Feature story: NASA's Roman Space Telescope is fully encapsulated inside its Falcon Heavy fairing and cleared to launch no earlier than 7:26 a.m. ET this Sunday, August 30 — about nine months ahead of its original schedule, a rarity for a NASA flagship mission. Roman is headed to Sun-Earth L2 for a five-year mission mapping dark energy and dark matter and hunting exoplanets with a starlight-cancelling coronagraph. Its wide-field camera surveys roughly a hundred times faster than Hubble at comparable image sharpness. Named for NASA's first chief astronomer, Nancy Grace Roman — the "mother of Hubble" — the mission is a formal ESA partnership; some of its data will come down through a new ESA antenna at New Norcia, Western Australia.
The rest of the news:
- ISS Spacewalk 98: NASA's Anil Menon and ESA's Sophie Adenot are outside the station today finishing a Space-to-Ground antenna replacement and, time permitting, installing a new docking retroreflector — their third spacewalk together in under a month.
- Milky Way merger scar: A Hubble-based study (the ARMA project, led by Davide Massari) has found evidence of a ~500-million-solar-mass dwarf galaxy, dubbed Low-energy-Kraken-Heracles, absorbed by the Milky Way roughly 12 billion years ago — the earliest documented merger in our galaxy's history.
- Perseids 2028 watch: Jupiter's gravity may nudge Perseid debris closer to Earth's path in 2028, potentially producing an outburst of 200-300 meteors/hour under favorable dark-sky conditions — though modelers caution the forecast is an "educated guess."
- Tonight's Sky: A 96%-partial lunar eclipse falls the night of August 27-28 — spectacular from the Americas and parts of Europe/Africa, but invisible from Australia and the rest of Asia-Pacific, where it happens in broad daylight. Venus and Saturn remain good evening targets locally in the meantime.
Links & sources:
- NASA Science — Roman Launch Countdown
- NASA Roman Blog — Roman Telescope Enclosed in Falcon Heavy Fairing
- Space.com — The Roman Space Telescope is ready to launch Aug. 30
- JPL — NASA Telescope Named for "Mother of Hubble" Nancy Grace Roman
- ESA — Roman factsheet
- NASA — NASA to Cover Three US Spacewalks
- Space.com — The earliest galaxy "swallowed" by the cannibal Milky Way left a scar at its heart
- Space.com — Could Jupiter supercharge the Perseids in 2028?
- Space.com — Partial lunar eclipse Aug. 27-28: stages and visibility
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This episode includes AI-generated content.
00:00:01 --> 00:00:03 Anna: Hey everyone. Welcome back to Astronomy
00:00:03 --> 00:00:04 AstroDailyPod. I'm Anna.
00:00:05 --> 00:00:07 Avery: And I'm, uh, avery. It's Tuesday, August
00:00:07 --> 00:00:09 25th, series five, episode
00:00:09 --> 00:00:10 176.
00:00:11 --> 00:00:14 Anna: Quick programming note before we get into it,
00:00:14 --> 00:00:16 no firm new launch date yet on China's
00:00:16 --> 00:00:19 Chang' E7, the storey we spent most of
00:00:19 --> 00:00:22 yesterday's episode on. Still pointing at
00:00:22 --> 00:00:24 that mid to late September window we talked
00:00:24 --> 00:00:27 about. Nothing more specific from CNSA
00:00:27 --> 00:00:30 as of this morning. We'll flag it the moment
00:00:30 --> 00:00:30 that changes.
00:00:31 --> 00:00:33 Avery: So instead, today belongs to a
00:00:33 --> 00:00:36 telescope. A, uh, very big, very expensive,
00:00:36 --> 00:00:38 very ready to fly telescope.
00:00:39 --> 00:00:41 Anna: NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space
00:00:41 --> 00:00:44 Telescope is sitting inside its rocket
00:00:44 --> 00:00:46 fairing right now. Cleared for launch this
00:00:46 --> 00:00:49 Sunday, and it's getting there the better
00:00:49 --> 00:00:51 part of a year earlier than anyone expected.
00:00:52 --> 00:00:54 We'll spend some real time on why that
00:00:54 --> 00:00:54 matters.
00:00:55 --> 00:00:57 Avery: Astronauts are heading back outside the space
00:00:57 --> 00:01:00 station today for the third spacewalk in a
00:01:00 --> 00:01:03 month. Astronomers have found a scar
00:01:03 --> 00:01:05 at the centre of the Milky Way from a
00:01:05 --> 00:01:07 collision 12 billion years ago.
00:01:08 --> 00:01:11 Jupiter might be about to supercharge the
00:01:11 --> 00:01:14 Perseids in 2028. And there's
00:01:14 --> 00:01:16 a near total lunar eclipse this week
00:01:17 --> 00:01:19 though we've gotta manage expectations on
00:01:19 --> 00:01:21 that last one. For anyone listening from down
00:01:21 --> 00:01:23 under, let's get into it.
00:01:23 --> 00:01:26 Okay, so this is the big one today. Talk me
00:01:26 --> 00:01:27 through where things actually stand.
00:01:28 --> 00:01:31 Anna: As of Monday, the Nancy Grace Roman Space
00:01:31 --> 00:01:34 Telescope is fully encapsulated inside the
00:01:34 --> 00:01:36 fairing of the Falcon Heavy rocket that's
00:01:36 --> 00:01:39 going to launch it. That happened at Kennedy
00:01:39 --> 00:01:41 Space Centre's Payload Hazardous Servicing
00:01:41 --> 00:01:44 facility. Teams will move the encapsulated
00:01:44 --> 00:01:46 payload over to SpaceX's hangar at
00:01:46 --> 00:01:49 pad 39A, made it to the rocket
00:01:49 --> 00:01:52 and roll the whole stack out to the pad later
00:01:52 --> 00:01:55 this week. Liftoff is targeted for no earlier
00:01:55 --> 00:01:58 than 7:26am Eastern time
00:01:58 --> 00:02:00 this Sunday, August 30th.
00:02:00 --> 00:02:02 Avery: That's in Florida time. So for anyone doing
00:02:02 --> 00:02:04 the math from Australia, that lines up with
00:02:04 --> 00:02:07 Sunday night here. Somewhere around 9:30pm
00:02:07 --> 00:02:08 Sydney time.
00:02:08 --> 00:02:11 Anna: Exactly. We'll pin down the precise local
00:02:11 --> 00:02:13 time closer to launch day. But here's the
00:02:13 --> 00:02:15 headline that actually got our attention.
00:02:16 --> 00:02:18 Roman is launching about nine months ahead of
00:02:18 --> 00:02:20 its original schedule.
00:02:20 --> 00:02:23 Avery: Nine months early for a NASA flagship
00:02:23 --> 00:02:25 mission. That basically never happens.
00:02:26 --> 00:02:29 Anna: It basically never happens, which is exactly
00:02:29 --> 00:02:31 why it's worth pausing on. Big space
00:02:31 --> 00:02:34 telescopes have a well earned reputation for
00:02:34 --> 00:02:37 slipping. Right. Webb famously blew out its
00:02:37 --> 00:02:40 schedule and budget by years. Roman going the
00:02:40 --> 00:02:42 other direction, arriving early and as far as
00:02:42 --> 00:02:45 the reporting shows, without dramatic cost
00:02:45 --> 00:02:47 blowouts, is genuinely unus.
00:02:48 --> 00:02:50 And it says something about how NASA and its
00:02:50 --> 00:02:52 contractors have run this build.
00:02:52 --> 00:02:54 Avery: What actually happens once it's up there?
00:02:54 --> 00:02:55 What is Roman for?
00:02:56 --> 00:02:58 Anna: 2 big jobs plus a bonus one.
00:02:59 --> 00:03:02 Job 1 map Dark Energy and dark matter
00:03:02 --> 00:03:04 by surveying huge swaths of the sky and
00:03:04 --> 00:03:07 watching how galaxies are distributed and how
00:03:07 --> 00:03:10 their light is bent by gravity. Job 2
00:03:10 --> 00:03:13 Hunt for exoplanets using a coronagraph
00:03:13 --> 00:03:15 instrument that's specifically built to block
00:03:15 --> 00:03:18 out a star's glare so the much fainter
00:03:18 --> 00:03:21 planets around it become visible. NASA's
00:03:21 --> 00:03:23 senior project scientist on this, Julie
00:03:23 --> 00:03:26 McInerney, put it nicely. She called it
00:03:26 --> 00:03:28 doing magic with physics, using the wave
00:03:28 --> 00:03:31 properties of light itself to cancel out
00:03:31 --> 00:03:33 starlight and reveal what's hiding next to
00:03:33 --> 00:03:33 it.
00:03:34 --> 00:03:35 Avery: And, um, the bonus job?
00:03:36 --> 00:03:39 Anna: The bonus job is speed. Roman's
00:03:39 --> 00:03:41 mirror is roughly the same size and sharpness
00:03:41 --> 00:03:44 as Hubble's, so similar image quality,
00:03:44 --> 00:03:46 but its camera has a field of view about
00:03:46 --> 00:03:49 100 times wider. NASA's own
00:03:49 --> 00:03:52 comparison is the one that stuck with us. One
00:03:52 --> 00:03:55 month of Roman surveying the Milky Way would
00:03:55 --> 00:03:57 take Hubble something like a
00:03:57 --> 00:03:59 Avery: century to match a century of
00:03:59 --> 00:04:00 Hubble time in a month.
00:04:01 --> 00:04:04 Anna: That's the number over its main survey.
00:04:04 --> 00:04:06 Roman is expected to image something like
00:04:06 --> 00:04:09 2 billion galaxies. And it'll
00:04:09 --> 00:04:12 generate more than 500 terabytes of data
00:04:12 --> 00:04:15 a year. For comparison, Hubble has
00:04:15 --> 00:04:17 produced around 400 terabytes total
00:04:17 --> 00:04:20 across its entire 35 year mission.
00:04:20 --> 00:04:23 Roman matches that in well under 12 months
00:04:23 --> 00:04:26 every year for years M. How
00:04:26 --> 00:04:28 Avery: does it stack up against James Webb since
00:04:28 --> 00:04:30 that's the telescope everyone's already got a
00:04:30 --> 00:04:33 mental picture of different job.
00:04:33 --> 00:04:35 Anna: Basically, Webb is built for depth,
00:04:35 --> 00:04:38 extreme sensitivity in the infrared,
00:04:38 --> 00:04:41 staring at one small patch of sky for a
00:04:41 --> 00:04:43 long time to see extremely faint,
00:04:43 --> 00:04:46 extremely distant objects in exquisite
00:04:46 --> 00:04:49 detail. Roman is built for breath,
00:04:49 --> 00:04:51 a wide field survey machine covering
00:04:51 --> 00:04:54 roughly 50 times the area Webb can. In
00:04:54 --> 00:04:57 a single image, one finds needles, the
00:04:57 --> 00:05:00 other maps the whole haystack. And
00:05:00 --> 00:05:02 Roman's actually expected to help with a
00:05:02 --> 00:05:05 puzzle. Webb turned up the little red
00:05:05 --> 00:05:07 dots, these compact, surprisingly
00:05:07 --> 00:05:10 luminous objects from the early universe
00:05:10 --> 00:05:12 nobody's fully explained yet. More
00:05:12 --> 00:05:15 sky coverage means more of those objects to
00:05:15 --> 00:05:18 study statistically instead of one at a time.
00:05:18 --> 00:05:21 Avery: Where does it actually go once it launches?
00:05:21 --> 00:05:24 Anna: Not low Earth orbit like Hubble or the space
00:05:24 --> 00:05:27 station Roman is headed to. Sun Earth,
00:05:27 --> 00:05:29 Lagrange Point 2, about
00:05:29 --> 00:05:31 1.6 million kilometres out.
00:05:32 --> 00:05:34 The same gravitationally stable neighbourhood
00:05:34 --> 00:05:37 Webb calls home. It's carrying enough
00:05:37 --> 00:05:39 hydrazine fuel on board for course
00:05:39 --> 00:05:41 corrections on the way out and for station
00:05:41 --> 00:05:44 keeping across a planned five year prim
00:05:44 --> 00:05:45 mission.
00:05:45 --> 00:05:47 Avery: Any sense of what happens right after launch?
00:05:47 --> 00:05:49 Like day One week one.
00:05:49 --> 00:05:52 Anna: Jeremy Perkins, one of the integration and
00:05:52 --> 00:05:55 test scientists on the project, described it
00:05:55 --> 00:05:57 about as plainly as you can. Roughly
00:05:57 --> 00:06:00 30 days out from an early August update,
00:06:00 --> 00:06:02 he said, we're going to be launching Roman,
00:06:03 --> 00:06:05 testing it out, opening the deployable
00:06:05 --> 00:06:07 aperture cover, looking at the sky and
00:06:07 --> 00:06:10 sending data down to the ground for the first
00:06:10 --> 00:06:12 time. So the sequence is launch,
00:06:12 --> 00:06:15 commissioning, first light, and then the real
00:06:15 --> 00:06:16 survey work begins.
00:06:17 --> 00:06:19 Avery: And the project managers basically just
00:06:19 --> 00:06:20 declared it done and ready.
00:06:21 --> 00:06:24 Anna: Jacqui Townsend's line was short. Roman
00:06:24 --> 00:06:27 is ready for launch after nine months of
00:06:27 --> 00:06:29 schedule margin. They clearly feel confident
00:06:29 --> 00:06:30 saying that.
00:06:30 --> 00:06:33 Avery: Worth asking. Who actually is Nancy Grace
00:06:33 --> 00:06:35 Roman? The name gets used a lot without the
00:06:35 --> 00:06:36 backstory.
00:06:36 --> 00:06:39 Anna: She was NASA's first chief astronomer back in
00:06:39 --> 00:06:42 the 1960s and she's usually credited as
00:06:42 --> 00:06:44 the person who did more than anyone to get
00:06:44 --> 00:06:47 the Hubble Space Telescope funded and built
00:06:47 --> 00:06:49 in the first place, which is where the
00:06:49 --> 00:06:52 nickname Mother of Hubble comes from. This
00:06:52 --> 00:06:54 mission actually started life under a much
00:06:54 --> 00:06:57 clunkier name, Wide Field Infrared
00:06:57 --> 00:07:00 Survey Telescope, before NASA renamed it in
00:07:00 --> 00:07:02 her honour a few years back. Given what
00:07:02 --> 00:07:05 Roman's actually built to do, a fast
00:07:05 --> 00:07:07 wide field survey machine following on from
00:07:07 --> 00:07:10 Hubble's legacy. It's a genuinely fitting
00:07:10 --> 00:07:10 name.
00:07:11 --> 00:07:13 Avery: And, um, this isn't a NASA only build, Right.
00:07:13 --> 00:07:16 I feel like I've seen ESA and other partners
00:07:16 --> 00:07:17 mentioned, right?
00:07:17 --> 00:07:19 Anna: There's meaningful international
00:07:19 --> 00:07:22 contribution. ESA is flying as a
00:07:22 --> 00:07:24 formal partner, supplying detector hardware
00:07:24 --> 00:07:26 for that coronagraph we just talked about,
00:07:26 --> 00:07:29 plus star trackers and batteries. And
00:07:29 --> 00:07:32 here's a nice local angle. Some of Roman's
00:07:32 --> 00:07:35 data is going to come down through a new 35
00:07:35 --> 00:07:38 metre ESA antenna at New Norcia
00:07:38 --> 00:07:39 out in Western Australia.
00:07:40 --> 00:07:42 Avery: Wait, this telescope's data's going to
00:07:42 --> 00:07:43 physically land in Australia?
00:07:45 --> 00:07:47 Anna: Some of it, yes. New Norcia already
00:07:47 --> 00:07:50 hosts one ESA dish, and this new one
00:07:50 --> 00:07:53 was built partly with missions like Roman in
00:07:53 --> 00:07:56 mind. So next time someone tells you space
00:07:56 --> 00:07:58 is happening somewhere else, you can point
00:07:58 --> 00:08:01 out there's a dish out west quietly catching
00:08:01 --> 00:08:03 signals from a telescope parked a million
00:08:03 --> 00:08:04 miles from Earth.
00:08:05 --> 00:08:08 Avery: And, um, remind me on cost, because flagship
00:08:08 --> 00:08:09 telescopes have a reputation for blowing
00:08:09 --> 00:08:12 budgets as well as schedules, anon's been
00:08:12 --> 00:08:15 Anna: reported at roughly $4 billion across its
00:08:15 --> 00:08:18 development. That's real money, but it's a
00:08:18 --> 00:08:21 fraction of Webb's final cost. And going back
00:08:21 --> 00:08:23 to where we started, it's arriving early
00:08:23 --> 00:08:25 rather than late, which on recent NASA
00:08:25 --> 00:08:27 flagship history is close to a genuine
00:08:27 --> 00:08:28 surprise.
00:08:29 --> 00:08:32 Avery: So to sum up the why this Matters, a $4
00:08:32 --> 00:08:35 billion flagship observatory, arriving
00:08:35 --> 00:08:37 early instead of late, headed out to join
00:08:37 --> 00:08:40 Webb at L2 built to survey the
00:08:40 --> 00:08:42 sky roughly a hundred times faster than
00:08:42 --> 00:08:45 Hubble, hunting dark energy and thousands
00:08:45 --> 00:08:47 of new exoplanets at the same time.
00:08:48 --> 00:08:50 Anna: That's the mission Sunday morning. US time.
00:08:50 --> 00:08:51 We'll be watching.
00:08:52 --> 00:08:54 Avery: Sticking with things happening literally this
00:08:54 --> 00:08:56 week, there is a spacewalk today.
00:08:57 --> 00:08:59 Anna: There is, and it's the third one in less than
00:08:59 --> 00:09:02 a month for the same two astronauts. NASA's
00:09:02 --> 00:09:05 Anil Menon and ESA's Sophie AdNote are
00:09:05 --> 00:09:07 heading back outside the International space
00:09:07 --> 00:09:10 station today. US time for what Mission
00:09:10 --> 00:09:12 Control is calling Spacewalk 98,
00:09:12 --> 00:09:15 Menon's third career EVA, AD notes.
00:09:15 --> 00:09:17 Avery: Second, remind me what the first two were
00:09:17 --> 00:09:18 about.
00:09:18 --> 00:09:21 Anna: Spacewalk 96 back on August 6th
00:09:21 --> 00:09:24 had Menon out with veteran astronaut Jessica
00:09:24 --> 00:09:26 Mair, installing hardware to modify the
00:09:26 --> 00:09:29 station's power channels, prepping for a
00:09:29 --> 00:09:31 future solar Array upgrade. Spacewalk
00:09:31 --> 00:09:34 97 on the 18th is the one that actually
00:09:34 --> 00:09:37 made headlines. Menon and Adano went out to
00:09:37 --> 00:09:39 replace a space to ground communications
00:09:39 --> 00:09:42 antenna. And Adno became the first French
00:09:42 --> 00:09:44 woman ever to conduct a spacewalk.
00:09:44 --> 00:09:47 Avery: And today's picks up where that one left off.
00:09:48 --> 00:09:50 Anna: Right. Today's walk is billed as finishing
00:09:50 --> 00:09:52 the antenna replacement and if time and
00:09:52 --> 00:09:55 consumables allow, swapping in a new
00:09:55 --> 00:09:58 retroreflector, which is a passive device
00:09:58 --> 00:10:00 used to help visiting spacecraft navigate and
00:10:00 --> 00:10:03 dock precisely. Standard EVA suit
00:10:03 --> 00:10:06 up puts the actual hatch open time at around
00:10:06 --> 00:10:09 8:35am M. Eastern, running
00:10:09 --> 00:10:11 roughly six and a half hours. So by the time
00:10:11 --> 00:10:13 most of you are hearing this, it's either
00:10:13 --> 00:10:15 just getting underway or already wrapped up.
00:10:15 --> 00:10:18 Avery: US side Three spacewalks, two
00:10:18 --> 00:10:21 astronauts, one month. That's a heavy
00:10:21 --> 00:10:21 cadence.
00:10:22 --> 00:10:24 Anna: It is though. It's also just what station
00:10:24 --> 00:10:26 maintenance looks like when several jobs
00:10:26 --> 00:10:29 queue up at once. Power upgrades, comms,
00:10:29 --> 00:10:32 hardware, docking aids. Nothing about today's
00:10:32 --> 00:10:35 walk is flagged as urgent or off normal. It's
00:10:35 --> 00:10:37 scheduled methodical work. We'll confirm how
00:10:37 --> 00:10:39 it went and note anything unexpected once
00:10:39 --> 00:10:41 NASA posts the wrap up.
00:10:41 --> 00:10:43 Avery: Now, for something that happened a lot longer
00:10:43 --> 00:10:46 ago than this morning, try 12 billion
00:10:46 --> 00:10:46 years.
00:10:47 --> 00:10:50 Anna: This is a genuinely nice piece of galactic
00:10:50 --> 00:10:52 archaeology. A team led by Daveed
00:10:52 --> 00:10:54 Massari at the Italian Institute for
00:10:54 --> 00:10:56 Astrophysics, working on something called the
00:10:56 --> 00:10:59 ARMA Project, has identified evidence that
00:10:59 --> 00:11:02 that the Milky Way swallowed a dwarf galaxy
00:11:02 --> 00:11:05 roughly 12 billion years ago. Which pushes
00:11:05 --> 00:11:07 the known start of our galaxy's merger
00:11:07 --> 00:11:10 history back about 1.8 billion years
00:11:10 --> 00:11:13 earlier than anything previously documented.
00:11:13 --> 00:11:15 Avery: How do you even find evidence of
00:11:15 --> 00:11:18 Anna: something that old globular clusters,
00:11:18 --> 00:11:21 these dense ancient balls of stars that orbit
00:11:21 --> 00:11:24 the galactic core. The team used Hubble to
00:11:24 --> 00:11:26 measure the ages and chemical makeup the
00:11:26 --> 00:11:29 metallicity of clusters right at the Milky
00:11:29 --> 00:11:31 Way centre with real precision. And they
00:11:31 --> 00:11:34 found three distinct groups. Two matched
00:11:34 --> 00:11:37 patterns astronomers already understood. The
00:11:37 --> 00:11:38 third didn't fit anything on record.
00:11:39 --> 00:11:41 Different age, different chemistry, which is
00:11:41 --> 00:11:43 the signature of material that came from
00:11:43 --> 00:11:44 somewhere else entirely.
00:11:45 --> 00:11:47 Avery: Somewhere else being this dwarf galaxy.
00:11:48 --> 00:11:50 Anna: Right, They've given it the name low energy
00:11:51 --> 00:11:53 Kraken Hercules or LKH for short,
00:11:54 --> 00:11:56 and estimate its mass at around 500
00:11:56 --> 00:11:59 million times that of the Sun. That's
00:11:59 --> 00:12:01 genuinely comparable in scale to Gaia
00:12:01 --> 00:12:04 Enceladus, the previously best known ancient
00:12:04 --> 00:12:06 merger in the Milky Way's history. Most of
00:12:06 --> 00:12:09 what LKH contributed ended up
00:12:09 --> 00:12:11 concentrated within about 20 light years
00:12:11 --> 00:12:14 of the galactic centre, which is exactly why
00:12:14 --> 00:12:17 it left a scar right at the core, rather than
00:12:17 --> 00:12:18 out in the disc somewhere else.
00:12:19 --> 00:12:21 Avery: What does finding this actually tell us?
00:12:21 --> 00:12:22 Beyond just there was another one.
00:12:23 --> 00:12:25 Anna: It fills in the very earliest chapter of the
00:12:25 --> 00:12:28 Storey. One of the team members, Chiara
00:12:28 --> 00:12:31 Zerbinati, put it simply. This work tells us
00:12:31 --> 00:12:32 what happened to the Milky Way in its
00:12:32 --> 00:12:35 infancy. A merger that early and that
00:12:35 --> 00:12:37 massive would have shaped how the galaxy's
00:12:37 --> 00:12:40 core assembled and how everything since has
00:12:40 --> 00:12:42 built on top of it. She called it a piece of
00:12:42 --> 00:12:44 the answer to where we ultimately came from.
00:12:45 --> 00:12:48 Avery: 12 billion years, and we're only just now
00:12:48 --> 00:12:49 finding the scar tissue.
00:12:49 --> 00:12:52 Anna: That's galactic archaeology for you. The
00:12:52 --> 00:12:54 wounds heal into structure. And it takes
00:12:54 --> 00:12:56 instruments like Hubble and a lot of careful
00:12:56 --> 00:12:59 work on stellar ages to read the scar.
00:12:59 --> 00:13:02 Avery: Okay, moving on and sticking with things
00:13:02 --> 00:13:04 written a long way in advance. This one's a
00:13:04 --> 00:13:07 forecast rather than a discovery. Meteor
00:13:07 --> 00:13:08 watchers are starting to talk about
00:13:08 --> 00:13:11 Anna: 2028, specifically whether
00:13:11 --> 00:13:13 Jupiter is about to give the Perseid meteor
00:13:13 --> 00:13:16 shower a serious boost. Robert Lunsford
00:13:16 --> 00:13:18 from the American Meteor Society has been
00:13:18 --> 00:13:21 modelling this. Jupiter's gravity passes
00:13:21 --> 00:13:23 close to part of the debris stream left
00:13:23 --> 00:13:26 behind by Comet 109p Swift Tuttle,
00:13:26 --> 00:13:28 the comet responsible for the perseids.
00:13:28 --> 00:13:31 Roughly every 12 years, the next close
00:13:31 --> 00:13:33 pass lines up with 2028.
00:13:34 --> 00:13:35 Avery: And the effect is what exactly?
00:13:35 --> 00:13:38 Anna: Jupiter's pull can nudge some of that debris
00:13:38 --> 00:13:41 into orbits that bring it closer to Earth's
00:13:41 --> 00:13:43 path. Which means more material for our
00:13:43 --> 00:13:46 atmosphere to potentially run into, and
00:13:46 --> 00:13:48 potentially a real outburst rather than a
00:13:48 --> 00:13:50 typical year's Perseid rate.
00:13:50 --> 00:13:51 Avery: How much more are we talking?
00:13:52 --> 00:13:54 Anna: Lunsford's own framing is honest about the
00:13:54 --> 00:13:56 uncertainty. He called these predictions
00:13:56 --> 00:13:59 educated guesses because the models don't
00:13:59 --> 00:14:01 have great data on exactly how dense the
00:14:01 --> 00:14:03 debris is at different points in the stream.
00:14:04 --> 00:14:06 But the working expectation is a, ah, two
00:14:06 --> 00:14:09 step signal. If 2027's Perseids
00:14:09 --> 00:14:12 come in elevated above 100 meteors an hour,
00:14:12 --> 00:14:14 that would support forecasts of something
00:14:14 --> 00:14:17 like 2 to 300 an hour in 2028.
00:14:17 --> 00:14:19 Genuinely spectacular.
00:14:19 --> 00:14:21 Avery: If it holds up, that's years away. But the
00:14:21 --> 00:14:23 good news is the timing might actually
00:14:23 --> 00:14:24 cooperate.
00:14:24 --> 00:14:27 Anna: It might. The 2028 peak is expected under
00:14:27 --> 00:14:29 a third quarter moon, which is far better
00:14:29 --> 00:14:31 than a full moon washing out the fainter
00:14:31 --> 00:14:34 meteors. Nothing to mark the calendar for
00:14:34 --> 00:14:36 yet, but it's the kind of setup worth
00:14:36 --> 00:14:38 watching over the next two Augusts.
00:14:38 --> 00:14:40 Avery: Alright, what should people actually go out
00:14:40 --> 00:14:42 and look for? And from what you said at the
00:14:42 --> 00:14:44 top of the show, I have a feeling a caveat's
00:14:44 --> 00:14:45 coming.
00:14:45 --> 00:14:47 Anna: There is, and we want to get ahead of it
00:14:47 --> 00:14:50 rather than oversell it. The lunar eclipse we
00:14:50 --> 00:14:52 flagged yesterday is real and it's dramatic
00:14:52 --> 00:14:55 on paper. A partial eclipse the night of
00:14:55 --> 00:14:57 August 27th into the 28th covering
00:14:57 --> 00:15:00 96% of the moon's disc. About as
00:15:00 --> 00:15:03 close to total as a partial eclipse gets
00:15:03 --> 00:15:05 without crossing the line. Peak coverage
00:15:05 --> 00:15:08 lands around 12:12am U.S. eastern
00:15:08 --> 00:15:10 Time on the 28th, which is 4:12
00:15:11 --> 00:15:11 UTC.
00:15:12 --> 00:15:13 Avery: Um, and convert it to here.
00:15:13 --> 00:15:16 Anna: That's the catch. 4:12 UTC works
00:15:16 --> 00:15:19 out to a little after 2pm in Sydney.
00:15:19 --> 00:15:21 Daybright Moon nowhere near the horizon.
00:15:22 --> 00:15:24 This one plays out over the Americas and
00:15:24 --> 00:15:26 parts of Europe and Africa, catching it low
00:15:26 --> 00:15:29 near sunrise for Australia and pretty much
00:15:29 --> 00:15:32 all of Asia and Pacific. The Moon is simply
00:15:32 --> 00:15:34 on the wrong side of the planet when it
00:15:34 --> 00:15:34 happens.
00:15:34 --> 00:15:37 Avery: So no blood moon for us this time.
00:15:37 --> 00:15:39 Anna: Not this time. Genuinely sorry to the watch
00:15:39 --> 00:15:42 this space crowd from yesterday. If you've
00:15:42 --> 00:15:44 got family or listeners in the Americas,
00:15:44 --> 00:15:47 though, it's worth telling them. 96%
00:15:47 --> 00:15:49 coverage, completely safe to watch with
00:15:49 --> 00:15:51 nothing more than your eyes, binoculars or a
00:15:51 --> 00:15:53 telescope. And it should turn the moon, uh, a
00:15:53 --> 00:15:56 deep coppery red as it passes through Earth's
00:15:56 --> 00:15:56 shadow.
00:15:57 --> 00:15:59 Avery: Anything to actually look at from down here
00:15:59 --> 00:16:01 this week, so we're not sending everyone home
00:16:01 --> 00:16:01 empty handed.
00:16:02 --> 00:16:04 Anna: Keep an eye on the evening western sky for
00:16:04 --> 00:16:07 Venus. It's been sitting there bright and
00:16:07 --> 00:16:10 unmistakable through most of August and is
00:16:10 --> 00:16:13 still an easy naked eye target after sunset.
00:16:13 --> 00:16:16 And Saturn's well placed too, rising
00:16:16 --> 00:16:18 in the east as it gets dark and sitting up
00:16:18 --> 00:16:20 nicely for a chunk of the evening. If you've
00:16:20 --> 00:16:23 got binoculars or a small scope handy.
00:16:23 --> 00:16:26 Nothing as headline grabbing as a comet
00:16:26 --> 00:16:29 outburst, but a genuinely nice pair to go
00:16:29 --> 00:16:30 find tonight.
00:16:30 --> 00:16:33 Avery: Venus at dusk, Saturn overnight, and an
00:16:33 --> 00:16:35 eclipse for the other side of the planet.
00:16:35 --> 00:16:38 Anna: That's the sky this week and that's it for
00:16:38 --> 00:16:39 Today's episode.
00:16:39 --> 00:16:42 Series 5 Episode 176 in the
00:16:42 --> 00:16:43 Books
00:16:43 --> 00:16:46 Avery: Quick Recap NASA's Roman Space Telescope is
00:16:46 --> 00:16:48 encapsulated, cleared and launching this
00:16:48 --> 00:16:50 Sunday, nine months ahead of schedule, to
00:16:50 --> 00:16:53 hunt dark energy and exoplanets from deep
00:16:53 --> 00:16:55 space. Astronauts Anil Menon and Sophie
00:16:55 --> 00:16:58 Adenote are back outside the station today
00:16:58 --> 00:17:00 for their third spacewalk in a month.
00:17:00 --> 00:17:02 Astronomers have found a 12 billion year old
00:17:02 --> 00:17:05 merger scar at the heart of the Milky Way.
00:17:05 --> 00:17:08 Jupiter might supercharge the Perseids in
00:17:08 --> 00:17:11 2028, and there's a spectacular near total
00:17:11 --> 00:17:13 lunar eclipse this week, just not for us here
00:17:13 --> 00:17:14 in the southern hemisphere.
00:17:15 --> 00:17:17 Anna: If you enjoyed the show, the best thing you
00:17:17 --> 00:17:19 can do is tell a friend. Leave us a rating
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00:17:28 --> 00:17:30 Avery: And while you're online, head to
00:17:30 --> 00:17:33 astronomydaily IO and sign up for our free
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00:17:35 --> 00:17:38 space and astronomy news straight to your
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00:17:41 --> 00:17:41 a new episode.
00:17:42 --> 00:17:44 Anna: We'll be back tomorrow with more from across
00:17:44 --> 00:17:45 the universe.
00:17:45 --> 00:17:47 Avery: Until then, keep looking up and
00:17:48 --> 00:17:49 clear skies.
00:17:49 --> 00:17:51 Anna: See you next time. Astronomy Day
00:17:53 --> 00:17:54 Avery: Storeys we told.
00:17:59 --> 00:17:59 You.
00:17:59 --> 00:18:00 Anna: Mhm.