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By NASA
Artist’s concept of a young, newly discovered planet, exposed to observation by a warped debris disk. Credit: Robert Hurt, Caltech-IPAC. The discovery
A huge planet with a long name – IRAS 04125+2902 b – is really just a baby: only 3 million years old. And because such infant worlds are usually hidden inside obscuring disks of debris, it is the youngest planet so far discovered using the dominant method of planet detection.
Key facts
The massive planet, likely still glowing from the heat of its formation, lies in the Taurus Molecular Cloud, an active stellar nursery with hundreds of newborn stars some 430 light-years away. The cloud’s relative closeness makes it a prime target for astronomers. But while the cloud offers deep insight into the formation and evolution of young stars, their planets are usually a closed book to telescopes like TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. These telescopes rely on the “transit method,” watching for the slight dip in starlight when a planet crosses the face of its host star. But such planetary systems must be edge-on, from Earth’s vantage point, for the transit method to work. Very young star systems are surrounded by disks of debris, however, blocking our view of any potentially transiting planets.
A research team has just reported an extraordinary stroke of luck. Somehow, the outer debris disk surrounding this newborn planet, IRAS 04125+2902 b, has been sharply warped, exposing the baby world to extensive transit observations by TESS.
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While the warped outer disk is a great coincidence, it’s also a great mystery. Possible explanations include a migration of the planet itself, moving closer to the star and, in the process, diverging from the orientation of the outer disk – so that, from Earth, the planet’s orbit is edge-on, crossing the face of the star, but the outer disk remains nearly face-on to us. One problem with this idea: Moving a planet so far out of alignment with its parent disk would likely require another (very large) object in this system. None has been detected so far.
The system’s sun happens to have a distant stellar companion, also a possible culprit in the warping of the outer disk. The angle of the orbit of the companion star, however, matches that of the planet and its parent star. Stars and planets tend to take the gravitational path of least resistance, so such an arrangement should push the disk into a closer alignment with the rest of the system – not into a radical departure.
Another way to get a “broken” outer disk, the study authors say, would not involve a companion star at all. Stellar nurseries like the Taurus Molecular Cloud can be densely packed, busy places. Computer simulations show that rains of infalling material from the surrounding star-forming region could be the cause of disk-warping. Neither simulations nor observations have so far settled the question of whether warped or broken disks are common or rare in such regions.
Fun facts
Combining TESS’s transit measurements with another way of observing planets yields more information about the planet itself. We might call this second approach the “wobble” method. The gravity of a planet tugs its star one way, then another, as the orbiting planet makes its way around the star. And that wobble can be detected by changes in the light from the star, picked up by specialized instruments on Earth. Such “radial velocity” measurements of this planet reveal that its mass, or heft, amounts to no more than about a third of our own Jupiter. But the transit data shows the planet’s diameter is about the same. That means the planet has a comparatively low density and, likely, an inflated atmosphere. So this world probably is not a gas giant like Jupiter. Instead, it could well be a planet whose atmosphere will shrink over time. When it finally settles down, it could become a gaseous “mini-Neptune” or even a rocky “super-Earth.” These are the two most common planet types in our galaxy – despite the fact that neither type can be found in our solar system.
The discoverers
A science team led by astronomer Madyson G. Barber of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill published the study, “A giant planet transiting a 3 Myr protostar with a misaligned disk,” in the journal Nature in November 2024.
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By NASA
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5 Surprising NASA Heliophysics Discoveries Not Related to the Sun
With NASA’s fleet of heliophysics spacecraft, scientists monitor our Sun and investigate its influences throughout the solar system. However, the fleet’s constant watch and often-unique perspectives sometimes create opportunities to make discoveries that no one expected, helping us to solve mysteries about of the solar system and beyond.
Here are five examples of breakthroughs made by NASA heliophysics missions in other fields of science.
This graphic shows missions in NASA’s Heliophysics Division fleet as of July 2024. NASA Thousands and Thousands of Comets
The SOHO mission — short for Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, which is a joint mission between ESA (European Space Agency) and NASA — has a coronagraph that blocks out the Sun in order to see the Sun’s faint outer atmosphere, or corona.
It turns out SOHO’s coronagraph also makes it easy to spot sungrazing comets, those that pass so close to the Sun that other observatories can’t see them against the brightness of our star.
Before SOHO was launched in December 1995, fewer than 20 sungrazing comets were known. Since then, SOHO has discovered more than 5,000.
The vast number of comets discovered using SOHO has allowed scientists to learn more about sungrazing comets and identify comet families, descended from ancestor comets that broke up long ago.
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Two sungrazing comets fly close to the Sun in these images captured by ESA/NASA’s SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory). They were the 3,999th and 4,000th comets discovered in SOHO images. ESA/NASA/SOHO/Karl Battams Dimming of a Supergiant
In late 2019, the supergiant star Betelgeuse began dimming unexpectedly. Telescopes all over the world — and around it — tracked these changes until a few months later when Betelgeuse appeared too close to the Sun to observe. That’s when NASA’s STEREO (Sun-watching Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) came to the rescue.
For several weeks in the middle of 2020, STEREO was the only observatory able to see Betelgeuse. At the time, the STEREO-A spacecraft was trailing behind Earth, at a vantage point where Betelgeuse was still far enough away from the Sun to be seen. This allowed astronomers to keep tabs on the star while it was out of view from Earth.
STEREO’s observations revealed another unexpected dimming between June and August of 2020, when ground-based telescopes couldn’t view the star.
Astronomers later concluded that these dimming episodes were caused by an ejection of mass from Betelgeuse — like a coronal mass ejection from our Sun but with about 400 times more mass — which obscured part of the star’s bright surface.
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The background image shows the star Betelgeuse as seen by the Heliospheric Imager aboard NASA’s STEREO (Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory) spacecraft. The inset figure shows measurements of Betelgeuse’s brightness taken by different observatories from late 2018 to late 2020. STEREO’s observations, marked in red, revealed an unexpected dimming in mid-2020 when Betelgeuse appeared too close to the Sun for other observatories to view it. NASA/STEREO/HI (background); Dupree et al. (inset) The Glowing Surface of Venus
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe studies the Sun’s corona up close — by flying through it. To dive into the Sun’s outer atmosphere, the spacecraft has flown past Venus several times, using the planet’s gravity to fling itself closer and closer to the Sun.
On July 11, 2020, during Parker’s third Venus flyby, scientists used Parker’s wide-field imager, called WISPR, to try to measure the speed of the clouds that obscure Venus’ surface. Surprisingly, WISPR not only observed the clouds, it also saw through them to the surface below.
The images from that flyby and the next (in 2021) revealed a faint glow from Venus’ hot surface in near-infrared light and long wavelengths of red (visible) light that maps distinctive features like mountainous regions, plains, and plateaus.
Scientists aimed WISPR at Venus again on Nov. 6, 2024, during Parker’s seventh flyby, observing a different part of the planet than previous flybys. With these images, they’re hoping to learn more about Venus’ surface geology, mineralogy, and evolution.
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As Parker Solar Probe flew by Venus on its fourth flyby, it captured these images, strung into a video, showing bright and dark features on the nightside surface of the planet. NASA/APL/NRL The Brightest Gamma-Ray Burst
You’ve heard of the GOAT. But have you heard of the BOAT?
It stands for the “brightest of all time”, a gamma-ray burst discovered on Oct. 9, 2022.
A gamma-ray burst is a brief but intense eruption of gamma rays in space, lasting from seconds to hours.
This one, named GRB 221009A, glowed brilliantly for about 10 minutes in the constellation Sagitta before slowly fading.
The burst was detected by dozens of spacecraft, including NASA’s Wind, which studies the perpetual flow of particles from the Sun, called the solar wind, just before it reaches Earth.
Wind and NASA’s Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope measured the brightness of GRB 221009A, showing that it was 70 times brighter than any other gamma-ray burst ever recorded by humans — solidifying its status as the BOAT.
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Astronomers think GRB 221009A represents the birth of a new black hole formed within the heart of a collapsing star. In this artist’s concept, the black hole drives powerful jets of particles traveling near the speed of light. The jets emit X-rays and gamma rays as they stream into space. NASA/Swift/Cruz deWilde A Volcano Blasts Its Way to Space
NASA’s ICON (Ionospheric Connection Explorer) launched in 2019 to study how Earth’s weather interacts with weather from space. When the underwater Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha‘apai volcano erupted on Jan. 15, 2022, ICON helped show that the volcano produced more than ash and tsunami waves — its effects reached the edge of space.
In the hours after the eruption, ICON detected hurricane-speed winds in the ionosphere — Earth’s electrified upper atmospheric layer at the edge of space. ICON clocked the wind speeds at up to 450 miles per hour, making them the strongest winds the mission had ever measured below 120 miles altitude.
The ESA Swarm mission revealed that these extreme winds altered an electric current in the ionosphere called the equatorial electrojet. After the eruption, the equatorial electrojet surged to five times its normal peak power and dramatically flipped direction.
Scientists were surprised that a volcano could affect the electrojet so severely — something they’d only seen during a strong geomagnetic storm caused by an eruption from the Sun.
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The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai eruption on Jan. 15, 2022, caused many effects, some illustrated here, that were felt around the world and even into space. Some of those effects, like extreme winds and unusual electric currents were picked up by NASA’s ICON (Ionospheric Connection Explorer) mission and ESA’s (the European Space Agency) Swarm. Illustration is not to scale. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Mary Pat Hrybyk-Keith By Vanessa Thomas
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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Last Updated Nov 20, 2024 Related Terms
Comets Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope Gamma-Ray Bursts Goddard Space Flight Center Heliophysics Heliophysics Division ICON (Ionospheric Connection Explorer) Parker Solar Probe (PSP) SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) Stars STEREO (Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory) The Sun The Sun & Solar Physics Uncategorized Venus Volcanoes Wind Mission Explore More
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NASA-Funded Study Examines Tidal Effects on Planet and Moon Interiors
NASA-supported scientists have developed a new method to compute how tides affect the interiors of planets and moons. Importantly, the new study looks at the effects of body tides on objects that don’t have a perfectly spherical interior structure, which is an assumption of most previous models.
The puzzling, fascinating surface of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa looms large in this newly-reprocessed color view, made from images taken by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft in the late 1990s. This is the color view of Europa from Galileo that shows the largest portion of the moon’s surface at the highest resolution. NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute Body tides refer to the deformations experienced by celestial bodies when they gravitationally interact with other objects. Think of how the powerful gravity of Jupiter tugs on its moon Europa. Because Europa’s orbit isn’t circular, the crushing squeeze of Jupiter’s gravity on the moon varies as it travels along its orbit. When Europa is at its closest to Jupiter, the planet’s gravity is felt the most. The energy of this deformation is what heats up Europa’s interior, allowing an ocean of liquid water to exist beneath the moon’s icy surface.
“The same is true for Saturn’s moon Enceladus.” says co-author Alexander Berne of CalTech in Pasadena and an affiliate at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “Enceladus has an ice shell that is expected to be much more non-spherically symmetric than that of Europa.”
The body tides experienced by celestial bodies can affect how the worlds evolve over time and, in cases like Europa and Enceladus, their potential habitability for life as we know it. The new study provides a means to more accurately estimate how tidal forces affect planetary interiors.
In this movie Europa is seen in a cutaway view through two cycles of its 3.5 day orbit about the giant planet Jupiter. Like Earth, Europa is thought to have an iron core, a rocky mantle and a surface ocean of salty water. Unlike on Earth, however, this ocean is deep enough to cover the whole moon, and being far from the sun, the ocean surface is globally frozen over. Europa’s orbit is eccentric, which means as it travels around Jupiter, large tides, raised by Jupiter, rise and fall. Jupiter’s position relative to Europa is also seen to librate, or wobble, with the same period. This tidal kneading causes frictional heating within Europa, much in the same way a paper clip bent back and forth can get hot to the touch, as illustrated by the red glow in the interior of Europa’s rocky mantle and in the lower, warmer part of its ice shell. This tidal heating is what keeps Europa’s ocean liquid and could prove critical to the survival of simple organisms within the ocean, if they exist. The giant planet Jupiter is now shown to be rotating from west to east, though more slowly than its actual rate. NASA/JPL-Caltech The paper also discusses how the results of the study could help scientists interpret observations made by missions to a variety of different worlds, ranging from Mercury to the Moon to the outer planets of our solar system.
The study, “A Spectral Method to Compute the Tides of Laterally Heterogeneous Bodies,” was published in The Planetary Science Journal.
For more information on NASA’s Astrobiology Program, visit:
https://science.nasa.gov/astrobiology
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Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
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Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
A SWOT data visualization shows water on the northern side of Greenland’s Dickson Fjord at higher levels than on the southern side on Sept. 17, 2023. A huge rockslide into the fjord the previous day led to a tsunami lasting nine days that caused seismic rumbling around the world. NASA Earth Observatory Data from space shows water tilting up toward the north side of the Dickson Fjord as it sloshed from south to north and back every 90 seconds for nine days after a 2023 rockslide.
The international Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite mission, a collaboration between NASA and France’s CNES (Centre National d’Études Spatiales), detected the unique contours of a tsunami that sloshed within the steep walls of a fjord in Greenland in September 2023. Triggered by a massive rockslide, the tsunami generated a seismic rumble that reverberated around the world for nine days. An international research team that included seismologists, geophysicists, and oceanographers recently reported on the event after a year of analyzing data.
The SWOT satellite collected water elevation measurements in Dickson Fjord on Sept. 17, 2023, the day after the initial rockslide and tsunami. The data was compared with measurements made under normal conditions a few weeks prior, on Aug. 6, 2023.
In the data visualization (above), colors toward the red end of the scale indicate higher water levels, and blue colors indicate lower-than-normal levels. The data suggests that water levels at some points along the north side of the fjord were as much as 4 feet (1.2 meters) higher than on the south.
“SWOT happened to fly over at a time when the water had piled up pretty high against the north wall of the fjord,” said Josh Willis, a sea level researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “Seeing the shape of the wave — that’s something we could never do before SWOT.”
In a paper published recently in Science, researchers traced a seismic signal back to a tsunami that began when more than 880 million cubic feet of rock and ice (25 million cubic meters) fell into Dickson Fjord. Part of a network of channels on Greenland’s eastern coast, the fjord is about 1,772 feet (540 meters) deep and 1.7 miles (2.7 kilometers) wide, with walls taller than 6,000 feet (1,830 meters).
Far from the open ocean, in a confined space, the energy of the tsunami’s motion had limited opportunity to dissipate, so the wave moved back and forth about every 90 seconds for nine days. It caused tremors recorded on seismic instruments thousands of miles away.
From about 560 miles (900 kilometers) above, SWOT uses its sophisticated Ka-band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn) instrument to measure the height of nearly all water on Earth’s surface, including the ocean and freshwater lakes, reservoirs, and rivers.
“This observation also shows SWOT’s ability to monitor hazards, potentially helping in disaster preparedness and risk reduction,” said SWOT program scientist Nadya Vinogradova Shiffer at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
It can also see into fjords, as it turns out.
“The KaRIn radar’s resolution was fine enough to make observations between the relatively narrow walls of the fjord,” said Lee-Lueng Fu, the SWOT project scientist. “The footprint of the conventional altimeters used to measure ocean height is too large to resolve such a small body of water.”
More About SWOT
Launched in December 2022 from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, SWOT is now in its operations phase, collecting data that will be used for research and other purposes.
The SWOT satellite was jointly developed by NASA and CNES, with contributions from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and the UK Space Agency. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, managed for the agency by Caltech in Pasadena, California, leads the U.S. component of the project. For the flight system payload, NASA provided the KaRIn instrument, a GPS science receiver, a laser retroreflector, a two-beam microwave radiometer, and NASA instrument operations. CNES provided the Doppler Orbitography and Radioposition Integrated by Satellite (DORIS) system, the dual frequency Poseidon altimeter (developed by Thales Alenia Space), the KaRIn radio-frequency subsystem (together with Thales Alenia Space and with support from the UK Space Agency), the satellite platform, and ground operations. CSA provided the KaRIn high-power transmitter assembly. NASA provided the launch vehicle and the agency’s Launch Services Program, based at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, managed the associated launch services.
To learn more about SWOT, visit:
https://swot.jpl.nasa.gov
News Media Contacts
Jane J. Lee / Andrew Wang
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Last Updated Oct 31, 2024 Related Terms
SWOT (Surface Water and Ocean Topography) Earth Earth Science Earth Science Division Jet Propulsion Laboratory Explore More
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By NASA
5 min read
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.
News Media Contact
Calla Cofield
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
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Last Updated Oct 10, 2024 Related Terms
Exoplanets Astrophysics Exoplanet Discoveries Gas Giant Exoplanets Jupiter Jupiter Moons Explore More
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