Asteroid 2004 BL86: NEO That Flew Past Earth Has A Companion Moon - Binary

This movie of asteroid 2004 BL86 was generated from data collected by NASA's Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, California, on Jan. 26, 2015. Twenty individual images were used.

Credit: NASA

Scientists working with NASA's 230-foot-wide (70-meter) Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, California, have released the first radar images of asteroid 2004 BL86.

The images show the asteroid, which made its closest approach on Jan. 26, 2015 at 8:19 a.m. PST (11:19 a.m. EST) at a distance of about 745,000 miles (1.2 million kilometers, or 3.1 times the distance from Earth to the moon), has its own small moon.

The 20 individual images used in the movie were generated from data collected at Goldstone on Jan. 26, 2015.

They show the primary body is approximately 1,100 feet (325 meters) across and has a small moon approximately 230 feet (70 meters) across.

In the near-Earth population, about 16 percent of asteroids that are about 655 feet (200 meters) or larger are a binary (the primary asteroid with a smaller asteroid moon orbiting it) or even triple systems (two moons).

The resolution on the radar images is 13 feet (4 meters) per pixel.

The trajectory of asteroid 2004 BL86 is well understood. Monday's flyby was the closest approach the asteroid will make to Earth for at least the next two centuries.

It is also the closest a known asteroid this size will come to Earth until asteroid 1999 AN10 flies past our planet in 2027.

Asteroid 2004 BL86 was discovered on Jan. 30, 2004, by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) survey in White Sands, New Mexico.

Radar is a powerful technique for studying an asteroid's size, shape, rotation state, surface features and surface roughness, and for improving the calculation of asteroid orbits.

Radar measurements of asteroid distances and velocities often enable computation of asteroid orbits much further into the future than if radar observations weren't available.

NASA places a high priority on tracking asteroids in a vain effort that this will somehow protect our home planet from them.

In fact, the U.S. believes it has the most robust and productive survey and detection program for discovering near-Earth objects (NEOs), and report that to date, taking into account all U.S. assets, both civil and military, they have discovered over 98 percent of the known NEOs.

ESO VLT Atacama: Largest yellow hypergiant star observed

HR 5171, the brightest star just below the centre of this wide-field image, is a yellow hypergiant, a very rare type of stars with only a dozen known in our galaxy. 

Its size is over 1,300 times that of the Sun -- one of the 10 largest stars found so far. 

Observations with ESO's Very Large Telescope Interferometer have shown that it is actually a double star, with the companion in contact with the main star. 

Credit: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2

ESO's Very Large Telescope has revealed the largest yellow star—and one of the 10 largest stars found so far.

This hypergiant has been found to measure more than 1,300 times the diameter of the Sun, and to be part of a double star system, with the second component so close that it is in contact with the main star.

Observations spanning over 60 years also indicate that this remarkable object is changing very rapidly.

Olivier Chesneau

Using ESO's Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI), Olivier Chesneau (Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur, Nice, France) and an international team of collaborators have found that the yellow hypergiant star HR 5171 A is absolutely huge—1300 times the diameter of the Sun and much bigger than was expected.

This makes it the largest yellow star known. It is also in the top ten of the largest stars known, 50% larger than the famous red supergiant Betelgeuse and about one million times brighter than the Sun.

"The new observations also showed that this star has a very close binary partner, which was a real surprise," says Chesneau.

"The two stars are so close that they touch and the whole system resembles a gigantic peanut."

The astronomers made good use of interferometry to combine the light collected from multiple individual telescopes, effectively creating a giant telescope up to 140 metres in size.

The new results prompted the team to thoroughly investigate older observations of the star spanning more than sixty years, to see how it had behaved in the past.

Chesneau concludes "The companion we have found is very significant as it can have an influence on the fate of HR 5171 A, for example, stripping off its outer layers and modifying its evolution."

This new discovery highlights the importance of studying these huge and short-lived yellow hypergiants, and could provide a means of understanding the evolutionary processes of massive stars in general.

More information: This research was presented in a paper "The yellow hypergiant HR 5171 A: Resolving a massive interacting binary in the common envelope phase", by Chesneau et al., to appear in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. arxiv.org/pdf/1401.2628v2.pdf

Strange solitary planet without companion star in Milky Way

Artist's conception of PSO J318.5-22. Credit: MPIA/V. Ch. Quetz

An international team of astronomers has discovered an exotic young planet that is not orbiting a star.

This free-floating planet, dubbed PSO J318.5-22, is just 80 light-years away from Earth and has a mass only six times that of Jupiter.

The planet formed a mere 12 million years ago—a newborn in planet lifetimes.

It was identified from its faint and unique heat signature by the Pan-STARRS 1 (PS1) wide-field survey telescope on Haleakala, Maui.

Follow-up observations using other telescopes in Hawaii show that it has properties similar to those of gas-giant planets found orbiting around young stars. And yet PSO J318.5-22 is all by itself, without a host star.

"We have never before seen an object free-floating in space that that looks like this.

Michael Liu

It has all the characteristics of young planets found around other stars, but it is drifting out there all alone," explained team leader Dr. Michael Liu of the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

"I had often wondered if such solitary objects exist, and now we know they do."

During the past decade, extrasolar planets have been discovered at an incredible pace, with about a thousand found by indirect methods such as wobbling or dimming of their host stars induced by the planet.

However, only a handful of planets have been directly imaged, all of which are around young stars (less than 200 million years old).

PSO J318.5-22 is one of the lowest-mass free-floating objects known, perhaps the very lowest. But its most unique aspect is its similar mass, color, and energy output to directly imaged planets.

"Planets found by direct imaging are incredibly hard to study, since they are right next to their much brighter host stars. PSO J318.5-22 is not orbiting a star so it will be much easier for us to study.

It is going to provide a wonderful view into the inner workings of gas-giant planets like Jupiter shortly after their birth," said Dr. Niall Deacon of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany and a co-author of the study.

More information: The discovery paper of PSO J318.5-22 is being published by Astrophysical Journal Letters and is available at arxiv.org/abs/1310.0457

MOBISERV: European funded Robot Companion for the Elderly

A highly customisable robot companion designed by EU-funded researchers to offer support to older people is currently being presented across Europe and could find its way into people's homes within two or three years, potentially greatly enhancing quality of life for older citizens and people with memory or mobility problems.

The robot, a mobile wheeled semi-humanoid figure equipped with cameras, sensors, audio and a touch screen interface, can remind users to take their medicine, suggest they have their favourite drink or prompt them to go for a walk or visit friends if they haven't been out for a while.

As part of a larger smart-home environment that can include smart clothing to monitor vital signs, the system can monitor user's health and safety, and alert emergency services if something is amiss.

'Across Europe, populations are growing older, and many people need care in some way. Care may be provided by professionals at home or in a care facility, but often the caregiver is the person's partner or another family member.

What we are seeing is that carers may also need additional support themselves, especially if they are also older - our vision is that technology can provide it,' explains Mr Herjan van den Heuvel of Smart Homes (Eng), the Dutch Expertise Centre on Home Automation and Smart Living, which oversaw the robot's development.

The median age across the European Union's current 28 Member States, which was around 41.2 years in 2011, is projected to rise to 47.6 years by 2060, while the number of people aged 65 and over will almost double to make up 29.5 % of the population, according to Eurostat's latest population projections.

Meanwhile, the percentage of people aged 80 and above is expected to triple by 2060.

With age-related illnesses also set to increase in line with that trend, more and more people across Europe will need care and assistance if they are to maintain their quality of life, stay healthy and avoid social exclusion.

Developed over 33 months by a consortium of research institutes, universities and technology companies in seven European countries - Finland, France, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United Kingdom - the companion robot helps address those issues.

It is just one of several results of an EU-funded project titled 'An integrated intelligent home environment for the provision of health, nutrition and well-being services to older adults' ( MOBISERV), which received EUR 2.75 million in research funding from the European Commission.

NASA Hubble: First Supernova Companion Star Found

An international team of astronomers has, for the first time, observed a stellar "survivor" to emerge from a double star system involving an exploded supernova.

Supernovae are some of the most significant sources of chemical elements in the universe, and they are at the heart of our understanding of the evolution of galaxies.

In this artist's view the red super-giant supernova progenitor star (left) is exploding after having transferred about 10 solar masses of hydrogen gas to the blue companion star (right).

Image Credit: NASA

NASA Spitzer Image: Coolest of Companions

These two infrared images were taken by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope in 2004 and 2009. 

They show a faint object moving through space together with a dead star called a white dwarf. 

The object, thought to be a "failed" star, or brown dwarf, is the coldest stellar companion to be directly imaged outside our solar system. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Penn State

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has captured a picture of a nearby star and its orbiting companion -- whose temperature is like a hot summer day in Arizona.

"We have discovered a new record-holder for the coldest companion imaged outside of the solar system, which is nearly as cold as Earth," said Kevin Luhman, an astronomer at The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, and lead author of a pair of papers on the findings in The Astrophysical Journal. "We believe the object is a brown dwarf, but it could be a gas-giant planet as well."

Based on the infrared light that it emits, the cool object, named WD 0806-661 B, appears to have a temperature in the range of 80 and 160 degrees Fahrenheit (about 27 to 70 degrees Celsius).

On the lower end, WD 0806-661 B offers a rather pleasant terrestrial temperature and is not even as warm as the human body.

Researchers ballpark WD 0806-661 B's mass between six and nine Jupiters, which means it could still qualify as a planet, albeit a particularly hefty one made mostly of gas. Instead, they suspect it's a type of failed star, called a brown dwarf.

WD 0806-661 B probably belongs to a recently discovered new class of objects called Y dwarfs, the coldest category of brown dwarfs.

Astronomers using NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) announced the unveiling of the first six Y dwarfs in August.

Those objects do not orbit stars and instead are floating by themselves in space, unlike WD 0806-661 B.

Together, WISE and Spitzer are proving complementary in tracking down ever-cooler brown dwarfs, all the way down to the Y class.

Subaru Telescope Spots Tiny Companion Planet To Sun-Like Star

This August 2009 discovery image of GJ 758 B was taken with the Subaru Telescope's HiCIAO instrument in the near infrared, which measures and records differences in heat.


Without the special technique employed here (angular differential imaging), the star's glare would overwhelm the light from the planet candidates.


The planet-like object, GJ 758 B, is circled as B in the lower right portion of the image. An unconfirmed companion planet or planet-like object, C, can be viewed above B.


The star, GJ 758, is located at the center of the image, at the hub of the starburst. The graphic at the top compares the orbital distances of solar system planets. Credit: Max Planck Institute for Astronomy/National Astronomical Observatory of Japan