Telescope

July 25, 2021

How to Hunt for Distant Worlds

Since the discovery of the first planet orbiting a Sun-like star in 1995, more than 4,000 exoplanets have been found. These widespread planetary systems confirm that our solar system is just one of many in our Milky Way galaxy. The discovery of such systems provided intriguing insights, challenging our perspectives about how planetary systems form and evolve. But how do astronomers search for these exoplanets and what can we find out about them? Join Dr. Rickman as she describes the scientific hunt for these distant worlds.


The lecture starts at about 13:30 minutes in after all the news updates.

Host: Frank Summers, Space Telescope Science Institute Recorded live on Tuesday, June 1, 2021 More information: www.stsci.edu/public-lectures

Very interesting lecture, some of this has been talked about before however it is always good to listen to different explanations of the same topics. The upcoming JWST is hopefully going to open up a lot more discoveries.

The lecture makes reference to the discovery of the moons around Jupiter with the first telescope. Which really puts in to context how quickly things have moved on. First exoplanet was found in 1992, but only recently has the number found increased.

Links at the end to the zooniverse project, two of these projects are to do with searching for exo-planets so this gives citizens a chance to take part (and get cited) in real research.

June 24, 2021

Earth-like biospheres on other planets may be rare

This is an interesting article on Science Daily. Seems that the conditions on Earth could be far rarer than we think. [1] So we are looking for Earth Like atmospheres, the JWST will really help push this research forward.

Please feel free to discuss further on discourse [2]l. I have also included a link to a infographc, on atmosphere composition in our own solar system [3]

Comment and questions on this.

I just wondered what the range of conditions could support life, for example is there a minimum and corresponding percentage range for Oxygen for example. The same would go for other gasses for example Nitrogen, $CO_2$ etc. Hopefully we can learn more about what is needed for life, so we perhaps increase our chances of finding possible habitable words. This, of course is assuming all life requires Oxygen We have found life in or near volcanoes on Earth, conditions are very hot, and inhospitable to humans generally, not to mention the Sulfur Dioxide and other toxic gasses.

I will try and look in to this further.

REFERENCES

TAGS

#YearOfTheFediverse,ScienceDaily,#Planets,#Atosphere, #Telescope,#JWST,#Exoplanets,#Life,#Composition

March 2, 2021

The Hubble Space Telescope: From Cosmological Conflict to Alien Atmospheres

Write up : 7th March 2021

This is a really interesting talk and overview of what the HST has undertaken since launch in 1990.

Some highlights

• Gravitational lensing, found galaxies magnified 50x and detection of galaxies 10x fainter.
• Precision cosmology & Hubble Constant calculations via several methods
• Exoplanet Atmospheres
• Exoplanets e.g 57 Pegasi
• Exoplanets found from transiting host star
• Planetary Atmospheres plus detection of organic molecules
• Earth size Exoplanets (Trappist 1b and 1c)

The talk also makes reference to academic papers, which can be easily searched for, so for example

With the last point in the list above, this paper was De Wit, et al 2016 Nature 537,69 – if you search for this you find arxiv 1006.01103 which is publication in the above journal 2016Natur 537

The 537 refers to the volume, and 69 is the first page of the article, in this case the article is on pages 69 to 72.

So using the references from the talk you can do further reading.

Well worth watching

Space Telescope Science Institute Public lectures The Hubble Space Telescope: From Cosmological Conflict to Alien Atmospheres Tue 2nd March 2021

February 4, 2021

February STSCI lecture review

This months lecture Milky Way vs Andromeda: When galaxies collide. was really interesting, and covered material about how galaxies are formed, looking for life and what may happen when in 7 billion years, the Andromeda galaxy merges with our own, home galaxy.

The lecture also talked about how galaxies were first discovered and how, only in the last 100 years have we really started to learn a lot more about them. Why the two will merge is linked to the expansion of the universe.

Earth, of course, won't exist by then. The sun, being 4 billion years old, will have expanded to a red giant. As the duration of a 'main sequence star' is about 10 billion years (cite OU Open Learn The Sun)

So the lecture also included about how we could find earth 2.0, the fact that this. may not be easy given the time it will take to reach even the nearest start.

Proxima Centauri (4.2ly) and the planet around that isn't very hospitable.

Personal comment to add to this

I would guess it also raises the question if it will take 10's of 1000s of years to reach will it be the same or have developed to be more life friendly, then on the other side of that a planet that is life friendly now, may like the Earth not be so friendly i 1000's of years time.

Looking forward to the next lecture in March.

REFERENCES

TAGS

February 2, 2021

The Milky Way vs. Andromeda: When Galaxies Collide

Space Telescope Science Institute Public lectures The Milky Way vs. Andromeda: When Galaxies Collide Tue 2nd Feb 2021

January 19, 2021

The Darkest Secrets of the Universe

Space Telescope Science Institute Public lectures The Darkest Secrets of the Universe Tue 19 Jan 2021

December 12, 2020

Active galaxies Review

So following on from the post on December 1st this is a quick review of the active galaxies lecture from the Space Telescope Science Institute.

This lecture, presented by Dr Mitchell Revalski, is really interesting, looking at how supermassive black holes, despite their small size compared to the galaxy they reside in.

Energy from these can push away surrounding gas, and heat this up which reduces star formation as gas needs to cool to form stars.

so scales are pretty huge:

First lets look at what a light year is

Citation : spaceplace.nasa.gov

For most space objects, we use light-years to describe their distance. A light-year is the distance light travels in one Earth year. One light-year is about 6 trillion miles (9 trillion km). That is a 6 with 12 zeros behind it!


1 pc = 1 parsec = 3.26 light years

Supermassive black hole < 1pc

Bulge = 1 = 3 kpc (kilo parsec)

disk 30 kpc

circumgalactic area 50kpc

So even though these black holes are very small, they have a big influence on what surrounds them.

We know this is happening thanks to the research that led to the 2020 Nobel prize.

Well worth watching and the link is above.

Next lecture 19th Jan – The Darkest Secrets of the Universe Speaker: Raja Guhathakurta (UC Santa Cruz)

July 23, 2020

Hubble – Eye in the Sky part 3

Part 3 of the NASA Mission Operations – Hubble Video Miniseries is released today.

The series so far, has been really interesting and each episode is roughly 10 minutes in length, so could make an ideal teaching resource too.

July 16, 2020

Hubble – Eye in the Sky – Mini Series

Yesterday (15/7/2020) NASA started a 3 part mini series on the Hubble space telescope.

Schedule as follows

• Episode 1: Driving the Telescope Release date: July 15,
• Episode 2: An Unexpected Journey Release date: July 20
• Episode 3: Time Machines Release date: July 23

Should make an interesting series.