As the year winds down, we make one last stop beneath the night sky for the week of December 21–27, marking the arrival of the winter solstice, the longest night of the year and a quiet turning point in Earth’s journey around the Sun.

In this short holiday episode, we reflect on what the solstice means from an astronomical perspective, why ancient cultures saw it as a rebirth of light, and how it gifts modern stargazers with long, early nights and some of the most iconic sights in the sky.

We tour the familiar winter constellations as Orion rises into prominence, with the Orion Nebula, the Pleiades, Sirius, and the steady guideposts of the northern sky all on display. This week also features some of winter’s planetary beacons, with Jupiter blazing brightly, Saturn lingering quietly in the early evening, and Mercury making a brief predawn appearance for sharp-eyed observers.

The episode also includes a spoiler-free book recommendation for listeners who enjoyed November’s deeper dives into time dilation, interstellar travel, and the limits imposed by physics. Drew shares thoughts on Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, author of The Martian.

Finally, as a holiday gift to listeners, we introduce Liminal Horizon, a new music project featuring three albums of space-inspired, planetarium-style music designed for stargazing, night drives, and quiet contemplation.

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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 our RSS.com affiliate link for a discount, and to help support Star Trails.

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 our RSS.com affiliate link for a discount, and to help support Star Trails.