Astronomy

Recently, a team of astronomers used Webb to observe a brown dwarf called W1935 and found an infrared emission from methane in the upper atmosphere of the brown dwarf. While this isn’t an uncommon detection, W1935 does not orbit a star — meaning there isn’t an obvious source behind the emission.

The team does have theories as to what could be causing the methane emission and one of the leading theories involves the production of aurorae in the upper atmosphere of W1935. The team believes that excess energy within the brown dwarf’s upper atmosphere could be what’s causing the emission, and after investigating the upper atmospheric environments of Jupiter and Saturn, the team found that the upper atmospheric heating that powers methane emissions from Jupiter and Saturn is linked to the production of aurorae.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/10656840

In launch event on Friday, agency shared plans to test over US cities to see if it’s quiet enough by engaging ‘the people below’

Nasa has unveiled a one-of-a-kind quiet supersonic aircraft as part of the US space agency’s mission to make commercial supersonic flight possible.

In a joint ceremony with Lockheed Martin Skunk Works in Palmdale, California, on Friday, Nasa revealed the X-59, an experimental aircraft that is expected to fly at 1.4 times the speed of sound – or 925mph (1,488 km/h).

The aircraft, which stands at 99.7ft (30.4 metres) long and 29.5ft wide, has a thin, tapered nose that comprises nearly a third of the aircraft’s full length – a feature designed to disperse shock waves that would typically surround supersonic aircraft and result in sonic booms.

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

Image Credit & Copyright: Michael Luy, Trier Observatory, TWAN

Explanation: Yesterday, the Moon was New. But on January 9, early morning risers around planet Earth were treated to the sight of an old Moon, low in the east as the sky grew bright before dawn. Above the city of Saarburg in Rhineland-Palatinate, western Germany, this simple snapshot found the waning Moon's sunlit crescent just before sunrise. But also never wandering far from the Sun in Earth's sky, inner planets Venus and Mercury shared the cold morning skyview. In the foreground are the historic city's tower and castle with ruins from the 10th century.

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

Image Credit & Copyright: 염범석 Yeom Beom-seok

Explanation: Named for a forgotten constellation, the Quadrantid Meteor Shower puts on an annual show for planet Earth's northern hemisphere skygazers. The shower's radiant on the sky lies within the old, astronomically obsolete constellation Quadrans Muralis. That location is not far from the Big Dipper asterism, known to some as the Plough, at the boundaries of the modern constellations Bootes and Draco. In fact the Big Dipper "handle" stars are near the upper right corner in this frame, with the meteor shower radiant just below. North star Polaris is toward the top left. Pointing back toward the radiant, Quadrantid meteors streak through the night in this skyscape from Jangsu, South Korea. The composite image was recorded in the hours around the shower's peak on January 4, 2024. A likely source of the dust stream that produces Quadrantid meteors was identified in 2003 as an asteroid.

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

Image Credit & Copyright: Gábor Galambos

Explanation: This colorful skyscape spans about three full moons across nebula rich starfields along the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy toward the royal northern constellation Cepheus. Near the edge of the region's massive molecular cloud some 2,400 light-years away, bright reddish emission region Sharpless (Sh)2-155 is at the center of the frame, also known as the Cave Nebula. About 10 light-years across the cosmic cave's bright walls of gas are ionized by ultraviolet light from the hot young stars around it. Dusty bluish reflection nebulae, like vdB 155 at the left, and dense obscuring clouds of dust also abound on the interstellar canvas. Astronomical explorations have revealed other dramatic signs of star formation, including the bright reddish fleck of Herbig-Haro (HH) 168. At the upper left in the frame, the Herbig-Haro object emission is generated by energetic jets from a newborn star.

This might be interesting to people here. It is an unfinished series of articles that cover each major stage of the big bang era timeline.

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/when-cosmic-inflation-occurred/

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/beginning-big-bang/

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/universe-at-its-hottest/

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/matter-defeated-antimatter/

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/higgs-gave-particles-mass/

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/protons-and-neutrons-formed/

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/last-antimatter-disappeared/

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/first-elements-formed/

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/what-like-when-no-stars-existed/

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/first-stars-began-shine/

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/very-first-stars-died/

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/polluted-stars-formed/

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/first-galaxies-began-to-form/

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/cosmic-dark-ages-ended/

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/life-first-became-possible/

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/universe-formed-most-stars/

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

Explanation: Thor not only has his own day (Thursday), but a helmet in the heavens. Popularly called Thor's Helmet, NGC 2359 is a hat-shaped cosmic cloud with wing-like appendages. Heroically sized even for a Norse god, Thor's Helmet is about 30 light-years across. In fact, the cosmic head-covering is more like an interstellar bubble, blown with a fast wind from the bright, massive star near the bubble's center. Known as a Wolf-Rayet star, the central star is an extremely hot giant thought to be in a brief, pre-supernova stage of evolution. NGC 2359 is located about 15,000 light-years away toward the constellation of the Great Overdog. This remarkably sharp image is a mixed cocktail of data from narrowband filters, capturing not only natural looking stars but details of the nebula's filamentary structures. The star in the center of Thor's Helmet is expected to explode in a spectacular supernova sometime within the next few thousand years.

On April 8, 2024, a total solar eclipse will be visible across the Americas.

Our total eclipse 2024 guide tells you everything you need to know, from how and where to watch it to why it's so special.

During a total eclipse, the moon appears almost exactly the same size as the sun and blocks the entire disk for a few minutes. The stunning result is known as "totality" whereby observers can see the outmost layer of the sun's atmosphere — the corona — with the naked eye.

The 115-mile-wide (185 kilometers) path of totality will cross three states in Mexico, 15 U.S. states and four states in southeast Canada.

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

Image Credit & License: Stéphane Gonzales

Explanation: Venus goes through phases. Just like our Moon, Venus can appear as a full circular disk, a thin crescent, or anything in between. Venus, frequently the brightest object in the post-sunset or pre-sunrise sky, appears so small, however, that it usually requires binoculars or a small telescope to clearly see its current phase. The featured time-lapse sequence was taken over the course of six months in 2015 from Surgères, Charente-Maritime, France, and shows not only how Venus changes phase, but changes angular size as well. When Venus is on the far side of the Sun from the Earth, it appears angularly smallest and nearest to full phase, while when Venus and Earth are on the same side of the Sun, Venus appears larger, but as a crescent. This month Venus rises before dawn in waxing gibbous phases.