Episode
Pluto's Big Night & a Sharper Look at M87's Black Hole | Today's Space News
- Published
- Jul 27, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 1172
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://www.astronomydaily.io
Actions
POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/astronomy-daily-space-news-updates-5658676/episodes/pluto-s-big-night-a-sharper-look-at-m87-s-black-hole-today-s-space-news/transcription-requests
Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-space-news-updates-5658676/pluto-s-big-night-a-sharper-look-at-m87-s-black-hole-today-s-space-news.md
Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.
Summary
Astronomy Daily · S05E151 · “The Faint Little World Has Its Day” · Monday 27 July 2026 · Hosts Anna & Avery. Pluto has its brightest night of the year — so we go deep on the world nobody can agree how to label. Then a crew comes home after 241 days, the galaxy’s most common planet turns out to maybe hide oceans of molten rock, and the first black hole ever photographed gets a sharper, two-colour read. In this episode LEAD — PLUTO AT OPPOSITION • Tonight Pluto sits opposite the Sun in Capricornus, near its closest point to Earth (~34.5 AU) and at its brightest for the year — yet still only magnitude ~15. • The full arc: Percival Lowell’s “Planet X,” Clyde Tombaugh’s 1930 discovery by blink comparator, and the name suggested by 11-year-old Venetia Burney. • The 2006 IAU reclassification to “dwarf planet” (the “clearing the neighbourhood” rule) — and the still-live debate between dynamical and geophysical definitions of a planet. • What New Horizons found in 2015: the nitrogen-ice plain of Sputnik Planitia, the famous “heart,” water-ice mountains, a hazy atmosphere, and a possible subsurface ocean. STORY 2 — HOME AFTER 241 DAYS • Soyuz MS-28 lands in Kazakhstan with NASA’s Chris Williams and cosmonauts Kud-Sverchkov and Mikaev; ~3,856 orbits, 102M+ miles; Expedition 74→75 handover to Jessica Meir. STORY 3 — SUB-NEPTUNES • New ASU modelling: deep clouds of vaporised rock and salt can act as a thermal blanket, potentially sustaining a hidden magma ocean and reshaping how we read JWST spectra. STORY 4 — M87 IN TWO COLOURS • A Shanghai Astronomical Observatory-led team builds the first spatially-resolved dual-frequency spectral map of M87* (1.3 mm + 3.5 mm, EHT + GMVA), linking the famous ring to the real physics of plasma at the event horizon. SKYWATCH — BOTH HEMISPHERES…