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The exoplanet census continues to grow. Currently, 5,819 exoplanets have been confirmed in 4,346 star systems, while thousands more await confirmation. The vast majority of these planets were detected in the past twenty years, owing to missions like the Kepler Space Telescope, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), the venerable Hubble, the Convection, Rotation and planetary Transits (CoRoT) mission, and more. Thousands more are expected as the James Webb Space Telescope continues its mission and is joined by the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (RST).

In the meantime, astronomers will soon have another advanced observatory to help search for potentially habitable exoplanets. It’s called Pandora, a small satellite that was selected in 2021 as part of NASA’s call for Pioneer mission concepts. This observatory is designed to study planets detected by other missions by studying these planets’ atmospheres of exoplanets and the activity of their host stars with long-duration multiwavelength observations. The mission is one step closer to launch with the completion of the spacecraft bus, which provides the structure, power, and other systems.

Funded by NASA’s Astrophysics Pioneers, Pandora is a joint effort between Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. The mission will study planets detected by other observatories that rely on Transit Photometry (aka. the Transit Method), where astronomers monitor stars for periodic dips in brightness that indicate the presence of orbiting planets. Pandora will then monitor these planets for future transits and obtain spectra from their atmospheres – a process known as Transit Spectroscopy.

Using this method, scientists can determine the chemical composition of exoplanet atmospheres and search for indications of biological activity (aka. “biosignatures”). During its year-long primary mission, the SmallSat will study 20 stars and their 39 exoplanets in visible and infrared light. The mission team anticipates Pandora will observe at least 20 exoplanets 10 times for 24 hours, during which transits will occur, and the satellite will obtain spectra from the exoplanets’ atmospheres.

In particular, Pandora will be looking to determine the presence of hazes, clouds, and water. The data it obtains will establish a firm foundation for interpreting measurements by Webb and future missions to search for habitable worlds. Daniel Apai, a co-investigator of the mission, is a professor of astronomy and planetary sciences at the U of A Steward Observatory and Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, who leads the mission’s Exoplanets Science Working Group. As he said in a U of A News release:

“Although smaller and less sensitive than Webb, Pandora will be able to stare longer at the host stars of extrasolar planets, allowing for deeper study. Better understanding of the stars will help Pandora and its ‘big brother,’ the James Webb Space Telescope, disentangle signals from stars and their planets.” 

The concept for the telescope emerged to address a specific problem with Transit Spectroscopy. During transits, telescopes capture far more than just the passing through the planet’s atmosphere. They also capture light from the star itself. In addition, stellar surfaces are not uniform and have hotter, brighter regions (faculae) and cooler, darker regions (stellar spots) that change in size and position as the star rotates. This produces “mixed signals” that make it difficult to distinguish between light passing through the planet’s atmosphere and light from the star – which can mimic the signal produced by water.

Pandora will disentangle these signals by simultaneously monitoring the host star’s brightness in visible and infrared light. These observations will provide constraints on the variations in the star’s light, which can used to separate the star’s spectrum from the exoplanet’s. With the completion of the spacecraft bus, Pandora is one step closer to launch thanks to the completion of the spacecraft bus, which provides the structure, power, and other systems vital to the mission.

The completion of the bus was announced on January 16th during a press briefing at the 245th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in National Harbor, Maryland. “This is a huge milestone for us and keeps us on track for a launch in the fall,” said Elisa Quintana, Pandora’s principal investigator at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “The bus holds our instruments and handles navigation, data acquisition, and communication with Earth — it’s the brains of the spacecraft.” Said Ben Hord, a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow who discussed the mission at the 245 AAS:

“We see the presence of water as a critical aspect of habitability because water is essential to life as we know it. The problem with confirming its presence in exoplanet atmospheres is that variations in light from the host star can mask or mimic the signal of water. Separating these sources is where Pandora will shine.”

“Pandora’s near-infrared detector is actually a spare developed for the Webb telescope, which right now is the observatory most sensitive to exoplanet atmospheres. In turn, our observations will improve Webb’s ability to separate the star’s signals from those of the planet’s atmosphere, enabling Webb to make more precise atmospheric measurements.”

Unlike Webb and other flagship missions, Pandora can conduct continuous observations for extended periods because the demand for observation time will be low by comparison. Therefore, the Pandora satellite will fill a crucial gap between exoplanet discovery provided by flagship missions and exoplanet characterization. The mission is also a boon for the University of Arizona since Pandora’s science working group is led from there, and Pandora will be the first mission to have its operations center at the U of A Space Institute.

Further Reading: U of A News

The post NASA is Building a Space Telescope to Observe Exoplanet Atmospheres appeared first on Universe Today.

After a vacation hiatus, Bill Maher is back with a monologue called, “New rules: political firestorm.”  Here he parses blame for the L.A. fires between unavoidable causes (no rain, lots of brush) and avoidable ones (blockheaded politicians).  The latter, he says, involves cuts in the firse-department budget, stolen or nonfunctional hydrants, empty reservoirs, exposed power lines, and a mayor who was off in Africa after saying she wouldn’t leave L.A. while in office.

Maher is clearly pissed off, more so than in many other videos. But he’s still funny (note his criticism for a city statement apparently prioritizing DEI over fighting fires.)

h/t: Divy

When I was invited to go on Piers Morgan Uncensored, I was deeply undecided.  I knew Morgan was quite conservative and religious, and I’ve seen clips of him bullying his guests.  So I had a back-and-forth with the producer, trying to discern what Morgan wanted to ask me about. I got a long list of questions, which I decided I could field, but it turned out that Morgan was on my side about the sex binary, the need to treat trans and non-binary gender people with respect and dignifty, but also for the need to discuss the issue of what happens when trans rights conflict with the rights of other groups, most especially women. Further it also turned out that the big issue for Morgan was trans women in women’s sports, something I could easily discuss.  Finally, I asked several of my friends who had been on that show, who encouraged me to go on.

So I said “yes”—with some trepidation. I emphasized that I didn’t want to debate, because I don’t see debates as a good way to rationally discuss issues (you can see a failed attempt below), and I prefer to express my views in talks or written articles, where rhetorical dexterity is not so important.  That was fine with the producer.  They gave me half an hour, and then said there would be a multi-person debate following my segment, though they didn’t tell me the participants.  They are listed below.  They sent a fancy studio truck to my University, complete with a Chicago background and a satellite broadcasting dish, and lo and behold, I was on t.v. (taped).

It turned out that yes, Piers and I agreed in our one-on-one, which goes for the first 25½ minutes below and involves mostly sports. My segment was followed by a heated debate.  Here’s the YouTube description:

This week, House Republicans passed a bill that bans transgender women and girls from school sports, and soon that legislation will advance to the Senate. Speaker Mike Johnson, says this move protects young girls, but others say this will further ostracise vulnerable kids. Emotions are running high, and people on both sides of the debate are reporting receiving online abuse and death threats.

To cover this vital discussion, Piers Morgan speaks to biologist Jerry Coyne, who left the Freedom from Religion Foundation due to its position on sex and gender. Then, he turns to his panel made up of host of ‘Tomi Lahren is Fearless’ Tomi Lahren, Executive Director from the progressive organisation, Rebellion Pac, Brianna Wu and trans rights activist, Eli Erlick for their expert opinions.

I had heard of Tomi Lahren and Brianna Wu before, but not Eli Erlick. (Wu and Erlick are trans women, while Lahren is a biological woman, but hates that term and prefers to call herself just “a woman.”)  But I knew little about any of them. It turns out that both Wu and Lahren agree that extreme trans activism was hurting the trans movement, while Erlick basically takes issue with everything I said.  Everybody save Erlick got quite exercised, and of course there was no rapprochement.

But one thing that came out, which is mentioned on Wikipedia, is that Erlick, at the least, had a plan to illegally supply puberty blockers to “trans children and adolescents”.  And at least one source says that Erlick actually followed through with this distribution, which is clearly unethical and possibly dangerous. (At 46:00, Erlick more or less admits she did indeed do the distribution.)

I think Wu would have had a bit more credibility had she not characterized Erlick and her confrères as “trans freak show friends”, and the same with Lahren and her “rainbow mafia” designation. (Wu is clearly disturbed that the excesses of gender activists could have helped Harris lose the election.)

Nevertheless, I do agree in general with what Wu and Lahren said.  Even conservatives (e.g., Lahren and Morgan) can be right about some things, and this is one of them.  Surely organizations like the ACLU or FFRF would not approve of the illegal distribution of puberty blockers to children!

Anyway, here’s the 50-minute video, which shows that, at least at present, there is no possibility of a thoughtful adjudication of the few areas in which trans rights clash with women’s rights.

Addendum: Although Erlick denies that the authors of study described below—mentioned by Lahren at 46:45—tried to bury it, Erlick is wrong.It has, as far as I know, still not been published.  Read the NYT article below by clicking the headline, or find it archived here:

An excerpt:

An influential doctor and advocate of adolescent gender treatments said she had not published a long-awaited study of puberty-blocking drugs because of the charged American political environment.

The doctor, Johanna Olson-Kennedy, began the study in 2015 as part of a broader, multimillion-dollar federal project on transgender youth. She and colleagues recruited 95 children from across the country and gave them puberty blockers, which stave off the permanent physical changes — like breasts or a deepening voice — that could exacerbate their gender distress, known as dysphoria.

The researchers followed the children for two years to see if the treatments improved their mental health. An older Dutch study had found that puberty blockers improved well-being, results that inspired clinics around the world to regularly prescribe the medications as part of what is now called gender-affirming care.

But the American trial did not find a similar trend, Dr. Olson-Kennedy said in a wide-ranging interview. Puberty blockers did not lead to mental health improvements, she said, most likely because the children were already doing well when the study began.

“They’re in really good shape when they come in, and they’re in really good shape after two years,” said Dr. Olson-Kennedy, who runs the country’s largest youth gender clinic at the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles.

That conclusion seemed to contradict an earlier description of the group, in which Dr. Olson-Kennedy and her colleagues noted that one quarter of the adolescents were depressed or suicidal before treatment.

This is a prime example of scientific truth being kept under wraps because it undermines people’s ideology.

Interview with Nick Tiller, News Items: Does Fact-Checking Work, Nuclear Electric Propulsion, The LA Fires, Building Materials for Storing Carbon; Who's That Noisy; Science or Fiction

On Thursday, January 16th, at 02:03 AM EST, Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket took off on its maiden flight from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. This was a momentous event for the company, as the two-stage heavy-lift rocket has been in development for many years, features a partially reusable design, and is vital to Bezos’ plan of “building a road to space.” While the company failed to retrieve the first-stage booster during the flight test, the rocket made it to orbit and successfully deployed its payload -the Blue Ring Pathfinder – to orbit (which has since begun gathering data).

According to the most recent statement by Blue Origin, the second stage reached its final orbit following two successful burns of its two BE-3U engines. The successful launch of NG-1 means that Blue Origin can now launch payloads to Low Earth Orbit (LEO), a huge milestone for the commercial space company. “I’m incredibly proud New Glenn achieved orbit on its first attempt,” said Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp in a company statement. “We knew landing our booster, So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance, on the first try was an ambitious goal. We’ll learn a lot from today and try again at our next launch this spring. Thank you to all of Team Blue for this incredible milestone.”  

The rocket is named in honor of NASA astronaut John Glenn, a member of the Mercury 7 and the first American astronaut to orbit Earth as part of the Liberty Bell 7 mission on July 21st, 1961. This is in keeping with Blue Origin’s history of naming their launch vehicles after famous astronauts, such as the New Shepard rocket. This single-stage suborbital launch vehicle is named in honor of Alan Shepard, the first American astronaut to go to space as part of the Freedom 7 mission on May 5th, 1961.

Unlike the New Shepard, a fully reusable vehicle used primarily for space tourism and technology demonstrations and experiments, the New Glenn has a reusable first stage designed to land at sea on a barge named Jacklyn, or Landing Platform Vessel 1 (LPV1). While the second stage is not currently reusable, Blue Origin has been working on a reusable second stage (through Project Jarvis) since 2021. While development began on the New Glenn in 2013, the rocket has been stuck in “development hell” since 2016, shortly after it was first announced.

As a result, Blue Origin began lagging behind its main competitor (SpaceX) and missed out on several billion dollars worth of contracts. This included the company’s failure to secure a National Security Space Launch (NSSL) procurement contract and the U.S. Space Force’s termination of their launch technology partnership in late 2020. In 2021, the ongoing delay led to Jeff Bezos announcing that he would step down as CEO of Amazon Web Services (AWS) to take the helm at Blue Origin. By February 2024, the first fully-developed New Glenn rocket was unveiled at Launch Complex 36.

This mission not only validated the launch vehicle that is vital to the company’s future plans in space. It also served as the first of several demonstrations required to be certified for use by the National Security Space Launch program. “The success of the NG-1 mission marks a new chapter for launch operations at the Eastern Range, redefining commercial-military collaboration to maintain SLD 45’s position as the world’s premier gateway to space,” wrote Airman 1st Class Collin Wesson of the U.S. Space Force (USSF) Space Launch Delta 45 (SLD 45) Public Affairs, shortly after the launch.

These plans include the launch of Amazon’s proposed constellation of internet satellites (Project Kuiper) and the creation of the Orbital Reef – a proposed commercial space station under development by Blue Origin and Sierra Space. They have also secured a contract with NASA to launch the Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE) mission, two satellites that will study how solar wind interacts with Mars’ magnetic environment and drives atmospheric escape. NASA has also contracted with Blue Origin to provide payload and crewed launch services for the Artemis Program.

Artist’s concept of the Blue Moon Mk. II lander. Credit: Blue Origin

This includes the cargo lander Blue Moon Mark 1 and the Mark 2 that will transport the Artemis V astronauts to the lunar surface. This flight and those that will follow place Blue Origin among other commercial space companies poised to break up the near-monopoly SpaceX has enjoyed for over a decade. Said Jarrett Jones, the Senior VP for Blue Origin’s New Glenn:

“Today marks a new era for Blue Origin and for commercial space. We’re focused on ramping our launch cadence and manufacturing rates. My heartfelt thanks to everyone at Blue Origin for the tremendous amount of work in making today’s success possible, and to our customers and the space community for their continuous support. We felt that immensely today.” 

Further Reading: Blue Origin

The post New Glenn Reaches Orbit, but Doesn't Recover the Booster appeared first on Universe Today.

Six or seven billion years ago, most stars formed in super star clusters. That type of star formation has largely died out now. Astronomers know of two of these SSCs in the modern Milky Way and one in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), and all three of them are millions of years old.

New JWST observations have found another SSC forming in the LMC, and it’s only 100,000 years old. What can astronomers learn from it?

SSCs are responsible for a lot of star formation, but billions of years have passed since their heyday. Finding a young one in a galaxy so close to us is a boon for astronomers. It gives them an opportunity to wind back the clock and see how SSCs are born.

New research published in The Astrophysical Journal presents the new findings. It’s titled “JWST Mid-infrared Spectroscopy Resolves Gas, Dust, and Ice in Young Stellar Objects in the Large Magellanic Cloud.” The lead author is Omnarayani (Isha) Nayak from the Space Telescope Science Institute and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

At about 160,000 light-years away, the LMC is close in terms of galactic neighbours. It’s also face-on from our vantage point, making it easier to study. The N79 region in the LMC is a massive star-forming nebula about 1600 light-years across. The JWST used its Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) and found 97 new young stellar objects (YSOs) in N79, where the newly discovered super star cluster, H72.97-69.39, is located.

This image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope shows N79, a region of interstellar atomic hydrogen that is ionized and is captured here by Webb’s Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI). N79 is a massive star-forming complex spanning roughly 1630 light-years in the generally unexplored southwest region of the LMC. At the longer wavelengths of light captured by MIRI, Webb’s view of N79 showcases the region’s glowing gas and dust. Star-forming regions such as this are of interest to astronomers because their chemical composition is similar to that of the gigantic star-forming regions observed when the Universe was only a few billion years old, and star formation was at its peak. Image Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, M. Meixner CC BY 4.0 INT

Stellar metallicity increases over time as generations of stars are born and die. The LMC’s metallic abundance is only half that of our Solar System, meaning the conditions in the new SSC are similar to when stars formed billions of years ago in the early Universe. This is another of those situations in astronomy where studying a particular object or region is akin to looking into the past.

“Studying YSOs in the LMC gives astronomers a front-row seat to witness the birth of stars in a nearby galaxy. For the first time, we can observe individual low-mass protostars similar to the Sun forming in small clusters—outside of our own Milky Way Galaxy,” said Isha Nayak, lead author of this research. “We can see with unprecedented detail extragalactic star formation in an environment similar to how some of the first stars formed in the universe.”

The YSOs near the SSC H72.97-69.39 (hereafter referred to as H72) are segregated by mass. The most massive YSOs are concentrated near H72, while the less massive are on the outskirts of N79. The JWST revealed that what astronomers used to think were single massive young stars are actually clusters of YSOs. These observations confirm for the first time that what appear to be individual YSOs are often small clusters of protostars.

A composite image created using JWST NIRCam and ALMA data. Light from stars is shown in yellow, while blue and purple represent the dust and gas fueling star formation. Image Credit: NSF/AUI/NSF NRAO/S.Dagnello

This finding brings attention to the complex processes of early star formation. “The formation of massive stars plays a vital role in influencing the chemistry and structure of the interstellar medium (ISM),” the authors write in their published research. “Star formation takes place in clusters, with massive stars dominating the luminosity.”

One of the five young stars is over 500,000 times more luminous than the Sun. As revealed by the JWST Near InfraRed Camera (NIRCam), it’s surrounded by more than 1,550 young stars.

This Spitzer image from the new research shows the N79 region in the LMC. N79 consists of three giant molecular clouds. Spitzer data showed that each of the red circles is a massive young stellar object of at least eight solar masses. However, the JWST has revealed that three of them, with the exception of the one in N79W, aren’t individual YSOs; they’re clusters. Together, they could make up a very young super star cluster. Image Credit: Nayak et al. 2025.

Previous Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observations hinted at what might contribute to the formation of SSCs. ALMA showed that colliding filaments of molecular gas at least one parsec long are in the region. These filaments could be behind H72’s formation.

This figure from previous research shows ALMA observations of the region near the super star cluster H72. Each one shows carbon monoxide in a different velocity channel. The white “x” shows the location of H72. “Scrolling through the channels it is clear there is a filament in the northeast to southwest direction and a distinct filament in the northwest to southeast direction,” the authors explain. Image Credit: Nayak et al. 2019.

This work highlights JWST’s power to resolve complex star formation locations in other galaxies. Not only did the JWST show us that what appeared to be individual YSOs are actually groups of stars, but it allowed the researchers to determine their mass accretion rates and chemical properties. The JWST’s new data gives astronomers new insights into complex chemistry, including the presence of organic molecules, dust, and ice in star-forming regions.

The post Astronomers are Watching a Newly Forming Super Star Cluster appeared first on Universe Today.

In the years following the launch of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have tallied over 1 trillion galaxies in the universe. But only one galaxy stands out as the most important nearby stellar island to our Milky Way -- the magnificent Andromeda galaxy (Messier 31). It can be seen with the naked eye on a very clear autumn night as a faint cigar-shaped object roughly the apparent angular diameter of our Moon. A century ago, Edwin Hubble first established that this so-called 'spiral nebula' was actually very far outside our own Milky Way galaxy -- at a distance of approximately 2.5 million light-years or roughly 25 Milky Way diameters.

Neuroscientists have set up computer frameworks that can help model individual brain dynamics.

Atmospheric scientists show proposed 'geoengineering' effort to remove methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from the atmosphere could worse air quality while providing minimal climate benefits.

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The Central Molecular Zone (CMZ) at the heart of the Milky Way holds a lot of gas. It contains about 60 million solar masses of molecular gas in complexes of giant molecular clouds (GMCs), structures where stars usually form. Because of the presence of Sag. A*, the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole (SMBH), the CMZ is an extreme environment. The gas in the CMZ is ten times more dense, turbulent, and heated than gas elsewhere in the galaxy.

How do star-forming GMCs behave in such an extreme environment?

Researchers have found a novel way to study two of the GMCs in the CMZ. The clouds are named “Sticks” and “Stones” and astronomers have used decades of X-ray observations from the Chandra X-ray Observatory to probe the 3D structures of the pair of clouds.

University of Connecticut Physics Researcher Danya Alboslani and postdoctoral researcher Dr. Samantha Brunker are both with the Milky Way Laboratory at the University of Connecticut. They’ve produced two manuscripts presenting their new X-ray tomography method and their results. Brunker is the lead author of “3D MC I: X-ray Tomography Begins to Unravel the 3-D Structure of a Molecular Cloud in our Galaxy’s Center,” and Alboslani is the lead author of “3D MC II: X ray echoes reveal a clumpy molecular cloud in the CMZ.” Brunker and Alboslani are also co-authors on each paper. Alboslani also presented her results at the recent 245th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

When gas from elsewhere in the galaxy reaches Sgr A*, it forms an accretion ring around the SMBH. As the gas heats up, it releases X-rays. These X-ray emission are only intermittent, and in the past, some of these episodes have been very intense. The X-ray travel outward in all directions, and while we didn’t have the capability to observe them, they interacted with GMCs near the CMZ. The clouds first absorbed them the re-emitted them in a phenomenon called fluorescence.

“The cloud absorbs the X-rays that are coming from Sgr A* then re-emits X-rays in all directions. Some of these X-rays are coming towards us, and there is this very specific energy level, the 6.4 electron volt neutral iron line, that has been found to correlate with the dense parts of molecular gas,” says Alboslani. “If you imagine a black hole in the center producing these X-rays which radiate outwards and eventually interact with a molecular cloud in the CMZ, over time, it will highlight different parts of the cloud, so what we’re seeing is a scan of the cloud.”

The Central Molecular Zone; the Heart of the Milky Way. Image Credit: Henshaw / MPIA

The center of the galaxy is choked with dust that obscures our view of the region. Visible light is blocked, but the powerful X-rays emitted by Sgr A* during accretion events are visible.

Typically, astronomers only see two dimensions of objects in space. According to Battersby, their new X-Ray tomography method allows them to measure the GMCs’ third dimension. Battersby explains that while we typically only see two spatial dimensions of objects in space, the X-ray tomography method allows us to measure the third dimension of the cloud. It’s because we see the X-rays illuminate individual slices of the cloud over time. “We can use the time delay between illuminations to calculate the third spatial dimension because X-rays travel at the speed of light,” Battersby explains.

The Chandra X-Ray Observatory has been observing these X-rays for two decades, and as it observes them it sees different “slices” of the clouds, just like medical tomography. The slices are then built up into a 3D image. These are the first 3D maps of star-forming clouds in such an extreme environment.

This figure from Brunker’s paper on the “Sticks” cloud illustrates how the X-ray tomography works. Each coloured line represents a different “slice” of the cloud from a specific year. Image Credit: Brunker et al. 2025.

The X-ray tomography method has one weakness. The X-ray observations aren’t continuous, so there are gaps. There are also some structures visible in submillimeter wavelengths that aren’t seen in X-rays. To get around that, the pair of researchers used data from the ALMA and the Herschel Space Observatory to compare the structures seen in the X-ray echoes to those seen in other wavelengths. The structures that are missing in X-rays but visible in submillimeter wavelengths can also be used to constrain the duratio of X-ray flares that illuminated the clouds.

“We can estimate the sizes of the molecular structures that we do not see in the X-ray,“ says Brunker, “and from there we can place constraints on the duration of the X-ray flare by modeling what we would be able to observe for a range of flare lengths. The model that reproduced observations with similar sized ‘missing structures’ indicated that the X-ray flare couldn’t have been much longer than 4-5 months.”

This figure from Brunker’s paper shows ALMA observations, which show the presence of H2CO (formaldehyde) combined with Chandra’s X-ray observations. Blue is X-rays and pink is ALMA data. Purple is where they overlap. Each panel is from a different year. Image Credit: Brunker et al. 2025.

“The overall morphological agreement, and in particular, the association of the densest regions in both X-ray and molecular line data is striking and is the first time it has been shown on such a small scale,” says Brunker.

Detecting a third dimension of the clouds in this extreme environment could open new avenues of discovery.

“While we learn a lot about molecular clouds from data collected in 2D, the added third dimension allows for a more detailed understanding of the physics of how new stars are born,” says Battersby. “Additionally, these observations place key constraints on the global geometry of our Galaxy’s Center as well as the past flaring activity of Sgr A*, central open questions in modern astrophysics.”

When it comes to how new stars from, there are many unanswered questions. While we know turbulence in GMCs can inhibit star formation, the exact mechanism is unkown. Astronomers are also uncertain how environmental factors affect star formation. There are many others and some of them can be answered by watching how GMCs behave in extreme environments.

There are also many questions regarding Sgr A*’s X-ray flaring. Astronomers aren’t certain how factors like magnetic reconnection events near the black hole and hot spots in the accretion flow affect X-ray flaring. They also aren’t certain why X-ray flaring occurs in random intervals. That’s just a sample of unanswered questions that could be addressed by studying GMCs in the galactic centre.

If all large galaxies contain SMBHs, which seems increasingly likely, then all large galaxies have CMZs that are extreme environments. The CMZs and the SMBHs are the heart of galaxies, and astrophysicists are keen to understand the processes that play out there, and if stars are able to form there.

“We can study processes in the Milky Way’s Central Molecular Zone (CMZ) and use our findings to learn about other extreme environments. While many distant galaxies have similar environments, they are too far away to study in detail. By learning more about our own Galaxy, we also learn about these distant galaxies that cannot be resolved with today’s telescopes,” says Alboslani.

Alboslani presents her results in this video from AAS 245. Her presentation begins at the 32:40 mark.

The post Sticks and Stones: The Molecular Clouds in the Heart of the Milky Way appeared first on Universe Today.

The Universe really seems to be expanding fast. Too fast, even. A new measurement confirms what previous -- and highly debated -- results had shown: The Universe is expanding faster than predicted by theoretical models, and faster than can be explained by our current understanding of physics. This discrepancy between model and data became known as the Hubble tension. Now, results provide even stronger support to the faster rate of expansion.

By editing the polymers of discarded plastics, chemists have found a way to generate new macromolecules with more valuable properties than those of the starting material. Upcycling may help remedy the roughly 450 million tons of plastic discarded worldwide annually, of which only 9% gets recycled; the rest is incinerated or winds up in landfills, oceans or elsewhere.

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Global average precipitation in 2024 may have broken the previous record set in 1998, as rising temperatures boosted the amount of moisture in the atmosphere

There will be news tomorrow as Israel finalizes its ceasefire deal with Hamas. In the meantime, let’s hear a story about how orcas can imitate human speech.  Apparently this horrifies some people, but I think it’s cool.

The story comes from an entertainment newsite, vt.com, and here’s an excerpt: (it’s from 2018 but I bet you didn’t know this):

Killer whales, the largest dolphin species and apex predators, possess remarkable intelligence, including the ability to mimic human speech.

This discovery was made by a team of researchers from Germany, Spain, the UK, and Chile, who conducted a study into the vocal capabilities of orcas and published their findings in the journal, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, in 2018.

“We wanted to see how flexible a killer whale can be in copying sounds,” Josep Call, professor in evolutionary origins of mind at the University of St Andrews and study co-author, told The Guardian.

“We thought what would be really convincing is to present them with something that is not in their repertoire – and in this case ‘hello’ [is] not what a killer whale would say,” he added.

The team trained Wikie, a 14-year-old female orca living in an aquarium in France, to copy three sounds made by her three-year-old calf, and then tested her ability to imitate five unfamiliar orca sounds.

Wikie was then exposed to three orca sounds and six human sounds, including the words “hello,” “Amy,” “ah ha,” “one, two,” and “bye-bye”.

The team was amazed to discover that the orca was able to quickly replicate the sounds, successfully mimicking two on the very first attempt.

Here’s Wikie in a news story. It’s pretty amazing.  Orcas live in pods that are matrilineal, and each pod has its own repertoire of sounds culturally inherited over many generations, and coming from mom.

More:

Recordings of Wikie’s attempts to mimic human speech have been released on social media, with some listeners finding them “terrifying”.

One user said: “This is as terrifying as it is hilarious,” while another quipped: “Ok, that second hello was a little demonic. Was that really an orca, or the Devil speaking through a ghost box LOL The funniest and scariest thing EVER!”

“Now I’m scared,” a third wrote, and a fourth added: “OK that’s the creepiest f’ing thing I’ve ever heard.”

However, others were amazed at the orca’s ability. “That’s genuinely amazing,” one person said. “These giants are much smarter than we think….amazing,” a second chimed in.

“Certainly a momentous occasion discovering another mammal that can enunciate human language. This could be significant given the high level of intelligence orcas have?” someone else shared.

Some of the “scary” noises.  They’re not as good as parrots or crows, but they’re discernible.  The abilities to imitate are probably evolved as a cohesion mechanism for pods, but what their pod-specific noises are learned. In that way it’s just like human language.

Here’s the Proceedings of the Royal Society article (click for free access). I’ve put the abstract below along with what was known about vocal imitation in orcas and in other species as well.

Abstract

Vocal imitation is a hallmark of human spoken language, which, along with other advanced cognitive skills, has fuelled the evolution of human culture. Comparative evidence has revealed that although the ability to copy sounds from conspecifics is mostly uniquely human among primates, a few distantly related taxa of birds and mammals have also independently evolved this capacity. Remarkably, field observations of killer whales have documented the existence of group-differentiated vocal dialects that are often referred to as traditions or cultures and are hypothesized to be acquired non-genetically. Here we use a do-as-I-do paradigm to study the abilities of a killer whale to imitate novel sounds uttered by conspecific (vocal imitative learning) and human models (vocal mimicry). We found that the subject made recognizable copies of all familiar and novel conspecific and human sounds tested and did so relatively quickly (most during the first 10 trials and three in the first attempt). Our results lend support to the hypothesis that the vocal variants observed in natural populations of this species can be socially learned by imitation. The capacity for vocal imitation shown in this study may scaffold the natural vocal traditions of killer whales in the wild.

And what was known anecdotally:

Elucidating the precise mechanism of social learning involved is difficult, however, particularly for acoustic communication in wild populations. Although killer whales are capable of learning novel motor actions from conspecifics through imitation , the experimental evidence for vocal production learning is still scarce in this species. There are reports of killer whales in the field and in captive settings suggesting that they can copy novel calls from conspecifics, and even from heterospecifics such as bottlenose dolphins or sea lions. One Icelandic female was found to match novel calls from a Northern Resident female with whom she had been housed together for several years. Two juvenile killer whales, separated from their natal pods, were observed to mimic the barks of sea lions in a field study . Crance et al. [and Musser et al.  took advantage of two unplanned cross-socializing experimental situations to show that two juvenile males learned novel calls from an unrelated but socially close adult male, and three individuals learned novel whistles from a dolphin, respectively.

However, as suggestive as these reports are, the lack of experimental controls curtails the interpretation about the underlying acquisition mechanisms. Experimental data are needed to ascertain whether vocal learning is a plausible mechanism underlying the complexity of vocal traditions in wild killer whales. However, to the best of our knowledge, not even anecdotal reports exist about killer whales spontaneously mimicking human speech similar to those reported in some birds (e.g. parrots, mynahs) and mammals (elephants, seals, belugas ).

Elephants can miic human speech? Here’s one elephant in Korea who can:

A novel bio-inspired camera capable of ultra-high-speed imaging with high sensitivity was developed by mimicking the visual structure of insect eyes.

Astrophysicists have imaged a large number of exocomet belts around nearby stars, and the tiny pebbles within them. The crystal-clear images show light being emitted from these millimeter-sized pebbles within the belts that orbit 74 nearby stars of a wide variety of ages -- from those that are just emerging from birth to those in more mature systems like our own Solar System.

In life sciences, confocal fluorescence microscopy (CFM) is widely regarded for producing high-resolution cellular images. However, it requires fluorescent staining, which poses risks of photobleaching and phototoxicity, potentially damaging the cells under study. Conversely, mid-infrared photoacoustic microscopy (MIR-PAM) allows for label-free imaging, preserving cell integrity. Yet, its reliance on longer wavelengths limits spatial resolution, making it difficult to visualize fine cellular structures with precision.

DwarfLab’s new Dwarf 3 smartscope packs a powerful punch in a small unit.

Dwarf Lab’s Dwarf 3 smartscope.

In the past decade, amateur astronomy has witnessed nothing short of a revolution, as smartscopes have come to the fore. In half a century of skywatching, we’ve used just about every iteration of GoTo system available, starting with the now almost prehistoric ‘push-and-point’ AstroMaster units of the 90s. Strange to think, these were the hot new thing for telescopes in the 90s… though you still often had to perform a visual spiral search to actually find the target.

We recently had a chance to put Dwarf Lab’s new Dwarf 3 smartscope through its paces, and were impressed with what we’ve seen thus far. The small telescope even has personality: my wife said it actually looked like Johnny 5 from the 80s movie Short Circuit on start up (!)

We’ve also had the chance to use Unistellar and Vaonis units in the past, and were curious to see how the tiny Dwarf 3 would compare.

Smartscope Revolution

The specifications for the small unit are impressive:

The Dwarf 3 has two ‘eyes’: a 35mm (telephoto) and a 3.4mm wide-angle lens. The focal lengths for the two are 150mm (telephoto) and 6.7mm for the wide-angle (an effective equivalent of 737mm/45mm for the two).

The optics feature Sony IMX 678 Stravis 2 sensors, a CMOS chip with an effective 8.4x megapixel array, an upgrade from the IMX 415 used in the Dwarf 2.

Modern GoTo systems really put me out of a job…and that’s probably a good thing. I learned how to find things the ‘old way’ by starhopping and peering at a star chart under a red light. Dwarf 3 and other smartscopes use a method known as ‘plate-solving,’ looking at sections of the sky on startup and comparing them to a database versus the GPS position. The Dwarf Lab app features a digital planetarium view, to give even a novice user a common sense feel for the sky.

Dwarf 3 was spot on with pointing, and even maps out local obstructions on startup as no-go zones. Startup was quick, and the app is intuitive to use.

Using Dwarf 3 The Andromeda galaxy and satellite galaxies, as seen in the Dwarf Lab app.

You can use the planetarium sky feature with its grid overlay to manually aim the telescope at a given point in Right Ascension and Declination, handy for, say, if a new bright comet appears in the sky. Newer comets such as G3 ATLAS were in the updated database.

I’d rate the compactness of the unit and ease of use and portability for travel as a big plus. The unit only weighs 1.3 kilograms (2.8 pounds), and attaches to a standard camera tripod. Though the unit needs a stable, level site to operate, it never protested, balked or failed to deliver even when moderate vibrations were present.

Visible (VIS), Astro, and Dual band filters are built in to the optics, and the unit comes with a magnetic snap in place solar filter.

Solar viewing with the Dwarf Labs app.

The battery life for the telescope is advertised as 4-6 hours, and the unit has a generous 10000 mAh built-in battery. The Dwarf 3 also has an internal storage capacity of 128Gb (gigabytes). I used the telescope in sub-freezing January temperatures for about an hour during the Mars occultation, without a problem.

The unit will also output and support JPEG, PNG, TIFF and FITS files, though of course, larger FITS files will also take up more storage room.

The scope hooks to your phone via wifi/bluetooth, and even features an NFC ‘smart-touch’ connection capability. Though you need a wireless connection to control the telescope from your tablet or phone, the unit will work in the field as a standalone unit. That is, without a network connection.

Putting the Dwarf 3 Through Its Paces

On startup and initialization the scope gives two views: one wide and one telephoto, about 2.93x 1.65 degrees across. The Pleiades filled up the view nicely. The wide view works great as a finderscope for manually slewing to targets. The manual slew rate is variable as well.

The Pleiades (M45) with the Dwarf 3 telescope; the system easily captured some of the dusty reflection nebulae surrounding the young stars.

The telescope can be used in both terrestrial and astronomical applications. I could even envision the unit installed in a mini-‘bird house’ style observatory on a balcony or rooftop, allowing the user to sit inside and remotely observe the sky. These days, it’s rare that a new piece of tech inspires out-of-the-box thinking as to what might be possible, but the Dwarf 3 does just that.

Of course, with such a wide view, the Dwarf 3 really shines in deep-sky astrophotography. This is true even from brightly lit downtown areas, a real plus.

The Orion Nebula… imaged with the Dwarf 3 under the bright downtown lights of Bristol, Tennessee.

A sunglasses-looking filter magnetically snaps in place over both lenses for solar viewing. Like a standard rich-field refractor, the Dwarf 3 also delivers decent lunar views, but planets will appear as small dots.

Using a camera control app with Real Time Streaming Protocol capability will allow users to live stream the Dwarf 3 and record and broadcast live views. This would be handy for streaming eclipses or occultations live.

Dwarf 3: Deep-Sky Downtown Astronomy

What we like: The Dwarf 3 is very portable, and packs a lot in a small package. As I get older, I take a dim view of lugging gear outside, cobbling things together and contorting to view and tend to troubleshooting things in the dark, all for maybe an hour’s use. The Dwarf 3 is light and easy to deploy, allowing me to spend more precious time actually observing. Smartscopes also work great at public star parties, as I can simply narrate the wonders of what we’re seeing, while the GoTo system does all of the grunt work.

The Moon occults the Pleiades (a composite of two images).

What we don’t like: You have to remember to download the images before shutting down the unit… this a tiny step to remember for sure, in an otherwise outstanding product.

How does Dwarf 3 stack up against other smart telescopes out there? Well, the biggest difference is the price: at $499, it’s a fraction of the cost of most competitors out there. Increasingly, the argument that ‘yeah, but you could buy a (insert the name of a telescope/camera) for that price’ doesn’t hold up. Of course, it’s hard to beat the physics of optics in terms of resolution with smaller units. Increasingly, smaller units get around this by simply staring at faint light sources for longer, and letting deep sky images stack and build up.

Bottom line: The Dwarf 3 is definitely worth the price, either as a quick travel-scope for the seasoned observer, or a beginner scope to show users the wonders of the cosmos.

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