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    Category Astronomy/Space

    Saturn’s High-Altitude Winds Generate an Extraordinary Aurorae, study finds

    February 9, 2022, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Leicester space scientists have discovered a never-before-seen mechanism fuelling huge planetary aurorae at Saturn. Saturn is unique among planets observed to date in that some of its aurorae are generated by swirling winds within its own atmosphere, and not just from the planet’s surrounding magnetosphere.

    At all other observed planets, including Earth, aurorae are only formed by powerful currents that flow into the planet’s atmosphere from the surrounding magnetosphere. These are driven by either interaction with charged particles from the Sun (as at the Earth) or volcanic material erupted from a moon orbiting the planet (as at Jupiter and Saturn).

    This discovery changes scientists’ understanding of planetary aurorae and answers one of the first mysteries raised by NASA’s Cass...

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    First ever Free-Floating Black Hole found Roaming through Interstellar Space

    February 9, 2022, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    HST image in the F814W (I-band) filter of an 800 ×800 region centered on MOA-11-191/OGLE-11-0462, obtained at our final epoch in 2017 August. North is at the top, east on the left. Encircled in green is the source star, now returned to baseline luminosity. The site is resolved into the source, a much brighter neighboring star 0.004 to the WNW, and several nearby fainter stars. The inner cyan circle has a diameter of 100, corresponding to the typical best seeing in ground-based microlensing survey images; the outer cyan circle’s diameter is 200, which is not unusual seeing. The source, bright neighbor, and several fainter stars are generally blended in ground-based frames, and the blending increases with seeing. Credit: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2201.13296.pdf

    An international team of re...

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    Puffy Planets Lose Atmospheres, become Super-Earths

    February 8, 2022, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    ILLUSTRATION OF THE MINI-NEPTUNE TOI 560.01, LOCATED 103 LIGHT-YEARS AWAY IN THE HYDRA CONSTELLATION. THE PLANET, WHICH ORBITS ITS STAR AT DISTANCE OF 0.06 AU, IS LOSING ITS PUFFY ATMOSPHERE AND MAY ULTIMATELY TRANSFORM INTO A SUPER-EARTH.
    Credit: W. M. Keck Observatory/Adam Makarenko

    Finding Represents First Detections of Atmospheric Loss in “Mini-Neptunes.

    Astronomers have identified two different cases of “mini-Neptune” planets that are losing their puffy atmospheres and likely transforming into super-Earths. Radiation from the planets’ stars is stripping away their atmospheres, driving hot gas to escape like steam from a pot of boiling water.

    “Most astronomers suspected that young, small mini-Neptunes must have evaporating atmospheres,” says Michael Zhang, lead author of bot...

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    Origin of Supermassive Black Hole Flares identified: Largest-ever simulations suggest Flickering powered by Magnetic ‘Reconnection’

    February 7, 2022, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    A snapshot from one of the new black hole simulations. Here, green magnetic field lines are overlaid on a map of hot plasma. Just outside the black hole’s event horizon, the connection of magnetic field lines pointing in opposite directions makes an X-point where they crisscross. This process of reconnection launches some particles in the plasma into the black hole and others into space, an important step in the generation of black hole flares. B. Ripperda et al., Astrophysical Journal Letters 2022

    Black holes aren’t always in the dark. Astronomers have spotted intense light shows shining from just outside the event horizon of supermassive black holes, including the one at our galaxy’s core...

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