Integral sets limits on gamma rays from merging black holes

ESA - Integral Mission patch.

30 March 2016

Following the discovery of gravitational waves from the merging of two black holes, ESA’s Integral satellite has revealed no simultaneous gamma rays, just as models predict.

On 14 September, the terrestrial Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) detected gravitational waves – fluctuations in the fabric of spacetime – produced by a pair of black holes as they spiralled towards each other before merging. The signal lasted less than half a second.

Merging black holes

The discovery was the first direct observation of gravitational waves, predicted by Albert Einstein a century ago.

Two days after the detection, the LIGO team alerted a number of ground- and space-based astronomical facilities to look for a possible counterpart to the source of gravitational waves. The nature of the source was unclear at the time, and it was hoped that follow-up observations across the electromagnetic spectrum might provide valuable information about the culprit.

Gravitational waves are released when massive bodies are accelerated, and strong emission should occur when dense stellar remnants such as neutron stars or black holes spiral towards each other before coalescing.

 Models predict that the merging of two stellar-mass black holes would not produce light at any wavelength, but if one or two neutron stars were involved in the process, then a characteristic signature should be observable across the electromagnetic spectrum.

Another possible source of gravitational waves would be an asymmetric supernova explosion, also known to emit light over a range of wavelengths.

Gravitational waves

It was not possible to pinpoint the LIGO source – its position could only be narrowed down to a very long strip across the sky.

Observatories searched their archives in case data had been serendipitously collected anywhere along this strip around the time of the gravitational wave detection. They were also asked to point their telescopes to the same region in search for any possible ‘afterglow’ emission.

Integral is sensitive to transient sources of high-energy emission over the whole sky, and thus a team of scientists searched through its data, seeking signs of a sudden burst of hard X-rays or gamma rays that might have been recorded at the same time as the gravitational waves were detected.

“We searched through all the available Integral data, but did not find any indication of high-energy emission associated with the LIGO detection,” says Volodymyr Savchenko of the François Arago Centre in Paris, France. Volodymyr is the lead author of a paper reporting the results, published today in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The team analysed data from the Anti-Coincidence Shield on Integral’s SPI instrument. The shield helps to screen out radiation and particles coming from directions other than that where the instrument is pointing, as well as to detect transient high-energy sources across the whole sky.

The team also looked at data from Integral’s IBIS instrument, although at the time it was not pointing at the strip where the source of gravitational waves was thought to be located.

“The source detected by LIGO released a huge amount of energy in gravitational waves, and the limits set by the Integral data on a possible simultaneous emission of gamma rays are one million times lower than that,” says co-author Carlo Ferrigno from the Integral Science Data Centre at the University of Geneva, Switzerland.

Subsequent analysis of the LIGO data has shown that the gravitational waves were produced by a pair of coalescing black holes, each with a mass roughly 30 times that of our Sun, located about 1.3 billion light years away. Scientists do not expect to see any significant emission of light at any wavelength from such events, and thus Integral’s null detection is consistent with this scenario.

Similarly, nothing was seen by the great majority of the other astronomical facilities making observations from radio and infrared to optical and X-ray wavelengths.

Integral: gamma-ray observatory

The only exception was the Gamma-Ray Burst Monitor on NASA’s Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope, which observed what appears to be a sudden burst of gamma rays about 0.4 seconds after the gravitational waves were detected. The burst lasted about one second and came from a region of the sky that overlaps with the strip identified by LIGO.

This detection sparked a bounty of theoretical investigations, proposing possible scenarios in which two merging black holes of stellar mass could indeed have released gamma rays along with the gravitational waves.

However, if this gamma-ray flare had had a cosmic origin, either linked to the LIGO gravitational wave source or to any other astrophysical phenomenon in the Universe, it should have been detected by Integral as well. The absence of any such detection by both instruments on Integral suggests that the measurement from Fermi could be unrelated to the gravitational wave detection.

“This result highlights the importance of synergies between scientists and observing facilities worldwide in the quest for as many cosmic messengers as possible, from the recently-detected gravitational waves to particles and light across the spectrum,” says Erik Kuulkers, Integral project scientist at ESA.

This will become even more important when it becomes possible to observe gravitational waves from space. This has been identified as the goal for the L3 mission in ESA’s Cosmic Vision programme, and the technology for building it is currently being tested in space by ESA’s LISA Pathfinder mission.

Such an observatory will be capable of detecting gravitational waves from the merging of supermassive black holes in the centres of galaxies for months prior to the final coalescence, making it possible to locate the source much more accurately and thus provide astronomical observatories with a place and a time to look out for associated electromagnetic emission.

“We are looking forward to further collaborations and discoveries in the newly-inaugurated era of gravitational astronomy,” concludes Erik.

Notes for Editors:

“Integral Upper Limits On Gamma-Ray Emission Associated With The Gravitational Wave Event GW150914,” by V. Savchenko et al. is published in Astrophysical Journal Letters.
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8205/820/2/L36

For more information about Integral mission, visit:  http://sci.esa.int/integral/

Images, Animation, Text, Credits: ESA/Markus Bauer/Erik Kuulkers/C.Carreau/François Arago Center APC - Astroparticule et Cosmologie Université Paris Diderot, CNRS/IN2P3, CEA/Irfu, Observatoire De Paris, Sorbonne Paris Cité Paris/Volodymyr Savchenko/Integral Science Data Centre, University of Geneva/Carlo Ferrigno/Medialab.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

The LHC wakes up from its winter break

CERN - European Organization for Nuclear Research logo.

March 29, 2016

Image above: These are distribution feed boxes, which bring power to the magnets.There are 52 of them around the LHC, of 4 different sizes and characteristics. Big, copper cables transfer the current in tiny superconducting cables. (Image: Maximillien Brice/ CERN).

It’s March already, and time for the LHC to wake up from its short winter break.The LHC was the last machine to be handed back to operators after the completion of maintenance work carried out during the Year-End Technical Stop (YETS) that had started on 14 December, 2015.

During the past eleven weeks several maintenance activities took place in all the accelerators and beam lines. They included the replacement of the LHC beam absorbers for injection (TDIs) that are used to absorb the SPS beam if a problem occurs, providing vital protection for the LHC, maintenance at several points of the cryogenic system, the replacement of 18 magnets in the Super Proton Synchrotron and an extensive campaign to identify and remove thousands of obsolete cables.

The YETS also gave the experiments the opportunity to carry out repairs and maintenance work on their detectors. In particular, at CMS, the cold box, which had caused problems for the experiment’s magnet during 2015, was cleaned and a few water leaks on the site were fixed.

Powering tests began on 4 March and finished on 18 March 2016, marking the initial step to the first beams of the year. It was a tight schedule, with the tests scheduled for just 14 days before moving on to machine checkout and then commissioning with beam around Easter. During that time, over 8500 tests are being performed on the 1600 circuits. Even though the tests were executed automatically, the experts in charge of running and analysing them needed to pay careful attention to the thousands of multi-coloured signals on their screens.

Image above: LHC machine operators at work during powering tests of the LHC superconducting circuits. Powering is the first milestone in the LHC machine restart process. In this stage, the LHC operators perform tests with current of the superconducting circuits with the aim of checking the protection functionalities, the powering chain and the capability of the circuits to reach the values needed for operation. In total, more than 8500 test steps were performed on the 1600 circuits in less than 2 weeks. (Image: Maximillien Brice/CERN).

Last year marked a great start to Run 2. The objective was to establish proton-proton collisions at 13 TeV with 25 nanosecond bunch spacing.

2015 was a learning year for CERN, and by the time the machines were switched off for the end-of-year break a great deal was known about how to operate the LHC at the new higher energy, with shorter bunch spacing, allowing physicists to get many more bunches of particles into the beam and thereby deliver more data to the experiments.

“This was a great result but, to put it into context, the goal for the whole of Run 2 is to deliver 100 fb-1 by the end of 2018, so we still have a long way to go”, says Frédérick Bordry, Director for accelerators and technology.

“It would be easy to think that LHC running is becoming routine, and in many ways it is. Nevertheless, the year-end technical stop is a vital part of the running cycle and much has been accomplished over this short winter break,” he concludes.

Note:

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is one of the world’s largest and most respected centres for scientific research. Its business is fundamental physics, finding out what the Universe is made of and how it works. At CERN, the world’s largest and most complex scientific instruments are used to study the basic constituents of matter — the fundamental particles. By studying what happens when these particles collide, physicists learn about the laws of Nature.

The instruments used at CERN are particle accelerators and detectors. Accelerators boost beams of particles to high energies before they are made to collide with each other or with stationary targets. Detectors observe and record the results of these collisions.

Founded in 1954, the CERN Laboratory sits astride the Franco–Swiss border near Geneva. It was one of Europe’s first joint ventures and now has 22 Member States.

Related link:

Large Hadron Collider (LHC): http://home.cern/topics/large-hadron-collider

For more information about the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), visit: http://home.web.cern.ch/

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: CERN/Harriet Kim Jarlett.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

New DNA/RNA Tool to Diagnose, Treat Diseases

NASA patch.

March 29, 2016

Mars exploration. Image Credit: NASA

If NASA is going to send astronauts on years-long missions, the agency will need new and better tools to monitor whether the men and women are healthy along the way. One company has developed a tool that could make comprehensive diagnostics at long distances a reality for NASA — and it has big potential to advance medicine on Earth, too.

Currently, Earth-based researchers keep track of things like white blood cell counts and cholesterol and cortisol levels, dubbed “biomarkers,” with tests that use special proteins called antibodies. But the antibodies have a short, three- to six-month shelf life and can be ruined by the high levels of radiation in space, making them ill-suited for such missions.

Research from the 1990s suggested an alternative: single strands of RNA and DNA that can be folded into three-dimensional structures and, like antibodies, bind to specific molecules. These structures, called aptamers, can be stored at ambient temperatures without degrading and are impervious to radiation.

One Hundred Trillion Options

There are, however, drawbacks to using aptamers for diagnostics. For one, making them is a time-consuming, complicated process. Furthermore, until recently aptamers haven’t been as good as antibodies at sticking to target molecules.

Graphic above: Looking for a new way to monitor health markers like white blood cell count and cholesterol, researchers discovered that single strands of DNA and RNA could fold into three-dimensional structures called aptamers that bind to specific molecules, a process made faster and simpler with the AM Biotechnologies kit. Graphic Credits: National Institute of General Medical Sciences.

“They didn’t bind well enough — they weren’t specific enough for their targets,” explains Mark Shumbera, president of AM Biotechnologies LLC, based in Houston. “Certain chemical modifications needed to be added to their DNA to make them work better.”

A standard aptamer process starts by placing a target molecule into a solution holding one hundred trillion random RNA/DNA sequences. Some sequences will bond well with the target molecule, while others won’t — or will bond only weakly. The successful sequences are then separated and copied through a chain reaction to create another, more refined solution, in a process that is repeated up to 15 times.

This technique, called systemic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment, or SELEX, often requires many chemical modifications to best tailor aptamers to bind to target substances. However, scientists are limited in how many chemical modifications they can make, in part because the chain reaction “doesn’t work very efficiently like that,” says Shumbera. “So typically, people only use one, and maybe two modifications at a time.”

In part through NASA Small Business Innovation Research funding from Johnson Space Center, in 2007 AM Biotechnologies advanced a faster, simplified method for creating aptamers that bond strongly to their target molecule. The company calls these next-generation aptamers X-Aptamers.

The new, faster method uses a proprietary process to synthesize a library of 10 billion RNA/DNA sequences, including both natural and heavily modified sequences, onto microbeads, which are then used to develop aptamers with an affinity for particular molecules, such as the biomarkers NASA is interested in. The bead-based method removes the previous limitations on allowable chemical modifications and simplifies the manufacturing process.

“You can have 50 modifications in a sequence — there is virtually no limit,” Shumbera says. “This method allows for the DNA or RNA to be more chemically diverse, meaning there’s a better chance of creating a molecule with a particularly high affinity and specificity for the target.”

Building the Future of Medicine

The process is now in use by the company, which has also made it commercially available so anyone can make their own aptamers. The kit is so simple that anyone with basic biochemistry lab skills can use it easily, Shumbera says. “We have university customers, our prototype users, who have freshmen undergraduates select X-Aptamers using our kits. The bead-based process simplifies aptamer selection tremendously.”

In addition to helping diagnose diseases, X-Aptamers could also be used to carry and attach a chemotherapy drug to a tumor, sparing other parts of the body from receiving the treatment. “It could help usher in the next big revolution in terms of how we diagnose and treat patients,” Shumbera says.

Image above: The AM Biotechnologies’ X-Aptamer Selection kit is simple enough for freshman undergraduates to use and takes only a few days to achieve results. Image Credits: AM Biotechnologies LLC.

One aptamer drug, Pegaptanib, has already gotten FDA approval, and Shumbera believes diagnostic applications aren’t far behind. He sees a bright future for aptamers, especially for NASA uses. The agency is working with other companies to create a hardware platform that can perform analysis in space, helping to diagnose and possibly treat ailments while astronauts are thousands or millions of miles from Earth.

To learn more about this NASA spinoff, read the original article from Spinoff 2016.
For more information on how NASA is bringing its technology down to Earth, visit http://technology.nasa.gov.

Images (mentioned), Graphic (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/William Bryan.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

2016 Arctic Sea Ice Wintertime Extent Hits Another Record Low

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center logo.

 

March 29, 2016

 

Arctic sea ice appears to have reached a record low wintertime maximum extent for the second year in a row, according to scientists at the NASA-supported National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and NASA.

Image above: Arctic sea ice was at a record low wintertime maximum extent for the second straight year. At 5.607 million square miles, it is the lowest maximum extent in the satellite record, and 431,000 square miles below the 1981 to 2010 average maximum extent.
Image Credits: NASA Goddard's Scientific Visualization Studio/C. Starr.

Every year, the cap of frozen seawater floating on top of the Arctic Ocean and its neighboring seas melts during the spring and summer and grows back in the fall and winter months, reaching its maximum yearly extent between February and April. On March 24, Arctic sea ice extent peaked at 5.607 million square miles (14.52 million square kilometers), a new record low winter maximum extent in the satellite record that started in 1979. It is slightly smaller than the previous record low maximum extent of 5.612 million square miles (14.54 million square kilometers) that occurred last year. The 13 smallest maximum extents on the satellite record have happened in the last 13 years.

Record Low Arctic Sea Ice Maximum - 2016

Video above: This short animation shows the Arctic sea ice freeze cycle from the last summertime minimum extent to March 24, when it reached its wintertime maximum extent.
Image Credits: NASA Goddard's Scientific Visualization Studio/C. Starr.

The new record low follows record high temperatures in December, January and February around the globe and in the Arctic. The atmospheric warmth probably contributed to this lowest maximum extent, with air temperatures up to 10 degrees Fahrenheit above average at the edges of the ice pack where sea ice is thin, said Walt Meier, a sea ice scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

The wind patterns in the Arctic during January and February were also unfavorable to ice growth because they brought warm air from the south and prevented expansion of the ice cover. But ultimately, what will likely play a bigger role in the future trend of Arctic maximum extents is warming ocean waters, Meier said.

“It is likely that we're going to keep seeing smaller wintertime maximums in the future because in addition to a warmer atmosphere, the ocean has also warmed up. That warmer ocean will not let the ice edge expand as far south as it used to,” Meier said. “Although the maximum reach of the sea ice can vary a lot each year depending on winter weather conditions, we’re seeing a significant downward trend, and that’s ultimately related to the warming atmosphere and oceans.” Since 1979, that trend has led to a loss of 620,000 square miles of winter sea ice cover, an area more than twice the size of Texas.

Arctic sea ice. Image Credit: NASA

This year’s record low sea ice maximum extent will not necessarily result in a subsequent record low summertime minimum extent, Meier said. Summer weather conditions have a larger impact than the extent of the winter maximum in the outcome of each year’s melt season; warm temperatures and summer storms make the ice melt fast, while if a summer is cool, the melt slows down.

Arctic sea ice plays an important role in maintaining Earth’s temperature—its bright white surface reflects solar energy that the ocean would otherwise absorb. But this effect is more relevant in the summer, when the sun is high in the sky in the Arctic, than in the winter, when the sun doesn’t rise for months within the Arctic Circle. In the winter, the impact of missing sea ice is mostly felt in the atmosphere, said Jennifer Francis, a climate scientist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

“In places where sea ice has been lost, those areas of open water will put more heat into the atmosphere because the air is much colder than unfrozen sea water,” Francis said. “As winter sea ice disappears, areas of unusually warm air temperatures in the Arctic will expand. These are also areas of increased evaporation, and the resulting water vapor will contribute to increased cloudiness, which in winter, further warms the surface.”

Related Link:

NSIDC's sea ice maximum announcement: https://nsidc.org/news/newsroom/arctic-sets-yet-another-record-low-maximum-extent

Image (mentioned), Video (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA's Earth Science News Team/Maria-Jose Viñas.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Communication anomaly of X-ray Astronomy Satellite “Hitomi” (ASTRO-H)

JAXA - ASTRO-H / X-Ray Observatory logo.

Mar. 29, 2016

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) found that communication with the X-ray Astronomy Satellite “Hitomi” (ASTRO-H), launched on February 17, 2016 (JST), failed from the start of its operation originally scheduled at 16:40, Saturday March 26 (JST). Up to now, JAXA has not been able to figure out the state of health of the satellite.

While the cause of communication anomaly is under investigation, JAXA received short signal from the satellite, and is working for recovery.

Under this circumstance, JAXA set up emergency headquarters, headed by the President, for recovery and investigation. The headquarters held its first meeting today, and has been working for recovery and the investigation of the cause.

Artist's view of ASTRO-H X-Ray Observatory. Image Credit: JAXA

Current Status of Communication Anomaly of X-ray Astronomy Satellite “Hitomi” (ASTRO-H)

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has been trying to communicate with the X-ray Astronomy Satellite “Hitomi” (ASTRO-H), using ground stations both in Japan and overseas.

By utilizing two opportunities of communicating with Hitomi, JAXA received signals from the satellite: the first time was at about 10:00 p.m. on 28 at the Uchinoura Ground Station, and the second one was at around 0:30 a.m. on 29 at the Santiago Tracking Station in Chile. JAXA has not been able to figure out the state of its health, as the time frames for receiving the signals were very short.

According to the U.S. Joint Space Operations Center (JSpOC), it is estimated that Hitomi separated to five pieces at about 10:42 a.m. In order to investigate the situation, JAXA is observing the objects, using a radar located at the Kamisaibara Space Guard Center (KSGC) and telescopes at the Bisei Space Guard Center (BSGC) owned by the Japan Space Forum. Up to now, the telescopes at BSGC detected two objects around the satellite’s original orbit, while the radar at KSGC identified one of them. It is confirmed that the signal received at the Santiago Tracking Station came from the orbital direction of the object identified at KSGC.

JAXA continues to investigate the relationship between the information announced by JSpOC and the communication anomaly.

JAXA will continue to do its best to recover communications with Hitomi and investigate the cause of the anomaly.

Related link:

X-ray Astronomy Satellite "Hitomi" (ASTRO-H): http://global.jaxa.jp/projects/sat/astro_h/

Image (mentioned), Text, Credits: National Research and Development Agency/Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Investigating the Mystery of Migrating 'Hot Jupiters'

NASA - Spitzer Space Telescope patch.

March 29, 2016

Image above: The turbulent atmosphere of a hot, gaseous planet known as HD 80606b is shown in this simulation based on data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

The last decade has seen a bonanza of exoplanet discoveries. Nearly 2,000 exoplanets -- planets outside our solar system -- have been confirmed so far, and more than 5,000 candidate exoplanets have been identified. Many of these exotic worlds belong to a class known as "hot Jupiters." These are gas giants like Jupiter but much hotter, with orbits that take them feverishly close to their stars.

At first, hot Jupiters were considered oddballs, since we don't have anything like them in our own solar system. But as more were found, in addition to many other smaller planets that orbit very closely to their stars, our solar system started to seem like the real misfit.

The wild Temperature Swings of an Exoplanet

"We thought our solar system was normal, but that's not so much the case," said astronomer Greg Laughlin of the University of California, Santa Cruz, co-author of a new study from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope that investigates hot Jupiter formation.

As common as hot Jupiters are now known to be, they are still shrouded in mystery. How did these massive orbs form, and how did they wind up so shockingly close to their stars?

The Spitzer telescope found new clues by observing a hot Jupiter known as HD 80606b, situated 190 light-years from Earth. This planet is unusual in that it has a wildly eccentric orbit almost like that of a comet, swinging very close to its star and then back out to much greater distances over and over again every 111 days. One side of the planet is thought to become dramatically hotter than the other during its harrowing close approaches. In fact, when the planet is closest to its host star, the side facing the star quickly heats up to more than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,100 degrees Celsius).

"As the planet gets closer to the star, it feels a burst of starlight, or radiation. The atmosphere becomes a cauldron of chemical reactions, and the winds ramp up far beyond hurricane force," said Laughlin, a co-author on the Spitzer study, which is accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

HD 80606b is thought to be in the process of migrating from a more distant orbit to a much tighter one typical of hot Jupiters. One of the leading theories of hot-Jupiter formation holds that gas giants in distant orbits become hot Jupiters when the gravitational influences from nearby stars or planets drive them into closer orbits. The planets start out in eccentric orbits, then, over a period of hundreds of millions of years, are thought to gradually settle down into tight, circular orbits.

Image above: Astronomers watched an exoplanet called HD 80606b heat up and cool off during its sizzling-hot orbit around its star. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MIT.

"This planet is thought to be caught in the act of migrating inward," said Julien de Wit of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, lead author of the new study. "By studying it, we are able to test theories of hot Jupiter formation."

Spitzer previously studied HD 80606b in 2009. The latest observations are more detailed, thanks to a longer observing time -- 85 hours -- and improvements in Spitzer's sensitivity to exoplanets.

"The Spitzer data are pristine," said de Wit. "And we were able to observe the planet for much longer this time, giving us more insight into its coldest temperature and how fast it heats up, cools down and rotates."

A key question addressed in the new study is: How long is HD 80606b taking to migrate from an eccentric to a circular orbit? One way to assess this is to look at how "squishy" the planet is. When HD 80606b whips closely by its star, the gravity of the star squeezes it. If the planet is squishier, or more pliable, it can better dissipate this gravitational energy as heat. And the more heat that is dissipated, the faster the planet will transition to a circular orbit, a process known as circularization.

"If you take a Nerf ball and squeeze it a bunch of times really fast, you'll see that it heats up," said Laughlin. "That's because the Nerf ball is good at transferring that mechanical energy into heat. It's squishy as a result."

The Spitzer results show that HD 80606b does not dissipate much heat when it is squeezed by gravity during its close encounters - and thus is not squishy, but rather stiffer as a whole. This suggests the planet is not circularizing its orbit as fast as expected, and may take another 10 billion years or more to complete.

"We are starting to learn how long it may take for hot Jupiter migration to occur," said de Wit. "Our theories said it shouldn't take that long because we don't see migrating hot Jupiters very often."

"The long time scales we are observing here suggest that a leading migration mechanism may not be as efficient for hot Jupiter formation as once believed," said Laughlin.

The Spitzer study suggests that competing theories for hot Jupiter formation -- in which gas giants form "in situ," or close to their stars, or smoothly spiral inward with the help of planet-forming disks -- may be preferred.

Spitzer Space Telescope. Image Credit: NASA

The new study is also the first to measure the rotation rate of an exoplanet orbiting a sun-like star. Spitzer observed changes in the planet's brightness as the planet spun on its axis, finding a rotation period of 90 hours.

"Fifty years ago, we were measuring the rotation rates of planets in our own solar system for the first time. Now we are doing the same thing for planets orbiting other stars. That's pretty amazing," said Laughlin.

A rotation rate of 90 hours is much slower than what is predicted for HD 80606b, puzzling astronomers, and adding to the enduring mystique of hot Jupiters.

Additional study authors are: Nikole Lewis of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore; Jonathan Langton of Principia College, Elsah, Illinois; Drake Deming of University of Maryland, College Park; Konstantin Batygin of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena; and Jonathan Fortney of the University of California, Santa Cruz.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at Caltech. Spacecraft operations are based at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, Littleton, Colorado. Data are archived at the Infrared Science Archive housed at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at Caltech. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

For more information about Spitzer, visit: http://spitzer.caltech.edu and http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer

Technical journal article:
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8205/820/2/L33

Images (mentioned), Video, Text, Credits: NASA/JPL/Whitney Clavin.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Herschel reveals a ribbon of future stars

ESA - Herschel Mission patch.

March 29, 2016

Star formation is taking place all around us. The Milky Way is laced with clouds of dust and gas that could become the nursery of the next generation of stars. Thanks to ESA’s Herschel space observatory, we can now look inside these clouds and see what is truly going on.

It may seem ironic but when searching for sites of future star formation, astronomers look for the coldest spots in the Milky Way. This is because before the stars ignite the gas that will form their bulk must collapse together. To do that, it has to be cold and sluggish, so that it cannot resist gravity.

As well as gas, there is also dust. This too is extremely cold, perhaps just 10–20 degrees above absolute zero. To optical telescopes it appears completely dark, but the dust reveals itselfat far-infrared wavelengths.

One of the surprises is that the coldest parts of the cloud form filaments that stretch across the warmer parts of the cloud. This image shows a cold cloud filament, known to astronomers as G82.65-2.00. The blue filament is the coldest part of the cloud and contains 800 times as much mass as the Sun. The dust in this filament has a temperature of –259ºC. At this low temperature, if the filament contains enough mass it is likely that this section will collapse into stars.

This image is colour-coded so that the longest infrared wavelength, corresponding to the coldest region, is shown in blue, and the shortest wavelength, corresponding to slightly warmer dust, is shown in red.

Artist's view of Herschel space observatory

The field of view on display here is a little more than two times the width of the full Moon. It is one of 116 regions of space observed by Herschel as part of the Galactic Cold Cores project. Each field was chosen because ESA’s cosmic microwave background mapper, Planck, showed that these regions of the galaxy possessed extremely cold dust.

Related links:

ESA’s Herschel space observatory: http://sci.esa.int/herschel/

Galactic Cold Cores project: https://wiki.helsinki.fi/display/PlanckHerschel/The+Cold+Cores

ESA’s Planck: http://sci.esa.int/planck/

Images, Text, Credits: ESA/Herschel/SPIRE/M. Juvela (U. Helsinki, Finland).

Best regards, Orbiter.ch