Podcasts about Southern Hemisphere

As fall approaches, flu and COVID-19 are once again moving to the forefront of public health. In this episode of The Health Advocates, Steven Newmark looks at what the Southern Hemisphere’s flu season may tell us about the months ahead, how this year’s flu vaccine has been updated, and when people should consider getting vaccinated. He also breaks down the newest COVID-19 vaccine, including which variant it targets, when it will be available, who is currently eligible to receive it in the United States, and how much protection we can realistically expect against infection and severe illness. The episode also explains why respiratory viruses often gain momentum as children return to school and people spend more time indoors, with practical guidance for patients, caregivers, and people living with chronic illness as they prepare for fall virus season. Contact Our HostSteven Newmark, Chief of Policy at GHLF: snewmark@ghlf.orgA podcast episode produced by Amelia Violet Prouse, Associate Podcast & Video Producer at GHLF.We want to hear what you think. Send your comments in the form of an email, video, or audio clip of yourself to podcasts@ghlf.orgListen to all episodes of The Health Advocates on our website or on your favorite podcast channel.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Our Food Mentor podcast chats are usually with starts ups and SME's but today we switch gears and talk with Max Buontempo the Founder and CEO of Roma Foods. Max and his family bought the Roma Foods business in 1984 however the original brand was founded in 1953. In 2026 Roma Foods has grown to become one of the largest gluten and allergen free manufacturing facilities in the Southern Hemisphere. Based in Carrum Downs, Victoria, the Roma Foods team manufacture a diverse range of products including pasta, cereals, crackers, biscuits,  pre mixes and much more.I was lucky enough to work with Max briefly this year through a transitional period so was able to witness this fabulous business first hand. Max not only trades with all major supermarkets here in Australia but also exports to numerous overseas markets. This is a great Australian story of staying true to the Roma Foods allergen free brand while moving with the times. I hope you enjoy this episode of The Food Mentor  Podcast. For all the details click the Roma Foods link here. https://romafoods.com.au/Meet David J Burnshttps://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tZKvu9FOjMwDavid is the  founder of DJB Food Group and Creme design helping manufacturers, brands and entrepreneurs develop innovative new products and brands and then distribute into retail. In 2026 David's clients will have achieved $200 mil in retail sales from brands and product ranges we have developed in the prior 24 months. Reach out for a chat anytime!https://www.djbfoodgroup.com/David also conducts strategy workshops as well as key note speaking engagements. Would you like to be a guest on our show or sponsor an episode to reach your target audience? We have enjoyed 60,000 podcast downloads with listeners in 370 cities across 68 countries. Connect with us anytime david@djbfoodgroup.com +61427034412

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for September 23, 2026 is: compendious • kum-PEN-dee-us • adjective A compendious book, research paper, article, etc. is one that provides most or all of the information one may want or require. Similarly, a person might be said to have compendious knowledge of a subject if they have a full and wide-ranging—that is, comprehensive—grasp of it. Compendious can also describe something that is both comprehensive and concise, as in “a compendious summary.” // The coveted book prize was awarded to a compendious history of environmental literature in the United States. See the entry > Examples: “For much of a career that spanned decades, he pursued the oscines, or songbirds, of the Neotropics to their habitats in the Southern Hemisphere—sketching, making compendious field notes, and amassing a vast file of images that he used as a reference tool when painting the plates for definitive books …” — Guy Trebay, The Boston Globe, 26 July 2026 Did you know? When Noah Webster titled his first dictionary, published in 1806, A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language, he used compendious to mean “short, brief, concise, summary,” as he defined it on the book's 58th page. This may come as a surprise given that compendious is now most often used to mean “comprehensive” and is applied to books, papers, etc. that are quite lengthy. But Webster's Compendious Dictionary was no more than a preparation for his two-volume An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828), and compendious traces back to the Latin adjective compendiōsus, meaning “both comprehensive and succinct.” Webster's title signaled that his debut word compendium would be useful, if not exhaustive. Today, however, compendious asserts comprehensiveness, typically without brevity.

Here is an Autumn Equinox Meditation to help set you up for the shift from the long days to the long nights. For those in the Southern Hemisphere, there's a Spring Equinox Meditation here.—About Accidental Gods—We offer three strands all rooted in the same soil, drawing from the same river: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing Masterclass Our next Open Gathering offered as part of our Accidental Gods Programme is 'DREAMING YOUR DEATH AWAKE' which will run on Sunday 1st November 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT (NOTE THE TIME! - We'll be out of summertime then)  - details are here. You don't have to be a member of Accidental Gods to come along, but if you are, all Gatherings are half price.If you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life. If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here. If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are hereManda and Louise both offer one-to-one Mentoring Calls.  Manda is writing a book just now, but if you'd like to contact Louise, details are here.

Interview with Allen Sabet, CEO, Mogotes Metals Our previous interview: https://www.cruxinvestor.com/posts/mogotes-metals-tsxvmog-district-scale-explorer-triples-drilling-to-20000m-through-2027-11919Recording date: 21st September 2026Mogotes Metals Inc. (TSXV:MOG, FSE:OY4, OTCQB:MOGMF) has spent 2026 assembling a three-project copper-gold portfolio spanning three continents, and CEO Allen Sabet's pitch to investors rests on a single screening discipline applied consistently across all of them: only advance ground that already carries drilled intercepts of at least 100 metres at 1% copper-equivalent, in a jurisdiction the company can realistically permit and finance.The flagship remains Filo Sur, in Argentina and Chile's Vicuña district, immediately south of Lundin Mining's Filo del Sol discovery. A 2025–2026 season of 6,208 metres delivered two discoveries on the Macho Muerto Fault Zone — the high-grade Albor breccia and the Cruz del Sur gold-copper porphyry — alongside expanded targets at Cuenca and Luz del Sol. Rio Tinto closed a US$15 million strategic placement in August, taking roughly 5% of the company and 15 months of project-level exclusivity on Filo Sur, ahead of a 2026–2027 season planned at up to 20,000 metres.Beyond Filo Sur, two option-stage assets add geographic and seasonal diversification. In Montana, Mogotes holds an earn-in over Rio Tinto's Copper Cliffs porphyry: US$16 million of exploration spend buys 51% of the project, with Rio Tinto entitled to pay US$32 million within 90 days of that stage completing to buy back a 2% controlling interest. Drilling of 8,000–9,000 metres is planned pending permits, potentially starting before winter. In Kazakhstan, a three-year option over the Beskauga deposit gives Mogotes access to a historical, unverified resource of several million gold-equivalent ounces at drilling costs the company describes as among the lowest available anywhere — supported by its own on-site sample-preparation lab. Up to 50,000 metres of drilling is planned this year, targeting a preliminary economic assessment within six months.Sabet frames the three-project structure as intentional rather than opportunistic: Filo Sur drills in the Southern Hemisphere summer, Copper Cliffs and Beskauga in the Northern Hemisphere season, spreading news flow and reducing the single-season, single-catalyst risk that typically affects one-asset explorers. The company reports a treasury of approximately C$75 million, which it says funds the coming year's combined ~80,000-metre programme.The risks scale with the structure's ambition. Two of the three projects remain contractually contingent — Mogotes must keep meeting staged spending commitments to retain or grow its interest, and Rio Tinto's Copper Cliffs buy-back right could cap Mogotes' ultimate ownership at a minority stake. The Beskauga resource has not been verified under current NI 43-101 standards. And running three permitting and drilling programmes concurrently across Argentina/Chile, the United States and Kazakhstan introduces jurisdictional and currency exposure that a single-asset peer would not carry.For investors, the near-term catalyst set is unusually dense for a company of this size: Kazakhstan assays within months, a possible Montana drill start in October, and Filo Sur's own season running inside Rio Tinto's 15-month exclusivity clock. Whether that translates into a re-rating depends on whether Mogotes can execute all three simultaneously without diluting shareholders or ceding control of the projects it has spent the past year assembling.Learn more: https://www.cruxinvestor.com/companies/mogotes-metalsSign up for Crux Investor: https://cruxinvestor.com/subscribe

Grains strongly higher on Chinese trade optimism, corn yields disappointing so far; weather concerns mounting for Southern Hemisphere's crops; cattle futures sharply higher on bullish Cattle-on-Feed report; cash steady; boxed beef stronger; cash feeders lower; weekly cash summary.

The Earth's orbit around the sound finds itself at the point where we, from our planet, measure the sun's relative location exactly above the Equator's, making its way South. This marks the autumnal equinox in the Northern Hemisphere and the vernal equinox and the beginning of spring in the Southern Hemisphere. The mix presented today, by our curator Melissa Pons, is an invitation to celebrate - or rather to contemplate, to attune the ears and let the body-mind wander freely. Thanks to our artists, we'll listen to Earth's soundscapes from Aotearoa New Zealand to Portugal - please see the full playlist below. They have all been recorded within 7 days of the September Equinox and in this piece, they have been sculpted and twined into a cinematic dreamy travel with ambient electronic music, in some impossible place between the Earth and the Moon. Full playlist: [00:00-03:07] Gannets of Muriwai - Aotearoa New Zealand (Janina Castro) [03:52-06:49] Cosmic Flows [06:22-12:04] A mirror of Grey Herons - France (Melissa Pons) [09:55-12:20] Acrobatics in the Clouds [10:37-15:06] Forest Rain Drops - Slovenia (Jan Brelih) [13:14-14:51] Plexus Radio Waves [14:07-19:12] A Tawny Frogmouth at Leeawuleena's Shore - Tasmania (Khristos Nizamis) [17:10-19:10] Dream of Pink Moss [17:50-23:31] Smooth Ocean Roar, Green Contours, Nocturnal Animals - Portugal (Melissa Pons) [21:34-26:28] Platypus Pool Quietude - Tasmania (Khristos Nizamis) [24:29-28:26] One Breath to the Outer Space [26:53-33:41] Intense Red Deer Rutting Through the Forest - France (Melissa Pons, Jocelyn Robert) [29:02-29:50] Through the Fog [32:01-34:19] Autumn Wind - Portugal (Melissa Pons] [33:34-38:59] Teddy - Canada (Darcy Spidle) [36:41-38:59] What Yesterday's Storm Offered Us

The September or autumnal equinox takes place tonight and marks the astronomical beginning of autumn in the Northern Hemisphere and spring in the Southern Hemisphere.Joining Seán to discuss this is Editor of Astronomy Ireland Magazine, David Moore…

The September or autumnal equinox takes place tonight and marks the astronomical beginning of autumn in the Northern Hemisphere and spring in the Southern Hemisphere.Joining Seán to discuss this is Editor of Astronomy Ireland Magazine, David Moore…

For our friends in the Southern Hemisphere, whose Spring Equinox is our Fall Equinox. Across the world for thousands of years, human beings have looked toward spring with awe and reverence. After the cold silence of winter, the earth begins to breathe again. Flowers rise from frozen soil. Rivers thaw. Animals emerge from hibernation. The days grow longer and sunlight returns to the land. Again and again, cultures across history have seen this moment not merely as a change in weather but as a cosmic miracle. On this episode we will travel through some of the world's great spring festivals -- from the pagan Ostara to Easter, Nowruz, the Spring Equinox, Holi, Shunbun no Hi, Qingmin and beyond. We'll explore the gods and goddesses associated with these celebrations, the ancient myths behind them and the spiritual meaning humanity has found in the return of spring. Sacred Source Home

Here in the Northern Hemisphere, we are entering the Fall Season. The Equinox is a time to reflect on the previous season and see what changes we need to make to create more balance in our lives. Whether you live in the Northern or Southern Hemisphere, Mother Mary wanted to share a message and meditation to help you receive the blessings of this seasonal shift.   In this episode, you will experience a healing meditation and message from Mother Mary to help you release what you no longer need and open up to the ever-present blessings of Divine Grace.   I would love to know if this meditation helps you feel blessed and more connected. Please feel free to leave a comment.   Key Learnings: 1)    The Equinox is a time of transition and reflection. It invites us to meditate on 'balance' and address any imbalances we may be experiencing. 2)    The fall season is a time of letting go. While surrender is not always easy, it is an act of great faith. Mother Mary urges us to let go of the stories that hold us back, and takes us through a powerful meditation to do exactly that. 3)    Whatever is happening in your outer circumstances, your heart is beating and your lungs are breathing. Divine Grace is the energy that beats your heart and breathes your lungs. Focus on feeling that Divine Grace more and more every day. "This Equinox, let go of the story that holds you back and give yourself a new story."   Click here to join The Miraculous Woman Membership If you love the image on the wall behind me of Mother Mary Blessing the World, you can order your own museum quality copy at www.deepaliu.com  

Forget everything you know about the traditional, sanitized big-top circus, because a beautifully twisted, punk-infused counter-cultural storm is rolling through regional Australia. Straight from the beating heart of the underground party scene, Cirque Le Strange - the mind-bending brainchild of Oozing Future - is hitting the highway for its Regional Tour. This is not a show designed for the faint of heart or the easily offended. It is a high-octane, beautiful explosion of raw sweat, gender-bending performance art, and human-body-defying spectacles that demands to be seen to be believed.For years, Australia's capital cities have gatekept the weirdest and wildest late-night cabaret and freak shows, leaving regional fans starving for authentic alternative entertainment. This highly anticipated regional tour changes the game entirely, bringing a hand-picked, heavy-hitting collective of carnies, queers, and sideshow royalty deep into regional hubs across Victoria and Queensland. Spanning ten chaotic stops from the historic bandrooms of Geelong and Albury to the sun-baked stages of Bundaberg, Rockhampton, and Townsville, this run of shows is a massive, unapologetic celebration of fringe culture.The lineup reads like a fever-dream roll call of alternative icons. Headlining the madness is the legendary King of the Freaks himself - world-famous body modification star The Lizardman, recognizable globally from Ripley's Believe It or Not! Alongside him stands Soliana Ersie, widely celebrated as the bendiest woman in the Southern Hemisphere. Adding fuel to the chaotic fire is punk clown Captain Ruin, famed for causing absolute mayhem and hanging actual weights from his private parts, alongside the stunning Mx Burlesque Victoria winner Winter Greene, and the sheer, gravity-defying pole strength of Thembot.This tour transforms standard regional pub venues into volatile, safe, and wildly liberating playgrounds where the line between performer and audience is completely obliterated. It's punk rock in its purest, most visual form—subversive, shock-inducing, and deeply captivating. Ahead of this monumental, logic-defying trek across the country, we sat down with the masterminds and freaks behind the curtain. In true HEAVY fashion, we dug into the sheer logistics of taking an underground freak show on the regional highway, how they handle pushing the absolute physical limits of the human body night after night, and why regional Australia is more than ready to embrace the strange.Secure your spot via Oztix, leave your expectations at the door, and prepare to join the rebellion—the freaks are officially coming to town.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/heavy-music-interviews--2687660/support.

Could a strong El Niño make one of Chilean salmon farming's most persistent disease challenges even harder to manage?We're taking a closer look at SRS and the potential risks facing Chilean salmon producers as warmer conditions develop ahead of the Southern Hemisphere summer. Learn what makes SRS particularly difficult to prevent and treat, how temperature can influence the spread and severity of the disease, and what happened during previous strong El Niño events. We also explore how better monitoring, new health solutions, and predictive models are giving producers more information to identify changing risks and act earlier.For more aquaculture insights head to our Fish n' Bits blog.

Dunedin's Pukekura/Taiaroa Head National Park is home to the Southern Hemisphere's only mainland colony of Northern Royal Albatross - or toroa. Right now, last season's chicks are preparing to leave their nests and a new lot of breeding adult birds will soon make landfall. But with the H5N1 Bird flu virus now wreaking havoc in Australia, there are concerns for this coming breeding season. Claire Concannon, host of RNZ's science podcast - Our Changing World - visited the Otago Peninsula, to find out how they're preparing.

Today's episode — The Weekend Wrap, Saturday 12 September 2026: OUR LEAD: A SMALLER MERCURY Mercury has been contracting for four and a half billion years as its huge iron core cools, and it writes the record on its own surface — in long lobe-fronted cliffs called lobate scarps, where one slab of crust has ridden up over another. Add up all that shortening and you get the total contraction. The trouble was that the surface record always gave a smaller number than thermal models predicted. New work led by Gaku Nishiyama at the German Aerospace Center in Berlin, published in Geophysical Research Letters and released by the American Geophysical Union on 10 September, explains the gap — and the explanation is beautifully simple. Impact debris buries the cliffs. Using MESSENGER imagery reworked with stereophotogrammetry, the team showed that the rougher the terrain, the fewer shortening structures you can find per unit area. Since faults don't know what the surface above them looks like, that correlation isn't geology — it's a detection limit. Correct for it and Mercury's total loss of diameter rises by 10–30%, from a range topping out near 16 km to as much as 23 km. That points to a larger metal core, fewer light elements in it, or a hotter start — and it closes the long-standing mismatch with the physics. BepiColombo is about ten weeks from gravity capture at Mercury, carrying a far better laser altimeter and a much less eccentric orbit. If Nishiyama is right, it should find the missing small scarps in exactly the rough ground where today's maps look suspiciously empty. Some of that data will come home through ESA's New Norcia station in Western Australia, run in partnership with CSIRO. THE WEEK THAT WAS ·         Monday — Isar Aerospace's Spectrum reached orbit from Andøya Spaceport in Norway on 5 September, the first vehicle ever to do it from Western European soil, carrying five university cubesats. ·         Tuesday — giant-impact simulations including temperature-dependent rock strength can produce an intact Moon in about five hours rather than a slowly accreting debris disc. A sensitivity result, not a new origin story. ·         Wednesday — Hubble and Webb together found 27 previously unknown trans-Neptunian objects down to about 5 km, and the small ones keep the colours of their birth population rather than looking like collision fragments. ·         Thursday — 109 localised fast radio bursts were used to measure how far galactic feedback has smoothed the clumpiness of matter, finding more cool gas in big haloes than X-ray surveys see. ·         Friday — population synthesis suggests magnetars are roughly half of all neutron stars at birth, not one in a hundred, which doubles the Galactic supernova rate and makes magnetar central engines affordable. ALSO IN THIS EPISODE ·         The Sun's superflare potential — new work from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research with the University of Colorado, released 10 September. Scaling the 300 strongest modern solar flares against the size of their active regions, then applying that relation to the giant sunspot group of 1947 — the largest in four centuries of observation — gives a region with enough stored magnetic energy to power a superflare. Potential, not prediction: the caveats are covered properly on air. ·         Rocket Lab has filed a protest with the US Government Accountability Office over NASA's ~$700M Mars Telecommunications Network award to Blue Origin, on eligibility and technical-evaluation grounds. A GAO decision is due around mid-December. ·         Starship Flight 14 has slipped to no earlier than 18 September — and the tower catch of the ship is deferred to a later flight, which corrects how we framed it earlier this month. SKYWATCH — BOTH HEMISPHERES ·         The Moon and Venus about half a degree apart in front of Spica on the evenings of 13–14 September — Southern Hemisphere observers get the better geometry. ·         Venus reaches greatest brilliancy on 18 September at magnitude −4.8. ·         SN 2026aaiv, a Type Ia supernova in NGC 7331 in Pegasus, around magnitude 12 — the week's best observing target, and far easier from North America than from Sydney. ·         Saturn building towards its 4 October opposition, with Dione and Tethys events in the small hours for northern telescope owners. ·         Mars passing 6° south of Pollux pre-dawn on 18 September. ·         The zodiacal light — an evening object in the west from the Southern Hemisphere, a pre-dawn object in the east from the Northern. Best chance until early October. ·         Eye safety: never point binoculars or a telescope near the Sun when hunting daylight Venus or twilight Mercury. Solar filters must be certified to ISO 12312-2, fitted over the front of the instrument, and inspected every time. Links & sources ·         Mercury contraction — Geophysical Research Letters: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2026GL124067 ·         Mercury contraction — AGU Newsroom release: https://news.agu.org/press-release/mercury-is-shrinking-more-than-we-thought ·         Superflares — Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research: https://www.mps.mpg.de/news ·         Superflares — release summary: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1143231 ·         Rocket Lab GAO protest: https://www.space.com/space-exploration/missions/rocket-lab-protests-nasas-decision-to-award-blue-origin-usd700-million-mars-orbiter-contract ·         Starship Flight 14 schedule: https://www.spacelaunchschedule.com/launch/starship-flight-14/ ·         SN 2026aaiv in NGC 7331: https://www.rochesterastronomy.org/sn2026/sn2026aaiv.html ·         Magnetar fraction — Nature Astronomy: https://www.nature.com/natastron/articles?year=2026 ·         Sky this week: https://www.astronomy.com/the-sky-this-week/the-sky-this-week-from-september-11-to-18-2026/ ·         ESA deep space ground stations: https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Operations/New_era_for_New_Norcia_deep_space_antenna More at astronomydaily.io — full back catalogue, news feed, newsletter sign-up and listener contact form. Follow us: @AstroDailyPodBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.astronomydaily.io/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Get the best secure and private email on the planet. Stop your Government, google and who knows who else spying on every email you write. Do what we did and use ProtonMail. They beleive in privacy and there are no ads in their business model...yet they still provide a free forever service. Check them out and get out special deal at www.astronomydaily.io/protonmailBecome a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

Today's episode — S05E191, Friday September 11, 2026: Main story: A population-synthesis study published in Nature Astronomy on 10 September argues that magnetars make up roughly half of all neutron stars, not the one-in-a-hundred implied by the catalogues. Celsa Pardo-Araujo and Nanda Rea (Institute of Space Sciences, ICE-CSIC, Barcelona) with Michele Ronchi (ASTRON) and Vanessa Graber (Royal Holloway) modelled the whole isolated-neutron-star population as one family rather than four separate classes, evolving spin-down, magneto-thermal decay and Galactic dynamics together, then filtering the simulated population the way real surveys filter the sky. Of the 24 known neutron stars younger than 2,000 years, magnetars and central compact objects are about 59%; the derived birth fraction averages ~50% (40–70% or 30–50% depending on the assumed birth-field distribution, which peaks at 1–2.5 × 10^14 gauss). Two consequences: the Galactic core-collapse supernova rate has to be higher than assumed, around two per century, and magnetar central-engine models for superluminous supernovae, gamma-ray burst plateaus and fast radio bursts finally have the supply to work. Caveats: it is a model rather than a census, the anchor sample is 24 objects, and 'magnetar' is defined by a field threshold. Southern thread: the field began with SGR 0526−66 in the Large Magellanic Cloud on 5 March 1979, and the same Barcelona group modelled GLEAM-X J162759, found with the Murchison Widefield Array in Western Australia. The rest of the news: ·         Chariklo's rings: The first stellar occultation ever planned specifically for JWST — 18 October 2022 — has been published in Science Advances, led by Yücel Kılıç, Pablo Santos-Sanz and Celia Navas (IAA-CSIC) with Nicolas Rambaux, Bruno Sicardy and Josselin Desmars (LTE) and Damya Souami (LIRA). Against the 2017 ground-based occultations, the inner ring C1R is about 50% more opaque and the outer ring C2R about 60% less, with the ring positions unchanged. Chariklo is the largest known centaur at ~125 km radius; the rings sit at 390 and 405 km and are a few km wide. Candidate explanations: material loss from C2R, material arriving at or collisions grinding down C1R — or a wavelength effect, since infrared is being compared with visible light. The rings were discovered in 2013 by an occultation campaign across Chile, Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. ·         Mercury under bombardment: Kilpua et al. report in Nature Astronomy (8 September) that BepiColombo's fourth Mercury flyby in September 2024 — 165 km above the surface, closer than its eventual science orbit — coincided with a major solar particle eruption. The Finnish-built SIXS instrument watched energetic electrons and protons penetrate Mercury's magnetosphere and precipitate onto the surface over a wide area. That bombardment both sputters atoms off the surface and drives the X-ray fluorescence used to read its composition, and Mercury's small, weak magnetosphere makes it a stand-in for Earth during an extreme solar storm. The spacecraft separated its transfer module on 3 September; gravity capture is 21 November. ·         Europe buys a way home: ESA has awarded The Exploration Company a contract worth up to €760M under ALADDIN (Autonomous LEO Accelerated Demo Docking to ISS Node) — €310M for the demonstration mission, with ESA funding 60% and the company 40%, plus €450M in options for two further flights. The Nyx capsule flies on Ariane 6 and must dock with the ISS no later than Q2 2029, with up to €50M in additional incentive for using European launch vehicles. Europe has flown cargo up before, with the five ATVs, but has never returned anything from orbit. CEO Hélène Huby: 'It is the first time in Europe that a five-year-old space startup wins a contract worth hundreds of millions of euros.' The company's Mission Possible capsule survived reentry in June 2025 but was lost before splashdown — a partial success in its own words. Thales Alenia Space Italy remains in a parallel tender. ·         Parker Solar Probe: NASA reports the spacecraft completed its 29th close approach on 4 September, again matching the record set on Christmas Eve 2024 — 430,000 mph and 3.8 million miles from the solar surface, for the eighth time. The encounter ran 30 August to 9 September with nine days of autonomous operation and a beacon tone on the 7th; this pass targeted structures near the Sun's north pole, sampling nearly 40% of the solar circumference in a day. Telemetry began flowing on 11 September, science data 13–27 September. The mission is extended through 2029. ·         Skywatch: New Moon on 11 September at 14:27 AEST makes tonight and tomorrow the darkest nights of the month. Southern Hemisphere — Venus low in the west after sunset, building to greatest brilliancy on 18 September at magnitude −4.8, with a very thin crescent Moon sweeping past on the 13th and 14th (about half a degree apart on the 14th, near Spica); EarthSky notes the Southern Hemisphere gets the better view. Saturn rises soon after sunset heading for its 4 October opposition with the rings ~7° open, and the Milky Way core is still high in the early evening. The zodiacal light is an evening object here — 'false dusk' in the west after full darkness, through early November. North America — the zodiacal light is a pre-dawn object in the east ('false dawn'), well flagged around the 15th; Jupiter dominates the pre-dawn east closing on Regulus with Mars near Castor and Pollux; Saturn is ~50° up in the south after midnight, and early Saturday morning Dione transits Saturn's north polar region around 2:55 a.m. EDT with Tethys entering Saturn's shadow around 2:10 a.m. EDT. Space weather has eased to quiet-to-unsettled after two minor G1 storms on the 8th and 9th. Eye safety: never point optics near the Sun without a purpose-built front-mounted solar filter; eclipse glasses must be ISO 12312-2 certified and are for naked-eye use only, never with binoculars or a telescope. Links & sources ·         Pardo-Araujo, Rea, Ronchi & Graber, 'Magnetar fraction in Core-Collapse Supernovae', Nature Astronomy (10 Sept 2026) — https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.16159 ·         ICE-CSIC — Institute of Space Sciences, magnetar population release (10 Sept 2026) — https://www.ice.csic.es/ ·         Kılıç, Santos-Sanz, Navas, Rambaux, Sicardy, Desmars & Souami, 'JWST stellar occultation reveals unexpected changes in Chariklo's ring system', Science Advances (Sept 2026) — https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aeh4794 ·         Observatoire de Paris / LTE — The James Webb Space Telescope Reveals That Chariklo's Invisible Rings Are Changing (9–10 Sept 2026) — https://lte.observatoiredeparis.psl.eu/The-James-Webb-Space-Telescope-Reveals-That-Chariklo-s-Invisible-Rings-Are ·         Sky & Telescope — Webb Space Telescope Discovers Surprising Changes in an Asteroid's Rings (10 Sept 2026) — https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/webb-space-telescope-discovers-surprising-changes-in-an-asteroids-rings/ ·         Kilpua et al., 'Planetary shielding and surface precipitation of solar energetic particles during BepiColombo's close Mercury flyby', Nature Astronomy (8 Sept 2026) — https://www.nature.com/natastron/research-articles ·         University of Helsinki / SIXS — BepiColombo measures Mercury's particle bombardment up close (10 Sept 2026) — https://phys.org/news/2026-09-bepicolombo-mercury-particle-bombardment.html ·         ESA — Press Release N° 47–2026: ESA awards service contract to The Exploration Company (10 Sept 2026) — https://www.esa.int/Newsroom/Press_Releases ·         European Spaceflight — ESA Awards The Exploration Company a €760M Space Station Cargo Contract (10 Sept 2026) — https://europeanspaceflight.com/esa-awards-the-exploration-company-a-e760m-space-station-cargo-contract ·         NASA — After Latest Swing Past Sun, NASA's Parker Solar Probe Checks In (10 Sept 2026) — https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/parker-solar-probe/ ·         EarthSky — Visible planets and night sky guide for September — https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/visible-planets-tonight-mars-jupiter-venus-saturn-mercury/ ·         EarthSky — Zodiacal light: everything you need to know — https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/everything-you-need-to-know-zodiacal-light-or-false-dawn/ ·         Astronomy.com — The Sky This Week from September 11 to 18 — https://www.astronomy.com/the-sky-this-week/the-sky-this-week-from-september-11-to-18-2026/ Follow us: @AstroDailyPodBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.astronomydaily.io/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Get the best secure and private email on the planet. Stop your Government, google and who knows who else spying on every email you write. Do what we did and use ProtonMail. They beleive in privacy and there are no ads in their business model...yet they still provide a free forever service. Check them out and get out special deal at www.astronomydaily.io/protonmailBecome a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

Today's episode — S05E190, Thursday September 10, 2026: Main story: 109 fast radio bursts have been used to measure how much galactic feedback has smoothed out the matter in the universe. A fast radio burst lasts about a millisecond, and on its way to us it is dispersed — low radio frequencies slowed more than high ones by free electrons along the path, exactly the way a prism separates white light. The size of that delay counts the ordinary matter the burst passed through. Writing in Nature Astronomy on 8 September, a team led by Kritti Sharma at Caltech, with Vikram Ravi, Liam Connor and Elisabeth Krause (University of Arizona), used 109 bursts localised to host galaxies out to redshift ~0.3 — most of them from Caltech's DSA-110 — to constrain the suppression of matter clustering by feedback, and the gas fractions of groups and clusters between 10^13 and 10^15 solar masses. They find more gas retained than the X-ray picture implies: gas fractions about 1.9σ above stacked eROSITA measurements, and slightly above the Atacama Cosmology Telescope's kSZ constraints, consistent with the bursts counting cool gas that X-rays miss. The constraint is already competitive with both of those far larger experiments, cutting the uncertainty on clustering at these scales by roughly a factor of eight. That matters because feedback is the confound sitting under the S8 tension — it mimics the signature of massive neutrinos and of some dark energy and dark matter models. The technique's foundation is Australian: the Macquart relation, established with ASKAP in Western Australia in 2020, is what found the universe's missing ordinary matter in the first place. The rest of the news: ·         Hypersoft X-ray sources: NASA and the Chandra X-ray Center announced a new class of object on 9 September — 84 sources across six galaxies (M31, M101 and four ellipticals) that emit more than eight times as many photons below 0.3 keV as just above it, exceeding 10^38 erg/s in that narrow band and more again in the extreme ultraviolet. Led by Mustafa Muhibullah (University of Alabama) with Jimmy Irwin and Rosanne Di Stefano (CfA), published in Nature Astronomy. They are likely compact objects accreting from companions, and may be both the long-sought progenitors of Type Ia supernovae and a significant unaccounted source of ionising radiation. ·         A rendezvous with Halley's Comet: a trajectory study circulated on 6 September by Roberto Flores and Elena Fantino (Khalifa University), Mauro Pontani (Sapienza), and Ivano Bertini and Cesare Barbieri (Padua) sets out the first Halley rendezvous achievable with proven hardware — unpowered Jupiter and Saturn gravity assists plus deep-space low-thrust arcs, a Hall-effect thruster on a standard RTG, ~2,000 kg launch mass with ~750 kg of instruments, launching August 2036 or September 2037 and arriving in 2060, about a year before Halley's 2061 perihelion. Months alongside the comet instead of Giotto's minutes at 68 km/s. ·         Apollo Maneuvers 2026: US Space Command announced on 8 September that it had completed the first live-fly orbital manoeuvre exercise of its kind, moving real operational satellites across low, medium and geosynchronous orbits with Operation Olympic Defender allies (Australia among them) and commercial operators via its Commercial Integration Cell. Named for the US Army's 1941 Louisiana Maneuvers. The practical consequence is more unpredictable objects in an already crowded region, and in-orbit refuelling becoming load-bearing. ·         Skywatch: New Moon on 11 September at 14:27 AEST (04:27 UTC) makes tonight and tomorrow the darkest nights of the month. Southern Hemisphere — the galactic core still high after dark, and Venus well placed low in the west-south-west, 7.4° from Spica and building to greatest brilliancy on 18 September at magnitude −4.8. Saturn rises about an hour after sunset for everyone, heading for its 4 October opposition with the rings about 7° from edge-on. North America — the pre-dawn sky, with Mars in Gemini passing Castor on the 12th and Pollux on the 17th, and Jupiter below it in Cancer. Plus a convoy of CMEs from AR4524 arriving since 8 September, two G1 storms already recorded and G2 possible: aurora chances at both ends of the planet, including Tasmania, coastal southern Victoria and New Zealand's South Island. Links & sources ·         Caltech — Fast Radio Bursts Poised to Help with Biggest Cosmic Mysteries (8 Sept 2026) — https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/fast-radio-bursts-poised-to-help-with-biggest-cosmic-mysteries ·         Sharma, Krause, Ravi, Connor et al., 'Signatures of Suppressed Matter Clustering revealed by Fast Radio Bursts', Nature Astronomy (8 Sept 2026) — https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.17162 ·         NASA — NASA's Chandra Unveils Mysterious X-ray Objects (9 Sept 2026) — https://science.nasa.gov/missions/chandra/nasas-chandra-unveils-mysterious-x-ray-objects/ ·         Muhibullah, Irwin & Di Stefano, 'Hypersoft X-ray Sources: A New Class of Luminous Cosmic Emitters', Nature Astronomy (9 Sept 2026) — https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.06192 ·         Flores, Beolchi, Pozzi, Pontani, Bertini, Barbieri & Fantino, 'Double Gravity-Assist Rendezvous Trajectory to Halley's Comet Using Deep-Space Low Thrust' (arXiv, 6 Sept 2026) — https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.02189 ·         Air & Space Forces Magazine — SPACECOM Maneuvers Satellites Across Orbits in New Exercise (9 Sept 2026) — https://www.airandspaceforces.com/space-command-maneuvers-satellites-across-multiple-orbits-in-new-exercise/ ·         EarthSky — Sun news: series of sun blasts arriving, auroras to come — https://earthsky.org/sun/sun-news-activity-solar-flare-cme-aurora-updates/ ·         EarthSky — Visible planets and night sky guide for September — https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/visible-planets-tonight-mars-jupiter-venus-saturn-mercury/ ·         TheSkyLive — Moon calendar, September 2026 — https://theskylive.com/moon-calendar?year=2026&month=09Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.astronomydaily.io/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Get the best secure and private email on the planet. Stop your Government, google and who knows who else spying on every email you write. Do what we did and use ProtonMail. They beleive in privacy and there are no ads in their business model...yet they still provide a free forever service. Check them out and get out special deal at www.astronomydaily.io/protonmailBecome a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

HEADLINES: Kieren Perkins says the Olympics needs to think hard about which sports make the cut for Brisbane 2032. One Nation has proposed letting people take some of their super as cash for three years. The far-right AfD party has doubled its vote share in a German state election. Nicole Kidman says she doesn't want to be her daughters' best friend. Sydney's is getting one of the biggest CBD solar farms in the Southern Hemisphere. PLUS The latest on the Lindsay Clancy murder trial.HELPLINES: If you or anyone you know needs to speak with an expert after welcoming a child, please contact the Perinatal Anxiety and Depression Australia (PANDA) Helpline on 1300 726 306. If you or anyone you know needs to speak with an expert, please contact your GP or in Australia, contact Lifeline (13 11 14), Kids Helpline (1800 55 1800) or Beyond Blue (1300 22 4636), all of which provide trained counsellors you can talk with 24/7. Check out The Quicky Instagram here and our TikTok here GET IN TOUCHGot a story, news tip-off, feedback or dilemma?Send us a voice note or email us at thequicky@mamamia.com.au HELPFUL LINKS: Become a Mamamia subscriber and get an all-access pass to everything we make, including exclusive podcasts and early listening, subscriber-only articles, monthly giveaways and our home workout app, MOVE. Get access to Very Peri, Mamamia's exclusive perimenopause series, for just $59.25 world-leading experts, over 20 on-demand sessions, available now. We’ve sorted through the noise so you don't have to. Go to veryperi.com.au today. You hot? Same. CREDITSHost: Charlotte Mortlock Audio Producer: Scott Stronach Group Executive Producers: Georgie Page and Tamsin Rose Discover more Mamamia podcasts here Did you know some of our shows are now in video on the Apple Podcast app? Make sure your phone is up to date and check it out here! Mamamia acknowledges the traditional owners of the land on which we have recorded this podcast.Become a Mamamia subscriber: https://www.mamamia.com.au/subscribeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Interview by Angela CroudaceFew musical trajectories in recent Australian heavy music history have matched the breakneck, neon-soaked velocity of Germany's electronicore powerhouses, Electric Callboy. What began as a wildly packed, early-afternoon curiosity slot at Good Things Festival 2022 has evolved into a full-blown love affair with the Southern Hemisphere. Aussie audiences quickly proved they had an insatiable appetite for the band's unapologetic fusion of crushing metalcore breakdowns and pulsating, high-energy EDM. Every subsequent visit has seen venue sizes skyrocket, culminating in their massive Tanzneid World Tour, which hits major arenas across the country this month.The secret to Electric Callboy's rapid rise lies in their ability to turn any venue into a chaotic yet unified celebration. Since frontmen Kevin Ratajczak and Nico Sallach ushered in the definitive TEKKNO era, the band has transcended traditional genre constraints. They trade grim, brooding metal tropes for bowl cuts, tracksuits, and unadulterated joy. Tracks like "We Got the Moves" and "Hypa Hypa" are designed for maximum crowd participation, blurring the line between a heavy music festival pit and a European rave.Australia occupies a genuinely special place in the band's hearts. It is a country where they have experienced everything from last-minute festival emergencies—like pulling in legendary drummer Frank Zummo with mere hours' notice—to headlining legendary venues like Rod Laver Arena. According to the band, flying down under feels less like a gruelling work trip and more like a reward, driven by the unique, welcoming chaos of local crowds who know how to party hard while looking out for one another.Ahead of their biggest Australian headline run to date, we sat down with Jamie and Jake. In this exclusive chat, the charismatic duo opens up about their meteoric rise from the smaller stages to full-blown arenas, navigating the relentless pace of global touring, and how their families react to their viral success. We also dive into the creative evolution behind their latest anthems, the profound impact of stopping to smell the roses amidst the madness, and why Australian fans continue to give them some of the most unforgettable nights of their lives.Turn up the techno, grab your sweatbands, and dive into our deep-chat with the unstoppable force that is Electric Callboy. To get tickets for Electric Callboy's Australian tour visit www.destroyalllines.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/heavy-music-interviews--2687660/support.

Grains open sharply lower on Black Sea export hopes, but regain much of the losses; solid export sales; Southern Hemisphere wheat prospects look good so far; cattle futures higher; cash steady; boxed beef lower; cash feeders mixed.

Today's episode — S05E183, Wednesday September 2, 2026: Main story: A thermal anomaly beneath Mars's south pole. Writing in Nature on August 27, a team led by Alexander Berne (Caltech PhD '26, now University of Arizona) reports that the interior of Mars's southern hemisphere is 200–400 °C hotter than the northern hemisphere and partially molten. The team used tidal tomography — measuring how much the solid body of Mars flexes under the Sun's tidal pull by tracking minute velocity changes in three orbiters (Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter) across roughly 25 years of radio tracking data. Hotter, softer rock deforms more, so the degree of flex reveals interior temperature. The result offers a deep-interior explanation for the Martian crustal dichotomy — the sharp division between the smooth low northern plains and the ancient, thickly crusted southern highlands, unexplained since the Viking era — and also accounts for the concentration of crustal magnetic anomalies in the south and the unexpectedly strong seismic-wave damping seen by InSight. The cause of the asymmetry remains open: a giant early impact, lopsided mantle convection, or a heat-trapping compositional layer. Co-authors span Brown University, NASA Goddard, the University of Arizona, Academia Sinica, the University of Rome, TU Delft, UCLA, UT Austin, CU Boulder and UC Santa Cruz. Crew-13 stands down. NASA and SpaceX announced on August 29 that an oxidizer leak had been found in the Dragon spacecraft's propulsion system during standard prelaunch processing, delaying the Crew-13 launch from its September 12 target. Teams are performing additional tests and data review and will complete any necessary rework before flight; a new target date will be announced once available. The crew is commander Jessica Watkins (NASA), pilot Luke Delaney (NASA), and mission specialists Joshua Kutryk (CSA) and Sergey Teteryatnikov (Roscosmos), flying an approximately seven-month increment with significant station maintenance and several spacewalks planned. Swift is observing again. NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory restarted science operations on August 26, with two of its three instruments back online and the third expected within weeks. Swift's telescopes had been powered down progressively — the ultraviolet/optical and X-ray telescopes in February, the Burst Alert Telescope in April — to reduce power draw and atmospheric drag while awaiting a boost from Katalyst Space's LINK spacecraft, launched in July. NASA announced on August 19 that LINK would not attempt the capture after developing attitude-control problems. With no rescue coming, NASA has restarted the instruments to extract as much science as possible. NASA expects Swift to fall below roughly 300 km (185 miles) — where telescope operations become impractical — within the next one to two months. Katalyst will still fly proximity operations to demonstrate in-orbit servicing techniques. An 80,000-year mission to Alpha Centauri. The Seattle-area nonprofit Fermi Explorer Mission announced plans to launch a 100–200 kg probe toward Alpha Centauri (4.4 light-years away) at the end of 2029, most likely on a SpaceX rideshare. Solar electric propulsion plus repeated perihelion pumping manoeuvres would build a cruise speed of 24.2 km/s (about 54,000 mph) — faster than New Horizons at Pluto — for a journey of roughly 80,000 years: 12 years of active operations followed by around 79,500 years of coasting. Budget is under $15 million, with $10 million verbally pledged. Payload is at least 1 kg in a shielded 10 cm cube, including a digitised Voyager Golden Record, messages from children worldwide, and cosmic-ray detectors. Co-founders Philip Johnston, Ezra Feilden and Adi Oltean are behind the space computing company Starcloud; the advisory board includes Rob Meyerson (former Blue Origin president) and Jeff Thornburg (former SpaceX propulsion lead). Johnston: "We'll be the first to leave, and the last to arrive." It would be the first spacecraft deliberately aimed at a specific star. Tonight's sky and the month ahead: Five naked-eye planets are in play through September. Venus dominates the early evening, low in the west/west-southwest about 14° up an hour after sunset (Sydney sunset ≈ 5:34pm AEST), still close to Spica after last night's conjunction, and building to maximum brilliance on September 18 — with a thin crescent Moon alongside on the 14th. Saturn is up most of the night at magnitude +0.4 with its rings tilted just 8° from edge-on, the narrowest in about a dozen years, and rides far higher for Southern Hemisphere observers than for northern ones. Mars rises around 1:40am and is slowly brightening; Jupiter rises east-northeast around 3:50am, and on September 8 the Moon occults Jupiter for much of North America. Mercury appears low in evening twilight in the final week, about 1° above Spica on the 25th. The Moon is a waning gibbous heading to last quarter on September 4. Also this month: International Observe the Moon Night on the 19th, the equinox on the 22nd, and a Harvest Moon near Saturn on the 26th. Standing reminder: any solar filter must be certified to ISO 12312-2.   Links & sources: Caltech — Thermal Anomaly Discovered Below Mars's South Pole (Aug 28) Nature — "Tidal Tomography Reveals a Thermal Anomaly Beneath Mars's Crustal Dichotomy", Berne et al. (Aug 27) Phys.org — Thermal anomaly discovered below Mars' south pole Space.com — Scientists discover massive underground 'thermal anomaly' on Mars NASA Space Station Blog — NASA, SpaceX Adjust Crew-13 Launch Date (Aug 29) Space.com — SpaceX, NASA delay next astronaut launch to ISS due to leak on Dragon spacecraft NASA Swift Blog — NASA's Swift Restarts Science Observations (Aug 28) Space.com — NASA's Swift space telescope resumes observations after failed orbital rescue attempt (Aug 31) GeekWire — Fermi Explorer team plans 80,000-year trip to Alpha Centauri (Sept 1) Space.com — Nonprofit wants to launch 80,000-year mission to Alpha Centauri in 2029 (Sept 1) MIT Technology Review — How AI plotted an interstellar journey to Alpha Centauri (Sept 1) NASA Science — What's Up: September 2026 Skywatching Tips Space.com — 5 planets will light up the September sky Follow us: @AstroDailyPod  Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.astronomydaily.io/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Get the best secure and private email on the planet. Stop your Government, google and who knows who else spying on every email you write. Do what we did and use ProtonMail. They beleive in privacy and there are no ads in their business model...yet they still provide a free forever service. Check them out and get out special deal at www.astronomydaily.io/protonmailBecome a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

Faded Luxury: The Sinking of the Principessa Mafalda On October 25, 1927, off the coast of Brazil, one of Italy's grandest ocean liners took over four hours to sink, in clear weather, calm seas, in daylight, with rescue ships already alongside. The Principessa Mafalda had carried tens of thousands of Italian emigrants across the Atlantic for nearly two decades, and was a symbol of national pride on the Genoa-Buenos Aires run. But by 1927, she was a tired ship on what should have been her final voyage that was plagued by breakdowns, food spoilage, and a mysterious list to port that nobody explained to the passengers. When her propeller shaft finally failed near the Abrolhos Islands, what followed was four hours of chaos, panic, and preventable death, followed by a government-shaped press cover-up and an official inquiry that never asked the hard questions. 314 people perished that day, including many by shark attack. The wreck has never been found, and a century later, the Principessa Mafalda remains one of history's least-remembered maritime disasters, despite being the deadliest peacetime shipping catastrophe the Southern Hemisphere has ever seen. Written, edited, and produced by Rich Napolitano. All episodes, images, and sources can be found at ⁠⁠shipwrecksandseadogs.com⁠⁠. Original theme music by Sean Sigfried. You can find him at ⁠⁠⁠seansigfried.com⁠⁠.⁠ **

In today's episode of The Quiz, we're testing your knowledge on everything from early education milestones to unique political history. Can you answer these? Changing Seasons: Earth's tilt causes opposite seasonal cycles between hemispheres. When the Northern Hemisphere transitions into autumn, during which month does autumn officially begin in the Southern Hemisphere? Historical Monikers: Before he became one of the most prominent leaders of the Civil Rights movement, this famous activist was known by a different name. Do you know his original birth surname? World Geography: European nations held territory across the globe under various historical titles. Which modern African nation was once known to European cartographers as Portuguese East Africa? Play. Share. Listen, with FOX News Sunday Anchor & Host of the ‘Livin' the Bream Podcast,' Shannon Bream. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode — S05E182, Tuesday September 1, 2026: Main story: SpaceX cleared Booster 21's static fire at Starbase's Pad 2 on August 30, the last major milestone before Starship Flight 14 — the third flight of the Starship V3 design. Ship 41 had already completed its own static fire campaign at Massey's Test Site. Flight 14 will attempt something no Starship flight has done before: catching the ship itself, not just the Super Heavy booster, with the launch tower's upgraded "chopstick" arms. Pad 2 received expanded propellant storage, additional pumps and faster-moving catch hardware ahead of the attempt. The flight follows directly on from Flight 13's Ship 40, which survived a dramatic, unplanned float in the Indian Ocean after splashdown before finally beginning its journey home to Starbase on August 30. A firm Flight 14 launch date is still pending FAA and range approvals, with current expectation pointing to sometime in September. Chang'e-7 slips to early 2027. China's four-vehicle lunar south pole mission — rolled back to the vehicle assembly building on August 24, hours before its scheduled launch — has now been retargeted to early 2027 (February–March windows), a far bigger delay than the "about a month" first reported. Chinese authorities have not disclosed a technical cause beyond an approaching storm; multiple outlets report a separate issue was likely found during final on-pad testing, with reviews continuing into whether the launch vehicle or the spacecraft itself is at fault. A very busy month at the space station. NASA's Jessica Meir (her 7th spacewalk) and ESA's Sophie Adenot (her 3rd, following her historic first-French-woman EVA a few weeks ago) began a roughly six-and-a-half-hour spacewalk at 7:30am EDT on September 1 — the ISS's 284th since 1998, and Expedition 75's fourth in a single month. Tasks include replacing a spacecraft navigational aid, prepping a cosmic particle detector for a future upgrade, and installing data-relay jumper cables. NASA's Anil Menon supported from inside on Canadarm2, with Jack Hathaway on safety watch. Planet formation is a "race against time." A team led by Naman Bajaj (University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, with the SETI Institute) published in The Astronomical Journal on August 27, using archival JWST MIRI data on 72 young, Sun-like stars to show protoplanetary disk dispersal happens in two distinct phases — magnetically driven jets and winds early on (roughly the first 1–10 million years), then photoevaporative winds taking over as the star matures. Gas giant planets must form before that gas is gone. Türkiye joins the Artemis Accords. Turkish Minister of Industry and Technology Mehmet Fatih Kacır signed on August 31 at NASA Headquarters, hosted by NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman — Türkiye is the 71st country to sign. Türkiye sent its first astronaut to the ISS in 2024 and is preparing its first lunar mission, AYAP-1; it hosts the International Astronautical Congress in October. Tonight's sky: Venus is in a tight conjunction with Spica, under 2° apart, low in the west/west-southwest about 45 minutes after sunset (Sydney sunset ≈ 5:33pm AEST), setting roughly 90 minutes later. Saturn now rises near sunset and is up most of the night in Aquarius, building toward an October 4 opposition with rings tilted a photogenic angle. Jupiter has returned to the pre-dawn sky (best 4–6am), with Mars still visible nearby but fading. The Moon is a waning gibbous heading to last quarter on September 4. The weak Aurigid meteor shower peaked overnight but is Northern Hemisphere-favoured and moonlight-affected — not worth chasing from the Southern Hemisphere. Links & sources: KeepTrack — SpaceX Brief, Aug 30 2026: Super Heavy Static Fire Clears Starship Flight 14 Basenor — Starship Flight 14: 5 Details That Matter Right Now Space.com — SpaceX test-fires Starship Super Heavy booster ahead of critical Flight 14 Tesla Oracle — Starship 40 begins its journey from the Indian Ocean back home to Starbase, Texas China-in-Space.com — Chang'e 7 Moon Launch Moved to Early 2027 (Aug 31) South China Morning Post — Could the delay to China's moon mission ease pressure on Nasa? (Aug 26) NASA Space Station Blog — Expedition 75 is Go for Tuesday's Navigation and Science Maintenance Spacewalk (Aug 31) NASA — NASA Sets Spacewalk for Station Maintenance, Live Coverage Planned (Sept 1) Universe Today — Planets Hurry To Form Before the Protoplanetary Disk Dissipates University of Arizona News — Planet formation is a 'race against time,' according to new U of A research SETI Institute — JWST Reveals a Race Against Time for Forming Planets NASA — NASA Welcomes Türkiye as Newest Artemis Accords Signatory (Aug 31) When The Curves Line Up — 2026, September 1: Venus and Spica Conjunction Tonight Follow us: @AstroDailyPodBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.astronomydaily.io/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Get the best secure and private email on the planet. Stop your Government, google and who knows who else spying on every email you write. Do what we did and use ProtonMail. They beleive in privacy and there are no ads in their business model...yet they still provide a free forever service. Check them out and get out special deal at www.astronomydaily.io/protonmailBecome a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

Fluent Fiction - Spanish: Airport Adventures: A Journey Beyond the Checkpoint Find the full episode transcript, vocabulary words, and more:fluentfiction.com/es/episode/2026-09-01-07-38-20-es Story Transcript:Es: Las puertas del aeropuerto El Dorado se abrieron y Valeria entró con rapidez.En: The doors of El Dorado Airport swung open and Valeria entered quickly.Es: Era un día típico de finales de invierno en el Hemisferio Sur, y el frío soplaba con fuerza.En: It was a typical late winter day in the Southern Hemisphere, with the cold blowing fiercely.Es: Pero a Valeria le preocupaba más perder su vuelo a España.En: But Valeria was more concerned about missing her flight to Spain.Es: Tenía una asignación importante como periodista de viajes que no podía dejar pasar.En: She had an important assignment as a travel journalist that she couldn't miss.Es: Las pantallas mostraban filas interminables para pasar el control de seguridad.En: The screens showed endless queues for security control.Es: El eco de las maletas rodando y las voces en español e inglés resonaban a su alrededor.En: The echo of rolling suitcases and voices in Spanish and English resonated around her.Es: Las nuevas regulaciones de seguridad habían creado un caos, y Valeria sintió el malestar crecer en su estómago.En: The new security regulations had created chaos, and Valeria felt uneasiness growing in her stomach.Es: Respiró hondo y evaluó sus opciones.En: She took a deep breath and weighed her options.Es: "Ciro," gritó una voz familiar.En: "Ciro," shouted a familiar voice.Es: Al girar, Valeria vio a un oficial de seguridad, Ciro, un hombre conocido por su rigor y profesionalismo.En: Turning around, Valeria saw a security officer, Ciro, a man known for his rigor and professionalism.Es: Valeria había escuchado historias de su deseo oculto de viajar.En: Valeria had heard stories of his hidden desire to travel.Es: Había algo en su mirada que dejaba entrever su sueño no cumplido.En: There was something in his gaze that hinted at his unfulfilled dream.Es: Valeria decidió arriesgarse.En: Valeria decided to take a risk.Es: Con paso decidido, intentó pasar al frente de la fila, pero Ciro la detuvo.En: With a determined step, she attempted to move to the front of the line, but Ciro stopped her.Es: "Señorita, por favor, respete la fila," dijo con voz firme.En: "Miss, please respect the line," he said firmly.Es: Valeria, con la desesperación creciendo, pensó en su carga de trabajo.En: Valeria, with growing desperation, thought about her workload.Es: "Es un vuelo crucial," imploró.En: "It's a crucial flight," she pleaded.Es: Pero Ciro no cedía.En: But Ciro did not relent.Es: Justo cuando la tensión parecía romperse, apareció Lorena, una azafata que había estado observando desde lejos.En: Just when the tension seemed ready to snap, Lorena, a flight attendant who had been watching from afar, appeared.Es: Ella conocía bien el estrés de los viajeros.En: She was well-acquainted with travelers' stress.Es: "Ciro," intervino, "sé que sueñas con viajar tanto como ella.En: "Ciro," she intervened, "I know you dream of traveling as much as she does.Es: Tal vez esto pueda ser su primera aventura, ambos en sus propios caminos."En: Perhaps this could be your first adventure, both of you in your own ways."Es: Ciro se detuvo, mirando a Lorena y luego a Valeria.En: Ciro paused, looking at Lorena and then at Valeria.Es: Suspiró, pensando en lo que realmente importaba en su vida.En: He sighed, reflecting on what truly mattered in his life.Es: Con una sonrisa tímida, autorizó el pase prioritario para Valeria.En: With a shy smile, he granted priority access for Valeria.Es: Valeria apenas podía creerlo.En: Valeria could hardly believe it.Es: Agradeció a Ciro de corazón y corrió hacia su puerta de embarque.En: She thanked Ciro wholeheartedly and rushed towards her boarding gate.Es: En el avión, se cruzó con Lorena, que le sonrió desde el pasillo.En: On the plane, she passed by Lorena, who smiled at her from the aisle.Es: Finalmente, mientras el avión despegaba rumbo a España, Valeria se permitió relajarse por primera vez en todo el día.En: Finally, as the plane took off bound for Spain, Valeria allowed herself to relax for the first time all day.Es: Aunque había actuado por instinto, entendió la importancia de pedir ayuda.En: Although she had acted on impulse, she realized the importance of asking for help.Es: En una nota mental, prometió mejorar su gestión del tiempo.En: Mentally noting, she promised to improve her time management.Es: Mientras tanto, Ciro observaba los aviones despegar cada día, pero ahora con una nueva determinación.En: Meanwhile, Ciro watched the planes take off each day, but now with a renewed determination.Es: Inspirado por el coraje de Valeria y las palabras de Lorena, comenzó a planear sus futuras aventuras por el mundo.En: Inspired by Valeria's courage and Lorena's words, he began planning his future adventures around the world.Es: El aeropuerto seguía siendo un espacio vibrante, pero para Ciro y Valeria, el día trajo cambios que seguirían sus vidas en direcciones más apasionadas.En: The airport remained a vibrant space, but for Ciro and Valeria, the day brought changes that would lead their lives in more passionate directions.Es: Y con una sonrisa satisfecha, Valeria cerró los ojos, lista para su siguiente gran historia.En: And with a satisfied smile, Valeria closed her eyes, ready for her next big story. Vocabulary Words:the airport: el aeropuertothe assignment: la asignaciónthe queues: las filasthe chaos: el caosthe uneasiness: el malestarto breathe: respirarthe security officer: el oficial de seguridadthe rigor: el rigorthe dream: el sueñoto risk: arriesgarseto plead: implorarto relent: cederthe flight attendant: la azafatato intervene: intervenirto reflect: reflexionarto grant: autorizarwholeheartedly: de corazónto rush: correrthe boarding gate: la puerta de embarquethe aisle: el pasilloto take off: despegarto allow: permitirsethe time management: la gestión del tiempothe courage: el corajeto plan: planearthe adventure: la aventurapassionate: apasionadasthe story: la historiathe space: el espaciothe determination: la determinación

The Remembrance: A Priestess Path Retreat: This September, join me for a sacred 2-night retreat in the beautiful Lincolnshire countryside. Held just after the autumn equinox, this is an opportunity to step away from the noise of everyday life, reconnect with yourself and walk the path of remembrance through workshops, ritual, meditation, movement, devotion and sisterhood. 28th–30th September 2026 – final spaces remaining. If you feel called to join us, find out more and book your place here: https://www.kirstygallagher.com/the-remembrance-a-priestess-path-retreat✨ Welcome to your #cosmicweatherreport for the week ahead.

Ask a question hereSPLASH 2026: Why Pool Professionals—and Their Teams—Need to Be ThereSPLASH isn't just another excuse to escape the office, collect two years' worth of free pens, and start asking suspicious questions about when the complimentary slushy machine becomes a margarita machine.For pool professionals across Australia and the Southern Hemisphere, SPLASH is the industry event. It's where new products are launched, new technology is demonstrated, business ideas are exchanged, and technicians finally see that the pool industry is much bigger than the route, retail counter, or equipment pad they work around every day.This week on Mondays Down Under, Lee Salisbury and Nick discuss what makes SPLASH worth attending, why business owners should consider bringing at least one team member, and how the event can reinvigorate a workforce heading out of winter and into the madness of summer.Lee also previews the customer-service and business-growth forums she will be facilitating, while Nick shares the story of a commercial fountain whose chemical controller had apparently been plumbed backward—and remained that way for somewhere between five and seven years while another company visited three times a week.In This Episode What SPLASH is and why it matters to the Australian pool and spa industry  How the trade show has evolved over the decades  Memorable exhibits, product demonstrations and promotional giveaways  Why technicians and younger employees should experience a major industry event  Using SPLASH to motivate and educate your team before summer  New products, software developments and masterclasses expected at the show  Lee's business-growth and customer-experience forums  Protecting productive time with the “red headphones” rule  Deciding which tasks should be delegated before the busy season  Why workplace interruptions cost more time than most managers realize  Preparing your business and staff for the transition from winter into summer  Nick's battle with a badly installed 30,000-litre commercial fountain  A chemical dosing system that had been plumbed incorrectly for years  What happens when equipment is serviced repeatedly without anyone diagnosing the actual problem If you're attending SPLASH, keep an eye out for Lee, Nick and the Mondays Down Under crew—and make sure you say hello. You may even find yourself appearing in an upcoming episode.Questions or topic suggestions? Email talkingpools@gmail.com. Support the showThank you so much for listening! You can find us on social media:FacebookInstagramTik TokEmail us: talkingpools@gmail.com

Anna and Avery cover NASA's newly funded concept for spherical, propeller-free "aerobots" that could one day explore the methane-carved cave systems of Saturn's moon Titan. Plus: SpaceX breaks its own launch-turnaround record with two Falcon 9 missions 38 minutes apart, Rocket Lab lands its biggest-ever defense contract to build "Flatellites" for the U.S. Space Force, and a geomagnetic storm arriving today could bring aurora to high latitudes tonight.**Full show notes:**Today's episode — S05E169, Monday August 17, 2026:**Main story: NASA funds spherical "Aerobots" to explore Titan's caves.** A NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Phase 1 grant is backing SPARK (Solid-state Propulsion for Autonomous Reconnaissance of Karst) — small, propeller-free spherical robots using electrohydrodynamic (EHD) thrusters, led by Daniel Drew (University of Hawaii) with JPL's Ethan Schaler and Jacob Izraelevitz and Michael Malaska (Blue Marble Space Institute of Science). The concept targets Titan's karst terrain — sinkholes and caves carved by liquid methane and ethane rather than water — as a candidate site for astrobiology research. Phase 1 covers nine months; a Phase 2 award could follow. No confirmed mission link yet, though NASA's Dragonfly rotorcraft is headed to Titan around 2028.**SpaceX sets a new launch-turnaround record.** Two Falcon 9 missions launched 38 minutes apart on August 15 — a Globalstar satellite mission from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 9:12 p.m. ET, and the classified USSF-366 mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base at 9:50 p.m. ET — beating SpaceX's previous 65-minute record from August 2024. Both boosters landed successfully (14th and 18th flights respectively). 2026 tally: 96 Falcon 9 launches so far.**Rocket Lab wins $397 million Space Force contract for "Flatellites."** The flat-panel satellites will support the SB-AMTI (Space-Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator) program and launch stacked aboard Rocket Lab's still-undebuted Neutron rocket. It's Rocket Lab's largest defense contract to date, bringing 2026 government contract funding to $943 million.**Geomagnetic storm expected today.** A double CME plus a high-speed solar wind stream is forecast to bring G1–G2 level geomagnetic storming, with the main impact expected later today. Aurora is possible at high latitudes — potentially Scotland, northern England, Northern Ireland, Alaska, Canada, and the northern US, plus southern New Zealand and Tasmania in the Southern Hemisphere. Comes amid an active stretch for the Sun, including 14 C-class flares from sunspot region AR4507 over August 15–16.**Links & sources:**  - [Space.com — NASA funds spherical 'Aerobots' for Titan's caves](https://www.space.com/technology/nasa-funds-spherical-aerobots-that-could-explore-the-caves-of-saturns-moon-titan)  - [JPL Robotics — Titan Aerobots](https://www-robotics.jpl.nasa.gov/what-we-do/research-tasks/titan-aerobots/)  - [JPL — Shapeshifter concept for Saturn's moons (background)](https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-designing-shapeshifting-robots-for-saturns-moons/)  - [Space.com — SpaceX breaks launch doubleheader record](https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/spacex-breaks-record-launch-doubleheader-ussf-366-globalstar-2r)  - [Spaceflight Now — Globalstar/USSF-366 launch coverage](https://spaceflightnow.com/2026/08/15/live-coverage-spacex-to-launch-satellite-replenishment-mission-for-globalstar-from-cape-canaveral/)  - [Space.com — Rocket Lab's $397M Flatellites contract](https://www.space.com/space-exploration/satellites/us-space-force-gives-rocket-lab-usd397-million-to-build-threat-tracking-flatellites)  - [Rocket Lab — Flatellites contract announcement](https://rocketlabcorp.com/updates/rocket-lab-awarded-397-million-contract-to-build-and-launch-flatellites-for-u-s-space-forces-space-based-airborne-moving-target-indicator-program/)  - [ummid.com — Geomagnetic storm set to hit Earth Monday Aug 17](https://www.ummid.com/news/2026/8/16/what-is-geomagnetic-storm-set-to-hit-earth-monday-aug-17.html)  - [EarthSky — Sun news / solar flare, CME, aurora updates](https://earthsky.org/sun/sun-news-activity-solar-flare-cme-aurora-updates/)Follow us: @AstroDailyPodBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.astronomydaily.io/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Get the best secure and private email on the planet. Stop your Government, google and who knows who else spying on every email you write. Do what we did and use ProtonMail. They beleive in privacy and there are no ads in their business model...yet they still provide a free forever service. Check them out and get out special deal at www.astronomydaily.io/protonmailBecome a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

Brian's back from his sojourn to the Southern Hemisphere and boy does he talk about it! We discuss the details of the trip, songs ruined by their choruses, lowbrow Criterion Collection pitches, and more!Do you hate ads but love this show? Do you want an incredible deal on access to our entire 6 year backlog of video and ad-free episodes for TWO DOLLARS A MONTH? Then check out our Patreon and support the show at patreon.com/leightonnight! Kick us $5 a month and you even get a MINISODE every week, too. AND access to the fan discord, which is cool and fun. It's a steal. We literally shouldn't be doing this. Follow us on Twitter at @leightonnight and on Instagram/TikTok at @leighton_night. You can find Brian on Twitter/Instagram at @bwecht and Leighton at @buttchamps (Instagram). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode •      Shadow Day: the only total solar eclipse of 2026 crosses Arctic Russia, Greenland, western Iceland and northern Spain today — the first total eclipse over western mainland Europe since 1999 (Spain's first since 1905, Iceland's since 1954). Max totality ~2 min 18 s. Reykjavík ~17:48 UT; northern Spain ~18:27–18:33 UT (Sun very low, ~4–10° up). Live via NASA, timeanddate and the Exploratorium. •      Where you are: North America gets an afternoon partial (Nova Scotia ~33%, N. Maine ~28%, Montreal ~18%, Boston ~16%, NYC ~9–10%, Toronto ~8%, DC ~10%; Fairbanks ~37% in the morning) — no totality anywhere on the continent, glasses on throughout. Europe outside the path sees a deep evening partial (London ~91%). Australia/SH: not visible directly — watch the streams (~1:30–6:00 am AEST Thu). •      Chasing the shadow: NASA's WB-57 jet flies the path at ~50,000 ft (~740 km/h), extending totality to nearly 3 minutes with four visible/IR cameras (SCIFI) to probe coronal heating, prominences and the solar wind (PI Amir Caspi, SwRI). The Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project (A. Des Jardins, Montana State) launches ~86 balloons from Iceland and Spain to measure atmospheric changes. •      A star-building magnetic field: ALMA captures the first direct high-resolution image of a twisted, toroidal magnetic field wrapped around a protostellar jet in NGC 1333 IRAS 4A (~960 ly, Perseus cloud), confirming a decades-old prediction of how young stars launch jets and shed spin — the same physics that scales up to black-hole jets (Ching et al., Nature Communications 2026; NSF NRAO/ALMA). •      Why worlds turn hellish: UC Riverside's Stephen Kane argues planetary rotation is an overlooked driver of climate and habitability — slow spin may help tip a world into a Venus-style runaway greenhouse. Measuring true spin is hard because winds can masquerade as rotation; ESA's PLATO (launch March 2027) could test the idea across hundreds of Venus-like planets (Astronomical Journal, accepted). •      Skywatch — both hemispheres: the Perseids peak overnight 12–13 Aug under a genuinely moonless sky (best midnight–dawn; NH-favoured). Southern Hemisphere: evening Venus (mag −4.4, just past dichotomy), the pre-dawn planet line-up, and Comet 10P/Tempel 2. ISO 12312-2 eye-safety line included.   Sources •      NASA Science — Total Solar Eclipse on August 12, 2026; “NASA Science Soars During August Total Solar Eclipse” •      timeanddate; Eclipsophile; NationalEclipse.com; azmth.space — path, contact times, magnitudes •      Astronomy.com; Forbes; CBS News — North American partial times & percentages •      Space.com; Smithsonian — WB-57 SCIFI campaign & Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project •      NSF NRAO / phys.org — Ching et al., “Unveiling dominant toroidal magnetic fields in a protostellar outflow,” Nature Communications (2026) •      UC Riverside (news.ucr.edu) / phys.org — S. Kane, planetary rotation & runaway greenhouse (Astronomical Journal, accepted) •      EarthSky; Astronomy.com — Perseid peak (moonless), Venus dichotomyBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.astronomydaily.io/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Get the best secure and private email on the planet. Stop your Government, google and who knows who else spying on every email you write. Do what we did and use ProtonMail. They beleive in privacy and there are no ads in their business model...yet they still provide a free forever service. Check them out and get out special deal at www.astronomydaily.io/protonmailBecome a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

Astronomy Daily · S05E164 “Eclipse Eve” · Tuesday 11 August 2026. Sources are primary/agency where possible; aggregator dates were checked against originals. In this episode •    LEAD — The 12 August total solar eclipse: the only total eclipse of 2026 and the first over mainland Europe since 1999. Totality arcs from Siberia over the North Pole to eastern Greenland, western Iceland, northern Spain and a sliver of Portugal; maximum totality ~2 min 18 s. Partial for much of North America near sunset; not visible from Australia. ESA livestreams from the Javalambre Observatory, Spain. •    MIDDLE 1 — A state CASC Long March 7A exploded ~85 seconds after lifting off from Wenchang on 10 August, a total loss (payload reported as the Zhongxing-4B communications satellite). Separately, Landspace's private Zhuque-3 was on the same-night manifest from Jiuquan for its second propulsive landing-legs recovery attempt — outcome unconfirmed at recording. China's first orbital-booster landing (net-capture, Long March 10B) already succeeded on 10 July. •    MIDDLE 2 — The Perseids peak overnight 12–13 August under a New Moon — the darkest conditions in roughly two decades. Parent comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle. Realistic ~30–50 meteors/hr from dark sites (nominal ~100), with a slim chance of a dust-trail boost; the next confidently forecast outburst is 2028. •    MIDDLE 3 — Japan's H3 launched Michibiki No. 7 (QZS-7) from Tanegashima, bringing the Quasi-Zenith Satellite System up to the strength Japan needs to run it as a standalone service — a regional navigation layer that keeps a satellite near the zenith over Japan/Asia-Pacific, reinforcing GPS and building navigation resilience. The satellite also hosts a US Space Force space-surveillance sensor (SACHI). •    CLOSER — Both-hemispheres skywatch: eclipse viewing times (totality window ~16:58–18:34 UT, greatest ~17:46 UT) and the ISO 12312-2 eye-safety rule; Perseid how-to for the North (best 2 a.m.–dawn); and Southern-Hemisphere content — pre-dawn planets, evening Venus, Comet 10P/Tempel 2. Eye safety •    A partial eclipse is never safe to view with the naked eye. Use ISO 12312-2 certified eclipse glasses/viewers, or indirect projection (pinhole). Direct viewing is only safe during true totality, and only inside the path (Greenland, Iceland, Spain). Links •    astronomydaily.io — full back-catalogue, daily news feed, listener reviews, newsletter sign-up, contact form •    @AstroDailyPod on your platform of choiceBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.astronomydaily.io/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Get the best secure and private email on the planet. Stop your Government, google and who knows who else spying on every email you write. Do what we did and use ProtonMail. They beleive in privacy and there are no ads in their business model...yet they still provide a free forever service. Check them out and get out special deal at www.astronomydaily.io/protonmailBecome a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

Astronomy Daily · S05E163 · “The Long Way Home” · Monday 10 August 2026. Sources verified against primary / institutional outlets. Starship “lost at sea” (Flight 13) •    Flight 13 launched 24 July 2026 from Starbase, South Texas; the upper stage (“Ship,” Ship 40, ~52 m) made the softest Starship water landing yet in the Indian Ocean off Western Australia — and, in a program first, survived intact and afloat. •    SpaceX had not planned to recover it. Musk confirmed the salvage attempt on 28 July (“We're sending a ship out to recover Starship”); recovery ship Go Australis was joined by Norwegian tugs Normand Ranger and Skimmer Tide, with a tow line to the nose. •    On 7 August, Musk said recovery is “not looking good right now” in rough seas — but the team had already obtained close-up photos of critical heat-shield and engine regions for future upgrades. A saltwater-soaked Ship was never going to be reflown. •    Heat shield: on SpaceX's first quarterly earnings call (4 August) Musk said he'd “consider the heat-shield problem solved,” long the biggest hurdle to full reuse. •    The flight also deployed 20 next-gen Starlink V3 satellites; the Super Heavy booster had engine trouble and was lost in the Gulf of Mexico. Stacked, Starship stands ~124 m. Flight 14 is targeted for late August — its first attempt at operational orbit with production Starlink. •    Sources: SpaceX / @elonmusk on X (7 Aug); Space.com (Mike Wall, 7 Aug); CNN (3 Aug). Landspace Zhuque-3, second landing attempt •    Landspace (private, Beijing, founded 2015) targets liftoff ~7:45 p.m. EDT Mon 10 Aug (23:45 UTC / ≈9:45 a.m. AEST Tue 11 Aug) from Jiuquan, aiming for a propulsive first-stage recovery on legs (Falcon 9-style), landing downrange in Gansu. •    The methalox, stainless-steel Zhuque-3 (~66 m) is broadly a Falcon 9 rival. Its Dec 2025 maiden flight reached orbit but the first stage failed its landing burn and crashed. •    Accuracy note: this is China's fourth orbital-class recovery attempt. A Long March 10B already landed via net-capture on 10 July (China became the 2nd nation to land an orbital booster) — so tonight would make Landspace the first Chinese company to attempt a propulsive/landing-legs recovery, not “China's first.” •    Sources: Space.com (7 Aug); Yahoo/Space (7 Aug); launch trackers (NOTAM-based). Uranus's “breathing” bow shock •    New multifluid-MHD modelling shows Uranus's bow shock expands and contracts over a single ~17-hour Uranian day — driven by the planet's own extreme rotation and tilted, offset magnetic field, not by changes in the solar wind. •    The model is constrained by Voyager 2's 1986 flyby — still the only direct measurements ever taken inside the Uranian system (a nice callback to E159's Voyager 2 “Big Bang” lead). •    Implications for future ice-giant missions and for the many ice-giant exoplanets now being found. Cao et al., AGU Advances; surfaced via an Eos research spotlight this week. (Framed as newly-spotlighted rather than newly-published.) •    Sources: AGU Advances (Cao et al.); Eos research spotlight; phys.org (7 Aug). Total solar eclipse — 12 August 2026 •    The only total solar eclipse of 2026. Unusual over-the-pole path: Arctic Siberia → eastern Greenland → western Iceland → northern Spain (clipping NE Portugal) → the Balearics at sunset. •    Greatest eclipse ≈17:46 UTC; max totality 2 min 18 s just off Iceland's west coast, with the Sun only ~26° high. Iceland's first total eclipse since 1954 (Reykjavik's first in 593 years); Spain's first since 1905. •    North America sees a partial across the northern tier (Alaska to North Carolina) and most of Canada — deepest in the far north, a shallow bite (

Astronomy Daily · S05E161 · “The Colour of Empty Space” · Friday 7 August 2026. Hosts: Anna & Avery. astronomydaily.io · @AstroDailyPod ① Vacuum birefringence: reading a magnetar ●        NASA's IXPE, with NICER and the Parkes/Murriyang radio telescope (NSW), measured the polarised X-rays of magnetar 1E 1547.0−5408. ●        Result: soft X-ray polarisation ~65% at 2 keV, rising to nearly 80% at some rotation phases — the strongest signal yet of vacuum birefringence, a QED effect predicted by Heisenberg in 1936. ●        The team calls it the “most definitive signal to date,” not a confirmed detection; an April 2026 analysis disputes it under different geometry. Co-leads: Rachael Stewart; Hoa Dinh Thi (Rice); with Marcus Lower (Swinburne). ●        Source: Stewart et al., Nature, 5 Aug 2026 (DOI 10.1038/s41586-026-10859-z); NASA IXPE release. ② Gateway HALO hardware → Lunar Infrastructure Demos ●        NASA and Northrop Grumman are repurposing the HALO module's power, data and avionics into three surface missions — LID-1, LID-2, LID-3. ●        Goal: “survive-the-night” power and thermal tech for the lunar South Pole, where night lasts ~14 Earth days and temperatures plunge below −200 °C. ●        Part of a wider Moon-base update in which four commercial landers reached final qualification testing at once. ●        Source: NASA & Northrop Grumman releases, 4 Aug 2026; Spaceflight Now. ③ New Glenn: the cause is a valve ●        Blue Origin traced the 28 May New Glenn booster explosion (during a pad hot-fire at Cape Canaveral) to the main oxygen valve on one of the seven BE-4 engines. ●        Fix: small, retrofittable valve modifications; return to flight still targeted by year's end. The BE-4 also powers ULA's Vulcan. ●        Source: Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp, 5 Aug 2026; SpaceNews. ④ LINK's de-spin: the fight to save Swift ●        Katalyst Space's LINK robot — tasked with boosting NASA's ageing Swift observatory before re-entry — hit a multi-axis tumble when two of three reaction wheels failed. ●        Using gimballed electric-propulsion thrusters, the team cut the spin from ~9°/s to ~1.47°/s on under 100 g of propellant. A flight-software update is next; rendezvous slips to ~end of August. ●        Source: NASA Swift blog, 6 Aug 2026; Katalyst mission updates. ⑤ Skywatch: eclipse + Perseids ●        12 Aug total solar eclipse — totality across Greenland, Iceland, northern Spain; afternoon partial for eastern Canada and the NE United States (>10% only NE of the NYC–Rochester line; ~50% in Atlantic Canada). NASA live from 1:15 pm EDT. ●        Perseid peak the night of 12–13 Aug under a New Moon — up to ~100/hr from dark rural sites. ●        Southern Hemisphere: eclipse not visible; Perseids barely clear the horizon. Sydney: pre-dawn planet line-up + Venus + winter Milky Way. ●        EYE SAFETY: use only ISO 12312-2 eclipse glasses for every partial phase; never combine them with a camera, telescope or binoculars.  Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.astronomydaily.io/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Get the best secure and private email on the planet. Stop your Government, google and who knows who else spying on every email you write. Do what we did and use ProtonMail. They beleive in privacy and there are no ads in their business model...yet they still provide a free forever service. Check them out and get out special deal at www.astronomydaily.io/protonmailBecome a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

Welcome to Thursday's Rugby Daily, with Cameron Hill.Coming up today, we'll look ahead to a busy weekend of test-match action in the Southern Hemisphere.And a little later in the pod, we'll hear from the Irish provinces, as the women's interpro get up and running on Saturday.Rugby on Off The Ball with Bank of Ireland | #NeverStopCompeting

Astronomy Daily · S05E160 · 6 August 2026. In this episode: a Falcon 9 upper stage confirmed to have struck the Moon; a live ISS spacewalk; supernova SN 2026gzf caught at first light; SpaceX Crew-13 previewed; and a both-hemispheres guide to the 12 August eclipse and Perseids. FALCON 9 LUNAR IMPACT (LEAD) ●        Spent upper stage 2025-010D struck near Einstein Crater (~19.4°N, 93.3°W) at ~06:35 UTC, 5 Aug 2026 — matching Bill Gray / Project Pluto predictions. ●        ESO's Very Large Telescope (Paranal) detected sodium and lithium in the impact plume for ~5–10 minutes — sodium from lunar soil, lithium likely from the rocket. ●        NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter holds a pre-impact baseline and will image the fresh crater, giving a rare before-and-after dataset to validate hollow-body impact models for future landers. ●        Origin: Falcon 9 launched 15 Jan 2025 with Firefly Blue Ghost 1 and ispace Resilience; the stage was left adrift and returned unplanned via solar activity and gravity. ●        Sources: NASA; ESO / VLT; CNN; Project Pluto (projectpluto.com); Fernando et al., arXiv:2607.14625. ISS SPACEWALK — U.S. EVA 96 ●        NASA's Jessica Meir (Expedition 75 commander) and Anil Menon; ~6.5 h EVA beginning ~08:35 EDT, 6 Aug; live on NASA+. ●        Task: reconfigure the 3B power channel to accept a seventh roll-out solar array later in 2026 — part of station upkeep ahead of the planned 2030 deorbit. ●        Menon's first spacewalk; two further EVAs scheduled 13 and 25 Aug. ●        Sources: NASA / NASA+ ; NASA ISS blog. SUPERNOVA SN 2026GZF ●        X-ray “shock breakout” (EP260321a) detected by China's Einstein Probe on 21 Mar 2026 from a galaxy ~500 million light-years away; follow-up revealed a broad-lined Type Ic supernova. ●        Unusually, no gamma-ray burst and no lasting relativistic jet — and the faintest shock breakout yet linked to this class; a possible missing link between ordinary and GRB-producing supernovae. ●        Follow-up used NSF NOIRLab facilities including DECam and the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. Two teams: O'Connor et al. (CMU) and Rastinejad et al. (UMD), in ApJL. ●        Sources: NSF NOIRLab; Carnegie Mellon University; The Astrophysical Journal Letters. SPACEX CREW-13 ●        Targeting NET 12 Sep 2026 aboard Crew Dragon Grace from SLC-40, Cape Canaveral. ●        Crew: Jessica Watkins (NASA, cmdr — first NASA astronaut to fly Dragon twice), Luke Delaney (NASA, pilot), Joshua Kutryk (CSA), Sergey Teteryatnikov (Roscosmos). 180-day stay; moved up from November. ●        Sources: NASA; SpaceX; Houston Public Media. SKYWATCH — 12 AUGUST & BEYOND ●        Total solar eclipse 12 Aug: totality across E Greenland, W Iceland, N Spain and NE Portugal (max 2m18s). Partial across northern US (Alaska–N Carolina), most of Canada, much of Europe and NW Africa. NASA livestream from 1:15 pm EDT. ●        US partial highlights: Presque Isle ME ~29% (contiguous-US max); NYC ~9% from ~1:07 pm EDT; Boston ~16%; Toronto ~8%; Montreal ~18%; St John's ~53%. ●        Perseids peak 12–13 Aug under a new Moon (northern-favoured, up to ~100/hr from dark northern sites). ●        Southern Hemisphere: pre-dawn planet parade (Saturn best, near opposition; Mars, Mercury, Uranus, Neptune), brilliant Venus in the evening west, and the winter Milky Way high overhead. ●        Look-ahead: deep partial lunar eclipse 28 Aug (96% umbral), favouring the Americas. ●        SAFETY: use only ISO 12312-2 certified eclipse glasses / solar filters during any partial phase. ●        Sources: NASA; ESA; Sky & Telescope; BBC Sky at Night; EarthSky; timeanddate.com; The Planetary Society.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.astronomydaily.io/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Get the best secure and private email on the planet. Stop your Government, google and who knows who else spying on every email you write. Do what we did and use ProtonMail. They beleive in privacy and there are no ads in their business model...yet they still provide a free forever service. Check them out and get out special deal at www.astronomydaily.io/protonmailBecome a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

S05E158 — “The Crater Makers” · Tuesday 4 August 2026. Four stories on cosmic impacts — and a new map of the X-ray sky — plus a both-hemispheres skywatch. ① A dead Falcon 9 is about to crater the Moon ●        A spent SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage (catalogued 2025-010D) is predicted to strike the Moon near Einstein Crater on 5 Aug 2026 at ~06:35 UTC — the second documented uncontrolled rocket impact on the Moon. ●        The stage launched Firefly's Blue Ghost and ispace's Resilience landers in Jan 2025, then was stranded in a chaotic Earth orbit for ~18 months. Impact speed ~2.4 km/s (~5,400 mph); expected crater ~17–27 m across. ●        Prediction by Bill Gray (Project Pluto). NASA's LRO can image the site before and after; a ~two-dozen-author campaign is coordinating observers to chase the ejecta plume. ●        Governance angle: no international framework governs cislunar debris — a growing hazard as lunar traffic increases (callback to E154's distant-retrograde-orbit debris study). Sources: Space.com / Forbes / Reuters (Cris Tolomia) — impact preview, 31 Jul–3 Aug 2026  ·  Project Pluto (Bill Gray) — 2025-010D impact page  ·  ZME Science — impact timing, 3 Aug 2026 ② Neptune's inner moons: shrapnel of a shattered world ●        JWST NIRSpec spectroscopy of Neptune's inner moons Larissa, Galatea and Proteus (Caltech; lead author Ryleigh Davis, Mike Brown's group) detected magnesium-rich phyllosilicates — clay minerals that require liquid water and had never been seen beyond Jupiter. ●        The clays imply the material came from much larger, water-bearing worlds — evidence that Neptune's original regular moon system was destroyed when Triton (a captured Kuiper Belt object) arrived. ●        Proteus, the largest of the three, lacks the clays — possibly re-heated and reprocessed after re-forming, hiding its history. Sources: Davis et al., Science Advances, 29 July 2026  ·  Caltech / phys.org press coverage, 29 Jul–3 Aug 2026  ·  Space.com (Charles Q. Choi), 3 Aug 2026 ③ “Charbroiled within hours”: impact dust and the dinosaurs ●        New modelling (Brandon Johnson et al., Purdue) argues ultrafine impact dust from Chicxulub acted as an insulating blanket, raising surface heating ~3.5× above the spherule-only estimate — enough to ignite global wildfires and kill exposed animals within hours. ●        The same dust then blocked sunlight for years — so the model adds a ferocious opening act to the established “impact winter,” rather than replacing it. Sheltering underground or underwater aided survival. ●        Caveat: the strongest physical wildfire evidence is so far confined to North America (per UCL's Alfio Chiarenza, not involved in the study); a truly global fire record remains unconfirmed. Sources: Johnson, Johnson, Wakita & Robertson, JGR: Biogeosciences, 2026  ·  Popular Science / Space.com / ZME Science, 28 Jul–2 Aug 2026 ④ eROSITA DR2 — the X-ray sky doubles ●        The eROSITA telescope (SRG mission) released its second data set (DR2) on 31 July 2026: ~1.9 million pointlike and ~64,000 extended X-ray sources from the first three all-sky scans — nearly doubling the previously released eROSITA catalogue. ●        For scale: ROSAT catalogued ~130,000 sources in the 1990s and was the benchmark for 30 years. Lead author: Miriam Ramos-Ceja (MPE). ●        DR2 delivers the first direct census of cataclysmic-variable binaries sufficient to explain the decades-old Galactic Ridge X-ray Emission. It coincides with SDSS DR20 (Black Hole Mapper), enabling 3D mapping of active black holes. Sources: Ramos-Ceja et al. (eROSITA-DE), arXiv:2607.27772; DR2 release  ·  Max Planck Society press release, 29 July 2026  ·  phys.org, 31 Jul 2026 Skywatch — both hemispheres ●        Falcon 9 impact (5 Aug, ~06:35 UTC): not naked-eye; ejecta plume a long shot for advanced amateurs in the Americas near the western limb (~2:35 a.m. EDT). Sydney: Moon below horizon — watch for LRO after-images. ●        Comet 10P/Tempel 2: perihelion 2 Aug, closest to Earth 3 Aug (~0.41 AU); ~mag 8–9 near M30 in Capricornus. Best return of the century; Southern-Hemisphere-favoured; Northern viewers low on the southern horizon. Darkest window ~7–8 Aug. ●        This evening: Venus threads between Regulus (Leo) and Spica (Virgo) in the west — both hemispheres, no equipment. Mercury at its best morning showing (greatest western elongation 2 Aug), low in the pre-dawn east. ●        Diary — 12 Aug: total solar eclipse (Greenland/Iceland/Spain), moonless Perseid peak, six-planet alignment. Always use certified ISO 12312-2 eclipse glasses / solar filters except during totality.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.astronomydaily.io/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Get the best secure and private email on the planet. Stop your Government, google and who knows who else spying on every email you write. Do what we did and use ProtonMail. They beleive in privacy and there are no ads in their business model...yet they still provide a free forever service. Check them out and get out special deal at www.astronomydaily.io/protonmailBecome a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

Astronomy Daily · S05E157 · “The Edge of Everything” · Monday 3 August 2026 In this episode •      The largest galaxy, measured at last. Ultra-deep imaging of IC 1101 in the Abell 2029 cluster has traced its outer edge for the first time: an edge radius of ~260 kpc, a diameter near 520 kpc (~1.7 million light-years), and ~3.4 trillion solar masses in stars — about 17× the width of the Milky Way. Faint outer structures aligned with cluster X-ray disturbances show it is still accreting. Source: Marrero-de la Rosa et al., “How large can galaxies be? Ultra-deep imaging of IC 1101”, accepted A&A (arXiv:2607.15340, 16 Jul 2026); phys.org, 31 Jul 2026; The Debrief, 1 Aug 2026. •      Hayabusa2's record asteroid flyby. JAXA confirmed (press conference 30 Jul) that its Hayabusa2 probe passed just 400 m from the surface of near-Earth asteroid Torifune on 5 July — 744 m from centre at >18,000 km/h — the closest asteroid flyby by any mission, plus the first-ever laser ranging of an asteroid during a flyby. Torifune proved to be a contact binary. Source: JAXA press conference, 30 Jul 2026; phys.org / Japan Today (AFP), 31 Jul 2026; autoevolution, 1 Aug 2026. •      UK's first orbital launch on hold. Rocket Factory Augsburg de-stacked its RFA One at SaxaVord Spaceport (Unst, Shetland) after finding a vehicle issue during hot-fire test prep (announced 28 Jul). The certified launch window opens 10 August; a successful flight would be the first orbital launch from UK soil. Source: RFA statement (X), 28 Jul 2026; Space.com, 1 Aug 2026; Shetland Times, 28 Jul 2026. •      Andromeda is winding down. A new Hubble study mapping ~200 million stars across two-thirds of Andromeda's disk finds star formation has declined over ~500 million years (from ~1 to ~0.2 solar masses/year), with the steepest drop in the last 40 million years — possibly linked to an interaction with satellite galaxy M32. Source: Williams et al., The Astrophysical Journal, 27 Jul 2026; NASA/STScI release, 27 Jul 2026. Skywatch — both hemispheres •      Comet 10P/Tempel 2 — perihelion 2 Aug; closest approach to Earth tonight (3 Aug). Binoculars/small scope, dark skies. Best pre-dawn from the Southern Hemisphere; ~9:30–10:30 pm local for mid-northern latitudes before moonrise. •      Moon near Saturn tonight (3 Aug) — naked-eye pairing, both hemispheres, up into dawn. •      Mercury at greatest western elongation (2 Aug) — low eastern horizon ~1 hr before sunrise, toward Gemini; Mars higher. Better placed for northern observers. •      Diary (2 days out): Falcon 9 upper stage (2025-010D) lunar impact near Einstein Crater, 5 Aug ~06:35 UTC — ~2:35 am EDT / 11:35 pm PDT (4 Aug); North America best-timed on the dark limb. Southern Hemisphere: ~4:35 pm AEST (daylight) — await orbiter after-images. •      Looking ahead: 12 Aug total solar eclipse (Greenland/Iceland/Spain) + moonless Perseid peak + six-planet dawn alignment. View partial phases only through certified ISO 12312-2 filters. Links & follow •      Website, back catalogue, news feed & newsletter: astronomydaily.io •      Social: @AstroDailyPod  ·  Part of the Bitesz.com Podcast NetworkBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.astronomydaily.io/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Get the best secure and private email on the planet. Stop your Government, google and who knows who else spying on every email you write. Do what we did and use ProtonMail. They beleive in privacy and there are no ads in their business model...yet they still provide a free forever service. Check them out and get out special deal at www.astronomydaily.io/protonmailBecome a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

FULL SHOW : Mick went to the footy over the weekend and his boys told him there were no pies at the MCG, Mitch Clearly stops by to chat all the games from the weekend. Melbourne is getting the Southern Hemisphere's Biggest Dog Park, Is It Ok To Discipline Someone Else's Child? Apparently there are four types of thinkers and voice of the show Broden Kelly is in the studio to talk abouthis new video game.Catch Mick in the Morning, with Roo, Titus & Rosie LIVE from 6-9am weekdays on 105.1 Triple M Melbourne or via the LiSTNR app. Mick In The Morning Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/molloy Triple M Melbourne Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/triplemmelb Send Us A Voice Memo: https://memo.fm/mickinthemorning/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.astronomydaily.io/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Get the best secure and private email on the planet. Stop your Government, google and who knows who else spying on every email you write. Do what we did and use ProtonMail. They beleive in privacy and there are no ads in their business model...yet they still provide a free forever service. Check them out and get out special deal at www.astronomydaily.io/protonmailBecome a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

This weeks ai slop is served up by DeepSeek v4 Pro. I tried to use Kimi but it got stuck generating the notes. So now you get this. Could be worse. Episode SummaryJack the Insider and Hong Kong Jack return for a wide-ranging conversation that spans the turbulent state of Australian politics and the precarious state of global affairs. The episode opens with striking Redbridge polling data suggesting One Nation could pick up as many as 19 seats in the upcoming Victorian state election -- a result that would leave neither major party able to form government in its own right. The Jacks explore the mechanics of minority government, the prospect of a marriage of convenience between the Liberals and One Nation, and whether Labor voters in protest mode could deliver One Nation unexpected inroads into heartland seats.The domestic focus then shifts to the Australian economy. Drawing on former ACTU Secretary Bill Kelty's recent analysis, the hosts dissect a bureaucracy more concerned with treating symptoms than causes, lamenting squandered billions on unused quarantine centres, infrastructure costs among the highest in the world, and a housing crisis driven by a failure to train enough workers. The conversation turns to political courage -- or the lack of it -- comparing today's risk-averse governing class with the Hawke-Keating reform era, when fringe benefits tax was meant to kill the long lunch but somehow did not.A spirited defence of Emerge Australia -- an advocacy group training GPs to diagnose and treat myalgic encephalomyelitis (chronic fatigue syndrome) -- highlights the government's decision to cut a mere $400,000 in funding, a move Jack the Insider brands disgraceful for an organisation serving an estimated 250,000 Australians. Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme reform also gets a hearing, with pharmaceutical companies increasingly bypassing Australia for clinical trials.Internationally, the Jacks confront the escalating dangers of the Russia-Ukraine war. With Ukraine making Crimea increasingly uninhabitable and Vladimir Putin backed into a corner, the prospect of an attack on a NATO or NATO-aligned state looms. The conversation covers Russia's cancelled bond sale, the shifting power dynamic between Putin and Xi Jinping, and thousands of Russian passports arriving in Moldova -- a familiar prelude to intervention. On Iran, the hosts reflect on the Trump administration's military strikes, oil climbing past USD 100 a barrel, and the political consequences for the upcoming US midterm elections.The episode closes with sport: the FIFA World Cup (and Argentina's remarkable ability to unify the football world in mutual disdain), the AFL's handling of the Nicky Winmar domestic violence case and questions of consistency, the end of the Bazball era in English Test cricket, a warm tribute to the late Sir Garfield Sobers, and rugby union's new Nations Championship format.Timestamped Highlights(All timestamps adjusted +25 seconds to account for theme music.)00:00:26 -- Introduction and Banter Jack the Insider and Hong Kong Jack open the show trading observations on air conditioning, long lunches, and the perils of sitting directly beneath the vent.00:01:32 -- One Nation's Victorian Polling Surge Redbridge polling data indicates One Nation could win as many as 19 seats in the Victorian state election. In an 88-seat legislature, that would make a majority for either major party almost impossible.00:02:52 -- Minority Government Mechanics Hong Kong Jack explains the constitutional pathway: if no party wins a majority, the sitting Premier gets the first conversation with the Governor and may be recommissioned to form government.00:04:20 -- A Three-Cornered Contest Jack the Insider argues the Allan government is at the end of the road, but the Liberal alternative inspires little confidence. One Nation may poll well in Labor heartland seats as protest voters look for an outlet that is not the Liberal Party.00:06:33 -- The Polling vs. the Pencil Hong Kong Jack predicts One Nation's polling numbers will soften once voters are alone in the booth with an HB pencil hovering over the ballot paper.00:08:32 -- Commonwealth Games Land in Glasgow The hosts acknowledge the Commonwealth Games have begun -- in Glasgow, not Victoria. The opening ceremony featured King Charles and Queen Camilla emerging from a Doctor Who TARDIS.00:10:50 -- Pauline Hanson and the Tommy Robinson Interview The Jacks dissect Hanson's decision to interview the controversial British figure, with Hong Kong Jack arguing the motivation is straightforward: publicity, good or bad.00:12:12 -- Factions Within One Nation Barnaby Joyce's visible discomfort with the Robinson interview signals internal tensions. Jack the Insider warns One Nation risks veering further towards the "lunar right."00:13:30 -- Two Australias: The Great Dog Divide A detour into the changing culture of pet ownership. Jack the Insider contrasts the utilitarian farm dogs of his Reservoir childhood with the multi-billion-dollar industry of designer dog beds, pushchairs, and booties.00:15:59 -- Bill Kelty's Economic Diagnosis Former ACTU Secretary Bill Kelty delivers a blunt assessment: Australian governments have spent decades treating symptoms rather than causes -- quarantine centres never used, infrastructure costs at world-record levels, a housing crisis born of under-investment in skills.00:17:59 -- The Courage Deficit Hong Kong Jack argues the current government, like its recent predecessors, lacks political boldness. The Prime Minister's Labor conference speech seemed "spooked by One Nation" rather than offering a growth narrative.00:19:22 -- The Keating Comparison Jack the Insider revisits the Hawke-Keating reform era, noting the howls of outrage that greeted early reforms -- including fringe benefits tax, which was meant to "kill lunch" but somehow did not. The difference today: social media amplifies every backlash.00:23:02 -- Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Funding Cut An urgent segment on the defunding of Emerge Australia, an advocacy group that has trained roughly 10% of the nation's GPs in diagnosing and treating ME/CFS. The cut amounts to approximately $400,000 -- a sum Jack the Insider describes as negligible in public expenditure but catastrophic for the 250,000 Australians living with the condition.00:26:37 -- The PBS and Australia's Clinical Trial Problem Pharmaceutical companies are increasingly bypassing Australia for clinical trials, leaving patients with rare conditions to raise extraordinary sums for overseas treatment. The Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme's pricing structure may require root-and-branch reform, particularly for newly developed drugs.00:29:50 -- What Should Labor Do About One Nation? Hong Kong Jack's prescription is simple: fix the economy and stop saying silly things. One Nation will wither on the vine if economic growth returns.00:30:17 -- Derryn Hinch: The Human Headline Remembered The former broadcaster, senator, and Justice Party founder has died aged 82. The Jacks reflect on a complicated legacy -- a man who transformed Melbourne talkback radio and tabloid television, was twice married to Jacki Weaver, and whose profound impact on the media is tempered by a deeply troubling intervention in the justice system.00:32:00 -- The Glennon Case: When a Headline Cost Children Their Safety Jack the Insider recounts in detail how Hinch's decision to publicly name convicted paedophile priest Michael Glennon during an active trial led to the suspension of proceedings, an eventual overturned conviction, and a four-year window in which Glennon continued operating camps and abusing children -- as many as 20 additional victims.00:38:14 -- Hinch's Media Legacy Despite the Glennon tragedy, Hong Kong Jack credits Hinch with changing the sound of Melbourne radio. The talkback format he pioneered arguably saved stations like 3AW.00:40:32 -- Ukraine and the Battle for Crimea The Ukrainians cannot hold Crimea, but they are making it unliveable. Water, electricity, and supplies have been cut. Crimeans are fleeing en masse. The Russian Black Sea Fleet has effectively ceased to exist.00:42:13 -- Putin Backed Into a Corner Jack the Insider warns that Vladimir Putin, when cornered, does not act rationally. The spectre of an attack on a NATO country -- perhaps a Baltic state -- or on Moldova is real. Putin cannot sue for peace; it would mean the end of him.00:44:21 -- Russia's Economic Pressure Points Hong Kong Jack notes that Russia cancelled a regular bond sale last week after failing to find buyers. The economic squeeze is mounting. Putin and his deeply unpopular party are now being fused together ahead of elections.00:47:13 -- Russian Passports Arrive in Moldova Thousands of Russian passports have been shipped to Moldova -- the same playbook used in Crimea and eastern Ukraine before intervention.00:49:32 -- Iran, the Houthis, and Oil Above USD 100 US strikes on Iran continue. Houthi attacks in the Red Sea have struck oil tankers. The price of crude has pushed past USD 100 a barrel -- a politically dangerous number for Donald Trump four months out from the midterms.00:50:33 -- The Netanyahu Pitch for Regime Change Jack the Insider recounts the scene from Swan and Haberman's book: Benjamin Netanyahu presenting a case for US-Israeli combined bombing to achieve regime change in Iran. Trump was impressed; Marco Rubio and the CIA director were not.00:52:56 -- US Midterms: The Democratic Candidate Problem The Democrats' prospects are muddied by candidate issues including the withdrawal of Graham Plattner over sexual assault allegations and the party's persistent inability to select candidates who genuinely connect with the white working class.00:54:40 -- Tim Waltz, John Kerry, and Authenticity Hong Kong Jack contrasts the Democrats' clumsy attempts to project authenticity -- Tim Waltz hunting, John Kerry windsurfing -- with the reality that Kerry was an ice hockey player who once attended a White House meeting with two black eyes from a congressional game.00:58:19 -- The Sickness in American Democracy Jack the Insider argues the two-party lock on presidential politics -- achieved partly by keeping third-party candidates off ballots in roughly 30 states -- is profoundly undemocratic. With 40% of voters now registering as independents, millions have no candidate who represents them.00:59:43 -- Can Trump Disrupt the Midterms? Hong Kong Jack analyses the constitutional limits on presidential interference in state-run elections. Any attempt to use emergency powers would go straight to court.01:03:43 -- Marine Le Pen: France's Next President? Polling around 67%, Le Pen is the frontrunner for the French presidential election. Her felony conviction for misusing EU funds appears to be no impediment.01:05:09 -- Andy Burnham's Fast Start as UK Prime Minister The new PM has hit the ground running with popular measures: a GBP 2 bus fare cap across England, 20% business rate cuts for pubs, clubs, and live music venues, and the scrapping of VAT on domestic electricity bills.01:07:36 -- Britain's Investment Challenge The biggest test for Burnham will be attracting investment. The UK has 11 million working-age citizens on benefits -- a figure now exceeding tax receipts.01:09:03 -- FIFA World Cup: Argentina Triumphs, Trump Photobombs Argentina are world champions, but not before a petition signed by millions demanded their exclusion from the final. Donald Trump appeared on the podium; the Spanish commemorative photos, the Jacks note, did not include him.01:11:07 -- The Refereeing and the Expansion The officiating was patchy, but the expanded tournament format was vindicated. Seeing Cape Verde, Australia, New Zealand, and Iran compete gave the event a genuinely global feel.01:14:23 -- Nicky Winmar, the AFL Hall of Fame, and Domestic Violence The Jacks grapple with the AFL's removal of Winmar from the Hall of Fame following a domestic violence conviction. Jack the Insider questions the consistency: Wayne Carey and Gary Ablett Sr. remain honoured. Hong Kong Jack suggests a suspension rather than permanent expulsion would have been more appropriate, arguing that football cannot be reserved for choirboys.01:19:06 -- Bazball's End: The McCallum Era Concludes Baz McCallum is out as England's Test coach after 49 Tests: 27 wins, 20 losses. Ten of the first eleven were victories; seven of the last nine were defeats. The hosts debate whether Bazball added to cricket's audience even if it could not sustainably win Test matches.01:23:20 -- Sir Garfield Sobers: The Greatest of All Time A warm tribute to the late West Indian legend. Jack the Insider recalls meeting Sobers at the Hilton in Barbados. Hong Kong Jack shares the story of Sobers -- completely ambidextrous -- playing golf off scratch left-handed and off two right-handed.01:27:53 -- Rugby Union's Nations Championship A new format pits Northern Hemisphere sides against Southern Hemisphere sides, culminating in finals at Twickenham. Hong Kong Jack is sceptical anyone will care which hemisphere wins. The 2027 Rugby World Cup in Australia, however, is selling tickets strongly.01:30:00 -- Sign-Off Jack the Insider thanks listeners and apologises for the previous week's absence due to illness. The hosts promise to return on or around 31 July, though Hong Kong Jack advises against buying "20-year futures in us."Social Media PostsTwitter / XPost 1: One Nation could win up to 19 seats in the Victorian election. On this week's episode, we break down what a three-cornered contest means for the major parties -- and why minority government may be coming to Spring Street. Listen now.Post 2: "Putin, when cornered, does not act rationally." This week we examine the escalating dangers in Ukraine, Russian passports in Moldova, and why oil above USD 100 spells trouble for Trump. New episode of The Two Jacks out now.Post 3: $400,000. That is what it costs to train GPs across Australia to diagnose and treat ME/CFS -- and the government has cut it. We discuss why this quiet defunding of Emerge Australia is a disgrace. Full episode linked.Post 4: Derryn Hinch transformed Australian media. He also, by his own grandstanding, gave a paedophile priest four more years of access to children. This week we examine the complicated legacy of the Human Headline.Post 5: Bazball is dead. Garry Sobers is immortal. Nicky Winmar is out of the Hall of Fame. Our sport segment this week covers the big calls in cricket, AFL, rugby, and a World Cup final that unified the planet -- against Argentina.FacebookThis week on The Two Jacks: Jack the Insider and Hong Kong Jack navigate a political landscape where the old rules no longer apply.Redbridge polling has One Nation on track to become kingmaker in Victoria. We explore what minority government would actually look like -- and whether Labor can cling to power even if it finishes second.Bill Kelty says Australia's bureaucracy treats symptoms, not causes. We ask: where has political courage gone, and could anyone sell reform the way Keating did?From a USD 400,000 funding cut that will devastate chronic fatigue sufferers, to pharmaceutical companies abandoning Australian clinical trials, to a PBS in need of root-and-branch reform -- the domestic agenda is packed.Internationally, the picture is darker. Putin is cornered in Ukraine. Iran burns. Oil has passed USD 100. And the US midterms are shaping up as a referendum on Trump's foreign policy.Plus: Derryn Hinch's complicated legacy, Argentina's World Cup, Nicky Winmar and the AFL's consistency problem, the death of Bazball, and a toast to Sir Garfield Sobers -- the greatest cricketer who ever lived.Listen wherever you get your podcasts.InstagramCaption for episode artwork: Episode 165 is live. This week: One Nation's Victorian moment, Putin's dangerous corner, the Hinch legacy, and why a $400K funding cut matters more than you think. Link in bio.

Have you ever heard of "Archeoastronomy"? Bright Side Channel is happy to show you the Secret Star Map that shows the actual origins of the Constellations of the Southern Hemisphere. It's been recently discovered. Cleverly hidden in the Southern Hemisphere stars, this map predates any of the early star maps published by the explorers of the 16th and 17th centuries. Isn't it cool? Just imagine this map served as a navigational guide for the early 16th century Spanish Empire's naval expeditions below the equator. And now you're gonna see it too. Let's head on a space journey in time! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Astronomy Daily · S05E146 · “Postcards from Mars” · Tuesday 21 July 2026 NASA's Psyche probe phones home from its Mars flyby — data and a spellbinding month-long time-lapse — as Europe's Plato planet-hunter clears its final test. From the Royal Astronomical Society's National Astronomy Meeting: a CubeSat that could give us hours of solar-storm warning, and a new way to forecast the Sun's next active spell. Plus the first pieces of the giant ngVLA radio array, and a Southern Hemisphere meteor shower to catch this week.Story notes & sources 1 · Psyche phones home NASA's Psyche spacecraft (launched 2023; arriving metal asteroid 16 Psyche in 2029) used a 15 May Mars gravity assist to test its instruments. The neutron spectrometer detected the anticipated count-rate enhancement near closest approach; the gamma-ray/neutron spectrometer, magnetometer and imager all performed well. Data and a month-long Mars time-lapse were released this week. ●        NASA/JPL — “Psyche Mission Delivers Mars Flyby Data, Time-lapse Video” (17 Jul 2026) ●        Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory — LLNL-built gamma-ray sensor's first planetary measurements (17 Jul 2026) 2 · Plato clears its final exam ESA's Plato — 26 cameras hunting Earth-like planets in the habitable zones of Sun-like stars — passed electromagnetic compatibility testing in the Maxwell chamber at ESTEC, its last major qualification hurdle. It's bound for Sun-Earth L2 aboard an Ariane 6 (current target 2027). ●        ESA — “Plato's electronics ready for space” (20 Jul 2026) 3 · HENON space-weather CubeSat Presented at NAM 2026: HENON, a deep-space CubeSat that would sit ~15 million km upstream of Earth (10× farther than L1), potentially extending severe geomagnetic-storm warning from ~15 minutes to 2–3 hours. It carries the UK-built MAGIC magnetometer (Imperial College London) plus instruments from the Czech Republic and Finland, paving the way for a future European early-warning mission. ●        Royal Astronomical Society / NAM 2026 — “From 15 minutes to 3 hours” (20 Jul 2026) 4 · The Sun's “sleep” precursor Also at NAM 2026: a newly identified precursor in the solar cycle's declining phase that could help predict the next maximum's sunspot number. After the Sun's active phase “switches off,” storms weaken and track a 27-day (solar-rotation) rhythm — pointing to co-rotating fast-wind streams rather than coronal mass ejections. ●        Royal Astronomical Society / NAM 2026 — “How the Sun goes to ‘sleep'…” (20 Jul 2026) 5 · Building the ngVLA The US National Science Foundation, NSF NRAO and the US Naval Observatory are partnering on a pathfinder for the next-generation Very Large Array (ngVLA) — the ~266-antenna successor to the iconic VLA. The focus is very long baseline interferometry for ultra-sharp imaging and for maintaining the International Celestial Reference Frame. Construction/early operations are expected before the end of the decade. ●        NSF NRAO / US Naval Observatory — ngVLA pathfinder partnership (17 Jul 2026) 6 · Skywatch: Southern Delta Aquariids Active mid-July to late August, peaking 29–30 July, with a radiant near Skat (δ Aquarii) — high overhead for Southern Hemisphere observers. ~15–20 faint, graceful meteors/hour under dark skies; suspected parent comet 96P/Machholz. A near-full Buck Moon spoils the peak, so the moon-free pre-dawn hours this week are the best window. Bright, slow Alpha Capricornid fireballs join in toward month's end. ●        Scientific American / EarthSky / American Meteor Society — Delta Aquariids 2026 Astronomy Daily is part of the Bitesz.com Podcast Network. Find every episode and the full show notes at astronomydaily.io, and follow @AstroDailyPod. Clear skies.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-the-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.bitesz.com/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Become a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

Melbourne stands out in the Southern Hemisphere for its love of black clothing. This look shaped by its climate, migration history, and thriving arts scene, giving the city an unexpected but fitting reputation. - Nirgendwo sonst auf der Südhalbkugel wird so viel Schwarz getragen wie in Melbourne. Dafür verantwortlich sind das Klima, die Migrationsgeschichte und die lebendige Kunstszene. Diese Besonderheit hat der Stadt einen ebenso überraschenden wie treffenden Ruf eingebracht.

Tonight on 'Over The Line' with George McDonagh and Darren Kelly: Sean Walsh looks back on yesterday's All-Ireland senior hurling final defeat for Galway against Limerick; Brian O'Keeffe is with us ahead of next week's Galway Races; And William Davies chats about Ireland's Nations Championship games in the Southern Hemisphere over the last three weeks; All this and more. == 'Over The Line' broadcasts every Monday evening from 8pm on Galway Bay FM.

Anna and Avery kick off with a decade-long game of cosmic hide-and-seek that has finally ended: Beta Pictoris d, the faintest exoplanet ever directly imaged from Earth, found lurking in more than ten years of archival images — and orbiting a star in the southern constellation Pictor. Then it's the completion of VLASS, the sharpest radio map of the whole sky ever made, arriving just as the Rubin Observatory's optical survey switches on. The James Webb Space Telescope has caught a supermassive black hole feeding itself in the Centaurus Cluster — the missing link in a decades-old mystery. A Pluto system double bill follows: the first landslides ever identified on Pluto, and evidence written in Charon's mountains that the big moon once spun more than ten times faster than it does today — both delivered by New Horizons data from 2015. Finally, SpaceX's latest FCC filing reveals Starlink satellites made over 355,000 collision-avoidance manoeuvres in the past year — nearly one dodge per satellite per week — and experts are warning about where the trend leads. Plus dark-sky Southern Hemisphere stargazing and a Starship Flight 13 launch reminder. Chapters •       00:00 — Intro & billboard •       01:30 — Beta Pictoris d: the faintest exoplanet ever imaged from Earth •       05:30 — VLASS complete: the sharpest radio map of the sky •       08:45 — JWST reveals how supermassive black holes feed •       12:15 — Pluto has landslides (Pluto double, part 1) •       15:00 — Charon's slowing spin (Pluto double, part 2) •       17:45 — Starlink's 355,000 collision dodges in a year •       20:45 — Southern Hemisphere skywatch + Starship Flight 13 reminder •       22:30 — Outro Story sources •       Beta Pictoris d: ESO release eso2609 (eso.org) · The Astrophysical Journal Letters · space.com · phys.org •       VLASS completion: NRAO release (public.nrao.edu/news/vlass-observations-complete) · phys.org •       JWST / NGC 4696: Université de Montréal · The Astrophysical Journal Letters · phys.org / EurekAlert •       Pluto landslides: Icarus (Discenza et al. 2026) · phys.org · Discover Magazine · Science News •       Charon despinning: Nature Communications (Chen et al. 2026, DOI 10.1038/s41467-026-75069-7) · phys.org · Gizmodo •       Starlink manoeuvres: SpaceX semiannual FCC constellation status report, via space.com Boilerplate Astronomy Daily is part of the Bitesz.com Podcast Network. Show notes, links and the full back catalogue at astronomydaily.io. Follow @AstroDailyPod on X, Instagram, TikTok and Tumblr. New episodes every day.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-the-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.bitesz.com/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Become a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

Astronomy Daily — S05E141 | Wednesday 15 July 2026 Anna and Avery bring you the biggest space and astronomy news of the day: Starship Flight 13 is cleared for Thursday after the FAA closes its Flight 12 investigation and SpaceX reveals exactly what went wrong; NASA astronaut Anil Menon rides a Soyuz to the ISS on his first flight; astronomers finally find the first of Omega Centauri's 10,000 "missing" black holes; the first-ever medical X-rays taken in space are published; four white dwarfs are found hiding within 65 light-years of Earth; and a new-moon dark-sky window opens with Comet 10P/Tempel 2 on the rise. In this episode •       Starship Flight 13 — FAA closes the Flight 12 mishap investigation (July 13); root causes revealed: hot-staging ignition sequence caused a 90° booster orientation error, five Raptors failed to relight, alarm settings shut engines down early. Launch window opens Thursday July 16, 6:45pm EDT (Friday 8:45am AEST) with the first 20 functional Starlink V3 satellites and an in-space Raptor relight. •       Soyuz MS-29 — NASA's Anil Menon with cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina launched from Baikonur July 14, docking three hours later for an eight-month stay. Menon and wife Anna Menon (Polaris Dawn) become a two-astronaut household; NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman attended in person. •       Omega Centauri's first stellar-mass black hole — oMEGACat BH-2, found via astrometry in 20+ years of Hubble data plus Webb observations (ApJL, July 13). Lower-than-expected mass; its companion star's 94-year orbit makes it the longest-period black hole binary known. The cluster is naked-eye visible in southern winter skies right now. •       First medical X-rays in space — RSNA publishes results from the Fram2 Crew Dragon mission: crew with 4 hours' training produced diagnostic-quality X-rays in orbit, opening the door to space radiology and non-destructive hardware testing on Moon and Mars missions. •       Four hidden white dwarfs — Warwick/Colorado Boulder team unmasks four white dwarfs within 65 light-years using Hubble near-UV spectroscopy (MNRAS). G 203-47, ~25 light-years away, is now the ninth-closest known white dwarf and closes a 27-year-old wobble mystery. •       Skywatch — New Moon (July 14) dark skies, Milky Way core season for the Southern Hemisphere, Comet 10P/Tempel 2 at magnitude 7–8 brightening toward early-August perihelion, and Mars near Aldebaran pre-dawn. Resources & further reading •       Starship Flight 13: spacenews.com | space.com Starship live blog •       Soyuz MS-29: nasa.gov ISS blog | nasaspaceflight.com •       Omega Centauri black hole: science.nasa.gov | esahubble.org (heic2610) | ApJL •       Space X-rays: rsna.org/news | space.com •       Hidden white dwarfs: warwick.ac.uk | phys.org | MNRAS Visit astronomydaily.io for all episodes and our constantly updating newsfeed. Follow us @AstroDailyPod. Astronomy Daily is part of the Bitesz.com Podcast Network.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-the-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.bitesz.com/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Become a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.

Jeff Stanfield and Andy Shaver are joined by Robby Nelson, host of the Southern Flight Podcast.Fresh off an unforgettable waterfowl hunting trip to New Zealand, Robby shares what it was like traveling halfway around the world to pursue duck species found only in New Zealand. He details the long journey to get there, the breathtaking scenery, and how hunting in the Southern Hemisphere differs from anything he's experienced in North America.The conversation also covers the unique birds, hunting traditions, and landscapes that make New Zealand a bucket-list destination for waterfowl hunters, along with the unforgettable memories made along the way.Looking ahead to the upcoming waterfowl season, Robby discusses his travel plans, the hunting trips that have become annual traditions, and the new destinations he's hoping to add to his growing list of adventures.

SpaceTime Series 29 Episode 77 BepiColombo mission finally reaches Mercury space After eight years of powered flight towards the planet Mercury, mission managers have finally turned off the BepiColombo spacecraft's propulsion engines in preparation for planetary orbit insertion. Is our Sun changing A new study claims the Sun has been mysteriously changing over the last forty years. Strange new type of x-ray flare detected in deep space Astronomers have detected a mysterious never before seen new type of X-ray flare in the skies of the Southern Hemisphere. The Science Report A special report on the latest bombshell developments in the case of the COVID 19 pandemic. Our Guests This Week: Uk Space Agency Programme Manager Rosemary Young Principle Investigator MIXS Instrument Emma Bunce Leicester University Planetary Geoscientist David Rothery The open University   And our regular guests: Alex Zaharov-Reutt from techadvice.life And Senior science writer and Sky and Telescope magazine contributor Jonathan Nally  

As we move through the Solstice portal and enter Cancer season, this week's Akashic Records bring forward a simple but powerful message:✨ Keep your faith in the light.The Records showed the image of a radiant heart—light pouring outward from within—and spoke of greater access to the heart, a spirit of goodwill, and a reminder that growth does not need to be rushed.In a world that often encourages us to maximize every opportunity and treat every supportive moment as our "one chance," this week's guidance invites something different:

Jeff Bliss describes massive, deadly swells hitting California beaches due to a southern hemisphere storm system. The conversation shifts to Las Vegas, where a massive, highly anticipated In-N-Out Burger recently opened on the Strip. Bliss details the chain's reputation for fresh food, cleanliness, and fair employee wages. (1)1903 PERSIA