Equatorial Launch Australia Unveils its Plans | S26E156

[00:00:00] This is SpaceTime Series 26 Episode 156 for broadcast on the 29th of December 2023. Coming up on SpaceTime… Equatorial Launch Australia unveils its plans for new spaceport launch pads. Rocket Labs back in business following successful Electron launch from New Zealand.

[00:00:20] And North Korea has launched its biggest intercontinental ballistic missile so far. All that and more coming up on SpaceTime. Welcome to SpaceTime with Stuart Gary Equatorial Launch Australia has unveiled its final plans for its spaceport launch pads at the Arnhem Space Centre east of Darwin.

[00:00:57] The new pads are specifically designed to accommodate multiple rocket designs with minimal modification. The new design can handle all current NewSpace small launcher rocket types with masses up to 450 tonnes and payload capacities of up to 3 tonnes. The new pads feature 90-degree triple redundancy hydraulically controlled pivot bases.

[00:01:18] Each is equipped with a custom-designed interface plate element, allowing rapid mounting and dismounting of different launch vehicles and support equipment. The new pads are also designed to reduce rocket plume damage by using a multi-layer composite plume deflector engineered to handle high-velocity rocket plumes exceeding 16,500 km per hour

[00:01:38] and temperatures over 4,000 degrees Celsius. The launch pads also feature an 80,000 litre water dilute system to mitigate the thermal and acoustic effects of the launch. Complementing the new launch pads will be a launch vehicle transport system to carry rockets from the Horizontal Integration Facility.

[00:01:55] The rocket trolley, as it's called, is designed to handle launch vehicles up to 45 metres long weighing in excess of 130 tonnes empty. The new launch pad design follows confirmation that a South Korean company has already signed up to be one of the first long-term tenants of the facility.

[00:02:12] Equatorial Launch expects to accommodate up to seven launch companies at the complex. Back in 2022, the company successfully launched three NASA Suborbital-2 Stage Black Brand 9 sounding rockets. The June 26 launch carried the X-ray Quantum Calorimeter experiment for the University of Wisconsin.

[00:02:30] The July 6 launch carried the Suborbital Imaging Spectrograph for Transition Region Irradiance of Nearby Exoplanet Host Stars, or SISTEEN mission for the University of Colorado Boulder. And the July 11 launch carried the Dual-Channel Extreme Ultraviolet Continuum Experiment, JUICE, also for the University of Colorado Boulder.

[00:02:50] The three flights mark NASA's first launches from Australian soil since 1995 when missions were conducted from the Woomera rocket range in Outback, South Australia. This is Space Time. Still to come, Rocket Lab are back in the space launch business following a successful

[00:03:06] mission from New Zealand, and North Korea flexes its muscle as it launches its biggest intercontinental ballistic missile ever. All that and more still to come on Space Time. Rocket Lab has returned to flight status, successfully launching an Electron rocket

[00:03:37] from its Mahea Peninsula spaceport on New Zealand's North Island. The mission, named the Moon God Awakens, carried the Tsukuyomi-1 satellite into orbit for Japanese startup Institute of Kyushu Pioneers of Space Inc. The synthetic aperture Earth Observation Satellite is named after a Japanese god of the moon.

[00:03:56] The launch was the 10th Electron flight this year, beating the company's previous record of nine set in 2022. It was also the 42nd Electron launch for the company. Avionics batteries have switched to internal power. Ground power is disabled. Vehicle is fully on internal power.

[00:04:13] AFTS is green and enabled for flight. Locks load is complete. System is in recirculation. Anti-geysering is disabled. Stage one and stage two tanks are pressed. High flow engine purge enabled. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, liftoff. Electron has lifted off from launch complex one and we are 34 seconds into our flight.

[00:04:44] With Electron now clear of the pad soon we will approach max Q or maximum aerodynamic pressure, the moment of the most amount of stress against the rocket. Vehicle is supersonic, approaching max Q. High voltage discharge nominal. Clear at max Q.

[00:04:57] And there you have it, Electron has cleared max Q. A beautiful and nominal mission so far. Now up 15 kilometers in altitude as the rocket reaches speeds of more than 2100 kilometers. Next up are three mission milestones that happen in quick succession.

[00:05:14] First up we have MECO or main engine cutoff. This is when all nine Rutherford engines on the first stage throttle down and then shut off completely. Very quickly after that we have the separation of the first and second stages. Main booster tank fall away from Electron's second stage.

[00:05:29] We then have the ignition of the single Rutherford engine on Electron's second stage, excuse me, as the mission continues to orbit. Those calls should be coming up from our operators in mission control very shortly. Stage one propulsion holding nominal. Standby for MECO. 15 seconds to MECO.

[00:05:45] Entered burnout detect mode. MECO confirmed. Stage separation successful. Stage two ignition confirmed. As you can probably tell from that applause we have had a successful MECO stage separation and second stage engine start for Electron.

[00:05:59] Up next will be the fairing jettison where the two halves of Electron's protective fairing split and fall away from the vehicle to expose IQPS's satellite to space in preparation for payload deployment. Fairing jettison succeeded. At three minutes and 42 seconds into the mission the single Rutherford engine on Electron's

[00:06:17] second stage continues to burn bright as we make our way to orbit. The engine's nozzle includes a nitrogen bottle which has been introduced as part of an update to the second stage system. Now this is providing pressurized gas to the enclosure covering the second stage electrical

[00:06:32] system helping to minimize the chances of electrical arcs. Stage two propulsion nominal. Soon we'll reach a mission milestone unique to Electron, the battery hot swap. Electron's fuel pumps are battery powered and once we deplete the first set of batteries

[00:06:45] they're of no use to us anymore and so we swap them out with a fresh set ejecting the depleted ones so that they don't hitch a ride to orbit. We are now four minutes and 42 seconds into flight and well on our way to orbit.

[00:06:57] Now attached to Electron's second stage is the kick stage IQPS's satellite right there which is poised for deployment to a 575 kilometer orbit. We have about 61 percent of propellant remaining which will take us through to about T plus

[00:07:12] nine and a half minutes where we will have engine shutdown and kick stage separation. The stage two Rutherford engine continues to perform nominally and Electron is climbing steadily to its target apogee of 575 kilometers above earth.

[00:07:26] The IQPS payload atop the kick stage is less than an hour away from its home in orbit. Swaddling down. HVB discharge nominal. Hot swap successful. That was the call that battery hot swap is confirmed and the mission is proceeding as

[00:07:39] planned in about three minutes Electron's second stage will experience SECO or second engine cutoff. Now much like main engine cutoff the stage two Rutherford will throttle down before the kick stage separates as it continues on to payload deployment. HVB battery discharge holding nominal.

[00:07:56] Alright a quick check in on the dials at T plus seven minutes and 28 seconds. Electron is traveling at a speed of over 17,000 kilometers per hour and approaching an altitude of about 242 kilometers which with some quick maths brings us another 300 or so kilometers to go in this mission.

[00:08:15] Now after we reach that target we will have a coast phase of about 45 minutes as the kick stage scoots around to the other side of earth and back into position ready for payload deployment. Stage two propulsion still holding nominal.

[00:08:27] The team and mission control are closely monitoring the stage two burn as we get closer and closer to SECO or second engine cutoff. Just a minute to go until that milestone with Electron and the IQPS payload remaining healthy.

[00:08:40] Reminder that this version of Rutherford is designed for the vacuum of space so the glowing nozzle is much larger than the sea level variant of the engine used on stage one. This larger nozzle extracts more energy from the exhaust as it expands increasing the performance of the engine.

[00:08:54] Entered burnout attack mode. Glynosis on 25 seconds remaining. As we mentioned before one of the final milestones coming up for this mission is SECO. If the second stage engine throttled down ahead of shutoff then the kick stage which

[00:09:07] the satellite is attached to will separate and begin its coast phase. So let's listen in to mission control for the calls. SECO confirmed. And stage two separation confirmed. And with that the Rutherford engine on Electron's second stage has successfully shut down and

[00:09:28] stage two and the kick stage have cleanly separated. The kick stage will now enter what we call a coast phase. For the next 45 minutes or so the kick stage will be in an elliptical orbit around earth

[00:09:38] before the CURI engine ignites raising the kick stage's perigee to put us in a circular orbit. From here we will deploy IQPS's Tsukuyomi satellite to its destination in orbit. Rocket labs 42nd Electron launch a dedicated mission for IQPS.

[00:09:53] There's a few more seconds left in this burn then the engine will shut down and the moon god will awaken. Let's hand it back over to mission control as we listen in for those final calls. CURI engine cutoff confirmed.

[00:10:03] That's confirmation from mission control the CURI engine has shut down. We are about 40 seconds away from payload deployment of the Tsukuyomi satellite ready to join the other QPS SAR 5 satellite already in orbit. Payload deployment confirmed.

[00:10:16] You heard it there from mission control and from the applause from our team payload deployment is confirmed. The moon god has awoken and Tsukuyomi is now in orbit ready to perform its mission to provide earth observation imagery in rain, hail or shine.

[00:10:33] Rocket lab have two launch pads at Mahia and a third at NASA's Wallops Island Flight Facility on the Virginian Mid-Atlantic Coast. And as well as Electron, it's now building a new rocket design, even bigger and more reusable, called the Neutron.

[00:10:47] The moon god awakens mission was the first Electron flight since the September 19 launch failure when the rocket's second stage suddenly shut down shortly after stage separation 2 and a half minutes after liftoff. An investigation into the incident by Rocket Lab and the US Federal Aviation Administration

[00:11:04] pointed to an electrical arc in the power supply system which provides high voltage to the Rutherford engine's motor controllers. And that shorted out the battery packs which provide power to the launch vehicle's upper stage. This is Space Time.

[00:11:19] Still to come, North Korea launches its biggest intercontinental ballistic missile, one large enough to reach any point in the United States. And in January's Skywatch, the Earth enters perihelion, a look at Sirius the Dog Star

[00:11:32] and the brightest star in the night skies, and the Quadrantids' meteor shower are among the highlights of the January night skies on Skywatch. North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un has vowed to accelerate the country's nuclear buildup

[00:12:01] after overseeing the launch of the solid-fueled Hwasong-18, Pyongyang's biggest and most powerful ballistic missile so far. Kim says the new missile is capable of reaching anywhere in the United States, confirming reports by Japan's defense ministry which claim the Hwasong-18 had a potential range

[00:12:19] of more than 15,000 kilometers, allowing it to quite literally cover the entire continental United States. On this test flight, the Hwasong-18 flew just over 1,000 kilometers, reaching a maximum altitude of 6,000 kilometers. The flight was the third test of a North Korean solid-fueled ICBM after launches in April and

[00:12:39] July this year, which analysts say are signaling consistent efforts to improve the technology. The United Nations Security Council has adopted numerous resolutions calling on Pyongyang to halt its nuclear and ballistic missile programs since its first nuclear test back in 2006.

[00:12:56] North Korea's carried out six nuclear tests so far, the most powerful with an estimated yield of somewhere between 100 and 370 kilotons back in September 2017. A report by the U.S. Congressional Research Service estimates that North Korea now has enough enriched uranium for between 20 and 60 nuclear warheads.

[00:13:17] This is Space Time, and time now to turn our eyes to the skies and check out the celestial sphere for January on Skywatch! January is the first month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian calendars. The name originates in the Latin word for door.

[00:13:47] That's because January is the door to the new year, and an opening to new beginnings. The month is conventionally thought of as being named after Janus, the mythical Roman god of beginnings and transitions. But according to the ancient Roman farmer's almanac, it was actually Juno who was the

[00:14:04] traditional god of January. Of course, from an astronomical point of view, January marks Earth's closest orbital position to the sun, perihelion, which occurs about two weeks after the December solstice. Planets, including the Earth, don't orbit the sun in perfect circles, but rather in ever-changing elliptical orbits.

[00:14:24] The shape of these orbits vary due to gravitational influences from other planetary objects, and in Earth's case that especially includes the Moon, which is almost massive enough to be considered a binary partner. So over a roughly 100,000 year cycle, Earth's orbit changes in shape from almost circular

[00:14:40] to far more elliptical. This difference is known as eccentricity. And the nearest point in Earth's orbit around the sun is called perihelion. This year's perihelion will occur on Wednesday January 3rd at 1138 am AUST, when the Earth will be just 147,100,632 km from the sun.

[00:15:03] That's 7.38 in the evening of Tuesday January 2nd US Eastern Standard Time, and 38 minutes after midnight on Wednesday January 3rd Greenwich Mean Time. Around six months later, and about two weeks after the June solstice, Earth will be at

[00:15:18] its furthest orbital position from the sun, a location known as aphelion. OK, let's start our tour of the January night sky by looking to the northeast right next to the constellation Orion, where you'll see the brightest star in the night sky, the dog star Sirius.

[00:15:34] So called because it's the brightest star in the constellation Canis Major, the Big Dog. The name Sirius actually means scorching or brilliant, a clear reference to its spectacular brightness in the sky.

[00:15:46] As well as being one of the nearest stars to the sun at just 8.7 light years, it's also intrinsically bright, and almost twice as bright as the second brightest star in the night skies, Canopus.

[00:15:57] A light year is about 10 trillion kilometres, the distance a photon can travel in a year at 300,000 km per second, the speed of light in a vacuum, and the ultimate speed limit of the universe.

[00:16:08] Sirius is the fifth closest star to the sun, and it's gradually moving closer to the solar system. So it'll steadily increase in brightness over the next 60,000 years, after which time it will begin moving away again, and it will gradually become fainter and fainter.

[00:16:24] But it will still continue to be the brightest star in Earth's night sky for at least the next 210,000 years. Sirius is a binary star system, comprising a spectrotype A main sequence white star called Sirius A, and a small white dwarf companion Sirius B, which orbits between 8.2 and 31.5

[00:16:44] astronomical units away from the primary star. An astronomical unit is the average distance between the Earth and the sun, about 150 million kilometres. Main sequence stars are those undergoing hydrogen fusion into helium in their core. Astronomers describe stars in terms of spectrotypes, a classification system based on temperature

[00:17:05] and characteristics. The hottest, most massive and most luminous stars are known as spectrotype O blue stars. If followed by spectrotype B blue white stars, then spectrotype A white stars, spectrotype F whitish yellow stars, spectrotype G yellow stars, that's where our sun fits in, spectrotype

[00:17:24] K orange stars, and the coolest and least massive stars known are spectrotype M red stars. Each spectral classification can also be subdivided using a numeric digit to represent temperature with zero being the hottest and nine the coolest, and a Roman numeral to represent luminosity.

[00:17:41] Now put all that together and our sun becomes a G2V or G25 yellow dwarf star. Also included in the spectral classification system are spectrotypes LT and Y which are assigned to failed stars known as brown dwarfs, some of which were born as spectrotype M red

[00:17:59] stars but became brown dwarfs after losing some of their mass. Brown dwarfs fit into a category between the largest planets, which are about 13 times the mass of Jupiter, and the smallest stars, those spectrotype M red dwarfs we talked about

[00:18:13] before, which are about 75 to 80 times the mass of Jupiter or around 0.08 solar masses. Brown dwarfs don't have enough mass to build up the sorts of temperatures and pressures in their cores needed to trigger the nuclear fusion process which makes stars like our sun shine.

[00:18:32] Sirius A has at least twice the mass of the sun and is about 25 times more luminous. The Sirius binary system is between 200 and 300 million years old, quite young by astronomical standards, and it originally consisted of two bright spectrotype A white stars.

[00:18:49] The more massive of these two stars, Sirius B, consumed its resources and became a red giant before shedding off its outer layers and collapsing into its current state as a white dwarf around 120 million years ago. White dwarfs are the stellar corpses of sun-like stars.

[00:19:06] Stars shine by fusing hydrogen in their core into helium. When these stars run out of hydrogen, hydrostatic equilibrium, that is the balancing act between the outwards push of nuclear energy and the inwards pull of gravity ceases and gravity

[00:19:20] wins, causing the star's core to dramatically contract and compress under its own gravity. As the star's contracting, regions around the stellar core which still contain hydrogen are moved closer to the core and the region where pressures and temperatures allow hydrogen fusion to take place.

[00:19:37] This triggers hydrogen burning in the shell around the core, causing the star's outer layers to dramatically expand and being further away from the core, the star's photosphere of visible surface gets cooler and looks redder.

[00:19:50] The star, now called a red giant, experiences a massive increase in its stellar wind production as more and more material flows out of its gaseous envelope. Meanwhile, the increase in pressure and temperature caused by the core contracting eventually triggers

[00:20:04] what's called a helium flash, fusing the core helium into carbon and oxygen. Higher mass stars will then progress to fuse heavier and heavier elements. But smaller stars like the sun don't contain enough mass to fuse carbon and oxygen into

[00:20:19] heavier elements, and so stellar fusion comes to an end. The star's outer gaseous envelope drifts away as a spectacular planetary nebula, leaving exposed the super-dense white-hot stellar core, a white dwarf, which will then slowly cool over the eons.

[00:20:37] In trillions of years time, it'll cool down enough to become a black dwarf, but the universe hasn't been around long enough for that to happen to any white dwarf yet. The atmospheres of white dwarfs are composed mainly of hydrogen and helium, but between

[00:20:50] 25 and 50% of all known white dwarfs also show traces of metals in their spectra. Astronomers refer to all elements heavier than hydrogen and helium as metals. These metals originate through the accretion of tidally disrupted planets that were previously

[00:21:04] orbiting the progenitor star, but were consumed by the star as it expanded out into a bloated red giant. And of course this will also be the fate that ultimately befalls our own local star the sun in about 7 billion years from now, and with it the Earth itself.

[00:21:21] 5,000 years ago, the ancient Egyptians looked at Sirius and they saw it as the god Anubis, lord of the underworld, who had the head of a dog, and who invented embalming, the funeral rites, and who guided one through the underworld to judgment, where he attended the scales

[00:21:37] during the weighing of the heart to determine one's fate in the afterlife. Anubis was later replaced in Egyptian mythology by Osiris as the lord of the underworld, and Sirius became the goddess Isis. By carefully watching Sirius' movements across the sky, the ancient Egyptians determined

[00:21:55] that it would be visible every night for 295 and a quarter nights, followed by 70 nights of absence. And this allowed them to determine that a year was 365 and a quarter days long. Their calculations were accurate to within 11 minutes.

[00:22:10] The helical rising of Sirius also marked the annual flooding of the River Nile in ancient Egypt and the hot, sultry dog days of summer for the ancient Greeks. In Greek mythology, Sirius was the dog star and the canine companion of Ryan the Hunter.

[00:22:27] Helical rising refers to the first time of the year when a star becomes visible above the eastern horizon for a brief moment just before sunrise. It's being claimed that the Dogon people in Mali in Western Africa have ancient stories

[00:22:40] describing the 50-year orbital period of Sirius and its companion white dwarf, which pre-dates the white dwarf's discovery by modern astronomers. It's also claimed that these legends were handed to the Dogon people by ancient aquatic space travellers who told them of a third star accompanying Sirius A and B.

[00:22:57] However, a report in the journal Current Anthropology raised serious doubts about whether the stars referred to by the Dogon people were in fact Sirius A and its white dwarf companion. That's because senior Dogon claim the story actually refers to a different grouping of stars.

[00:23:14] Also other researchers have pointed out that the Dogon could have heard about the discovery of Sirius' companion and then simply incorporated it into their mythology in 1893 when a French expedition arrived in central West Africa to observe an April 16 total eclipse and were overheard discussing the discovery.

[00:23:32] Looking due north just above the horizon this time of year, you'll see the bright yellowy star Capella, the brightest star in the constellation Riga the Charioteer. Capella is the Latin term for a small female goat.

[00:23:45] The star's alternative name is Capra, which was more commonly used in classical times. Although it appears to be a single star to the unaided eye, Capella is actually a system of four stars in two binary pairs.

[00:23:57] The first pair comprises two bright yellow giant stars, both of which are around 2.5 times the mass of the Sun. Having exhausted their core hydrogen supplies, both stars have cooled and expanded out to become giants, moving off the main sequence.

[00:24:13] Designated Capella AA and Capella AB, they're in a very tight circular orbit, some 0.76 astronomical units apart, orbiting each other every 104 Earth days. Capella AA is the cooler and more luminous of the two, with some 78 times the luminosity and 12 times the radius of the Sun.

[00:24:32] Known as an aging red clump star, Capella AA is fusing helium into carbon and oxygen in its core. Capella AB is a slightly smaller but hotter subgiant, about 73 times as luminous and almost

[00:24:46] nine times the radius of the Sun, and it's in the process of expanding out to become a red giant. The Capella system is one of the brightest sources of X-rays in the sky, thought to come primarily from the corona of the more massive giant.

[00:25:00] The second pair of stars in Capella are located about 10,000 astronomical units from the first pair. They consist of two faint, small, relatively cool spectral type M main sequence red dwarf stars. The two red dwarfs have been designated Capella H and Capella L.

[00:25:18] Almost directly overhead this time of year, a position in the sky known as Zenith, we find Canopus, the second brightest star in the night sky after Sirius. Located some 313 light years away in the constellation Korean of the Keel, Canopus looks incredibly bright because it is huge.

[00:25:35] It's a giant spectral type A white star, with some 10 times the mass, 71 times the diameter and 10,000 times the luminosity of the Sun. Canopus is another bright X-ray source, also most likely produced by its corona, magnetically heated to several million Kelvin.

[00:25:53] The temperature is also likely to be stimulated by fast rotation combined with strong internal convection currents percolating through the star's outer layers. No star in our night sky closer than Canopus is more luminous than it, and it's been the

[00:26:07] brightest star in Earth's night sky during three different epochs over the past 4 million years. Other stars appear brighter only during relatively temporary periods, during which they are passing the solar system at much closer distances than Canopus.

[00:26:22] About 90,000 years ago, Sirius moved close enough that it appeared to be brighter in our night sky than Canopus, and as we mentioned earlier, that will remain the case for another 210,000 years. But in 480,000 years from now, Canopus will once again be the brightest star in the night

[00:26:39] sky, and it will remain so for a period of about 510,000 years. In Greek mythology, Canopus was a helmsman and the navigator for the fleet of Menelaus, king of Sparta, which was settling back from the Battle of Troy.

[00:26:54] Canopus is said to have died when the fleet arrived at the port of Alexandria in Egypt, and so a star which was visible on the horizon was named in his honour. As we said, it's the brightest star in the constellation Carina, which represents the

[00:27:08] keel of the boat Argo, used by Jason and the Argonauts in their quest for the Golden Fleece. Located nearby are the vessel's sails, represented by the constellation Vela, and the roof of the boat's rear cabin or poop deck, which is represented by the constellation Pappus.

[00:27:25] Canopus forms part of the stellar association or asterism known as the False Cross, which straddles the constellations Carina and Vela the sails, and is often confused with the real Southern Cross or Crux. Combined, Carina, Vela, and Pappus used to form the constellation Argo Navis, representing

[00:27:42] the ship Argo skimming along the river of the Milky Way. But modern-day astronomers consider the constellation to be simply too big, because it was some 28% larger than the next biggest constellation and it had more than 160 easily visible stars.

[00:27:57] And so it was eventually divided into the three smaller constellations Carina, Vela, and Pappus in 1755. This time of the year, the Southern Cross is upside down and low down in the southern skies during the early evening.

[00:28:12] For our listeners north of say Brisbane, it will most likely be hidden by trees and buildings on the horizon during the early evening. But later on as the Earth turns, the Southern Cross will rise above the horizon in the south-southeast

[00:28:24] for our northern listeners and appear to be lying on its left side. One of the best things about living in the southern hemisphere is that most of the brightest stars in the night sky are visible during January nights.

[00:28:37] In the Sirius, the Dog Star is the brightest, followed by Canopus the navigation star. Third brightest is Alpha Centauri, the furthest of the two pointer stars pointing to the Southern Cross and the nearest star system to the Sun.

[00:28:51] The fourth and fifth brightest stars, Arcturus and Vega, aren't visible in the southern hemisphere during January. But the sixth brightest, Capella, is visible just above the northern horizon. And the seventh, Rigel, marks Orion's knee. Next in eighth place is Procyon the little dog.

[00:29:08] And ninth is Achenar, at the end of the River Eridanus. Finally, there's Betelgeuse, Orion's shoulder, the tenth brightest star in the night sky. So that's eight of the ten brightest stars in the night sky, all visible at once on a warm summer's evening in the southern hemisphere.

[00:29:26] January also plays host to one primary meteor shower, the Quadrantids. Most meteor showers radiate out from a recognisable constellation, like Leo's Leonids or Gemini's Geminids or Orion's Orionids. But the Quadrantids are meteors that appear to radiate out from the location of the former Quadrans Moralis constellation.

[00:29:46] In the early 1920s, the International Astronomical Union divided the sky into 88 official constellations. However, that means more than 30 other historical constellations didn't make the cut. The Quadrans Moralis area of the sky falls within the boundaries of the official constellation Bootes.

[00:30:04] The radiant point of the shower is near the Big Dipper, between the end of the handle and the quadrilateral of stars marking the head of the constellation Draco. The Quadrantids are usually one of the year's most spectacular meteor showers, with up to eight meteors per hour.

[00:30:19] They're best seen from the northern hemisphere, and unlike other meteor showers which tend to peak for at least a day or two, the Quadrantids only peak for a couple of hours. While most meteor showers are produced by the Earth passing through debris trails left

[00:30:32] behind by comets, the Quadrantids are one of only two meteor showers known to be produced by asteroids. They're associated with the asteroid 2003 EH1, which is thought to be the remains of a cometary nucleus that fragmented and broke apart centuries ago.

[00:30:48] EH1 still circles the Sun in a 5.5 Earth year long elongated comet-like orbit which extends out beyond Jupiter. The progenitor is thought to be the comet C1490Y1, which was first observed by Chinese, Japanese and Korean astronomers 500 years ago.

[00:31:04] It was classified as an asteroid when it was discovered by a near-Earth asteroid telescopic survey in 2003. The only other major meteor shower associated with an asteroid are the Geminids which occur in December and are caused by debris left behind by the asteroid 3200 Phaeton, which

[00:31:21] is also thought to be the remains of a comet. Jonathan Nelly from Sky & Telescope Magazine joins us now for the rest of our tour of the January night skies. G'day Stuart, yeah January so for us down here in the southern hemisphere it's mid-summer

[00:31:34] which means beautiful weather for observing. It does mean shorter hours of night time though so the days are longer and the nights are shorter but the weather is good so those hours you can get a lot of stuff done if you're a stargazer in the summer.

[00:31:48] So if you're looking for the Southern Cross which is the thing that most people want to see when they come to the south, it's still more or less upside down at the moment, low

[00:31:54] down on the southern horizon but as the night goes on and the Earth rotates, Southern Cross will rise higher and higher until sort of late evening getting on towards midnight you'll see it sort of lying on its left hand side down in the south-southeast.

[00:32:05] It's actually a really small constellation, people expect to see something really huge and therefore they don't spot it, they say where is it, where is it? And when you point out that it's really quite tiny, they go oh yeah it's really small but

[00:32:16] the stars are quite prominent, they're quite bright so once you get the hang of it anyway you're always then able to find the Southern Cross. The Milky Way which is just our galaxy seen from the inside of course is stretching right

[00:32:25] across the sky from the south to the north and its star fields contain some really great constellations and what astronomers call deep sky objects, those things like star clusters and those big nebulae, those colourful clouds that float around in space.

[00:32:36] So starting down in the south we've got the Southern Cross that's in the Milky Way, then we come to the constellations Carina and Vela and Pappus and Canis Major and if we keep going north we eventually end up to Orion and Gemini and Taurus.

[00:32:48] Now some of those constellation names people will have heard before, others they might not have because there are 88 constellations up there and only what 12 are of the Zodiac which should be a 13th of course over Euclid but 76 constellations up there most people

[00:33:00] have never heard of and of course they just sort of join the dot affairs. In the sky people long time ago wanted to put a particular mythological figure or some sort of object into the starry heavens and so they sort of joined the dots sort of thing

[00:33:12] and said that looks roughly like this or that looks roughly like that, like a fish or this or whatever or a river. There's a constellation called Eridanus which is just a big long, literally just a big long

[00:33:21] join the dots affair which stretches right from the northern sky down to the southern sky and it's just a river. It's just one long linear thing with lots of kinks and bends in it of course. So anyway that's what's up there in the sky if you're into constellations.

[00:33:33] So all those ones I just mentioned anyway, they've got amazing star fields, star clusters and nebulae, all of which can be enjoyed just with a pair of binoculars. You don't need a telescope for some of this stuff.

[00:33:41] In fact for a lot of it a pair of binoculars is perfectly good but also if you've got it nice dark sky that you're looking from then just use your own eyes to sweep along the Milky Way and there's plenty of stuff to see.

[00:33:52] Now more or less directly north in the mid to late evening in January, that is north if you're looking from the southern hemisphere, is a tiny clump of stars called the Pleiades or the Seven Sisters which we've spoken about lots and lots of times in the program.

[00:34:03] It's a cluster of about a thousand stars quite a long way from Earth and for us here this distance to the naked eye under dark skies with dark adapted eyes, you can see about six or seven stars, what I call the Seven Sisters.

[00:34:16] Some people claim to be able to see 10 or 11. I certainly can't see that with my eyesight these days but if you get a pair of binoculars onto this star cluster then you will see more stars. It really is super pretty.

[00:34:27] It really is lovely if you get a chance to see that. Back down in the south again, we've got two galaxies that you can see with the unaided eye as long as you don't have too much light pollution around such as nearby streetlights and things.

[00:34:37] These two galaxies are the small and the large Magellanic Clouds and they've been famous for many, many years and they've been known since antiquity by all the indigenous peoples of the southern part of the planet. They're named Magellanic after Ferdinand Magellan because when he was leading the expedition

[00:34:54] at 1519 I think they left and some of his ships eventually got back 1522 I think. He didn't make it all the way. He was killed in the Philippines in April 1521 I think the date was so someone else

[00:35:06] took over and led the expedition for the rest of it but it was on that voyage that the person on board who was sort of the astronomer took note of these wispy cloudy things in the southern sky and thought oh that's interesting.

[00:35:17] They got named after the boss of course not after this astronomer. And actually there's a bit of a push on at the moment by some astronomers to rename these two galaxies, take the name Magellanic Clouds off them and call them something else because

[00:35:29] during that voyage Ferdinand Magellan led. A lot of indigenous people got killed along the way and were mistreated along the way and they also say that that was the voyage that then sort of opened up the way for the Spanish

[00:35:44] to come into South America and of course there's all that history there with that. So some people are suggesting that they should be renamed these things and one name I've seen suggested is just the Milky Clouds.

[00:35:54] So we have the Milky Way galaxy that we live in and these two nearby galaxies might just be called the Milky Clouds but anyway that's a bit of a push on for that at the moment but nothing's been settled.

[00:36:03] Now here's something interesting if you go out and look at the sky around midnight June and January you'll be able to see the first, second and third brightest stars in the whole sky not counting the Sun of course.

[00:36:12] I mean you can see these three stars for a span of a couple of months really but this is a good time of year to see them and they are respectively the stars Sirius, Canopus and Rigel Cantoris.

[00:36:21] That's a name people might not have heard before and they might not have heard Canopus either. Sirius is very high up at this time of the year. It's for someone where I am in Australia it's pretty much more or less overhead during January in the sort of mid-evening.

[00:36:34] Canopus is high up too again pretty much overhead a little further south than Sirius and the star Rigel Cantoris is low down on the southeastern horizon but it gets a bit higher during the night as the Earth rotates.

[00:36:46] This star, Rigel Cantoris, is one of the two stars that make up the Alpha Centauri system and the other one is called Ptolemy. Most people never hear Rigel Cantoris or Ptolemy we just call it Alpha Centauri. It's a double star system or binary star system.

[00:36:58] It's actually a trinary star system. There is a third one we won't go into that but Alpha Centauri is what we normally call it and it and its nearby sibling called Beta Centauri, that's imaginative isn't it?

[00:37:08] Together they are known as the two pointers or just the pointers because if you draw an imaginary line through them and extend it further out it sort of points towards the southern cross. Now let's look at the planets. So what have we got?

[00:37:18] After sunset Saturn can be seen about 25 degrees up from the western horizon in the sort of end of the twilight glow. It's brightish, it's got a slightly yellowish tinge. If you can get a telescope onto it even a small one you'd be able to see the rings.

[00:37:32] Jupiter is in the same part of the sky, it's about 40 degrees up so about twice as high up in the sky as Saturn is but around towards the northern horizon rather than the western horizon and Jupiter is very easy to spot because it's really quite bright.

[00:37:45] It's a very big bright object. What else have we got? So Venus, now if you want to see Venus you have to be a night owl at the moment or a very early riser because it's rising over the eastern horizon just before around about

[00:37:56] 4am so you know that's an awkward time of the night to be looking for it but again with Venus you can't miss it because it is so big and bright. By about the second week of January Mercury, the planet Mercury makes an appearance in

[00:38:07] the morning sky too rising sort of underneath Venus about half an hour later and each of those planets is then followed about half an hour after that by the planet Mars. Now Venus is big and bright, Mercury's tiny and sort of brightish, Mars is brightish and

[00:38:23] has a orangey-reddy sort of colour so that one's easy to distinguish. And what you'll find as the weeks go by this month during January, Mercury and Mars will appear to get closer and closer and closer together.

[00:38:34] They're not actually getting closer together in space of course it's just a line of sight effect that we see from Earth and something spectacular will occur in the pre-dawn sky on that morning of January 28 because Mercury and Mars will be right next to each other.

[00:38:47] You know just right next to each other in the sky. It's going to be really spectacular to see and with Venus not far above them it's going to be a really spectacular scene to see all those three planets together.

[00:38:55] So if you get a chance January 28 in the morning get up early and have a look and there you go sort of a triple planet extravaganza. And that Stuart is the Sky for January. That's Jonathan Ali from Sky and Telescope magazine and this is Space Time and that's

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