Jan 6, 2025 08:37 PM
(This post was last modified: Jan 6, 2025 09:28 PM by C C.)
Citizen science reveals that Jupiter’s colorful clouds are not made of ammonia ice
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1069534
INTRO: Collaborative work by amateur and professional astronomers has helped to resolve a long-standing misunderstanding about the composition of Jupiter’s clouds. Instead of being formed of ammonia ice – the conventional view – it now appears they are likely to be composed of ammonium hydrosulphide mixed with smog.
The findings have been published in the Journal of Geophysical Research – Planets.
The new discovery was triggered by amateur astronomer, Dr Steven Hill, based in Colorado. Recently, he demonstrated that the abundance of ammonia and cloud-top pressure in Jupiter’s atmosphere could be mapped using commercially-available telescopes and a few specially coloured filters.
Remarkably, these initial results not only showed that the abundance of ammonia in Jupiter’s atmosphere could be mapped by amateur astronomers, they also showed that the clouds reside too deeply within Jupiter’s warm atmosphere to be consistent with the clouds being ammonia ice.
In this new study, Professor Patrick Irwin from the University of Oxford’s Department of Physics applied Dr Steven Hill’s analytical method to observations of Jupiter made with the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument at the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile. MUSE uses the power of spectroscopy, where Jupiter’s gases create telltale fingerprints in visible light at different wavelengths, to map the ammonia and cloud heights in the gas giant’s atmosphere.
By simulating how the light interacts with the gases and clouds in a computer model, Professor Irwin and his team found that the primary clouds of Jupiter – the ones we can see when looking through backyard telescopes – had to be much deeper than previously thought, in a region of higher pressure and higher temperature. Too warm, in fact, for the condensation of ammonia. Instead, those clouds have to be made of something different: ammonium hydrosulphide... (MORE - details, no ads)
The carbon in our bodies probably left the galaxy and came back on cosmic ‘conveyer belt’
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1069434
INTRO: Life on Earth could not exist without carbon. But carbon itself could not exist without stars. Nearly all elements except hydrogen and helium — including carbon, oxygen and iron — only exist because they were forged in stellar furnaces and later flung into the cosmos when their stars died. In an ultimate act of galactic recycling, planets like ours are formed by incorporating these star-built atoms into their makeup, be it the iron in Earth’s core, the oxygen in its atmosphere or the carbon in the bodies of Earthlings.
A team of scientists based in the U.S. and Canada recently confirmed that carbon and other star-formed atoms don’t just drift idly through space until they are dragooned for new uses. For galaxies like ours, which are still actively forming new stars, these atoms take a circuitous journey. They circle their galaxy of origin on giant currents that extend into intergalactic space. These currents — known as the circumgalactic medium — resemble giant conveyer belts that push material out and draw it back into the galactic interior, where gravity and other forces can assemble these raw materials into planets, moons, asteroids, comets and even new stars.
“Think of the circumgalactic medium as a giant train station: It is constantly pushing material out and pulling it back in,” said team member Samantha Garza, a University of Washington doctoral candidate. “The heavy elements that stars make get pushed out of their host galaxy and into the circumgalactic medium through their explosive supernovae deaths, where they can eventually get pulled back in and continue the cycle of star and planet formation.”
Garza is lead author on a paper describing these findings that was published Dec. 27 in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
“The implications for galaxy evolution, and for the nature of the reservoir of carbon available to galaxies for forming new stars, are exciting,” said co-author Jessica Werk, UW professor and chair of the Department of Astronomy. “The same carbon in our bodies most likely spent a significant amount of time outside of the galaxy!” (MORE - details, no ads)
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1069534
INTRO: Collaborative work by amateur and professional astronomers has helped to resolve a long-standing misunderstanding about the composition of Jupiter’s clouds. Instead of being formed of ammonia ice – the conventional view – it now appears they are likely to be composed of ammonium hydrosulphide mixed with smog.
The findings have been published in the Journal of Geophysical Research – Planets.
The new discovery was triggered by amateur astronomer, Dr Steven Hill, based in Colorado. Recently, he demonstrated that the abundance of ammonia and cloud-top pressure in Jupiter’s atmosphere could be mapped using commercially-available telescopes and a few specially coloured filters.
Remarkably, these initial results not only showed that the abundance of ammonia in Jupiter’s atmosphere could be mapped by amateur astronomers, they also showed that the clouds reside too deeply within Jupiter’s warm atmosphere to be consistent with the clouds being ammonia ice.
In this new study, Professor Patrick Irwin from the University of Oxford’s Department of Physics applied Dr Steven Hill’s analytical method to observations of Jupiter made with the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument at the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile. MUSE uses the power of spectroscopy, where Jupiter’s gases create telltale fingerprints in visible light at different wavelengths, to map the ammonia and cloud heights in the gas giant’s atmosphere.
By simulating how the light interacts with the gases and clouds in a computer model, Professor Irwin and his team found that the primary clouds of Jupiter – the ones we can see when looking through backyard telescopes – had to be much deeper than previously thought, in a region of higher pressure and higher temperature. Too warm, in fact, for the condensation of ammonia. Instead, those clouds have to be made of something different: ammonium hydrosulphide... (MORE - details, no ads)
The carbon in our bodies probably left the galaxy and came back on cosmic ‘conveyer belt’
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1069434
INTRO: Life on Earth could not exist without carbon. But carbon itself could not exist without stars. Nearly all elements except hydrogen and helium — including carbon, oxygen and iron — only exist because they were forged in stellar furnaces and later flung into the cosmos when their stars died. In an ultimate act of galactic recycling, planets like ours are formed by incorporating these star-built atoms into their makeup, be it the iron in Earth’s core, the oxygen in its atmosphere or the carbon in the bodies of Earthlings.
A team of scientists based in the U.S. and Canada recently confirmed that carbon and other star-formed atoms don’t just drift idly through space until they are dragooned for new uses. For galaxies like ours, which are still actively forming new stars, these atoms take a circuitous journey. They circle their galaxy of origin on giant currents that extend into intergalactic space. These currents — known as the circumgalactic medium — resemble giant conveyer belts that push material out and draw it back into the galactic interior, where gravity and other forces can assemble these raw materials into planets, moons, asteroids, comets and even new stars.
“Think of the circumgalactic medium as a giant train station: It is constantly pushing material out and pulling it back in,” said team member Samantha Garza, a University of Washington doctoral candidate. “The heavy elements that stars make get pushed out of their host galaxy and into the circumgalactic medium through their explosive supernovae deaths, where they can eventually get pulled back in and continue the cycle of star and planet formation.”
Garza is lead author on a paper describing these findings that was published Dec. 27 in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
“The implications for galaxy evolution, and for the nature of the reservoir of carbon available to galaxies for forming new stars, are exciting,” said co-author Jessica Werk, UW professor and chair of the Department of Astronomy. “The same carbon in our bodies most likely spent a significant amount of time outside of the galaxy!” (MORE - details, no ads)