Skip to main content

Home/ SciByte/ Group items tagged Spitzer

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Mars Base

Alien Super-Earth Light Seen for 1st Time | Exoplanet Search | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/light-detected-55-cancrie.html

scibyte45 exoplanet Spitzer

shared by Mars Base on 09 May 12 - No Cached
  • Light from an alien "super-Earth" twice the size of our own Earth has been detected by a NASA space telescope for the first time
  • spotted light from the alien planet 55 Cancri e, which orbits a star 41 light-years from Earth
  • A year on the extrasolar planet lasts just 18 hours
  • ...27 more annotations...
  • 55 Cancri e was first discovered in 2004 and is not a habitable world
  • The world is about twice the width of Earth and is super-dense, with about eight times the mass of Earth.
  • until now, scientists have never managed to detect the infrared light from the super-Earth world.
  • pioneering the study of atmospheres of distant planets and paving the way for NASA's upcoming James Webb Space Telescope
  • Spitzer first detected infrared light from an alien planet in 2005
  • that world was "hot Jupiter," a gas giant planet much larger than 55 Cancri e that orbited extremely close to its parent star
  • other telescopes have performed similar feats
  • Spitzer's view of the 55 Cancri e is the first time the light from a rocky super-Earth type planet has been seen
  • Since the discovery of 55 Cancri e, astronomers have pinned down increasingly strange features about the planet
  • already knew it was part of an alien solar system containing five exoplanets centered on the star 55 Cancri in the constellation Cancer
  • But 55 Cancri e stood out because it is ultra-dense and orbits extremely close to its parent star
  • 26 times closer than the distance between Mercury and our own sun
  • observations revealed that the star-facing side of 55 Cancri e
  • temperatures reaching up to 3,140 degrees Fahrenheit (1,726 degrees Celsius).
  • likely a dark world that lacks the substantial atmosphere needed to warm its nighttime side
  • the planet is oozing
  • Past observations of the planet by the Spitzer Space Telescope have suggested that one-fifth of 55 Cancri e is made up of lighter elements, including water
  • the extreme temperatures and pressures on 55 Cancri e would create what scientists call a "supercritical fluid" state
  • Supercritical fluids can be imagined as a gas in a liquid state, which can occur under extreme pressures and temperatures
  • On Earth, water can become a supercritical fluid inside some steam engines.
  • This graphic illuminates the process by which astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have for the first time detected the light from a super-Earth planet, the alien world of 55 Cancri e 41 light-years from Earth.
  • planet is likely a rocky world covered with water in a supercritical fluid state and topped off with a steam blanket
  • could be very similar to Neptune, if you pulled Neptune in toward our sun and watched its atmosphere boil away
  • detailed in the Astrophysical Journal
  • Spitzer Space Telescope launched in 2003
  • telescope engineers modified several settings on the observatory to optimize its alien planet vision
  • conceived of Spitzer more than 40 years ago
Mars Base

Spitzer Finds Possible Exoplanet Smaller than Earth - NASA Spitzer Space Telescope - 0 views

www.spitzer.caltech.edu/...e-Exoplanet-Smaller-than-Earth

scibyte55 exoplanet

shared by Mars Base on 18 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • Astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have detected what they believe is a planet two-thirds the size of Earth. The exoplanet candidate, called UCF-1.01, is located a mere 33 light-years away, making it possibly the nearest world to our solar system that is smaller than our home planet. 
  • strong evidence for a very small, very hot and very near planet
  • new-planet candidate was found unexpectedly
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • studying the Neptune-sized exoplanet GJ 436b, already known to exist around the red-dwarf star GJ 436
  • In the Spitzer data, the astronomers noticed slight dips in the amount of infrared light streaming from the star, separate from the dips caused by GJ 436b
  • review of Spitzer archival data showed the dips were periodic, suggesting a second planet might be orbiting the star and blocking out a small fraction of the star's light. 
  • diameter would be approximately 5,200 miles (8,400 kilometers), or two-thirds that of Earth
  • revolve
  • about seven times the distance of Earth from the moon, with its "year" lasting only 1.4 Earth days
  • the exoplanet's surface temperature would be more than 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit (almost 600 degrees Celsius
  • might therefore resemble a cratered, mostly geologically dead world like Mercury
  • another possibility; that the extreme heat of orbiting so close to GJ 436 has melted the exoplanet's surface
  • colleagues noticed hints of a third planet
  • Spitzer has observed evidence of the two new planets several times each
  • even the most sensitive instruments are unable to measure exoplanet masses as small
  • mass is required for confirming a discovery
  • cautiously calling both bodies exoplanet candidates for now.
  • 1,800 stars identified by NASA' Kepler space telescope as candidates for having planetary systems, just three are verified to contain sub-Earth-sized exoplanets
  • only one exoplanet is thought to be smaller than the Spitzer candidates
Mars Base

NASA Space Telescopes Find Patchy Clouds on Exotic World - NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory - 0 views

www.jpl.nasa.gov/...news.php

scibyte105 exoplanet

shared by Mars Base on 05 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Astronomers using data from NASA's Kepler and Spitzer space telescopes have created the first cloud map of a planet
  • known as Kepler-7b
  • Previous studies from Spitzer have resulted in temperature maps of planets orbiting other stars
  • ...21 more annotations...
  • this is the first look at cloud structures on a distant world.
  • observing this planet with Spitzer and Kepler for more than three years, we were able to produce a very low-resolution 'map' of this giant, gaseous planet
  • wouldn't expect to see oceans or continents on this type of world, but we detected a clear, reflective signature that we interpreted as clouds
  • Kepler-7b was one of the first
  • Kepler's visible-light observations of Kepler-7b's moon-like phases led to a rough map of the planet that showed a bright spot on its western hemisphere
  • data were not enough on their own to decipher whether the bright spot was coming from clouds or heat
  • Spitzer Space Telescope played a crucial role in answering this question
  • Spitzer can fix its gaze at a star system as a planet orbits around the star, gathering clues about the planet's atmosphere
  • Spitzer's ability to detect infrared light means it was able to measure Kepler-7b's temperature, estimating it to be between 1,500 and 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit (1,100 and 1,300 Kelvin).
  • relatively cool for a planet that orbits so close to its star -- within 0.06 astronomical units (one astronomical unit is the distance from Earth and the sun)
  • , too cool to be the source of light Kepler observed.
  • Instead, they determined, light from the planet's star is bouncing off cloud tops located on the west side of the planet.
  • Kepler-7b reflects much more light than most giant planets we've found, which we attribute to clouds in the upper atmosphere
  • the cloud patterns on this planet do not seem to change much over time -- it has a remarkably stable climate
  • With Spitzer and Kepler together, we have a multi-wavelength tool for getting a good look at planets that are trillions of miles away
  • exoplanet science
  • moving beyond just detecting exoplanets, and into the exciting science of understanding them
  • observations of Kepler-7b previously revealed that it is one of the puffiest planets known: if it could somehow be placed in a tub of water, it would float
  • found to whip around its star in just less than five days
  • a fully rendered 3D visualization tool, available for download at http://eyes.nasa.gov/exoplanets
  • program is updated daily with the latest findings from NASA's Kepler mission and ground-based observatories around the world as they search for planets
Mars Base

Light From a 'SuperEarth' Detected for the First Time - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...th-detected-for-the-first-time

scibyte46 Spitzer exoplanet

shared by Mars Base on 09 May 12 - No Cached
  • 55 Cancri
  • one of the first known stars to host an extrasolar planet
  • discovered via radial velocity measurements in 2004
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • astronomers were able to determine its mass and radius
  • Spitzer became the first telescope to detect light from a planet beyond our solar system, when it saw the infrared light of a “hot Jupiter
  • NASA’s Hubble and Kepler space telescopes
  • using the same method
  • In this method, a telescope gazes at a star as a planet circles behind it. When the planet disappears from view, the light from the star system dips ever so slightly, but enough that astronomers can determine how much light came from the planet itself
  • information reveals the temperature of a planet, and, in some cases, its atmospheric components
  • other current planet-hunting methods obtain indirect measurements of a planet by observing its effects on the star.
  • about 8.57 Earth masses
  • radius is 1.63 times that of Earth
  • density is 10.9 ± 3.1 g cm-3 (the average density of Earth is 5.515 g cm-3),
  • Cancri e is tidally locked, so one side always faces the star
  • James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to launch in 2018, likely will be able to learn even more about the planet’s composition
  • might be able to use a similar infrared method to Spitzer to search other potentially habitable planets for signs of molecules possibly related to life.
Mars Base

Spitzer sees the light of alien 'super earth' - 0 views

phys.org/...spitzer-alien-super-earth.html

scibyte45 exoplanet Spitzer

shared by Mars Base on 09 May 12 - No Cached
  • new information is consistent with a prior theory that 55 Cancri e is a water world: a rocky core surrounded by a layer of water in a "supercritical" state where it is both liquid and gas, and topped by a blanket of steam
Mars Base

Early Black Holes were Grazers Rather than Glutonous Eaters - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...s-rather-than-glutonous-eaters

scibyte52 black holes

shared by Mars Base on 21 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • Black holes powering distant quasars in the early Universe grazed on patches of gas or passing galaxies rather than glutting themselves in dramatic collisions according to new observations from NASA’s Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes
  • A black hole doesn’t need much gas to satisfy its hunger and turn into a quasar
  • Quasars are distant and brilliant galactic powerhouses. These far-off objects are powered by black holes that glut themselves on captured material; this in turn heats the matter to millions of degrees making it super luminous
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • team studied 30 quasars with NASA’s orbiting telescopes Hubble and Spitzer
  • These quasars, glowing extremely bright in the infrared images
  • telltale sign that resident black holes are actively scooping up gas and dust into their gravitational whirlpool
  • formed during a time of peak black-hole growth between eight and twelve billion years
  • supports evidence that the creation of the most massive black holes in the early Universe was fueled not by dramatic bursts of major mergers but by smaller, long-term events
  • found 26 of the host galaxies
  • about the size of our own Milky Way Galaxy, showed no signs of collisions
  • Quasars that are products of galaxy collisions are very bright
  • the process powering the quasars and their black holes lies below the detection of Hubble
  • prime targets for the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope, a large infrared orbiting observatory scheduled for launch in 2018
Mars Base

Astrophysicists spy ultra-distant galaxy amidst cosmic 'dark ages' - 0 views

phys.org/...tra-distant-galaxy-cosmic.html

scibyte64 galaxy

shared by Mars Base on 20 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • combined power of NASA's Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes as well as a cosmic magnification effect, a team
  • has spotted what could be the most distant galaxy ever detected.
  • Light from the young galaxy captured by the orbiting observatories shone forth when the 13.7-billion-year-old universe was just 500 million years old
  • ...19 more annotations...
  • This galaxy is the most distant object we have ever observed with high confidence
  • Future work involving this galaxy—as well as others like it that we hope to find—will allow us to study the universe's earliest objects and how the Dark Ages ended
  • traveled approximately 13.2 billion light-years
  • the universe was just 3.6 percent
  • Objects at these extreme distances are mostly beyond the detection sensitivity of today's largest telescopes
  • astronomers rely on "gravitational lensing
  • predicted by Albert Einstein a century ago
  • gravity of foreground objects warps and magnifies the light from background objects
  • brightening the remote object some 15 times and bringing it into view.
  • small and compact, containing only about 1 percent of the Milky Way's mass
  • leading cosmological theories, the first galaxies should indeed have started out tiny
  • then progressively merged
  • omers plan to study the rise of the first stars and galaxies and the epoch of reionization with the successor to both Spitzer and Hubble—NASA's James Webb Telescope, slated for launch in 2018
  • newly described distant galaxy will likely be a prime target.
  • first galaxies likely played the dominant role in the epoch of reionization
  • event that signaled the demise of the universe's Dark Ages
  • About 400,000 years after the Big Bang, neutral hydrogen gas formed from cooling particles
  • these earliest galaxies is thought to have caused the neutral hydrogen strewn throughout the universe to ionize, or lose an electron
  • during the epoch of reionization, the lights came on in the universe
Mars Base

Faraway moon or faint star? Possible exomoon found - 0 views

phys.org/...y-moon-faint-star-exomoon.html

scibyte126 exoplanets

shared by Mars Base on 11 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • NASA-funded researchers have spotted the first signs of an "exomoon," and though they say it's impossible to confirm its presence
  • The discovery was made by watching a chance encounter of objects in our galaxy, which can be witnessed only once
  • won't have a chance to observe the exomoon candidate again
  • ...29 more annotations...
  • can expect more unexpected finds like this.
  • international study
  • using telescopes
  • technique, called gravitational microlensing, takes advantage of chance alignments between stars
  • When a foreground star passes between us and a more distant star, the closer star can act like a magnifying glass to focus and brighten the light of the more distant one
  • These brightening events usually last about a month
  • If the foreground star—or what astronomers refer to as the lens—has a planet circling around it, the planet will act as a second lens to brighten or dim the light even more
  • carefully scrutinizing these brightening events, astronomers can figure out the mass of the foreground star relative to its planet.
  • the foreground object could be a free-floating planet, not a star
  • astronomers are actively looking for exomoons—for example, using data from NASA's Kepler mission - so far, they have not found any.
  • In the new study, the nature of the foreground, lensing object is not clear. The ratio of the larger body to its smaller companion is 2,000 to 1.
  • That means the pair could be either a small, faint star circled by a planet about 18 times the mass of Earth—or a planet more massive than Jupiter coupled with a moon weighing less than Earth.
  • astronomers have no way of telling which of these two scenarios is correct
  • One possibility is for the lensing system to be a planet and its moon
  • The answer to the mystery lies in learning the distance to the circling duo
  • A lower-mass pair closer to Earth will produce the same kind of brightening event as a more massive pair located farther away
  • once a brightening event is over, it's very difficult to take additional measurements of the lensing system and determine the distance
  • The true identity of the exomoon candidate and its companion, a system dubbed MOA-2011-BLG-262, will remain unknown
  • In the future, however, it may be possible to obtain these distance measurements during lensing events
  • NASA's Spitzer and Kepler space telescopes, both of which revolve around the sun in Earth-trailing orbits, are far enough away from Earth to be great tools for the parallax-distance technique.
  • The basic principle of parallax can be explained by holding your finger out, closing one eye after the other, and watching your finger jump back and forth
  • A distant star, when viewed from two telescopes spaced really far apart, will also appear to move
  • When combined with a lensing event, the parallax effect alters how a telescope will view the resulting magnification of starlight
  • Though the technique works best using one telescope on Earth and one in space, such as Spitzer or Kepler, two ground-based telescopes on different sides of our planet can also be used
  • Meanwhile, surveys
  • are turning up more and more planets
  • These microlensing surveys have discovered dozens of exoplanets so far, in orbit around stars and free-floating
  • A previous NASA-funded study, also led by the MOA team, was the first to find strong evidence for planets the size of Jupiter roaming alone in space, presumably after they were kicked out of forming planetary systems
  • The new exomoon candidate, if real, would orbit one such free-floating planet.
Mars Base

Kepler Mission Extended to 2016 - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...epler-mission-extended-to-2016

scibyte41 Kepler

shared by Mars Base on 03 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • Artist concept of Kepler in space. Credit: NASA/JPL
  • NASA’s tight budget
  • Anxieties were rampant about one mission in particular, the very fruitful exoplanet-hunting Kepler mission, as several years of observations are required in order for Kepler to confirm a repeated orbit as a planet transits its star
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • Additionally, missions such as Hubble, Fermi and Swift will receive continued funding
  • only mission that took a hit was the Spitzer infrared telescope, which – as of now — will be closed out in 2015, which is sooner than requested.
  • Senior Review of missions takes place every two years
  • In the Review, missions are ranked as which are most successful
  • previous Senior Reviews led to the removal of funding for the weakest 10-20% of extended missions
  • Hubble Space Telescope will continue at the currently funded levels
  • Chandra will also continue at current levels, but its Guest Observer budget will actually be increased to account for decreases in Fiscal Year 2011
  • Fermi operations are extended through FY16, with a 10 percent per year reduction starting in FY14.
  • Swift and Kepler mission operations are extended through FY16, including funding for data analysis.
  • Planck will support one year extended operations of the Low Frequency Instrument (LFI).
  • Spitzer’s operations are extended through FY14 with closeout in FY15
  • U.S. science support of Suzaku is extended to March 2015.
  • Funding for U.S. support of XMM-Newton is extended through March 2015.
  • all FY15-FY16 decisions are for planning purposes and they will be revisited in the 2014 Senior Review
Mars Base

Alien Planet Smaller Than Earth Covered in Lava | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/-lava-world-smaller-earth.html

scibyte55 exoplanet

shared by Mars Base on 18 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • Spitzer may be able to discover exoplanets as small as Mars
  • Even after almost nine years in space, Spitzer's observations continue to take us in new and important scientific directions
Mars Base

Two 'Weird' Alien Planets Found Around Bright, Distant Stars | Space.com - 1 views

www.space.com/ets-kelt-telescope-aas220.html

scibyte52 exoplanets

shared by Mars Base on 19 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • Astronomers using a small ground-based telescope have discovered two unusual alien planets around extremely bright, distant stars.
  • detected using the Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope (KELT) in southern Arizona, which has a lens that is roughly as powerful as a high-end digital camera
  • slightly more diminutive than Kepler
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • KELT-1b, is a massive world that is both incredibly hot and dense. The alien planet, which is mostly metallic hydrogen, is slightly larger than Jupiter, but contains a whopping 27 times the mass
  • completes one orbit in a mere 29 hours
  • surface temperature is likely above 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit (roughly 2,200 degrees Celsius
  • receiving 6,000 times the amount of radiation that Earth receives from the sun
  • located approximately 825 light-years away in the constellation of Andromeda
  • massive enough that KELT-1 has raised tides on its parent star and actually spun it
  • both KELT-1 and its parent star are locked in each other's gaze as they go around."
  • KELT-2Ab, and is located about 360 light-years away in the constellation of Auriga
  • 30 percent larger than Jupiter with 50 percent more mass.
  • KELT-2Ab's parent star is so bright it can be seen from Earth through binoculars
  • the star is so luminous that researchers will be able to make direct observations of the planet's atmosphere by examining light that shines through it when the star passes within KELT North's field of view again in November.
  • Follow-up observations are also being planned
  • as well as several space observatories, including the Hubble Space Telescope and the infrared Spitzer Space Telescope.
  • orbits a star that is slightly bigger than the sun, within a binary system
  • one star is slightly bigger than our sun, and the other star is slightly smaller. KELT-2Ab orbits the bigger star, which is bright enough to be seen from Earth with binoculars
  • using the so-called transit method, which involves watching for tiny dips in the star's light that could indicate a planet is crossing, or transiting
  • Rather than staring at a small group of stars at high resolution, the twin KELT North and KELT South telescopes observe millions of very bright stars at low resolution,
  • KELT North scans the northern sky from Arizona
  • KELT South covers the southern sky from Cape Town, South Africa.
  • small ground-based KELT telescopes provide a low-cost alternative for exoplanet hunters by primarily using off-the-shelf technology. The hardware for a KELT telescope costs less than $75,000
Mars Base

Star is discovered to be a close neighbor of the Sun and the coldest of its kind - 0 views

phys.org/...neighbor-sun-coldest-kind.html

scibyte128 star

shared by Mars Base on 27 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • A "brown dwarf" star that appears to be the coldest of its kind—as frosty as Earth's North Pole—has been discovered
  • Images from the space telescopes also pinpointed the object's distance at 7.2 light-years away, making it the fourth closest system to our Sun
  • Brown dwarfs start their lives like stars, as collapsing balls of gas, but they lack the mass to burn nuclear fuel and radiate starlight
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • The newfound coldest brown dwarf, named WISE J085510.83-071442.5, has a chilly temperature between minus 54 and 9 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 48 to minus 13 degrees Celsius).
  • Although it is very close to our solar system
  • is not an appealing destination for human space travel in the distant future.
  • WISE was able to spot the rare object because it surveyed the entire sky twice in infrared light
  • Cool objects like brown dwarfs can be invisible when viewed by visible-light telescopes, but their thermal glow—even if feeble—stands out in infrared light.
  • is estimated to be 3 to 10 times the mass of Jupiter.
  • With such a low mass, it could be a gas giant similar to Jupiter that was ejected from its star system. But scientists estimate it is probably a brown dwarf rather than a planet since brown dwarfs are known to be fairly common
  • If so, it is one of the least massive brown dwarfs known.
  • Combined detections
  • ken from different positions around the Sun, enabled the measurement of its distance through the parallax effect
  • In March of 2013
  • analysis of the images from WISE uncovered a pair of much warmer brown dwarfs at a distance of 6.5 light years, making that system the third closest to the Sun
  • NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and Spitzer Space Telescopes.
1 - 15 of 15
Showing 20▼ items per page