S05E155 · Friday 31 July 2026 · Astronomy Daily with Anna & Avery. Four stories and a both-hemispheres skywatch. Australian English. ① Asteroid (44) Nysa — the first three-lobed world, and its hidden moon ● trilobate body — three lobes joined by two narrow necks; a candidate “first” of its kind. ● A new ~1 km moon, S/2026 (44) 1, was found orbiting ≥170 km out — spotted using high-contrast imaging borrowed from exoplanet work, and confirmed moving across two observing runs. ● The moon lets astronomers weigh Nysa (mass → density), which should help decide between a genuine contact-trinary and a single, deeply indented body. ● Nysa is a bright, main-belt E-type (enstatite-rich) asteroid, ~75 km across, known since 1857. ● Source: Lowell Observatory / University of Arizona press release, 29 Jul 2026; study “Unmasking (44) Nysa: Evidence for a Trilobate Structure” (Minker et al.). Coverage: Space.com, Gizmodo, 29–30 Jul 2026. ② Mapping Alien Continents — a NASA concept to image an exoplanet’s surface ● NASA’s 2026 NIAC round funds 18 early-stage “visionary” concepts (~$175k each, 9 months). These are seed studies, not missions. ● Paul Stankus (Brookhaven) proposes “Mapping Alien Continents”: resolve the surface of an Earth-like exoplanet — continents, oceans — in visible light. ● Method: a novel “dynamic hierarchical nulling” interferometer to suppress starlight at 10¹⁰-to-1 contrast, then combine beams from two spacecraft ~100 km apart (optical VLBI-style imaging). ● Source: NASA “2026 Innovative Technology Concepts” release and NIAC selections (posted 21 Jul; consolidated release ~29 Jul 2026); Universe Today feature, 30 Jul 2026. ③ Solar-storm watch — CMEs inbound, minor-storm and aurora potential ● Two faint coronal mass ejections, plus coronal-hole solar wind, are set to give Earth glancing blows; forecasters flag possible G1 (minor) geomagnetic storms and auroras over the coming days. ● G1 means little grid impact but aurora visible at somewhat lower latitudes than usual — see the skywatch for where to look, both hemispheres. ● Source: NOAA SWPC (WSA-ENLIL model); EarthSky / The Sun Today, 30 Jul 2026. ④ ESCAPADE’s family portrait of Earth and the Moon ● NASA’s twin Mars orbiters (“Blue” and “Gold,” built by Rocket Lab) imaged Earth and the Moon as thin crescents in visible and thermal-infrared light from a loiter orbit near Sun–Earth L2. ● In infrared, Earth’s night side glows with its own heat; the Moon’s shadowed half is far colder — a calibration check before Mars. ● ESCAPADE’s science goal (arrival Sept 2027): measure how the solar wind strips Mars’s unshielded atmosphere — the payoff of today’s solar-wind thread. ● Source: NASA (Goddard) image feature, ~25 Jul 2026 (images captured 3 Jul); NAU / phys.org; Universe Today, 29 Jul 2026. Skywatch — both hemispheres ● Bright waning-gibbous Moon (post-Buck-Moon, 29 Jul) washes out faint targets. ● Southern Delta Aquariids + Alpha Capricornids just past peak (SH-favoured; Moon-hampered). Perseids build to a near-moonless peak on the night of 12–13 Aug — prime for North America, low in the north for the SH. ● 12 Aug total solar eclipse: totality across Greenland / Iceland / Spain; partial for parts of northern North America and Europe. ISO 12312-2 eye protection required for any partial phase. ● Pre-dawn planets low in the east (Sydney and North American framing). Aurora watch for high latitudes both hemispheres if the storms land. ● Diary: a spent Falcon 9 upper stage (2025-010D) is predicted to hit the Moon near Einstein Crater on 5 Aug 2026, ~06:35 UTC (~2:34 a.m. ET). North America best-timed; telescope needed, Moon ~56% lit, target the limb dust plume. From Sydney the Moon is down at impact — rely on LRO after-images. Callback to E125/E147. Source: Fernando et al., arXiv 2607.14625.
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00:00:00 --> 00:00:01 Picture
00:00:01 --> 00:00:04 an asteroid. You're probably imagining a
00:00:04 --> 00:00:07 potato, one lump of rock tumbling
00:00:07 --> 00:00:10 through the dark. Now imagine three
00:00:10 --> 00:00:13 lumps joined at the neck like a cosmic
00:00:13 --> 00:00:17 string of pearls and a tiny moon keeping
00:00:17 --> 00:00:18 pace alongside.
00:00:18 --> 00:00:21 >> That's a real object out in the main
00:00:21 --> 00:00:23 belt. And until this week, nobody knew
00:00:23 --> 00:00:25 it looked like that. We'll take you
00:00:25 --> 00:00:26 there first,
00:00:26 --> 00:00:29 >> and then we'll chase a wind. one that
00:00:29 --> 00:00:32 lights up our own sky and the same kind
00:00:32 --> 00:00:35 of wind that's slowly stripping a planet
00:00:35 --> 00:00:36 bare.
00:00:36 --> 00:00:39 >> Good day and welcome to Astronomy Daily.
00:00:39 --> 00:00:43 It's Friday, the 31st of July, 2026. I'm
00:00:43 --> 00:00:44 Avery.
00:00:44 --> 00:00:47 >> And I'm Anna. Four stories today. A sky
00:00:47 --> 00:00:50 watch that spans both hemispheres and a
00:00:50 --> 00:00:52 thread running right through the back
00:00:52 --> 00:00:55 half of the show. Avery, where do we
00:00:55 --> 00:00:58 start? Where else with the three-faced
00:00:58 --> 00:00:59 asteroid?
00:00:59 --> 00:01:03 >> So, asteroid 44 Nissa, the number tells
00:01:03 --> 00:01:05 you it was one of the early finds
00:01:06 --> 00:01:09 discovered back in 1857.
00:01:09 --> 00:01:11 One of the brightest asteroids in the
00:01:11 --> 00:01:14 whole main belt, that broad river of
00:01:14 --> 00:01:17 rubble between Mars and Jupiter. It's
00:01:17 --> 00:01:21 about 75 km across at its widest. So a
00:01:21 --> 00:01:24 serious chunk of rock, one of the
00:01:24 --> 00:01:27 largest of its particular type. Its type
00:01:27 --> 00:01:30 matters here. Nissa is what astronomers
00:01:30 --> 00:01:34 call an E type. Its surface is rich in a
00:01:34 --> 00:01:37 pale mineral called instatite, which
00:01:37 --> 00:01:39 makes it unusually bright and
00:01:39 --> 00:01:41 reflective. There aren't many big E
00:01:42 --> 00:01:44 types, so Nissa has always been a bit of
00:01:44 --> 00:01:47 a favorite, but its shape has been a
00:01:47 --> 00:01:50 nagging mystery for years. Earlier
00:01:50 --> 00:01:53 observations hinted it might be what's
00:01:53 --> 00:01:56 called a contact binary. Two loes stuck
00:01:56 --> 00:01:59 together, a bit like a peanut or a
00:01:59 --> 00:02:02 snowman. We've seen plenty of those.
00:02:02 --> 00:02:05 Comet 67P that Rosetta visited. The
00:02:05 --> 00:02:08 little asteroid deorphice that the NASA
00:02:08 --> 00:02:11 dart mission crashed into last year.
00:02:11 --> 00:02:13 Donald Johansson that the Lucy
00:02:13 --> 00:02:15 spacecraft flew past last year. Two
00:02:15 --> 00:02:19 lobes is almost normal. Bisa isn't
00:02:19 --> 00:02:22 normal. A team led by Kate Minker at
00:02:22 --> 00:02:25 Lowel Observatory has just announced in
00:02:25 --> 00:02:28 a study with the wonderful title
00:02:28 --> 00:02:32 unmasking 44 Nissa that Nissa appears to
00:02:32 --> 00:02:36 have three loes, three joined by two
00:02:36 --> 00:02:39 narrow necks like a figure carved with
00:02:39 --> 00:02:42 two deep waists around it. If it holds
00:02:42 --> 00:02:45 up, it's the first triilobed asteroid
00:02:45 --> 00:02:46 ever seen.
00:02:46 --> 00:02:49 >> Three loes. How do you even see that?
00:02:49 --> 00:02:51 These things are tiny dots even in big
00:02:51 --> 00:02:52 telescopes.
00:02:52 --> 00:02:55 >> That's the clever part. They used two of
00:02:55 --> 00:02:58 the sharpest eyes on Earth. The large
00:02:58 --> 00:03:01 binocular telescope in Arizona, its main
00:03:01 --> 00:03:04 mirror is about 8 m, roughly three times
00:03:04 --> 00:03:06 the size of Hubble's, running an
00:03:06 --> 00:03:09 instrument called Shark Vis. Plus, the
00:03:09 --> 00:03:12 very large telescope down in Chile. And
00:03:12 --> 00:03:15 they used adaptive optics, a mirror that
00:03:15 --> 00:03:18 flexes hundreds of times a second,
00:03:18 --> 00:03:21 nearly 600 tiny actuators pushing on it
00:03:22 --> 00:03:24 to cancel out the blurring of our
00:03:24 --> 00:03:27 atmosphere in real time. The result is
00:03:27 --> 00:03:30 sharper than Hubble. They imaged Nissa
00:03:30 --> 00:03:33 on two nights, the 15th of February and
00:03:33 --> 00:03:35 the 21st of March this year, and both
00:03:35 --> 00:03:38 times the same strange threepart
00:03:38 --> 00:03:41 silhouette turned up. Which brings us to
00:03:41 --> 00:03:44 the second surprise. Nissa has a moon, a
00:03:44 --> 00:03:47 little one about a kilometer across,
00:03:47 --> 00:03:51 orbiting at least 170 km out. It's been
00:03:51 --> 00:03:57 given the placeholder name S/2026-441,
00:03:57 --> 00:04:00 and it was hiding in plain sight,
00:04:00 --> 00:04:02 drowned out by the glare of the much
00:04:02 --> 00:04:05 brighter asteroid next to it. To dig it
00:04:05 --> 00:04:07 out, the team borrowed a trick from a
00:04:07 --> 00:04:09 completely different corner of
00:04:09 --> 00:04:12 astronomy. High contrast imaging. The
00:04:12 --> 00:04:14 same family of techniques we used to
00:04:14 --> 00:04:17 pull a faint planet out of the glare of
00:04:17 --> 00:04:20 its star. As one of the shark viss
00:04:20 --> 00:04:23 scientists, Gian Luca Lee put it. They
00:04:23 --> 00:04:26 used that technique to catch a faint
00:04:26 --> 00:04:28 companion whose light was being swamped
00:04:28 --> 00:04:31 by the primary. And because they caught
00:04:31 --> 00:04:33 it moving across two separate observing
00:04:33 --> 00:04:37 runs, they know it's genuinely in orbit,
00:04:37 --> 00:04:39 not a background star photobombing the
00:04:39 --> 00:04:42 shot. And a moon is useful, right? Not
00:04:42 --> 00:04:43 just a bonus.
00:04:43 --> 00:04:46 >> It's enormously useful. This is the
00:04:46 --> 00:04:48 thing I love about it. Watch how fast
00:04:48 --> 00:04:51 the moon goes around and how far out it
00:04:51 --> 00:04:54 sits. And you can weigh the asteroid.
00:04:54 --> 00:04:57 You get nice mass. Combine the mass with
00:04:57 --> 00:05:00 the size and you get its density. And
00:05:00 --> 00:05:02 density is the whole ball game here
00:05:02 --> 00:05:05 because there are two competing stories
00:05:05 --> 00:05:08 for what NISA actually is. Story one,
00:05:08 --> 00:05:12 it's a genuine threepart body, maybe a
00:05:12 --> 00:05:14 contact trinary. Three chunks that
00:05:14 --> 00:05:18 drifted together and gently stuck. Story
00:05:18 --> 00:05:21 two, it's one solid, deeply dented lump
00:05:21 --> 00:05:24 that only looks threeloed from our
00:05:24 --> 00:05:26 angle. Density can help tell those
00:05:26 --> 00:05:29 apart. A loose rubble pile reads light
00:05:29 --> 00:05:33 and fluffy. A solid coherent rock reads
00:05:33 --> 00:05:36 dense. So that little moon is going to
00:05:36 --> 00:05:38 help settle what kind of world this is
00:05:38 --> 00:05:41 and how it got so weird.
00:05:41 --> 00:05:43 >> Any theories on the how?
00:05:43 --> 00:05:45 >> Nothing locked in. And that honesty is
00:05:45 --> 00:05:48 the fun of it. It could be a record of
00:05:48 --> 00:05:51 gentle slow motion collisions in the
00:05:51 --> 00:05:54 belt. bodies bumping and merging over
00:05:54 --> 00:05:56 billions of years. It could be the
00:05:56 --> 00:05:59 aftermath of a bigger smash that left a
00:05:59 --> 00:06:02 battered survivor. Or observations of
00:06:02 --> 00:06:05 that moon will narrow it down. For now,
00:06:05 --> 00:06:08 we've got a brand new kind of object, a
00:06:08 --> 00:06:10 triple lobed asteroid with its own
00:06:10 --> 00:06:13 satellite sitting in a part of the sky
00:06:13 --> 00:06:15 we thought we understood. And that's the
00:06:15 --> 00:06:18 quiet lesson of NISA. It was found in
00:06:18 --> 00:06:21 1857. It's one of the best studied
00:06:22 --> 00:06:25 bright asteroids we have. And in 2026,
00:06:25 --> 00:06:28 it still had two secrets left. A shape
00:06:28 --> 00:06:31 nobody expected and a moon nobody had
00:06:31 --> 00:06:34 seen. The solar system is not done
00:06:34 --> 00:06:37 surprising us. From a world we can
00:06:37 --> 00:06:40 nearly touch to one we may never reach,
00:06:40 --> 00:06:43 but might one day actually see, NASA has
00:06:43 --> 00:06:46 just backed a genuinely audacious idea.
00:06:46 --> 00:06:48 A plan to photograph the surface of a
00:06:48 --> 00:06:51 planet around another star. Not detect
00:06:51 --> 00:06:55 it, not measure it, see it. Continents,
00:06:55 --> 00:06:56 oceans, weather.
00:06:56 --> 00:06:59 >> Hang on. We can't do that. I feel like
00:06:59 --> 00:07:02 we have pictures of exoplanets.
00:07:02 --> 00:07:05 >> We have dots. Every exoplanet we've ever
00:07:05 --> 00:07:08 found is in a sense invisible. We infer
00:07:08 --> 00:07:10 it from a stars tiny wobble or a faint
00:07:10 --> 00:07:13 dip in brightness as a planet crosses in
00:07:13 --> 00:07:15 front. In the very best cases, we've
00:07:15 --> 00:07:18 captured a single pixel of light. Nobody
00:07:18 --> 00:07:20 has ever resolved a surface. The problem
00:07:20 --> 00:07:23 is brutal. A star can be around 10
00:07:23 --> 00:07:24 billion times brighter than the little
00:07:24 --> 00:07:26 Earth-sized planet beside it. And the
00:07:26 --> 00:07:29 two sit almost on top of each other in
00:07:29 --> 00:07:31 the sky. The new concept comes from
00:07:31 --> 00:07:33 physicist Paul Stanis at Brook Haven,
00:07:34 --> 00:07:36 and it's one of 18 early stage ideas
00:07:36 --> 00:07:38 NASA just funded through its innovative
00:07:38 --> 00:07:41 advanced concepts program, NYAK. These
00:07:41 --> 00:07:44 are seed grants. Small money, 9 months,
00:07:44 --> 00:07:46 permission to chase something wild. This
00:07:46 --> 00:07:49 is called mapping alien continents. It
00:07:49 --> 00:07:51 works in two moves. First, a new kind of
00:07:51 --> 00:07:54 light cancelling instrument, another
00:07:54 --> 00:07:56 that blotss out the stars glare while
00:07:56 --> 00:07:58 keeping the planet's light at a contrast
00:07:58 --> 00:08:01 of 10 billion to one or better. Then the
00:08:01 --> 00:08:03 really bold bit. You fly two of these on
00:08:03 --> 00:08:06 separate spacecraft about a 100 km apart
00:08:06 --> 00:08:08 and combine their beams so they act as
00:08:08 --> 00:08:11 one enormous telescope big enough in
00:08:11 --> 00:08:13 principle to resolve features on the
00:08:13 --> 00:08:14 planet's face.
00:08:14 --> 00:08:18 >> A telescope 100 km wide made of two
00:08:18 --> 00:08:20 spacecraft flying in formation.
00:08:20 --> 00:08:22 >> That's a dream. And I want to be honest
00:08:22 --> 00:08:24 about where this sits. It's a concept
00:08:24 --> 00:08:27 study, not a mission on a launchpad. It
00:08:27 --> 00:08:29 may never fly in this form, but this is
00:08:29 --> 00:08:32 exactly how the big leaps begin. Someone
00:08:32 --> 00:08:34 asks, "What if we could actually look?"
00:08:34 --> 00:08:36 And NASA hands him a little funding to
00:08:36 --> 00:08:38 find out whether the physics holds. If
00:08:38 --> 00:08:40 it ever came together, it would turn
00:08:40 --> 00:08:44 exoplanets from statistics into places.
00:08:44 --> 00:08:46 Now, Anna, speaking of things we can see
00:08:46 --> 00:08:48 from right here, we've got weather
00:08:48 --> 00:08:51 coming in. Space weather. Forecasters at
00:08:51 --> 00:08:54 Noah are tracking a couple of clouds of
00:08:54 --> 00:08:56 solar material heading our way. Coronal
00:08:56 --> 00:09:00 mass ejections. Big blobs of charged gas
00:09:00 --> 00:09:03 flung off the sun. These two are faint
00:09:03 --> 00:09:05 and they're only likely to give Earth a
00:09:05 --> 00:09:08 glancing blow over the next day or so.
00:09:08 --> 00:09:10 >> Glancing, but not nothing.
00:09:10 --> 00:09:14 >> Not nothing. Layer those CMEs on top of
00:09:14 --> 00:09:16 a fast stream already flowing from a
00:09:16 --> 00:09:19 coronal hole, a gap in the sun's outer
00:09:19 --> 00:09:21 atmosphere, and the models suggest we
00:09:22 --> 00:09:25 could tip into a G1 storm. That's the
00:09:25 --> 00:09:27 mildest rung on the scale. No drama for
00:09:27 --> 00:09:29 the power grid, but enough to nudge the
00:09:29 --> 00:09:32 aurora to slightly lower latitudes than
00:09:32 --> 00:09:35 usual. Though over the coming nights,
00:09:35 --> 00:09:37 it's worth a look if you're up high. And
00:09:37 --> 00:09:39 I'll give you the where and when in the
00:09:39 --> 00:09:42 sky watch. Here's the thread, though.
00:09:42 --> 00:09:44 That same solar wind, the constant
00:09:44 --> 00:09:47 outflow from the sun is gentle at Earth
00:09:47 --> 00:09:49 because we've got a strong magnetic
00:09:49 --> 00:09:52 field and a thick atmosphere shrugging
00:09:52 --> 00:09:55 it off. Auroras are the pretty side of
00:09:55 --> 00:09:57 that shrug. But not every world is so
00:09:58 --> 00:10:00 lucky. Some planets have been standing
00:10:00 --> 00:10:03 in that wind for billions of years with
00:10:03 --> 00:10:04 no shield at all.
00:10:04 --> 00:10:06 >> Which is the perfect cue for my next
00:10:06 --> 00:10:09 one. Meet Escapade. A pair of NASA's
00:10:10 --> 00:10:12 craft nicknamed blue and gold after the
00:10:12 --> 00:10:14 University of California Berkeley colors
00:10:14 --> 00:10:17 built by Rocket Lab and launched last
00:10:17 --> 00:10:19 November on a Blue Origin New Glenn.
00:10:19 --> 00:10:22 They're Marsbound, and right now they're
00:10:22 --> 00:10:24 loitering out near a spot called L2,
00:10:24 --> 00:10:26 about a million miles beyond Earth,
00:10:26 --> 00:10:29 waiting for the road to Mars to open.
00:10:29 --> 00:10:31 While they wait, one of them turned its
00:10:31 --> 00:10:34 cameras back toward home and snapped a
00:10:34 --> 00:10:36 family portrait. Earth and the moon
00:10:36 --> 00:10:39 together as two slim crescents. In
00:10:39 --> 00:10:41 ordinary visible light, they look
00:10:41 --> 00:10:43 exactly as you'd hope, two bright sunlit
00:10:43 --> 00:10:46 sickles against the black. But these
00:10:46 --> 00:10:48 cameras also see in thermal infrared
00:10:48 --> 00:10:51 heat, and that view is stranger and
00:10:51 --> 00:10:53 honestly a bit beautiful. The night side
00:10:53 --> 00:10:55 of Earth glows softly with its own
00:10:56 --> 00:10:58 warmth, while the moon's dark half sits
00:10:58 --> 00:11:01 far, far colder. A portrait in light and
00:11:02 --> 00:11:04 a portrait in heat of the same two
00:11:04 --> 00:11:05 worlds.
00:11:05 --> 00:11:07 >> Gorgeous. But that's not why they built
00:11:07 --> 00:11:08 it, is it?
00:11:08 --> 00:11:10 >> It's not. And here's where our thread
00:11:10 --> 00:11:13 lands. Escapade exists to study exactly
00:11:13 --> 00:11:15 what we were just talking about. Its
00:11:15 --> 00:11:17 whole job once it reaches Mars in 2027
00:11:17 --> 00:11:20 is to measure how the solar wind strips
00:11:20 --> 00:11:22 away the Martian atmosphere. Mars
00:11:22 --> 00:11:24 doesn't have a global magnetic shield
00:11:24 --> 00:11:26 like ours. So the same wind that just
00:11:26 --> 00:11:28 gives us auroras has over billions of
00:11:28 --> 00:11:31 years helped peel Mars from a warmer,
00:11:31 --> 00:11:33 wetter world into the thin, cold desert
00:11:33 --> 00:11:36 we see today. Two spacecraft taking
00:11:36 --> 00:11:38 readings from two vantage points at
00:11:38 --> 00:11:40 once, watching a planet lose its air in
00:11:40 --> 00:11:43 real time. That Earth and Moon portrait
00:11:43 --> 00:11:45 was really a calibration check, a chance
00:11:45 --> 00:11:47 to point the cameras at familiar targets
00:11:47 --> 00:11:50 before the main event, but it doubles as
00:11:50 --> 00:11:52 a quiet reminder. A shielded world and
00:11:52 --> 00:11:55 an unshielded one are separated by not
00:11:55 --> 00:11:58 very much at all. The wind that paints
00:11:58 --> 00:12:01 our sky and the wind that scour Mars.
00:12:01 --> 00:12:05 Same sun. Lovely thread, Avery. Right
00:12:05 --> 00:12:08 out under the sky. First, the moon.
00:12:08 --> 00:12:10 We've just come off the full buck moon
00:12:10 --> 00:12:13 on the 29th, so we're in a bright waning
00:12:13 --> 00:12:16 gibbous stretch. Beautiful to look at,
00:12:16 --> 00:12:18 but that glare will wash out anything
00:12:18 --> 00:12:20 faint for the next several nights. Worth
00:12:20 --> 00:12:23 knowing before you plan.
00:12:23 --> 00:12:26 The southern delta aquarids and the
00:12:26 --> 00:12:28 alpha Capricornids have just passed
00:12:28 --> 00:12:31 their peak on the 30th into the 31st.
00:12:31 --> 00:12:33 From here in the southern hemisphere,
00:12:33 --> 00:12:36 the Delta Aquar still favor us. But with
00:12:36 --> 00:12:39 the moon this bright, keep expectations
00:12:39 --> 00:12:41 modest and watch for the occasional
00:12:41 --> 00:12:45 slow, bright Capricorned fireball, which
00:12:45 --> 00:12:47 both hemispheres can catch. The better
00:12:47 --> 00:12:50 news is what's coming. The Perciads
00:12:50 --> 00:12:52 build to their peak on the night of the
00:12:52 --> 00:12:55 12th into the 13th of August. And this
00:12:55 --> 00:12:58 year, the moon is nearly new, so it's a
00:12:58 --> 00:13:01 genuinely dark, generous window for
00:13:01 --> 00:13:03 North America. That's prime. Find a dark
00:13:03 --> 00:13:06 spot, look up after midnight, and the
00:13:06 --> 00:13:08 northern sky can deliver a meteor a
00:13:08 --> 00:13:10 minute at its best. From the southern
00:13:10 --> 00:13:13 hemisphere, the Perciads sit low in the
00:13:13 --> 00:13:16 north, so you'll see fewer, but a clear
00:13:16 --> 00:13:19 northern horizon is worth a try. Mark
00:13:19 --> 00:13:22 the 12th. Also on the 12th of August, a
00:13:22 --> 00:13:24 total solar eclipse. The path of
00:13:24 --> 00:13:27 totality runs across Greenland, Iceland,
00:13:27 --> 00:13:30 and a slice of Spain with partial phases
00:13:30 --> 00:13:33 for parts of northern North America and
00:13:33 --> 00:13:35 Europe. If you're anywhere near it,
00:13:35 --> 00:13:37 never look at the partial sun without
00:13:37 --> 00:13:40 certified eclipse glasses that meet the
00:13:40 --> 00:13:43 ISO12312-2
00:13:43 --> 00:13:46 standard. Ordinary sunglasses will not
00:13:46 --> 00:13:49 protect your eyes. Totality only is safe
00:13:49 --> 00:13:51 to view with the naked eye and only for
00:13:51 --> 00:13:54 those precious seconds it lasts. Planets
00:13:54 --> 00:13:57 quickly both hemispheres. The pre-dawn
00:13:57 --> 00:14:00 sky is the place to be with the brighter
00:14:00 --> 00:14:02 planets gathering low in the east before
00:14:02 --> 00:14:05 sunrise. From Sydney, look to the
00:14:05 --> 00:14:08 eastern horizon in the hour before dawn.
00:14:08 --> 00:14:10 From North America, the same window an
00:14:10 --> 00:14:13 hour or so before your local sunrise.
00:14:14 --> 00:14:16 One quick diary item, and this one's for
00:14:16 --> 00:14:19 our telescope owners. On the 5th of
00:14:19 --> 00:14:22 August, a dead SpaceX Falcon 9 upper
00:14:22 --> 00:14:24 stage, space junk we tracked since it
00:14:24 --> 00:14:27 launched Fireflyy's blue ghost lander
00:14:27 --> 00:14:29 back in January of last year, is
00:14:29 --> 00:14:32 expected to smack into the moon near
00:14:32 --> 00:14:35 Einstein Crater at about half 6
00:14:35 --> 00:14:37 universal time. For North America,
00:14:38 --> 00:14:40 that's the small hours of the 5th, and
00:14:40 --> 00:14:43 you're the best place to try for it. Aim
00:14:43 --> 00:14:45 for the faint dust plume near the moon's
00:14:45 --> 00:14:48 eastern edge, not a naked eye flash.
00:14:48 --> 00:14:50 You'll want a decent telescope. From
00:14:50 --> 00:14:53 Sydney, the moon isn't up at impact. So
00:14:53 --> 00:14:55 down here, we'll be leaning on the after
00:14:55 --> 00:14:58 images from orbiters like NASA's Lunar
00:14:58 --> 00:15:01 Reconnaissance Orbiter. And to close our
00:15:01 --> 00:15:03 thread, the aurora. If those solar
00:15:03 --> 00:15:06 storms land as forecast, watch the high
00:15:06 --> 00:15:09 latitudes over the coming nights across
00:15:09 --> 00:15:11 the northern tier of the United States
00:15:11 --> 00:15:14 and up into Canada in the north and down
00:15:14 --> 00:15:17 towards Tasmania, southern New Zealand,
00:15:17 --> 00:15:19 and southern Victoria in the south. Same
00:15:19 --> 00:15:22 sun, same wind, both ends of the Earth.
00:15:22 --> 00:15:25 And if you catch a glow, you'll know
00:15:25 --> 00:15:26 exactly what you're looking at.
00:15:26 --> 00:15:28 Everything we talked about today, the
00:15:28 --> 00:15:31 links, the images of NISA and that Earth
00:15:31 --> 00:15:35 and Moon portrait is at astronomyaily.io
00:15:35 --> 00:15:37 along with the daily news feed and the
00:15:37 --> 00:15:38 newsletter signup.
00:15:38 --> 00:15:40 >> And if you spotted an aurora or bagged a
00:15:40 --> 00:15:43 Percied, tell us. There's a listener
00:15:43 --> 00:15:45 contact form on the site and we love
00:15:45 --> 00:15:46 hearing what you've seen.
00:15:46 --> 00:15:48 >> That's Astronomy Daily for Friday the
00:15:48 --> 00:15:51 31st of July. I'm Avery
00:15:51 --> 00:15:53 >> and I'm Anna. Until next time, clear
00:15:53 --> 00:15:57 skies. Astronomy day.
00:15:57 --> 00:16:05 Stories be told.
00:16:05 --> 00:16:09 Stories told.