Three new planets might support life

Did you know that there's a whole universe out there where other life may exist? Astronomers say there is a  likelihood and recently announced that they've identified a star system with up to seven planets -- three of which could potentially host life -- about 22 light-years away.
The likelihood that conditions could support life on at least one of those planets is "tremendous" according to one scientist, given that there are three terrestrial-mass planets in the habitable zone of one system. The "habitable zone" is the area near a star in which a planet can theoretically hold liquid water. In our own solar system, Venus is close to the inner edge of potential habitability, while Mars is closer to the outer edge. The findings, published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, are the latest in a recent string of identifications of planets that may host life.
What are these planets like?
The three planets orbit a star called Gliese 667C, part of the triple-star system Gliese 667. They are between four and eight times the mass of the Earth, making them "super-Earths." If you were standing on any of the potentially habitable planets in this system, that sun would appear as a bright red star. The other two stars in the system "would look like a very bright pair of stars providing as much illumination as the full moon on Earth," said Guillem Anglada-Escude of the University of Gottingen, Germany, who led the team of astronomers.
The planets are likely either rocky or water worlds, meaning they're entirely covered in water. These particular planets also appear to be "tidally locked," meaning the same side of a planet is always facing a star. That means one side of the planet always gets light and the other hemisphere is always in darkness.
And with three terrestrial-mass planets in the habitable zone, the likelihood of one of them actually being habitable is tremendous. The system also likely consists of two hot planets further in and two cooler planets orbiting further out, although scientists are less certain that the seventh planet exists.
Scientists determined these characteristics of the star system using new observations gathered from the W. M. Keck Observatory and the Magellan Telescope, with existing data from the European Southern Observatory's HARPS instrument in Chile. Earlier, scientists had determined that the star Gliese 667C had three planets with one that could be a candidate for life.

Read more about the findings from here.

The missing Oxygen molecule in the Orion Nebula

Today, interest in O2 no longer lies in its being a significant reservoir of elemental oxygen or in its cooling power. Instead, the searches have become an important way to test our current understanding of interstellar chemistry, and the various key formation, destruction, and depletion processes for O2 and the balance between them.
A 2012 search for molecular oxygen in the Orion Nebula came up negative, leading to new ideas on what's wrong in the chemical models. Searches for interstellar molecular oxygen, O2, have a long history, and the motivation for these searches has evolved. Prior to the late 1990’s, efforts to detect O2 were driven by a desire to confirm its predicted role as a major reservoir of elemental oxygen within dense molecular clouds and as the most important gas coolant of typical clouds after carbon monoxide (CO). But O2 was never found.
The image shows the nebula's glowing gas surrounding hot young stars at the edge of an immense interstellar molecular cloud only 1500 light-years away. Visible simultaneously are the bright stars of the Trapezium in Orion's heart, the sweeping lanes of dark dust that cross the center, the red glowing hydrogen gas, and the blue tinted dust that reflects the light of newborn stars. The whole Orion Nebula cloud complex, which includes the Horsehead Nebula, will slowly disperse over the next 100,000 years.
The SAO-led Submillimeter Wave Astronomy Satellite (SWAS) in 1998 and the Odin satellite in 2001 both failed to detect O2 toward a large number of sources at levels of a few percent of the abundances predicted by equilibrium gas-phase chemical models. Something in the chemical models was wrong, but what?
The conclusion forced a shift in the emphasis of searches.
Harvard Center for Astrophysics (CfA) astronomers Gary Melnick and Volker Tolls led a team of nineteen astronomers using the Herschel Space Observatory in study of O2 in the Orion nebula, a location well known for its rich chemistry. Herschel instruments have both high sensitivity and the broad wavelength coverage needed to search for the molecule in several of its emission lines.
The scientists report that they still did not find O2. The improved sensitivity, however, allows them to reach some general, if preliminary conclusions about four issues: the way oxygen clings to ice in the interstellar medium (perhaps stronger than previously suspected), the amount of total material in the Orion region (less than had been thought), the way O2 clumps together (smaller clumps), and the location of these molecules in the clouds (buried deeper than previous estimates).
Further modeling and additional observations will clarify the situation further, but the present work goes a long way to narrowing the possible explanations for the mysterious absence of this life-giving molecule.

Dusty surprise around black hole challenges current theories

The European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) has gathered the most detailed observations ever of the dust around the huge black hole at the center of an active galaxy. Rather than finding all of the glowing dust in a doughnut-shaped torus around the black hole, as expected, the astronomers discovered that much of it is located above and below the torus. These observations show that dust is being pushed away from the black hole as a cool wind — a surprising finding that challenges current theories and tells us how supermassive black holes evolve and interact with their surroundings.
Over the last 20 years, astronomers have found that almost all galaxies have a huge black hole at their center. Some of these black holes are growing by drawing in matter from their surroundings, creating in the process the most energetic objects in the universe — active galactic nuclei (AGN). The central regions of these brilliant powerhouses are ringed by doughnuts of cosmic dust dragged from the surrounding space, similar to how water forms a small whirlpool around the plughole of a sink. It was thought that most of the strong infrared radiation coming from AGN originated in these doughnuts.
But new observations of a nearby active galaxy called NGC 3783, harnessing the power of the VLTI at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile, have given a team of astronomers a surprise. Although the hot dust — at some 1300°–1800° Fahrenheit (700°–1000° Celsius) — is indeed in a torus as expected, they found huge amounts of cooler dust above and below this main torus.
The newly discovered dust forms a cool wind streaming outward from the black hole. This wind must play an important role in the complex relationship between the black hole and its environment. The black hole feeds its insatiable appetite from the surrounding material, but the intense radiation this produces also seems to be blowing the material away. It is still unclear how these two processes work together and allow supermassive black holes to grow and evolve within galaxies, but the presence of a dusty wind adds a new piece to this picture.
In order to investigate the central regions of NGC 3783, the astronomers needed to use the combined power of the Unit Telescopes of ESO’s Very Large Telescope. Using these units together forms an interferometer that can obtain a resolution equivalent to that of a 130-meter telescope.
These new observations may lead to a paradigm shift in the understanding of AGN. They are direct evidence that dust is being pushed out by the intense radiation. Models of how the dust is distributed and how supermassive black holes grow and evolve must now take into account this newly discovered effect.

How did the astronomers discover this? Read it here.

Don't miss the full moon on June 22-23 in 2013

This year, the largest full moon falls on June 23 at 11:32 UTC (6:32 a.m. CDT in the U.S.). For many, the moon appears about as full in the June 22 evening sky as it does on the evening of June 23. This full moon is not only the closest and largest full moon of the year but also presents the moon’s closest encounter with Earth for all of 2013. The moon will not be so close again until August, 2014.
Astronomers call this a perigee full moon. The word perigee describes the moon’s closest point to Earth for a given month. Two years ago, when the closest and largest full moon fell on March 19, 2011, many used the term supermoon, which we’d never heard before. Last year, we heard this term again to describe the year’s closest full moon on May 6, 2012.
Last month’s full moon – May 24-25, 2013 – was also a supermoon but the June full moon is special because the time of full moon falls even closer to the time of perigee, the moon’s closest point to Earth. The crest of the moon’s full phase in June 2013, and perigee, fall within an hour of each other.
 In fact, the June 2013 full moon lines up much more closely with perigee – the moon’s closest point to Earth. According to Guy Ottewell’s Astronomical Calendar 2013, the 2013 June full moon falls only 22 minutes after the moon reaches perigee, the moon’s closest point to Earth for this month and year. At perigee, the moon lies only 356,991 kilometers (221,824 miles) away. Two weeks later, on July 7, the moon will swing out to apogee – its farthest point for the month and year – at 406,490 kilometers (252,581 miles) distant.
Though these might seem to be routine astronomical events, on June 2013 the moon has the closest encounter with Earth until August 10, 2014, at which time the moon will be only five kilometers closer to Earth. The full moon will come even closer to Earth on September 28, 2015 (356,877 kilometers) and closer yet on November 14, 2016 (356,509 kilometers). November 2016 will feature the closest full moon until November 25, 2034!

Know more about supermoons from here.

Scientists discover 26 possible black holes in nearby Andromeda galaxy

Researchers have come upon a large group of possible cosmic vacuum cleaners, which have been identified as 26  black holes in Andromeda, a galaxy near our own.This is the largest number of possible black holes found in a galaxy outside the Milky Way, but that may be because of Andromeda's relative proximity to our galaxy.

Seven of the new potential Andromeda black holes reside within 1,000 light years of the center of that galaxy. This supports earlier research showing that, near the center of Andromeda, there are an unusual number of X-ray sources. A black hole is a dense region of space that has collapsed in on itself in such a way that nothing can escape it, not even light.Black holes can't be seen directly but astronomers can detect material falling into them when they interfere with other stars. To know more about black holes, watch this video or read from Black hole X-ray emissions.

Combining this discovery with previous observations of nine other black hole candidates, scientists can say that Andromeda has a total of 35 possible black holes. The research is published in The Astrophysical Journal. NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory made more than 150 observations over the course of 13 years to identify these black hole candidates.

It's probably easiest for Earth-based scientists to find black holes outside the Milky Way there, said Robin Barnard of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.In a binary system of this nature, a black hole and a star orbit each other closely. Material from the star falls into the black hole and "as it spirals in, it gets hotter and hotter, and faster and faster, and eventually it gives off X-rays, so we see lots and lots of X-rays coming out of it," Barnard said.

The material as it has been swallowed gets incredibly hot, up to about 10 billion degrees. Because of the tremendous amount of energy released, some of the brightest objects in the universe are black holes.It's hard for scientists to distinguish distant black holes from neutron stars.When a star explodes in a supernova, its fiery death leaves behind either a neutron star or a black hole, which is a more extreme version of a neutron star. If our own sun were a neutron star, it would be only about 10 kilometers, or 6.2 miles, across, Barnard said.

By comparison, as a black hole our sun might be only 2 kilometers across.Black holes of the kind that scientists may have spotted in Andromeda have masses that are typically five to 10 times that of the sun.Neutron stars have a surface, so falling material pounds onto it, Barnard said. Material rains down at enormous speeds, causing huge explosions and energy emissions.Billions of years from now, the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies will collide, marking the end of the galaxy as we know it.

Huge Asteroid belongs to new type of space rock, say scientists

A big asteroid that flew past Earth last month belongs to a new category of space rock, scientists say. The dark, cratered main asteroid is 1.9 miles (3 km) wide, and it has a 2,500-foot (750 m) moon that orbits it once every 32 hours.
Asteroid 1998 QE2 and its moon sailed within 3.6 million miles (5.8 million kilometers) of Earth on May 31, making their closest approach to our planet for at least the next two centuries. New radar images captured by the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico are revealing just how unique this binary asteroid is, researchers say.

Arecibo's Ellen Howell said, "Asteroid QE2 is dark, red, and primitive — that is, it hasn't been heated or melted as much as other asteroids. QE2 is nothing like any asteroid we've visited with a spacecraft, or plan to, or that we have meteorites from. It's an entirely new beast in the menagerie of asteroids near Earth."

The 1000-foot-wide (305 meters) Arecibo dish and NASA's 230-foot (70 m) Deep Space Network antenna in Goldstone, Calif., tracked 1998 QE2 as it approached Earth last month, then kept following the near-Earth asteroid as it receded into the depths of space. The resulting radar images have helped researchers take 1998 QE2's measure.

"QE2's moon is roughly one-quarter the size of the main asteroid. Similarly, our moon is also approximately one-fourth the size of our planet," said Patrick Taylor, also of Arecibo. Studying the moon and its orbit should help scientists determine the mass of the main asteroid, which in turn will shed light on the object's composition, researchers said. Asteroid 1998 QE2 was discovered in August 1998 by astronomers working with MIT's Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research program in New Mexico. The space rock completes one lap around the sun every 3.8 years.

There was never any danger of 1998 QE2 hitting Earth during last month's flyby, scientists say. If it had hit us, the damage would have been severe; researchers think that any asteroid bigger than 0.6 miles (1 km) is capable of inflicting damage on a global scale, primarily by altering the planet's climate.1998 QE2 is one of roughly 10,000 near-Earth asteroids that have been spotted to date. The total population of close-flying space rocks is thought to exceed 1 million.Arecibo's observing campaign of 1998 QE2 came to end on Thursday (June 13), observatory officials said.