The news is stressful but space is not, so this week we are going to cruise through the void to get some much needed perspective and beauty. We will begin at our smaller terrestrial neighbor, Mars and gaze upon some surprisingly beautiful terrain. Then we will stop by Jupiter, one of the most beautiful planets in the solar system, before heading to iconic Saturn. Then it's out into deep space. HI Andromeda!
While you're here, how about this:
Our Weird Solar System Gets Weirder With 139 New Minor Planets
A group of astronomers have located 139 new trans-Neptunian Objects—tiny sun-orbiting celestial bodies out past Neptune in the Kuiper belt. The most famous of these trans-Neptunian objects is the former planet Pluto, but Eris, Haumea, and MakeMake are also considered trans-Neptunian objects.
Computer software scanned over 7 billion pin-pricks of light in images taken across multiple nights to find celestial objects that moved. Stationary objects, such as stars or supernovae, were removed. This narrowed the field to 22 million objects. Eventually, the team narrowed down 400 potential trans-Neptunian objects, which were viewed over the course of at least six different nights.
In The Shadow Of 'The Planets' Lies Gustav Holst's Sweet Little Suite : Deceptive Cadence : NPR
A montage of images taken by the Voyager spacecraft of the planets and four of Jupiter's moons, set against a false-color Rosette Nebula with Earth's moon in the foreground. NASA hide caption
Morning Edition 's series One-Hit Wonders / Second-Best Songs focuses on musicians or bands whose careers are defined by a single monster hit, and explains why their catalogs have much more to offer.
In this edition, NPR's classical producer Tom Huizenga makes the case for the charming, danceable St. Paul's Suite by Gustav Holst, who's best known for his symphonic juggernaut called The Planets .
Astronomers discover scorching hot planet where it rains liquid iron - CBS
On one particularly hot planet, hundreds of light-years away from Earth, the forecast is cloudy with a chance of liquid iron rain. Scientists recently discovered the bizarre exoplanet, which they referred to as one of the most "extreme" they've ever observed.
Using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the European Southern Observatory (ESO), researchers observed an "ultra-hot" giant exoplanet, where temperatures can exceed 2,400 degrees Celsius during the day — hot enough to vaporize metals.
Not to change the topic here:
Planet 9 discovery gets closer as astronomers discover 139 'minor planets' past Neptune
Astronomers are getting closer to discovering the elusive and mysterious Planet Nine after 139 "minor planets " were discovered past Neptune's orbit.
These objects, ones "that were not previously published," are not officially planets or comets, but rather space objects that orbit the Sun. In total, the discovery is five percent of the trans-Neptunian object (TNO) population, bringing the number to approximately 3,000, according to a statement accompanying the study.
On a faraway planet, it's cloudy with a chance of liquid iron rain
WASHINGTON — Scientists have detected an exotic planet in another solar system where the weather forecast is always dire — a 100 percent chance of the most outrageous rain imaginable, with droplets of scaldingly hot liquid iron.
The researchers said on Wednesday they used the planet-hunting ESPRESSO instrument on the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile to observe a planet called WASP-76b located about 640 light-years from Earth. It is nearly twice the size of Jupiter, our solar system's largest planet.
New minor planets beyond Neptune | Penn Today
The goal of DES, which completed six years of data collection in January, is to understand the nature of dark energy by collecting high-precision images of the southern sky. While DES wasn't specifically designed with TNOs in mind, its breadth and depth of coverage made it particularly adept at finding new objects beyond Neptune. "The number of TNOs you can find depends on how much of the sky you look at and what's the faintest thing you can find," says Bernstein.
Because DES was designed to study galaxies and supernovas, the researchers had to develop a new way to track movement. Dedicated TNO surveys take measurements as frequently as every hour or two, which allows researchers to more easily track their movements. "Dedicated TNO surveys have a way of seeing the object move, and it's easy to track them down," says Bernardinelli. "One of the key things we did in this paper was figure out a way to recover those movements."
Could we have already imaged a ringed exoplanet? | Ars Technica
Many of the exoplanets we've discovered look at least vaguely like something we're familiar with. Exoplanets have been described as super-Earths, mini-Neptunes, hot Jupiters, and so on. But not everything is entirely familiar, and we've stumbled across a number of oddballs. Among those oddballs is a group of planets with extremely low density. Lacking a Solar System analogy has forced us to come up with a non-planetary nickname: the super puffs.
Many of the super puffs are a bit hard to explain via normal planetary physics. But a group of researchers based in Europe looked at a possible alternate explanation for one super puff: it's a normal planet with unusual rings. The answer they came up with is that we can't really tell right now, but they do suggest ways that we could possibly sort this all out.
Happening on Twitter
Some cosmic catharsis for all the coronavirus-related anxiety you may be feeling. https://t.co/YmghlbESBl WIRED (from San Francisco/New York) Sat Mar 14 19:50:02 +0000 2020
Some cosmic catharsis for all the coronavirus-related anxiety you might be feeling at the moment. https://t.co/E4tkbPmOly WIREDScience (from San Francisco, California) Sat Mar 14 21:05:33 +0000 2020
はるか昔、ふたつの天体が合体した「白鳥星雲」を訪ねて：今週の宇宙ギャラリー https://t.co/Uj5YSEhzfN #最新記事 wired_jp (from Tokyo, Japan) Sat Mar 14 12:04:02 +0000 2020
This week we opted for catharsis in the form of beautiful space photos. If you want a break: Space Photos of the… https://t.co/lTjYVcZu2K shannonmstirone (from Bay Area, CA) Sat Mar 14 19:46:30 +0000 2020
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