Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks is a Halley-type periodic comet that was first discovered by Jean-Louis Pons on July 12, 1812 and then independently rediscovered by William Robert Brooks in 1883. It has an orbital period of about 71.3 years. Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks will make its return in 2024 and it is expected to reach its maximum brightness (potentially …
NASA has a catalog of many large comets and some of them are nearly as large or larger than the Chicxulub impactor (Dinosaur killer). Comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle takes 133 years to orbit the Sun once. Swift-Tuttle last reached perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) in 1992 and will return again in 2125. Swift-Tuttle is a large …
The James Webb Space Telescope had a weak detection of the microbial life biomarker, dimethyl sulfide. There is a 1 in 66 chance that it was instrument noise. There will be a follow up analysis with the MIRI (Mid Infrared Instrument) on the James Webb. This should scan the exoplanet K2-18B at the wavelengths for …
NASA’s James Web found trace of dimythyl suflide (DMS) in th atmosphere of exoplanet K2-18b and DMS is a biomarker of life. K2-18b’s atmosphere consists of mainly hydrogen, along with small amounts of methane and carbon dioxide. On Earth, the DMS molecule is only associated with microbial life. We have to wait for the existence …
Japanese researchers have used computer simulation and the orbits of several large objects past Neptune to calculate that there is Kuiper Belt planet (KBP) 1.5–3 times as massive as Earth, located at ten to twenty times further than Neptune (250–500 au). A trans-Neptunian object (TNO) is any minor planet in the Solar System that orbits …
According to the widely accepted Rayleigh criterion, in order to resolve two distant point sources, their angular separation must be larger than 1.22 (the wavelength of light divided by the telescope’s aperture diameter. To achieve higher resolutions, telescope systems with ever larger primary mirrors are therefore being designed, making them extremely expensive and technologically challenging …
Shenar’s astronomy research team used an instrument on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope to look for the chemical fingerprints that magnetic fields can leave on a star’s spectrum and found HD45166 has a field strength of 43,000 Gauss. “One-thousand-Gauss magnetic fields are pretty rare amongst massive stars, so 43,000 Gauss is really off the chart,” says Paul …
A new astronomical model proposes that the age of the Universe is 26.7 billion years old and not 13.7 billion years. For years, astronomers and physicists have calculated the age of our universe by measuring the time elapsed since the Big Bang and by studying the oldest stars based on the redshift of light coming …
Astronomers turned networks of dead stars into galaxy-size gravitational wave detectors, radio astronomers have tuned into the slowly undulating swells in spacetime thought to arise from pairs of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) that are about to collide. We are improving instruments and creating new instruments to improve our gravitational map of the universe. “As a …
Researchers used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to calculate the amount of heat energy coming from the rocky exoplanet TRAPPIST-1 c. The result suggests that the planet’s atmosphere – if it exists at all – is extremely thin. The result marks another step in determining whether planets orbiting small red dwarfs like TRAPPIST-1 – the …
University of Florida astronomers have discovered that a third of the planets around the most common stars in the galaxy could be in a goldilocks orbit close enough to hold onto liquid water – and possibly harbor life. The remaining two-thirds of the planets around these ubiquitous small stars are likely roasted by gravitational tides, …