Space: The Final Frontier

[Stan]

 

 

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A huge burst of mysterious cosmic radio waves traced back to the exact location in a galaxy billions of light years away

Phoebe Weston

A huge one-off burst of mysterious cosmic radio waves has been precisely located to a galaxy 3.6 billion light-years away.

The powerful shiver of waves came from a Milky Way-sized galaxy that scientists were able to pinpoint for the first time using three of the world’s largest optical telescopes.

“This is the big breakthrough that the field has been waiting for since astronomers discovered fast radio bursts in 2007,” said lead author Keith Bannister, from Australia’s national science agency.

© Thomson Reuters A Hubble Space Telescope image shows bright blue gas threading through the galaxy IC 4870 that shines because it emits radio wave and gamma-ray radiation, in this image obtained September 26, 2018. NASA/ESA/Hubble Space Telescope/Handout via REUTERS THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. IT IS DISTRIBUTED, EXACTLY AS RECEIVED BY REUTERS, AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS

“If we were to stand on the Moon and look down at the Earth with this precision, we would be able to tell not only which city the burst came from, but which postcode and even which city block,” he said.

The discovery was made by an Australian-led international team using a new radio telescope belonging to the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), the Australian science agency.

Astronomers hope the breakthrough will move them closer to discovering the causes of fast radio bursts, which remain unknown, according to the study published in the journal Science.

Since 2007, just 85 cosmic radio wave bursts have been detected. Most are “one-offs” but a small amount are “repeaters” which recur in the same place.

Two years ago, astronomers found a “repeater” home galaxy but this is the first time they have exactly located a “one-off” ripple. Fast radio bursts last less than a millisecond which makes it incredibly hard to pinpoint their origin.

The technology used in the discovery was the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope.

Team member Dr Adam Deller from the Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne said: “The burst we localised and its host galaxy look nothing like the ‘repeater’ and its host. It comes from a massive galaxy that is forming relatively few stars.

© Heritage Space Spiral galaxy in Triangulum constellation. Artist NASA. (Photo by Heritage Space/Heritage-Images/Getty Images)

“This suggests that fast radio bursts can be produced in a variety of environments, or that the seemingly one-off bursts detected so far by ASKAP are generated by a different mechanism to the repeater.”

ASKAP is an array of multiple dish antennas and the burst had to travel a different distance to reach each antenna which means it arrived at slightly different times.

ASKAP was able to freeze and save the data less than a second after the burst (FRB 180924) arrived at the telescope from its home galaxy (DES J214425.25?405400.81).

“From these tiny time differences – just a fraction of a billionth of a second – we identified the burst’s home galaxy and even its exact starting point, 13,000 light-years out from the galaxy’s centre in the galactic suburbs,” said Dr Deller.

To find out more about the home galaxy, the team imaged it with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile and measured its distance with the Keck telescope in Hawaii and the Gemini South telescope in Chile.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/techandscience/huge-burst-of-mysterious-cosmic-radio-waves-traced-back-to-exact-location-in-galaxy-billions-of-light-years-away/ar-AADw5n5?MSCC=1561712335&ocid=chromentp

 

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Dragonfly: Drone helicopter to fly on Saturn's moon, Titan

Nasa will fly a drone helicopter mission to cost $1bn (£800m) on Saturn's moon, Titan, in the 2030s.

The rotorcraft will visit dozens of promising locations on Titan to investigate the chemistry that could lead to life.

Titan plays host to many of the chemical processes that could have sparked biology on the early Earth.

The eight-rotor drone will be launched to the Saturnian moon in 2026 and arrive in 2034.

It will take advantage of Titan's thick atmosphere to fly to different sites of interest.

Video

Dragonfly was selected as the next mission in Nasa's New Frontiers programme of medium-class planetary science missions.

It was in competition with the Comet Astrobiology Exploration Sample Return (CAESAR) mission, which would have delivered a sample from a comet to Earth.

Titan has wind, rivers, seas and lakes, just like Earth - but with an exotic twist.

The huge moon (it is second only in size to Jupiter's moon, Ganymede) has its own seasonal cycle, where wind and rain have shaped the surface to form river channels, seas, dunes and shorelines.

The average temperature of -179C (-290F) means that mountains are made of ice, and liquid methane assumes many of the roles played by water on Earth.

Dragonfly will first land at the "Shangri-La" dune fields, which are similar to the linear dunes found in Namibia in southern Africa.

The drone will explore this region in short flights, building up to a series of longer "leapfrog" flights of up to 8km (5 miles), stopping along the way to take samples.

"Flying on Titan is actually easier than flying on Earth," said the mission's principal investigator Elizabeth "Zibi" Turtle, from Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland. "The atmosphere is four times denser at the surface than the atmosphere at the surface of Earth and the gravity is about one-seventh of the gravity here on Earth."

She added: "Its the best way to travel and the best way to go long distances so that we can make measurements in a variety of different geologic environments."

It will finally reach the Selk impact crater, where there is evidence of past liquid water and organics - the complex carbon-based molecules that are vital for life. These may have existed together for tens of thousands of years.

"What really excites me about this mission is that Titan has all of the key ingredients needed for life," said Dr Lori Glaze, the director of planetary science at Nasa. "Liquid water and liquid methane. We have the complex organic carbon-based molecules. And we have the energy that we know is required for life.

"So we have on Titan opportunity to observe the processes that were present on early Earth when life began to form and possibly even conditions that may be able to harbour life today."

In addition to studying this "pre-biotic chemistry", Dragonfly carries instruments that can investigate the moon's atmosphere and the water-ammonia ocean thought to lie beneath its surface. It will also search for chemical evidence of past or present life.

"With the Dragonfly mission, Nasa will once again do what no-one else can do," said the US space agency's administrator, Jim Bridenstine.

"Visiting this mysterious ocean world could revolutionise what we know about life in the Universe. This cutting-edge mission would have been unthinkable even just a few years ago, but we're now ready for Dragonfly's amazing flight."

The lander could eventually fly more than 175km (108 miles) - nearly double the distance travelled to date by all Mars rovers combined.

Dragonfly will be powered by a Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (MMRTG), which converts the heat released by the decay of a radioactive material into electricity. While there is enough sunlight at Titan's surface to see, there is not enough to use solar power efficiently.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-48799315

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Hubble Catches a Bounty of Stars and Cosmic Dust

This Hubble Space Telescope image shows the spiral galaxy Messier 98, which is located about 45 million light-years away in the constellation of Coma Berenices (Berenice's Hair). The galaxy was discovered in 1781 by the French astronomer Pierre Méchain, a colleague of Charles Messier, and is one of the faintest objects in Messier’s astronomical catalog.

Messier 98 is estimated to contain about a trillion stars, and is full of cosmic dust — visible here as a web of red-brown stretching across the frame — and hydrogen gas. This abundance of star-forming material means that Messier 98 is producing stellar newborns at a high rate; the galaxy shows the characteristic signs of stars springing to life throughout its bright center and whirling arms.

This image of Messier 98 was taken in 1995 with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, an instrument that was installed on Hubble from 1993 until 2009. These observations were taken in infrared and visible light as part of a study of galaxy cores within the Virgo Cluster, and feature a portion of the galaxy near the center.

 

Text credit: ESA (European Space Agency)
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, V. Rubin et al.

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June 30, 2019

How Historic Jupiter Comet Impact Led to Planetary Defense

Twenty-five years ago, humanity first witnessed a collision between a comet and a planet. From July 16 to 22, 1994, enormous pieces of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 (SL9), discovered just a year prior, crashed into Jupiter over several days, creating huge, dark scars in the planet’s atmosphere and lofting superheated plumes into its stratosphere.

The SL9 impact gave scientists the opportunity to study a new celestial phenomenon. It was also a wake-up call that big collisions still occur in the solar system – after all, if Jupiter was vulnerable, maybe Earth is, too. Had the comet hit Earth instead, it could have created a global atmospheric disaster, much like the impact event that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

"Shoemaker-Levy 9 was a sort of punch in the gut," said Heidi Hammel, who led visible-light observations of the comet with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and is now the executive vice president at The Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy AURA (which manages astronomers’ interface to Hubble). "It really invigorated our understanding of how important it is to monitor our local neighbourhood, and to understand what the potential is for impacts on Earth in the future."

25 years ago, humanity had its first glimpse of a cosmic collision when comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 crashed into Jupiter — and the whole world watched. We’ve seen evidence of impacts all throughout our solar system, but we had never before been able to watch an impact while it was happening.

Credits: NASA 360

Comets, cosmic snowballs of frozen gases, rock and dust that orbit the Sun, are just one type of object that can wreak havoc on planetary bodies. Asteroids — the rocky, airless remnants left over from the formation of our solar system — are another. In honour of World Asteroid Day, June 30, we look back at this historic Shoemaker-Levy 9 event, which taught us the importance of looking out for potential impacts.

Discovering the Comet

Astronomers Carolyn and Eugene Shoemaker and David Levy discovered comet SL9 in March 1993. The Shoemakers were already a well-known comet-discovering astronomical duo, having discovered 32 comets together or separately in their careers. Calculations indicated that the comet, broken up into large pieces (some over a half a mile wide) by the planet’s gravity, was orbiting Jupiter and would impact in July 1994.

Fragments of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 as seen by Hubble on May 17, 1994. This image includes all 21 fragments and spans about 710,000 miles (114,000 kilometers), roughly three times the distance from the Earth to the Moon. The fragments impacted Jupiter in July 1994.

Credits: NASA/ESA/H. Weaver and E. Smith (STSci)

The news whipped the astronomical community into a frenzy – here was an opportunity to actually observe an impact. Other planets and moons are covered in craters, but we had never seen an impact happen. On Earth, scientists had recently confirmed that many of our own craters were created by impacts rather than volcanic eruptions, like the mile-wide (1.6-kilometer-wide) Meteor Crater in Arizona, and the 93-mile-wide (150-km-wide) Chicxulub Crater in the Gulf of Mexico. The SL9 impact with Jupiter would be an extraordinary opportunity to study how impacts affected a planet.

MORE (FULL REPORT)

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Hubble’s Brand New Image of Eta Carinae

  

NASA Goddard

Published on Jul 1, 2019

 

In the mid-1800s, mariners sailing the southern seas navigated at night by a brilliant star in the constellation Carina. The star, named Eta Carinae, was the second brightest star in the sky for more than a decade. Those mariners could hardly have imagined that by the mid-1860s the brilliant orb would no longer be visible. Eta Carinae was enveloped by a cloud of dust ejected during a violent outburst named “The Great Eruption.” Because of Eta Carinae's violent history, astronomers have kept watch over its activities. Although Hubble has monitored the volatile superstar for 25 years, it still is uncovering new revelations. Using Hubble to map the ultraviolet-light glow of magnesium embedded in warm gas, astronomers were surprised to discover the gas in places they had not seen it before.

 

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/main/index.html

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July 2, 2019

Atmosphere of Mid-Size Planet Revealed by Hubble and Spitzer

Two NASA space telescopes have teamed up to identify, for the first time, the detailed chemical "fingerprint" of a planet between the sizes of Earth and Neptune. No planets like this can be found in our own solar system, but they are common around other stars.

This artist's illustration shows the theoretical internal structure of the exoplanet GJ 3470 b. It is unlike any planet found in the Solar System. Weighing in at 12.6 Earth masses the planet is more massive than Earth but less massive than Neptune. Unlike Neptune, which is 3 billion miles from the Sun, GJ 3470 b may have formed very close to its red dwarf star as a dry, rocky object. It then gravitationally pulled in hydrogen and helium gas from a circumstellar disk to build up a thick atmosphere. The disk dissipated many billions of years ago, and the planet stopped growing. The bottom illustration shows the disk as the system may have looked long ago. Observation by NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes have chemically analyzed the composition of GJ 3470 b's very clear and deep atmosphere, yielding clues to the planet's origin. Many planets of this mass exist in our galaxy.

Credits: NASA, ESA, and L. Hustak (STScI)

The planet, Gliese 3470 b (also known as GJ 3470 b), maybe a cross between Earth and Neptune, with a large rocky core buried under a deep crushing hydrogen and helium atmosphere. Weighing in at 12.6 Earth masses, the planet is more massive than Earth but less massive than Neptune (which is more than 17 Earth masses).

Many similar worlds have been discovered by NASA's Kepler space observatory, whose mission ended in 2018. In fact, 80% of the planets in our galaxy may fall into this mass range. However, astronomers have never been able to understand the chemical nature of such a planet until now, researchers say.

By inventorying the contents of GJ 3470 b's atmosphere, astronomers are able to uncover clues about the planet's nature and origin. 

"This is a big discovery from the planet formation perspective. The planet orbits very close to the star and is far less massive than Jupiter—318 times Earth's mass—but has managed to accrete the primordial hydrogen/helium atmosphere that is largely "unpolluted" by heavier elements," said Björn Benneke of the University of Montreal, Canada. "We don't have anything like this in the solar system, and that's what makes it striking."

Astronomers enlisted the combined multi-wavelength capabilities NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes to do the first-of-a-kind study of GJ 3470 b's atmosphere.

This was accomplished by measuring the absorption of starlight as the planet passed in front of its star (transit) and the loss of reflected light from the planet as it passed behind the star (eclipse). All totalled, the space telescopes observed 12 transits and 20 eclipses. The science of analyzing chemical fingerprints based on light is called "spectroscopy."

"For the first time we have a spectroscopic signature of such a world," said Benneke. But he is at a loss for classification: Should it be called a "super-Earth" or "sub-Neptune?" Or perhaps something else?

Fortuitously, the atmosphere of GJ 3470 b turned out to be mostly clear, with only thin hazes, enabling the scientists to probe deep into the atmosphere.

"We expected an atmosphere strongly enriched in heavier elements like oxygen and carbon which are forming abundant water vapour and methane gas, similar to what we see on Neptune", said Benneke. "Instead, we found an atmosphere that is so poor in heavy elements that its composition resembles the hydrogen/helium-rich composition of the Sun."

Other exoplanets called "hot Jupiters" are thought to form far from their stars, and over time migrate much closer. But this planet seems to have formed just where it is today, says Benneke.

The most plausible explanation, according to Benneke, is that GJ 3470 b was born precariously close to its red dwarf star, which is about half the mass of our Sun. He hypothesizes that essentially it started out as a dry rock, and rapidly accreted hydrogen from a primordial disk of gas when its star was very young. The disk is called a "protoplanetary disk."

"We're seeing an object that was able to accrete hydrogen from the protoplanetary disk, but didn’t run away to become a hot Jupiter," said Benneke. "This is an intriguing regime."

One explanation is that the disk dissipated before the planet could bulk up further. "The planet got stuck being a sub-Neptune," said Benneke.

NASA's upcoming James Webb Space Telescope will be able to probe even deeper into GJ 3470 b's atmosphere thanks to the Webb's unprecedented sensitivity in the infrared. The new results have already spawned large interest by American and Canadian teams developing the instruments on Webb. They will observe the transits and eclipses of GJ 3470 b at light wavelengths where the atmospheric hazes become increasingly transparent.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Washington, D.C.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at Caltech in Pasadena. Space operations are based at Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Littleton, Colorado. Data are archived at the Infrared Science Archive housed at IPAC at Caltech. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2019/atmosphere-of-mid-size-planet-revealed-by-hubble-and-spitzer

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July 5, 2019

Hubble Watches Stars in Bloom

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows bright, colourful pockets of star formation blooming like roses in a spiral galaxy named NGC 972. 

The orange-pink glow is created as hydrogen gas reacts to the intense light streaming outwards from nearby newborn stars; these bright patches can be seen here amid dark, tangled streams of cosmic dust. 

Astronomers look for these telltale signs of star formation when they study galaxies throughout the cosmos, as star formation rates, locations, and histories offer critical clues about how these colossal collections of gas and dust have evolved over time. New generations of stars contribute to — and are also, in turn, influenced by — the broader forces and factors that mould galaxies throughout the universe, such as gravity, radiation, matter, and dark matter.

German-British astronomer William Herschel is credited with the discovery of NGC 972 in 1784. Astronomers have since measured its distance, finding it to be just under 70 million light-years away.

Text credit: ESA (European Space Agency)
Image credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA, L. Ho

https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2019/hubble-watches-stars-in-bloom

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R.I.P. Mandla 

South African man set to be first 'Afronaut' killed in a bike crash

Agence France-Presse

© AFP/Getty Images In this picture taken in 2014, Mandla Maseko speaks to a journalist in Mabopane, north of Pretoria. He won the chance to go into space but died before that could happen.

A South African man who won the chance to be the first black African in space has died in a motorbike crash before turning his dream into reality.

Mandla Maseko, a part-time DJ and candidate officer with the South African air force, was nicknamed “Afronaut” after landing a coveted seat to fly 103km (64 miles) into space in 2013 in a competition organised by a US-based space academy.

He died in a motorcycle accident on Saturday, according to a family statement cited by local media on Sunday.

MORE

Edited July 8, 2019 by CaaC (John)
Spelling

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Jodrell Bank gains Unesco World Heritage status

Jodrell Bank Observatory has been declared a Unesco World Heritage Site.

It has been at the forefront of astronomical research since its inception in 1945 and tracked US and Russian craft during the space race.

The site in Cheshire is part of the University of Manchester. It is dominated by the landmark Lovell Telescope.

It joins the ancient Iraqi city of Babylon and other locations that have been added to the prestigious list.

 

FULL STORY

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Far out: Saturn will be 'nearby' on Tuesday, so you just might see its rings

Doyle Rice

Saturn, its rings and its moons will be paying a "close" visit to Earth Tuesday night. 

Saturn is at "opposition" that day, meaning the planet and the sun are on opposite sides of the Earth, according to NASA. That also means the ringed planet is as close to the Earth as it gets all year long. 

You can recognize Saturn because it’s in your southeastern sky at dusk and nightfall, EarthSky said.

Video: NASA announces a new mission to explore Saturn's largest moon (FOX News)

It will be visible with the naked eye all night long, rising in the East around sunset and slowly making its way across the sky before setting in the West around sunrise, according to AccuWeather.

You'll need a telescope to see the planet's famous rings. But “if you have never spotted Saturn's rings, now is your chance,” AccuWeather astronomy blogger Dave Samuhel said.

Some of Saturn's moons might also be visible with a telescope, NASA said. If you see its moons, Titan will be the brightest. 

According to Inverse.com, this is also the best time to photograph Saturn. 

As for the weather forecast, cloud-free skies are expected on Tuesday night across much of the interior West, southern Plains and Northeast, leading to uninterrupted viewing, AccuWeather said.

Rain and clouds will result in poor viewing conditions for residents along the West Coast, in the Midwest and across the Southeast. 

However, don’t assume Saturn’s opposition is a one-night-only event, EarthSky said. The ringed planet will be in good view throughout July, August and September.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/techandscience/far-out-saturn-will-be-nearby-on-tuesday-so-you-just-might-see-its-rings/ar-AAE2XCa?li=BBoPWjQ

 

Edited July 9, 2019 by CaaC (John)

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Did the Hubble Telescope Confirm the First Exomoon?

The Hubble and Kepler space telescopes found evidence for what could be a giant moon accompanying a gas-giant planet that orbits the star Kepler-1625, located 8,000 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. The moon may be as big as Neptune and it orbits a planet several times more massive than Jupiter. Credit: NASA’s Goddard 

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/videos/index.html

 

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Half-mile-wide asteroid found ‘hiding in our solar system’

Rob Waugh

The asteroid has the shortest year yet detected (Caltech)

Don’t panic, but astronomers have found a huge, half-mile-wide asteroid lurking in our solar system - which had eluded decades of asteroid hunts.

The newly found space rock poses no danger to us, of course - but it’s very unusual, with the shortest ‘year’ known for an asteroid.

The rock, called 2019 LF6, is about a kilometer in size and circles the sun roughly every 151 days. In its orbit, the asteroid swings out beyond Venus and, at times, comes closer in than Mercury, which circles the sun every 88 days.

'You don't find kilometre-size asteroids very often these days,' says Quanzhi Ye, a postdoctoral scholar at Caltech who discovered 2019 LF6.

'Thirty years ago, people started organizing methodical asteroid searches, finding larger objects first, but now that most of them have been found, the bigger ones are rare birds,' he says.

'LF6 is very unusual both in orbit and in size—its unique orbit explains why such a large asteroid eluded several decades of careful searches.'

(3d illustration, elements of this image are furnished by NASA)

2019 LF6 was discovered via the Zwicky Transient Facility, or ZTF, a state-of-the-art camera at the Palomar Observatory that scans the skies every night for transient objects, such as exploding and flashing stars and moving asteroids.

'We only have about 20 to 30 minutes before sunrise or after sunset to find these asteroids,' says Ye.

© Johannes Gerhardus Swanepoel Close-up of an asteroid entering the atmosphere at high speed and starting to burn -3D artwork

2019 LF6 is one of only 20 known "Atira" asteroids, whose orbits fall entirely within Earth's.

To find the Atira asteroids, the ZTF team has been carrying out a dedicated observing campaign, named Twilight after the time of day best suited for discovering the objects. Twilight was developed by Ye and Wing-Huen Ip of the National Central University in Taiwan.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/techandscience/half-mile-wide-asteroid-found-hiding-in-our-solar-system/ar-AAE8xqo?ocid=chromentp

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Alien moon likely seen forming in the first-of-its-kind picture

Nadia Drake

© Image by A. Isella, ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)This ALMA image of dust in the star system PDS 70 shows two faint smudges inside a larger disk surrounding the star. One of those faint blobs may be the first picture of a moon forming around an alien world.

In a possible first, a giant, faraway planet may have been caught in the act of growing moons.

Seen in an image from the ALMA Observatory in Chile, the young planet orbits a small star roughly 370 light-years away, and it appears to be swaddled in a dusty, gassy disk—the exact type of structure scientists think produced Jupiter’s many moons billions of years ago. (Tour the moons of our solar system with our interactive atlas.)

“It’s quite possible there might be planet-size moons in a formation around it,” study leader Andrea Isella of Rice University says in a statement.

“It’s certainly plausible that giant planets could have giant moon-forming disks around them,” says Stanford University’s Bruce Macintosh of the observation, published this week in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. “It’s an intriguing and quite possible result.”

Sean Andrews of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics agrees, adding that he is optimistic that the image is a first of its kind.

“If the result holds up,” he says “this will be an important ‘first strike.’”

Spin right ‘round

Astronomers have seen many similar dusty clouds surrounding stars. Called circumstellar disks, these structures are the milieu in which planets form—although the exact process by which worlds emerge from the dust is unknown. In some cases, astronomers think they can see newborn planets ploughing lanes into these circumstellar disks, and ALMA has captured many images of these nascent planetary fingerprints.

But until now, no one had seen a dusty disk surrounding a planet itself; it’s hard enough to directly image planets beyond our solar system, let alone see the diffuse clouds of debris hugging younger, giant worlds.

Isella and his colleagues studied one dust-encircled star system, called PDS 70, using data gathered in 2017 by ALMA, an array of 66 radio dishes sprinkled over a patch of the Atacama desert. The star system includes a Jupiter-size planet called PDS 70b, which has vacuumed up a gap in the dusty shroud surrounding its small, six-million-year-old home star. Another planet, called PDS 70c, traces a path near the inner edge of the gap, at roughly the same distance from its star as Neptune is from the sun.

Initially, the hazy area around PDS 70c looked like a faint arm of gas. But this year, when the team reprocessed the ALMA data using a slightly different method, the irregularities resolved into a dust ring. Isella and his colleagues interpret the newly processed image as depicting a circumplanetary debris disk, the type of structure from which moons grow and burgeoning planets siphon material.

“We believe that Jupiter’s moons formed in a disk around the young Jupiter, and that circumplanetary disks play an important role in the formation of planets,” he says.

A faint disk of dust surrounds a large planet, possibly giving rise to a new moon, in an illustration of the star system PDS 70.

Straight to the point

But it’s not a rock-solid detection yet.

“There are certainly some puzzling aspects of these results,” Andrews says. He notes inconsistencies between observations made at different wavelengths, which produce slightly different images of the disk swirling around the star. When viewed by ALMA, that disk clearly contains a point source that looks like a planet: PDS 70c. But when studied in shorter, infrared wavelengths, that point source becomes much more diffuse.

“The environment around ‘c’ appears pretty complicated,” Andrews says.

Isella notes that “the ALMA detection is quite faint,” and he says that the team is working on confirming their result with additional observations.

“We have an ongoing ALMA program to re-observe this system and measure the orbital motion of the circumplanetary disk,” he says. “So, stay tuned.”

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/techandscience/alien-moon-likely-seen-forming-in-first-of-its-kind-picture/ar-AAEfmfk?MSCC=1562994500&ocid=chromentp

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Spektr-RG: Powerful X-ray telescope launches to map cosmos

One of the most significant Russian space science missions in the post-Soviet era has launched from Baikonur.

The Spektr-RG telescope is a joint venture with Germany that will map X-rays across the entire sky in unprecedented detail.

Researchers say this information will help them trace the large-scale structure of the Universe.

The hope is Spektr-RG can provide fresh insights on the accelerating behaviour of cosmic expansion.

It should also identify a staggering number of new X-ray sources, such as the colossal black holes that reside at the centre of galaxies.

As gas falls into these monsters, the matter is heated and shredded and "screams" in X-rays. The radiation is essentially a telltale for the Universe's most violent phenomena.

Spektr-RG is expecting to detect perhaps three million super-massive black holes during its service life.

VIDEO - LAUNCH

The telescope rode to orbit atop a Proton rocket which left the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 17:31 local time (12:31 GMT).

It will be many weeks however before the mission's work can begin in earnest.

The spacecraft must first travel to a popular observing position some 1.5 million km from Earth known as Lagrange Point 2.

It's here that Spektr-RG can enjoy a stable environment free from the shadowing and temperature swings it would otherwise experience if operating closer to our home planet.

But once testing is complete, the observatory can get on with the business of scanning the sky.

Spektr-RG is constructed as a two-in-one telescope.

Taking up most of the room on the spacecraft bus, or chassis, is the German-developed eRosita system. Nestled next to it is the Russian-built science hardware known as ART-XC.

Both use a cluster of seven tubular mirror modules to corral the X-ray light down on to sensitive camera detectors.

Working in tandem, eRosita and ART-XC will map the radiation as it floods across the cosmos in the energy range of 0.2 to 30 kiloelectron volts (keV).

Over the course of six months, they should complete one full-sky survey, which will then be repeated again and again to improve on the detail.

Scientists expect the data to be a revelation. An all-sky X-ray map has never before been produced at the sought-after energies and at such fine resolution.

A key goal of Spektr-RG will be to investigate the mysterious cosmic components referred to as "dark matter" and "dark energy".

This duo makes up 96% of the energy density of the Universe, but next to nothing is known about them. The former seems to pull on normal, visible matter gravitationally, while the latter appears to be working to drive the cosmos apart at an ever faster rate.

Spektr-RG's insights will come from mapping the distribution of hot, X-ray-emitting gas.

This will illuminate the great clusters of galaxies that thread across the Universe. And in doing so, it will identify where the greatest concentrations of dark matter can be found.

"We're aiming to detect about 100,000 clusters, and in fact, above a certain mass limit we expect to detect all the clusters in the Universe," explained Prof Kirpal Nandra from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany.

"We then measure their masses and see how the number of clusters of a given mass evolves over cosmic time. This gives us a potentially very accurate measure of the amount of dark matter, and how it clumps together," he told BBC News.

"Our sensitivity allows us to map all this out to huge distances, all the way back to more than half the age of the Universe. That means we see the large-scale structure not just as it is today, but back then as well. And we also see how it's evolved over time. That's what gives you the ability to test cosmological models and to see perhaps the influence of dark energy and whether this has changed over time."

Spektr-RG has taken decades to develop. Russian scientists have had to cope with inconsistent funding down the years and as a consequence, the concept that launched on Saturday is quite radically different from what was originally envisaged.

The mission has been described as the most important astrophysics venture in post-Soviet Russia. Prof Nandra said his Russian colleagues certainly saw it that way.

"It puts them right at the forefront of X-ray astronomy; it's a massive opportunity for them," he added.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-48966645

[CaaC (John)+]

Lunar eclipse: Full moon to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 landing

Andrew Griffin

 

Watch: Meteorite hits Moon during a lunar eclipse (Independent)

The Moon is about to go dark as it is covered by a lunar eclipse.

As the Earth, Sun and Moon line up to create the rare celestial spectacular, their timing is perfect: it comes exactly 50 years to the day since the beginning of the Apollo 11 mission, when astronauts set off for its surface.

The partial eclipse will be visible across the UK, much of Asia, all of Africa, the eastern part of South America and the western part of Australia.

Gallery: 12 little-known facts about Apollo 11 (Reuters)

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It will appear in the sky on the evening of 16 July. That happens to be the exact same date that the Apollo 11 mission to the moon blasted off, with the first people ever to touch the lunar surface arriving just a few minutes later.

A lunar eclipse happens when the Earth, Sun and Moon all line-up, leaving the Moon hidden from the Sun by the Earth, which sits in between the two. As the Moon moves into the shadow the Earth, it dims dramatically.

What light does fall on it comes from around the Earth’s atmosphere, meaning that it is given a deep red tinge. It is that leads some to call the event a “blood moon”, because of its rich colour.

Gallery: Spectacular photos from space (Photos)

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In the UK, the Moon will rise shortly after it has entered into the darkest part of the Earth’s shadow, meaning that it will already be eclipsed when it becomes visible. It will come up around 9 pm in London and will arrive later the further north and west it is seen from.

The sun does not set until shortly after, so it will rise up into a brighter sky. The eclipse will be visible for hours after, however, giving people the chance to see it as the sun sets and the surface of the Moon changes in appearance.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/lunar-eclipse-full-moon-to-coincide-with-50th-anniversary-of-apollo-11-landing/ar-AAEmj2o

 

[CaaC (John)+]

Leaky component led to SpaceX explosion

A leaky component may have been to blame for the dramatic explosion of a SpaceX capsule during testing in April.

No one was hurt in the ground test at Cape Canaveral in Florida, but the failure was a setback in the company's efforts to send astronauts to the International Space Station.

Currently, the US buys seats for its astronauts on the Russian Soyuz rocket.

Nasa is planning to hand over the transport of astronauts to and from the ISS to Elon Musk's SpaceX and Boeing.

It's doing this under something called the Commercial Crew Programme.

The preliminary findings of the SpaceX analysis suggest that the leaking component allowed a small amount of nitrogen tetroxide (NTO), which is used as a liquid oxidiser in spacecraft engines, to enter high-pressure tubes meant for helium.

On 20 April at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, engineers were conducting something called a static fire engine test, where the spacecraft is secured to the ground and its engines are fired at full thrust. SpaceX was checking the vehicle's propulsion systems prior to a planned test of the in-flight emergency abort system.

A small amount of NTO was driven at high speed through a helium check valve (one that allows gas to flow in just one direction) made from titanium during initialisation of the launch escape system - which is designed to blast the crew free in the event of a rocket failure. This led to structural failure within the valve.

In a statement, the company said: "The failure of the titanium component in a high-pressure NTO environment was sufficient to cause ignition of the check valve and led to an explosion."

It added: "The reaction between titanium and NTO at high pressure was not expected."

As a result of the explosion, SpaceX has already taken several actions, including the use of components called burst disks instead of check valves. The burst disks seal completely until opened by high pressure. The company believes this will prevent any liquid propellant entering the gaseous pressurisation system.

In an interview with the C-SPAN television network on 12 July, Nasa administrator Jim Bridenstine, said: "This was a test. This is why we test. Ultimately, we find out what went wrong, we make adjustments and we move forward. That's what Nasa has always done, that's what we expect our commercial crew partners to do. They are doing it."

SpaceX has been criticised for a perceived lack of openness in the wake of the explosion. Jim Bridenstine said there was now a new procedure in place in the event that something similar happens again.

"Within a couple of hours, we're going to do a press conference and get as much information out to the public as soon as possible," he explained.

The company has had to rearrange its spacecraft assignments as a result of the test failure, in order to stay on track for its Commercial Crew Programme flights. The Crew Dragon originally assigned to SpaceX's demonstration mission to the ISS (known as Demo-2) will carry out the company's in-flight abort test.

The spacecraft originally assigned to the first operational mission (known as Crew-1) will launch on Demo-2.

Demo-2 will ferry Nasa astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken to the ISS for the first crewed test flight of the vehicle. It would mark the first time US astronauts have launched to space from American soil since the last flight of the space shuttle in July 2011.

The plan had been to launch the mission at the end of this year. But officials currently won't commit to whether that goal can be achieved.

Jim Bridenstine told C-SPAN: "I don't want to comment on whether or not we will get that flight complete this year," adding: "We need to do it as soon as possible."

It is expected to be followed by the first crewed flight of Boeing's spacecraft, the CST-100 Starliner. Astronauts Michael Fincke, Christopher Ferguson and Nicole Aunapu Mann will fly on the first crewed test of the Starliner.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-49005026

[nudge]

 

[CaaC (John)+]

NASA says we will start harvesting precious resources like platinum from the moon 'this century'

In this July 20, 1969, photo made available by NASA, astronaut Buzz Aldrin, lunar module pilot, walks on the surface of the moon near the leg of the Lunar Module "Eagle" during the Apollo 11 extravehicular activity. (Neil Armstrong/NASA via AP)

We may be excavating the surface of the moon for precious substances like platinum within this century, NASA officials said Thursday. 

NASA's administrator, Jim Bridenstine, said that added interest and new advancements in technology will help unlock an array of materials never-before available in a CNBC interview.  

Jim Bridenstine said that added interest and new advancements in technology will help unlock an array of materials never-before accessible to humans. 

A new crop of billionaires intent on helping NASA return to the moon and establish a permanent presence there are bolstering the prospect of lunar mining, Bridenstine said.  

This rendering (pictured above) shows a concept of what a base on the lunar surface may look like. From here, humans would be able to explore the lunar surface.

'Billionaires are actually investing in space and exploration, and NASA can benefit in that,' Bridenstine said. 

'We have commercial partners that didn’t exist historically, so they can help offset the cost. They’re making their own investments because they want customers that are not necessarily NASA.'

Bridenstine cited billionaires like Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos, and SpaceX's Elon Musk by name according to CNBC.

Echoing Bridenstine earlier this week, Bezos, who also owns the private aerospace company Blue Origin said that quick lunar transit could enable a thriving industry on the moon.   

'Eventually, it will be much cheaper and simpler to make really complicated things in space and then send those objects back down to earth,' Bezos told CBS Evening News.   

 Media and employees view four RS-25 engines, formerly used for space shuttle missions, that will be used for the core stage of NASA's Space Launch System (SLS), which they say will carry the Orion spacecraft, and ultimately a crew, to the moon and beyond, at the NASA Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, Friday, June 28, 2019. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

At stake could be an array of minerals, especially metal ores, useful in manufacturing, construction, and so on. 

'There could be tons and tons of platinum group metals on the moon, rare-earth metals, which are tremendously valuable on Earth,' Bridenstine told the outlet.

In addition to platinum, scientists say the moon could be loaded with silicon -- used in making computer chips -- as well as titanium and aluminium which is used for constructing buildings, making joint replacements, and more.

As noted by CNBC, those metals have become an increasingly valuable resource to the U.S. amid rising trade tensions with China. More than 80 per cent of rare Earth materials come from China. 

Already NASA has ploughed ahead on its mission to rove the moon for those metals, funding several concepts meant to mine natural resources on the lunar surface as well as reachable asteroids.

 A combination of autonomous rovers and other technology would help scientists on their mission to explore the moon's surface.

Through NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program, the agency said it will begin to explore the feasibility of robotic rovers and mining technology that could make space mining a reality. 

One particularly exciting concept would use a type of 'optical mining' to blast the surface of the moon with lasers and then collect the resulting debris. 

NASA's recently announced its intention to return to the moon via a much-anticipated mission dubbed Artemis.

The stories behind the 1969 moon landing, humanity's greatest mission

That mission will entail 37 separate launches over a decade and culminate in the construction of a moon base by 2028, according to documents leaked in May.

The plan also calls for the construction of the lunar 'Gateway' a space station and waypoint on the way to the moon which could be launched by 2024.

Gallery: 50th anniversary of the moon landing (Microsoft Pictures)

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https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/techandscience/nasa-says-we-will-start-harvesting-precious-resources-like-platinum-from-the-moon-this-century/ar-AAEAJYU?li=BBoPWjQ&ocid=mailsignout

[CaaC (John)+]

 

[Stan]

Anyone watching the Moon Landing Live programme on Channel 4?

 

[nudge]

6 minutes ago, Stan said:

Anyone watching the Moon Landing Live programme on Channel 4?

That's a documentary? I tuned into their six-day "livestream" on youtube a few times which pretty much simulates and reconstruct the whole mission...pretty cool stuff.

But this is even cooler: https://apolloinrealtime.org/ . It's an interactive website that replays the mission second by second - and thus includes 11000 hours of mission control audio, 240 hours of space-to-ground audio, thousands of photographs, all mission control, onboard and TV film and audio footage, multiple camera angles, transcripts, astromaterials sample data. It's incredible.

[Stan]

4 minutes ago, nudge said:

That's a documentary? I tuned into their six-day "livestream" on youtube a few times which pretty much simulates and reconstruct the whole mission...pretty cool stuff.

But this is even cooler: https://apolloinrealtime.org/ . It's an interactive website that replays the mission second by second - and thus includes 11000 hours of mission control audio, 240 hours of space-to-ground audio, thousands of photographs, all mission control, onboard and TV film and audio footage, multiple camera angles, transcripts, astromaterials sample data. It's incredible.

I watched it up to the famous Armstrong quote and it was all footage of the landing and communications between the astronauts and Houston.

[CaaC (John)+]

 

July 19, 2019

Hubble Spots a Stunning Spiral

Galaxies come in many shapes and sizes. One of the key galaxy types we see in the universe is the spiral galaxy, as demonstrated in an especially beautiful way by the subject of this Hubble Space Telescope image, NGC 2985. NGC 2985 lies over 70 million light-years from the solar system in the constellation of Ursa Major (the Great Bear).

The intricate, near-perfect symmetry on display here reveals the incredible complexity of NGC 2985. Multiple tightly wound spiral arms widen as they whirl outward from the galaxy’s bright core, slowly fading and dissipating until these majestic structures disappear into the emptiness of intergalactic space, bringing a beautiful end to their starry splendor. 

Over eons, spiral galaxies tend to run into other galaxies, often resulting in mergers. These coalescing events scramble the winding structures of the original galaxies, smoothing and rounding their shape. These objects possess a beauty all their own, distinct from the spiral galaxies from whence they came.

Text credit: ESA (European Space Agency)
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, L. Ho

[CaaC (John)+]

Money, shoes, poop, and other highlights from the 796 items we’ve left on the moon

Sara Chodosh

© Infographic by Sara Chodosh Data from the NASA  Catalogue of Manmade Material on the Moon

Humans have a bad habit of leaving a trace wherever they go. The moon is no exception. Sure, we left some ceremonial flags held aloft by wire in lieu of a brisk wind to blow them, but the most telling things we've left aren't what you see in commemorative photos.

The official NASA Catalogue of Manmade Material on the Moon lists 796 items, 765 of which are from American missions. Some as small as a pair of nail clippers, others consist of entire lunar rovers and probes that long ago crashed into the surface. We're not totally sure where all these items are, but they're definitely up there, cluttering the otherwise barren lunar landscape.

Yet somehow maps of the artefacts left on the moon never look that cluttered.

Most of the dots you can see are fairly large items. The Ranger spacecraft, for instance, was a series of uncrewed missions in the 1960s to get images of the moon. Not all of them made it (Ranger 3 missed the surface entirely), but 4, 6, 7, 8, and 9 all crashed into the surface. Similarly the Lunar Orbiters, well, orbited. They took photos in part to scope out potential landing sites for the first crewed missions, then came tumbling down once they were done.

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