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00:00:00 --> 00:00:02 Anna: It aborted at zero. It got scrubbed
00:00:02 --> 00:00:05 by the weather, and then on the third try,
00:00:05 --> 00:00:08 it flew and came down in the Indian
00:00:08 --> 00:00:10 Ocean softer than it ever has before.
00:00:11 --> 00:00:14 Avery: Starship's 13th test finally left the
00:00:14 --> 00:00:17 pad. That's our lead then, the strongest
00:00:17 --> 00:00:19 sign yet of a moon beyond our solar system.
00:00:20 --> 00:00:22 A robot mechanic heading for the graveyard
00:00:22 --> 00:00:25 belt of dead satellites. And what the
00:00:25 --> 00:00:28 far side of our own moon has been quietly
00:00:28 --> 00:00:29 recording about the Earth.
00:00:30 --> 00:00:32 Anna: It's the weekend wrap. I'm Anna.
00:00:32 --> 00:00:35 Avery: And I'm Avery. This is Astronomy Daily.
00:00:35 --> 00:00:37 Anna: So we have been living with this one for
00:00:37 --> 00:00:40 weeks and I want to give it the room it
00:00:40 --> 00:00:42 deserves because the story of Flight 13
00:00:42 --> 00:00:45 is really the story of persistence.
00:00:45 --> 00:00:48 Let's rewind. For anyone just joining US Back
00:00:48 --> 00:00:51 on 16 July, SpaceX counted all
00:00:51 --> 00:00:54 the way down to zero, and the rocket's own
00:00:54 --> 00:00:57 flight computer said no. 4 of the
00:00:57 --> 00:01:00 33 Raptor engines on the booster didn't
00:01:00 --> 00:01:02 come up to healthy starting conditions and
00:01:02 --> 00:01:04 the vehicle aborted, uh, itself on the pad.
00:01:04 --> 00:01:07 That's not a failure, by the way. That's the
00:01:07 --> 00:01:09 safety system doing exactly what it's built
00:01:09 --> 00:01:10 to do.
00:01:10 --> 00:01:13 Avery: Right? An abort at uh T0 is the
00:01:13 --> 00:01:16 rocket protecting itself and the pad. Elon
00:01:16 --> 00:01:18 Musk said afterwards two Raptors would be
00:01:18 --> 00:01:21 pulled and replaced to be confident of a good
00:01:21 --> 00:01:24 flight. They swapped the engines, rolled back
00:01:24 --> 00:01:26 out. And then last week, the weather turned.
00:01:27 --> 00:01:29 Thursday's attempt got scrubbed because
00:01:29 --> 00:01:31 SpaceX wanted clear skies, not just for the
00:01:31 --> 00:01:34 launch, but to actually see the vehicle and
00:01:34 --> 00:01:36 photograph the heat shield under high stress
00:01:36 --> 00:01:37 on the way up.
00:01:37 --> 00:01:40 Anna: And that brings us to Friday, the 24th
00:01:41 --> 00:01:43 liftoff from Starbase in Texas, just
00:01:43 --> 00:01:45 before quarter to seven in the evening
00:01:45 --> 00:01:48 Eastern time. So prime time viewing across
00:01:48 --> 00:01:51 North America and the small hours of Saturday
00:01:51 --> 00:01:54 morning for us here in Australia. This was
00:01:54 --> 00:01:56 the second flight of the bigger, more
00:01:56 --> 00:01:59 powerful version 3 Starship. And this
00:01:59 --> 00:02:01 time it went, let's walk
00:02:01 --> 00:02:03 Avery: the flights because there's real nuance here.
00:02:03 --> 00:02:05 Not everything was perfect. And, um, that's
00:02:05 --> 00:02:08 okay. First, the good news that matters most
00:02:08 --> 00:02:11 for the program. The heat shield basics
00:02:11 --> 00:02:13 and Musk both flagged a, uh, marked
00:02:13 --> 00:02:15 improvement in how the shield held up during
00:02:15 --> 00:02:18 re entry. And that is the single hardest
00:02:18 --> 00:02:21 problem standing between Starship and genuine
00:02:21 --> 00:02:24 reusability. If you can't bring the ship home
00:02:24 --> 00:02:25 intact, none of the rest works.
00:02:26 --> 00:02:29 Anna: The booster, super heavy, separated
00:02:29 --> 00:02:31 cleanly a few minutes in and flew itself back
00:02:31 --> 00:02:34 for a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of
00:02:34 --> 00:02:36 Mexico about six minutes after launch.
00:02:36 --> 00:02:39 But here's the honest on that
00:02:39 --> 00:02:42 final landing burn, it looked like only about
00:02:42 --> 00:02:45 five of the 13 planned engines lit,
00:02:45 --> 00:02:48 so it came down harder and faster than
00:02:48 --> 00:02:49 SpaceX wanted.
00:02:50 --> 00:02:52 Avery: Now, important context, so nobody mishears
00:02:52 --> 00:02:55 this. That booster was always going to be
00:02:55 --> 00:02:57 thrown away in the water. This wasn't the
00:02:57 --> 00:03:00 catch attempt. So a rough splashdown on an
00:03:00 --> 00:03:03 expendable booster is a data point, not a
00:03:03 --> 00:03:05 disaster. And crucially, it still made a
00:03:05 --> 00:03:07 controlled landing, which means they appear
00:03:07 --> 00:03:10 to have fixed whatever caused them to lose
00:03:10 --> 00:03:12 the booster outright. On Flight 12 back in
00:03:12 --> 00:03:15 May, that one lost engines after separation
00:03:15 --> 00:03:18 and just fell into the Gulf. This one
00:03:18 --> 00:03:20 flew the profile. That's progress.
00:03:21 --> 00:03:24 Anna: Then the star of the show, the ship itself.
00:03:24 --> 00:03:27 Ship 40 sailed through its burn,
00:03:27 --> 00:03:30 coasted on a suborbital arc. This was never
00:03:30 --> 00:03:32 going all the way to orbit and did something
00:03:32 --> 00:03:35 lovely on the way. It relit one of its
00:03:35 --> 00:03:38 Raptor engines in space. That in space
00:03:38 --> 00:03:41 relight is a rehearsal for the maneuvers a
00:03:41 --> 00:03:43 future orbital starship will need to come
00:03:43 --> 00:03:46 home. And then came the splashdown west
00:03:46 --> 00:03:48 of Australia in the Indian Ocean.
00:03:48 --> 00:03:50 Avery: And this is the bit I keep replaying.
00:03:50 --> 00:03:53 SpaceX's Dan Huat called it live,
00:03:53 --> 00:03:55 the softest splashdown they have ever had
00:03:55 --> 00:03:58 with Starship for the first time. After the
00:03:58 --> 00:04:00 ship did its flip and settled onto the water
00:04:00 --> 00:04:03 and tipped over, it did not explode.
00:04:04 --> 00:04:06 It sat there bobbing, still sending back
00:04:06 --> 00:04:09 telemetry and video floating in the Indian
00:04:09 --> 00:04:12 Anna: Ocean, which, if you've watched these tests,
00:04:12 --> 00:04:14 is genuinely new. We are used to the
00:04:14 --> 00:04:17 fireball as the full stop at the end of the
00:04:17 --> 00:04:19 sentence. This time the sentence just
00:04:19 --> 00:04:20 kept going.
00:04:21 --> 00:04:23 Avery: There's one more first, and it's a big one
00:04:23 --> 00:04:25 for the Starlink side of the business. On the
00:04:25 --> 00:04:28 way up, the ship deployed 20 real Starlink
00:04:28 --> 00:04:31 V3 satellites, the first V3s ever to
00:04:31 --> 00:04:33 fly. Every previous flight that tested
00:04:33 --> 00:04:36 deployment used dummy mass simulators. These
00:04:36 --> 00:04:38 were the real thing, big flat satellites with
00:04:38 --> 00:04:41 laser links and large solar arrays. And
00:04:41 --> 00:04:43 SpaceX says they successfully talked to all
00:04:43 --> 00:04:45 of them by radio and laser and pulled
00:04:45 --> 00:04:48 telemetry down, which six of
00:04:48 --> 00:04:51 Anna: those 20 carried cameras specifically to
00:04:51 --> 00:04:53 scan Starship's own heat shield tiles and
00:04:53 --> 00:04:56 beam the pictures back. A clever way to
00:04:56 --> 00:04:58 inspect the shield in flight. The satellites
00:04:58 --> 00:05:01 then follow the ship's path back down. So
00:05:01 --> 00:05:03 they're not staying up there. It's a test
00:05:03 --> 00:05:05 appointment, not a Constellation launch.
00:05:06 --> 00:05:09 Avery: So how do we score Flight 13 overall?
00:05:09 --> 00:05:12 SpaceX and Musk both called it a success.
00:05:12 --> 00:05:15 And I think the fair read is a strong
00:05:15 --> 00:05:18 flight with one soft spot. The heat
00:05:18 --> 00:05:20 shield improved. The ship flew its whole
00:05:20 --> 00:05:23 profile and relit in space. The softest
00:05:23 --> 00:05:26 ever splashdown first real V3
00:05:26 --> 00:05:28 deployment set against a booster landing
00:05:28 --> 00:05:30 burn, uh, that underperformed on an
00:05:30 --> 00:05:31 expendable stage.
00:05:31 --> 00:05:34 Anna: And a lovely piece of timing to close on the
00:05:34 --> 00:05:36 original Launch date. The 16th was the
00:05:36 --> 00:05:39 57th anniversary of the Apollo 11
00:05:39 --> 00:05:42 launch. Friday's launch date. The 24th
00:05:42 --> 00:05:45 of July is the 57th anniversary
00:05:45 --> 00:05:48 of the day the Apollo 11 crew splashed back
00:05:48 --> 00:05:50 down on Earth in 1969. A
00:05:50 --> 00:05:53 splashdown anniversary for a rocket that's
00:05:53 --> 00:05:55 meant to help carry the next crew to the
00:05:55 --> 00:05:56 moon.
00:05:56 --> 00:05:59 Avery: The road ahead is still steep. SpaceX has to
00:05:59 --> 00:06:01 dramatically raise the flight rate, prove
00:06:01 --> 00:06:03 they can catch the ship on the tower like
00:06:03 --> 00:06:05 they catch boosters and crack an orbit
00:06:05 --> 00:06:08 refueling before starship can land Artemis
00:06:08 --> 00:06:11 astronauts. But after weeks of near misses,
00:06:11 --> 00:06:13 Flight 13 is exactly the kind of day the
00:06:13 --> 00:06:14 program needed.
00:06:14 --> 00:06:17 Anna: Alright, let's move on to other news from the
00:06:17 --> 00:06:18 past in space.
00:06:18 --> 00:06:21 Avery: From our own backyard to 70 odd light
00:06:21 --> 00:06:24 years away and a discovery with a southern
00:06:24 --> 00:06:26 hemisphere fingerprint all over it.
00:06:27 --> 00:06:29 Astronomers using the European Southern
00:06:29 --> 00:06:32 Observatory's Very Large Telescope up in
00:06:32 --> 00:06:34 the Chilean desert have reported the
00:06:35 --> 00:06:37 strongest evidence yet for a moon outside
00:06:37 --> 00:06:40 our solar system. It's in a system called
00:06:40 --> 00:06:43 CD35 20072 2.
00:06:44 --> 00:06:46 And it is, in the lead author's own words,
00:06:46 --> 00:06:47 super weird.
00:06:48 --> 00:06:51 Anna: Weird how? Well, we've found more than
00:06:51 --> 00:06:53 6 planets around other stars, but
00:06:53 --> 00:06:56 never once confirmed a moon out there. Every
00:06:56 --> 00:06:59 candidate so far has been contested. So what
00:06:59 --> 00:07:00 makes this one different?
00:07:01 --> 00:07:03 Avery: This is the twist. It didn't turn up the way
00:07:03 --> 00:07:06 exomoon hunters expected. A little moon
00:07:06 --> 00:07:09 crossing in front of a planet. Instead, the
00:07:09 --> 00:07:11 team led by Kevin Hoy, an um ESO
00:07:11 --> 00:07:14 student based in Chile with Alice Zurlo and
00:07:14 --> 00:07:17 colleagues, published in Nature, watched a
00:07:17 --> 00:07:19 brown dwarf and caught it wobbling. Something
00:07:19 --> 00:07:22 is tugging on it. And that something is a gas
00:07:22 --> 00:07:25 giant about the mass of Jupiter orbiting the
00:07:25 --> 00:07:26 brown dwarf.
00:07:26 --> 00:07:29 Anna: So let me get the nesting doll right, because
00:07:29 --> 00:07:32 it's genuinely strange. There's a star
00:07:32 --> 00:07:35 about half the mass of our own sun. Around it
00:07:35 --> 00:07:38 orbits a brown dwarf bigger than a planet,
00:07:38 --> 00:07:41 too small to be a star, around 30 times
00:07:41 --> 00:07:43 the mass of Jupiter. And around the brown
00:07:43 --> 00:07:46 dwarf orbits this Jupiter mass object.
00:07:47 --> 00:07:49 Avery: Exactly. And that's why nobody quite knows
00:07:49 --> 00:07:51 what to call it. It's the size of a planet,
00:07:51 --> 00:07:54 but it doesn't orbit a star. It orbits an
00:07:54 --> 00:07:57 object that orbits a star. So is it a moon?
00:07:57 --> 00:08:00 An exosatellite? The researchers
00:08:00 --> 00:08:02 themselves say there's no officially accepted
00:08:02 --> 00:08:05 definition of an exomoon. And this system
00:08:05 --> 00:08:07 blurs every line between star, planet
00:08:07 --> 00:08:08 and moon.
00:08:08 --> 00:08:10 Anna: And the honest headline, because this
00:08:10 --> 00:08:13 matters, is that the team calls it the first
00:08:13 --> 00:08:16 plausible detection of an exosatellite.
00:08:16 --> 00:08:18 Not confirmed plausible, the strongest
00:08:18 --> 00:08:21 candidate we've had, but still one that needs
00:08:21 --> 00:08:23 more observations to nail down.
00:08:23 --> 00:08:25 Avery: The technique is the exciting part. For what
00:08:25 --> 00:08:28 comes next. They used radial velocity,
00:08:28 --> 00:08:30 the same wobble method that found the first
00:08:30 --> 00:08:33 exoplanet around a sun like star back in the
00:08:33 --> 00:08:35 90s, but applied it to a directly
00:08:35 --> 00:08:38 imaged brown dwarf for the first time. Which
00:08:38 --> 00:08:41 means, uh, every one of those directly imaged
00:08:41 --> 00:08:43 giant worlds out there is now a fresh hunting
00:08:43 --> 00:08:44 ground for moons.
00:08:44 --> 00:08:47 Anna: A new door opened from a telescope under the
00:08:47 --> 00:08:50 southern skies. We'll be watching CD
00:08:50 --> 00:08:52 352722 closely.
00:08:53 --> 00:08:55 Avery: Next up in our weekly roundup, Northrop
00:08:55 --> 00:08:57 Grumman MRV MEP.
00:08:57 --> 00:08:59 Anna: Here's a job title you don't hear every
00:09:00 --> 00:09:03 satellite mechanic. On Tuesday evening, a
00:09:03 --> 00:09:05 SpaceX Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape
00:09:05 --> 00:09:08 Canaveral carrying one of the more quietly
00:09:08 --> 00:09:10 futuristic missions of the year. Northrop
00:09:10 --> 00:09:13 Grumman's Mission Robotic Vehicle, plus
00:09:13 --> 00:09:16 three of what the company literally calls
00:09:16 --> 00:09:16 jetpacks.
00:09:17 --> 00:09:20 Avery: I love this because it's so practical. We
00:09:20 --> 00:09:22 put enormous expensive satellites up in
00:09:22 --> 00:09:24 geostationary orbit. The ring about
00:09:25 --> 00:09:27 36 km up, where a
00:09:27 --> 00:09:29 spacecraft hovers over the same spot on
00:09:29 --> 00:09:32 Earth. And historically, when one runs out of
00:09:32 --> 00:09:35 maneuvering fuel, that's the end of it. A
00:09:35 --> 00:09:37 perfectly good satellite, dead because the
00:09:37 --> 00:09:38 tank's empty.
00:09:38 --> 00:09:40 Anna: So what does the mechanic do about it?
00:09:40 --> 00:09:43 Avery: The Mission robotic vehicle, the MRV,
00:09:43 --> 00:09:46 carries two fully articulated robotic
00:09:46 --> 00:09:49 arms, each about 3 meters long, built by
00:09:49 --> 00:09:51 the U.S. naval Research Laboratory under a
00:09:51 --> 00:09:54 DARPA program. Over the next year, it climbs
00:09:54 --> 00:09:56 out to geostationary orbit. And then it
00:09:56 --> 00:09:59 starts making house calls. It grabs one of
00:09:59 --> 00:10:01 those mission extension pods, the jetpacks,
00:10:01 --> 00:10:04 and bolts it onto an aging satellite. The
00:10:04 --> 00:10:07 pod becomes a satellite's new propulsion,
00:10:07 --> 00:10:10 buying it something like six extra years of
00:10:10 --> 00:10:10 life.
00:10:10 --> 00:10:12 Anna: And then it moves on to the next customer.
00:10:13 --> 00:10:15 One robot, three pods, three rescued
00:10:15 --> 00:10:18 satellites. Here's the local hook. Among the
00:10:18 --> 00:10:21 named clients are SES in Luxembourg,
00:10:21 --> 00:10:23 and this one's for our Australian listeners,
00:10:23 --> 00:10:26 Optis. So there's a genuine chance an
00:10:26 --> 00:10:28 Aussie communications satellite gets a new
00:10:28 --> 00:10:30 lease on life from this robot.
00:10:30 --> 00:10:32 Avery: This isn't coming out of nowhere either.
00:10:32 --> 00:10:35 Northrop Space Logistics Arm did this before
00:10:35 --> 00:10:37 with its mission extension vehicles. The
00:10:37 --> 00:10:40 first one, back in 2019, was the first
00:10:40 --> 00:10:43 commercial spacecraft ever to dock with a
00:10:43 --> 00:10:45 live satellite in geostationary orbit. But
00:10:45 --> 00:10:48 those were big. One to one. One
00:10:48 --> 00:10:50 vehicle, one satellite for good.
00:10:50 --> 00:10:53 Anna: Whereas the pods are smaller, cheaper and
00:10:53 --> 00:10:55 reusable in the sense that the robot can keep
00:10:55 --> 00:10:58 deploying them. It turns satellite servicing
00:10:58 --> 00:11:01 from a one off rescue into something closer
00:11:01 --> 00:11:03 to a routine a tow truck service for the
00:11:03 --> 00:11:04 geostationary belt.
00:11:05 --> 00:11:06 Avery: And, um, in an era we're all worried about
00:11:06 --> 00:11:09 space junk keeping working satellites working
00:11:09 --> 00:11:11 instead of abandoning them and launching
00:11:11 --> 00:11:14 replacements is a genuinely good news story
00:11:14 --> 00:11:16 about doing more with less up there.
00:11:16 --> 00:11:19 Anna: Next. Chang' E6 Far Side Solar wind.
00:11:20 --> 00:11:22 Avery: Our last highlight brings us home to our own
00:11:22 --> 00:11:25 moon and a result that turns lunar soil
00:11:25 --> 00:11:28 into a diary of the Earth. This is from
00:11:28 --> 00:11:30 China's Chang' E6 mission, the one that
00:11:30 --> 00:11:32 pulled off the first ever sample return from
00:11:32 --> 00:11:35 the far side of the Moon. The findings are
00:11:35 --> 00:11:36 published in Nature Geoscience.
00:11:37 --> 00:11:39 Anna: And it starts with a question I'd never
00:11:39 --> 00:11:41 thought to. Does the solar wind hit the
00:11:41 --> 00:11:44 near side and the far side of the Moon the
00:11:44 --> 00:11:44 same way?
00:11:45 --> 00:11:48 Avery: Turns out, no. The solar wind is this
00:11:48 --> 00:11:50 constant stream of charged particles pouring
00:11:50 --> 00:11:53 off the Sun. The Moon has no real atmosphere
00:11:53 --> 00:11:55 and no global magnetic field. So those
00:11:55 --> 00:11:58 particles slam straight into the dust. And
00:11:58 --> 00:12:00 over billions of years, that dust, the
00:12:00 --> 00:12:03 regolith, becomes an archive, trapping
00:12:03 --> 00:12:06 noble gases, helium, neon, argon,
00:12:06 --> 00:12:07 krypton, xenon.
00:12:08 --> 00:12:10 Anna: So the team compared the far side dirt that
00:12:10 --> 00:12:12 Chang' E6 brought back from the South Pole
00:12:12 --> 00:12:15 Aitken Basin with the near side samples from
00:12:15 --> 00:12:18 the earlier Chang' e 5 mission. And the two
00:12:18 --> 00:12:20 sides tell different stories.
00:12:20 --> 00:12:23 Avery: They do. The far side samples show the
00:12:23 --> 00:12:25 solar wind penetrating deeper and a
00:12:25 --> 00:12:28 distinctly different neon fingerprint. And
00:12:28 --> 00:12:30 the culprit they land on is us,
00:12:30 --> 00:12:33 uh, the Earth. For part of every month,
00:12:33 --> 00:12:36 the Moon's near side sits inside the Earth's
00:12:36 --> 00:12:39 magnetosphere, our planet's magnetic shield.
00:12:39 --> 00:12:42 And that shield actually slows the solar wind
00:12:42 --> 00:12:44 down before it reaches the near side.
00:12:44 --> 00:12:47 Anna: The far side, meanwhile, spends more of its
00:12:47 --> 00:12:50 time fully exposed, taking the solar wind at
00:12:50 --> 00:12:52 full speed. Though the Earth has, in effect,
00:12:52 --> 00:12:55 been leaving its signature on one face of the
00:12:55 --> 00:12:58 Moon and not the other for billions of years.
00:12:58 --> 00:13:01 Avery: And that's the poetic bit. The far side of
00:13:01 --> 00:13:03 the Moon, the side we never see from here,
00:13:03 --> 00:13:06 has been keeping a record of the Earth's own
00:13:06 --> 00:13:08 magnetic environment across deep time.
00:13:09 --> 00:13:11 To be fair, the scientists say the neon
00:13:11 --> 00:13:14 result is still a bit of a puzzle. More than
00:13:14 --> 00:13:16 one process is probably at play. But the
00:13:16 --> 00:13:19 headline stands. The Moon's two faces have
00:13:19 --> 00:13:21 lived through different weather from the sun.
00:13:21 --> 00:13:23 And the Earth is part of the reason.
00:13:23 --> 00:13:26 Anna: A little over a gram and a half of farside
00:13:26 --> 00:13:29 dust, rewriting how we think about the Sun,
00:13:29 --> 00:13:31 Earth, Moon system. Not bad.
00:13:31 --> 00:13:34 Avery: Finally today, our regular sky watch for
00:13:34 --> 00:13:35 both hemispheres.
00:13:35 --> 00:13:38 Anna: Well, that was the week that was. Which means
00:13:38 --> 00:13:41 it's time to look up wherever you are. Lets
00:13:41 --> 00:13:43 start with the moon itself because it's the
00:13:43 --> 00:13:45 main character in the sky. Right now we're
00:13:45 --> 00:13:47 heading toward a full moon, the buck moon on
00:13:47 --> 00:13:50 the 29th. So tonight and over the weekend
00:13:50 --> 00:13:52 you've got a big bright waxing gibbous moon
00:13:52 --> 00:13:55 lighting up the evening sky, north and
00:13:55 --> 00:13:57 Avery: south alike, which is beautiful to look at
00:13:57 --> 00:14:00 and a nuisance if you're chasing meteors. So
00:14:00 --> 00:14:03 let's set expectations. Honestly, the
00:14:03 --> 00:14:05 southern Delta Aquariids are active right now
00:14:05 --> 00:14:08 and they peak on the 29th into the 30th
00:14:09 --> 00:14:11 southern hemisphere. Friends, this shower is
00:14:11 --> 00:14:14 ours. The radiant near the star Skat in
00:14:14 --> 00:14:17 Aquarius rides high overhead for us and
00:14:17 --> 00:14:18 it's also a fine show from the southern
00:14:18 --> 00:14:20 United States and the tropics.
00:14:20 --> 00:14:23 Anna: But here's the catch. This year that peak
00:14:23 --> 00:14:26 lands right on the full buck moon, so the sky
00:14:26 --> 00:14:28 will be washed out at exactly the wrong
00:14:28 --> 00:14:31 moment. My advice, don't pin your hopes on
00:14:31 --> 00:14:33 peak night. Go out in the dark window before
00:14:33 --> 00:14:36 dawn once the moon has set and look well away
00:14:36 --> 00:14:39 from it. The Delta Aquariids are faint, so a
00:14:39 --> 00:14:42 truly dark patch of sky is everything and
00:14:42 --> 00:14:45 a nice the slow bright fireballs of the
00:14:45 --> 00:14:47 Alpha Capricornids are peaking around the
00:14:47 --> 00:14:49 same nights for both hemispheres.
00:14:49 --> 00:14:51 Avery: And if the moon spoils this one, don't
00:14:51 --> 00:14:54 despair because the big one is coming and the
00:14:54 --> 00:14:57 timing is perfect. The Perseids are
00:14:57 --> 00:14:59 already switching on and they peak on the
00:14:59 --> 00:15:02 12th into the 13th of August on a new moon.
00:15:03 --> 00:15:06 Dark skies, no interference. That's a
00:15:06 --> 00:15:08 Northern Hemisphere favorite. The radiant
00:15:08 --> 00:15:10 sits high in the north, but it carries down
00:15:10 --> 00:15:12 to the Southern hemisphere's mid latitudes
00:15:12 --> 00:15:14 too. So it's worth a look. From Northern
00:15:14 --> 00:15:16 Australia bark that date because
00:15:16 --> 00:15:19 Anna: it's a genuine double feature. On the very
00:15:19 --> 00:15:22 same day as the Perseid peak, 12 August,
00:15:22 --> 00:15:24 there's a total solar eclipse.
00:15:24 --> 00:15:27 Avery: There is. Totality carves a narrow path
00:15:27 --> 00:15:30 across Greenland, Iceland and Spain if
00:15:30 --> 00:15:32 you're lucky enough to be under it. That's
00:15:32 --> 00:15:34 the whole day sorted. Eclipse in the
00:15:34 --> 00:15:37 afternoon, meteors overnight. For most of
00:15:37 --> 00:15:39 North America and Western Europe, it's a
00:15:39 --> 00:15:42 partial eclipse rather than total, but still
00:15:42 --> 00:15:44 very much worth stepping out for.
00:15:44 --> 00:15:47 Anna: And this is our uh, non negotiable reminder.
00:15:47 --> 00:15:50 Never look at even a partial eclipse without
00:15:50 --> 00:15:53 proper certified eye protection. Solar
00:15:53 --> 00:15:54 viewers that meet the ISO
00:15:54 --> 00:15:57 123122 standard
00:15:58 --> 00:16:00 ordinary sunglasses will not protect your
00:16:00 --> 00:16:02 eyes. No exceptions.
00:16:02 --> 00:16:04 Avery: Please take care of your eyes safety first
00:16:04 --> 00:16:07 and all of that. As for planets, step out
00:16:07 --> 00:16:10 after sunset and brilliant Venus is climbing
00:16:10 --> 00:16:12 back into the western evening twilight it
00:16:12 --> 00:16:15 only gets better through August and if you're
00:16:15 --> 00:16:18 an early riser the pre dawn sky is where
00:16:18 --> 00:16:20 the action is Saturn is well up in the hours
00:16:20 --> 00:16:23 before sunrise with Jupiter returning low in
00:16:23 --> 00:16:25 the east southern hemisphere viewers get
00:16:25 --> 00:16:27 these morning planets riding higher and
00:16:27 --> 00:16:29 steeper one of the quiet perks of our
00:16:29 --> 00:16:31 southern skies so a
00:16:31 --> 00:16:33 Anna: bright moon this weekend patience on the
00:16:33 --> 00:16:36 meteors and a spectacular double bill to
00:16:36 --> 00:16:39 circle for the 12th of August that's
00:16:39 --> 00:16:41 Avery: the weekend wrap Starship's 13th
00:16:41 --> 00:16:44 finally flew and floated the strongest
00:16:44 --> 00:16:46 hint yet of a moon around the distant brown
00:16:46 --> 00:16:49 dwarf a robot mechanic on its way to the
00:16:49 --> 00:16:52 satellite graveyard and the far side of our
00:16:52 --> 00:16:54 moon cor quietly keeping the
00:16:54 --> 00:16:56 Anna: earth's diary thanks for spending part of
00:16:56 --> 00:16:58 your weekend with us you'll find every source
00:16:58 --> 00:17:00 in the show notes and we're back tomorrow
00:17:00 --> 00:17:03 with your daily space and astronomy news
00:17:03 --> 00:17:05 until then from Anna and
00:17:05 --> 00:17:07 Avery: uh Ivory clear skies.
00:17:19 --> 00:17:19 The
00:17:19 --> 00:17:27 toll.