00:00:00 --> 00:00:02 Heidi Campo: Welcome back to another fun and exciting
00:00:02 --> 00:00:05 episode of Space Nuts, the
00:00:05 --> 00:00:07 podcast that is out of this world.
00:00:07 --> 00:00:10 Voice Over Guy: 15 seconds. Guidance is internal.
00:00:10 --> 00:00:12 10, 9. Ignition
00:00:12 --> 00:00:15 sequence start. Space nuts. 5, 4, 3,
00:00:15 --> 00:00:18 2. 1. 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 4,
00:00:18 --> 00:00:21 3, 2, 1. Space nuts astronauts
00:00:21 --> 00:00:23 report it feels good.
00:00:23 --> 00:00:26 Heidi Campo: And joining us today is Professor Fred Fred
00:00:26 --> 00:00:29 Watson, astronomer at large.
00:00:29 --> 00:00:30 How are you today, Fred?
00:00:31 --> 00:00:34 Professor Fred Watson: Um, I'm very well. Probably a
00:00:34 --> 00:00:36 bit better than you are, because I hear you
00:00:36 --> 00:00:37 haven't been too well lately, and I hope
00:00:37 --> 00:00:39 you're feeling a little bit better, a little.
00:00:39 --> 00:00:41 Heidi Campo: Little under the weather, which is probably
00:00:41 --> 00:00:42 why I forgot to introduce myself.
00:00:42 --> 00:00:45 I am your. I am your.
00:00:45 --> 00:00:46 Professor Fred Watson: I should.
00:00:47 --> 00:00:49 Heidi Campo: I am the host of this episode. My, uh, name
00:00:49 --> 00:00:52 is Heidi Campo. I am filling in for Andrew
00:00:52 --> 00:00:55 Dunkley, who is our regular host, who is on a
00:00:55 --> 00:00:57 cruise around the world right now, and he's
00:00:57 --> 00:01:00 having just the time of his life. Um, you
00:01:00 --> 00:01:02 know, yeah, I've been better. I've been
00:01:02 --> 00:01:05 worse. Uh, I think this is just. I've
00:01:05 --> 00:01:08 been battling a fever. But the good thing
00:01:08 --> 00:01:10 about podcasting is we can do this at a
00:01:10 --> 00:01:11 distance.
00:01:12 --> 00:01:14 Professor Fred Watson: Uh, in fact, a distance almost equal to the
00:01:14 --> 00:01:17 Earth's diameter. It's quite a long way that
00:01:17 --> 00:01:19 separates us. Not quite, but getting
00:01:19 --> 00:01:20 on that way.
00:01:20 --> 00:01:23 Heidi Campo: Yeah, it's, uh, it's always my. My evenings,
00:01:23 --> 00:01:25 your mornings, my summer, your winter. It's
00:01:25 --> 00:01:27 opposite in so many ways.
00:01:27 --> 00:01:28 Professor Fred Watson: All wrong.
00:01:28 --> 00:01:28 Heidi Campo: But.
00:01:28 --> 00:01:30 Professor Fred Watson: But, uh, we're on the same. We're on the same
00:01:30 --> 00:01:30 page.
00:01:31 --> 00:01:31 Heidi Campo: We are.
00:01:31 --> 00:01:34 And. And one thing that I think everyone
00:01:34 --> 00:01:37 around the world can be on the same page on
00:01:37 --> 00:01:39 is everybody is always
00:01:39 --> 00:01:42 fascinated with extraterrestrial life
00:01:42 --> 00:01:44 and the search of it and the question of, is
00:01:44 --> 00:01:47 there life outside of our little
00:01:47 --> 00:01:50 blue marble that we live on? And it
00:01:50 --> 00:01:52 looks like our first story today is kind of
00:01:52 --> 00:01:55 talking about just that, um, they're
00:01:55 --> 00:01:58 scanning the famous. The Earthrise
00:01:58 --> 00:02:01 crater on a mission to find
00:02:01 --> 00:02:02 alien life.
00:02:03 --> 00:02:04 Professor Fred Watson: Uh, that's right.
00:02:04 --> 00:02:04 Heidi Campo: Um.
00:02:05 --> 00:02:07 Professor Fred Watson: Ah, I love this story because it links
00:02:07 --> 00:02:10 two very different eras in
00:02:10 --> 00:02:13 space flight. Um, it goes back
00:02:13 --> 00:02:16 right to the beginning of human flight in
00:02:16 --> 00:02:18 space, uh, when on
00:02:18 --> 00:02:21 the 24th of December,
00:02:21 --> 00:02:24 1968, uh, William
00:02:24 --> 00:02:26 Anders, one of the three astronauts orbiting
00:02:26 --> 00:02:29 the moon on the Apollo 8 mission. Apollo 8
00:02:29 --> 00:02:31 was a mission that did not land on the moon,
00:02:31 --> 00:02:32 but it was the first time humans had
00:02:32 --> 00:02:35 circumnavigated the moon. Uh, he took
00:02:35 --> 00:02:38 that amazing image of the
00:02:38 --> 00:02:41 gibbous Earth, the Earth, uh, sort of partly
00:02:41 --> 00:02:43 illuminated, rising above the limb of the
00:02:43 --> 00:02:45 moon. And, um,
00:02:46 --> 00:02:49 I, uh, remember that so clearly. Um, Heidi,
00:02:49 --> 00:02:52 I know it's long before your time but it
00:02:52 --> 00:02:55 was so exciting, Christmas Eve, really
00:02:55 --> 00:02:58 special, uh, that we got this image
00:02:58 --> 00:03:01 back with some very appropriate words as well
00:03:01 --> 00:03:04 from the crew of Apollo 8. And it was, you
00:03:04 --> 00:03:06 know, it was the dawn of human spaceflight
00:03:06 --> 00:03:09 going to the moon. It was really. We thought,
00:03:10 --> 00:03:12 um. We thought there would be no end to this,
00:03:12 --> 00:03:14 that we'd be living on the moon by the
00:03:14 --> 00:03:17 1980s. It was an amazing
00:03:17 --> 00:03:19 time. Uh, so as I said, I remember it with
00:03:19 --> 00:03:21 great excitement. You probably picked that up
00:03:21 --> 00:03:23 already. Uh, now, um, in the foreground of
00:03:23 --> 00:03:26 that image is a large crater. Um,
00:03:26 --> 00:03:29 it's about 40 kilometers or 25 miles
00:03:29 --> 00:03:31 across. Uh, it was known as
00:03:31 --> 00:03:34 Pasteur T, Named after Louis
00:03:34 --> 00:03:37 Pasteur, uh, Pasteur T. Not, uh,
00:03:37 --> 00:03:39 quite sure what the T was. I think it was
00:03:39 --> 00:03:40 because there's probably a different one with
00:03:40 --> 00:03:43 a different letter as well. Um,
00:03:43 --> 00:03:46 um. But, uh, following
00:03:46 --> 00:03:49 the image and the fame and the iconic
00:03:49 --> 00:03:52 nature that that image, uh, taken by Apollo 8
00:03:52 --> 00:03:55 astronauts, um, produced, uh,
00:03:55 --> 00:03:57 that, uh, crater was renamed,
00:03:58 --> 00:04:00 uh, Anders Earthrise, named after William
00:04:00 --> 00:04:03 Anders, who is the astronaut who took the
00:04:03 --> 00:04:06 photo. And I've just checked and I'm sorry to
00:04:06 --> 00:04:08 say William Anders is no longer with us. He
00:04:08 --> 00:04:10 passed away just over a year ago in June
00:04:11 --> 00:04:14 2024. But an
00:04:14 --> 00:04:16 exciting life he led. Uh, and so
00:04:16 --> 00:04:19 here we have this, uh, wonderful crater, well
00:04:19 --> 00:04:21 known, perhaps the best known of all lunar
00:04:21 --> 00:04:23 craters, even though it's not one of the
00:04:23 --> 00:04:26 biggest by any means. Uh, but what has
00:04:26 --> 00:04:28 happened now, uh, to link it with
00:04:28 --> 00:04:30 spaceflight today and to link it with your
00:04:30 --> 00:04:33 intro, uh, which, uh, is
00:04:33 --> 00:04:36 all related to astrobiology and the hunt
00:04:36 --> 00:04:38 for evidence of living
00:04:38 --> 00:04:41 organisms beyond our own planet. Uh, and one
00:04:41 --> 00:04:44 of the space missions that has that,
00:04:44 --> 00:04:47 uh, very much in mind is a European one.
00:04:47 --> 00:04:49 It's not a NASA mission. It's a European
00:04:49 --> 00:04:51 Space Agency mission. It's called juice.
00:04:52 --> 00:04:55 Juice, um, is an acronym for the Jupiter Icy
00:04:55 --> 00:04:57 Moons Explorer. Not quite sure what happened
00:04:57 --> 00:05:00 to the M in that, uh, in that acronym, but
00:05:00 --> 00:05:03 never mind. JUICE is a good name. Launched,
00:05:03 --> 00:05:06 uh, back in, uh, 2023, uh,
00:05:06 --> 00:05:09 and on its way to Jupiter with a few, um,
00:05:09 --> 00:05:11 slingshot maneuvers. Uh, it's, uh, going
00:05:11 --> 00:05:14 to reach Jupiter orbit in
00:05:14 --> 00:05:16 2031. Uh, and,
00:05:16 --> 00:05:19 um, why are we talking about that in relation
00:05:19 --> 00:05:22 to the moon? Because, um,
00:05:22 --> 00:05:25 the spacecraft, uh, it's actually almost a
00:05:25 --> 00:05:28 year ago now, actually, um, flew past the
00:05:28 --> 00:05:31 moon, uh, and used that,
00:05:31 --> 00:05:34 uh, encounter of JUICE
00:05:34 --> 00:05:37 with the moon to test one of the
00:05:37 --> 00:05:39 primary pieces of equipment on board the
00:05:39 --> 00:05:41 spacecraft. And it's something called rime,
00:05:41 --> 00:05:44 another acronym, uh, not R H Y
00:05:44 --> 00:05:45 M E. That Would have been too complicated.
00:05:45 --> 00:05:48 Complicated. It's Rime, um, uh, the
00:05:48 --> 00:05:50 radar for icy moon exploration.
00:05:52 --> 00:05:54 And rime is a device that uh,
00:05:54 --> 00:05:57 will, we hope, uh, when the spacecraft is in
00:05:57 --> 00:06:00 orbit around Jupiter, uh, it
00:06:00 --> 00:06:03 will test the level of
00:06:04 --> 00:06:06 um. It will basically examine the
00:06:06 --> 00:06:09 structure beneath the icy surface of
00:06:09 --> 00:06:12 moons like Europa. Um, it won't be in orbit
00:06:12 --> 00:06:13 around Europa, it'll be in orbit around
00:06:13 --> 00:06:15 Jupiter. But it will make many flybys of
00:06:15 --> 00:06:18 Europa. And in doing that, it will use the
00:06:18 --> 00:06:21 RHYME instrument to probe
00:06:21 --> 00:06:24 what's underneath the ice of uh,
00:06:25 --> 00:06:27 ice, um, moons like Europa, probably some of
00:06:27 --> 00:06:30 the other ones as well. Uh, Ganymede
00:06:30 --> 00:06:32 and uh, Callisto are both also thought to be
00:06:32 --> 00:06:35 ice moons of this kind. A moon with an
00:06:35 --> 00:06:38 icy surface overlaying a global ocean
00:06:38 --> 00:06:41 which overlays a rocky body, the sort of moon
00:06:41 --> 00:06:43 itself. Now in order to test
00:06:44 --> 00:06:46 the RIME device, this radar for icy moon
00:06:46 --> 00:06:49 exploration, you need radio, uh,
00:06:49 --> 00:06:52 silence because it's very, very sensitive. So
00:06:52 --> 00:06:55 uh, what they did was uh, the
00:06:55 --> 00:06:57 mission controllers, they switched off all
00:06:57 --> 00:06:59 the other instruments on board, uh,
00:06:59 --> 00:07:02 Juice to test rime and
00:07:02 --> 00:07:05 tested it on. Yes, you've guessed it.
00:07:05 --> 00:07:08 Uh, the Anders Crater, the
00:07:08 --> 00:07:11 Anders Earthrise Crater. Uh, so that
00:07:11 --> 00:07:14 was the zone on the moon that they tested
00:07:14 --> 00:07:17 the radar with. Uh, and as far as
00:07:17 --> 00:07:19 I understand it came out absolutely
00:07:19 --> 00:07:20 perfectly. Um,
00:07:22 --> 00:07:25 the performance of the instrument was uh,
00:07:25 --> 00:07:28 as expected. And it looks as though
00:07:28 --> 00:07:30 we will find, um,
00:07:31 --> 00:07:34 uh, when Juice gets to Jupiter in
00:07:34 --> 00:07:36 2031, that it's going to work for.
00:07:36 --> 00:07:39 Probing the suburbace region of uh,
00:07:39 --> 00:07:41 of Europa's ice fields.
00:07:43 --> 00:07:46 Heidi Campo: Well that is just fantastic. So we're
00:07:46 --> 00:07:49 not quite sure yet, but that information
00:07:49 --> 00:07:50 is coming. What do you think?
00:07:52 --> 00:07:55 Professor Fred Watson: Uh, um. You mean
00:07:56 --> 00:07:57 what do you think they're going to find when
00:07:57 --> 00:07:58 the spacecraft gets to Jupiter? What's it
00:07:58 --> 00:08:00 going to find? What do you think I think it's
00:08:00 --> 00:08:02 going to find? Well, the first thing it'll
00:08:02 --> 00:08:04 find is layers in the ice.
00:08:04 --> 00:08:07 It will probably show
00:08:07 --> 00:08:10 a stratified ice formation.
00:08:11 --> 00:08:14 Um, what would be brilliant would be. And I
00:08:14 --> 00:08:15 don't know whether it's capable of doing this
00:08:16 --> 00:08:18 if it could probe down to the
00:08:19 --> 00:08:22 lowest layer of the ice where there's an
00:08:22 --> 00:08:24 interface between the underneath of the ice
00:08:24 --> 00:08:27 crust and the top of the briny
00:08:27 --> 00:08:30 ocean, uh, uh, on which the
00:08:30 --> 00:08:32 ice crust flows and it's liquid too. And it's
00:08:32 --> 00:08:34 kept that way because of the pressure of the
00:08:34 --> 00:08:36 ice on top and probably the tidal
00:08:37 --> 00:08:39 heating. Um, all of Jupiter's moons,
00:08:40 --> 00:08:42 especially IO, the volcanic one, they're all
00:08:42 --> 00:08:44 subject to being squashed and squeezed by the
00:08:44 --> 00:08:47 huge gravity of Jupiter itself. And so,
00:08:47 --> 00:08:50 um, that warms up the core and keeps the
00:08:50 --> 00:08:53 ocean liquid. Whether we'll see fish swimming
00:08:53 --> 00:08:56 in the ocean, uh, I think that might be
00:08:56 --> 00:08:59 a step too far. But what it might reveal
00:08:59 --> 00:09:02 is what the depth of the ice is.
00:09:02 --> 00:09:04 It might tell us what we would need to do to
00:09:04 --> 00:09:07 go and sample that water directly, how much
00:09:07 --> 00:09:09 ice we'd need to drill through. It may even
00:09:09 --> 00:09:11 tell us about the constituents of the
00:09:11 --> 00:09:14 ocean itself, give us some indication of just
00:09:14 --> 00:09:17 how briny it is. I
00:09:17 --> 00:09:20 think it would be, again, a step too far to
00:09:20 --> 00:09:23 find it penetrating down to the rocky
00:09:23 --> 00:09:26 seabed of that ocean, because
00:09:26 --> 00:09:28 that's where we expect to find
00:09:28 --> 00:09:31 hydrothermal vents. And they are thought to
00:09:31 --> 00:09:34 have been the cradle of life on Earth. Maybe
00:09:34 --> 00:09:36 they are the cradle of life on Europa,
00:09:36 --> 00:09:39 Callisto and Ganymede as well. So lots to
00:09:40 --> 00:09:43 imagine, uh, in the time between now and
00:09:43 --> 00:09:45 2031. Uh, I hope Space
00:09:45 --> 00:09:48 Nuts is still going strong in
00:09:48 --> 00:09:50 2031. And I hope you feel better by then,
00:09:50 --> 00:09:51 Heidi.
00:09:51 --> 00:09:53 Heidi Campo: I hope I feel better by then too.
00:09:58 --> 00:09:59 Professor Fred Watson: Space Nuts.
00:10:00 --> 00:10:03 Heidi Campo: Well, our next story is one, uh, that I think
00:10:03 --> 00:10:05 everybody's going to be really excited about
00:10:05 --> 00:10:07 because everyone here on Space Nuts is, seems
00:10:07 --> 00:10:09 to be obsessed with the same thing
00:10:10 --> 00:10:13 and that is black holes. And
00:10:13 --> 00:10:16 this is not just any
00:10:16 --> 00:10:18 black hole. This is a
00:10:18 --> 00:10:21 exotic. And then it's called a
00:10:21 --> 00:10:24 blazar. And it's an extreme
00:10:24 --> 00:10:27 double black hole. What? I didn't even know
00:10:27 --> 00:10:29 that you could have like a double black hole
00:10:29 --> 00:10:31 situation going on. But it's a good thing
00:10:31 --> 00:10:34 that we have you, an astronomer, to
00:10:34 --> 00:10:35 explain that to us.
00:10:37 --> 00:10:40 Professor Fred Watson: No, well, I'll do my best. Um,
00:10:40 --> 00:10:43 uh, so once again, going back to,
00:10:44 --> 00:10:46 I'm not going quite back as far as, um, the
00:10:46 --> 00:10:49 Apollo 8 mission, but, um,
00:10:50 --> 00:10:53 uh, the blazar is
00:10:53 --> 00:10:56 a fairly new term, uh, that
00:10:57 --> 00:10:59 has been coined probably within the last 20
00:10:59 --> 00:11:02 or 30 years. Um, when I was a young
00:11:02 --> 00:11:03 astronomer at the Royal Observatory in
00:11:03 --> 00:11:06 Edinburgh, uh, they were a big time topic
00:11:06 --> 00:11:08 because nobody knew what they were. We had no
00:11:08 --> 00:11:10 idea that they were black holes back then.
00:11:10 --> 00:11:13 Uh, um, we called them Bl Lac objects.
00:11:13 --> 00:11:16 And Bl Lac is an abbreviation for Bl
00:11:16 --> 00:11:19 Lakerti, uh, which is a
00:11:19 --> 00:11:22 name for a variable star because that's what
00:11:22 --> 00:11:24 they were classified as, an extreme variable
00:11:24 --> 00:11:26 star, a star that varied in its brightness.
00:11:27 --> 00:11:29 Uh, but once we realized that these are
00:11:29 --> 00:11:31 actually black holes squirting out jets
00:11:31 --> 00:11:34 of material that, uh,
00:11:34 --> 00:11:37 aligns with the Earth and so looks
00:11:37 --> 00:11:39 very bright, then they were
00:11:39 --> 00:11:42 renamed blazars. Uh,
00:11:42 --> 00:11:44 and it's quite nice because The BL is still
00:11:44 --> 00:11:46 part of BL lac blt. Okay,
00:11:47 --> 00:11:49 so this particular one has uh, the
00:11:49 --> 00:11:51 wonderful name of OJ287,
00:11:52 --> 00:11:54 which is perhaps notable only for its
00:11:54 --> 00:11:57 brevity, uh, but it's a good name.
00:11:57 --> 00:12:00 Uh, and it's. It's got, um,
00:12:00 --> 00:12:03 the uh. Basically the
00:12:03 --> 00:12:05 object has the distinction
00:12:06 --> 00:12:08 of producing a jet of material
00:12:09 --> 00:12:11 which is not quite aligned with our
00:12:11 --> 00:12:14 own planet, very nearly aligned with it,
00:12:15 --> 00:12:17 but it's crooked. Uh,
00:12:17 --> 00:12:20 it's a jet of material that looks like a
00:12:20 --> 00:12:23 corkscrew. Uh, it's got
00:12:23 --> 00:12:25 kinks in it basically. And the
00:12:26 --> 00:12:28 uh, deductions that have been made
00:12:29 --> 00:12:32 because of the crooked jet of material
00:12:32 --> 00:12:35 coming from this blazar is
00:12:35 --> 00:12:38 that it is, um,
00:12:38 --> 00:12:41 actually not one black hole that is doing
00:12:41 --> 00:12:43 all the activity. It's two.
00:12:44 --> 00:12:46 And just to recap, uh, when a black
00:12:46 --> 00:12:49 hole is in, um, the center of a
00:12:49 --> 00:12:52 galaxy, a supermassive black hole, uh, it
00:12:52 --> 00:12:55 has an accretion disk around it, a disk of M
00:12:55 --> 00:12:56 material that's swirling around the black
00:12:56 --> 00:12:59 hole that gets very energetic, can emit X
00:12:59 --> 00:13:02 rays, radio waves. But some of that material
00:13:02 --> 00:13:04 doesn't get sucked into the black hole. Some
00:13:04 --> 00:13:07 of it basically gets focused into one of,
00:13:07 --> 00:13:09 uh, well, a pair of jets going, uh,
00:13:09 --> 00:13:11 vertically perpendicular to the accretion
00:13:11 --> 00:13:13 disk, um, which are focused by magnetic
00:13:13 --> 00:13:16 forces. Now, um, the normal name
00:13:16 --> 00:13:19 for one of those is a quasar, uh,
00:13:19 --> 00:13:21 which is an acronym for a quasi
00:13:22 --> 00:13:25 stellar source. Um,
00:13:25 --> 00:13:28 uh, and a quasar, uh,
00:13:28 --> 00:13:30 is basically a single black hole emitting a
00:13:30 --> 00:13:33 jet of material which, uh, we see very
00:13:33 --> 00:13:36 brightly, uh, from our vantage point
00:13:36 --> 00:13:39 on Earth. So, um,
00:13:39 --> 00:13:42 uh, basically a blazar
00:13:42 --> 00:13:44 is one of those, but seen head on. So it's
00:13:44 --> 00:13:46 directly. The material is directly
00:13:47 --> 00:13:49 being aimed at, uh, the Earth. It's a special
00:13:49 --> 00:13:51 kind of, uh, quasar.
00:13:51 --> 00:13:54 Now the, uh, crooked jet tells you
00:13:54 --> 00:13:57 that there's something else going on. And
00:13:57 --> 00:14:00 the observers who have done this research,
00:14:01 --> 00:14:04 uh, and really looked at
00:14:04 --> 00:14:06 the hypothesis for what's happening
00:14:07 --> 00:14:09 is that it's not one black hole, but
00:14:10 --> 00:14:12 two. Uh, one of them
00:14:13 --> 00:14:15 has, um,
00:14:15 --> 00:14:17 basically a huge mass,
00:14:17 --> 00:14:20 18.35 billion
00:14:20 --> 00:14:23 solar masses. So 18.35
00:14:23 --> 00:14:25 billion times the mass of the Sun. It dwarfs
00:14:25 --> 00:14:27 the one at the center of our own galaxy,
00:14:27 --> 00:14:30 which is about 4 million times the mass of
00:14:30 --> 00:14:32 the Sun. But this 18,
00:14:32 --> 00:14:34 uh,.35 billion solar mass black, uh,
00:14:35 --> 00:14:37 hole is at the center of
00:14:38 --> 00:14:40 activity there. And that's what's shooting
00:14:40 --> 00:14:43 out the jet. But, um, it has another
00:14:43 --> 00:14:45 one going around it which is probably less
00:14:45 --> 00:14:47 massive. I don't know that there's an
00:14:47 --> 00:14:49 estimate for the mass of the second one. And
00:14:49 --> 00:14:52 it's in a very elongated orbit around the
00:14:52 --> 00:14:55 main black hole. And every 12 years it
00:14:55 --> 00:14:57 actually, uh, gets close enough to the main
00:14:57 --> 00:14:59 black hole to sort of
00:15:00 --> 00:15:02 steam through the accretion disk of the big
00:15:02 --> 00:15:05 black hole and essentially grab some
00:15:05 --> 00:15:07 of the material from that disk and
00:15:07 --> 00:15:10 basically produces its own jet of
00:15:10 --> 00:15:13 material, uh, and becomes a double
00:15:13 --> 00:15:16 quasar for a short time. Uh, and
00:15:16 --> 00:15:18 then, um, it fades away.
00:15:19 --> 00:15:21 And, you know, observations of, um, this
00:15:21 --> 00:15:24 object, OJ287, have been a
00:15:24 --> 00:15:27 mystery until now. Um, back in
00:15:27 --> 00:15:29 2021, there was a huge increase in
00:15:29 --> 00:15:32 brightness that only took 12 hours. Uh,
00:15:32 --> 00:15:35 that's quite extraordinary, uh, you know, in
00:15:35 --> 00:15:38 something as compact as that. Uh, so
00:15:38 --> 00:15:41 we've got a, uh, theory that, um. And I
00:15:41 --> 00:15:43 might just add that it's very nicely
00:15:43 --> 00:15:46 expounded, uh, on thespace.com
00:15:46 --> 00:15:48 website by, uh, Keith Cooper, who's written
00:15:48 --> 00:15:51 an article on this. Uh, and I
00:15:51 --> 00:15:54 think, uh, the bottom
00:15:54 --> 00:15:56 line is that this object will continue to be
00:15:56 --> 00:15:58 observed. We'll find out more about black
00:15:58 --> 00:16:00 holes. We'll discover more about double black
00:16:00 --> 00:16:02 holes like this one. Um, my question,
00:16:03 --> 00:16:06 uh, to the astronomers who've made this, uh,
00:16:06 --> 00:16:09 research would be, is there any chance of the
00:16:09 --> 00:16:11 two merging? Because we do know that black
00:16:11 --> 00:16:13 holes merge. We see their gravitational wave
00:16:13 --> 00:16:16 signals. Uh, and maybe that would
00:16:16 --> 00:16:17 be something that, down the track might
00:16:17 --> 00:16:19 happen. We might get a merger between
00:16:19 --> 00:16:22 OJ287 and its companion black hole.
00:16:23 --> 00:16:25 Heidi Campo: I mean, the images are truly incredible. If
00:16:25 --> 00:16:28 you guys are able to, um, look
00:16:28 --> 00:16:31 this up, I really encourage you because it
00:16:31 --> 00:16:34 really. I can't quite describe it, but
00:16:34 --> 00:16:36 it almost looks like, um, like you. Can
00:16:36 --> 00:16:39 you. I can't describe it. It looks like they
00:16:39 --> 00:16:41 are connected though. Like you can see like
00:16:41 --> 00:16:43 there's this spiraling energy between them.
00:16:43 --> 00:16:44 It's really interesting.
00:16:47 --> 00:16:49 Professor Fred Watson: Okay, we checked all four systems, and.
00:16:49 --> 00:16:51 Heidi Campo: Being with a go Space nets, I also wanted to
00:16:51 --> 00:16:53 ask you, were you really thirsty when you
00:16:53 --> 00:16:55 were looking at, um, the articles today?
00:16:55 --> 00:16:57 Because I realized juice is in all of them.
00:16:58 --> 00:17:00 With the first one, um, juice, the
00:17:00 --> 00:17:03 acronym. And then this one's OJ 2,
00:17:03 --> 00:17:06 8 7. And then the very
00:17:06 --> 00:17:09 last OJ orange juice. And the very
00:17:09 --> 00:17:12 last article we have is, uh,
00:17:12 --> 00:17:15 some people pronounce it Beetlejuice,
00:17:16 --> 00:17:19 but Beetle. Guys, um, we were
00:17:19 --> 00:17:21 talking about this before we logged on,
00:17:21 --> 00:17:24 um, and you told me the
00:17:24 --> 00:17:27 French way of pronouncing beetle.
00:17:27 --> 00:17:27 Geist.
00:17:27 --> 00:17:29 Professor Fred Watson: Betelgeuse. Betelgeuse.
00:17:30 --> 00:17:31 Heidi Campo: And then what was the German?
00:17:32 --> 00:17:34 Professor Fred Watson: Well, I don't know whether the Germans say
00:17:34 --> 00:17:36 it, but it would be Bettel Goiser, I guess,
00:17:36 --> 00:17:39 in German, but we often call it
00:17:39 --> 00:17:42 Betelgeuse because that's the easiest way to
00:17:42 --> 00:17:44 do it. But, uh, what a lovely comment to
00:17:44 --> 00:17:47 make, Heidi. I hadn't spotted. I had not
00:17:47 --> 00:17:49 spotted that link between the three stories.
00:17:49 --> 00:17:50 That's brilliant.
00:17:50 --> 00:17:52 Heidi Campo: Well, I'm just sitting here listening to you.
00:17:52 --> 00:17:54 I'm like, wait a second. Every article today
00:17:54 --> 00:17:55 mentions juice.
00:17:55 --> 00:17:58 Professor Fred Watson: Yeah. So it's a very juicy episode of
00:17:58 --> 00:18:00 Space Nuts today.
00:18:01 --> 00:18:02 So, um, and that's a lovely segue to the
00:18:02 --> 00:18:04 final story as well, which is about
00:18:04 --> 00:18:06 Betelgeuse or Betelgeuse or whatever you want
00:18:06 --> 00:18:09 to say. Uh, I copy. Um, Patrick
00:18:09 --> 00:18:12 Moore, that great science communicator, uh,
00:18:12 --> 00:18:14 in the United Kingdom, sadly no longer with
00:18:14 --> 00:18:17 us. But he encouraged many, many people to
00:18:17 --> 00:18:19 take up astronomy as a hobby and
00:18:20 --> 00:18:22 another large number to take up astronomy as
00:18:22 --> 00:18:25 a career. Including the person talking to you
00:18:25 --> 00:18:28 now. Uh, he pronounced it Betelgeuse. He
00:18:28 --> 00:18:30 made it French. Um, but Betelgeuse is as good
00:18:30 --> 00:18:33 as any. And why is it in the news? Because
00:18:33 --> 00:18:36 for a long time, this star, I should
00:18:36 --> 00:18:39 say it's the reddish star, uh, on
00:18:39 --> 00:18:41 Orion's shoulder. And that's the
00:18:41 --> 00:18:43 constellation of Orion, which is very
00:18:43 --> 00:18:45 familiar to all of you people in the Northern
00:18:45 --> 00:18:48 Hemisphere. Uh, and so it's
00:18:48 --> 00:18:51 the star on his right shoulder, a red
00:18:51 --> 00:18:53 giant star, very gigantic star, probably
00:18:53 --> 00:18:56 pretty unstable. Maybe we'll turn it into a
00:18:56 --> 00:18:59 supernova within the next 10 years or so.
00:18:59 --> 00:19:02 Something to look forward to. Um, but, um,
00:19:02 --> 00:19:04 now we see Betelgeuse, uh, in a different
00:19:05 --> 00:19:08 place because our view of Orion is upside
00:19:08 --> 00:19:10 down. Uh, and, um, people tend to notice more
00:19:10 --> 00:19:12 the three stars of Orion's belt, which we
00:19:12 --> 00:19:14 call the base of the saucepan. It's very
00:19:14 --> 00:19:17 confusing, Heidi. Um, um, but, um,
00:19:18 --> 00:19:20 it doesn't matter where it is. The main thing
00:19:20 --> 00:19:22 is, if I remember rightly, it's about 500
00:19:22 --> 00:19:24 light years away. I can't remember the exact
00:19:24 --> 00:19:26 figure, but it's something like that. Uh, and
00:19:26 --> 00:19:29 it's thought there's been a suspicion
00:19:29 --> 00:19:32 for many decades that it has a companion
00:19:32 --> 00:19:35 star. Now, companion stars are not at all
00:19:35 --> 00:19:37 uncommon. Uh, in fact, probably more
00:19:37 --> 00:19:40 stars in the galaxy are double stars. So they
00:19:40 --> 00:19:42 have a companion. They're a binary object,
00:19:42 --> 00:19:45 uh, than single ones. Um, our sun
00:19:45 --> 00:19:47 is a bit unusual in that respect because it's
00:19:47 --> 00:19:50 definitely a single star, at least to the
00:19:50 --> 00:19:52 best of our knowledge so far. Um,
00:19:53 --> 00:19:55 this, however, is a putative,
00:19:56 --> 00:19:58 uh, discovery. Sorry, a discovery of a
00:19:58 --> 00:20:01 putative satellite. Uh, star
00:20:01 --> 00:20:04 of Betelgeuse. Betelgeuse Uh,
00:20:04 --> 00:20:07 which has been detected with the Gemini North
00:20:07 --> 00:20:10 Telescope in Hawaii, one of the eight meter
00:20:10 --> 00:20:12 class telescopes. That is at the summit of
00:20:12 --> 00:20:14 Mauna Kea, the mountain on the Big island
00:20:14 --> 00:20:17 there. Um, and uh, the
00:20:17 --> 00:20:19 thing that interests me about it, um, because
00:20:19 --> 00:20:21 we don't really know much about what's
00:20:21 --> 00:20:23 discovered except there's a faint blob
00:20:23 --> 00:20:25 showing up next to Betelgeuse, which is
00:20:25 --> 00:20:28 thought to be the companion M. But the method
00:20:28 --> 00:20:30 used was something we call speckle imaging,
00:20:30 --> 00:20:33 um, which is a way of trying to tease
00:20:33 --> 00:20:36 out detailed information in an image
00:20:36 --> 00:20:39 in spite of the turbulence of the atmosphere,
00:20:39 --> 00:20:42 um, sort of blurring the image out,
00:20:42 --> 00:20:45 uh, as the, as the light comes through it. If
00:20:45 --> 00:20:48 you can take very, very short exposures, you
00:20:48 --> 00:20:50 know, perhaps a thousandth of a second,
00:20:51 --> 00:20:53 take an image lasting that long, you'll
00:20:53 --> 00:20:56 freeze the turbulence of the atmosphere. And
00:20:56 --> 00:20:58 by doing that, it's possible to tease out
00:20:59 --> 00:21:01 much, uh, more detail. This technique called
00:21:01 --> 00:21:03 speckle imaging. And that's how this object
00:21:03 --> 00:21:06 has been found. The reason there is
00:21:06 --> 00:21:09 still some doubt about whether it's a real
00:21:09 --> 00:21:12 companion or not is because as I understand
00:21:13 --> 00:21:15 it, over the time that this object has been
00:21:15 --> 00:21:18 observed, um, Betelgeuse and
00:21:18 --> 00:21:20 its companion, there's been no apparent
00:21:20 --> 00:21:23 movement of the companion. Uh,
00:21:23 --> 00:21:25 and if you've got something in orbit around
00:21:25 --> 00:21:28 another star, uh, this close as it seems
00:21:28 --> 00:21:31 to be, you would expect to see some motion of
00:21:31 --> 00:21:33 the image of the object. We see that with one
00:21:33 --> 00:21:35 or two of the exoplanets that have been
00:21:36 --> 00:21:38 discovered. Of the 7 odd
00:21:38 --> 00:21:41 exoplanets that we know, there's only a
00:21:41 --> 00:21:42 handful that have been seen by direct
00:21:42 --> 00:21:45 imaging. Most of them, uh, it's by
00:21:45 --> 00:21:48 deducing their presence from other evidence.
00:21:48 --> 00:21:51 But one or two have been shown, uh, by direct
00:21:51 --> 00:21:53 imaging and you can see their motion around
00:21:53 --> 00:21:55 the parent star. That's why we know those
00:21:55 --> 00:21:57 planets are real. Now you would expect the
00:21:57 --> 00:21:59 same thing to happen with a star and a
00:21:59 --> 00:22:02 companion star like we're talking about now.
00:22:02 --> 00:22:05 But, um, so far, as far as I know, no
00:22:05 --> 00:22:08 motion has been detected. And
00:22:08 --> 00:22:09 once again, if you want to read about that,
00:22:09 --> 00:22:11 there's a great article on the sky and
00:22:11 --> 00:22:12 Telescope website.
00:22:13 --> 00:22:15 Heidi Campo: Well, and I'm looking at this one too. I
00:22:15 --> 00:22:17 realize now that I probably say this about a
00:22:17 --> 00:22:19 lot of our articles, but this is also such a
00:22:19 --> 00:22:21 beautiful image. Um, and the one here.
00:22:22 --> 00:22:25 So this, this photo is, that's the technique
00:22:25 --> 00:22:27 they used is the really short,
00:22:28 --> 00:22:31 um, that is just stunning because
00:22:31 --> 00:22:32 you, it's.
00:22:32 --> 00:22:34 Professor Fred Watson: So what, what they do is they, they take
00:22:34 --> 00:22:36 really short exposures and then they kind of
00:22:36 --> 00:22:38 stack the good ones, the ones that are
00:22:38 --> 00:22:40 showing what they expect to show. They stack
00:22:40 --> 00:22:42 them up to build up what we call the signal
00:22:42 --> 00:22:45 to noise ratio in the image to make it, uh,
00:22:45 --> 00:22:48 an image that's got some credibility to
00:22:48 --> 00:22:50 it rather than just, you know, just noise.
00:22:50 --> 00:22:52 But yes, you're right. It's a stunning image.
00:22:52 --> 00:22:55 Heidi Campo: Yeah. Usually you don't, um. I
00:22:55 --> 00:22:57 don't know what it is about it. There's just
00:22:57 --> 00:22:59 so much detail in it. It almost looks,
00:23:00 --> 00:23:02 I don't. Just different from a lot of the
00:23:02 --> 00:23:04 space images that you see. And it's really,
00:23:04 --> 00:23:05 really beautiful to me.
00:23:06 --> 00:23:08 But I also had another thought, um,
00:23:08 --> 00:23:10 when you introduced this to how you mentioned
00:23:10 --> 00:23:13 how Orion's upside down for you. And it made
00:23:13 --> 00:23:16 me remember, um, I think this was
00:23:16 --> 00:23:19 episodes quite a ways back where we talked
00:23:19 --> 00:23:22 about how different cultures refer to the
00:23:22 --> 00:23:24 Moon and different genders. So like, I've
00:23:24 --> 00:23:27 always. People, people in the US we always.
00:23:27 --> 00:23:30 I hear the Moon referred to in the female.
00:23:30 --> 00:23:31 Then you're like, oh. And then I think you
00:23:31 --> 00:23:34 mentioned, um, Aboriginals mentioned it in
00:23:34 --> 00:23:37 the masculine. And then it made me really
00:23:37 --> 00:23:38 think. I'm like, wait a second. Are there
00:23:38 --> 00:23:40 totally. There's probably totally different
00:23:40 --> 00:23:43 constellations in every other culture? And
00:23:43 --> 00:23:44 this would probably be a whole other episode
00:23:44 --> 00:23:47 and a whole other tangent. But how did we
00:23:47 --> 00:23:49 come up with the universal
00:23:49 --> 00:23:52 constellations that astronomers worldwide
00:23:52 --> 00:23:53 use?
00:23:55 --> 00:23:57 Professor Fred Watson: Um, yeah, the short answer is they're derived
00:23:57 --> 00:24:00 from, I, uh, think ancient Babylonian
00:24:00 --> 00:24:02 constellations. They go back a very, very
00:24:02 --> 00:24:05 long time, uh, and were
00:24:05 --> 00:24:07 adopted by the Greeks and Romans. And I think
00:24:07 --> 00:24:10 it was Ptolemy who basically produced the
00:24:10 --> 00:24:12 first map that recorded them. That's 2
00:24:12 --> 00:24:15 years ago. And so that's, uh, in what
00:24:15 --> 00:24:17 you might call Western culture that was
00:24:17 --> 00:24:20 rooted to existence very early on. And
00:24:20 --> 00:24:21 those constellations that we're all familiar
00:24:21 --> 00:24:24 with in the world of astronomy, uh, uh,
00:24:24 --> 00:24:27 um, they're basically taken from that
00:24:27 --> 00:24:30 era. But you're absolutely right. Uh, other
00:24:30 --> 00:24:32 cultures have their own
00:24:32 --> 00:24:35 constellations. Here in Australia, um, there
00:24:35 --> 00:24:38 are something like 450 different nation
00:24:38 --> 00:24:40 groups within Australia. So individual
00:24:41 --> 00:24:44 groups of Aboriginal people, uh, are,
00:24:44 --> 00:24:46 uh. And they have their own constellation.
00:24:46 --> 00:24:49 They have different languages as well. Uh,
00:24:49 --> 00:24:52 these first nations people in Australia are a
00:24:52 --> 00:24:54 very diverse and,
00:24:55 --> 00:24:57 um, interesting set of cultures.
00:24:58 --> 00:25:01 So constellations vary from one part of
00:25:01 --> 00:25:03 Australia to another. The traditional first
00:25:03 --> 00:25:04 nations constellations, they're quite
00:25:04 --> 00:25:07 different, uh, and have different stories.
00:25:07 --> 00:25:10 Um, one of them I could just mention in the
00:25:10 --> 00:25:12 context of Orion. Um, I can't remember where
00:25:12 --> 00:25:14 this comes from, but it's one of the language
00:25:14 --> 00:25:17 groups. It may be uh, in Northern Victoria,
00:25:17 --> 00:25:20 which is one of our states in Australia. But
00:25:20 --> 00:25:22 they see Orion as a canoe
00:25:23 --> 00:25:26 with three brothers in it, uh, which are the
00:25:26 --> 00:25:29 three stars of the belt sitting right in the
00:25:29 --> 00:25:32 middle. And, um, what we know as the
00:25:32 --> 00:25:35 Orion Nebula, that faint patch which
00:25:35 --> 00:25:37 in the northern tradition is Orion's sword.
00:25:38 --> 00:25:40 Um, they see that as a fish that these three
00:25:40 --> 00:25:41 brothers have, of course.
00:25:41 --> 00:25:42 Heidi Campo: Oh, that's so cute.
00:25:42 --> 00:25:45 Professor Fred Watson: You know. Yeah. Uh, and there are other style
00:25:45 --> 00:25:48 groups that don't relate to ours. Um,
00:25:48 --> 00:25:51 uh, I might just mention why I studied this
00:25:51 --> 00:25:54 and it goes back 20 years. Um, I
00:25:54 --> 00:25:56 work sometimes with a very well known
00:25:56 --> 00:25:58 classical music composer in Australia, Russ
00:25:58 --> 00:26:01 Edwards, who's produced some fabulous music
00:26:01 --> 00:26:04 in his career. Um, but he and I
00:26:04 --> 00:26:06 collaborated on his fourth Symphony, which is
00:26:06 --> 00:26:08 a choral work. So it's got actually two
00:26:08 --> 00:26:11 choirs singing. And what I did for the words
00:26:11 --> 00:26:14 was to take a journey right through the sky
00:26:14 --> 00:26:16 from the far northern horizon here in
00:26:16 --> 00:26:18 Australia, down to the south polar star,
00:26:18 --> 00:26:21 which is called Sigma Octantis. Um, and,
00:26:22 --> 00:26:24 um, in doing that, um, I tried
00:26:24 --> 00:26:27 to pull together the western star names and
00:26:27 --> 00:26:30 constellations with their first nations
00:26:30 --> 00:26:32 equivalent. And it was quite a difficult job
00:26:32 --> 00:26:34 because there are so many different cultures
00:26:34 --> 00:26:36 in the aboriginal population of Australia.
00:26:37 --> 00:26:40 But we did it. Uh, and, um, it actually won
00:26:40 --> 00:26:42 a major award. The CD that was made won a
00:26:42 --> 00:26:43 major award.
00:26:43 --> 00:26:45 Heidi Campo: So beautiful.
00:26:45 --> 00:26:48 We're gonna maybe. Maybe we'll see if Huw can
00:26:49 --> 00:26:51 find that symphony and we can have that be
00:26:51 --> 00:26:52 our exit music for this episode.
00:26:54 --> 00:26:55 Professor Fred Watson: Well, you never know. He might.
00:26:55 --> 00:26:55 Heidi Campo: He might.
00:26:56 --> 00:26:57 Professor Fred Watson: Uh, yeah. ABC cd.
00:26:57 --> 00:26:59 Heidi Campo: He's pretty incredible. But this was a great
00:26:59 --> 00:27:02 episode. Thank you so much for joining us.
00:27:02 --> 00:27:05 And we will catch you, you
00:27:05 --> 00:27:07 guys, later with our next
00:27:07 --> 00:27:10 episode, which will be a Q and A episode.
00:27:10 --> 00:27:12 Until then, see you guys next time.
00:27:12 --> 00:27:15 Andrew Dunkley: Hello, Fred. Hello, Heidi. Hello, Huw in the
00:27:15 --> 00:27:16 studio. Andrew, again.
00:27:16 --> 00:27:19 And since I spoke to you last, we have, uh,
00:27:20 --> 00:27:22 been sort of halfway around the UK
00:27:23 --> 00:27:25 from Ireland, uh, in
00:27:26 --> 00:27:28 Cob, Uh, near County Cork.
00:27:28 --> 00:27:31 Uh, from there we went across to Liverpool
00:27:32 --> 00:27:35 and then, uh. No, Edinburgh. Edinburgh.
00:27:35 --> 00:27:37 Sorry, Fred, I nearly left out Edinburgh. My
00:27:37 --> 00:27:39 goodness. And then, uh, we went down to
00:27:39 --> 00:27:42 Liverpool and then around to Dover, then
00:27:42 --> 00:27:44 across to Norway, which is where we
00:27:44 --> 00:27:47 spent today in Bergen. And it's been
00:27:47 --> 00:27:50 a fabulous trip. Uh, unfortunately, Fred did
00:27:50 --> 00:27:53 not get to go to the Royal Observatory
00:27:53 --> 00:27:55 in Edinburgh, but, um, did
00:27:56 --> 00:27:58 see a heck of a lot of the place. That castle
00:27:58 --> 00:28:00 is remarkable. I mean,
00:28:01 --> 00:28:03 it stands out like a sore thumb, but, uh,
00:28:03 --> 00:28:06 a very good sore thumb, if I can put it to
00:28:06 --> 00:28:09 you that way. But, uh, I can see why. Ah,
00:28:09 --> 00:28:11 so Many people love Edinburgh, Fred. Uh, I
00:28:11 --> 00:28:14 know you spent a, uh, great many years
00:28:14 --> 00:28:17 there and uh, I think you were
00:28:17 --> 00:28:20 educated in that um, part of the world or I
00:28:20 --> 00:28:22 know you worked at the Royal Observatory.
00:28:22 --> 00:28:25 Um, yeah, fabulous.
00:28:25 --> 00:28:28 Um, uh, Cove was brilliant in Ireland
00:28:28 --> 00:28:30 and we, we uh, did a lot of uh, things
00:28:30 --> 00:28:32 connected with the Titanic because the last
00:28:32 --> 00:28:35 passengers uh, to board the
00:28:35 --> 00:28:37 Titanic did that, uh, in um,
00:28:38 --> 00:28:40 in Cove. And most of them were
00:28:41 --> 00:28:44 Irish, um, immigrants headed for the
00:28:44 --> 00:28:46 United States and none of them made it.
00:28:47 --> 00:28:47 Professor Fred Watson: It.
00:28:47 --> 00:28:50 Andrew Dunkley: Well, not most of them didn't make it, which
00:28:50 --> 00:28:53 is a very sad tale that most people are very
00:28:53 --> 00:28:55 much aware of. Then to Liverpool where we um,
00:28:55 --> 00:28:58 visited the Beatles quite literally. We went
00:28:58 --> 00:29:01 to all of their houses and uh, did
00:29:01 --> 00:29:04 quite, quite a bit. We actually did a taxi
00:29:04 --> 00:29:06 tour of Liverpool visiting the major
00:29:06 --> 00:29:09 beetle sites and I highly recommend that.
00:29:09 --> 00:29:12 It was just fabulous. Strawberry Fields.
00:29:12 --> 00:29:15 Um, gosh, all their houses, their
00:29:15 --> 00:29:18 schools, uh, Penny Lane, uh, you
00:29:18 --> 00:29:21 name it, we saw it. And um, that was just
00:29:21 --> 00:29:24 a terrific day. Uh, one of my
00:29:24 --> 00:29:26 highlights. And then, uh,
00:29:26 --> 00:29:29 uh, in Dover we went to the castle and went
00:29:29 --> 00:29:31 through all the siege tunnels and the World
00:29:31 --> 00:29:34 War I and World War II tunnels. I didn't
00:29:34 --> 00:29:35 know. I thought I knew everything, but I
00:29:35 --> 00:29:38 didn't know that they coordinated the
00:29:38 --> 00:29:41 evacuation from Dunkirk from the tunnels
00:29:41 --> 00:29:43 underneath Dover Castle. So there you are.
00:29:44 --> 00:29:46 And then today we're in Bergen and we
00:29:46 --> 00:29:49 went uh, looking at fjords
00:29:49 --> 00:29:52 and waterfalls and I must say
00:29:52 --> 00:29:55 Norway has got to be one of the most
00:29:55 --> 00:29:57 picturesque countries I've ever seen.
00:29:57 --> 00:30:00 It is just dotted with beautiful little homes
00:30:00 --> 00:30:03 on the sides of mountains overlooking fjords.
00:30:03 --> 00:30:05 Uh, and these things are enormous. I think
00:30:05 --> 00:30:08 their biggest ones. 179 kilometers long and
00:30:08 --> 00:30:11 900 meters deep. And we had a quick
00:30:11 --> 00:30:13 look at it today. Uh, yeah, beautiful
00:30:13 --> 00:30:16 harbour, Bergen. And we continue uh,
00:30:16 --> 00:30:19 our trek, uh, up the coast, uh, to
00:30:19 --> 00:30:21 Shalden tomorrow. And then we're going to
00:30:21 --> 00:30:24 cross into the Arctic Circle in a
00:30:24 --> 00:30:26 few days and visit North Cape, the
00:30:26 --> 00:30:29 northernmost point of Europe,
00:30:29 --> 00:30:31 mainland Europe. So looking forward to that.
00:30:32 --> 00:30:34 Uh, still quite a few stops to go. A uh,
00:30:34 --> 00:30:37 couple of two or three more weeks on board. I
00:30:37 --> 00:30:39 think probably three. Uh, but hope all is
00:30:39 --> 00:30:42 well with everybody. Uh, we've got, got our
00:30:42 --> 00:30:44 fingers crossed for the northern lights, but
00:30:44 --> 00:30:46 it's not a good time of year and the
00:30:46 --> 00:30:49 forecasts uh, at best are 50, 50,
00:30:49 --> 00:30:51 but mainly May, may be
00:30:51 --> 00:30:54 opportunistic in Greenland. So
00:30:54 --> 00:30:56 I'll keep you posted. All right, until next
00:30:56 --> 00:30:58 time. Take care. See you soon.
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