Universe Today Feed

Olympus Mons is well known for being the largest volcano in the Solar System. It’s joined on Mars by three other shield volcanoes; Ascraeus, Pavonis and Arsia but a recent discovery has revealed a fifth. Provisionally called Noctis volcano, this previously unknown Martian feature reaches 9,022 metres high and 450 kilometres across. Its presence has eluded planetary scientists because it has been heavily eroded and is on the boundary of the fractured maze-like terrain of Noctis Labyrinthus. 

Mars seems to like shield volcanoes. They are a type of volcano that have a broad gently sloping profile and are generally composed of basaltic lava flows. The flows spread out over large distances during eruptions before eventually solidifying and creating long gently sloping faces. They tend to be the result of divergent plate boundaries where tectonic plates gently drift apart. It’s not just Mars that hosts them, here on Earth Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea in Hawaii are great examples of shield volcanoes.

Olympus Mons, captured by the ESA’s Mars Express mission from orbit. Credit: ESA/DLR/FUBerlin/AndreaLuck

Noctis volcano was found on the edges of Noctis Labyrinthus, a region whose name means Labyrinth of the Night. It’s a fascinating surface feature with a complex valley, canyon and ridge system within Valles Marineris. It’s a distinctive feature on the Martian surface with disorderly, intersecting valleys and plateaus. Thought to be the result of erosion and tectonic activity the region has masked the new volcano, until now. 

Noctis Labyrinthus on Mars as seen by Viking 1 orbiter. Courtesy NASA.

A team of scientists, led by SETI Institute planetary scientist Dr Pascal Lee said “We were examining the geology of an area where we had found the remains of a glacier last year when we realised we were inside a huge and deeply eroded volcano.” There were a number of signs that revealed the volcanic activity in the region and led to the volcano’s discovery. Located on the eastern edge of Noctis Labyrinthus there were a number of meseas – or flat topped mountains – arranged in an arc that seemed to reach a peak before descending away from an apparent summit area. A gentle slope softly slips away over distances of over 200km and close study seems to reveal the remains of a caldera. The study revealed what looked like a collapsed crater that once contained a lava lake and there was significant evidence of lava flows in the area including pyroclastic deposits. 

The study of Mars over the years since the invention of the telescope and more recently the advent of space flight has revealed a complex geological history. The features across the planet seem to reveal significant modification too perhaps from thermal erosion, glacial erosion and fracturing of the crust. 

The team conclude that the volcano is a shield volcano that has been built up of layers of accumulations of pyroclastic material, lava and ice. The ice it seems, just like volcanic lava, has built up over repeated years of snow and ice build up on the flanks of the volcano. With the fractures, likely driven by plate uplifts in the general Tharsis region, lava was able to seep through different regions of the volcano. Where the ice has been buried and subsequently melted, catastrophic collapses have occurred compounding the challenge of identifying it.

Source : Giant Volcano Discovered on Mars

The post Mars Was Hiding Another Giant Volcano appeared first on Universe Today.

Each year, the Hubble Space Telescope focuses on the giant planets in our Solar System when they’re near the closest point to Earth, which means they’ll be large and bright in the sky. Jupiter had its photos taken on January 5-6th, 2024, showing off both sides of the planet. Hubble was looking for storm activity and changes in Jupiter’s atmosphere.

The images are part of OPAL, the Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy program. These yearly images provide a long-time baseline of observations of the outer planets, helping to understand their atmospheric dynamics and evolution as gas giants. Jupiter was at perigee — its closest point to Earth — back in November 2023.

Jupiter’s colorful clouds present an ever-changing medley of shapes and colors, as it is the stormiest place in the Solar System. Its atmosphere is tens of thousands of kilomters/miles deep, and this stormy atmosphere gives the planet its banded appearance. Here you can find cyclones, anticyclones, wind shear, and other large and fantastic storms.

The largest and most famous storm on Jupiter is the Great Red Spot. In the image on the left, you can see the Great Red Spot and a smaller spot to its lower right known as Red Spot Jr. The two spots pass each other every two years on average. In the right image, several smaller storms are rotating in alternating atmospheric bands.

“The many large storms and small white clouds are a hallmark of a lot of activity going on in Jupiter’s atmosphere right now,” said OPAL project lead Amy Simon of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

This 12-panel series of Hubble Space Telescope images, taken January 5-6, 2024, presents snapshots of a full rotation of the giant planet Jupiter. The Great Red Spot can be used to measure the planet’s real rotation rate of nearly 10 hours. The innermost Galilean satellite, Io is seen in several frames, along with its shadow crossing over Jupiter’s cloud tops. Hubble monitors Jupiter and the other outer solar system planets every year under the Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy program. Credit: NASA, ESA, Joseph DePasquale (STScI).

NASA explains that the bands are produced by air flowing in different directions at various latitudes with speeds approaching 560 km/h (350 miles per hour). Lighter-hued areas where the atmosphere rises are called zones, while the darker regions where air falls are called belts. When these opposing flows interact, storms and turbulence appear.

Hubble tracks these dynamic changes every year (see a few of our previous articles about Hubble’s view of Jupiter here, here and here.) There is always lots of activity and changes taking place from year to year.

Toward the far-left edge of the right-side image is Jupiter’s tiny moon Io. The variegated orange color is where volcanic outflow deposits are seen on Io’s surface.

Side-by-side images show the opposite faces of Jupiter. The largest storm, the Great Red Spot, is the most prominent feature in the left bottom third of this view. Credit: NASA, ESA, Amy Simon (NASA-GSFC).

The post It's Time for Jupiter's Annual Checkup by Hubble appeared first on Universe Today.

Stars more massive than the Sun blow themselves to pieces at the end of their life. Usually leaving behind either a black hole, neutron star or pulsar they also scatter heavy elements across their host galaxy. One such star went supernova nearly 11,000 years ago creating the Vela Supernova Remnant. The resultant expanding cloud of debris covers almost 100 light years and would be twenty times the diameter of the full Moon. Astronomers have recently imaged the remnant with a 570 megapixel Dark Energy Camera (DECam) creating a stunning 1.3 gigapixel image. 

The Vela supernova remnant is visible in long exposure photographs in the constellation Vela. It is the result of a star more massive than the Sun reaching the end of its life. As the progenitor star evolved the fusion deep in its core ceased. The lack of fusion means the cessation of the outward pushing thermonuclear force, the star instantly implodes under the immense force of gravity. The inward rushing material rebounds leading to the supernova explosions we see. The shockwave from the event is still travelling through the surrounding gas cloud thousands of years later. 

The image recently released is one of the largest images ever taken of the object with the DECam camera. The instrument, built by the Department of Energy, was mounted upon the 4 metre Victor M Blanco telescope in Chile. It reveals amazing levels of detail with red, yellow and blue tendrils of gas. The image was taken through three colour filters in a technique familiar to amateur astronomers. The filters capture specific wavelengths of light and are then stacked on top of each other during processing to reveal the stunning high resolution colour image. 

The Dark Energy Camera mounted on CTIO’s Blanco 4-meter telescope. Credit: DOE/FNAL/DECam/R. Hahn/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA

Supernova explosions of this type take hundreds of thousands of years for the effects to dissipate however the core of the collapsed star does remain. As the star collapses, the core is compressed leaving an ultra dense sphere of neutrons, the result of protons and electrons having been forced together under extreme pressures. The Vela Pulsar is only a few kilometres across but contains as much mass as the Sun. The stellar remnant is rotating rapidly, sweeping out a powerful beam of radiation across the Galaxy at a speed of 11 times per second.  

Previous images from other instruments highlight the incredible capabilities of DECam.  Coupled up to the 4 metre telescope in Chile, it operates like a conventional camera. Light enters the telescope and is redirected back up the tube by the large mirror. The light passes into DECam, through a 1 metre corrective lens and then arrives at its final destination, a grid of 62 charge-coupled devices. These little sensor generate current dependent on the amount of light that falls upon them. With an array of these sensors (570 million of them to be exact), a high resolution image can be recreated!

Source : Ghostly Stellar Tendrils Captured in Largest DECam Image Ever Released

The post This is a 1.3 Gigapixel Image of a Supernova Remnant appeared first on Universe Today.

The Galaxy is a collection of stars, planets, gas clouds and to the dismay of astronomers, dust clouds. The dust blocks starlight from penetrating so it’s very difficult to learn about the far side of the Galaxy. Thankfully the upcoming Nancy Grace Roman telescope has infrared capability so it can see through the dust. A systematic survey of the far side of the Milky Way is planned to see what’s there and could discover billions of objects in just a month. 

The Nancy Grace Roman telescope (NGRt) has been named after NASA’s inaugural chief astronomer who was known as the ‘mother of the Hubble Space Telescope.’ It will have a field of view at least 100 times that of Hubble giving it an impressive swathe of space in each capture. Not only will it be able to peer through dust clouds, it also has the capability to block out starlight enabling direct observation of exoplanets and other infrared observations. 

The incredible resolution of NGRt will help to identify individual stars within interstellar dust clouds even at the far reaches of the Galaxy. It’s expected the observations will lead to the creation of an extensive stellar catalogue of stars previously unseen. Even the mapping observatory satellite Gaia (from the European Space Agency) didn’t have the mapping and precision available from NGRt which will surpass it tenfold. The extraordinary work of Gaia mapped over a billion stars within a distance of about 10,000 light years. NGRt will go a step further and map over 100 billion stars out to 100,000 light years! As far as our Galaxy is concerned, there’s not much out of NGRt’s reach. Even Spitzer, NASA’s infrared space telescope had surveyed the Galactic plane, it did not have the resolution to resolve stars on the far side of the Galaxy.

The Spitzer Space Telescope observatory trails behind Earth as it orbits the Sun. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

In 2021 calls were made for ideas for surveys and the Galactic Plane Survey was the top ranking idea. It is now down to the scientific community to pull together observational projects to support the survey. It’s impressive to think that the survey will be targeting 1,000 square degrees of sky, equivalent to 5,000 full moons. That might not sound like too much but it would pretty much allow for all the stars in our Galaxy to be surveyed. That might sound like a lifelong piece of work but NGRt is a telescope that means business, knocking out the survey in around a month!

Other observatories could of course undertake similar projects but it would take years for even Hubble or James Webb Space telescope to achieve the same results. They are far more suited to studying external galaxies and we have seen some incredible images revealing complex galactic structure. Our own Galaxy has rather been overlooked, but it’s actually quite difficult to study our own! The entire sky needs to be observed and then there is the obscuring effect of dust. ‘We have studied our own Solar System’s neighbourhood well’ says Catherine Zucker, co-author of a white paper entitled ‘Roman Early-Definition Astrophysics Survey Opportunity’ and astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian. ‘We have a very incomplete view of what the other half of what the Milky Way looks like beyond the Galactic centre.’ she went on to say. 

NGRt is due for launch in 2027 and, if all goes to plan, looks set to deliver not only some exciting science but the first time view of objects on the far side of the Galaxy.

Source :  NASA’s Roman Team Selects Survey to Map Our Galaxy’s Far Side

The post Nancy Grace Roman will Map the Far Side of the Milky Way appeared first on Universe Today.

Hycean planets may be able to host life even though they’re outside what scientists consider the regular habitable zone. Their thick atmospheres can trap enough heat to keep the oceans warm even though they’re not close to their stars.

Astronomers have found another one of these potential hycean worlds named TOI-270 d.

The word hycean is a portmanteau of ‘hydrogen’ and ‘ocean’ and it describes worlds with surface oceans and thick hydrogen-rich atmospheres. Scientists think that they may be common around red dwarfs and that they could be habitable, although any life that exists on a hycean world would be aquatic.

Because they contain so much water, scientists think they’re larger than comparable non-hycean planets. Their larger size makes them easier targets for atmospheric study by the JWST. Though hycean worlds are largely hypothetical now, the JWST is heralding a new era in planetary science and may be able to show that they do exist.

The telescope’s ability to characterize exoplanet atmospheres could be the key to confirming their existence. Using transmission spectroscopy, the space telescope can watch as starlight travels through their atmospheres, revealing the presence of certain important chemicals and even biosignatures.

The exoplanet TOI-270 d could be a hycean world, and a new paper presents evidence supporting that. The paper is “Possible Hycean conditions in the sub-Neptune TOI-270 d,” and it’s published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. The authors are Måns Holmberg and Nikku Madhusudhan, both from the
Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge.

“The JWST has ushered in a new era in atmospheric characterizations of temperate low-mass exoplanets with recent detections of carbon-bearing molecules in the candidate Hycean world K2-18 b,” the authors write. That was an important discovery, and the authors of this paper say the JWST has more to show us about exoplanet atmospheres. In this work, the pair of researchers examined two sub-Neptunes in the TOI-270 system as they transited their M-dwarf. “We report our atmospheric characterization of the outer planet TOI-270 d, a candidate Hycean world, with JWST transmission spectroscopy…,” they write.

TOI-270 is an M-dwarf (red dwarf) star about 73 light-years away. Red dwarfs are known to sometimes flare violently, ruling out habitability on nearby planets. However, the authors describe TOI-270 as a quiet star. It hosts three sub-Neptune planets, and the pair of outermost planets, TOI-270 c and d, are both candidate hycean worlds. TOI-270 d is considered the strongest candidate.

TOI-270 d is about 4.2 Earth masses and measures about 2.1 Earth radii. It takes just over 11 Earth days to complete an orbit, a fact that aids atmospheric study. The Hubble Space Telescope looked at TOI-270 d recently, and its observations suggested a hydrogen-rich atmosphere with some evidence of H2O. Those results warranted further examination with the more powerful JWST.

Though scientists still haven’t proven that hycean worlds exist, they know something about their atmospheric chemistry. On an ocean world with a thick, hydrogen-rich atmosphere, scientists expect to find strong signatures of CH4 (methane) and CO2 and no evidence of NH3 (ammonia.) This is what the JWST found at K2-18b, though there is still uncertainty if that exoplanet is a hycean world.

This graphic shows what the JWST found in the atmosphere of K2-18 b, a suspected hycean world. Image Credit: NASA, CSA, ESA, J. Olmstead, N. Madhusudhan

Every planet is different, but each type should have things in common. “For Hycean worlds, the presence of an ocean below a thin H2-rich atmosphere may be inferred by an enhancement of CO2, H2O, and/or CH4, together with a depletion of NH3,” the authors write. Since TOI-270 d is a candidate hycean world, its spectroscopy should be similar to other hycean candidates like K2-18b. “Therefore, for the Hycean candidate TOI-270 d, observations of these key carbon-, nitrogen-, and oxygen- (CNO) bearing molecules are required to assess whether or not it is a Hycean world,” the paper’s authors explain.

In October of 2023, the JWST observed TOI-270 b and d during two transits. The observations amounted to a total exposure time of 5.3 hours. “This rare event allows for transmission spectroscopy of both planets,” the authors write.

This figure from the study shows the spectra from both the Hubble Space Telescope and the JWST. The prominent molecules responsible for the features in different spectral regions are labelled. Image Credit: Holmberg and Madhusudhan 2024.

“Our atmospheric retrieval results support the inference of an H2-rich atmosphere on TOI-270 d and provide valuable insights into the abundances of dominant CNO molecules,” the authors explain. Furthermore, the abundances are similar to what the JWST found on K2-18 b, another suspected hycean world.

But when it comes to water, the results are less certain. “We found only tentative evidence of H2O, with the detection significance and abundance estimates varying…,” the authors write. The detection and abundance of H2O were more strongly dependent on what method the researchers used to analyze the data.

The appearance of CS2 (carbon disulphide) in TOI-270 d’s atmosphere is intriguing. It’s considered a detectable biomarker in hycean world atmospheres, as well as in hydrogen-rich atmospheres of rocky worlds, although the direct sources could also be volcanic or photochemical.

The atmospheric spectrum also contains hints of C2H6 (ethane.) Ethane can be a byproduct of photochemical reactions involving methane and other gases, including biogenic ones. Its presence is another indication that methane is present. The researchers also point out that the abundances of ethane and carbon disulphide are well above theoretical predictions. “More observations are required to robustly constrain the presence and abundances of both molecules,” they write.

All the researchers can conclude is that TOI-720 d is a candidate hycean world. But while the previous HST observations that hinted at its status showed the presence of H2O in an H2-rich atmosphere, the JWST observations provide more depth. The JWST’s more robust detections of CH4 and CO2, along with its non-detection of NH3, makes it an even stronger hycean world candidate.

“The planet stands out as a promising Hycean candidate, consistent with its initial predictions as a world with the potential for habitable oceans beneath an H2-rich atmosphere,” the authors conclude.

The post Another Hycean Planet Found? TOI-270 d appeared first on Universe Today.

After falling short in its first two attempts, SpaceX got its Starship super-rocket to an orbital altitude today during the launch system’s third integrated flight test. Now it just has to work on the landing. 

Today’s test marked a major milestone in SpaceX’s effort to develop Starship as the equivalent of a gigantic Swiss Army knife for spaceflight, with potential applications ranging from the deployment of hundreds of Starlink broadband satellites at a time to crewed odysseys to the moon, Mars and beyond.

The 396-foot-tall (120-meter-tall) rocket lifted off from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in South Texas at 8:25 a.m. CT (1325 GMT), with all 33 of the first-stage booster’s methane-fueled Raptor engines firing. The Super Heavy booster is considered the world’s most powerful launch vehicle, with 16.7 million pounds of thrust at liftoff.

Minutes after launch, the rocket’s second stage — known as Ship — successfully executed a hot-staging operation to start up its six engines while still attached to the Super Heavy booster. After stage separation, Ship continued onward at orbital velocity to an altitude of about 140 miles (230 kilometers). Meanwhile, the booster began a series of burns that were meant to bring it down to a soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Super Heavy splashdown turned out to be not as soft as SpaceX hoped. Only a few of the booster’s engines were able to light up again for the intended landing burn. The last telemetry from the booster seemed to suggest that it hit the water at almost 700 mph (1,112 kilometers per hour). “We didn’t light all the engines that we expected, and we did lose the booster,” SpaceX commentator Dan Huot said during today’s webcast. “We’ll have to go through the data to figure out exactly what happened, obviously. … But wow, Ship in space!”

For more than 40 minutes, a camera on the second stage transmitted stunning views of Earth as seen from an orbital height. SpaceX also tested the opening and closing of a payload door that’s meant to be used for satellite deployment in orbit — and tried out a refueling procedure that involved transferring liquid oxygen between tanks.

The flight plan for this test didn’t call for doing a complete orbit. Rather, the trajectory was designed to have Ship come down for its own soft splashdown in a remote stretch of the Indian Ocean.

The climax of the descent came when Ship’s onboard camera captured the glow of plasma generated by the craft’s descent at speeds in excess of 16,500 mph (26,700 kilometers per hour). The atmospheric heating was expected to reach 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit (1,425 degrees Celsius).

“We’ve never seen anything like this before,” SpaceX commentator Kate Tice said of the fiery real-time video, which was transmitted down to Earth via SpaceX’s Starlink network.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk marveled at the sight in a posting to X / Twitter, the social media channel he owns:

Watch the super hot plasma field grow as Starship re-enters the atmosphere! pic.twitter.com/to4UOF2Kpd

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 14, 2024

A few minutes into the descent, SpaceX lost the signal from Ship — and the prolonged silence led SpaceX’s mission controllers to assume that the ship was lost during re-entry. It’s possible that the second stage’s engines weren’t able to fire properly to reduce the speed of the descent. The mission team will have to analyze the data to determine what went wrong.

“No splashdown today,” Huot said. “But it’s incredible to see how much further we got this time around.”

Huot emphasized that the aim of today’s test was to learn how to improve future Starships, and eventually make them reusable. “The data is the payload on one of these flights,” he said.

SpaceX is already getting ready for the next test flight, and the ones after that. “Hopefully, at least 6 more flights this year,” Musk said in a pre-launch X / Twitter posting. The precise timing will depend on approvals from the Federal Aviation Administration.

NASA is depending on SpaceX to provide a version of Starship that would serve as the landing system for the Artemis program’s first crewed mission to the lunar surface, currently set for 2026. Today, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson congratulated SpaceX on its “successful test flight.”

“Starship has soared into the heavens,” Nelson wrote on X / Twitter. “Together, we are making great strides through Artemis to return humanity to the Moon — then look onward to Mars.”

Musk has pointed to Starship as the vehicle that could carry thousands of settlers to Mars in years to come — and he touched upon that theme again after today’s test flight.

“Starship will make life multiplanetary,” he wrote.

The post Starship Reaches Orbit on SpaceX’s Third Test but Breaks Up on Re-Entry appeared first on Universe Today.

Climate change is arguably the single greatest threat facing the world today. According to the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), average global temperatures are set to increase between 1.5 and 2 °C (2.7 to 3.6 °F) by mid-century. To restrict global temperatures to an increase of 1.5 C and avoid the worst-case scenarios, the nations of the world need to achieve net zero emissions by then. Otherwise, things will get a lot worse before they get better, assuming they ever do.

This means transitioning to cleaner methods in terms of energy, transportation, and aviation. To meet our climate commitments, the aviation industry is developing technology to significantly reduce air travel’s carbon footprint. To help meet this goal, NASA and Boeing have come together to create the X-66 Sustainable Experimental Airliner, the first experimental plane specifically focused on helping the U.S. achieve net-zero aviation. Last week, NASA released a new rendering of the concept, giving the public an updated look at the future of air travel.

This configuration is identical to the one unveiled by NASA and Boeing at the Experimental Aviation Association‘s (EAA) AirVenture Oshkosh airshow last year. As you can see from the renderings (above and below), the design features the Transonic Truss-Braced Wing concept. Developed by Boeing, this design features extra-long, thin wings stabilized by diagonal struts. This configuration is based on “Subsonic Ultra-Green Aircraft Reach (SUGAR)” research, a series of studies that began in 2011 to evaluate the benefits of truss-bracing and hybrid electric technologies.

The X-66A is the X-plane specifically aimed at helping the United States achieve the goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Credits: NASA

Combined with an advanced propulsion system, a sophisticated systems architecture, and advanced materials, this configuration could reduce fuel consumption and the resulting emissions by up to 30% (compared to top-of-the-line commercial aircraft). Development of the X-66 began in early 2019 through the Sustainable Flight Demonstrator (SFD) project, which is an integral part of NASA’s Sustainable Flight National Partnership (SFNP) – where NASA Aeronautics partners with industry, academia, and other agencies to accomplish the goal of net-zero aviation by 2050.

To build the X-66A, Boeing has been working with NASA to modify a McDonnell Douglas MD-90 single-aisle passenger aircraft. Modifications include a shortened fuselage and the replacement of its wings with the longer, thinner truss-braced variant. The engines have also been relocated from the tail section to under the wings and replaced with gas-electric models. Boeing transported the MD-90 aircraft to its facility in Palmdale, California, in August of 2023 and has since removed its engines and completed the 3-meter (10-foot) model wing they will use for aerodynamic testing.

The project’s ultimate goal is to inform a new generation of more sustainable, single-aisle aircraft, which account for the largest share of air travel worldwide. The program is also part of the U.S. Aviation Climate Action Plan, which seeks to not only meet the nation’s ambitious climate goals but also to improve the quality of life for those living near airports and under flight paths through reductions in noise and pollutants. As NASA Administrator Bill Nelson remarked in a press statement last year:

“At NASA, our eyes are not just focused on stars but also fixated on the sky. The Sustainable Flight Demonstrator builds on NASA’s world-leading efforts in aeronautics as well [as] climate. The X-66A will help shape the future of aviation, a new era where aircraft are greener, cleaner, and quieter, and create new possibilities for the flying public and American industry alike.”

Further Reading: NASA

The post NASA and Boeing Release New Rendering of their X-66 Sustainable Experimental Airliner appeared first on Universe Today.

Star birth is a messy and chaotic event. Some of the process remains well hidden behind clouds of gas and dust that make up star-forming regions. However, part of it happens in wavelengths of light we can detect, such as visible light and infrared. It’s an intricate process that the Webb telescope (JWST) can study in detail.

Recently this infrared-sensitive space observatory zeroed in on a portion of a star-forming region called NGC 604 in the Triangulum galaxy and returned a pair of amazing images. The telescope’s Near-infrared Camera (NIRCam) image shows gas bubbles, and tendrils and wisps of glowing material lit up by more than 200 hot, young massive stars. Some of those stars are probably at least 100 times the mass of the Sun. Finding so many of them in such a small area of space is a rare occurrence.

JWST’s mid-infrared instrument (MIRI) identified glowing clouds of gas and dust in NGC 604 and a collection of red supergiant stars in the surrounding galaxy region. They’re cool and ancient, and most are hundreds of times the diameter of the Sun.

JWST Reveals the Chemistry of a Star-forming Region

As cool as these images look, the chemistry they reveal is amazing. Orange-colored streaks in the NIRCam image indicate the presence of polycyclic hydrocarbons (PAHs). These carbon-based molecules play a big role in star- and planet-forming processes. Here on Earth they’re pretty commonly found in coal, oil, gasoline, and as a by-product of burning these substances. Obviously, coal, gasoline, and burning garbage don’t exist in outer space. However, pure PAHs do, and they’re a good tracer of star formation. So, it’s not a surprise to find them in this particular nebula.

Deep red regions in the nebula are pockets of molecular hydrogen. That’s the basic building block of stars. In other places, hot young stars have ionized hydrogen gas, which appears white in the image. The MIRI images also show the distribution of cool gas and dust throughout the nebula, and blue tendrils identify the presence of more PAHs.

The view of NGC 604 from JWST’s MIRI instrument. Notice the difference in view from NIRCam. Each part of the infrared spectrum reveals different features in the clouds of gas and dust. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI Dynamics of Star Birth

The chaotic part of star birth comes as hot young stars are born. They directly affect the stellar nursery by emitting copious amounts of ultraviolet radiation into space. That ionizes (heats) the surrounding birth clouds and causes them to glow. The stellar newborns also blow hot stellar winds like gas bubbles out around them. That carves out caverns in the dusty birth cloud and creates those tendrils.

The creation of stars gobbles up immense amounts of gas and dust. The most massive stars, like the ones seen in these images, basically clear out the region. That also shuts down (or severely stunts) future star formation. Eventually, the process of stellar creation will play itself out here, leaving behind clusters of massive, hot young stars, along with smaller more sun-like stars and even a few brown dwarfs.

About the NGC 604 Star-forming Region

NGC 604 is a pretty typical star birth creche, similar to the Orion Nebula in our own Milky Way Galaxy. It’s fairly extensive—it measures about 1,300 light-years across (much larger than the Orion star-birth complex) and lies about 2.7 million light-years away from us. The cloud has been making baby stars for at least 3.5 million years. Compare that to the Orion Nebula, which is about 1,400 light-years away from us and has been cranking out stars for about 3 million years. Its brightest stars lie in the Trapezium at the heart of the nebula. Many of Orion’s stars are quite young—only about 300,000 years old. The nebula also has a collection of brown dwarfs, as well as protoplanetary disks that harbor newly forming protostars.

NGC 604 in Galaxy M33 as seen by Hubble Space Telescope.

JWST isn’t the first space telescope to study this region of space. The Hubble Space Telescope has looked at it often, beginning in the 1990s, and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory has traced its superheated stars in X-ray wavelengths. Ground-based observatories such as the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), and others have long studied this region to gather as much information as possible about the structure of this nursery and its stars.

The starbirth process can take anywhere from 10,000 to 100,000 years for the highest-mass stars to millions of years for less-massive ones. So, when we look at a star-birth region, we’re looking at a fairly short-lived phenomenon in the overall 13.7 billion-year-long history of the Universe. That’s why astronomers are interested in learning more about the process, particularly in other galaxies such as the Triangulum.

For More Information

Peering Into the Tendrils of NGC 604 with NASA’s Webb
The Formation of Stars

The post Webb Sees a Star-Forming Region Blowing Vast Bubbles appeared first on Universe Today.

In the next decade, space agencies will expand the search for extraterrestrial life beyond Mars, where all of our astrobiology efforts are currently focused. This includes the ESA’s JUpiter ICy moon’s Explorer (JUICE) and NASA’s Europa Clipper, which will fly past Europa and Ganymede repeatedly to study their surfaces and interiors. There’s also NASA’s proposed Dragonfly mission that will fly to Titan and study its atmosphere, methane lakes, and the rich organic chemistry happening on its surface. But perhaps the most compelling destination is Enceladus and the lovely plumes emanating from its southern polar region.

Since the Cassini mission got a close-up look at these plumes, scientists have been aching to send a robotic mission there to sample them – which appear to have all the ingredients for life in them. This is not as easy as it sounds, and there’s no indication flying through plumes will yield intact samples. In a recent paper, researchers from the University of Kent examined how the velocity of a passing spacecraft (and the resulting shock of impact) could significantly affect its ability to sample water and ice within the plumes.

The research was conducted by Prof. Mark Burchell and Dr. Penny Wozniakiewicz (an Emeritus Professor and a Senior Lecturer in Space Science) from the Centre for Astrophysics and Planetary Science (CAPS), part of the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Kent, UK. Their work could have significant implications for missions to Icy Ocean Worlds (IOW), bodies in the outer Solar System composed predominantly of frozen water and volatiles with oceans in their interior. These bodies have become of increasing interest to scientists since it is possible some could support life.

The term “Ocean Worlds” has become common in recent years as the number of potential candidates for exploration has increased. Since the Voyager probes passed through the system in 1979, scientists have speculated about the possibility of an interior ocean within Europa based on its surface features. This included patches of “young terrain” sitting next to older, cratered terrain – indicative of regular exchanges between the surface and interior. The Voyager probes noticed similarly youthful terrain on Enceladus when they few past Saturn in 1980 and 81 (respectively).

However, it was the Cassini-Huygens mission that discovered water vapor and organic molecules venting from the Enceladus’ southern polar region in 2004. Over the next thirteen years, the Cassini orbiter conducted several more flybys of the moon, yielding additional evidence of an interior ocean and an energy source at the core-mantle boundary. These findings placed Enceladus among the “Ocean Worlds” that scientists want to examine more closely with future missions. But unlike other IOWs, Enceladus is particularly attractive because of the nature of the plumes around its south pole.

Whereas Europa also experiences plume activity, these are more sporadic and difficult to detect. Due to Europa’s higher gravity (~13% vs. 1% of Earth’s), water vapor and vented material don’t reach nearly as far into space. As Burchell told Universe Today via email, collecting samples from these plumes seems relatively simple, at least in theory. “Like all IOWs, it has an internal ocean with lots of water. What is in that water is the subject of much speculation and interest,” he said. “And Enceladus ejects plumes of water into space, making any space mission that wants to sample the water much easier – you can just fly through the plume.”

However, in the realm of practice (as always), things get a little more complicated. Depending on how fast a mission is traveling, the impact it will inflict upon plume material will vary considerably. As Burchell explains, this could jeopardize the very samples a mission was trying to obtain:

“The problem with collecting samples at speed is that a lot of testing has been done with metal and mineral projectile, but less is known about the response of organics to the high-speed impacts. The bonds in the organics will break, but at what speed? And which bonds first? So what you end up with for analysis may not be what came out of Enceladus. But with what biases? What degree of alteration? Understanding this is essential to any successful collection of samples.”

Artist rendering showing an interior cross-section of the crust of Enceladus, which shows how hydrothermal activity may be causing the plumes of water at the moon’s surface. Credits: NASA-GSFC/SVS, NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI

According to Burchell, modeling how a spacecraft’s velocity would affect its ability to collect samples can be accomplished in one of two ways. On the one hand, there’s the computer modeling approach, where teams rely on advanced software to simulate impacts and measure the results. The other is the “kinetic” approach, which consists of firing small grains at targets at the right speeds and then measuring the force of impact. Burchell and his team prefer to do the latter. “In our lab, we like firing things at targets,” he said.

Their results clearly showed that the collection speed is critical to sample collection. However, they also found that the results vary from one body to the next. Said Burchell:

“In an orbit at a small body like Enceladus, it is fairly low. But for the larger IOWs, it is greater. And it just gets into the regime where the shock of the impact process in the collection causes increasingly severe alteration to the samples. If you do a flypast of the IOW without orbiting it, you are faster again, and the samples experience a greater shock. It suggests a low-speed orbital collection is best for un-shocked, minimally processed samples. But that needs more spacecraft design and restricts the other science you could do. It is always a tradeoff.”

Without the Solar System, there are several bodies where water and other volatiles are vented from the interior – a phenomenon known as cryovolcanism. These bodies vary considerably in terms of their size and gravitational pull, ranging from the microgravity (less or slightly more than 1%) of Mimas and Enceladus to the roughly 13-15% of Europa, Titan, and Ganymede. As a result, these findings could help inform the design of many sample-collection missions destined for IOWs.

Further Reading: Meteoritics & Planetary Science

The post What Can We Learn Flying Through the Plumes at Enceladus? appeared first on Universe Today.

Space flight is an expensive business and that money has to come from somewhere. The White House has just released their budget for fiscal year 2025. What does that mean for NASA?, they will get $25.4 billion, the same as it received last year but $2 billion less than it requested. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said the constraints come from a debt ceiling agreement that limits non-defence spending. Alas the $2 billion deficit means NASA will need to cut costs from various missions.

Nelson went on to put the blame squarely on a small handful of people in the House of Representatives. It was his opinion that they would only agree to raising the debt ceiling (the maximum amount of money the US Government can spend) if spending caps were implemented. Whilst the deficit in this years budget is $2 billion, for NASA that means a lot. Their budget figures included $7.6 billion for science so NASA will have to look long and hard at their upcoming missions and spend over the next year to see what costs can be cut. 

One of the projects that looks like it may be cancelled is the Geospace Dynamics Constellation mission. It plans to accomplish breakthroughs in our understanding of the processes that govern the dynamics of the Earth’s upper atmosphere. The layer is the region that is on the very boundary of space and includes the ionosphere and components of the thermosphere. 

The Earth System Observatory series of missions looks set to be restructured under the new budget too. The project is a joint enterprise with the Japanese Space Agency and, in an endeavour to preserve the partnership, NASA are assessing their options. These may focus on aerosol and cloud convection and precipitation studies. 

Sadly this reduction also means NASA will have to reduce spending on Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-Ray telescope. Given that Hubble has surpassed its original goals ten fold it is perhaps no surprise its no the list of cuts with a 5% reduction in spend. The reductions for Chandra are more substantial with $68.3 million last year reducing to $41.1 million. Over the period of its operational mission, several of the systems are degrading and require active management to keep ticking along. This means Chandra will undertake minimal operations to account for the cuts.

The Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission is now under scrutiny given the budget costs. The original budget proposal for planetary science was $2.7 billion but this lists only as TBD for MSR. A sad day given that the Perseverance Rover has been trundling around Mars collecting samples ready for MSR to collect and return to Earth. The mission is under review which should conclude by end March. 

Thankfully it seems the Artemis program is unaffected with the full amount requested being received. There will be one tiny change though, Artemis 5 (which will be using the Blue Origin Lunar Lander for the first time) will slip back half a year to March 2030. 

In the grand scheme of things and the challenges facing governments the world over, perhaps NASA should be content with only losing $2 billion of their overall ask. As Nelson said “the current situation was not as bad for the agency as was the case a decade ago, when a budget sequestration made deeper cuts” he went on to say “I’d say this is mild by comparison back then”.

Source : President’s NASA FY 2025 Funding Supports US Space, Climate Leadership and NASA chief Bill Nelson promises a ‘fight’ for agency’s 2025 budget request

The post NASA Announces its 2025 Budget. Lean Times Ahead. appeared first on Universe Today.

Our solar system does not exist in isolation. It formed within a stellar nursery along with hundreds of sibling stars, and even today has the occasional interaction with interstellar objects such as Oumuamua and Borisov. So it’s reasonable to presume that some interstellar material has reached Earth. Recently Avi Loeb and his team earned quite a bit of attention with a study arguing that it had found some of this interstellar stuff on the ocean seabed. But a new study finds that the material has a much more local origin.

The original study is based on a 2014 meteor that entered the Earth’s atmosphere off the coast of Papua New Guinea. Observations of its impact trajectory suggested it might have been extraterrestrial in origin. And since we had an idea of where it hit, why not look for its debris? This led Loeb’s team to the seafloor near Papua New Guinea, where they found small, iron-rich spheres known as spherules. The study analyzed the composition of these spherules and found the isotope distribution was so unusual they must have an interstellar origin.

The iron isotopes of these spherules show a local origin. Credit: Desch, et al

While that sounds compelling, there are a few caveats. The first is that the trajectory of the 2014 meteor isn’t that precisely known. We know the general impact region, but the data simply isn’t good enough to prove that these spherules came from this particular meteor. The second is that “unusual” isotopes aren’t uncommon within our solar system. As the new study shows, there is a distribution of iron isotope ratios for objects originating in the solar system, specifically the ratios of 57Fe and 56Fe. The ratio for the “alien” spherules is well within that range. So well that the odds of them being interstellar is less than 1 in 10,000. So these spherules have a local origin.

But they were likely formed from an impact event, so this new study went further. Is there a known impact from which these spherules originated? Turns out there is. The region in which they were found is part of what’s known as the Australasian tektite strewn field. It is a vast field that spans southeast Asia to Antarctica and was caused by a large impact 790,000 years ago. The team looked at other isotope ratios and found they are consistent with other known Australasian tektites.

So these particular spherules have a local origin. But that doesn’t mean interstellar meteorites don’t exist. Given what we know, there are almost certainly interstellar objects on Earth just waiting to be found. We just have to keep looking for them.

Reference: Loeb, A., et al. “Recovery and Classification of Spherules from the Pacific Ocean Site of the CNEOS 2014 January 8 (IM1) Bolide.” Research Notes of the AAS 8.1 (2024): 39.

Reference: Desch, Steve. “Be, La, U-rich spherules as microtektites of terrestrial laterites: What goes up must come down.” arXiv preprint arXiv:2403.05161 (2024).

The post A 790,000 Year-Old Asteroid Impact Could Explain Seafloor Spherules appeared first on Universe Today.

If you, like me, have dabbled with telescope making you will know what a fickle friend light can be. On one hand you want to capture as much as you can (but only from the object, not from nearby lights) and want to reflect or refract it to the point of observation or study.  What you most certainly don’t want is stray light to be bounced around inside the telescope so components (except the mirror!) are sprayed as black as possible. Unfortunately black paints tend to be quite susceptible to damage and struggle to cope with the harsh conditions and cold temperatures telescopes are subjected to. A team has recently developed a new atomic-layer deposition method which absorbs 99.3% of light and is durable too. 

A team of scientists from the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology and the Chinese Academy of Sciences have recently published a paper in the Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology. The paper announces that they have engineered an ultrablack thin-film coating which boasts the remarkable light absorption rate of 99.3%. The technique is tailored for coating aerospace grade magnesium alloys (not a lot of help for my telescope but there is hope) and the result is a coating that is durable and capable of withstanding harsh environmental conditions. 

Of course, this is designed for telescopes operating in the harsh environment of space rather than the cold winter nights of Norfolk in the UK but it will certainly help with professional observatories atop mountains too. Current coatings like vertically aligned carbon nanotubes or black silicon tend to be easily damaged needing repair and leaving contamination that has to be carefully managed. 

Another problem is the often difficult and intricate shapes and curves that the black coatings are to be deposited upon. To overcome these problems, the team explored atomic layer deposition (ALD). Items to be coated are paced in a vacuum chamber and exposed to different gasses in sequence which will adhere to the object’s surface in thin layers. It’s a technique not too dissimilar to aluminising a telescope mirror that is placed inside a vacuum chamber before allowing the aluminium to be deposited on the mirror surface. 

The vacuum coating method is far easier to apply to intricate shapes than previous techniques. To build up the layers, the process uses alternating layers of aluminium mixed with titanium carbide and silicon nitride. The two materials work well together to stop nearly all light from reflecting off the coated surface. 

During the test phase, the team tested wavelengths of light from violet light at 400 nanometers to near infrared at 1,000 nanometers and found average absorption levels over 99% across all wavelengths. The coating seems to withstand heat, friction, damp and extreme changes in temperature well so it is most certainly suited to space instrumentation. The team haven’t given up yet though, they are now working to improve the performance of the material. 

Source : Ultrablack coating could make next-gen telescopes even better

The post Ultrablack Coating Could Be Ideal for Telescopes appeared first on Universe Today.

I often drag out the amazing fact that the Andromeda Galaxy, that faint fuzzy blob just off the corner of the Square of Pegasus, is heading straight for us! Of course I continue to tell people it won’t happen for a few billion years yet but a recent study suggests that we are already seeing hypervelocity stars that have been ejected from Andromeda already. It is just possible that the two galaxies have already started to exchange stars long before they are expected to merge. 

We tend to think of stars as stationery objects in the sky, except for their slow westward drift across the sky as the Earth rotates. The reality is different though, stars do move but due to the vast distances in interstellar space, that motion is largely not noticeable. There are exceptions such as Barnard’s star in the constellation Ophiuchus. This inconspicuous red dwarf star moves 10.39 seconds of arc each year (by comparison, the full Moon is 1,900 seconds or arc in diameter.)

Another type of star can be observed, hypervelocity stars (HVSs), and these are among the fastest objects in the Galaxy. They are defined as stars that have a velocity which is of the order 1,000 km per second and by comparison, the Earth travels through space at a velocity of around 30 km per second! The first was discovered in 2005 but since then a number of HVSs have been found, and some of them have the potential to escape from the Milky Way. 

Typically the motion of stars is the result of their motion around the centre of a galaxy. Our own star the Sun, takes 220 million years to complete one orbit of the centre of the Milky Way. The origin of the HVSs high velocity is believed to stem from gravitational interactions between binary stars and black holes. The idea was proposed by Jack Gilbert Hills is a stellar dynamicist, born on 15 May 1943. In this process, a black hole (stellar or the supermassive black hole at Galactic centre) captures one of a binary star system while the other gets ejected at high velocity. Other theories include ejection of one of a binary star system when the other goes supernova or from galactic interactions.

To understand the interactions between the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy the team (led by Lukas Gülzow from the Institute for Astrophysics in Germany) had to go through painstaking analyses. First they had to understand the relative motion fo the two galaxies, they then had to model the gravitational potential of the entire system – this is the total acceleration acting upon an object at any position in either of the galaxies at any time. Finally the team could generate simulations of stellar motion to model the HVSs trajectories. 

The study calculated the trajectories of 18 million HVSs for two different scenarios taking into account the two galaxies having equal mass and the other with the Milky Way having about half the mass of the Andromeda Galaxy. The starting positions of the HVSs in the simulation were randomly generated around the centre of Andromeda. The ejection directions were random and the results showed that 0.013 and 0.011 percent of HSVs are now within a radius of 50kpc around the Milky Way centre. 

The explored the velocity of HVSs on arrival with both galaxy mass simulations and found that many approximately retain their initial velocity. Interestingly due to the time taken for the journey, a significant proportion may well evolve off the main sequence during their journey. Some of the HVSs slow down sufficiently to be captured by the Milky Way.

Artist impression of ESA’s Gaia satellite observing the Milky Way (Credit : ESA/ATG medialab; Milky Way: ESA/Gaia/DPAC)

The team mapped the simulated position of stars against the sky and ran the data against high velocity star positions from Gaia data (Release 3) and found the simulated position distribution consistent with the Gaia data. The study concludes that it is highly likely that HVSs from Andromeda could indeed migrate to the Milky Way. Whilst they are not expected in their thousands, they are expected to distribute equally around the Milky Way centre. It might even be possible to detect them based on stellar velocity and trajectories but further studies are now required to take that next step. 

Source : On Stellar Migration from Andromeda to the Milky Way

The post Are Andromeda and the Milky Way Already Exchanging Stars? appeared first on Universe Today.

Gamma-ray telescopes observing neutron star collisions might be the key to identifying the composition of dark matter. One leading theory explaining dark matter it that is mostly made from hypothetical particles called axions. If an axion is created within the intensely energetic environment of two neutron stars merging, it should then decay into gamma-ray photons which we could see using space telescopes like Fermi-LAT.

About 130 million years ago, a pair of neutron stars collided violently. The powerful gravitational waves from the impact radiated outwards at the speed of light, followed shortly after by a tremendous flash of radiation. On 17 August 2017, the gravitational waves reached Earth, and were detected by both detectors of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in the United States, and the Virgo interferometer in Italy. This event was named GW170817. Mere seconds later, the Fermi-LAT gamma ray telescope recorded a burst of gamma rays in the same region of sky. Over the next few days, other telescopes saw and recorded the event in visible light and other wavelengths. This marked the first ever multi-messenger observation of two neutron stars merging.

What is an axion?

One of the leading theories around the composition of dark matter is that it is mostly made from a hypothetical particle called an axion. If enough axions were created in the big bang, and if their masses fall within a specific range, then they could account for much of the dark matter shaping the universe today. Unfortunately, axions have never been observed, and nobody has yet confirmed whether they even exist. But according to Dr Bhupal Dev of Washington State University, axions and axion-like particles (ALPs) could be created within the extreme conditions of a neutron star collision, and we might be able to see their signature from Earth.

An artist’s depiction showing how an ALP (dashed line), after being produced in the NS merger, escapes and decays outside the merger environment into photons, which can be detected by the Fermi satellite (or future MeV gamma-ray telescopes.

Physicists have spent decades trying to solve the mystery of dark matter. It seems likely that it could be made mostly from axions and axion-like particles, but these particles are still only hypothetical. The axion was first proposed in 1977, as a solution to the Strong CP Problem, but has yet to be confirmed.

Theory predicts, however, that axions can be briefly created by passing high-energy photons through a powerful magnetic field. These axions last for a short while, then decay back into a pair of gamma-ray photons. A number of experiments are being conducted around the world, using this phenomenon to try and create axions, and watching for the gamma radiation of their decay. Others, like the Axion Dark Matter eXperiment (ADMX) are looking for naturally existing axions by using a similar process to convert them into microwave photons.

But there are lots of places in the Universe where axions can be created in this manner, including the cores of stars, around magnetars, and anywhere else with strong magnetic fields. One possible location is the site of a neutron star collision. When such massively dense objects collide, they release a tremendous amount of energy, some of it in the form of hard electromagnetic radiation and powerful magnetic fields: perfect conditions to create axions!

By modelling the energies involved, researchers can predict the masses of axions that will be produced. From there they can deduce the specific frequency of gamma ray photons that would be produced when they decay. If we can detect another such merger, and spot that specific spectrum of gamma radiation coming from the collision, that would confirm that axions are real, and provide evidence supporting a major theory about dark matter.

Natural particle accelerators One of the H.E.S.S. telescopes in Namabia. Credit: H.E.S.S.

An experiment like this would not be the first time scientists have tried to use natural events in place of a particle accelerator. Our own upper atmosphere is one such place where high energy particle collisions happen all the time. Unlike gamma radiation, cosmic rays are subatomic particles hurtling through space at relativistic speeds, and they from catastrophic events like supernova explosions. When they encounter our atmosphere, they smash into air molecules with greater violence than we are able to create in our largest particle accelerators. Telescopes like the High Energy Stereoscopic System (HESS) in Namibia are built to detect these collisions, high up in the sky. HESS is a pair of telescopes which focus on the upper atmosphere, looking for the characteristic bursts of cherenkov radiation that reveal the cascades of particles generated whenever a cosmic ray smashes into the atmosphere.

The observations from GW170817 have already been used by Dr Dev: careful analysis of the gamma rays observed by Fermi-LAT have already helped to narrow the constraints on the properties of axions and axion-like particles.

Observations like this, combined with the work of earth-bound experiments like ADMX, are critical to finding out whether axions exist. And although they haven’t found it yet, we still learn something each time an experiment fails to find anything. Each test is tuned for a specific mass, so those negative results all work together to narrow the range of possibilities. Hopefully it won’t be long before we have a definitive answer.

To learn more, visit https://source.wustl.edu/2024/03/finding-new-physics-in-debris-from-colliding-neutron-stars/

The post Colliding Neutron Stars are the Ultimate Particle Accelerators appeared first on Universe Today.

The Voyager spacecraft carried on board a plethora of scientific instruments but attached to the side was a golden record. The sounds of Earth were recorded upon it. Now, another mission is going to be carrying a message out into space. The Europa Clipper mission will launch in October and it will carry a plaque with images, illustrations and messages. There will be more than 2.6 million names and the word for ‘water’ converted into waveform from 103 languages. 

I think Captain James T Kirk would be proud of NASA for boldly going. This time with another message to the Cosmos on board the Europa Clipper. The destination is Jupiter’s moon Europa which has an icy crust and it is thought, a subsurface ocean. If the ocean exists, and all evidence seems to point to its presence, then there is likely twice as much water by volume than here on Earth. The plaque has been attached to commemorate the connection between the two worlds. 

The triangular shaped tantalum metal plaque measures about 18x28cm and has an engraving of a handwritten poem by Ada Limon “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa”. The 2.6 million names are engraved upon a silicon microchip that is in the centre of an illustration of a bottle among the Jovian system, NASA’s message in a bottle. 

In a statement, Lori Glaze, director of Planetary Science Division at NASA said “The plate combines the best humanity has to offer across the Universe – science, technology, education, art and math.” He went on to say “The message of connection through water, essential for all forms of life as we know it, perfectly illustrates Earth’s tie to this mysterious ocean world we are setting out to explore.”

One perhaps more controversial inclusion is the famous Drake Equation. Scientists have been divided about the validity and benefit of this equation which was developed by Frank Drake in 1961. Drake’s equation attempts to answer the question, using mathematics, of how many advanced civilisations there may be in our Galaxy. Aside from its varied levels of support, the equation has been etched onto the plate as well, on the inward facing side.

The probe is scheduled to launch later this year and, after a 2.6 billion km journey, will arrive at Europa in 2030. It will then begin making a total of 49 flyby’s of Europa to try and establish if the conditions could support life. To that end, it will have a host of instruments to explore the subsurface ocean, the crust, the atmosphere and the space environment around the moon. To ensure the instruments don’t fail in the high levels of radiation from Jupiter, they are housed in a metal container with one of the openings sealed by the plaque. 

This view of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa was captured by the JunoCam imager aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft during the mission’s close flyby on Sept. 29, 2022. Image data: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS Image processing: Kevin M. Gill CC BY 3.0

The illustrations don’t just advertise what we are like, they also depict how we communicate. References are made to radio frequencies that we could use for interstellar communication just in case an alien civilisation intercepts the probe some time in the future. It reveals how we use radio bands to listen out for alien signals and includes the frequencies emitted by water. 

If all of that wasn’t enough, in a lovely touch and a nod to one of the founders of planetary science and advocate for the mission, there is a portrait of Ron Greeley too. It was he who laid the very building blocks for the mission and it is a fitting gesture that he should be travelling to Jupiter with the craft he dreamed of.

Source : NASA Unveils Design for Message Heading to Jupiter’s Moon Europa

The post This is Europa Clipper’s Version of the Golden Record appeared first on Universe Today.

Galaxy NGC3799 lies around 16 million light years from Earth. Any event observed today within that galaxy took place 16 million years ago. One such event was observed in February 2023 when a surge in brightness in the core was followed by a rapid dimming. The observations that followed revealed that the event was a star being torn apart by a supermassive black hole at the heart of the galaxy. This is not the first time such an event has been observed but it is the first to be within our galactic backyard suggesting it may be more common that first thought. 

Normal stellar mass black holes form when massive stars reach the end of their lives. The star ceases fusion in its core, the star collapses leading to a rebound visible as supernova explosions. The remains, if the star was massive enough, is a black hole. These black holes tend to be between 5 and 50 times the mass of the Sun yet at the core of most galaxies seem to be black holes that can be up to several billion times the mass of the Sun. 

Our own Milky Way hosts one such supermassive galaxy with its gravitational pull that is so immense that even light cannot escape. The presence of these colossal objects has an influence on the dynamics of the galaxy and can reshape the orbit of stars and gas clouds  around them. The origin and evolution of supermassive black holes has been the subject of much debate over recent years. 

Researchers at the University of Hawaii Institute of Astronomy (IfA) have recently published a paper detailing the nearest observation of a supermassive black hole shredding a star. The team co-led by Jason Hinkle (a graduate student from the IfA) used the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN) to observe a sharp increase in brightness followed by a fading from the heart of NGC3799. 

Following on from the discovery, subsequent observations were conducted using the Asteroid Terrestrial Last Alert System (ATLAS) on Maunaloa, the Keck Observatory and a few other ground and space based telescopes. These events occur when a star wanders too close to a supermassive black hole. The intense gravitational pull from the black hole varies greatly with distance so the unsuspecting star is torn apart. Eventually the star is consumed by the black hole. 

The sun sets on Mauna Kea as the twin Kecks prepare for observing. Credit: Laurie Hatch/ W. M. Keck Observatory

The change in brightness was was the result of a flare released when the star was consumed. The event has been called ASASSN-23bd and was visible on all-sky cameras. It was unique in its proximity to Earth but unique for other reasons too; more energy released than previous Tidal Disruption Events (TDEs), closest discovered using visible light and a faster light curve profile than other events.

It’s not unusual to see stars being ripped apart by supermassive blackholes but the team have observed one closer than ever before. Willem Hoogendam, an IfA graduate student who co-led the study reported “This discovery holds the potential to significantly enhance our comprehension of the growth of supermassive black holes and their accretion of surrounding material.”

Source : Star ripped apart by black hole in rare discovery

The post Black Holes are Tearing Stars Apart All Around Us appeared first on Universe Today.

Some parts of the Universe only reveal important details when observed in radio waves. That explains why we have ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimetre-submillimetre Array, a collection of 7-meter and 12-meter radio telescopes that work together as an interferometer. But, ALMA-type arrays have their limitations, and astronomers know what they need to overcome those limitations.

They need a radio telescope that’s just one single, massive dish.

Many astronomical objects emit radio waves. From massive galaxies to individual molecules, radio waves and the observatories that sense them provide insights into these objects in ways that other observatories can’t. But there’s a problem. In order to do radio astronomy with a usable signal-to-noise ratio, astronomers need huge antennae or dishes. That’s why ALMA exists. It’s a collection of dishes working together via interferometry to create a much larger dish.

But as powerful as ALMA is, and as much as it continues to make a huge contribution to astronomy, it has its limitations.

That’s why some in the astronomical community are calling for a new radiotelescope with one single large dish. It’s called AtLAST, for the Atacama Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope, and the idea has been fermenting for a few years. Now, a new paper is fine-tuning the idea.

The paper is “Design of the 50-meter Atacama Large Aperture Submm Telescope,” and it’s currently in pre-print. The lead author is Tony Mroczkowski, an astronomer and submillimetre instrument specialist at the European Southern Observatory (ESO), one of the organizations behind ALMA.

“Submillimetre and millimetre wavelengths can reveal a vast range of objects and phenomena that are either too cold, too distant, or too hot and energetic to be measured at visible wavelengths,” the paper states. They point out that the astronomical community has “highlighted the need for a large, high-throughput sub-mm single dish” radio observatory that can advance radio astronomy.

“The Atacama Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (AtLAST), with its 50-m aperture and 2o maximal field of view, aims to be such a facility,” they explain.

Their paper presents the full design concept for AtLAST.

This is the CAD drawing of AtLAST. Note the truck shown for scale. The telescope’s innovative rocking chair design drives its functionality. Image Credit: Mroczkowski et al. 2024, AtLAST.

AtLAST’s large 50-meter aperture is its critical feature. Smaller apertures, even when combined together in an interferometer like ALMA, can only see more extreme features due to noise. That’s why two or more smaller dishes can’t replace a single large one.

There are some large-aperture radio antennae, like the Japanese Nobeyama 45 m telescope and the IRAM 30 m telescope. But due to their designs they can’t observe as well as AtLAST will. AtLAST will be able to see closer to the spectral energy distribution (SED) peak of galaxies and will be able to observe far infrared (FIR) emission lines in the interstellar medium and in high-redshift galaxies. ALMA can observe these SEDs and FIRs, but not as well as AtLAST will.

Existing large dishes also have smaller fields of view (FOV.) But AtLAST’s design was driven by the need for a larger FOV of 2 degrees. This will give AtLAST a much higher mapping speed for science cases that need large fields of several hundred degrees square.

AtLAST’s overarching scientific goal is multifaceted. The telescope will perform the most complete, deepest, and highest-resolution survey of the Milky Way. This includes gas clouds, protoplanetary disks, protostars, and dust. AtLAST will even survey some parts of the Local Group of Galaxies. The radio telescope will even be able to detect complex organic molecules, the precursors to life.

The gas and dust in the Universe is of particular interest to AtLAST. Much of the gas and dust in the Universe is cold and dense. The interstellar medium (ISM) consists of clouds of gas and dust that have unique spectral signatures in the sub-millimetre range. ALMA has given us some of our best looks at these structures with high-resolution images of some of the fine details of the ISM. But single-dish antennae have given astronomers glimpses of other discoveries waiting to be made. That’s one of the reasons the international astronomy community is so enthusiastic about AtLAST.

AtLAST will also be able to take a census of star-forming galaxies at high redshifts. It’ll also map out the reionization of the Universe and track the Universe’s dust, gas, and metallicity across cosmic time.

AtLAST will dig into the deeper, fundamental aspects of galaxies by examining the circumgalactic medium (CGM). The CGM is cold gas and dust that exists in galactic haloes and shapes the evolution of galaxies. This material is invisible at other wavelengths.

This graphic shows some of the details of the CGM, though much of it is uncertain. At the very center are the galaxy’s red central bulge and blue gaseous disk. Gaseous outflows emerge in pink and orange, and some is recycled back into the galaxy. The diffuse gas is shown in mixed tones to reflect its multiple sources. The accreting gas is moving directly into the galaxy. Image Credit: Tumlinson J. et al. 2017.

The radio telescope’s single-dish design has some advantages over ALMA that are separate from its dish size and its field of view. As a single-dish antenna, AtLAST will be able to switch targets quickly and even track moving targets. It’ll employ several different scanning modes, as well as tracking modes that allow the telescope to track comets, asteroids, and near-Earth objects. Its innovative rocking chair design is behind some of AtLAST’s performance, a design it shares with extremely large optical telescopes like the ELT.

This cutaway view shows some of AtLAST’s details. Note the green human-sized figures for scale. Image Credit: Mroczkowski et al. 2024, AtLAST.

AtLAST will be designed to last many decades. It’ll have six instrument bays and will allow rapid switching between instruments. With a nod to our changing climate, AtLAST will be powered by renewable energy.

But what it’s really all about is science.

“The design presented here is expected to meet all of the specifications set for AtLAST to achieve its broad scientific goals,” the paper states. The details of the design allow it to meet the stringent requirements needed to reach its goals. “Namely, these are the large field of view, the high surface
accuracy, fast scanning and acceleration, and the need to deliver a sustainable, upgradeable facility that will serve a new generation of astronomers and remain relevant for the next several decades.”

It’s a complex project, as are all astronomical observatories. But as technology advances, so does the complexity. There’s a lot of work yet to be done and quite a bit of time before construction can even begin.

“Despite the amount of work that remains to be done, AtLAST is on track to potentially begin construction, if fully funded, later this decade,” the authors conclude.

The post Astronomers Propose a 50-Meter Submillimeter Telescope appeared first on Universe Today.

The Universe is filled with supermassive black holes. Almost every galaxy in the cosmos has one, and they are the most well-studied black holes by astronomers. But one thing we still don’t understand is just how they grew so massive so quickly. To answer that, astronomers have to identify lots of black holes in the early Universe, and since they are typically found in merging galaxies, that means astronomers have to identify early galaxies accurately. By hand. But thanks to the power of machine learning, that’s changing.

With the power of current and future sky surveys, the challenge of astronomy is less about capturing the right data and more about filtering out the right data from the vast trove we gather. It takes a tremendous amount of skill to distinguish a true merging galaxy from an irregular galaxy or two independent galaxies that just happen to be seen in the same patch of sky. People can be trained to do it well, but the need for skilled identifiers far surpasses the number of skilled people. One way to overcome this is to allow volunteers to fill the gap. In general, their identifications won’t be as accurate as the professionals, but a bit of statistics will allow astronomers to glean useful information.

True positives vs false positives in machine learning identification. Credit: Avirett-Mackenzie, et al

This new study takes a different approach. Rather than having experts train volunteers, they used experts to train machine learning algorithms. That’s easier said than done. Even the most skilled expert will occasionally make mistakes, or have certain biases, and any software trained on that expert will have the same biases. So the team partnered with the Big Data Applications for Black Hole Evolution Studies (BiD4BEST), which is an EU project that provides a training network for black hole evolution data. Together they used skilled experts to identify black hole mergers in both simulated data and data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). By comparing the two, the team could remove biases from the machine learning data. The result was pretty successful. When algorithm sortings were compared to simulated mergers they found it had an accuracy of well over 80%, comparable to that of the most skilled experts.

The team then used the software to identify more than 8,000 active black holes and found an interesting connection between the growth of black holes and their galaxies. It isn’t galactic mergers that trigger the growth of supermassive black holes, but large quantities of nearby cold gas. The team found that mergers only drive rapid growth when they involve the merger of star-forming galaxies rich in gas and dust. Thus, the same conditions that lead to star formation also lead to supermassive black holes. This is part of the reason why galaxies and their black holes seem to grow in parallel.

As we continue to capture astronomical data at an almost exponential rate, software will be a necessary complement to skilled observers. As this study shows, the two can be used together effectively.

Reference: Avirett-Mackenzie, M. S., et al. “A post-merger enhancement only in star-forming Type 2 Seyfert galaxies: the deep learning view.” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 528.4 (2024): 6915-6933.

The post Black Holes Need Refreshing Cold Gas to Keep Growing appeared first on Universe Today.

Earth’s oceans are—like space—a largely unexplored frontier. Relatively few humans have explored either place, using specialized life-support equipment. Unlike space, however, the oceans also have other beings that can explore them: jellyfish. They can head to places underwater that humans can never go. That makes them interesting candidates for autonomous ocean exploration.

Jahn Dabiri, a researcher at Caltech, is modifying these creatures to create biohybrid robotic jellyfish. These cyborg jellies do what they’ve done since time immemorial: swim, eat, sting, and breed. But, with a few enhancements—including a little electronics pack and a prosthetic hat—these little guys now have enhanced swimming capabilities. The idea is to use the cyborg jellyfish as data-gathering robots. They will swim the ocean to collect information about temperatures, oxygen levels, and salinity. Climate change affects all these factors. This is important as we seek to understand how the buildup of carbon dioxide could affect the oceans.

“It’s well known that the ocean is critical for determining our present and future climate on land, and yet, we still know surprisingly little about the ocean, especially away from the surface,” said Dabiri. “Our goal is to finally move that needle by taking an unconventional approach inspired by one of the few animals that already successfully explores the entire ocean.”

Recruiting Jellyfish to Solve Engineering Challenges

It may seem a little odd to co-opt jellyfish into doing science data gathering, but it’s not a new idea. These creatures inspired Dabiri to try creating a mechanic robot that swam like one. The idea worked, sort of. But, the robotic one never did swim as well as the real thing. So, eventually, Dabiri decided to, in essence, recruit live ones for further experiments.

Dabiri and colleagues first implanted electronic pacemakers into jellyfish to control their swim speeds. When that worked, they added an additional piece to the jelly, called a forebody. It looks like a little hat that sits atop the jelly’s body. The team had to do some work to adapt it. Eventually, they came up with a model that works with sensors and other electronics.

“Much like the pointed end of an arrow, we designed 3D-printed forebodies to streamline the bell of the jellyfish robot, reduce drag, and increase swimming performance,” team member Simon Anuszczyk said. “At the same time, we experimented with 3D printing until we were able to carefully balance the buoyancy and keep the jellyfish swimming vertically.”

How Well Did the Cyborg Jellyfish Work?

After much experimentation, the team was ready to test their cyborg partners. They built a three-story aquarium at Caltech for the tests. Why so big? “In the ocean, the round trip from the surface down to several thousand meters will take a few days for the jellyfish, so we wanted to develop a facility to study that process in the lab,” Dabiri said. “Our vertical tank lets the animals swim against a flowing vertical current, like a treadmill for swimmers. We expect the unique scale of the facility—probably the first vertical water treadmill of its kind—to be useful for a variety of other basic and applied research questions.”

A biohybrid jellyfish descends through the three-story tank in which swimming tests were conducted. Credit: Caltech

The results are interesting. Testing showed that a cyborg jellyfish carrying an instrument payload swims up to 4.5 times faster than a “naked” one. And, they are hardy creatures that don’t seem to mind the work at all. “Jellyfish are the original ocean explorers, reaching its deepest corners and thriving just as well in tropical or polar waters,” Dabiri says. “Since they don’t have a brain or the ability to sense pain, we’ve been able to collaborate with bioethicists to develop this biohybrid robotic application in a way that’s ethically principled.”

The cost of a cyborg jellyfish is pretty cheap, compared to highly expensive ocean-going instruments. The total expense comes to about $20 per jellyfish, according to Dabiri. A research vessel with similar capabilities can cost upwards of $50,000. Of course, the jellyfish have only been tested in a relatively shallow area. For jellies to be sent to greater depths, there’s more work to be done on their instrument packs. “We still need to design the sensor package to withstand the same crushing pressures, but that device is smaller than a softball, making it much easier to design than a full submarine vehicle operating at those depths,” said Dabiri. “I’m really excited to see what we can learn by simply observing these parts of the ocean for the very first time.”

Cyborg Jellies in Space?

Dabiri’s work doesn’t cover any space applications. However, reading about these cyborgs does invoke thoughts of using similar technologies at other worlds. We can’t send cyborg jellyfish to Europa, really. But, maybe instrument designers can take a cue from their enhanced abilities to come up with advanced swimmers to ply the salty oceans of that distant moon. Who knows what they might find—and all thanks to some jellyfish research partners right here on Earth.

For More Information

Building Bionic Jellyfish for Ocean Exploration
Bionic Jellyfish Swimg Faster and More Efficiently
Electromechanical Enhancement of Life Jellyfish for Ocean Exploration

The post Cyborg Jellyfish Could Help Explore Oceans Autonomously appeared first on Universe Today.

The Starship/Super Heavy is the world’s first fully reusable launch system and the most powerful rocket in history. It is also the key to fulfilling SpaceX’s long-term vision of broadband satellite internet, delivering crews and cargo to the lunar surface, and creating the first self-sustaining city on Mars. After years of development, design changes, and “hop tests” at the company’s launch facility near Boca Chica, Texas, orbital test flights finally began in April last year. The first two flights ended in the loss of both vehicles, though the second flight saw the Starship prototype reach orbit.

According to a recent statement from the company, Flight Test-3 (FT-3) could be happening as soon as Thursday, March 14th, pending approval of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The event will be covered in a live webcast streaming on the company website and SpaceX’s official X (Twitter) account.

The SN25 Starship and BN9 booster on the landing pad at Boca Chica, Texas. Credit: SpaceX

The inaugural flight test witnessed the fully-stacked SN24 and BN7 prototypes successfully lifting off from the launch pad and reaching an altitude of about 40 km (25 miles) above sea level. Unfortunately, the SN24 failed to separate from the BN7 a few minutes into the flight, causing the vehicle to fall into an uncontrolled tumble. Ground teams then activated the on-board explosives to detonate both vehicles to avoid a severe crash landing. After an investigation by the FAA, SpaceX upgraded its launch pad and prepared for round two.

The second flight test took place the following November and saw the SN25 and BN9 prototypes successfully launch and seperate at an altitude of 70 km (43 mi). The booster stage was lost about 30 seconds later, exploding over the Gulf of Mexico, while the SN25 reached an altitude of about 148 km (92 mi) – just shy of the company’s goal of 150 km (93 mi). The SN25 also exploded after reaching space, reportedly because its flight termination system was activated. According to the company statement, the third flight will incorporate the lessons learned from their previous attempts:

“Starship’s second flight test achieved a number of major milestones and provided invaluable data to continue rapidly developing Starship. Each of these flight tests continue to be just that: a test. They aren’t occurring in a lab or on a test stand, but are putting flight hardware in a flight environment to maximize learning.”

This is in keeping with SpaceX’s rapid prototyping and iterative development approach, where lessons from previous tests (and improvements) are incorporated along the way. According to the timeline included in the statement, the flight test will include “a number of ambitious objectives,” including the successful ascent burn of both stages, a “flip maneuver” by the booster after separation, followed by the booster making a propulsive landing in the Gulf of Mexico. The Starship‘s payload door will also be opened roughly 12 minutes into the flight (and closed again about 16 minutes later) to test the spacecraft’s ability to deliver satellites and other payloads to space.

Starship Flight Test-3 Version 1.0: My (unofficial) infographic – "Excitement guaranteed!" A huge thank you to Bill @LunarCaveman for all his help putting this together. If any new details are released by @SpaceX, watch for an updated version. pic.twitter.com/GFdiS6AhNc

— Tony Bela – Infographic news (@InfographicTony) March 10, 2024

Other objectives include a propellant transfer demonstration and the first ever re-light of a Raptor engine in space. This will be followed by a controlled reentry of the Starship, which will splash down in the Indian Ocean about an hour after launch. Earlier today, an infographic was posted on X by space artist Tony Bela (X handle @InfographicTony) that depicts the various stages of Flight Test-3 (shown below). With the help of Bill “LunarCaveman” (@LunarCaveman), the infographic provides a detailed rundown of the flight test and everything it aims to accomplish.

The live webcast will begin about 30 minutes before liftoff, though the timetable is still subject to change. Those interested in catching it live are encouraged to check out X @SpaceX for further updates.

Further Reading: SpaceX

The post SpaceX is Gearing Up for the Starship’s Third Orbital Test Flight appeared first on Universe Today.