Latest news with #Ophiuchus
Yahoo
05-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Scientists Spot Thousands of Newborn Stars Fleeing Their Nursery
As humans do from their parents' homes and birds do from their nests, stars leave their so-called stellar nurseries once they're old enough to do so. Unlike Earthly beings, however, it usually takes hundreds of millions of years for stars to age out of their childhood homes. That's why it's strange that, in the constellation Ophiuchus, more than 1,000 newborn stars are fleeing their home after just 20 million years of existence—and no one can explain why they're doing it. This bizarre stellar behavior came to light via the European Space Agency's (ESA) Gaia mission, which captured the biggest and most detailed sky map yet before retiring in March 2025. Gaia made history by measuring the position, distance, spectra, and velocity of nearly 2 billion stars. After researchers at Western Washington University and the University of North Florida developed a method that would allow them to scan Gaia's spectroscopic findings for young, low-mass stars, they found Ophiuchus, also known as Ophion. And within Ophion, they found newly formed stars dispersing in "record time." Gaia's massive troves of stellar data made this discovery possible—and produced this stunning view of the Milky Way. Credit: ESA/Gaia/DPAC, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO Rapid pace aside, these stars are strange because they're striking out on their own, not sticking to small family clusters. Of course, gravity (not sentimentality) is responsible for stars' typical group behavior: Conditions that make it easy for one star to form usually lead to several new stars, which remain bound together by gravity for "millions or even billions of years," NASA explains. Throughout that great window of time, the stars slowly separate from one another; some even die within the cluster. But Ophion's newborn stars are scattering frantically in different directions. "Ophion is filled with stars that are set to rush out across the galaxy in a totally haphazard, uncoordinated way, which is far from what we'd expect for a family so big," computer scientist and lead study author Dylan Huson told the ESA. "What's more, this will happen in a fraction of the time it'd usually take for such a large family to scatter. It's like no other star family we've seen before." Neither Huson nor his colleagues can definitively say why Ophion's stars are behaving so uniquely, but they have a couple of guesses. Though Ophion is 650 light-years from Earth, it's closer to some other massive clusters of young stars, meaning it's possible that some bizarre energetic interactions between the groups might have triggered the unusual behavior. Supernovae could have also exploded in the region, rushing material past the constellation and forcing the stars to "move far more rapidly and erratically than before," says the ESA. Though Gaia is no longer operational, its vast troves of star data will make it possible for the team to dig deeper into Ophion's oddities.
Forbes
05-04-2025
- Science
- Forbes
Astronomers Name ‘Super Venus' Close To Solar System — What To Know
Artist's impression of GJ 1214 b passing in front of its host star. The 'transit method' allows ... More astronomers to study an exoplanet by seeing which wavelengths of light dim when the star's light passes through the exoplanet atmosphere. Astronomers in Japan and Arizona, using data from the James Webb Space Telescope, have revealed a unique type of exoplanet unlike any in the solar system. The exoplanet — defined as a planet orbiting a star other than the sun — is named Enaiposha and is just 48 light-years away, putting it in the solar system's immediate neighborhood. That also makes it close enough for astronomers to see whether it has an atmosphere and what kind. That's exactly what astronomers at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan and the University of Arizona/Steward Observatory did—and they found something unexpected. The latest data on Enaiposha, also called GJ 1214 b and Gliese 1214 b, suggests it has a carbon-dioxide-rich atmosphere, challenging previous notions about the composition of exoplanets of its size. Though exoplanets tend to be classed as a 'super-Earth' or a 'mini Neptune,' Enaiposha's carbon dioxide-dominated atmosphere makes it more likely to be a 'super Venus.' 'The detected CO2 signal from the first study is tiny, and so it required careful statistical analysis to ensure that it is real,' said Kazumasa Ohno at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, who co-led the study. Artist's depiction of the size relationship between Earth and GJ 1214b, also known as Gliese 1214b. Enaiposha has been studied closely since its discovery in 2009, but until JWST came along, astronomers couldn't see through its thick blanket of clouds. That allows it to reflect a lot of its parent star's light, making it cooler than anticipated. By using its Mid-Infrared Instrument, JWST has been able to reveal major new insights into its atmosphere. In May 2023, scientists at the University of Oxford tracked Enaiposha, then described as a 'sub-Neptune,' through an entire orbit of its star, with its changing heat seen as it passed through phases, similar to how we see the moon, Venus and Mercury from Earth. In addition to finding a big temperature difference between the planet's day and night sides, scientists discovered that Enaiposha's atmosphere is enriched with heavier molecules, such as methane and water. The constellation Ophiuchus in the night sky. Enaiposha is in the constellation Ophiuchus (pronounced 'Or-few-cuss), a vast summer constellation and one of 13 that the sun travels through each year. The other 12 are familiar to everyone as signs of the zodiac, so why isn't Ophiuchus one of them? The ancient Babylonians divided the ecliptic—the apparent path of the sun through the sky—into twelve 30° sectors and assigned each one equally to one of the twelve constellations or 'signs' that intersected it. Since 13 is an unlucky number, one was dropped. Ophiuchus got booted out despite the sun spending a long time within it from Nov. 29–Dec. 17 (commonly thought of as Sagittarius despite the sun being in that constellation from Dec. 17–Jan. 20. Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.
Yahoo
17-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Scientists Discover Four Intriguing Planets Around Closest Single-Star Solar System to Earth
Astronomers have spotted four smaller-than-Earth exoplanets orbiting the closest single-star system to us, called Barnard's Star. As detailed in a new paper published in the journal The Astrophysical Journal Letters, an international team of researchers discovered that the star — a small red dwarf star just 16 percent of our own Sun's mass and just under six light-years from Earth in the constellation Ophiuchus — has four tiny and seemingly rocky worlds orbiting it. According to the astronomers, these exoplanets — which are among the smallest ever discovered — could force us to reevaluate our understanding of how planets form and evolve. The four planets were spotted by the MAROON-X instrument, a highly sensitive piece of equipment attached to the Gemini North telescope at the International Gemini Observatory in Hilo, Hawaii. "It's a really exciting find — Barnard's Star is our cosmic neighbor, and yet we know so little about it," said University of Chicago PhD student and first author Ritvik Basant in a statement. "It's signaling a breakthrough with the precision of these new instruments from previous generations." MAROON-X was specifically designed to detect tiny exoplanets orbiting red dwarf stars by detecting the minuscule back-and-forth motion of a star caused by the gravitational pull of orbiting planets, a trick scientists call the radial velocity technique. Using the instrument, the team discovered four likely rocky exoplanets that are only anywhere from roughly 20 to 30 percent of the mass of Earth each. They orbit their star at an extremely close distance, completing a full revolution in a matter of a few Earth days. The team also used data from a 2024 study, which involved the ESPRESSO instrument at the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile, to confirm the existence of one of the four exoplanets. Last year, astronomers detected an exoplanet with at least half the mass of Venus orbiting Barnard's Star. "We observed at different times of night on different days," said Basant in the statement. "They're in Chile; we're in Hawai'i. Our teams didn't coordinate with each other at all. That gives us a lot of assurance that these aren't phantoms in the data." One of the four exoplanets spotted by MAROON-X was the smallest to have been discovered using the radial velocity technique, which could set the stage for many future discoveries like it. Unfortunately, the planets are unlikely to harbor life since they're not in Barnard Star's habitable zone, the area around a star where temperatures allow liquid water to exist on a given planet's surface. "With the current dataset, we can confidently rule out any planets more massive than 40 to 60 percent of Earth's mass near the inner and outer edges of the habitable zone," Basant told "Additionally, we can exclude the presence of Earth-mass planets with orbital periods of up to a few years." But that doesn't necessarily mean that will also be the case for other single-star systems like it. As our exoplanet detection methods continue to improve, astronomers are hoping to spot even more rocky worlds, which may still turn out to be habitable. More on Barnard's Star: Astronomers Spot Mysterious Planet Orbiting the Closest Single Star
