Astronomy and Planetary Science Thread

Anton Petrov has a video concerning evidence of a stellar flyby of the Solar-System early in its' history:


0:00 Strange orbits in the solar system
1:25 New study: was there a stellar flyby?
2:05 Trans Neptunian objects
3:35 Planetary disks in other systems
4:40 Flyby chances in the solar system
5:40 Simulations and discoveries
7:01 Implications and what this means
8:02 How we can prove this in the future and additional questions

Personally I suspect that this flyby occurred before the open star-cluster of which the Sun was a member of where it formed perhaps even before stellar nursery molecular-cloud disbursed.
 
For the first time, astronomers have captured images of a star other than the sun in enough detail to track the motion of bubbling gas on its surface. The images of the star, R Doradus, were obtained with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a telescope co-owned by the European Southern Observatory (ESO), in July and August 2023. They show giant, hot bubbles of gas, 75 times the size of the sun, appearing on the surface and sinking back into the star's interior faster than expected.



Convection motions had never been tracked in detail in stars other than the sun, until now. By using ALMA, the team were able to obtain high-resolution images of the surface of R Doradus over the course of a month. R Doradus is a red giant star, with a diameter roughly 350 times that of the sun, located about 180 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Dorado.



Related video:

View: https://youtu.be/jaxyu4RP9-I?si=HDUgOtOgh3Dh_MoR
 
Frasier Cain has a video about how astronomers determine a star's age:


Stars oscillate. Even the Sun does. And we can learn a lot about them by studying those oscillations. How is it done and what can we learn? Finding out in this interview.
00:00 Intro
01:39 What is Astroseismology
07:07 Measuring the oscillations of the Sun
12:45 Age of stars
24:17 The technique
36:03 Future instruments
49:32 Current obsessions
54:46 Final thoughts and more interviews
 
Anton Petrov has a new video out about a new study concerning how dark the Universe is from the New Horizons probe:


0:00 Different types of background radiation and why we study it
2:15 Cosmic Optical Background and why it matters
4:50 New Horizons missions and how it helped
5:45 Initial observations and anomalies
6:30 New study and results
7:45 Implications and conclusions
9:22 Unasnwered questions
 
Get your crash hats out!!!

Odds of asteroid 99942 Apophis striking Earth slightly higher than thought

An astrophysicist at the University of Western Ontario finds that the odds of the asteroid 99942 Apophis striking Earth are slightly higher than previously thought. In his study, published in The Planetary Science Journal, Paul Wiegert took a new look at the possibility of a smaller asteroid striking Apophis and changing its trajectory to a collision course with Earth.



To find that answer, he began by noting that differently sized objects moving at different speeds would lead to different changes in course. He found that an object as small as 0.6 meters across could be big enough to knock the asteroid into a collision course sometime past 2029. He also found that an object just 3.4 meters across could strike with enough force to push Apophis into a collision course with Earth by 2029.

Wiegert then looked for a way to make an estimate of the number of objects that could potentially strike Apophis—he used the number of objects 3.4 meters across that strike the Earth each year as a reasonable guide. He then used that number to calculate the odds of such an object striking Apophis and found it to be approximately 10–8, which is, of course, low.

Noting also that such a collision would have to be at just the right angle, he suggests the odds of just the right hit are likely 1 in 2 billion. And he estimates the chances of such a collision to result in a later impact to be 1 in 1 million.


 
New IW And-type star discovered by astronomers

A team of Chinese astronomers has performed photometric observations of a dwarf nova known as Karachurin 12. As a result, they have found that Karachurin 12 is an IW And-type star. The discovery was detailed in a research paper published September 4 on the preprint server arXiv.


 
Huge gamma-ray burst collection 'rivals 250-year-old Messier catalog,' say astronomers

Hundreds of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) have been recorded as part of an enormous global effort so extensive it "rivals the catalog of deep-sky objects created by Messier 250 years ago", astronomers say.



The latest research recorded 535 GRBs—the nearest of which was 77 million light-years from Earth—from 455 telescopes and instruments across the world.



What the team found particularly interesting about their findings was that nearly a third of the GRBs recorded (28%) did not change or evolve as the light from the explosions traveled across the cosmos.

Co-author Dr. Rosa Becerra, of the University of Tor Vergata in Rome, said this suggests that some of the most recent GRBs behave in exactly the same way as those which occurred billions of years ago.

Such a finding is at odds with the big picture commonly seen in the universe, where objects have continuously evolved from the Big Bang.


 
Astronomers discover new planet in Great Bear constellation

Astronomers from the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun have discovered a new planet in the constellation of the Great Bear. It has a mass as much as 11 times that of Jupiter, orbits its star in 14 years and has a temperature of no more than minus 100 degrees Celsius.


 
There's a new scientific paper out suggesting that the Moon was formed from a giant impact on Earth Mk-1 by The, from Anton Petrov:


0:00 Is giant impact hypothesis incorrect?
1:00 Why do we think Earth and Moon were the result of a collision?
3:30 Potential explanations on how this happened
5:00 Why this is important
5:35 Unanswered questions
7:25 The biggest issue with this hypothesis
8:45 Isotopes are identical and no sign of impact
9:30 Conclusions and potential explanations
11:00 So Moon is a planet...maybe?
11:55 But we won't know more until future missions
 
The ESA released this short clip showing BepiColombo's latest Mercury flyby yesterday:


Watch the closest flyby of a planet ever, as the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo spacecraft sped past Mercury during its latest encounter on 4 September 2024.
This flyby marked BepiColombo’s closest approach to Mercury yet, and for the first time, the spacecraft had a clear view of Mercury’s south pole.
This timelapse is made up of 128 different images captured by all three of BepiColombo’s monitoring cameras, M-CAM 1, 2 and 3. We see the planet move in and out of the fields of view of M-CAM 2 and 3, before M-CAM 1 sees the planet receding into the distance at the end of the video.The first few images are taken in the days and weeks before the flyby. Mercury first appears in an image taken at 23:50 CEST (21:50 UTC) on 4 September, at a distance of 191 km. Closest approach was at 23:48 CEST at a distance of 165 km.
The sequence ends around 24 hours later, on 5 September 2024, when BepiColombo was about 243 000 km from Mercury.
During the flyby it was possible to identify various geological features that BepiColombo will study in more detail once in orbit around the planet. Four minutes after closest approach, a large ‘peak ring basin’ called Vivaldi came into view.
This crater was named after the famous Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741). The flyover of Vivaldi crater was the inspiration for using Antonio Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’ as the soundtrack for this timelapse.
Peak ring basins are mysterious craters created by powerful asteroid or comet impacts, so-called because of the inner ring of peaks on an otherwise flattish floor.
A couple of minutes later, another peak ring basin came into view: newly named Stoddart. The name was recently assigned following a request from the M-CAM team, who realised that this crater would be visible in these images and decided it would be worth naming considering its potential interest for scientists in the future.
BepiColombo’s three monitoring cameras provided 1024 x 1024 pixel snapshots. Their main purpose is to monitor the spacecraft’s various booms and antennas, hence why we see parts of the spacecraft in the foreground. The photos that they capture of Mercury during the flybys are a bonus.
The 4 September gravity assist flyby was the fourth at Mercury and the seventh of nine planetary flybys overall. During its eight-year cruise to the smallest and innermost planet of the Solar System, BepiColombo makes one flyby at Earth, two at Venus and six at Mercury, to help steer itself on course for entering orbit around Mercury in 2026.
BepiColombo is an international collaboration between ESA and JAXA.
BepiColombo images in ESA’s Planetary Science: https://psa.esa.int/psa/#/pages/home
Processing notes: The BepiColombo monitoring cameras provide 1024 x 1024 pixel images. These raw images have been lightly processed. The M-CAM 1 images have been cropped to 995 x 995 pixels.
Credits: ESA/BepiColombo/MTM
Acknowledgements: Image processing and video production by Mark McCaughrean
 
A couple of interesting videos here (One from Anton Petrov) concerning origins of life on Earth and Earth's beginnings (This one is speculative):


Could Earth, our rocky blue planet, have once been a gas giant like Jupiter or Neptune? The question sparks the imagination, but this idea does have roots in some intriguing scientific theories that challenge our understanding of Earth's ancient past. So let’s dive into the possibility that Earth, our rocky blue home, could have once been something entirely different billions of years ago.

A rather interesting bit of speculation there.

Now this would be of astronomical interest as it would be useful as a reference for eco-biologists when they eventually get to investigate places such as Europa and Enceladus for alien life:


0:00 Origins of life and asgard bacteria
0:45 How we divide life on Earth
1:55 How we learned about evolution of life
2:40 Why do we have bacteria, archaea and eukaryotes?
3:05 New organism called Asgard microbes
5:15 Asgards that form symbiosis and show links to the origins of life
6:15 Multiple mergers
6:55 New proof from the immune system studies
8:45 What these genes mean and conclusions

Of course when Anton is about the Asgard he's not referring to these guys;):D:

800px-Asgard.jpg

 
A couple of interesting videos here (One from Anton Petrov) concerning origins of life on Earth and Earth's beginnings (This one is speculative):




A rather interesting bit of speculation there.

Now this would be of astronomical interest as it would be useful as a reference for eco-biologists when they eventually get to investigate places such as Europa and Enceladus for alien life:





Of course when Anton is about the Asgard he's not referring to these guys;):D:

800px-Asgard.jpg
Hermiod - Asgard engineer/liaison to the Daedalus.
 
Earth may have had a ring system 466 million years ago

In a discovery that challenges our understanding of Earth's ancient history, researchers have found evidence suggesting that Earth may have had a ring system that formed around 466 million years ago, at the beginning of a period of unusually intense meteorite bombardment known as the Ordovician impact spike.



The research team believes this localized impact pattern was produced after a large asteroid had a close encounter with Earth. As the asteroid passed within Earth's Roche limit, it broke apart due to tidal forces, forming a debris ring around the planet—similar to the rings seen around Saturn and other gas giants today.



The researchers speculate that the ring could have cast a shadow on Earth, blocking sunlight and contributing to a significant global cooling event known as the "Hirnantian Icehouse."

This period, which occurred near the end of the Ordovician, is recognized as one of the coldest in the last 500 million years of Earth's history.


 
New tidally tilted pulsator discovered by astronomers

Astronomers have detected a new tidally pulsator star (TTP) by analyzing the data from NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). The newfound pulsator, designated TIC 435850195, belongs to the rare class of tri-axial TTPs. The finding was detailed in a research paper published September 5 on the pre-print server arXiv.


 
Astronomers detect black hole 'starving' its host galaxy to death

Astronomers have used the NASA/ESA James Webb Space Telescope to confirm that supermassive black holes can starve their host galaxies of the fuel they need to form new stars. The results are reported in the journal Nature Astronomy.



The mass of gas being ejected from the galaxy is greater than what the galaxy would require to keep forming new stars. In essence, the black hole is starving the galaxy to death.


 
Anton Petrov has a video old about an old idea called the Tired Light Hypothesis:


Hello and welcome! My name is Anton and in this video, we will talk about bizarre new evidence for either tired light hypothesis or some strange redshift measurement issues, but it's super preliminary
Links:
https://www.mdpi.com/2571-712X/7/3/41https://www.youtube.com/redirect?ev...//www.mdpi.com/2571-712X/7/3/41&v=gb5Nf1iNOxA
S8 tension: • Confirmation of a Problem With Gravit... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qD69YBwyCzE&t=0s
Cosmic web: • New Evidence That Cosmic Web Feeds Th... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gZHvrKyNkw&t=0s
#tiredlight #redshift #universe
0:00 Tired light hypothesis
1:00 Big claims?
1:43 Basics of redshift measurements
2:20 Tired light hypothesis issues
3:00 Cosmology has issues too though
3:55 Could the redshift model be wrong? Methods used
5:15 Specific techniques used
6:30 Results and bizarre discoveries
7:45 Potential explanations
8:50 Hubble tensions connection - can this solve the cosmological issue?
9:30 Issues with the study
11:30 What needs to be done to confirm this
 
Dr. Rachel Phillips aka GEO GIRL uploaded a new video a couple of days ago concerning the asteroid Psyche:


Check out my other interview about Pulverizing Asteroids on GSA's geosociety channel: • Pulverizing Asteroids For Planetary D... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQx5ZLdlJZs&t=0s
Video Chapters:
0:00 Intro to Topic & Interviewee
3:09 What is the Psyche Mission & Why Are We Doing it?
4:21 GSA Connects 2024 Meeting & Presentation
4:53 Why do we want to visit a ball of metal?
5:56 A Window into Earth’s Core!
6:18 Differentiation & Core Hypothesis
9:23 How Psyche lost its surface layers
10:03 When did Psyche lose its surface layers?
11:37 Science Goals & Objectives of Psyche Mission
13:48 Objective #1
14:44 Instruments on Psyche
16:02 Can we date the rocks on Psyche?
17:32 Objective #2
19:25 How Big is Psyche?
20:25 Objective #3
22:20 Objective #4
24:43 Objective #5
27:18 Mining on Psyche?
30:07 Why an Orbiter instead of Flyby or Lander?
31:49 How far along is the mission?
33:34 How to get started in Space Exploration!
35:18 Check out my Pulverizing Asteroids Interview!
 
At the end of this month Earth will briefly have a second very small moon, from ABC:


Astrophysics Professor Adam Frank explains the gravitational capture event involving tiny asteroid 2024 PT5.

I wonder if Dr. Evil will try to set up a secret base on it;):D?
 
Earth's new 'mini-moon' will orbit our planet for the next 2 months

Earth is set to gain another moon by the end of the month — a small asteroid that will be snared by our planet's gravity until the end of the year, scientists say.

The mini-moon, an asteroid called 2024 PT5, was spotted by the Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) on Aug. 7. The space rock will make one complete orbit of our planet between Sept. 29 and Nov. 25 before escaping Earth's gravity.

Yet despite this 57-day close flyby of our planet, the asteroid will be hard to spot as it's just 33 feet (10 meters) wide.


 
I wonder if SpaceX or some other space-launch outfit will quickly try to win up and launch a simple space-probe to investigate it?
 
Detailed model suggests organic matter on Mars was formed from atmospheric formaldehyde

This discovery indicates that formaldehyde contributed to the formation of organic matter on ancient Mars, implying that bio-important molecules such as sugars and ribose (a component of RNA, which is present in all living cells) may have been produced on the planet.


 
 
This seems a really big breakthrough.

Astronomers' new technique measures temperature of a star with high precision

Astronomers study stars by looking at the different colors of light they emit—colors they capture and analyze using spectroscopy. Now a team led by Université de Montréal's Étienne Artigau has developed a technique that uses a star's spectrum to chart variations in its temperature to the nearest tenth of a degree Celsius, over a range of time scales.

"By tracking a star's temperature, we can learn a lot about it, such as its rotation period, its stellar activity, its magnetic field," explained Artigau, an astrophysicist at UdeM's Trottier Institute for Research on Exoplanets (IREx). "Such detailed knowledge is also essential for finding and studying a star's planets."



”It's very difficult to confirm the existence of an exoplanet or to study its atmosphere without precise knowledge of the host star's properties and how they vary over time," explained Charles Cadieux, a doctoral student at IREx who contributed to the study.

"This new technique gives us an invaluable tool for ensuring that our knowledge of exoplanets is solid and for advancing our characterization of their properties." It's very difficult to confirm the existence of an exoplanet or to study its atmosphere without precise knowledge of the host star's properties and how they vary over time," explained Charles Cadieux, a doctoral student at IREx who contributed to the study.



The innovative technique will be directly applicable to observations from NIRPS, a spectrograph installed last year in the ESO telescope in Chili. According to the researchers, it would also be possible to use this technique with space-based instruments, such as the James Webb Space Telescope.

"The power and versatility of this technique means we can exploit existing data from numerous observatories to detect variations that were previously far too small to be perceived, even on very long timescales," said Artigau.

"This opens up new horizons in our study of the stars, their activity and their planets."


 
An interesting new video from Fraser Cain including about the possibility that Earth had rings in the late Ordovician:


Could we repair missions like JWST and Gaia? Polaris Dawn returns to Earth, did Earth once have rings? and a peanut-shaped asteroid just drifted past Earth. https://www.youtube.com/redirect?ev...198440-universe-today-book-club&v=hm44Blv5Y0k
Host: Fraser Cain
Producer: Anton Pozdnyakov
Editing: Artem Pozdnyakov
 
New study uncovers unexpected interaction between Mars and the solar wind

Scientists of the Swedish Institute of Space Physics (IRF) in Kiruna and Umeå University find that under certain conditions the induced magnetosphere of Mars can degenerate. The findings are presented in a new study published in Nature.


 
Anton Petrov has uploaded a video about how recent advances in astronomy have enabled astronomers to start imaging the surfaces of stars:


0:00 We can now see surfaces of distant stars
0:25 Polaris and R Doradus observed by astronomers
1:05 Observations of R Doradus and why it's exciting
4:02 Polaris - the closest cepheid variable
7:00 Solving some of the mysteries
8:48 Conclusions and what still needs to be learned
 
Anton Petrov has a video out about the biggest known galactic jet and astronomers have yet to have a satisfactory explanation for it:


0:00 Largest galaxic jet ever found - Porphyrion
0:48 We don't know how these jets are produced
3:15 Largest structure ever?
4:25 Several discoveries - so not an anomaly
5:35 Connection to the cosmic web
6:10 Potential explanations
7:10 Implications and final thoughts
 
A magnetic halo in the Milky Way: New discoveries about galactic outflow

A new study led by the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF), and with contributions from Radboud University's Marijke Haverkorn, has unveiled significant insights into the Milky Way: a magnetized galactic halo.

This discovery challenges previous models of our galaxy's structure and evolution. Researchers have identified several magnetized structures extending far above and below the galactic plane (reaching heights of more than 16,000 light-years or 150 quadrillion kilometers), revealing one of the origins of the so-called eROSITA Bubbles, which are large-scale powered by intense outflows of gas and energy that are also being generated by the explosive death of stars in supernovae.



The study discloses that the magnetic fields within these bubbles are highly organized, forming thin filamentary structures. These filaments stretch up to around 150 times the full moon's diameter, showing their immense scale. The filaments are related to the hot winds with a temperature of 3.5 million Kelvin, ejected from the galactic Disk and powered by star-forming regions.


 
Anton Petrov has another video out about the recent discovery that Earth may've had a ring-system orbiting it during the late Ordovician period:


0:00 Strange discovery that Earth had rings
0:42 Middle Ordovician period and the extinction
2:00 Asteroids?
3:00 New study and unusual propositions
4:30 Other planets and how it usually works
5:40 Summary and what this means
6:30 Shadow and glaciation
7:15 Modeling and future studies
8:05 Terraforming?
 
Titan's major seas have a common level, suggesting underground connections - cave complexes. I've seen elsewhere that the water ice 'rock' of Titan resembles karst landscapes on Earth. This is complicated by a large proportion or organic material likely to exist.


So then, a verrrry interesting world.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1YJ-j9r14U
 
Here's a new and interesting ESA video concerning asteroid defence:


There’s a mystery out there in deep space – and solving it will make Earth safer. That’s why the European Space Agency’s Hera mission is taking shape – to go where one particular spacecraft has gone before.
On 26 September 2022, moving at 6.1 km/s, NASA’s DART spacecraft crashed into the Dimorphos asteroid. Part of our Solar System changed. The impact shrunk the orbit of the Great Pyramid-sized Dimorphos around its parent asteroid, the mountain-sized Didymos.
This grand experiment was performed to prove we could defend Earth against an incoming asteroid, by striking it with a spacecraft to deflect it. DART succeeded. But that still leaves many things scientists don’t know: What is the precise mass and makeup of Dimorphos? What did the impact do to the asteroid? How big is the crater left by DART’s collision? Or has Dimorphos completely cracked apart, to be held together only by its own weak gravity?
That’s why we’re going back – with ESA’s Hera mission. The spacecraft will revisit Dimorphos to gather vital close-up data about the deflected body, to turn DART’s grand-scale experiment into a well-understood and potentially repeatable planetary defence technique.
The mission will also perform the most detailed exploration yet of a binary asteroid system – although binaries make up 15% of all known asteroids, one has never been surveyed in detail.
Hera will also perform technology demonstration experiments, including the deployment ESA’s first deep space ‘CubeSats’ – shoebox-sized spacecraft to venture closer than the main mission then eventually land – and an ambitious test of 'self-driving' for the main spacecraft, based on vision-based navigation.
By the end of Hera’s observations, Dimorphos will become the best studied asteroid in history – which is vital, because if a body of this size ever struck Earth it could destroy a whole city. The dinosaurs had no defence against asteroids, because they never had a space agency. But – through Hera – we are teaching ourselves what we can do to reduce this hazard and make space safer.
 
Anton Petrov has a video out about a study that has found Sagittarius A*s age and how it formed:


0:00 Sgr A* study and new findings
2:05 X-ray emissions and other detections
3:05 Chimneys and exhaust events
3:55 How do black holes grow though?
4:48 Evidence of collision
6:15 What most likely happened
7:10 Why this is important
 

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