When it comes to couples who look skyward and dream big, no celebrity couple is more cosmic than Elon Musk and his “fluid” wife Grimes.
While the couple officially dated for three years from April 2018, they have reportedly been going back and forth since September 2021 after publicly going their separate ways. Along with son X A-12 (aka “X”) and daughter Exa Dark Siderl, the two began spreading their seed, fantasizing about colonizing other planets through space and time, as well as joking about the establishment of a lesbian space community on one of Jupiter’s moons.
Musk, 50, who has seven kids and a slew of ex-wives, is a guy looking to push humanity to the next level of civilization, but Grimes, 33, is already on his way to becoming a post-earth alien. human – as she embarks on a new romance! So what’s the deal with this unique duo’s back and forth, and is it written in the stars? Will they create a legion of children to conquer the solar system, breed with aliens, or end up bouncing around forever? Dive into their romance with me since I’m a pop culture astrologer and can see it for you.
Grimes’ birth chart reveals she enjoys being a rebel radical
First, let’s look at the birth chart of the alien queen Grimes. If you wonder about Musk’s complexity, you can learn everything you need to know about his astrology and birth chart.
Grimes was born on March 17, 1988. As a result, she has an innovative Pisces sun and a fiery Aries moon. Her due date hasn’t been confirmed by me yet (Hey ma’am, go ahead!), so we’ll focus on what we know. Right away we can observe that it is a lady dominated by the elemental energy of earth, followed by water.
She is very focused on achieving long-term accomplishments and is naturally strong-willed and inflexible. This works to her advantage in getting what she wants, but it also demonstrates that when she thinks about anything, she goes all out.
As her Jupiter and Saturn dance beautifully in exact degree, she has a tremendous drive for achievement. Her Jupiter is also conjunct Uranus, bringing her lofty goals and a strong desire to be unique and unconstrained. This is all the more emphasized in his astrological profile as Saturn, the planet of limits, is in perfect conjunction with Uranus, the planet of revolution.
To comply – for her – is as excruciating as death. She is drawn to the concept of building her own institutions for herself, her family and society as a resistance against existing authority.
It’s an obvious reason why she and Musk get along so well — they’re both visionary in their desire to build a new world without old ideals or customs. When you consider that her Sun, which rules her life force, also collides with Uranus, it adds to her unexpected impulses, where she is ready to rebel and express all the depths of eccentricity she possesses.
Astrological compatibility of Elon Musk with Grimes
I’ll be honest with you: I totally understand the attraction between Musk and Grimes. They have a compatibility rating of 8.5 out of 10 in my opinion. Their love and intellectual chemistry are out of this world. They have so much in common in terms of financial and family affinities, as well as strong evidence that this was always meant to be a lifelong relationship.
However, this does not always mean that they will remain loving partners for life, especially because their astrological charts contain extremely harsh astrological aspects that indicate a lack of support when it comes to pursuing their own personal goals and their professional lifestyle. Since there is not as much synergy around career support, it is clear that their separation is motivated by a respect for distance in this regard.
In many ways, the connection between the two is vast, joyful and instructive. There is romance and sensuality, as well as significant degrees of desire and passion. They have a virtually telepathic connection as well as strong mutually reinforcing aspirations and visions. This virtually mystical bond has tremendous depth, but it can sometimes require tremendous sacrifice from the two in particular.
This connection, on the other hand, is highly karmic in nature and designed to alter each other. With Grimes’ sun colliding with Musk’s Pluto, they have and will continue to cause profound changes in everyone’s life. On the one hand, it can be extremely rewarding as they gain new insights into life and themselves, allowing them to soar to new heights. It can, however, generate an extremely conflicting energy between them with huge ego clashes, as they have sometimes thought the other to be immensely selfish and dominating.
Deception and concealment are also possibilities, attracting darker aspects of the self to surface and confront. However, their connection is likely to be incredibly magnetic, which is why they can’t leave each other. Musk can be tough on Grimes, with her Mercury clashing with her Saturn, disorienting her, as evidenced by her Mercury under the onslaught of her Neptune.
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A portrait of Caroline Herschel with an illustration of the planets of the solar system. Image: Royal Astronomical Society.
German-born Herschel (1750-1848) moved to the UK to be with his brother William Herschel (1738-1822) and they started out as musicians before later becoming famous astronomers.
They lived at 19 New King Street in Bath, which now houses the Herschel Museum of Astronomy.
The guestbook is a vellum-bound volume, compiled by Caroline from the mid-1780s, when she and her brother were living in Datchet, near Windsor. Written in Caroline’s own hand, it lists more than a hundred names of people who have come to see them – often including the king and queen, accompanied by members of the court – to look through William’s telescopes.
Scientists, writers, artists, politicians and foreign royalty are all present. Joseph Haydn, Benjamin Franklin and Fanny Burney are among the guests.
The book had been on long-term loan to the museum since 1996 – kindly provided by Dr and Mrs A Koester – and the museum recently had the opportunity to purchase it.
Caroline Herschel’s guest book was purchased by the Herschel Museum of Astronomy in Bath. Image: Bath Preservation Trust.
Friends of National Libraries backed the deal to buy the book for £6,000. He donated £5,000, with the remaining £1,000 coming from museum reserves.
The museum is dedicated to the many achievements of the Herschels. William discovered the planet Uranus in 1781 using a telescope of his own home design. Later the couple were joined by William’s son John (1792-1871), who also became an astronomer.
Among Caroline’s accomplishments was the discovery of several comets, including periodic comet 35P/Herschel–Rigollet.
]]>Artist’s impression of Kepler-16b, the first known planet to permanently orbit two stars – what is called a circumbinary planet. The planet, visible in the foreground, was discovered by NASA’s Kepler mission. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle
A study proves that ground-based telescopes can search for planets with two suns.
Astronomers have used a new technique to confirm a real Tatooine, the fictional planet with two suns that was home to Luke Skywalker in ‘Star Wars’.
The planet, Kepler-16b, is about 245 light-years from Earth, is a gas giant, and is roughly the size of Saturn. Scientists already knew the planet existed, but in a recent study, an international team of astronomers explained how they successfully applied a technique that had never been used before to observe a planet orbiting two stars.
“This is confirmation that our method is working,” said David Martin, co-author of the study and Nasa Sagan Fellow in the Department of Astronomy at Ohio State University. “And that creates an opportunity for us to apply this method now to identify other systems like this.”
The technique, called the radial velocity method, has long been used in astronomy. (The first planet ever found around a sun-like star was found using radial velocity – and was found using the same telescope astronomers used to find this one.)
The method of radial velocities consists of analyzing the spectra of light produced by stars. Astronomers collect spectral data through ground-based telescopes – in this case, from a France-based telescope, the Observatoire de Haute Provence. This spectral data comes in the form of a line, but the line “wobbles” as the planet orbits the two stars, producing a shaky line in the light spectra. The wobble indicates a planet is there, and astronomers can use it to derive a number of other pieces of information about a planet, including its mass.
Measuring radial velocity is, according to Martin, one of the best tools astronomers have for identifying exoplanets, or planets outside our solar system. But until this study, astronomers hadn’t been able to use it to find planets outside our solar system that orbit two stars.
The study was published this week in the Royal Astronomical Society Monthly Notices.
In the past, these planets – called circumbinary planets – were identified by watching the passage of one star in front of another. This method, known as the “transit method,” identified 14 such planets, including Kepler-16b. The first confirmed circumbinary planet was described in a 2011 paper; others followed. But until this article, none had been found using radial velocity.
“What people had to deal with is that having two sets of two star spectra makes it really tricky, and people were having trouble getting enough precision to see the wobble caused by the planet,” Martin said. “And we got around that by doing a survey of systems with two stars orbiting each other where one star is large and the other is quite small.”
The survey, called Binaries Escorted by Orbiting Planets, or BEBOP, was created specifically to search for planets like this.
One of Kepler-16b’s stars is about two-thirds the mass of Earth’s sun, and the other about 20% the mass.
Astronomers had been monitoring this system since July 2016.
Proving that measuring radial velocities can identify planets orbiting two stars, Martin said, opens the door to the technique’s wider application. This is important to astronomers for a number of reasons, but the main one is that planets that orbit two stars tend to exist at a distance that would make them good candidates for life.
“These planets are frequently in the habitable zone, at a distance from stars where one would expect to find liquid water,” Martin said.
Kepler-16b, which is composed mostly of gas, is unlikely to be a candidate where life could be found, Martin said. But using the radial velocity method could help astronomers find other similar planets.
Reference: “BEBOP III. Observations and independent mass measurement of Kepler-16(AB)b – the first circumbinary planet detected with radial velocities” by Amaury HMJ Triaud, Matthew R Standing, Neda Heidari, David V Martin, Isabelle Boisse, Alexandre Santerne, Alexandre CM Correia , Lorena Acuña, Matthew Battley, Xavier Bonfils, Andrés Carmona, Andrew Collier Cameron, Pía Cortés-Zuleta, Georgina Dransfield, Shweta Dalal, Magali Deleuil, Xavier Delfosse, João Faria, Thierry Forveille, Nathan C Hara, Guillaume Hébrard, Sergio Hoyer, Flavien Kiefer, Vedad Kunovac, Pierre FL Maxted, Eder Martioli, Nicola J Miller, Richard P Nelson, Mathilde Poveda, Hanno Rein, Lalitha Sairam, Stéphane Udry and Emma Willett, February 25, 2022, Royal Astronomical Society Monthly Notices.
DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stab3712
Martin’s portion of this work was funded in part by NASA.
]]>An astronomer from the Vatican Observatory has discovered a new body in the solar system.
The “Trans-Neptunian Object” (TNO) was designated 2021 XD7 and was spotted by Richard Boyle using the Vatican’s Advanced Technology Telescope on December 3.
Much like Pluto, the first discovered trans-Neptunian object, 2021 XD7 has a strange orbit that is considerably more inclined than the motions of Earth, Mars, and other planets.
The closest to the Sun is still 30 times farther than our own planet and extends twice as far outward.
It takes 286 years to move around the Sun, and due to its great distance from Earth, little is known about the planet – other than that, it is almost certainly smaller than even Pluto.
Exploring the TNO could help scientists find the elusive ninth planet orbiting our closest star. Pluto, when discovered in 1930, was once thought to be the ninth planet, but was eventually downgraded to a dwarf planet.
The Planet Nine theory was first proposed in 2015 after Caltech astronomers Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin said they found evidence of a giant planet in the outer solar system.
Proof of this was the orbits of five smaller objects in the same region – a configuration that only has a 0.007% change to occur by chance.
Unfortunately, it has been incredibly difficult to pin down the object with other astronomers claiming there is “no evidence” for such a planet. They think the apparent clustering is simply confirmation bias, discovered only because that’s where the telescopes were looking at the time, or due to other equipment sensitivities.
More TNOs are expected to be discovered next year with the construction of the Survey Telescope at the Vera Rubin Observatory in 2023.
]]>The campaign was well underway when Bridges and Mandel joined. They found the lab when they were undergraduates, but their interest in astronomy was sparked much earlier. In elementary school, Bridges remembers bringing a stack of photos taken from the Mars Rover to show and tell. For Mandel, it was the recycled rockets SpaceX sent into space and then recovered that blew her away. The mentorship and hands-on experience they received convinced them to stay for their PhD. Colombia News spoke with Bridges and Mandel about studying Jupiter and the advice they have for other astronomy enthusiasts.
Q. What causes auroras?
Gabriel Bridges: Occur when charged particles from space strike a planet’s magnetic field and are deflected toward the planet’s north and south poles. The magnetic field attracts the particles, and when they crash into the atmosphere, they slow down considerably and emit a lot of electromagnetic radiation. On Earth, most radiation is visible light. If you are far enough north (or south), you will see brilliant green curtains of light that are the result of electrons colliding with oxygen atoms in our atmosphere.
Shifra Mandel: The magnetic field that connects the north and south poles of the Earth forms a protective barrier that prevents the solar wind from eroding our atmosphere; it also protects life from potentially harmful cosmic rays. The magnetosphere is constantly bombarded with charged particles; some penetrate the outer layers and are accelerated along the magnetic field lines towards the two poles. When these energetic particles collide with the Earth’s atmosphere, they generate auroras.
Q. What do the auroras look like from Jupiter?
GB: Interestingly, Jupiter’s aurora borealis is quite unimpressive, at least to the human eye. The real light show occurs at higher energies than what we can see. Jupiter’s ultraviolet auroras are bright, lingering features that can be seen in this visualization based on data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. In this video, you can clearly see the magnetic fingerprint of Jupiter’s moon, Io. This luminous point at the bottom right of the aurora is the magnetic shadow of Io.
SM: Io is constantly bombarding Jupiter with charged particles from volcanic eruptions on its surface. These charged particles are the source of most of the X-ray emissions we see. In contrast, Earth’s main source of ions comes from periodic solar storms. Thus, our aurora borealis are not continuous like those of Jupiter.
Q. What’s so intriguing about Jupiter’s X-ray light?
GB: Jupiter’s magnetic field is 20 times stronger than Earth’s and the strongest in our solar system. If Jupiter’s magnetic field were visible at its widest point from Earth, it would appear three times larger than our sun or moon. This means that Jupiter has unparalleled power to accelerate and focus charged particles. Thus, you would expect more energetic X-rays from Jupiter than from Earth because its magnetic field generates such a large energetic acceleration.
Jupiter’s closest moon also emits a ton of ions and electrons every second. This gives Jupiter a constant supply of charged particles to power its auroras. Back on Earth, we have to wait for solar storms to pull charged particles into our atmosphere.
SM: If we were standing on Jupiter to observe Earth, we probably wouldn’t be able to see the Earth’s aurora borealis. But Jupiter’s auroras are so much more powerful that we can observe them from the same distance.
Q. What other planets in our solar system emit high energy radiation?
GB: The planets emit high-energy radiation through the auroras and by reflecting the X-rays emitted by the sun. To produce an aurora, three things are needed: a magnetic field, an atmosphere and a source of charged particles. Most planets in our solar system do not meet these criteria. Mercury has no atmosphere. Mars and Venus do not have a magnetic field. Uranus and Neptune have weak magnetic fields. That leaves Earth, Jupiter, and Saturn. We know Earth and Jupiter certainly have X-ray auroras, but we’re not sure about Saturn yet!
Q. What is the mystery at the heart of this article?
SM: The space probe Ulysses flew over Jupiter in 1992 equipped with a detector to record high-energy X-rays between 27 and 48 kiloelectronvolts (keV) but found nothing. This intrigued astrophysicists, who expected that electrons producing ultraviolet radiation from Jupiter’s auroras would also produce energetic X-rays. The mystery deepened when the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton telescope later recorded high-energy X-rays near the upper end of its detection limit, around 7 keV. The source of this X-ray emission was unclear, but we were confident that NuSTAR, with its ability to detect radiation from 3 keV to 79 keV, could provide answers.
Q. How did you solve it?
SM: NuSTAR observations have confirmed that Jupiter produces X-rays as high as 20 keV – much higher than what XMM-Newton is able to detect, but below the detection band of Ulysses, which is why Ulysses missed it. To test our suspicions that the X-rays detected by NuSTAR were generated by electrons flowing through Jupiter’s atmosphere, we examined data from NASA’s Juno space probe; as Juno orbits Jupiter, it records the levels of charged particles in its path. We simulated the effects of these particles passing through and colliding with a Jupiter-like atmosphere. We found that the x-rays produced matched the radiation we saw with the NuSTAR telescope.
Q. What should everyone know about astrophysics?
GB: It’s not as pretentious and inaccessible as it may seem. Everyone can have an impact. All it takes is a lot of time and hard work. If you are interested, find a researcher and ask to work with him.
SM: It’s not easy, but if you like it, it’s really worth it!
Q. Any advice for other students debating a career in astronomy?
GB: I used to think that I couldn’t contribute to a research group until I knew X, Y and Z in physics. If you’re seriously interested, the best time to start researching is now. The second best time is tomorrow! You won’t know what a career in astrophysics is like until you try.
SM: Find your niche: something you’re passionate about, something that makes you want to get out of bed in the morning.
]]>The unidentified flying object seen over Kenilworth and the surrounding area has now been identified as a large meteor.
Residents and motorists spotted the unusual sight on Saturday evening (January 29) and many took to social media to see if anyone else had seen the same thing.
The object, which an eyewitness said flashed “really bright green” before disappearing, was visible above the Warwickshire town at around 6.30pm.
Read more Warwickshire news stories here
Many guessed the object was likely an asteroid, but CoventryLive learned it was technically a large meteor – an offshoot of an asteroid and therefore generally smaller.
Professor Tom Marsh, from the Astronomy and Astrophysics Group at the University of Warwick, said: “It was a bright meteor seen in many parts of the UK which evaporated into the upper atmosphere, it therefore did not reach the ground as a meteorite.
“Meteors are associated with small solar system objects such as asteroids and comets. They travel at high speeds, around 30 kilometers per second in this case, causing them to heat up in the Earth’s atmosphere.
“They span a wide range of sizes, with larger ones like this being visible as ‘fireballs’ for several seconds during which they can travel 150 km or more.
“They are visible over a wide area because they light up when they are 50 to 100 km above the Earth’s surface.”
The meteor was filmed by Ty Leon-Fernandez who was driving at the time of the sighting, and captured the moment on his dashcam.
“It was amazing,” Ty told CoventryLive. “It was really bright green, at first it made me think of fireworks or something, but I knew it was way higher than that.
“It’s definitely not the kind of thing you see every day and the odds of catching it in the right place with your own eyes, let alone catching it on camera – I need to get a lottery ticket now !”
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As stars begin to reach the end of their life cycle, they get bigger. Surrounding planets lose their orbital energy and move closer together, eventually being consumed by the star.
The Earth will eventually be swallowed up by the Sun, but that won’t happen for at least five billion years. The Sun is estimated to be about halfway through its life cycle.
Astronomers at the University of Hawaii have discovered three planets about to be absorbed by stars similar in mass to our Sun. They were detected using NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) space telescope.
“The changes we expect to see for the Sun are the same as we see in these different solar systems where the radius of the star increases, the star swells and cools, but the radius will increase so dramatically that we we expect the inner planets of the solar system to actually be consumed by the surface of the Sun itself,” said Nick Saunders, a UH graduate student working on the project.
“So as the radius of the Sun moves away, the inner planets out to the vicinity of Earth will likely be inside the star at that time,” Saunders said.
The three observed planets (TOI-2337b, TOI-4329b, TOI-2669b) are less than 2,000 light-years from Earth.
The planet labeled TOI-2337b will be swallowed up by its star in less than a million years. Of all the currently observable planets, this one will be consumed by a star the earliest.
]]>A group of astronomers and citizen scientists have discovered a hidden planet the size of Jupiter in a distant solar system, and they should be lucky enough to see it again soon.
The planet, designated TOI-2180 b, is relatively close to us here on Earth, just 379 light-years away. But what makes this world special among the sample of known giant exoplanets is that it takes 261 days to orbit its host star, far longer than most gas giants discovered outside our solar neighborhood. .
The team spotted the world using data collected by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS. TESS spots exoplanets by finding very small, repeatable dips in a star’s brightness that are caused by a planet blocking some of the star’s light as it transits or passes between the spacecraft and the star. While the orbital period of TOI-2180 b is not entirely confirmed, scientists predict that TESS will see the planet again in February.
Related: The 10 biggest exoplanet discoveries of 2021
“Transit events … are the best way to discover cooler exoplanets,” study lead author Paul Dalba, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California Riverside, told a news conference on the planet. discovered at the 239th meeting of the American Astronomical Society on Thursday (January 13).
Dalba described it as “cool” not only because of the uniqueness of the exoplanet, but also because of its lower temperature caused by its longer-period orbit around its parent star. (The presentation is available in the video below, starting at around 34 minutes.)
“There is a lot of scientific motivation,” added Dalba. “We can ask questions like ‘Do short and long orbiting exoplanets form or evolve differently? How do they change over time? “”
TOI-2180 is about the same size as Jupiter. But it’s almost three times as massive; the planet contains about 105 Earth masses of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, according to a statement from the University of New Mexico, the home institution of discovery team member Diana Dragomir . This difference in density could indicate that the planet formed differently from Jupiter.
Another oddity is the planet’s temperature, which averages a surprisingly mild 170 degrees Fahrenheit (77 degrees Celsius). Although TOI-2180 b is hotter than Jupiter and Saturn, it is still quite cold compared to many other huge exoplanets. (Many of the gas giant exoplanets discovered to date are near-orbiting “hot Jupiters,” which are easier to find because they transit more often and exert a greater gravitational pull on their host stars than planets orbiting further out. )
“It’s a good stepping stone between most of the giant exoplanets we’ve found and then really cold Jupiter and Saturn,” Dalba said in a NASA press release. This temperature difference is not yet understood, but could be explored further with observations from other observatories, such as NASA’s just-launched James Webb Space Telescope, the investigators said.
This discovery was made by a unique team of astronomers and citizen scientists, including former US Navy officer Tom Jacobs. Jacobs participates in Planet Hunters, a NASA-funded citizen science project run through the online platform Zooniverse that focused on data from NASA’s now-retired Kepler planet-hunting spacecraft.
“The discovery and publication of TOI-2180 b was a great group effort demonstrating that professional astronomers and seasoned citizen scientists can work together successfully,” Jacobs said in the same NASA statement.
Together, the team of citizen scientists and astronomers examined the TESS data in a collaboration called the Visual Survey Group. Jacobs spotted a dip in brightness in the new planet’s parent star on February 1, 2020. Since fluctuations in stellar brightness may be due to other factors such as sunspots, Jacobs needed confirmation and alerted astronomers Dalba and Dragomir.
TESS saw only one fading of the star, but the team received more information through observations from the automated planet-finding telescope at Lick Observatory in California, as well as the observatory WM Keck in Hawaii. Both of these observatories saw the planet’s gravitational “tug” on its parent star, allowing the team to focus on its mass.
The orbit of the planet, however, remains uncertain. The team tried to figure it out by looking for a transit again using telescopes at 14 sites, on three continents, in August 2020.
While the collaboration produced 55 datasets in 11 days, no telescope captured the transit. But this lack of information still allowed astronomers to “put a limit” on its orbital time, which they estimate at 261 days, NASA said.
Scientists also hope to further study TOI-2180 b to search for rings or moons, which are common among gas giants in our own solar system. Most of the large exoplanets discovered have been found very close to their parent stars, where intense gravity can tear things like rings away from the planet. Since TOI-2810b is farther from its star, it may be a “fun system” in which to search for moons or rings, Dalba said in the NASA statement.
A study based on the research was published Thursday, January 13 in the Astronomical Journal.
Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. Follow us on twitter @Espacedotcom and on Facebook.
]]>By Gary Boyle
The backyard astronomer
Looking back to 2021, there have been many great space stories in the news, including two lunar eclipses in May and November. Coincidentally, two more total lunar eclipses will occur in May and November 2022. We were also entertained by three large meteor showers in January, August, and December, but the moon suffered major interference. The Northern Lights were prominent last month, especially in western Canada, painting the skies green.
The endless list of exoplanets continues to grow with a total of 4,884 confirmed worlds and 8,288 other candidates. This research continues via terrestrial and space telescopes. So, the next time you look at those sparkling dots of light, you’re looking at the mini solar systems of at least one planet orbiting its mother star. After all, the sun is only one of 300 billion stars in the Milky Way.
It was around the same time last year that the Japanese mission Hayabusa managed to restore soil samples from the asteroid Itokawa. The sample shows that the water and organic matter that come from the asteroid itself have evolved chemically over time. Astronomers and scientists have long believed that the building blocks of organic compounds necessary for the creation of life began in the solar system and were delivered to young earth via meteorites. Missions like this shed new light on this theory. Meteorites and comets contain small amounts of water. Impacts over millions of years have most likely provided water to the earth.
Similar to the list of exoplanets, 70 other rogue planets have been detected floating in space. They are “excluded” from their solar system by an event such as the explosion of the star thus launching it on a path to nowhere. Or some could have been overpowered by larger planets in their solar system and pulled out of their system, because of the light and (possibly) heat of their sun.
Until now, the sun has been studied by terrestrial telescopes and orbiting satellites. The amount of information learned is exceptional, but the missing key was a physical exam. Never before had a spacecraft touched the sun until the launch of the Parker solar probe in 2018. Over the years, the spacecraft performed multiple maneuvers as it approached the sun. In December of this year, the probe hit the upper atmosphere of the solar corona which is only visible from Earth during a total solar eclipse when the moon blocks out blinding light. Over the next few years it will move closer to our star and by 2025 it will be traveling at an unprecedented speed of 690,000 kilometers per hour or 192 kilometers per second. Its 11.4-centimeter-thick heat shield combines it to operate at around 29 degrees Celsius and not fry the electronics.
The latest addition to the Martian fleet came with the deployment of the SUV-sized Perseverance and Ingenuity helicopter, anchored below. The two blades of the small helicopter rotate in opposite directions to help lift the thin Martian atmosphere. To date, he has logged 30 minutes in a series of short flights. This is the first time that such a vehicle has been used on the Red Planet.
Private companies have proven they have the right equipment to launch into space, not just NASA. Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin helped 90-year-old William Shatner and retired NFL Michael Strahan touch the space beyond the 100 Karman line. But Elon Musk took space travel a step further by transporting astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station via the SpaceX Dragon freighter. It’s the same Dragon capsule that was almost used as an emergency evacuation vehicle. The International Space Station was subjected to a field of dangerous debris from a deliberately destroyed satellite. The danger has practically passed, but there have been moments of anxiety.
Space is dangerous. In addition to solar radiation from the sun and cosmic rays from the cosmos, more than 23,000 pieces of orbital debris larger than a softball are tracked. Half a million pieces are the size of a marble or more with about 100 million pieces of debris – about a millimeter and a little larger. All moving at 28,000 km / h or nearly 8 km / sec.
In September 2022, the DART mission will arrive on the 800-meter-wide asteroid Didymos to deflect a small 160-meter-wide Dimorphos moon. This is a test to see if a potential asteroid coming towards Earth can be deflected slightly, changing course and missing our planet. This particular asteroid is only a test subject and is by no means on a collision course with our home planet.
The much anticipated James Webb Space Telescope (successor to the Hubble Space Telescope) was launched on Christmas Day. It has a much larger mirror system and will study nascent galaxies in the near infrared, allowing us to see through the gas and dust of early galaxies. The sun visor is the size of a tennis court and will shield the telescope from the heat of the sun and block light from the earth and the moon. It will operate at a distance of 1.5 million kilometers from Earth where the space temperature is -223 degrees Celsius. JWST will be able to return to the beginning of the universe some 13.8 billion years ago. One of his many projects will be to see if black holes helped create galaxies or if they came after. He will also look for signs of resemblance in the atmospheres of distant exoplanets.
Clear sky.
Known as “The Backyard Astronomer”, Gary Boyle is an astronomical educator, guest speaker and monthly columnist for the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada as well as the past president of the Ottawa Center of the CARS. He has been interviewed on over 50 Canadian radio stations as well as on television across Canada and the United States. In recognition of his public awareness of astronomy, the International Astronomical Union honored him with the name Asteroid (22406) Garyboyle. Follow him on Twitter: @astroeducator, Facebook and his website: www.wondersofastronomy.com
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You’ve probably heard that our solar system is part of the Milky Way galaxy. But what exactly is a galaxy? Who coined the name “Milky Way galaxy” in the first place? What do we know about the Milky Way? How big is it, what shape does it have and how many stars does it have? What else is there besides stars in it? How old is he? Are stars still forming? If so, where? Is there a model? Where is the center and how far are we? And if we can’t see the center (which we can’t), how do we know where it is or what might be hiding there?
How do we know any of this information? There is so much to say. Plus, what are the planets and constellations doing this month? Join the group through Zoom to find out more.
Those interested in participating must register to receive the Zoom login. You can register until the presentation start time or even during the meeting to participate: https://bit.ly/3JQ4ULb
Presenters will chronicle early observations of the Milky Way, as well as early understandings, to modern studies involving satellite images and spectroscopic observations. Along the way, they will provide answers to all of the questions raised above. Finally, a monthly tech update will focus on the recently launched James Webb Space Telescope: its purpose, progress, and amazing history.
And, as always, the hosts will show you how to find lots of fun things in the sky in January and early February. Have you noticed that the Winter Hexagon, which locates eight (not just six) of the brightest stars in the sky, has returned to the evening sky? Did you know Orion can be used as a pointing system to locate other stars and constellations? Did you know that over the next month, three planets will move from the evening sky to the morning sky? The presenters will help you see all of these things for yourself.
Time will be allocated for live Q&A throughout the event. American Sign Language interpretation is also in the spotlight at the event.