Podcasts · Science

Astronomy Daily: Latest Space News

bitesz.com

300 episodes

Join hosts Anna and Avery for daily Space & Astronomy news, insights, and discoveries. Give us 20 minutes and we'll give you the Universe! For more visit, our website and sign up for the free daily newsletter and check out our continually updated newsfeed. http://astronomydaily.io. Follow us on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, YouTube and TikTok ...just search for AstroDailyPod. Enjoy! Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support.

Episodes page 1 of 6

  1. A Gamma-Ray Burst’s Split Personality: The Week Swift Fell Silent

    · 26 min · S5 E214

    Show notes In 2016, NASA's Swift caught a gamma-ray burst that came in two parts: a 1.7-second spike, four minutes of silence, then a 51-second burst from the same spot. A new Nature Astronomy paper finds that nearly…

  2. Artemis 4: The Moon's Tiebreaker Awaits - The Weekend Wrap

    · 19 min · S5 E213

    Show notes NASA lays out Artemis III day by day: fourteen days in Earth orbit, two rival landers, one Orion. Plus the week that was, Swift's final bow, and Venus changing sides. The Rehearsal NASA's 23 October Artemis…

  3. Starry Nights and Cosmic Insights: Van Gogh's Real Sky Revealed

    · 23 min · S5 E211

    Show notes Astronomers argue The Starry Night shows a real pre-dawn sky over Saint-Rémy around 22 July 1889; Roman enters science commissioning; Rubin's test camera and the Seagull Nebula; quick hits on Hera, Starship,…

  4. From Solar Storms to Martian Canyons: The Latest in Space News

    · 25 min · S5 E211

    Show notes Last November the Sun produced its strongest radiation storm in almost twenty years, and this time scientists were ready: neutron monitors from Cornwall to Shetland, sensors on transatlantic airliners, and…

  5. Born Thick, Settled Thin

    · 22 min · S5 E210

    Show notes The Milky Way's disc settled in two stages; metal-rich gas around Sgr A*; two mirror-image simulated universes; shadows in the Orion Bar; quick hits on Hera, Uzbekistan and Artemis; Orionid-night skywatch.…

  6. Cracking the Moon's Secrets: New Findings on Lunar Shrinkage

    · 22 min · S5 E209

    Show notes The Moon Is Still Shrinking Watters, Banks, Nypaver and Robinson (Planetary Science Journal, 14 Oct 2026) map more than 10,000 young thrust faults — ~8,900 lobate scarps and 2,000+ small mare ridges — with…

  7. A Round Trip to Phobos Underway

    · 24 min · S5 E208

    MMX: A Round Trip to Phobos JAXA's Martian Moons eXploration mission launched on schedule on H3 Flight No. 10 at 04:41:03 JST on 20 October 2026 (19:41 UTC 19 Oct; 06:41 AEDT Tue; 15:41 EDT / 12:41 PDT / 20:41 BST…

  8. Time's Tipping Point: The End of Leap Seconds and a Lunar Clock Revolution

    · 22 min · S5 E207

    Show notes Time Lets Go of the Sky On 15 October 2026 the 28th General Conference on Weights and Measures in Versailles adopted Resolution 5: UTC becomes continuous on 20 May 2027, ending leap seconds, with the UTC–UT1…

  9. Stellar Breakthroughs: The Discovery of Deuterated Methanol and the First Green Star

    · 27 min · S5 E206

    Show notes Episode 206 opens with the first results from ALMA's COMPASS survey: the first detection anywhere in interstellar space of fully deuterated methanol, and methanol masers turning up around more than half of a…

  10. Martian Mystery: Unveiling the Secrets of Arsia Mons' Elusive Clouds

    · 25 min · S5 E205

    Show notes A cloud on Mars that forms only if textbook-theoretical physics really happens; Webb maps a hot Jupiter's edge angle by angle; multi-planet systems turn out to come in two families tied to their stars; and…

  11. Cosmic Revelations: Artemis 2's Historic Observations and the Case of Hypernovae

    · 25 min · S5 E204

    Show notes Six months after Artemis II swung around the far side of the Moon, NASA has published what the crew saw, said and sketched — including five faint impact flashes spotted during a 54-minute eclipse. Plus: two…

  12. HERA's Grand Maneuver: Braking for Didymos and the Future of Planetary Defence

    · 25 min · S5 E203

    Show notes Hera Hits the Brakes ESA's Hera spotted its target asteroid for the first time last week and fires its first braking burn on Thursday — 93 minutes of thrust to start stopping at Didymos and Dimorphos, the…

  13. Cloudy with a Chance of Water: The Mysteries of WISE 0855 Unveiled

    · 25 min · S5 E202

    The coldest brown dwarf we know has weather. JWST watched water clouds thicken and thin on WISE 0855, a sunless world seven and a half light-years away — plus a star slowly eating a brown dwarf, ten minutes of X-rays…

  14. A Nobel in Ice: Unveiling the Secrets of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory

    · 24 min · S5 E201

    Show notes We're back after a short break! Today: the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics goes to Francis Halzen for the IceCube Neutrino Observatory — a cubic kilometre of Antarctic ice turned into a telescope. Then a…

  15. The Great Water Mystery: Jezero Crater and the Hunt for Mars' Hidden History

    · 27 min · S5 E200

    Perseverance drove to the edge of an ancient Martian lake expecting a beach and found the inside of a volcano — rock that water has been through at least three separate times. Europe's Jupiter probe comes home on…

  16. What Keeps a Galaxy Churning: Andromeda's Supernova Secrets Revealed

    · 28 min · S5 E199

    Supernovae keep galaxies churning A new study led by Fan Yi Meng from Tsinghua University provides the first comprehensive census of superbubbles in the Andromeda Galaxy, revealing that clustered supernova feedback is…

  17. The Unifying Mystery of Black Hole Jets: Stellar and Supermassive Connections

    · 34 min · S5 E197

    SHOW NOTES Black hole jets follow one universal rule Adelle Goodwin (Curtin University / ICRAR, Forrest Research Foundation Fellow) and Andrew Mummery (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton) show that supermassive…

  18. The Youngest Planet Ever Found

    · 34 min · S5 E196

    Astronomers have confirmed the youngest planet ever found - Elias 2-24 b, less than a million years old, sitting inside a gap it is carving in its own birth disc 450 light-years away. Plus: the Lunar Reconnaissance…

  19. Roman Opens Its Eye

    · 32 min · S5 E195

    First starlight from Roman, a shorter fuse on the Solar System, weapons in orbit, and a globular cluster hiding behind the dust Roman opens its eye — and finds it has twice as long to look NASA has activated the Nancy…

  20. The Evolving Enigma of Dark Energy and the Sun's Mysterious Past

    · 30 min · S5 E193

    An Australian-led team has rebuilt thirty years of supernova observations into one consistent catalogue — and it adds fresh weight to the idea that dark energy is not constant. We also ask whether the young Sun…

  21. The Planet That Keeps Shrinking plus the Weekend Wrap

    · 37 min · S5 E192

    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…

  22. Half the Neutron Stars

    · 31 min · S5 E191

    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…

  23. A Hundred and Nine Flashes

    · 28 min · S5 E190

    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…

  24. The Smallest Things Remember

    · 28 min · S5 E189

    Everything beyond Neptune is a leftover. The icy bodies of the Kuiper Belt never got assembled into a planet, and out there — dark, cold and empty enough that things mostly leave each other alone — they are the closest…

  25. The Moon in Five Hours

    · 27 min · S5 E188

    For fifty years the story has been that the Moon assembled slowly out of a disc of debris. New simulations from Southwest Research Institute add one thing everybody left out — the strength of rock — and get an intact…

  26. Europe Launches From Europe — And Two White Dwarfs Six Minutes Apart

    · 29 min · S5 E187

    A German rocket lifted off from an Arctic island on Saturday and became the first vehicle ever to reach orbit from Western European soil. Plus: the gaps in stellar streams may not be dark matter after all, two white…

  27. The Hydrogen Map: How a Radio Telescope Heard Half the Universe

    · 28 min · S5 E186

    Anna and Avery open the Weekend Wrap with a genuine first: South Africa's MeerKAT has detected the 21-centimetre hydrogen signal from four to five billion light years away using radio data alone — no optical galaxy…

  28. One Flash in the Xenon: The Dark Matter Event Nobody Can Explain

    · 26 min · S5 E185

    Links & sources Brown University — LZ experiment sees surprising result in search for dark matter — https://www.brown.edu/news/2026-09-01/lz-dark-matter-results US Department of Energy — LZ Sees Surprising Result in…

  29. BepiColombo Lets Go: Eight Years, Nine Flybys, One Irreversible Moment

    · 25 min · S5 E184

    Anna and Avery cover BepiColombo's arrival at Mercury beginning today, as the ESA/JAXA mission jettisons the transfer module that has carried it for nearly eight years and nine planetary flybys. Plus: NASA awards Blue…

  30. There's Something Molten Under Mars's South Pole

    · 24 min · S5 E183

    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…

  31. Catching the Uncatchable: Starship's Boldest Test Yet

    · 19 min · S5 E182

    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…

  32. Roman Launches: A Telescope's Countdown Ends

    · 17 min · S5 E181

    🚀 The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is safely away — Anna and Avery recap Sunday's clean Falcon Heavy launch, what happens next on the road to L2, and a surprise Australian link in the mission. Then: Elon Musk…

  33. The Weekend Wrap, August 29: Roman's Countdown Begins

    · 18 min · S5 E180

    Today's episode — S05E180, Saturday August 29, 2026, The Weekend Wrap: Main story: The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launches tomorrow, Sunday August 30, with a primary window opening 7:26am EDT (11:26 UTC / 9:26pm…

  34. Forty Times Brighter Than the Full Moon: Inside the Space-Mirror Fight

    · 17 min · S5 E179

    Today's episode — S05E179, Friday August 28, 2026: Feature story: US startup Reflect Orbital has FCC approval for Eärendil-1, a demonstration satellite carrying a 60-foot mirror, the first step toward a planned…

  35. Diamond Rain, Decoded: Twenty Years of Disagreement, Solved

    · 21 min · S5 E178

    Today's episode — S05E178, Thursday August 27, 2026: Feature story: Physicists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, led by Marius Millot, used the Omega Laser Facility at the University of Rochester to…

  36. Betelgeuse, Up Close: A Star's Boiling Skin, Revealed

    · 16 min · S5 E177

    Today's episode — S05E177, Wednesday August 26, 2026: Feature story: Astronomers using the ALMA array in Chile, led by Bill Dent (European Southern Observatory), have released the most detailed picture yet of the…

  37. NASA's Roman Space Telescope Is Ready to Fly — Nine Months Early

    · 18 min · S5 E176

    Today's episode — S05E176, Tuesday August 25, 2026: Feature story: NASA's Roman Space Telescope is fully encapsulated inside its Falcon Heavy fairing and cleared to launch no earlier than 7:26 a.m. ET this Sunday,…

  38. China Delays Its Most Ambitious Moon Mission Ever

    · 13 min · S5 E175

    Today's episode — S05E175, Monday August 24, 2026: Main story: China delays Chang'e-7's launch by about a month. The Chang'e-7 lunar south pole mission's launch window opened today, August 24, but a tropical system…

  39. China's About to Attempt the Most Ambitious Moon Mission Ever

    · 17 min · S5 E7

    Anna and Avery cover China's Chang'e-7 mission — a four-vehicle lunar south pole expedition, including a leaping hopper robot, that a Brown University scientist calls the most ambitious robotic Moon mission any nation…

  40. NASA Finds the Crater a SpaceX Rocket Left on the Moon

    · 13 min · S5 E173

    Anna and Avery cover how NASA, working with South Korea's Danuri orbiter, pinpointed and imaged the exact crater left by a SpaceX Falcon 9 stage that struck the Moon on August 5th. Plus: the private rescue mission for…

  41. LandSpace Nails It: China's First Private Booster Recovery

    · 15 min · S5 E172

    Anna and Avery cover LandSpace becoming the first Chinese commercial company to land an orbital-class rocket booster — a big step for the country's private space sector. Plus: astronomers find a "mega-Earth" 23 times…

  42. First Frenchwoman in Space Steps Outside

    · 12 min · S5 E171

    Anna and Avery cover Sophie Adenot becoming the first French woman ever to conduct a spacewalk — a historic EVA that ran into some antenna trouble along the way. Plus: a trillion-mile river of gas that explains why…

  43. Starship's Ship 40 Makes It Home

    · 15 min · S5 E170

    Anna and Avery close out a three-week saga: SpaceX has recovered Starship's Ship 40 from the Indian Ocean after a soft splashdown, a difficult tow, and a moment where recovery odds looked as low as 18%. Plus: a dead…

  44. Tiny Robots, Alien Caves: NASA's Plan for Titan

    · 18 min · S5 E169

    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…

  45. Is Empty Space Really Empty? A 90-Year-Old Mystery Gets Its Answer (S05E168 — The Weekend Wrap)

    · 16 min · S5 E168

    Today's episode — S05E168, Saturday August 15, 2026, our "Weekend Wrap": **Main story: a magnetar confirms 90-year-old vacuum birefringence prediction.** A team led by Rachael Stewart (George Washington University),…

  46. The Black Hole Wrapped in a Star: JWST's Cosmic Dawn Discovery

    · 17 min · S5 E167

    Anna and Avery break down JWST's discovery of MoM-BH*-1, the earliest known "black hole star" — a black hole shrouded in dense gas, glowing from just 660 million years after the Big Bang, that might explain how…

  47. Two Minutes of Totality: Inside the August 12 Eclipse

    · 16 min · S5 E166

    Anna and Avery break down yesterday's total solar eclipse — a 182-mile-wide shadow that swept from the Arctic through Greenland and Iceland to northern Spain, giving millions of people up to 2 minutes 18 seconds of…

  48. Eclipse 2026: Where, When & How to Watch (Both Hemispheres)

    · 16 min · S5 E165

    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…

  49. Eclipse Eve: Totality Returns to Europe

    · 18 min · S5 E164

    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:…

  50. SpaceX Starship Lost at Sea? Plus China’s Landing Attempt & Uranus “Breathing”

    · 17 min · S5 E163

    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,…

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