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Space News Update — December 3, 2019 —

Contents

In the News

Story 1: Amateur sleuth helps locate crash site of India’s Vikram moon lander

Story 2:

There’s Now an Operational Radio Telescope on the Far Side of the Moon

Story 3: Global Storms on Mars Launch Dust Towers Into the Sky

Departments

The Night Sky

ISS Sighting Opportunities

Space Calendar

NASA-TV Highlights

Food for Thought

Space Image of the Week

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1. Amateur sleuth helps locate crash site of India’s Vikram moon lander

An Indian software developer and mechanical engineer combing through high-resolution imagery captured by a NASA spacecraft has located debris scattered on the lunar surface in September by the crash of the Vikram lander, India’s first probe to attempt a soft touchdown on the moon, NASA said Monday.

A camera mounted on NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has recorded images of the Vikram spacecraft’s target landing site since Indian ground controllers lost contact with probe Sept. 6 during final descent to the moon.

The robotic Vikram lander was descending toward a landing zone around 373 miles (600 kilometers) from the moon’s south pole. With Vikram, India aimed to become the fourth country to achieve a soft landing on the moon.

But engineers at the Indian Space Research Organization’s mission control center lost communication with Vikram moments before landing, when the probe was just 1.3 miles (2.1 kilometers) above the lunar surface.

The festive mood in the control center in Bengaluru quickly turned somber. Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, who was at mission control to observe the landing, consoled ISRO chairman K. Sivan and other members Vikram team.

Vikram was named for the father of India’s space program. The lander departed Earth in July with India’s Chandrayaan 2 spacecraft, a three-piece lunar explorer comprising an orbiter, lander and rover.

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The Vikram lander — with the Pragyan rover on-board — detached from the Chandrayaan 2 orbiter before starting its descent. The orbiter remains operational with its own set of scientific instruments, including sensors to map the lunar surface and search for evidence of water ice hidden in dark polar craters.

After Vikram stopped communicating with ground teams, ISRO began looking for signs of the lander with the sharp-eyed camera on the country’s new Chandrayaan 2 orbiter. Within days, the Indian space agency announced the orbiter had located the lander on the moon, and added that engineers continued to attempt to contact it.

Chandrayaan 2’s camera can resolve more detail on the lunar surface than the imager aboard NASA’s LRO spacecraft, but ISRO has never released any images from the Chandrayaan 2 orbiter showing the Vikram crash site.

Instead, LRO went to work searching for Vikram’s wreckage and imaged the landing site Sept. 17. And thanks to NASA’s open data policy, the U.S. space agency published imagery from each of LRO’s passes over the Vikram landing site. The public responded by sifting through the pictures, comparing images taken before and after the Sept. 6 crash to identify any changes that might hint at Vikram’s location.

Shanmuga Subramanian, an Indian programmer who lives in Chennai, tipped off NASA when he noticed a new dot in an image from the LRO’s mapping camera.

In an email sent to Spaceflight Now, Subramanian wrote he searched NASA’s images of the Vikram landing site in his spare time.

“It was something challenging as even NASA couldn’t find out, so why (not) try it out,” Subramanian wrote. “And that’s the thought that led me to search for Vikram … I don’t think Vikram lander would have made such an impact on (the) minds of (the) Indian public if it had landed successfully. Since it was lost, there was (a) lot of discussion in public forms as well as on my Facebook regarding what malfunctioned, etc.”

He said the Vikram lander’s crash got him hooked. He searched through NASA imagery every night for four or five days.

Subramanian, who said he’s been interested in space exploration since childhood, deduced the Vikram lander’s flight path before landing from information gleaned from social media.

“I searched around north of the landing spot as Vikram approached the landing spot only from (the) north,” he wrote. “And though there were lot of false positives, I found a tiny little dot and compared with previous LRO images (over the) last nine years, which eventually confirmed it would be the debris. Then I reached out (to) NASA.”

NASA said it confirmed Subramanian’s discovery by comparing before and after images of the Vikram landing area.

“When the images for the first mosaic were acquired, the impact point was poorly illuminated and thus not easily identifiable,” members of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, or LROC, team wrote in a statement. “Two subsequent image sequences were acquired on Oct. 14 and 15, and Nov. 11. The LROC team scoured the surrounding area in these new mosaics and found the impact site (70.8810°S, 22.7840°E, 834 m elevation) and associated debris field.”

Subramanian received an email from NASA Monday thanking and congratulating him for his role in determining Vikram’s final resting place.

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Subramanian suggested the public could contribute more to space missions in the future. One example way students and others might help is by building a database to help with before-and-after image comparisons, a process which Subramanian performed manually.

He added that he hopes his discovery will inspire others.

“It clearly proves someone who is not involved in space exploration or a scientist can also do a lot as far as space is concerned,” Subramanian wrote.

Indian space officials have not announced the exact cause of Vikram’s crash landing on the moon. The Indian government only officially acknowledged that the lander crashed in November, more than two months after the loss of Vikram.

In a written response to questions from a member of India’s parliament, Jitendra Singh, the Indian government official responsible for the country’s space program, offered new details about Vikram’s failed landing.

He wrote that Vikram performed as expected during the first phase of its descent from an altitude of 30 kilometers (98,400 feet) to 7.4 kilometers (24,300 feet) above the moon’s surface. During that time, the spacecraft’s velocity was reduced from 1,683 meters per second (3,764 mph) to 146 meters per second (326 mph).

“During the second phase of descent, the reduction in velocity was more than the designed value,” he wrote. “Due to this deviation, the initial conditions at the start of the fine braking phase were beyond the designed parameters. As a result, Vikram hard landed within 500 m (meters) of the designated landing site.”

He added that most of the Chandrayaan 2’s technology demonstration objectives were successfully accomplished, including the launch, critical orbital maneuvers, lander separation, de-boost and the “rough braking phase” of the descent.

The Chandrayaan 2 orbiter is expected to function at least seven years.

“With regards to the scientific objectives, all the eight state-of-the-art scientific instruments of the orbit are performing as per the design and providing valuable scientific data,” Singh wrote.

Source: Spaceflight Now Return to Contents

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2. There’s Now an Operational Radio Telescope on the Far Side of the Moon

The Chang’e-4 mission, the fourth installment in the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program, has made some significant achievements since it launched in December of 2018. In January of 2019, the mission lander and its Yutu 2 (Jade Rabbit 2) rover became the first robotic explorers to achieve a soft landing on the far side of the Moon. Around the same time, it became the first mission to grow plants on the Moon (with mixed results).

In the latest development, the Netherlands-China Low Frequency Explorer (NCLE) commenced operations after a year of orbiting the Moon. This instrument was mounted on the Queqiao communications satellite and consists of three 5-meter (16.4 ft) long monopole antennas that are sensitive to radio frequencies in the 80 kHz – 80 MHz range. With this instrument now active, Chang’e-4 has now entered into the next phase of its mission.

The radio observatory is the result of collaboration between the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON) and the China National Space Agency (CNSA). ASTRON has a long history of conducting radio astronomy, which includes the operation of one of the largest radio telescopes in the world – the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT), which is also part of the European Very Long Baseline Interferometry Network (EVN).

The NCLE is the first observatory built by the Netherlands and China to conduct radio astronomy experiments while orbiting on the far side of the Moon. This location is considered ideal for such experiments since it is removed from any terrestrial radio interference. It is for this reason that Queqiao has had to act as a communications relay with the Chang’e-4 mission since radio signals cannot reach the far side of the Moon directly.

While the NCLE is capable of mounting multiple forms of scientific research, its main purpose is to conduct groundbreaking experiments in radio astronomy. Particularly, the NCLE will gather data in the 21-cm (8.25 inch) emission range, which corresponds with the earliest periods in cosmic history.

These are otherwise known as the Dark Ages and Cosmic Dawn, which have previously been inaccessible to astronomers. By examining light from the earliest periods of the Universe, astronomers will finally be able to answer some of the most enduring questions about the Universe. These include when the first stars and galaxies formed, as well as the influence of Dark Matter and Dark Energy on cosmic evolution.

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Until now, the Queqiao satellite was primarily a communications relay between the lander and rover and mission controllers on Earth. But with the primary goals of the Chang’e-4 mission now achieved, the China National Space Agency (CNSA) has entered into the next phase of operations, which is to operate a radio observatory on the far side of the Moon.

As Marc Klein Wolt, the Managing Director of the Radboud Radio Lab and leader of the Dutch team, expressed:

“Our contribution to the Chinese Chang’e 4 mission has now increased tremendously. We have the opportunity to perform our observations during the fourteen-day-long night behind the moon, which is much longer than was originally the idea. The moon night is ours, now.“

The unfolding of the antennas is the culmination of three years of hard work and the demonstration of this technology is expected to pave the way for new opportunities for radio instruments in space. In addition to scientists with ASTRON and the CNSA, there is no shortage of people around the world who are eagerly awaiting the NCLE’s first radio measurements.

Professor Heino Falcke, the chair of astrophysics and radio astronomy at Radboud University, is also the scientific leader of the Dutch-Chinese radio telescope. As he explained:

“We are finally in business and have a radio-astronomy instrument of Dutch origin in space. The team has worked incredibly hard, and the first data will reveal how well the instrument truly performs.”

The deployment of the instrument was meant to happen sooner and the year-long wait behind the Moon is believed to have had an effect on the antennas. Initially, the antennas unfolded smoothly but the progress became increasingly sluggish as time went on. As a result, the team decided to collect data first from the partially-deployed antennas first and may decide to unfold them further later.

At their current, shorter deployment, the instrument is sensitive to signals from roughly 13 billion years ago – aka. about 800 million years after the Big Bang. Once the antennas are unfolded to their full length, they will be able to capture signals from just after the Big Bang. This will allow astronomers to see the first stars being born and star clusters coming together to form the very first galaxies.

The first light in the Universe and the answers to some of the most profound questions will finally be accessible!

Source: Universe Today Return to Contents

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3. Global Storms on Mars Launch Dust Towers Into the Sky

Dust storms are common on Mars. But every decade or so, something unpredictable happens: A series of runaway storms breaks out, covering the entire planet in a dusty haze.

Last year, a fleet of NASA spacecraft got a detailed look at the life cycle of the 2018 global dust storm that ended the Opportunity rover's mission. And while scientists are still puzzling over the data, two papers recently shed new light on a phenomenon observed within the storm: dust towers, or concentrated clouds of dust that warm in sunlight and rise high into the air. Scientists think that dust-trapped water vapor may be riding them like an elevator to space, where solar radiation breaks apart their molecules. This might help explain how Mars' water disappeared over billions of years.

Dust towers are massive, churning clouds that are denser and climb much higher than the normal background dust in the thin Martian atmosphere. While they also occur under normal conditions, the towers appear to form in greater numbers during global storms.

A tower starts at the planet's surface as an area of rapidly lifted dust about as wide as the state of Rhode Island. By the time a tower reaches a height of 50 miles (80 kilometers), as seen during the 2018 global dust storm, it may be as wide as Nevada. As the tower decays, it can form a layer of dust 35 miles (56 kilometers) above the surface that can be wider than the continental United States.

The recent findings on dust towers come courtesy of NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), which is led by the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Though global dust storms cloak the planet's surface, MRO can use its heat-sensing Mars Climate Sounder instrument to peer through the haze. The instrument is designed specifically for measuring dust levels. Its data, coupled with images from a camera

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aboard the orbiter called the Mars Context Imager (MARCI), enabled scientists to detect numerous swelling dust towers.

How Did Mars Lose Its Water?

Dust towers appear throughout the Martian year, but MRO observed something different during the 2018 global dust storm. "Normally the dust would fall down in a day or so," said the paper's lead author, Nicholas Heavens of Hampton University in Hampton, Virginia. "But during a global storm, dust towers are renewed continuously for weeks." In some cases, multiple towers were seen for as long as 3 1/2 weeks.

The rate of dust activity surprised Heavens and other scientists. But especially intriguing is the possibility that dust towers act as "space elevators" for other material, transporting them through the atmosphere. When airborne dust heats up, it creates updrafts that carry gases along with it, including the small quantity of water vapor sometimes seen as wispy clouds on Mars.

A previous paper led by Heavens showed that during a 2007 global dust storm on Mars, water molecules were lofted into the upper atmosphere, where solar radiation could break them down into particles that escape into space. That might be a clue to how the Red Planet lost its lakes and rivers over billions of years, becoming the freezing desert it is today.

Scientists can't say with certainty what causes global dust storms; they've studied fewer than a dozen to date.

"Global dust storms are really unusual," said Mars Climate Sounder scientist David Kass of JPL. "We really don't have anything like this on the Earth, where the entire planet's weather changes for several months."

With time and more data, the MRO team hopes to better understand the dust towers created within global storms and what role they may play in removing water from the Red Planet's atmosphere.

For more information about MRO:

https://mars.nasa.gov/mro/

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/main/index.html

Source: JPL Return to Contents

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The Night Sky Tuesday, Dec. 3

• Now Fomalhaut is almost straight under the Moon at nightfall. The Moon is first-quarter this evening and tomorrow evening.

Wednesday, Dec. 4

• Right after dark, look high above the Moon for the Great Square of Pegasus oriented level.

• Orion fully clears the eastern horizon by about 8 p.m. now, depending on how far east or west you live in your time zone. High above Orion shines orange Aldebaran. Above Aldebaran is the little Pleiades cluster, the size of your fingertip at arm's length.

Far left of Aldebaran and the Pleiades shines bright Capella.

Down below Orion, brilliant Sirius rises around 9.

Thursday, Dec. 5

• Now the Moon is straight below the east (left) side of the Great Square of Pegasus in early evening.

Friday, Dec. 6

• The Moon shines lower left of the Great Square of Pegasus.

Source: Sky & Telescope Return to Contents

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ISS Sighting Opportunities

For Denver: Date Visible Max Height Appears Disappears

Tue Dec 3, 5:25 PM 2 min 11° 10° above N 10° above NNE

Wed Dec 4, 6:13 PM 1 min 14° 10° above NNW 14° above N

Thu Dec 5, 5:25 PM 3 min 13° 10° above NNW 11° above NE

Thu Dec 5, 7:01 PM < 1 min 10° 10° above NW 10° above NW

Fri Dec 6, 6:12 PM 2 min 25° 10° above NW 25° above N Sighting information for other cities can be found at NASA’s Satellite Sighting Information NASA-TV Highlights (all times Eastern Daylight Time) December 3, Tuesday Noon: Town Hall with NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine (All Channels) 1:30 p.m. - What’s On Board: SpaceX CRS-19: A look at the payload for the upcoming SpaceX Commercial Resupply Service mission to the International Space Station (All Channels) 4:00 p.m. - SpaceX CRS-19 Pre-Launch News Conference (All Channels)

December 4, Wednesday 12:30 p.m. – Launch of SpaceX CRS-19 Commercial Resupply Service mission to the International Space Station. (Launch scheduled at 12:51 p.m. EST) (All Channels) 3 p.m. – NASA Science Live: Parker Solar Probe (All Channels)

December 6, Friday 4:15 a.m. – Coverage of the Launch of the International Space Station Progress 74 cargo craft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan; launch is scheduled at 4:34 a.m. EST – Johnson Space Center via Baikonur, Kazakhstan (All Channels) 9 a.m. – International Space Station Expedition 61 in-flight event for the European Space Agency with Nobel Prize Winners in Stockholm, Sweden and Station Commander Luca Parmitano of ESA (All Channels) 11 a.m. – SpaceCast Weekly (All Channels)

Watch NASA TV on the Net by going to the NASA website. Return to Contents

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Space Calendar • Dec 03 - Comet C/2018 F4 (PANSTARRS) Perihelion (3.441 AU) • Dec 03 - Comet 73P-K/Schwassmann-Wachmann At Opposition (3.705 AU) • Dec 03 - Asteroid 2296 Kugultinov Occults HIP 33212 (6.7 Magnitude Star) • Dec 03 - Asteroid 97 Klotho Occults UCAC5 446-006792 (6.9 Magnitude Star) • Dec 03 - Apollo Asteroid 2017 AP4 Near-Earth Flyby (0.022 AU) • Dec 03 - Apollo Asteroid 37655 Illapa Closest Approach To Earth (0.640 AU) • Dec 03 - Asteroid 8129 Michaelbusch Closest Approach To Earth (1.379 AU) • Dec 03 - Asteroid 61189 Ohsadaharu Closest Approach To Earth (1.458 AU) • Dec 03 - Asteroid 61342 Lovejoy Closest Approach To Earth (1.535 AU) • Dec 03 - Asteroid 5036 Tuttle Closest Approach To Earth (2.123 AU) • Dec 03 - Kuiper Belt Object 2006 QH181 At Opposition (83.241 AU) • Dec 03 - 115th Anniversary (1904), Charles Perrine's Discovery of Himalia (Jupiter Moon) • Dec 03 - Robert G Harrington's 115th Birthday (1904) • Dec 03-05 - European Space Week, Helsinki, Finland

• Dec 04 - [Nov 27] CRS-19/ CIRiS/ PTD 1/ EdgeCube Falcon 9 Launch (International Space Station) • Dec 04 - Comet 114P/Wiseman-Skiff Closest Approach To Earth (0.723 AU) • Dec 04 - Comet 73P-N/Schwassmann-Wachmann At Opposition (3.755 AU) • Dec 04 - Aten Asteroid 2010 TK7 (Earth Trojan) Closest Approach To Earth (0.212 AU) • Dec 04 - Lecture: Can Astrophysics Help Save Our Planet?, Liverpool, United Kingdom • Dec 04 - 60th Anniversary (1959), Little Joe 2 Launch (Monkey "Sam") • Dec 05 - [Dec 03] ALE 2/ NOOR 1A & 1B/ ATL 1/ FossaSat 1/ SMOG-P/ TRSI-Sat Electron

Launch • Dec 05 - Comet 298P/Christensen At Opposition (1.893 AU) • Dec 05 - Apollo Asteroid 2019 WW Near-Earth Flyby (0.022 AU)

• Dec 06 - [Nov 29] Progress MS-13 Soyuz-2.1a Launch (International Space Station 74P) • Dec 06 - [Nov 30] Apollo Asteroid 2019 WR3 Near-Earth Flyby (0.036 AU) • Dec 06 - [Dec 02] Apollo Asteroid 2019 WB5 Near-Earth Flyby (0.048 AU) • Dec 06 - [Dec 03] Kuiper Belt Object 229762 G!kun||'homdima At Opposition (40.938 AU) • Dec 06 - Clyde Cowan's 100th Birthday (1919)

Source: JPL Space Calendar Return to Contents

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Food for Thought

Does complex life exist elsewhere? Study of exoplanet-tilts boosts hopes

Are we alone, or are there other intelligent civilizations in our Milky Way galaxy? In recent years, astronomers have discovered thousands of exoplanets, or worlds orbiting distant suns, some of which are potentially habitable. The growing consensus seems to be that we probably aren’t all by ourselves. Now a new study – announced by astronomers at the Georgia Institute of Technology (aka Georgia Tech) on November 20, 2019 – focuses on the axial tilt of Earthlike exoplanets in binary or double star systems. It also boosts hope for complex life elsewhere … although not, these astronomers say, within the star system closest to our sun.

The new peer-reviewed study was published in The Astrophysical Journal on November 19.

The researchers found that if a theoretical twin of Earth were placed into a binary star system – where two stars orbit each other – up to 87% of them should tilt on their axes in a way similar to Earth’s. What’s more, the tilt should be as stable as Earth’s: not perfectly stable, but not wildly unstable, either. This result is significant, since Earth’s relatively steady tilt on its axis helps our world maintain a stable climate, needed for complex life to evolve.

Astronomer Gongjie Li at Georgia Tech said in a statement:

Multiple-star systems are common, and about 50% of stars have binary companion stars. So, this study can be applied to a large number of solar systems.

Do the results mean that all exoEarths in double star systems have steady and stable axial tilts, along with a greater potential for complex life? Unfortunately, no. We need only look as far as the next-nearest star system to find a counter-example.

EarthSky 2020 lunar calendars are available! They make great gifts. Order now. Going fast!

That is, the researchers modeled an example of an Earthlike world within the habitable zones of the two primary stars in the Alpha Centauri system, only 4.2 light-years away. Their statement explained:

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Alpha Centauri A actually didn’t look bad, but the outlook for mild axis dynamics on an exo-Earth modeled around star B was wretched. This may douse some hopes because Alpha Centauri AB is 4 light-years away, and a mission named Starshot with big-name backers plans to launch a space probe to examine the system, including for signs of advanced life.

So far, no actual exoplanets have yet been detected around either Alpha Centauri A or B. On the other hand, a planet is thought to orbit Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf star and technically our sun’s nearest neighbor (although no one knows for sure if Proxima is gravitationally bound to the A-B stars). This planet – called Proxima b – isn’t thought to be habitable, though. According to the new study’s principal investigator Billy Quarles, also of Georgia Tech:

We simulated what it would be like around other binaries with multiple variations of the stars’ masses, orbital qualities, and so on. The overall message was positive, but not for our nearest neighbor.

Earth’s axial tilt varies between 22.1 and 24.5 degrees every 41,000 years. This is mild enough for the planet to maintain a stable enough climate for complex life to evolve. Image via timeanddate.com.

A world’s axial tilt is important to the question of whether it can produce and sustain complex life. That’s because, for example, Earth’s axial tilt has a huge effect on our planet’s climate.

Earth’s tilt doesn’t vary much – only between 22.1 and 24.5 degrees every 41,000 years – and that fact has helped the planet maintain a stable climate over hundreds of millions of years, these astronomers say. In turn, the stable climate has allowed evolution to proceed and produce more complex lifeforms.

Earth’s moon also helps to keep variation in Earth’s axial tilt to a minimum.

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Plus Earth has a stable orbit around the sun, another factor in how well our planet can maintain a climate stable enough for complex life.

If a planet has large variations in its axial tilt – as our neighboring planet Mars does for example – it’s harder for the planet’s climate to stay stable. Mars’ axis is much more variable than Earth’s, precessing between 10 degrees and 60 degrees every 2 million years. According to Quarles:

If we didn’t have the moon, Earth’s tilt could vary by about 60 degrees. We’d look maybe like Mars, and the precession of its axis appears to have contributed to a loss of atmosphere.

On Mars, this has significant effects; at 10 degrees tilt, the atmosphere condenses at the poles, creating caps that lock up a lot of the carbon dioxide atmosphere in ice. At 60 degrees, the planet could actually develop an ice belt around its equator. There is a lot of ice underground on Mars today, even near the equator, but not on the surface of the planet except at the poles.

The researchers also found that – in a double star system – for example, for Alpha Centauri B, an Earth-like planet would actually have a more stable climate without a moon. According to Quarles:

Around Alpha Centauri B, if you don’t have a moon, you have a more stable axis than if you do have a moon. If you have a moon, it’s pretty much bad news.

But even without a moon, a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri B would have a difficult time maintaining a stable climate. Quarles said:

The biggest effect you would see is differences in the climate cycles related to how elongated the orbit is. Instead of having ice ages every 100,000 years like on Earth, they may come every 1 million years, be worse, and last much longer.

But, Quarles noted, there’s also a sweet spot in their model, albeit a small one:

Planetary orbit and spin need to precess just right relative to the binary orbit. There is this tiny sweet spot.

The potential for habitable climates on Earth-like worlds in the galaxy and the universe in general, however, seems quite positive, according to Li:

In general, the separation between the stars is larger in binary systems, and then the second star has less of an effect on the model of Earth. The planet’s own motion dynamics dominate other influences, and obliquity usually has a smaller variation. So, this is quite optimistic.

This is great news for the search for life elsewhere. About half the stars in our galaxy exist in double star systems, and the new results suggest that many exoEarths in those systems should have stable climate systems, suitable for complex life to evolve.

Even if not right next door.

Bottom line: A new study of exoplanet axial tilts from Georgia Tech shows that many Earth-sized worlds, even in binary star systems, could have stable enough climates for complex life to evolve.

Source: EarthSky.com Return to Contents

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Space Image of the Week

Hubble Detects Dynamic Galactic Duo

Some galaxies are closer friends than others. While many live their own separate, solitary lives, others stray a little too close to a near neighbor and take their friendship even deeper. The two galaxies in this image taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, named NGC 6285 (left) and NGC 6286 (right), have done just that! Together, the duo is named Arp 293 and they are interacting, their mutual gravitational attraction pulling wisps of gas and streams of dust from them, distorting their shapes, and gently smudging and blurring their appearances on the sky — to Earth-based observers, at least. Hubble has viewed a number of interacting pairs. These can have distinctive, beautiful, and downright odd shapes, ranging from sheet music to a spaceship entering a sci-fi-esque wormhole, a bouquet of celestial blooms and a penguin fiercely guarding its precious egg. Arp 293 is located in the constellation of Draco (the Dragon) and lies over 250 million light-years from Earth. Text credit: ESA (European Space Agency); Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, K. Larson et al. Source: NASA Return to Contents