Love Is in the Stars

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Pappy Valentine's Day, everyone.

Welcome to Astronomy Daily, the podcast that brings you the latest space and astronomy

news every single day.

I'm Anna.

And I'm Avery.

And what did data be talking about the Cosmos Anna?

The universe has really pulled out all the stops for Valentine's Day this year.

It really has.

We've got astronauts arriving at the space station today, a dying star sending the

universe a literal Valentine, possible Aurora dancing across the skies tonight, and a whole

lot more.

So let's get into it.

Ready when you are.

Our top story today is a Valentine's Day rendezvous.

Not between sweethearts, but between a dragon spacecraft and the International Space Station.

SpaceX's crew 12 mission launched yesterday morning at Cape Canaveral at 515 Eastern

time.

And as we speak, four astronauts are on their way to dock with the ISS later this afternoon.

And what a crew it is.

Commanding the mission is NASA astronaut Jessica Meere with Jack Hathaway as pilot.

They're joined by ESA astronaut Sophie Adinot, whose mission has been named Epsilon.

And Ross Cosmos Cosmonaut Andre Fetteyev.

It's a truly international crew.

This mission has been particularly urgent, Avery.

The ISS has been operating with just three crew members, a skeleton crew, since mid-January,

when crew 11 had to make an unexpected early return to Earth, due to a medical issue with

one of its members.

That left NASA astronaut Chris Williams and two Russian cosmonauts Sergei Kudzverskov and

Sergei Mikhail holding down the four under-own.

NASA has been clear that seven crew members is really what you need to maximize a science

output on a station that costs around $3 billion a year to operate.

So there was real pressure to get this launch done quickly.

SpaceX actually had the rocket and spacecraft ready ahead of schedule, but crew training

and weather kept pushing the date.

They lost two launch windows earlier in the week to bad weather along the flight path

before finally getting off the ground yesterday.

And in a lovely touch for Valentine's Day, the crew revealed their zero gravity indicator.

A handmade crocheted model of Earth with four little satellites representing each crew member,

plus a tiny moon for Commander Meir.

It was made by Meir's childhood best friend and half the way's daughter.

That's pretty adorable.

It really is.

Docking is expected at around 3.15 pm Eastern time today.

So by the time many of you are listening to this, the ISS should be back to its full

complement of seven.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman praised the teams, saying they brought crew 11 home

early, pulled crew 12 forward, and did it all while preparing for the Artemis 2 moon

mission.

A busy few weeks at NASA to save a least.

And speaking of the Artemis 2 rocket, there was a fantastic photo from Kennedy Space Center

this week showing the massive SLS moon rocket photo bombing the crew 12 Falcon 9 on the

neighboring launch pad.

Two very different rockets, side by side, representing the present and future of human space

flight.

Now, we've been keeping you updated on this one, but with just three days to go, it's

time for a final reminder.

On Tuesday, February 17, the first solar eclipse of 2026 will take place, an annular solar

eclipse, or also known as a ring of fire eclipse.

And here's the thing.

This one is going to be witnessed by more penguins than people.

A path of annularity, where you'd actually see that stunning ring of sunlight around

the moon, cuts across a remote stretch of Antarctica and the southern ocean.

At maximum eclipse, the moon will cover about 96 percent of the sun's disc, leaving that

slim, glowing ring visible for up to two minutes and twenty seconds.

But you'd need to be at one of the scientific research stations down in Antarctica, like

the French Italian Concordia station or Russia's Mirney station.

For the rest of the world, partial phases will be visible from the very southern tips

of Chile and Argentina, and the cross parts of southern Africa, including South Africa,

Mozambique, and Madagascar.

But if you're in Europe, North America, or most of Asia, no dice on this one I'm afraid.

Bill, it's a reminder that eclipse season is upon us, and that brings us neatly to our

next story.

Have you ever noticed that solar eclipses and lunar eclipses seem to arrive in pairs?

It's not a coincidence.

Every eclipse is part of a predictable pattern during a short window known as an eclipse

season.

That's right.

An eclipse season lasts about 31 to 37 days, and there are typically two each year, roughly

six months apart.

They occur when the sun passes near one of the lunar nodes.

The points where the moon's tilted orbit crosses the plane of Earth's orbit around the

sun.

During this window, the geometry lines up for eclipses to happen.

And because the window is long enough to contain both a new moon and a full moon, which

are always about two weeks apart, you almost always get a pair, a solar eclipse at new moon,

and the lunar eclipse at full moon, or vice versa.

So the annular solar eclipse on February 17th is the opening act.

Exactly 14 days later, on March 3rd, the same eclipse season delivers a total lunar eclipse,

a blood moon, with the moon spending nearly an hour fully inside Earth's dark umbral

shadow.

And that one is much more accessible.

Observers in East Asia, Australia, the Pacific, and Western North America will have excellent

views of the moon turning that gorgeous coppery colored during totality.

But wait, there's more.

The second eclipse season of 2026 arrives in August, and this one is the blockbuster.

On August 12th, a total solar eclipse will sweep across Greenland, Iceland, and Northern

Spain.

That's the first total solar eclipse since April 2024.

And much of Western Europe and North America will see at least a deep partial eclipse.

Then two weeks after that, on August 28th, a partial lunar eclipse rounds out the season.

So 2026 really is shaping up to be a remarkable year for eclipse chasers.

For eclipses, two seasons, and some genuinely spectacular events.

If you've been meaning to plan an eclipse trip, now's the time.

We'll have much more on the March and August eclipses as they get closer, so stay tuned.

And now for what has to be the most perfectly timed astronomy story of the year.

Just in time for Valentine's Day, space has sent us a heart-shaped greeting.

The star Mira A, about 300 light years from Earth, has ejected a cloud of gas and dust

that forms a striking heart shape around it.

And this isn't just a pretty picture.

It's a genuinely surprising scientific discovery.

Mira A is a red giant star, one of the most famous variable stars in the sky.

It was first documented all the way back in 1596.

As a star in the last stages of its life, it's been shedding material into space.

But the amount and speed of this particular rejection caught astronomers off guard.

This study, led by Theo Corey at Sweden's Chalmers University of Technology, found that

Mira A ejected roughly seven Earth masses of material in this burst.

Using observations from both the very large telescope and the Alma radio array in Chile,

the team discovered that gas fills the heart-shaped structure, while dust concentrates along

the outer edges, creating a beautiful glowing outline.

What's particularly fascinating is that the star appears to be acting like a lighthouse,

illuminating its surroundings unevenly.

Corey said that they were very surprised to see the structure, and that the star's illumination

of the surrounding dust varies in unexpected ways.

And there's a companion star in this love story, too.

Mira B, a white dwarf star that orbits Mira A, is already beginning to gather some of

the ejected material.

The researchers say they'll keep monitoring the expanding cloud because it could eventually

affect Mira B.

Though we've got a cosmic couple exchanging material on Valentine's Day, you couldn't

make it up.

The study has been accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics,

and the pre-print is already available on archive.

A truly heartfelt discovery, literally.

From hearts to head spinners, scientists have been left puzzled by a comet that has done

something truly extraordinary.

It's flipped its rotation direction.

Comet 41P, Tuddle, Jacobini, Creesack, try saying that three times fast, was observed

by NASA's Swift spacecraft back in 2017, slowing its rotation dramatically.

It went from spinning once every 20 hours to once every 53 hours in just 60 days.

To put that in context, the previous record for a cometary spin-down was held by Comet

Hartley II, which slowed from 17 to 19 hours over 90 days.

So Comet 41P changed its spin rate 10 times more dramatically in two-thirds the time.

It's unprecedented.

But that's not even the stranger part.

New analysis of Hubble Space Telescope Images by astronomer David Jewett at UCLA has

revealed that after slowing down, the comet's rotation appeared to actually reverse.

It started spinning the other way.

The culprit appears to be the comet's own outgassing.

As Comets approached the Sun, they heat up and release jets of gas.

When that gas escapes unevenly from the surface, what scientists call anisotropic outgassing,

it creates a torque on the nucleus, gradually changing and eventually reversing its spin.

Jewett estimates that the nucleus is less than 0.7 kilometers in radius, making it particularly

susceptible to these forces.

And here's the sobering implication.

The lifetime of the nucleus to rotational instability is just a few decades, which is incredibly

short compared to the thousands of years it's been in its current orbit.

So while the comet's orbit might be stable for millennia, its physical integrity is much

more fragile.

It raises the question of whether Comets might not last as long as we previously thought,

with their own internal forces eventually tearing them apart.

The paper is available as a preprint on archive for anyone who wants to dig into the details.

And finally, here's something for everyone to look forward to later this month.

A rare six planet parade is building in the evening sky, and the best part, it's happening

at a perfectly civilized hour.

Throughout February, six planets are lining up across the sky in what astronomers call

a planetary alignment.

The parade features Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune, and the show peaks

on February 28th.

Now, four of those Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter will be visible to the naked eye.

Uranus and Neptune will require binoculars or a telescope.

The best time to look is about 30 minutes after your local sunset, low in the western

sky.

You'll want a clear, unobstructed horizon.

Mercury might be the trickiest to spot because of its low position near the horizon, but

Venus and Jupiter should be unmistakable.

They're the brightest objects in the evening sky after the moon.

Now, this isn't quite as rare as the seven planet alignment we saw in February last

year, which included all the classical planets, plus Uranus and Neptune.

But one won't happen again until 2040.

But groupings of six planets are still pretty special.

As astronomer Greg Brown from the Royal Observatory Greenwich has pointed out, while groups of three

or four planets appearing together are relatively common, the more planets involved, the more orbital

geometry has to cooperate.

So a six planet parade is definitely worth stepping outside for.

Work your calendars for February 28th, and maybe start scoping out a good western-facing

spot with a low horizon.

We'll remind you as the day gets closer.

Before we go, one more little Valentine's Day treat.

If you're in the Northern United States or Southern Canada tonight, you might want

to step outside after dark and look north.

NOAA forecasters are predicting possible G1 minor geomagnetic storming this weekend, driven

by the combined effects of a coronal hole high speed solar wind stream and a coronal

mass ejection from earlier this week.

So there's a chance, no guarantees, but a chance to see the Northern Lights tonight

and into Sunday.

Dates like Michigan and Maine, and of course our friends in Canada and Northern Europe

have the best odds.

What could be more romantic than watching the aurora dance across the sky on Valentine's

Day?

Imagine telling your date, I arranged the Northern Lights just for you.

Smooth move.

Very smooth.

Well that's offered today's show, whether you're spending Valentine's Day stargazing,

watching a spacecraft dock with the space station, or just enjoying the cosmic love story

of Mira A and its heart-shaped nebula, we hope the universe gives you something to smile

about today.

Don't forget to subscribe to Astronomy Daily wherever you get your podcasts.

And you can find us online at astronomydaily.io and on social media at AstroDailyPod.

If you enjoyed today's episode, please leave us a rating and review.

It really helps others find the show.

Until next time, keep looking up.

And Happy Valentine's Day from all of us at AstroDaily.

Clear skies everyone.

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