Tag: neptune

The Cosmos, As Viewed By The James Webb Space Telescope

The iconic “Pillars of Creation” image, on left, was taken in visible light by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2014. A new, near-infrared-light view from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, at right, helps us peer through more of the dust in this star-forming region. The thick, dusty brown pillars are no longer as opaque and many more red stars that are still forming come into view.  The pillars of gas and dust seem darker and less penetrable in Hubble’s view, and they appear more permeable in Webb’s. (NASA)

The James Webb Space Telescope was developed to allow us to see the cosmos in a new way — with much greater precision, using infrared wavelengths to piece through dust around galaxies, stars and planets, and to look further back into time and space.

In the less than four months since the first Webb images were released,  the pioneering telescope has certainly shown us a remarkable range of abilities.  And as a result, we’ve been treated to some dazzling new views of the solar system, the galaxy and beyond.  This is just the beginning and we thankfully have years to come of new images and the scientific insights that come with them.

Just as the Hubble Space Telescope, with its 32 years of service and counting, ushered in a new era of space imagining and understanding, so too is the Webb telescope revolutionizing how we see and understand our world writ large.  Very large.

Neptune as seen by Voyager 2 during a flyby more than three decades ago, the Hubble Space Telescope last year, and the JWST this summer. ( NASA/ESA/CSA))

The differences between the Webb’s image and previous images of Neptune are certainly dramatic, in terms of color, precision and what they tell us about the planet.

Surely most striking in Webb’s new image is the crisp view of the planet’s rings, some of which have not been seen since NASA’s Voyager 2 became the first spacecraft to observe Neptune during its flyby in 1989. In addition to several bright, narrow rings, the Webb image clearly shows Neptune’s fainter, never-seen dust bands as well.

Neptune is an ice giant planet. Unlike Jupiter and Saturn, which consist primarily of hydrogen and helium, Neptune has an interior that is much richer in heavier elements (“heavier is the sense of not hydrogen or helium.) One of the most abundant heavy molecules is methane, which appears blue in Hubble’s visible wavelengths but largely white in the Webb’s near-infrared camera.… Read more

How Planet 9 Would Make Ours a More Typical Solar System

 

The six most distant known objects in the solar system with orbits exclusively beyond Neptune (magenta) all mysteriously line up in a single direction. The new report shows a planet with 10 times the mass of the earth in a distant eccentric orbit anti-aligned with the other six objects (orange) is required to maintain this configuration. Image: Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC)"

The six most distant known objects in our solar system with orbits (magenta) exclusively beyond Neptune all mysteriously line up in a single direction. A new report identifies the potential presence of a distant solar system planet — with 10 times the mass of the Earth and in a distant and eccentric orbit (orange) — as the reason why.  (JPL/Caltech; R. Hurt)

There’s been a ton of justifiable excitement these days about the possible discovery of a ninth planet in our solar system — an object ten time the mass  of Earth and 200 times further from the sun.  Especially in the context of the recent demotion of Pluto from a planet to a dwarf planet, the announcement of a potential replacement seems almost karmic, stage managed, in its take-and-give.  This is especially so since the astronomer probably most responsible for the diminished position of Pluto is also the one who now asserts the very far away presence of a different Planet 9 — planetary astronomer Michael Brown of the California Institute of Technology.

The validity of the possible detection of a Planet 9 has set off hot debates — with NASA officials, for instance, making clear that the agency sees the “discovery” as an exciting but early step towards establishing the existence of possible new planet.  We are all drawn to discovery and controversy, so the presence, or non-presence, of the planet has been the focus of attention.

But another most intriguing aspect of the finding has been largely ignored — the way  that such a Planet 9 would make our solar system surprisingly more similar to the many more eccentric exoplanet solar systems now known to be out there.  Our solar system would also suddenly have a range of planets sized more like the galactic norm.

What’s more, there’s reason to consider that a Planet 9 could have been spun off another solar system rather than having been ejected from the inner solar system, as proposed by Brown and colleague Konstantin Batygin.

In other words, Planet 9 may be an “exoplanet” in origin.  And if not, a finding that it was ejected long ago from our inner solar system would answer some questions about why our system seems to be so different from many of the other exoplanetary systems discovered so far.

Mike Brown and Konstanytin Batyglin of Caltech

Astronomers Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin of Caltech.  They took research by Scott Shepard of the Carnegie Institution for  Science and Chad Trujillo of the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii regarding the unusual paths of objects orbiting beyond Pluto and carried it further to conclude there is a Planet 9 in the distant solar neighborhood. 

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