Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-space-news-updates--5648921/support.
Sponsor Details:
Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.bitesz.com/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!
Become a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click Here
This episode includes AI-generated content.
00:00:00 --> 00:00:02 Anna: From the bytes.com podcast network. This is
00:00:02 --> 00:00:05 Astronomy Daily. I'm Anna.
00:00:05 --> 00:00:08 Avery: And I'm avery. It's Friday, July 3,
00:00:08 --> 00:00:10 2026, and we've got a proper Fourth of July
00:00:10 --> 00:00:13 weekend send off for you. A rescue mission
00:00:13 --> 00:00:15 that's still grounded, a solar storm that's
00:00:15 --> 00:00:18 actually arrived, and a planet that came back
00:00:18 --> 00:00:20 from the dead sort of.
00:00:20 --> 00:00:23 Anna: Today on the show, NASA's Swift Rescue
00:00:23 --> 00:00:25 mission hits another wall, this time mid
00:00:25 --> 00:00:28 flight. The sun is genuinely kicking
00:00:28 --> 00:00:31 off right now with a geomagnetic storm watch
00:00:31 --> 00:00:34 in effect for tonight. Hess accidentally
00:00:34 --> 00:00:36 discovers a planet it was never built to
00:00:36 --> 00:00:39 find. A red dwarf just 25 light years
00:00:39 --> 00:00:41 away might be hiding the most Earth like
00:00:41 --> 00:00:43 world we've found in ages.
00:00:43 --> 00:00:46 Astronomers sound the alarm on satellite
00:00:46 --> 00:00:49 mega constellations. And we close with a
00:00:49 --> 00:00:52 planet that shouldn't exist, orbiting the
00:00:52 --> 00:00:54 corpse of its own star.
00:00:54 --> 00:00:57 Avery: Six stories. One very busy week for the
00:00:57 --> 00:00:58 universe. Let's get into it.
00:00:59 --> 00:01:01 Anna: We start with an update to a story we've been
00:01:01 --> 00:01:04 tracking for weeks. And it's not the Update
00:01:04 --> 00:01:06 anyone wanted. NASA's mission to rescue
00:01:06 --> 00:01:09 the Swift Observatory attempted to launch on
00:01:09 --> 00:01:12 Thursday, July 2. And for the first
00:01:12 --> 00:01:14 time, it actually got off the ground.
00:01:15 --> 00:01:17 Avery: Right, quick recap for anyone just joining
00:01:17 --> 00:01:20 us. The Neil Garrels Swift Observatory is
00:01:20 --> 00:01:22 a 22 year old Gamma ray telescope that's
00:01:22 --> 00:01:25 losing altitude fast because heightened solar
00:01:25 --> 00:01:27 activity has puffed up Earth's upper
00:01:27 --> 00:01:30 atmosphere and increased drag on its orbit.
00:01:30 --> 00:01:33 Anna: Left alone, Swift reenters and burns up by
00:01:33 --> 00:01:36 October. So NASA hired a company
00:01:36 --> 00:01:38 called catalyst space technologies,
00:01:38 --> 00:01:41 $30 million, incredibly tight
00:01:41 --> 00:01:44 timeline to build a robotic spacecraft
00:01:44 --> 00:01:47 called Link 3 articulated arms.
00:01:47 --> 00:01:49 The plan is for Link to grapple Swift,
00:01:50 --> 00:01:52 a satellite that was never designed to be
00:01:52 --> 00:01:55 serviced, and shove it back up to a safer
00:01:55 --> 00:01:55 orbit.
00:01:55 --> 00:01:58 Avery: It launches piggyback. A Northrop Grumman
00:01:58 --> 00:02:00 Pegasus rocket tucked under the belly of the
00:02:00 --> 00:02:03 Stargazer aircraft takes off from Kwajalein
00:02:03 --> 00:02:06 Atoll in the Marshall Islands, climbs to
00:02:06 --> 00:02:09 about 39ft and then drops the
00:02:09 --> 00:02:11 rocket, which lights up five seconds later.
00:02:11 --> 00:02:13 This week alone, it had already been scrubbed
00:02:13 --> 00:02:14 twice for weather.
00:02:15 --> 00:02:18 Anna: So Thursday morning, Stargazer finally
00:02:18 --> 00:02:20 takes off. It's airborne, heading for the
00:02:20 --> 00:02:23 release point. And then mid flight, the team
00:02:23 --> 00:02:25 spots a, uh, warning in the data stream and
00:02:25 --> 00:02:28 makes the call not to release the rocket at
00:02:28 --> 00:02:28 all.
00:02:28 --> 00:02:30 Avery: Which is a genuinely different failure mode
00:02:30 --> 00:02:32 than what we told you earlier this week. This
00:02:32 --> 00:02:35 wasn't weather. This was an act of abort in
00:02:35 --> 00:02:38 the air on a live vehicle. It's not even
00:02:38 --> 00:02:39 clear yet whether the warning came from the
00:02:39 --> 00:02:42 rocket or from the carrier aircraft itself.
00:02:42 --> 00:02:45 Anna: No new Launch date has been set. NASA's been
00:02:45 --> 00:02:47 very upfront that this is a race against the
00:02:47 --> 00:02:50 clock. They've already suspended most of
00:02:50 --> 00:02:52 Swift's science operations since February
00:02:52 --> 00:02:55 just to buy time flying it in a low drag
00:02:55 --> 00:02:57 orientation to slow the decay.
00:02:57 --> 00:03:00 Avery: The stakes here go beyond one telescope. 2.
00:03:00 --> 00:03:03 If Link pulls this off, it's the first time a
00:03:03 --> 00:03:05 commercial spacecraft has docked with a
00:03:05 --> 00:03:07 government satellite that was never built for
00:03:07 --> 00:03:09 servicing. That's a template for saving
00:03:09 --> 00:03:11 Hubble one day or any number of aging
00:03:11 --> 00:03:13 observatories we'd otherwise just have to
00:03:13 --> 00:03:14 write off.
00:03:14 --> 00:03:17 Anna: So, still grounded, still no date, and the
00:03:17 --> 00:03:20 clock is still ticking towards October. We'll
00:03:20 --> 00:03:22 keep you posted the moment there's movement.
00:03:23 --> 00:03:25 Avery: Story 2 and if you were listening earlier
00:03:25 --> 00:03:27 this week, you'll remember we flagged the big
00:03:27 --> 00:03:30 X class flare and told you to watch the
00:03:30 --> 00:03:32 skies. Well, watch the skies.
00:03:32 --> 00:03:33 It's happening.
00:03:34 --> 00:03:36 Anna: The sun has been properly busy
00:03:36 --> 00:03:39 after that X1.1 flare from
00:03:39 --> 00:03:41 Sunspot Region
00:03:41 --> 00:03:44 AR4479 on June 30. It
00:03:44 --> 00:03:47 followed up with 10m M class flares
00:03:47 --> 00:03:49 in a single 24 hour stretch.
00:03:49 --> 00:03:52 Multiple coronal mass ejections, several of
00:03:52 --> 00:03:54 them Earth directed.
00:03:54 --> 00:03:57 Avery: NOAA Space Weather Prediction center has a G2
00:03:57 --> 00:04:00 that's a moderate geomagnetic stormwatch
00:04:00 --> 00:04:02 active for today July 3rd, with a chance of
00:04:02 --> 00:04:05 reaching G2 levels through the day as the CME
00:04:05 --> 00:04:08 arrives and interacts with Earth's magnetic
00:04:08 --> 00:04:08 field.
00:04:08 --> 00:04:11 Anna: The key thing forecasters are watching is the
00:04:11 --> 00:04:14 BZ component of the magnetic field,
00:04:14 --> 00:04:16 basically whether the storm's magnetic
00:04:16 --> 00:04:19 orientation points south, which is what lets
00:04:19 --> 00:04:21 solar wind energy pour into our
00:04:21 --> 00:04:24 magnetosphere efficiently. Get that right
00:04:24 --> 00:04:25 and the aurora show
00:04:25 --> 00:04:28 Avery: gets a lot more dramatic in the Northern
00:04:28 --> 00:04:31 Hemisphere. That means aurora potentially
00:04:31 --> 00:04:33 visible much farther south than usual.
00:04:33 --> 00:04:35 Forecasters are talking about spots like
00:04:35 --> 00:04:38 Idaho and New York if skies stay dark and
00:04:38 --> 00:04:40 clear over the coming nights.
00:04:40 --> 00:04:43 Anna: And for our Southern Hemisphere listeners,
00:04:43 --> 00:04:45 this is a genuine Aurora Australis
00:04:45 --> 00:04:48 opportunity too. D2 level storms can
00:04:48 --> 00:04:51 push the southern lights up into Tasmania
00:04:51 --> 00:04:54 and sometimes as far as southern Victoria and
00:04:54 --> 00:04:56 the Lower south island of New Zealand. If
00:04:56 --> 00:04:59 you've got clear, dark skies away from the
00:04:59 --> 00:05:01 coast tonight, it's worth a look.
00:05:01 --> 00:05:03 Avery: South conditions are expected to start
00:05:03 --> 00:05:06 easing back toward quieter levels tomorrow,
00:05:06 --> 00:05:09 July 4th as the CME's effects wane.
00:05:09 --> 00:05:12 So if you're chasing the lights tonight into
00:05:12 --> 00:05:14 the small hours is your best shot before the
00:05:14 --> 00:05:17 Northern Hemisphere's holiday fireworks take
00:05:17 --> 00:05:18 over as the main show.
00:05:19 --> 00:05:21 Anna: Our third story is a lovely bit of science
00:05:21 --> 00:05:24 serendipity. NASA's Tess, the
00:05:24 --> 00:05:27 transiting exoplanet Survey satellite has
00:05:27 --> 00:05:30 notched ah, a genuine first. Its first
00:05:30 --> 00:05:32 planet found by gravitational
00:05:32 --> 00:05:33 microlensing,
00:05:33 --> 00:05:36 Avery: which is a big deal because TESS wasn't
00:05:36 --> 00:05:39 designed for that at all. Its entire job is
00:05:39 --> 00:05:41 watching for the tiny dip in starlight when a
00:05:41 --> 00:05:43 planet crosses in front of its star.
00:05:44 --> 00:05:46 Microlensing is a completely different trick.
00:05:47 --> 00:05:49 It happens when a foreground star drifts
00:05:49 --> 00:05:52 almost exactly in front of a background star
00:05:52 --> 00:05:55 and its gravity bends and briefly magnifies
00:05:55 --> 00:05:57 that background star's light, like a natural
00:05:57 --> 00:05:57 lens.
00:05:57 --> 00:06:00 Anna: If that foreground star happens to have its
00:06:00 --> 00:06:03 own planet, the planet adds its own little
00:06:03 --> 00:06:05 flicker to that magnification event. And
00:06:05 --> 00:06:08 that's exactly what happened here. The
00:06:08 --> 00:06:11 planet's called Gaia 23 Bra, a
00:06:11 --> 00:06:13 super Jupiter, about 1.63
00:06:13 --> 00:06:16 times Jupiter's mass, orbiting an orange
00:06:16 --> 00:06:19 dwarf star roughly 40 light years away
00:06:19 --> 00:06:21 out near the galactic center.
00:06:21 --> 00:06:24 Avery: It was actually the European Space Agency's
00:06:24 --> 00:06:26 Gaia mission that first flagged the
00:06:26 --> 00:06:29 brightening event back in 2023. But
00:06:29 --> 00:06:31 Gaia's observations were too sparse to
00:06:31 --> 00:06:33 confirm a planet was involved. It was only
00:06:33 --> 00:06:36 when researchers went back and combed through
00:06:36 --> 00:06:38 tess's archival data that they realized
00:06:38 --> 00:06:41 TESS had caught the same event with enough
00:06:41 --> 00:06:42 detail to nail it down.
00:06:43 --> 00:06:45 Anna: Lead author Mallory Harris, a UH doctoral
00:06:45 --> 00:06:48 candidate at the University of New Mexico,
00:06:48 --> 00:06:51 published The findings on July 1st in the
00:06:51 --> 00:06:53 Astrophysical Journal Letters. And the
00:06:53 --> 00:06:56 tantalizing bit is what it implies. TESS
00:06:56 --> 00:06:59 has been quietly recording eight years of
00:06:59 --> 00:07:01 data and nobody was looking for this kind of
00:07:01 --> 00:07:03 signal. There could be plenty more of these
00:07:03 --> 00:07:05 hiding in the archive.
00:07:05 --> 00:07:07 Avery: It's also a nice bit of foreshadowing.
00:07:08 --> 00:07:10 NASA's Roman Space Telescope, on track to
00:07:10 --> 00:07:13 launch August 30 this year, is being
00:07:13 --> 00:07:16 purpose built for exactly this kind of
00:07:16 --> 00:07:18 survey. It's expected to find around
00:07:18 --> 00:07:21 1 microlensing planets. By staring
00:07:21 --> 00:07:23 into the crowded center of The Galaxy
00:07:24 --> 00:07:27 Gaia, uh, 23B is basically a
00:07:27 --> 00:07:28 preview of what's coming.
00:07:28 --> 00:07:30 Story four takes us a lot closer to home,
00:07:30 --> 00:07:33 just 25 light years away, which in galactic
00:07:33 --> 00:07:35 terms is basically next door.
00:07:36 --> 00:07:36 Anna: This is
00:07:36 --> 00:07:39 GJ3378B,
00:07:39 --> 00:07:42 a rocky world orbiting a faint red dwarf
00:07:42 --> 00:07:45 star in the constellation Camilo partillaris,
00:07:45 --> 00:07:48 the giraffe. It was actually first picked up
00:07:48 --> 00:07:50 back in 2024 by French astronomers,
00:07:50 --> 00:07:53 but the original numbers pegged it as a puffy
00:07:53 --> 00:07:56 mini Neptune, five times Earth's mass,
00:07:56 --> 00:07:59 orbiting on a 25 day period, sitting
00:07:59 --> 00:08:01 right at the edge of the habitable zone.
00:08:01 --> 00:08:04 Avery: A team at UC Irvine led by Paul
00:08:04 --> 00:08:07 Robertson went back with two instruments. The
00:08:07 --> 00:08:09 Habitable Zone Planet Finder on the Hobby
00:08:09 --> 00:08:12 Eberly Telescope in Texas and the NED
00:08:12 --> 00:08:15 Spectrometer on the YIYN Telescope
00:08:15 --> 00:08:18 at Kitt Peak in Arizona and revised those
00:08:18 --> 00:08:21 numbers substantially. Robertson put it
00:08:21 --> 00:08:24 nicely this super Earth gets about 90%
00:08:24 --> 00:08:26 of the radiation Earth gets from the sun
00:08:27 --> 00:08:29 right in the sweet spot for liquid water, at
00:08:29 --> 00:08:30 least in principle.
00:08:30 --> 00:08:33 Anna: The catch, and there's always a catch with
00:08:33 --> 00:08:36 red dwarfs, is that these stars can be
00:08:36 --> 00:08:38 vicious with stellar wind and radiation,
00:08:38 --> 00:08:41 which tends to strip atmospheres clean
00:08:41 --> 00:08:43 off nearby planets. And because
00:08:43 --> 00:08:46 GJ3378B doesn't
00:08:46 --> 00:08:49 transit its star from our point of view, we
00:08:49 --> 00:08:51 can't use transit spectroscopy to check
00:08:51 --> 00:08:54 whether it's actually kept in atmosphere, the
00:08:54 --> 00:08:57 trick JWST has been using on planets
00:08:57 --> 00:08:59 like the Trappist 1 system.
00:09:00 --> 00:09:03 Avery: So the honest answer is nobody knows yet.
00:09:03 --> 00:09:05 We'll likely have to wait for NASA's
00:09:05 --> 00:09:07 Habitable Worlds Observatory, which isn't due
00:09:07 --> 00:09:10 to launch until sometime in the 2000-40s, to
00:09:10 --> 00:09:13 get a direct look. But for a planet this
00:09:13 --> 00:09:15 close and this promising, that's a long wait
00:09:15 --> 00:09:17 worth marking on the calendar.
00:09:17 --> 00:09:20 Anna: Dory 5 is one that hits close to home
00:09:20 --> 00:09:23 for us, quite literally given our own dark
00:09:23 --> 00:09:25 skies down here in the Southern Hemisphere.
00:09:26 --> 00:09:28 Avery: The European Southern Observatory has
00:09:28 --> 00:09:30 published the first study to actually
00:09:30 --> 00:09:32 calculate what happens to ground based
00:09:32 --> 00:09:35 astronomy if current satellite mega
00:09:35 --> 00:09:38 constellation proposals go ahead and um, the
00:09:38 --> 00:09:40 word ESO used was devastating.
00:09:41 --> 00:09:43 Anna: There are currently somewhere around 14
00:09:43 --> 00:09:46 to 17 satellites in
00:09:46 --> 00:09:49 orbit. But between SpaceX, which wants
00:09:49 --> 00:09:52 roughly a million more for space based data
00:09:52 --> 00:09:54 centers, and companies like
00:09:54 --> 00:09:56 Reflectorbital, which is proposing three
00:09:57 --> 00:09:59 50 mirror satellites designed to beam
00:09:59 --> 00:10:02 sunlight down to Earth at night, the combined
00:10:02 --> 00:10:05 proposals on the table add up to over
00:10:05 --> 00:10:08 1.7 million satellites.
00:10:08 --> 00:10:11 Avery: The study, led by ESO astronomer
00:10:11 --> 00:10:14 Olivier Hainau and accepted for publication
00:10:14 --> 00:10:17 in Astronomy and Astrophysics, modeled the
00:10:17 --> 00:10:19 actual imaging impact for a SpaceX
00:10:19 --> 00:10:22 scale constellation. Even if every satellite
00:10:22 --> 00:10:25 stayed just below naked eye brightness, the
00:10:25 --> 00:10:28 study found it would produce dozens of trails
00:10:28 --> 00:10:31 per image on ESO's Very Large Telescope,
00:10:31 --> 00:10:33 cutting usable field of view by up to
00:10:33 --> 00:10:34 28%.
00:10:34 --> 00:10:37 Anna: It gets worse for the Vera Rubin
00:10:37 --> 00:10:39 Observatory's new legacy survey of Space and
00:10:39 --> 00:10:42 Time, which just began full science
00:10:42 --> 00:10:45 operations. If those satellites were even a
00:10:45 --> 00:10:48 little brighter than assumed, most of Rubin's
00:10:48 --> 00:10:50 images each night could be rendered
00:10:50 --> 00:10:52 essentially unusable.
00:10:52 --> 00:10:55 Avery: And reflect orbital's mirrors are their own
00:10:55 --> 00:10:57 special problem. Even when they're not
00:10:57 --> 00:10:59 pointed directly at an observer, the
00:10:59 --> 00:11:01 scattered light alone could brighten the
00:11:01 --> 00:11:04 entire night sky three to four times over.
00:11:04 --> 00:11:06 I now describe the single one of those
00:11:06 --> 00:11:09 mirrors as being as Bright as, uh, Venus, the
00:11:09 --> 00:11:10 so called Morning Star.
00:11:11 --> 00:11:13 Anna: ESO's recommendation is a hard
00:11:13 --> 00:11:16 ceiling, no more than 100
00:11:16 --> 00:11:19 satellites total, all kept fainter than
00:11:19 --> 00:11:21 naked eye visibility. Worth noting, this
00:11:21 --> 00:11:24 study also directly informs the
00:11:24 --> 00:11:26 observatories closest to us here in the
00:11:26 --> 00:11:29 southern hemisphere, since ESO's Very
00:11:29 --> 00:11:32 Large Telescope and the Extremely Large
00:11:32 --> 00:11:34 Telescope currently under construction. Both
00:11:34 --> 00:11:36 sit in the Chilean Atacama Desert.
00:11:37 --> 00:11:40 Avery: SpaceX and reflect orbital are both still
00:11:40 --> 00:11:42 waiting for a decision from the U.S. federal
00:11:42 --> 00:11:44 Communications Commission about whether their
00:11:44 --> 00:11:46 proposed constellations get approved. And
00:11:46 --> 00:11:48 this study is now very much part of that
00:11:48 --> 00:11:49 conversation.
00:11:49 --> 00:11:52 And for our, uh, final story today, one
00:11:52 --> 00:11:54 that's been bugging astronomers since 2020,
00:11:54 --> 00:11:57 and JWST just cracked it.
00:11:57 --> 00:11:59 Anna: Meet WD 1856
00:12:00 --> 00:12:02 b. It's a gas giant,
00:12:02 --> 00:12:05 somewhere between 4 and 11 times
00:12:05 --> 00:12:07 Jupiter's mass. And it orbits its star
00:12:08 --> 00:12:10 every 34 hours, less than 3
00:12:10 --> 00:12:13 million kilometers out, 50 times
00:12:13 --> 00:12:16 closer than Earth is to the Sun. When it
00:12:16 --> 00:12:19 transits, it blocks 56% of
00:12:19 --> 00:12:22 the star's light, one of the deepest transits
00:12:22 --> 00:12:23 ever recorded.
00:12:23 --> 00:12:26 Avery: Here's the problem. The star it's orbiting is
00:12:26 --> 00:12:29 a white dwarf, the collapsed Earth
00:12:29 --> 00:12:32 sized corpse of a star that has already gone
00:12:32 --> 00:12:34 through its red giant phase, where it swells
00:12:34 --> 00:12:37 up hundreds of times its original size and
00:12:37 --> 00:12:40 incinerates anything nearby. A, uh,
00:12:40 --> 00:12:42 planet orbiting this close should have been
00:12:42 --> 00:12:45 vaporized billions of years ago when the star
00:12:45 --> 00:12:47 was still ballooning outward.
00:12:47 --> 00:12:50 Anna: So how is it still there? Using
00:12:50 --> 00:12:52 JWST, an international team
00:12:52 --> 00:12:55 including Northwestern's Christopher O'
00:12:55 --> 00:12:57 Connor and lead author Ryan McDonald measured
00:12:57 --> 00:13:00 the planet's atmosphere directly for the
00:13:00 --> 00:13:03 first time. Gas temperature and chemical
00:13:03 --> 00:13:05 composition, including methane and
00:13:05 --> 00:13:07 hydrocarbon haze, which would give it a color
00:13:07 --> 00:13:09 similar to Saturn's moon.
00:13:09 --> 00:13:11 Avery: Titanium and the temperature was the
00:13:11 --> 00:13:13 giveaway. The planet's running at around
00:13:13 --> 00:13:15 400 kelvin, roughly
00:13:15 --> 00:13:18 240 degrees hotter than
00:13:18 --> 00:13:21 it should be if it were only being warmed by
00:13:21 --> 00:13:24 the faint light of its dead star. That extra
00:13:24 --> 00:13:25 heat had to come from somewhere.
00:13:26 --> 00:13:28 Anna: By modeling how giant planets cool over time,
00:13:29 --> 00:13:31 the team worked backward and found the planet
00:13:31 --> 00:13:34 was heated somewhere between 3 and 5.5
00:13:34 --> 00:13:36 billion years after the white dwarf formed.
00:13:37 --> 00:13:39 In other words, it wasn't sitting in this
00:13:39 --> 00:13:41 tight, dangerous orbit during the red giant
00:13:41 --> 00:13:44 phase at all. It was out at a safe distance
00:13:44 --> 00:13:46 the whole time and only migrated inward
00:13:46 --> 00:13:49 billions of years later through gravitational
00:13:49 --> 00:13:51 interactions with other bodies in the system,
00:13:51 --> 00:13:52 eating up as it went.
00:13:53 --> 00:13:56 Avery: It didn't survive the apocalypse. It arrived
00:13:56 --> 00:13:57 after the funeral.
00:13:57 --> 00:14:00 Anna: Which makes this more than just a curiosity,
00:14:00 --> 00:14:03 because our own sun is going to do exactly
00:14:03 --> 00:14:05 this in about 5 billion years swell
00:14:05 --> 00:14:08 into a red giant, almost certainly consume
00:14:08 --> 00:14:11 Mercury and Venus, with Earth sitting right
00:14:11 --> 00:14:13 on the edge of that danger zone. Jupiter and
00:14:13 --> 00:14:16 Saturn will very likely survive that phase
00:14:16 --> 00:14:18 out at a safe distance, just like
00:14:18 --> 00:14:21 WD1856B's planet originally
00:14:21 --> 00:14:21 did.
00:14:22 --> 00:14:24 Avery: And what this research suggests is that the
00:14:24 --> 00:14:27 story doesn't necessarily end there. Over
00:14:27 --> 00:14:30 billions more years afterward, gravitational
00:14:30 --> 00:14:32 nudges could send one of our own surviving
00:14:32 --> 00:14:35 gas giants migrating inward, closer
00:14:35 --> 00:14:38 to whatever's left of the sun, just like this
00:14:38 --> 00:14:40 planet did around its white dwarf.
00:14:40 --> 00:14:42 Anna: As the researchers put it, stellar death
00:14:42 --> 00:14:45 isn't necessarily the end. Some planets
00:14:45 --> 00:14:48 get a whole second act afterwards. A
00:14:48 --> 00:14:50 nice thought to leave you with heading into
00:14:50 --> 00:14:50 the weekend.
00:14:51 --> 00:14:53 Avery: And that's a wrap on Astronomy daily for
00:14:53 --> 00:14:56 Friday, July 3. A grounded rescue
00:14:56 --> 00:14:59 mission, A solar storm right over our heads.
00:14:59 --> 00:15:02 A planet Tess wasn't even looking for. A
00:15:02 --> 00:15:05 promising new neighbor 25 light years out,
00:15:05 --> 00:15:08 a warning about our crowding skies, and a
00:15:08 --> 00:15:10 planet that outlived its own star's death.
00:15:11 --> 00:15:14 Anna: If you're in the US have a safe and happy 4th
00:15:14 --> 00:15:16 of July weekend. And if the skies stay dark
00:15:16 --> 00:15:19 and clear, maybe let the aurora provide a few
00:15:19 --> 00:15:20 fireworks of its own tonight.
00:15:21 --> 00:15:23 Avery: If you enjoyed today's episode, please hit
00:15:23 --> 00:15:25 subscribe wherever you're listening and, uh,
00:15:25 --> 00:15:27 leave us a review. If you can spare 30
00:15:27 --> 00:15:29 seconds, it really does help new listeners
00:15:29 --> 00:15:30 find the show.
00:15:30 --> 00:15:33 Anna: You can find full show notes, sources and
00:15:33 --> 00:15:35 links at astronomydaily IO and
00:15:35 --> 00:15:38 follow us on socials@astrodaily pod.
00:15:38 --> 00:15:41 We're back tomorrow with more from across the
00:15:41 --> 00:15:43 universe and of course, the weekend wrap.
00:15:43 --> 00:15:44 Avery: I'm Avery.
00:15:44 --> 00:15:46 Anna: I'm Anna. Clear skies, everyone.
00:15:47 --> 00:15:48 Astronomy Day
00:15:50 --> 00:15:51 stories. Mhm. Be told.