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00:00:00 --> 00:00:02 Anna: Picture the emptiest m place you can imagine.
00:00:03 --> 00:00:05 No stars, no dust, not a
00:00:05 --> 00:00:08 single atom. Now switch off the light
00:00:09 --> 00:00:11 and empty space still isn't
00:00:11 --> 00:00:14 empty. It seethes with particles that
00:00:14 --> 00:00:17 flicker into being and vanish again faster
00:00:17 --> 00:00:19 than any clock can catch them. For 90
00:00:20 --> 00:00:22 years, that's been a prediction on a
00:00:22 --> 00:00:24 chalkboard. This week, a dead star
00:00:24 --> 00:00:27 with an absurd magnetic field may have let
00:00:27 --> 00:00:30 us see it by bending starlight through the
00:00:30 --> 00:00:33 vacuum itself. G' day and welcome
00:00:33 --> 00:00:36 to Astronomy Daily. I'm Anna.
00:00:36 --> 00:00:38 Avery: And I'm avery. It's Friday 7th
00:00:38 --> 00:00:41 August 2026, and there is a lot of very good
00:00:41 --> 00:00:42 sky ahead of us.
00:00:42 --> 00:00:45 Anna: There is coming up, NASA
00:00:45 --> 00:00:48 rummages through the parts bin of a canceled
00:00:48 --> 00:00:50 space station to help build a moon base.
00:00:50 --> 00:00:53 Avery: Blue Origin finally says what blew up its big
00:00:53 --> 00:00:56 rocket back in May. And a plucky little robot
00:00:56 --> 00:00:58 fights the stop spinning long enough to
00:00:58 --> 00:01:00 rescue a beloved NASA telescope.
00:01:00 --> 00:01:03 Anna: And we finish where the whole world is
00:01:03 --> 00:01:05 looking next week, the total solar eclipse on
00:01:05 --> 00:01:08 the 12th paired with the best Perseids in
00:01:08 --> 00:01:11 years, both hemispheres and the eye safety
00:01:11 --> 00:01:14 rules that are absolutely non negotiable.
00:01:14 --> 00:01:17 But, uh, we start with the physics of nothing
00:01:17 --> 00:01:19 at all. Avery, want to set the scene?
00:01:20 --> 00:01:22 Avery: Gladly. This is a genuine
00:01:22 --> 00:01:24 fundamental physics lead and it's about a
00:01:24 --> 00:01:26 lovely Australian thread running through it.
00:01:27 --> 00:01:30 Anna: So on Wednesday, the journal Nature published
00:01:30 --> 00:01:33 a result that's been decades in the making. A
00:01:33 --> 00:01:36 team led by Rachel Stewart used NASA's
00:01:36 --> 00:01:39 IXPE X ray telescope, that's
00:01:39 --> 00:01:42 the Imaging X Ray Polarimetry Explorer,
00:01:42 --> 00:01:45 to stare at a magnetar with the catchy name
00:01:45 --> 00:01:46 1E
00:01:47 --> 00:01:49 1547.0 to
00:01:49 --> 00:01:51 5408. And they think
00:01:51 --> 00:01:54 they've caught empty space, behaving
00:01:54 --> 00:01:57 exactly as quantum theory says it should.
00:01:57 --> 00:02:00 Avery: Lets define the star first because magnetars
00:02:00 --> 00:02:01 are ridiculous objects.
00:02:02 --> 00:02:04 Anna: They really are. A magnetar is a
00:02:04 --> 00:02:07 neutron star, the collapsed core of a
00:02:07 --> 00:02:10 massive dead star. A whole sun's
00:02:10 --> 00:02:13 worth of mass crammed into a ball the size
00:02:13 --> 00:02:15 of a city. But this particular
00:02:15 --> 00:02:18 flavor has the strongest magnetic field
00:02:18 --> 00:02:21 known anywhere in the universe. We're talking
00:02:21 --> 00:02:24 a field around a thousand trillion times
00:02:24 --> 00:02:27 stronger than Earth's. Roughly a, uh,
00:02:27 --> 00:02:29 trillion times stronger than the beefiest
00:02:29 --> 00:02:32 permanent magnet ever built in a lab.
00:02:32 --> 00:02:35 Avery: And that monstrous field is the whole point
00:02:35 --> 00:02:38 because of a prediction from 1936.
00:02:38 --> 00:02:41 Anna: Right. This goes back to Werner Heisenberg
00:02:41 --> 00:02:43 and his colleagues, one of the founders of
00:02:43 --> 00:02:46 quantum mechanics. Quantum theory says the
00:02:46 --> 00:02:49 vacuum isn't truly empty. It's a
00:02:49 --> 00:02:52 boiling sea of virtual particles,
00:02:52 --> 00:02:54 electrons and their antimatter twins,
00:02:54 --> 00:02:57 positrons popping in and out of
00:02:57 --> 00:03:00 existence and vanishing before you can ever
00:03:00 --> 00:03:01 measure them directly.
00:03:02 --> 00:03:04 Avery: Which sounds like philosophy until you add a
00:03:04 --> 00:03:05 magnetic field.
00:03:05 --> 00:03:08 Anna: Exactly. Turn on a strong enough
00:03:08 --> 00:03:11 field and those flickering virtual particles
00:03:11 --> 00:03:14 line up. And when they line up, the
00:03:14 --> 00:03:17 empty vacuum starts to behave like a
00:03:17 --> 00:03:20 piece of glass, or better, like a crystal.
00:03:20 --> 00:03:22 It gains a grain. Light traveling
00:03:22 --> 00:03:25 one way through it moves slightly differently
00:03:25 --> 00:03:28 than light traveling another way. Physicists
00:03:28 --> 00:03:30 call it vacuum birefringence.
00:03:30 --> 00:03:33 Avery: Birefringence being the same trick a crystal
00:03:33 --> 00:03:36 of calcite plays. Split a light ray in two.
00:03:36 --> 00:03:39 Anna: The very same. The vacuum becomes a
00:03:39 --> 00:03:42 prism made of nothing. The catch has
00:03:42 --> 00:03:45 always been that you need a field so
00:03:45 --> 00:03:47 absurdly strong to make the effect visible
00:03:47 --> 00:03:50 that no laboratory on Earth can get
00:03:50 --> 00:03:53 anywhere near it. Only a magnetar will
00:03:53 --> 00:03:56 do. So we've had to wait for the universe
00:03:56 --> 00:03:58 to build the experiment for us.
00:03:58 --> 00:04:01 Avery: Enter ixpe. And, um, here's where it turns
00:04:01 --> 00:04:03 into a proper international relay, with
00:04:03 --> 00:04:05 Australia holding one of the batons.
00:04:06 --> 00:04:07 Anna: This is my favorite part.
00:04:08 --> 00:04:11 IXPE measures the polarization of
00:04:11 --> 00:04:13 X rays. The direction the light waves are
00:04:13 --> 00:04:16 wiggling. That's the fingerprint you need to
00:04:16 --> 00:04:19 catch birefringence. But the team didn't
00:04:19 --> 00:04:21 stop at one telescope. They ran
00:04:21 --> 00:04:23 IXPE together with NASA's
00:04:23 --> 00:04:26 NICER instrument on the space station and
00:04:26 --> 00:04:29 crucially, the Parkes radio telescope in
00:04:29 --> 00:04:31 central New South Wales.
00:04:31 --> 00:04:34 Avery: Merjang the dish, our dish,
00:04:34 --> 00:04:37 doing frontier quantum physics from a paddock
00:04:37 --> 00:04:38 outside of Parkes.
00:04:38 --> 00:04:40 Anna: And there's more homegrown talent in the
00:04:40 --> 00:04:43 byline. Dr. Marcus Lower from
00:04:43 --> 00:04:45 Swinburne University in Melbourne is on the
00:04:45 --> 00:04:48 team alongside co lead Hoa Dinh
00:04:48 --> 00:04:51 T at University in Houston.
00:04:51 --> 00:04:54 So this is genuinely a NASA and Australia
00:04:54 --> 00:04:55 result.
00:04:55 --> 00:04:57 Avery: What did the numbers actually show?
00:04:58 --> 00:05:00 Anna: Extraordinary polarization in the
00:05:00 --> 00:05:03 soft X ray band, where you're seeing the
00:05:03 --> 00:05:05 star's glowing surface. The light was
00:05:05 --> 00:05:08 polarized at around 65%.
00:05:08 --> 00:05:11 And at some points in the magnetar's
00:05:11 --> 00:05:13 rotation, it climbed to nearly 80.
00:05:14 --> 00:05:16 That's enormous. And the pattern shifts
00:05:16 --> 00:05:19 smoothly as the star turns. According to the
00:05:19 --> 00:05:22 team, you can't reproduce that combination,
00:05:22 --> 00:05:25 the X rays and the radio behavior together
00:05:25 --> 00:05:28 without the vacuum itself bending the light.
00:05:29 --> 00:05:31 In their words, the signal requires vacuum
00:05:31 --> 00:05:34 birefringence to be present now,
00:05:34 --> 00:05:35 and I
00:05:35 --> 00:05:37 Avery: think this is important for our listeners.
00:05:37 --> 00:05:40 This is not case closed, is it?
00:05:40 --> 00:05:43 Anna: No, and I'm glad you flagged it. The team is
00:05:43 --> 00:05:45 careful. They call it the most definitive
00:05:45 --> 00:05:48 signal to date. Not a confirmed detection.
00:05:49 --> 00:05:51 And there's a genuine scientific argument
00:05:51 --> 00:05:54 happening in real time. Back in April,
00:05:54 --> 00:05:56 an independent group looked at the same
00:05:56 --> 00:05:59 IXPE data with a different model of the
00:05:59 --> 00:06:02 star's geometry and concluded it wasn't
00:06:02 --> 00:06:05 compelling evidence yet. So there are two
00:06:05 --> 00:06:06 honest readings on
00:06:06 --> 00:06:08 Avery: the table, which is science working
00:06:08 --> 00:06:10 exactly as it should.
00:06:10 --> 00:06:13 Anna: It is to nail it down, you'd want a
00:06:13 --> 00:06:15 stronger dip at the specific energy where the
00:06:15 --> 00:06:18 effect should bite. Or the same signature
00:06:18 --> 00:06:21 from a whole family of magnetars, which or
00:06:21 --> 00:06:24 the dream, a lab experiment on Earth
00:06:24 --> 00:06:26 that corroborates it. None of those is in
00:06:26 --> 00:06:29 hand yet. But think about what's being
00:06:29 --> 00:06:32 claimed that we watched the empty vacuum
00:06:32 --> 00:06:34 of space act on light using a
00:06:34 --> 00:06:37 dead star as the apparatus and a radio
00:06:37 --> 00:06:40 dish in the central west as one of the ears.
00:06:40 --> 00:06:43 Avery: The emptiest thing there is finally showing
00:06:43 --> 00:06:44 its grain.
00:06:44 --> 00:06:47 Anna: That's a lead from the very big
00:06:47 --> 00:06:49 physics let's come back down to the moon
00:06:50 --> 00:06:53 where Avery someone's been raiding the parts
00:06:53 --> 00:06:53 bin.
00:06:53 --> 00:06:56 Avery: They have. Longtime listeners will remember
00:06:56 --> 00:06:59 that back in the autumn NASA paused the Lunar
00:06:59 --> 00:07:01 Gateway, the small space station that was
00:07:01 --> 00:07:03 meant to orbit the moon, and pivoted to
00:07:03 --> 00:07:06 putting infrastructure straight onto the
00:07:06 --> 00:07:08 surface instead. This week we learned what
00:07:08 --> 00:07:10 happens to the hardware that was already
00:07:10 --> 00:07:11 built.
00:07:11 --> 00:07:13 Anna: It doesn't go in a museum.
00:07:14 --> 00:07:16 Avery: It goes to the moon by another route.
00:07:17 --> 00:07:19 NASA and Northrop Grumman announced on
00:07:19 --> 00:07:22 Tuesday that the guts of Halo, that's the
00:07:22 --> 00:07:24 habitation and logistics outpost, the crew
00:07:24 --> 00:07:26 module that was going to be the heart of
00:07:26 --> 00:07:29 Gateway, will be repurposed into three
00:07:29 --> 00:07:32 robotic missions called Lunar Infrastructure
00:07:32 --> 00:07:34 Demos Lid 1, Lid 2
00:07:34 --> 00:07:36 and Lid 3.
00:07:36 --> 00:07:39 Anna: So the power systems, the avionics, the data
00:07:39 --> 00:07:42 plumbing, all the expensive already flight
00:07:42 --> 00:07:45 Avery: ready bits get reused on the
00:07:45 --> 00:07:47 surface instead of in orbit. And the job
00:07:47 --> 00:07:49 they're being pointed at is the single
00:07:49 --> 00:07:52 hardest problem of living at the lunar South
00:07:52 --> 00:07:54 Pole. Surviving the night.
00:07:54 --> 00:07:57 Anna: The two week night, a uh, night
00:07:57 --> 00:07:59 Avery: that lasts about 14 Earth days, where the
00:07:59 --> 00:08:02 temperature at the pole can swing wildly and
00:08:02 --> 00:08:04 plunge to well below minus 200
00:08:04 --> 00:08:07 degrees Celsius and where your solar panels
00:08:07 --> 00:08:10 do precisely nothing for a fortnight. If
00:08:10 --> 00:08:12 you want astronauts to stay for more than one
00:08:12 --> 00:08:15 lunar day, you have to keep the lights and
00:08:15 --> 00:08:17 the heaters on through that. These demos are
00:08:17 --> 00:08:20 meant to prove the power, thermal and
00:08:20 --> 00:08:22 avionics kit that makes a persistent base
00:08:22 --> 00:08:23 even thinkable.
00:08:24 --> 00:08:27 Anna: And the reasoning behind reusing Halo is
00:08:27 --> 00:08:29 basically don't reinvent the wheel.
00:08:29 --> 00:08:31 Avery: Northrop Grumman's framing is that the
00:08:31 --> 00:08:34 hardware is ready to fly, so it lets NASA
00:08:34 --> 00:08:36 move faster and start gathering real
00:08:36 --> 00:08:38 performance data on the surface sooner. It
00:08:38 --> 00:08:41 was part of a broader moon base update too.
00:08:41 --> 00:08:44 Four different commercial landers all
00:08:44 --> 00:08:46 reaching final qualification testing at once,
00:08:46 --> 00:08:48 which is its own milestone.
00:08:48 --> 00:08:50 Anna: It's a very North American story.
00:08:51 --> 00:08:53 Basa, Northrop Grumman, the whole
00:08:53 --> 00:08:56 Artemis push. But it lands for everyone
00:08:56 --> 00:08:59 because the South Pole and its water ice is
00:08:59 --> 00:09:01 where the whole world's lunar plans are
00:09:01 --> 00:09:01 converging.
00:09:02 --> 00:09:04 Avery: Waste not, want not in space.
00:09:04 --> 00:09:07 Anna Speaking of things that ah, didn't go to
00:09:07 --> 00:09:07 plan.
00:09:08 --> 00:09:11 Anna: Yes, some closure on a big bang from
00:09:11 --> 00:09:13 earlier this year. Cast your mind back to
00:09:13 --> 00:09:16 28 May. Blue Origin was running a
00:09:16 --> 00:09:18 routine engine test of a new Glenn booster on
00:09:18 --> 00:09:21 the pad at Cape Canaveral and it exploded
00:09:22 --> 00:09:24 spectacularly. It destroyed the rocket
00:09:24 --> 00:09:27 and did serious damage to the launch complex
00:09:27 --> 00:09:28 and until
00:09:28 --> 00:09:30 Avery: this week we didn't officially know why.
00:09:31 --> 00:09:33 Anna: Now we do. On Tuesday, Blue
00:09:33 --> 00:09:36 Origin's chief executive Dave Limp gave the
00:09:36 --> 00:09:39 first real update on the investigation. The
00:09:39 --> 00:09:42 culprit? The main oxygen valve on one of the
00:09:42 --> 00:09:44 rocket's seven BE4 engines. They
00:09:44 --> 00:09:47 traced it there, then confirmed it by
00:09:47 --> 00:09:49 recovering and inspecting the hardware.
00:09:49 --> 00:09:52 Avery: One valve on one of seven
00:09:52 --> 00:09:54 engines, One valve.
00:09:54 --> 00:09:56 Anna: That's the thing about rockets, they're
00:09:56 --> 00:09:58 thousands of parts that all have to behave
00:09:59 --> 00:10:01 and any one of them can ruin your day. The
00:10:01 --> 00:10:04 valve controls the flow of liquid oxygen into
00:10:04 --> 00:10:07 the engine and something about it initiated
00:10:07 --> 00:10:09 the anomaly. Limp said they've run extensive
00:10:09 --> 00:10:12 component level and engine hot fire tests to
00:10:12 --> 00:10:15 understand the failure mode and the fix is
00:10:15 --> 00:10:18 Avery: a redesign everything situation or a
00:10:18 --> 00:10:18 tweak.
00:10:18 --> 00:10:21 Anna: Encouragingly, a tweak. They're making small
00:10:21 --> 00:10:23 modifications to the valve that can be
00:10:23 --> 00:10:25 retrofitted to engines that already exist
00:10:26 --> 00:10:28 rather than starting from scratch. Blimp's
00:10:28 --> 00:10:31 line was simply the path forward is clear
00:10:31 --> 00:10:33 with updated hardware coming in the near term
00:10:33 --> 00:10:36 and a return to flight still targeted before
00:10:36 --> 00:10:37 the end of the year.
00:10:37 --> 00:10:40 Avery: There's a wider ripple here too. The BE4
00:10:40 --> 00:10:42 doesn't only fly on New Glenn.
00:10:42 --> 00:10:45 Anna: Good point. The same engine powers United
00:10:45 --> 00:10:48 Launch Alliance's Vulcan rocket. So the
00:10:48 --> 00:10:50 industry will be watching how this valve
00:10:50 --> 00:10:53 story plays out beyond Blue Origin. But
00:10:53 --> 00:10:55 the headline for today is a good one. They
00:10:55 --> 00:10:58 found it, they understand it and they think
00:10:58 --> 00:11:00 it's fixable. That's how you turn a very bad
00:11:00 --> 00:11:03 day into a flying rocket again.
00:11:03 --> 00:11:06 Avery: From M, a rocket that needs to fly again to a
00:11:06 --> 00:11:09 robot that just needs to stop spinning. This
00:11:09 --> 00:11:10 one's a nail biter.
00:11:10 --> 00:11:12 Anna: Nothing unusual in that though.
00:11:12 --> 00:11:15 Avery: In space it genuinely is. We've
00:11:15 --> 00:11:17 been following this since the launch scrubs
00:11:17 --> 00:11:19 back at the start of July. So let me bring
00:11:19 --> 00:11:22 everyone up to speed. NASA's Neil Gerald
00:11:22 --> 00:11:25 Swift Observatory, a much loved telescope
00:11:25 --> 00:11:27 that's been catching gamma ray bursts since
00:11:27 --> 00:11:29 2004 is slowly sinking.
00:11:30 --> 00:11:32 Its orbit is decaying and without a boost it
00:11:32 --> 00:11:35 will re enter and burn up later this year.
00:11:35 --> 00:11:37 Anna: And the cavalry is a robot.
00:11:37 --> 00:11:40 Avery: The cavalry is a robot called Link, built by
00:11:40 --> 00:11:42 a company called Catalyst Space out of
00:11:42 --> 00:11:45 Flagstaff, Arizona. They're billing it as
00:11:45 --> 00:11:47 America's first commercial space robot.
00:11:48 --> 00:11:50 Designed, built and launched in under a year.
00:11:50 --> 00:11:53 And its job is to fly up, grab Swift
00:11:53 --> 00:11:56 and gently boost it to a higher, safer
00:11:56 --> 00:11:59 orbit. It launched on 3 July on an air
00:11:59 --> 00:12:00 launched Pegasus rocket.
00:12:00 --> 00:12:01 Anna: So what went wrong?
00:12:02 --> 00:12:04 Avery: During commissioning, Link got into trouble.
00:12:04 --> 00:12:07 It ended up in a multi axis tumble, spinning
00:12:07 --> 00:12:09 at about 9 degrees per second, which caused
00:12:09 --> 00:12:12 it to drop in and out of communication. And
00:12:12 --> 00:12:14 the cause was nasty. Two of its three
00:12:14 --> 00:12:16 reaction wheels, the spinning disks a
00:12:16 --> 00:12:19 spacecraft uses to point itself while, were
00:12:19 --> 00:12:21 knocked out by a fault in the power system
00:12:21 --> 00:12:21 upstream of them.
00:12:22 --> 00:12:24 Anna: Losing your steering while you're tumbling,
00:12:24 --> 00:12:25 that's the stuff of nightmares.
00:12:26 --> 00:12:29 Avery: It is. But here's the clever bit. With the
00:12:29 --> 00:12:32 reaction wheels down, the team improvised.
00:12:32 --> 00:12:35 They used Lynx electric propulsion thrusters,
00:12:35 --> 00:12:37 the gentle ion drive meant for the long
00:12:37 --> 00:12:40 cruise to Swift, mounted on a gimbal and
00:12:40 --> 00:12:42 fired them to cancel the spin. And it's
00:12:42 --> 00:12:45 working. They've brought the Tumble down from
00:12:45 --> 00:12:48 9 degrees per second to 4, and now to
00:12:48 --> 00:12:51 about 1 and a half. All of it using less than
00:12:51 --> 00:12:53 a hundred grams of propellant. So they're not
00:12:53 --> 00:12:55 eating into the fuel they need for the rescue
00:12:55 --> 00:12:55 itself.
00:12:56 --> 00:12:59 Anna: A hundred grams, That's a small chocolate
00:12:59 --> 00:13:01 bar's worth of fuel to tame a tumbling
00:13:01 --> 00:13:02 spacecraft.
00:13:03 --> 00:13:05 Avery: Beautifully economical. And the next step is
00:13:05 --> 00:13:08 a big flight software upload in the coming
00:13:08 --> 00:13:10 days. New control code written specifically
00:13:10 --> 00:13:13 for the wounded spacecraft, which should hand
00:13:13 --> 00:13:15 full pointing control back to the team. After
00:13:15 --> 00:13:18 that, Link can start. The slow orbital dance
00:13:18 --> 00:13:21 to line up with Swift Rendezvous has slipped
00:13:21 --> 00:13:22 to around the end of August.
00:13:23 --> 00:13:25 Anna: There's a lovely echo here with our lead.
00:13:25 --> 00:13:27 Actually, our top story was about reading a
00:13:27 --> 00:13:30 magnetar with X ray telescopes. And Swift
00:13:30 --> 00:13:33 is itself an X ray and gamma ray observatory.
00:13:33 --> 00:13:36 A robot fighting to save one of the very
00:13:36 --> 00:13:38 instruments we use to do this kind of
00:13:38 --> 00:13:38 science.
00:13:39 --> 00:13:41 Avery: Fingers crossed for that software upload.
00:13:41 --> 00:13:43 We'll keep watching the dashboard.
00:13:43 --> 00:13:45 Anna, take us to the sky.
00:13:45 --> 00:13:48 Anna: With pleasure, because next Wednesday 12th
00:13:48 --> 00:13:50 August, as we've mentioned before, is one of
00:13:50 --> 00:13:53 the biggest sky days of the year. Two
00:13:53 --> 00:13:56 headline events in 24 hours, a total solar
00:13:56 --> 00:13:58 eclipse and the peak of the Perseid meteor
00:13:58 --> 00:14:01 shower under a beautifully dark moonless
00:14:01 --> 00:14:01 sky.
00:14:02 --> 00:14:04 Avery: Let's do the eclipse first and let's do it by
00:14:04 --> 00:14:07 hemisphere. The path of Totality, where the
00:14:07 --> 00:14:10 moon completely covers the sun, sweeps across
00:14:10 --> 00:14:13 northern Russia, Greenland, Iceland and
00:14:13 --> 00:14:16 northern Spain, clipping a tiny corner of
00:14:16 --> 00:14:18 Portugal for mainland Europe. It's the first
00:14:18 --> 00:14:21 total solar eclipse since 1999.
00:14:21 --> 00:14:23 If you're lucky enough to be in Spain,
00:14:23 --> 00:14:25 totality comes late in the day,
00:14:25 --> 00:14:28 Anna: low and golden for our North American
00:14:28 --> 00:14:30 listeners, our largest audience. You don't
00:14:30 --> 00:14:33 get totality this time, but the Northeast
00:14:33 --> 00:14:35 does get a partial. It's an afternoon event.
00:14:35 --> 00:14:38 The rule of thumb. You'll see more than a 10%
00:14:38 --> 00:14:41 bite only if you're northeast of a line
00:14:41 --> 00:14:43 running roughly from New York City up through
00:14:43 --> 00:14:45 Rock Rochester, or east of about mid
00:14:45 --> 00:14:47 Ontario in Canada.
00:14:47 --> 00:14:50 Avery: And the further into Atlantic Canada you go,
00:14:50 --> 00:14:52 the better it gets. Around half the sun
00:14:52 --> 00:14:55 covered at maximum. New England and the
00:14:55 --> 00:14:57 northeastern states get a smaller nibble.
00:14:57 --> 00:15:00 NASDAQ will stream the whole thing live from
00:15:00 --> 00:15:02 1:15 in the afternoon Eastern time. If your
00:15:02 --> 00:15:04 local sky won't play along.
00:15:04 --> 00:15:07 Anna: Now, the non negotiable bit. And we say this
00:15:07 --> 00:15:09 every single time for a reason.
00:15:10 --> 00:15:12 Avery: In every partial phase, you must protect your
00:15:12 --> 00:15:15 eyes. Use only eclipse glasses or handheld
00:15:15 --> 00:15:18 solar viewers certified to the ISO
00:15:18 --> 00:15:20 123122 safety
00:15:20 --> 00:15:23 standard. Ordinary sunglasses are not
00:15:23 --> 00:15:26 safe, no matter how dark they look. And
00:15:26 --> 00:15:29 never point a camera, telescope or binoculars
00:15:29 --> 00:15:31 at the sun while wearing eclipse glasses. The
00:15:31 --> 00:15:33 optics will concentrate the light and burn
00:15:33 --> 00:15:35 straight through the filter and into your
00:15:35 --> 00:15:36 eye.
00:15:36 --> 00:15:38 Anna: If you saved your glasses from a previous
00:15:38 --> 00:15:40 eclipse, check them for scratches and
00:15:40 --> 00:15:42 pinholes. Before you trust them in doubt,
00:15:42 --> 00:15:43 throw them out.
00:15:44 --> 00:15:46 Avery: And for the southern hemisphere, Anna. Uh,
00:15:46 --> 00:15:47 the honest word.
00:15:47 --> 00:15:50 Anna: The honest word is that here in Australia, we
00:15:50 --> 00:15:52 miss this one entirely. The eclipse isn't
00:15:52 --> 00:15:54 visible from our part of the world, and the
00:15:54 --> 00:15:57 Perseids are stubbornly a northern hemisphere
00:15:57 --> 00:16:00 shower. Their radiant point barely clears our
00:16:00 --> 00:16:03 northern horizon, so at best you might catch
00:16:03 --> 00:16:06 a stray one or two very low in the couple
00:16:06 --> 00:16:08 of hours before dawn on the 13th.
00:16:08 --> 00:16:10 Avery: But we're not left out. What Sydney can do
00:16:10 --> 00:16:13 next week is beautiful in its own right.
00:16:13 --> 00:16:16 Anna: It is. Get up before dawn and
00:16:16 --> 00:16:18 look for the lineup of planets stretched
00:16:18 --> 00:16:21 across the eastern sky. And keep an eye on
00:16:21 --> 00:16:24 Venus, which is climbing back into view. Add
00:16:24 --> 00:16:27 the winter Milky Way arching overhead from a
00:16:27 --> 00:16:30 dark site and you've got a genuinely lovely
00:16:30 --> 00:16:32 pre dawn show. No eclipse glasses
00:16:32 --> 00:16:33 required.
00:16:33 --> 00:16:35 Avery: And for our, uh, northern friends, chasing
00:16:35 --> 00:16:38 meteors, the Perseids peak the night of the
00:16:38 --> 00:16:41 12th into the pre dawn of the 13th with a
00:16:41 --> 00:16:43 new moon. Conditions are about as good as
00:16:43 --> 00:16:45 they get. From a dark rural site, you could
00:16:45 --> 00:16:48 see up to a hundred an hour, many of them
00:16:48 --> 00:16:51 bright fast and trailing. Get away from city
00:16:51 --> 00:16:53 lights. Give your eyes 20 minutes to adjust.
00:16:53 --> 00:16:55 Look up and be patient.
00:16:56 --> 00:16:58 Anna: That's the show. The vacuum of space
00:16:58 --> 00:17:01 showing its colors. A moon base built from
00:17:01 --> 00:17:04 spare parts. Earth. A rocket mystery solved.
00:17:04 --> 00:17:06 And a little robot fighting to save a
00:17:06 --> 00:17:07 telescope.
00:17:07 --> 00:17:09 Avery: All the links and sources are in your show
00:17:09 --> 00:17:12 notes and over at astronomydaily IO,
00:17:12 --> 00:17:14 where you can also grab the newsletter and
00:17:14 --> 00:17:15 drop us a line.
00:17:15 --> 00:17:18 Anna: For Avery, I'm Anna. Look after those eyes.
00:17:18 --> 00:17:20 Avery: Next Wednesday and until next time.
00:17:20 --> 00:17:21 Anna: Clear skies.
00:17:33 --> 00:17:33 The stories.
00:17:41 --> 00:17:42 Avery: Were told.