Links & sources: Space.com — Liftoff! NASA's Roman Space Telescope soars to the stars on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket in spectacular launch (video) NASA Science (Roman blog) — NASA's Roman Space Telescope Launches NASA Science (Roman blog) — NASA Concludes Roman Space Telescope Launch Coverage Space.com — What time will SpaceX launch NASA's Roman Space Telescope? (Full mission timeline) Space.com — Goodbye, Falcon 9: SpaceX planning to retire workhorse launcher when Starship is up and running Teslarati — Elon Musk just set a condition that could end Falcon 9 as we know it ScienceDaily — The universe is still speeding up, but nobody knows why University of Bern (media relations) — Asteroid impact shaped the appearance of Mars' moon Deimos Nature Astronomy — Raducan, Agrusa, Asphaug et al. (2026), DOI 10.1038/s41550-026-02956-w When The Curves Line Up — 2026, August 31: Venus Nears Spica TelescopeAdvisor — Night Sky in September 2026: Saturn Approaching Opposition Follow us: @AstroDailyPod
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00:00:00 --> 00:00:03 Anna: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Astronomy
00:00:03 --> 00:00:05 daily. It's Monday, August 31st,
00:00:05 --> 00:00:08 series five, episode 181.
00:00:08 --> 00:00:10 Avery: And, um, this is the good kind of Monday,
00:00:10 --> 00:00:13 Anna, because we finally get to talk about a
00:00:13 --> 00:00:15 launch that actually happened.
00:00:15 --> 00:00:18 Anna: Finally, after a full week of. It's coming,
00:00:18 --> 00:00:20 it's coming. Roman is up.
00:00:21 --> 00:00:23 Avery: The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope
00:00:23 --> 00:00:25 launched yesterday morning, right on time.
00:00:26 --> 00:00:28 And it went about as clean as a launch can
00:00:28 --> 00:00:30 go. We'll walk through the whole thing.
00:00:30 --> 00:00:33 Anna: Then SpaceX drops a pretty big hint
00:00:33 --> 00:00:35 about Falcon 9's eventual retirement.
00:00:36 --> 00:00:38 Two Nobel laureates weigh in on whether the
00:00:38 --> 00:00:41 universe's expansion is actually still
00:00:41 --> 00:00:44 speeding up. One very old
00:00:44 --> 00:00:46 asteroid strike explains two separate
00:00:46 --> 00:00:49 mysteries on a tiny Martian moon.
00:00:49 --> 00:00:51 And we'll get you sorted for what's actually
00:00:51 --> 00:00:54 worth looking up at tonight, wherever you
00:00:54 --> 00:00:54 are.
00:00:55 --> 00:00:56 Avery: Lots to get through, let's go.
00:00:56 --> 00:00:59 Anna: But start with the, uh, Nancy Grace Roman
00:00:59 --> 00:01:00 Space Telescope launch then.
00:01:00 --> 00:01:03 Avery: Okay. I've been waiting all week to say this.
00:01:03 --> 00:01:04 Tell me it went well.
00:01:04 --> 00:01:07 Anna: It went about as well as a launch
00:01:07 --> 00:01:09 possibly can. Liftoff was
00:01:09 --> 00:01:12 7:26 yesterday morning, Eastern Time.
00:01:12 --> 00:01:14 That's Sunday, August 30th, right on the
00:01:14 --> 00:01:17 primary window. No scrubs, no holds.
00:01:17 --> 00:01:20 SpaceX's Falcon Heavy took the Nancy Grace
00:01:20 --> 00:01:23 Roman Space Telescope up From Launch Complex
00:01:23 --> 00:01:25 39A at Kennedy Space Centre.
00:01:26 --> 00:01:28 Avery: The same pad Apollo flew from.
00:01:28 --> 00:01:31 Anna: The very same. And More recently, Artemis
00:01:31 --> 00:01:34 1 side boosters peeled away about 2
00:01:34 --> 00:01:36 1/2 minutes in and flew themselves home to
00:01:36 --> 00:01:39 landing zones at Cape Canaveral. Textbook
00:01:39 --> 00:01:42 boost back and landing on both. Main
00:01:42 --> 00:01:44 engine cutoff on the core stage came around
00:01:44 --> 00:01:47 the four minute mark and, um, Roman itself
00:01:48 --> 00:01:50 deployed clean 31 minutes after
00:01:50 --> 00:01:53 liftoff. No anomalies reported at any
00:01:53 --> 00:01:55 stage of the flight. By NASA's own account,
00:01:55 --> 00:01:58 about as tidy a run as you could hope for.
00:01:58 --> 00:02:01 Avery: I love it when they get to actually say that.
00:02:01 --> 00:02:03 Anna: There was a nice moment in the post launch
00:02:03 --> 00:02:05 press conference too. President Trump called
00:02:05 --> 00:02:08 in live to congratulate the team, which made
00:02:08 --> 00:02:11 for a slightly surreal watch alongside all
00:02:11 --> 00:02:11 the mission control.
00:02:12 --> 00:02:14 Avery: CHEERING okay, it's up, it's safely away from
00:02:14 --> 00:02:16 the rocket. What's next for it? And, um,
00:02:16 --> 00:02:18 remind everyone what it's actually for,
00:02:19 --> 00:02:20 because we've built this thing up all week
00:02:20 --> 00:02:22 without it existing in orbit.
00:02:22 --> 00:02:24 Anna: Yet right now it's real.
00:02:25 --> 00:02:27 Romans on a 90 day cruise out to the
00:02:27 --> 00:02:30 sun. Earth L2 point, about a
00:02:30 --> 00:02:32 million and a half kilometres from Earth,
00:02:33 --> 00:02:36 same neighbourhood as Webb. The first 40 days
00:02:36 --> 00:02:38 or so are instrument activation and status
00:02:38 --> 00:02:41 cheques. Then science commissioning kicks in
00:02:41 --> 00:02:44 from around day 45. First images
00:02:44 --> 00:02:46 are expected in early 2027.
00:02:47 --> 00:02:49 Avery: And there's an actual local link to this one
00:02:49 --> 00:02:51 too, isn't there? Not just an American
00:02:51 --> 00:02:51 storey.
00:02:51 --> 00:02:54 Anna: There is, and it's worth saying out loud,
00:02:54 --> 00:02:56 part of Roman's data is going to come down
00:02:56 --> 00:02:59 through a brand new ESA antenna in
00:02:59 --> 00:03:01 New Norcia in Western Australia.
00:03:02 --> 00:03:05 Roman's a formal ESA partnership, so
00:03:05 --> 00:03:07 that antenna's already built into how this
00:03:07 --> 00:03:08 mission gets its data home.
00:03:09 --> 00:03:11 Avery: I like that a lot. Okay. Remind people why
00:03:11 --> 00:03:14 this telescope is such a big deal. Because
00:03:14 --> 00:03:17 similar mirror size to Hubble undersells it
00:03:17 --> 00:03:17 badly.
00:03:18 --> 00:03:20 Anna: It does. Same 2.4 metre
00:03:20 --> 00:03:23 primary mirror as Hubble. But Roman's wide
00:03:23 --> 00:03:26 Field instrument gives it a view roughly a
00:03:26 --> 00:03:29 hundred times wider at basically the same
00:03:29 --> 00:03:31 sharpness. Where Hubble gives you a postage
00:03:31 --> 00:03:34 stamp, Roman gives you a poster.
00:03:34 --> 00:03:36 Programme scientist Dominic Benford put it
00:03:36 --> 00:03:39 nicely before launch. The smallest Roman
00:03:39 --> 00:03:42 images will be a billion pixels.
00:03:42 --> 00:03:44 There isn't a screen on Earth big enough to
00:03:44 --> 00:03:46 display all of them at once.
00:03:46 --> 00:03:49 Avery: Billion pixels in the smallest image.
00:03:49 --> 00:03:52 Anna: The smallest. And that scale is
00:03:52 --> 00:03:55 entirely the point. The flagship project is
00:03:55 --> 00:03:57 the High Latitude Wide area survey.
00:03:57 --> 00:04:00 Roughly 2 billion galaxies imaged to
00:04:00 --> 00:04:03 map dark matter and chart how dark energy
00:04:03 --> 00:04:06 is pulling the universe apart faster over
00:04:06 --> 00:04:09 time. There's a companion supernova time
00:04:09 --> 00:04:12 domain survey chasing the same question from
00:04:12 --> 00:04:15 a different angle. And funnily enough, that's
00:04:15 --> 00:04:17 relevant to our next storey today too.
00:04:18 --> 00:04:20 Avery: And um, the exoplanet hunt, that's the one I
00:04:20 --> 00:04:21 always want.
00:04:21 --> 00:04:24 Anna: More detail on the galactic bulge. Time
00:04:24 --> 00:04:26 domain survey, a completely different
00:04:26 --> 00:04:29 technique to Kepler or tess. It watches for
00:04:29 --> 00:04:32 a foreground star's gravity, briefly
00:04:32 --> 00:04:34 magnifying light from something behind it.
00:04:34 --> 00:04:37 With a planet adding its own little blip to
00:04:37 --> 00:04:39 that signal, it catches things. Transit
00:04:39 --> 00:04:42 surveys can't wide orbit planets. Even
00:04:42 --> 00:04:45 free floating rogue planets with no star at
00:04:45 --> 00:04:48 all bear expecting on the order of
00:04:48 --> 00:04:51 100 new detections from that
00:04:51 --> 00:04:52 survey alone.
00:04:52 --> 00:04:55 Avery: 100 new worlds from one survey.
00:04:55 --> 00:04:57 Anna: From one survey. And there's a fourth
00:04:57 --> 00:05:00 instrument riding along the coronagraph, a
00:05:00 --> 00:05:03 technology demonstration for directly imaging
00:05:03 --> 00:05:06 exoplanets by blocking out the glare of their
00:05:06 --> 00:05:09 host star rather than just inferring they're
00:05:09 --> 00:05:11 there. If it works as hoped, it's a real
00:05:11 --> 00:05:14 stepping stone toward NASA's future flagship
00:05:14 --> 00:05:16 missions. Doing that a, uh, standard.
00:05:16 --> 00:05:19 Avery: So walk me back through the week because this
00:05:19 --> 00:05:21 has actually been a four part storey and I
00:05:21 --> 00:05:23 don't think we've said that out loud yet.
00:05:23 --> 00:05:26 Anna: It has. Tuesday we told you. Roman
00:05:26 --> 00:05:29 got cleared for launch nine months ahead of
00:05:29 --> 00:05:32 schedule, which is almost unheard of for a
00:05:32 --> 00:05:35 NASA flagship mission. Thursday we told the
00:05:35 --> 00:05:38 genuinely Strange storey of how its core
00:05:38 --> 00:05:40 optics started life inside a, uh,
00:05:40 --> 00:05:42 cancelled National Reconnaissance Office
00:05:43 --> 00:05:45 spy satellite programme before being
00:05:45 --> 00:05:48 donated to NASA back in 2012.
00:05:48 --> 00:05:51 Friday we told you it survived a budget
00:05:51 --> 00:05:53 draught that would have cancelled it
00:05:53 --> 00:05:55 outright, and how the team that saved it
00:05:55 --> 00:05:58 responded by pulling the launch forward eight
00:05:58 --> 00:06:01 months instead of slipping it. And Saturday
00:06:01 --> 00:06:03 we previewed the launch itself.
00:06:04 --> 00:06:06 Avery: And today the actual thing happened.
00:06:06 --> 00:06:09 Anna: The actual thing happened. Clean launch,
00:06:09 --> 00:06:12 clean deployment, on its way to L2.
00:06:12 --> 00:06:15 First images due early next year. After
00:06:15 --> 00:06:17 everything that had to go right just to get
00:06:17 --> 00:06:20 it off the ground, it's genuinely satisfying
00:06:20 --> 00:06:22 to get to close the loop on this one.
00:06:22 --> 00:06:24 Avery: A very good Monday indeed.
00:06:25 --> 00:06:27 Next up, sticking with SpaceX for a second
00:06:27 --> 00:06:30 because Elon Musk said something last week we
00:06:30 --> 00:06:32 haven't gotten to yet worth flagging.
00:06:32 --> 00:06:35 Anna: Even though the post itself isn't brand new.
00:06:35 --> 00:06:38 Musk said on X on August 22
00:06:38 --> 00:06:41 that winding down both Falcon 9 and
00:06:41 --> 00:06:43 Falcon Heavy is, in his words,
00:06:43 --> 00:06:44 inevitable.
00:06:44 --> 00:06:47 Avery: Inevitable. That's a strong word for the
00:06:47 --> 00:06:49 rocket that's basically been SpaceX's entire
00:06:49 --> 00:06:51 business for a decade.
00:06:51 --> 00:06:53 Anna: It is, but the condition he attached
00:06:53 --> 00:06:56 matters. Once Starship is flying
00:06:56 --> 00:06:59 reliably several times a week, he says it
00:06:59 --> 00:07:01 makes sense to shift production resources
00:07:01 --> 00:07:04 over to Starship and push its launch rate
00:07:04 --> 00:07:06 up to multiple times a day.
00:07:06 --> 00:07:09 Avery: So this isn't, um, we're retiring Falcon 9
00:07:09 --> 00:07:10 next quarter?
00:07:10 --> 00:07:13 Anna: Not remotely. It's a statement of intent,
00:07:13 --> 00:07:16 not a timeline. Falcon 9 only just hit
00:07:16 --> 00:07:19 its 100th launch of the year back on August
00:07:19 --> 00:07:21 25th, and Booster
00:07:21 --> 00:07:23 B1067 set a new
00:07:23 --> 00:07:26 single booster reuse record at 37
00:07:26 --> 00:07:29 flights on that very mission. This is still
00:07:29 --> 00:07:31 an enormously active fleet.
00:07:31 --> 00:07:33 Avery: So what's the actual estimate for when this
00:07:33 --> 00:07:34 starts to bite?
00:07:35 --> 00:07:37 Anna: Industry reporting points to most Falcon 9
00:07:37 --> 00:07:39 missions winding down from around
00:07:39 --> 00:07:42 2028, with a limited number of flights
00:07:42 --> 00:07:45 continuing well past that. NASA's crew
00:07:45 --> 00:07:48 and cargo runs to the ISS are expected to
00:07:48 --> 00:07:51 keep flying on Falcon 9 through at least
00:07:51 --> 00:07:54 2030. Since human rating, a brand new
00:07:54 --> 00:07:56 vehicle for those missions isn't something
00:07:56 --> 00:07:57 anyone rushes.
00:07:57 --> 00:08:00 Avery: There's something almost poetic about this
00:08:00 --> 00:08:02 landing. The same week Roman flew on a Falcon
00:08:02 --> 00:08:03 Heavy.
00:08:03 --> 00:08:06 Anna: Genuinely, Roman rode one of the very rockets
00:08:06 --> 00:08:09 Musk is talking about eventually phasing out
00:08:09 --> 00:08:11 on what could well end up being one of Falcon
00:08:11 --> 00:08:14 Heavy's higher profile flights. And it's not
00:08:14 --> 00:08:17 an isolated signal either. We've already told
00:08:17 --> 00:08:19 you about Starbase, Louisiana. SpaceX's
00:08:19 --> 00:08:22 planned second Starship focused launch
00:08:22 --> 00:08:24 complex, and Starship's own Flight 14
00:08:25 --> 00:08:27 is still tracking toward, uh, no earlier than
00:08:27 --> 00:08:28 September 15th.
00:08:29 --> 00:08:31 Avery: So the plan really is get starship flying
00:08:31 --> 00:08:34 like Falcon 9 does now, then hand over the
00:08:34 --> 00:08:34 keys.
00:08:35 --> 00:08:37 Anna: That's the plan. As Musk describes it,
00:08:37 --> 00:08:39 whether starship's flight cadence actually
00:08:39 --> 00:08:42 gets there on anything like that timeline is
00:08:42 --> 00:08:44 very much the open question.
00:08:44 --> 00:08:46 Avery: Onto our next storey today. And this one's
00:08:46 --> 00:08:48 got some serious star power behind it,
00:08:49 --> 00:08:51 literally. Nobel Prize star power.
00:08:51 --> 00:08:54 Anna: This is a good one. Back in November last
00:08:54 --> 00:08:56 year, a, uh, South Korean research team
00:08:56 --> 00:08:59 published a paper suggesting the universe's
00:08:59 --> 00:09:01 expansion might actually, actually be slowing
00:09:01 --> 00:09:04 down, not speeding up. Which, if true,
00:09:04 --> 00:09:07 would upend a huge chunk of modern cosmology.
00:09:07 --> 00:09:09 Avery: That's the kind of headline that gets a lot
00:09:09 --> 00:09:10 of attention.
00:09:10 --> 00:09:13 Anna: It did, and it also got a lot of
00:09:13 --> 00:09:16 scrutiny. A team led by Phil Wiseman at the
00:09:16 --> 00:09:18 University of Southampton, working alongside
00:09:18 --> 00:09:21 Adam Reese And Brian Schmidt, two of the
00:09:21 --> 00:09:24 three scientists who shared the 2011 Nobel
00:09:24 --> 00:09:25 Prize in Physics for discovering the
00:09:25 --> 00:09:28 universe's accelerating expansion in the
00:09:28 --> 00:09:30 first place, which went back through the
00:09:30 --> 00:09:32 analysis and published a rebuttal in the
00:09:32 --> 00:09:35 monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical
00:09:35 --> 00:09:37 Society this week. And their finding,
00:09:37 --> 00:09:40 the universe is in fact still speeding up.
00:09:40 --> 00:09:43 Nobody's disputing that part. What they found
00:09:43 --> 00:09:46 was a specific flaw in the earlier study's
00:09:46 --> 00:09:48 method. It had effectively treated the age of
00:09:48 --> 00:09:51 a distant galaxy as if it were the age of the
00:09:51 --> 00:09:54 individual star inside it that later
00:09:54 --> 00:09:57 exploded as a supernova and hadn't properly
00:09:57 --> 00:10:00 accounted for the host galaxy's mass either.
00:10:00 --> 00:10:02 Avery: Which matters because.
00:10:02 --> 00:10:05 Anna: Because the whole technique relies on type
00:10:05 --> 00:10:08 1A supernovae, extremely bright,
00:10:08 --> 00:10:10 reliably behaved stellar explosions from
00:10:10 --> 00:10:13 white dwarf stars as standardised cosmic
00:10:13 --> 00:10:16 candles to measure distance. And from that,
00:10:16 --> 00:10:18 the universe's expansion rate over time.
00:10:18 --> 00:10:21 Get the underlying age or mass assumptions,
00:10:21 --> 00:10:24 even subtly wrong, and you can shift your
00:10:24 --> 00:10:26 final answer in a way that looks like new
00:10:26 --> 00:10:28 physics, when it's actually just an error
00:10:28 --> 00:10:30 creeping in upstream.
00:10:30 --> 00:10:33 Avery: So this isn't new data, it's a correction to
00:10:33 --> 00:10:34 how old data was read.
00:10:34 --> 00:10:37 Anna: Exactly. No new telescope, no new
00:10:37 --> 00:10:40 survey, just a more careful reanalysis of
00:10:40 --> 00:10:42 existing supernova observations. Which,
00:10:42 --> 00:10:45 fittingly, is precisely the kind of question
00:10:45 --> 00:10:48 Roman was built to help nail down for good
00:10:48 --> 00:10:51 with its own dedicated supernova time domain
00:10:51 --> 00:10:51 survey.
00:10:51 --> 00:10:54 Avery: Once it's up and running, dark energy remains
00:10:54 --> 00:10:55 undefeated.
00:10:55 --> 00:10:57 Anna: Then, for now, nobody's claiming to know
00:10:57 --> 00:11:00 what dark energy actually is. Only
00:11:00 --> 00:11:02 that, whatever it is, it's still doing what
00:11:02 --> 00:11:03 we thought it was doing.
00:11:04 --> 00:11:06 Avery: Next up, we're heading to Mars. Well,
00:11:06 --> 00:11:09 technically, just passed it to one of its two
00:11:09 --> 00:11:11 little moons, Themos, the
00:11:11 --> 00:11:14 Anna: smaller and more distant of Mars. Two moons.
00:11:14 --> 00:11:17 It's always been a Bit of an odd duck. It's
00:11:17 --> 00:11:19 shaped like a lumpy potato. It's got an
00:11:19 --> 00:11:22 unexplained depression near its south pole
00:11:22 --> 00:11:25 and its surface is oddly smooth and dusty for
00:11:25 --> 00:11:26 a body that small.
00:11:26 --> 00:11:28 Avery: Small. And somebody's finally worked out why.
00:11:29 --> 00:11:31 Anna: A team led by Sabina Radican, now at the
00:11:31 --> 00:11:34 Vri Universitite Brussels, working with
00:11:34 --> 00:11:36 Martin Uzi at the University of Bern,
00:11:36 --> 00:11:39 published the answer in Nature Astronomy. And
00:11:39 --> 00:11:42 this is the first published study to use
00:11:42 --> 00:11:44 actual Flyby Data from ESA's HERA mission,
00:11:44 --> 00:11:47 which swung past Deimos on its way out to the
00:11:47 --> 00:11:48 asteroid Dimorphos.
00:11:49 --> 00:11:50 Avery: What did they find?
00:11:50 --> 00:11:53 Anna: A single asteroid impact explains both
00:11:53 --> 00:11:56 quirks at once. They're simulations, about
00:11:56 --> 00:11:58 a hundred of them, each needing roughly a
00:11:58 --> 00:12:01 week of supercomputer time. Using a piece
00:12:01 --> 00:12:04 of impact modelling software the University
00:12:04 --> 00:12:06 of Bern has been developing for two
00:12:06 --> 00:12:08 decades, show an asteroid around
00:12:08 --> 00:12:11 320 metres across, hitting
00:12:11 --> 00:12:14 at a 45 degree angle is enough
00:12:14 --> 00:12:17 to carve out that south polar depression
00:12:17 --> 00:12:20 and scatter enough debris around the entire
00:12:20 --> 00:12:23 moon to explain the dusty regolith
00:12:23 --> 00:12:24 layer everywhere else.
00:12:25 --> 00:12:28 Avery: 45 degrees feels oddly specific.
00:12:28 --> 00:12:31 Anna: It's the sweet spot. Violent enough to
00:12:31 --> 00:12:34 genuinely redistribute material across the
00:12:34 --> 00:12:37 whole surface, but not so violent it would
00:12:37 --> 00:12:39 have shattered a moon this small entirely.
00:12:40 --> 00:12:43 Deimos, by the way, is basically a porous
00:12:43 --> 00:12:46 rubble pile rather than one solid rock.
00:12:46 --> 00:12:49 So getting that balance right mattered a lot
00:12:49 --> 00:12:50 in the models.
00:12:51 --> 00:12:53 Avery: One impact, two mystery, M solved.
00:12:53 --> 00:12:56 Anna: One impact, two mysteries. And a nice
00:12:56 --> 00:12:59 example of a spacecraft doing useful science
00:12:59 --> 00:13:01 on the way to somewhere else entirely.
00:13:02 --> 00:13:05 Hera's primary job is studying what NASA's
00:13:05 --> 00:13:07 DART mission did to Dimorphos. This
00:13:07 --> 00:13:10 Deimos flyby was almost a bonus stop on the
00:13:10 --> 00:13:11 way past.
00:13:11 --> 00:13:13 Avery: Alright, let's get everyone sorted for
00:13:13 --> 00:13:16 tonight, wherever tonight actually is for
00:13:16 --> 00:13:16 you.
00:13:16 --> 00:13:19 Anna: Venus is the headline act, and it's an easy
00:13:19 --> 00:13:22 one to find. Low in the west, west
00:13:22 --> 00:13:25 southwest, roughly 45 minutes after
00:13:25 --> 00:13:28 sunset from Sydney tonight. Sunsets
00:13:28 --> 00:13:31 around 5.32pm, so you're looking
00:13:31 --> 00:13:33 from about a quarter past six. Wherever
00:13:33 --> 00:13:36 else you are, just use your own local sunset
00:13:36 --> 00:13:38 and add the same 45 minutes.
00:13:39 --> 00:13:41 Avery: How long do people have before it sets?
00:13:41 --> 00:13:44 Anna: Uh, not long. Venus is following the
00:13:44 --> 00:13:46 sun down pretty quickly at the moment,
00:13:46 --> 00:13:49 setting only 90 minutes after sunset. So
00:13:49 --> 00:13:51 don't dawdle. It's sitting close to Spica
00:13:51 --> 00:13:54 right now, too. Tonight's basically a
00:13:54 --> 00:13:56 preview, because the real close pass happens
00:13:56 --> 00:13:59 tomorrow night, September 1, when the two
00:13:59 --> 00:14:02 will be less than 2 degrees apart. It's
00:14:02 --> 00:14:04 heading toward its brightest of the year
00:14:04 --> 00:14:07 later in September So this is really just the
00:14:07 --> 00:14:07 opening act.
00:14:08 --> 00:14:10 Avery: What about Saturn? We've called it the
00:14:10 --> 00:14:12 reliable one a lot lately.
00:14:12 --> 00:14:15 Anna: Saturn's actually graduated to a better slot.
00:14:15 --> 00:14:18 It's now rising close to sunset and staying
00:14:18 --> 00:14:21 up for the most of the night, sitting in
00:14:21 --> 00:14:23 aquarius at magnitude 0.3,
00:14:24 --> 00:14:26 brighter than anything else nearby in that
00:14:26 --> 00:14:29 stretch of sky. Even a modest telescope
00:14:29 --> 00:14:31 will show the rings clearly separated from
00:14:31 --> 00:14:34 the disc now that they've opened up to about
00:14:34 --> 00:14:37 7.5 degrees, a big improvement
00:14:37 --> 00:14:39 on how flat and hard to read they were last
00:14:39 --> 00:14:42 year. It's closing in on opposition on
00:14:42 --> 00:14:44 October 4, so it only gets better from
00:14:44 --> 00:14:47 here. Great target either hemisphere.
00:14:47 --> 00:14:50 Avery: And for the early risers, Jupiter's
00:14:50 --> 00:14:51 just
00:14:51 --> 00:14:53 Anna: returned to the morning sky after being lost
00:14:53 --> 00:14:56 in the Sun's glare, so it's back as a pre
00:14:56 --> 00:14:58 dawn target. Low in the east, best
00:14:58 --> 00:15:01 windows roughly 4 to 6 in the morning.
00:15:01 --> 00:15:04 Mars is out there too, fading a uh, bit these
00:15:04 --> 00:15:07 days in that same pre dawn eastern sky.
00:15:07 --> 00:15:10 And the moon waning gibbous tonight,
00:15:10 --> 00:15:12 still bright. It was sitting right next to
00:15:12 --> 00:15:15 Saturn the last couple of nights and it'll
00:15:15 --> 00:15:16 keep thinning out through the week.
00:15:17 --> 00:15:19 Avery: One quick standing reminder before we go.
00:15:19 --> 00:15:21 Since we're talking about bright things low
00:15:21 --> 00:15:24 Anna: near the horizon, always worth repeating.
00:15:24 --> 00:15:27 Whenever you're pointing anything, even just
00:15:27 --> 00:15:29 your eyes near the Sun's position in the sky,
00:15:30 --> 00:15:33 sunrise, sunset or any direct solar
00:15:33 --> 00:15:36 viewing, make sure any filter you're using is
00:15:36 --> 00:15:37 certified to ISO
00:15:38 --> 00:15:40 123122.
00:15:40 --> 00:15:43 Ordinary sunglasses are nowhere near enough
00:15:43 --> 00:15:46 protection. Venus and Saturn ah, are
00:15:46 --> 00:15:48 perfectly safe to look at anytime. Obviously
00:15:48 --> 00:15:50 this one's just a standing habit worth
00:15:50 --> 00:15:51 keeping. Sharp.
00:15:52 --> 00:15:54 Avery: Good habit to keep sharp indeed.
00:15:54 --> 00:15:56 And that's a show for today. The Nancy Grace
00:15:56 --> 00:15:59 Roman Space Telescope safely away and headed
00:15:59 --> 00:16:02 for deep space. SpaceX uh, signalling the
00:16:02 --> 00:16:04 eventual end of the Falcon 9 era. Two Nobel
00:16:04 --> 00:16:07 laureates defending an accelerating universe,
00:16:07 --> 00:16:10 one very old asteroid strike solving two
00:16:10 --> 00:16:13 mysteries on Deimos, and everything you need
00:16:13 --> 00:16:14 to get outside tonight.
00:16:14 --> 00:16:16 Anna: If you enjoyed today's episode, the best
00:16:16 --> 00:16:18 thing you can do for us is leave a rating or
00:16:18 --> 00:16:21 review wherever you're listening and share it
00:16:21 --> 00:16:23 with a fellow space nerd. Full show notes,
00:16:23 --> 00:16:26 sources and links for every storey we covered
00:16:26 --> 00:16:29 today are @astronomydaily IO
00:16:29 --> 00:16:31 and you can find us on social media. We're
00:16:31 --> 00:16:34 AstroDaily Pod pretty much everywhere.
00:16:34 --> 00:16:36 Avery: We'll be back tomorrow with more space and
00:16:36 --> 00:16:38 astronomy news. Until then, keep looking up.
00:16:38 --> 00:16:40 Anna: See you next time. Clear skies.
00:16:50 --> 00:16:50 Avery: Mhm.
00:16:52 --> 00:16:52 Anna: The storey.