March 4, 2026

Blood Moon, Broken Records & the Hubble Mystery

Blood Moon, Broken Records & the Hubble Mystery

The Blood Moon has come and gone — and what a show it was. In today's Astronomy Daily, Anna and Avery recap last night's total lunar eclipse, the last visible from North America until New Year's Eve 2028. Plus: NASA confirms Artemis 2 repairs are complete and an April crewed Moon mission is back on track. Astronomers have found the most tightly packed quadruple star system ever discovered — four stars crammed into a space no bigger than Jupiter's orbit. Gravitational waves could be about to solve one of cosmology's biggest mysteries: the Hubble Tension. The world's first private commercial space telescope has captured its first star. And finally — why do physicists say interstellar travel is impossible and aliens definitely haven't visited? In This Episode • 00:00 — Cold Open & Show Introduction • 02:00 — Story 1: Blood Moon Total Lunar Eclipse Recap • 06:00 — Story 2: Artemis 2 Repairs Complete, April Launch on Track • 09:00 — Story 3: Record-Breaking Quadruple Star System TIC 120362137 • 12:30 — Story 4: Gravitational Waves and the Hubble Tension • 15:30 — Story 5: Mauve — World's First Private Space Telescope • 18:30 — Story 6: Why Interstellar Travel Is Impossible • 22:00 — Show Close Find Us • Website: astronomydaily.io • Social: @AstroDailyPod • Network: Bitesz.com Podcast Network

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WEBVTT

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Last night, the moon turned red and bled across the

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sky for nearly an hour. A spacecraft is being prepped

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for the most daring crude mission in half a century.

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And somewhere out there, four stars are dancing together in

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a space so tight it would fit inside Mercury's orbit.

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And apparently no aliens are coming to visit physiccesso.

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Dot even a postcard. This is Astronomy Daily.

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I'm Anna and I'm Avery. Let's get into it.

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Welcome to Astronomy Daily, the podcast bringing you the universe's

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best stories, six days a week. It is Wednesday, March fourth,

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twenty twenty six, and we have a genuinely stellar episode

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for you today, pun absolutely intended.

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We have the aftermath of what many of you stayed

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up all night to see, the blood moon, total lunary clips.

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We have major Artemis two news, a star system that

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honestly shouldn't exist, the solution to one of cosmology's biggest headaches,

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the dawn of commercial space astronomy, and the physics based

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reality check on alien visitors.

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It's a lot. Let's not waste a second.

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Okay, First things first, Yesterday morning or the early hours

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of yesterday, depending on where you were. The moon turned

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blood red, and I need to know, Anna, did you

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watch it?

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I absolutely did. I dragged a blanket outside and watched

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the whole thing from my garden and the moment totality

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hit this deep, rusty orange glow, stars suddenly visible that

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had been washed out by moonlight. It was genuinely one

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of those I love being alive on a planet with

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the moon moments right.

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For those who missed it, here's what happened. The Moon

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passed completely through Earth's shadow. That's what makes it a

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total lunar eclipse, and the reason it turns red rather

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than just going dark is this beautiful piece of physics.

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Every sunrise and every sunset had happening on Earth at

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that moment, projects its orange and red light through our

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atmosphere and bends it onto the Moon's surface. So what

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you're seeing is the light of every dawn and dusk

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on the planet, all at once.

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Which is one of the most romantic explanations in all

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of astronomy.

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Honestly, Totality lasted just under an hour fifty nine minutes

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to be precise, and it was visible across a US, Canada, Mexico,

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and parts of South America in the morning hours and

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from Australia, New Zealand and Asia after sunset, so pretty

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much anyone who wanted to see it had a shot.

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The timing was great for observers in the Mountain and

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Pacific time zones. In North America they got totality in

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fully dark skies. Eastern time viewers had to contend with

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twilight creeping in, but honestly, still spectacular.

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And here's the bittersweet part. If you missed this one,

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you're going to be waiting a while. This was the

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last total lunaric clips visible from North America until New

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Year's Eve twenty twenty eight.

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So if you watched it, well done. You caught a

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rare treat. And if you didn't, mark your calendars now

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New Year's Eve twenty twenty eight, great excuse for a party.

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We'd love to hear from you. Did you get clear skies?

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Drop us a message at Astro Daily Pod.

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All right. Next up, huge news for human spaceflight. DASA

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has confirmed that repairs to the Artemis two rocket are

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complete and in April, launch is still very much on

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the table.

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This is the one we've all been waiting for. Artemis

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two would be the first crude mission to fly around

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the Moon in over fifty years. Not a landing, not yet,

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but a crude flight that will take four astronauts further

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from Earth than any humans have ever been.

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The crew is Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission

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specialist Christina Koch, who would become the first woman to

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travel to the Moon, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen.

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The issue that need fixing was a hydrogen leak that

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showed up during fueling tests. NASA took it seriously, worked

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through it methodically, and they're now satisfied its resolved. The

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vehicle is back in the Vehicle Assembly building at Kennedy

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Space Center and the teams are working towards an April target.

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No exact launch date has been confirmed yet. NASA is

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still working through its checklist, but the fact that repairs

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are complete and they're still talking April is genuinely encouraging.

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To put it in perspective, the last time humans flew

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to the Moon was Apollo seventeen in December nineteen seventy two.

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That's fifty three years and if Artemis two launches as planned,

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we'll be back in lunar space before the spring is out.

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We'll keep tracking this one closely as the launch date

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firms up. Exciting times.

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Okay, I need everyone to picture something. Take our entire

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Solar system from the Sun to Mercury. That tiny sliver

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of space roughly seventy seven million kilometers now cram three

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stars into it. Three stars.

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That's I mean, that's insane. Stars are enormous.

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They are, And yet astronomers have just confirmed a system

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called TIC one two zero three six two one three seven,

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where exactly that is happening. Three stars, all bigger and

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hotter than our Sun, packed into a volume smaller than

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Mercury's orbit around our star. And then, as if that

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weren't enough, there's a fourth star orbiting all three of

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them at a distance comparable to where Jupiter sits in

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our solar system.

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So it's a triple star system with a chaperone.

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That's genuinely the best way I've heard it described. The

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research was published in Nature Communications and led by astronomer

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to Maas Borkowitz at the University of Seged in Hungary.

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His team used data from NASA's test satellite, originally designed

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to hunt four exoplanets alongside ground based telescopes in Hungary, Arizona,

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the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. Seventy three spectra from the

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Fred Whipple Observatory in Arizona alone.

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How do you even spot something like this?

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It starts with dips in starlight. The stars eclipse each

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other as a orbit, causing tiny periodic drops in brightness.

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What initially looked like a simple pair of stars eclipsing

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every three point three days turned out on closer inspection

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to be hiding a third star. Two and then the

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fourth was teased out using a clever algorithm that isolated

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each star spectral fingerprints individually.

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This system is in the Constellations signess the Swan, and

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its technical classification is a three plus one type quadruple

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three inner stars in a tight mutual orbit with a

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fourth outer companion. The outer stars orbital period is just

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one thousand, forty six days, the shortest ever recorded for

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this type of system.

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And the team was also able to model the system's

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eventual fad over billions of years. The heavyweight stars will

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exhaust their fuel, swell into giants, and shed their outer layers.

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The whole thing will likely end up as a pair

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of white dwarfs orbiting each other, a slow, quiet fade

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into stellar retirement.

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From cosmic chaos to cosmic peace. I find that oddly comforting.

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It's a reminder that our own sun, lone solitary planetarily

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well behaved, might actually be the weird one. Most stars

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in the galaxy have at least one companion, some apparently

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have three.

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Right. This next one is for the cosmology nerds, but

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we're going to make it make sense for everyone because

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it is genuinely important.

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The Hubble tension. It sounds like a minor bureaucratic disagreement,

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but it's actually one of the biggest unsolved problems in

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modern physics.

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So here's the setup. We know the universe is expanding,

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the question is how fast, and when astronomers use two

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different methods to measure that expansion rate, called the Hubble constant,

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they get two different answers that stubbornly refuse to agree.

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One method uses the early universe the cosmic microwave background,

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the leftover light from shortly after the Big Bang. Other

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methods use nearby cosmic distance markers like cepheed variable stars

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and Type ONEA supernovae. Both methods are solid. Both have

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been refined for decades, and they still don't match.

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The gap between them is only about eight or nine

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percent numerically, but that's small. Discrepancy is a massive headache

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because it suggests either our measurements are wrong, or more excitingly,

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there's new physics we don't understand yet.

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And now scientists are proposing a third, completely independent method,

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gravitational waves. When two massive objects like black holes or

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neutron stars spiral together and merge, they send ripples through

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the fabric of space time itself. These gravitational waves carry

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precise information about the distance to the event and how

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fast the universe is expanding at that point.

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The beautiful thing is gravitational wave detectors like LIGO and

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virgo don't rely on the same assumptions as the other methods.

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So if gravitational wave measurements can pin down the hubble

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constant independently, we'll finally have a referee in this argument.

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We don't have enough events yet to be definitive. Gravitational

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wave astronomy is still young, but as detectors improve and

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we observe more mergers, this could be the key that

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unlocks one of cosmology's greatest mysteries.

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Physics still keeping us humble since always.

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A genuine milestone in the history of astronomy. This week,

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the MAV telescope, the world's first privately owned commercial space telescope,

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has captured its first observation and it's the first star.

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This is a big deal. MAV is operated by a

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London based startup called Blue Sky's Space, launched back in

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November aboard a SpaceX ride share mission. It's a small satellite,

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about the size of a suitcase, weighing under nineteen kilograms,

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but what it can do is genuinely unique.

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BOV is designed to observe stars in ultraviolet light wavelengths

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that are completely blocked by earth atmosphere, so you simply

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cannot study them from the ground. The last dedicated ultraviolet

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space observatory was the International Ultraviolet Explorer, which was retired

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back in nineteen ninety six, so there's been a three

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decade gap in this kind of science.

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And this science it's doing matters enormously for the search

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for life. Not every star is as well behaved as

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our Sun. Many stars, especially the cooler, more common red dwarfs,

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produce intense UV flares that could strip the atmospheres off

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nearby planets, making them uninhabitable regardless of their distance from

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the star. MOV will survey hundreds of stars to figure

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out which ones are genuinely friendly to life.

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The commercial model here is also interesting. Data access is

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provided through annual subscriptions to research teams, a sort of

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Netflix for UV astronomy data. It's a new way of

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funding space science, and if it works, Blue Sky Space

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plans a whole fleet of these.

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The first star observed was one of the brightest stars

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in the ursa major constellation. A calibration target to check

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the instrument is working correctly, and it is first light achieved.

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Science operations underway.

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The universe has its first commercial telescope. I for one,

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welcome our new private sector stargazers.

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And finally our lighter closer, although I'd argue there's nothing

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light about the physics involved.

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A new piece from the Brighter side of News has

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been making the rounds this week, and it takes a

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long hard look at why, despite the vastness of the

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universe and the billions of potentially habitable worlds out there,

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no alien civilization has ever shown up on our doorstep

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and The answer, it turns out, isn't conspiracy. It's physics.

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Five barriers, that's the argument, Five physical constraints that together

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make interstellar contact essentially impossible. Shall we run through them?

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Let's do it.

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Number one distance The nearest star to us, Proxima Centauri,

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is four point two four light years away. The Parker

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Solar Probe, the fastest human made object ever built, would

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take around sixty six hundred years to reach it, And

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that's our closest neighbor. The Milky Way is one hundred

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thousand light years across.

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Number two, the speed of light. This is not an

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engineering problem, it's a law of reality. Einstein's special relativity

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tells us that as you accelerate anything with mass toward

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the speed of light, it takes ever more energy, forever

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smaller gains and speed. To actually reach light speed would

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take infinite energy, not a lot of energy, infinite.

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Number three propulsion. Even if you accept a much lower target,

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say one percent of light speed, you run straight into

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what's called the rocket equation. To accelerate, you need fuel,

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But fuel has mass, which means you need more fuel

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to push the fuel, which adds more mass. It grows

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exponentially the fuel required for even a modest interstellar trip

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would be staggering.

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Number four. Biology, The human body evolved on Earth under

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Earth's magnetic field, under Earth's gravity, Deep space is brutal.

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Cosmic radiation shreds DNA, microgravity degrades bones and cardiovascular systems,

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and we still haven't solved cryogenic preservation. Even robots aren't immune.

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Radiation degrades electronics and over the time skills involved entropy wins.

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And number five and this is my favorite one. Timing

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our civilization has been broadcasting radio signals for about one

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hundred years. That creates a bubble roughly one hundred light

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years across. The Milky Way is a thousand times wider

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than that The universe is thirteen point eight billion years old.

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Civilizations might rise, transmit, and fall all before their signals

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even reach anyone capable of receiving them. The physicist Richard

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Feynman apparently compared it to fireflies blinking on different nights

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in a dark forest. They never overlap.

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And what about UFOs. The piece applies physics to claims

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of craft performing impossible maneuvers, instant acceleration to extreme speeds,

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sharp turns with no sonic signature. The forces involved would

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be tens of thousands of times Earth's gravity. Occupants would

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be pulped, materials would fail. The physics doesn't work.

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Now Is this depressing? I actually don't think so. The

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piece ends on something beautiful. The same laws of physics

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that prevent easy interstellar travel also make the universe stable, ordered,

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and ultimately life friendly. Light speed preserves causality. Without it,

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cause and effect would unravel. Stable atoms permit chemt stars

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forge the elements that build planets and people.

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We might be alone in our cosmic neighborhood, but we're

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made of the same star stuff as every galaxy in

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the observable universe. We're not separate from the cosmos. We're

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the universe looking at itself.

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I'll take that.

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That's Astronomy Daily for Wednesday, March the fourth, twenty twenty six.

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Blood Moons, Crude Moon Missions, Cosmic star Huddles, the Universe's

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expansion mystery, the dawn of private space telescopes, and why

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the Aliens Aren't coming.

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Honestly, one of my favorite episodes in a while. If

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you enjoyed it, please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

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Leave us a review, It genuinely helps us reach more

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space enthusiasts and find us on social media. At Astro

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Daily Pod.

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Few episodes every Weekday and Saturday. We'll see you Tomorrow.

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For more from the universe, Blear Skys Everyone.

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Sunday Stars The Stars.

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The Soul

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Store is control