International Conference on Astrophysics and Astronomy: May 2023

Tuesday, May 30, 2023

Asteroid’s Comet-Like Tail Is Not Made of Dust, Solar Observatories Reveal

A weird asteroid has just gotten a little weirder.

We have known for a while that asteroid 3200 Phaethon acts like a comet. It brightens and forms a tail when it’s near the Sun, and it is the source of the annual Geminid meteor shower, even though comets are responsible for most meteor showers. Scientists had blamed Phaethon’s comet-like behavior on dust escaping from the asteroid as it’s scorched by the Sun. However, a new study using two NASA solar observatories reveals that Phaethon’s tail is not dusty at all but is actually made of sodium gas.

“Our analysis shows that Phaethon’s comet-like activity cannot be explained by any kind of dust,” said California Institute of Technology PhD student Qicheng Zhang, who is the lead author of a paper published in the Planetary Science Journal reporting the results.

This illustration depicts asteroid Phaethon being heated by the Sun. The asteroid’s surface gets so hot that sodium inside Phaethon’s rock likely vaporizes and vents into space, causing it to brighten like a comet and form a tail.

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/IPAC

Asteroids, which are mostly rocky, do not usually form tails when they approach the Sun. Comets, however, are a mix of ice and rock, and typically do form tails as the Sun vaporizes their ice, blasting material off their surfaces and leaving a trail along their orbits. When Earth passes through a debris trail, those cometary bits burn up in our atmosphere and produce a swarm of shooting stars – a meteor shower.

After astronomers discovered Phaethon in 1983, they realized that the asteroid’s orbit matched that of the Geminid meteors. This pointed to Phaethon as the source of the annual meteor shower, even though Phaethon was an asteroid and not a comet.

In 2009, NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) spotted a short tail extending from Phaethon as the asteroid reached its closest point to the Sun (or “perihelion”) along its 524-day orbit. Regular telescopes hadn’t seen the tail before because it only forms when Phaethon is too close to the Sun to observe, except with solar observatories. STEREO also saw Phaethon’s tail develop on later solar approaches in 2012 and 2016. The tail’s appearance supported the idea that dust was escaping the asteroid’s surface when heated by the Sun.

However, in 2018, another solar mission imaged part of the Geminid debris trail and found a surprise. Observations from NASA’s Parker Solar Probe showed that the trail contained far more material than Phaethon could possibly shed during its close approaches to the Sun.

Zhang’s team wondered whether something else, other than dust, was behind Phaethon’s comet-like behavior. “Comets often glow brilliantly by sodium emission when very near the Sun, so we suspected sodium could likewise serve a key role in Phaethon’s brightening,” Zhang said.

An earlier study, based on models and lab tests, suggested that the Sun’s intense heat during Phaethon’s close solar approaches could indeed vaporize sodium within the asteroid and drive comet-like activity.

Hoping to find out what the tail is really made of, Zhang looked for it again during Phaethon’s latest perihelion in 2022. He used the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft — a joint mission between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) – which has color filters that can detect sodium and dust. Zhang’s team also searched archival images from STEREO and SOHO, finding the tail during 18 of Phaethon’s close solar approaches between 1997 and 2022.

In SOHO’s observations, the asteroid’s tail appeared bright in the filter that detects sodium, but it did not appear in the filter that detects dust. In addition, the shape of the tail and the way it brightened as Phaethon passed the Sun matched exactly what scientists would expect if it were made of sodium, but not if it were made of dust.

This evidence indicates that Phaethon’s tail is made of sodium, not dust.

“Not only do we have a really cool result that kind of upends 14 years of thinking about a well-scrutinized object,” said team member Karl Battams of the Naval Research Laboratory, “but we also did this using data from two heliophysics spacecraft – SOHO and STEREO – that were not at all intended to study phenomena like this.”

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China’s rover finds signs of recent water on Mars, droughts likely ended the megacities of Indus Valley Civilisation

A new study suggests water on Mars may be more widespread and recent than previously thought. Scientists reported the finding from China’s Mars rover in Science Advances on Friday, April 28, 2023. | Photo Credit: AP

From finding West Eurasian genetic imprint in ancient DNA from Kerala’s Pattanam to increasing heat stress burden in Global South due to humidity, a lot has happened this week in the field of science. Find the most recent discoveries and findings here.

Expanding upon the historic first images of black holes, scientists have unveiled the first picture showing the violent events unfolding around one of these ravenous cosmic behemoths, including the launching point of a colossal jet of high-energy particles shooting outward into space. The new image of Messier 87 shows the entire system with the base of the jet of hot plasma, a fuzzy ring of light from hot plasma falling into the black hole, and a central dark area - sort of a donut hole - created by the black hole’s presence.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is training four people to live on planet Mars this summer. While the endeavor to send humans to the neighbouring planet on the part of the US space agency is not new, the four ‘Martians’ will be part of NASA's human exploration expedition on Mars.

"During the simulation, crew members will carry out different types of mission activities, including simulated spacewalks, robotic operations, habitat maintenance, personal hygiene, exercise, and crop growth," Nasa said in a statement.

The crew will face environmental stressors such as resource limitations, isolation, and equipment failure in order to be as close to the situation on Mars when humans arrive. The team will be subjected to resource limitations, isolation, equipment failure, and significant workloads during their habitation."

NASA has also sent satellites, lander called InSight designed to give the Red Planet its first thorough checkup, and a rover mission that includes the rover Perseverance, the small robotic helicopter Ingenuity, and associated delivery systems. During the simulation, crew members will carry out different types of mission activities, including simulated spacewalks, robotic operations, habitat maintenance, personal hygiene, exercise, and crop growth," Nasa said in a statement.

Saturday, May 27, 2023

Big News! Around 200 new planets have been discovered outside the solar system in 2022!

Astronomers always have this germ of eagerness to know the unknown areas of the universe. Luckily, in the year 2022, around 200 new plants were discovered outside the solar system. Excited? Let’s know the full story better.

Mankind has always been grateful for the blue planet but always looked at the sky with great hope to discover the unknown. We have never been satisfied with simply walking on the land; we look up to the stars, moon, and sun, with the dual intention of admiring their beauty and getting to know these celestial bodies better.

And when mankind shook hands with science; the discoveries were great. Astronomers have tried hard and succeeded in knowing other bodies in space. What interests astronomers and astronauts a lot are looking for planets similar to Earth in resources and life-sustaining possibilities. Luckily, in the year 2022, 200 new planets have been discovered outside the solar system

The year 2022 has been proven to be highly rewarding and enthralling for astronomers from across the globe as they were able to make the discovery of 200 unique planets. A few of these newly found planets have been primed for in-depth observations with the help of the James Webb Space Telescope and many others.

At the very beginning of the year 2022, the exoplanet catalog had less than 5,000 planets.

As the year comes closer to its end, the same catalog having names of possibly habitable planets has a total of 5,235 exoplanets.

NASA is super proud. In one of its recent tweets, it said,

"We started the year with fewer than 5,000 confirmed exoplanets. We end with 5,235 known worlds. About 4% are rocky planets like Earth or Mars. What will the new year bring? More planets!"

The exoplanet catalogs till now have multiple varied ranges of worlds, based on their characteristics and composition. These worlds include gas giants, Earth-like rocky worlds, and supremely hot Jupiter-like bodies.

Not to miss, the list also comprises ``super-Earths”. These are possible rocky bodies bigger than our very own. Moreover, the list also includes “mini- Neptunes''. These are tinier versions of the Neptune of our solar system.

The planets discovered:

The most recent planet to be found in the year 2022 is the HD 109833 b. This is a Neptune-like exoplanet. It orbits a G-type star. As per NASA, the mass of this Neptune-like exoplanet is 8.69 Earths. Moreover, it takes 9.2 days in all to finish one orbit of its star. The planet was found with the help of a transit method. This is because astronomers had a look at the star and found a dip in its light each time the object appeared in front of it.

Additionally, astronomers also discovered two exoplanets orbiting a red dwarf star. The star was unlike any other found before and had a strange composition, making it highly unique.

The two planets thus discovered are filled with water. These are situated in a planetary system that is 218 light-years away in the constellation Lyra.

Friday, May 19, 2023

NASA's Magellan Data discovers volcanic activity on Venus for the first time

Geological proof of recent volcanic activity has been found on the surface of Venus for the first time. NASA has shared pictures of the same.

Space is still widely being explored and studied by numerous researchers worldwide. There are several fascinating reports and studies that are made public which often intrigues people. Now, another discovery that has caught the attention of many shows volcanic activi Venus.

According to Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, geological proof of recent volcanic activity has been found on the surface of Venus for the first time. After carefully studying old radar photographs of Venus collected by NASA's Magellan mission in the 1990s, scientists made the finding. Images showed a volcanic vent that had grown greatly in size and changed shape in less than a year.

Also Read: NASA's Hubble telescope captures the start of a new 'spoke' season of Saturn

They further added, "Scientists study active volcanoes to understand how a planet's interior can shape its crust, drive its evolution, and affect its habitability. The new findings set the stage for our upcoming orbiter mission VERITAS – short for Venus Emissivity, Radio science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy – which will do just that when it launches within a decade.⁣"

Venus is not called 'volcano planet' for nothing. It's surface is littered with volcanoes. The surface temperature is 450 degrees Celsius, not so pleasant for an astronaut. That Venus had volcanic activity on its surface was a known thing. But a new research has published a mindblowing map of volcanoes on the surface of Venus.

The research has been published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, as per a report by Sky News. According to this map, there are about 85,000 volcanoes on the surface of Venus. This number is about 50 per cent more than previously thought.

Thursday, May 18, 2023

NASA's Kepler Discovers Its Smallest 'Habitable Zone' Planets to Date

Relative sizes of all of the habitable-zone planets discovered to date alongside Earth. Left to right: Kepler-22b, Kepler-69c, Kepler-62e, Kepler-62f and Earth (except for Earth, these are artists' renditions). Image credit: NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech.

MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. - NASA's Kepler mission has discovered two new planetary systems that include three super-Earth-size planets in the "habitable zone," the range of distance from a star where the surface temperature of an orbiting planet might be suitable for liquid water.

The Kepler-62 system has five planets; 62b, 62c, 62d, 62e and 62f. The Kepler-69 system has two planets; 69b and 69c. Kepler-62e, 62f and 69c are the super-Earth-sized planets.

Two of the newly discovered planets orbit a star smaller and cooler than the sun. Kepler-62f is only 40 percent larger than Earth, making it the exoplanet closest to the size of our planet known in the habitable zone of another star. Kepler-62f is likely to have a rocky composition. Kepler-62e, orbits on the inner edge of the habitable zone and is roughly 60 percent larger than Earth.

The third planet, Kepler-69c, is 70 percent larger than the size of Earth, and orbits in the habitable zone of a star similar to our sun. Astronomers are uncertain about the composition of Kepler-69c, but its orbit of 242 days around a sun-like star resembles that of our neighboring planet Venus.

Scientists do not know whether life could exist on the newfound planets, but their discovery signals we are another step closer to finding a world similar to Earth around a star like our sun.

"The Kepler spacecraft has certainly turned out to be a rock star of science," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The discovery of these rocky planets in the habitable zone brings us a bit closer to finding a place like home. It is only a matter of time before we know if the galaxy is home to a multitude of planets like Earth, or if we are a rarity."

The Kepler space telescope, which simultaneously and continuously measures the brightness of more than 150,000 stars, is NASA's first mission capable of detecting Earth-size planets around stars like our sun. Orbiting its star every 122 days, Kepler-62e was the first of these habitable zone planets identified. Kepler-62f, with an orbital period of 267 days, was later found by Eric Agol, associate professor of astronomy at the University of Washington and co-author of a paper on the discoveries published in the journal Science.

The size of Kepler-62f is now measured, but its mass and composition are not. However, based on previous studies of rocky exoplanets similar in size, scientists are able to estimate its mass by association.

"The detection and confirmation of planets is an enormously collaborative effort of talent and resources, and requires expertise from across the scientific community to produce these tremendous results," said William Borucki, Kepler science principal investigator at NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., and lead author of the Kepler-62 system paper in Science. "Kepler has brought a resurgence of astronomical discoveries and we are making excellent progress toward determining if planets like ours are the exception or the rule."

The two habitable zone worlds orbiting Kepler-62 have three companions in orbits closer to their star, two larger than the size of Earth and one about the size of Mars. Kepler-62b, Kepler-62c and Kepler-62d, orbit every five, 12, and 18 days, respectively, making them very hot and inhospitable for life as we know it.

The five planets of the Kepler-62 system orbit a star classified as a K2 dwarf, measuring just two-thirds the size of the sun and only one-fifth as bright. At seven billion years old, the star is somewhat older than the sun. It is about 1,200 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra.

A companion to Kepler-69c, known as Kepler-69b, is more than twice the size of Earth and whizzes around its star every 13 days. The Kepler-69 planets' host star belongs to the same class as our sun, called G-type. It is 93 percent the size of the sun and 80 percent as luminous and is located approximately 2,700 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus.

"We only know of one star that hosts a planet with life, the sun. Finding a planet in the habitable zone around a star like our sun is a significant milestone toward finding truly Earth-like planets," said Thomas Barclay, Kepler scientist at the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute in Sonoma, Calif., and lead author of the Kepler-69 system discovery published in the Astrophysical Journal.

When a planet candidate transits, or passes in front of the star from the spacecraft's vantage point, a percentage of light from the star is blocked. The resulting dip in the brightness of the starlight reveals the transiting planet's size relative to its star. Using the transit method, Kepler has detected 2,740 candidates. Using various analysis techniques, ground telescopes and other space assets, 122 planets have been confirmed.

Early in the mission, the Kepler telescope primarily found large, gaseous giants in very close orbits of their stars. Known as "hot Jupiters," these are easier to detect due to their size and very short orbital periods. Earth would take three years to accomplish the three transits required to be accepted as a planet candidate. As Kepler continues to observe, transit signals of habitable zone planets the size of Earth orbiting stars like the sun will begin to emerge.

Ames is responsible for Kepler's ground system development, mission operations, and science data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., managed Kepler mission development.

Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo., developed the Kepler flight system and supports mission operations with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore archives, hosts and distributes Kepler science data. Kepler is NASA's 10th Discovery Mission and was funded by the agency's Science Mission Directorate.

For more information about the Kepler mission and to view the digital press kit, visit:

Tuesday, May 16, 2023

A more precise model of the Earth's ionosphere

The ionosphere—the region of geospace spanning from 60 to 1000 kilometers above the Earth—impairs the propagation of radio signals from global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) with its electrically charged particles. This is a problem for the ever higher precision required by these systems—both in research and for applications such as autonomous driving or precise orbit New approach using machine learning and neural networks

A team from the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences around Artem Smirnov, Ph.D. student and first author of the study, and Yuri Shprits, head of the "Space Physics and Space Weather" section and Professor at University Potsdam, took a new ML-based empirical approach.

For this, they used data from satellite missions from 19 years, in particular CHAMP, GRACE and GRACE-FO, which were and are significantly co-operated by the GFZ, and COSMIC. The satellites measured—among other things—the electron density in different height ranges of the ionosphere and cover different annual and local times as well as solar cycles.

With the help of Neural Networks, the researchers then developed a model for the electron density of the topside ionosphere, which they call the NET model. They used the so-called MLP method (Multi-Layer Perceptrons), which iteratively learns the network weights to reproduce the data distributions with very high accuracy.

The researchers tested the model with independent measurements from three other satellite missions.

Evaluation of the new model

"Our model is in remarkable agreement with the measurements: It can reconstruct the electron density very well in all height ranges of the topside ionosphere, all around the Globe, at all times of the year and day, and at different levels of solar activity, and it significantly exceeds the International Reference Ionosphere Model IRI in accuracy. Moreover, it covers space continuously," first author Artem Smirnov sums up.

Yuri Shprits adds, "This study represents a paradigm shift in ionospheric research because it shows that ionospheric densities can be reconstructed with very high accuracy. The NET model reproduces the effects of numerous physical processes that govern the dynamics of the topside ionosphere and can have broad applications in ionospheric research."

Possible applications in ionosphere research

The researchers see possible applications, for instance, in wave propagation studies, for calibrating new electron density data sets with often unknown baseline offsets, for tomographic reconstructions in the form of a background model, as well as to analyze specific space weather events and perform long-term ionospheric reconstructions. Furthermore, the developed model can be connected to plasmaspheric altitudes and thus can become a novel topside option for the IRI.

The developed framework allows the seamless incorporation of new data and new data sources. The retraining of the model can be done on a standard PC and can be performed on a regular basis. Overall, the NET model represents a significant improvement over traditional methods and highlights the potential of neural network-based models to provide a more accurate representation of the ionosphere for communication and navigation systems that rely on GNSS.

Monday, May 15, 2023

Eight-fold rise seen in jobs in solar and wind energy sectors, says report

India’s solar and wind energy sectors added 52,700 new workers in project development roles in the last financial year, an eight-fold increase from financial year 2021, according to a joint report by three think tanks on February 10.

Nearly 99% all of the new workforce (52,100 workers) were employed in the solar energy sector, with the wind energy sector registering very small growth (600 new workers). India’s solar and wind energy sectors employed 1,64,000 workers as of FY’22, showing a 47% increase from FY’21. 84% of this workforce is in the solar energy sector.

The study was jointly conducted by the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), NRDC India (Natural Resources Defence Council India), and Skill Council for Green Jobs (SCGJ).

Were these trends to continue, new on-grid solar (238 GW) and wind (101 GW) capacities — planned as part of India’s commitment to ensure half its electricity, or nearly 500 GW, is from non-fossil fuel sources — can potentially create about 3.4 million jobs temporary and permanent jobs, the report suggests.

The report considered only full-time jobs, calculated by a formula developed by the team in 2017 wherein a co-efficient, called FTE, for each sector — solar rooftop, utility solar and wind — was computed by dividing the time spent by an employee on a particular activity to the number of standard working hours in a year. The FTE formula translates short-term or one-time employment into a full-time equivalent or job-year and the coefficients are derived from surveys conducted in 2016-17 across the solar and wind energy companies that included developers, engineering construction and procurement contractors and solar PV module manufacturers. These FTE numbers are used as coefficients to estimate the total workforce expected to be employed in the solar and wind energy project deployment process based on excess capacity added every year (MW),

“India’s renewable energy sector continues to grow steadily and create employment opportunities. Our earlier studies have showcased the potential to employ 1 million people in the sector as India marches towards its 2030 ambitions. The skilling programmes must catch up with the new requirements arising from sectors such as solar module and battery manufacturing and hybrid projects,” Neeraj Kuldeep, senior programme lead, CEEW, and an author of the report, said in a statement.

The study also pointed to a “huge shortage” of workers trained in upstream manufacturing segments such as making poly-silicon, ingots, wafers and cells. This segment is the focus of the recently launched ₹19,500 crore ($2.43 billion) production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme, which targets 65 GW of domestic manufacturing capacity. The bulk of the current jobs are in assembling solar modules.

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'Mini Neptune’ outside of our solar system captured by James Webb Space telescope

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is able to see what the universe looked like around a quarter of a billion years (possibly back to 100 million years) after the Big Bang, when the first stars and galaxies started to form. It has observed a mysterious planet outside of our solar system known as planet GJ1214b.

The atmosphere in this mysterious world is known to be steamy and vapour contributes to a major part of it. The planet is too hot to harbour liquid water oceans. "The planet is totally blanketed by some sort of haze or cloud layer. The atmosphere just remained totally hidden from us until this observation,” said lead author Eliza Kempton, a researcher at the University of Maryland.

If indeed water-rich, the planet could have been a “water world” with large amounts of watery and icy material at the time of its formation, Kempton noted in a paper published in Nature.
The research team took a chance on a novel approach to penetrate such a thick barrier : In addition to capturing the host star's light that has filtered through the planet's atmosphere, they tracked GJ 1214 b through nearly its entire orbit around the star with the help of Webb's Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI).

They created a "heat map" of the planet Using MIRI, as it orbited the star which revealed both its day and night sides. Kempton noted that the temperatures shifted from 279 to 165 degrees Celsius.

Such a big shift is only possible in an atmosphere made up of heavier molecules, such as water or methane, which appear similar when observed by MIRI. Meaning the atmosphere of the planet is not composed mainly of lighter hydrogen molecules, Kempton explained.

The planet is hot by human standards, it is much cooler than expected, Kempton noted. Because its unusually shiny atmosphere, which came as a surprise to the researchers, reflects a large fraction of the light from its parent star rather than absorbing it and growing hotter.

Mini-Neptunes or sub-Neptunes as they’re called are the most common type of planet in the galaxy, but mysterious to us because they don’t occur in our solar system. Measurements so far show they are broadly similar to a downsized version of our own Neptune. Hopefully with further observation, more will be unveiled.

International Conference on Astrophysics and Astronomy