Hello Space Fans! Welcome to another edition
of Space Fan News!
As if the Kepler space telescope hasn’t
unveiled enough about weird exoplanets, astronomers
have found another doozy in the data.
This exoplanet’s name is Kepler 413b and
it’s a little off its rocker.
Now we’ve become used to seeing exoplanets
with very small orbits around their stars,
but Kepler 413b’s is just a bit shorter
than that of Mercury’s at 66 days.
Where this exoplanet stands out is not the
period of its orbit, but the axial tilt caused
by it. Here, let me show you.
You see, Kepler 413b is orbing TWO stars,
one orange and one red dwarf.
Now orbiting two stars isn’t something that’s
new, but as you can see in this top-down view,
the orbit isn’t following a typical elliptical
pattern. Its orbit is moving and precessing.
Looking at the orbit from the side is what
really made the astronomers scratch their
head.
As you can see, the orbit of Kepler 413b does
not follow directions very well. And by directions,
I mean the ecliptic plane of its stars.
Since Kepler detects exoplanets using the
transit method, that is the measuring of the
light that dips down when a planet passes
in front of star… it was a little weird
when a planet that transited three times in
180 days suddenly stopped showing up. Not
only that, but then it came back again!
The scientists are still trying to figure
out the details, but It could have something
to do with either a third, yet very dim star,
or perhaps another planet that’s making
Kepler 413b’s orbit all…. Wibbly wobbly.
As many of you have heard in previous shows,
I’m totally stoked about the Gaia spacecraft
coming online and starting its work.
This billion star surveyor was launched in
December of last year by the European Space
Agency and is in the beginning stages of testing
its equipment before the beginning of it’s
5-year mission.
As part of this first test, we’re given
a little treat: a star cluster in the Large
Magellanic Cloud, which is a satellite galaxy
that can be seen from the southern hemisphere.
Unfortunately for those like me who are immensely
eager to see what Gaia does, this will also
be one of the last images we get from the
spacecraft for some time.
Getting Gaia completely operational will take
several months now that it’s at its home
at the lagrangian 2 point.
The nearly billion pixel camera will need
to be tested, not to mention calibrating the
mirrors that will be focusing in the light
from our galactic neighborhood.
Once Gaia officially starts its observation
mission, it will be observing one billion
stars, that’s 1% of our galaxy, about 70
times each.
This will give astronomers many opportunities
to see the fluctuations of luminosity, position
and color to have the most comprehensive understanding
of the most proximal stars to our own.
Once the survey is done, it’ll have nearly
a petabyte of data to be processed… that’s
one million gigabytes of information for us
to better understand where we’re at in the
Milky Way.
Finally, a blast from the past… well sort
of.
Back in 1999, the Chandra x-ray observatory
first imaged the galaxy Centaurus A, which
was originally discovered by Scottish astronomer
James Dunlop.
Over the years, Chandra has gone back to Cen
A to make more and more observations of this
amazing galaxy.
As you can imagine, we’ve developed new
and better ways to process image data from
our space telescopes, and the data from Chandra
is no different.
Here, we’re able to see a collection of
over 9 ½ straight days of observation in
the x-ray wavelengths.
The red coloring is for low energy x-rays,
green for medium, and blue for high-energy.
When they’re combined in this image, we
get this amazing view of the jet of matter
shooting out from the giant black hole at
the galactic nucleus.
With the new methods of processing, astronomers
were able to resolve enormous dust lanes that
surround the galaxy as well.
It’s just amazing at what we’re able to
learn from data nearly 15 years old, and is
very telling that we are in a remarkable time
in astronomy. More and more data is collected
from better and better observatories.
As time goes on and methods improve, one can
only speculate at what we’ll uncover about
the Universe, even if it’s been staring
us in the face all this time.
Well that’s it for this week, Space Fans!
Thank you ALL for watching. And, as always,
keep looking up!
Now don’t forget to join Tony and I at 9
p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific, 2 a.m. Greenwich
mean time for our edition of Space Fan News
Live! Leave your questions and comments below
and we’ll respond to them live on air!
