… the More We Find

Astronomy is a win-win proposition. You look at the sky with your naked eye and you see stars, planets, maybe a galaxy or two if you have the right observing conditions. You can always find something great to see.

If you magnify the view, you get to see more stuff that’s dimmer, farther away, and in more detail. It’s the science that keeps on giving, no matter what at what level you understand things.

If you REALLY magnify the view, say with a telescope like Hubble, you find things you’d never see with the naked eye. The top image is a view of the star Sirus, which lies just over 8 light-years away. It’s a blue-white star, and if you look at the belt of Orion and trace a line down from it to the horizon, you’ll run right into Sirius.

This star has a companion which is terribly difficult to see. It’s a white dwarf star called Sirius B. It’s not an easy star to spot because the brightness of Sirius overpowers the faint little glow of the companion. Hubble scientists managed to spot this Sirius-hugging little star by overexposing the bright star to get the dim glow of its little sibling.

The second image is a result of ongoing observations of the planet Uranus. HST scientists found a pair of rings (very thin, to be sure) circling the gas giant. We already knew that Uranus had rings, but this new discovery also tells us something is furnishing the dust that creates planetary rings. In thise case, a little moon called Mab that orbits the planet is most likely the source of the dust. Meteoroid impacts knock material from Mab’s surface, sending it into space. Ultimately it gets caught up into orbit around Uranus.

This is why I find astronomy a continual source of fascination. There’s always something new to find, to see, to learn. The universe is a great show-and-tell machine!