In mythology, centaurs are half-human, half-horse creatures, but in space, they’re celestial objects orbiting the Sun between Jupiter and Neptune.
Centaurs are “hybrid” objects in the sense that they share characteristics with trans-Neptunian objects from the Kuiper Belt reservoir and short-period comets. A team of scientists used the James Web Telescope to study Centaur 29P.
While data from previous observations of Centaur 29P showed a carbon monoxide (CO) gas jet pointed toward Earth, Webb parsed the jet’s composition in greater detail, and also detected multiple never-before-seen features of the centaur: two jets of carbon dioxide (CO2) emanating in the north and south directions, and another jet of CO pointing toward the north.
Centaur 29P’s different CO and CO2 abundances suggest that the body may be composed of different pieces that coalesced together during its formation. However, other scenarios to explain Centaur 29P’s outgassing activity are still being considered.
During a break from looking at planets around other stars, ESA’s CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite (Cheops) mission has observed a dwarf planet in our own Solar System and made a decisive contribution to the discovery of a dense ring of material around it.
Studying these dwarf planets is difficult because of their small sizes and extreme distances. Quaoar itself orbits the Sun at almost 44 times the Sun-Earth distance. So, occultations are particularly valuable tools. Until recently, however, it has been difficult to predict exactly when and where they will take place.
For an occultation to occur, the alignment between the occulting object (here the TNO), the star, and the observing telescope must be extremely precise. In the past, it has been almost impossible to meet the stringent accuracy requirements to be certain of seeing an event. Nevertheless, to pursue this goal the European Research Council Lucky Star project, coordinated by Bruno Sicardy, Sorbonne University & Paris Observatory – PSL (LESIA), was created to predict upcoming occultations by TNOs, and to co-ordinate the observation of these events from professional and amateur observatories around the globe.
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Most striking about Webb’s new image is the crisp view of the planet’s dynamic rings — some of which haven’t been seen at all, let alone with this clarity, since the Voyager 2 flyby in 1989. In addition to several bright narrow rings, the Webb images clearly show Neptune’s fainter dust bands. Webb’s extremely stable and precise image quality also permits these very faint rings to be detected so close to Neptune.
We are Europe’s gateway to space. Our mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world. Check out https://www.esa.int/ to get up to speed on everything space related.
In a fitting tribute to the farthest flyby ever conducted by spacecraft, the Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69 has been officially named Arrokoth, a Native American term meaning “sky” in the Powhatan/Algonquian language.
With consent from Powhatan Tribal elders and representatives, NASA’s New Horizons team – whose spacecraft performed the record-breaking reconnaissance of Arrokoth four billion miles from Earth – proposed the name to the International Astronomical Union and Minor Planets Center, the international authority for naming Kuiper Belt objects. The name was announced at a ceremony at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC.
