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00:00:01 --> 00:00:03 Anna: Somewhere past the edge of the Sun's
00:00:03 --> 00:00:06 influence, more than 21 billion
00:00:06 --> 00:00:09 kilometers from here, a spacecraft older
00:00:09 --> 00:00:12 than almost everyone listening is losing
00:00:12 --> 00:00:15 about 2 watts of power a year and
00:00:15 --> 00:00:18 quietly refusing to go dark.
00:00:18 --> 00:00:21 Avery: And this week, a team of engineers found a
00:00:21 --> 00:00:23 way to give it another year of science. Good
00:00:23 --> 00:00:25 morning, or good evening, wherever you are.
00:00:26 --> 00:00:28 This is Astronomy Daily. I'm Avery.
00:00:29 --> 00:00:31 Anna: And I'm anna. It's Wednesday the 5th of
00:00:31 --> 00:00:34 August. Today, a clever rescue for
00:00:34 --> 00:00:37 Voyager 2. A cell tower that fits in
00:00:37 --> 00:00:40 a rocket fairing, a sea of honeycombs
00:00:40 --> 00:00:43 on Mars, and a little telescope about
00:00:43 --> 00:00:46 to go hunting for the universe's missing
00:00:46 --> 00:00:48 gas. Plus everything worth looking up
00:00:48 --> 00:00:50 for north and south.
00:00:51 --> 00:00:51 Avery: Let's get into it.
00:00:52 --> 00:00:55 Anna: Let's start out at the very frontier of
00:00:55 --> 00:00:58 everything we've ever built. Voyager 2
00:00:58 --> 00:01:01 launched in 1977. That's
00:01:01 --> 00:01:03 nearly 49 years ago, and it's
00:01:03 --> 00:01:06 still right now, sending back data from
00:01:06 --> 00:01:09 interstellar space. It crossed the
00:01:09 --> 00:01:12 heliopause, the boundary of the Sun's bubble,
00:01:12 --> 00:01:14 back in November 2018. It is
00:01:14 --> 00:01:17 over 13 billion miles from
00:01:17 --> 00:01:20 Earth. That's about 21 billion
00:01:20 --> 00:01:21 kilometers.
00:01:21 --> 00:01:24 Avery: And, um, when you're that far out, a
00:01:24 --> 00:01:26 conversation takes a while. A radio command
00:01:26 --> 00:01:28 from Earth needs the better part of a day
00:01:28 --> 00:01:29 just to reach it.
00:01:30 --> 00:01:32 Anna: Close to 19 or 20 hours one
00:01:32 --> 00:01:35 way. So you can't exactly troubleshoot
00:01:35 --> 00:01:38 in real time. Now, here's the challenge the
00:01:38 --> 00:01:41 mission has been living with. The Voyagers
00:01:41 --> 00:01:43 don't run on solar panels. Out there,
00:01:43 --> 00:01:46 sunlight is basically useless. They run
00:01:46 --> 00:01:49 on what's called a radioisotope
00:01:49 --> 00:01:51 thermoelectric generator, an
00:01:51 --> 00:01:54 rtg, which turns the heat from
00:01:54 --> 00:01:56 slowly decaying plutonium into
00:01:56 --> 00:01:57 electricity.
00:01:58 --> 00:02:00 Avery: And the catch with decay is that it never
00:02:00 --> 00:02:03 stops. Every year, both voyagers lose about
00:02:03 --> 00:02:06 4 watts of power. Four watts doesn't sound
00:02:06 --> 00:02:08 like much. It's a fraction of an old light
00:02:08 --> 00:02:11 bulb. But do that for almost half a century,
00:02:11 --> 00:02:13 and the margins get razor thin.
00:02:14 --> 00:02:17 Anna: So thin that since 2024, the team
00:02:17 --> 00:02:20 has had to switch off two science instruments
00:02:20 --> 00:02:22 on each spacecraft just to keep the lights
00:02:22 --> 00:02:25 on. And they were staring down another one.
00:02:25 --> 00:02:28 Without intervention, Voyager 2 would have
00:02:28 --> 00:02:30 had to lose yet another instrument before the
00:02:30 --> 00:02:31 end of this year.
00:02:32 --> 00:02:34 Avery: Which is where this week's news comes in. And
00:02:34 --> 00:02:37 I love that they gave it a nickname. NASA's
00:02:37 --> 00:02:39 Jet Propulsion Laboratory calls it the Big
00:02:39 --> 00:02:39 Bang.
00:02:40 --> 00:02:42 Anna: It does sound dramatic. For what is
00:02:42 --> 00:02:45 essentially very careful housekeeping.
00:02:45 --> 00:02:47 The Big Bang was a coordinated move.
00:02:48 --> 00:02:51 The engineers simultaneously turned off
00:02:51 --> 00:02:54 certain powered devices on the spacecraft and
00:02:54 --> 00:02:56 swapped in lower power alternatives,
00:02:56 --> 00:02:59 all while making sure Voyager 2 stayed
00:02:59 --> 00:03:02 warm. Enough to keep functioning. Because out
00:03:02 --> 00:03:04 there, the cold is another enemy
00:03:04 --> 00:03:07 entirely. Let a propellant line freeze
00:03:07 --> 00:03:09 and you can lose the whole spacecraft.
00:03:10 --> 00:03:12 Avery: And the payoff for all that care.
00:03:12 --> 00:03:15 Anna: They freed up enough power to keep three
00:03:15 --> 00:03:17 science instruments running for at least an
00:03:17 --> 00:03:20 extra year. An instrument that was going to
00:03:20 --> 00:03:23 go silent in 2026 now stays
00:03:23 --> 00:03:26 on. And the team says they'll try the very
00:03:26 --> 00:03:28 same trick on Voyager 1, which is even
00:03:29 --> 00:03:30 further away in the coming months.
00:03:31 --> 00:03:33 Avery: So what are those three instruments actually
00:03:33 --> 00:03:36 doing out there? Because Voyager isn't taking
00:03:36 --> 00:03:38 pretty pictures anymore. The cameras were
00:03:38 --> 00:03:39 switched off decades ago.
00:03:40 --> 00:03:42 Anna: Right. What's left are, ah, the fields and
00:03:42 --> 00:03:45 particle senses on Voyager 2. That's
00:03:45 --> 00:03:48 the magnetometer which feels the magnetic
00:03:48 --> 00:03:50 field, the plasma wave subsystem
00:03:50 --> 00:03:53 which effectively listens to the density of
00:03:53 --> 00:03:56 the charged gas around it, and the
00:03:56 --> 00:03:59 cosmic ray subsystem which counts the high
00:03:59 --> 00:04:01 energy particles streaming in from the
00:04:01 --> 00:04:03 galaxy. Together they turn
00:04:03 --> 00:04:06 interstellar space from a line on a
00:04:06 --> 00:04:09 diagram into an actual measured
00:04:09 --> 00:04:11 place. The only direct readings
00:04:11 --> 00:04:14 humanity has ever taken from outside the
00:04:14 --> 00:04:15 sun's bubble.
00:04:15 --> 00:04:17 Avery: And um, here's a detail I think our
00:04:17 --> 00:04:20 Australian listeners in particular will love.
00:04:20 --> 00:04:23 When JPL wants to send the command to Voyager
00:04:23 --> 00:04:25 2, there's really only one antenna on Earth
00:04:25 --> 00:04:26 that can do it.
00:04:26 --> 00:04:29 Anna: Hanburgh. Voyager 2 headed
00:04:29 --> 00:04:32 south out of the solar system below the plane
00:04:32 --> 00:04:35 of the planets. And from that angle the only
00:04:35 --> 00:04:38 dish with the clear line to it is the big
00:04:38 --> 00:04:41 70 meter antenna at the Canberra Deep
00:04:41 --> 00:04:43 Space Communication Complex. So
00:04:43 --> 00:04:46 every one of these life extending commands,
00:04:46 --> 00:04:49 the Big Bang included, goes up through
00:04:49 --> 00:04:52 the southern hemisphere. There's something
00:04:52 --> 00:04:55 rather lovely about that. The oldest working
00:04:55 --> 00:04:57 emissary we have stays in touch through
00:04:57 --> 00:05:00 a dish in the New South Wales bush.
00:05:00 --> 00:05:02 Avery: And uh, the people behind it are historian
00:05:02 --> 00:05:05 themselves. The mission has NASA retirees in
00:05:05 --> 00:05:08 their 80s advising on subsystems they helped
00:05:08 --> 00:05:11 design in the 70s, working alongside team
00:05:11 --> 00:05:13 members so young their parents hadn't been
00:05:13 --> 00:05:14 born when Voyager launched.
00:05:15 --> 00:05:18 Anna: Two generations, one spacecraft. And
00:05:18 --> 00:05:21 a running argument with entropy that they
00:05:21 --> 00:05:24 keep somehow winning by a year at a
00:05:24 --> 00:05:27 time. The honest truth is the Voyagers are
00:05:27 --> 00:05:30 in their twilight. Every watt now is a
00:05:30 --> 00:05:32 decision about what humanity still gets to
00:05:32 --> 00:05:35 learn from out there. But this week the
00:05:35 --> 00:05:38 twilight got a little longer. And that's
00:05:38 --> 00:05:40 worth marking the little spacecraft
00:05:40 --> 00:05:42 Avery: that could still could.
00:05:43 --> 00:05:45 Next, from the oldest hardware in the sky to
00:05:45 --> 00:05:48 some of the newest. In the early hours this
00:05:48 --> 00:05:51 morning US time a SpaceX Falcon 9
00:05:51 --> 00:05:53 lifted off from Cape Canaveral and delivered
00:05:53 --> 00:05:56 three satellites, Bluebird 11,
00:05:56 --> 00:05:59 12 and 13, into orbit for a company
00:05:59 --> 00:06:02 called AST Space Mobile. And True
00:06:02 --> 00:06:04 to form, the first stage came back for its
00:06:04 --> 00:06:06 30th successful landing.
00:06:06 --> 00:06:09 Anna: And the pitch behind these is genuinely
00:06:09 --> 00:06:12 futuristic. No special phone, no
00:06:12 --> 00:06:14 dish, no satellite handset. Your
00:06:14 --> 00:06:17 ordinary unmodified smartphone connects
00:06:17 --> 00:06:19 straight to the satellite, straight up to
00:06:19 --> 00:06:20 orbit.
00:06:20 --> 00:06:23 Avery: The trick is scale. To reach a normal phone,
00:06:23 --> 00:06:26 which has a tiny antenna and not much power,
00:06:26 --> 00:06:28 the satellite has to do the heavy lifting
00:06:28 --> 00:06:31 with an enormous antenna of its own. These
00:06:31 --> 00:06:34 next generation Bluebirds unfold phased
00:06:34 --> 00:06:36 array antennas of around two and a half
00:06:36 --> 00:06:39 thousand square feet. That's the
00:06:39 --> 00:06:41 largest commercial array ever flown in low
00:06:41 --> 00:06:44 Earth orbit. Roughly the footprint of a
00:06:44 --> 00:06:46 decent sized house up there in space.
00:06:47 --> 00:06:49 Anna: And they're faster than the first batch,
00:06:50 --> 00:06:52 Avery: nearly double the peak download speed of the
00:06:52 --> 00:06:54 earlier Bluebirds, which had already hit
00:06:54 --> 00:06:57 close to 100Mbps, straight to a
00:06:57 --> 00:07:00 standard phone. This trio follows three
00:07:00 --> 00:07:02 that went up in June. And the company is
00:07:02 --> 00:07:04 aiming to start beta service later this year,
00:07:04 --> 00:07:06 building towards a constellation that can
00:07:06 --> 00:07:08 give proper coverage across its key markets.
00:07:09 --> 00:07:12 Anna: It's worth being clear eyed about it. They're
00:07:12 --> 00:07:14 not the only ones chasing direct to phone
00:07:14 --> 00:07:17 from space. SpaceX's own Starlink is
00:07:17 --> 00:07:20 doing a version of this too. But the promise
00:07:20 --> 00:07:22 is the same and it's a big one.
00:07:22 --> 00:07:25 Avery: The idea that the dead zone, the bottom of a
00:07:25 --> 00:07:28 valley, the middle of the outback, a boat
00:07:28 --> 00:07:30 well offshore, just quietly disappears.
00:07:31 --> 00:07:33 For the billions of people still unconnected
00:07:33 --> 00:07:36 or underconnected, that's not a gadget story,
00:07:36 --> 00:07:37 that's infrastructure.
00:07:38 --> 00:07:41 Anna: Now to Mars and a bit of an anniversary,
00:07:41 --> 00:07:44 because today, the 5th of August is 14
00:07:44 --> 00:07:47 years to the day since NASA's Curiosity
00:07:47 --> 00:07:49 RO touched down in Gale Crater.
00:07:50 --> 00:07:52 And it has marked the occasion more or less
00:07:52 --> 00:07:55 by finding something that stopped the mission
00:07:55 --> 00:07:56 team in their tracks.
00:07:57 --> 00:07:59 Avery: This is the honeycomb terrain everyone's been
00:07:59 --> 00:08:00 sharing.
00:08:00 --> 00:08:03 Anna: It is as Curiosity climbs a
00:08:03 --> 00:08:06 valley the team has nicknamed Valley Grande.
00:08:06 --> 00:08:08 On the slopes of Mount Sharp, it rolled into
00:08:08 --> 00:08:10 a landscape covered with polygons,
00:08:11 --> 00:08:13 honeycomb shaped cracks in the ground each.
00:08:13 --> 00:08:16 Each one only about 4-8 cm
00:08:16 --> 00:08:19 across. The Rover has seen little patches of
00:08:19 --> 00:08:22 these before, but never anything on this
00:08:22 --> 00:08:25 scale. In, uh, a 360 degree
00:08:25 --> 00:08:27 panorama stitched from over 300
00:08:27 --> 00:08:30 images, the shapes spread out in
00:08:30 --> 00:08:33 every direction as far as the camera can
00:08:33 --> 00:08:35 see. They even wrap around the base of a
00:08:35 --> 00:08:36 small butte.
00:08:37 --> 00:08:39 Avery: The project scientists put it beautifully,
00:08:39 --> 00:08:41 said that after everything they've seen
00:08:41 --> 00:08:43 through Curiosity's eyes, this sea of
00:08:43 --> 00:08:46 polygons still took their breath away. So
00:08:46 --> 00:08:47 what makes a honeycomb like that?
00:08:48 --> 00:08:51 Anna: Water or the memory of it? Patterns
00:08:51 --> 00:08:53 like these can form when mud dries and
00:08:53 --> 00:08:56 cracks, or through repeated cycles of wetting
00:08:56 --> 00:08:59 and drying, or when buried sediment gets
00:08:59 --> 00:09:02 squeezed and pushes water out. And that fits
00:09:02 --> 00:09:04 the bigger picture of where Curiosity is.
00:09:05 --> 00:09:07 The foothills of Mount Sharp are thought to
00:09:07 --> 00:09:10 have hosted lakes and streams billions of
00:09:10 --> 00:09:12 years ago. So this isn't just a pretty
00:09:12 --> 00:09:15 texture. It's another line of evidence for,
00:09:15 --> 00:09:18 uh, a Mars that was once wet layered into
00:09:18 --> 00:09:19 the rock.
00:09:19 --> 00:09:22 Avery: 14 years, wheels worn down to holes.
00:09:22 --> 00:09:23 And it's still turning up.
00:09:23 --> 00:09:26 Anna: Genuine surprises, still climbing,
00:09:26 --> 00:09:29 still reading the story written in the stone.
00:09:29 --> 00:09:31 Not bad for a mission that was only ever
00:09:31 --> 00:09:32 promised two years.
00:09:32 --> 00:09:35 Avery: Our last story today is a look ahead to a
00:09:35 --> 00:09:38 launch just 10 days away and one with
00:09:38 --> 00:09:41 a distinctly Southern hemisphere flavor.
00:09:42 --> 00:09:44 Around the 15th of August, a Rocket Lab
00:09:44 --> 00:09:47 electron is due to lift off from Mahia in New
00:09:47 --> 00:09:50 Zealand carrying a NASA mission called
00:09:50 --> 00:09:50 Aspera.
00:09:50 --> 00:09:53 Anna: And Aspera is tiny. This is not a
00:09:53 --> 00:09:55 flagship observatory, it's
00:09:55 --> 00:09:58 Avery: roughly shoebox sized, a small Satellite,
00:09:58 --> 00:10:00 part of NASA's Pioneers program, which funds
00:10:00 --> 00:10:03 genuinely ambitious science on a modest
00:10:03 --> 00:10:05 budget. But the question it's chasing is
00:10:05 --> 00:10:08 enormous. Aspeta will be the first NASA
00:10:08 --> 00:10:11 mission to map in ultraviolet light the hot
00:10:11 --> 00:10:13 diffuse gas that drifts in around
00:10:13 --> 00:10:16 galaxies, what astronomers call the circum
00:10:16 --> 00:10:17 galactic medium.
00:10:17 --> 00:10:19 Anna: And this ties into one of the quiet
00:10:19 --> 00:10:22 embarrassments of cosmology, doesn't it? The
00:10:22 --> 00:10:23 missing baryons.
00:10:23 --> 00:10:25 Avery: It really does. The mission's principal
00:10:25 --> 00:10:28 investigator put it almost sheepishly. We
00:10:28 --> 00:10:31 have a good idea of how much ordinary matter
00:10:31 --> 00:10:33 there should be to explain all the stars we
00:10:33 --> 00:10:36 see, and yet we've searched far and wide and
00:10:36 --> 00:10:38 still can't find most of it. A lot of it is
00:10:38 --> 00:10:40 thought to be hiding in this faint gas
00:10:40 --> 00:10:43 between and around galaxies too diffused
00:10:43 --> 00:10:46 to see easily. Esperad is built to trace
00:10:46 --> 00:10:49 it. The gas flowing in to build new stars
00:10:49 --> 00:10:51 and the gas being blown back out.
00:10:51 --> 00:10:53 Anna: And there's uh, a nice human footnote there
00:10:53 --> 00:10:53 is.
00:10:54 --> 00:10:56 Avery: The mission is led out of the University of
00:10:56 --> 00:10:58 Arizona by one of the youngest principal
00:10:58 --> 00:11:01 investigators in NASA's history. A small
00:11:01 --> 00:11:03 telescope, a young scientist, a big question.
00:11:04 --> 00:11:06 Launching from a clifftop in New Zealand,
00:11:06 --> 00:11:08 we'll be watching for it around the 15th.
00:11:08 --> 00:11:10 Anna: And that brings us to the sky tonight first,
00:11:10 --> 00:11:13 then a big fortnight ahead and I'll be
00:11:13 --> 00:11:15 straight with you about who gets the best of
00:11:15 --> 00:11:18 it tonight. The moon is at last quarter, so
00:11:18 --> 00:11:19 the first half of the night stays nice and
00:11:19 --> 00:11:22 dark before it rises. And in the pre dawn
00:11:22 --> 00:11:24 sky, Mars is sitting in a neat little
00:11:24 --> 00:11:27 triangle with Elnath, the bright star that
00:11:27 --> 00:11:29 marks the tip of Taurus's horn and the star
00:11:29 --> 00:11:32 cluster, um, M35 over in Gemini.
00:11:32 --> 00:11:34 Mars and Elmath are easy naked eye. Grab
00:11:34 --> 00:11:37 binoculars for M M35 and you'll find that
00:11:37 --> 00:11:40 soft glow of stars just beside them. That
00:11:40 --> 00:11:42 one's there for everybody north and south.
00:11:42 --> 00:11:44 Avery: And uh, then there's the 12th of August,
00:11:44 --> 00:11:46 which is shaping up to be the single biggest
00:11:46 --> 00:11:47 sky day of the year.
00:11:48 --> 00:11:51 Anna: Three headline events in 24 hours. So
00:11:51 --> 00:11:53 let's take them honestly one at a time.
00:11:53 --> 00:11:56 First, a total solar eclipse. This one
00:11:56 --> 00:11:59 traces a very unusual path. It touches down
00:11:59 --> 00:12:02 in the arctic near eastern Siberia, nearly
00:12:02 --> 00:12:04 grazes the north pole, then sweeps over
00:12:04 --> 00:12:07 Greenland, Iceland, where totality peaks, uh,
00:12:07 --> 00:12:09 at a little over two minutes and finishes
00:12:09 --> 00:12:12 over northern Spain around sunset. It's the
00:12:12 --> 00:12:14 first total solar eclipse to reach mainland
00:12:14 --> 00:12:17 Europe since 1999. Parts of the
00:12:17 --> 00:12:20 United States from Alaska across to the
00:12:20 --> 00:12:22 northeast get a partial bite out of the sun.
00:12:22 --> 00:12:24 Avery: And for our southern hemisphere listeners,
00:12:24 --> 00:12:27 including me, the plain truth is we don't see
00:12:27 --> 00:12:29 this one at all. It's entirely a, uh,
00:12:29 --> 00:12:30 northern hemisphere event.
00:12:30 --> 00:12:33 Anna: We don't, but NASA and others will livestream
00:12:33 --> 00:12:36 it so you can still share the moment. And one
00:12:36 --> 00:12:38 rule that never gets trimmed on this show. If
00:12:38 --> 00:12:41 you are anywhere the sun is even partially
00:12:41 --> 00:12:43 eclipsed, you need certified eclipse glasses
00:12:43 --> 00:12:45 that meet the ISO
00:12:45 --> 00:12:48 123122 standard
00:12:48 --> 00:12:50 for every partial phase. Ordinary
00:12:50 --> 00:12:53 sunglasses will not protect your eyes. And
00:12:53 --> 00:12:56 never point a camera, telescope or binoculars
00:12:56 --> 00:12:58 at the sun while wearing eclipse glasses. The
00:12:58 --> 00:13:01 concentrated light can destroy the filter and
00:13:01 --> 00:13:02 your sight in an instant.
00:13:03 --> 00:13:05 Avery: Second event that same day. The Perseids.
00:13:05 --> 00:13:08 Anna: And 2026 is a special year for them
00:13:08 --> 00:13:11 because the peak on the night of the 12th
00:13:11 --> 00:13:13 into the 13th falls on a new moon.
00:13:14 --> 00:13:17 No moonlight at all to wash them out. The
00:13:17 --> 00:13:19 next time that lines up is 2045.
00:13:20 --> 00:13:23 From a dark rural site, you might see 30
00:13:23 --> 00:13:25 to 50 an hour and up to 100 under
00:13:25 --> 00:13:28 really pristine skies. Now the
00:13:28 --> 00:13:31 Perseids favor the northern hemisphere. The
00:13:31 --> 00:13:33 point they radiate from climbs high in the
00:13:33 --> 00:13:35 north and barely clears the horizon down
00:13:35 --> 00:13:38 south. So northern listeners, this is your
00:13:38 --> 00:13:41 night. Southern listeners, you'll catch far
00:13:41 --> 00:13:44 fewer. But a patient hour after midnight
00:13:44 --> 00:13:46 looking northeast can still turn up a few
00:13:46 --> 00:13:47 bright ones.
00:13:47 --> 00:13:50 Avery: And third, the planet parade.
00:13:50 --> 00:13:53 Anna: Six planets strong along the pre dawn
00:13:53 --> 00:13:55 sky around the 12th. Mercury,
00:13:56 --> 00:13:58 Venus's neighbor, Jupiter, Mars,
00:13:58 --> 00:14:01 Saturn and the two ice giants, Uranus and
00:14:01 --> 00:14:04 Neptune. Don't picture a, uh, tidy line.
00:14:04 --> 00:14:07 It's a broad arc following the ecliptic.
00:14:07 --> 00:14:10 Mars and Saturn are the easy naked eye ones.
00:14:10 --> 00:14:13 Uranus and Neptune need binoculars or a
00:14:13 --> 00:14:15 telescope. Mercury and Jupiter sit
00:14:15 --> 00:14:18 low in the dawn glow for North America and
00:14:18 --> 00:14:21 the northern mid latitudes look about 30
00:14:21 --> 00:14:24 to 60 minutes before your local sunrise,
00:14:24 --> 00:14:27 with the arc running towards the southwest.
00:14:27 --> 00:14:29 Down south, the window's a bit later and
00:14:29 --> 00:14:31 shorter, and the arc leans towards the
00:14:31 --> 00:14:34 northwest. And the mornings either side of
00:14:34 --> 00:14:36 the 12th work just as well, so treat them as
00:14:36 --> 00:14:37 practice runs.
00:14:38 --> 00:14:40 Avery: So the 12th leans north. What does the
00:14:40 --> 00:14:42 Southern hemisphere get to call its own?
00:14:42 --> 00:14:44 Anna: Um, plenty, actually. On the 7th,
00:14:44 --> 00:14:47 a modest shower called the Eta Eridinaids
00:14:47 --> 00:14:50 peaks only a few an hour, but it genuinely
00:14:50 --> 00:14:53 favors southern observers. The winter Milky
00:14:53 --> 00:14:56 Way is riding high for us. So the
00:14:56 --> 00:14:58 Sagittarius star fields, the Lagoon Nebula
00:14:58 --> 00:15:01 and company are beautifully placed under a
00:15:01 --> 00:15:04 dark sky and mark the calendar for the
00:15:04 --> 00:15:06 27th into the 28th. A deep
00:15:06 --> 00:15:09 partial lunar eclipse that's visible across,
00:15:09 --> 00:15:12 um, much of the Americas and parts of Europe
00:15:12 --> 00:15:14 and Africa. A, uh, proper both
00:15:14 --> 00:15:17 hemispheres event to close the month. We'll
00:15:17 --> 00:15:19 have full local timings closer to each one.
00:15:19 --> 00:15:22 Avery: That's your lot for today. Voyager Second
00:15:22 --> 00:15:25 Wind, A, uh, phone tower in orbit, honeycombs
00:15:25 --> 00:15:27 on Mars, and the little gas Hunter warming up
00:15:27 --> 00:15:28 in New Zealand.
00:15:28 --> 00:15:30 Anna: You'll find all our sources and links in the
00:15:30 --> 00:15:33 show notes and over at astronomydaily IO
00:15:33 --> 00:15:35 and you can find us on all your usual
00:15:35 --> 00:15:38 platforms at Strodaily Pod. And
00:15:38 --> 00:15:41 keep an eye out tomorrow. There may just be
00:15:41 --> 00:15:43 word on whether that derelict rocket stage
00:15:43 --> 00:15:44 left a fresh mark on the Moon.
00:15:45 --> 00:15:48 Avery: Until then, from Avery and Anna,
00:15:48 --> 00:15:49 clear skies.