A Penn State
University astronomer using NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE)
has detected a new brown dwarf star at a distance of 7.2 light years away from
us. It is the fourth closest system to our Sun. What is peculiar about this
brown dwarf is it's temperature, which closely resemble the temperatures of our
North Pole at -53 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit. The coldest brown dwarf discovered
was only at room temperatures. Kevin Luhman, an associate professor of
Astronomy and Astrophysics at Penn State and a researcher in the Penn State
Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds, says that this discovery can tell
us the temperatures of the planets in that solar system. "Brown dwarfs start their lives like stars, as collapsing
balls of gas, but they lack the mass to burn nuclear fuel and radiate
starlight."
WISE
was able to detect this star because it surveyed the sky using infrared twice,
scanning some areas up to three times. Luhman says that this is not an ideal
place for human exploration because the planets are not habitable for humans.
Because the star is too cold, it would not be able to provide warmth to the
planets in its solar system. The star is predicted to be about 3 to 10 times
the size of Jupiter. This small mass makes some scientist believe that it might
be a gas giant but other scientists say otherwise. If the case is that it is a
brown dwarf, it would be one of the least massive brown dwarfs.
Sources:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140425162339.htm
Posted by Unknown
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10:05 AM
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NASA's Kepler Space Telescope has found planets, long ago, orbiting a star. It was believed that one of these planets would be able to harbor life. Recently, this has been confirmed through the W. M. Keck Observatory and the Gemini Observatory. The planet discovered is Earth-sized and is a reasonable distance away from its star. Elisa Quintana of the SETI Institute and NASA AMES Research Center says that even though the star is cooler than our Sun, the planet might contain liquid water. Steve Howell, a co-author in this paper says that no telescope has been able to see the planet. "However, what we can do is eliminate essentially all other possibilities so that the validity of these planets is really the only viable option."
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| Gemini Observatory |
Because the host star is so small, the team decided to eliminate any suggestion of a
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| Keck Observatory |
background star mimicking what Kepler saw. They obtained extremely high spatial resolution images from the Gemini Observatory and the W. M. Keck Observatory. With these two telescopes observing the region, they were able to rule out several items and finally concluded that what Kepler detected was truly a planet. Quintana says that "Without these complementary observations we wouldn't have been able to confirm this Earth-sized planet. The host star is called Kepler 186 and the Earth-sized planet called Kepler-186f.
Sources:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140417141946.htm
https://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/news/02/images/gssnow.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/af/KeckTelescopes-hi.png
Posted by Unknown
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6:42 AM
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Astronomers using ESO's Very Large Telescope in Chile captured an image of the planetary nebula PN A66 33. This nebula is usually referred to as Abell 33. The nebula is aligned with a star in a foreground, which appears to have the resemblance of a diamond ring. This star's name is HD 83535 and it lies between Earth and Abell 33. Abell 33 is located about 2500 light years away from Earth. The nebula is very symmetrical, almost appearing to look like a circle in the sky. This is very uncommon because there always seems to be something that gives a nebula an irregular shape. The remnant of the Abell 33's star can be seen just a bit off of the center of the nebula. It is on it's way to becoming a white dwarf star. The remnant star is still very bright, shining brighter than the Sun, emitting enough ultraviolet radiation to make the nebula grow. Abell 33 is one of 86 objects in George Abell's catalogue of Planetary Nebulae. "Abell also scoured the skies for galaxy clusters, comping the Abell Catalogue of over 4000 of these clusters in both the northern and souther hemispheres of the sky." The image uses data from the Focal Reducer and low dispersion Spectrograph (FORS) that is hitched onto the Very Large Telescope.
Sources:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140409094228.htm
http://s273.photobucket.com/user/Astronomerica/media/SDSS-1/Abell33-wide-SDSS.jpg.html
Posted by Unknown
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3:29 PM
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In ESO's La Silla Observatory, two contrasting galaxies were shown: NGC 1316 and NGC 1317. Both of these galaxies, even though very close to each other, share different histories. NGC 1316, the bigger galaxy has engulfed galaxies while NGC 1317 has had a very rough history. NGC 1316 is believed to have engulfed a dust-rich spiral galaxy because it has strange dust lanes and small globular star clusters. Very faint tidal tails have also been found within the galaxy. The tidal tails mean that the stars have been ripped off from their original location. This is what happens when a galaxy comes very close to another galaxy.
NGC 1316 is located 60 million light-years away from Earth. It resides in the southern constellation of Fornax and also takes the name because it is the brightest source of radio emission in that area. It is actually the fourth brightest radio emission in the night sky. The radio emission is steered by the material that is falling into the black hole. Because of several contacts with other galaxies, most likely it has extra fuel.
Sources:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140402095846.htm
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/0809/ngc1316_pugh.jpg
Posted by Unknown
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4:00 PM
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