Astronomy

Archive link: https://archive.ph/2rbva

Water (hydroxyl radicals) was unexpected because the comet is three farther from the Sun as Earth. Explaining this will be interesting.

"(ESO’s VLT) reveals that this free-floating planet is eating up gas and dust from its surroundings at a rate of six billion tonnes a second. This is the strongest growth rate ever recorded for a rogue planet, or a planet of any kind...."

A paper on HerS-3:

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/adf204

"Detailed 1 mm spectroscopy and imaging with NOEMA and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array resolve the individual images and show that each of the five images display a series of molecular lines that have similar central velocities, unambiguously confirming that they have identical redshifts."

After a long wait, astronomers have finally seen the stellar companion of the famous star Betelgeuse. This companion star orbits Betelgeuse in an incredibly tight orbit, which could explain one of Betelgeuse's longstanding mysteries. The star is doomed, however, and the team behind this discovery predicts that Betelgeuse will cannibalize it in a few thousand years.

The fact that Betelgeuse is one of the brightest stars in the sky over Earth, visible with the naked eye, has made it one of the most well-known celestial bodies. And ever since the first astronomers began inspecting this fixture in the night sky, they have been baffled by the fact that its brightness varies over periods of six years.

This mystery is now solved.

Screenshot of social media post. Reads, "Everyone was saying that the May geomag activity had no impact on the satellites. Of course we knew this was wrong. Over one hundred sats re-entered during this period and now a paper is showing that thousands of Starlinks had to move. Holy fuck. Imagine if those thousands had to re-enter. This. Is. Insane. We. Must. Stop. Launching. Shit. NOW. https://spaceweather.com/"

I have no photos or videos, but I was on Topsail Island on vacation on June 4th around 11pm, where I saw a decently bright moving object erupt with a huge v-shaped tail for atleast 30 seconds. The tail was a faint green color. It fell from the eastern sky into the northeastern sky.

Google has been particularly unhelpful. Was wondering if you fine folks had any idea. I'm assuming space debris. But I cant find any other reports of anyone seeing it.

The Simons Observatory, a group of microwave telescopes in the high desert of Chile, is starting to gather data to attempt to prove or disprove the theory of inflation.

Un-paywalled article from the NY Times.

A growing number of researchers in the field are using their expertise to fight the climate crisis.

The article spotlights several astronomers who are attempting to fight climate change, sometimes through changing careers.

NYT gift link, should be un-paywalled.