To measure the mass of a star, you need two stars.

Well, Voyager 1 is 24 billion kilometres away.

And I feel like they must mean the Royal We there.

Our oldest listeners from 1859.

Hello and welcome to the Supermassive podcast from the Royal Astronomical Society with me,

science journalist, Izzy Clark and astrophysicist Dr. Becky Smythurst.

Yeah, it's been a while since we did one of these is.

So who's ready for a good old Q&A episode?

And, well, if you've clicked play on this podcast, you've got no choice because this is

absolutely what we're doing.

But if you're new to the podcast, we ask everyone to send in their questions to the clicked play on this podcast. You've got no choice because this is absolutely what we're doing.

But if you're new to the podcast, we ask everyone to send in their questions to the supermassive mailbox. And I asked Becky and Robert, the deputy director of the Royal Astronomical Society,

as many of your questions as possible. But we always start with some space trivia. So, to the

both of you, what's your favorite

space-related myth that we've now proven incorrect? Oh, I like this one. Incorrect. So my favorite

myth is that, although we've now proven incorrect anyway, is that you cannot see the Great World of

China from space. I'm so sorry to tell you. Oh, so many people are going to be so upset by

this. I know, I know, I know. I mean, this myth is so fascinating. It has roots like well before even

like the space race, you know, in sort of like the 60s. Like there was a letter that a Reverend William

Stucle wrote in 1754. And in that letter, he says that the Great Wall of China is so big that you could see it from the moon.

Which is crazy to think, like, you know, or even back then they were thinking of things like this.

That obviously was debunked by Apollo 12 astronaut, the lunar module pilot Alan Bean, who said, no, you definitely can't see that from the moon.

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