Category Archives: Astronomy

Scientists have discovered one of the smallest black holes on record and the closest one to Earth found to date.

Researchers have dubbed it The Unicorn, in part because it is, so far, one of a kind, and in part because it was found in the constellation Monoceros The Unicorn. The findings are publishingtoday, April 21, in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

When we looked at the data, this black hole the Unicorn just popped out, said lead author Tharindu Jayasinghe, a doctoral student in astronomy at The Ohio State University and an Ohio State presidential fellow.

The Unicorn is about three times the mass of our sun tiny for a black hole. Very few black holes of this mass have been found in the universe. This black hole is 1,500 light years away from Earth, still inside the Milky Way galaxy. And, until Jayasinghe started analyzing it, it was essentially hiding in plain sight.

The black hole appears to be a companion to a red giant star, meaning that the two are connected by gravity. Scientists cant see the black hole they are, by definition, dark, not only visually, but to the tools astronomers use to measure light and other wavelengths.

But in this case, they can see the black holes companion star. That star had been well-documented by telescope systems including KELT, run out of Ohio State; ASAS, the precursor to ASAS-SN, which is now run out of Ohio State, and TESS, a NASA satellite that searches for planets outside our solar system. Data about it had been widely available but hadnt yet been analyzed in this way.

When Jayasinghe and the other researchers analyzed that data, they noticed something they couldnt see appeared to be orbiting the red giant, causing the light from that star to change in intensity and appearance at various points around the orbit.

Something, they realized, was tugging at the red giant and changing its shape. That pulling effect, called a tidal distortion, offers astronomers a signal that something is affecting the star. One option was a black hole, but it would have to be small less than five times the mass of our sun, falling into a size window that astronomers call the mass gap. Only recently have astronomers considered it a possibility that black holes of that mass could exist.

When you look in a different way, which is what were doing, you find different things, said Kris Stanek, study co-author, astronomy professor at Ohio State and university distinguished scholar. Tharindu looked at this thing that so many other people had looked at and instead of dismissing the possibility that it could be a black hole, he said, Well, what if it could be a black hole?

That tidal disruption is produced by the tidal force of an unseen companion a black hole.

Just as the moons gravity distorts the Earths oceans, causing the seas to bulge toward and away from the moon, producing high tides, so does the black hole distort the star into a football-like shape with one axis longer than the other, said Todd Thompson, co-author of the study, chair of Ohio States astronomy department and university distinguished scholar. The simplest explanation is that its a black hole and in this case, the simplest explanation is the most likely one.

The velocity of the red giant, the period of the orbit and the way in which the tidal force distorted the red giant told them the black holes mass, leading them to conclude that this black hole was about three solar masses, or three times that of the sun.

For about the last decade, astronomers and astrophysicists wondered whether they werent finding these black holes because the systems and approaches they used were not sophisticated enough to find them. Or, they wondered, did they simply not exist?

Then, about 18 months ago, many of the members of this Ohio State research team, led by Thompson, published a scientific article in the journal Science, offering strong evidence that these types of black holes existed. That discovery motivated Jayasinghe and others, both at Ohio State and around the world, to search in earnest for smaller black holes. And that evaluation led them to the Unicorn.

Finding and studying black holes and neutron stars in our galaxy is crucial for scientists studying space, because it tells them about the way stars form and die.

But finding and studying black holes is, almost by definition, difficult: Individual black holes dont emit the same kind of rays that other objects emit in space. They are, to scientific equipment, electromagnetically silent and dark. Most known black holes were discovered because they interacted with a companion star, which created a lot of X-rays and those X-rays are visible to astronomers.

In recent years, more large-scale experiments to try and locate smaller black holes have launched, and Thompson said he expects to see more mass gap black holes discovered in the future.

I think the field is pushing toward this, to really map out how many low-mass, how many intermediate-mass and how many high-mass black holes there are, because every time you find one it gives you a clue about which stars collapse, which explode and which are in between, he said.

Other Ohio State researchers who co-authored this paper include Chris Kochanek, Dominick Rowan, Patrick Vallely, David Martin and Laura Lopez.

Go here to see the original:

Black hole is closest to Earth, among the smallest ever discovered - The Ohio State University News

How many black holes are there in our galaxy?

We don't know. But we can make a decent guess: We know the kinds of stars that make black holes (massive stars that explode at the ends of their lives), we know how many of those kinds of stars are born over time, and we know how old the galaxy is.

Putting that all together and doing the math, you get that the galaxy may have ten million black holes in it. Yikes.

but that number is so uncertain there could be as many as a billion of them, too. A billion black holes out there in the Milky Way!

The problem is finding them. They're black. That makes them tough to see against the blackness of space. Now, some of them orbit stars, drawing matter off that gets infernally hot and glows brightly, making them easy to spot. We know of a couple of dozen like that. That leaves 999,999,980 or so left to discover.

Enter the Nancy Roman Space Telescope.

This telescope is in the early stages now, with engineering models being built to test out the design. Scheduled for launch "in the mid-2020s" (which seems aspirational, but shouldn't be too long after that) and costing about $4 billion (including the first five years of mission costs), it's based on what NASA calls "legacy" hardware and concepts, ideas and tech developed for previous missions that have been shown to work.

Roman is very similar to the Hubble Space Telescope: It will sport a 2.4-meter primary mirror, the same size as Hubble's. But it will have a far, far wider field of view, meaning it will see larger chunks of the sky. How much bigger? In a single image it will see one hundred times as much of the sky as Hubble.

So, for example, to get the equivalent of the incredible image of the Andromeda galaxy that took Hubble 400 pointings, Roman will do in four. Yes, four.

And this is why Roman will find so many black holes. While they're dark, they have a profound effect on light that passes by them.

Light flows through space, but gravity warps space, distorting it like a bowling ball sitting on a trampoline. The path light takes going past an object will bend to follow the warp in space made by the object's gravity. The higher the gravity, the more space warps, and the more the light's path will bend.

Perhaps you see where this is going.

A black hole warps space severely. If a black hole passes between us and more distant star, for example, all manners of weird things happen to the light we see from the star. It can get amplified, making the star brighter. It can get smeared out, making the star look like a ring, or create multiple images of the star. We call this effect gravitational lensing, since gravity acts like a lens, bending the light.

That's cool, but here's the very cool bit: The Sun, that background star, and the black hole are all orbiting around the center of our galaxy, so they're all moving relative to one another. If the alignment is just so, we can actually see the star appear to move back and forth a bit on the sky as its light is bent by the passing black hole!

This won't happen hugely often because the alignment has to be fairly precise; the effect is small, with a shift of only about a milliarcsecond (one arcsecond is 1/3600th of a degree, and the full Moon on the sky is about 1,800 arseconds). Because the shift is so small we call it microlensing.

But here's where the Roman Space Telescope steps in: Its Wide-Field Imager camera looks at such a huge area of the sky (a quarter of a degree at one shot, half the width of the full Moon on the sky) with such high resolution (nearly the same as Hubble's, so sharp) and precision that just by chance it will catch this motion.

To maximize that chance astronomers will point it toward the center of the galaxy, where it will see many tens or even hundreds of millions of stars at once. By taking many images of the same field over time, any tiny shift in a star's position can be recorded. By doing this it's expected to find hundreds of solitary black holes between us and the center of the galaxy just under 26,000 light years away.

It's still a tiny fraction of the lonely dark black holes out there, but it's a whole lot more than we've seen so far. And by measuring the change in the star's position we can get the black hole's distance from us (likely thousands of light years), its mass, and it's velocity through space.

But wait! There's more!

Stars and planets can cause this gravitational lensing as well. If a solar system between us and the galactic center drifts past a more distant star, we can see the background star's brightness increase (the position shift is too small to measure). Quite a few planets thousands of light years from Earth have already been discovered this way. Roman should find a substantial number more.

Not that any of this is easy. The positions of all those stars will shift due to parallax as Roman orbits the Sun, for example, and changes in the camera's temperature can distort the detector a teeny bit (though this can be mapped very accurately and corrected). So astronomers will have their work cut out for them once Roman starts looking for these events.

Hubble Space Telescope was a revolution in astronomy. Once the focus issue was fixed it provided us with stunningly crisp and deep images of the Universe, and we leapt forward in our understanding of it.

What will the Nancy Roman Space Telescope be able to do with 100 times as much of the cosmos to see at once?

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Millions of lonely black holes are in our galaxy. Heres how well find some of them. - SYFY WIRE

IfA astronomers will help NASA generate a three-dimensional map of the universe.

University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy (IfA) astronomers will play an instrumental role in helping unveil the universes very first galaxies, more than 13 billion light years away. On Monday, April 19, NASA announced the first suite of science programs for its groundbreaking James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), set to launch in October 2021. The IfA researchers are part of the COSMOS-Webb project, which will be the largest guest observer program in JWSTs first year of operation.

The IfA astronomers will conduct detailed follow-up observations of galaxies seen in the JWST images, using the telescopes on Maunakea. The JWST is the largest and most powerful space telescope ever built and will succeed NASAs Hubble Space Telescope. It is equipped to observe some of the most distant objects in the universe, using upgraded infrared sensitivity and resolution.

Ground-based observations from Maunakea will be critical for turning the JWST images into a three-dimensional map of the universe, said David Sanders, lead IfA investigator.

Sanders and his IfA team are part of the newly selected COSMOS-Webb program, comprised of nearly 50 researchers from 30 institutions worldwide, including IfA, the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), and University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin). The COSMOS-Webb program will help NASA map the first galaxies formed at Cosmic Dawn, when the universe was less than 1/20th of its current age.

Researchers will conduct spectroscopic follow-up of interesting galaxies at the W.M. Keck Observatory and Subaru Telescope. Subarus new instrument called the Prime Focus Spectrograph will be crucial for determining distances to all galaxies in the JWST survey.

The program will log more than 200 hours of observation time on Maunakea to conduct an ambitious survey of half a million galaxies. An unprecedented 32,000 galaxies will be observed using mid-infrared imaging. Researchers will rapidly release data to the public so it can lead to other studies.

The sheer scope of our program is so exciting, said IfA alumna Jeyhan Kartaltepe, a professor at RITs School of Physics and Astronomy. The first year of Webb observations will result in a lot of new discoveries that people will want to explore more in-depth in future cycles.

Much of the earlier research in this specific part of the sky has been centered at the IfA, including the S-COSMOS survey, a deep infrared imaging survey using NASAs Spitzer Space Telescope. Led by Sanders, the project was an essential precursor to this JWST program.

COSMOS-Webb has the potential to be ground-breaking in ways we havent even dreamt yet, said former IfA Hubble Fellow Caitlin Casey, now an assistant professor and COSMOS-Webb principal investigator at UT Austin. You dont know what treasures are there to find until you use an incredible telescope like Webb to stare at the sky for a long time.

COSMOS-Webb is one of just 286 general scientific observer programs NASA selected out of more than 1,000 proposals for the telescopes first year of science. These specific programs will provide the worldwide astronomical community with one of the first extensive opportunities to investigate scientific targets. JWST is slated to be operational in 2022.

For more information go to the Space Telescope Science Institute website.

This work is an example of UH Mnoas goal of Excellence in Research: Advancing the Research and Creative Work Enterprise (PDF), one of four goals identified in the 201525 Strategic Plan (PDF), updated in December 2020.

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UH astronomers to help map the first galaxies in the universe | University of Hawaii System News - UH System Current News

The mild Lyrids meteor shower has been gracing our night sky without fanfare every April, for centuries. This year, it has to tussle with a supermoon for attention

It never hurts to look up at the night sky. Stars explode, comets careen, cosmic miracles take place at an inconceivable scale far beyond our line of sight, and the only indication we get is the lightest of twinkles above our heads. Every once in a while, however, one of these phenomena deigns to enter our humble fields of vision. And while the Lyrids meteor shower is not the most exciting of them, it is among the first meteor showers of the year and one of two reasons for us to keep our eyes trained towards the sky this month.

The showers can be seen at their peak tonight (as well as a few days before and after), but their glow might be dimmed by the other phenomenon of the month: a supermoon on April 26.

What would have happened is that a comet would have broken up, probably centuries ago. We [the Earth] will be passing through the tail of the comet, or through what is left of it. This particular one is what we pass every year, around the third week of April, explains Jayant Murthy, a scientist and professor at the Bengaluru-based Indian Institute of Astrophysics, over the phone. He adds, The comet itself came by our solar system in the mid-1800s, and wont be coming back for a while.

Neeraj Ladia, head of education organisation SPACE Chennai, explains further: When the debris is left in space, it has a fixed space in the sky. Due to the Earths revolution it will cross the debris that lies in the path of its orbit. The parts of debris that encounter our atmosphere begin to burn, creating the spectacle of bright, streaking meteors.

Murthy adds that this particular shower does have a few bright fragments, and can be best viewed after midnight on a dark sky, ideally one not lit up by bright city lights. It will be brightest between April 21 and 23. Look towards the Lyra constellation to spot it, he suggests.

Major meteor showers through the year

The constellation, which the meteor shower has been named after, is considered the radiant point of the shower, explains Ladia. In simple terms, as the Earth nears this debris, that constellation is the point from where the shower appears to begin, to us.

Ladia calls this radiant point a meteor showers address in the sky. Whichever constellation it seems to be coming from, he says, is what the meteor shower is named after: Lyrids for Lyra, Geminids for Gemini, Perseid for Perseus and so on.

How powerful a meteor shower is, depends on a number of factors, such as how numerous the debris is, the size of each individual particle, its luminosity, and its rate per hour. The standard for measuring that last factor, says Ladia, is zhr or zenithal hourly rate: how many meteors can one person see per hour on a clear night. It is the measure of the quality of a meteor shower.

Lyrids has a zhr of 15 to 20 on dark skies, adds Ladia: It isnt very good, it is considered a fairly normal zhr. Geminids [in December] on the other hand has almost 120 zhr. Perseid, which is coming in August, will have around 80 meteors per hour.

He further adds that Lyrids might be even less bright this year, because of its close proximity to the supermoon. There is already a gibbous moon in the sky, which will only set around 1 am or 2 am each night, he states, adding that post-1 am is the best time to make an attempt if you live close to dark skies.

Lyrid Meteor Shower - Night astrophotography skies with light trails from streaking meteors in April.

The biggest danger of the meteor shower being drowned out by luminosity still stems from the supermoon, which also happens to be the first of its kind this year. Supermoons are generally the brightest and largest full moons of the year, and can occur two or three times a year if certain factors fall exactly into place.

Shweta Kulkarni, chief executive officer of Pune-based organisation Astron, which works to spread awareness of astronomy, explains the concept of a supermoon. The lunar orbit around the Earth is elliptical. So the moon is sometimes very close to the Earth, and sometimes moves further away during its orbit. When it is very close to us and we happen to have a full moon at the same time, we call it a supermoon.

For any satellite, the closest point of orbit to Earth is termed its perigee. According to NASA, both a new moon and a full moon can be termed a supermoon, as long as it is within 90% of perigee.

So what does this mean in visual terms? According to both Kulkarni and Ladia, it is difficult to gauge the difference between a usual full moon and a supermoon unless you put their photographs side by side.

The difference in size is just about 10% to 14%, so there isnt much to notice once its up in the sky, adds Ladia, You can tell it most drastically when the moon is still rising. Closer to the horizon, with buildings, trees or other structures for reference, it can look amazing. Space Chennai is organising a photography contest, as well as a Facebook Live on April 26. Anyone can join in and enjoy it, adds Ladia.

So you can keep your cameras and telephoto lenses ready, or you can just sit back and watch the sky and all its miracles, letting it provide some of the succour we so desperately need.

See the article here:

A supermoon and a meteor shower: astronomical events this April - The Hindu

DiscountMags has a few notable titles on sale right now including a nice Astronomy magazine price drop as part of its new Hot Titles of the Week sale. This, like most of the retailers weekday events, focuses in on four titles at a particularly rock-bottom price. This time around the real standout is Astronomy magazine, but youll find some others in there as well as free shipping, no sales tax, and absolutely zero auto-rental worries. More details below.

As we mentioned above, the real standout here is the Astronomy magazine price drop at $12.99 per year with free shipping. This one sells for $45 per year at Amazon and is now matching our previous mention. All of you astrophotographers, space enthusiasts, and Space Explored fans can have this one land your coffee table all year long for just over $1 per month. Astronomy is described as the worlds best-selling astronomy magazine brings the wonders of space down to earth and into your handsWhether youre a new stargazer or a seasoned astronomer, Astronomy is the magazine of choice for everyone interested in the happenings of our universe.

Browse through the rest of the Hot Titles of the Week sale right here. And remember, outside of todays Astronomy magazine price drop, there are loads more magazine deals live from the weekend sale until midnight tonight.

Swing by ourmedia deal hubfor additional entertainment price drops including these Blu-ray + 4K offers from $7and much more. Then go grab your Amazon First Reads April eBookfreebies and check out ourlatest reading list.

Spectacular photography: Full color images of distant galaxies, blazing stars, icy moons, stunning planets and moreExpert observing tips: Down-to-earth advice to view the universe from your own backyardTop-notch science reporting: Leading experts keep you in the loop on the latest news and discoveries in the science of astronomyMonthly star maps: Learn what to see and where to see it in the night skyAnd much more!

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Astronomy magazine 1-year subs just dropped to $13 (Reg. $45+), more from $6 - 9to5Toys

Astronomers using NASAs Spitzer Space Telescope have identified three fastest-spinning ultracool dwarfs ever found: 2MASS J03480772-6022270, 2MASS J12195156+3128497, and 2MASS J04070752+1546457.

The faster a brown dwarf spins, the narrower the different-colored atmospheric bands on it likely become, as shown in this illustration. Some brown dwarfs glow in visible light, but they are typically brightest in infrared wavelengths, which are longer than what human eyes can see. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

2MASS J03480772-6022270, 2MASS J12195156+3128497, and 2MASS J04070752+1546457 were first spotted by the ground-based Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS), which ran until 2001.

These brown dwarfs are all about the same diameter as Jupiter but between 40 and 70 times more massive.

They rotate once per 1.08, 1.14 and 1.23 hours, respectively, while the next-fastest known brown dwarfs rotate about once every 1.4 hours and Jupiter spins once every 10 hours.

Based on their size, that means the largest of the three brown dwarfs whips around at more than 100 km per second (60 miles per second).

We seem to have come across a speed limit on the rotation of brown dwarfs, said first author Megan Tannock, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Western Ontario.

Despite extensive searches, by our own team and others, no brown dwarfs have been found to rotate any faster. In fact, faster spins may lead to a brown dwarf tearing itself apart.

Tannock and her colleagues first identified the rapid rotation rates of the three brown dwarfs using data from Spitzer.

They then corroborated their unusual findings through observations with the ground-based Gemini North and Magellan telescopes.

They did this by measuring alterations in the objects light caused by the Doppler effect and using a computer model to match those alterations to spin rates.

Brown dwarfs, like planets with atmospheres, can have large weather storms that affect their visible brightness, said co-author Dr. Stanimir Metchev, an astronomer at the Institute for Earth and Space Exploration at Western University.

The observed brightness variations show how frequently the same storms are seen as the object spins, which reveals the brown dwarfs spin period.

A paper describing the results will be published in the Astronomical Journal.

_____

Megan E. Tannock et al. 2021. Weather on Other Worlds. V. The Three Most Rapidly Rotating Ultra-Cool Dwarfs. AJ, in press; arXiv: 2103.01990

See the rest here:

Spitzer Discovers Three Most Rapidly-Rotating Brown Dwarfs | Astronomy - Sci-News.com

According to the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA) founded in 1988 and based in Tucson, Arizona light pollution is increasing at a rate two times that of population growth, and 83% of the global population lives under a light-polluted sky. Thats why the group has established an International Dark Sky Week, which in 2021 falls on April 5 to 12. Goals for the week include turning off unneeded exterior lights and considering leaving them off all year long. The group also hopes youll learn the stars and constellations, and teach them to others, and join the global dark sky movement to protect and celebrate our shared heritage. According the the IDA:

It may seem harmless, but light pollution has far-reaching consequences that are harmful to all living things. Effective outdoor lighting reduces light pollution, leading to a better quality of life for all. The dark sky movement is working to bring better lighting to communities around the world so that all life can thrive.

Looking for ways to celebrate International Dark Sky Week? Find International Dark Sky Week events all over the world, organized by astronomy clubs, schools, universities, communities and more. Visit EarthSkys Tonight page to see what you can view in the sky this week. Visit EarthSkys Best Places to Stargaze page to find a good dark-sky observing site close to home. Share your night sky photos at EarthSky Community Photos.

Paul Bogard has written extensively on the importance of darkness. His book is titled The End of Night. His TEDx Talk focuses on why we need darkness. Youll find his TEDx Talk here.

Use this poster to help spread the word: Its International Dark Sky Week! Celebrate April 5 to 12, 2021, by teaching others the night sky. Image via IDA.

View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Jatinkumar Thakkar in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, captured this photo of the Milky Way on March 20, 2021. He wrote: Cape Cod has the darkest sky within the state. As the Milky Way season has begun, my friends and I decided to go to Cape Cod to take pictures of the Milky Way near the seashore. What a calm and clear night! We could see a clear reflection of the Milky Way in the water. Thank you, Jatinkumar!

Bottom line: The 2021 International Dark Sky Week runs from April 5 to April 12.

See the article here:

International Dark Sky Week is April 5 to 12 - EarthSky

Meteor showers, pink supermoons, and zodiacal glows, oh my! A slew of astronomy events promise to dazzle people across the country this month, so be sure to mark your calendar and keep a pair of binoculars handy.

If you're searching for the best time to head outside or wondering how to catch these stunning phenomena in the sky, don't sweat itwe've got you covered. Sure it might require waking up at a few unusual times, but it'll surely be worth your while. First up: the zodiacal glow!

Thanks to a cloud of dust particles orbiting the sun, we can catch a glimpse of sunlight being reflected toward earth, which results in this experience, according to NASA. Those in search of the zodiacal glow should try to find a column of light extending from the horizon. Though it's still being researched, the zodiacal glow is said to be a result of mars!

Have a look at the Palatinate Forest near Bad Derkheim in Germany in March 2021. You'll be able to catch that faint column of light toward the left of the photograph. That's the zodiacal glow! At times, it can look like a pyramid.

(Image credit: Getty Images)

Those in the northern hemisphere are expected to see the zodiacal glow from now until April 13.

The best time is after twilight. It is likely to appear in the west after sunset, according to EarthSky.

On average, these cool moons often appear roughly 15% brighter and 7% bigger, according to Farmer's Almanac.

Much like Chrissy Teigen's new hairdo, the moon sports a ros-colored tint. However, sometimes it could come across as golden or white-colored, according to Farmer's Almanac.

(Image credit: Chaiwat Subprasom/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

The first pink supermoon of 2021 is happening on April 26! If you miss it, don't worry: It'll return a month later, on May 26. Talk about good timing!

The best time to see this spectacular event is at night. (Farmer's Almanac suggests after sunset.) The moon will reach peak illumination at 11:33pm EDTa bit late for the kiddos, but hopefully not for you! Space.com suggests arriving early, as it predicts the peak illumination will be two minutes earlier at 11:31pm.

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Following a months-long meteor drought, these space rocks will enter Earth's atmosphere as glowing hot air, according to NASA.

(Image credit: Mario Hommes/DeFodi Images via Getty Images)

These are shooting stars! You have to be on your toes to catch 'em! These were captured in Germany in April 2020.

We're expected to see them all over the world! Catch them from April 19 to the morning of April 23, according to EarthSky.

Take a look between moonset and dawn!

Link:

Here's how to catch a star-studded April thanks to these astronomy events - woman&home

To help keep readers plugged into Cincinnati life even as we continue to physically distance from each other due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, CityBeat is highlighting a series of local podcasts and their creators every week. Read previous installments about "When Pigs Fly," "West End Stories," "Cincinnati Zoo Tails," "Cincy Brewcast," "Nature Vs. Narcissism" and "Person of Interest."

The "Looking Up" podcast explores the cosmos.Photo: Greg Rakozy, Unsplash

Curiosity isnt just the name of NASAs Mars rover. Its also the driving force behind Cincinnati Public Radios Looking Up podcast.

Twice a month, co-hosts Dean Regas and Anna Hehman talk about all things astronomy from the red, dying star Betelgeuse (up in the sky, not the fictional poltergeist made famous by actor Michael Keaton) to the periodic alignment of Saturn and Jupiter to NASAs citizen scientists programs.

And if things veer into the pop-culture realm when Star Trek's William Shatner makes a guest appearance, it's all the better to get more Cincinnatians interested in space.

According to Regas and Hehman, the purpose of the podcast is to spark curiosity and conversation about science in a way that is accessible and exciting.

The thing that is important, and I think what hopefully people get from this podcast, is just because you don't have this knowledge, you can have an interest and genuine curiosity about the universe and cosmos, Hehman tells CityBeat.

While Regas is considered an expert on observational astronomy as the Cincinnati Observatorys renowned educator and astronomer, Hehmans background is devoid of anything astronomical. She says she learns alongside the listener, and her dynamic with Regas provides a light-hearted crash course on astronomy that is intriguing for all ages.

If it was just Dean kind of explaining things in a vacuum, it would be great, of course, but the back and forth is what makes it feel more relatable and really bring some of these topics, like we say, down to Earth, Hehman says.

In each 30-minute episode, Hehman and Regas also interview guests, including NASA astronauts, celebrities from classic sci-fi shows, space-related authors and astrophysicists.

Regas explains that a key role of astronomers is to be great communicators between the technical aspects of astronomy and the discoverys relation to the public. With these interviews, Regas says he tries to impart the pivotal work of each guest while also making it relevant to the average person.

I try to be kind of the intermediary between the people making these awesome, incredible discoveries and kind of relating it to people to say, What does this actually mean or what does this actually do for us? he says.

Notable guests have included Shatner (Star Treks Captain James Kirk), Paul Zaloom (who played the titular character onBeakman's World), Phil Plait (Twitter personality The Bad Astronomer and writer on Netflixs Bill Nye Saves the World)and Ann Druyan (writer/editor/producer of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odysseyand Carl Sagans widow).

In an upcoming episode, Hehman and Regas will interview a Cincinnati-born engineer that worked on NASAs latest Mars rover, Perseverance.

Hehman says she loves talking to the guests because of their palpable excitement for their work and space in general, which always enhances the key insights that they bring to the show.

In addition to the science-centric topics, Hehman and Regas like to add comedy and commentary. Each episode of Looking Up has a segment called The Crank File, in which Hehman and Regas look at astronomers theories from the 1800s to 1900s and try to debunk them with modern knowledge. Another segment has Regas answering space-related questions submitted by kindergarteners.

With a field as nebulous as astronomy, Regas and Hehman say they never have to fear running out of episode topics.

I think there's so many different topics to cover and so many new discoveries. I mean, I always like to say that astronomy stories are always like good news stories. Theyre always very positive, Regas says.

That ties into the podcasts title, Looking Up, both in the practicality of astronomy and as a philosophy on life.

That idea of the looking up is a little bit of a philosophy also, Regas says. Especially for this past year, we've been really trying to be very positive about things. That's actually kind of part of our thingwe're real positive about the future, were positive about things going on.

Looking Up is released twice per month. It can be accessed via Cincinnati Public Radio, Appleor wherever you listen to podcasts.

See the article here:

'Looking Up' Podcast Explores Cincinnati's Connection to Space, the Final Frontier - Cincinnati CityBeat

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System and is one of the gas giants. It is the third-brightest natural object in the night sky (after the moon and Venus) and is named after a Roman god. Jupiter has 79 known natural satellites (53 have been named and 26 are still waiting for official names) of these 60 are less than 10km wide. They can be classified into three different categories, Inner, Outer and Galilean.

The inner moons are those which orbit closest to Jupiter and they are sometimes known as the Amalthea group. This category includes moons such as Metis, Adrastea, Amalthea, and Thebe. The other moons are known as irregular moons due to their eccentric and distant orbit paths. These are the furthest from Jupiter and are considerably smaller objects. It is thought that many of these moons are captured asteroids pulled in by the gravitational forces of Jupiter.

The third classification of the moons of Jupiter are the Galilean moons which are the largest four moons of Jupiter; Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. These were discovered by Galileo in 1610 (hence where the name comes from). They each have a radius larger than any of the dwarf planets and they are some of the largest objects in the solar system outside of the eight planets.

Io is the most volcanically active body in the solar system and its surface is a colourful collaboration of different forms of sulphur. The immense gravitational pull of Jupiter causes gravity pulled tides on the surface of Io that can rise up to 100meters high that end up creating enough heat for the volcanic activity to drive off any water. The surface of Europa is covered in mostly water ice, with evidence of this suggesting that it may be covering an ocean of water/slushy ice. In-fact it is thought that there may be as mush as twice the amount of water on Europa compared to Earth. Ganymede is the largest moon within our solar system, indeed it actually is larger than the planet Mercury. The size of this moon means that it is large enough to actually generate its own magnetic field. Callisto is the second largest moon orbiting Jupiter and the third largest overall in the solar system.

Limerick Astronomy Club email limerickastronomyclub @gmail.com

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Limerick Astronomy Club: The Moons of Jupiter - Limerick Leader