Tag Archives: Cosmos

Space Chronicles: Neil deGrasse Tyson's New Book

i-7bd390062f3760739898800fe36380e2-9780393082104_custom.jpgNeil deGrasse Tyson has a new book out: Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier. It is (as one might guess) about space exploration, and assembles earlier speeches and writings with some new stuff. This is an interesting time to be talking about the space program, as NASA seems to be producing new results ever week, there are large and small space robots on their way to distant orbs, or soon to be launched, we are on the verge of understanding the potential of life on Mars on a basic level, we are finding more earth-ish Exoplanets and at the same time the sky is falling, or at least, trashed with litter from one of the most significant, direct and obvious side effects of the space program: We humans get to ruin not just the air and the sea and the land, but also, near space!

From a recent NPR interview:
Continue reading Space Chronicles: Neil deGrasse Tyson's New Book

Waterworld Discovered in Space

… Well, everything is in space, but I mean outer space!

Observations by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have come up with a new class of planet, a waterworld enshrouded by a thick, steamy atmosphere. It’s smaller than Uranus but larger than Earth.

Zachory Berta of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and colleagues made the observations of the planet GJ1214b.

“GJ1214b is like no planet we know of,” Berta said. “A huge fraction of its mass is made up of water.”

The ground-based MEarth Project, led by CfA’s David Charbonneau, discovered GJ1214b in 2009. This super-Earth is about 2.7 times Earth’s diameter and weighs almost seven times as much. It orbits a red-dwarf star every 38 hours at a distance of 1.3 million miles, giving it an estimated temperature of 450 degrees Fahrenheit.

Details here

Faster Than Light Neutrinos Explained?

From Science Insider, there is a possible explanation for the recently observed “faster than light” neutrinos. The Neutrinos were clocked at faster-than-light speeds on their way form CRN in Switzerland to a detectors site in Italy. I had originally proposed that the neutrinos were merely very hungry but unwilling to eat Swiss food, and since they were on their way to Italy, why not go FTL?

The research at first was assumed to most likely be some kind of mistake, but a Mulligan Redo Procedure clearly demonstrated that the most obvious errors could not explain the observation, which violates The Laws of Physics.

It turns out that the reason that the Neutrinos appeared to go faster than the speed of light is exactly the same reason most of these things happen:
Continue reading Faster Than Light Neutrinos Explained?

Space Buckyballs

PASADENA, Calif. — Astronomers using data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope have, for the first time, discovered buckyballs in a solid form in space. Prior to this discovery, the microscopic carbon spheres had been found only in gas form in the cosmos.

Formally named buckministerfullerene, buckyballs are named after their resemblance to the late architect Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes. They are made up of 60 carbon molecules arranged into a hollow sphere, like a soccer ball. Their unusual structure makes them ideal candidates for electrical and chemical applications on Earth, including superconducting materials, medicines, water purification and armor.

Details and more at NASA

Even better than science!

… well, not really, but …

No matter how interesting the big expensive science NASA does is, or how important the work is to understanding our planet and solar system or figuring out important problems, nothing is as cool as seeing your own house on a satellite photograph, as it were:

The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter recorded a scene on Jan. 29, 2012, that includes the first color image from orbit showing the three-petal lander of NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit mission. Spirit drove off that lander platform in January 2004 and spent most of its six-year working life in a range of hills about two miles to the east.

Another recent image from HiRISE, taken on Jan. 26, 2012, shows NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander and its surroundings on far-northern Mars after that spacecraft’s second Martian arctic winter. Phoenix exceeded its planned mission life in 2008, ending its work as solar energy waned during approach of its first Mars winter.

Here’s the Spirit Lander:

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Click to see a much larger image for context.

And here’s a picture of the Phoenix Mars Lander.

These photos were taken by HiRISE, the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

More details here.

A Penny for your Thoughts (about Mars Exploration)

This August, Mars Science Robot Curiosity will land on the surface of the Angry Red Planet equipped with a Penny to tell how big things are.

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The camera at the end of the robotic arm on NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has its own calibration target, a smartphone-size plaque that looks like an eye chart supplemented with color chips and an attached penny.

When Curiosity lands on Mars in August, researchers will use this calibration target to test performance of the rover’s Mars Hand Lens Imager, or MAHLI. MAHLI’s close-up inspections of Martian rocks and soil will show details so tiny, the calibration target includes reference lines finer than a human hair. This camera is not limited to close-ups, though. It can focus on any target from about a finger’s-width away to the horizon.

Full press release

New Planetary Systems Discovered

Kepler has discovered 11 new “solar systems” with 26 confirmed planets among them. They:

  • Range from 1.5 Earths in radius to bigger than Jupiter
  • 15 are between Earth and Neptune in size
  • They have years ranging from 6 to 143 days.

Their rockiness or gaseousness remains unassessed to date.

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This artist’s concept shows an overhead view of the orbital position of the planets in systems with multiple transiting planets discovered by NASA’s Kepler mission. All the colored planets have been verified. More vivid colors indicate planets that have been confirmed by their gravitational interactions with each other or the star. Several of these systems contain additional planet candidates (shown in grey) that have not yet been verified. Image credit: NASA Ames/UC Santa Cruz

Also of interest is the number of transiting planets. Transiting planets are often how they find these systems to begin with; When a planet passes in front of its star (from our persepctive) we can detect it. There are a number of things that can be measured for these planets which eventually lead to a better understanding of what they are.

Continue reading New Planetary Systems Discovered

Giant X-Ray Machine to be Hurled Into Space!

It is called NuStar, for “Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array,” and NASA will be launching this giant thing that looks like a dumpster on March 14th.

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NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, mission is seen here being lowered into its shipping container at Orbital Sciences Corporation in Dulles, Va. The spacecraft is headed to Vandenberg Air Force Base in Central California, where it will be mated to its rocket. It is scheduled to launch from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands on March 14. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Orbital

When you look at the sky with your beautifully evolved Primate Eye (our eyes are better than those of many other mammals at seeing and interpreting a wide spectrum of light) you are actually missing most of what is out there. In order to really see what is out there, a machine that detects ranges of the light spectrum that are invisible to humans captures that information. This is then transformed into visible light (“enhanced” is the term often used) so we can see it, or otherwise processed for data analysis.

NuSTAR will detect X-rays from the sun, as well as from things outside our galaxy, and things in between. In particular, the detector will be able to read high-energy X-rays, and will be able to produce very detailed images in that range.

NuSTAR uses 133 concentric shells of mirrors which will focus X-rays over a 10 meter focusing distance.

During its two-year primary mission, NuSTAR will map the celestial sky in X-rays, surveying black holes, mapping supernova remnants, and studying particle jets travelling away from black holes near the speed of light.

NuSTAR also will probe the sun, looking for microflares theorized to be on the surface that could explain how the sun’s million-degree corona, or atmosphere, is heated. It will even test a theory of dark matter, the mysterious substance making up about one-quarter of our universe, by searching the sun for evidence of a hypothesized dark matter particle.

“NuSTAR will provide an unprecedented capability to discover and study some of the most exotic objects in the universe, from the corpses of exploded stars in the Milky Way to supermassive black holes residing in the hearts of distant galaxies,” said Lou Kaluzienski, NuSTAR program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

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The machine will be flown under the belly of an L-1011 aircraft (you’ve likely flown on one or two of those) attached to a Pegaus Launch Vehicle. This will then be dropped from the aircraft over the ocean, and the Pegaus will bring NuSTAR into orbit.

The three-stage Pegasus is used by commercial, government and international customers to deploy small satellites weighing up to 1,000 pounds into low-Earth orbit. Pegasus is carried aloft by our “Stargazer” L-1011 aircraft to approximately 40,000 feet over open ocean, where it is released and then free-falls in a horizontal position for five seconds before igniting its first stage rocket motor. With the aerodynamic lift generated by its unique delta-shaped wing, Pegasus typically delivers satellites into orbit in a little over 10 minutes.

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There could be H2O ice on Vesta

Vesta is the second biggest asteroid in the famous asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. It has generally been thought that Vesta would get enough sun over its entire surface that water would not survive, but a recent survey of the surface indicates that deeply buried water has a chance of remaining on the asteroid near the poles, or possibly at the bottom of some deep craters.

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Vesta Up Close (image by NASA)

This is interesting, in part, because of questions about the role of water in the early formation of the solar system. One of the main objectives of the Dawn spacecraft mission is to examine water (or the lack of water) on Vesta and Ceres (another asteroid).

Dawn is looking for water using the gamma ray and neutron detector (GRaND) spectrometer, which can identify hydrogen-rich deposits that could be associated with water ice. The spacecraft recently entered a low orbit that is well suited to collecting gamma ray and neutron data.

“Our perceptions of Vesta have been transformed in a few months as the Dawn spacecraft has entered orbit and spiraled closer to its surface,” says Lucy McFadden, a planetary scientist at NASA Goddard and a Dawn mission co-investigator. “More importantly, our new views of Vesta tell us about the early processes of solar system formation. If we can detect evidence for water beneath the surface, the next question will be is it very old or very young, and that would be exciting to ponder.”

The modeling done by Stubbs and Wang, for example, relies on information about Vesta’s shape. Before Dawn, the best source of that information was a set of images taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope in 1994 and 1996. But now, Dawn and its camera are getting a much closer view of Vesta.

“The Dawn mission gives researchers a rare opportunity to observe Vesta for an extended period of time, the equivalent of about one season on Vesta,” says Stubbs. “Hopefully, we’ll know in the next few months whether the GRaND spectrometer sees evidence for water ice in Vesta’s regolith. This is an important and exciting time in planetary exploration.”

NASA press release

Happy Birthday Opportunity!

Can you imagine driving around on roadless terrain with a four wheel drive vehicle for eight years and not ever changing a tire, getting a tuneup, adjusting the suspension, replacing the hydraulics or brakes, or doing any other service whatsoever on your vehicle? I’ve actually done that, and I’m here to tell you, you can’t do that!

But Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has, in fact, done it.

Opportunity was tasked to took around on the Martian surface for three months. The Space Robot landed on Mars on January 25th, 2004. During the last eight years, Opportunity has traveled great distances, taken amazing photographs, and done all kinds of science.

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Opportunity’s Eighth Anniversary View From ‘Greeley Haven’
This mosaic of images taken in mid-January 2012 shows the windswept vista northward (left) to northeastward (right) from the location where NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is spending its fifth Martian winter, an outcrop informally named “Greeley Haven.”

Opportunity’s Panoramic Camera (Pancam) took the component images as part of full-circle view being assembled from Greeley Haven.

The view includes sand ripples and other wind-sculpted features in the foreground and mid-field. The northern edge of the the “Cape York” segment of the rim of Endeavour Crater forms an arc across the upper half of the scene.

Opportunity landed on Mars on Jan. 25, 2004, Universal Time and EST (Jan. 24, PST). It has driven 21.4 miles (34.4 kilometers) as of its eighth anniversary on the planet. In late 2011, the rover team drove Opportunity up onto Greeley Haven to take advantage of the outcrop’s sun-facing slope to boost output from the rover’s dusty solar panels during the Martian winter.

The image combines exposures taken through Pancam filters centered on wavelengths of 753 nanometers (near infrared), 535 nanometers (green) and 432 nanometers (violet). The view is presented in approximate true color. This “natural color” is the rover team’s best estimate of what the scene would look like if humans were there and able to see it with their own eyes.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Arizona State Univ.
Continue reading Happy Birthday Opportunity!

Warning Will Robinson: There Is No Evidence of Life on Venus

There is a story going around that there is evidence of life on Venus. The evidence would be very convincing if some descriptions of it were true: Scorpion or crab like creatures walking around on the surface sounds a lot like life to me! And, the research is published in a peer reviewed journal put out by one of the big publishing houses, and the paper is by a mainstream Russian scientist who’s done a lot of work. But is seems to be very wrong.

The research is by Leonid Ksanfomaliti, and looks at photographs from the 1980s period landing probe. What looks a lot like a crab seen in two separate photographs is actually two fragments of lens caps that fell off of the probe’s cameras (I assume they were supposed to do that). Other objects are also explained as artifacts or tricks of light.

This really wouldn’t be interesting enough to mention here were it not for the fact that the version of the story where there really might be life on Venus is getting some traction, despite the widespread story of how there is no life on Venus.

This is from Yahoo, and This is from MSNBC.

Does every star have planets?

According to one study, yes.

Using a technique called gravitational microlensing, an international team found a handful of exoplanets that imply the existence of billions more.

The findings were released at the 219th American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting, alongside reports of the smallest “exoplanets” ever discovered.

Gravitational microlensing is a method that uses the gravity of a far-flung star to amplify the light from even more distant stars that have planets.

Astronomers used a number of relatively small telescopes that make up the Microlensing Network for the Detection of Small Terrestrial Exoplanets, or Mindstep, to look for the rare event of one star passing directly in front of another as seen from Earth.

The team witnessed 40 of these microlensing events, and in three instances spotted the effects of planets circling the more distant stars.

That would mean that there about bout 10 billion earth-size planets in this galaxy. Details here.

Three Smallest Planets Yet Discovered

… outside our solar system.

Kepler has discoverd theree planets around the star KOI-961, and they are a mere 0.78, 0.73 and 0.57 times the radius of Earth, rocky like the earth, but alas, they are too close to the star so there can’t be any liquid water on them. But still, there are hardly any rocky exoplanets known, and the small ones are hard to find.

And the possibility of life being on them is, well, just have a look:

Here’s the NASA press release on this new finding.

GRAIL closing in on Moon

The Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory, which will neither be recovering gravity or being inside the moon but “GRAIL” apparently sounds good, is coming into Lunar Orbit as I write this.

As you know from watching Apollo 13 the travel distance to or back from the moon is a matter of several days … Apollo crews got there in about three Earth Days. But the GRAIL mission has taken months to get there, because of the kind of orbit they wanted to achieve. Also, the long duration allows for other things to happen, like temperatures to stabilize within the machinery.

GRAIL is two space ships flying together and will achieve a more or less polar orbit around the moon, going around the moon ever 11.5 hours. Over time, the period of the orbit will be reduced to about 2 hours. Then, GRAIL will start mapping the Moon’s mass.

When science collection begins, the spacecraft will transmit radio signals precisely defining the distance between them as they orbit the moon. As they fly over areas of greater and lesser gravity, caused both by visible features such as mountains and craters and by masses hidden beneath the lunar surface. they will move slightly toward and away from each other. An instrument aboard each spacecraft will measure the changes in their relative velocity very precisely, and scientists will translate this information into a high-resolution map of the moon’s gravitational field. The data will allow mission scientists to understand what goes on below the surface. This information will increase our knowledge of how Earth and its rocky neighbors in the inner solar system developed into the diverse worlds we see today.

details

Dawn Obtains First Low Altitude Images of Vesta

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This image, one of the first obtained by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft in its low altitude mapping orbit, shows an area within the Rheasilvia basin in the south polar area of the giant asteroid Vesta. Image credit: NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ UCLA/ MPS/ DLR/ IDA

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has sent back the first images of the giant asteroid Vesta from its low-altitude mapping orbit. The images, obtained by the framing camera, show the stippled and lumpy surface in detail never seen before, piquing the curiosity of scientists who are studying Vesta for clues about the solar system’s early history.

At this detailed resolution, the surface shows abundant small craters, and textures such as small grooves and lineaments that are reminiscent of the structures seen in low-resolution data from the higher-altitude orbits. Also, this fine scale highlights small outcrops of bright and dark material.

Those ripples almost look like the result of conchoidal fracturing, but can’t be. Compression? Early melting?

Read all about it here.