Photos of Nature, Nature Photography Across The Universe. All about Nature, Love, Travel, Beautiful Photo, Landscape, Sunset, Summer, Mountains, Flowers, Photographer, Wallpaper, Portrait, Photo, what is the Universe
Photos of Nature | Nature Photography What is The Universe
The waning crescent Moon below Venus, rising in the east on June 24, 2014 as seen from home over the flat prairie horizon of southern Alberta, Canada. Credit and copyright: Alan Dyer.
Did you see the crescent Moon near a bright star on Tuesday morning this week? Many of our Flickr group astrophotographers captured gorgeous shots of the two together in the sky, including this eye-candy image from Alan Dyer from Canada. Just take a look!
A beautiful conjunction between the Moon, the very bright planet Venus, and the easily recognizable open star cluster of the Pleiades from central Italy on the morning of June 24, 2014. Credit and copyright: Giuseppe Petricca.
The waning crescent Moon and Venus as seen from the UK on June 24, 2014. Credit and copyright: Sculptor Lil on Flickr.
Moon and Venus Conjunction approximately 1 hour before sunrise on 24th June 2014. Looking east over central London with Canary Wharf on the horizon. Credit and copyright: Roger Hutchinson.
Venus and Waning Crescent Moon on June 24, 2014. Credit and copyright: Stephen Rahn.
Want to get your astrophoto featured on Universe Today? Join our Flickr group or send us your images by email (this means you’re giving us permission to post them). Please explain what’s in the picture, when you took it, the equipment you used, etc.
rtistic representation of the potentially habitable Super-Earth Gliese 832 c against a stellar nebula background. Credit: Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico, Arecibo, NASA/Hubble, Stellarium.
On a clear night, you might be able to spot the red dwarf star Gliese 832 through a backyard telescope, as it is just 16 light years away. Today, astronomers announced the discovery of super-Earth planet orbiting this nearby star and say it might be the best candidate yet for habitable world.
Gliese 832c was spotted by an international team of astronomers, led by Robert A. Wittenmyer from UNSW Australia. They used high-precision radial-velocity data from HARPS-TERRA, the Planet Finder Spectrograph and the UCLES echelle spectrograph. This star is already known to have one additional planet, a cold Jupiter-like planet, Gliese 832 b, discovered in 2009.
Orbital analysis of Gliese 832 c, a potentially habitable world around the nearby red-dwarf star Gliese 832. Gliese 832 c orbits near the inner edge of the conservative habitable zone. Its average equilibrium temperature (253 K) is similar to Earth (255 K) but with large shifts (up to 25K) due to its high eccentricity (assuming a similar 0.3 albedo). Credit: Planetary Habitability Laboratory.
Since red dwarf stars shine dimly, the habitable zones around these stars would be very close in. Gliese 832c complies with an orbital period of 36 days (it’s orbital companion Gliese 832 b orbits the star in 9.4 years.)
The newly found super-Earth has a mass at least five times that of Earth’s and the astronomers estimate it receives about the same average energy as Earth does from the Sun. “The planet might have Earth-like temperatures, albeit with large seasonal shifts, given a similar terrestrial atmosphere,” says a press release from the Planetary Habitability Laboratory. “A denser atmosphere, something expected for Super-Earths, could easily make this planet too hot for life and a ‘Super-Venus’ instead.”
Using the Earth Similarity Index (ESI) — a measure of how physically similar a planetary mass object is to Earth, where 1 equals the same qualities as Earth — Gliese 832 c has an ESI of 0.81. This is comparable to Gliese 667C c (ESI = 0.84) and Kepler-62 e (ESI = 0.83).
“This makes Gliese 832c one of the top three most Earth-like planets according to the ESI (i.e. with respect to Earth’s stellar flux and mass) and the closest one to Earth of all three, a prime object for follow-up observations. However, other unknowns such as the bulk composition and atmosphere of the planet could make this world quite different to Earth and non-habitable.”
Artistic representation of the potentially habitable exoplanet Gliese 832 c as compared with Earth. Gliese 832 c is represented here as a temperate world covered in clouds. The relative size of the planet in the figure assumes a rocky composition but could be larger for a ice/gas composition. Credit: Planetary Habitability Laboratory.
In their paper, Wittenmyer and his colleagues noted that while Solar Systems like our own appear — so far — to be rare, the Gliese 832 system is like a scaled-down version of our own Solar System, with an inner potentially Earth-like planet and an outer Jupiter-like giant planet. They added that the giant outer planet may have played a similar dynamical role in the Gliese 832 system to that played by Jupiter in our Solar System.
Certainly, astronomers will be attempting to observe this system further to see if any additional planets can be found.
The classic view of the Pillars of Creation as viewed by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1995. Credit: NASA/ESA/STScl/P. Scowen and J. Hester (Arizona State University).
It’s one of the most iconic images of the modern Space Age. In 1995, the Hubble Space Telescope team released an image of towering columns of gas and dust that contained newborn stars in the midst of formation. Dubbed the “Pillars of Creation,” these light-years long tendrils captivated the public imagination and now grace everything from screensavers to coffee mugs. This is a cosmic portrait of our possible past, and the essence of the universe giving birth to new stars and worlds in action.
Now, a study out on Thursday from the 2014 National Astronomy Meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society has shed new light on just how these pillars may have formed. The announcement comes out of Cardiff University, where astronomer Scott Balfour has run computer simulations that closely model the evolution and the outcome of what’s been observed by the Hubble Space Telescope.
The ‘Pillars’ lie in the Eagle Nebula, also known as Messier 16 (M16), which is situated in the constellation Serpens about 7,000 light years distant. The pillars themselves have formed as intense radiation from young massive stars just beginning to shine erode and sculpt the immense columns.
The location of Messier 16 and the Pillars of Creation in the night sky. Credit: Stellarium.
But as is often the case in early stellar evolution, having massive siblings nearby is bad news for fledgling stars. Such large stars are of the O-type variety, and are more than 16 times as massive as our own Sun. Alnitak in Orion’s belt and the stars of the Trapezium in the Orion Nebula are examples of large O-type stars that can be found in the night sky. But such stars have a “burn fast and die young” credo when it comes to their take on nuclear fusion, spending mere millions of years along the Main Sequence of the Hertzsprung Russell diagram before promptly going supernova. Contrast this with a main sequence life expectancy of 10 billion years for our Sun, and life spans measured in the trillions of years — longer than the current age of the universe — for tiny red dwarf stars. The larger a star you are, the shorter your life span.
A capture from the simulation, showing a cross-section 25 by 25 light years square and 0.2 light years thick. The simulation shows how the O-type star “sculpts” its surroundings over the span of 1.6 million years, carving out, in some cases, the famous “pillars”. Credit: S. Balfour/ University of Cardiff.
Such O-Type stars also have surface temperatures at a scorching 30,000 degrees Celsius, contrasted with a relatively ‘chilly’ 5,500 degree Celsius surface temperature for our Sun.
This also results in a prodigious output in energetic ultraviolet radiation by O-type stars, along with a blustery solar wind. This carves out massive bubbles in a typical stellar nursery, and while it may be bad news for planets and stars attempting to form nearby any such tempestuous stars, this wind can also compress and energize colder regions of gas and dust farther out and serve to trigger another round of star formation. Ironically, such stars are thus “cradle robbers” when it comes to potential stellar and planetary formation AND promoters of new star birth.
In his study, Scott looked at the way gas and dust would form in a typical proto-solar nebula over the span of 1.6 million years. Running the simulation over the span of several weeks, the model started with a massive O-type star that formed out of an initial collapsing smooth cloud of gas.
That’s not bad, a simulation where 1 week equals a few hundred million years…
As expected, said massive star did indeed carve out a spherical bubble given the initial conditions. But Scott also found something special: the interactions of the stellar winds with the local gas was much more complex than anticipated, with three basic results: either the bubble continued to expand unimpeded, the front would expand, contract slightly and then become a stationary barrier, or finally, it would expand and then eventually collapse back in on itself back to the source.
The study was notable because it’s only in the second circumstance that the situation is favorable for a new round of star formation that is seen in the Pillars of Creation.
“If I’m right, it means that O-type and other massive stars play a much more complex role than we previously thought in nursing a new generation of stellar siblings to life,” Scott said in a recent press release. “The model neatly produces exactly the same kind of structures seen by astronomers in the classic 1995 image, vindicating the idea that giant O-type stars have a major effect in sculpting their surroundings.”
Such visions as the Pillars of Creation give us a snapshot of a specific stage in stellar evolution and give us a chance to study what we may have looked like, just over four billion years ago. And as simulations such as those announced in this week’s study become more refined, we’ll be able to use them as a predictor and offer a prognosis for a prospective stellar nebula and gain further insight into the secret early lives of stars.
Ceres and Vesta are converging in Virgo not far from Mars and Spica. On July 5, the duo will be just 10′ apart and visible in the high power telescope field of view. Positions are shown every 5 days for 10 p.m. EDT and stars to magnitude +8.5. Created with Chris Marriott’s SkyMap software
I bet you’ve forgotten. I almost did. In April, we reported that Ceres and Vesta, the largest and brightest asteroids respectively, were speeding through Virgo in tandem. Since then both have faded, but the best is yet to come. Converging closer by the day, on July 5, the two will make rare close pass of each other when they’ll be separated by just 10 minutes of arc or the thickness of a fat crescent moon.
Vesta (left) and Ceres. Vesta was photographed up close by the Dawn spacecraft from July 2011-Sept. 2012, while the best views we have to date of Ceres come from the Hubble Space Telescope. The bright white spot is still a mystery. NASA will plunk Dawn into orbit around Ceres next February. Credit: NASA
Both asteroids are still within range of ordinary 35mm and larger binoculars; Vesta is easy at magnitude +7 while Ceres still manages a respectable +8.3. From an outer suburban or rural site, you can watch them draw together in the coming two weeks as if on a collision course. They won’t crash anytime soon. We merely see the two bodies along the same line of sight. Vesta’s closer to Earth at 164 million miles (264 million km) and moves more quickly across the sky compared to Ceres, which orbits 51 million miles (82 million km) farther out.
Ceres and Vesta lie near an easy naked eye star, Zeta Virginis, which forms an isosceles triangle right now with Mars and Spica. The map shows the sky around 10 p.m. local time tonight facing southwest. Stellarium
Right now the two asteroids are little more than a moon diameter apart not far from the 3rd magnitude star Zeta Virginis. Happily, nearby Mars and Spica make excellent guides for finding Zeta. Once you’re there, use binoculars and the more detailed map to track down Ceres and Vesta.
Virgo will be busy Saturday night July 5, 2014 when the waxing moon passes about 1/2 degree from Mars as Ceres and Vesta squeeze closest. Stellarium
In early July they’ll look like a wide double star in binoculars and easily fit in the same high power telescopic view. Vesta has always looked pale yellow to my eye. Will its color differ from Ceres? Sitting side by side it will be easier than ever to compare them. Vesta is a stony asteroid with a surface composed of solidified (and meteoroid-battered) lavas; Ceres is darker and covered with a mix of water ice and carbonaceous materials.
On the night of closest approach, it may be difficult to spot dimmer Ceres in binoculars. By coincidence, the 8-day-old moon will be very close to the planet Mars and brighten up the neighborhood. We’ll report more on that event in a future article.
With so much happening the evening of July 5, let’s hope for a good round of clear skies.
An Iridium Flare flashes over western Maine in this beautiful night sky image from June 2014. Credit and copyright: Mike Taylor/Taylor Photography.
Ever seen a flash in the night sky and wondered if you were seeing things? Iridium flares are often mistaken for meteors because of their notable bright flashes of light in the night sky but they are actually caused by a specific group of satellites that orbit our planet. The Iridium communication satellites are just in the right orbit that when sunlight reflects on their antennas, a flash — or flare — is visible down on Earth. There are currently about 66 Iridium satellites in orbit, so flares are a rather common occurrence.
This image from photographer Mike Taylor is one frame from a timelapse of the Milky Way and other features of the night sky in motion against a silhouetted foreground. “Photographed from western Maine, this shot includes quite a bit of light pollution and some fast moving cloud cover,” Mike told Universe Today via email. “Most of the light pollution in this image is coming from Farmington, Maine which is about 35 miles from this location.”
Mike added the footage from this timelapse will be featured in his upcoming short film “Shot In The Dark.”
He also provided this info about Iridium flares:
Iridium satellites are in near-polar orbits at an altitude of 485 miles. Their orbital period is approximately 100 minutes with a velocity of 16,800 miles per hour. The uniqueness of Iridium flares is that the spacecraft emits ‘flashes’ of very bright reflected light that sweep in narrow focused paths across the surface of the Earth. An Iridium communication satellite’s Main Mission Antenna is a silver-coated Teflon antenna array that mimics near-perfect mirrors and are angled at 40-degrees away from the axis of the body of the satellites. This can provide a specular reflection of the Sun’s disk, periodically causing a dazzling glint of reflected sunlight. At the Earth’s surface, the specular reflection is probably less than 50 miles wide, so each flare can only be viewed from a fairly small area. The flare duration can last from anywhere between 5 to 20 seconds and can easily be seen by the naked eye.
If you want to try and see an Iridum flare for yourself, check out Heavens Above for your location.
Want to get your astrophoto featured on Universe Today? Join our Flickr group or send us your images by email (this means you’re giving us permission to post them). Please explain what’s in the picture, when you took it, the equipment you used, etc.
Have you ever noticed that everything in space is a sphere? The Sun, the Earth, the Moon and the other planets and their moons… all spheres. Except for the stuff which isn’t spheres. What’s going on?
Have you noticed that a good portion of things in space are shaped like a sphere? Stars, planets, and moons are all spherical.
Why? It all comes down to gravity. All the atoms in an object pull towards a common center of gravity, and they’re resisted outwards by whatever force is holding them apart. The final result could be a sphere… but not always, as we’re about to learn.
Consider a glass of water. If you could see the individual molecules jostling around, you’d see them trying to fit in as snugly as they can, tension making the top of the water smooth and even.
Artist’s impression of the planets in our solar system, along with the Sun (at bottom). Credit: NASA
Imagine a planet made entirely of water. If there were no winds, it would be perfectly smooth. The water molecules on the north pole are pulling towards the molecules on the south pole. The ones on the left are pulling towards the right. With all points pulling towards the center of the mass you would get a perfect sphere.
Gravity and surface tension pull it in, and molecular forces are pushing it outward. If you could hold this massive water droplet in an environment where it would remain undisturbed, eventually the water would reach a perfect balance. This is known as “hydrostatic equilibrium”.
Stars, planets and moons can be made of gas, ice or rock. Get enough mass in one area, and it’s going to pull all that stuff into a roughly spherical shape. Less massive objects, such as asteroids, comets, and smaller moons have less gravity, so they may not pull into perfect spheres.
Jupiter Credit: Christopher Go
As you know, most of the celestial bodies we’ve mentioned rotate on an axis, and guess what, those ones aren’t actually spheres either. The rapid rotation flattens out the middle, and makes them wider across the equator than from pole to pole. Earth is perfect example of this, and we call its shape an oblate spheroid.
Jupiter is even more flattened because it spins more rapidly. A day on Jupiter is a short 9.9 hours long. Which leaves it a distorted imperfect sphere at 71,500 km across the equator and just 66,900 from pole to pole.
Stars are similar. Our Sun rotates slowly, so it’s almost a perfect sphere, but there are stars out there that spin very, very quickly. VFTS 102, a giant star in the Tarantula nebula is spinning 100 times faster than the Sun. Any faster and it would tear itself apart from centripetal forces.
This oblate spheroid shape helps indicate why there are lots of flattened disks out there. This rapid spinning, where centripetal forces overcome gravitational attraction that creates this shape. You can see it in black hole accretion disks, solar systems, and galaxies.
Objects tend to form into spheres. If they’re massive enough, they’ll overcome the forces preventing it. But… if they’re spinning rapidly enough, they’ll flatten out all the way into disks.
Artists illustration of the expansion of the Universe (Credit: NASA, Goddard Space Flight Center)
This week at the Royal Astronomical Society’s National Astronomy Meeting in the UK, physicists are challenging the evidence for the recent BICEP2 results regarding the inflation period of the Universe, announced just 90 days ago. New research is laying doubt upon the inclusion of inflation theory in the Standard Cosmological Model for understanding the forces of nature, the nature of elementary particles and the present state of the known Universe.
Back on March 17, 2014, it seemed the World was offered a glimpse of an ultimate order from eons ago … actually from the beginning of time. BICEP2, the single purpose machine at the South Pole delivered an image that after analysis, and subtraction of estimated background signal from the Milky Way, lead its researchers to conclude that they had found the earliest remnant from the birth of the Universe, a signature in ancient light that supported the theory of Inflation.
BICEP2 Telescope at twilight at the South Pole, Antarctica (Credit: Steffen Richter, Harvard University)
Thirty years ago, the Inflation theory was conceived by physicists Alan Guth and Andei Linde. Guth, Linde and others realized that a sudden expansion of the Universe at only 1/1000000000000000000000000000000000th of a second after the Big Bang could solve some puzzling mysteries of the Cosmos. Inflation could explain the uniformity of the cosmic background radiation. While images such as from the COBE satellite show a blotchy distribution of radiation, in actuality, these images accentuate extremely small variations in the background radiation, remnants from the Big Bang, variations on the order of 1/100,000th of the background level.
Note that the time of the Universe’s proposed Inflationary period immediately after the Big Bang would today permit light to travel only 1/1000000000000000th of the diameter of the Hydrogen atom. The Universe during this first moment of expansion was encapsulated in a volume far smaller than the a single atom.
Emotions ran very high when the BICEP2 team announced their findings on March 17 of this year. The inflation event that the background radiation data supported is described as a supercooling of the Cosmos however, there were physicists that simply remained cool and remained contrarians to the theory. Noted British Physicist Sir Roger Primrose was one who remained underwhelmed and stated that the incredible circular polarization of light that remained in the processed data from BICEP2 could be explained by the interaction of dust, light and magnetic fields in our own neighborhood, the Milky Way.
Illustration of the ESA Planck Telescope in Earth orbit (Credit: ESA)
Now, new observations from another detector, one on the Planck Satellite orbiting the Earth, is revealing that the contribution of background radiation from local sources, the dust in the Milky Way, is appearing to have been under-estimated by the BICEP2 team. All the evidence is not yet laid out but the researchers are now showing reservations. At the same time, it does not dismiss the Inflation Theory. It means that more observations are needed and probably with greater sensitivity.
So why ask the question, are physicists constructing a Rube Goldberg device?
Our present understanding of the Universe stands upon what is called “the Standard Model” of Cosmology. At the Royal Astronomical Society meeting this week, the discussions underfoot could be revealing a Standard Model possibly in a state of collapse or simply needing new gadgets and mechanisms to remain the best theory of everything.
Also this week, new data further supports the discovery of the Higg’s Boson by the Large Hadron Collider in 2012, the elementary particle whose existence explains the mass of fundamental particles in nature and that supports the existence of the Higgs Field vital to robustness of the Standard Model. However, the Higgs related data is also revealing that if the inflationary period of the Universe did take place, then if taken with the Standard Model, one can conclude that the Universe should have collapsed upon itself and our very existence today would not be possible.
A Rube Goldberg Toothpaste dispenser as also the state of the Standard Model (Credit: R.Goldberg)
Dr. Brian Green, a researcher in the field of Super String Theory and M-Theory and others such as Dr. Stephen Hawking, are quick to state that the Standard Model is an intermediary step towards a Grand Unified Theory of everything, the Universe. The contortion of the Standard Model, into a sort of Rube Goldberg device can be explained by the undaunting accumulation of more acute and diverse observations at cosmic and quantum scales.
Discussions at the Royal Astronomical Society meeting are laying more doubts upon the inflation theory which just 90 days ago appeared so well supported by BICEP2 – data derived by truly remarkable cutting edge electronics developed by NASA and researchers at the California Institute of Technology. The trials and tribulations of these great theories to explain everything harken back to the period just prior to Einstein’s Miracle Year, 1905. Fragmented theories explaining separately the forces of nature were present but also the accumulation of observational data had reached a flash point.
Today, observations from BICEP2, NASA and ESA great space observatories, sensitive instruments buried miles underground and carefully contrived quantum experiments in laboratories are making the Standard Model more stressed in explaining everything, the same model so well supported by the Higg’s Boson discovery just two years ago. Cosmologists concede that we may never have a complete, proven theory of everything, one that is elegant; however, the challenges upon the Standard Model and inflation will surely embolden younger theorists to double the efforts in other theoretical work.
XCOR Aerospace’s Lynx Mark II suborbital vehicle is designed to fly to 328,000 feet (Credit: XCOR)
Well, technically not space*, but suborbital, and that’d still be way cool! And what’s even cooler is that you can enter to win a trip on an XCOR Lynx Mark II suborbital flight while helping to support a good cause of your choice, courtesy of The Urgency Network’s “Ticket to Rise” campaign. Check out the dramatic spaceflight-packed promotional video and find out how to enter below:
The Urgency Network is an online platform whereby participants can win experience-based prizes by participating in campaigns that are designed to aid and support good causes, many of which assist specific communities in need, awareness groups, and conservation efforts. You earn “entries” for prize drawings by purchasing gift packages from the participating foundations or by donating time, social media presence, or money directly. It’s a way for organizations that might not have (or be able to afford) a large PR department to get funded and gain widespread exposure. Learn more about The Urgency Network here.
In the Ticket to Rise campaign, the grand prize is beyond stratospheric — literally! One lucky winner will experience a ride aboard an XCOR Lynx Mark II suborbital craft, a single-stage space vehicle that takes off from a runway to ultimately coast briefly at a maximum altitude of 328,000 feet (about 100 km), experiencing 4 minutes of microgravity before re-entry and a runway landing. It’s a supersonic 30-minute flight to the very edge of space!
(*Actually, 100 km is right at the von Karman line, so riding the Lynx Mark II past that could qualify you as an astronaut. Just sayin’.)
How a Lynx Mark II flight works (Source: XCOR)
Add to that you’d be helping any one of dozens of good causes (you can choose from different ones by clicking the “Select a Different NonProfit” text link on the donation page) and it’s a win-win for everyone. And even if you don’t get a seat aboard a spaceship (many will enter, few will win) you can still get some pretty awesome promo offers from the organizations as bulk-entry packages.
The deadline to enter the campaign is 11:59:59 p.m. EDT August 11, 2014. Drawing will be held on August 12. The Lynx flight is dependent on meeting all requirements and passing physical exams and tests by XCOR Aerospace, and although the date is expected to be in the fall of 2015, this is rocket science and things change. Read the official contest rules for all details, fine print, etc.
Ethereal and stunning sundog-like forms in the clouds called circumhorizontal arcs over Oxford, England on June 25, 2014. Credit and copyright: Nathanial Burton-Bradford.
My Twitter feed exploded on June 25 with reports of colorful, crazy-looking clouds, sundogs, Sun halos and more. The above image from Nathanial Burton-Bradford is just an example of the type of atmospheric effect called a circumhorizontal arc. These are sometimes referred to as “fire rainbows” but of course are not rainbows at all, and have nothing to do with fire.
This is an optical phenomenon from sunlight hitting ice crystals in high cirrus clouds. It is actually a rather rare occurance, but it it happens most often during the daytime in summer when the Sun is high in the sky. This creates a rainbow-type effect directly in the clouds.
See more examples below.
Wispy clouds and a circumhorizontal arc over Italy. Credit and copyright: Elisabetta Bonora.
Circumhorizontal Arc over the UK on June 25, 2014. Credit and copyright: Sculptor Lil on Flickr.
A recovery vessel lifts the Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator aboard after its June 28, 2014 test over the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Missile Range. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Although the parachute didn’t pop out during a flight test this weekend of NASA’s flying-saucer shaped prototype spacecraft for future Mars exploration, the agency says the so-called Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator performed to expectations.
In an update released yesterday (June 30), one day after the craft made a hard landing in the Pacific, the agency noted that every goal on the flight had been met. The nature of the parachute failure is being investigated; the parachute was a year ahead of schedule in its development, according to NASA.
“The test vehicle worked beautifully, and we met all of our flight objectives,” stated Mark Adler, project manager for LDSD at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. “We have recovered all the vehicle hardware and data recorders and will be able to apply all of the lessons learned from this information to our future flights.”
The flight test (which had been delayed for some time due to weather) saw LDSD soar into the sky on a high-altitude balloon launch that took it up to 120,000 feet (36,576 meters). As planned, the test vehicle was severed from the balloon to see how well it would perform during a simulated descent to the Martian surface.
The Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) soars into the sky during a test flight June 28, 2014 (invisible at top of contrail) while its carrier balloon floats in the frame. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
With Martian spacecraft getting heavier, NASA is testing out new technologies to control spacecraft during the landing that would safely be able to navigate the Red Planet’s thin atmosphere. This test was supposed to see the LDSD leave the balloon while spinning sideways (somewhat like a football) and zoom to four times the speed of sound.
Next, it was supposed to deploy a Supersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator to slow down to 2.5 Mach (speed of sound) and then pop the parachute. The SIAD did inflate as planned, but not the parachute.
“All indications are that the SIAD deployed flawlessly, and because of that, we got the opportunity to test the second technology, the enormous supersonic parachute, which is almost a year ahead of schedule,” stated Ian Clark, principal investigator for LDSD at JPL.
Artist’s conception of Rosetta’s target, 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, which is losing two 5-ounce (150 milliliter cups) of water every second while still 362 million miles (583 million kilometers) from the sun. The water vapor output will increase as the comet gets closer; these measurements were made on June 6, 2014. Credit: ESA
Feeling thirsty? If you could somehow capture the water vapor from Rosetta’s comet, you would have the equivalent of two water glasses every second. That’s more than scientists expected given that Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko is still screaming into the inner solar system at more than double the distance from Mars to the Sun.
“We always knew we would see water vapor outgassing from the comet, but we were surprised at how early we detected it,” stated Sam Gulkis, the instrument’s principal investigator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.
“At this rate, the comet would fill an Olympic-size swimming pool in about 100 days. But, as it gets closer to the Sun, the gas production rate will increase significantly. With Rosetta, we have an amazing vantage point to observe these changes up close and learn more about exactly why they happen.”
Comets are sometimes called “dirty snowballs” because they are collection of debris and ices. From their origin points in the outer solar system, occasionally one will be pushed towards the Sun.
Artist’s impression (not to scale) of the Rosetta orbiter deploying the Philae lander to comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. Credit: ESA–C. Carreau/ATG medialab.
As it gets closer, the ices bleed off and the comet develops an envelope of gases that eventually, with the Sun’s help, will turn into a tail. Some of the major “volatiles” include water, carbon monoxide, methanol and ammonia.
The observations were made on June 6 by an instrument called the Microwave Instrument for Rosetta Orbiter (MIRO), taken when the spacecraft was about 218,000 miles (350,000 km) away from its target. MIRO is trying to figure out the relative ratios of the ingredients of the coma, and will keep following along with the comet as it makes its closest approach to the sun in August 2015.
Rosetta, meanwhile, will get up close to Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko by August and if all goes well, subsequently deploy a lander called Philae to check out the surface of the comet.
Saturn’s northern storm marches through the planet’s atmosphere in the top right of this false-color mosaic from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
We’re spoiled, don’t you know? It was 10 years ago today that the Cassini spacecraft entered Saturn’s system, and it has been busily beaming back pictures of the ringed planet and its (many) moons ever since. We’ve learned more about seasons on Titan, investigated plumes on Enceladus, and examined phenomena such as auroras on Saturn.
Embedded in this story are 20 of our favourite pictures from Universe Today’s archive of Cassini discoveries, which you can check out below the jump.
It’s only a fraction of the more than 332,000 images received from the spacecraft, which is in excellent health and has seen its mission extended three times past its original 2008 expiry date. Additionally, more than 3,000 scientific papers have been generated. More cool stats in this NASA infographic.
The full mosaic from the Cassini imaging team of Saturn on July 19, 2013… the “Day the Earth Smiled”
In this unique mosaic image combining high-resolution data from the imaging science subsystem and composite infrared spectrometer aboard NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, pockets of heat appear along one of the mysterious fractures in the south polar region of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. Image credit: NASA/JPL/GSFC/SWRI/SSI
Saturn, imaged by Cassini on approach. Credit: CICLOPS
Titan and Dione as seen by Cassini. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
This image taken by the Cassini orbiter on Oct. 15, 2007, shows Saturn’s A and F rings, the small moon Epimetheus and smog-enshrouded Titan, the planet’s largest moon. The image is colorized to approximate the scene as it might appear to human eyes. (Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)
Cassini imaging scientists used views like this one to help them identify the source locations for individual jets spurting ice particles, water vapor and trace organic compounds from the surface of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. Credit: NASA
Raw image from Cassini on May 18. Credit: NASA/JPL/SSI
Hemispheric color differences on Saturn’s moon Rhea are apparent in this false-color view from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. This image shows the side of the moon that always faces the planet. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/SSI
Three of Saturn’s moons bunch together in this image by Cassini. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute. Click for larger image.
This mosaic of Titan was created from the first flyby of the moon by Cassini in 2004. Credit: NASA/JPL/SS
Phoebe imaged by the Cassini spacecraft. Image Credit: NASA
Cassini VIMS image of specular reflections in one of Titan’s lakes from a flyby on July 24, 2012 (NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/Jason W. Barnes et al.)
A crescent Dione was seen by Cassini on January 29, 2011 from approximately 767,922 kilometers away. Credit: NASA/JPL/SSI
Rhea, as seen by Cassini. Credit: NASA
Cassini captured this startling image of Saturn’s moon Hyperion. Photo Credit: NASA/JPL
ets of water ice particles spew from Saturn’s moon Enceladus in this image obtained by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft on Aug. 13, 2010. Image credit: NASA/JPL/SSI
This false-color composite image shows Saturn’s rings and southern hemisphere. The composite image was made from 65 individual observations by Cassini’s visual and infrared mapping spectrometer in the near-infrared portion of the light spectrum on Nov. 1, 2008. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
This mosaic of images from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft shows three fan-like structures in Saturn’s tenuous F ring. Such “fans” suggest the existence of additional objects in the F ring. Image credit: NASA/JPL/SSI
Cassini came within 25 kilometers (15.6 miles) of the surface of Enceladus on Oct. 5, 2008. Image credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
