Astronomy August 2021

the exoplanet explosion

In 1992, a discovery rocked the astronomy world when astronomers found a planet orbiting a pulsar in the Milky Way Galaxy. It was the first planet discovered outside our own solar system. Technology and emerging, clever techniques were on parallel tracks to give us immense new insight into the galaxy around us. Thirty years after the initial discovery, we now know of more than 4,700 extrasolar planets in nearly 3,500 different systems. None of this is really surprising. The conventional wisdom about how stars form suggests that a disk of debris — of planets and small bodies like asteroids and comets — should be commonplace, if not universal. It is comforting to know that thousands of stars relatively near us in the Milky Way have their own planetary systems. However, despite…

astro letters

Another sky While reading Randall Hyman’s excellent article, “The galaxy’s marvelous rogues and misfits,” from the April 2021 issue, I couldn’t help but think about what the night sky would look like from a planet of a rogue star that is drifting somewhere between the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies. I bet a night sky without stars would be very unsettling, at least for an earthling’s perspective! — Joe Stevens, Casco, MI A natural curiosity David Eicher’s February 2021 editorial, titled “A renewal for stargazing,” couldn’t have been more timely and spot-on. The two significant “once-in-a-lifetime” cosmic events in 2020, witnessed by so many, were definitely impressive enough to add new hobbyists to the ranks. The universe is unraveling its never-ending mysteries in so many ways. It only shows humans will never get…

new light on the veil nebula

Around 8,000 years ago, our distant ancestors may have thought they were seeing a new star briefly join the northern sky. They were actually witnessing the explosive death of a massive star 2,000 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. The shock waves from this supernova are still traveling away from the epicenter of the blast, colliding with the surrounding gas. These collisions create the appearance of delicate threads and filaments for which the remnant is famous, earning it the nickname Veil Nebula. Only a portion of the nebula appears in this image. At 110 light-years in diameter, the remnant is so large that its various arcs each have their own designation. Named Caldwell 35 (NGC 6960), this portion is roughly 2 light-years across. Using new processing techniques, astronomers have enhanced certain details…

a bird’s-eye view of mars

It’s been mere months since NASA’s latest Mars rover, Perseverance, dramatically landed on the Red Planet’s surface. And boy, has it been busy. Since touching down Feb. 18, Perseverance has tested its systems, recorded audio of its surroundings, captured thousands of images, spotted several possible science targets, and even proved it can pluck oxygen out of Mars’ thin air — an invaluable option, should humans ever venture there. Yet, if we’re being honest, the carsized rover has so far been overshadowed by a tiny, 4-pound (1.8 kilograms) helicopter that simply hitched a ride to the Red Planet to test out some new tech. That high-flying show stealer is none other than Ingenuity. Ingenuity was born as an experimental tagalong mission slated for a 30-day run shortly after Perseverance’s landing. After a slight…

quick takes

REUSABLE RIDE SpaceX’s Crew-2 launch on April 24 ferried four astronauts — two American, one European, and one Japanese — to the International Space Station (ISS). It was the company’s third crewed flight and the first to reuse a rocket and crew capsule that had flown before. LIGHT FINDS A WAY Recent data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array show baby stars being born less than 1,000 light-years from the Milky Way’s center. Scientists had thought star formation was extremely difficult in the galaxy’s central zone due to turbulence and strong magnetic fields. SMATTERING OF ANTISTARS? Astronomers have identified 14 stars that could be made of antimatter, based on their gammaray emissions, which resembles predictions of matter-antimatter annihilation. Although standard cosmology holds that nearly no antimatter remains in the universe, an experiment mounted to the…

unusual records

Bob’s newest book, Earth-Shattering (Little, Brown and Company, 2019), explores the greatest cataclysms that have shaken the universe. First-time celestial events and superlatives are always fun. So this month, let’s scour the history books to uncover some record-holders you’ll recognize — and some you won’t. Since astrophysicists spend 75 percent of their time doing spectroscopy, who first analyzed light from a distant object using a spectroscope? The answer is Robert Bunsen, whose super-hot burner gave you so many high school memories. One night in 1859, Bunsen and his pal, the electrical wizard Gustav Kirchhoff, saw a neighbor’s house on fire a mile (1.6 kilometers) away. They pointed their newly invented spectroscope at it and saw brief flashes of various colored lines — the now-familiar signatures of elements — as lead or copper…