NASA Is Looking For Some Big Stars With Radio Astronomy

NASA has enhanced it’s mission of discover with a new radio station. Known as “Third Rock – America’s Space Station” it will play a variety of New Rock, Alternative and Indie music in search of new music stars. This station is also an attempt to reach out to the younger crowd through internet radio to help fill high-tech jobs in the engineering, science, and IT fields. It can be reached by going through NASA’s web portal, the radio tab of Apple’s iTunes or directly by going to www.rfcmedia.com/thirdrockradio//

Built to be light-years ahead of the best new music, we’ll have to see if NASA can engage new prospects with this gambit. I’ve listened to the station for a little while and must admit that they do have some good new rock bands. I guess all that sky searching does pay off when searching the radio waves for new stars.

OK, I don’t usually do radio station reviews. Here is some hard science with an illustrated comparison of some really big actual stars.

(Click on image to Enlarge)
Note that our very own Sun will balloon up to the size of Arcturus (frame 4 – middle) when it goes red-giant in about 5 billion years. If VY Canis Majoris took the place of our Sun, it would extend all the way out to Saturn. Note that largest in size does not mean largest in mass. temperature, or luminosity.