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Astronomy and Astrophysics: Facts

Here is a list of some curiosities of astronomy and astrophysics. From our solar system to interstellar space.

90377 Sedna - Sedna is a large minor planet in the outer reaches of the Solar System that was, as of 2015, at a distance of about 86 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun, about three times as far as Neptune.

Miranda - Miranda’s surface has patchwork regions of broken terrain indicating intense geological activity in Miranda’s past, and is criss-crossed by huge canyons. It also has the largest known cliff in the Solar System, Verona Rupes, which has a height of over 5 km (3.1 mi).

PSR B1257 + 12 - Is a pulsar located 2300 light years from the Sun in the constellation of Virgo.

The pulsar has a planetary system with three known extrasolar planets, named “Draugr” (PSR B1257+12 b), “Poltergeist” (PSR B1257+12 c) and “Phobetor” (PSR B1257+12 d), respectively. They were both the first extrasolar planets and the first pulsar planets to be discovered; b and c in 1992 and c in 1994.

J1407b - J1407b is the first exoplanet or brown dwarf discovered with a ring system by the transit method. The J1407b ring system has an outer radius of about 90 million km (about 640 times the one of Saturn’s rings).

Rain on a Brown Dwarf - Its atmosphere mainly contains gases, including gaseous iron and silicate. At higher temperatures - 3,140 degrees Fahrenheit (2,000 degrees Kelvin) - typical of younger brown dwarfs, iron remains in its gaseous phase. Over time as the incandescent body cools, the iron condenses to form clouds rich in iron and raindrops of liquid iron.

Titan’s Rain - On Saturn’s moon Titan there are lakes and rain just like on Earth, but there the lakes and rains are made up of hydrocarbons (methane and liquid ethane).

Triton - Triton is the largest natural satellite of the planet Neptune, and the first Neptunian moon to be discovered. It is the only large moon in the Solar System with a retrograde orbit, an orbit in the opposite direction to its planet’s rotation. At 2,700 kilometres (1,700 mi) in diameter, it is the seventh-largest moon in the Solar System.

Rings of Neptune - The system consists of five rings that are named after the most relevant astronomers in the Neptune survey. From the inner most to the outer are: Galle, Le Verrier, Lassell, Arago and Adams. They are a system of planetary rings very weak and tenuous, composed mainly of dust and discovered in 1989 by the space probe Voyager 2.

Stars can be born in the winds of supermassive black holes - Artist’s impression of a galaxy forming stars within powerful outflows of material blasted out from supermassive black holes at its core. Results from ESO’s Very Large Telescope are the first confirmed observations of stars forming in this kind of extreme environment. The discovery has many consequences for understanding galaxy properties and evolution.

Seyfert Galaxy - Seyfert galaxies are one of the two largest groups of active galaxies, along with quasars. They have quasar-like nuclei (very luminous, distant and bright sources of electromagnetic radiation) with very high surface brightnesses whose spectra reveal strong, high-ionisation emission lines, but unlike quasars, their host galaxies are clearly detectable.

Sources: wikipedia & eso.org

Images credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (SSC-Caltech), University of Western Ontario/Stony Brook University, Ron Miller, David A. Hardy (AstroArt), A. Tayfun Oner, ESO/M. Kornmesser & NASA, ESA & A. van der Hoeven

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