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Multiple nations and private space companies are racing to the Moon. 24th Jan 2024 - NASA's Peregrine Lunar lander launched a few weeks ago suffered a major failure and crashed landed back on Earth. Japan's SLIM lander successfully performed  a precision landing on the Lunar surface a few days ago but sadly  is having power and communication problems - although the Japanese space agency is holding out hope for a restart of the lander's system despite it landing either on its side or even upside down. India's Chandrayaan-3 Moon lander successfully landed in 2023, and China's Chang'e 4 Moon lander touched down on the far side of the Moon  - something not achieved by any nation previously. Space company,  Intuitive Machines, it scheduled to head to the Moon from around the middle of February 2024 onwards. Their Nova-C lander is headed to crater Malapert A near the Moon's south pole. This mission  will be carrying five NASA and commercial Lunar payloads.  Plus there's more on the way! There are numerous upcoming missions to the Moon in both the early and advanced stages of planning . In fact ESA(European Space Agency) has stated that by 2023 there will more than 100 missions to the Moon.  Not all of these will be Lunar rovers. Quite a large percentage of these will be Lunar orbiters, surveying in detail the Moon's surface and searching for resources. There's even an Australian Lunar rover- called Roo-ver - due to fly on a fly on a future Artemis mission, where it will collect Lunar regolith* to attempt the extraction of oxygen from it. While no humans have visited the Moon since Apollo 17 in December 1972, even the most sceptical commentators estimate that NASA's oft-delayed  Artemis program will return humans to the Moon's surface and there's possibility another space program will beat them too it. Seeing there was only a small handful of space missions to the Moon and '90s and early part of this century, why are so many new ventures to the Moon underway or on the drawing board? National prestige The original race to the Moon in the 1960s was largely driven by the geopolitical prestige of putting boots on the Moon's surface before anyone else. After being beaten into Earth orbit and putting the first person into by the USSR , the USA embarked on a massive effort to put a human on the Moon. In 1969 they achieved this and successfully landed a further five Apollo crews.  Along the way the Apollo program answered some important scientific questions including those around the formation of the Earth-Moon system. Having "beaten the Russians to the Moon", the American people quickly lost interest in the Apollo program and there was pressure on NASA over the huge costs of the program.  Apollo 18, 19 and 20 were cancelled and since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972, no human has left Earth's orbit.  (Having "dodged a bullet" with Apollo 13, some in NASA were  nervous about further mishaps with the vastly complex Apollo spacecraft.) Space exploration, especially to the Moon, has been seen for decades as the mark of a developed, high-tech society - this is certainly many developing countries aspire to. Resources for staying and living on the Moon - and exploring beyond Oxygen and water. Studies show that both of these critical resources exist in usable quantities in the Lunar regolith and frozen in the Moon's polar regions.  Oxygen, especially is plentiful and pretty much  everywhere on the Moon. The issue where is it's "stored" Each tonne of Lunar regolith contains around 450kg of oxygen.  It's tightly bound to the rocky materials in the regolith, so the chemical bond holding these compounds need to be broken using energy. We already do this here on Earth with common materials, including aluminium, so it's not unknown technology. Just tricky to learn how to do this on the Moon! The Moon's polar region are known to have water frozen in deep shadows around the pole. There's some debate about the actual amount accessible on the surface, but it is will a vast reserve. Developing techniques for exploiting materials elsewhere in the Solar System Learning to live and work in space is hard.  The ISS (International Space Station) has been used to do just that, but is limited to life in orbit and not on the surface. Many researchers feel that a permanent base on the Moon will be able to act as a "gateway" for future missions to Mars and mineral and resource rich asteroids elsewhere in the Solar System. (The current SpaceX plan to put humans on Mars goes directly there -  no Lunar stop offs. You can check it out here.) NASA's Artemis program has the establishment of a Lunar base camp in its timeline - possibly close to Shackleton Crater near the Moon's south pole.   These Lunar bases are still many years, it not decades away from being built. Have a look at NASA's Artemis base camp plans here. Science on the Moon - protecting ancient sites What's there to protect on the Moon?  Isn't it  a lifeless, rocky body? There's few reasons for sealing off part of the Moon for further scientific study. The very water that's being searched for at the Moon's polar regions has likely been delivered to the Lunar surface in meteorites and comets slamming into the Moon over billions of years.  This means these regions of water ice are sample of the very earliest periods of the Solar System and could contain pointers to the development of life on Earth.  (Water is found other Solar System moons but might have undergone geological and possibly biological processes over billions of years.) NASA's Artemis accords signed by 31 countries agree among other things that certain areas on the Moon such as the Apollo landing sites are of historic value and will be protected, peaceful exploration of space and resource extraction, but there's no explicit protection of regions of scientific value. The Moon would make an ideal places for a wide variety of telescopes (Image via KORNMESSER/ESO)   The far side of the Moon that points away from Earth has long been suggested as a place for large optical and radio telescopes instead of them being placed in space. Light pollution isn't going to be a problem and radio emissions from Earth will be shielded by the Moon.  Probes in Lunar orbit chatting to surface mining rovers might interfere with radio observations or fine Lunar dust being thrown up could effect  observations. Resources for use here on Earth Helium-3 is often given as a reason for the race to the Moon. This is an isotope of helium and has the advantage of not making the reactor and surrounds radioactive during nuclear fusion. It does require much higher temperatures to achieve nuclear fusion ignition than than other materials. The reason more helium-3 is found on the Moon  rather than on the Earth is that the Moon's regolith has been blasted by the Solar wind over billions or years, creating this isotope.  There might be reserves of helium-3 on Earth, trapped in the mantle either from the formation of the planet or processes since then.** The thinking is as this is well below the Earth's crust, it would be easier to obtain it from the Moon's surface. All this is somewhat academic though. There's no doubt that large scale fusion power would truly change the world and the quantity of fuel required to do this is fairly small. However, we don't possess the technology for any kind sustainable nuclear fusion reactor, let alone one that uses helium-3.  In other words, why spend  a fortune to get the fuel for an engine that could be decades away? So, why is everyone heading to the Moon? As seen, there's multiple reason. There's national prestige at stake, testing of new technology and methods of living in space. There might be minerals and rare elements not easily found Earth and very importantly, it's a gateway to the exploration and use of resources further out in the Solar System. Finally - can you see the NASA Apollo landing sites through a telescope? No. Even the most powerful telescopes on Earth can't see them. You can see where they landed, but the equipment left before and the the astronaut's footprints are too small to resolve from Earth.   Guide to Apollo landing sites - image via NASA When you're looking up at the Moon through a telescope, remember to wave at the growing fleet of robots in orbit and crawling over the Lunar surface. Cheers, Earl White *Regolith is the term used for the layer of dust and small rocks that cover the Lunar surface. Unlike the  complex soil here on Earth, it hasn't gone through any weathering processes or contains biological materials.

NASA has finally pried the lid off a precious sample of pristine material dating back to  the early history of the Solar System, collected by the OSIRIS-REx mission from the asteroid Bennu. 19th Jan 2024: We've all been there.  You have your favourite source, jam or sandwich spread. Try as you might, the #$#&#!! lid is jammed on and cannot get it off no matter what you try. (I'm going to admit that I've given up on hot water, various tools etc - I just slam the lids stuck jars on a hard surface face first and this normally works.) The daring OSIRIS-REx mission to the near-Earth asteroid Bennu launched in 2016 and arrived at Bennu in 2018. Bennu was selected as a destination for OSIRIS-REx  as it a carbon rich body that contains pristine material from the earliest days of the Solar System.  In fact, it's thought that Bennu was already formed within 10 million years of the Solar System's formation. Image credit: NASA/Robert Markowitz OSIRIS-REx spent a couple of years exploring the environment around Bennu and even landing on the asteroid to collect samples. The spacecraft returned to Earth, but didn't land. It passed by us on the way to its next next destination - the asteroid Apophis. It dropped off a sample canister which safely landed in the Utah dessert on the 23rd of September 2023. The samples collected from outside the main sample container or AGSAM (Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism) were much greater than expected, 70.3g versus the planned 60g.  Curation and study of these precious materials has already begun. However, accessing the main sample material in the AGSAM  has proved somewhat more difficult. None of the tools rated by NASA for use in the extreme clean environment developed for study of these materials were able to remove the lid of the container! Two stuck fasteners prevented the opening.  Rather than slamming it on a desk or prying the lid off with a screwdriver in a rush to see what's inside, NASA developed additional tools, tested them and the procedure for removing the stubborn fasteners before finally successfully extracting them and opening the container this week. Next comes imaging and study of the materials in the container before their careful extraction and cataloguing and eventual distribution to institutions for research. NASA will make their results publicly available for scientists globally. More on this here.  If this seems like a lot to go through for some space rocks, remember these were formed when our Solar System was a tiny fraction its current age. Also...... The Peregrine Lunar lander splashed down in the Pacific ocean earlier today after major hardware failures prevented it landing on the Moon.  It took a "free return" path back to Earth after looping around the Moon   The Earth from the final image taken by Peregrine-1 as it returned for a crash landing in the Pacific Ocean.  The Peregrine-1 mission had ended. Hopefully the team will be looking at the data collected over the course of the last week or so to help make the next landing attempt a success. The first Lunar lander from Japan is expected to touch down in the next day or so. More soon.... Cheers, Earl White BINTEL

10th Jan 2024: Some amazing new products launch in recent days at the CES event in the USA - and they'll be arriving at BINTEL in the near future! Celestron Origin Intelligent Home Observatory The world's leading telescope maker, Celestron, has released their first Smart Telescope. Celestron has produced high-tech and computerised telescopes for many years, starting off with the original Celestron Compustar SCT telescopes in the late 1980's, through to the NexStar series in the 90's and the more recent StarSense Explorer and NextStar Evolution telescopes.  (At BINTEL, we been supplying our customers with these Celestron telescopes for decades.) So it's no surprise that Celestron has not only introduced their own Smart Telescope, but it also includes some amazing, high end features. What appeals to us and what features we feel sets the Celestron Origin apart include: 150mm aperture, f/2.2 RASA optical system. This is the largest of any Smart Telescope on the market today. Upgradability of the camera Handy external filter drawer Upcoming options for external guiding and EQ mounting for extended exposures Optimised for sharing images and displaying views on large screen TVs etc.   The full feature list of the Celestron Origin is very comprehensive. The Celestron Origin is due to arrive in the next couple of months at BINTEL and only in very limited numbers, although this situation is likely to improve as the year goes on.  This is definitely a high-end telescope for those who want the best in terms of features and image quality.  We'll be talking more about the Celestron Origin telescope closer to them being available. It certainly widens the range of Smart Telescopes on offer. Swarovski AX Visio 10X32 Binocular - the world's first "Smart Binoculars" You might have heard about Smart Telescopes over the last couple of years - telescopes with inbuilt guiding, cameras and image processing - but features like sophisticated species recognition via AI, photo and video processing,  along with object view direction are coming to binoculars. The first major feature of the new Swarovski AX Visio 10X32 Binocular is their ability to recognise a bird or animal that you're viewing. There over 9,000 different species and this includes comprehensive support for Australian and New Zealand wildlife. I was fortunate enough to try a pair of these new binoculars recently, and from out the front of the BINTEL showroom, they quickly identified a number of different bird across the road in Wentworth Park including the beloved  Australian white ibis AKA a "Bin Chicken". This feature is going to be super handy for birdwatchers especially as it allows them to catalogue what they've spotted and where and when they were seen. (Like all the advanced AX Visio features, this doesn't have to be used.) Swarovski posted a great article about using the AX Visio binoculars for birdwatching in the field that you can find here. They have great potential for changing the way bird watchers especially share discoveries with a small group and then further onto social media. All of these new features plus SWAROVISION optics for super crisp views. Next time - new Smart Telescopes from Unistellar and Vaonis too.  Cheers, Earl White BINTEL  

Space Launches 2024 is looking like a busy year on the launch front! 2024 kicks off with the launch on January 8 of the NASA Peregrine Mission 1 (TO2-AB) which will head to the Moon to investigate Lunar geology, magnetic field and the abundance of hydrogen in the surface rocks. It's not on the  first return to the Lunar surface by NASA since the Apollo program, but also the first launched by a commercial space company. China is planning to launch its Chang’e-6 mission to the Moon in later part of 2024. This is a Lunar sample return mission with the aim of return sample from the far side of the Moon - something we haven't been able to study before. October 2024 sees the launch of the Europa Clipper mission. The is expected to arrive at the giant planet Jupiter in 2030 and study its icy moon Europa. It's widely expected that a vast salt water ocean lies under Europa's planet wide crust of ice. This ocean contains more water than all the oceans on Earth combined and is one of the prime sites in the Solar System to search for life. The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, is putting the final touches to it Martian Moon eXploration, or MMX, planned for launch around September 2024. This will explore the Martian moons of Phobos and Deimos.  We're unsure whether these two small moon were formed with their host planet Mars, or are captured asteroids from elsewhere in the Solar System. VIPER (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover) is a Lunar Rover, planned for delivery to the Moon sometime late in 2024. It's designed to investigate the presence of water ice in the south polar regions of the Moon that are permanently in darkness. Illustration of VIPER prospecting for water ice on the surface of the Moon ESA’s Hera mission. Back in 2022, NASA's DART probe impacted the asteroid Dimorphos as part of the development of an Earth planetary defence system to guard about possible major impacts from space.  You can read our article about it here. Now DART has completed its mission, the European Space Agency's (ESA)  Hera probe due for launch in October 2024 will examine in detail the first test of asteroid deflection as well as performing the first survey of a binary asteroid system. Artemis II - taking humans back to the Moon.  Probably the most anticipated launch of 2024 will be the Artemis II mission planned for late this year.  The Artemis I mission in 2022 took astronauts into low Earth orbit and Artemis II will take humans beyond the Earth's orbit for the first time since the Apollo 17 in December 1972.  Artemis II won't land on the Moon or even perform a Lunar orbital insert manoeuvre, rather it will simply loop around Moon on free trajectory and return to Earth. (Those with a keen interest in space history will realise this is  a similar path that the nearly ill-fated Apollo 13 mission took.) Artemis III is the NASA mission to land humans on the Moon. While was originally planned for 2025, it's looking like it might take place in 2027 Total Solar Eclipse 2024 Another major astronomy story in 2024 will be the Total Eclipse of the Sun on the 8th of April 2024. While not visible here in Australia, it will be a BIG news as the path of the Eclipse crosses over continental North America. In the USA, it will pass over the heads of more than 30 million people. We'll be talking about this major event as it gets closer. If you re having trouble buying Solar filters and equipment at the moment - this is the reason why! Of course this rare event is simply a dress rehearsal for the Total Solar Eclipse which will roll directly over BINTEL in July 2028  :)  Full detail here. New Telescopes? On the mega telescope front, we're still a couple of years from "first light" of the ones under construction we mentioned in a previous blog post.  The closest to completion is probably Vera C. Rubin Observatory,  a massive, ultra wide field 8.4m class telescope being built in Chile. It will be completed in a 2024 with full scale testing to start in January 2025. While there are other 8m and larger telescopes already in operation, the Vera C. Rubin instrument will be able to scan the entire night sky every week in detail that hasn't been achieved before. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory under construction in Chile Part of the reason for imaging all of the sky in such detail is to look for transient astronomical events including GRB (gamma-ray bursts) novae, supernovae, comets and possibly even interstellar objects travelling through the Solar System such as ones found by conventional means in recent years. On the amateur astronomy side, we're expecting new developments to smart telescopes after some exciting product releases in 2023.  We'd say new imaging cameras and mounts systems are also highly possible.   Whatever is released, we'll be chatting about it for sure! Planets put on a show - again Saturn will be at its best in 2024 around the 8th of September, with excellent viewing from around late August to early October.  The rings of Saturn will also continue to appear even more edge on as viewed from Earth as the planet approaches its own equinox in 2025. Saturn taken by Andy Casely and posted to the BINTEL Society Facebook group.  Jupiter will be at its best for 2024 on the 8th of December. Like Saturn, it will be fantastic viewing and an an ideal for imaging for some weeks before and also after this date. Jupiter taken by Andy Casely and posted to the BINTEL Society Facebook group.  Mars fans will have to wait until January 2025 to see the red planet at its best. A slim chance, but hey, who knows.... There's more than a few astronomers who are eagerly awaiting the discovery of biosignatures on exoplanets - indicators in a planet's atmosphere of biological processes happening on the surface planet or perhaps even taking place in the atmosphere itself. Major searches are underway and the JWST especially can possibly observe and analyse what's in the atmospheres of  planets around  other stars. There's even been some such as UK astronomer and presenter of The Sky at Night, Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock, Dr Becky Smethurst from Oxford University and famous astronaut Tim Peake who have all stated  in the last few days that they feel 2024 will be the year that we announce a discovery along these lines. It would be major event  to state the obvious. We're certainly not going to include exoplanet biosignatures on our "likely to happen in '24" list, but will be keeping one eye on the news... Cheers, Earl White BINTEL 5th January 2024      

Here's some of our favourite images and happenings over the last 12 months. The Sun puts on a show The Sun's been in the news globally in 2023. First of all, there was a rare hybrid total Solar Eclipse visible in a remote part of Western Australia in April. This was viewed and photographed by thousands of visitors to the Ningaloo region in WA. There was a widely-visible partial annular Solar Eclipse in the USA in October.  This event will be followed up by a Total Solar Eclipse that will be seen on the 8th of April 20 in  parts of  Mexico, the United States, and Canada. While eclipses grab the world's attention, for astronomers 2023 has seen an increase in the number of Sunspots visible on the Sun as it heads into "Solar Maximum" in 2024, a year earlier than we'd previously thought.  2023 has been a great time to view and photograph the Sun and  2024 will be even better! The Sun imaged through a ZWO Seestar S50 telescope in December 2023 by Steven Olney and posted to the BINTEL Society Facebook group. Full details here Gravitational Waves spreading across the Universe  - the background hum In June,  a team of Astronomers from across the globe, The NANOGrav collaboration, announced they’d observed a faint sign of a background signal or “hum” of Gravitational Waves that’s spread through the Universe.  Gravitational Waves are ripples in space and time caused by the acceleration of massive objects. These move away or “propagate” in all directions from their source at the speed of light. They contain information about the event that caused them and transport energy, in a similar way electromagnetic radiation or light does.   Artist’s impression of an array of pulsars being affected by gravitational waves produced by orbiting super massive black holes in a faraway galaxy (Image credit: Aurore Simonnet for the NANOGrav Collaboration) This  "background hum" was discovered by observing small variations in the timing in some of the Universe's most reliable clocks - fast spinning stars called pulsars. More on this here. Hubble captures spokes in Saturn's ring The second largest planet in the Solar System has long been known to have "spokes" - dark areas that radiate outwards towards the edges of the ring system. These only last some two or three orbits around the fast rotating planet which has meant they've only really been properly photographed by spacecraft like NASA's Cassini probe to Saturn. In 2023  the Hubble Space Telescope has been able to image Saturn's spoke from Earth orbit as part of the Outer Planets Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) programme which monitors outer Solar System planets for changes. Saturn imaged by the  Hubble Space Telescope on Oct. 22, 2023. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, Amy Simon (NASA-GSFC)) The largest rocket ever built by humans flew twice in 2023 and blows up both times - a spectacular success! SpaceX launched and flew their Starship twice in 2023.  Both flights ended in the destruction of the rocket shortly afterwards.  Despite this RUD (Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly), the real world engineering data obtained will lead to improvements to the Starship design and increased reliability. Previous SpaceX rockets such as the Falcon 9 also went through lengthy periods of development and have now successfully reached orbit hundreds of time, with nearly 100 flights  in 2023 alone. Image via @SpaceX SpaceX's Starship is not the only rocket designed to carry humans beyond Earth orbit.  The Saturn V first did that in December 1968 and the NASA Artemis program plans to  return astronauts to Lunar orbit towards the end of 2024. However, SpaceX has plans for Starship far beyond the Earth/Moon system, with their eyes on possible human flights to Mars or even destinations in the Solar System.  The progress of Starship in coming years will be keenly watched! JWST Captures some stunners in 2023 The JWST (James Webb Space Telescope) was well into its second year of operations in 2023 and continued to surprise and delight the world with the beauty of the images it produced. It's a hard task to select the most stunning, but we through this one of the Ring Nebula (M57) was especially wonderful. Image via: ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, M. Barlow, N. Cox, R. Wesson The Ring Nebula has been previously imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope and a favourite for amateur astronomers as it's visible in quite small telescopes. You can read more about this image at the ESA (European Space Agency) site here. Smart Telescopes become even more affordable We were delighted in 2022 with the emergence of "Smart  Telescopes"  - easy to use astrophotography systems - like the Vespera, Stellina and Unistellar telescopes.  This kicked into high gear for 2023 with the release of the DWARF II from DWARF Labs and the Seestar S50 from ZWO. Both of these are complete, all-in-one telescopes that include a camera, computerised mount and more, all controlled via an app over Wi-Fi were suddenly available for well under $1000.  They were also so compact and could be tucked under you arm!  We admit the struggle to keep up with demand during the course of 2023 has been frustrating, but many hundreds of these clever little devices have found new homes with our BINTEL customers.  Interestingly  they haven't just gone to newbie astronomers - a large number of purchases were by experienced amateur or even professional astronomers after an easy to use imaging setup. All major brands of Smart Telescopes- ZWO Seestar S50, Unistellar eQuinox, DWARF II and Vaonis Vespera - on display at BINTEL Just how easily these new gizmos have made basic astrophotography is amazing. They're certainly not  a replacement for traditional astrophotography systems, rather a way to simple way to obtain great looking astrophotos without  too much complexity.  We think Smart Telescopes are going to continue to grow in popularity in 2024 and introduce the wonders of night sky to even more people. The 5,500 Exoplanet Mark was passed 2023 saw the number of confirmed exoplanets - planets orbiting other stars - pass 5,500 (it's actually now 5,566 as this is being written). This number was reached   just a few decades after the discovery of the first exoplanet in 1992. Many of these are rocky, Earth-like planets orbiting the host star in the  "Habitable Zone" where liquid water could exist on the planet's surface. It's staggering to think of the multitude of worlds in our Milky Way galaxy. More on this milestone here. India lands spacecraft near south pole of the Moon India joined the USA, Russia and China in successfully landing a spacecraft on the Moon's surface.  The Chandrayaan-3 lander touched down in August of 2023 on the unexplored and rugged south pole region of the Moon.  While this a hard place to attempt a landing, it's though there might  oxygen and drinking water for future missions in this region. Illustration of Chandrayaan-3 on the Moon. Image via ISRO The Chandrayaan-3 lander failed to respond to mission control signals after going into hibernation mode for a long period of darkness during the Lunar night at it's landing location and it's now assumed that the probe is longer responding. It did manged to send back important observations prior to this and Chandrayaan-3 has certainly assisted in the planning of future Lunar spacecraft. 2023 - Year of the Swifty - but not in a good way. Another Swift was in the news in 2023, but sadly, the Swift Parrot is now at a point where it's critically endangered. Recent surveys have put the number of these beautiful birds have reached a critical level and urgent action is needed to protect them before they head towards extinction.  You can read more about the 2023 Bird of the Year at Birdlife Australia.  If you want to take action, swing by the this page to add your voice to Australia's nature laws as they undergo their first major rewrite in many years. At BINTEL in 2023, we saw a large spike in the number of folks getting into bird watching, and this has been across a wide range of age groups too. Encouraging to see more and more folks wanting to spend more time with the wildlife around us all. "And the winner is Sidy Ney!" Sydney was announced as the host city for the 76th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) to be held  from the 29 September to 3 October 2025. This is the world's largest space and related technology events and often referred to the as the "Olympics of space", when companies and space experts from all parts of the world gather to discuss and learn about the latest developments in the space industry. With the rapid commercialisation of the space, it's going to be an amazing event to look forward to. More details here. We know there's been many events and developments in the space, nature and astronomy world . Contact us with your favourites and we'll add to them the list! Cheers, Earl White BINTEL      

Up until only a few decades ago, every planet we knew existed in the Universe as well as all asteroids and comets, orbited the Sun. Since the first planet outside the Solar System orbiting another main-sequence star was made in 1995 - or Exoplanet - was confirmed , there been some 5,470 exoplanets found. Exoplanets have been found in a bewildering array of sizes, host star types and star system configurations. (If you're interested on keep track of the numbers of Exoplanets, the current count can be found at the NASA Exoplanet site here.) These have been discovered using a wide variety of methods, both here on the ground or using space-based instruments. Exoplanets are generally discovered by indirect means, IE the effect they have on their host star. Some were found via the light dip of the host star as the Exoplanet transits in front of it, others by the wobble the orbiting planets caused the star, variations Exoplanets cause to variable stars and other techniques. Even the arrangement of Exoplanets varies greatly. The original theories of rocky planets being close to the star and gas giants being on the edges of a star system quickly went out the windows as large, gas giants in orbits close to their host star were discovered in great numbers. It's looking like the configuration of the Solar System - rocky planets in near the host star and all gas giants in the outer regions - might be the least common of all (Read more here.) (One quick point though. I often get asked if you can see Exoplanets in a telescope. The short is answer is NO.) But all Exoplanet discoveries until recently had one thing in common - they were in orbit around a host star. Could there be planets in the Milky Way that aren't in orbit around a host star? Could there be Rogue planets in the Milky Way? Even if the answer is "yes", they might be tricky to detect as Exoplanets are identified by the effects on their host star, how could planets without a star be found? Why would a planet go Rogue? Astronomers have long proposed the idea of a Rogue Planet. This is a planet that is travelling through the Milky Way on its own and not in orbit around a host star.  There's a number of ways a planet could end up like this. It might achieve escape velocity in the star system where it was formed by gravitational interactions with other planets in the same system. In other words, it could get "flung"" put of its star system.  Planets form out of the interstellar materials that are attracted by gravity to form stars. The same process could occur with enough rocky materials bound together by gravity away from star formation. (There's some conjecture as to whether extremely low mass Rogue planets could even form on their own in this way.) How could a Rogue Planet be found? With no host star, Rogue planets cannot be observed using the indirect detection methods mentioned above. They're also too far away from any star to reflect light from it. (This is how was see Jupiter and Saturn in our own Solar System. We see the light of the Sun reflected off them.) There's no light coming from Rogue Planets. There's also nothing nearby to effect so we can't observe their influence on a nearby body. Rather, astronomers look for events called gravitational microlensing. The minute effect the gravity of an object in the foreground has on the space around it, bending space and effecting the path of the light of a star behind it. This bending of light around objects was proposed by Albert Einstein at the start of the 20th century.  Astronomers observe a tiny warping in the light from stars. By analysing these results, it's possible to detect whether a body such as a Rogue planet has passed in front of the star, possibly even at vast distances from it. Only a handful of Rogue planets have been confirmed compared to the number of Exoplanets, including a group of 70 discovered by ESO which was announced last year. Artist’s impression shows an example of a rogue planet with the Rho Ophiuchi cloud Much like Exoplanets which are though to exist around most stars, it's estimated Rogue planets are travelling through the Solar System in enormous numbers. "We estimate that our galaxy is home to 20 times more rogue planets than stars – trillions of worlds wandering alone,” said David Bennett, a senior research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. This means that the number of Rogue planets vastly the outnumber the planets that orbit stars. This points to planetary systems forming around stars more likely to eject planets than keeping them in orbit around them. The upcoming NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, due for launch in 2027, might even be locate approx. 400 Earth-sized Rogue planets, with two candidates already discovered. “We found that Earth-size rogues are more common than more massive ones,” Sumi said. “The difference in star-bound and free-floating planets’ average masses holds a key to understanding planetary formation mechanisms.” You can read more about what the new space telescope might find here. Do we have direct observation of bodies are travelling through the Solar System that aren't attached to a star? We sure do as three interstellar bodies have been detected in the Solar System. Discovered in 2017, "Oumuamua" cruised through the inner Solar System and is now on the way back out towards deep-space. Interstellar comet "Borisov" disintegrated as it went around the Sun in 2020 and an interstellar meteor with the funky name of CNEOS 2014-01-08 hit the Earth in 2014. (There's a controversial effort underway to recover fragments of this meteor from the ocean floor off the coast of New Guinea.) As always, there's so much to discover in our Universe! Cheers, Earl White BINTEL July 20th July 2023

The arc of the Milky Way above our heads at night has been seen and recorded for as long as humans have existed. We see the Milky Way in visible light, but much else can be revealed beyond this. Astronomers in recent decades have begun to observe the Milky Way in a wide range of other wavelengths - radio waves, infrared, ultraviolet even gamma rays. Announced this month was a map of the Milky Way not by light, but by subatomic particles called Neutrinos. What's a Neutrino? A Neutrino is a subatomic particle that's found in vast numbers throughout the Universe and created by a variety of processes. They don't have any electrical charge, have miniscule masses close to zero, and hardly interact with matter. This means that while they're constantly zipping around and through us and everything that surrounds us, they're extremely hard to detect. Most of the Neutrinos streaming through us come from either the Sun or our atmosphere. However, a tiny number moving at a higher speed arrive from outside the Solar System. Detecting Neutrinos As Neutrinos are so hard to detect, a unique observatory was built in the Antarctic. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory is a huge facility with some 5,160 sensors in a cubic array one kilometer on each side, buried deep in the ice at the South Pole. IceCube neutrino detector's aboveground lab. Image via YUYA MAKINO, ICECUBE/NSF The detectors located at IceCube are shielded as much as possible from the Sun during winter months and other sources of radiation.  Occasionally Neutrinos will strike the nucleus of atoms in the water molecules in the dense polar ice and break them down into a series of sort lived, subatomic particles, some of which will emit a form of light called Cherenkov radiation.  (This is the same process that gives pools of water surrounding nuclear reactors their blueish glow.) Since starting operations in 2011, about a million Neutrino observations have been recorded by IceCube.  Some of these detections leave tracks that can be analysed and used to point back to where they originated. Others, with much higher velocities sometimes caused "Cascade Events" where they kicked off other processes. These are harder to establish where they originate from. Their usefulness for Astronomy was limited Now Astronomers are using AI networks to scour through these events to establish where these Neutrinos have arrived from. Physicist Naoko Kurahashi Neilson of Drexel University in Philadelphia and her team used Neutrinos to map the Milky Way for the first time in something other than light. “When I first joined IceCube,” Professor Kurahashi Neilson commented, “I used to do air quotes” when using the phrase neutrino astronomy. “I don’t do that anymore.… I don’t have to because we’re starting to resolve things” in neutrino images that resemble the astronomical images from other telescopes." The Milky Way as seen in Neutrinos We have good views of the Milky Way in visible light. Why do we need this? The very nature of Neutrinos is the reason they offer new and unique views of our local galaxy. Much of the Milky Way is hidden from us by interstellar gas and dust. While telescopes sensitive to different wavelengths of light such as Infrared help get around this, Neutrinos can pass through hundreds of thousands of light years of space unimpeded - and bringing with them information about where they were formed. What's next? As always in Astronomy, new telescopes, tools or techniques bring new knowledge and discoveries.  IceCube itself is undergoing a massive in what is simply called IceCube GEN2 (read about it here) Neutrino Astronomy is a very new field, but one that's opening up new ways to look at the Universe. Cheers, Earl White BINTEL 7th July 2023

A team of Astronomers from across the globe, The NANOGrav collaboration, this week announced they'd observed a faint sign of a background signal or "hum" of Gravitational Waves that's spread through the Universe. What's a Gravitational Wave? Gravitational Waves are ripples in space and time caused by the acceleration of massive objects. These move away or "propagate" in all directions from their source at the speed of light. They contain information about the event that caused them and transport energy, in a similar way electromagnetic radiation or light does. They'd been proposed by a number of people but were formally described by Albert Einstein as part of his Theory of General Relativity. Gravitational Waves shrink and then expand the very space they move through. When did we first detect Gravitational Waves? There'd been an indirect detection prior to the first direct detection in 2015 by the LIGO gravitational wave detector, for which the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded. This event was caused by the collision of two Black Holes, some 1.3 billion light years from Earth. If the very fabric of space around me is moving, why can't I feel it? While events that cause Gravitational Waves are extremely energetic, this energy is propagated outwards and hard to detect after what could be millions of years of travel. The frequency of these waves is so low and the wavelength so incredibly long, they're beyond our ability to experience them directly. Artist's impression of an array of pulsars being affected by gravitational waves produced by orbiting super massive black holes in a faraway galaxy (Image credit: Aurore Simonnet for the NANOGrav Collaboration) How was the recent discovery made and how long did it take to gather all the data? Rather than looking for individual Gravitational Wave events, the NANOGrav team collected data from a number of "cosmic clocks" to detect the ripples of space on vast scale. Spread throughout galaxies are quickly spinning neutron stars called Pulsars. These are in the final stages of stellar evolution, leftovers after massive stars explode in Supernova events. Their rotating cores compress and shrink under their gravity and spin faster and faster. Think of an ice skater bringing their arms and legs in towards their body to twirl faster. In the case of Pulsars, they spin with extremely regular times of milliseconds to seconds. Their rate of spin will change, but it will be over enormous spans of time. If their magnetic "beam" points towards us, we see Pulsars as some of the most accurate timekeeping devices in the Universe. Astronomers have been studying and cataloging Pulsars for decades, with Murriyang - The CSIRO Radio Telescope outside of Parkes NSW - being a key facility in providing these Pulsar timing observations. Image via Alex Cherne Using a network of radio telescopes around the world, 67 different pulsars were observed for 15 years. NANOGrav found small, but measurable changes to the distances from Earth to these Pulsars caused by Gravitational Waves. The Universe is a noisy place at all frequencies of light, so even with the accuracy of Pulsar timing the NANOGrav was unable to extract individual events, but instead found the long-theorised "hum" of Gravitational Waves that are spread throughout the Universe - and this is not something "out there" either. Gravitational Waves are passing through everything around us and even through our bodies! What causes Gravitational Waves? It's likely the Gravitational Waves that makeup the background hum detected by the NANOGrav team was caused by the merger of Black Holes. A number of these mergers since the beginning of the Universe- possibly in the billions - send Gravitational Waves out into space, they combine and effect space around us. “It’s like a choir, with all these supermassive black hole pairs chiming in at different frequencies,” Chiara Mingarelli, a NANOGrav scientist who worked on the new findings, said. “This is the first-ever evidence for the gravitational wave background. We’ve opened a new window of observation on the universe.” Can astronomers observe using Gravitational Waves? Very likely!  As Gravitational Wave are changes in the fabric or space and time itself, they're not effected by the presence of matter. This means the inner workings of Super Massive Black Holes, or certain eras of the early history of the Universe which is opaque to the wavelengths of lights astronomers use are "visible" to Gravitational Wave. Every time Astronomers have worked out ways to observe the Universe - whether it's been in radio wave, infrared or ultraviolet etc - amazing new discoveries follow. Gravitational Waves will no doubt provide another way to learn about the space we live in. Cheers, Earl White BINTEL 29th June 2023    

NASA this week announced that further study of data received from the Cassini mission to Saturn has revealed the presence of phosphorous on its moon, Enceladus. Hi resolution image of Enceladus showing its "tiger stripes"  (via NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute) Despite its vast distance from Sun and next to no atmosphere, Enceladus is known to have a planet wide water ocean about 10km deep under an icecap that is some 30 to 50 kilometres thick. (For comparison, oceans on the Earth average just under four kilometres deep with the deepest point being around eleven kilometres.) It's thought the water on Enceladus is kept from freezing over entirely by heating from by tidal interactions as it orbits Saturn. The ocean under the ice on Enceladus was confirmed by the discovery that the rocky core of the moon "wobbled" slightly in its ocean underneath the solid icecap. Cracks in the ice on the surface of Enceladus allow plumes of vapor and ice and ice to escape into space. Methane, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen - ingredients for amino acids - embedded into ice particles had previously been observed.  These feed into Saturn's E ring, part of the spectacular system of rings surrounding Saturn. Plumes of material escaping into space from the "tiger stripes" on Enceladus. (Image via NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute) Now researchers have further analysed the particles in Saturn's E ring that were ejected from Enceladus.  They found these particles contain large amounts of sodium phosphates in their samples. Sodium phosphates are molecules of chemically bound sodium, oxygen, hydrogen, and phosphorus.  The key discovery was the presence of phosphorus. This is not found in great quantities in life on Earth unlike elements such as carbon, but it is critical for life processes to take place. Now it's been found on Enceladus, all the "building blocks" of life have now been confirmed on this ocean world. Further work found that the phosphorus concentrations on Enceladus are at least one hundred times that of Earth's oceans. A researcher Christopher Glein, a planetary scientist and geochemist at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas said " “This key ingredient could be abundant enough to potentially support life in Enceladus’ ocean; this is a stunning discovery for astrobiology.” It's very important to note that while this discovery points to the key ingredients for life are found on Enceladus and other water worlds in the Solar System, this does not mean that life itself or any traces of previous life processes have been discovered. “Having the ingredients is necessary, but they may not be sufficient for an extraterrestrial environment to host life. Whether life could have originated in Enceladus’ ocean remains an open question.” continued Glein. Are we going to check out Enceladus further? Yes! Further research on the data obtained from Cassini will be ongoing. Space-based telescopes like the JWST will also study the Saturn system in more detail. NASA has approved the Enceladus Explorer (EnEx) mission which will orbit and land on the icy moon. This won't happen until 2050. Its main science objectives are: To search for evidence of life. To obtain geochemical and geophysical context for life detection experiments. It will be a long wait, but given the discoveries made so far, the mission might produce some stunning results! Cheers, Earl White BINTEL 16th June 2023    

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory reached a major construction recently. The primary instrument at this revolutionary facility is called the Simonyi Survey Telescope. The massive telescope mount and surrounding structure is ready to be fitted with a "dummy" full size replica of its 8.4m mirror and 32000-megapixel camera and other gear. This will allow full testing and shake down of the mechanical side of the telescope before its main mirror and remarkable camera are installed. Astronomers are really excited about this new observatory and expect it will advance our understanding of the early formation and structure of the Universe as well as observing events in the Solar System. There's already a number of 8m class telescopes operating across the world. So why is the Simonyi Survey Telescope at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory so different? The telescope has an extremely low centre of gravity and short focal ratio. These combine to make is far manoeuvrable than other large professional telescopes. It can quickly move to different parts of the sky and begin imaging within seconds - probably faster than most amateur telescopes. The 32000-megapixel camera can not only capture more of the sky and in more detail than other comparable telescopes, but the telescope can also produce some 200,000 images per year or nearly 1.3 petabytes of uncompressed data. These all combine to enable the Simonyi Survey Telescope to image the entire night sky from its location every 2-3 nights. Why the rush? Traditional all-sky surveys take several years to complete. Long term surveys across the world - including here in Australia - have helped researchers make and discover billions of stars and galaxies in multiple wavelengths of light. The Universe doesn't seem to be going anywhere in a hurry, so we do we need large observatories that can complete a major sky survey every few nights? What we're coming to realise is that the Universe is far from static! It changes from night to night and often on a short timeframe too. Some of these changes are well known and predictable. Examples of these includes Solar System objects as they move around the Sun. Many variable stars have a predictable rise and fall in their light output. Others are less regular. There are also sudden changes. These include events like the recent Supernova explosion in galaxy M10, Other events we're only just learning about. Mergers of Neutron stars, black holes interacting with stars and gases plus lots more! Discovering new objects and studying the movement of vast numbers of bodies in the Solar System, especially in the asteroid belts between Mars and Jupiter and further out in the Kuiper Belt will help us learn more about our local Solar neighbourhood. Rapid scans of the night sky will add another layer to our NEO (Near Earth Asteroid) detection programs to help us identify any objects that could pose a threat to us. The ability to map faint galaxies across large areas of the sky in great detail will also assist in studies of the large-scale structure of the Universe, help us learn more about its formation and the mysteries behind dark energy and dark matter. Probably what's has astronomers excited the most is discovering the things they didn't expect. Every time a major new research facility is opened, we tend to get surprised by something out of left field. First light is expected at the Simonyi Survey Telescope at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory sometime in 2024 with major research starting soon after. This observatory and other mega telescope projects coming on-line in the follow decades mean Astronomy in the second half of the 21st Century is going to be amazing! Cheers, Earl White BINTEL 9th June 2023