Ring of Fire, Farewell Comet, and the Smell of Rotten Eggs in Space

0:00 Speaker 1: Good day, stargazers, and welcome to Astronomy Daily, episode forty

0:05 Speaker 1: one of season five. I'm Anna and I'm.

0:08 Speaker 2: Avery, and what a day will be alive and looking up? Anna,

0:12 Speaker 2: It's Tuesday, February seventeenth, twenty twenty six, and we have

0:16 Speaker 2: not one, but two celestial events happening today.

0:20 Speaker 1: That's right. The Sun is about to be turned into

0:23 Speaker 1: a ring of fire over Antarctica, and a comment that

0:27 Speaker 1: may never return is making its closest pass to Earth

0:31 Speaker 1: as we speak. Plus we've got JWST solving an identity

0:36 Speaker 1: crisis for some massive exoplanets, NASA doing CT scans on

0:41 Speaker 1: the Northern Lights, and a startup that wants to fuel

0:44 Speaker 1: rockets with water. And a preview of why twenty twenty

0:48 Speaker 1: six might just be the greatest year of eclipses in

0:52 Speaker 1: a generation.

0:53 Speaker 2: Let's not waste a single second. Let's dive right.

0:56 Speaker 1: In, so Avery, We've been building up to this for weeks,

1:00 Speaker 1: and today is finally the day. Right now, as many

1:04 Speaker 1: of our listeners are tuning in, an annular solar eclipse

1:08 Speaker 1: is tracing its path across Antarctica.

1:11 Speaker 2: And I know some of our listeners might be thinking,

1:13 Speaker 2: didn't we just cover this, and yes, we've talked about

1:17 Speaker 2: it in recent episodes, but today is the day, and

1:20 Speaker 2: there's something truly special happening down at the bottom of

1:23 Speaker 2: the world.

1:24 Speaker 1: Let's recap the essentials. An annular eclipse happens when the

1:28 Speaker 1: Moon passes directly between the Earth and the Sun, but

1:32 Speaker 1: because the Moon is at a more distant point in

1:35 Speaker 1: its orbit, it doesn't completely cover the Sun's disk. Instead,

1:40 Speaker 1: you get this breath taking ring of brilliant sunlight surrounding

1:44 Speaker 1: the dark silhouette of the Moon.

1:46 Speaker 2: The ring of fire, and today's ring will last up

1:49 Speaker 2: to two minutes and twenty seconds for anyone lucky enough

1:52 Speaker 2: to be standing in the path of annularity. At the

1:55 Speaker 2: moment of greatest eclipse, which occurs at twelve twelve UTC,

1:59 Speaker 2: the Moon will cover approximately ninety six percent of the

2:02 Speaker 2: Sun's surface.

2:03 Speaker 1: Now ninety six percent sounds like almost everything, but here's

2:08 Speaker 1: the important thing. It's not a total eclipse. The sky

2:12 Speaker 1: won't go dark. You absolutely must keep your solar eclipse

2:16 Speaker 1: glasses on for the entire event. There's no moment where

2:20 Speaker 1: it's safe to look at the Sun with the naked eye.

2:23 Speaker 2: The path of annularity itself is actually quite wide, for

2:26 Speaker 2: eclipse standards about six hundred and sixteen kilometers across, but

2:31 Speaker 2: it's crossing some of the most remote territory on Earth.

2:34 Speaker 2: We're talking about the Antarctic mainland and the surrounding Southern Ocean.

2:38 Speaker 2: So realistically, the only people seeing the full ring of

2:42 Speaker 2: fire today are researchers at a handful of Antarctic stations.

2:46 Speaker 1: However, the partial phases of the eclipse are visible from

2:50 Speaker 1: a much wider area. Observers in southern Argentina, southern Chile,

2:55 Speaker 1: southeastern Africa, Madagascar, and Mauritius will all see the Moon

3:00 Speaker 1: take a bite out of the Sun to varying degrees.

3:03 Speaker 2: And here's something that I think really elevates today's event.

3:06 Speaker 2: This eclipse kicks off the first eclipse season of twenty

3:09 Speaker 2: twenty six. Eclipse seasons are these brief windows, typically about

3:13 Speaker 2: thirty four days long, when the geometry of the Sun, Earth,

3:16 Speaker 2: and Moon aligns just right for eclipses to occur, and

3:20 Speaker 2: they usually come in pairs.

3:22 Speaker 1: Exactly so less than two weeks from now, on March

3:25 Speaker 1: the third, we get a total lunar eclipse, a blood moon,

3:29 Speaker 1: visible from North America. And that's just the beginning for

3:33 Speaker 1: twenty twenty six, which we'll come back to later in

3:35 Speaker 1: the show.

3:36 Speaker 2: For anyone wanting to follow along today, there are several

3:39 Speaker 2: live streams available, and we'll have links in our show

3:41 Speaker 2: notes even if you can't see it from where you are.

3:44 Speaker 2: This is a wonderful moment to appreciate the clockwork precision

3:48 Speaker 2: of our solar system.

3:49 Speaker 1: Am sticking with things happening literally today, let's talk about

3:54 Speaker 1: Comet C twenty twenty four e one, better known as

3:57 Speaker 1: Comet weird Chosh, which is making its closest approach to

4:01 Speaker 1: Earth right now.

4:03 Speaker 2: This is one of those stories where the science and

4:05 Speaker 2: the poetry really come together beautifully. This comment was discovered

4:09 Speaker 2: back in March twenty twenty four by Polish astronomer Casper

4:12 Speaker 2: Weirtoch using the Mount Lemon survey in Arizona, and today

4:17 Speaker 2: it passes within about one hundred and fifty one million

4:20 Speaker 2: kilometers from Earth, roughly the same distance as Earth is

4:23 Speaker 2: from the Sun, so.

4:25 Speaker 1: It's not exactly a close shave, but it's still a

4:28 Speaker 1: significant astronomical moment. What makes this comment truly special is

4:33 Speaker 1: that it's on a hyperbolic orbit. For our listeners who

4:36 Speaker 1: aren't familiar with that, term. It means the comet's trajectory

4:40 Speaker 1: isn't a closed loop. It's not coming back.

4:43 Speaker 2: Ever, or at least not for over two hundred thousand years,

4:47 Speaker 2: and even that's optimistic. Scientists believe it originated in the

4:51 Speaker 2: Orc cloud, that vast icy shell at the outer edges

4:55 Speaker 2: of our solar system, and it's now getting a gravitational

4:58 Speaker 2: slingshot that will send it how into interstellar space. This

5:02 Speaker 2: is genuinely a once in a civilization event.

5:06 Speaker 1: NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day featured Comet Versos today

5:10 Speaker 1: with a thirty minute exposure taken from Chile, showing a

5:14 Speaker 1: gorgeous five degree long ion tail and three separate dust tails.

5:20 Speaker 1: The comet also has a vivid green coma, which scientists

5:24 Speaker 1: believe is linked to carbon bearing compounds, likely diatomic carbon,

5:29 Speaker 1: fluorescing under ultraviolet sunlight.

5:32 Speaker 2: The James Webb Telescope actually observed this comet last year

5:35 Speaker 2: when it was still far out at about seven astronomical

5:38 Speaker 2: units from the sun. They found that it's activity is

5:41 Speaker 2: primarily driven by carbon dioxide rather than carbon monoxide, which

5:46 Speaker 2: is interesting because it suggests the comet may have lost

5:49 Speaker 2: its near surface COO early in its evolution.

5:53 Speaker 1: Now, in terms of actually seeing it at magnitude seven

5:57 Speaker 1: point eight to eight point two, you're going to need

5:59 Speaker 1: bens at minimum, ideally a small telescope. It's currently in

6:04 Speaker 1: the constellation Sculptor, quite low in the southwestern sky after sunset.

6:09 Speaker 1: Southern hemisphere observers have the far better view today.

6:12 Speaker 2: Northern hemisphere observers don't despair. Over the coming days, the

6:16 Speaker 2: comment will climb a bit higher, and by around February

6:19 Speaker 2: twenty third it should be a more accessible target as

6:22 Speaker 2: it passes near some galaxies in Cetus, but it will

6:26 Speaker 2: be fading by then. If you can get out tonight

6:28 Speaker 2: with some optics, it's worth the effort. You're quite literally

6:32 Speaker 2: saying goodbye to something the human race will never see again.

6:36 Speaker 1: All right, let's travel one hundred and thirty three light

6:39 Speaker 1: years away to the constellation Pegasus, where the James Webb

6:43 Speaker 1: telescope has just settled one of exoplanet's science's most persistent mysteries.

6:49 Speaker 2: And the key to solving it. Hydrogen sulfide, the molecule

6:53 Speaker 2: that gives rotten eggs their delightful aroma. Published in Nature Astronomy,

6:58 Speaker 2: a team from UCLA and U see San Diego use

7:02 Speaker 2: JWST to study HR eight seven nine nine system, which

7:06 Speaker 2: hosts four enormous gas giant planets, each between five and

7:11 Speaker 2: ten times the mass of Jupiter.

7:13 Speaker 1: Now, these planets have been known since two thousand and eight,

7:16 Speaker 1: and they're actually directly visible through telescopes, which is remarkable

7:20 Speaker 1: in itself. Most exoplanets are detected indirectly. But because they're

7:25 Speaker 1: so massive, and because they're so far from their star

7:29 Speaker 1: between fifteen and seventy times Earth's distance from the Sun,

7:33 Speaker 1: scientists have long debated if they're truly planets or something

7:37 Speaker 1: else entirely.

7:39 Speaker 2: Specifically, are they planets or brown dwarfs. Brown dwarfs are

7:43 Speaker 2: sometimes called failed stars, objects that form through gravitational collapse

7:48 Speaker 2: of a gas cloud like a star, but never got

7:51 Speaker 2: massive enough to sustain hydrogen fusion. The traditional mass boundary

7:56 Speaker 2: is around thirteen Jupiter masses, but that's a bit arbitrary.

8:00 Speaker 1: What really matters is how they formed. Did they form

8:04 Speaker 1: like planets through core accretion, building up a solid core

8:08 Speaker 1: from dust and rock that then attracted gas, or did

8:11 Speaker 1: they form like stars through the rapid collapse of a

8:14 Speaker 1: dense pocket of gas.

8:16 Speaker 2: And this is where the rotten eggs come in. The

8:19 Speaker 2: team detected hydrogen sulfide in the atmospheres of these three

8:22 Speaker 2: worlds Hr eight, seven, nine, nine, C, D, and E.

8:27 Speaker 2: Now why is sulfur the key? Because at the vast

8:30 Speaker 2: distances these planets orbit their star, sulfur can only exist

8:35 Speaker 2: in solid form within the protoplanetary disc. It cannot be

8:38 Speaker 2: in the gas phase. So if they're sulfur in these

8:41 Speaker 2: planet's atmospheres, it had to have been gobbled up as

8:44 Speaker 2: solid material during the planet's formation.

8:47 Speaker 1: That's the smoking gun for core accretion. These worlds massive

8:52 Speaker 1: as they are formed the same way Jupiter did, just

8:56 Speaker 1: on a much grander scale. Previous studies looking at carbon

9:00 Speaker 1: and oxygen couldn't distinguish between the two formation pathways because

9:05 Speaker 1: those elements can come from either gas or solids.

9:09 Speaker 2: The researchers also found that these planets are enriched in

9:12 Speaker 2: heavy elements compared to their hostar by factors of roughly

9:16 Speaker 2: two to nine times. The estimate the four planets together

9:20 Speaker 2: contain around six hundred earth masses of heavy material. That's

9:25 Speaker 2: an extraordinary amount of solid material.

9:28 Speaker 1: And this phrases a really fascinating question. How big can

9:32 Speaker 1: a planet get if objects ten times Jupiter's mass can

9:36 Speaker 1: form through Cora accretion, where exactly is the line between

9:40 Speaker 1: the biggest planets and the smallest brown dwarfs.

9:44 Speaker 2: Lead researcher Jerry Swan from UCLA put it beautifully. He said,

9:49 Speaker 2: the technique they used to separate the light from these

9:51 Speaker 2: incredibly faint planets ten thousand times fainter than their star,

9:56 Speaker 2: will eventually be applicable to studying earth like worlds. He said.

10:00 Speaker 2: Finding an Earth analog is the holy grail, and we

10:04 Speaker 2: might be twenty to thirty years away from getting the

10:07 Speaker 2: first spectrum of an earth like planet and searching for biosignatures.

10:11 Speaker 1: The future of exoplanet science built on the foundation of

10:15 Speaker 1: smelly gas.

10:16 Speaker 2: Who would have thought thing closer to home now? Well,

10:20 Speaker 2: relatively speaking. NASA launched two groundbreaking sounding rocket missions from

10:25 Speaker 2: Alaska earlier this month, and the results are already exciting

10:29 Speaker 2: the science community.

10:30 Speaker 1: These launched from the Poker Flat Research Range near Fairbanks,

10:34 Speaker 1: and they had two of the best mission acronyms I've

10:37 Speaker 1: ever encountered. The first is Badass, the Black and Diffuse

10:42 Speaker 1: Auroral Science Surveyor and yes that's the real name.

10:46 Speaker 2: Launched February ninth, Badass reads an altitude of about three

10:50 Speaker 2: hundred and sixty kilometers and was specifically designed to study

10:54 Speaker 2: a phenomenon called black auroras. These are these strange dark

10:58 Speaker 2: structures that appear as apps or voids drifting within the

11:02 Speaker 2: brighter diffuse aurora like someone has taken an eraser to

11:06 Speaker 2: parts of the Northern Lights.

11:07 Speaker 1: What's happening physically is that electrons, instead of streaming down

11:12 Speaker 1: into Earth's atmosphere the way they do in normal auroras,

11:16 Speaker 1: are shooting upward into space. Scientists don't fully understand why

11:21 Speaker 1: this reversal happens, and Badass was designed to gather data

11:25 Speaker 1: on exactly that.

11:26 Speaker 2: Then on February tenth, NASA launched the GNEISS mission. That's

11:32 Speaker 2: the Geophysical Non Equilibrium Ionoscire Science System. This one used

11:37 Speaker 2: two rockets launched just thirty seconds apart, flying side by

11:41 Speaker 2: side through the same aurora along different slices.

11:45 Speaker 1: And here's the clever bit. Each rocket ejected four sub payloads,

11:50 Speaker 1: giving them multiple measurement points inside the aurora. Simultaneously, the

11:55 Speaker 1: rockets also sent radio signals through the surrounding plasma to

11:59 Speaker 1: a network of eleven ground receivers. The way the plasma altered,

12:04 Speaker 1: those radio wives allowed scientists to map the plasma density,

12:08 Speaker 1: revealing where electrical currents can flow.

12:11 Speaker 2: Principal investigator Christina Lynch from Dartmouth College described it as

12:16 Speaker 2: essentially doing a CT scan of the plasma beneath the

12:19 Speaker 2: aurora in the same way a medical CT scan uses

12:22 Speaker 2: X rays passing through different body tissues to reconstruct the

12:26 Speaker 2: three D image. NIE uses radio waves passing through auroral

12:30 Speaker 2: plasma to reconstruct the electrical environment in three dimensions.

12:34 Speaker 1: Both missions reported that all instruments performed as expected and

12:39 Speaker 1: returned high quality data. This is particularly satisfying for the

12:43 Speaker 1: Badass team because the same mission was on the launch

12:46 Speaker 1: pad at Poker Flat last year, but the required auroral

12:50 Speaker 1: conditions never materialized before the launch window closed.

12:54 Speaker 2: Understanding how auroral currents work isn't just pure physics. Those

12:59 Speaker 2: currents shape how energy from space spreads through earth upper atmosphere.

13:03 Speaker 2: Where the current fans out, the atmosphere heats up, which

13:06 Speaker 2: can affect satellite drag, GPS accuracy and radiocommunications. With our

13:12 Speaker 2: increasing dependence on space based technology, this research has very

13:16 Speaker 2: practical implications.

13:17 Speaker 1: Now for something that sounds like science fiction but is

13:21 Speaker 1: heading for a real World test later this year. A

13:24 Speaker 1: startup called General Galactic, led by former SpaceX engineer Hallan Madison,

13:30 Speaker 1: is developing technology to use water as rocket fuel.

13:34 Speaker 2: And before anyone thinks we're talking about some kind of

13:36 Speaker 2: perpetual motion scam, the science here is sound. The core

13:41 Speaker 2: concept uses electrolysis, splitting water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen,

13:47 Speaker 2: and then using those gases in two different propulsion systems.

13:51 Speaker 1: Right For chemical propulsion, you burn the hydrogen and oxygen together,

13:56 Speaker 1: which produces high pressure thrust, much like a conventional rocket engine.

14:00 Speaker 1: For electrical propulsion, you ionize the oxygen and accelerate it

14:04 Speaker 1: using a magnetic field, creating plasma thrust. Madison describes that

14:09 Speaker 1: second type as very very low thrust. People jokingly like

14:13 Speaker 1: to call it a burp in space, but.

14:16 Speaker 2: Even a burp in space can be useful for precise

14:19 Speaker 2: maneuvers and station keeping. The real game changer here isn't

14:23 Speaker 2: the propulsion technology itself, but the fuel source. Water is

14:27 Speaker 2: one of the most abundant resources we found on other worlds.

14:31 Speaker 2: There's water ice on the Moon, on Mars, on asteroids.

14:35 Speaker 2: If you can turn that water into fuel, you've essentially

14:38 Speaker 2: created the infrastructure for cosmic refueling stations.

14:41 Speaker 1: That's exactly Madison's long term vision. He's talking about building

14:46 Speaker 1: a refueling network that connects Earth, the Moon, and Mars.

14:50 Speaker 1: As he puts it, everybody wants to go build a

14:53 Speaker 1: Moon base or a Mars base. Who's going to pay

14:56 Speaker 1: for it? How does it actually work? His answer is

14:59 Speaker 1: to make the economic viable by using in situ resources.

15:03 Speaker 2: Now, there are real challenges to overcome. Water has to

15:07 Speaker 2: be purified, electoralized, and stored efficiently, and the whole system

15:11 Speaker 2: has to be lightweight enough for space applications. There's also

15:15 Speaker 2: concerns about ionized oxygen potentially affecting satellite electronics, but the

15:20 Speaker 2: team is pushing ahead with a proof of concept.

15:23 Speaker 1: And that proof of concept is coming soon. General Galactic

15:27 Speaker 1: is planning to launch an eleven hundred pound satellite on

15:30 Speaker 1: a SpaceX Falcon nine rocket in October twenty twenty six.

15:34 Speaker 1: That satellite will test both the chemical and electrical propulsion

15:38 Speaker 1: systems using water as fuel in actual space conditions.

15:43 Speaker 2: If it works, it could fundamentally change the economics of spaceflight.

15:48 Speaker 2: Mathison plans. They're talking about billions of dollars in savings

15:51 Speaker 2: even with current operations and trillions in new economic growth

15:55 Speaker 2: as the infrastructure scales up. Those are bold claims, but

15:59 Speaker 2: the underlying phis is solid. We'll be watching that October

16:02 Speaker 2: launch very closely.

16:04 Speaker 1: So we open the show with today's annular eclipse, and

16:08 Speaker 1: we mentioned that it kicks off an eclipse season, but

16:11 Speaker 1: I think it's worth zooming out and looking at the

16:13 Speaker 1: bigger picture because twenty twenty six is shaping up to

16:17 Speaker 1: be an absolutely extraordinary year for eclipses.

16:21 Speaker 2: It really is. So let's run through what's coming first. Up,

16:24 Speaker 2: as we mentioned on March the third, we get a

16:27 Speaker 2: total lunary eclipse that's a blood moon, and it will

16:30 Speaker 2: be visible across North America, which is fantastic news for

16:34 Speaker 2: our listeners in that part of the world.

16:36 Speaker 1: Then we get to August twelfth, and this is the

16:39 Speaker 1: big one, a total solar eclipse, not annular, but total,

16:44 Speaker 1: with its path of totality crossing the Arctic, Greenland, Iceland

16:48 Speaker 1: and Spain, and observers across much of Western Europe and

16:52 Speaker 1: North America will see a partial eclipse.

16:55 Speaker 2: For anyone in the UK, this is particularly exciting. The

16:58 Speaker 2: BBC Sky at Night magazine and the Royal Observatory Greenwich

17:02 Speaker 2: are both flagging this as the best solar eclipse visible

17:06 Speaker 2: from the UK since nineteen ninety nine. Viewers in London

17:09 Speaker 2: will see the Moon touch the edge of the Sun's

17:12 Speaker 2: disc at six seventeen pm BST, and.

17:15 Speaker 1: It doesn't stop there. The astronomical community is talking about

17:19 Speaker 1: a genuine Golden age of eclipses beginning right now. Between

17:23 Speaker 1: twenty twenty six and twenty twenty eight. We're looking at

17:27 Speaker 1: three total solar eclipses and three Ring of Fire eclipses

17:31 Speaker 1: in just three years. That's an extraordinary run.

17:35 Speaker 2: So if today's Antarctic Ring of Fire has you feeling

17:38 Speaker 2: a bit left out because you couldn't see it, don't worry.

17:41 Speaker 2: There is so much more to come. Start planning now

17:44 Speaker 2: for August twelfth, and make sure you're subscribed to Astronomy

17:47 Speaker 2: Daily because we'll be covering every single one of these events.

17:51 Speaker 1: This is going to be an epic year for eclipse chasers.

17:55 Speaker 2: And that brings us to the end of another packed

17:57 Speaker 2: edition of Astronomy Daily. What a day, anne an eclipse,

18:01 Speaker 2: a comment, farewell, rotten eggs, solving planetary mysteries, seet scans

18:06 Speaker 2: of auroras, water powered rockets, and a Golden Age of

18:10 Speaker 2: eclipses beginning right now.

18:12 Speaker 1: If you enjoyed today's episode, please do subscribe wherever you

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18:18 Speaker 1: and share us with anyone you know who loves looking up.

18:21 Speaker 1: You can find us at Astronomydaily dot io, on YouTube,

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18:30 Speaker 2: Don't forget we're part of the Bytes dot com podcast network,

18:33 Speaker 2: where you'll find plenty of other great shows to keep

18:35 Speaker 2: you entertained.

18:36 Speaker 1: And informed until next time, Keep your eyes on the skies.

18:40 Speaker 2: Clear skies. Everyone, Sunday Stars Start. The story is control

19:02 Speaker 2: over