Atmosphere Stripping May Limit Habitability of Extrasolar Planets – Sci-News.com

Huge coronal mass ejections (CMEs) on the Sun produce extreme space weather effects at Earth. Models of solar CMEs have now been applied to M-dwarf and Sun-like stars a popular target in the search for Earth-like exoplanets, in research published in the Astrophysical Journal (arXiv.org preprint).

Artists conception of an exoplanets atmosphere being stripped by the radiation from its parent star. Image credit: Mark A. Garlick / University of Warwick.

CMEs are gigantic clouds of solar plasma drenched with magnetic field lines that are blown away from the Sun during solar flares and filament eruptions.

They are a fundamental factor in so-called space weather, and are known to disrupt the flow of the solar wind and produce disturbances that strike the Earth with sometimes catastrophic results.

However, astronomers have shown that the effects of space weather may also have a significant impact on the potential habitability of planets around cool, low mass stars.

Traditionally an exoplanet is considered habitable if its orbit corresponds to a temperature where liquid water can exist.

Low mass stars are cooler, and therefore should have habitable zones much closer in to the star than in our Solar System, but their CMEs should be much stronger due to their enhanced magnetic fields.

When a CME impacts a planet, it compresses the planets magnetosphere, a protective magnetic bubble shielding the planet.

Extreme CMEs can exert enough pressure to shrink a magnetosphere so much that it exposes a planets atmosphere, which can then be swept away from the planet.

This could in turn leave the planetary surface and any potential developing lifeforms exposed to harmful X-rays from the nearby host star.

We figured that the CMEs would be more powerful and more frequent than solar CMEs, but what was unexpected was where the CMEs ended up, said lead author Dr. Christina Kay, from NASAs Goddard Flight Center and Boston University.

Dr. Kay and co-authors modeled the trajectory of theoretical CMEs from V374 Pegasi, an M-class dwarf star located 19.6 light-years from Earth.

V374 Pegasi has a surface temperature of only 2,900 degrees Celsius, in contrast to the Suns 5,500 degrees Celsius. Its mass and radius are less than one-third the mass and radius of the Sun.

The researchers found that the strong magnetic fields of V374 Pegasi push most CMEs down to the Astrophysical Current Sheet (ACS), the surface corresponding to the minimum magnetic field strength at each distance, where they remain trapped.

While these cool stars may be the most abundant, and seem to offer the best prospects for finding life elsewhere, we find that they can be a lot more dangerous to live around due to their CMEs, said co-author Marc Kornbleuth, a graduate student at Boston University.

The results suggest that an exoplanet would need a magnetic field ten to several thousand times that of Earths to shield their atmosphere from the cool stars CMEs.

As many as five impacts a day could occur for planets near the ACS, but the rate decreases to one every other day for planets with an inclined orbit.

This work is pioneering in the sense that we are just now starting to explore space weather effects on exoplanets, which will have to be taken into account when discussing the habitability of planets near very active stars, said co-author Dr. Merav Opher, an associate professor at Boston University.

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C. Kay et al. 2016. Probability of CME Impact on Exoplanets Orbiting M Dwarfs and Solar-Like Stars. ApJ 826, 195; doi: 10.3847/0004-637X/826/2/195

This article is based on text provided by the Royal Astronomical Society.

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Atmosphere Stripping May Limit Habitability of Extrasolar Planets - Sci-News.com

Astronomy: July is the season of Scorpius – Longmont Times-Call

(Daniel Zantzinger / Skywatcher's Guide)

It is perhaps indisputable that skywatching July's warm summer nights is the most comfortable, spectacular and awe inspiring outdoor activity going.

The trick, the essence of summer's night skywatching, lies in first rooting in the core concentration of stars in the south, and then slowly climbing the galactic arms toward zenith and beyond.

Whether you're using your eyes, binoculars, telescopes, scientific journals and/or telescope-directing websites, there's more than enough out there to stimulate the imagination, provoke wonder and astound the senses.

For many skywatchers, this is a great time to head away from the city lights into the hills; to the high country with its deep and darkened valleys; to our state parks and national monuments; and to someone else's sparsely populated, protected properties.

This is the season of the scorpion, the swan, the deeply troubled Hercules and myriad other sidereal (star-like) residents of the Milky Way. Moreover, each one of these house crystalline and nebulous denizens of their own, who in turn hold in their embraces secrecies unfolded only to skywatchers making the effort to look for them.

Find fishhook-shaped Constellation Scorpius, "the scorpion," low and due south at 11 tonight (July 1) and around nightfall on the 31st. To its east is teapot-shaped Constellation Sagittarius, "the centaur archer," and to its north is Constellation Ophiuchus, "the serpent-bearer." Saturn, having reached opposition just two weeks ago, is well positioned here for viewing until the end of August.

These areas of space are so rich that if you figuratively speaking were to draw your last breath right after careful and thorough examination of them, you will have died having a life fulfilled with few regrets.

The moon is bright here in the month's first 10 days or so, so it's best to get serious July 16 and thereafter.

Darker skies mean better views. Longer expanses of time between ocular exposures to white light after a minimum of 12 minutes mean better viewing ability. Use red flashlights. Avoid looking at car headlights, or you'll have to start the clock all over again. A good dose of Zen patience and measured breathing provides for you a better overall experience. Speak minimally, and your companions will have a better overall experience.

When you're staring at Sagittarius, you're gazing in the direction of the galactic core, that is, toward the center of the Milky Way. Most of the wow factor in the southern sky is from here toward zenith.

From our line of sight, three arms of the spiral barred (striped) galaxy intersect at the Scorpius/Sagittarius border. This allows us to observe not only millions of stars, but also diffuse nebulae M8, M17 and M20; and the relatively young and open star clusters M6, M7, M21, M23 and M25 circulating with the disc. These clusters have a few hundred to several thousand stars.

Scorpius and Sagittarius and our southern sky's hemisphere for that matter is home to an abundance of globular star clusters, spherical concentrations of several hundreds of thousands of much older and denser stars that dwell in the galaxy's outer halo.

With the naked eye, find red giant star Antares, the "rival of Mars," the heart of the scorpion, an irregular star that slowly pulses from magnitude 0.6 to 1.6. Train the telescope 1.3 degrees west to M4 to find one of the two closest globular clusters to the solar system.

Clocking in at 12.2 billion years old, M4 has some 13 billion-year-old white/degenerate dwarf stars invisible to earthbound skywatchers that are among the oldest known stars in the Milky Way galaxy. In 1995, the Hubble Space Telescope photographed white dwarf PSR B1620-26 with a planet with a mass of 2.5 times that of Jupiter.

With binoculars and/or a motorized telescope, crawl up the galaxy's arms into Constellation Cygnus, "the swan,"to the Great Globular Cluster (M13) in Constellation Hercules at zenith, and then into the great beyond.

The moon is full at 10:07 p.m. July 8, and is called the Full Thunder Moon.

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Astronomy: July is the season of Scorpius - Longmont Times-Call

See the sharpest-ever view of giant Betelgeuse – Astronomy Now Online

30 June 2017 Astronomy Now

This orange blob shows the nearby star Betelgeuse, as seen by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). This is the first time that ALMA has ever observed the surface of a star and this first attempt has resulted in the highest-resolution image of Betelgeuse available.

Betelgeuse is one of the largest stars currently known with a radius around 1400 times larger than the Suns in the millimeter continuum. About 600 light-years away in the constellation of Orion (The Hunter), the red supergiant burns brightly, causing it to have only a short life expectancy. The star is just about eight million years old, but is already on the verge of becoming a supernova. When that happens, the resulting explosion will be visible from Earth, even in broad daylight.

The star has been observed in many other wavelengths, particularly in the visible, infrared, and ultraviolet. Using ESOs Very Large Telescope astronomers discovered a vast plume of gas almost as large as our Solar System. Astronomers have also found a gigantic bubble that boils away on Betelgeuses surface. These features help to explain how the star is shedding gas and dust at tremendous rates. In this picture, ALMA observes the hot gas of the lower chromosphere of Betelgeuse at sub-millimeter wavelengths where localised increased temperatures explain why it is not symmetric. Scientifically, ALMA can help us to understand the extended atmospheres of these hot, blazing stars.

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Could foreground stars make faraway quasars twinkle? – Astronomy Magazine

Stars twinkle because were looking at them through Earths turbulent atmosphere. Quasars are not stars, but the massive disks around supermassive black holes sitting at the centers of faraway galaxies, gobbling up immense amounts of dust and gas. These objects show variability on a variety of timescales at different wavelengths, including variations in radio light. A recent study now suggests that some quasars might twinkle because of features around foreground stars when we peer at them from our vantage point on Earth.

The work, led by Mark Walker of Manly Astrophysics and published in the Astrophysical Journal, began with observations taken with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisations (CSIRO) Compact Array radio telescope in Australia. While studying the quasar PKS 1322110, it began twinkling violently, said Walker in a press release. When the team followed up with the 10-meter Keck telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, they noticed the quasar is very close on the sky to the hot star Spica, said collaborator Vikram Ravi of the California Institute of Technology.

That realization brought another twinkling quasar to mind: J1819+3845, which is close to the bright star Vega on the sky. Based on that knowledge, the team examined data of J1819+3845 and a third violently twinkling quasar, PKS 1257326, which is near the star Alhakim.

Could these alignments be pure chance? The researchers calculated that the likelihood of two twinkling quasars residing near hot stars on the sky was about one in ten million.

Based on their re-examination of data taken J1819+3845 and PKS 1257326, We have very detailed observations of these two sources, said co-author Hayley Bignall of CSIRO. They show that the twinkling is caused by long, thin structures.

These structures, the team thinks, are filaments of warm gas around hot stars, much like the filaments seen in the Helix Nebula. The Helix Nebula contains globules of hydrogen gas, which are stretched out into filaments by ultraviolet radiation from the central star. Although the Helix Nebula is home to an older star and the globules likely formed recently, the astronomers think similar structures might sit around younger stars.

They might date from when the stars formed, or even earlier, said Walker. Globules don't emit much light, so they could be common yet have escaped notice so far.

If so, these globules and the filaments associated with them could be responsible for the twinkling of background quasars when they affect the focus of the radio signals traveling through them, rather than changes in emission from the quasars themselves. Determining the true reason for the twinkling will tell astronomers more about both the physics of distant quasars and the stars in our own galaxy.

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Could foreground stars make faraway quasars twinkle? - Astronomy Magazine

Earth-based views of Jupiter to enhance Juno flyby – Astronomy Now Online

This composite, false-color infrared image of Jupiter reveals haze particles over a range of altitudes, as seen in reflected sunlight. It was taken using the Gemini North Telescopes Near-InfraRed Imager (NIRI) on May 18, 2017, in collaboration with the investigation of Jupiter by NASAs Juno mission. Credit: Gemini Observatory/AURA/NASA/JPL-Caltech

Telescopes in Hawaii have obtained new images of Jupiter and its Great Red Spot, which will assist the first-ever close-up study of the Great Red Spot, planned for July 10. On that date, NASAs Juno spacecraft will fly directly over the giant planets most famous feature at an altitude of only about 5,600 miles (9,000 kilometres).

Throughout the Juno mission, numerous observations of Jupiter by Earth-based telescopes have been acquired in coordination with the mission, to help Juno investigate the giant planets atmosphere. On May 18, 2017, the Gemini North telescope and the Subaru Telescope, both on Hawaiis Mauna Kea peak, simultaneously examined Jupiter in very high resolution at different wavelengths. These latest observations supplement others earlier this year in providing information about atmospheric dynamics at different depths at the Great Red Spot and other regions of Jupiter.

The Great Red Spot is a swirling storm, centuries old and wider than the diameter of Earth. Juno will use multiple instruments to study this feature when it flies over it about 12 minutes after the spacecraft makes the closest approach to Jupiter of its current orbit at 6:55 p.m. on July 10, PDT (9:55 p.m. on July 10, EDT; 1:55 a.m. on July 11, Universal Time). Juno entered orbit around Jupiter on July 4, 2016.

Observations with Earths most powerful telescopes enhance the spacecrafts planned observations by providing three types of additional context, said Juno science team member Glenn Orton of NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. We get spatial context from seeing the whole planet. We extend and fill in our temporal context from seeing features over a span of time. And we supplement with wavelengths not available from Juno. The combination of Earth-based and spacecraft observations is a powerful one-two punch in exploring Jupiter.

Orton collaborated with researchers at Gemini; Subaru; the University of California, Berkeley; Tohoku University, Japan; and elsewhere in planning the recent observations.

The observers used Gemini North on May 18 to examine Jupiter through special near-infrared filters. The filters exploit specific colors of light that can penetrate the upper atmosphere and clouds of Jupiter, revealing mixtures of methane and hydrogen in the planets atmosphere. These observations showed a long, fine-structured wave extending off the eastern side of the Great Red Spot.

On the same night, researchers used Subarus Cooled Mid-Infrared Camera and Spectrometer (COMICS), with filters sensitive to temperatures at different layers of Jupiters atmosphere. These mid-infrared observations showed the Great Red Spot had a cold and cloudy interior increasing toward its center, with a periphery that was warmer and clearer, Orton said. A region to its northwest was unusually turbulent and chaotic, with bands that were cold and cloudy, alternating with bands that were warm and clear.

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Earth-based views of Jupiter to enhance Juno flyby - Astronomy Now Online

First quarter Moon meets Jupiter and Spica in the evening sky – Astronomy Now Online

30 June 2017 Ade Ashford

Observers in the UK and Western Europe need to direct their gaze low to the southwest an hour after sunset to glimpse the 7-day-old Moon (first quarter occurs in the small hours of Saturday, 1July) a low-power binocular field of view to the right of Jupiter in the bright twilight of Friday, 30June. The following night finds the waxing gibbous Moon a similar distance to the largest planets upper left, forming a near isosceles triangle with first-magnitude star Spica in Virgo. For scale, Jupiter and Spica are currently separated by about the span of a fist at arms length. AN animation by Ade Ashford.Its hard believe that 12weeks have elapsed since Jupiter was at opposition. But now that we are into summer, the Solar Systems largest known planet is already sinking in the southwest when it can be first seen with the naked eye in bright twilight around 10:30pmBST from the UK.

If you find it hard to locate Jupiter in the bright sky around civil dusk, a convenient celestial marker in the form of the almost first quarter Moon sits just 6degrees to the right on the planet on the evening of Friday 30June. The pair can fit in the same field of view of wide-angle 7 binoculars.

One night later, the 8-day-old Moon lies 6.4degrees to the upper left of Jupiter, forming an almost isosceles triangle with first-magnitude Spica, the brightest star in the constellation of Virgo. Jupiter and Spica are 10⅔degrees apart at this time, roughly the span of a fist at arms length.

If you are successful in catching a glimpse of the changing configuration of this celestial trio on the nights of 30June and 1July, reflect on the knowledge that Jupiter (distance 491million miles, or 790million kilometres) lies about 2,000 times farther away than the Moon. And at a distance of about 250 light-years, Spica is a staggering 3million times more distant than Jupiter!

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First quarter Moon meets Jupiter and Spica in the evening sky - Astronomy Now Online

Your Connected Devices Are Screwing Up Astronomy – WIRED

By now, Here Are Some Stupid Things on the Internet of Things has become a full-on article genre . Theres even a Tumblr dedicated to the idea: We Put a Chip in It, its called.

In some visions of the future, smart devices capture, quantify, and control most aspects of daily life. The oven knows you forgot about your cookies and cools them off for you at peak crisped-edginess. The fan knows you have entered the room and desire a breeze. The pillow knows when you start snoring and vibrates so you shift in your sleep. Alexa can order you one! OK, Google?

Heres the thing, though: For those chips in those devices to do any good, they have to communicate with the outside world, and the outside world has to talk back. Andlike most communications magicthat often happens via radio waves.

The increasing number of smart objects on Earth (in addition to higher-power and longer-range WiFi-beaming satellites, car radars, and ubiquitous cell coverage) causes problems for scientists who want to look beyond our planet: Astronomers are finding it harder and harder to detect faint radio signals from space, which sometimes come in on the same frequencies as human technology. Scientists, industry, and the government are trying to share a spectrum so crowded many call it a crisis.

Right now, the FCC regulates the use of the radio spectrum. And it saves some bands, or ranges of frequencies, mostly for radio astronomy. Around 1,400 megahertz, for example, astronomers can fairly safely look for neutral hydrogen. A bit higher, near 1,600 megahertz, the FCC has protections for hydroxyl observations. In fully protected bands, like hydrogen's, no one elsenot a smart toothbrush maker or a cell phone providercan broadcast at those frequencies.

The rest of the FCC-allocated spectrum is split among 29 other services, like broadcasting, amateur, mobile, and meteorological aids. Not all technologies require licenses to use specific frequencies (including many Internet of Things things). But within some of the FCC's slices, companies do vie for specific sections. Cell providers, for instance, paid more than $19 billion earlier this year for 84 megahertz of bandwidth that television broadcasters used to use.

And that b$g number should tell you something: Those slices are precious. It's simple supply and demand. Which means those wedges reserved exclusively for radio astronomy? Someone would really like to use them to make money.

Because this is academia, theres a committee for that: the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Radio Frequencies ( CORF! ). And on July 1, astronomer Liese vanZee will become its new head, leading the group of scientists who (try to) help guide the governmentsand the worldsallocation of radio resources so scientists can study galaxies without confiscating your Samsung Galaxy.

VanZees research mostly uses one of the ultra-protected bandsaround frequencies of 1,420 megahertz, where cosmic hydrogen beams out its emissions. So shes got a lot less to worry about, personally, than some radio astronomers who study the complex organic molecules that send emit at the same frequency as anticollision radar . Still, even in vanZees supposedly science-only section of spectrum, problems pop up. It doesn't prevent people from deciding to broadcast there, she says. That often happens unintentionally, in the form of harmonics , or accidental overtones with frequencies exactly 2, 3, 4, etc. times higher than intended one.

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In preparation for an upcoming meeting of the World Radiocommunication Conference , vanZees committee will provide input to attending leaders on some new spectrum between 275 and 450 gigahertz. With the lower frequencies so crowded, people are pushing higher (even though the technology to do that isn't mature), and moving into previously un-allocated spectrum.

But theres a big problem: A brand-new, billion-dollar telescope in Chilethe Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, or ALMAjust opened its eyes a few years ago, staring into space in that radio range. If you want to study molecules in our atmosphere or other parts of our galaxy or other galaxies, that's a part of the spectrum you want to be using, says vanZee. If a bunch of communications types start broadcasting all up in there, that billion-dollar instrument won't be able to do its job.

Now, vanZee isnt saying everyone except astronomers should become luddites to save astronomy. It's really tempting for the science community to put their foot down and say, No no no, she says. But, in fact, we do want to work with industry.

Both sides can work to minimize head butting: Astronomers can keep building their radio telescopes in the worlds wilds, far from the hordes of Blueteeth and cell towers and Teslas. And they can build interferometerssets of smaller telescopes that work together as one, which help astronomers distinguish between terrestrial and celestial signalsinstead of standalone dishes.

For industrys part, it can say sorry when it creates harmonics, and then fix them. That's good for everyone. You're wasting energy if youre transmitting outside of your band, vanZee says. And the FCC could give both sides more leeway: Put some blank space between astronomys sacred bands and the communication bands, so industry can be a little sloppy without obscuring the universe.

That's still an old way of thinking about things, though, says Darpathe defense research agency that brought you this crawling jellyfish donut robot. "Allocating" the spectrum? So rigid, so pass. The way forward is not to tell radio-emitters exactly what to do, but to liberate them, let them decide for themselves.

The old model worked relatively well for more than a century. But its no longer practical, in Darpa's opinion, to have devices that operate at a set, static frequency. This is the basis of the agency's new Spectrum Collaboration Challenge (similar to a challenge from a few years ago ): Outsiders create devices that can choose, on the fly, what frequency range will work best at that moment, based on the broadcasting characteristics of other nearby devicesincluding those that are also flipping between frequencies.

If we want to eliminate the inefficiencies that exist today," says Paul Tilghman, head of the challenge, "we want to manage the spectrum at machine speeds, not people speeds. Thirty teams, selected in January, are now preparing for the first tournament in December , where their radio-broadcasters will battle-of-the-bots it out.

The military, and so Darpa, is interested in this because its many unmanned platforms drones in the water and the air, satellites in orbitneed consistent, uninterrupted communications. But whatever comes out of the competition can make its way into industry, too. Into your toothbrush that tells you if your teeth are clean!

Super-smart broadcasters like that could be both good and bad news for radio astronomy. The good news: The algorithms that help the machines figure out which frequencies to use can easily include things like a "never use 1,420 megahertz."

The bad news: When astronomers want to know if a signal comes from space, they sometimes depend on knowing what a given source of human-made radio waves looks like. "Yes, that's definitely the neighbors' iRobot ," they may be able to say. But not if iRobot is always changing.

The important thing, however radio use evolves, is to share, smartly, and to talk it all through first. Because as cool as it is to communicate at home, doing so irresponsibly could cut humans off from space. If you fill the spectrum with man-made emissions, you will never be able to understand certain parts of the universe, says vanZee.

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Astronomers spot a pair of orbiting supermassive black holes – Astronomy Magazine

Supermassive black holes are the monstrous objects found in the centers of galaxies. The Milky Ways own supermassive black hole weighs nearly 4 million times more than our Sun. Although massive and often active, these objects are still difficult to see in the traditional sense of the word for many reasons. But now, using the uniquely sharp vision afforded by the National Science Foundations Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), astronomers have spotted for the first time a pair of supermassive black holes orbiting each other in a galaxy 750 million light-years away.

The discovery, which appears in the Astrophysical Journal, utilized radio information to determine that the two supermassive black holes are a mere 24 light-years apart and have a combined mass of about 15 billion times the mass of our Sun. It takes them about 30,000 years to complete a single orbit.

The pair of supermassive black holes is located in a giant elliptical galaxy called 0402+379, which was first observed to have two core regions in data taken in 2003 and 2005 with the VLBA. The VLBA is part of the Long Baseline Observatory, a radio telescope system utilizing 10 antennas located between Hawaiis Big Island and St. Croix. Such a long baseline, or large distance between the dishes, allows astronomers to combine the data taken from each to observe objects with significantly greater detail than using one dish alone.

New observations of 0402+379 were taken in 2009 and 2015; when this information was combined with the previous observations, astronomers was finally able to identify the motion of two distinct supermassive black holes. This is the first pair of black holes to be seen as separate objects that are moving with respect to each other, and thus makes this the first black-hole visual binary, said Greg Taylor of the University of New Mexico, one of the studys authors, in a press release.

Why does this galaxy have two supermassive black holes? The presence of two such objects simply indicates that the galaxy has undergone a merger in the relatively recent cosmic past. When two galaxies combine, each contributes a supermassive black hole to the final product; in time, these two supermassive black holes should also combine, leaving behind a single object. In the case of 0402+379, this just hasnt happened yet, and likely wont happen for a few million years yet. Thats how long it will take for the orbits of the supermassive black holes to spiral inward via the loss of energy through gravitational radiation, such as the gravitational waves detected by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO).

Such pairs of supermassive black holes should actually be quite common, given the fact that galaxy mergers are themselves common events. Mergers are how galaxies grow over cosmic time, morphing from young, active spiral galaxies into old, quiescent ellipticals. Now that we've been able to measure orbital motion in one such pair, we're encouraged to seek other, similar pairs. We may find others that are easier to study, explained Karishma Bansal, a graduate student at the University of New Mexico and lead author of the study.

But the confirmation of a pair of supermassive black holes in 0402+379 isnt the end of astronomers interest in this galaxy. We need to continue observing this galaxy to improve our understanding of the orbit, and of the masses of the black holes, stressed Taylor. This pair of black holes offers us our first chance to study how such systems interact.

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Astronomy.com will host a live feed on Asteroid Day – Astronomy Magazine

International Asteroid Day 2017 is nearly upon us. How will you spend it?

Astronomy.com is pleased to host the official live Asteroid Day stream this Friday, June 30, 2017, beginning at 3am Central European Time (10pm Eastern Time on Thursday evening). This years broadcast will be the first ever 24-hour live broadcast focusing on space and, specifically, asteroids. The intention of the broadcast is to spark and foster global conversations about not only asteroids and their effects on Earth, but also current and future missions to asteroids and Earth-based asteroid science projects.

As remnants from the formation of the solar system, asteroids have much to tell us about the solar nebula from which our planets formed, as well as the conditions throughout the early solar system. But because they are so small, they are difficult to see with any great detail from Earth, despite the fact that we can chart their paths relatively easily with small telescopes. There are several asteroid-centric space missions currently operating (including Dawn and OSIRIS-REx), as well as missions currently in the planning stages (Lucy and Psyche). Each mission reveals a little more about these enigmatic yet essential objects, helping us to piece together the puzzle of how our solar system formed and evolved over the past 4.6 billion years.

The Asteroid Day broadcast will include footage from Luxembourg, as well as programming from NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). You can tune in here on our website for the live broadcast, or find out more on the official Asteroid Day website.

The 2017 International Asteroid Day broadcast is made possible with support from OHB, SES, BCE, and the Luxembourg Government.

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Astronomy.com will host a live feed on Asteroid Day - Astronomy Magazine

MSU Astronomy Students Look to the Sky to Listen for Good Vibrations – KSMU Radio

Missouri State University Astronomy professor Mike Reed, likens his and his students research into vibrations of stars, to listening to a full orchestra play one long note, and picking out the sounds of individual instruments.

Mike Reed says The Kepler Space Telescope, launched in 2009, makes that research much easier, and more successful. Kepler is a huge innovation in that unlike the Hubble Telescope , which orbits the Earth every 90 minutes, letting the Sun, Moon and Earth get in its way, Kepler is far enough away so that the Earth is but a tiny, tiny dot in that telescope. That allows it to look at one spot for virtually as long as the telescope can last. Kepler is now in an extended mission which should continue until sometime in 2018.

Mike Reed says Kepler data is downloaded to a public archive, and is available to anyone who wants it, however: We do have to propose for our targets, what Kepler looks at, and we apply for our targets. Its a competitive proposal, and when we win targets, it observes those and downloads the data to the public archive, where we get it.

One of the things were doing, Reed says, Is trying to be on the cutting edge of technology, using Kepler of course, to study the vibrations of stars, and doing seismology. Just like studying earthquakes, we study vibrations within stars, to determine what their structures are.

According to Reed, the stars vibration is seen by Kepler as successions of light variations, which can be recorded as sound waves which can be sped up on a time scale for placement in an audio file. Every star gives us something new. When MSU students this data and theyre finding new things, well look at the vibrations together and theyll say, What do You Think This Means? We have to piece together that puzzle, and thats very exciting.

Mike Reed and his students analyze Kepler Space Telescope data inside MSUs Astronomy Lab, located in Kemper Hall, room200.

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MSU Astronomy Students Look to the Sky to Listen for Good Vibrations - KSMU Radio

Institute for Astronomy celebrates 50 years of discovery – UH System Current News

Since its founding on July 1, 1967, the University of Hawaii at Mnoa Institute for Astronomy (IfA) has played a role in almost every significant astronomical discovery. IfA is responsible for the observatories on Maunakea, the most productive astronomy site in the world, and on Haleakal, the world leader in asteroid and Near Earth Object detection. IfA recently celebrated its 50th anniversary.

UH President David Lassner said, The Institute for Astronomy is clearly one of our superstars in research.

IfA graduate and Native Hawaiian Heather Kaluna was born and raised in Phoa on the Island of Hawaii and will begin teaching astronomy as an associate professor at UH Hilo in the fall.

The maintaining and strengthening of IfAs outreach programs, which werent around when I was growing up, are important opportunities to continue nurturing IfAs student body with more of Hawaiis keiki, said Kaluna. She added that IfA outreach programs have the power to fill children with pride in the world class science taking place here at home.

IfA is looking forward to another 50 years of cutting edge astronomy.

On Maunakea, all of the observatories will remain competitive for the foreseeable future. UHs renovated 2.2-meter telescope will be upgraded with a new adaptive optics system. A specialized 10-meter telescope, able to collect thousands of spectra simultaneously, may replace the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. Another important frontier is the Thirty Meter Telescope; IfA remains hopeful that construction will begin in early 2018.

The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, the largest solar telescope in the world, will advance the frontiers of solar physics. The first Pan-STARRS telescope reports more discoveries of solar system objects and supernovae than all other current surveys combined. The second Pan-STARRS telescope will improve the odds of finding new objects in the solar system, especially asteroids that come close to the Earth. The ATLAS telescope, paired with one on Maunaloa, will find dangerous asteroids on a collision course with the Earth. A dedicated high-contrast PLANETS (Polarized Light from Atmospheres of Nearby Extra-Terrestrial Systems) telescope is also planned.

IfA hopes to build additional ATLAS telescopes in the southern hemisphere. There is a proposal for a Hawaii Orbiting Space Telescope to conduct sky surveys, and also the possibility of working jointly with the European Space Agencys Euclid mission to measure the cosmological acceleration of the universe.

IfA Director Gnther Hasinger said, With these wonderful resources and an ongoing investment in our world-class faculty and students, IfA will pursue a vibrant range of research programs, making discoveries we cannot even imagine today. Through our education and community programs, we will engage the next generation of astronomers with the amazing opportunities we enjoy in our own backyard, and ensure that the IfA and Hawaii remain exceptional places for astronomy for at least 50 more years.

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Institute for Astronomy celebrates 50 years of discovery - UH System Current News

It’s in the stars, June 30, 2017 – Daily Advertiser

30 Jun 2017, 2 p.m.

Star Chart puts a virtual planetarium right in your pocket.

OUR Australian skies are sparkling at the moment so why not get outside tonight under the stars from your own backyard.

Sure its cool but you wont be disappointed with so much on offer for now and the start of July.

Remember, the starlight you see coming from all those stars tonight left there hundreds, and in most cases thousands of years ago, and its just arriving now!

ASTRONOMY MADE EASY: Modern apps will find anything in the Aussie night sky for you. Picture: Starwalk

When you stargaze youre looking back in time, said Dave Reneke from Australasian Science magazine.

When you use a telescope youre using a time machine. Cool huh?

If youre new to astronomy the hardest part is learning all those stars.

Relax! Its a lot easier than you think, but you wont do it sitting inside at your keyboard.

Some people say that we spend too much time indoors and not enough time observing the things around us, like the stars and planets.

It puts a virtual planetarium right in your pocket.

But what if your screen, in this case your Smartphone or tablet, can actually help you appreciate the skies more?

Well they can and theyre amazingly simple to use!

Here are some of my favourites, Dave said.

Sky View will identify almost everything above your head at night and its fantastic! If you want an easy target try MoonPhasefor your lunar viewing, then download a free NASA app spotthestation.nasa.gov/sightings to catch the space station passing over your area.

This one is a knockout. On your tablet or laptop download an app called Star Chart.

It puts a virtual planetarium right in your pocket.

It uses state of the art GPS technology that will show you the current location of every star and planet visible from Earth.

Hey, want to see something really cool? Dave said.

After sunset all this week the two stunners, Jupiter and Saturn appear in our winter skies all evening. This is magic! Get the family outside and just marvel at two of the best celestial sights youll see.

Theyll be with us all week then, things change dramatically in August! Venus however steals the show this week because it looks like a brilliant white beacon high overhead. In real terms, the planets are millions of kilometres apart, but to us here on Earth they appear to fairly close together.

It may be cold outside buy winter skies are the clearest. Go look, you may surprise yourself.

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It's in the stars, June 30, 2017 - Daily Advertiser

Rialto Beach road to reopen, astronomy sessions set as Olympic National Park marks birthday – The Seattle Times

Here's the latest roundup of what's open in the park this summer and what's not, and details on summer fun.

Happy birthday, Olympic National Park. Thursday, June 29, is the 79th anniversary of the day in 1938 that Congress created the park.

You can help celebrate with a visit this Independence Day weekend. Heres the latest roundup of whats open in the park this summer and whats not. The top of the news: Access to the parks scenic Rialto Beach will reopen this weekend after six weeks of repair work to Mora Road.

Its also the season for ranger programs, plus special star-gazing astronomy sessions up high on Hurricane Ridge and full-moon hikes on Hurricane Hill.

Heres an area-by-area update provided by the park:

Pacific Coast

Kalaloch, Mora and Ozette are Olympic National Parks road-accessible coastal destinations.Kalaloch and Ozetteare open, including all roads, campgrounds and trailheads.Mora Campground is open.Mora Road has been closed for six weeks for flood damage repair work just beyond the campground with no access to Rialto Beach. The road is scheduled to reopen for the Fourth of July holiday weekend. This project restored the road to two lanes and addressed additional slope instabilities.Visitors should call the Road & Weather Hotline at 360-565-3131 for current road conditions.

The Kalaloch and Mora campgrounds both provide drinking water and flush toilets. The Ozette Campground is primitive, with pit toilets, and drinking water is available now through mid-October. South Beach Campground, a primitive campground located just south of Kalaloch is open through September 25.

The Kalaloch Information Station is open daily through Sept. 30.

Kalaloch Lodge is open year-round with cabins, lodge rooms, dining, gift shop, and a small store. For more information, checkwww.thekalalochlodge.com.

Staircase

The Staircase Campground is open with drinking water and flush toilets available through Sept. 30.

Dosewallips

The Dosewallips Road remains closed due to a washout outside the park boundaries in Olympic National Forest, so access to the primitive campground is walk-in only (6.5 miles).

Deer Park

Deer Park Road and campground are open. The campground provides primitive camping, with pit toilets and no drinking water.

Hurricane Ridge Road and Heart O the Hills

The Hurricane Ridge Road is now open 24 hours a day, weather permitting. Visitors should call the Road & Weather Hotline at 360-565-3131 for current road and weather conditions.

The Hurricane Hill Road is open.

Obstruction Point Road is now open for the first 3 miles to Waterhole. Park officials anticipate opening the remaining section of Obstruction Point Road by early July.

The Hurricane Ridge Visitor Center is staffed daily through Sept. 30. The Hurricane Ridge Gift Shop & Snack Bar on the lower level of the Hurricane Ridge Visitor Center is open daily through October 15. Checkwww.olympicnationalparks.comfor more information.

The Olympic National Park Visitor Center in Port Angeles is open daily except for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Summer hours of operation are from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Heart O the Hills Campground is open year round with drinking water and flush toilets available.

Elwha Valley

The Olympic Hot Springs Road is open to the Glines Canyon Spillway Overlook. The remainder of the Olympic Hot Springs Road is closed to all access during work on the Boulder Creek Trail. This project involves the use of heavy equipment for the demolition and removal of the Crystal Creek bridge and installation of an alternate route and creek crossing at that location. For visitor and employee safety, there will be no access above the Glines Canyon Overlook on Olympic Hot Springs Road until later this summer.

The Whiskey Bend Road is open to the trailhead.

There are currently no campgrounds in the Elwha Valley. Campgrounds in the area were destroyed by flooding in recent years.

Lake Crescent

Lake Crescent Lodge is open for the season and will remain open through Jan. 2, 2018, offering a range of lodging options, a dining room, boat rentals and a gift shop.

Fairholme Campground is open through Oct. 2, with drinking water and flush toilets available.Fairholme Storewill open daily May 26-Sept. 4.

Log Cabin Resort is open through Sept. 30 for lodging, RV and tent camping, a boat launch, dining room and store.

La Poel picnic area is open for day use.

Sol Duc Valley

The Sol Duc Road is generally open 24 hours a day, unless road work or weather conditions cause it to close temporarily.

The Sol Duc Campground is operated by Sol Duc Hot Springs Resort and is open for the season with flush toilets and drinking water available through Oct. 29. Reservations are accepted for up to 75 percent of the campsites, with the remainder available on a first-come, first-served basis. Reservations for the Sol Duc Campground can be made online atwww.recreation.gov. After Oct. 29, Loop A of the campground will be open for primitive use when the road is open.

The Sol Duc Hot Springs Resort is open for the season with lodging, dining, hot spring pools and a small store. The resort will be open through Oct. 29.

Hoh Rain Forest

The Hoh Rain Forest Road is generally open 24 hours a day, unless road work or weather conditions cause it to close temporarily. The Hoh Rain Forest Campground is open year round with drinking water and flush toilets available.

The Hoh Rain Forest Visitor Center is open daily through Sept. 30.

Queets Valley

The Lower and Upper Queets roads are both open 24 hours a day, unless road work or weather conditions cause temporary closures. The Queets Campground is open for primitive camping with pit toilets and no drinking water.

Quinault Rain Forest

The Quinault Loop Road, which includes the Quinault North Shore and South Shore roads, is open.The North Fork Road is also open.

The six-mile Graves Creek Road is open. RVs and trailers are not permitted because of road conditions.

Quinault area roads are typically open 24 hours a day, unless temporarily closed by road work or weather conditions. The Graves Creek Campground and North Fork Campground are both open for primitive camping with pit toilets and no drinking water.

Park trails and Wilderness Information Center

The Olympic National Park Wilderness Information Center, located at the Olympic National Park Visitor Center in Port Angeles, is currently open8 a.m.-5 p.m. Sunday-Thursdayand8 a.m.-6 p.m. Friday-Saturday.Visitors are encouraged to stop by or call the Wilderness Information Center at 360-565-3100 for current trail reports, summer hiking safety tips and trip-planning suggestions. Such information is alsoavailable at the parks website.

Even at low elevations, hikers are reminded to use caution and be aware of downed trees, trail damage, high and swift creek crossings, and changing weather conditions.

Ranger programs and astronomy events

Summer ranger programs have started as well as the Astronomy/Night Sky Programs at Hurricane Ridge. The program schedule for all of the park is in the park newspaper on page 4:Summer Bugler 2017.

For astronomy programs, meet Master Observer John Goar at Hurricane Ridge Visitor Center for a one-hour program with telescopes. Look for the rings of Saturn or a distant galaxy. Schedule: July 13-20 at 11 p.m.; July 21-July 26 at 10:30 p.m.; August 12-19 at 10 p.m.; August 22-26 at 9:30 p.m.

Full moon on Hurricane Hill

Learn constellations from astronomer John Goar on Hurricane Hill. Meet at the Hurricane Hill trailhead. As the sun sets and the full moon rises, hike at your own pace up the 1.6-mile, partially-paved trail, climbing 700 feet to the summit. At the top, Goar will point out constellations. Bring flashlights and wear sturdy shoes. Schedule: July 8 and 9 at 9:15 p.m. to about 11:30 p.m.; August 6 and 7 at 7:30 p.m. to about 10 p.m.; September 4 at 6:45 p.m. to about 9:15 p.m.

If skies are cloudy, programs will be canceled. For program status, call the park recording at 360-565-3131 after 2 p.m. the day of the program.

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Rialto Beach road to reopen, astronomy sessions set as Olympic National Park marks birthday - The Seattle Times

Artificial brain helps Gaia catch speeding stars – Astronomy Now Online

Artists impression of two stars speeding from the centre of our Galaxy, the Milky Way, to its outskirts. These hypervelocity stars move at several hundred of km/s, much faster than the galactic average. Credit: ESA

With the help of software that mimics a human brain, ESAs Gaia satellite spotted six stars zipping at high speed from the centre of our galaxy to its outskirts. This could provide key information about some of the most obscure regions of the Milky Way.

The results were presented Monday at the annual meeting of the European Astronomical Society, EWASS 2017, in Prague, Czech Republic.

Our galactic home, the Milky Way, houses more than a hundred billion stars, all kept together by gravity. Most are located in a flattened structure the galactic disc with a bulge at its centre, while the remaining stars are distributed in a wider spherical halo extending out to about 650,000 light-years from the centre.

Stars are not motionless in the galaxy but move around its centre with a variety of velocities depending on their location for example, the Sun orbits at about 220 km/s, while the average in the halo is about 150 km/s. Occasionally, a few stars exceed these already quite impressive velocities. Some are accelerated by a close stellar encounter or the supernova explosion of a stellar companion, resulting in runaway stars with speeds up to a few hundred km/s above the average.

A new class of high-speed stars was discovered just over a decade ago. Swooping through the galaxy at several hundred of km/s, they are the result of past interactions with the supermassive black hole that sits at the centre of the Milky Way and, with a mass of four million Suns, governs the orbits of stars in its vicinity.

These hypervelocity stars are extremely important to study the overall structure of our Milky Way, says Elena Maria Rossi from Leiden University in the Netherlands, who presented Gaias discovery of six new such stars today at the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science in Prague.

These are stars that have travelled great distances through the galaxy but can be traced back to its core an area so dense and obscured by interstellar gas and dust that it is normally very difficult to observe so they yield crucial information about the gravitational field of the Milky Way from the centre to its outskirts.

Unfortunately, fast-moving stars are extremely difficult to find in the stellar haystack of the Milky Way, as current surveys list the speed of at most a few hundred thousand stars.

To find them, scientists have been looking for young, massive stars that would stand out as interlopers in the old stellar population of the galactic halo. Given away by their out-of-place age, these stars are likely to have received an extra kick to reach the halo. Further measurements of their speeds and estimates of their past paths can confirm if they are indeed hypervelocity stars that were shoved away from the centre of the Milky Way.

So far, only 20 such stars have been spotted. Owing to the specific selection of this method, these are all young stars with a mass 2.5 to 4 times that of the Sun. However, scientists believe that many more stars of other ages or masses are speeding through the galaxy but remain unrevealed by this type of search.

The billion-star census being performed by Gaia offers a unique opportunity, so Elena and her collaborators started wondering how to use such a vast dataset to optimise the search for fast-moving stars.

After testing various methods, they turned to software through which the computer learns from previous experience.

In the end, we chose to use an artificial neural network, which is software designed to mimic how our brain works, explains Tommaso Marchetti, PhD student at Leiden University and lead author of the paper describing the results published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

After proper training, it can learn how to recognise certain objects or patterns in a huge dataset. In our case, we taught it to spot hypervelocity stars in a stellar catalogue like the one compiled with Gaia.

As part of Elenas research project to study these stars, the team started developing and training this program in the first half of 2016, in order to be ready for the first release of Gaia data a few months later, on 14 September.

Besides a map of over a billion stellar positions, this first release included a smaller catalogue with distances and motions for two million stars, combining observations from Gaias first year with those from ESAs Hipparcos mission, which charted the sky more than two decades ago. Referred to as the Tycho-Gaia Astrometric Solution, or TGAS, this resource is a taster for future catalogues that will be based solely on Gaia data.

On the day of the data release, we ran our brand new algorithm on the two million stars of TGAS, says Rossi. In just one hour, the artificial brain had already reduced the dataset to some 20,000 potential high-speed stars, reducing its size to about 1%. A further selection including only measurements above a certain precision in distance and motion brought this down to 80 candidate stars.

The team looked at these 80 stars in further detail. Since only information on the stars motion across the sky are included in the TGAS data, they had to find additional clues to infer their velocity, looking at previous stellar catalogues or performing new observations. Combining all these data, we found that six stars can be traced back to the galactic centre, all with velocities above 360 km/s, says Tommaso.

Most importantly, the scientists succeeded at probing a different population from the 20 stars that were already known: the newly identified stars all have lower masses, similar to the mass of our Sun. One of the six stars seems to be speeding so fast, at over 500 km/s, that it is no longer bound by the gravity of the galaxy and will eventually leave. But the other, slightly slower stars, are perhaps even more fascinating, as scientists are eager to learn what slowed them down the invisible dark matter that is thought to pervade the Milky Way might also have played a role.

While the new program was optimised to search for stars that were accelerated at the centre of the galaxy, it also identified five of the more traditional runaway stars, which owe their high speeds to stellar encounters elsewhere in the Milky Way.

This result showcases the great potential of Gaia opening up new avenues to investigate the structure and dynamics of our galaxy, says Anthony Brown from Leiden University, a co-author on the study and chair of the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium. The scientists are looking forward to using data from the next Gaia release, which is planned for April 2018 and will include distances and motions on the sky for over a billion stars, as well as velocities for a subset.

Dealing with a billion stars, rather than the two million explored so far, is an enormous challenge, so the team is busy upgrading their program to handle such a huge catalogue and to uncover the many speeding stars that will be lurking in the data. The sheer number of stars probed by Gaia is an exciting but also challenging opportunity for astronomers, and we are glad to see that they are happily embracing the challenge, says Timo Prusti, Gaia project scientist at ESA.

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Artificial brain helps Gaia catch speeding stars - Astronomy Now Online

Celebrate Asteroid Day with NASA’s special broadcast – Astronomy Magazine

Back on June 30, 1908, the biggest recorded potentially asteroid-related impact event occurred near the Stony Tunguska River in Russia. Now, we honor June 30 as International Asteroid Day, a day to raise awareness about asteroids, how they impact Earth, and what we can do to protect the planet.

To honor the day, NASA is featuring a special TV program with the Planetary Defense Coordination Office and other projects that study near-Earth objects (NEOs).

The program will feature several segments that will go over information about NEOs such as how they are found and characterized as well as what to do in the event of a potential impact threat. Viewers can also send in questions for the broadcast via social media by using the hashtag #AskNASA in their post.

The Asteroid Day broadcast will air on NASA TV as well as NASAs website starting at noon EDT.

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Celebrate Asteroid Day with NASA's special broadcast - Astronomy Magazine

Astronomers detect orbital motion in pair of supermassive black holes – Astronomy Now Online

Artists conception of the pair of supermassive black holes at the center of the galaxy 0402+379, 750 million light-years from Earth.Credit: Josh Valenzuela/University of New Mexico

Using the supersharp radio vision of the National Science Foundations Very Long Baseline Array, astronomers have made the first detection of orbital motion in a pair of supermassive black holes in a galaxy some 750 million light-years from Earth.

The two black holes, with a combined mass 15 billion times that of the Sun, are likely separated by only about 24 light-years, extremely close for such a system.

This is the first pair of black holes to be seen as separate objects that are moving with respect to each other, and thus makes this the first black-hole visual binary, said Greg Taylor, of the University of New Mexico (UNM).

Supermassive black holes, with millions or billions of times the mass of the Sun, reside at the cores of most galaxies. The presence of two such monsters at the center of a single galaxy means that the galaxy merged with another some time in the past. In such cases, the two black holes themselves may eventually merge in an event that would produce gravitational waves that ripple across the universe.

We believe that the two supermassive black holes in this galaxy will merge, said Karishma Bansal, a graduate student at UNM, adding that the merger will come at least millions of years in the future.

The galaxy, an elliptical galaxy called 0402+379, after its location in the sky, was first observed in 1995. It was studied in 2003 and 2005 with the VLBA. Based on finding two cores in the galaxy, instead of one, Taylor and his collaborators concluded in 2006 that it contained a pair of supermassive black holes.

The latest research, which Taylor and his colleagues are reporting in the Astrophysical Journal, incorporates new VLBA observations from 2009 and 2015, along with re-analysis of the earlier VLBA data. This work revealed motion of the two cores, confirming that the two black holes are orbiting each other. The scientists initial calculations indicate that they complete a single orbit in about 30,000 years.

We need to continue observing this galaxy to improve our understanding of the orbit, and of the masses of the black holes, Taylor said. This pair of black holes offers us our first chance to study how such systems interact, he added.

The astronomers also hope to discover other such systems. The galaxy mergers that bring two supermassive black holes close together are considered to be a common process in the universe, so astronomers expect that such binary pairs should be common.

Now that weve been able to measure orbital motion in one such pair, were encouraged to seek other, similar pairs. We may find others that are easier to study, Bansal said. 04 The VLBA, part of the Long Baseline Observatory, is a continent-wide radio telescope system using ten, 240-ton dish antennas distributed from Hawaii to St. Croix in the Caribbean. All ten antennas work together as a single telescope with the greatest resolving power available to astronomy. That extraordinary resolving power allows scientists to make extremely fine measurements of objects and motions in the sky, such as those done for the research on 0402+379.

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Astronomers detect orbital motion in pair of supermassive black holes - Astronomy Now Online

Protostar May Have Triggered Formation of Another, Younger Star – Sci-News.com

Astronomers using NSFs Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) have found new evidence suggesting that a jet of fast-moving material ejected from an intermediate-mass protostar known as FIR 3 may have triggered the formation of a younger protostar, FIR 4.

The protostar FIR 3 with outflow that may have triggered the formation of the younger protostar FIR 4. Pullouts are individual VLA images of each protostar. Image credit: Osorio et al / NRAO / AUI / NSF.

The orientation of the jet, the speed of its material, and the distance all are right for this scenario, said Dr. Mayra Osorio, an astronomer at the Astrophysical Institute of Andalucia in Spain.

Dr. Osorio and co-authors studied the Orion Molecular Cloud complex, a giant cloud of gas approximately 1,400 light-years from Earth in the constellation Orion.

The region has been studied before, but the team carried out a series of VLA observations at different radio frequencies that revealed new details.

Images of the pair show that the younger protostar, FIR 4 (also known as Herschel Orion Protostar Survey 108, or HOPS 108), lies in the path of the outflow from the older, FIR 3 (also known as HOPS 370).

This alignment led University of Tokyo astronomer Dr. Yoshito Shimajiri and co-authors to suggest in 2008 that the shock of the fast-moving material hitting a clump of gas had triggered the clumps collapse into a protostar.

We found knots of material within this outflow and were able to measure their speeds, said Dr. Ana K. Diaz-Rodriguez, also from the Astrophysical Institute of Andalucia.

The VLA observations gave important support to the idea that the older stars outflow had triggered the youngers stars formation process.

The scientists suggest that the jet from FIR 3 began to hit the clump of gas about 100,000 years ago, starting the process of collapse that eventually led to the formation of FIR 4.

Four other protostars in the region also could be the result of similar interactions, but the researchers found evidence for shocks only in the case of FIR 4.

While the evidence for this triggering scenario is strong, one fact appears to contradict it.

The younger star seems to be moving rapidly in a way that indicates it should have been formed elsewhere, apart from the region impacted by the older stars outflow.

This motion, however, might be an illusion possibly created by an outflow from the newer star itself, Dr. Osorio said.

We want to continue to observe it over a period of time to resolve this question.

The results were published in the May 3, 2017 issue of the Astrophysical Journal (arXiv.org preprint).

_____

Mayra Osorio et al. 2017. Star Formation Under the Outflow: The Discovery of a Non-thermal Jet from OMC-2 FIR 3 and Its Relationship to the Deeply Embedded FIR 4 Protostar. ApJ 840, 36; doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/aa6975

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Protostar May Have Triggered Formation of Another, Younger Star - Sci-News.com

Viewing the MIlky Way – AccuWeather.com (blog)

Astronomy blog By Dave Samuhel, AccuWeather senior meteorologist 6/28/2017, 6:38:51 PM

Check out a super high res version of this image here

Every star you see in the night sky is in the Milky Way. In fact, every individual star you can see with the naked eye is in a small part of the Milky Way, nearest Earth. Our galaxy is huge!

The Milky Way galaxy contains somewhere between 200 and 400 billion stars. What we refer to the Milky Way you view in the night sky is the actual center of the galaxy. The milky looking cloud that stretches from horizon to horizon is the galactic center of the Milky Way. The cloud is made up of lots and lots of stars. Click on the image above to get an idea of the amount of stars we are talking about.

AccuWeather Astronomy friend Ron Shawley recently shot a meteor crossing the Milky Way.

The problem viewing the Milky Way is the fact that it is rather dim. The cluster of stars that make up the galactic center of galaxy is much further away than the individual stars you can see with the naked eye.

The Earth is about 26,000 light-years from the center of the galaxy. The closest stars are just over 4 light-years away; 23,600,000,000,000 miles away! So we are some 15,340,000,000,000,000. Yes, that is 15 quadrillion miles away!

So, you need a dark area to see the Milky Way clearly. The problem is, there are fewer and fewer of these places.

The brighter the color, the higher the light pollution. Image courtesy of World Atlas of Light

Zooming in on North America

The brighter the color, the higher the light pollution. Image courtesy of World Atlas of Light

Finding the Milky Way The number one thing to do to ensure you have a chance of seeing the Milky Way is to let your eyes adjust to the darkness. Go at least 15-20 minutes in the dark let those pupils grow large enough to take in all the night sky has to offer!

While you are waiting for your eyes to adjust, find the Summer Triangle. It is made up of 3 of the brightest stars in the night sky. They are easy to spot later in the evening and through the overnight hours when they are high in the sky. The Milky Way flows right through this trio of stars.

Image courtesy of Lonley Speck. How to find the Milky Way

If you are looking in a northerly direction, use Cassiopia. This famous constellation looks like the letter "W". The Milky Way goes right through this constellation as well!

While Cassiopia generally shows the northern extent of the Milky Way, use Scorpius and Sagittarius to see the southern extent.

Image courtesy of Gold Paint Photography. How to find the Milky Way

There are some good mobile apps out there to help you find the Milky Way, but I would recommend using these apps indoors and putting your phone away before attempting to view the night sky. That phone light will kill your night vision. If you're looking for apps, here is a great write-up about what is available 5 Awesome Astronomy Apps

You will be more likely to see the Milky Way in the evening sky later in summer. Through early summer it is best viewed after midnight.

Good luck seeing the Milky Way! Look during the next few nights before the moon dominates the night sky next week. Thanks for reading and just look up, you never know what you will see!

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Viewing the MIlky Way - AccuWeather.com (blog)

Betelgeuse is lumpy! Except not really! – SYFY WIRE (blog)

A new observation of the bright star Betelgeuse shows it's odd.

[Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/E. OGorman/P. Kervella]

You can see it in that image (much bigger versions are available, too). The orange color isn't real; the observations were made using the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA), which observes light way outside the color range our eyes can see. But the bright spot to the upper left is real, as is the gigantic lump on the left side, too. But here's the thing: That lump isn't really a lump, at least not a physical protrusion in the side of the star. It's actually a place where the star is warmer and denser, making it look like a lump.

I know, that's weird. Let me explain.

First, Betelgeuse is a red supergiant, a star much more massive than the Sun (about 20 times the Sun's mass) and nearing the end of its life. When a star like that runs out of available hydrogen in its core to fuse into helium, the core heats up. The gas above the core responds by expanding (just like a hot air balloon; when you heat a gas it expands). Furthermore, Betelgeuse is already on the next step, fusing helium into carbon and oxygen. That creates a huge amount of energy that gets dumped into the outer layers. When that happens a star's size increases hugely; depending on how you measure it, Betelgeuse is about a thousand times wider than the Sun!

Normally, stars are far too small to see them as anything other than points of light. But Betelgeuse is so big that our most powerful telescopes can resolve it into a disk. The ALMA image shows it to be about 0.1 arcseconds wide. Arcseconds are an angular measure; there are 60 arcseconds to an arcminute and 60 arcminutes to a degree. The Moon appears in the sky to be 0.5 degrees = 30 arcminutes = 1800 arcseconds across. That's 18,000 times wider than Betelgeuse!

So just seeing Betelgeuse at all as a disk in these images is pretty amazing. But it gets better.

When a massive star expands into a red supergiant, counterintuitively, despite the extra energy, the gas cools: That same energy is spread out over a lot more volume, so each cubic centimeter of the star has less energy in it. When the outer layer cools it goes from being blue-white hot to reddish, dropping to a temperature of a few thousand degrees Celsius, cooler than the Sun.

I described how this works in my episode of Crash Course Astronomy: High Mass Stars (at about the 2:30 mark):

Betelgeuse doesn't have an actual surface. It's a gas, and a pretty rarefied one at that. The density deep inside it is quite high, but by the time you get out into that outer part the density can be so low it's pretty much a hot vacuum.

So a funny thing happens when you look at it. The kind of light you see from the star depends on the density and the temperature of the gas emitting it. Deep down, it's hot and dense and the light is bluer a wavelength of a few hundred billionths of a meter. Up near the top, the gas is cooler and thinner and is redder, with a wavelength twice as long. Gas farther out from the center emits even longer-wavelength light, with a wavelength around a millimeter or so.

Thats the kind of light ALMA is sensitive to. So what you're seeing isn't really the surface of Betelgeuse which it doesn't have anyway but just the gas in it that emits at that wavelength. The size you measure for a star depends on what kind of light you're looking at!

This is where that lump comes in. At a certain distance from the center of Betelgeuse, the gas is the right temperature and density to emit the light ALMA sees. Outside of that, it's cooler and doesn't emit that light, so it looks black. There is still gas there, but we just can't see it in the ALMA image. However, for some reason, in that one spot on the edge of the star there is some gas still warm and dense enough to emit millimeter light, and so we see it in the ALMA image as a lump, a local patch of gas warmer (and/or denser) than the gas around it.

That bright spot stretching across the upper left of the star may be the same sort of phenomenon as the lump, but we see it against the disk of the star, so it looks like a bright spot.

So what's causing this? It's not clear. It may be magnetic in origin. The Sun has a pretty strong and complicated magnetic field, and that can cause all sorts of odd features we can see. Betelgeuse has strong convection hot blobs of gas rising from the interior, like water boiling in a pan and we know that these blobs can have their own embedded magnetic field (the Sun does the same sort of thing). It may be we're seeing the top of a strong convection cell in Betelgeuse, with the gas heated by the magnetic field it carries.

I know this may seem a little esoteric, but it's actually pretty important. For one thing, we know that red supergiant stars blow tremendous winds of gas, like a super solar wind (Betelgeuse has a wind a million times stronger than the Sun's!). But we don't really understand the mechanism behind it. Magnetic fields may be important there, so studying Betelgeuse's upper atmosphere could lead to insight there.

Also, stars like Betelgeuse do one more thing at the ends of their lives: They explode. Like, supernova explode, sending huge amounts of gas several times the mass of the Sun screaming outward at a significant fraction of the speed of light! Betelgeuse is about 8 million years old and may only have about 100,000 years left before it goes bye-bye. At a distance of 650 light-years or so, it's probably too far from us to physically impact us, but it'll be bright when it explodes, about as bright as the full Moon. You'll be able to see it in the daytime.

These explosions create the heavy elements we need to live: The iron in our blood, for example, came from a star that blew up long before the Sun was born. Studying Betelgeuse gives us insight into this mechanism, which in turn is critical for our being here at all to study it!

Beyond that rather philosophical direction of thought, Betelgeuse is just amazing to observe. In 2013, astronomers observed that it had blown out an arc of gas as big as our solar system! It's also traveling through space, and the gas blowing away from the star will soon (well, in 5,000 years) hit a sheet of gas that will distort and interact with the star's wind. That should make for pretty pictures.

And, as you may know, Betelgeuse marks the right shoulder of the constellation Orion, and is bright enough that we can actually see its reddish color with the naked eye. I like showing it to people through my telescope when I can; the color is amazing, and its so bright it's like a ruddy gem in the eyepiece.

And I like knowing that, as beautiful as it is by eye, what we see is just one small bit of what Betelgeuse really is. If it had a surface, we'd barely be scratching it.

[The image at the top of this post is Orion by Rogelio Bernal Andreo; Betelgeuse is the bright orange star at the upper right. This is the best image of the constellation I have ever seen, and you can buy a print of it.]

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Betelgeuse is lumpy! Except not really! - SYFY WIRE (blog)

The planets, like grains of sand – SYFY WIRE (blog)

I was recently contacted by a radio show called Texas Standard for an interview. Not long before, astronomers announced they had found an additional 200 exoplanets, worlds orbiting other stars, including 10 that were about the size of Earth, adding to the more than 2,000 known exoplanets already discovered. The host of the radio show, David Brown, wanted to look past the specific news a bit and ask a less proximate question: Why should we care?

This is, in fact, an excellent question. We are inundated with news of all kinds, and science news can get lost in the noise, especially when its incremental news, not a major new discovery but something that just adds to and reinforces whats already known.

You can listen to the interview at the Texas Standard site; its relatively brief.

I want to talk about this a little more, because the interview was abbreviated and this is an important topic.

Why should we care about this news, or indeed any science news? As I said in the interview, its because were not automatons, trudging along our dreary lives, counting the gray minutes until we die. We are multidimensional beings, capable of seeing and doing so much more, wanting to experience wonder and joy, and curious about the Universe around us.

When we find a new collection of exoplanets, for example, its more than just tossing a handful of dusty old data onto a now-slightly-bigger pile. You have to get past the hype and understand what were doing here: Kepler is designed to look at a small patch of the sky, one you could easily cover with your thumb held at arms length. It looks at 150,000 stars in that patch, and over four years has found well over 2,000 planets. But there are hundreds of billions of stars in the galaxy, a million times as many as Kepler is studying.

Statistically speaking, for every planet Kepler finds, there are a million more in the galaxy waiting to be discovered.

This is profound knowledge, the sort of thing that fills the soul, opens the mind, makes us crave to understand more. This alone is reason enough to study the heavens. It stirs our passion and is no different than the drive that motivates us to create great works of art, or to ponder the deepest of philosophical questions.

There is a part of us that seeks to know more about whats outside of us. When we gaze upward, when we train the results of our centuries-long technological and scientific ambition on the heavens, we can find those answers. It satisfies, at least in part, that itch to know more.

But theres more to it than that. These philosophies, these desires, do not exist in a vacuum. For some, this sort of exploration demands a more materialistic impetus.

For them, note then that motivated self-interest plays into this as well. We are to the best of our knowledge the first technological civilization on this planet, and weve spread to every place on it, and even, in a limited sense, above it. The technology we developed to allow this is interacting with the Earth, changing its surface and atmosphere and oceans, and some of these changes are not necessarily to our benefit. Were running a massive global experiment with no control groups.

By sending up satellites to look down on Earth weve discovered these changes and have been able to deal with some of them. But we dont fully understand the way our planet works. We study it intensely, but it is the only sample of a planet like ours we can study. It would be extremely useful to have more, so that we can compare and contrast our home worlds behavior with theirs. By looking outward we can find these other planets, see how they work, and then learn more about our own.

These arent just words. These are actual deeds, things that we really and truly are doing and learning by studying other worlds. Were trying to answer the biggest questions there are. Why are things this way and not another way? Why are we here? What lies ahead? But we are also hoping to answer more immediate questions: How are we changing our planet? How quickly are we changing it? What can we do to prevent these changes becoming toxic?

Certainly not all these issues will be solved, by searching for exoplanets or otherwise. But the same desire and the same means to do so science are by far the best paths we can take to lead to the answers we seek.

By looking outward, we look inward.

One more thing. In the interview, the host then said an interesting thing with respect to this new exoplanet finding: If you find a grain of sand, and then even another hundred grains of sand ... if you know there are billions out there, then who cares?

Ironically, this analogy does not show how these discoveries inure us to this news. It shows the exact opposite.

Imagine youve lived somewhere isolated, say deep in a forest. Youve never seen a grain of sand, but youve wondered if they exist. Then you find one. Sand is real! Thats a terribly important discovery, and has profound implications. And then you find another one, and the next one, and the next one, and a new revelation dawns: Sand is common. And as you make a pile of them you find some are clear, some translucent, some green, some yellow, some black. They come in different sizes and shapes, and are composed of different materials. What is this telling you?

So you go exploring, and find more sand the more you look. You see more, and more, and then, breaking through the trees, you see to your utter amazement a beach stretching out before you, something you could only dream of before.

But even that is nothing compared to what lies beyond: an ocean, something you could not have even conceived of. It is beautiful, dark, vast, sweeping, its motion beguiling and enthralling. And even as you see it, you realize youre only seeing the surface. What lies beneath?

All this because you found a grain of sand, and decided to look for more.

That is why we look for exoplanets. And that is why we do science.

[Top image:Hubble's view toward the center of our galaxy. 150,000 stars are visible here. How many have planets? Credit: NASA, ESA, K. Sahu (STScI) and the SWEEPS science team]

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The planets, like grains of sand - SYFY WIRE (blog)