Light from newborn stars may have blown the fog out of the early universe. A new study by Shyam Menon (Flatiron Institute, ANU PhD) and Aaron Smith (UT Dallas) finds that Lyman-alpha radiation — ultraviolet light that bounces from hydrogen atom to hydrogen atom — can clear diffuse gas and dust out of young galaxies while leaving their dense star clusters free to keep forming stars, helping explain why JWST sees so many bright galaxies so early. Also: LOFAR's sharpest and deepest low-frequency radio image yet (almost 63,000 sources, 200 hours of observing); Blue Origin's new GS3 third stage and Northstar engine; and Sandia simulations showing that an asteroid's shape and orientation can change a nuclear stand-off deflection by up to five times. Quick hits: the space station's final roll-out solar array is installed, sunspot region AR4566 fires an M3 flare as October's sunspot number falls, and Earth picks up a tiny temporary mini-moon, 2026 QQ8. Skywatch for both hemispheres: ESCAPADE's powered flybys over southern Australia, the Moon with Venus and Spica, New Moon on the 9th, globular cluster M30 for southern observers, and Mars closing on Jupiter before dawn. Sources: Menon & Smith, The Astrophysical Journal (2026), DOI 10.3847/1538-4357/aeaed6 · de Jong et al., arXiv 2611.06152 (accepted A&A) · Blue Origin announcements, 5 Nov 2026 · Moore et al., Icarus (2026) · NOAA SWPC · Minor Planet Center MPEC 2026-U95 · NASA ESCAPADE blog, 2 Nov 2026.
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00:00:00 --> 00:00:02 Anna: Hello again, everybody. 13 billion years
00:00:02 --> 00:00:05 ago, the first galaxies were wrapped in fog.
00:00:05 --> 00:00:08 Thick hydrogen, thick dust. And yet the James
00:00:08 --> 00:00:10 Webb Space Telescope keeps finding far more
00:00:10 --> 00:00:12 bright ones than anyone expected.
00:00:13 --> 00:00:15 Avery: Today, a team with deep Australian roots
00:00:15 --> 00:00:18 thinks it knows why the stars blew the fog
00:00:18 --> 00:00:20 away, using light itself as a leaf blower.
00:00:20 --> 00:00:23 Anna: Also on the show, the sharpest, deepest low
00:00:23 --> 00:00:25 frequency radio picture ever made. Blue
00:00:25 --> 00:00:27 Origin's new third stage. And a brand new
00:00:27 --> 00:00:30 engine. And why aiming a nuclear blast at an
00:00:30 --> 00:00:32 asteroid matters far more than anyone
00:00:32 --> 00:00:32 thought.
00:00:33 --> 00:00:35 Avery: Plus, the space station's power upgrade is
00:00:35 --> 00:00:37 finished. The sun fires off an M M class
00:00:37 --> 00:00:39 flare. And Earth has picked up a tiny
00:00:39 --> 00:00:40 passenger.
00:00:40 --> 00:00:41 Anna: I'm Anna.
00:00:41 --> 00:00:43 Avery: And I'm, um, Avery. This is Astronomy daily
00:00:43 --> 00:00:46 for Friday 6th November 2026.
00:00:47 --> 00:00:47 Let's get into it.
00:00:48 --> 00:00:49 Anna: Let's start with a problem that's been
00:00:49 --> 00:00:51 nagging astronomers since Webb opened its
00:00:51 --> 00:00:54 eyes. When it looks back to around 400 or 500
00:00:54 --> 00:00:56 million years after the Big Bang, it finds an
00:00:56 --> 00:00:59 overabundance of bright galaxies, more of
00:00:59 --> 00:01:01 them, and brighter than our models said
00:01:01 --> 00:01:02 should exist that early.
00:01:02 --> 00:01:04 Avery: And, um, there are a few candidate
00:01:04 --> 00:01:06 explanations floating around. Maybe stars
00:01:06 --> 00:01:09 formed more efficiently back then. Maybe the
00:01:09 --> 00:01:10 mix of stars was different, more
00:01:10 --> 00:01:13 heavyweights. Or maybe we're simply seeing
00:01:13 --> 00:01:15 more of the light than we expected to because
00:01:15 --> 00:01:16 something cleared the view.
00:01:16 --> 00:01:18 Anna: That last option is where today's paper
00:01:18 --> 00:01:21 lives. And there's an important clue in what
00:01:21 --> 00:01:23 Webb has actually seen. In some of these
00:01:23 --> 00:01:25 early galaxies, especially the ones magnified
00:01:25 --> 00:01:28 by gravitational lensing. The star formation
00:01:28 --> 00:01:31 isn't spread out. It's packed into tiny,
00:01:31 --> 00:01:33 incredibly dense star clusters. One famous
00:01:33 --> 00:01:36 example is a lensed galaxy seen about
00:01:36 --> 00:01:39 460 million years after the Big Bang, where
00:01:39 --> 00:01:41 Webb picked out several of these. Compact
00:01:41 --> 00:01:41 clusters,
00:01:42 --> 00:01:45 Avery: dense clusters, very little dust, lots of
00:01:45 --> 00:01:47 hydrogen. That combination turns out to
00:01:47 --> 00:01:48 matter a great deal.
00:01:49 --> 00:01:51 Anna: So here's the star of the story. It's a
00:01:51 --> 00:01:53 particular colour of ultraviolet light called
00:01:53 --> 00:01:56 Lyman Alpha. It's what a hydrogen atom gives
00:01:56 --> 00:01:58 off when its electron drops from the second
00:01:58 --> 00:02:00 energy level down to the lowest one
00:02:00 --> 00:02:03 wavelength, about 122 nanometers.
00:02:04 --> 00:02:06 Avery: And because hydrogen is everywhere, Lyman
00:02:06 --> 00:02:08 Alpha is everywhere too. Young, hot stars
00:02:08 --> 00:02:10 ionise the gas around them. Um, the electrons
00:02:10 --> 00:02:13 and protons recombine and a big share of that
00:02:13 --> 00:02:15 energy comes back out as Lyman Alpha.
00:02:16 --> 00:02:19 Anna: Here's the most Light, when it's
00:02:19 --> 00:02:21 absorbed, gets re emitted at some other
00:02:21 --> 00:02:24 wavelength and moves on. Lyman Alpha
00:02:24 --> 00:02:26 doesn't. A hydrogen atom absorbs it and
00:02:26 --> 00:02:29 spits it straight back out at almost the same
00:02:29 --> 00:02:31 wavelength. So the photon gets caught
00:02:31 --> 00:02:34 bouncing from atom to atom over and over
00:02:34 --> 00:02:35 before it can escape.
00:02:36 --> 00:02:38 Avery: Like a pinball machine that won't let the
00:02:38 --> 00:02:40 ball drain. And every bounce is a little push
00:02:40 --> 00:02:42 on the gas. Light carries momentum.
00:02:43 --> 00:02:45 Bounce the same photon thousands of times and
00:02:45 --> 00:02:47 you can deliver thousands of times the push
00:02:47 --> 00:02:49 of a photon that just flies straight through.
00:02:50 --> 00:02:52 Anna: Which is why people have suspected for a very
00:02:52 --> 00:02:54 long time that Lyman Alpha could be a
00:02:54 --> 00:02:57 powerful force. The catch is that all that
00:02:57 --> 00:02:59 bouncing is a nightmare to simulate. You're
00:02:59 --> 00:03:02 tracking photons scattering enormous numbers
00:03:02 --> 00:03:04 of times through a messy three dimensional
00:03:04 --> 00:03:07 cloud. A lot of galaxy models simply leave it
00:03:07 --> 00:03:07 out.
00:03:07 --> 00:03:09 Avery: So the team, Xiaom Menon at the Flight Iron
00:03:09 --> 00:03:11 Institute in New York and Aaron Smith at the
00:03:11 --> 00:03:14 University of Texas at Dallas took a clever
00:03:14 --> 00:03:16 shortcut. Rather than build Lyman Alpha into
00:03:16 --> 00:03:18 a full simulation from scratch, they took
00:03:18 --> 00:03:20 snapshots from existing radiation
00:03:20 --> 00:03:23 hydrodynamic simulations of dense star
00:03:23 --> 00:03:24 cluster forming clouds,
00:03:24 --> 00:03:27 Anna: frozen frames, if you like, of a cloud as it
00:03:27 --> 00:03:30 collapses and forms stars. Then
00:03:30 --> 00:03:32 they ran a specialised Monte Carlo code
00:03:32 --> 00:03:35 called Colt, short for cosmic Lyman
00:03:35 --> 00:03:38 Alpha transfer through each frame, firing
00:03:38 --> 00:03:41 virtual photons into the gas and following
00:03:41 --> 00:03:43 every bounce to work out how hard the Lyman
00:03:43 --> 00:03:45 Alpha would actually be pushing at each
00:03:45 --> 00:03:45 point.
00:03:46 --> 00:03:48 Avery: And they did it across a range of dust
00:03:48 --> 00:03:50 levels. Because dust eats Lyman Alpha, less
00:03:50 --> 00:03:53 dust and the photons survive long enough to
00:03:53 --> 00:03:53 keep pushing.
00:03:54 --> 00:03:56 Anna: The answer comes in two halves, and both
00:03:56 --> 00:03:59 matter first. In the densest
00:03:59 --> 00:04:02 parts, the thick filaments where stars are
00:04:02 --> 00:04:04 actually being born, gravity wins.
00:04:04 --> 00:04:07 Biment Alpha isn't strong enough to blow that
00:04:07 --> 00:04:09 gas apart. So star formation in those dense
00:04:09 --> 00:04:11 clusters keeps going efficiently.
00:04:12 --> 00:04:14 Avery: That's important because it means this isn't
00:04:14 --> 00:04:16 a break on star formation. If anything, the
00:04:16 --> 00:04:18 picture is of clusters forming stars very
00:04:18 --> 00:04:20 efficiently in short bursts.
00:04:20 --> 00:04:23 Anna: The second half is the leaf blower outside
00:04:23 --> 00:04:25 those dense filaments in the thinner gas that
00:04:25 --> 00:04:28 fills the space between them, Lyman Alpha
00:04:28 --> 00:04:30 wins easily. It shoves that diffused gas and
00:04:30 --> 00:04:33 dust out fast enough to launch winds that can
00:04:33 --> 00:04:35 carry material right out of the galaxy.
00:04:35 --> 00:04:37 Avery: Menon, um, put it nicely. He said the
00:04:37 --> 00:04:40 radiation can sort of clear the fog, letting
00:04:40 --> 00:04:42 us see the stars much more clearly than we
00:04:42 --> 00:04:43 otherwise would.
00:04:44 --> 00:04:46 Anna: And in low dust conditions, which is exactly
00:04:46 --> 00:04:48 what you'd expect in the young universe, they
00:04:48 --> 00:04:50 found Lyman Alpha pushing harder than
00:04:50 --> 00:04:52 ordinary ultraviolet light or infrared
00:04:52 --> 00:04:55 radiation by factors ranging from about three
00:04:55 --> 00:04:56 to about 500.
00:04:57 --> 00:05:00 Avery: So you get dense clusters busily making stars
00:05:00 --> 00:05:03 and the haze around them swept away. From our
00:05:03 --> 00:05:05 point of view, 13 billion years later,
00:05:05 --> 00:05:08 that galaxy looks brighter, not because
00:05:08 --> 00:05:10 there's more in it, but because less of it is
00:05:10 --> 00:05:11 hidden.
00:05:11 --> 00:05:13 Anna: It's worth dwelling on that dust point,
00:05:13 --> 00:05:15 because it's really the dial that controls
00:05:15 --> 00:05:17 this whole effect. Dust is made of heavier
00:05:17 --> 00:05:20 elements carbon, silicon, iron, forged
00:05:20 --> 00:05:23 inside earlier generations of stars. In
00:05:23 --> 00:05:25 today's Milky Way, there's plenty of it. So
00:05:25 --> 00:05:27 Lyman Alpha photons get soaked up by dust
00:05:27 --> 00:05:29 grains after a handful of bounces and the
00:05:29 --> 00:05:30 push never builds.
00:05:31 --> 00:05:33 Avery: But in the first few hundred million years,
00:05:33 --> 00:05:35 there simply hadn't been enough time to make
00:05:35 --> 00:05:38 much dust. The paper's sweet spot is dust
00:05:38 --> 00:05:40 levels around a tenth of what we see locally
00:05:40 --> 00:05:43 or less exactly the conditions Webb is
00:05:43 --> 00:05:43 peering into.
00:05:44 --> 00:05:46 Anna: So the same physics that's negligible in the
00:05:46 --> 00:05:47 Milky Way today could have been one of the
00:05:47 --> 00:05:49 most important forces in the infinite
00:05:49 --> 00:05:51 universe. That's a theme that keeps coming up
00:05:51 --> 00:05:53 in this field. The early universe isn't just
00:05:53 --> 00:05:56 a younger version of ours. It can play by
00:05:56 --> 00:05:57 noticeably different rules.
00:05:57 --> 00:06:00 Avery: And this is testable. If Lyman Alpha winds
00:06:00 --> 00:06:02 are clearing gas out of these young galaxies,
00:06:02 --> 00:06:05 Webb should see the signs. Gas moving outward
00:06:05 --> 00:06:07 fast in the spectra and more ultraviolet
00:06:07 --> 00:06:09 light escaping than you'd otherwise expect.
00:06:10 --> 00:06:12 Anna: That last part connects to a much bigger
00:06:12 --> 00:06:14 question too. How the universe went from
00:06:14 --> 00:06:16 opaque to transparent. The era called
00:06:16 --> 00:06:19 reionization. Clear the gas around a
00:06:19 --> 00:06:21 cluster and ionising light can escape into
00:06:21 --> 00:06:24 intergalactic space more easily. So a
00:06:24 --> 00:06:26 mechanism that makes early galaxies look
00:06:26 --> 00:06:28 brighter could also help explain how they lit
00:06:28 --> 00:06:29 up the cosmos.
00:06:30 --> 00:06:32 Avery: Now I'm um, sensing you have a big honest
00:06:32 --> 00:06:33 part for us.
00:06:34 --> 00:06:36 Anna: I m do. This is post processing. They
00:06:36 --> 00:06:39 calculated the force on frozen snapshots.
00:06:39 --> 00:06:41 They didn't let the gas respond to that force
00:06:41 --> 00:06:44 as the simulation ran. The authors are clear
00:06:44 --> 00:06:45 that the next step is simulations that
00:06:45 --> 00:06:48 include Lyman Alpha, the gas flows and the
00:06:48 --> 00:06:51 star formation altogether self consistently.
00:06:51 --> 00:06:52 And then compare those with Webb.
00:06:53 --> 00:06:55 Avery: And it's one contributor to the bright galaxy
00:06:55 --> 00:06:58 puzzle. Not the whole answer. Star formation,
00:06:58 --> 00:07:00 efficiency and um, the mix of stars are still
00:07:00 --> 00:07:01 very much in play.
00:07:02 --> 00:07:04 Anna: One disclosure too. The paper was published
00:07:04 --> 00:07:06 in the Astrophysical Journal this week on the
00:07:06 --> 00:07:09 4th, but a pre print version has been public
00:07:09 --> 00:07:11 since May. So it's newly published, not brand
00:07:11 --> 00:07:12 new work.
00:07:12 --> 00:07:15 Avery: Here's the part I love. Shawn Menon did his
00:07:15 --> 00:07:17 PhD at the Australian National University,
00:07:18 --> 00:07:20 finishing in 2023, supervised by
00:07:20 --> 00:07:23 Christoph Federath and Mark Krumholtz at Matt
00:07:23 --> 00:07:25 Stromolo. His thesis was recognised as the
00:07:25 --> 00:07:28 Most Outstanding Astronomy PhD in Australia
00:07:28 --> 00:07:30 for 2023-24.
00:07:30 --> 00:07:33 Anna: And it was all about exactly this. How
00:07:33 --> 00:07:35 radiation from young massive stars put
00:07:35 --> 00:07:38 pushes on the gas that make star clusters.
00:07:38 --> 00:07:40 Listeners with long memories might recognise
00:07:40 --> 00:07:42 Federeth's name. He came up uh, back in
00:07:42 --> 00:07:45 episode 199, as one of the referees on the
00:07:45 --> 00:07:47 Andromeda Super Bubbles paper,
00:07:47 --> 00:07:49 Avery: which makes this a nice third chapter. In
00:07:49 --> 00:07:52 episode 199, we saw Supernovae keep a
00:07:52 --> 00:07:54 galaxy churning. On Wednesday, in episode
00:07:54 --> 00:07:57 222, we saw wind strip the oxygen
00:07:57 --> 00:07:59 out of small galaxies.
00:07:59 --> 00:08:01 Anna: And today, before a single supernova has even
00:08:01 --> 00:08:04 gone off, the light of the newborn stars is
00:08:04 --> 00:08:06 already clearing the stage. Read back at
00:08:06 --> 00:08:09 every scale from the very beginning, a cosmic
00:08:09 --> 00:08:11 leaf blower built from the simplest atom
00:08:11 --> 00:08:12 there is.
00:08:12 --> 00:08:15 Avery: From ultraviolet light to radio waves now,
00:08:15 --> 00:08:17 and a picture that's been a long time in the
00:08:17 --> 00:08:19 making. A team led from Leiden University has
00:08:19 --> 00:08:21 produced what they say is the sharpest and
00:08:21 --> 00:08:23 most sensitive radio image ever made at low
00:08:23 --> 00:08:24 frequencies.
00:08:24 --> 00:08:27 Anna: This is lofar, the Low Frequency Array.
00:08:27 --> 00:08:29 It's not a dish, it's tens of thousands of
00:08:29 --> 00:08:31 simple antennas spread across the
00:08:31 --> 00:08:33 Netherlands, with stations reaching out
00:08:33 --> 00:08:35 across Europe. Combine the signals and you
00:08:35 --> 00:08:37 get a telescope as wide as the continent.
00:08:37 --> 00:08:39 Avery: They pointed it at a patch of northern sky
00:08:39 --> 00:08:42 called Eleaz and one for 200 hours between
00:08:42 --> 00:08:45 about 115 and 168 MHz,
00:08:45 --> 00:08:47 roughly the neighbourhood of FM radio.
00:08:47 --> 00:08:49 Anna: And the numbers are something almost
00:08:49 --> 00:08:52 63 radio sources and a patch of
00:08:52 --> 00:08:55 sky about 25 times the area of the full
00:08:55 --> 00:08:58 moon. 20 times sharper than the previous most
00:08:58 --> 00:09:01 sensitive LOFAR image of that field. Sharp
00:09:01 --> 00:09:03 enough, the team says, to pick out a coin
00:09:03 --> 00:09:06 from about 10 kilometres away. The full image
00:09:06 --> 00:09:07 is 8 billion pixels.
00:09:08 --> 00:09:10 Avery: The authors say these are the deepest radio
00:09:10 --> 00:09:13 images to date, anywhere below about
00:09:13 --> 00:09:14 1.3 GHz.
00:09:15 --> 00:09:17 Anna: Why does sharpness matter? Because at this
00:09:17 --> 00:09:19 depth, most of what you see is distant
00:09:19 --> 00:09:22 galaxies. And the big question for each one
00:09:22 --> 00:09:24 is, is that radio glow coming from stars
00:09:24 --> 00:09:27 forming or from a black hole firing jets at,
00:09:27 --> 00:09:29 ah, blurry resolution, they look alike.
00:09:29 --> 00:09:31 Sharpen the image and you can see the jets.
00:09:32 --> 00:09:34 Avery: The hard part is the sky itself. Low
00:09:34 --> 00:09:36 frequency radio waves have to come through
00:09:36 --> 00:09:38 the ionosphere, which ripples and distorts
00:09:38 --> 00:09:40 them, a bit like looking up from the bottom
00:09:40 --> 00:09:42 of a swimming pool. The team improves their
00:09:42 --> 00:09:44 calibration and processing, and the release
00:09:44 --> 00:09:46 says they cut processing costs more than
00:09:46 --> 00:09:47 tenfold along the way.
00:09:48 --> 00:09:50 Anna: The paper was posted on Wednesday and has
00:09:50 --> 00:09:52 been accepted by Astronomy and Astrophysics,
00:09:53 --> 00:09:54 and the data have been made public.
00:09:55 --> 00:09:58 Avery: Now an honest hemisphere note. ELA's N1
00:09:58 --> 00:10:00 sits well up in the northern sky. From New
00:10:00 --> 00:10:02 York, it climbs to about 76 degrees. From
00:10:02 --> 00:10:04 Sydney, it barely scrapes one degree above
00:10:04 --> 00:10:05 the horizon.
00:10:05 --> 00:10:08 Anna: But the paper itself points south. It talks
00:10:08 --> 00:10:10 about laying the foundation for the next
00:10:10 --> 00:10:12 generation. And that includes SKA Low
00:10:12 --> 00:10:15 being built in Western Australia. More than
00:10:15 --> 00:10:18 130 antennas in 512
00:10:18 --> 00:10:21 stations, up to about 74 kilometres apart
00:10:21 --> 00:10:21 from.
00:10:21 --> 00:10:24 Avery: To be fair about the comparison, SKA Low
00:10:24 --> 00:10:26 won't match this image's sharpness. That
00:10:26 --> 00:10:28 takes lofar's baselines stretching right
00:10:28 --> 00:10:31 across Europe. By our own rough estimate, SKA
00:10:31 --> 00:10:33 LOS sharpest view at these frequencies will
00:10:33 --> 00:10:35 be a few arcseconds. Where it will shine
00:10:35 --> 00:10:38 is sensitivity and the whole southern sky.
00:10:39 --> 00:10:42 Anna: Rocket news now. On Thursday, Blue Origin
00:10:42 --> 00:10:44 announced two new pieces of hardware for its
00:10:44 --> 00:10:45 New Glenn rocket.
00:10:45 --> 00:10:48 Avery: First, a, uh, third stage called GS3.
00:10:48 --> 00:10:50 New Glenn currently flies with two stages.
00:10:50 --> 00:10:53 Its reusable booster uses seven BE4 engines
00:10:53 --> 00:10:55 and the upper stage has two BE3Us.
00:10:55 --> 00:10:58 It's about 98 metres tall and can lift around
00:10:58 --> 00:11:00 45 tons to low Earth orbit.
00:11:00 --> 00:11:03 Anna: GS3 sits on top and is powered by a single
00:11:03 --> 00:11:06 VE7. That's the engine Blue Origin developed
00:11:06 --> 00:11:08 for its Blue Moon lander. The company says
00:11:08 --> 00:11:10 the third stage allows satellites to be
00:11:10 --> 00:11:12 delivered directly to geostationary orbit and
00:11:12 --> 00:11:14 supports heavy science and exploration
00:11:14 --> 00:11:16 missions to the moon and deep space.
00:11:16 --> 00:11:18 Avery: Um, and there's already a customer. Blue
00:11:18 --> 00:11:20 Origin says an unnamed government customer
00:11:20 --> 00:11:23 has booked a GS3 mission into Cislunar space,
00:11:23 --> 00:11:25 the region between Earth and the moon.
00:11:25 --> 00:11:27 Targeted for 2028.
00:11:27 --> 00:11:29 Anna: The second announcement is a new booster
00:11:29 --> 00:11:32 engine called Northstar. Like BE4,
00:11:32 --> 00:11:35 it burns liquid oxygen and liquid methane.
00:11:35 --> 00:11:37 But Blue origin says it's 30% lighter, has
00:11:37 --> 00:11:40 half as many parts and pushes thrust up from
00:11:40 --> 00:11:43 640 to 715
00:11:43 --> 00:11:45 pounds force. They also say it can be
00:11:45 --> 00:11:46 assembled in under a day.
00:11:47 --> 00:11:49 Avery: No date yet for its first flight, though
00:11:49 --> 00:11:51 Anna: some context because it's been a rough year
00:11:51 --> 00:11:54 for New Glenn. On its third flight in April,
00:11:54 --> 00:11:56 it placed a communications satellite in the
00:11:56 --> 00:11:58 wrong orbit and the satellite was lost. Then
00:11:58 --> 00:12:01 in May, a rocket exploded on the pad during
00:12:01 --> 00:12:03 an engine test. The company has been
00:12:03 --> 00:12:04 rebuilding, with a fourth flight expected
00:12:04 --> 00:12:05 late this year.
00:12:06 --> 00:12:08 Avery: And this matters well beyond Blue Origin.
00:12:08 --> 00:12:10 Their Blue Moon lander is part of the Artemis
00:12:10 --> 00:12:13 plan we covered in episode 213. And Blue
00:12:13 --> 00:12:14 Origin also holds the NASA Mars
00:12:14 --> 00:12:16 Telecommunications orbiter contract, where
00:12:16 --> 00:12:19 Rocket Lab's protest is due to be decided by
00:12:19 --> 00:12:20 the Government Accountability Office around
00:12:20 --> 00:12:21 mid December.
00:12:22 --> 00:12:25 Anna: So new hardware on paper and a lot riding on
00:12:25 --> 00:12:27 the next launch. Planetary defence next.
00:12:27 --> 00:12:29 Avery: If a dangerous asteroid were found heading
00:12:29 --> 00:12:32 our way with too little warning for a gentle
00:12:32 --> 00:12:35 nudge, one last resort option is a nuclear
00:12:35 --> 00:12:38 device. Not to blow the asteroid up, but to
00:12:38 --> 00:12:39 detonate nearby
00:12:40 --> 00:12:42 Anna: in space, there's no shockwave in the air.
00:12:42 --> 00:12:44 What you get is an intense pulse of X rays.
00:12:45 --> 00:12:47 That pulse vaporises a thin layer of the
00:12:47 --> 00:12:50 surface. On one side, the vapour blasts off
00:12:50 --> 00:12:52 and the recoil shoves the asteroid the other
00:12:52 --> 00:12:52 way.
00:12:53 --> 00:12:55 Avery: A team led by Nathan Moore at ah Sandia
00:12:55 --> 00:12:57 National Laboratories has now modelled that
00:12:57 --> 00:13:00 with real asteroid shapes. Most earlier work
00:13:00 --> 00:13:03 treated asteroids as spheres because the math
00:13:03 --> 00:13:05 is easier. But as Moore points out, spherical
00:13:05 --> 00:13:06 uh, asteroids don't.
00:13:07 --> 00:13:09 Anna: They built a new algorithm which they say is
00:13:09 --> 00:13:12 over 1600 times faster and tested three
00:13:12 --> 00:13:15 very different shapes. Bennu, the spinning
00:13:15 --> 00:13:17 top asteroid, Itokawa the peanut
00:13:17 --> 00:13:19 and Golevka a lumpy one.
00:13:20 --> 00:13:22 Avery: The result is in the journal Icarus.
00:13:22 --> 00:13:24 Depending on which way the asteroid happens
00:13:24 --> 00:13:26 to be facing at the moment of the blast, the
00:13:26 --> 00:13:28 push it gets can vary by up to nearly two
00:13:28 --> 00:13:31 times for Bennu, four times for Itokawa and
00:13:31 --> 00:13:33 five times for Golevka.
00:13:33 --> 00:13:35 Anna: Orr's reaction was that they expected aim to
00:13:35 --> 00:13:37 matter. What surprised them was how much.
00:13:38 --> 00:13:41 Avery: Two caveats. The model handles rocks breaking
00:13:41 --> 00:13:43 off the surface, but not the whole asteroid
00:13:43 --> 00:13:46 breaking apart. And this is an option of last
00:13:46 --> 00:13:48 resort. A uh, kinetic impactor like dart is
00:13:48 --> 00:13:50 the preferred tool when there's time.
00:13:51 --> 00:13:53 Anna: But the lesson is know the shape
00:13:53 --> 00:13:56 first. Which is exactly what ESA's HERA
00:13:56 --> 00:13:58 mission is doing right now. At Didymos and
00:13:58 --> 00:14:01 Dimorphous, the pair dart hit. Detailed
00:14:01 --> 00:14:03 images of Dimorphos are due on the 25th.
00:14:04 --> 00:14:05 Avery: Next up, let's get a few quick stories.
00:14:06 --> 00:14:09 Anna: A few quick ones indeed. The space station's
00:14:09 --> 00:14:11 power upgrade is complete. On Thursday, Anil
00:14:11 --> 00:14:14 Menon and Canada's Joshua Kutryk installed
00:14:14 --> 00:14:16 the eighth and final rollout solar array,
00:14:16 --> 00:14:18 finishing a multi year project that boosts
00:14:18 --> 00:14:20 station power by about 30%.
00:14:21 --> 00:14:23 Avery: On Thursday's show we flagged Sunspot Region
00:14:23 --> 00:14:26 4566 with its tangled magnetic field. It
00:14:26 --> 00:14:29 delivered an M M3 flare at 18:33
00:14:29 --> 00:14:32 Universal Time on the 5th. That's 5:33 on
00:14:32 --> 00:14:34 Friday morning in Sydney. Meanwhile, NOAA's
00:14:34 --> 00:14:36 monthly sunspot number for October fell to
00:14:36 --> 00:14:39 45.7, down from
00:14:39 --> 00:14:42 60.3 in September. The sun is still winding
00:14:42 --> 00:14:44 down, but it can still bite. A big coronal
00:14:44 --> 00:14:46 hole is also turning toward us, so watch for
00:14:46 --> 00:14:48 auroras at high latitudes. This weekend,
00:14:49 --> 00:14:51 Anna: Earth has a new mini moon. It's called
00:14:51 --> 00:14:54 2026 QQ8, discovered in
00:14:54 --> 00:14:57 August by Christian Charnetsky and the
00:14:57 --> 00:14:59 Minor Planet Centre reported it on 29
00:14:59 --> 00:15:02 October. It's tiny, about 1 to 2 metres
00:15:02 --> 00:15:05 depending on who you ask. And it's been
00:15:05 --> 00:15:07 loosely held by Earth's gravity since around
00:15:07 --> 00:15:10 April. Expect it to drift away around the
00:15:10 --> 00:15:11 turn of the year.
00:15:11 --> 00:15:14 Avery: And Starship Flight 15 is still targeted for
00:15:14 --> 00:15:16 November with no date from SpaceX yet.
00:15:17 --> 00:15:19 Next, time to look up. And we'll start with
00:15:19 --> 00:15:21 something happening this weekend that isn't a
00:15:21 --> 00:15:23 star or a planet.
00:15:23 --> 00:15:26 Anna: NASA's TWIM Escapade spacecraft are swinging
00:15:26 --> 00:15:28 past Earth on their way to Mars, each firing
00:15:28 --> 00:15:31 its engine during the flyby. Both burns
00:15:31 --> 00:15:33 happen over southern Australia. The first is
00:15:33 --> 00:15:36 at 8:51 on Saturday night, Sydney time. The
00:15:36 --> 00:15:38 second is at 9:51 on Monday night.
00:15:38 --> 00:15:40 Avery: One thing our calculations turned up. At
00:15:40 --> 00:15:43 Saturday's burn, the sun is only 16 degrees
00:15:43 --> 00:15:46 below the horizon in Sydney, so the sky isn't
00:15:46 --> 00:15:48 fully dark yet. Monday's burn is in a
00:15:48 --> 00:15:50 properly dark sky. If you're planning to
00:15:50 --> 00:15:52 travel with a telescope, Monday's the better
00:15:52 --> 00:15:55 bet. In North America, that first burn falls
00:15:55 --> 00:15:57 into small hours of Saturday morning
00:15:57 --> 00:16:00 Anna: before sunrise this week, Venus sits just
00:16:00 --> 00:16:02 over a degree from the bright star Spica, uh,
00:16:02 --> 00:16:04 low in the east. On Saturday morning, a very
00:16:04 --> 00:16:07 thin crescent moon joins them. And this one
00:16:07 --> 00:16:09 is a northern wind. From New York, the Moon
00:16:09 --> 00:16:12 and Venus are about 1 1/2 degrees apart, from
00:16:12 --> 00:16:15 London, about 2, and from Los Angeles, closer
00:16:15 --> 00:16:15 to 3
00:16:16 --> 00:16:18 Avery: from Sydney. On Saturday, they're more than 8
00:16:18 --> 00:16:20 degrees apart. Our turn comes on Sunday
00:16:20 --> 00:16:23 morning when the moon is about 4 1/2 degrees
00:16:23 --> 00:16:26 from Venus, but it's only 2.5% lit
00:16:26 --> 00:16:28 and just 4 degrees up. So you'll need a clear
00:16:28 --> 00:16:30 eastern horizon. And some luck.
00:16:30 --> 00:16:33 Anna: New moon is on Monday the 9th at 7:02
00:16:33 --> 00:16:36 universal time. That's 6:02 on Monday
00:16:36 --> 00:16:38 evening in Sydney. Dark skies all round next
00:16:38 --> 00:16:39 week.
00:16:39 --> 00:16:41 Avery: And with the Moon out of the way, here's one
00:16:41 --> 00:16:44 for Southern observers. Messier 30, a
00:16:44 --> 00:16:46 globular cluster in Capricornis. NASA
00:16:46 --> 00:16:48 released a lovely new Hubble image of it this
00:16:48 --> 00:16:51 week. Once it's fully dark, it's about 67
00:16:51 --> 00:16:54 degrees up from Sydney. From Los Angeles and
00:16:54 --> 00:16:56 New York, it's down to about 33 degrees and
00:16:56 --> 00:16:59 from London just 15. That one's ours.
00:16:59 --> 00:17:02 Anna: Saturn is well placed in the evening sky
00:17:02 --> 00:17:04 everywhere about 50 degrees up from Sydney at
00:17:04 --> 00:17:07 full dark and a bit lower further north.
00:17:07 --> 00:17:10 Avery: And for the north, the headline act, Mars and
00:17:10 --> 00:17:12 Jupiter are, uh, closing in before dawn.
00:17:12 --> 00:17:14 They're about 4 degrees apart now and our
00:17:14 --> 00:17:16 calculations circulation puts their closest
00:17:16 --> 00:17:19 approach at 1.2 degrees at 2am Universal, um,
00:17:19 --> 00:17:21 time on the 16th.
00:17:21 --> 00:17:23 Anna: From Los Angeles, they're about 70 degrees up
00:17:23 --> 00:17:26 before sunrise. From New York, 64 from
00:17:26 --> 00:17:29 London, 53 from Sydney, about
00:17:29 --> 00:17:31 32. Still easy to see, just lower
00:17:31 --> 00:17:34 Avery: watch two for the northern Torrids, peaking
00:17:34 --> 00:17:36 around the 12th. Not many meteors, but
00:17:36 --> 00:17:39 they're known for slow, bright fireballs.
00:17:39 --> 00:17:42 Anna: And as always, because it's our duty to make
00:17:42 --> 00:17:45 sure you stay safe, never look directly
00:17:45 --> 00:17:47 at the sun. If you ever do observe it, use
00:17:47 --> 00:17:50 only a solar filter certified to ISO
00:17:50 --> 00:17:53 1231122 or a, uh, proper
00:17:53 --> 00:17:55 projection method. Ordinary sunglasses are
00:17:55 --> 00:17:56 not safe.
00:17:57 --> 00:17:59 Avery: That's the show for Friday. Light from
00:17:59 --> 00:18:01 newborn stars, clearing the fog of the early
00:18:01 --> 00:18:04 universe. The sharpest radio picture ever
00:18:04 --> 00:18:06 made at low frequencies. Blue origin's new
00:18:06 --> 00:18:09 hardware and white asteroid shapes matter.
00:18:09 --> 00:18:12 Anna: Tomorrow is the weekend wrap with the week
00:18:12 --> 00:18:14 that was. And if you've got a question about
00:18:14 --> 00:18:15 anything we've covered, you can reach us
00:18:15 --> 00:18:18 through the contact form@astronomydaily.IO,
00:18:18 --> 00:18:20 where you'll also find every episode and our
00:18:20 --> 00:18:21 newsletter.
00:18:21 --> 00:18:23 Avery: We're on social media. Astrodaily. Uh, Pod.
00:18:23 --> 00:18:24 I'm Avery.
00:18:24 --> 00:18:27 Anna: And I'm Anna. Clear skies, everyone. And
00:18:27 --> 00:18:29 if you're under a dark sky on Monday night in
00:18:29 --> 00:18:31 Australia, keep an eye out for a little
00:18:31 --> 00:18:33 spacecraft on its way to Mars.
00:18:36 --> 00:18:37
00:18:44 --> 00:18:45 Stories.
00:18:47 --> 00:18:47 Hmm.
00:18:53 --> 00:18:53 We told
00:18:56 --> 00:18:57 you.