Star Trails

• How to Build a Time Machine

  For the season finale of Star Trails, we’re building a “time machine” the only way we know how: with physics, not plot holes. Drew takes a tour through the time-travel stories that shaped his 80s childhood—Back to the Future, Star Trek IV, The Time Machine, Bill & Ted, and even Disney’s wonderfully unhinged The Black Hole—and then sets them beside the actual rules of our universe. We’ll look at the real ways you can travel into the future using speed and gravity.

  Along the way we’ll ride with nuclear-pulse starships, bust the myth of the Bussard ramjet, and imagine skimming just outside the maw of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. We’ll talk about why time only runs forward, what it really means to “move through spacetime,” why black holes make clocks crawl, and how modern quantum ideas try, and mostly fail, to sneak backward time travel in through the side door without breaking causality.

  In the second half of the episode, we park the starship and focus on the actual sky. December is one of the richest observing months of the year, so while the podcast takes a short holiday break, you’ll have a clear roadmap: the final Cold Supermoon of the year, the Geminid and Ursid meteor showers, Mercury’s dawn cameo, Jupiter and Saturn in the evening, and the full cast of winter constellations. We’ll lay out a simple three-session observing plan to carry you through the month: supermoon and giants, Geminid weekend, and a quiet solstice night under the Ursids.

  It’s an episode about time travel that ends with the most accessible time machine we have: walking outside, looking up, and catching ancient photons from the deep past on a cold December night.

  Connect with us on Bluesky @startrails.bsky.social, or if you prefer listening on YouTube, visit our channel @TheStarTrailsPodcast.

  If you're enjoying the show, consider sharing it with a friend! Want to help? Buy us a coffee!

  Podcasting is better with RSS.com! If you're planning to start your own podcast, use ourRSS.com affiliate link for a discount, and to help support Star Trails.

• Eras of the Universe (Taylor’s Version)

  This week, we’re doing something chaotic: we’re mapping the entire history of the universe onto the musical eras of Taylor Swift. And yes, the science is absolutely real.

  From the Big Bang to the heat death of everything, each of Taylor’s albums becomes a chapter in the cosmic timeline. We’ll travel through the Primordial Universe, the formation of the first stars, galaxy evolution, black hole fireworks, the rise of dark energy, and the long, cold future of the cosmos — all through a Swiftian lens.

  Later in the episode, we return to our usual sky tour. We’ll explore the waxing crescent Moon, bright views of Jupiter and Saturn, and the early arrival of the winter constellations. And we’ll take a moment to marvel at Hubble’s breathtaking new mosaic of the Andromeda Galaxy, detailed enough that you can zoom in and see individual stars in another galaxy.

  Think of this episode as a cosmic mix tape!

  Connect with us on Bluesky @startrails.bsky.social, or if you prefer listening on YouTube, visit our channel @TheStarTrailsPodcast.

  If you're enjoying the show, consider sharing it with a friend! Want to help? Buy us a coffee!

  Podcasting is better with RSS.com! If you're planning to start your own podcast, use ourRSS.com affiliate link for a discount, and to help support Star Trails.

• Sad Astronomy: Reflections on Distance, Death, and Meaning

  This episode begins with auroras and interstellar objects and ends somewhere much closer to the heart. After catching up on the week’s sky – dark moonless nights, Mercury in the dawn, meteor activity, and the quiet unraveling of comet 3I/Atlas – we shift into something different.

  We’ll explore the idea of “sad astronomy”: the loneliness of deep space, the slow death of stars, the fragility of spacecraft, the silence of the cosmic void, and why so many stargazers feel a mix of awe and melancholy when they look up.

  Along the way we wander through pop culture – the films Contact, and Interstellar, the Challenger and Columbia tragedies, the ghost glow of old light, the Arecibo message, Voyager’s endless journey, and the overview effect, the transformative shift astronauts feel when they see Earth from above.

  It’s a meditation on distance, death, meaning, and the strange comfort found in the cold geometry of the cosmos.

  Connect with us on Bluesky @startrails.bsky.social

  If you're enjoying the show, consider sharing it with a friend! Want to help? Buy us a coffee!

  Podcasting is better with RSS.com! If you're planning to start your own podcast, use ourRSS.com affiliate link for a discount, and to help support Star Trails.

• Playing Dice with the Universe

  This week on Star Trails, we let the universe decide.

  We fire up a real quantum computer to generate pure randomness — the seed for a million-universe simulation of the famous Drake Equation. Each run explores how many intelligent civilizations might exist in our galaxy, from barren voids to thriving cosmic metropolises. The results are startling, the implications profound, and the method delightfully nerdy.

  Along the way, we revisit the roots of the Drake Equation, the strangeness of quantum mechanics, and the poetry of probability. Then we step outside to the real night sky: the waning Moon, Saturn’s thinning rings, Jupiter’s bright rise, and the Taurid fireballs streaking through November darkness.

  I also share how I photographed the recent Full Beaver Moon using Stellarium, PhotoPills, and The Photographer’s Ephemeris.

  This episode blends code, cosmology, and contemplation.

  Links mentioned:

  • Sampling the Drake Equation with Python
  • My Full Beaver Moon Cityscape
  • Photo tools: Stellarium, PhotoPills, and The Photographer's Ephemeris

  For more episodes and resources for backyard astronomers, visit www.startrails.show. Share the wonder of the stars with friends and continue your cosmic journey with us. Also, connect with us on Bluesky @startrails.bsky.social, or YouTube @TheStarTrailsPodcast.

  If you're enjoying the show, consider sharing it with a friend! Want to help? Buy us a coffee!

  Podcasting is better with RSS.com! If you're planning to start your own podcast use ourRSS.com affiliate link for a discount, and to help support Star Trails.

• A Postcard to the Cosmos: Recreating the Arecibo Signal

  This week on Star Trails, we explore the messages written across the cosmos — from faint comets in our own skies to the coded signals we’ve sent into the void. Drew shares a quick report from his local astronomy club’s fall star party, where hopes of photographing Comet A6 Lemmon met the familiar mix of excitement, haze, and grilled hamburgers under imperfect skies.

  Then we turn from backyard observing to deep-space communication with a hands-on look at the Arecibo Message — the radio transmission beamed from Earth in 1974 as humanity’s mathematical greeting to the stars. We’ll break down what that signal said, how it was constructed, and whether an alien civilization could ever decode its meaning. Along the way, Drew recreates the original 1,679-bit message using Python code, transforms it into sound, and decodes it again to reveal the famous stick figure, DNA helix, and planetary map.

  It’s a story about logic, language, and what it means to say hello to the universe — a reminder that every beam of light and burst of radio energy carries a trace of who we are.

  For more episodes and resources for backyard astronomers, visit www.startrails.show. Share the wonder of the stars with friends and continue your cosmic journey with us. Also, connect with us on Bluesky @startrails.bsky.social, or YouTube @TheStarTrailsPodcast.

  If you're enjoying the show, consider sharing it with a friend! Want to help? Buy us a coffee!

  Podcasting is better with RSS.com! If you're planning to start your own podcast use ourRSS.com affiliate link for a discount, and to help support Star Trails.