Space Scientific Studies
Two Bizarre Brown Dwarfs Found With Citizen Scientists’ Help
This artist’s concept shows a brown dwarf, a ball of gas not massive enough to power itself the way stars do. Despite their name, brown dwarfs would appear magenta or orange-red to the human eye if seen close up. Credit: CC byWilliam Pendrill
With the help of citizen scientists, astronomers have discovered two highly unusual brown dwarfs, balls of gas that are not massive enough to power themselves the way stars do.
Participants in the NASA-funded Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project helped lead scientists to these bizarre objects, using data from NASA’s Near-Earth Object Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) satellite along with all-sky observations collected between 2009 and 2011 under its previous moniker, WISE. Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 is an example of “citizen science,” a collaboration between professional scientists and members of the public.
Scientists call the newly discovered objects “the first extreme T-type subdwarfs.” They weigh about 75 times the mass of Jupiter and clock in at roughly 10 billion years old. These two objects are the most planetlike brown dwarfs yet seen among the Milky Way’s oldest population of stars.
What’s Up – October 2019
Published by NASA
Link to article with video: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/video/details.php?id=1588
Link to page: International Observe the Moon Night, Oct 5, 2019
What can you see in the October sky? Join the global celebration of International Observe the Moon Night on Oct. 5th, then try to catch the ice giant planets Uranus and Neptune, which are well placed for viewing in the late night sky.
Transcript:
What’s Up for October? A night for the whole world to observe the Moon and hunting for ice giants!
International Observe the Moon Night is Oct. 5th. It’s an annual celebration of lunar observation and exploration. Events are scheduled in lots of places around the world, so there may be one near you. But all you really need to participate is to go out and look up.
The event is timed to coincide with the first quarter moon. This allows for some great observing along the lunar terminator – the line that divides the dayside from the nightside. With even a small pair of binoculars, you can see some great details as features like mountains and craters pop up into the light. Learn more and look for events in your area at moon.nasa.gov/observe.
October is a great time to try and capture an ICE GIANT. Now, these aren’t mythical creatures. They’re planets – the most distant of the major planets of our solar system, Uranus and Neptune.
The four giant planets of our solar system are not created equal. The gas giants, Jupiter and Saturn, are much bigger and way more massive, while the ice giants are so named because they contain a much higher amount of materials that typically form ices in the frigid depths of the outer solar system.
In October, both Uranus and Neptune are well placed in the late night sky. In fact, you can see all four giant planets in the same evening if you look for Jupiter and Saturn in the west after sunset, and then come back a couple of hours later to spot Uranus and Neptune. (Think of it as your own personal “Voyager mission.” NASA’s Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft to have visited the ice giants so far, although scientists are eager to go back for a more detailed study.)
Unlike Jupiter and Saturn, the ice giants are quite faint, so the best way to observe them is with a telescope, and from personal experience, it’s much easier to find them if you have a computer-controlled mount that can automatically point the telescope for you. If you don’t have access to one, find a local event with the Night Sky Network at nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov. Otherwise, sky watching apps can help you star-hop your way to these two incredibly distant planets.
Now be advised, because they’re so far away, each planet appears as just a point of light. But with a modest telescope, you’ll see Uranus as a tiny disk. You’d be forgiven for mistaking Neptune as a star – it’s the same size as Uranus, but much farther away, so it’s fainter.
The ice giants are elusive, but well worth the effort to say you’ve seen them with your own eyes.
Here are the phases of the Moon for October. You can catch up on all of NASA’s current and future missions at nasa.gov. I’m Preston Dyches from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and that’s What’s Up for this month.
NASA’s InSight ‘Hears’ Peculiar Sounds on Mars
Andrew Good
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov
Alana Johnson
NASA Headquarters, Washington
alana.r.johnson@nasa.gov
Put an ear to the ground on Mars and you’ll be rewarded with a symphony of sounds. Granted, you’ll need superhuman hearing, but NASA’s InSight lander comes equipped with a very special “ear.”
The spacecraft’s exquisitely sensitive seismometer, called the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS), can pick up vibrations as subtle as a breeze. The instrument was provided by the French space agency, Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES), and its partners.
New Organic Compounds Found in Enceladus Ice Grains
Gretchen McCartney
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
gretchen.p.mccartney@jpl.nasa.gov
Alana Johnson
NASA Headquarters, Washington
alana.r.johnson@nasa.gov
New kinds of organic compounds, the ingredients of amino acids, have been detected in the plumes bursting from Saturn’s moon Enceladus. The findings are the result of the ongoing deep dive into data from NASA’s Cassini mission.
Powerful hydrothermal vents eject material from Enceladus’ core, which mixes with water from the moon’s massive subsurface ocean before it is released into space as water vapor and ice grains. The newly discovered molecules, condensed onto the ice grains, were determined to be nitrogen- and oxygen-bearing compounds.
Gretchen McCartney
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
gretchen.p.mccartney@jpl.nasa.gov
Alana Johnson
NASA Headquarters, Washington
alana.r.johnson@nasa.gov
New kinds of organic compounds, the ingredients of amino acids, have been detected in the plumes bursting from Saturn’s moon Enceladus. The findings are the result of the ongoing deep dive into data from NASA’s Cassini mission.
Powerful hydrothermal vents eject material from Enceladus’ core, which mixes with water from the moon’s massive subsurface ocean before it is released into space as water vapor and ice grains. The newly discovered molecules, condensed onto the ice grains, were determined to be nitrogen- and oxygen-bearing compounds.
How NASA’s Spitzer Has Stayed Alive for So Long
Calla Cofield
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
calla.e.cofield@jpl.nasa.gov
After nearly 16 years of exploring the cosmos in infrared light, NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope will be switched off permanently on Jan. 30, 2020. By then, the spacecraft will have operated for more than 11 years beyond its prime mission, thanks to the Spitzer engineering team’s ability to address unique challenges as the telescope slips farther and farther from Earth.
Managed and operated by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, Spitzer is a small but transformational observatory. It captures infrared light, which is often emitted by “warm” objects that aren’t quite hot enough to radiate visible light. Spitzer has lifted the veil on hidden objects in nearly every corner of the universe, from a new ring around Saturn to observations of some of the most distant galaxies known. It has spied stars in every stage of life, mapped our home galaxy, captured gorgeous images of nebulas and probed newly discovered planets orbiting distant stars.
New Clues About How Ancient Galaxies Lit up the Universe
Calla Cofield
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
calla.e.cofield@jpl.nasa.gov
NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has revealed that some of the universe’s earliest galaxies were brighter than expected. The excess light is a byproduct of the galaxies releasing incredibly high amounts of ionizing radiation. The finding offers clues to the cause of the Epoch of Reionization, a major cosmic event that transformed the universe from being mostly opaque to the brilliant starscape seen today.
In a new study (Royal Astronomical Society), researchers report on observations of some of the first galaxies to form in the universe, less than 1 billion years after the big bang (or a little more than 13 billion years ago). The data show that in a few specific wavelengths of infrared light, the galaxies are considerably brighter than scientists anticipated. The study is the first to confirm this phenomenon for a large sampling of galaxies from this period, showing that these were not special cases of excessive brightness, but that even average galaxies present at that time were much brighter in these wavelengths than galaxies we see today.
Scientists Planning Now for Asteroid Flyby a Decade Away
Dwayne Brown / JoAnna Wendel
NASA Headquarters, Washington
DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
On April 13, 2029, a speck of light will streak across the sky, getting brighter and faster. At one point it will travel more than the width of the full Moon within a minute and it will get as bright as the stars in the Little Dipper. But it won’t be a satellite or an airplane – it will be a 1,100-foot-wide (340-meter-wide) near-Earth asteroid called 99942 Apophis that will cruise harmlessly by Earth, about 19,000 miles (31,000 kilometers) above the surface. That’s within the distance that some of our spacecraft that orbit Earth.
The international asteroid research community couldn’t be more excited.
Black Hole Image Makes History
Elizabeth Landau
NASA Headquarters, Washington
A black hole and its shadow have been captured in an image for the first time, a historic feat by an international network of radio telescopes called the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). EHT is an international collaboration whose support in the U.S. includes the National Science Foundation.
A black hole is an extremely dense object from which no light can escape. Anything that comes within a black hole’s “event horizon,” its point of no return, will be consumed, never to re-emerge, because of the black hole’s unimaginably strong gravity. By its very nature, a black hole cannot be seen, but the hot disk of material that encircles it shines bright. Against a bright backdrop, such as this disk, a black hole appears to cast a shadow.
MedIa Event: NASA Invites Media to Learn More About Near-Earth Asteroids, Comets
April 25, 2019
MEDIA ADVISORY M19-034
Media are invited to hear experts from around the world discuss the latest research on near-Earth objects (NEOs) at the International Academy of Astronautics’ 2019 Planetary Defense Conference, Monday, April 29 through Friday, May 3 at The Hotel at the University of Maryland.
NEOs include asteroids and comets that orbit our Sun and come within 30 million miles of Earth’s orbit, where some may pose an impact hazard to our planet. NASA experts will talk about the agency’s first mission to demonstrate a technique to change the motion of an asteroid in space and other aspects of the nation’s planetary defense program.
Black Hole Image Of Galaxy M87 Makes History
A black hole and its shadow have been captured in an image for the first time, a historic feat by an international network of radio telescopes called the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). EHT is an international collaboration whose support in the U.S. includes the National Science Foundation.
A black hole is an extremely dense object from which no light can escape. Anything that comes within a black hole’s “event horizon,” its point of no return, will be consumed, never to re-emerge, because of the black hole’s unimaginably strong gravity. By its very nature, a black hole cannot be seen, but the hot disk of material that encircles it shines bright. Against a bright backdrop, such as this disk, a black hole appears to cast a shadow.
The stunning new image shows the shadow of the supermassive black hole in the center of Messier 87 (M87), an elliptical galaxy some 55 million light-years from Earth. This black hole is 6.5 billion times the mass of the Sun. Catching its shadow involved eight ground-based radio telescopes around the globe, operating together as if they were one telescope the size of our entire planet.
