Clearing of the Chimera group continues. The main problem remaining are implants of the Cabal members, connected with Tunnels of Set to Yaldabaoth plasma accretion vortex which extends throughout the Solar system, tied to plasma strangelet and t...
Tag: Neptune (page 1 of 4)
Excerpt from csmonitor.com
Researchers have found Jupiter-scale gas giants orbiting binary stars and estimate that Earth-like planets orbiting binary stars could be as numerous as rocky planets orbiting single-star systems.
For all the sci-fi charm of watching a pair of suns sink below a distant horizon on a planet in a galaxy far, far away, conventional wisdom has held that binary-star systems can't host Earth-scale rocky planets.
As the two stars orbit each other like square-dance partners swinging arm in arm, regular variations in their gravitational tug would disrupt planet formation at the relatively close distances where rocky planets tend to appear.
Not so fast, say two astrophysicists. They argue that only are Tatooine-like planets likely to be out there. They could be as numerous as rocky planets orbiting single-star systems – which is to say, there could be large number of them.
Building rocky planets in a binary system not only is possible, it's "not even that hard," says Scott Kenyon, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., who along with University of Utah astrophysicist Benjamin Bromley performed the calculations.
Researchers have found Jupiter-scale gas giants orbiting binary stars and have estimated that such gas giants are likely to be as common in binary systems as they are in systems with a single star.
"If that's true, then Earth-like planets around binaries are just as common as Earth-like planets around single stars," Dr. Kenyon says. "If they're not common, that tells you something about how they form or how they interact with the star over billions of years."
The modeling study grew out of work the two researchers were undertaking to figure out how the dwarf planet Pluto and its largest moon Charon manage to share space with four smaller moons that orbit the two larger objects.
Pluto and Charon form a binary system that early in its history saw the two objects graze each other to generate a ring of dust that would become the additional moons.
The gravity the surrounding dust felt as Pluto and Charon swung about their shared center of mass would vary with clock-like precision.
Conventional wisdom held that this variable tug would trigger collisions at speeds too fast to allow the dust and larger chunks to merge into ever larger objects.
Kenyon and Dr. Bromley found that, in fact, the velocities would be smaller than people thought – no greater than the speeds would be around a single central object, where velocities are slow enough to allow the debris to bump gently and merge to build ever-larger objects.
They recognized that binary stars hosting planets are essentially scaled-up versions of the Pluto-Charon system. So they applied their calculations to a hypothetical binary star system with a circumstellar disk of dust and debris.
"The modest jostling in these orbits is the same modest jostling you'd get around a single star," Kenyon says, allowing rocky inner planets to form.
As for the Jupiter- or Neptune-scale planets found around binary stars, they would have formed farther out and migrated in over time, the researchers say, since there is too little material within the inner reaches of a circumstellar disk to build giant planets.
The duo's calculations imply that as more planets are discovered orbiting binary stars, a rising number of Tatooines will be among them.
Tatooine "was science fiction," Kenyon says. But "it's not so far from science reality."
Excerpt from spacedaily.comAccording to the new method, Saturn's day is 10 hours, 32 minutes and 44 seconds long. Tracking the rotation speed of solid planets, like the Earth and Mars, is a relatively simple task: Just measure the time it tak...
Excerpt from news.discovery.comDozens of candidate worlds reside within the "habitable zones" of their parent stars. THE GIST - NASA's Kepler telescope has found more than 1,200 extrasolar planet candidates. - Smaller worlds, like Earth,...
Strong irradiation from the host star can cause planets known as mini-Neptunes in the habitable zone to shed their gaseous envelopes and become potentially habitable worlds.Credit: Rodrigo Luger / NASA imagesExcerpt from sciencedaily.com Two ph...
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| Skychart by A. Fazekas/SkySafari |
Excerpt from
Green Giant, Lunar Triangle and Jovian Shadows A planetary pairing and moon dances take center stage in the heavens this week.
Neptune meets Mars this week for stargazers, while Jupiter's retinue plays shadow games.
Neptune and Mars. About an hour after sunset on Monday, January 19, look towards the southwestern sky for Venus and Mercury hanging near the horizon. Look higher up to see the ruddy beacon of Mars.
A stunning celestial trio low in the southwest sky forms this week with the crescent moon, Venus and Mercury.
Lunar Triangle. Just after the sun sets on Wednesday, January 21, gaze towards the thin crescent moon, which rests low in the sky toward the western horizon.
Joining it in a stunning triangular formation, and particularly eye-catching through binoculars, are the two innermost planets in our solar system, Mercury and Venus.
The waxing moon acts as a wonderfully convenient guide to spotting these two worlds.
Moon meets Mars. On Thursday, January 22, Earth’s lone natural satellite rises higher in the sky and pays a visit to the red planet. The curl of the moon's crescent will almost seem to point to Mars, just off to its left.
And wait just one more day, on Friday, January 23, when the moon will continue its journey across the sky, climbing higher to form a straight line connection with Mars and Venus. The dawn star will hang below its two companions, just above the horizon.
This skychart shows the moon pointing to Uranus in the early morning western sky.
Skychart by A. Fazekas/SkySafari
Moon and Uranus. After night falls on Sunday, January 25, look for the moon pairing up with the seventh planet from the sun, Uranus.
The two solar system objects will reside only 7 degrees apart, making them just fit into the same field of view in binoculars.
Look for Jupiter in the early morning southeast sky and with a telescope soak in a triple Jovian moon shadow transit.
Skychart by A. Fazekas/SkySafari
Triplet Jovian Eclipse. In the early morning hours of Saturday, January 24, telescopes will reveal a trio of tiny black dots trekking across the face of Jupiter.
Three of the gas giant’s moons, Calisto, Io, and Europa all cast their shadows tight on the cloud tops of Jupiter at once starting at 1:27 am EST to 1:53 am .
Happy hunting!
Excerpt from thespacereporter.com
Theory predicts that they be randomly distributed and that their orbits must have a semi-major axis with a value around 150 AU; an orbital inclination of nearly zero degrees; and an angle of perihelion, the point in the object’s orbit at which it is closest to the Sun, of zero to 180 degrees.
However, a dozen ETNO do not fit these orbital criteria. These objects have semi-major axis values of 150 to 525 AU, orbital inclinations of around 20 degrees, and angles of perihelion far from 180 degrees.
According to a statement, a new study by astrophysicists at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) and University of Cambridge have calculated that these orbital discrepancies could be explained by the existence of at least two additional planets beyond the orbits of Neptune and dwarf planet Pluto. Their study suggests that the gravitational pulls of those two planets must be disturbing the orbits of some smaller ETNO.
However, there are two difficulties with the hypothesis. One is that current models of the formation of our solar system do not allow for additional planets beyond Neptune. Secondly, the team’s sample size is very small, only 13 objects. However, additional results are in the pipeline, which will expand the sample.
“This excess of objects with unexpected orbital parameters makes us believe that some invisible forces are altering the distribution of the orbital elements of the ETNO and we consider that the most probable explanation is that other unknown planets exist beyond Neptune and Pluto,” said Carlos de la Fuente Marcos of UCM and lead author on the study.
The new findings have been published in two papers published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters.
At least two unknown dwarf planets may be lurking beyond Pluto, orbiting around the Sun in our own solar system just waiting to be discovered, according to a new study. (Photo : NASA/JPL-Caltech) Excerpt from natureworldnews.comAt least...
Excerpt from huffingtonpost.comNASA's Kepler space telescope celebrated its 1,000th exoplanet discovery earlier this month, an impressive milestone in the search for life on other worlds. Now astronomers are homing in on those exoplanets that may ...
Excerpt from earthsky.org
Admit it. You’ve probably got a pair of binoculars lying around your house somewhere. They may be perfect – that’s right, perfect – for beginning stargazing. Follow the links below to learn more about the best deal around for people who want to get acquainted with the night sky: a pair of ordinary binoculars.
1. Binoculars are a better place to start than telescopes
2. Start with a small, easy-to-use size
3. First, view the moon with binoculars.
4. Move on to viewing planets with binoculars.
5. Use your binoculars to explore inside our Milky Way.
6. Use your binoculars to peer beyond the Milky Way.
1. Binoculars are a better place to start than telescopes. The fact is that most people who think they want to buy a telescope would be better off using binoculars for a year or so instead. That’s because first-time telescope users often find themselves completely confused – and ultimately put off – by the dual tasks of learning the use a complicated piece of equipment (the ‘scope) while at the same time learning to navigate an unknown realm (the night sky).
Beginning stargazers often find that an ordinary pair of binoculars – available from any discount store – can give them the experience they’re looking for. After all, in astronomy, magnification and light-gathering power let you see more of what’s up there. Even a moderate form of power, like those provided by a pair of 7×50 binoculars, reveals 7 times as much information as the unaided eye can see.
You also need to know where to look. Many people start with a planisphere as they begin their journey making friends with the stars. You can purchase a planisphere at the EarthSky store. Also consider our Astronomy Kit, which has a booklet on what you can see with your binoculars.
2. Start with a small, easy-to-use size. Don’t buy a huge pair of binoculars to start with! Unless you mount them on a tripod, they’ll shake and make your view of the heavens shakey, too. The video above – from ExpertVillage – does a good job summing up what you want. And in case you don’t want to watch the video, the answer is that 7X50 binoculars are optimum for budding astronomers. You can see a lot, and you can hold them steadily enough that jitters don’t spoil your view of the sky. Plus they’re very useful for daylight pursuits, like birdwatching. If 7X50s are too big for you – or if you want binoculars for a child – try 7X35s.
February 24, 2014 moon with earthshine by Greg Diesel Landscape Photography.
You’ll want to start your moon-gazing when the moon is just past new – and visible as a waxing crescent in the western sky after sunset. At such times, you’ll have a beautiful view of earthshine on the moon. This eerie glow on the moon’s darkened portion is really light reflected from Earth onto the moon’s surface. Be sure to turn your binoculars on the moon at these times to enhance the view.
Each month, as the moon goes through its regular phases, you can see the line of sunrise and sunset on the moon progress across the moon’s face. That’s just the line between light and dark on the moon. This line between the day and night sides of the moon is called the terminator line. The best place to look at the moon from Earth – using your binoculars – is along the terminator line. The sun angle is very low in this twilight zone, just as the sun is low in our sky around earthly twilight. So, along the terminator on the moon, lunar features cast long shadows in sharp relief.
You can also look in on the gray blotches on the moon called maria, named when early astronomers thought these lunar features were seas. The maria are not seas, of course, and instead they’re now thought to have formed 3.5 billion years ago when asteroid-sized rocks hit the moon so hard that lava percolated up through cracks in the lunar crust and flooded the impact basins. These lava plains cooled and eventually formed the gray seas we see today.
The white highlands, nestled between the maria, are older terrain pockmarked by thousands of craters that formed over the eons. Some of the larger craters are visible in binoculars. One of them, Tycho, at the six o’clock position on the moon, emanates long swatches of white rays for hundreds of miles over the adjacent highlands. This is material kicked out during the Tycho impact 2.5 million years ago.
Photo of Jupiter’s moons by Earthsky Facebook friend Carl Galloway. Thank you Carl! The four major moons of Jupiter are called Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. This is a telescopic view, but you can glimpse one, two or more moons through your binoculars, too.
4. Move on to viewing planets with binoculars. Here’s the deal about planets. They move around, apart from the fixed stars. They are wanderers, right?
You can use our EarthSky Tonight page to locate planets visible around now. Notice if any planets are mentioned in the calendar on the Tonight page, and if so click on that day’s link. On our Tonight page, we feature planets on days when they’re easily identifiable for some reason – for example, when a planet is near the moon. So our Tonight page calendar can help you come to know the planets, and, as you’re learning to identify them, keep your binoculars very handy. Binoculars will enhance your view of a planet near the moon, for example, or two planets near each other in the twilight sky. They add a lot to the fun!
Below, you’ll find some more simple ideas on how to view planets with your binoculars.
Mercury and Venus. These are both inner planets. They orbit the sun closer than Earth’s orbit. And for that reason, both Mercury and Venus show phases as seen from Earth at certain times in their orbit – a few days before or after the planet passes between the sun and Earth. At such times, turn your binoculars on Mercury or Venus. Good optical quality helps here, but you should be able to see them in a crescent phase. Tip: Venus is so bright that its glare will overwhelm the view. Try looking in twilight instead of true darkness.
Mars. Mars – the Red Planet – really does look red, and using binoculars will intensify the color of this object (or of any colored star). Mars also moves rapidly in front of the stars, and it’s fun to aim your binoculars in its direction when it’s passing near another bright star or planet.
Jupiter. Now on to the real action! Jupiter is a great binocular target, even for beginners. If you are sure to hold your binoculars steadily as you peer at this bright planet, you should see four bright points of light near it. These are the Galilean Satellites – four moons gleaned through one of the first telescopes ever made, by the Italian astronomer Galileo. Note how their relative positions change from night to night as each moon moves around Jupiter in its own orbit.
Saturn.Although a small telescope is needed to see Saturn’s rings, you can use your binoculars to see Saturn’s beautiful golden color. Experienced observers sometimes glimpse Saturn’s largest moon Titan with binoculars. Also, good-quality high-powered binoculars – mounted on a tripod – will show you that Saturn is not round. The rings give it an elliptical shape.
Uranus and Neptune. Some planets are squarely binocular and telescope targets. If you’re armed with a finder chart, two of them, Uranus and Neptune, are easy to spot in binoculars. Uranus might even look greenish, thanks to methane in the planet’s atmosphere. Once a year, Uranus is barely bright enough to glimpse with the unaided eye . . . use binoculars to find it first. Distant Neptune will always look like a star, even though it has an atmosphere practically identical to Uranus.
There are still other denizens of the solar system you can capture through binocs. Look for the occasional comet, which appears as a fuzzy blob of light. Then there are the asteroids – fully 12 of them can be followed with binoculars when they are at their brightest. Because an asteroid looks star-like, the secret to confirming its presence is to sketch a star field through which it’s passing. Do this over subsequent nights; the star that changes position relative to the others is our solar system interloper.
Pleiades star cluster, also known as the Seven Sisters
5. Use your binoculars to explore inside our Milky Way. Binoculars can introduce you to many members of our home galaxy. A good place to start is with star clusters that are close to Earth. They cover a larger area of the sky than other, more distant clusters usually glimpsed through a telescope.
Beginning each autumn and into the spring, look for a tiny dipper-like cluster of stars called the Pleiades. The cluster – sometimes also called the Seven Sisters – is noticeable for being small yet distinctively dipper-like. While most people say they see only six stars here with the unaided eye, binoculars reveal many more stars, plus a dainty chain of stars extending off to one side. The Pleiades star cluster is looks big and distinctive because it’s relatively close – about 400 light years from Earth. This dipper-shaped cluster is a true cluster of stars in space. Its members were born around the same time and are still bound by gravity. These stars are very young, on the order of 20 million years old, in contrast to the roughly five billion years for our sun.
Stars in a cluster all formed from the same gas cloud. You can also see what the Pleiades might have like in a primordial state, by shifting your gaze to the prominent constellation Orion the Hunter. Look for Orion’s sword stars, just below his prominent belt stars. If the night is crisp and clear, and you’re away from urban streetlight glare, unaided eyes will show that the sword isn’t entirely composed of stars. Binoculars show a steady patch of glowing gas where, right at this moment, a star cluster is being born. It’s called the Orion Nebula. A summertime counterpart is the Lagoon Nebula, in Sagittarius the Archer.
With star factories like the Orion Nebula, we aren’t really seeing the young stars themselves. They are buried deep within the nebula, bathing the gas cloud with ultraviolet radiation and making it glow. In a few tens of thousands of years, stellar winds from these young, energetic stars will blow away their gaseous cocoons to reveal a newly minted star cluster.
Scan along the Milky Way to see still more sights that hint at our home galaxy’s complexity. First, there’s the Milky Way glow itself; just a casual glance through binoculars will reveal that it is still more stars we can’t resolve with our eyes . . . hundreds of thousands of them. Periodically, while scanning, you might sweep past what appears to be blob-like, black voids in the stellar sheen. These are dark, non-glowing pockets of gas and dust that we see silhouetted against the stellar backdrop. This is the stuff of future star and solar systems, just waiting around to coalesce into new suns.
Andromeda Galaxy from Chris Levitan Photography.
Many people use the M- or W-shaped constellation Cassiopeia to find the Andromeda Galaxy. See how the star Schedar points to the galaxy?
It’s a whole other galaxy like our own, shining across the vastness of intergalactic space. Light from the Andromeda Galaxy has traveled so far that it’s taken more than 2 million years to reach us.
Two smaller companions visible through binoculars on a dark, transparent night are the Andromeda Galaxy’s version of our Milky Way’s Magellanic Clouds. These small, orbiting, irregularly-shaped galaxies that will eventually be torn apart by their parent galaxy’s gravity.
Such sights, from lunar wastelands to the glow of a nearby island universe, are all within reach of a pair of handheld optics, really small telescopes in their own right: your binoculars.
John Shibley wrote the original draft of this article, years ago, and we’ve been expanding it and updating it ever since. Thanks, John!
Bottom line: For beginning stargazers, there’s no better tool than an ordinary pair of binoculars. This post tells you why, explains what size to get, and gives you a rundown on some of the coolest binoculars sights out there: the moon, the planets, inside the Milky Way, and beyond. Have fun!
Excerpt from theweek.com NASA's Kepler finds massive alien planet 180 light years away NASA's Kepler space telescope has discovered its first alien planet since malfunctioning in May 2013,...
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| An artist's conception shows the size of super-Earth 55 Cancri e compared to Earth. A ground-based telescope in Spain was able to identify 55 Cancri e, which suggests that telescopes on the ground help in the search for habitable planets around other stars. |
Excerpt from csmonitor.com
A telescope on the Canary Islands has spotted a planet twice the size of Earth as it passed in front of a star, the first time a planet in this category has been detected by a ground-based telescope.
Finding Earthlike planets beyond our solar system has largely been the work of space-based telescopes, but new observations from a remote island suggest that could change.The Nordic Optical Telescope on La Palma — one of the Canary Islands off the west coast of Africa — observed 55 Cancri e, a planet twice the size of Earth, as it passed in front of its parent star and caused a dip in the star's brightness, according to a new study. This is the first time a planet in this "super-Earth" size category orbiting a sunlike star has been observed by a ground-based telescope using this detection method, the researchers say.
First identified in 2004 by a space-based telescope, 55 Cancri e has a diameter of about 16,000 miles (26,000 kilometers) — about twice that of Earth. The alien world is eight times as massive as Earth, making it a so-called super-Earth, a planet more massive than Earth but significantly smaller than gas giants like Neptune and Uranus. While not habitable, the planet's size and position around a sunlike star make it similar to planets that might support life, researchers say.
"We expect these surveys to find so many nearby terrestrial worlds that space telescopes simply won't be able to follow up on all of them. Future ground-based instrumentation will be key, and this study shows it can be done," Mercedes Lopez-Morales, co-author of the new research and a researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), said in a statement.
Five exoplanets orbit the star 55 Cancri, which is located 40 light-years from Earth and is visible to the naked eye. The closest-orbiting of those five is 55 Cancri e, which completes one lap around the star every 18 hours. When the planet passes between Earth and the parent star, 55 Cancri appears to dim by 1/2000th (or 0.05 percent) for almost 2 hours, researchers said.
Daytime temperatures on 55 Cancri e likely reach higher than 3,100 degrees Fahrenheit (1,700 degrees Celsius) — hot enough to melt metal and much too hot to support life. But scientists involved with the study say this approach could help characterize the atmosphere of more hospitable Earthlike or super-Earth planets.
After its initial detection, 55 Cancri e also became the first super-Earth seen by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, using light directly from the planet. Thus, it has now served twice as a litmus test for super-Earth detection methods.
In addition to the wealth of planets identified by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, the space agency's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission, scheduled for launch in 2017, is expected to "discover thousands of exoplanets in orbit around the brightest stars in the sky," according to the TESS website. The European Space Agency's Planetary Transits and Oscillations of stars (PLATO) mission, planned for launch in 2024, will also search for a large number of exoplanets.
NASA's New Horizons space probe is set to zoom by Pluto next summer. Where should it go after that?
Excerpt from
csmonitor.com
A NASA spacecraft may have another frigid object in its sights after zooming past Pluto next summer.NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has spotted three faraway bodies that the New Horizons probe could potentially visit after completing its highly anticipated flyby of the Pluto system in July 2015. One of these newly identified objects is definitely reachable, researchers said, while further tracking is required to determine if the other two are indeed accessible.
The $700 million New Horizons mission launched in 2006 with the primary goal of returning the first-ever up-close looks at Pluto and its moons. But Stern and his colleagues have always wanted the probe to fly by another object in the Kuiper Belt — the ring of frigid bodies beyond Neptune — after the Pluto encounter.
An additional flyby would increase researchers' knowledge of the mysterious Kuiper Belt, mission team members say. Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs) have never been "heat-treated" by the sun, so they're viewed as relatively pristine building blocks left over from the solar system's formation 4.6 billion years ago.
Analysis of Hubble's data turned up the three new KBOs, which are each 1 billion miles (1.6 billion kilometers) beyond Pluto and range in size from 15 to 34 miles wide (25 to 55 km). The KBOs are each about 10 times bigger than a typical comet but just 1 to 2 percent as big as Pluto, researchers said.
"We started to get worried that we could not find anything suitable, even with Hubble, but in the end the space telescope came to the rescue," said New Horizons science team member John Spencer, also of SwRI. "There was a huge sigh of relief when we found suitable KBOs; we are over the moon about this detection."
The additional flyby would likely occur in 2019, he added — but there's no guarantee it will happen.
"In 2016, we need to propose to NASA to get permission (and funding) to fly the KBO mission," he said via email.
