Where are All the Double Planets?

Image comparing the sizes of Earth and its Moon (top right) and Pluto and its largest moon, Charon (bottom right). (Credit: NASA, JHUAPL, SWRI, Gregory H. Revera)

A recent study published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society examines formation mechanisms for how binary planets—two large planetary bodies orbiting each other—can be produced from a type of tidal heating known as tidal dissipation, or the energy that is shared between two planetary bodies as the orbit close to each other, which the Earth and our Moon experiences. This study comes as the hunt for exomoons and other satellites orbiting exoplanets continues to expand and holds the potential to help astronomers better understand the formation and evolution of exoplanets and their systems. So, why is studying binary planets specifically important?

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Weekly Space Hangout – Sept 23, 2016: Dr. Frank Timmes and Online Astronomy Education

Host: Fraser Cain (@fcain)

Special Guests:
Dr. Frank Timmes is an astrophysicist at Arizona State University and will be discussing online astronomy education and the Global Freshman Academy. His interests include the universe’s evolving composition and its implications for life in the universe. Dr. Timmes’ current area of research is nuclear astrophysics and the creation of the periodic table.

Guests:

Morgan Rehnberg (MorganRehnberg.com / @MorganRehnberg)
Dave Dickinson (www.astroguyz.com / @astroguyz)
Kimberly Cartier ( KimberlyCartier.org / @AstroKimCartier )
Nicole Gugliucci (cosmoquest.org / @noisyastronomer)

Their stories this week:

New bill targets serial harasses

Tiangong-1 to crash next year

The Final Days of Rosetta

Microlensing circumbinary planet detected

Repeat of Voyager’s “impossible” cloud

We are now using a tool called Trello to submit and vote on stories we would like to see covered each week, and then Fraser will be selecting the stories from there. Here is the link to the Trello WSH page (http://bit.ly/WSHVote), which you can see without logging in. If you’d like to vote, just create a login and help us decide what to cover!

We record the Weekly Space Hangout every Friday at 12:00 pm Pacific / 3:00 pm Eastern. You can watch us live on Universe Today, or the Universe Today YouTube page.