Soundgarden win at Astrophysics

Summary

AWESOME ASTRONOMY
Episode 165: Soundgarden win at Astrophysics
January 5, 2026
Hosts: Paul & Dr Jeni

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Episode Overview

This episode kicks off Awesome Astronomy’s 2026 with customary banter and a heartfelt nod to the resilience of humanity—no world wars in the first quarter of the 21st century, unlike previous centuries. Paul and Jeni bring their signature blend of humor and deep dives into astronomy and astrophysics, covering everything from mind-bending new findings (black hole stars!) to skywatching tips for January. JWST news dominates, alongside a surprising update on the search for oceans beneath Titan’s icy crust.

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Main Discussion Points & Insights

1. New Year Reflections & Banter (00:00–09:32)

• Themes: Staying optimistic in the face of history; humorous holiday anecdotes (family, TV bingeing, board games).
• Notable Exchange: On making a baby cry at New Year’s:
  • Jeni (03:09): “...and just literally looked at me and just burst into tears. Oh, it was horrific.”
  • Paul: “It’s a common reaction. She might as well start young.”

2. Soundgarden Wins at Astrophysics: Black Hole Stars! (09:32–13:34)

• Key Topic: Recent JWST data may explain the universe’s “little red dots” (LRDs) as black hole stars, previously thought to be massive galaxies or dust-enshrouded black holes.
• Explanation: Black hole stars—hybrid objects with a supermassive black hole at the center encased in a dense hydrogen envelope, which absorbs and re-emits radiation in the infrared spectrum, matching JWST’s observations.
• Astrophysical Relevance: Provides a new lens for interpreting JWST’s early-universe data and the makeup of the LRDs.
• Quotes:
  • Jeni (11:12): “So the core is an active galactic nucleus…cocooned in a gas shell so thick and turbulent that it mimics the atmosphere of a star.”
  • Paul (13:34): “How cool is that?”

3. Globular Cluster Chemistry + Black Hole Formation Connections (13:34–17:21)

• Legacy Problem: Diverse chemical compositions in ancient globular cluster stars.
• New Model: Extremely massive stars (1,000–10,000x solar mass) formed at cluster centers, polluted surrounding gas via stellar winds during a short starburst phase, explaining chemical oddities.
• Seeding Supermassive Black Holes: These monster stars collapse into intermediate-mass black holes, possibly planting seeds for galaxy centers.
• Quotes:
  • Jeni (15:59): “They vomit some of their rubbish out…pumping all this pollution.”
  • Paul (16:58): “This potentially explains the seeds required to grow a supermassive black hole. I know, excellent.”

4. JWST Detects the Oldest Known Supernova (17:21–23:22)

• Story: Coordinated international observational campaign detects a gamma-ray burst and, months later (as predicted), JWST confirms the accompanying ancient supernova—13 billion years old.
• Scientific Impact: Early-universe supernovae appear similar to modern ones, affirming stellar physics’ consistency over cosmic time.
• Quotes:
  • Jeni (18:10): “What’s fascinating is this supernova explosion was surprisingly similar to ones that we see in the nearby universe…stellar physics [is] uniform across space, but it’s also uniform across time.”
  • Paul (22:24): “Love it.”
  • Jeni: “I love a detective story like this.”

5. Titan’s Subsurface Ocean: More a Slushie Than a Sea (23:22–32:26)

• Background: Cassini’s original analysis indicated a global subsurface ocean beneath Saturn’s moon Titan.
• New Findings: Updated models and improved computational analysis imply Titan’s interior is likely slush—ice with pockets of meltwater—rather than an uninterrupted ocean.
• Hope for Life?: Even 0.01–1% liquid in the ice equates to Mediterranean- to Atlantic-sized water reserves; concentrated organics could still support unique habitats.
• Quotes:
  • Jeni (30:31): “What they found was a really strong signal of energy dissipation. And what that means is slush…”
  • Paul (30:31): “That’s both kind of amazing…brilliant…I love how they work this out. But also slightly disappointed.”
  • Jeni (31:08): “Those pockets of melt water could actually be reasonably warm…the simulation suggests up to about 20 degrees Celsius…”

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January Sky Guide & Observing Highlights

Jupiter at Opposition (32:40–35:24)

• Observation Tip: Jupiter is high in the sky all night, ideally positioned, offering the rare chance to observe the full 10-hour rotation in one night.
• Quote:
  • Paul (34:20): “Yeah. Enjoy your full Jupiter day.”
• Profound Moment:
  • Jeni (34:50): “You could like once every hour…”
  • Paul: “Oh, easily. Oh God, yeah. I mean you would see it change dramatically.”

Moon-Star Conjunctions & Occultations (35:24–37:47)

• Events:
  • Jan 6: Regulus within half a degree of the Moon.
  • Jan 10: Spica passes 1.5° from the Moon.
  • Jan 14: Antares grazes the limb (<0.1°) for UK; occultation in far south.
  • Jan 27: Moon passes through the Pleiades, covering bright cluster stars.
  • Jan 31: Another close Moon–Jupiter pairing.
• Side Note: Watch Castor & Pollux (color difference visible), with Jupiter and the Moon nearby.

Deep Sky Highlights: Messier Open Cluster Mini-Marathon (37:47–41:31)

• Cluster Tour:
  • M41 (Canis Major)
  • M50 (Monoceros)
  • M46 & M47 (Puppis, with M46’s planetary nebula NGC 2438)
  • M93 (Puppis; “Butterfly Cluster”)
  • M48 (Hydra/Monoceros; “missing Messier,” discovered by Caroline Herschel)
• Banter: Discussion on Sirius as the “disco star” (38:52–39:04).

Lunar Features: Days 4–6 after New Moon (41:31–45:58)

• Day 4: Mare Crisium, Mare Fecunditatis, double crater Messier and Messier A, Proclus and its rays, Rima & Rupes Cauchy.
• Day 5: Best for naked eye; Sea of Tranquility, Serenity, and Nectar emerge; chain of Theophilus, Cyrillus, Caterina.
• Day 6: Southern highlands, complex crater fields, Montes Alpes & Montes Haemus.
• Lunar phases for January:
  • Full: Jan 3
  • Last Quarter: Jan 10
  • New: Jan 18
  • First Quarter: Jan 26

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Paul (00:00): “There is too much good science and astronomy out there waiting to be discovered for us to start dicking around with trivialities and egotism. Onwards to rationality and biscuits.”
• Jeni (11:45): “I thought I would never really be surprised by astrophysics again. But then they pull this out of the bag. This is amazing.”
• Jeni (22:25): “The signal that JWST detected was almost exactly as it would be predicted to be a supernova. It was like very small differences, which, you know, is fine…”
• Paul (31:08): “Okay, so, so, so there’s still a lot of warm water out there.”
• Jeni (31:57): “It might just be that moons with global subsurface oceans may not be as common as we thought.”

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Holiday Banter & Board Games: 00:00–09:32
• JWST: Black Hole Stars & LRDs Explained: 09:32–13:34
• Globular Cluster Chemistry & Black Hole Seeds: 13:34–17:21
• JWST’s Ancient Supernova Discovery: 17:21–23:22
• Titan’s ‘Slush’ Interior Revelation: 23:22–32:26
• Sky Guide: Jupiter & January Highlights: 32:40–37:47
• Deep Sky Messier Cluster Tour: 37:47–41:31
• Lunar Feature Guide (Days 4–6): 41:31–45:58

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Tone & Style

The episode is as witty and personable as ever, mixing “sht” jokes with genuine awe at the universe. The hosts balance technical explanation with analogies and enthusiasm, ensuring listeners of all experience levels are informed and entertained.

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Summary

Episode 165 is a perfect exemplar of Awesome Astronomy: scientific discovery, infectious curiosity, and relatable, offbeat humor. The show shines a spotlight on the transformative role of JWST, reveals how new models rewrite our cosmic origin stories, and grounds everything with practical tips for skywatching in January. The update on Titan brings nuance to the ongoing search for habitable worlds, leaving listeners with both sober realism and hope.

For newcomers and seasoned sky-watchers alike, the episode makes the wonders (and weirdness) of the cosmos accessible, relevant, and fun.

Transcript

[A]

Once more round the sun, dear friends, once more. Happy New Year. Welcome to the second quarter of the 21st century. And despite the doom and gloom, we've actually done okay. I mean, if you look at the previous four centuries, then the great powers have always fallen to a massive and terrible war in the first 25 years. So well done, humanity. You broke that cycle. In fact, the people of the British Isles managed to start a new century without forming a new country again. Something that's happened in the first quarter of each of the previous four centuries. It was a close call on that one, but we did make it. Now, the next 25 years were a bit sticky in the last few centuries. Big wars, big revolutions, big moustache energy. But come on, people, we can do this. There is too much good science and astronomy out there waiting to be discovered for us to start dicking around with trivialities and egotism. Onwards to rationality and biscuits. I'm Paul.

[B]

And I'm Jenny.

[A]

And welcome to episode 165 of awesome Astronomy for January 2026. Fireworks.

[B]

Yeah, just insert the, like 12 minutes of the London fireworks here.

[A]

I didn't even watch them this year, actually.

[B]

Oh, do you know what? They were good this year.

[A]

Yeah, I didn't do that.

[B]

I think at the end they just kind of went, sod it, and they just let off every single firework that they had left in their arsenal. It was just like blinding. It was good.

[A]

Yeah. They usually go, hey, I didn't watch it this year.

[B]

Yeah, happy New Year.

[A]

Happy New Year.

[B]

What did you do for New Year's then, if you weren't watching the London fireworks?

[A]

What was I doing? Actually, do you know what we were supposed to have. Some university friends of ours was supposed to come, we're going to have a little bit of a party. Old, like, uni friends get together and our kids were all going to go do their thing. And my daughter being older, she's now got her, like, teenage friends and having their own little party thing going on. And our university friends had to cancel for. I know, for unforeseen. Nothing they could do about it. And so we just sat home and you know what? We binge watched a TV series which we'd been meaning to watch all year, and we just watched the whole thing and then watch a bit of old Jules and he's hooting. Nanny.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, he's a.

[A]

He's a bit of a pretentious prick, but. But, you know, it was a good little way to see the new Year in and we had some Beers and it was alright actually. It was, it was good. It was, it was a nice chilled one in the end. Expecting a party and actually we just had a really nice chilled one.

[B]

Yeah, nice. Yeah. We went over to friends so it's just the four of us and then they're two kids so it's like one of them's three, one of them's nine months. Oh my God. Though I like made the nine month old cry like immediately I felt like such an a hole because the thing is the little boy wanted to show me some presents so following him into the living room and then the little girl was like sat in her high chair like having some food and she like turned and just clearly did not expect to see me. And then of course I'm like stranger danger and just literally looked at me and just burst into tears. Oh, it was horrific.

[A]

It's a common reaction. She might as well start young.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Hey.

[B]

Yo. That's it, I'm leaving.

[A]

You're alone.

[B]

No, but yeah, it was really nice and it was, yeah, really chill. Like we played a couple of games. But yeah, it was just like drinking and chatting and watching the fireworks on the telly.

[A]

Nice. Good, good. Cool.

[B]

Yeah, it was good. How was your Christmas?

[A]

Good. You know I actually. Well kind of up and up and down actually. I've got to be honest. I'll be honest, it was a good Christmas itself but we had a lot of illness flight floating around the family, the more general family, you know, grandmas and grandparents and children and it was all that kind of up and down with the whole like who's going to be sitting in the invalid corner coughing their guts up and. And we did a lot of driving around this year. It was a lot of driving to and fro. It was a bit of, bit of. I've only had a couple of days where I know people thinking but I think in a couple of days where I just sat my ass and did nothing.

[B]

And that's what Christmas is all about.

[A]

Which is Christmas should be about that. Exactly. I'm always a fan of the holiday, the Christmas holiday being the one where you actually sit around and do nothing.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And actually I didn't do that much this year at all. Much to my disappointment. So yeah, so yeah, it was alright though. It was good. It was good. I mean it was a nice Christmas. It was a nice Christmas. And yeah, I got lots of books and socks. Yeah, books and socks. That was my books and socks. Hooks and socks. Oh, and a new telly. I've got a new Telly, you're gonna be amazed. Yeah, we have. We have got a bigger telly. Oh, we've gone.

[B]

Finally done it.

[A]

We've gone from our. Our little. Our 24 inch.

[B]

2.

[A]

32 inches.

[B]

32 inches, though, is like a nice size.

[A]

It's still a smaller telly, but you know what? It's. It's weird. Yeah. I'm not a fan of massive telly, so. But I can actually. What I found was the both of us sitting there going, oh, I don't actually have to keep getting out of my seat to read the clue that the detective has held up in front of the camera. You know, when they hold up, you're like, what the hell is he just reading?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Oh, my God. Because modern telly is designed for big TVs.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it's like. So I like, I'm a big fan of the old 1980s Sherlock Holmes series with David David Brett and all the rest of it. Not Dave, Jerry Brett. David Brett. What the hell am I talking about? Jeremy Brett and of course, old telly. If they had to zoom in on a clue, they really zoomed in. Because TVs in the 80s were like the size of, like, pencil cases. They were tiny.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So I watched an episode of that the other night on our new telly and it was like, I could have read this clue from the next county.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Oh, my God.

[B]

Seen it from space.

[A]

Yeah, exactly, exactly. So, yeah, it was quite dramatic. It's a big, big change in our lives is a slightly bigger telly.

[B]

Yeah, I know. I've got to buy a. Now for my tally.

[A]

Oh, how big's your telly?

[B]

55 inches, anyone?

[A]

Jesus Christ.

[B]

No, it's a 55. Or is it 50? 50.

[A]

Jeez.

[B]

50. Not 55. 50.

[A]

Bloody hell. You can see that from space.

[B]

Bloody hell.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The thing is, like, there's. There's a hole in the wall for it to, like, go in. And I didn't want it like sitting in the hole in the wall. I wanted it to, like, just cover

[A]

the hole in the wall.

[B]

And like, that size will just cover the hole in the wall but not be too big mad. But yeah, it'll be good mad, I think. Especially if you're doing like side by side gaming. Then it breaks down into, like two 24 inch screens. Right.

[A]

Blimey. So not a thing that happens, I have to say, in our house, the gaming's for the young UN's, for the youth. For the youth. For the youth. The youth. The gaming in our house consists of getting. Getting the games table out and putting a board out.

[B]

Do you know what, though? We did Monopoly at Christmas.

[A]

Oh, God, I'd rather shoot myself.

[B]

No, but the thing is, if you play it properly, it only takes about two hours.

[A]

Yeah, it's still the most dull game ever made.

[B]

My dad absolutely annihilated us. It was disgusting. Like, it was genuinely horrendous. So it was me, my mum and my dad. This was on Boxing Day. And my dad ended up with every single property and over 3,000 monopoly pounds. And he wouldn't, like, let me and my mum fold, even though victory was inevitable for him. No, he wanted all of these debts settled, so he took everything from us. My dad, that sweet little Welshman who wanders around Astral Camp with a. With a little ale in his hand and, you know, chatting to everyone. Turns out he's absolutely ruthless when it comes to Monopoly.

[A]

Monster. Yeah, I'm sorry. I literally. I loathe a Monopoly with a really.

[B]

I really enjoy it.

[A]

Oh, God, it's awful.

[B]

I love it. We also played Bananagrams.

[A]

Oh, yeah? Yeah, I like Bananagrams.

[B]

That's cool. Yeah, Bananagrams. It's really good. And then my mum bought this. I think she got it on, like, I don't know, Teemu or something, but it's like a string. And then you have these little misshapen magnets. And the aim of the game is to put all your magnets inside the loop. But if you put your magnet down and they stick together, you gotta pick them up.

[A]

Oh, what was the game we played with friends over Christmas? Brilliant. And you get loads of magnetic words in front of you. You get about, like, 75 magnetic words that. Just random in front of you. Little pile.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

You have a little magnetic board and then you have prompts and you have to write a thing with the magnetic words you've got. So it'd be like instructions for cpr.

[B]

Oh, okay.

[A]

And they were filth. They were absolute filth.

[B]

I bet they were.

[A]

And it was the one I. It was like, tell your. Tell your wife of 20 years or your partner of 20 years, you want a threesome. And the filth coming around this table with actually a hilarious game like Frigmaginic. It was very good, actually, that I did enjoy. That was good fun. Anyway, I suppose we've been on with some news and stuff.

[B]

Yeah, we should. Should we?

[A]

Well, first up for me. Well, you know, it looks like Soundgarden called it way back in 1994.

[B]

Oh, I'm going to do a bad thing.

[A]

Now you're going to say, well, who's Soundgarden and what am I talking about? Yeah, the Right. Do yourself a favor.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Get on.

[B]

Get on the YouTubes or the Spotify. I've got the Spotify on the air.

[A]

And look up Black Hole Sun.

[B]

Oh, I do know that one.

[A]

Of course you do. Of course. It is an epic tune. Which had an epic video back in the day, which I always tried to record an mtv. Because that's what you did when you were a teenager back in the early 90s, I'm sure.

[B]

I know that one. I know that one.

[A]

You know that one. Black Hole Sun. Exactly. Won't you come and wash away the paint and all that? Well, recent findings from the JWST provide a compelling new explanation for those infamous, mysterious little red dots. The LRDs.

[B]

Little green men.

[A]

Not the little green men. The little red dots. You know those little red dots? Lrds, the extremely compact red objects we observe in the early universe, which were initially thought to be either massive galaxies or dust shrouded black holes. But the new model suggests they may actually be black hole stars.

[B]

Black hole stars, yes. That seems like a juxtaposition.

[A]

Black hole Sun. So unlike traditional stars powered by nuclear fusion. Yeah. A black hole star. Is this kind of theoretical? It's still theoretical, but this seems to, you know, the model's there sort of hybrid object. So in this model you get a super massive black hole at the center of a young galaxy in is surrounded by a massive, extremely dense envelope of hydrogen gas.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And so the core is an active galactic nucleus, essentially agn, where a black hole is rapidly consuming matter. And this is cocooned in a gas shell so thick and turbulent that it mimics the atmosphere of a star.

[B]

Oh, what? I can see that. Yeah, I get that.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. So basically, in effect, it's a. It's a supermassive black hole in a massive shell of gas that basically behaves like a star.

[B]

That's. Do you know what I thought? I would never really be surprised by astrophysics again.

[A]

I know, I know.

[B]

But then they pull this out of the bag. This is amazing.

[A]

Yeah. So the gas shell absorbs high energy radiation like X rays, and then re emits it as low energy light. And because the gas is relatively cool compared to the naked accretion disk, it shifts the light into the infrared spectrum. Therefore little red dots giving them their signature red color.

[B]

Because this is the thing is like when the photons of light are first emitted in the heart of the sun in that fusion process, they are a lot higher energy. They're like X ray gamma rays. Like, they're really high energy. And then they lose so much energy wiggling their way out of the sun, Then they're emitted, like in the visible range.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So it's like that.

[A]

Exactly. So in effect, you. I think the argument essentially is it is a star. It is a kind of star. It's just.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It's got a black hole at its core.

[B]

Because this is the thing is it's like. Like, how do you. How do you define what stars? Is it like that it has to have fusion or is it that it's like a spherical object that's like emitting

[A]

its own light singularity and a event horizon in its core? Doing the. Doing a sort of similar thing. Emitting.

[B]

It's like, technically shining.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So it's like. Yeah, wicked. I love this story. This is good.

[A]

Still lots of work and observation to do. But this idea does neatly explain what is observed, particularly the spectra that appears to show a smooth body typical of a star. This is what kind of was leading this. This is kind of that. That rather than that kind of more spiky profile you get that you'd actually see with, like a galaxy because there's multiple light sources and different types, you get that kind of spiky spectra. That's all a bit sort of messy. And this was suggesting. This is these. This was like the confusion that these are smooth bodies. Well, how does that work? Enter black hole stars. How cool is that?

[B]

It's epic. This is a great story. Good choice.

[A]

And then how do you fancy a connected story?

[B]

Oh, love a collected story.

[A]

Yeah. Well, for decades, astronomers have been puzzled by why the stars in ancient globular clusters have vastly different chemical compositions, which, when they appear to have formed around the same time. Yes.

[B]

This is a conundrum because that's the idea is that they were supposed to be like one big old burst of star formation.

[A]

Yeah. So some are enriched with elements like nitrogen, helium, sodium, while others are depleted in oxygen and magnesium. So you know what's going on. So study by a team led by Mark Gilles and appearing in the Royal Astronomical Society's monthly notices suggests a polluter source existed during the cluster's birth. Okay, so it's the idea of a sort of globular cluster polluter.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

So Gelies team applied the inertial inflow model of star formation to the extreme conditions of the early universe. And their findings include these things called extremely massive stars that in the dense, turbulent gas clouds of the early universe form as these monster stars between 1000, 10,000 times the mass of the sun.

[B]

And they are actual sars or are they more like black hole sars?

[A]

Well, ah, ah, ah, ah.

[B]

Jumping ahead on accident, this is, do you know what this is? The thing so I think the listeners need to know this is that when we put the script together, we don't read each other's news stories. I mean obviously we check the titles to make sure we're not going to write about the same things.

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

See, but we, we don't read each other's news stories so that our reactions are genuine. Oh, rains are happening here.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. So what this leads to. So you got these, these thousand, ten thousand times mass of sun seem to sort of naturally form the center of young globular clusters. In this model, this leads to a sort of conveyor belt effect. The extremely massive stars are so massive and unstable, they lose significant portion their mass through powerful winds.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

This processed gas enriched by high temperature hydrogen burning mixes with the surrounding pristine gas to form a second generation stars. When the observed these kind of observed chemical anomalies. And then they suggest that a single starburst is responsible. So unlike previous theories where it required multiple generations of star formation over millions of years, this model allows for the entire cluster to form in a single continuous starburst lasting about 1 to 2 million years.

[B]

So you have like these massive stars form. Yeah, but they're really unstable. And while all the other stars are still forming, they like vomit some of their rubbish out and then pumping all this pollution.

[A]

This is why they called it.

[B]

Yeah, but it's still a single burst because it's only over a few million

[A]

years as you've already gone like, because you're such a genius and you made the link, the star direct link to the little red dots in the JWST observations. As the model predicts that the nitrogen rich galaxies JWST is finding in the early universe are actually nurseries for these massive globulin clusters. And once these extremely massive stars exhaust their fuel, they don't explode as typical supernovae. Instead they collapse into intermediate mass black holes with masses exceeding 100 suns. And this potentially explains the seeds required to grow a supermassive black hole. I know, excellent.

[B]

Because this is a huge question as well, isn't it? Is where do these intermediate media, yeah, black holes come from? Where do then like the supermassive black holes come from? Because you know, there's this idea of that how have they grown so massive

[A]

and globular clusters and which Are these ancient enigmatic things that are.

[B]

Yeah,

[A]

I need to go and have a lie down.

[B]

Well, you can't go and have a lie down yet, because I think what I'm gonna do now, considering you've done two JWST stories, this is obviously the episode of JWST Stories. I'm actually gonna see skip my first news, go to my second news story because it's another JWS news story. So we're going to see the title Spectre.

[A]

Yeah, I just seen your first one.

[B]

Jwst. Right, go on. And I'm calling this one, Blast from the Past. All right, so this is again the James Webb Space Telescope, and it has detected the signal, the infrared signal from the oldest supernova yet discovered. So it's again, we're in jwst.

[A]

This is like synchronicity, as the Americans call it, meshing.

[B]

It's amazing, isn't it? Right. It's brilliant. So we're going back, way back 13 billion years to 730 million years after the Big Bang. This is when this supernova happened. So we are super early. Super, super early. And. And what's fascinating is that this supernova explosion was surprisingly similar to ones that we see in the nearby universe in our galaxy and in other galaxies. Wow. And that tells us that not only is stellar physics uniform across space, but it's also uniform across time. And this has been a big question. It has always been, do those early stars behave in the same way as stars in the nearby universe? Can we apply our understanding from the nearby universe to the distant past? And it looks like actually, yeah, at least in the case of supernovae, we probably can. I mean, yeah, there's going to be little differences, but by the by, yeah, we can. So we go to the 14th of March 2025, which is like 10 months ago actually, but 14th of March 2025, the Space Variable Objects Monitor Savon, right, which is Chinese French telescope, operates in the X rays and gamma ray part of the spectrum detects a gamma ray burst. So this really intense blast of gamma rays lasted about 10 seconds. And these are typically associated with the deaths of stars. So you get different types of gamma ray bursts. So you can get them from like merging neutron stars and you can get them from like accreting black holes, but you can also get them from supernovae. And this kind of one is typically associated with supernovae. So the alert went out. It was a kind of like because discovery burst happened. And so the alert went out from Sivom saying, hey, guys, take A look at this part of space. Something's just screamed at us. Swift, which is that observatory that's going to be boosted this year to save it.

[A]

Yes, yes.

[B]

So Swift has a look. Within 90 minutes of the alert going out, it had pinpointed the location of the X ray signal because it detects it in x ray 90 minutes. So this is like rapid astronomy happening.

[A]

Yeah, right.

[B]

Pinpointed it because the, the field of view, like the resolution, first of all, is not great. So Swift pinpointed it, said, right, it's in Virgo near 66 Virginis. Specifically, the alert went out and the telescope's gone on it. So 11 hours after Swift, the Nordic Optical Telescope, which is in La Palma, that detected a faint afterglow. So people like, right, definitely supernova. We're on it. Four hours later, the Very Large Telescope, the VLT down in Chile, that detects a fake signal. And from that spectroscopy, it confirms it's got a redshift of 7.3. So that is 730 million years after the Big Bang. Now, here's the interesting bit, because we always talk about redshift, right? About things happening, you know, in the distant past. If things happen in the distant past past, their light is redshifted. That means the light is shifted to the red end part of the spectrum. And that is because the light has been traveling through an expanding universe to get to us. And so the wavelength of light is stretched out and so it becomes redder. But it also acts with delaying the time signal for this supernova explosion. So instead of the, the signal of the supernova coming through a couple of weeks after the gamma ray burst, in terms of the visible light part, which would be red, shifted down into the infrared, it was actually a few months later, because of this, the knowledge of having the red shift, they were able to predict and say, right, well, the glow of the supernova should be visible three and a half months from this date. So they applied to director's discretionary time on the James Webb Space Telescope, which is time which is reserved for things like this, where you have to react rapidly and it cannot be predicted. They got awarded the time and on July 1st, so exactly three and a half months later, Jones Space Telescope had a look at the same patch of sky. Lo and behold, it finds the infrared signal of the supernova. How amazing is that?

[A]

Love it.

[B]

I love a detective story like this.

[A]

That's brilliant.

[B]

And the signal that JWST detected was almost exactly as it would be predicted to be a supernova. It was like very small Differences, which, you know, is fine. Different kind of environment. You would expect it to be a little bit different, but it's really remarkable how similar the signal was. And so even down to like the mass of the star that was exploding, you know, despite different metallicities, it was remarkably similar, you know, and this is happening in a part of the universe known as the epoch of realization. So it's completely different.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Galaxies are hidden behind this haze of hydrogen gas. It's a really difficult part of the universe to explore. Explore. But JWST managed to detect this signal exactly when it was predicted to happen.

[A]

That's so cool.

[B]

And we've learned that supernovae in the early universe are remarkably similar to ones in the nearby. It's just amazing, isn't there?

[A]

That's so cool.

[B]

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

[A]

Love it.

[B]

But for my final story, we're gonna stop being absolute hoes to jwst.

[A]

Yeah, we, we are the JWST holes.

[B]

We are, we are, we're like proper cheerleaders for, for it this episode. But we're gonna, we're gonna go to a different observatory that we have long been cheerleaders for. And that is Cassini. Oh, Cassini. Cassini. Cassini. Right. Looks world Saturn and its moons. And one of the greatest revelations from Cassini was a global ocean beneath Titan. So Titan is Saturn's largest moon. I mean, it's bigger than Mercury. It's huge, this moon. You know, it is second in size only to Ganymede in terms of moons. Right. Big moon. And you know, Titan we've always been interested in because it's the kind of, I would argue it's the most Earth like world that we know about. Yes. Because it's got a thick, nitrogen rich atmosphere.

[A]

Yeah. Very similar pressure to Earth's.

[B]

Yep, yep, it has. I mean, yeah. If you had big enough wings strapped to, you could fly on titanium.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

You know, which sounds mad, but it is true. And it has its own version of the water cycle. So we have the water cycle, but on Titan it's hydrocarbons. So there's like methane and ethane. Rivers and lakes.

[A]

And my favorite thing about that is that the drops falling from the sky would be about the size of like tennis balls. They'd be huge.

[B]

That's a good one.

[A]

Right. But also because of the gravity, they would fall so slowly you could actually dodge out of the way of them. You could just like, oh my God. Move around these tennis balls falling through the sky. How cool.

[B]

Now that is a holiday yeah.

[A]

How cool.

[B]

That is a trip that I want to do when I'm on my cruise ship. Right. Sailing down the rivers of Titan.

[A]

I want to have full size drops of methane. Yeah, how cool.

[B]

Dodge the, the ray. Yeah, yeah, that's brilliant. And, yeah, and it's like on, on Titan, the rocks are not rocks that. It's water ice.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

You know, because it's like minus 180 degrees on the surface.

[A]

Yeah. So water is just another rock.

[B]

It's just another rock.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So, you know, it's a pretty special place. And so then this concept of, oh, there could be a global liquid ocean. We think there's global liquid ocean. Really, really exciting. But, but modern reanalysis of the data suggests that actually may not be a global ocean beneath Titan's icy crust. It's more like slush, they're now thinking, with like little liquid pockets. Right. And so then this leads to the question, are the icy moons of gas giants as habitable as we once thought they were?

[A]

Right.

[B]

So we'll dig into this. So Titan has an elliptical orbit around Saturn. It's not perfect circle. And that means that the gravitational pull from Saturn onto Titan, it varies, depends on where it is on its orbit. You know, sometimes it's a little bit greater and sometimes it's a little bit lower. And so this results in tidal forces where the moon gets squashed and squeezed and tugged. And, and this generates heat inside. And this was known before Cassini went to saturate. And then there was this theory that, well, actually the tidal forces could theoretically maybe be strong enough to generate enough heat to melt water ice and so create this global ocean. But you didn't know if it was possible, theoretically possible, but didn't know if it was happening. And so Cassini didn't go with like a lander just to like drill down into the crust. Right. I mean, we, we had the Huygens lander, but it wasn't designed to like, break through the crust and like, find this, this ocean. Right. So the way they figured it out was it was so clever. It's using Cassini's radio calls back home. And then the Doppler effect. Everyone's familiar with the Doppler effect, even though you may not know it's called that. It's that effect where you know when like a police car or an ambulance is like driving towards you and then, and then the pitch increases and then, and then it drops off again. And that's all to do with the sound waves getting compressed as the car's coming towards you and then getting stretched out as the car's moving away from you. And so when spacecraft are orbiting in deep space, they're flying on predetermined trajectories. And we know those trajectories down to, like, very, very fine numbers. But gravitational anomalies beneath the crust of whichever body they're flying around can then alter that trajectory ever so slightly.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

If it's like a less dense region, then the gravity's a little bit weaker, so you get a bit less acceleration than expected. If it's a little bit more dense beneath the crust, then you get slightly stronger gravity. And so then the spacecraft will accelerate a little bit more. And then these changes in motion are reflected in the radio waves that are beamed back to Earth by Cassini, because it won't be moving exactly as expected. It will be exactly where expected. So the frequencies will change, and you can then decode that to work out what's actually going on beneath the crust.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So they use 10 flybys of Cassini to look at the what's going on beneath Titan's icy crust. And the initial analysis said global ocean. So, like, everyone was ecstatic but very excited about it. But here's. Here's the. But there was something that wasn't like what's not accounted for simply because computers were not good enough at the time to do it. So this is no one's fault. This is not like bad science was done. It's just that we did not have the technology to do the analysis properly. And it's all about looking at the timings of how energy is dissipated through Titan. Now, if it was a completely liquid ocean. Right. Then Titan would react really quickly to the tidal pools of Saturn.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But a slushy interior would act more slowly. So the way to think about it is, like, if you've got a cup of water and you swirl it around, that water reacts really quickly. If you've got a cup of syrup, you swirl it around. It takes a lot slower. It's like gloopier. So it's kind of like that sort of vibe. Right. So the timing of how tidal energy is dissipated, that would reveal what was what, the kind of the nature of the liquid underneath the crust.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

And what they found was a really strong signal of energy dissipation. And what that means is slush, because slush layers, they generate friction and heat as the ice crystals are, like, rubbing together. And that slows down the energy transportation through Titan. So it's not reacting Quickly to the tidal effects from Saturn by comparing then with simulations, again, something that we couldn't do before, but lab simulations of ice under really tremendous pressure. The best fitting model actually suggests that it's not a global ocean, it is slush. And there's little pockets then of melt water in between these layers of slush.

[A]

That's both kind of amazing. Brilliant. I love how they work this out. But also slightly disappointed.

[B]

Yeah. Right. But I, I come bearing more good news.

[A]

Oh, God, I'm gonna finish on a Saturday. Leave us on a high. Leave us on a high.

[B]

I am. Right, because you're probably all thinking now, right, ah, it's like disaster for life, right, because liquid water is always the thing. But it's not that the liquid water is totally gone. We think there's still going to be these little pockets of melt water. Right. And those pockets of melt water could actually be reasonably warm. The simulation suggests up to about 20 degrees Celsius, which is, you know, really quite tepid.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's, that's.

[B]

And because it's like little pieces, pockets, they will act to concentrate organics and salts, which is good. We want that. And the thing is, there is so much water ice on Titan that if only 1% of the water ice was melted into these little pockets, it would be the same amount of water is contained in Earth's Atlantic Ocean. Wow.

[A]

Okay, so, so, so there's still a lot of warm water out there.

[B]

If it was 0.01%, it would be the same amount of water that's in the Mediterranean Sea.

[A]

There's still a lot of water, which

[B]

is still a lot of water. So even if, like, there's only tiny amounts of these pockets, that's still plenty of liquid water. Right?

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, okay, okay. You're leaving us on a happier note.

[B]

Exactly. And like, this doesn't apply to Ganymede and Europa and Enceladus because they've got other evidence for liquidity. Water oceans, they've got geysers and they've got like, magnetic field disturbances and like all sorts of other lines of evidence as well. But we don't have that for Titan. So it, it's not a disaster for Titan and life. And it's not a disaster for life on icy moons. It might just be that moons with global subsurface oceans may not be as common as we thought.

[A]

But there we are.

[B]

But there we are.

[A]

Okay, then, it's time for our monthly sky guide. And, well, the obvious one to start with, you can't have missed it. We had some clear skies over Christmas. Jupiter, Jupiter is there at opposition, looking gorgeous, dangling from Gemini.

[B]

Yeah, you just can't miss it. I was driving earlier today and I was just like Jupiter like yeah, I wasn't even trying. I was just like driving along and I was like oh, super bright Jupiter.

[A]

I have literally had message after message. I always do whenever Jupiter's nice and high in the sky like this or Venus, Venus is the other one. But Jupiter particularly people saying what's that bright thing in the sky in the south? Paul? I just get all these little WhatsApp from non astronomy friends going Paul, Paul, you'll know what's this? Paul? I literally had one this morning saying that thing just, just by the moon last night was that Saturn is like. No, that's, that's, yeah, yes. Dangling just, just below the moon, wasn't it? It was absolutely gorgeous last night. So yeah, best time to look at Jupiter. And of course what's glorious about this of course is the opposition at this time of year means you, you can get that full 10 hours of Jupiter rotation at its peak. This is, this is like a really good time to see Jupiter and it's pretty close opposition as well.

[B]

I didn't even think about that. Of course you can because it's happening in winter for us.

[A]

It's happening in winter for a change. And so, and it's at the longest part of the longest night. So you can pop your scope up and you can do a full 10 hour rotation with Jupiter at its most detail because it says its closest and it's a pretty good opposition issue as well so.

[B]

Oh my, what a good point.

[A]

Yeah. Enjoy your full Jupiter day.

[B]

I know, I'm so tempted to try and pull an all night and do that.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. It's one of those where you should, what you should do is like study it for like a few minutes, like five minutes, go and come back again and every every so often like you either take another image or, or you know, do another sketch or whatever. Just do it. You don't have to sit there all 10 hours. Your eye glue to the IP because you literally will like keel over. But yeah, you can, you can just keep popping back and seeing it rotate and change.

[B]

You could like once every hour.

[A]

Oh easily. Oh God, yeah. I mean you would see it change dramatically. I, I would recommend probably about every perhaps 15, 20 minutes.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Would be a good, a good rhythm to get through, through, you know, sort of, you know, half hour maybe through the night. Yeah. Which I think would. Would give you that nice flavor of. Because, I mean, you'd sit there, you'd study, you'd. You'd go planet blind after a while, just constantly staring at it. But, yeah, it's a perfect time to do it. You'll see all the moons rotate around it and change formation. Oh, yeah.

[B]

See the Great Red Spot.

[A]

Exactly, exactly, exactly. So, yeah, perfect time to go and have a good time with Jupiter. And then it's an absolute smorgasbord of moon star meetups all month. We talked about this at Christmas, didn't we? We talked about this.

[B]

There's so many of them this year.

[A]

There are so many. And January kicks us off big time. So we've got. Regulus is just half a degree from

[B]

the moon on the 6th, which is a moon width.

[A]

Yes, exactly. And it's actually an occultation in China.

[B]

Ah, if anyone's listening. In China.

[A]

Yeah. Spica is one and a half degrees from the moon on the 10th.

[B]

Again, three moon widths. Yeah. But very close.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. While Antares grazes the moon. It's less than 0.1 degrees away if you're in the UK. I know. I think it's actually somewhere, because that's like 0.06 degrees. I mean, it literally is like skimming, bouncing across the mountains.

[B]

On the limb, it'd be like, can you. Can you see it? Like, can you spot it?

[A]

Exactly on the 14th. And that's actually an occultation for the most southerly penguin fanciers. So right down in, I think, southeastern Australia and the very southern tip of South America and things like that you'll see as an occultation, which is really cool. They would just be stunning if that wasn't enough. The moon crashes into the Pleiades on the night of the 27th.

[B]

Yeah. And it's like covering bright stars as well. Yeah, it's all just like skirting round it.

[A]

It's like barreling into the middle of the bloody cluster. So, yeah, it's absolutely superb. And then. So that, you know, ends out this busy month for our companion with stars. And also

[B]

Jupiter's back, baby, on, like, the 31st. If you missed that conjunction when it was the night of the. The full super Moon. Well, yeah, on the 3rd.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

On the. On the 31st, the moon's back with Jupiter again, so you'll be able to

[A]

see it all again. Yeah.

[B]

So, I mean, Castor and Pollux, of course, is there.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

As well. You can actually pick them out and even under some light pollution, you can see the color difference between Castor and Pollux. One looks orangey, one looks bluey. You've got super bright Jupiter, got the Moon. It's an amazing conjunction.

[A]

Yeah. Great month. Great month. Right. Time. Some deep sky though, because it is really a deep sky. And so for this, for deep sky this month, I'm suggesting a Messier Oprah cluster marathon with a cheeky planetary thrown in for sh. Ts and giggles. So, located along the winter Milky Way, the constellations of Canis Major, Monoceros and Poopus contain five Messier objects with an addition of one from neighboring Hydra, which is really in Monoceros. Really it's right on the border to make it a nice tour of six. So all are open star clusters. As this region of the sky looks directly through the star rich disk of our star galaxy, this is kind of good, good internal views of our own Milky way. So I've M41 in Canis Major, bright open cluster at Mach 4.5. It's often nicknamed the Little Beehive and is located just below Sirius. Not one many people in the UK look at because it's quite low.

[B]

But also I guess it's worth mentioning as well that Sirius is fun through a telescope at this time of year.

[A]

It's fun. It's fun anytime. It's the disco star.

[B]

Yeah. It's like the star of a thousand colors. Right.

[A]

It's so bright and bonkers and it's quite low in the UK atmosphere that.

[B]

Yeah. Which helps with all those colours dancing

[A]

with the pollution in the sky, the dust and things. It's just bonkers. Brilliant.

[B]

Yeah. So worth checking out while you're looking for M41.

[A]

Absolutely. So moving above the head of the dog, we find M50 in Monoceros. It's an open cluster, Mag 5.9, sometimes called the Heart shaped cluster. Very compact and bright cluster. Very nice one to look at. Then you move your telescope slightly to the east and we have M46 and M47 in Pupis. Now, M46 is an open cluster of Mag 6.1 that contains a hidden planetary nebula in the form of NGC 2438, which is just offset from the core of the cluster. So if you imagine the core just move up and slightly out from the core to the left, you will see this little, little.

[B]

What's that? Is that telescope binocular target?

[A]

It's definitely a telescope. Binoculars probably see it as a star.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Because it's quite a bright planetary. But it is a small, it's a little small thing. So a telescope easily Pick it up. And it is actually not in the cluster, it's actually between us and the cluster. It's actually. It's in this line of sight, visual line of sight. Invader going on. M47 is a brighter open cluster. It's right next door mag 4.4, but it's more sparse, but has very bright stars. So together 46, 47 form is a really lovely pair. So it's nice kind of wide field view. You can get that little planetary in there as well. It's lovely. M93 in pupas. Another open cluster, Mach 6.2, known as the Butterfly Cluster. Though it tends to look more like a wedge or a triangle if you ask me. But that's a nice cluster to look as well. Nearby. Now, as mentioned, M48 is actually in Hydra, but is right on the board of Rhinoceros and is properly added here as this is the missing or misplaced Messier. An old Charlie boy, recorded it and then couldn't locate it again. Yeah, as it appears he catalogued it in 1771. He made a mathematical error and recorded its position five degrees away from its actual location.

[B]

So then he couldn't find it again.

[A]

Find it again. Poor bugger. Astronomers couldn't find the object for over 150 years and it was independently discovered by Caroline Herschel in 1783. And it was until 1934 that researchers finally realized Herschel's discovery and Messier's lost object were probably the same cluster.

[B]

So did so prior to 1934, was it not 110 Messier objects?

[A]

Well, no, they just thought M48 was just like, what the hell's he talking about? Where's, you know, you know, like, which one is it? M70? Obviously three. The one that actually isn't anything, it's just two stars. And everyone's like, the hell was that? I think everyone just assumed M48 was just a. Another spurious like mistake. But there is another theory put forward by Stephen o', Meara suggests that if you take a wider angle view here, there are two glows. The dimmer one is actually M48, while the bright one is actually just a bright gathering of unrelated stars that looks a bit like a cluster. And perhaps this was actually the M48 that Chazza recorded.

[B]

Right?

[A]

And then maybe, and that is about 5 degrees away and he's in the right place. But actually, so maybe he just. And it happens to be there's another cluster nearby. And actually what we should do is say, no, that's Caroline Herschel's discovery. Yeah, get your hands off Charlie. And actually his one is the sort of mistaken bright patch which is kind of where he recorded it.

[B]

Yeah. And I guess if he advanced his optics post 1771.

[A]

Yes. He'd gone.

[B]

He's like looking at it and it no longer kind of appears faintly fuzzy.

[A]

Exactly, exactly, exactly that. And Maybe he'd seen M48 as we see it now as well. And just then conflated it all and gone like there was a bright classic. What the hell's going on? So anyway, regardless, we now call this one M48. It's there, but it was the missing Messier. Right, time for our little moon guide, our new little slot that was suggested. And we're now on to day four to six. So we move on to day four first of all. And Mare Chrysium and Mare Fencunditatus, always love that one, are now very obvious. And out of the Terminator, look out for the double crater. The double crater. Messier and Messier A. Funnily enough, we've just been talking about Chazza inside that marae they have a fun ray system to look for. So if you look to the west of Chrysium, you'll also see a weird polygonal crater called Proclus. This is two very bright rays projecting from it that are particularly visible early on day four. Then on the Terminator, look out for the emergence of the Sea of Tranquility. And with it an interesting feature, a 210 kilometer long rail called Rima Cauchi. And to the south it, Rupus Cauci, 180 kilometer long fault escarpment. So these are two scars across the Moon's surface, quite long ones that the low sun reveals as they get the shadow through them. So day five is one of the great naked eye views of the Moon, that gorgeous broad crescent in the evening sky. And here's all sorts of interesting features that are appearing. So tranquility is looming large. It's coming right out of the terminator now. Serenity, Sea of Serenity above it is emerging from the shade and below it the Sea of Nectar is also appearing. Big complex craters are also emerging on day five. Piccolomini and that fantastic chain of Theophilus, Cirillus and Caterina, which is one of my favorite chains. Absolute breathtaking dawn. You'll see if you watch dawn over those three crater, the kind of links they're overlapping each other. Absolutely stunning dawn. It's one of the great things you can witness on the Moon is to get your telescope on there as it comes out the terminal and while in the north, Poseidonus emerges 95 km wide and one of the truly stunning craters. Really complex craters. Lovely. So while day five is for the spectacular, day six is for the connoisseur. Ah. As a whole host of features emerge. Southern highlands begin to really make their presence felt with a huge complexity of craters. There are more craters than you can shake a stick at you. You'll spend hours trying to work out which craters which in that this area and the ridges of the Montes Alpis, the Alps, basically the Montes Hamus show off their peaks in the sunlight. Really gorgeous. And watch. See each like little mountaintop like picking up the sun as the sun basically comes up over the horizon. It's a really stunning thing to do. So there we go, really good days. And day five particularly is pretty stunning. So the moon this month though is was full on the 3rd and of course we're recording a little bit late because of Christmas and New Year.

[B]

Yeah, Christmas, New Year Panto takes its toll.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. Moves to the last quarter on the 10th, is new on the 18th and is at first quarter on the 26th. So I wish you cheers guys and happy. Hunt it. Well. Once more the cruel hands of fate grasp at the neck of destiny, Snap it and leave it lying in the sht stained gutter of fun times. Our time is once more at an end and we must bid you goodbye.

[B]

Email the show with your thoughts, your musings and of course your images because this is what what we do in the next episode. It'll be answering your emails and discussing things that you want us to discuss. So get them over to us the [e-mail] so that's it.

[A]

So until the middle of the month, it's goodbye from Cydonia Base. Bye bye.

[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 [e-mail] if you want us to read your thoughts and comments out on the show, send us your view, views, opinions, critiques or questions to the show at awesomeastronomy. Com. Tweet us at awesomeastropod or give the awesome Astronomy Facebook page a like and leave your comments there. Thanks for listening. From Cydonia Base Head of transmission.