2020

Artist's concept of Pi Earth (Image courtesy NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle, Christine Daniloff, MIT)

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An article published in “The Astronomical Journal” reports a study on the exoplanet K2-315b, nicknamed Pi Earth because its year lasts 3.14 Earth days, an approximation of the value of pi. A team of researchers from the SPECULOOS (Search for habitable Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars) project, a network of ground-based telescopes, used them to confirm the planet’s existence by verifying data collected by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope. Pi Earth is very close to its star so the temperature on its surface is very high even if the star is very small and relatively cold. Any life forms should be analogous to terrestrial extremophiles. It may be lifeless but it is an interesting candidate for studying its atmosphere.

Bright boulders on asteroids Ryugu and Bennu

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Three articles published in the journal “Nature Astronomy” report the results of as many researches on asteroids Ryugu and Bennu, which are being explored respectively by JAXA’s Hayabusa 2 and NASA’s OSIRIS-REx space probes. The two asteroids already showed some similarities and, in a news & views editorial, Maria Cristina De Sanctis talks about the catastrophic events that might have generated them and the bright rocks discovered on the surface of both despite their dark color. Catastrophic events are also the object of the other two articles, and in the one focused on Bennu, there are indications that some rocks on its surface come from Vesta, one of the largest objects in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Views of Enceladus

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An article published in the journal “Icarus” reports a study on the frozen crust on the surface of Enceladus, the moon of Saturn which has an ocean of liquid water under its crust. A team of researchers analyzed data collected by the Cassini space probe’s Visible and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) instrument to obtain the most detailed infrared map of Enceladus’s surface. The map shows a clear correlation between reflected infrared emissions and geological activity, and in some areas, the surface ice turns out to be recent.

Jupiter and Europa seen by Hubble (Image NASA, ESA, A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center), and M. H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley) and the OPAL team.)

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New images of the planet Jupiter captured by the Hubble Space Telescope show the gigantic storms sweeping through it, including a new one in the middle of the Northern Hemisphere that appears as a multiple whitish spot and what was called a cousin of the Great Red Spot because it’s little to south of it has changed color once again. Hubble also captured an image of Jupiter along with Europa, one of its major moons that became famous after the discovery of a subterranean ocean of liquid water in which conditions could be favorable to life.

Uranus' moons seen by Herschel

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An article published in the journal “Astronomy & Astrophysics” reports the results of a research on the five major moons of the planet Uranus. A team of researchers led by Örs H. Detre of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) in Heidelberg, Germany, analyzed data collected by ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory using a new technique that made it possible to obtain new information from the weak signals obtained in the past to determine the physical characteristics of the moons Titania, Oberon, Umbriel, Ariel, and Miranda. The results indicate that they’re similar to the trans-Neptunian dwarf planets while they’re different from other moons of Uranus leaving open the possibility that they were captured by the planet after their formation.