March 20, 2026
Equinox Auroras, Ancient Stars, and a Satellite Resurrection
It's the first day of astronomical spring — and the universe is celebrating in style. On today's Astronomy Daily, Anna and Avery cover a triple CME solar storm with aurora potential reaching as far south as Illinois, explain why the vernal equinox amplifies aurora activity, report on the ongoing meteorite hunt following Tuesday's spectacular Ohio fireball, reveal an extraordinary 14-billion-year-old star that carries the chemical fingerprints of the universe's very first stars, bring a happy update on Europe's Proba-3 solar science satellite which has ended a month of silence, and explain how X-ray CT scans of returned asteroid samples finally cracked one of Bennu's longest-standing mysteries. Stories in This Episode 1. Triple CME Strike + Equinox Aurora Alert Three coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are currently en route to Earth, with the first arriving today. Forecasters predict G2 (moderate) to G3 (strong) geomagnetic storm conditions, potentially bringing auroras as far south as Illinois. The timing coincides with the vernal equinox — historically one of the best aurora windows of the year due to the Russell-McPherron effect. 2. The Vernal Equinox — Today! The 2026 March equinox arrived today at 14:46 UTC, marking the astronomical start of spring in the Northern Hemisphere (and autumn in the Southern). Tonight, a thin crescent Moon appears alongside Venus in the west-southwest sky. 3. Ohio Fireball — Meteorite Hunt Underway On St. Patrick's Day (March 17), a seven-ton asteroid exploded over northeast Ohio with the force of 250 tons of TNT. NASA confirmed meteorites landed near Medina County, and hunters from across the US have already found fragments in the Sharon Center area. 4. Ancient 'Cosmic Fossil' Star PicII-503 Astronomers have discovered PicII-503, a second-generation star in the Pictor II dwarf galaxy with only 1/40,000th of the Sun's iron — the lowest ever measured outside the Milky Way. Its extraordinary carbon-to-iron ratio links it to mysterious carbon-enhanced metal-poor stars scattered across our galaxy's halo, solving a long-standing stellar mystery. Published in Nature Astronomy by Anirudh Chiti (Stanford) et al. 5. Proba-3 Phones Home — 'A Great Relief!' ESA confirmed on March 19 that its Proba-3 Coronagraph satellite — silent since mid-February after an anomaly caused it to lose attitude control — has reestablished contact via the Villafranca ground station. The spacecraft is in safe mode, solar-powered, and undergoing health checks before science operations can resume. 6. NASA Cracks Bennu's Boulder Mystery X-ray CT scans of returned OSIRIS-REx samples reveal Bennu's boulders are riddled with internal crack networks — the missing piece explaining the asteroid's puzzling low thermal inertia. Published in Nature Communications. The findings will improve asteroid characterisation from Earth-based telescopes globally. Source Links Triple CME / Aurora Alert — Space.com: https://www.space.com/stargazing/auroras/aurora-alert-powerful-geomagnetic-storm-could-spark-northern-lights-as-far-south-as-illinois-on-march-19 Triple CME / Sun News — EarthSky: https://earthsky.org/sun/sun-news-activity-solar-flare-cme-aurora-updates/ NOAA Space Weather Prediction Centre: https://www.spaceweather.gov Vernal Equinox 2026 — EarthSky: https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/everything-you-need-to-know-vernal-or-spring-equinox/ Ohio Fireball — EarthSky: https://earthsky.org/earth/sonic-boom-from-a-meteor-cleveland-ohio-and-pennsylvania-mar-17-2026/ Ohio Meteorite Hunt — Cleveland19: https://www.cleveland19.com/2026/03/19/meteorite-hunters-states-away-find-fragments-northeast-ohio/ PicII-503 Discovery — NOIRLab: https://noirlab.edu/public/news/noirlab2607/ PicII-503 — Nature Astronomy (DOI): https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-026-02802-z Proba-3 Phones Home — Space.com: https://www.space.com/space-exploration/missions/a-great-relief-europes-proba-3-solar-eclipse-satellite-phones-home-after-a-month-of-silence Proba-3 ESA Statement: https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Engineering_Technology/Proba-3_s_Coronagraph_is_alive Bennu Mystery Solved — NASA Science: https://science.nasa.gov/missions/osiris-rex/asteroid-bennus-rugged-surface-baffled-nasa-we-finally-know-why/ Bennu — Nature Communications (SciTechDaily): https://scitechdaily.com/we-were-scratching-our-heads-scientists-finally-solve-asteroid-bennus-surface-mystery/ Find us: astronomydaily.io | @AstroDailyPod on Twitter/X, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube & Tumblr Part of the Bitesz.com Podcast Network
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WEBVTT
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Happy first day of spring everyone, at least if you're
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in the northern hemisphere.
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I'm Anna and I'm Avery, And what a day for
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the cosmos to celebrate with us, because right now, as
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we're recording, the Sun has fired three enormous blasts of
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charged particles straight at Earth. A seven ton space rock
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just lit up the skies over Ohio, a satellite that
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went silent for a full month has finally phoned home,
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and astronomers have found a star so old it carries
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the direct fingerprints of the very first stars that ever existed.
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Plus, we're going to explain exactly why the equinox and
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those solar storms are connected. It's one of the most
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fascinating quirks of Earth's orbit around the Sun, and today
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is literally the best day of the year to talk
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about it.
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This is Astronomy Daily, Season five, episode sixty eight. Let's
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get into.
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It, okay, Avery, Before we even get into the equinox itself,
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we have to talk about what the Sun has been
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doing this week, because it has been.
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Busy, extremely busy. So here's a situation. As of today, Friday,
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the twentieth of March, Earth is being targeted by not one,
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not two, but three separate coronal mass ejections CMEs all
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fired off within the last few days.
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So for anyone who needs a quick refresher, A CME
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is essentially a massive eruption of plasma and magnetic field
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from the Sun. When these hit Earth's magnetic field, they
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compress it cause geomagnetic storms, and most visibly for us
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down here, they trigger auroras.
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The first of the three CMEs was expected to arrive today.
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Forecasters at Noah's Space Weather Prediction Center have issued a
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geomagnetic storm watch with conditions potentially reaching G two that's
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moderate with a chance of G three or strong, and
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that second level G three is where things get really interesting.
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Because G three conditions could push aurora of ability well
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into mid latitudes as far south as Illinois, Oregon, potentially
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even lower under the right conditions. So if you're in
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the northern US, northern Europe, Canada, tonight is a night
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to keep an eye on the sky.
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And there's more to come. A second CME is expected
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to deliver a glancing blow, and the third, triggered by
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an M two point seventy five flare from sunspot region
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AR four three nine two, is expected to arrive around
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March twenty first, so this isn't a one day event.
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The Space Weather picture remains active through the weekend.
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We should also mention we're currently near solar maximum, the
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peak of the Sun's eleven year cycle, which is part
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of why we're seeing this kind of activity. Peak activity
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is expected to continue through the second half of twenty
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twenty six, so get used to these kinds of alerts.
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Worth bookmarking Noah's Space Weather Prediction Center spaceweather dot gov
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for live Aurora forecasts, and on our website at ostrowna
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medaily dot io, we'll link to some recommended Aurora apps
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for your phone.
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Okay, so let's talk about the actual astronomical event that
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is happening today, the vernal equinox. The twenty twenty six
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March equinox falls at fourteen forty six UTC this afternoon.
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At that moment, the Sun crosses the celestial equator, the
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imaginary line in the sky directly above Earth's equator, moving
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from south to north, and at that precise moment, every
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point on Earth receives roughly equal amounts of daylight and darkness.
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The word equinox comes from the Latin for equal night
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I equos nooakes. It's the astronomical beginning of spring in
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the northern hemisphere and autumn in the southern. So if
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you're listening from Australia or New Zealand, happy autumn to you.
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And here's the thing that connects this equinox directly to
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the aurora story we just told. There's a phenomenon called
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the Russell Macphear in effect, named after the two scientists
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who identified it, and it specifically amplifies aurora activity around
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the equinoxes.
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Right basically around the equinoxes, Earth's magnetic field orientation is
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particularly favorable for coupling with the solar wind. The geometry
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of our planet's tilt relative to the Sun means incoming
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charged particles from CMEs interact more efficiently with our magnetosphere.
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So what this means in practice is the equinoxes are
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historically the best times of year to see auroras, even
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when the Sun isn't being especially active. When you combine
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a natural peak and aurora probability with three incoming CMEs
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on the same day, well, today is genuinely a special
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aurora opportunity.
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And there's a lovely bonus for skywatchers this evening. After
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sunset today, look to the west southwest and you'll be
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able to spot a thin, five percent lit, waxing crescent
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moon glowing just above Venus. Spring evenings don't get much
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more beautiful than.
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That equinox Aurora's crescent moon Venus, and I feel like
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the Universe planned this episode.
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I am starting to think so too. Check Astronomy Daily
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dot io for skywatching links for tonight.
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Okay, shifting from things you need to look up for
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to something that came down from above rather dramatically. On Tuesday,
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Saint Patrick's Day, thousands of people across the American Midwest
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experienced quite the green tinged morning, and not just from
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the holiday.
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At around eight fifty seven in the morning, a seven
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ton asteroid roughly six feet in diameter, entered the atmosphere
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above Lake Erie near Lorraine, Ohio, and moved southeast at
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around forty thousand miles per hour before fragmenting about thirty
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miles above Valley City.
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The explosion had the energy equivalent of two hundred and
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fifty tons of TNT, and it produced multiple sonic booms
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that were heard and felt across northeast Ohio and into Pennsylvania,
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New York and beyond. Some reports came in as far
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as Ontario and Canada.
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People were flooding nine to one one lines thinking it
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was an earthquake or an explosion or actually there was
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quite a creative range of theories on social media. But
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NASA's Meteoroid Environment's Office confirmed the medior quickly and tracked
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its trajectory precisely.
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And here's the exciting follow up that's still unfolding. NASA
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confirmed meteorites, actual fragments that survived the journey to the
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ground landed in the vicinity of Medina County, Ohio, and
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the meteorite hunting community has mobilized in a spectacular fashion.
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Within days, hunters from Connecticut, South Carolina, and multiple other
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states were converging on a small town called Sharon Center.
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At least one hunter found a twelve point two gram
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fragment found pieces in a parking lot, and the hunt
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is still very much on.
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Daytime. Fireballs this bright are genuinely rare. An amateur astronomer
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in the area sets something along the lines of to
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see a fireball in the daytime, it has to be
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extraordinarily bright, and the fact that it created multiple signing
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booms over a populated area is something that happens, perhaps
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once in a lifetime.
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If you're in the Medina County area and you spot
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a dark rock with a shiny exterior or a gray
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interior that looks slightly out of place, it might be
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worth a closer look. NASA's guidance is to photograph it
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without disturbing it and contact a local university geology department,
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and absolutely do not pick it up without checking the rules.
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Meteorites have real scientific value.
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Happy hunting, Ohio, All right.
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From things falling to Earth to a star so old
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it predates almost everything we can see in the modern universe.
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This week in the journal Nature Astronomy, a team led
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by anarud Cheaty of Stanford University published a discovery that
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is being called, and I love this phrase, cosmic archaeology.
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So let's set the scene. In the very early universe.
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The first stars were enormous and formed from just three
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elements hydrogen, helium, and a tiny bit of lithium. That
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was it. Those were the only elements that existed. No carbon,
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no iron, no oxygen, none of the building blocks of chemistry.
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As we know it.
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These first stars, called Population three stars burned fast and hot,
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and when they exploded as supernovae, they scattered the first
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heavy elements into the surrounding gas clouds. The next generation
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of stars, population two, formed from that enriched material.
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And that's what makes this week's discovery so extraordinary. Astronomers
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have found a star called Picked two Dash five zero
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three sitting in a tiny ancient dwarf galaxy called Picter two,
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located about one hundred and fifty thousand light years from Earth.
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And this star contains virtually no iron, less than one
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forty thousandth of the iron in our Sun.
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To put that in perspective, our Sun is a third
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generation star. Picked two five oh three is second generation.
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It formed from the direct debris of the universe's very
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first stars. It is quite literally carrying the chemical fingerprints
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of stars that no longer exist anywhere in the observable universe.
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The star also has an extraordinary overabundance of carbon, about
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fifteen hundred times more carbon relative to iron than our Sun,
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and this is the key to unlocking a mystery that
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astronomers have puzzled over for years.
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There's a whole class of stars in the outer halo
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of our Milky Way called carbon enhanced metal poor stars
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that show this same bizarre signature high carbon almost no iron.
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Scientists knew they were ancient, but they couldn't explain where
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they originally formed because our galaxy has been cannibalizing smaller
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galaxies for billions of years, scattering stars far from their birthplaces.
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Picked two five oh three is the missing link. It
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shows that these mysterious halo stars were born in tiny,
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primitive dwarf galaxies like picture two, galaxies that formed early
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in cosmic history and haven't changed much since. The discovery
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was made possible by the Magic Survey that stands for
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decam mapping the ancient galaxy in cachk, a fifty four
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to night observing program using the Dark Energy Camera in Chile,
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combined with the follow up from the Very Large telescopes
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and the Magellan telescopes.
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The lead researcher described it as being at the edge
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of what we thought possible, and I think that phrase
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captures it perfect because this star isn't just old. It's
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a direct record of chemical processes that happened when the
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universe was less than a billion years old. It's a
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time capsule.
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The paper is in Nature Astronomy this week. We'll link
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to the nor Lab press release on the website. They
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have some spectacular images of picture two.
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Now. This one is a follow up to a story
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we covered a few weeks ago, and it is very
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much a good news update. You'll remember that Europe's Proba
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three mission, issa's ingenious two satellite formation flying solar science mission,
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ran into serious trouble in mid February when the Coronagraph
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spacecraft went completely silent.
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For those who need the refresher, Proba three consists of
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two small satellites flying in exquisitely precise formation about one
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hundred and fifty meters apart, with positioning accuracy of one millimeter.
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The oculture spacecraft blocks out the bright disc of the Sun,
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while the Corona gramp photographs the Sun's outer atmosphere, the Corona.
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It's basically a spacecraft that manufactures artificial solar eclipses on
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demand in orbit. The sience potential is enormous because the
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corona is normally invisible from Earth except during the few
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minutes of a total solar eclipse.
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But in mid February, an anomaly on the corona graph
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triggered a cascade of failures. It lost its attitude, its
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orientation in space, and failed to enter safe mode as expected.
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ESA spent weeks attempting to regain contact, working through ground
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stations around the world.
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And the great news confirmed on March nineteenth, issa's ground
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station in Via Franca, Spain, received a data packet from
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the coronagraph. The satellite is alive. It's in safe mode.
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Its solar panel is facing the sun, powering the electronics
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and charging the battery.
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Proba IIE mission manager Damian Galano said, and this is
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a direct quote from the ESA statement, hearing back from
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the Corona graph is amazing news and a great relief.
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Now we should be clear the mission team isn't popping
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champagne just yet. The satellite has spent a month floating
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in space, exposed to the deep cold of orbital night,
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and its systems need time to warm up before any
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major actions are taken. Health checks are underway to assess
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whether any damage occurred, but.
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The spacecraft is stable, the hardware is powered, and if
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those health checks come back clean, PROBA three could resume
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its artificial eclipse science program. We'll be following this one
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closely what.
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A relief is. Right. We'll link to the full ESA
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update at Astronomy Daily dot io.
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And finally, a story that is both a scientific mystery
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solved and a lovely reminder for why sample return missions
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matter so much. You'll remember NASA's Osiris REX spacecraft collected
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samples from asteroid Benin back in twenty twenty, and those
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samples ared on Earth in twenty twenty three. Well, this week,
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scientists published results in Nature Communications that finally solve one
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of Benu's most puzzling features.
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So here's the mystery. Back in two thousand and seven,
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NASA's Spitzer space telescope measured what's called low thermal inertia
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on Benu, meaning the asteroid's surface heats up and cools
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down rapidly as it rotates on Earth. That's what sand does,
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which led astronomers to expect Benu's surface would be sandy
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