KREUZADER (Posts tagged astronomy)

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Solar System’s First* Interstellar Visitor Dazzles Scientists“Now, new data reveal the interstellar interloper to be a rocky, cigar-shaped object with a somewhat reddish hue. The asteroid, named ‘Oumuamua by its discoverers, is up to one-quarter mile...

Solar System’s First* Interstellar Visitor Dazzles Scientists

Now, new data reveal the interstellar interloper to be a rocky, cigar-shaped object with a somewhat reddish hue. The asteroid, named ‘Oumuamua by its discoverers, is up to one-quarter mile (400 meters) long and highly-elongated—perhaps 10 times as long as it is wide. That aspect ratio is greater than that of any asteroid or comet observed in our solar system to date. While its elongated shape is quite surprising, and unlike asteroids seen in our solar system, it may provide new clues into how other solar systems formed.

The observations and analyses were funded in part by NASA and appear in the Nov. 20 issue of the journal Nature. They suggest this unusual object had been wandering through the Milky Way, unattached to any star system, for hundreds of millions of years before its chance encounter with our star system.

*that humanity has detected

Source: nasa.gov
asteroid astronomy space nasa
SETI observations of ‘exo-Earth’ Ross 128b“Exciting news: the HARPS exoplanet hunter team have discovered a new, Earth-like exoplanet orbiting around the star Ross 128, one of our closest neighbors. This newly discovered 'exo-Earth’, designated Ross...

SETI observations of ‘exo-Earth’ Ross 128b

Exciting news: the HARPS exoplanet hunter team have discovered a new, Earth-like exoplanet orbiting around the star Ross 128, one of our closest  neighbors. This newly discovered 'exo-Earth’, designated Ross 128b, is particularly remarkable as it is thought to have surface temperatures similar to here on Earth.

Curiously, this is the second time this year Ross 128 has been in the news. In May 2017, an intriguing signal in the direction of Ross 128 was detected at Arecibo. In July, we conducted follow-up observations with Green Bank Telescope and concluded that disappointingly, the signal was most likely due to radio interference from a passing satellite.

Source: seti.berkeley.edu
seti astronomy exoplanet
Water ice lines and the formation of giant moons around super-Jovian planets“Most of the exoplanets with known masses at Earth-like distances to Sun-like stars are heavier than Jupiter, which raises the question of whether such planets are...

Water ice lines and the formation of giant moons around super-Jovian  planets

Most of the exoplanets with known masses at Earth-like distances to Sun-like stars are heavier than Jupiter, which raises the question of whether such planets are accompanied by detectable, possibly habitable moons. Here we simulate the accretion disks around super-Jovian planets and find that giant moons with masses similar to Mars can form. Our results suggest that the Galilean moons formed during the final stages of accretion onto Jupiter, when the circumjovian disk was sufficiently cool. But in contrast to other studies, with our assumptions, we show that Jupiter was still feeding from the circumsolar disk and that its principal moons cannot have formed after the complete photoevaporation of the circumsolar nebula. To counteract the steady loss of moons into the planet due to type I migration, we propose that the water ice line around Jupiter and super-Jovian exoplanets acted as a migration trap for moons. Heat transitions, however, cross the disk during the gap opening within 10^4 yr, which makes them inefficient as moon traps. This indicates a fundamental difference between planet and moon formation. We find that icy moons larger than the smallest known exoplanet can form at about 15 - 30 Jupiter radii around super-Jovian planets. Their size implies detectability by the Kepler and PLATO space telescopes as well as by the European Extremely Large Telescope.

Source: arxiv.org
astronomy space
“The first-known asteroid from another solar system officially has a name, and a Planetary Society-funded asteroid hunter is among those who spotted it during its brief visit to Earth’s skies. Observers at Hawaii’s Pan-STARRS 1 telescope chose the...

The first-known asteroid from another solar system officially has a name, and a Planetary Society-funded asteroid hunter is among those who spotted it during its brief visit to Earth’s skies.

Observers at Hawaii’s Pan-STARRS 1 telescope chose the name ʻOumuamua for the small, interstellar visitor they discovered on October 19. The Hawaiian word reflects how the asteroid is like a scout reaching out from the distant past.

One week after the discovery, asteroid hunter Luca Buzzi tracked ʻOumuamua from northern Italy with a 50-minute image exposure on October 26. In an email, Buzzi said he fought thin cirrus clouds to barely pull the asteroid above the visual threshold using his 0.84-meter telescope and Planetary Society-funded CCD camera.

Source: planetary.org
astronomy
What Happens If China Makes First Contact?“Last January, the Chinese Academy of Sciences invited Liu Cixin, China’s preeminent science-fiction writer, to visit its new state-of-the-art radio dish in the country’s southwest. Almost twice as wide as...

What Happens If China Makes First Contact?

Last January, the Chinese Academy of Sciences invited Liu Cixin, China’s preeminent science-fiction writer, to visit its new state-of-the-art radio dish in the country’s southwest. Almost twice as wide as the dish at America’s Arecibo Observatory, in the Puerto Rican jungle, the new Chinese dish is the largest in the world, if not the universe. Though it is sensitive enough to detect spy satellites even when they’re not broadcasting, its main uses will be scientific, including an unusual one: The dish is Earth’s first flagship observatory custom-built to listen for a message from an extraterrestrial intelligence. If such a sign comes down from the heavens during the next decade, China may well hear it first.

Source: The Atlantic
china liu cixin astronomy radio astronomy seti
Proxima Centauri Dust Indicates a Complicated System“Just how elaborate is the planetary system around the nearest star? It’s a question rendered more interesting this morning by the news that the ALMA Observatory in Chile has now detected dust in...

Proxima Centauri Dust Indicates a Complicated System

Just how elaborate is the planetary system around the nearest star? It’s a question rendered more interesting this morning by the news that the ALMA Observatory in Chile has now detected dust in the system in an area one to four times as far from Proxima Centauri as the Earth is from the Sun. Moreover, there are signs of what may be an outer dust belt, an indication that while we have already discovered Proxima Centauri b, we are looking at a system in which cold particles and debris that could have formed other planets continue to accompany the star.

Source: centauri-dreams.org
proxima centauri astronomy
Scientists detect comets outside our solar system“Scientists from MIT and other institutions, working closely with amateur astronomers, have spotted the dusty tails of six exocomets — comets outside our solar system — orbiting a faint star 800 light...

Scientists detect comets outside our solar system

Scientists from MIT and other institutions, working closely with amateur astronomers, have spotted the dusty tails of six exocomets — comets outside our solar system — orbiting a faint star 800 light years from Earth.

These cosmic balls of ice and dust, which were about the size of Halley’s Comet and traveled about 100,000 miles per hour before they ultimately vaporized, are some of the smallest objects yet found outside our own solar system.

The discovery marks the first time that an object as small as a comet has been detected using transit photometry, a technique by which astronomers observe a star’s light for telltale dips in intensity. Such dips signal potential transits, or crossings of planets or other objects in front of a star, which momentarily block a small fraction of its light.  

In the case of this new detection, the researchers were able to pick out the comet’s tail, or trail of gas and dust, which blocked about one-tenth of 1 percent of the star’s light as the comet streaked by.

Source: news.mit.edu
astronomy
“A small, recently discovered asteroid - or perhaps a comet - appears to have originated from outside the solar system, coming from somewhere else in our galaxy. If so, it would be the first “interstellar object” to be observed and confirmed by...

A small, recently discovered asteroid - or perhaps a comet - appears to have originated from outside the solar system, coming from somewhere else in our galaxy. If so, it would be the first “interstellar object” to be observed and confirmed by astronomers.

This unusual object - for now designated A/2017 U1 - is less than a quarter-mile (400 meters) in diameter and is moving remarkably fast. Astronomers are urgently working to point telescopes around the world and in space at this notable object. Once these data are obtained and analyzed, astronomers may know more about the origin and possibly the composition of the object.

A/2017 U1 was discovered Oct. 19 by the University of Hawaii’s Pan-STARRS 1 telescope on Haleakala during the course of its nightly search for Near-Earth Objects for NASA. Rob Weryk, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy (IfA), was first to identify the moving object and submit it to the Minor Planet Center. Weryk subsequently searched the Pan-STARRS image archive and found it was present in images taken the previous night, but was not initially identified by the moving object processing.

Weryk immediately realized this was an unusual object. “Its motion could not be explained using either a normal solar system asteroid or comet orbit,” he said. Weryk contacted IfA graduate Marco Micheli, who had the same realization using his own follow-up images taken at the European Space Agency’s telescope on Tenerife in the Canary Islands. But with the combined data, everything made sense. Said Weryk, “This object came from outside our solar system.”  

“This is the most extreme orbit I have ever seen,” said Davide Farnocchia, a scientist at NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “It is going extremely fast and on such a trajectory that we can say with confidence that this object is on its way out of the solar system and not coming back.”

space asteroid astronomy
Astronomers Spot First-Known Interstellar Comet“But an object swept up just a week ago by observers using the PanSTARRS 1 telescope atop Haleakala on Maui has an extreme orbit — it’s on a hyperbolic trajectory that doesn’t appear to be bound to the...

Astronomers Spot First-Known Interstellar Comet

But an object swept up just a week ago by observers using the PanSTARRS 1 telescope atop Haleakala on Maui has an extreme orbit — it’s on a hyperbolic trajectory that doesn’t appear to be bound to the Sun. Preliminary findings, published earlier today by the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center (MPC), suggest that we are witnessing a comet that escaped from another star.

“If further observations confirm the unusual nature of this orbit,” notes Gareth Williams, the MPC’s associate director, “this object may be the first clear case of an interstellar comet.”

Source: skyandtelescope.com
astronomy comet
Hubble Traces Subtle Signals of Water on Hazy Worlds“Using the powerful­ eye of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, two teams of scientists have found faint signatures of water in the atmospheres of five distant planets. The presence of atmospheric water...

Hubble Traces Subtle Signals of Water on Hazy Worlds

Using the powerful­ eye of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, two teams of scientists have found faint signatures of water in the atmospheres of five distant planets.

The presence of atmospheric water was reported previously on a few exoplanets orbiting stars beyond our solar system, but this is the first study to conclusively measure and compare the profiles and intensities of these signatures on multiple worlds.

The five planets – WASP-17b, HD209458b, WASP-12b, WASP-19b and XO-1b – orbit nearby stars. The strengths of their water signatures varied. WASP-17b, a planet with an especially puffed-up atmosphere, and HD209458b had the strongest signals. The signatures for the other three planets, WASP-12b, WASP-19b and XO-1b, also are consistent with water.

Source: nasa.gov
astronomy space nasa