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1
COMING EVENTS PUBLIC OBSERVING
POST BAND CONCERT SOUTH PARK
West of MASS. ST.
May 31 June 14 June 28 July 12
9:15PM
President Rick Heschmeyer
ALCOR William Winkler
University Advisor Dr. Bruce Twarog [email protected]
Report from the Officers It was a very busy month in April, with an excellent presentation by Dan McIn-tosh of UMKC on the lega-cy of the Hubble Space Telescope and the future of space-based observa-tional Astronomy. The last half of the month saw the Science March, which drew a few hundred sup-porters in Topeka alone,
as well as the Astronomy Day events at Washburn University sponsored by Ad Astra of Kansas. The evening concluded with a panel discussion at Washburn by two facul-ty and two students from Washburn and KU on the possibilities for life in the recently identified planetary system around Trappist 1, a very cool M dwarf star with seven orbiting terrestrial planets. The low luminosity of the star is partially offset by the prox-imity and terrestrial nature of the 7 planets (image above). In the end, at least one planet appears to be in the Goldilocks zone ideally suited for the development of life. The bad news is that even at a distance of 40 light years, travel to Trappist 1 using the fastest speed for any current spacecraft (New Horizons) would still take 800,000 years. Observational astronomy seems the only hope for testing the likelihood of a life-modified atmosphere around any of the planets in the near future. We had a con-densed version of this panel discussion at the last club meeting of the Spring semes-ter last week.
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Volume 43 Number 05 MAY 2017
INSIDE THIS ISSUE
Officer’s Report (continued) 2
Prime Focus (continued) 2
Supernova Survivor 3
NASA SPACE PLACE 4
Hubble Spirals 5
Europa (continued) 6
Europa Venting 7
Choking Black Hole 8
Choking BH (continued) 9
Iceball Planet (continued) 9
Iceball Planet 10
Eclipse Prep Form 11
Eclipse Prep Form 12
THE GLASS UNIVERSE by Dava Sobel
Many amateurs know that the northern and southern hemisphere night
skies were systematically photo-graphed with telescopes ranging from 11
to 24 inches for more than 100 years by Harvard Observatory astrono-
mers. The result is a library of some 500 thousand thin glass plates, 8 by 10
inches and larger. They give a history of as- tronomical events down to roughly 15th mag- nitude, better as photo technology im-proved. In addition to star and other images, much low-and high-resolution spectra and optical photometry data were recorded. This work greatly advanced astronomy and astrophysics in real time and historically, and the collection is being digitized for more effective use. That is Sobel’s glass universe.
This book details the huge astronomy events occurring as the photographs were
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PRIME FOCUS
William Winkler
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About the Astronomy Associates of Lawrence
The club is open to all people interested in sharing their love for astronomy. Beginning in Fall 2016, monthly meetings are typical-ly on the last Sunday of each month and often feature guest speakers, presentations by club members, and a chance to ex-
change amateur astronomy tips. These meetings and the public observing sessions that follow are scheduled at the Baker Wet-lands Discovery Center, south of Lawrence. All events and meetings are free and open to the public. Periodic star parties are
scheduled as well. For more information, please contact the club officers: president, Rick Heschmeyer at [email protected]; AlCor William Winkler, at [email protected]; or faculty advisor, Prof. Bruce Twarog at [email protected]. Because of the flexibility of the schedule due to holidays and alternate events, it is always best to check the Web site for the exact Sundays
when events are scheduled. The information about AAL can be found at http://www.physics.ku.edu/AAL/
Copies of the Celestial Mechanic can also be found on the web at http://www.physics.ku.edu/AAL/newsletter
With the close of the Spring semester, we switch to the summer schedule tied to the Wednesday evening Band Concerts. As a reminder, the concerts typically end around 9 PM. The club normally sets up 2-3 telescopes for public observing in South Park on the WEST side of Mass St. so that they are available for use after 9:15 PM. It doesn’t get dark until ~9:30 PM, but having them set up and staffed at 9PM when people leaving the Band Concert can see them can help draw more people to
the site. If you can help, the perennial request is to please contact Rick ([email protected]) so that we can make sure that at least a couple of people are available for each session. The scheduled dates for the Public Observing are on pg. 1. Note that we only plan to be there every other week. Given that a significant fraction of the time the weather will not cooper-ate, you won’t need to be there every session, but it helps to have someone on call for each scheduled event, just in case.
The eclipse is approaching fast and will be here before you know it. The last two pages of the newsletter are a form/checklist of things to think about as the eclipse approaches—items to plan for if you want to optimize your viewing and educational experience for this almost once-in-a-lifetime local event. The form is supplied by the Astronomical League, of which the As-tronomy Associates is a member organization. For more details and suggestions about amateur astronomy in general, check out their regularly updated website at https://www.astroleague.org/.
As noted last month, Mid-States Regional Convention will be Friday, June 9 2017, 12:00 PM to Sunday, June 11 2017, 12:00 PM. The website can be accessed at this link. The 2017 MSRAL convention is co-hosted by two local member clubs, the Ozarks Amateur Astronomers Club (located at Missouri State University) and the Springfield Astronomical Society (http://www.springfieldastronomy.org), as well as the Department of Physics, Astronomy, and Materials Science and the College of Natural and Applied Sciences at Missouri State University. If you haven’t returned your annual dues, please do so as soon as possible so that we can forward our updated membership list to the Astronomical League by the end of June. The local form can be accessed here. Any suggestions for improving the club or the newsletter are always welcome.
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being accumulated and used, many events of significant social importance too. Concentration is primarily on the visionary ca-reers of Edward C. Pickering, director of Harvard observatory (1877-1919) and the most brilliant five women assistants whose careers he enabled. A.J. Cannon, W. Fleming, H.S. Leavitt, A. Maury, and C. Payne were very different in background. The author makes the reader feel they know each astronomer and their science intimately, as a skilled science writer can. We see how these women thrived in an era of few opportunities due in part to the rise of serious women’s colleges both in the U.S. and U.K.
Add to this Pickering’s abilities as researcher, observer, planner, fund raiser and teacher, and the committed elderly ladies An-na Draper and Catherine W. Bruce, who sensitively used their inherited fortunes to fund Harvard Observatory work. I can’t avoid thinking, these people were TITANS!
You will read how novae, many kinds of variable stars, the period-luminosity law, double stars known only by their spectral lines and much else were coaxed from the glass plates. Ultimately high-resolution spectroscopy and quantum mechanics yielded understanding of stellar atmospheres. You will see how international cooperation grew into the massive science so very differ-ent today. Later in this book you see events unfold in the careers of famous Harvard directors who followed Pickering. You will see tragedy and near-tragedy in the history of the glass plates. For example, a ship carrying 1500 plates from the South Afri-can station was torpedoed in WWII, and in 2016 a large water main broke under the plate library.
The Glass Universe is scholarly as well as a pleasure to read. Sixteen historic plates, three pages of sources, three of glossa-ry, seven-page timeline, 17- page index, and eight- pages of biographical sketches. To me, this volume is a prequel to two oth-er astronomical history books by great science writers: First Light, by Richard Preston, and Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos, by Dennis Overbye.
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Wispy Remains of Supernova Explosion Hide Possible Survivor
Star might answer question of how white dwarfs explode. Of all the varieties of exploding stars, the ones called Type Ia
are perhaps the most intriguing. Their predictable brightness lets astronomers measure the expansion of the universe,
which led to the discovery of dark energy. Yet the cause of these supernovae remains a mystery. Do they happen when two
white dwarf stars collide? Or does a single white dwarf gorge on gases stolen from a companion star until bursting?
If the second theory is true, the normal star should survive. Astronomers used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to search
the gauzy remains of a Type Ia supernova in a neighboring galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud. They found a sun-like
star that showed signs of being associated with the supernova. Further investigations will be needed to learn if this star is
truly the culprit behind a white dwarf's fiery demise.
4
Images credit: an artist's concept of the JPSS-2 Satellite for NOAA and NASA by Orbital ATK (top); complete temperature map of the world from NOAA's National Weather Service (bottom).
NOAA's Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) to monitor Earth as
never before
By Ethan Siegel
Later this year, an ambitious new Earth-monitoring satellite will launch into a polar orbit around our planet. The new satellite—called JPSS-1—is a collabo-ration between NASA and NOAA. It is part of a mission called the Joint Polar Satellite System, or JPSS.
At a destination altitude of only 824 km, it will complete an orbit around Earth in just 101 minutes, collecting extraordinarily high-resolution imagery of our surface, oceans and atmosphere. It will obtain full-planet coverage every 12
hours using five separate, independent instruments. This approach enables near-continuous monitoring of a huge variety of weather and climate phenomena.
JPSS-1 will improve the prediction of severe weather events and will help advance early warning systems. It will also be indispensable for long-term climate monitoring, as it will track global rainfall, drought conditions and ocean properties.
The five independent instruments on board are the main assets of this mission:
The Cross-track Infrared Sounder (CrIS) will detail the atmosphere’s 3D structure, measuring water vapor and temperature in over 1,000 infrared spectral channels. It will enable accurate weather forecasting up to seven days in advance of any major weather events.
The Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS) adds 22 microwave channels to CrIS’s measure-ments, improving temperature and moisture readings.
Taking visible and infrared images of Earth’s surface at 750 meter resolution, the Visible Infrared Imaging Ra-diometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument will enable monitoring of weather patterns, fires, sea temperatures, light pollution, and ocean color observations at unprecedented resolutions.
The Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS) will measure how ozone concentration varies with altitude and in time over every location on Earth's surface. This can help us understand how UV light penetrates the various layers of Earth’s atmosphere.
The Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant System (CERES) instrument will quantify the effect of clouds on Earth’s energy balance, measuring solar reflectance and Earth’s radi-ance. It will greatly reduce one of the largest sources of uncertainty in climate modeling.
The information from this satellite will be important for emergency responders, airline pilots, cargo ships, farmers and coastal resi-dents, and many others. Long and short term weather monitoring will be greatly enhanced by JPSS-1 and the rest of the upcoming satel-lites in the JPSS system.
Want to teach kids about polar and geostationary orbits? Go to the NASA Space Place: https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/geo-orbits/
Ball and Raytheon technicians integrate the VIIRS Optical and Electrical Modules
onto the JPSS-1 spacecraft in 2015. The spacecraft will be ready for launch later this
year. Image Credit: Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp.
5
A New Angle on Two Spiral Galaxies for Hubble's 27th Birthday
In celebration of the 27th anniversary of the launch of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope on April 24, 1990, astrono-mers used the legendary telescope to take a portrait of a stunning pair of spiral galaxies. This starry pair offers a glimpse of what our Milky Way galaxy would look like to an outside observer.
The edge-on galaxy is called NGC 4302, and the tilted galaxy is NGC 4298. These galaxies look quite different because we see them angled at different positions on the sky. They are actually very similar in terms of their struc-ture and contents.
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growing evidence that Europa's complex geology belies an active, maybe habitable, ice shell and ocean. Under-standing Europa's plumbing through studies like this gives us a chance to better understand that picture."
The newly imaged plume rises about 62 miles above Europa's surface. The plume observed by Hubble in 2014 in the same location was estimated to be about 30 miles high. Sparks' team matched the plumes' position with their corresponding location on the thermal map taken of the moon's night side by Galileo. The absence of sunlight at night allows Europa's surface to cool down. But the researchers spotted a region that was warmer than the sur-rounding area. This region, roughly 200 miles across, is in the same location as the observed plumes. The area was previously identified as a "thermal anomaly,” because it was a few degrees warmer than the surrounding ter-rain. Such an apparently minor temperature variation is significant, considering that Europa's icy surface is so cold.
One possibility for the temperature variation is that an infusion of energy warmed up the frigid surface. Another idea is that the surface retains an abnormal amount of heat. Both possibilities suggest that unusual activity is tak-ing place.
"After Hubble imaged the second plume-like feature, we looked at its corresponding location on the thermal map, because studies of the plumes on Saturn's moon Enceladus have shown that they are associated with hotter re-gions," Sparks explained. "We discovered that Europa's plume candidate is sitting right on the thermal anomaly."
The plumes and the warm spot could be generated by a variety of geological activity. The team has proposed two possible scenarios for a link between the two features. The warmer area could be caused by the heat from liquid water, located more than one mile beneath Europa's thick, icy crust. The water is pushed upward and cracks the surface, venting as a plume. Another idea is that water ejected by the plume falls onto the surface as a fine mist. This process could change the structure of the surface grains, allowing them to retain heat longer than the sur-rounding landscape. Sparks and his team are continuing to use Hubble to search for additional examples of plume candidates on Europa, hoping to determine the frequency with which they appear..
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These images of the surface of the Jovian moon Europa, taken by NASA's Galileo spacecraft, focus on a "region of interest" on the icy moon. The image at left traces the location of the erupting plumes of material, observed by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in 2014 and again in 2016. The plumes are located inside the area surrounded by the green oval. The green oval also corresponds to a warm region on Europa's surface, as identified by the temperature map at right. The map is based on observations by the Galileo spacecraft. The warmest area is col-ored bright red. Researchers speculate these data offer circumstantial evidence for unusual activity that may be related to a subsurface ocean on Europa. The dark circle just below center in both images is a crater and is not thought to be related to the warm spot or the plume activity
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Hubble Spots Possible Venting Activity on Europa
Recent observations of Jupiter's icy moon Europa by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have uncovered a probable plume of material erupting from the moon's surface at precisely the same location as a similar apparent plume seen two years earlier by Hubble. These images bolster evidence that the plumes are a real phenomenon, flaring up intermittently in the same region on the satellite. In the most recent observation — Feb. 22, 2016 — Hubble's Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) uncovered a dark patch, silhouetted against Jupiter and protruding slightly off the surface at Europa's equatorial region. The dark feature is not only in the same location but is also similar in appearance to the one seen in a previous STIS study of Europa, taken March 17, 2014.
For both the 2016 and 2014 observations, Sparks and his team used the same transit technique to uncover the plumes in ultraviolet light. As Europa passes in front of Jupiter, any atmospheric features around the edge of the
moon block some of Jupiter's light, allowing STIS to see those features in silhouette.
The plumes correspond to the location of an unusually warm spot on the moon's icy crust, seen in the late 1990s by NASA's Galileo spacecraft. Researchers speculate that this might be circumstantial evidence for water erupting from the moon's subsurface. Such a "location of interest" may be a site where material dredged up from beneath Europa's surface could be analyzed for habitability by a future visiting spacecraft.
"If there is a causal link between the plumes and the thermal anomaly, there could be geologic activity on Europa's surface that is producing the plumes, or the plume activity may be influencing the surface thermal properties," said lead researcher William Sparks of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland. Added team member Britney Schmidt of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta: "This latest observation adds to the
(Continued on page 6)
These composite images show a suspected plume of material erupting two years apart from the same location on Jupiter's icy moon Europa. The images bolster evidence that the plumes are a real phenomenon, flaring up inter-mittently in the same region on the satellite. Both plumes, photographed in ultraviolet light by NASA's Hubble's Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, were seen in silhouette as the moon passed in front of Jupiter.
The newly imaged plume, shown at right, rises about 62 miles above Europa's frozen surface. The image was tak-en Feb. 22, 2016. The plume in the image at left, observed by Hubble on March 17, 2014, originates from the same location. It is estimated to be about 30 miles high. The snapshot of Europa, superimposed on the Hubble image, was assembled from data from NASA's Galileo mission to Jupiter.
The plumes correspond to the location of an unusually warm spot on the moon's icy crust, seen in the late 1990s by the Galileo spacecraft. Researchers speculate that this might be circumstantial evidence for water venting from the moon's subsurface. The material could be associated with the global ocean that is believed to be present be-neath the frozen crust.
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Scientists identify a black hole choking on stardust
In the center of a distant galaxy, almost 300 million light years from Earth, scientists have discovered a supermas-sive black hole that is “choking” on a sudden influx of stellar debris. Researchers from MIT, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, and elsewhere reported on a “tidal disruption flare” — a dramatic burst of electromagnetic activity that occurs when a black hole obliterates a nearby star. The flare was first discovered on Nov. 11, 2014, and scientists have since trained a variety of telescopes on the event to learn more about how black holes grow and evolve.
The MIT-led team looked through data collected by two different telescopes and identified a curious pattern in the energy emitted by the flare: As the obliterated star’s dust fell into the black hole, the researchers observed small fluctuations in the optical and ultraviolet (UV) bands of the electromagnetic spectrum. This very same pattern re-peated itself 32 days later, this time in the X-ray band. The researchers used simulations of the event performed by others to infer that such energy “echoes” were produced from the following scenario: As a star migrated close to the black hole, it was quickly ripped apart by the black hole’s gravitational energy. The resulting stellar debris, swirling ever closer to the black hole, collided with itself, giving off bursts of optical and UV light at the collision sites. As it was pulled further in, the colliding debris heated up, producing X-ray flares, in the same pattern as the optical bursts, just before the debris fell into the black hole.
“In essence, this black hole has not had much to feed on for a while, and suddenly along comes an unlucky star full of matter,” says Dheeraj Pasham, the paper’s first author and a postdoc in MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. “What we’re seeing is, this stellar material is not just continuously being fed onto the black hole, but it’s interacting with itself — stopping and going, stopping and going. This is telling us that the black hole is ‘choking’ on this sudden supply of stellar debris.”
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In this artist's rendering, a thick accretion disk has formed around a supermassive black hole following the tidal disruption of a star that wandered too close. Stellar debris has fallen toward the black hole and collected into a thick chaotic disk of hot gas. Flashes of X-ray light near the center of the disk result in light echoes that allow as-tronomers to map the structure of the funnel-like flow, revealing for the first time strong gravity effects around a normally quiescent black hole. Image: NASA/Swift/Aurore Simonnet, Sonoma State University
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Pasham’s co-authors include MIT Kavli postdoc Aleksander Sadowski and researchers from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, the University of Maryland, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Columbia Uni-versity, and Johns Hopkins University. Pasham says tidal disruption flares are a potential window into the uni-verse’s many “hidden” black holes, which are not actively accreting, or feeding on material.
“Almost every massive galaxy contains a supermassive black hole,” Pasham says. “But we won’t know about them if they’re sitting around doing nothing, unless there’s an event like a tidal disruption flare.”
Such flares occur when a star, migrating close to a black hole, gets pulled apart from the black hole’s immense gravitational energy. This stellar obliteration can give off incredible bursts of energy all along the electromagnetic spectrum, from the radio band, through the optical and UV wavelengths, and on through the X-ray and high-energy gamma ray bands. As extreme as they are, tidal disruption flares are difficult to observe, as they happen infre-quently.
“You’d have to stare at one galaxy for roughly 10,000 to 100,000 years to see a star getting disrupted by the black hole at the center,” Pasham says.
Nevertheless, on Nov. 11, 2014, a global network of robotic telescopes named ASASSN (All Sky Automated Sur-vey for SuperNovae) picked up signals of a possible tidal disruption flare from a galaxy 300 million light years away. Scientists quickly focused other telescopes on the event, including the X-ray telescope aboard NASA’s Swift satellite, an orbiting spacecraft that scans the sky for bursts of extremely high energy.
“Only recently have telescopes started ‘talking’ to each other, and for this particular event we were lucky because a lot of people were ready for it,” Pasham says. “It just resulted in a lot of data.”
With access to these data, Pasham and his colleagues wanted to solve a longstanding mystery: Where did a flare’s bursts of light first arise? Using models of black hole dynamics, scientists have been able to estimate that as a black hole rips a star apart, the resulting tidal disruption flare can produce X-ray emissions very close to the black hole. But it’s been difficult to pinpoint the origin of optical and UV emissions. Doing so would be an added step toward understanding what happens when a star gets disrupted.
"Supermassive black holes and their host galaxies grow in-situ,” Pasham says. “Knowing exactly what happens in tidal disruption flares could help us understand this black hole and galaxy coevolution process."
The researchers studied the first 270 days following the detection of the tidal disruption flare, named ASASSN-14li. In particular, they analyzed X-ray and optical/UV data taken by the Swift satellite and the Las Cumbres Observato-ry Global Telescope. They identified fluctuations, or bursts, in the X-ray band — two broad peaks (one around day 50, and the other around day 110) followed by a short dip around day 80. They identified this very same pattern in the optical/UV data some 32 days earlier.
To explain these emission “echoes,” the team ran simulations of a tidal disruption flare produced from a black hole obliterating a star. The researchers modeled the resulting accretion disc — an elliptical disc of stellar debris swirl-ing around the black hole — along with its probable speed, radius, and rate of infall, or speed at which material falls onto the black hole. From simulations run by others, the researchers conclude that the optical and UV bursts likely originated from the collision of stellar debris on the outer perimeter of the black hole. As this colliding material circles closer into the black hole, it heats up, eventually giving off X-ray emissions, which can lag behind the optical emissions, similar to what the scientists observed in the data.
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star at all. It could be a brown dwarf, a star-like object whose core is not hot enough to generate energy through nuclear fusion. This particular star is only 7.8 percent the mass of our sun, right on the border between being a star and not.
Alternatively, it could be an ultra-cool dwarf star much like TRAPPIST-1, which Spitzer and ground-based tele-scopes recently revealed to host seven Earth-size planets. Those seven planets all huddle closely around TRAP-PIST-1, even closer than Mercury orbits our sun, and they all have potential for liquid water. But OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb, at the sun-Earth distance from a very faint star, would be extremely cold -- likely even colder than Pluto is in our own solar system, such that any surface water would be frozen. A planet would need to orbit much closer to the tiny, faint star to receive enough light to maintain liquid water on its surface. Ground-based telescopes availa-ble today are not able to find smaller planets than this one using the microlensing method. A highly sensitive space telescope would be needed to spot smaller bodies in microlensing events. NASA's upcoming Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), planned for launch in the mid-2020s, will have this capability. "One of the problems with estimating how many planets like this are out there is that we have reached the lower limit of planet masses that we can currently detect with microlensing," Shvartzvald said. "WFIRST will be able to change that."
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'Iceball' Planet Discovered Through Microlensing
Scientists have discovered a new planet with the mass of Earth, orbiting its star at the same distance that we orbit our sun. The planet is likely far too cold to be habitable for life as we know it, how-ever, because its star is so faint. But the discovery adds to scientists' understand-ing of the types of planetary systems that exist beyond our own.
"This 'iceball' planet is the lowest-mass planet ever found through microlensing," said Yossi Shvartzvald, a NASA post-doctoral fellow based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Cali-fornia, and lead author of a study pub-lished in the Astrophysical Journal Let-ters.
Microlensing is a technique that facili-tates the discovery of distant objects by using background stars as flashlights. When a star crosses precisely in front of a bright star in the background, the gravity of the foreground star focuses the light of the background star, making it appear brighter. A planet orbiting the foreground object may cause an addi-tional blip in the star’s brightness. In this
case, the blip only lasted a few hours. This technique has found the most distant known exoplanets from Earth, and can detect low-mass planets that are substantially farther from their stars than Earth is from our sun.
The newly discovered planet, called OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb, aids scientists in their quest to figure out the distri-bution of planets in our galaxy. An open question is whether there is a difference in the frequency of planets in the Milky Way's central bulge compared to its disk, the pancake-like region surrounding the bulge. OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb is located in the disk, as are two planets previously detected through microlensing by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.
"Although we only have a handful of planetary systems with well-determined distances that are this far outside our solar system, the lack of Spitzer detections in the bulge suggests that planets may be less common toward the center of our galaxy than in the disk," said Geoff Bryden, astronomer at JPL and co-author of the study.
For the new study, researchers were alerted to the initial microlensing event by the ground-based Optical Gravita-tional Lensing Experiment (OGLE) survey, managed by the University of Warsaw in Poland. Study authors used the Korea Microlensing Telescope Network (KMTNet), operated by the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Insti-tute, and Spitzer, to track the event from Earth and space. KMTNet consists of three wide-field telescopes: one in Chile, one in Australia, and one in South Africa. When scientists from the Spitzer team received the OGLE alert, they realized the potential for a planetary discovery. The microlensing event alert was only a couple of hours be-fore Spitzer's targets for the week were to be finalized, but it made the cut.
With both KMTNet and Spitzer observing the event, scientists had two vantage points from which to study the ob-jects involved, as though two eyes separated by a great distance were viewing it. Having data from these two per-spectives allowed them to detect the planet with KMTNet and calculate the mass of the star and the planet using Spitzer data.
"We are able to know details about this planet because of the synergy between KMTNet and Spitzer," said Andrew Gould, professor emeritus of astronomy at Ohio State University, Columbus, and study co-author.
Although OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb is about the same mass as Earth, and the same distance from its host star as our planet is from our sun, the similarities may end there. OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb is nearly 13,000 light-years away and orbits a star so small, scientists aren't sure if it's a
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This artist's concept shows OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb, a planet discov-ered through a technique called microlensing. Study authors used the Korea Microlensing Telescope Network (KMTNet), operated by the Ko-rea Astronomy and Space Science Institute, and NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, to track the microlensing event and find the planet. Although OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb is about the same mass as Earth, and the same distance from its host star as our planet is from our sun, the simi-larities may end there. This planet is nearly 13,000 light-years away and orbits a star so small, scientists aren't sure if it's a star at all.
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stro
leagu
e.o
rg
This
ecl
ipse
rec
ord
was
mad
e b
y:
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Speci
al
Sola
r Ecl
ipse
item
s av
aila
ble
thro
ugh
the L
eag
ue S
tore
:
htt
ps:
//st
ore
.ast
role
ague.o
rg/index.p
hp
Sola
r Ecl
ipse
O
bse
rvin
g C
heck
list
A
stro
nom
ical
Leag
ue
MO
NT
HS
BE
FO
RE
T
HE
EC
LIP
SE
[
] R
evie
w t
he
star
ch
arts
fo
r th
e ex
pec
ted
loca
tio
n o
f th
e Su
n
du
rin
g th
e ec
lipse
.
[
] Id
enti
fy b
righ
t st
ars
that
will
b
e cl
ose
to
th
e Su
n d
uri
ng
the
eclip
se.
[
] Id
enti
fy t
he
loca
tio
ns
of
the
bri
ght
pla
net
s d
uri
ng
the
eclip
se.
[
] T
ake
an im
age
of
the
sky
at
nig
ht
wh
ere
the
Su
n w
ill b
e d
uri
ng
the
eclip
se.
HO
UR
S B
EF
OR
E T
HE
E
CL
IPS
E
[
] S
et u
p a
ll eq
uip
men
t th
at w
ill
be
use
d d
uri
ng
the
ecl
ipse
.
[
] R
evie
w t
he
tim
elin
e fo
r th
e ac
tivi
ties
du
rin
g th
e e
clip
se.
[
] C
he
ck a
ll eq
uip
men
t.
Des
ign
ed b
y A
aro
n C
leve
nso
n, O
bse
rvat
ory
Dir
ecto
r,
Insp
eri
ty O
bse
rvat
ory
in H
um
ble
ISD
w
ww
.hu
mb
leis
d.n
et/o
bse
rvat
ory
15
MIN
UT
ES
BE
FO
RE
O
R A
FT
ER
TO
TA
LIT
Y
[
] O
bse
rve
and
ph
oto
grap
h b
ird
an
d a
nim
al b
eh
avio
r ch
ange
s.
[
] N
ote
ch
ange
s in
tem
per
atu
re,
bar
om
etri
c p
ress
ure
, clo
ud
s an
d c
lou
d c
olo
r, w
ind
sp
eed
, an
d f
orm
atio
n o
f fo
g.
[
] O
bse
rve
and
ph
oto
grap
h t
he
app
eara
nce
of
cres
cen
t su
ns
on
th
e gr
ou
nd
.
[
] O
bse
rve
and
ph
oto
grap
h
shad
ow
ban
ds
on
a fl
at w
hit
e su
rfac
e.
[
] O
bse
rve
any
incr
ease
in
co
ntr
ast
or
shad
ow
s o
n E
arth
.
[
] O
bse
rve
and
ph
oto
grap
h t
he
par
tial
ecl
ipse
. N
ote
su
nsp
ots
.
Use
pro
per
so
lar
filt
ers.
[
] N
ote
, ob
serv
e an
d p
ho
to-
grap
h t
he
app
roac
hin
g sh
ad-
ow
of
the
Mo
on
. It
is O
NLY
saf
e t
o lo
ok
at t
he
Su
n
wit
ho
ut
filt
ers
du
rin
g to
talit
y!
MO
ME
NT
S B
EF
OR
E
OR
AF
TE
R T
OT
AL
ITY
[
] O
bse
rve
and
ph
oto
grap
h t
he
Dia
mo
nd
Rin
g.
We
ar E
clip
se G
lass
es!
[
] O
bse
rve
and
ph
oto
grap
h
Bai
ley’
s B
ead
s.
We
ar E
clip
se G
lass
es!
DU
RIN
G T
OT
AL
ITY
[
] O
bse
rve
and
ph
oto
grap
h t
he
Co
ron
a.
[
] O
bse
rve
and
ph
oto
grap
h
pro
min
ence
s an
d fl
ares
.
[
] N
ote
ch
ange
s in
tem
per
atu
re
and
th
e b
righ
tnes
s an
d t
he
co
lor
of
the
sky
and
clo
ud
s.
[
] N
ote
ap
pea
ran
ce o
f st
ars
and
p
lan
ets.
[
] O
bse
rve
and
ph
oto
grap
h t
he
loca
tio
n o
f st
ars
clo
se t
o t
he
edge
of
the
Sun
.
ww
w.a
stro
leagu
e.o
rg
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