Astronomy Oddities 3

 

Cerberus Fossae.  The Cerberus Fossae are a series of semi=parallel fissures on Mars.  They were formed by faults which pulled the crust apart in the Cerberus region.  The formation of the fossaw released pressurized underground water.  The Cerberus Fossae area has been positively identified as the first tectonically active region on Mars.  The InSight mission has enabled the investigation of tectonics on the surface of another planet for the first time.  Seismicity is mostly originating from one source, the Cerberus Fossae.    [source: Stahler et al, “Tectonics of Cerberus Fossae unveiled by marsquakes,” Nature, Oct 27, 2022]

Churyumov - Gerasimenko.  67P/Churyumov – Gerasimenko is a Jupiter-family comet, originally from the Kuiper belt.  It has a orbital period of 6.45 years.  It is about 2.7 miles long.  The Rosetta spacecraft mission orbited the comet in September 2014.  Rosetta’s lander, Philae, landed on the comet in November 2014, becoming the first spacecraft to land on a comet nucleus.  It found that the comet has ice that’s fluffier than freshly falle snow.  The ice was more like cotton candy or fresh alpine powder.  A number of collapsing cliffs have been observed.   [source: Boyle, “Spacecraft’s Tumbling Landing Reveals Some of Comet’s Surface is Like Cappuccino Foam,” Inside Science, Oct 28, 2020]

 

Clumping.  Research indicates star-forming clumps start as giant, dense areas in turbulen gas-rich matter in young galaxies, live about 500 million years, and may migrated to the center of a galaxy, creating the central bulge of a galaxy.  After the Big Bang created all the matter in the universe, the matter then spread outward, cooling and clumping as it goes.  Recent findings indicate that matter is not as “clumpy” as expected based on the current best model of the universe.  Young star-forming clumps in deep space have been spotted for the first time.    [source: Lerner, “Scientists release newly accurate map of all the matter in the universe,” University of Chicago News, Jan 31, 2023]

 

Eris.  Eris (136199 Eris) is the most massive and second-largest dwarf planet in the Solar System.  It is 1,445 miles in diameter and 8.95 billion miles away.  Its rotation is constrained by its large moon Dysnomia.  Eris is tidally locked in a mutual dance with its only moon, which orbits Eris every 15.78 Earth days.  [source: “Demon goddess moon takes control of a planet,” Nature, Jan 10, 2023]

Galactic disc.  A galactic disc is a component of disc galaxies, such as spiral galaxies and lenticular galaxies. Galactic discs consist of a stellar component (composed of most of the galaxy’s stars) and a gaseous component (cool gas and dust).  The density of stars is very high near the center of the galaxy and decreases as we go outward along the galactic disc.  Our Milky Way galaxy has a rotating warped galactic disc.  

Giant Arc.  The Giant Arc is a large-scale structure of galaxies, galactic clusters, gas, and dust that spans 3.3 billion light-years (the width of the observable universe is 94 billion light-years).  It is 9.3 billion miles away.  The discovery of giant superclusters of galaxies are challenging our very understanding of the Universe.  The arc may have been formed due to something in the natural physics of the Universe that we currently don’t account for.  [source: Fox-Skelly, “The giant arcs that may dwarf everything in the cosmos, BBC, March 2023]

Heliosphere.  The heliosphere is the magnetosphere, astrosphere, and outermost atmosphere layer of the sun.  It is the cavity formed by the Sun in the surrounding interstellar medium.  The “bubble” of the heliosphere is continuously “inflated” by plasma originating from the Sun, known as solar wind.  The boundary of the heliosphere is more dynamic and structured than previously known.  The heliosphere is not a perfect sphere.  [source: DeMajistre, “Where solar wind meets interstellar medium,” Nature, Mar 7, 2023]

KELT-9b.  KELT-9b is a ultra-hot exoplanet that is 1.8 times the size of Jupiter.  It is the hottest known exoplanet.  It is 670 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus.  It is a giant planet in a very close, nearly polar orbit around a rapidly rotating star.  The temperature on the dayside of this planet is 7,800 degrees Fahrenheit, hotter than the surface of some stars.   [source: Goddard Space Flight Center, “NASA’s TESS Investigates Strange Ultrahot World,” Sci Tech Daily, June 30, 2020] 

Kepler-51.  Kepler-51 is a Sun-like star about 500 million years old.  It is orbited by three super-puff planets.  These planets are the lightest and lowest known densities of any exoplanet.  The planets are all Jupiter-sized, but with the mass of a few Earth’s.  The Kepler-51 system is the only system that hosts more than one so-called super-puff exoplanet.  Less than 20 super-puff planets are known.

Kepler-1658b.  This is a hot Jupiter exoplanet that is the closest known planet to an evolved star.  It is gradually spiraling into its star (KOI-4), which is in its subgiant phase.  The planet takes 3.8 Earth days to complete one orbit around its star.  It will consumed by its star in 2.5 million years.  [source: University of Hawaii, “Planet spiraling to its doom discovered by UH astronomers,” hawaii.edu, Dec 19, 2022] 

Local Bubble.  The Local Bubble (or Local Cavity) is a cavity of sparse, hot gas around the Sun.  It is a relative cavity in the interstellar medium (ISM) of the Orion Arm in the Milky Way.  The origin of the Local Bubble started some 14 million years ago, when between 14 and 20 stars went supernovae.  The sun now sits nearly at the center of the Local Bubble.  At the time of the supernovae, the Sun was 1,000 light-years away.  The Sun drifted into the Local Bubble 5 million years ago,  The Local bubble is at least 1,000 light years in size.  Its neutral-hydrogen density is 1/10 of the average ISM in the Milky Way.  

LP 890-9.  LP 890-9 (SPECULOO-2 or TOI-4306) is a red dwarf star located 105 light-years away in the constellation Eridanus.  It is the second coolest star discovered, with a temperature of 4,708 degrees Fahrenheit (half the temperature of our Sun).  It has two exoplanets, LP 890-9 b and LP 890-9 c.  Both planets are likely terrestrial planets.  The outer planet LP 890-9 c orbits within the habitable zone, and is a favorite target for atmospheric characterization.  The planet is tidally locked to its star, is 3.7 million miles away from its sun and takes 8.5 days to orbit its sun.  [source: Jones, “A newly discovered planet 40% larger than Earth may be suitable for life,” NPR, Sep 7, 2022]

Lunar soil.  Lunar soil is the fine fraction of the regolith found on the surface of the moon.  The physical properties of lunar soil are primarily the result of mechanical disintegration of basaltic and anorthositic rock, caused by meteoroid impacts and bombardment by solar and interstellar charged atomic particles over billions of years.  Lunar soil typically refers to only the finer fraction of lunar regolith, which is composed of grains 1 cm in diameter or less.  Lunar dust generally connotes even finer materials than lunar soil.  When asteroids or meteors crash into the moon, the collisions send fragments of the lunar surface flying into the air, heated to molten temperatures by the impact. Under these extreme conditions, silicate particles come together to form tiny glass beads.  Scientists have found water stored in these glass beads.  This means that the lunar soil may hold up to 300 billion tons of water.  In 2020, data from observations confirmed water existed in lunar soil on the sunlit side of the moon,  [source: Sullivan, “Scientists Find Water in Glass Beads From the Moon,” Smithsonian Magazine, March 31, 2023]

Magnetar.  A magnetar is a type of neutron star with an extremely powerful magnet field.  he magnetic-field decay powers the emission of high-energy electromagnetic radiation, particularly X-rays and gamma rays.  Over 20 confirmed magnetars have been confirmed.  The magnetars are about 12 miles in diameter with a mass of 1.4 solar masses.  They rotate more slowly than a neutron star.  Many attributes of magnetars remain poorly understood: spin-down glitches or the sudden reductions in the star’s angular momentum, radio bursts reminiscent of extragalactic fast radio bursts (FRBs) and transient pulsed radio emission lasting months to years.  Magnetars erupt bursts of X-rays without warning, some for hours and others for months before dimming and disappearing again.  A magnetar could tear iron from you blood atom by atom, even from 1,000 miles away.  [sources: “Magnetar spin-down glitch clearing the way for FRB-like bursts and a pulsed radio episode,” Nature Astronomy, Jan 12, 2023 and Alexander, “Magnetars: A Terrifying Oddity of the Space,”interestingengineering.com, Oct 3, 2020]

Magnificent Seven.  The Magnificent Seven is the informal name of a group of isolated young cooling neutron stars that are X-ray pulsars.  One of the neutron stars was observed shooting out infrared emissions at a very large distance never before seen.  All seven stars are recognized to be relatively close by, middle age (several hundred thousand years), and emitting soft X-rays due to cooling. [source: Grossman, “Cosmic Oddity Challenges What We Know About Pulsars,” Popular Mechanics, Sep 19, 2018]

Megamaser.  A megamaser is a type of astrophysical maser, which is a naturally occurring source of stimulated specral line emission.  They are 100 million times brighter than ordinary masers in the Milky Way.  In 2022, scientists discovered a megamaser 5 billion light-years away, and named it Nkalakatha (Zulu for “big boss”).  It is the most distant hydroxyl megamaser of its kind ever detected. The first megamaser discovered was a water megamaser in 1979.   [source:Larkin,“Telescope discovers record-breaking galactic space laser,” CBS News, Apr 7, 2022] 

Methane of Mars.  It is odd that the presence of methane has been detected in the atmosphere of Mars.  Since 2003, trace amounts of methane have been reported in various Mars spacecraft missions.  Methane may indicate the presence of microbial life on Mars, or a geochemical process such as volcanism or hydrothermal activity.  Concentrations of methane were found that were not yet diluted by winds in the atmosphere.  Methane concentrations were highest in the Martian summer, and disappearing during the winter. 

Milky Way.  The Milky Way is our galaxy that includes the Solar system.  It is a barred spiral galaxy with a diameter of 90,000 light-years.  The spiral arms are 1,000 light years thick.  It has about 400 billion stars.  The Milky Way converts four to eight solar masses of interstellar gas and dust into new stars each year.  [source: Croswell, “The Milky Way may be spawning many more stars than astronomers had thought,” ScienceNews, Feb 23, 2023]

Neptune.  Neptune has internal heating that makes Neptune having the fastest winds in the solar system, with gusts of 1,300 mph.  Neptune is the densest giant planet.  It is the only planet in the solar system found by mathematical prediction and was found in 1846.  It has 14 known moons. 

Neptune Trojans.  Neptune Trojans are bodies that orbit the Sun near one of the stable Lagrangian points of Neptune.   They therefore have approximately the same orbital period as Neptune and follow roughly the same orbital path. Discovered in 2001, twenty-eight Neptune rocky body Trojans are currently known.  Astronomers have observed that these Trojan asteroids are deep red.  They all have the same shade of red – far redder than most asteroids in the solar system.  This indicates that these asteroids are rich in volatile compounds such as ammonia and methanol.  It is likely that the reddest asteroids formed even farther from the sun in the early days of the solar system before migrating inward and getting caught in Neptune’s orbit.    [source: Thompson, “Rare red asteroids around Neptune could reveal the secrets of the early solar system,” Live Science, April 1, 2023]

Neutrino.  A neutrino is a fermion (an elementary particle with a spin of 1.2) that interacts only via the weak interaction and gravity.  The rest mass is much smaller than that of any other elementary particles, except for massless particles.  The mass of a neutrino is less than a millionth the mass of an electron.  Detectors are being built to study neutrinos and their antimatter counterparts, antineutrinos.  A difference in neutrinos and anti neutrinos’ behavior might hint at the origins of the matter-antimatter imbalance.  [source: Conover, LaCerte, & Thompson, “How ghostly neutrinos could explain the universe’s matter mystery.” Science News, Sep 22, 2022] 

Neutron Star.  A neutron star is the collapsed core of a massive supergiant star.  Except for black holes, they are the smallest and densest class of stellar objects.  It has a radius of 6 miles and a mass of about 1.4 solar masses.  New research suggest that collisions of neutron stars may trigger mysterious fast radio bursts (FRBs].  [source: Lewis, “Curious cosmic coincidence cold help explain fast radio burst mystery,” space.com, April 1, 2023]

NGC 3923.  NGC 3923 is an elliptical galaxy located in the constellation Hydra.  It is 90 million light-years from Earth.  It is a shell galaxy where the stars in its halo are arranged in layers.  It has more than 40 shells.   It has more shells than any other shell galaxy.  The shells surrounding the galaxy are made of stars on orbits that are hard to explain, 

Observable Universe.  The observable universe is a ball-shaped region of the universe that can be observed from Earth,  The diameter of the observable universe is about 93 billion light-years.  There may be 1 trillion galaxies in the observable universe.  Neither the curvature nor the topology is presently known.  Our universe began with a hot big bang 13.7 billion years ago and has expanded and cooled ever since.  It has evolved from a formless soup of elementary particles into the richly structural cosmos of today.  The universe’s future lies in the hands of dark energy, an unknown form of energy that caused cosmic expansion to start accelerating a few billion years ago.  [source: Turner, “Origin of the Universe,” Scientific American, May 21,2013]

Olympus Mons.  Olympus Mons on mars is the biggest volcano ever discovered in the solar system.  It is 374 miles across and 16 miles high.  It is 100 times larger than Earth’s largest volcano, Hawaii’s Mauna Loa.  Its last eruption was 25 million years ago. 

Oort Cloud.  The Oort cloud is a theoretical concept of a cloud of  icy planetesimals proposed to surround the Sun at distances ranging from 2,000 to 200,000 AU (0.03 to 3.2 light-years). It is divided into two regions: a disc-shaped inner Oort cloud and a spherical outer Oort cloud. Both regions lie beyond the heliosphere and are in interstellar space. Many long-period comets originated from the Oort cloud.  [source: Stein, “Oort cloud: What is it and where is it located?,” space.com, Mar 8, 2023]

Oumuamua.  Oumuamua (11/2017 U1) was the first interstellar comet ever seen in our solar system.  It was discovered on October 19, 2017 by Robert Weryk using the Pan-STARRS telescope in Hawaii,  It whipped past Earth at an unusually high speed (196,000 mph).  The comet is cigar-shaped, about 3,000 feet in length and over 500 feet in width.  It has a motion of tumbling rather than spinning and moves relatively fast relative to the Sun.  It had an unexplained acceleration from the sun, which sparked some speculation that it was an alien spacecraft.  However, nearing the sun, outgassed hydrogen gave the tiny comet a kick.  [source: University of California – Berkeley, Mar 22, 2023]