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AAS Random Astro-Facts
AAS Random Astro-FactsApril 25
Last fall NASA's Parker Solar Probe raced past the Sun within 24 million km (15 million miles) at 343,000 km/hour (213,000 mph). It will make at least 23 more such passes, each time going closer & even faster. It's got a heat shield & a cooling system. #GAM2019 #RandomAstroFact
April 24
Galactic center crowd: Besides giant black hole Sagittarius A* (4 billion x the mass of the Sun), there's a cluster of binary systems within a few light-years. Each consists of a normal star & a small black hole (5 to 15 solar masses), producing X-rays. #GAM2019 #RandomAstroFact
April 23
Pulsars are highly magnetized neutron stars, spinning fast & emitting radio beams. They can be deadly. The powerful wind from a “black widow pulsar” in a binary star system can erode away the companion star, like a black widow spider destroying her mate. #GAM2019 #RandomAstroFact
April 22
A “cosmic web” of long, thin filaments of galaxies, intergalactic gas & dark matter pervades the universe. Where filaments cross each other (“a node”) there may be hundreds of galaxies or more, held together by gravity in a great cluster of galaxies. #GAM2019 #RandomAstroFact
April 21
Apollo 11 brought water for the crew to the Moon. Since then, ice was found in shadowed craters at the lunar poles. Now an orbiting probe detects water molecules sticking to sunlit soil across the Moon, warming & hopping from one soil grain to another. #GAM2019 #RandomAstroFact
