Tabla de contenidos para October 2023 en Astronomy

A DECADE OF DATA from the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole has allowed astronomers to view the Milky Way not in light, but in particles. The resulting image, a first, was published June 29 in Science. “This is the first time we are viewing our galaxy in something other than light,” says Naoko Kurahashi Neilson, a particle physicist at Drexel University in Philadelphia who has been working at IceCube for over a decade. Because neutrinos rarely interact with matter, by observing them astronomers can pierce the dust that permeates galaxies and shrouds black holes. But this noninteractive nature also makes neutrinos hard to detect. IceCube tackles this with 5,000 optical sensors that have been lowered into the Antarctic ice on strings into drill holes up to 8,000 feet…

An annular eclipse of the Sun on Oct. 14 is the big event this month, with most of the U.S. seeing a partial eclipse. Saturn is stunning in the evenings, while Jupiter is nearing its best for the year, visible all night. And it’s a good time to track down Uranus and Neptune in binoculars. Venus dazzles in the morning sky, rising about four hours before the Sun. The second week of October is also a great time to view the zodiacal light. Saturn is well placed all evening for observation with a telescope. It starts out at magnitude 0.5 and dips by 0.1 magnitude during October. The planet’s location in southwestern Aquarius adds luster to this dimly lit region of sky. The ringed planet stands high in the south…

HOW TO USE THIS MAP This map portrays the sky as seen near 35° north latitude. Located inside the border are the cardinal directions and their intermediate points. To find stars, hold the map overhead and orient it so one of the labels matches the direction you’re facing. The stars above the map’s horizon now match what’s in the sky. The all-sky map shows how the sky looks at: 10 P.M. October 1 9 P.M. October 15 8 P.M. October 31 Planets are shown at midmonth MAP SYMBOLS Open cluster Globular cluster Diffuse nebula Planetary nebula Galaxy STAR COLORS A star’s color depends on its surface temperature. The hottest stars shine blue Slightly cooler stars appear white Intermediate stars (like the Sun) glow yellow Lower-temperature stars appear orange Fainter stars…

Nov. 30, 3340 B.C. Spiral petroglyphs on the Loughcrew Cairn L Megalithic Monument in Ireland indicate this was the earliest observed solar eclipse for which a record exists. March 30, 1578 B.C. The partial solar eclipse that was closer to total than any other occurred. At maximum, the Moon’s diameter was 0.99985 that of the Sun. May 3, 1375 B.C. A total solar eclipse on this date is described in carvings on a clay tablet found in 1948 in the ancient port city of Ugarit, Syria. Totality was north of the city; the city itself saw “only” a 98-percent partial eclipse. April 16, 1178 B.C. This is possibly the eclipse mentioned in Homer’s Odyssey. In parts of Ancient Greece, totality would have lasted some 4½ minutes. Feb. 22, 720 B.C.…

Q CASSINI INTENTIONALLY CRASHED QI INTO SATURN TO PREVENT CONTAMINATION FROM EARTHLY ORGANISMS. BUT WOULDN’T HUYGENS POSE A MUCH GREATER RISK, AS IT ACTUALLY LANDED ON TITAN? Rich Andreano Lakewood, Colorado A The rationale dominating the decisions to land Huygens on Titan and destroy Cassini in Saturn’s atmosphere is that astrobiologists and planetary protection experts are far more concerned about contaminating Enceladus than about contaminating Titan. This might seem counterintuitive: Titan is of major astrobiological import because its surface and atmosphere are teeming with organic chemicals — including many that are part of the basis of life on Earth and which we think played a role in the origin of life. Titan is also unique as a moon with a substantial atmosphere. However, due to Titan’s cold temperatures (minus 290 degrees…

Dwarfed stars I read the June 2023 article “Explore the 10 nearest stars” with interest and some dismay. I thought, “What about the surprising new additions to the local family of stellar systems, the brown dwarfs?” An account of them was entirely missing. For instance, the brown dwarf binary pair Luhman 16 is just 6.5 lightyears from Earth, third place in distance after Barnard’s Star. And there is another brown dwarf, designated as WISE 0855-0714, at 7.43 light-years, fourth closest to Earth and a little nearer than Wolf 359 (7.85 light-years). Out of the four nearest stellar systems, two are brown dwarfs. A more complete picture of what our nearest stellar neighbors are like is important to our understanding of what kind of stars populate our galaxy — and other…

The universe is continuously rippling with gravitational waves, a 15-year survey has reported. Using pulsars as distant beacons and radio telescopes to plumb the galaxy, a massive collaboration of astronomers and physicists found strong evidence of a gravitational-wave background undulating through the cosmos. A single wave may take years or even decades to crest and fall. The detection of these background gravitational waves is a long-awaited result. Scientists think these waves largely result from pairs of supermassive black holes at the centers of merging galaxies, with some contribution possibly from the Big Bang itself. The ability to measure these waves directly should inform scientists about the origin and history of the universe. The results were published June 28 in a series of papers in The Astrophysical Journal Letters and were…

ACCORDING TO LEGEND, the ancient giant Enceladus vents sulfur from his tomb. According to data, Saturn’s tiny moon Enceladus vents more than that. In a new analysis of data from the retired Cassini mission to Saturn, an international team of researchers has detected phosphorus — a key ingredient for life — coming from Enceladus’ warm, salty subsurface ocean. Enceladus is now the only other place in the solar system besides Earth with compelling evidence for all six of the most critical elements needed for life: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur. Phosphates are critical to life’s most important molecules — DNA and RNA — as well as to walls of cells. The study was led by Frank Postberg, a planetary scientist at the Free University of Berlin in Germany,…

LOOK UP AT THE NIGHT SKY and among the stars you might see a few brighter dots — the planets in our solar system. What you won’t see, though, are the most common kinds of planets in the Milky Way: super-Earths and sub-Neptunes. These worlds, with sizes between that of Earth and Neptune, account for about one-third of known exoplanets. But they are absent from our own cosmic neighborhood. Why they don’t appear around the Sun is an intriguing question that astronomers are now working to answer. DEFINING PLANETS To explore this mystery, astronomers must understand what these planets are like and how they fit into the architecture of planetary and solar system formation. Super-Earths and sub-Neptunes are worlds with two to 10 times Earth’s mass, and radii between those…

IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM and beyond, aurorae brighten the skies of planets and moons. But aurorae are more than just a pretty light show. To scientists, they are nature’s way of making visible the complex dynamics of magnetic fields and the invisible influence they wield throughout the universe. Magnetic fields play an important role throughout the cosmos. The magnetic fields generated by stars, planets, and moons create emissions ranging from X-ray to radio wavelengths. Aurorae are a signpost for myriad interactions between matter and magnetic fields, which can drastically alter the nature of a planet or moon, including its habitability. While satellites continuously survey Earth’s magnetic field, we lack similar long-term, continuous coverage at our solar system’s outermost planets — let alone exoplanets. For those distant bodies, aurorae are one…

Many good things come in threes: the Three Musketeers, the Three Tenors, movie and book trilogies, and more. There seems to be something symmetrical, beautiful, and satisfying when using the power of three. With that mindset, I was immediately impressed by my first glimpse of the European Southern Observatory’s 2017 release of a mosaic image, titled “VST Captures Three-In-One.” These objects — the Swan Nebula (M17) in Sagittarius, and the Eagle Nebula (M16) and Sharpless 2–54, both in Serpens — are part of the summer Milky Way. The mosaic consists of images taken by the VLT Survey Telescope (VST), atop Cerro Paranal in Chile. Commissioned in 2011, the VST has a 2.6-meter mirror feeding a 268-megapixel camera that delivers wide-angle images covering a 1° by 1° area of the sky.…

HOW TO USE THIS MAP This map portrays the sky as seen near 30° south latitude. Located inside the border are the cardinal directions and their intermediate points. To find stars, hold the map overhead and orient it so one of the labels matches the direction you’re facing. The stars above the map’s horizon now match what’s in the sky. The all-sky map shows how the sky looks at: 11 P.M. December 1 10 P.M. December 15 9 P.M. December 31 Planets are shown at midmonth MAP SYMBOLS Open cluster Globular cluster Diffuse nebula Planetary nebula Galaxy STAR COLORS A star’s color depends on its surface temperature. The hottest stars shine blue Slightly cooler stars appear white Intermediate stars (like the Sun) glow yellow Lower-temperature stars appear orange Fainter stars…

A blazing inferno lights up the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex in this image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), published to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the release of its first science images. The picture reveals dynamism in a relatively quiet star-forming region 390 light-years from Earth in the constellation Ophiuchus the Serpent-bearer. The portion of the complex imaged by JWST contains 50 stars the mass of our Sun or smaller. However, the glowing sun dominating the lower part of the picture and surrounded by chaotic swirls of hot dust is a much larger star. To the upper right are red-colored jets composed of molecular hydrogen streaming out from opposing ends of newly formed stars. The dark, dense clouds are thick dust enclosing forming protostars. Although difficult to…

THE CALCIUM IN OUR BONES, the iron in our blood, and the oxygen we breathe all arose eons ago in the hearts of massive stars. These heavy elements ultimately found their way into our bodies after colossal explosions called supernovae ripped their suns apart and seeded our infant solar system with the debris. No wonder, then, that astronomers would turn the power of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) on the remnants of these exploded stars. And there’s hardly a better place to start than with one of the youngest and closest supernova remnants in the Milky Way Galaxy: Cassiopeia A (Cas A for short). The light from Cas A’s birth arrived at Earth some 340 years ago. It came from a massive star that almost certainly siphoned material from a…

Each year, we search the globe to bring you a wide variety of astronomical products. Whether you’re new to the hobby and science or a seasoned veteran, there’s something here for you. Here are Astronomy’s Star Products for 2023, presented in no particular order. 1 SVBONY SV215 Zoom Eyepiece for Planetary Observing SVBONY’s 1¼" SV215 zoom eyepiece is designed with high-power viewing in mind. The SV215 maintains the same focus, 56° apparent field of view, and 10mm eye relief across the entire range of focal lengths. Other features include click stops at 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8mm, and a foldable eyecup. $149.99 • www.svbony.com 2 Explore Scientific ReflexSight Non-Magnifying Finder Explore Scientific’s ReflexSight is a different kind of finder. While it fits onto popular dovetail bases, its “multi-dot” reticle…

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A COLORFUL COSMIC CRUSTACEAN…