Newswise A central mission of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) is to nurture and inspire the next generation of radio astronomers. One way NRAO does this is through the Jansky Fellowship Program. Jansky Fellows are allowed to pursue their personal research interests with the support of NRAO observatories. This year, five postdoctoral awards were made.

Im looking forward to working with the many experts in Charlottesville, said Kimberly Emig. Her doctoral work has focused on the gas and dust of interstellar space. When interstellar gas is exposed to the intense light of large stars, it ionizes. Electrons in the gas break free of their atoms. When the atoms and electrons recombine, they emit radio light. Kimberly can observe this light through observations made by the Very Large Array (VLA). My goal is to study the interstellar medium and its role in the evolution of galaxies.

Bang Nhan studies the early universe in the period known as the Cosmic Dawn and Dark Age. It is the time after the hot glow of the Big Bang, but before the first stars and galaxies were born. Since there is no starlight during this time, he studies the period by observing the radio emissions of neutral hydrogen, sometimes called the 21-cm line. A common challenge in the 21-cm observation is to extract the weak cosmic signal embedded in our own bright Milky Way, Bang said. To capture the faint signal of the early universe, Bang will be upgrading the telescope at Green Bank known as the Cosmic Twilight Polarimeter (CTP), to better observe this neutral hydrogen.

Pallavi Patil studies a different period of the universe, known as Cosmic Noon. It is a time about 10 billion years ago when galaxies were their most active. Pallavis doctoral research focused on active supermassive black holes during this period. As a Jansky Fellow, I will study a special class of galaxies that have recently ignited supermassive black holes. Pallavi said. Galaxies with active black holes are rare in the nearby universe, but were more common during Cosmic Noon. They play an important role in the formation of galaxies. I can't wait to be a part of the astronomical community at NRAO Socorro.

Its an incredible honor to be selected as a Jansky Fellow to work at the NRAO, said Jacob White. Through Measuring the Emission of Stellar Atmospheres at Submillimeter/millimeter wavelengths (MESAS), Jacob has been studying the atmospheres of stars. MESAS looks at the radio light emitted by a stars atmosphere through observatories such as the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). Young stars often have study circumstellar debris, which also emits radio light. It can be difficult to distinguish radio light from stars versus light from debris. For his fellowship, Jacob plans to build a catalog of the radio emissions of stars, to better distinguish between the two.

Dyas Utomo plans to study molecular gas in deep space. The interstellar medium is made mostly of hydrogen, but only a fraction of it is cold enough to form molecules. I will approach my research by gathering high-resolution observations in a large number of nearby galaxies, said Dyas. He is interested in how interstellar gas forms into molecules, and how molecular clouds form into stars. Dyas hopes to capture a variety of environments that may affect star formation. "I'm glad to continue my research at NRAO Charlottesville and looking forward to collaborate with people there," Dyas said.

The goals of these Jansky fellows are ambitious. Each brings a tremendous amount of skill to their work, and with the support of the NRAO these scholars will broaden our understanding of the universe in new and exciting ways.

Full text and images:https://public.nrao.edu/news/five-jansky-fellows-look-to-the-future-of-radio-astronomy/

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Five Jansky Fellows Look to the Future of Radio Astronomy - Newswise

Our final summertime globular is M55, which lies 8 east of Ascella (Zeta Sagittarii). It glows at magnitude 6.3 and spans 19'. Youll quickly notice that M55 doesnt have a dense core.

Large scopes with eyepieces that provide high powers (300x and above) will reveal several hundred faint stars. And heres something fun you can try: Insert an eyepiece with a tiny field of view. Through it, M55 looks more like an open cluster than a glob.

A 4-inch scope will resolve dozens of stars around M15s bright central region. Observers specifically target the clusters attractive chains of stars. Because of their position, M15 may appear slightly oval through a small scope.

If you head south to Aquarius and look about 5 north of Beta Aquarii, youll encounter one of my favorite globulars: M2. This stellar beehive glows at magnitude 6.6 and measures 12.9' across. Even a small telescope will reveal M2s slightly elliptical shape, although more northerly observers will need steady air near the southern horizon. Its worth the wait.

While youre in M2s neighborhood, head west one constellation and locate M30 in Capricornus. To find this magnitude 6.9 glob, look about 3 east-southeast of Zeta Capricorni.M30 has a diameter of 11'. Through a small scope, youll see lots of resolvable stars surrounding a large, bright core. To resolve that region, youll need a 12-inch scope and a magnification of 300x or more.

Our final object is the lone entry from the winter sky. M79 in Lepus glows at magnitude 7.8 and spans 8.7'. To find it, draw a line from Alpha through Beta Leporis and extend it 3.5.

Small scopes dont reveal much detail in M79. However, a 10-inch instrument shows a bright, wide core. Use a magnification of 200x or more, and youll resolve scores of stars at the clusters edges.

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Enjoy the sky's great globular - Astronomy Magazine

Sparkling near the heart of the constellation Scorpius lies ruby-red Antares, the 15th-brightest star in the night sky. Like its bloated cousin Betelgeuse, Antares is a red supergiant nearing the end of its life. These enormous yet relatively cold stars sport strong stellar winds that fire heavy elements like carbon and nitrogen into space, providing many of the building blocks for life as we know it.

Exactly how these winds are cast off has largely remained a mystery but it might not stay that way for long. Thanks to both the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the National Science Foundations Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), astronomers have peered deep within the atmosphere of Antares, and the insights their observations reveal help bring them one step closer to solving the mystery of superpowered winds from supergiant stars.

The two radio telescopes revealed that Antares is even larger than we previously believed. In visible light, the star is about 700 times larger than the Sun. But when ALMA and VLA looked at it in radio light, they saw that the stars chromosphere the second of a stars three main atmospheric layers extended out some 2.5 times the stars radius. For comparison, the Suns chromosphere extends only 1/200 of its radius.

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An unprecedented look at the atmosphere of the supergiant star Antares - Astronomy Magazine

As astronomers have discovered more and more galaxies since the 1920s, they have acquired one fundamental piece of knowledge: The universe is really big! Lets imagine that you could climb into a spaceship and travel out into the universe, seeing more and more distant things as you went on. Lets also imagine that the spaceship could travel at the speed of light the fastest speed we know of in the cosmos. Thats about 186,000 miles per second, the speed at which photons particles of light are striking your eyes, enabling you to read this article. (Photons can travel that fast because they have no mass; spaceships have mass, so we know that spaceships couldnt move that fast. But, for the sake of understanding the size of the universe, lets pretend that our spaceship could.)

In our spaceship, lets set out from the Milky Way Galaxy, our home. The closest galaxy we can encounter is the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy, a tiny galaxy that orbits ours. If we move at the speed of light, it would take us 70,000 years to reach this galaxy. Another way of thinking about these enormous distances is to understand how long the light that we now see from other galaxies has been traveling through space to reach us. The light from the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy has traveled since humans made their earliest bits of art inside caves in South Africa. If we traveled for 163,000 years in our spaceship, we could arrive at the Large Magellanic Cloud, our galaxys largest satellite. Traveling for 200,000 years would carry us to the Small Magellanic Cloud, another satellite of our Milky Way. The light you see from this galaxy tonight has traveled through space since our earliest human ancestors closely linked to our species walked the African plains.

But those are dwarf galaxies that are very close to us. The largest nearby galaxy is the Andromeda Galaxy, which would take us 2.5 million years to reach in our spaceship. The light you see from this galaxy tonight has traveled through space since some of our earliest human ancestors were here on Earth.

And these are just some of the galaxies closest to us. Traveling outward, you would find countless examples of strange and beautiful galaxies at all manner of distances. These would include spirals like IC 239, M100, M106, NGC 210, NGC 2683, NGC 2841, NGC 3310, NGC 3338, NGC 4565, and NGC 6946. You would encounter fields of multiple galaxies like those in the Leo Trio (M65, M66, and NGC 3628), M81 and M82, and the galaxy group Hickson 31. Some galaxies that seem to be connected, like NGC 3314, would grow away from each other as you approached and their visual alignment disappeared. You would encounter numerous weird, distorted galaxies the result of interactions or disruptions by black holes like Arp 188, ESO 243-49, NGC 474, NGC 660, NGC 2685, NGC 4622, NGC 5291, NGC 7714, and UGC 697.

You can see how enormous the cosmos is and understand that, fundamentally, it is filled with galaxies. The Virgo Cluster galaxies would take 50 million years to reach in our light-speed spaceship. More distant galaxies are arranged in clusters and superclusters that we can see from Earth, and some lie hundreds of millions or billions of light-years away. Reaching the most distant galaxies that we can see would take us more than 13 billion years, traveling at the speed of light.

Living our lives on this third planet from the Sun in our solar system, its easy to ignore how unbelievably immense the universe is. But moving farther and farther out into the universe to explore galaxies allows us to understand how the universe came to be, and where its going.

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Explore the world of galaxies - Astronomy Magazine

Astronomy magazine is excited to introduce a new weekly video series that will let you explore the cosmos from the comfort of your own home. Hosted by Abigail Bollenbach an ambitious and enthusiastic astronomer in the making Infinity and Beyond will introduce you to some of the most fascinating aspects of our solar system, galaxy, and universe!

Bollenbach, who just recently graduated high school, has long been fascinated by space. This is why she plans to study astrophysics when she begins college in the fall. Her drive and passion for knowledge reach far beyond the stars, and she is always up for discussing the cosmos.

I think this is one of the best times to be alive, honestly, and in so many different realms but especially in science, Bollenbach told Astronomy Editor David Eicher in a recent interview.

You can catch Infinity and Beyond each week here on Astronomy.com, as well as on our social media channels.

We hope you enjoy the first episode!

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Infinity and Beyon: Episode 1 The Big Bang - Astronomy Magazine

Six billion Earth-like planets in the Milky Way? If true, thats astounding. But the number needs some context.

The Milky Way has up 400 billion stars. So even if there are six billion Earth-like planets, theyre still spread far and wide throughout our vast galaxy.

A new study came up with the six billion number. The co-authors are Michelle Kunimoto and Jaymie Matthews, both from the University of British Columbia. The studys title is Searching the Entirety of Kepler Data. II. Occurrence Rate Estimates for FGK Stars. Its published in The Astronomical Journal.

An Earth-like world is one thats rocky, roughly the same size as Earth, and that orbits a Sun-like, or G-Type, star. It also has to orbit that star in the habitable zone, which is a range of distance allowing for liquid water on the planet. Its worth noting that the most common type of exoplanet weve detected is a Neptune-size planet far from the habitable zone.

My calculations place an upper limit of 0.18 Earth-like planets per G-type star, said co-author Kunimoto in a press release. Estimating how common different kinds of planets are around different stars can provide important constraints on planet formation and evolution theories, and help optimize future missions dedicated to finding exoplanets.

Previous work on the occurrence of Earth-like planets have come up with other numbers, from 0.02 potentially habitable Earth-like worlds per Sun-like star, up to greater than one per star.

Our Milky Way has as many as 400 billion stars, with seven per cent of them being G-type, said co-author Matthews. That means less than six billion stars may have Earth-like planets in our Galaxy.

The vast majority of the exoplanets weve discovered have been found using the transit timing method. Automated observatories like Kepler monitored stars for the telltale dip in brightness created by a planet passing in front of its star. But that method has an unavoidable bias.

Since a larger planet will cause a much more pronounced dip in starlight than a smaller planet, weve found many more large gas planets than we have smaller, rocky worlds. Kepler was also more likely to spot planets with shorter orbital periods. So we cant just take Kepler data and extrapolate it to the entire Milky Way.

In their paper, the researchers write that Finding Earth-size planets is challenging due to their small sizes and low transit signal-to-noise ratios (S/Ns), meaning planet detection pipelines have greater difficulty uncovering them than larger planets, and a higher risk of confusing them with transit-like noise in the data.

To get over this sampling bias, Kunimoto used a technique known as forward modelling.

I started by simulating the full population of exoplanets around the stars Kepler searched, she explained. I marked each planet as detected or missed depending on how likely it was my planet search algorithm would have found them. Then, I compared the detected planets to my actual catalogue of planets. If the simulation produced a close match, then the initial population was likely a good representation of the actual population of planets orbiting those stars.

Their study is based on a Kepler catalogue of about 200,000 stars, and precision radius measurements from the Gaia Data Release 2. They also took into account detection efficiency, and transit-like noise signals in the data. In the end, as the authors write, For planets with sizes 0.751.5R?orbiting in a conservatively defined habitable zone (0.991.70 au) around G-type stars, we place an upper limit (84.1th percentile) of <0.18 planets per star.

But coming up with that number was only part of the study. This new work also had something to say about whats known as the radius gap of planets.

The radius gap is also known as the Fulton gap, after Benjamin Fulton, an astronomer and research scientist at the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute. It describes a phenomenon outlined in a 2017 paper by Fulton and a team of researchers.

For some reason, its very uncommon for an exoplanet with an orbital period of fewer than 100 days to have a radius between 1.5 and 2 times Earths.

One explanation for this radius gap is photoevaporation. The closest planets are so close to their stars that they lose their atmospheres due to stellar high-energy radiation from their stars. But stars simmer down after 100 million years or so, so larger planets with thicker hydrogen/helium envelopes may still retain some of their envelopes by the time the high energy radiation from their star shuts down. Even if they retain a small percentage of their original H/He atmospheres, thats enough to inflate their radii.

But Kunimoto and Matthews found something else.

They found that this radius gap actually occurs over a smaller range of orbital periods than previous work showed. The teams results can provide constraints on planet evolution models that explain the radius gaps characteristics.

One of the problems in this type of work is the term habitable zone. Theres no exact definition of the term, meaning it can be difficult to compare work between different teams of people. A partial explanation for the lack of consistency between literaturevalues lies in how authors define the HZ, the authors write.

Another problem is the definition of a rocky planet. Another complicating factor is how authors define the size of a potentially habitable, rocky planet. Too small, and a planet will not be able to retain an atmosphere or support plate tectonics.

In this work, the authors use a definition of habitable zone thats becoming more common: from 0.99 to 1.70 astronomical units. They also use a lower radius limit of 0.75 Earth radii for a rocky planet, and 1.5 Earth radii for an upper limit. Other researchers are working with these same definitions.

This wont be the final work on exoplanet populations of Earth-like planets. Were still in the infancy of exoplanet studies, and were only starting to get good at finding exoplanets, and reliably characterizing their sizes, type, and positions. As Kunimoto explained in the press release, this type of research will help us refine our understanding of exoplanet populations, and how to search for them.

But if there are 6 billion Earth-like planets in the Milky Way, expect to hear about more of them as time goes on. Missions like NASAs TESS and the ESAs CHEOPS are taking planet-finding to the next level. If there are other planets that are like Earth, they cant hide forever.

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Astronomers Estimate There Are 6 Billion Earth-Like Planets in the Milky Way - Universe Today

A Canadian-led team of astronomers, including researchers from the University of Torontos Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics, has discovered that a repeating fast radio burst (FRB) originating from a nearby galaxy pulses at regular intervals.

Researchers with theCanadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment(CHIME) Fast Radio Burst Collaboration used the CHIME telescope in British Columbia to show that the repeating radio source known as FRB 180916.J0158+65 first discovered in 2018 by the same group pulsates every 16.35 days.

The findings, described in a studypublished recently in Nature, are the first to demonstrate that repeating FRBs can burst predictably.

The finding was unexpected. We were surprised by the fact that the FRB has regular activity on the time scale of weeks, saidDongzi Li, a PhD student at Dunlap and corresponding author of the paper. Most people would expect it to be at much shorter time scales, like seconds or even milliseconds, from rotation of a compact star. Any explanation for a 16-day cycle is likely very different.

FRBs were discovered over a decade ago. First thought to be singular events, astronomers have since learned that some of these high-intensity blasts of radio emissions, in fact, repeat.

Though the explanation for the mysterious phenomenon is still elusive, the new study is another step towards determining what might be causing FRBs.

There are suddenly lots of concrete questions to ask and to follow-up on, explains Li. If any observed properties of the bursts change regularly with the same 16.35-day period, it will tell us about the environment close to the burst.

Earlier this year,astronomersin Europe, in partnership with the CHIME/FRB Collaboration, were able to pinpoint FRB 180916 to a nearby galaxy located 500 million light years from Earth. Astronomers worldwide are now studying the source with a variety of telescopes, in the hopes of explaining the repetition.

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CHIME study involving U of T astronomers finds fast radio bursts repeat 'on the time scale of weeks' - News@UofT

Todays Astrobite looks at the work of Barbara A. Williams, the first African-American woman to achieve a PhD in Astronomy.

Barbara A. Williams started her studies at the University of North Carolina. She then moved to the University of Maryland for her masters degree in Radio Astronomy before also completing her PhD there in 1981 as the first Black American woman to acquire a PhD in astronomy. After her PhD, Williams then moved to the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, VA where she continued her focus on radio observations of compact groups of galaxies.

Title: MKW 10: A Group of Galaxies with a Compact CoreAuthor: Barbara A. WilliamsAuthors Institute (at the time of publication): National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Charlottesville, VAStatus: Published in Astrophysical Journal [open access]

Todays Astrobite focusses on a single-author paper written by Williams in 1984. Much of Williams research focusses on compact groups of galaxies. Todays paper looks at the galaxy group MKW10, shown in Figure 1.

MKW10 is a small collection, or poor cluster of galaxies (with rich clusters defined as containing more than a thousand galaxies). Originally identified in a previous study in 1975, the system contains 9 bright galaxies (labelled 2-10), with 5 bright members (labelled 3-7) concentrated towards the centre forming a subsystem known as a compact group of galaxies. Many of these compact groups have been identified and were first catalogued by Paul Hickson in 1982, leading to the name Hickson compact groups, which have continued to be studied in detail, including in this astrobite.

The radio observations were made using the 305 m Arecibo telescope during June 1982 and October 1983. The Arecibo Observatory located in Puerto Rico and completed in 1963 was, until 2016, the worlds largest single-aperture telescope. Some eagle-eyed readers may also recognise it from the movie Contact (one of my all time favourites!), as well as James Bonds GoldenEye.

Eight spiral members were detected in the 21cm line of neutral hydrogen, as well as observations of galaxies surrounding the group in order to construct (for the first time) a complete redshift sample of all spiral galaxies within this 10.2 square degree region. The 21cm line, also known as the HI line sits within the radio wavelengths and corresponds to an emission line of neutral hydrogen. When a hydrogen atom transitions from the excited state into the ground state, a photon is emitted at a wavelength of 21cm. This line is very useful in determining the velocity of the source due to doppler shifts in this line. Wilson finds that the spiral galaxies in the compact group show strong signs of tidal interaction due to the strange shapes of their HI profiles. This provides evidence for the fact that the compact group is indeed compact, rather than just being an observational effect.

Williams then looks at the mass-to-light ratios of the galaxies, that is the mass measured within the galaxy as a ratio of the light emitted by the stars. Mass-to-light ratios gives information about the types and ages of a galaxys stars. Spiral galaxies have a large percentage of young stars and therefore have relatively high mass-to-light ratios, whereas elliptical galaxies with mostly older stars have lower values. By studying all of the surrounding galaxies as well as the compact group, Wilson is able to build up a picture of the larger scale environment which may be affecting the evolution of the galaxies. Using these mass-to-light ratios along with the morphological type of the galaxies, she finds that the fraction of early-type (Sc) spiral galaxies is higher in the compact group than in the rest of the group, indicating these galaxies have been more disturbed in some way as the rotation of the stars is not as ordered as late-type spiral galaxies. The dynamical friction timescale is also calculated to be short, meaning that these galaxies are interacting with each other. From this, as well as the density of galaxies, the collision rate of galaxies is calculated to be high in this group a rate of 22 per galaxy per Hubble time (~14 billion years). For this reason, Wilson finds that it is unlikely that the compact group has been compact for a long time. This compact group is likely a bound configuration of galaxies which will coalesce in around a billion years.

The compact central group in the centre of MKW10, known as the Hickson compact group 58 studied in this paper by Williams continues to be studied to this day, as shown in Figure 4 in a more recent observation by SDSS. If you take a look back at the panels of Figure 3, youll notice the top right panel corresponds to the bottom three galaxies in Figure 4 (NGC3852, NGC3848 and NGC 3817) and the bottom left panel of Figure 3 corresponds to the top two galaxies of Figure 4 (NGC 3819 and NGC3820). The difference in resolution is astonishing, and makes the findings from the original studies back in the 80s all the more impressive!

The formation and mere existence of these groups is still a mystery as the lifetimes of these groups is predicted to be quite short, meaning that observing these groups should be rare. However, hundreds of these groups have been observed so far in the local Universe. One significant result that Williams found with this study, which has proven to be true of all similar compact groups was that the observed HI abundance was lower than expected. A likely suggestion for this is that as these galaxies are interacting, their gas is being tidally stripped, but the jury is still out and research is still ongoing. These observations as well as the observational techniques pioneered by Williams paved the way for future deeper understanding of the effect of environment on galaxy evolution.

Following her time at National Radio Astronomy Observatory, she returned to the University of North Carolina as a Research Associate, where she had completed her undergraduate studies, before moving to the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Delaware as an Associate Professor, where she also served as Acting Associate Chair. Along with many other awards, Williams was named as the Outstanding Young Woman of America in 1986. As well as her significant contribution to the field of radio observations of groups of galaxies, Williams later studied educational research, with a focus on methods to prevent women from leaving academia.

Williams paved the way for Black American women to follow in her footsteps. As far as I can tell from the information online, Williams is now retired. Wherever you are Barbara, I hope you are enjoying your retirement and that telling your story will continue to inspire generations to come.

About Jessica May HislopDoctoral Student at the Max Planck Institute of Astrophysics in Munich, Germany. Studying the formation of nuclear star clusters and intermediate mass black holes in high resolution simulations of dwarf galaxies.

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1981: Barbara Williams becomes the first Black woman to get a PhD - Astrobites

Professor Scott Baalrud is the co-chair of a committee setting a 10 year plan for the future of plasma physics and fusion energy research.

Ryan Adams

Van Allen Hall is seen on Monday, November 18, 2019. Van Allen is the home of the physics and astronomy department.

Molly Allen, News Reporter June 21, 2020

University of Iowa professors are taking the lead on plasma physics and fusion-energy research. A campus committee has created a strategic plan to advise the Office of Fusion Energy Science with the U.S. Department of Energy on how to invest its resources to advance research.

Fusion energy is a type of energy created by fusing together light elements like hydrogen. This is a similar process seen in the sun and stars, according to Fred Skiff, physics and astronomy professor at the UI.

UI Physics and Astronomy professor Scott Baalrud co-chairs the committee that developed a 10-year plan for the future of plasma physics and fusion-energy research.

It also describes what the scientific community feels are the highest priority, basic science questions in plasma science and engineering, Baalrud said.

Baalrud said his committee is prioritizing research on fusion energy because it has the potential to provide a carbon-free source of energy for the world. Fuel for fusion energy is abundant, he said, because the main component is isotopes of hydrogen found in seawater.

Skiff is a member of a committee of experts that will review Baalruds report before sending it to the U.S. Department of Energy. This report is important because it is going to inform the department on how it does its work, he said.

[Baalruds committee] is trying to shepherd and lead the scientific community doing this research, Skiff said. They provide funding from the government and they want to make sure their money is well spent.

Skiff said fusion energy is a better alternative to other types like fission energy which can be used to make nuclear bombs.

Sea water isnt dangerous, Skiff said. Its not like uranium where people also make weapons out of it.

RELATED: University of Iowa Physics and Astronomy department host first-ever virtual astronomy, observation night

Skiff said fission energy leaves behind radioactive waste that lasts for 100,000 years and causes harm to the environment. Fission energy is a kind of nuclear energy that power plants use.

The shift to fusion energy, however, is not simple, he said.

To do fusion, you have to heat the hydrogen to temperatures like there is in the sun, which is 10 million degrees, Skiff said. Thats not easy.

Fusion energy has been researched for 50 to 60 years, Skiff said. Although there has been a lot of progress, he said, people have become skeptical about fusion energy because it is taking so long.

The UI report sets a goal to build a demonstration fusion power plant in the 2040s, Baalrud said.

Its a very hard problem, but when a lot of smart people work on a problem for a long time, you make progress, Skiff said.

Gregory Howes is another UI Physics and Astronomy professor involved in plasma physics research. Howes was a part of the community planning process that established priorities for Baalruds committee to consider.

Howes said that setting priorities for plasma-physics research is crucial to make sure members of the community are using their resources toward common goals.

Otherwise, all of these different little areas are fighting for their slice of the pie, Howes said.

The average person may not realize the wide applicability of plasma physics, he added. The most obvious application is computer technology, he said.

Every chip from your phone to your computer uses what is called plasma processing, Howes said.

Howes said that a new and cutting-edge plasma technology is being used for medicine, including cancer treatments.

The importance of plasma physics research is to provide information for future generations, Skiff said.

Its really not about my career, Skiff said. Its about the next generation of people coming along.

The independent, student-run newsroom at the DI covers the University of Iowa and local community to keep you informed. Your support helps provide the necessary resources and training to continue our mission.

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UI professors mapping the way for the future of plasma physics and fusion energy research - UI The Daily Iowan

High in the atmosphere of Mars, astronomers have found a phenomenon they've been hunting for decades: a faint green glow, caused by the interaction between sunlight and oxygen in the upper atmosphere.

Previously, this glow has only been detected in one place: the sky above Earth. Its discovery in the Martian atmosphere will help us better understand the processes that drive airglow, both on Earth and elsewhere.

"One of the brightest emissions seen on Earth stems from night glow. More specifically, from oxygen atoms emitting a particular wavelength of light that has never been seen around another planet," said astronomer Jean-Claude Grard of the Universit de Lige in Belgium, the lead author of the new paper describing the phenomenon.

"However, this emission has been predicted to exist at Mars for around 40 years - and, thanks to [ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter], we've found it."

Earth's sky is never completely dark, not even at night, even once you've extracted light pollution, starlight, and diffuse sunlight. The molecules in the atmosphere are constantly undergoing various processes, which causes them to faintly glow across a range of wavelengths.

The glow is not dissimilar to aurora, since it's produced by the same particles - except it's much fainter, and the mechanisms behind it are different. Aurora is produced by charged particles from the solar wind which ionise atmospheric atoms, causing them to form dancing lights across the sky.

Airglow, on the other hand, is caused by the interaction between sunlight and the atmosphere, and falls broadly into two categories. There's nightglow; this occurs when atoms broken apart by solar radiation during the day recombine, releasing their excess energy in the form of photons. Nightglow has previously been observed on both Venus and Mars, as well as Earth.

What astronomers have now observed in the atmosphere of Mars is dayglow - a phenomenon that's much harder to detect, given that its faint presence is vastly outshone by broad daylight.

On Earth, it occurs when molecules in the atmosphere absorb sunlight, which gives them excess energy they emit in the form of radiation at the same or slightly lower frequency as the radiation absorbed in the first place.

In images of Earth taken from the International Space Station, when the camera is looking across the top of the atmosphere rather than straight down, the airglow is much more visible.

On the Red Planet, such dayglow was predicted in 1979, but Mars orbiters, facing directly at the Martian surface, had failed to detect it until now.

Earth's nightglow. (NASA)

So, learning from the ISS, the team reoriented the Nadir and Occultation for MArs Discovery (NOMAD) instrument from its position looking straight down at Mars, to looking across the atmosphere towards the Martian horizon. From this position, they took a range of observations of the Martian atmosphere, at a range of altitudes between 20 and 400 kilometres (12 to 250 miles).

When they analysed the data, they found the green emission in both optical and ultraviolet wavelengths, in all of the dayside observations.

"The emission was strongest at an altitude of around 80 kilometres and varied depending on the changing distance between Mars and the Sun," explained planetary aeronomer Ann Carine Vandaele of the Institut Royal d'Aronomie Spatiale de Belgique in Belgium.

When the team modelled the process behind the emission, they found that it's produced by a process very similar to airglow on Earth. When solar radiation hits the Martian atmosphere, it splits apart carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide and oxygen. It's the oxygen atoms that are responsible for the green glow.

But there was something interesting, too. The emission's visible wavelength was 16.5 times more intense than its ultraviolet wavelength.

"The observations at Mars agree with previous theoretical models but not with the actual glowing we've spotted around Earth, where the visible emission is far weaker," Grard said.

"This suggests we have more to learn about how oxygen atoms behave, which is hugely important for our understanding of atomic and quantum physics."

This discrepancy, the team notes, could be an issue with the way the instrument taking Earth observations has been calibrated. Obviously the best thing to do is a whole lot more science.

The research has been published in Nature Astronomy.

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Astronomers Detect a Fascinating Green Glow in The Atmosphere of Mars - ScienceAlert

Conspiracy theorists had claimed the dates of the Maya calendar had been misinterpreted, and that the end of the world will actually be today. Back in 2012, the internet was abuzz with claims that the Maya calendar was set to end on December 21. That date came and went without the apocalypse, leaving many doomsdayers red faced.

Now however, the bizarre claims are back, with suggestions there were discrepancies in how the calendar had been interpreted.

The claims resurfaced following a tweet from Paolo Tagaloguin, who explained his theory on Twitter.

He said: "Following the Julian Calendar, we are technically in 2012 The number of days lost in a year due to the shift into Gregorian Calendar is 11 days For 268 years using the Gregorian Calendar (1752-2020) times 11 days = 2,948 days. 2,948 days / 365 days (per year) = 8 years."

This takes the apparent end of the world from December 21, 2012, to June 21, 2020.

But once again the claims have been absolutely rubbished by people in the know, stating there is no scientific evidence to support the theory.

Hasan Al Hariri, CEO of the Dubai Astronomy Group, told Gulf News: Science is elegant and beautiful, but it requires effort to understand. This is a golden opportunity to educate people.

"Any person with a scientific temperament, not necessarily a scientist, cannot support these type of messages."

Other astronomers have also dismissed the claim, stating that the maths and new interpretation is simply wrong.

Astronomer Phil Plait explained on SyFy: "The Gregorian calendar does not lose 11 days per year! Basically, the Julian calendar, which was widely used a long time ago, didn't account for leap years very well, so hundreds of years ago countries started switching to the Gregorian calendar, which does a better job (though it's a little complicated).

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End of the world: Astronomers break silence over June 21 doomsday - Express.co.uk

A file photo of Sushant Singh Rajput. (Image courtesy: sushant_singh_rajput246)

The International Space University (ISU) in France has paid homage to Sushant Singh Rajput in a statement, saying the news of the actor's death was "deeply saddening." Mr Rajput was found dead at his Bandra apartment on Sunday. According to an official, Mumbai Police found out during the probe that the 34-year-old actor was under medication for depression. The official Twitter handle of ISU on Monday tweeted how Mr Rajput was supposed to visit the campus last year but was unable to due to scheduling conflict.

"We are deeply saddened by the dramatic news on the death of well-known Indian actor Sushant Singh Rajput. Mr Rajput was a believer and strong supporter of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education and was following ISU on social media. He had even accepted an invitation to visit ISU's Central Campus in the summer of 2019 but other agenda priorities prevented him from travelling to Strasbourg," the statement by the university read. ISU paid condolences to Sushant Singh Rajput's family and friends, saying the actor's memory will "remain among his thousands of followers across India and all over the world."

Mr Rajput enrolled at Delhi Technical University (DTU) in 2003, which was then known as Delhi College of Engineering but left the course to pursue his showbiz dreams. Even after leaving the four-year degree course, he remained fascinated with science and had a deep interest in astronomy. As part of his research for the film Chanda Mama Door Ke, he also visited the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 2017.

Mr Rajput stayed in NASA to train for his role as an astronaut for the film, which was eventually shelved. The actor also owned Meade 14'' LX600 telescope.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

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For Astronomy Buff Sushant Singh Rajput, A Tribute From France's International Space University - NDTV

The University of Arizona is looking to grow its extended family of learners by making some of its programming more affordable. Through multiple initiatives, the university is offering discounted or free resources to those looking to build on their education and training in a difficult economic environment.

Pay What You Can

Eller Executive Education, a University of Arizona-affiliated nonprofit that provides nondegree, executive-level management and leadership training, is offering its Leadership Readiness for Turbulent Times program on a "pay what you can" basis.

"We listened to our community and realized that some needed help as they were either suffering financially, being furloughed or laid off, while others wanted to help support those who could not afford learning," said Joe Carella, assistant dean for Eller Executive Education. "Learning budgets are often the first thing to be cut during crises, and yet people need to continue to show that they are growing and spending time wisely."

The program is designed to help leaders better manage turbulent situations, such as those created by the COVID-19 pandemic. It covers areas including making decisions during times of complexity and chaos, how to communicate in a crisis and how to manage and motivate teams in a totally virtual workplace.

Carella says demand for the program has topped expectations, with more than 1,000 participants from around the world. He says about 30% of them have voluntarily paid more for the program to help financially support others wanting to take the class who could not pay as much.

MOOCs

With in-person entertainment options limited due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many people are taking the opportunity to learn something new through massive open online courses, or MOOCs. Christopher Impey, University Distinguished Professor of astronomy, is among the University of Arizona faculty members who have found success in offering the not-for-credit courses for "free-choice learners."

"People taking these courses are doing it with the purest of intentions," Impey says. "They're not necessarily doing it to get a better job or to get a degree. They're just doing it because they're interested in the subject."

Among Impey's MOOCs is Astronomy: Exploring Time and Space. He says a recent surge drove up enrollment to 131,000 participants, with almost 10,000 of them currently active. The course features more than 20 hours of video content as well as assignments, quizzes and citizen science activities.

David Soren, Regents Professor of anthropology, also offers a MOOC. Roman Art and Archaeology has attracted more than 30,000 enrollees. The course, which provides an overview of the culture of ancient Rome, features over 70 videos, including some guest lectures.

Corporate Partner Benefits

Through the Arizona Online Corporate Initiative, the university partners with companies and other organizations to offer their employees access to a University of Arizona education on a flexible schedule. Approved corporate partners receive benefits that can include waived application fees, tuition reduction, a dedicated enrollment team, and marketing and promotional support for company management. Arizona Online is now extending those benefits to the immediate families of employees working for partner organizations.

"Uncertain times call for certain action," said Kara Aquilano Forney, executive director of the Arizona Online Corporate Initiative. "We wanted to do whatever we could to create something positive for our partners' employees and their families. By extending partnership benefits, we hope to further eliminate barriers to education for an even wider audience."

Arizona Online corporate partners include American Express, Geico, Banner Health and more than a dozen other companies, organizations and municipalities. More information on the Corporate Partner Initiative is available online.

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UArizona Offers Free and Discounted Programs to Meet Needs of New Learners - UANews

Astronomers using data from NASAs Kepler space telescope have discovered two new planets in the Kepler-160 planetary system. One of the new planets is the super-Earth-sized transiting world in the host stars habitable zone.

An artists impression of a four-planet system. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Kepler-160 is a Sun-like star located 3,141 light-years away in the constellation of Lyra.

Also known as KOI-456 and KIC 7269974, the star is 1.12 times bigger than our Sun and is just 1% more luminous.

In 2010, astronomers detected two massive transiting planets, Kepler-160b and c, in very close orbits around the star.

Kepler-160b has a radius of 1.7 times that of the Earth and is in a 4.3-day orbit, while Kepler-160c, with a radius of about 3.1 Earth radii, orbits the star with a period of 13.7 days.

Their surface temperatures would certainly make them hotter than a baking oven and everything but hospitable for life as we know it, said Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research astronomer Ren Heller and colleagues.

But tiny variations in the orbital period of planet Kepler-160c gave scientists a signature of a third planet that had yet to be confirmed.

In the new study, Dr. Heller and co-authors analyzed archival data from the Kepler space telescope.

Our analysis suggests that Kepler-160 is orbited not by two but by a total of four planets, Dr. Heller said.

One of the two planets that we found is Kepler-160d, the previously suspected planet responsible for the distorted orbit of Kepler-160c.

Kepler-160d is a non-transiting planet with a mass higher than Earths and an orbital period between about 5 and 50 days.

The fourth planet in the system, Kepler-160e (also designated KOI-456.04), is probably a transiting planet with a radius of 1.9 times that of the Earth and an orbital period of 378 days.

Given its Sun-like host star, the very Earth-like orbital period results in a very Earth-like insolation from the star both in terms of the amount of the light received and in terms of the light color, Dr. Heller said.

All things considered, Kepler-160e sits in a region of the habitable zone that is comparable to the Earths position around the Sun.

Kepler-160e is relatively large compared to many other planets that are considered potentially habitable, he said.

But its the combination of this less-than-double the size of the Earth planet and its solar type host star that make it so special and familiar.

If Kepler-160e has a mostly inert atmosphere with a mild Earth-like greenhouse effect, then its surface temperature would be 5 degrees Celsius on average, which is about 10 degrees lower than the Earths mean global temperature.

The discovery is described in paper published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

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Ren Heller et al. 2020. Transit least-squares survey III. A 1.9 R transit candidate in the habitable zone of Kepler-160 and a nontransiting planet characterized by transit-timing variations. A&A 638, A10; doi: 10.1051/0004-6361/201936929

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Sun-Like Star Kepler-160 Has Super-Earth in Habitable Zone | Astronomy - Sci-News.com

Saturday, June 6Saturns largest and brightest moon, Titan, sits due south of the ringed planet in the early morning sky. In a telescope, the magnitude 9 moon should be relatively easy to spot its the brightest point of light after the planet itself. Titan orbits Saturn every 16 days; on June 14 it will sit due north of the planet and will return to its most southerly point again on the 22nd.

Swing away from Saturn to the southeast in the two hours before sunrise to find the famous star Fomalhaut in the small constellation Piscis Austrinus, rising in the southeast. Magnitude 1.2 Fomalhaut is not only the brightest star in the constellation, but also one of the brightest stars in the sky, ranking 18th. Only about 25 light-years away, Fomalhaut is surrounded by a massive disk of material that astronomers believe could be forming planets. In fact, astronomers long thought theyd directly imaged one such nascent world only to recently discover that what theyd seen was actually the aftermath of a collision between two icy planetesimals.

Sunday, June 7The constellation Perseus climbs above the northeastern horizon a few hours before sunrise this morning. With a bright Moon on the opposite side of the sky, its a great time to tour the Heros brighter treasures, the most famous of which may be the Double Cluster, comprising NGC 884 and NGC 869 in the western (upper right) region of the constellation. These two young, bright open star clusters are about 7,600 and 6,800 light-years away, respectively, with ages between 3 million and 5 million years. In a dark sky, you may spot them without binoculars, but this morning the Moon will likely make that impossible. Binoculars or a small scope, however, will bring out increasing levels of richness in the clusters; youll see NGC 884 to the east of NGC 869, which lies farther west.

The constellation is also home to the famous California Nebula (NGC 1499). This emission nebula has a magnitude of roughly 6 but its dim, diffuse glow will be hard to spot even with a telescope, given the bright Moon. Return to this constellation on a moonless morning later in the month or even next month, when the 2.5-long nebula will be higher above the horizon at the same time each night in Perseus eastern region. Its shape shows up best in long-exposure photographs.

Monday, June 8Today is the 395th anniversary of the birth of Italian-French astronomer Giovanni Cassini. You most likely know the name either from the Cassini Division that separates Saturns A and B rings or from the NASA mission that spent over a decade exploring Saturn and its extensive system of moons. Cassinis planetary science claim to fame is threefold: He measured the scale of the solar system, discovered four moons of Saturn, and identified the large gap in Saturns rings.

Early morning is the best time to get a look at the ringed planet, which rises around 11:30 P.M. local time. By 3 to 4 A.M., its higher in the sky for easy viewing. You can find magnitude 0.4 Saturn in the south, just 5 northeast of brilliant magnitude 2.6 Jupiter. A bright, 92-percent-lit Moon hangs nearby. Farther southwest is the familiar Teapot asterism of Sagittarius.

The disk of Saturn appears 18" wide, while its rings stretch roughly 41" across. Although the background sky will be bright thanks to the Moon, you may still be able to spot the dark Cassini Division, which appears as a thin gap but actually spans an average of nearly 3,000 miles (4,800 kilometers), although its width varies.

The Moon passes 2 south of Jupiter at 1 P.M. EDT today. Nine hours later, the Moon passes 3 south of Saturn at 10 P.M. EDT. But both events take place when the planets arent visible.

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The Sky This Week from June 5 to 12 - Astronomy Magazine

Capturing previously inaccessible radio waves has been a dream of astronomers for decades. Some 40 years ago, scientists started seriously considering what different types of lunar telescopes might be able to discover, as well as how they could be built.

Even then, according to a NASA document titled Future Astronomical Observatories on the Moon, scientists realized that the Moon offered a unique vantage point that could open up the last window in the electromagnetic spectrum at very low frequencies.

By the early 1980s, the Apollo missions were a decade in the rearview, but the burgeoning Space Shuttle Program was looking like a success. This led to renewed talks of returning to the Moon. Researchers hoped these developments might eventually lead to Moon bases that would enable the infrastructure for sustained scientific studies.

The only way we could conceive of putting scientific instruments on the Moon was with astronauts, says University of Colorado Boulder astronomer Jack O. Burns. He serves as director of the NASA-fundedNetwork for Exploration and Space Science, and for decades has been the lead crusader for building telescopes on the Moon.

Now, for the first time thanks to modern robotics and the emergence of private spaceflight companies Burns thinks this once-crazy idea can actually become a reality. His students now routinely work with remotely operated robots and machine learning algorithms things that would have been unimaginable in the 1980s, he says. Technology has caught up, and maybe thats what we needed.

Due to these technological advancements and more, lunar telescopes no longer require astronaut construction crews and $100 billion space programs. Instead, they could be built using rovers sent on privately built rockets that are already under development.

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The History and Future of Telescopes on the Moon - Astronomy Magazine

Therein lay the potential of FRBs to weigh the universes baryons, an opportunity we recognized on the spot. By measuring the spread of different wavelengths within one FRB, we could calculate exactly how much matter how many baryons the radio waves passed through on their way to Earth.

At this point we were so close, but there was one final piece of information we needed. To precisely measure the baryon density, we needed to know where in the sky an FRB came from. If we knew the source galaxy, we would know how far the radio waves traveled. With that and the amount of dispersion they experienced, perhaps we could calculate how much matter they passed through on the way to Earth?

Unfortunately, the telescopes in 2007 werent good enough to pinpoint exactly which galaxy and therefore how far away an FRB came from.

We knew what information would allow us to solve the problem, now we just had to wait for technology to develop enough to give us that data.

It was 11 years until we were able to place or localize our first FRB. In August 2018, our collaborative project called CRAFT began using the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope in the outback of Western Australia to look for FRBs. This new telescope which is run by Australias national science agency, CSIRO can watch huge portions of the sky, about 60 times the size of a full Moon, and it can simultaneously detect FRBs and pinpoint where in the sky they come from.

ASKAP captured its first FRB one month later. Once we knew the precise part of the sky the radio waves came from, we quickly used the Keck telescope in Hawaii to identify which galaxy the FRB came from and how far away that galaxy was. The first FRB we detected came from a galaxy named DES J214425.25405400.81 that is about 4 billion light-years away from Earth, in case you were wondering.

The technology and technique worked. We had measured the dispersion from an FRB and knew where it came from. But we needed to catch a few more of them in order to attain a statistically significant count of the baryons. So we waited and hoped space would send us some more FRBs.

By mid-July 2019, we had detected five more events enough to perform the first search for the missing matter. Using the dispersion measures of these six FRBs, we were able to make a rough calculation of how much matter the radio waves passed through before reaching earth.

We were overcome by both amazement and reassurance the moment we saw the data fall right on the curve predicted by the 5% estimate. We had detected the missing baryons in full, solving this cosmological riddle and putting to rest two decades of searching.

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Half the matter in the cosmos was missing, but astronomers found it h - Astronomy Magazine

We dont actually know why that is, Stevenson says. But I think whatever that explanation might be, its telling us something important about how Jupiter formed. Things could have been stirred up by the impact of another huge proto-planet, he says. Or it could be that somehow Jupiter moved around and more planetesimals were added at a particular stage during formation. There are many different stories you could conjure up.Hybrid magnetismJupiters huge fuzzy core undoubtedly has implications for other aspects of the planets behavior one of them being the planets unusual, contorted magnetic field.

For decades, the textbook picture of the Jovian magnetic field was that it resembled Earths which is to say that it looked like the field of a really big bar magnet, with a well-defined magnetic north pole on one end and a well-defined south pole on the other. Quick peeks from earlier spacecraft seemed to confirm that picture.

But the textbooks were wrong. Junos measurements show that the magnetic field in Jupiters northern hemisphere looks completely different from its southern counterpart. Its as if someone took a bar magnet, bent it almost in half, frayed one end, split the other end, and then stuck the whole thing in the planet at a cockeyed angle. In the north is the frayed end: Rather than emerging around one central spot, the magnetic field sprouts like weeds along a long high-latitude band. In the south is the split end: Some of the field plunges back into the planet around the south pole while some is concentrated in a spot just south of the equator.

Jupiters magnetic field, illustrated in this NASA visualization, is a strange blend of simple and complex. The field emerges from the north in a long band (red areas), and mostly reenters the planet in a compact spot just south of the equator (dark blue).

NASA/JPL-CALTECH/Harvard/Moore et al.

It was weird to have essentially one hemisphere Earth and one hemisphere Uranus and Neptune, says Kimberly Moore, a Caltech astrophysicist and a lead author of several studies of Junos magnetic findings.

Planetary magnetic fields are generated by electrically conductive fluids in their interior. The unusual fields at Uranus and Neptune may be due to these fluids being restricted to a thinner region of the planet, relative to their size. Something similar might be happening at Jupiter thanks to its dilute core, says Moore. The north-south dichotomy may also emerge from all this complexity.

That can really change the geometry of the patterns you can come up with, she says. But thats just one idea. Helium rain might also wreak havoc on the magnetic field, as could penetrating winds.

Jupiter has conga lines of polar cyclones; Saturn has just one vortex per pole (one of which is six-sided!). Jupiters magnetic field is a hodge-podge; Saturns is pretty boring. Jupiters atmosphere is multicolored and banded; Saturns is relatively unblemished.

Giant planets must come in different flavors, Bolton says. We need to understand that if were going to understand them in general, because the same physics must dictate everything.

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What has the Juno spacecraft taught us about Jupiter? - Astronomy Magazine

The first stars in the universe formed even earlier than astronomers had thought, a new study suggests.

Researchers probing the early universe found no sign of first-generation stars in galaxies that existed just 500 million to 1 billion years after the Big Bang.

"These results have profound astrophysical consequences, as they show that galaxies must have formed much earlier than we thought," study lead author Rachana Bhatawdekar, a research fellow at the European Space Agency (ESA), said in a statement.

Related: Peering back to the Big Bang & early universe (images)

Bhatawdekar and her colleagues used the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile to hunt for "Population III" stars in a variety of distant galaxies.

Population III stars were the first suns to form in our 13.8-billion-year-old universe, and they're identifiable by their unique composition: just hydrogen, helium and lithium, the only elements around immediately after the Big Bang. Heavier elements were forged in the cores of these stars and their successors.

(The somewhat confusing moniker results from the fact that astronomers had already classified the stars of our own Milky Way galaxy into two groups before considering their super-old cousins. "Population I" stars, such as Earth's sun, are rich in heavy elements, and "Population II" stars are considerably less so.)

The research team took advantage of a phenomenon called gravitational lensing to bring their hard targets into view. In each case, they used a giant galaxy cluster in the foreground as a sort of magnifying glass, allowing them to study small, distant and incredibly faint galaxies.

It has taken the light from these background galaxies 12.8 billion to 13.3 billion years to reach Earth meaning that these objects are time capsules harboring lots of information about the early universe, including what types of stars were shining back then.

"We found no evidence of these first-generation Population III stars in this cosmic time interval," Bhatawdekar said.

Population III stars and the first galaxies must therefore be older still so old that they're beyond Hubble's reach. But NASA's $9.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope, which is scheduled to launch next year, may be able to spot them, study team members said.

The new results, which were presented this week at the 236th meeting of the American Astronomical Society and will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, shed other light on the early universe as well.

For example, low-mass, faint galaxies like the ones observed in the new study were probably responsible for "cosmic reionization," Bhatawdekar and her colleagues said. In this process, which began perhaps 400 million years after the Big Bang, radiation split the hydrogen atoms pervading the universe into their constituent protons and electrons. Reionization was a big cosmic transition, and getting a better handle on how it happened could help astronomers better understand our universe's structure and evolution, scientists have said.

Mike Wall is the author of "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.

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The 1st stars in the universe formed earlier than thought - Space.com

Three thousand light-years from Earth sits Kepler 160, a sun-like star thats already thought to have three planets in its system. Now researchers think theyve found a fourth. Planet KOI-456.04, as its called, appears similar to Earth in size and orbit, raising new hopes weve found perhaps the best candidate yet for a habitable exoplanet that resembles our home world. The new findings bolster the case for devoting more time to looking for planets orbiting stars like Kepler-160 and our sun, where theres a better chance a planet can receive the kind of illumination thats amenable to life.

Most exoplanet discoveries so far have been made around red dwarf stars. This isnt totally unexpected; red dwarfs are the most common type of star out there. And our main method for finding exoplanets involves looking for stellar transitsperiodic dips in a stars brightness as an orbiting object passes in front of it. This is much easier to do for dimmer stars like red dwarfs, which are smaller than our sun and emit more of their energy as infrared radiation. The highest-profile discovery of this type is near our closest neighboring star, Proxima Centauria red dwarf with a potentially habitable planet called Proxima b (whose existence was, incidentally,confirmed in a new study published this week).

Data on the new exoplanet orbiting Kepler 160,published in Astronomy and Astrophysicson Thursday, points to a different situation entirely. From what researchers can tell, KOI 456.04 looks to be less than twice the size of Earth and is apparently orbiting Kepler-160 at about the same distance from Earth to the sun (one complete orbit is 378 days). Perhaps most important, it receives about 93% as much light as Earth gets from the sun.

This is critical, because one of the biggest obstacles to habitability around red dwarf stars is they can emit a lot of high-energy flares and radiation that could fry a planet and any life on it. By contrast, stars like the sunand Kepler-160, in theoryare more stable and suitable for the evolution of life.

The authors found KOI-456.04 by reanalyzing old data collected by NASAs Kepler mission. The team employed two new algorithms to analyze the stellar brightness observed from Kepler-160. The algorithms were designed to look at dimming patterns on a more granular and gradual level, rather than seeking the abrupt dips and jumps that had previously been used to identify exoplanets in the star system.

Right now the researchers say its 85% probable KOI-456.04 is an actual planet. But itcouldstill be an artifact of Keplers instruments or the new analysisan object needs to pass a threshold of 99% to be a certified exoplanet. Getting that level of certainty will require direct observations. The instruments on NASAs upcoming James Webb Space Telescope are expected to be up to the task, as are those on ESAs PLATO space telescope, due to launch in 2026.

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Astronomers have found a planet like Earth orbiting a star like the sun - MIT Technology Review