Daily Archives: March 27, 2022

G C ANUPAMA, president, Astronomical Society of India (ASI), Saturday said India needs more observational facilities and telescopes in order to do competitive research at par with the global community.

She was delivering the presidential address at the 40th ASI meet hosted at IIT-Roorkee and jointly organised with Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES), Nainital.

India is lagging in observational facilities, thus making us dependent for data on other (global) facilities. This is not a happy situation. India needs to improve the observational facilities and have access to multi-wavelength and multi-messenger facilities, said Anupama. The Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope in Pune, she said, remains among the few world-class facilities available in India. Apart from some telescope facilities working between the 1 metre to 4 metre class, India otherwise does not have telescopes in the optical and infra-red spectra that function in ranges between the 8 metre to 10 metre class for doing competitive science, she said.

According to Anupama, Astronomy, over the recent decades, has grown with a lot of synergy present now in doing science. With Indias participation in the mega science projects like the Thirty Metre Telescope, Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory and the Square Kilometre Array projects, a stronger astronomy community was required.

India with a unique longitudinal positioning and places like Ladakh hold promising locations to set up suitable telescopes in future, proposals for which are under consideration, she said. We need to expand also to the submillimetre region the area of star formation. There is a need to upgrade and network the existing telescope facilities with the global ones, especially for studying transient objects, she said.Earlier in the day, the ASI 2022 was formally inaugurated by Professor K Vijay Raghavan, Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India. I urge the Indian astronomy community to plan forward-looking and futuristic research plans which will help India make significant contribution in global mega science projects, he said.

In his virtual address, he further elaborated on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) and their growing uses.

Anupama talked about the current areas of research and mentioned that Astronomy was among the top areas included in the Mega Science Vision Document 2035, an effort led by the office of Principal Scientific Advisor. This document will be a roadmap for deciding future course of research covering nuclear science, high energy physics, astronomy and astrophysics, accelerator-based science and technology and climate research, ecology and environment.

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India needs more world-class telescopes to do competitive research in Astronomy: Anupama - The Indian Express

April 8 Star Gaze with Oakland Astronomy Club in Oakland Twp.

April 8 Star Gaze with Oakland Astronomy Club in Oakland Twp.

Share safe telescopic views of the Winter night sky with the Oakland Astronomy Club. See details of lunar craters and the colorful gases of the star nursery in Orion. Find the Big Dipper and Leo the Lion and enjoy the colorful stars of the Winter sky before they disappear for the season!

April 8th, 8-9:30 for adults to teens, at Marsh View Park,3100 E Clarkston Rd, Oakland, MI 48363. Register online at: https://oaklandtownship.recdesk.com/Community/Program/Detail?programId=677

April 9th, 8-9:30 for star gazers of all ages, at Independence Oaks County Park, 501 Sashabaw Rd., Clarkston, MI 48348. Register via phone with Oakland County Parks during weekday business hours at248-858-0916.

More info: http://oaklandastronomy.net/event.html

For more things to do, visit the Oakland County Times Event Page! To submit event info email editor@oc115.com .

Thank you to Jim Shaffer & Associates Realtors for sponsoring this section!

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April 8 Star Gaze with Oakland Astronomy Club in Oakland Twp. Oakland County Times - Oakland County Times

Basic structure of our home galaxy, edge-on view. The new results from ESA's Gaia mission provide for a reconstruction of the history of the Milky Way, in particular of the evolution of the so-called thick disc. (Stefan Payne-Wardenaar / MPIA via ESA)

Scientists have discovered that parts of the Milky Way galaxy are actually older than previously thought at least by two billion years.

Data collected by the European Space Agencys (ESA) Gaia mission was analyzed by astronomers from the Max-Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, and compared to earlier datasets from Gaias observation of the motion of stars in the outskirts of our galaxy, also known as the anticentre, in 2020.

In addition, astronomers received data from Chinas Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) for roughly 250,000 stars to derive their ages, according to an agency news release.

Combining this information, astronomers were able to determine that stars within the "thick disc" part of our galaxy began forming 13 billion years ago, around 2 billion years earlier than expected, and just 0.8 billion years after the Big Bang, according to the ESA.

So, our beautiful galaxy is made up of billions of components, but to keep things simple, well narrow it down to the disc and the halo.

If one were to hypothetically look at our galaxy and it laid flat, you would be able to see a bulge in the center of the disc, which is essentially the center of our galaxy.

Surrounding that disc is the stellar halo, which is the outermost part of our galaxy and was originally believed to be the oldest part of the Milky Way, the ESA said.

The halo has a radius of about 100,000 light-years and contains isolated stars as well as many globular clusters, which are basically clusters of millions of stars packed into one area.

The galactic disc is made up of both thick and thin discs. The thin disc, which is about 700 light-years high in comparison to the galactic disc, contains most of the stars we humans can see. Its often photographed as a misty streak across the night sky and dotted with stars.

The thick disc, which is about 3,000 light-years high, contains fewer stars but this is the area where astronomers were able to find their surprising discovery, thanks to Gaia, according to the ESA.

An artists impression of our Milky Way galaxy, a roughly 13 billon-year-old barred spiral galaxy that is home to a few hundred billion stars. (NASA/JPL-Caltech; right: ESA; layout: ESA/ATG medialab)

Determining a stars age is one of the most difficult things to decipher, according to the ESA.

"It cannot be measured directly but must be inferred by comparing a stars characteristics with computer models of stellar evolution. The compositional data helps with this," according to the ESA.

Astronomers must take into account the matter of which a star is made in its early stages which includes hydrogen and helium. Once a star is born, it will continue to develop and create metals within itself. These metals are expelled out into space as a star grows older, according to the ESA.

So, to make a very complicated method easy to understand: The fewer metals a star has, the older it is.

"Together, the brightness and metallicity allow astronomers to extract the stars age from the computer models," the ESA said.

The Milky Way was formed in two phases, according to the ESA.

The first phase was the Big Bang which happened around 0.8 billion years ago, scientists believe.

The aforementioned "thick disk" began to form at this time. Astronomers also believe other parts of the galaxy, such as the inner parts of the stellar halo which basically encircles the entirety of the Milky Way galaxy, began to form as well.

Then, the Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus, which was a dwarf galaxy hurtling through space, collided with the Milky Way and rapidly accelerated the formation of our galaxy, according to Carnegie Mellon University.

This collision gave birth to millions of stars, according to the ESA.

During the second phase of the galaxys formation, a thinner disc developed as all of the space matter began to form together and thats when Earths sun and subsequent planets were formed.

This story was reported out of Los Angeles.

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Parts of Milky Way are older than expected, astronomers say - FOX 6 Milwaukee

Growing up, Jesse Stout remembers learning about astronomy from his dad.

"When I was younger my father used to take us out camping and that was probably the first time I was introduced to astronomy," he said.

"We used to look up at the stars and my father used to point out things I'm not too sure how accurate he was."

But a life-changing workplace accident in 2018 saw him rethink how he saw himself, and rediscover an old interest.

"A lot of my hobbies before my accident were very, very active, so camping, going to the beach or surfing," he said.

"The ASV has allowed me to explore my new hobby and be positive about a new element in my life I think that's a very, very hard thing to express when you've got a disability."

Late last year, as he recovered from a second surgery on his back, Jesse's partner and family decided to pool their money to buy him a telescope.

Excited to try it out, Jesse soon discovered having to manoeuvre himself around the equipment came with a very painful drawback, that could leave him in pain for days afterwards.

Looking around for groups to join, he found the Astronomical Society of Victoria's (ASV) Pathways to the Planets project, trying to raise funds to make their sites and equipment more accessible for people with varying levels of mobility.

With around 12 per cent of its members having some sort of disability, ASV Vice president Mark Iscaro said it was stories like Jesse's that inspired them.

"The sky belongs to everyone," he said.

"If there are people who've got sight issues, they should still be able to feel the night sky, whether that's through 3D-printed star maps, and those with mobility issues shouldn't be prevented from coming up and seeing the stars."

Now, in the year of their 100th anniversary, the society has opened an all-abilities accessible observatory at the Leon Mow dark sky site near Heathcote, north of Melbourne, with features such as better-lit and widened pathways, a motorised entry gate and accommodation for those staying overnight.

There are also plans to build remote-controlled astrophotography observatories for people who can't physically travel to the site, or use an eyepiece.

The main attraction is a specially designed telescope, altered to make the eyepiece the axis so it stays at the perfect height for a viewer sitting down.

ASV President Chris Rudge said traditional astronomical equipment wasn't always easy for everyone to use.

"Unfortunately, to use those large telescopes you have to go up a ladder, but this new telescope we've specially built so that you can sit down and look at the night sky," he said.

"We have many older members these days, including myself, who may be mobility-limited, they can just sit down and enjoy the night sky at their leisure."

The telescope is the second in Victoria, with the first being in the regional town of Ballarat.

But the ASV is hoping their larger member base and more widely accessible facilities will attract more keen astronomers in the future.

Jesse was just looking forward to enjoying his hobby pain-free.

"I'll be able to use the telescope and I'll be able to look at the stars and not have to worry about the next day that I'm going to be bedridden because of the pain from bending down or moving around or adjusting my body slightly," he said.

And it has reminded him of what he loves about looking up at the skies.

"There's a huge element of mystery behind astronomy," he said.

"Being able to look up into the sky and realising you're finding something new each time you look and the fact that a telescope can bring you even closer to finding something."

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A new all-abilities accessible observatory in Heathcote is opening up new worlds for Victorians - ABC News

The Sun is literally the closest star to us in the entire Universe, but theres a lot about it thats still pretty mysterious.

For example, nearly 150 years ago, the astronomer Angelo Secchi first observed narrow, towering fingers of material stretching vertically away from the Sun. Called spicules, these can grow to a height of 12,000 kilometers nearly the diameter of the Earth but tend to be only 1/10th that wide. They grow in a matter of minutes, shooting upwards at tens of thousands of kilometers per hour, then collapse back down.

There are millions of spicules on the Sun at any given moment, and they look like grass or shag carpeting. Time-lapse video of them is entrancing and eerie:

And while theyre known to be associated with strong magnetic fields typical of phenomena on the Sun even after all this time its not clear what causes them. Paper after paper has been published over the years, with varying degrees of success in explaining these weird features.

A few years ago, a study showed that they may be due to the way the magnetic field interacts with both electrically neutral and charged particles on the Suns surface. However, a different team of solar astronomers wondered if there might be a more fundamental piece of physics going on with them. They noticed how fluids can dance when vibrated by the sound waves from a speaker heres a good video of that and thought there might be a connection. When the surface of a fluid is vibrated you can get neat patterns in it as waves get pumped up by them, but as the frequency gets higher theres a critical frequency when the surface starts to create jets of water shooting up. This type of motion is called Faraday excitation or Faraday waves. Usually in water or other liquids the top of the jet breaks off into a droplet that then falls back to the surface.

This type of event is common in nature; in fact alligators use a low-frequency mating call that can cause it to happen in the water around them, shown in this video about 20 seconds in.

The Suns surface is a plasma, mostly hydrogen thats so hot the atoms have lost an electron, and is dense enough to act like a fluid. Also, there are plenty of sources of vibrations in the solar surface. Deep inside the Sun theres a layer where extremely hot material rises buoyantly, and when it gets to the surface it cools and falls back down. This is called convection, and there are many towering convective conveyor belts transporting material up and down in the Sun. This causes a continuous rumble on the surface at a frequency that could excite Faraday waves.

The new research [link to paper] first shows that the physics of Faraday waves in the Sun and in a fluid dancing on a speaker are similar. They then experimented in the lab with various fluids to see if they could mimic spicules. They found that a diluted mixture of a polymer (specifically polyethylene oxide) when placed over a speaker can create jets very similar to spicules, and when diluted at the right amount the droplet creation is suppressed as well. Spicules dont make droplets, so given that the math is similar to describe both effects, there could be some physical similarities.

They then turned to software that simulates the behavior of the solar plasma. Using the known physics of how it behaves, the code can be tweaked to see if certain behaviors can be reproduced. Without any real detailed inputs just using the vibrations of the solar surface created from sound waves of certain harmonic frequencies their code reproduced spicule-like structures. Thats encouraging! They also found the driving frequency doesnt need to be harmonic (that is, sound waves of evenly divisible frequencies, like say 440 and 220 and 110 Hertz), but can be quasi-periodic; mostly periodic but with some randomness thrown in. Thats good too, as the Suns surface is a cacophony of different frequencies that dont always create harmonic chords.

When they added a simple vertical magnetic field to their code they found they got even more spicule-like behavior, with about the right heights and widths. The speed of growth was similar, too. The magnetic field introduces an anisotropy, a non-symmetric nature to the surface that helps squeeze the plasma into narrow towers. This is similar for the need of the polymeric fluid to be diluted; that also is an anisotropy that helps the jets form.

The overall conclusion is that they found a more fundamental reason spicules might be produced on the Sun without the need for lots of special circumstances. This doesnt mean earlier research was wrong, necessarily, but it can be nice to reach for more basic physics sometimes to see what it contributes, and then add layers to it.

And, like the earlier attempts to explain spicules, its hard to know if this is the right answer. Just because the experiments and code make something that looks like spicules doesnt mean thats whats going on.

As I like to point out, this is the nature of science. We usually wind up with lots of ideas to explain a phenomenon, and it can take a while to weed out which ones are actually involved and which arent. The Sun is a nightmare of complexity, and a lot of its behavior is incredibly difficult to understand. But we now have observatories like Hinode and Solar Dynamics Observatory and the Inouye Solar Telescope that can see the Sun in high resolution and at wavelengths of light our eyes cant see, and all these observations help the theorists figure out whats what.

As time goes on, well understand the Sun better and better. That too is how science works.

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Bad Astronomy | Spicules on the Sun may be due to Faraday waves | SYFY WIRE - Syfy

There are thousands of near-Earth asteroids in the inner solar system, as depicted in this graphic. Some known and some unknown. Another asteroid discovered by the same astronomer to discover 2022 EB5 in early March made a close pass with Earth in the early hours of March 25, 2022. Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ Wikimedia Commons.Another asteroid whizzes past Earth overnight

Overnight on March 24-25, 2022, another small asteroid raced toward Earth, unseen until hours before its closest approach. Hungarian astronomer Krisztin Srneczky, same astronomer who first spotted asteroid 2022 EB5 earlier this month hours before it hit Earth near Iceland, found this new asteroid, too. He caught it just hours before it sped by Earth. This asteroid is labeled Sar2594. Its close encounter with Earth came at 8:10 UTC or 3:10 a.m. CDT.

This time, instead of a collision, the space rock slipped through Earths shadow.

It passed at a distance of about 5,400 miles (8,700 km). Thats in contrast to the moons distance of 238,900 miles (384,000 km).

Sar2594 is categorized as a Near-Earth Object, or NEO. It raced by at about 40,265 miles an hour (18 km/s).

Sar2594 now has an official designation: 2022 FD1. Srneczky says the asteroid is about 2-4 meters in size. This could put it in the running for the smallest asteroid known. The current record holder is 2015 TC25, which is approximately 6 feet or 2 meters in diameter.

The asteroids flyby of Earth changed its course. Srneczky and Tony Dunn share charts and simulations of 2022 FD1s inclination:

Bottom line: Another asteroid whizzes past Earth hours after discovery. The asteroid, Sar2594, was discovered by the same astronomer, Krisztin Srneczky, who discovered 2022 EB5, which impacted near Iceland earlier this month.

Kelly Kizer Whitt has been a science writer specializing in astronomy for more than two decades. She began her career at Astronomy Magazine, and she has made regular contributions to AstronomyToday and the Sierra Club, among other outlets. Her childrens picture book, Solar System Forecast, was published in 2012. She has also written a young adult dystopian novel titled A Different Sky. When she is not reading or writing about astronomy and staring up at the stars, she enjoys traveling to the national parks, creating crossword puzzles, running, tennis, and paddleboarding. Kelly lives with her family in Wisconsin.

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Whoa! Another asteroid whizzes past Earth hours after discovery - EarthSky