I have 3D Sun on my iPad, and every now and then it beeps at me and tells me that something important is happening. Earlier today it beeped at me to tell me that an ENORMOUS solar eruption happened.

Notice that the update just prior to the Huge Eruption is an update daying “NOAA forecasters estimate a 25% chance of M-flares….” Is that funny?

Anyway, when I clicked on the current notice (“Huge Eruption”) I got this:

The movie mentioned in that text is HERE:

We won’t be getting any effects of this on Earth because it was pointing the wrong way.

So far indeed. It is blobbish and small, but interesting.

From NASA:

PASADENA, Calif. – By combining the power of NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes and one of nature’s own natural “zoom lenses” in space, astronomers have set a new record for finding the most distant galaxy seen in the universe.

The farthest galaxy appears as a diminutive blob that is only a tiny fraction of the size of our Milky Way galaxy. But it offers a peek back into a time when the universe was three percent of its present age of 13.7 billion years. The newly discovered galaxy, named MACS0647-JD, was observed 420 million years after the big bang, the theorized beginning of the universe. Its light has traveled 13.3 billion years to reach Earth.

This find is the latest discovery from a program that uses natural zoom lenses to reveal distant galaxies in the early universe. The Cluster Lensing And Supernova Survey with Hubble (CLASH), an international group led by Marc Postman of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, is using massive galaxy clusters as cosmic telescopes to magnify distant galaxies behind them. This effect is called gravitational lensing.

Along the way, 8 billion years into its journey, light from MACS0647-JD took a detour along multiple paths around the massive galaxy cluster MACS J0647+7015. Without the cluster’s magnification powers, astronomers would not have seen this remote galaxy. Because of gravitational lensing, the CLASH research team was able to observe three magnified images of MACS0647-JD with the Hubble telescope. The cluster’s gravity boosted the light from the faraway galaxy, making the images appear about eight, seven, and two times brighter than they otherwise would, enabling astronomers to detect the galaxy more efficiently and with greater confidence.

“This cluster does what no man-made telescope can do,” said Postman. “Without the magnification, it would require a Herculean effort to observe this galaxy.”

MACS0647-JD is so small it may be in the first steps of forming a larger galaxy. An analysis shows the galaxy is less than 600 light-years wide. Based on observations of somewhat closer galaxies, astronomers estimate that a typical galaxy of a similar age should be about 2,000 light-years wide. For comparison, the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy companion to the Milky Way, is 14,000 light-years wide. Our Milky Way is 150,000 light-years across.

“This object may be one of many building blocks of a galaxy,” said the study’s lead author, Dan Coe of the Space Telescope Science Institute. “Over the next 13 billion years, it may have dozens, hundreds or even thousands of merging events with other galaxies and galaxy fragments.”

The galaxy was observed with 17 filters, spanning near-ultraviolet to near-infrared wavelengths, using Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) and Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). Coe, a CLASH team member, discovered the galaxy in February while poring over a catalogue of thousands of gravitationally lensed objects found in Hubble observations of 17 clusters in the CLASH survey. But the galaxy appeared only in the two reddest filters.

“So either MACS0647-JD is a very red object, only shining at red wavelengths, or it is extremely distant and its light has been ‘redshifted’ to these wavelengths, or some combination of the two,” Coe said. “We considered this full range of possibilities.”

The CLASH team identified multiple images of eight galaxies lensed by the galaxy cluster. Their positions allowed the team to produce a map of the cluster’s mass, which is primarily composed of dark matter. Dark matter is an invisible form of matter that makes up the bulk of the universe’s mass. “It’s like a big puzzle,” said Coe. “We have to arrange the mass in the cluster so that it deflects the light of each galaxy to the positions observed.” The team’s analysis revealed that the cluster’s mass distribution produced three lensed images of MACS0647-JD at the positions and relative brightness observed in the Hubble image.

Coe and his collaborators spent months systematically ruling out these other alternative explanations for the object’s identity, including red stars, brown dwarfs and red (old or dusty) galaxies at intermediate distances from Earth. They concluded that a very distant galaxy was the correct explanation.

The paper will appear in the Dec. 20 issue of The Astrophysical Journal.

Redshift is a consequence of the expansion of space over cosmic time. Astronomers study the distant universe in near-infrared light because the expansion of space stretches ultraviolet and visible light from galaxies into infrared wavelengths. Coe estimates MACS0647-JD has a redshift of 11, the highest yet observed.

Images of the galaxy at longer wavelengths obtained with the Spitzer Space Telescope played a key role in the analysis. If the object were intrinsically red, it would appear bright in the Spitzer images. Instead, the galaxy barely was detected, if at all, indicating its great distance. The research team plans to use Spitzer to obtain deeper observations of the galaxy, which should yield confident detections as well as estimates of the object’s age and dust content.

MACS0647-JD galaxy, however, may be too far away for any current telescope to confirm the distance based on spectroscopy, which spreads out an object’s light into thousands of colors. Nevertheless, Coe is confident the fledgling galaxy is the new distance champion based on its unique colors and the research team’s extensive analysis.

“All three of the lensed galaxy images match fairly well and are in positions you would expect for a galaxy at that remote distance when you look at the predictions from our best lens models for this cluster,” Coe said.

The new distance champion is the second remote galaxy uncovered in the CLASH survey, a multi-wavelength census of 25 hefty galaxy clusters with Hubble’s ACS and WFC3. Earlier this year, the CLASH team announced the discovery of a galaxy that existed when the universe was 490 million years old, 70 million years later than the new record-breaking galaxy. So far, the survey has completed observations for 20 of the 25 clusters.

The team hopes to use Hubble to search for more dwarf galaxies at these early epochs. If these infant galaxies are numerous, then they could have provided the energy to burn off the fog of hydrogen that blanketed the universe, a process called re-ionization. Re-ionization ultimately made the universe transparent to light.

Research scientists Leonidas Moustakas and Julian Merten of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., participated in the study.

The Drake Equation is that famous equation where you count how many stars there are, figure out the chance of a star having planets, of planets having water, etc. etc. until finally you get some rough estimate of the chance of live evolving elsewhere in the universe. It’s a little more complicated (and also simpler) than that, but one factor that permeates the equation is the life-friendliness of a star system. It might turn out that the presence of asteroid belts affects life-friendliness. NASA reports some new research indicating… Continue reading Does the Drake Equation require smaller coefficients? →

Sitting on top of enough explosive stuff to send a heavy weight into orbit at a high speed is dangerous, and that has cost lives in the space program. Re-entering the earth’s atmosphere, effectively imitating a meteor as it burns up owing to the translation of the aforereferenced kinetic energy into heat is also dangerous and has taken lives. But increasingly, just sitting there in a sealed box floating above the air far away from everything is becoming as dangerous as it sounds owing to an increased amount of space litter, and earlier this month another event has contributed what experts say is a “not insignificant amount” of litter to the problem.

The Russians recently launched a large rocket intended to put into orbit a couple of communication satellites, but the rocket stopped working on the way up, floated around for several days, and then exploded, creating an arc of new debris that shares orbital space with lots of satellites and the International Space Station. Apparently, similar events in recent years have led to a situation in which the ISS regularly adjusts its orbit to avoid space junk.

It is important to note that this recent explosion did not produce an imminent threat, but over time the situation becomes worse as more debris is added to the mix.

As of Tuesday evening, there were no orbital debris threats to the space station requiring any action, according to Josh Byerly, a NASA spokesperson.

The 450-ton complex can change its orbit, when necessary, to avoid individual pieces of space debris. The maneuvers have become more common since 2008 after a Chinese anti-satellite test and the high-speed crash of two satellites collectively sent approximately 5,000 chunks of space junk into the paths of spacecraft in low Earth orbit.

The Oct. 16 breakup marked the third explosion since 2007 of a Breeze M stage left with partially-full propellant tanks after a launch failure.

Each of the previous Breeze M breakups in 2007 and 2010 produced about 100 pieces of debris, according to NASA’s orbital debris program office.

Tracking equipment is said to be pretty good at finding debris that is “large” (tennis size or more) but most of the debris is small (bug-size). The small stuff acts like an erosive material when hitting things like the ISS, but larger objects would be more of a problem. “Erosion” can be mitigated against with “bumpers” that absorb the effects, but solar panels, antennas, etc. have to be exposed and are thus subject to damage by even small particles.

If a largish object hits something like a satellite or the ISS, Continue reading Will the next space disaster be a debris collision? And Kessler Blankets. →

Late Winter, 1997, just before moving from Boston to Minnesota, was very snowy out east. And, that year I had stupidly agreed to shovel the snow for our apartment building in exchange for a pittance of some kind. One night I was shoveling the latest 7 inch storm off the walk, and the father of our upstairs neighbor came out to look at the weather, the snow, and the sky. Our neighbors were Russian, and had been in the US for only a year, and their dad may or may not have been a refugee of some sort. He was wearing his big Russian hat and his big Russian coat and he knew almost no English. Noticing him looking around, I stood up and said hello. He grunted something. Then, I pointed up the street, and up in the sky. There, hovering over the Somverville Massachusetts cityscape was Comet Hale-Bopp, bright, curving, strange looking, hovering in the night sky. He turned his gaze and looked at the comet for a moment, then looked back at me, shaking his head in awe.

“America…,” was his only comment.

He then returned to the warmth of his apartment. I continued to shovel snow for the next couple of hours.

Well, we have a new comet, and it is named ISON (full name, C/2012 S1). Continue reading Welcome Comet ISON →

From NASA:

…astronomers have, for the first time, spotted planets orbiting sun-like stars in a crowded cluster of stars. The findings offer the best evidence yet that planets can sprout up in dense stellar environments. Although the newfound planets are not habitable, their skies would be starrier than what we see from Earth.

The starry-skied planets are two so-called hot Jupiters, which are massive, gaseous orbs that are boiling hot because they orbit tightly around their parent stars. Each hot Jupiter circles a different sun-like star in the Beehive Cluster, also called the Praesepe, a collection of roughly 1,000 stars that appear to be swarming around a common center.

Much more HERE.

Remember the GRAIL mission? At the beginning of the year, two satellites, named Ebb and Flow, arrived at the Moon and fell into a parallel orbit. There is an instrument on board that very precisely determines the distance between the two space craft, said to be about the size of a typical washing machine. As the craft circle the Moon in an orbit that takes them all over the place, the exact distance between them changes as a result of differential gravitational forces that are in turn caused by the details of the shape of the Moon below them. Thus, the precise measurements of distance between Ebb and Flow can be converted into a very good gravitational map of the Moon.

Ultimately, this map will be used to test hypotheses about the Moon structure and, indirectly, origin. It is an interesting fact that the nature of the Moon’s origin is an unsettled scientific question.

The GRAIL (which stans for “Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory”) space craft completed a survey of the Moon’s gravity from an altitude of about 55 kilometers in the Spring, and has now lowered in altitude to do more survey at 23 kilometers, which will provide a different view of the Moon’s gravity. This process of data collection starts now.

Ultimately the mission hopes to map the structure of the Moon’s solid rock zone, better understand variation in the Moon’s crust in relation to the planetoid’s cooling down from a molten phase, figure out certain long known of anomalies in the Moon’s gravitational field, figure out the history of the gravity, magnetics, and other aspects of the geology of younger (less than 3.2 billion years old) formations, better understand Earth-tides on the Moon, and figure out the size of the liquid core.

The GRAIL Mission home page is here.