Astronomers have turned up plenty of extrasolar planets, but a newly discovered binary pair of planets is quite the find. The system consists of a 7-Jupiter mass planet and a 14-Jupiter mass planet… but no star. These planets – or “planemos” – just orbit each other. Their discovery challenges the current theory that planets are thought to form out of the disks of gas and dust that surround newborn stars.
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Brown Dwarf Lived Inside Another Star
ESO’s Very Large Telescope has uncovered an interesting stellar pair: a hot white dwarf and a brown dwarf orbiting each other every two hours. In the past, the heavier star was actually a bloated red giant, and the brown dwarf orbited inside its envelope. The friction of moving through the red giant caused the brown dwarf to spiral in to its current position. Finally, the star collapsed down to a white dwarf, leaving the two objects in this embrace.
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Podcast: A Puzzling Difference
Imagine looking at red houses, and sometimes you see a crow fly past. But every time you look at a blue house, there’s always a crow flying right in front of the house. The crow and the house could be miles apart, so this must be impossible, right? Well, according to a new survey if you look at a quasar, you’ll see a galaxy in front 25% of the time. But for gamma ray bursts, there’s almost always an intervening galaxy. Even though they could be separated by billions of light years. Figure that out. Dr. Jason X. Prochaska, from the University of California, Santa Cruz speaks to me about the strange results they’ve found, and what could be the cause.
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Astrophoto: NGC 6755 and 6756 by Bernhard Hubl
Stars arise at the heart of great interstellar clouds that have collapsed under their own weight. These free-floating clouds are comprised principally of hydrogen, the most common element in the universe, plus a smaller amount of dust from previous generations of suns. The size of a typical cloud is so enormous that it takes light many years to travel from one end to the other. The amount of material within an interstellar cloud is also staggering to imagine- so much material is brought together that multiple star births are common. Seen from the outside, a collapsed cloud can appear dark and foreboding. But, inside they are full of light from the hot, newly formed stars that have been incubated. Over time, the cloud will part or dissipate to reveal a new group of stars, similar to the two clusters seen in the accompanying picture.
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Jupiter’s Great Red Spots
Astronomers from UC Berkeley used the massive W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii to capture this infrared image of Jupiter and its two massive storms: the Great Red Spot and the smaller Oval BA. The image was taken on July 20, using the telescope’s adaptive optics system to sharpen the image. Scientists still aren’t sure why the spots have turned red, but they think it might be that they dredge darker material up from deeper in the planet’s atmosphere; when exposed to ultraviolet light from the Sun, this material turns red.
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Hubble View of a Supernova Remnant
This Hubble Space Telescope photograph contains a supernova remnant located in the Small Magellanic Cloud – it’s bluish haze at the centre of the photo. The remnant is known as E0102, and it’s about 50 light-years away from the edge of a massive star forming region called N 76. The light from the supernova itself would have reached us about 2,000 years ago.
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Help Look for Space Dust
If you’ve got keen eyes, a computer connection, and a little spare time, you could help discover particles of interstellar dust. Poring over the samples returned by NASA’s Stardust probe is a big job, so the scientists have opened up the task to volunteers through the Internet. Using a virtual microscope, volunteers can download images and search for the telltale track of a interstellar dust particles that were captured in aerogel. Discoverers will get a chance to name the particles they discover.
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Book Review: Astronomy: Eyewitness Companions
There’s nothing like spending a warm summer’s evening sitting in pitch black while letting your eyes soar to the vaults of the heavens. A few twinkling hot shot stars steal the show, then more subtle but equally charming fine points of light gradually fill in the blank spots. Eventually, with eyes fully adapted to the dark, the heavens are ablaze with a panorama of elegance and variety. Accumulating years of people’s effort brings sense and order to this menagerie. Ian Ridpath with his book Astronomy makes a wonderful little guide for observers looking for a little sense, and it may turn a summer fling with the stars into a longer affair.
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Syndication Service Offline for a While
For various reasons, I’ve decided to take my syndication feed offline while I think of a new solution. Hopefully this won’t affect people too much.
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What’s Up this Week: July 31 – August 6, 2006
Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! Are you chasing Comet 177/P 2006 M3 (Barnard 2)? If so, I’d like to hear your comments on this fast and diffuse traveler before the Moon takes it out for awhile. In the meantime, journey along to rest of the night skies, because….
Here’s what’s up!
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