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Topic: Giant Planet
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Robby
Advanced Member
Member # 448
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posted
Speaking of planets, let's not forget that Mars is closer to Earth than it has ever been.
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Red Planet never closer than now
By Dan Vergano, USAToday
If the Martians want to invade, now would be the time. The Red Planet is making its closest pass by Earth in 50,000 years over the next few months.
Mars will swing very close to Earth during the next few months.
NASA via AFP
As it happens, the real invasion is by Earth. Five separate space missions are headed to Mars as that planet passes into "opposition" this summer. Opposition is astronomers' jargon for another planet lining up with our Earth and sun.
Close passages occur every few years, as Earth, running a faster inside track around the sun, laps its planetary peer. For sky watchers, the excitement arises from the fact that on Aug. 27 the two planets pass as close as they ever get, about 35 million miles apart instead of the usual distance of about 60 million miles. This will allow a particularly nice view of Mars.
"Absolutely it will be a mind-blower for amateur astronomers," says editor David Eicher of Astronomy magazine.
The planets pass so close this year because both orbit the sun in ways that are not perfectly circular. When Earth is in a more distant part of its orbit in relation to the sun, and Mars is in the part of its orbit that's closest the sun, the two planets are closer to each other.
Eicher says July may be the best time to look at the Red Planet, as Martian dust storms are expected to obscure the view next month.
In mid-July, Mars rises at about 10:30 p.m. in the constellation Aquarius in the southeastern sky in the USA. Except for the waning moon, to the right and above the planet, Mars will likely be the brightest object, "a notably deep orange," in the nighttime sky, Eicher says. To the naked eye, Mars will look about 1/40th the size of a full moon.
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One other thing--Thursday, July 16-17 is the Mars eclipse. space
Posts: 364 | Registered: Sep 2002
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Miguel
Advanced Member
Member # 47
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posted
Distant giant planet is oldest yet discovered
David Adam, science correspondent
Saturday July 12, 2003
The Guardian
The oldest and most distant planet yet discovered has been found 5,600 light years from Earth. It is 800 times bigger than our planet.
The Jupiter-like gas giant is believed to have been formed 13bn years ago, more than 8bn years before any other planet identified so far, and a mere 1bn years after the big bang.
The discovery, announced yesterday, could force astronomers to rethink theories of how planets are made. The early universe had little of the relatively heavy elements such as carbon, silicon and oxygen, which experts currently think are needed to kick-start planet creation.
"This offers tantalising evidence that planet formation processes are quite robust and efficient at making use of a small amount of heavier elements," said Professor Steinn Sigurdsson of Pennsylvania State University, who led the research. "This implies that planet formation happened very early in the universe."
His team found the planet by using images taken by the Hubble space telescope of a crowded star system called globular cluster M4, in the summer constellation Scorpius.
At the heart of the cluster is a bizarre celestial ménage à trois: a pulsar (a star which emits pulses of radio waves) locked into orbit with a white dwarf (a dying star) - and one other, previously unidentified object.
It is this mysterious heavenly body which the scientists now say is a planet, and probably a gas giant similar to Jupiter. They announced their findings yesterday in the American journal Science.
Such globular clusters were thought unable to spawn planets because they lack the necessary heavy "building blocks". These heavy elements are churned out of the nuclear furnaces at the cores of stars, and so are only abundant in much younger parts of the universe. The ancient M4 cluster studied by Prof Sigurdsson's team contains about one thirtieth of the heavy elements found in our own solar system.
The fact that planets can form in such an unlikely place means there could be a lot more of them out there than astronomers thought.
"This is tremendously encouraging that planets are probably abundant in globular star clusters," said Professor Harvey Richer of the University of British Columbia.
More planets means a greater chance of life; and the chance of forms of life that arose and died out billions of years before the Earth was even formed.
Dr Hugh Jones, a planet hunter at Liverpool John Moores University, said the new finding was exciting, but he cautioned against reading too much into it.
"This planet was found in rather a special environment," he said. The supernova explosion that created the pulsar would have thrown all sorts of material into space, something which could have disrupted the way the planet formed.
"What makes a planet is quite complicated and the processes are not well understood," Dr Jones said.
Scientists have found more than 100 planets outside our own solar system over the past decade. Last week, Dr Jones announced that he and his colleagues had found one very similar to Jupiter some 90 light years from Earth.
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Romans 9:11-24
Our Eschatology may vary even our Ecclesiology may be disputed among us but our Soteriology most assume a singularity and exclusivity which in biblical term is known as Quote; "The Narrow Way" and Quote!
Posts: 2792 | From: Stockton,Ca | Registered: Jun 2002
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