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Mars Base

NASA: Donated NRO Space Telescopes 'Came Out of the Blue' | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/y-space-telescopes-budget.html

scibyte51 hubble SpaceTelescope

shared by Mars Base on 15 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • A pair of space telescopes that were donated to NASA from the secretive National Reconnaissance Office could be repurposed for a wide variety of science missions
  • it will likely be years before the agency's budget can accommodate them.  
  • two spy satellite telescopes were originally built
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • but they were never used
  • June 4, NASA announced its acquisition of the telescopes, and the agency's intention to use them for future astronomical research
  • The two telescopes have main mirrors that measure nearly 8 feet wide (2.4 meters), making them comparable to the veteran Hubble Space Telescope, which was launched into orbit 22 years ago. Grunsfeld called the donated optical hardware "very high quality."
  • currently being stored in Rochester, N.Y., in facilities belonging to the hardware's manufacturer,
  • cost to keep them in storage is about $70,000 a year
  • not insignificant, but it's not something that's unmanageable
  • One possible application for the telescopes is as a base for NASA's Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), which is being designed to hunt for dark energy
  • Given budget projections for the next several years
  • in an extremely confined fiscal environment
  • NASA does not anticipate being able to dedicate any funding to the newly acquired telescopes until the James Webb Space Telescope successfully launches
  • In the meantime, NASA is investigating different uses for the telescopes, and hopes to have input from the scientific community to guide the decision-making process
  • Mars Base on 15 Jun 12
     
    Grunsfeld co-hosted a town hall-style gathering Tuesday (June 12) to discuss NASA's budget and plans here at the 220th meeting of the American Astronomical Society.
Mars Base

Early Black Holes were Grazers Rather than Glutonous Eaters - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...s-rather-than-glutonous-eaters

scibyte52 black holes

shared by Mars Base on 21 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • Black holes powering distant quasars in the early Universe grazed on patches of gas or passing galaxies rather than glutting themselves in dramatic collisions according to new observations from NASA’s Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes
  • A black hole doesn’t need much gas to satisfy its hunger and turn into a quasar
  • Quasars are distant and brilliant galactic powerhouses. These far-off objects are powered by black holes that glut themselves on captured material; this in turn heats the matter to millions of degrees making it super luminous
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • team studied 30 quasars with NASA’s orbiting telescopes Hubble and Spitzer
  • These quasars, glowing extremely bright in the infrared images
  • telltale sign that resident black holes are actively scooping up gas and dust into their gravitational whirlpool
  • formed during a time of peak black-hole growth between eight and twelve billion years
  • supports evidence that the creation of the most massive black holes in the early Universe was fueled not by dramatic bursts of major mergers but by smaller, long-term events
  • found 26 of the host galaxies
  • about the size of our own Milky Way Galaxy, showed no signs of collisions
  • Quasars that are products of galaxy collisions are very bright
  • the process powering the quasars and their black holes lies below the detection of Hubble
  • prime targets for the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope, a large infrared orbiting observatory scheduled for launch in 2018
Mars Base

NASA Hubble Telescope Discovers Water Plumes Over Icy Europa - 0 views

www.scienceworldreport.com/...ter-plumes-over-icy-europa.htm

scibyte113 Europa

shared by Mars Base on 13 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has
  • spotted water vapor above the moon's frigid south polar region, providing the first strong evidence of water plumes erupting off the moon's surface
  • Scientists had previously detected evidence of an ocean under Europa's icy crust
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • the simplest explanation for this water vapor is that it erupted from plumes on the surface of Europa
  • If those plumes are connected with the subsurface water ocean
  • then this means that future investigations can directly investigate the chemical makeup of Europa's potentially habitable environment without drilling through layers of ice
  • This would actually be the second moon in the solar system known to have water vapor plumes
  • The first one to be discovered was Saturn's moon Enceladus
  • First detected in 2005 by NASA's Cassini orbiter, the plumes also possess dust and ice particles
  • So far, though, only water vapor gases have been detected in Europa.
  • It's possible that these plumes could be vented from long cracks on Europa's surface
  • Cassini has actually seen similar fissures that host the Enceladus
  • Europa plumes are similar to Enceladus in another way. They seem to also vary depending on the moon's orbital position; active jets have only been seen when Europa is farthest from Jupiter
  • supports a key prediction that Europa should tidally flex by a significant amount if it has a subsurface ocean
  • Once the plumes are confirmed, scientists can take a closer look at their composition and may even be able to find out more about the potential subsurface sea of Europa
Mars Base

Hubble discovers water vapor venting from Jupiter's moon Europa - 0 views

phys.org/...apor-venting-jupiter-moon.html

scibyte113 Europa

shared by Mars Base on 13 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Only after a particular camera on the Hubble Space Telescope had been repaired on the last servicing mission by the Space Shuttle did we gain the sensitivity to really search for these plumes
  • Future space probe missions to Europa could confirm that the exact locations and sizes of vents and determine whether they connect to liquid subsurface reservoirs
  • ESA's JUpiter ICy moons Explorer, a mission planned for launch in 2022, and which aims to explore both Jupiter and three of its largest moons: Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa.
Mars Base

Hubble Sees Jupiter's Red Spot Shrink to Smallest Size Ever - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...t-shrink-to-smallest-size-ever

scibyte132 jupiter ViewerFeedback

shared by Mars Base on 16 May 14 - No Cached
  • “Recent Hubble Space Telescope observations confirm that the spot is now just under  10,250 miles (16,500 km) across, the smallest diameter we’ve ever measured,” said Amy Simon of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Cente
  • Using historic sketches and photos from the late 1800s, astronomers determined the spot’s diameter then at 25,475 miles (41,000 km) across
  • Amateur observations starting in 2012 revealed a noticeable increase in the spot’s shrinkage rate
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  • The spot’s “waistline” is getting smaller by just under 620 miles (1,000 km) per year while its north-south extent has changed little
  • the spot has
  • become more circular in shape
  • what causing the drastic downsizing, there are no firm answers yet:
  • new observations
  • very small eddies are feeding into the storm
  • may be responsible for the accelerated change by altering the internal dynamics of the Great Red Spot
  • The Great Red Spot has been a trademark of the planet for at least 400 years
  • a giant hurricane-like storm whirling in the planet’s upper cloud tops with a period of 6 days
  • The storm appears to be conserving angular momentum by spinning faster the same way an ice skater spins up when she pulls in her arms
  • Wind speeds are increasing too, making one wonder whether they’ll ultimately shrink the spot further or bring about its rejuvenation.
Mars Base

For the first time, astronomers have measured the radius of a black hole - 0 views

phys.org/...onomers-radius-black-hole.html

scibyte65 black holes

shared by Mars Base on 30 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • an international team
  • , has for the first time measured the radius of a black hole at the center of a distant galaxy—the closest distance at which matter can approach before being irretrievably pulled into the black hole.
  • scientists linked together radio dishes in Hawaii, Arizona and California to create a telescope array called the "Event Horizon Telescope" (EHT) that can see details 2,000 times finer than what's visible to the Hubble Space Telescope.
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  • , the team observed the glow of matter near the edge of this black hole—a region known as the "event horizon."
  • , not everything can cross the event horizon to squeeze into a black hole
  • "cosmic traffic jam" in which gas and dust build up, creating a flat pancake of matter known as an accretion disk
  • disk of matter orbits the black hole at nearly the speed of light, feeding the black hole a steady diet of superheated material
  • Over time, this disk can cause the black hole to spin in the same direction as the orbiting material
  • Caught up in this spiraling flow are magnetic fields, which accelerate hot material along powerful beams above the accretion disk
  • resulting high-speed jet, launched by the black hole and the disk, shoots out across the galaxy, extending for hundreds of thousands of light-years
  • jets can influence many galactic processes, including how fast stars form.
  • . Because M87's jet is magnetically launched from this smallest orbit,
  • astronomers can estimate the black hole's spin through careful measurement of the jet's size as it leaves the black hole
  • Until now, no telescope has had the magnifying power required for this kind of observation
  • team used a technique called Very Long Baseline Interferometry, or VLBI, which links data from radio dishes located thousands of miles apart.
  • , taken together, create a "virtual telescope" with the resolving power of a single telescope as big as the space between the disparate dishes
  • enables scientists to view extremely precise details in faraway galaxies.
  • Using the technique
  • team measured the innermost orbit of the accretion disk to be only 5.5 times the size of the black hole event horizon
  • According to the laws of physics, this size suggests that the accretion disk is spinning in the same direction as the black hole
  • first direct observation to confirm theories of how black holes power jets from the centers of galaxies
  • The team plans to expand its telescope array, adding radio dishes in Chile, Europe, Mexico, Greenland and Antarctica, in order to obtain even more detailed pictures of black holes in the future.
  • www.eventhorizontelescope.org/
Mars Base

Space Shuttle Discovery Enters Smithsonian for Museum Display | NASA Shuttle Retirement... - 0 views

www.space.com/covery-smithsonian-museum.html

scibyte43 shuttle discovery AprMedia

shared by Mars Base on 20 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • Mars Base on 20 Apr 12
     
    ted with technological and scientific achievements, including the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit in 1990 and the deployment of the Ulysses solar probe the same year. The fleet leader, Discovery also returned the space shuttle program to flight after the losses of Challenger and Columbia in 1986 and 2003, respectively.
Mars Base

Runaway Planets Tossed From Galaxy at Fraction of Speed of Light | Space.com - 1 views

www.space.com/speed-planets-light-speed.html

scibyte40 exoplanet

shared by Mars Base on 24 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Planets in tight orbits around stars that get ejected from our galaxy may actually themselves be tossed out of the Milky Way at blisteringly fast speeds of up to 30 million miles per hour, or a fraction of the speed of light, a new study finds.
  • would be some of the fastest objects in the galaxy, aside from photons
  • In terms of large, solid objects, they would be the fastest. It would take them 10 seconds or so to cross the diameter of the Earth
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  • In 2005, astronomers found evidence of a runaway star that was flying out of the Milky Way galaxy at a speed of 1.5 million mph (2.4 million kph).
  • part of a double-star system that wandered too close to the supermassive black hole
  • In the seven years since, 16 of these hypervelocity stars have been found
  • typical runaway planet would likely dash outward at 7 to 10 million mph (11.3 to 16.1 million kph), but given the right circumstances, a small fraction could have their speeds boosted to up to 30 million mph (48.3 million kph).
  • hypervelocity planets will escape the Milky Way and travel through interstellar space
  • a civilization on such a planet, they would have a very exciting journe
  • Once the planet exits from the local group of galaxies, it will be accelerated away by cosmic expansion. So, within 10 billion years, it would go from the center of the galaxy to all the way to the edge of the observable universe
  • planet that tightly orbits a runaway star will cross in front and cause its brightness to dim slightly in what astronomers call a "transit
  • To hitch a ride on a hypervelocity star, a planet would have to be locked in a tight orbit, which ups the odds of witnessing a transit to around 50 percent
  • first time someone is talking about searching for planets around hypervelocity stars
Mars Base

Kepler Mission Extended to 2016 - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...epler-mission-extended-to-2016

scibyte41 Kepler

shared by Mars Base on 03 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • Artist concept of Kepler in space. Credit: NASA/JPL
  • NASA’s tight budget
  • Anxieties were rampant about one mission in particular, the very fruitful exoplanet-hunting Kepler mission, as several years of observations are required in order for Kepler to confirm a repeated orbit as a planet transits its star
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  • Additionally, missions such as Hubble, Fermi and Swift will receive continued funding
  • only mission that took a hit was the Spitzer infrared telescope, which – as of now — will be closed out in 2015, which is sooner than requested.
  • Senior Review of missions takes place every two years
  • In the Review, missions are ranked as which are most successful
  • previous Senior Reviews led to the removal of funding for the weakest 10-20% of extended missions
  • Hubble Space Telescope will continue at the currently funded levels
  • Chandra will also continue at current levels, but its Guest Observer budget will actually be increased to account for decreases in Fiscal Year 2011
  • Fermi operations are extended through FY16, with a 10 percent per year reduction starting in FY14.
  • Swift and Kepler mission operations are extended through FY16, including funding for data analysis.
  • Planck will support one year extended operations of the Low Frequency Instrument (LFI).
  • Spitzer’s operations are extended through FY14 with closeout in FY15
  • U.S. science support of Suzaku is extended to March 2015.
  • Funding for U.S. support of XMM-Newton is extended through March 2015.
  • all FY15-FY16 decisions are for planning purposes and they will be revisited in the 2014 Senior Review
Mars Base

Hubble Space Telescope detects fifth moon of Pluto (Update) - 0 views

phys.org/...pace-telescope-moon-pluto.html

scibyte54 PlutoMoons

shared by Mars Base on 12 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • 4 percent as bright as Pluto II (Nix) and half as bright as S/2011 (134340) 1
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