#24A - Largest Rings in the Universe - Stars Making Fluorine and Magnetism - Nobody Out There? - & 3 More Stories
TGT 1/17/24: TGT Resumes! What Happened?; High and Low Coordinates in Everyday Life; Giants in Evenings, Terrestrials in Dawns, Mercury and Mars Meet; Aquarius for a Day
Cover Photo - Universe’s Largest Rings
An edge-on ring and a circular ring of galaxies illuminated by quasar light simulated on the Earthly night sky. These rings are 1-3 billion light years across, around 9 billion light years away, and are not actually visible in the winter night sky in the late evening eastern sky. See This Just In.
In This Issue:
Cover Photo — Universe’s Largest Rings
Welcome to Issue 24A!
* To Those Who Are Joining the TGT Community
* To Those Who Were Here BeforeThis Just In —
* Largest Rings You can’t Have or See (Cover Story)
* G and K Stars With Magnetism Have Interesting Personalities
* We Aren’t There Yet; Neither May Be Anybody Else* Help for Your Cavities from the Stars
Sky Planning Calendar —
* Moon-Gazing - Luna Glides Past Some Giants
* Observing—Plan-et - Giants In the Evening Skies, Terrestrial Planets Rule the Mornings
* For the Future—March’s Penumbral Appetizer; A Possible Naked Eye Comet
* Border Crossings - A One-Day OverlapAstronomy in Everyday Life - The Highs and Lows of Astronomy
Welcome to The Galactic Times Newsletter-Inbox Magazine #24A!
To Those of You Joining The TGT Community
Welcome! The Galactic Times Inbox Magazine is a twice-monthly look at the Sky, Astronomy News, and the Universe in Everyday Life. When it comes to news, TGT concerns itself not with breaking news but news that is intriguing, interesting yet usually ignored by the 24-hour news cycle, and news that most often relates to objects you might see in tonight’s sky. Read about it in This Just In. In the Sky Planning Calendar, Sky events for the next half-month are those that anybody can see—first by using the Moon as your guide in Moon-Gazing—then Solar System events in Observing-Plan-et!, with experienced advice, and often done for fun as tongue in cheek—especially when it comes to things like superstitions (Border Crossings). Other events, such as stellar and cometary or other objects are discussed as appropriate. Astronomy has been a part of society since the first cave dwellers checked the sky to see if it was going to be a stay-in-the-cave day, and astronomy still is a societal thing—only now it is in products, places, literature, and just plain funky stuff we see in our travels! We show that in Astronomy in Everyday Life. Occasionally I write about items that are looked at in depth, in Deeper Looks, or InDepth articles, both seriously and for fun. Lastly, TGT will be going to throw in more astronomy educational materials as well, for those engaged in public awareness and engagement.
For Those of You Who Were Here Before
It has been a much longer gap than I anticipated…..
Last April I put this and my other writings on hiatus for medical reasons. And I expected to be ‘‘on leave” for 2-4 months. That turned into (eek!) 9 months! And it all may not be over yet, but I decided it was time to get the cobwebs off the laptop and get back to writing astronomy. I HAVE been attending some online conferences, and HAVE been gathering information, stories and news. I HAVE been writing books. It just took this long to get back into ‘writing newsletter’ mode.
There will be some evolution to TGT. There will be a paid level…..possibly TWO (yes, Substack created tiers, imagine that). The rates will not be exorbitant but professional writing requires some support. I’ll bring that to bear shortly. First I need to crank this newsletter back up!
Meanwhile….
In this getting-back-into-the-groove issue, we look at some news from the far reaches of the Universe—the largest things ever detected….and which may change how we think the Universe…is. Red giant stars make things—everything except hydrogen and helium come from the burning of elements in stellar fusion, or end of stellar life explosions. We’ll see how these stars make the rather rare element fluorine that protects your teeth, and how some of the same ones do NOT make magnetism but do throw up lithium. And finally, are we alone? So far, it appears yes, but perhaps we aren’t searching the right way, or the right place.
The sky is evenly divided; giants in the evening sky, rocky worlds in the dawn. But soon we will have eclipses, and a possible comet to see without a telescope.
Enjoy! And stay safe!!
Publisher — Dr. Larry Krumenaker Email: newsletter@thegalactictimes.com
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This Just In —
* Largest Rings You Can’t Have or See
Don’t you just hate it when your assumptions may suddenly turn out to be wrong?
One of the biggest underlying assumptions in astronomy is the Cosmological Principle, that the universe is homogeneous and isotropic, a.k.a. the Standard Model. That means the Universe is the same in every direction and, in general, made up the same way at the large scale everywhere. Everything averages out in the long view, which roughly translates into over distances greater than 1.2 billion light years. Apparently until it might not.
British astronomer Alexia Lopez reported at the American Astronomical Society January meeting in New Orleans that she and her group discovered two large rings of galaxies, each of which were on the order of 1 to 3 billion light years across, a significant fraction of the size of the known universe. One ring was circular and one was nearly edge-on (see Cover Photo). They were found as quasar light shining through galaxies.
The problem is these rings are too large. One of them is about 4 billion light years in circumference. That’s a significant fraction of the size of the known Universe. They are features that destroy the assumption of homogeneity. Dr. Lopez asks two questions: Could these be evidence that Cosmic Strings are truly a thing? And is it time for a new Standard Model?
* G and K Stars With Magnetism Have Interesting Personalities
Among the stars in the January very late evening skies you will find Arcturus rising in the northeast, Aldebaran in Taurus and Beta Gem (Pollux) high in the southern skies. The latter two actually have planets, and all three have week magnetic fields. They were among 20 relatively bright G and K giant stars studied by four Russian astrophysicists in Crimea for their magnetic properties. Does magnetism mean anything?
In terms of the chemical composition of the red giant stars, no. They found there is no systematic differences in the element abundances between magnetic and non-magnetic stars. Chemical composition differences reflect only the initial compositions of the stars. The possible cause of the magnetic field MAY be the engorgement of a Jupiter-sized planet. The so-called B-field has nothing to do with the chemical composition, or whether Lithium, an element dredged up from the core during the evolution to being a red-giant star, has or not, even though Lithium is more common in magnetic stars than not. [Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 528, #1, February 2024].
* We Aren’t There Yet; Neither May Be Anybody Else
If you want to detect extraterrestrial life, your best odds, some say, are to seek out those who are well beyond your own levels. And one key technique is to do your searching in places where there just might be a lot of candidates.
Thus might be the synopsis of the article “The Breakthrough Listen Search for Intelligent Life: Technosignature Search of 97 Nearby Galaxies” by Carmen Choza et al, in The Astronomical Journal, 167, 10, December 6, 2023. The Breakthrough Listen Project attempts to hear radio technosignatures—signals of an advanced nature—from civilizations elsewhere. These include radio communications and biological phenomena, and recently in optical and infrared wavelengths, too. Some searches look at local objects. This search tried an en masse approach, in the crowded centers of various galaxies. The galaxies ranged from a mere 60 kiloparsecs to 29 Megaparsecs. Whatever signal might be detected, it would not follow a predictable pattern, like a stellar pulsation, thus indicating non-natural origins.
The search also utilized an assumption that the civilizations were quite more advanced, on something called the Kardashev scale. Created in 1964, a Kardashev level I civilization would use all the energy resources of its planet; a Level II world would use the energy of its star. Earth isn’t even a Level I yet. But with so many stars in a galaxy’s central region, there might be more than one such civilization, the hypothesis supposes.
As one might suspect, many signals—all terrestrial—were detected, from satellites, communication networks, GPS systems, etc., and not one interstellar signal.
To be opinionatedly blunt, this should not be too surprising. This writer questions some of the assumptions. Just because there are a lot of stars in a galactic center doesn’t mean there might be a lot of civilizations there. The center might not be as life-friendly as the spiral arms, due to radiations from the galactic cores, perhaps. Even more strongly, perhaps no civilization would think it is a worthwhile venture to take ALL your planet’s energy (let alone all your STAR’S energy!) away from your other needs and use it to broadcast a signal. Perhaps we might detect the usage and waste energy, but that might not be something we could distinguish from noise? Maybe that would not be a sign of a Level I or II civilization after all…..
* Help for Your Cavities from the Stars
All that Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and New Years eating. A dentist’s delight almost as much Halloween and birthday parties. Sugar, drinks, extra foods—> cavities for January! So how can an astronomer try to keep one’s teeth celestially solid? Use toothpaste that has been seeded by Asymptotic Giant Branch stars, of course!
According to Kate Womack and company at the University of Hull in Great Britain, cavity-fighting fluorine is best produced by these stars, known by the acronym AGB stars. These are stars that are not only red giants but may be on their second time through the stage, with helium burning in its core extinguished or nearly so, and carbon burning may begin underneath. So the star expands with thin hydrogen burning shell over a thin helium shell over a burning or inert carbon shell.
Womack found that fluorine was most produced in AGB stars that were massive and rotating, but NOT in Wolf-Rayet stars with strong winds that blew off too much material that caused too little formation processes to happen. Some supernovae and novae also produced fluorine in their explosions.
So thank a dying (likely, now, long-dead) star for the fluorine that goes into your toothpaste to clean your teeth after those heavy holiday meals. You did brush right afterwards, right?
Sky Planning Calendar
Moon-Gazing
Moon passages by a star, planet or deep sky object are a good way to find a planet or other object if you’ve never located it before.
January 17 First Quarter
January 18 That bright star hanging 3-degrees off the southern edge of the Moon isn’t a star, it’s Jupiter.
January 19 That dim star hanging 3-degrees off the southern edge of the Moon isn’t a star, it’s Uranus, and if you can see it, you’ve got extraordinary eyes!
January 20 That group of stars hanging about a degree south of the Moon in the morning especially is the star cluster the Pleiades (M45).
January 25 Full Moon
January 27 The Moon is near the nominally spring star Regulus.
January 29 The waning gibbous Moon is at apogee, a micro-`fat’ Moon! Isn’t that an oxymoron?
Observing---Plan-et
==Giants in the Evening Skies, Terrestrial Planets Rule the Mornings==
Mercury starts this fortnight by rising at the start of morning twilight and stays rising in the twilight the whole time, just closer to sunrise as the days go by. Oddly, while getting closer to the Sun, its usually at its brightest when at its most distant from the Sun’s disk, yet this time it gains brightness as it gets closer in! Two dates to look for it especially: The morning of the 19th, look for a line from Mars (low and 4.9 degrees lower left of, but distance shrinking daily) to Mercury, to brilliant Venus to reddish-like-Mars Antares until Mercury is a mere 0.2-degrees from Mars on the 27th!
Venus, on the other hand, is hard to miss in the morning sky, to Mercury and Mars’ upper right.
Mars, despite the mixing it up with Mercury, will be hard to see for some time. Having just passed solar conjunction, it is a mere 20-degrees west of the Sun, nearly lost in the bright twilight, and it will remain in said twilight until May…and in the morning sky totally for all of 2024. No Mars in the evenings for Earthlings….but to compensate, this meeting of Mars and Mercury on the 27th is the first of SIX meetings with planets this year. Just you have to be a morning person to enjoy them…
Jupiter is nearly to quadrature, i.e. a bit more than 90-degrees of arc from the Sun in the evening sky, and sets after midnight this month and into February, but then on only an evening object. Find it near the First Quarter Moon on the 17th.
You’ll find Saturn in Aquarius and closing out its evening show, approaching the setting Sun and evening twilight into which it will disappear. Get those Christmas telescopes on it while you can.
For the Future
A March Eclipse
A lot of PR happening about the upcoming Total Solar Eclipse in April across the USA, but there’s a nice appetizer two weeks before. A deep penumbral lunar eclipse on March 25th, just after the March Solstice, that falls just shy of a partial eclipse. Visible primarily over the Americas.
And we’ll have a variety of Sun and Solar Eclipse things in March, but check our Archives for past articles, too! Our website Homepages at https://www.classroomastronomer.com and https://www.thegalactictimes.com have multiple articles and indexes to the newsletters on watching the Sun safely.
Possible Naked Eye Comet?
One of the earliest known periodic comets is making a long-awaited return to our neighborhood this spring and it could be an interesting display, though more for Southern Hemispherians. Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks was discovered way back in the early 1800s by a French astronomer Pons. But an orbital calculation mis-fired and it seemed lost until an American, Brooks, rediscovered it in 1883 by accident. The comet has been shown to have large outbursts when near the Sun, its perihelion near Earth;s orbit, and then it hides far away beyond Neptune. It was last seen in the 1950s. Long time no see.
Pons-Brooks should break into easy binocular-level brightness in the western sky in Aries, trying to stay ahead of the setting Sun, peaking near 5th magnitude in March. More details as that time approaches…
Border Crossings
A total mismatch. The newspaper says the Sun is in Capricorn(us) until January 19th and then into Aquarius. In reality, the Sun ENTERS Capricornus on the 19th and remains there the rest of the month. A one-day overlap between reality and non-reality.
Astronomy in Everyday Life
The Highs and Lows of Astronomy
We all have our highs and our lows, right? So does the sky. And astronomers have designated those places precisely. Apparently, so have some businesses….
This one must be top of the trucking industry?
Hope this one isn’t on the low end of its!
At least we aren’t nearing anything approaching a nadir……
In our next TGT, we’re going to be talking about Moon Music…..stay tuned….
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