The Youngest Planet Ever Found
Astronomers have confirmed the youngest planet ever found - Elias 2-24 b, less than a million years old, sitting inside a gap it is carving in its own birth disc 450 light-years away. Plus: the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter finds a 222-metre crater that was not there in 2024, a 178-year-old space weather record gets corrected by seven years, and Sakurai's Object - a star that came back from the dead - has become six times hotter in thirty years.
SOURCES Newfound 'Baby' Planet Smashes Record for Youngest Known World NASA Science, 16 September 2026 - https://science.nasa.gov/universe/newfound-baby-planet-smashes-record-for-youngest-known-world/ Elias 2-24 b discovery paper Bernardi, Cieza et al., The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 16 September 2026, DOI 10.3847/2041-8213/ae9bb6 - https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ae9bb6 ALMA Observations of Elias 2-24: A Protoplanetary Disk with Multiple Gaps (background) Cieza et al., ApJL 851 L23, 2017, DOI 10.3847/2041-8213/aa9b7b - https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/aa9b7b NASA's Moon Orbiter Spots New, 'Once-in-Century' Moon Crater NASA Science, 16 September 2026 - https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/moon/nasas-moon-orbiter-spots-new-once-in-century-moon-crater/ New 222-metre lunar crater - mission release W. M. Keck / Intuitive Machines / NASA LROC, 16 September 2026; two papers in Science Advances (Robinson et al., morphology and ejecta; Powell et al., Diviner thermal signature) - https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nasas-lunar-reconnaissance-orbiter-discovers-a-new-222-m-diameter-lunar-crater-302880555.html Mystery of one of the earliest recorded space weather impacts solved Lancaster University / RMIT University, 16 September 2026; Wild, Carter, Hapgood et al., Space Weather (AGU), DOI 10.1029/2026SW005239 - https://doi.org/10.1029/2026SW005239 'Born-again' star offers rare chance to watch stellar evolution in real time The University of Manchester, 16 September 2026; Zijlstra, van Hoof et al., 'The emergence of a [WC] star in Sakurai's object', MNRAS, DOI 10.1093/mnras/stag1533 - https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stag1533 Cargo Mission and Crew-13 Updates; Station Research, Maintenance Continue NASA Space Station Blog, 16 September 2026 - https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/spacestation/2026/09/16/cargo-mission-and-crew-13-updates-station-research-maintenance-continue/ International Observe the Moon Night 2026 NASA, Saturday 19 September 2026 - https://science.nasa.gov/moon/observe-the-moon-night/overview Skywatch ephemerides Computed in-session with PyEphem for Sydney, Los Angeles, New York and London, 17-18 September 2026
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This episode includes AI-generated content.
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Anna: Every planet you have ever heard of was
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already finished when we found it. Grown up,
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settled into its orbit. The
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disc of gas and dust it was built from
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long gone.
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Avery: Not this one. Astronomers have found a
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planet that is still being built, less than
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a million years old, sitting in the gap it is
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carving through its own birth cloud.
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Anna: Also today, a brand new crater on the
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Moon, a Victorian train delay that turns
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out to be a solar storm, and a dead star
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that has got six times hotter in 30 years.
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Avery: I'm Avery.
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Anna: And I'm Anna. This is Astronomy
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AstroDailyPod. Here is a number that should
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stop you.
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Every previously confirmed young planet,
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every single one held up as an example of a
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world caught in the act of forming, was at
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least 5 million years old. 5 million years
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sounds young. It is young. Our own
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solar system is about four and a half
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billion. But five million years is also long
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enough that the most interesting part is
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already over. The gas is mostly gone.
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The building is done. You are looking at the
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result, not the process. Yesterday in
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the Astrophysical Journal Letters, a team led
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from Chile published the confirmation of a
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planet that is less than 1 million years old,
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not 5, less than 1. It is
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called Elias 224B. And the most
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remarkable thing about it is that we are
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watching it being made.
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Avery: And this is one of those results where the
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storey of how we got there is as good as the
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result itself. Because the first hint of
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this planet is 9 years old, it
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is.
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Anna: Let me take you back to 2017. A team
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including Lucas Sieza, who is an author on
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today's paper as well, pointed Alma,
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the Big Millimetre array up on the Chagnantor
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Plateau in northern Chile at a young star in
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the Ophiuchus molecular cloud.
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Ophiuchus is one of the closest active star
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forming regions to us, about 450
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light years away. And from here in the
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southern hemisphere, it rides high across the
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winter sky. The star is catalogued as
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Elias224. It is a K
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type star, roughly the mass of the sun, but
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much cooler and much puffier because it has
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not finished contracting yet. What Alma saw
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was a disc of dust around that star with gaps
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in it. Dark rings, clean
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circular lanes swept through the dust. And
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the standard interpretation of a gap like
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that is simple and beautiful. Something
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massive is orbiting in there and its gravity
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is hurting the dust out of its path. The gap
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is the wake, a footprint
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Avery: rather than a foot.
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Anna: Exactly that. And footprints are frustrating
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because a gap can be made by other things.
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Ice lines, where a particular molecule
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freezes out and changes how the dust sticks
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together. Magnetic effects in the disc
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turbulence. For nine years,
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Elias224 has been a beautiful set of
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rings and an unproven assumption. What
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Andrea Bernardi at Universidad Diego Portales
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in Santiago did was go looking for the foot
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and the data had been sitting in an archive
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the whole time.
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Avery: This is the part I love.
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Anna: The W.M. keck Observatory on Mauna
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Kea observed this system in 2018
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and again in 2020 using a
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coronagraph on the NIRC 2
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infrared camera. A, uh, coronagraph is a
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mask that blocks the light of the star itself
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so you can see the much fainter things next
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to it. The same basic trick the Roman Space
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Telescope's coronagraph is being commissioned
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to do right now, which we talked about on
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Wednesday. Those Keck observations were
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taken, archived and not fully
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mined. Bernardi's team went back into them,
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reprocessed them and found a point of
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infrared light sitting inside one of the
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gaps. And here is Bernardi's line, which
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is the whole paper in one. The
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planets should be found within the gaps since
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they are carving them.
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And that's exactly where we found
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Elias224B, end quote.
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Avery: So the prediction and the detection line up.
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Anna: They line up and then the confirmation
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needed a third instrument. ESO's Very
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Large Telescope at Paranal in the Atacama
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had also caught a faint point of light in
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that gap. Put the three together.
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ALMA showing you the gap in millimetre dust.
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The the VLT and KECK both showing you an
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infrared source sitting in it at two separate
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epochs, two years apart. So you can cheque it
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is moving with the star rather than being a
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background object and you have a planet.
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Avery: Bernardi made a point of that in the release.
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Something like we usually hear about
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telescopes working separately. But this
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confirmation was only possible by using
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multiple telescopes together, which is worth
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sitting with for a second because it is also
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a storey about hemispheres. ALMA and
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the VLT are both in Chile. Keck is
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in Hawaii. Ophiuchus sits at about
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24 degrees south, so it is a target
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both hemispheres can reach. And it took all
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three facilities on both sides of the equator
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to nail this down. The southern telescopes
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found the gap and the northern telescope had
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the planet sitting in its archive. Now
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the physics and this is where it gets
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genuinely awkward for the textbooks.
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Elias224B is roughly the
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mass of Jupiter and it is orbiting about
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55 times further from its star than Earth
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is from the Sun. 55
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astronomical units for scale.
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Neptune is at 30, Pluto averages
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about 39. So this is a Jupiter
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mass planet out past where our own Kuiper
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Belt starts. And it got there in under a
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million years. And the standard way we build
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giant planets does not go that fast, that
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far out.
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Anna: It does not core accretion.
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The mainstream model says you assemble
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a solid core first by sticking pebbles
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together. And once that core is heavy enough,
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it starts pulling gas down onto itself and
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runs away into a gas giant. The trouble is
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that the further out you go, the thinner the
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disc is and the slower everything orbits.
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So there is less material and fewer
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collisions per orbit. Building a Jupiter at
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55 au by core accretion is slow.
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Estimates run to many millions of years.
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This planet did not have many millions of
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years. It had at the outside one.
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Lucas Sieza put it plainly,
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our planet formation models already struggled
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to explain the previous record holders.
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Elias224B shows us that even our best
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models are still missing some important
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processes. End quote.
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Avery: There is an alternative, isn't there? The
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disc fragmenting directly.
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Anna: There is gravitational instability.
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Instead of building a planet from the bottom
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up, you let a patch of the disc become dense
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enough that it collapses under its own
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gravity all at once and makes a giant
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planet more or less the way a star forms.
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That is fast, and it works better at large
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distances where discs are cooler and more
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prone to collapse. A planet like this one,
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this young, this far out, is exactly
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the sort of object people point to when they
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argue that gravitational instability has to
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be part of the picture rather than a, uh,
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curiosity. But I want to be careful here.
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And this is the caveat that does not come out
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of the script. Go on directly
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Imaged protoplanets have a history.
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Candidates around the stars Lkca 15
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and AB Orige were both announced as
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planets in the making, and both ended up
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disputed. In some cases, what looked like a
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planet turned out to be a bright knot of disc
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material or an artefact of how the starlight
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was subtracted. The system PDS 70
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is the one everybody agrees on, and that took
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years of independent confirmation. So
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Elias 224B is a strong detection
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with three telescopes behind it. And it is
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also a detection that will get tested hard
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over the next few years, as it should be.
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And the mass number deserves the same care.
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At an age under a million years, you cannot
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weigh a planet directly. You measure how
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bright it is in the infrared, and you convert
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that to, uh, a mass using models of how a
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young giant planet cools. Those models
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disagree with each other most severely at
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exactly this age, because they depend on how
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much heat the planet held onto from its
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formation. And some of the light you are
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seeing may not be the planet's surface at
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all, but gas falling onto it and glowing as
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it lands. So when we say Jupiter mass,
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read that as Jupiter ish, with real room on
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either side. An earlier kinematic estimate
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for whatever is carving that gap put it as
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high as five Jupiter masses.
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Avery: None of which changes the headline.
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Anna: None of which changes the headline. Something
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with the mass of a giant planet is
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sitting in that gap and the star it
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orbits is younger than our species.
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We have around 6,000 confirmed
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exoplanets now and almost every one of them
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is a finished product.
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This is a building site with the scaffolding
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still up and it is going to be observed
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to death, which is the correct fate for a
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result like this one.
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Avery: Moving on to storey two, sometime between
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11 April and 22 May
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2024, something the size of a three
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to six storey building hit the moon.
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Nobody saw it happen. We found the hole
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18 months later and the papers describing it
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were published yesterday in Science Advances.
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Anna: How big a hole?
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Avery: 222 metres across and
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about 43 metres deep. That is roughly
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two football pitches wide and a 14
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storey building deep. And here is the part
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that makes it news rather than trivia. It
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is about three times wider than the largest
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new crater found in the entire 17 years the
235
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lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has been
236
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watching. The team put an impact this size
237
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at something like one in a hundred and thirty
238
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years. It is on the near side at about
239
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1.4 degrees north, 67
240
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degrees east, out on the outer ring of the
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crisium basin, roughly 20 kilometres
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east of Mare Speumens, right on the boundary
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where the bright highlands meet the dark Mare
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plains. It is being referred to informally
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by the name of its neighbourhood, Magecheon,
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after Thomas Magn, who once directed the
247
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Lunar and Planetary Institute.
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Formal naming is the IAU's business
249
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and that is a separate process.
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Anna: And nobody was looking at that patch of the
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moon at the time.
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Avery: Nobody was.
253
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It was found by Robert Wagner, an image
254
00:10:44.980 --> 00:10:47.380
processing specialist at Intuitive Machines,
255
00:10:47.700 --> 00:10:50.100
working with the orbiter's camera team. In
256
00:10:50.100 --> 00:10:52.979
October last year, doing routine data
257
00:10:52.979 --> 00:10:55.940
quality cheques, he was running software that
258
00:10:55.940 --> 00:10:58.420
compares before and after maps of the whole
259
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moon and flags. What has changed?
260
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His description of the moment is my favourite
261
00:11:03.500 --> 00:11:06.410
thing. In the release I just
262
00:11:06.410 --> 00:11:08.890
stopped, dropped everything and started
263
00:11:08.890 --> 00:11:10.730
looking into what that spot was.
264
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What stood out was a bright splash of fresh
265
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ejecta. And the ejecta is the science.
266
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The continuous blanket of thrown out rock
267
00:11:20.569 --> 00:11:23.490
reaches a median of about 258
268
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metres from the centre. Bright disturbance
269
00:11:26.250 --> 00:11:28.250
shows up 15 kilometres out.
270
00:11:28.730 --> 00:11:31.570
Fainter, darker disturbance runs beyond a
271
00:11:31.570 --> 00:11:34.080
hundred kilometres. The biggest boulder they
272
00:11:34.080 --> 00:11:36.920
measured is 13 metres by 9 by 3
273
00:11:37.400 --> 00:11:40.040
from a hole 200 metres wide. The
274
00:11:40.040 --> 00:11:42.840
surface is measurably rearranged over an area
275
00:11:42.840 --> 00:11:44.360
the size of a small country,
276
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Anna: which is a lot of energy, about
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Avery: 65 trillion joules on assumptions of a
278
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rocky impactor at 15 kilometres a second.
279
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And the second paper is the one I would not
280
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have predicted.
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A team led by Powell went to Diviner,
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the orbiter's thermal instrument and found a
283
00:12:02.190 --> 00:12:04.630
cold spot about seven kilometres across,
284
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centred on the crater eight or nine Kelvin,
285
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cooler than its surroundings. That is the
286
00:12:10.030 --> 00:12:12.790
signature of fluffed up soil. The impact
287
00:12:12.950 --> 00:12:15.749
did not just dig a hole, it loosened the top
288
00:12:15.749 --> 00:12:18.390
layer of regolith across seven kilometres.
289
00:12:18.470 --> 00:12:21.030
And loose soil holds heat differently from
290
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packed soil. Mark Robinson, the
291
00:12:23.510 --> 00:12:26.030
camera's chief scientist, framed it as
292
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gardening impacts, as the process that
293
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turns the lunar soil over, churning buried
294
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material up and fresh material down. And
295
00:12:34.550 --> 00:12:36.830
he drew the conclusion people always want
296
00:12:36.830 --> 00:12:39.510
drawn on that turnover rate. The
297
00:12:39.510 --> 00:12:41.750
Apollo footprints will, in his words,
298
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definitely be long gone in about
299
00:12:44.550 --> 00:12:45.270
80,000
300
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Anna: years, which is not soon. But it
301
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is not forever either.
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Avery: That is the thing to take away.
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We talk about the moon as the dead unchanging
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one, the place where nothing happens. It
305
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is not unchanging. It is changing slowly
306
00:13:00.760 --> 00:13:03.320
and it changed in a big way two years ago.
307
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And the only reason we know is that there is
308
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a spacecraft up there photographing the same
309
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ground over and over. Take the watcher
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00:13:11.200 --> 00:13:13.130
away and this simply would not be a, ah,
311
00:13:13.200 --> 00:13:13.800
known event.
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Anna: Okay, now on to our next storey. This one
313
00:13:17.320 --> 00:13:19.720
is a detective storey and it has an
314
00:13:19.720 --> 00:13:22.210
Australian fingerprint on it for
315
00:13:22.210 --> 00:13:25.130
178 years. The textbook answer
316
00:13:25.130 --> 00:13:27.930
to when did space weather first disrupt
317
00:13:27.930 --> 00:13:30.834
human Technology has been 18
318
00:13:31.026 --> 00:13:33.490
October 1841 in
319
00:13:33.490 --> 00:13:36.330
Devon, in the southwest of England. A
320
00:13:36.330 --> 00:13:38.690
train leaving Exeter at 5 past 10 at night
321
00:13:38.690 --> 00:13:41.370
was held for 16 minutes because the
322
00:13:41.370 --> 00:13:43.570
railway telegraph between Exeter and the
323
00:13:43.570 --> 00:13:45.890
village of Starcross had stopped working
324
00:13:46.290 --> 00:13:48.770
and the signalman could not confirm the line
325
00:13:48.770 --> 00:13:49.570
ahead was clear.
326
00:13:50.360 --> 00:13:51.320
Avery: Sixteen minutes.
327
00:13:51.640 --> 00:13:53.160
Hardly a catastrophe.
328
00:13:53.400 --> 00:13:56.360
Anna: Hardly a catastrophe. And that is precisely
329
00:13:56.360 --> 00:13:59.240
why it is famous. It is the first time we can
330
00:13:59.240 --> 00:14:01.360
point at a piece of critical infrastructure
331
00:14:01.360 --> 00:14:04.320
and say the sun did that. Trains
332
00:14:04.320 --> 00:14:06.640
stopped because of something happening 93
333
00:14:06.640 --> 00:14:09.320
million miles away and the people involved
334
00:14:09.320 --> 00:14:12.040
had no idea. It is quoted in review
335
00:14:12.040 --> 00:14:14.360
papers, in government resilience reports,
336
00:14:14.760 --> 00:14:17.670
in lectures. 1841 is the
337
00:14:17.670 --> 00:14:20.510
date everyone uses yesterday in the
338
00:14:20.510 --> 00:14:23.470
Journal Space Weather. A team led by Jim Wild
339
00:14:23.470 --> 00:14:26.310
at Lancaster University, with Brett Carter at
340
00:14:26.310 --> 00:14:28.910
RMIT in Melbourne, Mike Hapgood at
341
00:14:28.910 --> 00:14:31.470
RAL Space and colleagues at the British
342
00:14:31.470 --> 00:14:34.230
Geological Survey, Natural Resources Canada
343
00:14:34.230 --> 00:14:37.230
and Baylor published the correction. It
344
00:14:37.230 --> 00:14:40.150
did not happen in 1841. It happened on
345
00:14:40.150 --> 00:14:41.685
the 18th of October
346
00:14:41.875 --> 00:14:44.250
Avery: 1848, seven years out.
347
00:14:44.650 --> 00:14:47.130
How does a date like that survive a century
348
00:14:47.130 --> 00:14:47.850
and a half?
349
00:14:48.010 --> 00:14:50.850
Anna: Because nobody went back to the source. The
350
00:14:50.850 --> 00:14:53.490
original account is an anonymous article in
351
00:14:53.490 --> 00:14:56.376
the journal nature, published in 1871,
352
00:14:56.564 --> 00:14:59.490
30 years after the fact. And the
353
00:14:59.490 --> 00:15:01.850
giveaway, once you look, is almost
354
00:15:01.850 --> 00:15:04.850
embarrassing. The railway line between Exeter
355
00:15:04.850 --> 00:15:07.610
and Star Cross did not open until 1846.
356
00:15:08.200 --> 00:15:09.800
The event could not have happened on the line
357
00:15:09.800 --> 00:15:12.800
in 1841, because in 1841 there was
358
00:15:12.800 --> 00:15:13.400
no line.
359
00:15:14.280 --> 00:15:15.800
Avery: So it is a typo.
360
00:15:16.200 --> 00:15:18.920
Anna: It looks like a typo. 1848
361
00:15:18.920 --> 00:15:21.000
misprinted as 1841,
362
00:15:21.480 --> 00:15:23.680
probably by the anonymous author, who the
363
00:15:23.680 --> 00:15:25.920
team think was most likely Nathaniel John
364
00:15:25.920 --> 00:15:28.520
Holmes, a telegraph engineer of the period.
365
00:15:29.160 --> 00:15:31.720
But proving that took real archival work
366
00:15:32.040 --> 00:15:34.330
and this is the part I enjoyed. They went
367
00:15:34.330 --> 00:15:36.810
through old railway timetables to find when a
368
00:15:36.810 --> 00:15:39.130
five past ten evening service from Exeter
369
00:15:39.130 --> 00:15:41.930
actually existed, which narrowed it to a four
370
00:15:41.930 --> 00:15:44.370
month window. They pulled the magnetic
371
00:15:44.370 --> 00:15:46.930
observatory records from Greenwich. They read
372
00:15:46.930 --> 00:15:49.130
the sunspot drawings. They went through
373
00:15:49.130 --> 00:15:51.494
newspaper archives and 18
374
00:15:51.646 --> 00:15:53.770
October 1848 lights up
375
00:15:54.090 --> 00:15:56.370
Greenwich recorded powerful magnetic
376
00:15:56.370 --> 00:15:58.610
disturbance from about 20 past 9 in the
377
00:15:58.610 --> 00:16:01.220
evening Universal Time. There were
378
00:16:01.220 --> 00:16:03.220
aurora sightings right across the United
379
00:16:03.220 --> 00:16:05.780
Kingdom. And there was a large sunspot group
380
00:16:05.780 --> 00:16:08.460
on the disc recorded from Durham. The
381
00:16:08.460 --> 00:16:10.900
timetable, the magnetometer, the aurora
382
00:16:10.900 --> 00:16:13.620
reports and the sunspot all agree on one
383
00:16:13.620 --> 00:16:13.940
night.
384
00:16:14.420 --> 00:16:17.300
Avery: Mike Hapgood had a line about that he
385
00:16:17.300 --> 00:16:18.500
did quote.
386
00:16:18.980 --> 00:16:21.300
Anna: Our research has a hint of a Detective Storey
387
00:16:21.780 --> 00:16:24.060
piecing together a wide range of archived
388
00:16:24.060 --> 00:16:26.140
records to better understand a historically
389
00:16:26.140 --> 00:16:27.620
severe space weather event.
390
00:16:28.220 --> 00:16:30.780
End quote. And there is a reason this matters
391
00:16:30.780 --> 00:16:32.620
beyond tidying up. A footnote.
392
00:16:33.020 --> 00:16:35.980
1848 is 11 years before the Carrington
393
00:16:35.980 --> 00:16:38.780
event of 1859, which is the storm
394
00:16:38.780 --> 00:16:41.500
everyone uses as the worst case. Redating
395
00:16:41.500 --> 00:16:44.099
this one does not just move a date, it puts a
396
00:16:44.099 --> 00:16:46.620
severe infrastructure affecting storm into
397
00:16:46.620 --> 00:16:48.540
the record in a decade where we thought we
398
00:16:48.540 --> 00:16:51.260
had one. How often the really big storms
399
00:16:51.260 --> 00:16:53.620
happen is a question we answer by counting
400
00:16:53.620 --> 00:16:55.990
them in the historical record. And the
401
00:16:55.990 --> 00:16:57.910
historical record is only as good as the
402
00:16:57.910 --> 00:16:59.670
record keeping, which is
403
00:16:59.670 --> 00:17:01.830
Avery: the same trap we keep running into with
404
00:17:01.830 --> 00:17:02.670
catalogues.
405
00:17:03.230 --> 00:17:05.790
Anna: It is exactly the same trap moved from
406
00:17:05.790 --> 00:17:08.790
telescopes to archives and it sits squarely
407
00:17:08.790 --> 00:17:10.830
in a thread we have been pulling all month.
408
00:17:11.230 --> 00:17:13.430
The superflare potential work back On
409
00:17:13.430 --> 00:17:16.310
Saturday the 12th, the cosmic radiation at
410
00:17:16.310 --> 00:17:17.430
aviation altitudes.
411
00:17:17.430 --> 00:17:19.950
On Monday the 14th, same dial.
412
00:17:20.510 --> 00:17:22.630
Jim Wilde's closing thought is the one to
413
00:17:22.630 --> 00:17:25.490
keep Space weather is not a
414
00:17:25.490 --> 00:17:27.490
new threat, but a long standing natural
415
00:17:27.490 --> 00:17:30.170
hazard. Society has been experiencing the
416
00:17:30.170 --> 00:17:32.570
effects of space weather on technology for
417
00:17:32.570 --> 00:17:34.690
almost as long as electrical technologies
418
00:17:34.690 --> 00:17:37.650
have existed. End quote. The Victorians
419
00:17:37.650 --> 00:17:39.970
were not protected from the sun. They just
420
00:17:39.970 --> 00:17:40.850
had less to lose.
421
00:17:41.010 --> 00:17:43.650
Avery: In February 1996, a
422
00:17:43.650 --> 00:17:46.330
Japanese amateur astronomer named Yukio
423
00:17:46.330 --> 00:17:48.530
Sakurai found a new star in
424
00:17:48.530 --> 00:17:51.120
Sagittarius. It was announced through the
425
00:17:51.120 --> 00:17:53.800
usual channel, an IAU circular
426
00:17:53.880 --> 00:17:56.800
on 23 February. At first
427
00:17:56.800 --> 00:17:58.760
everyone assumed it was a nova.
428
00:17:59.160 --> 00:17:59.960
Anna: It wasn't.
429
00:18:00.680 --> 00:18:03.320
Avery: No, it certainly wasn't. What
430
00:18:03.320 --> 00:18:05.600
Sakurai had found was one of the rarest
431
00:18:05.600 --> 00:18:08.520
events in stellar astrophysics. A
432
00:18:08.520 --> 00:18:10.960
star that had already died coming back to
433
00:18:10.960 --> 00:18:13.080
life. It is catalogued as
434
00:18:13.080 --> 00:18:14.920
V4334
435
00:18:14.920 --> 00:18:17.480
Sagittarius and everybody calls it
436
00:18:17.480 --> 00:18:20.440
Sakurai's object. Yesterday, a
437
00:18:20.440 --> 00:18:23.280
team led by Albert Zylstra at the Jodrell
438
00:18:23.280 --> 00:18:25.680
Bank Centre for Astrophysics in Manchester,
439
00:18:25.840 --> 00:18:28.800
with Peter Van Hoof at the Royal Observatory
440
00:18:28.800 --> 00:18:31.400
of Belgium and colleagues at the Valongo
441
00:18:31.400 --> 00:18:34.200
Observatory in Rio de Janeiro published
442
00:18:34.200 --> 00:18:36.920
new measurements of it in monthly notices of
443
00:18:36.920 --> 00:18:39.880
the Royal Astronomical Society. And the
444
00:18:39.880 --> 00:18:42.760
number is. In 30 years, the
445
00:18:42.830 --> 00:18:45.470
the star has become about six times hotter.
446
00:18:45.790 --> 00:18:48.510
Its surface was sun like when Sakurai found
447
00:18:48.510 --> 00:18:50.510
it. It is now somewhere between
448
00:18:50.750 --> 00:18:53.390
27,000 and 36,000
449
00:18:53.470 --> 00:18:56.270
kelvin. That is among the fastest heating
450
00:18:56.270 --> 00:18:58.430
rates ever measured on any star.
451
00:18:59.150 --> 00:19:01.150
Anna: Take us through what actually happened to it.
452
00:19:01.790 --> 00:19:04.630
Avery: So this star had finished. It had been a sun
453
00:19:04.630 --> 00:19:07.150
like star. It had run through its fuel,
454
00:19:07.310 --> 00:19:09.750
blown off its outer layers and and settled
455
00:19:09.750 --> 00:19:12.710
down to be a white dwarf, an inert cooling
456
00:19:12.710 --> 00:19:15.310
cinder that is meant to be the end.
457
00:19:15.630 --> 00:19:17.950
But there was still a thin layer of helium
458
00:19:17.950 --> 00:19:20.670
sitting on top of the carbon and oxygen core.
459
00:19:20.750 --> 00:19:23.590
And that layer reignited one
460
00:19:23.590 --> 00:19:26.550
last shell flash after the star had already
461
00:19:26.550 --> 00:19:29.270
become a white dwarf. The technical
462
00:19:29.270 --> 00:19:32.270
term is a very late thermal pulse and
463
00:19:32.270 --> 00:19:34.790
the effect is dramatic. The star
464
00:19:34.790 --> 00:19:37.750
puffs back up into a giant in years rather
465
00:19:37.750 --> 00:19:40.690
than millennia. It ends up hydrogen poor
466
00:19:40.690 --> 00:19:43.650
and enriched in helium and carbon because
467
00:19:43.650 --> 00:19:46.370
the flash has dragged process material up
468
00:19:46.370 --> 00:19:49.370
from deep inside. Astronomers call these
469
00:19:49.370 --> 00:19:52.330
born again stars and we know of only
470
00:19:52.330 --> 00:19:53.130
a handful.
471
00:19:53.690 --> 00:19:54.809
Anna: And then it vanished.
472
00:19:54.809 --> 00:19:57.730
Avery: Didn't, did. And that is the
473
00:19:57.730 --> 00:20:00.450
frustrating part of the storey. By late
474
00:20:00.450 --> 00:20:03.370
1998 the Star had manufactured
475
00:20:03.370 --> 00:20:05.560
so much carbon dust that that it wrapped
476
00:20:05.560 --> 00:20:07.880
itself in an opaque shell and by
477
00:20:07.880 --> 00:20:10.640
1999 it had disappeared from
478
00:20:10.640 --> 00:20:12.560
optical telescopes entirely.
479
00:20:13.200 --> 00:20:15.640
Imagine watching the one event you have been
480
00:20:15.640 --> 00:20:18.440
waiting a career for and the object pulls a
481
00:20:18.440 --> 00:20:21.240
curtain across itself. What this team has
482
00:20:21.240 --> 00:20:23.720
done is get back in. They used
483
00:20:23.720 --> 00:20:26.720
ESO's Very Large Telescope in Chile for
484
00:20:26.720 --> 00:20:29.600
spectroscopy. They used ALMA, and
485
00:20:29.600 --> 00:20:32.120
they compared what they saw against models
486
00:20:32.120 --> 00:20:35.020
built for Wolf Rayet stars, the hot
487
00:20:35.100 --> 00:20:37.900
stripped, fiercely windy stars that show
488
00:20:37.900 --> 00:20:40.300
strong carbon and helium signatures.
489
00:20:40.620 --> 00:20:43.460
And that is what Sakurai's object now looks
490
00:20:43.460 --> 00:20:46.180
like. The paper's title says the
491
00:20:46.180 --> 00:20:48.380
emergence of a WC star in
492
00:20:48.380 --> 00:20:51.380
Sakurai's object. Astronomers write it
493
00:20:51.380 --> 00:20:53.980
in square brackets, which is the notation for
494
00:20:53.980 --> 00:20:56.940
the low mass version. It has the spectrum of
495
00:20:56.940 --> 00:20:59.740
a Wolf Rayet star without being a massive
496
00:20:59.740 --> 00:21:00.700
star at all.
497
00:21:01.590 --> 00:21:02.710
Anna: So the curtain is thinning.
498
00:21:02.870 --> 00:21:05.310
Avery: You could say that. And the star underneath
499
00:21:05.310 --> 00:21:07.590
is a different star from the one that went
500
00:21:07.590 --> 00:21:08.310
behind it.
501
00:21:08.630 --> 00:21:11.270
And the headline result is a disagreement
502
00:21:11.270 --> 00:21:13.670
with theory, which is the useful kind of
503
00:21:13.670 --> 00:21:16.470
result. Zelstra's team find it is
504
00:21:16.470 --> 00:21:18.750
reheating more gradually than some of the
505
00:21:18.750 --> 00:21:21.670
newer models predicted. That is a direct
506
00:21:21.750 --> 00:21:24.710
constraint on how convection and mixing work
507
00:21:24.790 --> 00:21:27.660
inside a star during a shell flash, a
508
00:21:27.660 --> 00:21:30.420
process we normally can only model because it
509
00:21:30.420 --> 00:21:33.260
takes longer than a civilization. Here
510
00:21:33.260 --> 00:21:36.260
it takes about as long as a career. One
511
00:21:36.260 --> 00:21:39.260
honest caveat. The distance to this object
512
00:21:39.260 --> 00:21:41.180
is genuinely poorly known.
513
00:21:41.820 --> 00:21:44.140
Published estimates run from under 2
514
00:21:44.140 --> 00:21:47.140
kiloparsecs to more than 5, which is a
515
00:21:47.140 --> 00:21:50.140
factor of nearly 3. And distance feeds
516
00:21:50.140 --> 00:21:53.100
into luminosity. The temperature measurement
517
00:21:53.100 --> 00:21:55.600
does not depend on it. That comes from the
518
00:21:55.600 --> 00:21:56.200
spectrum.
519
00:21:56.280 --> 00:21:58.840
But be wary of any brightness figure
520
00:21:58.840 --> 00:22:01.360
quoted to more precision than that spread
521
00:22:01.360 --> 00:22:02.040
allows.
522
00:22:02.680 --> 00:22:03.880
Anna: And where is it headed?
523
00:22:04.440 --> 00:22:06.800
Avery: Back where it came from. It will keep
524
00:22:06.800 --> 00:22:09.480
heating, blow away what is left and
525
00:22:09.560 --> 00:22:12.040
settle down to being a white dwarf again.
526
00:22:12.360 --> 00:22:14.520
The same fate reached twice.
527
00:22:15.080 --> 00:22:17.840
Peter van Hoof's summary is the one to end
528
00:22:17.840 --> 00:22:20.680
on. Sakurai's
529
00:22:20.680 --> 00:22:23.000
object offers something far rarer.
530
00:22:23.560 --> 00:22:26.160
It is one of the very few stars known to have
531
00:22:26.160 --> 00:22:28.480
changed dramatically within just a few
532
00:22:28.480 --> 00:22:31.320
decades, end quote. Most
533
00:22:31.320 --> 00:22:34.080
of stellar evolution is a slideshow. We get
534
00:22:34.080 --> 00:22:37.000
one frame of this one is a film.
535
00:22:37.640 --> 00:22:39.640
Anna: A quick update on a storey we left
536
00:22:39.640 --> 00:22:42.440
deliberately unfinished Back On Monday
537
00:22:42.440 --> 00:22:45.200
the 14th we told you Crew 13 had been
538
00:22:45.200 --> 00:22:47.920
stood down, that the cause was an oxidizer
539
00:22:47.920 --> 00:22:49.880
leak found in Dragon's propulsion system
540
00:22:50.350 --> 00:22:52.550
during pre launch processing. That the
541
00:22:52.550 --> 00:22:55.070
Canadian Space Agency had said late September
542
00:22:55.230 --> 00:22:57.950
and that NASA had published no specific date.
543
00:22:58.350 --> 00:23:00.790
We said on air that the absence of a date was
544
00:23:00.790 --> 00:23:01.710
itself the news.
545
00:23:02.510 --> 00:23:04.030
Avery: And now there is one.
546
00:23:04.590 --> 00:23:05.790
Anna: Now there is a window.
547
00:23:06.109 --> 00:23:08.910
NASA's station blog updated yesterday says
548
00:23:08.910 --> 00:23:11.550
the oxidizer valve has been replaced and that
549
00:23:11.550 --> 00:23:14.550
NASA and SpaceX are targeting quote as
550
00:23:14.550 --> 00:23:17.230
soon as early October end quote for the
551
00:23:17.230 --> 00:23:19.670
launch. The extra time is for pre launch
552
00:23:19.670 --> 00:23:21.910
activities. Readiness reviews and
553
00:23:21.910 --> 00:23:24.790
coordinating with station operations. So
554
00:23:24.950 --> 00:23:27.390
still not a calendar date, but a valve that
555
00:23:27.390 --> 00:23:29.310
has been fixed rather than a leak being
556
00:23:29.310 --> 00:23:31.830
investigated and a month you can plan around.
557
00:23:32.390 --> 00:23:34.990
The crew is unchanged. Jessica Watkins
558
00:23:34.990 --> 00:23:37.910
commanding, Luke Delaney as pilot, Joshua
559
00:23:37.910 --> 00:23:40.550
Kutryk for the Canadian Space agency and
560
00:23:40.550 --> 00:23:43.110
Sergey to Teriatnikov for Roscosmos
561
00:23:43.620 --> 00:23:46.180
on a Falcon 9 from Space Launch Complex 40.
562
00:23:46.900 --> 00:23:49.420
Avery: And the station is not going hungry in the
563
00:23:49.420 --> 00:23:51.140
meantime, it is not.
564
00:23:51.700 --> 00:23:54.500
Anna: Progress 96 launched yesterday morning US
565
00:23:54.580 --> 00:23:57.220
time with nearly three tonnes of food,
566
00:23:57.540 --> 00:24:00.380
fuel and cargo for the Expedition 75
567
00:24:00.380 --> 00:24:03.020
crew. And it docks to the POISK module on
568
00:24:03.020 --> 00:24:03.300
Saturday.
569
00:24:03.700 --> 00:24:06.620
Avery: Right, what to actually go outside and look
570
00:24:06.620 --> 00:24:06.900
at.
571
00:24:07.140 --> 00:24:09.660
And there is a genuine event on the calendar
572
00:24:09.660 --> 00:24:12.630
for tomorrow night. Friday the 18th
573
00:24:12.870 --> 00:24:15.590
Venus reaches greatest brilliancy.
574
00:24:15.910 --> 00:24:18.510
That is the single brightest Venus gets in
575
00:24:18.510 --> 00:24:21.350
this entire evening apparition at about
576
00:24:21.430 --> 00:24:24.190
magnitude -4.8. And
577
00:24:24.190 --> 00:24:27.030
tonight it is already within a whisker of it.
578
00:24:27.270 --> 00:24:30.150
So do not wait for permission. The reason the
579
00:24:30.150 --> 00:24:32.950
peak falls now rather than when Venus is
580
00:24:32.950 --> 00:24:35.750
closest or when Venus is fullest, is
581
00:24:35.750 --> 00:24:38.740
worth 30 seconds because it is a lovely bit
582
00:24:38.740 --> 00:24:39.660
of geometry.
583
00:24:40.220 --> 00:24:41.420
Anna: It is a trade off.
584
00:24:41.900 --> 00:24:44.900
Avery: It is exactly a trade off. Brightness is
585
00:24:44.900 --> 00:24:47.900
lit fraction times disc size. As
586
00:24:47.900 --> 00:24:50.780
Venus swings round toward us, it gets bigger.
587
00:24:51.020 --> 00:24:54.020
The disc is now about 39 arc seconds
588
00:24:54.020 --> 00:24:56.740
across, which is enormous, roughly
589
00:24:56.740 --> 00:24:59.140
three times the size it was at the start of
590
00:24:59.140 --> 00:25:01.900
the apparition. But as it comes toward us,
591
00:25:01.900 --> 00:25:04.810
we also see less of its lit face. It
592
00:25:04.810 --> 00:25:07.650
is only about 26% illuminated.
593
00:25:07.890 --> 00:25:10.650
A big thin crescent beats a small full
594
00:25:10.650 --> 00:25:13.570
disc. And tomorrow night the two curves
595
00:25:13.570 --> 00:25:14.050
cross.
596
00:25:14.450 --> 00:25:17.010
Put a pair of binoculars on it, steadied
597
00:25:17.010 --> 00:25:19.610
against a fence or a door frame, and the
598
00:25:19.610 --> 00:25:22.570
crescent shape is obvious. That is not a
599
00:25:22.570 --> 00:25:25.170
subtle target. One note on the date.
600
00:25:25.490 --> 00:25:28.330
Some listings give 22 September for
601
00:25:28.330 --> 00:25:30.690
greatest brilliancy. On a slightly different
602
00:25:30.690 --> 00:25:33.030
definition, we are using the
603
00:25:33.030 --> 00:25:33.750
18th.
604
00:25:33.990 --> 00:25:36.630
The difference is a definition, not a
605
00:25:36.630 --> 00:25:39.390
disagreement about Venus. And either way,
606
00:25:39.390 --> 00:25:41.830
this week and next are spectacular.
607
00:25:42.470 --> 00:25:45.110
Now, where you are standing decides how good
608
00:25:45.110 --> 00:25:48.030
a night you have. And the gap is enormous.
609
00:25:48.030 --> 00:25:50.910
Right now. From Sydney, the Sun sets
610
00:25:50.910 --> 00:25:53.790
at 11 minutes to 6 and Venus is
611
00:25:53.790 --> 00:25:56.670
39 degrees above the western horizon at
612
00:25:56.670 --> 00:25:59.500
that moment, most of the way from the horizon
613
00:25:59.500 --> 00:26:02.140
to overhead. It does not set until
614
00:26:02.220 --> 00:26:05.060
three minutes past nine. That is three
615
00:26:05.060 --> 00:26:08.060
and a quarter hours of Venus after sunset.
616
00:26:08.300 --> 00:26:11.100
Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Auckland,
617
00:26:11.260 --> 00:26:14.220
Cape Town, Santiago, same storey.
618
00:26:15.100 --> 00:26:17.100
Anna: And for our, uh, North American listeners,
619
00:26:17.260 --> 00:26:19.180
who are the biggest part of this audience,
620
00:26:20.060 --> 00:26:21.340
considerably tougher.
621
00:26:21.580 --> 00:26:24.060
Avery: And I am not going to pretend otherwise.
622
00:26:24.720 --> 00:26:27.640
From Los angeles, Venus is 14 degrees
623
00:26:27.640 --> 00:26:30.360
up at sunset and sets an hour and
624
00:26:30.360 --> 00:26:33.320
20 minutes later from New York, 10
625
00:26:33.320 --> 00:26:35.600
degrees and an hour and five
626
00:26:36.240 --> 00:26:39.040
from London, three degrees and half an
627
00:26:39.040 --> 00:26:42.000
hour. Genuinely difficult. This is the
628
00:26:42.000 --> 00:26:44.920
ecliptic tilt again and it is at its most
629
00:26:44.920 --> 00:26:47.520
extreme in the weeks around the equinox.
630
00:26:47.840 --> 00:26:50.240
The line the planets follow stands almost
631
00:26:50.320 --> 00:26:52.880
vertically up from the western horizon at
632
00:26:52.880 --> 00:26:55.250
dusk from the southern hemisphere and, and
633
00:26:55.250 --> 00:26:57.930
lies almost flat along it from the northern.
634
00:26:58.490 --> 00:27:01.210
Same planet, same evening, radically
635
00:27:01.210 --> 00:27:02.490
different altitude.
636
00:27:03.050 --> 00:27:05.210
Anna: So what is the practical advice up north?
637
00:27:05.450 --> 00:27:08.370
Avery: Find a clear western horizon, the sea,
638
00:27:08.370 --> 00:27:11.290
a lake, a ridge with nothing on it. And
639
00:27:11.290 --> 00:27:14.250
look 20 to 45 minutes after sunset.
640
00:27:14.890 --> 00:27:16.970
Venus is bright enough to punch through
641
00:27:16.970 --> 00:27:19.530
twilight and you will not mistake it for
642
00:27:19.530 --> 00:27:22.240
anything else. It is worth the effort.
643
00:27:22.560 --> 00:27:25.200
You just cannot be casual about it the way we
644
00:27:25.200 --> 00:27:28.200
can down here. Mercury is the harder
645
00:27:28.200 --> 00:27:31.080
version of the same lesson. From Sydney,
646
00:27:31.080 --> 00:27:33.680
it is 15 degrees up, uh, at sunset,
647
00:27:33.920 --> 00:27:36.800
a genuinely good apparition. And it sets
648
00:27:36.800 --> 00:27:38.960
an hour and a quarter after the Sun.
649
00:27:39.600 --> 00:27:42.560
From Los angeles, it is 8 degrees. From
650
00:27:42.560 --> 00:27:44.960
New York, six from London, three
651
00:27:45.680 --> 00:27:48.020
Southern. Listeners, this is your
652
00:27:48.020 --> 00:27:50.860
Mercury. It sits below and to the
653
00:27:50.860 --> 00:27:53.780
right of Venus, about 24 degrees away
654
00:27:54.500 --> 00:27:56.900
then the Moon. And this is where both
655
00:27:56.900 --> 00:27:58.740
hemispheres get the same present.
656
00:27:59.300 --> 00:28:01.860
It is a fat Crescent tonight, about
657
00:28:01.860 --> 00:28:04.260
37% lit, going to
658
00:28:04.260 --> 00:28:07.060
47% tomorrow. And first quarter
659
00:28:07.140 --> 00:28:09.980
falls on Friday the 18th at 43
660
00:28:09.980 --> 00:28:12.740
minutes past 8 in the evening, universal
661
00:28:12.740 --> 00:28:15.390
time, which is quarter to 7 on Saturday
662
00:28:15.550 --> 00:28:18.550
morning here in Sydney. And that timing
663
00:28:18.550 --> 00:28:21.190
is not an accident because Saturday the
664
00:28:21.190 --> 00:28:24.150
19th is international. Observe the Moon
665
00:28:24.150 --> 00:28:26.190
night, which is deliberately
666
00:28:26.190 --> 00:28:27.390
Anna: scheduled for this phase.
667
00:28:27.470 --> 00:28:29.870
Avery: Deliberately and for the right reason.
668
00:28:30.270 --> 00:28:32.830
A full moon is a flat, glaring,
669
00:28:32.830 --> 00:28:35.510
shadowless disc and it is the worst night of
670
00:28:35.510 --> 00:28:38.030
the month to look at it. At first quarter,
671
00:28:38.110 --> 00:28:40.990
the terminator, the line between lunar day
672
00:28:40.990 --> 00:28:43.630
and lunar night, runs straight down the
673
00:28:43.630 --> 00:28:46.550
middle. The sunlight comes in almost sideways
674
00:28:46.790 --> 00:28:49.630
and every crater, rim and mountain throws
675
00:28:49.630 --> 00:28:52.430
a long shadow. Through even the smallest
676
00:28:52.430 --> 00:28:53.110
telescope.
677
00:28:53.110 --> 00:28:55.870
The Moon stops being a picture and becomes a
678
00:28:55.870 --> 00:28:58.470
landscape. And in the light of our second
679
00:28:58.550 --> 00:29:01.390
storey, have a look at Mare Chrisium, the
680
00:29:01.390 --> 00:29:04.110
dark oval near the eastern limb. It is
681
00:29:04.110 --> 00:29:07.100
obvious in binoculars. Somewhere out on
682
00:29:07.100 --> 00:29:09.980
its outer ring, 20 kilometres east of Mare
683
00:29:09.980 --> 00:29:12.540
Spumans, is the crater that was not there
684
00:29:12.540 --> 00:29:15.380
before the middle of 2024. You
685
00:29:15.380 --> 00:29:18.260
will not see it. 200 metres is far
686
00:29:18.260 --> 00:29:20.580
below anything Earth based equipment can
687
00:29:20.580 --> 00:29:23.340
resolve. And at this phase that region is
688
00:29:23.340 --> 00:29:25.940
fully lit and flat, rather than sitting on
689
00:29:25.940 --> 00:29:28.300
the terminator. But you will be looking at
690
00:29:28.300 --> 00:29:30.940
the right patch of ground and knowing it is
691
00:29:30.940 --> 00:29:33.530
there changes what you are looking at. Before
692
00:29:33.530 --> 00:29:36.090
dawn, the balance flips and this one
693
00:29:36.090 --> 00:29:38.970
belongs to the North Jupiter Is the
694
00:29:38.970 --> 00:29:41.930
prize at the start of nautical Twilight.
695
00:29:42.090 --> 00:29:44.770
Jupiter is 26 degrees up from Los
696
00:29:44.770 --> 00:29:46.970
Angeles, 24 from New York,
697
00:29:47.450 --> 00:29:50.238
21 from London and only 8
698
00:29:50.342 --> 00:29:52.090
1/2 degrees from Sydney.
699
00:29:52.490 --> 00:29:55.330
Still fighting the horizon murk. Mars
700
00:29:55.330 --> 00:29:58.170
is even more lopsided, 48 degrees
701
00:29:58.170 --> 00:30:01.030
up from Los Angeles, 46 from New
702
00:30:01.030 --> 00:30:03.830
York, 40 from London against uh, 20
703
00:30:03.830 --> 00:30:06.590
from Sydney. Mars is faint at the
704
00:30:06.590 --> 00:30:09.430
moment, magnitude 1.2, an
705
00:30:09.430 --> 00:30:12.430
unremarkable orange dot, but the two are
706
00:30:12.430 --> 00:30:15.390
23 degrees apart and closing. They
707
00:30:15.390 --> 00:30:17.830
will be about 12 degrees apart by mid
708
00:30:17.830 --> 00:30:20.590
October and about 2 degrees apart by
709
00:30:20.590 --> 00:30:23.310
mid November. Start watching that gap
710
00:30:23.310 --> 00:30:25.750
now and the shrinking is the whole point.
711
00:30:26.490 --> 00:30:28.970
Saturn is well placed for everybody before
712
00:30:28.970 --> 00:30:31.690
dawn around 23 to 28
713
00:30:31.690 --> 00:30:34.610
degrees up wherever you are and it is worth
714
00:30:34.610 --> 00:30:37.250
getting familiar with because opposition is
715
00:30:37.250 --> 00:30:39.930
on the 4th of October rings about
716
00:30:39.930 --> 00:30:42.730
7 degrees open disc a uh touch
717
00:30:42.730 --> 00:30:45.610
under 20 arc seconds. One note for
718
00:30:45.610 --> 00:30:48.370
the southern zodiacal light hunters, not this
719
00:30:48.370 --> 00:30:51.170
week. The evening sky is moonlit from
720
00:30:51.170 --> 00:30:53.690
here through full moon on the 26th.
721
00:30:54.240 --> 00:30:57.240
That false dusk in the west. The faint cone
722
00:30:57.240 --> 00:30:59.880
of sunlight scattered off interplanetary
723
00:30:59.880 --> 00:31:02.360
dust which is an evening object from the
724
00:31:02.360 --> 00:31:05.040
southern hemisphere and a pre dawn object
725
00:31:05.040 --> 00:31:07.800
from the northern at this time of year comes
726
00:31:07.800 --> 00:31:10.480
back into play in the first week of October
727
00:31:10.800 --> 00:31:13.320
and the equinox Wednesday the
728
00:31:13.320 --> 00:31:16.200
23rd at five minutes past midnight
729
00:31:16.200 --> 00:31:18.760
Universal time which is the evening of
730
00:31:18.760 --> 00:31:21.760
Tuesday the 22nd across the Americas and
731
00:31:21.760 --> 00:31:24.160
mid morning on Wednesday here in Australia.
732
00:31:24.900 --> 00:31:27.620
It is an instant, not a day, so the date
733
00:31:27.620 --> 00:31:30.460
depends on where you are standing. Finally,
734
00:31:30.460 --> 00:31:33.060
and we say this every single episode for a
735
00:31:33.060 --> 00:31:35.940
reason, our space weather storey mentioned a
736
00:31:35.940 --> 00:31:37.900
big sunspot group visible in
737
00:31:37.900 --> 00:31:40.820
1848 and every time we mention
738
00:31:40.900 --> 00:31:43.860
sunspots someone quite reasonably wants to go
739
00:31:43.860 --> 00:31:46.820
and look. Do not point any telescope,
740
00:31:46.820 --> 00:31:49.660
any binoculars or any camera at the sun
741
00:31:49.660 --> 00:31:52.140
without a purpose built solar filter fitted
742
00:31:52.140 --> 00:31:54.600
over the front of the optics. If you are
743
00:31:54.600 --> 00:31:57.400
using eclipse glasses or a handheld solar
744
00:31:57.400 --> 00:31:59.880
viewer they must meet the ISO
745
00:31:59.880 --> 00:32:02.640
123122 international
746
00:32:02.960 --> 00:32:05.960
safety standard cheque for that marking and
747
00:32:05.960 --> 00:32:08.720
cheque the filter for scratches or pinholes
748
00:32:08.720 --> 00:32:10.320
before every single use.
749
00:32:10.960 --> 00:32:13.360
Sunglasses are not a solar filter.
750
00:32:13.840 --> 00:32:16.320
Exposed film, smoked glass and
751
00:32:16.320 --> 00:32:19.040
welding glass below shade 14 are
752
00:32:19.040 --> 00:32:21.940
not solar filters. Eye damage from the
753
00:32:21.940 --> 00:32:24.740
sun is painless and permanent and it does
754
00:32:24.740 --> 00:32:26.820
not announce itself until it is done.
755
00:32:26.980 --> 00:32:28.980
Anna: That is Astronomy AstroDailyPod for Thursday
756
00:32:29.140 --> 00:32:31.860
17th September. A
757
00:32:31.860 --> 00:32:34.380
planet under a million years old caught in
758
00:32:34.380 --> 00:32:37.020
the gap. It is carving a 200
759
00:32:37.020 --> 00:32:39.260
metre hole in the moon that nobody saw
760
00:32:39.260 --> 00:32:41.860
arrive. A Victorian train delay
761
00:32:41.860 --> 00:32:44.420
recovered from the wrong decade and a dead
762
00:32:44.420 --> 00:32:46.020
star getting hotter by the year.
763
00:32:47.000 --> 00:32:49.840
Avery: Show notes Sources and links for everything
764
00:32:49.840 --> 00:32:52.280
we have covered are at astronomydaily
765
00:32:52.600 --> 00:32:55.320
IO and there is a contact form there.
766
00:32:55.560 --> 00:32:57.680
Listener questions have started whole
767
00:32:57.680 --> 00:32:59.960
segments on this show, so use it.
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Anna: We are on x, Facebook,
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Instagram, TikTok and Tumblr.
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AstroDaily Pod Astronomy AstroDailyPod
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is part of the Bitesz.com podcast network
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produced in Sydney.
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Avery: I'm Avery.
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Anna: And I'm Anna. Clear Skies.
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Mhm.