Astro Blog

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/01/10/teenager-discovered-new-planet-third-day-his-nasa-internship/ Source:   By Lateshia Beachum, The Washington Post. Excerpt: Most people sit through countless orientations on the first few days of their job, but one teen discovered a planet — on his third day. Wolf Cukier, 17, of Scarsdale, N.Y., had wrapped up his junior year of high school when he headed off to intern in the summer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., where he discovered a planet orbiting two stars. The planet, now known as TOI 1338 b, is nearly seven times as large as Earth and has two stars — one that’s about 10 percent more massive than our sun and another only a third of the sun’s mass and less bright, according to NASA [ https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/nasa-s-tess-mission-uncovers-its-1st-world-with-two-stars ]. ...Cukier had a framework of what to look for based on his exploration of the Planet Hunters TESS citizen science ...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/09/science/astronomy-supernova-betelgeuse.html Source:  By Dennis Overbye, The New York Times. Excerpt: Is Betelgeuse about to blow? Probably not, but astronomers are having fun thinking about it. Over the last three months, the star, which marks the armpit of Orion the hunter, has mysteriously dimmed to less than half its normal brightness, markedly altering one of the great sights of the winter sky. At the beginning of January the star was fainter than ever before observed, according to Edward Guinan of Villanova University, who has been compiling data on Betelgeuse. In its “fainting” spell, Dr. Guinan said, the star has dropped from seventh to twenty-first on the list of brightest stars in the sky. ...All this has raised the issue of Betelgeuse’s mortality, and its cosmic endgame. ...That will be quite a show. Betelgeuse is only 700 light years from Earth, far enough to not kill us when it goes, but close enough to impress; the supernova would...

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/how-many-our-comets-come-alien-solar-systems Source:   By Eva Frederick, Science Magazine. Excerpt: Comets are generally thought to originate in our Solar System, made up of the leftover gas and rocks thrown out as the planets formed. The recent arrival of two interstellar objects—a rock named ‘Oumuamua and a flashy comet called Borisov—have challenged that assumption. Tom Hands, an astrophysicist at the University of Zurich’s Institute for Computational Science and his co-author Walter Dehnen at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich used mathematical models to estimate just how many long-period comets—those that take 200 years or longer to circle the Sun—could be interstellar visitors. ...We estimated from the study that there should be 100,000 ‘Oumuamua-style small rocks and 100 Borisov-style comets in the Solar System. Making far more conservative estimates for how long these objects would survive in the Solar System [shorter than 10 ...

https://news.berkeley.edu/2019/12/04/parker-probe-traces-solar-wind-to-its-source-on-suns-surface Source:    By Robert Sanders, UC Berkeley News. Excerpt: A year ago, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe flew closer to the sun than any satellite in history, collecting a spectacular trove of data from the very edge of the sun’s million-degree corona. ...that data has allowed solar physicists to map the source of a major component of the solar wind that continually peppers Earth’s atmosphere, while revealing strange magnetic field reversals that could be accelerating these particles toward our planet. These accelerated particles interact with Earth’s magnetic field, generating the colorful northern and southern lights. But they also have the potential to damage the electrical grid and telecommunications networks on Earth’s surface, threaten orbiting satellites and perhaps endanger astronauts in space. ...“There was a major space weather event in 1859 that blew out telegraph networks on...

https://eos.org/articles/meet-hygiea-the-smallest-dwarf-planet-in-our-solar-system Source:   By Javier Barbuzano, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: Around 2 billion years ago, two large rock bodies hit each other in the main asteroid belt, a region between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter populated by fragments of rocks of various sizes. The impactor, with a size ranging from 75 to 150 kilometers in diameter, hit a body at least 4 times larger. Astronomers have known about this impact for a long time because it created a whole family of asteroids in the main asteroid belt, formed by the celestial body Hygiea and almost 7,000 smaller asteroids that have similar orbits. Hygiea itself has been considered an asteroid since it was discovered in 1849 by Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis. With a diameter just over 430 kilometers, it is the fourth-largest object in the main asteroid belt. New observations obtained with the Very Large Telescope (VLT), located in Chile and operated by the European ...

https://eos.org/research-spotlights/curiosity-rover-reveals-oxygen-mystery-in-martian-atmosphere Source:   By Sarah Stanley, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: The Martian atmosphere is thin and cold and consists mostly of carbon dioxide. Although certainly unsuitable for humans, Martian air could hold clues to whether other life-forms live—or once lived—on the Red Planet. Now Trainer et al. report the first measurements of the five major components of the Martian atmosphere captured over several seasonal cycles. ...On average, the data revealed, the equatorial Martian atmosphere consists of 95% carbon dioxide, 2.59% nitrogen, 1.94% argon, 0.161% oxygen, and 0.058% carbon monoxide. However, throughout the year, some of these concentrations vary widely because of seasonal freezing of carbon dioxide at the planet’s poles, which periodically removes much of this gas from the atmosphere. Seasonal polar freezing—and subsequent thawing—of carbon dioxide also causes atmospheric pressure to rise and fa...

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/11/how-enceladus-got-its-water-spewing-tiger-stripes Source:   By Adam Mann, Science Magazine. Excerpt: Researchers say they have solved a long-standing mystery about Saturn’s tiny, frozen moon Enceladus: why its south pole features long, water-spewing geysers known as tiger stripes. The study could also help explain why these unique formations aren’t seen on any other satellite in the solar system. Enceladus became a star attraction in 2005, when NASA’s Cassini mission photographed enormous jets of water ice and vapor emanating from four parallel slashes near its south pole. Since then, researchers have detected organic molecules and hydrogen in the jets—potential food for microbes—making Enceladus one of the top destinations in the search for life elsewhere in the Solar System. ...As it orbits around Saturn, Enceladus experiences gravitational tidal forces that squeeze and heat it. ...According to the new study, led by Douglas Hemingway of...