StarDate

Lightning may flash through the skies of Mars. But don’t expect to see big, jagged streaks like those produced by storms on Earth. Instead, they may be tiny sparks – like fireflies twinkling through a summer evening.

On Earth, lightning is generated by the motions of bits of ice inside clouds. As the particles move past each other, they build up an electric charge. They dis-charge as lightning.

The clouds on Mars are high and thin, so there’s no way for them to make big lightning bolts. But the dust grains that swirl through the Martian atmosphere might generate their own discharges. And two recent studies found evidence of them.

In the first, researchers combed through recordings made by a microphone on the Perseverance rover. They found 55 instances of small “crackling” sounds near the rover. Almost all of them happened during dust storms, or when small dust devils passed the rover.

The scientists decided the most likely explanation for the crackles was tiny discharges – “lightning” bolts about a centimeter long.

In the second study, a team looked at observations made by the MAVEN orbiter. The scientists looked for radio waves produced by lightning, which are different from other types of radio from the planet. They found a single example – a possible flicker in Martian skies.

Even if lightning is small and rare, it could interfere with future Mars landers – perhaps endangering instruments and people on the Red Planet.

Script by Damond Benningfield

Stargazers on Mars might face one of the same challenges that often hampers a night under the stars here on Earth: clouds. A recent study found that clouds on the Red Planet tend to be thicker at night than during the day. They’re thickest in early morning and evening, especially when Mars is coldest.

A fleet of orbiters and landers has been scanning the planet for decades. The probes have told us quite a bit about the Martian climate. The cloud study came from a craft that’s been in orbit since 2021. It watched the clouds both day and night. It amassed the most complete view of the nighttime sky to date.

Another study looked at Martian winds. Researchers used AI to sift through more than two decades of images collected by two orbiters. The program identified more than a thousand dust devils – twisting columns of air that sweep dust high into the sky, such as this one recorded by the Perseverance rover. [dust devil sounds]

Tracking the motions of the little devils allowed scientists to plot the speed and direction of the winds across the whole planet. The study revealed peak wind speeds of almost a hundred miles per hour – far faster than anything ever recorded by instruments on the surface.

These studies and others are helping scientists better understand how the Martian climate works – day and night, in every season.

More about Martian climate tomorrow.

Script by Damond Benningfield

Time is tricky. There’s no “universal” clock ticking along at a constant rate. Instead, every clock in the universe ticks at its own rate, influenced by its motion and by the gravity of the matter around it. Those influences are built into the clocks of GPS satellites; without them, the system would fail within days.

Scientists recently calculated how clocks would tick on Mars – an average of 477 millionths of a second faster per day than clocks on Earth. But as Mars orbits the Sun, that rate varies by up to 226 millionths of a second.

The scientists used Albert Einstein’s theories of gravity and motion. Stronger gravity and faster motion both make a clock move more slowly as seen by an outside observer. The surface gravity of Mars is only about a third as strong as Earth’s. And because the planet is farther from the Sun, it orbits the Sun more slowly.

But Mars’s orbit is more lopsided than Earth’s, so its orbital speed varies more dramatically. The changing distance also alters the gravitational influence of the Sun, as well as that of Earth and the Moon. The researchers incorporated all of these variables – and many others – to figure out the ticking of Martian clocks.

Mars is working its way into the morning sky. It’s quite low in the east during dawn twilight. But the planet will climb a little higher day by day, and will be in good view this summer.

More about Mars tomorrow.

Script by Damond Benningfield

The Moon creeps up on the heart of Leo tonight, the star Regulus. Regulus is close to the upper left of the Moon at nightfall. The Moon will move closer before they set, around 2 a.m. They’ll be closest together as seen from the West Coast.

The star we see as Regulus is called Regulus A. It’s several times bigger and heavier than the Sun, and much brighter. A tiny companion star is so close that it’s impossible to see through the glare.

That duo appears to have two more companions, Regulus B and C. They form their own pair, orbiting each other once every 600 years or so. Regulus B is about 80 percent the size and mass of the Sun, and one-third as bright. Regulus C is a third of the Sun’s mass and size, and just two percent as bright.

Regulus B and C are 79 light-years from Earth – the same distance as Regulus A. And they’re moving through space in the same speed and direction as the brighter star. That suggests that they’re bound to Regulus A. But they’re a long way from it – several thousand times the distance between Earth and the Sun.

So astronomers haven’t watched the system nearly long enough to calculate a mutual orbit for the two pairs of stars. Estimates say it would take more than a hundred-thousand years for them to complete one circuit. So it’s possible that they’re not really bound at all – just a chance alignment at the bright heart of the lion.

Script by Damond Benningfield

A space telescope is scheduled for a rescue. If the plan works, a small spacecraft will boost it to a higher orbit. That would allow the telescope to keep watching the skies for years.

Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory was launched in late 2004. It watches the universe at a wide range of wavelengths, from visible light to gamma rays – the most powerful form of energy.

Its original mission was to study gamma-ray bursts – the explosive deaths of massive stars. They’re among the most violent events in the universe, and among the “swiftest” – they fade in as little as a few seconds. So the telescope has to pivot swiftly when a new burst occurs – hence its name.

Swift’s original altitude was 375 miles. But the Sun has been especially active in recent years. It’s heated Earth’s atmosphere, causing it to expand. That’s dragged the telescope to less than 250 miles. There’s a good chance it could fall from orbit by the end of the year.

The rescue mission is scheduled for launch within a few weeks. Swift wasn’t designed to be serviced in orbit, so it’ll take some delicate maneuvering to not harm its delicate equipment. The rescue ship will spend a couple of weeks flying around the observatory, giving controllers time to plot the capture. Once latched on, the craft will boost the telescope back to its original altitude – allowing it to keep watching some of the most powerful events in the universe.

Script by Damond Benningfield

The Moon lines up with the twins of Gemini this evening – the stars Pollux and Castor. Pollux is the brighter twin, and is closer to the Moon. The brilliant planet Jupiter is to the lower right of the Moon.

Gemini has been around for thousands of years. Its roots trace back to ancient Babylon, as do those of many other constellations. All of them were recorded in one of the most important works of astronomy in the ancient world. Known as the Almagest, it was written by Claudius Ptolemy around the year 150.

Ptolemy studied many fields, including astronomy, astrology, geology, and music theory. The Almagest is perhaps his most famous work. In it, he recorded the positions of a thousand stars, and included details on the motions of the Sun, Moon, and planets. He also discussed everything from eclipses to the length of the year.

The book listed 48 constellations that were visible from northern skies – Gemini among them. The constellations weren’t given any borders – just the regions of the sky in which they appeared. And some barren regions weren’t part of any constellation.

Over the centuries, astronomers shifted things around some. And they created constellations for southern skies as well. Finally, in 1930, they created an “official” list of 88 constellations. Each one was given precise borders. That gave every star a home – its own “address” in the universe.

Script by Damond Benningfield

Hurricane season is whirling to life in the northern hemisphere. The giant storms twirl across the ocean, developing deadly winds, rains, and storm surges. As they grow, they trace a familiar pattern – cloud bands spinning counter-clockwise around the central eye.

That spin is a result of the Coriolis effect. It’s caused by a combination of Earth’s rotation and its shape.

Because Earth is a sphere, locations on the equator move more than 24,000 miles in 24 hours. Locations off the equator move a much smaller distance in the same time. So, as a storm moves across the northern hemisphere, its southern edge moves faster than its northern edge. This causes the storm to rotate counter-clockwise.

The Coriolis effect is much more pronounced on the giant worlds of the outer solar system – especially Jupiter. It’s the biggest planet, and it has the fastest rotation – one turn in less than 10 hours. That combination deflects what normally would be north-south winds into east-west winds. They can blow at hundreds of miles per hour. They separate Jupiter’s atmosphere into wide bands. Individual storms – some the size of continents or bigger – spin through the bands, or along their boundaries – monster storms spinning through alien skies.

Jupiter stands to the upper left of the Moon this evening. It looks like a brilliant star. The twins of Gemini are above the Moon, and we’ll have more about them tomorrow.

Script by Damond Benningfield

There’s a beautiful conjunction between the Moon and the planet Venus early this evening. Venus is the “evening star” – the brightest object in the night sky after the Moon. The Moon is a thin crescent – the Sun illuminates only a sliver of the lunar hemisphere that faces Earth.

We can’t see it, but the Moon is moving farther from us – by about an inch and a half per year. It’s been moving away since it was born, when Earth was young. In fact, that shift was one of the clues that led to the leading theory of how the Moon was born.

In the chaotic conditions of the early solar system, Earth was walloped by a planet about the size of Mars. That blasted debris into orbit around Earth. Much of that material quickly coalesced to form one or more moons. Today’s Moon is the only survivor.

The collision caused Earth to spin much faster, so a day was much shorter than it is now. Gravitational interactions between Earth and Moon have slowed us down. But they’ve also caused the Moon to slide farther away. The process isn’t smooth – the Moon speeds up and slows down. And it won’t stay smooth in the future.

Given enough time, the Earth-Moon system would reach a point when the same hemisphere of Earth would always face the Moon, and the Moon would stop moving away. But that time may never come. It could be so far in the future that the Sun will have expired – perhaps destroying Earth and its slip-sliding Moon.

Script by Damond Benningfield

Many astronomical discoveries have come in stages – a series of “aha” moments where we learn more about the nature of an object.

A good example is Messier 13, the Great Hercules Cluster. Under especially dark skies, it’s just visible to the unaided eye, so people have known about it forever. It looks like a faint, hazy star. But during the 1700s, the cluster was “discovered” several times.

The first discovery was made by Edmond Halley. Using a small telescope, he came across it in 1714. He described it as “a little patch.” Charles Messier saw it a half-century later. He described it as “round, beautiful, and brilliant.” But, he wrote, “I am sure it doesn’t contain any star.” He made it the 13th object in his catalog.

In 1779, though, William Herschel contradicted Messier. M13 “is a most beautiful cluster of stars,” he wrote.

Many other discoveries have followed. They’ve told us that M13 contains hundreds of thousands of stars packed into a tight ball. And the cluster is ancient – 12 billion years old or older.

Messier 13 is 25,000 light-years away. In early evening, look in the east-northeast for the Keystone of Hercules – a lopsided “square” of stars. M13 is between the two stars at the top of that pattern, a bit closer to the one on the left – a giant cluster that’s still producing amazing discoveries.

Script by Damond Benningfield

Most of the stars in the Milky Way orbit the center of the galaxy in the same direction as all the other stars around them, and at about the same speed.

But a few follow their own paths. An example is a star at the tip of the Guitar Nebula. The nebula is a bubble of gas with an outline that resembles a guitar.

It’s in Cepheus, which is low in the north at nightfall. The king’s brightest stars form an outline that resembles a child’s drawing of a house. Don’t look for the nebula, though – it’s so faint that it wasn’t discovered until 1992.

The guitar was sculpted by a pulsar – the crushed corpse of a mighty star. It spins once every two-thirds of a second, emitting a beam of energy that sweeps past Earth on each turn.

The pulsar was born when the star exploded as a supernova. The explosion must have been off-center, so it gave the dead core a powerful kick. The pulsar is plowing through clouds of gas and dust at almost two million miles per hour. It leaves an expanding wake behind it, like a ship traveling across the ocean.

That wake is what we see as the Guitar.

But there’s more to the nebula than meets the eye. X-ray telescopes in space reveal a long, high-speed “jet.” It’s firing away from the tip of the nebula at a right angle to the nebula itself. The jet most likely is powered by the pulsar’s magnetic field, which funnels charged particles away from the pulsar – an interesting note from a celestial guitar.

Script by Damond Benningfield