Next week’s night sky:
When the moon completes the first quarter of its journey around Earth on Sunday, Aug. 15 at 11:19 a.m. EDT (1519 GMT), its 90-degree angle away from the sun will cause us to see the moon half-illuminated — on its eastern side. In the first quarter, the moon always rises around midday and sets around midnight, so it is also visible in the afternoon daytime sky. The evenings surrounding the first quarter are the best ones for seeing the lunar terrain when it is dramatically lit by low-angle sunlight, especially along the terminator, the pole-to-pole boundary between the lit and dark hemispheres.
Superflares may be less threatening
Young red dwarf stars are among the most common in the galaxy, hosting numerous exoplanets that could be abodes for life. But red dwarf stars also produce powerful superflares, extreme bursts of radiation that would wreak havoc with exoplanet atmospheres, possibly preventing life as we know it from gaining a foothold. But this may not be the case
Based on observations from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, researchers were able to track down where such superflares originate.
They discovered that extremely large flares are launched from near the poles of red dwarf stars, rather than from their equator, as is typically the case on the Sun. Exoplanets that orbit in the same plane as the equator of the star, like the planets in our own solar system, could therefore be largely protected from such superflares, as these are directed upwards or downwards out of the exoplanet system.
This could improve the prospects for the habitability of exoplanets around small host stars, which would otherwise be much more endangered by the energetic radiation and particles associated with flares compared to planets in the solar system.
To learn more, go here: https://academic.oup.com/mnras/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/mnras/stab2159/6339287
Hubble peers into a dusty stellar nursery
Nestled among the vast clouds of star-forming regions like this one lie potential clues about the formation of our own solar system.
This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope features AFGL 5180, a beautiful stellar nursery located in the constellation of Gemini (the Twins).
At the center of the image, a massive star is forming and blasting cavities through the clouds with a pair of powerful jets, extending to the top right and bottom left of the image. Light from this star is mostly escaping and reaching us by illuminating these cavities, like a lighthouse piercing through the storm clouds.
Stars are born in dusty environments and although this dust makes for spectacular images, it can prevent astronomers from seeing stars embedded in it. Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) instrument is designed to capture detailed images in both visible and infrared light, meaning that the young stars hidden in vast star-forming regions like AFGL 5180 can be seen much more clearly.