White dwarf’s eight-minute radio pulse & Euclid opens vast cosmic map - Space News (Nov 12, 2026)

Support The Automated Daily directly: 15 free episodes a day, 5 editions, 3 languages, about $4 a day to produce. A coffee keeps it going: theautomateddaily.com/support Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: - Invest Like the Pros with StockMVP - https://www.stock-mvp.com/?via=ron - Discover the Future of AI Audio with ElevenLabs - https://try.elevenlabs.io/tad - Consensus: AI for Research. Get a free month - https://get.consensus.app/automated_daily Today's topics: White dwarf’s eight-minute radio pulse - Astronomers traced an eight-minute repeating radio signal to a rapidly spinning white dwarf paired with a Sun-like star. The rare binary system could help explain mysterious long-period radio transients. [161] Euclid opens vast cosmic map - ESA released Euclid’s first major collection of survey data, containing light from more than a billion objects. The observations will support an enormous three-dimensional map designed to investigate dark matter, dark energy and cosmic structure. [87] Black hole image independently confirmed - An independent reconstruction of Event Horizon Telescope data reproduced the famous ring around the M87 black hole, strengthening confidence that it is real. A separate study also offered an explanation for the bright edges of the jets from Centaurus A. [43][148] Hera reaches NASA-struck asteroid pair - ESA’s Hera spacecraft began its close survey of Didymos and Dimorphos, the asteroid moon struck by NASA’s DART mission. Hera will show researchers how the historic planetary-defense impact changed the system. [117] Bennu organics reveal scattered origins - Isotope measurements from asteroid Bennu and the Murchison meteorite suggest that similar amino-acid chemistry occurred in widely separated parts of the early solar system. The findings broaden the possible origins of prebiotic organic material. [147] Second secret Space Force launch - A Falcon 9 launched the classified USSF-627 mission from California, marking the second undisclosed Space Force flight in six days. The mission reflects the accelerating role of commercial rockets in national-security space operations. [131] Episode Transcript White dwarf’s eight-minute radio pulse We begin with a radio signal that repeats roughly every eight minutes. Astronomers have traced it to an unusual binary system containing a white dwarf—the compact remnant of a dead star—and a living star broadly similar to the Sun. The white dwarf appears to rotate extraordinarily quickly, producing radio pulses that become visible for several hours before disappearing as the two stars move through their orbit. This is the first known radio-pulsing white dwarf found with a Sun-like companion. That matters because astronomers have discovered several slow, repeating radio sources in recent years without fully understanding what produces them. This system gives researchers a concrete example that may help explain at least part of that mysterious population. [161][54] Euclid opens vast cosmic map Next, the European Space Agency’s Euclid telescope has opened a major new window onto the large-scale universe. Its first substantial public data release contains about thirteen months of observations and captures light from more than a billion objects across a huge section of the sky. Among them are hundreds of millions of galaxies and thousands of candidates for gravitational lenses, where foreground matter bends and magnifies light from more distant objects. Euclid’s larger goal is to build an exceptionally detailed three-dimensional map of the cosmos. By following how galaxies are distributed across space and time, scientists hope to test how dark matter shaped cosmic structure and how dark energy influenced the universe’s expansion. The release is not the finished map, but it gives researchers the foundation—and an immense amount of raw material—for years of discoveries. [87][92] Black hole image independently confirmed There is also reassuring news about...