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An artist illustration of a small planet and it's lonely single luna in a distant distractor system not far from our mil...
03/01/2022

An artist illustration of a small planet and it's lonely single luna in a distant distractor system not far from our milky way

01/28/2022

. Due to strong tidal forces, the appearance of the planet WASP-103b resembles a rugby ball rather than a sphere.

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On coasts, the tides determine the rhythm of events. At low tide, boats remain on land; at high tide, the way out to sea is cleared for them again. On Earth, the tides are mainly generated by the moon. Its gravitational pull causes an accumulation of water in the ocean region below, which is then missing in surrounding regions and thus accounts for the low tide. Although this deformation of the ocean causes striking differences in level in many places, it is hardly recognisable from space.

On the planet WASP-103b, tides are much more extreme. The planet orbits its star in just one day and is deformed by the strong tidal forces so drastically, that its appearance resembles a rugby ball. This is shown by a new study involving researchers from the Universities of Bern and Geneva as well as the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS, published today in the scientific journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. This finding was made possible thanks to observations with the CHEOPS space telescope. CHEOPS is a joint mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) and Switzerland, led by the University of Bern in collaboration with the University of Geneva.

A groundbreaking measurement

The planet WASP-103b is located in the constellation Hercules, is almost twice the size of Jupiter, has one and a half times its mass and is about fifty times closer to its star than Earth is to the Sun. "Because of its great proximity to its star, we had already suspected that very large tides are caused on the planet. But, we had not yet been able to verify this," explains study co-author Yann Alibert, professor of astrophysics at the University of Bern and member of the NCCR PlanetS.

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope had already observed the planet. In combination with the high precision and pointing flexibility of CHEOPS, these observations enabled the researchers to measure the tiny signal of the tidal deformation of the planet light years away. In doing so, they took advantage of the fact that the planet dims the light of the star slightly each time it passes in front of it. "After observing several such so-called "transits," we were able to measure the deformation. It's incredible that we were able to do this -- it's the first time such an analysis has been done," reports Babatunde Akinsanmi, a researcher at the University of Geneva, co-author of the study and NCCR PlanetS associate.

The planet is inflated

The researchers' results not only allow conclusions to be drawn about the shape of the planet, but also about its interior. This is because the team was also able to derive a parameter called the "Love number" (named after the British mathematician Augustus E. H. Love) from the transit light curve of WASP-103b. It indicates how the mass is distributed within the planet and thus also gives clues about its inner structure. "The resistance of a material to deformation depends on its composition," explains Akinsanmi. "We can only see the tides on Earth in the oceans. The rocky part doesn't move that much. Therefore, by measuring how much the planet is deformed, we can determine how much of it is made up of rock, gas or water."

WASP-103b's Love number is like Jupiter's, our Solar System's biggest gas giant. It suggests that the internal structures of WASP-103b and Jupiter are similar -- even though WASP-103b is twice as large. "In principle, we would expect a planet with 1.5 times the mass of Jupiter to be about the same size. Therefore, WASP-103b must be highly inflated due to heating by its nearby star, and perhaps other mechanisms," says Monika Lendl, professor of astronomy at the University of Geneva and co-author of the study.

However, since the measurement uncertainty in the Love number is still quite high, future observations with CHEOPS and the James Webb Space Telescope will be needed to decipher the details of the tidal deformation and internal structure of WASP-103b and comparable exoplanets. "This would improve our understanding of these so-called 'hot Jupiters' and allow a better comparison between them and giant planets in the Solar System," Lendl concludes

10th Planet in our Solar System? The Newly Discovered “Farout” Has A Pinkish Hue There’s a new dwarf planet in our so...
01/28/2022

10th Planet in our Solar System? The Newly Discovered “Farout” Has A Pinkish Hue

There’s a new dwarf planet in our solar system, and it’s the most distant one scientists have ever discovered. This tiny world, formally known as 2018 VG18, but nicknamed Farout, is about 18 billion kilometers away, roughly 3.5 times the distance to Pluto from Earth. The pink cosmic body was nicknamed after its discoverer’s exclamation!

The new object was announced on Monday, December 17, 2018, by the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center and has been given the provisional designation of 2018 VG18. The discovery was made by Carnegie’s Scott S. Sheppard, the University of Hawaii’s David Tholen, and Northern Arizona University’s Chad Trujillo.

“I said ‘far out!’ when I discovered it, and it’s a very far out object,” said team member, Scott Sheppard, at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington DC. Its pink shade indicates an ice-rich object, but little else is known.

Discovery Through the Japanese Subaru Telescope
Discovery images of 2018 VG18 "Farout" from the Subaru Telescope on November 10, 2018. (Source: Scott S. Sheppard/David Tholen)

Discovery images of 2018 VG18 "Farout" from the Subaru Telescope on November 10, 2018. (Source: Scott S. Sheppard/David Tholen)

A team of astronomers discovered "Farout" using the Japanese Subaru telescope in Hawaii. The Subaru telescope is owned and operated by Japan and the valuable telescope access that the team obtained was due to a combination of time allocated to the University of Hawaii, as well as to the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) through telescope time exchanges between the US National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) and National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ).

Solar system objects like these are found by looking at a series of images at the same spot on the sky for any dot that appears to be moving in comparison to the background stars.

Solar system distances to scale showing the newly discovered 2018 VG18 "Farout," compared to other known solar system objects. (Source: Roberto Molar Candanosa/Scott S. Sheppard/Carnegie Institution for Science)

"2018 VG18 is much more distant and slower moving than any other observed Solar System object, so it will take a few years to fully determine its orbit," said Sheppard. "But it was found in a similar location on the sky to the other known extreme solar system objects, suggesting it might have the same type of orbit that most of them do. The orbital similarities shown by many of the known small, distant Solar System bodies was the catalyst for our original assertion that there is a distant, massive planet at several hundred AU shepherding these smaller objects."

"All that we currently know about 2018 VG18 is its extreme distance from the Sun, its approximate diameter, and its color," added Tholen, "Because 2018 VG18 is so distant, it orbits very slowly, likely taking more than 1,000 years to take one trip around the Sun."

Future Research Ahead
More observations of this tiny world can help us pin down an important detail - the orbit of "Farout." The strange orbits of similar distant objects have led astronomers to hypothesize that they might be pushed around by a huge planet on the outer edges of our solar system. This as-yet unseen object has been dubbed Planet X.

Earth and the other familiar planets all orbit the sun in roughly the same plane. But the smaller Kuiper belt objects are far enough from the gravitational influence of the giant planets that they can orbit the sun at angles to this plane, nudged by their own gravitational interactions and past collisions.

It is possible to predict this angle, known as the inclination, for any object observed. Thus, Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin at the California Institute of Technology used this idea to predict the existence of a ninth planet, thought to be ten times the mass of Earth, orbiting around 700 AU from the sun.

If Farout’s orbit is similarly warped, it might help us narrow down our search for the elusive planet. In fact, the astronomers found the planet while searching the sky for Planet X.

Top Image: Artist concept of 2018 VG18 “Farout.” (Source: Roberto Molar Candanosa/Carnegie Institution for Science)

The UFC space agency captured the first ever photo from VIKING 3 as it left Earth early last February in 2021. This phot...
01/28/2022

The UFC space agency captured the first ever photo from VIKING 3 as it left Earth early last February in 2021.
This photo shows the first time ever of a very distant cousin outside our solar system about 7.6 billion light years away from us, and the probe around 7.4 billion light years away from the VIKING 3 probe.
They released and given the name of the friendly neighbour which is none other than an asteroid around the size of our moon.
Meet Sillarina the asteroid two solar systems away from us!

A mysterious space rock, first spotted in 2017, bewildered astronomers — was it an icy comet, a rocky asteroid, or something entirely new? As the object, called ‘Oumuamua, hurtles away from us, the mystery may be solved: it’s accelerating like a comet.

Researchers tracked the space rock’s trajectory on its way out of this solar system, using telescopes on the ground and the powerful Hubble Space Telescope to keep watch even as the interstellar visitor faded out of sight. They discovered that ‘Oumuamua’s speed couldn’t just be the result of gravity. It was accelerating — which could be explained by gas puffing out of the sun-warmed end of a comet, the team reports today in the journal Nature) source science magazine.....

One of Saturns moons Jasso
01/28/2022

One of Saturns moons Jasso

On February 17th NASA and the SUFC launched Viking 3 probe to explore outside our solar system. Traveling beneath our so...
01/28/2022

On February 17th NASA and the SUFC launched Viking 3 probe to explore outside our solar system. Traveling beneath our solar system towards in almost the opposite direction from our galaxy center is our neighbor galaxy, Andromeda (yes in the Andromeda constellation) about 2 million light years away.

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