Speaker 1: This is Spacetime Series twenty nine, episode ninety four, for
Speaker 1: broadcast on the seventh of August twenty twenty six. Coming
Speaker 1: up on Space Time, it turns out black holes are
Speaker 1: a hundred times more powerful than previously thought. The dramatic
Speaker 1: collision which flipped our Milky Way galaxy and a successful
Speaker 1: return to Worth for the crew of the Sawyers M
Speaker 1: twenty eight. All that and more coming up on space Time.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Space Time with Stewart Gary.
Speaker 1: Astronomers have been forced to rewrite their textbooks on the
Speaker 1: power of supermassive black holes after new observations have shown
Speaker 1: that these cosmic monsters can generate enough energy to impact
Speaker 1: galaxies hundreds of thousands of light years away. Scientists previously
Speaker 1: believe that the impact of winds generated by super massive
Speaker 1: black holes was contained to the host galaxy, but the
Speaker 1: new findings reported in the General Nature Astronomy, reveals that
Speaker 1: the energy produced extends to surrounding galaxies three hundred thousand
Speaker 1: light years away, one hundred times further than previously thought.
Speaker 1: The studies lead author Satashi Yomta from Tohoku University says
Speaker 1: the discovery demonstrates that these explosive winds impact vast expanses
Speaker 1: of space far beyond the galaxies they inhabit. It Mata says.
Speaker 1: Black holes are largely known for sucking in matter, but
Speaker 1: they also eject gas in the form of powerful winds.
Speaker 1: These winds were thought to be contained within the galaxy,
Speaker 1: but your Madas study reveals the force is immensely more
Speaker 1: powerful than previously understood. Your matter and colleagues use the
Speaker 1: CHRISM X ray space telescope to observe the activity of
Speaker 1: a quaser cataloged as H eighteen twenty one plus six
Speaker 1: forty three, located some three point four billion light years
Speaker 1: away in the direction of the constellation. Draco. Quasars are
Speaker 1: extremely luminous jets of energy and matter given off material
Speaker 1: being crushed and stretched in the accretion disk of feeding
Speaker 1: black holes. The rapidly growing black hole containing the quasa
Speaker 1: is located in the center of a galaxy caster, where
Speaker 1: it's driving turbulence and the surrounding hot gas emitting X
Speaker 1: rays in the process. The authors precisely determine the motion
Speaker 1: of the gas by analyzing spectroscopic emission lines from iron ions.
Speaker 1: The observations revealed that the high temperature gas surrounding the
Speaker 1: black hole isn't remaining static, but violently disperses over a
Speaker 1: wide area due to turbulence, and they also confirm that
Speaker 1: the flow of the gas extends far beyond the host galaxy,
Speaker 1: reaching distances of more than three hundred thousand light years.
Speaker 1: The amount of energy involved in the turbulence was approximately
Speaker 1: one hundred times greater than what previous estimates had made,
Speaker 1: and equivalent to several billion supernova explosions, the blasts that
Speaker 1: occur when stars reach the end of their lives. You
Speaker 1: might have says. It's the first time anyone has shown
Speaker 1: that black holes can influence such a broad cosmic environment,
Speaker 1: and it demonstrates that black holes are key drivers of
Speaker 1: gas flow and motion in space, transporting vast amounts of
Speaker 1: energy materials to very distant regions of the cosmos. This
Speaker 1: is space time still to come. The dramatic collision that
Speaker 1: flipped our Milky Way galaxy and a successful return to
Speaker 1: Earth for the crew of the Sawyer's M twenty eight spacecraft.
Speaker 1: All that and more still to come on space time.
Speaker 1: A new study suggest that our home galaxy, the Milky Way,
Speaker 1: may have undergone a dramatic change in orientation following a
Speaker 1: head on collision with another galaxy. The findings, reported to
Speaker 1: the Royal Astronomical Society's conference in Birmingham, help us explain
Speaker 1: a long standing mystery about our galaxy. Using supercomputer simulations
Speaker 1: of galaxies like the Milky Way, astronomers found that galaxies
Speaker 1: with slowly rotating stellar halos are more likely to have
Speaker 1: experienced a major disc flip. That's where the galaxy's disc
Speaker 1: changes its orientation by more than ninety degrees. Most of
Speaker 1: the Milky Way stars are located in the flat spiral
Speaker 1: disc of the galaxy, and surrounding this disc is a
Speaker 1: much larger but spars stellar halo, made up mostly of
Speaker 1: stars that are originally formed in smaller galaxies before being
Speaker 1: pulled into the Milky Way through galactic mergers. Observations by
Speaker 1: the European Space Agency's Guian mission have shown that the
Speaker 1: Milky Way stellar halo rotates very slowly, but astronomers have
Speaker 1: not understood why. So they analyze the evolution of twenty
Speaker 1: five Milky Way like spiral galaxies in the rigious squid
Speaker 1: of cosmological computer simulations, and they followed their development over
Speaker 1: billions of years. They found that galaxies with the slowest
Speaker 1: rotating stellar haloes shared two important features. Each experienced a
Speaker 1: major head on merger or collision with another galaxy, and
Speaker 1: they also underwent a disc flip during their revolution. The
Speaker 1: studies lead author Kirol Batrikov from Durham University says astronomers
Speaker 1: already know that the Milky Way had a massive head
Speaker 1: on collision in the past with a galaxy known as
Speaker 1: the Guy Sausage and Soladus, and this new data suggests
Speaker 1: that may have caused the Milky Way's disc to flip.
Speaker 1: The Guy of Sausage and Soladus was a massive dwarf
Speaker 1: galaxy that collided with and was absorbed into the early
Speaker 1: milky Way somewhere around ten to eleven billion years ago.
Speaker 1: This defighting galactic merger was the largest single event in
Speaker 1: the early history of the Milky Way, and it reshaped
Speaker 1: our galaxy, leaving billions of stars orbiting in a highly
Speaker 1: elongated sausage shaped path. Identifying a past disc flip gives
Speaker 1: astronomers a new way to understand how the Milky Way assembled,
Speaker 1: and it may also provide indirect clues that the motion
Speaker 1: of its invisible dark matter halo. A disc clip also
Speaker 1: means most of the Milky Way stars moved on very
Speaker 1: different trajectories compared to the way they moved today, possibly
Speaker 1: even our own son Any our stable spot in the
Speaker 1: galaxy might not have been quite so stable in the past.
Speaker 1: The study also found that the rotation of the Milky
Speaker 1: Way stellar halo is closely linked to the rotation of
Speaker 1: its dark matter halo, and that suggests the two possibly
Speaker 1: evolve together as the galaxy grew by a creation of
Speaker 1: the smallst satellite galaxies. This is space time still to come.
Speaker 1: A successful return to Earth for the crew of the
Speaker 1: Sawyers M twenty eight. The red super giant antaries, Barnard Star,
Speaker 1: the second Earestar system to the Sun, and the annual
Speaker 1: Percied's meteor shower are among the highlights of the August
Speaker 1: night skies on SkyWatch. The ros Cosmos Sawyers M twenty
Speaker 1: eight spacecraft has returned safely to Earth, bringing home the
Speaker 1: expedition seventy four crew who were spent the past eight
Speaker 1: months aboard the International Space Station. The capsule touchdown of
Speaker 1: the world in script Kazakhstan stick three and a half
Speaker 1: hours after the patting the over the outpost.
Speaker 3: We are covering the return of the Suyu's MS twenty
Speaker 3: eight spacecraft with NASA astronaut Chris Williams and Ross Cosmos
Speaker 3: cosmonauts Sergei Kodsvirzkov and Sergei Mikhaye, returning under its main parachute,
Speaker 3: slowing it down for a touchdown on Earth. We did
Speaker 3: hear confirmation from the crew that everything was nominal or
Speaker 3: as expected on board. That's so us MS twenty eight
Speaker 3: spacecraft suspended under the orange and white parachute, and that
Speaker 3: main parachute covering an area of one thousand meters. It's
Speaker 3: slowing the capsule down to about sixteen miles per hour,
Speaker 3: quite a contrast from the seventeen thousand, five hundred miles
Speaker 3: per hour this crew was traveling just three hours ago.
Speaker 4: You course is how do papy me? I am? This
Speaker 4: is quesche Yas was pretty much us. We read you
Speaker 4: loud and clear.
Speaker 5: I love my space kid, but its.
Speaker 4: Ballistic myths is for seconds. We are in the controlled
Speaker 4: automatic descent. We see you, guys, uh one feeling great, creature,
Speaker 4: two feeling good, three feeling amazing. That is good news, guys.
Speaker 3: Confirmation from the crew themselves that they are are all
Speaker 3: feeling good, great and amazing. The crew also has a
Speaker 3: voice and visual with the search and recovery forces. Russian
Speaker 3: Search and Recovery at vs continue making their way towards
Speaker 3: the anticipated landing site.
Speaker 4: Cious search and rescue forces. What's your altitude?
Speaker 5: Thirty start for them?
Speaker 4: Our altitude is three kilometers seven fifty meters. Oxidizer jobs
Speaker 4: figure on.
Speaker 5: Matter, I apprecail a point at you.
Speaker 3: As the crew continues drifting down to Earth under that parachute.
Speaker 4: The aiometric altitude on the INPU panel is three kilometers.
Speaker 3: The next major milestone, and essentially the final milestone just
Speaker 3: before landing, is the soft landing engine firing says when
Speaker 3: six engines will fire to slow the descent rate to
Speaker 3: one point five meters per second, so just over three
Speaker 3: miles an hour when soy US is less than one
Speaker 3: meter above the ground. So the spacecraft now traveling about
Speaker 3: sixteen miles per hour ahead of those soft landing engines
Speaker 3: that fire just before touchdown to help ease the return
Speaker 3: to Earth. And a reminder that radio beacon that you
Speaker 3: is completely normal. This is establishing communications that begon coming
Speaker 3: from the spacecraft. You're hearing communications to and from the
Speaker 3: SWAYUS MS twenty eight spacecraft. Once you're hearing that of
Speaker 3: Commander Sergei Kidsfirzkov Ross Cosmos cosmonauts speaking with the mission
Speaker 3: control team in Moscow again. Conditions at the landing site.
Speaker 3: Visibility about six miles with twenty four mile per hour
Speaker 3: winds and eighty eight degrees fahrenheit.
Speaker 4: This is questions. I'm getting to nine hundred meters, hold
Speaker 4: your arms close to the body and please.
Speaker 5: Do not speak your globo docture and.
Speaker 4: This is going to stay true all the way and
Speaker 4: still handing.
Speaker 3: Landing now less than thirty seconds away. Crew receiving final
Speaker 3: instructions as they prepare for.
Speaker 4: Touchdown reference altitude, braceful landing.
Speaker 3: Touchdown. Chris Williams, Sergei Mikaev, and Sergi Kispertzhkov have returned
Speaker 3: to their home planet at five twenty seven am Central
Speaker 3: time three twenty seven pm in Kazakhstanzois.
Speaker 4: Is on its side and there is no fire. That's
Speaker 4: the rescue force is reporting all right, and the helicopters
Speaker 4: approaching to land.
Speaker 3: So I heard the call that the Soyus is on
Speaker 3: its side. This is not uncommon for the Soyuz, and
Speaker 3: the crew will be extracted from the spacecraft upon the
Speaker 3: recovery forces arriving at the capsule.
Speaker 1: The two hundred and forty one day mission launched from
Speaker 1: the Bike and or Cosmo drove and the Central Asian
Speaker 1: Republic of Kasek stand back on November the twenty seventh
Speaker 1: and involved obening the Earth some three thousand, eight hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty six times, traveling more than one hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty million kilometers. While on station, the crew were involved
Speaker 1: in more than two hundred and fifty scientific experiments, including
Speaker 1: research on new cancer treatments and improving in space manufacturing
Speaker 1: of materials used in high performance computers and electronics. They
Speaker 1: also undertook two extra vehicular activities or EVAs NASA speKt
Speaker 1: for spacewalks. These were designed to prepare for station power
Speaker 1: system upgrades and to replace a faulty joint in the
Speaker 1: Canada ARM two robotic arm. For more than twenty five
Speaker 1: years now, people have lived and worked continuously in space
Speaker 1: aboard the International Space Station. The Orbiting our Post is
Speaker 1: helping NASA understand and overcome the challenges of human spaceflight
Speaker 1: for long duration missions to the Moon and eventually onto
Speaker 1: Mars and beyond. As part of the Artemis program, However,
Speaker 1: the space station's future is now limited, with NASA planning
Speaker 1: to deorbit one hundred and nine meter long four hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty one our posts sometime in late twenty thirty
Speaker 1: or early twenty thirty one. It'll be replaced by smaller
Speaker 1: commercial space stations and a major expansion of China's Tiangong
Speaker 1: space station, which will double its size this space time
Speaker 1: and Time Out of turn oives to the skies and
Speaker 1: check out the celestiousphere for August on SkyWatch. August is
Speaker 1: the eighth month of the year in the Julian Engagorian calendars.
Speaker 1: It was originally named six Tillius in Latin because it
Speaker 1: was the sixth month of the original ten month Roman
Speaker 1: calendar under Romulus in seven fifty three BCE, when the
Speaker 1: year started in March. It only became the eighth month
Speaker 1: when January and February were added to the start of
Speaker 1: the year in the year eight BCE. It was renamed
Speaker 1: in honor of the Roman statesmen and military leader Augustus,
Speaker 1: who had achieved several military victories, including the conquest of Egypt.
Speaker 1: During the month. Okay, turning to the heavens and the
Speaker 1: constellation s, the Scorpion is high overhead this time of year,
Speaker 1: covering almost a third of the August night skies. At
Speaker 1: the heart of Scorpius, located some four hundred and seventy
Speaker 1: light years away, is the red super giant Antaries. A
Speaker 1: light year is a distance of about ten trillion kilometers,
Speaker 1: a distance of photon can travel in a year at
Speaker 1: three hundred thousand kilometres per second, the speed of light
Speaker 1: in a vacuum and the ultimate speed limit of the universe.
Speaker 1: The name Antaries means rival of Mars, and indeed, when
Speaker 1: they're close together in the sky, they do look very similar.
Speaker 1: And Tari's, or Alpha Scorpius that's sometimes called has some
Speaker 1: twelve point four times the mass and an incredible four
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty times the diameter of our Sun and
Speaker 1: is one of the largest known stars in the universe.
Speaker 1: And Tari's is so big that wordplace where the Sun
Speaker 1: is at the center of our solar system, it would
Speaker 1: engulf all the inner planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars.
Speaker 1: It's outer surface would rich almost as far as the
Speaker 1: orbit of Jupiter. And Tari's is a binary system, there's
Speaker 1: a companion style orbiting with it called Antari's B, a
Speaker 1: massive spectual type B blue white star at least seven
Speaker 1: point two times the mass and five point two times
Speaker 1: the radius of the Sun. It's located about two hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty four astronomical units beyond the primary star. An
Speaker 1: astronomical unit is the average distance between the Sun and
Speaker 1: the Earth, about one hundred and fifty million kilometers or
Speaker 1: eight point three light minutes. Astronomers describe stars in terms
Speaker 1: of spectual types, a classification system based on temperature and characteristics.
Speaker 1: The hottest, most massive, and most luminous stars are known
Speaker 1: spectro type O blue stars. They're closely followed by spectual
Speaker 1: type B blue white stars, the n spectual type A
Speaker 1: white stars, spetual type F whitish yellow stars, spectro type
Speaker 1: G yellow stars. That's where our Sun fits in, special
Speaker 1: type K orange stars, and the coolest and least massive
Speaker 1: of all stars are spectual type M red stars, commonly
Speaker 1: referred to as red dwarfs. Each spectral classification is further
Speaker 1: subdivided using a numeric digit to represent temperature, with zero
Speaker 1: being the hottest and nine the coolest, and a Roman
Speaker 1: uneral to represent luminosity. Now put all that together, and
Speaker 1: our sun is a special type G two V or
Speaker 1: G two five yellow dwarf star. Also included in the
Speaker 1: stellar classification system are special types LT and Y, which
Speaker 1: are assigned to feldstars known as brown dwarves, some of
Speaker 1: which were actually born as spectral type M red dwarf stars,
Speaker 1: but became brown dwarves after losing some of their mass.
Speaker 1: Brown dwarfs fitted to a category between the largest planets,
Speaker 1: which are about thirteen times the mass of Jupiter, and
Speaker 1: the smallest spectral type M red dwarf stars, which are
Speaker 1: about seventy five to eighty times the mass of Jupiter
Speaker 1: or zero point zero eight solar masses. Located near antaries
Speaker 1: is the spectacular globular cluster Messi four or M four
Speaker 1: for short, named after the eighteenth century of frenchist ronomoer
Speaker 1: and commet hunter Charles Messier, It's one of a catalog
Speaker 1: of one hundred and three fuzzy objects which weren't comets
Speaker 1: and so were of no interest to Messier, and so
Speaker 1: he made a list of them so he didn't waste
Speaker 1: his time looking at them. Other astronomers have since added
Speaker 1: further celestial objects to the catalog, bringing the turtle to
Speaker 1: around one hundred and ten. Located some seven thousand light
Speaker 1: years away, messi at four can be seen through a
Speaker 1: pair of binoculars, making it one of the closest globular
Speaker 1: clusters to Earth. Globular clusters are densely packed fees containing
Speaker 1: thousands to millions of gravitationally bounced stars, which it's thought
Speaker 1: were either originally all born at the same time in
Speaker 1: the same stellar nursery, or of the surviving cause of
Speaker 1: galaxies that have been cannibalized by larger galaxies. They're almost
Speaker 1: always found orbiting the halo of galaxies. The Milky Way
Speaker 1: has about one hundred and fifty of them, and they're
Speaker 1: all usually very ancient, some dating back to around twelve
Speaker 1: billion years. Located just below the sting of Scorpius are
Speaker 1: two open star clusters M six and M seven. M
Speaker 1: sevens the nearer of the two, located about eight hundred
Speaker 1: light years away, while M six is a more distant
Speaker 1: two thousand light years. Open clusters are less densely packed
Speaker 1: than their globular cluster counterparts, with the stars inside them
Speaker 1: less gravitationally bound and more prone to drifting away over time.
Speaker 1: Another open star cluster in Scorpius is NNGC sixty two
Speaker 1: to thirty one, located about six five hundred light years away,
Speaker 1: just near the stars Zeta Scorpii. NGC sixty two thirty
Speaker 1: one is a bright, open star cluster containing around one
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty stars, including a significant population of highly
Speaker 1: luminous supergiants, numerous white yellow stars, and at least two
Speaker 1: Wolfrayet stars. Wolfrayets are extremely luminous evolved stars reaching the
Speaker 1: ends of their lives. Having run out of hydrogen for
Speaker 1: core fusion. They're no longer on the main sequence and
Speaker 1: are instead fusing progressively heavier and heavier elements in their cores.
Speaker 1: This causes them to have surface temperatures of up to
Speaker 1: two hundred thousand degrees celsius, and such extreme temperatures generate
Speaker 1: powerful stellar winds. Just behind Scorpius is the constellation Sagittarius,
Speaker 1: the half man, half horse of Greek mythology, and as
Speaker 1: we mentioned in last month SkyWatch, the center of the
Speaker 1: Milky Way galaxy is found in Sagittarius, roughly twenty seven
Speaker 1: thousand light years away. The name Sagittarius could be traced
Speaker 1: back beyond the Greeks to the ancient Mesopotamian archer god Nergel.
Speaker 1: Sagittarius is known for its many nebula and clusters, more
Speaker 1: than any other constellation. One of the largest and brightest
Speaker 1: is the globular cluster M twenty two, big enough to
Speaker 1: be visible to the unaided eye, located about ten thousand,
Speaker 1: six hundred light years away near the galactic bulge. M
Speaker 1: twenty two is more elliptical the most globular clusters. It's
Speaker 1: located just south of the ecliptic that're played in the
Speaker 1: sky upon which all the planets orbit the Sun, and
Speaker 1: it contains over seventy thousand stars covering an area of
Speaker 1: around one hundred light years. It also contains at least
Speaker 1: two black holes, and he's one of only a handful
Speaker 1: of globular clusters known to contain planetary nebulae, the puffed
Speaker 1: off outer gases envelopes of dead sun like stars. Located
Speaker 1: in the sky next to Scorpius in the western Sagittarius
Speaker 1: in the east is the constellation of Fayusius, the healer
Speaker 1: or serpent bearer, often betrayed as a snake coiled around
Speaker 1: a man in Greek mythology, Opaiucius raises a rind from
Speaker 1: the dead after he was bitten by Scorpius O Fa
Speaker 1: Yushius contains several star clusters and other interesting features, including
Speaker 1: Barnard Star. Barnard Star is the second nearest star system
Speaker 1: to the Sun, beaten only by the Alphasentaury Triple star system,
Speaker 1: located some five point nine light years away. Barnard Star
Speaker 1: is a spectral type M red dwarf, about zero point
Speaker 1: one four four times the mass of the Sun. Our
Speaker 1: Sun is around four point six billion years old. At
Speaker 1: between seven and twelve billion years of ever age, Barnard's
Speaker 1: Star is considerably older than the Sun and maybe among
Speaker 1: the oldest stars in the Milky Way galaxy. It's lost
Speaker 1: a great deal of rotational energy, and its periodic slight
Speaker 1: changes in brightness indicate that it's rotating about once every
Speaker 1: one hundred and thirty days. By comparison, our Sun rotates
Speaker 1: roughly once every twenty nine days. Given its age, Bernard
Speaker 1: Star was long assumed to be quiercent in terms of
Speaker 1: stellar activity, but in nineteen ninety eight astronoms observed an
Speaker 1: intense stellar flare, indicating that Barnard Star is indeed a flare.
Speaker 1: Star flare stars of variable stars they can undergo unpredictable
Speaker 1: dramatic increases in brightness, lasting a few minutes. It's believed
Speaker 1: that the flares of flare stars are analogous to solar
Speaker 1: flares in the Sun, and that they're generated by stellar
Speaker 1: magnetic energy stored in the star's atmosphere. Lying just to
Speaker 1: the west of the scorpion is the constellation Libra at
Speaker 1: the scales. In Greek mythology, Libra represents the core of
Speaker 1: Scorpius the scorpion. However, the Romans considered Libra a distinct,
Speaker 1: separate constellation from Scorpius, and thought them to be the
Speaker 1: scales symbolizing the equinoxes, the times of the year in
Speaker 1: March and September, when the Earth gets equal lengths of
Speaker 1: day and night. That's because two thousand years ago, when
Speaker 1: all this was made up, the Sun moved into Libre
Speaker 1: at the time of the September equinox, but due to procession,
Speaker 1: as the Earth Spentax's wobbles in direction, this point in
Speaker 1: time has now moved into the adjoining constellation of Virgo.
Speaker 1: If you look to the south and the southern cross,
Speaker 1: that's the constellation Centaurus. Another half man, half horse mythical
Speaker 1: beast Centaurus was the teacher of many of the Greek
Speaker 1: gods and heroes. He was placed among the stars in
Speaker 1: the heavens after accidentally being kured by a poisoned arrow
Speaker 1: fired by Hercules close to the point of star nearest
Speaker 1: the southern cross. Beta Centauri lies NNGC fifty one thirty nine.
Speaker 1: Omega Centauri the largest and brightest globular cluster in the
Speaker 1: visible sky. Because of its brightness, the ancient Greek mathematician
Speaker 1: and astronomer Claudius Ptolemy originally thought Amiga Centauri was a star.
Speaker 1: It has a diameter of more than one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty light years and contains an estimated ten million stars,
Speaker 1: giving it some four million times the mass of our Sun.
Speaker 1: Located some fifteen thy eight hundred light years away, Amiga
Speaker 1: Centauri is another very ancient globular cluster, around twelve billion
Speaker 1: years old, and it contains many so called population two stars.
Speaker 1: These are the second generation of stars to have formed,
Speaker 1: and were created directly out of the remains of the
Speaker 1: very first stars in the universe. Stars in the core
Speaker 1: of Amiga Centauri are so crowded yarreestimated to average only
Speaker 1: zero point one light years away from each other, and
Speaker 1: that compares to the nearest start of our sun proximate century,
Speaker 1: which is some four point two light years distant. Located
Speaker 1: close to a megasentaurium the sky is the giant lenticular
Speaker 1: galaxy NNGC fifty one twenty eight Centaurus A, which we
Speaker 1: see looking like it's split in half by a thick
Speaker 1: band of dust. The galaxy was discovered in eighteen twenty
Speaker 1: six by astronomer James Dunlop from his home in what
Speaker 1: is now the Sydney suburb of Paramatta, a time long
Speaker 1: before the bright lights of a modern city would make
Speaker 1: such a discovery impossible. Located some thirteen million light years away,
Speaker 1: Centaurus is one of the strongest radio sources in the
Speaker 1: sky and is thought to be the result of a
Speaker 1: merger between an elliptical and a spiral galaxy. It can
Speaker 1: easily seen using a pair of binoculars, but you'll need
Speaker 1: a telescope to make out its spectacular dust lanes. August
Speaker 1: is also the time of the peak of the annual
Speaker 1: Percied's meteor shower. The meteors are the debris trail ejected
Speaker 1: by the comets with tuttle as it travels along its
Speaker 1: one hundred and thirty three year orbit through the Solar System.
Speaker 1: As its name suggests, the perseed's radiant that is the
Speaker 1: point of the sky from which the meteors appear to originate.
Speaker 1: It lies in the constellation of Perseus. The Perseids one
Speaker 1: of the oldest known meteor showers, with early Chinese historical
Speaker 1: records of its activity going back almost two thousand years.
Speaker 1: They're active between July seventeenth and August twenty fourth, with
Speaker 1: a peak on August twelfth, with around sixty meteors an
Speaker 1: hour being visible. The Perseids are very bright and fast
Speaker 1: moving meteors traveling at speeds of fifty nine kilometres per second.
Speaker 1: The best scene between midnight and just before dawn, producing long,
Speaker 1: bright trails and some fireballs. Most Perseids burn up in
Speaker 1: the atmosphere altitudes of over eighty kilometers. Their best scene
Speaker 1: from the northern hemisphere, so for southern hemisphere sky watchers
Speaker 1: look to the north, with the radiant below the northern
Speaker 1: horizon and joining us Now for the rest of our
Speaker 1: tour of the August night skies. Senior science writer and
Speaker 1: sky n tell Uscout magazine contributor Jonathan Nally.
Speaker 5: Day Stuart well as winter here in AUSTRALAISA, so that
Speaker 5: means that stargaze is down here have at their disposal
Speaker 5: the thickest part of the Milky Way and the center
Speaker 5: of our galaxy to view up there in the night sky.
Speaker 5: So if you go outside in the mid evening during
Speaker 5: August to find the Milky Way stretching across the sky
Speaker 5: from the northeast all the way down to the southwest,
Speaker 5: and the center of the Milky Way in the region
Speaker 5: of Sangitarius is pretty much directly overhead for those that
Speaker 5: roughly the latitude of Sydney. The Milky Way, of course,
Speaker 5: is just our galaxy scene from the inside. Most of
Speaker 5: its stars are too far away and dim to be
Speaker 5: seen individually, so if you add them all up collectively,
Speaker 5: light adds up to form a sort of hazy band
Speaker 5: of lights stretching across the sky. It looks really bright
Speaker 5: and prominent. If you have dark skies throughout the countryside
Speaker 5: and you've let your eyes adapted to the darkness to
Speaker 5: the night sky. Takes about twenty minutes or so to
Speaker 5: get your eyes dark adapted. So if you're out there
Speaker 5: in the bush or a desert or a rural area.
Speaker 5: If we call of the bush in Australia, then you
Speaker 5: should get a really nice view of the Milky Way.
Speaker 5: If you have even mild light pollution around, then it
Speaker 5: starts to drown out the haze of the Milky Way,
Speaker 5: so it might be very dem or hard. It's hard
Speaker 5: to see. And if you live in heavily light pollute
Speaker 5: the suburbia, well just forget it. You'ren't going to see
Speaker 5: the Milky Way, which is a real shame because when
Speaker 5: I was growing up, you could even in suburbia because
Speaker 5: there won't have so many lights around. I don't remember
Speaker 5: when I was growing up in the city. I was
Speaker 5: in too many decicated too many decades ago to mention.
Speaker 5: They used to turn all the street lights off late
Speaker 5: at night. I think partly because there were very few
Speaker 5: people driving around, and also at the time I think
Speaker 5: there was a bit of a just general power shortage
Speaker 5: in our state. Needed to build more power station moving,
Speaker 5: so there's to conserve a bit of energy and save
Speaker 5: a bit of coal and turn the lights off later.
Speaker 1: Melbourne, Yeah, Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Yeah, but I had that
Speaker 1: in Sydney they were on to the Meltman came in
Speaker 1: the morning.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think. I think in Melbourne at the time.
Speaker 5: Melbourne was a huge influx of migration after World War two,
Speaker 5: and that's the stacks of people and it was growing
Speaker 5: very quickly and they just needed to build small power
Speaker 5: stations and they at least turned the lights off just
Speaker 5: to conserve a bit of energy, I think, And I
Speaker 5: remember blackouts, you know, when there simply wasn't enough power.
Speaker 5: But anyway, did a little bit off topic the well,
Speaker 5: blackouts are good for a stargaze and of course, but
Speaker 5: it's not good for other things. So we were all
Speaker 5: up to well anyway. So yeah, so the center of
Speaker 5: our galaxy is really good thing. It's a focus of
Speaker 5: a lot of attention for as drammas actually, and it's
Speaker 5: one of the reasons why they were saying and in
Speaker 5: professional and semi professional observatories located in the southern hemisphere,
Speaker 5: because when we look in the direction of our galaxy's core,
Speaker 5: we're actually looking through the densest and deeper section of
Speaker 5: the Milky Way. So there are lots of things to
Speaker 5: see what astronomers called deep sky objects. We've got star
Speaker 5: clusters of both kinds, open and open and golobular we've
Speaker 5: got bright and dark Nebulay got law, And of course
Speaker 5: for the professional astronomers, we've got the right sort of
Speaker 5: year to study it. They can look right into the
Speaker 5: heart of the Milky Way, into the area where the
Speaker 5: black hole is that lives right in the core of
Speaker 5: our galaxy. Our friends in the northern half of the sky, yes,
Speaker 5: say the United States through in the southern United States,
Speaker 5: you can certainly see the Sagittarias and see most of
Speaker 5: the dead, But the further north you go, it starts
Speaker 5: starting to get really low on the horizon and hard
Speaker 5: to see or even below the horizon if you're quite
Speaker 5: far north, because it is a southern constellation. So yes,
Speaker 5: it's a lucky thing for us down in the southern
Speaker 5: minisphere that we've got the center of our galaxy nicely overhead.
Speaker 5: That's partly because just where it is in space compared
Speaker 5: to us, and of course the tilt of our planet,
Speaker 5: so we're a bit lucky in that way. Now, further
Speaker 5: down in the south, we've got the other famous thing
Speaker 5: that you can see down here, which is the Southern Cross.
Speaker 5: It's in the southwest at the moment, got halfway up
Speaker 5: from the horizon and lying on its right hand side.
Speaker 5: The Southern Cross area is within the Milky Way, the
Speaker 5: band of the Milky Way and stretching away from the
Speaker 5: Cross in the line northwards along the Milky Way, there
Speaker 5: are lots of other really interesting constellations to have a
Speaker 5: lookout constellation. It's just an area of the sky. In
Speaker 5: the old days, the constellation was like a stick figure arrangement,
Speaker 5: you know, joined the dots of stars and it let's
Speaker 5: a triangle or a this or that, or an animal
Speaker 5: or some kind or These days, as far as astronomous concerned,
Speaker 5: it's just an area of sky. But there's lots of
Speaker 5: lots of interesting constellations along me. You've got Centaurus, which
Speaker 5: is near the southern Cross. You've got Scorpius, Scorpio. You's
Speaker 5: got Saburtarius we've mentioned, and another one called Stutum. Now
Speaker 5: a lot a lot of people outside of astronomy have
Speaker 5: heard of Centaurus, and fewer still have heard of Scrutem.
Speaker 5: As the name suggests, Scutum is named after a scooter,
Speaker 5: but it's not the kind of scooter with two wheels
Speaker 5: that cool people like me right around on Stewart, you know,
Speaker 5: it's named after a Scooter s cut a, which is
Speaker 5: a Latin word for the type of ancient Roman shield,
Speaker 5: and scooter is Scooter is the constellation of the shield. Now,
Speaker 5: if you're out there stargazing for long enough, as night
Speaker 5: goes on and the Earth turns, you'll notice that from
Speaker 5: our vantage point, the band of the Milky Way appears
Speaker 5: to shift. So I said earlier on that are stretching
Speaker 5: across the night sky from the northeast to the southwest. Well,
Speaker 5: as the Earth turns, the Milkie Way and in the
Speaker 5: night sky moves seems to move as well. So by
Speaker 5: the time you get to early morning, it's no longer
Speaker 5: a right overhead, it's now all the way around the horizon.
Speaker 5: And that's just simply because our viewpoint has changed. And
Speaker 5: then the next night of courses the Earth has turned
Speaker 5: to more it'll be back and roughly the same part
Speaker 5: of the night sky. So if you're a morning person,
Speaker 5: there is plenty to see, particularly in the eastern half
Speaker 5: of the sky. And this includes the constellation of Ryan
Speaker 5: the Hunter, where it's bright stars rideal and Beetlejuice, and
Speaker 5: it's very easy to see group of three stars in
Speaker 5: a row which formed the built of the mythological figures clothing.
Speaker 5: I always remember as a kid that these three stars
Speaker 5: stood out, and I didn't know anything about astronomy really
Speaker 5: or constellations things back then. I just new to do
Speaker 5: as a part of the sky where there's really three
Speaker 5: stars and the perfect line, perfectly sort of equally separated,
Speaker 5: and I always just look for them and now, and
Speaker 5: of course that is part of the constellation Orion. A
Speaker 5: little way from Orion, not too far around to the
Speaker 5: right or the south, you'll find Serious, which is the
Speaker 5: brightest star in the night sky. And further around to
Speaker 5: the right you've got the star Canopus, which is the
Speaker 5: second brightest star of the night's sky. Canopus is quite
Speaker 5: deep into the southern part of the heavens. So a
Speaker 5: lot of people look for the equator, don't get a
Speaker 5: view of it at all because it's down below the
Speaker 5: horizon for them. Now, so is the planet's scope. For
Speaker 5: August this year, at least, there's only one we can
Speaker 5: see actually in the early evening sky, and that's a venus.
Speaker 5: You simply can't miss it. Wait, stuff get dark, when
Speaker 5: the sun's gone down, and look in the western half
Speaker 5: of the sky, and there it is big and bright
Speaker 5: when I was looking at it just the other night,
Speaker 5: and it's really quite spectacular. In particular, have a look
Speaker 5: on the sixteenth if you can, the sixteenth of August,
Speaker 5: if you got clear weather, and you'll see Venus in
Speaker 5: the moon quite close together. That should look pretty spectacular.
Speaker 5: Getting closer to midnight, there's a second planet now, so
Speaker 5: we've got Saturn rising out of the eastern horizon around
Speaker 5: about midnight. It just looks like a fairly bright, slightly
Speaker 5: yellowish star. If you can get a telescope onto it,
Speaker 5: even a small one, you'd be able to see the rings.
Speaker 5: It's always pretty good sat and never ever disappoints. You
Speaker 5: have to wait until about four o'clock in the morning
Speaker 5: until the next planet makes an appearance, and that's Mars
Speaker 5: that will come up over the horizon just after four o'clock.
Speaker 5: It looks like a sort of a reddish orange, medium
Speaker 5: brightness start. I say it looks like a start. It's
Speaker 5: not a start. It looks a bit like a start.
Speaker 5: And the only other planet around at the moment that's
Speaker 5: easy to see is Mercury. But I say easy to see,
Speaker 5: but it actually is quite hard to see at the moment,
Speaker 5: and you only have a week or so to do,
Speaker 5: so you need to look into the orange pre dawn
Speaker 5: glow before the sun rises and try and pick it
Speaker 5: out low on the horizon. Just the first week week
Speaker 5: and a half of August. It'll be quite low down,
Speaker 5: looks like a tiny pin prick of life within the
Speaker 5: pre dawn glow. It's hard to see mercury a lot
Speaker 5: of the times when it is above the horizon. It
Speaker 5: is not high above the horizon and not particularly bright,
Speaker 5: and it can be obscured by trees or buildings or
Speaker 5: whatever because it never really gets too high other times
Speaker 5: of the year. Other times it can actually be reasonably
Speaker 5: prominent and you can see it quite easily, but no
Speaker 5: pin intended mercury can be a bit mercurial. The easiest
Speaker 5: part to see. That's because it is so close to
Speaker 5: the sun. It's never you might call an angel a
Speaker 5: distance away from the sun and they're not in the sky.
Speaker 5: It never gets very far from the sun, so you
Speaker 5: either see it just before dawn or just after sunset,
Speaker 5: and it's a bit of a harder type during the
Speaker 5: other plants. But anyway, that's the night sky for August run.
Speaker 1: That's Senior Science writer and Skye tell Let's Goote Magazine
Speaker 1: contributed Jonathan Elly. And this is space Time, and that's
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