Howdy stargazers and welcome to this episode
of Star Trails. Drew here, and I'll be your guide
to the night sky for the week starting May 11th
through the 17th. This week we welcome the Flower
Moon. We say goodbye to the last remnants of
the Eta Aquarid meteor shower, and we revisit
a topic from a previous episode to learn what
happens when a red giant eats a neutron star.
The universe can be a very weird place. Whether
you're tuning in from the backyard, the balcony,
or just your imagination, I'm glad you're here.
So find a cozy spot, let your eyes adjust, and
let's see what the sky holds for us this week.
Before we take a look at this week's night sky,
I wanted to briefly mention a topic that's been
showing up in my news feeds recently, and maybe
yours too. There have been a number of headlines
in recent weeks concerning the discovery of what
could be a candidate for the elusive Planet 9,
also known as Planet X. A massive, enigmatic
world in our own solar system lurking somewhere
out beyond Pluto. The idea of an undiscovered
planet isn't new. In fact, it stretches back
more than a century. Early astronomers noticed
discrepancies in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune
that led them to suspect another planet was tugging
on them gravitationally. This theoretical body
was often referred to as Planet X. While Pluto
was discovered in 1930 during that search, it
was quickly deemed too small to explain the gravitational
anomalies, and the mystery persisted. Fast forward
to 2016. A pair of Caltech astronomers, Mike
Brown and Konstantin Batygin, reignited the Planet
9 discussion. They were looking at the odd clustering
of several distant trans -Neptunian objects,
or TNOs, icy bodies way out in the Kuiper Belt
and beyond. Their orbits seemed to be shepherded
by something massive. The best explanation was
a yet undiscovered planet at least five to ten
times the mass of Earth, orbiting far beyond
Pluto on a highly elliptical, tilted path. If
real, this ninth planet would take 10 ,000 to
20 ,000 years to complete a single orbit. Since
then, astronomers have been combing sky surveys
and telescope archives looking for any sign of
this ghostly planet, and just recently there's
been a possible breakthrough. Using infrared
data from two old space missions, NASA's IRIS
satellite from 1983 and Japan's Akari Observatory
from the 2000s, researchers may have spotted
a faint object moving slowly across the sky in
images taken 23 years apart. That kind of motion,
combined with its faintness, is exactly what
you'd expect from a distant planet orbiting hundreds
of times farther from the Sun than Earth. This
candidate object appears to be roughly the right
mass, somewhere between 5 and 10 Earth masses.
Its orbit seems to be tilted about 120 degrees
relative to the plane of the solar system. That's
far more extreme than what the Planet 9 model
predicts, which puts the tilt more around 15
to 25 degrees, because remember our solar system
is largely flat. In other words, this might not
be THE Planet 9, but it could be A Planet 9,
a new unknown planetary body in the far outer
solar system. Mike Brown, the same astronomer
who helped revive the Planet 9 theory, has expressed
skepticism about this new candidate. He points
out that the extreme tilt doesn't match what
they expected. Still, the discovery is intriguing
and adds fuel to the idea that we really don't
know everything about what's lurking in the solar
system's deep freeze. We're expecting a lot more
clarity in the coming years. The Vera C. Rubin
Observatory in Chile, set to begin operations
soon, will conduct an incredibly deep, wide -field
sky survey that could either confirm this object
or uncover something even more compelling. So,
if you've been seeing headlines about Planet
Nine lately, you're not alone. The hunt is heating
up again, and we may be closer than ever to discovering
a whole new world orbiting in the shadows. And
if you want to learn more about this search,
look way back into our archive to episode 14.
On Monday, we witness May's full moon, traditionally
known as the Flower Moon. The name originates
from Native American cultures, notably the Algonquin
people, who associated the May full moon with
the abundance of blooming flowers during this
time of year. This full moon is also a micro
-moon, occurring when the moon is near its apogee,
making it appear slightly smaller than usual.
Despite its size, it will illuminate the night
sky beautifully. The planets are very much the
same as they've been for the past few weeks.
In the evening sky, Jupiter shines brightly in
the west after sunset, setting before midnight.
Mars remains reddish and prominent, located higher
in the sky above Jupiter, passing through Cancer.
You'll be able to see it until about 2 a .m.
In the morning sky, Venus remains visible in
the east after about 4 .30 a .m. until just before
sunrise. Venus is currently at a very bright,
negative 4 .3 magnitude, so you can't miss it.
Venus and Saturn are in a conjunction less than
10 degrees apart. Look for Saturn a bit above
and to the right of Venus. It's currently at
a magnitude of 1. Mercury remains elusive, lost
in the morning sun's glare. While its peak occurred
earlier in May, the Etta aquarid meteor shower
remains active through May 21st. It's best viewed
in the pre -dawn hours, especially in areas with
minimal light pollution. These meteors are caused
by debris from Halley's Comet, and they will
appear to radiate from the southeast sky, from
the constellation Aquarius, although you'll be
able to see them in any portion of the sky. High
in the eastern sky, you'll find Corona Borealis,
the northern crown. In Greek mythology, this
semicircular constellation represents the crown
of Princess Ariadne of Crete. gifted to her by
the god Dionysus on their wedding day. After
her death, Dionysus placed the crown in the heavens
to honor her. This constellation is home to the
blaze star T. coroni borealis, a binary star
system located about 3 ,000 light years away.
TCB is a recurrent nova, and we know it's erupted
at least twice before, in 1866 and in 1946, roughly
80 years apart. Astronomers anticipate its next
eruption could occur soon, potentially making
it visible to the naked eye for about a week,
about as bright as the star Polaris. Two weeks
ago on Star Trails, we explored the wild phenomenon
of runaway stars. Celestial bodies ejected from
their stellar neighborhoods at incredible speeds,
often owing to violent gravitational interactions
or supernova kicks. But what happens when a runaway
star doesn't escape but crashes into another
star instead? That brings us to one of the weirdest
and most intriguing star types ever proposed,
the Thorne -Zitkow object. Back in the 1970s,
physicist Kip Thorne, who you might know from
his work on gravitational waves and as the science
advisor for the film Interstellar, teamed up
with Polish astrophysicist Anna Zitkow. Together,
they theorize the existence of a bizarre kind
of star that could form under extreme circumstances.
A neutron star, that's the dense core remnant
of a supernova, merging into a red supergiant.
The science is mind -bending. A neutron star
is roughly the size of a city, but contains more
mass than our sun. If such an object were to
collide with a red supergiant, it wouldn't just
pass through. It would sink to the core of the
larger star, embedding itself there, and essentially
take over its inner workings. This hybrid part
-star and part -Frankenstein experiment is what
we now call a Thorn -Zitkow Object, or TZO. These
objects are difficult to locate. On the outside,
they look almost exactly like normal red supergiants.
But inside, the neutron star is altering the
star's fusion process in bizarre ways. TZOs are
expected to produce unusual amounts of certain
heavy elements like rubidium, molybdenum, and
lithium that aren't typically abundant in red
giants. So far, only one strong candidate has
emerged, a star known as HV2112, located in the
small Magellanic cloud. This star shows a chemical
fingerprint that fits the profile, though some
scientists argue alternative explanations are
still on the table. If confirmed, HV2112 would
be the first real -life Thorne -Zitkow object
ever discovered. A neutron star cocooned inside
a swollen red giant envelope, the aftermath of
a stellar collision or a failed binary. It's
essentially a star that died, then was reborn
inside another, invisible to the eye, yet rewriting
the physics of its host from within. Eventually,
it's theorized the star's structure destabilizes
and the whole system may collapse into a black
hole, leaving behind almost no trace of what
once was. If the stars spoke to you this week,
or if a question's been on your mind, I'd love
to hear it. Visit our website, StarTrails .Show,
where you can contact me and explore past episodes.
Be sure to follow us on Mastodon, Blue Sky, and
YouTube. Links are in the show notes. Until we
meet again beneath the stars, clear skies everyone.