Next week’s night sky:
This week, Mars will be extraordinarily easy to stop. From October 28-30, about an hour after sunset, simply locate the moon. The reddish dot above it will be Mars!
Halloween is a full moon! This is the perfect time to look at the moon for a great socially distanced holiday.
Are non-spherical planets possible?
Some of the planetary systems researchers have found experience extreme conditions. These large, gassy planets orbiting very close to their stars are called hot Jupiters. One of these hot Jupiters is WASP-121 b, which orbits a blazingly hot star. In fact, this planet orbits so close to its star that gravitational forces have stretched it out into a football shape. Researchers believe that if the planet were much closer to its star, it would be ripped apart entirely.
In addition to its stretched-out shape, WASP-121 b and other planets appear to have puffed-up atmospheres and comet-like tails. These tails form as their host star blasts the planet with high-energy radiation, knocking gas particles into space.
As for pear-shaped exoplanets, astronomers haven’t found anything to suggest they exist to the extent you’re likely picturing. Other terrestrial planets likely have deformations similar to Earth’s — or perhaps slightly more extreme — but even “extreme” in this case probably translates to a planet appearing essentially spherical from a great distance.
OSIRIS-REx samples
The spacecraft OSIRIS-REx collected a huge sample from asteroid Bennu just two days ago! This sample will provide invaluable data to researchers trying to understand the origins of our solar system.
Earlier star formation
One of the many profound questions about the birth of the universe is when the first stars and galaxies formed in the cooling aftermath of cosmic creation. Researchers are still trying to answer the question of when they first formed and what effect they had on the surrounding interstellar medium. A team of European astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope to study low-mass galaxies dating back to between 500 million and 1 billion years after the Big Bang.
The observations, carried out between 2012 and 2017, are among the deepest ever made, revealing galaxies 10 to 100 times fainter than any previously seen.
Such stars and the first galaxies must have formed even earlier than previously believed. The many observed low-mass galaxies suggest those galaxies may have produced the radiation needed to reionize the universe, breaking neutral hydrogen atoms apart and ending the so-called dark ages that followed the Big Bang.
The results have profound astrophysical consequences as they show that galaxies must have formed much earlier than we thought. To learn more, go here: Evolution of the galaxy stellar mass functions and UV luminosity functions at z = 6−9 in the Hubble Frontier Fields.
Do you have any cool astronomy research news from this week? Share it in the comments below!