Saturn's moon Titan has a unique surface that's hard to see through its nitrogen-rich atmosphere. (NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)
Big, schmancy compounds keep popping up all over the solar system , and new research may help clear up confusion about how they form in so many places.
"These dunes are pretty large," study senior author Ralf Kaiser, a chemist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, told Space.com, nearly as tall as the Great Pyramid in Egypt, he added. "If you want to understand the carbon and hydrocarbon cycle and the processes of hydrocarbons on Titan, it's really important to understand, of course, where the dominant source of carbon comes from."
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On Titan, there's a straightforward mechanism that scientists know likely builds polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons: These large molecules can form in the moon's thick atmosphere and settle down to the surface! Videos for A Faux Saturn Moon Titan On Earth Could 13:18 Titan Colonization: Could Saturn 's Moon Be A New Earth ? YouTube!! But the same family of compounds has been found on plenty of worlds that boast no such atmosphere, like the dwarf planets Pluto and Ceres and the Kuiper Belt object Makemake .
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Visitors from deep space are buzzing our solar system. The race is on to explore them.
Two years ago, an automated telescope in Hawaii detected 'Oumuamua , the first known object from interstellar space observed passing through our solar system! A faux Saturn moon Titan on Earth could solve solar system ...-solve...A faux Saturn moon Titan on Earth could solve solar system mystery - Villa Rica News Saturn's moon Titan has a unique surface that's hard to see through its nitrogen-rich atmosphere.!! Then in August, an amateur astronomer in Crimea found a second interstellar visitor, 2I/Borisov, suggesting that such objects come our way on a regular basis.
Now, scientists are eagerly developing plans to explore these messengers from afar and to learn their secrets.
For now, answers are trickling in slowly from observatories on the ground and in orbit around Earth, including an intriguing new image of Borisov just taken by the Hubble telescope . Come 2028, though, a European spacecraft called Comet Interceptor could be on its way to a brief encounter with another, as-yet-undetected interstellar object.
Hein and his colleagues have an even grander project in mind. They've drawn up plans for Project Lyra , a space probe that could travel fast enough to overtake either 'Oumuamua or Borisov (or another interstellar object) as it speeds its way out of the solar system, reaching either one by the mid-2040s.
Today's Your Last Chance to Help Name an Alien Solar System-- | Space
Right now, it's a solar system known only by the designation HD 17156. Before 2019 ends, it will bear an entirely different second moniker — perhaps one suggested by you.
That's because the International Astronomical Union (IAU), which oversees all celestial nomenclature, has decided to mark its 100th anniversary by letting each country name a planetary system! A Faux Saturn Moon Titan on Earth Could Solve Solar System ...solar...Queen's Speech latest news: Britain's priority is to leave the EU on Oct 31, monarch says!! The United States got HD 17156, and today (Oct. 15) is the last day for the public to submit proposed names, so get thinking.
The IAU has put some constraints on the project, of course. First, it needs two names: one for the planet , one for the star. They should be connected in some way that is open-ended enough to allow for naming other, not-yet-discovered stars or planets in the same system along the same principals.
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"The proposed names should be of things, people, or places of long-standing cultural, historical, or geographical significance, worthy of being assigned to a celestial object," the IAU wrote in its guidelines . The names don't have to be related to astronomy, although they can be.
Comet from another Solar System looks a lot like our own | Ars Technica
Interactions among the small bodies of our Solar System are expected to hurl small objects out into interstellar space with some regularity, and the frequency was probably much higher early in the system's history! A Faux Saturn Moon Titan on Earth Could Solve Solar System ...weeklyreviewer.com/ ...solar-system...A Faux Saturn Moon Titan on Earth Could Solve Solar System Mystery - WeeklyReviewer Big, schmancy compounds keep popping up all over the solar system , and new research may help clear up confusion!! Given that the same thing almost certainly happens at exosolar systems—and we now know there are a lot of those—it's likely that the vast volume of interstellar space is lightly sprinkled with small objects, some of which may sporadically pass through our own Solar System! Flipboard: A Faux Saturn Moon Titan on Earth Could Solve ...solar...A Faux Saturn Moon Titan on Earth Could Solve Solar System Mystery. space.com - Meghan Bartels. Big, schmancy compounds keep popping up all over the solar system, and new research may help clear up confusion about how they form in so many places. …!! But up until very recently, we'd had no evidence of their existence.
That situation changed with the discovery of 'Oumuamua , a strange, cigar-shaped body that was the first confirmed exosolar visitor. But 'Oumuamua was so strange that it set some astronomers speculating that it could be an alien craft . Earlier this year, however, scientists spotted a second potential exosolar visitor , and this one looked a lot like a comet. Now, the first data on the object, 2I/Borisov, is in, and it's clearly exosolar in origin but looks so much like our existing comets that we might not have realized where it was from if we didn't have a good grip on its orbit.
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Jupiter's Great Red Spot: Our Solar System's Most Famous Storm | Space
When you think of Jupiter , you might think of its massive size, or colorful bands of gases stretching across its face. Or you might think of the iconic storm, that huge, churning red hurricane twice the size of Earth that's remained a signature of our solar system's largest planet since for more than a century. This is Jupiter's Great Red Spot and it has captivated humans for generations.
Jupiter's Great Red Spot was first observed in 1831 by amateur astronomer Samuel Heinrich Schwabe, so we know the storm has existed for at least 150 years. But it could be even older than that. Some astronomers speculate that, back in 1665, when astronomer Gian Domenico Cassini (the namesake for NASA's Cassini mission ) wrote about a "Permanent Storm," he was referring to the Great Red Spot.
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This enhanced-color image of Jupiter's Great Red Spot was created by citizen scientist Jason Major using data from the JunoCam imager on NASA's Juno spacecraft.
Newly Discovered Interstellar Comet Appears Indistinguishable from the Native Solar System Comets
A second interstellar object, designated C/2019 Q4 (2I/Borisov), was discovered on August 30, 2019, by Gennady Borisov at the MARGO observatory in Nauchnij, Crimea. A new paper published in Nature Astronomy reports on the initial characterization of this object using images taken with the William Herschel Telescope and the Gemini North Telescope, which showed an extended coma and a faint, broad tail. 2I/Borisov's high orbital velocity indicates that it originated outside the solar system and is not gravitationally bound to the Sun. This makes it the first certain case of an interstellar comet and the second known interstellar minor body identified in the solar system (after ‘Oumuamua). Moreover, its estimated nucleus size, approximately 1 kilometer, and measured slightly reddish color make it look much more like an ordinary comet than ‘Oumuamua did.
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