Latest news with #Mid-InfraredInstrument
Yahoo
11-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
NASA's autopsy of planet swallowed by a star gives astronomers a surprise
When many stars reach billions of years in age and run out of fuel, they become dying stars known as red giants. The stars expand and can engulf nearby planets, effectively incinerating them. In approximately five billion years, Earth's own sun will turn into a red giant and engulf planets, including our blue marble. While astronomers have identified many of these red giant stars, it was only recently that the process of eating a planet had been directly observed. Astronomers have identified many red giant stars and suspected that in some cases they consume nearby planets, but the phenomenon had never been directly observed before. In 2023, scientists discovered a star nearing the end of its life had swelled and absorbed a planet that is likely about the size of Jupiter. Now, with additional observations from the James Webb Space Telescope, they say there's been a 'surprising twist.' Instead of eating the planet, Webb's observations show the planet's orbit shrank over millions of years, pulling the celestial body closer to its demise until it was fully engulfed. 'Because this is such a novel event, we didn't quite know what to expect when we decided to point this telescope in its direction,' Ryan Lau, an astronomer at the National Science Foundation National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory in Tucson, Arizona, said in a statement. 'With its high-resolution look in the infrared, we are learning valuable insights about the final fates of planetary systems, possibly including our own.' Lau is the lead author of a new paper published Thursday in The Astrophysical Journal. Using the telescope's Mid-Infrared Instrument and Near-Infrared Spectrograph, the researchers examined the Milky Way galaxy scene about 12,000 light-years away from Earth. While the sun had been recognized as more like our sun, a measurement from the Mid-Infrared Instrument found the star was not as bright as it should have been if it had evolved into a red giant. The finding indicated to researchers that there was no swelling to engulf the planet, as once believed. 'The planet eventually started to graze the star's atmosphere. Then it was a runaway process of falling in faster from that moment,' team member Morgan MacLeod of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, explained. 'The planet, as it's falling in, started to sort of smear around the star.' The planet would have blasted gas away from the outer layers of the star. The Near-Infrared Spectrograph revealed a hot disk of molecular gas surrounding the star, where carbon monoxide was detected. 'With such a transformative telescope like Webb, it was hard for me to have any expectations of what we'd find in the immediate surroundings of the star,' said Vassar College's Colette Salyk, an exoplanet researcher and a co-author of the new paper. 'I will say, I could not have expected seeing what has the characteristics of a planet-forming region, even though planets are not forming here, in the aftermath of an engulfment.'
The Independent
11-04-2025
- Science
- The Independent
NASA's autopsy of planet swallowed by a star gives astronomers a surprise
When many stars reach billions of years in age and run out of fuel, they become dying stars known as red giants. The stars expand and can engulf nearby planets, effectively incinerating them. In approximately five billion years, Earth's own sun will turn into a red giant and engulf planets, including our blue marble. While astronomers have identified many of these red giant stars, it was only recently that the process of eating a planet had been directly observed. Astronomers have identified many red giant stars and suspected that in some cases they consume nearby planets, but the phenomenon had never been directly observed before. In 2023, scientists discovered a star nearing the end of its life had swelled and absorbed a planet that is likely about the size of Jupiter. Now, with additional observations from the James Webb Space Telescope, they say there's been a 'surprising twist.' Instead of eating the planet, Webb's observations show the planet's orbit shrank over millions of years, pulling the celestial body closer to its demise until it was fully engulfed. 'Because this is such a novel event, we didn't quite know what to expect when we decided to point this telescope in its direction,' Ryan Lau, an astronomer at the National Science Foundation National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory in Tucson, Arizona, said in a statement. 'With its high-resolution look in the infrared, we are learning valuable insights about the final fates of planetary systems, possibly including our own.' Lau is the lead author of a new paper published Thursday in The Astrophysical Journal. Using the telescope's Mid-Infrared Instrument and Near-Infrared Spectrograph, the researchers examined the Milky Way galaxy scene about 12,000 light-years away from Earth. While the sun had been recognized as more like our sun, a measurement from the Mid-Infrared Instrument found the star was not as bright as it should have been if it had evolved into a red giant. The finding indicated to researchers that there was no swelling to engulf the planet, as once believed. 'The planet eventually started to graze the star's atmosphere. Then it was a runaway process of falling in faster from that moment,' team member Morgan MacLeod of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, explained. 'The planet, as it's falling in, started to sort of smear around the star.' The planet would have blasted gas away from the outer layers of the star. The Near-Infrared Spectrograph revealed a hot disk of molecular gas surrounding the star, where carbon monoxide was detected. 'With such a transformative telescope like Webb, it was hard for me to have any expectations of what we'd find in the immediate surroundings of the star,' said Vassar College's Colette Salyk, an exoplanet researcher and a co-author of the new paper. 'I will say, I could not have expected seeing what has the characteristics of a planet-forming region, even though planets are not forming here, in the aftermath of an engulfment.'
USA Today
03-04-2025
- Science
- USA Today
The Earth is safe from asteroid 2024 YR4. The moon? Not so much, Webb telescope finds
The Earth is safe from asteroid 2024 YR4. The moon? Not so much, Webb telescope finds While astronomers eventually ruled out the asteroid as a threat to our planet, it was always the plan for the Webb telescope to rendezvous with YR4 in March to get better data on its size and path. Show Caption Hide Caption Whew! Asteroid risk level shifts lower overnight for Earth impact. Asteroid 2024 YR4 had a 3.1% chance of hitting earth in 2032 according to experts, but the chances dropped to 1.5% overnight. Here's why. An infamous asteroid known as 2024 YR4 won't be crashing into Earth anytime soon, but the James Webb Space Telescope recently went to get a look at it anyway. If the name of the asteroid sounds familiar, it's because YR4 caused quite an uproar earlier this year after it was discovered on a course projected to bring it uncomfortably close to Earth in 2032. While astronomers eventually ruled out the asteroid as a threat to our planet, it was always the plan for the Webb telescope to rendezvous with YR4 in March to get better data on its size and flight path. The asteroid is now the smallest object ever observed by Webb – an advanced telescope launched in 2021 outfitted with a gold-coated mirror and powerful infrared instruments. Weeks after Webb glimpsed the asteroid, NASA and the European Space Agency are releasing findings and images from the telescope's observations. Most ominously, while Earth is still safe from the menacing asteroid, the odds that our celestial neighbor, the moon, could be impacted have only continued to climb. James Webb Space Telescope gets images of asteroid Webb turned its eye toward YR4 on March 8. The ESA then shared a collage of three images Wednesday that Webb captured with both its Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam,) which shows reflected light, and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) showing thermal light. The observations allowed NASA and the ESA to conclude that asteroid 2024 YR4 measures anywhere from 174-220 feet, or about the size of a 10-story building, the U.S. space agency said in a blog post. That's a tad different than previous estimates of 131-295 feet based on ground telescopes alone. YR4 is heading away from Earth and will soon be out of view of ground-based telescopes until June 2028. Webb, though, will have an opportunity to observe it once again in May, according to NASA. What to know about asteroid 2024 YR4 Because it's big enough to destroy a city, asteroid 2024 YR4 became a source of alarm due to the uncommonly high risk it had of colliding with Earth on Dec. 22, 2032. The space rock was reported on Dec. 27, 2024, to the Minor Planet Center, the official authority for observing and reporting new asteroids, comets and other small bodies in the solar system. The object eventually caught the attention of NASA and other astronomers when it rose on the U.S. Space Agency's Sentry Impact Risk Table, which tracks any known asteroids with a non-zero probability of hitting Earth. For a time, it was the only object among more than 37,000 known large space rocks with any chance of hitting Earth anytime soon – with its probability of impact even rising to a record level of 3.1%. That began to change in late February as more precise observations allowed scientists to effectively winnow down the asteroid's odds of impact to a number so low, it may as well be zero. Earth safe from asteroid, but moon still under threat Earth may no longer be at risk of a calamitous collision with the asteroid, but the moon isn't so lucky. After Webb's observations, the odds of YR4 crashing into the moon rose from the 1.7% figure calculated in February to 3.8%, according to NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies, which tracks objects like asteroids at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. If our cosmic neighbor were to take such a hit from an asteroid of that size, NASA assures that the moon's orbit around Earth would not be altered. The risk to the moon is only part of the reason astronomers want to continue to keep an eye on 2024 YR4. While YR4 and its much larger cousin, Apophis, have been ruled out as threats to Earth, astronomers believe studying such imposing space rocks could help the world's space agencies prepare to mount a planetary defense if the need ever arose. Eric Lagatta covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach him at elagatta@
