Fogbow

Astronomers have discovered a six-pack of planets, formed at least 4 billion years ago and remarkably unchanged since, orbiting a nearby sun-like star. The new planets, described in a paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature, could provide a breakthrough in the understanding of how planets form and why there are so many between the sizes of Earth and Neptune, a class known as “sub Neptunes” that is astoundingly common in our galaxy.

These newfound worlds are hot, gassy and unlikely to be pleasant places to visit. Their cozy orbits around the parent star mean they are not in what astrobiologists consider the “habitable zone” of a planetary system. The hunt for Earth 2.0 goes on.

But what makes these planets unusual, in addition to their large number, is that they are locked into a resonance with one another as they orbit the star. One planet, for example, will make precisely three orbits while an adjacent planet makes two.

p0rtia wrote: ↑Sat Mar 20, 2021 2:32 pm It's obviously a derelict space ship.

NASA’s spacecraft Juno just had a super-close encounter with the most volcanic world in the solar system—but its stunning first image could be among its last after 56 orbits of Jupiter.

On December 30, the bus-sized spacecraft—orbiting Jupiter since 2016—got very close to Io, the giant moon of Jupiter. It reached a mere 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) from the moon’s surface. However, the spacecraft’s camera has suffered radiation damage and may not last much longer.

An asteroid as big as a skyscraper will pass within 1.7m miles (2.7mkm) of Earth on Friday.

Don’t worry: there’s no chance of it hitting us since it will miss our planet by seven times the distance from the Earth to the moon.

Nasa’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies estimates the space rock is between 690 and 1,575 feet (210 and 480 meters) across. That means the asteroid could be similar in size to New York City’s Empire State Building or Chicago’s Willis Tower.

Discovered in 2008, the asteroid is designated as 2008 OS7. It won’t be back our way again until 2032, but that will be a much more distant encounter, staying 45m miles away.

Nature is Amazing ☘️ @AMAZlNGNATURE wrote: This girl captured the COOLEST video of the meteor that fell in Portugal

Six Planets Are Going to Align in the Sky. Here's How To See Them.

The Secrets of the Universe
26 May 2024

Planet Parade 2024: If you look towards the east just before sunrise, you'll witness an amazing sight: a parade of six planets, with three visible to the naked eye. In early June, Jupiter, Mercury, Uranus, Mars, Neptune, and Saturn will align in a straight line near a thin crescent moon.

Remarkably, all seven other planets are going to be in the same part of the sky in the first week of June, and you have an opportunity to catch glimpse of a few of them! However, you'll need to plan ahead. Timing is crucial, as are dark skies and a clear view of the horizon.

James Webb space telescope photographs most distant known galaxy
Unexpected brightness of JADES-GS-z14-0 means telescope could capture images of galaxies even further away

Hannah Devlin Science correspondent
Fri 31 May 2024 14.11 CEST

The most distant known galaxy has been captured in a record-breaking image by the James Webb space telescope.

The galaxy, called JADES-GS-z14-0, is revealed as it was just 290m years after the big bang, at the dawn of the universe. The telescope’s previous record holder was a galaxy seen at 325m years after the big bang, which happened nearly 14bn years ago.

The newly observed galaxy is much brighter than expected, suggesting that the first generation of stars were either more luminous or formed much more rapidly than conventional cosmological theories have predicted.

“The universe at these early stages was different than it is today,” said Dr Francesco D’Eugenio, of the University of Cambridge, one of the team behind the discovery. “Early galaxies – this is the most distant found but there are others – seem to be brighter than expected from the models.”

The $10bn James Webb space telescope, launched in 2021, can see further across the cosmos than any previous telescope. Due to the expansion of the universe, the light from distant galaxies stretches to longer wavelengths as it travels, an effect known as redshift. In these galaxies the effect is extreme, stretching by a factor of 15, and moving even the ultraviolet light of the galaxies to infrared wavelengths where only the James Webb space telescope has the capability to see it.

These incredibly distant observations reveal the universe in its infant state and are already transforming scientists’ understanding of the early universe. An emerging theme is that galaxies and black holes appear to have grown much more rapidly than was expected.

Dr Stefano Carniani, of the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, the lead author on the discovery paper, said: “JADES-GS-z14-0 now becomes the archetype of this phenomenon. It is stunning that the universe can make such a galaxy in only 300m years.”

This suggests that either the earliest stars were far more luminous than those seen today or that the galaxy was much more massive. “We’re not quite sure which one it is,” D’Eugenio said.

The unexpected brightness of these early galaxies means that the telescope could make even more distant observations.



https://www.theguardian.com/science/art ... own-galaxy

Sam the Centipede wrote: ↑Sun Jun 23, 2024 1:09 pm Maybe our lonely rocky satellite will drift out a way and join Phobos and Deimos orbiting around Mars.

That would be a happy little moonage à trois.

Sam the Centipede wrote: ↑Sun Jun 23, 2024 1:09 pm Maybe our lonely rocky satellite will drift out a way and join Phobos and Deimos orbiting around Mars.

That would be a happy little moonage à trois.

Now here’s a discovery that’s pretty sweet: the most distant Solar System object ever visited by a spacecraft appears to be dusted with sugar. Known as Arrokoth, this small, irregularly shaped world is reddish in colour, and scientists in the US and France say that its unusual hue may be due to the presence of glucose and other forms of sugar on its surface. The discovery has implications for the origins of life, as comets could have delivered organic molecules from “sugar worlds” like Arrokoth to the early Earth.

Arrokoth orbits the Sun as part of the Kuiper belt of objects beyond the planet Neptune. Because it formed when two objects collided and fused together, it looks a little like a flattened snowman, with a “head” and “body” 15 and 21 km in diameter. Nicknamed “Ultima Thule” by scientists working on the New Horizons mission, it gets its formal name from a word meaning “sky” or “cloud” in the Powhatan language spoken by Native Americans who lived on what is now the US East Coast before European settlers arrived there.

Scientists identify a ‘sugar world’ beyond Neptune

03 Jun 2024
Margaret Harris

Now here’s a discovery that’s pretty sweet: the most distant Solar System object ever visited by a spacecraft appears to be dusted with sugar. Known as Arrokoth, this small, irregularly shaped world is reddish in colour, and scientists in the US and France say that its unusual hue may be due to the presence of glucose and other forms of sugar on its surface. The discovery has implications for the origins of life, as comets could have delivered organic molecules from “sugar worlds” like Arrokoth to the early Earth.

Arrokoth orbits the Sun as part of the Kuiper belt of objects beyond the planet Neptune. Because it formed when two objects collided and fused together, it looks a little like a flattened snowman, with a “head” and “body” 15 and 21 km in diameter. Nicknamed “Ultima Thule” by scientists working on the New Horizons mission, it gets its formal name from a word meaning “sky” or “cloud” in the Powhatan language spoken by Native Americans who lived on what is now the US East Coast before European settlers arrived there.

Apart from its knobbly shape, Arrokoth’s most distinctive feature is its colour. Unlike pink-tinged Pluto – the largest Kuiper belt object (KBO), and the subject of New Horizons’ first flyby in 2015 – Arrokoth is darker and reddish. The cause of this unusual colouring, which also occurs in a few other KBOs, is not fully understood. However, New Horizons detected abundant frozen methanol (CH3OH) on Arrokoth’s surface when it flew past in 2019, and scientists had previously found that irradiating methanol with ions significantly reddens its spectrum.



https://physicsworld.com/a/scientists-i ... d-neptune/

Jupiter’s moon Ganymede was struck by asteroid bigger than dinosaur-killing rock
Impact may have caused largest moon in solar system to swing on its axis, say scientists

Ian Sample Science editor
Tue 3 Sep 2024 11.00 CEST

The largest moon in the solar system was struck by an ancient asteroid 20 times bigger than the rock that clattered into Earth and ended the reign of the dinosaurs 66m years ago, research suggests.

The devastating impact took place 4bn years ago and caused Ganymede, one of nearly 100 known moons of Jupiter, to spin around such that the impact crater faces almost directly away from the gas giant.

According to computer models, the asteroid was most likely 185 miles across and struck at an angle of 60-90 degrees. The impact created an initial crater up to 1,000 miles wide that was partly filled in as rock and dust knocked out by the collision fell back down.



https://www.theguardian.com/science/art ... -dinosaurs