Category Archives: Astronomy

HE WAS a Gisborne Astronomical Society star but the late Huon Chandler preferred to stay out of the limelight, says society president John Drummond of his long-time friend.

Mr Chandler was the societys long-standing treasurer and public nights presenter.

Devoted to the society since the early 1970s, the Cook Observatory was like his second home, said Mr Drummond in his eulogy.

Few know he paid the monthly power bills out of his own pocket when the society was at its ebb.

He also regularly mowed the grass around the Cook Observatory for years and painted over graffiti as soon as it appeared on the observatory.

Mr Chandler ran public nights every Tuesday for about 25 years and his talks on cosmology and others aspects of astronomy were legendary.

Those public nights even made it into the New Zealand Lonely Planet section on Gisborne.

There are undoubtedly many other things that Huon did for the society and observatory that even I dont know, said Mr Drummond.

Born in Dunedin in 1947, Mr Chandler joined the Inland Revenue Department on leaving school. When his family moved to Gisborne a few years later, he moved here too.

He met his future wife, Carol, during a holiday in USA and in 1976. They married in Gisborne and raised two boys, Joseph and Matthew.

Mr Chandlers varied career usually included a computer.

A passionate reader, Mr Chandler had a particular penchant for science fiction and loved fantasy games.

When computer fantasy games became available, he was in his element.

He was equally in his element on starry nights.

Mr Drummond recalls those nights.

We discussed everything from astronomy, to politics, to God and, of course his family, which he always spoke of with pride and excitement.

I remember one night on the roof of the Cook Observatory when Huon and I were observing a meteor shower.

We got to talking about the movie Blazing Saddles and noticed more meteors.

Later we revisited that comedy-western and again saw an increase in meteors.

This happened a number of times during the night. It was a unique experience to us both and one that we joked about for many years after.

Mr Chandler died on May 26 after several months of illness.

Farewell my old meteor-observing buddy, said Mr Drummond.

May you shine like a star in your new abode forever.

HE WAS a Gisborne Astronomical Society star but the late Huon Chandler preferred to stay out of the limelight, says society president John Drummond of his long-time friend.

Mr Chandler was the societys long-standing treasurer and public nights presenter.

Devoted to the society since the early 1970s, the Cook Observatory was like his second home, said Mr Drummond in his eulogy.

Few know he paid the monthly power bills out of his own pocket when the society was at its ebb.

He also regularly mowed the grass around the Cook Observatory for years and painted over graffiti as soon as it appeared on the observatory.

Mr Chandler ran public nights every Tuesday for about 25 years and his talks on cosmology and others aspects of astronomy were legendary.

Those public nights even made it into the New Zealand Lonely Planet section on Gisborne.

There are undoubtedly many other things that Huon did for the society and observatory that even I dont know, said Mr Drummond.

Born in Dunedin in 1947, Mr Chandler joined the Inland Revenue Department on leaving school. When his family moved to Gisborne a few years later, he moved here too.

He met his future wife, Carol, during a holiday in USA and in 1976. They married in Gisborne and raised two boys, Joseph and Matthew.

Mr Chandlers varied career usually included a computer.

A passionate reader, Mr Chandler had a particular penchant for science fiction and loved fantasy games.

When computer fantasy games became available, he was in his element.

He was equally in his element on starry nights.

Mr Drummond recalls those nights.

We discussed everything from astronomy, to politics, to God and, of course his family, which he always spoke of with pride and excitement.

I remember one night on the roof of the Cook Observatory when Huon and I were observing a meteor shower.

We got to talking about the movie Blazing Saddles and noticed more meteors.

Later we revisited that comedy-western and again saw an increase in meteors.

This happened a number of times during the night. It was a unique experience to us both and one that we joked about for many years after.

Mr Chandler died on May 26 after several months of illness.

Farewell my old meteor-observing buddy, said Mr Drummond.

May you shine like a star in your new abode forever.

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Stalwart of astronomy and proud family man - Gisborne Herald

A team of astronomers has determined how the gas flow from a massive infant star is launched. The researchers used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to observe the 10-solar-mass protostar Orion KL Source I in the Kleinmann-Low Nebula and obtained clear evidence of rotation in the outflow.

Artists impression of Orion KL Source I. The massive protostar is surrounded by a disk of gas and dust. The outflow is launched from the surface of the outer disk. Image credit: ALMA / ESO / NAOJ / NRAO.

Stars form from gas and dust floating in interstellar space. But, astronomers do not yet fully understand how it is possible to form the massive stars seen in space.

One key issue is gas rotation. The parent cloud rotates slowly in the initial stage and the rotation becomes faster as the cloud shrinks due to self-gravity.

Stars formed in such a process should have very rapid rotation, but this is not the case. The stars observed in the Universe rotate more slowly.

How is the rotational momentum dissipated? One possible scenario involves that the gas emanating from protostars.

If the gas outflow rotates, it can carry rotational momentum away from the system.

Astronomers have tried to detect the rotation of the outflow to test this scenario and understand its launching mechanism.

In a few cases signatures of rotation have been found, but it has been difficult to resolve clearly, especially around massive protostars.

Orion KL Source I observed with ALMA. The massive protostar is located in the center and surrounded by a gas disk (red). A bipolar gas outflow is ejected from the protostar (blue). Image credit: ALMA / ESO / NAOJ / NRAO / Hirota et al.

Dr. Tomoya Hirota, an astronomer at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) and SOKENDAI, and colleagues observed a protostar called Orion KL Source I in the Kleinmann-Low Nebula, the most active part of the Orion Nebula complex.

Thanks to its close vicinity and ALMAs advanced capabilities, Dr. Hirota and co-authors were able to reveal the nature of the outflow from Orion KL Source I.

We have clearly imaged the rotation of the outflow. In addition, the result gives us important insight into the launching mechanism of the outflow, Dr. Hirota said.

The new ALMA observations beautifully illustrate the rotation of the outflow: it rotates in the same direction as the gas disk surrounding the star; this strongly supports the idea that the outflow plays an important role in dissipating the rotational energy.

Furthermore, ALMA clearly shows that the outflow is launched not from the vicinity of Orion KL Source I itself, but rather from the outer edge of the disk. This morphology agrees well with the magnetocentrifugal disk wind model.

The findings appear today in the journal Nature Astronomy.

_____

Hirota et al. Disk-Driven Rotating Bipolar Outflow in Orion Source I. Nature Astronomy, published online June 12, 2017

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ALMA Observes Massive Protostar in Kleinmann-Low Nebula - Sci-News.com

Waikato Museum exhibition "Te Whnau Mrama: The Heavenly Bodies" was a double-finalist at the New Zealand Museum Awards.

Curated by Dr Rangi Matamua, Dr Hemi Whaanga, Dr Ann Hardy and Hohepa Tuahine from the University of Waikato, the exhibition shines the spotlight on Mori astronomy and how it is being revitalised.

Supported by taonga, photographs and krero, Te Whnau Mrama opens the door on tuning into the stars and a better understanding of the history and meaning of Matariki.

Dr Rangi Matamua (Thoe) is an associate professor at the University ofWaikato.

He states, The right time to look for Matariki is at the end of June or the beginning or middle of July. That's Pipiri according to the Mori calendar. This year, its from July 17 to July 20 when the moon is in the Tangaroa phase in the month ofPipiri.

Matamua maintains that Mori astronomy is not practised as widely as it once was.

I want this system of knowledge of astronomy to be revitalised in our modern world. We haveforgottenhow to read the stars. However, the knowledge is still there today.

The exhibition was a finalist in the Excellence: Taonga Mori and Most Innovative Use of Te Reo Mori categories.

It incorporates Mori legend, tradition, architecture, music and history to convey the spoken and written language within the exhibition.

Although the exhibition was not a winner, Matamua maintains that the overall aim is the dissemination and revival of traditional Mori knowledge.

The hope is for Mori to return to the environment, to the origin of Mori language and philosophy, governing principals and protocols everything that came from the environment.

The Te Whnau Mrama: The Heavenly Bodies exhibition is on at Waikato Museum and runs until 13 July 2018.

Excerpt from:

Mori Astronomy exhibition double-finalist at NZ Museum Awards - Mori Television

The origin of the notorious Wow! Signala 72 second-long astronomical anomaly some scientists first thought to have been a signal from extraterrestrial lifehas been a constant source of speculation for alien hunters ever since it was recorded in 1977 by Ohio State University's Big Ear radio telescope.

Was it a radio signal sent by E.T. or just something more mundanely human?

A new scientific paper, published in the Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences, claims to have finally nailed it, sparking a flurry of press coverage proclaiming the mystery finally solved. According to the study author, Antonio Paris of St. Petersburg College in Florida, the answer lies in a passing comet called 266P/Christensen (only discovered in 2006) that caused the 1420MHz 'Wow!' radio signal detected some forty years ago.

Paris' research claims to have confirmed that comets emit a 1420MHz signal. Thus, he goes on to argue, this is likely what the telescope picked up on when the comet passed in front of the area of the sky the it was pointed at.

But Paris' conclusion doesn't have fellow astronomers convinced.

"There are some problems with the analysis, which doesn't use many of the standard things one would do in radio astronomy," Chris Lintott, professor of astrophysics at the University of Oxford, told Motherboard.

"The paper appears in a journal that I hadn't heard of before Paris published his Wow/comet ideas in thereit may be peer reviewed, but it's not part of the astronomical mainstream and so I'd be worried about the quality of that review."

"You may as well say it's due to ghosts or due to reality television"

So between interrogative tweets and doubting Reddit threads, Motherboard reached out to Paris to ask what's really going on.

"I have received over 500 emails this week about the Wow paper. About 99.99 percent appear [to be] positive reaction from the public and the scientific community," Paris told Motherboard in an email. "A handful, however, were from those who are still skeptical, mostly from the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Life) community. I suspect that SETI, who has used the Wow signal as a source of revenue, is nervous."

SETI, for its part, says such claims are preposterous: "We haven't made any money on the Wow signal whatsoever," Seth Shostak, senior astronomer for the SETI Institute, told Motherboard. "The charge we're making a lot of money off of it is bizarre. It's a bogus claim."

Shostak says he finds Paris's paper hard to believe based on what other astronomers have observed.

"The Ohio State radio telescope has two receivers on it. If it observes something in the sky, it's always reobserved 70 seconds later with a second feed," he said. "With Wow, it found it in one feed but it doesn't find it in the second. It's disappeared. A comet doesn't disappear in a minute. It doesn't move across the sky in a minute. It barely moves at all."

Paris said he had even received a phone call from a technician who helped build the Big Ear telescope who was excited that "the mystery has been solved." But Paris' research is still in the firing line.

"Saying 'The Wow signal might not be a comet if comets do something we haven't seen them doing' seems not very exciting."

"The claimed detectioneven if it's realis much, much weaker than the Wow signal, and lasts for longer. So at best the paper shows that comets are detectable in the radionot that they're capable of the kind of burst that produced the Wow signal," Lintott told Motherboard. "Saying 'The Wow signal might be a comet if comets do something we haven't seen them doing' seems not very exciting."

A Reddit user, also claiming to be a radio astronomer, posted a lengthy takedown of Paris' paper over the weekend, arguing, "This paper was also just really, really, really short on details that a radio astronomer would want, to the point where it likely wouldn't have passed a referee at a 'regular' journal."

The Wow! signal. Its name inspired by astronomer Jerry R. Ehman, who discovered the anomaly in August 1977. Image: Big Ear Radio Observatory and North American AstroPhysical Observatory (NAAPO).

But Paris has kicked back against what he calls an "emotional" response. "I am not in the business of responding to emotions," he told Motherboard. "There are too many people 'excited' or 'upset' about this project. Emotions should not have any part in science."

Shostak said that the comet explanation "would be an interesting result if true," but that the data just doesn't back it up: "You may as well say it's due to ghosts or due to reality television or something. If the explanation doesn't fit the data, you have to be a little suspect."

To that end, Lintott has spent the weekend putting together a public list of questions for Paris to answer about his paper, including contributions from other astronomers. The search for extraterrestrial life continues.

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The Controversy Over the Alien 'Wow!' Signal Is Astronomy's Greatest Beef - Motherboard

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Planets, stars, constellations and galaxies in the night sky are one of the free benefits for people who spend nights high in the Central Sierra, and for people who work and live beyond the reach of urban lighting.

The Forest Service used to offer astronomy programs at Bald Mountain Heliport. Stargazers say its a high point with no trees that offers near-perfect 360-degree panoramas of the heavens after dark.

But staffing and budget constraints have prompted Stanislaus National Forest administrators to cancel the astronomy star parties they used to host at the heliport.

Among those who are disappointed is amateur astronomer Rich Combs, 66, a resident of Strawberry and Livermore. He began coming to the Pinecrest area when he was a youngster in the late 1950s and 1960s. He remembers being inspired by a satellite passing over him in the night sky.

His affinity for the stars and astronomy stayed with him. He eventually hosted astronomy star parties for the Forest Service for more than a decade. An invoice from last year shows he got paid $120 a night for star parties at the heliport.

Combs contacted The Union Democrat and said today he doesnt care about the money.

Over the years, theyve offered me as much as $400 per presentation, Combs said Thursday. Thats what they told me some of their presenters get, and they asked me what I wanted to charge.

He charged $100, and thats what the Forest Service paid him for about 10 years. A couple years ago he started charging $120 a night.

I would be happy to do it for free if that would make any difference, Combs said. I hope the public understands heres what your money is not getting spent on.

Space race

Combs was born in 1951, and he remembers when he was about 8 years old the first time he attended Camp Gold, also known as Lair of the Golden Bear, an alumni camp for the University of California system, near Pinecrest and the Summit District Ranger Station.

Camp Gold is a family camp for alumni and their families, Combs said. Families almost always went the same week each year. We made friends that way. Combs family went from about 1959 to 1963.

Camp Gold is still there, off of Dodge Ridge Road and within walking distance of the Summit Ranger Station.

The first time Combs went to Camp Gold was for a week in August 1959, with his family. His father attended UC Berkeley, and he was a qualified alumnus. Combs remembers stargazing at dark night skies from a baseball field at the camp.

I was interested in astronomy since grade school, Combs said. I remember at Camp Gold going up and looking at a satellite, easily visible to the eye. My dad took to the family to a dark area near Camp Gold and a satellite had been predicted to be visible. We saw it go overhead. I was maybe 10 years old.

Combs said the satellite was called Echo.

This was in the midst of the space race between the Soviet Union and the United States, and the Russians were beating the Americans.

In late 1957, the Russians launched Sputnik I, the first artificial satellite placed in orbit, and Sputnik II, which carried a small dog named Laika into orbit.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, created in 1958, was in its infancy. According to NASA historians, the agency launched an Echo I metalized balloon satellite Aug. 12 1960.

Echo satellites generated a lot of public interest in the early 1960s because they could be seen with the naked eye from the ground as they passed overhead.

In April 1961, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin orbited the Earth once and became the first human in space. Less than a month later, Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American in space.

Bald Mountain Heliport

Bald Mountain Heliport opened in 1962, said Dave Phillips, helibase manager. Its a Forest Service facility on Forest Service land. Phillips said helicopter crews with Cal Fire and contractor PHI Air Medical also use the base when needed.

Shawn Estes, an information assistant at the Summit District Ranger Station, said summer interpretive astronomy programs at Bald Mountain probably began in the summer of 1975.

Combs says hes been an active amateur astronomer since 1980.

He said he remembers going to Bald Mountain Heliport for the first time about 15 years ago, when he saw an ad in the Stanislaus Traveler newsletter distributed by the Forest Service. Combs said they were looking for someone to help with astronomy programs at Bald Mountain Heliport, because the person who did it for several years was retiring.

Im an observer of stars, galaxies and other objects in the heavens, Combs said. I share my enthusiasm for astronomy with others through my club and through programs at schools, including Summerville High School in Tuolumne.

In addition to leading astronomy programs at Bald Mountain Heliport until this year, Combs says he hosts star parties at Summerville High in October each fall.

We usually try to schedule it around a crescent moon, Combs said. A crescent moon is easy to view but does not overwhelm the dark night sky, so people can see the moon as well as stars.

He said he met a Summerville High science teacher, Karen Wessel, at a star party at Bald Mountain Heliport. At Summerville High star parties, Combs said he organizes star parties on the tennis court at the school. Each year, 20 to 30 people attend, including students and family members.

Its convenient, and its usually dark enough we can see a reasonable number of objects in the night sky, Combs said. Its not as good as Bald Mountain, but its close.

Combs says he is also currently president of the club Tri-Valley Stargazers, based in Livermore.

Staffing and budget

Combs said he went to Summit District Ranger Station about two weeks ago because he had not received his annual invitation to host star parties at Bald Mountain Heliport.

Basically, I was told they were not going to be having the program this year due to a lack of staffing and a lack of funding, Combs said.

Estes confirmed that interpretive astronomy programs at Bald Mountain Heliport this summer have been canceled.

A night program like that, we have to have staff up there, Estes said. Its on a locked firefighting aviation facility. There needs to be supervision up there for public safety.

Like numerous other federal agencies, the Forest Service has faced a hiring freeze and budget cuts since President Donald J. Trumps inauguration in January.

In Tuolumne County, public affairs staff with the Stanislaus National Forest announced that, beginning this week, the front desk at the Mi-Wok Ranger District will be open just one day a week, 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. each Friday.

The decision to open the Mi-Wok Ranger District front desk only on Fridays stems in part from staffing challenges and budget constraints, said Diana Fredlund with Stanislaus National Forest public affairs.

Asked for more details, Fredlund responded, Regarding the staffing challenges, the hiring freeze limits our ability to fill behind departures, whether its retirements or relocations. Flat or declining budgets for the past many years eventually impact our ability to provide services and reducing Mi-Woks front desk operating hours is one of those impacts. We cant discuss anything about future budgets until they have been voted on and announced by Congress and the White House.

In 2016 the overall budget for Stanislaus National Forest was about $20 million, Fredlund said. The 2017 overall budget is about $19.5 million. These numbers do not take into account special funding sources, like recovery from the Rim Fire, which may only be spent on recovery or management efforts directly related to the Rim Fire, or other grants that are designated for a specific purpose.

Combs said, I understand, but I kind of feel our government priorities are not in order. Were losing the chance to educate the public with a free resource, the night skies.

Contact Guy McCarthy at gmccarthy@uniondemocrat.com or (209) 588-4585. Follow him on Twitter @GuyMcCarthy.

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Forest Service cancels astronomy programs at heliport - Union Democrat

The image is a stack of 12 images made over the course of three years with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Using high-precision astrometry, an Italian-led team of astronomers tracked the two components of the system as they moved both across the sky and around each other. Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, L. Bedin et al.

This seemingly unspectacular series of dots with varying distances between them actually shows the slow waltz of two brown dwarfs. The image is a stack of 12 images made over the course of three years with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

Using high-precision astrometry, an Italian-led team of astronomers tracked the two components of the system as they moved both across the sky and around each other.

The observed system, Luhman 16AB, is only about six light-years away and is the third closest stellar system to Earth after the triple star system Alpha Centauri and Barnards Star. Despite its proximity, Luhman 16AB was only discovered in 2013 by the astronomer Kevin Luhman.

The two brown dwarfs that make up the system, Luhman 16A and Luhman 16B, orbit each other at a distance of only three times the distance between the Earth and the sun, and so these observations are a showcase for Hubbles precision and high resolution.

The astronomers using Hubble to study Luhman 16AB were not only interested in the waltz of the two brown dwarfs, but were also searching for a third, invisible, dancing partner. Earlier observations with the European Southern Observatorys Very Large Telescope indicated the presence of an exoplanet in the system. The team wanted to verify this claim by analyzing the movement of the brown dwarfs in great detail over a long period of time, but the Hubble data showed that the two dwarfs are indeed dancing alone, unperturbed by a massive planetary companion.

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Hubble applauds waltzing dwarfs - Astronomy Now Online

James Ambrister has trained his telescope since he was a seventh-grader on the night-sky, but lately learned to look up during the day at the skys brightest star the sun.

Ambrister and other local astronomy buffs are excited for one of the rarer wonders of the daytime sky: a total solar eclipse that will be visible to much of the U.S. in August.

Ambrister, a member of the Oxford Alabama Solar Astronomy Club, had solar telescopes set up Saturday at Art in the Park in Choccolocco Park in Oxford.

Ambrister said he moved from New Hampshire to Oxford in 2009. He had been a member of New Hampshire Astronomical Society, which visited schools to interest kids in astronomy. Ambrister said he missed that outreach.

When I moved down, I missed that, Ambrister said. I started taking my telescope to Oxford Lake and show people.

Laura Weinkauf, planetarium director at Jacksonville State University, said people can usually see sunspots and solar flares through telescopes.

Sunspots are regions that are cooler than the rest of the sun, Weinkauf said. Solar flares are when the sun sends heated plasma out in one direction or another.

According to Weinkauf, sunspots look like small blemishes on the surface of the sun, but she said its all relative.

The sun is about 6,000 degrees Kelvin, Weinkauf said. The sunspots are cooler at about 4,000 degrees Kelvin, but keep in mind Earth is only 300 degrees Kelvin. Sunspots also look small, but theyre about the size of the Earth.

Ambrister said he is amazed at how many people dont know how big the sun is.

You can fit 109 Earths across the diameter of the sun, Ambrister said. If you opened it up, 1.2 million Earths would fit inside the sun.

Weinkauf said solar telescopes have special lenses on them that filter out sunlight to make it safe.

Its usually a lens you can attach to your telescope that blocks ninety-nine point some large fraction of the sunlight, Weinkauf said. Its so you dont blind yourself like Galileo did.

Ambrister said he has a telescope that is made specifically for looking at the sun and the filtering lenses for another telescope. He said he brought both to the park.

Oxford resident and co-founder of Backyard Weather Kent Shaddix was also at the park. He said he connected with Ambrister through a mutual friend. Shaddix said he and Ambrister decided to do a joint solar astronomy and weather event at the park.

Shaddix said he is excited for the upcoming solar eclipse.

Its gonna be August 21, Shaddix said. Were gonna set up somewhere for that too.

Weinkauf said a solar eclipse happens when the moon passes between the sun and the Earth. She said seeing a solar eclipse is pretty rare. She said the last total solar eclipse that could be seen in North America was in 1972 in northern Alaska.

The place where you can see the eclipse, the pass width, usually ends up to be somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, Weinkauf said. We wont get a total eclipse in Anniston, but well get about 95-percent coverage which is still pretty rare.

Ambrister said he wont be in town for the eclipse, but he plans to take his telescopes back to the park on June 18 from 8 a.m. to noon. He said he hopes people will come out to take a look.

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Solar astronomy buffs warming up for August eclipse - Anniston Star

It can be hard to visualize something you can't see, so when NASA announced the TRAPPIST-1 system, they knew they needed to get some great artists to visually represent the amazing new system.

Robert Hurt, a visualization scientist at Caltechs IPAC Center with a Ph.D. in astrophysics, and Tim Pyle, a multimedia producer with a background in Hollywood special effects, came together to create visualizations of the TRAPPIST-1 system.

The seven-planet system discovered by NASAs Spitzer Space Telescope has three Earth-size planets in its habitable zone. As no telescope is powerful enough to photograph our distant neighbors yet, the two were tasked with creating realistic renderings of what they might look like.

"For the public, the value of this is not just giving them a picture of something somebody made up," Douglas Hudgins, a program scientist for the Exoplanet Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters, said in a press release. "These are real, educated guesses of how something might look to human beings. An image is worth a thousand words."

Hurt and Pyle worked with data from telescopes and consulted the discovery team at NASA as they went along. TRAPPIST-1b was inspired by Jupiters moon, Io. Pyle based the design of TRAPPIST-1h, the most distant and mysterious planet in the system, off two more of Jupiters moons, Ganymede and Europa.

"When we're doing these artist's concepts, we're never saying, 'This is what these planets actually look like,'" Pyle said. "We're doing plausible illustrations of what they could look like, based on what we know so far. Having this wide range of seven planets actually let us illustrate almost the whole breadth of what would be plausible. This was going to be this incredible interstellar laboratory for what could happen on an Earth-sized planet."

Based on the possibly that the planets are tidally locked, Hurt put an ice cap on TRAPPIST-1cs dark side. Hurt also took a little creative liberty, putting water on the dayside of TRAPPIST-1d, one of the three habitable planets. Scientists originally wanted him to depict an eyeball world, where the side facing the host star would be hot and dry, the side on the back would be icy, and the middle would have water. But Hurt tried to convince them his design would be the best bet.

Then I kind of pushed back, and said, 'If it's on the dark side, no one can look at it and understand we're saying there's water there,' Hurt said.

After the disagreement, the team compromised, allowing water to be seen in the dayside.

Ultimately, the teams main goal was to get the public excited about science and give them more information about what these planets might look like.

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When art and astronomy mix - Astronomy Magazine

ALMA has observed stars like the Sun at a very early stage in their formation and found traces of methyl isocyanate a chemical building block of life. This is the first ever detection of this prebiotic molecule towards a solar-type protostar, the sort from which our Solar System evolved. The discovery could help astronomers understand how life arose on Earth.This image shows the spectacular region of star formation where methyl isocyanate was found. The insert shows the molecular structure of this chemical. Credit: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2/L. Calada

ALMA has observed stars like the Sun at a very early stage in their formation and found traces of methyl isocyanate a chemical building block of life. This is the first ever detection of this prebiotic molecule towards solar-type protostars, the sort from which our Solar System evolved. The discovery could help astronomers understand how life arose on Earth.

Two teams of astronomers have harnessed the power of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array(ALMA) in Chile to detect the prebiotic complex organic moleculemethyl isocyanatein the multiple star systemIRAS 16293-2422. One team was co-led by Rafael Martn-Domnech at theCentro de Astrobiologain Madrid, Spain, and Vctor M. Rivilla, at the INAF-Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetriin Florence, Italy; and the other by Niels Ligterink at theLeiden Observatoryin the Netherlands and Audrey Coutens at University College London, United Kingdom.

This star system seems to keep on giving! Following the discovery of sugars, weve now found methyl isocyanate. This family of organic molecules is involved in the synthesis ofpeptidesandamino acids, which, in the form of proteins, are the biological basis for life as we know it, explain Niels Ligterink and Audrey Coutens.

ALMAs capabilities allowed both teams to observe the molecule at several different and characteristic wavelengths across theradio spectrum. They found the unique chemical fingerprints located in the warm, dense inner regions of the cocoon of dust and gas surrounding young stars in their earliest stages of evolution. Each team identified and isolated the signatures of the complex organic molecule methyl isocyanate. They then followed this up with computer chemical modelling and laboratory experiments to refine our understanding of the molecules origin.

IRAS 16293-2422is a multiple system of very young stars, around 400 light-years away in a large star-forming region calledRho Ophiuchiin the constellation ofOphiuchus(The Serpent Bearer). The new results from ALMA show that methyl isocyanate gas surrounds each of these young stars.

Earth and the other planets in our Solar System formed from thematerialleft over after the formation of the Sun. Studying solar-type protostars can therefore open a window to the past for astronomers and allow them to observe conditions similar to those that led to the formation of our Solar System over 4.5 billion years ago.

Rafael Martn-Domnech and Vctor M. Rivilla, lead authors of one of the papers, comment: We are particularly excited about the result because these protostars are very similar to the Sun at the beginning of its lifetime, with the sort of conditions that are well suited for Earth-sized planets to form. By finding prebiotic molecules in this study, we may now have another piece of the puzzle in understanding how life came about on our planet.

Niels Ligterink is delighted with the supporting laboratory results: Besides detecting molecules we also want to understand how they are formed. Our laboratory experiments show that methyl isocyanate can indeed be produced on icy particles under very cold conditions that are similar to those in interstellar space This implies that this molecule and thus the basis for peptide bonds is indeed likely to be present near most new young solar-type stars.

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Ingredient of life found around infant Sun-like stars - Astronomy Now Online

The TRAPPIST-1 system looks more like Jupiter and its moons than our own solar system. Seven planets orbit in an elaborate synchronous dance around a star only slightly larger than Jupiter. Those seven planets are constrained within a 3 million-mile space and all of them are between the size of Mars and a slightly-larger-than-Earth rocky planet. Oh, and at least three of the planets are habitable.

And now, a group of University of Amsterdam professors believe they know how it formed. And they think it happened rock-by-rock.

Solar systems typically form from nebula as gas accumulates and clumps, it forms a star, which then helps gravitationally shape planets. But in a small system like TRAPPIST-1, the planets have to stay close in order to keep gravitationally bound. In the TRAPPIST system, the first batch of planets formed from material leftovers clumps of dirt and ice then migrated outward. At a certain point they reach a place where water sublimes into vapor, and water accumulates onto that ice and rock. It becomes enough material to smoosh into a proto-planet and migrates closer to the star.

The end result? Seven icy, Earth-sized worlds. Chris Ornell, lead author of the paper recently accepted to the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, said in a press release, We have been working on pebble aggregation and sweep-up by planets for a long time and were also developing a new ice-line model. Thanks to the discovery of Trappist-1 we can compare our model with reality.

This method of accumulation also helps settle why the system seems to have no gas giants like Neptune or Uranus, at least that we know of. Its unknown yet if such a mechanism creates atmospheres on the planets or how this might affect habitability in the system.

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The TRAPPIST-1 system may have formed pebble-by-pebble ... - Astronomy Magazine