Space: The Final Frontier

[CaaC (John)+]

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Winners of the Astronomy Photographer of the Year in pictures

Royal Observatory Greenwich announces the winners of Astronomy Photographer of the Year 13.

Photographer Shuchang Dong has just been announced as the Overall Winner of the Royal Observatory Greenwich’s title Astronomy Photographer of the Year 13, with his astounding image of the annular solar eclipse, ‘The Golden Ring’.

The beauty of simplicity and the technical excellence of Dong’s image spellbound the judges. The photograph depicts the annular solar eclipse that occurred on 21 June 2020 in a powerful and atmospheric composition. Competition judge László Francsics said: “Perfection and simplicity… lead to a winner image. A true masterpiece.”

Winning images from other categories and special prizes include the mesmerising Aurora dance taken from the bridge of a ship by the Third Officer Dmitrii Rybalka (Russia), Venus rising over the rocky horizon of the Moon by Nicolas Lefaudeux (France), a poignant star trail image taken during lockdown by Deepal Ratnayaka (UK), and the outstanding image of the Space X Falcon 9 rocket passing the Moon by Paul Eckhardt (USA).

FULL REPORT & WINNING PHOTOS

 

 

[CaaC (John)+]

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Nasa selects landing site for Moon rover mission

Nasa is sending a robotic rover to look for water-ice near a crater at the Moon's South Pole.

In 2023, the golf cart-sized vehicle will land near the western edge of Nobile Crater, a 73km-wide depression that is almost permanently in shadow.

The Viper mission will support plans for human exploration of the Moon, because the ice could be mined for use as drinking water and rocket fuel.

Nasa wants to return astronauts to the lunar surface this decade.

The space agency's Artemis programme will see the first woman and the first person of colour land on the Moon. It could pave the way for a long-term human presence on Earth's sole natural satellite.

FULL REPORT

 

 

[CaaC (John)+]

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Scientists find huge, mysterious ‘cavity’ in space
Astronomers have found a huge cavity in space – and no definite explanation of where it came from.

The vast void is shaped like a sphere, stretches almost 500 light-years across and is found in space among the constellations Perseus and Taurus. The molecular clouds – regions where stars form – are named after those constellations that surround the cavity.

But despite that intriguing fact, scientists have not been able to pin down how exactly the cavity was formed.

“ Hundreds of stars are forming or exist already at the surface of this giant bubble,” says Shmuel Bialy, a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Theory and Computation (ITC) at the Center for Astrophysics (CfA) who led the study.

“ We have two theories—either one supernova went off at the core of this bubble and pushed gas outward forming what we now call the ‘ Perseus-Taurus Supershell,’ or a series of supernovae occurring over millions of years created it over time.”

They speculate that the Perseus and Taurus molecular clouds are not actually separate structures in space. Instead, they both appear to have been formed from the same shockwave, after a supernova explosion.

“ This demonstrates that when a star dies, its supernova generates a chain of events that may ultimately lead to the birth of new stars,” said, Dr Bialy.

Researchers found the void when they were analysing 3D maps of the shapes and sizes of nearby molecular clouds. Those aps were made using data from Gaia, an observatory in space launched by the European Space Agency.

That map is itself a major breakthrough: it is the first time that molecular clouds have been charted in 3D. Previously, scientists were restricted to flat images.

“We’ve been able to see these clouds for decades, but we never knew their true shape, depth or thickness. We also were unsure how far away the clouds were,” said Catherine Zucker, a postdoctoral researcher at the CfA who led the study to create them, which is detailed in a separate paper published in the  Astrophysical Journal. “ Now we know where they lie with only 1 per cent uncertainty, allowing us to discern this void between them.

“ There are many different theories for how gas rearranges itself to form stars,” said, Dr Zucker. “ Astronomers have tested these theoretical ideas using simulations in the past, but this is the first time we can use real — not simulated — 3D views to compare theory to observation, and evaluate which theories work best.”

An article describing the findings, ‘ The Per-Tau Shell: A Giant Star-forming Spherical Shell Revealed by 3D Dust Observations’ is published in  The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/techandscience/scientists-find-huge-mysterious-cavity-in-space/ar-AAOHuRm?li=AAnZ9Ug#image=1

 

Edited September 23, 2021 by CaaC (John)
Spelling check

[CaaC (John)+]

@nudge, get going young lady and find this one with your camera.

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Astronomy Picture of the Day

2021 September 26

The Red Square Nebula
Image Credit & Copyright: Peter Tuthill (Sydney U.) & James Lloyd (Cornell U.)

Explanation: How did a round star create this square nebula? No one is quite sure. The round star, known as MWC 922 and possibly part of a multiple star system, appears at the center of the Red Square Nebula. The featured image combines infrared exposures from the Hale Telescope on Mt. Palomar in California, and the Keck-2 Telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. A leading progenitor hypothesis for the square nebula is that the central star or stars somehow expelled cones of gas during a late developmental stage. For MWC 922, these cones happen to incorporate nearly right angles and be visible from the sides. Supporting evidence for the cone hypothesis includes radial spokes in the image that might run along the cone walls. Researchers speculate that the cones viewed from another angle would appear similar to the gigantic rings of supernova 1987A, possibly indicating that a star in MWC 922 might one day itself explode in a similar supernova.

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

[nudge]

3 minutes ago, CaaC (John) said:

@nudge, get going young lady and find this one with your camera.

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Astronomy Picture of the Day

2021 September 26

The Red Square Nebula
Image Credit & Copyright: Peter Tuthill (Sydney U.) & James Lloyd (Cornell U.)

Explanation: How did a round star create this square nebula? No one is quite sure. The round star, known as MWC 922 and possibly part of a multiple star system, appears at the center of the Red Square Nebula. The featured image combines infrared exposures from the Hale Telescope on Mt. Palomar in California, and the Keck-2 Telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. A leading progenitor hypothesis for the square nebula is that the central star or stars somehow expelled cones of gas during a late developmental stage. For MWC 922, these cones happen to incorporate nearly right angles and be visible from the sides. Supporting evidence for the cone hypothesis includes radial spokes in the image that might run along the cone walls. Researchers speculate that the cones viewed from another angle would appear similar to the gigantic rings of supernova 1987A, possibly indicating that a star in MWC 922 might one day itself explode in a similar supernova.

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

That's above my pay grade, I'm afraid  Taken by combinging infrared exposures, I don't have equipment for that  

But it's incredible, really. Square shapes are so rare in nature, especially at this scale. Looks almost artificial!

[Bluewolf]

1 minute ago, nudge said:

That's above my pay grade, I'm afraid  Taken by combinging infrared exposures, I don't have equipment for that  

But it's incredible, really. Square shapes are so rare in nature, especially at this scale. Looks almost artificial!

A gateway perhaps.. 

[nudge]

3 minutes ago, Bluewolf said:

A gateway perhaps.. 

When are we leaving?

[Azeem]

That's actually a good observation, square things are rare. 

[Bluewolf]

Just now, nudge said:

When are we leaving?

As soon as god damn possible.... 

[nudge]

Just now, Khan of TF365 said:

That's actually a good observation, square things are rare. 

Crystals are the only thing that comes to mind immediately. That and wombat poop  

[Azeem]

1 minute ago, nudge said:

Crystals are the only thing that comes to mind immediately. That and wombat poop  

I think geometrically squares are too much of a 'perfect' shape to exist naturally

[Bluewolf]

2 minutes ago, nudge said:

Crystals are the only thing that comes to mind immediately. That and wombat poop  

What??? 

[nudge]

Just now, Bluewolf said:

What??? 

Didn't know that? That's nudge's fun fact of the day  

[CaaC (John)+]

9 minutes ago, Bluewolf said:

A gateway perhaps.. 

 

5 minutes ago, nudge said:

When are we leaving?

 

4 minutes ago, Bluewolf said:

As soon as god damn possible.... 

ALL ABOARD

[Bluewolf]

1 minute ago, nudge said:

Didn't know that? That's nudge's fun fact of the day  

Give over.... 

[nudge]

Just now, Bluewolf said:

Give over.... 

Be glad I didn't post actual pictures  

[Bluewolf]

2 minutes ago, CaaC (John) said:

 

 

ALL ABOARD

Too big John... To run a ship like that we would need a load of riff raff to run it properly and although I don't mind having a plentiful supply of cannon fodder to beam down for planet exploration I am not keen on sharing all the booze or indeed having meeting after meeting to make sure everyone has a safe place and all that... The idea of going is leaving all that shit behind.. 

[CaaC (John)+]

Fuck!!! Imagine bumping into a Borg Wombat Poo Spacecraft on your journey 

[CaaC (John)+]

2 minutes ago, Bluewolf said:

Too big John... To run a ship like that we would need a load of riff raff to run it properly and although I don't mind having a plentiful supply of cannon fodder to beam down for planet exploration I am not keen on sharing all the booze or indeed having meeting after meeting to make sure everyone has a safe place and all that... The idea of going is leaving all that shit behind.. 

What? like Wombat cubed poo...

[nudge]

A new attempt after a while...

Tarantula Nebula, a hotbed of star formation in the Large Magellanic Cloud.

Telescope: ASA 500N (50-cm F3.8)

Camera: FLI PL 16803 with Astrodon narrowband filters (3nm)

3 hours observation time, processed with DeepSkyStacker and PS.

 

[CaaC (John)+]

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What’s happening to Jupiter’s Great Red Spot?

The winds of one of the Solar System’s biggest storms are speeding up, and no one yet knows why.

The Great Red Spot on Jupiter is a vast storm that has been raging for at least 150 years, and new analysis shows that its winds are changing.

The storm is an anticyclone big enough to swallow our entire planet, with massive, crimson-coloured clouds spinning in an anticlockwise direction. The winds raging on the outer edge are more than twice as intense as a Category 5 cyclone on Earth, while the winds within the storm are cruising around more slowly.

Now, a new study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research has found that the outer winds have sped up.

Using data from the Hubble Space Telescope from 2009 to 2020, the research team found that mean wind speeds in the Great Red Spot have increased by 4% to 8%.

This correlates to winds increasing in speed by only 2.5km/h every (Earth) year, so they now blow at more than 640km/h.

“When I initially saw the results, I asked, ‘Does this make sense?’ says Michael Wong, lead author of the study from the University of California, Berkeley in the US. “No one has ever seen this before.”

Co-author Amy Simon, from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, explains that Hubble made the revelations possible.

“We’re talking about such a small change that if you didn’t have 11 years of Hubble data, we wouldn’t know it happened,” she says. “Hubble is the only telescope that has the kind of temporal coverage and spatial resolution that can capture Jupiter’s winds in this detail.”

The team used software to track hundreds of thousands of wind vectors (measurements taking into account both direction and speed) to observe the change over time.

But what does this speed increase mean?

“That’s hard to diagnose, since Hubble can’t see the bottom of the storm very well,” says Wong. “Anything below the cloud tops is invisible in the data. But it’s an interesting piece of data that can help us understand what’s fueling the Great Red Spot and how it’s maintaining energy.”

The storm is also changing shape, becoming less cigar-shaped and more circular.

Previous research has additionally shown that the Great Red Spot is shrinking, but we still don’t know much about when and how it formed, why it has such a striking red colour, or why it is so long-lived.

Data from NASA’s Juno spacecraft, which is currently in orbit around Jupiter, may help shed further light on this monstrous storm.

 

https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/astronomy/whats-happening-to-jupiters-great-red-spot/

 

[CaaC (John)+]

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Europe's Mercury space mission in final stretch

Europe's first mission to Mercury arrives at its destination in the coming hours.

It'll be the briefest of visits, however.

The BepiColombo probe is moving too fast to go into orbit and will fly straight by the planet.

But the diminutive world's gravity will have slowed the craft just a little, and further passes in the coming years will eventually see Bepi take up a stable station around Mercury.

That'll be late 2025; patience is required.

FULL REPORT

 

[nudge]

First image

 

[CaaC (John)+]

 

[CaaC (John)+]

On 03/10/2021 at 01:17, nudge said:

First image

 

 

More Images 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-58754882

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