Category Archives: Astronomy

The so-called "Jupiter Opposition" happens when Jupiter, the Earth and the Sun are aligned in the same line.

Jupiter was at the opposition on September 26 at 20:00 UTC. At the time of the opposition, Jupiter was at a distance of 3.95 AU or 591 million km or 33 light minutes from our planet.

All the planets in the Solar System orbit around the Sun. At certain points during these orbits, the Earth finds itself directly between the Sun and another planet. This is the moment at which that planet is said to be "in opposition".

During opposition, the planet appears at its largest and brightest, and it is above the horizon for much of the night. For stargazers and astro photographers, it's an ideal time to view and photograph the superior planets. Jupiters opposition to the sun and closest approach to Earth fell on the same day.

Thats because opposition took place so near in time to Jupiters perihelion on January 21, 2023 its closest point to the sun in its 12-year orbit. The juxtaposition of Jupiters opposition in September 2022, and perihelion in early 2023, brings the planet closer to Earth at this opposition than it has been for 59 years (since 1963).

The emirates leading archaeological and eco-tourism project, developed by the Sharjah Investment and Development Authority (Shurooq) is located in the historic dunes of Mleiha, approximately 40 minutes away from Sharjah city lights.

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UAE astronomy enthusiasts gather for Jupiter Opposition event - Gulf News

The Mercer Astronomy Student Association is on a mission to grow the field of astronomy through outreach events.

Junior Bryson Malta, a double-major in biology and philosophy, wanted to start an astronomy club since his first year at Mercer. Now, the club is a reality and is helping create a community focused on outreach events to bring more people together through hands-on experience with astronomy.

Bryson feels really strongly about astronomy as an outreach tool and bringing it to people, and I really admire that and appreciate that. I think having outreach in the bones of the club, as its core mission, is really valuable, Dr. Frank McNally, the clubs faculty adviser and an assistant physics professor, said. These students seeing themselves as educators, to some degree, I think will really help them grow to appreciate and learn even more about astronomy.

Maltas interest in astronomy started in a high school class. He later bought his own telescope and taught himself how to use it.

What I find most interesting about astronomy, or at least more specifically, amateur astronomy, is just, well, the feeling of it, Malta said. That feeling of bliss.

Right now, the club is still gaining momentum, as it continues to grow in members and interest. Recently, the club had its election for officers.

Mostly right now (the club meetings are) about the basics of how to set up astronomical equipment and some of the terms that we use, Malta said.

The meetings emphasize hands-on applications such as constructing the equipment to learn how to use it.

As the club continues to grow, perhaps the astronomy program at Mercer will grow, too.

From my experience in teaching astronomy, it feels like there are a lot of students at Mercer who are really interested in the stars. And so, MASA feels like a great way to help show that to the administration, Dr. McNally said, noting how astronomy is now being taught twice a year instead of just once.

Part of that growth includes plans for land Mercer owns out in Crawford County, with hopes to turn it into an astronomy observatory. The project, Dr. McNally said, was spearheaded by Dr. Matthew Marone, another physics professor at Mercer.

The land, which is away from Mercers campus, is farther from light pollution.

It is basically an elevated plateau. And so you still have light from Atlanta, you still have light from Macon, but it is significantly darker than here, Dr. McNally said, noting how celestial bodies people dont often get to see, such as the Milky Way, can be observed.

The astronomy courses at Mercer utilize the land for observations, and Dr. McNally hopes to take the club there soon.

The Mercer Astronomy Student Association has some outreach events coming up, the first of which is a viewing of the Jupiter opposition from 8:30-11 p.m. Sept. 26 on Cruz Plaza. The Jupiter opposition is when Jupiter and Earth are on the same side of the sun during their elliptical orbits, said Dr. McNally.

When you look at Jupiter through the telescopes that we have, youll be able to see stripes on the planet, (and) youll be able to see the four Galilean moons, Dr. McNally said.

The club also has plans for a Halloween event and a viewing of a total lunar eclipse.

For students interested in joining the Mercer Astronomy Student Association, meetings are from 8-10 p.m. on Mondays in the Science and Engineering Building, Room 143.

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New astronomy club aims to help more people see the stars and beyond - Mercer University

Virginia Trimble, 78, is a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California, Irvine, whose astronomy career spans more than 50 years. She has studied the structure and evolution of stars, galaxies and the universe and published more than 1,000 works, including research papers in astronomy, astrophysics, the history of science and scientometrics the field concerned with measuring scientific outputs as well book reviews and biographies. She has co-edited The Sky Is for Everyone, a new collection of 37 autobiographical essays by distinguished female astronomers, including herself. Spanning a range of generations and nationalities, each tells of the barriers they have overcome to change the face of modern astronomy.

What got you into astronomy?It wasnt a love of stars: I grew up in Los Angeles very nearsighted and never saw the night sky. I really wanted to be an Egyptologist, but the University of California, Los Angeles [UCLA] didnt have an archaeology major. My father looked at the catalogue and saw astronomy. I enrolled in an astronomy-math double degree but that got moved to the school of engineering, which wasnt terribly welcoming to women, so I switched to astronomy-physics. I started at UCLA in 1961 in the gifted students programme.

In 1962, you were featured in a Life magazine article, Behind a Lovely Face, a 180 IQ. Where did that lead?As a result, I was approached by a publicity agency looking for some way to bring up the ratings of what was going to be the last year of the Twilight Zone programmes. In my year being Miss Twilight Zone, I toured 10 cities where television ratings were taken, doing newspaper, radio and television interviews. The shtick was that I was reading the scripts for accuracy. Some of my suggestions were taken, for instance that there is a difference between a solar system and a galaxy. It brought in some extra, much-needed pennies.

You started graduate school at the prestigious California Institute of Technology, or Caltech, in 1964 when you were not quite 21. You were awarded your joint masters in physics and astronomy in 1965 and your PhD in astronomy in 1968. Was it hard getting in?I hadnt quite realised that they admitted women only under exceptional circumstances. My exceptional circumstance was that my fellowship required me to go someplace other than my undergraduate institution and I didnt want to leave home (Caltech and UCLA were the only two places in southern California with astronomy majors). There were 14 women on the entire campus when I arrived, and the two women who arrived ahead of me in astronomy both came with their husbands.

It seems Caltech was a hotbed of seduction. You became friendly with the physicist Richard Feynman by modelling for himI had quickly noticed in both my undergraduate and graduate classes there were a lot of nice men students and faculty. The astronomy professor who became my PhD adviser Guido Mnch and I were lovers for about three years until I left Caltech.

Feynman was learning to draw and hed seen me walking across campus and decided: I want that one. He saw Mnch coming out of the building I had gone into and went up to him and said: Im hunting, perhaps you know the quarry. Mnch brought Feynman to my office and introduced us.

Feynman paid me $5.50 an hour (a lot then) plus all the physics I could swallow. His studio was in the basement of his house in Altadena and I used to go there Tuesday evenings for a couple of hours. Sometimes I posed nude. Sometimes we cuddled, but innocently. I recall once he suggested we cuddle on the couch, and I said I didnt think we really wanted to do that. His wife quite often brought us orange juice and cookies, and I didnt want to be naked on the couch with Feynman when she did.

Wasnt it creepy to be involved with these professors? There was a big power imbalance.I enjoyed the company of men who liked me. I was never aware of a power imbalance; I could always just walk away. Of course, it would get us all fired today!

You have published hundreds of research papers, but perhaps your colleagues know you best for your amusing, must-read annual summaries of astrophysics research, which you undertook for 16 years starting in 1991. How deliberate was the humour?I couldnt help [the jokes]. I am told that if we who are on the autism spectrum and I would say I am slightly Aspergerish simply describe things the way we see them, it strikes many other people as amusing. But some of the footnotes were designed to be funny. I described distinguished colleagues by pseudonyms such as the rotund musician or the keen amateur dentist. I made enemies both by not citing people and by citing them, because quite often I picked out something from their paper which was not what they had primarily intended. It was said that each time [a summary] came out you could see the Princeton astronomers tiptoeing into the library late at night to see if they had been mentioned.

How have things changed for female astronomers?The first women in astronomy came in through a father, brother or husband, and some almost certainly married in order to do science. Then came being a human computer [which involved doing calculations by hand, and later machine]. These women didnt necessarily fall in love with astronomy but it was an interesting job that a college-educated woman could do that wasnt teaching or nursing. Then in the US, driven by post-Sputnik concerns, graduate programmes in space-related fields grew rapidly. They were so desperate to expand they even hired women faculty! Today roughly 30-40% of astronomy graduate students are female, though that lessens up the hierarchy.

Which female astronomers have been overlooked for a Nobel prize?Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin discovered that stars are made of hydrogen and helium. But she wasnt believed until it was confirmed by men. Jocelyn Bell (later Bell Burnell) was a PhD student when she participated in the discovery of pulsars but the resultant share of the Nobel prize was awarded only to her male supervisor. In contrast, the male PhD student who recognised the signal from the first binary pulsar shared the prize with his adviser.

Various female astronomers in the book note some shockingly sexist behaviour and at least one details being sexually harassed in an elevator. You must have experienced some of this in your working life, but you dont seem too riled about men behaving badlyClearly men behaving badly has been a major problem for some of my colleagues, and I dont want to seem to be defending law-breakers. I dont feel that I have ever been sexually harassed. I am friends with some senior male scientists whove been accused of being seriously inappropriate and I just find it hard to believe. I think perhaps some things can feel very different to different women.

What words of advice would you give young women who want an astronomy career?Nearly everybody says: follow your passion. My view is: find something youre good enough at to earn your living and do it.

The Sky Is for Everyone, edited by Virginia Trimble and David A Weintraub, is published by Princeton University Press (25). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

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Astronomer Virginia Trimble: There were 14 women on the Caltech campus when I arrived in 1964 - The Guardian

Learn about the James Webb Space Telescope that NASA launched in December 2021 during this months astronomy night at Cape Lookout National Seashore, a certified International Dark Sky Park.

Meet in the Harkers Island Visitor Center Theater at 7 p.m. Saturday to hear NASA Solar System Ambassador Matthew Bruce give a 45-minute talk on Webb, the largest, most powerful and complex space telescope ever built and launched into space, organizers said.

After the presentation, park staff and area astronomers from the Crystal Coast Stargazers, a NASA Night Sky Network astronomy club, will host a Star Party on the visitor center grounds. Participants will have a chance to view astronomical objects above the Southern Outer Banks through the lens of a telescope.

The free event is child-friendly, but organizers ask no pets. Solar System Ambassador programs are rain or shine but stargazing is weather dependent. Organizers recommend dressing for the weather, bringing lawn chairs, blankets, water, snacks, bug repellent, or any other comfort items, as well as a flashlight with a red filter to help maintain everyones night vision.

Folks may also consider bringing their own telescopes to learn how to get the most out of their equipment from members of the Stargazers club.

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Webb telescope the star of this month's astronomy night | Coastal Review - Coastal Review Online

A team of astronomers has found what may be the oldest known planetary nebula ever seen, and certainly one of the biggest. These structures are fleeting on a cosmic timescale, so finding one so old is extremely helpful in nailing down what happens as stars die.

Bonus: It was confirmed to be in a bright, nearby stellar cluster, making it far easier to nail down several of its characteristics [link to paper].

A planetary nebula is a huge cloud of gas blown off by a star like the Sun as it ages and dies. Stars generate energy by fusing lighter elements into heavier ones in their cores. They can do this for billions of years, but eventually the usable fuel runs out. This sets off a complicated chain of events, but in a nutshell the core contracts and heats up, while the outer layers of the star expand and cool. The star becomes a red giant, and blows a wind of gas away that eventually depletes it of gas.

The core of the star, dense and hot and exposed to space, is now called a white dwarf. Its so hot it pours out ultraviolet light that excites the gas it previously blew away, which responds by glowing quite literally like a neon sign. Thats the planetary nebula. Over time the expanding gas gets so spread out the ultraviolet light passes right through it, so the nebula fades away. This typically takes a few thousand years, which is the blink of an eye in a stars lifetime.

A few thousand planetary nebulae are known in our galaxy, but most are distant, small, and faint.

RELATED: Crash Course Astronomy: White Dwarfs and Planetary Nebulae

The planetary nebula in question here is called IPHASX J055226.2+323724 lets call it J0552 for short. It was discovered in 2008, right on top of the well-known open cluster M 37. Open clusters are small collections of hundreds or thousands of stars, typically all born at the same time from a single cloud of gas. Thousands are known, and some are close enough to see by the naked eye, like the Pleiades or the Hyades, the latter of which is the V-shaped series of stars that makes up the head of the constellation Taurus the Bull.

I was delighted to read about this planetary nebula because M 37 is one of a few bright open clusters in the constellation of Auriga that are easily seen from a dark site with binoculars. Ive observed it many, many times with my own telescope because its big, bright, and very easy to find.

The nebula J0552 is large on the sky for a planetary nebula, about a tenth of a degree, or a fifth the size of the full Moon on the sky. Its incredibly faint, and only shows up in very deep exposures using filters that block all light except for the reddish hue that comes from glowing hydrogen gas. It appears to be just off-center in M37, well inside the cluster.

The problem here is that space is deep, and things can appear to overlap while being at wildly different distances. Just seeing a nebula coincident in the sky with an open cluster doesnt mean theyre physically associated.

The new work shows that the two are in fact related. One key is finding the planetary nebula central star, the star that cast off the gas in the first place. Thats usually easy for small nebulae, but for big ones, especially in dense fields of stars, it can be difficult. However in this case it wasnt too hard: Young white dwarfs tend to be blue and hot, and theres only one blue star anywhere near the nebula center. Observations indicate it is in fact a white dwarf with a temperature of 100,000C, and its moving through space along with the cluster. These pretty much clinch its membership.

The beauty of this is that we know the clusters distance from us: about 4,700 light-years away. That gives the physical size of the nebula as 10 light-years, which is huge. Most fade away when theyre a fraction of that size.

Using spectra, the astronomers determined the nebular gas is expanding at a rate of about 20 kilometers per second. Knowing its distance and size, that gives an age of the nebula of about 80,000 years, making this the oldest planetary nebula ever seen.

An important relationship in how stars die is how massive the star was at first, and how massive the white dwarf it leaves behind is when the star dies. The central white dwarf star of J0552 has a mass of about 0.6 times that of the Sun now. Using the characteristics of the cluster the astronomers find it started off life with 2.8 times the Suns mass, making it a beefy blue-white star back in the day.

With these numbers in hand, plus the age, size, and chemical composition of the gas determined from spectra, astronomers can learn quite a bit about what happens when stars die. On top of that, only two other planetary nebulae are known in our galaxy that exist in open clusters, so this helps us understand these stellar jewels as well. Interestingly, the other two are large, old, and come from higher mass stars as well. That might be due to a bias: Open clusters disperse over time, so we tend to see them when theyre relatively young. It takes time for a star to die, with higher-mass stars dying first, so of course in a young cluster well likely only see planetary nebulae from more massive stars.

Or it might be telling us something fundamental about the way clusters make stars and how those stars die. That will take a lot more observations, but that first step is finding these cluster nebulae. J0552 is a precious object.

Mind you, our own Sun will follow this path someday. Not for many billions of years, but it too will run out of core fuel, swell up (engulfing the Earth in the process), blow off its outer layers, and form a planetary nebula. Studying these objects means studying ourselves, if our far-distant-future selves. But if we want a complete picture of the Sun and Earth, we need to understand the whole picture, including what happens, and how, eons from now.

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Astronomers find the death cry of a star in a cluster long ago and not so very far away - Syfy

Astronomers now routinely discover planets orbiting stars outside of the solar system theyre called exoplanets. But in summer 2022, teams working on NASAs Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite found a few particularly interesting planets orbiting in the habitable zones of their parent stars.

One planet is 30% larger than Earth and orbits its star in less than three days. The other is 70% larger than the Earth and might host a deep ocean. These two exoplanets are super-Earths more massive than the Earth but smaller than ice giants like Uranus and Neptune.

Im a professor of astronomy who studies galactic cores, distant galaxies, astrobiology and exoplanets. I closely follow the search for planets that might host life.

Earth is still the only place in the universe scientists know to be home to life. It would seem logical to focus the search for life on Earth clones planets with properties close to Earths. But research has shown that the best chance astronomers have of finding life on another planet is likely to be on a super-Earth similar to the ones found recently.

Most super-Earths orbit cool dwarf stars, which are lower in mass and live much longer than the Sun. There are hundreds of cool dwarf stars for every star like the Sun, and scientists have found super-Earths orbiting 40% of cool dwarfs they have looked at. Using that number, astronomers estimate that there are tens of billions of super-Earths in habitable zones where liquid water can exist in the Milky Way alone. Since all life on Earth uses water, water is thought to be critical for habitability.

Based on current projections, about a third of all exoplanets are super-Earths, making them the most common type of exoplanet in the Milky Way. The nearest is only six light-years away from Earth. You might even say that our solar system is unusual since it does not have a planet with a mass between that of Earth and Neptune.

Another reason super-Earths are ideal targets in the search for life is that theyre much easier to detect and study than Earth-sized planets. There are two methods astronomers use to detect exoplanets. One looks for the gravitational effect of a planet on its parent star and the other looks for brief dimming of a stars light as the planet passes in front of it. Both of these detection methods are easier with a bigger planet.

Over 300 years ago, German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz argued that Earth was the best of all possible worlds. Leibnizs argument was meant to address the question of why evil exists, but modern astrobiologists have explored a similar question by asking what makes a planet hospitable to life. It turns out that Earth is not the best of all possible worlds.

Due to Earths tectonic activity and changes in the brightness of the Sun, the climate has veered over time from ocean-boiling hot to planetwide, deep-freeze cold. Earth has been uninhabitable for humans and other larger creatures for most of its 4.5-billion-year history. Simulations suggest the long-term habitability of Earth was not inevitable, but was a matter of chance. Humans are literally lucky to be alive.

Researchers have come up with a list of the attributes that make a planet very conducive to life. Larger planets are more likely to be geologically active, a feature that scientists think would promote biological evolution. So the most habitable planet would have roughly twice the mass of the Earth and be between 20% and 30% larger by volume. It would also have oceans that are shallow enough for light to stimulate life all the way to the seafloor and an average temperature of 77 degrees Fahrenheit (25 degrees Celsius). It would have an atmosphere thicker than the Earths that would act as an insulating blanket. Finally, such a planet would orbit a star older than the Sun to give life longer to develop, and it would have a strong magnetic field that protects against cosmic radiation. Scientists think that these attributes combined will make a planet super habitable.

By definition, super-Earths have many of the attributes of a super habitable planet. To date, astronomers have discovered two dozen super-Earth exoplanets that are, if not the best of all possible worlds, theoretically more habitable than Earth.

Recently, theres been an exciting addition to the inventory of habitable planets. Astronomers have started discovering exoplanets that have been ejected from their star systems, and there could be billions of them roaming the Milky Way. If a super-Earth is ejected from its star system and has a dense atmosphere and watery surface, it could sustain life for tens of billions of years, far longer than life on Earth could persist before the Sun dies.

To detect life on distant exoplanets, astronomers will look for biosignatures, byproducts of biology that are detectable in a planets atmosphere.

NASAs James Webb Space Telescope was designed before astronomers had discovered exoplanets, so the telescope is not optimized for exoplanet research. But it is able to do some of this science and is scheduled to target two potentially habitable super-Earths in its first year of operations. Another set of super-Earths with massive oceans discovered in the past few years, as well as the planets discovered this summer, are also compelling targets for James Webb.

But the best chances for finding signs of life in exoplanet atmospheres will come with the next generation of giant, ground-based telescopes: the 39-meter Extremely Large Telescope, the Thirty Meter Telescope and the 24.5-meter Giant Magellan Telescope. These telescopes are all under construction and set to start collecting data by the end of the decade.

Astronomers know that the ingredients for life are out there, but habitable does not mean inhabited. Until researchers find evidence of life elsewhere, its possible that life on Earth was a unique accident. While there are many reasons why a habitable world would not have signs of life, if, over the coming years, astronomers look at these super habitable super-Earths and find nothing, humanity may be forced to conclude that the universe is a lonely place.

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Super-Earths are bigger, more common and more habitable than Earth itself and astronomers are discovering more of the billions they think are out...

Starwatch chart

Bid farewell to the harvest moon this week as it cruises through Gemini, the twins, for a close encounter with the star Pollux.

In the early hours of 20 September, the moon will be a beautiful waning crescent with 30% of its visible surface illuminated. As the week goes on, and the moon draws closer to the sun, the illuminated percentage will drop and the moon will rise later and later until it disappears into the morning twilight. It will then be reborn a few days later in the evening sky as a new moon.

The chart shows the view looking north-east at 01.00 BST on 20 September, when the moon will be close to Pollux, one of the twins in Gemini. The further west you are located, the closer the conjunction will appear to be.

According to Greek mythology, Pollux and his twin half-brother, Castor, were Argonauts, who sailed with Jason on his quest to retrieve the golden fleece. In traditional Chinese astronomy, these stars belong to the North River mansion, the equivalent of a western zodiacal constellation. The pairing is visible from the southern hemisphere in the pre-dawn hours in the north-north-eastern sky.

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Starwatch: Goodbye, harvest moon, its time to visit the twins - The Guardian

Maarten Schmidt, Francis L. Moseley Professor of Astronomy, Emeritus, at Caltech, passed away on Saturday, September 17, 2022. He was 92 years old. Schmidt is well known for his 1963 discovery of quasarsextremely bright and distant cosmic objects powered by active supermassive black holes.

Schmidt was born in December of 1929, in Groningen, the Netherlands. He earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Groningen, a PhD from Leiden University in 1956, and a Doctor of Science degree from Yale in 1966.

After earning his PhD, Schmidt did postdoctoral work at the Mount Wilson and Mount Palomar observatories for two years as a Carnegie Fellow. He then returned to the University of Leiden for one year before moving to the United States.

Schmidt joined Caltech in 1959 as an associate professor of astronomy. He became full professor in 1964, Institute Professor in 1981, and Moseley Professor in 1987. He retired and became Moseley Professor, Emeritus, in 1996. He had also served as the executive officer for astronomy from 1972 to 1975, chair of the Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy from 1976 to 1978, and director of the Hale Observatories from 1978 to 1980.

After first coming to Caltech, Schmidt focused on mass distribution and dynamics of galaxies. During this period, he published a paper titled "The Rate of Star Formation," in which he outlined a relationship between gas density and star formation rate in a given region. This relationship came to be known as the Schmidt law.

Schmidt is best known for his discovery of quasars and his measurement of their great distances from Earth. While studying the light spectra of radio sources, he noticed that a cosmic object called 3C 273 produced spectral lines that had been shifted to the red end of the spectrum, or "red shifted," indicating that the object was approximately 3 billion light-years away, well outside our galaxy. Because the faraway object shone too brightly to be a star, Schmidt came to the realization that the "quasi-stellar object" was the core of a forming galaxy, in which swirling disks of matter surround a supermassive black hole.

Since this pivotal observation in 1963, thousands of quasars have been identified. These objects only existed in the early universe but are visible from Earth today because of the time it takes for light to travel over such enormous distances. Schmidt's work gave astronomers a deep insight into the history of our universe.

Schmidt is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the Kavli Prize for Astrophysics (2008); the Bruce Medal (1992); the James Craig Watson Medal (1991); the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1980); the Henry Norris Russel Lectureship (1978); and the Helen B. Warner Prize (1964). He was also on the cover of Time magazine on March 11, 1966.

He is survived by his three daughters: Anne, Marijke, and Elizabeth.

A full obituary will follow at a later date.

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Caltech Mourns the Passing of Maarten Schmidt, 1929-2022 - Caltech

Artists illustration of a small Saturn-like planet discovered in the system LkCa 15. The planet resides within dense rings of dust and gas that surround a bright yellow star. Material accumulates in a clump and arc-shape, about 60 degrees away from the planet. Note: This illustration is not to scale. Credit: M.Weiss/Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian

A new technique has been developed by astronomers to identify small planets hidden in protoplanetary disks.

According to astronomers and astrophysicists, planets are born in protoplanetary disks rings of dust and gas that surround young, newborn stars. Although hundreds of these disks have been detected throughout the universe, observations of actual planetary birth and formation have proved difficult within these environments.

Astronomers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) have now developed a new way to detect these elusive newborn planets. With it, they have uncovered smoking gun evidence of a small Neptune or Saturn-like planet lurking in a disk. The results were described on September 14 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Directly detecting young planets is very challenging and has so far only been successful in one or two cases, says Feng Long, a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Astrophysics who led the new study. The planets are always too faint for us to see because theyre embedded in thick layers of gas and dust.

Instead, scientists must hunt for clues to infer a planet is developing beneath the dust.

In the past few years, weve seen many structures pop up on disks that we think are caused by a planets presence, but it could be caused by something else, too, Long says. We need new techniques to look at and support that a planet is there.

Long decided to re-examine a protoplanetary disk known as LkCa 15 for her study. Located about 518 light years away, the disk sits in the Taurus constellation on the sky. Previously, researchers reported evidence for planet formation in the disk using observations with the ALMA Observatory.

After diving into new high-resolution ALMA data on LkCa 15, obtained primarily in 2019, Long discovered two faint features that had not previously been detected.

About 42 astronomical units out from the star or 42 times the distance Earth is from the Sun Long discovered a dusty ring with two separate and bright bunches of material orbiting within it. The material took the shape of a small clump and a larger arc, which were separated by 120 degrees.

To figure out what was causing the buildup of material, Long examined the scenario with computer models. She discovered that their size and locations matched the model for the presence of a planet.

This arc and clump are separated by about 120 degrees, Long says. That degree of separation doesnt just happen its important mathematically.

Long points to positions in space known as Lagrange points, where two bodies in motion such as a star and orbiting planet produce enhanced regions of attraction around them where matter may accumulate.

Were seeing that this material is not just floating around freely, its stable and has a preference where it wants to be located based on physics and the objects involved, Long explains.

In this case, the arc and clump of material Long detected are located at the L4 and L5 Lagrange points. Hidden 60 degrees between them is a small planet causing the accumulation of dust at points L4 and L5.

According to the results, the planet is roughly the size of Neptune or Saturn, and around one to three million years old. (Thats relatively young when it comes to planets.)

Due to technology constraints, directly imaging the small, newborn planet may not be possible any time soon. However, Long believes further ALMA observations of LkCa 15 can provide additional evidence supporting her planetary discovery.

She also hopes her new approach for detecting planets with material preferentially accumulating at Lagrange points will be utilized in the future by astronomers.

I do hope this method can be widely adopted in the future, she says. The only caveat is that this requires very deep data as the signal is weak.

Long recently completed her postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Astrophysics and will join the University of Arizona as a NASA Hubble Fellow this September.

Reference: ALMA Detection of Dust Trapping around Lagrangian Points in the LkCa 15 Disk by Feng Long, Sean M. Andrews, Shangjia Zhang, Chunhua Qi, Myriam Benisty, Stefano Facchini, Andrea Isella, David J. Wilner, Jaehan Bae, Jane Huang, Ryan A. Loomis, Karin I. berg and Zhaohuan Zhu, 14 September 2022, The Astrophysical Journal Letters.DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/ac8b10

Co-authors on the study are Sean Andrews, Chunhua Qi, David Wilner and Karin Oberg of the CfA; Shangjia Zhang and Zhaohuan Zhu of the University of Nevada; Myriam Benisty of the University of Grenoble; Stefano Facchini of the University of Milan; Andrea Isella of Rice University; Jaehan Bae of the University of Florida; Jane Huang of the University of Michigan and Ryan Loomis of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.

This study involved high-resolution ALMA observations taken with Band 6 (1.3mm) and Band 7 (0.88mm) receivers.

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Astronomers Uncover New Evidence of Baby Planet in the Making - SciTechDaily

Enlarge / Photograph showing the emission nebula, Eta Carina (formerly Eta Argus) taken using the astrographic telescope at the Royal Observatory, Cape of Good Hope, South Africa. Located at the center of this intricate nebula is a massive but unstable star that one day will explode spectacularly.

SSPL/Getty Images

Recently, the European Space Agency released the third installment of data from the Gaia satellite, a public catalog that provides the positions and velocities of over a billion stars. This is our most recent attempt to answer some of the most long-standing questions in astronomy: How are stars (and nebulae) spread out across the sky? How many of them are there, how far away are they, and how bright are they? Do they change in position or brightness? Are there new classes of objects that are unknown to science?

For centuries, astronomers have tried to answer these questions, and that work has been laborious and time-consuming. It wasn't always easy to record what you could see in your telescope lensif you were lucky enough to have a telescope at all.

Now imagine the emergence of a new technique that, for its time, offered some of the benefits of the technology that enabled the Gaia catalogs. It could automatically and impartially record what you see, and anyone could use it.

That technique was photography.

This article tells the story of how photography changed astronomy and how hundreds of astronomers formed the first international scientific collaboration to create the Carte du Ciel (literally, "Map of the Sky"), a complete photographic survey of the sky. That collaboration resulted in a century-long struggle to process thousands of photographic plates taken over decades, with the positions of millions of stars measured by hand to make the largest catalog of the night sky.

Unfortunately, the Carte du Ciel project came at a time when our ability to collect measurements of the natural world was not matched by our capacity to analyze them. And while the project was in progress, new instruments made it possible to study physical processes in distant celestial objects, tempting scientists away from the survey by offering the chance to create new models to explain the world.

For the astronomers working on the Carte du Ciel, no model yet existed that could abstract the positions of millions of stars into a theory of how our galaxy evolved; the researchers instead only had an intuition that photographic techniques could be useful to map the world. They were right, but it took most of a century and the entire careers of many astronomers for their intuition to bear fruit. Advertisement

Enlarge / The Astrographic Telescope used at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich for the Carte du Ciel photographic sky survey. The instrument consists of two refracting telescopes mounted together on an equatorial mounting. One was used to take the photograph while the other was for ensuring accurate tracking during the long exposures necessary for the poorly light-sensitive films then available.

SSPL/Getty Images

For centuries, astronomers had struggled to record what they saw in the night sky with notes and hand-drawn sketches. Peering through the distorted optics of early instruments, it was not always easy to draw what you could see. You might ''observe'' things that weren't there at all; those canals and vegetation on Mars that poor Schiaparelli drew from his Milanese observatory were nothing more than an optical illusion, caused in part by the turbulent atmosphere. Only a few very highly trained astronomers, like Caroline and William Herschel, could instantly spot a new star in a familiar galaxya signal of some distant cataclysmic event?

Photography could change all that. Arago instantly realized the immense potential of this technique: Images taken in the depths of night could be analyzed comfortably and quantitatively in the light of day. Measurements could be precise, and they could be checked repeatedly.

Daguerre received a pension and allowed Arago to open-source the details of his procedure, leading to an explosion of portrait studios in Paris and around the world. But as it turned out, Daguerre's method was simply not sensitive or practical enough for capturing anything besides the brightest stars, the Sun, or the Moon. The next hot new technology, wet-plate collodion emulsions, was not much better; the plates would dry out during the long exposures required to capture faint astronomical objects.

Astronomers had to wait 40 years, until the 1880s, for very sensitive dry photographic plates to finally become available.

Read more:

How an enormous project attempted to map the sky without computers - Ars Technica