News in Astronomy & Geophysics – December 2022

Two tails of dust ejected from the Didymos-Dimorphos asteroid system are seen in recent images from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (HST). Following the impact of NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) probe on 26 September, the second tail appears to have formed between 2 and 8 October. The twin tail is an unexpected development, although similar behaviour is commonly seen in comets and active asteroids. Current data show that DART shortened Dimorphos' original 11 hour and 55 minute orbit around Didymos by about 32 minutes. bit.ly/3TVwSJu A new study may have discovered the ancient chemical remains of Population III stars. A team led by Yuzuru Yoshii (University of Tokyo) observed distant quasar ULAS J1342+0928 with the Gemini North telescope. They found the clouds surrounding the quasar contained over 10 times more iron than magnesium, compared to the ratio of these elements found in the Sun. The most likely explanation for this striking feature is that the material was left behind by a Population III star that exploded as a ‘pair-instability supernova’. The study appears in The Astrophysical Journal. bit.ly/3DCnVjb The most colossal stars in the universe may be less massive than previously thought. A research team led by Venu M. Kalari (Gemini Observatory), used the Gemini South telescope to study R136a1, currently the most massive star known. The data enabled the researchers to separate the brightness of R136a1 more accurately from its nearby stellar companions. This led to a lower estimate of its brightness and, therefore, its mass. Previous observations suggested that R136a1 had a mass somewhere between 250 and 320 solar masses. But Kalari and team, writing in The Astrophysical Journal, estimate the mass as between 170 to 230 solar masses – which is still the most massive star. This result suggests that the upper limit on stellar masses may also be smaller than previously thought. This has implications for the origin of elements heavier than helium, thought to form in pair-instability supernovae, when stars of more that 150 solar masses explode at the ends of their lives. If there are fewer such massive stars, then pair-instability supernovae may be rarer than thought, with implications for the chemical evolution of the universe. bit.ly/3U2bSkt The RAS has taken a decision over the controversy that currently surrounds the name of the newest space telescope. At its meeting in July the governing council of the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) took a decision to write to the UK Space Agency, the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA to express its concerns about the original JWST naming process, the apparent failure to investigate celebrated 1960s NASA administrator James E. Webb's background, and the dismissal of requests to rename the telescope. Until that investigation takes place and the results are made public, both RAS communications generally, as well as the Society's journals and publications (including A&G), will adopt a standard of ‘JWST’, rather than spell out the acronym. The Society also urges space agencies around the world, including the UK Space Agency, ESA and NASA to implement transparent naming processes for future missions. James Webb was the administrator of NASA during the 1960s. His stewardship led to the success of space projects such as the Apollo landings. His historical reputation is compromised by evidence that he took part in purges of homosexual men from the federal workforce in the 1940s and 1950s – the ‘Lavender Scare’. Paula Szkody, the president of the American Astronomical Society (AAS), has twice written to NASA to request archive access for an independent historian with expertise in LGBTQ+ history to fully investigate Webb's role. The UK Space Agency, the European Space Agency, and NASA are all strong public advocates of equity, diversity and inclusion in recruitment and retention of employees, ideas central to the mission of the RAS. We therefore share the disappointment of the AAS at NASA's failure to respond and to investigate Webb's background to establish the facts, and ask that this happens as a matter of urgency. ras.ac.uk Captured on 27 July 2022, infrared images of Jupiter, taken with the JWST, give a spectacular and unprecedented view of the auroral emission from ionized hydrogen over the planet's north and south poles. The images reveal high-altitude hazes (green) that swirl around the poles, and light reflected from the deeper main cloud (blue). Regions with little cloud cover appear as dark ribbons north of the equatorial region. go.nasa.gov/3gKu97q The galaxy SDSS J1448+1010 stopped forming stars about 70 million years ago. New research shows that, rather than exhausting its star-forming material, the galaxy became dormant as a result of a merger. Justin Spilker (Texas A&M University) and team made the discovery using ALMA and HST data. The galaxy merger appears to have ejected about half the gas available for star formation into tidal tails, which is equal to about 10 billion solar masses. ALMA data showed the cold tidal tail from the merger. A paper appears in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. bit.ly/3DBocmk The JWST has revealed the ice giant Neptune (and its rings) in a whole new light. Methane in the planet's atmosphere strongly absorbs near-infrared wavelengths, making it appear quite dark, except where high-altitude clouds are present. A thin line of brightness circling the planet's equator could be a visual signature of global atmospheric circulation that powers Neptune's winds and storms. The image also captured seven of Neptune's 14 known moons, the brightest of which is Triton. go.nasa.gov/3N8mn3y Tiny tracking devices coupled with data from ESA's Swarm satellites can now predict the geomagnetic intensity encountered by migrating animals, with the potential to better understand how some creatures find their way across the globe. The project is a collaboration between spatial data scientists at the University of St Andrews and researchers at the British Geological Survey and the University of Western Ontario, Canada. “This is the first direct use of Swarm data in ecology and so represents an exciting new avenue of research between geophysicists, spatial data scientists and ecologists,” noted Ciarán Beggan from the British Geological Survey. The approach estimates total and horizontal field intensity, inclination and declination. Research published in Movement Ecology includes the example of greater white-fronted geese, which fly from Siberia to Germany in the autumn. The paper includes an example of the geese generally veering away from the straight north-south migratory direction during a geomagnetic storm, which highlights the potential of the technique. “Adding in a new set of magnetic data will allow us to explore how animals migrate using a whole new set of environmental parameters that was unavailable before Swarm”, concluded Urška Demšar, of the University of St Andrews. bit.ly/3Ne1Kmk The fleet of satellites operated by the European Space Agency and partners showed their mettle in September when the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in the Baltic Sea sprung leaks in four places. The Agency was able to locate the leaks, track the plume of methane and estimate how much gas was lost. The first signs of a problem with the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea came with seismic signals from two shallow events north-east and south-east of Bornholm Island in Sweden on 26 September. There was no sign of disturbance of the sea surface when ESA's Sentinel-1 passed over the Baltic Sea on 24 September, but when an ICEYE satellite crossed the same area on 28 September, the sea surface was rougher locally. A release of methane produces bubbles that grow as they rise through the water column; satellites using Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) instruments pick up the roughness of the sea surface from the backscatter of the microwave radar they emit. ESA's Copernicus Sentinel-1 and the Copernicus Contributing Mission ICEYE constellations both use SAR and monitored the gas release. Breaks in the cloud cover allowed enough optical satellites data to suggest that the area of bubbling at the sea surface was between 500 and 700 m across. The area of disturbance decreased after a few days; gas was not moving through the pipelines, but there was methane present within. The size of the methane release was estimated with data from GHGSat, a satellite constellation designed to measure methane emissions as part of ESA's Third Party Mission programme. GHGSat estimated 79 000 kg of methane was escaping from one site southeast of Bornholm on 30 September. This is a large methane plume, from one of the four estimated ruptures, four days after the initial breaches. The total methane release is thought to be 300 000 tonnes – equivalent to 1.5 days of global methane release from the oil and gas industry. bit.ly/3W4DtTN Long-term climate modelling for sites including Mauna Kea, Hawaii, USA and the European Southern Observatory in Chile, suggests that most will experience worse observing conditions in future. Temperature, specific humidity and precipitable water vapour increase over the next 30 years, in models using the European Union's PRIMAVERA model. The results are published in Astronomy & Astrophysics by Haslebacher et al. bit.ly/3TIGacd Congratulations to Lennart Lindegren and Michael Perryman, who have been awarded the 2022 Shaw Prize for Astronomy for “their lifetime contributions to space astrometry, and in particular for their role in the conception and design of the European Space Agency's Hipparcos and Gaia missions.” shawprize.org/laureates/astronomy A research team has combed records from the Byzantine Empire to find total solar eclipse record from the Eastern Mediterranean in the 4th-7th centuries CE, when records are sparse. They identified probable eclipses in 346, 418, 484, 601, and 693 CE and suggest that the day length should be revised upward, for the 5th century and downward for the 6th and 7th. Hisashi Hayakawa (Nagoya University) and colleagues report the findings in The Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. bit.ly/3gR2NwM Researchers say the Chicxulub asteroid impact triggered a mega-earthquake so massive that it shook Earth for weeks or even months. Rocks now exposed on the coast of Gorgonilla Island, off Colombia, were under 2 km of water when the asteroid hit and the sea-floor sediment was deformed after the collision. The research, led by Hermann Bermúdez (Montclair State University), was presented at a recent meeting of The Geological Society of America. bit.ly/3gC7XMM Ian Crossfield (Uni of Kansas) and team have discovered that exoplanet GJ 1252b is completely devoid of an atmosphere. Using eclipse observations with the Spitzer Space Telescope, the researchers found the daytime temperatures were so hot that gold, silver, and copper would all melt on the exoplanet. A paper appears in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. bit.ly/3SZFIW5 A 15-year-long research project has identified a probable impact crater in Spain's southern province of Almeria, the first to be found on the Iberian Peninsula. The research team, led by Juan Antonio Sánchez Garrido (University of Almeria), believe the crater is about 4 km in diameter and is surrounded by a 20 km-wide area where the impact caused the sedimentary strata to collapse. The results were presented at the 2022 Europlanet Science Congress. bit.ly/3DgjBEC Saturn's moon Titan once got into a resonance with another, hypothetical moon, destabilizing its orbit. The latter moon, which researchers have called Chrysalis, eventually came so close to Saturn that the planet's gravity tore it apart, with a portion forming the rings. Jack Wisdom (MIT) and team, writing in Science, date the event 100 and 200 million years ago. bit.ly/3DCHW9e Impacts have greater effects on porosity and structure of moons and planets than had been suspected, if the Moon is anything to go by. That's the conclusion of Sean Wiggins (Purdue University), and team, using NASA's GRAIL (Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory) mission data. Writing in Nature Communications, the researchers show the Moon's crust is porous to great depths – and suggest that life could lurk there. bit.ly/3TW7d3s Planetary nebula IPHASX J055226.2+323724, has been found inside the open cluster M37, only the third example of such an association. It is also the oldest known, with a kinematic age of about 70 000 years; between 5000 and 25 000 years is typical for planetary nebulae. The research team, led by Vasiliki Fragkou (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México), published the findings in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. bit.ly/3zjQcIM GRB221009A was first detected on the morning of 9 October by X-ray and gamma-ray space telescopes, including NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, and the Wind spacecraft. This rare event appears to originate in a dusty galaxy some 2.4 billion light-years away and is the brightest and closest gamma ray burst. Observations continue across the EM spectrum. go.nasa.gov/3gOGpUI Professor Dr Eva Grebel, Director of the Astronomisches Rechen-Institut, Heidelberg University, has become the first to receive the Caroline Herschel Award, a new prize that celebrates outstanding research by women astrophysicists in the UK and Germany. The award recognizes Prof. Dr Grebel's outstanding contribution to understanding the evolution of galaxies and galactic archaeology. She has led research into galaxy evolution, and pioneered the field of near-field cosmology. She and her group discovered a new class of galaxies, the ultra-faint dwarf galaxies, which provided evidence for the role of unseen dark matter in galaxy formation. She has also pioneered the use of variable stars to understand the 3D structure of our galaxy and its neighbours. Her Prize lecture, ‘Caroline Herschel, The Hunt for Faint Features and Galactic Archaeology’, included a detailed account of Caroline Herschel's life and achievements. The award is generously funded by the UK Government Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) to acknowledge the long-standing cooperation between Germany and the UK. The prize is jointly administered by the RAS and the German Astronomical Society. “I was delighted to attend Eva's award ceremony at the German Astronomical Society's annual conference in the University of Bremen in September. Her personal and scientific story is inspiring,” said RAS Executive Director Phil Diamond. “It was a particular pleasure finally to meet Michael Kramer, President of our sister society, and his colleagues as well as Kate Robinson and Olaf Krantz from the British Embassy. I look forward to welcoming our colleagues from Germany to the winner's ceremony in the UK next year.” Professor Dr Eva Grebe The Science and Technology Facilities Council is changing the structure and timescales of the Astronomy Grants Scheme. The new Small Award Scheme will start in 2023 and the Large Award Scheme in 2024. Following community consultation, the Small Awards are in effect the standard grant, similar to the existing astronomy Consolidated grant, with more flexibility. The Large Awards are science-themed programmatic awards, in a concerted and coordinated effort to address a specific research area or technology development. There is no longer a cap on costs for both types of award, but there is a limit on resources requested, allowing more flexibility for technology development and lab-based projects. bit.ly/3N9QR57 Exoplanet TOI-1452 b appears to be an ocean That's the conclusion of a study by de and Writing in The Astronomical Journal, the team observations of the system that enabled to the mass and of TOI-1452 The results that water may up as much as of its a similar to that of some satellites in the solar such as moons and and Saturn's moons Titan and The were of the RAS on 14 October USA USA USA Shaw for and colleagues have the Telescope observations of the in Using a the team the of light by around the of the the feature was by the in the but was by off the to the have been able to – to a signature of gravity around a The published in The Astrophysical Journal, reveal the of a from the Observations with the Telescope in and the in have revealed a It is the first a from the central has been observed to with a large all appears to be material in only one and in out from the central as it This from (University of and team, appears in of the Royal Astronomical Letters. have found that is not and as as the can of data from NASA's revealed of the in are in they are of large of the that the (and of dark A team led by researchers at University have published a of on the findings in the journals Science and Science A research team now they can predict when massive stars are about to go by University), and on the team that massive stars between 8 and 20 solar in the become around 100 times in light in the few before they This is caused by a of material around the star. The research appears in of the Royal Astronomical Society. JWST has provided the first of in an exoplanet atmosphere. b is a hot gas giant with a mass the same as Saturn and a diameter times greater than is to its the more gas in the solar close to its star – only about the between the and – an orbit in over four The by (University of at and appears in have discovered a new variable with a of the (MIT) and colleagues the and of and concluded that the star has much of its hydrogen atmosphere to the 70 million years, the stars will migrate with an orbit before they and The research appears in the of Earth through the of our galaxy the at which University) and his team that it on evidence in from Western and The team found that the in these had a 200 and that times of greater crust to when the solar system of the They that the through the more comets from the distant of the solar more The appears in A new by observations with to have the of the in on the star system is to 100 times less than the typical from which they The research, by & and found that the four at it had into could be used to measure how the is and E. (University of a that on the that the in a merger the the appear to the in the of apparent masses with a measure of the of the universe. the to will of of a that may be in a few A paper appears in Letters.

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