Category Astronomy/Space

Charon (top) and Pluto are only separated by 12,000 or so miles. When Charon is positioned between the sun and Pluto, Georgia Tech research indicates that the moon can significantly reduce atmospheric loss  Credit: NASA-JHUAPL-SwRI

Pluto’s relationship with its moon Charon is one of the more unusual interactions in the solar system due to Charon’s size and proximity. It’s more than half of Pluto’s diameter and orbits only 12,000 or so miles away. To put that into perspective, picture our moon three times closer to Earth, and as large as Mars. A new study from the Georgia Institute of Technology provides additional insight into this relationship and how it affects the continuous stripping of Pluto’s atmosphere by solar wind...

Lunar formation in the multiple-impact scenario. Moon- to Mars-sized impactors strike the Earth and leave a disk of debris orbiting the planet. The debris forms “moonlets” and migrate farther away from the Earth due to a tidal interaction, but eventually settle at a distance known as the Hill radius. Here, the moonlets merge to eventually form the moon..

The Moon, and the question of how it was formed, has long been a source of fascination and wonder. Now, a team of Israeli researchers suggests that the Moon we see every night is not Earth’s first moon, but rather the last in a series of moons that orbited Earth in the past. The newly proposed theory by Prof. Hagai Perets, of Technion, and Weizmann Institute Profs...

Molnar’s prediction is that a binary star (two stars orbiting each other) he is monitoring will merge and explode in 2022. Credit: Calvin College

Calvin College professor Larry Molnar et al are predicting a change to the night sky that will be visible to the naked eye. “It’s a 1-in-a-million chance that you can predict an explosion,” Molnar said. “It’s never been done before.” Molnar’s prediction is that a binary star he is monitoring will merge and explode in 2022, give or take a year; at which time the star will increase its brightness 10000X, becoming one of the brighter stars in the heavens for a time. The star will be visible as part of the constellation Cygnus, and will add a star to the recognizable Northern Cross star pattern.

Molnar’s exploration into the star known as KIC 98322...