Ring of Fire, Farewell Comet, and the Smell of Rotten Eggs in Space

Tyler Reddick here from 2311 Racing.

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Good day, stargazers, and welcome to Astronomy Daily,

episode 41 of season five.

I'm Anna.

And I'm Avery.

And what a day to be alive and looking up, Anna.

It's Tuesday, February the 17th, 2026,

and we have not won, but two celestial events happening today.

That's right.

The sun is about to be turned into a ring of fire over Antarctica,

and a comment that may never return

is making its closest past to Earth as we speak.

Plus, we've got JWST solving an identity crisis

for some massive exoplanets.

NASA doing CT scans on the northern lights

and a startup that wants to fuel rockets with water.

And a preview of why 2026 might just

be the greatest year of eclipses in a generation.

Let's not waste a single second.

Let's dive right in.

So Avery, we've been building up to this for weeks.

And today is finally the day.

Right now, as many of our listeners are tuning in,

an annular solar eclipse is tracing its path across Antarctica.

And I know some of our listeners might be thinking,

didn't we just cover this?

And yes, we've talked about it in recent episodes.

But today is the day, and there's

something truly special happening

down at the bottom of the world.

Let's recap the essentials.

An annular eclipse happens when the moon passes

directly between the Earth and the Sun.

But because the moon is at a more distant point in its orbit,

it doesn't completely cover the Sun's disc.

Instead, you get this breath-taking ring of brilliant sunlight

surrounding the dark silhouette of the moon.

The ring of fire.

And today's ring will last up to two minutes and 20 seconds

for anyone lucky enough to be standing

in the path of annularity.

At the moment of greatest eclipse,

which occurs at 1212 UTC,

the moon will cover approximately 96% of the Sun surface.

Now, 96% sounds like almost everything,

but here's the important thing.

It's not a total eclipse.

The sky won't go dark.

You absolutely must keep your solar eclipse glasses on

for the entire event.

There's no moment where it's safe to look at the Sun

with the naked eye.

The path of annularity itself is actually quite wide

for eclipse standards, about 616 kilometers across.

But it's crossing some of the most remote territory on Earth.

We're talking about the Antarctic mainland

and the surrounding southern ocean.

So realistically, the only people seeing the full ring

of fire today are researchers

at a handful of Antarctic stations.

However, the partial phases of the eclipse

are visible from a much wider area.

Observers in southern Argentina, southern Chile,

South Eastern Africa, Madagascar, and Mauritius

will all see the moon take a bite out of the Sun

to varying degrees.

And here's something that I think really elevates today's event.

This eclipse kicks off the first eclipse season of 2026.

Eclipse seasons are these brief windows,

typically about 34 days long when the geometry

of the Sun, Earth, and Moon aligns just right

for eclipses to occur.

And they usually come in pairs.

Exactly.

So less than two weeks from now, on March the 3rd,

we get a total lunar eclipse.

A blood moon visible from North America.

And that's just the beginning for 2026,

which we'll come back to later in the show.

For anyone wanting to follow along today,

there are several life streams available

and we'll have links in our show notes.

Even if you can't see it from where you are,

this is a wonderful moment to appreciate

the clockwork precision of our solar system.

I'm sticking with things happening literally today.

Let's talk about C2024 E1, better known

as comet Wearchosh, which is making its closest

approach to Earth right now.

This is one of those stories where

the science and the poetry really come together beautifully.

This comet was discovered back in March 2024

by a Polish astronomer Casper Wearchosh

using the Mount Lemons survey in Arizona.

And today, it passes within about 151 million kilometers

from Earth.

Roughly the same distance as Earth is from the Sun.

So it's not exactly a close shave,

but it's still a significant astronomical moment.

What makes this comet truly special

is that it's on a hyperbolic orbit.

For our listeners who aren't familiar with that term,

it means the comet's trajectory isn't a closed loop.

It's not coming back.

Ever, or at least not for over 200,000 years,

and even that's optimistic,

scientists believe it originated in the orc cloud

that vast icy shell at the outer edges of our solar system.

And it's now getting a gravitational slingshot

that will send it out into interstellar space.

This is genuinely a once-in-a-civilization event.

NASA's astronomy picture of the day

featured comet were soged today

with a 30-minute exposure taken from Chile,

showing a gorgeous five-degree long ion tail

and three separate dust tails.

The comet also has a vivid green coma,

which scientists believe is linked

to carbon-bearing compounds, likely diatomic carbon,

fluorescing under ultraviolet sunlight.

The James Webb telescope actually observed this comet

last year when it was still far out

at about seven astronomical units from the Sun.

They found its activity is primarily driven

by carbon dioxide rather than carbon monoxide,

which is interesting because it suggests

the comet may have lost its near-surface CO

early in its evolution.

Now, in terms of actually seeing it,

at magnitude 7.8 to 8.2,

you're going to need binoculars at minimum,

ideally a small telescope.

It's currently in the constellation sculptor,

quite low in the southwestern sky after sunset.

Southern hemisphere observers have the far better view today.

Northern hemisphere observers don't despair.

Over the coming days, the comet will climb a bit higher.

And by around February 23rd,

it should be a more accessible target

as it passes near some galaxies in Cetus.

But it will be fading by then.

If you can get out tonight with some optics,

it's worth the effort.

You're quite literally saying goodbye

to something the human race will never see again.

All right, let's travel 133 light years away

to the constellation Pegasus,

where the James Webb telescope

has just settled one of exoplanet sciences

most persistent mysteries.

And the key to solving it?

Hydrogen sulfide,

the molecule that gives rotten eggs

their delightful aroma.

Published in Nature Astronomy,

a team from UCLA and UC San Diego

used JWST to study HR-8799 system,

which hosts four enormous gas giant planets,

each between five and 10 times the mass of Jupiter.

Now, these planets have been known since 2008,

and they're actually directly visible through telescopes,

which is remarkable in itself.

Most exoplanets are detected indirectly,

but because they're so massive

and because they're so far from their star

between 15 and 70 times Earth's distance from the Sun,

scientists have long debated

if they're truly planets or something else entirely.

Specifically, are they planets or brown dwarfs?

Brown dwarfs are sometimes called failed stars,

objects that form through gravitational collapse

of a gas cloud like a star,

but never got massive enough to sustain hydrogen fusion.

The traditional mass boundary is around 13 Jupiter masses,

but that's a bit arbitrary.

What really matters is how they formed.

Did they form like planets through core accretion,

building up a solid core from dust and rock

that then attracted gas?

Or did they form like stars

through the rapid collapse of a dense pocket of gas?

And this is where the rotten eggs come in.

The team detected hydrogen sulfide

in the atmospheres of these three worlds,

HR-8799C, D and E.

Now, why is sulfur the key?

Because at the vast distances these planets orbit their star,

sulfur can only exist in solid form

within the protoplanetary disk.

It cannot be in the gas phase.

So if they're sulfur in these planets atmospheres,

it had to have been gobbled up as solid material

during the planet's formation.

That's the smoking gun for core accretion.

These worlds, massive as they are,

formed the same way Jupiter did,

just on a much grander scale.

Previous studies looking at carbon and oxygen

couldn't distinguish between the two formation pathways

because those elements can come from either gas or solids.

The researchers also found that these planets

are enriched in heavy elements compared to their hostar.

By factors of roughly two to nine times,

they estimate the four planets together

contain around 600 earth masses of heavy material.

That's an extraordinary amount of solid material.

And this raises a really fascinating question.

How big can a planet get?

If objects 10 times Jupiter's mass

can form through core accretion,

where exactly is the line between the biggest planets

and the smallest brown dwarfs?

Lead researcher Jerry Swan from UCLA put it beautifully.

He said the technique they used to separate the light

from these incredibly faint planets 10,000 times

fainter than their star will eventually be applicable

to studying Earth-like worlds.

He said finding an Earth analog is the holy grail

and we might be 20 to 30 years away

from getting the first spectrum of an Earth-like planet

and searching for biosignatures.

The future of exoplanet science

built on the foundation of smelly gas.

Who would have thought?

Staying closer to home now, well, relatively speaking,

NASA launched two groundbreaking

sounding rocket missions from Alaska earlier this month

and the results are already exciting to science community.

These launched from the Poker Flat Research Range

near Fairbanks and they had two of the best mission acronyms

I've ever encountered.

The first is badass.

The black and diffuse auroral science surveyor.

And yes, that's the real name.

Launched February 9th, badass reads an altitude

of about 360 kilometers and was specifically designed

to study a phenomenon called black auroras.

These are these strange dark structures

that appear as gaps or voids drifting within the brighter

diffuse aurora, like someone has taken an eraser

to parts of the northern lights.

What's happening physically is that electrons,

instead of streaming down into Earth's atmosphere,

the way they do in normal auroras,

are shooting upward into space.

Scientists don't fully understand why this reversal happens

and badass was designed to gather data on exactly that.

Then on February 10th, NASA launched the GN EISS mission.

That's the geophysical non-equilibrium

ionoskear science system.

This one used two rockets launched just 30 seconds apart,

flying side by side through the same aurora

along different slices.

And here's the clever bit.

Each rocket ejected four sub payloads,

giving them multiple measurement points

inside the aurora simultaneously.

The rockets also sent radio signals

through the surrounding plasma to a network

of 11 ground receivers.

The way the plasma altered those radio wives

allowed scientists to map the plasma density,

revealing where electrical currents can flow.

Principal investigator, Christina Lynch,

from Dartmouth College,

described it as essentially doing a CT scan

of the plasma beneath the aurora.

In the same way, a medical CT scan uses X-rays

passing through different body tissues

to reconstruct the 3D image,

Nisse uses radio waves passing through auroral plasma

to reconstruct the electrical environment in three dimensions.

Both missions reported that all instruments performed

as expected and returned high quality data.

This is particularly satisfying for the badass team

because the same mission was on the launch pad

at Poker Flat last year,

but the required auroral conditions never materialized

before the launch window closed.

Understanding how auroral currents work

isn't just pure physics.

Those currents shape how energy from space

spreads through Earth upper atmosphere,

where the current fans out the atmosphere heats up,

which can affect satellite drag, GPS accuracy,

and radio communications.

With our increasing dependence on space-based technology,

this research has very practical implications.

Now, for something that sounds like science fiction,

but is heading for a real-world test later this year,

a startup called General Galactic,

led by former SpaceX engineer, Halen Madison,

is developing technology to use water as rocket fuel.

And before anyone thinks we're talking about

some kind of perpetual motion scam,

the science here is sound.

The core concept uses electrolysis,

splitting water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen,

and then using those gases in two different propulsion systems.

Right, for chemical propulsion,

you burn the hydrogen and oxygen together,

which produces high pressure thrust,

much like a conventional rocket engine.

For electrical propulsion, you ionize the oxygen

and accelerate it using a magnetic field,

creating plasma thrust.

Madison describes that second type as very, very low thrust.

People jokingly like to call it a burp in space.

But even a burp in space can be useful

for precise maneuvers and station keeping.

The real game changer here isn't the propulsion technology

itself, but the fuel source.

Water is one of the most abundant resources

we found on other worlds.

There's water ice on the moon, on Mars, on asteroids.

If you can turn that water into fuel,

you've essentially created the infrastructure

for cosmic refueling stations.

That's exactly Madison's long-term vision.

He's talking about building a refueling network

that connects Earth, the moon, and Mars.

As he puts it, everybody wants to go build a moon base

or a Mars base who's going to pay for it.

How does it actually work?

His answer is to make the economics viable

by using in situ resources.

Now, there are real challenges to overcome.

Water has to be purified, electrolyzed,

and stored efficiently.

And the whole system has to be lightweight enough

for space applications.

There's also concerns about ionized oxygen

potentially affecting satellite electronics.

But the team is pushing ahead with a proof of concept.

And that proof of concept is coming soon.

General Galactic is planning to launch

an 1,100-pound satellite on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket

in October, 2026.

That satellite will test both the chemical

and electrical propulsion systems using water

as fuel in actual space conditions.

If it works, it could fundamentally

change the economics of spaceflight.

Matheson claims they're talking about billions

of dollars in savings, even with current operations,

and trillions in new economic growth

as the infrastructure scales up.

Those are bold claims, but the underlying physics is solid.

We'll be watching that October launch very closely.

So we opened the show with today's annular eclipse.

And we mentioned that it kicks off an eclipse season.

But I think it's worth zooming out

and looking at the bigger picture.

Because 2026 is shaping up to be an absolutely

extraordinary year for eclipses.

It really is.

So let's run through what's coming.

First up, as we mentioned, on March the 3rd,

we get a total lunar eclipse.

That's a blood moon.

And it will be visible across North America,

which is fantastic news for our listeners

in that part of the world.

Then we get to August 12th.

And this is the big one, a total solar eclipse,

not annular, but total, with its path of totality crossing

the Arctic, Greenland, Iceland, and Spain.

And observers across much of Western Europe

and North America will see a partially eclipse.

For anyone in the UK, this is particularly exciting.

The BBC Sky at Night magazine and the Royal Observatory

Greenwich are both flagging this

as the best solar eclipse visible from the UK since 1999.

Yours in London will see the moon touch the edge

of the sun's disc at 617 PM BST.

And it doesn't stop there.

The astronomical community is talking

about a genuine golden age of eclipses beginning right now.

Between 2026 and 2028, we're looking

at three total solar eclipses and three ring of fire eclipses

in just three years.

That's an extraordinary run.

So if today's Antarctic ring of fire

has you feeling a bit left out

because you couldn't see it, don't worry.

There is so much more to come.

Start planning now for August 12th.

And make sure you're subscribed to Astronomy Daily

because we'll be covering every single one of these events.

This is going to be an epic year for eclipse chasers.

And that brings us to the end of another packed edition

of Astronomy Daily.

What a day Anna, an eclipse, a comet farewell,

rotten eggs solving planetary mysteries,

CT scans of auroras, water powered rockets,

and a golden age of eclipses beginning right now.

If you enjoyed today's episode, please do subscribe

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where you'll find plenty of other great shows

to keep you entertained and informed.

Until next time, keep your eyes on the skies.

Clear skies, everyone.

Astronomy day, the star is the toe.

The star is the toe.

The star is the toe.

The star is the toe.

Tyler Reddick here from 2311 Racing,

another checkered flag for the books.

Time to celebrate with Jamba.

Jump in at chumbacacino.com.

Let's jump.

No purchase necessary.

VTW Group, voidware prohibited by law.

CTNC, 21 plus, sponsored by chumbacacino.

No purchase necessary.

VTW Group, voidware prohibited by law.

CTNC, 21 plus, sponsored by chumbacacino.