Woah :O

Yeah Earth is such a narcissist

But TESS is a great satellite (it launched in 2018 by SpaceX - so thanks guys!)

The study of exoplanets has never been my main thing in astrophysics (sorry, my heart belongs to black holes and cosmology!) but I think it’s a really cool and important field. And, for everyone who says that the vastness of space just shows our insignificance, know that the odds of us finding other intelligent life are extremely small. I think we’re pretty special.

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SpaceX successfully launched TESS yesterday! We’re going to discover so many new exoplanets.

Woah :o

That is soooooooo cool!

I don’t do excess research into exoplanets - like I do stars - but wow. Isn’t it just amazing how much information we can get from such a far object??? Science has really come so far, it brings a single tear to my eye ;)

I’ll definitely be on the lookout for more info!

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YALE’S EXPRES LOOKS TO THE SKIES OF A SCORCHING, DISTANT PLANET

Yale technology is giving astronomers a closer look at the atmosphere of a distant planet where it’s so hot the air contains vaporized metals.

The planet, MASCARA-2 b, is 140 parsecs from Earth – or roughly 2.68 quadrillion miles. It’s a gas giant, like Jupiter. However, its orbit is 100 times closer to its star than Jupiter’s orbit is to our Sun.

The atmosphere of MASCARA-2 b reaches temperatures of more than 3,140 degrees Fahrenheit, putting it on the extreme end of a class of planets known as hot Jupiters. Astronomers are keenly interested in hot Jupiters because their existence had been unknown until 25 years ago and they may offer new information about the formation of planetary systems.

“Hot Jupiters provide the best laboratories for developing analysis techniques that will one day be used to search for biosignatures on potentially habitable worlds,” said Yale astronomer Debra Fischer, the Eugene Higgins Professor of Astronomy and co-author of a new study that has been accepted by the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Fischer is the guiding force behind the instrument that made the discovery possible: the Extreme PREcision Spectrometer (EXPRES), which was built at Yale and installed on the 4.3-meter Lowell Discovery Telescope near Flagstaff, Ariz.

The primary mission of EXPRES is finding Earth-like planets based on the slight gravitational influence they have on their stars. This precision also comes in handy when looking for atmospheric details of far-away planets, the researchers said.

Here’s how it works.

As MASCARA-2 b crosses the direct line of sight between its host star and Earth, elements in the planet’s atmosphere absorb starlight at specific wavelengths – leaving a chemical fingerprint. EXPRES is able to pick up those fingerprints.

Using EXPRES, Yale astronomers and colleagues from the Geneva Observatory and Bern University in Switzerland, as well as the Technical University of Denmark, found gaseous iron, magnesium, and chromium in MASCARA-2 b’s atmosphere.

“Atmospheric signatures are very faint and difficult to detect,” said co-author Sam Cabot, a graduate student in astronomy at Yale and leader of the study’s data analysis. “Serendipitously, EXPRES offers this capability, since you need very high-fidelity instruments to find planets outside our own solar system.”

The study’s lead author, astronomer Jens Hoeijmakers of the Geneva Observatory, said EXPRES also found evidence of different chemistry between the “morning” and “evening” sides of MASCARA-2 b.

“These chemical detections may not only teach us about the elemental composition of the atmosphere, but also about the efficiency of atmospheric circulation patterns,” Hoeijmakers said.

Along with other advanced spectrometers such as ESPRESSO, built by Swiss astronomers in Chile, EXPRES is expected to collect a wealth of new data that may dramatically advance the search for exoplanets – planets orbiting stars other than our own Sun.

“The detection of vaporized metals in the atmosphere of MASCARA-2 b is one of the first exciting science results to emerge from EXPRES,” Fischer said. “More results are on the way.”

I’m so hype for this telescope though

They say it might be able to see back to when the first stars were born - how exciting!

Eat shit Hubble telescope

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The launch of the James Webb Telescope – the successor of the Hubble Telescope – has been delayed until 2021 but damn it’s going to be awesome.

I’m re-watching Crash Course: Astronomy for about the 10 x 10^23 time

Want to join me?

It’s one of my favorites :)

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Well TECHNICALLY it’s a helium-4 nucleus

I guess I can see where the confusion comes from

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first post on Reddit lets go

My favorite YouTube video as of now (I know this doesn’t seem like it’s related to space - but it has a nice discussion about black holes and hawking radiation, which is I love it so much)

Remember kids: be cautious of bouncy castles!

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They’re so lonely :(

Wait I guess that means I’m an electron since I’m #foreveralone. I feel like I should be sad about this but electrons are cool so I can’t really be lol.

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Poor electrons

It’s been two years, and I’ll never forget him.

I remember when I was little and I loved space, but I was worried that I would be too bored of the astrophysics area. Then I read Mr. Hawking’s book a Brief History of Time, and I fell in love.

Thanks, Stephie.

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The world lost an amazing thinker today. Celebrated world-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking passed away in Cambridge on March 14th, 2018 (Pi Day), at age 76. Somehow, I think he would have found this to be very poetic.

Stephen William Hawking CH CBE FRS FRSA was an English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, author and Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology within the University of Cambridge.

The rickroll is basically all scientists in a nutshell

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Let’s keep asking questions…

More nebulae!!!

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M27: Not a Comet : While hunting for comets in the skies above 18th century France, astronomer Charles Messier diligently kept a list of the things he encountered that were definitely not comets. This is number 27 on his now famous not-a-comet list. In fact, 21st century astronomers would identify it as a planetary nebula, but it’s not a planet either, even though it may appear round and planet-like in a small telescope. Messier 27 (M27) is an excellent example of a gaseous emission nebula created as a sun-like star runs out of nuclear fuel in its core. The nebula forms as the star’s outer layers are expelled into space, with a visible glow generated by atoms excited by the dying star’s intense but invisible ultraviolet light. Known by the popular name of the Dumbbell Nebula, the beautifully symmetric interstellar gas cloud is over 2.5 light-years across and about 1,200 light-years away in the constellation Vulpecula. This impressive color composite highlights details within the well-studied central region and fainter, seldom imaged features in the nebula’s outer halo. It incorporates broad and narrowband images recorded using filters sensitive to emission from hydrogen and oxygen atoms. via NASA