This article was originally published atThe Conversation.The publication contributed the article to Space.com'sExpert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Ian Glass, Associate Research Astronomer, South African Astronomical Observatory

TheSouth African Astronomical Observatoryin Cape Town is the oldest permanent observatory in the southern hemisphere: it turned 200 in 2020.

This observatory is a fundamental part of South Africas long history of astronomical research, which began when French academicNicolas-Louis de La Caillevisited Cape Town from 1751 to 1753. He undertook a careful examination of every square degree of the southern sky. This resulted in the first comprehensive sky survey ever made, in either hemisphere.

The Royal Observatory, Cape Town of Good Hope (today the South African Astronomical Observatory) was established in 1820. It became and remained for 150 years the most important source of star positions in the southern hemisphere sky. This was in terms of both accuracy and the number of measurements made. In the years that followed its foundation, the observatorys laborious work led to important scientific discoveries.

Cape astronomers were responsible for, among other things, the first measurement of the distance to a star; the first photographic sky survey and the accurate measurement of the distance to the sun. They were at the forefront of developments in stellar spectroscopy. This is the detailed analysis of a stars light to find out its composition and movement towards or away from the sun. They also determined the shape of the earth in the southern hemisphere and conducted the first accurate country-wide survey measurements of southern Africa.

In 1543 the mathematician and astronomerNicolaus Copernicusasserted that the earth orbits the sun. This meant that people should be able to observe the apparent shift in the position of the nearest stars from different points in the earths orbit. But that had not been observed in the centuries that followed. The reason was, of course, that even the nearest stars are incredibly far away and the effect being looked for is very small.

When the Royal Observatory was founded in 1820, it was equipped with the most accurate star position measuring devices available. Eleven years later Thomas Henderson used those devices to make the first believable measurements of this effect, known as parallax. By observing the angular movement of Alpha Centauri still the second-closest star known to us and knowing also the size of the earths orbit, this gave the distance to the star by simple trigonometry.

A different technology, photography, would lead to more important astronomical discoveries at the Cape. All observatories in the 19th century made precise observations of star positions one by one and published catalogues of these. In 1882 the head of the Royal Observatory, David Gill, was surprised to receive a letter from a Mr Simpson, an amateur photographer in Aberdeen, a town elsewhere in the Cape.

Simpson had managed to photograph a bright comet that had just appeared. His photographic plates were sensitive enough to register stars in the background. This led to a lightbulb moment for Gill: he realised that the positions of stars could now be recorded in quantity on a permanent medium, more reliably than any visual observer could ever hope to do.

So he set up a special photographic telescope using the largest lens that he could find and set about making the first photographic star catalogue. This was called theCape Photographic Durchmusterungafter its much more laboriously compiled northern hemisphere equivalent, put together in Bonn, Germany.

But it wasnt just Cape Town that hosted an important astronomical site.

In 1903, theJohannesburg Observatorywas established. It achieved its greatest success in 1915 when its director, Robert Innes, discovered a very faint star near Alpha Centauri.

On various grounds he claimed it to be the nearest star to Earth; it took many years of investigation before this could be verified. The new discovery was named Proxima Centauri, meaning the nearest in the constellation Centaurus. Not only was it the nearest star but at that time of discovery it was the least luminous star ever discovered. Other dimmer stars have been found since, but Proxima still retains its nearest star status and its distance has been thoroughly verified from space satellites.

In 1948 the private Radcliffe Foundation in the United Kingdom set up in Pretoria what was for a time the largest telescope in the southern hemisphere and joint fourth largest in the world. This is a title currently held by theSouthern African Large Telescope.

Early on in the Radcliffes existence the then director, David Thackeray, and his colleague Adriaan Wesselink discovered in our neighbouring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud, a number of RR Lyrae variable stars that astronomers using smaller telescopes could not detect. These are stars that change their brightness in a well-defined manner over a cycle of a few days and whose average wattage is completely predictable.

By measuring the Magellanic Cloud stars average apparent brightnesses and comparing them to other RR Lyrae stars at known distances they determined that the cosmic distance scale originally published two decades before by Edwin Hubble and others was underestimated by about a factor of two. In effect, they doubled the size of the Universe. This result was announced to great acclaim at the triennial meeting of theInternational Astronomical Union in 1952.

Today South African astronomy remains at the forefront of many initiatives and discoveries. It has become a leader in the field of radio astronomy with the MeerKAT telescope near Carnarvon and will within a decade be the host of an international project, theSquare Kilometre Array.

This article is adapted froma piecethat initially appeared in the South African National Research Foundations Science Matters Magazine.

This article is republished fromThe Conversationunder a Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article.

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South African astronomy has a long, rich history of discovery and a promising future - Space.com

By Dirk Lorenzen

2021 begins as a year of Mars. Although our red planetary neighbor isn't as prominent as it was last autumn, it is still noticeable with its characteristic reddish color in the evening sky until the end of April. In early March, Mars shines close to the star cluster Pleiades in the constellation Taurus.

But for space nerds, Mars is already the center of attention in February. Three space probes that were launched in the summer of 2020 will arrive on the red planet.

On February 9, "Hope," the first interplanetary mission of the United Arab Emirates, is set to enter orbit around Mars. Only one day later, the Chinese probe Tianwen-1 will join it. The name means "heavenly questions," referring to a famous piece of ancient poetry.

Both missions will take surface and atmospheric measurements of Mars. Probably in May, a small rover will detach from the Chinese spacecraft and make its way down to the surface to explore the surroundings of the landing site.

NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover (shown in artist's illustration) is the most sophisticated rover NASA has ever sent to Mars. Ingenuity, a technology experiment, will be the first aircraft to attempt controlled flight on another planet. Perseverance will arrive at Mars' Jezero Crater with Ingenuity attached to its belly. NASA

The highlight of this year's Mars exploration is the landing of the NASA rover "Perseverance" on February 18. Once the spacecraft enters the atmosphere it will be slowed down by friction. The heat shield will surpass 1,000 degrees Celsius. Later, parachutes will deploy to slow it down even more. Roughly two kilometers above the planet's surface, a sky crane comes into play. Four thrusters keep the crane properly oriented.

The rover is connected to the crane by nylon tethers. Upon approach of Mars' surface, the sky crane will lower Perseverance down about 7 meters. Once the rover has touched down, the tethers are cut and the sky crane flies off to land somewhere else on the surface.

Entry, descent and landing takes just seven minutes the so-called seven minutes of terror. The flight team can't interact with the spacecraft on Mars. Experts have to sit and watch what's happening more than 200 million kilometers away. Radio signals from the spacecraft need about 11 minutes to travel in one direction. When the control center in Pasadena, California receives the message that entry has begun, Perseverance will already be on the ground. There is only one chance for a smooth landing. Any error could mean the mission is lost. The audacious sky crane maneuver would be a great feat in any action movie. But NASA knows how to do it the Curiosity rover landed with a sky crane in 2012.

Scientists want to use Perseverance to explore whether there is or ever has been life on Mars. Today the planet is a hostile environment dry and cold with no magnetic field shielding the harsh radiation from space. Life as we know it can't survive on the Martian surface right now. But billions of years ago, Mars was hotter and wetter and had a shield against radiation. So it is at least plausible that simple microbes developed there. Maybe they live in the soil now, one or two meters below the surface. Perseverance will collect samples to find out. A future mission by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) will pick up the samples and return them to Earth. But this won't happen before 2030.

The Hubble Space Telescope has been orbiting the Earth for more than 30 years. NASA

The Hubble Space Telescope's images of planets, nebulae, star clusters and galaxies are legendary. The cosmic eye, launched in 1990, is likely to fail towards the end of this decade. The James Webb Space Telescope will be its successor. It is scheduled to launch on October 31 with a European Ariane 5 rocket from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana.

The launch date is about 14 years later than planned when the project began in 1997. At almost $10 billion (8.2 billion), the telescope is more than ten times as expensive as originally conceived. Its namesake James Webb was the NASA administrator during the height of the Apollo project in the 1960s.

Astronomers expect completely new insights from James Webb Telescope images, such as how the universe came into being, how it developed and how galaxies, stars and planets are formed. The instrument will observe the earliest childhood of the cosmos and photograph objects that already existed in the universe 200 to 300 million years after the Big Bang. James Webb, as the experts call the telescope for short, may even provide information about possibly inhabited exoplanets planets like ours orbiting stars other than the Sun.

The fully assembled James Webb Space Telescope with its sunshield and unitized pallet structures that will fold up around the telescope for launch. NASA

The mirror of the James Webb Space Telescope is 6.5 meters in diameter and consists of 18 hexagonal segments. The entire instrument unfolds in 178 steps over a period of several months. Only then probably in the spring of 2022 will we see its first images.

Many communication or reconnaissance satellites only unfold in space. However, not every micrometer is as important as with this telescope.

NIRSpec, one of the four cameras on board, was built at Airbus in Ottobrunn near Munich. It is made of an unusual material: ceramic. Both the basic structure and the mirrors are made of this very light, hard and extremely temperature-insensitive material. With good reason the large camera has to withstand a lot in space. It is cooled to around -250 degrees Celsius in order to register the weak infrared or thermal radiation from the depths of space. Plastic or metal bend and lead to blurred images. Ceramic, on the other hand, remains in perfect shape.

The NIRSpec instrument will examine, among other things, emerging stars and distant galaxies. The ceramic camera is incredibly sensitive it could register the heat radiation from a burning cigarette on the Moon. Thanks to this precision, astronomers will get completely new insights into the cosmos with the James Webb Telescope and NIRSpec.

It's not very likely that the Orion spacecraft from NASA and ESA will start its maiden voyage to the Moon before the end of 2021. As part of the Artemis-1 mission, it will remain in space for four weeks and will orbit the Moon for a few days. There will be no crew on board for the first flight, but two dummies from the German Aerospace Center, which use thousands of sensors to measure the conditions that human beings would be exposed to. The Orion capsule comes from NASA, while the ESA supplies the service module. The service module, which is being built by Airbus in Bremen, provides propulsion, navigation, altitude control and the supply of air, water and fuel. After problems with an engine test in mid-January, the new NASA large rocket Space Launch System (SLS), with which Orion is supposed to be launched, is unlikely to be operational until early 2022.

Matthias Maurer from Saarland is scheduled to fly to the International Space Station (ISS) in October. The flight will be in a Crew Dragon capsule from Cape Canaveral. Maurer will live and work in the orbital outpost for six months. He is currently training to work on numerous scientific experiments. Maurer will be the twelfth German in space.

So far, Germany has only sent men into space. In mid-March, ESA will start the next application process for astronauts. A few years ago, the private initiative Die Astronautin ("She is an astronaut") showed that there are numerous excellent female applicants.

Even if there is no flight to the Moon, sky fans are looking forward to two eclipses this year. On May 26, there will be a lunar eclipse between 9:45 and 12:53 UTC. From 11:10 to 11:28 UTC, the Moon will be completely in the Earth's shadow. It can then only be seen in a copper-red light. This is sunlight that is directed into the Earth's shadow by the Earth's atmosphere reddish, like the sky at sunset. This eclipse can be observed throughout the Pacific, and will be best viewed in Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, and Antarctica. In Europe, the Moon will be below the horizon and therefore the eclipse will not be visible.

This also the case for the partial lunar eclipse on November 19. From 07:18 to 10:47 UTC, the Moon will be partly in the shadow of the Earth. In the middle of the eclipse (around 9:03 UTC) 98% of the Moon will be eclipsed. The spectacle will be best seen in North America, Greenland, East Asia and much of the Pacific, such as Hawaii and New Zealand.

In 2021, the Moon will pass right in front of the sun, twice. On June 10, the moon will be nearly in the furthest point of its elliptical orbit around Earth. So it will be too small to cover the sun completely. In the middle of this eclipse, an annulus of the sun will remain visible. The sun's ring of fire appears between 9:55 and 11:28 UTC for a maximum of four minutes but it will only be visible in the very sparsely populated areas of northeast Canada, northwestern Greenland, the North Pole and the far east of Siberia.

In the North Atlantic, Europe and large parts of Russia, an eclipse will be seen at least partially. Between 8:12 and 13:11 UTC, the Sun will appear like a cookie that has been bitten into as the Moon covers parts of the bright disk. In some places, the eclipse will last about two hours. In Central Europe, a maximum of one-fifth of the sun will be covered.

The celestial event of the year will be a total solar eclipse on December 4. In a 400-kilometer-wide strip, the New Moon will cover the sun completely. For a maximum of one minute and 54 seconds, day will turn to night. For that short time, the brightest stars can be seen in the sky and the flaming solar corona can be seen around the dark disc of the Moon.

Unfortunately, hardly anyone will get to see this cosmic spectacle because the strip of totality only runs through the Southern Ocean and the Antarctic. From 7:03 to 8:04 UTC the umbra of the Moon moves across the Earth's surface and perhaps some ships' crews will enjoy the solar corona.

Only during the few minutes of totality is it possible to look safely at the Sun with the naked eye. During the partial phase or in the case of an annular eclipse, suitable protective goggles are necessary to watch the spectacle. Normal sunglasses are not safe. Looking unprotected into the sun can lead to severe eye damage or even blindness.

Venus, our other neighboring planet, will be behind the sun on March 26. It is not visible for the first few months of the year. From the end of April through Christmas, it will be visible as an evening star in the sky after sunset. The planet, shrouded in dense clouds, is the brightest object in the sky after the Sun and the Moon. The best visibility will be from September to December.

The giant planet Jupiter is in its best position of the year on August 20. It then shines in the constellation Capricorn, only disappearing from the evening sky at the beginning of next year. The ringed planet Saturn is also in the constellation Capricorn and can be observed particularly well on August 2.

Jupiter and Saturn are the stars of summer in the Northern Hemisphere and those of the long winter nights in the Southern Hemisphere. They are in the same area of the sky, almost forming a double star with Jupiter being the brighter of the two.

There are certain periods when the Earth crosses the orbital path of a comet and shooting stars are much more likely than on other nights. Many small stones and dust particles are scattered on comet orbits, which light up the Earth's atmosphere for a moment when they enter.

The Perseids are particularly promising: August 9-13, a few dozen meteors (the technical term for shooting stars) will scurry across the sky per hour. The traces of light will seem to come from the constellation Perseus, near the striking celestial W of Cassiopeia. The Geminids meteors coming from the constellation Gemini will be similarly exciting with up to 100 shooting stars per hour, December 10-15.

Reposted with permission from Deutsche Welle.

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2021: What Astronomical and Space Events Await Us This Year? - EcoWatch

When black holes swallow down massive amounts of matter from the space around them, they're not exactly subtle about it. They belch out tremendous flares of X-rays, generated by the material heating to intense temperatures as it's sucked towards the black hole, so bright we can detect them from Earth.

This is normal black hole behaviour. What isn't normal is for those X-ray flares to spew forth with clockwork regularity, a puzzling behaviour reported in 2019from a supermassive black hole at the centre of a galaxy 250 million light-years away. Every nine hours, boom - X-ray flare.

After careful study, astronomer Andrew King of the University of Leicester in the UK identified a potential cause - a dead star that's endured its brush with a black hole, trapped on a nine-hour, elliptical orbit around it. Every close pass, or periastron, the black hole slurps up more of the star's material.

"This white dwarf is locked into an elliptical orbit close to the black hole, orbiting every nine hours," King explainedback in April 2020.

"At its closest approach, about 15 times the radius of the black hole's event horizon, gas is pulled off the star into an accretion disk around the black hole, releasing X-rays, which the two spacecraft are detecting."

The black hole is the nucleus of a galaxy called GSN 069, and it's pretty lightweight as far as supermassive black holes go - only 400,000 times the mass of the Sun. Even so, it's active, surrounded by a hot disc of accretion material, feeding into and growing the black hole.

According to King's model, this black hole was just hanging out, doing its active accretion thing, when a red giant star - the final evolutionary stages of a Sun-like star - happened to wander a little too close.

The black hole promptly divested the star of its outer layers, speeding its evolution into a white dwarf, the dead core that remains once the star has exhausted its nuclear fuel (white dwarfs shine with residual heat, not the fusion processes of living stars).

But rather than continuing on its journey, the white dwarf was captured in orbit around the black hole, and continued to feed into it.

Based on the magnitude of the X-ray flares, and our understanding of the flares that are produced by black hole mass transfer, and the star's orbit, King was able to constrain the mass of the star, too. He calculated that the white dwarf is around 0.21 times the mass of the Sun.

While on the lighter end of the scale, that's a pretty standard mass for a white dwarf. And if we assume the star is a white dwarf, we can also infer - based on our understanding of other white dwarfs and stellar evolution - that the star is rich in helium, having long ago run out of hydrogen.

"It's remarkable to think that the orbit, mass and composition of a tiny star 250 million light years away could be inferred," King said.

Based on these parameters, he also predicted that the star's orbit wobbles slightly, like a spinning top losing speed. This wobble should repeat every two days or so, and we may even be able to detect it, if we observe the system for long enough.

This could be one mechanism whereby black holes grow more and more massive over time. But we'll need to study more such systems to confirm it, and they may not be easy to detect.

For one, GSN 069's black hole is lower mass, which means that the star can travel on a closer orbit. To survive a more massive black hole, a star would have to be on a much larger orbit, which means any periodicity in the feeding would be easier to miss. And if the star were to stray too close, the black hole would destroy it.

But the fact that one has been identified offers hope that it's not the only such system out there.

"In astronomical terms, this event is only visible to our current telescopes for a short time - about 2,000 years, so unless we were extraordinarily lucky to have caught this one, there may be many more that we are missing elsewhere in the Universe," King said.

As for the star's future, well, if nothing else is to change, the star will stay right where it is, orbiting the black hole, and continuing to be slowly stripped for billions of years. This will cause it to grow in size and decrease in density - white dwarfs are only a little bigger than Earth - until it's down to a planetary mass, maybe even eventually turning into a gas giant.

"It will try hard to get away, but there is no escape," King said. "The black hole will eat it more and more slowly, but never stop."

The research has been published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

A version of this article was first published in April 2020.

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Astronomers Have Discovered a Star That Survived Nearly Being Swallowed by a Black Hole - ScienceAlert

A love of stargazing and a desire to meet new people inspired undergraduate student Samantha Bianco to introduce herself to Vanderbilt astronomy professor Keivan Stassun, but she never imagined the educational opportunities that would follow. Stassun invited her to participate in his research, and now, thanks to her passion for astronomy and the mentoring she has received, Bianco is a named co-author on a graduate-level scientific research paper and the first Vanderbilt student officially to have completed an Immersion Vanderbilt project.

Im really excited about the work Ive been doing in Professor Stassuns lab, and the whole experience has been challenging and awesome, said Bianco, a junior from Wauconda, Illinois, who is double-majoring in computer science and communication of science and technology.

Sam is just a great example of the quality and diversity of Vanderbilts undergraduates, said Stassun, Stevenson Chair in Physics, professor of astronomy and computer science and director of the Frist Center for Autism and Innovation. I think one of the real pleasures and benefits of working with students on immersion projects is that they bring so much aspiration and energy and excitement to the work.

In addition to Stassun, Ph.D. graduate student Dax Feliz, who came to Vanderbilt through the Fisk-Vanderbilt Masters-to-Ph.D. Bridge Program, has mentored Bianco.

Biancos Immersion Vanderbilt project looked for evidence of the presence of exoplanets around stars. Bianco and Feliz used data from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which observes hundreds of thousands of star systems in hopes of detecting the presence of extrasolar planets.

She presented her research at a virtual Vanderbilt Research Fair in October and is now a co-author on a research paper submitted by Feliz.

Biancos immersion project is inspiring her plans for the future. When she graduates in 2022, shes interested in a career focused on the communication of science, specifically space science within an organization like NASA.

I really love the idea of taking something thats really complex with tons of scientific jargon and putting it into words that the general public can understand and be interested in, she said.

Stassun believes immersion projects are valuable because they focus students on design projects tied to their interests while giving them opportunities and skills needed for high-level research.

Making groundbreaking discoveries in science is a learned skill. The way we ensure the next generation of discoveries is to invest in training future researchers now, when they are at the beginning of their academic journey as undergraduates, he said. Its been just a great thrill and honor to be a part of Sams journey, of Daxs journey, of the labs journey together and to be representing Immersion Vanderbilt for the first time.

Immersion Vanderbilt provides undergraduate students with the opportunity to pursue their passions and cultivate intellectual interests through experiential learning. This intensive learning experience takes place in and beyond the classroom and culminates in the creation of a final project.

Immersion Vanderbilt became a degree requirement starting in fall 2018, but due to the unprecedented challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, undergraduate students in the Class of 2022 have a flexible option. Immersion Vanderbilt is now highly recommended but not required for undergraduate students who matriculated in the summer and fall of 2018 as well as those who joined the class later as transfer students.

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Students fascination with astronomy inspires first completed Immersion Vanderbilt project - Vanderbilt University News

Nature is fond of patterns, on both the small scale and the large. Take the Fibonacci sequence, for instance the repeating pattern of numbers in which each subsequent number totals the sum of the previous two. The formula appears in nautilus' spiral shells, but also in the arrangement of the planets in the solar system, whose distances align roughly with Fibonacci numbers' ratios.

But the rough synchrony of our planets is nothing compared to the precise alignment of five newly-discovered exoplanets, which orbit their parent star with such a perfect harmony that it seems almost uncanny. According to a study published in the scientific journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, a solar system discovered by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite is host to at least six planets, five of which orbit around the star known as TOI-178 (or TESS Object of Interest 178) in a preciseratio. This is known as a "chain of resonances," or a series of occasions in which planets orbit a star while maintaining a beatwith one another.

"A resonance between two planets is what happens when one completes a certain integer number of orbits while the other also does so," Dr. Nathan Hara, an astrophysicist at the University of Geneva and a co-author of the paper, wrote to Salon. "They therefore find themselves periodically in the same configuration and the strongest attraction between them is therefore always in the same direction."

There are a few details that make the new finding so striking. One is the fact that five planets are involved instead of two; as Hara explained, this makes it "one of the longest known chains" of resonant planets. In the case of the exoplanets surrounding TOI-178, they dance at a rhythm of 18:9:6:4:3. This means that every time the innermost planet in the chain makes 18 orbits around TOI-178, the next one in line makes nine orbits, and the one after that makes six orbits, and so on.

The finding is also significant because "in the known resonance chains, the farther the planet is from the star, the less dense it is, like in the Solar system: Mercury, Venus and Earth, Mars, have a higher density than Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune." The stars orbiting TOI-178 in synchrony, by contrast, have unusual comparative densities.

"The innermost planets are the densest ones, but then you have a planet with a very small, Saturn-like density, then it goes up again and falls off," Hara told Salon. "It is not shattering our understanding of planetary formation, but it is certainly puzzling."

He also told Salon that the discovery is helpful to scientists because TOI-178 is an unusually bright star indeed, the brightest star which is known to have transiting resonant chains.

"Here 'transiting'means that the planet passes between the star and the observer, so that the stellar light flux measured by the observer decreases periodically," Hara explained."This way you also get an estimate of the radius of the planet.The fact that the star is brighter means that we can gain information with other measurement techniques."

Hara told Salon that, in addition to TESS, the discovery was made possible by recent advances in astronomical technology including a European Space Agency telescope called CHEOPS, which was launched in 2019, and a state-of-the-art spectrograph known as ESPRESSO that has been operative since 2018.

"This one allows to measure the velocity of the star in the direction of the line of sight and has an unprecedented precision," Hara explained. "We would not have been able to make mass measurements of the planets of the system with the previous generation of spectrographs, or at the cost of extremely long campaigns."

As for how the resonant chain on planets exists, Hara told Salon that he has a partial hypothesis.

"The formation of resonant chains is believed to result from formations of planets at wider separations from the star which then migrate inwards together and are trappedin resonance with one another," Hara wrote. "As for the fact that the densities are not monotonically decreasing as you move away from the star, we don't really have a convincing explanation yet."

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Astronomers discover a bizarre string of five planets that "dance" in perfect resonance - Salon

Laurel Kornfeld

January 26th, 2021

The late astronomer Ada Carrera, who now has a near-Earth asteroid named for her. Her name selected as the winner of an asteroid-naming contest sparked an online panel discussion by the contests sponsors about the role of women in astronomy Credit: Unistellar

The selection of the late astronomer Ada Amelia Carrera Rodriguez as the winner of an asteroid-naming contest sparked an online panel discussion by the contests sponsors about the role of women in astronomy.

In a joint project, the SETI Institute and the company Unistellar sponsored a Name the Asteroid contest in late 2020 for near-Earth asteroid 1999 AP10, also known as Asteroid 159402, which drew over 120 entries.

At Unistellars Winter Solstice Virtual Star Party on Dec. 21, 2020, the company announced Carrera, a Mexican astronomer, who died earlier that year at age 84, as the contest winner.

Her selection was celebrated in an online discussion on Jan. 13, 2021, titled Women in Astronomy, which promoted awareness of Carrera and her accomplishments and recognized the growing number of women in the field.

We hoped this asteroid would receive a name as inspiring as our accomplishment, but we never could have expected how truly fitting the winning name would be. Adas drive and astronomical accomplishments have found their match in near-Earth asteroid 1999 AP10, said Val Klavans, Unistellar Brand Ambassador at the SETI Institute.

Contest organizers plan to submit the name to the International Astronomical Union Working Group for Small Body Nomenclature for formal approval.

Carrera was a motorcyclist who started her career in astronomy when she was in her 40s. She was a powerful advocate of astronomy education in Mexico and shared her love of astronomy and space throughout Latin America and beyond, acting as a powerful inspiration for women and girls.

The online presentation focused not just on the asteroid naming but also on the increasing number of women in and entering astronomy over just the last few years.

Panelists included Nancy Wolfson of the Taksha Center for Planetary Defense; Jill Tarter of the SETI Institute, on whom the late Carl Sagan based the protagonist of his novel Contact, and Klavans.

Dr. Jill Tarter of the SETI Institute. Photo Credit: NASA Ames Research Center

They noted that in 2017, women earned 33% of bachelors degrees in astronomy and 40% of doctorates in the subject. While just 19% of astronomy faculty at universities were women in 2014, by 2016, 40% of new astronomy faculty members were women.

As of 2018, women made up just 18% of members in the International Astronomical Union (IAU), but that percent is steadily increasing among younger generations.

Nine of the 18 astronauts selected for NASAs Artemis project to return humans to the Moon are women.

Tarter, who is 77, recalled that in college, she initially studied engineering, where she was the only woman in a class of 300. As late as the 1970s and 1980s, women were not permitted to use some of the large mountaintop telescopes to conduct their research. This meant young women interested in the field had few female role models.

In contrast, today, there are more opportunities than ever before for women to pursue astronomy careers, Tarter said.

Wolfson, who has worked in several sectors of the burgeoning space industry, including planetary defense against near-Earth objects, said she always felt welcome in the field while acknowledging there is still a long way to go in terms of equal gender representation.

One obstacle faced by both genders is that in elementary schools, astronomy is taught as a set of known facts rather than as open questions.

The best piece is the questions we dont have answers to, Tarter said.

Her entry into the search for extra-terrestrial life started when she learned how to program an early computer. An astronomer who was given that program approached her questioning whether it could be used to find extra-terrestrial intelligence.

Two new, exciting subfields of astronomy are astrobiology and the study of exoplanets, she added.

Klavans noted she worked as an intern with the Cassini team at NASA analyzing propane spectra with the goal of finding new chemicals in Titans atmosphere. There, she met many women astronomers who worked on Cassini. For her own enjoyment, shetaught herself Photoshop, so she could combine Cassini images of Saturns large moon Titan to replicate the way Titan would appear to the human eye.

One entry path to astronomy is taking part in citizen science projects on a volunteer basis. The SETI Institute runs many research projects, as do other groups, such as Globe at Night and Zooniverse.

Find something eye-catching for you. Think about what you can bring to the table, Wolfson advised potential volunteers.

The panelists also encouraged those interested in astronomy to develop relationships with professional astronomers by reaching out to them and learning about the projects on which they are working.

Dont be afraid to drop an email to someone who inspires you, Tarter said.

Another way to meet specialists working on specific projects is to attend astronomical conferences. Because of COVID, most of these are now virtual. At least half are free to attend, and many need volunteers, Wolfson stated.

One such event is the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) Planetary Defense Conference in April 2021, which will be virtual and free to all.

Regardless of level of education, you always want to keep learning. We have so many digital tools where you can educate yourself. You might have one idea we didnt consider yet, Wolfson said.We need the general public, and were creating a community. Please continue educating yourselves in any way you can.

Tarter encouraged anyone interested in astronomy to look around where you live community colleges, research laboratories, and opportunities to intern and learn by doing. See if you can volunteer and become part of a group.

Video courtesy of Unistellar

Tagged: Asteroid SETI Institute STEM The Range Unistellar women

Laurel Kornfeld is an amateur astronomer and freelance writer from Highland Park, NJ, who enjoys writing about astronomy and planetary science. She studied journalism at Douglass College, Rutgers University, and earned a Graduate Certificate of Science from Swinburne Universitys Astronomy Online program. Her writings have been published online in The Atlantic, Astronomy magazines guest blog section, the UK Space Conference, the 2009 IAU General Assembly newspaper, The Space Reporter, and newsletters of various astronomy clubs. She is a member of the Cranford, NJ-based Amateur Astronomers, Inc. Especially interested in the outer solar system, Laurel gave a brief presentation at the 2008 Great Planet Debate held at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab in Laurel, MD.

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Asteroid naming contest sparks discussion of women in astronomy - SpaceFlight Insider

Roughly 212 light years away in the Virgo constellation lies a super-large exoplanet that has astronomers revising their theory of how giant gas planets form.

The exoplanet, called WASP-107b, was discovered in 2017. At the time, it was difficult to accurately pinpoint its mass. But what astronomers did know is that it was already unusual.

It is a particularly large planet, roughly the size of Jupiter, but with an orbit that is just a mere ninemillion kilometres away from its host star, WASP-107, which is estimated to be about three billion years old.

To put that in perspective, Mercury, the closest planet to our sun, sits at 60 million kilometres. One year on WASP-107b takes roughly 5.7 days.

However, now, after years of observations using the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, a team of international astronomers have uncovered something else: WASP-107b is oddly light. In fact, it's much lighter than what was thought was needed to build gas giants such as Saturn and Jupiter.

"What was really surprising about this planet is that people have known that it's about the size of Jupiter, so it's a gas giant," said Eve Lee, co-author of the study published in the Astrophysical Journal and an assistant professor in the department of physics at McGill University and McGill Space Institute in Montreal. "So if it's a gas giant, then the usual expectation is that it would weigh just as [much] as gas giants. Except it didn't."

Jupiter is about 300 times the mass of Earth. But WASP-107b while roughly the same size as our solar system's biggest and most massive planet is only 30 times that of Earth. That's 1/10th the mass.

The international team of astronomers inferred from their observations that the core of the planet was just four times that of Earth. But in theory, it was believed that these giant planets with such a gaseous atmosphere would require a core that was at least 10 times that of Earth's.

After a star forms, the remaining gas and dust called a protoplanetary disk come together to build planets. When it comes to the gas giants, it's believed that a core that is 10 times more massive than Earth's is required to build or accrete and hold on to the gas envelopes.

So what's the deal with WASP-107b?

Lead author Caroline Piaulet of the Universit de Montral said there are two key elementsin the theory of how this might have happened.

First, it's believed that WASP-107b formed much farther out from its current location, likely around one astronomical unit, or the average distance between the sun and Earth, roughly 150 million kilometres. There, it began to accrete gas and dust relatively quickly.

Secondly, it began to cool rather quickly.

"When it cools down efficiently, it's able to accrete efficiently because if it cools down, it's going to shrink," said Piaulet. "So it's going to have more space to accrete more gas."

Eventually, the planet migrated inward to its current position.

WASP-107b isn't the only "super puff" planet, as they are often called. Lee said there are four others known, though WASP-107b is the puffiest.

So just how puffy is it?

"It's usually compared to cotton candy, because it's about the right density," Lee said. "But it's not the kind that you find at carnivals. It's more like the kind that you buy at stores."

And, as surprising as this super-puff planet was, there was yet another surprise in store: a second planet orbiting the star, WASP-107c.

The planet was detected because of the longer observation time and was found to be roughly one-third the mass of Jupiter. Its orbit around the star takes about three years, significantly longer than WASP-107b.

The discovery is just a reminder that, while we may think we have an understanding of how planets form, we still have a lot to learn about what lies beyond our own solar system. Even then, Piaulet said, we still don't even know much about the cores of our own giant gas planets, such as Jupiter.

"What I found really exciting is that it's kind of pushing our understanding of planet formation to its limits."

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Astronomers discover huge exoplanet has the density of cotton candy - CBC.ca

Back at the dawn of the Universe, astronomers have found a stacks on of cosmic proportions. At least 21 galaxies, forming stars at a tremendous rate, are merging together in the early stages of the formation of a galaxy cluster. And it's all happening 13 billion light-years away - just 770 million years after the Big Bang itself.

This is the earliest protocluster discovered yet, named LAGER-z7OD1, and today it has probably evolved into a group of galaxies 3.7 quadrillion times the mass of the Sun.

Such a large protocluster, so early in the Universe - barely a cosmic eyeblink since the curtain was raised on life, the Universe and everything - could contain some vital clues as to how the primordial smoke cleared and the lights switched on, sending light streaming freely through space.

Our Universe is a massively interconnected place. Galaxies may seem relatively self-contained, but more than half of all galaxies are gravitationally bound together in clusters or groups, huge structures of hundreds to thousands of galaxies.

The beginnings of such clusters are not unknown in the early Universe. Protoclusters have been found nearly as far as LAGER-z7OD1, some even much bigger, suggesting that clusters could begin assembling much faster than previously thought possible.

But LAGER-z7OD1, according to a team of researchers led by astronomer Weida Hu of the University of Science and Technology of China, is special. It can reveal clues about one of the most mysterious stages in the history of the Universe: the Epoch of Reionisation.

"The total volume of the ionised bubbles generated by its member galaxies is found to be comparable to the volume of the protocluster itself, indicating that we are witnessing the merging of the individual bubbles and that the intergalactic medium within the protocluster is almost fully ionised," they wrote in their paper.

"LAGER-z7OD1 thus provides a unique natural laboratory to investigate the reionization process."

Space, you see, wasn't always the lovely, see-through place it is today. For the first 370 million years or so, it was filled with a hot murky fog of ionised gas. Light was unable to travel freely through this fog; it scattered off free electrons and that was that.

Once the Universe cooled down enough, protons and electrons started to recombine into neutral hydrogen atoms. This meant that light - not that there was much, yet - could finally travel through space.

As the first stars and galaxies began to form, their ultraviolet light reionised the neutral hydrogen ubiquitous throughout the Universe: first in localised bubbles around the ultraviolet sources, and then larger and larger areas as the ionised bubbles connected and overlapped, allowing the entire spectrum of electromagnetic radiation to stream freely.

By about 1 billion years after the Big Bang, the Universe was completely reionised. This means that it's more challenging to probe beyond this point (about 12.8 light-years away), but it also means that the reionisation process itself is tricky to understand.

Ideally, you need really bright objects whose ionising radiation could cut through the neutral hydrogen, and that's what Hu and his team were looking for with the Lyman Alpha Galaxies inthe Epoch of Reionization survey. These are small, early-Universe galaxies forming stars at an insane rate, which means they can be detected at quite large distances, well inside the Epoch of Reionisation. This makes them useful probes of the period.

In their search, the researchers found LAGER-z7OD1, an overdense region of galaxies in a three-dimensional volume of space measuring 215 million by 98 million by 85 million light-years. This volume contained two distinct sub-protoclusters merging together into one larger one, with at least 21 galaxies, 16 of which have been confirmed.

The total volume of ionised space around the galaxies was slightly larger than the volume of LAGER-z7OD1.

"This demonstrates substantial overlaps between individual bubbles, indicating that the individual bubbles are in the act of merging into one or two giant bubbles," the researchers wrote.

So not only does the protocluster represent an excellent example of its kind, providing a new datapoint for studying how these structures form and emerge, as well as star formation in the early Universe, it offers a one-of-a-kind window into the formation and combination of ionised bubbles in the middle of the Epoch of Reionisation.

What insights will emerge are yet to be discovered, though. As the researchers note, that will be the work of future, more powerful telescopes that will better be able to observe the finer details of the reionisation process.

The team's research has been published in Nature Astronomy.

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Astronomers Detect a Surprisingly Huge Galactic Birthplace in The Early Universe - ScienceAlert

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Bengaluru: Astronomers using NASAs Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) have observed a six-star system called TIC 168789840, also known as TYC 7037-89-1, that is around 2,000 light years away from the earth.

The astronomers have also called it the sextuply-eclipsing sextuple star system. This far away system was discovered using the NASA supercomputer called Discover by extracting useful information from years of existing TESS data.

While it was difficult to distinguish the individual stars, they showed a consistent pattern of dimming and brightening through which the astronomers were able to understand that starlight was being eclipsed by other stars (and not planets) with a line of sight from earth.

The discovery and analysis of the six-star system has been reported on a pre-print (not yet peer reviewed) server arXiv. It has been accepted for publication in the journal The Astronomical Journal.

Also read:For the first time ever, astronomers are witnessing a galaxys death as its happening

The star system is the fourth known sextuple star system where six stars are gravitationally bound to each other. The most famous of these is the Castor system discovered originally in the 18th century in the Gemini constellation but identified in 1920 to be a sextuple system, and is located about 51 light years away from the earth.

There are many configurations in which six stars circle a common centre or each other. In another sextuple system, known as the ADS 9731 system, four stars circle a common point, of which two stars are actually binaries.

However, the TIC 168789840 is aligned differently. Two pairs of inner stars orbit around a common barycentre (the systems centre of mass) every 3.7 years, while the outer binary pair go around the inner four every 2,000 years. Among these, the three binary star pairs are also made of two stars that whip around each others common centre of mass.

One of the inner pair of binaries revolves around each other in 31 hours, while the other does in 38 hours. The outer binary stars revolve around each other in about 197 hours.

The inner binaries orbit too close to each other, causing any potential planet to be ejected, explained the astronomers. However, the outer binaries may host planets that could have stellar views of multiple suns and sunsets.

This is the first star system where all stars in the same system eclipse each other from our line of sight, leading the astronomers to describe the system as sextuply-eclipsing.

Astronomy is increasingly becoming reliant on machine learning and large scale data processing due to the sheer volume of information being acquired on a daily basis.

Lead authors Brian Powell, a data scientist at NASAs High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center, and Veselin Kostov, an astrophysicist at the US-based SETI Institute, designed a neural network that could identify eclipsing binary stars when combing through the TESS data.

TIC 168789840 is also the only sextuple star system in our line of sight where the stars transit or pass in front of one another. Such transits are typically observed in exoplanets, where planets move in front of a star, causing a dimming in starlight and with which scientists can deduce the size of the planet blocking the star.

The neural network studied nearly 80 million records that dealt with such dimming of starlight caused by other stars, and discovered many such multiple star super systems. TIC 168789840 was discovered in March 2020, after which amateur astronomers were made aware of the data and contributed to confirmed it through observations.

Astronomers are still not clear on how such large star systems with multiple stars were formed. One of the authors has speculated that in this system, three stars were formed first from a central cloud, after which each star was enveloped with material from the same cloud, giving them all an eventual secondary companion.

Discoveries of such star systems and observations of their behaviour can give more insight into how these systems were formed and evolve, thus improving our understanding of the universe.

Also read: Mars, Moon & a fresh pair of eyes in the sky the big space missions planned for 2021

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Sextuply-eclipsing Astronomers discover a six-star system that eclipses one another - ThePrint

The International Astronomical Unions Office of Astronomy for Development(OAD) is pleased to announce the results of its 2020 call for proposals, with21 projects selected to receive funding in 2021. Out of the 21, eight projects are from Africa.

These projects, which will address global challenges using astronomy-related innovations, include online astronomy programmes in Indonesia and India; development of astronomy video content to be used in television lessons in Pakistan; training programmes for displaced populations in refugee camps in Algeria, Spain, Italy and Uganda; motivating and improving the welfare of prisoners in Nigeria; teaching coding using astronomical topics in Portugal, Mozambique and East Timor; mentoring and inspiring girls in primary schools in rural Kenya; and astronomy projects to celebrate indigenous culture and help students identify with their ancestral roots in Chile, Brazil, Cape Verde, Mozambique, So Tom and Prncipe, Angola, and Portugal.

Although the call was announced in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the OAD received an enthusiastic response from the community, with 110 applications submitted. An independent review panel selected 21 proposals, which were later approved by the OAD Steering Committee. In total, 109 944 will be granted to the funded projects.

This was the ninth annual call for proposals run by the OAD. In light of the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the OAD also ran a separate call in 2020, inviting proposals to address the immediate challenges caused by the pandemic. As a result of this additional call, a further43 projects were fundedin June 2020.

The annual call for proposals is open to anyone from anywhere in the world. The next call is expected to open in April 2021.

The eight projects from Africa funded are:

1. Astrobus, NigeriaAstroBus-Nigeria is a mobile Astronomy outreach activity carried out by organizing a march and driving a motor vehicle probably 2-3 convoy to different locations in Nigeria. The Astronomy activities include sensitization, poster/billboard activities at popular location, simple astronomy experiments and others. The project aims to stimulate astronomy education and a culture of scientific thinking in Nigeria through the use of astronomy activities. We believe this idea is an effective approach to reach out to the general public in a creative and inspiring way.

2. Astrolab Distant Training, Southern, Eastern and West African countriesTo get students involved in science studies, lab activities are a necessity, but often scarce funding limits the capacity to implement it. In that context the enquiry-based lab Astrolab was developed. It is based on the analysis of astronomical images obtained with remote telescopes to introduce students to the scientific research method by working through project development and preparation, data acquisition and treatment, analysis and conclusions.

3. Astro-prison, NigeriaThe Astro-prison project aims to use Astro-prison as an astronomical tool in achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in Nigerian correctional facilities. The Astro-prison project targets the eighteen (18) correctional centres in South-Eastern Nigeria. South-East Nigeria is made up of five states which include Anambra State, Enugu State, Abia State, Imo State and Ebonyi State. The Astro-prison project will adopt a cross-sectional design. The project design will utilize both qualitative and quantitative methods for analysis. The project is designed to cope with the current COVID-19 pandemic by adopting preventive World Health Organization guidelines. This project will adopt the use of English, Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba languages as major communication languages because Nigeria is multi-ethnic. The Astro-prison project targets all inmates and prison warders in the South-East region of Nigeria and the sample size per prison (n) i.e. the number of participants per prison will be determined using standard Fischers et al. (1998) formula, n = (Z^2 pq)/d^2.

4. Elimisha Msichana. Elimisha Jamii na Astronomia (EMJA), (Swahili for educate a girl, educate the entire community with astronomy) KenyaIn Kenya, although 70.4% of girls aged 15-19 years manage to achieve some sort of primary education only 4.5% complete secondary education (World Bank, 2012). Only 3.5% of women (aged 15+) have completed tertiary education (World Bank, 2015). This is due to many socio-economic challenges such as teenage pregnancies, early marriages, FGM, poverty and lack of mentorship.

EMEJA will support schoolgirls and their families in rural areas of Kenya through astronomy outreach, mentorship & inspirational programmes. EMEJA aims to; 1) engage local communities in positively tackling the above socio-economic challenges; 2) increase number of girls completing secondary education in rural areas; 3) increase numbers of girls picking Physics & STEM; 4) develop resources for often underfunded local rural day secondary schools. Astronomy is the key tool & central theme around which activities will be built.

5. Knowledge access and sharing through Cultural Astronomy in Ugandas Refugee settlements and host communities, UgandaThis project is based on introducing Astronomy to refugee settlements through student activities, teacher training workshops, public engagements, webinars on Cultural Astronomy all of which will eventually be incorporated in a mobile Astronomy Lab for replication in other regions of Uganda. Project deliverables include; introduction of Astronomy in the general sciences education, a catalogue of videos, poems & other collected information for publication & display in an Astronomy museum. This project will be implemented in the 11 refugee settlements of Uganda, Africas leading refugee host.

6. Open Astronomy Clubs for Quality Education, Gender Equality and Distribution of Telescopes, CameroonOur project idea is to open Astronomy Clubs (one in a university, one in a secondary school and one in a primary school) for quality education and gender equality, and to distribute thirty telescopes in schools across the republic ( ten in ten state Universities, ten in ten secondary schools, seven in seven secondary schools and three in three primary, nursery and pre-nursery Schools) for partnership and good Ties between us, the Astronomy Club Of Cameroon and the IAU NOC Committee with the different institutions and ministry of higher education and that of the primary education.

Our only drawback was the budget. Since Astronomy Club Of Cameroon is the only existing Astronomy Club in Cameroon, we think these initiatives will help reduce our load and easily bring Astronomy knowledge to the community.

7. OruMbya Astronomy as fuel of life: the resilience of stars in Yoruba, Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous Cosmogony, Brazil, Cape Verde, Mozambique, So Tom and Principe, Angola and PortugalOruMbya (Orum, sky in Yorub, and Mbya, a Brazilian Guarani ethnicity) is a pilot project to celebrate Astronomy as the fuel of life, in which the stories of the stars are preserved in the resilience of people from three different continents and shared over months, through scientific-cultural activities focused on the dissemination of knowledge, promotion of social inclusion and sustainable development in the context of PLOAD.

We plan to organise five public events (once a month) at the Observatory of Valongo. Every event will comprise an organic combination of three experiences: dedicated to astronomy, African and indigenous knowledge, and art or music, which will be recorded and live broadcast. There will be webinars (roundtable discussions) where people from the different countries will share their experiences of Cultural Astronomy.

8. Pan-African School for Emerging Astronomers 2021, AfricaThe Pan-African School for Emerging Astronomers (PASEA) formally known as West African International Summer School for Young Astronomers (WAISSYA) has remained one of the flagship projects of the West African Regional Office of Astronomy for Development (WAROAD), since the first edition was initiated in the year 2013.

The school is primarily designed as an innovative short-course in astronomy for university students, an outreach program for high school students cum teachers at local universities. PASEA gives students the opportunity to develop their interest in astronomy, inspire their scientific curiosity cum enhance their practice of scientific thinking; while instructors have the opportunity of exchanging educational ideas between Africa and the rest of the world.

The other projects selected are:

The OAD has also compiled a list of recommended proposals that were approved by the reviewers but could not be funded. You can browse through them here.

The Authority on News, Data and Market Analysis for the African Space Industry.

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International Astronomical Union's OAD selects eight projects from Africa to receive funding - Space in Africa