Archives par mot-clé : Astronomy

What You Should Know About Ice Ages & Climate Change

by D.W. Euring, May 20, 2020 in PrincipiaScientificInternational


It became apparent from investigation of the Variability of the Gravitational Constant that Jupiter’s orbit is affecting the Sun’s surface temperature and driving the Sunspot Cycle which appear to be triggered at its Aphelion and suppressed at Perihelion.

Saturn has even greater eccentricity than Jupiter and it is noted that it was at Perihelion at the end of 1972 which seems to account for the Low Solar Maximum at that time and a particular dip after the main peak. So, whilst cycle periods are not influenced by Saturn, it does impact on their magnitude, and it seems likely that it will have augmented in 1957-58 as well as 1990.

ESO telescope observes exoplanet where it rains iron

by C. Rotter, March 13, 2020 in WUWT


Researchers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) have observed an extreme planet where they suspect it rains iron. The ultra-hot giant exoplanet has a day side where temperatures climb above 2400 degrees Celsius, high enough to vaporise metals. Strong winds carry iron vapour to the cooler night side where it condenses into iron droplets.

“One could say that this planet gets rainy in the evening, except it rains iron,” says David Ehrenreich, a professor at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. He led a study, published today in the journal Nature, of this exotic exoplanet. Known as WASP-76b, it is located some 640 light-years away in the constellation of Pisces.

This strange phenomenon happens because the ‘iron rain’ planet only ever shows one face, its day side, to its parent star, its cooler night side remaining in perpetual darkness. Like the Moon on its orbit around the Earth, WASP-76b is ‘tidally locked‘: it takes as long to rotate around its axis as it does to go around the star.