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Dust Ring Mercury

16 March 2019
Astronomy

Roberet sent in a link to www.space.com/dust-ring-discovered-mercury-orbit.html … a dust ring has been discovered orbiting Mercury. Or one might put it another way, Mercury regular encounters a dust ring during its orbit around the Sun. Two different ways of looking at it. Both Earth and Venus share their orbits with a dust ring but Mercury is much closer to the Sun and it came as something of a surprise. Researchers created models to try and identify where such a dust ring might have originated and hypothesise on a yet to be discovered group of small asteroids. More on this will leak out in future research.

At https://phys.org/print471767753.html … a recently reactivated radio magnetar. The cosmic body in question had been quiet for ten years but last December it decided to wake up. Magnetars, according to theory, are neutron stars with extremely strong magnetic fields. The decay of magnetic fields in magnetars is thought to power the emissions of high energy electromagnetic radiation in the form of an X-ray outburst. Back in 2004 this magnetar was observed following an X-ray outburst. It went on to exhibit high variable pulsed radio emissions until late in 2008.

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