Amira Shehata Thursday, October 12, 2023 08:00 PM A picture revealed the moment he collided Icy alien planets With each other 1,800 light-years away in a cosmic collision, this discovery represents the first time that astronomers have captured the aurora resulting from a planetary collision in outer space.
According to the British newspaper “Daily Mail”, the matter was discovered after the two giant planets outside the solar system collided with each other around a sun-like star, resulting in a glow of light and ejecting huge columns of dust.
Collision between planets in telescope images
“To be honest, this observation was a complete surprise to me,” said Dr. Matthew Kenworthy, co-author of the new study from Leiden University in the Netherlands. “When we originally shared the visible light curve of this star with other astronomers, we started observing it using a network.” From other telescopes.
A network of professional and amateur astronomers studied the star closely to observe how its brightness changed over the course of two years. The star was named ASASSN-21qj after the network of telescopes that first detected the star’s fading at visible wavelengths.
The researchers came to the conclusion that the most likely explanation for this fading star is that two icy giant exoplanets collided with each other and produced the infrared glow detected by NASA’s NEOWISE mission.
NASA’s NEOWISE mission is a space telescope that hunts for near-Earth asteroids and comets.
Co-researcher Dr Simon Locke, from the University of Bristol, said: “Our calculations and computer models indicate the temperature and volume of the glowing material, as well as the amount of time the glow lasted, is consistent with the collision of two objects.”
Also, about three years after the flare was detected, the dust cloud resulting from the collision eventually passed in front of ASASSN-21qj, and this is what caused the star’s brightness to dim at visible wavelengths.
