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00:00:00 --> 00:00:03 Anna: Hello everyone. Let's get stuck into today's
00:00:03 --> 00:00:06 space and astronomy news. Somewhere in The
00:00:06 --> 00:00:09 Zaharov in 2022 prospectors
00:00:09 --> 00:00:11 picked up a pinkish rock a little lighter
00:00:11 --> 00:00:14 than a bag of sugar. This week we learned
00:00:14 --> 00:00:17 it is more than 4.1 billion years old
00:00:17 --> 00:00:19 and it came from Mars.
00:00:19 --> 00:00:22 Avery: And a little Further out, Voyager 1 went
00:00:22 --> 00:00:25 silent for two days, came back on its own
00:00:25 --> 00:00:27 and is three weeks from a distance that takes
00:00:27 --> 00:00:29 light a full day to cross.
00:00:29 --> 00:00:32 Anna: Plus the wreckage of a collision between two
00:00:32 --> 00:00:35 worlds the size of Pluto. Two
00:00:35 --> 00:00:37 ghosts in the southern sky just in time for
00:00:37 --> 00:00:40 Halloween. And a, uh, solar array unrolled
00:00:40 --> 00:00:43 by a Canadian on his first ever space mock.
00:00:44 --> 00:00:46 I'm Avery. And I'm Anna.
00:00:46 --> 00:00:48 This is Astronomy daily for Friday
00:00:49 --> 00:00:51 30th October 2026.
00:00:51 --> 00:00:52 Let's get into it.
00:00:53 --> 00:00:55 Avery: You lead off then, Anna, tell me about this
00:00:55 --> 00:00:56 rock from Mars.
00:00:56 --> 00:00:59 Anna: Let's start with the rock itself because it
00:00:59 --> 00:01:01 does not look like much. It's called
00:01:01 --> 00:01:04 Tagaza 001, after the salt
00:01:04 --> 00:01:07 plain in Mali where it turned up. Tahari
00:01:07 --> 00:01:09 prospectors found it in September 2022.
00:01:10 --> 00:01:12 It's rose coloured, it weighs about 800
00:01:12 --> 00:01:15 grammes and for a while nobody knew what it
00:01:15 --> 00:01:17 was or how old it was.
00:01:18 --> 00:01:21 Avery: So how do you even know a rock in the desert
00:01:21 --> 00:01:22 came from Mars?
00:01:23 --> 00:01:26 Anna: Oxygen isotopes. Every rocky
00:01:26 --> 00:01:28 body in the solar system carries its own
00:01:28 --> 00:01:30 ratio of the three oxygen isotopes,
00:01:31 --> 00:01:33 almost like a postcode. Scientists
00:01:33 --> 00:01:36 at the University of New Mexico's Institute
00:01:36 --> 00:01:38 of Meteoritics checked Tegazot against other
00:01:38 --> 00:01:41 Martian meteorites and it matched.
00:01:41 --> 00:01:44 At that point it looked like a shergottite,
00:01:44 --> 00:01:46 which is the most common kind of Martian
00:01:46 --> 00:01:49 meteorite and frankly the least exciting.
00:01:50 --> 00:01:52 There are roughly 435 Meteorites
00:01:52 --> 00:01:55 from Mars known, and most of them formed
00:01:55 --> 00:01:57 within the last couple of billion years.
00:01:58 --> 00:01:59 Avery: So what changed?
00:02:00 --> 00:02:02 Anna: Yang liu at, uh, NASA's Jet Propulsion
00:02:02 --> 00:02:05 Laboratory nearly passed on it. She'd seen
00:02:05 --> 00:02:07 plenty of srgaiolites. She looked anyway,
00:02:08 --> 00:02:10 saw textures and minerals she didn't
00:02:10 --> 00:02:12 recognise and then found zircons.
00:02:13 --> 00:02:16 Avery: Before we get to the clocks, how does a
00:02:16 --> 00:02:19 rock from Mars end up in a desert on Earth at
00:02:19 --> 00:02:19 all?
00:02:20 --> 00:02:22 Anna: Every Martian meteorite has the same
00:02:23 --> 00:02:26 A large impact on Mars blasts material off
00:02:26 --> 00:02:27 the surface fast enough to escape the
00:02:27 --> 00:02:30 planet's gravity. Those fragments then orbit
00:02:30 --> 00:02:32 the sun, sometimes for millions of years,
00:02:33 --> 00:02:35 until one happens to cross Earth's path and
00:02:35 --> 00:02:38 fall. Deserts, uh, are where we find them
00:02:38 --> 00:02:41 because a dark stone on pale sand or ice
00:02:41 --> 00:02:44 stands out and in a dry climate it doesn't
00:02:44 --> 00:02:46 rust away quickly. That's why so many come
00:02:46 --> 00:02:49 from the Zaharov and from Antarctica.
00:02:49 --> 00:02:52 Avery: So the launch, the journey and the landing
00:02:52 --> 00:02:54 all wipe out the context.
00:02:54 --> 00:02:57 Anna: Exactly. And that's the frustration with
00:02:57 --> 00:02:57 meteorites.
00:02:57 --> 00:03:00 You get a real sample of another planet, but
00:03:00 --> 00:03:03 no label. Seeing where it came from. The rock
00:03:03 --> 00:03:05 has to tell you its own story.
00:03:05 --> 00:03:08 Avery: Zircons are the geologists favourite clock.
00:03:08 --> 00:03:08 Right?
00:03:09 --> 00:03:12 Anna: They are. A zircon crystal takes in a
00:03:12 --> 00:03:14 little uranium when it forms and almost no
00:03:14 --> 00:03:17 lead. Uranium decays into lead at a rate
00:03:17 --> 00:03:20 we know very precisely. So the ratio
00:03:20 --> 00:03:23 of lead to uranium inside the crystal tells
00:03:23 --> 00:03:25 you how long it's been ticking. The team
00:03:25 --> 00:03:28 measured 10 zircon ages and their weighted
00:03:28 --> 00:03:30 average came out at 4
00:03:30 --> 00:03:33 million years, plus or minus 14 million.
00:03:33 --> 00:03:35 Avery: And they checked it a second way.
00:03:35 --> 00:03:38 Anna: That's the part I like. Francois Thiseau's
00:03:38 --> 00:03:40 lab at Caltech has a technique for rubidium
00:03:40 --> 00:03:43 strontium dating that works in place on
00:03:43 --> 00:03:45 individual mineral grains on the surface of a
00:03:45 --> 00:03:48 fragment smaller than a fingernail. You don't
00:03:48 --> 00:03:50 have to dissolve the sample, which matters
00:03:50 --> 00:03:52 when you only have 800 grammes of ancient
00:03:52 --> 00:03:55 Mars. Two completely independent clocks,
00:03:55 --> 00:03:58 uranium lead and rubidium strontium, gave
00:03:58 --> 00:03:59 the same age.
00:04:00 --> 00:04:03 Avery: Two, um, clocks agreeing is a lot more
00:04:03 --> 00:04:04 convincing than one.
00:04:04 --> 00:04:07 Anna: It is. And here's the subtle bit.
00:04:07 --> 00:04:10 The minerals record that water altered this
00:04:10 --> 00:04:12 rock around 4.1 billion years ago.
00:04:13 --> 00:04:15 You can't alter a rock that doesn't exist
00:04:15 --> 00:04:18 yet. So the rock itself formed at
00:04:18 --> 00:04:21 least that long ago and possibly earlier. The
00:04:21 --> 00:04:23 paper's title says it formed at or before
00:04:23 --> 00:04:25 4.1 billion years. That little
00:04:26 --> 00:04:28 ore before is doing real work.
00:04:29 --> 00:04:32 Avery: We do have other very old Martian
00:04:32 --> 00:04:33 meteorites, though,
00:04:33 --> 00:04:35 Anna: two that people usually
00:04:36 --> 00:04:38 ALH84001,
00:04:39 --> 00:04:41 the Antarctic one, made of almost a single
00:04:41 --> 00:04:43 mineral, which is similar in age. And
00:04:43 --> 00:04:46 NWA 7034, nicknamed
00:04:46 --> 00:04:49 Black Beauty, which contains very old
00:04:49 --> 00:04:51 fragments, but was assembled into the rock we
00:04:51 --> 00:04:54 have much later. Tegaza is different.
00:04:54 --> 00:04:57 It's a, uh, slowly cooled igneous rock,
00:04:57 --> 00:04:59 a piece of crust that crystallised from
00:04:59 --> 00:05:01 magma, which, with a mix of minerals that
00:05:01 --> 00:05:04 tells you about both the early crust and the
00:05:04 --> 00:05:07 mantle it came from. The New Mexico team
00:05:07 --> 00:05:09 calls it the oldest known Martian lava rock.
00:05:10 --> 00:05:12 NASA's own phrasing is one of the oldest
00:05:12 --> 00:05:14 Martian meteorites ever found.
00:05:14 --> 00:05:16 And I think that careful version is the right
00:05:16 --> 00:05:17 one.
00:05:17 --> 00:05:19 Avery: Do we know where on Mars it came from?
00:05:20 --> 00:05:23 Anna: Not exactly, and the team is upfront about
00:05:23 --> 00:05:26 that. They compared the rock's chemistry with
00:05:26 --> 00:05:28 what orbiters like Mars Reconnaissance
00:05:28 --> 00:05:30 Orbiter see from above and. And the best
00:05:30 --> 00:05:32 matches are in the Cratered southern
00:05:32 --> 00:05:35 highlands, some of the oldest terrain on the
00:05:35 --> 00:05:38 planet. They list 13 candidate locations.
00:05:38 --> 00:05:40 That's a short list, not an address.
00:05:41 --> 00:05:43 Avery: And there's a Southern Hemisphere thread to
00:05:43 --> 00:05:44 the address finding, isn't there?
00:05:45 --> 00:05:48 Anna: There is. Matching a meteorite to its launch
00:05:48 --> 00:05:50 crater has partly been an Australian
00:05:50 --> 00:05:53 specialty. In 2022, a Curtin
00:05:53 --> 00:05:56 University team in Perth traced Black Beauty
00:05:56 --> 00:05:59 to a crater on Mars they named Karatha after
00:05:59 --> 00:06:01 the Pilbara town. So when we eventually get
00:06:01 --> 00:06:04 an address for Tagaza, that's the kind of
00:06:04 --> 00:06:05 work that will find it.
00:06:06 --> 00:06:08 Avery: What does the Reviewer comment in NASA's
00:06:08 --> 00:06:09 release? Say again,
00:06:10 --> 00:06:12 Anna: Lu said one of the paper's reviewers called
00:06:12 --> 00:06:14 it a Rosetta Stone for Mars.
00:06:14 --> 00:06:17 Lee Saper, the second author now at NASA
00:06:17 --> 00:06:20 Ames, put it more plainly. It's the first
00:06:20 --> 00:06:22 piece of Martian crust from a part of Mars
00:06:22 --> 00:06:23 we've never had a sample of before.
00:06:24 --> 00:06:26 Avery: And there's a water story underneath this.
00:06:27 --> 00:06:30 Anna: There is an earlier paper from the same team
00:06:30 --> 00:06:32 this year looked at the hydrogen trapped in
00:06:32 --> 00:06:35 Telegaza, and it suggests Mars
00:06:35 --> 00:06:36 was already well on the way to losing its
00:06:36 --> 00:06:39 water more than 4 billion years ago.
00:06:39 --> 00:06:42 So the planet's dry out wasn't a late event.
00:06:42 --> 00:06:44 It was underway while this rock was young.
00:06:44 --> 00:06:47 Avery: Put that in context for us. How old is
00:06:47 --> 00:06:48 Mars itself? Uh,
00:06:49 --> 00:06:51 Anna: Mars, like Earth, formed about four and a
00:06:51 --> 00:06:54 half billion years ago. So Tegaza
00:06:54 --> 00:06:56 crystallised when the planet was only a few
00:06:56 --> 00:06:59 hundred million years old. That's the era
00:06:59 --> 00:07:02 geologists call the Noachian, when Mars
00:07:02 --> 00:07:05 had rivers and lakes and probably a thicker
00:07:05 --> 00:07:08 atmosphere. Mars also had a global
00:07:08 --> 00:07:10 magnetic field early on, which helped shield
00:07:10 --> 00:07:13 its atmosphere from the solar wind. And that
00:07:13 --> 00:07:16 field is thought to have faded around 3.9
00:07:16 --> 00:07:18 billion years ago. What this rock
00:07:18 --> 00:07:21 adds is that water loss was already happening
00:07:21 --> 00:07:24 before that by 4.1 billion years ago.
00:07:24 --> 00:07:26 Avery: And, um, the rock's chemistry is unusual in
00:07:26 --> 00:07:27 other ways, too.
00:07:28 --> 00:07:31 Anna: It is. The paper reports trace
00:07:31 --> 00:07:33 elements more abundant than in any other
00:07:33 --> 00:07:36 igneous Martian meteorite, except black
00:07:36 --> 00:07:39 beauty and a mantle source different from the
00:07:39 --> 00:07:41 ones that made the other meteorites. So it
00:07:41 --> 00:07:44 isn't just old. It's sampling a part of
00:07:44 --> 00:07:46 Mars's interior we hadn't seen before.
00:07:47 --> 00:07:48 That's exactly what you'd hope to compare
00:07:48 --> 00:07:51 with samples a rover might one day collect.
00:07:51 --> 00:07:53 So honest caveats
00:07:53 --> 00:07:56 Avery: 3. First, the age was first
00:07:56 --> 00:07:58 shown publicly at the Goldschmidt
00:07:58 --> 00:08:00 Geochemistry Conference in Montreal in July
00:08:01 --> 00:08:03 and was covered then. What's new this week
00:08:03 --> 00:08:06 is the full peer reviewed paper in Science
00:08:06 --> 00:08:08 published Thursday. Second, uh, the
00:08:08 --> 00:08:11 source location is a list of candidates not
00:08:11 --> 00:08:14 an identification. Third, one
00:08:14 --> 00:08:17 rock is one rock. It tells us about one
00:08:17 --> 00:08:19 patch of ancient crust, not all of early
00:08:19 --> 00:08:20 Mars.
00:08:20 --> 00:08:23 Anna: Still, a piece of Mars from when the solar
00:08:23 --> 00:08:25 system was barely half a billion years old,
00:08:26 --> 00:08:28 picked up off the ground in the Zaharov
00:08:29 --> 00:08:32 Avery: and dated with two clocks on a chip smaller
00:08:32 --> 00:08:33 than your fingernail.
00:08:33 --> 00:08:34 Liu's line was, uh, that they've only
00:08:34 --> 00:08:37 scratched the surface, given how small the
00:08:37 --> 00:08:39 chip was. I think that's literally true.
00:08:39 --> 00:08:42 Anna: From the oldest rock to the most distant
00:08:42 --> 00:08:45 machine. On 18 October,
00:08:45 --> 00:08:48 NASA's Deep Space Network tried to hear
00:08:48 --> 00:08:50 Voyager 1 and got nothing. They
00:08:50 --> 00:08:53 tried again 24 hours later, still
00:08:53 --> 00:08:54 nothing.
00:08:54 --> 00:08:56 Avery: That must have been a long weekend at JPL.
00:08:57 --> 00:09:00 Anna: It came back on its own on the 20th, before
00:09:00 --> 00:09:03 the team had even sent a command. What
00:09:03 --> 00:09:05 they've found so far is that one group of
00:09:05 --> 00:09:07 thrusters went offline and the backups took
00:09:07 --> 00:09:10 over automatically. Decks fault protection
00:09:10 --> 00:09:12 doing its job. The spacecraft spots something
00:09:12 --> 00:09:15 wrong, switches to a safe configuration,
00:09:16 --> 00:09:18 pauses normal work and waits for the humans.
00:09:18 --> 00:09:20 Avery: Do they know what caused it?
00:09:20 --> 00:09:23 Anna: Not yet. Mission manager Karim
00:09:23 --> 00:09:25 Badarradin said it's the first time they've
00:09:25 --> 00:09:28 seen the spacecraft do this. But at this
00:09:28 --> 00:09:30 point in the mission, they have to expect the
00:09:30 --> 00:09:30 unexpected.
00:09:31 --> 00:09:33 Avery: And, um, there was a power story too.
00:09:33 --> 00:09:36 Anna: Yes. The Voyagers run on plutonium
00:09:36 --> 00:09:39 generators that lose about 4 watts a year.
00:09:39 --> 00:09:42 In early September, the team pulled off
00:09:42 --> 00:09:44 something they nicknamed the Big Bang. They
00:09:44 --> 00:09:47 switched off three devices and switched on
00:09:47 --> 00:09:49 three lower power substitutes at the same
00:09:49 --> 00:09:52 time. Those devices keep the spacecraft
00:09:52 --> 00:09:54 warm, so they had to swap all three together
00:09:54 --> 00:09:57 to cut power and still keep heat where it
00:09:57 --> 00:09:59 needs to be. They'd done the same on Voyager
00:09:59 --> 00:10:02 2 about six weeks earlier. Without it,
00:10:02 --> 00:10:05 Voyager 1 would have had to turn off another
00:10:05 --> 00:10:07 science instrument as early as the middle of
00:10:07 --> 00:10:08 2027.
00:10:08 --> 00:10:10 Avery: And now the milestone
00:10:11 --> 00:10:14 on the 18th of November, Voyager 1 will
00:10:14 --> 00:10:17 be about 25.9 billion kilometres
00:10:17 --> 00:10:20 away. That's one light day.
00:10:21 --> 00:10:23 A radio command takes 24 hours to get there,
00:10:23 --> 00:10:25 and the reply takes another 24.
00:10:26 --> 00:10:29 Project manager Suzanne Dodd put it nicely.
00:10:29 --> 00:10:32 You say hello, go home and wait
00:10:32 --> 00:10:35 two days for the answer. Remind us where
00:10:35 --> 00:10:36 it actually is now.
00:10:37 --> 00:10:40 Anna: Voyager 1 crossed the heliopause, the
00:10:40 --> 00:10:42 edge of the bubble. The sun's wind blows
00:10:42 --> 00:10:45 around the solar system in 2012. Since
00:10:45 --> 00:10:47 then, it's been measuring interstellar space
00:10:47 --> 00:10:50 directly. Voyager 2 followed in 2018.
00:10:50 --> 00:10:52 They're the only spacecraft ever to do that,
00:10:52 --> 00:10:55 which is why every watt matters so much.
00:10:55 --> 00:10:58 Avery: Nothing changes on board when it
00:10:58 --> 00:10:59 crosses that line.
00:11:00 --> 00:11:02 Anna: No, NASA is clear about that.
00:11:02 --> 00:11:05 It's a milestone about scale not physics.
00:11:06 --> 00:11:09 It's moving at about 61 kilometres an
00:11:09 --> 00:11:11 hour. Launched in 1977
00:11:11 --> 00:11:14 and still sending data from interstellar
00:11:14 --> 00:11:14 space.
00:11:15 --> 00:11:17 Avery: And for our listeners in Australia, the
00:11:17 --> 00:11:20 dishes listening for it include Canberra's at
00:11:20 --> 00:11:21 uh, Tidbin Villa.
00:11:22 --> 00:11:24 Anna: That's right, Voyager 1 is in the
00:11:24 --> 00:11:27 northern sky, but it's still high enough for
00:11:27 --> 00:11:29 all three Deep Space Network complexes
00:11:30 --> 00:11:32 Goldstone, Madrid and Canberra.
00:11:33 --> 00:11:35 Voyager 2 heading south, can only be
00:11:35 --> 00:11:38 commanded from Canberra. So when either
00:11:38 --> 00:11:40 Voyager says hello, there's a good chance
00:11:40 --> 00:11:42 it's an Australian dish that hears it.
00:11:43 --> 00:11:46 Avery: 63 light years away, in the small
00:11:46 --> 00:11:49 southern constellation Pictor, the Painter's
00:11:49 --> 00:11:52 Easel, there's a uh, young star called Beta
00:11:52 --> 00:11:55 Pictoris. It's only around 20
00:11:55 --> 00:11:57 million years old and it's surrounded by a
00:11:57 --> 00:12:00 disc of dust and debris that we see edge on.
00:12:01 --> 00:12:03 Think of it as a model of our own solar
00:12:03 --> 00:12:04 system when it was still messy.
00:12:05 --> 00:12:06 Anna: And it has a tail,
00:12:06 --> 00:12:09 Avery: a dark streak of dust nicknamed the Cat's
00:12:09 --> 00:12:12 Tail. Webb found it in mid infrared
00:12:12 --> 00:12:14 light in 2024. The
00:12:14 --> 00:12:17 puzzle has been that it just wouldn't show up
00:12:17 --> 00:12:20 at visible wavelength. Now a team led
00:12:20 --> 00:12:23 by Aaron Afzarai, a ah, doctoral student at
00:12:23 --> 00:12:25 the University of Arizona, has found it with
00:12:25 --> 00:12:28 Hubble by stacking six sets of
00:12:28 --> 00:12:30 observations from 2012 to 2025
00:12:30 --> 00:12:31 M.
00:12:31 --> 00:12:33 Anna: Why was it so hard to see?
00:12:33 --> 00:12:36 Avery: Because of what it's made of. The dust
00:12:36 --> 00:12:38 is almost entirely what's called
00:12:38 --> 00:12:41 organic refractory material. Long
00:12:41 --> 00:12:44 chains of carbon that absorb visible light.
00:12:44 --> 00:12:47 So it's very dark and the grains
00:12:47 --> 00:12:50 are tiny, micron sized
00:12:50 --> 00:12:53 and extremely porous. Fluffy
00:12:53 --> 00:12:53 basically.
00:12:54 --> 00:12:55 Anna: And the collision?
00:12:56 --> 00:12:58 Avery: The team asked how much rock you'd have to
00:12:58 --> 00:13:01 destroy to make that much organic dust.
00:13:02 --> 00:13:05 Using the organic content of dwarf planets in
00:13:05 --> 00:13:08 our own solar system as a guide, each of the
00:13:08 --> 00:13:11 colliding bodies would need at least 1 to
00:13:11 --> 00:13:13 3 times 10 to the 21
00:13:13 --> 00:13:16 kilogrammes. That's about the Mass of Charon
00:13:16 --> 00:13:18 or Makemaker.
00:13:18 --> 00:13:21 Two small worlds destroyed in one collision.
00:13:21 --> 00:13:24 Anna: Which ties neatly to Wednesday's dwarf planet
00:13:24 --> 00:13:25 candidate from Rubin.
00:13:25 --> 00:13:28 Avery: It does. We're finding the survivors in our
00:13:28 --> 00:13:31 own Kuiper Belt and watching the casualties
00:13:31 --> 00:13:34 around another star. The tail is about a uh,
00:13:34 --> 00:13:37 thousand astronomical units long and
00:13:37 --> 00:13:39 the new modelling suggests it lies roughly
00:13:39 --> 00:13:41 sideways in our view rather than stretching
00:13:41 --> 00:13:44 away behind the star. Hubble
00:13:44 --> 00:13:47 also found a warp in the outer dust halo,
00:13:47 --> 00:13:49 probably from the giant planet Beta
00:13:49 --> 00:13:51 pycbut 10 times Jupiter's
00:13:51 --> 00:13:52 mass.
00:13:53 --> 00:13:53 Anna: Caveats.
00:13:54 --> 00:13:57 Avery: The mass estimate leans on an assumption that
00:13:57 --> 00:13:59 these bodies were made like our dwarf
00:13:59 --> 00:14:02 planets. And nobody can yet explain how
00:14:02 --> 00:14:05 grains get that porous. Co author Kevin
00:14:05 --> 00:14:07 Wagner suggests the impact may have vaporised
00:14:07 --> 00:14:10 the carbon and let it recondense. But that's
00:14:10 --> 00:14:12 a suggestion also for transparency.
00:14:13 --> 00:14:15 The paper was published in Astrophysical
00:14:15 --> 00:14:17 journal letters on the 7th of October. The
00:14:17 --> 00:14:19 university's release came this week.
00:14:20 --> 00:14:21 Anna: And it's one for the south,
00:14:21 --> 00:14:22 Avery: very much.
00:14:23 --> 00:14:25 From Sydney, Beta Pictoris climbs about
00:14:25 --> 00:14:28 73 degrees. From Los Angeles
00:14:28 --> 00:14:31 barely clears 5. And from New York or
00:14:31 --> 00:14:33 London it never rises at all.
00:14:34 --> 00:14:36 Anna: Beadhost Avery.
00:14:37 --> 00:14:38 228 words.
00:14:39 --> 00:14:40
00:14:40 --> 00:14:43 Avery: with Halloween tomorrow. NASA has
00:14:43 --> 00:14:46 released two spooky images, both from
00:14:46 --> 00:14:48 the Carina Nebula, about
00:14:48 --> 00:14:49 7 light years away.
00:14:50 --> 00:14:51 Anna: Ghost number one
00:14:51 --> 00:14:54 Avery: from Chandra and Webb. A lone
00:14:54 --> 00:14:57 cloud of gas and dust with a glowing
00:14:57 --> 00:15:00 hooded head and a long cape like tail.
00:15:01 --> 00:15:03 Astronomers call shapes like this cometary
00:15:03 --> 00:15:06 globules, though they have nothing to do with
00:15:06 --> 00:15:09 comets. The pink dots in Chandra's X ray data
00:15:09 --> 00:15:12 are young stars. So this ghost is a
00:15:12 --> 00:15:14 nursery. Its shape probably comes from
00:15:14 --> 00:15:17 radiation from massive stars outside the
00:15:17 --> 00:15:19 frame, including Eta Carinae
00:15:20 --> 00:15:23 and number zero, the Cat's Head Nebula
00:15:23 --> 00:15:26 from Hubble and Webb together, it's a
00:15:26 --> 00:15:29 dark dust pillar shaped like a cat,
00:15:29 --> 00:15:31 sitting with its back to us, head turned to
00:15:31 --> 00:15:34 show one glowing eye. That eye
00:15:34 --> 00:15:37 may be a young star still wrapped in dust.
00:15:37 --> 00:15:40 Hubble shows a bright rim where ultraviolet
00:15:40 --> 00:15:43 light is boiling the pillar away. And
00:15:43 --> 00:15:45 Webb's infrared sees through to the structure
00:15:45 --> 00:15:46 and the stars inside.
00:15:47 --> 00:15:49 Anna: So that's two cats today
00:15:49 --> 00:15:51 Avery: to catch one honest
00:15:51 --> 00:15:52 note.
00:15:52 --> 00:15:55 These are image releases, not new research
00:15:55 --> 00:15:58 papers. And Chandra's X ray data were
00:15:58 --> 00:16:00 actually taken in 2008. They're
00:16:00 --> 00:16:03 beautiful, but they're not discoveries.
00:16:04 --> 00:16:05 Anna: And the hemisphere?
00:16:05 --> 00:16:08 Avery: Ours. The Carina Nebula sits at
00:16:08 --> 00:16:11 about 60 degrees south from Sydney.
00:16:11 --> 00:16:14 It never sets. From Los Angeles, New York
00:16:14 --> 00:16:17 and London. It never rises. So,
00:16:17 --> 00:16:19 northern listeners, this one's for the
00:16:19 --> 00:16:20 photos.
00:16:20 --> 00:16:22 Anna: Quick hits. First, a, uh, spacewalk
00:16:23 --> 00:16:26 on Thursday. NASA's Ano Menon and the
00:16:26 --> 00:16:29 Canadian Space Agency's Joshua Kutryk spent
00:16:29 --> 00:16:31 seven hours and 11 minutes outside the space
00:16:31 --> 00:16:33 station and um, installed the seventh of
00:16:33 --> 00:16:36 eight rollout solar arrays. Once released,
00:16:36 --> 00:16:39 it unrolled to about 18 metres in roughly 10
00:16:39 --> 00:16:41 minutes with no motors, driven by energy
00:16:41 --> 00:16:43 stored in its carbon fibre booms.
00:16:43 --> 00:16:45 Avery: And um, it was Ku Trick's first,
00:16:45 --> 00:16:48 Anna: his first spacewalk, the fifth ever by a
00:16:48 --> 00:16:51 Canadian and the first by a Canadian since
00:16:51 --> 00:16:53 2019. He arrived on Crew 13
00:16:54 --> 00:16:56 which we followed through all those delays,
00:16:56 --> 00:16:59 so it's good to see it pay off. NASA
00:16:59 --> 00:17:01 counts it as US spacewalk number 100. At the
00:17:01 --> 00:17:04 station the eighth and final array goes up on
00:17:04 --> 00:17:07 5 November. Next up,
00:17:07 --> 00:17:10 Reid Wiseman, who commanded Artemis 2
00:17:10 --> 00:17:13 around the Moon in April, has a new job
00:17:13 --> 00:17:15 from the 30th of November.
00:17:15 --> 00:17:17 He'll be Deputy Director of NASA's Jet
00:17:17 --> 00:17:20 Propulsion Laboratory and an associate vice
00:17:20 --> 00:17:22 president at Caltech
00:17:22 --> 00:17:23 Avery: and, um, Swift
00:17:24 --> 00:17:27 Anna: still in orbit as we record. NASA
00:17:27 --> 00:17:29 expects the old Gamma Ray Observatory to re
00:17:29 --> 00:17:31 enter within weeks. We'll tell you when it
00:17:31 --> 00:17:32 happens.
00:17:32 --> 00:17:35 And Starship Flight 15 is still targeted for
00:17:35 --> 00:17:38 November, with SpaceX aiming to catch both
00:17:38 --> 00:17:40 the booster and the ship. We'll believe the
00:17:40 --> 00:17:42 date once SpaceX announces it.
00:17:42 --> 00:17:45 Avery: Time for the sky. First, a, uh, clock
00:17:45 --> 00:17:47 node for everyone listening across time
00:17:47 --> 00:17:50 zones. Daylight saving ends in the United
00:17:50 --> 00:17:52 States at 2am this Sunday, 1st
00:17:52 --> 00:17:53 November.
00:17:53 --> 00:17:56 London already changed last weekend, so from
00:17:56 --> 00:17:59 Sunday, Sydney is 16 hours ahead of New
00:17:59 --> 00:18:01 York and 19 ahead of Los Angeles.
00:18:02 --> 00:18:05 Let's start in the evening. Saturn is
00:18:05 --> 00:18:08 the evening planet 45 minutes
00:18:08 --> 00:18:11 after sunset on Saturday. It's about 37
00:18:11 --> 00:18:14 degrees up in the northeast from Sydney and
00:18:14 --> 00:18:16 in the east, about 24 from Los Angeles,
00:18:17 --> 00:18:20 20 from New York and 13 from London.
00:18:20 --> 00:18:22 Even a small telescope shows the rings.
00:18:23 --> 00:18:24 Avery: What happened to Mercury?
00:18:25 --> 00:18:27 Avery: Gone for now. It's heading between
00:18:28 --> 00:18:30 us and the sun and has dropped below the
00:18:30 --> 00:18:32 horizon at dusk. Everywhere.
00:18:33 --> 00:18:36 Venus has just made the same crossing and
00:18:36 --> 00:18:38 is now coming up in the morning.
00:18:39 --> 00:18:42 It's low, only about 4 degrees up,
00:18:42 --> 00:18:44 half an hour before sunrise from all four
00:18:44 --> 00:18:47 cities. But it's bright and climbing a
00:18:47 --> 00:18:48 little higher each morning.
00:18:48 --> 00:18:51 Anna: And the morning sky is where the action is.
00:18:51 --> 00:18:54 Avery: It is, and it favours the north.
00:18:55 --> 00:18:57 Mars and Jupiter are drawing together.
00:18:57 --> 00:18:59 They're about six and a half degrees apart
00:18:59 --> 00:19:02 today, about four by the 6th of
00:19:02 --> 00:19:04 November and just over one degree apart by
00:19:04 --> 00:19:07 the 16th, half an hour before
00:19:07 --> 00:19:10 sunrise. They're roughly 60 to 70
00:19:10 --> 00:19:13 degrees up from Los Angeles and New York and
00:19:13 --> 00:19:16 over 50 from London. From Sydney,
00:19:16 --> 00:19:18 they're about 30 degrees up in the northeast,
00:19:19 --> 00:19:20 lower but, uh, easy to see.
00:19:21 --> 00:19:21 Avery: And
00:19:21 --> 00:19:22 Anna: the Moon joins them.
00:19:22 --> 00:19:25 Avery: The waning moon passes Pollux on the night of
00:19:25 --> 00:19:28 the 31st, then slides past Mars and
00:19:28 --> 00:19:30 Jupiter around the 2nd and 3rd of November,
00:19:31 --> 00:19:33 and the bright star Regulus around the 3rd
00:19:33 --> 00:19:35 and 4th. Depending on your time zone,
00:19:36 --> 00:19:38 those are close passes under a degree for
00:19:38 --> 00:19:40 Jupiter and Regulus as seen from Earth's
00:19:40 --> 00:19:43 centre. So the exact spacing depends on where
00:19:43 --> 00:19:46 you are. Last quarter is on the 1st of
00:19:46 --> 00:19:49 November in the Americas and the 2nd in
00:19:49 --> 00:19:49 Australia.
00:19:50 --> 00:19:51 Anna: Meteors?
00:19:52 --> 00:19:54 Avery: The southern Taurids peak around the 4th and
00:19:54 --> 00:19:56 5th of November. They're slow,
00:19:57 --> 00:20:00 sometimes bright, never many maybe five
00:20:00 --> 00:20:02 an hour at 1am the radiant in
00:20:02 --> 00:20:05 Taurus is about 40 degrees up from Sydney and
00:20:05 --> 00:20:07 um, 60 to 70 from the northern cities.
00:20:08 --> 00:20:10 The Moon is a waning crescent and rises late,
00:20:10 --> 00:20:11 which helps
00:20:12 --> 00:20:13 Anna: and for the South
00:20:14 --> 00:20:17 Avery: Carina if our ghost segment made you
00:20:17 --> 00:20:20 curious, the Carina Nebula never sets from
00:20:20 --> 00:20:21 Sydney in the evening.
00:20:21 --> 00:20:24 It skims only about 5 degrees above the
00:20:24 --> 00:20:26 southern horizon, but by 4am it's over
00:20:26 --> 00:20:28 35 degrees up in the southeast.
00:20:29 --> 00:20:31 Binoculars show it clearly from a dark site.
00:20:32 --> 00:20:34 Beta Pictoris climbs through the night and is
00:20:34 --> 00:20:37 about 73 degrees high around 4am you
00:20:37 --> 00:20:39 won't see the tail, but you can see the star
00:20:39 --> 00:20:40 Anna: and looking ahead.
00:20:41 --> 00:20:43 Avery: Uranus reaches opposition in late November
00:20:43 --> 00:20:46 and Voyager 1 crosses one light day on the
00:20:46 --> 00:20:49 18th, though you won't see that one.
00:20:49 --> 00:20:51 Anna: And the standing reminder
00:20:52 --> 00:20:54 Avery: Never look at the sun directly or through
00:20:54 --> 00:20:57 binoculars or a telescope without a proper
00:20:57 --> 00:21:00 solar filter or any solar viewing.
00:21:00 --> 00:21:02 Use glasses or filters that meet the ISO
00:21:03 --> 00:21:06 123122 safety standard
00:21:06 --> 00:21:08 and check them for damage before you use
00:21:08 --> 00:21:08 them.
00:21:08 --> 00:21:11 Anna: That's the show for Friday. A 4 billion
00:21:11 --> 00:21:14 year old piece of Mars dated with two clocks.
00:21:14 --> 00:21:17 Voyager 1 coming back from two days of
00:21:17 --> 00:21:20 silence, a collision between two Pluto sized
00:21:20 --> 00:21:22 worlds, two ghosts in Carina and a ah,
00:21:22 --> 00:21:24 Canadian's first spacewalk.
00:21:25 --> 00:21:27 Avery: Tomorrow is the weekend wrap, so if you
00:21:27 --> 00:21:29 missed anything this week, we'll catch you
00:21:29 --> 00:21:29 up.
00:21:29 --> 00:21:32 Anna: You'll find show notes and our newsletter at
00:21:32 --> 00:21:34 astronomydaily IO and we're
00:21:34 --> 00:21:36 astrodailypod on social media.
00:21:37 --> 00:21:39 If you have a question for the show, the
00:21:39 --> 00:21:41 contact form on the website comes straight to
00:21:41 --> 00:21:41 us.
00:21:42 --> 00:21:44 Avery: And if you're trick or treating this weekend
00:21:44 --> 00:21:46 or watching spring storms in the south
00:21:47 --> 00:21:48 look up once in a while.
00:21:48 --> 00:21:49 I'm Avery.
00:21:49 --> 00:21:52 Anna: And I'm Anna. Clear skies everyone.