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 ...