Anna: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Astronomy
AstroDailyPod. I'm Anna.
Avery: And I'm Avery. And Anna, uh, I don't think
I've slept properly since Wednesday.
Anna: Because of the eclipse.
Avery: Because of the Eclipse. It's Thursday,
August 13th. This is series five, episode
166. And yesterday, half our
listeners were either standing on a beach in
Spain or on a boat in Greenland watching the
moon eat the sun. So, yeah, today's a
big one.
Anna: It really is. We've got the eclipse as
our main storey today, properly deep dive.
We're going to spend some real time on it.
And then three more news storeys to get
through. Astronomers have found three
supermassive black holes hanging out in one
single galaxy, which rude
Virgin Galactic just pushed its comeback
flight back again. And Rocket Lab's
neutron rocket is doing that thing where the
deadline keeps sliding, but they're also
signing new customers, so make it make sense.
Avery: Lots to get through. Let's get into it.
Anna: Okay, so let's set the scene. Yesterday,
August 12th, the moon's shadow, and this
shadow is about 182 miles wide,
swept across the planet, starting up near
Siberia, across the Arctic Ocean, down
through eastern Greenland, western Iceland,
northern Spain, over the Balearic Islands,
and finally out into the Mediterranean, which
is such a wild path.
Avery: Like, you don't usually get Arctic Ocean in
northern Spain in the same sentence for
anything, let alone the same eclipse.
Anna: Right. And this is one of the reasons this
one had people so excited, because it hit
two totally different kinds of eclipse
chasing experiences. You had people up in
Greenland and Iceland, where it's this stark,
icy, end of the world kind of landscape.
And then a few hours of shadow travel later,
it's crossing sunbathers in Spain.
Avery: Tell me about the Iceland leg, because I
heard that's where you got the longest
totality.
Anna: Yeah, so the single longest point of totality
on land was at a place called La Tr,
which is this dramatic bird cliff on
Iceland's westernmost tip. And totality there
ran about 2 minutes and 18 seconds.
The actual maximum point of the whole eclipse
was just off the coast, about 45 kilometres
out over the water.
Avery: 2 minutes 18. Doesn't sound like much, but
when you're
Anna: standing there, it's an eternity. And
this is the bit I love. One of the Space.com
editors on the ground, Daisy Dobrievic,
said something like, I knew what to expect.
I've seen thousands of photos, but nothing
compares to that feeling you get when you
watch the sun transform before your very
eyes.
Avery: That's a thing every eclipse chaser tries to
explain to people who haven't seen one, and
you just can't really.
Anna: There was another quote I liked from a guy
watching in Spain, Anthony Wood. He said it
strikes the lizard part of your brain that
just tells you this shouldn't be real.
Avery: The lizard brain thing. Yeah, that tracks.
There's something about totality that's
almost primal. Day turning to night in a
couple of minutes, temperature dropping,
animals going quiet.
Anna: And in Iceland, because it happened mid
afternoon, only about four hours before
sunset, and up that far north, you got some
extra atmospheric effects that this eclipse
gamma geometry meant people could actually
see the moon shadow moving through the high
atmosphere and had this weirdly extended
twilight window either side of totality.
Avery: That's very niche and, uh, very cool.
Anna: There was even a chance of aurora showing up
in northern Russia if the geomagnetic
activity cooperated. Which total eclipse and
aurora at once, that's the dream combo for a
lot of skywatchers.
Avery: Okay, let's talk Spain, because that's where
the crowd numbers really show up.
Anna: So the path crossed Ocaruna, Bilbao,
Zaragoza, Valencia and Palma,
notably Madrid and Barcelona, were both
just outside the path of totality. So a
lot of people had to
Avery: travel for it, which, if you live in Madrid,
that's a rough one. So close. And yet,
nope, you get the partial.
Anna: Millions of people gathered across small
towns in northern Spain. Places like
Valoria, La Buena, and Segur de Calafel
were absolutely packed. And because it
happened about an hour before sunset there,
you got totality low on the horizon
with this golden, dramatic lighting.
Avery: And it wasn't just a look up and go home
event either. There was real science
happening during totality.
Anna: Yeah, this is the bit that matters. Beyond
the spectacle during totality, the
sun's corona, its outer atmosphere, which
you basically never get to see because the
sun's surface is so blindingly bright, still
streams out visibly into space.
Observers also picked out a solar prominence,
and you could see Jupiter, Mercury, and
Venus all pop into the darkened sky.
Avery: Four minutes, well, two and a bit minutes
of what does a solar system actually look
like right now?
Anna: Exactly. And coronal science is
genuinely useful. It helps researchers study
the sun's magnetic structure and the
processes that drive space weather, which is
obviously very relevant right now, given how
active this solar cycle's
Avery: been for anyone gutted, they missed it.
Partial phases were visible from a huge chunk
of the world, too. Some are set in England,
the northeastern U.S. michigan, Canada,
even Alaska. All got a partial bite taken out
of the sun.
Anna: And if you're already eclipse hungry again,
Spain gets another one relatively soon.
Less than a year from now, on August 2,
2027, there's another total solar
eclipse crossing Spain.
Avery: Two total eclipses in Spain within 12 months.
Eclipse chasers are going to have a
Anna: very good year, they really are.
So that's our deep dive. The August 12th
total solar eclipse. A, uh,
182 mile wide shadow,
Arctic ice to Spanish coastline. 2
minutes 18 seconds of totality at its
longest and a genuine I can't believe what
I just saw moment for millions of people.
Avery: Can we talk logistics for a second? Because I
know a chunk of our listeners are already
plotting the 2027 one. If you've never
chased totality before, what's actually
involved?
Anna: Honestly, the biggest thing is just being
inside the path. Even
99% partial is nothing like
totality. It's a completely different
experience. So it's worth the travel. After
that, it's the usual stuff. Proper eclipse
glasses for every phase, except totality
itself. A spot with a clear horizon if you
can one, and a uh, backup location in case of
cloud because you cannot control the weather
on the day.
Avery: And don't try to photograph the whole thing
on your phone and forget to actually look up.
Anna: That is the classic mistake. Half the
eclipse chaser community has a rule now. Get
one or two shots set up on a tripod and
then just put the phone down and watch it
with your own eyes. Because you only get 2
minutes and 18 seconds and you don't get them
back.
Avery: I did see the livestreams were huge for this
one too. Between the Greenland boat
expeditions and the Spanish coverage, they
were millions of people watching online who
couldn't be there in person.
Anna: Which is honestly one of the nicer things
about how big eclipse broadcasting has
gotten. You don't have to be a hardcore
chaser with a passport full of stamps to get
at least some of the I can't believe what I
just saw feeling.
Avery: Still not the same as the lizard brain moment
though.
Anna: No, nothing beats being there. But August
2, 2027 in Spain is looking
very tempting for a lot of people right now.
Avery: Alright, from one sun to three black holes,
astronomers have confirmed for the first time
three actively feeding supermassive black
holes
Anna: sitting inside a single galaxy, which is
just greedy.
Avery: The galaxy's called
J014-84214
and it's about 12.5 billion light
years away. So we're seeing it as it looked
roughly 1.2 billion years after the
big bang.
Anna: So this is baby picture of the universe
stuff.
Avery: Exactly. And that's what Makes it such a big
deal. The team led by Hannah Hubler at the
Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial
Physics used the James Webb Telescope's
NIRSP instrument to find them.
Specifically, a technique called
spectroastrometry, which measures tiny
spatial shifts in the light coming from
hydrogen emission to pin down exactly where
each black hole is sitting, even though
they're really close together on the sky.
Anna: And these aren't small either?
Avery: No, roughly 80 million, 2 million
and 0.6 million solar masses. And
here's the two of the three are on a
collision course. They're heading for a
merger.
Anna: So why does finding three in one galaxy
actually matter scientifically beyond just
wow three?
Avery: Because it's evidence for how supermassive
black holes get so big so fast in the early
universe, which has honestly been a bit of a
puzzle. If black holes can merge with each
other, not just grow by slowly swallowing
gas, that gives them a much faster route to
becoming supermassive. Hubler's team is
essentially saying mergers might be doing a
lot more of the heavy lifting early on than
we thought.
Anna: It's basically a black hole growth hack,
cosmic speedrunning to supermassive status.
But it does reshape how we think about galaxy
assembly in the early universe. If triple
black hole systems like this aren't a total
fluke, there could be a lot more of these
hiding out there, waiting for JWST to spot
them for scale.
Avery: Sagittarius A, our own galaxy's black
hole, is about 4 million solar masses. So
the biggest of these three, at 80 million, is
20 times heavier than the black hole sitting
at the centre of the Milky Way.
Anna: And that's just one of three in the same
galaxy.
Avery: Right. Which tells you this galaxy was doing
some serious growing up fast. It's another
one of those results where JWST just keeps
outperforming what Hubble could ever have
shown us at these distances. This is a level
of detail on a 12.5 billion year old
galaxy that simply wasn't accessible a few
years ago.
Anna: JWST really is the gift that keeps on
giving. We'll be watching to see if Uber's
team or anyone else turns up more of these
triple systems now that people know what to
look for.
Sticking with things that are taking longer
than planned, Virgin Galactic has delayed its
return to commercial spaceflight again.
Avery: Again being the key word.
Anna: Right. So the new spacecraft, this is their
upgraded Delta class vehicle, was supposed to
start flying paying customers in the fourth
quarter of this year. That's now been pushed
to February 2027.
Avery: What's the hold at this time? According to
the company, it's avionics and systems
installation on the first operational
spacecraft. They say they need more time to
get it right before putting people on board,
which. Fair enough. I'd rather they take the
extra months than rush it.
Anna: Always the right call with anything crude.
How did the market react?
Avery: Not well. Shares dropped about 12% in after
hours trading on the news.
Anna: Ouch. But there's a more interesting storey
buried in the same. Their
$750,000 a seat flight packages
were over subscribed and CEO Michael
Coglazier said they'll be offering higher
price points when ticket sales reopen this
autumn.
Avery: So even with the delay, demand isn't the
problem. If anything, they could be
underpricing seats.
Anna: Seems that way. Financially, the picture is
actually improving too. Net loss narrowed to
about $56 million, down from
$67 million a year ago. And they've still got
$286 million in cash and
securities on hand.
Avery: So they can absorb another delay. They've
just got to actually get the Delta ships
flying at some point.
Anna: That's the whole storey with Virgin Galactic
at this point, isn't it? The money and the
demand are there. It's the hardware timeline
that keeps slipping.
Avery: It's a very different position than where
they were even five years ago. Right back
when this was Richard Branson's company
flying the original SpaceShipTwo on short
hops. And everyone was comparing them
directly to Blue Origin's New Shepard.
Anna: Right. And that comparison's aged in an
interesting way. Blue Origins had its own
well documented hardware problems this year
too. So it's not like Virgin Galactic's the
only one whose timeline keeps slipping.
Suborbital space tourism as a whole seems to
be harder than everyone hoped across the
board.
Avery: Which? Building crewed spacecraft's always
harder than everyone hoped. We'll cheque back
in as February 2027 gets closer.
Last one, Rocket Lab. Their new medium
lift rocket, Neutron, is looking less and
less likely to make its planned debut before
the end of this year.
Anna: How much of a slip are we talking?
Avery: The company's now hedging pretty openly. This
could push out of 2026 and into
2027. It's the kind of narrowing
window language that usually means don't hold
your breath for December.
Anna: Rocket development timelines name a more
consistent disappointment, honestly.
Avery: But and this is the fun contrast, in the same
window, they announced a brand new 5 launch
deal with Kepler Communications, who'll be
flying payloads on Neutron once It does get
off the ground,
Anna: so customers are still betting on it even as
the debut date wobbles.
Avery: Exactly. And Rocket Lab's actually coming off
a record revenue quarter, so the business
overall is healthy. It's specifically
Neutron's first flight that keeps sliding,
right?
Anna: Which to be fair, is basically the storey of
every new orbital rocket ever built. Starship
slipped for years, New Glenn slipped for
years.
Avery: Ariane 6 slipped for years,
right?
Anna: It's basically tradition at this point. We'll
keep you posted on Neutron as we get closer
to an actual launch date.
Avery: For anyone not fully across it, Neutron's the
reusable medium lift rocket Rocket Lab's been
building to sit between their small electron
rocket and the big players. Basically going
head to head with Falcon 9 for the medium
payload market, which
Anna: is a pretty crowded lane to be entering late.
Falcon 9's flying constantly and everyone
from Blue Origin to the Chinese commercial
players wants a piece of that market too.
Avery: Exactly why deals like the Kepler
communications one matter so much right now.
Signing customers ahead of your first flight
is basically a vote of confidence that Rocket
Lab's execution track record with electron is
enough to earn trust, even with Neutron
itself still on the ground reputation
Anna: doing some of the heavy lifting while the
hardware catches up.
Okay, that's our storeys for today. Quick
recap the total solar eclipse over Greenland,
Iceland and Spain gave millions of people a
lizard brain moment on August 12.
Astronomers found three supermassive black
holes cozying up in one distant galaxy, two
of them headed for a merger. Virgin
Galactic's Delta class comeback flight has
slipped to February 2027, and Rocket
Lab's neutron rocket is picking up customers
faster than it's picking up a launch date.
Avery: If you enjoyed today's episode, the best
thing you can do for us is leave a rating or
review wherever you're listening and share
the episode with a fellow space nerd. You can
find full show notes, sources and links for
every storey we cover today at astronomydaily
IO and find us on social media. We're
astronomydailypod pretty much everywhere.
Anna: We'll be back tomorrow with another episode.
Until then, keep looking up.
Avery: See you next time.