The Other Moon Race: Jupiter vs. Saturn

~ J.S. Pailly ~ Leave a comment

Hello, friends!

As you know, there’s a new moon race going on, a new race to return humans to the Moon!  But that’s not the moon race we’re talking about today.  No, today we’re talking about the race between Jupiter and Saturn to be the planet with the most moons in the Solar System.

You might expect Jupiter to win this easily.  Jupiter’s the biggest planet, and Jupiter has the most gravity.  Shouldn’t Jupiter end up with the most moons?  Well, Saturn has one not-so-obvious advantage over Jupiter: Saturn is farther away from the Sun.  That means a moon orbiting Saturn is less likely to be yanked away by the Sun’s gravity than a moon orbiting Jupiter.

This has to do with a concept in astrophysics called the Hill sphere, named after American astronomer/mathematician George William Hill.  This can get a bit technical, so if you want to learn more please check out the “What to Learn More?” section below.  This gist is this: a Hill sphere is the area around a planet where the planet’s gravity is more important than the gravity of the Sun.  The size of a Hill sphere is determined by two factors: how massive is the planet, and how far away is the Sun?

Saturn may be smaller than Jupiter, and she may have less gravity than Jupiter, but she’s so much farther away from the Sun that she ends up having the larger Hill sphere.  So which planet has the most moons?  Well, over the past few decades, as astronomers have discovered more and more moons orbiting each planet, it’s been a bit of a horserace.  Sometimes Saturn’s ahead by a couple moons, then Jupiter will catch up and take the lead, then Saturn will take the lead again for a while, and so on.

But in the last year or so, that’s changed.  Saturn has surged way ahead in the “moon race.”  At the time of this writing, Jupiter is known to have 115 moons.  Saturn, meanwhile, has 292.  We can safely assume that more moons will be discovered orbiting both planets, so the race isn’t over; however, I’m going to make a prediction now.  I don’t think Jupiter’s going to win this.

I don’t think Saturn will win, either.  There are (at least) two more planets farther away from the Sun than Saturn.  If having the biggest Hill sphere is the key to winning this moon race, Neptune’s Hill sphere is larger than Jupiter and Saturn’s Hill spheres combined (and if the Planet Nine hypothesis turns out to be correct, God only knows how large Planet Nine’s Hill sphere must be).

At the moment, Neptune is only known to have 16 moons.  I’m predicting today that as our telescopes continue to advance and as our observing techniques continue to improve, Neptune’s moon count will go up.  By a lot.  Ultimately, I’m predicting that Neptune’s total moon count will exceed Jupiter’s and Saturn’s by far.

WANT TO LEARN MORE?

Here’s an article from CosmoBC on Hill spheres, including a chart listing the radius of the Hill spheres of each planet of the Solar System (plus a few of the dwarf planets).

Here’s an article by Phil Plait on how the Moon stays in orbit by staying inside Earth’s Hill sphere.  It’s an older article, but it’s still very much worth a read if you want to understand how Hill spheres work.

Here’s an article from Earth Sky on the current totals for Jupiter’s  and Saturn’s moons.

And here’s another article from Earth Sky on the total number of moons for Uranus and Neptune, with a little information about why discovering moons orbiting Uranus and Neptune is still so difficult for us.

Lastly, I mentioned the Planet Nine hypothesis.  If you don’t know what that is, click here.

The art in today’s post is my own original work.  I don’t use A.I. for anything, ever.  If you like my art, please consider visiting the I-Love-Space store on RedBubble.  Even if you don’t buy anything, just visiting my store and clicking the like button on a few things helps me a lot.  Thank you, friends!

Mercury in the Sky with Diamonds

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 4 Comments

Hello, friends!  Today’s post is mainly intended for Sci-Fi writers, but I’m hoping others will find it interesting, too.

Mercury, the planet closest to the Sun, perhaps the most overlooked and under-appreciated planet in the Solar System, may possess a precious and beautiful secret: diamonds.  So many diamonds!  Tiny diamonds may be scattered all across Mercury’s surface, with even more diamond buried deep, deep, deep underground.

Superficially, Mercury looks a lot like Earth’s moon.  They’re both rocky, airless worlds peppered with impact craters.  They’re both kind of grey, except Mercury is a darker shade of grey than the Moon.  That darker color is caused by graphite (the same graphite found in pencil lead).

For whatever reason, when Mercury first formed, it ended up with an overabundance of carbon (and an underabundance of stuff that would normally react with carbon).  As a result, carbon atoms combined with other carbon atoms to produce plain, simple graphite.

But as I said, Mercury (like the Moon) is covered with impact craters.  A whole lot of impact craters.  In fact, Mercury is the #1 most heavily cratered planet in the Solar System.  And so, whenever an asteroid or comet rammed full speed into Mercury, the force of that impact would have put Mercury’s graphite under sudden and extreme pressure—enough pressure to compress ordinary graphite into diamond.

According to one source I read (see the “want to learn more?” section below), there’s an estimated 16 quadrillion tons of diamond on Mercury’s surface.  That’s about 16 times more diamond than the estimated total amount of diamond we have here on Earth.  But wait, there’s more!  According to another source I read (again, see the “want to learn more?” section below), Mercury may also have a layer of pure diamond buried deep underground.  This diamond layer would be roughly 10 miles thick, and it would lie roughly 300 miles down.

Given that synthetic diamonds already exist, would Mercury’s superabundance of diamonds be worth anything in the distant future?  I don’t know, but I feel like there’s potential here for a Sci-Fi story.  Whenever I learn a weird and quirky science fact like this, I treat it like a writing prompt and see if any good Sci-Fi ideas come out of it.

But I don’t have any plans to write a story about diamond mining on Mercury, which is why I’m sharing this weird and quirky science fact here on the blog, so other Sci-Fi writers can read this and ponder over it.  The planet Mercury is brimming with diamonds—way, way more diamonds than we have here on Earth.  How would you use that science fact for science fiction?

WANT TO LEARN MORE?

Here’s an article from Science News explaining how impact events on Mercury create diamonds on Mercury’s surface.

And here’s an article from Live Science explaining how a 10 mile thick layer of diamond might have formed deep beneath Mercury’s surface.

Also, I did another post on Mercury just a couple of weeks ago.  If you want to learn a few more fast facts about Mercury, click here.

The art featured in today’s post is my own original work.  If you like my art and want to support what I do on this blog, please consider visiting the I-Love-Space store on RedBubble.  Even if you don’t buy anything, just visiting and clicking the like button on some of my work would help me a lot (and obviously, if you do end up buying something, that would help me even more!).

Thank you, friends!

IWSG: Insecure Astronauts Need Support, Too

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 14 Comments

Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writers’ Support Group, a blog hop created by Alex J. Cavanaugh and co-hosted this month by Jenni Enzor, Jemima Pett, Jamie of Uniquely Maladjusted but Fun, and Kim Lajevardi.  Are you a writer?  Do you feel insecure?  Well, then this is the support group for you!  Click here to learn more and to see a list of participating blogs.

Hello, friends!

As a writer, who are your heroes?  Who are your idols?  Probably other writers, right?  Most of my heroes are other writers, like Isaac Asimov or Arthur C. Clarke; but as I pursue my writing dreams, I also find inspiration from people outside of the writing world.  So today, I want to tell you a little about Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti.

You may know Cristoforetti as the first Italian woman in space.  You may also know her as the person who cosplayed as a Starfleet officer aboard the International Space Station.  A few years back, I read Cristoforetti’s autobiography, Diary of an Apprentice Astronaut, because I wanted to know more about the daily life of astronauts (important stuff to know if you want to write science fiction).  I did learn the stuff I wanted to learn, but Cristoforetti also wrote about the doubts, fears, and insecurities that sometimes held her back from her own dreams.

It’s been a while since I read Cristoforetti’s book, so I don’t remember all of her credentials or all of the details of her career.  What I do remember is that she speaks five or six different languages, has multiple degrees in science and engineering, and trained as a fighter pilot for the Italian Navy—and then, on top of all that, she went to space.  Twice.

Samantha Cristoforetti is just so gosh darn impressive.  And yet, as she confesses in her book, she still struggles with the same doubts and insecurities that I do—that all of us do.

What’s the lesson here?  I don’t know, but my take away is this: self-doubt is normal.  It’s natural.  It’s just another part of being human.  I feel it, you feel it, E.S.A. astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti feels it.  There’s no shame in doubting yourself.  The real problem—the real thing to avoid—is when self-doubt transforms into self-sabotage.

WANT TO LEARN MORE?

Here’s an article from Italy Magazine celebrating Cristoforetti’s accomplishments as the first Italian female astronaut.

And here’s an article from Space.com about her love for Star Trek and why she wore a Starfleet uniform aboard the I.S.S.

And if you want to read Cristoforetti’s book, here’s a link to her book on Amazon.

Mercury’s #1

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 9 Comments

Hello, friends!

I love Mercury.  He’s the planet closest to the Sun, which makes him the first planet of our Solar System.  Sadly, that seems to be the limit of what the average person knows about Mercury, so today I’d like to share just a few other ways Mercury wins first place.

First off, if there were a footrace among all the planets of the Solar System, Mercury would win.  Easily.  Mercury is the #1 fastest moving planet in the Solar System.  This has a lot to do with Kepler’s laws of planetary motion and Netwon’s law of universal gravitation, but I think I can explain this without digging into Kepler or Newton’s math.  Imagine you’re a planet and you don’t want to fall into the Sun.  You’ll need to keep moving to maintain your orbit.  The closer you are to the Sun, the more you’ll have to fight the Sun’s gravity, and thus the faster you’ll have to move.  Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun; ergo, he’s the fastest.  (If you’d like to learn more about the math behind planetary motion, click here.)

Since Mercury is the planet closest to the Sun, you might assume Mercury is also the hottest planet.  But no, Venus is hotter than Mercury (how that happened is a story for another time).  However, Mercury does have the #1 most extreme difference between daytime and nighttime temperatures.  Daytime temperatures climb as high as 430 degrees Celsius (800 degrees Fahrenheit).  At night, the temperature rapidly drops as low as -180 degrees Celsius (-290 degrees Fahrenheit).  Why?  Because Mercury has virtually no atmosphere.  Atmospheres are like insulating blankets for planets.  Without an atmosphere, Mercury can’t retain heat at all, so all the extreme heat Mercury gets during the day is immediately lost to the vacuum of space at night.  (To learn more about Mercury’s daytime vs. nighttime temperatures, click here.)

There are plenty more ways Mercury is #1, but I’m only going to share one more with you today.  Mercury is the #1 most heavily cratered planet in the Solar System.  How did that happen?  Well, once again, Mercury has no atmosphere, which means all the smaller meteoroids that would burn up in the atmospheres of other planets make it straight through to the ground on Mercury.  Additionally, there’s very little geological activity on Mercury.  No volcanic eruptions, no major earthquakes (mercuryquakes?)… at least not in the last 3.5 billion years.  On other worlds, geologic activity helps erode and erase old impact craters, but that’s not happening on Mercury.  So Mercury gets hit more easily and has a harder time erasing old impact craters.  Those two facts add up to Mercury having more impact craters today than any other planet in our Solar System.  (To learn more about Mercury’s overabundance of craters, click here.)

In my humble opinion, Mercury doesn’t get as much love as he deserves.  I don’t know why that is, but I hope this post has piqued your curiosity and helped you appreciate Mercury a little bit more.  At the time of this writing, the BepiColombo space probe (a joint venture by the European and Japanese space agencies) has completed several flybys of Mercury.  If all goes according to plan, BepiColombo should settle into orbit around Mercury in November of this year (2026).  Here’s hoping BepiColombo will discover even more reasons to love the first planet from the Sun.

The art is today’s post is my own original work.  If you like my art, please consider visiting the I-Love-Space store on RedBubble.  Even if you don’t buy anything, just visiting and clicking the “like” button on my work helps me a lot (and obviously, if you do decide to buy something, that helps me even more).  Thank you, friends!

Artemis II: She’s Not Like Other Missions

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 15 Comments

Hello, friends!

It’s been a couple weeks since Artemis II went to space, looped around the Moon, and returned safely to Earth.  One thing really surprised me during this mission: I didn’t hear many people whining about the cost.  Whenever important NASA stuff is in the news, I always hear a ton of people whining about the cost.  But this time, not so much!  Which leaves me wondering: why was Artemis II different?

The most obvious explanation is that while Artemis II was up in space, there was this other major news story happening down here on the ground.  Now this is not a political blog, and I don’t want to dwell on politics too long, but we can’t ignore the elephant in the room: the war.  Just before Artemis II launched, the U.S. started a war with Iran.  That war is wildly unpopular and also extravagantly expensive.  When we keep hearing about the government spending one or two billion dollars per day on the war, NASA’s budget of $24 billion per year doesn’t sound so bad.

But I don’t think that’s the only reason.  Space launches used to be rare and extraordinary events, but in the last few years, they’ve been normalized.  With private companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin in the game, launches happen all the time now.  There were something like 300 launches worldwide last year!  Artemis II was still something new and different and very, very special; at the same time, though, it was just another rocket launch.  If we’re going to have 300 launches per year, it doesn’t seem outlandish for one of them to be a Moon mission.

Do you think I’m right about this?  Was your experience similar to mine, or did you hear more grumbling and griping about Artemis II’s price tag than I did?  Let me know in the comments below.

I will acknowledge that I did hear one complaint.  It was some political pundit who said something like: “NASA just sent billions of taxpayer dollars to the Moon!”  There’s plenty I could say in response to that, but that statement conjured such an amusing mental image in my head.  So I’m just going to leave you with this:

WANT TO LEARN MORE?

It wasn’t just me who felt like Artemis II was different.  According to this article from Forbes, the vast majority of Americans support the Artemis program and followed the Artemis II mission closely.

If you want to know more about NASA’s budget, check out this article from the Planetary Society.  It’s a great resource, not only for understanding NASA’s budget in particular, but for understanding the U.S. federal budgeting process as a whole.

And if you’re up for some more academic literature, here’s a research paper from the journal Space Policy examining how the federal government sometimes does (and sometimes does not) listen to public opinion regarding space exploration.

IWSG: Not Because It Is Easy, But Because It Is Hard

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 12 Comments

Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, a blog hop created by Alex J. Cavanaugh and co-hosted this month by Melissa Maygrove, Cathrina Constantine, Kate Larkinsdale, and Rebecca Douglass.  Are you a writer?  Do you feel insecure?  Well, then this is the support group for you!  Click here to learn more and to see a list of participating blogs.

Hello, friends!

Later today, if all goes according to plan, NASA’s Artemis II Mission will launch from Kennedy Space Center, carrying four astronauts on a ten-day voyage around the Moon and back again.  Artemis II will not land on the Moon, but this will still be the farthest any human has traveled away from Earth since the 1970’s.  I bring this up for today’s IWSG post because the space program has always been my favorite metaphor for writing.

First off, we writers are always falling behind schedule, always scrambling to keep up with our deadlines, and frequently missing our deadlines despite our best efforts—much like the space program!  Artemis II, for example, was originally supposed to launch in 2024, but there were set-backs.  Unforeseen difficulties.  Stuff happened and got in the way.  It honestly doesn’t take much.  I remember a rocket launch being postponed due to something as simple as a cloud being in just the wrong place at just the wrong time.  I don’t know about you, but I’ve had plenty of writing days ruined by problems almost as simple.

Another thing we writers have in common with the space program: we can’t just do the same thing over and over again.  Every space mission has different objectives, faces exceptional challenges, and requires its own unique innovations in order to succeed.  The same can be said for each new story we writers write.  Sure, there are tried-and-true formulas we can turn to for guidance.  There may be certain methods and techniques that have been helpful before and may be helpful again.  But at some point along the way, we’re going to have to do something we’ve never done before.  That’s the scariest part of the journey.  Simultaneously, that’s the part that make the journey worth taking.

And lastly, both writers and the space program have to deal with naysayers and critics: people who don’t get it, people who don’t see the point.  Why waste so much time, effort, and money reaching for the stars when there are more pragmatic things we could be doing here on the ground?  I don’t think these people understand the difference between the cost of a thing and its value.  The space program is very expensive—I am not denying that—but its value to our species is far, far greater.  Similarly, I don’t believe the value of writing can be measured with money—not my writing, and not yours.

So, my fellow writers: keep writing, keep dreaming, keep reaching for the stars.  It won’t be easy.  Writing is never easy.  But as President Kennedy would remind us: we do these things “not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

Aliens Don’t Exist

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 6 Comments

Hello, friends!

Today, I’d like to tell you a little about my 6th grade science teacher.  Oh, I remember him well!  Just not for the best of reasons.  For the purposes of this blog post, let’s call him Mr. M.

So one day, Mr. M. was teaching us about the formation of the Solar System, about how the planets of our Solar System were created from a cloud of dust and gas swirling round and round the Sun.  During this lesson, Mr. M. told us that our Solar System is unique.  He told us that science had not yet discovered any other planets orbiting any other stars, and he hazarded to guess that science never would.  He said that maybe there are no other planets out there for science to find.

Imagine that!  In the whole big, wide universe, there are only nine planets (Pluto was still considered a planet at the time).  And furthermore, the only nine planets in the entire universe all happen to be orbiting the same star!  That sounds pretty silly today, with over 6100 confirmed exoplanet discoveries now in the books.  It was also a silly thing to say at the time.  This would have been in 1996.  The first two exoplanets were discovered in 1992, orbiting a pulsar.  A third exoplanet was discovered in 1994, orbiting that same pulsar.  And then 51 Pegasi b, the first exoplanet discovered orbiting a sun-like star, was discovered in October of 1995.

So not only would science prove Mr. M. wrong—it already had.

I think about Mr. M. whenever someone tells me we’ll never discover alien life.  I think about Mr. M. whenever someone tells me that maybe there’s no alien life out there for us to find.

Frankly, I think about Mr. M. every time someone claims science will never do this or never explain that.  I may not have learned much in my 6th grade science class, but that class did help me learn one thing: there’s a long history of science proving people like Mr. M. wrong.

P.S.: Mr. M. also told us the Internet was just a fad and everyone would forget about it in a few years.  Again, this was in 1996.

The art in today’s post is my own original work.  If you like my art, please consider visiting the I-Love-Space store on RedBubble.  Even if you don’t buy anything, just visiting and clicking the “like” button on some of my work helps me a lot (and if you do decide to buy something, that obviously helps me even more!).  Thank you!

IWSG: Why Aren’t You Doing Something Useful with Your Life?

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 8 Comments

Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, a blog hop created by Alex J. Cavanaugh and co-hosted this month by PJ Colando, Ronel Janse von Vuuren, and Natalie Aguirre.  Are you a writer?  Do you feel insecure?  Well, then this is the support group for you!  Click here to learn more and to see a list of participating blogs.

Hello, friends!

I’m not a scientist, I’m not an engineer, and I don’t work for NASA.  I’m just some guy on the Internet who loves space.  In my last few IWSG posts, I talked about how I sometimes worry that I’m not sciency enough to call myself a science communicator.  Today, I want to talk about the flip-side of that particular insecurity.

Every once in a while, somebody I know in real life will discover my blog.  They’ll see my spacey art, they’ll read my spacey writing, they’ll recognize my obsession with all things outer space, and they’ll compliment me for being so knowledgable about this topic.  Which then leads to an inevitable question: “But why haven’t you pursued a career in science?”

That question stings.  If you don’t understand why it stings, let me translate that question into something that I suspect every writer, every artist, every dancer, every actor, every musician—every creative person of every sort—has had to contend with at some point: “Your art/writing/whatever is good, but why aren’t you doing something more useful with your life?”

When I’m asked why I haven’t pursued a scientific career, typically, I just tell people I’m bad at math.  It’s an easy excuse.  However, if I really wanted a scientific career, if I really felt that that was my calling in life, I could learn how to do math.  Math isn’t that hard.  No, the real reason I’m a writer and an artist, rather than a scientist, is because the world needs beauty.  The world always needs beauty, and so in every generation, some number of people will be called upon by the Muse to make beautiful things.

I am one of the people the Muse has called upon (or at least I strongly believe this about myself).  I will trust others to do the math and the science and the engineering required to understand nature and explore the cosmos.  Meanwhile, I’m going to do my best to make good art and do good writing—the kind of art and writing that celebrates space and science and the future of humanity out there among the stars—because I want people to see those things as I see them.  I want people to see how beautiful it all is.

Art?  Writing?  Creative expression in general?  These things are useful.  More than that, these things are needed.  Don’t listen to anyone who questions that.

WANT TO LEARN MORE?

Today’s blog post was inspired by We Need Your Art: Stop Messing Around And Make Something, by Amie McNee.  If you’re feeling insecure about your writing (or any other form of creative expression), this book might be the pep talk you need.  Click here to see the book’s listing on Amazon.

IWSG: An Insecure Science Communicator

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 21 Comments

Hello, friends!  Welcome to this month’s meeting of the Insecure Writers’ Support Group, a blog hop created by Alex J. Cavanaugh and cohosted this month by J Lenni Dorner, Victoria Marie Lees, and Sandra Cox.  Are you a writer?  Do you feel insecure?  Well, then this is the support group for you!  Click here to learn more and to see a list of participating blogs.

Each month, IWSG asks members a question.  The question is optional.  I usually skip it, but this month’s question stirred up some deep feelings and some deep insecurities, so I thought I’d better address that.  The question is:

Many writers have written about the experience of rereading their work years later.  Have you reread any of your early works?  What was that experience like for you?

I’ve mentioned before in these IWSG posts that I feel insecure about my role as a science communicator, given that I don’t have any formal scientific training or experience.  So it’s a little jarring, when I’m looking for information about a specific space/science topic, to see my own blog posts pop up in search results.  I sometimes forget, when I’m looking for information about a specific topic, that I’ve already covered that topic before.

Reading those old blog posts of mine—those blog posts I forgot I wrote—is not fun.  They’re pretty cringy.  The art (in my judgment) is bad, the writing is worse, and the jokes aren’t funny.  However, setting aside these issues of style, the substance of my old blog posts is surprisingly decent.  The important thing is this: I came looking for information about a specific space/science topic.  Sometimes it’s a super niche topic that nobody on the Internet would think to write about (except me, apparently).  And whatever information current me is looking for, past me provided it.  Past me also did a good job citing his sources, usually, so if I want to learn more, I can learn more.

I still feel insecure about my place as a science blogger on the Internet.  My writing could be better.  My art could be better, too, and my jokes need work.  But after rereading some of my old blog posts, I can feel reassured about this: I stick to the facts and communicate information well.  I’m at least doing that part of the job right.

Betelgeuse and Siwarha

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 6 Comments

Hello, friends!

I love space, but I also love language and words and names, and I especially love it when people put thought and care into the naming of things.  Betelgeuse is a super famous supergiant star in the constellation Orion.  For as long as I can remember, it was generally assumed that Betelgeuse was a loner.  A single star, all by herself, with no binary companion.  But now it seems that Betelgeuse does have a very small, very faint companion star, which astronomers have (very aptly) named Siwarha.

Back in 2019/2020, astronomers noticed Betelgeuse start to flicker and dim.  There was a rapid 30% decrease in Betelgeuse’s brightness, leading to rampant speculation that Betelgeuse was about to go up in a supernova explosion.  That would have been an amazing sight for all of us here on Earth!  But then, nothing happened, and Betelgeuse’s brightness eventually went back to normal.

The Great Dimming of Betelgeuse, as this event is now called, was caused by something less spectacular than a supernova (less spectacular, but still interesting—check out the “want to learn more?” section below if you want to learn more).  Still, during the Great Dimming, Betelgeuse got a lot more attention from astronomers than usual, and astronomers started noticing patterns in her behavior—including a pattern that (based on reexamining historical records) seemed to repeat every 2100 days.

One possible explanation: maybe Betelgeuse has a companion star with an orbital period of 2100 days.  This hypothetical companion star was initially nicknamed “Betelbuddy.”  But then, in December of 2024, astronomers at the Gemini North Observatory in Hawaii were able to directly image “Betelbuddy” in mid-orbit.  At that point, Betelgeuse’s companion stopped being hypothetical, and somebody needed to give it a more official-sounding name.

Betelgeuse is an Arabic name (as most traditional star names are), and it means something like “the hand of the giant.”  The giant in question is, of course, Orion; however, the Arabic name for Orion is al Jawza, which is a female name from Arabian legend.  Therefore, since this newly discovered star circles round and round the hand of a lady giant, the Gemini North team proposed naming it “Siwarha,” meaning “her bracelet.”

How perfect is that?

Siwarha would have been hidden behind Betelguese during the Great Dimming, so it was not visible to Earth-based astronomers at that time, no matter how hard they looked for it.  Even after Siwarha emerged from behind Betelgeuse, spotting it stretched the limits of one of the very best telescopes in the world.  After crossing in front of Betelgeuse, Siwarha should appear again (on the opposite side of Betelgeuse) in late 2027, at which point astronomers should be able to learn much, much more about it.

WANT TO LEARN MORE?

Here’s a brief article published by NASA announcing the discovery of Siwarha.

And here’s a link to the actual research paper explaining how the Gemini North team detected Betelgeuse’s companion star.  The proposal to name it “Siwarha” is near the end of the paper.

As for the Great Dimming of Betelgeuse, it was caused by Betelgeuse burping a big, giant cloud of dust up into space, which partially obscured our view.  Click here to learn more about that.

P.S.: The art in today’s post is my own original work.  If you like my art, please consider visiting the I-Love-Space store on RedBubble.  Even if you don’t buy anything, just visiting and clicking the “like” button on some of my work helps me a lot (and if you do decide to buy something, that obviously helps me even more!).  Thank you!