This is Spacetime Series twenty nine, episode fifty five, for broadcast on the eighth of May twenty twenty six. Coming up on Spacetime, Scientists finally determined the cause of Venus' enigmatic lower haze, discovery of two worlds colliding, and confirmation that the Lunar Gateway space station modules are resting. All that and more coming up on Spacetime. Welcome to space Time with Stuart Gary. Astronomers have finally determined that cosmic dust is the source of a mysterious lower atmospheric case that blankets the planet Venus. Venus is often called Earth's sister planet. Both are about the same size and were formed in the same part of the Solar System under similar conditions and using the same basic materials. But if Venus is a sister planet, then it's a twisted sister. With surface pressures one hundred times that of sea level on Earth and surface temperatures of over four hundred and sixty degrees celsius hot enough to melt lead, Venus is shrouded by dense sulfuric acid clouds. It does rain on Venus, but instead of water, it's acid rain, and it even snows on Venusian mountains, but the snur is metallic. Even stranger, Venus rotates backwards compared to most of the other planets in our Solar System, with the sun rising in the west and setting in the east, and it's spins so slowly that a day on Venus lasts longer than its year. While the planet's main cloud cover sits between forty seven and seventy kilometers above the surface, scientists have long been puzzled by a mysterious layer of particles below forty seven kilometers, which they call the Lower Haze, first detected by spacecraft back in the nineties in seventies, the origin of this haze has remained an unexplained mystery for more than half a century, but now astronomers think they finally solve the mystery, showing that this lower haze is formed by cosmic dust, tiny particles left behind by meteoroids which are constantly raining down on Venus. One of the studies authors, Hiroki Cayu, from the Royal Belgian Institute of Aeronomy, says, while the cosmic dust might seem insignificant, it turns out to be the missing ingredient needed to explain Venus's lower haze. The findings reported in the journal Nature of Astronomy based on computer simulations which were used to trace the life cycle of these particles, finding that incoming cosmic dust burns up high in the atmosphere, producing nanometer size mineral grains. These particles then become embedded within Venus's sulfuric acid clouds. As they drift downwards towards hotter and harder atmospheric temperatures, the sulfuric acid evaporates, leaving by behind solid mineral cause. These cares then collide and stick together, forming the haze layer observed by past missions. The computer model results closely match measurements collected decades ago, lending strong support to the author's conclusions. Kau and colleagues also found that these cosmic particles play an important role in Venus's climate, acting as seeds for cloud formation. They increase cloud production by an estimated twenty to thirty percent. These findings show that material from space isn't just a passive visitor, but can actively shape a planet's atmosphere and climate. The study reshapes our scientists think about planetary atmospheres, suggesting that similar process may be occurring on the gas giants like Jupiter and Satin. The authors now helped to test their predictions with future missions, including NASA's Da Vinci mission to Venus, which is slated for launch later this decade. This is space time still to come. Discovery of two worlds lighting and confirmation that the Lunar Gateway space station modules are rusting away. All that and more still to calm on space time. Astronomers have found evidence of two planets colliding in the Distant Star system. The discovery reported in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, based on observations of a stable main sequence sun like star cataloged as guy At twenty EHK, located some eleven thousand light years away in the constellation Pappas. The studies lead author, Andy Sanadakas from the University of Washington, was coming through archival telescope data when he found the otherwise boarding star acting rather strangely. It seems the star's a light output was nice and flat for a while, but studying in around twenty sixteen, it began showing a series of dips in brightness. Santadakas says it then went completely bonkers. In twenty twenty one, Now, the cause of the flickering had nothing to do with the star itself. It seems huge quantities of rocks and dust, seemingly out of nowhere, were passing in front of the star as the material orbited in the system, dimming the light before it reached the Earth. Now, the likely source of all this debris was even more remarkable, a catastrophic collision between two orbiting planets. Santa Darkas says, amazingly, several different telescopes caught the impact in real time, and that's significant because there are only a few planet or collisions of any kind on record, and none best so many similarities to the impact which created the Earth and Moon. Some four point five billion years ago, a marsized planet which cite is called Thea, slammed into the early proto Earth. The impact turned both worlds into a moon magma ocean. That ball of molted material eventually solidified to form the planet Earth we know today, and some of the ejected debris from that impact, which had been sented to orbit around the planet, eventually coalesced to form the Moon. Sanadaka says, if we can observe more moments like this elsewhere in the galaxy, it'll teach astronomers a lot about the formation of our own planet. We know planets forming protoplanetary disks around stars, gravity forces, dars, gas, ice, and rocky debris together a process called accretion. But early star systems are chaotic places, with planets routinely colliding and breaking apart or being flung out of their orbits through gravitational perturbations from other planets. Through this process and over maybe one hundred million years or so, planetary systems like ours eventually winner their planets down and settle into an equilibrium. As common as these collisions probably are, observing one in the distant Solar system requires a lot of patients, and even more, like you see, the orbits of the planets must put them in direct alignment between us and the star. That's so we can actually see the resulting debris obscuring some of the stars light and the telltale flicker can then take years to play out. Astronomers are a patient lot. Sanadaka, says Guy A twenty EHK strange behavior was perplexing, and sa he and colleagues looked for infrared observations rather than just visible light, and the infrared curve was completely the opposite of what the visible light curve was showing. As the visible light began to flicker and dim, the infrared light spiked, it got brighter, and that suggested the material blocking the stars light must have been hot, so hot, in fact, it was glowing in the infrared. And of course, a cataclysmic collision between planets would certainly produce enough heat to explain that infrared signature, and the right kind of collision would also explain the initial dips in light you see that would be caused are two planets spiraling closer and closer to each other before they eventually collided. Sanadakas says that at first they simply had a series of grazing impacts that wouldn't produce a lot of infrared energy. Then came the final catastrophic collision, and he says the infrared really ramped up. He says there are also other aspects which resembled the one which created the Earth Moon system. The dust cloud orbiting guy twenty EHK is roughly one astronomical unit away from the host star, and that's the same distance the Earth is from the Sun. At that distance, material could eventually cool down enough to solidify into something similar to our own Earth Moon system. But of course that could take a few million more years. As I said, astronomers are a patient bunch. This is space time still to come. Confirmation that the Lunar Gateway space Station modules are slowly rusting away, and we explore the Constellation Scorpius, the spectacular six and M seven open star clusters, and the Eta Acrids meteor shower produced by Harley's comment In our May edition of SkyWatch, Nasairs confirmed that two of the habitation modules being built for the now postponed Lunar Gateway space Station project are suffering from corrosion problems. The admission by NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman was made during a congressional hearing last week. The primary contractor for the Gateway Habitational Logistics Outpost or HALO module, Northrope Grumman, has now confirmed that there is an issue, and the European Space Agency, which is providing Gateway's other habitation module, the IHAB, has also acknowledged that corrosion has been observed in its module. The thing is Both pressure vessel structures for these two modules were manufactured by the Franco Italian firm Thallisolenius Space now Thalisilenia initially refused to comment that. Five days after Issachmann's testimony, the company finally admitted that, yeah, there were problems, stating that a well known metallurgical behavior was found on the surface of the module, which will be fixed by the end of the third quarter of twenty twenty six. Now presumably well known metallurgical behavior is some sort of euphemism for corrosion, in other words rust. The company went on to say that it's also teaming up with Easy to fix the Eyehad module, which is still at the plant, and as we said, it is suffering from the same problem and it doesn't end there, it seems. Axiom Space, which is also ordered to pressurize structure for its private space station from Thallus, says similar issues have been identified with the module for its future commercial space station. Initial analysis points to problems with the manufacturing processes, surface treatments, and material properties. The corrosion issues with the modules were a will kept secret until Isaacman disclosed them during the hearings. Now, with the demise of the Lunar Gateway space station, Northrop Grumman has been trying to position the Halo module as an option for future lunar surface habitat as part of NASA's Moon Bay South Pole project, and Ester is likely to make a similar suggestion for its IHAB module. During his testimony, Isacman said the corrosion issues were, among other problems, likely to have delayed the launch of the Lunar Gateway space station to will beyond twenty thirty. Gateway was slated to be in orbit by twenty twenty eight. Isacman says he's not sure whether efforts to repair Halo and IHAB are even warranted at this point. Only time will tell what happens in the future. This is space time and time out to turn our eyes to the skies and check out the celestial sphere for the month of May on SkyWatch. May is the fifth month of the year in both the Julian Angagorian calendars. The month was named for the Greek goddess Maya, who was identified with the Roman era goddess of fertility Bernadia, whose festival was held in May. But I guess more importantly for many of our listeners, May typically marks the start of summer vacation season in the United States and Canada. Let's start out tour of the night skies by looking east, where you'll see the constellation Scorpius the Scorpion. In Greek mythology, the constellation was named after Scorpius, who was sent to Earth by the goddess KaiA in order to slay Ryan the Hunter after he boasted that he could kill all the animals on Earth. Scorpius stung a Ryin in the shoulder, but Orion's life was spared by Epheutius the Healer and was placed in the heavens along with Scorpius, who continues to pursue him for eternity. Orian the Hunter has become the hunted forever, with Scorpius rising in the east this time of year to triumphantly chase and defeat Orion, who sets in the west. Meanwhile, oh Fa Yushus, the Hero arises in the east, following behind Scorpius to chase and crush him into the earth as the Scorpion sets in the west, and so this ancient story continues to play out in the heavens year after year. Interestingly, parts of this story predate the Greeks, with Orion known in ancient Egypt as a Cyrus, the god of the underworld and of regeneration. The brightest star in Scorpius is Alpha Scorpio or Antaris, the scorpion's heart in ancient Greek, and Taris means the equal arrival of Mars, the god of war. That's because it's gold an orange appearance is very similar to that of the red planet, and it passes very close to Mars every seven hundred and eighty days, easily seen with the unaided eye. And Tari's is some five hundred and fifty light years away, but it looks so bright right because it's around fifty seven thousand, five hundred times as luminous as the Sun and is one of the largest known stars in the universe. And Tari's is a red super giant about eighteen times the mass in eight hundred and eighty three times the diameter of the Sun. Were placed where the Sun is in our solar system, yielding gulf all the terrestrial planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, and its visible surface would extend almost as far as as Jupiter. A light year is about ten trillion kilometers the distance of photon can travel in a year at three hundred thousand kilometers per second, the speed of light in a vacuum, and the ultimate speed limit of the universe. Astronomers believe and Taris began life around twelve million years ago as a spectrotype O orb blue star. Astronomers describe stars in terms of spectual types, a classification system based on temperature and characteristics. The hottest, most massive, and most luminous stars are known as spectrotype OH blue stars, followed by spectrotype B blue white stars, then specturotype A white stars, spectrotype F whitish yellow stars, spectrotype G yellow stars. That's where our Sun fits in. Then there's spectrotype K orange stars, and the coolest and least massive stars and earn as spectrotype M red stars. Each spetual classification system can also be subdivided using a numeric digit to represent temperature, with zero being the hottest and nine the coolest, and then you add a Roman numeral to represent luminosity. So put it all together and you can describe our Sun as being a G two V or G two five yellow dwarf star, one of millions spread across our galaxy. Also included in the stellar classification system are special types LT and Y, which are assigned to feldstars known as brown dwarves, some of which were actually born as spectrotype M red stars but became brown dwarves after losing some of their mass. Brown dwarves fit into a unique categor between the largest planets, which are about thirteen times the mass of Jupiter, and the smallest spectro type M red dwarf stars, which are about seventy five to eighty times the mass of Jupiter or zero point zero eight solar masses like the similar sized red giant Bettle Girls in the constellation Orion, and Tari's will almost certainly end its life as a spectacular type two or cor collapse supernerva, probably sometime within the next one hundred thousand years or so. When it does explode, it'll appear as bright as the full moon for several months on end, and will be clearly visible during daylight hours here on Earth, and Tari' says a companion star and Tari's b located between two hundred and twenty four and five hundred and twenty nine astronomical units away from the primary. An astronomical unit is the average distance between the Earth and the Sun, which is about one hundred and fifty million kilometers or eight point three light minutes. Special analysis of Ntari's b indicates it's pulling a lot of material off its bloated red super giant can companion, located near Antaries is the M four globular cluster. Globular clusters are tight balls densely packed with thousands to millions of stars which were either all originally formed at the same time from the collapse of the same molecular gas and dust cloud, or alternatively, their galactic centers the remains of ancient galaxies that are being merged into the Milky Way Galaxy over billions of years. M four is composed of a million or so stars originally born some twelve billion years ago. The M four globular cluster is located some seven two hundred light years away, making it one of the nearest globular clusters to Earth. Easily seen through a pair of small binoculars, it covers an area of the sky as seen from Earth, as big as the full moon. Astronomers estimate there are some one hundred and fifty or so globular clusters orbiting in the halo of the Milky Way, located Near the tail of the scorpion are two open star clusters, known as M six and M seven. Seven. Open star clusters are loosely bound groups of a few thousand stars which are all originally formed from the same milecular gas and dust cloud at the same time, but are not as densely bound as globular clusters. Open clusters generally survive for a few hundred million years, with the most massive ones surviving for maybe a few billion years now. In contrast, the far more massive globular clusters exert far stronger gravitational attraction on their members, which is why they can survive so much longer. M six, which is also known as the Butterfly cluster, is some twelve light years across and located about sixteen hundred light years away. It contains around eighty stars which are or less than one hundred million years old, which is quite young in cosmic terms. The M seven or Ptolome cluster is named after the famous Greek astronomer and mathematician Claudius Ptolemy. It's about nine hundred and eighty light years away and is far more dispersed than M six, covering an area around twenty five light years across, and at around two hundred million years, it's about twice as old. By the way, the M in terms like M four, M six, and M seven are abbreviations for Messier, in honor of the eighteenth century French astronomer Charles Messier, who developed an astronomical catalog of fuzzy nebulous objects in the skies. See. Messier was a comet hunter, and he compiled the list of one hundred and three fuzzy objects which one comets and so from his perspective, could be ignored. Later other astronomers added additional celestial objects to the list, bringing the present catalog up to one hundred and ten. Our solar system. In fact, most of the stars we see when we look up in the night sky are located in the Milky Way galaxies. Orion Arm. The Iran Arm, also known as the Orion Spur or the Orion Sigus Arm, depending on which name you prefer, is some three thousand, five hundred light years wide and around ten thousand light years long. The Iran Arm is named after the Irion constellation, which is one of the most prominent constall relations in the Southern Hemisphere. Summer and northern hemisphere winter. Some of the brightest and most famous celestial objects in the constellation include Bettle Girls, Rigel, the stars of the Orion Belt, and the Orion Nebula, all located within the Iran Arm. The Orion Arm is located between the Kreana Sagittarius Arm, which is more towards the galactic center from our position, and the Perseus Arm, which is more towards the outer edge of the galaxy from our point of view. The Perseus Arm is one of the two major arms of the Milky Way, the other being the Scutum Centaurius Arm. Long thought of is a minor structure spur if you will, between the two longer adjacent arms Perseus and Koreana Sagittarius. Evidence was presented in mid twenty thirteen that the Iran Arm might actually be a branch of the Perseus Arm, or possibly a completely independent arm segment itself within the Orion arm our solar system, The Sun, the Earth, and all the other planets we know are located close to the Inner Rim in what's known as the local bubble, about halfway along the Orion Arm's length, approximately twenty six thousand light years from the Galactic Center. The Local Bubble is a cavity in the interstellar medium in the Irion arm, containing, among other things, the local interstellar Cloud, which contains our Solar System and the g Cloud. It's at least three hundred light is across, and it has a neutral hydrogen density of just zero point zero five Adams picubic centimeter. There's just one tenth of the average for the interstellar medium across the Milky Way and about a six that of the local interstellar cloud. The hot diffuse gas in the Local Bubble amidst X rays and is the result of a supernova that exploded sometime during the past ten to twenty million years. It was once thought that the most likely candidate for the remains of the supernova was Jaminga, a pulsar and the constellation Gemini. However, later it was suggested that mouldible supernovae in a subgroup be one of the Pleiades moving group was more likely responsible becoming a room that supersh our. Solar System has been traveling through this region of space occupied by the Local Bubble for the last five to ten million years. Its current location is in what's known as the local Interstellar cloud, a minor region of slightly dense and material within the bubble. The cloud formed when the local bubble and another bubble called the Loop one bubble met gas within the local interstellar cloud as a density of about zero point three atoms for cubic centimeter. From what we can tell, the local bubble isn't spherical, but seems to be narrower in the galactic plane, becoming somewhat egg shaped or elliptical, and may even become wider above and below the galactic plane, becoming shaped more like an hourglass. It's not alone, it's subbutting other bubbles of lesser dense interstellar medium, including the Loop one bubble. The Loop one bubble was created by supernervae instellar winds in the Scorpius Centaurus association, some five hundred layers from the Sun. The Loop one bubble also contains the starr inaris that we spoke about earlier. Astronomers have identified several well, I guess you call them tunnels which connect the cavities of the local bubble with that of the Loop one bubble. Collectively, they've been referred to as the Loopers tunnel. Other bubbles which are adjacent to our local bubble and then as the Loop two bubble and the Loop three bubble looks like astronomers still have a problem when it comes to thicking up cool names. Also visible this month is the Edna Acards meteor shower, which is generated as the Earth passes through the dust and debris trail left behind by Halley's comet Comet P one. Halley's a well known short period comet which visits the Inner Solar System every seventy five to seventy six years. The fifteen kilometer wide mountain of rock and ice will make its next close up appearance in twenty sixty one. It's named in honor of the British astronomer Edmund Halley, who in seventeen oh five, after examining ancient Chinese, Babylonian and medieval European records, successfully predicted its return in seventeen fifty eight. However, he died in seventeen forty two before his prediction could be confirmed. The comet's highly elliptical and elongated orbit takes it from between the orbits of Mercury and Venus out almost as far as the orbit of Pluto. Halley's orbit is in retrograde, meaning orbits the Sun in the opposite direction to the planets, that is, clockwise from above the Sun's northern pole. This retrograde orbit results in at having one of the highest velocities relative to the Earth of any object in the Solar System, traveling at some seventy point five six kilimetis per second, or if you prefer, two hundred and fifty four thousand and sixteen kilimeatus per hour. As well as the eto Acrids meteor shower every May, Halley's comet also produces the Orionid's meteor shower in late October. Astronomers think Comet Halley was originally a long period comet which took thousands of years to travel to the inner Solar System from the Oort Cloud, but was gravitationally perturbed into its current orbit by close encounters with the giant outer planets. The Old Cloud is a hypothetical sphere of comets and asteroids beyond the heliosphere, a mixture of vagabonds from the Solar System and objects from deep space which have been collected by the Sun's gravitational pull. Occasionally, as the Sun passes by another star, an Old Cloud object will get perturbed and be flung towards the inner Solar System. The etter Acrids meteor shower runs from the nineteenth of April through to the twenty eighth of May, peaking around May the fifth, with around fifty five meteors an hour, making it one of the Southern hemispheres best celestial showers. However, back in nineteen seventy five they were running ninety five meteors an hour, and in nineteen eighty it was up to one hundred and ten. Even better, the bright yellow meteors often appear as streaks known as trains. As their name suggests, they radiate out from the direction of the constellation Aquarius and the star Eta Aquerry. Just look towards the east after midnight and before dawn for the best view. And joining us now for the rist of our two of the May night skies, seeing your science writer and Sky tell us about magazine contributor Jonathan Nale. Today, Stewart, Yeah, Well, what's in the night's drive from May? Well, it's now autumn for those of us in the Southern Hemisphere, and a springtime of course for our friends north of the equator. For us where I live down south. That means the night are becoming colder, but the hours of darkness are growing longer, so we've got more time for stargates, which is good weather permitting. Of course, brooks any towards wind and weather gets in the way, but anyway, we have more hours of night time now. Stargates is in each of the north or southern hemispheres. They do have some constellations that only Va can things up in the northern hemisphere, you know, I mean, I've never seen the constellation of Cassiopea and those sorts of ones an putting were seen Ursa major as a minor. Those are the ones in the south. We've got constellations that people far in the north don't see. Have got the famous Southern Cross, for instance, which in the middle part of May evenings is standing upright and high in the south for once. These constellations their appearance in the sky. Where they appear in the sky depends on the time of the year, as the Earth goes around and it's all but so for certain time of the year, a lot of people can't find the Southern Cross, and that's because you can't spire. It's below the horizon or very low down on the horizon. As the months go past, however, the sky has appeared to rotate a bit, and we get to May, and so we can see the Southern Cross now well above the horizon, nice and high and standing straight up right as a kite shape to shape like a kite, rather than lying on a stift hand side or a try hand sid as it does at other times a year. To the left of the Southern Cross, we've got two bright stars and the constellation Centaurus. The two brightest ones, in fact are for Ambta Centaurie, and these are called to two pointers because if you draw a line between them and keep the line going at points more or less to the Southern Cross. I don't know why you need to do that. The Southern Cross is pretty prominent, although having said that, it is quite small, and there are a couple of other larger crosses not too far away that people do. I use the pointers to guid into the Southern Cross. Even though I know what the Southern Cross looks like and I know where it is in the sky, I'd still use those pointers. Yeah, if you see the point is, you definitely know you're in the right part of the sky because the point are not near those other two large crosses, the False Cross, and I can't remember then any other costs. But the False Cross is really quite big, because people think the Southern Cross must be really big because it's famous, but it's actually the smallest constellation in the sky. I don't really have any trouble finding across these days because I've been watching it for years and years and years. But when you're starting out, for sure, yeah, using the pointer stars to get you in the right area, and the right direction is very very handed. So they're on the left of the Southern Cross as at the years, at this time of year, to the right of the cross the constellations Karina, Vela and Puppas. People probably never heard of those ones, Karina Villa and Pappas, and these ones, being more or less smack bang in the middle of the Milky Way, are full of wonderful star fields and nebula. You can pick a lot of these out with just a small pair of monoculars. Just you don't need big binoculars, you don't need heavy monoculars, just normal pair of binoculars, which is how I got going in stargazing emis Ago. I had a pair of that it wasn't with my mum's. It was a little pair of eight by thirty monoculars that's fairly small and like a sie stacks of things. With those, I did have nice dar skis who ide it in a country town. Much better than than shitting the stargasing. But you don't need a telescope to start with, just some monoculars. But if you do have a telescope, even a small one, you'll get an even better view of these star fields and negular things. So grab a star chart or download an app for your mobile phone and see if you can find a star cluster called Amiga Centauri. You can actually just make this out with the unaided eye. It looks like a tiny, fuzzy star, but it's not a star. It's a huge globe called a globular star cluster of about ten million stars, and it's about seventeen thousand light years away. But even a small telescope will show you that it's not a point of light like a star is. It's a round blob, a sort of faint grayish blob. And the bigger and bigger, bigger telescope is that you use if you can need a hands on them to start to see more and more, and then the starchiatric stars in this Fuice starcluster, which is really quite incredible. And when you think it's seventeen thousand light years away, so what you're seeing now left there seventeen thousand years ago. Its mind boggles the minds all the time. Another thing you can another object you can try and stop, even with a small telescope. There's a galaxy called n GC five one to eight, which is often called cen Taurus A. There's a story behind that. I like to tell this story because if you look it up on Wikipedia, it'll say it's called sen Taurus A, sometimes known as MGC five one two eight. When it was discovered, it was cataloged as MGC five one two eight. Centaurus A is the name given to the source of radio wave emission that is coming from this galaxy. When the first radio telescopes are being built, and the first one is down here in the Southern hemisphere, they were pointing him around the sky and they've got this huge signal coming from this direction of the sky. When they looked, they saw, oh, this enormous apparent origin of radio waves seems to be inside this galaxy called MGC five one two eight. So MGC five one two eight is the name of the galaxy. Centaurus A is the name of the radio source coming up from that is inside the galaxy. But it's a losing battle. I've sort of given up. People call it sentaurus A or Senna, and the MGC five one two eight is the sort the secondary secondary, yeah, name given to it. But anyway, that's my little soapbox on that galaxy. It's about ten to thirteen million light years away. So when you're looking at it, think about that the light that you're seeing now left there about ten to thirteen million years ago. It's got a massive black hole and it's called about fifty five million times the mass of our sun. Hugely massive black hole in the middle of this, they think. And if you see it, picture can look it up on the internet in GC five one two eight or centall u s A. You see that it's an odd looking galaxy. It's got this big dark lane that goes through the middle. Old that a piece to be twisted, and it's a sort of around appears to be around galaxy are what they call an elliptical galaxy or spiral galaxy. Just the angle that we're looking at it. But it's a bit of an odd ball, but pretty specky. And the thing is, even with a small telescope, you can see this thing. And when you think that it's ten to thirteen million light years away, that's pretty impressive, I think. So what else we got In the western part of the sky just after sunset, you'll see the constellation Awry and the Hunter, which is dipping below the horizon this darm of year. You've also got Serious, which is the brightest star in the night sky, and it's the brightest star in the constellation Canus Major, or the Greater Dog. A little bit to the north, there's another fairly bright are called Psion, which is the brighter star in Caness minor, or the Lesser or a smaller Dog. Imagine if you have aren't there these names. Take a look at Ryan and Serious and Pression now, because as the weeks go by now they'll soon be outside, they look below the horizon, and they won't appear again until the end of the year. For us in the south, the northern half of us, the sky doesn't seem to have much going through it at the moment. Now, not many bright star fields this time of year, at least during the evening time. There are some famous constellations there. Though you can see Leo, you can see Cancer and Virgo. Everyone's heard of those. There's some of the constellations of the zodiac. Virgo, in fact, is actually a great interest to amateur astronomers because it contains hundreds and hundreds of galaxies which are really great to see, but you do need a telescope to see those, and some dark skies as well. If you're still outstargazing around midnight, you will start to see some mining impressive constellations starting to climb up over the eastern horizon. You've got the famous Sagittarius of Scorpius. Then people will heard of those, and there's a couple of lesser known ones called Scutum and Ophiucus, and the Milky Way region through these constellations, all of those ones I just mentioned is really quite spectacular, full of incredible star fields and star clusters, and regularly just a pair of monoculars will get you going there, and if you can get hold of a tele scurf to have a look even better. And the thing is when you're looking at Sagittarius or at least the right part of Set's curious. You are looking right into the center of our Milky Way galaxy, which is why that area of the sky is pretty impressive, because you know, we're sort of towards the outskirts of the Milky Way, so when you look towards the center, you're looking in towards the main part of the Gallsits so that displowes so much stuff there to see. Now, let's see what's happening with the planets during May. Well low in the northwestern sky, you'll find Venus after sunset. It's going to be there all month, slowly moving northward as each night goes past, but otherwise appearing fairly unchanging. And it's big and bright. It's much brighter than that star series which I mentioned earlier, the brightest star in the night sky, so Venus is really bright. The area of darkness it also in the northwest, and a bit higher up is Jupiter. It's currently about the same brightness as that star, Serious, but it has a slightly off white coloring. Serious, that's really searingly white, bright white. But Jupiter has a bit of color to it. You might say it's bit yellowish or orangish something like that. As the month goes on, Jupiter is actually going to slowly start to sink toward the horizon. It will still be above the horizon at the end of the month and next month, actually coming up on the nineteen tenth of June, Venus and Jupiter will be quite close to each other in the sky, at less than four moon wips apart. So these two big bright planets will be fairly close to each other. And that shouldn't look pretty specky for our listeners. Oversee steppy is Australia and then go for spectacular, should add that in. And lastly, we've got in the early morning sky, so if you're up before dawn, you'll find Saturn and now it's rising above the eastern horizon about four am, followed roughly an hour later by Mars. As the month goes on, Saturn will be rising increasingly earlier, and therefore it will be higher and higher in the sky before the dawn comes. So do you go out of five o'clock in the morning at the beginning of the month, you'll see Saturn a certain high above the horizon or altfeud it should say. And then three weeks later where at the same time you'll see the Saturn is now much higher in the sky. That's just due to the changing angles between birth and it's all that and Saton and it's all but just a line of side effect. Mars won't change much during May. It will be sort of more or less hagging in the horizon, about eight to ten degrees above the horizon all months, and it looks like a small reddish orangish medium brightness star. So as long as you've got a fairly clean horizon, the granet mountains or buildings or that sort of stuff in the way, you should be able to make it out. And that's Stewart is the United Spy of format. That's in your science writer and sky until let's got a magazine contributed to Jonathan Nelly, and this is space Time, and that's the show for now. Space Time is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through at fightes dot com, SoundCloud, YouTube, your favorite podcast download provider, and from space Time with Stuart Gary dot com. Space Time's also broadcast through the National Science Foundation, on Science Own Radio and on both iHeartRadio and tune in Radio. And you can help to support our show by visiting the Spacetime Store for a range of promotional merchandising goodies, or by becoming a Spacetime Patron, which gives you access to triple episode commercial free versions of the show, as well as lots of bonnus audio content which doesn't go to weir, access to our exclusive Facebook group, and other rewards. Just go to space Time with Stewart Gary dot com for full details. You've been listening to space Time with Stuart Gary. This has been another quality podcast production from bytes dot com.
