DCB Jazz on WDCB 90.9
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Evening Treats
The evening sky offers up a couple of nice conjunctions tonight. One of them disappears quickly, but the other lingers awhile. The early pairing is the planets Venus and Mercury. The two worlds are quite low in the west at sunset, and drop from view about the time it gets good and dark. If you have a clear horizon, though, you should be able to pick them out because Venus is the brilliant “evening star.” It’s far brighter than any of the other planets or stars in the night sky, so it stands...
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Venus and Mercury
It takes a lot of hard work to explore the worlds of our solar system. Over the last five years, for example, scientists have analyzed thousands of pictures of Mercury, the planet closest to the Sun, snapped by the Messenger spacecraft. Those pictures have revealed mountains, canyons, craters, and other features — many of which had never been seen before. But once you find all those features you have to name them — a job that’s not much easier than the exploration itself. Before Messenger,...
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Breaking Ground
RADIO MOSCOW: This is Radio Moscow. Here is a special announcement. For the first time in history, a woman has gone up into outer space. A Soviet citizen, Tereshkova. Valentina Tereshkova was a 22-year-old textile worker when she decided to take up a hobby — skydiving. She became so good at it that a couple of years later she earned the attention of the Soviet Union’s space program. She was one of five women selected to train for a trip to orbit. And 50 years ago today, she became the only...
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Galactic Thief
About two dozen satellite galaxies orbit the Milky Way, which is a giant among galaxies. By far the brightest of these satellites is the Large Magellanic Cloud, which is best seen from the southern hemisphere. There’s evidence that it owes some of its luster to galactic thievery: It stole some of its stars from another galaxy. The Large Magellanic Cloud is about 160,000 light-years from Earth, making it one of our nearest galactic neighbors. It’s only about one-tenth as bright as the Milky...
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Dusty Vega
The second-brightest star in the northern half of the sky is in great view as we head toward summer. Vega is well up in the east as darkness falls and climbs high overhead later on. Vega is a bit like a scaled-up version of the Sun — it’s more than twice the Sun’s diameter and mass. And recent research shows that it’s encircled by scaled-up versions of the belts of comets and asteroids that surround the Sun — suggesting that it could have a scaled-up planetary system as well. Two large space...
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Older Vega
The brilliant star shining in the eastern sky shortly after sunset tonight is beautiful Vega. It’s the brightest member of the constellation Lyra, and one of the best-known stars in the sky. Perspective views of VegaDuring the 1980s, Vega achieved even greater fame when a space telescope detected dust orbiting the star, suggesting that it might be giving birth to planets. Because of that, astronomer Carl Sagan chose to make Vega the star in the novel “Contact.” In the novel, a signal from...
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Summer Triangle
With the start of summer just a few days away, the signature star pattern of the season is already in good view. The Summer Triangle is low in the east and northeast as night falls, and climbs high across the sky later on. The triangle’s points are Vega, Deneb, and Altair. Vega is the brightest and stands highest in the sky during the evening hours. In fact, for those at the middle latitudes of the United States, Vega passes directly overhead in the wee hours of the morning. Deneb is to...
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PROGRAM INFORMATION
- Glen Ellyn, IL
- Jazz
- English
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WDCB Public Radio
College of DuPage
425 Fawell Blvd.
Glen Ellyn, IL 60137(630) 942-4300 - Visit the station website Email the show Update show info
