Thursday, July 31, 2014

Picture This: Vesta's Dark Materials in Dawn's View

Picture This: Vesta's Dark Materials in Dawn's View:

This composite-color view from NASA's Dawn mission shows Cornelia Crater, streaked with dark materials, on the giant asteroid Vesta.
This composite-color view from NASA's Dawn mission shows Cornelia Crater, streaked with dark materials, on the giant asteroid Vesta. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
› Full image and caption


January 03, 2013

A new study of images from NASA's Dawn mission examines remarkable, dark-as-coal material that speckles the surface of the giant asteroid Vesta. Scientists are using the images, taken by Dawn's framing camera, to understand the impact environment early in Vesta's evolution.


In the most comprehensive analysis of the dark material to date, Dawn scientists describe how this carbon-rich material tends to appear around the edges of two giant impact basins in Vesta's southern hemisphere. The analysis suggests that the dark material was most likely delivered by the object that created the older of the two basins, known as Veneneia, about 2 to 3 billion years ago. Some of those materials were later covered up by the impact that created the younger basin, Rheasilvia.


The paper, published in the November-December issue of the journal Icarus, was led by Vishnu Reddy of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany, and the University of North Dakota, Grand Forks. More information on the paper is available at: http://www.mpg.de/en .


The Dawn spacecraft orbited Vesta for more than a year, departing in September 2012. Dawn is now on its way to the dwarf planet Ceres, and will arrive in early 2015.


More information on Dawn is available at: http://www.nasa.gov/dawn and http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov .


The Dawn mission to Vesta and Ceres is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The University of California, Los Angeles, is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. The Dawn framing cameras were developed and built under the leadership of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany, with significant contributions by DLR German Aerospace Center, Institute of Planetary Research, Berlin, and in coordination with the Institute of Computer and Communication Network Engineering, Braunschweig. The framing camera project is funded by the Max Planck Society, DLR and NASA.

Jia-Rui C. Cook 818-354-0850

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

jccook@jpl.nasa.gov


2013-001
Posted by Nelio Inacio at 12:39 PM 0 comments

NASA's NuSTAR Catches Black Holes in Galaxy Web

NASA's NuSTAR Catches Black Holes in Galaxy Web:

Blazing Black Holes Spotted in Spiral Beauty
This new view of spiral galaxy IC 342, also known as Caldwell 5, includes data from NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR. High-energy X-ray data from NuSTAR have been translated to the color magenta, and superimposed on a visible-light view highlighting the galaxy and its star-studded arms. NuSTAR is the first orbiting telescope to take focused pictures of the cosmos in high-energy X-ray light; previous observations of this same galaxy taken at similar wavelengths blurred the entire object into one pixel. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/DSS
› Full image and caption

January 07, 2013

PASADENA, Calif. - NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, set its X-ray eyes on a spiral galaxy and caught the brilliant glow of two black holes lurking inside.


The new image is being released Monday along with NuSTAR's view of the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A, at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Long Beach, Calif.


"These new images showcase why NuSTAR is giving us an unprecedented look at the cosmos," said Lou Kaluzienski, NuSTAR program scientist at NASA headquarters in Washington. "With NuSTAR's greater sensitivity and imaging capability, we're getting a wealth of new information on a wide array of cosmic phenomena in the high-energy X-ray portion of the electromagnetic spectrum."


Launched last June, NuSTAR is the first orbiting telescope with the ability to focus high-energy X-ray light. It can view objects in considerably greater detail than previous missions operating at similar wavelengths. Since launch, the NuSTAR team has been fine-tuning the telescope, which includes a mast the length of a school bus connecting the mirrors and detectors.


The mission has looked at a range of extreme, high-energy objects already, including black holes near and far, and the incredibly dense cores of dead stars. In addition, NuSTAR has begun black hole searches in the inner region of the Milky Way galaxy and in distant galaxies in the universe.


Among the telescope's targets is the spiral galaxy IC342, also known as Caldwell 5, featured in one of the two new images. This galaxy lies 7 million light-years away in the constellation Camelopardalis (the Giraffe). Previous X-ray observations of the galaxy from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory revealed the presence of two blinding black holes, called ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs).


How ULXs can shine so brilliantly is an ongoing mystery in astronomy. While these black holes are not as powerful as the supermassive black hole at the hearts of galaxies, they are more than 10 times brighter than the stellar-mass black holes peppered among the stars in our own galaxy. Astronomers think ULXs could be less common intermediate-mass black holes, with a few thousand times the mass of our sun, or smaller stellar-mass black holes in an unusually bright state. A third possibility is that these black holes don't fit neatly into either category.


"High-energy X-rays hold a key to unlocking the mystery surrounding these objects," said Fiona Harrison, NuSTAR principal investigator at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "Whether they are massive black holes, or there is new physics in how they feed, the answer is going to be fascinating."


In the image, the two bright spots that appear entangled in the arms of the IC342 galaxy are the black holes. High-energy X-ray light has been translated into the color magenta, while the galaxy itself is shown in visible light.


"Before NuSTAR, high-energy X-ray pictures of this galaxy and the two black holes would be so fuzzy that everything would appear as one pixel," said Harrison.


The second image features the well-known, historical supernova remnant Cassiopeia A, located 11,000 light-years away in the constellation Cassiopeia. The color blue indicates the highest-energy X-ray light seen by NuSTAR, while red and green signify the lower end of NuSTAR's energy range. The blue region is where the shock wave from the supernova blast is slamming into material surrounding it, accelerating particles to nearly the speed of light. As the particles speed up, they give off a type of light known as synchrotron radiation. NuSTAR will be able to determine for the first time how energetic the particles are, and address the mystery of what causes them to reach such great speeds.


"Cas A is the poster child for studying how massive stars explode and also provides us a clue to the origin of the high-energy particles, or cosmic rays, that we see here on Earth," said Brian Grefenstette of Caltech, a lead researcher on the observations. "With NuSTAR, we can study where, as well as how, particles are accelerated to such ultra-relativistic energies in the remnant left behind by the supernova explosion."


For more information about NuSTAR and to view the new images, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/nustar .


NuSTAR is a Small Explorer mission led by Caltech and managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Orbital Sciences Corporation of Dulles, Va., built the spacecraft. Its instrument was built by a consortium including Caltech; JPL; the University of California (UC) Berkeley; Columbia University; NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.; the Danish Technical University in Denmark; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif.; and ATK Aerospace Systems of Goleta, Calif.
NuSTAR's mission operations center is at UC Berkeley, with the Italian Space Agency providing an equatorial ground station located at Malindi, Kenya. The mission's outreach program is based at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park, Calif. Goddard manages NASA's Explorer Program. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.


You can follow JPL News on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/nasajpl and on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/nasajpl . Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov


J.D. Harrington 202-358-5241

NASA Headquarters, Washington

j.d.harrington@nasa.gov


2013-008
Posted by Nelio Inacio at 12:39 PM 0 comments

NASA's Kepler Discovers 461 New Planet Candidates

NASA's Kepler Discovers 461 New Planet Candidates:

Size of Kepler Planet Candidates
Since the last Kepler catalog was released in February 2012, the number of candidates discovered in the Kepler data has increased by 20 percent and now totals 2,740 potential planets orbiting 2,036 stars. Based on observations conducted May 2009 to March 2011, the most dramatic increases are seen in the number of Earth-size and super Earth-size candidates discovered, which grew by 43 and 21 percent respectively. Image credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech
› Larger image

January 07, 2013

PASADENA, Calif. - NASA's Kepler mission Monday announced the discovery of 461 new planet candidates. Four of the potential new planets are less than twice the size of Earth and orbit in their sun's "habitable zone," the region in the planetary system where liquid water might exist on the surface of a planet.


Based on observations conducted from May 2009 to March 2011, the findings show a steady increase in the number of smaller-size planet candidates and the number of stars with more than one candidate.


"There is no better way to kick off the start of the Kepler extended mission than to discover more possible outposts on the frontier of potentially life-bearing worlds," said Christopher Burke, Kepler scientist at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., who is leading the analysis.


Since the last Kepler catalog was released in February 2012, the number of candidates discovered in the Kepler data has increased by 20 percent and now totals 2,740 potential planets orbiting 2,036 stars. The most dramatic increases are seen in the number of Earth-size and super Earth-size candidates discovered, which grew by 43 and 21 percent respectively.


The new data increase the number of stars discovered to have more than one planet candidate from 365 to 467. Today, 43 percent of Kepler's planet candidates are observed to have neighbor planets.


"The large number of multi-candidate systems being found by Kepler implies that a substantial fraction of exoplanets reside in flat multi-planet systems," said Jack Lissauer, planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. "This is consistent with what we know about our own planetary neighborhood."


The Kepler space telescope identifies planet candidates by repeatedly measuring the change in brightness of more than 150,000 stars in search of planets that pass in front of, or "transit," their host star. At least three transits are required to verify a signal as a potential planet.


Scientists analyzed more than 13,000 transit-like signals to eliminate known spacecraft instrumentation and astrophysical false positives, phenomena that masquerade as planetary candidates, to identify the potential new planets.


Candidates require additional follow-up observations and analyses to be confirmed as planets. At the beginning of 2012, 33 candidates in the Kepler data had been confirmed as planets. Today, there are 105.


"The analysis of increasingly longer time periods of Kepler data uncovers smaller planets in longer period orbits-- orbital periods similar to Earth's," said Steve Howell, Kepler mission project scientist at Ames. "It is no longer a question of will we find a true Earth analogue, but a question of when."


The complete list of Kepler planet candidates is available in an interactive table at the NASA Exoplanet Archive. The archive is funded by NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program to collect and make public data to support the search for and characterization of exoplanets and their host stars.


Ames manages Kepler's ground system development, mission operations and science data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., managed Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo., developed the Kepler flight system and supports mission operations with JPL at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder.


The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore archives, hosts and distributes the Kepler science data. Kepler is NASA's 10th Discovery Mission and is funded by NASA's Science Mission Directorate at the agency's headquarters in Washington.


JPL manages NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program. The NASA Exoplanet Archive is hosted at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology.


For information about the NASA Exoplanet Archive, visit: http://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/index.html .


For information about the Kepler mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/kepler .

Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

jccook@jpl.nasa.gov


J.D. Harrington 202-358-5241

NASA Headquarters, Washington

j.d.harrington@nasa.gov


Michele Johnson 650-604-4789

Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.

michele.johnson@nasa.gov


2012-005
Posted by Nelio Inacio at 12:38 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

NASA's Galex Reveals the Largest-Known Spiral Galaxy

NASA's Galex Reveals the Largest-Known Spiral Galaxy:

This composite of the giant barred spiral galaxy NGC 6872 combines visible light
This composite of the giant barred spiral galaxy NGC 6872 combines visible light images from the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope with far-ultraviolet (1,528 angstroms) data from NASA's GALEX and 3.6-micron infrared data acquired by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Image credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/ESO/JPL-Caltech/DSS
› Full image and caption

January 10, 2013

PASADENA, Calif. -- The spectacular barred spiral galaxy NGC 6872 has ranked among the biggest stellar systems for decades. Now a team of astronomers from the United States, Chile and Brazil has crowned it the largest known spiral, based on archival data from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) mission, which has since been loaned to the California Institute of
Technology in Pasadena.


Measuring tip-to-tip across its two outsized spiral arms, NGC 6872 spans more than 522,000 light-years, making it more than five times the size of our Milky Way galaxy.


"Without GALEX's ability to detect the ultraviolet light of the youngest, hottest stars, we would never have recognized the full extent of this intriguing system," said lead scientist Rafael Eufrasio, a research assistant at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., who is a doctoral student at Catholic University of America in Washington. He presented the findings Thursday at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Long Beach, Calif.


The galaxy's unusual size and appearance stem from its interaction with a much smaller disk galaxy named IC 4970, which has only about one-fifth the mass of NGC 6872. The odd couple is located 212 million light-years from Earth in the southern constellation Pavo.


Astronomers think large galaxies, including our own, grew through mergers and acquisitions -- assembling over billions of years by absorbing numerous smaller systems.


Intriguingly, the gravitational interaction of NGC 6872 and IC 4970 may have done the opposite, spawning what may develop into a new small galaxy.


"The northeastern arm of NGC 6872 is the most disturbed and is rippling with star formation, but at its far end, visible only in the ultraviolet, is an object that appears to be a tidal dwarf galaxy similar to those seen in other interacting systems," said team member Duilia de Mello, a professor of astronomy at Catholic University.


The tidal dwarf candidate is brighter in ultraviolet than other regions of the galaxy, a sign it bears a rich supply of hot young stars less than 200 million years old.


The researchers studied the galaxy across the spectrum using archival data from the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, the Two Micron All Sky Survey, and NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, as well as GALEX.


By analyzing the distribution of energy by wavelength, the team uncovered a distinct pattern of stellar age along the galaxy's two prominent spiral arms. The youngest stars appear in the far end of the northwestern arm, within the tidal dwarf candidate, and stellar ages skew progressively older toward the galaxy's center.


The southwestern arm displays the same pattern, which is likely connected to waves of star formation triggered by the galactic encounter.


A 2007 study by Cathy Horellou at Onsala Space Observatory in Sweden and Baerbel Koribalski of the Australia National Telescope Facility developed computer simulations of the collision that reproduced the overall appearance of the system as we see it today. According to the closest match, IC 4970 made its closest approach about 130 million years ago and followed a path that took it nearly along the plane of the spiral's disk in the same direction it rotates. The current study is consistent with this picture.


As in all barred spirals, NGC 6872 contains a stellar bar component that transitions between the spiral arms and the galaxy's central regions. Measuring about 26,000 light-years in radius, or about twice the average length found in nearby barred spirals, it is a bar that befits a giant galaxy.


The team found no sign of recent star formation along the bar, which indicates it formed at least a few billion years ago. Its aged stars provide a fossil record of the galaxy's stellar population before the encounter with IC 4970 stirred things up.


"Understanding the structure and dynamics of nearby interacting systems like this one brings us a step closer to placing these events into their proper cosmological context, paving the way to decoding what we find in younger, more distant systems," said team member and Goddard astrophysicist Eli Dwek.


The study also included Fernanda Urrutia-Viscarra and Claudia Mendes de Oliveira at the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil and Dimitri Gadotti at the European Southern Observatory in Santiago, Chile.


The GALEX mission is led by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, which is responsible for science operations and data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, also in Pasadena, manages the mission and built the science instrument. GALEX was developed under NASA's Explorers Program managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. In May 2012, NASA loaned GALEX to Caltech, which continues spacecraft operations and data management using private funds.


For more information about GALEX, visit http://www.nasa.gov/galex and http://www.galex.caltech.edu/ .

Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov


Lynn Chandler 301-286-2806

Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

lynn.chandler-1@nasa.gov


J.D. Harrington 202-358-5241

Headquarters, Washington

j.d.harrington@nasa.gov


2013-016
Posted by Nelio Inacio at 6:05 AM 0 comments

Study Finds Severe Climate Jeopardizing Amazon Forest

Study Finds Severe Climate Jeopardizing Amazon Forest:

At left, the extent of the 2005 megadrought in the western Amazon rainforests during the summer months of June
At left, the extent of the 2005 megadrought in the western Amazon rainforests during the summer months of June, July and August as measured by NASA satellites. The most impacted areas are shown in shades of red and yellow. The circled area in the right panel shows the extent of the forests that experienced slow recovery from the 2005 drought, with areas in red and yellow shades experiencing the slowest recovery. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/GSFC

› Larger image

January 17, 2013

PASADENA, Calif. - An area of the Amazon rainforest twice the size of California continues to suffer from the effects of a megadrought that began in 2005, finds a new NASA-led study. These results, together with observed recurrences of droughts every few years and associated damage to the forests in southern and western Amazonia in the past decade, suggest these rainforests may be showing the first signs of potential large-scale degradation due to climate change.


An international research team led by Sassan Saatchi of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., analyzed more than a decade of satellite microwave radar data collected between 2000 and 2009 over Amazonia. The observations included measurements of rainfall from NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission and measurements of the moisture content and structure of the forest canopy (top layer) from the Seawinds scatterometer on NASA's QuikScat spacecraft.


The scientists found that during the summer of 2005, more than 270,000 square miles (700,000 square kilometers, or 70 million hectares) of pristine, old-growth forest in southwestern Amazonia experienced an extensive, severe drought. This megadrought caused widespread changes to the forest canopy that were detectable by satellite. The changes suggest dieback of branches and tree falls, especially among the older, larger, more vulnerable canopy trees that blanket the forest.


While rainfall levels gradually recovered in subsequent years, the damage to the forest canopy persisted all the way to the next major drought, which began in 2010. About half the forest affected by the 2005 drought - an area the size of California - did not recover by the time QuikScat stopped gathering global data in November 2009 and before the start of a more extensive drought in 2010.


"The biggest surprise for us was that the effects appeared to persist for years after the 2005 drought," said study co-author Yadvinder Malhi of the University of Oxford, United Kingdom. "We had expected the forest canopy to bounce back after a year with a new flush of leaf growth, but the damage appeared to persist right up to the subsequent drought in 2010."


Recent Amazonian droughts have drawn attention to the vulnerability of tropical forests to climate change. Satellite and ground data have shown an increase in wildfires during drought years and tree die-offs following severe droughts. Until now, there had been no satellite-based assessment of the multi-year impacts of these droughts across all of Amazonia. Large-scale droughts can lead to sustained releases of carbon dioxide from decaying wood, affecting ecosystems and Earth's carbon cycle.


The researchers attribute the 2005 Amazonian drought to the long-term warming of tropical Atlantic sea surface temperatures. "In effect, the same climate phenomenon that helped form hurricanes Katrina and Rita along U.S. southern coasts in 2005 also likely caused the severe drought in southwest Amazonia," Saatchi said. "An extreme climate event caused the drought, which subsequently damaged the Amazonian trees."


Saatchi said such megadroughts can have long-lasting effects on rainforest ecosystems. "Our results suggest that if droughts continue at five- to 10-year intervals or increase in frequency due to climate change, large areas of the Amazon forest are likely to be exposed to persistent effects of droughts and corresponding slow forest recovery," he said. "This may alter the structure and function of Amazonian rainforest ecosystems."


The team found that the area affected by the 2005 drought was much larger than scientists had previously predicted. About 30 percent (656,370 square miles, or 1.7 million square kilometers) of the Amazon basin's total current forest area was affected, with more than five percent of the forest experiencing severe drought conditions. The 2010 drought affected nearly half of the entire Amazon forest, with nearly a fifth of it experiencing severe drought. More than 231,660 square miles (600,000 square kilometers) of the area affected by the 2005 drought were also affected by the 2010 drought. This "double whammy" by successive droughts suggests a potentially long-lasting and widespread effect on forests in southern and western Amazonia.


The drought rate in Amazonia during the past decade is unprecedented over the past century. In addition to the two major droughts in 2005 and 2010, the area has experienced several localized mini-droughts in recent years. Observations from ground stations show that rainfall over the southern Amazon rainforest declined by almost 3.2 percent per year in the period from 1970 to 1998. Climate analyses for the period from 1995 to 2005 show a steady decline in water availability for plants in the region. Together, these data suggest a decade of moderate water stress led up to the 2005 drought, helping trigger the large-scale forest damage seen following the 2005 drought.


Saatchi said the new study sheds new light on a major controversy that existed about how the Amazon forest responded following the 2005 megadrought. Previous studies using conventional optical satellite data produced contradictory results, likely due to the difficulty of correcting the optical data for interference by clouds and other atmospheric conditions.


In contrast, QuikScat's scatterometer radar was able to see through the clouds and penetrate into the top few meters of vegetation, providing daily measurements of the forest canopy structure and estimates of how much water the forest contains. Areas of drought-damaged forest produced a lower radar signal than the signals collected over healthy forest areas, indicating either that the forest canopy is drier or it is less "rough" due to damage to or the death of canopy trees.


Results of the study were published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Other participating institutions included UCLA; University of Oxford, United Kingdom; University of Exeter, Devon, United Kingdom; National Institute for Space Research, Sao Jose dos Campos, Sao Paulo, Brazil; Boston University, Mass.; and NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.


For more on NASA's scatterometry missions, visit: http://winds.jpl.nasa.gov/index.cfm . You can follow JPL News on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/nasajpl and on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/nasajpl . The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.

Alan Buis 818-354-0474

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Alan.buis@jpl.nasa.gov


2013-025
Posted by Nelio Inacio at 6:04 AM 0 comments

Martian Crater May Once Have Held Groundwater-Fed Lake

Martian Crater May Once Have Held Groundwater-Fed Lake:

Layers with Carbonate Content Inside McLaughlin Crater on Mars
This view of layered rocks on the floor of McLaughlin Crater shows sedimentary rocks that contain spectroscopic evidence for minerals formed through interaction with water. The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter recorded the image. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
› Full image and caption

January 20, 2013

PASADENA, Calif. -- A NASA spacecraft is providing new evidence of a wet underground environment on Mars that adds to an increasingly complex picture of the Red Planet's early evolution.


The new information comes from researchers analyzing spectrometer data from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which looked down on the floor of McLaughlin Crater. The Martian crater is 57 miles (92 kilometers) in diameter and 1.4 miles (2.2 kilometers) deep. McLaughlin's depth apparently once allowed underground water, which otherwise would have stayed hidden, to flow into the crater's interior.


Layered, flat rocks at the bottom of the crater contain carbonate and clay minerals that form in the presence of water. McLaughlin lacks large inflow channels, and small channels originating within the crater wall end near a level that could have marked the surface of a lake.


Together, these new observations suggest the formation of the carbonates and clay in a groundwater-fed lake within the closed basin of the crater. Some researchers propose the crater interior catching the water and the underground zone contributing the water could have been wet environments and potential habitats. The findings are published in Sunday's online edition of Nature Geoscience.


"Taken together, the observations in McLaughlin Crater provide the best evidence for carbonate forming within a lake environment instead of being washed into a crater from outside," said Joseph Michalski, lead author of the paper, which has five co-authors. Michalski also is affiliated with the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Ariz., and London's Natural History Museum.


Michalski and his co-authors used the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) to check for minerals such as carbonates, which are best preserved under non-acidic conditions.


"The MRO team has made a concerted effort to get highly processed data products out to members of the science community like Dr. Michalski for analysis," said CRISM Principal Investigator Scott Murchie of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. "New results like this show why that effort is so important."


Launched in 2005, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and its six instruments have provided more high-resolution data about the Red Planet than all other Mars orbiters combined. Data are made available for scientists worldwide to research, analyze and report their findings.


"A number of studies using CRISM data have shown rocks exhumed from the subsurface by meteor impact were altered early in Martian history, most likely by hydrothermal fluids," Michalski said. "These fluids trapped in the subsurface could have periodically breached the surface in deep basins such as McLaughlin Crater, possibly carrying clues to subsurface habitability."


McLaughlin Crater sits at the low end of a regional slope several hundreds of miles, or kilometers, long on the western side of the Arabia Terra region of Mars. As on Earth, groundwater-fed lakes are expected to occur at low regional elevations. Therefore, this site would be a good candidate for such a process.


"This new report and others are continuing to reveal a more complex Mars than previously appreciated, with at least some areas more likely to reveal signs of ancient life than others," said Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project Scientist Rich Zurek of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.


The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., provided and operates CRISM. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver built the orbiter.


To see an image of the carbonate-bearing layers in McLaughlin Crater, visit: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA16710 .


For more about the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mro .

Guy Webster 818-354-6278

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov


Alan Fischer 520-382-0411

Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, Ariz.

fischer@psi.edu


Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726

NASA Headquarters, Washington

dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov


2013-028
Posted by Nelio Inacio at 6:03 AM 0 comments

Betelgeuse Star Braces for Crash with Strange Bar

Betelgeuse Star Braces for Crash with Strange Bar:

Betelgeuse's Enigmatic Environment
The red supergiant star Betelgeuse is seen here in a new view from the Herschel Space Observatory, a European Space Agency mission with important NASA participation. Image credit: ESA/Herschel/PACS/L. Decin et al
› Full image and caption

January 22, 2013

Orion, the famous hunter presiding over northern winter skies, may experience a stellar crash in its future. The red star at its shoulder, called Betelgeuse, appears to be set to collide with a dusty "wall" in 5,000 years.


A new image from the Herschel Space Observatory, a European Space Agency mission with important NASA participation, reveals the shedding, aging star -- called Betelgeuse - is located near an odd, linear bar of material. While some earlier theories proposed that this bar was a result of matter ejected during a previous stage of the star's evolution, analysis of the new image suggests that it is a separate object: either a linear filament linked to the galaxy's magnetic field, or the edge of a nearby interstellar cloud that is being illuminated by Betelgeuse.


If the bar is completely separate from the star, then the outermost arc around Betelgeuse is estimated to collide with the bar in just 5,000 years, with the star itself hitting the bar about 12,500 years later.
Roughly 1,000 times the diameter of our sun and shining 100,000 times more brightly, Betelgeuse is likely on its way to a spectacular supernova explosion. It has already swelled into a red supergiant and shed a significant fraction of its outer layers.


The new, longer-wavelength infrared view from Herschel also shows how the star's winds are crashing against the surrounding interstellar medium, creating a bow shock as the star moves through space at speeds of around 30 kilometers per second (about 67,000 mph).


A series of broken, dusty arcs around the star, and ahead of the direction of its motion, testify to a turbulent history of mass loss in past years.


Read the full ESA story at http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Betelgeuse_braces_for_a_collision .
Herschel is a European Space Agency cornerstone mission, with science instruments provided by consortia of European institutes and with important participation by NASA. NASA's Herschel Project Office is based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. JPL contributed mission-enabling technology for two of Herschel's three science instruments. The NASA Herschel Science Center, part of the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, supports the United States astronomical community. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.


More information is online at http://www.herschel.caltech.edu , http://www.nasa.gov/herschel and http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Herschel .

Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov


2013-031
Posted by Nelio Inacio at 6:03 AM 0 comments

NASA Officially Joins ESA's 'Dark Universe' Mission

NASA Officially Joins ESA's 'Dark Universe' Mission:

Artist's concept of Euclid spacecraft.
This artist's concept shows the Euclid spacecraft. The telescope will launch to an orbit around the sun-Earth Lagrange point L2. The Lagrange point is a location where the gravitational pull of two large masses, the sun and Earth in this case, precisely equals the force required for a small object, such as the Euclid spacecraft, to maintain a relatively stationary position behind Earth as seen from the sun. Image credit: ESA/C. Carreau
› Larger image

January 24, 2013

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA has joined the European Space Agency's (ESA's) Euclid mission, a space telescope designed to investigate the cosmological mysteries of dark matter and dark energy.


Euclid will launch in 2020 and spend six years mapping the locations and measuring the shapes of as many as 2 billion galaxies spread over more than one-third of the sky. It will study the evolution of our universe, and the dark matter and dark energy that influence its evolution in ways that still are poorly understood.


The telescope will launch to an orbit around the sun-Earth Lagrange point L2. The Lagrange point is a location where the gravitational pull of two large masses, the sun and Earth in this case, precisely equals the force required for a small object, such as the Euclid spacecraft, to maintain a relatively stationary position behind Earth as seen from the sun.


"NASA is very proud to contribute to ESA's mission to understand one of the greatest science mysteries of our time," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate at the agency's Headquarters in Washington.


NASA and ESA recently signed an agreement outlining NASA's role in the project. NASA will contribute 16 state-of-the-art infrared detectors and four spare detectors for one of two science instruments planned for Euclid.


"ESA's Euclid mission is designed to probe one of the most fundamental questions in modern cosmology, and we welcome NASA's contribution to this important endeavor, the most recent in a long history of cooperation in space science between our two agencies," said Alvaro Gimenez, ESA's Director of Science and Robotic Exploration.


In addition, NASA has nominated three U.S. science teams totaling 40 new members for the Euclid Consortium. This is in addition to 14 U.S. scientists already supporting the mission. The Euclid Consortium is an international body of 1,000 members who will oversee development of the instruments, manage science operations and analyze data.


Euclid will map the dark matter in the universe. Matter as we know it -- the atoms that make up the human body, for example -- is a fraction of the total matter in the universe. The rest, about 85 percent, is dark matter consisting of particles of an unknown type. Dark matter first was postulated in 1932, but still has not been detected directly. It is called dark matter because it does not interact with light. Dark matter interacts with ordinary matter through gravity and binds galaxies together like an invisible glue.


While dark matter pulls matter together, dark energy pushes the universe apart at ever-increasing speeds. In terms of the total mass-energy content of the universe, dark energy dominates. Even less is known about dark energy than dark matter.


Euclid will use two techniques to study the dark universe, both involving precise measurements of galaxies billions of light-years away. The observations will yield the best measurements yet of how the acceleration of the universe has changed over time, providing new clues about the evolution and fate of the cosmos.


Euclid is an ESA mission with science instruments provided by a consortia of European institutes and with important participation from NASA. NASA's Euclid Project Office is based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. JPL will contribute the infrared flight detectors for the Euclid science instrument. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., will test the infrared flight detectors prior to delivery. Three U.S. science teams will contribute to science planning and data analysis. JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.


For more information about Euclid, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/euclid , http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/area/index.cfm?fareaid=102 and http://www.euclid-ec.org/ .

Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov


J.D. Harrington 202-358-5241

NASA Headquarters, Washington

j.d.harrington@nasa.gov


2013-033
Posted by Nelio Inacio at 6:02 AM 0 comments

Cool, New Views of Andromeda Galaxy

Cool, New Views of Andromeda Galaxy:

Andromeda's Colorful Rings
The ring-like swirls of dust filling the Andromeda galaxy stand out colorfully in this new image from the Herschel Space Observatory, a European Space Agency mission with important NASA participation. Image credit: ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech/NHSC
› Full image and caption

January 28, 2013

Two new eye-catching views from the Herschel space observatory are fit for a princess. They show the elegant spiral galaxy Andromeda, named after the mythical Greek princess known for her beauty.


The Andromeda galaxy, also known as Messier 31, lies 2 million light-years away, and is the closest large galaxy to our own Milky Way. It is estimated to have up to one trillion stars, whereas the Milky Way contains hundreds of billions. Recent evidence suggests Andromeda's overall mass may in fact be less than the mass of the Milky Way, when dark matter is included.


Herschel, a European Space Agency mission with important NASA contributions, sees the longer-wavelength infrared light from the galaxy, revealing its rings of cool dust. Some of this dust is the very coldest in the galaxy -- only a few tens of degrees above absolute zero.


In both views, warmer dust is highlighted in the central regions by different colors. New stars are being born in this central, crowded hub, and throughout the galaxy's rings in dusty knots. Spokes of dust can also be seen between the rings.


One view, seen at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA16682 , is a mosaic of data from Herschel's Photodetecting Array Camera and Spectrometer (PACS) and spectral and photometric imaging receiver (SPIRE).


The second view, seen at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA16681 , shows data from only the SPIRE instrument, which captures the longest of wavelengths detectable by Herschel.


Herschel is a European Space Agency cornerstone mission, with science instruments provided by consortia of European institutes and with important participation by NASA. NASA's Herschel Project Office is based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. JPL contributed mission-enabling technology for two of Herschel's three science instruments. The NASA Herschel Science Center, part of the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, supports the United States astronomical community. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.


More information is online at http://www.herschel.caltech.edu , http://www.nasa.gov/herschel and http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Herschel .

Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov


2013-035
Posted by Nelio Inacio at 6:02 AM 0 comments

NASA to Launch Ocean Wind Monitor to Space Station

NASA to Launch Ocean Wind Monitor to Space Station:

Artist's rendering of NASA's ISS-RapidScat instrument (inset)
Artist's rendering of NASA's ISS-RapidScat instrument (inset), which will launch to the International Space Station in 2014 to measure ocean surface wind speed and direction and help improve weather forecasts, including hurricane monitoring. It will be installed on the end of the station's Columbus laboratory.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/JSC

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January 29, 2013

PASADENA, Calif. - In a clever reuse of hardware originally built to test parts of NASA's QuikScat satellite, the agency will launch the ISS-RapidScat instrument to the International Space Station in 2014 to measure ocean surface wind speed and direction.


The ISS-RapidScat instrument will help improve weather forecasts, including hurricane monitoring, and understanding of how ocean-atmosphere interactions influence Earth's climate.


"The ability for NASA to quickly reuse this hardware and launch it to the space station is a great example of a low-cost approach that will have high benefits to science and life here on Earth," said Mike Suffredini, NASA's International Space Station program manager.


ISS-RapidScat will help fill the data gap created when QuikScat, which was designed to last two years but operated for 10, stopped collecting ocean wind data in late 2009. A scatterometer is a microwave radar sensor used to measure the reflection or scattering effect produced while scanning the surface of Earth from an aircraft or a satellite.


NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have studied next-generation replacements for QuikScat, but a successor will not be available soon. To meet this challenge cost-effectively, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and the agency's station program proposed adapting leftover QuikScat hardware in combination with new hardware for use on the space station.


"ISS-RapidScat represents a low-cost approach to acquiring valuable wind vector data for improving global monitoring of hurricanes and other high-intensity storms," said Howard Eisen, ISS-RapidScat project manager at JPL. "By leveraging the capabilities of the International Space Station and recycling leftover hardware, we will acquire good science data at a fraction of the investment needed to launch a new satellite."


ISS-RapidScat will have measurement accuracy similar to QuikScat's and will survey all regions of Earth accessible from the space station's orbit. The instrument will be launched to the space station aboard a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft. It will be installed on the end of the station's Columbus laboratory as an autonomous payload requiring no interaction by station crew members. It is expected to operate aboard the station for two years.


ISS-RapidScat will take advantage of the space station's unique characteristics to advance understanding of Earth's winds. Current scatterometer orbits pass the same point on Earth at approximately the same time every day. Since the space station's orbit intersects the orbits of each of these satellites about once every hour, ISS-RapidScat can serve as a calibration standard and help scientists stitch together the data from multiple sources into a long-term record.


ISS-RapidScat also will collect measurements of Earth's global wind field at all times of day for all locations. Variations in winds caused by the sun can play a significant role in the formation of tropical clouds and tropical systems that play a dominant role in Earth's water and energy cycles. ISS-RapidScat observations will help scientists understand these phenomena better and improve weather and climate models.


The ISS-RapidScat project is a joint partnership of JPL and NASA's International Space Station Program Office at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, with support from the Earth Science Division of the Science Mission Directorate in Washington.


For more on ISS-RapidScat, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/ISSRapidScat.html . For more on NASA's scatterometry missions, visit: http://winds.jpl.nasa.gov/index.cfm . For more information about the International Space Station, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/station .


You can follow JPL News on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/nasajpl and on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/nasajpl . The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.

Alan Buis 818-354-0474

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Alan.buis@jpl.nasa.gov


Trent J. Perrotto 202-358-1100

NASA Headquarters, Washington

Trent.j.perrotto@nasa.gov


Josh Byerly 281-483-5111

NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston

Josh.byerly@nasa.gov


2013-037
Posted by Nelio Inacio at 6:01 AM 0 comments

Herschel Finds Past-Prime Star May Be Making Planets

Herschel Finds Past-Prime Star May Be Making Planets:

This artist's illustration shows a planetary disk (left) that weighs the equivalent of 50 Jupiter-mass planets.
This artist's illustration shows a planetary disk (left) that weighs the equivalent of 50 Jupiter-mass planets. It demonstrates a first-of-its-kind feat from astronomers using the Herschel space observatory. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

› Full image and caption

January 30, 2013

PASADENA, Calif. -- A star thought to have passed the age at which it can form planets may, in fact, be creating new worlds. The disk of material surrounding the surprising star called TW Hydrae may be massive enough to make even more planets than we have in our own solar system.


The findings were made using the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Telescope, a mission in which NASA is a participant.


At roughly 10 million years old and 176 light years away, TW Hydrae is relatively close to Earth by astronomical standards. Its planet-forming disk has been well studied. TW Hydrae is relatively young but, in theory, it is past the age at which giant planets already may have formed.


"We didn't expect to see so much gas around this star," said Edwin Bergin of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Bergin led the new study appearing in the journal Nature. "Typically stars of this age have cleared out their surrounding material, but this star still has enough mass to make the equivalent of 50 Jupiters," Bergin said.


In addition to revealing the peculiar state of the star, the findings also demonstrate a new, more precise method for weighing planet-forming disks. Previous techniques for assessing the mass were indirect and uncertain. The new method can directly probe the gas that typically goes into making planets.


Planets are born out of material swirling around young stars, and the mass of this material is a key factor controlling their formation. Astronomers did not know before the new study whether the disk around TW Hydrae contained enough material to form new planets similar to our own.


"Before, we had to use a proxy to guess the gas quantity in the planet-forming disks," said Paul Goldsmith, the NASA project scientist for Herschel at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "This is another example of Herschel's versatility and sensitivity yielding important new results about star and planet formation."


Using Herschel, scientists were able to take a fresh look at the disk with the space telescope to analyze light coming from TW Hydrae and pick out the spectral signature of a gas called hydrogen deuteride. Simple hydrogen molecules are the main gas component of planets, but they emit light at wavelengths too short to be detected by Herschel. Gas molecules containing deuterium, a heavier version of hydrogen, emit light at longer, far-infrared wavelengths that Herschel is equipped to see. This enabled astronomers to measure the levels of hydrogen deuteride and obtain the weight of the disk with the highest precision yet.


"Knowing the mass of a planet-forming disk is crucial to understanding how and when planets take shape around other stars," said Glenn Wahlgren, Herschel program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.


Whether TW Hydrae's large disk will lead to an exotic planetary system with larger and more numerous planets than ours remains to be seen, but the new information helps define the range of possible planet scenarios.


"The new results are another important step in understanding the diversity of planetary systems in our universe," said Bergin. "We are now observing systems with massive Jupiters, super-Earths, and many Neptune-like worlds. By weighing systems at their birth, we gain insight into how our own solar system formed with just one of many possible planetary configurations."


Herschel is a European Space Agency (ESA) cornerstone mission, with science instruments provided by a consortium of European institutes and with important participation by NASA. NASA's Herschel Project Office is based at JPL, which contributed mission-enabling technology for two of Herschel's three science instruments. NASA's Herschel Science Center, part of the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, supports the United States astronomical community. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.


More information is online at http://www.herschel.caltech.edu , http://www.nasa.gov/herschel and http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Herschel .








Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov

J.D. Harrington 202-358-5241

NASA Headquarters, Washington

j.d.harrington@nasa.gov

2013-328
Posted by Nelio Inacio at 6:01 AM 0 comments

Small Asteroid to Whiz Past Earth Safely

Small Asteroid to Whiz Past Earth Safely:

Diagram depicting the passage of asteroid 2012 DA14 through the Earth-moon system on Feb. 15, 2013.
Diagram depicting the passage of asteroid 2012 DA14 through the Earth-moon system on Feb. 15, 2013. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
› Larger image

February 01, 2013

The small near-Earth asteroid 2012 DA14 will pass very close to Earth on February 15, so close that it will pass inside the ring of geosynchronous weather and communications satellites. NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office can accurately predict the asteroid's path with the observations obtained, and it is therefore known that there is no chance that the asteroid might be on a collision course with Earth. Nevertheless, the flyby will provide a unique opportunity for researchers to study a near-Earth object up close.


Asteroid 2012 DA14 will be closest to Earth on Feb. 15, at about 11:24 p.m. PST (2 p.m. EST and 1924 UT), when it will be at a distance of about 27,700 kilometers (17,200 miles) above Earth's surface. Although this is close enough for the asteroid to pass inside the ring of geosynchronous satellites, located about 35,800 kilometers (22,200 miles) above the equator, it will still be well above the vast majority of satellites, including the International Space Station. At its closest, the asteroid will be only about 1/13th of the distance to the moon. The asteroid will fly by our planet quite rapidly, at a speed of about 17,400 mph (7.8 kilometers per second) in a south-to-north direction with respect to Earth.


Even though 2012 DA14 is coming remarkably close, it will still only appear as a point of light in the biggest of optical telescopes, because of its small size. Based on its brightness, astronomers estimate that it is only about 45 meters (150 feet) across. It will brighten only to magnitude 7.5, too faint to be seen with the naked eye, but easily visible with a good set of binoculars or a small telescope. The best viewing location for the closest approach will be Indonesia, from which the asteroid will be seen to move at a rate of almost 1 degree per minute against the star background. Eastern Europe, Asia and Australia are also well situated to see the asteroid around its closest approach. But by the time Earth rotates enough for observers in the continental United States to have a chance to see the asteroid, it will have receded and faded to about the 11th magnitude. Radar astronomers plan to take images of the asteroid about eight hours after closest approach using the Goldstone antenna in California's Mojave Desert, which is part of NASA's Deep Space Network.


2012 DA14 has not been in the catalogues for very long -- it was discovered in February of 2012 by astronomers at the La Sagra Sky Survey program in southern Spain and reported to the Minor Planet Center, which designates minor bodies in our solar system. At the time of the discovery, the asteroid had just made a fairly distant passage by Earth, about seven times farther than the distance to the moon. Since 2012 DA14's orbital period around the sun has been about 368 days, which is very similar to Earth's, the asteroid made a series of annual close approaches. This year's is the closest approach, and is the closest the asteroid will come for at least three decades. But this encounter will shorten 2012 DA14's orbital period to about 317 days, changing its orbital class from Apollo to Aten, and its future close approaches will follow a different pattern.


This passage of 2012 DA14 by Earth is a record close approach for a known object of this size. A few other known asteroids have flown by Earth even closer, but those asteroids were smaller. On average, we expect an object of this size to get this close to Earth about once every 40 years. An actual Earth collision by an object of this size would be expected much less frequently, about once every 1,200 years, on average.

DC Agle 818-393-9011

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

agle@jpl.nasa.gov


2013-041
Posted by Nelio Inacio at 6:00 AM 0 comments

NASA to Host Feb. 7 Media Telecon on Asteroid Flyby

NASA to Host Feb. 7 Media Telecon on Asteroid Flyby:

Diagram depicting the passage of asteroid 2012 DA14 through the Earth-moon system on Feb. 15, 2013.
Diagram depicting the passage of asteroid 2012 DA14 through the Earth-moon system on Feb. 15, 2013. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
› Larger image

February 04, 2013

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA will hold a media teleconference at 11 a.m. PST (2 p.m. EST), on Thursday, Feb. 7, to discuss an asteroid, 150 feet (45 meters) in diameter, that will pass close, but safely, by Earth on Feb. 15. The flyby creates a unique opportunity for researchers to observe and learn more about asteroids.


The teleconference participants are:
--Lindley Johnson, program executive, Near-Earth Object (NEO) Observations Program, NASA Headquarters, Washington

--Timothy Spahr, director, Minor Planet Center, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Mass.

--Donald Yeomans, manager, NEO Office, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

--Amy Mainzer, principal investigator, NEOWISE observatory, Jet Propulsion Laboratory

--Edward Beshore, deputy principal investigator, Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer Asteroid Sample Return Mission, University of Arizona, Tucson


Audio of the teleconference will be streamed live at: http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio and http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2 .


Related images will be available at the start of the teleconference at:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/asteroids/news/telecon20130207.html .


For detailed information concerning the Earth flyby of 2012 DA14, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/asteroidflyby.html .


A Ustream feed of the flyby from a telescope at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., will be broadcast from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. PST (9 p.m. to midnight EST) on Feb. 15. To view the feed and ask researchers questions via Twitter about the flyby, visit: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasa-msfc .

DC Agle 818-393-9011

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

agle@jpl.nasa.gov


Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726

NASA Headquarters, Washington

Dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov


Nancy Neal Jones 301-286-0039

Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

nancy.n.jones@nasa.gov


2012-043
Posted by Nelio Inacio at 5:59 AM 0 comments

Cassini Sees Titan Cooking up Smog

Cassini Sees Titan Cooking up Smog:

Reflection of Sunlight off Titan Lake
This image shows the first flash of sunlight reflected off a lake on Saturn's moon Titan. The glint off a mirror-like surface is known as a specular reflection. This kind of glint was detected by the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer (VIMS) on NASA's Cassini spacecraft on July 8, 2009. It confirmed the presence of liquid in the moon's northern hemisphere, where lakes are more numerous and larger than those in the southern hemisphere. Scientists using VIMS had confirmed the presence of liquid in Ontario Lacus, the largest lake in the southern hemisphere, in 2008. Image Credit:
NASA/JPL/University of Arizona/DLR
› Full image and caption

February 04, 2013

A paper published this week using data from NASA's Cassini mission describes in more detail than ever before how aerosols in the highest part of the atmosphere are kick-started at Saturn's moon Titan. Scientists want to understand aerosol formation at Titan because it could help predict the behavior of smoggy aerosol layers on Earth.


According to the new paper, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Titan's trademark reddish-brown smog appears to begin with solar radiation on molecules of nitrogen and methane in the ionosphere, which creates a soup of negative and positive ions. Collisions among the organic molecules and the ions help the molecules grow into bigger and more complex aerosols. Lower down in the atmosphere, these aerosols bump into each other and coagulate, and at the same time interact with other, neutral particles. Eventually, they form the heart of the physical processes that rain hydrocarbons on Titan's surface and form lakes, channels and dunes.


The paper was led by Panayotis Lavvas, a Cassini participating scientist based at the University of Reims, Champagne-Ardenne, France. The team analyzed data from three Cassini instruments -- the plasma spectrometer, the ion and neutral mass spectrometer, and the radio and plasma wave science experiment. They compared their results to those obtained by ESA's Huygens probe on its descent through the Titan atmosphere in 2005 and found they were compatible.


The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. JPL is a division of Caltech. For more information on Cassini, visit http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov .

Jia-Rui C. Cook 818-354-0850

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.


jccook@jpl.nasa.gov


2013-042
Posted by Nelio Inacio at 5:59 AM 0 comments

WISE Feels the Heat from Orion's Sword

WISE Feels the Heat from Orion's Sword:

The Cosmic Hearth
The Orion nebula is featured in this sweeping image from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. The constellation of Orion is prominent in the evening sky throughout the world from about December through April of each year. The nebula (also catalogued as Messier 42) is located in the sword of Orion, hanging from his famous belt of three stars. The star cluster embedded in the nebula is visible to the unaided human eye as a single star, with some fuzziness apparent to the most keen-eyed observers. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA
› Full image and caption

February 05, 2013

The tangle of clouds and stars that lie in Orion's sword is showcased in a new, expansive view from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE.


Orion, the famous hunter, is visible in evening skies throughout the world from about December through April. The constellation appears tranquil and still to the naked eye, but lying in its sword, at what appears to be a slightly fuzzy star, is a turbulent cauldron of stellar birth.


WISE scanned the whole sky in infrared light, capturing this vast view of the dynamic region, called the Orion nebula. The telescope picked up the infrared glow from dust heated by newborn stars. The colors green and red highlight this warmed dust, while the white regions are the hottest. Massive stars burned through the dust, carving out cavities, the largest of which is seen at the center of the picture.


Astronomers think that our sun was probably born in a similar cloud some five billion years ago. Over time, the cloud would have dispersed and the stars would have drifted apart, leaving us more isolated in space. The crowded newborn stars in the Orion nebula are less than 10 million years old -- billions of years from now, they will likely spread out.


NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages, and operated, WISE for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. The spacecraft was put into hibernation mode in 2011, after it scanned the entire sky twice, completing its main objectives. Edward Wright is the principal investigator and is at UCLA. The mission was selected competitively under NASA's Explorers Program managed by the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The science instrument was built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory in Logan, Utah. The spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo. Science operations and data processing take place at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.


More information is online at http://www.nasa.gov/wise and http://wise.astro.ucla.edu and http://jpl.nasa.gov/wise .

Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov


2013-046
Posted by Nelio Inacio at 5:58 AM 0 comments

Pacific Locked in 'La Nada' Limbo

Pacific Locked in 'La Nada' Limbo:

The latest image of sea surface heights in the Pacific Ocean from NASA's Jason-1 satellite
The latest image of sea surface heights in the Pacific Ocean from NASA's Jason-1 satellite shows that the equatorial Pacific Ocean is now in its 10th month of being locked in what some call a neutral, or "La Nada" state. "La Nadas" make long-range climate forecasting more difficult due to their greater unpredictability. Yellows and reds indicate areas where waters are relatively warmer and have expanded above normal sea level, while blues and purple areas show where waters are relatively colder and sea level is lower than normal. Green indicates near-normal sea level conditions. Image credit is NASA-JPL/Caltech/Ocean Surface Topography Team.

› Larger image

February 06, 2013

Sea-surface height data from NASA's Jason-1 satellite show that the equatorial Pacific Ocean is still locked in what some call a neutral, or 'La Nada' state. This condition follows two years of strong, cool-water La Niña events.


A new image, based on the average of 10 days of data centered on Jan. 26, 2013, shows near-normal conditions (depicted in green) across the equatorial Pacific. The image is available at: http://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov/images/latestdata/jason/2013/20130126P.jpg .


This latest image highlights the processes that occur on time scales of more than a year, but usually less than 10 years, such as El Niño and La Niña. These processes are known as the interannual ocean signal. To show that signal, scientists refined data for this image by removing trends over the past 20 years, seasonal variations and time-averaged signals of large-scale ocean circulation.


The height of the water relates, in part, to its temperature, and thus is an indicator of the amount of heat stored in the ocean below. As the ocean warms, its level rises; as it cools, its level falls. Yellow and red areas indicate where the waters are relatively warmer and have expanded above normal sea level, while green (which dominates in this image) indicates near-normal sea level, and blue and purple areas show where the waters are relatively colder and sea level is lower than normal. Above-normal height variations along the equatorial Pacific indicate El Niño conditions, while below-normal height variations indicate La Niña conditions. The temperature of the upper ocean can have a significant influence on weather patterns and climate. For a more detailed explanation of what this type of image means, visit: http://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov/science/elninopdo/latestdata/ .


"This past spring, after two years of La Niña, the expected El Niño was a no-show," says Bill Patzert, climatologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "La Niña faded and 'La Nada' conditions locked in."


"This absence of El Niño and La Niña, termed 'neutral' by some, has left long-range climate forecasters adrift," Patzert added. "Seasonal, long-range forecasting works best when signals like El Niño and La Niña are strong."
Patzert calls the present condition 'La Nada,' because the word 'neutral' misleadingly implies to some that weather will be 'normal.'


"For me 'normal' is the cycle on a washing machine," Patzert said. "I never say the word 'normal' when it comes to winter weather in the American West. For instance, in the last 100 years, we've only had a total of six 'normal' years of rainfall in Los Angeles, meaning about 15 inches of rain per winter in downtown L.A. Historically, La Nadas have delivered both the wettest and driest winters on record. For long-range forecasters, La Nada is a teeth grinder."
NASA scientists will continue to monitor this persistent La Nada - now in its 10th month -- to see what the Pacific Ocean has in store next for the world's climate.


The comings and goings of El Niño, La Niña and La Nada are part of the long-term, evolving state of global climate, for which measurements of sea surface height are a key indicator. Jason-1 is a joint effort between NASA and the French Space Agency, Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES). Jason-2 is a joint effort between NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, CNES and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT). JPL manages the U.S. portion of both missions for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C.
In early 2015, NASA and its international partners CNES, NOAA and EUMETSAT will launch Jason-3, which will extend the timeline of ocean surface topography measurements begun by the Topex/Poseidon and Jason 1 and 2 satellites. Jason-3 will make highly detailed measurements of sea level on Earth to gain insight into ocean circulation and climate change.


For more on NASA's satellite altimetry programs, visit: http://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov .


You can follow JPL News on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/nasajpl and on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/nasajpl . The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.

Alan Buis 818-354-0474

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Alan.buis@jpl.nasa.gov


2013-049
Posted by Nelio Inacio at 5:58 AM 0 comments
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