Howdy Star Gazers and welcome to Star Trails.
I'm Drew and I'll be your guide to the night
sky for the week of October 5th to the 11th.
This week the bright harvest supermoon takes
center stage, Saturn continues its evening rain,
and autumn constellations emerge in full force.
Later in the show we'll examine some truly weird
stuff five unsolved mysteries of the cosmos Whether
you're tuning in from the backyard the balcony
or just your imagination I'm glad you're here.
So find a cozy spot Let your eyes adjust and
let's see what the sky holds for us this week
Folks again, let me apologize for the lack of
shows in September In addition to it being a
very busy period at my day job, I had a birthday
last month, and it's one of the ones that no
one looks forward to. Age 50. And to be honest,
this one put me in a bad place for a week or
so. As I tried to stave off the imminent collapse
of my own wave function, I looked to quantum
physics for answers to life's questions. And
here's what I landed on. 50 isn't a gateway to
old age. It's proof of improbable survival against
entropy, against chance, and against the noise
of the universe. I like to think that the fact
that I'm still here is a superposition of sorts.
At least that's what I've been telling myself
to stay sane. I'm also happy to report the weather
here in the south has finally cooled off a little,
and we're seeing clear skies in the evenings
again. Hopefully that's been the case for you
as well. Fall officially arrived last month,
and that means it's time to dust off the binoculars
and scopes as we enjoy longer, cooler nights.
Your first target for observation this week is
likely going to be the moon. The full moon arrives
Monday night, and this is not only the harvest
moon, but a supermoon, meaning it's slightly
closer to Earth than usual and will look just
a bit larger and brighter. For most of the week,
the bright moon will wash out fainter deep sky
objects, but it also gives us some spectacular
lunar conjunctions with planets and star clusters.
More on those in a moment. Now, last week in
my brief update episode, I mistakenly said September's
full moon was the Harvest Moon. That was an oversight
on my part. The Harvest Moon can occur in either
September or October. It's simply the full moon
closest to the autumnal equinox. This year, October's
full moon has that honor. The name of the Harvest
Moon dates back to when farmers used to rely
on this extra moonlight to bring in the last
of the harvest after sunset. So what was September's
full moon called? That was the corn or barley
moon. Looking further out, Saturn continues to
dominate the evening sky. It reached opposition
just a couple weeks ago and it's still bright
and well placed for observation. Step outside
after sunset and look toward the southeast to
find it. Tonight the moon slides close to Saturn
making for a lovely pairing. Binoculars show
them beautifully together and a moderately powered
telescope will reveal Saturn's rings, although
they may look a little thinner than expected.
Saturn's thin rings this year aren't an illusion.
They're a matter of Earth's changing vantage
point. The planet's ring system is tilted about
27 degrees relative to its orbit, and as Saturn
moves around the Sun, we see that tilt from different
angles. Roughly every 14 to 15 years, Earth passes
through the plane of Saturn's rings, an event
called a ring -plane crossing. Around these times,
the rings appear edge -on and seem to disappear
in small telescopes. They don't actually vanish,
the rings are just extraordinarily thin, so they
present almost no reflective surface when seen
edge on. Fun side note, ring plane crossings
often allow astronomers to spot some of Saturn's
smaller moons that are normally lost in the ring's
glare. So these periods are scientifically valuable,
even if the visual show dims a bit. Later at
night, Jupiter rises dazzling in the pre -dawn
sky. It's a brilliant beacon currently in Gemini.
Venus is also in the morning sky, hugging the
eastern horizon before sunrise. If you have a
flat view toward the east, you can't miss it.
It's the brightest object in the sky after the
moon. Mars and Mercury are too close to the Sun
to observe this week. From October the 6th through
the 10th, we get a visit from the draconid meteor
shower. The predicted peak is the evening of
Wednesday, October the 8th. This is an unusual
shower because the best time to watch it is right
after nightfall, not before dawn. The radiant
is high in the northwest after sunset, so grab
a chair, face away from the moon, and scan the
sky during twilight's fade. The waning gibbous
moon will drown out many of the fainter meteors,
so expect just a handful per hour. But the draconids
are famous for surprise outbursts, so it's worth
a look. On the nights of October 9th and 10th,
the moon passes very close to the Pleiades star
cluster, also known as the Seven Sisters. For
some observers in North America, the moon will
actually occult or pass in front of several of
the brighter stars in the cluster. If you have
binoculars or a small telescope, this is a magical
sight. Watch stars disappear behind the moon's
bright limb and reappear on the dark side. As
always, refer to a stargazing app like Sky Safari
or Stellarium to see if this phenomenon is visible
in your area. Summer's constellations are on
their way out. By mid -evening, Pegasus stands
tall in the east, marked by the Great Square.
Trace a line from the Great Square into Andromeda,
and you can find M31, the Andromeda galaxy. Visible
in binoculars, even from suburban skies. Above
Pegasus, Cassiopeia forms her distinctive W shape,
which is a reliable signpost to M31 as well.
The larger point of the W seems to form an arrow
that points the way to M31. This is how I've
always located the Andromeda galaxy. Meanwhile,
Perseus and the double cluster rise in the northeast,
a binocular favorite. To the south, the bright
star Fomalot shines alone, low on the horizon,
while the summer triangle still lingers in the
west, slowly giving way to the stars of autumn.
There's been another giant comet in the news.
Comet 3I Atlas, also known as C2025N1, is the
third confirmed interstellar object to enter
our solar system, after Oumuamua and Borisov.
Despite breathless headlines recently, this is
not a naked eye spectacle. This week, it's actually
too close to the sun in the evening sky to observe
safely. The comet will reach perihelion on October
29, then gradually reappear in the pre -dawn
sky in December, mostly for large telescopes.
Early Hubble data suggests a nucleus no larger
than about 5 km, and its peak brightness is expected
around magnitude 11 to 12. Faint, but scientifically
thrilling. It's interstellar, after all. It's
October, so that means it's time for some eerie
topics. Imagine a smoke machine running, Robert
Stack in his trench coat, and that creepy, synth
-heavy theme whispering into the void. We're
about to explore some unsolved mysteries of the
cosmos. That's coming up after the break. Stay
with us. Welcome back. The universe, vast, silent,
filled with mysteries beyond imagination. Everywhere
we look the cosmos is brimming with enigmas,
riddles that defy our laws of physics and confound
even the sharpest minds. They are the cold cases
of astronomy, the unsolved puzzles of astrophysics.
Tonight we open the cosmic case file, Five mysteries,
each as unsettling as it is profound. These are
the questions that haunt the night sky, waiting
for answers that may change everything we think
and know. Let's dim the lights and step into
the shadows of the universe. the dark sector,
matter and energy we cannot see. It begins with
a crime of omission, a hidden force at work.
Galaxies, those magnificent pinwheels of stars,
are not behaving as they should. According to
Newton, according to Einstein, stars at the edges
should drift lazily, moving slower than those
near the core. Instead, they whirl around at
the same breakneck speed, as if an invisible
hand is holding the galaxy together. That invisible
hand is called dark matter. We can't see it,
we can't touch it, but the evidence is overwhelming.
Dark matter doesn't glow, reflect, or even absorb
light, yet it outweighs the visible stars 5 to
1, like a shadowy suspect. it makes its presence
known only through its gravitational pull. And
then there's its partner in mystery, dark energy.
In 1998, astronomers studying distant exploding
stars, supernova, noticed something shocking.
The universe isn't just expanding. It's accelerating,
as if some unseen energy is stretching the fabric
of space itself. Dark matter and dark energy
together make up about 95 % of the universe.
95%. That means everything we see, stars, planets,
gas clouds, even ourselves, amounts to a cosmic
rounding error. Theories abound. Perhaps exotic
particles are hiding in plain sight. Perhaps
there are unseen dimensions warping the rules,
or maybe the very laws of gravity need rewriting.
But no experiment has yet revealed the culprit.
Let's rewind the clock to the first second of
the universe. The Big Bang should have created
equal amounts of matter and antimatter. For every
proton, an anti -proton. For every electron,
a positron. Matter and antimatter are mirror
images. Same mass, but with an opposite charge.
When they meet, they annihilate, vanishing in
a burst of light. By that logic, the universe
should have destroyed itself almost instantly,
yet it didn't. Somehow matter gained the upper
hand, and antimatter vanished, and we are the
survivors of that imbalance. But why? Physicists
call this puzzle baryon asymmetry. The smoking
gun lies in something known as CP violation.
And here's the translation. C stands for charge
conjugation. Swap a particle for its antiparticle.
P stands for parity. Flip the universe like a
mirror image. If the laws of physics were fair,
a process should look the same under both flips,
but experiments show that's not always true.
In the 1960s, researchers found that certain
subatomic particles Kions decayed differently
than their antimatter twins. Nature had shown
a preference. This CP violation is the universe's
tiny cheat code favoring matter ever so slightly
over antimatter. But here's the problem. The
CP violation we've measured isn't strong enough
to explain why the universe is filled with matter
instead of just light. That's why physicists
are chasing neutrinos. These ghostly particles
able to slip through a trillion miles of lead
unhindered may hold the answer. Neutrinos oscillate
between different flavors, electron, muon, tau,
and in doing so, they might break CP symmetry
in ways far more dramatic than quarks do. If
so, we'll finally know why matter won. Until
then, the trail is cold. Case three black holes
and the information paradox There is no greater
locked room in the cosmos than a black hole Cross
its boundary the event horizon and escape is
impossible Gravity there is absolute light itself
cannot flee Einstein's equations tell us matter
falls inward, collapsing to a singularity, a
point of infinite density. But infinities are
the mathematician's red flag, a sign that our
theories might be broken. What happens to the
information carried by particles that fall in?
Quantum mechanics says information can never
be destroyed, yet black holes seem to erase it
completely. This contradiction is called the
information paradox. Stephen Hawking offered
a clue. Black holes aren't perfectly black. They
radiate faint amounts of energy, now called Hawking
radiation, and slowly evaporate. If they vanish
completely, what becomes of the information they
devoured? Does it escape scrambled in the radiation?
Is it somehow preserved on the surface of the
event horizon like a cosmic hologram? Some theories
suggest firewalls of energy at the event horizon,
violent boundaries that incinerate matter instantly.
Others propose that our universe itself may be
holographic, and black holes are the proof. The
Event Horizon Telescope gave us our first images
of these beasts, shadows of darkness against
glowing disks of gas. But their inner secrets
remain sealed. Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays
Every second Earth is bombarded by cosmic rays,
charged particles hurled through space at near
light speed. Most are modest in energy, spawned
by exploding stars. But sometimes a monster arrives,
a cosmic ray with energies so vast it staggers
belief. In 1991, one such particle hit a detector
in Utah. Its energy was so extreme, more than
10 to the 20th power, electron volts, that physicists
nicknamed it the Oh My God particle. Packed into
a single proton it carried as much energy as
a baseball traveling at 90 kilometers per hour
Imagine something that tiny carrying that much
punch But here's the paradox physics says such
particles shouldn't reach us on their journey
They should collide with the faint glow of the
cosmic microwave background That's the afterglow
of the Big Bang and lose energy in the process
This predicted cutoff is known as the GZK limit,
and yet they arrive anyway. Where do they come
from? Some point to active galactic nuclei, jets
from supermassive black holes. Others suggest
gamma ray bursts, the most violent explosions
known. A few even whisper about exotic physics,
remnants of the Big Bang itself decaying into
cosmic bullets. Detectors like the Pierre Auger
Observatory in Argentina and IceCube in Antarctica
are on the case, scanning the skies. But the
source remains unidentified. Case 5. The Hubble
tension. At the heart of cosmology lies a deceptively
simple number, the Hubble constant. the rate
at which the universe expands. Measure it carefully
and you know the age, size, and fate of the cosmos.
But here the case takes a strange turn. Using
the cosmic distance ladder, measuring Cepheid
variable stars in certain supernova, astronomers
get a value of about 73 kilometers per second
per megaparsec. But when they measure the same
expansion through the ancient light of the cosmic
microwave background, they get 67. Two methods,
two results, and they refuse to agree. This disagreement
is known as the Hubble tension, and it's no minor
discrepancy. The gap is now statistically significant,
suggesting something fundamental is missing in
our picture of the universe. Could there be new
physics in the early universe, a hidden form
of energy, early dark energy that vanished long
ago, or subtle interactions between dark matter
and neutrinos? If the tension holds, it means
our standard cosmological model, the proud achievement
of 20th century science, may be incomplete. The
universe may still have surprises waiting. Five
mysteries, five case files still open. The dark
sector that hides 95 % of reality. The disappearance
of antimatter, cheated out of existence by subtle
violations of symmetry. Black holes, the cosmic
vaults where information may vanish. Ultra -high
-energy cosmic rays, impossible bullets from
nowhere, and the Hubble tension, a crack in our
cosmic foundation. Each of these is a shadow
in the night sky, each a locked door daring us
to find the key. With each new telescope, each
detector buried in ice or lofted into orbit,
the case grows warmer. And maybe one day, one
of these mysteries will be solved. But for now,
they remain the unsolved mysteries of the cosmos.
If the stars spoke to you this week, or if a
question's been on your mind, I'd love to hear
it. Visit our website StarTrails .Show where
you can contact me and explore past episodes.
Be sure to follow us on Blue Sky and YouTube.
Links are in the show notes. Until we meet again
beneath the stars, Clear skies everyone.