Bob Berman

One of the all-time lowest Full Moons you’ll ever see graces us this month, but the real fun happens a few nights from then as the “star” closest to the Moon, Saturn, is at its biggest and brightest of the entire year. Hear how to spot Saturn and why it’s hard to locate.

Bastille Day is here and we had our own Independence Day fireworks just recently as well. So speaking of explosions, unimaginable violence is up in the sky too – and keeps happening. The greatest are supernovas. Tune in to hear how these cause a star’s total destruction.

What a year we’re having. First we got to see a super-rare total solar eclipse, when the Moon completely covered the Sun. And now this week, almost as rare, the Moon will eclipse a far more distant star, a famous blue one. When a star is blocked by the Moon, it’s called an occultation, and it rarely happens to one of the few truly bright stars that happen to be positioned along the Moon’s path.

All the interactions in the universe can be explained by gravity, electromagnetism, and the two forces, strong and weak, that operate only within atoms. This week: The String Theory.

For the first time since 1985, the Full Moon happens precisely on the summer solstice. Tune in to hear the process of the moon’s explosive brightening.

The June Full Moon, coming up this Thursday night, will be very strange. For the first time since 1985, Full Moon happens precisely on the summer solstice. As it approaches that rare milestone, check it out on June 18, because that marks the turning point in the moonlight department.

On Tuesday night the crescent Moon hovers next to the famous blue star Regulus. As the brightest luminary in Leo the Lion, the ancient Persians considered it one of the “four royal stars,” famous for sitting in the center of the zodiac, which is why it sometimes meets the Moon.

The dark matter problem started with the famous Swiss physicist Fritz Zwicky in 1933, when he studied galaxy motion in the giant Coma group. What he perceived was astonishing. Each member moved so quickly, it should have no problem escaping the gravitational glue of the entire assembly. Zwicky realized that this galaxy cluster — and all others, it soon turned out — shouldn't even exist. Yet there they were.

Jupiter passed behind the Sun a week ago, so it’s still lost in the solar glare. By next month, early risers will start seeing brilliant Jupiter in the east before dawn, as a morning star. But when we think of that giant planet, people who care about astronomy think of its strange moon Europa, which is probably the likeliest place for life in the known universe.

In the category of cool naked-eye sky events, you’ve got eclipses, comets, meteor showers, and the event happening right now – a bright conjunction. Tune in to hear about one of the best conjunctions of the year!