Posted on 02/28/2022 7:43:31 AM PST by Red Badger
Kepler-16b Artist’s impression of Kepler-16b, the first planet known to definitively orbit two stars – what’s called a circumbinary planet. The planet, which can be seen in the foreground, was discovered by NASA’s Kepler mission. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle
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Study proves ground-based telescopes can search for planets with two suns.
Astronomers have used a new technique to confirm a real-life Tatooine, the fictional planet with two suns that was home to Luke Skywalker in “Star Wars.”
The planet, Kepler-16b, is about 245 light years from Earth, is a gas giant, and is roughly the size of Saturn. Scientists already knew that the planet existed, but in a recent study, an international team of astronomers explained how they successfully applied a technique that hadn’t been previously used to observe a planet orbiting two stars.
“It’s a confirmation that our method works,” said David Martin, co-author of the study and NASA Sagan Fellow in The Ohio State University’s Department of Astronomy. “And it creates an opportunity for us to apply this method now to identify other systems like this.”
The technique, called the radial velocity method, has long been used in astronomy. (The first planet ever found around a sun-like star was found using radial velocity – and was found using the same telescope astronomers used to find this one.)
The radial velocity method involves analyzing the spectra of light produced by the stars. Astronomers gather spectra data through telescopes on the ground – in this case, from a telescope based in France, the Observatoire de Haute Provence. That spectra data graphs into a line, but the line “wobbles” as the planet orbits around the two stars, producing a shaky line in the spectra of light. The wobble indicates a planet is there, and astronomers can use it to derive a number of other pieces of information about a planet, including its mass.
Measuring radial velocity is, Martin said, among the best tools astronomers have to identify exoplanets, or planets outside our solar system. But until this study, astronomers had not been able to use it to find planets outside our solar system that orbit two stars.
The study was published this week in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
In the past, such planets – known as circumbinary planets – were identified by monitoring when one star passed in front of the other. That method, known as the “transit method,” has identified 14 such planets, including Kepler-16b. The first confirmed circumbinary planet was described in a paper in 2011; others have followed. But until this paper, none had been found using radial velocity.
“What people had faced was that having two sets of spectra from two stars makes it really tricky, and people were struggling to get enough precision to see the wobble caused by the planet,” Martin said. “And we got around that by making a survey of systems with two stars that orbit each other where one star is big, and one is quite small.”
The survey, called Binaries Escorted by Orbiting Planets, or BEBOP, was established specifically to search for planets like this one.
One of Kepler-16b’s stars is about two-thirds the mass of Earth’s sun, and the other is about 20% the mass.
Astronomers had been watching this system since July 2016.
Proving that measuring radial velocities can identify planets that orbit two stars, Martin said, opens the door for the technique to be applied more broadly. That is important to astronomers for a number of reasons, but a big one is that planets that orbit two stars tend to exist at a distance that would make them good candidates for life.
“These planets are frequently found in the habitable zone, at a distance from the stars where you would expect to find liquid water,” Martin said.
Kepler-16b, which is made primarily of gas, is not likely to be a candidate where life could be found, Martin said. But using the radial-velocity method could help astronomers find other similar planets.
Reference: “BEBOP III. Observations and an independent mass measurement of Kepler-16 (AB) b – the first circumbinary planet detected with radial velocities” by Amaury H M J Triaud, Matthew R Standing, Neda Heidari, David V Martin, Isabelle Boisse, Alexandre Santerne, Alexandre C M Correia, Lorena Acuña, Matthew Battley, Xavier Bonfils, Andrés Carmona, Andrew Collier Cameron, Pía Cortés-Zuleta, Georgina Dransfield, Shweta Dalal, Magali Deleuil, Xavier Delfosse, João Faria, Thierry Forveille, Nathan C Hara, Guillaume Hébrard, Sergio Hoyer, Flavien Kiefer, Vedad Kunovac, Pierre F L Maxted, Eder Martioli, Nicola J Miller, Richard P Nelson, Mathilde Poveda, Hanno Rein, Lalitha Sairam, Stéphane Udry and Emma Willett, 25 February 2022, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stab3712
Martin’s portion of this work was funded in part by NASA.
Most of the named stars we are familiar with were named by Arab astronomers, so their names are in Arabic, another Semitic Hebrew cousin language!.............................
That's the simple point. :)
"The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few."
The narrow way involves the lowest form of humor. After all, when Jacob was dubbed Israel, he called that place "Peniel".
Then the next thing is that the sun rose upon "Penuel", which of course is some kind of odd name switch-a-roo that attracts experts like a magnet.
If you want to see God and live to tell the tale, you have to camp out in Puniel, or Punuel as it were:
Matthew 13
44 Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field; the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field.
45 Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls:
46 Who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it.
Remember that gal?
$1.98 -- basically pocket change, or the loose change in the couch.
Bargains galore if you know where to look.
Inflation!
Could you just imagine the madness and mayhem, should it turn out that something got lost in translation, reading?
Dreadful!
Esau was determined to slay Jacob... or that if Saul found out that Samuel was headed on over to Jesse's house, he'd kill him!
There wouldn't be enough rocks and caves for those suddenly seeking shelter.
That's the kind of cataclysm that would really bring down the house.
prepared for the golden EIB microphone, crying,
, Father.
Excellence in broadcasting!
Because, there's
Something good in everything I see:
It's like the midrash about Jacob's little grandaughter Serach, gently singing and playing her harp to inform him that Joseph was still alive. The brothers had to think up a clever scheme to break the good news to their father -- delicately, otherwise he'd die of a heart attack.
I searched, in order to bring Serach's sweet song up-to-date:
The Mashiach is alive
And living in Galut
He has two parents
Ya'akov and Rut.
The film stars Dr Tim Hunt, 2001 Nobel Prize in Medicine.
Wow, can you believe that scandal? Well look at the bright side -- it would have been much much worse if his name were Mike.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_shaming#Tim_Hunt_controversy
The man was attacked based on his own observations and research, because talk about being over the target, dropping a proverbial carpet bomb:
"In 1990, he began work at Imperial Cancer Research Fund, later known as the Cancer Research UK London Research Institute, in the United Kingdom, where his work focused on understanding on what makes cell go cancerous, that is: proliferate uncontrollably, with the ordinary inhibitory signals switched off."
♪ ♫Changing from bad to good is as easy as taking your first step. ♫ ♪
That's right, because reversing the bad (e.g. cancer, online shaming) is as easy as taking that first step in the opposite direction ("Don't be the rule be the exception!"). It's even a [key]board game:
BAD in reverse is DAB.
E is one step up from D.
Z is one step down from A.
SPACE is below B.
B really high up. No crowds. ;)
No wonder nothing ever gets solved. EZ matches the Hebrew keyboard letters kuf zayin [קז], which is a spelling for gauze (deriving from Aramaic for silk, silk-weaving), and also a transliteration of "cause".
One bandage strip at a time. Matches right up.
(All of the letters hover above space. No need to be a Kabbalist to see that. EZ!)
By switching the stress to the first syllable, a capitol city becomes "beer": בירה
Or not every beer is really beer. I'll Root for the home team, in any case!
Ah, beer, Beer Shiva, Seven Wells, wells, where you go to get a beer...
As Springsteen sang in Glory Days Well I think I'm going down to the well tonight And I'm going to drink till I get my fill...
Another link... The Harp...
Tehillim 49:5 I will incline mine ear to a parable; I will open my dark saying upon the harp.
ה אַטֶּה לְמָשָׁל אָזְנִי; אֶפְתַּח בְּכִנּוֹר, חִידָתִי.
כִּנּוֹר kinnôwr, kin-nore'; from a unused root meaning to twang; a harp:—harp.
The Sea of Galilee also called Lake Tiberias, Kinneret or Kinnereth, is a freshwater lake in Israel. It is the lowest freshwater lake ...
Matthew 13:1 That same day Yeshua went out of the house and sat by the lake. 2 Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat in it (upon the harp), while all the people stood on the shore.
John 6:1 Some time after this, Yeshua crossed to the far shore of the Sea of Galilee (that is, the Sea of Tiberias), 2 and a great crowd of people followed him because they saw the signs he had performed by healing the sick. 3 Then Yeshua went up on a mountainside and sat down with his disciples. 4 The Jewish Passover Festival was near.
Hey! A beer and a harp, and I've got a couple of Guinness in the fridge. [only for English Premier Football]
And it echos on and on and...
M
Priceless, thanks! LOL (Purim code 707 upside down).
There's even have a "draught" of [drinking like a] fish on the label.
Yeah what about that year, 17 + 59..
It's a veritable spirit of...76.
Drink!
2 Kings 10:27 And they brake down the image of Baal, and brake down the house of Baal, and made it a draught house unto this day.
Ooops. Kind of like a good word for Mordecai is a bad word for Haman.
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