From Dr. Becky.
Hello and welcome to this episode of Night Sky News for February 2026 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 the delay to NASA’s Artemis mission, the drastic cuts proposed to UK astronomy funding, whether JWST’s little red dots mystery can be explained by direct collapse black holes, and whether the centre of the MW is a clump of dark matter rather than a black hole.
This is astronomy and astrophysics direct from an astrophysicist.
My previous video on the "little red dots" – https://youtu.be/KuTVjuXu7uE?t=1167
My previous video on the evidence for dark matter – https://youtu.be/nbE8B7zggUg?si=ShSkZSMI2sgurK6W
Template letter to write to your MP opposing cuts to UK astronomy funding – https://ras.ac.uk/news-and-press/news/ras-fellows-urged-lobby-against-unprecedented-cuts
UKRI letter explaining funding cuts – https://www.ukri.org/news/open-letter-from-ian-chapman-to-research-and-innovation-community/
Pacucci et al. (2026; little red dots are direct collapse black holes?) – https://arxiv.org/pdf/2601.14368
Crespi et al. (2026; the centre of the Milky Way is dark matter not a black hole?) – https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.19087
Matthee et al. (2024) – https://arxiv.org/pdf/2306.05448
Kocevski et al. (2023) – https://arxiv.org/pdf/2302.00012
Kocevski et al. (2025) – https://arxiv.org/pdf/2404.03576
Simmons, Smethurst & Lintott (2017) – https://arxiv.org/pdf/1705.10793
Guia, Pacucci & Kocevski (2024) – https://arxiv.org/pdf/2408.11890
Yue et al. (2024) – https://arxiv.org/pdf/2404.13290
Inayoshi et al. (2025) – https://arxiv.org/pdf/2409.07805
Baggen et al. (2024) – https://arxiv.org/pdf/2408.07745
00:00 Introduction
00:55 Planetary parade 28th Feb
03:29 Saturn and Venus conjunction 7th March
04:07 Lunar eclipse 3rd March
05:20 Different colours of stars
08:14 Artemis II launch delayed
09:32 UK astronomy research budget cuts
11:06 Are JWST’s "little red dots" direct collapse black holes?
17:16 Is the centre of the Milky Way dark matter or a black hole?
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.
