Next week’s night sky:
This is a great week to take a look at the moon! It will be especially bright on Monday, so be sure to look for its large craters and dark seas. Look down below for a map of what you can see on the moon.
On Monday, at 5 in the morning, the moon will be only 2 degrees away from Saturn! Look around the sky near the moon for a brighter object. If you have binoculars or a telescope, you should be able to make out greater detail, and maybe even its rings!
On July tenth, Venus will be at its brightest this month. To find it, go to this website, which will help you visualize the night sky in real-time: https://stellarium-web.org/.
A possible Thorne-Żytkow object
First of all, what is a Thorne-Żytkow object? This is a sort of Russian-doll star, where a large, light star envelopes a small, heavy star.
So how do these objects form? First, there has to a big, light star, next to a small, heavy, star. Then, something, like an explosion, has to push the smaller star into the larger star. To learn more about stars, click here.
Why haven’t we found many of these objects, if they are so interesting?
These stars are hard to find for two reasons. First, they look almost like every other star. Second, they are on the dimmer side, and so they are harder to see.
This discovery is a major breakthrough because we have discovered the first real example of an entirely new object!
A drifting planetary core
Another interesting discovery made this week is that a planetary core was discovered drifting around a star.
What is a planetary core?
Simply put, a planetary core is the very middle of a planet. To this day, planetary cores remain one of the least understood things in the universe. We do not know how they form, how they move, or what their lifecycle is.
How did we get so lucky in finding this core?
Most likely, this was once a gas giant, a planetary core surrounded by miles of thick gas. An example of a gas giant in our solar system is Jupiter.
So, how did this form?
This was probably formed when the planet flew to close to the star. This led to the layers of gas being stripped off until we could see the planetary core.
This is very important because it not only lets us see how other planets form but also gives us clues about the formation of our own planet. To learn more about this wonderful discovery, click here.
Stellar fireworks
Finally, stellar fireworks exploded to mark the creation of a giant cluster.
These beautiful explosions were seen by the ALMA telescopes, in Atacama.
While the birth of this cluster just started, it still has millions of years to go before growing up. To learn more, click here.
Do you have any interesting astronomy news that you know about? Let me know in the comments below!