Deadly radiation burst from another star detected for the first time | Night Sky News November 2025

From Dr. Becky.

AD | Go to https://ground.news/drbecky to stay fully informed with the latest Space and Science news. Save 40% off the Vantage plan through my link for unlimited access | Hello! Welcome to this episode of Night Sky News for November 2025. This is the show where we chat about what you should look out for in the night sky in the next month, and what’s been happening in space news in the past month. In this episode we’re chatting about the burp of high energy radiation spotted from a star other than the Sun for the first time, plus how astrophysicists have once again smashed the observing proposals record for the James Webb Space Telescope, plus whether the interstellar comet visiting our solar system 3i ATLAS, has been bombarded by galactic cosmic rays…

Please note that the intro and outro of this video were recorded before I recently started a course of chemotherapy. The rest of the video was recorded as voiceover only.

Callingham et al. (2025) – https://arxiv.org/pdf/2511.09289
Cordiner et al. (2025) – https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ae0647
Maggiolo et al. (2025) – https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.26308

00:00 Introduction

Video filmed on a Sony ⍺7 IV
Video edited by Martino Gasparrini: https://www.fiverr.com/mgs_editing

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👩🏽‍💻 I’m Dr. Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford (Christ Church). I love making videos about science with an unnatural level of enthusiasm. I like to focus on how we know things, not just what we know. And especially, the things we still don’t know. If you’ve ever wondered about something in space and couldn’t find an answer online – you can ask me! My day job is to do research into how supermassive black holes can affect the galaxies that they live in. In particular, I look at whether the energy output from the disk of material orbiting around a growing supermassive black hole can stop a galaxy from forming stars.

http://drbecky.uk.com