The Starless Galaxy That Shouldn’t Exist - But Does

Space Nuts: Spanish Eclipse, Nancy Grace Roman Launch, Cloud Nine, and Venus's Mysterious Clouds

Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fred Watson cover four big astronomy stories in this episode, from Fred’s trip to view a sunset eclipse in Spain to the launch of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. They also unpack a starless dwarf galaxy called Cloud Nine and a new way of thinking about the strange dark material in Venus’s clouds.

Guests and speakers

Andrew Dunkley - Host, frames the news, asks listener questions, and guides the discussion.

Professor Fred Watson - Astronomer at large, explains the eclipse, the Roman telescope, Cloud Nine, and Venus’s clouds.

Key topics

In this episode, Fred recounts the Spanish eclipse expedition

The eclipse was only 9 degrees above the western horizon at totality, making the viewing conditions unusually challenging.

He and Marnie led a 16-person tour through France, Spain, and Switzerland before settling near Santander in northern Spain.

They staked out a viewing site 2 kilometers from the hotel, set up a gazebo, and had to tie it down to a car to keep it from blowing away.

The weather looked threatening, but a hole opened in the cloud just before totality, giving them a clear view of the corona.

Fred described the yellowish corona, pink hydrogen clouds, and the crowd of around 2,000 people.