Exploring the Night Sky and Beyond | S02E54 - Astronomy Daily: The Latest Space News

Good day everybody, and welcome to the Astronomy Daily podcast. Day the podcast

will be your whole pome Now as usual, I have Halle here in the

studio with me. But before we go over to Halle, I found an

interesting local story here in the Rasad that I believe deserves a bit of coverage,

so here we go. A new dark Sky Discovery hub has opened at

a Somerset beauty spot. The new hub is located at Wimball Lake, within

Europe's first international Dark Sky remove is a designated Dark Sky Discovery Suite. The

project was made possible thanks to generous thunding from Exmoor National Park Authority, Hinckley

Tourism Action Partnership and local supporters. The new hub has been built on grassland

overlooking the lake. The structure has low seating design for stargazers to lean back

and experience views out over the lake and the starry skies above, with a

circular flat patio style platform in front for the use of telescopes. The new

facility open to its first visitors during Xmore Dark Skies Festival. Neil Reeves from

the Southwest Lake said looking out over the lakes at night is a magical experience.

We delighted that visitors can now use this facility to rest, gaze upwards

and watch the planets, spot constellations or shooting stars. It's also a great

location for astrophotography and to learn about national wildlife oh sorry, nocturnal wildlife.

We'll be developing a series of inspiring and educational events to take place all year,

and we're grateful for funding support from Xmore National Park Authority and the Somerset

Council through the Hintley Tourism Action Partnership to help us develop the hub. It's

a fantastic addition to the activities on offer at the lake and for those staying

at our campsite. The lake, which is managed by environmental and recreational charity

Southwest Lakes, attracted two hundred thousand visitors every year, with both local residents

and tourists visiting for on water activities, walking, cycling, angling and experiencing

the great outdoors on the moor. Facilities include ample outdoor space and parking,

activity centre, cafe, campsite, toilets and play area. Importantly, the

lake and its surrounding land also provide for a variety of wildlife and habitats.

Katrina Monroe from the Exmoor National Park Authority said, we delighted that this facility

increases the opportunities for visitors and residents to appreciate our dark skies. This will

be our third Dark Sky Discovery Hub, joining those at North Maulton and Exford.

Each herb is unique, offering different opportunities to discover more. Along with

our Dark Sky Discovery Trail, accredited Dark Sky Friendly businesses and the annual Xmore

Dark Skies Festival, everyone can now enjoy our dark skies all year round,

whether it's simply looking up and appreciating the wonders of the staff filled sky,

or learning more about the universe from a stargazing guide. This is one of

the special qualities of Xmore and something to be celebrated. Now over to Halle

for our Stories of the week. Hi Tim, Here are my stories of

the week. NASA's James Webspace Telescope has helped astronomers determine the distance to nearly

two hundred galaxies and galaxy clusters formed in the universe's early days. One of

the first publicly released images from the James Webspace Telescope JWST or web release on

July eleventh, twenty twenty two, captured at least seven thousand galaxies in a

sparkling deep field view. The image is a rich hunting ground for astronomers seeking

to learn more about how galaxies change over time. A new Canadian led study

is the first to measure galactic distances in the image, showing huge collections of

stars as far as ten billion light years away from Earth. The universe itself

is about thirteen point seven billion years old. The clusters represent ideal targets for

future studies to better understand how galaxies and the clusters they inhabit have evolved.

Research team members stated in a University of Montreal press release from October thirty first,

never before has a telescope been able to create such razor sharp astronomical images

across such a large patch of the sky. On Tuesday, November seventh,

ESA will release the first full color images captured by its recently launched Euclid space

telescope. These images form part of the mission's early release observations, where Euclid

was tasked with scrutinize using a set of celestial targets chosen for their public appeal

and scientific value. The five images are full of cosmic secrets waiting to be

revealed, and this is just the beginning. During its six year mission,

EUCLID will generate the equivalent of a million DVDs of data. These detta will

be used to create the biggest ever three D map of the universe and uncover

the secrets of dark matter and dark energy. Watch the reveal of the images

live through ESA web TV or YouTube on seven November thirteen, fifteen Greenwich meantime

fourteen fifteen Central European time. At the same time, an ESA press release

including all images will be published at esay and slash EUCLID. Miss England took

the controls of Boeing's new astronaut spaceship simulator style Jessica Goggin crowned Miss England earlier

this year, stopped by the Boeing made Starliner simulator at NASA's Kennedy Space Center

in Orlando. Boeing officials posted to x formerly Twitter. Starliner is aiming to

bring an astronaut crew on a test mission to the International Space Station ISS no

earlier than April twenty twenty four, following several years of engineering delays. The

tweet included a shout out to NASA astronaut Sunny Williams, who will pilot the

Boeing crew flight test of Starliner in twenty twenty four alongside NASA Commander Barry Butch

Wilmore. We think you might have a new trainee, the post added,

addressed to Williams. Just so you know, folks, Jessica Goggin is an

aerospace engineer. You go girl. NASA's Office of the Inspector General OIG has

issued its annual report for twenty twenty three, highlighting the challenges that lie ahead

for the US Space agency. The report recognizes innovations made by NASA since its

creation in nineteen fifty eight that have made it a global space science leader,

including programs such as Apollo, the Space Shuttle, the James Webb Space Telescope

JWST, and emerging technologies for sustainable aviation. It also highlights substantial cost growth

and lengthy scheduled delays as issue use that continue to impact NASA programs ranging from

spaceflight to major science and exploratory programs. A major factor in the OIG report

is the planned return of humans to the Moon as part of the Artemis program.

And it also points to the forthcoming retirement of the International Space Station ISS

at the end of the decade and the challenge this poses to NASA as it

seeks to maintain an active human presence in Low Earth orbit. The report is

broken down into seven different challenges that the OIG has identified as top challenges in

relation to NASA's overall mission. NASA Inspector General Paul kage Martin wrote in the

report, these seven highlighted challenges are not the only significant issues that confront NASA,

and identification of an issue as a top challenge does not denote a lack

of attention on the agency's part. Rather, most of these issues are long

standing, difficult challenges central to NASA's core missions and likely will remain top challenges

for years to come. A team of astronomers and astrophysicists affiliated with several instants

tutions in China, working with one colleague from Centro Research and Rico Fermi in

Italy and another from the University of Utah in the US, has found a

link between star age and the frequency of hot jupiters. In their study reported

in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, The group characterized the ages of

a large number of star systems that have Jupiter like exoplanets and compared them.

In this new effort, the research team sought to learn more about star systems

that host Jupiter sized exoplanets. More specifically, they wanted to know if the

age of a star system might be related to its likelihood of hosting Jupiter sized

planets that have an orbital period of less than ten days. Such exoplanets have

come to be known as hot Jupiter exoplanets because they tend to orbit their stars

closely. Prior research has suggested that such exoplanets are hotter than others of similar

makeup due to the heat they receive from their star. Such exoplanets also have

much stronger winds due to the extreme temperature differences between the night and day sides

of the planet. To learn more about the association of hot jupiters and star

age, the researchers collected and analyzed data for three hundred and eighty three Jupiter

sized planets that orbit stars that are similar in size and characteristics to the Sun.

They found that hot jupiters were more likely to be found orbiting relatively young

stars. They also found that the number of hot Jupiter exoplanets declines as star

systems grew older. They also noted that they found no similar correlations between cold

or warm jupiters. The research team also found that the frequency of finding hot

jupiters reduced as their orbits decayed, likely due to a tidal impact. Such

decays, it has been suggested, likely lead to planet death. They found

that the frequency of hot jupiters was proportional to the amount of metal in the

host star, a finding that helps to explain discrepancies between the number of hot

jupiters that have been found as calculated using planetary transit versus exoplanet surveys based on

radial velocity ys. For you, Tim, I am ending this week's news

headlines with a NASA joke. Why did the astronaut break up with their computer

because it had too many space issues? Astronomy Daily five cats thanks to that

Hallie, great stories, terrible joke as usual, They don't forget folks.

You can get all of our past, current and future episodes at space dots

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down Under and from myself Tim Gibbs here in Zomerset. And also don't forget

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podcast group. Thanks for listening this week, everybody, Bye for now. Astronomy Podcast

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