Three of a Kind
Astronomy Daily: Space News July 31, 2026x
155
00:16:1814.98 MB

Three of a Kind

AnnaAnnaHost
S05E155 · Friday 31 July 2026 · Astronomy Daily with Anna & Avery. Four stories and a both-hemispheres skywatch. Australian English. ① Asteroid (44) Nysa — the first three-lobed world, and its hidden moon ● trilobate body — three lobes joined by two narrow necks; a candidate “first” of its kind. ● A new ~1 km moon, S/2026 (44) 1, was found orbiting ≥170 km out — spotted using high-contrast imaging borrowed from exoplanet work, and confirmed moving across two observing runs. ● The moon lets astronomers weigh Nysa (mass → density), which should help decide between a genuine contact-trinary and a single, deeply indented body. ● Nysa is a bright, main-belt E-type (enstatite-rich) asteroid, ~75 km across, known since 1857. ● Source: Lowell Observatory / University of Arizona press release, 29 Jul 2026; study “Unmasking (44) Nysa: Evidence for a Trilobate Structure” (Minker et al.). Coverage: Space.com, Gizmodo, 29–30 Jul 2026. ② Mapping Alien Continents — a NASA concept to image an exoplanet’s surface ● NASA’s 2026 NIAC round funds 18 early-stage “visionary” concepts (~$175k each, 9 months). These are seed studies, not missions. ● Paul Stankus (Brookhaven) proposes “Mapping Alien Continents”: resolve the surface of an Earth-like exoplanet — continents, oceans — in visible light. ● Method: a novel “dynamic hierarchical nulling” interferometer to suppress starlight at 10¹⁰-to-1 contrast, then combine beams from two spacecraft ~100 km apart (optical VLBI-style imaging). ● Source: NASA “2026 Innovative Technology Concepts” release and NIAC selections (posted 21 Jul; consolidated release ~29 Jul 2026); Universe Today feature, 30 Jul 2026. ③ Solar-storm watch — CMEs inbound, minor-storm and aurora potential ● Two faint coronal mass ejections, plus coronal-hole solar wind, are set to give Earth glancing blows; forecasters flag possible G1 (minor) geomagnetic storms and auroras over the coming days. ● G1 means little grid impact but aurora visible at somewhat lower latitudes than usual — see the skywatch for where to look, both hemispheres. ● Source: NOAA SWPC (WSA-ENLIL model); EarthSky / The Sun Today, 30 Jul 2026. ④ ESCAPADE’s family portrait of Earth and the Moon ● NASA’s twin Mars orbiters (“Blue” and “Gold,” built by Rocket Lab) imaged Earth and the Moon as thin crescents in visible and thermal-infrared light from a loiter orbit near Sun–Earth L2. ● In infrared, Earth’s night side glows with its own heat; the Moon’s shadowed half is far colder — a calibration check before Mars. ● ESCAPADE’s science goal (arrival Sept 2027): measure how the solar wind strips Mars’s unshielded atmosphere — the payoff of today’s solar-wind thread. ● Source: NASA (Goddard) image feature, ~25 Jul 2026 (images captured 3 Jul); NAU / phys.org; Universe Today, 29 Jul 2026. Skywatch — both hemispheres ● Bright waning-gibbous Moon (post-Buck-Moon, 29 Jul) washes out faint targets. ● Southern Delta Aquariids + Alpha Capricornids just past peak (SH-favoured; Moon-hampered). Perseids build to a near-moonless peak on the night of 12–13 Aug — prime for North America, low in the north for the SH. ● 12 Aug total solar eclipse: totality across Greenland / Iceland / Spain; partial for parts of northern North America and Europe. ISO 12312-2 eye protection required for any partial phase. ● Pre-dawn planets low in the east (Sydney and North American framing). Aurora watch for high latitudes both hemispheres if the storms land. ● Diary: a spent Falcon 9 upper stage (2025-010D) is predicted to hit the Moon near Einstein Crater on 5 Aug 2026, ~06:35 UTC (~2:34 a.m. ET). North America best-timed; telescope needed, Moon ~56% lit, target the limb dust plume. From Sydney the Moon is down at impact — rely on LRO after-images. Callback to E125/E147. Source: Fernando et al., arXiv 2607.14625.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--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.astronomydaily.io/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!

Get the best secure and private email on the planet. Stop your Government, google and who knows who else spying on every email you write. Do what we did and use ProtonMail. They beleive in privacy and there are no ads in their business model...yet they still provide a free forever service. Check them out and get out special deal at www.astronomydaily.io/protonmail

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.


00:00:01 --> 00:00:03 Anna: Picture an asteroid. You're probably

00:00:03 --> 00:00:06 imagining a potato, one lump of

00:00:06 --> 00:00:09 rock tumbling through the dark. Now

00:00:09 --> 00:00:12 imagine three lumps joined at the neck

00:00:12 --> 00:00:15 like a cosmic string of pearls and

00:00:15 --> 00:00:18 a tiny moon keeping pace alongside.

00:00:18 --> 00:00:21 Avery: That's a real object out in the main belt.

00:00:21 --> 00:00:24 And until this week, nobody knew it looked

00:00:24 --> 00:00:26 like that. We'll take you there first, and

00:00:26 --> 00:00:27 then

00:00:27 --> 00:00:30 Anna: we'll chase a wind. One that lights up

00:00:30 --> 00:00:32 our own sky and the same kind of

00:00:32 --> 00:00:35 wind that's slowly stripping a planet

00:00:35 --> 00:00:36 bare.

00:00:36 --> 00:00:39 Avery: G' day and welcome to Astronomy Daily. It's

00:00:39 --> 00:00:42 Friday 31st July, 2026.

00:00:42 --> 00:00:43 I'm Avery.

00:00:43 --> 00:00:46 Anna: And I'm Anna. Four stories today,

00:00:46 --> 00:00:48 a skywatch that spans both

00:00:48 --> 00:00:51 hemispheres and a thread running right

00:00:51 --> 00:00:54 through the back half of the show. Avery,

00:00:54 --> 00:00:55 where do we start?

00:00:55 --> 00:00:58 Avery: Where else? With the three faced asteroid.

00:00:59 --> 00:01:01 Anna: So, asteroid 44

00:01:01 --> 00:01:04 NISA. The number tells you it was one of

00:01:04 --> 00:01:07 the early finds. Discovered back in

00:01:07 --> 00:01:09 1857. One of the

00:01:09 --> 00:01:12 brightest asteroids in the whole main

00:01:12 --> 00:01:15 belt. That broad river of rubble between

00:01:15 --> 00:01:17 Mars and Jupiter. It's about

00:01:17 --> 00:01:20 75 kilometers across at its widest.

00:01:21 --> 00:01:24 So a serious chunk of rock, one of the

00:01:24 --> 00:01:26 largest of its particular type.

00:01:26 --> 00:01:29 Its type matters here. NISA is

00:01:29 --> 00:01:32 what astronomers call an E type. Its

00:01:32 --> 00:01:35 surface is rich in a pale mineral called

00:01:35 --> 00:01:38 instatite, which makes it unusually

00:01:38 --> 00:01:41 bright and reflective. There aren't many

00:01:41 --> 00:01:43 big E types, so NYSSA has always

00:01:43 --> 00:01:46 been a bit of a favorite. But its shape

00:01:46 --> 00:01:49 has been a nagging mystery for years.

00:01:49 --> 00:01:52 Earlier observations hinted it might be

00:01:52 --> 00:01:55 what's called a contact binary. Two

00:01:55 --> 00:01:58 lobes stuck together, a bit like a

00:01:58 --> 00:02:00 peanut or a snowman. We've seen

00:02:00 --> 00:02:03 plenty of those. Comet 67P

00:02:03 --> 00:02:06 that Rosetta visited, the little asteroid

00:02:06 --> 00:02:09 Dimorphos that the NASA Dart mission crashed

00:02:09 --> 00:02:12 into last year. Donald Johansen that

00:02:12 --> 00:02:15 the Lucy spacecraft flew past last year.

00:02:15 --> 00:02:17 Two lobes is almost normal.

00:02:18 --> 00:02:20 BISA isn't normal. A team

00:02:21 --> 00:02:23 led by Kate Minker at, uh, Lowell Observatory

00:02:24 --> 00:02:26 has just announced in a study with the

00:02:26 --> 00:02:29 wonderful title Unmasking 44

00:02:29 --> 00:02:32 Nysa, that Nyssa appears to have

00:02:32 --> 00:02:35 three lobes. Three joined by

00:02:35 --> 00:02:38 two narrow necks, like, uh, a figure carved

00:02:38 --> 00:02:40 with two deep waists around it.

00:02:41 --> 00:02:43 If it holds up, it's the first tri

00:02:43 --> 00:02:45 lobed asteroid ever seen.

00:02:46 --> 00:02:49 Avery: Three lobes? How do you even see that? These

00:02:49 --> 00:02:52 things are tiny dots, even in big telescopes.

00:02:52 --> 00:02:55 Anna: That's the clever part. They used two of

00:02:55 --> 00:02:58 the sharpest eyes on Earth. The Large

00:02:58 --> 00:03:00 Binocular Telescope in Arizona. Its

00:03:00 --> 00:03:03 main mirror is about eight meters, roughly

00:03:03 --> 00:03:06 three times the size of Hubble's, running an

00:03:06 --> 00:03:09 instrument called sharkvis, plus

00:03:09 --> 00:03:11 the Very Large Telescope down in Chile.

00:03:12 --> 00:03:15 And they used adaptive optics, a mirror

00:03:15 --> 00:03:17 that flexes hundreds of times a second,

00:03:18 --> 00:03:20 nearly 600 tiny actuators

00:03:20 --> 00:03:23 pushing on it to cancel out the blurring of

00:03:23 --> 00:03:26 our atmosphere in real time. The

00:03:26 --> 00:03:29 result is sharper than Hubble. They imaged

00:03:29 --> 00:03:31 NISA on two nights, 15

00:03:31 --> 00:03:34 February and 21 March this year.

00:03:35 --> 00:03:37 And both times the same strange

00:03:37 --> 00:03:39 three part silhouette turned up.

00:03:40 --> 00:03:42 Which brings us to the second surprise.

00:03:42 --> 00:03:45 NISA has a moon, a little one,

00:03:45 --> 00:03:48 about a kilometer across, orbiting at

00:03:48 --> 00:03:50 least 170 kilometers out.

00:03:51 --> 00:03:53 It's been given the placeholder name

00:03:53 --> 00:03:55 S202644

00:03:55 --> 00:03:58 1, and it

00:03:58 --> 00:04:01 was hiding in plain sight, drowned out by

00:04:01 --> 00:04:03 the glare of the much brighter asteroid next

00:04:03 --> 00:04:06 to it. To dig it out, the team borrowed a

00:04:06 --> 00:04:09 trick from a completely different corner of

00:04:10 --> 00:04:13 high contrast imaging, the same family

00:04:13 --> 00:04:15 of techniques we used to pull a faint

00:04:15 --> 00:04:18 planet out of the glare of its star.

00:04:18 --> 00:04:20 As one of the sharkvis scientists,

00:04:21 --> 00:04:23 Gianluca Lee Cauce, put it, they used

00:04:23 --> 00:04:26 that technique to catch a faint companion

00:04:26 --> 00:04:29 whose light was being swamped by the primary.

00:04:29 --> 00:04:32 And because they caught it moving across two

00:04:32 --> 00:04:35 separate observing runs, they know it's

00:04:35 --> 00:04:38 genuinely in orbit, not a background star.

00:04:38 --> 00:04:41 Avery: Photobombing the shot and a, uh, moon is

00:04:41 --> 00:04:41 useful, right?

00:04:42 --> 00:04:44 Anna: Not just a bonus, it's enormously

00:04:44 --> 00:04:47 useful. This is the thing I love about it.

00:04:47 --> 00:04:50 Watch how fast the moon goes round and how

00:04:50 --> 00:04:53 far out it sits and you can weigh the

00:04:53 --> 00:04:55 asteroid. You get nice's mass.

00:04:56 --> 00:04:58 Combine the mass with the size and you get

00:04:58 --> 00:05:01 its density. And density is the whole

00:05:01 --> 00:05:03 ball game here, because there are two

00:05:03 --> 00:05:06 competing stories for what NYSA actually

00:05:06 --> 00:05:09 is. Story one, it's a

00:05:09 --> 00:05:11 genuine three part body, maybe a

00:05:11 --> 00:05:14 contact trinary. Three chunks that

00:05:14 --> 00:05:17 drifted together and gently stuck.

00:05:18 --> 00:05:21 It's one solid, deeply dented lump

00:05:21 --> 00:05:24 that only looks three lobed from our angle.

00:05:25 --> 00:05:27 Density can help tell those apart. A loose

00:05:27 --> 00:05:30 rubble pile reads light and fluffy. A

00:05:30 --> 00:05:33 solid coherent rock reads dense.

00:05:34 --> 00:05:36 So that little moon is going to help settle

00:05:36 --> 00:05:39 what kind of world this is and how it got

00:05:39 --> 00:05:40 so weird.

00:05:40 --> 00:05:42 Avery: Any theories on the how?

00:05:42 --> 00:05:45 Anna: Nothing locked in. And that honesty is

00:05:45 --> 00:05:48 the fun of it. It could be a record of

00:05:48 --> 00:05:51 gentle slow motion collisions in the belt,

00:05:51 --> 00:05:54 bodies bumping and merging over billions of

00:05:54 --> 00:05:57 years. It could be the aftermath of a

00:05:57 --> 00:05:59 bigger smash that left a battered

00:05:59 --> 00:06:02 survivor. Or observations of that

00:06:02 --> 00:06:05 moon will narrow it down. For now, we've got

00:06:05 --> 00:06:08 a brand new kind of object, a triple

00:06:08 --> 00:06:11 lobed asteroid with its own satellite

00:06:11 --> 00:06:13 sitting in a part of the sky we thought we

00:06:13 --> 00:06:16 understood. And that's the quiet lesson of

00:06:16 --> 00:06:18 NISA. It was found in

00:06:18 --> 00:06:21 1857. It's one of the best

00:06:21 --> 00:06:24 studied bright asteroids we have. And in

00:06:24 --> 00:06:27 2026, it still had two secrets

00:06:27 --> 00:06:30 left. A shape nobody expected and a

00:06:30 --> 00:06:33 moon nobody had seen. The solar system

00:06:33 --> 00:06:34 is not done surprising

00:06:34 --> 00:06:37 Avery: us from a world we can nearly

00:06:37 --> 00:06:39 touch to one we may never reach,

00:06:40 --> 00:06:42 but might one day actually see.

00:06:43 --> 00:06:45 NASA has just backed a genuinely audacious

00:06:45 --> 00:06:48 idea. A plan to photograph the surface of a

00:06:48 --> 00:06:51 planet around another star. Not detect

00:06:51 --> 00:06:53 it, not measure it, see it.

00:06:53 --> 00:06:56 Continents, oceans, weather.

00:06:56 --> 00:06:59 Anna: Hang on, we can't do that. I feel

00:06:59 --> 00:07:01 like we have pictures of exoplanets.

00:07:02 --> 00:07:05 Avery: We have dots. Every exoplanet we've

00:07:05 --> 00:07:07 ever found is, in a sense, invisible. We

00:07:07 --> 00:07:10 infer it from a star's tiny wobble or a faint

00:07:10 --> 00:07:12 dip dip in brightness as the planet crosses

00:07:12 --> 00:07:15 in front. In the very best cases, we've

00:07:15 --> 00:07:18 captured a single pixel of light. Nobody

00:07:18 --> 00:07:20 has ever resolved a surface. The problem is

00:07:20 --> 00:07:23 brutal. A star can be around 10 billion times

00:07:23 --> 00:07:25 brighter than the little Earth sized planet

00:07:25 --> 00:07:28 beside it. And the two sit almost on top of

00:07:28 --> 00:07:31 each other in the sky. The new concept comes

00:07:31 --> 00:07:33 from physicist Paul Stankis at Brookhaven,

00:07:33 --> 00:07:36 and it's one of 18 early stage ideas NASA

00:07:36 --> 00:07:38 just funded through its innovative Advanced

00:07:38 --> 00:07:41 Concepts Program. Nyack. These are

00:07:41 --> 00:07:43 seed grants, small money, nine months,

00:07:43 --> 00:07:46 permission to chase something wild. His is

00:07:46 --> 00:07:49 called Mapping Alien Continents. It works in

00:07:49 --> 00:07:52 two moves. First, a new kind of light

00:07:52 --> 00:07:54 canceling instrument, another that blots out

00:07:54 --> 00:07:57 the star's glare while keeping the planet's

00:07:57 --> 00:07:59 light at a contrast of 10 billion to one or

00:07:59 --> 00:08:02 better. Then the really bold bit. You fly

00:08:02 --> 00:08:05 two of these on separate spacecraft about a

00:08:05 --> 00:08:07 hundred kilometers apart and combine their

00:08:07 --> 00:08:09 beams till they act as one enormous

00:08:09 --> 00:08:12 telescope, big enough in principle to resolve

00:08:12 --> 00:08:14 features on the planet's face.

00:08:14 --> 00:08:17 Anna: A telescope a hundred kilometers wide

00:08:17 --> 00:08:20 made of two spacecraft flying in formation.

00:08:20 --> 00:08:22 Avery: That's a dream. And I want to be honest about

00:08:22 --> 00:08:25 where this sits. It's a concept study, not a

00:08:25 --> 00:08:28 mission on a launch pad. It may never fly in

00:08:28 --> 00:08:30 this form, but this is exactly how the big

00:08:30 --> 00:08:33 leaps begin. Someone asks what if we could

00:08:33 --> 00:08:36 actually look? And NASA hands him a little

00:08:36 --> 00:08:37 funding to find out whether the physics

00:08:37 --> 00:08:40 holds. If it ever came together, it would

00:08:40 --> 00:08:42 turn exoplanets from statistics into

00:08:42 --> 00:08:43 places.

00:08:44 --> 00:08:45 Now, Anna, speaking of things, we can

00:08:45 --> 00:08:48 Anna: see from right here, we've got weather coming

00:08:48 --> 00:08:51 in space. Weather forecasters at

00:08:51 --> 00:08:53 noaa, uh, are tracking a couple of clouds of

00:08:53 --> 00:08:56 solar material heading our way. Coronal

00:08:56 --> 00:08:59 mass ejections, big blobs of charged

00:08:59 --> 00:09:02 gas flung off the sun. These two

00:09:02 --> 00:09:04 are faint and they're only likely to give

00:09:04 --> 00:09:07 Earth a glancing blow over the next day or

00:09:07 --> 00:09:07 so.

00:09:08 --> 00:09:09 Avery: Glancing, but not nothing.

00:09:10 --> 00:09:13 Anna: Not Nothing. Layer those CMEs

00:09:13 --> 00:09:16 on top of a fast stream already flowing from

00:09:16 --> 00:09:18 a coronal hole, a gap in the Sun's

00:09:18 --> 00:09:21 outer atmosphere, and the models suggest we

00:09:21 --> 00:09:24 could tip into a G1 storm. That's

00:09:24 --> 00:09:27 the mildest rung on the scale. No drama for

00:09:27 --> 00:09:29 the power grid, but enough to nudge the

00:09:29 --> 00:09:32 aurora to slightly lower latitudes than

00:09:32 --> 00:09:35 usual. The so over the coming nights. It's

00:09:35 --> 00:09:37 worth a look if you're up high, and I'll give

00:09:37 --> 00:09:39 you the where and when in the skywatch.

00:09:40 --> 00:09:43 Here's the thread, though. That same solar

00:09:43 --> 00:09:45 wind, the constant outflow from the sun

00:09:46 --> 00:09:48 is gentle at Earth because we've got a strong

00:09:48 --> 00:09:51 magnetic field and a thick atmosphere

00:09:51 --> 00:09:54 shrugging it off. Auroras are the pretty

00:09:54 --> 00:09:57 side of that shrug. But not every world

00:09:57 --> 00:09:59 is so lucky. Some planets have been

00:09:59 --> 00:10:02 standing in that wind for billions of years

00:10:02 --> 00:10:04 with no shield at all.

00:10:04 --> 00:10:07 Avery: Which is the perfect cue for my next 1mi

00:10:07 --> 00:10:10 escapade, a pair of NASA's craft

00:10:10 --> 00:10:12 nicknamed Blue and Gold after the University

00:10:12 --> 00:10:15 of California, Berkeley colors, built by

00:10:15 --> 00:10:17 Rocket Lab and launched last November on a

00:10:17 --> 00:10:20 blue origin. New Glenn. They're Mars bound.

00:10:20 --> 00:10:23 And right now they're loitering out near a

00:10:23 --> 00:10:25 spot called L2, about a million miles

00:10:25 --> 00:10:28 beyond Earth, waiting for the road to Mars to

00:10:28 --> 00:10:31 open. While they wait, one of them turned its

00:10:31 --> 00:10:34 cameras back toward home and snapped a family

00:10:34 --> 00:10:37 portrait. Earth and the Moon together as

00:10:37 --> 00:10:39 two slim crescents. In ordinary

00:10:39 --> 00:10:41 visible light, they look exactly as you'd

00:10:41 --> 00:10:44 hope, two bright sunlit sickles against the

00:10:44 --> 00:10:47 black. But these cameras also see in thermal

00:10:47 --> 00:10:50 infrared heat, and that view is stranger

00:10:50 --> 00:10:53 and honestly, a bit beautiful. The night

00:10:53 --> 00:10:55 side of Earth glows softly with its own

00:10:55 --> 00:10:58 warmth, while the Moon's dark half sits

00:10:58 --> 00:11:01 far, far colder. A portrait in

00:11:01 --> 00:11:03 light and a portrait in heat of the same two

00:11:03 --> 00:11:04 worlds.

00:11:04 --> 00:11:07 Anna: Gorgeous. But that's not why they built it,

00:11:07 --> 00:11:08 is it?

00:11:08 --> 00:11:10 Avery: It's not. And here's where our, uh, thread

00:11:10 --> 00:11:13 lands. Escapade exists to study exactly what

00:11:13 --> 00:11:15 we were just talking about. Its whole job,

00:11:15 --> 00:11:18 once it reaches Mars in 2027, is to measure

00:11:18 --> 00:11:20 how the solar wind strips away the Martian

00:11:20 --> 00:11:23 atmosphere. Mars doesn't have a global

00:11:23 --> 00:11:26 magnetic shield like ours, so the same wind

00:11:26 --> 00:11:28 that just gives us auroras has, over billions

00:11:28 --> 00:11:31 of years, helped peel Mars from a warmer,

00:11:31 --> 00:11:33 wetter world. The thin, cold desert we see

00:11:33 --> 00:11:36 today. Two spacecraft taking readings from

00:11:36 --> 00:11:39 two vantage points at once, watching a planet

00:11:39 --> 00:11:42 lose its air in real time. That Earth and

00:11:42 --> 00:11:44 Moon portrait was really a calibration check,

00:11:44 --> 00:11:46 a chance to point the cameras at uh, familiar

00:11:46 --> 00:11:49 targets before the main event, but it doubles

00:11:49 --> 00:11:52 as a quiet reminder. A shielded world

00:11:52 --> 00:11:55 and an unshielded one are separated by

00:11:55 --> 00:11:56 not very much at

00:11:56 --> 00:11:59 Anna: all the wind that paints our sky

00:11:59 --> 00:12:02 and the wind that scours Mars. The same

00:12:02 --> 00:12:04 sun. Lovely thread Avery

00:12:04 --> 00:12:06 right out under the sky.

00:12:07 --> 00:12:09 First the moon. We've just come off the full

00:12:09 --> 00:12:12 buck moon on the 29th, so we're in a

00:12:12 --> 00:12:15 bright waning gibbous stretch. M beautiful

00:12:15 --> 00:12:17 to look at, but that glare will wash out

00:12:17 --> 00:12:20 anything faint for the next several nights.

00:12:20 --> 00:12:23 Worth knowing before you plan meteors.

00:12:23 --> 00:12:26 The southern Delta Aquariids and the Alpha

00:12:26 --> 00:12:29 Capricornids have just passed their peak on

00:12:29 --> 00:12:32 the 30th in into the 31st. From here

00:12:32 --> 00:12:34 in the southern hemisphere, the Delta

00:12:34 --> 00:12:37 Aquarids still favor us. But with the moon

00:12:37 --> 00:12:39 this bright, keep expectations modest

00:12:39 --> 00:12:42 and watch for the occasional slow bright

00:12:42 --> 00:12:45 Capricornid fireball which both

00:12:45 --> 00:12:48 hemispheres can catch. The better news is

00:12:48 --> 00:12:50 what's coming. The Perseids build to

00:12:50 --> 00:12:53 their peak on the night of the 12th into the

00:12:53 --> 00:12:56 13th of August, and this year the Moon is

00:12:56 --> 00:12:59 nearly new, so it's a genuinely dark

00:12:59 --> 00:13:01 generous window. For North America,

00:13:01 --> 00:13:04 that's prime. Find a dark spot, look

00:13:04 --> 00:13:07 up after midnight and the northern sky can

00:13:07 --> 00:13:09 deliver a meteor a minute at its best.

00:13:10 --> 00:13:12 From the southern hemisphere, the Perseids

00:13:12 --> 00:13:15 sit low in the north so you'll see fewer.

00:13:15 --> 00:13:18 But a clear northern horizon is worth a try.

00:13:18 --> 00:13:21 Mark the 12th. Also on the 12th of

00:13:21 --> 00:13:24 August, a uh, total solar eclipse. The

00:13:24 --> 00:13:26 path of totality runs across Greenland,

00:13:26 --> 00:13:29 Iceland and a slice of Spain, with

00:13:29 --> 00:13:32 partial phases for parts of northern North

00:13:32 --> 00:13:34 America and Europe. If you're anywhere near

00:13:34 --> 00:13:37 it, never look at the partial sun without

00:13:37 --> 00:13:40 certified eclipse glasses that meet the

00:13:40 --> 00:13:41 ISO

00:13:41 --> 00:13:43


00:13:43 --> 00:13:46 standard. Ordinary sunglasses will not

00:13:46 --> 00:13:49 protect your eyes. Totality only is

00:13:49 --> 00:13:51 safe to view with the naked eye and only for

00:13:51 --> 00:13:54 those precious seconds it lasts. Planets

00:13:54 --> 00:13:57 quickly, both hemispheres. The pre dawn

00:13:57 --> 00:14:00 sky is the place to be with the brighter

00:14:00 --> 00:14:02 planets gathering low in the east before

00:14:02 --> 00:14:05 sunrise. From Sydney, look to the eastern

00:14:05 --> 00:14:08 horizon in the hour before dawn. From

00:14:08 --> 00:14:11 North America, the same window an hour or

00:14:11 --> 00:14:14 so before your local sunrise. One

00:14:14 --> 00:14:16 quick diary item and this one's for our

00:14:16 --> 00:14:19 telescope owners. On the 5th of August, a uh,

00:14:19 --> 00:14:22 dead SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage

00:14:22 --> 00:14:24 space junk we tracked since it launched

00:14:24 --> 00:14:27 Firefly's Blue Ghost lander back in January

00:14:27 --> 00:14:30 of last year is expected to smack

00:14:30 --> 00:14:33 into the moon near Einstein Crater at

00:14:33 --> 00:14:36 about half past six Universal Time.

00:14:36 --> 00:14:39 For North America, that's the small hours of

00:14:39 --> 00:14:42 the 5th and you're the best placed to try for

00:14:42 --> 00:14:44 it. Aim for the faint dust plume near the

00:14:44 --> 00:14:47 Moon's eastern edge. Not a naked eye

00:14:47 --> 00:14:50 flash. You'll want a decent telescope from

00:14:50 --> 00:14:53 Sydney. The Moon isn't up at impact, so down

00:14:53 --> 00:14:56 here we'll be leaning on the afterimages from

00:14:56 --> 00:14:59 orbiters like NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance

00:14:59 --> 00:15:01 Orbiter. And to close our thread, the

00:15:01 --> 00:15:04 aurora. If those solar storms land

00:15:04 --> 00:15:07 as forecast, watch the high latitudes over

00:15:07 --> 00:15:10 the coming nights across the northern tier of

00:15:10 --> 00:15:13 the United States and up into Canada in the

00:15:13 --> 00:15:15 north and down towards Tasmania,

00:15:15 --> 00:15:18 southern New Zealand and southern Victoria in

00:15:18 --> 00:15:21 the south. Same sun, same wind,

00:15:21 --> 00:15:23 both ends of the Earth. And if you catch a

00:15:23 --> 00:15:26 glow, you'll know exactly what you're looking

00:15:26 --> 00:15:26 at.

00:15:26 --> 00:15:29 Avery: Everything we talked about today, the links,

00:15:29 --> 00:15:31 the images of NISA and that Earth and moon

00:15:31 --> 00:15:32 portrait is at

00:15:32 --> 00:15:35 astronomydaily.IO, along with the

00:15:35 --> 00:15:38 daily newsfeed and the newsletter signup.

00:15:38 --> 00:15:40 Anna: And if you spotted an aurora or bagged a

00:15:40 --> 00:15:43 Perseid, tell us. There's a listener contact

00:15:43 --> 00:15:45 form on the site. And we love hearing what

00:15:45 --> 00:15:46 you've seen.

00:15:46 --> 00:15:49 Avery: That's Astronomy daily for Friday 31st

00:15:49 --> 00:15:51 July. I'm Avery.

00:15:51 --> 00:15:53 Anna: And I'm Anna. Until next time. Click. Clear

00:15:53 --> 00:15:54 Skies.