You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.

Hey, Sherovers, Regina Barbara here.

It's time for my favorite monthly episode, our space news segment, spacing out with Gina.

We're here today with science correspondent Katie Riddle.

Hey, Katie.

Hey, Gina.

I will say you're going to have to learn a secret handshake by the end of the day.

I'm ready. I'm ready for it. And space connoisseur and all things considered hosts, Scott Detrow. Welcome back, Scott. I like space connoisseur. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited here what you will teach us this week. Yes, I actually did use to teach this stuff for like a dozen years.

But, Kadia, you're actually going to

start us off, though, with a story about the furthest planet in our solar system. Exactly, which,

you know, I grew up learning with Pluto, but unfortunately it's since been kicked out of the

major planet guild. There's a lot of beef, a lot of baggage. I'll be telling you about Neptune today and how one of its moons could help us fill in the gaps of our solar system's origin story.

But I promise it'll still be fun.

Can I rattle off the like slightly dated pneumomic, pneumonic device?

That is a hard word to say that I learned to sail the planets.

Do it.

My very educated mother just served us nine pizzas. Just served us nothing. Yes, just nothing. Yeah, now it's nothing. Or like noodles. I don't know. Got to update it. But Pluto aside, Neptune's cool too. That's not the only planet on our agenda today, though, right? Yes. So there's a planet that isn't in our solar system, an exoplanet orbiting another star far, far away. And Gina, you're also telling us another reason that the northern lights are awesome. Yes. Have either of you seen the northern lights? Honestly, I never have. All the times that it was coming low,

in recent years, I get excited and then I'd be like, oh, wait, I live in a city. Yeah. It's not going to happen. I think I kind of did once. It was like a foggy green, but I can't confirm it, right? So let's all pack our bags and let's all go to Alaska together. I think so. Take the show on the road. I'm there.

Okay.

Today on the show, we're traveling up and out from Earth's northern lights to the edges of our solar system and outside of it.

You're listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR.

Okay. Okay, Gina, Scott, I'm sure you've heard a lot about Neptune, but I bet you don't know much about its moons.

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