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Astronomical News

Peripart said:
Well, you're kind, but it was as much a proof of concept as anything. Holding my phone by hand was always going to result in a bit of blurring at that distance. Once I'm able to hold my mobile still, and block off any extraneous light, I'll try again. I'm not looking to get any special image processing software (yet!), but I'd like to see what the phone/telescope combo is capable of.
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What you’re doing is called digiscoping. The following site has some info and some links, it’s mainly talking about wildlife but the theory is the same

https://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/technique/expert_advice/guide-to-digiscoping-100214
 
I believe that some phones have a feature which allows you to take multiple photos and combine the best bits to produce one pic containing all of them
 
Trevp666 said:
I believe that some phones have a feature which allows you to take multiple photos and combine the best bits to produce one pic containing all of them
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To be fair, I think that most of the blurriness in my photo was down to the phone not being kept absolutely still against the 'scope. I have plans in place to remedy this for next time...
 
Peripart said:
Well, as promised, and even less spectacular than you feared, here's the photo I took on my mobile phone by holding it over the eye-piece of my telescope:

View attachment 33110

Brightest dot is Jupiter, with 2 of its moons visible (1 in the haze just at the top of the planet), and Saturn at bottom right. If you squint, you can see that Saturn isn't round - the rings looked better using my eyes!

Forget the orientation, which isn't what you'd see with the naked eye. I haven't taken the trouble to correct for the inversion caused by looking through a refractor, nor the angle of the eyepiece. If I improve my astrophotography skills, I'll tidy up the presentation!

As I say, this was Sunday, just after sunset, so a day before nearest conjunction.

No proper clear skies since then - this was the cloudy sunset yesterday:

View attachment 33111
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I really like the sunset photo. Lovely colours, bare trees etc.
 
The discovery of a presumably uninhabitable exoplanet has something of a silver lining. It's almost 10 billion years old, indicating rocky earth-type planets were being formed far earlier than previously believed. It's suggested planets of such extended age may recommend themselves as places where life had plenty of time to develop.
Astronomers Find an Astonishing 'Super-Earth' That's Nearly as Old as The Universe

It turns out that planets can live a very long time indeed.

Around one of the galaxy's oldest stars, an orange dwarf named TOI-561 just 280 light-years away, astronomers have found three orbiting exoplanets - one of which is a rocky world 1.5 times the size of Earth, whipping around the star on a breakneck 10.5-hour orbit.

Obviously an exoplanet so close to its star isn't likely to be habitable, even if it is rocky like Earth, Venus and Mars. It would have a temperature of 2,480 Kelvin, tidally locked with a magma ocean on the permanent day side.

But the TOI-561 system, planets and all, is one of the oldest ever seen, at an estimated age of around 10 billion years.

That's more than twice as old as the Solar System, nearly as old as the Universe itself, and evidence that rocky exoplanets can remain stable for a very long time.

"TOI-561 b is one of the oldest rocky planets yet discovered," said astronomer Lauren Weiss of the University of Hawai'i.

"Its existence shows that the universe has been forming rocky planets almost since its inception 14 billion years ago." ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.sciencealert.com/an-astonishing-super-earth-exoplanet-is-nearly-as-old-as-the-universe
 
Got an email from jpl.nasa.gov today (as did 4 million others) that the Mars Perseverance rover will land on Feb 18th 2021.
https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/

BoardingPass.jpg

Will try to watch the landing live and can then claim my 313,000,000 air miles for my travel wallet.
 
Colliding White Dwarfs Produced Bizarre Slime-Green Zombie Star

BRIAN KOBERLEIN, UNIVERSE TODAY
23 JANUARY 2021

A white dwarf isn't your typical kind of star.

While main sequence stars such as our Sun fuse nuclear material in their cores to keep themselves from collapsing under their own weight, white dwarfs use an effect known as quantum degeneracy. The quantum nature of electrons means that no two electrons can have the same quantum state.

When you try to squeeze electrons into the same state, they exert a degeneracy pressure that keeps the white dwarf from collapsing.

But there is a limit to how much mass a white dwarf can have.

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar made a detailed calculation of this limit in 1930 and found that if a white dwarf has more mass than about 1.4 Suns, gravity will crush the star into a neutron star or black hole.

But the Chandrasekhar limit is based upon a rather simple model. One where the star is in equilibrium and isn't rotating. Real white dwarfs are more complex, particularly when they undergo collisions.

Binary white dwarfs are fairly common in the universe. Many Sun-like stars and red dwarfs are part of a binary system.

When these stars reach they reach the end of their main-sequence life they become a binary system of white dwarfs.

Over time their orbits can decay, eventually causing the two white dwarfs to collide. What happens next depends upon the situation.

[...]

https://www.sciencealert.com/colliding-white-dwarfs-produce-slime-green-zombie-star
 
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-55956058

The BBC headlined this As why are people counting stars? I thought that might take a bit of time but is an investigation into light pollution in different areas and people are being asked to report how many stars they can see in Orion.

“Experts want to get an accurate picture of light pollution levels, by asking members of the public to count how many stars they can see.
Organisers at Campaign to Protect Rural England want people across the country to focus on the stars in Orion, between 6 and 14 February 2021.
Light pollution can be harmful to birds, insects and other creatures.”

Looking at the weather forecast for tonight it will be zero!
 
I do think to myself that 'experts' give the general public credit for having more intelligence than they actually do though.

I mean, most people have difficulty identifying anything in the sky on a good day/night.

I know the 3 stars that make up Orion's belt but have just had to look up their names (Zeta (Alnitak), Epsilon (Alnilam), and Delta (Mintaka) ).

I'm aware that 'Betelgeuse' makes up a part of Orion, but I doubt whether I could accurately point it out.
As for the rest, .....nah......

And I spend quite a lot of time looking up at the night sky as I have an interest in seeing the ISS, other satellites, and any planets I can make out (and of course any meteorite showers and bolides).
 
Lots of good things to see, if you do know the stars. I like to know their names, if they have one, and their distance and other characteristics, such as their arity (the number of stars in the system). Alpha Centauri, for instance, has three stars, and Castor has six. Even familiar Sirius has two, a big one and a little one.
On a cold clear night you can journey in your imagination from the nearest visible star (which is Sirius, from the UK) at 8 light years, to Procyon at 12 ly, across to Pollux at 33 ly, Castor at 48, Aldebaran at 66, Bellatrix at 200ly, the Pleiades at 400ly, Betelguese at about 500ly, Rigel at 800 or so, and the Belt stars at about a thousand light years or more. I call this my 'thousand-light-year ramble', and actually Alnilam is probably a couple of thousand light years way.
Weird, cos all these stars look about the same brightness more-or-less, but Alnilam would be shockingly bright if it were as close as Sirius.
 
Trevp666 said:
I do think to myself that 'experts' give the general public credit for having more intelligence than they actually do though.

I mean, most people have difficulty identifying anything in the sky on a good day/night.

I know the 3 stars that make up Orion's belt but have just had to look up their names (Zeta (Alnitak), Epsilon (Alnilam), and Delta (Mintaka) ).

I'm aware that 'Betelgeuse' makes up a part of Orion, but I doubt whether I could accurately point it out.
As for the rest, .....nah......

And I spend quite a lot of time looking up at the night sky as I have an interest in seeing the ISS, other satellites, and any planets I can make out (and of course any meteorite showers and bolides).
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Betelgeuse (Beetlejuice), is I believe the one in Orion which shows a dull redness in it's colouration.
 
kamalktk said:
That's "Farout". ...
For the first time, an object in our solar system has been found more than 100 times farther than Earth is from the sun.
The International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center announced the discovery Monday, calling the object 2018 VG18. But the researchers who found it are calling it "Farout."
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'Farout' is no longer the 'farthest out' planetoid-sized object discovered to date in our solar system. The new distance champion is nicknamed 'Farfarout'. Because Farfarout's orbit is heavily influenced by Neptune it cannot be leveraged to determine whether there's a relatively massive 'Planet X' out in its remote neighborhood.
'Farfarout'! Solar system's most distant planetoid confirmed

A team, including an astronomer from the University of Hawai?i Institute for Astronomy (IfA), have confirmed a planetoid that is almost four times farther from the Sun than Pluto, making it the most distant object ever observed in our solar system. The planetoid, nicknamed "Farfarout," was first detected in 2018, and the team has now collected enough observations to pin down the orbit. The Minor Planet Center has now given it the official designation of 2018 AG37.

Farfarout's name distinguished it from the previous record holder "Farout," found by the same team of astronomers in 2018. ...

Farfarout's current distance from the Sun is 132 astronomical units (au); 1 au is the distance between the Earth and Sun. For comparison, Pluto is only 34 au from the Sun. The newly discovered object has a very elongated orbit that takes it out to 175 au at its most distant, and inside the orbit of Neptune, to around 27 au, when it is closest to the Sun.

Farfarout's journey around the Sun takes about a thousand years, crossing the giant planet Neptune's orbit every time. This means Farfarout has probably experienced strong gravitational interactions with Neptune over the age of the solar system, and is the reason why it has such a large and elongated orbit. ...

Farfarout is very faint, and based on its brightness and distance from the Sun, the team estimates its size to be about 400 km across, putting it on the low end of being a dwarf planet, assuming it is an ice-rich object. ...

Because Neptune strongly interacts with Farfarout, its orbit and movement cannot be used to determine if there is another unknown massive planet in the very distant solar system, since these interactions dominate Farfarout's orbital dynamics. Only those objects whose orbits stay in the very distant solar system, well beyond Neptune's gravitational influence, can be used to probe for signs of an unknown massive planet. These include Sedna and 2012 VP113, which, although they are currently closer to the Sun than Farfarout (at around 80 au), they never approach Neptune and thus would be most influenced by the possible Planet X instead. ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-02/uoha-ss021021.php
 
What building have they used to depict the Eiffel Tower on that pic then? I know it isn't the Eiffel Tower. Looks more like the Elizabeth Tower.
 
Hubble's Latest Image Release Is So Beautiful, It Should Be Illegal

13 March, 2021
sciencealert.com

The latest image released from the Hubble Space Telescope really is just beyond the pale.

Just look at it. The sheer audacity. The absolute cheek of it.

Here you were, just minding your own mundane business, and then Hubble had to come along and remind you that our Universe is jaw-droppingly, mind-blowingly, sickeningly gorgeous.

What you're looking at is a nebula around 4,900 light-years away in the constellation of Gemini. It's named AFGL 5180, and it's part of a vast molecular cloud complex named Gem OB1.

Such thick molecular clouds are where stars are born, and AFLG 5180 is no exception. It's spectacularly lit from within by a very young, hot star that's violently disturbing the space around it as it grows, carving out vast cavities in the gas cloud.

To make a baby star, you need to start with a dense clump in a cloud of cool molecular gas. If this clump collapses under its own gravity, it will start to form a star. As that protostar starts to spin, the material in the cloud around it forms a disk, spooling into the growing star, inexorably drawn in by its strengthening gravitational pull.

https://www.sciencealert.com/hubble-s-latest-image-release-is-so-beautiful-it-should-be-illegal
 
A view of the M87 supermassive black hole in polarised light

eso.org
24 March, 2021

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration, who produced the first ever image of a black hole released in 2019, has today a new view of the massive object at the centre of the Messier 87 (M87) galaxy: how it looks in polarised light. This is the first time astronomers have been able to measure polarisation, a signature of magnetic fields, this close to the edge of a black hole.

https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso2105a/
 
Comfortably Numb said:
Hubble's Latest Image Release Is So Beautiful, It Should Be Illegal

13 March, 2021
sciencealert.com

The latest image released from the Hubble Space Telescope really is just beyond the pale.

Just look at it. The sheer audacity. The absolute cheek of it.

Here you were, just minding your own mundane business, and then Hubble had to come along and remind you that our Universe is jaw-droppingly, mind-blowingly, sickeningly gorgeous....
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Well, it's pretty, Ms. Starr (if that is your real name) but seriously, is it that much more pretty than all the more familiar nebulae that we see in all the books and TV shows ?
 
Strange, Distant Space Object Is Sending Out Ultra-Low Frequency Radio Signals

Researchers have detected ultra-low radio frequencies being emitted from a jellyfish-shaped object in a distant galaxy cluster.

The mysterious object is located 340 million lightyears from Earth in the galaxy cluster Abell 2877.

image


“We looked at the data, and as we turned down the frequency, we saw a ghostly jelly-fish like structure begin to emerge,” said Torrance Hodgson, lead author, from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research in Perth.

They’ve been able to develop a working theory of where it came from: supermassive black holes that created “powerful jets of plasma” about two billion years ago.

“This plasma faded, went quiet, and lay dormant,” Hodgson said. “Then quite recently, two things happened — the plasma started mixing at the same time as very gentle shock waves passed through the system. This has briefly reignited the plasma, lighting up the jellyfish and its tentacles for us to see.”

https://futurism.com/the-byte/stran...sending-out-ultra-low-frequency-radio-signals

maximus otter
 
maximus otter said:
Strange, Distant Space Object Is Sending Out Ultra-Low Frequency Radio Signals

Researchers have detected ultra-low radio frequencies being emitted from a jellyfish-shaped object in a distant galaxy cluster.

The mysterious object is located 340 million lightyears from Earth in the galaxy cluster Abell 2877.

image


“We looked at the data, and as we turned down the frequency, we saw a ghostly jelly-fish like structure begin to emerge,” said Torrance Hodgson, lead author, from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research in Perth.

They’ve been able to develop a working theory of where it came from: supermassive black holes that created “powerful jets of plasma” about two billion years ago.

“This plasma faded, went quiet, and lay dormant,” Hodgson said. “Then quite recently, two things happened — the plasma started mixing at the same time as very gentle shock waves passed through the system. This has briefly reignited the plasma, lighting up the jellyfish and its tentacles for us to see.”

https://futurism.com/the-byte/stran...sending-out-ultra-low-frequency-radio-signals

maximus otter
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"Argh... throw it back in the water... quick!"
1617096248332.png
 
maximus otter said:
Strange, Distant Space Object Is Sending Out Ultra-Low Frequency Radio Signals

Researchers have detected ultra-low radio frequencies being emitted from a jellyfish-shaped object in a distant galaxy cluster.

The mysterious object is located 340 million lightyears from Earth in the galaxy cluster Abell 2877.

image


“We looked at the data, and as we turned down the frequency, we saw a ghostly jelly-fish like structure begin to emerge,” said Torrance Hodgson, lead author, from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research in Perth.

They’ve been able to develop a working theory of where it came from: supermassive black holes that created “powerful jets of plasma” about two billion years ago.

“This plasma faded, went quiet, and lay dormant,” Hodgson said. “Then quite recently, two things happened — the plasma started mixing at the same time as very gentle shock waves passed through the system. This has briefly reignited the plasma, lighting up the jellyfish and its tentacles for us to see.”

https://futurism.com/the-byte/stran...sending-out-ultra-low-frequency-radio-signals

maximus otter
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These astronomers havent seen many real jellyfish have they :hahazebs:
 
Here's a question for you clever people on here.

Well not a question really just an observation. Last night at about 22:00 I looked out of the window. The moon was waning by one day from a full moon.

It appeared as situated perfectly between what seemed to be two parallel and diagonal long thin straight clouds. The clouds, one above and one below appeared as identical, and parallel. Looked very odd indeed! Anyone else seen anything like it?

I'm afraid I can't post a pic here now as am at work. May do later this evening.
 
I saw the moon low in the night sky at about 9pm last night, and there were two 'contrail' type clouds, one north-south and one east-west, with the moon directly where they crossed each other, making a nice white cross in the sky.
 
Trevp666 said:
I saw the moon low in the night sky at about 9pm last night, and there were two 'contrail' type clouds, one north-south and one east-west, with the moon directly where they crossed each other, making a nice white cross in the sky.
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Hmm, thats interesting...
 
Mysterious Radio Blasts From Space

Scientists discovered that so-called "giant radio pulses" coincide with X-rays, suggesting they are hundreds of times more energetic than previously thought.

In the year 1054, skywatchers in China and Japan witnessed light from an exploding star reach Earth, creating a dazzling bright spot in the sky. More than a millennium later, scientists have now revealed amazing new details about the powerful and unexplained radio signals that eerily emanate from the remains of this ancient supernova.

1617901901126-screen-shot-2021-04-08-at-11044-pm.png


Crab Nebula. Image: NASA/ESA, J. Hester and A. Loll (Arizona State University)

For years, scientists have been baffled by extremely loud radio signals, known as giant radio pulses (GRPs), that can be traced to a special type of dead star known as a pulsar. Pulsars are compact, rapidly rotating remnants of supernovae that get their name from the clockwork pulses of radiation they emit from their poles, which have made them useful natural timepieces for astronomers who use their regular bursts to measure other celestial phenomena.

For reasons that remain unexplained, some pulsars occasionally spew out GRPs that are hundreds to thousands of times brighter than regular pulsar radio signals. Now, scientists have discovered that GRPs are many times more energetic than previously thought.

One of the most infamous sources of GRPs is the Crab Pulsar, the remnant of the supernova spotted by skywatchers in 1054, which sits inside the Crab Nebula some 6,500 light years from Earth.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7b...om-space-just-got-a-whole-lot-weirder-somehow

maximus otter
 
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