Topic: Late June Astronomy Bulletin

[Clive]

ASTEROID 16 PSYCHE MIGHT NOT BE WHAT WE EXPECTED
University of Arizona

The widely studied metallic asteroid known as 16 Psyche was long thought to be the exposed iron core of a small planet that failed to form during the earliest days of the solar system. But new research suggests that the asteroid might not be as metallic or dense as once thought, and hints at a much different origin story. Scientists are interested in 16 Psyche because if its presumed origins are true, it would provide an opportunity to study an exposed planetary core up close. NASA is scheduled to launch its Psyche mission in 2022 and arrive at the asteroid in 2026. New research proposes 16 Psyche is 82.5% metal, 7% low-iron pyroxene and 10.5% carbonaceous chondrite that was likely delivered by impacts from other asteroids. It is estimated that 16 Psyche's bulk density -- also known as porosity, which refers to how much empty space is found within its body -- is around 35%. These estimates differ from past analyses of 16 Psyche's composition that led researchers to estimate it could contain as much as 95% metal and be much denser. Rather than being an intact exposed core of an early planet, it might actually be closer to a rubble pile, similar to another thoroughly studied asteroid – Bennu. A sample from Bennu's surface is now making its way back to Earth. Asteroid 16 Psyche is about the size of Massachusetts, and scientists estimate it contains about 1% of all asteroid belt material. First spotted by an Italian astronomer in 1852, it was the 16th asteroid ever discovered.

Asteroid 16 Psyche has been estimated to been worth $10,000 quadrillion but the new findings could slightly devalue the iron-rich asteroid. The other well-studied asteroid, Bennu, contains a lot of carbonaceous chondrite material and has porosity of over 50%, which is a classic characteristic of a rubble pile. Such high porosity is common for relatively small and low-mass objects such as Bennu -- which is only as large as the Empire State Building -- because a weak gravitational field prevents the object's rocks and boulders from being packed together too tightly. But for an object the size of 16 Psyche to be so porous is unexpected. Past estimates of 16 Psyche's composition were done by analyzing the sunlight reflected off its surface. The pattern of light matched that of other metallic objects. The researchers also believe the carbonaceous material on 16 Psyche's surface is rich in water, so they will next work to merge data from ground-based telescopes and spacecraft missions to other asteroids to help determine the amount of water present.


VENUS’ TECTONICS REVEAL GEOLOGICAL SECRETS :
North Carolina State University

A new analysis of Venus' surface shows evidence of tectonic motion in the form of crustal blocks that have jostled against each other like broken chunks of pack ice. The movement of these blocks could indicate that Venus is still geologically active and give scientists insight into both exoplanet tectonics and the earliest tectonic activity on Earth. The finding is important because Venus has long been assumed to have an immobile solid outer shell, or lithosphere, just like Mars or Earth's moon. In contrast, Earth's lithosphere is broken into tectonic plates, which slide against, apart from, and underneath each other on top of a hot, weaker mantle layer. An international group of researchers used radar images from NASA's Magellan mission to map the surface of Venus. In examining the extensive Venusian lowlands that make up most of the planet surface, they saw areas where large blocks of the lithosphere seem to have moved: pulling apart, pushing together, rotating and sliding past each other like broken pack ice over a frozen lake. The team created a computer model of this deformation, and found that sluggish motion of the planet's interior can account for the style of tectonics seen at the surface. These observations tell us that interior motion is driving surface deformation on Venus, in a similar way to what happens on Earth. Plate tectonics on Earth are driven by convection in the mantle. The mantle is hot or cold in different places, it moves, and some of that motion transfers to Earth's surface in the form of plate movement. A variation on that theme seems to be playing out on Venus as well. It's not plate tectonics like on Earth -- there aren't huge mountain ranges being created here, or giant subduction systems -- but it is evidence of deformation due to interior mantle flow, which hasn't been demonstrated on a global scale before.

The deformation associated with these crustal blocks could also indicate that Venus is still geologically active. We know that much of Venus has been volcanically resurfaced over time, so some parts of the planet might be really young, geologically speaking. But several of the jostling blocks have formed in and deformed these young lava plains, which means that the lithosphere fragmented after those plains were laid down. This gives us reason to think that some of these blocks may have moved geologically very recently -- perhaps even up to today. The researchers are optimistic that Venus' newly recognized "pack ice" pattern could offer clues to understanding tectonic deformation on planets outside of our solar system, as well as on a much younger Earth. The thickness of a planet's lithosphere depends mainly upon how hot it is, both in the interior and on the surface. Heat flow from the young Earth's interior was up to three times greater than it is now, so its lithosphere may have been similar to what we see on Venus today: not thick enough to form plates that subduct, but thick enough to have fragmented into blocks that pushed, pulled, and jostled.



BETELGEUSE’S BRIGHTNESS DIP SOLVED
ESO

When Betelgeuse, a bright orange star in the constellation of Orion, became visibly darker in late 2019 and early 2020, the astronomy community was puzzled. A team of astronomers have now published new images of the star’s surface, taken using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), that clearly show how its brightness changed. The new research reveals that the star was partially concealed by a cloud of dust, a discovery that solves the mystery of the “Great Dimming” of Betelgeuse. Betelgeuse’s dip in brightness — a change noticeable even to the naked eye — led astronomers to point ESO’s VLT towards the star in late 2019. An image from December 2019, when compared to an earlier image taken in January of the same year, showed that the stellar surface was significantly darker, especially in the southern region. But the astronomers weren’t sure why. The team continued observing the star during its Great Dimming, capturing two other never-before-seen images in January 2020 and March 2020. By April 2020, the star had returned to its normal brightness. In their new study, the team revealed that the mysterious dimming was caused by a dusty veil shading the star, which in turn was the result of a drop in temperature on Betelgeuse’s stellar surface. Betelgeuse’s surface regularly changes as giant bubbles of gas move, shrink and swell within the star. The team concludes that some time before the Great Dimming, the star ejected a large gas bubble that moved away from it. When a patch of the surface cooled down shortly after, that temperature decrease was enough for the gas to condense into solid dust. Rather than just the result of a dusty outburst, there was some speculation online that Betelgeuse’s drop in brightness could signal its imminent death in a spectacular supernova explosion. A supernova hasn’t been observed in our galaxy since the 17th century, so present-day astronomers aren’t entirely sure what to expect from a star in the lead-up to such an event. However, this new research confirms that Betelgeuse's Great Dimming was not an early sign that the star was heading towards its dramatic fate.


DARK MATTER SLOWING SPIN OF MILKY WAY’S GALACTIC BAR
University College London

The spin of the Milky Way's galactic bar, which is made up of billions of clustered stars, has slowed by about a quarter since its formation, according to a new study. For 30 years, astrophysicists have predicted such a slowdown, but this is the first time it has been measured. The researchers say it gives a new type of insight into the nature of dark matter, which acts like a counterweight slowing the spin. In the study, researchers analysed Gaia space telescope observations of a large group of stars, the Hercules stream, which are in resonance with the bar -- that is, they revolve around the galaxy at the same rate as the bar's spin. These stars are gravitationally trapped by the spinning bar. The same phenomenon occurs with Jupiter's Trojan and Greek asteroids, which orbit Jupiter's Lagrange points (ahead and behind Jupiter). If the bar's spin slows down, these stars would be expected to move further out in the galaxy, keeping their orbital period matched to that of the bar's spin. The researchers found that the stars in the stream carry a chemical fingerprint -- they are richer in heavier elements (called metals in astronomy), proving that they have travelled away from the galactic centre, where stars and star-forming gas are about 10 times as rich in metals compared to the outer galaxy. Using this data, the team inferred that the bar -- made up of billions of stars and trillions of solar masses -- had slowed down its spin by at least 24% since it first formed.

The Milky Way, like other galaxies, is thought to be embedded in a 'halo' of dark matter that extends well beyond its visible edge. Dark matter is invisible and its nature is unknown, but its existence is inferred from galaxies behaving as if they were shrouded in significantly more mass than we can see. There is thought to be about five times as much dark matter in the Universe as ordinary, visible matter. Alternative gravity theories such as modified Newtonian dynamics reject the idea of dark matter, instead seeking to explain discrepancies by tweaking Einstein's theory of general relativity. The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy, with a thick bar of stars in the middle and spiral arms extending through the disc outside the bar. The bar rotates in the same direction as the galaxy.


GIANT 'BLINKING' STAR TOWARDS CENTRE OF MILKY WAY
University of Cambridge

An international team of astronomers observed the star, VVV-WIT-08, decreasing in brightness by a factor of 30, so that it nearly disappeared from the sky. While many stars change in brightness because they pulsate or are eclipsed by another star in a binary system, it's exceptionally rare for a star to become fainter over a period of several months and then brighten again. The researchers believe that VVV-WIT-08 may belong to a new class of 'blinking giant' binary star system, where a giant star -- 100 times larger than the Sun -- is eclipsed once every few decades by an as-yet unseen orbital companion. The companion, which may be another star or a planet, is surrounded by an opaque disc, which covers the giant star, causing it to disappear and reappear in the sky. Since the star is located in a dense region of the Milky Way, the researchers considered whether some unknown dark object could have simply drifted in front of the giant star by chance. However, simulations showed that there would have to be an implausibly large number of dark bodies floating around the Galaxy for this scenario to be likely. One other star system of this sort has been known for a long time. The giant star Epsilon Aurigae is partly eclipsed by a huge disc of dust every 27 years, but only dims by about 50%. A second example, TYC 2505-672-1, was found a few years ago, and holds the current record for the eclipsing binary star system with the longest orbital period -- 69 years -- a record for which VVV-WIT-08 is currently a contender. The UK-based team has also found two more of these peculiar giant stars in addition to VVV-WIT-08, suggesting that these may be a new class of 'blinking giant' stars for astronomers to investigate.

VVV-WIT-08 was found by the VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea survey (VVV), a project using the British-built VISTA telescope in Chile and operated by the European Southern Observatory, that has been observing the same one billion stars for nearly a decade to search for examples with varying brightness in the infrared part of the spectrum. While VVV-WIT-08 was discovered using VVV data, the dimming of the star was also observed by the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE), a long-running observation campaign run by the University of Warsaw. OGLE makes more frequent observations, but closer to the visible part of the spectrum. These frequent observations were key for modelling VVV-WIT-08, and they showed that the giant star dimmed by the same amount in both the visible and infrared light. There now appear to be around half a dozen potential known star systems of this type, containing giant stars and large opaque discs.


SURVEY OF 'NURSERIES' WHERE STARS ARE BORN
Ohio State University

Over the past five years, an international team of researchers has conducted the first systematic survey of "stellar nurseries" across our part of the Universe, charting the more than 100,000 of these nurseries across more than 90 nearby galaxies and providing new insights into the origins of stars. Every star in the sky, including our own Sun, was born in one of these stellar nurseries. These nurseries are responsible for building galaxies and making planets, and they're just an essential part in the story of how we got here. But this is really the first time we have a complete view of these stellar nurseries across the whole nearby Universe. The project is called PHANGS-ALMA, and the research was possible thanks to the ALMA telescope array high in the Andes mountains in Chile. PHANGS-ALMA can use ALMA to take pictures of many galaxies, and these pictures are as sharp and detailed as those taken by optical telescopes. The survey has expanded the amount of data on stellar nurseries by more than tenfold. That has given astronomers a much more accurate perspective of what these nurseries are like across our corner of the Universe. Based on these measurements, astronomers have found that stellar nurseries are surprisingly diverse across galaxies, live only a relatively short time in astronomical terms, and are not very efficient at making stars. The diversity of these stellar nurseries came as something of a surprise. For a long time, conventional wisdom among astronomers was that all stellar nurseries looked more or less the same. But with this survey we can see that this is really not the case. While there are some similarities, the nature and appearance of these nurseries change within and among galaxies, just like cities or trees may vary in important ways as you go from place to place across the world. For example, nurseries in larger galaxies, and those in the centre of galaxies, tend to be denser and more massive, and much more turbulent. Star formation is much more violent in these clouds, findings suggest. So the properties of these nurseries and even their ability to make stars seem to depend on the galaxies they live in.

Results from the survey also showed that these stellar nurseries live for only 10 to 30 million years, which is a relatively short time in astronomical terms. And the team used the same measurements to gauge how efficiently these stellar nurseries turned their gas and dust into stars -- and it turned out they weren't that efficient. This survey is allowing us to build a much more complete picture of the life cycle of these regions, and we're finding they are short-lived and inefficient. It's not random chance destroying these nurseries, but the new stars that they make. The radiation and heat that come out of these young stars begins to disperse and dissolve the clouds, eventually destroying them before they can convert most of their mass.


HUBBLE CONFIRMS GALAXIES LACKING DARK MATTER
Institute for Advanced Study

The most accurate distance measurement yet of ultra-diffuse galaxy (UDG) NGC1052-DF2 (DF2) confirms beyond any shadow of a doubt that it is lacking in dark matter. The newly measured distance of 22.1 +/-1.2 megaparsecs was obtained by an international team of researchers. The results are based on 40 orbits of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, with imaging by the Advanced Camera for Surveys and a "tip of the red giant branch" (TRGB) analysis, the gold standard for such refined measurements. In 2019, the team published results measuring the distance to neighbouring UDG NGC1052-DF4 (DF4) based on 12 Hubble orbits and TRGB analysis, which provided compelling evidence of missing dark matter. This preferred method expands on the team's 2018 studies that relied on "surface brightness fluctuations" to gauge distance. Both galaxies were discovered with the Dragonfly Telephoto Array at the New Mexico Skies observatory. In addition to confirming earlier distance findings, the Hubble results indicated that the galaxies were located slightly farther away than previously thought, strengthening the case that they contain little to no dark matter. If DF2 were closer to Earth, as some astronomers claim, it would be intrinsically fainter and less massive, and the galaxy would need dark matter to account for the observed effects of the total mass. Dark matter is widely considered to be an essential ingredient of galaxies, but this study lends further evidence that its presence may not be inevitable. While dark matter has yet to be directly observed, its gravitational influence is like a glue that holds galaxies together and governs the motion of visible matter. In the case of DF2 and DF4, researchers were able to account for the motion of stars based on stellar mass alone, suggesting a lack or absence of dark matter. Ironically, the detection of galaxies deficient in dark matter will likely help to reveal its puzzling nature and provide new insights into galactic evolution.

While DF2 and DF4 are both comparable in size to the Milky Way galaxy, their total masses are only about one percent of the Milky Way's mass. These ultra-diffuse galaxies were also found to have a large population of especially luminous globular clusters. This research has generated a great deal of scholarly interest, as well as energetic debate among proponents of alternative theories to dark matter, such as Modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND). However, with the team's most recent findings -- including the relative distances of the two UDGs to NGC1052 -- such alternative theories seem less likely. Additionally, there is now little uncertainty in the team's distance measurements given the use of the TRGB method. Based on fundamental physics, this method depends on the observation of red giant stars that emit a flash after burning through their helium supply that always happens at the same brightness. Moving forward, researchers will continue to hunt for more of these oddball galaxies, while considering a number of questions such as: How are UDGs formed? What do they tell us about standard cosmological models? How common are these galaxies, and what other unique properties do they have? It will take uncovering many more dark matter-less galaxies to resolve these mysteries and the ultimate question of what dark matter really is.


‘CHANGING–LOOK’ BLAZAR DISCOVERED
University of Oklahoma

Astronomers have discovered a "changing-look" blazar -- a powerful active galactic nucleus powered by supermassive black hole at the centre of a galaxy. Blazars appear as parallel rays of light or particles, or jets, pointing to observers and radiating across all wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum. These jets span distances on the million light-year scales and are known to impact the evolution of the galaxy and galaxy cluster in which they reside via the radiation. These features make blazars ideal environments in which to study the physics of jets and their role in galaxy evolution. They are a unique kind of AGN with very powerful jets. Jets are a radio mode of feedback and because of their scales, they penetrate the galaxy into their large-scale environment. The origin of these jets and processes driving the radiation are not well-known. Thus, studying blazars allows us to understand these jets better and how they are connected to other components of the AGN, like the accretion disk. These jets can heat up and displace gas in their environment affecting, for example, the star formation in the galaxy. The team's research highlights the results of a campaign to investigate the evolution of a blazar known as B2 1420+32. At the end of 2017, this blazar exhibited a huge optical flare, a phenomenon captured by the All Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae telescope network. The team followed this up by observing the evolution of its spectrum and light curve over the next two years and also retrieved archival data available for this object. The campaign, with data spanning over a decade, has yielded some most exciting results. There is dramatic variability in the spectrum and multiple transformations between the two blazar sub-classes for the first time for a blazar, thus giving it the name 'changing-look' blazar.

The team concluded that this behaviour is caused by the dramatic continuum flux changes, which confirm a long-proposed theory that separates blazars into two major categories. In addition, astronomers see several very large multiband flares in the optical and gamma-ray bands on different timescales and new spectral features. Such extreme variability and the spectral features demand dedicated searches for more such blazars, which will allow them to utilize the dramatic spectral changes observed to reveal AGN/jet physics, including how dust particles around supermassive black holes are destructed by the tremendous radiation from the central engine and how energy from a relativistic jet is transferred into the dust clouds, providing a new channel linking the evolution of the supermassive black hole with its host galaxy. The team is very excited by the results of discovering a changing-look blazar that transforms itself not once, but three times, between its two sub-classes, from the dramatic changes in its continuum emission. These results open the door to more such studies of highly variable blazars and their importance in understanding AGN physics.


CHIME DISCOVERS OVER 500 FAST RADIO BURSTS
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

To catch sight of a fast radio burst is to be extremely lucky in where and when you point your radio dish. Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are oddly bright flashes of light, registering in the radio band of the electromagnetic spectrum, that blaze for a few milliseconds before vanishing without a trace. These brief and mysterious beacons have been spotted in various and distant parts of the Universe, as well as in our own galaxy. Their origins are unknown, and their appearance is unpredictable. Since the first was discovered in 2007, radio astronomers have only caught sight of around 140 bursts in their telescopes. Now, a large stationary radio telescope in British Columbia has nearly quadrupled the number of fast radio bursts discovered to date. The telescope, known as CHIME, for the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment, has detected 535 new fast radio bursts during its first year of operation, between 2018 and 2019. Scientists with the CHIME Collaboration, including researchers at MIT, have assembled the new signals in the telescope's first FRB catalogue, which they will present this week at the American Astronomical Society Meeting. The new catalogue significantly expands the current library of known FRBs, and is already yielding clues as to their properties. For instance, the newly discovered bursts appear to fall in two distinct classes: those that repeat, and those that don't. Scientists identified 18 FRB sources that burst repeatedly, while the rest appear to be one-offs. The repeaters also look different, with each burst lasting slightly longer and emitting more focused radio frequencies than bursts from single, non-repeating FRBs. These observations strongly suggest that repeaters and one-offs arise from separate mechanisms and astrophysical sources. With more observations, astronomers hope soon to pin down the extreme origins of these curiously bright signals. CHIME comprises four massive parabolic radio antennas, roughly the size and shape of snowboarding half-pipes, located at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory in British Columbia, Canada. CHIME receives radio signals each day from half of the sky as the Earth rotates. While most radio astronomy is done by swivelling a large dish to focus light from different parts of the sky, CHIME stares, motionless, at the sky, and focuses incoming signals using a correlator -- a powerful digital signalling processor that can work through huge amounts of data, at a rate of about 7 terabits per second, equivalent to a few percent of the world's internet traffic.

Over the first year of operation, CHIME detected 535 new fast radio bursts. When the scientists mapped their locations, they found the bursts were evenly distributed in space, seeming to arise from any and all parts of the sky. From the FRBs that CHIME was able to detect, the scientists calculated that fast radio bursts, bright enough to be seen by a telescope like CHIME, occur at a rate of about 9,000 per day across the entire sky -- the most precise estimate of FRBs overall rate to date. As radio waves travel across space, any interstellar gas, or plasma, along the way can distort or disperse the wave's properties and trajectory. The degree to which a radio wave is dispersed can give clues to how much gas it passed through, and possibly how much distance it has travelled from its source. For each of the 535 FRBs that CHIME detected, astronomers measured its dispersion, and found that most bursts likely originated from far-off sources within distant galaxies. The fact that the bursts were bright enough to be detected by CHIME suggests that they must have been produced by extremely energetic sources. As the telescope detects more FRBs, scientists hope to pin down exactly what kind of exotic phenomena could generate such ultrabright, ultrafast signals. Scientists also plan to use the bursts, and their dispersion estimates, to map the distribution of gas throughout the Universe. Each FRB gives us some information of how far they've propagated and how much gas they've propagated through. With large numbers of FRBs, we can hopefully figure out how gas and matter are distributed on very large scales in the universe. So, alongside the mystery of what FRBs are themselves, there's also the exciting potential for FRBs as powerful cosmological probes in the future.


PROBLEMS WITH HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE
Physics.org

The Hubble Space Telescope, which has been peering into the Universe for more than 30 years, has been down for the past week. The problem is a payload computer that stopped working the US space agency said. It insisted the telescope itself and scientific instruments that accompany it are "in good health." NASA said initial evidence pointed to a degrading computer memory module as the source of the computer problem. An attempt to switch to a back-up memory module also failed. The technology for the payload computer dates back to the 1980s, and it was replaced during maintenance work in 2009. Launched in 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope revolutionized the world of astronomy and changed our vision of the Universe as it sent back images of the solar system, the Milky Way and distant galaxies. NASA plans to continue its efforts to resolve the problem.