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ESA’s exoplanet mission Cheops confirmed the existence of four warm exoplanets orbiting four stars in our Milky Way. These exoplanets have sizes between Earth and Neptune and orbit their stars closer than Mercury our Sun.
These so-called mini-Neptunes are unlike any planet in our Solar System and provide a ‘missing link’ between Earth-like and Neptune-like planets that is not yet understood. Mini-Neptunes are among the most common types of exoplanets known, and astronomers are starting to find more and more orbiting bright stars.
Mini-Neptunes are mysterious objects. They are smaller, cooler, and more difficult to find than the so-called hot Jupiter exoplanets which have been found in abundance. While hot Jupiters orbit their star in a matter of hours to days and typically have surface temperatures of more than 1000 °C, warm mini-Neptunes take longer to orbit their host stars and have cooler surface temperatures of only around 300 °C.
The first sign of the existence of these four new exoplanets was found by the NASA TESS mission. However, this spacecraft only looked for 27 days at each star. A hint to a transit – the dimming of light as a planet passes in front of its star from our viewpoint – was spotted for each star. During its extended mission, TESS revisited these stars and the same transit was seen again, implying the existence of planets.
Scientists calculated the most likely orbital periods and pointed Cheops at the same stars at the time they expected the planets to transit. During this hit-or-miss procedure Cheops was able to measure a transit for each of the exoplanets, confirming their existence, discovering their true orbital periods and taking the next step in their characterisation.
The four newly discovered planets have orbits between 21 and 53 days around four different stars. Their discovery is essential because it brings our sample of known exoplanets closer to the longer orbits that we find in our own Solar System.
One of the outstanding questions about mini-Neptunes is what they are made of. Astronomers predict that they have an iron-rocky core with thick outer layers of lighter material. Different theories predict different outer layers: Do they have deep oceans of liquid water, a puffy hydrogen and helium atmosphere or an atmosphere of pure water vapour?
Discovering the composition of mini-Neptunes is important to understand the formation history of this type of planet. Water-rich mini-Neptunes probably formed far out in the icy regions of their planetary system before migrating inwards, while combinations of rock and gas would tell us that these planets stayed in the same place as they formed.
The new Cheops measurements helped determine the radius of the four exoplanets, while their mass could be determined using observations from ground-based telescopes. Combining the mass and radius of a planet gives an estimate of its overall density.
The density can only give a first estimate of the mass of the iron-rocky core. While this new information about the density is an important step forward in understanding mini-Neptunes, it does not contain enough information to offer a conclusion for the outer layers.
The four newly confirmed exoplanets orbit bright stars, which make them the perfect candidates for a follow-up visit by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope or ESA’s future Ariel mission. These spectroscopic missions could discover what their atmospheres contain and provide a definitive answer to the composition of their outer layers.
A full characterisation is needed to understand how these bodies formed. Knowing the composition of these planets will tell us by what mechanism they formed in early planetary systems. This in turn helps us better understand the origins and evolution of our own Solar System.
The results were published in four papers: ‘Refined parameters of the HD 22946 planetary system and the true orbital period of the planet d’ by Z. Garai et al. is published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
‘Two Warm Neptunes transiting HIP 9618 revealed by TESS & Cheops’ by H. P. Osborn et al. is published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
‘TESS and CHEOPS Discover Two Warm Sub-Neptunes Transiting the Bright K-dwarf HD15906’ by A. Tuson et al. is published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
‘TOI-5678 b: a 48-day transiting Neptune-mass planet characterized with CHEOPS and HARPS’ by S. Ulmer-Moll et al. is published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Credits: ESA (Acknowledgement: work performed by ATG under contract for ESA), CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
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is there meaning of a i existence? Even if My existence was always kind of something like a shadow or mist.
50 secs under Boscombe pier, Dorset.
Converted to mono via channel mixer with a dab of deep yellow filter. I had to place the camera next to a pillar and stand so my shadow was cast across the lens to minimise flare due to the strong sunset without clouds.
The greatest irony of human existence is our inability to recognize our happiness in a moment until it becomes a photograph. I won't speak for others, but for me, photography evokes nostalgia. Sometimes, when I look at a photo, I feel a profound sadness, knowing that the moment captured will never happen again. It resembles the museum scene in *The Catcher in the Rye*. I always try to be mindful of time and how fleeting it is…
The town of Bude is relatively young and has only been in existence for around one hundred years. And while it was the sandy beach that led indirectly to the establishment of the town, it was nothing to do with people wanting a holiday at the seaside. In those days the majority of people simply didn't have holidays as we know them.
Before the advent of artificial fertilisers many farmers spread lime on their fields to improve the quality of the soil. But Cornwall doesn't have its own source of limestone, so this had to be imported. Then it was discovered that the sand at Bude contained calcium carbonate (in effect, limestone) and suddenly there was a great demand for it. But there were no railways and few decent roads in those days, and so a company was formed to construct a canal and small harbour to move the sand in bulk to farms inland and to places from which it could more easily be distributed. Having built up a demand for the sand it was natural for the developing railway system to come to Bude, and as elsewhere this eventually put the canal out of business. But it also provided an easy way for people to get to Bude, and so the seaside resort was born.
The entrance to the canal with its heavy lock gates is just out of shot to the left. The old harbour is immediately in front.
"There was a nuclear war. A few years from now, all this, this whole place, everything, it's gone. Just gone. There were survivors. Here, there. Nobody even knew who started it. It was the machines, Sarah."
('T-800 Endoskeleton' by NECA)
Diorama by RK
here's for never letting go
please View On Black
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"A myth is a way of making sense in a senseless world. Myths are narrative patterns that give significance to our existence."
~ Rollo May, 1991, The Cry for Myth, p. 15
Burnaby Mountain, Burnaby, BC.
As the bracken fern slowly sink back into the earth, the final days of their yearly existence resemble the last glowing embers of a fire as it exhausts what remains of it's fuel. Even as their light is extinguished, the warmth they bring to the forest at this cold time of year is enough to uplift even the lowest of spirits.
1965 .I was a DJ back then and on my way with friends to see the Kinks ( Fab show ) Even though I did not drive , I had friends who did and was able to take a few shots of Paris with a cheap camera ... now I can edit and process them to the max if I wanna ...here is one of them and maybe more 2 come ;-)
Every moment of existence seems like some dirty trick
Happiness can come suddenly and leave just as quick
Any minute of the day the bubble could burst
Try to make things better for someone, sometimes, you just end up making it a thousand times worse
Day 265. 19/03/2011
Life will have its share of storm and waves, but you have to stay put and be patient.
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We went to the beachside to celebrate a friend's birthday. The weather wasn't too great for photos-quite foggy and overcast, but was quite serene for the inner sense.