Comet MAPS Is Gone — What Killed It & What Comes Next + Planet Parade Tonight

0:00 Speaker 1: A once in a generation comet flew too close to

0:02 Speaker 1: the Sun and didn't survive. A monster spiral galaxy has

0:07 Speaker 1: been hiding behind a veil of cosmic dust for eleven

0:10 Speaker 1: point five billion years, and JWST and ALMAH have finally

0:15 Speaker 1: pulled it back. And four planets are lining up in

0:18 Speaker 1: the dawn sky right now, right outside your window. This

0:22 Speaker 1: is Astronomy Daily. I'm Anna, and I'm.

0:25 Speaker 2: Avery, and this is your Space news for Saturday, April eighteen.

0:29 Speaker 1: So Avery, we's been watching Comet c Dash twenty twenty six,

0:33 Speaker 1: a one known as Comet Maps for months. When it

0:36 Speaker 1: was discovered back in January, it was the furthest out

0:39 Speaker 1: a kreutz Sungrazer had ever been spotted. There was genuine

0:43 Speaker 1: excitement that it might become a naked eye spectacle, maybe

0:47 Speaker 1: even a great comment.

0:49 Speaker 2: And then it went and died on.

0:50 Speaker 1: Us, dramatically and completely. On April fourth, Comet Maps made

0:55 Speaker 1: its closest approach to the Sun, passing just one hundred

0:59 Speaker 1: sixty thousand kilometers above the solar surface or about ninety

1:03 Speaker 1: nine thousand miles, and it did not survive. The intense

1:07 Speaker 1: heat and tidal forces simply pulled it apart.

1:11 Speaker 2: To put that distance in perspective, the Sun's diameter is

1:14 Speaker 2: about one point four million kilometers. This comet was skimming

1:18 Speaker 2: just above the surface. It's a wonder anything survived at all.

1:22 Speaker 1: For a brief moment, coronograph images from the Soho and

1:26 Speaker 1: Gohs nineteen spacecraft showed the comet going in, and then

1:30 Speaker 1: what emerged was not an intact comet, but a dust plume,

1:34 Speaker 1: a ghost the nucleus had disintegrated.

1:37 Speaker 2: There was a brief period of cautious optimism. Some of

1:40 Speaker 2: the leftover debris created a faint curved dust tail visible

1:44 Speaker 2: in the coronagraph images, raising hopes of what astronomers call

1:48 Speaker 2: a headless wonder, a commetless tail glowing in the evening sky.

1:53 Speaker 1: But those hopes have now faded. The debris cloud has

1:56 Speaker 1: been dispersing, and as of today, Comet Maps is effected over.

2:01 Speaker 1: Its story is done, and that is.

2:03 Speaker 2: A point at ending. Maps was named for the four

2:06 Speaker 2: French amateur astronomers who discovered it. Mari, a tard, parrot,

2:10 Speaker 2: and signare in their observatory in San Fedro Data Gamma

2:13 Speaker 2: in Chile. The James Webbs based telescope had even managed

2:17 Speaker 2: to measure the comet's nucleus before perihelion, estimating it at

2:21 Speaker 2: around four hundred meters in diameter, about the size of

2:24 Speaker 2: the comet Lovejoy, which did survive at solar encounter in

2:27 Speaker 2: twenty eleven.

2:28 Speaker 1: Mapps was just too fragile or the sun was too greedy.

2:33 Speaker 2: But the sky doesn't stay empty for long. Attention is

2:36 Speaker 2: now turning to comet seed Dash twenty twenty five R three,

2:39 Speaker 2: known as pan Stars. It's a more predictable, steadier target,

2:43 Speaker 2: no deaf deifying solar flyby on the agenda, and it's

2:46 Speaker 2: expected to be a good binocular comet in the weeks ahead.

2:49 Speaker 2: We'll be tracking it.

2:51 Speaker 1: Goodbye, Maps, you were brief and beautiful.

2:54 Speaker 2: Meanwhile, NASA is already moving at pace toward the next

2:57 Speaker 2: lunar mission, and this coming Monday, April twentieth, there's a

3:01 Speaker 2: major physical milestone happening in your lens. What's rolling out

3:05 Speaker 2: the largest section of the Space Launch System rocket that

3:08 Speaker 2: will power Artemis three, what NASA calls the top four

3:12 Speaker 2: to fifth of the core stage, which contains the liquid

3:15 Speaker 2: hydrogen tank, the liquid oxygen tank, the intertank, and the

3:19 Speaker 2: forward skirt, is being rolled out of the misshout assembly.

3:22 Speaker 2: Facility and loaded onto the Pegasus barge for delivery to

3:26 Speaker 2: Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

3:28 Speaker 1: This is the backbone of the rocket, enormous piece of engineering.

3:32 Speaker 2: Absolutely once it arrives at Kennedy, teams will complete the

3:36 Speaker 2: vertical integration with the engine section, which has already been

3:39 Speaker 2: in the vehicle assembly building since July. The four RS

3:42 Speaker 2: twenty five engines veteran hardware from the Space Shuttle program,

3:46 Speaker 2: are being refurbished that Stennis Space Center and expected to

3:49 Speaker 2: arrive at Kennedy no later than July.

3:52 Speaker 1: And just to clarify for listeners who may have been

3:55 Speaker 1: following along, Artemis three's mission profile has been revised. It

3:59 Speaker 1: won't be good going directly to the Moon. The plan

4:02 Speaker 1: now is to perform a crude test in Earth orbit,

4:05 Speaker 1: justing rendezvous and docking between Orion and the commercial lunar

4:09 Speaker 1: landers from SpaceX and Blue Origin as a stepping stone

4:13 Speaker 1: towards a crude moonlanding in twenty twenty eight.

4:16 Speaker 2: So while the Moon itself is still on the horizon,

4:20 Speaker 2: this mission is critical infrastructure proving out the systems you

4:23 Speaker 2: need once you get there, and Artemis three is currently

4:27 Speaker 2: targeting a twenty twenty seven launch a.

4:30 Speaker 1: Big visual moment for the program on Monday. Follow at

4:33 Speaker 1: NASA Artemis on social media. If you want to see

4:36 Speaker 1: the roll.

4:36 Speaker 2: Out live, I'll be watching now.

4:39 Speaker 1: Let's travel back in time eleven and a half billion

4:42 Speaker 1: years to be precise, when the universe was barely two

4:46 Speaker 1: billion years old. Galaxies were still forming and chaos reigned, and.

4:51 Speaker 2: Right in the middle of that chaos, something impossibly organized

4:55 Speaker 2: was already taking shape.

4:57 Speaker 1: Astronomers have just published new findings on mo one of

5:00 Speaker 1: the most remarkable objects in the early universe, a galaxy

5:04 Speaker 1: known as ADF twenty two point a one. It resides

5:08 Speaker 1: in a protocluster of galaxies called SSA twenty two, and

5:12 Speaker 1: for years it was just a mysterious blob of infrared light,

5:16 Speaker 1: heavily veiled by cosmic dust. But now, using the combined

5:20 Speaker 1: power of the James Webb Space Telescope and the AUTOCOMMA

5:24 Speaker 1: Large Millimeter Array ALMA, researchers have pulled back that dusty curtain.

5:29 Speaker 2: And what they found underneath was extraordinary. ADF twenty two

5:34 Speaker 2: point a one is not a blob. It is a giant, structured,

5:38 Speaker 2: rapidly rotating spiral galaxy similar to form to our own

5:43 Speaker 2: Milky Way, but nearly twice the size of typical galaxies

5:47 Speaker 2: from that era.

5:48 Speaker 1: Its effective radius is about twenty two thousand, eight hundred

5:52 Speaker 1: light years, comparable to local galaxies we see today. That

5:56 Speaker 1: is enormous for something that existed so early in cosmica history.

6:00 Speaker 1: The universe just hadn't had time to build something that

6:03 Speaker 1: large according to our models.

6:05 Speaker 2: Jwst revealed the spiral arms by capturing the infrared glow

6:10 Speaker 2: of the stars embedded within the dust Alma then mapped

6:13 Speaker 2: the gas kinematics the motion of cold gas throughout the galaxy,

6:18 Speaker 2: and the numbers are staggering. The entire gas disk is

6:22 Speaker 2: rotating at around five hundred and thirty kilometers per second.

6:27 Speaker 2: For comparison, our own milky waste disc rotates at roughly

6:30 Speaker 2: two hundred and twenty kilometers per second.

6:33 Speaker 1: So this is a galaxy spinning more than twice as

6:36 Speaker 1: fast as our own when the universe was a fraction

6:39 Speaker 1: of its current age. How does that even happen?

6:42 Speaker 2: The leading explanation involves the cosmic web, the vast network

6:46 Speaker 2: of hydrogen filaments that connects galaxies across the universe. ADF

6:51 Speaker 2: twenty two dot A one appears to sit at the

6:53 Speaker 2: core of a protocluster that's being fed by these filaments.

6:57 Speaker 2: Cold gas flows in from the cosmic web, imparting both

7:01 Speaker 2: the raw material for star formation and the rotational momentum

7:05 Speaker 2: that spins the disc up so rapidly.

7:07 Speaker 1: The galaxy is also forming stars at an explosive rate

7:12 Speaker 1: hundreds two thousands of times faster than the Milky Way

7:15 Speaker 1: does today. It's a monster galaxy in the truest sense, and.

7:19 Speaker 2: The latest study goes further, examining not just ADF twenty

7:23 Speaker 2: two dot A one, but nine dusty star forming galaxies

7:27 Speaker 2: in the same proto cluster region, giving astronomers a broader

7:31 Speaker 2: picture of how the most massive galaxies in the early

7:34 Speaker 2: universe build themselves. The results suggest a surprising diversity. Some

7:38 Speaker 2: are in active bulge building phases, others are disk dominated,

7:42 Speaker 2: and the cosmic web appears to be the common thread

7:45 Speaker 2: driving them all.

7:46 Speaker 1: We'll link to both the Alma press release and the

7:49 Speaker 1: journal paper in our show notes. Truly stunning science.

7:53 Speaker 2: Still in the realm of astonishing astronomy, Let's talk about

7:56 Speaker 2: a planetary system three hundred seventy two light year away

8:00 Speaker 2: in the constellation Pictor that is doing something astronomers have

8:04 Speaker 2: genuinely never seen before.

8:07 Speaker 1: Tell me.

8:08 Speaker 2: A team led by Smaiel Mireles, a PhD candidate at

8:11 Speaker 2: the University of New Mexico, has just published findings in

8:15 Speaker 2: Science Advances on a three body system called TOI two

8:19 Speaker 2: zero one. And what makes it extraordinary is that the

8:23 Speaker 2: orbits of all three members are changing fast enough to

8:26 Speaker 2: be observed in real time on human timescales.

8:29 Speaker 1: Which is almost unheard of. These things usually take millions

8:33 Speaker 1: of years exactly.

8:35 Speaker 2: The system contains three very different objects. First, a super

8:39 Speaker 2: Earth TOI two one D, about one point four times

8:44 Speaker 2: the size of our planet and six times its mass,

8:47 Speaker 2: completing an orbit every five point eighty five days. Second,

8:51 Speaker 2: a warm Jupiter TOI two A one B, a gas

8:55 Speaker 2: giant about half the mass of Jupiter, orbiting every fifty

8:59 Speaker 2: three days. And third, the troublemaker, a brown dwarf TOI

9:04 Speaker 2: two oh one C on a wide, highly elliptical orbit

9:08 Speaker 2: of about seven point nine years.

9:10 Speaker 1: A brown dwarf is that in between object too massive

9:14 Speaker 1: to be a planet, not quite massive enough to ignite

9:17 Speaker 1: fusion and become a.

9:18 Speaker 2: Star right and in this case, the brown dwarf's immense

9:22 Speaker 2: gravitational pool is actively warping the orbits of the inner

9:25 Speaker 2: two planets in real time. The team first noticed that

9:28 Speaker 2: the warm Jupiter was arriving at its transits its crossings

9:32 Speaker 2: in front of the star about thirty minutes late. That

9:35 Speaker 2: gravitational shutter was a signal that something was pulling on

9:39 Speaker 2: the system, and.

9:40 Speaker 1: The implications of these changing orbits are dramatic.

9:43 Speaker 2: Within about two hundred years, the super Earth will stop

9:46 Speaker 2: transiting its star from our viewpoint entirely. The warm Jupiter

9:50 Speaker 2: will follow a few centuries after that. The system is

9:54 Speaker 2: actively reorganizing itself in front of our eyes.

9:57 Speaker 1: Which also means we caught it at a very particular

10:00 Speaker 1: moment in cosmic time.

10:02 Speaker 2: A lucky window and the TOI too a one see

10:05 Speaker 2: Brown Dwarf has another distinction. It holds the record as

10:09 Speaker 2: the longest period transitting object ever discovered. Its next predicted

10:13 Speaker 2: transit is March twenty six, twenty thirty one. A rare

10:17 Speaker 2: opportunity for a worldwide observing campaign including amateur astronomers.

10:21 Speaker 1: The discovery required collaboration across three continents, pass from space,

10:27 Speaker 1: the ASTEP telescope at Antarctica's remote Concordia station and telescope

10:31 Speaker 1: networks in Chile, Australia and South Africa. We'll link to

10:35 Speaker 1: this Science Advances paper in the show notes. And now

10:39 Speaker 1: your alarm clock challenge for tomorrow morning, because right now

10:42 Speaker 1: four planets are gathering in a tight cluster in the

10:45 Speaker 1: pre dawn eastern sky, and we in the Southern Hemisphere

10:48 Speaker 1: have the best seats on the planet.

10:51 Speaker 2: Mercury, Mars, Saturn, and Neptune, all fitting into a patch

10:55 Speaker 2: of sky just four degrees wide. That's about the width

10:58 Speaker 2: of three fingers held at.

10:59 Speaker 1: Arms land Neptune. You'll need binoculars or a small telescope

11:03 Speaker 1: for but Mercury, Mars, and Saturn are all naked eye targets.

11:08 Speaker 1: Mercury is currently the brightest of the group at magnitude

11:11 Speaker 1: negative zero point one, quite striking.

11:14 Speaker 2: From Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, Perth. Look low in the east

11:18 Speaker 2: starting about sixty to ninety minutes before sunrise. The cluster

11:22 Speaker 2: sits near the border of Pisces and Cetus. Make sure

11:25 Speaker 2: your eastern horizon is as open as possible.

11:28 Speaker 1: The good news this isn't a single morning event. The

11:31 Speaker 1: peak viewing window runs from roughly April sixteenth through twenty third,

11:35 Speaker 1: with tonight and tomorrow morning being the absolute prime. If

11:39 Speaker 1: cloud cover spoils it for you, you have multiple more chances.

11:42 Speaker 1: This coming week.

11:43 Speaker 2: A stargazing app like star Walk two or sky Tonight

11:47 Speaker 2: will show you exactly where to look from your specific location,

11:50 Speaker 2: and it's completely free to step outside and look up.

11:53 Speaker 1: Set that alarm. You won't regret it.

11:56 Speaker 2: And finally, we're going all the way back to the

11:58 Speaker 2: early universe about ten to twelve billion years ago, to

12:02 Speaker 2: an era astronomers call cosmic noon, the peakup BOC, when

12:06 Speaker 2: galaxies were growing their stars faster than at any other

12:09 Speaker 2: time in history.

12:11 Speaker 1: And there's been a long standing mystery here. All that

12:14 Speaker 1: star formation requires enormous amounts of hydrogen, but astronomers couldn't find.

12:19 Speaker 2: It until now. The hobby Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiments

12:25 Speaker 2: HEDX has published a landmark study in the Astrophysical Journal

12:32 Speaker 2: identifying more than thirty three thousand massive hydrogen gas halos

12:38 Speaker 2: called Lyman alpha nebulae surrounding ancient galaxies from that era.

12:44 Speaker 1: Thirty three thousand. What was the previous count.

12:47 Speaker 2: About three thousand, So this study has increased in no

12:51 Speaker 2: number tenfold in a single survey. And what this tells

12:55 Speaker 2: us is that these hydrogen halos are not rare or exotic.

12:59 Speaker 2: They are common features of early galaxies. The fuel for

13:03 Speaker 2: cosmic noons explosive star formation was always there. We just

13:07 Speaker 2: finally have an instrument powerful enough to find it.

13:10 Speaker 1: The lead researcher, Aaron Mentitch Cooper, described the halos as

13:14 Speaker 1: giant amibas with tentacles extending into the cosmos and headdecks.

13:19 Speaker 1: Was specifically designed to hunt for the liman alpha radiation signature,

13:24 Speaker 1: the characteristic glow that hydrogen produces when energized by the

13:28 Speaker 1: ultraviolet light of nearby young stars.

13:31 Speaker 2: It's a beautiful piece of science, and the implications go

13:34 Speaker 2: beyond just accounting for the hydrogen. This discovery reshapes our

13:38 Speaker 2: models of how galaxies grew during their most productive era.

13:42 Speaker 2: The raw material was not a limiting factor. It was

13:45 Speaker 2: everywhere in vast glowing clouds surrounding every major galaxy.

13:50 Speaker 1: A reminder that sometimes the universe is not hiding its secrets.

13:54 Speaker 1: We just need bigger eyes to see them.

13:56 Speaker 2: And they are indeed getting bigger all the time.

13:59 Speaker 1: Time for today's astronomy trivia question. Avery hit me all right, Anna.

14:05 Speaker 2: Today's question, comet maps was a Krutz Sungrazer. What are

14:09 Speaker 2: Krutz Sungrazers and what ancient comet are the all thought

14:13 Speaker 2: to be fragments.

14:14 Speaker 1: Of Okay, I've got this. Krutz Sungrazers are a family

14:18 Speaker 1: of comets that all follow similar orbital paths and pass

14:21 Speaker 1: extremely close to the Sun at perihelion. They're believed to

14:25 Speaker 1: be fragments of a single massive comet that broke apart

14:28 Speaker 1: roughly seventeen hundred years ago, sometimes linked to the Great

14:32 Speaker 1: Comet of three seventy one BC, which may have been

14:35 Speaker 1: the original progenitor body.

14:37 Speaker 2: That's exactly right. Named after German astronomer Heinrich Krutz, who

14:42 Speaker 2: first cataloged their similar orbits in the nineteenth century. There

14:45 Speaker 2: are more than thirty five hundred known members, most of

14:49 Speaker 2: them tiny, discovered only in soho coronagraph images as they

14:53 Speaker 2: flare briefly before vaporizing maps. Was one of the rare

14:57 Speaker 2: ones large enough to be spotted far from the Sun.

15:00 Speaker 2: One of the rare ones large enough to generate real excitement,

15:03 Speaker 2: even if that excitement ultimately ended in heartbreak.

15:07 Speaker 1: I love trivia questions. I think we'll do more of these.

15:10 Speaker 2: I'll see if I can keep them coming then and that's.

15:13 Speaker 1: Your Astronomy Daily for Saturday, April eighteenth. A fallen comet,

15:18 Speaker 1: a monster galaxy unveiled, a planetary system changing shape, four

15:23 Speaker 1: planets at dawn, and thirty three thousand cosmic haloes illuminating

15:27 Speaker 1: the early universe. It's been a big week for the sky.

15:31 Speaker 2: We'll be back Monday with the latest. In the meantime,

15:33 Speaker 2: find this at Astronomy Daily dot io and on all

15:36 Speaker 2: major podcast platforms. Make sure you subscribe so you never

15:40 Speaker 2: miss an episode. I'm Anna and I'm Avery. Keep looking

15:43 Speaker 2: up Sunday Stars. Star Storm is Control