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- [00:00]
A
Life on this small blue marble can be terrifying at times, the power wielded by a select few having ramifications not across mere countries, but whole continents. But frankly, it pales in comparison to the power of the universe. Hundreds of millions of light years away, mountain sized rocks are colliding together with enough energy to shatter themselves into a billion pieces on the long and difficult path to forming new worlds. Glittering across the night sky are fusion reactors pumping out in mere seconds more energy than humanity has ever consumed in all our weary existence. And in the darkest depths, jets of radio waves powerful enough to knock some sense even to the thickest skulls pierce the blackness of the night beacons, reminding us of just how wonderful this complicated universe of ours is. We're glad to have you with us today. As for the next hour or so, we cocoon ourselves in the joys of the heavens, celebrating all the fantastic work of astronomers around the globe, chipping away at the universe's secrets one telescopic observation at a time. I'm Jenny.
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B
And I'm Paul.
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A
And welcome to episode 171 of awesome Astronomy for April 2026. How are you?
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B
I'm all right, yeah. How are you?
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A
Yeah, not too bad, not too bad. I've recovered.
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B
You've. Yeah, recovered. Recovered's the right word.
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A
We'll save this for next time, but yeah, suffice to say I got the norovirus on the ship.
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B
I'm not laughing, but.
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A
Oh, no, but you can't laugh. We'll share the glorious stories next time, but, oh, I am glad to be over that. Apart from now I've got loads of spots because whenever I'm ill, about a week after I've been ill, I just get like, loads of spots come out. I look like a proper like zitty teenager at the minute.
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B
Nice.
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A
Well, I know, right? Join the dots. At the minute, something fun happened that when I came back from the cruise, I was invited up to Bath, to Bath astronomers. So hello, Simon, if you're listening, because they were celebrating 50 years of Bath astronomers.
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B
Yeah, get that.
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A
How amazing is that?
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B
That is cool.
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A
And they held the event right to the day of when bath astronomers started 50 years ago. And the reason they know, I just think that this is really cool is that they went back through loads of newspapers because they knew the rough date. Like they knew it was like March, April time and they knew the year, but they were like, don't know, like the actual date. Can we find the actual day? And they trawled through loads of like newspapers and they found an advertisement for the first meeting. How amazing is that?
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B
That's very cool.
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A
It's very cool, isn't it? And Dame Jocelyn Bell Bunnell was the keynote speaker.
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B
Nice.
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A
So she did a lovely talk about women in astronomy and the things that they achieved. So that was very enjoyable. I didn't go and talk to her because obviously I interviewed her for the podcast and obviously, being who she is, she was, like, absolutely swamped with people at the end. But it was a joy to see her speak again. I tell you what, essentially, she's like 82 or something. She's so sprightly.
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B
Yeah, yeah.
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A
Like, the way she moves about and stuff. Because I was just thinking about, like, my parents are, like, late 60s, early 70s now, and I was just thinking about, like, the way that they get around. And then I was looking at her and I was like, my God, woman, whatever you're doing, we need to share some of this, like, Fountain of Youth around.
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B
It's all about sharp minds, keeping active, isn't it? Doing the stuff. Doing the stuff. Absolutely.
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A
Have a bit of fruit every now and then. Gnaw on a carrot.
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B
Have a bit of fruit and challenge yourself all the time.
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A
Yes. And that's the thing, it's keeping the brain going, isn't it?
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B
My anecdotal observations from parents and relatives and things like that, it's all about keeping sharp, keeping sharp, keeping that razor of the mind kind of gleaming.
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A
Yeah.
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B
So, yeah, absolutely. Oh, that sounds fantastic. That sounds fantastic.
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A
It was. It was. It was very good. So what have you been up to?
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B
Amazingly, astronomy.
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A
Oh, lordy. Oh, lordy. Oh, my God. It actually happens.
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B
I didn't know what to do with myself. Literally, we had this just spell of just gorgeous, gorgeous. And they were. They. I did bloody four nights astronomy in a row.
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A
Oh, my God. That's it for the year. You're not getting any.
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B
I've done for the year. Exactly. I think I thought it was almost as much as I did last year. It literally. It was just that I saw this patch coming up. I thought, oh, you know what, I'll put the scope out on the lawn, put its little tent over it on the sort of Tuesday lunchtime when I was. I wasn't working, I had a break and I thought, oh, put the thing out. And then Tuesday night, there it was. And so I, you know, after a few hours, put the tent back on. And then the next day, like, oh, it's going to be clear Wednesday night. Well, I'll just leave the scope on the lawn and just, you know, it's under its tent, it'll be fine.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Wednesday night, superb. Really good. Then. Then the next night's like, oh look, it's Thursday night, it's going to be clear again. Wasn't so good. Slightly, slightly missed but there was a good, good like bit of planetary and stuff like that. And then put that Friday night I didn't actually. I say in a row, actually it was three. There was a gap because Friday night I was out and then Saturday was just the most stunning. Like the seeing and the transparency was like really. It's almost like it was looking through a vacuum. It was just incredible.
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A
Go on then. Favorite thing that you saw, the Hasria,
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B
actually one I really enjoyed. I sat and watched because you can do a GRS transit all the way across.
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A
Did you?
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B
I did, I did. I kept going back to it. I didn't sort of stare it constantly, but it was like I sort of, you know, watched it for like 10 minutes, went back, did say look back 10 minutes, made a little nothing a little, just little tracked it on a little diagram and just, just had really, really fun. Just like watching the moons change position as well over that time. So did that for like most of the night, not the entire transafce. That was quite long, but did see it, most of it. And something I'm gonna talk about in the Deep Sky Guide, a little, little kind of advert for later on is I went through the Leo, one group of which was really awesome and plus some others in the like the neck of Leo and things like that.
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A
Okay. Yeah.
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B
Galaxies in Leo that you don't normally look at and just had a really, just really, really fantastic few days. So the Scope was out on the lawn for like six days. It was brilliant. Yeah, it was fab.
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A
Oh, amazing. Yeah. I think that was when I was on the cruise, wasn't it?
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B
It was, yeah, I think it was, yeah.
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A
Because I'm looking now as we're recording, I've actually got blue skies with some cloud, but I do see blue. So I'm hoping that, you know, we'll have some time soon when I'm not working.
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B
Weather's actually really nice. I got my legs out and everything today.
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A
I got washing on the line.
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B
Yeah, same, same.
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A
It's a thrill in the UK to put your washing on the line in March.
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B
Amazing.
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A
And then I think there's only one other thing I want to mention because we've got so much news to talk about. So we're not going to chat too much this time. Yeah, I just want to Say if you haven't seen it, go and see Project Hail Mary. We're not. No spoilers are here. Like, we're not spoiling it, but go and see it. Because I. I've been to see it. Partner went to see it. Everyone I know who's seen it has absolutely loved it. Like, just. It's immense.
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B
Yeah, I've not seen it yet. I've not seen it. I was going this week.
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A
Yeah, it's emotional, it's funny. Like, like actually laughing in the cinema. So no spoilers. But, yeah, go and see it. It is worth the cinema ticket price. Instead of waiting for it to, like, come out later. Yeah, yeah, go and see it.
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B
Cool.
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A
All right then. So we are on to the news and I think we're gonna just preface the news by saying we are not talking about Artemis in this episode. No, we are having an Artemis free episode. We've talked about it so much lately. So go back to the previous episodes if you want to know more about the Artemis 2 mission. But we will return to Artemis once it actually launches.
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B
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. We're just holding our. Keeping our powder dry. Keeping our powder dry until the. The actual thing is that kind of. I'm in danger of getting bored of it from the amount of times we've talked about it. And I just want to. I want to save it and it's gonna be good.
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A
Yeah, exactly.
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B
Yeah, exactly.
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A
Yeah. So we are. We're waiting for it to launch and then we will turn to Artemis.
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B
Then we will come back to Artemis.
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A
Yes. So Artemis aside, NASA. Oh, my God. They just. So many announcements lately about really sort of changing things, so.
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B
Oh, my God. Yeah.
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A
I'm gonna start with, I think, a very exciting announcement from NASA. And if it kind of works, if they can pull it off, it is gonna be changing the future of deep space exploration. Because, you know, I don't know who put 50p in Jared, right? But someone did because he is, like, running all over NASA like, a rash. And I am so here for it. Like, it's amazing, but this story in particular is all about the dawn of the nuclear powered spacecraft.
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B
It's happening.
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A
It's happening.
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B
Now.
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A
The thing is, right, I say that, and I think some people are probably having the same thoughts that I did when I was, like, watching this announcement. I was kind of thinking to myself, like, hang on, they've been using nuclear power on spacecraft for decades.
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B
Not
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A
so they have, but not like this.
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B
Not like this.
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A
Completely different nuclear power. So the nuclear power that we're used to when it comes to spacecraft is rtgs. So radioisotope thermoelectric generators, that's what it stands for. And this is using radioactive decay to basically power your electronic systems. So pioneers have this, Voyagers, the big rovers on Mars, like Curiosity and Perseverance, New Horizons went past Pluto. All of these RTGs, right, what it is, there's plutonium 238 on board as that naturally decays. It's got a half life of about 80 years. So that means like half of your fuel will disappear after 80 years. So it's really sort of long lived. This is why the Voyagers are still going. But what happens is you get this radioactive decay. So it generates heat. That heat is essentially from kinetic energy of the decaying particles. It's converted into electrical energy. That heat. It's also used to keep the spacecraft warm, so sort of fight the freezing conditions of space. And then that electricity is used to power things like your communication, your instruments, your cameras, like all of that sort of stuff. It is very inefficient. Only about 5% of the heat generated is converted into electricity. But the new ones, these new nuclear powered spacecraft, the idea is that there is enough power generated for your propulsion as well. And this is the key difference because it's not, you know, using any chemical propulsion or like gases, the nuclear power is going to be at such a greater level that you can actually power your engines through it. And this is where it's a game changer. So this is nep, so nuclear electric propulsion. And this uses fission.
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B
Yep.
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A
So this is not fusion where you're smashing atoms together, but fission, where you split them apart.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And they want to use, so halu. So it's an acronym, it's H, A L E U Hale, Uranium oxide, essentially highly enriched uranium. And it contains more fissile material, so it's more energy efficient. And you basically fire a neutron into your uranium, it makes it unstable, it then decays into barium and krypton and a bunch of neutrons, and all of those have kinetic energy, which is your heat energy. And then the process that NASA seems to want to use is a Brayton power conversion system. So this is where you use the heat to create mechanical work, and then that mechanical work creates electricity. And this is, even though it's a lot more complicated, this kind of system, it means that you can convert about 30% of the heat generated into electricity. So it's much higher than that 5% that we're seeing from the RTGS. And basically the crux of it is these NEP systems. They will generate enough power to not only power all of the electronics and your communications, your instruments, but also your propulsion system.
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B
Yes.
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A
In the form of ion thrusters. This is the way forward. Now, ion thrusters, really interesting, because if you want quick explosive power, this ain't it. You got to use your chemical engines.
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B
This ain't it.
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A
Yeah, yeah. But if you're like in it for the long haul, your ion thruster, it just builds up that momentum over time.
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B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you can get seriously quick.
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A
Yes, you can. If you give yourself some time. Oh, yeah. That speed will thunder upwards.
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B
And that's the thing, because actually if you could keep a chemical engine going as long as, like, on time, you'd get incredible speeds. Because the amount of sort of thrust you get from a chemical engine is enormous. It is enormous. It's huge. But you just can't do that. There's just no way. You can have a tank of fuel.
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A
Yep.
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B
More. More than essentially a few minutes in the big scheme of things. Yeah, you can. You know, I imagine if you really put your mind to it, you could probably get a chemical engine that maybe burn for an hour or so that, you know, that would probably be like this enormous thing you could build, but that would be ridiculously huge. And again, it wouldn't go very far. Well, yeah, it would coast, but that's it. That's all you'd get.
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A
And ion thrusters are going to be the way forward if we want to go and explore the outer solar system.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And in this press conference, Uranus was mentioned. It was just like a little size note, but it was mentioned and it's like, interesting. Like if you're gonna go out there, out to the sort of Uranus.
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B
Well, of course, China recently said they were gonna go to Uranus, didn't they?
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A
Yeah.
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B
So that's interesting because of course, suddenly the American. Actually, we might go to Uranus.
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A
Well, maybe we'll go to Uranus.
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B
We've got a new engine for it.
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A
Yeah. And the thing is, this sort of engine is what you need for a Uranus mission for a long duration, you know, Uranus mission that you don't want to just be a flyby and you need nuclear power because what, I mean, at Jupiter, the power of the sun, like, like if you're doing solar power, the amount of solar radiation that's reaching you At Jupiter is 4% of what we get on Earth.
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B
Oh, yeah. The solar panels for what's the spacecraft around Jupiter, Juno, are they enormous? They're just enormous, the flipping masses. Tiny spacecraft, huge solar panels. It's just enormous.
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A
Yeah, it's literally like. You know how like the body of a butterfly is actually really tiny and then they've got like these gigantic wings?
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B
It is like that.
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A
Yeah, it's like that because there's solar radiance that you. And that's Jupiter. Uranus.
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B
Oh, Uranus. You've got no hope. You've got no. There's just nothing there. It's just like, it's, it's dark.
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A
It's basically the sun looks like another star in the sky.
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B
Yeah, it looks like an extremely bright star. But yeah, you're not getting much light from it. It.
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A
No. Which is why you need the nuclear power. So this is seriously game changing and for like long duration missions because these ion engines, you don't need much fuel for them. We'll talk through how they work now. So they're really efficient, they will last for years and years. And so it's really a game changer. So how do these ion engines work in a nutshell? So you, you have a chamber. You put an easily ionized gas into this chamber. You pump it in something like xenon, you fire electrons then at this xenon gas and then that knocks electrons off the xenon atoms and then you get xenon ions. So this is where the ion engine comes in. And so then you got this cloud of positively charged ions milling around. And at the, the one end where, where your sort of engine is, where you throw, we want your thrust to come out, you got a couple of plates. One is positively charged, one is negatively charged. Now the positively charged one is, is not as positive as your ion cloud. So you've got this gradient in the charge. So then your ions will drift through some holes in your positive plate. But then the negative plate is really negative. And then you get this rapid acceleration of the ions. Because they're positive, the plate is very negative. So then they accelerate, you fire them out of a nozzle and there is your thrust.
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B
Off you go.
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A
Yeah. And then they also pump out electrons where the, with the ions are coming out so that it remains neutral because you don't want charge building up. But that, that is how, how they work. And they've been used on spacecraft before. So dawn that went to Vesta in Ceres adds an ion thruster.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Bepicolombo that's gonna enter Mercury orbit very soon. Also got an ion engine. So but it's just generating enough power to power an ion engine in the far out depths.
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B
Yes.
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A
You, you need this nuke, this kind of nuclear fission power. So they're not going to Uranus yet because they've got to build up this technology a bit. So the mission is called SR1 Freedom.
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B
Of course it's Freedom. Of course it's Freedom.
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A
Of course it is.
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B
Can I, can I ask the, the American audience, why do you name everything Freedom? There are other names. There are other names. Literally there are other names.
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A
So this is SR1 Freedom, a 2028 launch.
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B
Yeah, not long, not long.
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A
And you may be thinking, well, that's never gonna happen. But actually they're repurposing fission technology from the lunar gateway. And so this fission technology is actually quite mature. It hasn't got much left that needs doing to it. And the spacecraft itself is not very fancy. It's basically, you've got your fission reactor, a great big boom to kind of keep the heat away from the instruments and then, and then you've got all your instruments and you go inside the other end.
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B
I love it because it's exactly, it's, it's the absolute stereotype of a science fiction deep space. It is ship. It is absolutely. It's the big long pole with the engine one and all the stuff at the other. Big long, like, you know, it's happening, it's happening, it's happening. I was, that was like, literally I saw the announcement and saw the picture, I was like, yeah, yeah, the spaceships
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A
I've always wanted, yeah, it's happening. And then as Jared pointed out, he was like, why waste an opportunity to do science at Mars? And so going along with it is going to be something called Skyfall. I'm just saying that Adele is going to just be getting so many royalties out of this now. Right?
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B
God, that's the worst Bond. Well, one of the worst Bond themes actually, the Madonna one's even worse.
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A
Oh, do you not like it?
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B
Oh, I don't like it.
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A
Sorry Adele. But so Skyfall, the mission is going to be three ingenuity style helicopters. They are going to be on an, in an entry capsule. They'll drop off from the entry capsule mid air. They're going to go flying off, explore Mars. They're going to have cameras, interestingly, apparently ground penetrating radar. Now radar is really heavy, so I'm not sure how that's going to work.
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B
Radar's come along loads in the last little while. Yeah, the. I saw this and I saw. You saw, I said you saw you'd written. Ah, like it's heavy actually. The like for instance The Royal Navy has a little helicopter, little like drone helicopter they use off the back of ships. It's only little. And I think it's got a payload lift of. It's only 100 kg or something like that is all it's. But it carries an optical turret, like with, you know, sensors and a radar.
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A
Oh, okay then.
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B
So maybe within 100kg. Yeah, I know now. Yeah. So I mean, you think about the ground penetrating radars that archaeologists use. You know, they pull them behind on a little wheelbarrow and stuff like, you
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A
know, so, yeah, I suppose they're not heavy.
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B
Yeah. So. And of course it's gonna be lighter on Mars because smaller planet, smaller planet. But yeah, radars come a long way. They're really small now, some of them.
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A
Okay, cool, that's good. So. And yeah, so it's gonna be looking. They're gonna be looking for water ice, Characterizing the water ice and then also scouting for future human landing sites. Looking at like, hazards, the terrains, like slopes and things like that.
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B
And the answer's gonna be F, off don't come. It's really, really horrible.
- [21:09]
A
Yeah, yeah. Basically. Yeah. And you mad it's only gonna be 20 kilowatts at this stage, so not loads of energy. But you know, this, this is a Pathfinder mission. Right. So then the idea is you gotta start somewhere. Start with this and then start scaling it up, link it into Artemis.
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B
That is exactly how it should happen. That is how it should happen.
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A
Yeah. And Jared is right. Is that all that, like, lately NASA's, it's either been like, we have to do the big giant golden mission or nothing at all. And it's like, no, do the little experimental mission. Yeah, it's the right thing to do.
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B
Yeah, that's exactly the right thing to do. Completely is completely. That's how you push it. Yeah, completely.
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A
100%. Instead of being like, right, we're going to go to Uranus with this untested technology. It's like, no, no, no, let's just fling something at Mars and see what happens. You know, it's Jarrah's like, we love you. It's great.
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B
Okay, so my story, my first story is back to that favorite of ours, the Hubble Tension. Oh, good old Hubble tension. Or talking about the Hubble Tension, which if you haven't heard us talk about it over the years. And frankly, how have you not. Yeah, it's the problem of measuring the speed of the expansion of the universe. One method looks at the early universe and the cmb, the cosmic Microwave background and the afterglow of the Big Bang suggests the universe is expanding at one speed, while looking at stars and supernovae nearby suggests it's expanding about 9% faster thereabouts. This disagreement is called the Hubble Tension.
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A
Yeah.
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B
So it suggests that either our measurements are wrong and they could both be wrong.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Or one of them is completely wrong. One of them is right. We don't know. Or understanding physics is just missing something huge. And we just. Actually we don't get it because it
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A
might be that both numbers are right, but we don't understand why.
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B
Yeah, exactly.
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A
Exactly why the number's different. So. So that's then why you don't understand some physics.
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B
This has been ongoing debate for a long time.
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A
Yeah.
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B
So into this debate stepped a new contender. Stochastic sirens, which have jumped out of the new exciting world of gravitational waves. Yes. So usually scientists use standard sirens. Gravitational waves. There's gravitational waves from a single clear event, like two black holes colliding, for instance. By hearing how loud the collision is, they can calculate how far away it happened.
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A
Yep.
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B
So it's not like kind of like standard candle. This is standard sirens because. Yeah, we get, we get a sound rather than a, you know, gets converted to sound. So it's not a visual thing. So this paper proposes using the gravitational wave background, the gwb. Get used to this, people. This is this whole new world. Brave new world here. Yeah. Instead of looking at the one big shout of a single collision, they're listening to the hum of the entire universe.
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A
That is poetic.
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B
Yeah, exactly. This hum is created by millions of distant faint black hole mergers too far away to see individually. It's all a little. The bubbling away in the early universe. The little buzz of gravitational waves of down the billions of years. And of course what that means is in some respects it's very. A sort of gravitational wave version of the cmb.
- [24:24]
A
Yeah. Which is just like crackling away in the radio.
- [24:28]
B
Exactly. That's cracking away and that's the only light. And of course you're seeing what's going to happen. Of course, because if the universe has got bigger and stretch, well, that's only gravitational waves, the same sort of thing. So the research suggests that this background hump is sensitive to the expansion of the history of the universe. By combining it with data from the louder events, they have suggested a new way of measuring the tension called stochastic sirens. Kind of think about it of like you hear in a big room of people, you're. You can tell how far away someone is who's talking loudly at you, but you're judging the size of the room by the overall kind of volume of sound.
- [25:06]
A
Yes, that sort of idea. Yeah.
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B
And by combining the two, you get some data, you get some information about what's going on. And so they can't resolve the GWB yet. This is the big thing about this, actually. We can't resolve the GWB yet. The gravitational wave detectors are not sensitive enough.
- [25:26]
A
Okay. Not yet. Does this require us going into space?
- [25:29]
B
Exactly. But the non detection is still useful. Oh, kind of like when we looked at things like Higgs boson, for instance, we knew where it wasn't.
- [25:38]
A
Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
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B
You know, when you do. You do the collider thing and you. You kind of go, well, it's not there. And it's not there. It's not there. So it could only be in this little thing here. So we. We've narrowed it down anyway. We know the non result is actually still useful.
- [25:51]
A
Yeah.
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B
And so by the non detection, it kind of places constraints on where it will be detected. And this in turn, already places some constraints on what the measurement of the Hubble constant will be. Because if it. If it's, you know, this. This is where it is, then that's going to be kind of giving us a little clue as to what result is going to come out of it when we do detect it.
- [26:07]
A
Yeah.
- [26:08]
B
If you see what I mean. So, essentially, as the instruments improve, especially over the next six years in sensitivity, the limits will narrow and either show us where the error is or give us a value that may be a truer value of.
- [26:21]
A
Okay. Yeah. Because then as the gap gets smaller, it's like, is it aligning with one or the other?
- [26:25]
B
Is it lining with one or the others in between? Or is it in the middle? Is it so. Yeah.
- [26:32]
A
Yeah.
- [26:33]
B
Exciting times, people. A third contender in the whole tension debate.
- [26:38]
A
I like that.
- [26:39]
B
It's good in it.
- [26:40]
A
Yeah. I've got just a quick little story from ESO which people have been getting quite excited about because it's. So it's not so much the planets themselves which are exciting, but it's the scale on which these planets are forming. So we're talking about a system called Wispit2. Quite like that. Whisper2 and Whisper2 was known to have one planet, and now a second one has been found. So we've got whisper 2B and whisper 2C. So whisper 2B is about 5 jupiters in mass, and then C is about 10 jupiters in mass, but B is forming about 60 astronomical units away from its host star. So this is about twice the distance of Neptune. And then C is forming sort of between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus in our system. So it's quite unusual for us to find these massive giant like gas planets really far out from this stuff because you normally would find them with like the transit methods or the radial velocity method. But this is direct imaging. So this is looking at this star, blocking out the central starlight, looking at the planetary disk around it because it still has its disk. It's a really young system. It's a scent like star, but a really young one. So it still has this planet forming disc. There are gaps in the disk and this is where the planets are forming. They also suspect that there is a third one. Unconfirmed as yet. But I just thought it was a neat little story because it's, you know, gas giants far out away from their star and forming there. Yeah, you know, because we've always got this like.
- [28:28]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [28:29]
A
Thing about all the hot Jupiters. Do they form further out and spiral in or are they forming closer? And so this is interesting to see these giant worlds forming quite far up from their star.
- [28:40]
B
Nice, nice. Like that. Right, so I've got, I've got the bad news. I've got the bad news. So just a quick update now. We're going to do a bit more on this. I think this is, this is, I think, kind of watch your spaces. There's more to come. A quick update on the death of British science, British physics specifically. So the most symbolic blow is the UK's plan to withdraw from a major upgrade to the Large Hadron Collider.
- [29:06]
A
No way.
- [29:07]
B
Yes. It's particularly jarring given the UK's historical leadership in particle physics and most notably of course, the Higgs boson discovery.
- [29:15]
A
That is
- [29:17]
B
depressing. Yes.
- [29:18]
A
Yeah. I'm a little bit surprised.
- [29:20]
B
Yep, yep. You're not the only one.
- [29:24]
A
Yeah.
- [29:25]
B
And yeah, so the. What else is going. So the Electron Ion Collider, which is a thing with America, which was a joint program, collide electrons and protons and nuclei suddenly how to build like, you know, kind of mass, create mass and spin and things like that. How that's going to be. Look, that's. We just canceled that. That's gone. The Rudy, the relativistic ultra fast electron diffraction and imaging, which is like an ultra fast electron camera allowing scientists to watch atoms move during chemical reactions. Whoa. That's been canceled.
- [30:10]
A
Oh, my God. Yes, I know. A lot of projects.
- [30:13]
B
Yeah. The CMAS National Mass Spectrometer center, cmas. It was a big thing. It's going to be like the most advanced mass spectrometry labs and you know, look at sort of medicines and biological samples. And universities had secured about 49 million in kind of funding for that. That's been pulled.
- [30:39]
A
I just. It's just like a list of do.
- [30:41]
B
Yeah. At least four large scale other science. Science infrastructure projects been shelved and university research direct grants to physics departments are being slashed by nearly 30%. Some project leaders being asked to model the impact cut as high as 60%.
- [30:58]
A
It's just not because we had a couple of months ago like the big astronomy astrophysics stuff as well and now.
- [31:04]
B
Well this is, this is all part of the. So under threat of cuts. Next is the elt which we're one
- [31:15]
A
of the lead nations of like the Extremely Large Telescope.
- [31:18]
B
The Extremely Large Telescope. So we may well pull out that the solar observation facilities that we were building for space weather. That looks like that might fall Scar Square Kilometer Array.
- [31:36]
A
Yeah.
- [31:37]
B
Which case we're like one of the key people and one of the lead nations. Looks like we're going to mostly pull out of that and not do the data centers which were of course going to be in the uk. Gravitational research. Just literally we're just talking about it.
- [31:53]
A
We just still. Yeah.
- [31:55]
B
And of course, you know, Cardiff being one of the biggest. That looks like they're thinking about pulling out of that. That area of science.
- [32:03]
A
Jesus Christ.
- [32:05]
B
I know. So the central theme that the government said is a shift towards what they call applied research, which is basically work with an immediate commercial application.
- [32:15]
A
Ah, right. Yeah. So to only do science is gonna make us money.
- [32:18]
B
What, what, what normal people call just engineering. It's not science as engineering. That's just the building stuff that you can then just flog. Yeah, that's not science.
- [32:30]
A
Well, engineering is a branch of science, but you're right that it's not. It's not the blue sky research.
- [32:34]
B
It's not pure science. Engineering uses science, already exists. It rarely comes up with something completely new.
- [32:40]
A
Yeah, it's a blue sky.
- [32:45]
B
And while there's absolutely nothing wrong with engineering, it's not the sort of. This is not the sort of fundamental science of blue skies. Senior scientists compare this to cutting the nutrients to a tree. Was a great comment. To make the leaves grow bigger. They argue that without fundamental physics, the long term innovation economy, AI and quantum computing will eventually wither because the talent pipeline's been destroyed.
- [33:08]
A
I mean.
- [33:08]
B
Yeah, completely. Professor Philip Burrows noted that continuing to pay international subscriptions while cutting the scientists who use them is like buying a Formula One car but not being able to afford the driver.
- [33:20]
A
Yeah, there's no point if we can't understand and make use of. Oh, Jesus.
- [33:27]
B
Professor Brian Cox, good old Coxie, described the cuts as the destruction of the future, warning that the annihilation of research would force university departments to close across the country. The Royal Astronomical Society called it the worst outcome for the field in decades, noting that the UK will soon have world class data from projects like Vera Rubin, but no funded astronomers to actually look at it.
- [33:48]
A
Do you know what, if you're doing your Ph.D. or you're in your early postdocs, this must be terrifying.
- [33:53]
B
Well, there's a quote here. Early career researchers have warned that the lack of job stability is already triggering a brain drain as the UK's best young physicists move to the US, Europe or China where funding is more stable.
- [34:04]
A
I mean, it's already in the uk, people will only get a job for like two, three years.
- [34:09]
B
So essentially, while the UK government claims to be increasing overall R and D spending, the rebalancing away from fundamental physics creating a localized collapse in the physical sciences critics argues he short sighted ministry decision that trades decades of global scientific leadership for modest immediate budgetary savings.
- [34:26]
A
Yeah, so it's, it's smoke and mirrors to hide the fire that they're creating.
- [34:30]
B
Like it's, I've said it before and I've said it again. The, this government does not understand science. No, they don't understand it. They don't get it. They are not scientists. They have no scientific background or leaning or interest unless it has a direct impact on their politics.
- [34:49]
A
And you know what, the thing is, they do TV appearances and radio appearances and who invented TV and radio? Oh wait, it was scientists. Yeah, you know, it's like, who's solving climate change? Oh wait, that's scientists too. Like all of the advanced train technology that they want. Who's creating that? Oh wait, it's scientists.
- [35:07]
B
Yeah, yeah, I know, I know. Fundamentally they are vandals, absolute vandals. This, this government is a bunch of vandals. It is a country embracing its decline. I've said it before, I mean, that's what Brexit was. Brexit was this country embracing its decline. And it still is. It's absolutely embracing its, its dotage.
- [35:31]
A
Should we, shall we move on? Talk about something that refuses to decline? Yes, let's move on because we're going
- [35:39]
B
to come back to this at some point and. But yes, let's move on.
- [35:42]
A
To something more cheery, something lovely, something that refuses to decline. And that is the Hubble Space Telescope.
- [35:50]
B
Yay. The ever living.
- [35:51]
A
The ever living.
- [35:53]
B
The Mumm Ra of spaceships.
- [35:55]
A
Yeah. It is glorious. Hubble again. And Hubble has revisited the Crab Nebula which I've added to our sky guys, because it is a backyard target. I mean you won't see it like Hubble sees it, but it is a backyard target. So Crab Nebula is supernova remnant. It was noted by. The actual supernova itself was noted by Chinese astronomers in, in 1054 AD. So you know, we're talking thousand years ago, they saw the, the flash of light. And so now the Crab Nebula is that expanding remnant about six and a half thousand light years away in the constellation of taurus. And over 25 years, so since for Hubble first looked at it, it's been expanding at a pace of, get this, 5.5 million kilometers.
- [36:49]
B
Wow.
- [36:49]
A
Per hour. Per hour.
- [36:51]
B
Per hour.
- [36:52]
A
Per hour.
- [36:53]
B
Holy cow. Holy cowsers.
- [36:56]
A
Right?
- [36:57]
B
Wow.
- [36:57]
A
And so Herbal's gone back to it 25 years later. And you know how I love a GIF? Well, this is like the queen of all gifts, right?
- [37:05]
B
Yeah, you love a gift.
- [37:06]
A
Actually see the expansion. You can actually physically see it. It literally gets bigger. And it's not just that it gets bigger, but you can see like there's changes in the gas filaments. Like some of them are brighter, some of them are a bit fainter.
- [37:23]
B
This is why it's important to have long term instruments and long term investment, UK government, because you get to see these things, we get to understand these things. Because in the human life, yeah, 25 years is actually a significant percentage of the life of that nebula so far.
- [37:39]
A
Yeah, yeah, it is.
- [37:41]
B
Like it's actually a reasonable amount of time within its lifetime.
- [37:45]
A
Yeah. And we're literally now watching like gas composition changes, you know, chemical changes and density of the gas change as it's expanding. And it's interesting things like the filaments at the edge seem to have moved more than the ones at the center. So it's not that they're stretching but they've actually moved more. And they, they think this is all to do with the. Because there's a pulsar at the center of the Crab. So it's all to do with the interaction of that pulsar with the surrounding nebulae. And it's like all the magnetic fields and everything. So it's having really interesting effects on the kind of evolution of the supernova remnant. And so it's amazing that you can actually see this. And because as well they've been able to return to it 25 years later, they're getting proper like three dimensional information. So, you know, it's like, oh, well, we thought that filament was a nearby filaments, but actually that one's a bit more distant because it hasn't moved as much. And so they like better sort of understanding actually the three dimensional structure which is really hard to do from 2D images.
- [38:49]
B
Cool.
- [38:50]
A
So. So yeah, it's. Go and have a look. It's. If you just have a little Google of Hubble.
- [38:55]
B
Yeah.
- [38:55]
A
Crab Nebula, new pictures.
- [38:57]
B
Very cool.
- [38:58]
A
That like, it'll come up and. And it's brilliant.
- [39:01]
B
Very cool.
- [39:01]
A
And then my final good news. And I think this is very exciting.
- [39:06]
B
Go on. Yeah, give us a bit more good news. We need it. We need it.
- [39:08]
A
Yeah. This is our final good news that we are ending on because the rumors are true. They're gonna try and reboost Hubble. Like the rumors are true. So I was watching all of the NASA press conferences where they're like announcing a bajillion things. I mean I. To be honest, a lot of it felt like smoke and mirrors. Look over here, look how exciting we're being. Don't look over there, look over here, look at us. But there were nuggets in there. There were good nuggets. And this is later in the year. We know that this private corporation is going to try and boost the Swift X Ray Observatory. We know that's happening. And they confirmed in this press conference that if that goes well, they are going to use that data to work with this private company to see if they can come up with a plan to boost Hubble.
- [39:52]
B
Nice.
- [39:53]
A
So a Hubble Reboost is seriously on the cards. Like there's no planned mission. It hasn't been fleshed out yet because they've got to try it with Swift first.
- [40:01]
B
But it's on the cards.
- [40:02]
A
It is on the cards. And the thing is, Hubble's orbit has degraded more than anticipated because we had a particularly dramatic solar cycle which inflated our atmosphere, increased drag. So this is very, very exciting news, I think. Very cool. And now it's on to the sky guide, isn't it?
- [40:35]
B
Yeah.
- [40:35]
A
So first for the sky guide, of course, it has to be the Crab Nebula. You have to sort of just mention that because it's a backyard target. We have to. Right, so Taurus is in the west now just after sunset. It's not going to be long till it disappears and we lose it again. Until autumn. Taurus, best marked by the Pleiades star cluster, which marks the tail of the ball. And then you've got the V shaped Hyades star cluster with that bright red Aldebaran, which is the angry red eye of the bull. Right. So if you take that V of the Hyades and you follow the prong, that's got Aldebaran in it, if you follow it across the sky about four times the length of the V, you'll come to the ends of the horns. Right, Two stars marking the ends of the horns and the one that you want to follow the prong with Aldebaran, you'll get to Zeta Tauri. And just over a degree from that star, that is where the Crab Nebula is. It's in the direction of the other sort of end of the Horn, but that's where the Crab is. You can see it with a small telescope, decent pair of binoculars. Obviously the bigger your telescope, the more details you will see. So go and have a look for the Crab. We also have a meteor shower this month. It's the Lyrids. Lyrids are back. It's like the first like good one of the year, really, the Lyrids. We've only got a crescent Moon which will set quite quickly. So it's a pretty decent year for the Lyrids. We're talking peaking around the 22nd of April. And as the name suggests, they look as if they're coming from the part of the sky where the constellation Elyra sits. So that's like around 10 o', clock, that's in the northeast. And then it kind of gets more towards the Easter, getting higher in the sky as the night rolls on. Now the thing with Lyrid, Lyrids are bright and reasonably high rate actually, if you're in the dark skies, up to 20 an hour. So that's one every few minutes. And they are like more along the kind of fireball, really bright meteors. And it is debris left behind by Comet 1861 G1. Thatcher. There we are. So look out for the Lyrides.
- [42:30]
B
Nice.
- [42:30]
A
We got some fun lunar conjunctions this month.
- [42:34]
B
There's loads. Yeah, there's loads. This is the year for them.
- [42:37]
A
Yeah. So on the second we've got the Moon and Speaker only a couple of degrees apart. Speaker, brightest star in Virgo. On the 23rd, the moon and Jupiter are going to be really close and also Castor and Pollux. And we've seen this a few times the last few months and it's lovely because Caster and Pollux in Gemini are so bright, Jupiter's gonna be there, the moon and kind of enjoy them because this is the kind of the last hurrah before these guys like disappear from view. And then on the 26th, the moon and Regulus are going to be really close and actually an occultation in some places. So we're on the curse in the uk, we'll sort of see it disappear but not necessarily reappear. And then Europe, the Middle east, parts of Africa, you'll be able to see, enjoy that occultation. And that is on the 26th.
- [43:23]
B
Nice.
- [43:24]
A
So then if you're looking at the Moon and Jupiter on the 23rd, the same evening, have a look at Venus and Uranus just after sunset, less than a degree apart.
- [43:35]
B
Nice.
- [43:36]
A
And the Pleiades is only a few degrees away. So it's gonna be a really lovely gathering in the even. So that's, that's the 23rd, that's something to enjoy. And then we maybe maybe have a super bright comet.
- [43:50]
B
Maybe, maybe.
- [43:52]
A
I think it's gonna break up because it is getting so close to the Sun.
- [43:55]
B
It's so close.
- [43:56]
A
So close. Like we're talking less than 1 sun diameter close. Like it is literally flying through the corona like. Yeah. So I don't think it's gonna survive. But if it does, it's, it might, it may.
- [44:08]
B
Yeah.
- [44:09]
A
This is C2026A1 maps. If it survives its close encounter with the sun on the fourth, then it could be visible in daylight. Like it may be that bright, but give it until about the 8th until you start looking for it, just to let it get away from the sun a little bit. Make sure the sun has set before you go looking for it. But it should be naked eye visible. How long it would remain naked eye visible, it's really hard to say because we don't know this comet, it's a new comet, we don't know how it's going to behave. But otherwise, I mean binoculars and you'll be, you'll be cracking along. So the fourth is perihelion, if it survives. Have a look at this from the 8th. And Venus will be a good guide from the UK around the 7th, 8th, basically find Venus, drop straight down and it'll be there close to the horizon.
- [44:58]
B
And if it's bright, you'll see it.
- [44:59]
A
Yeah, yeah, exactly. But we don't know it's a. Maybe we'll see, see if it survives.
- [45:05]
B
Right time some deep sky action. So I'm gonna, I'll talk you through that. What, What I was looking at the other night. Because if the Leo triplet. Now you've probably all heard about the Leo triplet, if that's the big name arena super band of galaxies in LEO, then the M96 group, also known as the LEO1 group, is the sophisticated raw indie band that loads of people have yet to discover. Okay, so it's located about 31,38 million light years away. This group is one of the closest galaxy clusters to our own Local Group. Actually one of our neighbours features a rare mix of spiral barred spiral elliptical galaxies, lenticular. It's got a little bit of everything.
- [45:42]
A
Nice.
- [45:44]
B
So M96 group sits right in the belly of the lion between the bright star Regulus Alpha Leo and Churton Theta Leo. Start at Regulus and move your eyes to Churton, which is to the east and the star at the base of Leo's haunches if you sort of think of a lion. And then the target zone of the M96 group is located about one third of the way from Regulus toward Churton. So. And like the anchor star for your kind of search, you need to begin Your sweep is 52 Leonis, which is a mag 5.5 star that can be hard to zero in on. But you can find it if you send to your finder on this star, M96 M5 less than a degree away.
- [46:26]
A
Oh, okay. Yeah.
- [46:27]
B
So unlike Leo triplet, which is Famous for having three galaxies in one field of view, the M96 group is more spread out. So you usually observe them in two distinct subgroups. So the first is the spiral pair of 96 and 95. 96 at Mach 9.2 is the brightest member in a 4 inch scope. It looks like a bright, slightly oval core. Large scopes you start to see it's asymmetrical spiral arms which are thought to be distorted by gravitational tugs from its neighbors.
- [46:53]
A
Ah, okay.
- [46:54]
B
Okay. M95AMAG 9.7 is a beautiful barred spiral. Through a medium scope you might just see a circular glow in large apertures. Look for the bar cutting through the center, which is earned the nickname the TIE fighter.
- [47:07]
A
Oh, I've heard of that nickname, yeah.
- [47:10]
B
So just north of 9,695 pair lies a tight cluster of three galaxies that can often be seen in a single medium power eyepiece. Okay, so M105 is Mach 9.3 and is bright round elliptical galaxy. It looks like a fuzzy star that won't focus in smaller scopes. It's actually one. I thought the other night it struck me as one that I can see why you would think that was a comet.
- [47:34]
A
Yeah.
- [47:35]
B
Even though it's 105, which is actually after Messier's sort of initial list, actually it did strike me as like, yeah, that's one. It kind of looks like a comet.
- [47:44]
A
Yeah.
- [47:44]
B
Bizarrely, I could see kind of the original purpose of the list. It houses a supermassive black hole nearly 200 million times the mass of our sun.
- [47:53]
A
Damn.
- [47:53]
B
NGC 3384, Mach 10.9 and located just 8 minutes northeast of M105. It's a lenticular galaxy. Often looks like a smaller, slightly elongated version of M105. And it's easy to confuse them at first. Actually. You sort of go, oh yeah, you've got to kind of. Yep. NGC3389 is the hidden member, the band group. It's like the drummer at the back. It's mag 11.8.
- [48:23]
A
Oh, much fainter.
- [48:25]
B
It's much further away. It's actually 60 million light years. Only appears to be part of the group by chance. It's just kind of like a, it's
- [48:31]
A
a line of sight thing there.
- [48:32]
B
It's a groupie standing in the background, which actually shows you how bright it actually is. It shows you it's much bigger, much brighter thing. It's still quite easy. It's quite faint. Quite a 10 inch scope really and dark skies to spot clearly. But it's great, it's a great search to go through that area of galaxies and there are other small ones as well to pick up nearby.
- [48:50]
A
Lovely.
- [48:51]
B
So onto our Moon guy.
- [48:53]
A
Yeah, Moon guy. He's getting bright now.
- [48:56]
B
15. Okay. We enter the days of Moon. Bright moon, bright moon, so bright. So top tip here is to break out a polarized filter. It'll make it more visually comfortable and bring out some missing contrast on the surface. It's not that it's dangerous for your eyes. There's all these.
- [49:10]
A
Oh no, it's not dangerous, it just hurts.
- [49:12]
B
It's not that bright, but it does can be a bit sort of like, whoa, that is bright.
- [49:16]
A
And it is. Yeah. Especially if you're looking through a kind of medium to large telescope at the Moon. You get that kind of after flash almost of the Moon on your eye.
- [49:25]
B
It's not dangerous or anything, it's just bright. So you might want to turn it down a little bit. So days 13, 14, 15 are all days that the civilians out there, the non astrotypes, you know, those old empty souls who wander the streets of purpose and meaning, they will Call all of this period full. And in some respects, they aren't entirely wrong. But you are totally entitled to break out your best. Well, actually, so now, while the bright surface light washes out shadows and makes craters look flat, this is the best time to see albedo features. Okay. Differences in surface brightness, such as the mare and the bright ray systems. So the contrast works really well there. So on day 13, the moon needs waxing gibbous. Most of the near side is illuminated. There is still a little sliver of a shadow on the western limb. So still some fun terminator sort of bits to be had. But the standout features are all in the light, actually. So Aristarchus crater. We talked about Aristarchus already a couple of days before. It's the brightest spot on the Moon. And even without shadows, it glows really intensely because it's relatively young. And its ejector hasn't been darkened by impact weathering yet. So it's just this really bright pattern now with the full glare of sun, it's really white. It's a really good example of that kind of albedo features. You can see Oceanus Procalarium looks incredible. You should see the subtle color differences over the surface of the largest, the Luna maria. Gassindi Crater is located on the northern edge of the Mare Humorum as well. So have a look at that. You can see sort of beautiful floor structures, and the central peaks are still kind of there, just as the Sun's. It's not quite that. That's. That's kind of one. We still see some detail before it's washed out. Then day 14 is, of course, Full Moon, and the sun is directly behind you, hitting the Moon head on. And this is actually the worst time to look at the Moon. Normally it's bright, looks washed out, and the features are shadowless and flat. But it's still worth a peek.
- [51:20]
A
Yeah.
- [51:21]
B
Ray systems like Tycho in the south or Copernicus near the center are at their most spectacular. Tico. It looks like a bright navel with white streaks extending thousands of kilometers across surface. You can see them going right across the Moon. It's brilliant. This is the time when you can really see that.
- [51:37]
A
Yeah.
- [51:38]
B
And these are trails of pulverized rock kicked up by sort of the massive impact that created the crater. Copernicus looks like a giant splat in the middle of the dark basalt. So where it was a sort of complex crater with all the. It now just looks like a really cool splat again. It's good time to see the subtle differences in mare color. Those Cs are more like patchwork than a uniform smooth colour. And you don't really notice that until you see it in these kind of bright light conditions. You go, oh, there's all sorts of subtle greys and blacks and stripes and things are. It's very cool. Day 15 is a subtle shift, but if you viewed the Moon at full the day before, you will notice the slight drop in intensity of light. You. You will, you'll notice it and you should pick up. The return of a few shadows on the new Terminator appeared on the eastern limb of the disk. The Moon is now technically a waning gibbous. And while the aforementioned civilians will still think it's as full as the fall, to the naked eye, you know better. You can see those subtle changes. Mari Chrisium. The isolated sea of Croesus on the far right of this becomes more defined as the sun begins to set over it. I often think it looks better than two weeks before at sunrise, actually. I think my Chrism actually kind of pops. Just looks better in sunset. Yeah, yeah. Grimaldi is also an interesting shout out here. Located on the far western edge, this is one of the darkest spots on the Moon. It's a large, ancient basin that looks like a dark thumbprint in this light angle. It just kind of really looks great on that day.
- [53:01]
A
Well, I like that.
- [53:02]
B
There we go.
- [53:02]
A
There we are. See, there's still things to see with
- [53:05]
B
the full Moon, even with a full moon. And of course, the. The moon this month is full on the 2nd, it's last quarter on the 10th, it is new on the 17th, and back to first quarter on the 25th. So wish you clear skies and happy hunter.
- [53:31]
A
And so this brings us to another glorious hour of astronomy awesomeness. Do you see what I did there? The only other thing we have to mention is that it is Astro Camp. It is Astro Camp this month. April is the month of Astro Camp, and we intend to be doing a live episode at Astro Camp. So if you have always wanted to kind of be in the background feature in an episode, come along to Astral Camp. Come along and listen to our amazing speakers experiments. And of course, the highlight, beautiful stargazing. It's gonna be wonderful. So it is.
- [54:12]
B
It's gonna be amazing.
- [54:13]
A
Keep emailing us@the showesomeastronomy.com because, you know, we're starting to actually get your emails again now, so that's lovely. Send us your thoughts, your queries, your questions, your ideas, your pictures. All of them are more than welcome. And that is the show awesomeastronomy.com so
- [54:34]
B
and there's more emails to come in the next episode.
- [54:36]
A
Yes, we always do our emails in the second episode of the month now.
- [54:39]
B
Yes, we've still got emails lined up.
- [54:41]
A
Yeah, yeah, second episode of the month. It's time for us to get through our emails. So until that next episode is goodbye. From Cydonia Bass.
- [54:56]
C
Awesome Astronomy is produced by Ralph Paul, Jen, John Damian and Dustin and is free to use with attribution. Theme music by Star Salzman with stinger variation by Rin Jorgensen. We promote general science, astronomy, space exploration and rational thinking with more resources on our website@awesomeastronomy.com if you want us to read your thoughts and comments out on the show, send us your views, opinions, critiques or questions to the show@awesomeastronomy.com tweet us @awesomeastropod or give the awesome Astronomy Facebook page a like and leave your comments there. Thanks for listening. From Cydonia Base Head of Transmission.