‘unusual bright light’ discovered by the Astronomers which cannot be explained

 National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was able to capture the glow within three days using the Hubble Space Telescope but the results were baffling.

On the left is an image of the Sombrero galaxy, and on the right side shows the detail in which Hubble was able to capture of the stars in the halo.

NASA/Digitized Sky Survey/P. Goudfrooij (STScI)/The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

SciTech News: Astronomers found a unique celestial event as they found the brightest infrared from a short gamma-ray burst ever seen. the rationale why it's so important is because of the glow produced is brighter than what was previously considered as maximum. The half-a-second flash of light from a very violent explosion was detected earlier this year in May. The energy was produced by the explosion of gamma rays billions of light-years faraway from earth which contains more energy than what our Sun will produce in its lifetime.

“It’s amazing to me that after 10 years of studying the same type of phenomenon, we can discover unprecedented behaviour like this,” said Wen-fai Fong, assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Northwestern University and lead author of the study. “It just reveals the diversity of explosions that the universe is capable of producing, which is very exciting.”

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was able to spot the glow within three days using the Hubble Space Telescope. However, the results were baffling because it was 10 times brighter than the earlier prediction.

“These observations don't fit traditional explanations for brief gamma-ray bursts,” said Fong. “Given what we all know about the radio and X-rays from this blast, it just doesn’t match up. The near-infrared emission that we’re finding with Hubble is much too bright.”

In order to know the exact levels of brightness and therefore the distance of the origin, WM Keck Observatory on mauna kea in Hawaii was used by the team.

Scientists believe that explosions like these are caused by two merging neutron stars which cause short gamma ray bursts which will create immense levels of energy. This phenomenon is named Kilonova. These stars are dense to an extent that even a teaspoon of it on Earth can weigh a billion tons. Typically, it's the mass of our Sun compressed into a small city.

“What we detected even outshines the one confirmed kilonova discovered in 2017,” said co-author Jillian Rastinejad, a graduate student with Fong’s team at Northwestern University. “As a first-year graduate student working with real-time data for the first time when this burst happened, it’s remarkable to see our discovery motivate a new and exciting magnetar-boosted model.”

In the future, these events are often recorded better with NASA’s upcoming James Webb Space Telescope which will help scientists understand them better.

“Distances are important in calculating the burst’s true brightness as opposed to its apparent brightness as seen from Earth,” said Fong. “Just as the brightness of a light bulb when it reaches your eye depends on both its luminosity and its distance from you, a burst could be really bright because either it is intrinsically luminous and distant, or not as luminous but much closer to us. With Keck, we were able to determine the true brightness of the burst and thus the energy scale. We found it was to be much more energetic than we originally thought.”

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Massive Asteroid 'Apophis',May Hit Earth in 2068,We have no solution,says Elon Musk

Massive Asteroid 'Apophis',May Hit Earth in 2068,We have no solution,says Elon Musk

 Astronomers have revealed that a large asteroid named 'Apophis' is predicted to pass extremely close or may hit the earth in 2068

Image Source: Google

 SciTech News: If you thought 2020 is bad, watch for the year 2068 when a large asteroid could potentially wipe all of humanity! Yes, astronomers have revealed that an asteroid named 'Apophis' is predicted to pass extremely close or may hit the earth in 2068 because of a phenomenon called Yarkovsky effect. Interestingly, the asteroid is known as after The Egyptian god of Chaos and Evil. 

Researchers at the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy (IfA) have announced the detection of Yarkovsky acceleration on the near-Earth asteroid Apophis. This acceleration arises from a very weak force on an object due to non-uniform thermal radiation.

Discovered in 2004, asteroid Apophis could be a 1,120-foot-wide (340-meter-wide) asteroid, about the dimensions of three-and-a-half football fields, NASA said. 

Earlier, it had been believed that the asteroid would pass by leaving the earth unscathed, but astronomers are no longer certain now. The detection of the Yarkovsky effect acting on Apophis means the 2068 impact scenario is still a possibility.

This force is especially important for the asteroid Apophis, because it affects the probability of an Earth impact in 2068, the astronomers said."

"All asteroids need to reradiate as heat the energy they absorb from sunlight in order to maintain thermal equilibrium, a process that slightly changes the orbit of the asteroid," they wrote.

Apophis is noteworthy due to its extremely close approach to the world on April 13, 2029, when the 300 metre-sized asteroid will come into sight to the unaided eye because it passes within the belt of communications satellites orbiting the world .

Earlier, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk had also predicted that massive asteroid Apophis will eventually hit humanity and there'll be no solution.

Great name! Wouldn’t worry about this particular one, but a big rock will hit Earth eventually & we currently have no defense. https://t.co/XhY8uoNNax

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 18, 2019

"Great name! Wouldn't worry about this particular one, but a big rock will hit Earth eventually & we currently have no defence," he wrote on the social media platform.

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Space Object Thought To Be Asteroid Or Mini Moon Is An Old Rocket as per NASA

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Space Object Thought To Be Asteroid Or Mini Moon Is An Old Rocket as per NASA

 

Image Source: Google

SciTech: The object appears to be an old rocket from a failed moon-landing mission decades ago, finally making its way back to Earth.

The jig could also be up for an "asteroid" that's expected to get nabbed by Earth's gravity and become a mini moon next month.

Instead of a cosmic rock, the newly discovered object appears to be an old rocket from a failed moon-landing mission 54 years ago that's finally making its way back home, as per NASA's leading asteroid expert. Observations should help nail its identity.

"I'm pretty jazzed about this," Paul Chodas told The Associated Press. "It's been a hobby of mine to find one of these and draw such a link, and i've been doing it for decades now."

Chodas speculates that asteroid 2020 SO, because it is formally known, is actually the centaur upper rocket stage that successfully propelled NASA's Surveyor 2 lander to the moon in 1966 before it had been discarded. The lander ended up crashing into the moon after one among its thrusters did not ignite on the way there. The rocket, meanwhile, swept past the moon and into orbit round the sun as intended junk, never to be seen again—until perhaps now.

A telescope in Hawaii last month discovered the mystery object heading our way while doing a search intended to guard our planet from doomsday rocks. The object promptly was added to the International Astronomical Union's minor planet Center's tally of asteroids and comets found in our solar system, just 5,000 shy of the 1 million mark.

The object is estimated to be roughly 26 feet (8 meters) based on its brightness. That's within the ballpark of the old Centaur, which might be less than 32 feet (10 meters) long including its engine nozzle and 10 feet (3 meters) in diameter.

What caught Chodas' attention is that its near-circular orbit round the sun is quite the same as Earth's—unusual for an asteroid.

"Flag number one," said Chodas, who is director of the center for Near-Earth Object Studies at NASA's jet propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

The object is additionally within the same plane as Earth, not tilted above or below, another red flag. Asteroids usually zip by at odd angles. Lastly, it's approaching Earth at 1,500 mph (2,400 kph), slow by asteroid standards.

As the object gets closer, astronomers should be able to better chart its orbit and determine how much it's pushed around by the radiation and thermal effects of sunlight. If it's an old Centaur—essentially a light empty can—it will move differently than a heavy space rock less susceptible to outside forces.

That's how astronomers normally differentiate between asteroids and space junk like abandoned rocket parts, since both appear merely as moving dots within the sky. There likely are dozens of fake asteroids out there, but their motions are too imprecise or jumbled to confirm their artificial identity, said Chodas.

Sometimes it is the other way around.

A mystery object in 1991, for example, was determined by Chodas and others to be a regular asteroid instead of debris, even though its orbit round the sun resembled Earth's.

Even more exciting, Chodas in 2002 found what he believes was the leftover Saturn V third stage from 1969′s Apollo 12, the second moon landing by NASA astronauts. He acknowledges the evidence was circumstantial, given the object's chaotic one-year orbit around Earth. It never was designated as an asteroid, and left Earth's orbit in 2003.

In this Aug. 13, 1965 photo provided by the San Diego Air and Space Museum, technicians work on an Atlas Centaur 7 rocket at Cape Canaveral , Fla. NASA's leading asteroid expert, Paul Chodas, speculates that asteroid 2020 SO, as it is formally known, is actually a Centaur upper rocket stage that propelled NASA's Surveyor 2 lander to the moon in 1966 before it had been discarded. (Convair/General Dynamics Astronautics Atlas Negative Collection/San Diego Air and Space Museum via AP)

The latest object's route is direct and much more stable, bolstering his theory.

"I could be wrong on this. i don't want to appear overly confident," Chodas said. "But it's the first time, in my view, that all the pieces fit together with an actual known launch."

And he's happy to note that it is a mission that he followed in 1966, as a teenager in Canada.

Asteroid hunter Carrie Nugent of Olin College of Engineering in Needham, Massachusetts, said Chodas' conclusion is "a good one" based on solid evidence. She's the author of the 2017 book "Asteroid Hunters."

"Some more data would be useful so we can know for sure," she said in an email. "Asteroid hunters from around the world will continue to watch this object to get that data. I'm excited to see how this develops!"

The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics' Jonathan McDowell noted there are "many, many embarrassing incidents of objects in deep orbit ... getting provisional asteroid designations for a few days before it was realized they were artificial."

It's seldom clear-cut.

Last year, a British amateur astronomer, Nick Howes, announced that an asteroid in solar orbit was likely the abandoned lunar module from NASA's Apollo 10, a rehearsal for the Apollo 11 moon landing. While this object is likely artificial, Chodas and others are skeptical of the connection.

Skepticism is good, Howes wrote in an email. "It hopefully will lead to more observations when it's next in our neck of the woods" within the late 2030s.

Chodas' latest target of interest was passed by Earth in their respective laps round the sun in 1984 and 2002. But it was too dim to see from 5 million miles (8 million kilometers) away, he said.

He predicts the object will spend about four months circling Earth once it's captured in mid-November, before shooting back out into its own orbit round the sun next March.

Chodas doubts the object will slam into Earth—"at least not this time around."

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