S02E27: Meteor Showers, SpaceX Launch Attempts, and a Rare Einstein Cross

Gooday everybody, and welcome to Astronomy Daily for Friday, the twenty eighth of July twenty twenty three. My name is Tim Gibbs and I will be your host for today's episode. Will be as usual. I have my AI assistant and brilliant reporter Hallie here in the studio with me. Hallie, have you got some headlines for us today? I sure do, Tim. Here are my top headlines for today. Massive meteor shower to peek over Australia this weekend with up to twenty shooting stars an hour. A stunning meteor shower called the Delta Aquariates will be visible over Australia this weekend, providing Australia with a light show of up to twenty shooting stars every hour. Delta Aquariats will provide a steady stream of meteors over several days starting from the week hours, and stargazers won't need a telescope to enjoy the event. Delta Aquariates is active from July twelfth August twenty third, with the peak of the meteor shower taking place in the early hours of July twenty ninth and July thirtieth. The peak is predicted for July thirtieth, twenty twenty three at eighteen UTC, but this shower doesn't have a noticeable peak. It rambles along steadily from late July through early August, joining forces with the August persides. Earth Sky dot Org says. The name of the shower comes from the constellation in the night sky that it appears to be traveling directly outward from Royal Museum's Greenwich. RMG explains for the Delta Aquariads, the radiant of the shower lies inside the constellation of Aquarius, near the bright star Delta Aquarii. Your naked eye is the best instrument to use to see meteors. Don't use binoculars or a telescope, as these have narrow fields of view. Start your meteor watch from around two am to increase your chances of spotting meteors, says RMG. Once you've located Delta Aquarii on the sky, look away from the radiant point. If you look in the direction of the radiant, you will only see short meteors. The Delta Aquariats is a small to medium shower, reaching a peak rate of around twenty meteors per hour. SpaceX misses attempt for record breaking double launch attempt. SpaceX on Thursday again scrubbed the launch of its Falcon Heavy rocket and Echostars Jupiter three satellite, missing an opportunity for a record setting double launch. The company was scheduled to launch the Falcon Heavy rocket within forty four minutes of launching a Falcon nine rocket carrying Starlink satellites, which, according to a report in space Flight Now, would break a record for the shortest time between Cape canaveral launches. SpaceX is targeting Friday, July twenty eighth for Falcon Heavy's launch of the Hughes Jupiter three mission to a geosynchronous transfer orbit from Launch Complex thirty nine A LC thirty nine A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The company said in a press release. The ninety nine minute launch window opens at eleven oh four p m Eastern time three four Universal time, coordinated on July twenty ninth. A backup opportunity is available on Saturday, July twenty ninth with the same window. The Falcon nine launch is still expected to occur around eleven ten pm Eastern time. According to another press release from the company, that rocket will carry twenty two Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit from Space Launch Complex forty at Cape Canaveral Space four station in Florida. If the weather does not cooperate with the launch, backup opportunities are also available just after midnight and again Friday evening, starting at ten o four pm Eastern Time until twelve to twenty six am on Saturday, meaning the two rockets could still launch in a close span. The Falcon Heavy launch had also been scrubbed Wednesday with just over a minute left in the countdown, and no reason was provided at the time. The Jupiter three satellite is reportedly the largest commercial communications satellite ever constructed, and will have the wingspan of a commercial airliner when deployed. Astronomy Daily podcast following on from Halley's earlier story, SpaceX has successfully launched twenty two Starlink satellite. SpaceX launched a Falcon nine rocket with a payload of twenty two Starlink satellites into space early Friday from Florida's famed Cape Canaveral, after having scrubbed the launch of a separate mission Thursday night. The rocket launched at twelve o one am Friday from Space Launch Complex forty at Cape Naveral Space Force Station. Up to four backup launch opportunities were available to SpaceX to launch the nearly two dozen satellites into Low Earth Object Low Earth orbit, where they will join Starlinks constellation of orbitals that provide high speed, low latency Internet around the globe. The launch occurred shortly after SpaceX scrubbed a Falcon Heavy mission that was to lift off late Thursday. No reason for aborting the mission was immediately made public. The first stage booster used in early Friday launch flew its fifteenth mission. After deploying its payload in space, the launch vehicle returned to Earth, where it landed upon the autonomous a shortfall of Gravitas drone ships stationed in the Atlantic Ocean. Both faring halves used in the launch were on their second mission and were to be retrieved by BOB, the recovery vehicle. Astronomers find a rare Einstein cross. Gravitational lensing is one of astronomer's many great wonders, a natural lens that magnifies the distant universe. Sometimes a lensing system takes the shape of a so called Einstein cross. Those are rare and amazingly useful ways to study objects far away in space and time. A team of astronomers recently found a new one using the Dark Energy Spectroscope instrument mounted on a telescope at kit Peak National Observatory. The instrument is surveying the skies and has found many instances of gravitational lensing. Following observations show that the new one to be both beautiful and a scientific treasutrove of information about the early universe. The lens system, called DSi two five three point two five three four plus twenty six point eight eight four three is actually a massive four ground elliptical galaxy surrounded by four blue images of a background galaxy. Team leader Alexander Sitoka of Nori Lab pointed out what those images that form of perfect Einstein cross pattern reveal. The four images that display consistent spectral features tell the astronomers that the source is a single galaxy, which allowed them to confirm the lens system. He said, the cross pattern tells them about the mass distribution of the lens galaxy. Elongated mass distribution results in Einstein crosses and spherical mass distribution, it would result in a Ninstein ring This latest Einstein cross has some interesting statistics. The main galaxy doing the lensing lies about five point nine eight billion light years away. The distant galaxy that it's lensing is more than eleven point one seven nine billion light years away. Thus, the four ground lensing galaxy is giving an amazing look at the galaxy in the yearly universe. Now over to you Halley for a terrible joke. Absolutely, here's another dad joke for you, and it's not astronomy related. I am branching out. Why do chicken coops only have two doors? Because if they had four, they'd be a chicken sedan. That is just a terrible joke. Thanks everybody for listening to Astronomy Ay. You can find all of our episodes, plus our parent podcasts, Space Nuts at space nuts dot io or at bytes dot com. And don't forget that you can join in the conversation yourself by going to our Facebook page Space Nuts podcast group. You can hear Steve Dunkley on Mondays and myself Tim Gives on Fridays for a full show. Thanks for listening, see you next week. Bye for now, Thanks Tim TTFN the Astronomy Daily Podcast. Bye