Astronomy_News_20_11_2020
Astronomy_News_20_11_2020
This months research Papers 20_11_2020
RASNZ_20_11_2020
Further links and discussion can be found at the groups/links below
Astronomy in New Zealand - Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/groups/5889909863/
Astronomy in New Zealand - Groups.io
https://groups.io/g/AstronomyNZ
Google Group
https://groups.google.com/g/nzastrochat
Astronomy in Wellington
https://www.facebook.com/groups/11451597655/
Blogger Posts
http://laintal.blogspot.com/
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Research papers
Hydrogen recombination line luminosities and -variability from forming planets
https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.09918
An Integrated Analysis with Predictions on the Architecture of the tau Ceti Planetary System
https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.14675
Hydrogen dominated atmospheres on terrestrial mass planets
https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.15091
A Targeted Shift-Stacking Search for Planet Nine and Distant TNOs in the Galactic Plane
https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.13791
The Occurrence of Rocky Habitable Zone Planets Around Solar-Like Stars from Kepler Data
https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.14812
Volume-Complete Sample of Mid-to-Late M dwarfs within 15 Parsecs
https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.15635
Water abundance at the surface of C-complex main-belt asteroids
https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.00279
Stellar occultations enable milliarcsecond astrometry for Trans-Neptunian objects and Centaurs
https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.12708
Modelling the atmosphere of lava planet K2-141b
https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.14101
SPECULOOS Ultracool Dwarf Transit Survey
https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.02069
Statistical Properties of Superflares on Solar-type Stars
https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.02117
Generalized Stoichiometry and Biogeochemistry for Astrobiological Applications
https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.02425
Clouds in Exoplanetary Atmospheres
https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.03302
The Effect of Land Albedo on the Climate of Land-Dominated Planets in the TRAPPIST-1 System
https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.03621
The Occurrence of Rocky Habitable Zone Planets Around Solar-Like Stars from Kepler Data
https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.14812
The Demographics of Exoplanets
https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.04703
Re-analysis of Phosphine in Venus' Clouds
https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.08176
Observability of ultraviolet N I lines in the atmosphere of transiting Earth-like planets
https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.05613
Evidence for geologically recent explosive volcanism in Elysium Planitia, Mars
https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.05956
Terraforming the dwarf planet Ceres
https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.07487
The Ultimately Large Telescope
https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.02946
Kernel Phase and Coronagraphy with Automatic Differentiation
https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.09780
Presumptuous Philosopher Proves Panspermia
https://philpapers.org/rec/TURPPP-8
A terrestrial-mass rogue planet candidate detected in the shortest-timescale microlensing event
https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.12377
Hubble WFC3 Spectroscopy of the Habitable-zone Super-Earth LHS 1140 b
https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.08815
Brightness modulations of our nearest terrestrial planet Venus reveal atmospheric super-rotation rather than surface features
https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.09271
New Horizons Observations of the Cosmic Optical Background
https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.03052
Methane as a dominant absorber in the habitable-zone sub-Neptune K2-18 b
https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.10424
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Interesting News items
FORTHCOMING STAR PARTIES -
CENTRAL STAR PARTY. Thu 14th – Mon 18th January 2021. Four days/nights of tenting/bunk rooms, excellent astronomy talks and
telescope viewing! Tuki Tuki Camp site, 70 Moore Rd, Haumoana, Hawkes Bay. www.censtar.party .
STARDATE – SOUTH ISLAND. Waitangi weekend, Fri 5th -Mon 8th February 2021. Staveley. Keep an eye on https://cas.org.nz/
STARDATE. Fri 12 and Sat 13 February 2021, at Stonehenge. Phoenix Astronomical Society. Contact secretary@astronomynz.org.nz
Astronomers find 139 new minor planets in the outer solar system
https://astronomy.com/news/2020/03/astronomers-find-139-new-minor-planets-in-the-outer-solar-system
NASA's Webb To Examine Objects in the Graveyard of the Solar System
http://spaceref.com/asteroids/nasas-webb-to-examine-objects-in-the-graveyard-of-the-solar-system.html
Why sleep experts say it’s time to ditch daylight saving time
https://theconversation.com/why-sleep-experts-say-its-time-to-ditch-daylight-saving-time-146956
How giant planets turn gas to metal
http://nccr-planets.ch/blog/2020/10/30/how-giant-planets-turn-gas-to-metal
Americans searching 'how to move to NZ' skyrockets during a tight election race
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/americans-searching-how-to-move-to-nz-skyrockets-during-a-tight-election-race/5OOOWEGQFBOMMBP3ZZPKXO3XJU/
Why is Australia chock-full of poisonous creatures
https://www.kickassfacts.com/askus-why-is-australia-full-of-poisonous-creatures-but-not-new-zealand/
On 300 Million Habitable Zone Planets
https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2020/11/10/on-300-million-habitable-zone-planets/
One of my favorite area's
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/searching-for-the-key-to-life-s-beginnings
Radioactive Elements May Be Crucial To The Habitability Of Rocky Planets
http://astrobiology.com/2020/11/radioactive-elements-may-be-crucial-to-the-habitability-of-rocky-planets.html
NSF begins planning for decommissioning of Arecibo Observatory’s 305-meter telescope due to safety concerns
https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=301674
Low Earth Orbit Visualization
https://platform.leolabs.space/visualization
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Updates from Andrew B,
Asteroid 101955 Bennu.
Touch-And-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM), being stowed in the Sample Return Capsule.
Imaged: Tuesday 27th October 2020.
Touch-And-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism / TAGSAM head clearly shows the sample aquisition attempt from the surface of the tiny Asteroid 101955 Bennu (1999 RQ36) about 500 metres across, was far more successful than anyone could have dared hoped for.
The heat shield is on a hinge, the TAGSAM head was placed inside the Sample Return Capsule and has detached from the arm. Then the heat shield closed.
These images were obtained by articulating the 3.4 metre / 11 foot long arm in front of the Stow Camera / STOWCAM, an engineering camera that periodically checked the condition of the Sample Return Capsule during the journey to 101955 Bennu and during the mission at 101955 Bennu. Now it has recored the opening of the return capsule, and now the Sampling Head being stowed in it's Earth return position.
This also could not have gone any better.
The 30 CM / 12 inch wide Sampling Head made contact for 6 seconds, actually buried briefly within the landing site 'Nightingale'. Generaly the rocks are rich in carbon and are hydrated. The hydration comes from water molecules (water = H2O, two atoms of Hydrogen to one of Oxygen) bound to the molecular structure of the rock. Also what will be very interesting will the the ratio of regular water to heavy water (where one of the hydrogen atoms has a neutron attached to the proton, this heavy hydrogen is known as Deuterium). Some rocks appear to have calcite veins running through them. What is very exciting is that some of the sample that appears to have been collected contains some very reflective tiny fragments.
It is speculated from earlier during the mission that other bright fragments on the asteroid are possibly from the giant Main Belt Asteroid / Protoplanet 4 Vesta (extensively surveyed by the DAWN spacecraft in 2011 - 2012 before leaving for 1 Ceres, where DAWN arrived in February 2015, mission ended in October 2018). So perhaps we have samples from both 4 Vesta and 101955 Bennu??? This potentially gets better.
If it was deemed that the sample collected is insufficient, there was another opportunity in January 2021 at a secondary site called 'Osprey'. However, judging by what happened on the 20th, this looks like a great success so hopefully option 2 will not be required. SAMCAM imagery obtained on th 22nd, clearly shows that the 'Osprey' option is definitely not required.
The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will await further instructions, the Earth return window opens in early March 2021, with the Earth return capsule being jetissoned and parachuted to land within the Utah Test and Training Range, Utah, USA on: Sunday 24th September 2023.
The density of 101955 Bennu is low, only about 1.2 g/cm3 or a mass of about 115 million tons, very low for even an object of this size. 101955 Bennu is certainly a pile of dusty, rocky ancient rubble held together by gravity.
Asteroid 101955 Bennu was chosen as is a very rare Type B, enriched with hydrated minerals and organic compounds (ingredients to help build life, not life itself) and the fact the asteroid may be made from ancient impact, ejected debris from a much larger, much more distant B type asteroid, maybe even the giant Main Belt Protoplanet 2 Pallas.
Asteroid 101955 Bennu rotates in a retrograde direction east to west, (Sun and stars would rise in the west and set in the east) about once every 4 hours & 17 minutes on it's axis & orbits the Sun once every 1 year & 72 days.
Text: Andrew R Brown.
NASA / Goddard / University of Arizona.
OSIRIS.REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer) spacecraft.
Jupiter.
Imaged: Friday 10th April 2020.
Released: Tuesday 27th October 2020.
Here Jupiter's southern hemisphere is partly imaged by the JUNO spacecraft during Perijove 26, back in April 2020, using the UltraViolet Spectrometer / UVS instrument.
Here the huge Jovian Aurora Australis, aka Southern Lights clearly form a gigantic ring around Jupiter's north magnetic pole (Jupiter's magentic field is orientated the oppostite way the Earth's. A compass in Jupiter's atmosphere would point south, not north as on Earth).
A bright spot with the trail looks like a plasma trail from possibly the very large volcanic moon Io.
At the Ten O'Clock position within the yellow circle, appeared and disappeared within milliseconds, very quickly. This is suggestive of a phenomenon known on Earth as Sprites, huge electromagnetic transient events above large thunderstorms, huge 'jellyfish' type tendrils that rise some 100 KM / 62 miles above the cloudtops.
SPRITE / Stratospheric / mesospheric Perturbations Resulting from Intense Thunderstorm Electrification.
Related to Sprites are sometimes a secondary brief event known as ELVES / Emission of Light and Very Low Frequency perturbations due to Electromagnetic Pulse Sources, these appear as giant disks that can be upto 320 KM / 200 miles wide.
Here it looks like the JUNO spacecraft detected a Sprite and / or Elve in Jupiter's, ionosphere in the upper atmosphere, some 300 KM / 186 miles above a gigantic Jovian thunderstorm.
Above Earth's thunderstorms, Sprites appear red, due to the interactions with nitrogen. Above Jupiter's thunderstorms, Sprites will appear blue, due to interactions with hydrogen as Jupiter's atmosphere contains only very little nitrogen.
Attached are the UVS image and an artist's impression of Sprites above a gigantic Jovian thunderstorm.
Jupiter orbits the Sun once every 11.82 years or 11 years & 315 days at an average distance of 778.57 million KM / 483.78 million miles from the Sun. Jupiter rotates on it's axis once every 9 hours & 56 minutes, the shortest day of any of the planets in our solar system.
Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system, 142,984 KM / 88,846 miles wide through the equator (11.21 times wider than the Earth) and 133,692 KM / 83,082 miles through the poles (10.25 times wider than the Earth).
Jupiter is also the most massive planet in our solar system with a mass of 317.8 times that of the Earth or about 1.899 trillion trillion tons (1,898.2 followed by twenty two zeros) and a mean global density of 1.326 g/cm3 (grams per cubic centimetre). Jupiter's rapid rotation causes the equator to bulge out and the polar regions to flatten, hense the somewhat oval shape of Jupiter.
Our own Earth with a diameter of 12,742 KM / 7,917 miles, with a mass of 5,972.2 billion trillion tons (5,972.2 followed by twenty zeros) and a mean global density of 5.517 g/cm3.
Jupiter is a gas giant, mostly composed of compressed hydrogen and helium, with new evidence pointing at a dense core of rock and metal roughly 15 times the mass of the Earth at the centre. About the inner two thirds of Jupiter appears to be composed of Metallic Hydrogen, liquid hydrogen under so much pressure, that the regular diatomic hydrogen H2 (two atoms consisting on one Proton with one electron each) are squashed together so hard that the compressed hydrogen acts as liquid metalm as is conductive. Within Jupiter to put is simply, this huge layer of metallic hydrogen is convecting and is generating Jupiter's gigantic magnetosphere, with traps particles from the Sun creating belts of very powerful radiation.
Two of Jupiter's large Galilean moons, Io and Europa orbit within one of these, hense radiation hardened spacecraft are needed to approach these two fascinating and very different moons
Both Io and Europa have been successfully approached by Voyager 1, Voyager 2 and Galileo, these were radiation hardened as the earlier Pioneer 10 way back on Monday 3rd December 1973 was nearly fried by the trapped radiation near Io. It was by sheer luck Pioneer 10 survived but this finding meant all future spacecradft closely approaching Jupiter and the inner moons would be radiation hardened including the current JUNO spacecraft. Ganymede (Jupiter's and the Solar System's largest and most massive moon) is sometimes inside and at times outside of intense radiation and only the very large Callisto (Jupiter's second largest and the Solar System's third largest moon) out of the very large moons orbits permantly outside of dangerous radiation. All of the four smaller inner moons (Thebe, Amalthea, Adrastea and Metis from outside in) are all within intense trapped radiation. Jupiter's vastly extended family of outer moons (most of which are very small) are all outside of the radiation belts.
Text: Andrew R Brown.
UVS / UltraViolet Spectrometer.
NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI. JUNO Spacecraft.
Asteroid 101955 Bennu.
Touch-And-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM).
Imaged: Thursday 22nd October 2020.
Three frame movie showing the underside of the Touch-And-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism / TAGSAM head clearly shows the sample aquisition attempt from the surface of the tiny Asteroid 101955 Bennu (1999 RQ36) about 500 metres across, was far more successful than anyone could have dared hoped for.
These images were obtained by articulating the 3.4 metre / 11 foot long arm in front of the Sampling Camera / SAMCAM, the same camera that recorded the descent and sampling attempt two days earlier.
At the Nine O'Clock position within the interior of the ring, a mylar trap has been jammed partially open by some larger pieces that did not fully enter the device. However they are still captured. Also what is very apparent is that the entire sampling ring is literally bulging, all the way around with captured samples. A few tiny dust grains and slightly larger particles are slowly making their way out of that slight opening, but the amount captured within the sampling ring is certainly well in excess of what would have been deemed as a successful run.
The inertial 'spin' tomorrow (Saturday 24th October 2020) to measure the torque, hense mass of samples is now not going to happen as these images clearly show that the entire sampling ring is full to bursting.
Shortly, over the next few days the Touch-And-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism / TAGSAM head will be placed into the Earth return capsule.
The heat shield is on a hinge, the TAGSAM head will be placed inside the Earth return capsule and will detach from the arm. Then the heat shield will then close. The entire process with be recorded.
This could not have gone any better.
The 30 CM / 12 inch wide Sampling Head made contact for 6 seconds, actually buried briefly within the landing site 'Nightingale'. Generaly the rocks are rich in carbon and are hydrated. The hydration comes from water molecules (water = H2O, two atoms of Hydrogen to one of Oxygen) bound to the molecular structure of the rock. Also what will be very interesting will the the ratio of regular water to heavy water (where one of the hydrogen atoms has a neutron attached to the proton, this heavy hydrogen is known as Deuterium). Some rocks appear to have calcite veins running through them. What is very exciting is that some of the sample that appears to have been collected contains some very reflective tiny fragments.
It is speculated from earlier during the mission that other bright fragments on the asteroid are possibly from the giant Main Belt Asteroid / Protoplanet 4 Vesta (extensively surveyed by the DAWN spacecraft in 2011 - 2012 before leaving for 1 Ceres, where DAWN arrived in February 2015, mission ended in October 2018). So perhaps we have samples from both 4 Vesta and 101955 Bennu??? This potentially gets better.
On Saturday 24th October 2020, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will do an 'inertial mass measurement) when the spacecraft will rotate around it's centre of mass with the sample head at the end of the extended 3.4 metre / 11 foot long arm. The greater the amount of collected sample, the greater torque the spacecraft will have and that can be measured. This exercise has now been abandoned due to the success of the initial attempt being very obvious with the TAGSAM imagery.
If it was deemed that the sample collected is insufficient, there was another opportunity in January 2021 at a secondary site called 'Osprey'. However, judging by what happened on the 20th, this looks like a great success so hopefully option 2 will not be required. SAMCAM imagery obtained on th 22nd, clearly shows that the 'Osprey' option is definitely not required.
The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will await further instructions, the Earth return window opens in early March 2021, with the Earth return capsule being jetissoned and parachuted to land within the Utah Test and Training Range, Utah, USA on: Sunday 24th September 2023.
The density of 101955 Bennu is low, only about 1.2 g/cm3 or a mass of about 115 million tons, very low for even an object of this size. 101955 Bennu is certainly a pile of dusty, rocky ancient rubble held together by gravity.
Asteroid 101955 Bennu was chosen as is a very rare Type B, enriched with hydrated minerals and organic compounds (ingredients to help build life, not life itself) and the fact the asteroid may be made from ancient impact, ejected debris from a much larger, much more distant B type asteroid, maybe even the giant Main Belt Protoplanet 2 Pallas.
Asteroid 101955 Bennu rotates in a retrograde direction east to west, (Sun and stars would rise in the west and set in the east) about once every 4 hours & 17 minutes on it's axis & orbits the Sun once every 1 year & 72 days.
Text: Andrew R Brown.
NASA / Goddard / University of Arizona.
OSIRIS.REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer) spacecraft.
Asteroid 101955 Bennu.
Touch-And-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM), obtaining sample filmed by NAVCAM 2 / Navigation 2 Camera. It is pretty awesome.
Imaged: Tuesday 20th October 2020.
Released: Sunday 1st November 2020.
Touch-And-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism / TAGSAM head clearly shows the sample aquisition attempt from the surface of the tiny Asteroid 101955 Bennu (1999 RQ36) about 500 metres across, was far more successful than anyone could have dared hoped for.
The heat shield is on a hinge, the TAGSAM head was placed inside the Sample Return Capsule and has detached from the arm. Then the heat shield closed.
This also could not have gone any better.
The 30 CM / 12 inch wide Sampling Head made contact for 6 seconds, actually buried briefly within the landing site 'Nightingale'. Generaly the rocks are rich in carbon and are hydrated. The hydration comes from water molecules (water = H2O, two atoms of Hydrogen to one of Oxygen) bound to the molecular structure of the rock. Also what will be very interesting will the the ratio of regular water to heavy water (where one of the hydrogen atoms has a neutron attached to the proton, this heavy hydrogen is known as Deuterium). Some rocks appear to have calcite veins running through them. What is very exciting is that some of the sample that appears to have been collected contains some very reflective tiny fragments.
It is speculated from earlier during the mission that other bright fragments on the asteroid are possibly from the giant Main Belt Asteroid / Protoplanet 4 Vesta (extensively surveyed by the DAWN spacecraft in 2011 - 2012 before leaving for 1 Ceres, where DAWN arrived in February 2015, mission ended in October 2018). So perhaps we have samples from both 4 Vesta and 101955 Bennu???
This potentially gets better.
If it was deemed that the sample collected is insufficient, there was another opportunity in January 2021 at a secondary site called 'Osprey'. However, judging by what happened on the 20th, this looks like a great success so option 2 will not be required. SAMCAM imagery obtained on th 22nd, clearly shows that the 'Osprey' option was definitely not required.
The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will await further instructions, the Earth return window opens in early March 2021, with the Sample Return Capsule being jettisoned and parachuted to land within the Utah Test and Training Range, Utah, USA on: Sunday 24th September 2023.
The density of 101955 Bennu is low, only about 1.2 g/cm3 or a mass of about 115 million tons, very low for even an object of this size. 101955 Bennu is certainly a pile of dusty, rocky ancient rubble held together by gravity.
Asteroid 101955 Bennu was chosen as is a very rare Type B, enriched with hydrated minerals and organic compounds (ingredients to help build life, not life itself) and the fact the asteroid may be made from ancient impact, ejected debris from a much larger, much more distant B type asteroid, maybe even the giant Main Belt Protoplanet 2 Pallas.
Asteroid 101955 Bennu rotates in a retrograde direction east to west, (Sun and stars would rise in the west and set in the east) about once every 4 hours & 17 minutes on it's axis & orbits the Sun once every 1 year & 72 days.
Text: Andrew R Brown.
NASA / Goddard / University of Arizona.
OSIRIS.REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer) spacecraft.
Titan.
Imaged: Various Dates.
Nine major impact craters on Saturn's largest moon Titan, give insights into the current devopment and geological processes on the giant, planet sized moon.
Using the VIMS / Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer and the RADAR imager SAR / Synthetic Aperture Radar on board the now deorbited, kronecentric (Saturn centred) orbiting Cassini spacecraft.
Further information was provided by the Huygens lander which successfully soft landed on Titan on: Friday 14th January 2005.
The largest crater on Titan is Menrva Crater and is about 425 KM / 264 miles wide and another crater the 80 KM / 50 mile wide Sinlap Crater where part of the study. The 90 KM / 56 mile wide Selk Crater was also used, and will be one of the craters studied by the upcoming NASA / JPL-Caltech Dragonfly quadcopter mission, due for launch in 2027 and arrival as Titan in 2034.
What was noted was that six of the craters studied are in the equatorial region among the carbon rick, ice particals dunes and three in the mid northern latitudes.
The equatroial craters were found to have frozen carbon rich, organic materials (chemicals that make life happen, not life itself) materials, with no exposed water ice detected, but those further north did have exposed water ice. This suggests that the liquid methane rain (far too cold for liquid water, temperatures are about minus 180 Celsius / minus 292 Fahrenheit) further north 'cleans' out the craters of organic materials.
Titan is the second largest and second most massive moon in the solar system, only Jupiter's Ganymede is any larger and more massive. Titan with a diameter of 5,154 KM / 3,201 miles is slightly greater than that of the planet Mercury, although Titan has only 40% of the mass of Mercury, as Mercury contains a great deal of iron and volcanic basalts, Titan lacks both. Titan though has a great deal of silicate rocks in the interior and ice. Titan has a mass of approximately 134.52 billion trillion tons (134.52 followed by nineteen zeros tons).
However Titan is quite dense and is 88% denser than water ice, roughly 55 - 45 rock and ice and has an average surface temperature of minus 180 Celsius / minus 292 Fahrenheit or 93 Kelvin.
Gravity tracking revealed that contrary to expectations, Titan has a homogenous (undifferentiated) interior under the ice, much like the giant Jupiter moon Callisto, where as Titan was expected to resemble Ganymede, with distinct layers and a core. There may well be, though as yet unconfirmed, a subsurface ocean of very salty water.
At the surface Titan's atmosphere is approximately 1.41 times denser than Earth's at sea level, the main atmospheric constituents are 95% Nitrogen, 4.9% Methane and 0.1% trace gasses including hydrogen, helium, ethane, propane, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide.
Titan orbits Saturn at an average distance of 1,222,000 KM / 758,850 miles once every 15 days, 22 hours and 41 minutes. Titan is kronesynchronous, so keeps the same face turned towards Saturn permanently.
On Tuesday 11th August 2009, the Saturn system underwent an Equinox, northern Spring / southern Autumn. As Saturn orbits the Sun once every 29.5 years, the Saturn system seasons last approximately 7.4 years. Saturn and the main moons are tilted by 26.7degrees in respect to the orbit around the Sun. The Earth is tilted by about 23.5 degrees. The Kronian system northern Summer / southern Winter Solstice occurred on: Thursday 25th May 2017. Titan's seasons match Saturn's.
Text: Andrew R Brown.
NASA / JPL-Caltech / ESA. Cassini Spacecraft.
ESA Huygens Lander.
Just heard that Chang'e 5's solar panels have all opened and that post launch telemetry shows that everything onboard is fine, cameras, detectors, sensors and the sample return capsule all powered up, after the hugely successful launch tonight on board the Long March 5 booster from the Wenchang Satellite Launch Centre in Hainan, Hainan Island, China.
Liftoff was at 20:30 HRS GMT / 04:30 HRS BT (Beijing Time, Tuesday 24th November 2020).
A recap now that the launch was successful.
The aim of Chang'e 5 is to soft land on the Moon this Friday 27th November 2020 and then return with about 2 KG of mare basalts. The lunar samples will be from the Mons Rümker volcanic province to the north east of the Mons Rümker formation itself, a shield volcano about 1,100 metres / 3,609 feet tall with a diameter averaging 70 KM / 43.50 miles wide. Mons Rümker is located within the northwestern part of Oceanus Procellarum / Ocean of Storms in the northern hemisphere on the Moon's near side.
Mons Rümker appears to be a former 'Mantle, Magmatic Hot Spot' much like the islands of Hawaii, Galapagos Islands, Canary Islands, Yellowstone, etc on Earth. A plume of molten rock rises from the lower mantle, 'melting' a hole in the crust forming volcanoes. In case of the Earth, due to plate tectonics, these form island arcs (like Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean) or arcs of calderas, like Yellowstone. Wyoming, USA (older inactive calderas from the same hot spot as Yellowstone have been traced from Wyoming to Idaho).
Chang'e 5 will be able to return samples that were once part of the Moon's lower mantle, near the core as the landing site is within the same LIP / Large Igneous Province that Mons Rümker is itself. Perhaps will shed further light onto the origin of the Moon, for instance, was or was not the Moon ever a part of the early Earth? How hydrated were rocks very deep inside the Moon, what isotope ratio between regular and heavy water as compared to Hot Spot volcanic lava on Earth, ratio and abundances of metals, etc?
Mons Rümker was named after the German astronomer Karl Ludwig Christian Rümker, born: Wednesday 28th May 1788 & died: Sunday 21st December 1862. 74 years of age, which during that period was a very good age indeed.
The landing on the Moon will take place just after sunrise at the end of a minus 180 Celsius / minus 292 Fahrenheit lunar night.
Chang'e 5 will take images including at least one high resolution panorama of the landing site, before attempting sample collection, which too will be recorded.
Time is of the essence as unlike the previous lander / rover predecessors Chang'e 3 and Chang'e 4, Chang'e 5 has no RHUs / Radioactive Heating Units to protect the internal electronics from the two week long, cryonically cold lunar nights. At night the temperature drops to at least minus 180 Celsius / minus 292 Fahrenheit / 93 Kelvin at this location at lunar sunrise (about the same as the average surface temperatures of the moons of Saturn).
On: Saturday 12th December 2020, the sample return capsule will leave the Moon to return to Earth.
On: Thursday 17th December 2020, the samples will land in Ulanqab Region, Inner Mongolia, China to awaiting scientists.
Text: Andrew R Brown.
CNSA / China National Space Administration.
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RASNZ
Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand
eNewsletter: No. 239, 20 November 2020
Affiliated Societies are welcome to reproduce any item in this email newsletter or on the RASNZ website www.rasnz.org.nz in their own newsletters provided an acknowledgement of the source is also included.
Contents
1. NZ Student Satellite Imminent
2. Michele Bannister Awarded Rutherford Discovery Fellowship
3. 2020 RASNZ On-Line Conference Presentations
4. The Solar System in December
5. Star Parties
6. 2021 RASNZ Conference in Wellington
7. By-Law Changes to be Notified Shortly
8. Variable Stars South News
9. Water on the Moon
10. Is There Really Phosphine on Venus?
11. Fast Radio Burst Source Identified
12. Quotes
1. NZ Student Satellite Imminent
New Zealand’s first satellite designed and built by university students is about to be launched into space via Rocket Lab’s Electron launch vehicle.
University of Auckland students conceived, designed and built the satellite which they have named Te Waka Amiorangi o Aotearoa (the New Zealand satellite vessel) APSS-1. It will be lofted to sun-synchronous orbit at 500 km altitude as one of 30 satellites aboard Rocket Lab’s 16th Electron launch this month. The launch will take place from Rocket Lab’s launch site on the Mahia Peninsula.
It’s been a three-and-a-half-year journey that has seen more than 26 students contribute to the project. “I never really thought I could be a part of something that involved space, I thought it was something other people did,” says Bachelor of Engineering graduate Francis Moynihan Lavey. “A lot of hard work went into this project and at times it was stressful. Looking back, I feel a sense of relief and liberation that we’ve reached the goal.”
The satellite the students designed will measure electrical activity in the upper reaches of Earth’s atmosphere right at the edge of space, a region known as the ionosphere. Because the ionosphere is ionised by solar and cosmic radiation and is affected by phenomena such as solar winds, it is uniquely reactive to changing magnetic and electrical conditions. That means it affects radio and GPS signals here on Earth including television, internet and telephone communications.
But scientists are also curious to what extent and how the ionosphere is affected by geophysical activity on Earth, including whether the electrical disturbances that occur in the ionosphere might be correlated with earthquakes. Insights into the ionosphere might also help us better prepare for disruption to communications technologies.
Te Waka Amiorangi o Aotearoa is part of a Rocket Lab ‘rideshare’ where each satellite can be deployed to a unique orbit via Rocket Lab’s Kick Stage. This means once the Electron launch vehicle’s second stage reaches orbit, the Kick Stage separates and takes over as a space ‘tug’ for the final leg of the journey, providing propulsion and pointing to deliver multiple satellites to precise, individual orbits.
“The APSS-1 mission is a triumph for the students and faculty at the University of Auckland and a significant step for the New Zealand space industry overall,” says Rocket Lab founder and CEO, Peter Beck. “Less than four years ago we didn’t have domestic space launch capability and now, we’re launching New Zealand’s first student-built satellite from kiwi soil. It marks the beginning of a whole new era of space research, development, and opportunity for local students.”
The APSS-1 project was multi-disciplinary, encouraging undergraduates across different faculties – including Engineering, Science and Business and Arts – to work together to come up with the concept for a satellite. Participants have gone on to work in the aerospace industry both in New Zealand and overseas including at NASA.
“The project is really an exciting story about students having the opportunity to do something extraordinary and stretch their imagination beyond the edges of our planet, readying them for the challenges of the future,” says Faculty of Engineering director of Auckland Programme for Space Systems, Jim Hefkey.
To support New Zealand’s next generation of space industry leaders, Rocket Lab is providing the launch service for APSS-1 to the Auckland Programme for Space Systems at no cost.
The Auckland Programme for Space Systems is supported by US-based engineering alumnus Neil Paton and his wife Louise. Their philanthropic support has been fundamental to allowing delivery of the programme and in supporting the students to design, develop and ultimately launch the satellite.
See the original press release with images at
https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/news/2020/11/03/new-zealand-s-first-student-built-satellite-ready-for-lift-off.html
2. Michele Bannister Awarded Rutherford Discovery Fellowship
Michele Bannister, University of Canterbury, was one of 10 recipients of a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship award. These Royal Society of NZ fellowships are intended to accelerate research careers in Aotearoa.
Michele's research programme is titled: Emissaries from the darkness: understanding planetary systems through their smallest worlds. Developing greater understanding of the formation and evolution of our planetary system by using observations of distant small worlds to model those that are beyond the sight of telescopes.
The award citation reads:
Dr Michele Bannister is a Lecturer in Astronomy at the School of Physical and Chemical Sciences | Te Kura Matu, University of Canterbury. Her research investigates the formation and evolution of planetary systems, focussing on our Solar System. She collaborates with international planetary missions in Europe and the USA, which seek to explore interstellar objects and worlds throughout the Solar System. After receiving her PhD in Astronomy at the Australian National University in 2014, Dr Bannister spent three years as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Outer Solar Systems Origins Survey, at the University of Victoria and the National Research Council of Canada. Subsequently, she moved to Queen's University Belfast in the UK. There, she spent another three years as a postdoctoral research fellow, before moving back to New Zealand in 2020. Dr Bannister’s research was recognised in 2020 by the Committee on Space Research and the Russian Academy of Sciences with their early-career Zel’dovich Medal.
For details and pictures see
https://www.royalsociety.org.nz/what-we-do/funds-and-opportunities/rutherford-discovery-fellowships/rutherford-discovery-fellowship-recipients/michele-bannister/
3. 2020 RASNZ On-Line Conference Presentations
Here is the schedule of the remaining talks that have been arranged for the 2020 on-line RASNZ Conference. For abstracts and any last-minute changes please check out the RASNZ website (www.rasnz.org.nz).
The talks will be streamed via RASNZ's YouTube channel. Please go to https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjE5Y-Eg2fkrfofBkDt3_EQ and subscribe to RASNZ's channel.
The only software you will need to watch these presentations is a web browser pointed to the RASNZ channel where all talks will be made available for later viewing.
Tuesday 24 November, 7:30 pm
Max Briel: Observing supernovae and gravitational wave events in a synthetic Universe (20 min)
JJ Eldridge: Understanding the stars that create gravitational wave transients (30 min, pre-recorded)
Tuesday 1 December, 7:30 pm
John Hearnshaw: New Zealand’s progress towards becoming a dark-sky nation (30 min)
John Drummond: Murray Geddes, an assiduous NZ observer of meteors, sunspots and variable stars - as well as aurora and comets (20 min)
-- Glen Rowe, Warwick Kissling
4. The Solar System in December
Dates and times shown are NZDT (UT + 13 hours). Rise and Set times are for Wellington. They will vary by a few minutes elsewhere in NZ. Data is adapted from that shown by GUIDE 9.1.
The Southern summer solstice is on December 21 at 11 pm. The sun is then at is southern-most point and the hours of daylight greatest for the year.
THE SUN and PLANETS in December, Rise & Set, Magnitude & Constellation
DEC 1 NZDT DEC 31 NZDT
Mag Cons Rise Set Mag Cons Rise Set
SUN -26.7 Oph 5.39am 8.40pm -26.7 Sgr 5.47am 8.59pm
Mercury -0.8 Lib 5.08am 7.49pm -1.0 Sgr 6.10am 9.33pm
Venus -3.9 Lib 4.23am 6.17pm -3.9 Oph 4.24am 7.27pm
Mars -1.1 Psc 4.00pm 3.22am -0.3 Psc 2.54pm 1.43am
Jupiter -2.0 Sgr 9.06am 11.57pm -2.0 Cap 7.40am 10.20pm
Saturn 0.6 Sgr 9.18am 12.04am 0.6 Cap 7.36am 10.16pm
Uranus 5.7 Ari 5.43pm 4.14am 5.7 Ari 3.42pm 2.15am
Neptune 7.9 Aqr 1.32pm 2.21am 7.9 Aqr 11.35am 12.23pm
Pluto 14.6 Sgr 8.49am 11.50pm 14.6 Sgr 6.56am 9.56pm
December 1 NZDT December 30 NZDT
Twilights morning evening morning evening
Civil: start 5.10am, end 9.11pm start 5.17am, end 9.31pm
Nautical: start 4.28am, end 9.52pm start 4.34am, end 10.14pm
Astro: start 3.40am, end 10.41pm start 3.43am, end 11.04pm
Nov PHASES OF THE MOON, times NZDT & UT
Last quarter: Dec 8 at 1.38pm (00:37 UT)
New Moon: Dec 15 at 5.17am (Dec 14, 16:17 UT)
First quarter: Dec 22 at 12.41pm (Dec 21, 23:41 UT)
Full Moon: Dec 30 at 4.28pm (03:28 UT)
THE PLANETS in DECEMBER
JUPITER and SATURN are in conjunction on December 21 (UT). They are, in fact, closest at about 7am on the 22nd NZDT when they will be one-tenth of a degree, 6 arc-minutes, apart.
From NZ the two planets will set on the 21st at 10.50 pm, only 2 hours after the Sun which itself sets at 8.56 pm. An hour later, at 10 pm, they will only 8° above the horizon in a direction 20° south of west as seen from Wellington. Nautical twilight ends at 10.12 pm when the Sun is 12° below the horizon. The two will be just under 7 arc-minutes apart. The following evening at the same time, they will be about 1 minute further apart. On that evening at 10 pm Saturn will be directly below Jupiter, altitude 7.5°.
MERCURY is at superior conjunction, at the far side of the Sun to the Earth, on December 20. The planet will then rise and set within a few minutes of the times the Sun does. For the rest of the month the planet is virtually unobservable.
VENUS is also in the morning sky, it rises close to 4.20 am, about 80 minutes before the Sun all month. It will be a very low object in the dawn sky. The moon, as a thin crescent, is closest to Venus for the month on the morning of the 13th.
MARS sets well after midnight during December, so is readily visible in the evening sky. It remains a bright object but fades somewhat during the month.
PLUTO falls further behind Jupiter in December. By the end of the month the dwarf planet sets only an hour after the Sun, during twilight.
URANUS sets well after midnight in December, so is well placed for viewing in the evening sky. The gibbous moon is some 5° from Uranus late evening on Christmas day.
NEPTUNE rises early afternoon. By the end of the month it will set shortly after midnight so will be getting low in the evening sky. The moon, near first quarter will be some 6° from Neptune in the evening of December 21.
POSSIBLE BINOCULAR ASTEROIDS in December
Dec 1 NZDT Dec 30 NZDT
Mag Cons transit Mag Cons transit
(1) Ceres 9.1 Aqr 7.18pm 9.3 Aqr 5.48pm
(4) Vesta 7.9 Leo 7.43am 7.4 Leo 6.12am
(8) Flora 8.7 Cet 10.57pm 9.4 Cet 9.04pm
(15) Eunomia 9.5 Cnc 5.27am 8.9 Cnc 3.15am
CERES is an evening object best seen as soon as the sky is dark. It remains in Aquarius setting at 2.38 am on the 1st and 12.50 am on the 31st.
VESTA is a morning object in Leo rising a little after midnight: 2.16 am on the 1st and 12.42 am on the 31st.
FLORA, an evening object fades to magnitude 9.4 by the end of December. It sets at 4.49am on the 1st and 2.43am on the 31st.
EUNOMIA brightens from magnitude 9.5 to 8.9 during the month. It is in the morning sky, rising at 12.32am on December 1 and 10.14pm on December 31. The asteroid is in Cancer. During December it swings round M44, Praesepe (the Beehive) star cluster. Eunomia is about 2° from the cluster all month. Burnham's Celestial Handbook notes 11 stars brighter than magnitude 7 in the cluster which has a diameter about 1°. On the morning of December 18, now at magnitude 9.1, Eunomia will be 8 arc-minutes from the star delta Cnc, magnitude 3.9.
-- Brian Loader
5. Star Parties
Central Star Party. Thu 14th – Mon 18th January 2021. Four days/nights of tenting/bunk rooms, excellent astronomy talks and telescope viewing! Tuki Tuki Camp site, 70 Moore Rd, Haumoana, Hawkes Bay. www.censtar.party .
Stardate - South Island. Waitangi weekend, Fri 5th-Mon 8th February 2021. Staveley. Keep an eye on https://cas.org.nz/
Stardate. Fri 12th and Sat 13th February 2021, at Stonehenge. Phoenix Astronomical Society. Contact secretary@astronomynz.org.nz
--- Mostly from Keeping in Touch #38, 11 October 2020.
6. 2021 RASNZ Conference in Wellington
Dennis Goodman, Secretary, Astronomy Section, Nelson Science Society, writes:
"The 2021 RASNZ Conference, which was scheduled to be held in Nelson at
the end of May 2021, has been relocated to Wellington, at a date yet to
be determined. As we all know, the 2020 RASNZ Centenary Conference had
to be postponed, and ultimately cancelled, due to COVID-19 issues. The
Nelson committee, organising the 2021 RASNZ Conference, determined it
would put its work on hold until there was some certainty regarding the
2021 Conference.
Following recent discussions with RASNZ Council, and ongoing
uncertainties, the Astronomy Section, Nelson Science Society, determined
it would be in its interests to withdraw from hosting the 2021 RASNZ
Conference. This also paves the way for the 2021 Conference to be held
in Wellington, and it can celebrate the centenary of the first actual
RASNZ meeting.
We know there may be some disappointment at this development, but we
considered we had to make a decision in the best interests of all.
Nelson intends to apply to host a RASNZ Conference at a future date, in
the post COVID-19 era".
7. By-Law Changes to be Notified Shortly
The Council of the Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand has
been working on three new By-Laws and altering a couple of existing
ones. The new By-Laws cover the Graham Blow Fund, the Bright Star
Award and the SWAPA scheme. The alterations will formalise changes
that Council has implemented.
The existing Rules and By-laws can be downloaded here:
https://www.rasnz.org.nz/images/articleFiles/Council/Rules2019.pdf
<https://www.rasnz.org.nz/images/articleFiles/Council/Rules2019.pdf>
RASNZ members will shortly receive an email setting out the
alterations; this notification being within three months of
Council's resolution as required by Rule 96. Members then have the
opportunity to make any objection in writing to Council within one
month of the notification. Rule 97 states that any objection must
be signed by at least eight members.
Please look out for the email which will detail the new By-Laws and
those to be altered and acquaint yourself with these updates.
Thank you,
Steve Butler
President, RASNZ
8. Variable Stars South News
The October 2020 Variable Stars South (VSS) Newsletter is now available at the VSS web-site https://www.variablestarssouth.org/vss-community/vss-newsletters/ and here is a run-down on the content of some of the papers.
Stan Walker has written an article titled “What is happening to VW Hydri?” VW Hydri is a cataclysmic variable which exhibits some outbursts which plateau and then rise to a higher magnitude, which have been labelled a “super-outburst”. There has been increased interest recently in this phenomenon and Stan is calling for more intensive observations in a collaborative project, monitoring the next predicted super-outbursts. The brightness during the initial critical interval is around magnitude V = 10.0 to 9.0. The programme would be aimed at monitoring in detail the light output between trigger and super-outburst, to help answer outstanding questions on the sources of variability in this star. Refer to his paper for more information on this star.
Observed – Calculated (O-C) charts describe the difference between observed and calculated (with constant periodicity) events, such as minima or maxima, and are a very convenient way of following changes in the period of a variable star. Roy Axelsen has mined his own observations and a couple of O-C charts in the literature to derive an updated O-C chart for the high amplitude delta Scuti star RS Gruis.
Tom Richards has a report on the period of binary AQ Tuc; no satisfactory linear O-C can be deduced from the observations to date and further estimates of minima are required.to establish if the O-C trends are parabolic. In another paper, updated ephemerids of MR Aps, 610 Ara, YY Gru and DI Mic, four very short period (less than 0.6 day) eclipsing binaries are advised, based on observations by the Southern Eclipsing Binaries Group of VSS. Observations cover a range of observing intervals from 744 days for V610 Ara to 1288 days for MI Mic. Using linear regression analysis, three of these stars do not show period changes over the period of the observations. However DI Mic does show clear evidence of a period change.
The VSS web-site for a number of years has been ably operated and maintained by David O’Driscoll. David is proposing a change to the supporting platform and using this opportunity to limit the scope and simplify the content of the new version to make it easier to operate. For more information see the article in the October 2020 VSS Newsletter (pp 19-20). One possibility would be to have project information managed by project leaders and simply have a link from the VSS site; this is already occurring for some projects. To have your input use the discussion thread on the VSS Google Group.
-- Alan Baldwin
9. Water on the Moon
If human beings should ever wish to build bases on the Moon, those bases will need water. Residents will require it not only for their own sustenance but also as a raw material for rocket fuel to power adventures farther afield — Mars, for example. Given the cost of blasting things off the surface of Earth, however, such a base would be best served by finding its water locally. A pair of studies published on October 26th, in Nature Astronomy, will therefore raise the hopes of would-be lunar settlers.
One, led by Paul Hayne of the University of Colorado, Boulder, shows that more of the Moon’s surface is in perpetual shadow than was previously believed. This matters because ice — the form in which any lunar water is likely to exist — would be stable and long-lived in such cold, shaded regions. Most of the lunar surface is bathed in harsh ionising radiation from the sun, so any water molecules present would swiftly be torn apart or disappear into space. But Dr Hayne’s work calculates that there are around 40,000 square kilometres of these ice-preserving “cold traps” on the Moon.
The other investigation, led by Casey Honniball of the Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland, a branch of NASA, America’s space agency, confirms the presence of water molecules (H2O) on the Moon’s surface. Previous evidence could not distinguish such molecules from hydroxyl radicals (OH), which are subunits of water that are normally chemically bonded to other substances. Intriguingly, these water molecules are on sunlit parts of the surface, away from any cold traps.
Despite the Moon being Earth’s closest and most studied celestial neighbour, the presence of water there was confirmed only recently, by a gradual accumulation of evidence. In 1999 a NASA craft called Cassini detected hints of the stuff as it flew past on its way to Saturn. The hints became stronger a decade later when Chandrayaan 1, an Indian probe, flew to the Moon. An American instrument on board, the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3), employed a spectrometer to examine sunlight reflected back from the lunar surface. M3 found that infrared light of a specific wavelength — three microns — was being absorbed by the surface. This is an absorption pattern shown by water, but also by hydroxyl.
In October 2009, a few months after the results from M3 had been published, NASA crash-landed the spent stage of an Atlas V rocket into Cabeus, a crater near the Moon’s south pole. They chose Cabeus because it was known to have areas in perpetual shadow. The impact was followed minutes later by LCROSS, the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, its cameras trained on the site taking pictures and measurements of the resulting cloud of debris.
Previous scans of the Moon’s south pole in the 1990s, by NASA missions called Clementine and Lunar Prospector, had indicated large amounts of hydrogen were present in the region, though it was unclear what form this hydrogen took. LCROSS was designed to find out. The crash excavated 350 tonnes of lunar regolith, creating within Cabeus a crater 20 metres wide and generating a plume that rose 10km from the surface. Among the ejecta, LCROSS detected the characteristic three-micron spectroscopic signal, but still could not distinguish whether the cause was water or hydroxyl.
One way to tell the difference is to look for missing light at six microns, too — for only water molecules absorb at this wavelength. So that was what Dr Honniball set out to do. In 2018 she commandeered the only instrument capable of making the relevant measurement — the 2.5-metre-wide Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) telescope, which sits on board a modified Boeing 747 that can fly it to an altitude of 13km. This is above 99.9% of the water vapour in Earth’s atmosphere, which would otherwise obscure any infrared signal reflected from the Moon.
SOFIA normally observes distant celestial objects, such as black holes. Instead, Dr Honniball pointed it towards Clavius, a crater about 75° south of the Moon’s equator, and which, perhaps coincidentally, was the fictional site of an American Moonbase in “2001: A Space Odyssey”. She found an absorption line at six microns in the reflected sunlight. This confirmed that, here at least, between one and four parts in 10,000 of the material of the lunar surface is water.
How useful such water would be for future missions depends, though, not only on how much of it there is but also on how it is stored in the regolith. One possibility is that it exists as ice crystals in microscopic voids between regolithic grains. If that is true, lunar settlers could simply heat the regolith up to liberate its water. Dr Honniball thinks, however, that the water she has found is more likely to be trapped in tiny glassy beads that form when the lunar surface is hit by micrometeorites.
The theory behind this idea is that the solar wind, which is composed largely of protons, the nuclei of hydrogen atoms, continuously deposits that element into the regolith. Some of this hydrogen then reacts with oxygen atoms present as part of lunar minerals. That leads to the creation of hydroxyl radicals. When a micrometeorite hits the Moon, the impact vaporises the regolith. Everything is lifted into space, where the hydroxyls combine to form water molecules. These molecules are then encapsulated within drops of rapidly cooling regolith as it falls back to the surface.
Extracting water from such beads would not be straightforward. A more promising source is the ice thought to exist in cold traps. Dr Hayne’s team used high-resolution images from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to identify potential cold traps all across the Moon’s surface. There are more than had been hoped for, and they range in size from several kilometres to a few centimetres across. Most, as expected, are found near the poles, where the sun, when visible, remains near the horizon and shadows are consequently long. But a small number also exist at lower latitudes, created by craters or other surface variations that might be small but nevertheless maintain shadows where the temperatures stay low enough to accumulate ice.
Just because cold traps exist, however, does not mean they have trapped anything. Finding out if they have, and also answering the questions left open by Dr Honniball’s work, requires further examination of the regolith itself. In November 2023 NASA hopes to launch a mission called VIPER (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover) to the Moon’s south pole. This craft will be armed with instruments designed to prospect the landing area for minerals and ice.
Both Dr Honniball’s and Dr Hayne’s results, then, give mission planners something to think about — not least those involved in NASA’s Artemis project to land people on the Moon some time this decade. Deciding where to site a base, should one ever be built, has always been a balance between the availability of water for food and fuel, and of sunlight for power. The idea of doing so at the south pole, to provide the water, would have come at the cost of astronauts having to work and live in pitch-dark conditions where temperatures rarely exceed -160°C. The possibility that better-lit and marginally less hostile parts of the lunar surface might have water as well will be a welcome prospect.
From https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2020/10/26/there-is-now-cast-iron-evidence-for-water-on-the-moon
This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the October 31st edition of The Economist, p.71, under the headline "Watermarked"
10. Is There Really Phosphine on Venus?
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. So goes the dictum, usually credited to Carl Sagan, a celebrated astronomer, on the need for caution when interpreting radical new ideas in science. And there are few claims more extraordinary than that of the discovery of life beyond Earth.
Jane Greaves of Cardiff University, in Britain, has not actually made that claim. But she came close to it when, in September, she and her colleagues published research that appeared to show the existence of a gas called phosphine in the clouds of Venus. This substance, a compound of phosphorus and hydrogen, should be able to survive only briefly in an atmosphere like that of Venus. But Dr Greaves’s team reported that it actually seemed to be persistent there, at a concentration of 20 parts per billion. This turned heads because, on Earth, the minuscule amounts of phosphine around have only two sources: chemists and microbes. The former are surely absent from Venus, so the question became whether there was a plausible, natural, but non-biological explanation for the gas being there. Neither Dr Greaves nor anyone else has yet come up with one, so that leaves open the tantalising possibility that it is a sign of life on the planet.
But there is another possibility. This is that the signal Dr Greaves and her team suggest is phosphine isn’t. And, in the weeks since the results were published, other groups have been busy poring over them, conducting their own analyses and attempting to poke holes in the original claims. Their concerns are twofold. One is an inability to find evidence for phosphine in independent observations of Venus’s atmosphere. The other is whether Dr Greaves and her colleagues have processed their data correctly.
Those data came from the Atacama Large Millimetre Array (ALMA), a set of radio-telescope dishes that sit at an altitude of 5,000 metres in the mountains of Chile. The solar radio spectrum reflected from Venus has, according to Dr Greaves, a gap known as an absorption line in it at a wavelength of around 1.1 millimetres. Phosphine molecules are known to absorb radiation of this wavelength.
But phosphine also absorbs other wavelengths. A robust way to verify Dr Greaves’s findings, therefore, would be to find similar characteristic gaps in other parts of Venus’s reflected solar spectrum. Therese Encrenaz of the Paris Observatory set herself this task, and went hunting for appropriate gaps in the infrared region of that spectrum. She combed through data collected using TEXES, a spectrograph at the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii, between 2014 and 2016. But she drew a blank. That result, published in the November issue of Astronomy & Astrophysics, seems to be a contradiction to the original claim of phosphine on Venus.
The second possible contradiction, of Dr Greaves’s data-processing methods, comes from Ignas Snellen of Leiden University in the Netherlands. Any work of this sort requires the data to be passed through a software noise-filter in order to subtract the effects of both Earth’s atmosphere and the telescope array itself. Dr Snellen and his colleagues have reprocessed the original ALMA data using a different noise-filter, to see if similar results emerge.
In a paper posted on arXiv (a website for so-called preprints, which have not yet been peer-reviewed but which their authors wish nevertheless to put into the public domain), they found some evidence for phosphine, but not enough to claim a confident discovery. More troubling, perhaps, was that when they used Dr Greaves’s noise-filter on a wider portion of the Venusian spectrum they found five other strong signals for molecules not actually believed to be present in the planet’s atmosphere.
Dr Greaves’s claim in September was, then, just the starting gun. Investigations about phosphine will continue, probably for years and perhaps for decades, as astronomers spiral in on the truth. Indeed, as if to highlight both the messiness of the current uncertainty and the desire of most scientific researchers to get at the truth regardless, Dr Greaves herself is one of the co-authors of the phosphine-dissenting paper published by Dr Encrenaz.
One way to settle the matter would be to send a spacecraft to Venus and take close-up measurements of its atmosphere. There are hopes here. India’s space agency plans to launch Shukrayaan-1, which is intended to orbit the planet, in 2025. Meanwhile, NASA, America’s space agency, has two Venus probes — VERITAS and DAVINCI+ — in the final selection stage for its next programme of missions. Rocket Lab, a private space company with a launch site in New Zealand, is also considering dispatching a mission as soon as 2023. Perhaps it won’t take decades after all.
From https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2020/11/14/is-there-really-phosphine-on-venus
11. Fast Radio Burst Source Identified
For more than a decade, astronomers have puzzled over the origins of mysterious and fleeting bursts of radio waves that arrive from faraway galaxies. Now, scientists have discovered the first such blast in the Milky Way and traced it back to its probable source: a small, spinning remnant from a collapsed star about 30,000 light years from Earth.
The surprise detection has handed researchers their strongest evidence yet that some if not all fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are unleashed by compact, highly magnetised neutron stars called magnetars – exotic objects born in the embers of supernovae.
“This is the most luminous radio burst ever detected in our galaxy,” said Daniele Michilli, an astrophysicist at McGill University in Montreal who works on the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment, or Chime telescope.
The first FRB sighting came in 2007 when Duncan Lorimer and his student David Narkevic worked through archived observations from the Parkes radio dish in Australia. The intense burst of radio waves lasted less than five milliseconds, and what had produced it was a mystery. Scientists have recorded dozens more since, all from beyond our own galaxy.
The latest discovery came on 28 April when the Chime telescope detected a millisecond-long FRB coming from a region of the sky where a magnetar called SGR1935+2154 lurks. A second, less sophisticated telescope – made from metal poles and cake tins – known as the Survey for Transient Astronomical Radio Emission 2, or Stare2, swiftly confirmed the sighting, along with an outburst of x-rays from the same source.
Chris Bochenek, an astrophysicist at Caltech who helped to build Stare2, said he and his colleagues had given the project a 10% chance of detecting an FRB in the Milky Way. “When I looked at the data for first time, I froze and was basically paralysed with excitement,” he said. “The fact that we detected such a burst in the Milky Way at all is surprising.”
Analysis of the signal, named FRB 200428, found that the magnetar emitted as much energy in radiowaves in one millisecond as the sun does in half a minute. Details of the discovery are published in three independent studies in Nature.
While the discovery does not mean that all fast radio bursts come from magnetars, it pinpoints the objects as one source that astronomers will now observe more closely. A major question that remains is how magnetars unleash such intense blasts of radiation. One idea is that magnetars are distorted by “starquakes” that tear open their surfaces and release vast blasts of energy. Another is that powerful flares from magnetars collide with particles in space, producing intense shockwaves and magnetic fields that whip electrons around, releasing bursts of radio waves in the process.
Duncan Lorimer, an astrophysicist at West Virginia University, who was not involved in the latest work, called the finding “an incredibly important development” that showed magnetars were “really credible sources of FRBs”. “Back in the day, we thought about magnetars, but I think I was more prone to a one-off source like a neutron star merger,” he said.
See the original article by The Guardian's Science Editor Ian Sample at https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/nov/04/burst-of-radio-waves-in-milky-way-probably-came-from-neutron-star
12. Quotes
"You come from dust and you will return to dust. That's why I don't dust. It could be someone I know."
"I started out with nothing… I still have most of it."
"One minute you're young and fun. And the next you're turning down the stereo in your car to see better."
-- All from www.bizwaremagic.com.
Alan Gilmore Phone: 03 680 6817
P.O. Box 57 alan.gilmore@canterbury.ac.nz
Lake Tekapo 7945
New Zealand
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June Celestial Calendar by Dave Mitsky
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Minor Planet Occultation Updates:
This email describes updates for minor planet occultations for November
2020.
If you do not wish to receive these updates please advise
the Occultation Section.
You can view updated paths and other details at:
http://www.occultations.org.nz/
Minor Planet Occultation Updates:
================================
Events of particular ease or importance below are marked: *****
***Nov 1 (570) KYTHERA: Star Mag 9.58, Max dur 9.5 sec, Mag Drop 3.59
Across Australia from Gympie across south-eastern Queensland,
north-western New South Wales and south-eastern South Australia to just
north of Adelaide.
Details:
http://www.occultations.org.nz//planet/2020/updates/201101_570_66452_u.htm
*****Nov 1 (85) IO: Star Mag 10.79, Max dur 4.7 sec, Mag Drop 1.84
A fairly broad path across southern Australia from Bunbury in evening
twilight across southern Western Australia, central South Australia,
north-western New South Wales and southern Queensland to Brisbane .
Details:
http://www.occultations.org.nz//planet/2020/updates/201101_85_66450_u.htm
Nov 2 (446) AETERNITAS: Star Mag 10.52, Max dur 4.7 sec, Mag Drop 2.17
Across the southern end of the South Island of New Zealand, including
Dunedin and Invercargill.
Details:
http://www.occultations.org.nz//planet/2020/updates/201102_446_66470_u.htm
Nov 2 (325) HEIDELBERGA: Star Mag 12.23, Max dur 3.1 sec, Mag Drop 2.81
Across north-western Australia from north-eastern Northern Territory
passing near Timber Creek and across north-western Western Australia
from near Halls Creek to south of Carnarvon.
Details:
http://www.occultations.org.nz//planet/2020/updates/201102_325_66474_u.htm
***Nov 3 (519) SYLVANIA: Star Mag 7.62, Max dur 7.9 sec, Mag Drop 6.06
A narrow path across Australia across western Queensland, possibly
including Mt Isa and eastern South Australia to Port Augusta and Adelaide.
Details:
http://www.occultations.org.nz//planet/2020/updates/201103_519_66482_u.htm
Nov 5 (556) PHYLLIS: Star Mag 9.1, Max dur 20.1 sec, Mag Drop 4.09
A narrow path across Western Australia from Exmouth to near Kalgoorlie.
Details:
http://www.occultations.org.nz//planet/2020/updates/201105_556_67314_u.htm
Nov 6 (2) PALLAS: Star Mag 11.86, Max dur 18.1 sec, Mag Drop 0.28
A very broad path across New Zealand covering most of the North Island
south of Auckland in evening twilight (soon after sunset).
Details:
http://www.occultations.org.nz//planet/2020/updates/201106_2_66510_u.htm
***Nov 8 (3641) WILLIAMSBAY: Star Mag 10.2, Max dur 2.5 sec, Mag Drop 5.41
A narrow path across Australia from Brisbane (or a little south ) across
southern Queensland and The Northern Territory and central Western
Australia to a little north of Exmouth.
Details:
http://www.occultations.org.nz//planet/2020/updates/201108_3641_67316_u.htm
Nov 8 (415) PALATIA: Star Mag 11.37, Max dur 10.9 sec, Mag Drop 2.31
A fairly narrow path across eastern Australia from Hervey Bay across
south-eastern Queensland and north-western New South Wales, and
south-eastern South Australia to Port Augusta in evening twilight.
Details:
http://www.occultations.org.nz//planet/2020/updates/201108_415_66524_u.htm
Nov 9 (187) LAMBERTA: Star Mag 12.46, Max dur 8.3 sec, Mag Drop 1.11
A broad path across Australia from Rockhampton across southern
Queensland, northern South Australia and southern Western Australia to
Margaret River.
Details:
http://www.occultations.org.nz//planet/2020/updates/201109_187_66530_u.htm
Nov 10 (441) BATHILDE: Star Mag 10.66, Max dur 5.5 sec, Mag Drop 1.67
Across north-eastern Australia near Proserpine and into central
Queensland at low elevation and in evening twilight. .
Details:
http://www.occultations.org.nz//planet/2020/updates/201110_441_66540_u.htm
Nov 12 (589) CROATIA: Star Mag 11.83, Max dur 6.9 sec, Mag Drop 1.81
Across Australia from north of Cooktown across the York Peninsula in
northern Queensland, central Northern Territory and central Western
Australia to north of Kalbarri.
Details:
http://www.occultations.org.nz//planet/2020/updates/201112_589_66558_u.htm
Nov 12 (1093) FREDA: Star Mag 11.2, Max dur 4.9 sec, Mag Drop 2.6
Across the South Island of New Zealand at Invercargill and possibly Te Anau..
Details:
http://www.occultations.org.nz//planet/2020/updates/201112_1093_73350_u.htm
Nov 13 (385) ILMATAR: Star Mag 10.46, Max dur 2.7 sec, Mag Drop 3.2
Across Australia crossing central New South Wales and western Victoria
at low elevation.
Details:
http://www.occultations.org.nz//planet/2020/updates/201113_385_66566_u.htm
Nov 13 (2778) TANGSHAN: Star Mag 9.8, Max dur 5.1 sec, Mag Drop 6.28
A narrow path of some uncertainty across Australia from Orbost across
eastern Victoria, central to north-western New South Wales,
south-western Queensland and central Northern Territory to south of Darwin.
Details:
http://www.occultations.org.nz//planet/2020/updates/201113_2778_67322_u.htm
Nov 17 (203) POMPEJA: Star Mag 12.39, Max dur 17.4 sec, Mag Drop 0.98
A fairly broad path across northern Australia from Ayr across northern
Queensland, central Northern Territory and northern Western Australia to
Port Headland.
Details:
http://www.occultations.org.nz//planet/2020/updates/201117_203_66598_u.htm
Nov 19 (56) MELETE: Star Mag 11.1, Max dur 3.4 sec, Mag Drop 2.04
A fairly broad path across eastern Victoria, including most of
Gippsland, the Mornington Peninsula and possibly eastern Melbourne.
Details:
http://www.occultations.org.nz//planet/2020/updates/201119_56_73362_u.htm
Nov 22 (106) DIONE: Star Mag 11.56, Max dur 8.1 sec, Mag Drop 1.66
A broad path across Australia from near Cooktown across northern
Queensland, southern Northern Territory to south-western Western
Australia near Bunbury and Albany.
Details:
http://www.occultations.org.nz//planet/2020/updates/201122_106_66626_u.htm
Nov 23 (41) DAPHNE: Star Mag 11.74, Max dur 23.7 sec, Mag Drop 1.22
A broad path across Australia from Bundaberg across southern Queensland
and into central South Australia at low and decreasing elevation.
Details:
http://www.occultations.org.nz//planet/2020/updates/201123_41_66638_u.htm
Nov 23 (16) PSYCHE: Star Mag 12.25, Max dur 24.1 sec, Mag Drop 0.11
A broad path across south-eastern Australia, including much of New South
Wales (other than the north and far south-east), north-western Victoria
and South Australia including Adelaide and south thereof.
Details:
http://www.occultations.org.nz//planet/2020/updates/201123_16_66640_u.htm
Nov 24 (52) EUROPA: Star Mag 12.3, Max dur 69 sec, Mag Drop 0.25
A broad path across Australia from Ballina (including the coast from
about Maroochydore to Port Macquarie), across southern Queensland and
northern New South Wales and into central South Australia at decreasing
elevation.
Details:
http://www.occultations.org.nz//planet/2020/updates/201124_52_66646_u.htm
Nov 24 (39) LAETITIA: Star Mag 12.19, Max dur 19.4 sec, Mag Drop 0.17
Across northern Australia crossing northern Queensland north of
Cooktown, northern Northern Territory possibly including Timber Creek,
and northern Western Australia to Broome.
Details:
http://www.occultations.org.nz//planet/2020/updates/201124_39_66648_u.htm
Nov 27 (1574) MEYER: Star Mag 11.4, Max dur 6.1 sec, Mag Drop 4.04
Across eastern Australia from Brisbane across south-eastern Queensland,
central New South Wales and western Victoria to Portland, all in morning
twilight.
Details:
http://www.occultations.org.nz//planet/2020/updates/201127_1574_66676_u.htm
Nov 29 (266) ALINE: Star Mag 12.04, Max dur 10.3 sec, Mag Drop 0.67
Across New Zealand, crossing the North Island at Auckland and then just
grazing the western coast of both islands.
Details:
http://www.occultations.org.nz//planet/2020/updates/201129_266_66692_u.htm
Nov 29 (143) ADRIA: Star Mag 9.4, Max dur 7 sec, Mag Drop 4.02
Across Australia, including north-eastern to south-western New South
Wales, possibly western Victoria and south-eastern South Australia, all
at low elevation.
Details:
http://www.occultations.org.nz//planet/2020/updates/201129_143_67332_u.htm
Note: for some events there will be an additional last minute update so
check
for one, if you can, on the day of the event or in the days leading up
to it.
You may need to click "Reload" or "Refresh" in your browser to see the
updated
page.
Please report all attempts at observation to Director Occsec at the address
below. (PLEASE report observations on a copy of the report available
from our
website).
John Sunderland
---------------------------------------------
RASNZ Occultation Section
P.O.Box 3181 / Wellington, 6140 / New Zealand
---------------------------------------------
WEBSITE: http://www.occultations.org.nz/
Email: Director@occultations.org.nz
---------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------
Further links and discussion can be found at the groups/links below
Astronomy in New Zealand - Groups.io
https://groups.io/g/AstronomyNZ
Astronomy in New Zealand - Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/groups/5889909863/
Google Group
https://groups.google.com/g/nzastrochat
Astronomy in Wellington
https://www.facebook.com/groups/11451597655/
Blogger Posts
http://laintal.blogspot.com/
Twitter
https://twitter.com/Laintal
Groups.io
Astronomy in New Zealand
https://groups.io/g/AstronomyNZ
AstronomyNZ@groups.io
Wellington Astronomers
https://groups.io/g/WellingtonAstronomers
WellingtonAstronomers@groups.io
AucklandAstronomers
https://groups.io/g/AucklandAstronomers
AucklandAstronomers@groups.io
North Island Astronomers
https://groups.io/g/NorthIslandAstronomers
NorthIslandAstronomers@groups.io
South Island Astronomers
https://groups.io/g/SouthIslandAstronomers
SouthIslandAstronomers@groups.io
NZAstrochat
https://groups.io/g/NZAstrochat
NZAstrochat@groups.io
NZ Photographers And Observers
https://groups.io/g/NZPhotographers
NZPhotographers@groups.io
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Please note:
My standard caveat that these are the views of a learned amateur, not a professional in the sector, applies as always.
The above post/email/update represents my own words, views, research and opinions, unless stated otherwise the above work
represents my own writing. I’ll give credit or thanks if I have used or represented other people’s words and/or opinions.
The links and references listed below represent the work and research of the respective author’s.
Questions and constructive criticism are always welcome, however I don’t believe anything written here by myself is any reason for impolite behaviour.
Thanks for your time and I hope you have enjoyed reading.
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