Mini-moon and the biggest bang in space are two of the latest astronomy finds – The National

IN a week of startling developments in space observation and exploration, two major events stand out.

The first is the discovery of a mini-moon which is orbiting the Earth and has been since 2017, only that nobody spotted it until a fortnight ago. Minimoon is an appropriate name as the object is about the size of a car.

The second announcement was about the biggest explosion ever found by mankind, and since no one has ever seen the Big Bang, it can be safely said that this latest explosion is the biggest ever detected.

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WHAT IS THE MINI MOON?

DISCOVERED on February 15 and confirmed as a mini-moon earlier this week, astronomers know very little about the object it may even be an artificial object, such as a dead satellite, but its most likely a small asteroid just 2m wide.

Found at three-quarters of the distance to the Moon, its going to miss Earth by a huge distance and will probably only be with us until April, but technically speaking it is a moon orbiting around the Earth.

Minimoon is just the second asteroid known to have been captured by Earth.

The first was given the uncharming name of 2006 RH120, and orbited around our planet between September 2006 and June 2007 before going off into the dark yonder.

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This latest object has also been given a bland name 2020 CD3. It was discovered by Kacper Wierzchos, a senior research specialist for the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona.

The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatorys Minor Planet Center announced the find earlier this week.

The Center stated: Orbit integrations indicate that this object is temporarily bound to the Earth. No link to a known artificial object has been found. Further observations and dynamical studies are strongly encouraged.

AND THE BIGGEST BANG?

DONT worry it wont affect us as it happened hundreds of millions of light-years away.

The explosion was detected by a new range of radio telescopes. Astronomers and astrophysicists concluded that the blast came from a supermassive black hole at the centre of a galaxy.

According to the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, this explosion released five times more energy than the previous record holder.

Professor Melanie Johnston-Hollitt of Curtin University in Perth, Australia, said the event was extraordinarily energetic.

Weve seen outbursts in the centres of galaxies before but this one is really, really massive, said the professor. And we dont know why its so big.

But it happened very slowly like an explosion in slow motion that took place over hundreds of millions of years.

The explosion occurred in the Ophiuchus galaxy cluster, about 390 million light-years from Earth.

It was so powerful it punched a cavity in the cluster plasma the super-hot gas surrounding the black hole.

People were sceptical because the size of outburst, she said. But it really is that. The Universe is a weird place.

The scientists themselves may not be wired but they have a sense of humour. Their website address features the word "kaboom".

WHY ARE WE LEARNING MORE ABOUT SPACE?

ITS an exciting time for space exploration with discoveries occurring on an almost weekly basis.

Particularly exciting is the potential for radio telescopes, especially in large arrays such as the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) in Australia of which professor Johnston-Hollitt is the director.

Its a low-frequency radio telescope and is the first of four Square Kilometre Array (SKA) which The National recently profiled installations to be completed.

Johnston-Hollitt feels theres a lot more to come: Its a bit like archaeology.

Weve been given the tools to dig deeper with low-frequency radio telescopes so we should be able to find more outbursts like this now.

We made this discovery with Phase 1 of the MWA, when the telescope had 2048 antennas pointed towards the sky.

Were soon going to be gathering observations with 4096 antennas, which should be 10 times more sensitive.

I think thats pretty exciting.

Other than radio telescopes, the next big development will be the James Webb Space Telescope, the replacement for the Hubble Telescope which revolutionised our view of the universe.

Webb will be launched next year and is an international programme led by NASA with its partners, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.

Its first job will be to look at the so-called ice giants of the Solar System, the planets Neptune and Uranus which lie beyond the orbits of the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn.

Leigh Fletcher, associate professor of planetary science at the University of Leicester, will lead the study of the two planets.

He said: The key thing that Webb can do that is very, very difficult to accomplish from any other facility is map their atmospheric temperature and chemical structure.

We think that the weather and climate of the ice giants are going to have a fundamentally different character compared to the gas giants. Thats partly because

theyre so far away from the Sun, theyre smaller in size and rotate slower on their axes, but also because the blend of gases and the amount of atmospheric mixing is very different compared with Jupiter and Saturn.

With Webb due to stay in service for 10 years or more, many more space discoveries will be made.

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Mini-moon and the biggest bang in space are two of the latest astronomy finds - The National