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: G' day and welcome to Astronomy
00:00:02 --> 00:00:03 AstroDailyPod. I'm Anna.
00:00:03 --> 00:00:06 Avery: And I'm Avery. It's the weekend wrap for
00:00:06 --> 00:00:08 Saturday 8th August, and this is one of those
00:00:08 --> 00:00:11 rare weekends where the sky itself is the
00:00:11 --> 00:00:13 headline. We are four days out from a total
00:00:13 --> 00:00:16 solar eclipse and the peak of the Perseids
00:00:16 --> 00:00:17 landing on the very same night.
00:00:17 --> 00:00:20 Anna: We'll get you set for all of that in the sky
00:00:20 --> 00:00:22 watch at the end. Both hemispheres, proper
00:00:22 --> 00:00:25 local times and one eye safety rule.
00:00:25 --> 00:00:27 None of us are allowed to skip.
00:00:27 --> 00:00:30 But we start where the whole week has quietly
00:00:30 --> 00:00:31 been pointing at the sun.
00:00:32 --> 00:00:34 Avery: Then, um, three storeys at the find the week.
00:00:34 --> 00:00:37 A rocket stage that finally hit The Moon, a
00:00:37 --> 00:00:39 48 year old spacecraft that just bought
00:00:39 --> 00:00:41 itself another year of life, and the rescue
00:00:41 --> 00:00:43 mission that spent, uh, the week rescuing
00:00:43 --> 00:00:45 itself. Let's go.
00:00:45 --> 00:00:47 Anna: Here's the question that sounds simple and
00:00:47 --> 00:00:50 isn't. What does the surface of the sun
00:00:50 --> 00:00:53 actually look like up close? Not the
00:00:53 --> 00:00:56 postcard, the fine detail right down at
00:00:56 --> 00:00:58 the scale where the physics happens. This
00:00:58 --> 00:01:01 week for the first time, we got to see it.
00:01:01 --> 00:01:04 And the answer is it's covered in whirlpools.
00:01:04 --> 00:01:06 Avery: Whirlpools on the sun.
00:01:07 --> 00:01:09 Anna: Tiny ones, some only about 20
00:01:09 --> 00:01:12 kilometres across, which on the sun is almost
00:01:12 --> 00:01:15 microscopic. In a paper published Wednesday
00:01:15 --> 00:01:18 in Nature, a team led by David
00:01:18 --> 00:01:20 Kureads at the U.S. national Solar
00:01:20 --> 00:01:23 Observatory in Hawaii, the biggest solar
00:01:23 --> 00:01:26 telescope ever built, a four metre mirror
00:01:26 --> 00:01:29 on Haleakala, zoomed in on the
00:01:29 --> 00:01:31 edges of the sun's granules. And where
00:01:31 --> 00:01:34 earlier telescopes saw a smooth, slightly
00:01:34 --> 00:01:37 blurry boundary, Inoue saw
00:01:37 --> 00:01:40 structure curling, breaking, wave
00:01:40 --> 00:01:42 like swirls forming and dissipating
00:01:42 --> 00:01:45 everywhere along the magnetic boundaries.
00:01:45 --> 00:01:47 Avery: And, um, these have a name. They're not a
00:01:47 --> 00:01:48 total surprise, physically.
00:01:48 --> 00:01:51 Anna: Right, exactly right. And that's what makes
00:01:51 --> 00:01:53 it satisfying rather than baffling. They're
00:01:53 --> 00:01:56 called Kelvin Helmholtz instabilities.
00:01:56 --> 00:01:59 If you've ever watched wind peel the top of
00:01:59 --> 00:02:02 an ocean wave, or seen those rows of curling
00:02:02 --> 00:02:04 cloud that look like a breaking sea in the
00:02:04 --> 00:02:07 sky, that's the same effect. It happens
00:02:07 --> 00:02:10 whenever two fluids slide past each other at
00:02:10 --> 00:02:13 different speeds. Lord Kelvin and Hermann
00:02:13 --> 00:02:15 Helmholtz described the math back around
00:02:15 --> 00:02:16 1870.
00:02:17 --> 00:02:20 Avery: So the physics is 150 years old. The
00:02:20 --> 00:02:22 picture of it on the sun's surface is four
00:02:22 --> 00:02:22 days old.
00:02:23 --> 00:02:26 Anna: That's the whole storey in one line. We've
00:02:26 --> 00:02:28 seen these swirls in Earth's clouds, in the
00:02:28 --> 00:02:31 atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn, even
00:02:31 --> 00:02:33 hinted at high up in the sun's outer
00:02:33 --> 00:02:36 corona. But never before down on the
00:02:36 --> 00:02:39 visible surface, the Photosphere where the
00:02:39 --> 00:02:41 solar wind and all that magnetic energy
00:02:41 --> 00:02:44 actually originate. The resolution
00:02:44 --> 00:02:47 simply wasn't there. Inui changed that.
00:02:47 --> 00:02:49 Avery: Walk me through why the surface is the
00:02:49 --> 00:02:50 important place to catch them.
00:02:51 --> 00:02:53 Anna: Because that's where the sun's magnetic field
00:02:53 --> 00:02:56 tangles with its boiling convection. Picture
00:02:56 --> 00:02:59 the granules, those bright cells of hot
00:02:59 --> 00:03:02 plasma, rising, cooling, sinking
00:03:02 --> 00:03:05 like a pot of porridge on the boil at the
00:03:05 --> 00:03:08 edges. Flows crash into each other, and the
00:03:08 --> 00:03:10 magnetic field lines get squeezed together.
00:03:10 --> 00:03:13 Bundle field lines tighter, and the field
00:03:13 --> 00:03:16 gets stronger. The stronger field resists
00:03:16 --> 00:03:18 the plasma flow. And that sudden change in
00:03:18 --> 00:03:21 speed is exactly the shear you need to set a
00:03:21 --> 00:03:24 Kelvin Helmh vortex spinning.
00:03:24 --> 00:03:26 Avery: And they didn't just eyeball it and declare
00:03:26 --> 00:03:27 victory.
00:03:27 --> 00:03:30 Anna: No, this is the part I like. They ran the
00:03:30 --> 00:03:32 same magnetic region through a state of the
00:03:32 --> 00:03:35 art physics simulation, A model called
00:03:35 --> 00:03:38 Maram, built purely from the laws of
00:03:38 --> 00:03:41 physics. No fudging. And the simulated sun
00:03:41 --> 00:03:44 grew the same swirls in the same places with
00:03:44 --> 00:03:46 the same shapes. Observation and theory
00:03:47 --> 00:03:50 shaking hands. The Max Planck team called the
00:03:50 --> 00:03:52 agreement remarkable. And that's the word
00:03:52 --> 00:03:55 that earns this a, uh, nature paper. Not we
00:03:55 --> 00:03:58 saw something odd, but we saw it. We
00:03:58 --> 00:04:00 understand why. And the model agrees.
00:04:01 --> 00:04:03 Avery: So why should someone with feet firmly on the
00:04:03 --> 00:04:06 ground care about micro whirlpools
00:04:06 --> 00:04:07 93 million miles away?
00:04:08 --> 00:04:11 Anna: Two reasons, and they're both big. The
00:04:11 --> 00:04:13 first is one of the great unsolved puzzles in
00:04:13 --> 00:04:16 solar physics. The corona problem. The
00:04:16 --> 00:04:19 sun's surface is around 6 degrees.
00:04:20 --> 00:04:22 Its outer atmosphere, the corona, is
00:04:22 --> 00:04:25 millions of degrees, hundreds of times
00:04:25 --> 00:04:27 hotter. Further away from the heat source.
00:04:28 --> 00:04:30 That should be impossible. Like standing
00:04:30 --> 00:04:33 back from a campfire and getting warmer.
00:04:33 --> 00:04:36 Something is carrying energy upward and
00:04:36 --> 00:04:38 dumping it into the corona. And these
00:04:38 --> 00:04:41 ubiquitous little vortices are a very good
00:04:41 --> 00:04:43 candidate for part of that pipeline.
00:04:44 --> 00:04:46 Avery: And the second reason is the one that reaches
00:04:46 --> 00:04:49 down and touches U.S. base weather.
00:04:49 --> 00:04:52 Anna: Those same swirls could feed the buildup of
00:04:52 --> 00:04:54 magnetic energy that the sun eventually
00:04:54 --> 00:04:57 releases as flares and coronal mass
00:04:57 --> 00:04:59 ejections. The blasts of charged
00:04:59 --> 00:05:02 particles that, when they're aimed our way,
00:05:02 --> 00:05:05 can knock satellites about, degrade GPS
00:05:05 --> 00:05:08 and stress power grids. The next step
00:05:08 --> 00:05:10 is to turn pattern recognition algorithms
00:05:11 --> 00:05:13 loose on long runs of ENOYE data
00:05:13 --> 00:05:16 to measure how much these instabilities
00:05:16 --> 00:05:19 actually shift. Nail that number, and
00:05:19 --> 00:05:22 you sharpen the models that forecast solar
00:05:22 --> 00:05:22 storms.
00:05:23 --> 00:05:25 Avery: Which is a lovely place to be starting an
00:05:25 --> 00:05:26 eclipse week. Honestly, everyone's about to
00:05:26 --> 00:05:28 point their attention at the sun anyway.
00:05:29 --> 00:05:31 Anna: It really is. For decades, this was a
00:05:31 --> 00:05:34 prediction on a chalkboard. This week, it
00:05:34 --> 00:05:37 became a picture. The Sun's surface
00:05:37 --> 00:05:39 isn't a smooth glowing ball, it's a
00:05:39 --> 00:05:42 sea and it's full of breaking waves
00:05:43 --> 00:05:44 from the sun to
00:05:44 --> 00:05:46 Avery: the moon and to a storey. This show first
00:05:46 --> 00:05:48 flagged back in the autumn. Early Wednesday
00:05:48 --> 00:05:51 morning, a spent SpaceX Falcon 9 upper
00:05:51 --> 00:05:54 stage slammed into the far western edge of
00:05:54 --> 00:05:56 the moon near Einstein Crater at around half
00:05:56 --> 00:05:58 past two in the morning US Eastern time.
00:05:59 --> 00:06:01 Anna: This is the one astronomer Bill Grey had been
00:06:01 --> 00:06:02 tracking since April.
00:06:03 --> 00:06:05 Avery: The very one. Catalogue number
00:06:05 --> 00:06:08 2025 010D.
00:06:09 --> 00:06:11 Roughly four tonnes of hollow metal, about 12
00:06:11 --> 00:06:14 metres long. It launched in January last
00:06:14 --> 00:06:16 year, carrying two commercial lunar landers,
00:06:16 --> 00:06:19 Firefly's Blue Ghost and I. Space's
00:06:19 --> 00:06:21 resilience. Under NASA's Commercial Lunar
00:06:21 --> 00:06:23 Programme, its job done, it was left
00:06:23 --> 00:06:26 drifting. And for 19 months, sunlight
00:06:26 --> 00:06:29 and gravity nudged it around cislunar space
00:06:29 --> 00:06:31 until the numbers lined up on a collision
00:06:31 --> 00:06:32 course.
00:06:32 --> 00:06:35 Anna: And it hit at genuinely startling speed,
00:06:36 --> 00:06:38 Avery: about 5 miles an hour,
00:06:39 --> 00:06:41 seven times the speed of sound, releasing
00:06:41 --> 00:06:43 energy like roughly three tonnes of TNT.
00:06:44 --> 00:06:47 The catch for skywatchers, it came down on
00:06:47 --> 00:06:50 sunlit ground, so any flash was washed out by
00:06:50 --> 00:06:53 daylight. Nobody on Earth got the fireworks.
00:06:53 --> 00:06:56 Anna: So how do we actually confirm it happened
00:06:56 --> 00:06:59 and see the scar from orbit?
00:06:59 --> 00:07:01 Avery: And this is where it gets good. NASA's Lunar
00:07:01 --> 00:07:03 Reconnaissance Orbiter and South Korea's
00:07:03 --> 00:07:06 Dhanuri spacecraft are retasking to
00:07:06 --> 00:07:08 photograph the site. Because we know almost
00:07:08 --> 00:07:11 exactly where and when it struck. We get
00:07:11 --> 00:07:14 a rare before and after. A fresh crater
00:07:14 --> 00:07:16 expected somewhere between 18 and 30
00:07:16 --> 00:07:19 metres wide, appearing on a patch of moon we
00:07:19 --> 00:07:22 already had mapped. I'll be honest, those
00:07:22 --> 00:07:24 high resolution images aren't in hand yet.
00:07:24 --> 00:07:26 They depend on lighting and orbital geometry
00:07:26 --> 00:07:29 over the coming weeks. But the impact itself
00:07:29 --> 00:07:30 is confirmed.
00:07:30 --> 00:07:33 Anna: And there's a bigger point sitting underneath
00:07:33 --> 00:07:34 the spectacle.
00:07:34 --> 00:07:35 Avery: There is.
00:07:35 --> 00:07:37 This is only the second known unintentional
00:07:37 --> 00:07:40 lunar impact by a rocket stage. The first was
00:07:40 --> 00:07:43 a Chinese Booster back in 2022. But the
00:07:43 --> 00:07:46 traffic up there is climbing fast and there's
00:07:46 --> 00:07:48 still no binding rulebook for disposing of
00:07:48 --> 00:07:50 hardware on these high energy paths.
00:07:51 --> 00:07:53 SpaceX says this stage was passivated by the
00:07:53 --> 00:07:56 book and is now working with NASA on
00:07:56 --> 00:07:58 prevention. Fittingly, the international
00:07:58 --> 00:08:00 meeting that produced the latest
00:08:00 --> 00:08:02 recommendations for the moon was held right
00:08:02 --> 00:08:05 here in Sydney. The recommendations are real.
00:08:05 --> 00:08:07 The requirements aren't there yet.
00:08:07 --> 00:08:09 Anna: A new crater and a, uh, nudge to write some
00:08:09 --> 00:08:11 rules before the next one.
00:08:11 --> 00:08:14 Now to the most distant good news, Storey,
00:08:14 --> 00:08:17 you'll hear all year. Voyager 2, launched
00:08:17 --> 00:08:20 in 1977, now more than
00:08:20 --> 00:08:22 21 billion kilometres away out
00:08:22 --> 00:08:25 in Interstellar space has just been given
00:08:25 --> 00:08:28 at least another full year of science by
00:08:28 --> 00:08:31 engineers who can't touch it, can't send it
00:08:31 --> 00:08:33 apart and have to wait about 19 and a
00:08:33 --> 00:08:36 half hours just for a command to arrive.
00:08:37 --> 00:08:39 Avery: And they've given the manoeuvre a wonderful
00:08:39 --> 00:08:39 name.
00:08:39 --> 00:08:42 Anna: They're calling it the Big Bang. Here's the
00:08:42 --> 00:08:44 problem it Voyager runs on
00:08:44 --> 00:08:47 plutonium radioisotope generators
00:08:47 --> 00:08:50 that turn heat from decay into electricity
00:08:50 --> 00:08:53 and that supply drops by about 4
00:08:53 --> 00:08:55 watts every single year. It's a
00:08:55 --> 00:08:58 spacecraft slowly running out of power. And
00:08:58 --> 00:09:00 for years the fix has been to switch
00:09:00 --> 00:09:03 instruments off one by one without action.
00:09:03 --> 00:09:06 Voyager 2 would have had to shut down another
00:09:06 --> 00:09:09 of its three remaining instruments before the
00:09:09 --> 00:09:10 end of this year.
00:09:10 --> 00:09:13 Avery: So why Big Bang? What's dramatic about a
00:09:13 --> 00:09:14 power swap?
00:09:14 --> 00:09:17 Anna: Because it all had to happen at once. They
00:09:17 --> 00:09:19 switched off a set of power hungry devices
00:09:19 --> 00:09:22 and swapped in lower power alternatives.
00:09:22 --> 00:09:25 But the catch is that the very same power
00:09:25 --> 00:09:28 also produces heat. And out there, near
00:09:28 --> 00:09:31 absolute zero, if the wrong component gets
00:09:31 --> 00:09:33 too cold, it freezes and dies
00:09:33 --> 00:09:36 permanently. You can't do it gently, one
00:09:36 --> 00:09:39 step at a time. The thermal sums only
00:09:39 --> 00:09:41 balance if you throw the switches
00:09:41 --> 00:09:44 simultaneously. As one of the engineers put
00:09:44 --> 00:09:46 it, they couldn't afford to be wrong. And
00:09:46 --> 00:09:49 it worked exactly to plan.
00:09:49 --> 00:09:51 Avery: And Voyager 1 is next in the queue.
00:09:51 --> 00:09:54 Anna: It is. The team is stepping through the same
00:09:54 --> 00:09:57 process on Voyager 1 in the coming weeks. And
00:09:57 --> 00:10:00 the early tests have gone smoothly. Two
00:10:00 --> 00:10:02 probes, 48 years old, still
00:10:02 --> 00:10:05 humanity's only instruments physically out in
00:10:05 --> 00:10:08 interstellar space, kept alive by people
00:10:08 --> 00:10:11 rewriting how the hardware is used from
00:10:11 --> 00:10:14 13 billion miles back. That's not
00:10:14 --> 00:10:16 a rescue. That ends the storey. The power
00:10:16 --> 00:10:19 keeps falling. But it's another year of
00:10:19 --> 00:10:21 listening to the space between the stars.
00:10:21 --> 00:10:24 Avery: And now our, uh, running saga of the week.
00:10:24 --> 00:10:26 The rescue mission that spent the week being
00:10:26 --> 00:10:29 rescued. You'll remember the setup. NASA
00:10:29 --> 00:10:32 Swift Observatory, 22 years old, a
00:10:32 --> 00:10:34 first responder for gamma ray burst is
00:10:34 --> 00:10:37 sinking. Its orbit is decaying and it can't
00:10:37 --> 00:10:40 lift itself. And without help, it's likely to
00:10:40 --> 00:10:43 re enter this spring, our time. Once it drops
00:10:43 --> 00:10:44 below about 300 kilometres.
00:10:45 --> 00:10:48 Anna: Enter link. Built at extraordinary
00:10:48 --> 00:10:50 speed to go up and give Swift a boost.
00:10:50 --> 00:10:53 Avery: A commercial servicing spacecraft from
00:10:53 --> 00:10:55 Catalyst Space built clean sheet in about
00:10:55 --> 00:10:58 nine months. Launched last month. First of
00:10:58 --> 00:11:01 its kind. A private robot grabbing a
00:11:01 --> 00:11:03 government satellite that was never designed
00:11:03 --> 00:11:05 to be serviced, except that during
00:11:05 --> 00:11:08 commissioning, Link itself tumbled into a
00:11:08 --> 00:11:11 multi axis spin up to 9 degrees a
00:11:11 --> 00:11:13 second. With two of its three reaction wheels
00:11:13 --> 00:11:16 out of action and some loss in its cold gas
00:11:16 --> 00:11:19 thrusters. The rescuer needed a rescue.
00:11:19 --> 00:11:22 Anna: And this week is where that turned a corner.
00:11:22 --> 00:11:25 Avery: It genuinely did. Using thruster
00:11:25 --> 00:11:27 burns, the team has wrestled that spin all
00:11:27 --> 00:11:30 the way down from 9 degrees a second, uh, to
00:11:30 --> 00:11:32 1.47 degrees. And they're holding
00:11:32 --> 00:11:35 it steady there. The D spin effectively is
00:11:35 --> 00:11:38 one the mission has now shifted from a
00:11:38 --> 00:11:40 stabilisation problem to a software one.
00:11:41 --> 00:11:43 Because so much of the original attitude
00:11:43 --> 00:11:45 control system is offline, they're preparing
00:11:45 --> 00:11:48 a major flight software upgrade to restore
00:11:48 --> 00:11:50 full control using what still works.
00:11:51 --> 00:11:53 Anna: And only once that lands can the chase
00:11:53 --> 00:11:54 actually begin.
00:11:54 --> 00:11:57 Avery: Right, software update first, then the
00:11:57 --> 00:11:59 phasing manoeuvres to line Link's orbit up
00:11:59 --> 00:12:02 with Swift. Then a rendezvous and, uh, a
00:12:02 --> 00:12:05 grapple with its three robotic arms targeted
00:12:05 --> 00:12:07 around the end of August. If it all comes
00:12:07 --> 00:12:10 off, Lynx slowly walks Swift back up toward
00:12:10 --> 00:12:13 its old orbit over a couple of months, then
00:12:13 --> 00:12:16 peels away and burns up itself. It's down
00:12:16 --> 00:12:18 to the wire. But a week ago, this looked
00:12:18 --> 00:12:21 close to lost. And today it looks like a
00:12:21 --> 00:12:23 spacecraft catching its breath. Breath before
00:12:23 --> 00:12:24 the hardest part.
00:12:24 --> 00:12:26 Anna: We will absolutely keep you posted as that
00:12:26 --> 00:12:28 end of August window comes up.
00:12:28 --> 00:12:30 And so to the sky. And What a, uh, four days
00:12:30 --> 00:12:33 we're heading into. On Wednesday 12th
00:12:33 --> 00:12:36 August, two of the year's marquee events land
00:12:36 --> 00:12:39 together. A, uh, total solar eclipse and
00:12:39 --> 00:12:41 the peak of the Perseid meteor shower.
00:12:42 --> 00:12:44 Avery: Let's be straight with everyone about who
00:12:44 --> 00:12:47 sees what, because this one is lopsided.
00:12:47 --> 00:12:50 Anna: It is. So let's do it. Honestly, the
00:12:50 --> 00:12:53 total eclipse, the full daytime darkness,
00:12:53 --> 00:12:56 corona blazing spectacle, belongs to the
00:12:56 --> 00:12:59 far north. The path of totality crosses the
00:12:59 --> 00:13:01 Arctic, eastern Greenland, western Iceland
00:13:01 --> 00:13:04 and clips northern Spain and the very
00:13:04 --> 00:13:06 northeast of Portugal near sunset. If you're
00:13:06 --> 00:13:08 anywhere near there, you're in for one of the
00:13:08 --> 00:13:11 sky's greatest sights, under two and a half
00:13:11 --> 00:13:12 minutes of it.
00:13:12 --> 00:13:14 Avery: And, um, for our North American listeners,
00:13:14 --> 00:13:17 our largest audience, the honest picture is a
00:13:17 --> 00:13:19 partial and only in one corner.
00:13:20 --> 00:13:22 Anna: That's right. No part of North America sees
00:13:22 --> 00:13:25 totality this time. But in the afternoon on
00:13:25 --> 00:13:28 the 12th, Eastern Canada and the northeastern
00:13:28 --> 00:13:31 United States get a genuine partial in parts
00:13:31 --> 00:13:34 of Atlantic Canada, roughly half the sun
00:13:34 --> 00:13:36 covered at maximum. A smaller bite across New
00:13:36 --> 00:13:39 England and the Northeast further west, it
00:13:39 --> 00:13:42 fades to little or nothing. If you're in
00:13:42 --> 00:13:44 that eastern window, cheque local times for
00:13:44 --> 00:13:47 your exact town. It's an afternoon event. And
00:13:47 --> 00:13:49 dig out your eclipse glasses.
00:13:50 --> 00:13:51 Avery: Which brings us to the rule we
00:13:51 --> 00:13:54 Anna: never, ever skip the non
00:13:54 --> 00:13:57 negotiable. To look at any partial phase
00:13:57 --> 00:14:00 of the sun safely, you need proper solar
00:14:00 --> 00:14:01 filters. That meet the ISO
00:14:01 --> 00:14:04 123122 standard
00:14:05 --> 00:14:08 certified eclipse glasses or a safe solar
00:14:08 --> 00:14:11 viewer M ordinary sunglasses do not work
00:14:11 --> 00:14:13 no matter how dark. Only someone standing
00:14:13 --> 00:14:16 inside the path of totality may remove them
00:14:16 --> 00:14:18 and only during the brief total phase.
00:14:19 --> 00:14:21 Everyone seeing a partial, that's all of
00:14:21 --> 00:14:24 North America and most of Europe keeps them
00:14:24 --> 00:14:26 on the entire time. Damage to your eyes
00:14:26 --> 00:14:29 is painless and permanent. Please don't risk
00:14:29 --> 00:14:30 it.
00:14:30 --> 00:14:32 Avery: And if you're nowhere near the track, which
00:14:32 --> 00:14:34 includes all of us down here in the south,
00:14:34 --> 00:14:37 NASA streams the whole thing live from about
00:14:37 --> 00:14:38 a quarter past one eastern.
00:14:39 --> 00:14:42 Anna: Now the Perseids that same night and here the
00:14:42 --> 00:14:44 news is good for the northern half of the
00:14:44 --> 00:14:47 world. The peak lies the night of the 12th
00:14:47 --> 00:14:49 into the 13th and this year the peak is
00:14:49 --> 00:14:52 essentially moonless. The eclipse falls on a
00:14:52 --> 00:14:55 new moon so the sky is dark and the faint
00:14:55 --> 00:14:57 meteors get their moment from the mid
00:14:57 --> 00:15:00 northern latitudes after midnight that's
00:15:00 --> 00:15:02 potentially dozens an hour under clear skies.
00:15:02 --> 00:15:05 North America, Europe, this is your gift of
00:15:05 --> 00:15:06 the week.
00:15:06 --> 00:15:09 Avery: But the Perseids are a northern shower. The
00:15:09 --> 00:15:11 radiant barely lifts above the horizon.
00:15:11 --> 00:15:13 Anna: For those of us down here it barely clears
00:15:13 --> 00:15:16 it. So from Sydney or Auckland you'll catch
00:15:16 --> 00:15:19 only a stray few low in the north before
00:15:19 --> 00:15:21 dawn. So here's what the southern hemisphere
00:15:21 --> 00:15:24 actually gets and it's worth setting an alarm
00:15:24 --> 00:15:26 for before sunrise. This week the morning
00:15:26 --> 00:15:29 sky is stacked a long line of planets
00:15:29 --> 00:15:32 Saturn, Mars, Uranus and
00:15:32 --> 00:15:34 Neptunewith Jupiter low and Mercury
00:15:34 --> 00:15:37 climbing strung across the pre dawn.
00:15:37 --> 00:15:39 Venus is your brilliant evening star after
00:15:39 --> 00:15:42 sunset and for the patient Comet
00:15:42 --> 00:15:45 10P Tempel 2 is rising late in the
00:15:45 --> 00:15:48 evening around half past nine. If you've got
00:15:48 --> 00:15:49 binoculars and a dark
00:15:49 --> 00:15:52 Avery: horizon so nobody misses out. North gets
00:15:52 --> 00:15:54 the eclipse and the meteors. South gets the
00:15:54 --> 00:15:57 planet parade and a comet and the livestream
00:15:57 --> 00:15:58 is there for all of us.
00:15:58 --> 00:16:01 Anna: Both hemispheres eyes up all week, just
00:16:01 --> 00:16:03 protect them around that sun.
00:16:03 --> 00:16:06 Avery: That's the weekend wrap for Saturday 8th
00:16:06 --> 00:16:08 August. The Sun's hidden whirlpools, a
00:16:08 --> 00:16:11 fresh crater on the moon, Voyager 2's
00:16:11 --> 00:16:14 extra year and a rescue mission back on its
00:16:14 --> 00:16:14 feet.
00:16:14 --> 00:16:17 Anna: We're back with your daily fix on Monday and
00:16:17 --> 00:16:19 all week we'll be counting down to that
00:16:19 --> 00:16:22 eclipse and Perseid Wednesday. Find the full
00:16:22 --> 00:16:24 back catalogue, the news feed and the
00:16:24 --> 00:16:27 newsletter@uh astronomydailyio
00:16:27 --> 00:16:30 and say hello@astronomydailypod
00:16:30 --> 00:16:32 until Monday from Anna and me.
00:16:32 --> 00:16:35 Avery: Look after those eyes and clear skies.