Interstellar comet 3I ATLAS has 40× more heavy water than Earth's oceans | Night Sky News May 2026

AD - Donate to Farm Kind today at farmkind.giving/drbecky and your monthly donation gets a 50% boost. It takes seconds, but transforms the lives of thousands of farmed animals. | Welcome back to Night Sky News for May 2026! In this episode we’re chatting about the latest on interstellar comet 3I Atlas and it’s heavy water ratio that’s very different to the solar system, the extension to the dark energy spectroscopic survey, whether Pluto should be made a planet again, and the massive cuts to NASA’s budget that have once again been proposed for next year... The Planetary Society ‘Save Nasa Science’ Hub - https://www.planetary.org/save-nasa-science President’s ‘Skinny Budget’ FY2027 - https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/budget_fy2027.pdf DESI Completes Planned 3D Map of the Universe and Continues Exploring - https://noirlab.edu/public/news/noirlab2610/ DESI Collaboration (2025) - https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.14738 Luis E. Salazar Manzano et al. (2026) - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-026-02850-5 Previous videos Night Sky News May 2025 with FY2026 NASA Cuts - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si6paqM2_ug Initial DESI results - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6HZaaypoSI Astrophotography tips - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToN15U6dy1Q Video filmed on a Sony ⍺7 IV Video edited by Martino Gasparrini: [email protected] Video produced by Marina Hui & Dr Becky Smethurst 00:00 - Introduction 01:00 - Stargazing 07:23 - NASA Budget cuts AGAIN 13:26 - Is Pluto going to be a planet again? 15:05 - DESI survey completed! 17:32 - Comet 3I/ATLAS alien water 25:04 - Bloopers --- 📚 My book, "A Brief History of Black Holes", out NOW in hardback, paperback, e-book and audiobook (which I narrated myself!): http://lnk.to/DrBecky --- 👕 My merch, including JWST designs, are available here (with worldwide shipping!): https://dr-becky.teemill.com/ --- 🎧 Royal Astronomical Society Podcast that I co-host: podfollow.com/supermassive --- 🔔 Don't forget to subscribe and click the little bell icon to be notified when I post a new video! --- 👩🏽‍💻 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 whether the energy output from the disk of material orbiting around a growing supermassive black hole can stop a galaxy from forming stars. http://drbecky.uk.com