Astronomy

• Medieval monastic thinkers often recorded celestial events such as eclipses.
• Most medieval observation of the heavens was by eye.
• Chroniclers, if not observing the event themselves, would rely on an eyewitness or other written records for the details.
• It is important to appreciate that this explains the serious attention paid to astrology in ancient and medieval thought.

• Direct correlations were made then by chroniclers of the period between celestial phenomena and political change – bearing in mind that most, if not all, chronicles were written after the fact.
• A comet is a star which is not always visible, but which appears most frequently upon the death of a king, or on the destruction of a kingdom.
• Another example, from September 13 1178, concerns the observation of the “horns” of the partially eclipsed Sun rotating to point towards the Earth.
• This was followed in the same year by a cruel war and terrible bloodshed in those counties, and general disturbances happened throughout England, Wales and Ireland.

Today’s celestial spectacles

• These days, celestial spectacles are seen as simply manifestations of the richness of a natural world that is explicable, at least in principle.
• Nevertheless, despite the predictive success of, for example, the theory of gravity and classical dynamics, there are still problems that remain unpredictable.

Giles Gasper receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, UK, and The Leverhulme Trust Brian Tanner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• The very first step in finding out is to understand how special the Earth really is – and, by extension, our entire Solar System.
• And that’s exactly what my colleagues and I have started to uncover with a new series of studies of star-forming regions.
• In the past decades, astronomers have spotted more than 5,000 planets around distant stars – so called exoplanets.
• We now know that planets are so abundant that you can look up to almost any star in the night sky and be near certain that planets are circling around it.
• This is no mean feat of engineering, with the latest generation of instruments only being available since about a decade.

New findings

• Our team, consisting of scientists from more than ten countries was able to observe more than 80 of these young stars in amazing detail – with our findings published in a series of papers in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
• All the images were taken in near infrared light, invisible to the human eye.
• They show the light from the distant young stars as it is reflected from the tiny dust particles in the discs.

• Unlike the Sun, most stars in our galaxy have companions, with two or more stars orbiting a shared centre of mass.
• When looking at the constellation of Orion, we found that stars in groups of two or more were less likely to have large planet-forming discs than lone stars.
• Another interesting finding was how uneven the discs in this region were, suggesting they may host massive planets that warp the discs.

Christian Ginski works for the University of Galway and frequently works with ESO facilities.

• San Antonio, March 08, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- With the largest gift in Trinity University’s history at $26.5 million, the University is honored to announce the naming of the D. R. Semmes School of Science .
• “This investment by the Semmes Foundation accelerates our goal to deliver the best undergraduate science education in the United States,” said Vanessa B. Beasley, Ph.D., President of Trinity University.
• “The sciences are at the core of a broad liberal arts education, and Trinity fundamentally understands this.
• “We look forward to collaborating with Trinity and offering its students real-world experience in the sciences.”
  The history between the Semmes Foundation and Trinity University runs deep.

• Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus said, “Spaceflight’s unique challenges are conquered on Earth but mastered in space.
• Our now proven robust lunar program, a national asset, feeds directly into our second and third missions.
• Mr. Altemus continued, “Before this mission, we had an absolute sense of humility and relied on our technical excellence and years of experience to triumph and persevere throughout all the challenges we faced during the mission.
• Following our unequivocal success, I am emboldened for the future of the U.S. and international lunar economy and Intuitive Machines' future as we believe we can win, execute, and pioneer the future of the cislunar market.”