Astronomy Daily: Latest Space News

Show notesA hot Jupiter called TOI-2535 b has become the first planet around a single star seen to stop transiting, tipped out of line by an unseen neighbour. Plus: why Uranus and Neptune have scrambled magnetic fields, MeerKAT measuring how cosmic hydrogen clusters, Euclid's first big data release, ESCAPADE heading for Mars, Starship Flight 15's double-catch attempt, the 2026 ozone hole, and a both-hemispheres sky with Mars and Jupiter 1.2 degrees apart. The planet that stopped transiting. TOI-2535 b, an 8.24-day hot Jupiter ~1,000 light-years away, ran up to ~6 hours early or late and its transits shortened and faded over seven years of TESS data until they vanished in 2026. A hidden companion of at least Saturn mass, likely in resonance on a tilted orbit, is making both orbits precess. Transits should return in 30–50 years. Yee, Petigura et al., The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 9 Nov 2026. Ice giants' scrambled magnetic fields. Dynamo models with electrical conductivity rising with depth reproduce Uranus- and Neptune-like fields, and suggest their tilt could shift by tens of degrees within decades. Aurora observations could test for change since Voyager 2. Yan et al., Communications Physics. MeerKLASS hears the cosmic web. Running MeerKAT's 64 dishes as independent telescopes, the MeerKLASS collaboration detected the 21-cm hydrogen power spectrum on cosmological scales at z = 0.42 over ~236 square degrees, signal-to-noise 6.2. MNRAS. Euclid DR1-Foundation. ~1,900 square degrees (about 1,400 in the southern sky), ~1.8 PB of images, catalogues and spectra. Weak-lensing and clustering products follow in mid-2027. Quick hits. ESCAPADE Blue and Gold complete powered Earth flybys, Mars arrival Sept 2027; Starship Flight 15 targeted NET 13 Nov 22:45 UTC; 2026 Antarctic ozone hole seventh largest in 48 years, recovery on track. Skywatch. Mars–Jupiter 1.19° on 16 Nov (pre-dawn, north-favoured); Venus 1.2° from Spica, a 10%-lit crescent; Saturn high in southern evenings; Leonids peak 17–18 Nov; first quarter 17 Nov, full Moon 24 Nov. Sources ·         UCLA Newsroom — First known 'disappearing planet' — https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/first-known-disappearing-planet-neighbor-wobble-like-top ·         Yee et al., ApJL 1011 L60 — https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/aeb4a4 ·         arXiv 2611.13343 — https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.13343 ·         Yan et al., Communications Physics — https://www.nature.com/articles/s42005-026-02841-y ·         UT Austin Jackson School release — https://www.jsg.utexas.edu/news/2026/11/wacky-magnetic-fields-of-ice-giants-explained/ ·         University of Portsmouth — MeerKLASS — https://www.port.ac.uk/news-events-and-blogs/news/breakthrough-cosmic-hydrogen-measurement-could-transform-our-view-of-the-universe ·         MNRAS stag1911 (DOI) — https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stag1911 ·         Caltech/IPAC — Euclid DR1 — https://euclid.caltech.edu/page/euclid-dr1 ·         ESA — DR1 timeline — https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/euclid/dr1-timeline ·         Berkeley News — ESCAPADE — http://news.berkeley.edu/2026/11/09/berkeleys-escapade-spacecraft-say-goodbye-to-earth-next-stop-mars/ ·         NextSpaceflight — Starship Flight 15 — https://nextspaceflight.com/launches/details/8403/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.

Show notes NASA turns Curiosity's spare test-bed rover into PROMISE, a nuclear-powered rover bound for the Moon's south pole, as part of a sweep of Moon Base awards. Plus: a theory of 'gravitational reconnection' hidden in Einstein's equations, a record 9.7-picokelvin quantum gas aboard China's Tiangong space station, ESCAPADE's twin burns over southern Australia, and a both-hemispheres skywatch. NASA's PROMISE rover and the Moon Base awards NASA Release 26-095 (7 Nov 2026) and PROMISE mission page. JPL is converting the duplicate Curiosity test-bed rover, powered by a flight-spare MMRTG, for a late-2028 launch and an 18-month mission at the lunar south pole. Blue Origin: $94M base + $140M option to deliver it on Mark 1. Also: eight CLPS 2 companies ($10B maximum, 10 years), CLPS 1 raised to $4.2B, six VADR task orders (~$1.3B), a 2028 Starship cislunar communications demo. https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-awards-moon-base-transportation-technology-science-projects/ https://www.nasa.gov/mission/promise/ Gravitational reconnection Comisso (Columbia) & Asenjo (Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez), 'Reconnection of Gravitational Fields', Physical Review D 114, 084095, 28 Oct 2026, DOI 10.1103/lmqy-pf9k; preprint arXiv 2609.25241 (Sept 2026). Theoretical only. https://news.columbia.edu/news/can-gravitational-fields-break-and-reconnect-einsteins-equations-suggest-they-can https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.25241 Quantum gas below 10 picokelvin on Tiangong 'Quantum gases below 10 picokelvin in space', Science (First Release, 5 Nov 2026), DOI 10.1126/science.aea5324. ~20,000 Rb-87 atoms, 9.7 pK equivalent temperature, 7 s observation (CAS). Peking University, SIOM and CSU-CAS. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aea5324 https://www.sciencenews.org/article/lowest-temperature-china-space-station ESCAPADE's powered Earth flybys NASA ESCAPADE blog (2 Nov 2026). Blue's burn 8:51 p.m. AEDT 7 Nov; Gold's 9:51 p.m. AEDT 9 Nov, both over southern Australia; Mars arrival 7 and 9 Sept 2027. https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/escapade/2026/11/02/nasas-twin-escapade-spacecraft-to-slingshot-past-earth-on-way-to-mars/ Quick hits Starship Flight 15 targeted Fri 13 Nov, 22:45 UTC, pending regulatory approval; Voyager 1 one light-day ~18 Nov; Euclid DR1-Foundation due in November. https://www.valleycentral.com/news/local-news/spacex-plans-to-launch-starship-15-flight-on-nov-13/ https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/euclid/dr1-timeline Skywatch New Moon 9 Nov. Venus about 1° from Spica before dawn 9–10 Nov (higher from the north). Mars and Jupiter close to ~1.2° on 16 Nov (our calculation). Crescent Moon ~2° from Antares on the evening of 11 Nov (southern-favoured). Saturn high in southern evenings. Northern Taurids 11–12 Nov; Leonids 17 Nov. Four-galaxy challenge for southern observers. Solar viewing only with ISO 12312-2 certified filters.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.

Is Mars still volcanically alive? Europe's ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter keeps catching hydrogen chloride, a gas that comes out of volcanoes on Earth, above fresh cracks on the giant Alba Mons volcano, in the wrong season, in one place and low to the ground. We unpack the evidence, the proposed 'ice lid', and everything this result is not. Then it's The Week That Was: two black holes in one early galaxy, Swift's fiery end over Sumatra, ESCAPADE's powered slingshots over Australia, a planet rescued from Webb's glare, and the cosmic leaf blower. Plus the week's sky from both hemispheres. In this episode • Lead: Hydrogen chloride detections at Alba Mons as a potential sign of igneous activity on Mars (Trokhimovskiy, Mège et al., Science Advances, 4 Nov 2026). Detections first presented at 2025 conferences. • Week That Was: LID-1166 dual black holes (E220); Swift re-entry, 4 Nov (E221); ESCAPADE powered flybys (E222); FLIP digital-twin coronagraph and 51 Eridani b (E223); Lyman-alpha 'leaf blower' (E224). • Arc updates: AR4566 M3.5 flare and storm watch; Starship Flight 15; Voyager 1 one light-day; BepiColombo; Hera. • Skywatch: Venus and Spica; thin crescent Moon; new Moon 9 Nov; spotting ESCAPADE Gold; Mars–Jupiter 16 Nov; aurora watch; ISO 12312-2 eye safety. Sources • Science Advances, DOI 10.1126/sciadv.aeb9422 — 'Enigmatic HCl detections as a potential signature of igneous activity on Mars' • ESA release, 4 Nov 2026 — European orbiter detects hints of volcanic activity on Mars • NASA ESCAPADE blog, 2 Nov 2026 — science.nasa.gov/blogs/escapade • NASA Swift blog — science.nasa.gov/blogs/swift • EarthSky Sun news, 6 Nov 2026 astronomydaily.io · @AstroDailyPod · Bitesz.com Podcast Network YouTube description Is Mars still volcanically alive? ESA's ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter has caught hydrogen chloride above fresh fissures on Alba Mons, out of season, in one place, low to the ground. We look at the evidence, the proposed ice lid, and what this result is NOT. Then The Week That Was: dual black holes in LID-1166, Swift's re-entry, ESCAPADE's slingshot over Australia, FLIP and 51 Eridani b, and the cosmic leaf blower. Plus this week's sky for both hemispheres. astronomydaily.io · @AstroDailyPod · Bitesz.com Podcast Network Chapters (estimate — confirm against final audio) 00:00 Cold open 00:40 Is Mars still breathing? Hydrogen chloride at Alba Mons 09:05 The Week That Was 14:10 Skywatch: Venus, Spica, ESCAPADE, Mars and Jupiter 17:30 OutroBecome 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.

Show notesLight from newborn stars may have blown the fog out of the early universe. A new study by Shyam Menon (Flatiron Institute, ANU PhD) and Aaron Smith (UT Dallas) finds that Lyman-alpha radiation — ultraviolet light that bounces from hydrogen atom to hydrogen atom — can clear diffuse gas and dust out of young galaxies while leaving their dense star clusters free to keep forming stars, helping explain why JWST sees so many bright galaxies so early. Also: LOFAR's sharpest and deepest low-frequency radio image yet (almost 63,000 sources, 200 hours of observing); Blue Origin's new GS3 third stage and Northstar engine; and Sandia simulations showing that an asteroid's shape and orientation can change a nuclear stand-off deflection by up to five times. Quick hits: the space station's final roll-out solar array is installed, sunspot region AR4566 fires an M3 flare as October's sunspot number falls, and Earth picks up a tiny temporary mini-moon, 2026 QQ8. Skywatch for both hemispheres: ESCAPADE's powered flybys over southern Australia, the Moon with Venus and Spica, New Moon on the 9th, globular cluster M30 for southern observers, and Mars closing on Jupiter before dawn. Sources: Menon & Smith, The Astrophysical Journal (2026), DOI 10.3847/1538-4357/aeaed6 · de Jong et al., arXiv 2611.06152 (accepted A&A) · Blue Origin announcements, 5 Nov 2026 · Moore et al., Icarus (2026) · NOAA SWPC · Minor Planet Center MPEC 2026-U95 · NASA ESCAPADE blog, 2 Nov 2026.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.

Show notesA Northwestern-led team builds a physics-based digital twin of the James Webb Space Telescope's coronagraph and recovers the giant planet 51 Eridani b in two-year-old data where standard processing could not see it. Plus VVV CL001, a dust-hidden cluster near the Milky Way's core dated at 13.4 billion years; China's most detailed account yet of its two-launch crewed Moon landing plan; and the flare alert system that tells sounding rockets exactly when to launch, as sunspot region AR4566 turns magnetically complex. The Planet in the Glare (lead) Ferrer-Chavez, Wang, Bouman, Freeman, Pueyo et al., Nature, 4 Nov 2026, DOI 10.1038/s41586-026-11213-z. FLIP (Physics-based Learning for Imaging Planets) models JWST/NIRCam coronagraph optics as a digital twin and subtracts simulated starlight. Tested on HIP 65426, 51 Eridani and TYC 5899: sensitivity improved 2–15×; 51 Eri b recovered at >5σ in F430M (CO₂ band) data where standard processing failed. Not a new planet; three-star demonstration; picometre-stability relief for the Habitable Worlds Observatory is a prospect, not yet shown. VVV CL001: the oldest cluster in the Galaxy? Olivares Carvajal, Zoccali et al., accepted to A&A, arXiv 2610.27969 (posted 20 Oct 2026). Age 13.4 ± 0.4 Gyr from Magellan/FourStar and Hubble photometry; [Fe/H] ≈ −2.2; ~7.3 kpc in the bulge. ~1 Gyr additional systematic from distance; Ton 2 dated at 13.6 Gyr — a strong candidate, not a settled record. China's crewed Moon landing plan Wang Xiang, 7th Manned Space Symposium, Beijing, 31 Oct 2026. Two Long March 10 launches; Lanyue lander and Mengzhou crew ship rendezvous in lunar orbit; crew of three, two land, rover on first landing. No new dates; target remains before 2030. Catching a flare in the act Early flare alert system, The Astrophysical Journal, 4 Nov 2026, DOI 10.3847/1538-4357/ae95fd. Enabled FOXSI-4 and Hi-C Flare to launch into an M-class flare on 17 Apr 2024 and FOXSI-5 to catch three flares on 14 May 2026. AR4566 reached beta-gamma-delta classification on 4 Nov. Quick hits Swift re-entered 7:39 a.m. EST 4 Nov (12:39 UTC) over North Sumatra; NASA's SSPICY (Starfish Space Otter) declared unrecoverable; final ISS roll-out solar array spacewalk (Kutryk, Menon); Hera begins early characterisation at Didymos per ESA's timeline.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.

Show notesESCAPADE's double slingshot over Australia NASA's twin ESCAPADE spacecraft, Blue and Gold, will each fly a powered Earth flyby on their way to Mars: the first around 5 a.m. EST on Saturday 7 November, the second around 6 a.m. EST on Monday 9 November. Each fires its engine for about nine minutes at closest approach, a manoeuvre NASA says no Mars-bound spacecraft has flown successfully before. The burns happen over southern Australia, starting 8:51 p.m. AEDT on the 7th and 9:51 p.m. AEDT on the 9th, and the spacecraft may be visible there through telescopes. Western US observers get their best chance between midnight and 2 a.m. PST. Arrival at Mars: 7 and 9 September 2027. Where did the oxygen go? Hubble's GLOW project (McQuinn et al., The Astrophysical Journal, published 2 November; preprint since August) measured oxygen in 37 nearby dwarf galaxies and found they keep only 4–25% (about 11% on average) of the oxygen their stars made, nearly all of it in gas. Simulations predict several times more. Supernova-driven winds are the likely culprit; where the oxygen ended up is still unknown. Gas data included CSIRO's Australia Telescope Compact Array. CHAPEA 2: a year on a pretend Mars NASA's second CHAPEA crew, Ross Elder, Ellen Ellis, Matthew Montgomery and James Spicer, left the 3D-printed Mars Dune Alpha habitat at Johnson Space Center on 31 October after 378 days, including communication delays of up to 22 minutes. An integrated HERA-plus-CHAPEA study is planned for 2027. Can a black hole split in two? A theory paper in Physical Review D (Cacciapaglia, Del Piano, Sannino & Vellucci, 22 October; preprint June) finds a split is thermodynamically allowed only, possibly, for black holes spinning near the maximum rate. The splitting process itself remains unknown, and no split has been observed. Quick hits Swift's final re-entry (see episode for status at recording); Starship Flight 15 targeted 12 November on an FAA planning slide, no SpaceX date yet; BepiColombo Mercury orbit capture 21 November; Voyager 1 one light-day from Earth around 18 November. Skywatch ESCAPADE telescope challenge over Australia (Sat 8:51 p.m. and Mon 9:51 p.m. AEDT); New Moon 9 Nov; Taurid fireballs; Mars and Jupiter closing to about 1.2° on 16 Nov (UT); thin crescent Moon under 1° from Venus around 10:45 UT on 7 Nov, best from eastern North America; Venus about 1.2° from Spica on the mornings of 9–10 Nov; Mercury at greatest western elongation 20 Nov. Never look at the Sun without ISO 12312-2 certified protection. Sources NASA ESCAPADE blog: Twin ESCAPADE spacecraft to slingshot past Earth (2 Nov 2026) — https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/escapade/2026/11/02/nasas-twin-escapade-spacecraft-to-slingshot-past-earth-on-way-to-mars/ NASA SVS ESCAPADE flyby star charts — https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/15114/ JPL Horizons System — https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons/app.html#/ UC Berkeley ESCAPADE mission timeline — https://escapade.ssl.berkeley.edu/timeline-news Blue Origin: New Glenn launches NASA's ESCAPADE (13 Nov 2025) — https://www.blueorigin.com/en-US/news/new-glenn-launches-nasa-escapade-lands-fully-reusable-booster NASA: Hubble uncovers case of missing oxygen in nearby dwarf galaxies (2 Nov 2026) — https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/nasas-hubble-uncovers-case-of-missing-oxygen-in-nearby-dwarf-galaxies/ McQuinn et al., GLOW II: A Census of Oxygen in Low-Mass Galaxies, ApJ, DOI 10.3847/1538-4357/ae93a6 (preprint arXiv 2608.07665) — https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.07665 NASA: CHAPEA crew 'returns' to Earth (31 Oct 2026) — https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/nasas-chapea-crew-returns-to-earth/ University of Southern Denmark: Can a black hole split in two? — https://www.sdu.dk/en/om-sdu/fakulteterne/naturvidenskab/nyheder-2026/black-hole-in-two Cacciapaglia, Del Piano, Sannino & Vellucci, Phys. Rev. D 114, 084072 (22 Oct 2026), DOI 10.1103/cx69-t466 — https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/cx69-t466 NASA Swift blog: Swift Observatory to re-enter atmosphere (2 Nov 2026) — https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/swift/2026/11/02/nasas-swift-observatory-to-re-enter-atmosphere/ Starlust: Starship Flight 15 FAA planning date — https://starlust.org/spacex-starship-flight-15-possible-launch-date-revealed/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.

Show notes Swift's Last Orbit: NASA's burst hunter falls home, a gamma-ray burst that is two explosions in one, and 3I/ATLAS's dusty ice. Swift's Last Orbit NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is expected to re-enter Earth's atmosphere on Wednesday 4 November; the US Space Force prediction is about 03:30 EST (08:30 UTC, 19:30 AEDT), plus or minus 11 hours. Surviving fragments are confined between 20.6°N and 20.6°S, a band that includes northern Australia; NASA puts the risk of harm to anyone at about 1 in 2,100. We look back at 22 years of science from a two-year mission: more than 2,000 gamma-ray bursts, the first short-burst afterglow in 2005, the BOAT in 2022, and about 7,000 papers. Two Bursts, Two Births GRB 160425A, caught by Swift in April 2016, is a 1.7-second short spike, four minutes of silence, then a 51-second long burst from the same place. A Nature Astronomy paper (Li, Wang, Zhang, Cai et al., 23 October; preprint March) argues the first is merger-like and the second collapsar-like. One event, no confirmed supernova or kilonova. 3I/ATLAS's Dusty Ice Webb's NIRSpec found the interstellar comet's ice grains are about a micron across and mixed with lots of dust, resembling some trans-Neptunian objects more than familiar comets (Protopapa et al., ApJL, 26 October; preprint September). Quick Hits Starship Flight 15 targeted NET 12 November per the FAA (unconfirmed by SpaceX); BepiColombo's Mercury orbit insertion on 21 November; Voyager 1 reaches one light-day around 18 November. Skywatch Venus near Spica before dawn, joined by a 5%-lit crescent Moon on Saturday 7 November; Mars and Jupiter closing to 1.2° by 16 November (high from the north); Saturn high in southern evening skies; New Moon 9 November; Leonids 17–18 November. ISO 12312-2 solar safetyBecome 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.

Show notesTwo black holes caught feeding side by side just 1.3 billion years after the Big Bang. JWST and ALMA confirm LID-1166, the first close dual AGN found beyond the nearby universe. Plus: Swift's final days and NASA's call for ideas to save Hubble, Rubin finds Neptune's missing trailing Trojans as Lucy enters Jupiter's, TRACERS' first look at where the solar wind gets in, and a both-hemispheres skywatch built around the Mars-Jupiter meeting on 16 November. Two Hearts in One Galaxy (LID-1166) JWST/NIRSpec integral-field spectroscopy resolves two feeding black holes ~1.5 kpc (~4,900 ly) apart at z~4.5; ALMA [CII] finds matching cold gas around each. Both appear super-Eddington yet already sit on the local black hole-host mass relation. One system, projected separation; preprint posted July, published in Nature Astronomy this week. Living on Borrowed Altitude Swift ended operations on 20 October and is expected to re-enter in early November. NASA's 29 October Request for Information asks industry about boosting, servicing or safely de-orbiting Hubble, likely to re-enter in 2033-34. Not a commitment; responses due 30 November. Trojan Week Rubin early data confirms 2025 MH348 and 2025 NN80 as long-lived trailing Neptune Trojans, plus candidate 2025 MD138 (Schwamb et al., ApJL). Lucy becomes the first spacecraft to enter the Jupiter Trojan region; Eurybates flyby 11 August 2027. TRACERS: Where the Solar Wind Gets In First results (JGR: Space Physics) suggest cusp reconnection is largely spatial rather than temporal. Mission extended to spring 2027. Quick hits BepiColombo Mercury orbit insertion 21 November; Starship Flight 15 targeted November with a double catch attempt; Voyager 1 one light-day from Earth around 18 November. Skywatch Mars and Jupiter 1.2 degrees apart before dawn on 16 November; Venus, a thin Moon and Spica low at dawn 7-10 November; Saturn high in southern evenings; zodiacal light around New Moon (9 Nov); Leonids 17-18 November; supermoon 24 November. ISO 12312-2 solar safety reminder.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.

Show notesElectrons made on the wrong side of Earth's 'impenetrable barrier', a gamma-ray burst that only looked weak, the week that was, and a Halloween that is astronomically a week early. The Wall That Broke In 2014 NASA's Van Allen Probes revealed a sharp inner edge to Earth's outer radiation belt: electrons at the very highest energies never got closer than about 2.8 Earth radii. During the May 2024 superstorm — the biggest since the 2003 Halloween storms — Japan's Arase satellite saw electrons of about 3 MeV rise deep inside that 'impenetrable barrier'. A new paper led by Yoshizumi Miyoshi (Nagoya University ISEE) shows a peak in electron phase space density growing in place at L* ≈ 3, about 12,000 km up — evidence the electrons were accelerated there rather than carried in. Intense chorus waves, operating in a region emptied by a crushed plasmasphere and a negative ionospheric storm, are the likely engine. Caveats: one storm; 'consistent with' chorus acceleration; the breach itself had been reported before — the new part is the mechanism. Not Faint, Just Side-On GRB 260310A, caught by Fermi on 10 March 2026, had a feeble gamma-ray flash but one of the brightest afterglows ever seen. Yu-Han Yang (Tor Vergata) and colleagues argue we viewed a two-component jet from the side. Preprint from May; published in ApJL this month; competing models exist. The Week That Was E214 GRB 160425A, one burst with two births · E215 θ¹ Ori C, the star born twice · E216 Rubin's first dwarf-planet candidate 2026 ED138 · E217 Betelgeuse pulled out of round by Siwarha · E218 Teghaza 001, one of the oldest pieces of Mars. Plus Swift's re-entry watch, Voyager 1 at one light-day on 18 Nov, and Starship Flight 15 targeted for November. Skywatch Halloween is astronomically a week early (true cross-quarter 7 Nov). Mars, Jupiter and Regulus line up before dawn, Mars–Jupiter just over 1° apart on 16 Nov. Moon near Mars and Jupiter on the mornings of 2–3 Nov. Saturn rules the evening, best from the south. US clocks fall back 1 Nov. Solar viewing only with ISO 12312-2 certified filters. Sources ·         Miyoshi et al., GRL 53, e2026GL125879 (2026) — https://doi.org/10.1029/2026GL125879 ·         ISAS/JAXA release, 27 Oct 2026 (Japanese) — https://www.isas.jaxa.jp/topics/004417.html ·         Nagoya University release via phys.org — https://phys.org/news/2026-10-solar-storm-triggered-ultrarelativistic-electrons.html ·         Yang et al., ApJL 1011 L22 (GRB 260310A) — https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/aea990 ·         arXiv 2605.23818 (Yang et al. preprint) — https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.23818 ·         Gill et al., arXiv 2605.26091 (competing model) — https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.26091 ·         NASA: Swift mission ends ahead of re-entry — https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/swift/2026/10/23/nasas-swift-mission-ends-ahead-of-re-entry/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.

Show notes A rose-coloured rock picked up in the Sahara in 2022 turns out to be one of the oldest pieces of Mars ever found. Teghaza 001 formed at least 4.1 billion years ago, and two independent radiometric clocks agree. We explain how it was dated, what it says about early Mars losing its water, and why its source is still a shortlist of 13 craters in the southern highlands. Also: Voyager 1 goes silent for two days and recovers on its own as it nears one light-day from Earth on 18 November; Hubble finally sees the 'Cat's Tail' of Beta Pictoris, the wreckage of a collision between two Pluto-sized worlds; two Halloween ghosts in the Carina Nebula; and quick hits on the 100th US spacewalk from the ISS, Reid Wiseman's move to JPL, Swift and Starship. Skywatch: US clocks go back on 1 November, Saturn in the evening, Venus returns to the morning sky, Mars and Jupiter close in, the Moon passes Pollux, Mars, Jupiter and Regulus, the Southern Taurids, and Carina for southern observers.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.