Our own Sun produces flares, but we are protected by our magnetosphere, and by the distance from the Sun to Earth. Credit: NASA/ Solar Dynamics Observatory,
When will the next big solar flare occur? How much damage could it cause to power lines and satellites? These are important questions for those looking to protect our infrastructure, but there’s still a lot we need to figure out concerning space weather.
The video above, however, shows magnetic lines weaving together from the surface of the Sun in 2012, eventually creating an eruption that was 35 times our planet’s size and sending out a surge of energy. It’s these energetic flares that can hit Earth’s atmosphere and cause auroras and power surges.
While models of this have been made before, this is the first time the phenomenon was caught in action. Scientists saw it using NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.
Models of the flares show they typically occur amid distorted magnetic fields, the University of Cambridge noted, showing that the lines can “reconnect while slipping and flipping around each other.” Before the flare happens, the magnetic field lines line up in an arc across the sun’s surface (photosphere). That phenonemon is called field line footprints.
“In a smooth, non-entangled arc the magnetic energy levels are low, but entanglement will occur naturally as the footpoints move about each other,” the release added. “Their movement is caused as they are jostled from below by powerful convection currents rising and falling beneath the photosphere. As the movement continues, the entanglement of field lines causes magnetic energy to build up.”
When the energy gets to great, the lines let go of the energy, creating the solar flare and coronal mass ejection that can send material streaming away from the sun. A note, this observation was made of an X-class flare — the strongest kind of flare — and scientists say they are not sure if this phenomenon is true of all kinds of flares. That said, the phenomenon would be harder to spot in smaller flares.
You can read more about the research in the Astrophysical Journal or in preprint version on Arxiv. It was led by Jaroslav Dudik, a researcher at the University of Cambridge’s center for mathemetical sciences.
An extra-tropical cyclone seen off the coast of Japan, March 10, 2014, by the GPM Microwave Imager. The colors show the rain rate: red areas indicate heavy rainfall, while yellow and blue indicate less intense rainfall. The upper left blue areas indicate falling snow. Credit: NASA/JAXA
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL – Weather researchers worldwide now have the ability to capture unprecedented three-dimensional images and detailed rainfall measurements of cyclones, hurricanes and other storms from space on a global basis thanks to the newest Earth observing weather satellite – jointly developed by the US and Japan.
NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) have now released the first images captured by their Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Core Observatory satellite.
GPM soared to space on Feb. 27, exactly one month ago, during a spectacular night launch from the Japanese spaceport at the Tanegashima Space Center on Tanegashima Island off southern Japan.
The newly released series of images show precipitation falling inside a vast extra-tropical cyclone cascading over a vast swath of the northwest Pacific Ocean, approximately 1,000 miles off the coast of eastern Japan.
3D view inside an extra-tropical cyclone observed off the coast of Japan, March 10, 2014, by GPM’s Dual-frequency Precipitation Radar. The vertical cross-section approx. 4.4 mi (7 km) high show rain rates: red areas indicate heavy rainfall while yellow and blue indicate less intense rainfall. Credit: JAXA/NASA
“It was really exciting to see this high-quality GPM data for the first time,” said GPM project scientist Gail Skofronick-Jackson at NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Md., in a NASA statement.
“I knew we had entered a new era in measuring precipitation from space. We now can measure global precipitation of all types, from light drizzle to heavy downpours to falling snow.”
The imagery was derived from measurements gathered by GPM’s two advanced instruments: JAXA’s high resolution dual-frequency precipitation (DPR) radar instrument (Ku and Ka band), which imaged a three-dimensional cross-section of the storm, and the GPM microwave imager (GMI) built by Ball Aerospace in the US which observed precipitation across a broad swath.
“The GMI instrument has 13 channels that measure natural energy radiated by Earth’s surface and also by precipitation itself. Liquid raindrops and ice particles affect the microwave energy differently, so each channel is sensitive to a different precipitation type,” according to a NASA statement.
On March 10, 2014 the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Core Observatory passed over an extra-tropical cyclone about 1,055 miles (1,700 km) east of Japan’s Honshu Island. Formed when a cold air mass wrapped around a warm air mass near Okinawa on March 8, it moved NE drawing cold air over Japan before weakening over the North Pacific. Credit: NASA/JAXA
The 3850 kilogram GPM observatory is the first satellite designed to measure light rainfall and snow from space, in addition to heavy tropical rainfall.
The data were released following check out and activation of the satellites pair of instruments.
“GPM’s precipitation measurements will look like a CAT scan,” Dr. Dalia Kirschbaum, GPM research scientist, told me during a prelaunch interview with the GPM satellite in the cleanroom at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
“The radar can scan through clouds to create a three dimensional view of a clouds structure and evolution.”
The $933 Million GPM observatory will provide high resolution global measurements of rain and snow every 3 hours. It is a joint venture between NASA and JAXA.
It will collect a treasure trove of data enabling the most comprehensive measurements ever of global precipitation – and across a wide swath of the planet where virtually all of humanity lives from 65 N to 65 S latitudes.
The GMI instrument has 13 channels, each sensitive to different types of precipitation. Channels for heavy rain, mixed rain and snow, and snowfall are displayed of the extra-tropical cyclone observed March 10, off the coast of Japan. Multiple channels capture the full range of precipitation. Credit: NASA/JAXA
GPM orbits at an altitude of 253 miles (407 kilometers) above Earth – quite similar to the International Space Station (ISS).
GPM is the lead observatory of a constellation of nine highly advanced Earth orbiting weather research satellites contributed by the US, Japan, Europe and India.
NASA’s next generation Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) observatory inside the clean room at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, MD. Technicians at work on final processing during exclusive up-close inspection tour by Universe Today. GPM launched on February 27, 2014 and will provide global measurements of rain and snow every 3 hours. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
Stay tuned here for Ken’s continuing GPM, Curiosity, Opportunity, Chang’e-3, SpaceX, Orbital Sciences, LADEE, MAVEN, MOM, Mars and more planetary and human spaceflight news.
Learn more at Ken’s upcoming presentations at the NEAF convention on April 12/13 and at Washington Crossing State Park, NJ on April 6. Also at the Quality Inn Kennedy Space Center, Titusville, FL, March 29.
The Expedition 39/40 crew just before climbing into their Soyuz spacecraft in Kazakhstan on March 25, 2014. From top, Oleg Artemyev (Roscosmos), Steve Swanson (NASA) and Alexander Skvortsov (Roscosmos). Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky
Update, 8:33 p.m. EDT: The Soyuz spacecraft arrived safely at station at 7:53 p.m. EDT (11:53 a.m. UTC) and coverage of the hatch opening is scheduled at 10:15 p.m. EDT (2:15 a.m. UTC).
After spending an extra couple of days in the cramped Russian Soyuz spacecraft, the incoming International Space Station crew will likely be very be glad to get out and stretch their legs. You can check out the festivities live in the video link above.
Three people are set to make a docking with the orbiting complex at 7:58 p.m. EDT (11:58 p.m. UTC). If all goes to schedule, they’ll pop the hatch open at 10:40 p.m. EDT (2:40 a.m. UTC). Meanwhile, engineers are trying to figure out what caused the malfunction that prevented a docking as planned on Tuesday (March 25).
Remember that all schedules are subject to change, so tune into NASA TV well before each event happens.
The Expedition 39/40 crew lifted off Tuesday afternoon (EDT) from Kazakhstan to take a fast track to the space station that should have seen them dock on launch day. The Soyuz has to make three engine firings or burns to accomplish this. The docking was cancelled after the third burn did not happen as planned. The Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) has determined this was because the spacecraft was in the wrong orientation, but the underlying cause is still being investigated.
Once this happened, the crew switched to a standard backup procedure to bring them to the station in two days instead. (This path, in fact, was what all crews did up until last year.) The crew is safe and in good spirits heading up to the docking, NASA has said. The Soyuz has done several other engine firings since, with no incident.
The Soyuz crew includes Steve Swanson (NASA), Alexander Skvortsov (Roscosmos) and Oleg Artemyev (Roscosmos). Awaiting them on the station are Koichi Wakata (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), Rick Mastracchio (NASA) and Mikhail Tyurin (Roscosmos). Wakata is in command of the station, marking a first for Japan’s astronaut corps.
Image of the Grand Canyon from the International Space Station on March 26, 2014. Credit: NASA/JAXA Koichi Wakata.
Can you spot the Grand Canyon in this picture? It is surprisingly hard to see. Astronaut Koichi Wakata took this picture on March 26, 2014 from the International Space Station, and thankfully he provided a clue: look in the bottom center portion in the photo.
If you’ve ever stood at this Canyon’s edge or even flew over in a plane, you know how dramatic the view is. From space … not so much.
You may have seen a fake image of the Grand Canyon from space floating around the various social medias last year that looks much more majestic. I won’t share it here, but suffice to say, it’s a doctored up aerial view with a starry sky photoshopped in. The images here are the real view of the Grand Canyon from space.
Earth’s Grand Canyon pales in comparison to Valles Marineris on Mars– the biggest canyon we know of in the Solar System — which is ten times longer and five times deeper than our Grand Canyon here on Earth.
Valles Marineris as seen in this mosaic of Viking orbiter images. Noctis Labyrinthus at the left, Melas Chasma in the middle, Hebes Chasma just left of top center, Eos Chasma at lower right and Ganges Chasma just above center right. Credit: NASA/JPL
Two videos recently released by the Hubble team take us on a tour of two famous and intriguing cosmic objects: the stellar wind-blown “celestial snow angel” Sharpless 2-106 and the uncannily equine Horsehead Nebula, imaged in infrared wavelengths by the HST.
Using Hubble imagery complemented with data from the Subaru Infrared Telescope and ESO’s Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy — VISTA, for short — the videos show us an approximation of the three-dimensional structures of these objects relative to the stars surrounding them, providing a perspective otherwise impossible from our viewpoint on Earth.
Hubble Space Telescope picture of comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring as observed on March 11, 2014. At that time the comet was 353 million miles from Earth. When the glow of the coma is subtracted through image processing, which incorporates a smooth model of the coma's light distribution, Hubble resolves what appear to be two jets of dust coming off the nucleus in opposite directions. This means that only portions of the surface of the nucleus are presently active as they are warmed by sunlight, say researchers. Credit: NASA, ESA, and J.-Y. Li (Planetary Science Institute)
Comet Siding Spring, on its way to a close brush with Mars on October 19, has been kicking up a storm lately. New images from Hubble Space Telescope taken on March 11, when the comet was just this side of Jupiter, reveal multiple jets of gas and dust.
Illustration showing Comet Siding Spring’s orbit and close pass of Mars as it plies its way through the inner solar system this year. Credit: NASA
Discovered in January 2013 by Robert H. McNaught at Siding Spring Observatory in Australia, the comet is falling toward the sun along a roughly 1 million year orbit. It will gradually brighten through spring and summer until reaching binocular brightness this fall when it passes 130 million miles (209 million km) from Earth.
Views of the comet on three different dates. Top shows a series of unfiltered images while the bottom are filtered to better show the jets. Comet Siding Spring’s hazy coma measures about 12,000 miles across and it’s presently about 353 million miles (568 million km) from the sun. Credit: NASA, ESA, J.-Y. Li (Planetary Science Institute)
Astronomers were particularly interested in getting images when Earth crossed the comet’s orbital plane, the path the comet takes as it orbits the sun. The positioning of the two bodies allowed Hubble to make crucial observations of how fast dust particles streamed off the nucleus.
Comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring photographed from Australia on March 4, 2014. Credit: Rolando Ligustri
“This is critical information that we need to determine whether, and to what degree, dust grains in the coma of the comet will impact Mars and spacecraft in the vicinity of Mars,” said Jian-Yang Li of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona.
On October 19 this year, Comet Siding Spring will pass within 84,000 miles (135,000 km) of Mars or less than half the distance of our moon. There’s a distinct possibility that orbiting Mars probes like NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and the European Mars Expressmight be enveloped by the comet’s coma (hazy atmosphere) and pelted by dust.
Mars and Comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring will overlap as seen from Earth on Oct. 19, 2014 when the comet might pass as close as 25,700 miles (41,300 km) from the planet’s center. View shows the sky at the end of evening twilight facing southwest. Stellarium
While comet dust particles are only 1 to 1/10,000 of a centimeter wide, they’ll be moving at 124,000 mph (200,000 km/hr). At that speed even dust motes small can be destructive. Plans are being considered to alter the orbits of the spacecraft to evade the worst of the potential blast. On the bright side, the Red Planet may witness a spectacular meteor storm! Protected by the atmosphere, the Martian rovers aren’t expected to be affected.
I know where I’ll be on October 19 – in the front yard peering at Mars through my telescope. Even if the comet doesn’t affect the planet, seeing the two overlap in conjunction will be a sight not to miss.
Space is a hostile environment for human beings. No part of it will permit you to survive longer than a minute. But what’s the fastest way to die in space?
Just in case you were planning to jump out into the vacuum of space without a spacesuit, I urge you to reconsider. There’s nothing but painful suffocation and death. Do not do it.
You probably wouldn’t be here if you weren’t wondering, just how lethal is space? What are all the ways space is trying to kill you? Space has a Swiss army knife of methods to do you in. You won’t be surprised to learn that classic sci-fi usually had it wrong. If you jumped out into the cold deep void without a protective suit, you wouldn’t pop like a giant pressurized juicy meat pimple. Your blood doesn’t boil, and you don’t flash freeze.
The good news is even though there is a pressure difference, human skin is strong enough to keep your body together. The bad news is you just plain old asphyxiate, almost instantaneously. The human body has about 15 seconds of usable oxygen in the blood. Once you run through that oxygen, you’ll take a quick space nap and then die a few minutes later.
On Earth, you can hold your breath for a few minutes but this gets much harder in space, as the low pressure forces the air out of your lungs. In fact, it would probably be wise to breathe every last bit of air out before you stepped out, since it’s coming out violently, one way or another.
Here’s the amazing thing. If you jumped out into space and could get back into a pressurized environment within a minute or so, you probably wouldn’t suffer any permanent damage, aside from a little bruising, some hypothermia and a really nasty sunburn. Stay out for any longer, though, and the damage will get worse. Beyond a few minutes and you’ll be done.Which is just fine, as you weren’t planning on going out into space without a spacesuit anyway.
An illustration showing the natural barrier Earth gives us against solar radiation. Credit: NASA.
Unfortunately, even tucked safely in your spacecraft, there are tremendous risks to being away from the comfort of Earth. You’ve got to be worried about radiation. Once a spacecraft leaves the protection of the Earth’s magnetic field, it’s exposed to the high levels constantly streaming through space. A trip from Earth to Mars and back again might increase your overall risk developing a fatal cancer by about 5%, and that’s a risk most astronauts are willing to take. But there are solar storms blasting out from the Sun that could deliver a lethal dose of radiation in just a few hours. Astronauts would need a safe, radiation-shielded location during these solar storms or they’d expire from acute radiation poisoning.
There are many, many other risks from traveling in space. Fire is one of the worst, failure of your oxygen system, access to clean water and food become an obvious problem. Even things we usually don’t think about, like mold building up in the damp environment of a spaceship becomes a problem.
Survive all these immediate hazards, just like here on Earth, and the long term hazards will get you. We have no idea if it’s even possible for the human body to exist in microgravity for longer than a few years. Your bones dissolve, your muscles waste away, and there might be other consequences.
A view of the damaged P6 4B solar panel on the ISS. Image credit: NASA
So far, nobody is willing to run the experiment long enough to find out. And finally, the fastest way space can kill you is likely impact with debris. Even though space is mostly empty, there’s all kinds of material whizzing around. Every spacecraft is pockmarked with micrometeorite impacts. There are holes punched through the International Space Station’s solar panels. These tiny pieces of rock can be traveling at 10 kilometers per second when they impact the spacecraft.
Spacecraft have layers of protection to absorb smaller particles, but there’s no way to prevent larger objects from causing catastrophic damage. If those layers weren’t there you’d be a short hop skip and a jump from becoming a heavily perforated spongebob spacepants. The solution? You just have to hope they never hit.
There certainly a many ways to quickly die in space, but what’s really amazing to me is how we can actually overcome many of these risks, certainly long enough to reach other worlds in the Solar System. Traveling in space is dangerous and difficult, but the exciting thing is it’s still possible. And one day, we’ll do it.
So, even knowing the risks, would you travel in space?
The Rosetta spacecraft saw its destination (Comet 67P/Churymov-Gerasimenko) on March 20, 2014 from about three million miles (five million kilometers) away. The comet is in the small circle next to the globular star cluster M107. ESA/MPS for OSIRIS-Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA
As Rosetta limbers up for its close-up encounter with a comet, we have visual confirmation that it’s on the right track! The comet spied its destination — Comet 67P/Churymov-Gerasimenko — using its OSIRIS wide-angle camera and narrow-angle camera on March 20 and March 21.
“Finally seeing our target after a 10 year journey through space is an incredible feeling,” stated OSIRIS principal investigator Holger Sierks from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany. “These first images taken from such a huge distance show us that OSIRIS is ready for the upcoming adventure.”
The image comes as Rosetta is preparing its science instruments for its encounter in August.
“Currently, Rosetta is on a trajectory that would, if unchanged, take it past the comet at a distance of approximately 50 000 km and at a relative speed of 800 m/s. A critical series of manoeuvres beginning in May will gradually reduce Rosetta’s velocity relative to the comet to just 1 m/s and bring it to within 100 km by the first week of August,” the European Space Agency stated.
Here’s an animation of how big the comet will appear to Rosetta as it gets closer:
“Between May and August the 4 km-wide comet will gradually ‘grow’ in Rosetta’s field of view from appearing to have a diameter of less than one camera pixel to well over 2000 pixels – equivalent to a resolution of around 2 m per pixel – allowing the first surface features to be resolved.”
For more information on the science commissioning, check out the Rosetta blog.
Artist’s impression (not to scale) of the Rosetta orbiter deploying the Philae lander to comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. Credit: ESA–C. Carreau/ATG medialab.
Artist's conception of Sedna, a dwarf planet in the solar system that only gets within 76 astronomical units (Earth-sun distances) of our sun. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Today, astronomers announced the discovery of 2012 VP113, a world that, assuming its reflectivity is moderate, is 280 miles (450 kilometers) in size and orbiting even further away from the sun than Pluto or even the more distant Sedna (announced in 2004). If 2012 VP113 is made up mostly of ice, this would make it large (and round) enough to be a dwarf planet, the astronomers said.
Peering further into 2012 VP113’s discovery, however, brings up several questions. What are the boundaries of the Oort Cloud, the region of icy bodies where the co-discoverers say it resides? Was it placed there due to a sort of Planet X? And what is the definition of a dwarf planet anyway?
First, a bit about 2012 VP113. Its closest approach to the Sun is about 80 astronomical units, making it 80 times further from the Sun than Earth is. This puts the object in a region of space previously known only to contain Sedna (76 AU away). It’s also far away from the Kuiper Belt, a region of rocky and icy bodies between 30 and 50 AU that includes Pluto.
The discovery images of 2012 VP113. Each one was taken about two hours apart on Nov. 5, 2012. Behind the object, you can see background stars and galaxies that remained still (from Earth’s perspective) in the picture frame. Credit: Scott S. Sheppard: Carnegie Institution for Science
“The detection of 2012 VP113 confirms that Sedna is not an isolated object; instead, both bodies may be members of the inner Oort Cloud, whose objects could outnumber all other dynamically stable populations in the Solar System,” the authors wrote in their discovery paper, published today in Nature.
The Oort cloud (named after the Dutch astronomer Jan Oort, who first proposed it) is thought to contain a vast number of smallish, icy bodies. This NASA web page defines its boundaries as between 5,000 and 100,000 AUs, so 2012 VP113 obviously falls short of this measure.
The astronomers hypothesize that 2012 VP113 is part of a collection of “inner Oort cloud objects” that make their closest approach at a distance of more than 50 AU, a boundary that is thought to avoid any “significant” interference from Neptune. Orbits of these objects would range no further than 1,500 AU, a location hypothesized as part of the “outer Oort cloud” — the spot where “galactic tides start to become important in the formation process,” the team wrote.
“Some of these inner Oort cloud objects could rival the size of Mars or even Earth. This is because many of the inner Oort cloud objects are so distant that even very large ones would be too faint to detect with current technology,” stated Scott Sheppard, co-author of the paper and a solar system researcher at the Carnegie Institution for Science. (The lead author is the Gemini Observatory’s Chadwick Trujillo, who co-discovered several dwarf planets with the California Institute of Technology’s Mike Brown.)
The layout of the solar system, including the Oort Cloud, on a logarithmic scale. Credit: NASA
One large question is how 2012 VP113 and Sedna came to be. And of course, with only two objects, it’s hard to draw any definitive conclusions. Theory 1 supposes that the gas giant planets beyond Earth ejected a “rogue” planet (or planets) that in turn threw objects from the Kuiper Belt to the more distant inner Oort Cloud. “These planet-sized objects could either remain (unseen) in the Solar System or have been ejected from the Solar System during the creation of the inner Oort Cloud,” the researchers wrote.
(Planet X hopers: Note that NASA just released results from its Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer that found nothing Saturn’s size (or bigger) as far as 10,000 AU, and nothing bigger than Jupiter at 26,000 AU.)
Theory 2 postulates that a passing star moved objects closer to the Sun into the inner Oort cloud. The last, “less-explored” theory is that these objects are “extrasolar planetesimals” — small worlds from other stars — that happened to be close to the Sun when it was born in a field of stars.
However these objects came to be, the astronomers estimate there are 900 objects with orbits similar to Sedna and 2012 VP113 that have diameters larger than 620 miles (1,000 kilometers). How do we know which are dwarf planets, however, given their distance and small size?
Artist’s impression of Makemake, a dwarf planet about two-thirds Pluto’s size. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada/Nick Risinger (skysurvey.org)
The International Astronomical Union’s definition of a dwarf planet doesn’t mention how big an object has to be to qualify as a dwarf planet. It reads: “A dwarf planet is an object in orbit around the Sun that is large enough (massive enough) to have its own gravity pull itself into a round (or nearly round) shape. Generally, a dwarf planet is smaller than Mercury. A dwarf planet may also orbit in a zone that has many other objects in it. For example, an orbit within the asteroid belt is in a zone with lots of other objects.”
That same page mentions there are only five recognized dwarf planets: Ceres, Pluto, Eris, Makemake and Haumea. Brown led the discovery of the last three dwarf planets in this list, and calls himself “the man who killed Pluto” because his finds helped demote Pluto from planethood to dwarf planet status.
It’s hard for official bodies to keep up with the pace of discovery, however. Brown’s webpage lists 46 “likely” dwarf planets, which under this definition would give him 15 discoveries.
“Reality … does not pay much attention to official lists kept by the IAU or by anyone else,” he wrote on that page. “A more interesting question to ask is: how many round objects are there in the solar system that are not planets? These are, by the definition, dwarf planets, whether or not they ever make it to any offiicially sanctioned list. If the category of dwarf planet is important, then it is the reality that is important, not the official list.”
Artist’s impression of the dwarf planet Haumea and its moons, Hi’aka and Namaka. Credit: NASA
His analysis (which focuses on Kuiper Belt objects) notes that most objects are too faint for us to notice if they are round or not, but you can get a sense of how round an object is by its size and composition. The asteroid belt’s Ceres (at 560 miles or 900 km) is the only known round, rocky object.
For icier objects, he suggested looking to icy moons to understand how small an object can be and still be round. Saturn’s moon Mimas is round at 250 miles (400 km), which he classifies as a “reasonable lower limit” (since observed satellites of 125 miles/200 km are not round).
Discovery of 2012 VP113 came courtesy of the new Dark Energy Camera (DECam) at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory’s 4-meter telescope in Chile. The orbit was determined with the Magellan 6.5-meter telescope at Carnegie’s Las Campanas Observatory, also in Chile.
The paper, called “A Sedna-like body with a perihelion of 80 astronomical units”, will soon be available on Nature’s website.
Artist's impression of what the rings of the asteroid Chariklo would look like from the small body's surface. The rings' discovery was a first for an asteroid. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada/Nick Risinger (skysurvey.org)
Rings are a tough phenomenon to spot. As late as 1977, astronomers thought that the only thing in the solar system with rings was the planet Saturn. Now, we can add the first asteroid to the list of ringed bodies nearby us. The asteroid 10199 Chariklo hosts two rings, perhaps due to a collision that caused a chain of debris circling its tiny surface.
Besides the 250-kilometer (155-mile) Chariklo, the only other ringed bodies known to us so far are (in order of discovery) Saturn, Uranus, Jupiter and Neptune.
“We weren’t looking for a ring and didn’t think small bodies like Chariklo had them at all, so the discovery — and the amazing amount of detail we saw in the system — came as a complete surprise,” stated Felipe Braga-Ribas of the National Observatory (Observatório Nacional) in Brazil, who led the paper about the discovery.
Illustration of how Asteroid Chariklo may have gotten its rings. Copyright: Estevan Guzman for Universe Today.
The rings came to light, so to speak, when astronomers watched Chariklo passing in front of the star UCAC4 248-108672 on June 3, 2013 from seven locations in South America. While watching, they saw two dips in the star’s apparent brightness just before and after the occultation. Better yet, with seven sites watching, researchers could compare the timing to figure out more about the orientation, shape, width and more about the rings.
The observations revealed what is likely a 12.4-mile (20-kilometer)-wide ring system that is about 1,000 times closer to the asteroid than Earth is to the moon. What’s more, astronomers suspect there could be a moon lying amidst the asteroid’s ring debris.
Artist’s impression of two rings discovered around the asteroid Chariklo. It was the first such discovery made for an asteroid. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada/M. Kornmesser/Nick Risinger (skysurvey.org)
If these rings are the leftovers of a collision as astronomers suspect, this would give fodder to the idea that moons (such as our own moon) come to be from collisions of smaller bits of material. This is also a theory for how planets came to be around stars.
The rings haven’t been named officially yet, but the astronomers are nicknaming them Oiapoque and Chuí after two rivers near the northern and southern ends of Brazil.
Because these occultation events are so rare and can show us more about asteroids, astronomers pay attention when they occur. Part of the Eastern Seabord enjoyed a more recent asteroid-star occultation on March 20.
The original paper, “A ring system detected around the Centaur (10199) Chariklo”, will soon be available on the Nature website.
Artist’s impression of rings around the asteroid Chariklo. This was the first asteroid where rings were discovered. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada/M. Kornmesser/Nick Risinger (skysurvey.org)
