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Explore the cosmos in EAC Payson Campus astronomy workshops - Payson Roundup

When Voyager 2 flew by Neptune in 1989, it sent back images that were processed to better reveal features like bands and a dark spot. But a new study says it's actually a greener planet. NASA/JPL-Caltech hide caption

When Voyager 2 flew by Neptune in 1989, it sent back images that were processed to better reveal features like bands and a dark spot. But a new study says it's actually a greener planet.

In 1989, Voyager 2 became the first and only spacecraft to ever fly by Neptune, and images from that mission famously show a planet that's a deep azure color.

But in reality, Neptune is far more of a light greenish blue. It's actually pretty similar in color to its fellow ice giant Uranus, also visited by Voyager 2.

"We find that the planets are different colors, but the difference in color was nothing like what you see when you Google for images of Uranus and Neptune," says Patrick Irwin, a planetary physicist at the University of Oxford.

Irwin led a team that did a new analysis that's just been published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The images taken by Voyager 2 when it passed Neptune in 1989 were originally processed to better reveal its distinctive features, but as a result they made the planet look too blue. P. Irwin hide caption

The images taken by Voyager 2 when it passed Neptune in 1989 were originally processed to better reveal its distinctive features, but as a result they made the planet look too blue.

The researchers rebalanced composite color images taken by the Voyager 2 camera, using data from instruments on the Hubble Space Telescope as well as the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope.

The resulting images more accurately reflect the true colors of these planets, says Irwin, as they'd be seen by the naked eye.

As a result, some of the key features of Neptune, such as cloud bands and a dark spot, become "indistinct and difficult to see," he says, noting that the Voyager team deliberately processed its images in a way that would highlight the unusual features of this planet.

"This is a very common thing to do. You're effectively trying to tell a story and to point out to your audience what the interesting features of those images might be," says Leigh Fletcher, an astronomer with the University of Leicester. "But even amateur astronomers looking through their own backyard telescopes up at Uranus and Neptune knew that the contrast in colors between those two worlds was rather more subtle than maybe the original NASA's images first let on."

Although Voyager scientists were open about how they processed their images, says Irwin, the subtleties of those decisions have gotten lost over the decades as the images of Neptune and Uranus have been endlessly reproduced.

"People now just think, 'Well, that's how they look,'" Irwin says, adding that when people see his team's new vision of Neptune, they're "quite surprised."

In addition to rebalancing Neptune's colors, the research team also investigated the unusual color changes seen on Uranus during its 84-year orbit of the sun.

Using observations taken from 1950 to 2016 by the Lowell Observatory in Arizona, they found that Uranus appears a little greener at its solstices, when one of the planet's poles is pointed toward the sun.

But when the sun is over the equator, Uranus looks a bit bluer.

The researchers attribute this color change to the fact that the poles have less methane than the equator, plus they have an increased amount of icy haze.

"We now have a model capable of explaining why those subtle colors are changing," says Fletcher, who notes that it took decades of data and calculations that can replicate how light interacts with various gases and aerosols.

In a description of the new research released by the Royal Astronomical Society, Heidi Hammel, of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), is quoted as saying that astronomers have been bedeviled for decades by the misperceptions of Neptune's color, as well as the color changes of Uranus.

"This comprehensive study," Hammel said, "should finally put both issues to rest."

Some astronomers have long lobbied for a new mission out to one of the ice giant planets, and an influential priority-setting panel for astronomy recently put a robotic mission to orbit Uranus at the top of its wish list.

"We're talking about launch dates in the 2030s and not arriving until 10 years later," says Irwin. "So it's to be beyond my professional career, but hopefully not my life."

Fletcher says no one really knows what the insides of these ice giants are like, and there's certain regions of these planets and their moons that no human or robotic eyes have ever seen.

"Going out to these destinations will be revealing environments, revealing landscapes, revealing atmospheres that nobody's ever seen before," he says, adding that it's one of the few places left in the solar system with the potential to make such discoveries.

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Neptune is more of a greenish blue than is commonly depicted - NPR

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These are our picks for the best splurge-worthy telescopes.

Observing the night sky with a telescope. Credit: Kim Grossman/NPS Photo

Attention stargazers and astrophotography aficionados: If youre ready to take a truly giant leap into the cosmos with an expensive telescope, this guide is for you. Were talking top-tier, splurge-worthy telescopes that promise to elevate your starry experiences to new heights.

However, you should know that choosing the right expensive telescope is not just about spending a ton of money; its about finding the right balance of quality, precision, and ease of use thats right for you. Here are a few things to keep in mind.

Note: This post contains affiliate links. When you buy a product through the links on this page, we may earn a commission.

What to consider when buying an expensive telescope

Our telescope review process: At Astronomy magazine, we take our reviews seriously. Our team of experts has hands-on experience with a wide range of telescopes, and we stay up-to-date with the latest technological advancements. For this list, weve considered user reviews, technical specifications, and our own experiences viewing celestial objects with many different telescopes.

Top expensive telescopes for serious astronomers

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Price: $22,500

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Price: $35,640

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The best expensive telescope mount

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The Meade 16-inch LX200 ACF Computerized Telescope is one of the best overall high-end telescopes because it strikes a great balance between price and performance. This is due to its Advanced Coma-Free (ACF) optics, akin to those used in the Hubble Space Telescope, which offer exceptional clarity and detail. The integration of GPS and high-tech features like the Zero Image-Shift Microfocuser also put the scope at the forefront of technological advancement. And LX200s 16-inch aperture enables profound exploration of deep-space objects, delivering an unmatched astronomical experience.

How to care for an expensive telescope

All telescopes can benefit from proper care and maintenance. But, maintaining a high-end telescope requires additional diligence and attention so you can ensure its longevity and get the most bang for your buck.

Remember, if youre making a significant financial investment in an expensive telescope, you should likewise invest the time and money you need to ensure it continues to operate at its peak performance for years to come.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Why are high-end telescopes so expensive? High-end telescopes command a higher price due to their advanced optics, larger apertures, sophisticated mounting systems, and additional features like computerized tracking and high-quality construction materials. These elements significantly enhance the overall viewing experience, allowing for more detailed and clearer observations of celestial objects. However, they also significantly increase the cost.

Are high-end telescopes suitable for beginners?They can be overwhelming for beginners due to their complexity and the detailed knowledge required to effectively operate them. Beginners may benefit more from starting with a less complex model and gradually progressing to more advanced telescopes.

For those looking to explore more affordable telescopes, please see our guides to the best telescopes under $1,000 and the best telescopes under $500.

How do high-end telescopes compare with professional telescopes? High-end telescopes for amateurs are incredibly advanced and offer excellent capabilities. But professional telescopes, like those used in observatories, have larger apertures, more sophisticated technology, and are often housed in locations with near-ideal viewing conditions. These professional instruments are designed for in-depth scientific research and can capture far more detailed astronomical data than those available to consumers.

Investing in a high-end telescope can profoundly transform your journey as an amateur astronomer. These telescopes not only bring the wonders of the universe closer, but also offer increased clarity and detail when viewing celestial objects. Expensive telescopes bridge the gap between amateur enthusiasm and professional-grade astronomical exploration, allowing users to experience the night sky in ways they never thought possible.

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The best expensive telescopes for those ready to splurge - Astronomy Magazine

In the last few years there has been growing interest in low-frequency gravitational waves. OnJune 29, 2023, after 15 years of searching, theNorth American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav)collaboration and its international partners announced evidence for the detection of a gravitational wave backgroundthe first time any gravitational wave background has been found with any detector.Before this point, only high-frequency gravitational waves had been detected.

Chiara Mingarelli, assistant professor in physics, said, What we found is evidence of hundreds of thousands of simultaneously merging pairs of supermassive black holes, with gravitational wavelengths of light-years There has been much excitement in the broader astrophysics community surrounding it.

While there have been several special sessions dedicated to NANOGrav results at the American Astronomical Society (AAS) and American Physical Society (APS) meetings, there had not been a dedicated workshop or symposium where members of the community could ask questions about the results and future prospects.

To address this need, the first Yale Gravitational Wave Symposium was held fromNovember 20-21, 2023 at Yale Universitys Kline Tower in New Haven.This symposium provided the gravitational wave research commmunity the opportunity toengage with keyNANOGravmembers and to delve into the latest advancements in the field by fosteringin-depth discussions regarding NANOGravs recent suite of papers, exchanging insights, and discussing the course for future directions for research in the field.

Mingarelli, who led the symposium organizing committee, said, My biggest hope for the symposium was to bring together experts in NANOGrav together with the broader community in physics and astronomy to discuss the current results, and to imagine future ways to collaborate. The field of multimessenger astrophysics the measurement of e.g., light and gravity from the same physical system is still very young. The detection of low-frequency gravitational waves is inherently multimessenger, combining expertise in radio astronomy, extra-galactic astronomy, data analysis, and fundamental physics. I believe it is important to have as much communication between astronomers, astrophysicists, and experts in data analysis to move the field forward, and to pursue new avenues of research together.

The symposium brought together a mix of experts from complementary cutting-edge experiments such as the Event Horizon Telescope, LIGO, Vera Rubin LSST; experts in industry from Wolfram and the Flatiron Institute; and colleagues from top universities and research centers across the United States and Europe working in cosmology, astrophysics, data analysis, and other fields of gravitational waves.

Meg Urry, the Israel Munson Professor of Physics and one of the members of the scientific organizing committee, commented, The force behind the meeting was Chiara Mingarelli, but I will say that it involved a wonderful mix of gravitational wave signal-processing experts and astrophysics-oriented people. The gap was just wide enough that both groups learned a lot, and just narrow enough that we could understand one another.

In addition to Mingarelli and Urry, other members of the scientific organizing committee included Priyamvada Natarajan,Joseph S. and Sophia S. Fruton Professor of Astronomy and Professor of Physics; Scott Ransom, staff astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO); and Tristan Smith, associate professor of physics at Swarthmore.

The meeting format was designed to foster discussions. There were 4 sessions over 2 days. The first day of the symposium focused on the gravitational wave background and pulsar noise, while the second day focused on both astrophysical interpretations of the background and new physics.Each session had a short plenary talk, followed by 3 deep dive talks; and the rest of the time was devoted to discussion.

Mingarelli explained that this format gave the community the opportunity to ask clarifying questions about the NANOGrav experiment, and foster conversations and debates about open questions in fundamental physics.

Urry added that the meeting space on the 14th floor was fabulous, as it allowed everyone to stay together from talks to meals and back again, thus helping build the community feeling and encouraging many more conversations than would have been possible had we all gone out to forage for meals.

As a result of the symposium, Mingarelli said, I personally came up with 5 new paper ideas with colleagues during the meeting it was very productive!

See below links for further information on the NANOGrav Collaboration and for photos, taken by Geriana Van Atta during the event.

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First Yale Gravitational Wave Symposium sparks research innovation | Department of Physics - Yale University

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A study reveals Neptune and Uranus are both greenish-blue, not the deep azure and pale cyan previously believed. Modern telescope data was used to correct these historical color misrepresentations. Credit: Patrick Irwin, edited

Recent research led by Professor Patrick Irwin shows that Neptune and Uranus are both a similar shade of greenish-blue, challenging previous perceptions of their colors. The study used modern telescopic data to correct historical color inaccuracies and explained the minor color changes in Uranus over its orbit.

Neptune is fondly known for being a rich blue and Uranus green but a new study has revealed that the two ice giants are actually far closer in color than typically thought.

The correct shades of the planets have been confirmed with the help of research led by Professor Patrick Irwin from the University of Oxford, which has been published today in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

He and his team found that both worlds are in fact a similar shade of greenish blue, despite the commonly-held belief that Neptune is a deep azure and Uranus has a pale cyan appearance.

Voyager 2/ISS images of Uranus and Neptune released shortly after the Voyager 2 flybys in 1986 and 1989, respectively, compared with a reprocessing of the individual filter images in this study to determine the best estimate of the true colors of these planets. Credit: Patrick Irwin

Astronomers have long known that most modern images of the two planets do not accurately reflect their true colors.

The misconception arose because images captured of both planets during the 20th century including by NASAs Voyager 2 mission, the only spacecraft to fly past these worlds recorded images in separate colors.

The single-color images were later recombined to create composite color images, which were not always accurately balanced to achieve a true color image, and particularly in the case of Neptune were often made too blue.

Uranus as seen by HST/WFC3 from 2015-2022. During this sequence, the north pole, which has a paler green color, swings down towards the Sun and Earth. In these images, the equator and latitude lines at 35N and 35S are marked. Credit: Patrick Irwin

In addition, the early Neptune images from Voyager 2 were strongly contrast-enhanced to better reveal the clouds, bands, and winds that shape our modern perspective of Neptune.

Professor Irwin said: Although the familiar Voyager 2 images of Uranus were published in a form closer to true color, those of Neptune were, in fact, stretched and enhanced, and therefore made artificially too blue.

Even though the artificially saturated color was known at the time amongst planetary scientists and the images were released with captions explaining it that distinction had become lost over time.

Applying our model to the original data, we have been able to reconstitute the most accurate representation yet of the color of both Neptune and Uranus.

In the new study, the researchers used data from Hubble Space Telescopes Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) and the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) on the European Southern Observatorys Very Large Telescope. In both instruments, each pixel is a continuous spectrum of colors.

This means that STIS and MUSE observations can be unambiguously processed to determine the true apparent color of Uranus and Neptune.

The researchers used these data to re-balance the composite color images recorded by the Voyager 2 camera, and also by the Hubble Space Telescopes Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3).

This revealed that Uranus and Neptune are actually a rather similar shade of greenish blue. The main difference is that Neptune has a slight hint of additional blue, which the model reveals to be due to a thinner haze layer on that planet.

Animation of seasonal changes in color on Uranus during two Uranus years (one Uranus year is 84.02 Earth years), running from 1900 to 2068 and starting just before the southern summer solstice, when Uranuss south pole points almost directly towards the Sun. The left-hand disc shows the appearance of Uranus to the naked eye, while the right-hand disc has been color-stretched and enhanced to make atmospheric features clearer. In this animation, Uranuss spin has been slowed down by over 3000 times so that the planetary rotation can be seen, with discrete storm clouds seen passing across the planets disc. As the planet moves towards its solstices a pale polar hood of increasing cloud opacity and reduced methane abundance can be seen filling more of the planets disc leading to seasonal changes in the overall color of the planet. The changing size of Uranuss disc is due to Uranuss distance from the Sun changing during its orbit. Credit: Patrick Irwin, University of Oxford

The study also provides an answer to the long-standing mystery of why Uranuss color changes slightly during its 84-year orbit of the Sun.

The authors came to their conclusion after first comparing images of the ice giant to measurements of its brightness, which were recorded by the Lowell Observatory in Arizona from 1950 2016 at blue and green wavelengths.

These measurements showed that Uranus appears a little greener at its solstices (i.e. summer and winter), when one of the planets poles is pointed towards our star. But during its equinoxes when the Sun is over the equator it has a somewhat bluer tinge.

Part of the reason for this was known to be because Uranus has a highly unusual spin.

It effectively spins almost on its side during its orbit, meaning that during the planets solstices either its north or south pole points almost directly towards the Sun and Earth.

This is important, the authors said, because any changes to the reflectivity of the polar regions would therefore have a big impact on Uranuss overall brightness when viewed from our planet.

What astronomers were less clear about is how or why this reflectivity differs.

This led the researchers to develop a model that compared the spectra of Uranuss polar regions to its equatorial regions.

It found that the polar regions are more reflective at green and red wavelengths than at blue wavelengths, partly because methane, which is red absorbing, is about half as abundant near the poles than the equator.

However, this wasnt enough to fully explain the color change so the researchers added a new variable to the model in the form of a hood of gradually thickening icy haze which has previously been observed over the summer, sunlit pole as the planet moves from equinox to solstice.

Astronomers think this is likely to be made up of methane ice particles.

When simulated in the model, the ice particles further increased the reflection at green and red wavelengths at the poles, offering an explanation as to why Uranus is greener at the solstice.

Professor Irwin said: This is the first study to match a quantitative model to imaging data to explain why the color of Uranus changes during its orbit.

In this way, we have demonstrated that Uranus is greener at the solstice due to the polar regions having reduced methane abundance but also an increased thickness of brightly scattering methane ice particles.

Dr. Heidi Hammel, of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), who has spent decades studying Neptune and Uranus but was not involved in the study, said: The misperception of Neptunes color, as well as the unusual color changes of Uranus, have bedeviled us for decades. This comprehensive study should finally put both issues to rest.

The ice giants Uranus and Neptune remain a tantalizing destination for future robotic explorers, building on the legacy of Voyager in the 1980s.

Professor Leigh Fletcher, a planetary scientist from the University of Leicester and co-author of the new study, said: A mission to explore the Uranian system from its bizarre seasonal atmosphere, to its diverse collection of rings and moons is a high priority for the space agencies in the decades to come.

However, even a long-lived planetary explorer, in orbit around Uranus, would only capture a short snapshot of a Uranian year.

Earth-based studies like this, showing how Uranus appearance and color has changed over the decades in response to the weirdest seasons in the Solar System, will be vital in placing the discoveries of this future mission into their broader context, Professor Fletcher added.

Reference: Modelling the seasonal cycle of Uranuss colour and magnitude, and comparison with Neptune by Patrick G J Irwin, Jack Dobinson, Arjuna James, Nicholas A Teanby, Amy A Simon, Leigh N Fletcher, Michael T Roman, Glenn S Orton, Michael H Wong, Daniel Toledo, Santiago Prez-Hoyos and Julie Beck, 12 September 2023, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stad3761

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Astronomical Illusions: New Images Reveal What Neptune and Uranus Really Look Like - SciTechDaily

THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE UNIVERSE: How Astronomers Decode Cosmic Chaos, by C. Rene James

There is one particular pulsar, a type of quick-spinning dead star, that holds the current record for the fastest rotation of any celestial body in the known universe 716 times per second. By contrast, the blade of a Vitamix can turn around 333 times every second, but a blender is small enough to sit on a countertop, and a pulsar is a city-size ball of neutrons that floats in space and contains the mass of half a million Earths.

One can read numbers like this and think, Oh, thats interesting, writes the astronomer C. Rene James in her new book, Things That Go Bump in the Universe. One can also feel that grasping the reality is impossible. But, she says, You should still try.

Pulsars may seem unfathomable, but they are worth studying both for their own sake they are among the weirdest things in the cosmos and for the insight they can offer. They can help us measure the distance between suns and advance our knowledge of nuclear physics. A pulsar like the record-setting PSR J1748-2446ad, which James usefully renames Zippy, is a key tool in the relatively new field of transient astronomy: the study of fast, short-lived, violent phenomena in what we otherwise perceive as a mostly empty and unblinking universe.

The James Webb Space Telescope and its siblings have revealed fascinating portraits of a cosmos spangled with stars, clouds of dust, filaments of gas and the whirling arms of galaxies. Things That Go Bump in the Universe introduces several of the most unusual cosmic characters in these realms, including the extremely abundant and ghostly particles known as neutrinos, which seemingly interact with nothing after they are born, whether they arise in horrifically violent stellar death throes or in the natural decay of the potassium in bananas. We also meet black widow pulsars (over eons they consume their binary-star companions) and see black holes merge. One such collision 1.2 billion years ago made space-time around the Earth shudder in 2015.

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Book Review: Things That Go Bump in the Universe, by C. Rene James - The New York Times

Astronomers have discovered 25 stars in two satellite galaxies of the Milky Way that have had their hydrogen-rich outer layers stripped away by a binary companion, leaving them as exposed helium stars. The hydrogen-stripped stars represent the progenitors of a special type of supernova an explosion that occurs when massive stars die and birth black holes or neutron stars and fill in a glaring hole in our understanding of some of the universe's most powerful events.

When massive stars die in bright supernova explosions, they often outshine the combined light of every star in the galaxy around them. Some of these events lack evidence of hydrogen, so it follows that they must begin with stars that also lack hydrogen in their outer layers. Until now, evidence of these hydrogen-stripped stars has largely eluded scientists.

This is the first time a population of these hydrogen-stripped stars has ever been discovered.

"We've known for a decade or two that almost all massive stars are actually in binary systems, and one in three is close enough to undergo this process where the hydrogen envelope should be removed by the gravitational influence of the other star," Maria Drout, an assistant professor in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Toronto and co-author of a new study on the stars, told Live Science. "The universe only made sense if these stars existed and were very common. However, only one candidate system was known until we did our study, so it was really a big problem."

With the discovery of these hydrogen-stripped stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) and the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) two small galaxies that orbit the Milky Way, and the closest galaxies visible to Earth beyond our own the astronomers can finally begin to correct this imbalance, helping to confirm models of stellar evolution. The team's research was published in the Dec. 14 edition of the journal Science.

Hydrogen-stripped stars have been so evasive because the removal of their outer layers leaves them as incredibly hot, exposed stellar cores, Drout said. This means they emit most of their light in the ultraviolet region of the electromagnetic spectrum, beyond the range visible to human eyes.

Ultraviolet light is difficult for ground-based telescopes to observe because it is strongly absorbed by our planet's atmosphere. Ambient dust in the Milky Way absorbs even more of this light, making hydrogen-stripped stars nearly impossible to detect. However, our view of satellite galaxies like the LMC and SMC is much clearer for space telescopes outside Earth's atmosphere.

The team discovered the population of stripped stars in data from the Swift Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope, which has observed millions of stars in the LMC and the SMC from its position in low Earth orbit.

The researchers then confirmed the stars as hot, hydrogen-poor, exposed stellar cores in binary systems using the Magellan Telescopes at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile between 2018 and 2022. While astronomers already knew that massive stars prefer life with a stellar companion, this discovery confirms what that social life looks like as those binary systems age.

Just as the sun will swell up as a red giant star when it runs out of hydrogen in its core in around 5 billion years, massive stars undergo a similar swelling transformation into red supergiant stars when they exhaust the hydrogen in their cores, Drout said.

"If you have two stars that are in a binary and one of them starts to expand, pretty soon, the outer part of that star ends up getting stripped, meaning you can end up with a star with basically no hydrogen left on it," she said. "So we have this process where the binary stars interact and dance with each other and exchange mass and material, and that really affects the rest of their lives dramatically."

While Drout and the team theorize that the 25 newly discovered stars will eventually erupt as hydrogen-poor supernovas, she concedes that astronomers won't be waiting around for this to happen.

"We think we understand what evolutionary stage these stars are in, and they are fusing helium in their cores, meaning they are quite evolved," Drout said. "But that means it will still probably be a million years before these particular stars explode."

When this eventually happens, the team thinks a small sample of the systems they have observed will become something very special. If the supernova creates a neutron star and doesn't push the companion star away, the transfer of matter between the stars could switch. Then, the star that once fed on the now-dead star would begin to lose its hydrogen-rich outer layers to the pull of its new neutron star companion.

This could result in a second hydrogen-poor core-collapse supernova in the binary and thus a system with two neutron stars orbiting each other. As these binary neutron stars spiraled around each other, they would lose angular momentum through the emission of gravitational waves, eventually leading them to merge and send out a flash of light called a kilonova.

To further study these stars and see which are possible kilonova progenitor systems, the team will turn to the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Magellan Telescopes, and the Anglo-Australian Telescope. Additionally, they will search for hydrogen-stripped stars in other galaxies and within the Milky Way.

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Astronomers discover 25 'stripped stars' that may be a missing link in supernova science - Livescience.com

We are now well into a new era of astronomy, where distant planets (called exoplanets) are being detected at a fast clip. At last count, there have been 5,557 confirmed discoveries of exoplanets and another 10,000 candidates awaiting confirmation. These discoveries have given rise to comparative planetology, a new area of astronomy dedicated to investigating the properties of different worlds, classifying them according to size, mass, (approximate) atmospheric composition, distance from their parent star, and whether they are rocky, gaseous, or some combination of the two.

The main goal is to compare them to Earth and other planets in our Solar System. For example, when astronomers talk about a super-Earth, they mean a rocky planet with a radius somewhat larger than Earths, while a sub-Neptune is a gaseous planet with a radius somewhat smaller than Neptunes. These definitions are operational and the boundaries between planetary classes are not very rigid, but they offer a quick way of classifying what we see.

Exoplanets are planets that orbit other stars in our galaxy (and stars in other galaxies, too, but those are too distant to be detected). An M-type dwarf star (or red dwarf star) is the smallest and coolest star, the most common in the Milky Way. Around three-quarters of the stars in our galaxy are M-type dwarf stars. In comparison, our Sun is a yellow dwarf star, about five times more massive than a red dwarf. Only about 3% of stars are yellow dwarfs like our Sun.

The diversity of planetary systems is absolutely staggering. There is no obvious or common type of planetary system: Some have huge Jupiter-like planets orbiting very near their host stars, while others have planets distributed more evenly, with some resembling our Earth. These seem to be quite rare.

If youre not amazed by what astronomers have discovered about planetary systems, consider the sheer difficulty of discovering distant planets. Finding a planet orbiting another star is much harder than finding a flea in front of a floodlight. To detect them, astronomers capture the ever-so-slight dimming of starlight as a planet passes in front of a star. This is called planetary transit. Imagine measuring the dimming of a floodlight as a flea hops over it. Now, move the floodlight incredibly far away so far as to look like a point source. With this image, you begin to get an idea of how delicate and spectacular the discovery of exoplanets is.

The main motivation, of course, is to figure out how rare or common our planet is. If there are lots of Earth-like planets not just with similar size and composition, but also located at the so-called habitable zone of the star where water, if present on the planets surface, would be liquid then the odds become higher that such worlds could harbor some kind of life. As my Dartmouth colleague Elisabeth Newton reported a few years back while reflecting on her discovery of a young exoplanet orbiting a relatively young star, One of the overall goals of astronomy is understanding the big picture of how we got here, how solar systems and galaxies take shape and why. By finding solar systems that are different from our own especially young ones we can hope to learn why Earth and our own Solar System evolved in the ways that they did.

So, it all boils down to one of the most exciting questions we can ask in science the one kids from ages five to 90 ask across all cultures on our planet: Are we alone in the Universe? Studying other worlds their history, location, and properties allows us to figure out our own history, and how exceptional (or not) it is. We live in this very special time when we can actually begin to answer this question. And it all points to our planet being a rare gem in a Universe that is very hostile to life.

We are still far from knowing whether other worlds harbor life of any kind. Clearly, given that there are so many worlds out there (trillions in our galaxy alone), and that the laws of physics and chemistry are the same across the Universe (this we do know with confidence), the expectation from a large fraction of scientists is: Yes, there should be other worlds with life. Otherwise, as Jodie Fosters character in the movie Contact (based on Carl Sagans homonymous novel) said, [It] seems like an awful waste of space.

But life is not so simple as large numbers. There is a disconnect between the way physical scientists and biologists think about this question. (Of course, there are exceptions in both groups.) Biologists tend to be more careful with such extrapolations, knowing only too well that life is enormously complex. There are many truly mind-boggling steps to go from non-life to the first living creatures, and then on to complex unicellular life and multicellular creatures. Whats more, life doesnt have a plan to get more complex over time; life cares about reproducing efficiently. If species are well-adapted, mutations wont do much. Ultimately, the question of how life did emerge on Earth remains very much open.

What we do know now, and this is extremely important, is that the life history of a planet the details of how it evolved, from its atmosphere to cosmic impacts and seismic activity is imprinted on its creatures. And vice versa: Life changes its host planet in dramatic ways. There is a two-way relationship between a planets history and the kind of life it supports. The planet provides the basic support for life to be possible and life acts back on the planet and changes it. Earth now is a different planet from three billion years ago, when it only had single-celled organisms. Their action changed the planet by dramatically increasing the oxygen levels in the atmosphere. Without that, we wouldnt be here. We can also see this with our own destructive activities, and how they are imprinted on Earth. Human presence has permanently scarred Earth.

Dominant species can change their world, either knowingly or unknowingly. We are living the reality of this fact. Yet, most of us are choosing not to pay attention or change our ways. Alienated from nature, we seem to have forgotten how much our survival depends on it. Bad water + bad air = sick life. Thats the equation everyone should know call it the survival equation. Maybe what we are learning about our planet and its distant cousins will inspire us to rethink how we relate to our world and the creatures we share it with.

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Exoplanet discoveries reveal Earth's profound rarity in the cosmos - Big Think

Frederic Churchs painting of an aurora is reminiscent of the descriptions of an auroral show noted after the Battle of Fredericksburg in Virginia in 1862. Credit: Smithsonian Institution

In the summer of 1863, the U.S. was in the middle of its greatest-ever crisis. A bloody civil war between the Southern Confederacy and the federal government had created hundreds of thousands of casualties, and to many, no end appeared to be in sight. By July of that year, however, things finally seemed to be brightening slightly for the hopes of a united country. Decisive victories for the Union at Gettysburg and Vicksburg gave the first glimmers of foresight that the war would eventually cease and that healing would begin.

Seven weeks after the Battle of Gettysburg, the nations leader, Abraham Lincoln, paid an unusual Washington, D.C., visit. Accompanied by his young private secretary John Hay, Lincoln made an unannounced journey to the U.S. Naval Observatory to indulge his interest in astronomy and to seek a brief reprieve from the war. In those days, the observatory was located at 23rd and E streets, about three blocks north of what is now the Lincoln Memorial site. (This area, called Foggy Bottom due to the frequent haze and fog that rolled off the Potomac, wasnt the best site for a telescope, and eventually the observatory would move.)

On the night of Aug. 22, 1863, the observatory was manned by a young astronomer, Asaph Hall. Fourteen years later, Hall would discover the two moons of Mars, but on that evening, he was an unknown 33-year-old researcher. Lincoln and Hay arrived and introduced themselves as if Lincoln needed to be introduced. The group climbed up a wooden ladder to the dome where the observatorys 9.6-inch refractor was located. There they observed the Moon and the star Arcturus.

In the 1980s, I was privileged to visit the historic site of the Old Naval Observatory, courtesy of Jan Herman, the observatorys former historian and a contributor to Astronomy. Climbing up the same wooden steps Lincoln had used to enter the dome gave me an ethereal feeling of the past, the present, and the universe, all meeting at one point.

Not all participants of the Civil War sought to contemplate the meaning of the cosmos as Abraham Lincoln did, but some viewed certain events as a beacon of hope or demise.

On May 13, 1861, an observer in New South Wales, Australia, found what came to be called the Great Comet of 1861. By midsummer, the comet had moved so that it was visible in the Northern Hemisphere sky and, according to astronomer Horace Tuttle, sported a tail 106 long.

The comet caused a press sensation. The evening spectacle came to be called The War Comet, and the editors of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle posed a question to their readers: What means this visit peace or war? Vanity Fair published a cartoon showing Lt. Gen. Winfield Scott, the senior general of the Union army, as the comets head and a slew of bayonets comprising the tail.

During this time, Charles Johnson, a private in the 9th New York Infantry, wrote in his diary, The comet is now tired of his visit to these regions of space, or disgusted it may be with the appearance of things on this side of the planet, for he is now leaving in seemingly greater haste than he came, with his tail between his legs, for the unknown regions out yonder.

The Great Comet of 1861 faded during the week of the First Battle of Bull Run, leading to vast speculation on that meaning. But comets were not done with the war. In 1862, Tuttle discovered another comet that would rise to significant brightness. Astronomer Lewis Swift had also spotted the comet, which became known as Swift-Tuttle. When that comet faded in September 1862, many attached its significance one way or another to the battle of Antietam, a substantial Union victory. Decades later, astronomers would identify this comet as the source of the Perseid meteor shower.

In December 1862, during the battle of Fredericksburg in Virginia, a different kind of celestial omen made its appearance. After a slow and discouraging lack of progress during the wars first two years, Lincoln assigned Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside to command the Army of the Potomac, the principal Union army in the east. Burnside faced Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee at Fredericksburg and sent repeated frontal attacks into the Rebel works, ending in a Union disaster.

Following the battle, as the cries of wounded filled the icy December air, an aurora appeared in the sky, visible to many thousands of soldiers on both sides. A brilliant aurora illuminated the night and much facilitated the work upon the entrenchments, wrote Confederate Col. Edward Porter Alexander.

The light show was taken as an omen of victory by Southerners, who had inflicted heavy losses on the Yankee troops. And, of course, many Union soldiers saw it as an omen of doom. Citizens in Fredericksburg, in Charlottesville, and all over the region remarked on the unusual aurora. Oh, child, it was a terrible omen, wrote Elizabeth Lyle Saxon in her 1905 reminiscences, quoting an elderly womans words to her. Such lights never burn, save for kings and heroes deaths. A writer for the Richmond Daily Dispatch proposed the crimson columns of light represented the blood of those martyrs who had offered their lives as a sacrifice to their native land.

In the following months, a significant event rocked the command structure of the Confederate Army. The battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863 was yet another huge win for the Confederacy, following the triumph at Fredericksburg. But in the action, the Southern general Thomas J. Stonewall Jackson, was accidentally and mortally wounded by other Confederate troops.

Recently, astronomers have shed some light or rather some moonlight onto why the events of that night led to Jacksons death. As the Sun faded on that fateful day at Chancellorsville, Jackson pressed his men forward. Stonewalls flank attack crushed a portion of the Union force, held by Maj. Gen. Oliver Howards 11th Corps. Jackson rode out under moonlight to the Plank Road, assessing the situation and determining the feasibility of a night attack by the light of the Full Moon. Soldiers in the 18th North Carolina Infantry believed the small group of riders, including Jackson, were Union cavalry and opened fire. Jackson was hit with three bullets, including in his left arm, which had to be amputated later that night. Confederate doctors attempted to transport him to Richmond for follow-up care, but he developed pneumonia and died eight days later.

In 2013, a group led by Don Olson of Texas State University determined that, based on astronomical research and battle maps, Stonewall and his party would have been viewed as a group of dark silhouettes using the light of the Moon, which sat at a low 25 above the horizon, as their guide. Their positions ultimately obscured their identities, resulting in the soldiers mistakenly opening fire.

North of the Mason-Dixon Line, another prominent figure was strongly associated with the night sky.

On the Union side, a well-known astronomer became one of the most prominent general officers in the western theater. Ormsby Mitchel had been born in Kentucky but grew up in Lebanon, Ohio, and was a classmate of Robert E. Lee at West Point. During his career, he helped establish the U.S. Naval Observatory and the Harvard College Observatory. Mitchel also studied the double star Nu () Scorpii and found in 1846 that the fainter of the two stars was also a close double.

After West Point, Mitchel became a professor of mathematics at the military academy, but then returned to Ohio, became a lawyer and engineer, and began a professorship at Cincinnati College. He organized the Cincinnati Astronomical Society and became an early popularizer of the subject. In 1859, Mitchel moved to the Dudley Observatory in New York. But in 1861, as the war rapidly approached, he returned to his military roots at the age of 51.

Commissioned a brigadier general, Mitchel first supervised defenses around Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. In 1862, he conspired with a Union spy, James J. Andrews, on a plot that would come to be known as the Great Locomotive Chase. Given the nickname Andrews Raiders, they stole the Confederate locomotive The General in northern Georgia, intent on disrupting the important railway between Atlanta and Chattanooga. The plan that Mitchel ordered but did not participate in eventually failed. Many of the raiders were captured and eight were hanged by the Confederacy, including Andrews himself, while others were able to escape. Afterward, 19 of the living and executed men became the first recipients of the Medal of Honor.

Despite the raids failure, Mitchel continued to lead other successful operations throughout the year. By September 1862, he was assigned command of a post in Beaufort, South Carolina, but he contracted yellow fever and died there in October.

The era in which Mitchel lived and the Civil War occurred not only saw a dramatic upheaval of the U.S. but also witnessed the rise of astrophysics. During this time, a field of simple observing and cataloging transformed into understanding the physical nature of what the universe contains.

Out of a maelstrom of chaos eventually came order, a start down the long road to justice and equality, and the beginnings of an understanding of our larger universe.

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The role of astronomy in the American Civil War - Astronomy Magazine