The SBAU Forum

see attached file to download 18 min audio.

show agenda by JerryW:
On 10/24/2020 2:39 PM, Jerry wrote:
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> Monday, October 26
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>    Asteroid 471 Papagena, currently located in the constellation Cetus the Whale, reached opposition at 11 PM PDT last night. At that time, the tiny world is about 40° high above the southwestern horizon, glowing at magnitude 9.5.
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>    If you’re looking to spot Papagena, the nearest stellar signpost is Mira (Omicron [ο] Ceti), which sits 5° north-northwest of the asteroid. Mira is a famous star in its own right — this “wonderful” luminary is a variable star whose magnitude swings between 2 and 10 over the course of nearly 11 months. Its most recent peak in brightness was earlier this month. Careful, consistent observers can chart its changes by revisiting the star every one to two weeks and comparing its brightness with the stars around it. Binoculars or a telescope will do the trick, depending on your options and your location (i.e., the amount of light pollution).
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> Tuesday, October 27
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>    It’s another early morning for observers, but well worth it to catch the Moon passing 4° south of Neptune at 11 PM PDT (Monday). The pair are in the constellation Aquarius, with two magnitude 4 stars — Psi1 (ψ1) and Phi (φ) Aquarii — between them. Neptune, at magnitude 7.8, requires some decent optical aid to see, especially with the gibbous Moon so close. Its 2"-wide, bluish disk will likely appear as a “flatter” star in your field of view.
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>    The distant ice giant is currently nearly 30 astronomical units, or AU, from Earth. (One AU is the average Earth-Sun distance.) Despite its diminutive appearance through your optics, Neptune is actually 17 times more massive than Earth and nearly 4 times as wide; however, it is only 0.3 times as dense as our planet, owing to its icy, gassy composition when compared to our rocky home.
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> Wednesday, October 28
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>    Like the Force, Saturn’s two-faced moon Iapetus has a light side and a dark side. Currently, that brighter side is turned toward Earth, making the tiny, icy moon a little easier to locate as it orbits the ringed planet.
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>    Tonight, magnitude 0.6 Saturn sits about 5.5° east of magnitude –2.2 Jupiter; both are in the southwest among the stars of Sagittarius. Zoom in on Saturn with a telescope to pick out several of its moons — the largest and brightest, Titan, is just under 2' southwest of the planet. Tenth-magnitude Tethys and Dione float east of the planet, with Dione the farther of the two. Rhea, also magnitude 10, is about 30" due south of the eastern edge of the rings. Enceladus, a challenging magnitude 12, lies just 6" northwest of Tethys.
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>    Look due west of Saturn to find Iapetus, glowing near magnitude 10 and about three times farther from the planet’s disk than Titan. As its dark side rotates back into view next month, the moon will dim; the difference in brightness between its two hemispheres is a little more than a magnitude.
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>    For a less-challenging set of satellites, swing over to Jupiter, where all four Galilean moons are on display. Only Callisto is currently east of the planet; on the western side, Ganymede, Io, and Europa line up (from closest to farthest). The orientation of the moons shows just how perpendicular Jupiter’s poles are to its orbital plane — the giant planet is tilted by a mere 3°, much less than Earth’s 23.5°.
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> Thursday, October 29
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>    The Moon passes 3° south of Mars at 9 AM PDT. By the time the pair has cleared the horizon around sunset, they’re just over 4° apart. You’ll find them in the east, rising as the sky grows darker, with Mars just to the upper right of the Moon. The Red Planet, still a bright beacon two weeks after opposition, glows at magnitude –2.2 and appears 20" across.
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>    By two hours after sunset, the face of Taurus the Bull is peeking above the horizon, with his bright red eye, Aldebaran, popping up shortly after. Look directly above the v of the Bull’s nose to find the Pleiades (M45) sparkling in the shape of a tiny dipper. Although this open cluster is often confused with the Little Dipper, its spoon shape is much smaller and more compact than the asterism, located in the north. The Pleiades is a young cluster containing several thousand stars and about 800 solar masses of material. With the naked eye, you may see as many as 12 of the cluster’s stars; binoculars and telescopes will bring out many more. If you’re an astroimager, turning your camera on the cluster is likely to reveal the nebulosity, or glowing gas, strung between the brightest stars.
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> Friday, October 30
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>    The Moon reaches apogee, the farthest point from Earth in its orbit, at 11:45 AM PDT. It will then sit 252,522 miles (406,395 kilometers) from our planet. Our satellite is 99 percent lit and will delight Halloween revelers tomorrow as a Full Moon to light the spooky holiday.
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>    The nearly Full Moon does, however, make the sky brighter and washes out dimmer stars and deep-sky objects. Tonight is a great night to search out some famous asterisms, though: the Square of Pegasus, the Big and Little Dippers, the Teapot in Sagittarius, and the w shape of Cassiopeia. Also still visible is the Summer Triangle, made up of the three bright stars Deneb, Altair, and Vega. High overhead during summer nights, the Triangle is now lower in the west around 8 P.M. local time. Over the next few months, its stars will set completely by sunset and the Triangle will disappear as the winter constellations come out in full force.
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> IapetusSides.jpeg
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> Dark and light
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> Saturn’s moon Iapetus is markedly brighter on one side than the other. This week, the lighter side is facing Earth.
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> Wolf-Rayet are Us!
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>    Astronomers know that our solar system formed about 5 billion years ago from material left over from previous generations of stars. However, beyond that, it gets a little murky.
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>    The prevailing theory is that a nearby supernova explosion compressed a dense cloud of gas and dust until it collapsed in on itself due to its own gravity. As the cloud condensed, it grew hotter and spun faster. Eventually, the center of the cloud grew so hot it began fusing hydrogen into helium and became the star we lovingly call the Sun.
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>    But according to a study published December 22 in the Astrophysical Journal, the solar system instead may have formed inside the dense shell of an enormous bubble within a giant star. The study not only provides a fantastical scenario for our solar system’s formation, but also addresses a long-standing mystery concerning our solar system’s chemical makeup.
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>    The new theory for how the solar system formed starts with an extremely massive star known as a Wolf-Rayet star. Of all the stars in the universe, these stars burn the hottest. Because they are so hot, they also have exceptionally strong stellar winds.
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>    As a Wolf-Rayet star sheds its outer layers – a normal end-of-life process for a giant star – its strong stellar winds plow through its loosely held cloak of material, forming densely shelled bubbles. According to the study, the solar system could have formed inside of one of these bubbles.
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>    Since such a huge amount gas and dust is trapped inside, “the shell of such a bubble is a good place to produce stars,” said Nicolas Dauphas, co-author of the study and professor of geophysical sciences at the University of Chicago, in a press release. The researchers estimate that this stellar-womb process is so effective that it could account for the formation of 1 to 16 percent of all Sun-like stars.
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>    Although the unconventional theory may seem a bit superfluous, the researchers proposed it because it also addresses a long-standing mystery of the early solar system: Why did it have so much aluminium-26 and so little iron-60 when compared to the rest of the galaxy?
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>    Previous studies of meteorite samples have shown that the early solar system was ripe with the isotope aluminium-26, while other studies have shown it was deficient in the isotope iron-60. However, since supernovae explosions produce both of these isotopes, “it begs the question of why one was injected into the solar system and the other was not,” said Vikram Dwarkadas, co-author of the study and professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Chicago.
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>    This is what brought the researchers to Wolf-Rayet stars, which produce lots of aluminium-26, but zero iron-60.
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> Star Spagettified by a Black Hole
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>    “The idea of a black hole ‘sucking in’ a nearby star sounds like science fiction. But this is exactly what happens in a tidal disruption event,” says Matt Nicholl, a lecturer and Royal Astronomical Society research fellow at the University of Birmingham, UK, and the lead author of the new study. But these tidal disruption events, where a star experiences what’s known as spaghettification as it’s sucked in by a black hole, are rare and not always easy to study. The team of researchers pointed ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) and ESO’s New Technology Telescope (NTT) at a new flash of light that occurred last year close to a supermassive black hole, to investigate in detail what happens when a star is devoured by such a monster.
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>    Astronomers know what should happen in theory. “When an unlucky star wanders too close to a supermassive black hole in the centre of a galaxy, the extreme gravitational pull of the black hole shreds the star into thin streams of material,” explains study author Thomas Wevers, an ESO Fellow in Santiago, Chile, who was at the Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, UK, when he conducted the work. As some of the thin strands of stellar material fall into the black hole during this spaghettification process, a bright flare of energy is released, which astronomers can detect.
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>    Although powerful and bright, up to now astronomers have had trouble investigating this burst of light, which is often obscured by a curtain of dust and debris. Only now have astronomers been able to shed light on the origin of this curtain.
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> “We found that, when a black hole devours a star, it can launch a powerful blast of material outwards that obstructs our view,” explains Samantha Oates, also at the University of Birmingham. This happens because the energy released as the black hole eats up stellar material propels the star’s debris outwards.
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>    The discovery was possible because the tidal disruption event the team studied, AT2019qiz, was found just a short time after the star was ripped apart. “Because we caught it early, we could actually see the curtain of dust and debris being drawn up as the black hole launched a powerful outflow of material with velocities up to 10 000 km/s,” says Kate Alexander, NASA Einstein Fellow at Northwestern University in the US. “This unique ‘peek behind the curtain' provided the first opportunity to pinpoint the origin of the obscuring material and follow in real time how it engulfs the black hole.”
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>    The team carried out observations of AT2019qiz, located in a spiral galaxy in the constellation of Eridanus, over a 6-month period as the flare grew in luminosity and then faded away. “Several sky surveys discovered emission from the new tidal disruption event very quickly after the star was ripped apart,” says Wevers. “We immediately pointed a suite of ground-based and space telescopes in that direction to see how the light was produced.”
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> The Big News of last week...A Fly-by-Grabbing
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>    WASHINGTON — NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft collected so much material from the surface of the asteroid Bennu that the lid of its sampling head is jammed open, causing material to leak out and changing the agency’s plans for the mission.
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> At a media briefing called by NASA on short notice Oct. 23, three days after the spacecraft touched down on the asteroid, officials said that images taken of the head of the sampling device, called the Touch-And-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM), showed material leaking out of the container from a gap in a Mylar diaphragm that is supposed to seal the bottom of the head.
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>    “I am highly confident that TAGSAM was success, that it collected abundant mass: definitely evidence of hundreds of grams of material, and possibly more,” said Dante Lauretta, principal investigator for OSIRIS-REx at the University of Arizona. “My big concern now is that the particles are escaping because we were almost a victim of our own success.”
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>    Those images show a cloud of particles outside of the TAGSAM, floating away from it at about one centimeter per second. He estimated that the material visible for those images had a mass of 5 to 10 grams. He added it is not likely a “steady state” mass loss since the head was moving around when those pictures were taken, helping particles escape through the gap in the diaphragm. Star tracker cameras on the spacecraft, which also detected the particles, saw much less after the head was “parked” on the side of the spacecraft.
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>    The concern that more material might leak out of the sample head, though, has prompted NASA to change plans for the mission. Lauretta said that a maneuver planned for the weekend, where the spacecraft would be slowly spun up to measure the change in its moment of inertia and thus the mass of the sample material, has been canceled. Instead, planning is underway to stow the samples in a canister inside the spacecraft, where they will be sealed for return to Earth.
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> Sent from my iPad

Download the attached 46min radio show audio and play!

On 10/10/2020 9:23 PM, Jerry wrote these notes to guide our conversations:
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> Monday, October 12The constellation Cetus the Whale is rising in the southeast as darkness falls. You can track it over the next few hours, as its stars climb higher in the sky. Focus in on one star in particular: the variable star Mira, whose very name means “wonderful.”
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>    You can find Mira, also cataloged as Omicron (ο) Ceti, roughly in the center of the constellation, about one-third of the way on a line drawn southwest from Menkar (magnitude 2.5) toward Diphda (magnitude 2). Mira is a long-period variable, swinging from 2nd to 10th magnitude and back over the course of 332 days. That means its brightness changes by a factor of 1,600 between its brightest and its dimmest.
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>    Consider visiting this variable once every one to two weeks this fall and winter to see if you can note its change over time in comparison to other, nearby stars. You can check out Phil Harrington’s column in Astronomy’s October 2020 issue for more details on this wonderful little star and step-by-step instructions on how to track its brightness in the coming months.
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> Tuesday, October 13
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>    The big night is finally here: Mars reaches opposition at 7 P.M. EDT, just one week after its closest approach to Earth. It’s blazing at magnitude –2.6 in the southeast, amid the stars of Pisces and about 10° high in the east an hour after sunset. It will climb higher as the hours tick by; the best time to observe the Red Planet is late this evening in the hours leading up to local midnight, when it is high above the horizon. It’s in a relatively dark part of the sky and in a faint constellation, so it will be easy to pick out, thanks to its brightness and its distinctive red color.
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>    Mars’ disk appears 22.4" across tonight, just 0.2" smaller than at its closest approach last week. At 11 P.M. EDT, the dark swath of Mare Cimmerium is visible, with Syrtis Minor rotating onto the disk. Follow the planet for a few more hours overnight, and you’ll see the bright Hellas basin appear. Also prominent will be the dark Syrtis Major region. Although astronomers once thought observed seasonal changes in this distinctive feature might be due to martian vegetation, today we know that its fluctuating appearance is actually due to sand blowing across the planet’s desolate surface.
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>    The Moon passes 4° north of Venus at 8 P.M. EDT, although both are still below the horizon. We’ll come back to them in just a few hours.
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>    Mercury is stationary at midnight EDT. It’s well below the horizon by then, but you can view it tomorrow at sunset.
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> Wednesday, October 14
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>    Today holds amazing solar system sights for both morning and evening observers. For those up before the Sun, you can spot the delicate crescent Moon — with just eight percent of its surface lit — join the planet Venus in the morning sky. Look east in the two hours before sunrise to glimpse the pair in the southern portion of Leo the Lion, about 9° southwest of Denebola (which you may remember from earlier this week marks the tip of Leo’s tail). See if you can spot any earthshine on the lunar surface, which occurs when sunlight bounces off Earth and lights up the portion of the Moon in Earth’s shadow.
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>    Lucky — and speedy — evening observers can catch magnitude 0.9 Mercury low in the western sky at sunset tonight. It’s only 5° high as the Sun sinks below the horizon and is completely gone within about 30 minutes.
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>    As Mercury disappears, look to its north. Higher above the horizon, you’ll see the bright star Arcturus in Boötes pop out in the darkening twilight. This red giant shines 113 times more brightly than our Sun and weighs about one-and-a-half times as much as our star.
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> Thursday, October 15
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>    Jupiter and Saturn set before local midnight in the south, still embedded within the stars of Sagittarius. You can find the giant planets to the northeast (upper left) of the Teapot asterism. The two planets are currently just under 6.5° apart, with magnitude 0.5 Saturn east of magnitude –2.3 Jupiter.
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>    Tonight, focus in on Jupiter with binoculars or a telescope after dark to see all four of its largest moons off to the planet’s east. But not for long — just after 9:40 P.M. EDT, the closest moon, Io, slips onto the disk. About 80 minutes later, its shadow follows, as Io is already more than halfway across Jupiter’s face. Jupiter is still about 4° above the horizon for observers at 40° north latitude when Io leaves the planet’s western limb just before midnight EDT. Observers on the East Coast and in the Midwest won’t get to see Io’s shadow disappear (around 1:13 A.M. EDT) before the planet sets, but West Coast observers will be able to catch the show’s finale.
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> Friday, October 16
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>    New Moon occurs at 3:31 P.M. EDT. The Moon is also at perigee today, the closest point in its orbit to Earth. It currently sits 221,775 miles (356,912 kilometers) away.
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> Unauthorized access.
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>    New Moon is the best time to seek out dim objects — and constellations — washed out by our satellite’s bright glare. Tonight, try to catch Delphinus the Dolphin high in the southwest after dark. This tiny constellation, which ranks 69th in size among the 88 official constellations, consists of four stars that form the dolphin’s body, as well as one additional star that marks its tail. The four stars of Delphinus’ body also create an asterism known as Job’s Coffin, which measures just 1.3° by 2.7°.
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>    Although this aquatic constellation may not look like much to the naked eye, turning binoculars or a small scope on the region can bring out a wealth of field stars to enjoy on a dark night like tonight.
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> SBAU Workshop back on
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>    It’s been a gloomy year for amateur astronomy, including the SBAU. Our face to face public outreach events remain on hold until at least the new year. But we are trying to resuscitate our Tuesday evening Telescope Workshop using Zoom and have had two meetings so far with good results. These trial meetings were hosted by Joe Doyle using  his personal zoom account. The Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History has now provided their zoom account so meetings can now be closer to the traditional 90 minute length. These meetings are focused on telescope designs, repair, use, imaging, or general astronomy questions from the general public. To participate, send an email to Jerry Wilson President of the SBAU. Email address can be found at www.SBAU.org. 
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> Last, but not least: Remember that cool video of stars orbiting the black hole at the center of the Milky Way. Well...
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>    Andrea Ghez, UCLA’s Lauren B. Leichtman and Arthur E. Levine Professor of Astrophysics, today was awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in physics.
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>    Ghez shares half of the prize with Reinhard Genzel of UC Berkeley and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics. The Nobel committee praised them for “the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy.” The other half of the prize was awarded to Roger Penrose of the University of Oxford “for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity.”
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>    In July 2019, the journal Science published a study by Ghez and her research group that is the most comprehensive test of Albert Einstein’s iconic general theory of relativity near the monstrous black hole at the center of our galaxy. Although she concluded that “Einstein’s right, at least for now,” the research group is continuing to test Einstein’s theory, which she says cannot fully explain gravity inside a black hole.
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> Ghez studies more than 3,000 stars that orbit the supermassive black hole. Black holes have such high density that nothing can escape their gravitational pull, not even light. The center of the vast majority of galaxies appears to have a supermassive black hole, she said.
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>    “I’m thrilled and incredibly honored to receive a Nobel Prize in physics,” said Ghez, who is director of the UCLA Galactic Center Group. “The research the Nobel committee is honoring today is the product of a wonderful collaboration among the scientists in the UCLA Galactic Center Orbits Initiative and the University of California’s wise investment in the W.M. Keck Observatory.
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>    “We have cutting-edge tools and a world-class research team, and that combination makes discovery tremendous fun. Our understanding of how the universe works is still so incomplete. The Nobel Prize is fabulous, but we still have a lot to learn.”
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> Sent from my iPad

200928 KZSB SBAU radio 1290AM Crop ads 46min mono const24kps joint stereo Baron CMcP JW TT

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On 9/25/2020 11:34 PM, Jerry wrote:
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> Monday, September 28
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>    Saturn will halt its westward motion, coming to an apparent stop against the background stars at 8 P.M. PDT tonight. It will now begin moving eastward again — although not as quickly as Jupiter. The largest planet in the solar system switched directions September 12 and is tracking east much faster than Saturn. Jupiter will ultimately catch up with the ringed planet December 21 for an extraordinary close conjunction that will bring Saturn (apparently) as close as Jupiter’s own moons.
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>    Our own Moon has pulled away from Sagittarius, where the giant planets now sit, so consider spending some time in this constellation tonight. The tiny dwarf planet Pluto, currently around magnitude 14, lies roughly between Saturn and Jupiter, about 3° west-southwest of Saturn and just under 4° east-southeast of Jupiter. You’ll need at least a small scope and clear skies to see it.
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>    Other celestial delights in Sagittarius to turn your telescope on include numerous star clusters. Open star clusters in this constellation include M18, M21, M23, and M25; globulars include M22, M28, M54, M55, and M75.
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> Tuesday, September 29
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>    The Moon passes 4° south of Neptune at 7 P.M. PDT tonight. You can find the pair in Aquarius the Water-bearer in the southeast at that time, although you’ll need large binoculars or a small scope to catch Neptune’s nearly magnitude 8 glow, especially in the glare of our satellite.
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>    For a planet that’s much easier to spot, look east to find magnitude –2.5 Mars about 16° above the horizon. Currently appearing about 22" across, Mars is headed for a brilliant opposition next month you won’t want to miss.
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>    Between Mars and Neptune on the sky is main-belt asteroid 68 Leto, which reaches opposition 8 P.M. PDT. It’s roughly magnitude 10 — best seen with a telescope. Discovered in 1861, Leto is 76 miles (123 kilometers) across. It’s currently traveling through the constellation Cetus the Whale.
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>    You can find yet another planet, Uranus, by looking 15° east-northeast of Mars, closer to the horizon. The nearer of our solar system’s two ice giants is magnitude 5.7 and should show up in binoculars, though beware the Moon’s nearby glow.
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> Wednesday, September 30
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>    Jupiter’s moons are having a busy week: Callisto’s shadow will begin creeping onto the planet’s disk around 6:04 P.M. PDT tonight. The shadow is so large that it takes roughly 10 minutes to fully slip onto the northeastern limb. Keep your eye on the gas giant overnight and you’ll also see tiny Io reappear from eclipse about 9:03 P.M. October 1. It should spring into view roughly 22" from the Jupiter’s eastern limb.
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>    With a nearly Full Moon tonight, many deep-sky objects are off limits. But it’s a great time to take in one of the summer sky’s most appealing double-star sights: Albireo (Beta [β] Cygni), the head of Cygnus the Swan. Still high overhead tonight, this pair of stars offers contrasting colors of gold and blue. Also known as the UCLA star. The magnitude 3.1 and 5.1 pair has a separation of 34", making the two stars easy to resolve in binoculars. Use a small scope (even 2 inches will do) to really bring out their vivid colors.
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> Thursday, October 1
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>    Mercury reaches greatest eastern elongation (26° from the Sun) at 9 P.M. PDT today. You can spot the solar system’s smallest planet this evening, but you’ll need to be quick — it’s only 3° high in the west-southwest 30 minutes after sunset, but glowing at bright magnitude 0. The planet sets 20 minutes later. By then, some of the brightest stars should be popping out of the twilight: Arcturus, Vega, Deneb, Altair, and near the southern horizon, Fomalhaut. Jupiter and Saturn should appear about the same time.
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>    Full Moon occurs at 2:05 P.M. PDT. Our satellite will rise in the east just moments after sunset and remain visible in the sky all night. It’s the first of two Full Moons this month — the second, called a Blue Moon when two Full phases take place in the same month, will occur October 31.
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> Friday, October 2
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>    Venus and the bright star Regulus in Leo are a mere 0.5° apart an hour before sunrise this morning. The pair rises together in the east around 1:00 A.M. local time, so you’ll have at least three hours to catch the sight. Earth’s sister planet glows a bright magnitude –4.1, which is about 145 times brighter than nearby Regulus. Venus’ disk currently spans about 15"; with magnification, you’ll see it’s a 72-percent-lit crescent. The planet will pass 0.09° south of Regulus at 5 P.M. PDT tonight, and they’ll be 41" apart by next morning.
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>    The Moon passes 0.7° south of Mars at 8 P.M. PDT. At that time, the Red Planet will be on view high in the southeast. Both should be readily visible, thanks to Mars’ brilliance. The dim stars of Pisces around them, however, will likely be washed out by the Moon’s bright light.
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> ISS Dodges Space Junk.
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>    On Tuesday night, the International Space Station (ISS) had to swerve out of the way of a piece of incoming space junk.
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>    It’s the third time this year alone that the ISS has had to pull an evasive maneuver, according to SpaceNews. The junk sailed past without incident, but now NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine is calling for more funding to help the agency better track and manage the growing sea of dangerous garbage orbiting our planet.
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>    Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics astronomer Jonathan McDowell later suggested that it was a piece of an upper stage of a Japanese rocket that launched in 2018 before being left in upper orbit.
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>    The debris object that ISS avoided is now available on SpaceTrack as 2018-084CQ, 46477, from the breakup of Japan's H-2A F40 rocket stage. At 2221:07 UTC it passed within a few km of ISS at a relative velocity of 14 6 km/s, 422 km over the Pitcairn Is  in the S Pacific
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>    The ISS crew used the thrusters of a docked spacecraft to push the station out of the way. The NASA crew hid in a Soyuz spacecraft as a safety capsule, according to SpaceNews, out of what NASA described as an “abundance of caution.”
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> Would you survive having witnessed formation of the Barringer Crater in Arizona?   
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>    If the Barringer Meteor Crater impact event in Arizona occurred in a modern city, it would completely destroy it. As the question implies, distance from the point of impact is directly related to one’s survival. The key to determining a safe distance lies in the energy of the impact event. Estimates of that energy exist, but the range of uncertainty can have significant consequences. If the energy was sufficiently small, one could have had a spectacular view of the impact event from Anderson Mesa, a long volcanic ridge about 15 miles (24 kilometers) west of the crater. However, for some of the larger energy estimates, that location may have been uncomfortably close, if not deadly. I have often thought that a very nice — and safe — vantage point would have been Mount Elden, a towering volcanic dome in Flagstaff nearly 40 miles (60km) northwest of the crater.
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>    The impact produced a shock wave and air blast that radiated across the landscape. If the impact energy was 20 megatons, it was immediately lethal for human-sized animals within 4 miles (6km) of the impact. A sharp change in pressure caused by the shock wave produced severe lung damage within 6 to 7 miles (10 to 12 km) of the impact. Winds were also catastrophic, with speeds in excess of 900 mph (1,500 km/h) within the inner 4-mile-diameter zone and still more than 60 mph (100 km/h) at radial distances of 12 miles (20km). Those winds would have picked up debris and hurled it across the landscape like a shotgun blast. Mammoths, mastodons, and giant ground sloths were among the unfortunate victims of the impact event. Let’s hope we are able to mitigate future events of that size and larger so that we never have an opportunity to witness them from any distance.
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> David Kring
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> Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston
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> Astronomy Magazine April 27, 2015
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> Life on Venus?
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>    On September 14, 2020, a new planet was added to the list of potentially habitable worlds in the solar system: Venus.
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>    Phosphine, a toxic gas made up of one phosphorus and three hydrogen atoms (PH3), commonly produced by organic life forms but otherwise difficult to make on rocky planets, was discovered in the middle layer of the Venus atmosphere. This raises the tantalizing possibility that something is alive on our planetary neighbor. With this discovery, Venus joins the exalted ranks of Mars and the icy moons Enceladus and Europa among planetary bodies where life may once have existed, or perhaps might even still do so today.
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>    It’s critical to point out that this detection does not mean that astronomers have found alien life in the clouds of Venus. Far from it, in fact.
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>    Although the discovery team identified phosphine at Venus with two different telescopes, helping to confirm the initial detection, phosphine gas can result from several processes that are unrelated to life, such as lightning, meteor impacts or even volcanic activity.
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>    However, the quantity of phosphine detected in the Venusian clouds seems to be far greater than those processes are capable of generating, allowing the team to rule out numerous inorganic possibilities. But our understanding of the chemistry of Venus’ atmosphere is sorely lacking: Only a handful of missions have plunged through the inhospitable, carbon dioxide-dominated atmosphere to take samples among the global layer of sulfuric acid clouds.
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>    There are two possibilities: Either there is some sort of life in the Venus clouds, generating phosphine, or there is unexplained and unexpected chemistry taking place there. How do we find out which it is? We go there and see.

200914 SBAU radio KZSB AM1290 VP DJ BaRonH JW CMcP BM TT 46min ads cropped
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download attached mp3 file and play.
We talked about September astro events shown on graphic found by SBAU President JerryW, also attached.

The SBAU hour on KZSB radio 1290AM, VP DJ Baron Ron Herron, Pres Jerry Wilson, Outreach Chuck McPartlin, Tom Whittemore, Bruce Murdock.  Talk on Betelgeuse dimming, star magnitudes, etc.  Please download attached file to play.

Attached is the audio file of August 28, 2020 SBAU Space Gossip with Vice Pres and DJ Baron Ron Herron, Pres Jerry Wilson, Chuck McPartlin, and Tom Totton.  We were on at 730 and 830am for 15 min each time.  Extra conversation with LadyK and Joe Danely is also included in the middle.  Download the file and play.

Please download the attached MP3 file of the radio program, ads were deleted.
Also, a transcript of the program was made by MS Word online transcribe function...20 pages of approximate conversation that will need some careful consideration of what is being said and by whom...is attached as well.

 Topics that were to be considered:

On 8/22/2020 10:42 PM, Jerry wrote:
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> Monday, August 24
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>    Pegasus the Winged Horse is rising in the east after sunset, climbing higher in the sky as evening proceeds. This large constellation is home to the globular cluster M15 (NGC 7078), sometimes called the Great Pegasus Cluster. M15 is located just over 4° northwest of magnitude 2.4 Enif, the brightest star in Pegasus despite its designation of Epsilon (ε) Pegasi. You’ll find Enif west of the Great Square of Pegasus, roughly 20° west of Markab. Enif, which means “the nose” in Arabic, is typically drawn as the flying horse’s mouth or muzzle.
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>    M15 itself is magnitude 6 and spans 12.3'. It lies about 33,600 light-years away and is one of our galaxy’s oldest globular clusters. M15 will look noticeably fuzzy in binoculars, especially compared to the 6th-magnitude star located just to its west.
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>    This dense globular cluster is also the first globular discovered to contain a planetary nebula, which is the shell of gas blown out by a dying star and subsequently lit up by that star as it fades. The nebula, Pease 1, is challenging to spot even with a large (15 inches or greater) telescope and requires dark skies and patience to pick out from the busy background of the packed cluster. If you’re an experienced observer or photographer looking for a challenge, push the magnification to 300x or greater and look about 1' northeast of the cluster’s core for the tiny, bubblelike nebula.
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> Tuesday, August 25
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>    First Quarter Moon occurs at 1:58 P.M. EDT. Because it rises at essentially the same time, our satellite is visible all evening, already in the sky at sunset and sinking below the horizon just shy of midnight. It’s a great time to settle back for some easy lunar observing. The terminator, which divides night from day, is moving relatively fast; between sunset and moonset, you may be able to detect its motion if you come back to the Moon several times.
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>    Several of the Moon’s large seas are on display for Northern Hemisphere observers: Frigoris, Serenitatis, Tranquillitatis, Nectaris, Crisium, and Fecunditatis. The large crater at Fecunditatis’ eastern edge is Langrenus. From directly above, the 81-mile-wide (130 km) crater is a near-perfect circle; but from our perspective here on Earth, it appears more as an oblong shape, thanks to the curvature of the lunar surface.
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> Wednesday, August 26
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>    Already high overhead at sunset, Cygnus the Swan is your target tonight. Lurking within this graceful grouping of stars is the sky’s surest black hole, one of two components of the binary system called Cygnus X-1. Although the black hole itself is invisible, its companion star — a hot, blue-white giant with the inauspicious designation HDE 226868 — is not. HDE 226868 (also designated HIP 98298, among a few other names) is an 8th-magnitude star less than 0.5° east of Eta (η) Cygni. It’s detectable with binoculars and more easily with a telescope.
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>    HDE 226868 orbits its black hole companion every 5.6 days, flung around by the compact massive object’s immense gravity. Astronomers suspect the pair is so close that the black hole is actively feeding on HDE 226868 as well, pulling material off the star and onto a disk of material that ultimately swirls into the black hole like water flowing down a drain.
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> Thursday, August 27
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>    With a brilliant opposition coming up October 13, we’re now in peak Mars observing season. The best time to observe it is a few hours before sunrise, when the Red Planet is high above the southern horizon, shining at magnitude –1.7 in southeastern Pisces. Its disk is currently 90 percent lit and spans 18". By the end of the month, it will span 19" and grow to 92 percent lit.
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>    Summertime is approaching in the Red Planet’s southern hemisphere; if you observe the planet with a telescope, you’ll see that its southern polar cap, tilted toward Earth, is relatively small. Because of its brilliance, the bright Hellas basin is often confused for the polar cap. The large basin is visible around 1 A.M. EDT and rotates off the disk within about three hours. Come back tomorrow night at the same time for a bit more time to search it out — thanks to the Red Planet’s rotation rate of 24 hours 37 minutes, Mars’ features appear to move slightly backward when viewed at the same time on successive nights.
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> Thursday, August 28
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>    Dwarf Planet 1 Ceres reaches opposition at 8 A.M. EDT. It’s glowing at magnitude 7.7 — within reach of binoculars or a small scope — and visible in Aquarius both early this morning and late this evening. The tiny world is currently 186 million miles (299 million km) from Earth. You’ll find it this morning about halfway on a line drawn between the bright stars Fomalhaut in Piscis Austrinus and Skat in Aquarius. It’s moving slowly west but is still roughly between the same stars by evening.
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>    While you’re in the area, look about 13° northeast of Skat to find Neptune. For a closer signpost, the planet is less than 3° east of 4th-magnitude Phi (φ) Aquarii. At magnitude 7.8, our solar system’s outermost planet is roughly the same brightness as Ceres.
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>    Asteroid 20 Massalia reaches opposition at 5 P.M. EDT, when it is nearly 147 million miles (236 million km) from Earth. It, too, is in Aquarius, about 14° due west of Neptune but glowing a much fainter magnitude 9.4.
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>    The Moon passes 1.4° south of Jupiter at 10 P.M. EDT. The pair, along with Saturn just 8.3° east of Jupiter, is in Sagittarius. The constellation is southwest of where you’ll find Ceres, Massalia, and Neptune in Aquarius.
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> ASTEROID SAMPLE RETURN IN DECEMBER
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>    The Hayabusa2 spacecraft is trekking back to Earth with a sample capsule full of material snagged from a near-Earth asteroid called Ryugu. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), which runs the mission, has long planned to deposit that capsule in the vast desert of Australia, but the new announcement marks that country's official approval of the plan.
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>    Over the course of its stay at Ryugu, Hayabusa2 collected samples from the asteroid's rocky surface, shot the asteroid to create an artificial crater, and collected some of the subsurface material uncovered by that impact as well. The diversity of samples means that scientists will be able to learn more about Ryugu's interior and how it has responded to the harsh forces of outer space, like the solar wind, a constant stream of highly energized particles called plasma flowing off the sun.
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>    But even with advanced spacecraft, scientists can always do more detailed analyses in laboratories on Earth, hence the need to land that capsule. Hayabusa2's predecessor, another asteroid sample-return mission called Hayabusa that visited a space rock called Itokawa, also returned its material to Australia, and the current mission will follow suit, with the deposit scheduled for Dec. 6.
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>    However, unlike Hayabusa, the current spacecraft will not return in full; it will only deposit a sample capsule back to Earth. JAXA is evaluating sending the Hayabusa2 probe on to visit a second asteroid about a decade from now.
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> COMET IN THE MAKING
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>    Like the mythical half-human, half-horse creatures, centaurs in the solar system are hybrids between asteroids and comets. Now, astronomers have caught one morphing from one type of space rock to the other, potentially giving scientists an unprecedented chance to watch a comet form in real time in the decades to come.
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>    “We have an opportunity here to see the birth of a comet as it starts to become active,” says planetary scientist Kat Volk of the University of Arizona in Tucson.
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> The object, called P/2019 LD2, was discovered by the ATLAS telescope in Hawaii in May. Its orbit suggests that it’s a centaur, a class of rocky and icy objects with unstable orbits. Because of that mixed composition and potential to move around the solar system, astronomers have long suspected that centaurs are a missing link between small icy bodies in the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune and comets that regularly visit the inner solar system (SN: 11/19/94).
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>    These “short-period” comets, which are thought to originate from icy objects in the Kuiper Belt, orbit the sun once a decade or so, and make repeat appearances in Earth’s skies. (Long-period comets, like Halley’s Comet, which visits the inner solar system once a century, probably originate even farther from the sun, in the Oort cloud (SN: 10/25/13).)
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>    All previously found short-period comets were spotted only after they had transitioned into comets (SN: 8/6/14). But LD2 just came in from the Kuiper Belt recently and will become a comet in as little as 43 years, Volk and colleagues report August 10 at arXiv.org.
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>    “It’s weird to think that this object should be becoming a comet when I’m retiring,” Volk says.
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>    In 2019, she and colleagues showed that there’s a region of space just beyond Jupiter that they call the “Gateway”.  In this area, small planetary objects hang out while warming up and transitioning from outer solar system ice balls to inner solar system comets with their long tails. It’s like a comet incubator, says planetary scientist Gal Sarid of the SETI Institute, who is based in Rockville, Md.
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>    After hearing about LD2, Volk, Sarid and their colleagues simulated thousands of possible trajectories to see where the object had been and where it is going. LD2’s orbit probably took it near Saturn around 1850, and it entered its current orbit past Jupiter after a close encounter with the gas giant in 2017, the team found. The object will leave its present orbit and move in toward the sun in 2063, where heat from the sun will probably sublimate LD2’s volatile elements, giving it a bright cometary tail, the researchers say.
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>    “This will be the first ever comet that we know its history, because we’ve seen it before being a comet,” Sarid says.
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>    The fact that LD2 is fairly new to the inner reaches of the solar system suggests that it’s made of relatively pristine material that has been in the back of the solar system’s freezer for billions of years, unaltered by heat from the sun. That would make it a time capsule of the early solar system. Studying its composition could help planetary scientists learn what the first planets were made of.
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> DO WE LIVE IN A MULTIVERSE?
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>    For as long as humans have gazed skyward, a question has loomed in the back of our collective mind: How do we know everything that we see is everything there is?
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>    Decades of astrophysical research beginning in the late 19th century established the universe as we see it, culminating with the Big Bang theory. We now know the universe is about 13.8 billion years old and at least 150 billion trillion miles across. But in recent years, astronomers have begun to address a staggering possibility — the universe we can observe, and in which we live, may be one of many that makes up the cosmos.
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>    The suggestive evidence for this comes from several directions, from the idea of cosmic inflation, from string ttheory and the existence of the famous cosmological constant. Some of the notions that come out of these lines of evidence are pretty counterintuitive. Yet that doesn’t worry astronomers. “I fully expect the true nature of reality to be weird and counterintuitive,” says cosmologist Max Tegmark of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “which is why I believe these crazy things.”
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>    The idea of multiple universes, or multiverses, poses the notion of the universe existing like a giant sponge. Each bubble is a distinct universe, like ours, but others could exist separated by giant voids.
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>    What’s the evidence for all this? First, measurements of distant supernovae suggest the expansion of the cosmos is accelerating. Second, more and more evidence supports the inflationary scenario of the early history of the universe. Third, ideas about inflation suggest many Big Bangs may have occurred. Fourth, recent notions about string theory suggest universes of very different types may have formed. Altogether, these notions suggest it was possible, if not probable, that multiple universes of different types formed in the past, and they coexist with the familiar cosmos we can see.
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>    Even without other universes, astronomers know the universe is larger than what we see with our telescopes. The view horizon now spans about 14 billion light-years; and if you count the knowledge that distant objects have expanded far beyond what we now see, the “currently” existing horizon is at least 40 billion light-years across.
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>    Accepting an inflation-based universe of the size we see, Jaume Garriga of the University of Barcelona and Alexander Vilenkin of Tufts University have proposed a cosmos peppered with numerous “O-regions,” observable universes like ours. Part of the idea goes that inflation, the hyperexpansion in the early universe, never completely stopped. It stopped where we are, producing our O-region, and many others. But in other areas of the universe at large, it continues. This creates a concept called eternal inflation — a universe unlike a simple sphere, instead rather like a sponge, pocked with holes that are bubble universes.
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>    How convincing is this to astrophysicists? Tegmark remains open. “As scientists,” he says, “We’re not testing the general idea of a multiverse. We’re testing inflation — a mathematical theory that predicts a multiverse and all kinds of other stuff.” Vilenkin looks ahead to an exciting future of learning more about multiverses. “By doing measurements in our own region,” he says, “We can test our predictions for what lies beyond.”

Missed the first 5 min of the 730 segment.  recording has a bit extra news stuff, but what the hay.
Download the attached mp3 file and play.

730am
-stars near the sun
-CME viewing? 
-comet neowise, orbit time, shape, oumoamoa? origin
-last meteor shower was perseids

830am: news, earth/sky commercial
-sbcc astro mention,
-art harris pandemic jokes....times are rough; wurst case senario
-sun used to have binary companion
-cloud of dust around vega, seen w infrared
-betelguese star dimming, puff of dust
-debris avoidance measures DAM, ISS moves; air leak

-perserverance

more news

Please download and play attached mp3 file to listen to two 15min shows stitched together (30min) of various astronomy topics or "Space Gossip"!