Category Archives: astronomy research

The Vortex Lives!

Hypnotic Cloud Movements on a Sister Planet

Venus’s dynamic vortexIt’s mysterious. It looks alive. And, like so many other “mysteries” of the solar system, it has a name: the South Polar Vortex. Is this a place on Earth, like the so-called Oregon Vortex or the one that hooks tourists to seek out new age “wisdom” at Sedona, Arizona?

Nope. This one’s on Venus, and unlike the optical and “psychic” illusions hawked in the other two places, this one’s a real phenomenon. It’s a region in the polar atmosphere of Venus where atmospheric gases flow at different levels of the atmosphere. The undulating motion is a lot like what you might see if you pulled the plug on a bathtub full of water as the hot liquid gurgles down the pipes.

According to the folks at the European Space Agency, which runs the Venus Express mission currently studying our cloud-covered planetary neighbor, it’s not completely clear how the vortex formed and stays in place. Colin Wilson, at the University of Oxford, had a plausible suggestion grounded in every day atmospheric physics: “One explanation is that atmospheric gases heated by the Sun at the equator, rise and then move poleward,” he said. “In the polar regions, they converge and sink again. As the gases move towards the poles, they are deflected sideways because of the planet’s rotation.”

Wilson and others will keep a close eye on this vortex that is quite similar to other atmospheric vortices on Earth, including those observed at the centers of hurricanes. Nothing new-aged here, folks: it’s all good, solid planetary science!

Mood Indigo: Ultraviolet Views of Starbirth in the Universe

A Swift Look at Starbirth in M33

Star formation is a hot topic, in more ways than one. When you look at an ultraviolet (UV) view of starbirth, you can see why. Hot young stars light up their birth clouds in ultraviolet light. In turn, the clouds radiate UV, a starbirth nebula’s equivalent of a baby monitor in a nursery. So, if you want to see where the hot action of star birth is taking place in a galaxy, look at it with a special UV-sensitive instrument. The star nurseries just stand out like beacons.

M33 as seen by SwiftThat’s basically what the Swift satellite did. It’s a multi-wavelength orbiting observatory, tuned to gamma-ray, x-ray, and UV/optical wavelengths of light. Between December 23, 2007 and January 4, 2008, Swift took a look at the galaxy M33 in the constellation Triangulum. The image mosaic it returned pinpoints the UV tracers of starbirth in exquisitely high resolution. It shows a galaxy ablaze with starbirth regions more active than the Milky Way or Andromeda galaxies.

Image credit: NASA/Swift Science Team/Stefan Immler. This image was created by combining 39 different frames taken during 11 hours of exposures. The bright areas are starbirth regions.