This year, some of the most interesting space images included a view of the cosmic bones in infrared, a double moon for an asteroid, a massive polar storm on Jupiter, and more.
The Radiance of the Cosmic Bone Cemetery
No exhibition like this could be complete without something from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), our latest eye in infrared on the sky. This giant observatory has already brought small revolutions in astronomy, so choosing one from last year is no easy task. Should it be a small star throwing a massive fit or an old massive star shedding material at huge rates before definitely exploding as a supernova? Or should it be a map of 100,000 galaxies?
Well, how about something very different and very strange – like the skeletal structure of a complex dust web in a nearby galaxy (as shown in the opening image above)?
Messier 51 (M51) is a spiral galaxy located about 30 million light-years away and appears nearly face-on when viewed from Earth. It is a favorite among both amateur and professional astronomers, boasting a beautiful spiral structure and showing the effects of a smaller galaxy colliding with it. In the sharp and haunting fake image from the JWST infrared device, we see countless clouds of cosmic dust arranged in a skeletal pattern. All these clouds are made of tiny grains of rocky and carbonaceous material expelled by dying stars. The rotational motion of M51 combines with its complex gravitational field to form these dust clouds clumped into interconnected cavities; the red areas indicate regions where dust is heated by starlight, while yellow hues signify active star formation sites. Astronomers captured this image for a better understanding of how stars are born in stellar nurseries and how they evolve over time.
Double Asteroid Moon
NASA’s Lucy spacecraft is currently roaming the main asteroid belt on its way to Jupiter – or more precisely, to Jupiter’s orbit. Lucy’s mission is to study several asteroids that share the massive gas giant’s orbit around the sun. Each asteroid has been nudged into position by the gravitational balance of Jupiter and that of our sun. The targets of Lucy’s mission are called Trojan asteroids, remnants from the early days of our solar system, akin to fossils from bygone times – which is why Lucy was named after the fossilized remains of the human ancestor Australopithecus afarensis discovered in Africa in the 1970s.
As a way to test its guidance and imaging system on its way to the planet, the spacecraft was directed to pass by an asteroid in the main asteroid belt. Known as Dinkinesh – the Ethiopian name for the Lucy fossil – this space rock has a diameter of about 800 meters. Astronomers had been wondering about the fluctuations in brightness of the asteroid as seen from Earth, which were explained when Lucy saw that Dinkinesh has a moon! It is not uncommon for asteroids to have companions, so although this was a surprise, it wasn’t exactly shocking.
But then, astronomers were really stunned because they saw the oddity: the moon itself is made of two touching rocks, called a binary contact! This is the first time anyone has seen a contact binary moon orbiting such an asteroid, and theorists are already busy trying to figure out how it formed. What other secrets will this wonderfully named spacecraft unveil as it passes more relics from our deeper planetary history?
A Time Capsule Sealed from the Solar System’s Past
Benoo
It is a potentially dangerous asteroid, a space rock with a diameter of half a kilometer that has a 0.06 percent chance of colliding with Earth in two centuries from now. I will take that chance, but I am also glad that NASA has sent the OSIRIS-REx mission to investigate it.
Among the many goals of the OSIRIS-REx mission was to collect samples of materials from the surface of Bennu and below, where it is believed that most of it has not changed much since the asteroid formed at the beginning of the solar system. Bennu is therefore a rocky time capsule from those distant eras, and scientists suspect that other asteroids like it may have helped deposit the essential elements of life on Earth after it cooled. After a very long journey, the capsule landed like a flying saucer, with a collection of Bennu pieces, in the Utah desert in September 2023.
Scientists had hoped to collect about 60 grams of material but may have collected several hundreds already. It is still uncertain exactly how much they have; two of the 35 screws holding the container lid are stuck, so mission members cannot fully open the device. Engineers are working on making tools that can open it completely.
Nevertheless, researchers were able to use tweezers to retrieve a small amount of material inside, and along with the scattered asteroid materials covering the outer part of the container, they already have over 70 grams for study. This is more than enough for scientists to get an early taste of OSIRIS-REx’s cosmic results, and they have already discovered that the sample brought back from Bennu is rich in both water and carbon. Ironically, this asteroid shows us how its kind could help deliver life to our planet while also threatening to collide with it.
The near, the far, and the very far
The comet C/2020 V2 (ZTF) has never come closer than 280 million kilometers from Earth, so it has not become bright enough to be seen with the naked eye. However, it was an exciting sight in telescopes, especially for astrophotography expert Damien Peach. He waited until December 12, 2023, to capture this shot, as the comet moved through the constellation of the migratory bird, passing three beautiful spiral galaxies called NGC 7582, 7590, and 7599. This shell-like positioning places all these objects in a perfect frame.
This gives us a strange sense of depth. At the time Peach took this picture, the comet was 500 million kilometers away from Earth. This is a good distance within our own solar system, but it is a much shorter distance than those background stars, which are billions of kilometers away.
This astonishing distance is positively dwarfed by the gap between us and the three galaxies, which are about 70 million light-years away: equivalent to about 700 quadrillion (700,000,000,000,000,000,000) kilometers! The universe is deep.
By the way, the comet’s orbit is what is called hyperbolic, meaning it has enough energy to not be bound by the sun’s gravity. V2 is likely to escape the solar system completely and slowly head towards interstellar space. In a few million years, it may be roaming the gaps between stars.
A view of a solar eclipse – from the moon
On April 20, 2023, the moon passed directly between the Earth and the sun, obscuring our star from selected observers in the southern hemisphere – a total solar eclipse. From Earth, the moon appeared as a dark disk as its shadow swept over the southern Indian Ocean and the southern Pacific Ocean.
But how was the view from the moon? A Japanese company called HAKUTO-R conducted a mission that entered lunar orbit on March 21, 2023. The company posted a landing sequence that was unfortunately lost moments before its final landing on the surface. A few days earlier, it saw something no human has ever witnessed in person: the shadow of the eclipsed moon sweeping across the face of the Earth from a distance of 380,000 kilometers.
The control
The gray surface of the moon, filled with craters and eerie, is visible in the image, but our eyes are irresistibly drawn to the wavy blue disk near the lunar edge (the edge of the moon’s surface). Some white clouds can be seen, as well as brown patches representing Australia and part of Asia.
But look again: that dark shading that distorts the Earth’s face near Australia is the shadow of the moon, cast
Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/behold-the-best-space-images-of-2023/
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