10 Steps To Confirm A Planet Around Another Star

Happy Birthday, Albert Einstein! Genius Scientist Turns 140 Years Old Today.

The year 1905 came to be known as Einstein’s Miracle Year. He was 26 years old, and in that year he published four papers that reshaped physics. 

Photoelectric effect

The first explained what’s called the photoelectric effect – one of the bases for modern-day electronics – with practical applications including television. His paper on the photoelectric effect helped pave the way for quantum mechanics by establishing that light is both a particle and a wave. For this work, Einstein was later awarded a Nobel Prize in physics.

Brownian motion 

Another 1905 paper related to Brownian motion. In it, Einstein stated that the seemingly random motion of particles in a fluid (Brownian motion) was a predictable, measurable part of the movement of atoms and molecules. This helped establish the Kinetic Molecular Theory of Heat, which says that, if you heat something, its molecules begin to vibrate. At this same time, Einstein provided definitive confirmation that atoms and molecules actually exist.

Special relativity

Also in 1905, Einstein published his Special Theory of Relativity. Before it, space, time and mass all seemed to be absolutes – the same for everyone. Einstein showed that different people perceive mass, space and time differently, but that these effects don’t show up until you start moving nearly at the speed of light. Then you find, for example, that time on a swiftly moving spaceship slows down, while the mass of the ship increases. According to Einstein, a spaceship traveling at the speed of light would have infinite mass, and a body of infinite mass also has infinite resistance to motion. And that’s why nothing can accelerate to a speed faster than light speed. Because of Einstein’s special relativity, light is now seen as an absolute in a universe of shifting values for space, time and matter.

Mass-energy equivalence

The fourth 1905 paper stated that mass and energy are equivalent. You perhaps know something of this work in Einstein’s famous equation E=mc2. That equation means that energy (E) is equal to mass (m) multiplied by the speed of light © squared. Sound simple? It is, in a way. It means that matter and energy are the same thing. It’s also very profound, in part because the speed of light is a huge number. As shown by the equation, a small amount of mass can be converted into a large amount of energy … as in atomic bombs. It’s this same conversion of mass to energy, by the way, that causes stars to shine.

But Einstein didn’t stop there. As early as 1911, he’d predicted that light passing near a large mass, such as a star, would be bent. That idea led to his General Theory of Relativity in 1916.

This paper established the modern theory of gravitation and gave us the notion of curved space. Einstein showed, for example, that small masses such as planets form dimples in space-time that hardly affect the path of starlight. But big masses such as stars produce measurably curved space.

The fact that the curved space around our sun was measurable let other scientists prove Einstein’s theory. In 1919, two expeditions organized by Arthur Eddington photographed stars near the sun made visible during a solar eclipse. The displacement of these stars with respect to their true positions on the celestial sphere showed that the sun’s gravity does cause space to curve so that starlight traveling near the sun is bent from its original path. This observation confirmed Einstein’s theory, and made Einstein a household name. 

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General Relativity Rules: Einstein Victorious In Unprecedented Gravitational Redshift Test

“The most interesting part of this result is that it clearly demonstrates the purely General Relativistic effect of gravitational redshift. The observations of S0-2 showcase an exact agreement with Einstein’s predictions, within the measurement uncertainties. When Einstein first conceived of General Relativity, he did so conceptually: with the idea that acceleration and gravitation were indistinguishable to an observer.

With the validation of Einstein’s predictions for the orbit of this star around the galactic center’s black hole, scientists have affirmed the equivalence principle, thereby ruling out or constraining alternative theories of gravity that violate this cornerstone of Einsteinian gravity. Gravitational redshifts have never been measured in environments where gravity is this strong, marking another first and another victory for Einstein. Even in the strongest environment ever probed, the predictions of General Relativity have yet to lead us astray.”

If you want to test Einstein’s General Relativity, you’ll want to look for an effect that it predicts that’s unique, and you’ll want to look for it in the strongest-field regime possible. Well, there’s a black hole at the center of our galaxy with 4 million times the mass of the Sun, and there’s a star (S0-2) that passes closer to it, during closest approach, than any other. In May of 2018, it made this closest approach, coming within 18 billion km (about twice the diameter of Neptune’s orbit) of the black hole, and zipping around at 2.7% the speed of light.

Did Einstein’s predictions for gravitational redshift come out right? You bet they did: 5-sigma, baby! Come get the full, amazing story here!

Black holes

A black hole is a region of spacetime exhibiting such strong gravitational effects that nothing—not even particles and electromagnetic radiation such as light—can escape from inside it. The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass can deform spacetime to form a black hole. The boundary of the region from which no escape is possible is called the event horizon. Although the event horizon has an enormous effect on the fate and circumstances of an object crossing it, no locally detectable features appear to be observed. In many ways a black hole acts like an ideal black body, as it reflects no light.  

The idea of a body so massive that even light could not escape was briefly proposed by astronomical pioneer and English clergyman John Michell in a letter published in November 1784. Michell’s simplistic calculations assumed that such a body might have the same density as the Sun, and concluded that such a body would form when a star’s diameter exceeds the Sun’s by a factor of 500, and the surface escape velocity exceeds the usual speed of light.

At the center of a black hole, as described by general relativity, lies a gravitational singularity, a region where the spacetime curvature becomes infinite. For a non-rotating black hole, this region takes the shape of a single point and for a rotating black hole, it is smeared out to form a ring singularity that lies in the plane of rotation. In both cases, the singular region has zero volume. It can also be shown that the singular region contains all the mass of the black hole solution. The singular region can thus be thought of as having infinite density. 

How Do Black Holes Form?

Scientists think the smallest black holes formed when the universe began.

Stellar black holes are made when the center of a very big star falls in upon itself, or collapses. When this happens, it causes a supernova. A supernova is an exploding star that blasts part of the star into space.

Scientists think supermassive black holes were made at the same time as the galaxy they are in.

Supermassive black holes, which can have a mass equivalent to billions of suns, likely exist in the centers of most galaxies, including our own galaxy, the Milky Way. We don’t know exactly how supermassive black holes form, but it’s likely that they’re a byproduct of galaxy formation. Because of their location in the centers of galaxies, close to many tightly packed stars and gas clouds, supermassive black holes continue to grow on a steady diet of matter.

If Black Holes Are “Black,” How Do Scientists Know They Are There?

A black hole can not be seen because strong gravity pulls all of the light into the middle of the black hole. But scientists can see how the strong gravity affects the stars and gas around the black hole. 

Scientists can study stars to find out if they are flying around, or orbiting, a black hole.

When a black hole and a star are close together, high-energy light is made. This kind of light can not be seen with human eyes. Scientists use satellites and telescopes in space to see the high-energy light.

On 11 February 2016, the LIGO collaboration announced the first observation of gravitational waves; because these waves were generated from a black hole merger it was the first ever direct detection of a binary black hole merger. On 15 June 2016, a second detection of a gravitational wave event from colliding black holes was announced. 

Simulation of gravitational lensing by a black hole, which distorts the image of a galaxy in the background 

Animated simulation of gravitational lensing caused by a black hole going past a background galaxy. A secondary image of the galaxy can be seen within the black hole Einstein ring on the opposite direction of that of the galaxy. The secondary image grows (remaining within the Einstein ring) as the primary image approaches the black hole. The surface brightness of the two images remains constant, but their angular size varies, hence producing an amplification of the galaxy luminosity as seen from a distant observer. The maximum amplification occurs when the background galaxy (or in the present case a bright part of it) is exactly behind the black hole.

Could a Black Hole Destroy Earth?

Black holes do not go around in space eating stars, moons and planets. Earth will not fall into a black hole because no black hole is close enough to the solar system for Earth to do that.

Even if a black hole the same mass as the sun were to take the place of the sun, Earth still would not fall in. The black hole would have the same gravity as the sun. Earth and the other planets would orbit the black hole as they orbit the sun now.

The sun will never turn into a black hole. The sun is not a big enough star to make a black hole.

More posts about black holes

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Make Sure You Observe the Moon on October 20

On Saturday, October 20, NASA will host the ninth annual International Observe the Moon Night. One day each year, everyone on Earth is invited to observe and learn about the Moon together, and to celebrate the cultural and personal connections we all have with our nearest celestial neighbor.

There are a number of ways to celebrate. You can attend an event, host your own, or just look up! Here are 10 of our favorite ways to observe the Moon:

1. Look up

Image credit: NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio/Ernie Wright

The simplest way to observe the Moon is simply to look up. The Moon is the brightest object in our night sky, the second brightest in our daytime sky and can be seen from all around the world — from the remote and dark Atacama Desert in Chile to the brightly lit streets of Tokyo. On October 20, the near side of the Moon, or the side facing Earth, will be about 80 percent illuminated, rising in the early evening.

See the Moon phase on October 20 or any other day of the year!

2. Peer through a telescope or binoculars

The Moon and Venus are great targets for binoculars. Image Credit: NASA/Bill Dunford

With some magnification help, you will be able to focus in on specific features on the Moon, like the Sea of Tranquility or the bright Copernicus Crater. Download our Moon maps for some guided observing on Saturday.

3. Photograph the Moon

Image credit: NASA/GSFC/ASU

Our Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has taken more than 20 million images of the Moon, mapping it in stunning detail. You can see featured, captioned images on LRO’s camera website, like the one of Montes Carpatus seen here. And, of course, you can take your own photos from Earth. Check out our tips on photographing the Moon!

4. Take a virtual field trip

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Plan a lunar hike with Moontrek. Moontrek is an interactive Moon map made using NASA data from our lunar spacecraft. Fly anywhere you’d like on the Moon, calculate the distance or the elevation of a mountain to plan your lunar hike, or layer attributes of the lunar surface and temperature. If you have a virtual reality headset, you can experience Moontrek in 3D.

5. Touch the topography

Image credit: NASA GSFC/Jacob Richardson

Observe the Moon through touch! If you have access to a 3D printer, you can peruse our library of 3D models and lunar landscapes. This model of the Apollo 11 landing site created by NASA scientist Jacob Richardson, is derived from LRO’s topographic data. Near the center, you can actually feel a tiny dot where astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin left the Lunar Descent Module.

6. Make Moon art

Image credit: LPI/Andy Shaner

Enjoy artwork of the Moon and create your own! For messy fun, lunar crater paintings demonstrate how the lunar surface changes due to consistent meteorite impacts.

7. Relax on your couch

Image credit: NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio/Ernie Wright

There are many movies that feature our nearest neighbor, from A Voyage to the Moon by George Melies, to Apollo 13, to the newly released First Man. You can also spend your evening with our lunar playlist on YouTube or this video gallery, learning about the Moon’s role in eclipses, looking at the Moon phases from the far side, and seeing the latest science portrayed in super high resolution. You’ll impress all of your friends with your knowledge of supermoons.

8. Listen to the Moon

Video credit: NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio/Ernie Wright

Make a playlist of Moon songs. For inspiration, check out this list of lunar tunes. We also recommend LRO’s official music video, The Moon and More, featuring Javier Colon, season 1 winner of NBC’s “The Voice.” Or you can just watch this video featuring “Clair de Lune,” by French composer Claude Debussy, over and over.

9. See the Moon through the eyes of a spacecraft

Image credit: NASA/GSFC/MIT

Visible light is just one tool that we use to explore our universe. Our spacecraft contain many different types of instruments to analyze the Moon’s composition and environment. Review the Moon’s gravity field with data from the GRAIL spacecraft or decipher the maze of this slope map from the laser altimeter onboard LRO. This collection from LRO features images of the Moon’s temperature and topography. You can learn more about our different missions to explore the Moon here.

10. Continue your observations throughout the year

Image credit: NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio/Ernie Wright

An important part of observing the Moon is to see how it changes over time. International Observe the Moon Night is the perfect time to start a Moon journal. See how the shape of the Moon changes over the course of a month, and keep track of where and what time it rises and sets. Observe the Moon all year long with these tools and techniques!

However you choose to celebrate International Observe the Moon Night, we want to hear about it! Register your participation and share your experiences on social media with #ObserveTheMoon or on our Facebook page. Happy observing!

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

Ten Solstice Facts That Everyone Should Know

“9.) The solstices are neither the hottest nor coldest days of the year. This one is actually very specific to Earth: the hottest times of the year typically correspond to approximately 6 weeks after the summer solstice, and approximately 6 weeks after the winter solstice. Other planets don’t have this same phenomenon for one very important reason: they don’t have the majority of their surfaces covered in liquid water.

The oceans themselves, being composed of large quantities of water and containing approximately 1,000 times the mass of Earth’s atmospheres, contain a tremendous amount of heat, and are slow to change their temperatures. We might receive more (or less) energy from the Sun on the summer (or winter) solstices, but the oceans require time to heat up or cool down. Global average temperature extremes, therefore, usually occur in early August and February, rather than at the June and December solstices.”

The solstice, Latin for the Sun standing still in the sky, occurs whenever the Earth’s axial tilt reaches a maximum relative to the Earth’s orbital plane around the Sun. With a tilt of 23.5 degrees, but a tilt that’s independent of our elliptical orbit around the Sun, many surprising and counterintuitive facts arise.

Want to know as many of them as possible? Come get this remarkable and fascinating list of educational facts on this year’s solstice: June 21, 2019!

Extreme Science: Launching Sounding Rockets from The Arctic

This winter, our scientists and engineers traveled to the world’s northernmost civilian town to launch rockets equipped with cutting-edge scientific instruments.

This is the beginning of a 14-month-long campaign to study a particular region of Earth’s magnetic field — which means launching near the poles. What’s it like to launch a science rocket in these extreme conditions?

Our planet is protected by a natural magnetic field that deflects most of the particles that flow out from the Sun — the solar wind — away from our atmosphere. But near the north and south poles, two oddities in Earth’s magnetic field funnel these solar particles directly into our atmosphere. These regions are the polar cusps, and it turns out they’re the ideal spot for studying how our atmosphere interacts with space.

The scientists of the Grand Challenge Initiative — Cusp are using sounding rockets to do their research. Sounding rockets are suborbital rockets that launch to a few hundred miles in altitude, spending a few minutes in space before falling back to Earth. That means sounding rockets can carry sensitive instruments above our atmosphere to study the Sun, other stars and even distant galaxies.

They also fly directly through some of the most interesting regions of Earth’s atmosphere, and that’s what scientists are taking advantage of for their Grand Challenge experiments.

One of the ideal rocket ranges for cusp science is in Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard, off the coast of Norway and within the Arctic circle. Because of its far northward position, each morning Svalbard passes directly under Earth’s magnetic cusp.

But launching in this extreme, remote environment puts another set of challenges on the mission teams. These launches need to happen during the winter, when Svalbard experiences 24/7 darkness because of Earth’s axial tilt. The launch teams can go months without seeing the Sun.

Like for all rocket launches, the science teams have to wait for the right weather conditions to launch. Because they’re studying upper atmospheric processes, some of these teams also have to wait for other science conditions, like active auroras. Auroras are created when charged particles collide with Earth’s atmosphere — often triggered by solar storms or changes in the solar wind — and they’re related to many of the upper-atmospheric processes that scientists want to study near the magnetic cusp.

But even before launch, the extreme conditions make launching rockets a tricky business — it’s so cold that the rockets must be encased in styrofoam before launch to protect them from the low temperatures and potential precipitation.

When all is finally ready, an alarm sounds throughout the town of Ny-Ålesund to alert residents to the impending launch. And then it’s up, up and away! This photo shows the launch of the twin VISIONS-2 sounding rockets on Dec. 7, 2018 from Ny-Ålesund.

These rockets are designed to break up during flight — so after launch comes clean-up. The launch teams track where debris lands so that they can retrieve the pieces later.

The next launch of the Grand Challenge Initiative is AZURE, launching from Andøya Space Center in Norway in April 2019.

 For even more about what it’s like to launch science rockets in extreme conditions, check out one scientist’s notes from the field: https://go.nasa.gov/2QzyjR4

For updates on the Grand Challenge Initiative and other sounding rocket flights, visit nasa.gov/soundingrockets or follow along with NASA Wallops and NASA heliophysics on Twitter and Facebook.

@NASA_Wallops | NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility | @NASASun | NASA Sun Science

Swirls of Jupiter

Jupiter is a very stormy, turbulent, violent planet. The planet completes a day (or one complete rotation) within roughly 10 hours, which creates massive winds, producing these swirls, and violent storms. The fast rotation coupled with the fact that the planet is nothing but gas greatly multiplies the Coriolis effect. Earth too has a Coriolis effect, this creates the characteristic hurricane shapes and also contributes to the fact that storms will spin the opposite direction in different hemispheres. Luckily, our rotation is slower - our storms are less frequent and less violent than they would be if our days were shorter.

The above images come from the recent Juno mission by NASA.

Study Tips Based on Your Hogwarts House

Just finished rewatching all 8 of the Harry Potter films last week… and I thought why not make my first graphic related to it? So, here’s study tips for each of the Hogwarts houses! I know some of these doesn’t apply to everyone, but I had really fun time making this :) Hope this helps!

NASA’s New Planet Hunter Reveals a Sky Full of Stars

NASA’s newest planet-hunting satellite — the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS for short — has just released its first science image using all of its cameras to capture a huge swath of the sky! TESS is NASA’s next step in the search for planets outside our solar system, called exoplanets.

This spectacular image, the first released using all four of TESS’ cameras, shows the satellite’s full field of view. It captures parts of a dozen constellations, from Capricornus (the Sea Goat) to Pictor (the Painter’s Easel) — though it might be hard to find familiar constellations among all these stars! The image even includes the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, our galaxy’s two largest companion galaxies.

The science community calls this image “first light,” but don’t let that fool you — TESS has been seeing light since it launched in April. A first light image like this is released to show off the first science-quality image taken after a mission starts collecting science data, highlighting a spacecraft’s capabilities.

TESS has been busy since it launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. First TESS needed to get into position, which required a push from the Moon. After nearly a month in space, the satellite passed about 5,000 miles from the Moon, whose gravity gave it the boost it needed to get into a special orbit that will keep it stable and maximize its view of the sky.

During those first few weeks, we also got a sneak peek of the sky through one of TESS’s four cameras. This test image captured over 200,000 stars in just two seconds! The spacecraft was pointed toward the constellation Centaurus when it snapped this picture. The bright star Beta Centauri is visible at the lower left edge, and the edge of the Coalsack Nebula is in the right upper corner.

After settling into orbit, scientists ran a number of checks on TESS, including testing its ability to collect a set of stable images over a prolonged period of time. TESS not only proved its ability to perform this task, it also got a surprise! A comet named C/2018 N1 passed through TESS’s cameras for about 17 hours in July.

The images show a treasure trove of cosmic curiosities. There are some stars whose brightness changes over time and asteroids visible as small moving white dots. You can even see an arc of stray light from Mars, which is located outside the image, moving across the screen.

Now that TESS has settled into orbit and has been thoroughly tested, it’s digging into its main mission of finding planets around other stars. How will it spot something as tiny and faint as a planet trillions of miles away? The trick is to look at the star!

So far, most of the exoplanets we’ve found were detected by looking for tiny dips in the brightness of their host stars. These dips are caused by the planet passing between us and its star – an event called a transit. Over its first two years, TESS will stare at 200,000 of the nearest and brightest stars in the sky to look for transits to identify stars with planets.

TESS will be building on the legacy of NASA’s Kepler spacecraft, which also used transits to find exoplanets. TESS’s target stars are about 10 times closer than Kepler’s, so they’ll tend to be brighter. Because they’re closer and brighter, TESS’s target stars will be ideal candidates for follow-up studies with current and future observatories.

TESS is challenging over 200,000 of our stellar neighbors to a staring contest! Who knows what new amazing planets we’ll find?

The TESS mission is led by MIT and came together with the help of many different partners. You can keep up with the latest from the TESS mission by following mission updates.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com. 

Animated Fine Art

Collection by E Lynx of famous artworks that have been animated and rendered in 3D which you can interact with their respective @sketchfab upload:

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