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This episode includes AI-generated content.
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Speaker 1: Tonight, the night sky puts on a show. The Moon
00:00:03
has a date with Jupiter, and six planets are lined
00:00:06
up for your viewing pleasure. This is Astronomy Daily. I'm
00:00:10
Avery and I'm Anna, Season five, episode forty nine, Thursday,
00:00:14
the twenty sixth of February twenty twenty six. Lots to
00:00:18
get through today, so let's go.
00:00:20
Speaker 2: If you've been watching the western sky after sunset this week,
00:00:23
you may have noticed something spectacular building. Six of the
00:00:27
Solar System's planets are above the horizon simultaneously right now,
00:00:32
and tonight is the visual highlight.
00:00:35
Speaker 1: We've also got a deep dive into some extraordinary new
00:00:38
findings about our galaxy's magnetic field, a quick update on
00:00:42
Artemis two, the identity of the astronaut at the center
00:00:45
of last month's historic ISS medical story, and a brief
00:00:50
heads up on a scrubbed military hypersonic launch that we'd
00:00:53
been previewing earlier in the week.
00:00:55
Speaker 2: Big show, let's get into it.
00:00:57
Speaker 1: So, Avery, I know you've been watching this planet parade
00:01:00
build all week, and tonight is the moment we've been
00:01:03
waiting for.
00:01:04
Speaker 2: It really is. As darkness falls this evening, if you
00:01:07
head outside and look west, you'll see the Moon sitting
00:01:11
right next to Jupiter. It's a stunning pairing, and it's
00:01:14
the centerpiece of a six planet alignment that's been building
00:01:18
throughout February.
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Speaker 1: Let's break this down. Fix planets above the horizon at once, Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus,
00:01:28
and Neptune. How does that work? Exactly?
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Speaker 2: The planets orbit the Sun and roughly the same flat plane,
00:01:34
the Ecliptic, so from Earth they always appear in a
00:01:37
band across the sky. When they spread out enough that
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several are visible simultaneously, we get what astronomers call a
00:01:44
planet parade or alignment. Right now, they're nicely spaced across
00:01:48
that band.
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Speaker 1: Now, I want to be honest with listeners here, because
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not all six planets are easy to spot. Some are
00:01:56
quite the challenge.
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Speaker 2: Absolutely right, Jupiter is by far the star of the
00:02:01
show tonight, pun intended. It's high in the western sky
00:02:04
after sunset, unmistakably bright and sitting just below the waxing,
00:02:08
gibbous Moon. If you only look once this week, look tonight,
00:02:12
look for the Moon, and that blazing point of light
00:02:15
right beside it is Jupiter.
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Speaker 1: What about the others?
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Speaker 2: Saturn, and Mercury are visible, but low on the western horizon.
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And I mean low, they said, not long after the sun,
00:02:25
so you've got a fairly tight window. Venus is actually
00:02:29
dimmer than you'd expect right now because it's also sitting
00:02:32
low in the twilight glare. Urinus needs binoculars, and Neptune
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really requires a telescope, and you'll need to wait until
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the Sun is fully below the horizon before even attempting
00:02:43
that one.
00:02:44
Speaker 1: So Jupiter and the Moon for casual observers, extra kit
00:02:48
for the dedicated stargazer, exactly.
00:02:51
Speaker 2: And here's something that keeping your diary. We're one week
00:02:53
away from the full moon on March third, and this
00:02:56
isn't just any full moon. It's a total lunaric LIL,
00:03:00
which means we're heading into a blood moon. We'll have
00:03:03
full coverage of that next.
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Speaker 1: Week, something to really look forward to. So tonight, get outside,
00:03:09
find the Moon and say hello to Jupiter right beside it. Beautiful.
00:03:14
Speaker 2: Now to the heart of our galaxy. Astronomers using the
00:03:17
world's largest radio telescope array have peered deeper into the
00:03:21
Milky Way's central molecular zone than ever before, and what
00:03:26
they found is extraordinary.
00:03:28
Speaker 1: The region around Sagittarius, a star. Our galaxy's super massive
00:03:32
black hole at the very center is a violent, turbulent environment,
00:03:37
and new observations have revealed hidden chemistry swirling through that chaos.
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Speaker 2: What the researchers have done is essentially map the complex
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molecules in the cloud of gas and dust that surround
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Sagittarius astar at a level of detail that wasn't previously possible.
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They're finding chemical signatures that challenge how we've thought about
00:03:58
that region of the galaxy.
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Speaker 1: When the lead researchers describe this as just the beginning,
00:04:03
that's telling, isn't it. That phrase usually means they've opened
00:04:07
a door rather than closed one.
00:04:09
Speaker 2: Precisely, this is a proof of concept for a new
00:04:12
era of galactic center observations. As the arraysed capabilities continue
00:04:16
to improve, the resolution and sensitivity will only get better.
00:04:21
We're talking about unlocking processes at the very engine room
00:04:24
of our galaxy, how molecules form in extreme environments, how
00:04:28
the black holes, radiation and gravity shape the surrounding chemistry.
00:04:33
Speaker 1: And it all feeds into the bigger question of how
00:04:36
galaxies like ours evolve over cosmic time.
00:04:39
Speaker 2: Exactly right, it's one of those stories where the science
00:04:42
is genuinely exciting right now, but the best discoveries are
00:04:45
still ahead of us.
00:04:47
Speaker 1: As we've been reporting throughout the week, NASA's Artemis two
00:04:50
Space launch System rocket has now been rolled back from
00:04:53
launch Pad thirty nine B to the Vehicle assembly building.
00:04:56
Speaker 2: The Crawler transporter made the journey on Tuesday, a spectacle
00:05:00
haular but somewhat sobering sight that six point six million
00:05:04
pound vehicle hauling a rocket that was supposed to be
00:05:07
heading for the Moon.
00:05:09
Speaker 1: The issue is with the upper stage, and engineers now
00:05:12
need to diagnose and repair whatever's causing the problem in
00:05:15
the controlled environment of the VAB rather than on the pad.
00:05:19
The current expectation is that the earliest realistic launch opportunity
00:05:23
is now early April.
00:05:25
Speaker 2: Interestingly, President Trump gave a State of the Union address
00:05:28
on Monday and gave a shout out to the Space Force,
00:05:31
calling it and I quote, my baby, but notably didn't
00:05:35
mention the Artemis two crew by name.
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Speaker 1: Make of that what you will. We'll continue to follow
00:05:40
this as it develops, but for now, no moonshot in March.
00:05:44
Speaker 2: Now to a story that first broke last month and
00:05:47
which has just had a significant new development. NASA has
00:05:50
now identified the astronaut at the center of the first
00:05:53
ever medical evacuation from the International Space Station.
00:05:57
Speaker 1: To recap for anyone who missed the original story, in January,
00:06:00
Space Excess Crew eleven mission returned to Earth early. One
00:06:04
member of that crew had experienced a medical issue serious
00:06:07
enough to warrant cutting the mission short and bringing the
00:06:10
entire crew home.
00:06:12
Speaker 2: That was unprecedented in the entire history of the ISS.
00:06:16
We'd never had a medical evacuation at that level before.
00:06:20
Speaker 1: NASA has now shed more light on what happened, specifically
00:06:23
at the request of the astronaut involved, who wanted their
00:06:26
identity made public. The crew of Crew eleven included NASA
00:06:30
astronauts Mike Fink and Xena Cardman, Jackson astronaut Kmiya Yui,
00:06:34
and Ross Cosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platinoff. It turns out it
00:06:38
was Mike Fink who needed the medical help. It was
00:06:41
explained that he needed some more imaging scans performed, which
00:06:44
just couldn't be done with the equipment on board the
00:06:46
ISS SO home they came, However, the nature of his
00:06:50
ailment still hasn't been revealed.
00:06:52
Speaker 2: The details emerging give the medical community and space agencies
00:06:56
important data for future long duration mission planning. It raises
00:07:01
real questions about how we handle health crises in orbit,
00:07:04
what protocols are in place, and how they might need
00:07:06
to evolve, especially as missions eventually go beyond Low Earth orbit.
00:07:11
Speaker 1: A deeply human story alongside all the engineering and science.
00:07:15
Will link to the full NASA disclosure in the show notes.
00:07:18
Speaker 2: Right and now for what might be my favorite story
00:07:21
of the episode, And honestly, it's one of those pieces
00:07:24
of research that just makes you stop and think about
00:07:26
how strange and wonderful our galaxy is.
00:07:29
Speaker 1: Tell me everything.
00:07:31
Speaker 2: So, a team led by doctor joe Anne Brown at
00:07:33
the University of Calgary has produced the most detailed map
00:07:37
yet of the Milky Ways magnetic field, and what they
00:07:40
found has fundamentally surprised them.
00:07:43
Speaker 1: Let's back up a second. How do you even map
00:07:46
a magnetic field across a galaxy?
00:07:48
Speaker 2: Great question. The technique is called Faraday rotation. When radio
00:07:54
waves travel through space, they interact with electrons and magnetic fields,
00:07:59
and that interaction causes them to shift slightly. They rotate.
00:08:04
Doctor Brown student Rebecca Booth described it brilliantly. Think of
00:08:08
a straw in a glass of water looking bent because
00:08:12
of refraction. Faraday rotation is the same concept, but it's
00:08:16
electrons and magnetic fields benting radio waves instead of light
00:08:21
through water.
00:08:22
Speaker 1: That's a genuinely beautiful analogy.
00:08:26
Speaker 2: Isn't it. And by carefully measuring how much those radio
00:08:30
waves shift, the team can trace the invisible magnetic lines
00:08:34
flowing through the galaxy. Now here's the astonishing finding. If
00:08:38
you could look at the Milky Way from above, the
00:08:41
overall magnetic field runs clockwise, but in the Sagittarius arm,
00:08:46
one of our galaxy spiral arms, it runs counterclockwise, a
00:08:50
complete reversal.
00:08:52
Speaker 1: They must have known about that reversal before, though.
00:08:55
Speaker 2: Right, they knew about the reversal, Yes, what they didn't
00:08:59
understand was how the transition happened, how the field switches direction.
00:09:04
And this is where the new data delivered a genuine
00:09:07
moment of discovery. Doctor Brown describes it perfectly. She says,
00:09:12
one day her student Anna brought in the new data,
00:09:15
and Brown's reaction was, and I'm quoting here, OMG, the
00:09:19
reversal's diagonal.
00:09:21
Speaker 1: I love that and OMG moment in astrophysics.
00:09:25
Speaker 2: It's wonderful. The reversal doesn't happen in a flat, clean
00:09:29
plane as previously assumed. It runs diagonally through the galaxy
00:09:34
in three dimensions. That changes everything about how we model
00:09:38
the magnetic structure. The team has now built a new
00:09:41
three D model to explain it.
00:09:43
Speaker 1: And why does it matter? Why does the galaxy's magnetic
00:09:46
field matter at all?
00:09:48
Speaker 2: Well, as doctor Brown puts it, without a magnetic field,
00:09:52
the galaxy would collapse in on itself due to gravity.
00:09:55
The magnetic field is essentially one of the forces holding
00:09:59
the whole structure and balance. Understanding how it's shaped and
00:10:03
how it's evolved over billions of years tells us something
00:10:06
profound about how galaxies like ours come to exist and persist.
00:10:11
Speaker 1: Absolutely mind expanding. We'll have the research details and links
00:10:15
in the show notes.
00:10:16
Speaker 2: And finally, a quick update on a launch we'd been
00:10:19
previewing earlier in the week. Rocket Lab's Haste suborbital rocket
00:10:24
was due to lift off from Wallops Island, Virginia on Tuesday,
00:10:27
but the mission was scrubbed due to out of bounds
00:10:30
launch commit criteria.
00:10:32
Speaker 1: No new launch date has been announced yet, but just
00:10:34
to give listeners the full picture on what this mission
00:10:37
actually is, because it's genuinely fascinating.
00:10:40
Speaker 2: It really is. The mission is called That's not a knife,
00:10:44
and yes, that is a deliberate crocodile done d reference
00:10:47
and it's carrying a scramjet powered hypersonic demonstrator called dart AE,
00:10:53
built by the Australian company Hypersonics.
00:10:56
Speaker 1: A scramjet being the key technology here.
00:10:59
Speaker 2: Exactly a scramjet supersonic combustion ramjet ingests air flowing through
00:11:05
it faster than the speed of sound and burns fuel
00:11:08
in that airstream. What makes hypersonics version particularly interesting is
00:11:13
that it runs on hydrogen rather than kerosene, making it
00:11:17
essentially zero carbon dioxide emissions at hypersonic speeds. The dart
00:11:21
AE is designed to validate advanced propulsion materials and guidance
00:11:26
systems for the US Defense Innovation.
00:11:29
Speaker 1: Unit, and HASTE itself is Rocket Labs workhorse electron rocket
00:11:33
adapted for suborbital hypersonic testing.
00:11:37
Speaker 2: Correct, this would have been the seventh HASTE flight. The
00:11:40
mission will fly, just not this week. We'll update you
00:11:44
when a new data is confirmed.
00:11:45
Speaker 1: That's everything for Series five, episode forty nine. An enormous
00:11:50
thank you for joining us today.
00:11:52
Speaker 2: Lots to look at both in the sky and in
00:11:54
the science. Don't forget Moon and Jupiter tonight, get outside
00:11:58
if you can.
00:11:59
Speaker 1: You enjoyed today's episode, please do subscribe, leave us a review,
00:12:04
and share us with a friend who loves space. We
00:12:08
are Astronomy Daily, part of the Bytes dot com podcast network.
00:12:12
Find us on all major podcast platforms at Astronomy Daily
00:12:17
and on social media at astro Daily Pod.
00:12:20
Speaker 2: We'll be back tomorrow with more from the universe.
00:12:23
Speaker 1: Until then, keep looking up blear skies everyone, Sunny
00:12:27
Speaker 2: Day, star Starz