A graphic designer in Rhode Island, Jason writes about space exploration on his blog Lights In The Dark, Discovery News, and, of course, here on Universe Today. Ad astra!
Comet Elenin, the supposed “doomsday comet” that has inspired so much confusion and controversy since its discovery in December 2010, may have broken apart completely during its recent pass around the Sun.
Discoverer Leonid Elenin posted the image above earlier today on his website, SpaceObs.org. Taken with the International Scientific Optical Network’s 18″ telescope in New Mexico (ISON-NM), it shows what may be the remnants of Elenin, a faint cloud barely visible after its exit from behind the Sun.
“On the left you can see possible position of this ‘cloud’,” Leonid writes. “Brightness of this object does not exceed 18m, which means what now, magnitude of the comet is lower then predicted on 12m. Hopefully in the near future debris of the comet will be observed on a large telescopes, and perhaps we’ll see some details of this ‘cloud’.”
Ground-based viewing of Elenin’s remains may be hampered over the next few days by the full Moon, he adds.
Although many rumors have been spread about the catastrophic danger Elenin poses to humans, in reality the comet was never a threat. Not expected to come any closer than 22 million miles (35 million km) to Earth, it’s been previously speculated that Elenin would most likely disintegrate during its current orbit.
“I don’t know why fearmongers [chose] my comet,” Leonid Elenin told Universe Today. “I received many letters from scared people. But if they believe in conspiracy theories I can’t help them.”
Hopefully this helps put some of the doomsday nonsense to rest!
Here’s a very cool “music video” showing the ongoing progress being made on the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, the next-generation vehicle for human space travel beyond low-Earth orbit.
Although the MPCV may resemble Apollo-era capsules, its technology and capability are light years apart. The MPCV features dozens of technology advancements and innovations incorporated into the spacecraft’s subsystem and component design.
From careful assembly of the smallest parts to the dramatic tests of the rocket launch abort system, this video shows how much expertise, talent and just plain hard work is being invested in the future of human spaceflight by NASA as well as many industry-leading experts around the country!
Pitted rocks imaged by Opportunity. NASA/JPL-Caltech/Stu Atkinson.
[/caption]
There are many ways rocks can be textured. Wind erosion, water erosion, the escape of volcanic gases during their formation (in the case of igneous rocks)… all these forces can create the pitted textures found on many rocks on Earth… and perhaps even on Mars. And according to a report published by a group of planetary geologists led by James Head of Rhode Island’s Brown University, another method may also be at play on Mars: melting snow.
Here on Earth in the hyper-arid dry valleys of Antarctica, water from melting snow erodes the surfaces of dark boulders, creating pitted textures similar to what has been found at many locations on Mars.
In order for that process to be truly analogous, though, a few conditions would have to be met on the red planet. First, the atmospheric pressure must be high enough to allow water to remain – if only temporarily – in a liquid state. Water that instantly boils away won’t have enough time to chemically attack the rock. Second, the rock itself must be at least warm enough to not freeze the water (again, must be liquid.) And third, there must actually be water, snow or frost present.
While one or more of these factors may be currently present in locations on Mars, they have not yet been found to exist all together in the same place. But that’s just what’s been found now… in Mars’ geologic past these may all have very well existed either in isolated locations or perhaps even planet-wide.
The paper’s abstract states:
For example, increases in atmospheric water vapor content (due, for example, to the loss of the south perennial polar CO2 cap) could favor the deposition of snow, which if collected on rocks heated to above the melting temperature during favorable conditions (e.g., perihelion), could cause melting and the type of locally enhanced chemical weathering that can cause pits.
In other words, if the dry ice at Mars’ south pole had melted at one point, freed-up water vapor could have fallen on rocks elsewhere as snow. If Mars were at a point in its orbit closest to the Sun and therefore experiencing warmer temperatures the snow could have then melted – especially upon darker rock surfaces.
Still, it’s possible – or even probable – that the weathering did not occur at a consistent rate across the entire surface of the rocks. Some sides may have weathered faster or slower than others, depending on how they were exposed to the elements. But if there’s one thing Mars has had a surplus of, it’s time. Even if the processes outlined in the report are indeed the cause of Mars’ pitted rocks, they have likely been in play over many hundreds of millions – even billions – of years.
Read the team’s report on the Journal of Geophysical Research here.
Thanks to Stu Atkinson for his color work on the images from Opportunity. Check out his blog The Road to Endeavour for updates on the rover’s progress.
On September 22, an international team of researchers working on the OPERA project at the Gran Sasso research facility released a paper on some potentially physics-shattering findings: beams of neutrinos that had traveled from the CERN facility near Geneva to their detector array outside of Rome at a speed faster than light. (Read more about this here and here.) Not a great deal faster, to be sure – only 60 nanoseconds faster than expected – but still faster. There’s been a lot of recoil from the scientific community about this announcement, and rightly so, since if it does end up being a legitimate finding then it would force us to rework much of what we have come to know about physics ever since Einstein’s theory of relativity.
Of course, to those of us not so well-versed in particle physics *raises hand* a lot of this information can quickly become overwhelming, to say the least. Thankfully the folks at Sixty Symbols have recorded this interview with two astrophysicists at the UK’s University of Nottingham. It helps explain some of the finer points of the discovery, what it means and what the science community in general thinks about it. Check it out!
The aurora australis seen from the ISS on September 17, 2011. Credit: NASA.
[/caption]
With all of the activity that’s been occurring on the Sun recently, the aurorae have been exceptionally bright and have created quite a show to viewers – both on Earth as well as above it!
The image above was taken over the southern Indian Ocean by astronauts aboard the International Space Station. The southern lights – a.k.a. aurora australis – glow bright green and red in the upper layers of the atmosphere, creating a dazzling aerial display. (Click here to watch a movie of this.)
Shortly after, fires can be seen on the ground as the ISS passes over Australia:
Wildfires in Australia seen from orbit. Credit: NASA.
Astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) used a digital camera to capture several hundred photographs of the aurora australis, or “southern lights,” while passing over the Indian Ocean on September 17, 2011. You can see the flowing ribbons and rays below as the ISS passed from south of Madagascar to just north of Australia between 17:22 and 17:45 Universal Time. Solar panels and other sections of the ISS fill some of the upper right side of the photograph.
Auroras are a spectacular sign that our planet is electrically and magnetically connected to the Sun. These light shows are provoked by energy from the Sun and fueled by electrically charged particles trapped in Earth’s magnetic field, or magnetosphere. In this case, the space around Earth was stirred up by an explosion of hot, ionized gas from the Sun — a coronal mass ejection — that left the Sun on September 14, 2011.
In the second image above, and in the last frames of the movie, light from the ground replaces the light show in the sky. Wildfires and perhaps some intentionally set agricultural fires burn on the continent of Australia,with smoke plumes faintly visible in the night sky. A gold and green halo of atmospheric airglow hangs above the horizon in the distance.
______________
Airglow is created by particles in the upper atmosphere that have been charged by UV light from the Sun during the day releasing the energy at night as greenish-yellow visible light.
Fires on the ground, fires in the sky… the stars blazing all around, the Sun in its full glory and a never-ending view of our entire planet… what an incredible place the ISS must be to work in! Absolutely amazing!
And the skies of night were alive with light, with a throbbing, thrilling flame; Amber and rose and violet, opal and gold it came. It swept the sky like a giant scythe, it quivered back to a wedge; Argently bright, it cleft the night with a wavy golden edge.
— “The Ballad of the Northern Lights”, Robert Service
Image of Venus in ultraviolet light by ESA's Venus Express.
[/caption]
Venus, Earth’s hotheaded neighbor, may have more variability in its weather patterns than previously believed. Using infrared data obtained by ground-based telescopes in Hawaii and Arizona researchers have found that Venus’ mesosphere and thermosphere are less consistent in temperature than layers closer to its surface.
But first let’s talk about Venus itself.
Possibly the most inhospitable of planets in our solar system, Venus is the victim of a runaway greenhouse effect. Our neighboring world is a virtual oven… with a rocky surface baked by 800ºF temperatures and crushed beneath the weight of its own incredibly dense atmosphere, standing “sea level” on Venus would be like being 3,300 feet underwater, just in terms of pressure per square inch. And as if the heat and pressure weren’t enough, Venus’ skies are full of clouds made of corrosive sulphuric acid, lit by bolts of lightning and and whipped along by hurricane-force planetwide winds. All Earth-based probes that have ever landed there only lasted moments on the surface before succumbing to Venus’ destructive environment.
Venus is, quite literally, hellish.
Venus' south polar vortex imaged in infrared. A darker region corresponds to higher temperature and thus lower altitude. Credit: ESA/VIRTIS/INAF-IASF/Obs. de Paris-LESIA.
Unlike Earth, Venus does not have much of an axial tilt. This means there’s little, if any, seasonal variation on Venus. (Actually it does have a tilt… Venus is rotated almost completely upside-down relative to its poles, and so in effect still has very little axial tilt.) And since its cloud cover is so dense and it lacks a hydrologic cycle to move heat energy around, it pretty much stays at a constant level of “extreme broil” all across Venus’ surface.
Surface weather on Venus, although unpleasant, is consistent.
Yet based on an international team’s new research this is not the case higher up in Venus’ atmosphere. A new look at old data has uncovered changing weather patterns visible in infrared light at about 68 miles (110 kilometers) above the planet’s surface in the cold, clear air above the acid clouds.
“Any variability in the weather on Venus is noteworthy, because the planet has so many features to keep atmospheric conditions the same,” said Dr. Tim Livengood, a researcher with the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education and the University of Maryland, now stationed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt.
Dr. Theodor Kostiuk of NASA Goddard explains further: “Although the air over the polar regions in these upper atmospheric layers on Venus was colder than the air over the equator in most measurements, occasionally it appeared to be warmer. In Earth’s atmosphere, a circulation pattern called a ‘Hadley cell’ occurs when warm air rises over the equator and flows toward the poles, where it cools and sinks. Since the atmosphere is denser closer to the surface, the descending air gets compressed and warms the upper atmosphere over Earth’s poles. We saw the opposite on Venus.”
Many factors could be contributing to Venus’ upper-atmospheric variabilities, such as interactions between opposing winds blowing around the planet at over 200 mph, giant vortexes that churn around its poles, and possibly even solar activity, like solar storms and coronal mass ejections which may create turbulence in Venus’ upper atmosphere.
“The mesosphere and thermosphere of Venus are dynamically active. Wind patterns resulting from solar heating and east to west zonal winds compete, possibly resulting in altered local temperatures and their variability over time.”
– Lead author Dr. Guido Sonnabend, University of Cologne, Germany
Artist concept of Venus' surface. (NASA)
The team also found that the temperatures of Venus’ atmosphere change over time, spanning weeks, months, years… even decades. Temperatures measured in 1990-91 are warmer than in 2009, and equatorial temperatures were even warmer in 2007.
“In addition to all these changes, we saw warmer temperatures than those predicted for this altitude by the leading accepted model,” said Kostiuk. “This tells us that we have lots of work to do updating our upper atmospheric circulation model for Venus.”
Even though Venus is compositionally similar to Earth and has a similar size as well, at some point in its history it lost all of its water to space and became the cloud-covered oven it is today. Studying Venus will help scientists learn how this may have happened and – hopefully! – learn how to prevent the same fate from ever befalling Earth.
The paper, led by Dr. Guido Sonnabend of the University of Cologne, Germany and co-authored by Drs. Livengood and Kostiuk, appeared July 23 in the online edition of the journal Icarus.
If you’re reading this, you’re probably very well aware of the Cassini mission. Launched in 1997, the Cassini spacecraft arrived at Saturn in June of 2004 and has been faithfully returning image after beautiful image of Saturn, its rings and its very extended family of moons ever since – not to mention all the groundbreaking scientific discoveries it’s made about the Saturnian system… and our solar system as a whole. Cassini truly is a rock star in the world of robotic space exploration, and now it has its own Hall of Fame to show off some of its best work!
The Cassini mission site put up by JPL/Caltech regularly features news and images from the mission, even including the latest downlinked raw image data from the spacecraft. In this way anyone can keep up with what Cassini is seeing and when, far before the images are included in NASA’s Planetary Data System. The new Cassini Image Hall of Fame showcases the “best of the best” from the mission, and is a great way to revisit Cassini’s past discoveries. (With so much happening at Saturn, sometimes it’s easy to forget all the amazing things Cassini has brought to our attention!)
Revisit the best of the best images of Saturn
If you’re a fan of Saturn (and really, who isn’t?) be sure to check this out. With the current mission extended into 2017 there’s sure to be lots more additions to the Hall of Fame on the way, too!
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
Also, be sure to visit the hard-working Cassini imaging team’s homepage at http://ciclops.org… they are the ones responsible for all these fantastic images in the first place!
Today, CERN announced that the LHCb experiment had revealed the existence of two new baryon subatomic particles. Credit: CERN/LHC/GridPP
[/caption]
It’s been a tenet of the standard model of physics for over a century. The speed of light is a unwavering and unbreakable barrier, at least by any form of matter and energy we know of. Nothing in our Universe can travel faster than 299,792 km/s (186,282 miles per second), not even – as the term implies – light itself. It’s the universal constant, the “c” in Einstein’s E = mc2, a cosmic speed limit that can’t be broken.
That is, until now.
An international team of scientists at the Gran Sasso research facility outside of Rome announced today that they have clocked neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light. The neutrinos, subatomic particles with very little mass, were contained within beams emitted from CERN 730 km (500 miles) away in Switzerland. Over a period of three years, 15,000 neutrino beams were fired from CERN at special detectors located deep underground at Gran Sasso. Where light would have made the trip in 2.4 thousandths of a second, the neutrinos made it there 60 nanoseconds faster – that’s 60 billionths of a second – a tiny difference to us but a huge difference to particle physicists!
The implications of such a discovery are staggering, as it would effectively undermine Einstein’s theory of relativity and force a rewrite of the Standard Model of physics.
The OPERA Neutrino Detector. Credit: LGNS.
“We are shocked,” said project spokesman and University of Bern physicist Antonio Ereditato.
“We have high confidence in our results. We have checked and rechecked for anything that could have distorted our measurements but we found nothing. We now want colleagues to check them independently.”
Neutrinos are created naturally from the decay of radioactive materials and from reactions that occur inside stars. Neutrinos are constantly zipping through space and can pass through solid material easily with little discernible effect… as you’ve been reading this billions of neutrinos have already passed through you!
The experiment, called OPERA (Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus) is located in Italy’s Gran Sasso facility 1,400 meters (4,593 feet) underground and uses a complex array of electronics and photographic plates to detect the particle beams. Its subterranean location helps prevent experiment contamination from other sources of radiation, such as cosmic rays. Over 750 scientists from 22 countries around the world work there.
Ereditato is confident in the results as they have been consistently measured in over 16,000 events over the past two years. Still, other experiments are being planned elsewhere in an attempt to confirm these remarkable findings. If they are confirmed, we may be looking at a literal breakdown of the modern rules of physics as we know them!
“We have high confidence in our results,” said Ereditato. “We have checked and rechecked for anything that could have distorted our measurements but we found nothing. We now want colleagues to check them independently.”
A preprint of the OPERA results will be posted on the physics website ArXiv.org.
Infrared image of Neptune from Keck Observatory in Hawaii. Credit: Mike Brown/CalTech
[/caption]
The confessed (and remorseless) “Pluto Killer” Mike Brown has turned his gaze – and the 10-meter telescope at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii – on Neptune, our solar system’s furthest “official” planet. But no worries for Neptune – Mike isn’t after its planetary status… he’s taken some beautiful infrared images instead!
Normally only visible as a featureless blue speck in telescopes, Brown’s image of Neptune — along with its largest moon Triton — shows the icy gas giant in infrared light, glowing bright red and orange.
Neptune and Triton in infrared. Credit: Mike Brown/CalTech.
Brown’s initial intention was not just to get some pretty pictures of planets. The target of the imaging mission was Triton and to learn more about the placement of its methane, nitrogen and seasonal frosts, and this sort of research required infrared imaging. Of course, Neptune turned out to be quite photogenic itself.
“The big difference is doing the imaging in the infrared where methane absorbs most of the photons,” said Brown. “So the bright places are high clouds where the sunlight reflects off of them before it had a chance to pass through much of the atmosphere. Dark is clear atmosphere full of methane absorption.
“I just thought it was so spectacular that I should post it.”
No argument here, Mike!
Neptune, now officially the outermost planet in our solar system, is the fourth largest planet and boasts the highest wind speeds yet discovered — 1,250 mph winds scream around its frigid skies! Like the other gas giants Neptune has a system of rings, although nowhere near as extravagant as Saturn’s. It has 13 known moons, of which Triton is the largest.
With its retrograde orbit, Triton is believed to be a captured Kuiper Belt Object now in orbit around Neptune. Kuiper Belt Objects are Mike Brown’s specialty, as he is the astronomer most well-known for beginning the whole process that got Pluto demoted from the official planet list back in 2006.
Jason Major is a graphic designer, photo enthusiast and space blogger. Visit his website Lights in the Dark and follow him on Twitter @JPMajor or on Facebook for the most up-to-date astronomy awesomeness!
Artist's concept of the new SLS on the launch pad. Credit: NASA
[/caption]
NASA has officially unveiled the plan for their next large-scale rocket: the Space Launch System, or SLS, will provide heavy-lift capabilities for cargo and spacecraft to go beyond low-Earth orbit and is proposed as a safe, sustainable and efficient way to open up the next chapter in US space exploration.
SLS is designed to carry the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Module, NASA’s next-generation human spaceflight vehicle that is specifically designed for long-duration missions. (Construction of the first space-bound MPCV began last week on September 9.)
Utilizing a modular design that can accommodate varying mission needs, SLS will also be able to provide service to the International Space Station.
“President Obama challenged us to be bold and dream big, and that’s exactly what we are doing at NASA. While I was proud to fly on the space shuttle, tomorrow’s explorers will now dream of one day walking on Mars.”
– NASA Administrator Charles Bolden
SLS will have an initial lift capacity of over 70 metric tons – about 154,000 pounds (70,000 kg). That’s three times the lift capability of the space shuttles! In the event of a Mars mission that can be upgraded to 130 metric tons – about the weight of 75 SUVs.
Artist image of SLS launch. Credit: NASA
The first developmental flight is targeted for the end of 2017.
SLS will be the first exploration-class vehicle since the giant Saturn V rockets that carried the Apollo astronauts to the Moon. Using rocket technology developed during the shuttle era and modified for the canceled Constellation program, combined with cutting-edge manufacturing processes, SLS will expand the boundaries of human spaceflight and extend our reach into the solar system.
“This launch system will create good-paying American jobs, ensure continued U.S. leadership in space, and inspire millions around the world,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. “President Obama challenged us to be bold and dream big, and that’s exactly what we are doing at NASA. While I was proud to fly on the space shuttle, tomorrow’s explorers will now dream of one day walking on Mars.”
