Objects in the Golden Mirror may be Closer

Summary

Podcast Summary: AWESOME ASTRONOMY – "Objects in the Golden Mirror may be Closer" (Episode 175)

Date: June 1, 2026
Hosts: Paul & Dr Jeni

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Episode Overview

This episode bursts with both humor and insight as Paul and Dr Jeni soldier through a record-breaking British heatwave and dive into the latest discoveries and controversies in astronomy. Centered around new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) findings and the cosmic web, the hosts also discuss an unexpected twist in the saga of "impossible" distant galaxies, showcase a new ESA–China satellite mission, and provide a rich stargazing guide for June. The tone is irreverent but always passionately educational, making advanced topics accessible and lively.

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Key Discussion Points & Notable Insights

1. Heatwave Banter & British Weather Woes ([00:00]–[06:45])

• The episode opens with a comedic lament about the UK’s scorching late May temperatures, comparing local heat to cosmic scale ("rivers of lava and anything of worth glowing hotter than Beelzebub's knackers" – Paul, [00:00]).
• Paul and Jeni share firsthand sweltering experiences, debating whether the humidity helped or hurt their laundry routines, and comically compare their indoor temperatures to the surfaces of stars.
• Jeni announces plans to visit the Apple Conference in the US, with some playful speculating about the lack of free Apple swag.

2. Podcast Programming Update ([06:33]–[08:45])

• Jeni: Upcoming episode to feature a talk by Professor Stephen Eales from AstroCamp, with a Q&A planned post-trip.
• "Steve is great. He’s a really good communicator… recording from AstroCamp" – Jeni, [07:22]
• Go Stargazing offers bulk solar eclipse glasses for clubs and enthusiasts, ahead of the August 2026 UK eclipse.

3. JWST & The Cosmic Web: Game-Changing Discoveries ([09:16]–[18:43])

Deep Field Studies and the COSMOS Field

• Jeni explains the significance of Hubble Deep & Ultra Deep Fields, then highlights the COSMOS field—a much larger, highly-studied region.
• JWST’s NIRCam mapped 160,000 galaxies, some from only a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.

New Insights into Cosmic Web Dynamics

• JWST enables distance measurements accurate to sub-1% for galaxies 13.4 billion years old.
• The cosmic web is not a passive scaffold but actively guides galaxy evolution:
  • In the first 2 billion years, fed galaxies, accelerating star formation.
  • Post 7.5 billion years ago, hot gas in dense nodes now strips galaxies, killing star formation.
  • "Now we have proof… not just that the cosmic web is this skeleton… but actually it dictates galaxy evolution." – Jeni, [15:46]
• This interprets the "star formation peak" at 10 billion years ago: the cosmic web’s role evolved from nurturing to destructive.

Memorable Quote

• "We live in a dying universe." – Jeni, [18:06]

Timestamp Highlight:

• [09:16]–[18:43]: Deep dive into JWST's cosmic web mapping and implications for galaxy evolution.

4. Galactic Impostors: Red Dots Revealed ([19:05]–[27:55])

Distant Galaxies… Or Nearby Brown Dwarfs?

• Paul updates on the JWST’s "impossible" high-redshift galaxy candidates (z = 32) that challenge cosmology.

• New findings: These are not distant galaxies, but ultra-cool brown dwarfs ~1,600 light-years away.

  • Discovery confirmed by spectral signatures of methane, water vapor, and ammonia ([21:32])—impossible for ancient galaxies.
  • Proper motion between images taken a year apart proves they are local.

• Brown dwarfs mimic galaxy spectral breaks ("Lyman Alpha break"), fooling observers.

  • "It literally… they look almost identical." – Paul, [22:58]
  • "A fantastic discovery for brown dwarf science, but I imagine it’s a bit of a wake up call for cosmologists." – Paul, [24:01]

• Density estimate: ~0.14 brown dwarfs per square arcminute means many previous high-redshift "galaxies" might be impostors.

• Jeni’s quip: "Objects in the golden mirror can be closer than they appear." ([25:45])

Memorable Exchange:

• Jeni: "So that's wild." ([23:25])
• Paul: "So the big news here is these cosmology breaking galaxies are probably… ultra-cool brown dwarfs." ([23:27])

Timestamp Highlight:

• [19:05]–[27:55]: The unmasking of "cosmology-breaking" galaxies as nearby brown dwarfs.

5. SMILE Mission – ESA & China Collaborate ([28:32]–[33:34])

• Jeni introduces the new SMILE satellite: a joint ESA-China effort to study the Earth's magnetosphere–solar wind–aurora connection.
• Uses an X-ray camera to observe the magnetosphere and ultraviolet camera for Earth's aurora.
• A unique polar orbit allows days-long continuous monitoring.
  • "So that's why it's gonna take like a month for it to get into its orbit." – Jeni, [33:19]
• Initial mission is three years; aims for real-time views of space weather interactions.

6. June 2026 Sky Guide ([33:34]–[48:52])

Planetary Highlights ([34:01]–[38:45])

• Venus–Jupiter Conjunction:

  • Best seen June 8–9, dazzling tight pair below Gemini’s Castor and Pollux.
  • "This is the absolute must-see planetary event of the summer, frankly." – Paul, [34:18]

• Mercury at Greatest Elongation:

  • June 15 offers year’s best chance for evening Mercury sightings.
  • Only 1% of people have knowingly observed Mercury ([36:16]).

• Planetary Parade with Crescent Moon:

  • June 16–17, razor-thin crescent moon aligns with Mercury, Jupiter, Venus for a striking view.

Solstice & Noctilucent Clouds ([38:53]–[41:47])

• Summer Solstice:
  • June 21, the UK enjoys 16.5 hours of daylight.
• Noctilucent Clouds:
  • Likely after sunset in June, described as "electrified lace" ([41:09]).
  • Last year’s displays possibly enhanced by planetary atmospheric waves.

Deep Sky & Lunar Highlights ([42:13]–[48:52])

• Scorpius Constellation: Targets like Antares, Messier 4, and Messier 6, though low for UK observers, are worth tracking on clear nights.
• Lunar Observing: Days 19–21 feature visually striking lunar features (Mare Crisium, Langrenus, Petavis, Theophilus, Rupees Altai, ghost craters).
  • "One of my favourites, the Theophilius trio is the must-see target here." – Paul, [46:19]
  • Morning viewing often offers the sharpest details.

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Notable Quotes

• "Some pretend it is a pleasant… These people need help and almost certainly shop in Sports Direct. Shun them." – Paul, [00:00]
• "Shower us with knowledge like the naughty little astronomy goblin that you are." – Paul, [08:46]
• "We haven't really… It's all got a bit quiet until now. But now there's some interesting stuff coming out again." – Jeni, [09:47]
• "So that's my news. It's cool, isn't it?" – Jeni, [18:02]
• "A bit of a wake up call for cosmologists. Bit of a shot across the bow there." – Paul, [24:01]
• "Objects in the golden mirror can be closer than they appear." – Jeni, [25:45]
• "Perhaps it is hell of our own making and certainly feels hot enough." – Paul, [49:44]

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Important Segment Timestamps

• British Heatwave banter: [00:00]–[06:45]
• Podcast news & upcoming programming: [06:33]–[08:45]
• JWST & cosmic web: [09:16]–[18:43]
• Redshift galaxies vs. brown dwarfs twist: [19:05]–[27:55]
• SMILE mission overview: [28:32]–[33:34]
• Sky guide – planetary and lunar highlights: [33:34]–[48:52]
• Closing rants & sign-off: [49:23]–[50:04]

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Tone & Style

• Witty, irreverent, and banter-filled (lots of playful jabs about weather, tech conferences, and cosmic mishaps).
• Explanations are metaphoric and visual, making use of humor and everyday comparisons.
• The science remains detailed and accurate, but never dry.

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Summary

This episode delivers a compelling blend of up-to-the-minute astronomical discovery and friendly, comic relief. Listeners get a thorough briefing on how JWST is transforming our understanding of the universe’s structure, a classic astronomer’s plot twist about the cosmic red dots, and practical guidance on what to look for in the skies this June—from planetary conjunctions to ethereal clouds to intricate lunar craters. For anyone serious about or newly curious for astronomy, it’s an entertaining yet informative update not to be missed.

Clear skies and happy hunting!

Transcript

[A]

Currently, the Sun's core is 15 million degrees on its surface, 5,500 degrees. But that is as nothing compared to Wolf Rayet stars, where just the surface temperatures are of the order of 200,000 degrees. And this is as nothing compared to the later stages of the sun's life, where upon becoming a red giant, the core temperature will be in the order of 100 million degrees. But all of this is as nothing when compared to the UK. In the fourth week of May 2026, the King's swans have evaporated, the beaches are covered in screaming children and more naked British tattooed flesh than face the Romans at Medway in 43 CE. Some pretend it is a pleasant, a nice change, a wonderful gift of mother Nature. These people need help and almost certainly shop in Sports Direct. Shun them, pay them no heed. It was so hot today that on opening my Cornetto, I witnessed the instantaneous ablation of frozen milk substitute spontaneous combustion of corn syrup based cone, and then witness the chocolate adjacent source provide ultimate proof of Einstein's mass energy equivalence. So with all about me, rivers of lava and anything of worth glowing hotter than Beelzebub's knackers, it's time to jump into the cool, refreshing stream that is astronomy in space. I'm Paul.

[B]

And I'm Jenny and this is episode

[A]

175 awesome astronomy for June 2026. Screams of people burning in hell, but it's just Wiltshire. Hello there. How the devil are you?

[B]

Oh, bloody boiling. Oh God. Everyone in the UK is gonna be reminiscing back. This is probably gonna be pissing down by the time people are listening to this.

[A]

Oh yeah, I think literally, I mean, right now. Yeah, right now. I know for a fact, I mean, the weather app says it's 23 outside. I mean, this is now what, we're 20 past nine almost in the evening.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

As we're recording, it reckons it's 23 in the shade outside.

[B]

Yeah. My app's saying 24 where I am.

[A]

I'm calling bollocks on that.

[B]

I agree.

[A]

I know for a fact my dining room thermometer, which is very accurate, is saying 27. 28 degrees in the dining room right now. Yeah, I am sweating like a devil's testicle right now.

[B]

Yeah, right, yeah. My. So when we started doing our preamble, which we always have before we smash that record button, my thermometer said 28.6 and obviously to record we gotta shut all the windows and doors, right? It is now reading 28.8. So my room Is climbing.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's so humid and warm. We did have a big thunderstorm just now. Well, say about.

[B]

Yeah, you did.

[A]

Yeah, two hours ago we had a big thunderstorm. It helped for a moment and we had that lovely smell of Petracore. Give me some of that soil bacteria. But, oh, my God, it's got humid again. Jesus. I. I'm literally sitting here just sweating. It's. It's so hot and humid. It's just. Yeah, absolutely bonkers. I say it got. It was certainly in my office earlier about 36. And that's in the shape.

[B]

Yes. Yeah. You sent a photo and it was quite early on that your office got to 36 as well.

[A]

Yeah. So it got hotter and actually I just. Just for it, like giggles pops the thermometer out in the sun on, like outside my office just to see. And it just went straight past 40 and was just climbing. I was like, yeah, that. Right, I'm gonna. It's gonna melt in the sun. It was so hot.

[B]

And I tell you what, though, it's been lush for drying the washing.

[A]

Do you know what? I struggled today because it was so humid.

[B]

Oh, really?

[A]

Oh, that. Actually, my washing didn't dry as well today, did it?

[B]

Oh, my stuff is all like bone dry, but mind you, I had it out all day, so it was like in the sun.

[A]

Yeah, I did. But it's actually so humid here today that just actually things. The humidity level was actually like. It wasn't evaporating. Well, because actually the air was wet.

[B]

Yeah. Oh, mine was. All right. Yeah, mine. Mine is like bone dried. But yeah, my lavender was wilting in the middle of the day. This is such like a middle class conversation. It's like, oh, the water.

[A]

Oh, my lavender, my wash. Oh, the

[B]

lavender was wilted, darling.

[A]

My office was 28 degrees. Oh, God. Oh, but it is like tomorrow it reckons it's gonna be 31 here twice. A little, little bit cooler, but then it just tails off and Friday is 22.

[B]

I mean, it's literally like, well, 19 for me on Friday, which I'm happy about.

[A]

Yeah, the weekend is like 20.

[B]

Yeah, it's raining for like a week.

[A]

Like 14 degrees cooler than at least than it was today. It's just bonkers.

[B]

But that's because I'm off to the land of America and I'm taking the sunshine with me.

[A]

No, you're taking sunshine with you, aren't you? Yeah, yeah. You're off.

[B]

I am.

[A]

You're off.

[B]

I am off. Off to the Apple conference this year. I'M very excited.

[A]

The Apple conference. Oh, you're going. You're going. You're going Apple. Yeah. So the land of the. The turtleneck jumper and the land of turtleneck jumper. Very weird.

[B]

The land of all the shiny technology. I really want an Apple goodie bag with, like, loads of free sh. T in it, but apparently that doesn't happen.

[A]

It's just not good enough, isn't it?

[B]

You just want a goodie bag with like. Like AirPods in it or something.

[A]

Like one of the wealthiest companies in the world. You thought they'd give away free sh.

[B]

T. Yeah. Literally.

[A]

They could probably give everybody in that conference an iPad and it probably wouldn't even, like, Scratch.

[B]

Yeah. Wouldn't touch the sides.

[A]

Scratch. Like their.

[B]

No, no. But they don't. I know I'm gonna get as much swag as I can, so. Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets on how many pens and pencils and tote bags I come back with.

[A]

I think you should nick something. You should do one for the people and steal something from Apple.

[B]

One of everything. IPad, Vision Pro, phone. Toilet roll. Toilet roll from the box. Do you reckon it's embossed with Apple logos?

[A]

No, I reckon they use.

[B]

If it's not, I'm gonna be a bit sad, to be honest.

[A]

I reckon they use the three seashells. And if you know that reference. Audience.

[B]

I know that reference.

[A]

Yeah. You see, you know that reference.

[B]

I got a reference. I never get references.

[A]

Hey, demolition rams. Yeah. I reckon they use three C shells.

[B]

Oh, no, I don't know. I use three seashells. Sorry. I'm very verse in cursing, though, so I'll be all right.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But yes, on the note of me going off to the land of America, it does mean that the next episode's gonna be a little bit different. We're gonna do. Our middle of the month episode is going to be a talk from Professor Stephen Eales of Cardiff University.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

About his latest book. And then we will come back for a third installment. So. Lucky duckies. And there we will just do a Q and A because it'll be sort of so late in the month, we'll just do. I say Q and A in the sense of we'll be answering your emails and then. And then it'll be more like business as usual. That's our plan, isn't it?

[A]

It is indeed. It is indeed. Enjoy. It's a good talk. It's a very good talk.

[B]

It is.

[A]

I very much enjoyed that talk.

[B]

Steve is great. He's a really good communicator. Yeah, and it was really good fun, like at Astro Camp. So this is a recording from Astro Camp, actually, we should mention that so you get a little flavour of what Astro Camp is like again. Oh, and I have one other thing to mention as well before we get onto the news.

[A]

Go on.

[B]

So go stargazing. Right. Have got 300,000 solar eclipse gases that they are trying to get rid of. You can get. I think it's 250 solar glasses for 20 quid or 200 solar glasses for 20 quid. So if you are an astronomy club or even if you are a person who would like to give out solar eclipse glasses basically for free, right, Head over to go stargazing or just Google like, go stargazing. Solar eclipse glasses.

[A]

Nice.

[B]

And it will come up and yeah, it's. It's literally 20 quid, little bit of postage of packaging, but dirt cheap, like 10 pence for a pair of solar eclipse glasses. That solar eclipse is coming in the middle of August for the uk.

[A]

So nice.

[B]

Get on it while they've still got them. But they've literally got a massive warehouse of 300,000 eclipse glasses that they are trying to get rid of.

[A]

So go stargazing. So probably pop to their website.

[B]

Go stargazing. Get on it.

[A]

Get on it.

[B]

Absolutely. Get on it.

[A]

Cool. So, Jenny, shower us with knowledge like the naughty little astronomy goblin that you are. What the hell was that?

[B]

The Goblin sound excited. Goblin.

[A]

I don't want to know what you were. Goblin.

[B]

So we've got a bit of a JWST theme just to kick off the news and then I got something different just to round us off and finish with. And I think that's all right because we haven't actually talked in great detail about JWST for a little while.

[A]

No, we went through a whole phase when it. Not long when it first went operational and we were just like jwst.

[B]

It was like every episode, every time.

[A]

Like, I think we did news things, which is all jwst. Like, yeah, many episodes ago. But. But we haven't really. It's all got a bit quiet until now.

[B]

But now there's some interesting stuff coming out again. I mean, there's always interesting stuff from jwst, but like really cool stuff now. So my story is about the cosmic web and that is web with two Bs. You see what I did there?

[A]

I see what you did there.

[B]

I like that you see what I did there. Okay, so I think most people listening have likely heard of the Hubble Deep Field. It was this apparently empty patch of sky that the Hubble Space Telescope stared at for 10 days over Christmas 1995.

[A]

Done by students, in fact, wasn't it done by students?

[B]

Yeah, because like no one wanted to work over Christmas except for the students. So they were like, they had this pie in the sky idea, let's do this thing. Pointing the telescope at this like, apparently empty patch of sky. And because it was Christmas, they were like, yeah, all right then, because we all just want to go home. So. So never would have happened otherwise. But this patch of sky is, is actually near the Big Dipper. If you think about the end of the bowl, you got the two Pointer stars to go to the North Pole. The other two stars in the bowl, if you kind of extend them by about the same distance, that's roughly the patch of sky where the Hubble Deep Field is. Anyhow, that's an aside. And when, when Hubble, they put all the images together, the stacked them all up in this apparently empty patch of sky. Hubble saw thousands of galaxies, right? Stretching back over a significant portion of cosmic history. So then a few years later, they did it again with the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. And this time it was in the southern hemisphere constellation of Fornax. Slightly bigger patch of sky and 10,000 galaxies in this patch of sky. And it's a very small patch of sky. Just for a little bit of perspective. If you hold your pinky finger out at arm's length and you, you hold it up to the sky, you look really weird. You will look really weird, right? But that patch of sky that the end of your pinky is covering is the equivalent to about 25 herbal ultra deep fields.

[A]

That's mad.

[B]

So it's a really small patch of sky.

[A]

That's so mad.

[B]

It is mad, isn't it? Like 10,000 galaxies, right? And like, so we've heard about the herbal deep fields, but the herbal deep fields are not the only deep fields out there. There's, there's loads of them. And one of the most studied, but actually not talked about so much is one called the Cosmos Field and it's in the constellation of Sextons. And the Cosmos field spans about 2 square degrees of sky. So it's about 10 full moons all put together. Yeah, it's like a big patch of sky. And there's a, about 2 million galaxies which are known about and studied in, in this patch. And it has been looked at by pretty much every telescope that you can think of. Ground based, space based. They will turn their telescopes at some point to The Cosmos field. And that means it's really rich in what we call multi spectral data. So data at many wavelengths spanning basically like ultraviolet all the way through to the radio, like all of that part of the electromagnetic spectrum. And that means it is perfect for diagnostics. So when you're looking at galaxies, you want to figure out things like their mass and their star formation rate and how far away they are. This allows you to categorize them and understand the evolution of galaxies over time. And I like this field because this was the field I studied in my PhD. So close to my heart as well. Yeah, yeah. And so you do this by, you have your photometry, all your different wavelengths, you've got all your different data points, you fit your models, and your best fitting model then will give you the information like mass and star formation, rate and distance and so on. And of course, the more data points you got, the more accurate your results. Now, the Cosmos Web portion of Cosmos field covers about three full moons. So it's like the central portion and this was done with Nircam. And then there's a much smaller area that's covered by Miri. But the near cam portion has got about 160,000 galaxies in it, going right back to a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. So it's basically when we first start getting galaxies. And what is so important about the Cosmos Web data is that it has mapped these galaxies in unprecedented detail. We are talking distances accurate to much less than 1% in many cases. And for galaxies that are that far away, we're talking, you know, 13.4 billion years ago. It is unprecedented and it has resulted in the most detailed map of the cosmic web ever. Yes, because it's, the distances to them are extraordinary because you've got all of this multi wavelength data. You can do really accurate photometric redshifts. You don't need the spectral data because all of this multi wavelength data is essentially like having a core spectrum. So it's just, it's absolutely extraordinary. So the cosmic web is this kind of underlying network within, throughout the universe. It's sheets and filaments of dark matter and gas that they interconnect at what we call nodes. And then in between them then are these enormous voids. And, and at the nodes is where you find galaxies and galaxy clusters and things like that. And then the voids are largely devoid of galaxies. Not completely, but largely devoid. And then you've got more material along the filaments and so on. And these, they grew the nodes and the voids grew from those density fluctuations from the Big Bang. And what we now have proof of from JWST is not just that the cosmic web is this kind of like, skeleton that the universe kind of grew around, but actually it dictates galaxy evolution.

[A]

Right.

[B]

So it's not just passive, it's active in the evolution of the universe. Yeah. So because they've got so many galaxies now really accurately mapped in terms of their mass and their star formation rate and their distance, they've been able to kind of look at, well, how. How are galaxies behaving in the cosmic web at different epochs? And so what they found is that in the early universe, so the first couple billion years, the cosmic web was actually feeding galaxies and helping them grow. And the evidence there is from these extra dense protoclusters where galaxies are really rapidly forming stars. Because the cosmic web is feeding. All this gas in dark matter is pooling, which is helping gas clump to form stars. So the first couple of billion years, yeah, the cosmic wave is great. It's like, helping the universe grow, but. And then all of, like, the galaxy growth is regulated by what they call internal feedback mechanisms. So it's like jets from supermassive black holes in the heart of galaxies, like heating up gas and ejecting it, pushing it away and stopping gas from accreting onto galaxies, exploding stars. So like supernovae doing similar sort of things, and also just galaxies being really efficient and just burning through all of their gas. Right. But then there's like this transition period which peaks around about 10 billion years and after from about 7 and a half billion years ago through to the present day, actually, all of the nodes were. The cosmic web is, like the densest. It's killing galaxies.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And that is because all of the gas in these nodes has now been heated over the billions of years. So instead of falling into galaxies to then form stars, it is actually ripping the gas out of galaxies as they're moving through all of this hot medium.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

Galaxy mergers are now destructive. Instead of triggering star formation, the tidal interactions are ripping galaxies apart is completely changed our view of the cosmic web. So it isn't just this scaffold anymore. It is actively dictating how galaxies evolve.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

So that's my news. It's cool, isn't it?

[A]

That is cool and rather scary now.

[B]

Yeah. Because, like, we live in a dying universe.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

This was like part of my PhD was like, why was the. The universe the best at forming stars? 10 billion years ago, it was this huge question because you. You can Trace it back. And there is this peak. 10 billion years ago, the like galaxies were brilliant at forming stars. And this is part of the answer is it's because actually the cosmic web is so much more than a scaffold and it actually performs differently at different epochs. But yeah, so it's, it's just incredible this, because JWST has enabled this really accurate mapping. Completely changed our view.

[A]

That's amazing. That's amazing.

[B]

Oh, and a temperature update.

[A]

Oh, yeah, temperature update. Cool.

[B]

We're now at 29 degrees.

[A]

You're getting hotter and hotter. Damn, you're hot. Damn.

[B]

I was gonna say how. I can't help it, darling. It's just how I am.

[A]

Just super hot.

[B]

Just how I am.

[A]

Yeah, no change here. It's still, it's still, it's still 27 in this room, but it's just so darn humid.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

God. So for me is the probable answer those odd galaxies that seem to defy cosmology. You remember the extreme red shift objects that JWST discovered? Ones that seem to have a shift of 32 and an age of 90 million years after Big Bang?

[B]

Those. Is it those, those little red dots? Little red dots?

[A]

Yeah, little red dots. The ones that. Well, they just aren't supposed to be there, frankly, is what we were saying this. We were saying this months and months ago. These aren't supposed to be here. What are they doing here? What is this about? Well, it turns out they probably aren't there. Well, not there anyway. They are somewhere. And crucially, they aren't what astronomers thought. So buckle up, kiddos. Let me explain.

[B]

Hello.

[A]

Yeah, it's good. This is. So a team led by astronomer Marusa Bradock thought they had found more of these weird cosmological vandals looking at the Bullet Cluster survey imaging. So JVC looked at the Bullet Cluster. Very interesting cluster. They were looking for these Cosmic dawn progenitors. Those kind of people have been talking about. They were talking about these ultra high redshift galaxies from way back at Z equals 20 in terms of redshift. And more for Context, z equals 14 was considered pretty way out back in the dark days of like 20, 24. So, you know, 32. Everyone's going like, what the hell? This is just is getting nuts. Well, they found two things. They found two objects, two incredibly compelling bright spots or points of light that completely dropped out of the shorter wavelength filters, but shone brightly in the F277W and F356W bands, which is sort of classic textbook signatures of these Galaxies that we've been picking up. And okay, brink of cosmic history. This is, this was like, oh yeah, here we go.

[B]

But.

[A]

And it is a massive. Does my bomb look big in this? But okay, because when you find candidates that exciting, when you look at it and you go, oh, there they are, look at that. Exactly what we're looking for. You don't just point and guess. You get your spectrograph out and you have a darn good look. And they turned JWT's powerhouse, we've already talked about near spec instrument onto these two galaxies to capture the chemical fingerprints. And instead of the pristine primordial hydrogen lines of the early universe, they found methane and water vapor and ammonia. So what?

[B]

Yeah, but they don't exist in the early universe.

[A]

So all very odd and frankly a little suspicious. Well, they took another image exactly one year later.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And guess what?

[B]

What?

[A]

Proper motion. Oh, they're nearby these two extreme distance highly redshifted galaxies with the very suspicious chemical figure moved. They moved. They moved. They moved against the background stars and galaxies in the image, one moved by 49 milliarcseconds and the other by 24. Actually like significantly moved.

[B]

Oh my God. So they're literally at the opposite end of the universe.

[A]

Yep. They've gone. And they're actually like. Yeah, yeah, exactly. They were looking at giant systems of billions of stars at the edge of the universe at all. They were looking at two ultra cool white dwarfs right in our own Milky Way about.

[B]

So why dwarfs? Are they the ones that are like on the brink between.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. So These are about 1600 light years away. How did this happen? Well, it turns out it's all to do with a thing called the Lyman Alpha break.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Now in distant galaxy spectra, there's a sudden break in the light curve. It kind of changes. You look at it, it's like a big drop. It's like a cliff.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And you, when you sort of record it and it turns out these wide dwarf, brown dwarf, if you like, mimic it pretty precisely.

[B]

Oh my God.

[A]

Their light spectra has this curve and the drop off this, this, it literally like you put the two next to each other, they look almost identical. And it's because it turns out it's specific wavelengths of light are absorbed by the various constituents in their, their atmospheres.

[B]

Holy smokes.

[A]

And it makes the curve look exactly like a very distant redshifted galaxy. I know.

[B]

So that's wild.

[A]

It is amazing. So the big news here is that these cosmology breaking galaxies are probably. I mean this is just Looking at these two objects, but it kind of suggests that actually this might be the answer that everyone's looking for. They're probably ultra cool brown dwarfs. Failed stars that never got massive enough to ignite nuclear fusion. And when they say ultra cool, they really mean it. One of these things is an effective temperature of just 350kelvin. You could literally stand on it.

[B]

Hang on. Yeah, I was gonna say 350 kelvin,

[A]

77 degrees Celsius, something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's basically a hot cup of tea.

[B]

Oh, no, it's basically where I am now in Wales.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. It feels like here now. Yeah, exactly. But it is like a hot. A hot cup of tea. You can sit and drink. You can sit and sit. 1. So it's actually one of the coldest brown dwarfs ever spectroscopically confirmed as well. I know that's quite cool. So it's really cool. It's like. It's cool in many, many ways. It really shows you how deceptive the universe can be, though. It's a fantastic discovery for brown dwarf science, but I imagine it's a bit of a wake up call for cosmologists. Bit of a shot across the bowel there.

[B]

Are they gonna have to go back and check?

[A]

Yeah, Other things, because the paper actually warns as we do these deeper sur, especially if we look closer to the plane in the Milky Way, these ultra cool white dwarfs are going to constantly basically photobomb and pretend to be high redshift galaxies. So the authors, because that's the thing

[B]

is these galaxies are so far away that they are just points of light. Like there's no structure to them.

[A]

No, no, no, exactly. So the authors calculated a density of about 0.14 of these sneaky little imposters per square arc minute.

[B]

My God, there's a lot.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. So suddenly a load of those little red dots everywhere that you see in various deep field images could actually just be brown dwarfs. Yeah, very close.

[B]

Great. For people who are studying like the transition between giant planets and stars.

[A]

I mean, these, these white dwarfs, they reckon they're. They're similar in actual physical size to Jupiter. They're not actually dissimilar in size to Jupiter itself. Just. Just more massive.

[B]

Yeah, they're just.

[A]

They're just a lot more massive.

[B]

Like denser.

[A]

Yeah, a lot, lot dense, but not radically bigger than Jupiter itself. So. Yeah, I mean, how bonkers is that?

[B]

That's a great story. And it goes to show that objects in the golden mirror can be closer than they appear.

[A]

Yeah, I like That. I like that a lot. I like that a lot. Yeah, good. I like. I like that.

[B]

But yeah, yeah, I made that up. That is actually a me one.

[A]

That. That is a new one. I like that.

[B]

That's a me one. That's not even stolen from the Internet.

[A]

You could get a little picture and actually like, you know, put that on the JWST mirror as like the little thing.

[B]

I'm saying that I made it up. I bet you now actually already exists on the Internet. And it's just like one of those, you know, you see it and then you forget it exists and then it just worms into your brain and you're like, people could be writing in and be like, no, actually it was coined by someone in like 2001. Yeah, but that's a great story, isn't it?

[A]

Isn't it? I just, I saw that and I thought, that's bonkers. That's really bonkers because actually we were getting. People were really starting to explode about this distant galaxy.

[B]

And this is how. Yeah, it's so important to get spectra.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[B]

And to revisit objects. And this is the perfect illustrator for that.

[A]

And taking that second image a year later and then seeing the proper motion and going, oh, these things are actually. They've literally gone from the edge of the known universe to just down the road.

[B]

Like the meme I've got in my. You know, there's that meme where you got like the three different spider mans, like, all pointing at each other. This is what I've got in my brain now. It's just like JJ versus scientists. Just like all pointing at these red dots which are pointing back at them.

[A]

Yeah, completely. How mad is that? That's bonkers.

[B]

It's a brilliant story.

[A]

So they. I mean, this has all now got to be applied to these. These things. That's what they say in the paper is actually like, I think we need to go back and revisit all these. All these previous kind of things people were pointing to over the last couple of years. Because they could just be brown dwarves.

[B]

Yeah, 100%. They're gonna have to double check. I mean, the ones I think that have got spectra already at least all they need to do is like double check the spectra because there should be signals there that would like.

[A]

There will be some that aren't, but there's a lot of them.

[B]

Yeah, there could be a lot of

[A]

them brown dwarfs that are just bumbling around the Milky Way, photobombing. Jwst.

[B]

Yeah, like, oh, lads, lads. They're looking for a galaxy. It's like, oh, go on, Jeff.

[A]

Go, go on, go on, go on. Dave, Dave, Dave. Just, just, just like move in.

[B]

They're all like, woo, look at me, I'm a galaxy.

[A]

My spectra looks just like yours. It's just like a lime and alpha break because of my methane and ammonia and water vapor.

[B]

I love that. That's good.

[A]

Yeah, it's good, isn't it? Right? What are you gonna fight? You're not a JWST now.

[B]

No, different acronym for you.

[A]

Oh, here we go. Oh, isa's all right. I like Issa. Yeah.

[B]

So this is actually, it's a mission that launched on the 19th of May. So there's no science or anything yet because it's going to take about a month in total to get into its science orbit, which is really interesting. We'll come on to that. But it's actually a collaboration between China and esa. It's the first time that they've collaborated on a mission from end to end and will continue to collaborate during the operations.

[A]

There's been some collaboration and China's used a lot of ESA's deep space fill for dishes for communication with their missions and things like that.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. So they absolutely collaborated before, but this is the first time. It's like an end to end mission.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And this mission is called Smile, which is cute.

[A]

Nice.

[B]

And this is all about. It's like a wide field Earth sun study. It's all about studying our magnetosphere and the aurora at the same time to really get a complete view of how our planet in real time responds to the solar wind and solar storms.

[A]

Oh, no. That'll be interesting, right?

[B]

It's cool, isn't it? So the solar wind, for anyone who's not sure, is this continuous stream of charged particles, so electrons and protons mostly, that emanates from the sun and it's constantly battering our magnetic field. And then sometimes the sun has these solar storms. So sometimes there's these quick bursts of material, coronal mass ejections where you can get like a billion tons of solar material like thrown in our direction.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And that's when we get. When that material then arrives at our magnetosphere because it's charged particles, they get caught up in the magnetic field and the magnetic field tangled within them from the sun, interacts with ours and they get funneled down into our atmosphere and they excite the atoms and molecules in our atmosphere, which then relax and then that they give off the excess energy in the form of light, which is the aurora and that is your kind of one sentence explanation of what the aurora is. But the thing is, we don't really understand the connection between the atmosphere, the magnetosphere and the sun. Like, because there's been loads of missions of like looked at each element individually, but like not at the same time.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So this is what Smile is all about. There's an X ray camera on board and that's going to monitor the magnetosphere.

[A]

Yeah, cool.

[B]

And it's going to reveal when and where and how the solar wind interacts with the upper portions of our magnetosphere. And these X rays actually come from the particles of the solar wind interacting with our like the really tenuous upper atmosphere of Earth. Like really, like really far out, super tenuous, you know, like not anything that we would call an atmosphere, but there's still molecules and atoms out there and that's what it's interacting with to generate these X rays. So you can imagine that there's like an X ray camera pointing in one angle, looking at the magnetosphere, the bit that's the closest to the sun, the sun facing side, then pointing in a different angle at the same time is an ultraviolet camera mag, monitoring Earth's North Pole at the auroral oval.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

And it's ultraviolet to see the aurora in the day and the night side. So instead of it, instead of it being visible and so then you get data. So when you see the magnetosphere sort of reacting to the solar wind, you get immediate data at the same time of how the aurora is changing. So is it brightening?

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

Where is it brightening? Is there a delayed reaction? Because, because we, we don't know, like we're not 100 sure how long everything takes. And there's also like a magnetometer on board to measure the solar wind and, and things like that.

[A]

Very cool.

[B]

And it's going to look at magnetic reconnection too on like the far side where you get the, the stretched out magnetic fields, where like our magnetic fields being buffered out by the solar wind. And you get those magnetic fields like lines snapping back together. That generates aurora too. And to do this is the orbit is amazing. So it's going to orbit over the poles and it's closest over the South Pole. It'll be about 5,000 km above the surface of the Earth. And then over the north pole it's about 121,000 km high. And that means it can hover basically and look at the North Pole of Earth for about two days, almost two days. And then like Zips back down and then it does this really, you know, slow arc over the top and zips back down. And so that's why it's gonna take like a month for it to get into its orbit.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because it's gotta like keep, keep tilting itself and tilting itself and tilting itself. And then initial mission is three years and you know, you know what it's like then let's see how it goes.

[A]

Yeah. Very cool. I like that mission.

[B]

So, yeah, it's one to kind of watch for.

[A]

I'd be interested to see what comes out of that. That'd be really interesting. Very cool. Well, it's time for our sky guide. And June brings the summer solstice. Short, fleeting nights and persistent astronomical twilight. Yeah, I'd pack it in and have a break if I was you, to be honest.

[B]

Let's go to the southern hemisphere. It's winter there and they got long nights.

[A]

Exactly. But there is treasure in them. There are hills, if you're going to insist. So Venus Jupiter conjunction. So we did, we did actually flag this up last month as well.

[B]

Oh, so such a good one.

[A]

I love a Venus Jupiter conjunction. They're always really good. So best view on the 8th and 9th Venus Jupiter conjunction. This is the absolute must see planetary event of the summer, frankly. While Jupiter and Venus are stunning on their own, they will form an incredibly tight, dazzling pair each in the twilight sky. They will be positioned just below the famous twin stars Castor and Pollux in Gemini. Assuming you have a clear unobstructed southwestern horizon, they'll be impossible to miss. They'll hang roughly one finger's width apart.

[B]

Really close.

[A]

Really? That's holding your finger out at arms. It's not you right in front of your face.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Standard pair of 10x50s will frame both planets together beautifully. And you might even pick out a few of Jupiter's Galilean moons right next to brilliant Venus. Good wide field eyepiece. May just squeeze them in and even if you can't, it is the tiniest nudge to move between them. So it's really cool.

[B]

It's just gonna be cracking and it's gonna be really like nice pictures. If you can get like a nice foreground, you can get some lovely pictures.

[A]

And you're gonna get that like it is now. I mean, look, it's like, you know, it's 10 o', clock, it's only a few days time this and you've got like this sort of lovely pink horizon, beautiful darkening blue sky. That really gorgeous summer. And then you're Gonna have that. Two beautiful like that gems just sitting there. It's just going to be gorgeous. It's just like what more do you want for summer Gin. Sitting there, having a. Yeah. Kicking back.

[B]

But that's not the only planetary action, right?

[A]

No.

[B]

Because we have got Mercury reaching greatest eastern elongation. So 24 degrees from the sun on, on the 15th, that is your best evening apparition for Mercury. Like this year for the UK like this is the one if you want to try and catch Mercury. Very few people have knowingly observed Mercury.

[A]

Yeah. They reckon 1%, 1% of the world have knowingly seen Mercury.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And got. And got it Right. And know what they were seeing.

[B]

Yeah. And the thing is once you know where to look like it is obvious. It is a lot fainter than Venus. But you can pick it out once you see it.

[A]

It's one of those I think I always find when I actually like go and look for it, I then see it day after day when you've like, you picked it up the first time and then you're evening you go oh, there it is. There is, there's Mercury. But otherwise you just sort of don't notice it. It's just if you're not looking for it, it's just you completely pass it over.

[B]

Yeah. And especially because twilight in June, it lingers. So it can kind of be lost in this.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So wait 3/4 of an hour after sunset, look to the west northwest, sweep it with binoculars and you'll see a faint, solitary, warm colored star sitting beneath the fading sunset colors. And that will be Mercury.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. And it's, it's further north and you always think that's always. You have to remember how far north the sunset is. It's really easy to get like, you know, you think oh, the sunset's in the west and actually no, you've got to like turn further towards the north to get these objects. I've noticed that with Venus the other night I was out sort of doing something and there's like, oh God, Venus is all the way over there now because.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Just of where the sunset is. It's way over towards the north now. Right. Full body problem. Because following on from that mid June gives astrophotographers and persistent visual observers if you, you know, want to sit there and take your time. A gorgeous composition. Just nice little, you know, flag this up. On the evenings of June 16th and 17th, razor thin waxing crescent moon will gracefully glide past the sort of planetary parade or are we going to use

[B]

that term Planetary parade.

[A]

Well, it is a parade of planets in this case, isn't it? Because you've got, you know, looking west about 10 o' clock BST, you'll be able to see the delicate sliver of the moon suspended near Mercury with Jupiter just slightly to left. Blazing Venus anchoring the trio just above them. It's perfect target for a wide angle dslr. Sit there, click, boom, get your nice big picture. Or for relaxing in a chair with the binos and a gin. Make sure you've got a nice clear western eyes. Basically you'll have three planets and the moon.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know that if you get a gorgeous sky like it is now. Oh my God, that's just gonna look so, so cool.

[B]

Yeah, it'd be lush on it.

[A]

Beautiful blue sky, red, red horizon, three planets, sliver of moon. Huh. What more could you want for the summer?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So of course though, the nights are gonna get longer because although we're bemoaning the thing, it is actually not the object pointer telescope at, but it is the solstice on 21 June which marks the astronomical turning point of our year.

[B]

Yes, it is.

[A]

At exactly 0924 BST, the northern hemisphere reaches its maximum tilt toward the sun. Giving the UK roughly 16 and a half hours of daylight. Which always is still like mind boggling. I've lived here my entire life and that still blows my mind that we get you know, a day that is like 16 and a half hours of daylight.

[B]

Two thirds of the day is daylight.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. And, and for people who live further south, which is all of like the US and like that I think it does show. I actually saw a little YouTube clip jumped up of someone who American had moved here and he said he just like he'd been prepared for it but just could not believe how, how early it was, how light it was so early. And actually thought he'd missed work and overslept because it was completely daylight at like 4:30 in the morning.

[B]

Yeah. And it's like, no, no, that's just life.

[A]

That's just life. That's just, you know, you're gonna wake up at 4 o' clock in the morning because it's daylight. And so. Yeah. So for deep sky observers, this is the official start of the countdown.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

As the night slowly begin to lengthen again and we get back to, get back to dark sky. So, you know, it's almost there people. It's almost there. We just got to keep pushing. But yeah. 21st of June. Yeah, I'm afraid so. You've got a while to wait.

[B]

And then the final thing to look out for is noctilucent clouds. They're back, baby.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Now 2025 was actually a great year for not to lucent clouds. And research has suggested that they were enhanced by large scale planetary waves. So these are enormous atmospheric waves which, which work their way around our planet. And they're generated by the heat differentials between the poles and the equator, air currents, things like that. And they think that last year they helped cool the mesosphere. So about 80 km up they enhanced moisture transportation. So they just basically created the perfect environment for these ice crystals to form. Which is what noctilucent clouds are.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

Noctilucent translates as night shining. And they are these like bright white electric blue clouds that kind of look like lace across the sky. And you can tell that they're not to do some clouds, not normal clouds because as the sun keeps setting, the sky gets darker, these get brighter. But normal clouds start getting darker and darker and that's how you can tell. So you want to look to the west about half an hour after sunset is when they can first start appearing. And yeah, just look for it. They kind of describe it like electrified lace. And they can appear just like low to the horizon, right across like half the sky. It just depends.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it's ice crystals in the mesosphere. So they form around contaminants like dust from meteors in the atmosphere. Meteoroids, Pollution. Could be human made pollution. And then it's as the sun keeps dropping below the horizon, even though we can't see the light anymore, the light can still illuminate high up in the atmosphere. And so that's why they appear so bright. So worth looking out for.

[A]

Cool, right? So for our deep sky segment, we're pointing our optics down into the murky soup of the southern horizon at midnight. In the uk, the magnificent constellation of Scorpius, which never fully rises here, is curling. So the stinger remains hidden below the ground, but its bright head and heart pop right along on our southern skyline. Very much overlooked constellation. People rarely look at it because of how low it is. So despite the low altitude and the twilight, Scorpius holds some iconic targets that are bright enough to cut through the summer haze. So Antares Alpha Scorpio, super red Giant and the fiery distinctive orange heart of the Scorpion. Visual magnitude of one make it easy to spot for the naked eye, even in the twilight. Then we have one of the biggest and brightest globs in the form of Messier 4. Sitting just 1.3 degrees above Antares in it's one of the closest globular clusters to Earth. In binoculars or a small scope, it looks like a glowing fuzzy ball of cosmic fluff in the thicker, lower sort of lower sky. If you're very used to seeing those sort of sharp, pin sharp globular clusters higher in the sky like M13, then this one probably is not going to appear as sharp. But it is bigger and brighter. It's actually a very, very big bright globular. And if you're in lower latitude, it's a beautiful object. But in the UK actually is slightly spoiled by sweat. But he's definitely there. It's definitely worth tracking down. Then rising a little after the last two is Messier 6 the butterfly cluster. An open cluster is one of the more stunning in the Messier catalogue and looks like an open set of wings of a butterfly. Again, one to see if you can go to a lower latitude, you'll get even better view. Because Scorpion stays so low for UK observers, it rarely climbs more than 1012 degrees. High atmospheric extensions distinction will dim these objects. So find an observing spot on a hill with a completely uninterrupted view to the south and wait for a night with exceptional atmospheric transparency to help you. And then it's on to our lunar guide. Day 19. I can't believe we get. We're getting towards the end of this. We're getting.

[B]

I know, we're getting right up. Such a good segment though.

[A]

Yeah, we're getting right. Such a good suggestion. So. Day 19, the moon. The Moon is now definitely past full. The terminator is beginning to visibly encroach on the eastern limb even without the aid of binoculars. And as a result it's casting long shadows over the great lava plains. So Mare Chrisium, the Sea of Crisis, the isolated dark basaltic plane that sits near the edge of the Moon is definitely worth a look at this lighting angle on day 19. The low grazing sunlight highlights the wrinkled ridges, or Dorsa, which are snake like across its floor, as well as the steep, dramatic cliffs that form its basement wall. Then you've got the stunning craters Langrinus and Petavas. They're located further south along the terminator with Langrenus, featuring complex slumped terraces on its inner walls and a bright central peak. Why? Petavis is a favorite for amateur astronomers because of its massive size and a prominent deep fracture rimmer that cuts all the way from its central mountain peak to his outer rim. I love this crater, I have drawn it many, many times. I absolutely love that rim of those. It's just, it's just really cool. It's just a big, yeah, like dark line that shatters the crater. It's really cool. So on day 20 the Terminator pushes further across the lunar disk. It cuts through the heavily cratered southern highlands on the edges of the larger mare Mari Fencunditatus. I love that one. Sea of Fertility.

[B]

It's a good word, isn't it?

[A]

It is. Look closely at the surface of this plane for the Messier crater pair. Messier Messier a. Two small Fascinating craters created by sort of highly oblique low angle asteroid impact. This unique impact blasted out a distinct double raid sort of double railed, sorry ray system of bright ejecta. Looks like a comet's tail streaking across the dark lava plain. So look out for.

[B]

That is cool.

[A]

It is, it is. Then you have a great example of a ghost crater, Free Castorius. Now this is located at the southern margin of the Mare Nectaris Sea of Nectar. This is a classic ghost crater where billions of years ago lava spilled over from the sea and, and completely breached the crater's northern wall, filling its interior. So you get this sort of flat kind of, it's a circle and it's a crater, but it's flat because it's ghost crater. So on day 20 the low sun angle beautifully illuminates the remaining horseshoe shaped rim that's left. You can really see it and actually once it gets behind you it's much more difficult to see. So on day 21 the moon reaches last quarter. So the terminator cuts directly down the center of the lunar disk, offering some of the most jaw dropping three dimensional views of the entire lunar cycle. One of my favourites, the Theophilius Trio is the must see target here. This is the spectacular north south chain of three massive overlapping craters, Theophilus, Coeruleus and Caterina. Because they overlap, they provide a sort of visual timeline of lunar history. Theophilus is the youngest and sharpest, featuring massive terraced walls, sharp central mountain peak that be catching the first rays of sunlight while its floor is plunged into shadow. Caterina is the oldest, its walls heavily eroded and battered by all the subsequent impacts that came afterwards. So you can see this big difference. Beautiful object to draw. It takes ages to draw all three, but it's well worth the effort. And also look out for the Rupees Altay, the Altay Scarp. This is a colossal mountain cliff face that forms part of the ancient outer rings of the Mare Nectaris impact basin. So on day 21, the scarp casts a massive sweeping shadow across the landscape. Look. Looking like a sort of jagged lightning bolt cut into the lunar surface. It's really cool. So as a last point here as we're into the morning for the best views, the air is often calmer and more stable just before sunrise, of course, so the view to these craters can be incredibly sharp and steady compared to the turbulent air of early evening. So if you're wondering whether it's worth getting up for or staying up for, then yes, images will be sharper, observation, more detail. So it's definitely worth doing. Lots of people just don't bother with the moon in the morning. It's, you know, you do, you do that whole like up until fall and then you go all right, well I've seen it all, I'm not going to bother with it going back the other way actually often get better views in the morning.

[B]

Interesting.

[A]

Definitely worth doing.

[B]

And so then your moon for this month. So you know when to look out for these features. The moon begins just past full its last quarter on the 8th, new on the 15th, first quarter on the 22nd and then full on the 30th. So then all that remains is to wish you clear skies and happy hunting.

[A]

Some say hell is a place of our own making. Others say it's just off junction 13 and 14 of the M1. I say is having to listen to 18 year old reform councillor Kieran Lay demanding that Doncaster city council investigate UFOs because NASA said so. Oh truly, we live in an idiocracy. Perhaps it is hell of our own making and certainly feels hot enough.

[B]

Stay in touch Etc Email or flag us down on the Kings Highway Put a message in one of our numerous dead drops the [e-mail] so until our

[A]

mid month talk and then wittering and waffle it's goodbye from Cydonia Base.

[B]

Bye bye.

[C]

Awesome Astronomy Is Pretty 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 [e-mail] if you want us to read your thoughts and comments out on the show, send us your views, opinions, critiques or questions to the [e-mail] tweet us @awesomeastropod or give the awesome Astronomy Facebook page a like and leave your comments there. Thanks for listening from Cydonia base. End of transmission.