SEWANEE, Tenn. — Something strange is sailing toward us. Something small and cold and extraordinarily fast. No one knows where it came from, or where it is going. But it's not from around here.
This is an interstellar comet — an ancient ball of ice and gas and dust, formed on the frozen outskirts of a distant star, which some lucky quirk of gravity has tossed into our path.
To astronomers, the comet is a care package from the cosmos — a piece of a place they will never be able to visit, a key to all the worlds they cannot directly observe.
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NASA postdoctoral fellow Nathan Roth examines the solar system - UMSL Daily |
NASA postdoctoral fellow Nathan Roth discovered his passion for comets in UMSL’s Department of Physics and Astronomy. (Photo by August Jennewein)
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Nathan Roth didn't plan on getting into comets when he came to the University of Missouri–St. Louis as an undergraduate student.
He knew he wanted to study physics, but it wasn't until his junior year when he took an astrophysics course with Professor Erika Gibb that he discovered his interest in protoplanetary disks , dense clouds of dust and gas surrounding certain stars.
Space Photos of the Week: Eyes in the Sky | WIRED
NASA's new exoplanet telescope, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS for short, recently released a new panoramic photo of the arc of our Milky Way surrounded by an endless array of stars.
These So-Called 'Super-Puff' Worlds Could Be Exoplanets with Rings | Discover Magazine
As astronomers find more and more planets outside the solar system, they're bound to come across some strange ones. They call one type of weird exoplanet "super-puffs" because their densities seem to be far lower than even the gas giants in our solar system. But astronomers aren't sure how such wispy planets could form.
And now a pair of astronomers is exploring another possible explanation for the super-puff phenomenon. What if these exoplanets have rings like Saturn, which would throw off estimates of their sizes and densities?
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How to Get a Solar Tax Credit in 2020 - Consumer Reports
In my own neighborhood in a New York City suburb, door-to-door salespeople have been making the rounds. Reps from two different solar companies have stopped by, and that's in addition to multiple mailings I've received.
Their pitch: Hurry if I want a big federal tax credit for a new solar-panel system, because it'll be gone at year-end.
"Residential solar installers are notorious for using deadlines like this to create a sense of urgency with customers, and that's definitely been the case this year," says Michelle Davis, a solar-industry analyst with the market research company Wood Mackenzie.
Joe Bauman: Catching Mercury's transit across the sun - Deseret News
We like to think that Earth is a mighty large place — so big that we call it "the world" as if no other existed. And it is humongous for us humans, nearly 25,000 miles in circumference, making a typical round-the-world cruise last maybe half a year.
But do we have a feeling about its size from an unbiased perspective? Here's how to get an idea, at least in terms of the solar system. With a diameter of 3,032 miles , Mercury is roughly a third the diameter of Earth's 7,926 miles (being generous to the innermost planet). So a Mercury transit, when it crosses in from the sun as viewed from here, is a good time to make the calculation.
Celestron's 114AZ Smartphone-Ready Telescope Is Still $50 Off for Black Friday Weekend | Space
This Black Friday, you can get a quality beginner telescope from Celestron for nearly half off. Celestron's 114AZ smartphone-ready reflector telescope is currently on sale at Kohl's for $129.99, which is down from the usual price of $179.99 — a 20% discount. If you missed Black Friday's 44% off deal, you still have time to save on this telescope.
The telescope comes with a smartphone adapter, allowing the user to take photos through the eyepiece using a smartphone. You can use it to observe the moon and planets in the solar system, as well as more distant objects like galaxies and nebulas.
U-I designed Voyager 2 leaves the solar system | News | kmaland.com
(Iowa City) -- A spacecraft carrying instruments designed and built at the University of Iowa is now the second man-made object to leave our solar system and it's heading off into interstellar space.
Don Gurnett, a U-I professor emeritus, helped craft the plasma wave instrument onboard Voyager 2, which has passed the outer boundary of the sun's influence, what's known as the heliosphere.
That's a long, long way away. "Think of the speed of light, that's the speed at which a radio wave propagates, and it takes 19 hours now for the radio signal to get from Voyager 1 back to the Earth," Gurnett says. "It's just out there at a staggeringly large distance."
Happening on Twitter
"An alien comet from another star is soaring through our solar system." Best writing in a news story I have seen i… https://t.co/X9VeHIbC0S jayrosen_nyu (from New York City jr3@nyu.edu) Fri Nov 29 13:17:59 +0000 2019
Headed this way is an interstellar comet — an ancient ball of ice and gas and dust, formed on the frozen outskirts… https://t.co/3RiHNqpyXg starsandstripes (from Washington D.C.) Fri Nov 29 17:56:00 +0000 2019
An alien comet from another star is soaring through our solar system https://t.co/xSnoJOfIUw https://t.co/dPnwq6uGQa ritholtz (from NYC) Sat Nov 30 05:52:00 +0000 2019
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