A Fresh Take on Our Moon’s Origin
Today’s post has been inspired by the following quote: “have yall seen this new theory of how the moon formed?? …honestly im shook”
Finding a New Molecule: Discovery of an Organic Acid in a Protoplanetary Disk
Radio observations of a nearby protoplanetary disk have revealed the discovery of a new molecule, formic acid, which is the first organic acid to be found in a planet-forming disk. The discovery of such biologically-relevant molecules can tell us something about questions related to the origins of life in other nascent planetary systems.
Solid As a Rock…Not
Some hot Jupiters that like living dangerously are spiraling rapidly into their stars. Could that be connected to how squishy and wobbly they are?
A protoplanetary disk on its side
What does a disk around a binary star look like? One possibility, recently observed around a young star for the first time, is that it is flipped on its side—its rotation is perpendicular to the orbit of the binary system!
Stirring Up Rocky Worlds
What can highly inclined giant worlds tell us about the presence of terrestrial companions?
Where’s Lucy Going? Studying Asteroid Mission Targets
Lucy, a new asteroid mission, has begun preparation to target multiple asteroids in the Trojan group near Jupiter for flybys in the late 2020s. Until that date, though, astronomers are busy preparing for the mission and trying to gather all the data on these objects that we can from Earth. Buie et. al. 2018 specifically investigates Leucus and Polymele, using their light curves to tease out information about their color, composition, orbit, and reflectivity.