This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the star cluster Trumpler 14. One of the largest gatherings of hot, massive and bright stars in the Milky Way, this cluster houses some of the most luminous stars in our entire galaxy.
Single stars are often overlooked in favour of their larger cosmic cousins — but when they join forces, they create truly breathtaking scenes to rival even the most glowing of nebulae or swirling of galaxies. This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the star cluster Trumpler 14. One of the largest gatherings of hot, massive and bright stars in the Milky Way, this cluster houses some of the most luminous stars in our entire galaxy.
Around 1100 open clusters have so far been discovered within the Milky Way, although many more are thought to exist. Trumpler 14 is one of these, located some 8000 light-years away towards the centre of the well-known Carina Nebula.
This short sequence zooms in on the open young cluster of stars, Trumpler 14. One of the largest gatherings of hot, massive and bright stars in the Milky Way, this cluster houses some of the most luminous stars in our entire galaxy. Credit: ESO, DSS, ESA/Hubble, Risinger (skysurvey.org) Music: Johan B. Monell
At a mere 500 000 years old — a small fraction of the Pleiades open cluster’s age of 115 million years — Trumpler 14 is not only one of the most populous clusters within the Carina Nebula, but also the youngest. However, it is fast making up for lost time, forming stars at an incredible rate and putting on a stunning visual display.
This region of space houses one of the highest concentrations of massive, luminous stars in the entire Milky Way — a spectacular family of young, bright, white-blue stars. These stars are rapidly working their way through their vast supplies of hydrogen, and have only a few million years of life left before they meet a dramatic demise and explode as supernovae. In the meantime, despite their youth, these stars are making a huge impact on their environment. They are literally making waves!
As the stars fling out high-speed particles from their surfaces, strong winds surge out into space. These winds collide with the surrounding material, causing shock waves that heat the gas to millions of degrees and trigger intense bursts of X-rays. These strong stellar winds also carve out cavities in nearby clouds of gas and dust, and kickstart the formation of new stars.
This colour-composite image of the Carina Nebula, made by the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at La Silla, Chile, reveals exquisite details in the stars and dust of the region. The open star cluster Trumpler 14, a collection of very bright, young stars within the Carina Nebula, is marked with a red circle. Several more well known astronomical objects can be seen in this wide field image: to the bottom left of the image is one of the most impressive binary stars in the Universe, Eta Carinae, with the famous Keyhole Nebula just adjacent to the star. A second open star cluster, Collinder 228 is also seen in the image, just below Eta Carinae.
The peculiar arc-shaped cloud visible at the very bottom of this image is suspected to be the result of such a wind. This feature is thought to be a bow shock created by the wind flowing from the nearby star Trumpler 14 MJ 218. Astronomers have observed this star to be moving through space at some 350 000 kilometres per hour, sculpting the surrounding clumps of gas and dust as it does so.
Astronomers estimate that around 2000 stars reside within Trumpler 14, ranging in size from less than one tenth to up to several tens of times the mass of the Sun. The most prominent star in Trumpler 14, and the brightest star in this image, is the supergiant HD 93129Aa [1]. It is one of the most brilliant and hottest stars in our entire galaxy.
Notes
[1] HD 93129Aa is part of the binary star system HD 93129AaAb consisting of HD 93129Aa and HD 93129Ab. HD 93129Aa is an O-type star that is approximately two and a half million times brighter than the Sun, and has a mass 80 times greater. It forms a close binary with another massive star within the open cluster, meaning that the two orbit around a shared centre of mass. With a surface temperature of over 50 000 degrees, HD 93129Aa is one of the hottest O-type stars in the entire Milky Way.
Caltech researchers have found evidence of a giant planet tracing a bizarre, highly elongated orbit in the outer solar system. The object, which the researchers have nicknamed Planet Nine, has a mass about 10 times that of Earth and orbits about 20 times farther from the sun on average than does Neptune (which orbits the sun at an average distance of 2.8 billion miles). In fact, it would take this new planet between 10,000 and 20,000 years to make just one full orbit around the sun.
This artistic rendering shows the distant view from Planet Nine back towards the sun. The planet is thought to be gaseous, similar to Uranus and Neptune. Hypothetical lightning lights up the night side. Credit: Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC)The researchers, Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown, discovered the planet’s existence through mathematical modeling and computer simulations but have not yet observed the object directly.
“This would be a real ninth planet,” says Brown, the Richard and Barbara Rosenberg Professor of Planetary Astronomy. “There have only been two true planets discovered since ancient times, and this would be a third. It’s a pretty substantial chunk of our solar system that’s still out there to be found, which is pretty exciting.”
The six most distant known objects in the solar system with orbits exclusively beyond Neptune (magenta) all mysteriously line up in a single direction. Also, when viewed in three dimensions, they tilt nearly identically away from the plane of the solar system. Batygin and Brown show that 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. Credit: Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC); [Diagram created using WorldWide Telescope.]Brown notes that the putative ninth planet—at 5,000 times the mass of Pluto—is sufficiently large that there should be no debate about whether it is a true planet. Unlike the class of smaller objects now known as dwarf planets, Planet Nine gravitationally dominates its neighborhood of the solar system. In fact, it dominates a region larger than any of the other known planets—a fact that Brown says makes it “the most planet-y of the planets in the whole solar system.”
Batygin and Brown describe their work in the current issue of the Astronomical Journal and show how Planet Nine helps explain a number of mysterious features of the field of icy objects and debris beyond Neptune known as the Kuiper Belt.
“Although we were initially quite skeptical that this planet could exist, as we continued to investigate its orbit and what it would mean for the outer solar system, we become increasingly convinced that it is out there,” says Batygin, an assistant professor of planetary science. “For the first time in over 150 years, there is solid evidence that the solar system’s planetary census is incomplete.”
Caltech professor Mike Brown and assistant professor Konstanin Batygin have been working together to investigate distant objects in our solar system for more than a year and a half. The two bring very different perspectives to the work: Brown is an observer, used to looking at the sky to try and anchor everything in the reality of what can be seen; Batygin is a theorist who considers how things might work from a physics standpoint. Credit: Credit: Lance Hayashida/CaltechThe road to the theoretical discovery was not straightforward. In 2014, a former postdoc of Brown’s, Chad Trujillo, and his colleague Scott Sheppard published a paper noting that 13 of the most distant objects in the Kuiper Belt are similar with respect to an obscure orbital feature. To explain that similarity, they suggested the possible presence of a small planet. Brown thought the planet solution was unlikely, but his interest was piqued.
He took the problem down the hall to Batygin, and the two started what became a year-and-a-half-long collaboration to investigate the distant objects. As an observer and a theorist, respectively, the researchers approached the work from very different perspectives—Brown as someone who looks at the sky and tries to anchor everything in the context of what can be seen, and Batygin as someone who puts himself within the context of dynamics, considering how things might work from a physics standpoint. Those differences allowed the researchers to challenge each other’s ideas and to consider new possibilities. “I would bring in some of these observational aspects; he would come back with arguments from theory, and we would push each other. I don’t think the discovery would have happened without that back and forth,” says Brown. ” It was perhaps the most fun year of working on a problem in the solar system that I’ve ever had.”
Fairly quickly Batygin and Brown realized that the six most distant objects from Trujillo and Shepherd’s original collection all follow elliptical orbits that point in the same direction in physical space. That is particularly surprising because the outermost points of their orbits move around the solar system, and they travel at different rates.
“It’s almost like having six hands on a clock all moving at different rates, and when you happen to look up, they’re all in exactly the same place,” says Brown. The odds of having that happen are something like 1 in 100, he says. But on top of that, the orbits of the six objects are also all tilted in the same way—pointing about 30 degrees downward in the same direction relative to the plane of the eight known planets. The probability of that happening is about 0.007 percent. “Basically it shouldn’t happen randomly,” Brown says. “So we thought something else must be shaping these orbits.”
The first possibility they investigated was that perhaps there are enough distant Kuiper Belt objects—some of which have not yet been discovered—to exert the gravity needed to keep that subpopulation clustered together. The researchers quickly ruled this out when it turned out that such a scenario would require the Kuiper Belt to have about 100 times the mass it has today.
That left them with the idea of a planet. Their first instinct was to run simulations involving a planet in a distant orbit that encircled the orbits of the six Kuiper Belt objects, acting like a giant lasso to wrangle them into their alignment. Batygin says that almost works but does not provide the observed eccentricities precisely. “Close, but no cigar,” he says.
Then, effectively by accident, Batygin and Brown noticed that if they ran their simulations with a massive planet in an anti-aligned orbit—an orbit in which the planet’s closest approach to the sun, or perihelion, is 180 degrees across from the perihelion of all the other objects and known planets—the distant Kuiper Belt objects in the simulation assumed the alignment that is actually observed.
“Your natural response is ‘This orbital geometry can’t be right. This can’t be stable over the long term because, after all, this would cause the planet and these objects to meet and eventually collide,'” says Batygin. But through a mechanism known as mean-motion resonance, the anti-aligned orbit of the ninth planet actually prevents the Kuiper Belt objects from colliding with it and keeps them aligned. As orbiting objects approach each other they exchange energy. So, for example, for every four orbits Planet Nine makes, a distant Kuiper Belt object might complete nine orbits. They never collide. Instead, like a parent maintaining the arc of a child on a swing with periodic pushes, Planet Nine nudges the orbits of distant Kuiper Belt objects such that their configuration with relation to the planet is preserved.
“Still, I was very skeptical,” says Batygin. “I had never seen anything like this in celestial mechanics.”
But little by little, as the researchers investigated additional features and consequences of the model, they became persuaded. “A good theory should not only explain things that you set out to explain. It should hopefully explain things that you didn’t set out to explain and make predictions that are testable,” says Batygin.
And indeed Planet Nine’s existence helps explain more than just the alignment of the distant Kuiper Belt objects. It also provides an explanation for the mysterious orbits that two of them trace. The first of those objects, dubbed Sedna, was discovered by Brown in 2003. Unlike standard-variety Kuiper Belt objects, which get gravitationally “kicked out” by Neptune and then return back to it, Sedna never gets very close to Neptune. A second object like Sedna, known as 2012 VP113, was announced by Trujillo and Shepherd in 2014. Batygin and Brown found that the presence of Planet Nine in its proposed orbit naturally produces Sedna-like objects by taking a standard Kuiper Belt object and slowly pulling it away into an orbit less connected to Neptune.
But the real kicker for the researchers was the fact that their simulations also predicted that there would be objects in the Kuiper Belt on orbits inclined perpendicularly to the plane of the planets. Batygin kept finding evidence for these in his simulations and took them to Brown. “Suddenly I realized there are objects like that,” recalls Brown. In the last three years, observers have identified four objects tracing orbits roughly along one perpendicular line from Neptune and one object along another. “We plotted up the positions of those objects and their orbits, and they matched the simulations exactly,” says Brown. “When we found that, my jaw sort of hit the floor.”
“When the simulation aligned the distant Kuiper Belt objects and created objects like Sedna, we thought this is kind of awesome—you kill two birds with one stone,” says Batygin. “But with the existence of the planet also explaining these perpendicular orbits, not only do you kill two birds, you also take down a bird that you didn’t realize was sitting in a nearby tree.”
Where did Planet Nine come from and how did it end up in the outer solar system? Scientists have long believed that the early solar system began with four planetary cores that went on to grab all of the gas around them, forming the four gas planets—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Over time, collisions and ejections shaped them and moved them out to their present locations. “But there is no reason that there could not have been five cores, rather than four,” says Brown. Planet Nine could represent that fifth core, and if it got too close to Jupiter or Saturn, it could have been ejected into its distant, eccentric orbit.
Batygin and Brown continue to refine their simulations and learn more about the planet’s orbit and its influence on the distant solar system. Meanwhile, Brown and other colleagues have begun searching the skies for Planet Nine. Only the planet’s rough orbit is known, not the precise location of the planet on that elliptical path. If the planet happens to be close to its perihelion, Brown says, astronomers should be able to spot it in images captured by previous surveys. If it is in the most distant part of its orbit, the world’s largest telescopes—such as the twin 10-meter telescopes at the W. M. Keck Observatory and the Subaru Telescope, all on Mauna Kea in Hawaii—will be needed to see it. If, however, Planet Nine is now located anywhere in between, many telescopes have a shot at finding it.
“I would love to find it,” says Brown. “But I’d also be perfectly happy if someone else found it. That is why we’re publishing this paper. We hope that other people are going to get inspired and start searching.”
In terms of understanding more about the solar system’s context in the rest of the universe, Batygin says that in a couple of ways, this ninth planet that seems like such an oddball to us would actually make our solar system more similar to the other planetary systems that astronomers are finding around other stars. First, most of the planets around other sunlike stars have no single orbital range—that is, some orbit extremely close to their host stars while others follow exceptionally distant orbits. Second, the most common planets around other stars range between 1 and 10 Earth-masses.
“One of the most startling discoveries about other planetary systems has been that the most common type of planet out there has a mass between that of Earth and that of Neptune,” says Batygin. “Until now, we’ve thought that the solar system was lacking in this most common type of planet. Maybe we’re more normal after all.”
Brown, well known for the significant role he played in the demotion of Pluto from a planet to a dwarf planet adds, “All those people who are mad that Pluto is no longer a planet can be thrilled to know that there is a real planet out there still to be found,” he says. “Now we can go and find this planet and make the solar system have nine planets once again.”
The paper is titled “Evidence for a Distant Giant Planet in the Solar System.”
The Philip K. Dick Science Fiction Film Festival Announces Fourth Year Award Winners
NYC’s Only Sci-Fi Film Festival Honored Superb Independent Filmmaking. Record 80 Films From Over 20 Countries Screened At Four-Day Gathering.
(New York City, N.Y.) January 19, 2016 — The Philip K. Dick Science Fiction Film Festival has announced the award winners of its fourth annual event which took place from January 14-17, 2016. Among the festival’s extraordinary 80 film lineup, twelve films rose as shining examples of independent cinema enriched with distinctive styles, daring narratives, stunning visuals and powerhouse performances all culminating into a thrilling experience for the science fiction genre’s legions of fans.
Festival founder and director Daniel Abella presented the coveted honors to filmmakers for their superb achievement. This year the festival welcomed three award-winning and highly respected individuals to its judging board including scientist and science fiction writer David Brin; science fiction writer, media personality and professor Paul Levinson and science fiction editor and administrator of the Philip K. Dick Award, David G. Hartwell, a colleague and editor of the late author. On opening night, Hartwell commented on the festival’s mission to serve as a platform in providing sensational independent films in honor of Philip K. Dick. “He was an impressive man,” said Hartwell. “The idea of a festival devoted to him would have astonished him.”
The Philip K. Dick Science Fiction Film Festival congratulates the 2016 award winners:
Best Philip K. Dick Feature: The Incident (2015) directed by Isaac Ezban
Best Science Fiction Feature: Counter Clockwise (2015) directed by George Moïse
Best Horror/Supernatural Feature: Chatter (2015) directed by Matthew Solomon
Best Trailer: Caihong City (2015) directed by Florina Titz
The four-day festival screened at Village East Cinema (181-189 2nd Ave, New York, NY 10003) with several events at Lovecraft Bar NYC (50 Avenue B, New York, NY 10009) including a pre-reception on January 13. The night headlined a special Skype conversation with Blade Runner actress Joanna Cassidy and the world premiere of the Golden Globe Award winner’s short film What Might Have Been: Snake Dance (2012).
While speaking about her decision to create a never-filmed scene from the popular movie, the actress recalled reading Philip K. Dick’s original book. “When I got married when I was 18-years-old and I was driving across the country with my then husband, we both loved science fiction and we had a stack of the old paperback books,” she said. “And one of them was Philip K. Dick’s book [Do Android’s Dream of Electric Sheep?] and I’m reading this book going ‘This is incredible. They have to make a movie about this. This is amazing.’ And look what happened.”
About The Philip K. Dick Science Fiction Film Festival: The Philip K. Dick Science Fiction Film Festival is New York City’s first and only festival of its kind and is organized by individuals and filmmakers who understand the difficulties and challenges of telling a unique story in a corporate environment. With successful 2012-2015 festivals, international festivals in Lille, France (2013, 2015) and Łódź, Poland (2015) and numerous event screenings the festival is only beginning its vision of honoring the legacy of the great Philip K. Dick. The festival has received media attention from The New York Times, CBS New York, The New York Daily News, The Wall Street Journal, Discover Magazine, Time Out New York, Gothamist, Metro New York, Chelsea Now, The Villager, East Villager, Downtown Express, MassLive.com, DNA Info, Flavorpill, Broadway World, Fangoria, Examiner and a January 13, 2015 primetime segment on NBC New York/COZI TV’s News 4 New York at 7 with anchor Roseanne Colletti (viewed at nbcnewyork.com/on-air/as-seen-on/288485941.html). From organizers, programmers, directors, writers, producers and industry professionals who best represent the goals of the festival to the original voices and enhanced visions in works submitted, this is a festival created for filmmakers by filmmakers.
About The Philip K. Dick Science Fiction Film Festival Sponsors: OMNI Reboot: OMNI Reboot is the intersection of science, technology, art, culture, design, and metaphysics. It is an experience, as well as an environment for both the informed and the information seeker. It’s a quest for truth, learning from yesterday and speculating about tomorrow, uncovering hidden realities, and living to make readers dream and wonder a free-rolling resource in a terrifying, wonderful, metamorphosing world. A true glimpse into the future. For more information, visit omnireboot.com.
Evolve and Ascend: Where the Library of Alexandria meets Andy Warhol’s Factory, Evolve and Ascend is all about growth through dialogue and sharing. The blog started with the firm belief that individuals can truly unlock their full potential through communicating and getting exposed to new ideas and insights that could change their outlook on life. This is a virtual crossroads where artists, entrepreneurs, (forward) thinkers and visionaries can converge into one place and start something unique. For more information, visit evolveandascend.com.
About Philip K. Dick: “Reality is whatever refuses to go away when I stop believing in it.” – Philip K. Dick Philip K. Dick (1928-1982) was one of the 20th century’s most profound novelists and writers within the science fiction community. His exploration, analysis and beliefs led to the publishings of 44 novels and 121 short stories. Dick’s enormous library of works led to several film and television adaptations including Blade Runner (1982), Total Recall (1990), Minority Report (2002), Paycheck (2003), A Scanner Darkly (2006), Radio Free Albemuth (2010), The Adjustment Bureau (2011), Total Recall (2012), FOX’s Minority Report (2015) and Amazon’s critically acclaimed series The Man in the High Castle (2015). Dick’s enormously effective views comprised of fictional universes, virtual realities, dystopian worlds and human mutation foresaw a sensational version of the current state of government and contemporary life. Though he is gone in the physical form his philosophies live on in the techniques applied to modern narratives, films and ideals and generate large displays of appreciation and understanding.
![Planet-9-Art-NEWS-WEB[1]](https://i0.wp.com/hobbyspace.com/Blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Planet-9-Art-NEWS-WEB1.jpg)
![P9_KBO_orbits_labeled-NEWS-WEB[1]](https://i0.wp.com/hobbyspace.com/Blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/P9_KBO_orbits_labeled-NEWS-WEB1.png)
![kbatygin-mbrown-0049_1000[1]](https://i0.wp.com/hobbyspace.com/Blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/kbatygin-mbrown-0049_10001.jpg)
![CZHeQ0PUsAAbLQf[1]](https://i0.wp.com/hobbyspace.com/Blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/CZHeQ0PUsAAbLQf1.jpg)
![CZHeTqcUMAA8HuG[1]](https://i0.wp.com/hobbyspace.com/Blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/CZHeTqcUMAA8HuG1.jpg)
