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00:00:00 --> 00:00:03 Anna: Welcome to Astronomy Daily and our weekend
00:00:03 --> 00:00:05 space and astronomy news wrap for Saturday,
00:00:06 --> 00:00:08 the 18th of July, 2026.
00:00:09 --> 00:00:10 I'm Anna.
00:00:10 --> 00:00:12 Avery: And I'm Avery. Every Saturday, we bring you
00:00:12 --> 00:00:15 two brand new stories, plus the four biggest
00:00:15 --> 00:00:17 headlines from the week that was. And
00:00:17 --> 00:00:19 honestly, Anna, what a week it was.
00:00:19 --> 00:00:22 Anna: It really was. Coming up, new research
00:00:22 --> 00:00:25 suggesting we may have been underestimating
00:00:25 --> 00:00:28 just how hard the sun can hit us. A
00:00:28 --> 00:00:31 planet 48 light years away that turns out to
00:00:31 --> 00:00:34 have air. A week of high drama at
00:00:34 --> 00:00:37 Starbase. A hidden black hole in the Southern
00:00:37 --> 00:00:39 Hemisphere's favorite star cluster,
00:00:39 --> 00:00:42 Landslides on Pluto. And to
00:00:42 --> 00:00:45 finish the most delightful space story of the
00:00:45 --> 00:00:47 week involving a cup of tea.
00:00:47 --> 00:00:50 Avery: Only on this show does that sentence make
00:00:50 --> 00:00:51 sense. Let's get into it.
00:00:51 --> 00:00:53 Our, uh, lead story this weekend is one of
00:00:53 --> 00:00:55 those quiet papers with very loud
00:00:55 --> 00:00:58 implications. New research published in the
00:00:58 --> 00:01:00 journal Nature suggests the most powerful
00:01:00 --> 00:01:03 solar storms to strike Earth may pack a
00:01:03 --> 00:01:04 bigger punch than scientists realized,
00:01:05 --> 00:01:07 because the limit we thought Nature had built
00:01:07 --> 00:01:09 in may never have existed at all.
00:01:10 --> 00:01:12 Anna: Set this up for us, Avery. What limit are we
00:01:12 --> 00:01:13 talking about?
00:01:13 --> 00:01:16 Avery: So, for decades, space weather scientists
00:01:16 --> 00:01:18 have observed something reassuring in the
00:01:18 --> 00:01:21 data. As the solar wind, that stream of
00:01:21 --> 00:01:23 charged particles flowing off the sun, gets
00:01:23 --> 00:01:25 stronger during a storm, the electrical
00:01:25 --> 00:01:27 currents it drives through the upper
00:01:27 --> 00:01:30 atmosphere increase up to a point. And then
00:01:30 --> 00:01:33 the response seemed to flatten out, saturate,
00:01:33 --> 00:01:35 as if the Earth had a ceiling on how badly it
00:01:35 --> 00:01:37 could react no matter how hard the sun
00:01:37 --> 00:01:38 pushed.
00:01:38 --> 00:01:41 Anna: Which would be very good news for anyone who
00:01:41 --> 00:01:43 owns a satellite or a power grid.
00:01:43 --> 00:01:46 Avery: Exactly. That assumed ceiling has been
00:01:46 --> 00:01:48 quietly baked into risk models for extreme
00:01:48 --> 00:01:51 space weather. But the new study, led by Dr.
00:01:51 --> 00:01:53 Nithin Cividas of NASA's Goddard Space Flight
00:01:53 --> 00:01:56 center, with co author Dr. Maria Wallach of
00:01:56 --> 00:01:59 Lancaster University, asked a deceptively
00:01:59 --> 00:02:02 simple. Is that saturation real
00:02:02 --> 00:02:04 physics, or is it an artifact of how we've
00:02:04 --> 00:02:06 been measuring the solar wind?
00:02:06 --> 00:02:07 Anna: And the answer?
00:02:08 --> 00:02:11 Avery: Very likely an artifact. The team analyzed
00:02:11 --> 00:02:12 more than a million solar wind measurements
00:02:12 --> 00:02:15 from spacecraft orbiting much closer to
00:02:15 --> 00:02:17 Earth, where the solar wind actually meets
00:02:17 --> 00:02:20 our magnetic field. And in that data, the
00:02:20 --> 00:02:22 electrical currents in the upper atmosphere
00:02:22 --> 00:02:24 just kept climbing as a solar wind got
00:02:24 --> 00:02:27 stronger. No flattening, no sealing.
00:02:27 --> 00:02:29 Anna: The paper's title gives away the mechanism,
00:02:29 --> 00:02:32 doesn't it? Regression to the mean.
00:02:32 --> 00:02:35 It's a statistical effect. Essentially, when
00:02:35 --> 00:02:37 you average noisy measurements of extreme
00:02:37 --> 00:02:40 events, the extremes get smoothed away.
00:02:40 --> 00:02:43 And that smoothing can masquerade as a
00:02:43 --> 00:02:43 physical limit.
00:02:44 --> 00:02:46 Avery: Right. The ceiling was in the maths, not the
00:02:46 --> 00:02:49 magnetosphere. And if there's no upper limit
00:02:49 --> 00:02:51 to our planet's response. Then the rare
00:02:51 --> 00:02:54 monsters, the so called once in a thousand
00:02:54 --> 00:02:56 year geomagnetic storms could hit
00:02:56 --> 00:02:59 satellites, gps, communic and power
00:02:59 --> 00:03:02 grids harder than current estimates predict.
00:03:02 --> 00:03:05 Anna: It's worth saying clearly this is not a
00:03:05 --> 00:03:07 prediction that a catastrophic storm is
00:03:07 --> 00:03:10 coming. Wallach herself makes the point that
00:03:10 --> 00:03:13 these extreme cases are rare, which is
00:03:13 --> 00:03:16 fortunate, but it also means we have very
00:03:16 --> 00:03:17 little data on them.
00:03:17 --> 00:03:19 Avery: And there's a timeliness to this because the
00:03:19 --> 00:03:21 sun is still near the peak of its roughly 11
00:03:22 --> 00:03:24 year activity cycle. For our listeners across
00:03:24 --> 00:03:26 Australia and New Zealand, that's the same
00:03:26 --> 00:03:28 solar activity that has delivered those
00:03:28 --> 00:03:31 spectacular Aurora australis displ over
00:03:31 --> 00:03:32 the past couple of years.
00:03:33 --> 00:03:36 Anna: The aurora is the beautiful face of
00:03:36 --> 00:03:38 space weather and this paper is a reminder
00:03:38 --> 00:03:41 that the same physics has a much less
00:03:41 --> 00:03:44 charming side. We'll come back to Aurora
00:03:44 --> 00:03:46 watching in our Skywatch segment a little
00:03:46 --> 00:03:46 later.
00:03:47 --> 00:03:50 Now to our weekly highlights, the four
00:03:50 --> 00:03:52 stories that defined the week. And if you
00:03:52 --> 00:03:55 only heard one episode this week, I hope it
00:03:55 --> 00:03:58 was Fridays because it carried what might
00:03:58 --> 00:04:00 just be the story of the year. For the
00:04:00 --> 00:04:03 first time, astronomers have detected an
00:04:03 --> 00:04:05 atmosphere around a rocky Earth like
00:04:05 --> 00:04:08 planet in the habitable zone of its
00:04:08 --> 00:04:10 Avery: star LHS 1140B,
00:04:11 --> 00:04:13 48 light years away, which in
00:04:13 --> 00:04:16 galactic terms is barely down the street.
00:04:16 --> 00:04:19 Anna: As we covered on Friday's show, the detection
00:04:19 --> 00:04:21 was published in the journal Science. The
00:04:21 --> 00:04:24 team found helium escaping from the planet's
00:04:24 --> 00:04:27 atmosphere and that escaping envelope is
00:04:27 --> 00:04:30 the fingerprint that told them an atmosphere
00:04:30 --> 00:04:32 is there at all. Rocky planet,
00:04:32 --> 00:04:35 habitable zone, confirmed atmosphere.
00:04:35 --> 00:04:37 That combination has never been ticked off
00:04:37 --> 00:04:40 before on any world anywhere,
00:04:40 --> 00:04:41 and the
00:04:41 --> 00:04:43 Avery: researchers believe the planet probably holds
00:04:43 --> 00:04:46 a substantial amount of water too. With the
00:04:46 --> 00:04:48 greenhouse atmosphere you have conditions
00:04:48 --> 00:04:50 that could plausibly support liquid water at
00:04:50 --> 00:04:53 Anna: the surface, with the lead author being very
00:04:53 --> 00:04:56 careful, as we stressed on Friday, to
00:04:56 --> 00:04:59 say nobody is claiming this planet has life.
00:05:00 --> 00:05:02 What they're claiming is a the first
00:05:03 --> 00:05:05 rocky temperate world where we can even ask
00:05:05 --> 00:05:07 the question with real data.
00:05:08 --> 00:05:10 Avery: Every generation of astronomers gets one or
00:05:10 --> 00:05:13 two first time in history moments. This week
00:05:13 --> 00:05:16 we got one. If you missed the full story,
00:05:16 --> 00:05:18 it's Friday's episode. So
00:05:18 --> 00:05:20 5e143.
00:05:20 --> 00:05:23 In your feed right now, highlight number
00:05:23 --> 00:05:26 two and it's less a story than a soap
00:05:26 --> 00:05:28 opera. Starship Flight 13
00:05:28 --> 00:05:31 gave us a full five act drama this week.
00:05:31 --> 00:05:34 Anna: Walk us through it, Avery. Because we covered
00:05:34 --> 00:05:35 a new twist Almost
00:05:35 --> 00:05:38 Avery: every day, Act 1 Monday we
00:05:38 --> 00:05:41 previewed the flight with SpaceX, aiming for
00:05:41 --> 00:05:44 midweek and the first functional Starlink V3
00:05:44 --> 00:05:47 satellites. Real working satellites this
00:05:47 --> 00:05:49 time, not the mass simulators of earlier
00:05:49 --> 00:05:52 flights. Act 2 Tuesday, the
00:05:52 --> 00:05:54 launch slipped to ah, Thursday after a
00:05:54 --> 00:05:56 successful 33 engine static fire.
00:05:57 --> 00:06:00 Act 3 Wednesday, the FAA
00:06:00 --> 00:06:02 formally closed its flight 12 mishap
00:06:02 --> 00:06:05 investigation, clearing the path. Act
00:06:05 --> 00:06:08 4 Thursday, the countdown reached
00:06:08 --> 00:06:08 zero
00:06:08 --> 00:06:11 Anna: and then stopped there the abort at
00:06:11 --> 00:06:14 T0. As we reported on Friday's show,
00:06:14 --> 00:06:16 some of the super heavy booster's Raptor
00:06:16 --> 00:06:19 engines failed to ignite and the vehicle's
00:06:19 --> 00:06:22 computers called an automatic abort. Just as
00:06:22 --> 00:06:25 the engines lit, Elon Musk said two
00:06:25 --> 00:06:27 Raptors would be removed and replaced.
00:06:27 --> 00:06:30 Avery: Which brings us to Act 5 and um, this part's
00:06:30 --> 00:06:33 new. Since yesterday's episode, SpaceX has
00:06:33 --> 00:06:36 restacked the two stages at Starbase. And
00:06:36 --> 00:06:38 Flight 13 is now scheduled for Monday
00:06:38 --> 00:06:41 evening, July 20th, US time, which
00:06:41 --> 00:06:43 Anna: means Tuesday morning for most of our
00:06:43 --> 00:06:46 Australian and New Zealand listeners. And it
00:06:46 --> 00:06:48 means we should have the results for you on
00:06:48 --> 00:06:51 Tuesday's show. The story that ate this week
00:06:51 --> 00:06:53 is about to headline next week, too.
00:06:53 --> 00:06:56 Avery: Third time lucky? We'll find out Monday.
00:06:56 --> 00:06:58 Anna: Highlight number three takes us to the
00:06:58 --> 00:07:01 Southern Hemisphere's crown jewel, Omega
00:07:01 --> 00:07:04 Centauri, the biggest and brightest globular
00:07:04 --> 00:07:07 cluster in the entire sky. As we covered
00:07:07 --> 00:07:09 on Wednesday's show, astronomers have found
00:07:09 --> 00:07:12 the first confirmed stellar mass black hole
00:07:12 --> 00:07:15 hiding among its 10 million stars.
00:07:16 --> 00:07:18 Avery: Found not by seeing it, you can't see it,
00:07:18 --> 00:07:20 but, uh, by watching stars move
00:07:21 --> 00:07:22 precisely.
00:07:22 --> 00:07:24 Anna: Using years of Hubble and James Webb
00:07:24 --> 00:07:27 astrometry, the painstaking measurement of
00:07:27 --> 00:07:30 stellar positions, the team tracked stars
00:07:30 --> 00:07:32 being swung around by something massive and
00:07:32 --> 00:07:35 invisible. The motions point to a stellar
00:07:35 --> 00:07:38 mass black hole, the first of its kind
00:07:38 --> 00:07:39 confirmed in the cluster.
00:07:40 --> 00:07:42 Avery: And what made Wednesday's episode special for
00:07:42 --> 00:07:44 our audience is that this isn't some faint
00:07:44 --> 00:07:47 smudge in a telescope catalog. Uh, Omega
00:07:47 --> 00:07:49 Centauri is a naked eye object from Australia
00:07:49 --> 00:07:52 and New Zealand. At this time of year, you
00:07:52 --> 00:07:54 can walk outside on a clear July evening,
00:07:55 --> 00:07:57 look up and see the fuzzy star
00:07:57 --> 00:08:00 Anna: that holds this black Hallie million
00:08:00 --> 00:08:02 suns packed into a ball you can cover with
00:08:02 --> 00:08:05 your thumbnail. And now we know at least one
00:08:05 --> 00:08:07 of them left a black hole behind. It's riding
00:08:07 --> 00:08:09 high in our winter sky right now. And we'll
00:08:09 --> 00:08:11 tell you exactly where to look.
00:08:11 --> 00:08:13 In the Skywatch segment, our final highlight
00:08:13 --> 00:08:16 Avery: is the double bill from Thursday's two
00:08:16 --> 00:08:19 discoveries from the Pluto system 10 years
00:08:19 --> 00:08:22 after New Horizons flew past. Proving that
00:08:22 --> 00:08:25 flyby is still the gift that keeps on giving.
00:08:25 --> 00:08:28 Anna: First, Pluto itself. Researchers combing
00:08:28 --> 00:08:30 through New Horizons imagery found evidence
00:08:30 --> 00:08:33 of landslides down steep crater walls,
00:08:33 --> 00:08:36 the first ever identified on Pluto. And
00:08:36 --> 00:08:39 some are enormous large enough, as we said on
00:08:39 --> 00:08:42 Thursday, to bury entire cities on Earth.
00:08:42 --> 00:08:45 Avery: Landslides on a world where the bedrock is
00:08:45 --> 00:08:47 water ice and the surface temperature sits
00:08:47 --> 00:08:49 around minus 230 degrees
00:08:49 --> 00:08:52 Celsius. Even in deep freeze,
00:08:52 --> 00:08:54 Pluto's geology is alive enough to move
00:08:54 --> 00:08:55 mountainsides.
00:08:56 --> 00:08:58 Anna: And then part two of the double bill. Pluto's
00:08:58 --> 00:09:01 giant moon Charon, where scientists showed
00:09:01 --> 00:09:03 that its network of tectonic fractures
00:09:04 --> 00:09:06 preserves a record of its ancient space spin
00:09:06 --> 00:09:09 down as, uh, Charon's rotation slowed over
00:09:09 --> 00:09:11 billions of years, locking one face
00:09:11 --> 00:09:14 permanently toward Pluto, the stresses
00:09:14 --> 00:09:17 cracked its crust in patterns we can still
00:09:17 --> 00:09:17 read today.
00:09:18 --> 00:09:21 Avery: A fossil record written in fractures.
00:09:21 --> 00:09:24 Ten years after a nine year journey and a
00:09:24 --> 00:09:26 nine hour flyby, the Pluto system is
00:09:26 --> 00:09:29 still handing us front page science. Not bad
00:09:29 --> 00:09:31 for a world some people try to demote out of
00:09:31 --> 00:09:32 the headlines.
00:09:33 --> 00:09:35 Anna: And now the story I've been saving all
00:09:35 --> 00:09:38 episode because it's brand new, it's
00:09:38 --> 00:09:39 historic and it's about tea.
00:09:40 --> 00:09:42 Avery: The finest sentence ever spoken on this
00:09:42 --> 00:09:45 Anna: program announced on Thursday. Seeds from
00:09:45 --> 00:09:48 South Africa's famous Rovioche plant are
00:09:48 --> 00:09:50 going to the International Space Station this
00:09:50 --> 00:09:53 October. They will be the first indigenous
00:09:53 --> 00:09:56 South African species and the first seeds
00:09:56 --> 00:09:59 from the African continent ever to go to
00:09:59 --> 00:09:59 space.
00:10:00 --> 00:10:02 Avery: Robios for listeners who haven't tried it,
00:10:02 --> 00:10:05 it's that lovely Swedish caffeine free
00:10:05 --> 00:10:08 red tea grown in the Cederberg region north
00:10:08 --> 00:10:10 of Cape Town and pretty much nowhere else on
00:10:10 --> 00:10:10 Earth.
00:10:11 --> 00:10:13 Anna: The mission is a partnership between the
00:10:13 --> 00:10:15 South African Robios Council, the space
00:10:15 --> 00:10:18 education company Max IQ Space and
00:10:18 --> 00:10:21 the South African Space Agency. The
00:10:21 --> 00:10:24 seeds travel in a sealed nanolab aboard an
00:10:24 --> 00:10:26 ISS resupply flight, spend at least
00:10:26 --> 00:10:29 six weeks exposed to microgravity and space
00:10:29 --> 00:10:32 radiation and return to Earth around December
00:10:32 --> 00:10:32 or January.
00:10:33 --> 00:10:36 Avery: And here's the part I love most. When they
00:10:36 --> 00:10:38 come back, the space flown seeds will be
00:10:38 --> 00:10:41 planted alongside ground control seeds.
00:10:41 --> 00:10:43 And the scientists doing that comparative
00:10:43 --> 00:10:45 study tracking germination, growth,
00:10:45 --> 00:10:48 resilience and yield are school students.
00:10:49 --> 00:10:51 Kids from the Cederberg region, the very
00:10:51 --> 00:10:54 region where Robios grows. Monitoring the
00:10:54 --> 00:10:55 plans of over 18 months.
00:10:56 --> 00:10:59 Anna: Kids from the birthplace of Robios running a
00:10:59 --> 00:11:01 real space biology experiment on their own
00:11:01 --> 00:11:04 hometown plant. If that doesn't launch a few
00:11:04 --> 00:11:06 careers in science, nothing will.
00:11:06 --> 00:11:09 Avery: It also joins a genuinely important research
00:11:09 --> 00:11:12 thread. Lettuce, peas and soybeans have
00:11:12 --> 00:11:14 all flown on the station as we work out how
00:11:14 --> 00:11:17 to grow food beyond Earth. Robios is
00:11:17 --> 00:11:19 hardy, drought adapted and packed with
00:11:19 --> 00:11:22 antioxidants. Honestly, if humanity's going
00:11:22 --> 00:11:24 to the moon and Mars, somebody should
00:11:24 --> 00:11:26 absolutely be bringing the tea.
00:11:26 --> 00:11:29 Anna: A story with warmth in every sense. We'll
00:11:29 --> 00:11:31 follow the seeds when they fly in October.
00:11:31 --> 00:11:34 Avery: Time for Skywatch what to look for from the
00:11:34 --> 00:11:36 Southern Hemisphere this week the
00:11:36 --> 00:11:39 Anna: Moon is returning to the evening sky as
00:11:39 --> 00:11:41 a waxing crescent after Tuesday's new Moon,
00:11:42 --> 00:11:44 low in the west after sunset and
00:11:44 --> 00:11:47 climbing higher each night with
00:11:47 --> 00:11:49 beautiful Earthshine on the unlit
00:11:49 --> 00:11:52 portion in these early days. It
00:11:52 --> 00:11:55 slit past brilliant Venus and the star
00:11:55 --> 00:11:57 Regulus late this week and the pairing
00:11:57 --> 00:11:59 is still worth a look as
00:11:59 --> 00:12:02 Avery: twilight fades but the Moon young and
00:12:02 --> 00:12:05 setting early, the evenings stay gloriously
00:12:05 --> 00:12:08 dark and that means the winter Milky Way. The
00:12:08 --> 00:12:10 galactic core in Sagittarius and Scorpius is
00:12:10 --> 00:12:13 virtually overhead in the mid evening from
00:12:13 --> 00:12:16 Australia and New Zealand. Right now from a
00:12:16 --> 00:12:19 dark site, it's the finest naked eye sight in
00:12:19 --> 00:12:19 nature.
00:12:19 --> 00:12:22 Anna: And while you're under it, find Omega
00:12:22 --> 00:12:25 Centauri, the very cluster from
00:12:25 --> 00:12:27 Wednesday's Black hole story. Look to
00:12:27 --> 00:12:30 the southwest in mid evening in the
00:12:30 --> 00:12:33 constellation Centaurus above the Southern
00:12:33 --> 00:12:35 Cross. To the naked eye it's a soft,
00:12:35 --> 00:12:38 fuzzy star in binoculars it
00:12:38 --> 00:12:41 swells into a glowing ball of ancient
00:12:41 --> 00:12:42 suns.
00:12:42 --> 00:12:45 Avery: Saturn rises late in the evening and stands
00:12:45 --> 00:12:47 high in the predawn sky for early risers,
00:12:47 --> 00:12:50 with Mars still tracking through Taurus near
00:12:50 --> 00:12:53 the red star Aldebaran in the dawn twilight.
00:12:53 --> 00:12:56 Anna: And given today's lead story, keep an
00:12:56 --> 00:12:59 eye on the aurora alerts. We're near
00:12:59 --> 00:13:01 solar maximum and one good
00:13:01 --> 00:13:04 coronal mass ejection can light up
00:13:04 --> 00:13:07 southern skies from Tasmania and the South
00:13:07 --> 00:13:10 Island. The Aurora australis is the
00:13:10 --> 00:13:12 friendly reminder of everything we discussed
00:13:12 --> 00:13:14 at the top of the show.
00:13:14 --> 00:13:16 Avery: And that's the week that was in space and
00:13:16 --> 00:13:19 astronomy. A sun with fewer limits than we
00:13:19 --> 00:13:22 thought, a rocky world with air, a rocket
00:13:22 --> 00:13:25 with one more chance on Monday, a black hole
00:13:25 --> 00:13:28 you can point at, landslides on Pluto and
00:13:28 --> 00:13:29 tea leaves headed for orbit.
00:13:30 --> 00:13:33 Anna: For all the show notes, links to every story
00:13:33 --> 00:13:35 and our full episode archive, visit
00:13:36 --> 00:13:38 astronomydaily IO and
00:13:38 --> 00:13:40 you'll find us across social media.
00:13:41 --> 00:13:44 AstroDailyPod we're back Monday
00:13:44 --> 00:13:46 with all the news, including, we hope, a
00:13:46 --> 00:13:47 starship launch.
00:13:48 --> 00:13:50 Avery: Until then, thanks for spending part of your
00:13:50 --> 00:13:52 weekend with us. I'm Avery.
00:13:52 --> 00:13:54 Anna: And I'm Anna. Clear skies everyone.
00:13:55 --> 00:13:56 Avery: Astronomy Day
00:13:58 --> 00:13:59 stories we told.
00:14:04 --> 00:14:04 Anna: You.
00:14:04 --> 00:14:04 Avery: Mhm.