Astronomy Daily: Latest Space News

Astronomy Daily S05E156 — Weekend Space & Astronomy News Wrap. Saturday, 1 August 2026. In this episode •    The first “self-driving” telescope — a SkAI deep-learning system (Northwestern / UChicago / Fermilab) schedules and re-plans observations in real time on the Dark Energy Camera at the Blanco 4-m, Cerro Tololo, Chile — matching human schedulers across two runs. •    Betelgeuse's companion imaged — ESO's VLT delivers the clearest view yet of likely “Betelgeuse B,” ending a century-long search (recap, E153). •    (44) Nysa — first known three-lobed (trilobate) asteroid, plus a ~1 km moon, from LBT + VLT high-contrast imaging (recap, E155). •    A black hole's 300,000-light-year reach — XRISM traces quasar-driven winds from H1821+643 reshaping an entire galaxy cluster (recap, E154). •    August skywatch — Comet 10P/Tempel 2 at perihelion (2 Aug); total solar eclipse crossing Greenland, Iceland, Spain & Portugal (12 Aug) paired with a moonless Perseid peak (12–13 Aug); a six-planet line-up through the month.   Sources •    SkAI / self-driving telescope: Northwestern University news release, 31 July 2026; phys.org, 31 July 2026 (Blanco 4-m / DECam / Cerro Tololo). •    Betelgeuse companion: ESO / VLT; Montargès et al., Astronomy & Astrophysics (covered in E153). •    (44) Nysa: Large Binocular Telescope (SHARK-VIS) + VLT high-contrast imaging; Lowell Observatory release (covered in E155). •    Black-hole feedback: XRISM observations of quasar H1821+643 (covered in E154). •    Skywatch: timeanddate.com and Space.com August 2026 sky guides; Royal Observatory Greenwich 2026 highlights (eclipse path and Perseid peak details).   astronomydaily.io · @AstroDailyPod · Part of the Bitesz.com Podcast Network

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S05E155 · Friday 31 July 2026 · Astronomy Daily with Anna & Avery. Four stories and a both-hemispheres skywatch. Australian English. ① Asteroid (44) Nysa — the first three-lobed world, and its hidden moon ●        trilobate body — three lobes joined by two narrow necks; a candidate “first” of its kind. ●        A new ~1 km moon, S/2026 (44) 1, was found orbiting ≥170 km out — spotted using high-contrast imaging borrowed from exoplanet work, and confirmed moving across two observing runs. ●        The moon lets astronomers weigh Nysa (mass → density), which should help decide between a genuine contact-trinary and a single, deeply indented body. ●        Nysa is a bright, main-belt E-type (enstatite-rich) asteroid, ~75 km across, known since 1857. ●        Source: Lowell Observatory / University of Arizona press release, 29 Jul 2026; study “Unmasking (44) Nysa: Evidence for a Trilobate Structure” (Minker et al.). Coverage: Space.com, Gizmodo, 29–30 Jul 2026. ② Mapping Alien Continents — a NASA concept to image an exoplanet’s surface ●        NASA’s 2026 NIAC round funds 18 early-stage “visionary” concepts (~$175k each, 9 months). These are seed studies, not missions. ●        Paul Stankus (Brookhaven) proposes “Mapping Alien Continents”: resolve the surface of an Earth-like exoplanet — continents, oceans — in visible light. ●        Method: a novel “dynamic hierarchical nulling” interferometer to suppress starlight at 10¹⁰-to-1 contrast, then combine beams from two spacecraft ~100 km apart (optical VLBI-style imaging). ●        Source: NASA “2026 Innovative Technology Concepts” release and NIAC selections (posted 21 Jul; consolidated release ~29 Jul 2026); Universe Today feature, 30 Jul 2026. ③ Solar-storm watch — CMEs inbound, minor-storm and aurora potential ●        Two faint coronal mass ejections, plus coronal-hole solar wind, are set to give Earth glancing blows; forecasters flag possible G1 (minor) geomagnetic storms and auroras over the coming days. ●        G1 means little grid impact but aurora visible at somewhat lower latitudes than usual — see the skywatch for where to look, both hemispheres. ●        Source: NOAA SWPC (WSA-ENLIL model); EarthSky / The Sun Today, 30 Jul 2026. ④ ESCAPADE’s family portrait of Earth and the Moon ●        NASA’s twin Mars orbiters (“Blue” and “Gold,” built by Rocket Lab) imaged Earth and the Moon as thin crescents in visible and thermal-infrared light from a loiter orbit near Sun–Earth L2. ●        In infrared, Earth’s night side glows with its own heat; the Moon’s shadowed half is far colder — a calibration check before Mars. ●        ESCAPADE’s science goal (arrival Sept 2027): measure how the solar wind strips Mars’s unshielded atmosphere — the payoff of today’s solar-wind thread. ●        Source: NASA (Goddard) image feature, ~25 Jul 2026 (images captured 3 Jul); NAU / phys.org; Universe Today, 29 Jul 2026. Skywatch — both hemispheres ●        Bright waning-gibbous Moon (post-Buck-Moon, 29 Jul) washes out faint targets. ●        Southern Delta Aquariids + Alpha Capricornids just past peak (SH-favoured; Moon-hampered). Perseids build to a near-moonless peak on the night of 12–13 Aug — prime for North America, low in the north for the SH. ●        12 Aug total solar eclipse: totality across Greenland / Iceland / Spain; partial for parts of northern North America and Europe. ISO 12312-2 eye protection required for any partial phase. ●        Pre-dawn planets low in the east (Sydney and North American framing). Aurora watch for high latitudes both hemispheres if the storms land. ●        Diary: a spent Falcon 9 upper stage (2025-010D) is predicted to hit the Moon near Einstein Crater on 5 Aug 2026, ~06:35 UTC (~2:34 a.m. ET). North America best-timed; telescope needed, Moon ~56% lit, target the limb dust plume. From Sydney the Moon is down at impact — rely on LRO after-images. Callback to E125/E147. Source: Fernando et al., arXiv 2607.14625.

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Astronomy Daily S05E154 — “The Reach of a Giant.” Thursday, 30 July 2026. Hosted by Anna and Avery. In this episode •    A supermassive black hole caught heating and stirring an entire galaxy cluster — turbulence reaching ~300,000 light-years, about 100× more energetic than expected (XRISM / quasar H1821+643). •    Why some “clean” white dwarfs are secretly feasting: magnetic fields funnel shredded planetary debris to the poles, aurora-style, hiding the meal. •    NASA’s Psyche used its Mars flyby as a dress rehearsal — spotting Phobos and Deimos from afar to practise for its 2029 moonlet hunt at asteroid 16 Psyche. •    A new study on keeping the road to the Moon clear: modelling how debris disperses in Distant Retrograde Orbits as cislunar traffic climbs. •    Skywatch: tonight’s double meteor shower — the Southern Delta Aquariids and Alpha Capricornids — with both-hemispheres viewing details and local times. Sources •    Yamada, S. et al., “Vigorous turbulence driven by quasar-mode feedback in a cluster core,” Nature Astronomy, 28 July 2026 (DOI 10.1038/s41550-026-02939-x; arXiv 2607.24911). Tohoku University release. •    “White Dwarfs Eat More Planetary Debris Than Thought, But Magnetic Fields Hide It,” Universe Today, 29 July 2026 (Pham et al., arXiv 2607.20747). •    “NASA’s Psyche Spacecraft Aces Mars Flyby,” NASA JPL / ScienceDaily, 28 July 2026. •    “The Risks of Debris Between the Earth and the Moon for Future Exploration,” Universe Today, 29 July 2026 (Chinese Academy of Sciences DRO study). •    Double meteor shower peak: American Meteor Society; NASA; Scientific American; CNN; National Geographic, 28–30 July 2026. Correction / caveat desk •    Skywatch numbers assume the ~98% waning Buck Moon (full 29 Jul). Faint Delta Aquariids will be washed out; the Alpha Capricornid fireballs are the reliable catch tonight.

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Astronomy Daily · S05E153 · Wednesday 29 July 2026. Four stories from the frontier of space and astronomy, plus a both-hemispheres look at the sky — and news of our brand-new website. In this episode •  Betelgeuse is not alone. ESO’s VLT/SPHERE has captured the clearest direct image yet of Betelgeuse B, the long-suspected companion to the famous red supergiant — ending a roughly century-long search. Published 28 July 2026 in Astronomy & Astrophysics (Montargès, Boccaletti et al.). The companion is more massive than predicted (≈2–3 solar masses), likely paces Betelgeuse’s ~6-year brightness cycle, and may eventually spiral into the supergiant. •  Swift catches a wandering black hole. TDE 2025abcr — the most off-centre tidal disruption event ever seen — reveals a ~1-million-solar-mass “wandering” black hole ~30,000 light-years from its galaxy’s core, ~750 million light-years away. First flagged by the Zwicky Transient Facility (Nov 2025) and pinned down with NASA’s Swift; an AI sifted ~500,000 nightly flashes to find it. Published 27 July 2026 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters (Stein et al.; Carney et al.). •  Roman is fuelled for launch. NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope completed fuelling on 25 July (≈290 gallons of hydrazine) and holds its mission-preview briefing today — one month from a 30 August launch, roughly eight months ahead of schedule. Roman will survey ~50× as much sky as Hubble in five years, probe dark energy, and is expected to find 100,000+ exoplanets via microlensing. •  Swift’s rescue mission is in trouble. Katalyst’s LINK servicing spacecraft — launched 3 July to boost the decaying Swift observatory — began spinning over the weekend; two of three reaction wheels are non-operable, with some cold-gas thruster degradation. LINK remains powered and in contact; the team is using its electric (xenon) thrusters to arrest the spin before deciding, with NASA, whether to proceed. Developing story — details accurate as of recording. •  Skywatch. Full Buck Moon tonight (29 July); Jupiter at solar conjunction; Southern Delta Aquariids favour the Southern Hemisphere but are washed out by the Moon this year; Alpha Capricornid fireballs are the pick for both hemispheres; the Perseids peak on the moonless night of 12–13 August alongside a total solar eclipse (Greenland/Iceland/Spain; partial for parts of Europe and North America). Never view the partial phases without ISO 12312-2 eclipse glasses. Sources •  ESO release eso2611 & Astronomy & Astrophysics, Montargès, Boccaletti et al., “VLT/SPHERE imaging of the candidate companion of Betelgeuse” (28 Jul 2026). •  NASA Swift / The Astrophysical Journal Letters — TDE 2025abcr wandering-black-hole discovery (27 Jul 2026); UNC-Chapel Hill release. •  NASA — Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope fuelling & launch-preview updates (25–29 Jul 2026). •  NASA Swift blog — “Commissioning Update for Spacecraft to Boost NASA’s Swift” (28 Jul 2026); Katalyst Space Technologies. •  EarthSky, NASA, American Meteor Society, timeanddate — meteor showers, Buck Moon, Jupiter conjunction, 12 Aug eclipse. New — astronomydaily.io Our new website is live: full back catalogue, a continuously-updating space-news feed, listener reviews (read and leave your own), and a daily newsletter sign-up. Got a question or a story tip? Drop us a note — and tell us what you think of the new site.

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Astronomy Daily S05E152 — “Reading the Heat” · Tuesday 28 July 2026. Hosts Anna & Avery. NASA’s Juno spacecraft has taken the first-ever temperature reading beneath the surface of Io, Jupiter’s volcanic moon — and the technique behind it could reshape how we study icy ocean moons and even volcanoes on Earth. We also look at why JWST’s “Little Red Dots” might be globular clusters being born, the first SETI search built from archived ALMA data (and its six-million-star surprise), and a live burst of space weather feeding into a meteor-filled — if Moon-washed — skywatch. In this episode ●        Juno reads Io’s subsurface temperature for the first time — >20°C rise within a few metres, heat flow up to ~30× Earth’s average, and a remarkably smooth, low-density surface. ●        Why the method matters: a multi-depth microwave thermometer that works from orbit — promising for Europa, Enceladus, and terrestrial volcanology. ●        JWST’s “Little Red Dots” may be globular clusters in formation, powered by a short-lived supermassive star — linking two long-standing mysteries. ●        The first SETI survey of archived ALMA data opens the millimetre band — and reveals “stellar bycatch” of 6.1 million background stars. ●        Live space weather: an M3.2 flare from region AR4494 and a glancing CME, with G1–G2 storms and possible aurorae, north and south. ●        Skywatch: meteor week under the full Buck Moon (29 July), the Alpha Capricornid fireball tip, evening Venus, pre-dawn Saturn/Mars/Mercury — and Jupiter vanishing behind the Sun. Sources ●        NASA/JPL — “NASA’s Juno Takes Temperature of Jupiter’s Fiery Moon Io” (22 July 2026); Brown et al., J. Geophys. Res.: Planets, DOI 10.1029/2025JE009622. ●        Chisholm et al., “Little Red Dots as Globular Clusters in Formation,” Astrophysical Journal Letters (press cycle 20 July 2026; UT Austin / McDonald Observatory). ●        L. Mason (University of Manchester), first ALMA-archive SETI survey, RAS National Astronomy Meeting 2026. ●        Space-weather status: EarthSky Sun news / NOAA SWPC (M3.2 flare AR4494, 26 July; 24 July CME; G1–G2 outlook, 27–28 July). ●        Skywatch data: EarthSky, Star Walk, American Meteor Society, NASA — Southern Delta Aquariids (peak ~30 July), Alpha Capricornids (30–31 July), full Buck Moon 29 July, Jupiter solar conjunction 29 July.
 

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