Phobos: Moon over Mars:
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
2017 July 21
Phobos: Moon over Mars
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Zolt Levay (STScI) - Acknowledgment: J.Bell (ASU) and M.Wolff (SSI)
Explanation: A tiny moon with a scary name, Phobos emerges from behind the Red Planet in this timelapse sequence from the Earth-orbiting Hubble Space Telescope. Over 22 minutes the 13 separate exposures were captured near the 2016 closest approach of Mars to planet Earth. Martians have to look to the west to watch Phobos rise, though. The small moon is closer to its parent planet than any other moon in the Solar System, about 3,700 miles (6,000 kilometers) above the Martian surface. It completes one orbit in just 7 hours and 39 minutes. That's faster than a Mars rotation, which corresponds to about 24 hours and 40 minutes. So on Mars, Phobos can be seen to rise above the western horizon 3 times a day. Still, Phobos is doomed.
Tomorrow's picture: to catch some sun
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Showing posts with label Universo. Show all posts
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Saturday, July 22, 2017
Friday, July 21, 2017
World's 1st Laser Weapon Is Ready to Blast Rogue Drones
World's 1st Laser Weapon Is Ready to Blast Rogue Drones:
The newly developed Laser Weapon System (LaWS) is situated on the USS Ponce, which is deployed to the Persian Gulf.
Credit: John F. Williams/US NavyThe world's first laser weapon — one that can "kill" threatening, airborne drones — is ready for action, according to news sources.
The laser, known as the Laser Weapons System (LaWS), may seem as though it were pulled straight from a James Bond movie, but it's entirely functional and can shoot with stunning accuracy, the U.S. Navy told CNN. The LaWS is currently deployed aboard the USS Ponce, an amphibious transport ship, in the Persian Gulf.
"Operationally, it works just like a laser pointer," Lt. Cale Hughes, a LaWS officer, told CNN. "There's a chamber inside with special materials that release photons." [7 Technologies That Transformed Warfare]
The LaWS laser beam is completely silent and invisible. It's also fast: The laser travels at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second, or about 300,000 kilometers per second), meaning it's about 50,000 times the speed of an incoming intercontinental ballistic missile, such as the one North Korea is testing, the Navy told CNN.
The $40 million system requires a team of three to operate it and a small generator to power its electricity supply, according to the Navy.
However, each blast is relatively cheap. "It's about a dollar a shot," Hughes told CNN.
In addition to being able to take down threats in the air, the LaWS can hit and disable objects in the water. The laser's accurate blasts, heated to thousands of degrees, might even mean fewer casualties in combat, Inez Kelly, a U.S. Naval Forces Central Command science adviser, told CNN.
For instance, if the laser is aimed at an enemy boat, operatives can "take out exactly the engine, and not necessarily damage anything else," Kelly said. "That type of precision weapon work is something that you don't really get with conventional weapons, because there tends to be more collateral damage."
Under Geneva Convention rules, armed forces are not allowed to use laser weapons directly against people, reported Optics.org, a site that tracks the photonics industry. The U.S. will abide by that protocol, Rear Adm. Matthew Klunder, chief of naval research, said in 2014 at a news conference in Washington, D.C., according to Optics.org.
The U.S. Navy is already developing second-generation systems that might be able to target threats other than drones and water vessels. These missions are classified, but when asked whether the LaWS could shoot and destroy missiles, USS Ponce Capt. Christopher Wells said "maybe" and smiled, according to CNN.
Original article on Live Science.
The laser, known as the Laser Weapons System (LaWS), may seem as though it were pulled straight from a James Bond movie, but it's entirely functional and can shoot with stunning accuracy, the U.S. Navy told CNN. The LaWS is currently deployed aboard the USS Ponce, an amphibious transport ship, in the Persian Gulf.
"Operationally, it works just like a laser pointer," Lt. Cale Hughes, a LaWS officer, told CNN. "There's a chamber inside with special materials that release photons." [7 Technologies That Transformed Warfare]
The LaWS laser beam is completely silent and invisible. It's also fast: The laser travels at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second, or about 300,000 kilometers per second), meaning it's about 50,000 times the speed of an incoming intercontinental ballistic missile, such as the one North Korea is testing, the Navy told CNN.
The $40 million system requires a team of three to operate it and a small generator to power its electricity supply, according to the Navy.
However, each blast is relatively cheap. "It's about a dollar a shot," Hughes told CNN.
In addition to being able to take down threats in the air, the LaWS can hit and disable objects in the water. The laser's accurate blasts, heated to thousands of degrees, might even mean fewer casualties in combat, Inez Kelly, a U.S. Naval Forces Central Command science adviser, told CNN.
For instance, if the laser is aimed at an enemy boat, operatives can "take out exactly the engine, and not necessarily damage anything else," Kelly said. "That type of precision weapon work is something that you don't really get with conventional weapons, because there tends to be more collateral damage."
Under Geneva Convention rules, armed forces are not allowed to use laser weapons directly against people, reported Optics.org, a site that tracks the photonics industry. The U.S. will abide by that protocol, Rear Adm. Matthew Klunder, chief of naval research, said in 2014 at a news conference in Washington, D.C., according to Optics.org.
The U.S. Navy is already developing second-generation systems that might be able to target threats other than drones and water vessels. These missions are classified, but when asked whether the LaWS could shoot and destroy missiles, USS Ponce Capt. Christopher Wells said "maybe" and smiled, according to CNN.
Original article on Live Science.
Liftoff? Icy Jets of Saturn Moon Enceladus Fly in NASA Photo
Liftoff? Icy Jets of Saturn Moon Enceladus Fly in NASA Photo:
Saturn's moon Enceladus releases jets of water ice as imaged by the Cassini spacecraft in April. The moon shines in reflected Saturn light, while the jets are backlit by the sun.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science InstituteA photo of Saturn's moon Enceladus looks poised for liftoff as jets fly from its southern hemisphere.
While Enceladus can't fly — at least outside of its ordinary orbit around the ringed planet — its remarkable icy jets intrigue scientists because they hint at a subsurface ocean that could support life.
The photo, taken by the Cassini spacecraft, spotlights the moon's Saturn-facing hemisphere, which is 313 miles across (504 km), according to NASA's image caption. The jets are backlit by sunlight, while the front shines with light reflected back from Saturn. Cassini was 502,000 miles (808,000 km) from Enceladus when it captured the visible-light image with its narrow-angle camera on April 13, and the image shows 3 miles (5 km) per pixel.
Enceladus' fierce jets emerge from a series of ridges in its southern hemisphere nicknamed "tiger stripes." Cassini first spotted the jets in 2005, and dove through the plumes multiple times; in 2015, it passed within 30 miles (50 km) of the moon's surface while sampling their composition. Data from that flyby suggested that its subsurface ocean might have enough energy, suggested by the existence of molecular hydrogen, to host life similar to microbes on Earth. Besides water ice, the plumes contain traces of methane, ammonia, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, salts and simple organic molecules.
Cassini is a collaboration among NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency, and it has orbited Saturn since 2004. The probe is in the Grand Finale phase of its mission, as it makes close flybys between Saturn and its rings before plunging down into the planet's atmosphere Sept. 15. That dive is partially motivated by a desire to protect the little icy moon — as Cassini ran out of fuel, its orbit could have become unstable and led to it crashing and contaminating moons in Saturn's neighborhood.
Email Sarah Lewin at slewin@space.com or follow her @SarahExplains. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
While Enceladus can't fly — at least outside of its ordinary orbit around the ringed planet — its remarkable icy jets intrigue scientists because they hint at a subsurface ocean that could support life.
The photo, taken by the Cassini spacecraft, spotlights the moon's Saturn-facing hemisphere, which is 313 miles across (504 km), according to NASA's image caption. The jets are backlit by sunlight, while the front shines with light reflected back from Saturn. Cassini was 502,000 miles (808,000 km) from Enceladus when it captured the visible-light image with its narrow-angle camera on April 13, and the image shows 3 miles (5 km) per pixel.
Enceladus' fierce jets emerge from a series of ridges in its southern hemisphere nicknamed "tiger stripes." Cassini first spotted the jets in 2005, and dove through the plumes multiple times; in 2015, it passed within 30 miles (50 km) of the moon's surface while sampling their composition. Data from that flyby suggested that its subsurface ocean might have enough energy, suggested by the existence of molecular hydrogen, to host life similar to microbes on Earth. Besides water ice, the plumes contain traces of methane, ammonia, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, salts and simple organic molecules.
Cassini is a collaboration among NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency, and it has orbited Saturn since 2004. The probe is in the Grand Finale phase of its mission, as it makes close flybys between Saturn and its rings before plunging down into the planet's atmosphere Sept. 15. That dive is partially motivated by a desire to protect the little icy moon — as Cassini ran out of fuel, its orbit could have become unstable and led to it crashing and contaminating moons in Saturn's neighborhood.
Email Sarah Lewin at slewin@space.com or follow her @SarahExplains. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
Future Space Colony? Maybe We Should Look Beyond Mars to Saturn's Titan Moon
Future Space Colony? Maybe We Should Look Beyond Mars to Saturn's Titan Moon:
NASA's Cassini spacecraft, Saturn, and Titan, Saturn's largest moon.
Credit: Cassini Model: Brian Kumanchik, Christian Lopez. NASA/JPL-Caltech. Migrated to Maya & materials updated by Kevin M. GillNASA and Elon Musk’s SpaceX are focused on getting astronauts to Mars and even one day establishing a colony on the Red Planet — but what if their attention is better directed elsewhere? A new paper in the Journal of Astrobiology & Outreach suggests that humans should instead establish a colony on Titan, a soupy orange moon of Saturn that has been likened to an early Earth, and which may harbor signs of "life not as we know it."
"In many respects, Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is one of the most Earth-like worlds we have found to date," NASA says on its website. "With its thick atmosphere and organic-rich chemistry, Titan resembles a frozen version of Earth, several billion years ago, before life began pumping oxygen into our atmosphere."
To be clear, Titan could have microbes — or, at the least, chemistry that resembles prebiotic life — but it is no Earth. The moon is perpetually covered in an orange cloud, and its atmosphere is not human-friendly. But Titan's gravity is walkable (14 percent that of Earth), radiation on the surface is less than on Mars due to its thick clouds, and it offers various sources from which visitors might generate energy.
As the paper's author, Amanda Hendrix, pointed out in a previous book that she co-authored, Beyond Earth: Our Path to a New Home in the Planets, Titan has massive deposits of hydrocarbons — compounds generally associated with petroleum and gas. Data from NASA's Cassini probe has shown that Titan has hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all of the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth.
Beyond Earth points out that people on Titan could get energy from these compounds if they use a separate combustion source that helps circumvent that fact that there's no oxygen in the moon’s atmosphere. But Hendrix's new research also discusses other ways of generating chemical energy, such as treating acetylene (an abundant compound) with hydrogen.
"In this paper, I wanted to dig into the chemical energy options a bit deeper and also look into alternative energy possibilities," said Hendrix, a staff scientist at the non-profit Planetary Science Institute. "My co-author, Yuk Yung, and I looked at chemical, nuclear, geothermal, solar, hydropower, and wind power options at Titan. The paper is designed to be a high-level first look at some of these topics."
RELATED: Saturn's Titan Moon May Offer a Glimpse of Life as We Don't Know It
While Hendrix said it's possible to generate such energy using technology that we have available today, she noted that there are ways that we could get even more out of Titan’s environment with the proper study. For example, more solar power would be generated if we learned about the capabilities of different photovoltaic cell materials — and most importantly, how they would behave on Titan.
Hydro power would require better mapping of Titan's abundant lake regions, including their topography and their flow rate. Even wind power would require some research into airborne wind turbines — but Hendrix said all of these options are promising.
"I imagine that, as here on Earth, a combination of energy sources will be useful on Titan," she said. "In particular, solar energy (using large arrays) and wind power (using airborne wind turbines) may be particularly effective."
RELATED: A City on Mars: Elon Musk Details SpaceX's Plan to Colonize the Red Planet
Delivered properly, the energy needs would be more than enough for a small outpost. Instead of just sending humans on a one-shot mission to look for life on the surface, for example, Hendrix envisions a future that could generate power for years. One scenario — solar arrays over 10 percent of Titan's surface area — would generate power needs of a population of roughly 300 million, equivalent to that of the United States.
"This is just an initial estimate, of course, but what we're talking about is something much larger than a short-term human science mission to Titan," Hendrix said.
With NASA's stated goal of sending humans to Mars by the 2030s, however, space agencies remain focused on Mars exploration. While the Cassini robotic mission at Saturn and its moons wraps up observations this September, NASA and the European Space Agency are planning even more missions to Mars in the coming years. Saturn doesn't really figure into the plans, although NASA is thinking about eventual missions to Uranus, Neptune, and Jupiter's moon Europa.
Originally published on Seeker.
"In many respects, Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is one of the most Earth-like worlds we have found to date," NASA says on its website. "With its thick atmosphere and organic-rich chemistry, Titan resembles a frozen version of Earth, several billion years ago, before life began pumping oxygen into our atmosphere."
To be clear, Titan could have microbes — or, at the least, chemistry that resembles prebiotic life — but it is no Earth. The moon is perpetually covered in an orange cloud, and its atmosphere is not human-friendly. But Titan's gravity is walkable (14 percent that of Earth), radiation on the surface is less than on Mars due to its thick clouds, and it offers various sources from which visitors might generate energy.
As the paper's author, Amanda Hendrix, pointed out in a previous book that she co-authored, Beyond Earth: Our Path to a New Home in the Planets, Titan has massive deposits of hydrocarbons — compounds generally associated with petroleum and gas. Data from NASA's Cassini probe has shown that Titan has hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all of the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth.
A simulation of the view from the ground on Titan.
Credit: Kevin M. GillBeyond Earth points out that people on Titan could get energy from these compounds if they use a separate combustion source that helps circumvent that fact that there's no oxygen in the moon’s atmosphere. But Hendrix's new research also discusses other ways of generating chemical energy, such as treating acetylene (an abundant compound) with hydrogen.
"In this paper, I wanted to dig into the chemical energy options a bit deeper and also look into alternative energy possibilities," said Hendrix, a staff scientist at the non-profit Planetary Science Institute. "My co-author, Yuk Yung, and I looked at chemical, nuclear, geothermal, solar, hydropower, and wind power options at Titan. The paper is designed to be a high-level first look at some of these topics."
RELATED: Saturn's Titan Moon May Offer a Glimpse of Life as We Don't Know It
While Hendrix said it's possible to generate such energy using technology that we have available today, she noted that there are ways that we could get even more out of Titan’s environment with the proper study. For example, more solar power would be generated if we learned about the capabilities of different photovoltaic cell materials — and most importantly, how they would behave on Titan.
Hydro power would require better mapping of Titan's abundant lake regions, including their topography and their flow rate. Even wind power would require some research into airborne wind turbines — but Hendrix said all of these options are promising.
"I imagine that, as here on Earth, a combination of energy sources will be useful on Titan," she said. "In particular, solar energy (using large arrays) and wind power (using airborne wind turbines) may be particularly effective."
RELATED: A City on Mars: Elon Musk Details SpaceX's Plan to Colonize the Red Planet
Delivered properly, the energy needs would be more than enough for a small outpost. Instead of just sending humans on a one-shot mission to look for life on the surface, for example, Hendrix envisions a future that could generate power for years. One scenario — solar arrays over 10 percent of Titan's surface area — would generate power needs of a population of roughly 300 million, equivalent to that of the United States.
"This is just an initial estimate, of course, but what we're talking about is something much larger than a short-term human science mission to Titan," Hendrix said.
With NASA's stated goal of sending humans to Mars by the 2030s, however, space agencies remain focused on Mars exploration. While the Cassini robotic mission at Saturn and its moons wraps up observations this September, NASA and the European Space Agency are planning even more missions to Mars in the coming years. Saturn doesn't really figure into the plans, although NASA is thinking about eventual missions to Uranus, Neptune, and Jupiter's moon Europa.
Originally published on Seeker.
A Huge Asteroid Hitting Mars 4 Billion Years Ago May Have Shaped the Red Planet
A Huge Asteroid Hitting Mars 4 Billion Years Ago May Have Shaped the Red Planet:
A composite pictures of (from left to right) Mars, Phobos, and Deimos. A giant impact could have formed these two small moons, according to a new paper.
Credit: NASAThe peculiar geological features on Mars have long puzzled astronomers and planetary scientists. The north of the planet is mostly smooth lowlands while the south is higher and full of craters, and the Red Planet’s interior has a striking abundance of rare metals.
Researchers have proposed various explanations for these elements, positing that they may have been shaped by such forces as ancient oceans, extraterrestrial plate tectonics, or a massive asteroid strike. The latter idea, known as the "single impact hypothesis," has picked up steam of late, and was just given a shot in the arm by a new paper that argues that the sculpting of Mars and its two small moons was largely determined by a huge impact early in the solar system's history.
In this scenario, a celestial body that was roughly the size of Ceres, a dwarf planet in the asteroid belt, collided with the Red Planet and tore away a part of its northern hemisphere, leaving behind large deposits of metallic elements. Additionally, debris from the asteroid circled the planet and eventually coalesced into Phobos and Deimos, the two tiny moons that orbit Mars — at least for now. (Scientists estimate that Phobos will either break up or slam into Mars in a few million years.)
RELATED: Mars May Have Been Born in the Asteroid Belt
"We showed in this paper — that from dynamics and from geochemistry — that we could explain these three unique features of Mars," said Stephen Mojzsis, a professor in the University of Colorado Boulder's department of geological sciences and a co-author of the paper, in a statement. "This solution is elegant, in the sense that it solves three interesting and outstanding problems about how Mars came to be."
The research, which Mojzsis produced in collaboration with Ramon Brasser, an astronomer at the Earth-Life Science Institute at the Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan, was recently published in Geophysical Research Letters. It looked at Martian meteorite samples that landed on Earth. These samples had more rare metals (like iridium, osmium or platinum) than expected, hinting that Mars received a lot of impacts from small, rocky asteroids that carried these elements with them.
The scientists estimated that these rare metals account for about 0.8% of the mass of Mars.
RELATED: NASA's Curiosity Rover Traces Ancient Environmental Changes on Mars
They then ran simulations with asteroids of various sizes to determine what size would best fit the Martian geology. The answer was a huge asteroid about 745 miles across (1,200 kilometers) — nearly the length of the state of California. The simulations suggest this behemoth slammed into Mars about 4.43 billion years ago, just 700 million years after the solar system was formed. Several smaller impacts occurred in the eons that followed.
The researchers theorize that after the big impact took place, there were distinct areas of asteroid material and Red Planet rock on the surface. Over time, however, erosion, wind, and other processes on the surface swept the two reservoirs together in a mixture.
Mojzsis and Brasser next plan to use UC Boulder's Martian meteorite archives to see how the composition of these meteorites differs or remains the same, depending on how old the meteorites are.
Originally published on Seeker.
Researchers have proposed various explanations for these elements, positing that they may have been shaped by such forces as ancient oceans, extraterrestrial plate tectonics, or a massive asteroid strike. The latter idea, known as the "single impact hypothesis," has picked up steam of late, and was just given a shot in the arm by a new paper that argues that the sculpting of Mars and its two small moons was largely determined by a huge impact early in the solar system's history.
In this scenario, a celestial body that was roughly the size of Ceres, a dwarf planet in the asteroid belt, collided with the Red Planet and tore away a part of its northern hemisphere, leaving behind large deposits of metallic elements. Additionally, debris from the asteroid circled the planet and eventually coalesced into Phobos and Deimos, the two tiny moons that orbit Mars — at least for now. (Scientists estimate that Phobos will either break up or slam into Mars in a few million years.)
RELATED: Mars May Have Been Born in the Asteroid Belt
"We showed in this paper — that from dynamics and from geochemistry — that we could explain these three unique features of Mars," said Stephen Mojzsis, a professor in the University of Colorado Boulder's department of geological sciences and a co-author of the paper, in a statement. "This solution is elegant, in the sense that it solves three interesting and outstanding problems about how Mars came to be."
The research, which Mojzsis produced in collaboration with Ramon Brasser, an astronomer at the Earth-Life Science Institute at the Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan, was recently published in Geophysical Research Letters. It looked at Martian meteorite samples that landed on Earth. These samples had more rare metals (like iridium, osmium or platinum) than expected, hinting that Mars received a lot of impacts from small, rocky asteroids that carried these elements with them.
The scientists estimated that these rare metals account for about 0.8% of the mass of Mars.
RELATED: NASA's Curiosity Rover Traces Ancient Environmental Changes on Mars
They then ran simulations with asteroids of various sizes to determine what size would best fit the Martian geology. The answer was a huge asteroid about 745 miles across (1,200 kilometers) — nearly the length of the state of California. The simulations suggest this behemoth slammed into Mars about 4.43 billion years ago, just 700 million years after the solar system was formed. Several smaller impacts occurred in the eons that followed.
The researchers theorize that after the big impact took place, there were distinct areas of asteroid material and Red Planet rock on the surface. Over time, however, erosion, wind, and other processes on the surface swept the two reservoirs together in a mixture.
Mojzsis and Brasser next plan to use UC Boulder's Martian meteorite archives to see how the composition of these meteorites differs or remains the same, depending on how old the meteorites are.
Originally published on Seeker.
In 'Valerian,' International Space Station Evolves into Interstellar Metropolis
In 'Valerian,' International Space Station Evolves into Interstellar Metropolis:
The city of Alpha in Luc Besson's latest fantasy film, "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets," shares a few similarities to the existing International Space Station, which is highlighted in the opening scene of the movie.
Credit: STX Films and EuropacorpIn the new adventure movie "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets," directed by Luc Besson, the title city of Alpha has a present-day origin: the International Space Station.
The opening of "Valerian" — a film inspired by the popular French comic series "'Valérian et Laureline," created by Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières — has a scene that showcases the International Space Station (ISS) as it grows into a galactic United Nations, hosting meet-and-greets with representatives from Earth and, later, aliens. It grows physically, too, until it is large enough that it needs to be moved out of low-Earth orbit. [Read our full "Valerian" review!]
The ISS' evolution is a plausible one: The station has a history of bringing cultures together to build itself and to exchange ideas. In "Valerian," the first greeting in the montage takes place in the not-too-distant year 2020, where two human astronauts are shown embracing, and as we advance in time, we see increasingly strange aliens introduce themselves to humans on board the station.
Certainly, the international crews that have continuously occupied the existing ISS since 2000 would have milder reactions to meeting foreign astronauts than hypothetically meeting alien life-forms. However, the ISS was nevertheless groundbreaking in its ability to unite five space agencies to expand scientific research possibilities and to mend older nationalistic divisions. Many of the space programs involved with the station — NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), CSA (Canada), JAXA (Japan), ESA (Europe) — include countries that have warred with one another in the last century.
Early concepts for the ISS had the space station taking the shape of a giant wheel. Wernher von Braun developed an ISS station concept in 1952 that was round in order to provide simulated gravity through rotation, with a capacity to house dozens of scientists, according this Space.com infographic.
Science-fiction storytellers were clearly inspired by these concepts, and a few years later, in 1968, Stanley Kubrick's film "2001: A Space Odyssey" developed a model for a space station that was in a similar wheel shape. The year before, 1967, the first issue of "Valerian and Laureline" was published by Dargaud, according to "Valerian" film representatives. Point Central, a vast space station that lies at the crossroads of space that inspired Alpha in the film adaptation, appeared a few years later, in the 1975 comic "Valerian Vol 6: Ambassador of the Shadows."
Right now, NASA and U.S. officials have only promised to fund the ISS through 2024, so it's uncertain what the future will hold for the orbiting lab. But as crews from around the world work together to research and live in space, science-fiction writers have inspiration to continue writing tales of the ISS expanding someday into that kind of vibrant metropolis.
Follow Doris Elin Salazar on Twitter @salazar_elin. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
The opening of "Valerian" — a film inspired by the popular French comic series "'Valérian et Laureline," created by Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières — has a scene that showcases the International Space Station (ISS) as it grows into a galactic United Nations, hosting meet-and-greets with representatives from Earth and, later, aliens. It grows physically, too, until it is large enough that it needs to be moved out of low-Earth orbit. [Read our full "Valerian" review!]
The fictional metropolis Alpha was inspired by Point City, which was first written about in the sixth volume of the "Valerian and Laureline" graphic novel series, entitled "Ambassador of the Shadows."
Credit: DargaudThe ISS' evolution is a plausible one: The station has a history of bringing cultures together to build itself and to exchange ideas. In "Valerian," the first greeting in the montage takes place in the not-too-distant year 2020, where two human astronauts are shown embracing, and as we advance in time, we see increasingly strange aliens introduce themselves to humans on board the station.
Certainly, the international crews that have continuously occupied the existing ISS since 2000 would have milder reactions to meeting foreign astronauts than hypothetically meeting alien life-forms. However, the ISS was nevertheless groundbreaking in its ability to unite five space agencies to expand scientific research possibilities and to mend older nationalistic divisions. Many of the space programs involved with the station — NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), CSA (Canada), JAXA (Japan), ESA (Europe) — include countries that have warred with one another in the last century.
This image is a side-by-side view of early space station concepts in fact and fiction. In the decade following these illustrations, the "Valerian and Laureline" comic was written, later inspiring director Luc Besson to create the 2017 "Valerian" film.
Credit: Karl Tate, Space.comEarly concepts for the ISS had the space station taking the shape of a giant wheel. Wernher von Braun developed an ISS station concept in 1952 that was round in order to provide simulated gravity through rotation, with a capacity to house dozens of scientists, according this Space.com infographic.
Science-fiction storytellers were clearly inspired by these concepts, and a few years later, in 1968, Stanley Kubrick's film "2001: A Space Odyssey" developed a model for a space station that was in a similar wheel shape. The year before, 1967, the first issue of "Valerian and Laureline" was published by Dargaud, according to "Valerian" film representatives. Point Central, a vast space station that lies at the crossroads of space that inspired Alpha in the film adaptation, appeared a few years later, in the 1975 comic "Valerian Vol 6: Ambassador of the Shadows."
Right now, NASA and U.S. officials have only promised to fund the ISS through 2024, so it's uncertain what the future will hold for the orbiting lab. But as crews from around the world work together to research and live in space, science-fiction writers have inspiration to continue writing tales of the ISS expanding someday into that kind of vibrant metropolis.
Mission specialists Lopez-Alegria and Herrington working on a newly installed Port One (P1) truss on the International Space Station in 2002.
Credit: NASAFollow Doris Elin Salazar on Twitter @salazar_elin. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
Old NASA Computers, Tapes Found in Dead Man's Basement
Old NASA Computers, Tapes Found in Dead Man's Basement:
Artist's illustration of NASA's Pioneer 10 spacecraft approaching Jupiter in late 1973.
Credit: NASATwo huge, Apollo-era NASA computers and more than 300 data-recording tapes were found in the Pittsburgh basement of a dead engineer in late 2015, according to media reports.
In November 2015, a scrap dealer was invited to clean out the basement of the recently deceased IBM engineer, who did some work for NASA at the height of the Space Race, Ars Technica reported. The dealer found about 325 magnetic data tapes and the two giant computers, both of which were marked "NASA Property."
The scrap dealer contacted NASA to inform the agency of the find, and NASA's Office of the Inspector General (OIG) performed an investigation. Ars Technica obtained the OIG's report via a Freedom of Information Act request.
"Please tell NASA these items were not stolen," the engineer's heir told the scrap dealer, according to the OIG report. "They belonged to IBM Allegheny Center, Pittsburgh, PA 15212. During the 1968-1972 time frame, IBM was getting rid of the items, so [the engineer] asked if he could have them and was told he could have them."
The relevant names have been redacted in the OIG report.
NASA officials told the deceased engineer's family that the agency did not need the computers back. After further investigation, an agency archivist determined that 93 of the tapes contained data from Pioneer 10 or Pioneer 11, flyby missions to Jupiter and Saturn that launched in the early 1970s.
A few of the other tapes recorded data from the Pioneer 8, Pioneer 9, Helios 1 and Intelsat IV missions, but most of the recordings — about 215 of them — could not be identified. The archivist recommended that all the tapes — which were moldy and in generally poor condition — be destroyed, because they didn't contain anything of historical significance.
You can read the NASA OIG report here and the full story at Ars Technica here.
Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.
In November 2015, a scrap dealer was invited to clean out the basement of the recently deceased IBM engineer, who did some work for NASA at the height of the Space Race, Ars Technica reported. The dealer found about 325 magnetic data tapes and the two giant computers, both of which were marked "NASA Property."
The scrap dealer contacted NASA to inform the agency of the find, and NASA's Office of the Inspector General (OIG) performed an investigation. Ars Technica obtained the OIG's report via a Freedom of Information Act request.
"Please tell NASA these items were not stolen," the engineer's heir told the scrap dealer, according to the OIG report. "They belonged to IBM Allegheny Center, Pittsburgh, PA 15212. During the 1968-1972 time frame, IBM was getting rid of the items, so [the engineer] asked if he could have them and was told he could have them."
The relevant names have been redacted in the OIG report.
NASA officials told the deceased engineer's family that the agency did not need the computers back. After further investigation, an agency archivist determined that 93 of the tapes contained data from Pioneer 10 or Pioneer 11, flyby missions to Jupiter and Saturn that launched in the early 1970s.
A few of the other tapes recorded data from the Pioneer 8, Pioneer 9, Helios 1 and Intelsat IV missions, but most of the recordings — about 215 of them — could not be identified. The archivist recommended that all the tapes — which were moldy and in generally poor condition — be destroyed, because they didn't contain anything of historical significance.
You can read the NASA OIG report here and the full story at Ars Technica here.
Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.
Advanced Civilizations Could Build a Galactic Internet with Planetary Transits
Advanced Civilizations Could Build a Galactic Internet with Planetary Transits:
Decades after Enrico Fermi’s uttered his famous words – “Where is everybody?” – the Paradox that bears his name still haunts us. Despite repeated attempts to locate radio signals coming from space and our ongoing efforts to find visible indications of alien civilizations in distant star systems, the search extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI) has yet to produce anything substantive.
But as history has taught us, failure has a way of stimulated new and interesting ideas. For example, in a recently-published paper, Dr. Duncan H. Forgan of St. Andrews University proposed that extra-terrestrial civilizations could be communicating with each other by creating artificial transits of their respective stars. This sort of “galactic internet” could be how advanced species are attempting to signal us right now.
Forgan’s paper, “Exoplanet Transits as the Foundation of an Interstellar Communications Network“, was recently published online. In addition to being a research fellow at the School of Physics and Astronomy and the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance at the University of St Andrews (Scotland’s oldest academic institution), he is also a member of the St Andrews Center for Exoplanet Science.
The paper begins by addressing the two fundamental problems associated with interstellar communication – timing and energy consumption. When it comes to things like radio transmissions, the amount of energy that would be needed to transmit a coherent message over interstellar distances is prohibitive. Optical communications (i.e. lasers) need less energy, but spotting them would require incredibly precise timing.
As such, neither method would be particularly reliable for establishing an interstellar communications system. Taking a cue from humanity’s recent exoplanet-hunting efforts, Forgan argues that a method where transits in front of a stars are a basis of communication would solve both problems. The reason for this is largely due to the fact that the Transit Method is currently one of the most popular and reliable ways of detecting exoplanets.
By monitoring a star for periodic dips in brightness, which are caused by a planet or object passing between the observer and the star, astronomers are able to determine if the star has a system of planets. The method is also useful for determining the presence and composition of atmospheres around exoplanet. As Forgan indicates in the paper, this method could therefore be used as a means of signalling other civilizations:
He even offers estimates on how often such transmissions could be made. As he put it:
According to Forgan, such a possibility is hardly far-fetched, and would actually be a relatively economical means of communicating with other advanced species. Using graph theory, he estimated that civilizations within the GHZ could establish a fully connected network within a million years, where all civilizations are in communication with each other (either directly or via intermediate civilizations).
Artist’s concept of KIC 8462852, which has experienced unusual changes in luminosity over the past few years. Credit: NASA, JPL-CaltechNot only would this network require far less energy to transmit data, but the range of any signal would be limited only by the extent of these civilizations themselves. Beyond saving energy and having greater range (assuming intermediate civilizations are able to pass messages along), this method presents other advantages. For one, a high level of technological sophistication would be required to pick up the transit of exoplanets.
In other words, civilizations would need to reach a certain level of development before they could hope to join the network. This would prevent any unfortunate “cultural contamination”, where less-advanced civilizations learned about the existence of aliens before they were ready. Second, once acquired, the transit network signals would be extremely predictable, with each transmission corresponding to a known orbital period.
That being said, there are some downsides that Forgan was sure to acknowledge. For starters, the periodicity of these signals would be a double edged sword, as signals could only be sent if and when the receiver begins to see the transit. And while a megastructure could be moved to alter the transit period, this poses problems in terms of synchronizing transmission and reception.
Addressing the limitations of the analysis, Forgan also acknowledges that the study relies on fixed stellar orbits. The orbits of stars are known to change over time, with stars passing in and out of the GHZ regularly on cosmic timescales. In addition, there is also the issue of how such a network would differ between denser regions in the galaxy – i.e. globular clusters – and areas populated by field stars. Binary stars are also not considered in the analysis.
In addition, planetary orbits are known to change over time, due to perturbations caused by neighboring planets, companion stars, or close encounters with passing stars. As a result, the visibility of transiting planets can vary even more over cosmic timescales. Last, but not least, the study assumes that civilizations have a natural lifespan of about a billion years, which is not based in any concrete knowledge.
However, these considerations do not alter the overall conclusions reached by Forgan. Making allowances for the dynamic nature of stars and planets, and assuming that civilizations exist for only 1 million years, Forgan maintains that the creation of an interstellar network of this kind is still mathematically feasible. On top of that, an artificial object could continue to signal other species long after a civilization has gone extinct.
Addressing the Fermi Paradox, Forgan concludes that this sort of communication would take a long time to detect.As he summarizes in the paper (bold added for emphasis):
And last, but not least, it offers a potential resolution to the Fermi Paradox, one which we may have already stumbled upon and are simply not yet aware of. For all we know, the observed drops in brightness coming from Tabby’s Star are evidence of an alien civilization (possibly an extinct one). Of course, the key word here is “perhaps”, as no evidence exists that could confirm this.
The possibilities raised by this paper are also exciting given that exoplanet-hunting is expected to ramp up in the coming years. With the deployment of next-generations missions like the James Webb Space Telescope and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), we expect to be learning a great deal more about star systems both near and far.
Will we find more examples of unexplained drops in brightness? Who knows? The point is, if we do (and can’t find a natural cause for them) we have a possible explanation. Maybe its neighbors inviting us to “log on”!
Further Reading: arXiv
The post Advanced Civilizations Could Build a Galactic Internet with Planetary Transits appeared first on Universe Today.
Decades after Enrico Fermi’s uttered his famous words – “Where is everybody?” – the Paradox that bears his name still haunts us. Despite repeated attempts to locate radio signals coming from space and our ongoing efforts to find visible indications of alien civilizations in distant star systems, the search extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI) has yet to produce anything substantive.
But as history has taught us, failure has a way of stimulated new and interesting ideas. For example, in a recently-published paper, Dr. Duncan H. Forgan of St. Andrews University proposed that extra-terrestrial civilizations could be communicating with each other by creating artificial transits of their respective stars. This sort of “galactic internet” could be how advanced species are attempting to signal us right now.
Forgan’s paper, “Exoplanet Transits as the Foundation of an Interstellar Communications Network“, was recently published online. In addition to being a research fellow at the School of Physics and Astronomy and the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance at the University of St Andrews (Scotland’s oldest academic institution), he is also a member of the St Andrews Center for Exoplanet Science.
The paper begins by addressing the two fundamental problems associated with interstellar communication – timing and energy consumption. When it comes to things like radio transmissions, the amount of energy that would be needed to transmit a coherent message over interstellar distances is prohibitive. Optical communications (i.e. lasers) need less energy, but spotting them would require incredibly precise timing.
As such, neither method would be particularly reliable for establishing an interstellar communications system. Taking a cue from humanity’s recent exoplanet-hunting efforts, Forgan argues that a method where transits in front of a stars are a basis of communication would solve both problems. The reason for this is largely due to the fact that the Transit Method is currently one of the most popular and reliable ways of detecting exoplanets.
By monitoring a star for periodic dips in brightness, which are caused by a planet or object passing between the observer and the star, astronomers are able to determine if the star has a system of planets. The method is also useful for determining the presence and composition of atmospheres around exoplanet. As Forgan indicates in the paper, this method could therefore be used as a means of signalling other civilizations:
In short, Forgan argued that within the Galactic Habitable Zone (GHZ) – the region of the Milky Way in which life is most likely develop – species may find that the best way to communicate with each other is by creating artificial megastructures to transit their star. These transits, which other civilizations will be looking for (looking for exoplanets, like us!) will lead them to conclude that an advanced civilization exists in another star system.“An ETI ’A’ can communicate with ETI ’B’ if B is observing transiting planets in A’s star system, either by building structures to produce artificial transits observable by B, or by emitting signals at B during transit, at significantly lower energy consumption than typical electromagnetic transmission schemes.”
He even offers estimates on how often such transmissions could be made. As he put it:
“A message with a path of 20 kpc (the diameter of the GHZ) has a total travel time at lightspeed of just under 0.06 Myr. If we assume a relatively short timescale on which both ETIs remain in the transit zone of 100,000 years (which is approaching the timescale on which both secular evolution of planetary orbits and the star’s orbit become important), then a total of 30 exchanges can be made. This of course does not forbid a continuing conversation by other means.”If this is starting to sound familiar, that’s probably because this is precisely what some theorists say is happening around KIC 8462852 (aka. Tabby’s Star). Back in May of 2015, astronomers noticed that the star had been undergoing considerable drops in brightness in the past few years. This behavior confounded natural explanations, which led some to argue that it could be the result of an alien megastructure passing in front of the star.
According to Forgan, such a possibility is hardly far-fetched, and would actually be a relatively economical means of communicating with other advanced species. Using graph theory, he estimated that civilizations within the GHZ could establish a fully connected network within a million years, where all civilizations are in communication with each other (either directly or via intermediate civilizations).
Artist’s concept of KIC 8462852, which has experienced unusual changes in luminosity over the past few years. Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech
In other words, civilizations would need to reach a certain level of development before they could hope to join the network. This would prevent any unfortunate “cultural contamination”, where less-advanced civilizations learned about the existence of aliens before they were ready. Second, once acquired, the transit network signals would be extremely predictable, with each transmission corresponding to a known orbital period.
That being said, there are some downsides that Forgan was sure to acknowledge. For starters, the periodicity of these signals would be a double edged sword, as signals could only be sent if and when the receiver begins to see the transit. And while a megastructure could be moved to alter the transit period, this poses problems in terms of synchronizing transmission and reception.
Addressing the limitations of the analysis, Forgan also acknowledges that the study relies on fixed stellar orbits. The orbits of stars are known to change over time, with stars passing in and out of the GHZ regularly on cosmic timescales. In addition, there is also the issue of how such a network would differ between denser regions in the galaxy – i.e. globular clusters – and areas populated by field stars. Binary stars are also not considered in the analysis.
In addition, planetary orbits are known to change over time, due to perturbations caused by neighboring planets, companion stars, or close encounters with passing stars. As a result, the visibility of transiting planets can vary even more over cosmic timescales. Last, but not least, the study assumes that civilizations have a natural lifespan of about a billion years, which is not based in any concrete knowledge.
However, these considerations do not alter the overall conclusions reached by Forgan. Making allowances for the dynamic nature of stars and planets, and assuming that civilizations exist for only 1 million years, Forgan maintains that the creation of an interstellar network of this kind is still mathematically feasible. On top of that, an artificial object could continue to signal other species long after a civilization has gone extinct.
Addressing the Fermi Paradox, Forgan concludes that this sort of communication would take a long time to detect.As he summarizes in the paper (bold added for emphasis):
“I find that at any instant, only a few civilizations are correctly aligned to communicate via transits. However, we should expect the true network to be cumulative, where a “handshake” connection at any time guarantees connection in the future via e.g. electromagnetic signals. In all our simulations, the cumulative network connects all civilizations together in a complete network. If civilizations share knowledge of their network connections, the network can be fully complete on timescales of order a hundred thousand years. Once established, this network can connect any two civilizations either directly, or via intermediate civilizations, with a path much less than the dimensions of the GHZ.”In short, the reason we haven’t heard from or found evidence of ETI could be an issue of timing. Or, it could be that we simply didn’t realize we were being communicated with. While such an analysis is subject to guess-work and perhaps a few anthropocentric assumptions, it is certainly fascinating because of the possibilities it presents. It also offers us a potential tool in the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI), one which we are already engaged in.
And last, but not least, it offers a potential resolution to the Fermi Paradox, one which we may have already stumbled upon and are simply not yet aware of. For all we know, the observed drops in brightness coming from Tabby’s Star are evidence of an alien civilization (possibly an extinct one). Of course, the key word here is “perhaps”, as no evidence exists that could confirm this.
The possibilities raised by this paper are also exciting given that exoplanet-hunting is expected to ramp up in the coming years. With the deployment of next-generations missions like the James Webb Space Telescope and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), we expect to be learning a great deal more about star systems both near and far.
Will we find more examples of unexplained drops in brightness? Who knows? The point is, if we do (and can’t find a natural cause for them) we have a possible explanation. Maybe its neighbors inviting us to “log on”!
Further Reading: arXiv
The post Advanced Civilizations Could Build a Galactic Internet with Planetary Transits appeared first on Universe Today.
Earth-Sized Planet Takes Just Four Hours to Orbit its Star
Earth-Sized Planet Takes Just Four Hours to Orbit its Star:
The Kepler space observatory has made some interesting finds since it began its mission back in March of 2009. Even after the mission suffered the loss of two reaction wheels, it has continued to make discoveries as part of its K2 mission. All told, the Kepler and K2 missions have detected a total of 5,106 planetary candidates, and confirmed the existence of 2,493 planets.
One of the latest finds made using Kepler is EPIC 228813918 b, a terrestrial (i.e. rocky) planet that orbits a red dwarf star some 264 to 355 light years from Earth. This discovery raises some interesting questions, as it is the second time that a planet with an ultra-short orbital period – it completes a single orbit in just 4 hours and 20 minutes – has been found orbiting a red dwarf star.
The study, which was recently published online, was conducted by an international team of scientists who hail from institutions ranging from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), the Tokyo Institute of Technology, and the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (IAC) to observatories and universities from all around the world.
NASA’s Kepler space telescope was the first agency mission capable of detecting Earth-size planets. Credit: NASA/Wendy StenzelAs the team indicated in their study, the detection of this exoplanet was made thanks to data collected by numerous instruments. This included spectrographic data from the 8.2-m Subaru telescope and the 10-m Keck I telescope (both of which are located on Mauna Kea, Hawaii) and the Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT) at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory in La Palma, Spain.
This was combined with speckle imaging from the 3.5-m WIYN telescope at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona, photometry from the NASA’s K2 mission, and archival information of the star that goes back over 60 years. After eliminating any other possible explanations – such as an eclipsing binary (EB) – they not only confirmed the orbital period of the planet, but also provided constrains on its mass and size. As they wrote:
Archival images of the star EPIC 228813918, demonstrating its proper motion over nearly six decades – from (i) 1954, (ii) 1992, and (iii) 2012. Credit: Smith et al.However, what is perhaps most surprising about this find is just how massive it is. Though they didn’t measure the planet’s mass directly, their constraints indicate that the exoplanet has an upper mass limit of 0.7 Jupiter masses – which works out to over 222 Earth masses. And yet, the planet manages to pack this gas giant-like mass into a radius that is 0.80 to 0.98 times that of Earth.
The reason for this, they indicate, has to do with the planet’s apparent composition, which is particularly metal-rich:
“Discovering and characterizing extreme systems, such as USP planets like EPIC 228813918 b, is important as they offer constraints for planet formation theories,” they conclude. “Furthermore, they allow us to begin to constrain their interior structure – and potentially that of longer-period planets too, if they are shown to be a single population of objects.”
An artist’s depiction of extra-solar planets transiting an M-type (red dwarf) star. Credit: NASA/ESA/STSclOn the other hand, the study raises some interesting questions about USP planets – for instance, why the two shortest-period planets were both found orbiting red dwarf stars. A possible explanations, they claim, is that short-period planets could have longer lifetimes around M-dwarfs since their orbital decay would likely be much slower. However, they are quick to caution against making any tentative conclusions before more research is conducted.
In the future, the team hopes to conduct measurements of the planet’s mass using the radial velocity method. This would likely involve a next-generation high-resolution spectrograph, like the Infrared Doppler (IFD) instrument or the CARMENES instrument – which are currently being built for the Subaru Telescope and the Calar Alto Observatory (respectively) to assist in the hunt for exoplanets around red dwarf stars.
The post Earth-Sized Planet Takes Just Four Hours to Orbit its Star appeared first on Universe Today.
The Kepler space observatory has made some interesting finds since it began its mission back in March of 2009. Even after the mission suffered the loss of two reaction wheels, it has continued to make discoveries as part of its K2 mission. All told, the Kepler and K2 missions have detected a total of 5,106 planetary candidates, and confirmed the existence of 2,493 planets.
One of the latest finds made using Kepler is EPIC 228813918 b, a terrestrial (i.e. rocky) planet that orbits a red dwarf star some 264 to 355 light years from Earth. This discovery raises some interesting questions, as it is the second time that a planet with an ultra-short orbital period – it completes a single orbit in just 4 hours and 20 minutes – has been found orbiting a red dwarf star.
The study, which was recently published online, was conducted by an international team of scientists who hail from institutions ranging from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), the Tokyo Institute of Technology, and the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands (IAC) to observatories and universities from all around the world.
NASA’s Kepler space telescope was the first agency mission capable of detecting Earth-size planets. Credit: NASA/Wendy Stenzel
This was combined with speckle imaging from the 3.5-m WIYN telescope at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona, photometry from the NASA’s K2 mission, and archival information of the star that goes back over 60 years. After eliminating any other possible explanations – such as an eclipsing binary (EB) – they not only confirmed the orbital period of the planet, but also provided constrains on its mass and size. As they wrote:
“Using a combination of archival images, AO imaging, RV measurements, and light curve modelling, we show that no plausible eclipsing binary scenario can explain the K2 light curve, and thus confirm the planetary nature of the system. The planet, whose radius we determine to be 0.89 ± 0.09 [Earth radii], and which must have a iron mass fraction greater than 0.45, orbits a star of mass 0.463 ± 0.052 M and radius 0.442 ± 0.044 R.”
This orbital period – four hours and 20 minutes – is the second shortest of any exoplanet discovered to date, being just 4 minutes longer than that of KOI 1843.03, which also orbits an M-type (red dwarf) star. It is also the latest in a long line of recently-discovered exoplanets that complete a single orbit of their stars in less than a day. Planets belonging to this group are known as ultra-short-period (USP) planets, of which Kepler has found a total of 106.
Archival images of the star EPIC 228813918, demonstrating its proper motion over nearly six decades – from (i) 1954, (ii) 1992, and (iii) 2012. Credit: Smith et al.
The reason for this, they indicate, has to do with the planet’s apparent composition, which is particularly metal-rich:
“This leads to a constraint on the composition, assuming an iron core and a silicate mantle. We determine the minimum iron mass fraction to be 0.525 ± 0.075 (cf. 0.7 for KOI 1843.03), which is greater than that of Earth, Venus or Mars, but smaller than that of Mercury (approximately 0.38, 0.35, 0.26, and 0.68, respectively; Reynolds & Summers 1969).”Ultimately, the discovery of this planet is significant for a number of reasons. On the one hand, the team indicated that the constraints their study placed on the planet’s composition could prove useful in helping to understand how our own Solar planets came to be.
“Discovering and characterizing extreme systems, such as USP planets like EPIC 228813918 b, is important as they offer constraints for planet formation theories,” they conclude. “Furthermore, they allow us to begin to constrain their interior structure – and potentially that of longer-period planets too, if they are shown to be a single population of objects.”
An artist’s depiction of extra-solar planets transiting an M-type (red dwarf) star. Credit: NASA/ESA/STScl
In the future, the team hopes to conduct measurements of the planet’s mass using the radial velocity method. This would likely involve a next-generation high-resolution spectrograph, like the Infrared Doppler (IFD) instrument or the CARMENES instrument – which are currently being built for the Subaru Telescope and the Calar Alto Observatory (respectively) to assist in the hunt for exoplanets around red dwarf stars.
One thing is clear though. This latest find is just another indication that red dwarf stars are where exoplanet-hunters will need to be focusing their efforts in the coming years and decades. These low mass, ultra-cool and low-luminosity stars are where some of the most interesting and extreme finds are being made. And what we stand to learn by studying them promises to be most profound!
Further Reading: arXivThe post Earth-Sized Planet Takes Just Four Hours to Orbit its Star appeared first on Universe Today.
IC 1396: Emission Nebula in Cepheus
C 1396: Emission Nebula in Cepheus:
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
2017 July 20
IC 1396: Emission Nebula in Cepheus
Image Credit & Copyright: César Blanco González
Explanation: Stunning emission nebula IC 1396 mixes glowing cosmic gas and dark dust clouds in the high and far off constellation of Cepheus. Energized by the bright central star seen here, this star forming region sprawls across hundreds of light-years, spanning over three degrees on the sky while nearly 3,000 light-years from planet Earth. Among the intriguing dark shapes within IC 1396, the winding Elephant's Trunk nebula lies just below center. Stars could still be forming inside the dark shapes by gravitational collapse. But as the denser clouds are eroded away by powerful stellar winds and radiation, any forming stars will ultimately be cutoff from the reservoir of star stuff. The gorgeous color view is a composition of image data from narrowband filters, mapping emission from the nebula's atomic oxygen, hydrogen, and sulfur into blue, green, and red hues.
Tomorrow's picture: moon with a scary name
< | Archive | Submissions | Index | Search | Calendar | RSS | Education | About APOD | Discuss | >
Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
NASA Official: Phillip Newman Specific rights apply.
NASA Web Privacy Policy and Important Notices
A service of: ASD at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
2017 July 20
IC 1396: Emission Nebula in Cepheus
Image Credit & Copyright: César Blanco González
Explanation: Stunning emission nebula IC 1396 mixes glowing cosmic gas and dark dust clouds in the high and far off constellation of Cepheus. Energized by the bright central star seen here, this star forming region sprawls across hundreds of light-years, spanning over three degrees on the sky while nearly 3,000 light-years from planet Earth. Among the intriguing dark shapes within IC 1396, the winding Elephant's Trunk nebula lies just below center. Stars could still be forming inside the dark shapes by gravitational collapse. But as the denser clouds are eroded away by powerful stellar winds and radiation, any forming stars will ultimately be cutoff from the reservoir of star stuff. The gorgeous color view is a composition of image data from narrowband filters, mapping emission from the nebula's atomic oxygen, hydrogen, and sulfur into blue, green, and red hues.
Tomorrow's picture: moon with a scary name
< | Archive | Submissions | Index | Search | Calendar | RSS | Education | About APOD | Discuss | >
Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
NASA Official: Phillip Newman Specific rights apply.
NASA Web Privacy Policy and Important Notices
A service of: ASD at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
Wednesday, July 19, 2017
July 14 Solar Flare and a Coronal Mass Ejection
July 14 Solar Flare and a Coronal Mass Ejection: A medium-sized (M2) solar flare and a coronal mass ejection erupted from the same, large active region of the sun on July 14, 2017. The flare lasted almost two hours, quite a long duration. The coils arcing over this active region are particles spiraling along magnetic field lines.
| Original enclosures: |
Strange Radio Signals Detected from a Nearby Star
Strange Radio Signals Detected from a Nearby Star:
Astronomers have been listening to radio waves from space for decades. In addition to being a proven means of studying stars, galaxies, quasars and other celestial objects, radio astronomy is one of the main ways in which scientists have searched for signs of extra-terrestrial intelligence (ETI). And while nothing definitive has been found to date, there have been a number of incidents that have raised hopes of finding an “alien signal”.
In the most recent case, scientists from the Arecido Observatory recently announced the detection of a strange radio signal coming from Ross 128 – a red dwarf star system located just 11 light-years from Earth. As always, this has fueled speculation that the signal could be evidence of an extra-terrestrial civilization, while the scientific community has urged the public not to get their hopes up.
The discovery was part of a campaign being conducted by Abel Méndez – the director of the Planetary Habitability Laboratory (PHL) in Peurto Rico – and Jorge Zuluaga of the Faculty of Exact and Natural Sciences at the University of Antioquia, Colombia. Inspired by the recent discoveries around Proxima Centauri and TRAPPIST-1, the GJ 436 campaign relied on data from Arecibo Observatory to look for signs of exoplanets around nearby red dwarf stars.
Arecibo Observatory, the world’s biggest single dish radio telescope, was and is still being used to image comet 45P/H-M-P. Courtesy of the NAIC – Arecibo Observatory, a facility of the NSFIn the course of looking at data from stars systems like Gliese 436, Ross 128, Wolf 359, HD 95735, BD +202465, V* RY Sex, and K2-18 – which was gathered between April and May of 2017 – they noticed something rather interesting. Basically, the data indicated that an unexplained radio signal was coming from Ross 128. As Dr. Abel Mendez described in a blog post on the PHL website:
They also conducted observations of Barnard’s star on that same day to see if they could note similar behavior coming from this star system. This was done in collaboration with the Red Dots project, a European Southern Observatory (ESO) campaign that is also committed to finding exoplanets around red dwarf stars. This program is the successor to the ESO’s Pale Red Dot campaign, which was responsible for discovering Proxima b last summer.
As of Monday night (July 17th), Méndez updated his PHL blog post to announced that with the help of SETI Berkeley with the Green Bank Telescope, that they had successfully observed Ross 128 for the second time. The data from these observatories is currently being collected and processed, and the results are expected to be announced by the end of the week.
In the meantime, scientists have come up with several possible explanations for what might be causing the signal. As Méndez indicated, there are three major possibilities that he and his colleagues are considering:
Hence, the team has something of a mystery on their hands, and hopes that further observations will allow them to place further constrains on what the cause of the signal could be. “[W]e might clarify soon the nature of its radio emissions, but there are no guarantees,” wrote Méndez. “Results from our observations will be presented later that week. I have a Piña Colada ready to celebrate if the signals result to be astronomical in nature.”
And just to be fair, Méndez also addressed the possibility that the signal could be artificial in nature – i.e. evidence of an alien civilization. “In case you are wondering,” he wrote, “the recurrent aliens hypothesis is at the bottom of many other better explanations.” Sorry, alien-hunters. Like the rest of us, you’ll just have to wait and see what can be made of this signal.
Further Reading: AFP, PHL
The post Strange Radio Signals Detected from a Nearby Star appeared first on Universe Today.
Astronomers have been listening to radio waves from space for decades. In addition to being a proven means of studying stars, galaxies, quasars and other celestial objects, radio astronomy is one of the main ways in which scientists have searched for signs of extra-terrestrial intelligence (ETI). And while nothing definitive has been found to date, there have been a number of incidents that have raised hopes of finding an “alien signal”.
In the most recent case, scientists from the Arecido Observatory recently announced the detection of a strange radio signal coming from Ross 128 – a red dwarf star system located just 11 light-years from Earth. As always, this has fueled speculation that the signal could be evidence of an extra-terrestrial civilization, while the scientific community has urged the public not to get their hopes up.
The discovery was part of a campaign being conducted by Abel Méndez – the director of the Planetary Habitability Laboratory (PHL) in Peurto Rico – and Jorge Zuluaga of the Faculty of Exact and Natural Sciences at the University of Antioquia, Colombia. Inspired by the recent discoveries around Proxima Centauri and TRAPPIST-1, the GJ 436 campaign relied on data from Arecibo Observatory to look for signs of exoplanets around nearby red dwarf stars.
Arecibo Observatory, the world’s biggest single dish radio telescope, was and is still being used to image comet 45P/H-M-P. Courtesy of the NAIC – Arecibo Observatory, a facility of the NSF
“Two weeks after these observations, we realized that there were some very peculiar signals in the 10-minute dynamic spectrum that we obtained from Ross 128 (GJ 447), observed May 12 at 8:53 PM AST (2017/05/13 00:53:55 UTC). The signals consisted of broadband quasi-periodic non-polarized pulses with very strong dispersion-like features. We believe that the signals are not local radio frequency interferences (RFI) since they are unique to Ross 128 and observations of other stars immediately before and after did not show anything similar.”After first noticing this signal on Saturday, May 13th at 8:53 p.m., scientists from the Arecibo Observatory and astronomers from the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute teamed up to conduct a follow-up study of the star. This was performed on Sunday, July 16th, using SETI’s Allen Telescope Array and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory‘s (NRAO) Green Bank Telescope.
They also conducted observations of Barnard’s star on that same day to see if they could note similar behavior coming from this star system. This was done in collaboration with the Red Dots project, a European Southern Observatory (ESO) campaign that is also committed to finding exoplanets around red dwarf stars. This program is the successor to the ESO’s Pale Red Dot campaign, which was responsible for discovering Proxima b last summer.
As of Monday night (July 17th), Méndez updated his PHL blog post to announced that with the help of SETI Berkeley with the Green Bank Telescope, that they had successfully observed Ross 128 for the second time. The data from these observatories is currently being collected and processed, and the results are expected to be announced by the end of the week.
In the meantime, scientists have come up with several possible explanations for what might be causing the signal. As Méndez indicated, there are three major possibilities that he and his colleagues are considering:
“[T]hey could be (1) emissions from Ross 128 similar to Type II solar flares, (2) emissions from another object in the field of view of Ross 128, or just (3) burst from a high orbit satellite since low orbit satellites are quick to move out of the field of view. The signals are probably too dim for other radio telescopes in the world and FAST is currently under calibration.”Unfortunately, each of these possibilities have their own drawbacks. In the case of a Type II solar flare, these are known to occur at much lower frequencies, and the dispersion of this signal appears to be inconsistent with this kind of activity. In the case of it possibly coming from another object, no objects (planets or satellites) have been detected within Ross 128’s field of view to date, thus making this unlikely as well.
Hence, the team has something of a mystery on their hands, and hopes that further observations will allow them to place further constrains on what the cause of the signal could be. “[W]e might clarify soon the nature of its radio emissions, but there are no guarantees,” wrote Méndez. “Results from our observations will be presented later that week. I have a Piña Colada ready to celebrate if the signals result to be astronomical in nature.”
And just to be fair, Méndez also addressed the possibility that the signal could be artificial in nature – i.e. evidence of an alien civilization. “In case you are wondering,” he wrote, “the recurrent aliens hypothesis is at the bottom of many other better explanations.” Sorry, alien-hunters. Like the rest of us, you’ll just have to wait and see what can be made of this signal.
Further Reading: AFP, PHL
The post Strange Radio Signals Detected from a Nearby Star appeared first on Universe Today.
Ancient Impacts Shaped the Structure of the Milky Way
Ancient Impacts Shaped the Structure of the Milky Way:
Understanding how the Universe came to be is one of the greater challenges of being an astrophysicist. Given the observable Universe’s sheer size (46.6 billion light years) and staggering age (13.8 billion years), this is no easy task. Nevertheless, ongoing observations, calculations and computer simulations have allowed astrophysicists to learn a great deal about how galaxies and larger structures have changed over time.
For example, a recent study by a team from the University of Kentucky (UK) has challenged previously-held notions about how our galaxy has evolved to become what we see today. Based on observations made of the Milky Way’s stellar disk, which was previously thought to be smooth, the team found evidence of asymmetric ripples. This indicates that in the past, our galaxy may have been shaped by ancient impacts.
The study, titled “Milky Way Tomography with K and M Dwarf Stars: The Vertical Structure of the Galactic Disk“, recently appeared in the The Astrophysical Journal. Led by Deborah Ferguson, a 2016 UK graduate, the team consisted of Professor Susan Gardner – from the UK College of Arts and Sciences – and Brian Yanny, an astrophysicist from the Fermilab Center for Particle Astrophysics (FCPA).
This study evolved from Ferguson’s senior thesis, which was overseen by Prof. Gardner. At the time, Ferguson sought to expand on previous research by Gardner and Yanny, which also sought to understand the presence of ripples in our galaxy’s stellar disk. For the sake of this new study, the team relied on data obtained by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey‘s (SDSS) 2.5m Telescope, located at the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico.
This allowed the team to examine the spatial distribution of 3.6 million stars in the Milky Way Galaxy, from which they confirmed the presence of asymmetric ripples. These, they claim, can be interpreted as evidence of the Milky Way’s ancient impacts – in other words, that these ripples resulted from our galaxy coming into contact with other galaxies in the past.
These could include a merger between the Milky Way and the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy roughly 0.85 billion years ago, as well as our galaxy’s current merger with the Canis Major dwarf galaxy. As Prof. Gardner explained in a recent UK press release:
Illustration showing a stage in the predicted merger between our Milky Way galaxy and the neighboring Andromeda galaxy, as it will unfold over the next several billion years. Credit: NASA; ESA; Z. Levay and R. van der Marel, STScI; T. Hallas; and A. MellingerAs noted, Gardner’s previous work also indicated that when it came to north/south symmetry of stars in the Milky Way’s disk, there was a vertical “ripple”. In other words, the number of stars that lay above or below the stellar disk would increase from one sampling to the next the farther they looked from the center of the galactic disk. But thanks to the most recent data obtained by the SDSS, the team had a much larger sample to base their conclusions on.
And ultimately, these findings confirmed the observations made by Ferguson and Lally, and also turned up evidence of an asymmetry in the plane of the galactic disk as well. As Ferguson explained:
For decades, astronomers have been of the opinion that in roughly 4 billion years, the Milky Way will collide with Andromeda. This event is likely to have tremendous repercussions, leading to the merger of both galaxy’s supermassive black holes, stellar collisions, and stars being ejected. While it’s doubtful humanity will be around for this event, it would still be worthwhile to know how this process will shape our galaxy and the local Universe.
Further Reading: University of Kentucky, The Astrophysical Journal
The post Ancient Impacts Shaped the Structure of the Milky Way appeared first on Universe Today.
Understanding how the Universe came to be is one of the greater challenges of being an astrophysicist. Given the observable Universe’s sheer size (46.6 billion light years) and staggering age (13.8 billion years), this is no easy task. Nevertheless, ongoing observations, calculations and computer simulations have allowed astrophysicists to learn a great deal about how galaxies and larger structures have changed over time.
For example, a recent study by a team from the University of Kentucky (UK) has challenged previously-held notions about how our galaxy has evolved to become what we see today. Based on observations made of the Milky Way’s stellar disk, which was previously thought to be smooth, the team found evidence of asymmetric ripples. This indicates that in the past, our galaxy may have been shaped by ancient impacts.
The study, titled “Milky Way Tomography with K and M Dwarf Stars: The Vertical Structure of the Galactic Disk“, recently appeared in the The Astrophysical Journal. Led by Deborah Ferguson, a 2016 UK graduate, the team consisted of Professor Susan Gardner – from the UK College of Arts and Sciences – and Brian Yanny, an astrophysicist from the Fermilab Center for Particle Astrophysics (FCPA).
This study evolved from Ferguson’s senior thesis, which was overseen by Prof. Gardner. At the time, Ferguson sought to expand on previous research by Gardner and Yanny, which also sought to understand the presence of ripples in our galaxy’s stellar disk. For the sake of this new study, the team relied on data obtained by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey‘s (SDSS) 2.5m Telescope, located at the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico.
This allowed the team to examine the spatial distribution of 3.6 million stars in the Milky Way Galaxy, from which they confirmed the presence of asymmetric ripples. These, they claim, can be interpreted as evidence of the Milky Way’s ancient impacts – in other words, that these ripples resulted from our galaxy coming into contact with other galaxies in the past.
These could include a merger between the Milky Way and the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy roughly 0.85 billion years ago, as well as our galaxy’s current merger with the Canis Major dwarf galaxy. As Prof. Gardner explained in a recent UK press release:
“These impacts are thought to have been the ‘architects’ of the Milky Way’s central bar and spiral arms. Just as the ripples on the surface of a smooth lake suggest the passing of a distant speed boat, we search for departures from the symmetries we would expect in the distributions of the stars to find evidence of ancient impacts. We have found extensive evidence for the breaking of all these symmetries and thus build the case for the role of ancient impacts in forming the structure of our Milky Way.”
Illustration showing a stage in the predicted merger between our Milky Way galaxy and the neighboring Andromeda galaxy, as it will unfold over the next several billion years. Credit: NASA; ESA; Z. Levay and R. van der Marel, STScI; T. Hallas; and A. Mellinger
And ultimately, these findings confirmed the observations made by Ferguson and Lally, and also turned up evidence of an asymmetry in the plane of the galactic disk as well. As Ferguson explained:
“Having access to millions of stars from the SDSS allowed us to study galactic structure in an entirely new way by breaking the sky up into smaller regions without loss of statistics. It has been incredible watching this project evolve and the results emerge as we plotted the stellar densities and saw intriguing patterns across the footprint. As more studies are being done in this field, I am excited to see what we can learn about the structure of our galaxy and the forces that helped to shape it.”Understanding how our galaxy evolved and what role ancient impact played is essential to understanding the history and evolution of the Universe as a whole. And in addition to helping us confirm (or update) our current cosmological models, studies like this one can also tell us much about what lies in store for our galaxy billions of years from now.
For decades, astronomers have been of the opinion that in roughly 4 billion years, the Milky Way will collide with Andromeda. This event is likely to have tremendous repercussions, leading to the merger of both galaxy’s supermassive black holes, stellar collisions, and stars being ejected. While it’s doubtful humanity will be around for this event, it would still be worthwhile to know how this process will shape our galaxy and the local Universe.
Further Reading: University of Kentucky, The Astrophysical Journal
The post Ancient Impacts Shaped the Structure of the Milky Way appeared first on Universe Today.
One. More. Month: Our Guide to the Total Solar Eclipse
One. More. Month: Our Guide to the Total Solar Eclipse:
Totality! An incredible moment from the March 29th, 2006 total solar eclipse. Credit and copyright: Alan Dyer/Amazing Sky PhotographyHave you heard?
I remember, getting into astronomy as a kid back in the 1970s, building a pinhole projector in a shoe box and watching the partial solar eclipse of February 26th, 1979 from our living room in northern Maine. I had no Learjet, no magic carpet to whisk me off to that thin thread of a path of totality way out west along the Pacific coast. As I settled for the 66% partial solar eclipse, I remember news reports stating that a total solar eclipse won’t cross the United States again until… August 21st, 2017.
That date is almost upon us now, only one month from this coming Friday.
This total solar eclipse is one for the ages, THE big ticket event for 2017. Umbraphiles (those who chase eclipses) have been planning for this one for decades, and it’s already hard to find a room along the path. Fear not, as you only need to be within striking distance the day of the eclipse to reach totality, though expect the roads to be congested that Monday morn.
The eclipse is indeed the first time totality touches the contiguous (“lower 48”) United States since 1979, and the first total solar eclipse to cross the United States since almost a century ago on June 8th 1918. A total solar eclipse did cross Hawaii on July 11th, 1991.
Partial phases for the eclipse begin at 15:47 Universal Time (UT) and span 5 hours and 18 minutes until 21:04 UT. The partial aspect of the eclipse touches all continents except Antarctica and Australia. The 115 kilometer wide shadow of Earth’s moon (known as the umbra) first makes landfall over the Oregon coast at 17:16 UT /10:16 Pacific Daylight Saving time (PDT) and races eastward at 3,900 kilometers per second. The shadow touches 14 states, just briefly nicking Montana and Iowa. Maximum totality of 2 minutes, 40 seconds occurs near Carbondale, Illinois.
Seen a partial solar eclipse before and wonder what the big deal is? You really need to get to the path of totality for the full eclipse experience. Millions live in the path of the August 21st eclipse, and millions more within an easy day drive. We witnessed the May 10th, 1994 annular eclipse from the shores of Lake Erie in Sandusky, Ohio, and can attest that 1% of the Sun at midday is still pretty darned bright.
A partial eclipse rising over the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center. Credit: Dave DickinsonAction really gets interesting moments before totality sweeps over the landscape. Be sure to keep an eye out for shadow bands flitting across the ground, an effect notoriously hard to photograph. It’s safe to drop those glasses moments before totality, when you’ll see those final rays of sunlight streaming through the valleys along the limb of the Moon, creating what’s known as Baily’s Beads or the Diamond Ring Effect. You’re now in the realm of the shadow of the Moon, an ethereal shadow world turned on its head. I dare you to blink. Looking sunward, you’ll see the pearly corona of the Sun, a white halo about as bright as a Full Moon spied only during totality.
Think about it: you knew this moment was coming, perhaps you’d been planning for it for years… but would you think as an average citizen thousands or millions of years ago if you were suddenly confronted with such as strange sky?
And all too soon, it’s over.
Be sure to keep an eye out for planets and bright stars during the eclipse. Totality is a late morning affair out west, and an early afternoon event for the US East Coast. All naked eye planets except Saturn are above the horizon during totality, covering a span of about 80 degrees from Jupiter to Venus. Look just one degree from the eclipsed Sun and you might just spy the star Regulus occulted by the Moon shortly after the eclipse.
Perhaps you’re planning on aiming a battery of cameras skyward during the eclipse, or maybe, you’re simply planning on simply enjoying the moment, then photographing the next one. The Eclipse MegaMovie project is planning on capturing the scene down the eclipse path. NASA will also be flying overhead with converted WB-57F aircraft, looking to capture high definition video in the visible and infrared wavelengths during the eclipse.
You need to take the same safety precautions observing the partial phases of the eclipse as you would during ordinary solar observing. Use only a filtered telescope designed to look at the Sun, or solar eclipse glasses with an ISO 12312-2 rating. Make sure that filter fits snugly over the aperture of the telescope and cannot be removed by curious prying hands or high winds, and that all finder-scopes are removed, stowed and/or covered. Also, don’t try and use one of those old screw-on eyepiece solar filters that came with old department store 60mm refractors, as they can heat up and crack. Likewise, be careful when projecting the Sun through a telescope onto a piece of paper, as it can heat up and damage the optics.
If you don’t think the danger is real, read this amazing recent interview with an optometrist on Space.com, where he states you can actually see the crescent Sun burned into the backs of patient’s eyes who stared too long at a partial solar eclipse (!) It’s a permanent souvenir you don’t want to have. Don’t be like 18th century psychologist Gustav Fechner who blinded himself staring at the Sun, mesmerized by the glare of lingering afterimages.
And though we can predict eclipses centuries out, there’s one thing we won’t know eclipse day: what the weather plans on doing. Best bets are for clear skies out west, though you only need a gap in the clouds to see the Sun. We’ll be running a final post on Universe Today just days prior to the eclipse looking at weather prospects, solar activity and prospects for transits of the International Space Station and possible views from space.
The second eclipse season for 2017 begins with a partial lunar eclipse favoring on August 7th… we’ve got you covered on that as well. And us? We’ll be watching the event from the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute (PARI) in Smoky Mountains just outside of Asheville, North Carolina for a glorious 107 seconds of totality.
And after that? Well, totality visits that same living room in northern Maine on April 8th, 2024… I think I know where I’ll be then.
A request- observing the eclipse from the path of totality? I’m planning on doing a state-by-state roundup post eclipse, perhaps with a paragraph of personal impressions from each observer. Let us know what your plans are!
-Read more about the August 21st total solar eclipse, plus the true tale of Edison’s Chickens and the 1878 total solar eclipse in out free e-guide to 101 Astronomical Events for 2017.
-Eclipse… fiction? Read our original eclipse-fueled sci-fi tales Exeligmos, Peak Season, Shadowfall and more!
The post One. More. Month: Our Guide to the Total Solar Eclipse appeared first on Universe Today.
Totality! An incredible moment from the March 29th, 2006 total solar eclipse. Credit and copyright: Alan Dyer/Amazing Sky Photography
I remember, getting into astronomy as a kid back in the 1970s, building a pinhole projector in a shoe box and watching the partial solar eclipse of February 26th, 1979 from our living room in northern Maine. I had no Learjet, no magic carpet to whisk me off to that thin thread of a path of totality way out west along the Pacific coast. As I settled for the 66% partial solar eclipse, I remember news reports stating that a total solar eclipse won’t cross the United States again until… August 21st, 2017.
That date is almost upon us now, only one month from this coming Friday.
This total solar eclipse is one for the ages, THE big ticket event for 2017. Umbraphiles (those who chase eclipses) have been planning for this one for decades, and it’s already hard to find a room along the path. Fear not, as you only need to be within striking distance the day of the eclipse to reach totality, though expect the roads to be congested that Monday morn.
The eclipse is indeed the first time totality touches the contiguous (“lower 48”) United States since 1979, and the first total solar eclipse to cross the United States since almost a century ago on June 8th 1918. A total solar eclipse did cross Hawaii on July 11th, 1991.
Partial phases for the eclipse begin at 15:47 Universal Time (UT) and span 5 hours and 18 minutes until 21:04 UT. The partial aspect of the eclipse touches all continents except Antarctica and Australia. The 115 kilometer wide shadow of Earth’s moon (known as the umbra) first makes landfall over the Oregon coast at 17:16 UT /10:16 Pacific Daylight Saving time (PDT) and races eastward at 3,900 kilometers per second. The shadow touches 14 states, just briefly nicking Montana and Iowa. Maximum totality of 2 minutes, 40 seconds occurs near Carbondale, Illinois.
Seen a partial solar eclipse before and wonder what the big deal is? You really need to get to the path of totality for the full eclipse experience. Millions live in the path of the August 21st eclipse, and millions more within an easy day drive. We witnessed the May 10th, 1994 annular eclipse from the shores of Lake Erie in Sandusky, Ohio, and can attest that 1% of the Sun at midday is still pretty darned bright.
A partial eclipse rising over the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center. Credit: Dave Dickinson
Think about it: you knew this moment was coming, perhaps you’d been planning for it for years… but would you think as an average citizen thousands or millions of years ago if you were suddenly confronted with such as strange sky?
And all too soon, it’s over.
Be sure to keep an eye out for planets and bright stars during the eclipse. Totality is a late morning affair out west, and an early afternoon event for the US East Coast. All naked eye planets except Saturn are above the horizon during totality, covering a span of about 80 degrees from Jupiter to Venus. Look just one degree from the eclipsed Sun and you might just spy the star Regulus occulted by the Moon shortly after the eclipse.
Perhaps you’re planning on aiming a battery of cameras skyward during the eclipse, or maybe, you’re simply planning on simply enjoying the moment, then photographing the next one. The Eclipse MegaMovie project is planning on capturing the scene down the eclipse path. NASA will also be flying overhead with converted WB-57F aircraft, looking to capture high definition video in the visible and infrared wavelengths during the eclipse.
You need to take the same safety precautions observing the partial phases of the eclipse as you would during ordinary solar observing. Use only a filtered telescope designed to look at the Sun, or solar eclipse glasses with an ISO 12312-2 rating. Make sure that filter fits snugly over the aperture of the telescope and cannot be removed by curious prying hands or high winds, and that all finder-scopes are removed, stowed and/or covered. Also, don’t try and use one of those old screw-on eyepiece solar filters that came with old department store 60mm refractors, as they can heat up and crack. Likewise, be careful when projecting the Sun through a telescope onto a piece of paper, as it can heat up and damage the optics.
If you don’t think the danger is real, read this amazing recent interview with an optometrist on Space.com, where he states you can actually see the crescent Sun burned into the backs of patient’s eyes who stared too long at a partial solar eclipse (!) It’s a permanent souvenir you don’t want to have. Don’t be like 18th century psychologist Gustav Fechner who blinded himself staring at the Sun, mesmerized by the glare of lingering afterimages.
And though we can predict eclipses centuries out, there’s one thing we won’t know eclipse day: what the weather plans on doing. Best bets are for clear skies out west, though you only need a gap in the clouds to see the Sun. We’ll be running a final post on Universe Today just days prior to the eclipse looking at weather prospects, solar activity and prospects for transits of the International Space Station and possible views from space.
The second eclipse season for 2017 begins with a partial lunar eclipse favoring on August 7th… we’ve got you covered on that as well. And us? We’ll be watching the event from the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute (PARI) in Smoky Mountains just outside of Asheville, North Carolina for a glorious 107 seconds of totality.
And after that? Well, totality visits that same living room in northern Maine on April 8th, 2024… I think I know where I’ll be then.
A request- observing the eclipse from the path of totality? I’m planning on doing a state-by-state roundup post eclipse, perhaps with a paragraph of personal impressions from each observer. Let us know what your plans are!
-Read more about the August 21st total solar eclipse, plus the true tale of Edison’s Chickens and the 1878 total solar eclipse in out free e-guide to 101 Astronomical Events for 2017.
-Eclipse… fiction? Read our original eclipse-fueled sci-fi tales Exeligmos, Peak Season, Shadowfall and more!
The post One. More. Month: Our Guide to the Total Solar Eclipse appeared first on Universe Today.
Hey Map Collectors, Here’s a New Map of Pluto!
Hey Map Collectors, Here’s a New Map of Pluto!:
On July 14th, 2015, the New Horizons mission made history when it became the first spacecraft to conduct a flyby of Pluto and its moons. In the course of making its way through this system, the probe gathered volumes of data on Pluto and its many satellites using a sophisticated suite of instruments. These included the first detailed images of what Pluto and its largest moon (Charon) look like up close.
And while scientists are still analyzing the volumes of data that the probe has sent home (and probably will be for years to come), the New Horizons mission team has given us plenty of discoveries to mull over in the meantime. For instance, using the many images taken by the mission, they recently created a series of high-quality, highly-detailed global maps of Pluto and Charon.
The maps were created thanks to the plethora of images that were taken by New Horizons’ Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) and its Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC). Whereas LORRI is a telescopic camera that was responsible for obtaining encounter and high-resolution geologic data of Pluto at long distances, the MVIC is an optical and infrared instrument that is part of the Ralph instrument – the main imaging device of the probe.
Global mosaic of Pluto, based on images obtained by the LORRI and MVIC instruments onboard New Horizons. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI/LPIThe Principal Investigator (PI) for the LORRI instrument is Andy Cheng, and it is operated from Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL) in Laurel, Maryland. Alan Stern is the PI for the MVIC and Ralph instruments, which are operated from the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in San Antonio, Texas. And as you can plainly see, the maps are quite detailed and eye-popping!
Dr. Stern, who is also the PI of the New Horizons mission, commented on the release of the maps in a recent NASA press statement. As he stated, they are just the latest example of what the New Horizons mission accomplished during its historic mission:
Global mosaic of Charon, based on images obtained by the LORRI and MVIC instruments onboard New Horizons. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI/LPIAnd these were not the only treats to come from the New Horizons team in recent days. In addition, the mission scientists used actual New Horizons data and digital elevation models to create flyover movies that show what it would be like to pass over Pluto and Charon. These videos offer a new perspective on the system and showcase the many unusual features that were discovered on both bodies.
The video of the Pluto flyover (shown above) begins over the highlands that are located to the southwest of Sputnik Planitia – the nitrogen ice basin that measures some 1,050 by 800 km (650 by 500 mi) in size. These plains constitute the western lobe of the feature known as Tombaugh Regio, the heart-shaped region that is named after the man who discovered Pluto in 1930 – Clyde Tombaugh.
The flyover also passes by cratered terrain of Cthulhu Macula before moving north past the highlands of Voyager Terra. It then turns south towards the pitted region known as Pioneer Terra before concluding over Tartarus Dorsa, a mountainous region that also contains bowl-shaped ice and snow features called penitentes (which are found on Earth and are formed by erosion).
The flyover video of Charon begins over the hemisphere that the New Horizons mission saw during its closest approach to the moon. The view then descends over Serenity Chasma, the wide and deep canyon that is named after the ship from the sci-fi series Firefly. This feature is part of the vast equatorial belt of chasms on Charon, which is one of the longest in the Solar System – 1,800 km (1,100 mi) long 7.5 km (4.5 mi) deep.
The view then moves north, passing over the Dorothy Gale crater and the dark polar region known as Mordor Macula (appropriately named after the domain of the Dark Lord Sauron in The Lord of the Rings). The video then turn south to fly over the northern terrain known as Oz Terra before finishing over the equatorial plans of Vulcan Planum and the mountain of Clarke Montes.
These videos were color-enhanced in order to bring out the surface details, and the topographic relief was exaggerated by a factor or two to three to emphasize the topography of Pluto and its largest moon. Digital mapping and rendering of these videos was performed by Paul Schenk and John Blackwell of the Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI) in Houston.
It may be many years before another mission is able to travel to the Trans-Neptunian region and Kuiper Belt. As a result, the maps and videos and images that were taken by the New Horizons mission may the last glimpse some us get of the Pluto system. Luckily, the New Horizons mission has provided scientists and the general public with enough information to keep them busy and fascinated for years!
Further Reading: NASA
The post Hey Map Collectors, Here’s a New Map of Pluto! appeared first on Universe Today.
On July 14th, 2015, the New Horizons mission made history when it became the first spacecraft to conduct a flyby of Pluto and its moons. In the course of making its way through this system, the probe gathered volumes of data on Pluto and its many satellites using a sophisticated suite of instruments. These included the first detailed images of what Pluto and its largest moon (Charon) look like up close.
And while scientists are still analyzing the volumes of data that the probe has sent home (and probably will be for years to come), the New Horizons mission team has given us plenty of discoveries to mull over in the meantime. For instance, using the many images taken by the mission, they recently created a series of high-quality, highly-detailed global maps of Pluto and Charon.
The maps were created thanks to the plethora of images that were taken by New Horizons’ Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) and its Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC). Whereas LORRI is a telescopic camera that was responsible for obtaining encounter and high-resolution geologic data of Pluto at long distances, the MVIC is an optical and infrared instrument that is part of the Ralph instrument – the main imaging device of the probe.
Global mosaic of Pluto, based on images obtained by the LORRI and MVIC instruments onboard New Horizons. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI/LPI
Dr. Stern, who is also the PI of the New Horizons mission, commented on the release of the maps in a recent NASA press statement. As he stated, they are just the latest example of what the New Horizons mission accomplished during its historic mission:
“The complexity of the Pluto system — from its geology to its satellite system to its atmosphere— has been beyond our wildest imagination. Everywhere we turn are new mysteries. These new maps from the landmark exploration of Pluto by NASA’s New Horizons mission in 2015 will help unravel these mysteries and are for everyone to enjoy.”
Global mosaic of Charon, based on images obtained by the LORRI and MVIC instruments onboard New Horizons. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI/LPI
The video of the Pluto flyover (shown above) begins over the highlands that are located to the southwest of Sputnik Planitia – the nitrogen ice basin that measures some 1,050 by 800 km (650 by 500 mi) in size. These plains constitute the western lobe of the feature known as Tombaugh Regio, the heart-shaped region that is named after the man who discovered Pluto in 1930 – Clyde Tombaugh.
The flyover also passes by cratered terrain of Cthulhu Macula before moving north past the highlands of Voyager Terra. It then turns south towards the pitted region known as Pioneer Terra before concluding over Tartarus Dorsa, a mountainous region that also contains bowl-shaped ice and snow features called penitentes (which are found on Earth and are formed by erosion).
The flyover video of Charon begins over the hemisphere that the New Horizons mission saw during its closest approach to the moon. The view then descends over Serenity Chasma, the wide and deep canyon that is named after the ship from the sci-fi series Firefly. This feature is part of the vast equatorial belt of chasms on Charon, which is one of the longest in the Solar System – 1,800 km (1,100 mi) long 7.5 km (4.5 mi) deep.
The view then moves north, passing over the Dorothy Gale crater and the dark polar region known as Mordor Macula (appropriately named after the domain of the Dark Lord Sauron in The Lord of the Rings). The video then turn south to fly over the northern terrain known as Oz Terra before finishing over the equatorial plans of Vulcan Planum and the mountain of Clarke Montes.
These videos were color-enhanced in order to bring out the surface details, and the topographic relief was exaggerated by a factor or two to three to emphasize the topography of Pluto and its largest moon. Digital mapping and rendering of these videos was performed by Paul Schenk and John Blackwell of the Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI) in Houston.
It may be many years before another mission is able to travel to the Trans-Neptunian region and Kuiper Belt. As a result, the maps and videos and images that were taken by the New Horizons mission may the last glimpse some us get of the Pluto system. Luckily, the New Horizons mission has provided scientists and the general public with enough information to keep them busy and fascinated for years!
Further Reading: NASA
The post Hey Map Collectors, Here’s a New Map of Pluto! appeared first on Universe Today.
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