{"podcast":{"title":"Astronomy Daily: Space News Updates","slug":"astronomy-daily-space-news-updates-5658676","podcast_index_feed_id":5658676,"rss_url":"https://www.spreaker.com/show/5648921/episodes/feed","website_url":"http://www.astronomydaily.io","image_url":"https://d3wo5wojvuv7l.cloudfront.net/t_rss_itunes_square_1400/images.spreaker.com/original/02745632cd7290e11e1db551f5b33f1c.jpg","author":"bitesz.com","episode_count":822,"summary":"Join hosts Anna & Avery for daily Space & Astronomy news, insights, and discoveries. Give us 10 minutes and we'll give you the Universe! For more visit, our website and sign up for the free daily newsletter and check out our continually updated newsfeed. www.astronomydaily.io . Follow us on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, YouTube and TikTok ...just search for AstroDailyPod . Enjoy! Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-space-news-updates--5648921/support .","last_synced_at":"2026-06-18T00:17:09.380827+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-space-news-updates-5658676"},"episode":{"title":"Comet MAPS Is Gone — What Killed It & What Comes Next + Planet Parade Tonight","slug":"comet-maps-is-gone-what-killed-it-what-comes-next-planet-parade-tonight","published_at":"2026-04-18T11:10:48+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-space-news-updates-5658676/comet-maps-is-gone-what-killed-it-what-comes-next-planet-parade-tonight","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-space-news-updates-5658676","url":"https://spacenutspodcast.com","audio_url":"https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/mgln.ai/track/op3.dev/e/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/71436840/comet_maps_is_gone_what_killed_it_what_comes_next_planet_parade_tonight.mp3","summary":"In this episode of Astronomy Daily, Anna and Avery cover six space and astronomy stories for Saturday, April 18, 2026. Comet MAPS has met its end at the Sun — the pair reflect on what happened and what comes next. Artemis III's SLS rocket stage rolls out of New Orleans on Monday. JWST and ALMA have revealed a stunning monster spiral galaxy hiding behind cosmic dust 11.5 billion years ago. An exoplanet system is changing its orbital architecture in real time. Four planets are gathering in a pre-dawn planet parade visible tonight. And 33,000 hydrogen halos have been found that solve a decades-old mystery about the early universe's fuel supply. Story 1: Comet MAPS — Death of a Sungrazer Comet C/2026 A1 (MAPS), a Kreutz sungrazer discovered on January 13, 2026 by French amateur astronomers at the AMACS1 Observatory in Chile, disintegrated during its close solar approach on April 4. The nucleus — estimated at approximately 400 metres in diameter based on JWST observations — could not survive passage just 160,000 km above the solar surface. A brief dust tail was visible in coronagraph images from SOHO and GOES-19, but the debris cloud has since dispersed. Attention now shifts to Comet C/2025 R3 (PanSTARRS) as the next comet of interest. MAPS was the furthest-discovered Kreutz sungrazer in history, spotted 81 days before perihelion. Sources: EarthSky | StarWalk Space News | Sky & Telescope Story 2: Artemis III SLS Core Stage Rollout On Monday, April 20, NASA will roll the top four-fifths of the Artemis III Space Launch System core stage — containing the liquid hydrogen tank, liquid oxygen tank, intertank, and forward skirt — out of the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans and load it onto the Pegasus barge for delivery to Kennedy Space Center. The engine section is al…","meta_description":"In this episode of Astronomy Daily, Anna and Avery cover six space and astronomy stories for Saturday, April 18, 2026. Comet MAPS has met its end at the S…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":968,"processing_state":"processed","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/astronomy-daily-space-news-updates-5658676/episodes/comet-maps-is-gone-what-killed-it-what-comes-next-planet-parade-tonight/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-space-news-updates-5658676/comet-maps-is-gone-what-killed-it-what-comes-next-planet-parade-tonight.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}