Category Archives: Astronomy

The orbit of an exoplanet around a star in a binary star system has been portrayed in three dimensions for the first time. The planet orbits its star at a different angle to the plane of the orbit of the two stars, and the misalignment could offer clues as to how planets form in binary systems.

The exoplanet, GJ 896Ab (note the lower case b for the planet), was found in the binary system GJ 896AB (note the capital A and B for the two stars) that is located 20.3 light-years away from Earth. Astronomers tracked the motion of the binary star system through space with the help of archived optical observations dating from 1941 to 2017, with extra data covering 2006 to 2011 gathered by the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), which is a network of 10 radio telescopes strung across the United States. The researchers also made new observations with the VLBA in 2020.

The astronomers, led by Salvador Curiel of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), found that as the star GJ 896A moves through space, it appears to wobble along its path. This wobble is caused by an orbiting planet with 2.3 times the mass of Jupiter that completes one orbit every 284.4 Earth days. Between the planet and its star is a common center of mass, known as the barycenter; the star's wobble is the result of its motion around this common center of mass.

Related: 10 amazing exoplanet discoveries

This technique of detecting the motion of stars through space, and any deviations in that motion, is called astrometry. Astrometry is the only means by which the orbits of a planetary system with more than one star can be interpreted in three dimensions, since astronomers are visibly detecting the wobble and the orientation of the orbits.

Intriguingly, the plane in which the planet orbits is misaligned by 148 degrees relative to the plane of the orbit of the two stars around each other.

"This means that the planet moves around the main star in the opposite direction to that of the secondary star around the main star," Gisela Ortiz-Len, an astronomer at UNAM and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany and team member on the project, said in a statement (opens in new tab).

Less than 4% of known exoplanets are in binary-star systems. This small proportion is in part because it's trickier to detect planets in binary systems, but also because models suggest that the existence of a companion star can truncate and destabilize a planet-forming disk.

"Maybe those models need to be adjusted," said UNAM's Joel Sanchez-Bermudez.

One problem in forming such a system is that gas giants are thought to take 5 to 10 million years to accrete all their gas from the planet-forming disk around them. However, the current models suggest that such a disk in a binary system survives for less than 1 million years before gravitational tides from the companion star break the disk apart.

Furthermore, in the case of GJ 896AB, the two stars are red dwarfs, which makes the existence of a gas giant planet in the system even more surprising. Scientists think red dwarfs lack the necessary amount of raw material to form giant planets, but the presence of a gas giant in this binary system suggests that planets could form differently when there are two stars present.

"Additional detailed studies of this and similar systems can help us gain important insights into how planets are formed in binary systems," Sanchez-Bermudez said.

There are currently two competing models for how binary systems and their planets form. One is termed disk fragmentation, whereby there is originally one star- and planet-forming disk that becomes gravitationally unstable and breaks apart into two separate disks that form two stars and any planets around them.

The other model is called turbulent fragmentation. In this explanation, turbulence in the original cloud of gas leads to two or more dense concentrations of material forming, which independently collapse to form the stars and any accompanying planets.

Now, these models will need to factor in the misalignment of GJ 896Ab by 148 degrees. Whichever better replicates the strange system could indicate how binary systems form.

The research was published on Sept. 1 in The Astronomical Journal.

Follow Keith Cooper on Twitter @21stCenturySETI. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Discovery of alien world with strange, tilted orbit puzzles astronomers - Space.com

NASA has extracted the sound waves from a black hole 250 million light years away and made them audible.

Sammi Kwon 11:06 pm, Sep 07, 2022

Contributing Reporter

Jessai Flores, Staff Illustrator

NASA released a groundbreaking audio clip of the soundwaves emitted by the black hole in the Perseus Galaxy Cluster, located 250 million light years away from Earth.

Astronomers have been aware of the sound waves emitted by the black hole at the center of the Perseus Galaxy Cluster for nearly 20 years, since they were first captured by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory in 2003. However, the sonification the conversion of astronomical data into sound is a recent development by researchers at NASA. The process involves sound waves being extracted radially, outwards from the center of the black hole, and then transposed up by 57 to 58 octaves to make them audible to the human ear. While the audio is fascinating in itself, it also provides another dimension of data in investigating black holes, star formation and galaxies for researchers. Yale astronomers underscored the significance of this development.

It provides sort of a unique way to study the environments of black holes, said astronomy professor and department chair Priyamvada Natarajan. Right around the vicinity of the black hole, there is a medium, theres a lot of gas sitting around. And this gas reverberates, so you can see these sound waves, and thats the sonification project.

The black hole at the center of the Perseus Galaxy Cluster has been investigated ever since researchers at NASA realized that it emitted pressure waves that would interact with gasses around it and produce sound waves. These sound waves are not audible to the human ear without modification, but now that NASA transposed the waves they can be listened to, interpreted and analyzed.

The waves are indicators of how energy from the black hole is interacting with the surrounding gasses. Energy propagating from the black hole interacts with gasses in the form of sound waves, and this interaction heats gasses up. Star formation relies heavily on heated gasses, so the sonification project and investigation of sound waves could help researchers better understand the formation of stars.

The general research used for data like this is to understand the role supermassive black holes play in regulating the star formation in the universe, said Michael Tremmel, post-doctoral associate of astronomy.

For researchers, the importance of this development stems from the tangible representation of the way black holes, specifically their sound waves, interact with the surrounding space.

Its not so much directly the black hole. Its more of the effect the black hole has on its surroundings, said Frank van den Bosch, Yale professor of astronomy and physics, whose research focuses on cosmology and galaxy formation.

The sonification project has provided a new way for astronomers to interact with data in different forms. While astronomers are familiar with visual forms, the project has provided data that will expand the ways in which researchers can learn about black holes. In addition to information, the sonification project also provides further accessibility of data in non-visual forms.

When you hear something, you learn about it in a very different way, no matter how many different times youve looked at it, said Kimberly Arcand, data visualizer and science communicator at NASA. It would be fantastic to be able to capture the sound waves of other black holes in the universe.

Albert Einstein first hypothesized the existence of black holes in 1916.

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Yale astronomers weigh in on newly captured sound emitted by black hole - Yale Daily News

Humanity is blinding itself with light and losing sight of the starry night skies that once guided our ancestors and filled them with wonder, according to the European Southern Observatory (ESO), and the international astronomy organization is doing something about it.

More than 80% of the worlds population has their view of the night sky curtailed due to light pollution, according to the ESO. The increasing number of satellites in orbit are photobombing the views of professional telescopes at the few remaining dark sky sites, such as the Very Large Telescope the ESO operates in Chile.

In response the ESO has launched a campaign to educate people about light pollution and the negative impacts of satellite mega-constellations on both professional and amateur astronomy. They launched a website spelling out the problem and created a social media hashtag, #ProtectDarkSkies, to spread the word. In a Tweet posted Wednesday using the new hashtag, the ESO pointed out that about one third of humanity can no longer see the Milky Way the thick disk of our galaxy rich with dust and stars in the night sky from where they live.

Light pollution, electric light from human settlement and industry, makes it harder to see the more subtle celestial lights of the night sky. A 2019 survey found that 57% of English people could pick out more than 10 stars in the night sky, while just 2% could pick out 30 or more.

But light pollution goes further than cutting off views of the sky, according to the ESO campaign website.

Light can intrude into bedrooms, distract drivers, and upset the natural body clock of animals, the ESO website reads, noting human health can suffer without a clear light-dark cycle. And in the natural world, Flocks of migratory birds and dung beetles alike orientate themselves using the Milky Way, and are disorientated by light pollution.

The loss of astronomical views is more dramatic than most contemporary urban dwellers may understand. In a graphic on the ESO website illustrating a measure of light pollution known as the Bortle Scale, it shows just how much of the further universe is actually visible with the naked eye when standing under a truly dark night sky.

Even more problematic for professional astronomers than light pollution are the swelling mega-constellations of low Earth orbit satellites, such as those being launched by the UKs OneWeb and the Starlink constellation of SpaceX. Companies plan to launch as many as 100,000 of these satellites in the coming years, and astronomers worry that they will reflect sunlight in ways that impairs important astronomical observations.

And in the case of the Starlink satellites, many observations have already been impacted by the long white streaks of satellites passing through a telescopes view during a long exposure.

To combat these issues, the ESO has launched the Protect Dark Skies campaign and suggested new lighting standards, noting that light pollution isnt just any light, but artificial light that shines where it is neither wanted, nor needed.

The ESO is also a member of the International Astronomical Union Centre for the Protection of the Dark and Quiet Sky from Satellite Constellation Interference, which was founded in April to help coordinate efforts to study and mitigate effects of satellites on astronomy. The ESO has also petitioned the United Nations to take action, leading to a discussion of the issue of satellite interference at the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space earlier in 2022.

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Astronomers launch campaign to protect the dark night sky from light pollution - The Independent

BRISTOL The President of the Astronomical Society of Greater Hartford will be coming to Manross Library Sept. 19 to discuss the recent images captured by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.

The free program will be held at 2 p.m. at the library at 260 Central St. Chris Markiewicz, president of the Astronomical Society of Greater Hartford, will be going over the first images captured by the James Webb Space Telescope, which were released by NASA on July 12.

The telescope, which was launched on Dec. 25 2021, has captured high definition images of the Carina Nebula, a young star forming region, Stephan's quintet, a grouping of five galaxies, the Southern Ring Nebula, and more.

Teresa Goulden, supervisor of branch services at Manross Memorial Library, said that Markiewicz will lend his astronomical expertise to further explain the beautiful images captured by the advanced telescope.

People are very curious to take a look at these beautiful images, she said. The James Webb Telescope is capturing images that allow us to see space in ways that weve never seen before. NASA is just starting to release them to the public and there is a lot of buzz about them. It gives you a whole different perspective on your place in the universe.

According to the Astronomical Society of Greater Hartfords website, the organization is a group of amateur astronomers interested in observing, imaging and studying the wonders of the heavens. The group participates in public education in astronomy through its public observing program and outreach events.

Member meeting are held online on the third Wednesday of the month from September through May. The group also holds public observations at the Van Vleck Observatory at Wesleyan University in Middletown.

For more information, visit asgh.org

Registration is required for the program at Manross Library.

People can register at Manross Memorial Library, by visiting bristollib.com or by calling 860-584-7790.

Brian M. Johnson can be reached at 860-973-1806 or bjohnson@bristolpress.com.

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President of the Astronomical Society of Greater Hartford coming to Manross Library - The Bristol Press

By the end of 2022, India will establish the countrys first Dark Sky Reserve in the cold desert regions of Ladakh, Dr Jitendra Singh, Minister of State (Independent charge) for Science and Technology, announced Saturday. This facility will also promote astronomy-tourism, he said.

A Dark Sky Reserve is public or private land with a distinguished nocturnal environment and starry nights that has been developed responsibly to prevent light pollution.

According to the International Dark Sky Association (IDSA) website, these reserves consist of a core area meeting minimum criteria for sky quality and natural darkness, and a peripheral area that supports dark sky preservation in the core.

These reserves, it said, are formed through a partnership of multiple land managers who have recognized the value of the natural nighttime environment through regulations and long-term planning.

Individuals or groups can nominate a site for certification to the International Dark Sky Association (IDSA). There are five designated categories, namely International Dark Sky parks, communities, reserves, sanctuaries and Urban Night Sky Places.

The certification process is similar to that of a site being awarded the UNESCO World Heritage Site tag or getting recognised as a Biosphere Reserve. Between 2001 and January 2022, there have been 195 sites recognised as International Dark Sky Places globally, the IDSA said.

The IDSA considers a piece of land suitable for dark sky place only if it is either publicly or privately owned; is accessible to the public partially or entirely during the year; the land is legally protected for scientific, natural, educational, cultural, heritage and/or public enjoyment purposes; the core area of the land provides an exceptional dark sky resource relative to the communities and cities that surround it and the land offers prescribed night sky brightness either for a reserve, park or sanctuary.

India is still in the process of filing its nomination to IDSA.

The Ladakh Union Territory administration is leading the efforts in establishing the countrys first Dark Sky Reserve.

To be situated at a height of 4,500 metres above sea level, the Hanle Dark Sky Reserve (HDSR) will come up within the Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary.

The Department of Science and Technology and experts from the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), Bengaluru, are providing scientific and technological support in developing this first-of-its-kind facility. The IIA already manages the Indian Astronomical Observatory (IAO) complex at Hanle, Ladakh.

Here, scientists have been carrying out astronomical observations using the existing gamma ray, an infrared and an optical telescope to study exoplanets, galaxies and stars through the pristine skies of Hanle.

The formal decision to set up this Dark Sky Reserve was made through a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between officials from the IIA, Bengaluru, the Ladakh UT and the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council in June this year.

Ladakh is a unique cold desert located about 3,000 metres above sea level with high mountainous terrains. Long and harsh winters with minimum temperatures dropping to minus 40 degrees Celcius make large parts of the UT highly inhabitable.

This aridity, limited vegetation, high elevation and large areas with sparse populations all make it the perfect setting for long-term astronomical observatories and dark sky places.

But the primary objective of the proposed Dark Sky Reserve is to promote astronomy tourism in a sustainable and environment-friendly manner. Scientific methods will be used here to preserve the night sky from ever-increasing light pollution.

With metros, cities and peripheral areas experiencing light pollution and remaining constantly lit up, there are diminishing areas that offer a view of clear skies on cloudless nights, experts have noted.

After it became a UT, tourism in Ladakh has seen an uptick during favourable months. However, its fragile environment is vulnerable to rising carbon footprint and in-coming vehicles. The Ladakh Tourism Vision Document 2022 underlined the need for efforts to increase the use of green fuels and boost carbon-neutral activities.

The locals in Ladakh are sensitive towards the conservation of the ecosystem. They are keen to protect the environment from getting deteriorated, said Prof Annapurni Subramaniam, Director, IIA. Since June, experts have held active interactions with the locals. A number of initiatives are underway ahead of opening the HDSR to the public.

Our teams travelled to remote villages to give hand-outs to villagers sharing details about the training programmes, the IIA Director said.

In the pilot phase, the IIA has procured ten small and easy-to-handle telescopes and light-reflecting shields. IIAs scientists and outreach experts will identify locals and train them to use these telescopes. This will include basic sky gazing, identification of constellations, and locating the pole star, among others. These telescopes will be installed at the homestays, which is a popular option for tourist accommodation in Ladakh.

The 22-km radius around the Hanle observatory, where the core Dark Sky Reserve will stand, will have restrictions imposed on outdoor lighting. All vehicles will be barred from using high-beam headlights. Houses here will be encouraged to use curtains of darker shades, install light reflecting shields and switch off all unwanted illumination.

See more here:

What is Ladakh's Dark Sky Reserve astronomy facility? - The Indian Express

The La Salle Public Library will host a showcase event for Project Next Generation: Destination Discoveries Be a Backyard Astronomer program from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 17.

The event is mostly intended for youth ages 11 through 14 and their families.

Be a Backyard Astronomer, is a grant-funded, six-week, independent, mentor-supported, distance kit learning program that includes hands-on science and technology activities about daytime and nighttime astronomy.

At the showcase event, visitors will have an opportunity to find out about the program, meet the mentor, browse the kit contents and activities, learn about a field trip opportunity to Chicagos Adler Planetarium, register for one of 18 spaces available in the Be a Backyard Astronomer program, conduct a simple series of experiments in the power of Ultra-Violet rays and watch a Glowforge CNC Laser Cutter/Engraver in action.

Funding for Project Next Generation: Destination Discoveries is provided by the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services to the Secretary of State/Illinois State Library under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act.

The showcase event is free and open to the public. The La Salle Public Library is located at 305 Marquette Street, La Salle, and is ADA welcome and compliant. For more information, call the Library at 815-223-2341.

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La Salle Library to host Be a Backyard Astronomer event on Sept. 17 - News-Tribune

Some of us are old enough to remember the excitement and wonder of the launching of the two Voyager spacecrafts in 1977. Those two have traveled and entered into interstellar space. If you wonder how their equipment is functioning, a back-up system of thrusters on Voyager 2 kicked on in 1994 after 17 years of waiting to be needed. There are still signals reaching earth from them. And those are low-bid products. The engineers and scientists who dreamed them into reality really did an amazing job.

When you are out taking that stroll around the neighborhood or jogging along one of the walking trails of your town, make time to look up. About two hours after dark you will be able to see Jupiter and Saturn in the east-southeast among the stars of the constellation Pisces. Above will be the Great Square of Pegasus, or the baseball diamond where the Little and Pony Leaguers wound up their stellar seasons recently.

Pegasus is an ancient constellation and its lower left corner points directly toward Jupiter now. Continuing from that line would point towards the celestial sea that includes the constellations of Cetus, the whale; Pisces, the two fish that in myths were Aphrodite (Venus) and her son Eros (Cupid) who were trying to escape to safety; Aquarius, the water-bearer; Capricornus, the sea-goat; and Eridanus, the river, that still flows into the Persian Gulf.

These constellations date back to Mesopotamia (Iran) and Eridanus is the Euphrates River, which is before the Greeks or Romans even were city-states themselves. Astronomy is the oldest science of all. It is the basis of geometry as well. Ponder that as your student complains about history, geometry, or science homework. Remind them it is ancient history and also as current as our space programs out on Boca Chica beach.

It is a shame we have so much light pollution now that these constellations can seldom be seen, much less recognized. When we talk about energy saving, fewer lights almost everywhere would be a big saving.

If you are fortunate to have a dark sky view, then you might use a decent telescope to scan the region of the tail of Cygnus to locate the North America nebula. Yes, the nebula does resemble our continent but mainly the U.S. part. As sky-watchers have always done, the objects discovered are given names of familiar places or things. What wonders will be discovered with the new James Webb Space Telescope remain to be seen. Millions, perhaps billions of previously unseen galaxies are emerging from the images JWST has already shared. And it has been a month in use. Hubble opened our eyes to billions of galaxies; JWST will do even more.

The moon is waxing now, with more of its surface which is reflecting sunlight facing Earth as the two revolve around the sun in their constant dance. Full moon is 14 days after the new moon. The new moon is lost in the glare of the sun, while the full moon is directly opposite the sun. Since our moons orbit is tilted five degrees off from Earths orbital path, we dont have eclipses every month. Hooray for geometry.

Since the moons appearance changes daily, as does its location in the sky, this might be a good time to begin keeping a chart of how the moon appears from night to night-or from day to day. Yes, it can be seen in the daytime, but when? Try to figure out the pattern and use it for a unique science fair project. I know school just started, but longer-term projects are more interesting to judges. And this one would be easily done.

Until next week, KLU.

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Astronomy, the oldest science of al - Brownsville Herald

Ah, the sounds of late summer. Pass a pool, and hear the happy yelps of kids splashing around. Sit outside at night, and bask in the soothing buzz of cicadas hidden in the trees. Open the internet, and hear the terrifying howling of outer space.

Thank NASA for that last one. The space agency recently shared a clip online of sound coming from a cluster of galaxies about 250 million light-years from Earth. NASA, always eager to show off its capacity to produce cosmic wonder, presented the audio enthusiastically, as if to say, Wow, check out this cool thing! And although the transformation of space phenomena into something detectable by our human ears certainly seems like an exciting exercise, the reality iswell, have a listen.

The noise sounds like a ghostly wail, or the horror-movie music just before a jump scare, or, as several people have pointed out, the cries of countless souls trapped in eternal darkness. Just nothing good; less awe-ful, and more awful. Does space really sound this scary?

The answer is, sort of. And there is a perfectly horror-free explanation for it. Some parts of space are full of hot gas, including the medium between the distant, sparkly galaxies huddled together. In 2002, when a NASA space telescope named Chandra studied the Perseus cluster, it detected wavelike movements in the gas, propagating outward like ripples in water. The ripples, scientists determined, were produced by the supermassive black hole in the clusters central galaxy. When the black hole sucks in cosmic material, it burps some outexplosive behavior that pushes around the gas nearby. The resulting waves, astronomers concluded, were sound waves, with a frequency much too deep for any of us to hear.

It wasnt until recently that Kimberly Arcand, Chandras visualization scientist, decided to shift those impossibly low cosmic notes into the audible range. She wanted the public, and particularly those who are blind or have reduced vision, to be able to experience the wonder of the Perseus cluster with senses besides sight. Arcand told me she was inspired by Wanda Daz-Merced, a blind astrophysicist who developed a program to convert sunlight into sound so that she could hear a solar eclipse sweeping across the United States in 2017. Arcand and her team extracted the sound data from Chandras observations and then, with some mathematical work and sound editing, brought them into the range of human hearing, a couple hundred quadrillion times higher than the original frequency. The result: a spooky, cosmic wail.

Arcand and her team at Chandra have previously made a variety of celestial images into music through a process known as sonification, but those projects were based on light, not sound. Consider the glittering, star-filled center of our Milky Way galaxy. To hear it, scientists assigned different sonic features to the cosmic material in a snapshot of the galaxy. Stellar stuff at the top of the image corresponds to higher pitches; the brightest bits play at top volume. Short notes represent stars, and a drawn-out hum indicates clouds of gas and dust. The image features observations in multiple wavelengths, which scientists used to make a more beautiful song: xylophone for X-rays, violin for optical light, piano for infrared.

The melody of our galactic center sounds lovely, peaceful. Most of the sonifications in Chandras library do too, even the clips that lack instrumental elements and feature only a jumble of notes. They are nothing like the primal scream of the Perseus cluster, which the Chandra team released in May this year. The Perseus one is perhaps the most evocative because it is actually based on sound waves, Arcand said. Its more objective, which makes the noise feel a bit more real. At the same time, the cosmic wail wouldnt sound exactly like this if you could hang out in the Perseus galaxy cluster with a helmet and superpowered hearing. The spooky audio is a combination of the sound waves emanating from the central galaxy in different directions, not a single scream in time. Still, this is as close as we know how to get, she said.

When I asked Arcand what she thought about the sound freaking people out, she cracked up. I just feel bad, she said. Arcand grew up singing in choirs, and for her, the Perseus audio is musical, like a dramatic tune from an emotional, sweeping Hans Zimmer track. She has worked on the Chandra mission for more than two decades, and being so intimately familiar with the data, she was unlikely to be spooked by it, even when it sounds like, you know, that. I didnt hear anything scary in it, she said, but I totally understand that other people have a different perspective. Scientists and sound engineers could certainly edit the clip to make it less creepy, mixing in some chimes or nice harp chords. But this is space putting on a little performance, and we may as well experience it as the artist intended.

Read more from the original source:

The Spookiest Sound in Astronomy - The Atlantic

In the search for extrasolar planets, astronomers and astrobiologists generally pursue a policy of follow the water. This comes down to searching for planets that orbit with a stars circumsolar habitable zone (HZ), where conditions are warm enough that liquid water can flow on its surface. The reason is simple: water is the only known solvent capable of supporting life and is required by all life on Earth. However, since the 1970s, scientists have speculated that there may be a class of rocky planets in our Universe that are completely covered in water.

With the explosion in confirmed exoplanets, scientists have been eager to find examples of this type of planet, so they study them more closely. Thanks to an international team of researchers led by the Institute for Research on Exoplanets (iREx) at the Universit de Montral, an exoplanet orbiting within its systems HZ was recently discovered that could be completely covered in deep oceans. This ocean world (aka. Waterworld) could reveal things about the nature of habitability when it is the subject of follow-up observations using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

The international team was led by Charles Cadieux, a Ph.D. student at the Universit de Montral and a member of IREX. He was joined by a team of fifty-five astronomers and astrophysicists from Canada, France, the U.S., Japan, Brazil, Hungary, Spain, Switzerland, Portugal, Germany, and Russia. The team represents institutions such as the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, the NASA Ames Research Center, the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute (NExScI), and many universities and institutes.

As they explain in their paper, which appeared on August 12th in The Astrophysical Journal, the exoplanet (TOI-1452 b) orbits within a binary system located in the Draco constellation about 100 light-years from Earth. The system is made up of two M-type (red dwarf) stars that orbit each other very closely, at 97 astronomical units (AUs), or about two and a half times the distance between the Sun and Pluto. The possibility that an exoplanet orbits one of these stars was originally ventured based on data obtained by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).

Based on the TESS data, the astronomers noted that the exoplanet experienced a slight decrease in brightness every 11 days, from which they estimated that it has a diameter about 70% larger than Earths. Cadieux and his colleagues then conducted follow-up observations (a function routinely performed by the iREx) using the Plantes Extrasolaires en Transition et en Occultation (PESTO) camera on the 1.6-meter telescope at the Observatoire du Mont-Mgantic (OMM) part of the Universit de Montral.

Because of their low brightness and proximity, TOI-1452s two stars appeared as a single point of light when observed by TESS. However, PESTOs resolution is high enough to distinguish the two objects, and the images it obtained confirmed that an exoplanet does orbit TOI-1452. Subsequent observations were performed by a team from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) using the 8.2-meter optical-infrared Subaru Telescope in Maunakea, Hawaii. As co-author Ren Doyon, a Universit de Montral Professor and the Director of iREx and of the OMM explained in an IREX press release:

Im extremely proud of this discovery because it shows the high calibre of our researchers and instrumentation. It is thanks to the OMM, a special instrument designed in our labs called SPIRou and an innovative analytic method developed by our research team that we were able to detect this one-of-a-kind exoplanet.

The OMM played a crucial role in confirming the nature of this signal and estimating the planets radius, Cadieux added. This was no routine check. We had to make sure the signal detected by TESS was really caused by an exoplanet circling TOI-1452, the largest of the two stars in that binary system.

After confirming the presence of an exoplanet and obtaining estimates on its size, the team turned to the un SpectroPolarimtre Infra-Rouge (SPIRou) instrument, a near-infrared spectropolarimeter installed on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. Designed largely in Canada, SPIRou is ideally-suited to studying low-mass stars like TOI-1452s binary components because they are brightest in the infrared wavelength. Despite this, it still took more than 50 hours of observation time to produce estimates of the planets mass (nearly five times that of Earth).

The next great challenge was the data analysis, which was performed using the line-by-line (LBL) analytic method developed by researched tienne Artigau and Neil Cook (also with iREx). This allowed the team to identify the weak signal produced by the exoplanet in the SPIRou data. Finally, Ph.D. students Farbod Jahandar and Thomas Vandal of Universit de Montral analyzed the SPIRou data to learn more about the host stars composition, which is useful for constraining the planets internal structure. Based on their estimates of its radius, mass, and density measurements, the astronomers theorize that TOI 1452 b is likely a rocky planet.

However, these same estimates led them to conclude that TOI 1452 b could be covered in a thick layer of water, similar to the largest moons of Jupiter, Saturn, and other icy bodies in the outer Solar System. This is supported by interior modeling conducted by University of Torontos Mykhaylo Plotnykov and Diana Valencia, which suggests that water may make up as much as 30% of TOI 1452 bs mass, which is also similar to satellites like Jupiters moons Europea, Ganymede, and Callisto, and Saturns moons Titan, Dione, and Enceladus.

In recent years, astronomers have detected hundreds of similar exoplanets with radii and masses between Earth and Neptune but significantly lower densities. This suggests that a large fraction of these exoplanets mass is made up of volatiles such as water, leading to the nickname ocean planets. As Cadieux explained, this latest discovery may be the first such planet discovered:

TOI-1452 b is one of the best candidates for an ocean planet that we have found to date. Its radius and mass suggest a much lower density than what one would expect for a planet that is basically made up of metal and rock, like Earth.

Given that TOI-1452 b orbits within its host stars HZ, it is unlikely to have an icy surface, which means it could have oceans several kilometers in depth. This makes TOI-1452 b a perfect candidate for further observations using the JWST, as it is one of the few known temperate planets that also exhibits the characteristics of an ocean planet. Its proximity to Earth also makes it a good candidate for atmospheric characterization, something Webb is very proficient at as demonstrated by the spectra it obtained twice from WASP-59 (confirming the presence of water and carbon dioxide).

To make matters even better, TOI-1452 is located in a region of the sky that Webb can observe year-round, making it perfectly positioned for follow-up observations. Our observations with the Webb Telescope will be essential to better understanding TOI-1452 b, said Doyon, who is also the Principal Investigator of the Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS), the Canadian Space Agencys contribution to the JWST. As soon as we can, we will book time on the Webb to observe this strange and wonderful world.

Further Reading: IREX

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Astronomers Find a Waterworld Planet With Deep Oceans in the Habitable Zone - Universe Today

The weird behavior of a galaxy around a billion light-years away suggests that it might contain one of the most highly anticipated events in modern astronomy.

Fluctuations in light from the center of the galaxy SDSS J1430+2303 look suspiciously like a pair of supermassive black holes with a combined mass of around 200 million Suns destined for an imminent collision with each other.

"Imminent" in cosmic terms can often stretch on for whole lifetimes. Fortunately in this case, astronomers predict that if the signal is indeed the result of colossal black holes they will merge within the next three years.

It may be our best shot yet to see two supermassive black holes collide but we still don't know for sure if that's what is going on at the heart of J1429+2303. Scientists advise that we continue watching the strange galaxy to see if it can be conclusively identified.

The first detection of colliding black holes back in 2015 launched a bold new era for astronomy. Since then, many more detections have been made thanks to the gravitational waves these massive events send rippling through space-time.

To date, almost all of these mergers have been binary pairs of black holes with masses comparable to individual stars. There's a very good reason for this. LIGO and Virgo, the gravitational wave instruments responsible for the detections, are designed for this mass range.

The more ponderous ripples generated by inspiralling and colliding supermassive black holes, in the range of millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun, are in a frequency range too low for our current observatories.

Still, the merger of a pair of supermassive black holes would be a freaking sweet thing to observe. Even without a detector capable of sensing low frequency gravitational waves, scientists expect to see an immense outburst of light across the spectrum.

The data packed into that outburst could tell us so much about how these events play out. We're not entirely sure how supermassive black holes get so big, but there are a few clues to suggest that one mechanism is binary mergers.

We know that galaxies have supermassive black holes in their centers, and we've observed not just pairs and groups of galaxies colliding, but supermassive black holes circling each other in mutual, decaying orbits in the centers of these post-merger galaxies. These are inferred from oscillations in the light emitted from the galactic center of these galaxies, on regular timescales that suggest an orbit.

This brings us back to J1430+2303. Earlier this year, a team of astronomers led by Ning Jiang of the University of Science and Technology of China uploaded a paper to preprint server arXiv, describing some really strange behavior. Over a period of three years, the oscillations in the galactic nucleus grew shorter and shorter, from a time period of about a year, down to just one month.

However, it's not entirely clear that what is happening at the heart of J1430+2303 is the result of a black hole binary at all, never mind one that is about to kaboom. Galactic nuclei are strange places, throwing out signals that are difficult to interpret, meaning it's possible something else may be causing the variability in the heart of J1430+2303.

To try to get to the bottom of the matter, astronomers turned to X-ray wavelengths. Using data from a range of X-ray observatories, covering a time period of 200 days, a team led by Liming Dou of Guangzhou University in China has attempted to identify high-energy signatures that we would expect to see in a close supermassive black hole binary on a decaying orbit.

They did see variations in the X-ray light emitted by the galaxy, as well as a type of emission associated with iron falling onto a black hole, which the team detected with a 99.96 percent confidence level from two different instruments. This emission can be associated with binary supermassive black holes; however, the team could not measure the "smoking gun" characteristics that would confirm a black hole binary.

Analysis of radio observations published in July were also inconclusive. So it appears we're still not 100 percent sure about what's happening with J1430+2303.

What we are able to state with confidence is that something very strange seems to be happening at the galaxy's center. Above all, it's a mystery, and a very juicy one; whether it's a supermassive black hole binary on the brink of collision or not, J1430+2303 seems to warrant closer, more detailed attention.

The paper has been accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics, and is available on arXiv.

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A Pair of Supermassive Black Holes Could Be Fated to Collide Within 3 Years - ScienceAlert