Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support.
Sponsor Details:
Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.astronomydaily.io/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!
Get the best secure and private email on the planet. Stop your Government, google and who knows who else spying on every email you write. Do what we did and use ProtonMail. They beleive in privacy and there are no ads in their business model...yet they still provide a free forever service. Check them out and get out special deal at www.astronomydaily.io/protonmail
Become a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click Here
This episode includes AI-generated content.
00:00:00 --> 00:00:03 Anna: Welcome to today's episode of Astronomy
00:00:03 --> 00:00:05 AstroDailyPod. Let's kick off with something
00:00:05 --> 00:00:07 a little different. In June
00:00:08 --> 00:00:11 1889, Vincent van Gogh wrote to
00:00:11 --> 00:00:13 his brother Theo that he finished a new study
00:00:13 --> 00:00:16 of a starry sky. It became the most
00:00:16 --> 00:00:19 famous night sky in art. And for more than a
00:00:19 --> 00:00:21 century, people have asked whether those
00:00:21 --> 00:00:23 swirling stars were ever real.
00:00:24 --> 00:00:26 Avery: A new paper says yes. It points
00:00:26 --> 00:00:29 to one particular morning, the pre dawn
00:00:29 --> 00:00:32 sky over the south of France around
00:00:32 --> 00:00:34 22 July 1889.
00:00:35 --> 00:00:37 We checked the sky for ourselves and we'll
00:00:37 --> 00:00:39 tell you what we found and where. The
00:00:39 --> 00:00:41 argument is still open.
00:00:41 --> 00:00:44 Anna: Also today, NASA's Roman
00:00:44 --> 00:00:46 telescope moves into its final commissioning
00:00:46 --> 00:00:49 phase and Rubin's test camera turns out a
00:00:49 --> 00:00:50 seagull.
00:00:50 --> 00:00:51 I'm Anna.
00:00:52 --> 00:00:54 Avery: Hi, I'm Avery. This is Astronomy daily for
00:00:54 --> 00:00:57 Friday 23rd October 2026.
00:00:57 --> 00:00:58 Let's get into it.
00:00:58 --> 00:01:01 Anna: The starry night has hung in the Museum of
00:01:01 --> 00:01:04 Modern Art in New York since 1941.
00:01:04 --> 00:01:07 You know it, even if you don't think you do.
00:01:07 --> 00:01:10 A dark cypress, like a flame. On the left,
00:01:10 --> 00:01:13 a sleeping village. Below, 11
00:01:13 --> 00:01:16 blazing stars, a crescent moon and
00:01:16 --> 00:01:19 that great rolling swirl across the middle of
00:01:19 --> 00:01:19 the sky.
00:01:20 --> 00:01:23 Avery: Van Gogh painted it at the Asylum of St.
00:01:23 --> 00:01:25 Paul de Montsou in St. Remy de
00:01:25 --> 00:01:28 Provence, where he'd admitted himself in
00:01:28 --> 00:01:31 May 1889. Art
00:01:31 --> 00:01:33 historians usually dated to mid June that
00:01:33 --> 00:01:36 year, mainly because of that letter to theo
00:01:36 --> 00:01:38 written around 18 June.
00:01:38 --> 00:01:41 Anna: The obvious question for us is whether any of
00:01:41 --> 00:01:44 it is the real sky or whether it's all
00:01:44 --> 00:01:47 feeling and imagination. That question
00:01:47 --> 00:01:49 has been argued before. In
00:01:49 --> 00:01:52 1984, the art historian Albert Boim,
00:01:52 --> 00:01:55 working with the astronomer George Abell,
00:01:55 --> 00:01:57 went looking for a real sky. In
00:01:57 --> 00:02:00 1986, Harvard astronomer Charles Whitney
00:02:00 --> 00:02:03 looked again. They didn't agree. And
00:02:03 --> 00:02:05 in earlier readings, the little group of
00:02:05 --> 00:02:08 stars in the middle of the canvas was matched
00:02:08 --> 00:02:09 to Aries.
00:02:09 --> 00:02:12 Avery: Now, a new study in Scientific Reports
00:02:12 --> 00:02:15 published this week takes another run at it.
00:02:16 --> 00:02:18 The lead author is Elijah Jonghyun Kim,
00:02:19 --> 00:02:21 PhD candidate at UH Kyunghee University
00:02:22 --> 00:02:24 School of Space Research in South Korea.
00:02:24 --> 00:02:27 He's also chief executive of SL Lab,
00:02:27 --> 00:02:30 a company that builds robotic telescopes.
00:02:30 --> 00:02:31 We'll come back to that.
00:02:31 --> 00:02:34 Anna: What's interesting here is the method,
00:02:34 --> 00:02:37 because it isn't one argument, it's
00:02:37 --> 00:02:40 four separate checks that all have to
00:02:40 --> 00:02:40 agree.
00:02:41 --> 00:02:43 Avery: First, the view. Kim travelled to St.
00:02:43 --> 00:02:46 Remy in 2019 to work out what Van Gogh
00:02:46 --> 00:02:49 could actually see from his room and how much
00:02:49 --> 00:02:52 sky would fit in that window. That gives
00:02:52 --> 00:02:54 a, uh, narrow strip of sky looking roughly
00:02:54 --> 00:02:54 east.
00:02:55 --> 00:02:58 Anna: Second, the shapes the team took the
00:02:58 --> 00:03:00 five central stars in the painting and
00:03:00 --> 00:03:03 compared their pattern with real star groups
00:03:03 --> 00:03:06 using a technique called Procrustes analysis.
00:03:06 --> 00:03:09 Avery: The name comes from the Greek myth of the
00:03:09 --> 00:03:12 innkeeper who stretched or cut his
00:03:12 --> 00:03:15 guests to fit his bed. In the
00:03:15 --> 00:03:17 statistical version, you scale,
00:03:17 --> 00:03:20 rotate and slide one pattern onto
00:03:20 --> 00:03:22 another until they line up as closely as
00:03:22 --> 00:03:25 possible, then measure what's left over.
00:03:25 --> 00:03:28 The smaller the leftover mismatch, the better
00:03:28 --> 00:03:28 the fit.
00:03:29 --> 00:03:31 Anna: On that test, the best match was the
00:03:31 --> 00:03:34 Hyades, the V shaped cluster in
00:03:34 --> 00:03:37 Taurus around the bright star Aldebaran.
00:03:37 --> 00:03:40 And here's a nice detail. A, uh, pen
00:03:40 --> 00:03:42 drawing Van Gogh made after the painting
00:03:42 --> 00:03:44 matched even more closely.
00:03:44 --> 00:03:47 Avery: If the Hyades are new to you, they're well
00:03:47 --> 00:03:49 worth knowing. They're the nearest star
00:03:49 --> 00:03:52 cluster of their kind, an open cluster
00:03:52 --> 00:03:55 about 150 light years away.
00:03:55 --> 00:03:58 Its hundreds of stars were born together
00:03:58 --> 00:04:01 roughly 625 million years
00:04:01 --> 00:04:04 ago and are still drifting through space as
00:04:04 --> 00:04:04 a family.
00:04:05 --> 00:04:08 Anna: Because they're close and their distance is
00:04:08 --> 00:04:10 so well measured, the Hyades have been a
00:04:10 --> 00:04:13 rung on astronomy's distance ladder for over
00:04:13 --> 00:04:16 a century. Measure them carefully and
00:04:16 --> 00:04:19 you can calibrate stars much further away.
00:04:19 --> 00:04:22 The one bright star that doesn't belong is
00:04:22 --> 00:04:25 Aldebaran, which sits in front of the cluster
00:04:25 --> 00:04:27 at about 65 light years.
00:04:27 --> 00:04:30 Avery: Third, the dates. The
00:04:30 --> 00:04:32 Hyades only work if they were actually above
00:04:32 --> 00:04:35 the horizon in that part of the sky before
00:04:35 --> 00:04:36 dawn.
00:04:36 --> 00:04:38 Along with a crescent Moon and the brilliant
00:04:38 --> 00:04:41 morning star, Venus is that
00:04:41 --> 00:04:44 morning star. All three come together
00:04:44 --> 00:04:46 around the 22nd of July,
00:04:46 --> 00:04:47 1889.
00:04:48 --> 00:04:51 Anna: And fourth, the documents. The
00:04:51 --> 00:04:53 team reread Van Gogh's letters alongside
00:04:53 --> 00:04:56 historical weather records. His letters from
00:04:56 --> 00:04:59 that summer keep mentioning cicadas, which
00:04:59 --> 00:05:02 suggests a hot spell. And the team argues
00:05:02 --> 00:05:04 that fits July better than June, because
00:05:04 --> 00:05:05 this is the
00:05:05 --> 00:05:07 Avery: kind of claim you can test. We did.
00:05:08 --> 00:05:11 We computed the sky over St. Remy for
00:05:11 --> 00:05:14 nautical dawn on 22 July,
00:05:14 --> 00:05:14 1889.
00:05:15 --> 00:05:18 Anna: The moon was a waning crescent, about
00:05:18 --> 00:05:21 28% lit and roughly
00:05:21 --> 00:05:22 29 degrees up in the east.
00:05:23 --> 00:05:26 Venus was blazing at magnitude
00:05:26 --> 00:05:29 -4.2, about 18 degrees
00:05:29 --> 00:05:31 up in the east. And Aldebaran, with
00:05:31 --> 00:05:34 the Hyades around it, sat about 20
00:05:34 --> 00:05:37 degrees up, almost beside Venus.
00:05:37 --> 00:05:40 Avery: Then we tried mid June, the traditional date.
00:05:40 --> 00:05:43 On the morning of 19 June, the moon was a
00:05:43 --> 00:05:46 fat, waning gibbous, about 2/3
00:05:46 --> 00:05:49 lit, which is not the slim crescent in the
00:05:49 --> 00:05:52 painting. And the Hyades hadn't even risen
00:05:52 --> 00:05:55 before dawn. They were still 7 degrees below
00:05:55 --> 00:05:55 the horizon.
00:05:56 --> 00:05:59 Anna: So on the astronomy, the paper holds Up.
00:06:00 --> 00:06:03 A late July pre dawn sky has every
00:06:03 --> 00:06:06 ingredient. The painting has. A mid June sky
00:06:06 --> 00:06:06 doesn't.
00:06:06 --> 00:06:09 Avery: Kim's answer is that Van Gogh may have
00:06:09 --> 00:06:12 conceived the picture in June and finished it
00:06:12 --> 00:06:13 after the 22nd of July.
00:06:14 --> 00:06:17 He's careful not to claim more than that. He
00:06:17 --> 00:06:19 says the study doesn't definitively rewrite
00:06:19 --> 00:06:22 the painting's accepted history and that
00:06:22 --> 00:06:24 linking the letters to the timeline relies
00:06:24 --> 00:06:26 partly on his own interpretation.
00:06:27 --> 00:06:29 Anna: The team also ran the same method on other
00:06:29 --> 00:06:31 paintings. They checked the field of view in
00:06:31 --> 00:06:34 Starry Night over the Rhone from 1888
00:06:35 --> 00:06:37 against photographs taken on site.
00:06:37 --> 00:06:40 They suggest the stars in Cafe Terrace at
00:06:40 --> 00:06:42 night may be the summer triangle.
00:06:43 --> 00:06:46 Kim's line is that the conversation with Van
00:06:46 --> 00:06:48 Gogh's other skies is still going.
00:06:48 --> 00:06:51 Avery: Now the other side, because there is one
00:06:51 --> 00:06:53 she Shape matching on its own wasn't
00:06:53 --> 00:06:56 decisive. The team says the
00:06:56 --> 00:06:59 Procrustes test couldn't rule out other star
00:06:59 --> 00:07:02 patterns that fit similarly well, which is
00:07:02 --> 00:07:04 why the history and visibility checks matter
00:07:04 --> 00:07:07 so much. 5 stars is not a lot to
00:07:07 --> 00:07:08 work with.
00:07:08 --> 00:07:11 Anna: Donald Olson of Texas State University,
00:07:11 --> 00:07:14 an astronomer well known for dating paintings
00:07:14 --> 00:07:17 and literature by their skies, told Science
00:07:17 --> 00:07:20 News he has doubts. His point is
00:07:20 --> 00:07:22 that the narrow field of view the authors
00:07:22 --> 00:07:25 assume doesn't fit the much wider view
00:07:25 --> 00:07:27 you'd need to include the hills and cliffs in
00:07:27 --> 00:07:27 the painting.
00:07:28 --> 00:07:31 Avery: And he proposes a simple test. If the
00:07:31 --> 00:07:33 theory is right, he says, it should be easy.
00:07:34 --> 00:07:37 Ask an experienced amateur astronomer to
00:07:37 --> 00:07:39 find the Hyades in the painting and see
00:07:39 --> 00:07:41 whether they pick out the star the team
00:07:41 --> 00:07:44 identifies as Aldebaran. He doubts they
00:07:44 --> 00:07:44 would.
00:07:45 --> 00:07:48 Anna: Art historians also point out that the
00:07:48 --> 00:07:50 painting's style sits differently from Van
00:07:50 --> 00:07:53 Gogh's other June work. That's partly why
00:07:53 --> 00:07:55 the June date has held for so long.
00:07:55 --> 00:07:58 Avery: And a, uh, transparency note.
00:07:58 --> 00:08:00 SLLAB is a company and the
00:08:00 --> 00:08:02 authors declare a competing interest.
00:08:03 --> 00:08:05 The company says it may benefit from related
00:08:05 --> 00:08:07 publications, educational programmes,
00:08:08 --> 00:08:11 exhibitions and media. That doesn't make
00:08:11 --> 00:08:13 the astronomy wrong. To their credit, the
00:08:13 --> 00:08:16 team has put its code and data online for
00:08:16 --> 00:08:16 anyone to check.
00:08:17 --> 00:08:20 Anna: Does it matter what night it was? In
00:08:20 --> 00:08:23 one sense, no. Van Gogh wasn't drawing a star
00:08:23 --> 00:08:25 chart. The sorrel, the
00:08:25 --> 00:08:28 oversized stars and the glowing cypress
00:08:28 --> 00:08:31 are about how the night felt, not where
00:08:31 --> 00:08:32 Aldebaran was.
00:08:32 --> 00:08:35 Avery: But Van Gogh's letters show he really
00:08:35 --> 00:08:38 did watch the sky. And he wrote about getting
00:08:38 --> 00:08:40 up to look at the countryside before sunrise.
00:08:41 --> 00:08:43 If he was looking east before dawn that July,
00:08:44 --> 00:08:47 he'd have seen exactly what we computed
00:08:47 --> 00:08:49 A thin moon, a brilliant Venus
00:08:50 --> 00:08:52 and the little V of the Hyades
00:08:52 --> 00:08:53 real sky.
00:08:54 --> 00:08:57 Painted as a feeling. That's not
00:08:57 --> 00:08:59 a bad way to describe what a lot of us do
00:08:59 --> 00:09:01 when we go outside at night, and you
00:09:01 --> 00:09:04 Anna: can see the same thing for yourself. The
00:09:04 --> 00:09:07 Hyades are back in our evening sky right now,
00:09:07 --> 00:09:09 and in Skywatch, we'll tell you exactly when
00:09:09 --> 00:09:12 to look. Venus, meanwhile, is about
00:09:12 --> 00:09:15 to slip past the sun and return as the
00:09:15 --> 00:09:17 morning star, just as it was over St.
00:09:17 --> 00:09:18 Remy.
00:09:18 --> 00:09:21 Avery: Our next story is a progress report and a
00:09:21 --> 00:09:24 good one. NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space
00:09:24 --> 00:09:26 Telescope has entered science commissioning
00:09:27 --> 00:09:29 the last phase before it starts its surveys.
00:09:29 --> 00:09:32 Anna: Longtime listeners have followed Roman since
00:09:32 --> 00:09:35 before launch. It went up on a Falcon
00:09:35 --> 00:09:38 Heavy on 30 August. In September,
00:09:38 --> 00:09:40 we covered the Wide Field instrument
00:09:40 --> 00:09:43 switching on and last week its focus
00:09:43 --> 00:09:43 result.
00:09:44 --> 00:09:47 Avery: This week, NASA says the checkout of the
00:09:47 --> 00:09:49 observatory and its main instrument is
00:09:49 --> 00:09:52 complete. Julie McEnery, Roman's
00:09:52 --> 00:09:55 senior project scientist at Goddard, put it
00:09:55 --> 00:09:58 the observatory is fully functional. It
00:09:58 --> 00:10:01 can guide, take exposures, move its
00:10:01 --> 00:10:04 data and slew from one target to the next.
00:10:05 --> 00:10:07 Anna: So the job now moves from does it work?
00:10:08 --> 00:10:09 To how good are the pictures?
00:10:10 --> 00:10:12 That sounds like a small step, but for Roman,
00:10:13 --> 00:10:14 it's the whole game.
00:10:14 --> 00:10:17 Avery: Roman's big surveys look for very small
00:10:17 --> 00:10:20 changes. Galaxy shapes stretched
00:10:20 --> 00:10:23 by a fraction of a percent by dark matter,
00:10:24 --> 00:10:26 supernovae brightening and fading across
00:10:26 --> 00:10:28 months, stars in the galactic
00:10:28 --> 00:10:31 bulge that flicker for a few hours when a
00:10:31 --> 00:10:32 planet passes in front of them.
00:10:33 --> 00:10:36 Anna: If some frames came out slightly blurrier
00:10:36 --> 00:10:38 or brighter than others because of the
00:10:38 --> 00:10:40 telescope itself, you couldn't tell a real
00:10:40 --> 00:10:43 change in the sky from a wobble in the
00:10:43 --> 00:10:46 instrument. Josh Sleeter, the Wide
00:10:46 --> 00:10:48 Field Instrument scientist, said any
00:10:48 --> 00:10:51 imperfection has to be driven down
00:10:51 --> 00:10:54 because even very small flaws could hide the
00:10:54 --> 00:10:55 signals thereafter.
00:10:56 --> 00:10:58 Avery: One worry going in was guiding
00:10:59 --> 00:11:02 Roman holds steady by locking onto individual
00:11:02 --> 00:11:04 stars, and the team wasn't sure that would
00:11:04 --> 00:11:07 work in very crowded fields or behind
00:11:07 --> 00:11:10 thick dust. Tom Barkley,
00:11:10 --> 00:11:13 the operations project scientist, says
00:11:13 --> 00:11:16 test observations in exactly those regions
00:11:16 --> 00:11:17 went, um, well.
00:11:17 --> 00:11:20 Anna: That matters for the Galactic Bulge Survey in
00:11:20 --> 00:11:23 particular, which stares into the most
00:11:23 --> 00:11:25 crowded, dustiest part of our sky.
00:11:26 --> 00:11:28 That's also the part that rides high over
00:11:28 --> 00:11:30 Australia in winter.
00:11:30 --> 00:11:33 Avery: Now comes a planned run of test observations
00:11:34 --> 00:11:36 to calibrate how the detectors respond to
00:11:36 --> 00:11:39 light and to tune the image quality
00:11:39 --> 00:11:41 before science operations begin.
00:11:42 --> 00:11:45 NASA hasn't put a date on that handover in
00:11:45 --> 00:11:45 this update.
00:11:46 --> 00:11:48 Anna: And a fair caveat this update
00:11:48 --> 00:11:51 gives no numbers. It's a milestone, and
00:11:51 --> 00:11:54 the quality figures will come later. But one
00:11:54 --> 00:11:57 line stood out. Toleder said a typical
00:11:57 --> 00:11:59 Wide Field instrument observation will reach
00:11:59 --> 00:12:02 objects about 100 million times
00:12:02 --> 00:12:04 fainter than the human eye can see.
00:12:04 --> 00:12:07 Avery: Every one of those frames covers about
00:12:07 --> 00:12:10 200 times the area of a Hubble
00:12:10 --> 00:12:12 infrared image. That's the reason this
00:12:12 --> 00:12:15 telescope exists faint and wide at
00:12:15 --> 00:12:16 the same time.
00:12:16 --> 00:12:19 Anna: From a telescope just getting ready to
00:12:19 --> 00:12:22 one that's been rehearsing for two years. The
00:12:22 --> 00:12:25 Vera C Rubin Observatory has released a new
00:12:25 --> 00:12:28 image of the Seagull Nebula. And
00:12:28 --> 00:12:30 there's a twist in how it was made.
00:12:30 --> 00:12:33 Avery: It wasn't taken with Rubin's giant camera at
00:12:33 --> 00:12:36 all. It came from commcam, the
00:12:36 --> 00:12:38 commissioning camera, a much smaller
00:12:38 --> 00:12:40 engineering stand in used to test the
00:12:40 --> 00:12:43 telescope before the real camera went in some
00:12:43 --> 00:12:44 context.
00:12:44 --> 00:12:46 Anna: On scale, the main camera,
00:12:46 --> 00:12:48 LSSTcam is about
00:12:48 --> 00:12:51 3.2 gigapixels, the
00:12:51 --> 00:12:53 largest digital camera ever built for
00:12:53 --> 00:12:55 astronomy. ComCam is about
00:12:55 --> 00:12:58 144 megapixels. Each
00:12:58 --> 00:13:01 frame still covers a patch of sky about two
00:13:01 --> 00:13:02 full moons across.
00:13:03 --> 00:13:06 Avery: CommCam ran for seven weeks from
00:13:06 --> 00:13:08 24 October to 11
00:13:08 --> 00:13:11 December 2024 and took about
00:13:11 --> 00:13:14 16 exposures. So this
00:13:14 --> 00:13:17 release lands two years almost to the day
00:13:17 --> 00:13:18 since that campaign began.
00:13:19 --> 00:13:22 Anna: The seagull itself is a sprawling cloud of
00:13:22 --> 00:13:24 glowing hydrogen and dust on the border of
00:13:24 --> 00:13:26 Canis Major and monocerotis,
00:13:27 --> 00:13:29 roughly 3 to
00:13:29 --> 00:13:31 3 light years away.
00:13:32 --> 00:13:35 The COMMCAM frame centres on the bird's
00:13:35 --> 00:13:38 head IC2177, where
00:13:38 --> 00:13:39 new stars are forming.
00:13:40 --> 00:13:42 Avery: And here's why the release is more than a
00:13:42 --> 00:13:45 pretty picture. Star forming regions are
00:13:45 --> 00:13:47 hard for processing software. Wispy
00:13:47 --> 00:13:50 nebulosity fills the whole frame. There's no
00:13:50 --> 00:13:52 clean background sky, and automated
00:13:52 --> 00:13:55 pipelines can mistake glowing gas for noise
00:13:55 --> 00:13:57 or noise for structure.
00:13:57 --> 00:14:00 Anna: Wire Lab says this field gave the image
00:14:00 --> 00:14:02 processing team early practice with
00:14:02 --> 00:14:05 exactly that kind of mess, using the same
00:14:05 --> 00:14:07 software that now handles the full survey.
00:14:08 --> 00:14:11 Avery: To be clear about what this is, an image
00:14:11 --> 00:14:14 release from data taken in late 2024.
00:14:14 --> 00:14:17 There's no new scientific paper behind it.
00:14:17 --> 00:14:19 The science from Rubin is arriving
00:14:19 --> 00:14:22 separately. We covered one result. The newly
00:14:22 --> 00:14:25 found globular cluster Rubin GC1 back
00:14:25 --> 00:14:25 in September.
00:14:26 --> 00:14:28 Anna: But it's a good reminder that the
00:14:28 --> 00:14:31 observatory on, um, Cerro Pechan in Chile,
00:14:32 --> 00:14:34 which will map the southern sky every few
00:14:34 --> 00:14:37 nights for a decade, was tested and
00:14:37 --> 00:14:39 tuned long before most of us saw its first
00:14:39 --> 00:14:42 images in June 2025.
00:14:42 --> 00:14:44 Avery: And the seagull is easy for everyone. Right
00:14:44 --> 00:14:47 now it's about 67 degrees up at its
00:14:47 --> 00:14:50 highest from Sydney, around 40 to
00:14:50 --> 00:14:53 45 from Los Angeles and New York, and um
00:14:53 --> 00:14:56 28 from London. Look near Sirius. In
00:14:56 --> 00:14:58 the small hours though, you'll want a dark
00:14:58 --> 00:15:00 sight and a camera to bring out the red.
00:15:01 --> 00:15:03 Anna: Time for a few quick hits first ESA's
00:15:03 --> 00:15:06 Hera Mission, its second big braking
00:15:06 --> 00:15:09 burn, BRM2, about 31 minutes
00:15:09 --> 00:15:12 long, was scheduled for early Thursday the
00:15:12 --> 00:15:15 22nd after last week's 93 minute
00:15:15 --> 00:15:17 BRM M1 was confirmed within its required
00:15:17 --> 00:15:18 parameters.
00:15:19 --> 00:15:22 Avery: As we record, ESA hasn't posted
00:15:22 --> 00:15:24 a result for that burn. Three
00:15:24 --> 00:15:26 smaller transition burns are planned later
00:15:26 --> 00:15:29 this month with arrival at Didymus in
00:15:29 --> 00:15:31 November. We'll bring you the outcome as soon
00:15:31 --> 00:15:32 as it's announced.
00:15:33 --> 00:15:35 Anna: Base X now Says Starship Flight
00:15:35 --> 00:15:38 15 is targeted for November
00:15:38 --> 00:15:40 and that it will try to catch both stages
00:15:40 --> 00:15:43 with the launch the super heavy booster,
00:15:43 --> 00:15:45 which it has done before, and for the first
00:15:45 --> 00:15:47 time the Starship upper stage
00:15:48 --> 00:15:50 that came from the company's third quarter
00:15:50 --> 00:15:53 call on the 20th. Gwynne Shotwell added
00:15:53 --> 00:15:55 that a uh, reflown upper stage and the long
00:15:55 --> 00:15:58 delayed ship to ship propellant transfer test
00:15:58 --> 00:16:00 are both aimed at early 2027.
00:16:01 --> 00:16:03 The word is targeted, not scheduled
00:16:04 --> 00:16:05 NASA's
00:16:05 --> 00:16:07 Avery: Science Mission Directorate has published an
00:16:07 --> 00:16:09 open letter to the science community called
00:16:10 --> 00:16:12 Faster to Science. It says the
00:16:12 --> 00:16:15 agency is changing how it runs competitions
00:16:15 --> 00:16:18 and selects missions so that science gets
00:16:18 --> 00:16:20 delivered faster. The details are due
00:16:20 --> 00:16:23 at a virtual NASA science town hall on Monday
00:16:23 --> 00:16:26 the 26th US time, and we'll
00:16:26 --> 00:16:28 report what changes once they're spelled out.
00:16:29 --> 00:16:32 Anna: NASA's Swift Observatory is still expected
00:16:32 --> 00:16:35 to re enter in early November, according to
00:16:35 --> 00:16:36 the Associated Press.
00:16:36 --> 00:16:39 NASA itself hasn't published a date
00:16:39 --> 00:16:40 so
00:16:40 --> 00:16:42 Avery: we won't give one and NASA holds its
00:16:42 --> 00:16:45 Artemis Update later today US time. That's
00:16:45 --> 00:16:48 2:00pm Eastern on Friday, which is 5:00am
00:16:48 --> 00:16:50 Saturday here in Sydney. We'll have what's
00:16:50 --> 00:16:52 said on tomorrow's weekend wrap.
00:16:53 --> 00:16:54 Anna: What's next on the show?
00:16:54 --> 00:16:57 Avery: Time for Skywatch and we'll start with a
00:16:57 --> 00:16:58 planet you can't see.
00:16:58 --> 00:17:01 Anna: Venus reaches inferior conjunction this
00:17:01 --> 00:17:04 weekend passing between Earth and the sun
00:17:05 --> 00:17:08 be instant is 3:44 universal time
00:17:08 --> 00:17:10 on Saturday the 24th. That's
00:17:10 --> 00:17:13 2:44 Saturday afternoon in Sydney and
00:17:13 --> 00:17:15 quarter to five Saturday morning in London.
00:17:16 --> 00:17:19 In North America it falls on Friday evening,
00:17:19 --> 00:17:22 8:44 in Los Angeles and 16
00:17:22 --> 00:17:24 minutes before midnight in New York.
00:17:24 --> 00:17:27 Avery: Venus will be about 41 million
00:17:27 --> 00:17:30 kilometres from us, a little over a
00:17:30 --> 00:17:33 quarter of the Earth's sun distance, but
00:17:33 --> 00:17:35 only about six and a half degrees from the
00:17:35 --> 00:17:38 sun in the sky, so it's lost in the
00:17:38 --> 00:17:38 glare for now.
00:17:39 --> 00:17:41 Anna: And the safety line we include
00:17:42 --> 00:17:45 every episode. Never look at
00:17:45 --> 00:17:47 the sun or sweet binoculars or a
00:17:47 --> 00:17:50 telescope and anywhere near it. Without a
00:17:50 --> 00:17:52 filter certified to ISO
00:17:52 --> 00:17:54 123122.
00:17:55 --> 00:17:58 Sunglasses are not a solar filter.
00:17:58 --> 00:18:01 With Venus this close to the sun, the safe
00:18:01 --> 00:18:03 plan is to wait.
00:18:03 --> 00:18:05 Avery: It won't be long. Within a couple of weeks,
00:18:05 --> 00:18:08 Venus climbs into the predawn sky as
00:18:08 --> 00:18:11 the morning star, the role it played over
00:18:11 --> 00:18:14 St. Remy in July 1889.
00:18:14 --> 00:18:17 Anna: On Saturday evening, the nearly full
00:18:17 --> 00:18:20 Moon sits close to Saturn. At
00:18:20 --> 00:18:22 9pm local time. They're about
00:18:22 --> 00:18:25 6.5 degrees apart from Sydney
00:18:25 --> 00:18:28 and seven from London, a little wider from
00:18:28 --> 00:18:31 Los Angeles and New York. At 9 to 11
00:18:31 --> 00:18:34 degrees, Saturn is
00:18:34 --> 00:18:36 magnitude plus 0.45
00:18:36 --> 00:18:39 with its rings still opening.
00:18:39 --> 00:18:42 Avery: Full Moon is at 4:11
00:18:42 --> 00:18:45 Universal Time on Monday the 26th.
00:18:45 --> 00:18:48 That's 3:11 Monday afternoon in Sydney.
00:18:48 --> 00:18:51 So the Moon rises full that evening.
00:18:51 --> 00:18:54 It's ten past midnight on Monday in New York
00:18:54 --> 00:18:57 and eleven past nine on, uh, Sunday evening
00:18:57 --> 00:18:58 in Los Angeles.
00:18:59 --> 00:19:02 Anna: In the UK, clocks go back an hour
00:19:02 --> 00:19:05 early on Sunday the 25th. So
00:19:05 --> 00:19:08 London's full moon is at 4:11 Monday
00:19:08 --> 00:19:10 morning Greenwich Mean Time. North
00:19:10 --> 00:19:13 America changes its clocks a week later
00:19:13 --> 00:19:14 on the 1st of November.
00:19:15 --> 00:19:17 Avery: Since the Hyades are this episode's star
00:19:17 --> 00:19:19 cluster, here's how to find them.
00:19:20 --> 00:19:22 Look for the V shaped group around the bright
00:19:22 --> 00:19:24 orange star Aldebaran.
00:19:24 --> 00:19:26 The eye of Torresta Bull.
00:19:26 --> 00:19:28 Anna: From the northern cities, Aldebaran, uh,
00:19:29 --> 00:19:31 rises around 8:30pm local time,
00:19:32 --> 00:19:35 and by 11:30 it's 32 to
00:19:35 --> 00:19:37 36 degrees up in the east
00:19:38 --> 00:19:40 from Sydney, it rises a little after
00:19:40 --> 00:19:43 10pm and is about 5015 degrees
00:19:43 --> 00:19:46 up by 11:30. It gets much better after
00:19:46 --> 00:19:49 midnight. And from down here, the V
00:19:49 --> 00:19:52 hangs upside down like a, uh, capital A,
00:19:52 --> 00:19:55 Avery: as we said in the lead, Aldebaran, uh, isn't
00:19:55 --> 00:19:57 actually part of the cluster. It sits in
00:19:57 --> 00:20:00 front at about 65 light years.
00:20:00 --> 00:20:03 Binoculars are the best way to see the
00:20:03 --> 00:20:05 Hyades. The cluster spans more than
00:20:05 --> 00:20:08 5 degrees too wide for most telescopes.
00:20:09 --> 00:20:11 Anna: A word about the Moon, though. It's nearly
00:20:11 --> 00:20:13 full and up, uh, most of the night.
00:20:14 --> 00:20:17 And next week the bright waning Moon moves
00:20:17 --> 00:20:20 through Taurus. It passes within about a
00:20:20 --> 00:20:22 degree and a half of the pleiades around the
00:20:22 --> 00:20:25 28th and stays roughly 10 degrees from
00:20:25 --> 00:20:28 Aldebaran. For the fainter Hyades
00:20:28 --> 00:20:31 stars, your best dark sky chance is the
00:20:31 --> 00:20:33 first week of November after last quarter on
00:20:33 --> 00:20:33 the
00:20:33 --> 00:20:36 Avery: second, Mercury is a Southern Hemisphere
00:20:36 --> 00:20:39 treat. This week at the end of civil
00:20:39 --> 00:20:42 Twilight, it's about 14 degrees up in the
00:20:42 --> 00:20:43 west from Sydney.
00:20:43 --> 00:20:45 At uh, magnitude 0.8.
00:20:46 --> 00:20:49 From Los Angeles, it's just three degrees up
00:20:49 --> 00:20:52 from New York about one and um from
00:20:52 --> 00:20:54 London it has already set.
00:20:54 --> 00:20:57 Anna: The pre dawn sky belongs to the north.
00:20:57 --> 00:21:00 At nautical dawn on Saturday, Mars is
00:21:00 --> 00:21:02 about 60 degrees up and Jupiter around
00:21:03 --> 00:21:05 50 from Los Angeles and New York and
00:21:05 --> 00:21:08 still above 45 from London. From
00:21:08 --> 00:21:11 Sydney they're only 22 to 24
00:21:11 --> 00:21:12 degrees up.
00:21:12 --> 00:21:15 Avery: The two planets are 8.8 degrees apart
00:21:15 --> 00:21:18 now closing to just 1.2 degrees
00:21:18 --> 00:21:21 on 16 November. It's worth
00:21:21 --> 00:21:23 following through the next three weeks.
00:21:23 --> 00:21:26 Anna: Finally, space weather. After a
00:21:26 --> 00:21:29 minor G1 storm on Wednesday night,
00:21:29 --> 00:21:32 another stream of fast solar wind from a
00:21:32 --> 00:21:33 coronal hole is due around Saturday.
00:21:34 --> 00:21:37 Earthsky also reports modelling that suggests
00:21:37 --> 00:21:40 part of a recent coronal mass ejection
00:21:40 --> 00:21:43 could deliver a glancing blow late on the
00:21:43 --> 00:21:45 26th or early on the 27th.
00:21:45 --> 00:21:48 Avery: With a full Moon, only a fairly strong
00:21:48 --> 00:21:51 display will cut through. But if you're at
00:21:51 --> 00:21:54 high latitude north or south, keep an
00:21:54 --> 00:21:57 eye on the forecasts in Australia. Um, that's
00:21:57 --> 00:21:59 the Bureau of Meteorology's Space Weather
00:21:59 --> 00:22:00 Forecasting Centre.
00:22:02 --> 00:22:05 That's the show today, a real
00:22:05 --> 00:22:08 sky in the starry night. Or at least a
00:22:08 --> 00:22:11 strong case for one Roman getting down to
00:22:11 --> 00:22:14 the fine detail, Rubin's test
00:22:14 --> 00:22:17 camera, finding a seagull and a
00:22:17 --> 00:22:18 weekend with Venus passing the sun.
00:22:19 --> 00:22:22 Tomorrow is the weekend wrap, a fresh lead
00:22:23 --> 00:22:25 the week that was and whatever NASA says in
00:22:25 --> 00:22:26 its Artemis Update.
00:22:27 --> 00:22:29 Anna: If you've got a question or a favourite
00:22:29 --> 00:22:32 painting with a real sky in it, send it
00:22:32 --> 00:22:32 through the contact
00:22:32 --> 00:22:35 form@astronomydaily.IO
00:22:35 --> 00:22:36 we read everyone.
00:22:37 --> 00:22:39 Avery: Show notes and sources are there too.
00:22:39 --> 00:22:40 I'm, um, Avery.
00:22:40 --> 00:22:43 Anna: And I'm Anna. Clear
00:22:43 --> 00:22:45 Skies Astronomy Day
00:22:47 --> 00:22:48 Stories.