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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

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The European Space Agency (ESA)’s next generation heavy lift rocket is just months away from its first flight, and its major components are now being assembled for launch at the Vehicle Assembly Building in Kourou, French Guiana.

The new rocket is Europe’s upgrade to the retired Ariane 5, which flew for the last time in 2023. With a large payload fairing and lift capacity, Ariane 6 will be able to carry seriously heavy satellites (or multiple smaller ones). The heavy lift capability of the Ariane 6 is achieved using Hydrolox engines on both the first and second stages, assisted by up to four solid rocket boosters, enabling it to bring up to 11,000kg to geostationary transfer orbit.

The Ariane 6’s upper stage features the capability to relight its engine multiple times, giving it plenty of flexibility in the types of missions it can carry out, and improving the precision of the orbits it can reach. That makes it useful for both interplanetary missions and for unique orbital requirements around Earth.

Part of the first Ariane 6 rocket inside the Vehicle Assembly Building, Kourou, French Guiana. Credit: ESA/CNES/Arianespace/Arianegroup.

What it won’t be is reusable.

Ariane 6 is an expendable rocket, bringing critics to wonder if it can keep up with notable competitors pursuing reusability like SpaceX. But Ariane 6 has different capabilities and caters to different launch parameters than SpaceX, giving it a market share that the Falcon Heavy isn’t tuned for. Perhaps more importantly, independent access to space is a priority for Europe, making Ariane 6 a strategic imperative as much as a technological or competitive advancement. Still, Ariane 6 may not remain ESA’s workhorse rocket long-term – they are already investigating reusable alternatives that should come onto the scene in the 2030s.

The rocket stages themselves aren’t the only place where ESA can make eco-and-budget-friendly innovations, and some changes are happening now. The support and logistics infrastructure for the Ariane 6, for example, includes shipping the rocket stages aboard the Canopée, a wind-assisted hybrid cargo ship that can cut emissions by more than 20% – up to 30% depending on its speed – compared to a conventionally powered ship.

the Canopée, arriving in French Guiana in February, carrying the first Ariane 6 rocket for launch later this summer. Credit: ESA/CNES/Arianespace/Arianegroup/Optique Vidéo du CSG – S. Martin.

The Canopée delivered the first Ariane 6 to Kourou last month, arriving at port after a 10-day, 7,000km journey from mainland Europe in February.

The rocket now being prepared for flight within the vehicle assembly building will go vertical on the pad in the coming months.

Ariane 6’s first flight is set for no earlier than June 15. It will carry out a rideshare mission bringing multiple small spacecraft into orbit.

After that, the vehicle will have a steady launch cadence, with a series of flights scheduled for 2025 to carry upgraded satellites for Europe’s Galileo constellation (an independent GPS system). There are also plans to launch several deep space missions in the next few years, including ESA’s exoplanet hunting telescope PLATO, components of the Mars Sample Return infrastructure, and ESA’s Comet Interceptor mission.

“Ariane 6 stages having a BAL,” ESA.

The post Ariane 6 is Coming Together appeared first on Universe Today.

In 2008, astronomers with the SuperWASP survey spotted WASP-12b as it transited in front of its star. At the time, it was part of a new class of exoplanets (“Hot Jupiters”) discovered a little more than a decade before. However, subsequent observations revealed that WASP-12b was the first Hot Jupiter observed that orbits so closely to its parent star that it has become deformed. While several plausible scenarios have been suggested to explain these observations, a widely accepted theory is that the planet is being pulled apart as it slowly falls into its star.

Based on the observed rate of “tidal decay,” astronomers estimate that WASP-12b will fall into its parent star in about ten million years. In a recent study, astronomers with The Asiago Search for Transit Timing Variations of Exoplanets (TASTE) project presented an analysis that combines new spectral data from the La Silla Observatory with 12 years worth of unpublished transit light curves and archival data. Their results are consistent with previous observations that suggest WASP-12b is rapidly undergoing tidal dissipation and will be consumed by its star.

Their results were published in a paper titled “TASTE V. A new ground-based investigation of orbital decay in the ultra-hot Jupiter WASP-12b” that appeared on February 21st in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. The paper is the fifth in a series published by the TASTE project, a collaborative effort involving astronomers and astrophysicists from the National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF), the “Giuseppe Colombo” University Center for Space Studies and Activities (CISAS), and multiple Italian universities and observatories.

Artist’s impression of WASP-12b, a Hot Jupiter deformed by its close orbit to its star. Credit: NASA

WASP-12b was one of many Hot Jupiters discovered by the Wide Angle Search for Planets (WASP), an international consortium funded and operated by Warwick University and Keele University. In terms of exoplanet discoveries, WASP was second only to the Kepler mission and also relied on the Transit Method. This consists of monitoring stars for periodic dips in luminosity to infer the presence of planets and to constrain their size and orbital periods. Based on their observations of its F-type (yellow-white dwarf), the WASP survey determined it was a gas giant 1.465 times as massive as Jupiter with an orbital period of 1.1 days.

Pietro Leonardi, a PhD Student in Space science and technology at the Università di Trento was the lead author on the paper. As he told Universe Today via email, the discovery of Hot Jupiters (HJ) represented a major breakthrough in exoplanet studies:

“The first discovery of an exoplanet around a Solar-type star by Mayor & Queloz (1995) completely revolutionized how we thought planets should and could be found orbiting a star. As human beings, we often have a tendency to envision new concepts close to those we already understand. This cognitive bias is equally applicable to scientists, who are, after all, ordinary individuals.

“Until 1995, it was widely assumed that exoplanets—planets orbiting stars beyond our solar system—would resemble those in our own solar system. We expected to find large, gaseous giants like Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune residing at significant distances from their host stars, while smaller, rocky planets like Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars would occupy the inner regions.”

Astronomers have found another hot Jupiter in a polar orbit around its star. This illustration shows the exoplanet WASP-79 b following a polar orbit around its star. Credit: NASA/GSFC

The discovery of a massive gas giant orbiting very closely to its star shattered these expectations and forced astronomers to reevaluate their theories on planet formation and evolution. For instance, scientists had long held that exoplanet systems likely resembled the Solar System and that their planets formed close to where they orbited. In this scenario, rocky planets form closer to their suns while gas giants form in the outer reaches beyond the “Frost Line” – the boundary beyond which volatile elements (hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen) begin to freeze.

“It highlighted the fact that our Solar System is not representative of the typical planetary system in the universe; rather, it appears to be an outlier,” said Leonardi. However, WASP-12b stood apart from other HJs in that it was the only one that appeared to be experiencing variations in its orbit. Multiple scenarios were proposed for this, including the possibility that it was experiencing tidal decay (slowly falling into its star). As Leonardi explained:

“WASP-12b is a very extreme planet. It is indeed part of the sub-category called Ultra-hot Jupiters. The planet is very close to its host star, orbiting it in just 1.09 days and having a surface temperature of 2600 K. Due to its extreme vicinity to its host star, the planet feels a strong gravitational pull that strips part of its atmosphere of heavy metals, which create a disk around the star. When it was first discovered that WASP-12b had a changing orbit, the other explanations that were explored were the Rømer effect and Apsidal precession.”

In the former scenario, the timing variation was attributed to the star being closer to Earth in the direction of the line of sight. In the latter, it was due to a gradual rotation of the planet’s orbit. For their study, Leonardi and his colleagues presented a new analysis based on 28 previously unpublished transit light curves gathered by the Asiago Observatory between 2010 and 2022. This was combined with all the available archival data and updated high-resolution spectra obtained by the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher-North (HARPS-N) instrument on the ESO 3.6-meter telescope at the La Silla Observatory.

An artist’s conception of the hot Jupiter WASP-79b. Credit: NASA)

These observations allowed the team to confirm that the planet’s orbit is decaying and that its star will consume it sooner than expected – in 3 million years rather than ten. These results have effectively settled the debate about this planet’s peculiar orbit and present opportunities for follow-up studies. Said Leonardi:

“This study helps us to get closer to understanding the rare scenario of orbital tidal decay and gives us a perfect laboratory to study the star-planet interactions. The system is still yet to be uncovered in various aspects, for example we still need to understand how this fast tidal dissipation is possible. According to our theories the tidal dissipation we observe should not be possible in a star still in the main sequence. However, our precise stellar parameters inferred from the HARPS@TNG spectra confirm that the star is still in the main sequence.”

In the past thirty years, the field of exoplanet studies has experienced tremendous and accelerating growth. With more than 5,000 confirmed exoplanets available for study, the field is now transitioning from discovery to characterization. The more we learn about worlds beyond our Solar System, the more we can infer about the nature of planets in our Universe and how they form and evolve with time. Someday, this could lead to a new understanding of the nature of life itself and what conditions under which it can arise.

Further Reading: arXiv

The post This Hot Jupiter is Doomed to Crash Into its Star in Just Three Million Years appeared first on Universe Today.

At the end of their lives, most stars including the Sun will become white dwarfs. After a red dwarf or sun-like star consumes all the hydrogen and helium it can, the remains of the star will collapse under its own weight, shrinking ever more until the quantum pressure of electrons becomes strong enough to counter gravity. White dwarfs begin their days as brilliantly hot embers of degenerate matter and grow ever cooler and dimmer as they age.

Because a white dwarf doesn’t produce new energy through nuclear fusion, it has only remnant thermal energy to keep it warm. This fact allows astronomers to determine the age of a white dwarf by its temperature. Basically, the cooler a white dwarf is, the older it is. But there seem to be some exceptions. Astronomers have other ways to estimate the age of a white dwarf, such as comparing it to the age of the cluster of stars it’s in. They’ve found that some white dwarfs are a bit hotter than they should be. A new study may help explain why.

Schematic representation of the two scenarios of white dwarf crystallization. Credit: Sihao Cheng and Simon Blouin

It has to do with the way the interior of a white dwarf cools over time. In its early days, a white dwarf has an exterior solid crust with a fluid interior, similar to the structure of a planet such as Earth. The interior is a hot fluid of degenerate matter, but as it cools it can crystalize. It’s generally been thought that crystalization initiates at the core where pressure is greatest, and then expands outward as the star cools. This means that white dwarfs experience a fast initial cooling, then a crystalization period where the surface temperature is fairly constant, and finally a final cooling period after core crystalization is over.

This new study shows how crystalization can occur in a different way. Rather than bulk crystalization, small crystals can form within the warm interior. Just as ice crystals are less dense than the surrounding water, so are these initial crystals of white dwarf matter. And like ice particles, these crystals float upward from the core. As a result, the crystals form an insulating layer around the still-hot core. In this model, white dwarfs don’t cool as much initially, and they stay warmer longer. This means that some white dwarfs can appear much warmer and younger than they actually are, so astronomers can’t simply use temperature as an age measure for all white dwarfs.

It isn’t entirely clear why some white dwarfs crystalize from the core outward and why some form a crystal layer, but it is likely due to differences in composition. One clue comes from the fact that most white dwarfs form from a single old star, while other white dwarfs are formed during stellar mergers. The merger of white dwarfs could have a more diverse composition that encourages the formation of a crystal layer.

Reference: Bédard, Antoine, et al. “Buoyant crystals halt the cooling of white dwarf stars.” Nature (2024).

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The Pentagon office in charge of investigating UFO reports — now known officially as unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAPs — today provided its most detailed explanation for what it said were false or misconstrued claims of alien visitations over the decades.

The first volume of a historical record report released by the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO, in response to a congressional mandate did include a fresh disclosure: During the 2010s, U.S. government officials considered a proposed program code-named “Kona Blue” that would have looked into the possibility that extraterrestrial technology could be reverse-engineered. But the Department of Homeland Security rejected the idea because it lacked merit, the report said.

“It is critical to note that no extraterrestrial craft or bodies were ever collected — this material was only assumed to exist by Kona Blue advocates and its anticipated contract performers,” according to the report. The same assumptions were made by outside investigators who delved into UAP reports as part of an earlier Pentagon-funded program, AARO said.

One of the investigators involved in that program — which was known as the Advanced Aerospace Weapons System Application Program or the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AAWSAP/AATIP) — made clear that he’d continue trying to keep the alien angle in the public eye.

“Today the Pentagon and its current UAP investigative program, AARO, issued a public report that is intentionally dishonest, inaccurate and dangerously misleading,” Lue Elizondo, who helped spark renewed interest in UFO reports in 2017, said in a posting to X / Twitter. “Myself and others who are aware of the truth are going to keep working to help Congress in their efforts to achieve disclosure.”

But Mick West, a retired software engineer who specializes in analyzing UFO/UAP reports, said the newly released report shows how a belief in alien phenomena can be self-reinforcing. “A belief in the supernatural … is what led to the current UFO flap that AARO is trying to pour cold water on,” West said on X / Twitter.

The ups and downs of UFOs

The 63-page report traces government-funded efforts to investigate sightings of unidentified flying objects going back to before the 1947 Roswell UFO incident, which was the subject of a “Case Closed” report on the 50th anniversary in 1997. Pages and pages are devoted to recounting projects that are well-known to the UFO community, including Project Blue Book and the Condon Report.

AARO acknowledged that there was “about a 40-year gap” in official efforts to investigate UAP sightings after Project Blue Book was terminated in 1969. The efforts resumed in earnest in 2009, primarily due to the interest of the late Sen. Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat who was Senate majority leader at the time.

For several years, the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency funded the AAWSAP/AATIP’s investigation into anomalous sightings. The review of aerial sightings by military personnel was conducted by Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies, which was created by Nevada billionaire Robert Bigelow.

When the funding for AAWSAP/AATIP ended in 2012, some of the people who were associated with the project — including Elizondo — continued their work in other roles. They also unsuccessfully tried to persuade the Department of Homeland Security to set up the Kona Blue program.

It took until 2020 for the Department of Defense to get back into the business of official UFO/UAP investigations. A series of initiatives focused on the possibility that some anomalous sightings might be due to novel technologies developed by Russia or China that might pose a threat to national security. Perhaps the best-known sightings of that type were last year’s reports about a Chinese spy balloon that crossed the U.S. and was eventually shot down by an Air Force fighter jet.

Highlights from the UFO files

In its previous reports, AARO has said it found no evidence of extraterrestrial explanations for UAP sightings. Instead, the office has traced all but a few of the sightings to more mundane causes such as balloons, drones, aerial clutter and natural phenomena. It said that some of the alien claims misconstrued sensitive national security programs — and that a small number of sightings remained unexplained, but did not merit being considered evidence of extraterrestrial activity.

“All investigative efforts, at all levels of classification, concluded that most sightings were ordinary objects and phenomena and the result of misidentification,” the Pentagon’s press secretary, Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, said today in a statement about today’s report. “AARO assesses that all of the named and described alleged hidden UAP reverse-engineering programs provided by interviewees either do not exist; are misidentified authentic national security programs that are not related to extraterrestrial technology exploitation; or resolve to a disestablished program.” 

Today’s report addressed some oft-debated UAP cases:

• One of the people interviewed by AARO claimed that a military officer explained in detail how he touched an extraterrestrial spacecraft. But the officer, now retired, recounted a story about touching an F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter — and said that tale could have been misconstrued by the person who heard the story.
• Another interviewee claimed that he witnessed what he believed to be the testing of extraterrestrial technology at a government facility. AARO said that “almost certainly was an observation of an authentic, non-UAP-related technology test that strongly correlated in time, location and description provided in the interviewee’s account.”
• Yet another claim had to do with a metallic material that was reportedly tested by Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies. Some suggested that the material couldn’t be identified by scientists and might have had extraterrestrial origins. But the AARO said further tests found that the material was a “manufactured, terrestrial alloy and does not represent off-world technology or possess any exceptional qualities.” AARO said the sample is possibly of U.S. Air Force origin — and is primarily composed of magnesium, zinc and bismuth, plus trace elements including lead.

What’s next on the UAP frontier

AARO said that it’s continuing to investigate unresolved UAP cases. The historical review in today’s report takes the story only as far as last Oct. 31 — and information gathered since that time will be addressed in a second volume to come.

Today’s report notes that UAP investigations have been challenged by insufficient data and the limitations of sensor technologies. “In terms of military reporting the sensors on which UAP most frequently are captured are calibrated and optimized for combat,” AARO explained. “UAP are not routinely captured by exquisite, high-definition, multi-capability, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance collection platforms — a threshold which is often required to successfully resolve a case.”

To address that shortcoming, AARO is developing a new surveillance capability known as the Gremlin System, which should be able to track anomalous phenomena with hyperspectral imaging.

“We’re working with some of the government labs, such as the Department of Energy labs, and we have a great partner with Georgia Tech,” DefenseScoop quoted acting AARO Director Tim Phillips as saying. “And what we’re doing is developing a deployable, configurable sensor suite that we can put in Pelican cases.”

Phillips said the portable kit is being tested in Texas and will enable long-term collection of hyperspectral data in the field.

There’s also a chance that Congress will schedule a sequel to last summer’s House subcommittee hearing on UAPs, during which witnesses claimed that the Pentagon knew more than it was telling lawmakers. Today’s AARO report said such claims were in large part “the result of circular reporting from a group of individuals who believe this to be the case, despite the lack of any evidence.” But Rep. Tim Burchett, a Tennessee Republican who was in on last year’s hearing, criticized the report in a posting to X / Twitter:

So the people doing the cover up of #ufo #uap say they find no cover up classic self fulfilled prophesy. https://t.co/jrC8ZLuYTF

— Tim Burchett (@timburchett) March 8, 2024

The post Pentagon Report Rules Out UFO Cover-Up, But the Debate Goes On appeared first on Universe Today.

As long as it has existed as a genre, there has been a notable relationship between science fiction and science fact. Since our awareness of the Universe and everything in it has changed with time, so have depictions and representations in popular culture. This includes everything from space exploration and extraterrestrial life to extraterrestrial environments. As scientists keep pushing the boundaries of what is known about the cosmos, their discoveries are being related to the public in film, television, print, and other media.

In the field of science communication, however, there is a certain hesitancy to use science fiction materials as an educational tool. In a recent paper that appeared in the Journal of Science Communication (JCOM), a team from the St Andrews Centre for Exoplanet Science and the Space Research Institute (IWF) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences focused on a specific area of scientific study – extrasolar planets. After analyzing a multimedia body of science fiction works produced since the first confirmed exoplanet discovery, they found that depictions have become more realistic over time.

The team was led by Emma Johanna Puranen, a St Leonard’s Interdisciplinary Doctoral Scholar at the University of St Andrews with degrees in astronomy and history. She was joined by Emily Finer, a senior lecturer at the University of St Andrews and co-director of the interdisciplinary St Andrews Centre for Exoplanet Science; V Anne Smith, a senior lecturer in the School of Biology and associate dean curriculum for the faculty of Science at the University of St Andrews, and the IWF Director Christiane Helling. Together, they conducted a Bayesian network analysis of exoplanet representations before and after the discovery of actual exoplanets.

Artist’s concept of the exoplanet, LTT 1445Ac, which is a nearby Earth-size world that orbits a red dwarf star in a trinary system. Credit: NASA/ESA/L. Hustak (STScI)

The interrelationship between scientific discovery and their portrayal in science fiction is certainly well-known. However, that does not mean that the phenomenon is well-understood, and attempts to study it are still in their infancy. As part of her thesis work, Puranen and her colleagues sought to address this by documenting a key example. As she explained to Universe Today via email, it is difficult to pin down when the tradition of science informing science fiction began since its roots go rather deep:

“I would say it consciously goes back to the time in the early 20th century when the genre as we know it today was being defined. But in practice, it goes back further. Science and SF have always influenced each other. Shelley, for example, was inspired to write Frankenstein by what she read of contemporary experiments on galvanism [the therapeutic use of direct electric current].”

In addition, Puranen and her colleagues were motivated by a pervasive trend regarding science communication. This is the hesitancy on behalf of many communicators to avoid using science fiction as an educational tool, perhaps owing to a lack of clarity. “I think this happens because what is fact and what is fiction within SF is not clearly marked,” Puranen added. “One of the biggest challenges in science education already is addressing misconceptions about science that students come into the classroom with, so I can understand the hesitancy.”

For their study, she and her team began by looking at exoplanet representations since 1995, when the first exoplanet was discovered. This was the hot Hupiter 51 Pegasi b (Dimidium), a gas giant that orbits very closely to its parent star, located about 50 light-years away. The focus on exoplanets was key because of the incredible growth this field of study has experienced in recent years, ever since the launch of the Kepler mission (2009-2018). To date, 5,595 exoplanets have been confirmed in 4,160 systems, while another 10,146 candidates are awaiting confirmation).

This artist’s view shows the hot Jupiter exoplanet 51 Pegasi b (Dimidium), which orbits a star about 50 light-years from Earth in the constellation Pegasus. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser/Nick Risinger (skysurvey.org)

Puranen and her teammates consulted 142 science fiction works, including novels, films, television programs, podcasts, and video games. While some were recommended by team members (based on personal experience), others came from a crowd-sourced Google form, from which the team fact-checked entries. These were subjected to Bayesian network analysis, a quantitative tool traditionally used to illustrate probabilities based on certain variables – in this case, exoplanet discoveries. The parameters they focused on included characteristics like atmosphere, presence of native life, and so on.

Their analysis revealed something very interesting: since 1995, the portrayal of exoplanets has undergone a significant shift. Essentially, with the growing discovery of exoplanets, the way in which they have been represented in science fiction has become less Earth-like. Said Puranen:

“One thing that became pretty clear is that lots of SF exoplanets are pretty Earth-like. This makes sense, as SF is written by humans, for humans, usually about humans. Still, the Bayesian network showed that since the discovery of real exoplanets, both fictional exoplanets with established non-native human populations living there, and fictional exoplanets with intelligent native life, are becoming less likely.

“Both these traits are part of this positive cluster of Earth-like traits, so the fact that their negative links are the mediation between that cluster and the variable of before or after real exoplanet discovery is interesting. It could indicate a few things—it could be that writers are reading about discoveries of all these wildly un-Earth-like planets in real life and are writing less habitable worlds in their fiction, or it could be that they’re focusing more on worlds with unintelligent ecosystems. Either way, it’s definitely showing that SF worldbuilding responds to scientific discovery.”

The prospect of alien invasion has sent shivers down the spines of science fiction fans ever since H. G. Wells published his classic “The War of the Worlds” in 1897. Credit: Henrique Alvim Correa (cover art for the 1906 edition).

According to Puranen, this trend demonstrates how science fiction responds to scientific discovery. Past examples also demonstrate this close relationship. For example, how Mars has been portrayed in popular media has closely mirrored what scientists knew about the planet at the time. Prior to the Space Age, astronomical observations during the 19th century revealed several similarities between Mars and Earth, such as polar ice caps and contrasts in surface albedo (which was mistaken for land masses and oceans).

Along with linear fat were mistaken for canals and infrastructure, these observations led to the popular myth of a Martian civilization. Examples of this can be found in everything from The War of the Worlds (1898) and the Barsoon Series (1917-1948) to The Martian Chronicles (1950). But once robotic missions like Soviet Mars and NASA Mariner probes, and NASA’s Viking missions revealed the harsh nature of the Martian landscape, these myths were dispelled. After that, science fiction books focused on how Mars might someday become a second home for humanity, as exemplified by Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy.

The renewed interest in the human exploration century has also found representation in SF, such as Andy Weir’s The Martian. This interrelationship makes SF a potentially useful tool for illustrating the history of science and our evolving understanding of the Universe. As Puranen summarized, the study she and her team conducted could help this process by clarifying the nature of SF and how it has historically portrayed scientific discoveries in an accurate way:

“Evidencing that SF responds to scientific discovery is a first step towards incorporating it into curricula—a lot more work needs to be done, particularly I think more work in analyzing the scientific content of SF. There are people out there using SF texts in their science classrooms, mostly on a case-by-case basis—I think what our study allows people to do is place works within a broader context of the genre.

“The Bayesian network can help people compare how various texts address various scientific contexts, how SF reflects the contemporary science of the time in which it was written, and tailor their use of SF in the classroom. Personally, I think it has the potential to be an excellent tool to introduce concepts and inspire readers to want to learn more.”

Further Reading: Space Daily, Journal of Science Communication

The post Science Fiction is Learning About Exoplanets From Science appeared first on Universe Today.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), human activities have significantly impacted the planet. As global greenhouse gas emissions (mainly carbon dioxide) have continued to increase, so too have global temperatures – with severe ecological consequences. Between 2011 and 2020, global surface temperatures rose by an estimated 1.07 °C (2.01 °F) above the average in 1850–1900. At this rate, temperatures could further increase by 1.5 to 2 °C (2.7 to 3.6 °F) in the coming decades, depending on whether we can achieve net zero by 2050.

Unfortunately, the data for the past year is not encouraging. According to the 2023 Global Carbon Budget (GCB), an annual assessment of Earth’s carbon cycle, emissions in 2023 continued to rise by 1.1 percent compared to the previous year. This placed the total fossil fuel emissions from anthropogenic sources at 36.8 billion metric tons (over 40 US tons) of carbon dioxide, with an additional 4.1 billion metric tons (4.5 US tons) added by deforestation, extreme wildfires, and other sources. This trend indicates we are moving away from our goals and that things will get worse before they get better!

Carbon budgets are essential for assessing humanity’s impact on the planet and implementing mitigation strategies. The budget quantifies how much carbon was added to the atmosphere from fossil fuel use, land-use change, and other factors relative to how much carbon was removed by the planet’s carbon cycle. This refers to how our planet and its ecosystems recycle carbon, which keeps carbon dioxide levels in our atmosphere within certain parameters and ensures temperatures remain stable over time.

Carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere if half of global-warming emissions are not absorbed. Credit: NASA/JPL/GSFC

For eons, this balance was maintained by photosynthetic plants, organisms, and Earth’s oceans, which absorbed CO2 from the atmosphere. Meanwhile, geological forces (i.e., mantle convection) sequestered it in the Earth’s crust as carbonate rocks. Since the Industrial Revolution, fossil fuel consumption has sharply increased, which has become exponentially worse since the mid-20th century. In addition, the growth of global populations since the 19th century has also seen a commensurate increase in land clearance and ecological destruction.

In short, emissions increased rapidly while Earth’s natural sequestration mechanisms were simultaneously being disrupted. The Global Carbon Budget was established to analyze these trends and prepare reports that inform organizations and help guide climate policy development. This year’s report relied on several data sources, the most notable of which were inventories of emissions collected by governments and energy agencies. Satellite data was provided by NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) instrument to estimate the flux of carbon between the land and atmosphere.

CO2 concentrations have increased from 278 parts per million (ppm) in 1750 to 420 ppm in 2023. In addition to carbon emissions from transportation, power generation, and manufacturing, major contributors this year included the extreme wildfire season in Canada. The data also indicates that the average global surface temperature in 2023 was 1.2 °C (2.1 °F) warmer than the average for NASA’s baseline period (1951-1980), making it the hottest year on record. This is part of a trend where the past ten years (2014-2023) were either the hottest year on record or tied with another year during that same period.

Based on climate modeling and data from the Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS), researchers at NASA also create visualizations that illustrate how carbon dioxide is produced and stored every year. The visualization below is based on the most recent full year of available information (2021) and includes data on vegetation, human population density, infrastructure, and wildfires to depict how carbon dioxide was added and removed from the atmosphere. The carbon dioxide emissions are color-coded based on source to show the two main contributors and removal systems.

These include fossil fuel emissions (yellow), burning biomass (red), land ecosystems (green), and the ocean (blue). The Earth’s crust and its oceans are both carbon sinks, meaning they remove more carbon from the atmosphere (and store it) than they emit. However, as the visualization shows, they can also be sources under certain circumstances, depending on the time and place. Surprisingly, the proportion of carbon dioxide that remains in the atmosphere (the airborne fraction) has remained remarkably stable over the past 60 years, even with the continued increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.

However, scientists question whether and for how long that stability will continue. Ben Poulter, a co-author of the report and scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, summarized in a recent NASA press release:

“Emissions are heading [in] the wrong direction that we need to limit global warming. Amazingly, the ocean and land continue to absorb about half of the carbon we emit. Only about 44 percent of emissions stay in the atmosphere each year, slowing the rate of climate change, but causing ocean acidification and altering how land ecosystems function.”

In 2023, a study led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) analyzed carbon storage in the ocean over two decades. Titled “Decadal Trends in the Oceanic Storage of Anthropogenic Carbon From 1994 to 2014,” this study indicated that this crucial carbon sink could be losing some of its storage capacity. The authors concluded that the ocean has likely slowed its absorption because it has already accumulated substantial amounts of CO2 and that changes in global ocean circulation (due to temperature increases) may be reducing the amount transferred from subsurface waters to the ocean floor.

The chart below, taken from the 2023 GCB report, illustrates how the absorption rates of carbon sinks have changed over time. The report also emphasizes how carbon dioxide emissions are declining slightly in some regions, including Europe and the United States, but are still rising globally. The countries with the largest increase in emissions in 2023 were India and China, reflecting the ongoing “economic miracle” these nations have undergone in recent decades. Based on these latest numbers, there is doubt that world governments will meet their climate goals, as spelled out in the Paris Agreement.

Visualization of annual carbon emissions vs. storage worldwide. Credit: NASA Goddard

Signed in December 2015, delegates from the 196 signatory countries committed to keeping average global temperature increases “well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels” while “pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C.” According to the GCB team, the current emissions level suggests that the planet’s current carbon budget for keeping temperatures within this range is running out. They also claim that, at present, “there is a 50 percent chance global warming will exceed 1.5°C consistently in about seven years.”

While it may not sound like a lot, this represents an average increase (both annually and globally), and the difference between these two scenarios is stark. As the IPCC explained in its A6 report, an increase of 1.5 °C would lead to more extreme weather (heavy rains and severe flooding), mass die-offs, and the extinction of many animal species. It would also mean that 8% of all farmland and 3 to 41% of fisheries worldwide would be lost due to increased famine and disruption to Earth’s oceans. These risks increase sharply with an average increase of 2 °C, with the projected extinction of up to 18% of all species on land.

Above all, it is important to note that this is not the worst-case scenario. According to the AR6 report, a temperature increase of 4 °C (7.2 °F) would result in irreversible damage to the planet and its species:

“[M]ass mortalities and extinctions are expected that will irreversibly alter globally important areas, including those that host exceptionally rich biodiversity such as tropical coral reefs and cold-water kelp forests and the world’s rainforests. Even at lower levels of warming of 2°C or less, polar fauna (including fish, penguins, seals, and polar bears), tropical coral reefs and mangroves will be under serious threat.”

Data collected by NASA and other federal agencies are now available through the recently launched U.S. Greenhouse Gas Center. This multi-agency effort consolidates information from observations and models to provide decision-makers with one location for data and analysis.

Further Reading: NASA Earth Observatory

The post Satellite Measurements Show That Global Carbon Emissions are Still Rising appeared first on Universe Today.

Astronomers using the Very Large Telescope in Chile have now completed one of the largest surveys ever to hunt for planet-forming discs. They were able to find dozens of dusty regions around young stars, directly imaging the swirling gas and dust which hints at the locations of these new worlds.

Just like the wide variety in the types of exoplanets that have been discovered, these new data and stunning images show how protoplanetary systems are surprisingly diverse, with different sizes and shapes of disks.

In research presented in three new papers, researchers imaged 86 young stars and found 62 of them had a wide range of star-forming regions surrounding them. The astronomers say this study provides a wealth of data and unique insights into how planets arise in different regions of our galaxy.

Planet-forming discs around young stars and their location within the gas-rich cloud of Taurus, roughly 600 light-years from Earth. The background image shows an infrared view of Taurus captured by the Infrared Astronomical Satellite. Credit: ESO/A.Garufi et al.; IRAS

“Some of these discs show huge spiral arms, presumably driven by the intricate ballet of orbiting planets,” said Christian Ginski, from the University of Galway, Ireland, and lead author of one of the three papers published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

“Others show rings and large cavities carved out by forming planets, while yet others seem smooth and almost dormant among all this bustle of activity,” said Antonio Garufi, an astronomer at the Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory, Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF), and lead author on another paper.

As of this writing, there are 5595 confirmed exoplanets that have been discovered, with more than another 5000 candidate planets yet to be confirmed. From these strange new worlds, we’ve found a wide variety of planetary systems, very different from our own. In order to understand this variety, a large international group of astronomers combined forces to observe the dust- and gas-rich discs that envelop young stars, where the very early stages of planet formation takes place.

Planet-forming discs around young stars and their location within the gas-rich cloud of Orion, roughly 1600 light-years from Earth. The background image shows an infrared view of Orion captured by the Infrared Astronomical Satellite. Credit: ESO/P.-G. Valegård et al.; IRAS

The 86 stars studied were in three different star-forming regions of our galaxy: Taurus and Chamaeleon I, both about 600 light-years from Earth, and Orion, a gas-rich cloud about 1,600 light-years from us that is known to be the birthplace of several stars more massive than the Sun.

In total, the team observed 43 stars in the Taurus region, and found planet-forming disks around 39 of them; 20 stars in the Chamaeleon I region, detecting discs around 13; and 23 stars in the Orion region, with planet-forming discs around 10 of them.

They used the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch instrument (SPHERE) mounted on ESO’s VLT, and were able to image discs around stars with masses as low as half the mass of the Sun, which are typically too faint for most other instruments. Additional data for the survey were obtained using the VLT’s X-shooter instrument, which allowed astronomers to determine how young and how massive the stars are. The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), also in Chile provided data on the amount of dust surrounding some of the stars.

One of the key findings from the observations of young stars in Orion showed that stars that are in systems with two or more stars were less likely to have large planet-forming discs. The astronomers said this is a significant result given that, unlike our Sun, most stars in our galaxy have companions. Additionally, they found that any uneven appearance of the planet-forming discs suggests the possibility of massive planets embedded within them, which could be causing the discs to warp and become misaligned.

Planet-forming discs around young stars and their location within the gas-rich cloud of Chamaeleon I, roughly 600 light-years from Earth. The stunning images of the discs were captured using the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) instrument mounted on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). The background image shows an infrared view of Chamaeleon I captured by the Herschel Space Observatory. Credit: ESO/C. Ginski et al.; ESA/Herschel

The researchers say they will continue to study the data gathered, but so far the beautiful images and insightful data have provided a wealth of information to help study the mysteries of planet formation.

“It is almost poetic that the processes that mark the start of the journey towards forming planets and ultimately life in our own Solar System should be so beautiful,” concludes Per-Gunnar Valegård, a doctoral student at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, who led the Orion study.

Further reading:
ESO press release 
Papers on Chamaeleon, Taurus, Orion

The post Astronomers Image 62 Newly-Forming Planetary Systems appeared first on Universe Today.

What to watch for on April 8th as totality sweeps across the continent.

The time has come. Seven years ago on an August afternoon, the shadow on the Moon swept across the United States. Now we’re in the one month stretch, leading up to the big ticket astronomical event for 2024: the April 8th total solar eclipse spanning North America.

This is the last total solar eclipse for the ‘lower 48 states’ until August 23rd, 2044. Totality does nick remote northwest corner of the state of Alaska on March 30th, 2033. The path of totality on April 8th spans Mexico, the contiguous United States from Texas to Maine, and the Canadian Maritimes.

The path of the April 8th, 2024 total solar eclipse. Credit: Michael Zeiler/Great American Eclipse

The eclipse will be partial from southeast Alaska, all the way down to the very northwest edge of South America. Hawaii will see a rising partial. On the other end, Iceland and the very western coast of Ireland will see the reverse underway at sunset.

A rising partial solar eclipse, over NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building. Credit: Dave Dickinson A Penumbral Prelude

The first eclipse season of 2024 actually begins on the night of Sunday/Monday March 24/25. A penumbral lunar eclipse that night puts the whole celestial game into play. This subtle eclipse is visible from the Americas. Don’t expect to see much more than a slight ragged darkening on the southwest limb of the Moon around 7:12 Universal Time.

Though it’s a slight affair, this penumbral eclipse means that the nodes where the Moon’s path intersect the ecliptic are aligning for the total solar eclipse two weeks later. Though the 2017 event was an ascending node eclipse, the 2024 one is a descending node event, crisscrossing the path.

The path of the April 8th eclipse. NASA/GSFC/A.T. Sinclair Tales of the Saros

This eclipse is member 30 of the 71 eclipses in solar saros series 139. This saros began way back on May 17th, 1501, and produced its first fully total solar eclipse (as opposed to a hybrid annular-total) on December 21st, 1843. It’ll cease doing so with the brief total solar eclipse of March 26th, 2601, and finally end on July 3rd, 2763.

A photograph of coronal streamers seen during the 1898 eclipse, another saros 139 member. Credit: Public Domain image.

One famous alumni for saros 139 occurred one exeligmos (three saroses or 54 years) ago on March 7th, 1970. This eclipse moved right up the U.S. East Coast in a path just slightly east of the upcoming eclipse. The three saros period is crucial, as each pass shifts the path 120 degrees in longitude westward, and three brings it nearly back around the globe full circle. The 1970 eclipse is one of two suspects referenced in Carly Simon’s song You’re so Vain… and the April 8th eclipse passes over the very tip of northern Nova Scotia. Will someone once again take their “Learjet to Nova Scotia, to see a total eclipse of the Sun?”

To be sure, we enjoy living in an epoch on a planet where total solar eclipses can occur… but this won’t always be the case. The Moon is slowly receding from the Earth, meaning that in about 600 million years time, all solar eclipses will be partial or annular only. Already, in the current 5,000 year epoch, annulars are now more common than totals. We’re also not the only place in the solar system where you could stand and see a moon versus the Sun in a close fit; the surfaces of the Jovian moons witness something similar about twice a decade.

Chasing the Shadow of the Moon

On Monday April 8th, the action begins when the penumbral (partial) shadow of the Moon first touches down over the South Pacific at 15:42 Universal Time (UT). Then, the inner umbral shadow touches down over the south-central Pacific at 16:42 UT, sweeping its way to the northeast. The shadow then first makes landfall over the Pacific coast of Mexico at 18:09 UT, and reaches its maximum duration of 4 minutes and 28 seconds over northern Mexico just shy of the Texas border.

This eclipse is on the long side of medium, with a maximum totality of just over three minutes shy of the maximum 7 minutes 32 seconds possible.

The 198 kilometer-wide shadow then continues to sweep 2,517 kilometers per hour to the northeast, intersecting the path of the 2017 eclipse over the states of Missouri, Illinois and Kentucky around 19:00 UT. Continuing its trek, the shadow then ranges over Lake Erie, northern New England and the Canadian Maritime provinces until departs the Earth over the North Atlantic at 19:55 UT. The final partial phases of the eclipse wrap up at 20:52 UT.

Millions live along the path of totality or within an easy day drive from the path. Major cities, including Dallas-Fort Worth, Indianapolis and Buffalo are all in the eclipse path. It’s well worth it to make the trip to the path to witness a total solar eclipse; even a deep 99% partial (such as an annular eclipse) is still pretty bright, something you might not notice otherwise.

“We urge anyone who can to go inside the path of total solar eclipse on April 8,” Michael Zeiler (Great American Eclipse) told Universe Today. “It will be an amazing experience when the sunlight suddenly disappears and the Sun’s stunning corona shimmers in the darkened sky. A total solar eclipse is nature’s most beautiful sight and you will never regret the effort to go see totality. If hotels are booked, stay with a friend or relative or go camping.”

“If someone in a location of 95% partial solar eclipse and says they will see most of the interesting phenomena, sorry but they’re wrong,” says Zeiler. “You have to be inside the path of totality with clear skies to see the full glory of totality. It’s the difference between watching the World Series final game in person or staying in a car in the stadium parking lot listening to the radio.”

Eclipse Safety

Proper safety precautions must be adhered to during all partial phases of the eclipse. This means covering finder-scopes, and either projecting the eclipsed Sun or using eclipse glasses meant for solar viewing. Approved glasses are stamped ISO 12312-2-2015 on the arms. Check those 2017 eclipse glasses in the daylight for cracks or pinholes before using them on eclipse day. NASA has a good page on eclipse safety, and tips on building a pinhole projector.

Eclipse safety practiced during totality in 2017. Credit: Myscha Theriault Wild Card Weather

We should know just what the weather might do about a week out from eclipse day. Likewise, we should start to have an idea of just how photogenic the partially eclipsed Sun will be in terms of sunspots, with a peek at what’s starting to rotate into view around April 1st. We’re nearing maximum for Solar Cycle 25, so we could be in for a fairly active Sun.

Best bets for clear skies are on Texas and Mexico, though April cloud cover can be fickle along the entire track. Keep in mind, you don’t need a crystal clear sky to see the eclipse; just a good view of the Sun. We had memorable views of the partially eclipsed Sun in 2017 leading up to totality, filtered though an approaching cloud bank.

Mobility and road access is key on eclipse day. Range and options dwindle hours prior as to where to head to to observe. NOAA’s GOES-East is a great site to see how the potential cloud cover situation is developing, come eclipse day. Don’t despair if clouds thwart the view: nearly every eclipse chaser has at least one story of the one that got away, and plans made to head to the next.

As the partial phases deepen, watch for crescent Suns dappling the ground. These are cast though natural pinhole projectors such as gaps in tree leaves and lattice-work. Spaghetti strainers or cheese graters are great tools for replicating this effect. Projecting the Sun back on a high contrast surface such as a piece of white paper can really enhance the view.

Projecting the annular eclipse in 2023. Credit: Dave Dickinson What to Expect During Totality

If it’s your first time experiencing totality, I’d advise you to simply enjoy the experience. The scant few minutes of totality goes by pretty quickly. Most people are surprised by the abrupt transition from broad daylight, to an eerie otherworldly twilight. You can drop the glasses as totality begins, and note the glow that circles the horizon. Jupiter and Venus will be visible near the eclipsed Sun. Also, watch for the +1st magnitude stars Aldebaran, Betelgeuse and -1st magnitude Sirius, all above the general horizon. Imagers may be treated views of Comet 12P Pons-Brooks, just two weeks from perihelion.

Sky at totality as seen from Buffalo, New York. Credit: Stellarium

Fun fact: comets have been discovered during eclipses, as occurred on November 1st, 1948.

Totality is the only time you’ll see the corona, the ethereal outermost atmosphere of the Sun. The streamers of the corona can look different from one eclipse to the next. Seasoned eclipse chasers can actually tell which eclipse a given image is from, based on the appearance of the corona.

Totality stages, seen in 2017. Credit: Eliot Herman

Temperatures may drop, and nocturnal wildlife may be briefly fooled by the onset of a false dusk. In 2017, we suddenly faced an onslaught of mosquitoes as totality fell over the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina.

As totality deepens, ask yourself: what would you think, centuries or millennia ago, if you were going about your daily business and such an event occurred, without warning?

These days, it is possible to nab a quick photo during totality with a smartphone camera. Be sure to shoot in RAW/Pro mode, and have your settings at the ready. Totality comes and goes very quickly. Here’s a great link to shooting an eclipse with your smartphone, and DSLR settings for totality. Check out this amazing smartphone eclipse video, courtesy of Tom Kerss:

pic.twitter.com/Tws1nbnWbN

— Tom Kerss FRAS (@tomkerss) March 6, 2024

The reappearance of the ’diamond ring’ effect as sunlight streams down the valleys along the lunar limb signals that its time to put the eclipse glasses back on. Folks along the edge of the path may witness a string of similar flashing effects known as Baily’s Beads. Key sites may also see the elusive ‘double diamond ring’ effect.

Chasing Eclipses Worldwide

Bitten by the ‘eclipse bug?’ The next total solar eclipse isn’t until August 12th, 2026 across Greenland, Iceland, and northern Spain. Incidentally, Spain becomes totality central after 2024. Two more eclipses grace the Iberian peninsula: a total on August 2nd, 2027 and an annular on January 26th, 2028.

Eclipses worldwide for the coming decade. Credit: Michael Zeiler/Great American Eclipse

Lots of amateur and professional projects are also underway leading up to the eclipse. We also typically see amazing views of the eclipse from space. These include views from ESA’s Proba-2 mission, NOAA’s GOES satellites, and from the International Space Station.

One of NASA’s eclipse chasing WB-57 aircraft. Credit: NASA

Also, expect NASA to livestream the event, come eclipse day.

And me? In an act of astronomical hubris, I’m once again tempting clouds and heading to northern Maine come eclipse day. This one has a special significance for us. It’s the only time that totality graces my hometown of Mapleton, Maine for this century. My rationale is, if we’re clouded out, we’ll then have an argument to chase after the next one…

Good luck, good eclipse chasing to all that live in or are headed to the path of totality, and clear skies!

The post Into Totality: Our Complete Guide to the April 8th Total Solar Eclipse Across North America appeared first on Universe Today.

When a galaxy runs out of gas and dust, the process of star birth stops. That takes billions of years. But, there’s a galaxy out there that was already dead when the Universe was only 700 billion years old. What happened to it?

That’s what an international team of astronomers wants to know. “The first few hundred million years of the Universe was a very active phase, with lots of gas clouds collapsing to form new stars,” said Tobias Looser from the Kavli Institute for Cosmology at the University of Cambridge. “Galaxies need a rich supply of gas to form new stars, and the early universe was like an all-you-can-eat buffet.”

So, when the galaxy JADES-GS-z7-01-QU showed up in a JWST observation, it didn’t exhibit much evidence of ongoing star formation. (JADES stands for JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey.) It’s in what astronomers refer to as a “quenched” state and looks like star formation started and quickly stopped. Figuring out why this happened to the young galaxy is an important step in cosmology. Why did it stop creating stars? And, were the factors that affect star formation the same then as they are today?

Composite image of the GOODS-South field where galaxy JADES-GS-z7-01-QU lies. This is part of a deep survey using two 8.2-meter telescopes. JWST later zeroed in on a small portion of this field.
(Credit : ESO/M Hayes) When a Galaxy Stops Forming Stars

Star-formation quenching is something astronomers don’t expect to happen quickly. “It’s only later in the universe that we start to see galaxies stop forming stars, whether that’s due to a black hole or something else,” said Dr Francesco D’Eugenio, also from the Kavli Institute for Cosmology and a co-author with Looser on a recent paper about JADES-GS-z7-01-QU.

Star birth usually begins as clouds of gas coalesce together. Gas-rich regions, including galaxies, are prime spots for star-birth nurseries. JWST data about JADES-GS-z7-01-QU shows that this baby galaxy experienced a very intense period of star formation shortly after it began forming (after the Epoch of Reionization). For somewhere between 30 to 90 million years, it was ablaze with star formation. Then, suddenly, it stopped.

That’s not surprising—although astronomers aren’t sure why it stopped. Clearly, it ran out of gas. Maybe a supermassive black hole at its heart gobbled up much of the available “star stuff”. The black hole’s rapidly moving winds and jets could also have shoved a great deal of the star-birth material completely out of the galaxy. It’s also possible that the very rapid pace of star formation that JADES-GS-z7-01-QU experienced simply used up the supply. That’s not impossible, according to Looser. “Everything seems to happen faster and more dramatically in the early universe, and that might include galaxies moving from a star-forming phase to dormant or quenched,” he said.

Figuring out the Answer

It’s not clear from the current JWST data what happened to this little galaxy back at the dawn of time. Astronomers are still probing the data. “We’re not sure if any of those scenarios can explain what we’ve now seen with Webb,” said paper co-author Professor Roberto Maiolino. “Until now, to understand the early Universe, we’ve used models based on the modern universe. But now that we can see so much further back in time, and observe that the star formation was quenched so rapidly in this galaxy, models based on the modern universe may need to be revisited.”

The epoch of reionization was when light from the first stars could travel through the early Universe. At this time, galaxies began assembling, as did black holes. The young galaxy JADES-GS-z7-01-QU went through a star burst phase during this time, and then stopped forming stars. Credit: Paul Geil/Simon Mutch/The University of Melbourne

That means more observations using JWST. “We’re looking for other galaxies like this one in the early universe, which will help us place some constraints on how and why galaxies stop forming new stars,” said D’Eugenio. “It could be the case that galaxies in the early universe ‘die’ and then burst back to life – we’ll need more observations to help us figure that out.”

There’s one other possibility that astronomers will want to probe. JADES-GS-z7-01-QU looked dead at the time of its life when JWST observed it. But, it’s possible that the star-birth quenching was only a temporary thing. Maybe it was caused by periodic outflows of star-stuff material to interstellar space (driven by the black hole in the nucleus). Other galaxies have also been observed to be taking a star-birth break, but they’re much more massive than this one.

Perhaps JADES-GS-z7-01-QU started up the star-forming factory later in its history. In that case, it could well have grown much more massive in later epochs of cosmic history. And, this provides an intriguing idea: perhaps other “quenched” galaxies also took a break, then got a massive infusion of gas—perhaps through collisions with other galaxies—to create later generations of stars. Future JWST observations should uncover more of these galaxies and that should allow astronomers to study their quenched phases in more detail.

For More Information

Astronomers Spot Oldest ‘Dead’ Galaxy Yet Observed
A Recently Quenched Galaxy 700 Million Years After the Big Bang
A Recently Quenched Galaxy 700 Million Years After the Big Bang (arXiv preprint)

The post This Galaxy Was Already Dead When the Universe Was Only 700 Million Years Old appeared first on Universe Today.

NASA’s Perseverance rover is busy exploring the Martian surface and collecting samples for eventual return to Earth. But the rover recently took some time to gaze upward and observe the heavens. Using Mastcam-Z, the rover’s primary science camera, Perseverance captured Phobos, Deimos, and Mercury as they transited in front of the Sun.

Phobos and Deimos are unusual. They’re lumpy and are often referred to as ‘potato-shaped.’ They’re quite close to their planet as moons go, and they’re most likely captured objects, either asteroids or chunks of debris from the Solar System’s early days. They’re also small for primary moons, and both are tidally locked to Mars.

They share the same composition as carbonaceous chondrite asteroids and also have low albedoes. Both those traits bolster the captured asteroid argument. Phobos has the more unstable orbit of the two, and that reflects a more recent capture. Some think that Phobos and Deimos may have been a single object that only broke into two when it was captured.

But, some aspects of Phobos go against the capture theory. It contains some of the same phyllosilicate minerals that Mars does. This points to an alternate formation. A powerful impact could’ve lofted Martian debris into orbit, and the debris could’ve coagulated together to form the small moon. That may have been how Earth’s Moon formed.

On the other hand, both moons have circular orbits near the Martian equator. That hints at a more complex past, including an impact or the involvement of a third body.

The animation below shows Phobos transiting in front of the Sun.

via GIPHY

Phobos, in particular, may be in trouble. It’s already the closest moon to any planet in the Solar System, and its orbit is lowering, slowly bringing it closer to Mars. At some point, around 50 million years from now, it’ll breach the Roche limit. Then it’ll either crash directly into Mars or it’ll break apart and form a dust ring around the planet. Either way, it’s game over.

Deimos’ future is different. While Phobos orbits at an altitude of about 6000 km (3700 miles), Deimos is much further away. It orbits at an altitude of about 23,500 km (14,600 miles). So, while Phobos is drawing closer to Mars and to its own eventual destruction, Deimos is slowly drifting away. In the distant future, Mars will lose Deimos.

The animation below shows Deimos transiting the Sun. This video is sped up because Deimos takes more than two minutes to transit.

via GIPHY

NASA’s Mars rovers have captured many of Phobos and Deimos’ transits over the years. There’s more to the effort than just their novelty. Repeatedly capturing these transits informs scientists about their orbits over time.

Mars and Deimos are odd and mysterious. Monitoring them as they transit could help slowly dispel some of the mystery. What we really need are samples.

Russia sent a sample mission to Phobos with the unfortunate name of Phobos-Grunt. They launched it in 2011, but rocket burns needed to send it to the moon failed, and the craft eventually plunged to its destruction in the Pacific Ocean. (For some reason, Roscosmos tried to blame foreign saboteurs, by which everyone assumed he meant the USA.)

Japan is planning to launch a mission to Mars’ moon in 2026. It’s called the Martian Moons eXploration mission, or MMX, and it’ll obtain a sample of Phobos and return it to Earth in 2031.

This illustration shows JAXA’s MMX spacecraft with Mars and Phobos. If all goes well, the mission will return samples from Phobos to Earth in 2031. Image Credit: JAXA

Those samples could help us finally determine where the moons came from.

Perseverance also watched as Mercury transited the Sun. The images are here.

The post Perseverance Sees Phobos, Deimos and Mercury Passing in Front of the Sun appeared first on Universe Today.

Technosignature research is heating up, with plenty of papers speculating on the nature, and sometimes the longevity, of signals created by technically advanced extraterrestrial civilizations. While we haven’t found any so far, that isn’t to say that we won’t, and a better understanding of what to look for would undoubtedly help. Enter a new paper by Amedeo Balbi and Claudio Grimaldi, two professors at the Universita di Roma Tor Vergata and the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, respectively. They have taken a statistical model to the problem of understanding how old a technosignature might be before we are likely to find it – and their answer is, surprisingly young.

We’ve reported before on how another recent paper thought that any civilization that created a technosignature that we can see is likely to be much older than ours. Simply put, technosignatures can last a long, long time. Over those long periods, the technosignatures can travel to places that are farther away. Given the extreme longevity of some of these civilizations, it turns out we are more likely to come across a technosignature that has been around for a very long time rather than one just created recently.

However, one big assumption in the previous paper is that the technosignature would last for extremely long periods. That assumption might not always hold, as many technosignatures have to be actively supported, such as radio signals or artificial lights on a planet. Given the active support these require, it’s likely they wouldn’t be supported anywhere near as long as implied by the previous paper.

Fraser discusses the idea of technosignatures.

Drs. Balbi and Grimaldi instead use a statistical technique to more accurately reflect what they think the actual situation in the universe would be – civilizations actively support their technosignatures for some time but let them die off once they are no longer beneficial to the civilization itself – essentially eliminating our chance to find them. From a statistical point of view, this clusters the vast majority of observable technosignatures to the far left of the x-axis, where that axis is defined as the longevity of a civilization. 

We could see some obvious technosignature that have been around for billions of years and don’t require any active support, such as the thermoradiation of a Dyson sphere. But it’s much more likely that, if we do see one, it is actively being supported by an active civilization. 

In the paper, the researchers perform a more rigorous statistical analysis, including invoking an idea known as Lindy’s Law. That law is somewhat counterintuitive, as it states that the life expectancy of a technology is roughly proportional to its age. In other words, as a technology ages, its life expectancy increases. However, it has been proven in multiple scenarios and has various causes. 

Dr. David Kipping, the author of a previous paper discussing how long technosignatures might last, discusses the research he did on his channel.
Credit – Cool Worlds YouTube Channel

The impact it has on this particular analysis is clear – the probability distribution of the length of a technically advanced civilization’s existence should be skewed per Lindy’s Law to show that short-lived technosignatures are much more common than long-lived ones.

At the moment, this is all theoretical, and it would be interesting to see what Dr. Kipping, the author of the original paper arguing for longer-lived societies, has to say about this alternative view of the statistical treatment. Maybe it will be featured on an episode of his Cool Worlds channel soon. Until then, the hard work of SETI data collection will continue apace, and the theoreticians will continue fine-tuning their statistical models, hoping to one day catch a glimpse of something out there.

Learn More:
Balbi & Grimaldo – Technosignatures Longevity and Lindy’s Law
Kipping, Frank and Scharf – Contact inequality: first contact will likely be with an older civilization
UT – The First Civilization We Contact Will Have Been Around Much Longer Than Humanity
UT – After all of This Time Searching for Aliens, is it The Zoo Hypothesis or Nothing?

Lead Image:
DALL-E Image of an advanced civilization.

The post How Long Will Advanced Civilizations Try to Communicate With Us? appeared first on Universe Today.

I always think of planispheres when I think of astrolabes! Navigators used these ancient devices (astrolabes not planispheres) to provide an accurate map of the stars in the sky. To use them you would match up the metal plates to the sky and you could calculate your location. Astrolabes date back to 220BC but one with Hebrew and Arabic markings was found and it is thought to have originated back in the 11th Century.

Historian at Christ’s College, Cambridge, Dr Federica Gigante came across the astrolabe by chance in an image on the website of Fondazione Museo Minisccalchi-Erizzo in Verona. Dr Gigante published an article in Nuncius (the Journal of the Material and Visual History of Science) and suggests that the ancient device had been changed a number of times. After it was made, it seems to have been physically adapted, translated and corrected over the centuries by Muslim, Jewish and Christian sky watchers from Spain, North Africa and Italy. 

Having seen the astrolabe online, Dr Gigante visited the museum to study it up close. She reports “When I visited the museum and studied the astrolabe up close, I noticed that not only was it covered in beautifully engraved Arabic inscriptions but that I could see faint inscriptions in Hebrew. I could only make it out in the raking light entering from the window. I thought I might be dreaming but I kept seeing more and more. It was very exciting.”

The astrolabe has a feature known as a ‘rete’ which is a pierced disk that represents a map of the sky. The position of the stars upon the disk reveal that they were added on the instrument in the late 11th Century making it one of the earliest astrolabes made in Spain.  Dr Gigante is well placed to analyse it as she is an expert on Islamic scientific instrument. The engravings and arrangement of the scales reminded her of instruments made in the Muslim ruled area of Spain known as Al-Andalus.  In her article she reports it may have been made in Toledo which would have been a place of co-existence between Muslims, Jews and Christians at the time.

Careful study revealed Jewish names in Arabic script which suggested it had been used in the Sephardi Jewish community where Arabic was the language of the day. There was a second plate which had been added after the astrolabe had been made and had been inscribed for North African users. It may have been used therefore, in Morocco in Egypt. Further to the African, Arabic and Jewish links the Hebrew markings suggested it had left Spain and North Africa and found its way to Italy where it was likely to be used by the Jewish Diaspora community that would use the Hebrew language instead. 

It seems this insignificant looking, hand held device has had a rich history and that history seems to have been revealed as its owners changed and transitioned from one community to the next. It is thought to have eventually made its way to the collection of the nobleman Ludovico Moscardo from Verona before it was passed on to the Miniscalchi family and ultimately on to the museum where it is still on view today. I doubt my planisphere will have such a rich life!

Source : Rare astrolabe discovered in Verona reveals scientific exchange

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Exploring the Moon has become increasingly more of a focal point lately, especially with a series of landers recently launched with various degrees of success. One of the difficulties those landers and any future human missions face is understanding the terrain they are landing on and potentially traversing in the case of a rover or human. To help fight this problem, a team of researchers from Switzerland has developed a drone concept that could help map out some of the more interesting, potentially hazardous areas to explore on the Moon.

Mapping the Moon has already been a priority for years. However, some of the more exciting regions, such as the Permanently Shadows Regions (PSR) at the lunar poles that hold a significant amount of water ice, have only been mapped to a resolution of about 1m per pixel in the best images of them. That’s including artificial enhancement by AI-backed algorithms. 

That level of resolution isn’t near enough to provide useful planning data for any potential rover or human missions – a given rover’s wheel itself won’t even more that in width, let alone hope to traverse an obstacle of that size. Consequently, any rovers we send must be manually controlled or make their way very slowly and autonomously. Given the limited operational timeline of these expected rover missions, that slow pace could limit their ability to search out the valuable resources and sites that scientists think are hiding in the PSRs.

Fraser discusses the Artemis I moon mission that is NASA’s first step to sending humans back.

The obvious solution to this problem is to have another form of robot serve as a scout, similar to what Ingenuity had been doing for the Perseverance rover on Mars up until recently. That collaboration had allowed Perseverance to set the record for longest single-day autonomous drive on another planet – totaling about 700 m. If a scout were able to map out details of the lunar surface in front of a potential rover, it could move even faster than the pace set by Perseverance. 

To this end, there have been plenty of planned missions to do just that. In a recently released paper describing their idea, Romeo Tonasso and his colleagues at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne split these existing mission concepts into two categories – large and small. Larger systems can contain tested, off-the-shelf chemical propulsion systems that, when flight-tested, can be bulky and use potentially hazardous chemicals. Smaller systems could use different forms of chemical propulsions, such as H2O2 rockets, or even more mundane means of locomotion, such as by literally jumping off the ground using legs. However, many of the technologies for that type of propulsion aren’t yet at a high enough development level for use in a practical mission.

Finding a middle ground between the older, heavier hopper model and the newer, untested one was one of the leading design constraints for the new concept. The solution they came up with was a rocket-propelled drone that would be launched from and return to a base station that could be towed by a rover or other lunar exploration vehicle. The base station would refuel the drone after each flight, allowing it to make multiple flights while not carrying excess propellant weight. With this setup, the system could map as many as 9 square kilometers of the lunar surface at a resolution that would be helpful for both rover and human mission planning. At the end of that effort, the base station would have to be refueled, allowing it to continue its mission, which is a central part of the design concept.

Fraser discusses why the south pole, and the PSRs that reside there, are so important.

This idea has other advantages – many other hoppers have to land on the ground, and their propulsion system can introduce a significant amount of chaos into the lunar environment. That is especially undesirable if the surface they’re landing on happens to contain commercially viable materials such as water ice. Landing back at a mobile docking station also eliminates any dust kick-up, which can significantly hinder operations in an area, given how long it takes dust to settle on the Moon.

While there are some details in the paper, including some high-level architecture discussion that uses space-tested hardware, so far, this idea is just a concept. However, with the date of the Artemis III human landing approaching quickly, NASA and other space agencies would undoubtedly benefit from a successful scouting mission such as the one described in the paper. Whether or not they will push the idea across the finish line remains to be seen, though.

Learn More:
Ronasso et al – A lunar reconnaissance drone for cooperative exploration and high-resolution mapping of extreme locations
UT – NASA is Going Ahead With a Hopping Lander to Explore the Lunar Surface
UT – The Surface of the Moon is Electrically Charged, Which Could Allow a Hovering Robot to Explore it
UT – China Reveals How it’s Planning to Search for Water Ice at the Moon’s South Pole

Lead Image:
Lunar reconnaissance drone system
Credit – Ronasso et al.

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It’s always a real benefit to have scientists on the ground, able to use the wealth of their experience and ingenuity to ‘think on their feet’.  It is therefore always quite challenging to use space probes that to a degree need to be autonomous. This is certainly true of the NASA Perseverance Rover that has been drilling core samples that will one day (hopefully) be returned to Earth as part of the Mars Sample Return mission. Until then, a team of Geologists have developed a technique to calculate the orientation of the core samples to help with future analysis. 

The journey of Mars Perseverance began on 30 July 2020 when it was launched off to the red planet. Arriving less than a year later on 18 February 2021, the rover carried with it an array of instrumentation. Its goal to explore the past habitability of Mars, looking for signs of ancient microbial life and helping to pave the way for future human exploration. 

A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket with NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover onboard launches from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Thursday, July 30, 2020, from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Perseverance rover is part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, a long-term effort of robotic exploration of the Red Planet. Photo Credit: (NASA/Joel Kowsky)

One instrument in particular, the Sample Caching System, gathered and stored rock and soil samples for the potential return to Earth by future missions. Perseverance and the Ingenuity drone have been exploring the Jezero crater, an ancient lake bed since. To date, 20 of the 43 tubes have been filled with core bedrock samples and a team of geologists have been looking at the original orientation of the samples to help answer questions about the planet’s past. 

The research, which appeared in Earth and Space Science journal by lead authors Benjamin P. Weiss and Elias N. Mansbach explains that the team have identified the original orientation of the majority of the samples collected so far. This crucial bit of information will help geologists to understand the magnetic field that may have existed at the time the rocks formed, how water and lava has flowed, the direction of wind and the tectonic processes that were going on too. 

Using data from the rover itself including its location and the positioning of the drill it was possible to calculate the orientation of the bedrock sample before it was drilled out. This will be the first time scientists have managed to orient the rock samples from another world. By completing the process for a number of samples at different locations will give clues to the conditions on Mars when the rocks formed.

The challenge was made more difficult by the mechanism that extracted the sample. A tube shaped drill is screwed into the ground at a 90 degree angle and then the sample is pulled directly out along with the rock. To be able to reorient the sample with the original location the team take what is effectively pitch, roll and yaw of a boat or aircraft.  Using pictures and aligning with true north the team could calculate the original orientation. They also used distinguishing surface features in the area that would help with location identification. If perchance they were in an area devoid of any feature then the onboard laser would mark an ‘L’ into the rock before taking the sample.

Source : Study determines the original orientations of rocks drilled on Mars

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Hubble and JWST are busily scanning the sky, sending home enormous amounts of data. They shift from target to target, completing the required observations.

But have you ever wondered what those two space telescopes are doing right at this moment? Now, you can do just that at the new Space Telescope Live website. It will show you what each observatory is scanning, where the objects are in the sky, and what researchers hope to learn. You can even go back or forward in time and see what each telescope has been looking at in the past or what observations are coming up.

A screenshot of JWST observations shown on the Space Telescope Live website on March 7, 2024.

NASA says that this exploratory tool offers the public “a straightforward and engaging way to learn more about how astronomical investigations are carried out.” You can also find out more about the science instruments, review each research proposal, and click through the entire catalog of past Hubble and JWST observations.

The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland is the science operations center for the Hubble Space Telescope, as well as the science operations and mission operations center for the James Webb Space Telescope. STScI says information about each observation on the new website, such as target name and coordinates, scheduled start and end times, and the research topic, are pulled directly from the observation scheduling and proposal planning databases kept at the Institute. Links within the tool direct users to the original research proposal, which serves as a gateway to more technical information.

All the information for observations from approved science programs is kept in a repository called the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes. The Space Telescope Live website offers easy access to this information. The entire catalog of past observations for JWST goes back to its first commissioning targets in January 2022, and Hubble observing records go all the way back to the beginning of its operations in May 1990.

Each webpage has a menu and search feature at the top of the page and a user guide can be found at the bottom of each page.

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Of all the stars in the sky, betelgeuse must be among the most enigmatic. One of its many mysteries surrounds the speed of its rotation which is surprisingly fast for a supergiant star. If it were placed where the Sun was, then its photosphere (visible layer) would be out around the orbit of Jupiter and it would be moving at 5 km/s. A new study now hints that instead of high rotation, it may be that the surface is boiling so furiously that it has been mistakingly identified as fast rotation. 

Betelgeuse is one of the first stars an amateur astronomer will learn. Its distinctive red colour in the upper left corner of Orion makes it a prominent star, easy to find and identify and a great signpost to other constellations. We all know that stars are big but Betelgeuse takes this to a whole new level at 1.2 billion km across, almost 2,000 larger than the Sun. Stars of this size are usually expected to rotate slowly but observations revealed its high rotation speed, far higher than expected of a star at this evolutionary stage. 

Orion and the molecular cloud covering the region. Betelgeuse is the red star in the upper left. (Credit : Rogelio Bernal Andreo)

Observations from the Atacama Large Millimetre Array pointed at the rotation speed of Betelgeuse. The system, which is made up of 66 antennae is a radio interferometer that combines the signal from all dishes to increase its sensitivity. Using this instrument, astronomers had concluded that one hemisphere seems to be approaching while the other seems to be receding and the rate of this led to the conclusion of a 5 km/s rotation speed. If Betelgeuse was a perfect sphere then this would have been a reasonable conclusion however, the surface of Betelgeuse is not like that! 

Two of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) 12-metre antennas gaze at the sky at the observatory’s Array Operations Site (AOS), high on the Chajnantor plateau at an altitude of 5000 metres in the Chilean Andes. There is now a total of 66 antennae, 54 of them with 12-metre diameter dishes, and 12 smaller ones, with a diameter of 7 metres each. The ALMA project is an international collaboration between Europe, East Asia and North America in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ESO is the European partner in ALMA.

Like all stars, convection is a prominent process in the photosphere that brings heat from the stellar interior. In the case of Betelgeuse the convection cells are massive, sometimes even as large as the Earth’s orbit around the Sun and they rise and fall at speeds around 30 km/s (that’s over twice the escape velocity of the Earth so is faster than any launching spacecraft).

Jing-Ze Ma PhD from the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics now proposes that the dipolar velocity map which identified the approaching and receding hemispheres, may actually have been picking up convection cells instead. The theory postulates that the limited resolution of the ALMA system was observing (but not able to differentiate) convection cells rising on one side of the star and sinking on the other. 

To reach that conclusion, the team had developed a new processing technique to produce synthetic data from ALMA and in 90% of cases, the boiling motion was not clear and led to an interpretation of high rotational speeds. Further observations are now needed to explore this exciting possibility but instruments with greater resolution are required. to that end, higher resolution observations were made back in 2022 but the data is still being analysed but it will, it is hoped, start to reveal much more about the nature of Betelgeuse.

Source : A new spin on Betelgeuse’s boiling surface

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Space travel seems to be a fairly regular occurrence now with crews hopping up and down to the International Space Station. This week, another crew arrived on board a SpaceX Dragon capsule known as Endeavour.  On board were NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt and Jeanette Epps along with cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin. The ISS already had seven people on board so this brought the total crew to eleven. The launch almost got cancelled due to a crack in the hatch seal. 

The construction of the International Space Station began in 1998 with the launch of the Zarya module on 20 November. It was finally completed in when the final Russian research module Rassvet was added in in May 2010 with the station completed in 2011. Despite not being finished until then, the first crew, known as Expedition 1 arrived on 2 November 2000 and it has been occupied ever since. 

International Space Station. Credit: NASA

Now completed, the station is 109m x 73m and has 16 pressurised modules within which the crew live, sleep and conduct experiments while orbiting the Earth. Getting to and from the ISS is never an easy mission, after all you can’t just nip up to it on a whim, at least not yet – I’m sure in the future this will be a thing but alas not just yet. Currently the only way to the ISS is either the SpaceX Dragon capsule or in the case of the Russian cosmonauts, the Soyuz module. 

The latest team, Crew 8, launched from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Centre around 4am on Monday 4th March. They have joined the Expedition 70 crew comprising of Jasmin Moghbeli, Loral O’Hara, from ESA (European Space Agency) Andreas Mogensen from JAXA (Japan Aerospace Agency) Satoshi Furukawa, and cosmonauts Konstantin Borisov, Oleg Kononenko, and Nikolai Chub. The trip to ISS however, nearly got scrubbed 30 mins before launch!

The engineer team completing the final checks of the hatch and its sealing systems noticed a crack when documenting the findings. It may sound serious and to be fair, I wouldn’t want to fly into space with something that had a dodgy seal. The crack the team identified though was in a silicon like sealant that was a top coating to the hatch pressure seal which itself is over the main seal for the hatch. Fortunately, the silicon like material (known as RTV) expands under heating so it was hoped it would seal itself on launch. 

Fortunately, and as history now shows, the launch was successful and Crew 8 arrived at the ISS safe and sound and ready to get on with their work on board what is the worlds most expensive but fascinating laboratory. 

Source : Four Crew-8 Members Enter Station for Six-Month Mission

https://www.digitaltrends.com/space/nasa-crew-8-spacecraft-crack/

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Supermassive black holes have been found at the heart of most galaxies but understanding how they have formed has eluded astronomers for some time. One of the most popular theories suggests they merge over and over again to form larger black holes. A recent discovery may support this however the pair of supermassive black holes are orbiting 24 light years apart and measure an incredible 28 billion solar masses making it the heaviest ever seen. 

A black hole is a region of space within which the escape velocity is greater than the speed of light. Ok so the definition is a little more complicated than that but that will suffice for now. They are objects that have undergone gravitational collapse with their largest versions, the supermassive black holes which have a mass from hundreds of thousands to billions of times that of the Sun. It’s now thought that nearly every massive galaxy has a supermassive black hole at its core. 

Galaxy mergers seem to be common with many examples visible in the sky like the classic Whirlpool Galaxy in the northern hemisphere. When they do, it is thought their black holes can form a binary pair. Ultimately it is believed they merge however this has never been observed. A paper that was recently published in the Astrophysical Journal and authored by a team led by Tirth Surti explores this process. 

Magnetic fields mapped within the Whirlpool Galaxy. Credit: NASA, SOFIA science team, ESA, STScI

One such binary black hole system exists inside elliptical galaxy B2 0402+379 (a catchy name if ever there was one) and the team analysed its data from the Gemini North Telescope. It’s possible to resolve this binary system so the team could study it in more detail than any before. The black holes are separated by only 24 light years and data shows the system to be an impressive 28 billion times the mass of the Sun. 

The team studied the stars in the vicinity of the black holes using the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) so they could determine their velocity. Measuring the velocity enabled the team to determine the mass of the black hole binary pair but also supports the theory that the mass of the black hole plays a role in delaying and even stalling their merging!

It turns out that B2 0402+379 is a so called ‘fossil cluster’ which means that it is the result of the merging of an entire cluster of galaxies. After such mergers, the black holes don’t crash head on into each other, instead they tend to swing by each other and fall into a bound orbit around a common centre of gravity. As they swing by each other, energy is transferred from the black holes to the nearby stars. As they lose energy, they get closer and closer and in the case of stellar mass black holes, they merge. This never seems to happen with supermassive binary black holes. 

In the case of binary black holes with large mass, the team propose that a huge number of stars would be needed in the vicinity to slow them sufficiently to bring them close enough to merge. Instead, the black holes seem to have ejected nearly all the matter from the region leaving it local mass low enough that the pair’s orbits are not able to slow and merge. Whether this is the ultimate fate and the binary pair are destined to orbit forever or eventually merge is still yet to be determined. If they do merge however, it is likely that the resultant gravitational wave will be far more powerful, potentially hundreds of millions of times more than a stellar mass merger. 

Source :

A black hole is a region of space within which the escape velocity is greater than the speed of light. Ok so the definition is a little more complicated than that but that will suffice for now. They are objects that have undergone gravitational collapse with their largest versions, the supermassive black holes which have a mass from hundreds of thousands to billions of times that of the Sun. It’s now thought that nearly every massive galaxy has a supermassive black hole at its core. 

Galaxy mergers seem to be common with many examples visible in the sky like the classic Whirlpool Galaxy in the northern hemisphere. When they do, it is thought their black holes can form a binary pair. Ultimately it is believed they merge however this has never been observed. A paper that was recently published in the Astrophysical Journal and authored by a team led by Tirth Surti explores this process. 

One such binary black hole system exists inside elliptical galaxy B2 0402+379 (a catchy name if ever there was one) and the team analysed its data from the Gemini North Telescope. It’s possible to resolve this binary system so the team could study it in more detail than any before. The black holes are separated by only 24 light years and data shows the system to be an impressive 28 billion times the mass of the Sun. 

The team studied the stars in the vicinity of the black holes using the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) so they could determine their velocity. Measuring the velocity enabled the team to determine the mass of the black hole binary pair but also supports the theory that the mass of the black hole plays a role in delaying and even stalling their merging!

It turns out that B2 0402+379 is a so called ‘fossil cluster’ which means that it is the result of the merging of an entire cluster of galaxies. After such mergers, the black holes don’t crash head on into each other, instead they tend to swing by each other and fall into a bound orbit around a common centre of gravity. As they swing by each other, energy is transferred from the black holes to the nearby stars. As they lose energy, they get closer and closer and in the case of stellar mass black holes, they merge. This never seems to happen with supermassive binary black holes. 

In the case of binary black holes with large mass, the team propose that a huge number of stars would be needed in the vicinity to slow them sufficiently to bring them close enough to merge. Instead, the black holes seem to have ejected nearly all the matter from the region leaving it local mass low enough that the pair’s orbits are not able to slow and merge. Whether this is the ultimate fate and the binary pair are destined to orbit forever or eventually merge is still yet to be determined. If they do merge however, it is likely that the resultant gravitational wave will be far more powerful, potentially hundreds of millions of times more than a stellar mass merger. 

Source : Astronomers Measure Heaviest Black Hole Pair Ever Found

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Packing to go to space is a lot like getting ready for a plane ride with only a carry-on bag. You have to maximize the use of the space in your bag at the same time you want to make sure you have what you need. That’s the challenge astronauts face in the upcoming Artemis moon missions. So, NASA held a competition to figure out the best and most innovative ways to store cargo for the missions.

The Lunar Gateway Cargo Packing and Storing challenge asked members of the public to come up with good ways to pack materials in the limited space on the lunar Gateway that will be orbiting the Moon. The idea inspired some 90 participants from 35 countries to step up and show off their packing skills. It also helped that there were cash prizes for the winners. Everybody submitted written solutions and 3D computer models to show what could be done for astronauts who would need easy, quick access to their cargo.

The design parameters had to take into account storing the cargo delivered to the gateway by the logistics module. The most efficient space design would allow astronauts to access the cargo easily in the module, which will also be their food and supply storage room, plus a place to store trash. So, given everything that needs to be placed there efficiently, the idea was to maximize volume and minimize mass.

And the Winner is…

The best design came from Austria, made by designer Kriso Leinfellner. It’s called QASIS, short for Quick Access Storage in Space. It’s a fairly straightforward method of stacking and packing that maximizes the amount of space the cargo takes up. It also proposes lightweight storage structures and does not rely on motors or batteries to power cranes or other equipment to move the boxes.
Leinfellner won $3,000.00 for this design.

Four other prizes of amounts ranging from $2,000.00 to $250.00 were awarded to winners from Turkey, Brazil, Nigeria, and Germany. They took into account launch and orbital conditions, and several specified manual and/or automated systems to move cargo around for access.

Packing Space for Artemis and the Gateway

The Artemis program will have multiple missions, and the logistics will vary with each crew or cargo trip. So, the “packing space” challenge used the following scenario. A crew of four launches in the Orion capsule on top of an SLS rocket on a three-week mission to the Gateway. Two crew members will then travel on to the Moon to spend a week of exploration and science experiments. Before the crew arrives at Gateway, it will have already been visited by an uncrewed Logistics module packed with supplies. It will be there waiting for the astronauts to arrive about a week later.

The lunar module on approach to the Moon and Gateway station. Courtesy NASA and SpaceX.

Just to make things more complicated, there won’t be a lot of space available at the Gateway. NASA’s plans show that the station will be about the size of a one-bedroom apartment, so a fraction of the size of the International Space Station. Once the astronauts get there, they’ll move in, using an internal system to help them stow the supplies. The contest asked entrants to design that stowage system.

Artemis Mission Overview

The Artemis mission is an ambitious long-range plan for lunar exploration and eventual habitation. It focuses primarily on scientific exploration of the lunar surface. Lessons learned on the Moon will translate to longer-term missions to Mars. The Gateway part of the mission is crucial. It provides an orbiting space station on the Moon, which will function as a transfer point and supply depot. There are Deep Space Logistics project offices at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. However, the Kennedy Space Center is responsible for leading the commercial supply chain. That team solicits and procures bids for cargo transport, equipment acquisition, and consumable supplies for the mission—both in the gateway and on the lunar surface.

The complex supply logistics of the Artemis mission. Courtesy NASA. (Click to enlarge.)

Why such a complex chain? It’s a complex mission, involving the construction of the Gateway, which requires transport of materials to the “construction site” in lunar orbit. It’s going to be there for several years, so long-term viability is important. It serves as the link to the lunar surface and so it will become the staging area for materials needed on the Moon for bases and installations.

Everything for Artemis and its Gateway has to withstand the rigors of launch, orbital insertion at the Moon, and use/reuse by the astronauts who will be passing through. Five Artemis missions will happen. Others are still in the proposal stages. Artemis 1 flew in 2022 as an uncrewed test flight. It “practiced” putting Orion into lunar orbit and then brought the capsule back to Earth. Artemis 2 could fly in late 2025, although that will likely slip. It will be the first crewed test flight and will do orbital testing around Earth and the Moon. Artemis 3 will be the first crewed lunar landing, bringing a diverse set of astronauts to the newly built lunar Gateway and then to the Moon. After that, Artemis 4 and 5 will fly (dates still to be determined) and will take astronauts to the gateway and lunar surface for further explorations.

For More Information

NASA Names Winners in Lunar Gateway Packing and Storing Challenge
Gateway Logistics

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