From how to spot the Perseids meteor shower, to fixing the Hubble Space Telescope, to billionaire space flights, free-floating planets, a new type of Supernova, and a solution to the crisis in cosmology. All in this month’s Night Sky News!

00:00 – Introduction
00:37 – Moon, Jupiter & Saturn
02:20 – Jupiter & Saturn in opposition
03:18 – Perseids Meteor Shower Spotting!
07:19 – Hubble Space Telescope issues
10:45 – Blue Origin & Virgin Galactic Flights
16:06 – 5 Free-Floating Planets found
19:20 – A new type of supernova discovered?!
25:20 – Is the crisis in cosmology over?

Previous videos on the crisis in cosmology:

McDonald et al. (2021; free-floating planets) – https://arxiv.org/pdf/2107.02746.pdf
Hiramatsu et al. (2021; a new type of supernova) – https://arxiv.org/pdf/2011.02176.pdf
Miyaji et al. (1980; prediction of electron capture supernova) – https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/link_ga…
Freedman et al. (2001; H0 measured 5 ways with HST) – https://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/001237…
Freedman (2021; no crisis in cosmology?) – https://arxiv.org/pdf/2106.15656.pdf

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👩🏽‍💻 I’m Dr. Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford. 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 what processes can feed growing black holes and whether the energy output from the disk of material orbiting around a growing supermassive black hole can stop a galaxy from forming stars.

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https://rebeccasmethurst.co.uk