Herschel Finds Water in a Cosmic Desert
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Herschel Finds Water in a Cosmic Desert
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
September 01, 2010
The Herschel infrared space observatory has discovered that ultraviolet
starlight is the key ingredient for making water in space. It is the
only explanation for why a dying star is surrounded by a gigantic cloud
of hot water vapor. Herschel is a European Space Agency mission with
important participation from NASA.
Every recipe needs a secret ingredient. When astronomers discovered an
unexpected cloud of water vapor around the old star IRC+10216 using
NASA's Submillimeter Wave Astronomy Satellite in 2001, they immediately
began searching for the source. Stars like IRC+10216 are known as carbon
stars and are thought not to make much water. Initially they suspected
the star's heat must be evaporating comets or even dwarf planets to
produce the water.
Now, Herschel has revealed that the secret ingredient is ultraviolet
light, because the water is too hot to have come from the destruction of
icy celestial bodies.
"Models predict that there should be no water in the envelopes around
stars like this, so astronomers were puzzled about how it got there,"
said Paul Goldsmith, the NASA project scientist for Herschel at NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "These Herschel observations
confirm the surprising presence of water vapor in what we thought was an
astronomical desert."
This research, which was led by Leen Decin of the Katholieke
Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, appears in the Sept. 2 issue of Nature.
Read ESA release: http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMW76EODDG_index_0.html
Herschel is a European Space Agency cornerstone mission, with science
instruments provided by consortia of European institutes and with
important participation by NASA. NASA's Herschel Project Office is based
at JPL. JPL contributed mission-enabling technology for two of
Herschel's three science instruments. The NASA Herschel Science Center,
part of the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California
Institute of Technology in Pasadena, supports the United States
astronomical community. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.
More information is online at http://www.herschel.caltech.edu,
http://www.nasa.gov/herschel and
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Herschel/index.html .
Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
whitney...@jpl.nasa.gov
2010-281