The veil between life and death is thin in late October, and not just on Earth. This week on Star Trails, we take a haunting journey through The Cosmic Graveyard, a place where dead suns still glow, galaxies devour one another, and the faint aftershocks of ancient explosions echo across time. From the slow cooling of white dwarfs to the bottomless depths of black holes, we explore the universe’s quietest afterlife.
But before venturing into that darkness, the night sky itself offers reason to stay up late. The Orionid meteor shower peaks under a new moon, delivering pristine, moonless skies for deep-sky observing. Saturn still commands the early evening, Jupiter gleams after midnight, and the autumn constellations fill the heavens with galaxies, clusters, and nebulae ripe for exploration.
Plus, a listener’s question sparks a timely detour into the strange beauty of black holes and the now-iconic image of a glowing ring surrounding a dark center. Is it art, or reality? We explain the physics behind those haunting visuals and how Einstein’s relativity sculpts light itself into the illusion we see.
So settle in beneath the cooling autumn sky, and listen as we wander the universe’s silent necropolis, where every dying star leaves behind a spark, and even the ashes of creation still shimmer with light.
Mentioned in this episode:
- What do black holes look like?