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Happy Valentine's Day, everyone. Welcome to Astronomy Daily, the podcast
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that brings you the latest space and astronomy news every
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single day.
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I'm Anna and I'm Avery, and what a day to
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be talking about the Cosmo Xana. The universe has really
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pulled out all the stops for Valentine's Day.
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This year, it really has. We've got astronauts arriving at
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the space station today, a dying star sending the universe
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a literal Valentine, possible Aurora dancing across the skies tonight,
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and a whole lot more. So let's get into.
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It ready when you are.
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Our top story today is a Valentine's Day rendezvous, not
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between sweethearts, but between a Dragon spacecraft and the International
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Space Station facex's Crew twelve mission launched yesterday morning at
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Cape Canaveral at five point fifteen Eastern time, and as
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we speak, four astronauts are on their way to dock
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with the ISS later this afternoon.
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And what a crew it is. Commanding the mission is
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NASA astronaut Jessicamir with Jack Hathaway as pilot. They're joined
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by ISSA astronaut Sophie Adenat, whose mission has been named
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Epsilon and Ross Cosmos cosmonaut Andre Fetiyev. It's a truly
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international crew.
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This mission has been particularly urgent avery the ISS has
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been operating with just three crew members, a skeleton crew
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since mid January, when Crew eleven had to make an
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unexpected early return to Earth due to a medical issue
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with one of its members.
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That left NASA astronaut Chris Williams and two Russian cosmonauts
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Sergei kutz Verskov and Sergei Mikhayev, holding down the four
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under own. NASA has been clear that seven crew members
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is really what you need to maximize a science output
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on a station that costs around three billion dollars a
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year to operate.
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So there was real pressure to get this launch done quickly.
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SpaceX actually had the rocket and spacecraft ready ahead of schedule,
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but crew training and weather kept pushing the date. They
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lost two launch windows earlier in the week to bad
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weather along a flight path before finally getting off the
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ground yesterday.
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And in a lovely touch for Valentine's Day, the crew
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revealed their zero gravity indicator, a handmade crocheted model of
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Earth with four little satellites representing each crew member. Plus
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a tiny moon for Commander Mer. It was made by
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Mer's childhood best friend and Hathaway's daughter. That's pretty adorable,
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it really is.
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Docking is expected at around three point fifteen pm Eastern
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Time today, so by the time many of you are
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listening to this, the ISS should be back to its
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full complement of seven. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman praised the teams,
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saying they brought Crew eleven home early, pulled Crew twelve forward,
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and did it all while preparing for the Artemis two
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moon mission. A busy few weeks at NASA, to say
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the least.
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And speaking of the Artemis to rocket, there was a
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fantastic photo from Kennedy Space Center this week showing the
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massive SLS Moon rocket photo bombing the Crew twelve Falcon
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nine on the neighboring launch pad, two very different rockets
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side by side, representing the present and future of human spaceflight.
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Now we've been keeping you updated on this one, but
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with just three days to go, it's time for a
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final reminder. On Tuesday, February seventeenth, the first solar eclipse
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of twenty twenty six will take place. An annular solar
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eclipse or also known as a ring of fire eclipse.
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And here's the thing. This one is going to be
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witnessed by more penguins than people. The path of annularity,
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where you'd actually see that stunning ring of sunlight around
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the Moon, cuts across a remote stretch of Antarctica and
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the Southern Ocean.
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At maximum eclipse, the Moon will cover about ninety six
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percent of the Sun's disc, leaving that slim glowing ring
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visible for up to two minutes and twenty seconds. But
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you'd need to be at one of the scientific research
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stations down in Antarctica, like the French Italian Concordia Station
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or Russia's Myrni station.
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For the rest of the world, partial phases will be
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visible from the very southern tips of Chile and Argentina
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and the cross parts of Southern Africa, including South Africa,
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Mozambique and Madagascar. But if you're in Europe, North America
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or most of Asia, no dice on this one. I'm
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afraid Bill.
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It's a reminder that eclipse season is upon us, and
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that brings us neatly to our next story.
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Have you ever noticed that solar eclipses and lunar eclipses
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seem to arrive in pairs. It's not a coincidence. Every
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eclipse is part of a predictable pattern during a short
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window known as an eclipse season.
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That's right. An eclipse season lasts about thirty one to
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thirty seven days, and there are typically two each year,
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roughly six months apart. They occur when the Sun passes
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near one of the lunar nodes, the points where the
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Moon's tilted orbit crosses the plane of Earth's orbit around
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the Sun. During this window, the geometry lines up for
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eclipses to.
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Happen, and because the window is long enough to contain
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both a new moon and a full moon, which are
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always about two weeks apart, you almost always get a pair,
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a solar eclipse at new moon and the lunar eclipse
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at full moon, or vice versa.
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So the annular solar eclipse on February seventeenth is the
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opening act. Exactly fourteen days later, on March third, the
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same eclipse season delivers a total lunar eclipse, a blood moon,
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with the Moon spending nearly an hour fully inside Earth's
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dark umbrel.
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Shadow, and that one is much more accessible observers in
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East Asia Australia. The Pacific and western North America will
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have excellent views of the Moon turning that gorgeous coppery
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color during flatality.
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But wait, there's more. The second eclipse season of twenty
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twenty six arrives in August, and this one is the blockbuster.
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On August twelfth, a total solar eclipse will sweep across Greenland, Iceland,
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and northern Spain. That's the first total solar eclipse since
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April twenty twenty four, and much of Western Europe and
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North America will see at least a deep partial eclipse.
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Then two weeks after that, on August twenty eighth, a
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partial lunar eclipse rounds out the season. So twenty twenty
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six really is shaping up to be a remarkable year
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for eclipse chasers, for eclipses, two seasons, and some genuinely
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spectacular events. If you've been meeting to plan an eclipse trip,
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now's the time.
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We'll have much more on the March and August eclipses
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as they get closer, so stay tuned.
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And now for what has to be the most perfectly
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timed astronomy story of the year. Just in time for
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Valentine's Day, Space has sent us a heart shaped greeting.
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The star Mira A, about three hundred light years from Earth,
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has ejected a cloud of gas and dust that forms
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a striking heart shape around it. And this isn't just
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a pretty picture, it's a genuinely surprising science discovery.
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Mira A is a red giant star, one of the
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most famous variable stars in the sky. It was first
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documented all the way back in fifteen ninety six as
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a star. In the last stages of its life, it's
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been shedding material into space, but the amount and speed
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of this particular rejection caught astronomers off guard.
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The study, led by Theo Corey at Sweden's Chalmers University
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of Technology, found that Mira A ejected roughly seven earth
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masses of material in this burst. Using observations from both
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the Very Large Telescope and the Alma radio array in Chile,
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the team discovered that gas fills the heart shaped structure,
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while dust concentrates along the outer edges, creating a beautiful
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glowing outline.
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What's particularly fascinating is that the star appears to be
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acting like a lighthouse, illuminating its surroundings unevenly. Corey said
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that they were very surprised to see the structure, and
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that the star's illumination of the surrounding us varies in
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unexpected ways.
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And there's a companion star in this love story too.
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Mira B, a white dwarf star that orbits Mira A,
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is already beginning to gather some of the ejected material.
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The researchers say they'll keep monitoring the expanding cloud because
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it could eventually affect Mira B. Though we've got a
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cosmic couple exchanging material on Valentine's Day, You couldn't make
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it up.
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The study has been accepted for publication in the journal
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Astronomy and Astrophysics, and the preprint is already available on archive.
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A truly heartfelt discovery.
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Literally from hearts to headspinners. Scientists have been lift puzzled
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by a comment that has done something truly extraordinary. It's
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flipped its rotation direction.
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Palmet forty one p Tutal Jacobini Cresak try saying that
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three times fast was observed by NASAs Swift spacecrafts back
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in twenty seventeen, slowing its rotation dramatically. It went from
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once every twenty hours to once every fifty three hours
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in just sixty days.
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To put that in context, the previous record for a
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commentary spin down was held by Comet Hartly II, which
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slowed from seventeen to nineteen hours over ninety days. So
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Comet forty one p changed its spin rate ten times
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more dramatically in two thirds the time. It's unprecedented.
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But that's not even the stranger part. New analysis of
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Hubble space telescope images by astronomer David Jewett at UCLA
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has revealed that after slowing down, the comet's rotation appeared
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to actually reverse it started spinning the other way.
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The culprit appears to be the comet's own outgassing. As
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comets approach the Sun, the heat up and release jets
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of gas. When that gas escapes unevenly from the surface,
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what scientists call anisotropic outgasing, it creates a torque on
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the nucleus, gradually changing and eventually reversing its spin.
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Jewett estimates that the nucleus is less than zero point
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seven kilometers in radius, making it particularly susceptible to these forces.
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And here's the sobering implication. The lifetime of the nucleus
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to rotational instability is just a few decades, which is
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incredibly short compared to the thousands of years it's been
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in its current orbit.
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So while the comet's orbit might be stable for millennia,
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its physical integrity is much more fragile. It raises the
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question of whether comets might not last as long as
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we previously thought, with their own internal forces eventually tearing
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them apart. The paper is available as a pre print
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on archive for anyone who wants to dig into the details.
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And finally, here's something for everyone to look forward to.
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Later this month, a rare six planet parade is building
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in the evening sky, and the best part, it's happening
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at a perfectly civilized hour.
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Throughout February, six planets are lining up across the sky
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in what astronomers call a planetary alignment. The parade features Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Uranus,
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and Neptune, and the show peaks on February twenty eighth.
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Now, four of those Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter will
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be visible to the naked eye, Urinus and Neptune will
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require binoculars or a telescope. The best time to look
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is about thirty minutes after your local sunset low in
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the western sky. You'll want a clear, unobstructed horizon.
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Mercury might be the trickiest to spot because of its
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low position near the horizon, but Venus and Jupiter should
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be unmistakable. They're the brightest objects in the evening sky
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after the moon.
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Now, this isn't quite as rare as the seven planet
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alignment we saw in February last year, which included all
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the classical planets plus Uranus and Neptune. That one won't
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happen again until twenty forty. But groupings of six planets
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are still pretty special.
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As astronomer Greg Brown from the Royal Observatory Greenwich has
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pointed out. While groups of three or four planets appearing
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together are relatively common, the more planets involved, the more
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orbital geometry has to cooperate. So a six planet parade
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is definitely worth stepping outside for.
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Mark your calendars for February twenty eighth, and maybe start
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scoping out a good western facing spot with a low horizon.
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We'll remind you as a day gets.
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Closer before we go, one more little Valentine's Day treat.
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If you're in the Northern United States or southern Canada tonight,
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you might want to step outside after dark and look north.
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NOAA forecasters are predicting possible G one minor geomagnetic storming
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this weekend, driven by the combined effects of a coronal
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whole high speed solar windstream and a coronal mass ejection
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from earlier this week.
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So there's a chance, no guarantees, but a chance to
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see the Northern lights tonight and into Sunday. Dates like
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Michigan and Maine, and of course our friends in Canada
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and northern US Europe have the best odds. What could
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be more romantic than watching the Aurora dance across the
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sky on Valentine's Day?
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Imagine telling your date, I arranged the Northern Lights just
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for you.
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Smooth move, very smooth. Well that's off for today's show.
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Whether you're spending Valentine's Day stargazing, watching a spacecraft doc
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with the Space Station, or just enjoying the cosmic love
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story of Mira A and its heart shaped nebula, we
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hope the universe gives you something to smile about today.