Euclid Finds 31 Ancient Quasars — Plus a "Snowman" Asteroid and Roman Telescope Update

0:00 Anna: Hello and welcome to Astronomy Daily. I'm

0:03 Anna.

0:03 Avery: And I'm, um, avery. It's Friday, July 10,

0:06 2026, and we've got quite the lineup for you

0:09 today.

0:09 Anna: We're talking about quasars from the dawn of

0:12 time. A telescope getting hoisted onto its

0:15 launch platform, an asteroid hunting

0:18 satellite constellation, a space snowman,

0:21 and a tiny cubesat that wants to

0:23 redraw the map of Earth itself. Itself.

0:26 Avery: It's a big one. Let's not waste any time.

0:29 Straight into it. And Anna, uh, how do you

0:31 feel about looking back nearly 13 billion

0:34 years?

0:35 Anna: Honestly, a little dizzy. But that's

0:37 exactly what the European Space Agency's

0:40 Euclid telescope has just done.

0:42 Astronomers have used it to find, uh, 31

0:45 quasars from the universe's first billion

0:48 years of existence.

0:49 Avery: And quasars, for anyone who needs the

0:52 refresher, are the blazing cores of galaxies.

0:55 Supermassive black holes gorging on gas and

0:58 dust so violently that they can outshine

1:01 every star in their host galaxy combined.

1:03 Anna: Right. And two of these 31 are

1:06 record breakers. Their light left them when

1:09 the universe was just 670

1:12 million years old. That's about 5%

1:15 of its current age.

1:16 Avery: 5%. That's like finding a photo

1:19 from someone's first birthday and using it to

1:22 figure out how they run a company 40 years

1:24 later.

1:25 Anna: Which is basically the mystery here. These

1:27 black holes are already around a billion

1:30 times the mass of our Sun. Nobody has a

1:32 clean explanation for how they packed on that

1:35 much mass so early.

1:37 Avery: The new record holder is cataloged as

1:39 Eucl J17, uh,

1:42 292.75641.8.1.

1:48 And it beats the previous most distant quasar

1:51 by about 15 million years, which, in

1:54 cosmic terms, is basically nothing.

1:56 Anna: The team, led by Daming Yang at Leiden

1:59 University, published the find in Astronomy

2:01 and Astrophysics. And here's a fun detail.

2:04 Finding 31 rare objects buried in a

2:07 survey of billions of galaxies is a

2:10 genuine needle in a haystack bobblem.

2:12 Avery: So how'd they do it?

2:14 Anna: Bayes Theorem. Um, centuries old statistics

2:17 repurposed for one of the largest

2:19 astronomical data sets ever assembled.

2:22 Old math, brand new universe.

2:24 Avery: I love that. Euclid's still got a long way

2:27 to run, too. This is from just its wide

2:29 survey, which will eventually cover more than

2:31 one third of the entire sky.

2:34 Anna: So consider this the opening chapter. There's

2:36 a lot more of the early universe still

2:39 defined now, from the deep past to the

2:42 very near future. NASA's Nancy

2:44 Grace Roman Space Telescope just took another

2:47 step toward launch.

2:49 Avery: This is the big dark matter dark energy

2:51 exoplanet hunting flagship. Right?

2:54 Anna: That's the one. NASA confirmed this week that

2:57 inside the payload hazardous servicing

2:59 facility at Kennedy Space center, technicians

3:02 used cranes to lift the 18,000

3:05 pound observatory onto a specialized work

3:08 platform called the Pantheon.

3:10 Avery: 18,000 pounds hanging in mid air on

3:13 a crane. That's not a moment I'd want to be

3:15 standing underneath.

3:16 Anna: Nerve wracking to watch, I'd imagine. But

3:19 it's a routine and carefully choreographed

3:21 step. It moves Roman from its padded shipping

3:24 configuration into its proper operational

3:27 setup, ready for integration and testing.

3:30 Avery: And they've already powered it up for system

3:32 checkouts to make sure everything survived

3:34 the trip from Goddard in one piece.

3:36 Anna: Exactly. Roman is targeting no earlier

3:39 than Sunday August 30th for launch on a

3:42 SpaceX Falcon Heavy from Launch

3:45 Complex 39A.

3:47 Avery: Once it's up, it's heading out to the sun.

3:49 Earth L2 point. About a million miles from

3:51 Earth where it'll have an unobstructed view

3:54 of the cosmos.

3:55 Anna: From there it'll hunt for dark matter, probe

3:58 dark energy and directly image

4:00 exoplanets around nearby stars. A

4:03 proper Swiss army knife of an observatory.

4:06 Avery: Less than two months to go now. We'll be

4:08 keeping a close eye on this one. Now Anna,

4:11 another quick question. Where's the one

4:13 direction in the sky where we're basically

4:15 blind to incoming asteroids?

4:18 Anna: Straight at the Sun. Anything approaching

4:20 from that direction gets lost in the glare

4:23 for any ground telescope.

4:25 Avery: Which is exactly how the 2013 Chelyabinsk

4:27 meteor snuck up on everyone. It came in from

4:30 near the sun and wasn't spotted until it was

4:32 already in the atmosphere over Russia.

4:35 Anna: China's now laying out detailed plans to

4:37 close that gap. Chief Scientist Li

4:40 Mingtao has confirmed a ah combined ground

4:43 and space monitoring network. And new

4:45 reporting this week reveals just how detailed

4:48 the space side of the plan already is.

4:50 Avery: Give me the details.

4:52 Anna: A paper from June co authored with Wu Wei

4:54 Ren, chief designer of China's lunar

4:57 exploration program, lays out four

5:00 candidate orbits for the space based

5:02 telescopes. The Sun, Earth L1,

5:05 Lagrange Point, an Earth leading or

5:07 trailing orbit, a Venus like

5:09 heliocentric orbit orbit, and something

5:12 called an Earth companion distant

5:14 retrograde orbit.

5:16 Avery: That's a lot of orbital real estate to be

5:18 considering.

5:19 Anna: It is. And each one's being evaluated for

5:22 how well it actually watches that sunward

5:24 blind spot. Right now more than 40,000

5:27 near Earth asteroids are cataloged and we've

5:30 found over 95% of the kilometer

5:33 plus ones that could cause global damage.

5:36 But. But only around

5:39 45% of the smaller

5:41 140 meter class asteroids have been

5:44 found and those are still big enough to

5:46 flatten a small country.

5:49 Avery: So this network is specifically going after

5:51 the ones we're most likely to miss.

5:53 Anna: Exactly. The idea, round the clock, no

5:56 blind spots. Coverage. Combining ground

5:58 telescopes for the night sky with space based

6:01 eyes watching the direction

6:03 Avery: the sun blocks, planetary defense,

6:06 filling in, um, the gaps one orbit at a time.

6:09 Anna: Time for my favorite kind of space story,

6:12 the ones that come with genuinely gorgeous

6:14 pictures. As we reported over the last couple

6:17 of episodes, JAXA's Hayabusa2

6:20 spacecraft has just flown past the asteroid

6:23 Tory Foon. And the images that have been sent

6:25 back so far are wonderful.

6:28 Avery: This is the same Hayabusa 2 that brought us

6:30 those Ryugu samples back in 2020?

6:33 Anna: The very same. Now out on an extended

6:35 mission. On July 5, it screamed past

6:38 Tory Foon at about 5 kilometers a second,

6:42 coming within roughly 800 meters of the

6:44 surface.

6:45 Avery: And what did it find?

6:47 Anna: Tory Foon turns out to be a contact

6:49 binary. Two separate asteroids that

6:52 drifted together over time and fused into

6:55 1 elongated 2 lobed shape.

6:58 Scientists are calling it a snowman. And once

7:01 you see the image, you can't unsee it.

7:04 Avery: Ground based observations had hinted it might

7:06 be elongated, but this is the first time

7:08 anyone's actually confirmed the double lobe

7:11 structure.

7:12 Anna: Right. Using its optical camera,

7:14 Thermal infrared Imager, Near Infrared

7:17 Spectrometer and lidar, all within about

7:20 an hour of closest approach. That's a lot of

7:23 instruments working overtime. On a single

7:25 high speed pass.

7:27 Avery: Corey foons, about 450 meters across,

7:30 orbits the sun every 383 days and

7:33 spins once every five hours. It belongs to

7:36 the Apollo Group, the near Earth asteroids

7:38 whose paths cross our own.

7:40 Anna: Hayabusa2 isn't done yet either.

7:43 Backstop is 1998

7:45 KY26 in 2031, an

7:48 asteroid only about 11 meters across,

7:51 which would make it the smallest asteroid

7:53 ever visited by a spacecraft.

7:55 Avery: From a cosmic snowman to visiting something

7:58 the size of a house, this mission just keeps

8:00 giving.

8:01 Our next story is proof that not every

8:03 exciting mission needs to leave Earth orbit.

8:06 Sometimes it's all about measuring the planet

8:08 we're already standing on.

8:09 Anna: This is grits, the Geodetic

8:12 Reference Instrument transponder for small

8:14 satellites. It launched July 7th

8:17 aboard SpaceX's Transporter 17

8:20 rideshare mission out of Vandenberg.

8:22 Avery: A cubesat, no less. How small are we talking?

8:25 Anna: A, uh, 12U cubesat, about the size of a

8:28 large shoebox built by the Dutch company

8:31 ISAS Space, working with NASA Goddard

8:34 and the University of Massachusetts, Lowell.

8:36 Avery: So what's the actual job here?

8:39 Anna: It's tackling a really specific,

8:41 unglamorous, but important problem.

8:44 Right now we measure Earth's precise shape

8:47 and position using three separate systems.

8:50 GPS satellites, radio telescopes, doing

8:53 something called very long baseline

8:55 interferometry and laser ranging stations

8:58 on the ground.

8:59 Avery: And those three systems don't always agree

9:02 with each other.

9:03 Anna: Exactly. Tying them together traditionally

9:06 relies on physical ground based surveying,

9:09 which introduces tiny errors.

9:11 Brits acts as a single satellite that all

9:14 three systems can see and measure at once,

9:17 effectively becoming a shared reference point

9:20 in the sky.

9:20 Avery: So instead of three separate rulers that, uh,

9:23 don't quite line up, you get one ruler

9:25 everyone agrees on.

9:26 Anna: That's the idea. It upconverts incoming

9:29 GPS signals and rebroadcasts them so

9:32 ground based radio telescopes can track it

9:35 too, while a mounted laser reflector lets

9:37 ground stations range it directly.

9:40 Avery: And the payoff is millimeter accuracy in

9:42 what's called the international terrestrial

9:44 reference frame. Basically the master

9:46 coordinate system the whole world uses for

9:48 mapping, navigation and tracking sea level

9:50 rise.

9:51 Anna: It sounds small, but that kind of precision

9:54 underpins everything from your phone's GPS

9:57 to climate science. A, uh, shoebox in orbit,

10:00 quietly making the whole planet easier to

10:03 measure.

10:04 Let's finish today somewhere a little more

10:06 relaxed. If you're the sort of person who

10:08 likes to just step outside and look up

10:10 tonight, you're in luck.

10:12 Avery: Why's that?

10:13 Anna: There's no moon in the sky at all this

10:15 evening, which means no wash of moonlight

10:17 drowning out the fainter stuff. It's

10:20 genuinely one of the best nights of the month

10:22 for chasing dimmer objects with a telescope

10:25 or a decent pair of binoculars.

10:27 Avery: And for anyone wanting an easier target with

10:29 the naked eye, Venus is still keeping close

10:32 company with Regulus, the brightest star in

10:34 Leo, low in the evening twilight.

10:37 Anna: That pairing's been a lovely one this week.

10:39 And Venus is on track to meet up with a

10:41 slender crescent moon around the 17th,

10:44 so keep half an eye on the western sky over

10:47 the coming days.

10:48 Avery: A dark sky tonight. A, uh, planet and star

10:50 pairing to enjoy right now. And a moon Venus

10:53 meetup to look forward to. Not a bad way to

10:55 close things out.

10:56 Anna: Not bad at all. Get outside if you can. The

10:59 sky's putting on a show either way.

11:01 Avery: That's it for today. Quasars from the dawn of

11:04 time. Roman's launch getting closer. A

11:07 sunward asteroid watch. A snowman in the

11:10 asteroid belt. And a cubesat remeasuring the

11:13 Earth.

11:13 Anna: Thanks for spending part of your day with us.

11:16 We'll be back tomorrow with more from across

11:18 the universe. Until then, Clear skies.

11:21 Avery: Astronomy day. Mhm

11:24 stories.