- 3281 - PLUTO - Planets and Baryons Beyond Pluto? Scientists thus discovered some of the Universe's missing baryons, thereby confirming that 80-90% of normal matter is located outside of galaxies, an observation that will help expand models for the evolution of galaxies. The further we look the more we see?
--------------------- 3281 - PLUTO - Planets and Baryons Beyond Pluto?
- Are there planets beyond Pluto? Maybe, the latest surveys have found 461 orbiting objects, but, none so far to be big enough for planets.
-
- The next-generation telescopes will be the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (RST). Improved data mining and machine learning techniques will also allow astronomers to get more out of existing instruments as well as the new telescopes.
-
- The current Dark Energy Survey (DES ) is a six-year survey of the outer solar system. In addition to gathering data on hundreds of known objects, this survey revealed 461 previously undetected objects as of 2021.
-
- Between 2013 and 2019, DES used the 4-meter Blanco Telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in Chile to study hundreds of millions of galaxies, supernovae, and the large-scale structure of the universe.
-
- While their primary objective is to measure the accelerating rate of the universe expansion (the Hubble-Lemaître Constant) and the spatial distribution of Dark Matter, the DES Collaboration also reported the discovery of individual TNOs.
-
- By 2021, the team detected 461 previously undetected objects, which brings the total number of TNOs discovered by DES to 777, and the number of known TNOs to nearly 4,000. They also gained fresh data on many other objects, including the large comet C/2014 UN271.
-
- Astronomers have long suspected that the population of small bodies orbiting beyond Neptune are remnants left over from the formation of the solar system. The current orbital distribution of these objects is the result of the migration of the giant planets to their current orbits. As they migrated, they kicked these objects into the trans-Neptunian region, outside the orbit o the planet Neptune.
-
- By having a census of TNOs and constraining their orbital dynamics, astronomers will be able to gain new insight into how our solar system formed and evolved billions of years ago. That knowledge could also inform our understanding of how habitable systems that give rise to life emerge, thus making it easier for us to find it.
-
- A giant comet from the outskirts of our solar system has also been discovered in six years of data from the Dark Energy Survey. It is estimated to be about 1,000 times more massive than a typical comet, making it arguably the largest comet discovered in modern times.
-
- This comet has an extremely elongated orbit, journeying inward from the distant Oort Cloud over millions of years. It is the most distant comet to be discovered on its incoming path, giving us years to watch it evolve as it approaches the Sun, though it's not predicted to become a naked-eye spectacle.
-
- The comet, which is estimated to be 200 kilometers across, or about 10 times the diameter of most comets, is an icy relic flung out of the solar system by the migrating giant planets in the early history of the solar system.
-
- DES was tasked with mapping 300 million galaxies across a 5,000-square-degree area of the night sky, but during its six years of observations it also observed many comets and trans-Neptunian objects passing through the surveyed field.
-
- A trans-Neptunian object, or TNO, is an icy body that resides in our solar system beyond the orbit of Neptune. Tracking algorithms have identified over 800 individual TNOs from among the more than 16 billion individual sources detected in 80,000 exposures taken as part of the DES. Thirty-two of those detections belonged to one object in particular, C/2014 UN271.
-
- Comets are icy bodies that evaporate as they approach the warmth of the Sun, growing their coma and tails.
-
- This comets current inward journey began at a distance of over 40,000 astronomical units (au) from the Sun, 40,000 times farther from the Sun than Earth is, or 3.7 trillion miles, or 0.6 light-years, 1/7 of the distance to the nearest star. For comparison, Pluto is 39 au from the Sun, on average.
-
- This means that Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein originated in the Oort Cloud of objects, ejected during early history of the solar system. It could be the largest member of the Oort Cloud ever detected, and it is the first comet on an incoming path to be detected so far away.
-
- Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein is currently much closer to the Sun. It was first seen by DES in 2014 at a distance of 29 au, 2.5 billion miles, or roughly the distance of Neptune, and as of June 2021, it was 20 au or 1.8 billion miles, the distance of Uranus from the Sun and currently shines at magnitude 20.
-
- The comet's orbit is perpendicular to the plane of the solar system and it will reach its closest point to the Sun, the perihelion, in 2031, when it will be around 11 au away , a bit more than Saturn's distance from the Sun. Despite the comet's size, it is currently predicted that skywatchers will require a large amateur telescope to see it, even at its brightest.
-
- Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein will be followed intensively by the astronomical community, including with NOIRLab facilities, to understand the composition and origin of this massive relic from the birth of our own planet.
-
- Astronomers suspect that there may be many more undiscovered comets of this size waiting in the Oort Cloud far beyond Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. These giant comets are thought to have been scattered to the far reaches of the solar system by the migration of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune early in their history.
-
- If we look a little further outside our solar system galaxies are receiving and exchanging matter with their external environment due to the galactic winds created by stellar explosions.
-
- The MUSE instrument has mapped this galactic wind for the first time. This unique observation, as 16 September 16, 2021, helped to reveal where some of the Universe's missing matter is located and to observe the formation of a nebula around a galaxy.
-
- Galaxies are like islands of stars in the Universe, and possess ordinary or baryonic matter, which consists of elements from the periodic table, as well as dark matter, whose composition remains unknown.
-
- One of the major problems in understanding the formation of galaxies is that approximately 80% of the baryons that make up the normal matter of galaxies is missing. According to models, they were expelled from galaxies into inter-galactic space by the galactic winds created by stellar explosions.
-
- The MUSE instrument was used to generate a detailed map of the galactic wind driving exchanges between a young galaxy in formation and a nebula (a cloud of gas and interstellar dust).
-
- The team chose to observe galaxy due to it’s proximity of a quasar, which served as a "lighthouse" for the scientists by guiding them toward the area of study. They also planned to observe a nebula around this galaxy, although the success of this observation was initially uncertain, as the nebula's luminosity was unknown.
-
- The perfect positioning of the galaxy and the quasar, as well as the discovery of gas exchange due to galactic winds, made it possible to draw up a unique map. This enabled the first observation of a nebula in formation that is simultaneously emitting and absorbing magnesium, some of the Universe's missing baryons, with this galaxy.
-
- This type of normal matter nebula is known in the near Universe, but their existence for young galaxies in formation had only been supposed.
-
- Scientists thus discovered some of the Universe's missing baryons, thereby confirming that 80-90% of normal matter is located outside of galaxies, an observation that will help expand models for the evolution of galaxies.
-
- September 19, 2021 PLUTO - Planets and Baryons ? 3281
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----- Comments appreciated and Pass it on to whomever is interested. ----
--- Some reviews are at: -------------- http://jdetrick.blogspot.com -----
-- email feedback, corrections, request for copies or Index of all reviews
--- to: ------ jamesdetrick@comcast.net ------ “Jim Detrick” -----------
--------------------- --- Sunday, September 19, 2021 ---------------------------
--------------------- 3281 - PLUTO - Planets and Baryons Beyond Pluto?
-
- Are there planets beyond Pluto? Maybe, the latest surveys have found 461 orbiting objects, but, none so far to be big enough for planets.
-
- The next-generation telescopes will be the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (RST). Improved data mining and machine learning techniques will also allow astronomers to get more out of existing instruments as well as the new telescopes.
-
- The current Dark Energy Survey (DES ) is a six-year survey of the outer solar system. In addition to gathering data on hundreds of known objects, this survey revealed 461 previously undetected objects as of 2021.
-
- Between 2013 and 2019, DES used the 4-meter Blanco Telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in Chile to study hundreds of millions of galaxies, supernovae, and the large-scale structure of the universe.
-
- While their primary objective is to measure the accelerating rate of the universe expansion (the Hubble-Lemaître Constant) and the spatial distribution of Dark Matter, the DES Collaboration also reported the discovery of individual TNOs.
-
- By 2021, the team detected 461 previously undetected objects, which brings the total number of TNOs discovered by DES to 777, and the number of known TNOs to nearly 4,000. They also gained fresh data on many other objects, including the large comet C/2014 UN271.
-
- Astronomers have long suspected that the population of small bodies orbiting beyond Neptune are remnants left over from the formation of the solar system. The current orbital distribution of these objects is the result of the migration of the giant planets to their current orbits. As they migrated, they kicked these objects into the trans-Neptunian region, outside the orbit o the planet Neptune.
-
- By having a census of TNOs and constraining their orbital dynamics, astronomers will be able to gain new insight into how our solar system formed and evolved billions of years ago. That knowledge could also inform our understanding of how habitable systems that give rise to life emerge, thus making it easier for us to find it.
-
- A giant comet from the outskirts of our solar system has also been discovered in six years of data from the Dark Energy Survey. It is estimated to be about 1,000 times more massive than a typical comet, making it arguably the largest comet discovered in modern times.
-
- This comet has an extremely elongated orbit, journeying inward from the distant Oort Cloud over millions of years. It is the most distant comet to be discovered on its incoming path, giving us years to watch it evolve as it approaches the Sun, though it's not predicted to become a naked-eye spectacle.
-
- The comet, which is estimated to be 200 kilometers across, or about 10 times the diameter of most comets, is an icy relic flung out of the solar system by the migrating giant planets in the early history of the solar system.
-
- DES was tasked with mapping 300 million galaxies across a 5,000-square-degree area of the night sky, but during its six years of observations it also observed many comets and trans-Neptunian objects passing through the surveyed field.
-
- A trans-Neptunian object, or TNO, is an icy body that resides in our solar system beyond the orbit of Neptune. Tracking algorithms have identified over 800 individual TNOs from among the more than 16 billion individual sources detected in 80,000 exposures taken as part of the DES. Thirty-two of those detections belonged to one object in particular, C/2014 UN271.
-
- Comets are icy bodies that evaporate as they approach the warmth of the Sun, growing their coma and tails.
-
- This comets current inward journey began at a distance of over 40,000 astronomical units (au) from the Sun, 40,000 times farther from the Sun than Earth is, or 3.7 trillion miles, or 0.6 light-years, 1/7 of the distance to the nearest star. For comparison, Pluto is 39 au from the Sun, on average.
-
- This means that Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein originated in the Oort Cloud of objects, ejected during early history of the solar system. It could be the largest member of the Oort Cloud ever detected, and it is the first comet on an incoming path to be detected so far away.
-
- Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein is currently much closer to the Sun. It was first seen by DES in 2014 at a distance of 29 au, 2.5 billion miles, or roughly the distance of Neptune, and as of June 2021, it was 20 au or 1.8 billion miles, the distance of Uranus from the Sun and currently shines at magnitude 20.
-
- The comet's orbit is perpendicular to the plane of the solar system and it will reach its closest point to the Sun, the perihelion, in 2031, when it will be around 11 au away , a bit more than Saturn's distance from the Sun. Despite the comet's size, it is currently predicted that skywatchers will require a large amateur telescope to see it, even at its brightest.
-
- Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein will be followed intensively by the astronomical community, including with NOIRLab facilities, to understand the composition and origin of this massive relic from the birth of our own planet.
-
- Astronomers suspect that there may be many more undiscovered comets of this size waiting in the Oort Cloud far beyond Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. These giant comets are thought to have been scattered to the far reaches of the solar system by the migration of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune early in their history.
-
- If we look a little further outside our solar system galaxies are receiving and exchanging matter with their external environment due to the galactic winds created by stellar explosions.
-
- The MUSE instrument has mapped this galactic wind for the first time. This unique observation, as 16 September 16, 2021, helped to reveal where some of the Universe's missing matter is located and to observe the formation of a nebula around a galaxy.
-
- Galaxies are like islands of stars in the Universe, and possess ordinary or baryonic matter, which consists of elements from the periodic table, as well as dark matter, whose composition remains unknown.
-
- One of the major problems in understanding the formation of galaxies is that approximately 80% of the baryons that make up the normal matter of galaxies is missing. According to models, they were expelled from galaxies into inter-galactic space by the galactic winds created by stellar explosions.
-
- The MUSE instrument was used to generate a detailed map of the galactic wind driving exchanges between a young galaxy in formation and a nebula (a cloud of gas and interstellar dust).
-
- The team chose to observe galaxy due to it’s proximity of a quasar, which served as a "lighthouse" for the scientists by guiding them toward the area of study. They also planned to observe a nebula around this galaxy, although the success of this observation was initially uncertain, as the nebula's luminosity was unknown.
-
- The perfect positioning of the galaxy and the quasar, as well as the discovery of gas exchange due to galactic winds, made it possible to draw up a unique map. This enabled the first observation of a nebula in formation that is simultaneously emitting and absorbing magnesium, some of the Universe's missing baryons, with this galaxy.
-
- This type of normal matter nebula is known in the near Universe, but their existence for young galaxies in formation had only been supposed.
-
- Scientists thus discovered some of the Universe's missing baryons, thereby confirming that 80-90% of normal matter is located outside of galaxies, an observation that will help expand models for the evolution of galaxies.
-
- September 19, 2021 PLUTO - Planets and Baryons ? 3281
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----- Comments appreciated and Pass it on to whomever is interested. ----
--- Some reviews are at: -------------- http://jdetrick.blogspot.com -----
-- email feedback, corrections, request for copies or Index of all reviews
--- to: ------ jamesdetrick@comcast.net ------ “Jim Detrick” -----------
--------------------- --- Sunday, September 19, 2021 ---------------------------
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