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00:00:01 --> 00:00:03 Avery: One of the most famous stars in the whole
00:00:03 --> 00:00:05 night sky has been keeping a secret for about
00:00:05 --> 00:00:06 100 years.
00:00:06 --> 00:00:09 Anna: And this week, a telescope in the Chilean
00:00:09 --> 00:00:11 desert finally caught it red handed.
00:00:11 --> 00:00:14 Betelgeuse, it turns out, is not alone.
00:00:14 --> 00:00:17 Avery: Also ahead, a black hole caught wandering the
00:00:17 --> 00:00:19 lonely outskirts of a galaxy dreading a
00:00:19 --> 00:00:22 star tens of thousands of light years from
00:00:22 --> 00:00:24 where any black hole has a right to be.
00:00:24 --> 00:00:27 Anna: NASA's next great observatory gets its tank
00:00:27 --> 00:00:29 filled and a date on the calendar.
00:00:29 --> 00:00:31 Avery: And the little spacecraft sent to rescue an
00:00:31 --> 00:00:34 aging telescope suddenly needs rescuing
00:00:34 --> 00:00:36 itself. G', day, and welcome to Astronomy
00:00:36 --> 00:00:39 Daily, your daily dose of space and astronomy
00:00:39 --> 00:00:40 news. I'm Avery.
00:00:40 --> 00:00:43 Anna: And I'm, um, anna. It's Wednesday, the 29th
00:00:43 --> 00:00:46 of July, four stories and a look at the sky
00:00:46 --> 00:00:48 from both hemispheres. Let's get into it.
00:00:48 --> 00:00:51 If you've ever looked up at Orion, and from
00:00:51 --> 00:00:54 Sydney or Seattle, just about everyone has,
00:00:54 --> 00:00:56 you've seen tonight's star Betelgeuse,
00:00:57 --> 00:00:59 that deep orange point marking the hunter's
00:00:59 --> 00:01:02 shoulder. It's a red supergiant, roughly
00:01:02 --> 00:01:04 650 light years away, and it is
00:01:04 --> 00:01:07 enormous. Drop it where our sun sits and it
00:01:07 --> 00:01:09 would swallow the orbit of Jupiter.
00:01:09 --> 00:01:12 Avery: And it's famous for misbehaving. It
00:01:12 --> 00:01:12 flickers.
00:01:13 --> 00:01:16 Anna: It does. Betelgeuse brightens and dims on
00:01:16 --> 00:01:18 a whole set of overlapping cycles. And people
00:01:18 --> 00:01:20 have been writing that down for more than a
00:01:20 --> 00:01:22 thousand years. But there's one rhythm, um,
00:01:23 --> 00:01:25 in particular, a slow beat about six years
00:01:25 --> 00:01:28 long that astronomers have never been able to
00:01:28 --> 00:01:31 fully explain. And for almost a century,
00:01:31 --> 00:01:33 one idea kept coming back. What if
00:01:33 --> 00:01:36 Betelgeuse has a companion, a second star,
00:01:36 --> 00:01:38 orbiting close, tugging on it?
00:01:39 --> 00:01:40 Avery: The famous Betel Buddy.
00:01:41 --> 00:01:43 Anna: That's the affectionate nickname, yes. The
00:01:43 --> 00:01:46 trouble is nobody had ever seen it. And you
00:01:46 --> 00:01:48 can see why. Imagine trying to spot a
00:01:48 --> 00:01:51 candle sitting right next to a lighthouse.
00:01:51 --> 00:01:54 Betelgeuse is so blindingly bright and so
00:01:54 --> 00:01:57 physically huge that any little companion
00:01:57 --> 00:01:59 tucked in beside it just drowns in the glare.
00:01:59 --> 00:02:02 For a hundred years, it stayed a hypothesis.
00:02:03 --> 00:02:04 Avery: So what changed?
00:02:04 --> 00:02:07 Anna: A team led by Miguel Montargis at the Paris
00:02:07 --> 00:02:09 Observatory in Chile, the vlt,
00:02:09 --> 00:02:12 and an instrument called Sphere that's built
00:02:12 --> 00:02:14 for exactly this job. Blocking out a bright
00:02:14 --> 00:02:17 star to hunt for faint things right beside
00:02:17 --> 00:02:19 it. And crucially, they picked their moment.
00:02:19 --> 00:02:22 They observed in December 2024, at the
00:02:22 --> 00:02:24 point in the orbit when the companion was
00:02:24 --> 00:02:27 predicted to swing out as far from Betelgeuse
00:02:27 --> 00:02:29 as it ever gets from seen from Earth. Best
00:02:29 --> 00:02:32 possible chance to split the two apart. And
00:02:33 --> 00:02:36 there it was. A faint little source right
00:02:36 --> 00:02:38 Where a companion should be. Their paper
00:02:38 --> 00:02:41 landed yesterday, 28th July in the journal
00:02:41 --> 00:02:44 Astronomy and Astrophysics. And Montargis
00:02:44 --> 00:02:46 called it the end of a century long quest.
00:02:47 --> 00:02:49 After a hundred years of arguing about it, we
00:02:49 --> 00:02:52 have a direct image of what is very likely
00:02:52 --> 00:02:53 Betelgeuse B.
00:02:53 --> 00:02:56 Avery: That gives me chills, honestly. A star that
00:02:56 --> 00:02:58 people have watched since antiquity and we're
00:02:58 --> 00:03:00 still learning brand new things about it.
00:03:00 --> 00:03:03 Anna: And here's the lovely twist. The reason they
00:03:03 --> 00:03:05 could see it at all is that it surprised
00:03:05 --> 00:03:07 them. The companion was predicted to be
00:03:07 --> 00:03:10 roughly the mass of our Sun. But the data
00:03:10 --> 00:03:13 say it's bigger than that, something like two
00:03:13 --> 00:03:16 to three times the Sun's mass. Montargis put
00:03:16 --> 00:03:18 it beautifully, because it's more massive
00:03:18 --> 00:03:20 than we expected, it's brighter than we
00:03:20 --> 00:03:22 expected, and that's the only reason it
00:03:22 --> 00:03:25 peeked out of the glare. If it had been as
00:03:25 --> 00:03:27 small as the textbook said, they might have
00:03:27 --> 00:03:28 missed it entirely.
00:03:28 --> 00:03:31 Avery: So the companion did us a favor by being
00:03:31 --> 00:03:34 chunkier than advertised. What is it though?
00:03:34 --> 00:03:35 Another supergiant?
00:03:35 --> 00:03:38 Anna: No, nothing like Betelgeuse. Think of it as
00:03:38 --> 00:03:41 a young, hot, fairly ordinary star,
00:03:41 --> 00:03:44 but locked in a very awkward orbit.
00:03:44 --> 00:03:47 It appears to circle so close that it's
00:03:47 --> 00:03:49 essentially skimming through the outer puffed
00:03:49 --> 00:03:52 up layers of the supergiant. And that has
00:03:52 --> 00:03:55 consequences. That orbit is almost
00:03:55 --> 00:03:58 certainly what paces that mysterious M6
00:03:58 --> 00:04:01 year brightness cycle. But it's also most
00:04:01 --> 00:04:03 likely a death sentence for the companion.
00:04:04 --> 00:04:05 Avery: Ooh, M. Go on.
00:04:05 --> 00:04:08 Anna: Plowing through a supergiant's outer
00:04:08 --> 00:04:10 atmosphere means constant drag. Every
00:04:10 --> 00:04:13 orbit, the little star loses a bit of energy.
00:04:13 --> 00:04:16 And models suggest it's slowly spiraling
00:04:16 --> 00:04:19 inward on astronomical timescales.
00:04:19 --> 00:04:22 Betelgeuse is very likely to swallow its
00:04:22 --> 00:04:25 own companion. Not tomorrow. We're talking
00:04:25 --> 00:04:28 thousands of years. But the relationship is,
00:04:28 --> 00:04:30 let's say, not built to last.
00:04:31 --> 00:04:33 Avery: The lighthouse eats the candle.
00:04:33 --> 00:04:36 Anna: Eventually, yes. And this matters for the big
00:04:36 --> 00:04:38 question everyone actually wants answered
00:04:38 --> 00:04:40 about Betelgeuse. When is it going to
00:04:40 --> 00:04:43 explode? Because it will. It's an old
00:04:43 --> 00:04:46 massive star, near the end of its life, and
00:04:46 --> 00:04:49 one day it will go supernova and briefly
00:04:49 --> 00:04:52 outshine everything in the night sky. Now,
00:04:52 --> 00:04:55 before anyone emails us, that's expected on a
00:04:55 --> 00:04:57 timescale of up to 100 years.
00:04:58 --> 00:05:00 So don't cancel your weekend. But whether a
00:05:00 --> 00:05:03 star has a close binary companion
00:05:03 --> 00:05:06 changes the whole picture. How it sheds mass,
00:05:06 --> 00:05:08 the shape of the gas around it, even the
00:05:08 --> 00:05:11 choreography of the explosion when it finally
00:05:11 --> 00:05:14 comes. Knowing Betelgeuse is a pear
00:05:14 --> 00:05:15 rewrites part of that story.
00:05:16 --> 00:05:18 Avery: And this was direct imaging. An actual
00:05:18 --> 00:05:20 Picture not just an inference from wobbles in
00:05:20 --> 00:05:21 the light.
00:05:21 --> 00:05:24 Anna: That's what makes it land. There had been
00:05:24 --> 00:05:27 circumstantial hints for years, but this is a
00:05:27 --> 00:05:29 direct detection light caught from the
00:05:29 --> 00:05:32 companion itself in the right place at the
00:05:32 --> 00:05:34 right time. It's the difference between the
00:05:34 --> 00:05:37 data suggest a second star and here
00:05:37 --> 00:05:38 it is.
00:05:38 --> 00:05:40 Avery: So if you want to go and look at the star at
00:05:40 --> 00:05:42 the center of all this, Betelgeuse itself.
00:05:43 --> 00:05:45 Where are we? Both hemispheres right now?
00:05:45 --> 00:05:48 Anna: Orion is a pre dawn act. It's climbing
00:05:48 --> 00:05:51 back into the morning sky after being lost in
00:05:51 --> 00:05:53 the sun's glare. For our Southern hemisphere
00:05:53 --> 00:05:56 listeners, Orion rides high in the northern
00:05:56 --> 00:05:58 part of the early morning sky. And it's
00:05:58 --> 00:06:00 upside down compared to the northern view.
00:06:00 --> 00:06:03 Look for Betelgeuse as the bright orange star
00:06:03 --> 00:06:05 from North America and mid northern
00:06:05 --> 00:06:08 latitudes. It's lower in the east southeast
00:06:08 --> 00:06:11 before dawn, climbing higher each week. As we
00:06:11 --> 00:06:13 head towards the northern winter, we'll come
00:06:13 --> 00:06:16 back to it properly in the sky watch. But
00:06:16 --> 00:06:18 next time you find it, just remember it's not
00:06:18 --> 00:06:20 one star. It never was.
00:06:21 --> 00:06:23 Avery: Now from a star that's hiding a companion to
00:06:23 --> 00:06:26 a black hole that was hiding full stop.
00:06:26 --> 00:06:29 Anna, picture, uh, a supermassive black hole.
00:06:29 --> 00:06:30 Where is it?
00:06:30 --> 00:06:33 Anna: Dead center of a galaxy. That's the rule. The
00:06:33 --> 00:06:35 big ones sit in the core.
00:06:35 --> 00:06:38 Avery: That's the rule. And this week, NASA's Swift
00:06:38 --> 00:06:40 observatory helped break it. Astronomers
00:06:40 --> 00:06:43 announced a tidal disruption event. That's
00:06:43 --> 00:06:45 the technical name for a black hole tearing a
00:06:45 --> 00:06:47 star apart and eating it. And the flare it
00:06:47 --> 00:06:50 produced was blazing briefly outshining its
00:06:50 --> 00:06:53 entire host galaxy in ultraviolet. Like
00:06:53 --> 00:06:56 10 billion suns switched on at once. But
00:06:56 --> 00:06:58 here's the thing. It didn't happen in the
00:06:58 --> 00:07:00 middle of the galaxy. It went off about
00:07:00 --> 00:07:03 30 light years out from the core.
00:07:03 --> 00:07:06 Anna: 30. That's not a rounding error.
00:07:06 --> 00:07:08 That's further from the center than the sun
00:07:08 --> 00:07:10 is from the middle of the Milky Way. That
00:07:10 --> 00:07:12 black hole is out in the suburbs.
00:07:13 --> 00:07:15 Avery: Way out in the suburbs. The event's called
00:07:15 --> 00:07:18 TDE 2025 ABCR
00:07:18 --> 00:07:21 in a Galaxy about 750 million light
00:07:21 --> 00:07:24 years away. And the teams one led out of
00:07:24 --> 00:07:27 NASA and the University of Maryland, another
00:07:27 --> 00:07:29 from UNC Chapel Hill, published it on
00:07:29 --> 00:07:32 27 July in the Astrophysical Journal
00:07:32 --> 00:07:35 Letters. It's the most off center tidal
00:07:35 --> 00:07:38 disruption ever seen. And what it reveals is
00:07:38 --> 00:07:40 a wandering black hole, a around a million
00:07:40 --> 00:07:42 times the mass of the sun, just roaming
00:07:42 --> 00:07:44 through its galaxy, nowhere near the core.
00:07:45 --> 00:07:47 Anna: How does a black hole end up out there? They
00:07:47 --> 00:07:49 don't exactly stroll.
00:07:49 --> 00:07:52 Avery: Best guess is a, uh, galaxy merger. When two
00:07:52 --> 00:07:54 galaxies collide and their central black
00:07:54 --> 00:07:57 holes get thrown together, one can get kicked
00:07:57 --> 00:07:58 out of the middle and left drifting.
00:07:59 --> 00:08:01 Theorists have predicted these wanderers for
00:08:01 --> 00:08:04 years. The problem is they're invisible. A
00:08:04 --> 00:08:06 black hole sitting quietly in the dark emits
00:08:06 --> 00:08:09 no light. You only ever attach one if it does
00:08:09 --> 00:08:10 something dramatic.
00:08:10 --> 00:08:13 Anna: Like grabbing a passing star and lighting up.
00:08:13 --> 00:08:15 Avery: Exactly. The star is the flashbulb. It
00:08:15 --> 00:08:18 wanders too close, gets shredded, and for a
00:08:18 --> 00:08:20 few weeks, the wreckage glows and gives the
00:08:20 --> 00:08:23 whole thing away. That's the only reason we
00:08:23 --> 00:08:25 know this black hole is there at all.
00:08:25 --> 00:08:27 Anna: And there's a lovely modern wrinkle to how
00:08:27 --> 00:08:30 they found it isn't there. This wasn't a
00:08:30 --> 00:08:31 human squinting at plates.
00:08:32 --> 00:08:34 Avery: Not a chance. The sky is too big for that
00:08:34 --> 00:08:36 now. The initial flare was picked up back in
00:08:36 --> 00:08:39 November 2025 by a survey at Palo are
00:08:39 --> 00:08:42 in California that scans the whole northern
00:08:42 --> 00:08:44 sky every couple of nights. It throws up
00:08:44 --> 00:08:47 something like half a million flashes every
00:08:47 --> 00:08:50 single night. So the team trained an AI to
00:08:50 --> 00:08:52 sift that fire hose and flag the ones that
00:08:52 --> 00:08:55 look like a tidal disruption. And it caught
00:08:55 --> 00:08:57 this one precisely because it was in a weird
00:08:57 --> 00:09:00 place off in the outskirts where nobody would
00:09:00 --> 00:09:02 have thought to look. Swift followed up to
00:09:02 --> 00:09:04 nail down the details.
00:09:04 --> 00:09:06 Anna: And that's the taste of what's coming, right?
00:09:06 --> 00:09:08 Once the big new survey telescopes are
00:09:08 --> 00:09:09 running.
00:09:09 --> 00:09:11 Avery: That's the real headline. Under the headline,
00:09:11 --> 00:09:14 with observatories like the Vera Rubin
00:09:14 --> 00:09:17 Observatory and UNC's Argus array coming
00:09:17 --> 00:09:19 online, we go from finding a handful of these
00:09:19 --> 00:09:22 a year to potentially hundreds or thousands.
00:09:22 --> 00:09:25 And suddenly all those invisible wandering
00:09:25 --> 00:09:27 black holes become findable. We're about to
00:09:27 --> 00:09:30 start taking a census of the galaxy's hidden
00:09:30 --> 00:09:32 monsters. And keep swip in mind, by the
00:09:32 --> 00:09:34 Anna: way, because it's going to come back to bite
00:09:34 --> 00:09:35 us later in the show.
00:09:36 --> 00:09:37 Avery: It is. Hold that thought.
00:09:37 --> 00:09:40 Anna: Speaking of survey telescopes about to change
00:09:40 --> 00:09:43 the game, let's talk about one that's now
00:09:43 --> 00:09:45 genuinely nearly on the
00:09:46 --> 00:09:48 NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space
00:09:48 --> 00:09:51 Telescope, because as of this week, it is
00:09:51 --> 00:09:53 fueled and counting down.
00:09:53 --> 00:09:56 Avery: Fueled. That's a real milestone. That's not a
00:09:56 --> 00:09:58 slide in a presentation. That's propellant in
00:09:58 --> 00:09:59 the tank.
00:09:59 --> 00:10:01 Anna: Precisely. On the 25th of July,
00:10:02 --> 00:10:03 teams at, uh, Kennedy loaded around
00:10:04 --> 00:10:06 290 gallons of hydrazine into
00:10:06 --> 00:10:09 the observatory. That's the fuel it'll use to
00:10:09 --> 00:10:11 hold its position and point with real
00:10:11 --> 00:10:14 precision once it's out there. And NASA is
00:10:14 --> 00:10:16 holding its big mission preview briefing
00:10:16 --> 00:10:19 today, exactly one month out from launch.
00:10:20 --> 00:10:22 The date to circle is the 30th of August
00:10:22 --> 00:10:25 and remarkably, that's about eight months
00:10:25 --> 00:10:27 ahead of the original schedule.
00:10:27 --> 00:10:30 Avery: A NASA flagship running early and as
00:10:30 --> 00:10:32 I understand it, on budget. Let the record
00:10:32 --> 00:10:34 show it can be done.
00:10:34 --> 00:10:37 Anna: It can. And here's why Roman is worth
00:10:37 --> 00:10:40 the excitement. Think of it as a telescope
00:10:40 --> 00:10:42 with Hubble quality sharpness, but a jaw
00:10:42 --> 00:10:45 droppingly wide field of view. Something like
00:10:45 --> 00:10:48 a hundred times the patch of sky Hubble sees
00:10:48 --> 00:10:51 in a single shot. Bass estimate is that in
00:10:51 --> 00:10:53 its first five years, it could image more
00:10:53 --> 00:10:56 than 50 times as much sky as Hubble has
00:10:56 --> 00:10:59 in 30. It's built to survey fast and
00:10:59 --> 00:10:59 wide.
00:11:00 --> 00:11:02 Avery: And what's that actually hunting?
00:11:02 --> 00:11:05 Anna: Two headline jobs. One, dark Energy,
00:11:05 --> 00:11:07 the mystery. Pushing the universe apart
00:11:08 --> 00:11:10 faster and faster. Roman will map how
00:11:10 --> 00:11:13 cosmic structure has grown over billions of
00:11:13 --> 00:11:16 years to pin down what Dark Energy is
00:11:16 --> 00:11:19 actually doing. And two, this is the one
00:11:19 --> 00:11:21 I love. It's an exoplanet machine.
00:11:22 --> 00:11:25 Using a trick called microlensing, Roman
00:11:25 --> 00:11:27 is expected to find more than 100
00:11:27 --> 00:11:30 new planets and to catch hundreds of others
00:11:30 --> 00:11:32 in the very act of finding forming around
00:11:32 --> 00:11:33 young stars.
00:11:34 --> 00:11:36 Avery: 100. We do a story
00:11:36 --> 00:11:39 most weeks about one interesting new planet
00:11:39 --> 00:11:42 and Roman's going to hand us 100.
00:11:42 --> 00:11:45 Anna: It really might reset the whole field.
00:11:45 --> 00:11:48 And this is genuinely for everyone listening
00:11:48 --> 00:11:51 wherever you are. It's a space telescope,
00:11:51 --> 00:11:54 though there's no hemisphere that misses out.
00:11:54 --> 00:11:57 The whole planet shares this one. One
00:11:57 --> 00:11:57 month to go.
00:11:58 --> 00:11:59 Avery: Fingers crossed for the 30th of August.
00:12:00 --> 00:12:02 Right? I told you Swift would come back
00:12:02 --> 00:12:04 around. In story two, Swift was the hero,
00:12:05 --> 00:12:07 the observatory that helped us catch that
00:12:07 --> 00:12:10 wandering black hole. Well, here's the
00:12:10 --> 00:12:12 thing in the tale, Swift itself is in
00:12:12 --> 00:12:15 trouble and the spacecraft sent to save it
00:12:15 --> 00:12:17 is now in trouble too.
00:12:17 --> 00:12:20 Anna: Set it up. Why does Swift need saving in
00:12:20 --> 00:12:21 the first place?
00:12:21 --> 00:12:24 Avery: Because Swift is falling. It's a fantastic
00:12:24 --> 00:12:26 gamma ray and X ray observatory that's been
00:12:26 --> 00:12:29 working since 2004. But it has no
00:12:29 --> 00:12:31 engine of its own, no way to boost its own
00:12:31 --> 00:12:34 orbit, and its orbit has been decaying faster
00:12:34 --> 00:12:36 than expected, partly because heightened
00:12:36 --> 00:12:39 solar activity puffs up the upper atmosphere
00:12:39 --> 00:12:42 and increases the drag. Left alone,
00:12:42 --> 00:12:44 Swift is looking at an uncontrolled re entry
00:12:44 --> 00:12:46 by around the end of this year.
00:12:46 --> 00:12:49 Anna: So it burns up unless someone
00:12:49 --> 00:12:51 goes up and gives it a push.
00:12:51 --> 00:12:54 Avery: Which is exactly the plan. A company called
00:12:54 --> 00:12:56 Catalyst Space Technologies built a
00:12:56 --> 00:12:59 robotics servicing spacecraft named Link.
00:12:59 --> 00:13:01 And NASA hired them for what its own mission
00:13:01 --> 00:13:04 director called a fast, high risk, high
00:13:04 --> 00:13:07 reward rescue. Link launched on 3
00:13:07 --> 00:13:10 July, and the goal is genuinely a first
00:13:10 --> 00:13:13 to fly up, grab hold of Swift, a
00:13:13 --> 00:13:15 satellite that was never designed to be
00:13:15 --> 00:13:17 docked with or serviced and physically
00:13:17 --> 00:13:20 boosted into a higher, safer orbit.
00:13:20 --> 00:13:22 Nobody has ever commercially docked with a
00:13:22 --> 00:13:24 government spacecraft that wasn't built for
00:13:24 --> 00:13:25 it.
00:13:25 --> 00:13:28 Anna: That's ambitious. So what's gone wrong?
00:13:28 --> 00:13:31 Avery: Over the weekend, Link ran into an attitude
00:13:31 --> 00:13:33 control problem and started spinning with its
00:13:33 --> 00:13:36 communications dropping in and out. According
00:13:36 --> 00:13:39 to NASA's update, and I want to be precise
00:13:39 --> 00:13:41 here because this is developing, the
00:13:41 --> 00:13:44 preliminary finding is that two of Link's
00:13:44 --> 00:13:46 three reaction wheels are no longer working
00:13:46 --> 00:13:48 and, and there's some loss of function in its
00:13:48 --> 00:13:50 cold gas thruster system as well.
00:13:50 --> 00:13:53 Anna: Reaction wheels, Those are the spinning
00:13:53 --> 00:13:55 wheels inside a spacecraft that let it turn
00:13:55 --> 00:13:58 and hold steady without using fuel.
00:13:58 --> 00:14:01 Lose those and you lose fine control of which
00:14:01 --> 00:14:02 way you're pointing.
00:14:02 --> 00:14:05 Avery: That's the one. And losing two of three is
00:14:05 --> 00:14:07 serious, especially because there was already
00:14:07 --> 00:14:09 a wobble with one Wheel earlier in
00:14:09 --> 00:14:11 commissioning that they patched in software.
00:14:12 --> 00:14:14 The good news, Link is not lost. It's still
00:14:14 --> 00:14:17 powered, still in contact, and its other
00:14:17 --> 00:14:20 major systems are behaving. The team's plan
00:14:20 --> 00:14:22 is to use Link's electric thrusters, its
00:14:22 --> 00:14:25 xenon propulsion, to stop the spin over the
00:14:25 --> 00:14:27 next few days, then re establish stable
00:14:27 --> 00:14:30 pointing, update the spacecraft's guidance
00:14:30 --> 00:14:32 and navigation to work around the dead
00:14:32 --> 00:14:34 hardware, and only then sit, uh, down with
00:14:34 --> 00:14:37 NASA and decide whether it's still safe to
00:14:37 --> 00:14:39 attempt the approach and capture of Swift.
00:14:39 --> 00:14:42 Anna: So the rescue isn't canceled, it's on
00:14:42 --> 00:14:45 hold while they figure out if the rescuer can
00:14:45 --> 00:14:46 still do the job.
00:14:47 --> 00:14:49 Avery: That's exactly it. And I'll flag for
00:14:49 --> 00:14:51 everyone. This is a life situation as of when
00:14:51 --> 00:14:54 we're recording. By the time you hear this,
00:14:54 --> 00:14:56 the team may already have stopped a spin or
00:14:56 --> 00:14:59 the picture may have changed again. But step
00:14:59 --> 00:15:01 back and look at the shape of it. The same
00:15:01 --> 00:15:03 little observatory that just helped us find
00:15:03 --> 00:15:06 an invisible black hole halfway across the
00:15:06 --> 00:15:08 universe is now clinging on in low Earth
00:15:08 --> 00:15:11 orbit, waiting to see if its own lifeboat can
00:15:11 --> 00:15:14 limp over and give it a shovel. Space is
00:15:14 --> 00:15:16 hard. Even the rescue missions need rescuing.
00:15:17 --> 00:15:19 Anna: We'll keep you posted as that one develops.
00:15:19 --> 00:15:22 And that brings us to the sky over the next
00:15:22 --> 00:15:24 few nights. And there's one thing you cannot
00:15:24 --> 00:15:27 miss, because it's going to be lighting up
00:15:27 --> 00:15:29 the whole night. The moon.
00:15:29 --> 00:15:31 Avery: The full buck moon.
00:15:31 --> 00:15:34 Anna: The full buck moon. Full tonight, the
00:15:34 --> 00:15:37 29th, and near enough to 100%
00:15:37 --> 00:15:39 lit for a couple of nights either side.
00:15:40 --> 00:15:42 Gorgeous to look at as it climbs the eastern
00:15:42 --> 00:15:45 sky after sunset. But it is a
00:15:45 --> 00:15:48 floodlight and that shapes everything else we
00:15:48 --> 00:15:49 can and can't
00:15:49 --> 00:15:51 Avery: do this week, starting with the meteors,
00:15:51 --> 00:15:53 because there are three showers on the go at
00:15:53 --> 00:15:53 once.
00:15:54 --> 00:15:56 Anna: There are. And this is where our two
00:15:56 --> 00:15:59 hemispheres genuinely differ. The headline
00:15:59 --> 00:16:01 shower right now is the Southern Delta
00:16:01 --> 00:16:04 Aquarius, peaking over the next couple of
00:16:04 --> 00:16:06 nights. And the clue is in the name of. For
00:16:06 --> 00:16:09 our Southern Hemisphere listeners, this one's
00:16:09 --> 00:16:12 yours. The radiant over near the bright star
00:16:12 --> 00:16:14 Fomalhaut rides high almost
00:16:14 --> 00:16:17 overhead in the pre dawn hours. So from
00:16:17 --> 00:16:20 Australia, New Zealand and southern Africa,
00:16:20 --> 00:16:23 you're in the best seats on Earth for it.
00:16:23 --> 00:16:26 And for the north, from North America,
00:16:26 --> 00:16:29 it's lower and stingier, though observers
00:16:29 --> 00:16:31 in the southern United States still get a
00:16:31 --> 00:16:34 fair look. Best window everywhere is
00:16:34 --> 00:16:36 the couple of hours before dawn. But
00:16:37 --> 00:16:39 big caveat, this year, that brilliant
00:16:39 --> 00:16:42 moon is going to wash out most of the faint
00:16:42 --> 00:16:45 Delta Aquarids. So temper expectations.
00:16:45 --> 00:16:47 Avery: If the faint ones are drowned out, what's
00:16:47 --> 00:16:48 worth staying up for?
00:16:49 --> 00:16:51 Anna: The fireballs. The Alpha Capricornids
00:16:51 --> 00:16:54 are active at the same time. They're sparse,
00:16:54 --> 00:16:57 only a handful an hour. But they specialize
00:16:57 --> 00:17:00 in slow, brilliant fireballs bright enough
00:17:00 --> 00:17:03 to punch through moonlight. And unlike the
00:17:03 --> 00:17:05 Delta Aquarids, the Capricornids play
00:17:05 --> 00:17:08 fair. They're just as good from either
00:17:08 --> 00:17:10 hemisphere. So the tip for everyone this
00:17:10 --> 00:17:13 week, don't chase quantity. Get
00:17:13 --> 00:17:16 comfortable, be patient and wait for
00:17:16 --> 00:17:19 one big slow fireball to make your
00:17:19 --> 00:17:19 night.
00:17:19 --> 00:17:22 Avery: And the shower, everyone's really waiting for
00:17:22 --> 00:17:23 the Perseids.
00:17:23 --> 00:17:25 Anna: And here's the good news to hold onto.
00:17:26 --> 00:17:28 They're building now, but they peak on the
00:17:28 --> 00:17:31 night of the 12th into the 13th of August.
00:17:31 --> 00:17:34 And this year the timing is close to perfect.
00:17:35 --> 00:17:37 The peak lands right on the New Moon.
00:17:37 --> 00:17:40 Dark skies, no moonlight.
00:17:40 --> 00:17:42 Potentially the best Perseids in years.
00:17:43 --> 00:17:45 They favor the northern Hemisphere, but mid
00:17:45 --> 00:17:48 southern latitudes will catch some too. Mark
00:17:48 --> 00:17:51 it. The night of 12 August is the one to
00:17:51 --> 00:17:52 keep clear.
00:17:52 --> 00:17:54 Avery: And that same date is a big one for another
00:17:54 --> 00:17:55 reason.
00:17:55 --> 00:17:58 Anna: It is a, uh, total solar eclipse on
00:17:58 --> 00:18:01 12 August, with the path of totality
00:18:01 --> 00:18:04 crossing Greenland, Iceland and slice of
00:18:04 --> 00:18:07 Spain, and a partial eclipse visible across
00:18:07 --> 00:18:09 much of Europe and parts of North America.
00:18:09 --> 00:18:12 We'll have full timings closer to the day.
00:18:12 --> 00:18:14 And the one rule that never changes
00:18:14 --> 00:18:17 wherever you are, never look at the
00:18:17 --> 00:18:20 partial phases of a solar eclipse. Without
00:18:20 --> 00:18:23 certified eclipse glasses, ISO
00:18:23 --> 00:18:26
00:18:26 --> 00:18:28 or a properly filtered telescope.
00:18:28 --> 00:18:31 Ordinary sunglasses will not protect your
00:18:31 --> 00:18:34 eyes. That safety line stays in.
00:18:34 --> 00:18:35 No exceptions.
00:18:36 --> 00:18:38 Avery: One quick planet note before we wrap the sky.
00:18:38 --> 00:18:41 Anna: Yes, say goodbye to Jupiter for a
00:18:41 --> 00:18:44 little while. Today the 29th
00:18:44 --> 00:18:47 Jupiter reaches solar conjunction. It's
00:18:47 --> 00:18:49 passing almost directly behind the sun from
00:18:49 --> 00:18:52 our point of view, so it's lost in the glare
00:18:52 --> 00:18:54 and out of action for the next few weeks.
00:18:54 --> 00:18:57 It'll creep back as a pre dawn object
00:18:57 --> 00:19:00 later in August. And for early risers,
00:19:00 --> 00:19:02 Mercury is putting on its best morning
00:19:02 --> 00:19:05 showing of the season, low in the pre dawn
00:19:05 --> 00:19:06 east,
00:19:06 --> 00:19:08 Avery: and we have to close the loop on our lead
00:19:08 --> 00:19:08 story.
00:19:09 --> 00:19:12 Anna: We do. If you're up before dawn chasing
00:19:12 --> 00:19:15 those meteors, look for Orion climbing in
00:19:15 --> 00:19:18 the east and find Betelgeuse, that bright
00:19:18 --> 00:19:20 orange shoulder from the southern hemisphere.
00:19:20 --> 00:19:23 It's high in the northern sky and flipped
00:19:23 --> 00:19:25 over from the north. It's lower in the east
00:19:25 --> 00:19:28 before sunrise. Either way, give it a nod.
00:19:29 --> 00:19:31 You now know something about that star that
00:19:31 --> 00:19:33 nobody knew for a hundred years.
00:19:34 --> 00:19:36 It's got a companion before we go,
00:19:36 --> 00:19:39 Avery: a bit of proper news from our end. We've just
00:19:39 --> 00:19:41 launched the brand new home for the show
00:19:41 --> 00:19:41 astronomydaily.
00:19:41 --> 00:19:44 Anna: Uh, IO same
00:19:44 --> 00:19:46 address you already know, but it's had a
00:19:46 --> 00:19:49 complete makeover and there's a lot there.
00:19:49 --> 00:19:51 Now you can stream the entire back catalog
00:19:52 --> 00:19:54 every episode. There's a news feed that
00:19:54 --> 00:19:56 updates continuously through the day so you
00:19:56 --> 00:19:58 can keep up with the latest space and
00:19:58 --> 00:20:01 astronomy headlines between episodes. You can
00:20:01 --> 00:20:03 read listener reviews and leave one of your
00:20:03 --> 00:20:05 own. And you can sign up for uh, our daily
00:20:05 --> 00:20:07 Space News newsletter to get it all straight
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00:20:09 --> 00:20:10 Avery: And there's a spot to drop us a line,
00:20:10 --> 00:20:13 questions, suggestions, a story you think
00:20:13 --> 00:20:15 we've missed, or just to say good day, we
00:20:15 --> 00:20:16 read them.
00:20:16 --> 00:20:18 Anna: It's brand new, so we genuinely love your
00:20:18 --> 00:20:21 feedback on it. Head to astronomydaily
00:20:21 --> 00:20:24 IO have a wander around and tell us what you
00:20:24 --> 00:20:26 think, what you love, what you change. Help
00:20:26 --> 00:20:27 us make it yours.
00:20:28 --> 00:20:30 Avery: That's astronomy daily for Wednesday, 29th of
00:20:30 --> 00:20:33 July. Betelgeuse's Hundred Year Secret
00:20:33 --> 00:20:36 A black hole in the wrong part of town, Roman
00:20:36 --> 00:20:39 on the clock and a rescue mission holding its
00:20:39 --> 00:20:39 breath.
00:20:39 --> 00:20:41 Anna: Thanks for spending part of your day with us.
00:20:41 --> 00:20:44 Look after each other and whichever
00:20:44 --> 00:20:45 hemisphere you're in.
00:20:45 --> 00:20:46 Avery: Clear skies.