Deep space planet confirmed in "life zone," 12.09.11

A planet roughly 2.4 times the size of Earth has been discovered orbiting its star in the “life zone” or “habitable zone.” Found by NASA’s Kepler mission, the planet is in a solar system approximately 600 light-years away.

Image credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech

The “life zone” is the sort of “sweet spot” around a star that is neither too hot nor too cold for water to exist in its liquid form, and consequently, for life as we know it to thrive on any planets that may be in that region. The star in the system is G-class star, like our own, but a little bit smaller, so the life zone around it is about the same region as the distance between the orbits of Venus through Mars, as illustrated in this diagram here.

The planet, thus far only referred to as Kepler 22b, is almost 2 1/5 times the size of Earth, and orbits its star a bit closer than Earth does, but having passed this first investigatory hurdle, astronomers will be studying it even more closely to try to determine what manner of planet it may be. As of yet, they do not know whether it is terrestrial (made of rock and soil like Mercury through Mars), covered in liquid (like Uranus and Neptune), or composed of gaseous clouds (like Jupiter and Saturn).

Credit: NASA.

Diamonds in the sky, 08.29.11

Apparently stars can turn into diamonds—entire planets of diamond. One such planet has just recently been discovered.

*Not an actual photograph, sorry, just in case the orbital track didn't give it away :)
This is just an artist's concept of the system.

According to Matthew Bailes of the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, in 2009 a millisecond pulsar was detected in the constellations Serpens, but its elusive orbiting neighbor had yet to be spotted until recently.

Let us back up for a moment first. We have talked about pulsars a lot in the past, but what is a millisecond pulsar? Like a regular pulsar, it rotates very quickly. Millisecond pulsars leave normal pulsars in the dust, though. This particular millisecond pulsar, designated J1719-1438, completely rotates over 10,000 times in a minute. It is only 12 miles in diameter, but it is still 1.4 times more massive than our own sun.

The entire system is so compact, that the distance for the pulsar at which the diamond planet orbits is still actually within the measure of our own sun’s diameter! The astronomers studying the system believe that the diamond planet used to be a white dwarf star, and that it went through as much fusion as it could until all that was left at its center was diamond. 

So how big is this galactic diamond? Oh, only 37,300 miles in diameter. Yeah, that is five times the size of Earth, people—a solid diamond five times the size of Earth! We can only imagine what other literal treasures the cosmos holds in store.

Credit: NASA. Image credit: Swinburne Astronomy Productions.

De blob, it glows! 08.19.11

Lyman-alpha blob 1 (LAB-1) is a blob. Not only that, but it is a giant, intergalactic green blob—a giant, intergalactic, green blob that can only be studied with extremely large telescopes, like the (aptly named) Very Large Telescope (VLT) in the mountains of Chile. This is what LAB-1 looks like through the VLT:

Very green, isn’t it? Believe it or not, but it is actually glowing green. That is no filter, no infrared exposure, no x-ray…nothing special done to the photograph. The thing is a glowing, green blob. That is only part of what makes it so fascinating, though.

According to the astronomers who have been studying it with the VLT, the LAB-1 is polarized in a very odd way. That polarization indicates something about what is inside of the blob: “We have shown for the first time that the glow of this enigmatic object is scattered light from brilliant galaxies hidden within, rather than the gas throughout the cloud itself shining,” said lead author Matthew Hayes at the University of Toulouse.

So, LAB-1 is full of galaxies. In case you don’t realize just how huge this blob is, astronomers calculate it is at least 300,000 light years across. That is more than 11 times the distance of our solar system from the center of just our own Milky Way galaxy. This blob is a monster… a creepy, glowing, green monster.

Astronomers are also very interested in LAB-1 because it may literally shed some light on how galaxies are formed. “For a long time now, astronomers have watched stars being born in places like the Great Orion Nebula. Now, it looks like we’ll be able to see where galaxies are born, an exciting prospect,” says Jim Friese of Thronateeska Heritage Center.

 Credit and image credit: NASA.

Playing tag with a "trojan," 08.05.11

Astronomers have recently discovered that Earth is not alone. It seems our planet is being followed, or our Earth is following something else, depending on how you look at it. Earth’s orbit is being shared by an object that astronomers refer to as a “trojan” asteroid.

Thanks to data gathered from the NEOWISE project, astronomers have discovered that there is an asteroid roughly 1,000 feet in diameter that shares almost the exact same orbit as Earth as it travels around the sun. While the asteroid, dubbed 2010 TK7, does at times travel above, below, or slightly to the side of Earth’s orbit, for the most part it seems as if Earth and the asteroid are following in each other’s tracks. 2010 TK7 does travel a little farther away from the sun than Earth does at times, as well.

So, why have astronomers not noticed it until now? It seems that 2010 TK7 is usually difficult to spot because from our vantage point on Earth, it would always appear to be close to the sun. For obvious reasons, this makes it very difficult to observe. The NEOWISE project changed the game though. NEOWISE is an aspect of the WISE (Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) mission, a telescope in space far removed from Earth’s atmosphere and the glare of our daylight. The “NEO” part of the name is a side-mission of the probe that searches for Near Earth Objects, bodies that pass within 28 million miles of the sun. By observing 2010 TK7 from outside of our atmosphere, astronomers were able to get a pin point on it and then track it down much easier using other observatories here on Earth, namely the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope on mount Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

Is Earth in danger from its stony stalker? No. According to NASA, trojans are fairly common in our solar system. Neptune, Mars, Jupiter, and even two of Saturn’s moons all have trojans. 2010 TK7 also seems to have a stable orbit, as well, so it is not likely to interfere with Earth.

“It’s as though Earth is playing follow the leader,” said Amy Mainzer, the principal NEOWISE investigator.

Let us hope there are no sore losers in space.

Credit: NASA.

Pin the tail on the pulsar, 07.18.11

The Chandra X-Ray Observatory has seen something very interesting in recent months. In a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal, several astronomers note how they have witnessed a tail of sorts that appears to be spreading out from a pulsar. The pulsar is a rapidly spinning neutron star, lovingly dubbed PSR J0357+3205.

The blue in this composite image is the Chandra x-ray data, and the yellow is a digitized sky survey. The pulsar is actually at the upper right-hand edge of the “tail,” which is part of the reason why astronomers are left scratching their heads over the situation. If the tail were really originating from the pulsar, the brightest portion should most likely be nearest the star, yet in this case the brightest portion is at the opposite end. This is even more shocking when you do a little math and realize that the tail is somewhere in the neighborhood of 4.2 light years long. This would be a record-setting tail for a rotation-powered pulsar.

There are more reasons than one why this tail should not be originating from the star. We have to keep in mind, too, that astronomers are not 100% certain that this really is PSR J0357’s tail. More observations will need to be made to know for certain if this really is the pulsar’s tail and why it is providing such odd data readings.

Image and story credit: NASA.

The laziest star in the universe, 03.18.11

Astronomers have recently discovered the laziest stars to date. By lazy, we mean they are just barely stars; they are actually “failed” stars.

Image credit: SPACE.com.

CFBDSIR 1458+10B is a binary, brown dwarf system located about 75 light-years from Earth. They are roughly the same size as Jupiter, but astronomers say they lack the gusto needed to kick off the nuclear reactions needed to make them shine. Right now, they are only burning at about 212 degrees Fahrenheit. Yes, that is the boiling temperature of water, just a tad hotter than your average cup of coffee. So far as stars are concerned, that is pathetic. For comparison, our own Sun burns at an average of 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. You would definitely need more than a Styrofoam cup to handle that.

Michael Liu, of the University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy and lead author of the study, said that astronomers could even expect CFBDSIR 1458+10B to have properties much like giant exoplanets (planets outside our solar system), and that “it could even have water clouds in its atmosphere.”

For now, Liu and his team will continue to track the system, and in about 10 years or so they will hopefully have enough data to determine the system’s mass, which will open up all manner of future number-crunching possibilities.

When all the heat on CFBDSIR 1458+10B burns away, it will look like another Jupiter-type planet, only super-sized.

Credit: SPACE.com.

Asteroid Apophis a threat in 2029? 03.14.11

Astronomers have been tracking a 900-foot wide rock that is hurtling towards earth. Will it strike us? Only the math can tell.

Image credit: SPACE.com.

Photographed on January 31, astronomers said on March 9 that this was the first clear shot they have been able to take of the approaching asteroid in at least 3 years. The photo was taken from atop one of Hawai’i’s dormant volcanoes, Mauna Kea, using a telescope. It was originally thought that the rock had a 1-in-37 chance of hitting earth, but new calculations made the number grow substantially; it now has a 1-in-250,000 chance of dashing earth to bits. Oh, joy!


All of the calculations are made by doing some careful comparisons with the “known” distances of stars near the asteroid. As stars move very slowly, they can be fairly reliable space-scale distance markers, but the passage of time still has to be taken into consideration upon each new measurement. 


If it does not smash into earth in 2029, it should pass by again in 2036 and 2068. The pass in 2029 will likely alter its path, too, making it slide ever so much closer to earth. The pass in 2029, in fact, will most definitely be closer to earth than a lot of communications satellites are! You can expect to see Apophis without the aid of a telescope or even binoculars, weather permitting. Until then, all we can do is sit, measure, and crunch some more numbers.


Credit: SPACE.com.

A quasar's lesson in death, 03.02.11

There is a supermassive black hole at the center of Markarian 231, about 600 million light years away, near the constellation Ursa Major, which is giving scientists some clues into the life cycles of black holes. Irony objectified, it turns out that their massive appetites actually starve them out in the end.

Image credit: Gemini Observatory/AURA, artwork by Lynette Cook.

Mrk 231 is under observation by the Gemini Observatory in Hilo, Hawai’I, and the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) on Mauna Kea, Hawai’i. The observatory has estimated that the total flow of matter from Mrk 231 is about 400 times the mass of the Sun, and that it puts out this much every year. Such an enormous appetite, however, cannot go on forever, scientists say.


Black holes are a normal find in the center of galaxies; we even have one of our own in the center of the Milky Way. Mrk 231has allowed scientists to glean data that demonstrates how black holes can be choked out. They are calling their findings a “negative feedback loop,” in which the black hole sucks in matter and energy around it, compresses it into an unimaginably fine stream (probably because of magnetic fields), and then spews it back out. The problem, they say, is that it is spitting its food out too far and too fast. “This is really a last gasp of this galaxy;” says Sylvain Veilleux of the University of Maryland, “The black hole is belching its next meal into oblivion!”


In the final, violent stages of merging with another galaxy, it spits out the material it needs faster and farther away than it can be retrieved. Soon, it will be stripped down to its energetic central quasar.


Quasar is actually a shortened term for “quasi-stellar radio source.” This is a bit of a misnomer, however, as some quasars emit very little of a radio signal, if any, at all. They also are some of the brightest and presumably oldest objects in the universe, and are still being extensively studied.


Credit: NASA.

Solar storms are growing threat: emergency backup plan neeeded now, 02.21.11

Last Monday, February 14, one of the largest solar storms in over a decade took place. It knocked out radio transmissions in the Western Pacific, parts of Asia, and even caused some polar flights to reroute for the sake of regaining communications. It could have been much worse, though, say space weather experts. The solar flare in this picture took place last September.

Image credit: NASA.

The sun goes through a weather cycle about every 11 years, and it was long overdue to begin its more active phases. It is difficult to say for sure when to expect the next big burst of solar activity. Experts guesstimate that it will probably reach its peak in 2013 or 2014.


One way solar storms can occur is a solar flare, a large burst of radiation that sends photons careening towards Earth. They are categorized according to their intensity: C, M, and X, with the latter being the most severe. The storm of last Monday was an X 2.2, which is strong, but by no means the strongest on record. In 1859, a solar flare was recorded that was intense enough to knock out telegraph signals and even spark fires in electrical lines, but it is difficult to say exactly how strong that particular flare was; estimates are about 30 times more powerful than Monday’s storm.


Had the same magnitude of storm that occurred in 1859 happened in this day and age, though, experts say the results would be devastating. Ships and planes would be “blind” as their communications and GPS devices would go down, cell phones, radio, and televisions would no longer work… the list of damages goes on and on. Experts estimate that the initial damages would be about $2 trillion, with on-going and clean up costs being even more. For perspective, let us remind you that the damages caused by Hurricane Katrina ranged from $80-$125 billion.


According to Helena Lindberg of the Swedish Civil Contigencies Agency, the world must “start sharing expertise and connecting our systems for warning and for response.” Waiting until everything is down is too late to take action. Imagine what happens when everything that relies on a radio or satellite is suddenly “dead” or malfunctioning. They may be 93 million miles away, but with our current technology, solar storms affect us in as little as eight minutes.


Credit: Spaceweather.com.

Alien planet provides clues to Earth's future? 11.26.10

Astronomers have recently discovered a planet that they strongly feel is from a galaxy not our own. Orbiting the star HIP 13044, the planet may provide clues as to what our own sun may have in store for Earth, 5 billion years from now, that is.

An artist's impression of HIP 13044. Image credit: SPACE.com.

This situation is unique because the planet is orbiting around a star that has an unexpected chemistry. This, along with the star’s proximity to other similar objects has led astronomers to believe that it is from the Helmi Stream, a nearby dwarf galaxy that our own Milky Way supposedly attracted and swallowed up. The planet is about “25 percent more massive than Jupiter” and is located approximately 2,000 light years away in the constellation Fornax.

Using a European Southern Observatory in Chile, the astronomers have determined that the chemistry of the star and its alien planet is drastically different from the normal patterns of solar system development. Simply put, because so large of a planet is orbiting around such a chemically different star, astronomers are having to rethink their theories regarding planetary formation around stars. Because the star is at such an advanced age and astronomers can track its changes, they are also hoping to glean data that may provide insight into the relationship between stars and their orbiting planets, which may in turn reveal what our sun has in store for our solar system as it (the sun) grows with age.


“This is very exciting,” said study co-author Rainer Klement of the Max-Planck-Institut fur Astronomie (MPIA) in Heidelberg, Germany. For the first time, astronomers can finally study stars and planets from another galaxy because of the absorption of the Helmi Stream.


Credit: SPACE.com.

Planet hunters find treasure trove and Thronateeska astronomer believes planet could be in crucial "life zone," 08.27.10

Astronomers at the European Southern Observatory have made one of the most exciting discoveries of the decade this week. In the constellation Hydrus, 127 light years away, five planets have been discovered orbiting the star HD 10180, with a possibility of two more planets. Jim Friese, staff astronomer at Thronateeska Heritage Center, believes one of the planets could be in the “life zone,” the area of space that is just the right distance from its sun for life to be sustained on the planet.


The star is very similar to our own, and the planets orbiting around it are thought to be much like Neptune. The sixth planet (when confirmed) is thought to be similar to Saturn. This solar system is unique because the planets all have circular orbits and are much closer to their sun than the planets in our solar system are to our star. The system also contains one of the smallest exoplanets ever discovered, one that is only 1.4 times the mass of our own earth. This discovery could greatly increase astronomers’ knowledge of how planets affect their stars and vice versa.


NASA also made an announcement this week that its own planet-hunting efforts have resulted in its Kepler Mission discovering two planets transiting, or crossing in front of, the same star, Kepler-9. The planets have been named Kepler-9b and Kepler-9c. Both planets have masses similar to the planet Saturn. An announcement was also made yesterday that there may be a third planet orbiting Kepler-9. It is only 1.5 times earth’s mass and is very close to the star, possibly making a complete orbit of its sun every 1.6 days.

A recent discovery in astronomy challenges knowledge of stars, 08.20.10

You may have read in the news lately about a fairly recent discovery in astronomy that is leaving astronomers questioning what they know about the life cycles and behavior of stars. An astronomer at Thronateeska Heritage Center says not to have worries about a recent discovery in our universe, though. Despite its enormous magnetic field, its safe distance away will cause no foreseeable problems in the near future for Earth.


An odd kind of neutron star called a “magnetar” because of its massive magnetic field is puzzling astronomers at the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile. It is located in the constellation Ara (the Altar), 16,000 light years away in a star cluster called Westerlund 1. This cluster is 3.5 to 5 million years old and should not have produced a “magnetar” because it is too young. Another problem is that the star that created this “magnetar” was far too large to have done what it did; it should have made a black hole out of its supernova remnant. The magnetic field that this “magnetar” has generated is about one million billion times stronger than that of Earth.


This strange behavior is causing a dilemma for astronomers. Because the giant collapsing star that created the “magnetar” did not behave as it should have, this might rewrite the book on stellar evolution of massive stars.


Discussions on this subject will be open to the public between planetarium shows at the Wetherbee Planetarium this Saturday, August 21^st. Call 229-432-6955 or visit http://heritagecenter.org for planetarium show times.