Category Archives: Astronomy

Astronomers detected the temporary dimming of X-rays from a system where a massive star is in orbit around a neutron star or black hole (shown in the artists illustration). This dimming is interpreted as being a planet that passed in front of an X-ray source around the neutron star or black hole. Credit: NASA/CXC/M. Weiss

Using ESAs XMM-Newton and NASAs Chandra X-ray space telescopes, astronomers have made an important step in the quest to find a planet outside of the Milky Way.

Spotting a planet in another galaxy is hard, and even though astronomers know that they should exist, no planetary systems outside of the Milky Way have been confirmed so far. Because the light from another galaxy is packed into a tiny area on the sky, it is very difficult for telescopes to distinguish one star from another, let alone a planet orbiting around them. And the usual techniques to find exoplanets in our galaxy dont work as well for planets outside of it.

This image shows the Whirlpool Galaxy (M51) as seen at X-ray wavelengths by ESAs XMM-Newton X-ray Observatory. Credit: ESA

This is different when studying X-rays, instead of visible light, in a galaxy. Because there are less objects that shine bright in X-ray light, an X-ray telescope like ESAs XMM can more easily distinguish between objects when observing a galaxy. Those objects are therefore easier to identify and study, and it might be possible to find a planet around them.

Some of the brightest objects that can be studied in external galaxies are the so-called X-ray binaries. They consist of a very compact object a neutron star or black hole that is eating material from a companion, or donor, star orbiting around it. The infalling material is accelerated by the intense gravitational field of the neutron star or black hole and heated to millions of degrees, producing a lot of bright X-rays. Astronomers expect that theoretically, planets passing in front of (transiting) such a source would block these X-rays, causing a dip in the observed X-ray light curve.

X-ray binaries may be ideal places to search for planets, because, although they are a million times brighter than our Sun, the X-rays come from a very small region. In fact, the source that we studied is smaller than Jupiter, so a transiting planet could completely block the light from the X-ray binary, explains Rosanne Di Stefano from the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian in the United States, and first author of a new study published in Nature Astronomy today.

A composite image of M51 with X-rays from Chandra and optical light from NASAs Hubble Space Telescope contains a box that marks the location of the possible planet candidate. Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/R. DiStefano, et al.; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI/Grendler

Rosanne and colleagues searched in Chandra and XMM-Newton data of three galaxies for such X-ray transits, dips in the light that could be explained by planets. And they found a very special signal in the Whirlpool Galaxy (M51) that they decided to study in more detail. The dip occurred in X-ray binary M51-ULS-1 and completely blocked the signal for a few hours, before it came back again.

Now the game of carefully crossing off possible explanations began, before the researchers could even consider the option of an extragalactic planet. We first had to make sure that the signal was not caused by anything else, says Rosanne, whose team argues against a number of possibilities in their new publication. We did this by an in-depth analysis of the X-ray dip in the Chandra data, analyzing other dips and signals in the XMM data, and also modeling dips caused by other possible events, including a planet.

Infographic: A planet in another galaxy. Credit: ESA

Could the X-ray dip be caused by small stars like a brown or red dwarf? No, they argue, the system is too young for that, and the transiting object too large.

Could it be a cloud of gas and dust? Not likely, the team says, because the dip indicates a transiting object with a well-defined surface, which would not be the same for a passing cloud. Even if the planet had an atmosphere, it would still have a more well-defined surface than a cloud.

Could the dip be explained by variations in brightness of the source itself? The paper authors are confident that this is not the case, because although the light from the source completely disappeared for a few hours before it came back, the temperature and light colors stayed the same.

Lastly, the team also compared the dip to another blockage of the light caused by the donor star passing in front of the compact star. This was partly observed by XMM-Newton and caused a much longer black-out, which was different from the dip caused by a possible planet.

We did computer simulations to see whether the dip has the characteristics of a planet transiting, and we find that it fits perfectly. We are pretty confident that this is not anything else and that we have found our first planet candidate outside of the Milky Way, adds Rosanne.

The team also speculates about the characteristics of the planet based on their observations: it would be the size of Saturn, orbiting the binary star system from tens of times the Earth-Sun distance. It would make one full orbit roughly every 70 years, and be bombarded with extreme amounts of radiation, making it uninhabitable by life as we know it on Earth.

This long orbit of the planet candidate is also a limitation for the study, because the event cant be repeated any time soon. Thats why the team remains careful to say that they found a possible planet candidate, for which the broader community might find other explanations, although they have not been found after careful research by the team. We can only say with confidence that it doesnt fit any of our other explanations, Rosanne clarifies.

Still, this is an exciting step forward in the quest to find a planet outside of the Milky Way. This is the first planet candidate that would orbit a known host system, as compared to candidates found with gravitational lenses. This would also be the first time that a planet is found orbiting an X-ray binary. The existence of those planets is consistent with the fact that planets are found around pulsars (rapidly rotating neutron stars), and some of these pulsars have been part of an X-ray binary in the past.

The first confirmed planet outside of our Solar System was found around a pulsar, an object typically observed in X-rays. I am excited that X-rays now also play important step in the search for planets beyond the border of our galaxy, says Norbert Schartel, XMM-Newton Project Scientist for ESA.

Now that we have this new method for finding possible planet candidates in other galaxies, our hope is that by looking at all the available X-ray data in the archives, we find many more of those. In the future we might even be able to confirm their existence, says Rosanne.

For more on this discovery:

Reference: A possible planet candidate in an external galaxy detected through X-ray transit by Rosanne Di Stefano, Julia Berndtsson, Ryan Urquhart, Roberto Soria, Vinay L. Kashyap, Theron W. Carmichael and Nia Imara, 25 October 2021, Nature Astronomy.DOI: 10.1038/s41550-021-01495-wPDF

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Astronomers May Have Discovered a Planet in Another Galaxy - SciTechDaily

This past March, UT-Austin astronomer Dr. Caitlin Casey was in the sleepless haze of early motherhood, holding a two-month-old baby on her lap, when she received an email akin to winning the scientific lottery. Cycle One JWST Notification Letter, was the subject line. Opening it, she read, We are pleased to inform you that your James Webb Space Telescope Cycle one proposal title Cosmos Webb has been approved...

She didnt need to read further. Approved! She knew what this meant. She slammed her laptop shut and messaged her colleague Jeyhan Kartaltepe, an astrophysicist at the Rochester Institute of Technology. We got itoh my God, we got it, Casey typed.

No! Kartaltepe responded, dumbfounded.

What Casey got was the largest project on the new, long-awaited James Webb Space Telescope, which is scheduled to launch from French Guiana on December 18. The worlds most powerful telescope, the Webb is expected to transform the way we understand the universe. Naturally, astronomers from around the world, hoping for precious research hours, sent proposals to the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI). In its March email, the center granted Casey and her team more time than any other group.

At 36 years old, only eleven years after getting her PhD, Casey is relatively young to be awarded such a distinction. But she had other reasons to be surprised. Her proposal, the COSMOS-Webbwhich she and Kartaltepe wrote together over the pandemic, in Zoom conversations with dozens of colleagues who would work on the project with them across the globewas almost absurdly ambitious. Whereas the conventional wisdom with the Webb telescope was to look deeply at a tiny portion of sky the size of a pinpoint held at arms length, Casey and Kartaltepe asked to see a patch considerably larger, the size of three full moons on an average night. The STScI granted them 218 hours, or roughly eight days, of telescope time. (Most programs are in the six-hour range, she says.) If all goes well, the resulting images and data will step right up to the doorstep of the Big Bang, nearly 14 billion years ago, to show the magical but mysterious period when a dark, soupy mess of atoms were ionized by the first sources of light.

I met Casey this past October in her small office, on the sixteenth floor of UTs towering Physics, Math, and Astronomy Building, where a giant dry-erase board that covered nearly half a wall was filled with equations. She is quick to teach, easily drawing analogies that a layperson can understand, and she exudes an excitement that even several cups of coffee could not manufacture, laughing readily as if shes sharing thrilling gossip while saying things like, We get to think about the beginning of time itself, right?

When Casey first focused on the obscure early universe for her PhD, which she earned at the University of Cambridge in 2010, most of what we knew was shaped by the NASA Hubble Space Telescopethe groundbreaking equipment that primarily measured starlight. Using the Hubble, astronomers could see starlight clear across the observable universe, including images dating almost as far back as the Big Bang. But not quite far enough to see those earliest years. (One of the more mind-blowing things about powerful telescopes is that they allow for a kind of time travel: since light from far away takes many years to reach Earth, and the universe is expanding, the Webb will show us images from the universes history as it probes deeper and deeper into space.) We think we have a pretty good idea of how things went in the past ten, eleven billion years, Casey says. But its those first few billion years where you start to get really interesting questions that challenge our idea of how physics works. A lot of the big-picture questions are a little bit like a chicken-and-egg problem.

Cosmically, the chicken-and-egg problem goes like this: We know that stars are born from gas, and that gas condenses after stars die, starting the cycle over. But how, scientists want to know, did that process begin? The Hubble provided images of a few early galaxiesthe oldest being 400 million years after the Big Banggiving astronomers a glimpse into what that era might have looked like. Still, the sample was too small to reach definitive conclusions. To further explore that period, astronomers needed a telescope that was primarily operational at infrared wavelengths, as the light from the distant galaxies is stretched on its journey to us, or red-shifted, into infrared.

Enter the revolutionary James Webb Space Telescope. Casey was about eleven years old in 1996, when scientists formally recommended an infrared telescope as NASAs next major project. Over the ensuing decades, a team of more than 1,200 scientists and engineers from fourteen countries has been pushing the limits of technology to create it. Operating at a frigid negative 370 degrees Fahrenheit, so that its infrared sensors can function, the $9.7 billion observatory will set itself up in space after launch, unfurling its eighteen hexagonal mirrors coated in gold one million miles from Earth. It has to work perfectly; if anything goes wrong, the telescope will be too far away for repair. Were all very nervous about that, Casey says, noting that the telescopes sunshield layers, which block the suns interfering light and heat, are as thin as single human hairs. Oh gosh, its so scary to me. Yeah, Im glad I dont work on that or have to think about that.

Casey, like all astronomers, has been anticipating the Webbs arrival for years. The Webb will multiply by orders of magnitude the number of galaxies we can see from the earliest eras of the universe. It will also provide clearer data on some of the biggest astronomical questions, such as those concerning star life cycles, galaxy behavior over time, planets outside our solar system, and evidence of life beyond Earth. Using the telescope as it was intended, most of the research will focus on tiny spots and go as deep as possible. (This is the case with Caseys UT colleague Steven Finkelstein, who will be studying the early epoch of light for around one hundred hours for the Webb Deep Extragalactic Exploratory Public [WDEEP] Survey.)

But Caseys unconventional proposal sold the idea that instead of going narrowly into a deep field, it was important to have more context and survey a wide area, patching together a mosaic. Describing the structure of the universe as spongelike, she explains that some areas are like pockets, or empty voids with no galaxies, while other areas are like knots that have thousands of densely packed galaxies. Without a wider perspective, a single point in space could lead to the wrong conclusions. You might think that, Well, oh, you know, galaxies just dont exist at that time in the universes history, she says. But you could have landed on a void.

While the bulk of her observations arent scheduled to take place until April of 2023, Caseys preparations are well underway. Shell be gathering data from observatories around the world to prepare for when she receives the long-awaited images and data. What she predicts shell find, when this survey is taken over eight critical days, is about a million galaxiesfour to five thousand of which formed in the epoch of reionization. Several hundred million years after the Big Bang, when the universe was mostly composed of neutral hydrogen, cooling and expanding, gas clouds began to collapse under their own gravity and form stars that slowly but surely turned a very foggy place into a clearer one where light traveled freely. We can use that data to refine our models of how we think the universe actually formed, Casey says. Yeah. Its a big deal.

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The Most Powerful Telescope Ever Made Will Launch Next Month. A Texas Astronomer Is Leading Its Biggest Project. - Texas Monthly

Planetary scientist Jim Bell, Ph.D., is scheduled to deliver an illustrated, nontechnical presentation, Postcards from Mars: The Latest from the International Armada of Robot Explorers, 7 p.m. today via livestream on YouTube.

The virtual event is part of the Silicon Valley Astronomy Lecture Series through Foothill College, now in its 22nd year.

Ten missions have successfully landed on Mars since 1976, including six rovers that have traversed across a total of nearly 30 miles of terrain on the Red Planet. Bell has been the lead or deputy scientist in charge of the science cameras on the NASA Spirit, Opportunity, Curiosity and Perseverance rovers, with a front-row seat for their photographic and geologic adventures.

In his presentation, Bell will share his favorite images and stories from inside mission operations and describe the major scientific findings made by the roving and landed missions over the past 45 years, focusing especially on the latest results streaming in from the still-active Curiosity and Perseverance rovers. He also will discuss plans for the next Martian rover.

Bell is a professor in the School of Earth & Space Exploration at Arizona State University and an astronomer who has been involved in solar system exploration using data from the Hubble Space Telescope, Mars rovers, Voyager 2 and orbiters sent to Mars, the Moon and several asteroids. His research focuses on the use of remote sensing imaging and spectroscopy to assess the geology, composition and mineralogy of the surfaces of planets, moons, asteroids and comets.

Bell is also the author of many science books related to space exploration, including Postcards from Mars, The Space Book, The Interstellar Age, The Ultimate Interplanetary Travel Guide and Hubble Legacy. He served as president of The Planetary Society from 2008 to 2020 and received the American Astronomical Societys Carl Sagan Medal for public communication in science.

Tonights lecture is co-sponsored by the Foothill College Science, Tech, Engineering & Math Division; the SETI Institute; the Astronomical Society of the Pacific; and the UC observatories.

To view Bells presentation, visit youtube.com/SVAstronomyLectures. A recording will be made available at a later date. Past lectures in the series are accessible at the link above, and as podcasts at buzzsprout.com/1805595.

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Foothill College tonight hosts virtual astronomy lecture on Mars rovers - Los Altos Town Crier

In this serieswe are exploring the weird and wonderful world of astronomy jargon! Get a good look at todays topic: the cosmic microwave background!

The cosmic microwave background, or CMB, is all around you. Indeed, its by far the brightest object in the entire universe, responsible for over 99% of all photons.

And its a baby picture of the universe.

When our cosmos was very young, it was much smaller, hotter, and denser than it is today. Indeed it was so hot and dense that all the matter in the universe was a plasma, with the electrons ripped out of atoms and constantly mixed up with the high-energy radiation that soaked the universe at the time.

But when our universe was about 380,000 years old, it cooled to the point that the electrons could settle into their little atomic homes, turning our cosmos into a neutral gas of hydrogen and helium. That left all the radiation hanging around with nothing to do, so off it went.

At the time it was released, that radiation was literally white-hot. But as the ages passed, our universe expanded. That radiation cooled, and its wavelength stretched. All the way down to where it today, 13.8 billion years later, in the microwave part of the electromagnetic spectrum.

The CMB was discovered accidentally in the 1960s once we finally developed sensitive microwave detectors. It confirms that the general story of the big bang is accurate; there are no other theories of cosmology that can explain its existence.

Today, astronomers work with detectors on the ground and in space to make accurate maps of the CMB. The latest all-sky map comes courtesy of the Planck telescope, which was a joint venture between NASA and the ESA. Those maps reveal tiny little temperature differences, no bigger than one part in a million.

Those temperature differences tell us what the universe was like billions of years ago. The temperature differences tell us that the universe wasnt perfectly uniform there were also tiny differences in density. Those little seeds would eventually grow up to become galaxies, groups, and clustersthe largest structures in the universe today.

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Astronomy Jargon 101: Cosmic Microwave Background - Universe Today

There's too many satellites, space junk around Earth

Astronomers are raising the alarm on the number of satellites orbiting Earth and say if nothing is done to regulate how many get launched in the future, it could be detrimental for not just the environment on Earth, but space as well.

Astronomers are raising the alarm on the number of satellites orbiting Earth and say if nothing is done to regulate how many get launched in the future, it could be detrimental for not just the environment on Earth, but space as well.

There are thousands of satellites currently orbiting the planet and there are a couple thousand more that are inactive and are slowly making their way back down.

Starlink, which is part of SpaceX, has the most in orbit, according to Science.org. The company has launched more than 1,700 satellites so far and it plans to send tens of thousands more into space in the future.

On top of the satellites mucking up the night sky for astronomers, millions of tiny pieces of reflective debris from various collisions are making looking for important celestial bodies even harder.

"For the most part, I think almost all observatories around the world will be affected to some degree. Some less than others," said Connie Walker, a scientist for the NSFs National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory.

The background image shows the double star Albireo in Cygnus and was taken on Dec. 26, 2019. Two out of ten 2.5-minute exposures recorded Starlink satellites moving across the field.

RELATED: NASA launches satellite that will track Earths health

Astronomers across the world started more seriously raising the alarm on the vast amount of satellites and space junk orbiting the planet in May 2019 when Starlink launched its first 60 satellites into space.

"Astronomers went, Ah! Oh my gosh! We didnt know this was happening," Walker said with a chuckle. "Of course, SpaceX didnt keep it a secret but it wasnt really advertised to the level that astronomers picked up on."

But satellites have been a constant nuisance for astronomers even before SpaceXs massive launch.

Depending on where you are in the world, an astronomer may see a couple hundred satellites pass across their viewing area, according to Walker.

"For me, during the whole night, probably a thousand satellites go across but you dont see a lot of them. They have to be pretty much lit by the sun during the twilight hours and that could range up to a good fraction of the night depending on what time of year it is. For instance, if its the summertime, its (night) shorter, so you have more twilight higher in latitude and due to that, youre not in Earths shadow so they do get seen," Walker said.

RELATED: Vice President Kamala Harris to convene 1st National Space Council meeting Dec. 1

Images taken from telescopes around the world often capture the "tracks" or "trails" of the passing satellites and will create lines, basically rendering images unusable for scientific purposes.

"You see a pinpoint going across the sky with your eye, but when you open a camera onto the sky it becomes a trail. And not only does it become a trail, but that trail can have significant consequences on the image," according to Walker.

Observations with DECam on the Blanco 4-meter telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), a Program of NSF's NOIRLab, astronomers Clara Martnez-Vzquez and Cliff Johnson noticed something interesting. One of their images, the 33 (CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/DECam DELVE Survey)

And while the issue doesnt seem like much now, Walker believes the lack of regulation in regards to space and how humans use it could prove problematic in the future.

"It is a business. The companies are a business, theyre trying to make money but they also have a goal in mind too and whether you believe it or not, one goal is to bring broadband internet to the world. Like, were Zooming right now, because its going through a satellite and Im able to talk with you and were hundreds of miles apart. Thats pretty amazing," Walker said.

"But, its like plastics. Plastics were like the best thing since sliced bread and we just went ahead and we mass-produced all this stuff from plastics for various reasons, whether they were bottles or whatever they were, even medical equipment. It was the coolest thing on Earth. But disposing them, no one thought that through and its not biodegradable. Were harming our environment, were harming our space environment now and its harming people on Earth in various ways," Walker said.

RELATED: Russia rejects blame for space debris endangering 7 astronauts aboard ISS

Walker believes that while the goal appears noble, not everyone is thinking of the potential negative consequences that could emerge from hurling hundreds of thousands of satellites into the sky.

Rwanda hopes to launch more than 330,000 satellites into space in the decades to come in order to increase the nations access to the internet, according to Walker.

She said Rwandas request, which was made to the International Telecommunications Union in October, is daunting considering how many satellites are already floating around our planet.

"But still, its alarming to have that many up there. Thats much, much more than we have totally right now but, that said, when you look at all of the other companies like Amazon with their corporate project and One Web, based in the U.K., youve got to be well up into the tens of thousands by the end of the decade and over 100,000 with all the other companies included," Walker continued.

And the goal to provide internet to everyone on the planet is not the only motivator to launch more satellites.

RELATED: Longest partial lunar eclipse for 1,000 years to dazzle skywatchers on Nov. 19

In late September, NASA launched the Landsat 9 satellite into space which aims to track the "health" of the planet.

"The Landsat mission is like no other," said Karen St. Germain, director of the Earth Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "For nearly 50 years, Landsat satellites observed our home planet, providing an unparalleled record of how its surface has changed over timescales from days to decades. Through this partnership with USGS, weve been able to provide continuous and timely data for users ranging from farmers to resource managers and scientists. This data can help us understand, predict, and plan for the future in a changing climate."

Meanwhile, on Nov. 5, Vice President Kamala Harris announced that she, along with other leaders of the Biden administration, will hold an inaugural National Space Council meeting on Dec. 1.

"At that meeting, we will outline a comprehensive framework for our nation's space priorities. From our civilian efforts like those we have seen today to our military and national security efforts to STEM education and emerging space economy and what is abundantly clear is that when it comes to our space activity, there is limitless potential," Harris said during a visit to NASA's Goddard Space Center.

Harris also highlighted the work being done by Landsat 9 which joined its sister satellite, Landsat 8, and the pair work in tandem to "collect images spanning the entire planet every eight days," according to NASA.

RELATED: NASA: Asteroid the size of Empire State Building to whiz close by Earth in coming days

With more satellites come more chances for collisions, and with more collisions comes more debris making it hard for astronomers to accurately see whats going on in the space around Earth and beyond.

The millions of pieces of tiny space debris can actually add to the light pollution already plaguing the planet. "And raise the levels of how bright the night sky is so for people and animals, and whomever that depend on the night sky, that can be a factor," Walker said.

"Astronomers really are going to lose the twilight hours, I think. They do their best research on near-Earth asteroids at that time because its the time of night you can see asteroids better. Those kind of hours will be brightened significantly," Walker said.

This image of Venus and the Pleiades also shows the tracks of the Starlink satellites. These satellites which are located at an altitude of approximately 550 kilometers, are part of an ever-growing constellation of satellites aimed to provide worldwi (Torsten Hansen/IAU OAE via the International Astronomical Union)

"So, its starting to get alarming because safety is a big issue up there and collisions can produce a lot of problems in terms of safety in other things," Walker said.

On Monday, a Russian weapons test created more than 1,500 pieces of space junk now threatening the seven astronauts aboard the International Space Station, according to U.S. officials who called the strike reckless and irresponsible.

RELATED: Liftoff! SpaceX launches batch of Starlink satellites into orbit

The State Department confirmed that the debris was from an old Russian satellite destroyed by the missile.

"Needless to say, Im outraged. This is unconscionable," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told the Associated Press. "Its unbelievable that the Russian government would do this test and threaten not only international astronauts, but their own cosmonauts that are on board the station" as well as the three people on China's space station.

Nelson said the astronauts now face four times greater risk than normal. And that's based on debris big enough to track, with hundreds of thousands of smaller pieces going undetected "any one of which can do enormous damage if it hits in the right place."

According to Walker, Russias alleged actions were highly dangerous, but there was no one around to tell them they couldnt do it and that is the problem.

"At this point in time, theres no one really out there that can say, You cant do that." Walker said. "They needed target practice, I guess, but it should have gone through some proper channels. But what are those proper channels?"

RELATED: Eiffel Tower-sized asteroid to fly past Earth next month

Until there is a governing body that can reprimand and "police" space, Walker said the next best thing astronomers have is communicating with companies and countries directly.

"Were actually working with companies, which is the best thing of all. To be able to work with the companies, and theres three companies that were working with right now and were trying to add to that list and theyre being pretty amenable about working with us. Although they cant always promise changes, and I can totally understand that," Walker said.

"We started communicating every single month for about a year with SpaceX, which was wonderful. And it was through the relationships they had with the Ruben Observatory that some solutions were actually made," Walker continued.

The Ruben Observatory, which is located in Chile, is expected to start operating within the next year and aims to observe and study dark energy and dark matter, take an inventory of the solar system, explore the transient optical sky and map the Milky Way, according to the observatorys website.

"They first darkened one or two of the satellites and then tried more," Walker said. SpaceX then put visors on their satellites to prevent certain parts from reflecting too much sunlight. While the effort proved effective, science and technology are continuing to evolve at a rapid pace and SpaceXs once-lauded solutions are now not having the same impacts as they once were.

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"Now they want to have these inter-satellite communications with lasers so theyre going to have to take away the visors. So that was a solution that brought us almost up to the point where we could say, Alright, well still have main street, well get rid of the residual effects that you see on the image, but now its like two steps backwards," Walker continued.

Despite that setback, Walker said companies are trying to find solutions. Companies such as Amazon and One Web have approached the astronomical society to find a happy middle for both businesses and scientists.

"Theres so many things to think about and readjust," Walker said. "But then you also look at, can these things actually be done?"

The goal for both companies and astronomers is to determine the most reasonable solution that wont break the bank.

Could there be a type of software that will eliminate any unwanted images from telescopes? Could there be someone whose sole job is to actively avoid catching satellites on telescopes? Or could companies possibly launch their satellites out of the line of sight of observatories? The answers to all of these questions is "not totally," according to Walker.

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"The question, too, is: Are we going to be funded?" Walker said.

Walker said funding is already scarce in the realm of astronomy, so, adding another financial hurdle like how to efficiently move satellites from scientists line of sight is making things tighter than they are already are.

"The happy middle is that they (companies) have to really have a stringent plan for how many can launch, how many can be up there, what their deorbit time is because they can build in when they have to deorbit," according to Walker.

"No ones going to go up there and bring the satellites down, its just too expensive. And the deorbit, the higher you go, the longer it takes to deorbit. So, it could take 100 years for something thats a thousand kilometers up there. It could take five years for something thats maybe at 600 or less kilometers if you build it in, but usually its something around 25 years. Satellites stay up there longer than their usefulness, basically. Because, they get used for five years then theyre antiquated," Walker said.

When putting a satellite into deorbit, Walker said, companies must consider the size and materials because once the satellite comes hurtling back through Earths atmosphere, depending on the materials used, it could either burn up or crash into a populated area and hurt people.

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"They (companies) have to go beyond what they have now and have a solid plan for deorbiting," Walker said.

Walker said apart from having a solid and safe plan to get useless satellites out of the sky, a broader dialogue about the issue needs to be initiated.

"We need a stronger relationship with the different companies and to work with them even more closely," she added.

Walker said there are some who believe there should be an absolute halt to any more satellite launches in the future, and while Walker acknowledges thats not possible, she said there needs to be accountability. Those who are launching satellites need to do their due diligence to ensure theyre doing everything they can to deflect any negative impacts satellites and space trash have.

"And in some ways, thats not unreasonable. You want to think things through. Its not like we dont want it to happen, we just want to think things through and come up with solutions before we make it worse, as we should have done with plastics," Walker said.

"This is our only spaceship," Walker said. "We have to be good stewards otherwise well create irreparable problems. Better start now."

The Associated Press contributed to this report. This story was reported out of Los Angeles.

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Thousands of satellites, space junk surround Earth and its a problem, astronomers say - FOX 10 News Phoenix

Our upcoming lunar eclipse has a direct connection to an eclipse that occurred in the late 1960s. There is a reason for this that I will make clear in just a moment. But first, let's take a look back at that eclipse of more than half a century ago, when a bunch of young people "one-upped" adults in obtaining a view of their celestial quarry.

It was in the predawn hours of Oct. 18, 1967, that the full moon moved completely into the Earth's dark umbral shadow, resulting in a total lunar eclipse. The previous year, in cooperation with New York City's department of parks, the Hayden Planetarium invited the public to Sheep Meadow in Central Park at midnight, to observe the Leonid meteor shower. Although cloudy weather prevailed, some 10,000 persons assembled, listening attentively to a 45-minute talk on astronomy.

So, based on the strength of that event, a similar gathering was arranged to view the total eclipse from Sheep Meadow, beginning at 4 a.m. on the morning of Oct. 18. Members of the planetarium staff were to be on hand to answer questions. In addition, the Planetarium planned to take photographs from the top of the United Nations Secretariat Building and the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington also planned observations as well. The first observable change would have been the dark umbra "biting" into the upper-left edge of the moon at 4:25 a.m. EDT.

Related: Beaver Moon lunar eclipse 2021: When, where and how to see it

Unfortunately, once again, the weather did not cooperate. About 11 p.m. low cloudiness settled in and soon made for a nearly solid overcast over much of the Northeast US. In addition, fog drifted in from off the water. The cloud ceiling at times extended as far down as 300 to 500 feet (90-150 meters). There was not the tiniest aperture through which the moon could wink at the small platform that had been set up in Central Park for the Hayden Planetarium astronomers.

None of them showed up anyway.

And instead of the thousands that showed up for the Leonid shower the previous year, just four skywatchers stood in a fruitless vigil scanning the thick quilt of low clouds for even a fleeting glimpse of the moon. The photographers stationed on the United Nations tower got none, and the U.S. Naval Observatory drew a blank as well.

The unsettled weather, however, did not stop 10 boys and two girls, ranging in age from 13 to 17 years old all amateur high school astronomers from trooping into the lobby of the Empire State Building at 11:30 p.m., carrying cameras, binoculars, monoculars (hand telescopes), two six-inch telescopes, a radio for shortwave time signals and a guitar.

They were members of the Amateur Observers Society (AOS), an astronomy club founded in 1965 by 17-year-old, Ronald Abileah. And thanks to Daniel Howe Jr., a manager at the Empire State Building, a special arrangement was made to allow the AOS members to watch the eclipse from the building's 86th-floor observation deck, long after the building had closed its doors to members of the general public.

As the budding young astronomers set up their equipment, conditions were far from ideal: it was raw and wet on the deck, and the mists ran fast in a stiff wind. At times, the kids were enveloped in fog with a visibility of about five feet.

But at the 86th floor, the altitude above street level thrusts to 1,050 feet.

I was able to track down Eric Bram, who was one of the twelve young people who were fortunate to catch a view of the eclipse that foggy morning. In an exclusive interview via Facebook Messenger, he told Space.com:

"There was thick fog all around and we couldn't see a thing; not the eclipse or anything else. Then suddenly the fog dropped and we found ourselves standing on a little island, on the low terrace of a tower protruding above the clouds that stretched like an ocean to the horizon in all directions. Nothing else existed in the world: just the tower, the clouds, the stars, the eclipsed moon, and we who observed it."

Overhead there were patches of fast-moving clouds, and the moon kept teasing the young observers, with the wind dissipating the fog a bit. But it was enough to allow for snatches of the celestial display, with the initial penumbral phase visible a couple of times and then there was a brief view of what appeared to be a crescent moon, with only about one-quarter of the face lit up about a half-hour before the start of the total phase.

In the aftermath of the eclipse, there was a considerable amount of publicity about how the teenagers had managed to catch views of the eclipse while older and presumably more experienced observers did not.

The New York Times carried the story in their Oct. 19, 1967 edition under the headline:"The Young See Moon in Eclipse as Their Elders Fail to Show Up"

So how does this eclipse of decades past, bear any relation to our upcoming lunar eclipse?

It is an interesting phenomenon that an eclipse, whether of the sun or the moon, will repeat itself. Ancient astronomers in Assyria and Babylonia kept track of time by carefully observing the motions of the moon and the sun. By recording the details of solar and lunar eclipses, the accuracy of these measurements increased markedly. As they studied the record of centuries of eclipses, a pattern began to emerge: Eclipses tend to repeat themselves at intervals of just over 18 years, though they recur at different locations on Earth. Thiseclipse cycle is called the "saros" Greek for "repetition."

A saros cycle encompasses 18 years and 10 1/3 days or 11 1/3 days, since almost always five or four leap years, respectively, intervene with almost equal frequency. Because of the extra third of a day, each successive eclipse occurs about 120 degrees in longitude to the west of its predecessor.

Thus, after three saros repetitions (54 years and 33 plus or minus 1 day) an eclipse recurs in the same general part of the world. The late science writer Isaac Asimov coined the phrase "triple saros" to describe this interval of time. However, astronomer Owen Gingerich notes that the Greeks called a period equal to three saros cycles an "Exeligmos," sometimes also referred to as "the turning of the wheel."

In this case, the 1967 lunar eclipse and our upcoming lunar eclipse aremembers of saros #126and can be tied together using the Exeligmos:

Oct. 18, 1967 Mid-eclipse: 6:15 a.m. EDTNov. 19, 2021 Mid-eclipse: 4:02 a.m. EDT

And comparing the path that the moon took through Earth's shadow in October 1967 as well as the general region of the visibility of that eclipse, with the shadow path and visibility zone for our upcoming eclipse, we would readily notice the similarities:

The only significant difference over 54+ years is that the moon takes a track a bit farther to the south in 2021, so that the southernmost edge of the moon remains just outside of the umbra, making it an "almost total" eclipse compared to 1967.

So, a relative of the lunar eclipse that was witnessed by a coterie of young moon watchers in the fall of 1967 will be paying us a visit this week. Let's hope the weather will be a bit more cooperative for everybody this time around!

And incidentally, the then-fledgling Amateur Observers Society, which catered only to teenagers back in 1967, is still active today, though is no longer restricted just to high schoolers, but to astronomy buffs of all ages.

Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York'sHayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy forNatural History magazine, theFarmers' Almanacand other publications. Follow uson Twitter@Spacedotcomand onFacebook.

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How the Beaver Moon lunar eclipse of Nov. 19 has shades of 1967 - Space.com

Sensei, astronomer, photographer and more, Michael Capurso was a man of many talents, gifts and pursuits.

A memorial service is scheduled next weekend for the popular Ridgewood native, who was killed in a crash last week in Pennsylvania.

Capurso, 26, was behind the wheel of a Subaru SUV that slid off the road into a tree and burst into flames near his Shohola, PA home around 11 p.m. Monday, Nov. 8, friends said.

Capurso had taught class that night at the Ridgewood Karate Academy, where he was a head instructor, friends said.

"Michael was an incredible teacher and mentor to hundreds of kids. Always patient and kind, and oh, so funny," one mom wrote. "Such a tremendous loss for the community."

Capurso studied physics and astronomy at SUNY New Paltz, with plans to graduate next May, after attending Bergen Community College.

He was an avid astro-photographer who published many of his images on social media with great delight -- among them, the photo above.

Capurso had also been an Eagle Scout, an assistant Scoutmaster and an active member of Troop 5 in Ridgewood with his family. He planned and attended overnights, helped at meetings, chaperoned at summer camp, and received Eagle Scout Mentor Pins from younger scouts, according to the troop.

Scout leaders said Capurso "exemplified what it is to be an Eagle Scout. We miss him."

He also was actively involved in the North Jersey Mineralogical Society.

Capurso joined RKA when he was six years and became part of the leadership team when he was only 13. Two years later, he'd earned his blackbelt alongside his younger brother, John.

He was promoted to sensei by the time he was 16 and studied for several years while training children, teens and adults.

A memorial service for Capurso is scheduled for 1 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 20 at First Presbyterian Church, 722 East Ridgewood Ave. in Ridgewood.His family asks that charitable donations be made in his name to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

DONATE HERE: Give Hope to Kids With Cancer

You can find some of Capurso's captivating photos at these links:

instagram.com/capurso_photography/astrobin.com/users/Michaelc95/

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Popular NJ Native Who Taught Karate, Studied Astronomy Dies In PA Crash - Northern Highlands Daily Voice

The Department of Physics and Astronomy at West Virginia University (WVU) invites applications for a Teaching Assistant Professor position starting August 1st, 2022. This is a full-time, nine-month, non-tenure track position with full benefits. Teaching Assistant Professor appointments have renewable terms of up to three years, with no limit on the number of terms. This position will be accompanied by an annual summer appointment for instructional laboratory management (required) and additional summer teaching (if desired). Teaching Assistant Professors are eligible for promotion, e.g., to Teaching Associate Professor and Teaching Full Professor; however, promotion to senior ranks is not a requirement for institutional commitment and career stability.

The successful candidate will contribute to our teaching mission by providing exemplary instruction of physics and astronomy classes at all levels, overseeing the management and curation of the introductory laboratories and demonstration collection, and overseeing the training and oversight of all graduate teaching assistants. Responsibilities include but are not limited to: organization and management of all introductory physics and astronomy teaching laboratories; management of the graduate teaching assistants; management, instruction, and development of a teaching assistant training program; teaching primarily introductory physics courses in a large lecture format as well as opportunities to teach other astronomy and physics courses; development of laboratory experiments for introductory physics and astronomy classes; development of lecture demonstrations and management of the lecture demonstration collection; collaboration with Physics Education Research faculty at WVU; and engagement with the regional and national physics education communities.

The successful applicant must have a Ph.D. or equivalent doctoral degree in astronomy, physics, physics education research, or a closely related field by time of appointment; excellent written and oral communication/teaching skills; the ability to teach effectively in a large lecture format; the ability to manage personnel; and the ability to maintain laboratory and demonstration equipment.The teaching load is 2 courses per semester.

The Department of Physics and Astronomy consists of 25 tenured and tenure-track faculty, one teaching associate professor, one teaching full professor, 16 research faculty and postdoctoral researchers, 90 Ph.D. graduate students, and 70 undergraduate physics majors. The main research areas are astrophysics, biophysics, condensed matter physics, physics education, and plasma physics.

WVU is an R1 research land grant university located within 90 minutes of Pittsburgh and 3.5 hours from the Washington/Baltimore area. Morgantown has been recognized as one of the most livable small cities in the U.S. There are extensive recreational opportunities, excellent public schools, and a supportive University environment in which to develop a visible and productive career. The WVU Dual Career Program is available to assist candidates with suitable employment opportunities for spouses or partners.

To apply, please visit https://careers.wvu.edu Applicants should upload a cover letter, statement of teaching philosophy, curriculum vitae, and contact information for three references as part of the application process. The cover letter should address the applicant's qualifications for each aspect of the responsibilities listed above. The screening process will begin January 14, 2022 and continue until the position is filled. For more information, please visit our website (http://physics.wvu.edu), or contact the chair of the search committee, Prof. John Stewart by email at jcstewart1@mail.wvu.edu.

WVU is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer and the recipient of an NSF ADVANCE award for gender equity. The university values diversity among its faculty, staff, and students, and invites applications from all qualified individuals, including minorities, females, individuals with disabilities, and veterans.

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Teaching Assistant Professor in Morgantown, WV for West Virginia University Department of Physics and Astronomy - Physics

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Eclipse of moon expected early Friday morning | Astronomy | dicksonpost.com - Dickson Post

Artists conception of the central portion of the Next Generation Very Large Array. Credit: Sophia Dagnello, NRAO/AUI/NSF

The Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Survey (Astro2020) of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences has published its report and the Next Generation Very Large Array (ngVLA) received high priority for new ground-based observatories to be constructed during the coming decade. The report, in which ngVLA shared second ranking among ground-based projects, was the culmination of a lengthy process aimed at developing a comprehensive research strategy and vision for a decade of transformative science at the frontiers of astronomy and astrophysics.

The ngVLA is a system of 263 dish antennas spread across the entire extent of North America and concentrated in the U.S. Southwest that will provide dramatic new scientific capabilities to the worlds astronomers. The Astro2020 report led the ground-based facility list with the U.S. Extremely Large Telescope Project (US-ELT), a plan for two large optical telescopes the Thirty Meter Telescope and the Giant Magellan Telescope, both under different stages of construction. After US-ELT, equal priority was given for development and construction for the ngVLA and the Cosmic Microwave Background Stage-4 experiment (CMB-S4).

Being ranked as an important new initiative indicates that our colleagues from all specialties within astronomy and astrophysics have recognized that they need the ngVLA to meet the leading research challenges of the coming decades. We designed the ngVLA based on extensive advice from the research community and know it will be in high demand by scientists from around the world, said NRAO Director Tony Beasley.

With the publication of the Astro2020 report, the ngVLA next will require approval by the National Science Foundations National Science Board and funding by Congress. Construction could begin by 2026 with early scientific observations starting in 2029 and full scientific operations by 2035.

The high scientific priority given to the ngVLA reflects the breadth and depth of the science that it makes possible, from the formation of exoplanets, to testing relativity using pulsars and black holes, to the study of some of the earliest galaxies in the Universe. This high ranking is a strong endorsement, and it opens the door to the U.S. continuing its leadership in radio astronomy and thus astrophysics as a whole for decades to come, said Alberto Bolatto, co-chair of the ngVLA Science Advisory Council and a Professor of Astronomy at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Artists conception of the central portion of the Next Generation Very Large Array (ngVLA) on the Plains of San Agustin in west-central New Mexico. Credit: Sophia Dagnello, NRAO/AUI/NSF

This Astro2020 outcome is a direct result of the close collaboration between NRAO and the greater astronomical community in developing both the broad, transformative science case and technical design of the ngVLA over the last five-plus years, said Eric Murphy, NRAOs Project Scientist for ngVLA. All of the communitys hard work has clearly paid off and we now look forward to continuing this collaboration as we finalize the design and move toward achieving first light with the ngVLA, Murphy added.

The ngVLA is designed to have sensitivity to detect faint objects and resolving power ability to see fine detail more than 10 times greater than the current VLA. It can address fundamental questions in all major areas of astrophysics. The ngVLAs capabilities will complement those of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and other planned instruments such as the lower-frequency Square Kilometer Array. It also will complement the capabilities of the US-ELT optical telescopes and the orbiting James Webb Space Telescope, which will operate at infrared wavelengths and is scheduled for launch next month.

The ngVLA is a resource for all astronomers, regardless of their institution or background. It will be accessible to all segments of the research community. Anyone will be able to submit an observing proposal to take advantage of the ngVLAs advanced capabilities for frontier science.

The Astro 2020 report said, The ngVLA facility would be absolutely unique worldwide in both sensitivity and frequency coverage, and concludes that It is of essential importance to astronomy that the VLA and Very Long Baseline Array be replaced by an observatory that can achieve roughly an order of magnitude improvement in sensitivity compared to these facilities, with the ability to image radio sources on scales of arcminutes to fractions of a milliarcsecond.

We congratulate the US-ELT and CMB-S4 teams for their strong proposals, and look forward to working alongside them, the research community and the National Science Foundation to provide astronomers with the advanced, multiwavelength suite of research tools needed to meet the challenges of 21st-Century astrophysics, as outlined in the Astro2020 report, Beasley said. We appreciate the tremendous amount of work that went into producing the Astro2020 report, including many members of the scientific community and particularly the tireless efforts of the chairs and the steering committees, he added.

The ngVLA will have a dense core of antennas and a signal processing center at the current site of the VLA on the Plains of San Agustin in New Mexico. The system will include other antennas located throughout New Mexico and in west Texas, eastern Arizona, and northern Mexico. More far-flung antennas will be located in clusters in Hawaii, Washington, California, Iowa, West Virginia, New Hampshire, Puerto Rico (at Arecibo Observatory), the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Canada. Operations will be conducted at the VLA site and in nearby Socorro, New Mexico, with additional science operations in a metropolitan area to be determined.

The NRAO has received $23 million in funding from the National Science Foundation for design and development work on the ngVLAs antennas, and in May, NRAO officials signed an agreement with the German firm mtex antenna technology GmbH to develop a production-ready design and produce a prototype ngVLA antenna.

Adam Cohen, president of Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI), which operates the NRAO, said, We are excited by this strong endorsement of ngVLA by the research community and look forward to continuing AUIs nearly seven-decade record of developing and providing some of the worlds finest telescopes for the advancement of astronomy. We greatly appreciate the National Science Foundations support for the initial stages of the ngVLA and are eager to work with them to make this outstanding facility a reality.

Earlier this year, the Canadian Astronomy Long Range Plan 2020-2030, a report on priorities and recommendations for Canadian astronomy over the next decade, recommended that Canada support the ngVLA. That panel recommended that Canada provide $130 million toward ngVLA construction and $6 million per year for operating the facility. A plan for Japanese contribution to the ngVLA is one of the major proposals under consideration by that nations scientific community to become part of the Master Plan 2023 of the Science Council of Japan.

The ngVLAs design is the result of extensive collaboration with researchers across the landscape of astrophysics. Through a series of workshops and science meetings beginning in 2015, NRAO worked with numerous scientists and engineers to develop a design that will support a wide breadth of scientific investigations over the lifetime of the facility. Participants from around the world contributed suggestions and expertise that helped guide the design.

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.

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10-Year Astronomy Plan Calls For Massive New Observatory To Study Exoplanets and Black Holes - SciTechDaily