Awesome Astronomy - Vanishing Stars & Invisible Galaxies

It's the 365 days of astronomy podcast, coming in three, two, one.

The quest we find ourselves upon is daunting.

Fraud with danger cloaked in mystery.

The long struggle and search is not for the faint of heart.

The depths astronomers have gone to, plunging into the unknown, probing with strange, often homemade instruments.

The constant question in of whether this is right or going to answer the question.

Bruno from up me and my block strains, for we are seekers of the secrets of the universe,

from the visible to the invisible space desks to space rocks, planets, comets, galaxies,

and everything in between.

And talking of the in between, I'm pretty sure the answer to dark matter sits about two foot down in my back garden.

I'm Jenny.

And I'm Paul.

And welcome to episode 169 of Autumn Housekeeping for March 2026.

Oh, good Lord, I've had a week.

You sound like it.

You did discover dark matter, didn't you?

Oh my god, yeah.

So I've been having worked on in my attic, first of all.

So basically the melon who did the lost conversion.

But like when I bought the house, didn't put any installation in the apex.

So it was always absolutely brassic up there.

So I've now had installation put in the apex.

So I've had all of that noise and chaos right over simulation to the max,

especially with all the like gaps to wrap that they were playing.

I just just say it is.

Yeah, not good.

And then I went out into the garden like, you see, because just before we started recording,

we commented on how like spring seems to have arrived, maybe.

Yes.

And so you know, it was, yeah, it was like a dry sunny day.

I was like, oh my god, I'm going to put motion on the line.

So I went out with my towels.

And I was like, what's that?

What's that?

And like around my pipe, which is weird, like the toilet waste goes.

There was all this gray.

I was like, what the?

Is that right?

Put my towels on, went in, got the barricades, started pulling up astro turf.

And before anyone judges me, the astro turf is not my choice.

It came with the house, right?

Pulling up the astro turf, all this like sludge underneath.

I was like, oh my god.

What it was at the poo pipe?

Thank god.

Turns out there's a breach in the concrete for the waste pipes that take the waste water

from the kitchen sink and the washing machine, right?

And so it was like leaking out.

So then I was like, well, why is it leaking out, right?

Pulled that drain off.

Water level writer, panic phoned my mom and dad.

They came down.

We got the water out.

And what I can only describe as black sludge that contains

bio sciences, just new to humanity in better organisms living in this thing,

that no one has discovered, is no one seen before,

literally about a foot of black crud.

Nice.

Me and dad scooped out with a ladle attached for a bit of a bit of stick.

Like a wooden baton that you got from the garage,

you strapped a ladle bottom of it.

We were wearing face masks like the smell,

like just ammonia was unbelievable.

Nice.

So this is not just me.

There's no way that this is like less than a year of buildup.

This is, I don't know.

I think I'm pulling stuff up from the last time we went to the moon.

Like honestly.

God.

Manhole cover is clean.

We checked that.

So we isolated where the issue is.

And now I have industrial strength like bio degraded.

Like the stuff you put down your sinks, but like industrial level.

A small tactical nuclear weapon.

Yeah.

Essentially.

It's way through.

To put down there.

And then if that doesn't work, then I'm going to have to call in the professional.

So.

Nice.

That's my week.

Nice.

Nice.

You've had a much more pleasant week though.

I thought, well, this, any tweaking's been just working and doing the things.

I was on holiday last week.

I was in, I was in, I was in, I was in that their Suffolk.

By in South old having a nice little just chill by the coast.

It was nice.

There's a nice brewery there and pubs and it's just nice.

It's really lovely place.

Go there regularly.

And before that, I was, it was festival tomorrow, which is the big science festival in Swindon.

And I was doing some shows there doing doing my thing.

How did that go?

Good.

Good.

Yeah.

I did a load of online shows for Skullwell.

It was one big online show for I think we had over 600 like kids online watching it.

Oh, that's amazing.

And doing questions and stuff like that.

And we did a, did a whole thing.

And then I did a, a day actually at the science fair on, on the level of like stage shows.

And stuff like that.

It was on all the, all the vegetable and stuff.

And got me sparkly costume on and all the rest of it.

So it was good.

Good.

Yeah.

So that was fun.

And yeah.

No, it's just been got to be reasonably chilled.

Are you chill enjoying the fact that spring is here?

Well, the blossoms on the spring.

Spring is spring.

And the dafts are up and the lambs are bouncing around in the field.

It's already springing, springing, and it's warm.

It was like 17 degrees on Wednesday.

Jesus.

I didn't have 17 degrees.

I mean, double figures, which is nice.

Yeah.

17 here on Wednesday.

Mad.

It was like literally.

T-shirt shorts.

I was like, this is amazing.

So.

I mean, to be fair, I am actually in a T-shirt today.

Like, for the first time in, I don't know.

It's literally been months, I think, as well.

Yeah.

I just sat around in a T-shirt.

It's really nice.

And poor old Dustin still like knee deep in snow.

I don't know.

I think he's up to his tips to be honest.

He keeps fingers filled with like, I'll, he'll this snow.

And then he goes, all we can do is snow like that.

Yeah.

I'm thinking to go like, it's 17 degrees and that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Crazy.

So.

We've also been planning AstroCamp.

Yeah.

AstroCamp is just about to go live.

It is.

As of, send in first of March, the tickets are on sale.

Yeah.

Come inside with this podcast coming out.

So if you're, if you're around, anywhere.

I mean, you know, go on a plane.

Come here.

Come, come.

Yeah.

Oh.

You know.

We'd love to break the record for the like most distant traveler.

We had some come from France once.

I'm sure we did.

We did.

So, yeah, be cool.

Come, come, come, come.

Yeah.

Tickets on sale.

It's all cool.

Exciting speakers and guaranteed.

Yes.

Yes.

And.

And beer.

And it's all.

You know, and people joke about this guy's guaranteed.

But every AstroCamp, we've seen at least one star.

We have.

We did have.

We did have.

Actually, we did have that one wash out, didn't we?

So when we joke like it was one star, it literally was like a hole in the cloud.

It was one star.

With all the rain.

With all the rain around.

Sorry.

It's fine.

Yeah.

We did have.

That's the only wash out we've ever had.

Yeah.

That's what we've done, which is quite a few now.

I've lost count.

I've lost count too.

It's.

It's got to be two dozen.

Oh, we've been.

We've passed 25.

Aren't we?

25 was last year.

Oh, yeah, it was.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

We're venturing towards 32.

And.

Yeah.

We've had one wash out, which is a pretty good record.

It's a pretty good record.

Actually, so.

Yeah.

It's not bad.

And also, we are solving the emails issue.

Yeah.

We have been.

Even I don't know what to do to everyone who has been sent

us emails, and helping us figure this out.

We think that we're getting there with the email issue.

Yes.

I haven't said you can message on another channel from Vesto.

Saying it's broken up in emailing you.

So yeah, we know we're fixing it next episode.

We will, we will chunk into some emails and.

Yes.

And do all that.

So it is, it is being solved.

They're actually.

We have loads of people emailing about.

Yes.

keep emailing us because it helps us figure out where the problems are. So the email is

for the show at awesomeestronomy.com. Just send us anything. Send us your latest photo.

You send us a question. Send us your thoughts about something. It just it helps us like

those siblings. So thank you so much. No, unless it's a dick dick. A dick dick. A dick dick.

A dick dick. Wait, I like a dick dick. But not a dick. But yeah, email the way. Email the way.

And you, you're, you're off again. I'm off again. You're off again on your journey,

your trips. But yeah, you're, you're. Yeah, that's as much thing as you're getting off me.

I am. I am preparing for another adventure with Fred Olson and Go Stargazing off

Norway. Again, so fingers crossed for the Northern Lights. They, they're on a Northern

Lights cruise now. Some of the Go Stargazing astronomers and they have had spectacular

shows. So I managed to see them last time, but I only have one clear night. So I would

love to have. I'm not going to be greedy and hope that every night is perfect. I'd love

to have. Go for it. I'd love to. Three. If I can have three good nights out of us, I

think my cruise is like a 10 day cruise. Yeah, so if I can have, yeah, three good, three

good. Yeah, I'd be happy. Cool. Yeah, that's, that's the hope. That's the dream. So can

we all have a word with the weather gods, please sacrifice a goat or something? Yeah, cool.

And so on to the news. And that was all the singing we were getting. Oh, yeah, I like

you know, you're going to see. I like it. I just, I you're just so. Yeah, we're going

to awesome. Awesome. The musical, aren't we? Oh, my God. Yeah, I pay to see that. Yeah,

it would be like kind of like Hamilton crossed with Phantom of the Opera. And what's that

one with the, when they're on the spaceship and they're like rocking and rolling, returned

to a bin planet. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, yeah. Cool. Yeah. Yeah. We are onto

the news and we are staying away from space exploration this time, apart from one very

quick word by Artemis later at the end. But we are all about the astrophysics this time.

We are. We are because how about a mysterious, vanishing star? So this is a sunlight main

sequence star in monstrous, called a, s, a, s, s, n, which I always assumed is a sasson.

I was trying to spell that out. I was like, yeah, I was going for a sassin. When they built

that system, they were going for a sassin, weren't they? And then they couldn't quite bring

themselves to actually write the word a sassin. No. So they just got it. So they made

the acronym as sassin. 24 fw. Okay. So it's so much so suddenly in September 24 became

forty times dimmer. So essentially, like pretty much vanished. I mean, forty times

there is these loads. Jesus. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just draw this, this is a main sequence

star. Yeah. And exactly. And this dimness to you for, wait, it's eight and a half months,

almost nine months. It was eight and a half months. Yeah. Exactly. So you're right.

Regular main sequence stars don't do that sort of thing. No. Don't dying stars. Yeah.

Absolutely. Yes. You know, look at people. Beetlejuice with that. Beetlegirls battle

over and all that. Yeah. Exactly. It does stuff like that. Infant stars. Yeah. Absolutely.

They flare up. They calm down. They do all sorts of crazy things. But not your billions

of years old, regular, stable, main sequence varieties start. They just don't do this.

What is it a Dyson sphere? Yeah. Was it a Dyson sphere? It's just got it. No. No. You

could just hear the foil tin happening. Just scrambling now. They're scrambling around.

Yeah. Yeah. So and on top of that, there appears to be, you do it like an excessive amount

of infrared observed. Oh, but then that kind of says dust. Yeah. Well, well, hmm. Hold

that cool. So well, this it turned out isn't the first time. So when astronomers look back

at old plates, they discovered that this star did this in 1937 and it did it in 1981.

Is it like something that's all but which means yeah, this is a 44 year long cycle of this

sort of radical dimming. This is why it's so important to keep all the old data. Exactly.

Exactly. That because if we if they throw those plates away, you know, some some idiot got

like, oh, I don't use plates anymore. Let's just chuck them all out. When you're known about

this, you've got to keep it all. You've got to keep it all. You've got to have your archive.

So yeah, 3781 and now 2024. There's a 44 year cycle going on. Love this. Quite dramatic. I mean,

this is the 40 times. It does massive. There's a huge dropping magnitude. It basically vanishes.

It basically is. So what's going on here? Well, a team led by Professor Nadia Zakomaskia

of John Hopkins University used optical spectroscopy with cosmos at the Apache Point Observatory

Maggie on the Magellan telescope and Ghost on the Gemini South telescope. So they used three

lots of some spectroscopic instruments from different observatories to have a look at what's

going on here because it looked really interesting. And kind of what they discovered is quite surprising.

The findings indicate a puffy, very gas rich, very metal rich as well, circumstellar disc.

Oh my goodness. Rather than a dusky, dusty, thin disc. Oh, well. Yeah, yeah. So this is surprising

in a couple of ways because firstly, your circumstellar discs are usually quite narrow,

usually quite thin. Yeah. And they dissipate quickly. Yeah, exactly. And precisely,

the rich probably shouldn't be there at this stage. This stars at least two billion years old.

So they probably should have gone by now. Yeah. But even if it still exists, they're usually very narrow

and very dusty. You know, probably how you imagine a disc of dust and debris around a cosmic object,

that kind of, I would say like a sass and ring like, but that kind of thin,

like egg white around a thing in the center, that kind of idea. But this is much thicker,

puffyer. They call it puffy in the paper. And the other is the rich cocktail of elements.

And it's a gas rich, metallic rich thing, which is very much the sort of disc you find around,

like an infant star, for instance, right? Brand new, still forming star. Yeah, so it hasn't formed

planets kind of thick. You've all seen the images of those kind of like, you know, blobs of gas

with a star burning weight starting in the center. And so, you know, the sort of disc that forms planets

and things like that, that, that sort of idea. Well, I, I, I, I, I said 24 FW is definitely not young.

At least two billion years old, as I said, main secret site, it's not anything special,

it's very sunlight kids, it's not, not, you know, it's pretty happens start. So this is the sort

of circumstances that shouldn't be present, it shouldn't be there. Yeah, really odd. So the team

think the explanation, well, they propose that this is debris from some sort of cataclysmic event,

like a large planetary collision, for instance. Ah, do you know what, that was in my brain,

wonder if it's going to be some kind of event. Big planets crashing into each other, like, you know,

bridge man, that kind of Hollywood styley, like end of booze. So surprising that that would happen

billions of years old. Well, exactly. And so, you know, this is left the star system filled with

a sort of element rich gaseous metallic rich cloud. Yeah. Rather than you kind of, you know, left

over bits of dust and debris from the formation and things like that, which is then of course explains

the infrared excess detected as well. Because if this whole system's got this sort of

big puffy cloud of gas and metal and things like that, then it's going to absorb infrared and release

it. Yeah. They point out that the grain size of the cloud does appear to be larger than a typical

cloud of ISM. So the average grain size is much larger than your typical interstellar medium. So

it's just indicated it's not, it's something else. Yeah. So it's like things have either started

clumping or they've like been fractured, they're not down to the molecular level. Exactly.

So the periodic dimming though, because of course, okay, if it's just a big uniform cloud,

why is there this dramatic doing it? Yeah. They think that's a particular dense area of the disc,

perhaps in the collision happened or something, but it's the team hypothesized it's tied to a large

planetary body that's all the team. So like, it's clumped it together in a spot because he

has been shepherded by the gravity. And it'd be something in the order of several Jupiter. So

there'd be a large planet that's orbiting the star that's shepherding this debris into a lump.

So you can think of it, think of it like a ring, I suppose, like a diamond ring, there's a sort of

ring and then there's a big lump of it at one side and that's going around in a sort of 44-year

orbit. I love that. It's good in there. It's really good. So post the dimming, they're now

following up the observations to check various signals from the star itself. Because now the star's

like, you feel like more views is brighter than back up again. Yeah. So they want to un-pick

like what's coming from the cloud, what's coming from the star. Yeah. I wonder if it's, yeah,

because it's so interesting. It's like, whether that dense a bit is where the collision happened or

it's like reforming. Yeah, exactly. Oh, yeah, yeah, exactly. It's about perhaps it's actually reform.

Who knows? Yeah, yeah, that's great. I don't think that's in the paper. That's a really interesting

idea. So yeah, I, well, if you're listening to your author, you should have seen the number

read that for 10%. I have to say it was a very modern paper in the, it had about like 13,000

like literally the authors. It's like, you know, the first page of the paper was like, everybody

and their aunt and dog was listed on the front page. I put Oreo in my acknowledgements in one of

my papers once. Yeah, but this wasn't even the acknowledgements. This was literally like, you know,

the author, the author, the author, the author, the author, God, that's like a page of all. Like, surely,

they kind of all written this. No, it's, they'll put people on like who built the instrument,

for example. Yeah. And it's like, because they never used to kind of credit those sorts of people,

and which is unfair because without them building the instrument, the science wouldn't happen.

Yeah, I can get a lot more people there. Yeah, but yeah, it's a big old list. Anyway, it's in the

astronomical journal. If you want to, to follow that up and say that it's, the, as the lead author says,

it shows the universe is very far from static. But yes, you know, you think of systems around

stable stars forming and then that's it. But actually, potentially, you still get billions of years

later, massive collisions between planets and bodies and things that create these kind of

debris fields and that would be, you know, almost like probably putting the clock back to the

beginning in terms of that, that system and its formation, asserting stuff like that. Love it.

There's a good story. There's a good story. So for my story, I'm actually going with something

unusual and interesting and different as well. And this is, I think it's an amazing discovery

in the Perseus cluster. And as Sean always think that they have found a galaxy that is made almost

entirely of dark matter. Right. Which is interesting on two levels. First of all, a galaxy

that's almost entirely dark matter. And then secondly, how would you find a thing you can't see?

Yeah. Because if it's almost entirely dark matter, then that sort of says there's not really any star

lights. And that is the case is there is hardly any star light. There's just this like really fine

like a gospel of veil of star light. And then these little buttons of globular questions. And

that is what was key to finding this. I love this story. So this is this whole new class of

galaxy. We're only just starting to find these dark matter dominated galaxies with very few stars.

You know, we're still finding them still trying to understand them. And it was found using

the globs. So globs, globular clusters, we love to look at them from our backyard. They're these

like ancient balls of gravitationally bound stars. They can contain hundreds of thousands, millions

of stars. They go back to the early days of the universe. Some of them forming sort of 13 billion

years ago. And by and large, many of them seem to have formed in kind of one burst of star formation

or with one major burst of star formation. And setting them gives us clues to kind of the earliest

stages of star formation because they are so ancient. We find them in the outskirts of galaxies.

We know our galaxy has got almost 160. That's how many we've cataloged anyway. There's probably

more hiding behind our dusty disk. We've counted them around Andromeda. You know, all the big

galaxies we've we've counted them. The thing is those galaxies are obvious, right? The big

galaxies like ours, Andromeda and Triangulum and the pinwheel, anything like that, right?

They're ancient, they're full of stars. They're really obvious, right? But not all galaxies are

obvious. And about a decade ago on mass, we started finding what's called ultra diffuse galaxies.

So ultra diffuse galaxies are, they have a large physical size, but very little star light.

Yeah. Like most of their mass is invisible. It's in the form of dark matter. And the way that

they're found is with really specialised camera equipment. Often it's like a rays of camera

lenses that don't allow stray light in and don't have very dark interior. So there's no internal

reflections of the light off mirrors and things like that so that you can then find the very faint

star light associated with these galaxies and get like lost in the process. So since, you know,

from about a decade ago, thousands have now been found, right? We find them in galaxy clusters.

We find them outside of galaxy clusters as well. But what was noticed about these ultra diffuse

galaxies is they have this really unusual property is that they seem to have, for their given

mass and size, five to seven times the amount of globular clusters. Right.

Yes, they have like this overpopulation of globular clusters. And about a quarter of their

stellar mass is in their globs. Like so much of their stellar mass is locked up in their globular

clusters. And so then a storm was kind of got thinking and they were like, well, we found these

ultra diffuse galaxies with like all these extra globs. But what if these are just kind of

the bright end of the scale? What if there are ones which are even fainter? Are they

starless galaxies out there? Are they dark galaxies? Right. Right down at the fainter end.

And so because they're based unusual property of these over densities of globular clusters,

as astronomers were like, oh, we could maybe use this to like try and find them because we

would be able to see them, but we could see their globs, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So using herbal,

this is actually a herbal story, not a James Webb look at herbal doing good old herbal good old

herbal. So the theme of the show was they looked at this herbal data. And they found

because the herbal had looked at parts of Pursus cluster and they found 10 over densities of

globs in the field in the images. And they had no associated starlight with them. So they were

like right interesting. Did a lot of digging found out that of those 10 they had all been sort of

found before they were associated with galaxies. They were like good, the method works because we

found them not through their starlight but through their globs. So then they dug into the data a

bit more. And they found a clump of four globular clusters with no associated starlight and no known

galaxy association. They called this one Candidate Dark Galaxy One. Now follow-up observations

haven't revealed any starlight. So that one is still a mystery. But what they did is they went back

to the data, went with more sophisticated, sistical methods, fetching things like the colors of

the globular clusters. So look for ones which are all might step together and found Candidate Dark Galaxy.

Now they noticed the Hubble had gone to that patch of sky twice. So they did the thing that

John was always do and they stacked the photos together. And in that stack in they then found some

very very faint starlight. They went to Euclid. Euclid has also looked at the same patch of sky

and they found some very faint starlight in Euclid with exactly the same morphology as was found

in the Hubble data. And so the fact that they have robustly detected starlight with two different

telescopes shows that it's not some kind of image processing error. And this is really strong

evidence that now they have found the first what they're calling Dark Galaxy. That's really cool.

Yeah. And if you look at the picture of it, literally you can see the four dots for the globular.

Yes, you can. I was just looking at the picture. I just brought it up while you were talking.

And you can. You can absolutely see there's four little globs.

Yeah, you can see them. And then you kind of squint and you're like,

maybe they some starlight.

There's kind of looking. You're like, yeah, on the zoomed on the very very zoomed in image.

There's a sort of triangle patch which you could, you could convince yourself is,

because you got that background fuzz that you get on very blow up images.

But there's a sort of dense patch of it. Exactly. And that is the starlight.

Wow. So with this particular galaxy, it's at least 16% of the solar mass is in the globs,

but they think it could be a lot higher. They just, because they've only got a couple of images

to try and decipher the starlight from this galaxy. It's kind of like baseline minimum

16%. And so then the question becomes, how do you get these dark galaxies?

And so what they think is that these are galaxies that have been stripped of their normal

matter during interactions with other galaxies in the Perseus cluster. Right.

But the globular clusters see they survive because as individual objects, because they are so

tightly gravitationally bound, that as individual objects, they don't get shredded.

But the matter has been ripped out of the galaxy. Right.

Yeah. And so then you can also wonder, through these interactions, are they've got extra globs?

Is that because they're stealing them from other galaxies during the interaction?

You know, like they lose their normal matter, but then they steal some globs. Who knows?

But then the question becomes, are these still the bright end of dark galaxies?

Because they still have starlight. Right. So they still have stars. They're not just dark matter.

So then it's like, are these still towards the bright end of dark galaxies? Because they clearly

still have starlight. So they're not like 100% dark matter. So it's like, are there ones still yet

to be found that don't have stars and don't have starlight? And maybe that's what the candidate

dark galaxy one is, because they couldn't find any starlight with that. And maybe that is sort of

a true dark galaxy. So yeah, but I just, I love this story. Yeah. And I suppose, I mean,

are we saying this helps confirm dark matter, do you think?

So this is, it's like another part of galaxy evolution. I guess it is another argument for dark matter

for sure, because there's no, these globular clusters would not randomly just be stuck together,

like they're coincidence, their location is not a kind of randomly these globs are being

tied together by something. And you can't see that something, so it has to be dark matter. But it's

also kind of looking at another window into galaxy evolution. Yeah. And another kind of, you know,

part of it, which we don't really understand yet. And we haven't really thought about. And there's,

you know, all these kind of galaxies out there, which we haven't even started scratching the surface

on. No, no. Well, it's really interesting part of astronomy, isn't it? Because we still

haven't confirmed dark matter. No, there's lots of evidence for it. And it's passed lots of

loads of evidence for it. And we, we, we constantly on this show say, like, we, you know, we still can't

absolutely go, because that's not scientific. It's not science to say, yes, it's absolutely definitely

exists. No, because we haven't found a particle. Yeah, exactly. That would be ridiculous to say

absolutely exists, because that would be unscientific to say that. Yeah. Which is kind of the point

we always try and make over the years. And we get a cue for being like, massive dark matter

skeptics on the rest of it. It's like, no, it's just good science. Yeah. Well, actually,

it's our leading theory, but we, it's the leading theory. Yeah. Well, it's not even,

it's not even really the leading theory. It's the leading hypothesis. It's not, it's not

striving up to see a theory even because there's lots of, there's so many competing ideas of what

it is. Yeah. And it is that, you know, there is so much evidence for it. Yeah. But it's like,

what is, we haven't got a clue. No, exactly. We're almost kind of in that, I suppose,

that period where we know what gravity, you know, we know gravity is, I mean, but we don't actually

hadn't worked out how it worked and, you know, sort of, all that sort of, yeah, it's like, we know,

we know it's there. It's something there. It does have things. What is it? What is it? Yes. So,

it's just interesting, because this is, this is, it's almost sort of predicated on the idea that,

yes, these, these are dark matter galaxies. These are actually, you know, so this, this is dark matter.

It's very interesting. And whether that then helps us discover what it is. Yeah. Because there's

clearly a glum of it here, or appears to be. Yeah. I just find the dark matter. If that's

funny enough, it's an astronomy now magazine this month, actually, which I, do you know,

have you been getting astronomy now recently? No, I haven't. Big shout out to the astronomy now,

they've been taken over. It's been, it's been the whole new team. And they've got new editors

two o'clock. Firstly, a doc two o'clock, who's, it actually has really become a much, I think,

a much better kind of, kind of magazine. Well, do I, maybe I'll try a few, a few copies and a few

issues? Yes. I, I, I think it's got a lot of it. And they've fun enough. This, this month, they have a

whole article on the sort of dark matter. Yeah. Kind of exploration. What is it? Is it even actually a

thing that there's a really good sort of little, little kind of, you know, deep dive into that?

Which is, you know, I have to try a few. Because, you know, I, yeah, I get, I get Skype night.

I'm focused. But, you know, it's, it's sometimes it's nice to kind of switch them up. And, you know,

it's like, sporadically, I buy new scientist and, yeah, maybe I'll give this one again.

Yeah, I'd say, I, I'd say I've been very impressed with it. In the last, last little while,

I think I think the new editorial team is very good for it. It's, it's, it's, it's stepped up a gear.

It's, it's, it's a much, much simpler, professional looking, looking, and they put QR codes on for

where all the, uh, science articles, they quote and things are. So there's like, look, QR code,

it goes straight to the, it goes straight to the paper that, that's useful. It's little little

things like that way through. It's like, yeah, it's a bit slick, and this is a bit better. This is

much better. Yeah, better product. I've, I've, I've been really enjoying it, right? I like that.

But it's just because they had a dark matter article this, this one. So, from a show I mean now,

to spaceflight, not now. Yeah. Yeah. Why? It's just a very quick mention. We're, we're not going to

bang on about it, but it's just to say that Artemis, too, has rolled back to the vehicle assembly

building. Although the second wet dresser, hersel went swimmingly, they were then issues post

that rehearsal with helium, which is used to kind of press noise tanks and maintain them.

They were issues there. So, and they can't fix it at the pad. So they got a rollback and investigate

properly, because they're not 100% sure what's actually gone wrong. I don't like to say we said it

wouldn't go. Yeah. And I mean, they're hoping to make April, but I don't think.

And now, I honestly, I don't think it will be, I think we're looking at May, June as, as a series.

I'm going to make a prediction that I think it won't even probably be to the autumn.

But it'll be later in the year, much, much later in the year. Well, I would quite like it to be June,

because that's probably when I'll go back up to the state to work again.

So it would be great if I could kind of time it so I can all my way back, stop at Florida.

And I actually watch it, like that would be sick. I just feel like they won't keep

wheeling out of the van. No. So just like, oh, they were going to be like, oh,

so they might just go actually strip some of this down and actually just make sure it does work

properly. And actually they'll come to the, oh, do you know what? Let's put a three-month delay in

to actually redo this bit and rebuild this bit and go to them, because it was a problem on the

pad as well, wasn't it? There was actually a problem with the stuff on the pad. So there'll be this

kind of like big engineering kind of, let's just go over everything again and just, and actually by

the time you've done that, suddenly it's like April, May, June, you're looking at June, and June.

June, June. Yeah. But what it means, then there's all, there's other launches going on.

Yes, and they have to look around those. Yeah, because you know, better weather and

all of this is you get lots and lots of other launches going on and there's lots of commercial

launches. And so they'll be this like, and then of course it's got to be particularly

wind over the moon. Yes, it's only certain days in the month that it can. Exactly. And suddenly you

like, well, it'd be September, then actually, like August, September, getting into autumn. I,

that's going to be, I'm going to put a pint on that. All right. So you're going in September

August. I reckon kind of the end of summer into autumn will be. I, I would like June, June,

June. Thank you. Yeah. And then just to finish off, I, I want to just mention this is really

cool new image that's come out from Almer to the Atacama large millimeter array down in Chile.

And they have image is the largest Almer image ever. So it spans about three full moons. And it

is focused on the central molecular zone of our galaxy. So this is the, the gas and dust of

swirling around our supermassive black hole. It's a region that spans about 650 light years.

And you find the star formation in this region is really interesting. There's typically more massive

stars. It's warmer. It's more turbulent. It's much more reminiscent. We think of what

star formation was like and the kind of conditions of star formation in the very early universe

because of this extra temperature and the turbulence and everything. So it kind of gives us an

opportunity to steady that kind of star formation up close because, you know, when we look at

galaxies in the early universe, we see them as blobs. We can't study star formation in any kind

of detail. It's a really, really cool image. They've looked at it over many way, but it's a

multi spectral image. It's very cool image. Yes. So much beautiful detail in it. I would recommend

have a look at that if you can. It's Alma and the central molecular zone. That should bring it.

And shout out to Alma. You go on their website. They have a pride mode and you go Alma. You click

on pride mode and your whole, the whole website just becomes sort of shimmering rainbow,

like sort of spectra. Love that. Love that. Love that. Love that. So shout out to Alma. That's a good

good work. So yeah, that is beautiful image. Really stunning. Yeah. Really stunning. Yeah.

And it's like there's not too much science has come out of it yet. It's just kind of like an image

released because they're going to sort of analyse it now in detail, but it's a lovely image. So

would you recommend people go and have a look at that? Cool. So now we should probably talk about

things that we can look at in the sky without eyeballs.

Right. Well, it's a lot of bright objects this month.

I see. There's a lot of bright, bright, bloody things, but white things to look at.

So we have Venus in the evening sky returning to us. So initially quite low. It was put in an

appearance after sunset at the end of February. So if you were kind of had a nice low western horizon,

you could probably see Venus just sitting there and just as the sunset. And this month goes on,

the brightest thing in the sky bar, the moon, the sun, is going to be starting rumors of UFOs

again because where it's sitting like 10 degrees up, causing a non-astro friends to start messaging

you going, Dave, what's that bright thing hovering over the park? But it's there. So it's going

to be climbing up. So it's not that kind of spectacular shooting up at the sky. So you've seen Venus at

like 30 degrees up in the sky. It's going to be kind of 10, 11, 20. It's going to be slowly climbing

up as it comes up. And it will be there. It'll be really bright and it'll be actually quite

well. I always think sometimes more spectacular killer when you see that close to the ground,

like on that bright. Yeah, and you see in it in the colors of twine, like you've got like pinky

purple sky. It's very cool. It's very cool. So that's Venus. Venus is back. So that's good.

And then Jupiter. Jupiter is still big and bright in Gemini. And white's past opposition

and fading a little in intensity now. So the mags starting to now turn down a little bit.

Very much the key go to object in the sky right now. Yeah, it's still good. Swing it every time.

And you can't miss it. It's like literally it's pretty much the only thing I see when it's been

clouded. It's like you see it burning through the cloud. It's reaching a second stationary point

on the 11th. Okay, so it's of course possible to get that nice little loop it makes.

There are various moon events, Galilei and moon events are plenty to watch out for through the month,

shadow transits, transits, occultations, they are, they're just more than we could list.

Very supportive. Yeah, especially from your location and things like that,

what's a good time I can see in the list loads of them. And of course you don't get the great red spot

transits and things like that. There's loads going on and it's really good Jupiter time. It's nice

and high Gemini's nice and high. For all the Europeans, there is a spectacular,

regular occultation on the 29th in the early evening. Okay, so the moon, depending on location,

the waxing gibbers moon will blot out the brightest star in Leo. Which of course we've

said this before, it's a surprisingly rare event that the moon passes in front of a bright star.

Yeah, it is. It's a surprising rare event that the moon passes in front of a

even the average, like, bright star. It doesn't happen very often. But regular, it's so bright.

Exactly. This is going to be a spectacular one. Which means it'll be completely cloud in raining

where I am. So this would be after 7pm, I think it's about 7.14 or 7.13 in London.

And a bit later, I think about 7.18, I think it isn't Edinburgh, for instance.

So depending on where you are, your latitude. So just after 7. And then it'll appear again

about an hour later. So it's about an hour behind the moon. So what might we miss

it disappearing? Yeah. Because of sunset time. Exactly. So now ingress it actually before sunset

in the UK. But we can see it reappear. Yeah, but actually a good bino's or a small scope. You'll

see regulars in the kind of twilighty, just pre sunset sky. You definitely see it's a very

bright star. And in the way that actually you can see bright stars all day, if you know where to put

your telescope. If you know where to point a telescope, you can see, I mean, I've seen Venus in

lunchtime. I have heard of people doing planets. I'm not hearing of people looking at stars.

You can see some of the bright stars, especially in that kind of later, like when it's a bit dimmer,

like early morning, like years before sunset. It's only like, yeah, it's serious. You might get

something like that. But actually you can see the bright stars when the sun is up. Just if you

absolutely know where to point the telescope. And you know, you can do not point it at the

same point in time. But they are, you know, these stars are bright. So it is possible. So actually,

this is not long before sunset. So you will actually see, if you put binoculars on the moon,

you'll find regular. So you'll see it sort of just next to it. So you will see it. So just make

sure you're prepared. Don't go out sort of naked eye going, well, I'm going to, I'm still

blue sky. You need a pair of, you know, 10 by 50s or something like that to see it.

Yeah. But yeah, and then an hour later, you'll definitely see it as it comes out. So that's a

spectacular one to watch out for. Then we also maybe have a bit of comet action in the middle of

the month. Oh my. I know. It's actually a month, but the moon will be kind of getting in the way

until then. Okay. Yeah. It will be bright. And so this is comet. See 2024 E1. Now I've been

debating how this is said, but we're, we're, we're, we're shots. We're shots. We're sure. I don't

know. W I R Z C H O S. Yeah. I'll, I, I happily be corrected on how that is said. But anyway,

let's go about two years ago. It's probably an Auckland object that's taken millions of years to

get here. And after it's in a solar system for a, it's going to be ejected out into deep space,

poor little bugger. Off it goes. It's going to bite the speed. It's a little achieved, falling

in from the Auckland. Yeah. That is going to kick itself out. And ping off and become an

interstellar comet. The interstellar will go. Perillium was the 20th of January. And the 17th

was closest approach to Earth. But it's now venturing into northern skies. Yeah, because it's been

a seven hemisphere object for weeks. Yeah. And it moves from Eradana's into Taurus. You'll see it

off sunset. And it should be about Mac 10. So about the, that would be nice. So small telescope.

Yeah. Exactly. So if you're out watching at the end of the month, you're out watching

regulars fall behind the moon. Have a look for a comet. You're there at sunset. Have a look for

the comet as well. And it's about Mac 10. That's, that's nicely reachable. You should be able to,

a good, strong pair of nodules should be able to sort of perhaps even pick it up. So that's good

stuff. So before Paul does the deep sky dive, there's another deep sky thing to do this month

because it's March. And that means it's messy a marathon time. I'm very excited. So.

It goes right. Ah, do you know what? I think if I've got clear skies, the problem is I'm going to have

to like go somewhere for it. Yeah. Yeah. What I'm thinking is I'm going to have a go

at AstroCamp. And I just, I know that by the time AstroCamp rolls around because it's in April,

so objects will not be visible. And I accept that. But I'm thinking this AstroCamp, I'm going to go

for a round two because I did try it. You did try it. You did try a couple of years ago. Yes.

We got about two thirds of the objects. And I was very pleased. So especially this time round,

I'll have the sea star. I like to try and photograph them. I would just do like a couple of

minutes on each one. Yeah. Yeah. Not to get the best images of them, but just to get something

all right. So question now is, what is the messy marathon? Go for it. It is one of the greatest

observing challenges that any backyard AstroCamp can ever attempt in their life. And I will deny anyone

to say otherwise. It's just really, you don't need a giant telescope to have a go. You need either

a large pair of binoculars or a small telescope, because what we are doing with the messy marathon

is we are hunting or 110 objects of comic hunter Charles Messier's catalog, which was originally

published in 1774, not with 110 objects. 110 objects was kind of finished like in more a few decades

ago. But because Charles Messier found them with his crappy like 18th century optics, it means that

you can definitely see them with your modern day 21st century or 20th century depends on when

your telescope was built optics. It is a mixture of stars and nebulae and encircleses and galaxies

and it's just excellent. Yeah. It is, it is difficult because it is a desktop dawn event. You have to

start shortly after sunset. You do not go in numerical order. No, there isn't or no, and that is

critical. There you have to go in order of right ascension essentially across the skies. You have

to catch things before they set to begin with and then later on you're waiting for things to rise.

There are all sorts of lists online that will tell you the order that you need to go in.

And the clear your horizon, the better. If you miss them at the beginning because you don't have

super clear horizon, who cares? Like so few people have actually completed the messy marathon.

If you can get halfway then you get a goal start to be honest because it is, the trick is the

problem is that you do a bunch at the beginning and then you kind of clear a Virgo and then you've

got like this three hour gap in middle while you're waiting for stuff to rise. Do not do what I did

which is go in and have a little nap and think you'll come back later because you will not. That's deadly,

that's deadly. That is deadly. And then you just you just too warm and it's too nice and you're

like now. I've never actually attempted the full thing. I've never done it and I keep maybe

this is the year. Maybe this is the year I'll do it. I can recommend a book, I think we mentioned

before, 110 things to see with the telescope. The world's most famous Stargazing list.

And that has advice on how to do the marathon. That's why John Reed and Seavorn and it's a really

good book and it's not expensive and you can get it and it's a nice little book as well. And it's

got some really good kind of guides on how to find the objects and things like that. So I'd recommend

that. But yeah, no, I, maybe this is a year I'll have a go. Maybe this is it because the problem is

it's just such a big long night. That's all night. It's all night. You've got to clear your diary

because you won't be fit for service the next day. No, no, no, no, absolutely because it's

literally and you've got to prepare, you've got to kind of sleep as late as you can in the day

before. Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. But the Messier catalog is not the only list of deep sky

objects out there. There are many, many other catalogs and we're going to tour some of the objects

from some of the other catalogs with Paul's deep sky suggestion. Right. And this one is Gemini,

deep sky Gemini. It's nice and high. You've got Jupiter sitting there. So you're in the area

because that's basic. You're going to have a look at Jupiter while you're out there. So you might as well

have a look at some of the other. And it's that kind of great constellation for winter spring

sitting right on the edge of the winter Milky Way. Oh, you can take one Messier object though.

So in your marathon, you're only going to visit it, visit it once. But it's home to several

iconic nebulae and star clusters are great for the sort of visual and astrophotophers like so.

Let's start with that lone Messier M35, which is one of the finest open clusters in the sky

to be fair. I mean, if you can have one Messier, this is a good one. Yeah, have a good one.

It's beautiful to naked eye under dark skies. It appears in the knockers of the large fuzzy patch.

In a telescope, it just explodes into hundreds of bright blue-white stars ranging from curving

chains. To find it, look near the foot of the twin caster, the upper of the two twins near the star

eater gymnasium. Now, bonus here is the right next to it is NGC 2158, a much older,

more compact cluster. Now, while they look like a duo, they might have them next to each other.

Actually, 2158 is actually four times further away at about 11,000 light years.

To M35's, 2800 light years, well, they're about. Not so fair, wait, wait. It's still fair

away, yeah, exactly. And it appears to faint golden smudge in small telescopes. So have a look out for

that. Next object on our tour of the twins is NGC 2392, or the clown face nebula.

This is a bright high surface brightness planetary nebula. It looks like a small,

blueish green fuzzy star at low power. So you can look at that. But with higher magnification,

you can see the bright central area, which is the nose of the clown, surrounded by a double shell

of gas that resembles a face. So yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's about two degrees southeast of the star

delta gymnasium, or wasad, wasad. You've got to be a certain age to know what that is.

A more difficult observation and a great imaging target is IC443, or the jellyfish nebula.

Now, this is a supernova remnant from a star that went supernova,

sometime probably at the height of the last ice age, from about 20,000 years ago.

And it's similar to the more famous veil nebula in thickness, it's very similar.

It is possible to see this visually with a dark sky, good aperture,

an O3 and UHC filters. So you need to look at the veil, as veil you can see,

completely naked eye through a telescope. They need a bit of a filter. Without filter through a

telescope, I should say. Yeah, I got what you were talking about naked eye through a telescope.

We got you. You got me. But it improves with O3 and UHC things in the veil.

The jellyfish, you have to be in a really dark sky with a lot of aperture to get a decent hint

of it without filters. So really, you can throw an O3 in and you should see it.

It appears to find delicate sweeping arcs of gas with sort of tendrils that can look a bit like a

jellyfish if you've never seen a jellyfish before. It makes me think of it was like

for the late medieval drawings, animals that they've heard descriptions of, but never seen,

like giraffes are always brilliant. Yeah, completely, completely. I mean, I can see where people

are coming from, it looks a bit like there's a blobby bit and there's kind of tendrils and

if you screen the other, it's kind of like a jellyfish, I suppose, sort of. Yeah. But it's fun,

it's a really lovely object if you get to see it. That's a great imaging target, because of course

you don't have to worry about the sort of power of your eyes. A couple of extras of mention here

are the heads of the twins, Casta and Pollux. Casta is a superb double star that splits even

a small telescope to two bright blue white stars. So it's actually a sex double system.

It's actually six in there and those are more power and girth than are. We'll get three stars,

but that's where you'll get. Pollux is an orange giant star though, not a binary,

but it is currently the brightest star thought to have a planet about twice the mass of Jupiter.

It's debated, actually, but it's even got a name, Festius. I like that though.

Looking at that, be like, Nick, I saw with a planet, maybe. Yeah, exactly, exactly.

So on for our moon guide. Yes, the moon. Our new moon guide that we...

This is a lovely section. Yeah, suggested. I liked it. I thought it was a really good idea.

Yeah. So this is day 10 to 12. So, okay. We've got 10, 11 and 12,

waxing gibbers phase of the moon and here are some of the most dramatic sort of land,

sea. He says in inverted commas, land, sea boundaries on the lunar surface. This is stunning

changes in relief for an albedo. Day 10 and the sinus iridium, the Bay of Rainbows, is now very clear.

This is a massive impact crater flooded by lava, appearing as a semi-circular bay on the

edge of the Maurea Inbrium. Copernicus crater, which we talked about last time, now fully

illuminated. It's complex teres walls and massive central peaks, cast long jagged shadows across

the crater floor, though perhaps not quite as dramatic as the previous 24 hours. So if you go back

to day 9, that's probably the better day for it. Look out for Bully Aldous, which is a perfect,

sharp-edged crater. It's like absolutely stunningly perfect. It looks like someone's actually

built it. In the Maurea Inbrium, it stands out beautifully against the dark,

basaltic plains, really beautiful. By day 11, we're moving on to the Aristarchus Plateau.

Of course, we've got Aristarchus. There's a most reflective, highest albedo area on the

moon. It's like that white patch, you can see. It looks white. It's just really, really bright.

And that's even on the terminator, as it's coming out of the turn, it glows. It just seems to

sort of almost radiate its own light. It's really, really impressive. Keep an eye out for the

Valus Schro-Terry, which is a massive cobra head. It is how it's often described,

so a signious rile. There's a lava channel that's nearby, which is a great thing to find.

It's quite small. I mean, this is when people look for these objects, they think they're going

to be as big as the craters. They're quite small, and you have to kind of search for them and

you find them. Yeah, but then that's the fun of the hunt. That's the fun of hunt, and that's

what's fun about the moon. Then your descendant crater is located on the northern edge of the

Marri-Humarum. I always love these Latin names. They're brilliant. This is a fantastic floor-fractured

crater. Interesting. How do you describe it? It's like, it's a delicate web of cracks on its

floor. It's kind of, as the sun hits you, you get these little shadows, and if you're physically

there, they'd be a lot deeper, but from our perspective, they just look like tiny scratches,

like sort of shattered glass kind of thing. It's really cool. Then, Marri-Humarum, self-Humarum,

or the rather saucy sounding sea of moisture, very moist. I don't like that word. It's the

back foot. The sea of moisture appeared fully out of the glume and it's framed by these

smaller craters, like Vitello on its southern edge. It's really cool. Then, Marri-Humarum,

to day 12, and the moon approaches approaching fall. Now, we're getting towards that fall moon,

and the terminator's kind of nearing the limb. You're getting very close. That point where people

think they, it's a fall moon. That's that. I was falling and I was like, no, actually, it's almost,

almost, they're not cut. It means that the shadows, because of the curve, as you're getting towards

the limb, from our perspective, the shadows are getting shorter. They're not quite as long,

sort of, shadows. The big star here is Gremaldi, large, strikingly dark, flawed basin,

near the western limb, because it's always made of dark lava. It looks like a black hole,

rather than the crater. If you like, catch it when it's really dark in that crater. It actually

looks like it's a hole in the moon. It's really cool. There's like these highlands around it. It's

very, very cool. Then, we have the Oceana Procolarium, or the Ocean of Storms on show. That's now

like fully out. This is the largest of the lunar Marri, and the day 12 is kind of revealed. Just

have vast of an ocean. It's just a huge, huge area. It has nice, kind of, what a big bit of the

moon it is. Look out for the various wrinkle ridges across its surface, caused by the cooling of

that kind of ancient lava, as it's cooling, shrinks and stuff. Real favourite mine is the crater

chicade, which is massive, wall plane, near the southwestern limb, unique, because its floor has

patches of varying dark and it's like sort of stained surface. It looks like it's kind of like

tied-eyed. It's really cool. Oh, I like that. See, the moon's so cool. It's really, really.

The moon is so cool. It's always overlapped as well. It's done. People get obsessed by

deep sky, and I'm one of those people a lot of the time, but go back to the moon. It's really

cool. It's such a cool object. And the thing is, the moon is always there. Yeah. You can only see

certain objects at certain times of year, but the moon, every month is there. And it's reliable,

and actually, it's one of those objects that even on a not so good night. Yes, you can really

enjoy itself. You can still go now. Even if it's a bit cloudy, but you can still go to the moon,

they can actually get a really good night's astronomy regardless, whereas, you know, if you want

to do deep sky and things like, er, it's cloudy up. I'm written off for the moon. Actually, the moon

is always there. It's really good. And the moon itself begins bright with full on the third,

last quarter on the 11th, new on the 19th, and first quarter on the 25th. So, all the remains

to wish you clear skies and happy hunting.

Right, there we are. Mystery solved. I'm waiting for the Shornham Royal to turn up any moment

and present me with my medal for discovering what Darkwater truly is all about.

If you have any comments, queries, suggestions, thoughts, send them over to us at theshowadawesomeastronomy.com.

We now have a bunch of your emails through which we can address next time, but we're still

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And so, until next time, it's goodbye from Cydonia Base.

Awesome Astronomy is produced by Ralph, Paul, Jen, John, Damien, and Dustin.

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