Volume 6 Issue 11, November 2022

Four researchers — Nicolas Bonne, Cheryl Fogle-Hatch, Garry Foran and Enrique Perez Montero — discuss the accessibility challenges in astronomy research, education and outreach for persons who are blind or visually impaired. Solutions to these challenges create innovative data analysis methods for all astronomers.

The development and use of research infrastructures accounts for more than 70% of the carbon footprint of the Institute for Research in Astrophysics and Planetology. Our community needs to rethink this crucial facet of astronomical research to engage in effective and perennial reduction strategies.

The 2019 carbon footprint of the W. M. Keck Observatory is estimated at 3.0 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent per science night and that figure will move towards net zero over the next decade or so by decarbonizing the Observatory’s vehicle fleet, aviation footprint reductions and other measures.

The Earth is a rocky planet in the so-called classical habitable zone (HZ), with a surface ocean taking up just ~10^–4 of its total mass. A study suggests that 5–10% of Earth-sized planets in the HZ around red dwarfs are ‘Earth-like’: rocky, with a small but non-zero amount of water on their surface.

A deep learning method accurately measures galaxy cluster mass with the aid of real galaxy clusters detected by the Planck satellite.

The coda correlation wavefield technique provides a powerful tool for surveying planetary interiors using only data from a single station. Its application to the SEIS seismometer on the InSight lander, which has been providing unique data on the interior of Mars since 2018, is a promising example of what it can bring to planetary seismology studies.

The limits of our knowledge on light–matter interactions (that is, opacity models) will affect the exploration of exoplanetary atmospheres. Accounting for these limits will prevent biased claims. Guided improvements in opacity models, their standardization and dissemination will ensure maximum return on investment from the next-generation observatories, including the JWST.

The habitability of early Mars’s subsurface to methanogenic microorganisms was assessed using a planetary ecosystem model that couples a subsurface biosphere to the atmospheric chemistry and climate. Mars’s subsurface was initially likely habitable, but the biosphere would have cooled the planet down, potentially compromising its long-term habitability.

The use of sound to represent astronomical data complements visual analysis tools and makes astronomy more accessible. This Perspective presents a growing number of projects with increasing applications in research, education and outreach across astronomy.

The sound community has developed many methods for listening to the Universe and not just looking at it. With their help, astronomers can increase the diversity of sonification tools, uses and users.

Topographic signatures typical of subglacial lakes on Earth are observed over the south pole area of Mars, where MARSIS found possible signatures of similar bodies of water. Modelling shows that such signatures can be generated in 0.5–5 Myr, depending on the intensity of the geothermal heating.

Early Martian surface and subsurface were probably habitable for methanogenic microorganisms with a hydrogen-based metabolism, according to an ecological model coupled with a geochemical simulation. Feedback effects of such a biosphere on the atmosphere might have driven strong global cooling.

A method that uses intersource correlograms measured by a single-station seismograph to constrain planetary interiors is presented. Applied to Mars, it measures a core radius of 1,812 ± 20 km, consistent with InSight direct-seismic-wave measurements. Such a method is useful in planetary exploration where the deployment of a full network of seismographs is unlikely.

The extraction of the wind pattern, vorticity and divergence down to a scale of 200 km from the cluster of cyclones at Jupiter’s north pole shows evidence of an anticyclonic ring, which is needed to keep the system stable, around the central cyclone. No signatures of convection are observed at 200 km scales.

Benchmark testing of many opacity models of exoplanetary transmission spectra, simulating representative spectra to be obtained with the James Webb Space Telescope, highlights the presence of biases that would significantly reduce the accuracy on the retrieval of atmospheric parameters. Mitigation strategies are presented.

Earth-mass planets in the classical habitable zone of M dwarfs span a range of water content higher than previously computed, according to a planetary population model that includes the effects of water enrichment in the primordial atmosphere.

JWST observations reveal more than 17 nested dust shells that formed in the colliding winds of the massive binary WR 140 that enrich the surrounding interstellar medium with organic compounds and carbon-rich dust.

A bright patch in the Fermi bubbles, previously attributed to a jet launched by the Galaxy’s central black hole, is actually due to gamma-ray emission by millisecond pulsars in a background, satellite galaxy of the Milky Way.

A convolutional neural network trained with mock galaxy cluster maps is applied to real maps from the Planck satellite, successfully predicting the masses of over 1,000 observed clusters and finding a 15% bias in masses measured directly from Planck.