It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Saturday, December 10, 2022
18-Year-Old Elected Youngest Black Mayor In U.S.
Jaylen Smith won a runoff election to lead the town of Earle, Arkansas.
An Arkansas teenager is headed from a seat in a high school classroom to a seat in the mayor’s office.
Jaylen Smith, 18, is set to become the youngest Black mayor in the U.S. after beating opponent Nemi Matthews in the Earle, Arkansas, runoff election. Earle, a town of about 1,800, is roughly 30 miles from Memphis, Tennessee.
Smith, a graduate of Earle High School who holds the rank of lieutenant in the town police department, called for better public safety, the demolition of abandoned homes and the opening of a grocery store, KTHV-TV reported.
“Citizens of Earle, Arkansas, it’s official!! I am your newly elected Mayor of Earle, Arkansas,” Smith wrote on Facebook following his victory.
He continued: “It’s Time to Build a Better Chapter of Earle, Arkansas.’ I would like to thank all my supporters for stepping up getting people to the polls. I am truly grateful for you all.”
Smith, who lives with his parents, told WHBQ-TV last month that he refuses to stop when the going gets tough.
“When somebody tells me ‘no,’ I don’t stop just because someone tells me ‘no.’ There’s always someone waiting to tell you ‘yes,’” Smith said.
Smith told CNN he sought advice from other politicians, including Frank Scott Jr., mayor of Little Rock. He said he didn’t run for mayor to “make a name for” himself.
“I ran because I wanted to help my community and move my community in the direction that it needed to be moved in,” Smith said.
Who Is Dina Boluarte, the New President of Peru?
Ms. Boluarte, the country’s first woman president, ascended to power suddenly, after her predecessor was arrested. She takes office as corruption and discontent test democracies across Latin America. Give this article
In Lima on Thursday, Dina Boluarte, Peru’s new president, joined in a religious celebration happening in the Plaza de Armas
Like the man she replaced, she is a leftist who grew up far from the capital, with a strong connection to her mostly poor mountainous region.
Unlike her predecessor, however, Dina Boluarte, 60, the new president of Peru and the first woman to lead the country, does not have a reputation as a firebrand.
On Wednesday, Ms. Boluarte replaced Pedro Castillo as president, after Mr. Castillo, 53, tried to dissolve Congress and install an emergency government — a move widely condemned as an attempted coup.
“It is up to us to talk, to engage in dialogue, to reach agreements,” said Ms. Boluarte, formerly the vice president, in her first speech as president, in which she called for a government of unity. “I ask for time to rescue our country from corruption and incompetence.”
The stunning but peaceful transition quickly came to symbolize two seemingly opposing characteristics that have come to define Peru's young democracy: its fragility, but also its resiliency.
In the last five years, the country has cycled through six presidents and two congresses, while corruption scandals, impeachment proceedings and deep division have undermined the government’s ability simply to function.
Pedro Castillo, who was in office for less than a year and a half, was impeached by Congress on Wednesday, hours after he said he was going to dissolve the body.
Yet, when Mr. Castillo, a former teacher and union activist, declared he was creating a new government that would rule by decree, he seemed to go too far.
In a period of just hours, his ministers resigned en masse, the country’s armed forces and national police declined to back him, he was quickly arrested and Ms. Boluarte was sworn in.
The political drama reflected a larger trend across Latin America, analysts said. Corruption, widespread frustration over growing inequality and longstanding anger at the elite have fueled distrust and populism across the region.
Prosecutors accused Mr. Castillo of leading a criminal organization to profit from government contracts and of obstructing justice. Hours before Congress was scheduled to vote on impeachment, Mr. Castillo announced the dissolution of Congress and the installation of an emergency government to rule by decree.
What happened next? Mr. Castillo’s announcement prompted the mass resignation of much of his government and a statement from Peru’s armed forces and the police suggesting that he did not have the legal authority to carry out his decree. In a swift vote hours after his announcement, Congress voted to impeach him and remove him from office.
What does this mean for Peru? Vice President Dina Boluarte will now lead the country’s fragile democracy through its biggest political crisis in years. The crisis comes as Peru’s inflation rate is at its highest point in decades, raising the stakes of political dysfunction in a nation where a quarter of the population of 33 million lives in poverty.
These factors have led to repeated tests of often young democracies, breeding extremist candidates and leaders who sow distrust in election results, in some cases adopting the playbook of former President Donald J. Trump.
But, while some countries, including Venezuela and Nicaragua, have slid into autocracy, democracy has proved resilient recently in countries like Brazil and Colombia, both of which held elections this year that challenged the strength of their institutions.
“They’re not thriving,” Steve Levitsky, a government professor at Harvard University, said, speaking of Latin American democracies, “but they are surviving, and that is not a small thing.”
Mr. Castillo was being held at naval base on the outskirts of Lima, the capital, where he faces charges of “rebellion,” according to the prosecutor’s office. On Thursday, he appeared at an initial court hearing, in which a judge approved a request to keep the former president imprisoned for at least a week as the case against him is prepared.
Guillermo Olivera, an attorney who told local media he is representing Mr. Castillo, called the former president’s arrest “terribly arbitrary, illegal and criminal.”
In an interview, the U.S. ambassador to Peru, Lisa Kenna, commended the institutional response to Mr. Castillo’s attempt to dissolve Congress, calling it a “win for democracy in Peru.”
But others in the region defended him, most prominently Mexican President Andrés López Obrador, who called Mr. Castillo’s removal a “soft coup,” that served elite interests.
“Since the beginning of the legitimate presidency of Pedro Castillo, an atmosphere of confrontation and hostility has been sustained against him until he has made decisions that have served his adversaries to consummate his dismissal,” the Mexican leader wrote on Twitter.
On Thursday evening, Mexican foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard said that his government was reviewing a petition by Mr. Castillo for asylum.
Ms. Boluarte, a leftist, called for calm and a government of unity as she took over a country facing political and economic challenges.
Credit...EPA, via Shutterstock
Ms. Boluarte is from the south-central department of Apurímac, a majority Indigenous Quechua-speaking region. A lawyer and civil servant, she worked for 15 years in the country’s national registry, the ministry that issues identification cards and manages records of births, marriages, divorces and deaths.
The national registry is politically autonomous from the rest of the government, and several Peruvian political analysts said it is generally seen as an efficient and technocratic institution.
Ms. Boluarte belonged to a Marxist political party, but broke with the party after a disagreement with its leader, telling the magazine Caretas: “Like thousands of Peruvian men and women, I am from the left, but from the democratic left, not a totalitarian or sectarian,” one. She praised a kind of politics “that allows divergence and criticism” rather than one “where there are no infallible or untouchable leaders.”
In 2021, Ms. Boluarte ran on Mr. Castillo’s ticket, and then served as both his vice president and his minister of development and social inclusion. When she was sworn in last year, she announced that she was taking office to serve “the nobodies.”
But she resigned from the ministry after the president formed his last cabinet last month, while staying on as vice president.
On Wednesday, she quickly criticized the former president’s call to shutter Congress, saying on Twitter: “I reject Pedro Castillo’s decision to perpetrate the breakdown of the constitutional order with the closure of Congress. It is a coup.”
Like Mr. Castillo, Ms. Boluarte had never been elected to a political office before 2021. She ran for mayor of a part of Lima, the capital, in 2018, and for Congress in a primary in 2020, and lost both races. But she has spent years working in government.
Gonzalo Banda, a political analyst and columnist, called Ms. Boluarte among the most stable figures in Mr. Castillo’s exceedingly unstable government.
Image
Protesters filling the streets of Lima last month, demanding Mr. Castillo’s resignation.
“After a year in government, a year and a half, she is not a stranger,” he said. “On the contrary, I think she’s a person who will know how to move in the quicksand of Peruvian power.”
She will face an uphill battle in Congress, now that she is in open conflict with the party that she and Mr. Castillo ran with.
Carlos Reyna, who worked with Ms. Boluarte for nine years at the national registry, described her as sociable with a polite formality. He doesn’t remember her ever drawing attention to herself, and was surprised to see her enter politics.
He was optimistic about her ability to handle the presidency, and heartened by her calls for truce and understanding in her first speech.
“This is something that people very much need right now in Peru,” said Mr. Reyna, who is now a social sciences professor at San Marcos University in Lima. “I think she has what it takes to be able to do it well.”
On Thursday, the streets of Lima and other cities were mostly calm, following a day when some of Mr. Castillo’s supporters had taken to the streets in scattered protests.
In a half dozen interviews, most people said they supported the institutional rejection of Mr. Castillo’s attempt to shutter the government.
But few believed that Ms. Boluarte would be able to usher in a new era of confidence in Peruvian democracy.
Demonstrators celebrating Mr. Castillo’s arrest on Wednesday in front of the police station in Lima where he was initially detained.
Credit...Marco Garro for The New York Times
Patricia Díaz, 46, who works at the front desk of an apartment building in Lima, called the peaceful transition of power “a relief” but said she had little hope for Ms. Boluarte.
Anyone who enters the government “with good intentions,” Ms. Díaz said, “is corrupted.”
Jacelin Tuesta, 39, a saleswoman for a cigarette distributor, said that she saw Ms. Boluarte as no different than politicians of the past.
“But she is new and we’re going to have faith,” Ms. Tuesta said. “She’s a woman, so maybe she’ll have another viewpoint.”
In an interview, Noam Lupu, associate director of the Latin American Public Opinion Project at Vanderbilt University, said the transition of power in Peru was a positive development, but he cautioned against too much celebration. He pointed out his research showing that Peruvians are highly dissatisfied with democracy, believe that a majority of politicians are corrupt and have a high tolerance for coups.
He asked, is Peruvian democracy enduring “because there’s some underlying sort of structural, institutional features that are going to ensure survival?”
Or, he said, “is it surviving because no one has come along who is really capable of galvanizing discontent?”
Elda Cantú contributed reporting.
From President to prisoner - the rapid descent of Peru's Pedro Castillo
December 9, 2022 Heard on All Things Considered SIMEON TEGEL, NPR Transcript Supporters of ousted Peruvian President Pedro Castillo march at the Plaza San Martin in Lima, Peru on Thursday. Peru's Congress voted to remove Castillo from office Wednesday and replace him with the vice president, Dina Boluarte, shortly after Castillo tried to dissolve the legislature ahead of a scheduled vote to remove him.
Fernando Vergara/AP
LIMA, Peru — Perhaps the most telling detail of Pedro Castillo's botched coup attempt this week was the fact that the high-stakes gamble may have been completely unnecessary.
The now former president of Peru made his power grab during an abrupt televised address to the nation on Wednesday morning in which he announced that he was shuttering Congress, "reorganizing" the judiciary and would rule by decree.
He had no constitutional authority to do so and, as swiftly became clear, zero support from the armed forces.
The chaos of Castillo
The move was intended to preempt an impeachment debate on corruption charges scheduled for that afternoon. Had that debate gone ahead as scheduled, many here still doubt that Castillo, 53, a former rural schoolteacher and wildcat strike leader, would have actually been ousted.
Peruvian President Pedro Castillo at a press conference for foreign journalists in Lima on Oct. 11.
Carlos Garcia Granthon/Fotoholica Press/LightRocket/Getty Images
Since he took office in July 2021, Castillo's administration has been a chaotic mess of far left infighting, endless corruption scandals and ineptitude.
All the while, the president largely ignored the poor who he frequently claimed to represent.
The result is that lawmakers had already twice tried to impeach him but on each occasion failed to reach the required two-thirds supermajority. Based on the frantic vote counting on Wednesday morning, that scenario appeared likely to repeat itself. Opposers to Peruvian President Pedro Castillo protest outside the Lima Prefecture on Wednesday.
Ernesto Benavides/AFP/Getty Images From traffic gridlock - to prison
But Castillo's address to the nation, his hands visibly trembling as he clutched the sheet of paper on which his speech was written, changed the calculus.
The power grab was so flagrant that many members of Congress who had previously backed the erratic political novice, felt they had no choice but to vote to remove him. The impeachment debate was moved forward on an emergency basis and Castillo was ousted by 101 votes to six just under two hours after he had made his dramatic TV appearance.
Peruvian congress members pose for a picture after the vote for the impeachment of President Pedro Castillo in Lima on Wednesday.
Chris Bouroncle/AFP/Getty Images
That then followed a brief period of uncertainty over the now ex-president's whereabouts, until it emerged that his SUV had become stuck in Lima's frequently gridlocked traffic on its way to the Mexican Embassy, where Castillo had been planning to request asylum.
He appeared in court for the first time on Thursday, looking glum after spending his first night in the cells. The judges rejected his attorney's habeas corpus request and ordered the ex-president be kept in preliminary detention for another week.
Peru's new President
President of Congress Jose Williams, left, and Sen. Jose Cevasco, right, place the presidential sash on Vice President Dina Boluarte as she is sworn-in as the country's new president in Lima on Wednesday. Boluarte replaced ousted President Pedro Castillo and became the first female leader in the history of the republic.
Guadalupe Pardo/AP
Castillo's Vice President, Dina Boluarte, was swiftly sworn in to take his place. She also hails from his self-declared Marxist-Leninist Free Peru party but has managed to steer clear of his endless corruption scandals while also distancing herself from the beleaguered leader in recent months.
Also a political neophyte, it remains unclear whether the 60-year-old lawyer has the political skills to build a legislative alliance within the conservative-dominated Congress and bring the Andean nation's six years of political turmoil to an end.
But Boluarte appears better qualified than Castillo — who faces half a dozen different corruption investigations, including one for allegedly falsifying his master's thesis — and should at least get a honeymoon period of several months.
Democracy tested - and survived
People clash with riot police during a demonstration demanding the release of ex-President Pedro Castillo and the closure of the Peruvian Congress in Lima on Thursday, a day after Castillo's impeachment.
Ernesto Benavides/AFP/Getty Images
The other piece of good news for Peru is that despite being tested almost to its limits, the country's democratic institutions have survived this latest assault.
There have been only small protests and violence in the streets and most citizens appear to understand that, although lawmakers' motives in seeking to oust Castillo may have been, in part, self-serving, ultimately the president simply had to go.
Maybe, just maybe, the new government and Congress will finally find some common ground in addressing ordinary Peruvians' numerous serious challenges, from endemic food insecurity to the social fallout from the pandemic in a society which has had the highest Covid 19 mortality in the world.
Peru’s Oligarchy Overthrows President Castillo – OpEd
June 6, 2021, was a day which shocked many in Peru’s oligarchy. Pedro Castillo Terrones, a rural schoolteacher who had never before been elected to office, won the second round of the presidential election with just over 50.13% of the vote. More than 8.8 million people voted for Castillo’s program of profound social reforms and the promise of a new constitution against the far-right’s candidate, Keiko Fujimori. In a dramatic turn of events, the historical agenda of neoliberalism and repression, passed down by former Peruvian dictator Alberto Fujimori to his daughter Keiko, was rejected at the polls.
From that day on, still in disbelief, the Peruvian oligarchy declared war on Castillo. They made the next 18 months for the new president a period of great hostility as they sought to destabilize his government with a multi-pronged attack that included significant use of lawfare. With a call to “throw out communism,” plans were made by the oligarchy’s leading business group, the National Society of Industries, to make the country ungovernable under Castillo.
In October 2021, recordings were released that revealed that since June 2021, this group of industrialists, along with other members of Peru’s elite and leaders of the right-wing opposition parties, had been planning a series of actions including financing protests and strikes. Groups of former military personnel, allied with far-right politicians like Fujimori, began to openly call for the violent overthrow of Castillo, threatening government officials and left-leaning journalists.
The right-wing in Congress also joined in these plans and attempted to impeach Castillo on two occasions during his first year in office. “Since my inauguration as president, the political sector has not accepted the electoral victory that the Peruvian people gave us,” Castillo said in March 2022. “I understand the power of Congress to exercise oversight and political control, however, these mechanisms cannot be exercised by mediating the abuse of the right, proscribed in the constitution, ignoring the popular will expressed at the polls,” he stressed. It turns out that several of these lawmakers, with support from a right-wing German foundation, had also been meeting regarding how to modify the constitution to quickly remove Castillo from office.
The oligarchic rulers of Peru could never accept that a rural schoolteacher and peasant leader could be brought into office by millions of poor, Black, and Indigenous people who saw their hope for a better future in Castillo. However, in the face of these attacks, Castillo became more and more distanced from his political base. Castillo formed four different cabinets to appease the business sectors, each time conceding to right-wing demands to remove leftist ministers who challenged the status quo. He broke with his party Peru Libre when openly challenged by its leaders. He sought help from the already discredited Organization of American States in looking for political solutions instead of mobilizing the country’s major peasant and Indigenous movements. By the end, Castillo was fighting alone, without support from the masses or the Peruvian left parties.
The final crisis for Castillo broke out on December 7, 2022. Weakened by months of corruption allegations, left infighting, and multiple attempts to criminalize him, Castillo was finally overthrown and imprisoned. He was replaced by his vice president, Dina Boluarte, who was sworn in after Congress impeached Castillo with 101 votes in favor, six against, and ten abstentions.
The vote came hours after he announced on television to the country that Castillo was dissolving Congress. He did so preemptively, three hours before the start of the congressional session in which a motion to dismiss him for “permanent moral incapacity” was to be debated and voted on due to allegations of corruption that are under investigation. Castillo also announced the start of an “exceptional emergency government” and the convening of a Constituent Assembly within nine months. He said that until the Constituent Assembly was installed, he would rule by decree. In his last message as president, he also decreed a curfew to begin at 10 o’clock that night. The curfew, as well as his other measures, was never applied. Hours later, Castillo was overthrown.
Boluarte was sworn in by Congress as Castillo was detained at a police station. A few demonstrations broke out in the capital Lima, but nowhere near large enough to reverse the coup which was nearly a year and a half in the making, the latest in Latin America’s long history of violence against radical transformations.
The coup against Pedro Castillo is a major setback for the current wave of progressive governments in Latin America and the people’s movements that elected them. This coup and the arrest of Castillo are stark reminders that the ruling elites of Latin America will not concede any power without a bitter fight to the end. And now that the dust has settled, the only winners are the Peruvian oligarchy and their friends in Washington.
The electoral strength of the right is pushing Latin America’s leftists away from progressive causes.
Peruvian President-elect Pedro Castillo speaks at a campaign rally in May.Miguel Yovera/Bloomberg
It’s no secret that the Latin American left has a strongman problem. From Havana to Caracas to Managua, self-proclaimed socialists are notorious for taking office only to never step down. But while left-wing autocrats and their human rights abuses garner much media attention, an emerging crop of leftist politicians in Latin America poses a more insidious threat: they’re embracing regressive social values. If they continue to fail in elevating the causes of equality, diversity and individual freedom, the new leaders on the left will leave the region’s most vulnerable and underrepresented communities at great risk.
Socially progressive causes began to lose their luster in the mid-2010s, especially as evangelical groups with hardline stances on abortion and LGBTQ rights – and equipped with mega-churches – expanded as a voting bloc. Right-wing politicians like Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro swept back into office, styling themselves as defenders of “traditional family values.” Donald Trump proved a convincing example to follow.
Now, after years spent championing the cause of women and minorities, Latin American leftists have veered to the right on social issues, leaning into traditionally conservative positions on gender equality, abortion access, LGBTQ rights, immigration, and the environment. The left’s conservative turn leaves marginalized communities bereft of their traditional political allies and jeopardizes freedom and safety. And if an economically populist yet socially conservative platform continues to prove a winning electoral formula, as it did earlier this month in Peru, regionwide poverty relief may ultimately come at the cost of individual rights.
On the gender equality front, evidence of this shift is everywhere. Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador campaigned on rectifying the gender pay gap and gender-based violence. But rather than meeting with women protesting the country’s record-setting levels of femicide, López Obrador shut out the protesters’ chants by erecting a ten-foot-high wall around the presidential palace.
Peru’s new socialist president-elect, Pedro Castillo, chalked up his country’s femicide problem to male “idleness,” blasting what he calls “gender ideology” taught in Peruvian schools. And Ecuador, governed by leftist administrations for most of the last two decades, has among the strictest anti-abortion laws in the world. Rafael Correa, in office from 2007 to 2017, even pressured his own party to keep the abortion ban in place.
Despite the expansion of LGBTQ rights during a wave of left and center-left presidents in the early 2000s, these communities have fared poorly under some on the left.
While strongmen like Nicolás Maduro have never been shy about using homophobia for political gain, the Dominican Republic’s “social democrat” president, Luis Abinader, disappointed activists when he publicly rejected same-sex marriage protections under considerable pressure from religious leaders; he, too, has backtracked on liberalizing abortion access. El Salvador’s populist president, Nayib Bukele, who started his career on the political left as mayor of the country’s capital and once declared himself an “ally” to LGBTQ people, has since come out against marriage equality and stopped his government’s sexual diversity work.
Around the world, xenophobia against immigrants is often the calling card of the radical right. In Latin America, the inverse is sometimes true. López Obrador has militarized Mexico’s southern border, deploying tear gas and rubber bullets against Central American migrant caravans. Peru’s Castillo insists that undocumented migrants will be given 72 hours to flee the country after he takes office. And Argentina’s leftist president recently sparked outrage with his remark that “Brazilians emerged from the jungle but we Argentines arrived on boats. On boats from Europe.”
In Latin America, environmental policy is also a social issue because the costs of climate change land heavily on ethnic and racial minorities. Leftist politicians – who often rely on natural resources to achieve their priority of redistributing wealth – have all too frequently sided against the environment and its defenders in the process.
In Ecuador’s April election, progressive presidential candidate Andrés Arauz – who narrowly lost – dug in his heels on oil drilling in the Amazon over loud objections by indigenous groups. Bolivia’s socialist President Luis Arce, too, was chided by the environmental movement for allowing agribusinesses to run wild with deforestation, fueling catastrophic forest fires while he served as finance minister in 2019.
Who to turn to?
For decades, left and center-left parties oversaw a period of expanding rights and protections for women and minorities, challenging the status quo in a region long dominated by conservativism and the Catholic church.
But now, many on the left, eager to reclaim power, capitalized on the trend sweeping voters by parroting social conservatives. The shift wasn’t all-encompassing. Some important voices, like Chile’s Michele Bachelet and Costa Rica’s Carlos Alvarado, stuck by their progressive roots. But more leftists have opted for the right-wing veer than not.
Photo by Alexandre Schneider/Getty Images
2022 will be a decisive year. Brazil and Colombia, two of the Americas’ most populous countries, will hold presidential elections. Conservative candidates are polling poorly and will have to face down popular leftist challengers. Brazil’s former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who governed as a social progressive, is likely to make a comeback bid and, should he win, has the credibility and appeal to corral new consensus across borders.
In a region that is both young and increasingly urban, the writing is on the wall: the electoral advantage the left stands to gain today by echoing the right is a risky gamble – one that could translate into lasting credibility losses among the voters of tomorrow. Individual rights need a political champion. If not the right or the left, then who?
—
Angelo is a fellow for Latin America studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Freeman is the Central America research fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA).
Last night's occultation of Mars by the full Cold Moon produced some gorgeous images from observers around the world
On Wednesday (Dec. 7), skywatchers around the world were treated to a celestial show as the full moon eclipsed Mars in the night sky.
The rare event, known as a lunar occultation, refers to one celestial body — in this case, Mars — appearing to disappear or hide behind another — in this case, the moon. This occultation was particularly noteworthy because Mars was at opposition, meaning Earth was directly between it and the sun, making the Red Planet appear particularly bright in the night sky.
Last night's occultation of Mars by the full moon produced some gorgeous images from observers around the world. The Griffith Observatory in California had a great view of the moon and Mars joining up on Dec. 7 and caught a time-lapse of the Red Planet disappearing behind Earth's celestial companion as seen in the video above.
In addition, skywatchers around the world have been posting gorgeous images of the lunar occultation of Mars on social media, offering a look at one of the year's most-watched celestial events.
The lunar occultation of Mars by the full Cold Moon was particularly noteworthy because the Red Planet only appears at opposition every 26 months, so the next opposition won't occur until January 2025.
Mars was also especially close to Earth during this event, which occurred while the planet was at perigee, or its closest point to Earth in its orbit. The record for closest approach between Mars and Earth was set in 2003 at just 34.8 million miles (56 million kilometers); according to NASA, Mars and Earth won't be this close for another 265 years, until 2287.
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Spaceflight photographer John Kraus caught a stunning shot of Mars(opens in new tab) as it appeared behind the moon following occultation:
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Amateur astrophotographer Tom Williams produced a gorgeous image of the moon and Mars by combining multiple photographs, and offered an explanation of how he made the image(opens in new tab) on Twitter.
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Amateur astronomer and photographer Tom Glenn produced a breathtaking image of Mars(opens in new tab) rising above the moon by stacking 15 different photograph frames.
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Astronomer and science communicator Phil Plait caught Mars creeping behind the moon(opens in new tab) just prior to occultation.
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Distant 'hell planet' with diamond core is the victim of a gravitational catastrophe
The planet 55 Cancri e, also known as the "hell planet," appears to have been dragged closer to its sun's equator due to a gravitational anomaly.
An artist’s drawing of Janssen. The planet orbits its star so closely that its surface is a 3632 degree Fahrenheit (2000 degrees Celsius) lava ocean.
(Image credit: ESA/Hubble, M. Kornmesser)
Scientists studying a distant "hell planet" where clouds rain lava, the oceans are molten and the core is filled with diamonds have found that the nightmarish planet wasn’t always so bad; but it became infernally hot after being yanked closer to its sun.
The planet, classified as 55 Cancri e, is nicknamed "Janssen" after Zacharias Janssen, a Dutch spectacle-maker who is dubiously attributed with the invention of the first optical telescope. The a rocky world, 40 light-years away from us, orbits its star Copernicus 70 times closer than Earth orbits the sun — meaning one of its years lasts just 18 hours.
But Janssen may not have always been this way, a new orbital analysis published Dec. 8 in the journal Nature Astronomy(opens in new tab) revealed. The planet orbits Copernicus, itself part of a binary pair with a red dwarf star, alongside four other planets; and while it was always hot, the planet may have only gained its hellish conditions after being reeled in toward its star's equator following shifts in the gravity felt from Copernicus, the red dwarf and Janssen's sister planets.
"We've learned about how this multi-planet system — one of the systems with the most planets that we've found — got into its current state," study lead author Lily Zhao, a research fellow at the Flatiron Institute's Center for Computational Astrophysics (CCA) in New York City, said in a statement.
The researchers wanted to study the distant system to assess how its planets evolved and how it is different from our flat, pancake-like solar system where all planets occupy mostly identical orbital planes. Understanding these differences will help scientists to assess the likelihood of life existing on Earth-like worlds elsewhere in the universe.
To study the distant system, the researchers used the Lowell Discovery Telescope in Arizona to measure miniscule shifts in light levels as the hell planet moved between Copernicus and Earth. Copernicus is also spinning, so the scientists used the telescope's Extreme Precision Spectrometer (EXPRES) to measure the tiny doppler shifting of the star's light and spot which part of the star was being blocked by the planet at any given moment. (The Doppler effect causes light from a source travelling towards the oberver to be bluer, and light from a source traveling away redder — so the star’s light appears bluer on one half where the star is moving towards the viewer, and redder on its other half where it is moving away.)
This enabled the scientists to reconstruct the planet's unusually close orbit around Copernicus' equator, which they think it entered into after the gravitational misalignments in the system pulled it closer to the star. Copernicus' spin bulges out the star’s midsection and flattens its top and bottom, which led Janssen to be tugged into line along the equator of the star. This is an especially strange orbit compared with the other planets in the system, whose orbits don't even cross between Copernicus and Earth.
The astrophysicists say they want to expand their study to search for planets like our own and learn how they evolved.
"We're hoping to find planetary systems similar to ours," Zhao said. "And to better understand the systems that we do know about."
