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Tag: Astronomy

  • Astronomers Spot Stars Soaring Out of the Galaxy

    Astronomers this week revealed that they have discovered a new type of star traveling fast enough to leave the Milky Way galaxy. The stars, dubbed “hypervelocity stars,” are different than other stars found traveling at such speeds as they did not come from the center of the galaxy.

    “These new hypervelocity stars are very different from the ones that have been discovered previously,” said Lauren Palladino, lead author of a paper on the stars published this month in the Astrophysical Journal and a graduate student at Vanderbilt University. “The original hypervelocity stars are large blue stars and appear to have originated from the galactic center.”

    The only current way that Astronomers know stars can reach escape velocity for our galaxy involves an interaction with the supermassive black hole at its center. Past research has found at least 18 hypervelocity stars that fit this standard profile and originate from the center of the galaxy.

    “It’s very hard to kick a star out of the galaxy,” said Kelly Holley-Bockelmann, a co-author of the study and an astronomer at Vanderbilt. “The most commonly accepted mechanism for doing so involves interacting with the supermassive black hole at the galactic core. That means when you trace the star back to its birthplace, it comes from the center of our galaxy. None of these hypervelocity stars come from the center, which implies that there is an unexpected new class of hypervelocity star, one with a different ejection mechanism.”

    The new study’s authors believe they have found 20 new stars that are moving at hypervelocity speeds within the Milky Way galaxy. These stars are closer in composition to main sequence stars such as the sun rather than the massive blue stars seen flung out of the galactic core.

    Palladino and her colleagues are now performing follow-up observations on the new hypervelocity stars in order to determine their origin. One hypothesis currently floated by astronomers is that these objects may have originate outside of our galaxy.

  • Massive Planet-Like Object Baffles Astronomers

    Astronomers this week announced the discovery of an odd object orbiting a star located around 440 light years from our solar system. The object’s size and position is now giving scientists trouble in determining what exactly it is.

    The object, dubbed ROXs 42Bb, is around nine times the mass of Jupiter, just shy of the mark where astronomers would classify the object as a brown dwarf. However, the object’s distance from its sun is also around 30 times further than the distance from Jupiter to our sun, calling into question whether the object can rightfully be called a planet.

    “We have very detailed measurements of this object spanning seven years, even a spectrum revealing its gravity, temperature, and molecular composition,” said Thayne Currie, lead author of a paper about the finding published in Astrophysical Journal Letters and an astronomer at the University of Toronto. “Still, we can’t yet determine whether it is a planet or a failed star – what we call a ‘brown dwarf’. Depending on what measurement you consider, the answer could be either.”

    The question of what to call ROXs 42Bb touches on how astronomers currently think massive gas planets form. While most believe these planets form around a pre-existing core, another hypothesis holds that accreted gas around a new star can collapse into a planet or a brown dwarf.

    “It’s very hard to understand how this object formed like Jupiter did,” said Currie. “However, it’s also too low mass to be a typical brown dwarf; disk instability might just work at its distance from the star. It may represent a new class of planets or it may just be a very rare, very low-mass brown dwarf formed like other stars and brown dwarfs: a ‘planet mass’ brown dwarf.”

    Image via Thayne Currie/University of Toronto

  • Hubble Spots Cloudy Atmospheres on Two Nearby Exoplanets

    Hubble Spots Cloudy Atmospheres on Two Nearby Exoplanets

    On the eve of a new year, astronomers have just revealed that two nearby exoplanets are covered in an atmosphere thick with clouds.

    Two new papers, both to be published in the journal Nature, examine the planets GJ 436b and GJ 1214b. GJ 436b is located just 36 light-years from our solar system and is thought to be a “warm Neptune” – a gas giant similar to our outer-most planet, but much closer to its sun. GJ 1214b is just 40 light-years away and is dubbed a “super-Earth” for its size and position relative to its star.

    Researchers used NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to observe these planets as they passed in front of their respective suns. Instead of the revealing chemical spectra that astronomers would normally find as starlight filters through the atmosphere of planets, the studies’ authors instead found spectra with no chemical markers.

    “Either this planet [GJ 436b] has a high cloud layer obscuring the view, or it has a cloud-free atmosphere that is deficient in hydrogen, which would make it very unlike Neptune,” said Heather Knutson, lead on the GJ436b observations and an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology. “Instead of hydrogen, it could have relatively large amounts of heavier molecules such as water vapor, carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide, which would compress the atmosphere and make it hard for us to detect any chemical signatures.”

    Follow-up observations of GJ 1214b found evidence that it too had a thick layer of clouds on top of an atmosphere made up of mainly of water vapor or hydrogen. The GJ1214b observations have also ruled out the possibility that the planet’s atmosphere cloudless but dominated by common chemicals such as water vapor, nitrogen, or carbon dioxide.

    “Both planets are telling us something about the diversity of planet types that occur outside of our own solar system; in this case we are discovering we may not know them as well as we thought,” said Knutson. “We’d really like to determine the size at which these planets transition from looking like mini-gas giants to something more like a water world or a rocky, scaled-up version of the Earth. Both of these observations are fundamentally trying to answer that question.”

    Image via NASA/ESA/L. Kreidberg and J. Bean (University of Chicago)/H. Knutson (California Institute of Technology)

  • China Moon Landing: Jade Rabbit Reaches Moon’s Surface

    China Moon Landing: Jade Rabbit Reaches Moon’s Surface

    China made history on Saturday by successfully landing its first unmanned spacecraft on the moon. The Chang’e-3  reached the moon at about 9.12 p.m Saturday and delivered “Yutu”, nicknamed “Jade Rabbit”. Yutu is a solar powered, six-wheeled robotic rover, equipped with at least four cameras and a number of  mechanical devices for sampling and analyzing the moon’s surface.

    On Saturday, Zheng Yong-Chun, a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences announced, “Chang’e-3 has been landed successfully on the surface of the moon today”. This means that China becomes only the third country to achieve such a feat after the United States last landed in 1972, and the former Soviet Union in 1976.

    The 1-ton rover will explore the moon’s surface, studying soil samples and rocks for at least three months. The Yutu moon rover is named after a pet rabbit that journeyed to the moon with the Chinese mythological goddess named Chang’e .

    The lander drifted about 100 meters in altitude above the lunar landscape as it searched for a safe landing spot. The spacecraft eventually landed in the Sinus Iridum (known as the Bay of Rainbows) located on the northern hemisphere of the moon.

    The lander also features a scientific gear that can observe the Earth and other celestial objects over the next 12 months. China is also expected to open a permanent space station in the Earth’s orbit, within the next decade.

    Watch the Chinese blast off to the moon

    http://youtu.be/lgZslWEQZHY

    (image via YouTube)

  • Argon Hydride Detected in Crab Nebula

    Argon Hydride Detected in Crab Nebula

    Researchers this week revealed that a rare molecule has been spotted in the Crab Nebula. The molecule, Argon Hydride, was found in data collected by the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Herschel Space Observatory, which ran out of coolant and ended its mission this past summer.. The finding has been published in the journal Science.

    Though argon on its own is a common byproduct of supernovae, this discovery is the first time astronomers have found a noble-gas based molecule in space.

    “At first, the discovery seemed bizarre,” said Michael Barlow, lead author of the paper and an astronomer at University College London. “With hot gas still expanding at high speeds after the explosion, a supernova remnant is a harsh, hostile environment, and one of the places where we least expected to find a noble-gas based molecule.

    “But we soon realised that even in the Crab Nebula, there are places where the conditions are just right for a noble gas to react and combine with other elements.”

    Argon hydride is formed from certain molecules of Argon and hydrogen molecules. The argon hydride found in the Crab Nebula was found in the so-called transition regions separating regions where ions form and others where molecules are formed.

    Following the discovery, astronomers are planning more research into the Crab Nebula. Specifically, researchers will be searching for other molecules that may be formed from other isotopes of argon.

    “This is not only the first detection of a noble-gas based molecule in space, but also a new perspective on the Crab Nebula, said Göran Pilbratt, project scientist for Herschel at ESA. “Herschel has directly measured the argon isotope we expect to be produced via explosive nucleosynthesis in a core-collapse supernova, refining our understanding of the origin of this supernova remnant.”

    (Image courtesy ESA/Herschel/PACS/MESS Key Programme Supernova Remnant Team; NASA, ESA and Allison Loll/Jeff Hester (Arizona State University))

  • Water Vapor Detected on Jupiter’s Moon Europa

    Water Vapor Detected on Jupiter’s Moon Europa

    New research published this week in the journal Science Express has revealed that there is water vapor in the atmosphere of Jupiter‘s moon Europa. The vapor was detected by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope over the moon’s south pole.

    Though the water vapor has been detected on Europa, the exact cause of the vapor has yet to be determined. The report’s authors believe that the likeliest cause is eruptions of water on the moon’s surface. Scientists have believed for years that Europa has oceans of water underneath its outer crust of ice.

    “By far the simplest explanation for this water vapor is that it erupted from plumes on the surface of Europa,” said Lorenz Roth, lead author of the paper and a researcher at the Southwest Research Institute. “If those plumes are connected with the subsurface water ocean we are confident exists under Europa’s crust, then this means that future investigations can directly investigate the chemical makeup of Europa’s potentially habitable environment without drilling through layers of ice. And that is tremendously exciting.”

    Roth and his colleagues believe that cracks in Europa’s ice crust could be the source of the water vapor. Such a phenomenon has already been seen on the surface of Saturn’s moon Enceladus.

    Europa’s water vapor is slightly different in that the vapor action was only detected when the moon was further away from its host planet. This suggests that Jupiter’s gravity is causing large tidal shifts on Europa, which could provide more evidence that Europa has water oceans underneath its surface.

    For now the information on Europa’s water vapor plumes is limited. Researchers were able to detect them only very faintly using Hubble’s imaging spectrograph, which recorded the ultraviolet light that serves as the evidence for water in the moon’s atmosphere.

    “We pushed Hubble to its limits to see this very faint emission. These could be stealth plumes, because they might be tenuous and difficult to observe in the visible light,” said Joachim Saur, co-author of the paper and a planetary scientist at the University of Cologne.

    (Image courtesy NASA/ESA/K. Retherford/SWRI)

  • Fate of Comet ISON Still Undetermined

    Fate of Comet ISON Still Undetermined

    More than one week on from comet ISON‘s close approach to the sun, astronomers are still working hard to determine what exactly happened to the object.

    The comet approached the sun on November 28 after traveling for millions of years from outside our solar system. NASA and ESA researchers used a wide array of instruments to capture the comet’s approach, including NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. For several hours during the comet’s approach astronomers were not able to observe the object due to the sun’s brightness, and many had assumed that the comet had disintegrated due to its proximity to the sun. However, NASA and ESA instruments were able to catch a glimpse of what was left of the comet on its way out of its approach.

    Following its approach, astronomers observed a glint that was far less bright than the comet had been in the days previous to the approach. In the days since the object has faded away to almost nothing. Researchers are now trying to work out whether the remainder seen after approach was the ice core of the comet that survived or whether it was simply reduced to debris by that time.

    NASA today stated that researchers are continuing to research exactly what happened while the comet was out of view. What can be confirmed already is that the comet shrank “considerably” during its approach and that at this time it is likely only dust.

    Astronomers are hoping that the vast amount of data collected on ISON will provide new discoveries for years to come. A video of the comet’s approach and the aftermath was released this week by NASA. The footage comes from the NASA/ESA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO):

  • Astronomers May Have Spotted a Double Black Hole

    Astronomers May Have Spotted a Double Black Hole

    Astronomers this week revealed that a double black hole system may have been found. An object known as WISE J233237.05-505643.5 was spotted at the center of a galaxy 3.8 billion light-years from our solar system. The jet shooting up out of the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy appears to be wavy, rather than straight. This suggests that another supermassive black hole may be close by, affecting the material shooting from the other’s jet.

    The rare sighting was take from data collected by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and followed up on using the Australian Telescope Compact Array. The WISE observatory has recently been reactivated to search for asteroids that are potentially hazardous to Earth.

    “At first we thought this galaxy’s unusual properties seen by WISE might mean it was forming new stars at a furious rate,” said Peter Eisenhardt, a co-author of a paper on the object published recently in the Astrophysical Journal and a WISE project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). “But on closer inspection, it looks more like the death spiral of merging giant black holes.”

    According to NASA, only a handful of so-called black hole binary candidates have been found over the years. This new finding is yet another of those candidates, though astronomers are being cautious in confirming the hypothesis. Several factors have pointed to the double black hole explanation including jet and the strange clumping of dust and gas in the accretion disc surrounding the object.

    “We think the jet of one black hole is being wiggled by the other, like a dance with ribbons,” said Chao-Wei Tsai, lead author of the paper. “If so, it is likely the two black holes are fairly close and gravitationally entwined.”

    (Image courtesy NASA)

  • Ultra Bright Black Hole Discovered

    An ultraluminous black hole that exists in the neighboring Pinwheel Galaxy has been discovered by astronomers, which shines twice as bright as previously thought possible.

    The ultra-bright object, which exists in a system called ULX-1, that resides about 22 million light-years from Earth, may alter traditional thinking regarding how black holes radiate energy. Joel Bregman of the University of Michigan said in a statement, “As if black holes weren’t extreme enough, this is a really extreme one that is shining as brightly as it possibly can. It’s figured out a way to be more luminous than we thought possible.”

    The ULX-1 system, which includes the bright black hole, along with a companion star, is short for “ultraluminous X-ray source.” A team led by Jifeng Liu, of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, has been studying ULX-1 using the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii and two NASA spacecraft, the Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory.

    ULX-1 generates extreme amounts of high-energy X-ray light, which is emitted by material on a downward spiral into the black hole’s maw. The light is so intense that astronomers initially figured that ULX-1 was an intermediate-mass black hole. Though, the latest findings suggest that the black hole is actually quite small by black hole standards. “Our findings may turn the trend of taking ultraluminous X-ray sources as promising intermediate black hole candidates,” Liu said in a statement.

    Spectroscopic analysis has shown that the companion star in ULX-1 is a big, hot type known as a Wolf-Rayet star, coming in at 19 times the mass of the sun. It was also found that the star and the black hole orbit each other once every 8.2 days. This rate of orbit allowed Liu’s team to estimate the black hole’s mass at being between 20 to 30 times that of the sun. These measurements put ULX-1 at a stellar-size black hole range, not an intermediate one.

    Though no middleweight black hole has been found regarding ULX-1, researchers believe that this intermediate-mass class makes up the building blocks of the supermassive black holes that exist in the center of most, if not all, galaxies.

    Researchers likewise aren’t sure how the ULX-1 system manages to put off so much light. “Our work shows, based on our conclusion of a stellar mass black hole, that our understanding of the black hole radiation mechanism is incomplete and needs revision,” Liu said.

    The full study appears in the journal Nature.

    Image via Twitter.

  • Comet ISON Moving Closer to Sun for Thanksgiving

    Many are preparing to draw closer together on Thanksgiving, and that includes space interaction as well. Comet ISON, which has more popularly been referred to as the “comet of the century” is currently continuing on the pathway to approach the sun’s vicinity. The closest encounter will be on November 28th, which just happens to also be Thanksgiving. The comet is anticipated to scrape close to the sun, just barely missing an impact by 730,000 miles. That may seem far, but is relatively close by space standards. There are present debates raging over whether the comet will sustain the energy force inherent from such a close encounter.

    Comet ISON even has an app, called Cometwatch, dedicated exclusively to potentially tracking the progress of the comet. Though the comet will draw closest on Thanksgiving day, stargazers may want to continue watching. Current estimations project that the comet will appear to be the most luminous in December. Comet ISON was discovered through the use of International Scientific Optical Network (ISON) by two relatively inexperienced Russian astronomers (Vitali Nevski and Artyom Novichonok) in September of 2012. The comet is officially named C/2012 S1 (ISON).

    According to Alan MacRobert, who is the senior editor for Sky & Telescope magazine, the comet may prove to be a glorious spectacular in the sky, or the event may be virtually almost unrecognizable. “We might witness a nice, long-tailed comet visible to the naked eye that will leave millions of people with fond memories for a lifetime. Or maybe it will be a small comet for sky hunters using binoculars and a good map of its position. Or it might yet break up and vanish,” he said.

    [Image Via Wikimedia Commons]

  • Three Ancient Galaxies Spotted Merging

    Astronomers this week revealed that they have spotted three ancient galaxies that appear to be merging. The observations, which were made using both the Hubble Space Telescope and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) are recorded in a paper to be published in The Astrophysical Journal.

    The three galaxies are located inside a large gas cloud that is located almost 13 billion light-years from our solar system. This means the galaxies are seen as they were less than one billion years after the big bang. Astronomers believe that the galaxies might have eventually merged, forming a larger galaxy similar to the ones we are more familiar with today.

    “This exceedingly rare triple system, seen when the Universe was only 800 million years old, provides important insights into the earliest stages of galaxy formation during a period known as ‘Cosmic Dawn,’ when the Universe was first bathed in starlight,” said Richard Ellis, a member of the research team and an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology. “Even more interesting, these galaxies appear poised to merge into a single massive galaxy, which could eventually evolve into something akin to the Milky Way.”

    The gas cloud, which researchers have dubbed “Himiko” was first spotted in 2009 and was seen as a single gas cloud. However, the size of the cloud is, according to the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, almost ten times larger than the nebulous galaxies that are found that early in the universe. This led to the new observations, which revealed that three distinct sources of light within the larger cloud.

    What astronomers did not find, however, could end up being their most interesting observation. The team did not detect any carbon in Himiko, which is one of the first elements created by young stars.

    “When this dust is heated by ultraviolet radiation from massive newborn stars, the dust then re-radiates at radio wavelengths,” said Kotaro Kohno, a member of the research team and an astronomer at the University of Tokyo. “Such radiation is not detected in Himiko.”

    Kohno and his colleagues currently believe that this could signal that Himiko is, in fact, a primordial galaxy made up mostly of hydrogen and helium gas. This would make it one of the first primordial galaxies to be caught during its early formation.

    (Image courtesy NASA/Hubble; NAOJ/Subaru)

  • Astronomers Confirm Milky Way Particle Jet

    Astronomers Confirm Milky Way Particle Jet

    Astronomers this week have revealed the confirmation that the black hole at the center of our galaxy is ejecting a stream of high-energy particles. The new findings have been published in The Astrophysical Journal.

    Researchers for some time have assumed that our Milky Way galaxy has a jet of particles spouting from its center, much like other galaxies similar to it. It is hypothesized that these types of jets are formed as material orbiting a black hole is forced outwards. Observations of the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole, named Sagittarius A*, have come up short in the past. These new findings confirm both the existence of the particle jet and its intensity, which is weak compared to other jets seen in the universe.

    “For decades astronomers have looked for a jet associated with the Milky Way’s black hole,” said Zhiyuan Li, lead author of a study and an astronomer at Nanjing University. “Our new observations make the strongest case yet for such a jet.”

    Li and her colleagues were able to discover the jet using the combined observations of the National Science Foundation’s Very Large Array (VLA) and NASA‘s Chandra Observatory. The team’s observations were able to use data on the jet to determine the spin axis of Sagittarius A*. This could help future astronomers determine how the Milky Way and its central black hole formed and evolved. The new paper has already determined that the object’s spin is parallel to the rotation axis of the galaxy, suggesting that the Milky Way has not merged with any other galaxies in recent galactic history.

    “We know this giant black hole has been much more active at consuming material in the past,” said Frederick Baganoff, co-author of the paper and an astronomer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “When it stirs again, the jet may brighten dramatically.”

    (Image courtesy NRAO/VLA/NASA/CXC/UCLA/Z. Li et al)

  • Leonid Meteor Shower Expected This Weekend

    The long awaited annual mid-November Leonid meteor shower will peak this weekend. The only problem is that the full moon’s glare may obstruct the annual celestial show.

    Assuming that the skies are clear during the peak viewing times, which will be just before the dawn on Sunday morning, you might just see Leonid streaks as well as a comet called ISON (the comet is visible to the naked eye). At its peak, you can expect to see more than 10 meteors per hour. Universe Today estimates the peak time to be about 5 a.m. ET Sunday. The wee hours are best for viewing the Leonid showers because that is when the Earth is turning more directly to the trails left behind by the comet Tempel-Tuttle.

    Here’s what it looked like last year

    The Leonids are so named because they appear to be coming from constellation Leo the Liona in the East – that is another good clue. During the predawn hours, the radiant is high up in the eastern sky; therefore, that is a good place to start with. If you face the east, the Leonid showers should be visible all the way across the sky. The Northeast and across the Southwest have been touted to be best locations to view the showers this weekend.

    (main image via Wikipedia)

  • Hubble Finds Young Milky Way-Like Galaxies

    Hubble Finds Young Milky Way-Like Galaxies

    Astronomers this week detailed findings showing how our own galaxy, the Milky Way, may have looked when it was first forming.

    The research, published recently in The Astrophysical Journal, shows that the Milky Way was likely once a blue-hued, gas-filled, low-mass object. It then gained mass and became a flat disc shape with a slight bulge in its center. Over time, the galaxy and the supermassive black hole at its center grew and formed the spiral shape that we observe today.

    “You can see that these galaxies are fluffy and spread out,” said Shannon Patel, another co-author of the study and an astronomer at Leiden University. “There is no evidence of a bulge without a disk, around which the disk formed later.”

    The research used the Hubble Space Telescope to perform deep-sky surveys of 400 galaxies chosen from a catalog of more than 100,000 galaxies for their similarities to the Milky Way. Astronomers were able to observe those Milky Way-like galaxies and place them each along an 11 billion year-long development path. They found evidence that our galaxy’s peak star formation period occurred when the universe was only 4 billion years old, with stars forming at a rate of around 15 per year.

    “For the first time, we have direct images of what the Milky Way looked like in the past,” said Pieter van Dokkum, a co-author of the study and an Astronomer at Yale University. “Of course, we can’t see the Milky Way itself in the past. We selected galaxies billions of light-years away that will evolve into galaxies like the Milky Way. By tracing the Milky Way’s siblings, we find that our galaxy built up 90 percent of its stars between 11 billion and 7 billion years ago, which is something that has not been measured directly before.”

    (Image courtesy NASA/ESA)

  • Astronomers Spot Newborn Star Spouting Gas

    Astronomers Spot Newborn Star Spouting Gas

    NASA today unveiled a new image of the stellar object known as HH 46/47. The picture shows that the object is a newly-formed star that is shedding some of the gasses from which it formed. The new observations have been published in The Astrophysical Journal.

    HH 46/47 can be seen throwing out huge jets of gas traveling out from the newborn star. Normally objects of this sort would be hidden behind the dust and gas from which they form. The HH 46/47 image was captured using the combined observations of the Spitzer Space Telescope and the Atacama Large Millimeter/ submillimeter Array (ALMA). Spitzer captured the object’s infrared light while ALMA was able to see submilimeter-wavelength light, both of which can pass through the surrounding dust clouds.

    “Young stars like our sun need to remove some of the gas collapsing in on them to become stable, and HH 46/47 is an excellent laboratory for studying this outflow process,” said Alberto Noriega-Crespo, a researcher at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology who led the team studying HH 46/47. “Thanks to Spitzer, the HH 46/47 outflow is considered one of the best examples of a jet being present with an expanding bubble-like structure.”

    Though the image is fascinating on its face, the new observations have significance for astronomers. Researchers hope to use the new images to learn about how gas jets from newborn stars affect their surroundings. Noriega-Crespo and his team have already discovered that the gas jets are traveling faster than previously thought, which could have a significant impact on surrounding star formation.

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/ALMA)

  • Hubble Telescope Spots Six-Tailed Asteroid

    Hubble Telescope Spots Six-Tailed Asteroid

    Astronomers today announced that an asteroid with six “comet-like” tails has been discovered. The asteroid, currently named P/2013 P5, was imaged twice in September by the Hubble Space Telescope. Its strange tails were seen changing position over the course of just a few days. A paper describing the asteroid was published today in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

    Astronomers currently hypothesize that these tails are made of dust that is expelled from the asteroid. The paper’s authors believe that the asteroid has begun rotating so fast that parts of its surface are now breaking off from its surface.

    “We were literally dumbfounded when we saw it,” said David Jewitt, lead investigator on the paper and an astronomer at the University of California at Los Angeles. “Even more amazing, its tail structures change dramatically in just 13 days as it belches out dust. That also caught us by surprise. It’s hard to believe we’re looking at an asteroid.”

    Modeling of the asteroid and its orbit have shown that its tails could have been formed by a series of “dust-ejection events” that happened between April and September of this year. Solar winds are believed to have strewn the dust into tail-like structures. That same radiation is also believed to have increased the asteroid’s rate of rotation, causing surface dust to slide together and eventually off of the asteroid all together.

    P/2013 P5’s nucleus is only approximately 1,400 feet wide, making the asteroid’s gravitational pull very weak. It is thought to be a piece of a larger asteroid that broke off around 200 million years ago.

    “We were completely knocked out,” said Jewitt. “This is just an amazing object to us, and almost certainly the first of many more to come.”

    (Image courtesy NASA, ESA, D.Jewitt/UCLA)

  • Hot, Earth-Sized Exoplanet Found by Astronomers

    Astronomers this week revealed that the mass of exoplanet Kepler 78b has been determined. The planet, located 400 light-year away in orbit around the star Kepler 78, has a mass of around 1.7 times that of Earth. The planet also has a radius just 1.2 times that of Earth and its density is also similar to Earth’s. The new research appeared this week in the journal Nature.

    These measurements make Kepler 78b the smallest planet outside our solar system to have had both its mass and size measured. Researchers believe the new data suggests the planet is made of mostly rock and iron – a composition similar to that of the Earth’s.

    Though Kepler 78b resembles Earth in many ways, there is no chance that humans would ever be able to live there. The planet is located very close to its host star, orbiting it once very 8.5 hours. At that range, Astronomers say, the planet is sure to have extremely hot temperatures unsuitable for life.

    “It’s Earth-like in the sense that it’s about the same size and mass, but of course it’s extremely unlike the Earth in that it’s at least 2,000 degrees hotter,” said Josh Winn, a co-author on the paper and an associate professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “It’s a step along the way of studying truly Earth-like planets.”

    Astronomers were able to measure the mass of Kepler 78b by measuring its Doppler effect it has on Kepler 78. For eight straight days a team led by astronomer Andrew Howard of the University of Hawaii used the school’s Keck Observatory to analyze the star. Their measurements are backed up by a second paper published in Nature this week by a separate group of astronomers.

    (Image courtesy NASA/David A. Aguilar)

  • New Confirmed Most-Distant Galaxy Announced

    Just over one year ago, NASA announced that the most distant galaxy yet found may have been spotted. Just two months later another galaxy took the title of most distant candidate. As astronomers improve techniques to peer further into the universe’s past this sort rapid record-setting can be expected for years to come, and today yet another galaxy has actually been confirmed as the most distant.

    Astronomers from the University of Texas today announced that they have spotted a galaxy as it existed just 700 million years after the big bang. Though this is older than the galaxies discovered last year, this one is the only one that has had its age confirmed using multiple telescopes. A paper on the galaxy and its discovery will appear tomorrow in the journal Nature.

    “We want to study very distant galaxies to learn how galaxies change with time, which helps us understand how the Milky Way came to be,” said Steven Finkelstein, the UT astronomer who lead the discovery team.

    The galaxy, dubbed z8_GND_5296, was originally discovered as part of the Hubble space telescope’s Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey. The team at UT had chosen 43 of the most distant galaxies from that survey based on their redshift and then used the Keck Observatory in Hawaii to follow up on Hubble’s observations. Galaxy z8_GND_5296 was discovered in a region of the sky as another previously most-distant galaxy.

    “So we’re learning something about the distant universe,” said Finkelstein. “There are way more regions of very high star formation than we previously thought.…There must be a decent number of them if we happen to find two in the same area of the sky.”

    (Image courtesy V. Tilvi/S.L. Finkelstein/C. Papovich/Hubble Heritage Team)

  • Planck Telescope is Officially Dead

    Planck Telescope is Officially Dead

    The European Space Agency (ESA) today officially announced that the Planck space telescope has been shut off for good. The final command to the telescope was sent from the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) this afternoon. Planck researchers earlier this week had been preparing the telescope for that final moment, disconnecting its systems and burning off the remainder of its fuel to place it in a safe disposal orbit around the sun.

    “It is with much sadness that we have carried out the final operations on the Planck spacecraft, but it is also a time to celebrate an extraordinarily successful mission,” said Steve Foley, Planck operations manager ESOC.

    The Planck space telescope was launched in May 2009 to study and map the cosmic microwave background (CMB) – the faint radiation left over from the big bang. Planck was able to complete five full-sky surveys of the CMB with all of its instruments before the liquid helium coolant for its high-frequency instrument ran out. The telescope continued to use its low-frequency instrument to complete three more full-sky surveys and continued gathering data until October 3.

    The end to the mission was similar to another ESA satellite named Herschel, which ran out of coolant back in April of this year and was switched off in June. Herschel was positioned near Planck in the Earth-Sun L2 Legrange point and is now orbiting the sun in a disposal orbit.

    “Planck has provided us with more insight into the evolution of the Universe than any mission has before,” said Alvaro Giménez, director of Science and Robotic Exploration at ESA. “Planck’s picture of the CMB is the most accurate ‘baby photo’ of the Universe yet, but the wealth of data still being scrutinized by our cosmologists will provide us with even more details.”

  • ESA Prepares to Shut Off the Planck Observatory

    The European Space Agency (ESA) today announced that it has burned off the last of the Planck space observatory’s fuel. The fuel burn was made to put the satellite in a safe orbit around the sun. The Planck observatory will be shut down entirely on Wednesday, October 23 when its transmitters are switched off.

    Astronomers are currently in the process of ending the Planck mission. Science missions using the satellite were ended on October 3, and its instruments were switched off on October 19. The observatory ran out of its helium coolant for its high-frequency instrument (HFI) in January 2012, but continued to use its low-frequency instrument to survey the cosmic microwave background (CMB) for over a year.

    “At ESOC (European Space Operations Centre), our business is keeping missions alive and productive, so sending a ‘shut-down’ command is very difficult,” said Paolo Ferri, head of Mission Operations at the ESOC. “While the end of this outstanding scientific mission was always foreseen with the exhaustion of the helium coolant, it seems fitting that we have a colleague from the science team to send the final command that once and for all silences the Planck spacecraft.”

    The Planck mission launched in May 2009 to survey the cosmic microwave background – the radiation left over from the big bang that blankets the universe. The satellite completed five full-sky surveys before its HFI coolant depleted, and wen to to conduct three more with its LFI instrument.

    The shutdown of Planck is very similar to another ESA mission that concluded this year, Herschel. Herschel also ran out of its liquid helium coolant, back in April of this year. That observatory was deactivated in June and was, like Planck, sent out of its L2 Sun-Earth Lagrange Point orbit an onto a safe heliocentric disposal orbit.

    “These are the first two missions ESA has flown at the scientifically valuable L2 Lagrange point, so it’s important that we set a positive precedent as to how we dispose of missions there,” said Andreas Rudolph, head of astronomy mission operations at ESOC.

    (Image courtesy ESA)

  • Neptune Inner Moon Naiad Rediscovered in Hubble Images

    Astronomers this week announced that Neptune’s small inner moon, named Naiad, has been spotted for the first time since the Voyager 2 probe left Neptune’s orbit in 1989. Researchers led by SETI scientist Mark Showalter found the moon in images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in December 2004.

    “Naiad has been an elusive target ever since Voyager left the Neptune system,” said Showalter.

    Showalter and his colleagues developed new techniques to see through the glare cause by Neptune in the images. The planet is, according to SETI, 2 million times brighter than Naiad. In addition to the moon, the revealed images also show Neptune’s many rings and ring-arcs, as well as several of its other inner moons, including Galatea, Larissa, and Proteus.

    Also shown is the recently-discovered moon currently designated as S/2004 N 1. That moon was discovered earlier this year by Showalter and his team.

    “It is always exciting to find new results in old data,” said Showalter. “We keep discovering new ways to push the limit of what information can be gleaned from Hubble’s vast collection of planetary images.”

    Oddly, Naiad was not where astronomers expected it to be in the images. The moon was found to be “significantly off course” from its predicted location based on Voyager’s observations. New research will be needed to determine why this is the case, though researchers currently suspect that gravitational interactions between Naiad and other nearby moons may be the most likely cause.