The First “Self-Driving” Telescope Goes Stargazing (SkAI )

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Anna: Happy horse's birthday. Yes. Today the

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1st of August, every horse in the Southern

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hemisphere is officially a year older,

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whether it was born yesterday or a decade

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ago. And in the spirit of a fresh start,

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our lead story today is a telescope that's

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learning to drive itself.

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Avery: A telescope that decides all on its own where

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to point next. In real time, reading the

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weather and the moonlight high in the Chilean

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Andes, we'll get into exactly what that means

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and whether we should be thrilled or a little

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bit nervous about it on,

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Anna: um, the three of the biggest stories from the

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week just gone. Beetlejuice finally

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caught with a companion. A bizarre three

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lobed asteroid with its own little moon

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and a black hole flexing its muscle across

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300,000 light years.

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Avery: And a, uh, look ahead at what is frankly a

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blockbuster August in the sky. This is the

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weekend wrap. Let's go.

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Anna: So picture the job of an observing astronomer

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for a moment. You've got one night on a world

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class telescope. The clock is ticking and

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every hour is precious. But the sky

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doesn't sit still for you. Clouds roll in,

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the moon rises and washes out the faint

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stuff, the air steadies or turns

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turbulent and you're constantly making

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judgment calls. Point here now, save

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that target for later. Skip this one

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entirely. It's a balancing act astronomers

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have honed over decades.

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Avery: And it's exactly the kind of judgment we tend

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to assume needs a human.

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Which is what makes this story land. A team

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from Northwestern University, the University

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of Chicago and Firma Lab working through a

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research center with the rather lovely name

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of the AI Institute for the sky

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sky, pronounced sky, have built a

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deep learning system that makes those calls

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itself in real time.

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Anna: And they didn't test it on a toy. They put it

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in charge of scheduling for the dark energy

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camera. That's a 570

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megapixel monster of an instrument

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mounted on the Victor M. Blanco 4 meter

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telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter American

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Observatory in Chile. That's one of the

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great observing sites on Earth up in the

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Andes, far from city light.

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Avery: And this is the part I want to sit on because

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it's the leap the, the AI didn't just

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generate a plan for the night in advance and

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hand it over. It adapted that plan on the

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fly as uh, the conditions changed around it,

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the weather shifts, the moonlight changes and

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the system redecides where to look next.

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Anna: They didn't sit down and program in. All the

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rules astronomers have worked out over the

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years. Don't point near the Moon, prioritize

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this when the seeing is Good. And so on. They

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let the model learn on its own. Alex

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Drelica Wagner at UH UChicago, who co led

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the project, described the method really

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simply. They trained it on years of

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historical observations from the Dark Energy

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Survey, showing it where the telescope was

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pointing at one moment and asking it to

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predict

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Avery: the next move and then correcting it.

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So it's the classic learning loop guess

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compared to what the human astronomers

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actually did. Adjust. Do that across

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years of real observing nights and you end up

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with a system that's absorbed the craft

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rather than being told the recipe and the

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headline result.

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Anna: Across two full observing runs, it

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performed comparably to human schedulers.

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It implicitly accounted for the atmospheric

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conditions and the moonlight without anyone

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ever writing those as explicit rules.

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Drelika Wagner called it an important

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milestone towards more autonomous

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observatories and noted the real

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achievement was setting up all the

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infrastructure to actually deploy it on a

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national observatory. That's the difference

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between a nice demo and a working tool.

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Avery: So let's talk about why this matters beyond

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the neat M headline, because I think it's

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genuinely a sign of where astronomy is

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heading. We're entering the era of survey

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astronomy at a scale that's honestly hard to

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picture. The Vera Rubin Observatory, also

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in Chile, is going to image the entire

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southern sky every few nights, over, over and

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over for a decade.

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Anna: And the data volume from that is staggering.

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The kind of fire hose where you simply cannot

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have a human hand tuning every decision fast

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enough to keep up. If you want to catch the

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things that change. A supernova flaring, an

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asteroid drifting through something that

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wasn't there last night. The telescope has to

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be nimble. It has to react.

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Avery: Which is exactly what a self scheduling

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system buys you. Speed and consistency

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and the ability to respond to the sky as it

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actually is on the night, rather than as you

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guessed it would be a week ago when you wrote

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your plan.

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Anna: There's a workload angle too, and I don't

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want to skate past it. Observing runs are

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exhausting. Astronomers up all night making

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hundreds of small decisions under pressure,

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automating the routine scheduling frees

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people up for the science, the

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interpretation, the creative questions that

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machines are nowhere near touching.

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Avery: Now, the honest tension, because whenever we

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say self driving anything, a reasonable

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person's eyebrows go up. Are we handing the

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keys to the machine? And I think the fair

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answer here is not really. Not in the way

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that phrase suggests. This is a system

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deciding the order and targeting of

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observations. Which patch of sky in which

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filter when within goals that

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humans set, the scientists still decide what

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the survey is for.

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Anna: That's the key distinction. The why

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stays human. The where next right

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now is what's being handed over. And it's

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being handed over to something that learned

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from the very astronomers it's now standing

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in for. So it's less a replacement and more

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a, uh, very fast, very tireless apprentice.

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Avery: And for our listeners who observe themselves,

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and I know a lot of you do, there's something

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quietly relatable in this. Every one of you

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has stood in the backyard doing this same

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calculation. Is it worth setting up tonight?

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Is that haze going to clear? Should I chase

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the faint galaxy now or wait for it to climb

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higher? This AI is doing your

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backyard math just, uh, at 4 meters of

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aperture and a few hundred megapixels.

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Anna: And I love that it's happening in the

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southern hemisphere at Cerro Tololo on a

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telescope that's been a workhorse of southern

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sky astronomy for decades. The Blanco helped

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make the original dark energy discovery. Now

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it's helping pioneer how the next generation

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of telescopes will run themselves. That's a

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nice bit of continuity.

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Avery: It is. So the first self driving telescope

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has gone stargazing, and it drove well. Keep

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an eye on this one, because the observatories

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of the2030s are going to be built around

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exactly this idea.

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Now into our three highlights from the week.

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And if you missed Wednesday's episode, this

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was a big one. Betelgeuse, that famous red

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orange shoulder of Orion, turns out not to be

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alone.

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Anna: And for a century, people have suspected a

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companion star tugging at it. Because

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Betelgeuse has this long, slow rhythm in its

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brightness that a single star struggles to

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explain. But nobody had ever seen the

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companion directly. It's lost in the glare of

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a supergiant that could swallow the orbit of

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Jupiter.

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Avery: Until now, a team led by Miguel

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Montajes, using the European Southern

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Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile,

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got the clearest image yet of what's very

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likely Betelgeuse B, a faint

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companion riding close. Montarge called it,

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uh, the conclusion of a century long quest,

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which is not a phrase astronomers throw

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around lightly.

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Anna: And it's a lovely reminder that even the

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stars we think we know best still have

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secrets. Betelgeuse is one of the most

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studied stars in the sky, and it was quietly

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hiding a partner in plain sight. If you want

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the full detail, it's all in Wednesday's

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episode 153. Highlight 2. And this

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one's brand new. We ran it just yesterday.

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Say hello to asteroid 44 Nisa,

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which has turned out to be genuinely strange

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in the best way.

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Avery: Strange how? Give people the picture.

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Anna: So most asteroids we imagine as a single

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lump or maybe a two part contact binary,

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like a peanut. NISA is the first

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known tri lobe asteroid. Three

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distinct lobes joined together by narrow

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necks, three connected blobs, and

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sophisticated high contrast imaging from the

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Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona and the

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VLT in Chile is what pulled the shape out of

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the glare.

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Avery: And it's not traveling alone either, is it?

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Anna: Uh, it is not. They also spotted a small

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moon roughly a kilometer across,

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orbiting it. And that little moon is

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scientifically gold because watching how it

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orbits lets you weigh the asteroid. You get

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its mass, and from the shape, you get its

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volume. And together those give you density,

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which tells you what it's actually made of.

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So a weird shape plus a handy moon equals

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a real physics windfall. Full stories in

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yesterday's episode 155 and

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Avery: highlight three takes us right up in scale

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from a kilometer wide moon to something

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spanning 300,000 light years. On

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Thursday, we covered new X ray observations

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of a quasar called H

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1821643

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Anna: and a quasar for anyone just joining us

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is a supermassive black hole in the middle of

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a galaxy, feeding so voraciously that the

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surrounding material blazes brighter than the

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whole galaxy around it.

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Avery: Exactly. And using the Xrism M X

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ray telescope, astronomers traced winds

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driven by that black hole, reshaping the gas

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across an entire galaxy cluster.

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Turbulence stirred up over hundreds of

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thousands of light years. One black hole at

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the center, setting the weather for a whole

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cluster of galaxies.

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Anna: It's one of those numbers that resets your

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sense of scale. The reach of a single

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object from a point out across a distance

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that three times the width of our entire

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galaxy. And it's a nice

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Xrism callback. That telescope

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keeps earning its keep. That was Thursday's

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episode 154. Quick Community

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Note before we look up. If you're enjoying

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the wrap, the new astronomydaily

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IO is the place to live. The full back

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catalog's there. A, uh, news feed that

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updates through the day and night. Listener

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reviews and a, uh, newsletter sign up. So the

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day's stories land in your

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Avery: inbox and it's a contact facility on the site

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now. So if there's a story you think we've

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missed or a bit of sky you want us to talk

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about, tell us directly. We do read them.

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And that brings us to the sky. And August is

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a genuine blockbuster. So this is a preview

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of the whole month, not just tonight.

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Anna: Start with a comet. Comet 10P

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Tempel 2 reaches perihelion its

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closest approach to the sun on 2 August,

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and it's near its peak brightness in early

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August. It's a binocular object rather than a

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naked eye showpiece. So find dark sky and

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sweep for it for us in the Southern

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Hemisphere. It's reasonably placed Northern

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Hemisphere observers. You can catch it too,

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just lower. Check a sky app for your exact

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Avery: local rise time and the headline event of the

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month. And it's a northern hemisphere one. A

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uh, total solar eclipse on the 12th of

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August. The path of totality crosses

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Greenland, Iceland, Spain and Portugal.

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If you're anywhere in Europe, you'll likely

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get at least a partial. And I have to say it

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every single time, never look at the sun

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without proper certified eclipse glasses.

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No exceptions.

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Anna: And here's the beautiful coincidence. That

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Same night, the 12th into the 13th, the

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Perseid meteor shower peaks. And this year it

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peaks under a new moon. No moonlight to wash

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them out at a good dark site. The Perseids

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enthro well over 100 meteors an hour at

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their best with bright fireballs.

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Avery: Now the honest Southern hemisphere notes

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because we always give it to you straight,

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the Perseids are a northern hemisphere

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shower. The radiance up in Perseus

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barely clears the horizon for much of the

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south, so we get far fewer. The

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Northern hemisphere gets the real show this

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time our northern listeners get to dark

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sky after Midnight on the 12th. Look up,

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be patient and let your eyes adapt.

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Anna: And building through the month. A six planet

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lineup strung along the sky. A lovely

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reason to learn the ecliptic. The best

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pairings shift week to week. The pre dawn

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sky is where a lot of the action is with the

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brighter planets. We'll give you the night by

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night detail in the daily episodes as each

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event sharpens up.

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Avery: So a comet at the start, an eclipse and

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meteor double bill in the middle. Planets all

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month. Whichever hemisphere you're in, August

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has something for you.

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Anna: That's the weekend wrap for Saturday 1st

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August. A self driving telescope in the

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Andes. A companion for Beetlejuice. A

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three lobed asteroid with a moon and a

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black hole reaching across a cluster.

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Not a bad week.

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Avery: We're back Monday with a fresh episode. Until

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then, from Anna and me and happy birthday to

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every horse listening.

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Anna: Clear skies,

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Wow.

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Avery: Story soul.