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What does it say when your hairdresser texts you wanting to know the color on your toes? It's OPI DS Radiance, with ILNP Interstellar on the fingers; I actually did a decent job on those on my own.
This frame from Suvarnabhumi Airport looks very spaceship-ish.
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Copyright © 2015 Wei Kiat.
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Drop me a email (kiatography@gmail.com) if you wish to purchase my images.
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On Aug. 30, 2019, when amateur astronomer Gennady Borisov gazed upward with his homemade telescope, he spotted an object moving in an unusual direction. Now called 2I/Borisov, this runaway point of light turned out to be the first confirmed comet to enter our solar system from some unknown place beyond our Sun’s influence. Astronomers everywhere rushed to take a look with some of the most powerful instruments in the world, hoping to learn as much as they could about the mysterious visitor.
Now, thanks to observations with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers have figured out that 2I/Borisov has an unusual composition. Specifically, it has a higher concentration of carbon monoxide than any comet seen at a similar distance; that is, within about 200 million miles (300 million kilometers) of the Sun.
This suggests to scientists that the comet could have formed around a red dwarf — a smaller, fainter type of star than the Sun — though other kinds of stars are possible. Another idea is that 2I/Borisov could be a carbon monoxide-rich fragment of a small planet.
What is an interstellar comet?
Comets are snowballs of ice, dust and frozen gas. When totally frozen (or “inactive”), they’re approximately the diameter of a small town, but when heated by the Sun their tails can extend for millions of miles. 2I/Borisov is about the length of nine football fields, or 0.61 miles (0.98 kilometers), making it relatively small. The new results on the comet’s composition are published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
All comets form in the primordial disk of material that encircles a young star, preserving remnants of a planetary system’s ancient past. Comets from our own solar neighborhood reveal the history of materials, including water, that made Earth the planet we know today, as well as our other planetary neighbors. An interstellar comet, on the other hand, is a chemical ambassador from an entirely different star system — containing a treasure trove of clues to worlds too far to reach with modern technology.
“With an interstellar comet passing through our own solar system, it’s like we get a sample of a planet orbiting another star showing up in our own backyard,” said John Noonan of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, Tucson, and a member of the Hubble research team led by Dennis Bodewits of Auburn University in Alabama.
What scientists found
Bodewits and colleagues used Hubble to look at 2I/Borisov from Dec. 11, 2019 to Jan. 13, 2020. Separately, a team of international scientists led by Martin Cordiner and Stefanie Milam at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, studied the comet on December 15 and 16, 2019, with ALMA, an array of radio telescopes at an altitude of 16,570 feet (5,050 meters) in northern Chile. Radio telescopes are especially useful for looking at cold, low-energy gas in objects like comets.
Results from both Hubble and ALMA estimate that 2I/Borisov’s carbon monoxide concentration is higher than that of the average solar system comet.
Where did it come from?
A high carbon-monoxide-to-water ratio suggests that the comet has traveled from a very cold place — as cold as the area where Pluto is in relation to our Sun, called the Kuiper Belt. The group using Hubble additionally theorizes 2I/Borisov may have originated around the most common type of star in the Milky Way: a red dwarf. Red dwarfs are much smaller and dimmer than the Sun, so the planet-forming material around them would be colder than the building blocks of our solar system.
“These stars have exactly the low temperatures and luminosities where a comet could form with the type of composition found in comet 2I/Borisov,” said Noonan.
Scientists using ALMA say it’s possible that 2I/Borisov could be a fragment of a dwarf planet that had a lot of carbon monoxide near its surface, regardless of which type of star it came from. “If that object collided with another, then the carbon monoxide-rich fragments could be released into space,” said Cordiner.
But 2I/Borisov may have simply formed as a comet with a high concentration of carbon monoxide, the ALMA team points out. Alternatively, it may have an unusually thick outer layer that insulates frozen gases like hydrogen cyanide and water. As the more volatile carbon monoxide evaporates or “outgasses,” it may appear more abundant than other cometary gases. 2I/Borisov’s unusual properties may also suggest a wider diversity of carbon monoxide in comets in our own solar system than previously thought.
“Whatever the answer is, 2I/Borisov opens up a whole new can of worms for cometary science,” says Milam, one of the scientists using ALMA.
In our own solar system, there are two places where most comets reside: The Kuiper Belt, an area that includes Pluto; and the Oort Cloud, which is much farther away. All of these comets likely formed closer to the Sun, but may have been booted outward by the erratic movements of Jupiter and Saturn billions of years ago. These giant planets, because of their immense gravity, could have even sent comets flying toward other stars, escaping the influence of the Sun’s gravity altogether.
Given this history, scientists using Hubble theorize that a massive planet in a red dwarf system, in an environment with frozen carbon monoxide, may have punted 2I/Borisov our way.
“If a Jupiter-sized planet migrates inward, it could kick out a lot of these comets,” Bodewits said.
The team using ALMA agrees that a young moving planet likely sent the comet on its way. “Then, after a cold, lonely voyage, 2I/Borisov made its close encounter with our solar system and started outgassing and showing us what it’s got inside,” Cordiner says.
More to come
2I/Borisov is only the second object astronomers have detected that definitely came from a different star system. The first was 'Oumuamua, discovered in October 2017, that whizzed by too quickly for scientists to pin down its chemistry. Whether it too is a comet, an asteroid, or something else — we may never know.
2I/Borisov is continuing on its path through the solar system, and will eventually head out. As more advanced telescopes and other instruments turn on and gaze out in the coming years, astronomers expect to find more interstellar objects, though they will still be rare.
“Our solar system is so tiny compared to the distances between star systems,” Cordiner says. “For an interstellar comet to come in and hit the bullseye like Borisov did is incredible.”
ALMA is a partnership of ESO (representing its Member States), NSF (USA) and NINS (Japan), together with NRC (Canada), MOST and ASIAA (Taiwan), and KASI (South Korea), in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. The Joint ALMA Observatory is operated by ESO, AUI/NRAO and NAOJ.
Written by Elizabeth Landau
NASA Headquarters
For more information: www.nasa.gov/feature/interstellar-comet-borisov-reveals-i...
Holy sh!t! My mind has been blown! This giant space epic was truly a mind bender, but what was amazing, and what sucked? Let's check it out!!
Good: Let's start with the performances. EVERYONE in this film gave it their all and it was just splendid. The soundtrack was amazing with the mostly organ music just really made the film intense. But I think the best thing about this film is how smart it was. Every time I go into a Christopher Nolan film, I always have a film that plays with my mind, which I like. This film has all these 5th dimension/worm hole/time theories that I just love that it just makes my brain work!
Bad: Ok, there are a few scenes where they had to explain everything to the dummies, which was just a waste of time and wasn't needed. The last thing that was kinda lame was they didn't really give us an emphasis on the world dying. They could've cut out some time with those explanation scenes and put in some global scale problems and why the earth is dying. Oh yeah, there was this also weird thing with like the power of love or something and it sucked.
Now, if you are a guy who just like a simple film (you know who you are), this is not the film for you, but if you are willing to pay attention for 2 hours and 45 minutes, then go have some fun with this film! Overall, I'm going to give this film an 8/10, a smart film for smart people.
How to fake your own interstellar cloud: take a hand-held blender and hold it into an aquarium while adding food coloring of your choice. The twirled bubbles will be your stars :-)
I just don't know how to take better picture or milky way....
But after watched the Movie Interstellar.... I really want to do something about it... seriously, this is a movie of the year where I still remember every moment when father talk to daughter.
Must go to cinema to watch this movie and please don't download from free sources.
Nuela Charles at the Interstellar Rodeo in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. ©Eric Kozakiewicz/Interstellar Rodeo
Strumbellas at the Interstellar Rodeo in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. ©Eric Kozakiewicz/ Interstellar Rodeo
For my friend Connie in Ireland who wanted to know what my Buddy Icon was. Well here it is. The butterflies are real , manipulated in Photoshop. The rest of the image I created in Photoshop. 20 layers later and here it is.
Thank you
Brian
This artist's depiction shows the interstellar visitor
'Oumuamua (pronounced oh-MOO-ah-MOO-ah) racing toward the outskirts of our solar system. The object, heated by the Sun (lower right), is venting gaseous material from its surface, as a comet would.
Using observations from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based observatories, an international team of scientists have confirmed that 'Oumuamua, the first known interstellar object to travel through our solar system, got an unexpected boost in speed and shift in trajectory as it passed through the inner solar system last year. Researchers suggest this outgassing is one possible cause for 'Oumuamua's slight acceleration.
For more information, visit: hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2018/news-2018-25.html
Credit: NASA, ESA, and J. Olmsted and F. Summers (STScI)