Check out the night sky this month, October 2024. Here are videos highlighting the top sights to observe.
** What’s Up: October 2024 Skywatching Tips from NASA – NASA JPL
What are some skywatching highlights in October 2024?
A potentially bright comet (C/2023 A3) to look for after mid-month, good opportunities to spy the ocean world NASA’s launching to, and the monthly dance of four planets with the Moon.
0:00 Intro 0:21 October planet visibility 0:59 Viewing Europa 2:10 Moon & planet pairings 2:38 Comet C/2023 A3 3:58 September photo highlights 4:12 October Moon phases
Additional information about topics covered in this episode of What’s Up, along with still images from the video, and the video transcript, are available at https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/skywatch….
Crisp, clear October nights are full of celestial showpieces. Find Pegasus, the flying horse of Greek myth, to pinpoint dense globular star clusters and galaxies, and keep watching for space-based views of M15, NGC 7331, and the Andromeda Galaxy.
About this Series … “Tonight’s Sky” is a monthly video of constellations you can observe in the night sky. The series is produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute, home of science operations for the Hubble Space Telescope, in partnership with NASA’s Universe of Learning. This is a recurring show, and you can find more episodes—and other astronomy videos—at https://hubblesite.org/resource-gallery/tonights-sky.
What’s in the night sky this month? Astronomers Pete Lawrence and Paul Abel reveal the best things to see in the sky in October 2024, including Comet A3, Saturn and Jupiter moon events, meteor showers and the deep sky.
00:00 Intro 00:14 Inner planets 03:45 Outer planets 10:42 Thin crescent Moon 12:37 Saturn and moon events 13:54 Southern Taurid meteor shower 14:48 Saturn and moons Titan and Dione 15:34 Perigee full Moon 16:48 moon and Pleiades 17:10 Orionid meteor shower 17:27 Ganymede shadow transit of Jupiter 19:00 Comet C/2023 A3 22:58 Stars, constellations and deep sky
** Sky & Telescope’s Sky Tour Podcast – October 2024 | A Comet, Andromeda, and Pegasus – Sky & Telescope Youtube
Our monthly Sky Tour #astronomy #podcast provides an informative and entertaining 10-minute guided tour of the #nighttime #sky. Join us for the October 2024 episode and ponder the #Moon’s whereabouts; spot a fast-moving #comet, learn what #andromeda and #pegasus have in common, circle around the pole star #Polaris, and watch for meteors shed by #halleyscomet.
Listen and subscribe to this podcast at https://skyandtelescope.org/observing/ and don’t forget to subscribe to S&T’s YouTube channel to get alerts about new videos, including this monthly podcast
This artist’s impression shows Barnard b, a sub-Earth-mass planet that was discovered orbiting Barnard’s star. Its signal was detected with the ESPRESSO instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), and astronomers were able to confirm it with data from other instruments. An earlier promising detection in 2018 around the same star could not be confirmed by these data. On this newly discovered exoplanet, which has at least half the mass of Venus but is too hot to support liquid water, a year lasts just over three Earth days.
Using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), astronomers have discovered an exoplanet orbiting Barnard’s star, the closest single star to our Sun. On this newly discovered exoplanet, which has at least half the mass of Venus, a year lasts just over three Earth days. The team’s observations also hint at the existence of three more exoplanet candidates, in various orbits around the star.
Located just six light-years away, Barnard’s star is the second-closest stellar system — after Alpha Centauri’s three-star group — and the closest individual star to us. Owing to its proximity, it is a primary target in the search for Earth-like exoplanets. Despite a promising detection back in 2018, no planet orbiting Barnard’s star had been confirmed until now.
The discovery of this new exoplanet — announced in a paper published today in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics — is the result of observations made over the last five years with ESO’s VLT, located at Paranal Observatory in Chile.
“Even if it took a long time, we were always confident that we could find something,”
says Jonay González Hernández, a researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias in Spain, and lead author of the paper. The team were looking for signals from possible exoplanets within the habitable or temperate zone of Barnard’s star — the range where liquid water can exist on the planet’s surface. Red dwarfs like Barnard’s star are often targeted by astronomers since low-mass rocky planets are easier to detect there than around larger Sun-like stars. [1]
Barnard b [2], as the newly discovered exoplanet is called, is twenty times closer to Barnard’s star than Mercury is to the Sun. It orbits its star in 3.15 Earth days and has a surface temperature around 125 °C.
“Barnard b is one of the lowest-mass exoplanets known and one of the few known with a mass less than that of Earth. But the planet is too close to the host star, closer than the habitable zone,” explains González Hernández. “Even if the star is about 2500 degrees cooler than our Sun, it is too hot there to maintain liquid water on the surface.”
For their observations, the team used ESPRESSO, a highly precise instrument designed to measure the wobble of a star caused by the gravitational pull of one or more orbiting planets. The results obtained from these observations were confirmed by data from other instruments also specialised in exoplanet hunting: HARPS at ESO’s La Silla Observatory, HARPS-N and CARMENES. The new data do not, however, support the existence of the exoplanet reported in 2018.
In addition to the confirmed planet, the international team also found hints of three more exoplanet candidates orbiting the same star. These candidates, however, will require additional observations with ESPRESSO to be confirmed.
“We now need to continue observing this star to confirm the other candidate signals,”
says Alejandro Suárez Mascareño, a researcher also at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias and co-author of the study.
“But the discovery of this planet, along with other previous discoveries such as Proxima b and d, shows that our cosmic backyard is full of low-mass planets.”
ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), currently under construction, is set to transform the field of exoplanet research. The ELT’s ANDES instrument will allow researchers to detect more of these small, rocky planets in the temperate zone around nearby stars, beyond the reach of current telescopes, and enable them to study the composition of their atmospheres.
Graphic representation of the relative distances between the nearest stars and the Sun. Barnard’s star is the second closest star system to the Sun, and the nearest single star to us.
Notes
[1] Astronomers target cool stars, like red dwarfs, because their temperate zone is much closer to the star than that of hotter stars, like the Sun. This means that the planets orbiting within their temperate zone have shorter orbital periods, allowing astronomers to monitor them over several days or weeks, rather than years. In addition, red dwarfs are much less massive than the Sun, so they are more easily disturbed by the gravitational pull of the planets around them and thus they wobble more strongly.
[2] It’s common practice in science to name exoplanets by the name of their host star with a lowercase letter added to it, ‘b’ indicating the first known planet, ’c’ the next one, and so on. The name Barnard b was therefore also given to a previously suspected planet candidate around Barnard’s star, which scientists were unable to confirm.
This collage highlights a small selection of regions of the Milky Way imaged as part of the most detailed infrared map ever of our galaxy. Here we see, from left to right and top to bottom: NGC 3576, NGC 6357, Messier 17, NGC 6188, Messier 22 and NGC 3603. All of them are clouds of gas and dust where stars are forming, except Messier 22, which is a very dense group of old stars. The images were captured with ESO’s Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) and its infrared camera VIRCAM. The gigantic map to which these images belong contains 1.5 billion objects. The data were gathered over the course of 13 years as part of the VISTA Variables in the Vía Láctea (VVV) survey and its companion project, the VVV eXtended survey (VVVX).
Astronomers have published a gigantic infrared map of the Milky Way containing more than 1.5 billion objects ― the most detailed one ever made. Using the European Southern Observatory’s VISTA telescope, the team monitored the central regions of our Galaxy over more than 13 years. At 500 terabytes of data, this is the largest observational project ever carried out with an ESO telescope.
“We made so many discoveries, we have changed the view of our Galaxy forever,”
says Dante Minniti, an astrophysicist at Universidad Andrés Bello in Chile who led the overall project.
This record-breaking map comprises 200 000 images taken by ESO’s VISTA ― the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy. Located at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile, the telescope’s main purpose is to map large areas of the sky. The team used VISTA’s infrared camera VIRCAM, which can peer through the dust and gas that permeates our galaxy. It is therefore able to see the radiation from the Milky Way’s most hidden places, opening a unique window onto our galactic surroundings.
This gigantic dataset [1] covers an area of the sky equivalent to 8600 full moons, and contains about 10 times more objects than a previous map released by the same team back in 2012. It includes newborn stars, which are often embedded in dusty cocoons, and globular clusters –– dense groups of millions of the oldest stars in the Milky Way. Observing infrared light means VISTA can also spot very cold objects, which glow at these wavelengths, like brown dwarfs (‘failed’ stars that do not have sustained nuclear fusion) or free-floating planets that don’t orbit a star.
This image from ESO’s VISTA telescope captures a celestial landscape of vast, glowing clouds of gas and tendrils of dust surrounding hot young stars. This infrared view reveals the stellar nursery known as NGC 6357 in a new light. It was taken as part of the VISTA Variables in the Vía Láctea (VVV) survey, which is currently scanning the Milky Way in a bid to map our galaxy’s structure and explain how it formed.
The observations began in 2010 and ended in the first half of 2023, spanning a total of 420 nights. By observing each patch of the sky many times, the team was able to not only determine the locations of these objects, but also track how they move and whether their brightness changes. They charted stars whose luminosity changes periodically that can be used as cosmic rulers for measuring distances [2]. This has given us an accurate 3D view of the inner regions of the Milky Way, which were previously hidden by dust. The researchers also tracked hypervelocity stars — fast-moving stars catapulted from the central region of the Milky Way after a close encounter with the supermassive black hole lurking there.
The new map contains data gathered as part of the VISTA Variables in the Vía Láctea (VVV) survey [3] and its companion project, the VVV eXtended (VVVX) survey.
“The project was a monumental effort, made possible because we were surrounded by a great team,”
says Roberto Saito, an astrophysicist at the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina in Brazil and lead author of the paper published today in Astronomy & Astrophysics on the completion of the project.
The VVV and VVVX surveys have already led to more than 300 scientific articles. With the surveys now complete, the scientific exploration of the gathered data will continue for decades to come. Meanwhile, ESO’s Paranal Observatory is being prepared for the future: VISTA will be updated with its new instrument 4MOST and ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) will receive its MOONS instrument. Together, they will provide spectra of millions of the objects surveyed here, with countless discoveries to be expected.
Notes
[1] The dataset is too large to release as a single image, but the processed data and objects catalogue can be accessed in the ESO Science Portal.
[2] One way to measure the distance to a star is by comparing how bright it appears as seen from Earth to how intrinsically bright it is; but the latter is often unknown. Certain types of stars change their brightness periodically, and there is a very strong connection between how quickly they do this and how intrinsically luminous they are. Measuring these fluctuations allows astronomers to work out how luminous these stars are, and therefore how far away they lie.
[3] Vía Láctea is the Latin name for the Milky Way.
Here is this week’s selection of videos, articles, and news items concerning space habitats (govt and commercial), living in space, and space settlement.
** Space to Ground: Sunita in Charge: Sept. 20, 2024 – NASA Johnson
** NASA’s Starliner astronauts talk about watching their ride leave ISS without them – VideoFromSpace
NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore talk about Starliner’s return trip and requesting an absentee ballot for the US election in November. Watch Starliner land: https://www.space.com/boeing-starline…
** Tracy C. Dyson Powers Space Station Research – NASA Johnson
NASA astronaut Tracy C. Dyson is returning home after a six-month mission aboard the International Space Station. While on orbit, Dyson conducted an array of experiments and technology demonstrations that contribute to advancements for humanity on Earth and the agency’s trajectory to the Moon and Mars. Here is a look at some of the science Dyson conducted during her mission: https://go.nasa.gov/4euV5kt
** NASA Aatronaut Discusses Life in Space with KCRA-TV, Sacramento – NASA Video
Aboard the International Space Station, Expedition 71 Flight Engineer Tracy C. Dyson of NASA discussed life and work aboard the orbital outpost during an in-flight interview Sept. 20 with KCRA-TV. Dyson is in the midst of a long-duration mission aboard the microgravity laboratory to advance scientific knowledge and demonstrate new technologies for future human and robotic exploration flights as part of NASA’s Moon and Mars exploration approach, including lunar missions through NASA’s Artemis program.
=== Commercial space habitats
** Updates on NASA’s transition from ISS to commercial space stations – Laura Forczyk
The International Space Station will soon be deorbited, and NASA is preparing to rely on commercial space stations, or commercial LEO destinations. In today’s NASA Advisory Council’s Human Exploration and Operations Committee meeting, NASA gave various updates on avoiding a gap in LEO, salvaging ISS items, the ISS deorbit timeline, the future of NASA microgravity research, and more.
Axiom Space is facing significant financial headwinds as the company attempts to deliver on two key commercial programs for NASA—the development of a private space station in low-Earth orbit and spacesuits that could one day be worn by astronauts on the Moon.
Forbes reports that Axiom Space, which was founded by billionaire Kam Ghaffarian and NASA executive Mike Suffredini in 2016, has been struggling to raise money to keep its doors open and has had difficulties meeting its payroll dating back to at least early 2023. In addition, the Houston-based company has fallen behind on payments to key suppliers, including Thales Alenia Space for its space station and SpaceX for crewed launches.
— Progress on construction of Axiom’s first space habitat:
Axiom Station’s Habitat One pressure vessel nears completion! @Thales_Alenia_S has welded the Axial Bulkhead to the Cone Panel and is moving toward quality inspection. With this, only three more welds remain until the pressure vessel is complete and Hab One is prepared for… pic.twitter.com/wHrkVFDEaU
The @Axiom_Space Station crew quarters will be about 20% bigger than the ones currently on Space Station, and unlike current quarters, each one will have a window. pic.twitter.com/eUqxT39GE1
On Sept. 11, we hosted NASA at our Eldorado campus for Milestone 5 of our Interim Design Review under CCSC-2, part of our NASA Space Act Agreement, where we summarized our Pathfinder mission and introduced our route to launch. pic.twitter.com/KKrArvUAYs
Sierra Space is collaborating with NASA for the development of the company’s commercial low Earth orbit ecosystem, including next-generation space transportation, in-space infrastructure, and expandable and tailorable space facilities providing a human presence in low Earth orbit.
Sierra Space, a leading commercial space company and defense tech prime that is Building a Platform in Space to Benefit Life on Earth®, announced today the company’s proprietary Carbothermal Oxygen Production Reactor has successfully completed thermal vacuum testing at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, heralding the first time in history that oxygen has been extracted from simulated lunar soil, or regolith, using an automated, standalone system in a lunar environment. The technology, when scaled up, is designed to produce oxygen in bulk to support one of the primary objectives of NASA’s Artemis program: establishing the first long-term presence on the moon.
“The Apollo program took us to the moon to study and learn. Artemis is taking us back to the moon, this time to stay,” said Tom Vice, CEO of Sierra Space. “Our company is focused on building the infrastructure necessary to enable continuous human presence on the lunar surface. This sustainable future begins with developing the core technology and systems that create oxygen in that environment, using local natural resources.”
Sierra Space test engineers spent two weeks in August operating the company’s oxygen extraction system inside a thermal vacuum chamber at Johnson, working with lunar regolith simulant in an environment the hardware would recognize as similar to the water-ice-laden south pole region of the moon. Under lunar temperatures and pressures, the Sierra Space system executed all of the regolith handling steps and performed the carbothermal reduction reaction that extracts oxygen from minerals in the regolith simulant.
This disruptive innovation, a system developed at Sierra Space’s facilities in Madison, Wisconsin, represents a major leap forward in enabling long-term human habitation on the moon and future space exploration endeavors. …
We’ve successfully completed thermal vacuum testing of our Carbothermal Oxygen Production Reactor at @NASA_Johnson, marking the first extraction of oxygen from simulated lunar soil (regolith) using an automated, standalone system in a lunar environment.https://t.co/CFkkVpim5Dpic.twitter.com/lcWqDuHJu2
Vast CEO, @maxhaot, spoke with @washingtonpost’s @wapodavenport about the future of the ISS and Vast’s role in creating the first commercial space station at the @USChamber 2024 Global Aerospace Summit. As NASA plans the ISS’s retirement, we’re excited to partner with innovators… pic.twitter.com/dSWzqWY4TB
During the spacewalk (also known as an extravehicular activity, or EVA), Polaris Dawn crewmembers Jared Isaacman (seen here) and Sarah Gillis exited their fully depressurized Crew Dragon spacecraft in specially-designed SpaceX spacesuits.
The Polaris Dawn crew Jared Isaacman, Scott “Kidd” Poteet, Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon explain the experiments conducted during the mission. Also, see a time-lapse of Isaacman’s spacewalk.
=== Chinese space habitats
** Chinese astronauts conduct experiments and more on Tiangong space station – VideoFromSpace
China’s Shenzhou-18 crew is seen conducting experiments and maintenance on the Tiangong space station.
Artist’s animation of a futuristic TESSERAE habitat that self-assembles in orbit, forms a multi-module space station, and can also be transported to the surface. Based on the real-life research project out of the MIT Space Exploration Initiative and Dr. Ariel Ekblaw’s PhD Thesis. To learn more: tesserae.arielekblaw.com
TESSERAE (Tessellated Electromagnetic Space Structures for the Exploration of Reconfigurable, Adaptive Environments). The name and nature of the structure hearken to the small, colored tiles used in Roman mosaics, where many standard pieces, or “tesserae,” interlock to create the image. We make this reference to ancient history, while designing an artifact of our space exploration future, to tie architectural elements together across scales and across millennia.
Rendering courtesy of TU Dortmund Fraunhofer Institute as part of a collaboration with MIT Media Lab SEI. Collaborator credit: Aswin Karthik Ramachandran Venkatapathy. Artist credit: David Knozowski.
“…webinar moderated by Beyond Earth’s Executive Vice President, Courtney Stadd, where subject experts will discuss the aggressive human spaceflight initiatives of China and India. These emerging space powers are challenging the long-held assumption that the U.S. will continue to lead in the development of beyond earth in-space human communities. The discussion will focus on the current status of these nations’ efforts toward permanent occupation of Earth orbit and beyond, the motivations behind their ambitious programs, and the broader geopolitical implications of their advancements. This event is designed to inform our audience about the dynamic changes in the global space landscape, without advocating for or against these developments.“
Beyond Earth Symposium 2024 – Nov. 12-13, 2024, American University Washington College of Law, Washington DC.
“The acceleration of space innovations that will enable space migration is outpacing public policy and international law regimes. Beyond Earth Institute’s mission is to create a policy and legal framework to support the robust development of an in-space economy and the expansion of human civilization beyond Earth. At the Beyond Earth Symposium 2024, we will wrestle with the critical current issues of the day and delve into the bleeding edge issues that must be moved to the center of international debate. What we do in a post-ISS era is an urgent, immediate concern. Policies that can foster the creation of a lunar-based economy are equally important.“
NASA EHDC6 Live views of the Earth from the International Space Station
** Highlight: Brazil – Aug 31 2024 10:03 BRT – ISS Above
* Live Video from the International Space Station (Official NASA Stream) – NASA
Watch live video from the International Space Station, including inside views when the crew aboard the space station is on duty. Views of Earth are also streamed from an external camera located outside of the space station. During periods of signal loss due to handover between communications satellites, a blue screen is displayed.
The space station orbits Earth about 250 miles (425 kilometers) above the surface. An international partnership of five space agencies from 15 countries operates the station, and it has been continuously occupied since November 2000. It’s a microgravity laboratory where science, research, and human innovation make way for new technologies and research breakthroughs not possible on Earth. More: https://go.nasa.gov/3CkVtC8
Did you know you can spot the station without a telescope? It looks like a fast-moving star, but you have to know when to look up. Sign up for text messages or email alerts to let you know when (and where) to spot the station and wave to the crew: https://spotthestation.nasa.gov
Astronomers have captured a sequence of images of a star other than the Sun in enough detail to track the motion of bubbling gas on its surface. The images of the star, R Doradus, were obtained with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a telescope co-owned by ESO, in July and August 2023. This panel shows three of these real images, taken with ALMA on 18 July, 27 July and 2 August 2023. The giant bubbles — 75 times the size of the Sun — seen on the star’s surface are the result of convection motions inside the star. The size of the Earth’s orbit is shown for scale.
For the first time, astronomers have captured images of a star other than the Sun in enough detail to track the motion of bubbling gas on its surface. The images of the star, R Doradus, were obtained with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a telescope co-owned by the European Southern Observatory (ESO), in July and August 2023. They show giant, hot bubbles of gas, 75 times the size of the Sun, appearing on the surface and sinking back into the star’s interior faster than expected.
“This is the first time the bubbling surface of a real star can be shown in such a way,“[1]
says Wouter Vlemmings, a professor at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, and lead author of the study published today in Nature.
“We had never expected the data to be of such high quality that we could see so many details of the convection on the stellar surface.”
Stars produce energy in their cores through nuclear fusion. This energy can be carried out towards the star’s surface in huge, hot bubbles of gas, which then cool down and sink — like a lava lamp. This mixing motion, known as convection, distributes the heavy elements formed in the core, such as carbon and nitrogen, throughout the star. It is also thought to be responsible for the stellar winds that carry these elements out into the cosmos to build new stars and planets.
Convection motions had never been tracked in detail in stars other than the Sun, until now. By using ALMA, the team were able to obtain high-resolution images of the surface of R Doradus over the course of a month. R Doradus is a red giant star, with a diameter roughly 350 times that of the Sun, located about 180 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Dorado. Its large size and proximity to Earth make it an ideal target for detailed observations. Furthermore, its mass is similar to that of the Sun, meaning R Doradus is likely fairly similar to how our Sun will look like in five billion years, once it becomes a red giant.
“Convection creates the beautiful granular structure seen on the surface of our Sun, but it is hard to see on other stars,”
adds Theo Khouri, a researcher at Chalmers who is a co-author of the study.
“With ALMA, we have now been able to not only directly see convective granules — with a size 75 times the size of our Sun! — but also measure how fast they move for the first time.”
The granules of R Doradus appear to move on a one-month cycle, which is faster than scientists expected based on how convection works in the Sun.
“We don’t yet know what is the reason for the difference. It seems that convection changes as a star gets older in ways that we don’t yet understand,”
says Vlemmings. Observations like those now made of R Doradus are helping us to understand how stars like the Sun behave, even when they grow as cool, big and bubbly as R Doradus is.
“It is spectacular that we can now directly image the details on the surface of stars so far away, and observe physics that until now was mostly only observable in our Sun,”
concludes Behzad Bojnodi Arbab, a PhD student at Chalmers who was also involved in the study.
