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00:00:00 --> 00:00:02 Anna: On Friday, a camera the size of a small car
00:00:02 --> 00:00:04 finished cooling to minus
00:00:04 --> 00:00:06 143 degrees Celsius,
00:00:07 --> 00:00:09 a million and a half kilometres from here.
00:00:10 --> 00:00:13 Over the weekend, NASA turned it on and
00:00:13 --> 00:00:14 then it looked at a star.
00:00:14 --> 00:00:17 Avery: The picture is blurry, deliberately,
00:00:17 --> 00:00:20 gloriously blurry. And it is the most
00:00:20 --> 00:00:23 important image the Nancy Grace Roman Space
00:00:23 --> 00:00:24 Telescope will ever take.
00:00:25 --> 00:00:28 Anna: Welcome to Astronomy AstroDailyPod. I'm Anna.
00:00:28 --> 00:00:31 Avery: And I'm avery. It's Wednesday 16th
00:00:31 --> 00:00:34 September 2026. Coming to you from
00:00:34 --> 00:00:34 Sydney.
00:00:35 --> 00:00:38 Anna: Coming up, Roman opens its eye and
00:00:38 --> 00:00:41 finds it has twice as long to look as anyone
00:00:41 --> 00:00:41 planned.
00:00:41 --> 00:00:44 Avery: Caltech says the solar system has an
00:00:44 --> 00:00:47 expiry date and it is very much earlier
00:00:47 --> 00:00:48 than the textbooks say.
00:00:48 --> 00:00:51 Anna: The United States says out loud. And for the
00:00:51 --> 00:00:54 first time that it has weapons in orbit,
00:00:54 --> 00:00:55 Rubin finds a
00:00:55 --> 00:00:58 Avery: globular cluster that was hiding behind a
00:00:58 --> 00:01:00 hundred thousand light years of dust and bad
00:01:00 --> 00:01:01 luck.
00:01:01 --> 00:01:04 Anna: Starship finally has a date and a Venus
00:01:04 --> 00:01:07 that is about to be as bright as it gets.
00:01:07 --> 00:01:08 Avery: Let's get into it.
00:01:09 --> 00:01:10 Anna: Let's start with a telescope we have been
00:01:10 --> 00:01:13 following all the way from the launch pad. On
00:01:13 --> 00:01:16 30 August, we watched the Nancy Grace
00:01:16 --> 00:01:18 Roman Space Telescope leave Kennedy on a
00:01:18 --> 00:01:21 Falcon Heavy. On 1st September, its
00:01:21 --> 00:01:23 Coronagraph Instrument got its first taste of
00:01:23 --> 00:01:26 electrical power. And this week, the main
00:01:26 --> 00:01:29 event, Roman's primary instrument, is awake
00:01:29 --> 00:01:30 and it has seen starlight.
00:01:31 --> 00:01:33 Avery: This is the wide field instrument.
00:01:34 --> 00:01:36 Anna: It is, and it's worth being precise about
00:01:36 --> 00:01:39 what it actually is because the specification
00:01:39 --> 00:01:42 is doing something unusual. It's a 300
00:01:42 --> 00:01:44 megapixel infrared camera built around 18
00:01:44 --> 00:01:47 separate detectors. Its field of view is at
00:01:47 --> 00:01:49 least a hundred times larger than Hubble's
00:01:49 --> 00:01:52 infrared field. The practical way to say that
00:01:52 --> 00:01:54 is in a single exposure.
00:01:54 --> 00:01:57 Roman captures a patch of sky bigger than the
00:01:57 --> 00:01:59 full moon at a sharpness comparable to
00:01:59 --> 00:02:02 Hubble's. Hubble takes exquisite postage
00:02:02 --> 00:02:05 stamps. Roman takes exquisite murals.
00:02:06 --> 00:02:08 Avery: And the activation happened over about four
00:02:08 --> 00:02:08 days.
00:02:09 --> 00:02:12 Anna: It did, and NASA has walked through it step
00:02:12 --> 00:02:14 by step, which I appreciate. On Friday the
00:02:14 --> 00:02:17 11th, the instrument finished cooling to its
00:02:17 --> 00:02:19 operating temperature. Minus
00:02:19 --> 00:02:21 225 Fahrenheit, minus
00:02:21 --> 00:02:24 143 Celsius. Infrared
00:02:24 --> 00:02:27 detectors have to be cold because if they
00:02:27 --> 00:02:29 aren't, the camera sees its own heat instead
00:02:29 --> 00:02:32 of the sky. Then across the 11th and
00:02:32 --> 00:02:35 12th, the team brought up all 18 infrared
00:02:35 --> 00:02:38 detectors and the calibration system. On
00:02:38 --> 00:02:40 the 12th, the element wheel, the carousel
00:02:40 --> 00:02:43 that swings filters and optical elements into
00:02:43 --> 00:02:45 the light path, turned in microgravity for
00:02:45 --> 00:02:46 the first time.
00:02:46 --> 00:02:49 On the 13th, they confirmed the Focus
00:02:49 --> 00:02:51 mechanism moves the way it's supposed to.
00:02:51 --> 00:02:53 Avery: Any one of which could have gone
00:02:53 --> 00:02:55 Anna: wrong, any one of which could have ended the
00:02:55 --> 00:02:58 mission. Frankly, a stuck filter wheel
00:02:58 --> 00:03:00 on an instrument a million and a half
00:03:00 --> 00:03:03 kilometres away is not a thing. You send
00:03:03 --> 00:03:06 somebody up to jiggle and then they pointed
00:03:06 --> 00:03:08 it at stars and took the picture I mentioned
00:03:08 --> 00:03:11 at the top, which is out of focus and
00:03:11 --> 00:03:12 which is exactly right.
00:03:13 --> 00:03:16 Avery: Explain that. Because our new
00:03:16 --> 00:03:19 billion dollar telescope took a blurry photo
00:03:19 --> 00:03:22 is a headline waiting to be misread?
00:03:22 --> 00:03:25 Anna: It is. So let's head it off. You do
00:03:25 --> 00:03:27 not focus an instrument before you know the
00:03:27 --> 00:03:30 detectors work. The order of operations is
00:03:31 --> 00:03:34 prove the detectors respond, prove they
00:03:34 --> 00:03:36 respond uniformly, establish a baseline
00:03:36 --> 00:03:39 and only then start the long fussy business
00:03:39 --> 00:03:42 of focusing a telescope that has been shaken
00:03:42 --> 00:03:44 by a rocket and then allowed to settle in
00:03:44 --> 00:03:47 vacuum. Those defocused stars
00:03:47 --> 00:03:50 smeared across thousands of pixels are a
00:03:50 --> 00:03:53 diagnostic. They tell you the optical path
00:03:53 --> 00:03:56 is clear, every detector is live, and
00:03:56 --> 00:03:58 the light is arriving where the model said it
00:03:58 --> 00:04:01 would. Josh Schlieder, the wide field
00:04:01 --> 00:04:03 instrument scientist at Goddard, put it
00:04:03 --> 00:04:06 plainly. After years of effort building and
00:04:06 --> 00:04:08 testing the instrument on the ground, they
00:04:08 --> 00:04:10 now have confirmation that it is operational
00:04:10 --> 00:04:11 in space.
00:04:11 --> 00:04:14 Sharp science images are expected by early
00:04:14 --> 00:04:17 2027 and the coronagraph
00:04:17 --> 00:04:20 progressing. The team at Caltech and IPAC
00:04:20 --> 00:04:22 have completed initial communications,
00:04:22 --> 00:04:24 testing software, thermal systems,
00:04:24 --> 00:04:27 mechanisms, cameras, avionics, all, all
00:04:27 --> 00:04:30 responding. It's now sitting through 30 day
00:04:30 --> 00:04:32 decontamination cycles at room temperature
00:04:32 --> 00:04:35 about 22 degrees to bake off any
00:04:35 --> 00:04:37 contaminants before it gets cold and precise.
00:04:38 --> 00:04:40 That's the instrument we talked about on the
00:04:40 --> 00:04:42 6th, the technology demonstrator. That's
00:04:42 --> 00:04:44 meant to prove we can block a star's light
00:04:44 --> 00:04:47 well enough to photograph a planet beside it.
00:04:47 --> 00:04:50 Avery: Okay, but the thing that actually made me sit
00:04:50 --> 00:04:53 up this week wasn't the first light. It was
00:04:53 --> 00:04:53 the fuel.
00:04:54 --> 00:04:56 Anna: It's the better storey. And it landed the day
00:04:56 --> 00:04:59 before. On Monday the 14th, NASA
00:04:59 --> 00:05:01 published the numbers from Roman's first mid
00:05:01 --> 00:05:04 course correction. The burn that fine tunes
00:05:04 --> 00:05:06 the trajectory out to the second Lagrange
00:05:06 --> 00:05:09 point. That burn was better than 99%
00:05:09 --> 00:05:12 accurate. It used under 10% of what had
00:05:12 --> 00:05:15 been allocated to it. About 18 kilogrammes
00:05:15 --> 00:05:17 of propellant out of a, uh, 200 kilogramme
00:05:17 --> 00:05:18 budget.
00:05:19 --> 00:05:21 Avery: And accuracy converts directly into fuel.
00:05:22 --> 00:05:24 Anna: Directly. Every kilogramme you don't spend
00:05:24 --> 00:05:27 correcting an error is a kilogramme you can
00:05:27 --> 00:05:30 spend later holding station and pointing. On
00:05:30 --> 00:05:32 top of that, the spacecraft came in lighter
00:05:32 --> 00:05:35 than the maximum it was allowed to be. So it
00:05:35 --> 00:05:36 launched with margin. It was never supposed
00:05:36 --> 00:05:39 to have. Add the accurate first burn,
00:05:39 --> 00:05:42 add the launch margin, add what they expect
00:05:42 --> 00:05:44 from the second burn and the insertion into
00:05:44 --> 00:05:47 orbit around L2. And Jamie Dunn at
00:05:47 --> 00:05:49 Goddard says the quiet part out loud.
00:05:50 --> 00:05:53 Roman has fuel for at least 22 years of
00:05:53 --> 00:05:56 potential science operations against a
00:05:56 --> 00:05:58 design life of 10 five years primary,
00:05:58 --> 00:06:01 five years extended. So this is roughly
00:06:01 --> 00:06:03 double. And here is where I want to be
00:06:03 --> 00:06:06 careful because NASA telescope's life
00:06:06 --> 00:06:08 doubled is going to be everywhere this week
00:06:08 --> 00:06:10 and it needs a caveat attached.
00:06:10 --> 00:06:13 22 years is a fuel figure, it is not a
00:06:13 --> 00:06:16 funding figure and it is not a hardware
00:06:16 --> 00:06:18 figure. Detectors degrade, budgets get
00:06:18 --> 00:06:21 written annually. Fuel is one of several
00:06:21 --> 00:06:23 things that can end a space telescope and
00:06:23 --> 00:06:25 Roman has just removed it from the top of the
00:06:25 --> 00:06:28 list. That's genuinely excellent news.
00:06:28 --> 00:06:31 It is not a promise of 22 years of science.
00:06:32 --> 00:06:34 Avery: Understood. So why does the fuel matter
00:06:35 --> 00:06:37 so much for this particular telescope?
00:06:37 --> 00:06:39 Anna: Because of what Roman was built to measure
00:06:40 --> 00:06:42 and because of what we led with on Monday.
00:06:42 --> 00:06:45 Remember Monday's lead the Australian
00:06:45 --> 00:06:47 led supernova compilation out of the
00:06:47 --> 00:06:50 University of Queensland with ANU and
00:06:50 --> 00:06:53 Swinburne2884
00:06:53 --> 00:06:56 type Ia supernovae Pantheon
00:06:56 --> 00:06:58 and the full dark energy survey five year
00:06:58 --> 00:07:01 sample rebuilt in one framework and a
00:07:01 --> 00:07:04 2.5 to 3.1-sigma preference for
00:07:04 --> 00:07:06 dark energy that changes over time rather
00:07:06 --> 00:07:07 than staying constant.
00:07:08 --> 00:07:11 Avery: Which was tantalising and not conclusive.
00:07:11 --> 00:07:14 Anna: Exactly that. And the reason it wasn't
00:07:14 --> 00:07:17 conclusive is the reason Roman exists. You
00:07:17 --> 00:07:19 are trying to detect a slow drift in a number
00:07:19 --> 00:07:22 and your enemies are sample size and
00:07:22 --> 00:07:24 systematics. Dust host
00:07:24 --> 00:07:27 galaxy properties, the slow accumulation
00:07:27 --> 00:07:29 of small calibration differences between
00:07:29 --> 00:07:32 surveys. Roman attacks all three
00:07:32 --> 00:07:35 Its high latitude Time domain survey about
00:07:35 --> 00:07:37 six months of observing Hunt's Type Ia
00:07:37 --> 00:07:39 supernovae specifically to measure how the
00:07:39 --> 00:07:42 expansion rate has changed. Its high
00:07:42 --> 00:07:45 latitude Wide area survey about 17 months
00:07:45 --> 00:07:48 covers more than 5 square degrees to
00:07:48 --> 00:07:50 probe the origin of cosmic acceleration
00:07:50 --> 00:07:53 through weak gravitational lensing and galaxy
00:07:53 --> 00:07:56 clustering. A completely independent handle
00:07:56 --> 00:07:57 on the same question.
00:07:57 --> 00:08:00 Avery: Two different methods, one telescope, one
00:08:00 --> 00:08:01 calibration.
00:08:01 --> 00:08:04 Anna: Which is the whole point. Monday's paper was
00:08:04 --> 00:08:07 heroic precisely because it had to stitch
00:08:07 --> 00:08:08 together three decades of different
00:08:08 --> 00:08:09 instruments.
00:08:09 --> 00:08:12 Roman gets to skip that problem and now it
00:08:12 --> 00:08:14 gets to do it for 22 years instead of 10.
00:08:15 --> 00:08:17 Which is not just more supernovae. It's a
00:08:17 --> 00:08:20 longer lever arm in time. And in this
00:08:20 --> 00:08:22 measurement the lever arm is everything.
00:08:22 --> 00:08:24 Avery: There's the exoplanet half too.
00:08:25 --> 00:08:27 Anna: There is, and it's extraordinary. The
00:08:27 --> 00:08:30 Galactic bulge time domain survey 15 months
00:08:30 --> 00:08:33 or so, 6 observing seasons imaging the
00:08:33 --> 00:08:36 crowded heart of the Galaxy every 12 minutes,
00:08:36 --> 00:08:39 12.1 minutes, to be exact. That
00:08:39 --> 00:08:41 Cadence is designed to catch gravitational
00:08:41 --> 00:08:44 microlensing events, and it's expected to
00:08:44 --> 00:08:46 find more than a thousand planets on wide
00:08:46 --> 00:08:49 orbits, the cold, distant worlds that transit
00:08:49 --> 00:08:52 surveys are almost blind to, plus something
00:08:52 --> 00:08:54 like a hundred thousand transiting planets as
00:08:54 --> 00:08:55 a bonus.
00:08:55 --> 00:08:58 Avery: And for southern listeners, there's a thread
00:08:58 --> 00:08:59 running through all of this.
00:08:59 --> 00:09:02 Anna: There is, and it's the one I keep coming back
00:09:02 --> 00:09:02 to.
00:09:02 --> 00:09:05 The Dark Energy survey data in Monday's paper
00:09:05 --> 00:09:08 came off the Blanco 4 metre telescope at
00:09:08 --> 00:09:11 Cerro Tololo in Chile. The
00:09:11 --> 00:09:13 compilation was led out of Brisbane. The
00:09:13 --> 00:09:15 accelerating universe result that started
00:09:15 --> 00:09:18 this whole argument was work Brian Schmidt
00:09:18 --> 00:09:20 did at Matt Stromlo outside Canberra.
00:09:21 --> 00:09:23 The question about dark energy got sharpened
00:09:23 --> 00:09:26 in the Southern sky over 30 years by
00:09:26 --> 00:09:29 people working in our half of the world. And
00:09:29 --> 00:09:31 this week the instrument built to settle it
00:09:31 --> 00:09:34 opened its eye, took a deliberately blurry
00:09:34 --> 00:09:36 picture of a star and found out it has twice
00:09:36 --> 00:09:38 as long to look as anyone had planned.
00:09:39 --> 00:09:40 Avery: Not a bad week.
00:09:41 --> 00:09:42 Anna: Not a bad week at all.
00:09:42 --> 00:09:45 Avery: Right, let's talk about how the solar system
00:09:45 --> 00:09:48 ends, because three people at Caltech have
00:09:48 --> 00:09:50 just moved the date forward by about a
00:09:50 --> 00:09:51 billion fold.
00:09:52 --> 00:09:53 Anna: That is an aggressive revision.
00:09:54 --> 00:09:56 Avery: It really is. The paper is by
00:09:56 --> 00:09:59 Constantine Batygin, Jim Fuller and
00:09:59 --> 00:10:01 Fred Watson Adams. It went up on the archive
00:10:01 --> 00:10:04 on Friday the 11th, and it's been accepted by
00:10:04 --> 00:10:07 the Astrophysical Journal Letters. So it's
00:10:07 --> 00:10:10 five days old and peer reviewed, but not yet
00:10:10 --> 00:10:12 in the Journal. I'll flag that as we go.
00:10:13 --> 00:10:15 The title is Terminal Instability of the
00:10:15 --> 00:10:18 Solar System Triggered by Stochastic Solar
00:10:18 --> 00:10:18 Mass Loss.
00:10:19 --> 00:10:20 Anna: Give me the old number first.
00:10:21 --> 00:10:23 Avery: 10 to the 18 years. A billion
00:10:24 --> 00:10:27 billion years. That's the standard estimate
00:10:27 --> 00:10:29 for how long the giant planets Jupiter,
00:10:29 --> 00:10:32 Saturn, Uranus, Neptune hold
00:10:32 --> 00:10:34 their current orbital architecture together.
00:10:35 --> 00:10:37 And it already accounts for the sun losing
00:10:37 --> 00:10:40 mass as it dies, and for the occasional
00:10:40 --> 00:10:43 passing star. It is an absurdly long
00:10:43 --> 00:10:46 time. The universe is 14 billion
00:10:46 --> 00:10:46 years old.
00:10:47 --> 00:10:48 Anna: So what breaks it?
00:10:48 --> 00:10:51 Avery: An assumption nobody was really examining.
00:10:51 --> 00:10:54 That the sun sheds its mass smoothly.
00:10:54 --> 00:10:57 That as it becomes a red giant and then a
00:10:57 --> 00:11:00 white dwarf, it releases material steadily
00:11:00 --> 00:11:03 and symmetrically, like a tyre with a slow
00:11:03 --> 00:11:05 puncture, and the planet's orbits widen
00:11:05 --> 00:11:06 gently in response.
00:11:07 --> 00:11:09 Anna: And that isn't what happens.
00:11:09 --> 00:11:12 Avery: Apparently not. And the evidence comes from
00:11:12 --> 00:11:15 white dwarfs themselves. Measure how
00:11:15 --> 00:11:17 fast white dwarfs are moving and they show
00:11:17 --> 00:11:20 recoil. A kick. A kick means
00:11:20 --> 00:11:23 the mass didn't leave evenly. It left
00:11:23 --> 00:11:25 in discrete, independently directed
00:11:25 --> 00:11:28 ejections. Parcels, not a stream,
00:11:28 --> 00:11:31 each one shoving the star a different way,
00:11:31 --> 00:11:31 and the
00:11:31 --> 00:11:34 Anna: planets are attached to the star's gravity,
00:11:34 --> 00:11:35 so they feel every shove.
00:11:36 --> 00:11:39 Avery: That's the mechanism. The star jitters and
00:11:39 --> 00:11:41 the planet's orbits take a random walk in
00:11:41 --> 00:11:44 response, each ejection nudging them a little
00:11:44 --> 00:11:47 in no particular direction, with the size of
00:11:47 --> 00:11:50 the nudges set by how lumpy the mass loss
00:11:50 --> 00:11:53 is. Do that for long enough and
00:11:53 --> 00:11:55 orbits that were carefully spaced drift into
00:11:55 --> 00:11:58 each other's business. And once giant
00:11:58 --> 00:12:00 planets start perturbing each other in
00:12:00 --> 00:12:03 earnest, the outcome is scattering planets
00:12:03 --> 00:12:06 thrown onto wild orbits or thrown out
00:12:06 --> 00:12:06 altogether.
00:12:07 --> 00:12:08 Anna: What do the simulations give?
00:12:08 --> 00:12:11 Avery: About 40% of the modelled systems are
00:12:11 --> 00:12:13 disrupted or violently scattered because
00:12:14 --> 00:12:16 before the sun even finishes becoming a white
00:12:16 --> 00:12:19 dwarf, and roughly 90%
00:12:19 --> 00:12:22 come apart within about 3 billion years.
00:12:22 --> 00:12:25 After that, the headline number the
00:12:25 --> 00:12:27 dynamical lifetime of the outer solar system
00:12:27 --> 00:12:30 drops from 10 to the 18 years to
00:12:30 --> 00:12:33 somewhere around 1 billion years past white
00:12:33 --> 00:12:34 dwarf formation.
00:12:35 --> 00:12:38 Anna: I want to be clear, for anyone reaching for
00:12:38 --> 00:12:41 the panic button, please, none
00:12:41 --> 00:12:43 Avery: of this is near term anything. The
00:12:43 --> 00:12:46 sun has about 5 billion years of normal
00:12:46 --> 00:12:49 life left and Earth's surface becomes
00:12:49 --> 00:12:51 uninhabitable long before the interesting
00:12:51 --> 00:12:54 part of this paper begins. What it
00:12:54 --> 00:12:57 changes isn't a forecast, it's a
00:12:57 --> 00:12:58 prediction. We can go and cheque.
00:12:59 --> 00:13:01 Meaning, if this is right,
00:13:02 --> 00:13:05 planetary systems around old white dwarfs
00:13:05 --> 00:13:08 should be rarer, more scattered and more
00:13:08 --> 00:13:10 chaotic than the smooth mass loss picture
00:13:10 --> 00:13:13 predicts. We already find white
00:13:13 --> 00:13:16 dwarfs polluted with the debris of shredded
00:13:16 --> 00:13:18 rocky bodies, which tells us something
00:13:18 --> 00:13:21 violent happens out there. This gives
00:13:21 --> 00:13:23 that violence a mechanism and a rate.
00:13:24 --> 00:13:27 And the caveat, the honest one, is
00:13:27 --> 00:13:30 it's a simulation result. And the answer
00:13:30 --> 00:13:33 depends entirely on how granular the mass
00:13:33 --> 00:13:35 loss really is. Big
00:13:36 --> 00:13:38 infrequent parcels give you a very different
00:13:38 --> 00:13:41 system for from small frequent ones.
00:13:41 --> 00:13:44 That granularity is now the number to go and
00:13:44 --> 00:13:47 measure. Which is a nice place for a paper
00:13:47 --> 00:13:50 to end, not with a claim, but with an
00:13:50 --> 00:13:50 assignment.
00:13:51 --> 00:13:54 Anna: Now, a storey that isn't astronomy, but which
00:13:54 --> 00:13:56 sits directly over the sky, we all use.
00:13:57 --> 00:13:59 On Monday, at the opening of the Air and
00:13:59 --> 00:14:02 Space Forces Association's Air, Space and
00:14:02 --> 00:14:04 Cyber Conference at National Harbour in
00:14:04 --> 00:14:06 Maryland, the Secretary of the Air Force,
00:14:06 --> 00:14:09 Troy Meink, said that the United
00:14:09 --> 00:14:12 States now has, in his words, on
00:14:12 --> 00:14:15 orbit space control weapons capable of
00:14:15 --> 00:14:17 defending the joint force against hostile
00:14:17 --> 00:14:19 adversary actions.
00:14:19 --> 00:14:21 Avery: That's the first time that's been said out
00:14:21 --> 00:14:22 loud.
00:14:22 --> 00:14:24 Anna: It is the first public acknowledgment by the
00:14:24 --> 00:14:27 United States military that it has offensive
00:14:27 --> 00:14:30 capability in orbit. And I want to be
00:14:30 --> 00:14:32 precise about what was and wasn't said,
00:14:33 --> 00:14:35 because the gap matters. What was said?
00:14:36 --> 00:14:39 The capability exists, it is on orbit
00:14:39 --> 00:14:41 and it is framed as defensive of the Joint
00:14:41 --> 00:14:44 Force. What was not said, what the
00:14:44 --> 00:14:47 systems are, how many there are, where they
00:14:47 --> 00:14:49 are, when they got there, or what they can
00:14:49 --> 00:14:50 actually do.
00:14:51 --> 00:14:53 Avery: Did anyone define the term?
00:14:53 --> 00:14:55 Anna: A Space Force spokesperson did, and the
00:14:55 --> 00:14:58 definition is broad. Space control, they
00:14:58 --> 00:15:01 said, encapsulates the mission areas required
00:15:01 --> 00:15:03 to contest and control the space domain,
00:15:03 --> 00:15:06 employing kinetic and non kinetic means to
00:15:06 --> 00:15:08 affect adversary capabilities through
00:15:08 --> 00:15:11 disruption, degradation and if
00:15:11 --> 00:15:13 necessary, destruction. So that covers
00:15:13 --> 00:15:16 everything from M jamming a signal to
00:15:16 --> 00:15:18 physically destroying a satellite. And the
00:15:18 --> 00:15:20 statement doesn't tell us where on that
00:15:20 --> 00:15:22 spectrum these systems sit.
00:15:22 --> 00:15:23 Avery: Why say it now?
00:15:23 --> 00:15:26 Anna: That question got answered the following day.
00:15:26 --> 00:15:29 General Douglas Schies, the Chief of Space
00:15:29 --> 00:15:32 Operations, said on Tuesday, I think it
00:15:32 --> 00:15:34 was time that within the Department of War we
00:15:34 --> 00:15:37 talked about it and it's time to talk about
00:15:37 --> 00:15:39 that. We have the capabilities to make sure
00:15:39 --> 00:15:42 that we can do what the Joint Force needs. He
00:15:42 --> 00:15:44 attributed the decision to advances by China
00:15:44 --> 00:15:47 and Russia in anti satellite capability
00:15:47 --> 00:15:49 and said the United States needed to be able
00:15:49 --> 00:15:52 to respond from a position of strength.
00:15:52 --> 00:15:54 Avery: How is that being read?
00:15:54 --> 00:15:57 Anna: Two ways, and I think both are worth hearing.
00:15:57 --> 00:15:59 The deterrence reading is that capability.
00:16:00 --> 00:16:03 Nobody knows about deters. Nobody. That if
00:16:03 --> 00:16:05 the point of a weapon is to make an adversary
00:16:05 --> 00:16:08 decide not to act, the adversary has to
00:16:08 --> 00:16:11 know it exists on that reading. Saying it
00:16:11 --> 00:16:13 out loud is the whole function. The arms
00:16:13 --> 00:16:15 control reading is that public acknowledgment
00:16:15 --> 00:16:18 by the largest space power lowers the
00:16:18 --> 00:16:20 threshold for everyone else, invites
00:16:20 --> 00:16:23 reciprocal declarations and makes the orbital
00:16:23 --> 00:16:26 environment more contested rather than less,
00:16:26 --> 00:16:28 with debris as the physical consequence that
00:16:28 --> 00:16:30 outlives any particular dispute.
00:16:31 --> 00:16:33 Avery: And debris is where this touches us.
00:16:33 --> 00:16:36 Anna: That's the part I'd hold onto. We covered US
00:16:36 --> 00:16:39 Space Command's Apollo manoeuvres exercise
00:16:39 --> 00:16:41 last week. The first live fly orbital
00:16:41 --> 00:16:43 manoeuvre drill with allies including
00:16:43 --> 00:16:46 Australia, under Operation Olympic Defender.
00:16:46 --> 00:16:48 Australia has its own Defence Space Command
00:16:48 --> 00:16:51 and we're part of that framework. But
00:16:51 --> 00:16:53 whatever anybody's strategic view, kinetic
00:16:53 --> 00:16:56 action in low Earth orbit produces debris,
00:16:56 --> 00:16:59 and debris doesn't respect flags. Every
00:16:59 --> 00:17:02 fragment is a hazard to every satellite and
00:17:02 --> 00:17:05 in the long run, to the sky above every
00:17:05 --> 00:17:07 observatory on the ground. We'll keep
00:17:07 --> 00:17:09 reporting this one factually as it develops.
00:17:10 --> 00:17:12 The conference is still running as we record.
00:17:13 --> 00:17:15 Avery: Lets finish the news with something that made
00:17:15 --> 00:17:18 me grin. The Vera Rubin Observatory
00:17:18 --> 00:17:20 has found a globular cluster in our own
00:17:20 --> 00:17:23 galaxy that nobody had ever catalogued.
00:17:23 --> 00:17:26 Anna: In our own galaxy in 2026,
00:17:27 --> 00:17:27 in
00:17:27 --> 00:17:30 Avery: our own galaxy in 2026.
00:17:30 --> 00:17:33 The paper went up on Monday. Lead author
00:17:33 --> 00:17:35 Ashay Pai with William Cerny,
00:17:35 --> 00:17:38 Andrew Pace, Alex Drlica, Wagner and
00:17:38 --> 00:17:40 colleagues across Chicago, Yale,
00:17:41 --> 00:17:43 Dartmouth, Washington and Colorado.
00:17:43 --> 00:17:46 They've named it Rubin GC1. And they
00:17:46 --> 00:17:49 found it in Rubin's early data preview too.
00:17:49 --> 00:17:52 Not even the survey proper. The preview.
00:17:52 --> 00:17:53 Anna: Where was it hiding?
00:17:54 --> 00:17:57 Avery: In the worst possible direction, towards the
00:17:57 --> 00:17:59 galactic bulge. You're looking through the
00:17:59 --> 00:18:02 thickest dust in the galaxy at a field so
00:18:02 --> 00:18:04 crowded with foreground stars that a faint
00:18:04 --> 00:18:07 clump is statistically invisible. Trying to
00:18:07 --> 00:18:09 pick out something that isn't bright to begin
00:18:09 --> 00:18:09 with.
00:18:10 --> 00:18:12 Anna: So it's in the bulge?
00:18:12 --> 00:18:15 Avery: No. And this is the lovely bit. It's
00:18:15 --> 00:18:18 behind it. Rubin GC1 is
00:18:18 --> 00:18:21 about 31 kiloparsecs away. Call it
00:18:21 --> 00:18:24 a hundred thousand light years. That puts it
00:18:24 --> 00:18:26 out in the Milky Way's halo, seen through the
00:18:26 --> 00:18:29 bulge. A, uh, halo object sitting in the most
00:18:29 --> 00:18:31 confusing line of sight we have.
00:18:31 --> 00:18:32 Anna: What is it physically?
00:18:33 --> 00:18:36 Avery: Small and old, half light radius around
00:18:36 --> 00:18:38 5 parsecs. A compact little ball,
00:18:39 --> 00:18:42 absolute magnitude about minus 2.4,
00:18:42 --> 00:18:45 which is faint for a globular. The authors
00:18:45 --> 00:18:47 place it in the faint tail of the globular
00:18:47 --> 00:18:50 cluster. Luminosity function age
00:18:50 --> 00:18:52 about 9.2 billion years.
00:18:52 --> 00:18:54 Moderately metal poor.
00:18:54 --> 00:18:57 Anna: And where did it come from?
00:18:57 --> 00:19:00 Avery: This is my favourite part. They took Gaia's
00:19:00 --> 00:19:03 third day to release proper motions, measured
00:19:03 --> 00:19:05 how the cluster is actually moving through
00:19:05 --> 00:19:08 space and ran the phase space modelling
00:19:08 --> 00:19:10 backwards. The answer that comes out is that
00:19:10 --> 00:19:13 Rubin GC1 was very probably
00:19:13 --> 00:19:15 stripped from the Sagittarius dwarf
00:19:15 --> 00:19:17 spheroidal galaxy, one of the small
00:19:17 --> 00:19:20 galaxies the Milky Way is currently eating.
00:19:21 --> 00:19:23 So it isn't ours originally.
00:19:23 --> 00:19:25 Anna: It's spoils that needs
00:19:25 --> 00:19:26 spectroscopy to confirm.
00:19:26 --> 00:19:29 Avery: Presumably it does, and the
00:19:29 --> 00:19:32 authors say so. That's the next beat,
00:19:32 --> 00:19:34 along with the fact that this is early
00:19:34 --> 00:19:36 preview data, not the full survey.
00:19:36 --> 00:19:39 But step back, because there's a pattern
00:19:39 --> 00:19:41 here. We have now hit four times in a month.
00:19:42 --> 00:19:44 M M74 turned out to be more than twice
00:19:44 --> 00:19:47 its catalogue size. Magnetars
00:19:47 --> 00:19:50 turned out to be half of all neutron stars,
00:19:50 --> 00:19:53 rather than 1%. Mercury turned
00:19:53 --> 00:19:55 out to have shrunk up to 30% more than we
00:19:55 --> 00:19:58 thought. And now a globular cluster a
00:19:58 --> 00:20:00 hundred thousand light years away turns out
00:20:00 --> 00:20:02 to have been sitting in our catalogue's blind
00:20:02 --> 00:20:04 spot the whole time.
00:20:04 --> 00:20:07 Anna: Catalogues are detection limits, not
00:20:07 --> 00:20:08 censuses.
00:20:08 --> 00:20:11 Avery: That's the line and it keeps being true.
00:20:12 --> 00:20:14 This cluster wasn't missing because it's far
00:20:14 --> 00:20:17 away. Plenty of catalogued globulars are.
00:20:17 --> 00:20:20 Further, it was missing because it's faint
00:20:20 --> 00:20:22 and behind dust and, and in a crowded
00:20:22 --> 00:20:25 direction. Three handicaps stacked on
00:20:25 --> 00:20:28 each other. Ruben removed enough of the first
00:20:28 --> 00:20:29 to overcome the other two.
00:20:30 --> 00:20:32 Anna: And Ruben is on Cerro Pachon in
00:20:32 --> 00:20:35 Avery: Chile in our half of the sky.
00:20:35 --> 00:20:37 And two names on that author list are, uh,
00:20:38 --> 00:20:40 old friends of this programme. Nora Shipp
00:20:40 --> 00:20:43 was on the Stellar Streams paper we led with
00:20:43 --> 00:20:46 on the 7th. Alex Drelika Wagner
00:20:46 --> 00:20:48 is a dark energy survey scientist. Which
00:20:48 --> 00:20:50 ties straight back to Monday.
00:20:51 --> 00:20:53 Same small community, same southern
00:20:53 --> 00:20:55 telescopes. Three different questions.
00:20:56 --> 00:20:59 Anna: We've ended three recent leads with wait for
00:20:59 --> 00:20:59 Rubin.
00:21:00 --> 00:21:03 Avery: Stellar Streams, the Trans Neptunian Objects
00:21:03 --> 00:21:05 and Monday's dark energy result.
00:21:06 --> 00:21:08 This is the first instalment on that promise
00:21:08 --> 00:21:10 and it came out of a data preview.
00:21:11 --> 00:21:13 Rubin hasn't really started yet.
00:21:14 --> 00:21:16 Anna: Next up, a quick hit. And it's an update to
00:21:16 --> 00:21:18 something we left unresolved Yesterday.
00:21:19 --> 00:21:21 Starship Flight 14 has a firm date.
00:21:22 --> 00:21:24 Finally, finally.
00:21:24 --> 00:21:26 Yesterday we had to carry two dates and a
00:21:26 --> 00:21:28 caveat. An FAA advisory showing the
00:21:28 --> 00:21:31 18th reporting pointing to the 22nd
00:21:31 --> 00:21:33 and no formal word from SpaceX.
00:21:34 --> 00:21:36 SpaceX has now published and the FAA has
00:21:36 --> 00:21:39 cleared it. Tuesday the 22nd of September.
00:21:40 --> 00:21:43 Uh, a 75 minute window opening at 8:15 in the
00:21:43 --> 00:21:46 morning Eastern. That's 12:15 UTC
00:21:46 --> 00:21:48 and 10 past 10 in the evening Sydney time on
00:21:48 --> 00:21:49 the 22nd.
00:21:49 --> 00:21:51 Avery: And um, this is the orbital one.
00:21:52 --> 00:21:55 Anna: This is the orbital one six orbits at about
00:21:55 --> 00:21:58 275 kilometres then
00:21:58 --> 00:22:00 splash down in the Pacific west of Chile
00:22:01 --> 00:22:03 roughly 10 hours after launch. So this flight
00:22:03 --> 00:22:06 ends in our half of the world. The payload is
00:22:06 --> 00:22:09 26 Starlink V3 satellites, the
00:22:09 --> 00:22:11 first flight of the next generation
00:22:11 --> 00:22:13 satellites designed specifically for
00:22:13 --> 00:22:13 starship.
00:22:14 --> 00:22:16 And three of them carry cameras to photograph
00:22:16 --> 00:22:18 the ship's heat shield during re entry.
00:22:18 --> 00:22:21 Booster Gulf splashdown about seven
00:22:21 --> 00:22:24 minutes after liftoff. And confirming what we
00:22:24 --> 00:22:27 corrected on air back on the 12th. No tower
00:22:27 --> 00:22:29 catches on this flight for either stage.
00:22:30 --> 00:22:32 SpaceX's framing is that going to orbit is
00:22:32 --> 00:22:34 what unlocks the next phase.
00:22:35 --> 00:22:37 Their line is that by going to orbit, the
00:22:37 --> 00:22:39 work of making starship fully and rapidly
00:22:39 --> 00:22:40 reusable can begin.
00:22:41 --> 00:22:44 Avery: And that brings us to the sky. And this is
00:22:44 --> 00:22:45 a good week in it.
00:22:45 --> 00:22:47 Anna: Start with tonight, because tonight is lovely
00:22:47 --> 00:22:50 and it's free. Go out at dusk and find the
00:22:50 --> 00:22:53 moon, a waxing crescent about a quarter lit,
00:22:53 --> 00:22:56 five days old. Sitting right beside it is
00:22:56 --> 00:22:58 Antares, the red heart of Scorpius.
00:22:59 --> 00:23:02 How close from Sydney? Two and a half
00:23:02 --> 00:23:04 degrees apart at nautical dusk and both of
00:23:04 --> 00:23:07 them about 60 degrees up. A pairing you can
00:23:07 --> 00:23:09 cover with two fingers at arm's length.
00:23:09 --> 00:23:12 Sitting high overhead From Los Angeles,
00:23:12 --> 00:23:14 five and a half degrees apart and 18 degrees
00:23:14 --> 00:23:17 up. From New York, nearly seven degrees
00:23:17 --> 00:23:19 apart and 12 degrees up.
00:23:19 --> 00:23:22 Avery: Same sky, wildly different view.
00:23:23 --> 00:23:25 Anna: Same sky, same night. And it's the
00:23:25 --> 00:23:27 ecliptic tilt we talked about yesterday.
00:23:28 --> 00:23:30 Around the September equinox, the ecliptic
00:23:30 --> 00:23:32 stands up almost vertically from the western
00:23:32 --> 00:23:34 horizon at dusk in the southern hemisphere
00:23:34 --> 00:23:37 and lies down almost flat in the northern.
00:23:38 --> 00:23:40 Everything on that line, the Moon,
00:23:40 --> 00:23:43 Venus. Mercury rides high and
00:23:43 --> 00:23:46 lingers in the south and hugs the horizon in
00:23:46 --> 00:23:49 the north. In March, it reverses and
00:23:49 --> 00:23:50 the north gets the good version.
00:23:51 --> 00:23:52 Avery: Which brings us to Venus.
00:23:52 --> 00:23:55 Anna: And, um, Friday, Friday the 18th,
00:23:55 --> 00:23:58 Venus reaches greatest brilliancy, about
00:23:58 --> 00:24:01 magnitude -4.8, the brightest it
00:24:01 --> 00:24:04 gets in this evening apparition. And the
00:24:04 --> 00:24:05 reason is worth understanding because it's
00:24:05 --> 00:24:08 counterintuitive. Venus is not brightest when
00:24:08 --> 00:24:09 it's fullest.
00:24:10 --> 00:24:10 Avery: Go on.
00:24:11 --> 00:24:13 Anna: Right now, Venus is a Crescent, only about
00:24:13 --> 00:24:16 26% lit, but it's swinging in towards
00:24:16 --> 00:24:19 us. So its disc has swollen to about 39
00:24:19 --> 00:24:22 arcseconds across. Enormous as
00:24:22 --> 00:24:25 planets go. Brightness depends on the total
00:24:25 --> 00:24:27 illuminated area, which is the lit fraction
00:24:27 --> 00:24:30 multiplied by the size of the disc. As Venus
00:24:30 --> 00:24:33 approaches, the crescent thins, but the disc
00:24:33 --> 00:24:36 grows. And the product of those two peaks,
00:24:36 --> 00:24:39 right about now, a thin crescent that's very
00:24:39 --> 00:24:41 big beats a full disc that's very small.
00:24:42 --> 00:24:45 Avery: And at, uh, 39 arcseconds, you can actually
00:24:45 --> 00:24:46 see the crescent.
00:24:46 --> 00:24:49 Anna: You, you can steady a pair of binoculars
00:24:49 --> 00:24:51 against a fence post or a wall, and Venus
00:24:51 --> 00:24:54 resolves into a crescent rather than a dot.
00:24:54 --> 00:24:56 That's a genuinely startling thing to show
00:24:56 --> 00:24:59 somebody who has never looked where and when
00:25:00 --> 00:25:02 west after sunset. And the two hemispheres
00:25:02 --> 00:25:05 get very different deals. From Sydney, Venus
00:25:05 --> 00:25:08 stands nearly 40 degree high at sunset and
00:25:08 --> 00:25:10 sets about three and a quarter hours after
00:25:10 --> 00:25:13 the sun. You cannot miss it. From Los
00:25:13 --> 00:25:15 Angeles, it sets about an hour and 20 minutes
00:25:15 --> 00:25:17 after the sun. From New York, about an hour
00:25:17 --> 00:25:19 and five. So for, uh, our North American
00:25:19 --> 00:25:22 listeners, and you are our largest audience,
00:25:22 --> 00:25:25 the honest advice is look low in the west
00:25:25 --> 00:25:28 20 to 45 minutes after sunset with a clear
00:25:28 --> 00:25:31 horizon, it's bright enough to punch through
00:25:31 --> 00:25:33 twilight. You just need to be looking at the
00:25:33 --> 00:25:35 right time without a building in the way.
00:25:36 --> 00:25:38 Avery: There's a southern only bonus this week, too.
00:25:39 --> 00:25:41 Anna: Mercury magnitude
00:25:41 --> 00:25:44 -0.4, which is bright, but only
00:25:44 --> 00:25:46 16 degrees from the sun, which is awful.
00:25:47 --> 00:25:49 From Sydney, the steep ecliptic rescues it
00:25:49 --> 00:25:52 15 degrees up at sunset, setting more than an
00:25:52 --> 00:25:55 hour after the Sun. From London, it's three
00:25:55 --> 00:25:58 degrees up and effectively unobservable same
00:25:58 --> 00:26:01 planet, same brightness. A real target in
00:26:01 --> 00:26:02 the south and a non event in the north.
00:26:03 --> 00:26:04 Avery: Saturn.
00:26:04 --> 00:26:07 Anna: Saturn is everybody's. It rises about an hour
00:26:07 --> 00:26:10 and a quarter after sunset from Sydney and
00:26:10 --> 00:26:12 under an hour after sunset from New York, Los
00:26:12 --> 00:26:15 Angeles and London. So from anywhere it's
00:26:15 --> 00:26:17 well placed by full dark and stays up all
00:26:17 --> 00:26:20 night. Magnitude around 0.3
00:26:20 --> 00:26:23 disc just under 20 arc seconds. Rings about
00:26:23 --> 00:26:26 7 degrees open heading for opposition on the
00:26:26 --> 00:26:27 4th of October.
00:26:27 --> 00:26:29 If you have a telescope, this is
00:26:29 --> 00:26:32 Avery: the month moon phase for the weekend.
00:26:32 --> 00:26:34 Anna: First quarter on Friday the 18th at
00:26:34 --> 00:26:37 2043 UTC, which is
00:26:37 --> 00:26:40 Saturday morning 27 in Sydney.
00:26:40 --> 00:26:43 And that timing is not an accident because
00:26:43 --> 00:26:45 Saturday the 19th is international observe
00:26:45 --> 00:26:47 the Moon, uh, night. NASA is running public
00:26:47 --> 00:26:50 events and observatories and astronomy clubs
00:26:50 --> 00:26:51 around the world will be too.
00:26:52 --> 00:26:54 Avery: Why first quarter specifically?
00:26:54 --> 00:26:57 Anna: Because a full moon is the worst moon.
00:26:57 --> 00:26:59 At full the sunlight comes straight down and
00:26:59 --> 00:27:02 everything looks flat and washed out. At
00:27:02 --> 00:27:05 first quarter, the terminator, the line
00:27:05 --> 00:27:08 between lit and unlit runs down the middle of
00:27:08 --> 00:27:10 the disc and along that line the sun is low
00:27:10 --> 00:27:13 and every crater rim and mountain throws a
00:27:13 --> 00:27:15 long black shadow. The Moon looks three
00:27:15 --> 00:27:16 dimensional.
00:27:17 --> 00:27:19 That's what you want to show somebody. And
00:27:19 --> 00:27:21 that's why the date moves each year to land
00:27:21 --> 00:27:22 near first quarter.
00:27:23 --> 00:27:25 Avery: And the pre dawn sky belongs to the north.
00:27:25 --> 00:27:28 Anna: This week it does. And that's a fair trade
00:27:28 --> 00:27:30 for Venus. Mars and Jupiter are both in the
00:27:30 --> 00:27:33 east before sunrise. From Los Angeles
00:27:33 --> 00:27:36 and New York, Mars is 45 to 47
00:27:36 --> 00:27:39 degrees up at nautical dawn with
00:27:39 --> 00:27:41 Jupiter about 24 degrees below it.
00:27:42 --> 00:27:44 A comfortable civilised pairing.
00:27:45 --> 00:27:47 From Sydney, Mars is 20 degrees up and
00:27:47 --> 00:27:50 Jupiter is a struggle at 8. Jupiter
00:27:50 --> 00:27:52 is the bright one at minus 1.7.
00:27:53 --> 00:27:56 Mars the modest orange dot at plus
00:27:56 --> 00:27:58 1.2. And they're closing
00:27:59 --> 00:28:02 24 degrees apart this morning, about 12
00:28:02 --> 00:28:05 by mid October and just 2 degrees apart by
00:28:05 --> 00:28:07 the middle of November. Put that in your
00:28:07 --> 00:28:09 calendar now, zodiacal light
00:28:10 --> 00:28:12 standing item. And the Moon is out of the way
00:28:12 --> 00:28:15 again after the 26th. For from the southern
00:28:15 --> 00:28:17 hemisphere it's a faint cone in the west
00:28:17 --> 00:28:19 after full dark.
00:28:19 --> 00:28:22 The false dusk from the northern hemisphere
00:28:22 --> 00:28:24 it's the same cone in the east before dawn,
00:28:24 --> 00:28:27 the false dawn, same dust, same
00:28:27 --> 00:28:30 tilt. Opposite ends of the night running
00:28:30 --> 00:28:33 through to early November. You need a dark
00:28:33 --> 00:28:34 sight and patience.
00:28:34 --> 00:28:37 Avery: And um, the equinox next Wednesday.
00:28:37 --> 00:28:39 Anna: And this is the clarification we made
00:28:39 --> 00:28:41 yesterday, and I wanna keep making the
00:28:41 --> 00:28:44 September equinox is a single instant five
00:28:44 --> 00:28:47 minutes past midnight UTC on the 23rd,
00:28:47 --> 00:28:49 which means it falls on the evening of the
00:28:49 --> 00:28:52 22nd across the Americas and mid morning
00:28:52 --> 00:28:54 on the 23rd in Australia.
00:28:54 --> 00:28:57 An equinox is a moment, not a day,
00:28:57 --> 00:29:00 and which calendar date it lands on depends
00:29:00 --> 00:29:01 entirely on where you're standing
00:29:02 --> 00:29:05 Avery: and the safety line, which we never cut.
00:29:05 --> 00:29:08 Anna: Never. But with Venus this bright, some of
00:29:08 --> 00:29:09 you will want to try to find it in broad
00:29:09 --> 00:29:12 daylight. And you can. It's genuinely doable,
00:29:13 --> 00:29:16 but you must do it safely. Do not sweep the
00:29:16 --> 00:29:18 daytime sky with binoculars or a telescope.
00:29:18 --> 00:29:21 Hunting for Venus One accidental pass
00:29:21 --> 00:29:24 across the sun at that magnification and the
00:29:24 --> 00:29:26 damage to your eye is instant and permanent.
00:29:26 --> 00:29:29 Use a building or a wall to physically block
00:29:29 --> 00:29:31 the sun from your field of view before you
00:29:31 --> 00:29:33 start and know where Venus is before you
00:29:33 --> 00:29:36 look. And if you have any eclipse glasses
00:29:36 --> 00:29:38 left over from August, those are for looking
00:29:38 --> 00:29:39 at the sun only.
00:29:39 --> 00:29:41 They must carry the
00:29:41 --> 00:29:43 ISO12312
00:29:44 --> 00:29:47 certification and they must be undamaged.
00:29:47 --> 00:29:49 Never look at the sun through any optics
00:29:49 --> 00:29:52 without proper solar filtration fitted at the
00:29:52 --> 00:29:54 front. Your eyes do not grow back.
00:29:55 --> 00:29:57 Avery: That's Astronomy daily for Wednesday
00:29:57 --> 00:29:58 16th September.
00:29:59 --> 00:30:02 Anna: Roman's wide field instrument is alive. It it
00:30:02 --> 00:30:04 has seen its first starlight and it has fuel
00:30:04 --> 00:30:07 for 22 years instead of 10, which
00:30:07 --> 00:30:09 matters most for the dark energy question an
00:30:09 --> 00:30:11 Australian LED team sharpened on Monday.
00:30:12 --> 00:30:15 Avery: Caltech has cut the solar system's dynamical
00:30:15 --> 00:30:17 lifetime from a billion billion years to
00:30:17 --> 00:30:20 about a billion by pointing out that dying
00:30:20 --> 00:30:22 stars don't lose mass.
00:30:22 --> 00:30:24 Anna: Politely, the United States has said out
00:30:24 --> 00:30:27 loud for the first time that it has weapons
00:30:27 --> 00:30:28 in orbit.
00:30:28 --> 00:30:31 Avery: Rubin has found a globular cluster a hundred
00:30:31 --> 00:30:33 thousand light years away that was hiding
00:30:33 --> 00:30:36 behind dust crowding and its own
00:30:36 --> 00:30:38 faintness. From a data preview
00:30:39 --> 00:30:40 Starship flies on
00:30:40 --> 00:30:42 Anna: the 22nd and Venus is at its brightest
00:30:42 --> 00:30:43 on Friday.
00:30:44 --> 00:30:47 Avery: Show notes, sources and links for every
00:30:47 --> 00:30:50 storey are at astronomydaily IO
00:30:50 --> 00:30:53 and there's a contact form there. We read
00:30:53 --> 00:30:55 everything that comes through it, and
00:30:55 --> 00:30:57 listener questions have driven segments on
00:30:57 --> 00:30:59 this programme more than once.
00:30:59 --> 00:31:02 Anna: You'll find us as astrodaily pod on Social
00:31:02 --> 00:31:04 and Astronomy AstroDailyPod wherever you get
00:31:04 --> 00:31:07 your podcasts. If the show is useful to you,
00:31:07 --> 00:31:09 the single most helpful thing you can do is
00:31:09 --> 00:31:11 tell one other person about it.
00:31:11 --> 00:31:12 Avery: I'm Avery.
00:31:13 --> 00:31:15 Anna: And I'm Anna. Astronomy AstroDailyPod is a
00:31:15 --> 00:31:18 production of the bytes.com podcast network
00:31:18 --> 00:31:21 clear Skies and if you're anywhere near the
00:31:21 --> 00:31:23 west after sunset this week or go and look at
00:31:23 --> 00:31:24 Venus
00:31:27 --> 00:31:27 Avery: mhm.