Some would call the event a “planetary alignment,” but others, including Dr. Danielle Pahud, an instructor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manitoba and director of the Lockhart Planetarium, prefer to use the term “planetary parade.”

She outlines her reasoning, saying, “I think when most people hear alignment, they imagine all of the planets in a row kind of a tight row, and that’s not the case. The planets all orbit the sun in the same direction. The planets that are closer in, like Mercury orbit very. They go all the way around the sun once every few months. And the planets further out, like Jupiter are much slower; Jupiter specifically orbits the sun once every 12 years. It gets longer and longer as you move further and further out. But they all orbit in the same plane, called the ecliptic, roughly on a flat surface. So, when we look out at the night sky, this flat surface kind of looks like an arc and it’s the same arc that the sun travels over a day. The planets are not all going to be in the same place, right now all the planets except Mercury are visible in the night sky.”

To read the entire article, please follow the link to Portage Online.

Danielle Pahud was also on CBC Manitoba’s Information Radio talking about the planetary alignment. Listen to the entire conversation on Information Radio, MB or watch the interview on YouTube.

A research and development microsatellite by the name of ‘Redwing’ which is being designed, built and operated by Magellan and funded by DND, will house a nanosatellite, designed and built by UM’s Space Technology and Advanced Research Laboratory (STARLab). This nanosatellite, known as the Little Innovator in Space Situational Awareness (LISSA, pronounced Lee-sa), will be deployed from Redwing once in orbit and will fly in tandem to monitor surrounding space objects. Uniquely, LISSA’s mission focuses on the South Pole. Current tracking networks lack good sensor coverage in this area and instead rely on mathematical projections to estimate where objects are. LISSA aims to fill this gap by actively tracking orbital objects over Antarctica.

Philip Ferguson, Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering and director of STARLab is no stranger to these kinds of missions. Last year, his team launched a CubeSat called ‘Iris’ into space, with the goal of studying the weathering of space rocks under solar radiation. They are also currently working on another CubeSat that will empower northern Inuit communities with ice and snow remote sensing data, helping them to assess ice safety. What is so great about these projects, is the experience that students get. It’s not everyday that a student can say that they worked on a satellite that got launched into space.

Andrew Bowman graduated with a BSc in Mechanical Engineering in 2022 and is now working on his master’s degree in the lab. He wasn’t initially interested in space until his final year of his undergraduate degree, where he worked on a lunar probe with Magellan for his capstone project. From then on, he was hooked. He worked on the final stages of Iris as a project manager and is highly involved with the work on LISSA. Every student in the lab plays some part in the project. Several graduate students have theses related to LISSA, including the development of the CubeSat’s thruster and investigations into orbital maneuvers. Bowman’s thesis is focused on improving the methods used to make space structures and lowering the associated barriers to entry. LISSA is designed using a modular structure, allowing him to investigate how this ‘building blocks’ approach can improve the satellite development process. He has also explored new analysis and testing methods with Magellan as part of the Redwing programme.

Iris was the starting point for designing LISSA, and the students certainly learned a lot from building it. The mission goals and requirements are different and LISSA is more integrated with industry than the research-focused Iris. Bowman comments that having a seat at the table with partners such as DND and Dstl is such a great learning opportunity. Being accountable for high-level responsibilities throughout the entire process of conceptualization, design, manufacturing and testing can’t be underestimated. It’s rare for a student to work through an entire design process, as most assignments end after the research and design phase and they never see their work come to life. It’s an experience that he will never forget and even has him considering a PhD so he can stay on for the entire duration of the project to see Redwing launch in 2027.  

Researchers Nathan Deg and Kristine Spekkens, in the Physics, Engineering Physics, and Astronomy department at Queen’s University, led the analysis of data.  They used the WALLABY survey, an innovative imaging radio telescope owned by CSIRO’s ASKAP (Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder). Looking at sky maps of more than 600 galaxies, they identified two potential polar ring galaxies.

Polar ring galaxies are a type of galaxy that exhibits a ring of stars and gas perpendicular to its main spiral disk.

“Polar ring galaxies are some of the most spectacular looking galaxies in the Universe. These findings suggest that one to three per cent of nearby galaxies may have gaseous polar rings, which is much higher than suggested by optical telescopes,” says researcher Dr. Nathan Deg, who is also the lead author on the study.

Although this is not the first time astronomers have observed polar ring galaxies, they are the first observed using the ASKAP telescope at CSIRO’s Murchison radio astronomy observatory on Wajarri Yamaji Country in Western Australia and virtual reality technology from UCT/IDIA Visualization Laboratory in South Africa. These new detections in gas alone suggest polar ring galaxies might be more common than previously believed.

Visualizing polar ring galaxies

UM’s Dr. Jayanne English, a member of the WALLABY research team, is also an expert in astronomy image-making in the Physics and Astronomy department, and a former postdoctoral fellow researcher at Queen’s. She worked on NASA’s Hubble Heritage Project at the Space Telescope Science Institute. That experience was beneficial on this project as she developed these first images of these gaseous polar ring galaxies using a combination of optical and radio data from the different telescopes in two different locations. Since gaseous polar ring galaxies cannot be seen by the human eye, composite images developed by astronomers create important visualizations using data from different telescopes.

First, optical and infrared data from the Subaru telescope in Hawaii provided the image for the spiral disk of the galaxy. Then, the gaseous ring around it was added based on data obtained from Australia’s CSIRO’s ASKAP radio telescope and its WALLABY survey, covering most of the southern sky, detected atomic hydrogen emission from about half a million galaxies. 

“It’s interesting to me because it will provide some evidence how galaxies will change over time” says Jayanne English, expert in astronomy image-making.

English says she was excited to work with such a diverse and collaborative team.

“We were able to work with data that showed a fine grid of velocity channels, which are equivalent to the radio stations on your old-fashioned radio receiver. The richness of the velocity data meant I could assign multiple colours to this composite to subtly convey the motion happening within the polar ring. The dance and choreography of the gas are beautiful, and that motion of the gas gives us some clues as to how galaxies evolve over time.”

The creation of this and other astronomical images are all composites because they include information that our eyes can’t capture. In this particular case, the cold hydrogen gas component, invisible to the human eye, is seen in radio “light” using CSIRO’s ASKAP. English says the subtle colour gradient you see on the ring represents the orbital motions of the gas, with purple-ish tints tracing gas that moves towards the viewer. The emission from the ring was separated from the radio emission emanating from the disk of the galaxy using virtual reality tools, in collaboration with South African Research Chair in Astrophysics and Space Science Astronomy, Tom Jarrett, from the University of Cape Town.

Watch this video to find out how virtual reality was used to discover and explore potential polar ring galaxies.

Understanding how galaxies evolve

Further investigation of polar ring structures can lead to a better understanding of how galaxies evolve. For example, one of the main hypotheses to explain the origin of polar rings is a merger where a larger galaxy ‘swallows’ a smaller one. If polar ring galaxies are more common than previously thought, this could mean that these mergers are more frequent.

“It’s interesting to me because it will provide some evidence how galaxies will change over time” says  English.

In the future, polar ring galaxies can also be used to deepen our understanding of the universe, with potential applications in dark matter research. It is possible to use polar rings to probe the shape of the halo region of the host galaxy, which could lead to new clues about the elusive properties of dark matter.

More than 25 global collaborators including researchers from Canada, Australia, South Africa, Ecuador, Burkina Faso, Germany, China, worked together to analyze the data from the first public data release of the WALLABY survey, resulting in the newly published paper.

“I want to congratulate Dr. English on this prestigious accomplishment and important discovery in astrophysics and astronomy,” said Dr. Mario Pinto, Vice President (Research and International). “UM is proud to showcase our research expertise in astrophysics and to be at the forefront of understanding what goes on in deep space.”

The next step for the team is to confirm the polar ring galaxies finding through additional observations using different telescopes, including the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa.