Astronomy Column

Chief Contributor: Roxana Ying

October 9, 2022

On October 9, China launched a solar probe, the Advanced Space-based Solar Observatory (ASO-S), with a Long March 2D carrier rocket from the Jiuquan Sattelite Launch Center. The probe, orbiting 720 kilometres above Earth, seeks to observe the sun and study space weather.

The ASO-S, nicknamed Kuafu-1, will be in testing for four to six months but will have a minimum lifespan of four years, during which it will survey solar phenomena such as flares and coronal mass ejections (significant ejections of plasma from the Sun’s outermost layer) and send around 500 gigabytes of data per day.

While terrestrial humans are mostly unaffected by solar meteorology, it can have devastating effects on technology, such as our satellites, by interacting with Earth’s magnetic field. Forecasting space weather is a difficult task, with current predictions for solar disasters only reliable up to an hour in advance. With the new launch of the ASO-S, China is hoping it can improve its solar forecasting abilities.

October 3, 2022

The mystery behind the source of the “cocoon”, an enigmatic bright blob discovered in 2012, may finally be solved.

The cocoon is found within the southern lobe of the Fermi Bubbles, massive structures of gamma rays found above and below the centre of the milky way. While the Fermi Bubbles are tentatively linked to activity from our supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*, the cocoon was more of an enigma: it didn’t have a twin in the upper bubble, and didn’t seem to have anything to do with the black hole at all.

Due to the objects’ proximities, researchers believe the cocoon is made of gamma rays from our neighbour satellite galaxy, the Sagittarius Dwarf. However, Sagittarius Dwarf is old, tiny, and being ripped apart by the Milky Way– it doesn’t have the kind of gas the Milky Way has to create gamma rays. Where are the gamma rays coming from, then?

Scientists think they have the answer: millisecond pulsars. These stellar remnants are a special kind of pulsar with rotational periods of just a few milliseconds and are “recycled” from dead pulsars through the accretion of binary star material. The millisecond pulsars can emit tons of gamma radiation.

New publications every Sunday!

September 18, 2022

NASA’s Perseverance rover recently collected some particularly promising rocks: they contained the highest concentration discovered yet of carbon-based molecules, a potential remnant of ancient life. While scientists cannot yet draw any conclusions, the discovery is significant– and past life on Mars is now a very real possibility.

What makes this find especially exciting is the location of these rocks, as they were discovered in a dried-up river delta– a place which would’ve had a high potential to harbor life.

This delta, named Jezero Crater, formed 3.5 billion years ago and is 28 miles wide, and NASA selected it as the landing site for the Perseverance due to its unique characteristic of likely once holding water.

While the future of Mars exploration looks very exciting, there is a chance that the molecules were not generated from any biological process.

September 4, 2022

On Saturday, September 3, a fuel leak occurred as NASA attempted to fuel its Space Launch System megarocket for the Artemis 1. While the exact cause of the leak is unknown, one thing is for sure: the Artemis 1 won’t make it this launch period.

The liquid hydrogen leak led to dangerous amounts of hydrogen gas– a highly flammable element. NASA’s engineers weren’t able to rectify the situation, so the launch of Artemis 1 must be delayed– for at least two weeks, when the launch period opens up again– but may be delayed even further.

This launch window is important; the Artemis 1 rocket depends on the moon to be in a favourable position in its orbit for the rocket to properly reach its destination. The current launch period will close on Sept. 6, while the next willl open on Sept. 16 and close on Oct. 4.

August 21, 2022

Despite its age of over 30 years, the Hubble space telescope continues to produce stunning images as it orbits our Earth. This time, its Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys captured NGC 6540 in the Sagittarius constellation, a globular cluster about 17,000 light years away.

Globular clusters are round groups of many stars, held together by their mutual gravitation. They can hold anywhere from ten thousands to millions of stars, and typically consist of older stars than their cousins, the open clusters.

The bright crosses you see in the photo aren’t really part of the stars – they’re diffraction spikes, caused by the disturbance of light as it passes through the structure of the Hubble.

August 14, 2022

Australia’s new Setonix supercomputer, named after the quokka, has processed an image of the supernova remnant G261.9+5.5. This object, located 10,000-15,000 light years away from Earth, is a relic of the explosion of a star. G261.9+5.5 compresses the surrounding magnetic field and traps energetic electrons, which produce the emissions seen in the image.

The data was gathered by CSIRO’s (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization) ASKAP (Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder) telescope, and transported via optical fiber to the Pawsey Supercomputing Research Center for the processing.

This image was produced as a test run for the computer. Despite the capabilities of the Setonix, this image was still a challenge to process due to the high amounts of data. However, scientists are excited for what images the computer can produce in the future.

August 7, 2022

The Sturgeon Moon, our last supermoon of the year, will occur on late Thursday, August 11 or early Friday, August 12– coinciding with the annual Perseid meteor shower. On one hand, witnessing a supermoon and a meteor shower at the same sounds magical, but on the other, the brightness of the full moon will obscure the showers and make them appear far less impressive. Poor timing? Probably, but that doesn’t make this event any less worth viewing.

Though it is very round, the moon’s orbit around the Earth is not a perfect circle, rather, it is an ellipse, and thus its distance from the Earth would vary as it orbits. A supermoon occurs when a full or new moon takes place around its perigee, which is the point of its orbit closest to our earth. During a supermoon, our moon appears the biggest and brightest in the sky.

If you’re interested in seeing the Sturgeon Moon, check the times for your local moonrise– the viewing experience is always the best around then. Remember that this is our last supermoon of the year– see it while you can!

July 31, 2022

China launched the Long March 5B to carry a lab module to the Tianggong Station under construction. Debris from the Long March 5B returned to Earth in an uncontrolled manner. This was fully intentional and not a fault in the construction (at least not an accidental one), compared to the typical steered or soft landings of other rocket cores. The material used in the Long March 5B means that 5-9 metric tons of the rocket likely would have hit Earth’s surface. It was not designed to burn up completely upon re-entry.

While China’s space agency claimed that whatever surviving debris would have landed in the Sulu Sea, far away from populated areas, critics have cited their method as reckless and dangerous, as there is no way for where the debris lands on the surface of the Earth to be controlled as it falls.

Long March 5 has had two previous launches in 2020 and 2021, which both followed the same disposal procedure. While no injuries to humans were caused, debris did once land in a populated location in the Ivory Coast and caused some damage to property.

July 24, 2022

The James Webb Space Telescope captured this gorgeous image of the galaxy Messier 74, nicknamed the Phantom Galaxy as its low surface brightness makes it difficult to observe without professional instruments. About 32 million light-years away, its large size and convenient face-on orientation (that is, the large face points towards us instead of its edge) make it a good target for scientists looking to study these spiral galaxies.

While Messier 74 has been photographed by other instruments, such as the Hubble telescope, what differs with the JWST is its usage of infrared technology, as compared to the visible light and ultraviolet of the Hubble.

The JWST image provides a much more detailed glimpse at the galaxy, as compared to the Hubble.

July 17, 2022

In 2019, astronomers released the first-ever image of a black hole– M87, which is a supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy M87. To accomplish this, they used the Event Horizon Telescope, a large network of smaller telescopes spread around the world. Following this release, there was an update that included polarized light on top of the original image, and this discovery revealed that not only did black holes have magnetic fields, but they were very strong, as polarization occurs with magnetic fields.

In May of 2022, the black hole at the center of our own galaxy was revealed– the supermassive Sagittarius A*. While it is visually rather similar to the M87 image taken in 2019 (albeit Sgr A* is much, much smaller), it’s the very first piece of visual evidence we have of Sgr A*’s existence. This photo was also taken using the Event Horizon Telescope.

Astronomers Reveal First Image of the Black Hole at the Heart of Our Galaxy | Event Horizon Telescope

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