StarDate

Nothing can survive the brutal conditions on the surface of the Moon. But a story that debuted 125 years ago depicted a vast civilization below the surface – a society of insects.

First Men in the Moon was written by H.G. Wells. It was published over several months in two magazines – “The Cosmopolitan” in the United States, and “The Strand” in Britain. The first installment appeared in November of 1900.

In the story, a man named Bedford befriends a scientist named Cavor who’s invented “cavorite” – a substance that nullifies gravity. He builds a ship and covers it with shutters that are coated in the stuff. Opening and closing the shutters allows the ship to move through space.

The two men travel to the Moon, where they’re taken underground by the Selenites. Bedford escapes. Thinking Cavor is dead, he returns to Earth alone. But two years later, Cavor starts beaming messages to Earth. He describes the Moon and its inhabitants in detail. After he tells the Selenite’s leader of Earth’s war-like tendencies, though, he’s cut off – and never heard from again.

First Men in the Moon was a hit. It influenced scientists and other fiction writers alike for decades, inspiring more stories, plus efforts to reach the Moon – a world populated only in the imagination.

The Moon climbs into good view by about 8 o’clock tonight. Elnath – the second-brightest star of Taurus – is quite close to the Moon’s upper left.

Script by Damond Benningfield

The black hole at the heart of the Milky Way is like the monster lurking under your bed. It’s four million times the mass of the Sun, and about 15 million miles across – just waiting to gobble up anything that gets too close.

But compared to the black holes in many other galaxies, the one in the Milky Way is less like a monster and more like a dust bunny. The largest ones yet seen are thousands of times bigger. They’re known as ultra-massive black holes. Informally, they’re also called SLABs – stupendously large black holes.

Just which one is the biggest is uncertain – it’s hard to measure the mass of something that might be billions of light-years away. A recent candidate is in a structure known as the Cosmic Horseshoe. The gravity of a stupendously large galaxy “warps” the view of a galaxy behind it, creating what looks like a big, blue horseshoe.

In a recent study, astronomers combined a couple of techniques to measure the mass of the black hole in the foreground galaxy: 36 billion times the mass of the Sun. Researchers say the combo makes the measurement the most accurate for any candidate for the “biggest black hole” honors.

But other black holes could be bigger. The biggest candidate is known as Phoenix A. It could be up to about 25 thousand times the mass of the Milky Way’s black hole. But that number is highly uncertain. So the search for the biggest black hole continues.

Script by Damond Benningfield

A Little Red Dot might have a big black hole in its heart. And that’s a bit of a challenge to explain.

Little Red Dots are galaxies from the first 1.5 billion years of the universe. The name comes from their appearance – they’re small and red, but they’re especially bright. They don’t appear to have enough stars to make them so bright. So a good bit of their “shininess” could come from giant black holes that are devouring material around them. As they tumble inward, the hot gas, dust, and stars produce enormous amounts of energy.

Even so, the black hole in one Little Red Dot is a bit of a puzzler.

Led by astronomers at the University of Texas at Austin, a team looked at CAPERS-LRD-z9 with Webb Space Telescope. By measuring the speed of material orbiting the center of the galaxy, the team determined that the black hole is up to 300 million times the mass of the Sun.

And that’s where the challenge comes in. The galaxy is so far away that we see it as it looked when the universe was just 500 million years old – three percent of its current age. That makes the black hole the most-distant yet seen. But theories of how such monster black holes form say that half a billion years probably isn’t long enough to make one that big. So theorists have a lot of work to do to explain the giant black hole at the center of a Little Red Dot.

More about black holes tomorrow.

Script by Damond Benningfield

With the autumn harvest safely stowed away, many people in bygone centuries turned their attention to hunting. And just as the Harvest Moon helped them bring in the crops, the Hunter’s Moon helped them find game. The moonlight made it easier to track animals through the empty fields and beyond.

Although most present-day Americans don’t have to worry about storing food for the winter, we still keep the names for those full Moons. We had the Harvest Moon last month. And tonight, it’s time for the Hunter’s Moon.

The names for both of these full Moons come mainly from parts of Europe and the British Isles. The names were recorded as far back as the early 1700s, but they’d probably been in everyday use for much longer. Variations of the “Hunter’s Moon” label were used by several native tribes and nations in the Americas as well.

The Harvest Moon is usually defined as the full Moon closest to the autumn equinox. Most years, that puts it in September. But this year, October’s full Moon edged out September by just a few hours. So the Hunter’s Moon got bumped into November.

Officially, the Moon will be full at 7:19 a.m. Central Standard Time tomorrow. So it will appear almost as “full” when it rises tomorrow night as it does tonight – extra time to appreciate the brilliant glow of the Hunter’s Moon.

Tomorrow: A giant black hole at the center of a little red dot.

Script by Damond Benningfield

In 1908, a space rock the size of a small office building exploded above Siberia, flattening hundreds of square miles of forest. In 1975, several “fireballs” blazed across the night, and instruments on the Moon recorded several impacts. And 30 years later, scientists saw an impact on the Moon.

These events might all be related to the Taurid meteor shower, which is underway now. The shower is created by two objects – a comet and an asteroid. They might be the remnants of a larger body that broke apart thousands of years ago. The debris might include larger rocks ranging from the size of boulders to mountains.

The material is spaced across a long, wide path. Earth flies through this path twice a year. We sweep up some of the debris – mostly small bits of dust and rock.

The amount of material varies from year to year, depending on which part of the stream we pass through. Right now, we’re in a thin region. In 1975, we passed through a denser part, producing more fireballs.

It’s been suggested that when we pass through denser parts of the stream, we might encounter some of the bigger rocks, which could cause major damage if they hit us. Astronomers will be watching during the next crossings through dense regions, in the next decade.

For now, the Taurids are at their best the next few nights. The Moon will wash out almost all the meteors. But a few fireballs might shine through.

Script by Damond Benningfield

The Taurid meteor shower has a double identity. It’s split into two different streams, which peak a few nights apart in early November. Neither stream is particularly impressive, but things pick up when they overlap.

Their story begins thousands of years ago, with the breakup of a big ball of ice and dust – Comet Encke. The biggest remaining chunk kept that name. But the breakup created several other big pieces, plus clouds of dust. The whole messy bunch is known as the Encke Complex.

The southern Taurid stream consists of small bits of dust and rock shed by Encke itself. The northern stream is produced by one of its offspring – an asteroid that wasn’t discovered until 2004.

Both streams contain a lot of debris, but it’s spread across tens of millions of miles. So it takes Earth weeks to fly through the streams. That means the twin showers last a long time, but they’re not usually all that noteworthy – at best, they produce no more than a handful of meteors per hour. Things are a little busier when the showers overlap, as they’re doing now.

Unfortunately, the Moon will be full in a couple of days, so it’ll overpower almost all of the Taurids. The streams do produce a few especially bright meteors, but that’s about the best we can expect from the shower with a dual identity.

The Taurid Complex may include some especially big, dangerous chunks of debris, and we’ll talk about that tomorrow.

Script by Damond Benningfield

AUDIO: We have contact. We have initial contact – initial contact of the Soyuz capsule with the Expedition 1 crew to the International Space Station.

A key milestone in the human exploration of space took place 25 years ago tomorrow. The first permanent crew took up residence in the International Space Station. And people have been living on the station ever since.

They weren’t the first to actually visit the station. Several groups of astronauts and cosmonauts had spent time assembling the early pieces of the station. And by November 2000, it was ready for full-time occupancy.

The Expedition 1 crew was commanded by American astronaut Bill Shepherd, and included Russian cosmonauts Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko. They launched on October 31st, from Kazakhstan:

AUDIO: 4, 3, 2, 1, we have ignition – we have ignition and liftoff. Liftoff of the Soyuz rocket, beginning the first expedition to the International Space Station and setting the stage for permanent human presence in space.

After arrival, they had a lot of work to do to get the station ready, as Shepherd described a decade later:

SHEPHERD: So the first week was really living in a sleeping bag, running around with a checklist and a bunch of tools, trying to get this stuff all to get cranking.

Shepherd and crew spent more than four months getting the station cranking. Since then, almost 300 people from more than two dozen countries have lived and worked there – an unbroken presence in space.

Script by Damond Benningfield

Like other buildings, observatory domes can outlive their usefulness. They may not be big enough for the latest telescopes. The light from encroaching cities can make it hard for them to see the heavens. Or time may just catch up to them.

Many domes and related buildings have been torn down. Others have been converted into offices or libraries. And still others have been abandoned – left to the elements and the ravages of time.

Several of these buildings are scattered around the country – in places like Illinois and the woods of Michigan, for example. Their walls are covered with graffiti, their floors with water and trash, their spaces haunted by the ghostly memories of nights under the stars.

Perhaps the most famous abandoned observatory sits on a grassy knoll in Cleveland. It was built by the men who founded Warner and Swasey, a machine-making company. They were amateur astronomers who devoted part of their business to building telescopes – including the first big telescope at McDonald Observatory.

In 1919, they donated an observatory to Case University. They equipped it with a telescope of their own making. Bigger telescopes followed. The beautiful building was abandoned in 1982. Its telescopes had been sent elsewhere, and its staff moved into other quarters.

Today, the building is decaying and dangerous – a ghostly presence beneath the stars on Halloween night.

Script by Damond Benningfield

The night sky is filled with monsters. And none are more fearsome than the Gorgons – three sisters who were so hideous that a single glance at them turned the observer to stone. One of them was beheaded by Perseus the hero. His constellation shows him holding the head, which is outlined by four stars – the Gorgons.

In mythology, two of the sisters were immortal. But the third, Medusa, was not. Perseus managed to lop off her head with the help of the gods. They gave him an invisibility cloak, a diamond sword, and a bronze shield. He could safely view the Gorgons by looking at their reflection in the shield.

Perseus used Medusa’s head to destroy the sea monster, Cetus, which was about to kill the princess Andromeda. Cetus and Andromeda have their own constellations, as do Andromeda’s parents.

The brightest star in Medusa’s head is Algol – a name that means “head of the demon.” It’s low in the northeast in early evening and climbs high across the sky later on.

The other Gorgons form an arc to the right of Algol. One is fairly easy to spot, while the other two require a darker sky. All four of the Gorgon stars are bigger, heavier, and brighter than the Sun. Algol is a couple of hundred light-years away, while the other three are about a hundred light-years farther.

The Gorgons form a demonic presence in the sky – shining down on Halloween weekend. We’ll have more about Halloween tomorrow.

Script by Damond Benningfield

A young “cotton-candy” planet is hastening its own demise. As it dips close to its star, it appears to trigger giant explosions that erode the planet’s atmosphere.

The planet orbits HIP 67522, a star roughly 400 light-years from Earth. The star is a little bigger and heavier than the Sun, but less than one percent the Sun’s age. Such young stars generate strong magnetic fields. Lines of magnetic force tangle and snap, producing powerful flares. The planet, HIP 67522 b, orbits just a few million miles from the star, so it already receives hefty doses of radiation and charged particles.

A European space telescope, Cheops, has seen 15 flares that are tied to the planet’s orbit around the star. The planet may gather magnetic energy as it whips around the star. Waves of magnetic force ripple outward like the wake of a ship. When the waves hit a stormy spot on the star, they trigger a giant flare. That douses the planet with six times more radiation than it would receive otherwise.

HIP 67522 b is almost as big as Jupiter, the giant of our own solar system. But it’s only about one-quarter of Jupiter’s mass. That makes the planet especially puffy, like cotton candy. But as it’s zapped by the star, some of its atmosphere is blown away. In a hundred million years or so, it could shrink to less than half its current size – a shrinkage caused by its close orbit around the star.

Script by Damond Benningfield