Paul M. Sutter, Author at Universe Today

October 9, 2020October 9, 2020 by Paul M. Sutter

The Solar System has a second plane where objects orbit the Sun

Artist's impression of the ecliptic plane (yellow), and the recently-discovered "empty" ecliptic (blue) in our solar system. (Credit: NAOJ)

Almost all the objects orbiting the sun live in a particular plane, called the ecliptic plane. But a recent analysis of long-period comets reveals a second home, a so-called “empty ecliptic”. And it may be populated with comets dragged there by none other than the gravity of the Milky Way galaxy.

October 2, 2020October 2, 2020 by Paul M. Sutter

What Decides the Shape of Planetary Nebulae? Whatever’s Orbiting a Star When it Dies

This Picture of the Week from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows NGC 5307, a planetary nebula which lies about 10000 light years from Earth. It can be seen in the constellation Centaurus (The Centaur), which can be seen primarily in the southern hemisphere. A planetary nebula is the final stage of a Sun-like star. As such, planetary nebulae allow us a glimpse into the future of our own Solar System. A star like our Sun will, at the end of its life, transform into a red giant. Stars are sustained by the nuclear fusion that occurs in their core, which creates energy. The nuclear fusion processes constantly try to rip the star apart. Only the gravity of the star prevents this from happening. At the end of the red giant phase of a star, these forces become unbalanced. Without enough energy created by fusion, the core of the star collapses in on itself, while the surface layers are ejected outward. After that, all that remains of the star is what we see here: glowing outer layers surrounding a white dwarf star, the remnants of the red giant star’s core. This isn’t the end of this star’s evolution though — those outer layers are still moving and cooling. In just a few thousand years they will have dissipated, and all that will be left to see is the dimly glowing white dwarf.

Planetary nebulae are some of the most beautiful objects in the galaxy, spanning a variety of shapes and sizes. They’re created in the death throes of stars like the sun, and new research sheds light into how they get their distinctive and unique shapes. The answer: anything unlucky enough to orbit that dying star.

October 1, 2020October 1, 2020 by Paul M. Sutter

Astronomers think they’ve found an exoplanet in a galaxy 23 million light-years away

Artist's impression of of Kepler-1649c orbiting around its host star. Credit: NASA’s Ames Research Center/Daniel Rutter

Using a variety of techniques astronomers have successfully identified thousands of exoplanets, which are planets orbiting stars outside of our own solar system. But a new research paper introduces a breakthrough: the first detection of an exoplanet not just in another solar system, but in an entirely different galaxy sitting millions of light years away.

September 23, 2020September 22, 2020 by Paul M. Sutter

Solar Cycle 25 has arrived. Here’s what to expect from the Sun in the coming months and years

The sun goes through a regular 11-year cycle, swinging between periods of dormancy and periods of activity. Scientists from NASA and NOAA have just announced that the sun has just passed its minimum, and will be ramping up in activity over the next few years, meaning that we have entered a new round of the never-ending solar cycle.

September 22, 2020September 22, 2020 by Paul M. Sutter

If dark matter is a particle, it should get inside red giant stars and change the way they behave

This artist’s impression shows the red supergiant star. Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer, an international team of astronomers have constructed the most detailed image ever of this, or any star other than the Sun. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

Dark matter makes up the vast majority of matter in the universe, but we can’t see it. At least, not directly. Whatever the dark matter is, it must interact with everything else in the universe through gravity, and astronomers have found that if too much dark matter collects inside of red giant stars, it can potentially cut their lifetimes in half.

September 15, 2020September 15, 2020 by Paul M. Sutter

Extreme galaxies depend on extreme conditions for their formation

The spiral pattern shown by the galaxy NGC 2275 in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is striking because of its delicate, feathery nature. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team; Acknowledgment: Judy Schmidt (Geckzilla)

Some galaxies are too small, and some galaxies are too big, while others are just right. A new survey of the nearby Virgo cluster has potentially revealed why extreme galaxies are the wrong size, and how they might be connected.

September 14, 2020September 14, 2020 by Paul M. Sutter

A beautiful picture of Saturn’s heavily-cratered moon Mimas, processed by @kevinmgill

Mimas, as imaged by NASA's Cassini spacecraft and processed by @kevinmgill

The Cassini mission to Saturn took many images of Mimas, one of the smallest moons in the solar system. And now you can view it in all its icy, cratered glory, thanks to the work of Kevin Gill.

September 7, 2020September 7, 2020 by Paul M. Sutter

Gravitational waves could show what’s happening inside a star as it’s going supernova

A 2-D snapshot of a pair-instability supernovae as the explosion waves are about to break through the star's surface. The tiny disturbances represent fluid instability - in a region where different elements interact and mix. Image Credit: ASIAA/Ken Chen

It’s kind of hard to see inside a star as it’s blowing up, because of the whole “blowing up” part, but gravitational waves – tiny ripples in the fabric of spacetime itself – may help astronomers unlock how the biggest stars die.

September 1, 2020September 1, 2020 by Paul M. Sutter

Quasars can twinkle?

This illustration depicts a gas halo surrounding a quasar in the early Universe. The quasar, in orange, has two powerful jets and a supermassive black hole at its centre, which is surrounded by a dusty disc. The gas halo of glowing hydrogen gas is represented in blue. A team of astronomers surveyed 31 distant quasars, seeing them as they were more than 12.5 billion years ago, at a time when the Universe was still an infant, only about 870 million years old. They found that 12 quasars were surrounded by enormous gas reservoirs: halos of cool, dense hydrogen gas extending 100 000 light years from the central black holes and with billions of times the mass of the Sun. These gas stashes provide the perfect food source to sustain the growth of supermassive black holes in the early Universe.

It turns out you can teach an old dog new tricks. With a recent upgrade to a 50-year-old radio telescope, astronomers have spotted nearly a dozen of a rare class of quasars, ones capable of flickering in less than an hour.

August 31, 2020August 31, 2020 by Paul M. Sutter

Europa’s entire icy shell shifted 70-degrees a few million years ago

Images from NASA's Galileo spacecraft show the intricate detail of Europa's icy surface. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The mysterious world Europa, the ice-covered second moon of Jupiter, sports deep scars that cut across its face. An international team of investigators studied high-resolution maps of that surface to reveal a pattern: something shook Europa sometime within the past few million years, causing the entire shell to shift by 70 degrees.