It's Full of Stars

Villain in disguise: Jupiter’s role in impacts on Earth

Jupiter is often credited for shielding Earth from catastrophic asteroid and comet impacts. But new simulations of the influence of gas giant planets in solar systems casts doubt on Jupiter’s reputation as Earth’s protector.

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Jupiter’s Melting Heart Sheds Light on Mysterious Exoplanet

Scientists now have evidence that Jupiter’s core has been dissolving, and the implications stretch far outside of our solar system.

Jupiter might be having a change of heart. Literally.

New simulations suggest that Jupiter’s rocky core has been liquefying and mixing with the rest of the planet’s innards. With this new data, astronomers hope to better explain a recent puzzling discovery of a strange planet outside of our solar system.

“It’s a really important piece of the puzzle of trying to figure out what’s going on inside giant planets,” said Jonathan Fortney, a planetary scientist at the University of California Santa Cruz who was not affiliated with the research.

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Angry Sun Erupting

Image Credit & Copyright: Alan Friedman (Averted Imagination)

Explanation: It’s one of the baddest sunspot regions in years. Active Region 1429 may not only look, to some, like an angry bird — it has thrown off some of the most powerful flares and coronal mass ejections of the current solar cycle. The extended plumes from these explosions have even rained particles on the Earth’s magnetosphere that have resulted in colorful auroras. Pictured above, AR 1429 was captured in great detail in the Sun’s chromosphere three days ago by isolating a color of light emitted primarily by hydrogen. The resulting image is shown in inverted false color with dark regions being the brightest and hottest. Giant magnetically-channeled tubes of hot gas, some longer than the Earth, are known as spicules and can be seen carpeting the chromosphere. The light tendril just above AR 1429 is a cool filament hovering just over the active sunspot region. As solar maximum nears in the next few years, the increasingly wound and twisted magnetic field of the Sun may create even more furious active regions that chirp even more energetic puffs of solar plasma into our Solar System. (via APOD: 2012 March 14 - Angry Sun Erupting)

The Sombrero Galaxy in Infrared

Credit: R. Kennicutt (Steward Obs.) et al., SSC, JPL, Caltech, NASA

This floating ring is the size of a galaxy. In fact, it is part of the photogenic Sombrero Galaxy, one of the largest galaxies in the nearby Virgo Cluster of Galaxies. The dark band of dust that obscures the mid-section of the Sombrero Galaxy in optical light actually glows brightly in infrared light. The above image, digitally sharpened, shows the infrared glow, recently recorded by the orbiting Spitzer Space Telescope, superposed in false-color on an existing image taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope in optical light. The Sombrero Galaxy, also known as M104, spans about 50,000 light years across and lies 28 million light years away. M104 can be seen with a small telescope in the direction of the constellation Virgo.

Astronomers Find Saturn’s Possible Cosmic Doppelgänger

By analyzing the silhouette of an exoplanet passing in front of its parent star some 420 light years from Earth, a team of astrophysicists has discovered an exoplanet that just might turn out to be Saturn’s cosmicdoppelgänger. 

Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Rochester University Eric Mamajek and graduate student Mark Pecaut studied data from the international SuperWASP (Wide Angle Search for Planets) and All Sky Automated Survey (ASAS) project.

They were looking at the star’s light pattern; periodic dimming is a telltale sign that a planet is passing in front of it. A spherical planet will dim a star’s light regularly. As seen from Earth, the star’s light will dim as the planet starts to cross it, getting darker until it reaches a point of maximum dimness – the point when the planet is directly between the Earth and the star. Then, the light will get brighter at the same pace as it previously dimmed.

But in December 2010, they noticed something odd. As they analyzed data gathered over a 54 day period in early 2007, the star 1SWASP J140747.93-394542.6 dimmed irregularly. The object passing in front of it couldn’t be a spherical planet, so what was it?

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thisistheverge:

The Old, Awesome Space Drawings of E.L. Trouvelot - Rebecca J. Rosen - Technology - The Atlantic

If you think NASA’s artistic renderings of the deep beyond are cool, you will love these space drawings from French astronomer and artist Etienne Leopold Trouvelot.

Starry Night necklace by Lana Pineapple on etsy!

Quadrantids Will Create Brief, Beautiful Show on Jan. 3-4

Due to the overwhelming interest in tonight’s Quadrantid meteor shower, Marshall Space Flight Center is currently setting up a live all-sky camera feed of the skies over Huntsville, Ala. The weather looks very clear for tonight in Huntsville, and the feed will go live late this afternoon. Please check back on this page to see the embedded Ustream feed. There will not be an associated live Web chat, but we urge you to share your meteor-watching experiences in the comments section at the bottom of this page, or on Marshall’s Facebook page and Twitter feed. Happy viewing!

The 2012 Quadrantids, a little-known meteor shower named after an extinct constellation, will present an excellent chance for hardy souls to start the year off with some late-night meteor watching. 

Peaking in the wee morning hours of Jan. 4, the Quadrantids have a maximum rate of about 100 per hour, varying between 60-200. The waxing gibbous moon will set around 3 a.m. local time, leaving about two hours of excellent meteor observing before dawn. It’s a good thing, too, because unlike the more famous Perseid and Geminid meteor showers, the Quadrantids only last a few hours — it’s the morning of Jan. 4, or nothing.

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henrytheworst:

Let’s be honest, Carl Sagan is probably the best human being ever.