Speaker 1: Happy Valentine's Day, everyone. Welcome to Astronomy Daily, the podcast
that brings you the latest space and astronomy news every
single day.
Speaker 2: I'm Anna and I'm Avery, and what a day to
be talking about the Cosmo Xana. The universe has really
pulled out all the stops for Valentine's Day.
Speaker 1: This year, it really has. We've got astronauts arriving at
the space station today, a dying star sending the universe
a literal Valentine, possible Aurora dancing across the skies tonight,
and a whole lot more. So let's get into.
Speaker 2: It ready when you are.
Speaker 1: Our top story today is a Valentine's Day rendezvous, not
between sweethearts, but between a Dragon spacecraft and the International
Space Station facex's Crew twelve mission launched yesterday morning at
Cape Canaveral at five point fifteen Eastern time, and as
we speak, four astronauts are on their way to dock
with the ISS later this afternoon.
Speaker 2: And what a crew it is. Commanding the mission is
NASA astronaut Jessicamir with Jack Hathaway as pilot. They're joined
by ISSA astronaut Sophie Adenat, whose mission has been named
Epsilon and Ross Cosmos cosmonaut Andre Fetiyev. It's a truly
international crew.
Speaker 1: This mission has been particularly urgent avery the ISS has
been operating with just three crew members, a skeleton crew
since mid January, when Crew eleven had to make an
unexpected early return to Earth due to a medical issue
with one of its members.
Speaker 2: That left NASA astronaut Chris Williams and two Russian cosmonauts
Sergei kutz Verskov and Sergei Mikhayev, holding down the four
under own. NASA has been clear that seven crew members
is really what you need to maximize a science output
on a station that costs around three billion dollars a
year to operate.
Speaker 1: So there was real pressure to get this launch done quickly.
SpaceX actually had the rocket and spacecraft ready ahead of schedule,
but crew training and weather kept pushing the date. They
lost two launch windows earlier in the week to bad
weather along a flight path before finally getting off the
ground yesterday.
Speaker 2: And in a lovely touch for Valentine's Day, the crew
revealed their zero gravity indicator, a handmade crocheted model of
Earth with four little satellites representing each crew member. Plus
a tiny moon for Commander Mer. It was made by
Mer's childhood best friend and Hathaway's daughter. That's pretty adorable,
it really is.
Speaker 1: Docking is expected at around three point fifteen pm Eastern
Time today, so by the time many of you are
listening to this, the ISS should be back to its
full complement of seven. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman praised the teams,
saying they brought Crew eleven home early, pulled Crew twelve forward,
and did it all while preparing for the Artemis two
moon mission. A busy few weeks at NASA, to say
the least.
Speaker 2: And speaking of the Artemis to rocket, there was a
fantastic photo from Kennedy Space Center this week showing the
massive SLS Moon rocket photo bombing the Crew twelve Falcon
nine on the neighboring launch pad, two very different rockets
side by side, representing the present and future of human spaceflight.
Speaker 1: Now we've been keeping you updated on this one, but
with just three days to go, it's time for a
final reminder. On Tuesday, February seventeenth, the first solar eclipse
of twenty twenty six will take place. An annular solar
eclipse or also known as a ring of fire eclipse.
Speaker 2: And here's the thing. This one is going to be
witnessed by more penguins than people. The path of annularity,
where you'd actually see that stunning ring of sunlight around
the Moon, cuts across a remote stretch of Antarctica and
the Southern Ocean.
Speaker 1: At maximum eclipse, the Moon will cover about ninety six
percent of the Sun's disc, leaving that slim glowing ring
visible for up to two minutes and twenty seconds. But
you'd need to be at one of the scientific research
stations down in Antarctica, like the French Italian Concordia Station
or Russia's Myrni station.
Speaker 2: For the rest of the world, partial phases will be
visible from the very southern tips of Chile and Argentina
and the cross parts of Southern Africa, including South Africa,
Mozambique and Madagascar. But if you're in Europe, North America
or most of Asia, no dice on this one. I'm
afraid Bill.
Speaker 1: It's a reminder that eclipse season is upon us, and
that brings us neatly to our next story.
Speaker 2: Have you ever noticed that solar eclipses and lunar eclipses
seem to arrive in pairs. It's not a coincidence. Every
eclipse is part of a predictable pattern during a short
window known as an eclipse season.
Speaker 1: That's right. An eclipse season lasts about thirty one to
thirty seven days, and there are typically two each year,
roughly six months apart. They occur when the Sun passes
near one of the lunar nodes, the points where the
Moon's tilted orbit crosses the plane of Earth's orbit around
the Sun. During this window, the geometry lines up for
eclipses to.
Speaker 2: Happen, and because the window is long enough to contain
both a new moon and a full moon, which are
always about two weeks apart, you almost always get a pair,
a solar eclipse at new moon and the lunar eclipse
at full moon, or vice versa.
Speaker 1: So the annular solar eclipse on February seventeenth is the
opening act. Exactly fourteen days later, on March third, the
same eclipse season delivers a total lunar eclipse, a blood moon,
with the Moon spending nearly an hour fully inside Earth's
dark umbrel.
Speaker 2: Shadow, and that one is much more accessible observers in
East Asia Australia. The Pacific and western North America will
have excellent views of the Moon turning that gorgeous coppery
color during flatality.
Speaker 1: But wait, there's more. The second eclipse season of twenty
twenty six arrives in August, and this one is the blockbuster.
On August twelfth, a total solar eclipse will sweep across Greenland, Iceland,
and northern Spain. That's the first total solar eclipse since
April twenty twenty four, and much of Western Europe and
North America will see at least a deep partial eclipse.
Speaker 2: Then two weeks after that, on August twenty eighth, a
partial lunar eclipse rounds out the season. So twenty twenty
six really is shaping up to be a remarkable year
for eclipse chasers, for eclipses, two seasons, and some genuinely
spectacular events. If you've been meeting to plan an eclipse trip,
now's the time.
Speaker 1: We'll have much more on the March and August eclipses
as they get closer, so stay tuned.
Speaker 2: And now for what has to be the most perfectly
timed astronomy story of the year. Just in time for
Valentine's Day, Space has sent us a heart shaped greeting.
Speaker 1: The star Mira A, about three hundred light years from Earth,
has ejected a cloud of gas and dust that forms
a striking heart shape around it. And this isn't just
a pretty picture, it's a genuinely surprising science discovery.
Speaker 2: Mira A is a red giant star, one of the
most famous variable stars in the sky. It was first
documented all the way back in fifteen ninety six as
a star. In the last stages of its life, it's
been shedding material into space, but the amount and speed
of this particular rejection caught astronomers off guard.
Speaker 1: The study, led by Theo Corey at Sweden's Chalmers University
of Technology, found that Mira A ejected roughly seven earth
masses of material in this burst. Using observations from both
the Very Large Telescope and the Alma radio array in Chile,
the team discovered that gas fills the heart shaped structure,
while dust concentrates along the outer edges, creating a beautiful
glowing outline.
Speaker 2: What's particularly fascinating is that the star appears to be
acting like a lighthouse, illuminating its surroundings unevenly. Corey said
that they were very surprised to see the structure, and
that the star's illumination of the surrounding us varies in
unexpected ways.
Speaker 1: And there's a companion star in this love story too.
Mira B, a white dwarf star that orbits Mira A,
is already beginning to gather some of the ejected material.
The researchers say they'll keep monitoring the expanding cloud because
it could eventually affect Mira B. Though we've got a
cosmic couple exchanging material on Valentine's Day, You couldn't make
it up.
Speaker 2: The study has been accepted for publication in the journal
Astronomy and Astrophysics, and the preprint is already available on archive.
A truly heartfelt discovery.
Speaker 1: Literally from hearts to headspinners. Scientists have been lift puzzled
by a comment that has done something truly extraordinary. It's
flipped its rotation direction.
Speaker 2: Palmet forty one p Tutal Jacobini Cresak try saying that
three times fast was observed by NASAs Swift spacecrafts back
in twenty seventeen, slowing its rotation dramatically. It went from
once every twenty hours to once every fifty three hours
in just sixty days.
Speaker 1: To put that in context, the previous record for a
commentary spin down was held by Comet Hartly II, which
slowed from seventeen to nineteen hours over ninety days. So
Comet forty one p changed its spin rate ten times
more dramatically in two thirds the time. It's unprecedented.
Speaker 2: But that's not even the stranger part. New analysis of
Hubble space telescope images by astronomer David Jewett at UCLA
has revealed that after slowing down, the comet's rotation appeared
to actually reverse it started spinning the other way.
Speaker 1: The culprit appears to be the comet's own outgassing. As
comets approach the Sun, the heat up and release jets
of gas. When that gas escapes unevenly from the surface,
what scientists call anisotropic outgasing, it creates a torque on
the nucleus, gradually changing and eventually reversing its spin.
Speaker 2: Jewett estimates that the nucleus is less than zero point
seven kilometers in radius, making it particularly susceptible to these forces.
And here's the sobering implication. The lifetime of the nucleus
to rotational instability is just a few decades, which is
incredibly short compared to the thousands of years it's been
in its current orbit.
Speaker 1: So while the comet's orbit might be stable for millennia,
its physical integrity is much more fragile. It raises the
question of whether comets might not last as long as
we previously thought, with their own internal forces eventually tearing
them apart. The paper is available as a pre print
on archive for anyone who wants to dig into the details.
Speaker 2: And finally, here's something for everyone to look forward to.
Later this month, a rare six planet parade is building
in the evening sky, and the best part, it's happening
at a perfectly civilized hour.
Speaker 1: Throughout February, six planets are lining up across the sky
in what astronomers call a planetary alignment. The parade features Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Uranus,
and Neptune, and the show peaks on February twenty eighth.
Speaker 2: Now, four of those Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter will
be visible to the naked eye, Urinus and Neptune will
require binoculars or a telescope. The best time to look
is about thirty minutes after your local sunset low in
the western sky. You'll want a clear, unobstructed horizon.
Speaker 1: Mercury might be the trickiest to spot because of its
low position near the horizon, but Venus and Jupiter should
be unmistakable. They're the brightest objects in the evening sky
after the moon.
Speaker 2: Now, this isn't quite as rare as the seven planet
alignment we saw in February last year, which included all
the classical planets plus Uranus and Neptune. That one won't
happen again until twenty forty. But groupings of six planets
are still pretty special.
Speaker 1: As astronomer Greg Brown from the Royal Observatory Greenwich has
pointed out. While groups of three or four planets appearing
together are relatively common, the more planets involved, the more
orbital geometry has to cooperate. So a six planet parade
is definitely worth stepping outside for.
Speaker 2: Mark your calendars for February twenty eighth, and maybe start
scoping out a good western facing spot with a low horizon.
We'll remind you as a day gets.
Speaker 1: Closer before we go, one more little Valentine's Day treat.
If you're in the Northern United States or southern Canada tonight,
you might want to step outside after dark and look north.
NOAA forecasters are predicting possible G one minor geomagnetic storming
this weekend, driven by the combined effects of a coronal
whole high speed solar windstream and a coronal mass ejection
from earlier this week.
Speaker 2: So there's a chance, no guarantees, but a chance to
see the Northern lights tonight and into Sunday. Dates like
Michigan and Maine, and of course our friends in Canada
and northern US Europe have the best odds. What could
be more romantic than watching the Aurora dance across the
sky on Valentine's Day?
Speaker 1: Imagine telling your date, I arranged the Northern Lights just
for you.
Speaker 2: Smooth move, very smooth. Well that's off for today's show.
Whether you're spending Valentine's Day stargazing, watching a spacecraft doc
with the Space Station, or just enjoying the cosmic love
story of Mira A and its heart shaped nebula, we
hope the universe gives you something to smile about today.
Speaker 1: Don't forget to subscribe to Astronomy Daily wherever you get
your podcasts, and you can find us online at Astronomy
Daily dot io and on social media at astro Daily Pod.
If you enjoyed today's episode, please leave us a rating
and review. It really helps others find the show.
Speaker 2: Until next time, keep looking up and Happy Valentine's Day
from all of us at Astronomy Daily, Queer Skies, Everyone,
Sunday Starts Store is the Soul Store? Is the troll
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