Every week, TecMundo this #AstroMiniBR Bring together five interesting and fun astronomical curiosities produced by Twitter profile contributors to spread the knowledge of this oldest science!

#1: The sun is NOT actually yellow

Have you ever wondered what color the sun is? Probably not, right? Because we’ve always learned that the Sun is yellow, period. But actually, it’s not like that.

When we split sunlight into different wavelengths, we can see that the Sun actually radiates all the colors of the rainbow more or less equally. What we see is the sum of all these colors, which means that the Sun is actually white, not yellow. So why do we see the Sun as yellow most of the time? Why does the sun sometimes appear red? This is because of our atmosphere.

Our atmosphere blocks or scatters bluer wavelengths. This is good! With this, it blocks some of the UV rays that are super toxic to humanity! But going back, the atmosphere also blocks the blue rays from the visible part. This means that when sunlight passes through our atmosphere, some of the blue rays are lost along the way. That’s why the sky we see is blue! This is why the sun appears yellow.

For the same reason, when the sun sets or rises, an even greater amount of rays pass through the atmosphere to reach us. With this, even the yellow of the Sun disappears and only the reddish rays remain!

#2: More than 230 years since the discovery of one of the icy moons in the Solar System

British astronomer William Herschel was responsible for many contributions to astronomy, and one of them took place more than 230 years ago: the discovery of the icy moon Enceladus. This moon orbits one of the gas giants, Saturn, and is only 500 km in diameter, making it the planet’s sixth largest moon.

Despite its small size, this satellite is super complex and interesting: The Moon has signs that it perpetuates a global ocean of liquid water below the frozen surface! One of the proofs of the existence of this ocean is cryovolcanoes at the south pole that eject about 200 kg of material per second. These cryovolcanoes have also been theorized to be related to the creation of Saturn’s E ring, a more distant and diffuse ring in which the moon is embedded. This ring must have been unstable and scattered. But with the constant injection of new particles from Enceladus, we have been able to observe this ring so far!

#3: Whoever makes a promise must keep it and JWST leaves nothing to be desired!

We already knew that JWST brought a lot of promises, but we didn’t expect it to be this fast! With just over a few months of data from the space telescope, astronomers and astronomers around the world are already breaking some records. One of them is the first detection of carbon dioxide found in the atmosphere of an exoplanet! The exoplanet in question is WASP-39 B, a gas giant orbiting a Sun-like star 700 light-years from us!

How did JWST achieve this feat? There is a technique for studying the isolated atmosphere of exoplanets, and this is done through what we call “filtered light.” In short, this is what happens: the star is observed when the planet is behind it, so we have the star’s pure light. At another time, we observed the star again, but this time with the planet in front of it. A small portion of the starlight will pass through the planet’s atmosphere before passing through us, so this light is “contaminated” by elements from the exoplanet’s atmosphere. By subtracting the “contaminated” light from the star’s pure light, we can only observe the contributions of elements found in the exoplanet’s atmosphere! With incredible sensitivity and resolution, JWST was able to detect the presence of carbon dioxide in an atmosphere far from here for the first time!

This is of great interest to astrobiology, because the way to search for life outside Earth is primarily through biosignatures. That is, the biological and chemical signatures that indicate the existence of life outside of here!

Stay tuned for more to come with JWST.

#4: What’s in the outer reaches of the Milky Way?

We know of a very classic image of the Milky Way: a flat galaxy with some structures such as spiral arms and a central bar. But the Milky Way goes beyond that!

Most of the mass we see and the light in our Galaxy is actually concentrated in the plane of the disk, but around the Milky Way is what we call a halo. This is a circular structure that covers the entire Milky Way. In this structure, we usually have the existence of very ancient globular clusters that were probably first formed in the Galaxy.

Additionally, the Milky Way also has a very large halo, but in this case it is an invisible halo of dark matter!

#5: Return to the Moon?

It hasn’t happened this time yet, but we’re getting there! Last week, we made two launch attempts for the Artemis 1 mission, which promises to be the first step towards bringing humanity back to the Moon! This is the first aircraft in the Artemis program and is currently an unmanned test. The satellite’s plan is to orbit the Moon and return safely to Earth. This flight brings with it some experiments that will allow us to better understand the lifetime consequences of the journey and to plan the next manned journeys more safely.

Artemis 1 has not yet been released and the next window of possibility is September 20. If not possible, the launch will only take place in October.


Source: Tec Mundo

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Bret
I am Bret Jackson, a professional journalist and author for Gadget Onus, where I specialize in writing about the gaming industry. With over 6 years of experience in my field, I have built up an extensive portfolio that ranges from reviews to interviews with top figures within the industry. My work has been featured on various news sites, providing readers with insightful analysis regarding the current state of gaming culture.

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