Space: The Final Frontier

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https://go.nasa.gov/3rCvKMh

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Weird and Wonderful Irregular Galaxies

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Astronomers declare no further research required

Astronomers around the globe reveal that we’ve learned everything we need to know about the universe.

Credit: Bryan Allen / Getty Images.

Scientists across the world have declared that no further research is required in the field of astronomy, saying that everything about space is now sufficiently understood. 

The decision, announced today at the virtual Global Consortium of Astronomy, Astrology and Astrophysics conference, was met with applause but not surprise from the astronomical community. 

“The Pluto thing distracted us for a while, but really we’ve been on a trajectory to finishing our research since the early 2000s,” says Professor April Furst, an astrophysicist at the Facility Of Observational Lens’ and Spectrometry in Space (FOOLSs), University of Eastern Australia. 

“We think we’ve figured it out at this point. There might be a few more black holes we can discover, but everything else is pretty much mapped. Humanity can now look to the stars, and not wonder about anything.” 

The decision comes along with a proposal to convert the world’s biggest telescopes – including the Square Kilometre Array – into theme parks. 

“We were excited for the development of the SKA,” says Furst. 

“But it turns out we’re not going to need it to look at the stars. It will still be a fun tourist destination, though. Maybe we could hook a couple of slides to the dishes and take school excursions out there?” 

Dr Henrietta Leavitt, a physician at the New South Victoria State Hospital, says the announcement will reduce strain on hospitals adjacent to universities, as it’s effectively a ‘cure’ for aperture fever.  

Aperture fever – the addictive desire to build bigger telescopes – is a serious condition among astronomers.  

“When William Herschel secured the funding to build a 40-foot telescope in 1785, he became patient zero for a disease that has claimed the lives of thousands of astronomers,” says Leavitt. 

“Because we’re so close to a university, we see dozens of aperture fever cases per year. It’s really distressing, all these astronomers bleating about what stars they could see with another million dollars. Just leave it.” 

The astronomers are now turning their expertise to other fields, with many focusing on ocean exploration.

“There’s still so much we don’t know about the ocean, but that can change now we’ve wrapped space,” says Furst. “I think that by 2027, we’ll be able to say we understand everything we need to know about the sea. Particularly now we have all these extra researchers to help.”

“Maybe we could aim some of the telescopes at the ocean.” 

Leavitt welcomes this news. “I’m sick of treating marine biologists that have been bitten by sea snakes. It would be great to have that finished by the end of the decade.” 

The lack of new discoveries has affected journals, too, forcing some of them to close their doors. 

“We only had one paper submitted to us in the last month,” says Stella Staright, editor-in-chief at Nature Astrology, “and it was just about Uranus. We don’t need to see Uranus. We’ve seen it plenty of times.  

“This has brought us to the decision to discontinue Nature Astrology.” 

The impacts are clear even to the general public, as interest dwindles in astronomy content on the famous social media platform, Tiktok. 

“Ultimately, everything is relative, even space,” says science Tiktoker Albert Einstein. “And space is relatively boring.” 

https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/astronomy/astronomers-declare-no-further-research-required/

 

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Not sure about anyone else but today I learned that Uranus has an axial tilt of nearly 90 degrees, meaning it looks like it rotates on its side in the solar system. 

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NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Completes Final Tour of Asteroid Bennu

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Heavenly 

 

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Hubble Takes a Spiral Snapshot

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Did some stargazing with the binos last night for the first time in a while, and my mind was completely blown by the sheer amount of visible stars... Very, very clear skies and acceptable light pollution. At first, I completely randomly stumbled upon the Spring Triangle - the yellow-orange Arcturus (Alpha Boötis) on the left, the sapphire blue Spica (Alpha Virginis) to its lower right, and then the twinkling Regulus (Alpha Leonis) on the right well above both of them. There's also Denebola, a less bright star inside this imaginary triangle. Pretty cool... Both Arcturus and Spica were extremely bright; easily seen with a naked eye as well. Arcturus is easy to find if you follow the arc from the Big Dipper; in my case it was easy to notice as it was literally the brightest star in the night sky...the colours give it away as well. 

The next target was the Stargate asterism in constellation Corvus west of Spica - two triangles of stars, one nested inside the other, hence the name. Very easily noticeable pattern, well the outer triangle, at least - the inner one was a bit too faint for the binos. Will definitely try to observe it with a scope at some point, as it looked pretty impressive.

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How to see the Lyrid meteor shower 2021 tonight

Where, when, and how to spot the first major meteor shower of this year.

Published: 13th April 2021 at 04:00

Good news to all amateur astronomers: the first major meteor shower of 2021 has arrived. Called the Lyrid meteor shower, the celestial spectacle is set to shoot streaks of light across the night sky during mid-April.

While not the most active shower of the year, you can still expect to see an estimated 18 fast and bright meteors each hour during its peak. However, the glare from a near-full moon (known as a gibbous moon) will make the meteors harder to spot than usual.

So, what is the best way of making sure you see the Lyrid meteor shower? What causes it in the first place? And when exactly should you look for it? All of this (and more) is answered below.

FULL REPORT

 

Edited April 14, 2021 by CaaC (John)
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Holy shit  

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Ten things to take on your next trip to space

What do you need to make life aboard the ISS bearable – even pleasant?

By all accounts, going to the toilet in space is horrid. NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson said it was the most challenging thing about the International Space Station (ISS). Still, at least they have toilets. On the Apollo missions, astronauts used plastic bags.

Things have got better since Whitson’s time. Last year, NASA introduced its new space toilet, with an “improved seat and funnel design for increased cleanliness and crew comfort”.

It’s still not that easy to “boldly go”, though.

FULL REPORT

 

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Laser to zap space debris, funding for SKA

ANU team helps build a laser to move space debris; PM announces funding boost for astronomy.

This graphic of orbital debris, or “space junk" (any human-made object in orbit around the Earth that no longer serves a useful purpose) comes from 2009. The same year, a US communications satellite owned by a private company, Iridium, collided with a non-functioning Russian satellite. The collision destroyed both satellites and created a field of debris that endangered other orbiting satellites. Credit: NASA illustration, courtesy Orbital Debris Program Office.

Australian National University researchers working with defence technology company EOS have developed lasers to blast space debris out of orbit. 

Space debris (or “junk”) is becoming a serious problem as orbits get more congested with decommissioned spacecraft and other objects, and new satellites. Debris can smash into assets such as the International Space Station, and even a small object can cause great damage in space. 

The ANU’s “guide star laser” will use adaptive optics to a better spot, track, and move space debris. 

Adaptive optics correct for haziness caused by atmospheric turbulence – the effect that makes stars twinkle. It “untwinkles” them. 

Lead researcher, ANU professor Celine D’Orgeville, said “removing the twinkle from the stars” cuts through the atmospheric distortion so objects can be seen more clearly. 

“This includes small, human-made objects – like weather and communications satellites or space junk,” she said. 

EOS group chief executive officer Ben Greene said EOS maintains a database of space objects and will now be able to actively manipulate them. 

“Space debris is a major society threat, globally but especially in Australia due to our heavy economic dependence on space assets,” he said.

In delightful news for deep space exploration, the Federal Government has chipped in $387 million for supercomputing capabilities that will help astronomers study the beginning of the universe. 

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Scott Morrison committed $300 million over a decade to the Square Kilometre Array Observatory in Western Australia, which will be the world’s largest radio telescope. 

According to CSIRO, in its first phase SKA “will process data at a rate of about 157 Terabytes per second, which is enough to fill 27 million laptops with data every day and is about 5 times the estimated global internet traffic in 2015”.

The rest of the money will go to the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre, which is set to host the world’s first diamond quantum accelerator, and to fibre-optic connections and site readiness. 

Australia will build and host the low-frequency part of the SKA as part of its collaboration with 15 other countries. Eventually up to a million antennae will help scientists model the first billion years of the universe, including the formation of the first stars and galaxies. 

The Pawsey Supercomputing Centre will process that data and is also available to organisations across Australia. 

PM Morrison said the technology would help scientists “crack some of the biggest problems that are there”. 

“The quantum computing capability is not just essential for solving deep scientific problems, but it’s absolutely essential for national security,” he said.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/exploration/laser-to-zap-space-debris-funding-for-ska/

 

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Apparently, Orion will launch on SLS, then rendezvous with Starship in lunar orbit.

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Last night's observation: Sirius, Canis Major, and a few neat objects around it. Started out with Sirius: very easy to find and unmistakeable, as no other star in the night sky is so bright and twinkles that much! Easily observed with a naked eye as well, but looks much more epic through the binos... Pretty much like a disco ball in space; think it twinkled in a handful of colours during my time of observation. Light refraction in the atmosphere is pretty cool... Not my image, but thought this was a great time lapse of Sirius "changing colour" throughout the night:

What is particularly interesting, is that like Spica, Sirius is actually a binary star - sadly, Sirius B is too small and too faint to be observed even through a decent telescope, as it drowns in Sirius A brightness, so it's completely impossible through the binos.

Anyway, moving on... Just south of Sirius (about half of the binoculars' field of view), there's a bright open cluster M41, also observable with a naked eye, but then all I can see unaided is a hazy blur  Through the binos, it looks much better though; I think I could count nearly two dozen of stars scattered there in one spot, but as it's close to the horizon, the whole view suffers a bit from light pollution. Still, a pretty cool sight nonetheless, and a great and easy deep-sky target.

Moving down from here, there's another three stars in the Canis Major that form a triangle and are in the hind legs of the dog, if you take the shape and the name of the constellation into account - Wezen in the middle, and then Aludra on the left and Alhadra on the right. All three are bright enough, and while not particularly interesting, it serves as a good guiding point to the two Collinder clusters just south of it - Cr140 and Cr132. Both observable, and Cr132 brightest stars form a quadrangle, while Cr140 stars form in a Y-shape of sorts. 

There are also a few other clusters around Sirius that I will try to observe tonight, if the conditions allow...

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30 minutes ago, nudge said:

Just south of Sirius (about half of the binoculars' field of view), there's a bright open cluster M41, also observable with a naked eye, but then all I can see unaided is a hazy blu

Just looked that up on my Stellarium but it's not visible just now, I will try again tomorrow sometime. 

Edit: Managed to get it, beautiful.

 

Edited April 21, 2021 by CaaC (John)

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Young galaxy puts a spin on old models

Radio telescope combines with a cosmic magnifying glass to study the early universe.

From an arid and isolated plateau in the Atacama Desert, a radio telescope has spied a baby galaxy in the infant universe – and surprisingly, it’s rotating.

Astronomers used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile to peer back to a time when the universe was just seven per cent of its current age, aiming to explore the nature of the first generation of galaxies.

In two separate papers, the team reports finding a galaxy just 1/100^th of the size of our Milky Way – about 2–3 billion times the mass of our Sun. But more interestingly, the galaxy is rotating.

Traditional models of how galaxies form and evolve predict that the gas in young galaxies should be turbulent and chaotic, before settling down to spin like a whirlpool as they age. But this new observation adds to the handful of young, rotating galaxies discovered over the past few years, sending theories of galaxy evolution into a spin.

These other galaxies were much brighter and larger, so to spot this fainter galaxy, the team had to use a natural “magnifying glass”.

“Many of the galaxies that existed in the early Universe were so small that their brightness is well below the limit of the current largest telescopes on Earth and in space, making [it] difficult to study their properties and internal structure,” explains Nicolas Laporte, co-author from the University of Cambridge. “However, the light coming from the galaxy, named RXCJ0600-z6, was highly magnified by gravitational lensing, making it an ideal target for studying the properties and structure of typical baby galaxies.”

Gravitational fields can distort light, just like water distorts the view of objects beneath its surface. The intense gravity of massive objects can therefore act like a giant lens, magnifying the light of fainter, more distant galaxies behind them.

In this study, ALMA surveyed 33 galaxy clusters. One of them – with the mass of 1000 trillion times our Sun – allowed the team to spot a galaxy in its early form – that it, as it was just 900 million years after the Big Bang (12.9 billion years ago).

The astronomers then combined other observations from the Hubble Space Telescope and ESO’s Very Large Telescope – as well as a theoretical model – to “undo” the distortion of the gravitational lens and see the galaxy as it actually was.

“Our study demonstrates, for the first time, that we can directly measure the internal motion of such faint, less massive galaxies in the early universe and compare it with the theoretical predictions,” says Kotaro Kohno, co-author from the University of Tokyo.

The baby galaxy will be studied further by the James Webb Space Telescope, the infrared successor to Hubble to be launched later in the year.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/astrophysics/young-galaxy-puts-a-spin-on-old-models/

https://www.sciencefocus.com/space/lyrid-meteor-shower-2021/

 

Edited April 22, 2021 by CaaC (John)

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How to see the Pink supermoon 2021

Find out when you can spot the fourth full Moon of this year – and why it will be the brightest of 2021 so far.

Called the Pink supermoon by many, the fourth full Moon of 2021 is soon set to shine across the night sky. And it’s going to be a hard one to miss: this April, the lunar surface will appear a whole 14 percent larger and 30 percent brighter than some past full Moons.

But what’s the science behind this supermoon? When will you be able to see it? And will it actually look even slightly pink? All answers to these lunar inquiries (and more) are below.

FULL REPORT

 

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Exciting, hopefully all goes well...