Pan: Saturn’s Ravioli-Shaped Moon

The universe served up a piece of Astro-pareidolia last week when humanity got its first close-up look at Saturn's tiny moon Pan. Appropriately named after the half-man, half-goat satyr from Greek mythology, Pan is nestled in the Encke (pronounced EN-key) Gap within Saturn's A ring. NASA's Cassini spacecraft flew just 15,268 miles past the moonlet (closer than the distance to the geosynchronous satellites from Earth) on March 7th.

Cassini's close-up of Saturn's moon Pan -  NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute.

'Nearing its end, Cassini delights again,” says Carolyn Porco (Space Science Institute) on Twitter. “Here is 35-km Pan in mind-blowing detail with its unmistakable accretionary equatorial bulge.”

Mark Showalter (then at Stanford University) discovered Pan on July 16, 1990. Showalter and colleagues first inferred the tiny moon's presence by the waves it kicked up in the wake of its passage through the Encke Gap. After accurately predicting the moon's orbit, Pan was found in 11 images taken by Voyager 2 during its August 1981 flyby.

The moon orbits Saturn every 13.8 hours from an average distance of 134,000 kilometers (80,150 miles), equivalent to about one-third the Earth-Moon distance, and just 73,000 miles from the Saturnian cloud tops), the 34x31x21-kilometer moon carves out the Encke Gap in Saturn's outermost bright A Ring. On Earth, Pan would just barely fit inside Tampa Bay. The moon has an albedo (or reflectance) of 50%, equivalent to dirty snow.

Unlike the narrow 35-kilometer-wide Keeler gap occupied by the tiny moonlet Daphnis, the wider 325-kilometer Encke Gap also hosts a tenuous ringlet that Pan braids and modifies. While the Daphnis is slightly inclined to the plane of Saturn's rings by 0.0036 degrees and kicks up vertical waves in its wake, the orbit of Pan is nearly flat with an inclination of only 0.0001 degrees, and it induces spiral density waves in the ring plane.

Read Full Source Article at http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/welcome-pan-saturns-ravioli-shaped-moon/

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Don’t Underestimate Tiny Telescopes

In a period of ever-larger observatories, you may imagine that there's no longer a place for small-aperture ground-based telescopes. However, small ground-based telescopes have been in charge of the disclosure and portrayal of around 250 exoplanets so far — and these are the objectives that are particularly valuable for exoplanet science, as they are more effectively followed up than the swoon revelations made by telescopes like Kepler.

The KELT-North telescope in Arizona. 
Courtesy Vanderbilt University.

The Kilogree Extremely Little Telescope (KELT) comprises two telescopes — one in Arizona and one in South Africa — that each has a 4.2-centimeter opening. Altogether, KELT watches around 70% of the whole sky hunting down planets traveling brilliant hosts. Furthermore, it's as of later discovered a significant intriguing one: KELT-16b. In a publication led by Thomas Oberst (Westminster College in Pennsylvania), a group of researchers introduces their find.

KELT-16b is what's known as a hot Jupiter. Utilizing the KELT information and follow-up perceptions of 19 travels, Oberst and colleagues assess KELT-16b's sweep at about 1.4 circumstances that of Jupiter and its mass at 2.75 circumstances Jupiter's. Its balance temperature is a burning 2453 K — brought about by the way that it circles so near its host star that it finishes each circle in an unimportant 0.97 days!

This brief period is amazingly irregular: there are just five other known traveling exoplanets with periods shorter than a day. KELT-16b is circling near its host, making it subject to extraordinary light and solid tidal powers.

In light of KELT-16b's circle, Oberst and colleagues gauge that the planet started a runaway inspiral by the age of 1 billion years. Presently, at ~3.1 billion years of age, KELT-16b is circling at a sweep of a little more than 3 stellar radii over its host's surface. The creators appraise that KELT-16b's proceeding with internal winding could end in the planet's annihilation by tidal powers in as meager as an additional 550,000 years.

Artist’s impression of a transiting hot-Jupiter planet. The recently discovered KELT-16b orbits so close to its host that it zips around it in less than a day! 
NASA/ESA/G. Bacon (STScI)

This exceptionally lighted world makes for a particularly valuable focus because of its brief period (which implies we can watch many travels) and brilliant host (which implies follow-up perceptions are more advantageous and have a vast flag-to-clamor proportion). Specifically, with follow-up perceptions of KELT-16b from missions like Hubble, Spitzer, and in the end the James Webb Space Telescope, we can take in more about open inquiries in exoplanet air forms — like how warmth is exchanged vertically through the air, or what occurs at the day-to-night eliminator line on such a profoundly lighted planet.

What's more, by studying KELT-16b, we can want to increase our general knowledge of hot Jupiter arrangement and movement. The simplicity of watching this planet and the abundance of data it can give will probably make it one of the top considered exoplanets. KELT-16b has a ton to show us before it's torn and separated!

Article Source: Thomas E. Oberst et al 2017 AJ 153 97. doi:10.3847/1538-3881/153/3/97

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Remote Robotic Telescope Lab Notes - Part 3

It's been about a month since the last blog about our work on the ATEO project, but that doesn't mean we haven't been busy. Last time we took a look at some of the hardware being used for ATEO, introducing some new technology we are throwing into the mix (by way of Raspberry Pi) to keep things interesting. Now we'll take a peek at some of the software that will be used as part of ATEO, specifically the UI (user interface) that will be the student's access point into the ATEO telescope.

For the ATEO project, we wanted to be able to deliver our "product" via the World Wide Web: all a student should need to access the ATEO telescopes is a browser and an internet connection. Our first challenge with designing and implementing a web-based tool was: how do we choose from the overabundance of available web application stacks (PHP, Ruby, Node, etc...), all of which provide what we need with varying degrees of complexity and success? The choice turned out to not be very difficult since we wanted to hit the ground running and not spend lots of time learning new languages, and this meant that a JavaScript implementation using NodeJS was the best choice. In particular, we chose the HapiJS framework which allows us to build not only the web application portal but also the APIs needed to tie everything together.

Now, what will it look like? Here is an initial look at a prototype of the portal home page:

ATEO Online Portal on a Desktop Computer.

Following the KISS principle ("Keep it Simple, Stupid"), the idea is to make it very obvious what each section and link do; we want to avoid confusing the user by minimizing the clutter which can result from having too much information on one page. This solution is also tablet and mobile-friendly: the portal dynamically adjusts its layout according to the size of the browser so you will not be restricted to using a desktop or laptop when using ATEO.

Online Portal on an iPhone 6.

Up next: since we have working versions of the profile page and the others will be following shortly, expect a follow-up blog post on the status of the ATEO Portal with screenshots and more information on what each of these areas does. Until then - clear skies!

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