Next week’s night sky:
There is an exciting planet-related event happening this week! On Saturday, August 22, there will be a rare double shadow transit over Jupiter! A shadow transit occurs when the shadow of a moon passes over a planet. Shadow transits quite regularly to Jupiter, which has a lot of moons. However, these shadow transits last only minutes, making a dual shadow transit extremely rare. This shadow transit will happen at 06:32 GMT on Saturday, August 22. The moon becomes a new moon on August 19, making the dark skies ideal for stargazing.
A quickly dimming star
A team of researchers has used the Hubble space telescope to answer a question that has been perplexing scientists. Stars usually dim on a scale of millions of years. This means that we can only perceive their dimmings with the best telescopes, and this takes well over 50 years. However, the red giant Betelgeuse (pronounced Beetle juice), appeared to be dimming within a couple of months! This means that the star is dimming twelve million times as fast as it should be. Scientists think that a huge solar flare was emitted by Betelguese. This flare cooled, turning into a giant cloud of dust that blocked Betelguese’s light. Although this explanation may seem far-fetched, this is the best reason that we have right now. If you want to learn more about this strange event, go here: https://astronomynow.com/2020/08/14/hubble-offers-explanation-for-dramatic-dimming-of-betelgeuse/.
An unusually stable galaxy
The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, or ALMA, has found an unusually stable galaxy from the beginnings of our universe. Usually, galaxies break down into amorphous blobs after a couple billion years. This galaxy shatters that precedent because this is the first galaxy that has evidence of a clearly defined nucleus and disk! Because this galaxy appears like a ring of fire to us because of gravitational lensing, we can see features magnified that we ordinarily would not be able to see. In the video below, you can see how the galaxy looks to us (the ring), and how it actually looks (the image at the end of the video). The appearance of this galaxy is changing how we think of the evolution and formation or early galaxies. To learn more about this galaxy, go here: https://astronomynow.com/2020/08/12/alma-spots-unusually-stable-galaxy-shining-early-in-cosmic-history/.
Icy Mars
At one point, liquid water must have been present on Mars. Martian streams must have carved the river-like valleys. However, new research suggests that this old Mars might not have been as pleasant as we think. Instead of a balmy temperature with rivers flowing freely on the surface, researchers think that icy sheets covered the surface of Mars, while streams ran below. New images strongly support this theory. However, all hope is not lost for finding life on Mars!. Just because Mars may have been frozen does not mean that there is no chance for life. To learn more about these frozen rivers, go here: https://astronomy.com/news/2020/08/rivers-on-ancient-mars-may-have-flowed-beneath-sheets-of-ice.
Do you have any cool astronomy research news from this week? Share it in the comments below!
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