Space, Planets and eclipses

[JustKelli]

Astronomers discover giant wave-shaped gaseous structure 'Radcliffe Wave' in the Milky Way Galaxy

The wave structure is the largest ever seen in the galaxy and is made up of interconnected stellar nurseries.

The wave structure is the largest ever seen in the galaxy and is made up of interconnected stellar nurseries. (representative image)

Astronomers from Harvard University have found the presence of a wave-shaped gaseous structure named 'Radcliffe Wave' in the Milky Way Galaxy. According to the research which has been published in the journal - Nature - the wave structure is the largest ever seen in the galaxy and is made up of interconnected stellar nurseries.

This discovery by the university transforms the 150-year-old vision of the nearby stellar nurseries*as an expanding ring in one featuring a star-forming filament that reached trillions of miles below and above the galactic disk.

What is the study talking about?

The study was enabled through a relatively new analysis of data from the European Space Agency's Gaia spacecraft which was launched in 2013 along with the mission of precisely measuring the distance, position, and motion of the stars.

The researchers combined the data from Gaia which was super-accurate, with other measurements for constructing a detailed, 3D map of interstellar matter in the Milky Way, and noticed an unexpected pattern in the spiral arm which is closest to the Earth.

The researchers further discovered a thin, long structure, about 9,000 light-years long and 400 light-years wide, having a shape that of a wave, cresting 500 light-years above and below the mid-plane of our galaxy's disk.
The wave consists of stellar nurseries that have been previously thought to form a part of the 'Gould's Belt', which is a band of star-forming regions and is believed to have an orientation around the Sun in a circular or ring-like fashion.

"No astronomer expected that we live next to a giant, wave-like collection of gas -- or that it forms the Local Arm of the Milky Way," said the researcher, Alyssa Goodman.

"We were completely shocked when we first realized how long and straight the Radcliffe Wave is, looking down on it from above in 3D -- but how sinusoidal it is when viewed from Earth. The Wave's very existence is forcing us to rethink our understanding of the Milky Way's 3D structure," Goodman added.

"Gould and Herschel both observed bright stars forming in an arc projected on the sky, so for a long time, people have been trying to figure out if these molecular clouds actually form a ring in 3D," said another researcher, Joao Alves.

"Instead, what we've observed is the largest coherent gas structure we know of in the galaxy, organized not in a ring but in a massive, undulating filament. The Sun lies only 500 light-years from the Wave at its closest point. It's been right in front of our eyes all the time, but we couldn't see it until now," Alves added.

What does the newly developed three-dimensional map shows?

The newly developed three-dimensional map shows Earth's galactic neighborhood in a new light, which gives researchers a revised view of the Milky Way and is also opening the door to some of the major discoveries.
"We don't know what causes this shape but it could be like a ripple in a pond as if something extraordinarily massive landed in our galaxy," said Alves.

"What we do know is that our Sun interacts with this structure. It passed by a festival of supernovae as it crossed Orion 13 million years ago, and in another 13 million years it will cross the structure again, sort of like we are 'surfing the wave," Alves added.

A long-standing challenge for astronomy and astronomers is disentangling structures that are present in the 'dusty' galactic neighborhood. In previous studies, a group of researchers mapped the three-dimensional distribution of dust using a vast survey of stars.

Using the new data researchers recently augmented these techniques, which dramatically improves the ability of astronomers for measuring the distances to star-forming regions. The work which was led by the researcher Zucker has been published in the Astrophysical Journal.

"We suspected there might be larger structures that we just couldn't put in context. So, to create an accurate map of our solar neighborhood, we combined observations from space telescopes like Gaia with astrostatistics, data visualization, and numerical simulations," said Zucker.

"We pulled this team together so we could go beyond processing and tabulating the data to actively visualizing it -- not just for ourselves but for everyone. Now, we can literally see the Milky Way with new eyes," she added.
"Studying stellar births is complicated by imperfect data. We risk getting the details wrong because if you're confused about distance, you're confused about size," another researcher Finkbeiner said.

Agreeing to the claims by Zucker and Finkbeiner, Goodman said, "All of the stars in the universe, including our Sun, are formed in dynamic, collapsing, clouds of gas and dust. But determining how much mass the clouds have, how large they are -- has been difficult,*because these properties depend on how far away the cloud is.

[JustKelli]

Keep an eye out for the latest buzzwords "gravitational waves" that you will be hearing a lot about in coming days weeks and years...

Here is a gravitional wave caused by 2 dead stars colliding.

[Lando Griffin]

Devil horns sunrise over the Persian Gulf during solar eclipse:

http://the-sun.com/news/225664/incredible-red-devil-horns-sunrise-photos-captured-during-rare-solar-eclipse-mirage-over-the-ocean/

Video:

You Tube

You Tube

[JustKelli]

I won't bother posting the whole article because it hurts my brain trying to understand it any more than scientists don't either but there was something funny about it as I read the article.

Here is the first paragraph:

Astronomers in Europe, working with members of Canada’s CHIME Fast Radio Burst collaboration, have pinpointed the location of a repeating fast radio burst (FRB) first detected by the CHIME telescope in British Columbia in 2018. The breakthrough is only the second time that scientists have determined the precise location of a repeating source of these millisecond bursts of radio waves from space.

The article goes on to say that these bursts are coming from a "nearby galaxy". As I read on I learned that that nearby galaxy is only half a billion light years away lol.


I really wanted there to be a there there in that story. My bad.

BUT if I woke you up for nothing here is a bone.

Astronomers have spotted a group of young stars...



The bad part is they are a part of the Milky Way's impending galactic collision...

[LongTimeLu]

One night last week I was out after dark and looked up at the stars, which, in an urban area were surprisingly bright.
As I watched five points passed west to east all in a line, then some more followed.
It totally freaked me out hoping we're being visited, but then my boring rational brain said "man-made". I expected aircraft lights or some such.
(I was supposed to go check flight-path websites but never got around to it)

In this weeks news:

Originally Posted by LTL://bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-51049746

California's SpaceX company says it will work constructively with the scientific community to fix the brightness of its satellites.

The firm has come under fire for the brilliance of its Starlink spacecraft, which are being launched to deliver broadband to every corner of the globe.

One hundred and eighty of the platforms have already been sent to orbit with thousands more to follow.

Astronomers fear they will interfere with telescope observations.

Pictures of the night sky showing long streaks as the Starlinks cross the field of view have now become a heightened complaint.

But a SpaceX executive told the American Astronomical Society conference in Hawaii on Wednesday that the company was seeking ways to make the platforms much less intrusive.

This was raised by astronomers last year

Originally Posted by LTL://mobile.twitter.com/i/web/status/1132163931378610178

I know people are excited about those images of the train of SpaceX Starlink satellites, but it gives me pause. They’re bright, and there are going to be a lot of them. If SpaceX launches all 12,000, they will outnumber stars visible to the naked eye.
10:58 PM - 24 May 2019

And Elon gave 'assurances'

Originally Posted by LTL://businessinsider.in/science/space/news/elon-musks-space-x-starlink-launch-to-eliminate-satellite-brightness/articleshow/73079659.cms

Despite Musk’s assurances that satellites will have “0% impact” on the astronomical discoveries, scientists have furiously disagreed. Even after reaching their designated altitude of 550 kilometres, the satellites are visible on the edge of the horizon to the naked eye.

Currently, the fuss is only over 60 of SpaceX’s satellites. But, the company has approval SpaceX already has the approval to launch a total of 12,000 satellites for Starlink. Furthermore. it’s also seeking permission from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) to launch an additional 30,000 satellites. This will bring the total up to 42,000 internet satellites - about 5 times more spacecraft than humanity has ever flown.

But hey! On the bright side you'll be able to get porn anywhere you are!

[JustKelli]

Ever wonder how many stars there are out in space? Ya me too.

Anyway there are about 170 billion galaxies out there and that translates to around roughly a septillion stars in the observable universe. That's 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars. Which is, for lack of a more fitting description ... a lot of stars.*

BUT we can only see about 5,000 from any point on earth if you look into space for an entire night. Or half that if you just look up and then get bored lol.

[LongTimeLu]

Originally Posted by JustKelli

Astronomers have spotted a group of young stars...



The bad part is they are a part of the Milky Way's impending galactic collision...

social media removed

Originally Posted by Ethan Siegel @StartsWithABang

The Milky Way Is Gaining New Stars From A Collision That Hasn't Even Occurred Yet. Our home galaxy is making new stars from material from the Magellanic Clouds, and they're still nearly 200,000 light-years away. Astronomy is cool. #AAS235
11:07 PM - 8 Jan 2020

[JustKelli]

We have our very own homegrown new celebrities...



‘The first reaction was disbelief’: Calgary researchers discover magnetic structure in Milky Way galaxy

It’s a discovery of cosmic proportions: a never-before-seen look into the magnetic structure of the Milky Way galaxy.

The celestial breakthrough was made by two University of Calgary students, Russell Shanahan and Stephen Lemmer, who at first thought their findings were a mistake.

Lemmer described the magnetic field in the galaxy as the muscles of the body.

“It gives you the structure. It holds up other things [like] the material in the galaxy, the material in all of space,” Lemmer said.

*The image shows a section of the Milky Way Galaxy the group analyzed. It is located in the sky in the constellation Aquila (the Eagle). The nebulae in the image are all hidden from view by dark clouds. Only infrared and radio waves can pass through those clouds. Courtesy: Jeroen Stil/University of Calgary

“The first reaction was disbelief, kind of skeptical if this was a real signature or was some false detection of some noise,” U of C PhD student Shanahan said.

The pair was working with data from an international survey called the THOR project, a comprehensive survey of data of interstellar gas in the Milky Way.

Lemmer was an astrophysics undergraduate in the radio astronomy group at the time who noticed the unusually high values.

“The structure that we have is a combination of a magnetic field of the galaxy as well as plasma inside the galaxy, and what we saw was a spike in data that we didn’t expect so this is occurring in a place we hadn’t expected before,” he said.

But the math checks out. What Shanahan and Lemmer found was an invisible magnetic field in the Sagittarius arm of the galaxy.

Astro scientists said the discovery is significant because it maps out a clearer picture of our galaxy’s composition and has astronomical implications in understanding how stars are formed.

“How star formations are formed is still kind of unknown. This discovery of peak and rotation measure can indicate that magnetic fields play a more significant role in star formations,” Shanahan said.

*The graceful, winding arms of the majestic spiral galaxy M51 (NGC 5194) appear like a grand spiral staircase sweeping through space. Courtesy: Jeroen Stil/ University of Calgary

The pair’s discovery happened while working with radio astronomer and associate professor Jereon Stil on a research project. Stil has been a radio astronomer for 30 years and has been doing survey work for about 15 years.

“It’s kind of humbling to get these guys to the frontier of science, [push] the frontier and say, ‘Wow, we need to tell the world about this,'” Stil said.

The advancements in technology made this discovery possible. Since the 1980s, scientists have been looking in this area but telescopes were unequipped — until now.*

“The radio telescopes were not equipped to detect this high, strong effect,” Shanahan said.

“It wasn’t until we had more sophisticated telescopes and technology to actually observe [this] fine signature.”

*The image shows the THOR-only image of a section of the Milky Way. Courtesy: Jeroen Stil/ University of Calgary

The five-year research finally paid off. The finding was published in the Astrophysical Journal, sparking more international interest and kicking off additional research. Shanahan and Stil even went to Germany to present their findings.

“We met in Berlin and shared what we were doing and what we found. When we presented this result to our colleagues, there was an audible gasp, like what is this? Because the thought wasn’t that we would find something like that. It was shocking,” Shanahan said.

Stil said the discovery spurred a lot of follow-up.

“The bigger international team is putting in proposals about some observing time on the telescopes. There is theoretical work and we have some more undergraduates on the implications and taking this [in the future],” Stil said.

“People think scientific discovery is like something like eureka and what we did in the last five minutes. This is a long process. Russell has been working on this for the past five years, and a lot of nitty-gritty data processing and making the images and technical analysis. What was special about here, there was this point where we said, ‘What is this?’

“The true surprise and the eureka moment was when we thought, ‘This must be the arm.’ It’s very exciting.”

[JustKelli]

Interesting but read on before getting too excited. The problem with technology (telescopes) advancing so rapidly is presumptions are running rampant in the science world as they "see what they want to see"... oh ya, and it's tidally locked and a little toasty on the surface.

An Earth-size planet in the habitable zone? New NASA discovery is one special world.

By*Meghan Bartels*2 days ago

HONOLULU — When scientists search for alien planets, they get a special thrill when they find one that seems to reflect our own world back to us.

TOI 700 d is the newest member of that elite club. The planet was discovered courtesy of NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, as one of three worlds in a distant solar system. Unlike its neighbors — and the vast majority of planets scientists have identified so far — it seems to be about the same size as Earth and to orbit its star at a distance that would allow water to remain liquid on its surface. The discovery was announced here on Jan. 6 at the*235th meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

As an Earth-size planet in its star's habitable zone, TOI 700 d is a big deal for scientists. "We really want to understand the question, could life form on these planets around very small stars? And this is kind of a nice big step towards that goal," Joseph Rodriguez, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts, told Space.com. "We're nowhere near it yet and we're talking, probably, decades, if not much, much longer to answer this question. but we're making steps towards*arguably one of the biggest questions in science*— and not just science but philosophy, religion and a lot of other things."

But for all their excitement, the scientists involved in the discovery don't know a whole lot about TOI 700 d. First, they know about its star, a red dwarf that appears to be a more pleasant sun than some. Active stars can*fling bursts of radiation and of highly charged material at planets orbiting them, potentially sterilizing these worlds.

"The star is absolutely quiet," Emily Gilbert, a graduate student in astronomy at the University of Chicago, told Space.com. "We had 11 [months] of TESS data and I didn't see a single flare. The star is a little bit older so it's kind of calmed down a bit over its lifetime, we expect."

The scientists have spotted three planets so far around this quiet star: TOI 700 b, c and d. The first two orbit too close to the star to be promising worlds for life, but the third orbits in*the magic ring scientists call the habitable zone, where temperatures allow water to remain liquid on a planet's surface. "It's actually farther into the habitable zone than Earth; Earth itself is barely habitable," Gilbert said.

They are also confident, although not positive, that this planet is*tidally locked*— the same side always faces its star in a constant day, while the other side is in constant night.

But from there, the uncertainties start to pile up. In particular, the scientists working on TOI 700 d want one crucial measurement: its mass. That number would clarify how likely the planet is to be a rocky world like ours, rather than a gassy body that looks like a*small sibling of Neptune.

They've announced their findings anyway because that measurement is going to be very hard to get. "There are facilities that can do it," Rodriguez said. "But there's only a few, it's going to take years probably and multiple campaigns and hundreds of observations."

The scientists also don't know right now*whether the planet has an atmosphere, a vital clue when looking for potential life. "If you have just a rock, no one can live there," Gilbert said. Unfortunately, answering that question will be even more difficult than measuring the world's mass.

So for now, scientists are assuming TOI 700 d is rocky, and using models to try to bridge the gap between what they know about the planet and what they know about what life requires. "Modeling helps us say, how robust is this planet? How well can it maintain habitable surface temperatures under all these conditions?" Gabrielle Engelmann-Suissa, a Universities Space Research Association visiting research assistant at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, told Space.com.

All told, Engelmann-Suissa and her colleagues ran 20 different models, each starting with a different combination of surface characteristics: Is the world covered in land, or is it covered in water? And atmospheres? Like Earth's today, like ancient Earth's, or like*that of Mars, for example.

Engelmann-Suissa and her colleagues have no idea which of those models is a better match for the reality of TOI 700 d — if any of them are. "It sounds like a free-for-all and it kind of is when you model all these types of planets," she said. But the point isn't to stumble upon a scenario that matches the distant truth. Instead, it's to get a sense of the range of possibilities and to understand whether scientific instruments could distinguish between them.

On the first front, the TOI 700 d models look somewhat promising. "None of them went into a*runaway greenhouse effect," Engelmann-Suissa said. "In no simulation that we studied did the ocean evaporate, which is cool, that's a good sign." She added that the global average temperatures ranged fairly dramatically, but not beyond the bounds of what scientists can imagine particularly hardy life withstanding.

A diagram showing the orbits of all three known planets in the TOI 700 system.*(Image credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Smith (USRA))

The hottest simulation, for example, turned up an average surface temperature of about 196 degrees Fahrenheit (91 degrees Celsius). "That's way too hot for us to be comfortable," Engelmann-Suissa said. "It's really hot, but it would kind of be presumptuous to say there's no life"

Modeling's second goal, to better understand how instruments could see the world, offers a grimmer evaluation of TOI 700 d. Nothing scientists have right now will be able to begin to differentiate between all these possible flavors of planet. NASA's next major telescope, the*James Webb Space Telescope, won't be able to either, and most future concept designs rely on similar apparatuses.

"That's a big problem in our field, there's kind of dim prospects for looking at these planets," Engelmann-Suissa said. "We need to really experiment with detectors and figure out, OK, how can we get this signal precision? Luckily, it's not my problem."

But what the scientists do know for sure is that starting this summer, TESS will again be pointed toward TOI 700 — and that could reveal whole new mysteries to try to solve. "Maybe we'll find out that we don't know the architecture of the system: Hey, there's a few more planets," Rodriguez said. "Maybe it's something where it starts to resemble*our own solar system, which seems to be uncommon.

"But we just don't know, and I think that's really interesting," Rodriguez said. "We're going to have a lot more data and we're just starting to peel the orange and figure out what's going on with the system."

[JustKelli]

Years measure time but light years measure distance...