## StarCast Podcast Transcript: February 15, 2026 **Hosts:** Jay Shaffer and Mike Lewenski **Jay Shaffer:** Welcome back to the StarCast for the week of February 15th, 2026. I'm your host, Jay Shaffer, and with me this morning is my co-host, Mike Lewenski. Good morning, Mike. **Mike Lewenski:** Good morning, Jay. **Jay Shaffer:** So, Mike, what's happening with the sun and our space weather? **Mike Lewenski:** Jay, for the last few days, there has been a large equatorial coronal hole on the sun, which is blowing solar wind at the earth. Last night this created a co-rotating interaction region, or CIR, that caused a G1 class geomagnetic storm. CIRs are transition zones between fast and slow moving streams of solar wind, and that creates shockwaves and enhances magnetic fields. Thanks to that coronal hole, we have a 35% chance of active magnetic conditions here at mid-latitudes over the next two days. And if you're at high latitudes, you have a 75% chance of severe geomagnetic storm today, dropping to a 65% chance tomorrow. Currently, there are five sunspots facing the Earth, but all have stable magnetic fields and are unlikely to produce significant flares. NOAA estimates just a 10% chance of M-class flares and a 1% chance of X-class flares over the next 48 hours. I will mention that I caught just a tiny ripple of Northern Lights in my time lapse right at sunset last night. It was probably only showing up for 5 minutes or so and then waned, and I had a camera pointed north. So what's happening in the night sky this week, Jay? **Jay Shaffer:** Ah, well, speaking about sunset, how about a comet? Now roughly 7th magnitude, comet C2024E1, which we call Wereszczuk, is readily visible in the Northern Hemisphere once more. With the new moon less than a day away, it's the perfect time to check out this comet, now visible for a short time after sunset in the constellation Sculptor. However, you're going to have to be quick, because a half hour after sunset Wereszczuk is only 10 degrees above the southwestern horizon. It sets around 7:30 PM local time, wherever you're at, and you should be able to catch it with binoculars or a telescope as twilight deepens. Wereszczuk will climb higher above the horizon each night this week, improving visibility in the coming days. However, the waxing moon will float nearby by the end of the week, and you may be able to actually see the comet right next to the moon. Nonetheless, try following the comet under medium power with your telescope, or look with your binoculars, and look for details as its appearance evolves. The new moon occurs at 7:01 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on Tuesday morning, bringing an annular solar eclipse to Antarctica and parts of the Southern Oceans. Only travelers in these regions will see the moon cover nearly all of the sun's disks, leaving only a thin ring of sunlight around the darkened outline of the moon. Annular eclipses occur when the moon is too far from Earth to completely cover the solar disk, so a thin annulus remains visible even at maximum eclipse. Remember that eclipses are never safe to observe with the naked eye, and you definitely need a solar filter whenever there's an eclipse and you're looking at the sun. I had to respond to a bunch of AI slop articles on social media this week that claimed that this eclipse would be over the southern US. I'm extremely concerned and angered by the amount of misinformation out there, particularly relating to these astronomical events. It's kind of a conundrum because the more that you post that a post is AI slop, the more hits and the way the algorithm actually pushes it up in popularity. So I guess the best way to respond is not to respond, but it kind of gets my goat to see misinformation out there. Well, that said, Mike, what do you have for us in space news? **Mike Lewenski:** Jay, before I jump into space news, I just want to remind our listeners that we have a lunar eclipse coming up on March 3rd. Now, solar and lunar eclipses always come in pairs. That doesn't mean that they're always going to be visible where you are. As you note, this solar eclipse is not visible for us here in North America, or at least not in the continental United States. The lunar eclipse will be the last total lunar eclipse visible here in the United States until 2028. So March 3rd, totality is at around 4:35 Mountain time. The moon will still be partially eclipsed when it sets for us here in Crestone. I'm looking forward to that. I'm hoping that we have really good weather for this, because it's going to be a couple years before we get another total lunar eclipse. Turning to space news: The International Space Station is now sporting a full house this morning after the Crew Dragon spacecraft Freedom successfully arrived at the orbiting laboratory yesterday afternoon. Following a pre-dawn launch on February 13th from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, the 4-person Crew 12 team completed docking with the station at approximately 3:15 PM Eastern Time on Saturday. The arrival of Crew 12 marks the beginning of a notably extended stay in microgravity. While standard rotations typically last six months, this international cohort is scheduled to remain aboard the ISS for eight months. The crew is led by veteran NASA astronaut Jessica Meir, who returns to the station as mission commander. She is joined by a diverse team of specialists: Jack Hathaway with NASA is serving as the mission's pilot, Sophie Adnott from the European Space Agency, and Andre Fedyov from Roscosmos is serving as a mission specialist. The arrival of Freedom kicks off what NASA officials are calling a busy schedule of orbital logistics. Over the coming weeks, the crew will manage several cargo resupply missions and the eventual handover from the outgoing Crew-11 team. The launch on Friday was a milestone for Space Launch Complex 40, as the Falcon 9 lit up the Florida coast at 5:15 AM, delivering the crew into a precise orbit that set the stage for yesterday's automated docking. In cosmology news this week, after 12 years of data collection and analysis, the Dark Energy Survey has released its final Year 6 results, providing the most precise constraints to date on the expansion of the universe. By combining 4 distinct cosmological probes—weak gravitational lensing, galaxy clustering, baryon acoustic oscillations, and Type Ia supernova—the international collaboration mapped nearly 700 million galaxies to test the standard model of cosmology. While the findings largely align with the Lambda CDM model, which posits that dark energy is a constant force, the data also revealed a persistent "clumpiness discrepancy." The universe appears slightly less clumpy than predicted by measurements of the early universe. While not yet enough to overturn established theories, these legacy results narrow the possibilities for how dark energy behaves and set a high-precision benchmark for the next generation of observatories to investigate whether this mysterious force evolves over time. In other news, researchers from Columbia University and Breakthrough Listen have identified a promising candidate for a millisecond pulsar located near Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. Discovered during the Breakthrough Listen Galactic Center Survey—one of the most sensitive radio searches of the region to date—this 8.19 millisecond pulsar candidate could serve as an incredibly precise cosmic clock. If confirmed, its proximity to the extreme gravitational field of the central black hole would allow scientists to conduct unprecedented tests of Einstein's general theory of relativity, potentially revealing new insights into the nature of space-time and the dense stellar environment at our galaxy's heart. So that's space news today. **Jay Shaffer:** Thanks, Mike. This is a very exciting time for astronomical research, and that last story ties in with a couple of other stories that we've talked about here on the StarCast in the last couple of weeks. Including one from last week, where researchers proposed that it might be dark matter instead of a massive black hole in our galaxy center. So, Mike, what do we know about the center of our own galaxy? **Mike Lewenski:** Yeah, Jay, last week we reported a story about the possibility of dark matter being at the center of our galaxy. That study presented a radical alternative to galactic architecture, proposing that the center of the Milky Way is not occupied by a supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A*, but rather by a massive, dense concentration of fermionic dark matter. Led by researchers from the Institute of Astrophysics La Plata, the team argues that this dark matter core model explains the high-speed orbits of nearby stars and the rotation of the galaxy's outer edges more consistently than the traditional black hole theory. By utilizing data from the Gaia mission, the study suggests that these subatomic particles could mimic the gravitational pull of a black hole while simultaneously providing the stability required for the rest of the galaxy. In contrast with the pulsar discovery, while both stories focus on the extreme environment at the heart of our galaxy, they represent fundamentally different approaches to understanding its nature. The first story about the pulsar discovery operates within the established scientific consensus and treats the existence of the supermassive black hole as a given, seeking to use the pulsar as a tool to test Einstein's relativity within that framework. In contrast, the second story challenges the very existence of that black hole, suggesting that our fundamental identification of the galactic engine might be incorrect. Essentially, where pulsar researchers found a new clock to measure a known object, the dark matter researchers are questioning the identity of the object itself. **Jay Shaffer:** Yes, Mike. I wanted to expand a little bit on the "high speed orbits of nearby stars and the rotation of the galaxy's outer edges" that you mentioned. We did a story several weeks ago about where the observed rotational speed of the outer arms of the Milky Way don't match those standard models. This latest study by Bielefeld University adds a third layer of complexity to our understanding of this galaxy center, suggesting that the solar system is moving 3 times faster than previously estimated: 1.5 million miles per hour versus a traditional model of 515,000 miles per hour. By measuring the headwind of distant radio galaxies, researchers found a directional bias that significantly contradicts the standard model of cosmology. This discovery implies that either our understanding of the universe's large-scale structure is flawed, or the Milky Way's internal dynamics are far more volatile than current models allow. So the intersection of these 3 discoveries presents a fascinating identity crisis for our galaxy as each study pulls at a different thread of established physics. This discovery of the millisecond pulsar near the galactic center provides scientists with that perfect clock to measure gravity, yet the value of its data depends entirely on the nature of the object that it orbits. If the dark matter core theory is correct, the pulsar isn't orbiting a singular black hole, but a massive fermionic clump which would fundamentally alter the gravitational signal that pulsar sends back. Furthermore, that Bielefeld study finding that our solar system is traveling three times faster than previously thought provides a symptom that the other two models must eventually diagnose. To maintain such high orbital velocities without the solar system flying off into intergalactic space, the galactic center, whether it be a black hole or dense dark matter core, must exert a gravitational pull far more complex than the current model of general relativity and the standard model of cosmology allow. Together, these findings suggest that the engine at the heart of our galaxy and the speed at which we revolve around it are both due for a massive scientific recalibration. Mike? **Mike Lewenski:** Yeah, Jay, it really seems like we're getting more questions than answers as to what is going on in the center of our own galaxy, and by extension, what is likely happening at the center of other galaxies across the universe. Of course, it's just going to take commitment to funding and education to advance our understanding further. This is a really exciting time to be alive. And you know, personally, I'm on team massive black hole. Every time I look at Sagittarius, I think about Sgr A* and I consider it to be a distant family member. If that turns out to just be some cosmic dark matter dust bunnies, I'm going to need time to grieve. **Jay Shaffer:** I, on the other hand, like the idea of a fermionic cloud. When we talk about fermionic clouds, I just wanted to briefly explain what that is. A fermionic cloud is a cloud of subatomic particles. These sub particles, the fermions, are not really studied well in nature. We can kind of simulate those by using the Large Hadron Collider and that sort of thing in high energy physics, but it's kind of an unexplored area in astronomy per se. So I kind of like the unknown unknowns side of things, rather than the black hole standard model. But I'm kind of radical that way. **Jay Shaffer:** Okay. I thought I'd get a bigger laugh from you, but okay. All right, so that's what's happening, or what we don't know is happening, in the center of our galaxy. We all want to thank our listeners for checking out this podcast, and please be sure to comment, like, and subscribe, and let us know what you'd like to hear more about. You can also check out our personal websites: Mike's is wildernessVagabonds.com and mine is Skylapser.com. Check out Mike's time lapses and videos on Mike Lewenski's YouTube channel, and you can see mine on the Skylapser YouTube channel. The intro music is "Fanfare for Space" by Kevin MacLeod from the YouTube Audio Library. From the Deep Sage 9 Observatory, this is Jay Shaffer and Mike Lewenski. Wishing you all clear skies.