Ian O'Neill, Author at Universe Today

June 3, 2008April 26, 2016 by Ian O'Neill

Japanese Lab Kibo Attached to Space Station (Video)

The Japanese Kibo Module is moved from the US space shuttle Discovery cargo bay (AFP/NASA)

The brand new Japanese science laboratory was attached to the International Space Station today (Tuesday). Space Shuttle Discovery’s STS-124 mission launched on May 31st (Saturday) has quickly gotten down to business, unloading the huge 11.2 meter-long lab using the station’s robotic arm. This is the second component of Kibo (Japanese for “Hope”) to be attached to the station, the first was a logistics module sent to the station by Endeavour in March. The third and final part of the lab, a facility that will allow outdoor experiments be exposed to space, will be delivered some time next year. The lab will be “switched on” and ready for occupation tomorrow (Wednesday) at 20:52 GMT.

Kibo is the largest module to be attached to the ISS so far. It is over two meters longer than NASA’s Destiny module (at 8.5 meters) and dwarfs ESA’s Columbus facility (at 6.8 meters long) attached back in February. The new lab will provide enough space for four astronauts to work in and gives Japan a key foothold in the science carried out on the station.

The 15 tonne lab was prepared for attachment by a six-hour spacewalk by US astronauts Mike Fossum and Ron Garan and the station’s robotic arm was controlled by Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and US astronaut Karen Nyberg.

Kibo has been designed to carry out an impressive variety of experiments into space medicine, biology and biotechnology, material production and communications. This research will be located inside and outside of the module so the tests can be carried out in a pressurized environment and exposed to the vacuum of space. A 10 meter-long robotic arm will also be attached by the STS-124 and ISS crew so experiments can be manipulated outdoors by a controller inside.

View the NASA video and commentary on the successful attachment of Kibo »

According to mission controllers, the delivery of Kibo went according to plan. However, the spacewalk by Fossum and Garan was delayed by an hour, but they managed to make up for lost time. Firstly they had to detach a shuttle inspection boom from the station that had been left behind by the previous shuttle mission in March. Used to check for damage to the protective ceramic tiles on the underbelly of the shuttle, the boom had been left there as there was no room in Discovery’s cargo bay.

Apart from delivering this important laboratory, the crew had two more gifts: a toy Buzz Lightyear and a highly valuable toilet pump – both very important payloads in very different ways…

Sources: AFP, BBC

June 2, 2008December 24, 2015 by Ian O'Neill

Mars Settlement Pioneers Will Face Huge Psychological Challenges

Artist impression of an astronaut on Mars (NASA)

Imagine you are on the crew of a Mars mission and you fall out with a fellow crew member. You can’t walk away from them. Imagine you are on the surface of Mars and you suffer terrible home sickness. You can’t simply fly back to your family. Imagine there is a medical emergency in your team en-route to the Red Planet. You can’t call emergency services, you’re on your own. These issues with long-period missions into space, especially on future missions to colonize Mars, could cause serious psychological issues and may jeopardise the mission. Many groups are currently working on understanding how humans could react in these situations when they are isolated and confined so far away from home, and “Mars Analogues” based here on Earth are proving to be very useful…

It may seem obvious that it is going to be mentally (let alone physically) tough for future astronauts on the first manned missions to Mars, but space organizations (like NASA and ESA) and voluntary groups such as the Mars Society are gaining a valuable insight to how we function when restricted to very confined spaces with only a handful of people for company. Mars settlement mock-ups known as “Mars analogue environments” based in locations like the Utah Desert or the Arctic island of Spitsbergen are extremely valuable to mission planners when researching how to live and work on the Martian surface. However, they are also proving to be very influential when selecting crew members who will spend all of their time together. This psychological factor may be key to the future of Mars missions that could last years.

Plans are afoot for a long 520-day mock Mars mission this year to study the effects isolation has on a group of 12 volunteers. The study is being carried out by ESA and the Russian Institute of Biomedical Problems so psychological issues can be identified and understood. It is work like this on Earth that will influence the selection of astronauts to be sent to Mars who are compatible in a work and social environment.

A lot of research has been done on astronauts ever since Yuri Gagarin was launched into orbit alone in 1961. Before Gagarin’s historic journey, doctors were very concerned that weightlessness may cause acute mental disorders such as schizophrenia. Fortunately, this was not to be the case, but there are many disorders we cannot fully test until man ventures far into interplanetary space.

It seems natural that Mars astronauts will want gifts, luxuries and other “reminders from home”, as is possible on the International Space Station, but they will be totally isolated with no ferrying of items when they leave the safety of Earth. This need can be subdued by regular communications with home (although a 40+ minute delay for communications between Earth and Mars will make any “live” conversation impossible), and generally we know the problems we’ll face should these “homesick” feelings surface.

But what happens when man loses sight of Earth? Dr. Nick Kanas, who has studied astronaut psychology at UC San Francisco, is concerned about this unknown factor. He has even given this situation a name: the “Earth out of view” phenomenon.

“Nobody in the history of mankind has ever experienced the Earth as a pale, insignificant blue dot in the sky. What that might do to a crew member, nobody knows.” – Dr. Nick Kanas.

This is the nature of the task in hand, humans are going to be pushed beyond what we would consider to be a “natural” situation. Perhaps we might surprise ourselves and find that space exploration is as natural to us as it was for our ancestors to discover new continents. In fact, many astronaut psychologists are looking back into the history books to gain an insight as to what it was like for early pioneers of global exploration.

“When early explorers left their home countries on the seas, they didn’t see their home countries anymore. They didn’t even have a dot to look at. It was out of sight on the other side of the world. It is not like we are reinventing the wheel. We are just doing the same thing in a different environment that was just as demanding then.” – Walter Sipes, NASA psychologist, Johnson Space Center, Houston.

These factors combined with space euphoria and the “Overview Effect”, our future Mars astronauts are possibly in for a bumpy psychological ride…

Source: CNN

June 2, 2008December 24, 2015 by Ian O'Neill

How do you Model the Earth’s Magnetic Field? Build your own Baby Planet…

The model Earth, can a magnetic field be modelled in the lab? (Flora Lichtman, NPR)

The Earth’s magnetic field is quite a mystery. How is it generated? How does it remain so stable? We have known of the Earth’s magnetic field for hundreds of years and the humble compass has been telling us the direction of magnetic North Pole since the 12th Century. Animals use it for navigation and we have grown dependent on its existence for the same reason. What’s more, the magnetosphere gives us a powerful shield against the worst solar storm. Yet we still have little idea about the mechanisms generating this field deep in the core of the Earth. In the hope of gaining a special insight to the large-scale, planetary magnetic field, a geophysicist from the University of Maryland has built his very own baby Earth in his laboratory, and it will be spinning (liquid metal included) by the end of the year…

This story reminds me of a classic experiment carried out by Norwegian Kristian Birkeland at the turn of the 19th Century. In an attempt to understand the dynamic Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights), Birkeland experimentally proved that electrical currents could flow along magnetic field lines (a.k.a. Birkeland, or “field-aligned” currents, pictured left). This can be observed in nature as charged particles from the solar wind interact with the Earth’s magnetosphere and are then guided down to the Earth’s magnetic poles. As the particles flow into the upper polar atmosphere, they collide with atmospheric gases, generating a colourful light display called aurorae. However, this early experiment simulated a magnetic field; it did not model how the Earth generates it in the first place.

Now, in a laboratory in the University of Maryland, geophysicist Dan Lathrop is pursuing this mystery by building his very own scale version of the Earth (pictured top). The model is set up on apparatus that will spin the 10-foot diameter ball to an equatorial speed of 80 miles per hour. To simulate the Earth’s molten outer core, Lathrop will fill the sphere with molten metal. The whole thing will weigh in at 26 tonnes.

This is Lathrop’s third attempt at generating a scale model of the Earth’s magnetic field. The last two attempts were much smaller, so this large experiment had to be constructed by a company more used to engineering heavy-duty industrial equipment.

It is believed that the Earth’s molten outer core, starting 2,000 miles below the Earth’s crust, generates the global magnetic field. This “dynamo effect” is somehow created through the interaction of turbulent liquid iron flow (which is highly conductive) with the spin of the planet. In Lathrop’s model, he will be using another conductive liquid metal, sodium. Molten iron is too hot to maintain in this environment, sodium exists at a liquid phase at far lower temperatures (it has a melting point close to that of the boiling point of water, nearly 100°C), but there are some serious hazards associated with using sodium as an iron analog. It is highly flammable in air and is highly reactive with water, so precautions will have to be taken (for one, the sprinkler system has been disabled, water in the case of a sodium fuelled fire will only make things worse!). This whole experiment, although risky, is required as there is no direct way to measure the conditions in the outer core of the Earth.

“The conditions of the core are more hostile than the surface of the sun. It’s as hot as the surface of the sun but under extremely high pressures. So there’s no way to probe it, no imaginable technique to directly probe the core.” – Dan Lathrop

Spinning this heavy sphere should cause sustained turbulence in the flow of the liquid sodium and it is hoped a magnetic field can be generated. There are many puzzles this experiment hopes to solve, such as the mechanics behind magnetic polar shift. Throughout the Earth’s history there is evidence that the magnetic poles have switched polarity, prolonged spinning of the model may cause periodic magnetic pole reversal. Testing the conditions in the conductive liquid metal may shed some light on what influences this global pattern of polar shift.

This kind of experiment has been done before, but scientists have directed the flow of liquid metal through the use of pipes, but this model will allow the metal to naturally organize itself, creating its own turbulent flow. Whether or not this test generates a magnetic field it is unknown, but it should aid our understanding about how magnetism is generated inside the planets.

See the video at National Public Radio »

Source: National Public Radio

June 1, 2008December 24, 2015 by Ian O'Neill

Harvesting Solar Power from Space

Artist's concept of a space-based solar array. Credit NASA/SAIC

In a new report, the viability of sending solar panels into space to collect a vast quantity of uninterrupted energy has been re-investigated. Although the idea has been around since the 1970’s, space solar power has always been viewed as prohibitively expensive. In the current energy climate down here on Earth with spiralling oil prices and a massive push toward green energy sources, sending massive solar arrays into geosynchronous orbit doesn’t seem like such a strange (or expensive) idea. There are many obstacles in the way of this plan, but the international community is becoming more interested, and whoever is first to set up an orbital array will have a flexible and unlimited energy resource…

It sounds like the perfect plan: build a vast array of solar panels in space. This avoids many of the practical problems we have when building them on Earth such as land availability, poor light conditions and night time, but sending a sunlight farm into space will be expensive to set up. In the 1970’s a plan was drawn up by NASA for the possibility of orbital sunlight “harvesting”, but it was deemed too expensive with a hefty price tag of at least $1 trillion. There was no country in the world that could commit to such a plan. But as we slowly approach an era of cheaper space travel, this cost has been slashed, and the orbital solar energy case file has been re-opened. Surprisingly, it isn’t the most developed nations in the world that are pushing for this ultimate renewable energy source. India and China, with their ballooning populations are reaching a critical point for energy consumption and they are beginning to realise their energy crisis may be answered by pushing into space.

“A single kilometer-wide band of geosynchronous Earth orbit experiences enough solar flux in one year to nearly equal the amount of energy contained within all known recoverable conventional oil reserves on Earth today.” – Pentagon’s National Security Space Office 2007 report.

So how could this plan work? Construction will clearly be the biggest expense, but the nation who leads the way in solar power satellites will bolster their economy for decades through energy trading. The energy collected by highly efficient solar panels could be beamed down to Earth (although it is not clear from the source what technology will go into “beaming” energy to Earth) where it is fed into the national grid of the country maintaining the system. Ground based receivers would distribute gigawatts of energy from the uninterrupted orbital supply. This will have obvious implications for the future high demand for electricity in the huge nations in Asia and will wean the international community off carbon-rich non-renewable resources such as oil and coal. There is also the benefit of the flexible nature of this system being able to supply emergency energy to disaster (and war-) zones.

“It will take a great deal of effort, a great deal of thought and unfortunately a great deal of money, but it is certainly possible.” – Jeff Keuter, president of the George C. Marshall Institute, a Washington-based research organization.

The most optimistic time frame for a fully operational space-based sunlight collection satellite would be 2020, but that is if we started work now. Indeed some research is being done (Japan is investing millions of dollars into a potential prototype to be put into space in the near future), but this is a far cry from planning to get full-scale operations underway in a little over a decade…

Source: CNN International

May 31, 2008December 24, 2015 by Ian O'Neill

Warm Coronal Loops May Hold the Key to Hot Solar Atmosphere

Coronal loops as imaged by TRACE at 171 Angstroms (1 million deg C) (NASA/TRACE)

Coronal loops, the elegant and bright structures threading through the solar surface and into the solar atmosphere, are key to understanding why the corona is so hot. Yes, it’s the Sun, and yes, it’s hot, but its atmosphere is too hot. The puzzle as to why the solar corona is hotter than the Sun’s photosphere has kept solar physicists busy since the mid-twentieth century, but with the help of modern observatories and advanced theoretical models, we now have a pretty good idea what is causing this. So is the problem solved? Not quite…

So why are solar physicists so interested in the solar corona anyway? To answer this, I’ll pull up an excerpt from my first ever Universe Today article:

…measurements of coronal particles tell us the atmosphere of the Sun is actually hotter than the Suns surface. Traditional thinking would suggest that this is wrong; all sorts of physical laws would be violated. The air around a light bulb isn’t hotter than the bulb itself, the heat from an object will decrease the further away you measure the temperature (obvious really). If you’re cold, you donâ€™t move away from the fire, you get closer to it! – from “Hinode Discovers Sun’s Hidden Sparkle“, Universe Today, December 21st, 2007

This isn’t only an academic curiosity. Space weather originates from the lower solar corona; understanding the mechanisms behind coronal heating has wide-ranging implications for predicting energetic (and damaging) solar flares and forecasting interplanetary conditions.

So, the coronal heating problem is an interesting issue and solar physicists are hot on the trail of the answer to why the corona is so hot. Magnetic coronal loops are central to this phenomenon; they are at the base of the solar atmosphere and experience rapid heating with a temperature gradient from tens of thousands of Kelvin (in the chromosphere) to tens of millions of Kelvin (in the corona) over a very short distance. The temperature gradient acts across a thin transition region (TR), which varies in thickness, but can be only a few hundreds of kilometers thick in places.

These bright loops of hot solar plasma may be easy to see, but there are many discrepancies between the observation of the corona and coronal theory. The mechanism(s) responsible for heating the loops have proven to be hard to pin down, particularly when trying to understand the dynamics of “intermediate temperature” (a.k.a. “warm”) coronal loops with plasma heated to around one million Kelvin. We are getting closer to solving this puzzle which will aid space weather predictions from the Sun to the Earth, but we need to work out why the theory is not the same as what we are seeing.

Solar physicists have been divided on this topic for some time. Is coronal loop plasma heated by intermittent magnetic reconnection events throughout the length of a coronal loop? Or are they heated by some other steady heating very low in the corona? Or is it a bit of both?

I actually spent four years wrestling with this issue whilst working with the Solar Group at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, but I was on the side of “steady heating”. There are several possibilities when considering the mechanisms behind steady coronal heating, my particular area of study was AlfvÃ©n wave production and wave-particle interactions (shameless self-promotion… my 2006 thesis: Quiescent Coronal Loops Heated By Turbulence, just in case you have a spare, dull weekend ahead of you).

James Klimchuk from the Goddard Space Flight Center’s Solar Physics Laboratory in Greenbelt, Md., takes a different opinion and favours the nanoflare, impulsive heating mechanism, but he is highly aware that other factors may come into play:

“It has become clear in recent years that coronal heating is a highly dynamic process, but inconsistencies between observations and theoretical models have been a major source of heartburn. We have now discovered two possible solutions to this dilemma: energy is released impulsively with the right mix of particle acceleration and direct heating, or energy is released gradually very close to the solar surface.” – James Klimchuk

Nanoflares are predicted to maintain warm coronal loops at their fairly steady 1 million Kelvin. We know the loops are this temperature as they emit radiation in the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) wavelengths, and a host of observatories have been built or sent into space with instruments sensitive to this wavelength. Space-based instruments such as the EUV Imaging Telescope (EIT; onboard the NASA/ESA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory), NASA’s Transition Region and Coronal Explorer (TRACE), and the recently operational Japanese Hinode mission have all had their successes, but many coronal loop breakthroughs occurred after the launch of TRACE back in 1998. Nanoflares are very hard to observe directly as they occur over spatial scales so small, they cannot be resolved by the current instrumentation. However, we are close, and there is a trail of coronal evidence pointing to these energetic events.

“Nanoflares can release their energy in different ways, including the acceleration of particles, and we now understand that the right mix of particle acceleration and direct heating is one way to explain the observations.” – Klimchuk.

Slowly but surely, theoretical models and observation are coming together, and it seems that after 60 years of trying, solar physicists are close to understanding the heating mechanisms behind the corona. By looking at how nanoflares and other heating mechanisms may influence each other, it is very likely that more than one coronal heating mechanism is at play…

Aside: Out of interest, nanoflares will occur at any altitude along the coronal loop. Although they may be called nanoflares, by Earth standards, they are huge explosions. Nanoflares release an energy of 10²⁴-10²⁶ erg (that is 10¹⁷-10¹⁹ Joules). This is the equivalent of approximately 1,600 to 160,000 Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs (with the explosive energy of 15 kilotonnes), so there is nothing nano about these coronal explosions! But on the comparison with the standard X-ray flares the Sun generates from time to time with a total energy of 6×10²⁵ Joules (over 100 billion atomic bombs), you can see how nanoflares get their name…

Original source: NASA

May 29, 2008December 24, 2015 by Ian O'Neill

Temperature Conditions of a Supernova Recreated in UK Laboratory

A scientist cleans a vacuum spatial filter for the Vulcan Petawatt Facility during construction (Rutherford Appleton Laboratory)

Scientists are one step closer to attaining the ultimate goal: producing temperatures high enough to sustain fusion, the reaction that powers our Sun and the possible future for global energy production. Researchers at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire, UK, have attained temperatures higher than the surface of the Sun, 10 million Kelvin (or Celsius), by using a powerful one petawatt laser called Vulcan. This experiment goes beyond the quest for fusion power; generating these high temperatures recreates the conditions of cosmological events such as supernova explosions, and astronomical bodies like white dwarfs and neutron star atmospheres…

This is some awesome research. An international collaboration of researchers from the UK, Europe, Japan and the US have succeeded in harnessing an equivalent of 100 times the world energy production into a tiny spot, measuring a fraction of the width of a human hair. That’s a whopping one petawatt of energy (one thousand million million watts, or enough to power ten trillion 100W light bulbs) focused on a volume measuring about 0.000009 metres (9Âµm) across (I took the value of the diameter of a human hair to be 90Âµm, as measured by Piezo Technology, in case you were interested). This is a vast improvement on previous tests, where the volume heated measured 20 times smaller than this new experiment. This feat was achieved through the use of Rutherford Appleton’s Vulcan laser.

The petawatt laser was able to attain this vast power by delivering a very short-period pulse onto the target. After all, the planet didn’t experience a black out as the laser was switched on, the laser is able to amplify the amount of power available by focusing on a microscopic volume for a short period of time. Vulcan blasted its target with the one petawatt laser beam for a mere 1 picosecond (one millionth of a millionth of a second). This may seem miniscule, but this microscopic period of time allowed the target material to be heated to the 10 million Kelvin.

These tests not only allow scientists to study what happens when matter is heated to such extremes, it also paves the way to more powerful lasers fusing the nuclei of hydrogen, deuterium and tritium. Self-sustaining nuclear fusion may then be possible, unlocking a gateway into a huge source of energy. It is conceivable that a future fusion reactor will use a powerful, focused laser to start fusion events, allowing the energy produced by each reaction to power the next. This is the basis of self-sustaining nuclear fusion.

“This is an exciting development – we now have a new tool with which to study really hot, dense matter” – Prof. Peter Norreys, STFC funded researcher and Vulcan scientist.

The Vulcan has some stiff competition though. In the US, the Texas Petawatt laser broke the record for most powerful laser a few days ago, reaching energies in excess of one petawatt. But plans for a bigger UK laser, the Hiper (High Power laser Energy Research), will be even more powerful and is intended to investigate fusion power.

Source: Telegraph

May 29, 2008December 24, 2015 by Ian O'Neill

US Wants to Defend Satellites From Laser Attack

In 2006 the US carried out space laser tests (Starfire Optical Range)

So what do you do if someone fires a powerful laser at your satellite? The optics on the satellite will probably be fried, so you couldn’t see who did it. The US military appears to be concerned that this possibility may become a reality. As the US depends more and more on space for communications, GPS and military applications, the US government has announced the development of a defence method intended to detect a ground-based laser attack on a satellite, and pin point the laser’s location. However, some experts have warned against taking this kind of action as there is little evidence other nations are developing anti-satellite laser technology. Also, it may be defence system but it could push further development of the militarization of space…

Satellites can be a pretty vulnerable technology. As showcased by both China and the US in the last year, satellites are well within the scope for anti-satellite missiles. Although both nations contest that the satellite shoot downs were not intended to demonstrate their military prowess in space, many observers have become concerned about the acceleration of research into space weaponry. Pentagon officials have even voiced their concern that their spy satellites may fall fowl of “illumination” by Chinese ground-based lasers. There is however little evidence that China is pursuing this technology.

Even so, the US Air Force has called on contractors to develop a system that will “sense and attribute” a laser attack. This means the technology must have the ability to sense laser emission aimed at a satellite and attribute it to a location on the surface. This development program has become known as Self Awareness/Space Situation Awareness (SASSA). The SASSA system will need to be sensitive to a wide range of laser and radio wavelengths, but the tough part will be to accurately pin-point where the laser is being fired from.

This month, both Lockheed Martin and Boeing have presented their proposals for the SASSA system and the Air Force hopes to fly the winning bid on board an experimental satellite (TacSat-5) in 2011.

Although this is a defensive measure, military analysts are worried that the SASSA could increase tensions around the use of space weapons. As Rob Hewson, analyst and editor for Jane’s Air Launched Weapons, points out, “It’s a defensive step but one that assumes an attack, it is a baby step in the preparation for fighting in space.”

Source: New Scientist Tech

May 29, 2008December 24, 2015 by Ian O'Neill

Japanese Special Brew: Space Beer

In 1985, Coke was flown into space. The carbon dioxide fizzed all the way through the zero-G blob (NASA)

Well, the title is a little misleading. It should read something like, “Japanese Scientists Brew Beer from Barley that Spent Five Months on the International Space Station,” but that seemed a little too long. It’s not actually beer brewed in space, more beer made from ingredients grown on the ISS. Regardless, the idea is pretty cool. A Japanese company wants to produce 100 bottles of space beer, but commercializing the product may not be a reality quite yet. Even if you might not be able to buy space beer at your local pub, there might not be much different from the normal stuff anyway. But it is a step in the right direction toward the first bar on the Moon or Mars…

The Japanese, known for their traditional alcoholic tipple SakÃ©, are about to become known for their space beer brewing exploits too. Using third-generation barley grown on the ISS for 5 months in 2006, the brewing company Sapporo is hoping to roll out their first 100 bottles of “Space Beer” by this November. The company has been working with Okayama University biologist Manabu Sugimoto and the Russian space agency on producing edible products grown in orbit. This is all in the effort to aid the science behind growing sustainable produce in space for future long-term missions, greatly benefiting future manned settlement plans on the Moon, and eventually Mars.

“In the future, we may reach a point where humans will spend an extended period of time in space and must grow food to sustain ourselves […] In the long run, we hope our space research will be not just about producing food, but about enjoying food and relaxing [in space].” – Manabu Sugimoto.

On analysing the DNA of barley grown in space and comparing it with barley grown here on Earth, there appears to be no difference between the strains. These results will be presented in July at a conference in Canada with a focus on the cultivation of plants in a space environment. Barley is a hardy plant, allowing it to grow in challenging environments in a range of temperatures. It is also high in fibre and nutrients, essential for the health of astronauts and future space colonists. Making beer from barley grown in space may seem pretty inconsequential, but once this is achieved, more products familiar here on Earth may be grown and manufactured in space.

As for brewing beer in a zero-G environment, this may be many years off. In separate experiments held by NASA in the 1980’s on carbonated drinks, it was found that the “fizz” cannot rise in the liquid (as there is no gravity, pictured top). The foam you’d associate with the head on a pint of beer would be non-existent in zero-G as the bubbles become suspended within the liquid. This has the unappealing effect of producing “wet burps” when drunk by astronauts – the liquid does not become separated from the gas, expelling the gas by belching also expels some liquid. This is one of the main reasons why carbonated drinks are not on the ISS menu.

For now, space beer, drunk in space, will probably be confined to consumption on planets, where gravity will help alleviate any messy burps…

Sources: Physorg.com, New Scientist

May 28, 2008December 24, 2015 by Ian O'Neill

Eta Carinae and the “Cosmic Cauldron” in Unprecedented Detail – New Images from the VLT

Eta Carinae. Taken with the NACO near-infrared adaptive optics instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope (ESO/VLT)

To celebrate the Very Large Telescope’s (VLT) 10th birthday on Tuesday, it was us who received the gifts. The European Southern Observatory (ESO) released two magnificent astronomical images of two nebulae, both very different, but spectacular all the same. One is the iconic scene of Eta Carinae (a.k.a. Homunculus, “little man” in Latin, pictured), the nebula produced by a single dying star just before it goes supernova. The second is of the large nebula NGC 3576, setting the scene for the “Cosmic Cauldron”, where the clouds are constantly churned up by the birth of newborn stars. These new images have applied some of the most advanced astronomy techniques to remove atmospheric blurring, bringing us the most detailed look into these nebulae we have ever experienced…

The VLT is located high on the Chilean mountain of Cerro Paranal, over 2.5 kilometres (1.5 miles) above sea level. The Atacama desert in northern Chile provides ideal, stable observation conditions to resolve the fine structure of astronomical objects four billion times fainter than what can be observed with the naked eye. The observatory consists of a group of four 8.2 metre telescopes, and an astronomical interferometer. For the last ten years the VLT has produced some of the most iconic images in the history of astronomy. The VLT was one of the first observatories to capture infrared images of extrasolar planets 2M1207b and GQ Lupi b. It also discovered the most distant gamma-ray burst and possibly the farthest observed (and therefore youngest) galaxy ever discovered, Abell 1835 IR1916. It has also uncovered evidence that there may be a supermassive black hole sitting in the centre of our galaxy. Still, it captures some of the deepest images of space we have ever seen.

Probably the most familiar image is of the twin bulges of the clouds of hot matter being blown from the dying bright star of Eta Carinae (pictured top). This is one of the finest examples of a star going through the last phase of its life as a “luminous blue variable”. The hot gas forming the “Homunculus” originates from a great outburst observed in 1843 and some time in the next 100,000 years, the star will die, exploding as a supernova. This new image is 6 to 7 times better resolved than previous images of Eta Carinae as the VLT has applied some of the most advanced adaptive optical technology (called NACO) to remove the blurring effect of the atmosphere. Now, the fine scale of Eta Carinae can be seen, clearly showing the jets blasting from the central star and the bipolar structure.

A second (bigger) nebula can also be found in the direction of the constellation of Carina, it is called NGC 3576. This vast region (stretching 100 light-years across) is located in a volume of space far beyond Eta Carinae, some 9,000 light-years from the Earth. The image of NGC 3576 (pictured above) shows, in awesome detail, the violent nature of the cradle for newborn stars. The nebula is thought to be very young, only 1.5 million years old, with massive stars emitting intense radiation and stellar winds, ejecting the clouds from where they grew up.

Researchers from the University of Cologne in Germany are studying NGC 3576 using the VLT to deduce the number of young stars that still have protoplanetary disks. From this study, astronomers hope to understand the lifetime of these planet-forming disks, how the star’s radiation influences lifetime and how stellar collisions will affect disk evolution.

For now, I’ll leave the science to the researchers and enjoy the beauty of these striking VLT images…

Source: ESO

May 28, 2008December 24, 2015 by Ian O'Neill

What is the Fastest Spinning Object in the Solar System? Near-Earth Asteroid 2008 HJ

The asteroid Eros, it might be big but it doesnt spin as fast as 2008 HJ (NASA)

A British astronomer has discovered a strange spinning object. The fact that it is spinning in itself is not strange, but the speed it is doing so has raised some eyebrows. The near-Earth asteroid 2008 HJ has been spotted spinning at a rate of one rotation every 42.7 seconds, breaking the record for the fastest rotating natural object in the Solar System. It is so fast that it has been designated as a “super-fast rotator”. What makes this discovery even more interesting was that it was spotted by an amateur astronomer when using the Australian Faulkes Telescope South observatory, operating it remotely over the Internet, in his Dorset home in the south of the UK…

Asteroid 2008 HJ smashes the previous record for fastest rotating object by 35 seconds. The previous record holder was asteroid 2000 DO8 (discovered eight years ago) with a rotational period of 78 seconds. This new discovery comes from a new project funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), which gives UK schools and colleges access to the world-class Faulkes Telescopes based in Australia and Hawaii. This finding is one of four recent successes in the search for small near-Earth asteroids under 150 meters in diameter. In April this year, the first significant discovery by the project was of asteroid 2008 GP3 with a measured rotation period of 11.8 minutes.

Perhaps even more exciting than the discovery itself is who spotted asteroid 2008 HJ in the first place. This isn’t a news release from the Australian observatory, it isn’t even an announcement from an academic institution; the discovery was made by retiree Richard Miles from the comfort of his own home. Miles is an amateur astronomer and vice-president of the British Astronomical Association (BAA). He was able to carry out his research via a remote connection to the Faulkes Telescope South on the other side of the planet, in the UK. This charity based program enables enthusiasts and students to control the research-grade two-metre diameter telescopes, and the discoveries are coming thick and fast.

“A discovery like this demonstrates the capabilities of amateur astronomers and school students to produce exciting scientific results if given the right tools. By providing Richard with access to a big telescope we have smashed the previous record, and opened up the search for even faster objects to UK amateur astronomers and school students. This helps to put all that classroom science, maths and IT to real use!” – Dr Paul Roche, Director of the Faulkes Telescope Project at Cardiff University, Wales

The finding of the 12×24 metre asteroid appears to be consistent with near-Earth asteroid theory, and many sub-minute period asteroids can be expected. It’s just that not very many have been discovered as yet, so with the help of UK schools and amateur astronomers, more can be expected to be found.

Near-Earth asteroids are a concern for the future of the planet as there are many Earth-crossing rocky bodies that could cause significant damage to us on the ground should one come our way. Although the skies appear clear for now, our knowledge of these rogue objects is very limited. It is generally understood that these spinning pieces of rock (often weighing in at thousands of tonnes) are fragments from ancient collisions in the early Solar System. Projects such as Faulkes have an obvious advantage in increasing our knowledge in that it opens up observation time to a vast number of astronomers.

For more information on the Faulkes Telescopes, go to the project website »

Source: SpaceRef.com