Astronomy

Hey everyone!

It's a great time to get out and go stargazing what with the meteor shower, Ophiuchus, Cygnus, and Aquila rising, Hercules near the zenith, and Scorpio prominant in the southern sky for those of you in the northern hemisphere. Tonight, I'm planning on taking some time to familiarize myself with the globs in Hercules, some targets in Scorpio, Epsilon Lyrae, and maybe some targets in Cygnus.

The Subaru Telescope has made an exciting discovery: a small body beyond Pluto, with implications for the formation, evolution, and current structure of the outer solar system.

The object officially designated 2023 KQ~14,~ was found as part of the survey project FOSSIL (Formation of the Outer Solar System: An Icy Legacy), which takes advantage of the Subaru Telescope's wide field of view. The object was discovered through observations taken in March, May, and August 2023 using the Subaru Telescope.

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/33958431

A team of astronomers led by the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian has discovered a rare object far beyond Neptune, from a class known as trans-Neptunian objects, that is moving in rhythm with the giant planet. This object, called 2020 VN40, is the first confirmed body that orbits the sun once for every ten orbits Neptune completes.

This discovery helps scientists understand how objects in the outer solar system behave and how they got there. It supports the idea that many distant objects are temporarily "caught" in Neptune's gravity as they drift through space.

Our circumstances here on the wondrous, life-supporting Earth can give us a false understanding of what the Universe is really like. But our blue-skied, temperate planet is the extreme exception when it comes to other worlds. There's nothing remotely like Earth in our Solar System, and exoplanet studies reinforce that idea. While some exoplanets have hints of habitability, most exoplanets are extremely inhospitable.

Ultra-Short Period (USP) planets are one example of these hostile worlds. USPs follow orbits shorter than one Earth day long, meaning they're very close to their stars. They're so close that their surfaces are molten, and they've likely lost whatever atmospheres they had to their star's intense output. These planets are also imperiled: they can be torn apart by their stars' massive gravitational force, or even spiral into their stars and be totally destroyed.

Astronomers have detected a giant exoplanet—between three and ten times the size of Jupiter—hiding in the swirling disk of gas and dust surrounding a young star.

Earlier observations of this star, called MP Mus, suggested that it was all alone without any planets in orbit around it, surrounded by a featureless cloud of gas and dust.

However, a second look at MP Mus, using a combination of results from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the European Space Agency's Gaia mission, suggest that the star is not alone after all.

The international team of astronomers, led by the University of Cambridge, detected a large gas giant in the star's protoplanetary disk: the pancake-like cloud of gases, dust and ice where the process of planet formation begins. This is the first time that Gaia has detected an exoplanet within a protoplanetary disk. The results, reported in the journal Nature Astronomy, suggest that similar methods could be useful in the hunt for young planets around other stars.

With the recent first light milestone for the Vera Rubin Observatory, it's only a matter of time before one of astronomy's most long-awaited surveys begins. The Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) is set to start on November 5, and will scan the sky of billions of stars for at least ten years.

One of the most important things it aims to find is evidence (or lack thereof) of primordial black holes (PBHs), one of the primary candidates for dark matter. A new paper posted to the arXiv preprint server by researchers at Durham University and the University of New Mexico looks at the difficulties the LSST will have in finding those enigmatic objects, especially the statistical challenges, and how they might be overcome.

A team of international researchers led by Tomas Stolker in the Netherlands has imaged a young gas giant exoplanet near a 12-million-year-old star. The planet is orbiting a star whose planet formation has finished, while a same-aged companion star in this double star system still has a planet-forming disk.

The researchers have published their findings in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

The double star system HD 135344 AB is located approximately 440 light-years away in the constellation Lupus. It consists of two young stars, A and B, that orbit each other at great distances.

There’s a new object in the solar system headed toward the sun, and it may have come from interstellar space. We only know of two other interstellar objects that have entered into our solar system before, ‘Oumuamua and Comet 2I/Borisov. The nature of ‘Oumuamua is still a matter of debate, and the second was a comet from another solar system. And now we may have a third interstellar visitor. Currently named A11pl3Z, this object has a trajectory that suggests it didn’t originate inside our own solar system.

The International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center added the object to their Near-Earth Object confirmation list on July 1, 2025. The object is also on NASA/JPL’s website for Near-Earth Object Confirmation Page under A11pl3Z. Despite being listed as a near-Earth object, there is no fear of it hitting Earth or even coming particularly close.

The dim space rock is currently at about magnitude 18.8. Our new visitor, A11pl3Z, will get its closest to the sun – at about 2 astronomical units (AU), or twice as far as Earth is from the sun – in October. As it reaches perihelion – its closest point to the sun – it should be moving at about 68 km/s relative to the sun, or at about 152,000 miles per hour.

Marshall Eubanks, a physicist and VLBI radio astronomer and co-founder of Space Initiatives, said on the Minor Planet Mailing List that the object could be as large as 12 miles (20 km) in diameter. It will also come within about 0.4 AU of Mars in October, which would make it just barely observable by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Some planets take the expression "you're your own worst enemy" to the extreme. At least, that's what astronomers found when they recently discovered a doomed planet clinging to its parent star so tightly that it's triggering explosive outbursts and destroying itself.

The clingy, self-destructive extrasolar planet, or "exoplanet," in question is called HIP 67522 b. It orbits a young, 17 million-year-old star so closely that one of its years lasts just one Earth week.

Considering our middle-aged star, the sun, is 4.6 billion years old, the stellar parent of this clingy exoplanet (called HIP 67522) is a relative infant. This means it is bursting with energy.

Since the mid-1990s, when the first exoplanets were discovered, astronomers have pondered whether exoplanets can orbit their stars closely enough that stellar magnetic fields are impacted. Over 5,000 exoplanet discoveries later and astronomers still hadn't found the answer.

That is, until now.

A rare astronomical sight is unfolding in the southern sky. Two exploding stars are shining so brightly that both can be viewed with the naked eye.

It’s hard to predict how long these “fascinating objects” will remain that radiant, but stargazers may have another four to five nights to witness the dual phenomena, says astronomer Juan Luna of the Universidad Nacional de Hurlingham in Buenos Aires.

These stellar bursts are considered novas. Unlike star-killing supernovas, the dimmer blasts only affect a star’s outer region. A nova occurs when a dense white dwarf star pulls material from its companion star, which are stuck together in a binary system. The stolen gas accumulates, heating up and building pressure until it explodes and suddenly lights up the sky.

One of the current novas was first spotted on June 12. Named V462 Lupi, it’s located within the Lupus constellation best seen from the Southern Hemisphere, though some people have reported seeing it from the United States. The eruption reached peak brightness on June 20, and now it’s slowly dimming, Luna says.

In contrast, the second nova, called V572 Velorum, seems to be changing intensity very quickly, he says. It was detected on June 25, reached peak brightness two days later and is in the southern constellation Vela.

The scientists who precisely measure the position of Earth are in a bit of trouble. Their measurements are essential for the satellites we use for navigation, communication and Earth observation every day.

But you might be surprised to learn that making these measurements—using the science of geodesy—depends on tracking the locations of black holes in distant galaxies.

The problem is, the scientists need to use specific frequency lanes on the radio spectrum highway to track those black holes.

And with the rise of Wi-Fi, mobile phones and satellite internet, travel on that highway is starting to look like a traffic jam.