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By NASA
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Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
This artist’s concept depicts a potential volcanic moon between the exoplanet WASP-49 b, left, and its parent star. New evidence indicating that a massive sodium cloud observed near WASP-49 b is produced by neither the planet nor the star has prompted researchers to ask if its origin could be an exomoon.NASA/JPL-Caltech The existence of a moon located outside our solar system has never been confirmed but a new NASA-led study may provide indirect evidence for one.
New research done at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory reveals potential signs of a rocky, volcanic moon orbiting an exoplanet 635 light-years from Earth. The biggest clue is a sodium cloud that the findings suggest is close to but slightly out of sync with the exoplanet, a Saturn-size gas giant named WASP-49 b, although additional research is needed to confirm the cloud’s behavior. Within our solar system, gas emissions from Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io create a similar phenomenon.
Although no exomoons (moons of planets outside our solar system) have been confirmed, multiple candidates have been identified. It’s likely these planetary companions have gone undetected because they are too small and dim for current telescopes to detect.
The sodium cloud around WASP-49 b was first detected in 2017, catching the attention of Apurva Oza, formerly a postdoctoral researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and now a staff scientist at Caltech, which manages JPL. Oza has spent years investigating how exomoons might be detected via their volcanic activity. For example, Io, the most volcanic body in our solar system, constantly spews sulfur dioxide, sodium, potassium, and other gases that can form vast clouds around Jupiter up to 1,000 times the giant planet’s radius. It’s possible that astronomers looking at another star system could detect a gas cloud like Io’s even if the moon itself were too small to see.
Exomoons — moons around planets outside our solar system — are most likely too small to observe directly with current technology. In this video, learn how scientists tracked the motion of a sodium cloud 635 light-years away and found that it could be created by volcanos on a potential exomoon. NASA/JPL-Caltech Both WASP-49 b and its star are composed mostly of hydrogen and helium, with trace amounts of sodium. Neither contains enough sodium to account for the cloud, which appears to be coming from a source that is producing roughly 220,000 pounds (100,000 kilograms) of sodium per second. Even if the star or planet could produce that much sodium, it’s unclear what mechanism could eject it into space.
Could the source be a volcanic exomoon? Oza and his colleagues set out to try to answer that question. The work immediately proved challenging because from such a great distance, the star, planet, and cloud often overlap and occupy the same tiny, faraway point in space. So the team had to watch the system over time.
A Cloud on the Move
As detailed in a new study published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, they found several pieces of evidence that suggest the cloud is created by a separate body orbiting the planet, though additional research is needed to confirm the cloud’s behavior. For example, twice their observations indicated the cloud suddenly increased in size, as if being refueled, when it was not next to the planet.
New NASA-led research suggests a sodium cloud seen around the exoplanet WASP-49 b might be created by a volcanic moon, which is depicted in this artist’s concept. Jupiter’s fiery moon Io produces a similar cloud. NASA/JPL-Caltech They also observed the cloud moving faster than the planet in a way that would seem impossible unless it was being generated by another body moving independent of, and faster, than the planet.
“We think this is a really critical piece of evidence,” said Oza. “The cloud is moving in the opposite direction that physics tells us it should be going if it were part of the planet’s atmosphere.”
While these observations have intrigued the research team, they say they would need to observe the system for longer to be sure of the cloud’s orbit and structure.
A Chance of Volcanic Clouds
For part of their sleuthing, the researchers used the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile. Oza’s co-author Julia Seidel, a research fellow at the observatory, established that the cloud is located high above the planet’s atmosphere, much like the cloud of gas Io produces around Jupiter.
They also used a computer model to illustrate the exomoon scenario and compare it to the data. The exoplanet WASP-49 b orbits the star every 2.8 days with clocklike regularity, but the cloud appeared and disappeared behind the star or behind the planet at seemingly irregular intervals. Using their model, Oza and team showed that a moon with an eight-hour orbit around the planet could explain the cloud’s motion and activity, including the way it sometimes seemed to move in front of the planet and did not seem to be associated with a particular region of the planet.
“The evidence is very compelling that something other than the planet and star are producing this cloud,” said Rosaly Lopes, a planetary geologist at JPL who co-authored the study with Oza. “Detecting an exomoon would be quite extraordinary, and because of Io, we know that a volcanic exomoon is possible.”
A Violent End
On Earth, volcanoes are driven by heat in its core left over from the planet’s formation. Io’s volcanoes, on the other hand, are driven by Jupiter’s gravity, which squeezes the moon as it gets closer to the planet then reduces its “grip” as the moon moves away. This flexing heats the small moon’s interior, leading to a process called tidal volcanism.
If WASP-49 b has a moon similar in size to Earth’s, Oza and team estimate that the rapid loss of mass combined with the squeezing from the planet’s gravity will eventually cause it to disintegrate.
“If there really is a moon there, it will have a very destructive ending,” said Oza.
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Last Updated Oct 10, 2024 Related Terms
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Hubble Space Telescope Home NASA’s Hubble, New… Hubble Space Telescope Hubble Home Overview About Hubble The History of Hubble Hubble Timeline Why Have a Telescope in Space? Hubble by the Numbers At the Museum FAQs Impact & Benefits Hubble’s Impact & Benefits Science Impacts Cultural Impact Technology Benefits Impact on Human Spaceflight Astro Community Impacts Science Hubble Science Science Themes Science Highlights Science Behind Discoveries Hubble’s Partners in Science Universe Uncovered Explore the Night Sky Observatory Hubble Observatory Hubble Design Mission Operations Missions to Hubble Hubble vs Webb Team Hubble Team Career Aspirations Hubble Astronauts News Hubble News Hubble News Archive Social Media Media Resources Multimedia Multimedia Images Videos Sonifications Podcasts E-books Lithographs Fact Sheets Glossary Posters Hubble on the NASA App More Online Activities 6 min read
NASA’s Hubble, New Horizons Team Up for a Simultaneous Look at Uranus
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope (left) and NASA’s New Horizon’s spacecraft (right) images the planet Uranus. NASA, ESA, STScI, Samantha Hasler (MIT), Amy Simon (NASA-GSFC), New Horizons Planetary Science Theme Team; Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Joseph Olmsted (STScI)
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NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and New Horizons spacecraft simultaneously set their sights on Uranus recently, allowing scientists to make a direct comparison of the planet from two very different viewpoints. The results inform future plans to study like types of planets around other stars.
Astronomers used Uranus as a proxy for similar planets beyond our solar system, known as exoplanets, comparing high-resolution images from Hubble to the more-distant view from New Horizons. This combined perspective will help scientists learn more about what to expect while imaging planets around other stars with future telescopes.
“While we expected Uranus to appear differently in each filter of the observations, we found that Uranus was actually dimmer than predicted in the New Horizons data taken from a different viewpoint,” said lead author Samantha Hasler of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and New Horizons science team collaborator.
In this image, two three-dimensional shapes (top) of Uranus are compared to the actual views of the planet from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope (bottom left) and NASA’s New Horizon’s spacecraft (bottom right). Comparing high-resolution images from Hubble to the smaller view from New Horizons offers a combined perspective that will help researchers learn more about what to expect while imaging planets around other stars with future observatories. NASA, ESA, STScI, Samantha Hasler (MIT), Amy Simon (NASA-GSFC), New Horizons Planetary Science Theme Team; Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Joseph Olmsted (STScI)
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Direct imaging of exoplanets is a key technique for learning about their potential habitability, and offers new clues to the origin and formation of our own solar system. Astronomers use both direct imaging and spectroscopy to collect light from the observed planet and compare its brightness at different wavelengths. However, imaging exoplanets is a notoriously difficult process because they’re so far away. Their images are mere pinpoints and so are not as detailed as the close-up views that we have of worlds orbiting our Sun. Researchers can also only directly image exoplanets at “partial phases,” when only a portion of the planet is illuminated by their star as seen from Earth.
Uranus was an ideal target as a test for understanding future distant observations of exoplanets by other telescopes for a few reasons. First, many known exoplanets are also gas giants similar in nature. Also, at the time of the observations, New Horizons was on the far side of Uranus, 6.5 billion miles away, allowing its twilight crescent to be studied—something that cannot be done from Earth. At that distance, the New Horizons view of the planet was just several pixels in its color camera, called the Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera.
On the other hand, Hubble, with its high resolution, and in its low-Earth orbit 1.7 billion miles away from Uranus, was able to see atmospheric features such as clouds and storms on the day side of the gaseous world.
“Uranus appears as just a small dot on the New Horizons observations, similar to the dots seen of directly-imaged exoplanets from observatories like Webb or ground-based observatories,” added Hasler. “Hubble provides context for what the atmosphere is doing when it was observed with New Horizons.”
The gas giant planets in our solar system have dynamic and variable atmospheres with changing cloud cover. How common is this among exoplanets? By knowing the details of what the clouds on Uranus looked like from Hubble, researchers are able to verify what is interpreted from the New Horizons data. In the case of Uranus, both Hubble and New Horizons saw that the brightness did not vary as the planet rotated, which indicates that the cloud features were not changing with the planet’s rotation.
However, the importance of the detection by New Horizons has to do with how the planet reflects light at a different phase than what Hubble, or other observatories on or near Earth, can see. New Horizons showed that exoplanets may be dimmer than predicted at partial and high phase angles, and that the atmosphere reflects light differently at partial phase.
NASA has two major upcoming observatories in the works to advance studies of exoplanet atmospheres and potential habitability.
“These landmark New Horizons studies of Uranus from a vantage point unobservable by any other means add to the mission’s treasure trove of new scientific knowledge, and have, like many other datasets obtained in the mission, yielded surprising new insights into the worlds of our solar system,” added New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute.
This illustration shows NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft’s view of our solar system from deep in the Kuiper Belt. New Horizons is currently at an estimated distance of more than 5 billion miles from Earth. The probe was 6.5 billion miles away from Uranus when it recently observed the planet. In this study, researchers used the gas giant as an exoplanet proxy, comparing high-resolution images from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to the smaller view from New Horizons to learn more about what to expect while imaging planets around other stars. NASA, ESA, Christian Nieves (STScI), Ralf Crawford (STScI), Greg Bacon (STScI)
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NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, set to launch by 2027, will use a coronagraph to block out a star’s light to directly see gas giant exoplanets. NASA’s Habitable Worlds Observatory, in an early planning phase, will be the first telescope designed specifically to search for atmospheric biosignatures on Earth-sized, rocky planets orbiting other stars.
“Studying how known benchmarks like Uranus appear in distant imaging can help us have more robust expectations when preparing for these future missions,” concluded Hasler. “And that will be critical to our success.”
Launched in January 2006, New Horizons made the historic flyby of Pluto and its moons in July 2015, before giving humankind its first close-up look at one of these planetary building block and Kuiper Belt object, Arrokoth, in January 2019. New Horizons is now in its second extended mission, studying distant Kuiper Belt objects, characterizing the outer heliosphere of the Sun, and making important astrophysical observations from its unmatched vantage point in distant regions of the solar system.
The Uranus results are being presented this week at the 56th annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society Division for Planetary Sciences, in Boise, Idaho.
The Hubble Space Telescope has been operating for over three decades and continues to make ground-breaking discoveries that shape our fundamental understanding of the universe. Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope and mission operations. Lockheed Martin Space, based in Denver, Colorado, also supports mission operations at Goddard. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, conducts Hubble science operations for NASA.
The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, built and operates the New Horizons spacecraft and manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. Southwest Research Institute, based in San Antonio and Boulder, Colorado, directs the mission via Principal Investigator Alan Stern and leads the science team, payload operations and encounter science planning. New Horizons is part of NASA’s New Frontiers program, managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
Facebook logo @NASAHubble @NASAHubble Instagram logo @NASAHubble Media Contacts:
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Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA
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Last Updated Oct 09, 2024 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
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Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.
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New Horizons was the first spacecraft to explore Pluto and its five moons up close and, later, made the first…
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By NASA
7 Min Read NASA’s Webb Reveals Unusual Jets of Volatile Gas from Icy Centaur 29P
An artist’s concept of Centaur 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 1’s outgassing activity as seen from the side. Credits:
NASA, ESA, CSA, L. Hustak (STScI) Inspired by the half-human, half-horse creatures that are part of Ancient Greek mythology, the field of astronomy has its own kind of centaurs: distant objects orbiting the Sun between Jupiter and Neptune. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has mapped the gases spewing from one of these objects, suggesting a varied composition and providing new insights into the formation and evolution of the solar system.
Centaurs are former trans-Neptunian objects that have been moved inside Neptune’s orbit by subtle gravitational influences of the planets in the last few million years, and may eventually become short-period comets. They are “hybrid” in the sense that they are in a transitional stage of their orbital evolution: Many share characteristics with both trans-Neptunian objects (from the cold Kuiper Belt reservoir), and short-period comets, which are objects highly altered by repeated close passages around the Sun.
Image A: Illustration
An artist’s concept of Centaur 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 1’s outgassing activity as seen from the side. While prior radio-wavelength observations showed a jet of gas pointed toward Earth, astronomers used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to gather additional insight on the front jet’s composition and noted three more jets of gas spewing from Centaur 29P’s surface. NASA, ESA, CSA, L. Hustak (STScI) Since these small icy bodies are in an orbital transitional phase, they have been the subject of various studies as scientists seek to understand their composition, the reasons behind their outgassing activity — the loss of their ices that lie underneath the surface — and how they serve as a link between primordial icy bodies in the outer solar system and evolved comets.
A team of scientists recently used Webb’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) instrument to obtain data on Centaur 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 1 (29P for short), an object that is known for its highly active and quasi-periodic outbursts. It varies in intensity every six to eight weeks, making it one of the most active objects in the outer solar system. They discovered a new jet of carbon monoxide (CO) and previously unseen jets of carbon dioxide (CO2) gas, which give new clues to the nature of the centaur’s nucleus.
“Centaurs can be considered as some of the leftovers of our planetary system’s formation. Because they are stored at very cold temperatures, they preserve information about volatiles in the early stages of the solar system,” said Sara Faggi of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and American University in Washington, DC, lead author of the study. “Webb really opened the door to a resolution and sensitivity that was impressive to us — when we saw the data for the first time, we were excited. We had never seen anything like this.”
Webb and the Jets
Centaurs’ distant orbits and consequent faintness have inhibited detailed observations in the past. Data from prior radio wavelength observations of Centaur 29P showed a jet pointed generally toward the Sun (and Earth) composed of CO. Webb detected this face-on jet and, thanks to its large mirror and infrared capabilities, also sensitively searched for many other chemicals, including water (H2O) and CO2. The latter is one of the main forms in which carbon is stored across the solar system. No indication of water vapor was detected in the atmosphere of 29P, which could be related to the extremely cold temperatures present in this body.
The telescope’s unique imaging and spectral data revealed never-before-seen features: two jets of CO2 emanating in the north and south directions, and another jet of CO pointing toward the north. This was the first definitive detection of CO2 in Centaur 29P.
Image B: IFU Graphic
A team of scientists used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s spectrographic capabilities to gather data on Centaur 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 1, one of the most active objects in the outer solar system. The Webb data revealed never-before-seen features: two jets of carbon dioxide spewing in the north and south directions, and a jet of carbon monoxide pointing toward north. NASA, ESA, CSA, L. Hustak (STScI), S. Faggi (NASA-GSFC, American University) Based on the data gathered by Webb, the team created a 3D model of the jets to understand their orientation and origin. They found through their modeling efforts that the jets were emitted from different regions on the centaur’s nucleus, even though the nucleus itself cannot be resolved by Webb. The jets’ angles suggest the possibility that the nucleus may be an aggregate of distinct objects with different compositions; however, other scenarios can’t yet be excluded.
Video A: Zoom and Spin
An artist’s concept of Centaur 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 1’s outgassing activity as seen from the side. While prior radio-wavelength observations showed a jet of gas pointed toward Earth, astronomers used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to gather additional insight on the front jet’s composition and noted three more jets of gas spewing from Centaur 29P’s surface.
Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, L. Hustak (STScI) “The fact that Centaur 29P has such dramatic differences in the abundance of CO and CO2 across its surface suggests that 29P may be made of several pieces,” said Geronimo Villanueva, co-author of the study at NASA Goddard. “Maybe two pieces coalesced together and made this centaur, which is a mixture between very different bodies that underwent separate formation pathways. It challenges our ideas about how primordial objects are created and stored in the Kuiper Belt.”
Persisting Unanswered Questions (For Now)
The reasons for Centaur 29P’s bursts in brightness, and the mechanisms behind its outgassing activity through the CO and CO2 jets, continue to be two major areas of interest that require further investigation.
In the case of comets, scientists know that their jets are often driven by the outgassing of water. However, because of the centaurs’ location, they are too cold for water ice to sublimate, meaning that the nature of their outgassing activity differs from comets.
“We only had time to look at this object once, like a snapshot in time,” said Adam McKay, a co-author of the study at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. “I’d like to go back and look at Centaur 29P over a much longer period of time. Do the jets always have that orientation? Is there perhaps another carbon monoxide jet that turns on at a different point in the rotation period? Looking at these jets over time would give us much better insights into what is driving these outbursts.”
The team is hopeful that as they increase their understanding of Centaur 29P, they can apply the same techniques to other centaurs. By improving the astronomical community’s collective knowledge of centaurs, we can simultaneously better our understanding on the formation and evolution of our solar system.
These findings have been published in Nature.
The observations were taken as part of General Observer program 2416.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
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Laura Betz – laura.e.betz@nasa.gov, Rob Gutro – rob.gutro@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Abigail Major – amajor@stsci.edu, Christine Pulliam – cpulliam@stsci.edu
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
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Last Updated Oct 02, 2024 Editor Marty McCoy Contact Laura Betz laura.e.betz@nasa.gov Related Terms
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By European Space Agency
Looking deep into the early Universe with the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have found something unprecedented: a galaxy with an odd light signature, which they attribute to its gas outshining its stars.
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