A Northwestern-led team builds a physics-based digital twin of the James Webb Space Telescope's coronagraph and recovers the giant planet 51 Eridani b in two-year-old data where standard processing could not see it. Plus VVV CL001, a dust-hidden cluster near the Milky Way's core dated at 13.4 billion years; China's most detailed account yet of its two-launch crewed Moon landing plan; and the flare alert system that tells sounding rockets exactly when to launch, as sunspot region AR4566 turns magnetically complex. The Planet in the Glare (lead) Ferrer-Chavez, Wang, Bouman, Freeman, Pueyo et al., Nature, 4 Nov 2026, DOI 10.1038/s41586-026-11213-z. FLIP (Physics-based Learning for Imaging Planets) models JWST/NIRCam coronagraph optics as a digital twin and subtracts simulated starlight. Tested on HIP 65426, 51 Eridani and TYC 5899: sensitivity improved 2–15×; 51 Eri b recovered at >5σ in F430M (CO₂ band) data where standard processing failed. Not a new planet; three-star demonstration; picometre-stability relief for the Habitable Worlds Observatory is a prospect, not yet shown. VVV CL001: the oldest cluster in the Galaxy? Olivares Carvajal, Zoccali et al., accepted to A&A, arXiv 2610.27969 (posted 20 Oct 2026). Age 13.4 ± 0.4 Gyr from Magellan/FourStar and Hubble photometry; [Fe/H] ≈ −2.2; ~7.3 kpc in the bulge. ~1 Gyr additional systematic from distance; Ton 2 dated at 13.6 Gyr — a strong candidate, not a settled record. China's crewed Moon landing plan Wang Xiang, 7th Manned Space Symposium, Beijing, 31 Oct 2026. Two Long March 10 launches; Lanyue lander and Mengzhou crew ship rendezvous in lunar orbit; crew of three, two land, rover on first landing. No new dates; target remains before 2030. Catching a flare in the act Early flare alert system, The Astrophysical Journal, 4 Nov 2026, DOI 10.3847/1538-4357/ae95fd. Enabled FOXSI-4 and Hi-C Flare to launch into an M-class flare on 17 Apr 2024 and FOXSI-5 to catch three flares on 14 May 2026. AR4566 reached beta-gamma-delta classification on 4 Nov. Quick hits Swift re-entered 7:39 a.m. EST 4 Nov (12:39 UTC) over North Sumatra; NASA's SSPICY (Starfish Space Otter) declared unrecoverable; final ISS roll-out solar array spacewalk (Kutryk, Menon); Hera begins early characterisation at Didymos per ESA's timeline.
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.
00:00:00 --> 00:00:02 Anna: Hello, everyone. Welcome back.
00:00:03 --> 00:00:06 A planet that was sitting in two year
00:00:06 --> 00:00:08 old telescope data all along, and
00:00:08 --> 00:00:11 nobody could see it. Not because it wasn't
00:00:11 --> 00:00:14 there, but because the telescope wobbles
00:00:14 --> 00:00:16 by a few billionths of a metre.
00:00:16 --> 00:00:18 Avery: Today, a team at Northwestern builds a
00:00:18 --> 00:00:20 digital twin of the James Webb Space
00:00:20 --> 00:00:23 Telescope's coronagraph and uses it to pull a
00:00:23 --> 00:00:26 giant planet out of the glare. Plus a star
00:00:26 --> 00:00:28 cluster near the heart of the Milky Way that
00:00:28 --> 00:00:30 may be 13.4 billion years old.
00:00:31 --> 00:00:33 China lays out its moon landing plan in more
00:00:33 --> 00:00:35 detail and a clever alert system that tells
00:00:35 --> 00:00:37 rockets exactly when to chase a solar flare.
00:00:38 --> 00:00:40 Anna: Welcome to Astronomy AstroDailyPod. I'm Anna.
00:00:41 --> 00:00:43 Avery: And I'm M. Avery, and we're coming to you
00:00:43 --> 00:00:44 from Sydney, Australia.
00:00:45 --> 00:00:46 Let's get into it.
00:00:46 --> 00:00:49 Anna: Let's start with a problem every planet
00:00:49 --> 00:00:52 hunter knows. Photographing a planet
00:00:52 --> 00:00:55 around another star is like trying to see
00:00:55 --> 00:00:57 a firefly hovering next to a floodlight.
00:00:58 --> 00:01:00 Even a young, hot giant planet can be
00:01:00 --> 00:01:03 100 times fainter than its star.
00:01:03 --> 00:01:06 For planets like Earth, it's 10 billion
00:01:06 --> 00:01:07 times.
00:01:07 --> 00:01:10 Avery: So telescopes use a coronagraph, which is a
00:01:10 --> 00:01:12 mask that blocks the star's light. But
00:01:12 --> 00:01:14 blocking the star isn't enough, is it?
00:01:14 --> 00:01:17 Anna: No. Some starlight always
00:01:17 --> 00:01:20 leaks around the mask and it forms a
00:01:20 --> 00:01:22 blotchy pattern of speckles that can look
00:01:22 --> 00:01:25 exactly like a planet. So
00:01:25 --> 00:01:27 astronomers clean up the image afterwards.
00:01:27 --> 00:01:30 For about 20 years, the Standard approach
00:01:30 --> 00:01:33 has been to photograph a second star with no
00:01:33 --> 00:01:36 planets, use that image as a reference
00:01:36 --> 00:01:37 and subtract it.
00:01:37 --> 00:01:39 Avery: And the catch is that, uh, the telescope
00:01:39 --> 00:01:41 isn't the same telescope between the two
00:01:41 --> 00:01:42 pictures
00:01:42 --> 00:01:45 Anna: exactly. Nothing is perfectly
00:01:45 --> 00:01:47 still. The lead author, PhD
00:01:47 --> 00:01:50 student Rodrigo Ferrer Chavez, points
00:01:50 --> 00:01:53 out that shifts or tilts of just a few
00:01:53 --> 00:01:55 nanometers change the pattern of light.
00:01:56 --> 00:01:58 Jason Wang, his supervisor, lists the
00:01:58 --> 00:02:01 culprits. Tiny thermal changes that make a
00:02:01 --> 00:02:03 mirror expand or contract,
00:02:04 --> 00:02:06 and the little motors in the cryocoolers that
00:02:06 --> 00:02:09 keep the instruments cold, which can make the
00:02:09 --> 00:02:12 mirrors vibrate. So the reference never
00:02:12 --> 00:02:15 quite matches, and the leftover glare can
00:02:15 --> 00:02:16 bury a faint planet.
00:02:16 --> 00:02:17 Avery: So what did they do instead?
00:02:18 --> 00:02:20 Anna: They built a digital twin.
00:02:20 --> 00:02:22 The method is called Flip
00:02:23 --> 00:02:25 Physics Based Learning for Imaging Planets.
00:02:26 --> 00:02:29 It's a virtual copy of Webb's near cam
00:02:29 --> 00:02:31 coronagraph that simulates how starlight
00:02:31 --> 00:02:34 travels through the mirrors and masks to the
00:02:34 --> 00:02:37 detector. Then they tune millions of
00:02:37 --> 00:02:40 parameters in that model. Things like tiny
00:02:40 --> 00:02:42 shifts in position and distortions in the
00:02:42 --> 00:02:45 optics until the simulated glare matches
00:02:45 --> 00:02:48 the real image. Then they
00:02:48 --> 00:02:49 subtract the simulation.
00:02:50 --> 00:02:52 Avery: That sounds like artificial intelligence.
00:02:52 --> 00:02:55 Anna: It uses the same optimization tools
00:02:55 --> 00:02:58 people use to train AI models. But Wang
00:02:58 --> 00:03:01 is careful to say they didn't use AI
00:03:01 --> 00:03:03 because they already know the physics of the
00:03:03 --> 00:03:05 telescope. They don't need a machine to guess
00:03:05 --> 00:03:08 it. The model is physics. The
00:03:08 --> 00:03:10 computer just finds the best setting.
00:03:11 --> 00:03:14 Avery: And the team is worth noticing. Alongside
00:03:14 --> 00:03:16 Ferrer, Chavez, and Wang are Kathryn Bowman
00:03:16 --> 00:03:18 from Caltech, who many listeners will know
00:03:18 --> 00:03:20 from the Event Horizon Telescope black hole
00:03:20 --> 00:03:23 images, Bill Freeman from MIT and
00:03:23 --> 00:03:25 Laurent Puejo from the Space Telescope
00:03:25 --> 00:03:28 Science Institute. It's computational imaging
00:03:28 --> 00:03:29 people working with telescope people.
00:03:29 --> 00:03:32 Anna: They tested it on existing Webb observations
00:03:32 --> 00:03:34 of three HIP
00:03:34 --> 00:03:37 65426 and 51
00:03:37 --> 00:03:40 Eridani, which both have known planets,
00:03:40 --> 00:03:42 and a third star, PYC
00:03:42 --> 00:03:45 5899, with no known companions
00:03:45 --> 00:03:45 at all.
00:03:45 --> 00:03:48 As a control across those observations,
00:03:49 --> 00:03:51 FLIP improved the sensitivity to faint
00:03:51 --> 00:03:54 planets by between 2 and 15
00:03:54 --> 00:03:56 times compared with the standard processing.
00:03:56 --> 00:03:59 Avery: And the headline is 51 Eridani B.
00:04:00 --> 00:04:02 Anna: Right. 51 Ary B is a
00:04:02 --> 00:04:05 young giant planet roughly twice the mass of
00:04:05 --> 00:04:08 Jupiter, about 100 light years away. Webb
00:04:08 --> 00:04:10 observed it a couple of years ago at a
00:04:10 --> 00:04:13 wavelength of 4.3 microns using a
00:04:13 --> 00:04:15 filter that sits right on a strong carbon
00:04:15 --> 00:04:18 dioxide absorption band. Carbon dioxide in
00:04:18 --> 00:04:21 the planet's atmosphere soaks up that light,
00:04:21 --> 00:04:24 so the planet is even fainter there. The
00:04:24 --> 00:04:26 original analysis, using the standard method,
00:04:27 --> 00:04:29 couldn't separate it from the leftover glare.
00:04:29 --> 00:04:32 Avery: Why does that particular wavelength matter so
00:04:32 --> 00:04:32 much?
00:04:33 --> 00:04:35 Anna: Because it's where the chemistry is.
00:04:35 --> 00:04:38 An earlier web study of 51 Ary B,
00:04:38 --> 00:04:41 led by William Balmer and published last
00:04:41 --> 00:04:44 year, did detect the planet at 4.1
00:04:44 --> 00:04:46 microns, but not at the longer wavelengths.
00:04:47 --> 00:04:49 That pattern pointed to two
00:04:49 --> 00:04:52 carbon chemistry that isn't in equilibrium
00:04:52 --> 00:04:55 with gas being churned up from deeper, hotter
00:04:55 --> 00:04:58 layers and an atmosphere relatively rich
00:04:58 --> 00:05:00 in heavy elements. Both are clues to
00:05:00 --> 00:05:03 how the planet formed. A giant planet that
00:05:03 --> 00:05:06 grew by first building a solid core and then
00:05:06 --> 00:05:09 sweeping up gas tends to end up enriched in
00:05:09 --> 00:05:12 heavy elements. So the dip at
00:05:12 --> 00:05:14 4.3 microns isn't a nuisance.
00:05:14 --> 00:05:17 It's the measurement you want. And it was
00:05:17 --> 00:05:20 exactly where the planet had disappeared into
00:05:20 --> 00:05:20 the glare.
00:05:21 --> 00:05:23 Avery: So a, uh, missing data point becomes a usable
00:05:23 --> 00:05:23 one.
00:05:23 --> 00:05:26 Anna: That's the idea, and it's worth saying why.
00:05:26 --> 00:05:28 The old approach struggles most at the
00:05:28 --> 00:05:31 faintest end, when the reference star's glare
00:05:31 --> 00:05:34 and the target's glare differ even slightly.
00:05:34 --> 00:05:37 The leftover pattern is brightest close to
00:05:37 --> 00:05:39 the star, which is exactly where young
00:05:39 --> 00:05:41 planets like 51 airy b orbit.
00:05:42 --> 00:05:45 It's about 0.4 arcseconds from its star
00:05:45 --> 00:05:48 model, the telescope itself and that leftover
00:05:48 --> 00:05:49 pattern shrinks.
00:05:49 --> 00:05:50 Avery: And with flip.
00:05:50 --> 00:05:53 Anna: With flip, the planet appears at better than
00:05:53 --> 00:05:56 five sigma in exactly the expected
00:05:56 --> 00:05:58 place and with the expected shape.
00:05:58 --> 00:06:01 Wang's phrase for it was science left
00:06:01 --> 00:06:04 on the table. The data were good, the
00:06:04 --> 00:06:05 tools weren't.
00:06:05 --> 00:06:07 Avery: Let's be precise about what this is and
00:06:07 --> 00:06:09 isn't, because the headlines are saying a
00:06:09 --> 00:06:11 hidden planet was discovered.
00:06:11 --> 00:06:14 Anna: Three things. First, 51
00:06:14 --> 00:06:17 Arai b isn't a new planet. It
00:06:17 --> 00:06:19 was discovered more than a decade ago. What's
00:06:19 --> 00:06:22 new is recovering it at a wavelength where it
00:06:22 --> 00:06:25 had been invisible, which matters because
00:06:25 --> 00:06:27 that's where you'd measure carbon dioxide in
00:06:27 --> 00:06:30 its atmosphere. Second, this
00:06:30 --> 00:06:33 is a demonstration on three stars. It needs
00:06:33 --> 00:06:35 to work across many more targets and
00:06:35 --> 00:06:37 instruments before we know how general it is.
00:06:37 --> 00:06:38 Avery: And third,
00:06:38 --> 00:06:41 Anna: third, the bigger promise. NASA's
00:06:41 --> 00:06:44 proposed habitable worlds Observatory aims to
00:06:44 --> 00:06:47 photograph Earth like planets around sun like
00:06:47 --> 00:06:47 stars.
00:06:48 --> 00:06:50 To do that, with today's approach, it may
00:06:50 --> 00:06:52 need to hold its optics stable to the
00:06:52 --> 00:06:55 picometer level, which is 100 to 1
00:06:55 --> 00:06:58 times steadier than Webb. The team
00:06:58 --> 00:07:01 suggests that instead of engineering perfect
00:07:01 --> 00:07:02 stability, you could correct for
00:07:02 --> 00:07:05 imperfections in software. That's a
00:07:05 --> 00:07:08 reasonable hope. It hasn't been shown at that
00:07:08 --> 00:07:08 level yet.
00:07:08 --> 00:07:10 Avery: There's a strong southern threat here.
00:07:11 --> 00:07:13 Anna: There is 51 Arie B
00:07:13 --> 00:07:16 was discovered with the Gemini Planet Imager
00:07:16 --> 00:07:18 on the Gemini South Telescope at Cerro
00:07:18 --> 00:07:21 Pachon, chile, announced in August
00:07:21 --> 00:07:24 2015. And it was notable then for showing
00:07:24 --> 00:07:27 methane like a young Jupiter. And
00:07:27 --> 00:07:29 hip 65426B was the
00:07:29 --> 00:07:32 first planet ever discovered by the Sphere
00:07:32 --> 00:07:34 instrument on Esso's Very Large Telescope at
00:07:34 --> 00:07:37 paranal back in 2017. Five
00:07:37 --> 00:07:40 years later, it became the first exoplanet
00:07:40 --> 00:07:42 Webb photographed, and Jason Wang was on that
00:07:42 --> 00:07:42 team too.
00:07:43 --> 00:07:43 Avery: And
00:07:43 --> 00:07:46 hip65426
00:07:46 --> 00:07:48 is a genuinely southern star.
00:07:48 --> 00:07:50 Anna: It is. It's in Centaurus at a
00:07:50 --> 00:07:53 declination of -51 degrees.
00:07:53 --> 00:07:56 From Sydney, it climbs to about 72
00:07:56 --> 00:07:59 degrees above the horizon. From Los
00:07:59 --> 00:08:01 Angeles, it barely clears 4 degrees.
00:08:02 --> 00:08:05 And from New York and London, it never rises
00:08:05 --> 00:08:08 at all. 51 Eridani, on the other
00:08:08 --> 00:08:10 hand, sits almost on the celestial equator.
00:08:11 --> 00:08:13 So everyone can see that one, and we'll come
00:08:13 --> 00:08:15 back to it in the sky watch.
00:08:15 --> 00:08:17 Avery: So what's the takeaway?
00:08:17 --> 00:08:20 Anna: Ferrer Chavez put it nicely. We don't
00:08:20 --> 00:08:22 know of any planets around other stars that
00:08:22 --> 00:08:25 look like the ones in our own solar system.
00:08:25 --> 00:08:27 And it isn't necessarily because they don't
00:08:27 --> 00:08:30 exist. It's because we can't see them yet.
00:08:31 --> 00:08:34 Every time the techniques improve, new kinds
00:08:34 --> 00:08:36 of planets turn up. This one
00:08:36 --> 00:08:38 improves the technique without touching the
00:08:38 --> 00:08:40 hardware, and it can be applied to data
00:08:40 --> 00:08:42 that's already sitting in the archive.
00:08:43 --> 00:08:45 Avery: Which means there may be more planets already
00:08:45 --> 00:08:47 hiding in Webb's archive.
00:08:47 --> 00:08:50 Anna: That's the next thing to watch whether Flip
00:08:50 --> 00:08:52 turns up something genuinely new in old data.
00:08:53 --> 00:08:55 The paper is in Nature this week titled
00:08:56 --> 00:08:58 Imaging Exoplanets below the Telescope
00:08:58 --> 00:08:59 Stability Limit.
00:08:59 --> 00:09:02 Avery: Our next story looks back almost as far as
00:09:02 --> 00:09:05 you can. A team led by Julio Olivares
00:09:05 --> 00:09:08 Carvajal, working with Manuela Socali and
00:09:08 --> 00:09:10 colleagues in Chile, has dated a globular
00:09:10 --> 00:09:12 cluster called VVV CL
00:09:13 --> 00:09:16 001 at 13.4
00:09:16 --> 00:09:18 billion years, give or take 400 million.
00:09:19 --> 00:09:22 Anna: The universe is about 13.8
00:09:22 --> 00:09:25 billion years old, so that would put the
00:09:25 --> 00:09:28 star's birth only a few hundred million
00:09:28 --> 00:09:30 years after the Big Bang.
00:09:30 --> 00:09:33 Avery: That's right. The paper was posted last month
00:09:33 --> 00:09:35 and has been accepted by Astronomy and
00:09:35 --> 00:09:38 Astrophysics. It calls the cluster a
00:09:38 --> 00:09:40 strong candidate for the most ancient star
00:09:40 --> 00:09:43 cluster in the galaxy. And it's a hard
00:09:43 --> 00:09:45 object to study. VVV
00:09:45 --> 00:09:48 CL001 sits towards the
00:09:48 --> 00:09:50 galactic bulge in Sagittarius, about
00:09:50 --> 00:09:53 24 light years away, behind thick
00:09:53 --> 00:09:56 dust and the crowded foreground of unrelated
00:09:56 --> 00:09:56 stars.
00:09:57 --> 00:09:59 Anna: So how do you date it?
00:09:59 --> 00:10:02 Avery: Globular cluster stars are all born at about
00:10:02 --> 00:10:05 the same time, and heavier stars burn through
00:10:05 --> 00:10:08 their core hydrogen first, the point where
00:10:08 --> 00:10:10 stars are just leaving the main sequence. The
00:10:10 --> 00:10:13 turnoff works like a clock. The team
00:10:13 --> 00:10:16 used near infrared images from the four star
00:10:16 --> 00:10:19 camera on the 6.5 metre Magellan Bod
00:10:19 --> 00:10:22 Telescope at Las Campanas, spanning about 13
00:10:22 --> 00:10:24 years, to pick out true cluster members by
00:10:24 --> 00:10:26 their M motion and pin down the distance.
00:10:27 --> 00:10:29 Then they used Hubble images to reach the
00:10:29 --> 00:10:32 turnoff. Two independent sets of stellar
00:10:32 --> 00:10:34 models gave 13.47 and
00:10:34 --> 00:10:36 13.39 billion years.
00:10:37 --> 00:10:38 Anna: And the chemistry fits.
00:10:39 --> 00:10:42 Avery: It does. Its stars carry less than 1% of the
00:10:42 --> 00:10:44 sun's proportion of iron, which makes it the
00:10:44 --> 00:10:46 most metal poor globular cluster known in the
00:10:46 --> 00:10:49 bulge. Earlier studies put it at around 12
00:10:49 --> 00:10:50 billion years, but they couldn't see deep
00:10:50 --> 00:10:52 enough to read the turnoff directly.
00:10:53 --> 00:10:54 Anna: What are the caveats?
00:10:55 --> 00:10:58 Avery: The big one is distance. The
00:10:58 --> 00:11:01 team adds a systematic uncertainty of about
00:11:01 --> 00:11:03 a billion years from the distance alone.
00:11:04 --> 00:11:06 Using a slightly smaller distance from an
00:11:06 --> 00:11:08 earlier study pushes the age to
00:11:08 --> 00:11:10 13.7 billion years, which is
00:11:10 --> 00:11:12 uncomfortably close to the age of the
00:11:12 --> 00:11:15 universe itself. That tells you the
00:11:15 --> 00:11:17 distance is the weakest link.
00:11:17 --> 00:11:20 And it isn't the only contender. Another team
00:11:20 --> 00:11:23 this year dated the bulge cluster Ton2
00:11:23 --> 00:11:25 at 13.6 billion, and the error
00:11:25 --> 00:11:28 bars overlap. So It's a strong candidate,
00:11:28 --> 00:11:30 not a crowned winner,
00:11:30 --> 00:11:32 Anna: and the southern spine is about as strong as
00:11:32 --> 00:11:33 it gets.
00:11:33 --> 00:11:36 Avery: It was discovered in 2011 by the
00:11:36 --> 00:11:39 VVV survey on ESO's VISTA
00:11:39 --> 00:11:40 telescope at Paranal.
00:11:41 --> 00:11:44 Its distance comes from Magellan and the
00:11:44 --> 00:11:47 team has deep roots in Chile. From
00:11:47 --> 00:11:49 Sydney it climbs to 80 degrees, almost
00:11:49 --> 00:11:52 straight overhead in the winter months. From
00:11:52 --> 00:11:55 New York it peaks at 25 degrees,
00:11:55 --> 00:11:57 and from London just 14.
00:11:58 --> 00:12:00 Anna: Next China has given its most detailed public
00:12:00 --> 00:12:02 account yet of how it plans to land
00:12:02 --> 00:12:05 astronauts on the moon. Wang Xiang, chief
00:12:05 --> 00:12:07 designer of China's Lunar Exploration
00:12:07 --> 00:12:10 Programme, presented it at the 7th manned
00:12:10 --> 00:12:13 space symposium in Beijing on 31 October.
00:12:13 --> 00:12:14 Avery: What's the architecture?
00:12:14 --> 00:12:17 Anna: Two launches and a meeting in lunar orbit. A
00:12:17 --> 00:12:20 long March 10 rocket sends the Lanyue lander
00:12:20 --> 00:12:23 first and it waits in lunar orbit. A second
00:12:23 --> 00:12:25 long March 10 sends the Mengzhou crew
00:12:25 --> 00:12:27 spacecraft to meet it. They dock, the
00:12:27 --> 00:12:30 astronauts transfer and Lanyue takes them
00:12:30 --> 00:12:32 down. The crew's three with two landing
00:12:33 --> 00:12:34 and a rover goes on the first landing.
00:12:35 --> 00:12:36 Avery: And the tests so far?
00:12:37 --> 00:12:39 Anna: According to Xinhua, Mengzhou has
00:12:39 --> 00:12:42 completed a zero height abort test and a
00:12:42 --> 00:12:44 maximum dynamic pressure escape test.
00:12:45 --> 00:12:48 Lanyue has completed a landing and takeoff
00:12:48 --> 00:12:50 test, and there's been a low altitude
00:12:50 --> 00:12:52 demonstration flight of the long March 10.
00:12:53 --> 00:12:55 Huang also said everything planned for the
00:12:55 --> 00:12:57 moon will first be tested in near Earth
00:12:57 --> 00:13:00 orbit, and every crewed mission will be
00:13:00 --> 00:13:02 validated by uncrewed tests. First,
00:13:02 --> 00:13:04 Avery: what wasn't said matters here too,
00:13:05 --> 00:13:08 Anna: right? There were no new dates. The target
00:13:08 --> 00:13:10 remains a crewed landing before 2030.
00:13:11 --> 00:13:13 The two launch architecture is the one first
00:13:13 --> 00:13:16 described in 2023 and the lunar
00:13:16 --> 00:13:19 version of Long March 10. Mengzhou and
00:13:19 --> 00:13:22 Lanyue have not yet made their first flights.
00:13:22 --> 00:13:25 Avery: For comparison, NASA's update on 23
00:13:25 --> 00:13:28 October put Artemis 3 in low Earth
00:13:28 --> 00:13:31 orbit in summer 2027, docking
00:13:31 --> 00:13:33 Orion with both landers there, and aimed for
00:13:33 --> 00:13:36 a crewed landing in 2028. Both
00:13:36 --> 00:13:38 plans test the hardest steps closer to home.
00:13:38 --> 00:13:41 First, we'll report the milestones as they
00:13:41 --> 00:13:42 actually happen.
00:13:43 --> 00:13:45 Now, how do you launch a rocket to catch
00:13:45 --> 00:13:47 something that's over in minutes?
00:13:47 --> 00:13:49 Anna: That's the problem behind a paper published
00:13:49 --> 00:13:52 on 4 November in the Astrophysical Journal.
00:13:52 --> 00:13:55 Sounding rockets are a fast, cheap way to
00:13:55 --> 00:13:57 study the X rays and ultraviolet light from
00:13:57 --> 00:14:00 solar flares that our atmosphere absorbs.
00:14:00 --> 00:14:03 But a sounding rocket only gets about five
00:14:03 --> 00:14:05 minutes above the atmosphere, and a flare can
00:14:05 --> 00:14:06 fade just as quickly.
00:14:07 --> 00:14:09 Avery: So if you launch late, you miss it.
00:14:10 --> 00:14:13 Anna: Exactly. Typical alerts tell you a flare
00:14:13 --> 00:14:15 has started, but not whether It'll still be
00:14:15 --> 00:14:18 going when the rocket gets there. So a team
00:14:18 --> 00:14:21 built an early alert system that locates a
00:14:21 --> 00:14:22 flare and predicts how long it will last
00:14:22 --> 00:14:25 within minutes of detection using data from
00:14:25 --> 00:14:28 NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, NOAA's
00:14:28 --> 00:14:30 GOAS satellites and ground based
00:14:30 --> 00:14:32 observatories. And
00:14:32 --> 00:14:32 Avery: it worked.
00:14:32 --> 00:14:35 Anna: It did. In April 2024,
00:14:36 --> 00:14:38 two rockets, Foxe 4 and HI C
00:14:38 --> 00:14:41 Flare, sat on the pad at Poker Flat in
00:14:41 --> 00:14:44 Alaska for two weeks, waiting.
00:14:45 --> 00:14:47 On 17 April they launched into an M
00:14:47 --> 00:14:50 M class flare, the first time NASA
00:14:50 --> 00:14:52 sounding rockets have studied a flare in
00:14:52 --> 00:14:55 progress. Then in May this year,
00:14:55 --> 00:14:57 an improved version of the system launched
00:14:57 --> 00:15:00 Foxy 5, which caught three small flares.
00:15:00 --> 00:15:02 Avery: And the timing is good because the sun is
00:15:02 --> 00:15:03 active right now.
00:15:03 --> 00:15:06 Anna: It is a new sunspot region.
00:15:06 --> 00:15:09 AR4566 developed
00:15:09 --> 00:15:11 what's called a beta gamma delta magnetic
00:15:11 --> 00:15:13 configuration on the 4th of November.
00:15:14 --> 00:15:17 That's the most complex classification and
00:15:17 --> 00:15:19 regions like that are the ones that can
00:15:19 --> 00:15:21 produce M M class and even X class flares.
00:15:22 --> 00:15:25 NOAA's forecast at the time put the chance of
00:15:25 --> 00:15:27 an M M class flare at about 25%
00:15:28 --> 00:15:30 and an X class flare at about 10%.
00:15:31 --> 00:15:34 Avery: The team is still improving the system and
00:15:34 --> 00:15:36 the same early warning could help future
00:15:36 --> 00:15:38 rocket campaigns, solar observatories and
00:15:38 --> 00:15:41 space weather forecasting, including the
00:15:41 --> 00:15:43 Bureau of Meteorology's Space Weather Service
00:15:43 --> 00:15:44 here in Australia.
00:15:45 --> 00:15:47 Anna: Some um, quick updates. First for the record,
00:15:47 --> 00:15:49 the U.S. space Force confirmed that NASA's
00:15:49 --> 00:15:52 Swift Observatory re entered at 7:39am
00:15:52 --> 00:15:55 Eastern Time on Wednesday, which was 11:39pm
00:15:55 --> 00:15:57 Wednesday night here in Sydney over North
00:15:57 --> 00:16:00 Sumatra in Indonesia. Over almost
00:16:00 --> 00:16:03 22 years, Swift observed more than 2
00:16:03 --> 00:16:04 gamma ray bursts
00:16:04 --> 00:16:06 Avery: and it's been a hard week for servicing in
00:16:06 --> 00:16:08 orbit. NASA says its
00:16:08 --> 00:16:11 sspicy demonstration Starfish
00:16:11 --> 00:16:13 Space's Otter spacecraft launched on the 1st
00:16:13 --> 00:16:15 of October is not recoverable. A fault
00:16:15 --> 00:16:17 protection problem is keeping its radio
00:16:17 --> 00:16:18 switched off.
00:16:18 --> 00:16:21 Anna: On the space station Joshua
00:16:21 --> 00:16:23 Kutryk and Anil uh Menon completed the
00:16:23 --> 00:16:26 spacewalk to install the eighth and final
00:16:26 --> 00:16:29 rollout solar array, finishing an
00:16:29 --> 00:16:32 upgrade that began in 2021 and
00:16:32 --> 00:16:34 raises station power from about
00:16:34 --> 00:16:36 160 to about
00:16:36 --> 00:16:38 215 kilowatts.
00:16:38 --> 00:16:41 Avery: And ESA's HERA, according to the mission's
00:16:41 --> 00:16:43 timeline, began its early characterization
00:16:43 --> 00:16:45 phase at the Didymos asteroid pair this week
00:16:45 --> 00:16:48 from about 2530 kilometres away.
00:16:48 --> 00:16:50 ESA plans to release the first detailed
00:16:50 --> 00:16:53 images of Dimorphos on the 25th of November.
00:16:54 --> 00:16:57 Okay, moving on time for the skywatch and um,
00:16:57 --> 00:16:59 it's a good week to be up before Dawn.
00:17:00 --> 00:17:02 Anna: Brilliant. Venus is sitting very close to
00:17:02 --> 00:17:05 Spica, the brightest star in Virgo, low
00:17:05 --> 00:17:07 in the east before sunrise. They're only
00:17:07 --> 00:17:09 about one and a quarter to one and a half
00:17:09 --> 00:17:12 degrees apart all week. So a finger held at
00:17:12 --> 00:17:15 arm's length covers both. A thin crescent
00:17:15 --> 00:17:17 Moon joins them. And here the north gets the
00:17:17 --> 00:17:20 better view. On Saturday morning the seventh,
00:17:20 --> 00:17:23 about half an hour before sunrise, the moon
00:17:23 --> 00:17:25 is under 2 degrees from Venus from New York
00:17:25 --> 00:17:28 and about 2 degrees from London and around 3
00:17:28 --> 00:17:29 degrees from Los Angeles
00:17:30 --> 00:17:31 Avery: and uh, from here
00:17:31 --> 00:17:34 Anna: from Sydney. The closest pairing comes a day
00:17:34 --> 00:17:36 later on Sunday morning at about four and a
00:17:36 --> 00:17:37 half degrees.
00:17:37 --> 00:17:40 But the Moon is a very thin sliver, only
00:17:40 --> 00:17:43 about 2.5% lit and around 7
00:17:43 --> 00:17:45 degrees up. So you'll need a clear eastern
00:17:45 --> 00:17:48 horizon and binoculars help. Never
00:17:48 --> 00:17:51 sweep binoculars near the sun, so finish
00:17:51 --> 00:17:52 before it rises
00:17:52 --> 00:17:55 Avery: higher up. Mars and Jupiter are drawing
00:17:55 --> 00:17:55 together.
00:17:56 --> 00:17:58 They're just under 4 degrees apart now and
00:17:58 --> 00:18:01 um, they'll close to about 1.2 degrees on the
00:18:01 --> 00:18:04 16th of November by our own calculation.
00:18:05 --> 00:18:08 From Los Angeles and New York, they're 60 to
00:18:08 --> 00:18:11 70 degrees up before dawn from Sydney,
00:18:11 --> 00:18:13 about 32 degrees, but still easy to find.
00:18:14 --> 00:18:17 Anna: The Moon is new on Monday the 9th at
00:18:17 --> 00:18:20 6.02pm Sydney time. So the
00:18:20 --> 00:18:23 evenings around this weekend are dark in
00:18:23 --> 00:18:25 the south. That means the 4 Galaxy
00:18:25 --> 00:18:28 Challenge, the Large and Small
00:18:28 --> 00:18:30 Magellanic Clouds, the Andromeda
00:18:30 --> 00:18:33 Galaxy low in the north and our own
00:18:33 --> 00:18:35 Milky Way all in one night.
00:18:36 --> 00:18:38 Avery: And you can find today's lead story yourself
00:18:38 --> 00:18:39 from anywhere
00:18:39 --> 00:18:42 Anna: you can. 51 Eridani is
00:18:42 --> 00:18:44 a 5th magnitude star in the long
00:18:44 --> 00:18:47 winding constellation of Eridanus the
00:18:47 --> 00:18:49 river, which rises in the east. During the
00:18:49 --> 00:18:52 evening it sits almost on the celestial
00:18:52 --> 00:18:55 equator. By about 11pm it's around
00:18:55 --> 00:18:58 32 degrees up from Sydney, 40 from
00:18:58 --> 00:19:01 Los Angeles, 35 from New York and
00:19:01 --> 00:19:02 27 from London.
00:19:02 --> 00:19:05 From a dark sight, it's a faint naked eye
00:19:05 --> 00:19:08 star. You won't see the planet of course, but
00:19:08 --> 00:19:10 you'll be looking at the system. Webb just re
00:19:10 --> 00:19:10 examined
00:19:11 --> 00:19:13 Avery: a reminder from our last episode. NASA's
00:19:13 --> 00:19:15 first escapade spacecraft is choosing to fire
00:19:15 --> 00:19:17 its engine over southern Australia starting
00:19:17 --> 00:19:20 at about 8:51pm AEDT on
00:19:20 --> 00:19:23 Saturday, with the second on Monday evening.
00:19:23 --> 00:19:25 They're telescope targets, not naked eye
00:19:25 --> 00:19:26 ones.
00:19:26 --> 00:19:29 Anna: The South Taurid meteors have just peaked and
00:19:29 --> 00:19:31 the North Taurids peak around the 12th.
00:19:31 --> 00:19:34 Rates are low, 5 to 10 an hour.
00:19:34 --> 00:19:37 But the Taurids are known for slow bright
00:19:37 --> 00:19:39 fireballs. And if
00:19:39 --> 00:19:42 ar4566 does fire off something
00:19:42 --> 00:19:44 big, keep an eye on the aurora forecasts
00:19:44 --> 00:19:47 from NOAA and the Bureau of Meteorology.
00:19:47 --> 00:19:49 Avery: And if you'd like to see
00:19:49 --> 00:19:51 AR4566 yourself,
00:19:51 --> 00:19:54 the only safe way is with a solar filter
00:19:54 --> 00:19:56 Certified to the ISO12312
00:19:56 --> 00:19:59 2 stand fitted properly over
00:19:59 --> 00:20:02 the front of binoculars or a telescope or by
00:20:02 --> 00:20:04 projecting the image. Never look at the sun
00:20:04 --> 00:20:06 directly or through unfiltered optics.
00:20:07 --> 00:20:10 Anna: That's the show for today, a planet pulled
00:20:10 --> 00:20:12 out of old data by a digital twin of a
00:20:12 --> 00:20:15 telescope, a star cluster that may be
00:20:15 --> 00:20:18 almost as old as the universe, China's
00:20:18 --> 00:20:21 two launch path to the moon, and a smarter
00:20:21 --> 00:20:22 way to catch a solar flare.
00:20:23 --> 00:20:25 Avery: If you've got a question about anything you
00:20:25 --> 00:20:26 heard today, send it to us through the
00:20:26 --> 00:20:29 contact form at astronomydaily IO
00:20:30 --> 00:20:31 Some of our best segments have started that
00:20:31 --> 00:20:34 way. You can also follow us astrodaily Pod on
00:20:34 --> 00:20:35 socials.
00:20:35 --> 00:20:38 Anna: We'll be back tomorrow with more. I'm Anna.
00:20:38 --> 00:20:40 Avery: And I'm, um, Avery. Clear Skies, everyone.
00:20:57 --> 00:20:57
00:21:00 --> 00:21:01 stories we told.