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Astronomy News





-Oct-19



INTERSTELLAR VISITOR


The second interstellar visitor to our Solar System was discovered earlier this year by a Polish amateur astronomer Gennady Borisov. This one is a comet named C/2019 Q4 Borisov. It has a speed of 49 km per sec meaning its orbit cannot be part of our solar system with its current distance from the Sun. Its orbit is a hyperbolic orbit meaning it will leave our solar system back out into interstellar space from where it came. It rounds the Sun at twice the Earth Sun distance on 7 Dec 2019 near the orbit of Mars. The image below is taken from the Hubble Space Telescope on Oct 12 2019. It resembles comets in our own Solar System.


Comet 21 Borisov is hot on the heels of another interstellar object Oumuamua discovered in 2017. This one a rocky object of a cigar or frisbee shape. Can't wait for the Sci Fi novels these discoveries that will evolve from conspiracies about these 2 visitors.

The comet is currently in the constellation Leo at magnitude 16, way too faint for the naked eye and visually through an amateur telescope. Though possible using a CCD camera on a telescope and will try to image it in the next month on my telescopes at Dubbo and Coonabarabran. Go to this link to find more information on the comet, its position in the Solar System, and brightness. https://theskylive.com/c2019q4-info





Astronomy News





20-Oct-19



20 more moons have been discovered orbiting the planet Saturn making it now the King of The Planets with a total of 82 moons relegating Jupiter to 2nd place with 79 moons. All these moons are small around 5km across and distant and take 2 to 3 Earth years to orbit Saturn.


The discovery was made by a team led by Scott Sheppard using the Subuaru telescope apon Hawaii's Mauna Kea. How many more will be found? Will Jupiter catch up?






Astronomy News





12-Sep-19



Hubble Space Telescope has discovered water vapour for the first time in the atmosphere on an exoplanet in the goldilocks zone around a star 110 light years away. If confirmed with further studies, This will be the first known planet with water discovered in a planet in the habitable zone The habitable zone is the region around a star where its not too hot or not too cold for liquid water to exist on a planet.


The planet named K2-18b is a Super-Earth, 8 times more massive than the Earth and orbits a small red dwarf star in the constellation Leo.


This is not to say that there is actually liquid water on the surface of this planet as its not known if this planet is a rocky world like our Earth or a gaseous planet like a smaller version of Neptune. Liquid water though means its a candidate for life on another world. It would be very different to life on Earth with the surface gravity several times that of Earth's surface gravity. However this is life in deep oceans of the Earth where water pressure is hundreds of atmospheres.​


Below is an artists rendition of the exoplanet






Astronomy News





14-Aug-19



Hubble Space Telescope has taken a new image of Jupiter.

Follow this link for more information and a cool video of Jupiter's rotation.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2019/hubble-new-portrait-of-jupiter​






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Enquiries: 0488 425 940

Email: peter@dubboobservatory.com