Tonight the Moon Turns Red — Plus Five More Space Stories You Need to Hear

0:00 Speaker 1: Hey, Stargazer's quick question, are you near a window right now?

0:04 Speaker 1: Because if you're in North America, Australia, New Zealand, or

0:08 Speaker 1: across Asia, tonight, the moon is about to do something extraordinary.

0:13 Speaker 1: We're talking full blood red total lunar eclipse, and it

0:18 Speaker 1: peaks in the early hours of March third. We'll have

0:21 Speaker 1: everything you need to know to catch it tonight on

0:24 Speaker 1: Astronomy Daily, Season five, Episode fifty two, Blood Moons, cosmic detectives,

0:30 Speaker 1: ancient magnetic mysteries, and a heist story that will make

0:34 Speaker 1: you question whether some space fans have gone just a

0:37 Speaker 1: little bit too far.

0:39 Speaker 2: I'm already intrigued and slightly nervous. You should be.

0:43 Speaker 1: Stay with us. Welcome to Astronomy Daily, your daily dose

0:47 Speaker 1: of everything happening in space and across the universe. I'm

0:51 Speaker 1: Enna and I'm Avery. Great to have you with us

0:53 Speaker 1: on this Monday, March second, and what a show we

0:56 Speaker 1: have lined up today. We really do six stories to

1:00 Speaker 1: covering everything from what's happening in tonight's sky to a

1:04 Speaker 1: telescope that generated almost a million alerts in a single night.

1:08 Speaker 1: Do some genuinely wild new science about Saturn, our planet's

1:12 Speaker 1: magnetic poles, and I promise you the last story is

1:16 Speaker 1: going to make you laugh.

1:18 Speaker 2: It really is. But let's kick things off with the

1:20 Speaker 2: story that's literally happening right now as our listeners are

1:23 Speaker 2: tuning in, the Blood Moon.

1:26 Speaker 1: Let's get into it then.

1:27 Speaker 2: So tonight or rather in the very early hours of

1:31 Speaker 2: tomorrow morning, depending on where you are, the moon is

1:34 Speaker 2: going to turn a deep, dramatic red. This is a

1:38 Speaker 2: total lunar eclipse and it's one of the most visually

1:41 Speaker 2: spectacular events in astronomy that requires absolutely zero equipment to enjoy.

1:47 Speaker 1: And the timing is remarkable. For our listeners in Australia

1:50 Speaker 1: and New Zealand, you're actually in one of the best

1:53 Speaker 1: seats on Earth for this one. The eclipse is visible

1:56 Speaker 1: in its entirety from the western part of North America

1:59 Speaker 1: right across the Pacific, through Oceania and then across Asia.

2:04 Speaker 1: For our friends in the eastern US and Europe, you'll

2:07 Speaker 1: catch part of it, but the moon will be low

2:09 Speaker 1: on the horizon or setting as totality peaks, So get

2:13 Speaker 1: to a good vantage point right.

2:15 Speaker 2: So here are the key times to know. The partial

2:18 Speaker 2: phase begins at four to fifty Eastern Time. That's one

2:21 Speaker 2: fifty Pacific totality. The moment the Moon is fully in

2:25 Speaker 2: Earth's shadow and turns that deep dramatic red begins at

2:30 Speaker 2: six h four Eastern and totality lasts for fifty nine minutes,

2:34 Speaker 2: almost a full hour of blood moon.

2:37 Speaker 1: Now why red, It's such a beautiful phenomenon. During a

2:41 Speaker 1: total lunar eclipse, the Moon passes completely into Earth's shadow,

2:46 Speaker 1: but Earth's atmosphere acts like a giant lens, bending and

2:50 Speaker 1: filtering sunlight around the edges of our planet and casting

2:53 Speaker 1: it onto the Moon's surface. The atmosphere strips out the

2:57 Speaker 1: blue wavelengths and lets the reds and oranges through, which

3:00 Speaker 1: is the same reason our sunrises and sunsets look the

3:03 Speaker 1: way they do. So in a very poetic sense, what

3:07 Speaker 1: you're seeing on the Moon is the light of every

3:09 Speaker 1: sunrise and every sunset on Earth, all at once.

3:13 Speaker 2: That is genuinely beautiful, And there's a rare atmospheric bonus

3:18 Speaker 2: tonight for a brief windows, some lucky observers on the

3:21 Speaker 2: east coast of North America and parts of Europe may

3:24 Speaker 2: witness what's called a cell anelion. That's where the totally

3:28 Speaker 2: eclipse red moon and the rising sun are both above

3:32 Speaker 2: the horizon at the same time, which geometrically shouldn't really

3:36 Speaker 2: be possible, but atmospheric refraction bends both the sun and

3:40 Speaker 2: moons light just enough to make it happen. It's been

3:44 Speaker 2: called seeing the impossible, both the eclipse and the sunrise simultaneously.

3:49 Speaker 1: And one more thing worth noting for our long term listeners.

3:52 Speaker 1: This is the last total lunar eclipse until late twenty

3:56 Speaker 1: twenty eight, So if you have any chance at all

3:59 Speaker 1: of getting out side tonight, set that alarm. This is

4:02 Speaker 1: not one to sleep through. We'll have links in the

4:05 Speaker 1: show notes to exact times for your location.

4:08 Speaker 2: As they say in the trades, not to be missed.

4:11 Speaker 1: Okay, story two, and this is a genuinely landmark moment

4:16 Speaker 1: in the history of astronomy. The Vera Reuben Observatory in Chile,

4:21 Speaker 1: which we've been eagerly waiting for, has just made its

4:24 Speaker 1: opening statement to the universe, and it is extraordinary.

4:29 Speaker 2: Eight hundred thousand alerts in a single night.

4:34 Speaker 1: Eight hundred thousand On February twenty fourth, the Vera Reuben Observatory,

4:40 Speaker 1: which houses the largest digital camera ever built, a jaw

4:44 Speaker 1: dropping three point two gigapixels issued eight hundred thousand alerts

4:50 Speaker 1: to astronomers worldwide in just one night of observation. These

4:55 Speaker 1: are real time notifications about everything changing in the sky,

5:00 Speaker 1: brightening or dimming objects, moving flashes of light from supernovae,

5:05 Speaker 1: asteroids on the move, And to.

5:07 Speaker 2: Be clear, this is just the beginning. At full operating capacity,

5:11 Speaker 2: Ruben is expected to produce up to seven million alerts

5:15 Speaker 2: every single night, seven million. The scale of this is

5:19 Speaker 2: almost incomprehensible.

5:22 Speaker 1: What makes this so revolutionary is the speed. Reuben captures

5:26 Speaker 1: a new region of the sky every forty seconds, then

5:30 Speaker 1: immediately sends that data to a processing facility in California,

5:34 Speaker 1: where an automated system compares it to previous images of

5:38 Speaker 1: the same region. Any change, any change at all, triggers

5:42 Speaker 1: an alert that goes out to astronomers worldwide, who can

5:46 Speaker 1: then point other telescopes at the event before it fades.

5:50 Speaker 2: Scientists say this could be transformative for catching supernovae before

5:54 Speaker 2: they reach their peak brightness, spotting asteroids that could be

5:57 Speaker 2: a threat to Earth. And here's a fun one, finding

6:00 Speaker 2: many more interstellar visitors like Comet three iatls as they

6:05 Speaker 2: enter our solar system. Because with Ruben watching the whole

6:08 Speaker 2: sky every forty seconds. There's nowhere to hide.

6:12 Speaker 1: One of the team described it perfectly. They said, the

6:15 Speaker 1: scale and speed of the alerts are unprecedented. After years

6:19 Speaker 1: of building and testing, they can now say, within minutes

6:23 Speaker 1: of each image, here's everything go. Astronomy has entered a

6:27 Speaker 1: new era of real time discovery, and we are here

6:31 Speaker 1: for it.

6:32 Speaker 2: Story three, and this one completely rewrites the origin story

6:36 Speaker 2: of two of the most iconic things in our Solar system,

6:39 Speaker 2: Saturn's rings and its largest moon, Titan.

6:42 Speaker 1: I love this story because it's one of those discoveries

6:46 Speaker 1: where scientists basically went, wait, what if these two mysteries

6:50 Speaker 1: have the same answer exactly?

6:53 Speaker 2: For years, astronomers have had two nagging questions. One, how

6:57 Speaker 2: did Saturn's rings form their remarkably young much younger than

7:01 Speaker 2: Saturn itself, which has always been puzzling. Two, how did

7:06 Speaker 2: Titan end up so different from all of Saturn's other moons.

7:09 Speaker 2: It's enormous, it has a thick atmosphere, it has liquid

7:13 Speaker 2: methane lakes, It's basically a world unto itself.

7:17 Speaker 1: And now new research suggests both mysteries have the same

7:21 Speaker 1: catastrophic answer. Around hundreds of millions of years ago, two

7:25 Speaker 1: of Saturn's older moons smashed into each other in a

7:29 Speaker 1: colossal collision. The force of that impact was so extreme

7:34 Speaker 1: that it didn't just destroy those moons, it created something new.

7:38 Speaker 1: The debris from the collision coalesced to form Titan, and

7:42 Speaker 1: the material flung outward by the blast, the icy fragments

7:45 Speaker 1: scattered into Saturn's orbit became the Rings.

7:49 Speaker 2: One cataclysmic event two of the most fascinating structures in

7:53 Speaker 2: the Solar System. It's the cosmic equivalent of a car

7:57 Speaker 2: crash that somehow produces both a city and the motorway.

8:01 Speaker 1: What I love about this is that it also explains

8:03 Speaker 1: Titan's composition, because if Titan formed from the collision of

8:08 Speaker 1: two older moons, it would have absorbed a complex mix

8:11 Speaker 1: of materials, which could explain its extraordinarily rich chemistry and

8:16 Speaker 1: possibly even its potential to harbor the building blocks of

8:20 Speaker 1: life in those methane seas.

8:22 Speaker 2: Pattern still full of surprises even after all this time.

8:26 Speaker 1: Okay, Story four. This one involves ancient seafloor sediments, a

8:31 Speaker 1: decade's long scientific mystery, and the uncomfortable possibility that our

8:36 Speaker 1: magnetic shield can fail for far longer than we thought.

8:41 Speaker 2: Oh good, I love a comfortable Monday.

8:45 Speaker 1: So here's the background. Earth's magnetic field, the invisible force

8:50 Speaker 1: field that protects us from harmful solar radiation and cosmic rays,

8:54 Speaker 1: isn't permanent. Roughly every few hundred thousand years, it weakens,

8:59 Speaker 1: becomes chao, and eventually reverses direction entirely. North becomes south,

9:05 Speaker 1: South becomes north. Scientists call this a geomagnetic reversal, and

9:10 Speaker 1: until now, the assumption was that these reversals happen relatively

9:15 Speaker 1: quickly in geological terms, within about ten thousand years.

9:20 Speaker 2: But new research has just blown that assumption out of

9:22 Speaker 2: the water.

9:23 Speaker 1: Scientists analyzing deep sea sediment cores drilled from the North

9:28 Speaker 1: Atlantic sediments laid down during the Eocene Epic around forty

9:32 Speaker 1: million years ago, have found evidence of a geomagnetic reversal

9:36 Speaker 1: that took not ten thousand years, but approximately seventy thousand years,

9:41 Speaker 1: seven times longer than the accepted benchmark. During that entire stretch,

9:47 Speaker 1: Earth's magnetic field was significantly weakened, and.

9:50 Speaker 2: The implications of that are significant, right because a weake

9:54 Speaker 2: in magnetic field means more cosmic radiation reaching the.

9:57 Speaker 1: Surface exactly the lead research described it clearly. When the

10:02 Speaker 1: magnetic field weakens, more solar radiation reaches the planet, which

10:06 Speaker 1: can affect organism's ability to navigate, potentially drive higher rates

10:11 Speaker 1: of genetic mutation, and could even cause measurable atmospheric erosion.

10:16 Speaker 1: For seventy thousand years, that's long enough to have real

10:20 Speaker 1: evolutionary consequences.

10:22 Speaker 2: Tho it's worth saying these reversals happen over geological time skills.

10:27 Speaker 2: There's no imminent reversal on the horizon in any human timeframe.

10:30 Speaker 2: But what this research does is force us to rethink

10:33 Speaker 2: what we thought we knew about one of Earth's most

10:36 Speaker 2: fundamental systems. The magnetic field isn't as predictable or as

10:40 Speaker 2: consistent as we assumed.

10:42 Speaker 1: The beautiful detail is how they found it, those tiny

10:46 Speaker 1: magnetic minerals preserved in slowly accumulating deep sea sediments, essentially

10:51 Speaker 1: recording the direction of Earth's field like a billion year

10:55 Speaker 1: magnetic diary. Geology is endlessly fascinating.

11:00 Speaker 2: Three five and we're back to some extraordinary telescope science.

11:04 Speaker 2: This time the James Web telescope has done something genuinely

11:07 Speaker 2: unprecedented with our most mysterious planet, Uranus. Core.

11:12 Speaker 1: Uranus, always the overlooked one.

11:15 Speaker 2: Not anymore. An international team of astronomers have used web's

11:19 Speaker 2: near infrared spectrometer to map the upper atmosphere of Uranus

11:24 Speaker 2: in three dimensions, the first time this has ever been

11:27 Speaker 2: done for the planet, and what they found is extraordinary.

11:31 Speaker 1: So Uranus is already a deeply strange world. It orbits

11:35 Speaker 1: on its side with an axial tilt of almost ninety

11:38 Speaker 1: eight degrees, meaning its polls point roughly towards the Sun.

11:42 Speaker 1: That extreme tilt gives it the most dramatic seasons of

11:46 Speaker 1: any planet in the Solar System, and now WEB has

11:49 Speaker 1: given us the first detailed vertical map of its ionosphere,

11:53 Speaker 1: its uppermost layer of its atmosphere, revealing its structure in

11:58 Speaker 1: unprecedented detail.

12:00 Speaker 2: And the auroras are remarkable. Unlike Earth's auroras, which form

12:03 Speaker 2: in rings around the poles, Uranus's auroras are far more

12:07 Speaker 2: complex and widespread, a reflection of its unusual magnetic field,

12:12 Speaker 2: which is tilted at a completely different angle to its

12:14 Speaker 2: rotation axis. Web's infrared vision allows scientists to detect these

12:19 Speaker 2: faint auroral displays that have never been seen in this

12:22 Speaker 2: kind of detail before.

12:24 Speaker 1: What makes this particularly valuable is that Urinus is a

12:27 Speaker 1: candidate target for a future dedicated NASA mission, the Urinus

12:31 Speaker 1: Orbiter and Probe, which has been recommended as a top

12:35 Speaker 1: priority by planetary scientists. Every new discovery like this helps

12:39 Speaker 1: build the scientific case for why going there would be

12:42 Speaker 1: so worthwhile.

12:44 Speaker 2: And yet another example of Web completely delivering on its

12:48 Speaker 2: promise seeing the universe and even our own solar system

12:51 Speaker 2: in ways that simply weren't possible before.

12:54 Speaker 1: And finally, our community service announcement of the day, because

12:59 Speaker 1: if you've ever bred housed eBay late at night and

13:01 Speaker 1: thought to yourself, Ooh, I wonder if I could get

13:04 Speaker 1: my hands on some actual Apollo moon rock, please listen carefully.

13:10 Speaker 1: This is a public safety message, it really is. So

13:14 Speaker 1: here's the deal. NASA brought back eight hundred and forty

13:17 Speaker 1: two pounds of lunar material during the six Apollo missions

13:21 Speaker 1: between nineteen sixty nine and nineteen seventy two, moonrocks, core samples, dust, pebbles.

13:29 Speaker 1: All of it is the property of the United States

13:31 Speaker 1: federal government, not NASA's property. The governments, and it is absolutely,

13:38 Speaker 1: unambiguously completely illegal to buy, sell, trade, or privately own

13:44 Speaker 1: any of it. Even the astronauts themselves cannot keep a

13:49 Speaker 1: single grain.

13:50 Speaker 2: Which you'd think would be enough of a deterrent.

13:53 Speaker 1: And yet, and yet, in two thousand and two, three

13:57 Speaker 1: NASA interns three decided to attack hemped, one of history's

14:01 Speaker 1: most audacious heists. Using tampered cameras, neoprene bodysuits, and their

14:07 Speaker 1: own NASA access badges, they broke into a safe at

14:11 Speaker 1: Johnson's Space Center and walked out with seventeen pounds of

14:15 Speaker 1: moon rocks worth an estimated twenty one million dollars.

14:19 Speaker 2: At which point they presumably thought, now what exactly?

14:23 Speaker 1: Because selling stolen moonrocks turns out to be surprisingly difficult,

14:28 Speaker 1: their solution post them on the website of the Mineralogy

14:31 Speaker 1: Club of Antwerp, which understandably caught the attention of the FBI,

14:37 Speaker 1: who sent undercover agents posing as interested buyers. They were

14:41 Speaker 1: arrested at a hotel in Orlando with the moon rocks,

14:45 Speaker 1: and the ringleader received an eight year prison sentence.

14:49 Speaker 2: The Mineralogy Club of Antwerp as a fence for stolen moonrocks.

14:53 Speaker 1: I know, I know now there is one nuance worth

14:57 Speaker 1: knowing lunar meteorites, rocks that have naturally fall into Earth

15:01 Speaker 1: from the Moon after being blasted off by ancient impacts

15:04 Speaker 1: are a completely different story. Those can be legally collected, bought,

15:09 Speaker 1: and sold because they arrived here naturally and weren't brought

15:12 Speaker 1: back by government astronauts. Though, if you want a piece

15:16 Speaker 1: of the Moon on your shelf, that's actually the legitimate route.

15:19 Speaker 2: And considerably less likely to result in a federal present sentence.

15:23 Speaker 1: Considerably the key message. If someone offers you Apollo Moon rocks,

15:29 Speaker 1: walk away very quickly.

15:31 Speaker 2: What a show today? A blood moon, a telescope seeing everything,

15:36 Speaker 2: the violent birth of Titan are magnetic fields, ancient secrets,

15:41 Speaker 2: Urinus and Glorious three D, and a reminder that the

15:44 Speaker 2: law applies in space adjacent context too.

15:47 Speaker 1: Thanks so much for spending part of your Monday with us,

15:50 Speaker 1: and seriously, if you can get outside and look up tonight,

15:54 Speaker 1: that blood moon is not going to wait. It's the

15:57 Speaker 1: last one until twenty twenty eight.

16:00 Speaker 2: Links to eclipse times for your location are in the

16:02 Speaker 2: show notes. You can find us at Astronomy Daily dot

16:05 Speaker 2: io and on socials at astro Daily Pod. If you

16:09 Speaker 2: enjoy today's episode, a review or share goes such a

16:12 Speaker 2: long way. It really helps new listeners find us.

16:14 Speaker 1: We'll be back tomorrow with more from the universe. Until then,

16:18 Speaker 1: keep looking.

16:19 Speaker 2: Up Sunday, Start STARTZ