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Destination: Missing--Comet Once Targeted by NASA Mission Vanished: Scientific American - 0 views

  • n 2005, after NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft had completed its objective of slamming an impactor probe into the nucleus of Comet Tempel 1, mission scientists began plotting their next move.
  • spacecraft that had released the probe and documented its cometary collision was intact, with fuel to spare, leaving it well equipped to rendezvous with another comet in the inner solar system
  • Comets preserve some of the primordial materials from the early solar system
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  • prospect of visiting another comet without having to build and launch a new spacecraft
  • seemed too good to pass up
  • best option, it seemed, was a comet called 85P/Boethin
  • would be drawing close to Earth in 2008
  • Comet Boethin had not been sighted in almost 20 years
  • seen on only two occasions—at its 1975 discovery and on its subsequent orbit around the sun, in 1986
  • roughly 11-year elliptical orbit placed it in the class of so-called short-period comets
  • another pass through the inner solar system in 1997
  • positioned on the opposite side of the sun from Earth, precluding astronomers from getting another look at it
  • 2008, when Boethin was to return once more
Mars Base

Four white dwarf stars caught in the act of consuming 'earth-like' exoplanets - 0 views

  • astrophysicists have pinpointed four white dwarf stars surrounded by dust from shattered planetary bodies which once bore striking similarities to the composition of the Earth
  • White dwarfs are the final stage of life of stars like our Sun, the residual cores of material left behind after their available fuel for nuclear reactions has been exhausted
  • researchers found that the most frequently occurring elements in the dust around these four white dwarfs were oxygen, magnesium, iron and silicon – the four elements that make up roughly 93 per cent of the Earth.
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  • even more significant observation was that this material also contained an extremely low proportion of carbon, which matched very closely that of the Earth and the other rocky planets orbiting closest to our own Sun
  • first time that such low proportions of carbon have been measured in the atmospheres of white dwarf stars
  • clear evidence that these stars once had at least one rocky exoplanet which they have now destroyed
  • must also pinpoint the last phase of the death of these worlds.
  • atmosphere of a white dwarf is made up of hydrogen and/or helium
  • heavy elements that come into their atmosphere are dragged downwards to their core and out of sight within a matter of days
  • astronomers must literally be observing the final phase of the death of these worlds as the material rains down on the stars at rates of up to 1 million kilograms every second.
  • clear evidence that these stars once had rocky exoplanetary bodies which have now been destroyed
Mars Base

Alien Super-Earth Light Seen for 1st Time | Exoplanet Search | Space.com - 0 views

  • Light from an alien "super-Earth" twice the size of our own Earth has been detected by a NASA space telescope for the first time
  • spotted light from the alien planet 55 Cancri e, which orbits a star 41 light-years from Earth
  • A year on the extrasolar planet lasts just 18 hours
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  • 55 Cancri e was first discovered in 2004 and is not a habitable world
  • The world is about twice the width of Earth and is super-dense, with about eight times the mass of Earth.
  • until now, scientists have never managed to detect the infrared light from the super-Earth world.
  • pioneering the study of atmospheres of distant planets and paving the way for NASA's upcoming James Webb Space Telescope
  • Spitzer first detected infrared light from an alien planet in 2005
  • that world was "hot Jupiter," a gas giant planet much larger than 55 Cancri e that orbited extremely close to its parent star
  • other telescopes have performed similar feats
  • Spitzer's view of the 55 Cancri e is the first time the light from a rocky super-Earth type planet has been seen
  • Since the discovery of 55 Cancri e, astronomers have pinned down increasingly strange features about the planet
  • already knew it was part of an alien solar system containing five exoplanets centered on the star 55 Cancri in the constellation Cancer
  • But 55 Cancri e stood out because it is ultra-dense and orbits extremely close to its parent star
  • 26 times closer than the distance between Mercury and our own sun
  • observations revealed that the star-facing side of 55 Cancri e
  • temperatures reaching up to 3,140 degrees Fahrenheit (1,726 degrees Celsius).
  • likely a dark world that lacks the substantial atmosphere needed to warm its nighttime side
  • the planet is oozing
  • Past observations of the planet by the Spitzer Space Telescope have suggested that one-fifth of 55 Cancri e is made up of lighter elements, including water
  • the extreme temperatures and pressures on 55 Cancri e would create what scientists call a "supercritical fluid" state
  • Supercritical fluids can be imagined as a gas in a liquid state, which can occur under extreme pressures and temperatures
  • On Earth, water can become a supercritical fluid inside some steam engines.
  • This graphic illuminates the process by which astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have for the first time detected the light from a super-Earth planet, the alien world of 55 Cancri e 41 light-years from Earth.
  • planet is likely a rocky world covered with water in a supercritical fluid state and topped off with a steam blanket
  • could be very similar to Neptune, if you pulled Neptune in toward our sun and watched its atmosphere boil away
  • detailed in the Astrophysical Journal
  • Spitzer Space Telescope launched in 2003
  • telescope engineers modified several settings on the observatory to optimize its alien planet vision
  • conceived of Spitzer more than 40 years ago
Mars Base

Busy Sunspot Unleashes New M-Class Solar Flare | Space Weather & Solar Storms | Space.com - 0 views

  • sun unleashed a new solar flare Tuesday (March 13) from the same region that has been actively brewing for the past week.
  • M7.9-class eruption
  • hurled a wave of plasma and energetic particles, called a coronal mass ejection (CME), into space
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  • not heading in Earth's direction
  • The Solar Radiation Storm promptly reached S2 (Moderate) levels, but now should slowly decline
  • sunspot region called AR 1429,
  • already unleashed three strong X-class solar flares and several weaker M-class eruptions
  • , X-class flares from region 1429 triggered the strongest solar storm in eight years.
  • Region 1429 has been rotating across the solar disk and is no longer facing Earth
  • solar physicists will continue to monitor it and other developing sunspot regions for new outbursts.
Mars Base

Listen to solar storm activity in new sonification video - 0 views

  • What does a solar storm sound like
  • Take a listen
  • sonification of the recent solar storm activity turns data from two spacecraft into sound
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  • measurements from the NASA SOHO spacecraft and the University of Michigan's Fast Imaging Plasma Spectrometer (FIPS) on NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft at Mercury
  • creator is Robert Alexander, a design science doctoral student at the University of Michigan and NASA fellow.
  • a composer with a NASA fellowship to study how representing information as sound could aid in data mining.
  • raw information to an audio waveform
  • To sonify the data
  • in its original sampling rate of 44,100 hertz, it played back in less than a quarter of a second
  • benefits of sonifying data. You can zip through days' worth of information in an instant
  • Sonification is the process of translating information into sound
  • used in Geiger counter radiation detectors, which emit clicks in the presence of high-energy particles
  • not typically used to pick out patterns in information, but scientists on the U-M Solar and Heliospheric Research Group are exploring its potential in that realm. They're looking to Alexander to make it possible.
  • used to looking at wiggly-line plots and graphs, but humans are very good at hearing things. We wonder if there's a way to find things in the data that are difficult to see."
  • his approach led to a new discovery
  • a particular ratio of carbon atoms that scientists had not previously keyed in to can reveal more about the source of the solar wind than the ratios of elements they currently rely on. The solar wind is a squall of hot plasma, or charged particles, continuously emanating from the sun.
  • hopes to build a bridge between science and art.
  • movies were silent and people just accepted that that's the way it
  • this high res footage of what's happening on the surface of the sun, and it's silent. I'm creating a soundtrack
Mars Base

Jupiter May Help Supercharge Orionid Meteor Shower | Halley's Comet | Space.com - 0 views

  • Jupiter's powerful gravity can help supercharge a meteor shower caused by trailing chunks of the famed Halley's comet, a new study suggests
  • Every October, skywatchers are treated to a dazzling show when the Orionid meteors — leftover bits of Halley's comet
  • The Orionids are incredibly active from time to
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  • activity is generated by a complex orbital interplay among Jupiter, the comet and the meteoroids
  • according to the study
  • Previous research had suggested that intense Orionid outbursts occur after the meteoroids fall into resonances with Jupiter's orbit
  • Resonances are gravitational sweet spots in which objects' orbits around the sun are related by a ratio of two whole numbers. (A 1:2 resonance, for example, means that one body completes one orbit in the time it takes another object to make two orbits.)
  • new study finds that Halley's comet itself has likely been in resonances with Jupiter in the
  • which in turn increases the odds of populating the Orionid stream with resonant meteoroids
  • particles ejected during those times tend to clump together due to periodic effects from Jupiter
  • modeled the orbital evolution of Halley's comet over a long stretch of time
  • from more than 12,000 years in the past to 15,000 years into the future
  • determind that from 1404 B.C. to 690 B.C., the comet was likely trapped in a 1:6 resonance with Jupiter
  • Halley completed one orbit for every six orbits of Jupiter around the sun).
  • from 240 B.C. to 1700 A.D., the comet was in a 2:13 orbital resonance with Jupiter
  • Debris deposited during these two periods are directly linked to heightened activity in the Orionid meteor showers in some years, according to the study.
  • the unusual Orionid outburst observed in 1993 was due to 2:13 resonant meteoroids sloughed by Halley around 240 B.C
  • predicts that the next similarly heightened display of meteors from this 2:13 resonance will be in 2070 A.D.
Mars Base

Astronomer urges researchers everywhere to study Venus transit - 0 views

  • during this transit, our sun will be displaying sun spots
  • allows for comparing changing light patterns of suspected exoplanets with those that occur much closer to home
  • Information gathered during the transit, he points out, could very well reveal pertinent information later on
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  • regardless of area of interest
  • more people studying the transit the better, in as many ways as possible, even if there doesn’t seem to be any immediate payoff
Mars Base

Evening Star Goes Black In Rare Celestial Event - Science News - 0 views

  • Venus will take six hours to march across the star’s face, appearing as an inky black dot in silhouette against the looming solar disk
  • Because the planet’s orbit is slightly off-kilter, its solar transits come in pairs spaced eight years apart, with more than 100 years between pairs.
  • Paris Observatory, who will join Venus Express team members in Svalbard, Norway to observe the transit against the midnight sun.
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  • its planetprint produces the type of dimming that occurs when exoplanets periodically block their stars’ light. Astronomers have been able to study the atmospheres of Jupiter-sized exoplanets, but similar observations of terrestrial planets are still a thing of the future.
  • Maybe one day we will be able to measure the same light that is filtered from the atmospheres of exoplanets – exo-Venuses and exo-Earths
  • such observations aren’t so simple. “Big mirrors and sensitive detectors are not good things to point at the sun
  • capture sunlight reflected off the face of the moon during the transit
Mars Base

Phone app | Venustransit - 0 views

  • Practising the timing of the contacts
  • Features of the phone app
  • Predicted
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  • Predicted times of contact
  • The phone app has a tab which gives you the predicted times of contact for your location, as well as the times of sunset and sunrise.
  • Contacts that cannot be viewed from your location (because the sun is below the horizon) are indicated in grey.
  • Using the timer, just tap the phone’s screen at the moment of internal contact (when Venus appears within the sun, just touching the sun’s edge).
  • As you are looking through the eyepiece and not at the screen, the phone will vibrate when you log your times to let you know the time was successfully recorded
  • app will record the exact GPS time and your location, which then will be sent to the global database.
  • you are also asked to enter your email address. Although this is optional, you will be able to add more info to your entry later if you send your address along with the data.
Mars Base

Astronomers seize last chance in lifetime for Venus Transit - 0 views

  • Transits occur in truly weird combinations, either in a June or a December. When one happens, another one happens in the same month eight years later.
  • EnlargeDescription of the June 5-6 transit of Venus across
Mars Base

Odd Alien Planets So Close Together They See 'Planetrise' | Kepler Mission | Space.com - 0 views

  • Astronomers have discovered two alien planets around the same star whose orbits come so close together that each rises in the night sky of its sister world
  • ,200 light-years from Earth
  • differ greatly in size and composition but come within just 1.2 million miles (1.9 million kilometers) of each other, closer than any other pair of planets known,
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  • Kepler-36b, appears to be a rocky "super-Earth" 4.5 times as massive as our planet
  • Kepler-36c, is a gaseous, Neptune-size world about eight times as massive as Earth
  • planets meet up every 97 days in a conjunction that would make each dramatically visible in the other's sky.
  • At their closest approach, the two planets are separated by five times the distance between the Earth and the moon
  • as different in density as Earth and Saturn
  • Kepler-36b and c are actually more like 20 times closer together than any two planets in our neck of the woods
  • Kepler-36c, which is about 3.7 times wider than Earth, likely has a rocky core surrounded by a substantial atmosphere filled with lots of hydrogen and helium
  • Kepler-36b, on the other hand, is a super-Earth just 1.5 times wider than our planet. Iron likely constitutes about 30 percent of its mass, water around 15 percent and atmospheric hydrogen and helium less than 1 percent
  • Kepler-36c orbits once every 16 days, at an average distance of 12 million miles (19 million km). Kepler-36b orbits each 14 days and sits about 11 million miles (18 million km) from the star.
  • Kepler-36b probably formed relatively close to the star
  • Kepler-36c likely took shape farther out
  • large-scale migrations that can bring initially far-flung planets much closer together
  • Kepler-36b probably sporting lava flows on its surface
  • orbit roughly three times closer to their host star, known as Kepler-36a, than the hellishly hot planet Mercury does to our sun
  • Kepler-36a is likely a bit hotter than our star
Mars Base

First Saturn-like rings circle alien world - 0 views

  • 11 January 2012
  • Saturn-like ring system has been discovered 420 light years away
  • using the ground-based SuperWASP (Wide Angle Search for Planets) and All Sky Automated Survey (ASAS),
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  • do the rings encompass a planet or a companion star?
  • four defined rings stretch out tens of millions of kilometres from the central object
  • dubbed Rochester, Sutherland, Campanas and Tololo after the sites where the eclipsed star was first detected and analysed
  • similar in mass to our own Sun, but a fraction of its age at just 16 million years.
  • Usually a star’s light is temporarily and periodically dimmed as a planet passes in front of it
  • in this case the team observed an unusually long and deep eclipse with up to 95 percent of the star’s light being dimmed by what the team conclude is a dusty ring system.
  • the only plausible explanation was some sort of dust ring system orbiting a smaller companion
  • Saturn on steroids
  • the first time astronomers have detected an extrasolar ring system transiting a Sun-like star
  • astronomers are unable to conclude what the ring system is orbiting
  • could be a very low-mass star, a brown dwarf, or a gas planet
  • hope to find the answer
  • over the next two years
  • another mystery
  • two pronounced gaps located between rings
  • gaps are carved by moons that have enough mass to gravitationally clear a path along their orbits
  • Saturnian system
  • brown dwarf or star then we could be seeing the late stages of planet formation in action
  • a giant planet, then perhaps there is a moon in the making.
Mars Base

Two Powerful Coronal Mass Ejections (Hey Mercury, down in front!) [hd video] | Flickr -... - 0 views

  • Nov. 12-14, 2011
  • The first event is a halo CME event in that the leading edge of the particle cloud expanded in an arc around the Sun
  • In the second, larger event the bright cloud is heading out into space and away from Earth
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  • The bright object moving into the field of view in the lower right is Mercury
Mars Base

NASA - Signs Changing Fast for Voyager at Solar System Edge - 0 views

  • third key sign is the direction of the magnetic field, and scientists are eagerly analyzing the data to see whether that has, indeed, changed direction
  • Scientists expect that all three of these signs will have changed when Voyager 1 has crossed into interstellar space
  • preliminary analysis of the latest magnetic field data is expected to be available in the next month
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  • The increase and the decrease are sharper than we've seen before, but that's also what we said about the May data
  • Voyager 1, which launched on Sept. 5, 1977, is 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers) from the sun. Voyager 2, which launched on Aug. 20, 1977, is close behind, at 9.3 billion miles (15 billion kilometers) from the sun.
Mars Base

A Mardi Gras Moon Crossing - 0 views

  • During portions of the year, the Moon transits the Sun on a regular basis from the perspective of NASA’s SDO spacecraft, which lies within the Moon’s orbit
  • it gives SDO engineers a way to fine-tune the observatory’s calibration as well.
  • keep up with the latest images coming in on the SDO site at http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/.
Mars Base

Huge Dust Devil on Mars Captured in Action - 0 views

  • A towering dust devil, casts a serpentine shadow over the Martian surface in this image acquired by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
  • Mars orbiters, rovers and landers have all captured devils in action before
  • whirlwind on Mars lofting a twisting column of dust more than 800 meters (about a half a mile) high, with the dust plume about 30 meters or yards in diameter.
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  • on Feb. 16, 2012
  • Amazonis Planitia region of northern Mars
  • Evidence of many previous whirlwinds, or dust devils, are visible as streaks on the dusty surface shown in the image
  • like on Earth, winds on Mars are powered by solar heating
  • Mars is now farthest from the Sun,
  • though the exposure to the Sun’s rays is now less, even so, the dust devils are moving dust around on Mars’ surface
  • Dust devils occur on Earth as well as on Mars
  • spinning columns of air, made visible by the dust they pull off the ground
  • Unlike a tornado, a dust devil typically forms on a clear day
  • ground is heated by the sun, warming the air just above the ground
  • eated air near the surface rises quickly through a small pocket of cooler air above i
  • the air may begin to rotate, if conditions are just right.
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