Category Archives: Science

See Mercury as it reaches ‘greatest elongation’ before dawn

June 15, 2022 Admin Leave a comment

Mercury will be visible at pre-dawn on June 16, 2022 when the planet reaches greatest western elongation. (Image credit: Chris Vaughan)

Mercury will briefly reveal itself at pre-dawn tomorrow (June 16) when the planet reaches its farthest separation from the sun as seen from Earth, also known as its greatest western elongation.

The elusive planet Mercury will reach a maximum angle of 23° west of the sun; viewers located near the Equator and farther south will experience the best viewing opportunities.

“Between about 4:30 and 5 a.m. in your local time zone, look for the magnitude 0.45 planet shining very low in the east-northeastern sky,” writes geophysicist Chris Vaughan, amateur astronomer with SkySafari Software who oversees Space.com’s Night Sky calendar. “It will be positioned a fist diameter to the lower left of much brighter Venus.”

The exact time of the event varies depending on your specific location, so you’ll want to check out a skywatching app like SkySafari or software like Starry Night to check for times. Our picks for the best stargazing apps may help you with your planning.

“Don’t worry if skies are cloudy on Thursday,” Vaughan said. “Mercury will be nearly as far from the sun on the surrounding mornings”.

Related: The brightest planets in June’s night sky: How to see them (and when)

Mercury is usually a tricky planet to spot as its orbit lies closer to the sun than Earth’s, and is often obscured by the sun’s glare. The best time to view Mercury is when the planet reaches greatest elongation — its greatest angular distance from the sun. According to In-The-Sky.org (opens in new tab) these apparitions occur roughly every three to four months.

Mercury zips around the sun every 88 Earth days, traveling through space at nearly 112,000 mph (180,000 km/h), faster than any other planet. In 2019, a rare transit of Mercury occurred where the planet crossed the face of the sun. This won’t happen again until 2032.

If you’re looking for a telescope or binoculars to see planet elongations like tomorrow’s event, our guides for the best binoculars deals and the best telescope deals now can help. Our best cameras for astrophotography and best lenses for astrophotography to prepare to capture the next stargazing sight in a photo.

Editor’s Note: If you snap a photo of Mercury and would like to share it with Space.com’s readers, send your photo(s), comments, and your name and location to spacephotos@space.com.

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NASA’s mega moon rocket will get another attempt at prelaunch test on Monday

June 15, 2022 Admin Leave a comment

The crucial test, known as the wet dress rehearsal, simulates every stage of launch without the rocket leaving the launchpad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

This process includes loading supercold propellant, going through a full countdown simulating launch, resetting the countdown clock and draining the rocket tanks.

The results of the wet dress rehearsal will determine when the uncrewed Artemis I will launch on a mission that goes beyond the moon and returns to Earth. This mission will kick off NASA’s Artemis program, which is expected to return humans to the moon and land the first woman and the first person of color on the lunar surface by 2025.

Three previous attempts at the wet dress rehearsal in April were unsuccessful, concluding before the rocket could be fully loaded with propellant due to various leaks, which according to NASA have since been corrected.

The NASA team rolled the 322-foot-tall (98-meter-tall) Artemis I rocket stack, including the Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft, back to the launchpad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on June 6.

Wet dress rehearsal: What to expect

The Artemis rocket will begin its next attempt at the wet dress rehearsal Saturday at 5 p.m. ET. with a “call to stations,” when all of the teams associated with the mission report that they’re ready for the test to begin.

Preparations over the weekend will set up the Artemis team to start loading propellant into the rocket’s core stage and upper stage on Monday, June 20.

The test will air live on NASA’s website, with commentary, beginning at 7 a.m. ET on Monday.

A two-hour test window will begin in the afternoon, with the Artemis team targeting the first countdown at 2:40 p.m. ET.

First, they will go through a countdown to 33 seconds before launch, then stop the cycle. The clock will be reset, then the countdown will resume again and run until about 10 seconds before a launch would occur.

The previous wet dress rehearsal attempts have already completed many objectives on the list to prepare the rocket for launch, said Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, Artemis launch director for NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems Program, during a news conference on Wednesday.

“We hope to finish them off this time around and get through the cryogenic loading operations along with terminal count,” she said. “Our team is ready to go and we’re looking forward to getting back to this test.”

The mission team is now looking at several possible launch windows for sending Artemis I on its journey to the moon in late summer: August 23 to August 29, September 2 to September 6 and beyond.

Once the Artemis rocket stack completes its wet dress rehearsal, it will roll back into the space center’s Vehicle Assembly Building to wait for launch day.

There is a long history behind the arduous process to test new systems before launching a rocket, and what the Artemis team is facing is similar to what the Apollo and shuttle era teams experienced, including multiple test attempts and delays before launch.

“There’s not a single person on the team that shies away from the responsibility that we have to manage ourselves and our contractors and to deliver, and deliver means meeting those flight test objectives for (Artemis I), and meeting the objectives of the Artemis I program,” said Jim Free, associate administrator for NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, during the news conference.

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Building the Ultimate Milky Way Map: Here’s What Scientists Have So Far

June 15, 2022 Admin Leave a comment

Beyond the realm of mind-blowing spaceflight, groundbreaking satellites and stunning moon landings, the European Space Agency is focused on one crucial quest. It is simply to “create the most accurate and complete multidimensional map of the Milky Way.”

The ambitious endeavor is called Gaia, and for the last several years, ESA has been steadily making strong progress on the dream. Scientists of the collaboration have collected tons of spectacular data about the over 1 billion stars throughout our galaxy, recording every juicy detail along the way.

And on Monday, the team reached a massive checkpoint for the project.

Lucky for us, it also released some remarkable visuals that encompass the treasure box of cosmic secrets gathered so far. This particular milestone is formally referred to as Gaia data release 3 — and importantly, it’s one that ESA says is the “most detailed Milky Way survey to date.”

In this dataset, not only can you see thousands of solar system objects like asteroids, moons and other celestial marvels within our galaxy, but you can also peruse millions of galaxies and phenomena outside the Milky Way.

The position of each asteroid at 12:00 CEST on June 13, 2022, is plotted. Blue represents the inner part of the solar system, where the near-Earth asteroids, Mars crossers and terrestrial planets are. The main belt, between Mars and Jupiter, is green. The two orange “clouds” correspond to the Trojan asteroids of Jupiter.

P. Tanga (Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur)

When you look at the stats of this survey, it really is jaw-dropping. This new wealth of galactic intelligence includes some 6.6 million quasar candidates with redshift estimates, aka the extremely bright jets that power supermassive black holes, and probably their precise locations. It boasts 4.8 million galaxy candidates, about 813,000 multistar systems, 2.3 million hot stars and so much more.

“Gaia is a survey mission. This means that while surveying the entire sky with billions of stars multiple times, Gaia is bound to make discoveries that other more dedicated missions would miss,” Timo Prusti, project scientist for Gaia at ESA, said in a statement.

The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds appear as bright spots in the lower right corner of the image. The Sagittarius dwarf galaxy is visible as a faint quasi-vertical stripe below the galactic center.

ESA/Gaia/DPAC/CU6, D. Katz, N. Leclerc, P. Sartoretti and the CU6 team.

A few interstellar surprises

According to the team, among the most surprising discoveries of Gaia’s data release 3 are strange phenomena called “starquakes.”

Starquakes are pretty much exactly what they sound like – tiny motions on the surface of a star that can alter its orblike shape. Some of these quakes ESA compares to vibrations we associate with “large-scale tsunamis” on Earth.

“Starquakes teach us a lot about stars, notably their internal workings. Gaia is opening a goldmine for ‘asteroseismology’ of massive stars,” Conny Aerts of KU Leuven in Belgium, and a member of the Gaia collaboration, said in a statement.

Asteroseismology is to stars what seismology is to Earth, the study of quakes and other such wave propagation. A rundown of the starquake portion of Gaia’s new data can be seen below.

Another striking revelation was that the Gaia telescope duo – which harnesses a whopping 1-billion-pixel camera – could detect the chemical composition of the stars being studied. This one’s a big deal that could revolutionize the field of astronomy.

In short, understanding the breakdown of which exact chemicals lace stellar objects could help us decode when they were born, where they were born and what trajectory they followed after they were born. It could reveal a timeline of the universe.

And with the new Gaia data, the team found that some stars had heavier elements than others. Heavier elements are often metals, and differentiate themselves from lighter elements because they have a different nuclei structure.

This all-sky view shows a sample of the Milky Way stars in Gaia’s data release 3. The color indicates the stellar metallicity. Redder stars are richer in metals.

ESA/Gaia

But the main point here is that lighter elements, from what experts know thus far, are thought to be the only kind present during the Big Bang. In essence, this means Gaia data release 3 offers direct proof of a super diverse combination of stars in our galaxy in terms of both time and place of genesis.

“This diversity is extremely important, because it tells us the story of our galaxy’s formation,” Alejandra Recio-Blanco of the Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur in France, and a member of the Gaia collaboration, said in a statement. “It reveals the processes of migration within our galaxy and accretion from external galaxies.”

This sky map shows the velocity field of the Milky Way for about 26 million stars. Blue shows the parts of the sky where the average motion of stars is towards us, and red shows the where the average motion is away from us.

ESA/Gaia/DPAC/CU6, O. Snaith, D. Katz, P. Sartoretti, N. Leclerc and the CU6 team.

Taking this all a step further, viewing the efforts of Gaia kind of reminds us of our place in the universe. Mapping a region far, far vaster than Earth’s immediate neighborhood inevitably forces human existence into perspective.

As Recio-Blanco puts it, “It also clearly shows that our sun, and we, all belong to an ever changing system, formed thanks to the assembly of stars and gas of different origins.”

Other remarkable sightings with Gaia include over 800 binary star systems, which refer to two stars orbiting one another, in contrast to our solar system’s singular sun, and a new asteroid survey comprising 156 ,000 rocky bodies.

This image shows the orbits of the more than 150,000 asteroids — from the inner parts of the solar system to the Trojan asteroids at the distance of Jupiter. The yellow circle at the center represents the sun. Blue represents the inner part of the solar system, where there are near-Earth asteroids, Mars crossers and terrestrial planets. The main belt, between Mars and Jupiter, is green. Jupiter Trojans are red.

P. Tanga (Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur)

“We can’t wait for the astronomy community to dive into our new data to find out even more about our galaxy and its surroundings than we could’ve imagined,” Prusti said.

And with regard to Gaia’s own next steps, the team intends to continue toiling away at what will eventually be the pinnacle of lore for our home galaxy, the Milky Way.

This image shows an artistic impression of the Milky Way, and on top of that an overlay showing the location and densities of a young star sample from Gaia’s data release 3 (in yellow-green). The “you are here” sign points towards the sun.

ESA/Kevin Jardine, Stefan Payne-Wardenaar

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cGAS–STING drives the IL-6-dependent survival of chromosomally instable cancers

June 15, 2022 Admin Leave a comment

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Astronomers discover a multiplanet system nearby

June 15, 2022 Admin Leave a comment

MIT astronomers have discovered a new multiplanet system that lies just 10 parsecs, or about 33 light-years, from Earth, making it one of the closest known multiplanet systems to our own. The star at the heart of the system likely hosts at least two terrestrial, Earth-sized planets. Credit: MIT News, with TESS Satellite figure courtesy of NASA

Astronomers at MIT and elsewhere have discovered a new multiplanet system within our galactic neighborhood that lies just 10 parsecs, or about 33 light-years, from Earth, making it one of the closest known multiplanet systems to our own.

At the heart of the system lies a small and cool M-dwarf star, named HD 260655, and astronomers have found that it hosts at least two terrestrial, Earth-sized planets. The rocky worlds are likely not habitable, as their orbits are relatively tight, exposing the planets to temperatures that are too high to sustain liquid surface water.

Nevertheless, scientists are excited about this system because the proximity and brightness of its star will give them a closer look at the properties of the planets and signs of any atmosphere they might hold.

“Both planets in this system are each considered among the best targets for atmospheric study because of the brightness of their star,” says Michelle Kunimoto, a postdoc in MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research and one of the discovery’s lead scientists. “Is there a volatile-rich atmosphere around these planets? And are there signs of water or carbon-based species? These planets are fantastic test beds for those explorations.”

The team will present its discovery today (June 15) at the meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Pasadena, California. Team members at MIT include Katharine Hesse, George Ricker, Sara Seager, Avi Shporer, Roland Vanderspek, and Joel Villaseñor, along with collaborators from institutions around the world.

Data power

The new planetary system was initially identified by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), an MIT-led mission that is designed to observe the nearest and brightest stars, and detect periodic dips in light that could signal a passing planet.

In October 2021, Kunimoto, a member of MIT’s TESS science team, was monitoring the satellite’s incoming data when she noticed a pair of periodic dips in starlight, or transits, from the star HD 260655.

She ran the detections through the mission’s science inspection pipeline, and the signals were soon classified as two TESS Objects of Interest, or TOIs—objects that are flagged as potential planets. The same signals were also found independently by the Science Processing Operations Center (SPOC), the official TESS planet search pipeline based at NASA Ames. Scientists typically plan to follow up with other telescopes to confirm that the objects are indeed planets.

The process of classifying and subsequently confirming new planets can often take several years. For HD 260655, that process was shortened significantly with the help of archival data.

Soon after Kunimoto identified the two potential planets around HD 260655, Shporer looked to see whether the star was observed previously by other telescopes. As luck would have it, HD 260655 was listed in a survey of stars taken by the High Resolution Echelle Spectrometer (HIRES), an instrument that operates as part of the Keck Observatory in Hawaii. HIRES had been monitoring the star, along with a host of other stars, since 1998, and the researchers were able to access the survey’s publicly available data.

HD 260655 was also listed as part of another independent survey by CARMENES, an instrument that operates as part of the Calar Alto Observatory in Spain. As these data were private, the team reached out to members of both HIRES and CARMENES with the goal of combining their data power.

“These negotiations are sometimes quite delicate,” Shporer notes. “Luckily, the teams agreed to work together. This human interaction is almost as important in getting the data [as the actual observations].”

Planetary pull

In the end, this collaborative effort quickly confirmed the presence of two planets around HD 260655 in about six months.

To confirm that the signals from TESS were indeed from two orbiting planets, the researchers looked through both HIRES and CARMENES data of the star. Both surveys measure a star’s gravitational wobble, also known as its radial velocity.

“Every planet orbiting a star is going to have a little gravitational pull on its star,” Kunimoto explains. “What we’re looking for is any slight movement of that star that could indicate a planetary-mass object is tugging on it.”

From both sets of archival data, the researchers found statistically significant signs that the signals detected by TESS were indeed two orbiting planets.

“Then we knew we had something very exciting,” Shporer says.

The team then looked more closely at TESS data to pin down properties of both planets, including their orbital period and size. They determined that the inner planet, dubbed HD 260655b, orbits the star every 2.8 days and is about 1.2 times as big as the Earth. The second outer planet, HD 260655c, orbits every 5.7 days and is 1.5 times as big as the Earth.

From the radial-velocity data from HIRES and CARMENES, the researchers were able to calculate the planets’ mass, which is directly related to the amplitude by which each planet tugs on its star. They found the inner planet is about twice as massive as the Earth, while the outer planet is about three Earth masses. From their size and mass, the team estimated each planet’s density. The inner, smaller planet is slightly denser than the Earth, while the outer, larger planet is a bit less dense. Both planets, based on their density, are likely terrestrial, or rocky in composition.

The researchers also estimate, based on their short orbits, that the surface of the inner planet is a roasting 710 kelvins (818 degrees Fahrenheit), while the outer planet is around 560 K (548 F).

“We consider that range outside the habitable zone, too hot for liquid water to exist on the surface,” Kunimoto says.

“But there might be more planets in the system,” Shporer adds. “There are many multiplanet systems hosting five or six planets, especially around small stars like this one. Hopefully we will find more, and one might be in the habitable zone. That’s optimistic thinking.”

Two rocky exoplanets discovered around nearby star

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June 15, 2022 Admin Leave a comment

The physicists also created an “odd ball” that always bounces to one side and an “odd wall” that controls where it absorbs energy from an impact. The objects all stem from the same equation describing an asymmetric relationship between stretching and squashing motions that the researchers identified two years ago.

“These are indeed behaviors you would not expect,” said Auke Ijspeert, a bioroboticist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne. Coulais and Vitelli declined to comment while their latest paper is under peer review.

In addition to guiding the design of more robust robots, the new research may prompt insights into the physics of living systems and inspire the development of novel materials.

Odd Matter

The odd wheel grew out of Coulais and Vitelli’s past work on the physics of “active matter” — an umbrella term for systems whose constituent parts consume energy from the environment, such as swarms of bacteria, flocks of birds and certain artificial materials. The energy supply engenders rich behavior, but it also leads to instabilities that make active matter difficult to control.

Physicists have historically focused on systems that conserve energy, which must obey principles of reciprocity: If there’s a way for such a system to gain energy by moving from A to B, any process that takes the system from B back to A must cost an equal amount of energy. But with a constant influx of energy from within, this constraint no longer applies.

In a 2020 paper in Nature Physics, Vitelli and several collaborators began to investigate active solids with nonreciprocal mechanical properties. They developed a theoretical framework in which nonreciprocity manifested in the relationships between different kinds of stretching and squashing motions. “That to me was just a beautiful mathematical framework,” said Nikta Fakhri, a biophysicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Suppose you squash one side of a solid, causing it to bulge outward in a perpendicular direction. You can also stretch and squash it along an axis rotated by 45 degrees, distorting it into a diamond shape. In an ordinary, passive solid, these two modes are independent; deforming the solid in one direction does not deform it along either diagonal.

In an active solid, the researchers showed that the two modes can instead have a nonreciprocal coupling: Squashing the solid in one direction will also squash it along the axis rotated by 45 degrees, but squashing along this diagonal will stretch it, not squash it, along the original axis. Mathematically, the number describing the coupling between these two modes is positive going one way and negative going the other way. Because of the sign difference, the physicists call the phenomenon “odd elasticity.”

In an odd elastic solid, undoing a deformation isn’t as simple as reversing the stretching and squashing motions that produced it; instead, the cycle of deformations that returns the solid to its starting configuration can leave it with some excess energy. This has striking consequences, such as enabling uphill locomotion of the odd wheel.

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Science

The James Webb Space Telescope is finally ready to do science – and it’s seeing the universe more clearly than even its own engineers hoped for

June 15, 2022 Admin Leave a comment

NASA is scheduled to release the first images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope on July 12, 2022. They’ll mark the beginning of the next era in astronomy as Webb – the largest space telescope ever built – begins collecting scientific data that will help answer questions about the earliest moments of the universe and allow astronomers to study exoplanets in greater detail than ever before. But it has taken nearly eight months of travel, setup, testing and calibration to make sure this most valuable of telescopes is ready for prime time. Marcia Rieke, an astronomer at the University of Arizona and the scientist in charge of one of Webb’s four cameras, explains what she and her colleagues have been doing to get this telescope up and running.

1. What’s happened since the telescope launched?

After the successful launch of the James Webb Space Telescope on Dec. 25, 2021, the team began the long process of moving the telescope into its final orbital position, unfolding the telescope and – as everything cooled – calibrating the cameras and sensors onboard.

The launch went as smoothly as a rocket launch can go. One of the first things my colleagues at NASA noticed was that the telescope had more remaining fuel onboard than predicted to make future adjustments to its orbit. This will allow Webb to operate for much longer than the mission’s initial 10-year goal.

The first task during Webb’s monthlong journey to its final location in orbit was to unfold the telescope. This went along without any hitches, starting with the white-knuckle deployment of the sun shield that helps cool the telescope, followed by the alignment of the mirrors and the turning on of sensors.

Once the sun shield was open, our team began monitoring the temperatures of the four cameras and spectrometers onboard, waiting for them to reach temperatures low enough so that we could start testing each of the 17 different modes in which the instruments can operate.

The NIRCam on Webb was the first instrument to go online and helped align the 18 mirror segments.
NASA Goddard Space Center/Wikimedia Commons

2. What did you test first?

The cameras on Webb cooled just as the engineers predicted, and the first instrument the team turned on was the Near Infrared Camera – or NIRCam. NIRCam is designed to study the faint infrared light produced by the oldest stars or galaxies in the universe. But before it could do that, NIRCam had to help align the 18 individual segments of Webb’s mirror.

Once NIRCam cooled to minus 280 F, it was cold enough to start detecting light reflecting off of Webb’s mirror segments and produce the telescope’s first images. The NIRCam team was ecstatic when the first light image arrived. We were in business!

These images showed that the mirror segments were all pointing at a relatively small area of the sky, and the alignment was much better than the worst-case scenarios we had planned for.

Webb’s Fine Guidance Sensor also went into operation at this time. This sensor helps keep the telescope pointing steadily at a target – much like image stabilization in consumer digital cameras. Using the star HD84800 as a reference point, my colleagues on the NIRCam team helped dial in the alignment of the mirror segments until it was virtually perfect, far better than the minimum required for a successful mission.

3. What sensors came alive next?

As the mirror alignment wrapped up on March 11, the Near Infrared Spectrograph – NIRSpec – and the Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph – NIRISS – finished cooling and joined the party.

NIRSpec is designed to measure the strength of different wavelengths of light coming from a target. This information can reveal the composition and temperature of distant stars and galaxies. NIRSpec does this by looking at its target object through a slit that keeps other light out.

NIRSpec has multiple slits that allow it to look at 100 objects at once. Team members began by testing the multiple targets mode, commanding the slits to open and close, and they confirmed that the slits were responding correctly to commands. Future steps will measure exactly where the slits are pointing and check that multiple targets can be observed simultaneously.

NIRISS is a slitless spectrograph that will also break light into its different wavelengths, but it is better at observing all the objects in a field, not just ones on slits. It has several modes, including two that are designed specifically for studying exoplanets particularly close to their parent stars.

So far, the instrument checks and calibrations have been proceeding smoothly, and the results show that both NIRSpec and NIRISS will deliver even better data than engineers predicted before launch.

The MIRI camera, image on the right, allows astronomers to see through dust clouds with incredible sharpness compared with previous telescopes like the the Spitzer Space Telescope, which produced the image on the left.
NASA/JPL-Caltech (left), NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI (right)/Flickr, CC BY

4. What was the last instrument to turn on?

The final instrument to boot up on Webb was the Mid-Infrared Instrument, or MIRI. MIRI is designed to take photos of distant or newly formed galaxies as well as faint, small objects like asteroids. This sensor detects the longest wavelengths of Webb’s instruments and must be kept at minus 449 F – just 11 degrees F above absolute zero. If it were any warmer, the detectors would pick up only the heat from the instrument itself, not the interesting objects out in space. MIRI has its own cooling system, which needed extra time to become fully operational before the instrument could be turned on.

Radio astronomers have found hints that there are galaxies completely hidden by dust and undetectable by telescopes like Hubble that captures wavelengths of light similar to those visible to the human eye. The extremely cold temperatures allow MIRI to be incredibly sensitive to light in the mid-infrared range which can pass through dust more easily. When this sensitivity is combined with Webb’s large mirror, it allows MIRI to penetrate these dust clouds and reveal the stars and structures in such galaxies for the first time.

5. What’s next for Webb?

As of June 15, 2022, all of Webb’s instruments are on and have taken their first images. Additionally, four imaging modes, three time series modes and three spectroscopic modes have been tested and certified, leaving just three to go.

On July 12, NASA plans to release a suite of teaser observations that illustrate Webb’s capabilities. These will show the beauty of Webb imagery and also give astronomers a real taste of the quality of data they will receive.

After July 12, the James Webb Space Telescope will start working full time on its science mission. The detailed schedule for the coming year hasn’t yet been released, but astronomers across the world are eagerly waiting to get the first data back from the most powerful space telescope ever built.

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Science

Weird Star Produces the Fastest Nova on Record

June 15, 2022 Admin Leave a comment

This illustration shows an intermediate polar system, a type of two-star system that the research team thinks V1674 Hercules belongs to. A flow of gas from the large companion star impacts an accretion disk before flowing along magnetic field lines onto the white dwarf. Credit: Illustration by Mark Garlick

Most people are familiar with supernovas, the spectacular stellar explosions that occur at the end of a massive star’s life and often result in a

Now, astronomers are buzzing after observing the fastest nova ever recorded. The unusual event drew scientists’ attention to an even more unusual star. As they study it, they may find answers to not only the nova’s many baffling traits, but to larger questions about the chemistry of our solar system, the death of stars and the evolution of the universe.

The research team, led by Arizona State University Regents Professor Sumner Starrfield, Professor Charles Woodward from the University of Minnesota and Research Scientist Mark Wagner from The Ohio State University, co-authored a report published today (June 14, 2022) in the Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society.

A nova is a sudden explosion of bright light from a two-star system. Every nova is created by a white dwarf — the very dense leftover core of a star — and a nearby companion star. Over time, the white dwarf draws matter from its companion, which falls onto the white dwarf. The white dwarf heats this material, causing an uncontrolled reaction that releases a burst of energy. The explosion shoots the matter away at high speeds, which we observe as visible light.

The bright nova usually fades over a couple of weeks or longer. On June 12, 2021, the nova V1674 Hercules burst so bright that it was visible to the naked eye — but in just over one day, it was faint once more. It was like someone flicked a flashlight on and off.

Nova events at this level of speed are rare, making this nova a precious study subject.

“It was only about one day, and the previous fastest nova was one we studied back in 1991, V838 Herculis, which declined in about two or three days,” says Starrfield, an astrophysicist in ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration.

As the astronomy world watched V1674 Hercules, other researchers found that its speed wasn’t its only unusual trait. The light and energy it sends out is also pulsing like the sound of a reverberating bell.

Every 501 seconds, there’s a wobble that observers can see in both visible light waves and X-rays. A year after its explosion, the nova is still showing this wobble, and it seems it’s been going on for even longer. Starrfield and his colleagues have continued to study this quirk.

“The most unusual thing is that this oscillation was seen before the outburst, but it was also evident when the nova was some 10 magnitudes brighter,” says Wagner, who is also the head of science at the Large Binocular Telescope Observatory being used to observe the nova. “A mystery that people are trying to wrestle with is what’s driving this periodicity that you would see it over that range of brightness in the system.”

The team also noticed something strange as they monitored the matter ejected by the nova explosion — some kind of wind, which may be dependent on the positions of the white dwarf and its companion star, is shaping the flow of material into space surrounding the system.

Though the fastest nova is (literally) flashy, the reason it’s worth further study is that novae can tell us important information about our solar system and even the universe as a whole.

A white dwarf collects and alters matter, then seasons the surrounding space with new material during a nova explosion. It’s an important part of the cycle of matter in space. The materials ejected by novae will eventually form new stellar systems. Such events helped form our solar system as well, ensuring that Earth is more than a lump of carbon.

“We’re always trying to figure out how the solar system formed, where the chemical elements in the solar system came from,” Starrfield says. “One of the things that we’re going to learn from this nova is, for example, how much lithium was produced by this explosion. We’re fairly sure now that a significant fraction of the lithium that we have on the Earth was produced by these kinds of explosions.”

Sometimes a white dwarf star doesn’t lose all of its collected matter during a nova explosion, so with each cycle, it gains mass. This would eventually make it unstable, and the white dwarf could generate a type 1a supernova, which is one of the brightest events in the universe. Each type 1a supernova reaches the same level of brightness, so they are known as standard candles.

“Standard candles are so bright that we can see them at great distances across the universe. By looking at how the brightness of light changes, we can ask questions about how the universe is accelerating or about the overall three-dimensional structure of the universe,” Woodward says. “This is one of the interesting reasons that we study some of these systems.”

Additionally, novae can tell us more about how stars in binary systems evolve to their death, a process that is not well understood. They also act as living laboratories where scientists can see nuclear physics in action and test theoretical concepts.

The nova took the astronomy world by surprise. It wasn’t on scientists’ radar until an amateur astronomer from Japan, Seidji Ueda, discovered and reported it.

Citizen scientists play an increasingly important role in the field of astronomy, as does modern technology. Even though it is now too faint for other types of telescopes to see, the team is still able to monitor the nova thanks to the Large Binocular Telescope’s wide aperture and its observatory’s other equipment, including its pair of multi-object double spectrographs and exceptional PEPSI high resolution spectrograph.

They plan to investigate the cause of the outburst and the processes that led to it, the reason for its record-breaking decline, the forces behind the observed wind, and the cause of its pulsing brightness.

Reference: 14 June 2022, Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society.
DOI: 10.3847/2515-5172/ac779d

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Science

June’s strawberry supermoon will take the sky Tuesday night

June 14, 2022 Admin Leave a comment

People across the U.S. can catch the strawberry supermoon on Tuesday night, if the weather permits.

According to NASA, the full moon will be at its closest point to the Earth for this orbit at 7:24 p.m. EDT Tuesday. It will be close enough to be considered a supermoon, making it the second one of 2022.

It will appear full Tuesday evening into Wednesday morning, and it’ll be the lowest full moon of the year, reaching only 23.3 degrees above the horizon Wednesday at 1:56 a.m. EDT, the agency said.

Full strawberry supermoon is seen on June 14 in Indonesia.

WF Sihardian/NurPhoto via Getty Images

How did strawberry moon gets its name?

The name has nothing to do with its color. Traditionally, the strawberry moon is the full moon in June, which is typically the last of spring or first of summer.

According to The Old Farmer’s Almanac, the name was used by Native American Algonquin tribes that live in northeastern U.S. and Ojibwe, Dakota, and Lakota peoples. It was used to mark the ripening of strawberries ready to be gathered in June.

How to watch the strawberry supermoon

After sunset, sky gazers are recommended to look southeast to watch the full moon rise above the horizon, the Almanac said. It reached peak illumination earlier, on Tuesday, at 7:52 a.m. EDT, but it won’t be visible in North American time zones until Tuesday evening, as some parts of the world have already seen the supermoon. The Almanac can calculate moonrise and moonset times based on your location here.

“Full moons are a fun time to observe lunar features, as the rest of the sky will be washed out by the light. With the naked eye, you can see the vast highlands and lowlands of the moon, which can appear to be certain shapes and generate stories about those shapes, depending on the culture you follow,” according to Space.com.

For those that won’t stay up, a free livestream from the Virtual Telescope Project in Italy is also showing the full moon rise over Rome.

And if you miss this supermoon, there will be another on July 13.

Christopher Brito

Christopher Brito is a social media producer and trending writer for CBS News, focusing on sports and stories that involve issues of race and culture.

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Science

Fastest nova ever recorded burns out in just one day

June 14, 2022 Admin Leave a comment

The fastest nova star explosion ever seen has been recorded by astronomers.

They watched as a white dwarf star ‘stole’ gas from a nearby red giant and triggered a blast bright enough to be witnessed from Earth with binoculars.

Named V1674 Hercules, the nova explosion occurred 100 light-years away on June 12 last year but lasted for just a day — up to three times quicker than any previously observed.

A nova is a sudden explosion of bright light from a two-star system. Every nova is created by a white dwarf – the very dense leftover core of a star – and a nearby companion star.

Experts from Arizona State University hope their observation will help answer larger questions about the chemistry of our solar system, the death of stars and the evolution of the universe.

The fastest nova star explosion ever seen has been recorded by astronomers. This illustration shows the type of two-star system that the research team thinks V1674 Hercules belongs to

WHAT IS A WHITE DWARF?

A white dwarf is the remains of a smaller star that has run out of nuclear fuel.

While large stars – those exceeding ten times the mass of our sun – suffer a spectacularly violent climax as a supernova explosion at the ends of their lives, smaller stars are spared such dramatic fates.

When stars like the sun come to the ends of their lives they exhaust their fuel, expand as red giants and later expel their outer layers into space.

The hot and very dense core of the former star – a white dwarf – is all that remains.

White dwarfs contain approximately the mass of the sun but have roughly the radius of Earth, meaning they are incredibly dense.

The gravity on the surface of a white dwarf is 350,000 times that of gravity on Earth.

They become so dense because their electrons are smashed together, creating what’s caused ‘degenerative matter’.

This means that a more massive white dwarf has a smaller radius than its less massive counterpart.

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Material shot into space at speeds of millions of miles an hour — which was visible from Earth for just over 24 hours before fizzling out.

Lead author Professor Sumner Starrfield, of Arizona State University, said: ‘It was like someone flicked a flashlight on and off.’

Novas differ from supernovas. They occur in binary systems where there is a small, incredibly dense star and a much bigger sun-like companion.

Over time, the former draws matter from the latter, which falls onto the white dwarf.

The white dwarf then heats this material, causing an uncontrolled reaction that releases a burst of energy and shoots the matter away at high speeds, which we observe as visible light.

The bright nova usually fades over a couple of weeks or longer but V1674 Hercules was over in a day.

Professor Starrfield said: ‘It was only about one day, and the previous fastest nova was one we studied back in 1991, V838 Herculis, which declined in about two or three days.’

Nova events at this level of speed are rare, making this nova a precious study subject.

Its speed wasn’t its only unusual trait — the light and energy sent out also pulses like the sound of a reverberating bell.

Every 501 seconds, there is a wobble detectable in visible light waves and X-rays. It is still there a year on — and is set to continue for even longer.

Mark Wagner, head of science at the Large Binocular Telescope Observatory on Mount Graham, southern Arizona, said: ‘The most unusual thing is this oscillation was seen before the outburst.

‘But it was also evident when the nova was some 10 magnitudes brighter. A mystery that people are trying to wrestle with is what’s driving this periodicity that you would see it over that range of brightness in the system.’

The US team also noticed a strange wind as they monitored the matter ejected by the nova, which they think may be dependent on the positions of the white dwarf and its companion star.

They appear to be shaping the flow of material into space surrounding the system which lay in the constellation of Hercules.

It is very conveniently placed, being in a dark sky in the east as twilight fades after sunset.

As this places it less than 17° north of the celestial equator, it could be seen from all over the world — and be photographed with an exposure of just a few seconds.

Novae can tell us important information about our solar system and even the universe as a whole.

About 30 to 60 are thought to occur each year in the Milky Way, although only about 10 are discovered during that time. Most are obscured by interstellar dust.

A white dwarf collects and alters matter, then seasons the surrounding space with new material when it goes nova.

It is an important part of the cycle of matter in space as the materials ejected by novae will eventually form new stellar systems.

Such events helped form our solar system as well, ensuring that Earth is more than a lump of carbon.

White dwarfs are the incredibly dense remains of sun-sized stars after they exhaust their nuclear fuel, shrunk down to roughly the size of Earth (artist’s impression)

Professor Starrfield said: ‘We are always trying to figure out how the solar system formed, where the chemical elements in the solar system came from.

‘One of the things we are going to learn from this nova is, for example, how much lithium was produced by this explosion.

‘We are fairly sure now that a significant fraction of the lithium that we have on the Earth was produced by these kinds of explosions.’

Sometimes a white dwarf star doesn’t lose all of its collected matter during a nova explosion, so with each cycle, it gains mass.

This would eventually make it unstable, and the white dwarf could generate a type 1a supernova, which is one of the brightest events in the universe.

Each type 1a supernova reaches the same level of brightness, so they are known as standard candles.

Co-author Professor Charles Woodward, of the University of Minnesota, said: ‘Standard candles are so bright we can see them at great distances across the universe.

‘By looking at how the brightness of light changes, we can ask questions about how the universe is accelerating or about the overall three-dimensional structure of the universe. This is one of the interesting reasons that we study some of these systems.’

Additionally, novae can tell us more about how stars in binary systems evolve to their death, a process that is not well understood.

They also act as living laboratories where scientists can see nuclear physics in action and test theoretical concepts.

The observed nova is now too faint for other types of telescopes to see, but it can still be monitored by the Large Binocular Telescope thanks to its wide aperture and state of the art scanners.

Professor Starrfield and colleagues now plan to investigate the cause, the processes that led to it, the reason for its record-breaking decline, the forces behind the observed wind, and the pulsing brightness.

The observation was published in the Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society.

HOW DO STARS FORM?

Stars form from dense molecular clouds – of dust and gas – in regions of interstellar space known as stellar nurseries.

A single molecular cloud, which primarily contains hydrogen atoms, can be thousands of times the mass of the sun.

They undergo turbulent motion with the gas and dust moving over time, disturbing the atoms and molecules causing some regions to have more matter than other parts.

If enough gas and dust come together in one area then it begins to collapse under the weight of its own gravity.

As it begins to collapse it slowly gets hotter and expands outwards, taking in more of the surrounding gas and dust.

At this point, when the region is about 900 billion miles across, it becomes a pre-stellar core and the starting process of becoming a star.

Then, over the next 50,000 years this will contract 92 billion miles across to become the inner core of a star.

The excess material is ejected out towards the poles of the star and a disc of gas and dust is formed around the star, forming a proto-star.

This matter is then either incorporated into the star or expelled out into a wider disc that will lead to the formation of planets, moons, comets and asteroids.

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Odd Matter

The James Webb Space Telescope is finally ready to do science – and it’s seeing the universe more clearly than even its own engineers hoped for

1. What’s happened since the telescope launched?

2. What did you test first?

3. What sensors came alive next?

4. What was the last instrument to turn on?

5. What’s next for Webb?

Weird Star Produces the Fastest Nova on Record

June’s strawberry supermoon will take the sky Tuesday night

How did strawberry moon gets its name?

How to watch the strawberry supermoon

Fastest nova ever recorded burns out in just one day

WHAT IS A WHITE DWARF?

HOW DO STARS FORM?

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