#24I - Spock's World? - An Airy Nearby Exoplanet - Dawn Photo-op - & 1 More Story
TGT 5/16/24: Research Around 40 Eri A; Stars in M33 Blowing Rings; A Rare Rocky Exoplanet With Air; Saturn Meets the Moon; Moon Covers Antares.
Cover Photo - Spock’s World—Not Yet…
In This Issue:
Cover Photo — Spock’s World—Not Yet….
Welcome to Issue 24I!
Sky Planning Calendar —
* Moon-Gazing - Photo-Op at Month’s End
* Observing—Plan-et - Two Pre-dawn Worlds Only
* Border Crossings - Five Days for TauransThis Just In
* An Exoplanet with Air
* Rings!
* Hiding Spock’s World (Cover Story)Subscription Note (and NAM announcement for European and British subscribers)
Welcome to The Galactic Times Newsletter-Inbox Magazine #24I!
The sky is quiet. No evening planets, two, though, in the predawn darkness. But a nice photo-op or dawn jogging view of the Moon and Saturn and Mars at month’s end.
The two brightest worlds, Venus and Jupiter, not visible, but one star in the brief time between its setting and end of twilight can be found with lots of exoplanets, one of which may have air. TGT supplies a map. A star every Trek fan should know by heart, alas, isn’t visible, and sadly, the planet found a few years ago that many have nicknamed Vulcan — as this star is the one that was named to be Spock’s home star — seems to be have been either a prank by Mother Nature, or there is an invisibility shield cloaking the world.
Enjoy!
Publisher — Dr. Larry Krumenaker Email: newsletter@thegalactictimes.com
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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.
May 17 Apogee, smallest Moon size of the Month.
May 29 The star Spica is 1.4-degrees South of the Moon.
May 23 Full Moon and it occults (covers up) the red giant star Antares but only if you are in the right area. Primarily that will be in the Southeast US, NE South America, equatorial Atlantic Ocean, and central Africa.
As examples, Antares gets covered up around 9:38 PM in Washington, DC and 9:13 in Miami. In Atlanta the star is already behind the Moon when it rises. Elsewhere, it is either behind the Moon or daylight/lack of Moon stops you from watching it vanish. It reappears at 10:06 PM (DC), 10:10 (Miami), and 10:14 (Atlanta).
May 30 Last Quarter
May 31 Prettiest photo-op of this half-month, Saturn 0.4-degrees North of the Moon, in the dawn, low in the ESE and the Moon hanging its upper pointed limb off and below Saturn. Mars and Mercury to its lower left, Mars equal in brightness though not in color to Saturn. The image below is about 4:45 AM local time.
Observing---Plan-et
==Mars Joins Saturn in Pre-dawn Darkness, Mercury a Distant Third. Venus and Jupiter Not Visible.==
Mercury is low in the Northern Hemisphere dawns, paradoxically getting brighter as it closes in on the Sun. But it always is rising more than 45 minutes before the Sun so you have decent chances to find the elusive world if your Eastern horizon is low and clear, until just after month-end
Venus. Nope. Come back next month, or maybe the next one…
Mars rises before morning twilight after the 17th, increasing the gap daily. Might not be an evening world but all the ‘‘dark-sky” planets (all two of them) are in the pre-dawn mornings.
Jupiter reaches conjunction with the Sun on the 18th. Nothing to see, folks.
Saturn is the other “dark-sky” world, rising 2 hours before morning twilight begins, and 90 minutes before Mars.
Border Crossings
A bit of an “improvement”. The Sun is in Taurus the Bull through the end of the month (and beyond, actually). Astrologists say it is in Taurus until the 20th and enters Gemini thereafter. They need glasses.
This Just In
An Exoplanet with Air
A rocky exoplanet called 55 Cancri e, around 41 light-years from Earth, may have a thick atmosphere according to a report in the May 8th Nature. 55 Cancri is one of the most studied exoplanetary systems, with numerous planets. Observations from the James Webb Space Telescope show the presence of a layer of gases surrounding the planet. Most rocky exoplanets have been found to have either no or minimal atmospheres.
The exoplanet 55 Cancri e is a “super-Earth” about twice the size of Earth, but nearly 9 times more massive (not a likely comfortable place for humans). The star itself, visible to the naked eye in the current evening sky above the lower, setting Gemini twins, is less massive than the Sun.
The star’s spectra indicate that a volatile atmosphere rich in carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide surrounds 55 Cancri e. It is suggested that this atmosphere is maintained by the planet’s magma ocean, though that isn’t confirmed and other hypotheses are possible.
RINGS!
The Local Group of Galaxies consists of the Milky Way, M31—the Andromeda Galaxy, a whole lot of small fluffy fellows, and—usually not discussed as much, the Triangulum Galaxy, M33. The smallest by far of the three main big galaxies in the Group, it is nevertheless close enough to see individual stars and other objects.
One object in our skies we often get introduced to early in our amateur astronomy days is the Ring Nebula in the summer constellation of Lyra the Lyre (Harp). It is a planetary nebula, the gently blown-off atmosphere of a red giant star condensing to a white dwarf at the end of its life. But other stars blow bubbles, or as we sometimes see them, rings. The hot stars known as Wolf-Rayets also blow off rings, and nearly 3 dozen were found recently in M33, using the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope and looking in red Hydrogen-alpha light.
The scientific results of this (to be published in the March 20th issue of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 530, Issue 4, June 2024, Pages 4153–4202, https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stae786, indicate that these bubbles don’t depend on the temperature of the star, and that only about 20% of Wolf-Rayets, known as energetically producing bright emission lines from glowing extended atmospheres and surrounding gas, actually produce rings around them.
Hiding Spock’s World?
Could not pass up reporting on this. I’d been meaning to do an article on all things Vulcan, from the mythological to the recent rocket launch that failed, to the once-mythical world interior to Mercury to, of course, the science-fiction one of Star Trek, the home of Mr. Spock. Especially since yours truly is working on a Star Trek Astronomy book. (See last year’s The Galactic Times InDepth issue on the topic!)
An Astrobites mailing list posting alerted me to this article in the Astronomical Journal: The Death of Vulcan: NEID Reveals That the Planet Candidate Orbiting HD 26965 Is Stellar Activity, 2024 April 26, Abigail Burrows et al 2024 AJ 167 243, DOI 10.3847/1538-3881/ad34d5 .
Years ago a potential planet around the red star HD 26965, aka 40 Eridani A, a likely presence of a super-Earth—Vulcan, perhaps—orbiting HD 26965, based on radial velocity (RV) measurements from a variety of instruments. These astronomers measured the mass to be equivalent to over 8 Earths, and the orbital period to be roughly 42 days. 40 Eridani A is only 5 parsecs, or roughly 17 light years, away and a cool K-dwarf, less hot than the Sun.
40 Eridani Ab, as it should be known as, however, is also a flaring star. The authors, Burrows et al, state “that the combined evidence of the activity correlations and depth dependence is consistent with (radial velocity) signatures dominated by a rotationally modulated activity signal at a period of ∼42 days. We hypothesize that this activity signature is due to a combination of spots and convective blueshift suppression.”
Thus, if there is a home-world for Mr. Spock here, it is still well hidden. Invisibility shields? [Right now, it is too close to the Sun in the sky, visible neither in morning or evening twilight; wait until at least August dawns.]
Subscription Note
Hi! Larry Krumenaker here. A week ago I got a surprise email. I was offered a 20% discount to upgrade my The Galactic Times subscription. Except, I hadn’t actually sent it. Substack did, but only to selected subscribers.
It took me a while to find out how and why Substack did that {*I* certainly don’t need a discount!}, but then I decided it was time for everybody to get a shot at it. Especially since I plan on merging aspects of The Classroom Astronomer newsletter into TGT. The two newsletters together are too much for me to deal with right now, especially having finished two books in the first 5 months of 2024.
A FURTHER NOTE: Yours truly will be attending three conferences with astronomy education focused highly in June and July, the American Astronomical Society, the RAS NAM (National Astronomical Meeting *see below) and Communicating Astronomy to the Public. Much of their coverage will get not into Today’s Cosmic Awareness column but into special PAID SUBSCRIBER ONLY editions. If you are an astro educator, this is your time to upgrade!
So….
There will be three-tiers of subscriptions—free, Paid, Professional Educator. The annual costs are—$0, $30, $35. Free subscribers get what goes out now, Sky Planning Calendar, Astronomy in Everyday Life, some This Just In news briefs, and other articles you have gotten already, including public outreach-related articles in the new Towards Cosmic Awareness column. Paid subscribers will start getting extra This Just In news briefs and the longer InDepth articles, longer than the occasional Deeper Looks. You also get access to the newsletters more than two issues ago! Professional Educators get everything above including extra posts of astronomy education conferences coming up (AAS, British NAM, and Communicating Astronomy to the Public), Teachniques for School astronomy education professionals, and the RAP Sheet of stories from the scholarly press.
You can get 20% off the annual fee from now until May 31st, 2024, by selecting the Summer Savings button below.
Thank you all for being readers of The Galactic Times !
LK
*NAM Public Outreach Event
As TGT went to press, this announcement came to it and might be of interest to our European and British readers:
“ The National Astronomical Meeting (NAM) is taking place at Hull University from 14-19 July this year: https://nam2024.hull.ac.uk/ . The organizing committee for NAM2024 would like to invite participants for a NAM Public Outreach Event - Astronomy Festival - to be held in Hull City Center during NAM2024.
This event aims to showcase astronomy research and outreach resources throughout the United Kingdom and is open to all astronomy departments in the UK attending NAM2024. It will take place on one day during the weekindoors and refreshments will be provided for exhibitors. Exhibitors will be supplied with a desk and space for any practical activities.
Unfortunately, we will not be able to support travel costs to the event for those not attending NAM, but please let us know if your activity requires any technical support and we will attempt to supply this. Further equipment - e.g. television screens, projectors, planetarium domes - may be available on request. Interested parties should complete the NAM 2024 Astronomy Festival form by Friday, June 14th.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScZTz3_BjX50lGMKYeY7Mgpnfb99SHFJ8lmilR8m5hPfZZ_Jw/viewform “
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