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 this month only. | Hello and welcome to this episode of Night Sky News for February 2025 with me astrophysicist Dr Becky Smethurst. 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 saying goodbye to ESA’s Gaia telescope which has reached the end of its mission, the risk of the newly discovered near earth asteroid 2024 YR4, the link between fast radio bursts and neutron stars, and of course that discovery of amino acids, the building blocks for life in the material brought back to Earth from the asteroid Bennu…
Glavin et al. (2025) – https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-024-02472-9
McCoy et al. (2025) – https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08495-6
Pastor-Marazuela et al. (2025) – https://arxiv.org/pdf/2406.00482
ESA blog latest updates 2024 YR4 – https://blogs.esa.int/rocketscience/2025/02/04/asteroid-2024-yr4-latest-updates/
00:00 Introduction
00:58 Planetary Parade
02:08 Venus brightest 15th February
03:48 Mercury & Saturn 25th February
05:14 Moon joins planetary parade in early March
05:42 Total Lunar Eclipse from Western Hemisphere
07:02 AD Ground News
09:15 Goodbye to Gaia
11:53 The possible threat of the asteroid 2024 YR4
15:57 Fast Radio Burst mystery solved?
19:48 Ingredients for life found on Bennu thanks to OSIRIS-REx
24:11 Conclusion
24:26 Bloopers
Video filmed on a Sony ⍺7 IV
Video edited by Jonny Hyman
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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.
