Links & sources · Isar Aerospace — mission updates — https://isaraerospace.com/mission-updates-overview · ESA — Spectrum launches to orbit (imagery) — https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2026/09/Spectrum_launches_to_orbit · NASASpaceflight — Isar 'Onward and Upward' — https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2026/09/isar-onward-and-upward/ · Space.com — Private German rocket makes history — https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/isar-aerospace-second-launch-norway-andoya-spaceport-spectrum-rocket · Space.com — Gilmour Space eyes a second orbital attempt — https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/australias-gilmour-space-not-going-to-give-up-as-it-eyes-2nd-orbital-launch-attempt-in-2026 · Sky & Telescope — Gaps in stellar streams may be common — https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/gaps-in-stellar-streams-common-not-sign-dark-matter/ · Arora et al. — Semianalytic modeling of subhalo encounters with thin stellar streams, ApJ — https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/adf740 · Sharma et al. — Rapid orbital decay in eRASSU J060839.5−704014 (arXiv) — https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.09341 · Maitra et al. — eRASSU J060839.5−704014 discovery paper, A&A (2024) — https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/ref/2024/03/aa47811-23/aa47811-23.html · MIT News — Peptides can form well-defined structures in Venus-like conditions — https://news.mit.edu/2026/study-peptides-can-form-well-defined-structures-harsh-venus-conditions-0831 · NASA Swift blog — Commercial spacecraft for Swift boost continues tech demo — https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/swift/2026/09/04/commercial-spacecraft-for-nasas-swift-boost-continues-tech-demo/ · NASA Swift blog — LINK spacecraft recovery progressing — https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/swift/2026/08/06/link-spacecraft-recovery-progressing-for-nasas-swift-boost/ · EarthSky — Saturn at opposition, 4 October 2026 — https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/saturn-at-opposition-closest-brightest-best/ · Star Walk — Astronomical events, September 2026 — https://starwalk.space/en/news/night-sky-tonight-september
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support.
Sponsor Details:
Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.astronomydaily.io/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!
Get the best secure and private email on the planet. Stop your Government, google and who knows who else spying on every email you write. Do what we did and use ProtonMail. They beleive in privacy and there are no ads in their business model...yet they still provide a free forever service. Check them out and get out special deal at www.astronomydaily.io/protonmail
Become a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click Here
This episode includes AI-generated content.
00:00:00 --> 00:00:03 Anna: Hello and welcome to Astronomy daily. It's
00:00:03 --> 00:00:06 Monday, September 7th, 2026. I'm
00:00:06 --> 00:00:08 Anna and this is series five, episode
00:00:08 --> 00:00:09 187.
00:00:10 --> 00:00:11 Anna: And I'm Avery. Anna.
00:00:11 --> 00:00:14 Uh, we're starting the week with a rocket
00:00:14 --> 00:00:16 that finally worked. And it's not one of the
00:00:16 --> 00:00:18 usual suspects.
00:00:18 --> 00:00:21 Anna: It isn't. On Saturday morning our time, a
00:00:21 --> 00:00:23 German built rocket lifted off from an island
00:00:23 --> 00:00:26 inside the Arctic Circle and put six
00:00:26 --> 00:00:29 payloads into orbit. And in doing so,
00:00:29 --> 00:00:32 it became the first vehicle in history to
00:00:32 --> 00:00:33 reach orbit
00:00:33 --> 00:00:36 Anna: from western European soil 69
00:00:36 --> 00:00:37 years into the space age.
00:00:38 --> 00:00:41 Anna: 69 years into the space age. Europe
00:00:41 --> 00:00:43 has been launching for decades from South
00:00:43 --> 00:00:46 America. On Saturday, it launched from home.
00:00:46 --> 00:00:49 Anna: That's our lead then. Three pieces of
00:00:49 --> 00:00:52 science that all quietly tell you something
00:00:52 --> 00:00:53 about how hard measurement is.
00:00:54 --> 00:00:56 Astronomers have found that the gaps in
00:00:56 --> 00:00:59 stellar streams. One of our best tools for
00:00:59 --> 00:01:02 finding dark matter might not be dark matter
00:01:02 --> 00:01:02 at all.
00:01:03 --> 00:01:05 Anna: A pair of white dwarfs in the far southern
00:01:05 --> 00:01:08 sky are circling each other every six
00:01:08 --> 00:01:11 minutes and we can now watch the orbit
00:01:11 --> 00:01:13 shrinking. That is gravity carrying energy
00:01:13 --> 00:01:16 away as waves measured with X rays.
00:01:16 --> 00:01:19 Anna: And on Venus, proteins, orbital or
00:01:19 --> 00:01:22 the beginnings of them, peptides that fold up
00:01:22 --> 00:01:25 properly and stay folded in concentrated
00:01:25 --> 00:01:28 sulfuric acid. Which is not what anybody
00:01:28 --> 00:01:30 expected then
00:01:30 --> 00:01:32 Anna: because a lot of you have written in about
00:01:32 --> 00:01:34 it. What on earth is Link actually
00:01:34 --> 00:01:37 doing up there? The Swift rescue that didn't
00:01:37 --> 00:01:39 rescue Swift has turned into something more
00:01:39 --> 00:01:42 interesting. And it's got about two weeks
00:01:42 --> 00:01:42 left,
00:01:42 --> 00:01:45 Anna: plus the sky for the week ahead, both
00:01:45 --> 00:01:47 hemispheres. And there's an occultation
00:01:47 --> 00:01:50 tomorrow that comes with a serious safety
00:01:50 --> 00:01:51 warning attached.
00:01:51 --> 00:01:52 Anna: Big Monday.
00:01:52 --> 00:01:55 Anna: Let's go right, set the scene for
00:01:55 --> 00:01:58 me because I want to understand why this is a
00:01:58 --> 00:02:00 first when Europe has been in the launch
00:02:00 --> 00:02:02 business since the 70s.
00:02:02 --> 00:02:04 Anna: That's exactly the right question. And the
00:02:04 --> 00:02:07 answer is geography. Europe's launch site
00:02:07 --> 00:02:10 is Kourou in French Guiana on the
00:02:10 --> 00:02:13 northeast coast of South America. It's been
00:02:13 --> 00:02:15 Europe's spaceport since 1968.
00:02:15 --> 00:02:18 Ariane Vega album, all of it.
00:02:18 --> 00:02:20 Superb location, 5 degrees off the equator.
00:02:21 --> 00:02:22 You get a free kick from the Earth's
00:02:22 --> 00:02:23 rotation.
00:02:23 --> 00:02:26 Anna: But it's 8 kilometres from Paris.
00:02:26 --> 00:02:29 Anna: 7 odd. And that's the point.
00:02:29 --> 00:02:32 Europe has had access to space for 50 years
00:02:32 --> 00:02:34 without having launch capability on its own
00:02:34 --> 00:02:37 continent. Every European satellite that
00:02:37 --> 00:02:40 went up on a European rocket went up from
00:02:40 --> 00:02:43 South America or from Cape Canaveral
00:02:43 --> 00:02:46 or for a long stretch from Kazakhstan on
00:02:46 --> 00:02:47 a Soyuz.
00:02:47 --> 00:02:49 Anna: And on Saturday that changed.
00:02:50 --> 00:02:53 Anna: On Saturday that changed. The company is
00:02:53 --> 00:02:56 Isar Aerospace, German, founded
00:02:56 --> 00:02:58 2018. Spun out of the technical University of
00:02:58 --> 00:03:01 Munich. The rocket is called Spectrum.
00:03:02 --> 00:03:04 It lifted off at 10:12 in the evening,
00:03:04 --> 00:03:07 Central European Time, on Friday the 5th,
00:03:07 --> 00:03:09 which is 6:12 on Saturday morning for those
00:03:09 --> 00:03:12 of us in Sydney from Andoya spaceport.
00:03:12 --> 00:03:15 Anna: And Andoya is where exactly?
00:03:15 --> 00:03:18 Anna: Northern Norway. An Island about 300
00:03:18 --> 00:03:20 kilometres inside the Arctic Circle. It's
00:03:20 --> 00:03:23 been a sounding rocket range since 1962,
00:03:23 --> 00:03:26 so there's real heritage there. But this is
00:03:26 --> 00:03:28 its first orbital launch pad and it's a
00:03:28 --> 00:03:31 genuinely useful location. You launch north
00:03:31 --> 00:03:33 over open ocean and you get straight into
00:03:33 --> 00:03:36 polar and sun synchronous orbits, which is
00:03:36 --> 00:03:38 where most Earth observation satellites want
00:03:38 --> 00:03:39 to be.
00:03:39 --> 00:03:40 Anna: Tell me about the rocket.
00:03:40 --> 00:03:43 Anna: Spectrum's a two stage vehicle, about 28
00:03:43 --> 00:03:46 metres tall, 2 metres across. Nine
00:03:46 --> 00:03:49 engines on the first stage, one vacuum
00:03:49 --> 00:03:51 optimised engine on the second. And they're
00:03:51 --> 00:03:53 all the same engine. It's called Aquila and
00:03:53 --> 00:03:56 Isar built it in house. The propellant
00:03:56 --> 00:03:58 combination is the interesting bit. Liquid
00:03:58 --> 00:04:00 oxygen and propane.
00:04:00 --> 00:04:03 Anna: Propane, not kerosene, not
00:04:03 --> 00:04:05 methane, propane.
00:04:05 --> 00:04:08 Anna: It sits between the two, denser than methane,
00:04:08 --> 00:04:10 cleaner burning than kerosene, and you can
00:04:10 --> 00:04:13 buy it anywhere. It's an unusual choice. And
00:04:13 --> 00:04:16 it's theirs. The second stage restarts, which
00:04:16 --> 00:04:18 matters in a minute. And the numbers are
00:04:18 --> 00:04:21 small, launcher numbers. About 700
00:04:21 --> 00:04:23 kilogrammes to sun synchronous orbit out of
00:04:23 --> 00:04:26 Andoya, around a tonne to low Earth orbit, if
00:04:26 --> 00:04:28 they ever fly it from French Guiana.
00:04:28 --> 00:04:31 Anna: So this is not an Ariane competitor?
00:04:32 --> 00:04:34 Anna: Not remotely, and nobody's pretending it is.
00:04:34 --> 00:04:37 Ariane 6 lifts 20 tonnes. This is
00:04:37 --> 00:04:39 the small satellite end of the market. The
00:04:39 --> 00:04:42 rocket lab electron end, roughly. But the
00:04:42 --> 00:04:45 strategic question was never about mass. It
00:04:45 --> 00:04:47 was about whether Europe could do this at
00:04:47 --> 00:04:49 all. From Europe, without asking anyone's
00:04:49 --> 00:04:50 permission.
00:04:50 --> 00:04:53 Anna: Now, this wasn't the first attempt.
00:04:53 --> 00:04:55 Anna: No, and I want to be fair about the first
00:04:55 --> 00:04:58 one. Spectrum's maiden flight was 30
00:04:59 --> 00:05:01 March 2025, from the same pad.
00:05:02 --> 00:05:05 It flew for about 30 seconds, lost attitude
00:05:05 --> 00:05:07 control and came down. The cause was a
00:05:07 --> 00:05:09 vent valve that opened when it shouldn't have
00:05:09 --> 00:05:12 during the pitchover manoeuvre. Isar spent
00:05:12 --> 00:05:15 the time since on software changes and on
00:05:15 --> 00:05:16 widening the vehicle's margins.
00:05:17 --> 00:05:19 Anna: 18 months between flights.
00:05:19 --> 00:05:22 Anna: 18 months and a, uh, run of scrubs this year.
00:05:22 --> 00:05:25 On top of that, a pressurisation valve in
00:05:25 --> 00:05:27 January weather, range issues.
00:05:28 --> 00:05:29 There were people writing them off as
00:05:29 --> 00:05:32 Anna: recently as last week and then Friday night.
00:05:32 --> 00:05:33 It just worked.
00:05:33 --> 00:05:36 Anna: It just worked. Nine engines lit clean.
00:05:36 --> 00:05:39 Ascent stage separation fairing away.
00:05:39 --> 00:05:41 And the second stage put itself into an
00:05:41 --> 00:05:44 elliptical orbit. Roughly 180 by
00:05:44 --> 00:05:47 500 kilometres, then restarted and
00:05:47 --> 00:05:50 circularised. That restart is the thing I'd
00:05:50 --> 00:05:52 point to. A lot of small launchers need a
00:05:52 --> 00:05:55 separate kick stage. To do that. Isar built
00:05:55 --> 00:05:57 the capability into the second stage.
00:05:57 --> 00:05:58 Anna: What was on board?
00:05:58 --> 00:06:01 Anna: Six payloads. And I love this manifest
00:06:01 --> 00:06:04 because it's so unglamorous in the best
00:06:04 --> 00:06:07 way. 5 cubesats from the technical
00:06:07 --> 00:06:09 University of Berlin, from
00:06:09 --> 00:06:12 NTNU in Norway, from the
00:06:12 --> 00:06:15 University of Maribor in Slovenia, from
00:06:15 --> 00:06:18 TU Wien in Austria, and one from
00:06:18 --> 00:06:21 endurosat, which is Bulgarian, plus
00:06:21 --> 00:06:23 a non deployable experiment from a German
00:06:23 --> 00:06:26 company called D Cubed that stayed bolted to
00:06:26 --> 00:06:28 the stage. Universities,
00:06:28 --> 00:06:31 Universities mostly. They're testing things
00:06:31 --> 00:06:34 like radiation tolerant perovskite solar
00:06:34 --> 00:06:36 cells and how batteries cope with being
00:06:36 --> 00:06:39 hibernated in orbit. It is exactly the kind
00:06:39 --> 00:06:41 of payload that has spent the last decade
00:06:41 --> 00:06:43 queuing for a rideshare slot on somebody
00:06:43 --> 00:06:46 else's rocket, on somebody else's schedule.
00:06:46 --> 00:06:49 Anna: So the significance isn't the six satellites,
00:06:49 --> 00:06:50 it's the queue.
00:06:50 --> 00:06:53 Anna: The significance is the cue. And
00:06:53 --> 00:06:56 it's sovereignty, which is a word that's
00:06:56 --> 00:06:58 doing a lot of work in European space policy
00:06:58 --> 00:07:01 Right now. ESA has been running a launcher
00:07:01 --> 00:07:04 challenge specifically to get more than one
00:07:04 --> 00:07:06 European company flying precisely because
00:07:06 --> 00:07:09 relying on a single vehicle or on somebody
00:07:09 --> 00:07:12 else's vehicle turned out to be uncomfortable
00:07:12 --> 00:07:15 when the geopolitics moved. Isar has
00:07:15 --> 00:07:17 raised well north of half a billion euros
00:07:17 --> 00:07:19 against that thesis and their Munich factory
00:07:19 --> 00:07:22 is built for more than 30 vehicles a year.
00:07:22 --> 00:07:25 Anna: Explain the geopolitics bit, because I think
00:07:25 --> 00:07:27 that's the piece people underestimate.
00:07:28 --> 00:07:30 Anna: It's not complicated, it's just
00:07:30 --> 00:07:32 uncomfortable. For years, a good
00:07:32 --> 00:07:35 slice of European payloads flew on Russian
00:07:35 --> 00:07:38 Soyuz rockets, including out of Kourou.
00:07:38 --> 00:07:41 That ended abruptly in 2022 at
00:07:41 --> 00:07:44 almost exactly the same moment Ariane 5
00:07:44 --> 00:07:46 retired and Ariane 6 wasn't ready and
00:07:46 --> 00:07:49 Vega C was grounded after a failure. So
00:07:49 --> 00:07:51 Europe spent a stretch of two or three years
00:07:51 --> 00:07:53 in the strange position of being a first rank
00:07:53 --> 00:07:56 space power that had to buy rides from SpaceX
00:07:56 --> 00:07:59 to launch its own science missions, including
00:07:59 --> 00:08:01 missions it built itself, including
00:08:01 --> 00:08:04 flagship missions it built itself. That was
00:08:04 --> 00:08:07 the wake up. And the response wasn't to build
00:08:07 --> 00:08:09 one bigger rocket, it was to stop having a
00:08:09 --> 00:08:12 single point of failure, which is where a
00:08:12 --> 00:08:14 German startup flying from a Norwegian island
00:08:14 --> 00:08:17 fits in. It's not that spectrum replaces
00:08:17 --> 00:08:19 anything. It's that if you have three or four
00:08:19 --> 00:08:22 independent European ways to reach orbit, no
00:08:22 --> 00:08:25 single failure, retirement or foreign policy
00:08:25 --> 00:08:27 decision can ground the continent again.
00:08:28 --> 00:08:30 Anna: And Norway gets something out of this
00:08:30 --> 00:08:32 Anna: too, Norway gets a great deal out of it.
00:08:33 --> 00:08:35 Andoya Space is majority state owned and.
00:08:35 --> 00:08:37 And Norway has just gone from hosting a
00:08:37 --> 00:08:40 sounding rocket range to hosting the only
00:08:40 --> 00:08:43 orbital launch site on the European mainland
00:08:43 --> 00:08:45 side of the Atlantic. There are two more pads
00:08:45 --> 00:08:48 planned there. If you're a European small
00:08:48 --> 00:08:50 satellite operator, that is suddenly a very
00:08:50 --> 00:08:52 short truck ride compared to shipping your
00:08:52 --> 00:08:54 spacecraft to South America.
00:08:54 --> 00:08:56 Anna: Which they now have to actually deliver.
00:08:56 --> 00:08:59 Anna: Which they now have to actually deliver. And
00:08:59 --> 00:09:02 that's the honest caveat. One successful
00:09:02 --> 00:09:05 flight is one successful flight. Vehicles
00:09:05 --> 00:09:07 three through seven are in production. But
00:09:07 --> 00:09:10 Cadence is where small launchers historically
00:09:10 --> 00:09:12 go to die. Ask anyone who's watched that
00:09:12 --> 00:09:13 market for 10 years.
00:09:14 --> 00:09:17 Anna: Alright, Southern hemisphere angle. I
00:09:17 --> 00:09:18 know you have one.
00:09:18 --> 00:09:21 Anna: I do. And it's close to home because the
00:09:21 --> 00:09:23 storey Isar just wrote is the storey Gilmour
00:09:23 --> 00:09:25 Space is trying to write in Queensland.
00:09:25 --> 00:09:26 Anna: Eris.
00:09:27 --> 00:09:30 Anna: Eris, Australia's first home built
00:09:30 --> 00:09:32 orbital rocket, launched from the Bowen
00:09:32 --> 00:09:34 Orbital Spaceport in July last year.
00:09:35 --> 00:09:37 Flew for 14 seconds and came back down.
00:09:38 --> 00:09:40 Adam Gilmour's line about it afterwards was
00:09:40 --> 00:09:42 that most companies need about three attempts
00:09:42 --> 00:09:44 to make orbit and that they're not going to
00:09:44 --> 00:09:46 give up. He said that at the International
00:09:46 --> 00:09:49 Astronautical Congress in Sydney.
00:09:49 --> 00:09:52 Anna: And Isar's second attempt made orbit
00:09:52 --> 00:09:52 after
00:09:52 --> 00:09:54 Anna: a first flight that lasted 30 seconds.
00:09:55 --> 00:09:58 Gilmour's first lasted 14. That is
00:09:58 --> 00:10:00 not a prediction. Rockets don't work by
00:10:00 --> 00:10:03 analogy. But if you want to know what the
00:10:03 --> 00:10:05 road out of a 14 second flight looks like,
00:10:06 --> 00:10:08 Friday night in Norway is a fairly
00:10:08 --> 00:10:09 encouraging map.
00:10:10 --> 00:10:12 Anna: Same problem, opposite ends of the planet,
00:10:13 --> 00:10:15 Anna: and the same underlying argument. A country
00:10:15 --> 00:10:18 or a continent that can build satellites but
00:10:18 --> 00:10:20 can't launch them is a customer, not a
00:10:20 --> 00:10:23 space power. Norway just stopped being only
00:10:23 --> 00:10:26 a customer. Queensland is trying to
00:10:26 --> 00:10:27 Storey 2 and
00:10:27 --> 00:10:30 Anna: it's a bit of a spoiler for a method a lot of
00:10:30 --> 00:10:31 people were counting on.
00:10:32 --> 00:10:34 Anna, uh, remind everyone what a stellar
00:10:34 --> 00:10:35 stream is.
00:10:36 --> 00:10:38 Anna: So a globular cluster or a small
00:10:38 --> 00:10:41 satellite galaxy falls into the Milky Way
00:10:41 --> 00:10:44 and our galaxy's gravity pulls it apart.
00:10:44 --> 00:10:47 What you're left with is a long, thin ribbon
00:10:47 --> 00:10:49 of stars strung out along the orbit the
00:10:49 --> 00:10:52 cluster used to have. There are dozens of
00:10:52 --> 00:10:54 them wrapped around our galaxy. GD1 is the
00:10:54 --> 00:10:55 famous one.
00:10:55 --> 00:10:58 Anna: And the reason people care is that they're
00:10:58 --> 00:10:58 delicate.
00:10:59 --> 00:11:01 Anna: Exactly. They're the most fragile structures
00:11:01 --> 00:11:04 in the galaxy, which makes them a detector.
00:11:04 --> 00:11:07 The idea has been if a clump of dark matter
00:11:07 --> 00:11:09 drifts through a stream, it gives the ribbon
00:11:09 --> 00:11:12 a gravitational kick and you get a gap or a
00:11:12 --> 00:11:15 kink or a little spur of stars. Flung off to
00:11:15 --> 00:11:18 the side. Find the gaps and you've found dark
00:11:18 --> 00:11:19 matter you cannot otherwise see.
00:11:20 --> 00:11:21 Anna: That's a beautiful idea.
00:11:22 --> 00:11:24 Anna: It's a genuinely beautiful idea. And it's
00:11:24 --> 00:11:26 been the great hope for testing what dark
00:11:26 --> 00:11:27 matter is actually made of.
00:11:28 --> 00:11:30 And this is where the new work comes in.
00:11:30 --> 00:11:33 Arpit Aurora with Nora Shipp and colleagues
00:11:33 --> 00:11:35 at the University of Washington published in
00:11:35 --> 00:11:37 the astrophysical journal on the 27th of
00:11:37 --> 00:11:40 August. They simulated four Milky Way
00:11:40 --> 00:11:43 sized galaxies and inside them
00:11:43 --> 00:11:45 about 15 stellar streams
00:11:45 --> 00:11:48 evolving over 5 billion years.
00:11:48 --> 00:11:49 Anna: And.
00:11:49 --> 00:11:52 Anna: And roughly 3/4 of the streams developed
00:11:52 --> 00:11:54 gaps, spurs or kinks.
00:11:55 --> 00:11:57 Only about 70 of the 15
00:11:57 --> 00:12:00 stayed genuinely smooth from dark matter
00:12:00 --> 00:12:03 clumps. That's the point. No,
00:12:03 --> 00:12:05 from the galaxy itself. The bar in the
00:12:05 --> 00:12:08 middle, the disc, the spiral arms, the
00:12:08 --> 00:12:11 ordinary visible furniture of a spiral galaxy
00:12:11 --> 00:12:13 is enough to chew up a stellar stream all on
00:12:13 --> 00:12:16 its own. Aurora's line is that in their
00:12:16 --> 00:12:19 simulations the host galaxies alone
00:12:19 --> 00:12:21 cause the same kinds of irregularities we
00:12:21 --> 00:12:23 actually observe in real streams.
00:12:23 --> 00:12:25 Anna: So a, uh, gap is not evidence.
00:12:26 --> 00:12:29 Anna: A gap on its own is not evidence.
00:12:29 --> 00:12:31 And they found the effect is worst for
00:12:31 --> 00:12:33 streams that formed closer to the galactic
00:12:33 --> 00:12:36 centre, which is where a lot of the observed
00:12:36 --> 00:12:38 ones are. Their honest conclusion is that at
00:12:38 --> 00:12:40 present we cannot tell you what made any
00:12:40 --> 00:12:41 particular gap.
00:12:41 --> 00:12:43 Anna: Is that the end of the method?
00:12:43 --> 00:12:46 Anna: No, and this is why I like the paper. Rather
00:12:46 --> 00:12:48 than finding it depressing. It's a
00:12:48 --> 00:12:50 recalibration, not a demolition.
00:12:51 --> 00:12:53 What it says is that you can't do this one
00:12:53 --> 00:12:55 stream at a time. You need the whole
00:12:55 --> 00:12:57 population statistically, how many gaps,
00:12:58 --> 00:13:01 how deep distributed how compared
00:13:01 --> 00:13:03 against simulations with dark matter and
00:13:03 --> 00:13:03 without,
00:13:03 --> 00:13:06 Anna: which needs a lot more streams and
00:13:06 --> 00:13:08 Anna: much better motions for the stars in them.
00:13:08 --> 00:13:10 That is more or less a job description for
00:13:10 --> 00:13:13 the Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile, which
00:13:13 --> 00:13:16 is going to find streams by the dozen. And
00:13:16 --> 00:13:19 for the next Gaia class, astrometry.
00:13:19 --> 00:13:22 So the tool isn't broken, it just turns out
00:13:22 --> 00:13:24 to need a much bigger sample before it tells
00:13:24 --> 00:13:25 the truth.
00:13:26 --> 00:13:29 Alright, moving on. And Storey 3 is one of my
00:13:29 --> 00:13:32 favourite kinds of result. An object we
00:13:32 --> 00:13:34 already knew about that just did something we
00:13:34 --> 00:13:35 could measure.
00:13:35 --> 00:13:36 Anna: Give me the object.
00:13:36 --> 00:13:39 Anna: It has a name only a catalogue could love.
00:13:39 --> 00:13:41 Erasu J
00:13:41 --> 00:13:44 060-8395
00:13:44 --> 00:13:47 -704014.
00:13:47 --> 00:13:50 We'll call it J0608.
00:13:50 --> 00:13:53 It's two white dwarfs orbiting each other and
00:13:53 --> 00:13:55 the orbital period is 374
00:13:55 --> 00:13:56 seconds.
00:13:57 --> 00:13:59 Anna: 374 seconds.
00:13:59 --> 00:14:01 That's six minutes and change.
00:14:01 --> 00:14:04 Anna: Six minutes and 14 seconds. A complete
00:14:04 --> 00:14:07 year for that pair in the Time it takes to
00:14:07 --> 00:14:10 boil an egg badly. The whole system would fit
00:14:10 --> 00:14:11 comfortably inside our sun.
00:14:12 --> 00:14:13 Anna: How was it found?
00:14:13 --> 00:14:16 Anna: By Erosita, the German X ray telescope
00:14:16 --> 00:14:19 on the Spectre RG spacecraft. During its all
00:14:19 --> 00:14:22 sky surveys, it showed up as an X ray Source,
00:14:22 --> 00:14:25 pulsing every 374 seconds.
00:14:25 --> 00:14:28 And the pulsing is dramatic. The flux
00:14:28 --> 00:14:30 goes to essentially zero and back about
00:14:30 --> 00:14:33 50% on, 50% off.
00:14:33 --> 00:14:36 Then XMM Newton followed up in X rays and
00:14:36 --> 00:14:39 the Dark Energy Camera in Chile picked it up
00:14:39 --> 00:14:39 optically.
00:14:40 --> 00:14:41 Anna: So what's new this week?
00:14:42 --> 00:14:44 Anna: This week Rahul Sharma and colleagues
00:14:44 --> 00:14:45 published in the Astrophysical Journal
00:14:45 --> 00:14:47 Letters. And what they've measured is that
00:14:47 --> 00:14:50 the orbit is shrinking measurably.
00:14:50 --> 00:14:52 And the rate at which it's shrinking matches
00:14:52 --> 00:14:55 what general relativity says it should be if
00:14:55 --> 00:14:58 the system is radiating away energy as
00:14:58 --> 00:14:59 gravitational waves.
00:14:59 --> 00:15:02 Anna: So we're watching gravitational waves carry
00:15:02 --> 00:15:04 energy off using an X ray
00:15:04 --> 00:15:05 telescope.
00:15:05 --> 00:15:07 Anna: That's precisely what's happening. And I
00:15:07 --> 00:15:09 think it's a lovely thing. We're not
00:15:09 --> 00:15:12 detecting the waves, we're watching the bill
00:15:12 --> 00:15:14 being paid. The energy leaves as
00:15:14 --> 00:15:17 gravitational radiation. The orbit
00:15:17 --> 00:15:20 tightens, the clock speeds up and you can
00:15:20 --> 00:15:20 time it.
00:15:21 --> 00:15:23 Anna: Which makes it useful to Lisa.
00:15:23 --> 00:15:26 Anna: Which makes it very useful to Lisa,
00:15:26 --> 00:15:28 the Space Based Gravitational Wave
00:15:28 --> 00:15:30 Observatory ESA is flying in the
00:15:30 --> 00:15:33 mid-2030s. Lisa is tuned to
00:15:33 --> 00:15:36 low frequencies and tight binaries like
00:15:36 --> 00:15:39 this sit right in its band. The chirp
00:15:39 --> 00:15:42 mass here works out to about 0.43
00:15:42 --> 00:15:44 solar masses, which makes
00:15:44 --> 00:15:46 J0608 one of the
00:15:46 --> 00:15:48 loudest known verification binaries,
00:15:49 --> 00:15:51 a source we already know the position and
00:15:51 --> 00:15:54 period of. So when LISA switches on, it
00:15:54 --> 00:15:56 should hear it. If it doesn't, something is
00:15:56 --> 00:15:59 wrong with the instrument, not the universe.
00:15:59 --> 00:16:01 Anna: A tuning fork.
00:16:01 --> 00:16:03 Anna: A tuning fork you build the observatory
00:16:03 --> 00:16:05 around. And here's our bit.
00:16:06 --> 00:16:09 J0608 sits at declination
00:16:09 --> 00:16:12 minus 70. It's in the direction of the Large
00:16:12 --> 00:16:15 Magellanic Cloud in front of it in our
00:16:15 --> 00:16:18 own galaxy's halo, somewhere between 1 and
00:16:18 --> 00:16:20 5 kiloparsecs out, which means it is
00:16:20 --> 00:16:23 a southern hemisphere object. It never rises
00:16:23 --> 00:16:26 for most of Europe and North America. It was
00:16:26 --> 00:16:28 found by an all sky survey confirmed from
00:16:28 --> 00:16:31 Chile. And if you're listening in Sydney or
00:16:31 --> 00:16:33 uh, Auckland or Cape Town, it is over your
00:16:33 --> 00:16:34 head and nobody else's.
00:16:35 --> 00:16:38 Anna: Storey 4 takes us to Venus and it picks
00:16:38 --> 00:16:41 up a thread. We were on last week, it does.
00:16:41 --> 00:16:43 Anna: On Friday we talked about the Venus Life
00:16:43 --> 00:16:46 Finder mission. MIT and Rocket Lab,
00:16:46 --> 00:16:49 the first privately funded mission to another
00:16:49 --> 00:16:51 planet, which is built and waiting on
00:16:51 --> 00:16:53 Neutron's first flight. This is the
00:16:53 --> 00:16:55 laboratory half of that storey and it lands
00:16:55 --> 00:16:56 very nicely.
00:16:56 --> 00:16:58 Anna: Sara Seeger again.
00:16:58 --> 00:17:01 Anna: Sarah Seager's group at mit, published in the
00:17:01 --> 00:17:02 Proceedings of the National Academy of
00:17:02 --> 00:17:05 sciences released on 31 August.
00:17:06 --> 00:17:09 Here's the setup. Venus's cloud deck at
00:17:09 --> 00:17:12 48 to 60 kilometres up has Earth like
00:17:12 --> 00:17:14 temperatures and pressures. It's the one
00:17:14 --> 00:17:17 genuinely temperate place on the planet. The
00:17:17 --> 00:17:19 problem is that the droplets up there are
00:17:19 --> 00:17:21 concentrated sulfuric acid, which we
00:17:21 --> 00:17:24 assume destroys everything and specifically
00:17:24 --> 00:17:27 destroys the molecules life needs. So the
00:17:27 --> 00:17:30 team took peptides, short chains of amino
00:17:30 --> 00:17:32 acids, the building blocks that fold into
00:17:32 --> 00:17:34 proteins, put three of them into
00:17:34 --> 00:17:37 98% sulfuric acid and watched
00:17:37 --> 00:17:39 them with nuclear magnetic resonance and they
00:17:39 --> 00:17:42 survived. They did better than survive.
00:17:42 --> 00:17:45 They folded, they took up stable, well
00:17:45 --> 00:17:48 defined three dimensional structures and held
00:17:48 --> 00:17:51 them for weeks. And the folding is the part
00:17:51 --> 00:17:53 that matters because. Because a protein that
00:17:53 --> 00:17:55 isn't folded correctly is just a string.
00:17:56 --> 00:17:58 Seeger's framing is that life needs
00:17:58 --> 00:18:00 specifically shaped proteins so they have a
00:18:00 --> 00:18:03 target they can latch onto. Shape is
00:18:03 --> 00:18:03 function.
00:18:04 --> 00:18:06 Anna: Why does the acid not shred them?
00:18:06 --> 00:18:09 Anna: Because there's no water. Our intuition about
00:18:09 --> 00:18:11 acid is really an intuition about acid
00:18:11 --> 00:18:13 dissolved in water. Take the water out
00:18:14 --> 00:18:16 and the chemistry is a different animal.
00:18:16 --> 00:18:19 Concentrated sulfuric acid turns out to be a
00:18:19 --> 00:18:21 solvent that some molecules can be perfectly
00:18:21 --> 00:18:22 comfortable in.
00:18:23 --> 00:18:26 Anna: Now the caveat, because I can hear you
00:18:26 --> 00:18:28 winding up to one, you know
00:18:28 --> 00:18:31 Anna: me too well, this is not life on Venus.
00:18:31 --> 00:18:33 It is not evidence of life on Venus.
00:18:34 --> 00:18:36 Nobody in that group is claiming it is. What
00:18:36 --> 00:18:39 it removes is an objection. The standard
00:18:39 --> 00:18:41 reply to Venus cloud habitability was always
00:18:42 --> 00:18:44 the biochemistry simply cannot hold together
00:18:44 --> 00:18:47 in that environment. This says for one
00:18:47 --> 00:18:49 important class of molecule and it can.
00:18:50 --> 00:18:52 That's a smaller claim and it's a much
00:18:52 --> 00:18:53 sturdier one.
00:18:53 --> 00:18:55 Anna: And it's the sort of thing you'd want to know
00:18:55 --> 00:18:57 before you spend money going there.
00:18:57 --> 00:18:59 Anna: It's exactly the sort of thing you'd want to
00:18:59 --> 00:19:02 know before you go. Which is why the timing
00:19:02 --> 00:19:04 is neat. The mission is sitting on the ground
00:19:04 --> 00:19:07 waiting for a rocket and the case for flying
00:19:07 --> 00:19:08 it just got firmer.
00:19:08 --> 00:19:11 Next storey five is here today because you
00:19:11 --> 00:19:14 asked for it. We've had a run of messages
00:19:14 --> 00:19:16 through the website about link, what happened
00:19:16 --> 00:19:19 to it, what it's doing now and whether Swift
00:19:19 --> 00:19:22 is going to be alright. So let's do the whole
00:19:22 --> 00:19:22 thing properly.
00:19:22 --> 00:19:24 Anna: Start at the beginning. For anyone joining us
00:19:24 --> 00:19:26 late, the Neil
00:19:26 --> 00:19:28 Anna: Garrels Swift Observatory has been NASA's
00:19:28 --> 00:19:31 Rapid Response Gamma Ray Burst telescope
00:19:31 --> 00:19:34 since 2004. Brilliant machine,
00:19:34 --> 00:19:37 22 years of service and one design
00:19:37 --> 00:19:39 limitation, no propulsion, it
00:19:39 --> 00:19:42 cannot raise its own orbit. It launched at
00:19:42 --> 00:19:45 around 600 kilometres and atmospheric drag
00:19:45 --> 00:19:47 has been quietly walking it down ever since.
00:19:47 --> 00:19:50 It's near 400 kilometres now and without
00:19:50 --> 00:19:52 help it re enters.
00:19:52 --> 00:19:54 Anna: So NASA hired someone.
00:19:54 --> 00:19:57 Anna: In September last year, NASA gave Catalyst
00:19:57 --> 00:20:00 Space technologies a uh, $30 million contract
00:20:00 --> 00:20:03 to build a spacecraft, fly it up, grab
00:20:03 --> 00:20:06 Swift and push it higher. That Spacecraft is
00:20:06 --> 00:20:08 linked 425 kilogrammes,
00:20:08 --> 00:20:11 three robotic arms, hall effect thrusters
00:20:12 --> 00:20:14 six metres across when it's deployed. It
00:20:14 --> 00:20:17 launched on 3 July this year on a Pegasus
00:20:17 --> 00:20:19 XL Air launched out
00:20:19 --> 00:20:22 Anna: of Kwajalein Atoll, which was itself
00:20:22 --> 00:20:25 a storey Pegasus hadn't flown in
00:20:25 --> 00:20:25 years.
00:20:26 --> 00:20:28 Anna: Dusted off specially and then
00:20:28 --> 00:20:31 three weeks after launch, on the 25th of
00:20:31 --> 00:20:34 July, link lost attitude control and started
00:20:34 --> 00:20:36 tumbling. When they worked out why it
00:20:36 --> 00:20:39 wasn't good, two of its three reaction wheels
00:20:39 --> 00:20:42 weren't working and the cold gas thruster
00:20:42 --> 00:20:43 system was degraded as well.
00:20:44 --> 00:20:45 Anna: Tumbling. How fast?
00:20:45 --> 00:20:48 Anna: About 9 degrees a second multi
00:20:48 --> 00:20:50 axis, which is fast enough that
00:20:50 --> 00:20:52 communications were dropping in and out. What
00:20:52 --> 00:20:55 the Catalyst team then did is the part of
00:20:55 --> 00:20:58 this storey I genuinely admire. They
00:20:58 --> 00:21:00 used the electric thrusters, which were never
00:21:00 --> 00:21:03 designed for attitude control, to take the
00:21:03 --> 00:21:05 spin down. By 5 August they
00:21:05 --> 00:21:08 had it to 1.47 degrees a second
00:21:08 --> 00:21:11 and then uploaded new flight software with
00:21:11 --> 00:21:13 attitude controllers written for a spacecraft
00:21:13 --> 00:21:15 that had lost half its hardware.
00:21:15 --> 00:21:17 Anna: But they didn't go for the capture
00:21:18 --> 00:21:20 Anna: on the 19th of August they stood down from
00:21:20 --> 00:21:22 it. And that was the right call.
00:21:22 --> 00:21:25 Docking with a tumbling, uncontrolled 22 year
00:21:25 --> 00:21:28 old telescope using a spacecraft that has
00:21:28 --> 00:21:31 itself lost most of its attitude control is a
00:21:31 --> 00:21:32 way to make one problem into two.
00:21:33 --> 00:21:36 Anna: So where does that leave Swift doing science?
00:21:36 --> 00:21:39 Anna: Actually, Swift restarted two of its three
00:21:39 --> 00:21:42 instruments on 26 August and it's
00:21:42 --> 00:21:44 observing, it's just observing on a clock.
00:21:44 --> 00:21:46 It comes down when it comes down
00:21:47 --> 00:21:49 Anna: and Link, this is what people are asking.
00:21:50 --> 00:21:53 Anna: This is the fresh part from NASA's Swift blog
00:21:53 --> 00:21:55 on Friday. Link has raised its own orbit.
00:21:56 --> 00:21:58 It has adjusted its plane to match Swift's.
00:21:58 --> 00:22:01 It has closed to within 12 to 15 kilometres
00:22:01 --> 00:22:03 of the telescope and it is deliberately going
00:22:03 --> 00:22:06 no closer. And in the last few days it has
00:22:06 --> 00:22:08 deployed all three robotic arms
00:22:08 --> 00:22:11 simultaneously and fired all three xenon
00:22:11 --> 00:22:12 thrusters at once.
00:22:13 --> 00:22:15 Anna: So it's running the mission it can run.
00:22:15 --> 00:22:18 Anna: Every one of those is a real in space
00:22:18 --> 00:22:20 servicing test that nobody had data on
00:22:20 --> 00:22:22 before, performed by a damaged spacecraft.
00:22:23 --> 00:22:25 And NASA's framing is that they're collecting
00:22:25 --> 00:22:27 data to inform future servicing technology
00:22:27 --> 00:22:30 and operations. Catalyst Reckon Link
00:22:30 --> 00:22:32 has about two to three more weeks in orbit
00:22:32 --> 00:22:34 before they deorbit it, which is a, ah,
00:22:35 --> 00:22:35 genuinely
00:22:35 --> 00:22:37 Anna: different ending to the one we expected.
00:22:38 --> 00:22:40 Anna: It's uh, a much better ending than it broke.
00:22:41 --> 00:22:44 The rescue failed, the demonstration didn't.
00:22:44 --> 00:22:46 And in space servicing is a field where
00:22:46 --> 00:22:48 almost nobody has flown anything. So a
00:22:48 --> 00:22:51 fortnight of hard data from a wounded vehicle
00:22:51 --> 00:22:53 is worth having. Keep the questions coming.
00:22:53 --> 00:22:55 That's what got this segment into today's
00:22:55 --> 00:22:56 episode.
00:22:56 --> 00:22:59 Anna: And that brings us to the sky for the week
00:22:59 --> 00:23:01 ahead. Anna, uh, this is a dark
00:23:01 --> 00:23:02 week.
00:23:02 --> 00:23:05 Anna: It's a dark week and that's the headline.
00:23:05 --> 00:23:08 New Moon is on Friday the 11th at about 3:30
00:23:08 --> 00:23:10 in the morning Greenwich time. So that's
00:23:10 --> 00:23:13 early Friday afternoon in Sydney and Thursday
00:23:13 --> 00:23:15 evening across North America, which means
00:23:15 --> 00:23:18 from about Tuesday right through to next
00:23:18 --> 00:23:20 Monday you have properly dark skies.
00:23:20 --> 00:23:22 If you have been waiting for a night to go
00:23:22 --> 00:23:25 somewhere without streetlights, this is the
00:23:25 --> 00:23:25 week.
00:23:26 --> 00:23:28 Anna: But before the dark, there's an event
00:23:28 --> 00:23:31 tomorrow and this one comes with a warning.
00:23:31 --> 00:23:34 Anna: It does, and I want to do the warning first.
00:23:34 --> 00:23:37 Tomorrow, 8th September, the
00:23:37 --> 00:23:40 moon passes in front of Jupiter. And for
00:23:40 --> 00:23:42 most of the places that can see it, this
00:23:42 --> 00:23:44 happens in broad daylight. That's parts of
00:23:44 --> 00:23:47 the United States, Canada, Greenland,
00:23:48 --> 00:23:50 eastern Russia and the North Pacific.
00:23:51 --> 00:23:53 Anna: Daylight with the sun in the sky.
00:23:53 --> 00:23:56 Anna: Daylight with the sun in the sky. And that is
00:23:56 --> 00:23:59 the whole safety issue. You will be sweeping
00:23:59 --> 00:24:01 around with binoculars or a telescope looking
00:24:01 --> 00:24:04 for a thin moon in a bright blue sky. And
00:24:04 --> 00:24:07 the sun is not far away. Never
00:24:07 --> 00:24:10 point any optical instrument at or near the
00:24:10 --> 00:24:13 sun. If you want to look at the sun at any
00:24:13 --> 00:24:15 point, you need a proper solar filter that
00:24:15 --> 00:24:16 meets the ISO
00:24:16 --> 00:24:19 123122 standard
00:24:19 --> 00:24:22 fitted over the front of the instrument, not
00:24:22 --> 00:24:24 a filter that screws into the eyepiece. And
00:24:24 --> 00:24:27 not sunglasses, welding glass, exposed film
00:24:27 --> 00:24:30 or a smoked plate. If you are not completely
00:24:30 --> 00:24:32 certain what you are pointing at, put the
00:24:32 --> 00:24:35 equipment down. An eclipse style pair of
00:24:35 --> 00:24:38 ISO 123122
00:24:38 --> 00:24:40 glasses will not protect you when you are
00:24:40 --> 00:24:43 looking through magnifying optics either. The
00:24:43 --> 00:24:45 safe way to do a daytime occultation is, is
00:24:45 --> 00:24:47 to set up in the shadow of a building so the
00:24:47 --> 00:24:50 sun is physically blocked and to know your
00:24:50 --> 00:24:52 Moon's position before you start.
00:24:52 --> 00:24:54 Anna: That said, if you do it safely,
00:24:54 --> 00:24:57 Anna: it's spectacular, it's genuinely
00:24:57 --> 00:25:00 wonderful. Jupiter is a tiny bright
00:25:00 --> 00:25:03 disc and you watch it wink out behind the
00:25:03 --> 00:25:05 Moon's limb and then reappear on the other
00:25:05 --> 00:25:08 side. Cheque the exact timings for your town
00:25:08 --> 00:25:11 because they vary enormously across that
00:25:11 --> 00:25:11 footprint.
00:25:12 --> 00:25:15 Anna: Right. Planets Southern hemisphere first this
00:25:15 --> 00:25:15 week.
00:25:16 --> 00:25:18 Anna: For those of us down south, Venus is the one
00:25:18 --> 00:25:21 to catch, and there's urgency. It's low
00:25:21 --> 00:25:24 in the west after sunset and sinking, but
00:25:24 --> 00:25:26 it's brilliant and it's building toward
00:25:26 --> 00:25:29 Greatest Brilliancy on 18 September at
00:25:29 --> 00:25:32 magnitude -4.8. Find a
00:25:32 --> 00:25:35 clear western horizon. Look about 20 to 30
00:25:35 --> 00:25:38 minutes after sunset from Sydney. That's
00:25:38 --> 00:25:39 around a quarter past six this week.
00:25:40 --> 00:25:41 Anna: And Saturn?
00:25:41 --> 00:25:44 Anna: Saturn is the evening planet for everybody.
00:25:44 --> 00:25:47 It rises in the east not long after dark, and
00:25:47 --> 00:25:49 it's up all night climbing toward opposition
00:25:49 --> 00:25:52 on the 4th of October. So it gets better
00:25:52 --> 00:25:54 every week between now and then. Even a small
00:25:54 --> 00:25:57 telescope will show you the rings and they're
00:25:57 --> 00:25:59 opening back up after the ring plane
00:25:59 --> 00:26:01 crossing, so there's something to see again.
00:26:01 --> 00:26:03 Anna: Anything else worth being outside for down
00:26:03 --> 00:26:04 here?
00:26:04 --> 00:26:07 Anna: The galactic core. It's still high in the
00:26:07 --> 00:26:09 early evening through September from southern
00:26:09 --> 00:26:11 latitudes. And with a new moon on Friday,
00:26:12 --> 00:26:14 you're getting the last really good look at
00:26:14 --> 00:26:16 it for this year before it slides west.
00:26:16 --> 00:26:19 Sagittarius and Scorpius overhead. Dark
00:26:19 --> 00:26:21 sky, no moon. Take the drive.
00:26:22 --> 00:26:25 Northern hemisphere northerners, your planets
00:26:25 --> 00:26:27 are in the morning. Mars and Jupiter are both
00:26:27 --> 00:26:30 well placed before dawn. Jupiter especially.
00:26:30 --> 00:26:33 And it's the same Jupiter the Moon covers
00:26:33 --> 00:26:35 tomorrow. Saturn is the same good evening
00:26:35 --> 00:26:38 object. It is everywhere. Venus is a much
00:26:38 --> 00:26:40 harder catch from the north this month. It's
00:26:40 --> 00:26:43 very low. There's also a minor meteor shower,
00:26:43 --> 00:26:46 the September Epsilon Perseids, peaking
00:26:46 --> 00:26:49 on the 9th at maybe 8 an hour under perfect
00:26:49 --> 00:26:51 skies. Northern favoured
00:26:52 --> 00:26:54 modest, but it's a dark week, so you may as
00:26:54 --> 00:26:55 well look up.
00:26:56 --> 00:26:58 Anna: And one to diarize, one to
00:26:58 --> 00:26:59 diarize.
00:26:59 --> 00:27:02 Anna: On the 14th, the moon occults Venus,
00:27:02 --> 00:27:05 and that one's for Europe, Africa, the Middle
00:27:05 --> 00:27:08 east and southern and Southeast Asia. If
00:27:08 --> 00:27:11 that's you, look it up now. It's the better
00:27:11 --> 00:27:13 of the two occultations this week, and the
00:27:13 --> 00:27:15 same daylight safety rules apply.
00:27:16 --> 00:27:18 Anna: And that's Astronomy daily from Monday
00:27:18 --> 00:27:19 7th
00:27:19 --> 00:27:22 Anna: September, a rocket from an Arctic island
00:27:22 --> 00:27:24 that made Europe a launching continent for
00:27:24 --> 00:27:26 the first time. A dark matter detector that
00:27:26 --> 00:27:28 turned out to be detecting the galaxy
00:27:28 --> 00:27:31 instead. Two white dwarfs six minutes
00:27:31 --> 00:27:33 apart, paying their bill in gravitational
00:27:33 --> 00:27:35 waves over southern skies,
00:27:36 --> 00:27:39 Peptides folding in acid and a broken
00:27:39 --> 00:27:40 repair robot doing good science.
00:27:40 --> 00:27:43 Anna: Anyway, not a bad Monday. If
00:27:43 --> 00:27:46 you want the links to every paper and release
00:27:46 --> 00:27:48 we've talked about, they're all in the show
00:27:48 --> 00:27:49 notes and on the website.
00:27:50 --> 00:27:53 Anna: That's astronomydaily IO. The full back
00:27:53 --> 00:27:55 catalogue is there, along with the newsletter
00:27:55 --> 00:27:57 if you'd like this in your inbox and there's
00:27:57 --> 00:28:00 a contact form, which is how the link segment
00:28:00 --> 00:28:01 happened today. So it does work.
00:28:02 --> 00:28:05 Anna: You'll find us on X at astrodaily Pod
00:28:05 --> 00:28:08 and wherever you get your podcasts, if
00:28:08 --> 00:28:10 you've got a minute. A, uh, rating helps more
00:28:10 --> 00:28:12 people find us than you'd think.
00:28:12 --> 00:28:15 Anna: We're back tomorrow. Until then, clear skies.
00:28:15 --> 00:28:17 And if you're anywhere with a dark one this
00:28:17 --> 00:28:18 week, use it.
00:28:19 --> 00:28:22 Anna: And remember, keep looking up. You
00:28:22 --> 00:28:24 just never know what you might see.
00:28:44 --> 00:28:44 Anna: We told.
00:28:51 --> 00:28:52 Anna: Storeys. We told.
00:28:59 --> 00:29:00 Storeys to.
00:29:07 --> 00:29:08 To
00:29:11 --> 00:29:11 Anna: m.