Evan Gough, Author at Universe Today

January 28, 2021January 28, 2021 by Evan Gough

Exoplanetary System Found With 6 Worlds in Orbital Resonance

This artist’s impression shows the view from the planet in the TOI-178 system found orbiting furthest from the star. New research by Adrien Leleu and his colleagues with several telescopes, including ESO’s Very Large Telescope, has revealed that the system boasts six exoplanets and that all but the one closest to the star are locked in a rare rhythm as they move in their orbits. Image Credit: ESO/L. Calçada/spaceengine.org

200 light-years away from Earth, there’s a K-type main-sequence star named TOI (TESS Object of Interest) 178. When Adrian Leleu, an astrophysicist at the Center for Space and Habitability of the University of Bern, observed it, it appeared to have two planets orbiting it at roughly the same distance. But that turned out to be incorrect. In fact, six exoplanets orbit the smallish star.

And five of those six are locked into an unexpected orbital configuration.

January 27, 2021January 27, 2021 by Evan Gough

Astronomers Find a Planet Like Jupiter, but It Doesn’t Have any Clouds

This artist's illustration shows the exoplanet WASP-62B. Searching for chemical biosignatures on exoplanets is a painstaking process, weighed down by assumptions and prone to false positives. Is there a better way to find exoplanets with a chance to support life? Image Credit: CfA

Can you picture Jupiter without any observable clouds or haze? It isn’t easy since Jupiter’s latitudinal cloud bands and its Great Red Spot are iconic visual features in our Solar System. Those features are caused by upswelling and descending gas, mostly ammonia. After Saturn’s rings, Jupiter’s cloud forms are probably the most recognizable feature in the Solar System.

Now astronomers with the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) have found a planet similar in mass to Jupiter, but with a cloud-free atmosphere.

January 26, 2021January 26, 2021 by Evan Gough

One of the Oldest Stars in the Galaxy has a Planet. Rocky Planets Were Forming at Nearly the Beginning of the Universe

Artist's rendition of TOI-561, one of the oldest, most metal-poor planetary systems discovered yet in the Milky Way galaxy. This 10 billion-year-old system has a hot, rocky exoplanet (center) that's one and a half times the size of Earth as well as two gas planets (to the left of the rocky planet) that are about twice as large as Earth. Credit: W. M. Keck Observatory/Adam Makarenko

Would it be surprising to find a rocky planet that dates back to the very early Universe? It should be. The early Universe lacked the heavier elements necessary to form rocky planets.

But astronomers have found one, right here in the Milky Way.

January 25, 2021January 25, 2021 by Evan Gough

Tree Rings Reveal 1,000 Years of Solar Activity

Solar activity over the last 1000 years (blue, with error interval in white), sunspot records (red curve) going back less than 400 years. The background shows a typical eleven-?year cycle of the sun. CREDIT ETH Zürich

The Sun has a lot of rhythm and goes through different cycles of activity. The most well-known cycle might be the Schwabe cycle, which has an 11-year cadence. But what about cycles with much longer time scales? How can scientists understand them?

As it turns out, the Sun has left some hidden clues in tree rings.

January 25, 2021January 25, 2021 by Evan Gough

Why do Planetary Nebulae Look the Way They Do?

Hubble was recently retrained on NGC 6302, known as the "Butterfly Nebula," to observe it across a more complete spectrum of light, from near-ultraviolet to near-infrared, helping researchers better understand the mechanics at work in its technicolor "wings" of gas. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and J. Kastner (RIT)

Planetary nebulae are the most beautiful objects in the night sky. Their gossamer shells of gas are otherworldly and evocative. They captivate the eye, and viewers need no scientific knowledge to get drawn in.

How are they created, and why do they look so beautiful?

January 21, 2021January 21, 2021 by Evan Gough

Mars has Been Through Many Ice Ages in the Last Billion Years

Deuteronilus Mensae (DM)has many rough surface features. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has shown that many areas in DM are sub-surface glaciers covered by a thin layer of debris. Image: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Like Earth, Mars has experienced periods of extreme glaciation or ice sheet coverage, which are known as ice ages. As these ice ages come and go, glaciers expand and contract along the planet’s surface, grinding huge boulders down to smaller rocks. By examining the size of boulders and rocks at specific locations on Mars, we should be able to understand the history of the Martian ice ages.

A new study did just that.

January 20, 2021January 20, 2021 by Evan Gough

New Drones for Exploring Mars are Getting Tested in Iceland

Created by an eruption five years ago, the Holuhraun lava flow field in Iceland is some of the newest "real estate" in the world where Christopher Hamilton and his team are testing new ways for drones and rovers to work together to explore Mars. Image Credit: Christopher Hamilton, LPL.

It’s looking more and more like the future of space exploration could involve drones in a big way.

We’ve already seen it here on Earth, where all kinds of flying drones are used by all kinds of people for all kinds of things. Drones are particularly useful in resource development, exploration, imaging, and remote sensing.

Could the future see drones flying around in the thin Martian atmosphere?

January 19, 2021January 19, 2021 by Evan Gough

This is a Simulation of the Interstellar Medium Flowing Like Smoke Throughout the Milky Way

The figure shows a section through the cube of the turbulence simulation. The colors show the density contrast relative to the mean density of the gas. Its turbulent structure is clearly recognizable. Image Credit: Federrath et al, 2021.

How do stars form?

We know they form from massive structures called molecular clouds, which themselves form from the Interstellar Medium (ISM). But how and why do certain types of stars form? Why, in some situations, does a star like our Sun form, versus a red dwarf or a blue giant?

That’s one of the central questions in astronomy. It’s also a very complex one.

January 14, 2021January 14, 2021 by Evan Gough

NASA Has Given Up on Trying to Deploy InSight’s Mole

InSight's Mole is finally buried. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

It’s always a sad day when a mission comes to an end. And it’s even sadder when the mission never really got going in the first place.

That’s where we’re at with NASA’s InSight lander. The entire mission isn’t over, but the so-called Mole, the instrument designed and built by Germany’s DLR, has been pronounced dead.

January 14, 2021January 14, 2021 by Evan Gough

The Roman Space Telescope’s Version of the Hubble Deep Field Will Cover a 100x Larger Area of the Sky

This composite image illustrates the possibility of a Roman Space Telescope “ultra deep field” observation. In a deep field, astronomers collect light from a patch of sky for an extended period of time to reveal the faintest and most distant objects. This view centers on the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (outlined in blue), which represents the deepest portrait of the universe ever achieved by humankind, at visible, ultraviolet and near-infrared wavelengths. Two insets reveal stunning details of the galaxies within the field. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Koekemoer (STScI) Acknowledgement: Digitized Sky Survey

Remember the Hubble Deep Field? And its successor the Hubble Ultra Deep Field? We sure do here at Universe Today. How could we forget them?

Well, just as the Hubble Space Telescope has successors, so do two of its most famous images. And those successors will come from one of Hubble’s successors, NASA’s Roman Space Telescope.