Nancy Atkinson, Author at Universe Today

November 24, 2015December 23, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Blue Origin Completes Successful Test Flight and Nails the Landing of New Shepard Rocket

The launch of the New Shepard rocket from Blue Origin's launch site in Texas on Nov. 23, 2015. Credit: Blue Origin.

Commercial space company Blue Origin achieved a huge milestone by successfully launching their New Shepard rocket to suborbital space and landing it dead center on target – and upright – back at their proving grounds in West Texas. This is the first successful landing of a reusable vertical takeoff, vertical landing (VTVL) rocket that has reached space.

“This flight validates our vehicle architecture and design,” said founder Jeff Bezos, the billionaire who also started Amazon.com.

Blue Origin's New Shepard reusable rocket standing upright after returning from an altitude of 329,839 feet (100.5 kilometers). Credit: Blue Origin. — Blue Origin’s New Shepard reusable rocket standing upright after returning from an altitude of 329,839 feet (100.5 kilometers). Credit: Blue Origin.

The suborbital flight launched Monday, November 23, 2015 at 11:21 a.m. CST from West Texas, reaching an altitude of 329,839 feet (100.5 kilometers) and a speed of Mach 3.72, which is about 2,854 mph (4,593 km/h), according a press release posted on the Blue Origin website.

Bezos said it was “flawless mission” for the Blue Origin team and for the reusable rocket, powered by the company’s own BE-3 engine, which uses liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen and produces 110,000-lbf thrust.

“We are building Blue Origin to seed an enduring human presence in space, to help us move beyond this blue planet that is the origin of all we know,” Bezos said in the press release. “We are pursuing this vision patiently, step-by-step. Our fantastic team in Kent, Van Horn and Cape Canaveral is working hard not just to build space vehicles, but to bring closer the day when millions of people can live and work in space.”

The capsule also landed successfully, returning to Earth on 3 parachutes.

Blue Origin released a video of the flight — which was not a crewed flight. The video oddly goes from actual footage of the launch to an animation of a crew inside the capsule, and then back to footage of the booster landing.

Bezos explained the landing:

“Our unique ring fin shifted the center of pressure aft to help control reentry and descent; eight large drag brakes deployed and reduced the vehicle’s terminal speed to 387 mph; hydraulically actuated fins steered the vehicle through 119-mph high-altitude crosswinds to a location precisely aligned with and 5,000 feet above the landing pad; then the highly-throttleable BE-3 engine re-ignited to slow the booster as the landing gear deployed and the vehicle descended the last 100 feet at 4.4 mph to touchdown on the pad.”

The goal of the New Shepard fully-reusable spacecraft is to carry people on suborbital spaceflights to experience weightlessness and view the Earth through the largest windows to ever fly in space. Science can also be done on these suborbital mission.

The Commercial Spaceflight Federation lauded the “historic landing,” saying Blue Origin has “demonstrated the economic viability of reusability, a revolutionary approach to spaceflight that counts fellow CSF Members Masten Space Systems and SpaceX among its pioneers. Reusable rocketry holds the promise of driving down launch costs and decreasing turn-around time.”

On April 29 of this year, Blue Origin flew the first developmental test flight of the New Shepard space vehicle. The engine worked flawlessly on launch, sending the rocket to its planned test altitude of 307,000 feet (58 miles, or 93.5 km). But the landing failed when pressure was lost in the hydraulic system on descent.

Bezos said he has always been a big fan of the vertical takeoff, vertical landing architecture. “We chose VTVL because it’s scalable to very large size,” he wrote on the company’s blog in April. “We’re already designing New Shepard’s sibling, her Very Big Brother – an orbital launch vehicle that is many times New Shepard’s size and is powered by our 550,000-lbf thrust liquefied natural gas, liquid oxygen BE-4 engine.”

The Blue Origins team celebrates their successful test flight on Nov. 23, 2015. Credit: Blue Origin.

Bezos has said he was inspired as a child watching the Apollo missions to the Moon. “You don’t choose your passions; your passions choose you,” he told CNN.

Bezos made the announcement of the successful test flight early today (Nov. 24) on social media:

The rarest of beasts – a used rocket. Controlled landing not easy, but done right, can look easy. Check out video: https://t.co/9OypFoxZk3

— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) November 24, 2015

Later, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted his congratulations: “Congrats to Jeff Bezos and the BO team for achieving VTOL on their booster.” But then, Musk also wanted to state the difference in what Blue Origin achieved and what SpaceX is trying to do with their resuable Falcon.

It is, however, important to clear up the difference between "space" and "orbit", as described well by https://t.co/7PD42m37fZ

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 24, 2015

November 20, 2015December 23, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

See Daytime Views of Pluto and Charon’s Rotation

On approach in July 2015, the cameras on NASA's New Horizons spacecraft captured Pluto rotating over the course of a full "Pluto day." The best available images of each side of Pluto taken during approach have been combined to create this view of a full rotation. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI.

A day on Pluto is 6.4 Earth days (6 days 9 hours and 36 minutes) long. That’s a lengthy, cold, and rather dark day. But this new image released by the New Horizons spacecraft team gives us a better idea of what a day on Pluto might be like. This montage of images shows Pluto rotating over the course of a full Pluto day.

It is interesting to note that Pluto’s moon Charon is tidally locked around Pluto, so this means that Charon takes 6.4 Earth days to orbit around Pluto – the same amount of time as a day on Pluto. If you were standing on Pluto, Charon would always be at the same place in the sky, or you wouldn’t be able to see it at all. And vise versa if you were on Charon.

New Horizons also captured a full day rotation for Charon, too, which you can see below.

On approach to the Pluto system in July 2015, the cameras on NASA's New Horizons spacecraft captured images of the largest of Pluto's five moons, Charon, rotating over the course of a full day. The best currently available images of each side of Charon taken during approach have been combined to create this view of a full rotation of the moon. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI. — On approach to the Pluto system in July 2015, the cameras on NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft captured images of the largest of Pluto’s five moons, Charon, rotating over the course of a full day. The best currently available images of each side of Charon taken during approach have been combined to create this view of a full rotation of the moon. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI.

The images were taken by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) and the Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera as New Horizons zoomed toward the Pluto system, and in the various images the distance between New Horizons and Pluto decreased from 5 million miles (8 million kilometers) on July 7 to 400,000 miles (about 645,000 kilometers) on July 13, 2015.

The science team explained that in the Pluto montage, the more distant images are at the 12 to 3 o’clock position, and so these are the best views we have of the peculiar “bumps” or impact craters on the far side. The side New Horizons saw in most detail – what the mission team calls the “encounter hemisphere” – is at the 6 o’clock position. The most prevalent feature there is the heart-shaped, “Tombaugh Regio” area that made us all love Pluto even more.

The odd shape of Pluto in the 12 and 1 o’clock position images aren’t lumps and deformities, but just artifacts from the way the images were combined to create these composites.

For the Charon montage, the images at the 9 o’clock position were taken from the greatest distance, with few of the signature surface features visible, such as the cratered uplands, canyons, or rolling plains of the region informally named Vulcan Planum. The side New Horizons saw in most detail, during closest approach on July 14, 2015, is at the 12 o’clock position.

As a comparison, below is a timelapse view of the Pluto-Charon orbital dance, which was taken by New Horizons back in January 2015. Pluto and Charon were observed for an entire rotation of each body, the same 6 days 9 hours and 36 minutes.

Pluto and Charon were observed by the New Horizons spacecraft for an entire rotation of each body; a “day” on Pluto and Charon is 6.4, which is Earth days. The first of the images was taken when New Horizons was about 3 billion miles from Earth, but just 126 million miles (203 million kilometers) from Pluto, on Jan. 25-31, 2015. NASA/APL/Southwest Research Institute.

Source: New Horizons

November 16, 2015December 23, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

New Dwarf Planet is Most Distant Object Yet Observed in our Solar System

A newly found object named V774104 was found using the Subaru Telescope. Credit: Scott Sheppard, Chad Trujillo, and David Tholen.

It has been estimated that there may be hundreds of dwarf planets in the Kuiper belt and Oort Cloud of the outer Solar System. So far we’ve found – and actually seen – just a few. This past week, one more dwarf planet was added to the list and comes in at the most distant object ever seen in the Solar System.

This newly found world, initially named V774104, is about 15.4 billion kilometers from the Sun. At 103 AU, it is three times further from the Sun than Pluto, and is more distant than the previous record holder, Eris, which lies at 97 AU.

The discovery of V774104 was announced by one of the astronomers who found the object, Scott Sheppard, from the Carnegie Institution for Science, at the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences fall meeting last week. Sheppard, along with Chad Trujillo and David Tholen used Japan’s 8-meter Subaru Telescope in Hawaii to make the find.

Astronomers say this newly spotted dwarf planet shows the depths of our Solar System.

“The discovery of V774104 is more proof that the Solar System is bigger than we thought,” said astronomer Joseph Burns from Cornell University, who was not associated with the discovery. “We need a little more time to pin down the orbit and determine the object’s exact size, but it must be big to see it at this distance.”

The size of V774104 is currently estimated to be between 500 and 1000 kilometers in diameter, which is less than half Pluto’s size.

While the size of the object is of some interest to astronomers who are searching for KBOs, even more interesting is pinning down its orbit. With its recent discovery, the orbit of V774104 has yet to be tracked for long periods of time.

If the orbit of V774104 comes closer to the Sun, such as between 30 to 50 AU, then it would be considered an icy Kuiper Belt objects which are more common among bodies like this found so far. Their orbits are more elongated because they fall under the gravitational influence of Neptune.

Of even more interest are what Sheppard called “inner Oort Cloud objects,” (also called “sednoids”). Theses bodies exist in a part of the Solar System that astronomers used to think was fairy empty. Of the two previously observed objects in this class — Sedna and 2012 VP113. — their orbits never come closer to the Sun than 50 AU, and they have a semi-major axis greater than 150 AU. The eccentric orbits of these objects have yet to be explained.

Colin Johnston from the Armagh Planetarium clarifies:

This means at their closest to the Sun they are still beyond the Kuiper Belt which lies 30-50 au from the Sun. Only two other objects in this category are known: 90377 Sedna and 2012 VP113.

They intrigue astronomers as they inhabit what was expected to be a largely empty region between the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud, the Solar System’s yet to observed reservoir of comets. As well, the current highly elliptical orbits of Sednoids cannot be their original orbits, the chance of smaller bodies in such eccentric paths accreting into objects hundreds of kilometres across is fantastically low. Sednoids must have originally formed in relatively circular orbits, possibly in the Oort Cloud.

“Non-eccentric orbits seem to be the anomaly here,” Burns told Universe Today.

So, this likely means that something other than the Sun is responsible for influencing the erratic orbits of such small objects like V774104. One theory is that there might be a large planet at the outer reaches of the Solar System influencing the orbits of these distant objects.

Of course, among some crowds that brings up the hypothetical Planet X. But Burns was quick to dismiss that idea.

“While we certainly don’t understand well these objects, we may want to scatter off an object like Planet X,” he said via email.

At the AAS meeting last week, Sheppard said the likely alternative is that the orbits of these objects might reflect the primordial conditions of the Solar System, which formed more than 4.5 billion years ago. This makes them even more enticing for study, and Sheppard and his team will be keeping a close eye on V774104 to try and learn more. Nature News reported that the team plans to look for it again this week using the Magellan Telescopes in Chile, and then again in a year, to calculate its orbit and determine whether if it is an inner Oort cloud resident or an icy Kuiper Belt object.

Further reading: Nature, Armagh Planetarium,Centauri Dreams, Science.

November 13, 2015December 23, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

‘Explody’ Taurid Meteors Produce Persistent Trains

A bright Taurid meteor falls over Deadfall Basin, near the base of Mount Eddy in California. Credit and copyright: Brad Goldpaint.

“The landscape was just at the verge of trying to silently explode with vibrant colors of red, gold and oranges,” said photographer Brad Goldpaint as he described the autumn view during his hike to Deadfall Basin in California to set up his cameras to try and capture a few Taurid meteors.

But the landscape wasn’t the only thing about to explode.

Later that night Brad captured a few “exploding” meteors that produced what are called persistent trains: what remains of a meteor fireball in the upper atmosphere as winds twist and swirl the expanding debris.

Brad created a time-lapse video from the event and slowed down the footage to highlight the trains.

Persistent trains have been difficult to study because they are rather elusive. But lately, with the widespread availability of ultra-fast lenses and highly sensitive cameras, capturing these trains is becoming more common.

Phil Plait still has the best description out there of what happens when persistent trains are produced:

As a meteoroid (the actual solid chunk of material) blasts through the air, it ionizes the gases, stripping electrons from their parent atoms. As the electrons slowly recombine with the atoms, they emit light — this is how neon signs glow, as well as giant star-forming nebulae in space. The upper-level winds blowing that high (upwards of 100 km/60 miles) create the twisting, fantastic shapes in the train.

The consensus among our Universe Today Flickr pool photographers who posted images of the Taurids this year is that the 2015 Taurids weren’t entirely remarkable. Most astrophotgraphers reported they saw one or two per hour. Here are a few more Taurid meteor shower images from our photographer friends:

A bright Taurid fireball on November 9, 2015. Credit and copyright: Mark Sansom.

Two Taurid meteors from the November 2015 shower, on November 10, 2015. Credit and copyright: Alan Dyer.

A bright Taurid meteor is reflected in a lake in Illinois. Credit and copyright: Kevin Palmer.

November 13, 2015December 23, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

A New “Mathematical” Definition Proposed for What Constitutes a Planet

Three exoplanet candidates found by the Planet Hunters citizen science project. Credit: Zooniverse

In the current (heated) debate of what constitutes a planet, it seems everyone can agree at least one thing: The current definition put forth by the International Astronomical Union is actually quite vague and it really only applies to our own Solar System. So while the definition is unclear at best in our own neighborhood, it also doesn’t provide a framework for classifying the thousands of exo-worlds that are being discovered on almost a weekly basis.

Since math has been dubbed “the language of the Universe” it seems rather fitting and logical to use arithmetic to help in framing a better definition for planethood.

This week, UCLA professor Jean-Luc Margot has proposed a simple mathematical test that can be used to separate planets from other bodies like dwarf planets and minor planets. He says his new system is easy.

“One should not need a teleportation device to decide whether a newly discovered object is a planet,” Margot said.

The new approach would use estimates of the star’s mass and the planet’s mass and orbital period. Since the IAU’s definition is based primarily on the ability of a planet to “clear its orbit,” (whether it can accumulate or dominate small bodies in its orbital neighborhood), Margot’s test narrows this down to a specific timeframe of determining whether a body can clear a specific region around its orbit.

“A simple metric can be used to determine whether a planet or exoplanet can clear its orbital zone during a characteristic time scale, such as the lifetime of the host star on the main sequence,” Margot writes in his paper. “This criterion requires only estimates of star mass, planet mass, and orbital period, making it possible to immediately classify 99% of all known exoplanets.”

Under these criteria, all 8 planets and all classifiable exoplanets would be classified as planets. It also keeps the distinction between planets and dwarf planets. Some have pointed out that Margot’s criteria would make our Moon a planet. But, as Margot told Universe Today, that’s not necessarily so. “It really depends on how the IAU decides to define satellites and if or how they decide to define double planets,” he said.

Margot says his definition would be useful in generalizing and simplifying the definition of a planet, and that the information for applying this for exoplanets is easily obtained with Earth- or space-based telescopes.

“The disparity between planets and non-planets is striking,” Margot said. “The sharp distinction suggests that there is a fundamental difference in how these bodies formed, and the mere act of classifying them reveals something profound about nature.”

Margot also found that bodies that can clear their orbits — and therefore qualify as planets — are typically spherical.

“Because a quantitative orbit-clearing criterion can be applied to all planets and exoplanets,” Margot writes, “it is possible to extend the 2006 IAU planet definition to stars other than the Sun and to remove any possible ambiguity about what it means to clear an orbital zone.”

Margot presented his proposal at the annual meeting of the AAS’s Division for Planetary Sciences. It is not known whether the new approach will be considered by the IAU.

Further reading: Margot’s paper, UCLA press release

November 10, 2015December 23, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Mars’ Moon Phobos Undergoing ‘Structural Failure’

New modeling indicates that the grooves on Mars’ moon Phobos could be produced by tidal forces – the mutual gravitational pull of the planet and the moon. Initially, scientists had thought the grooves were created by the massive impact that made Stickney crater (lower right). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

We’ve said it before: Mars’ moon Phobos is doomed. But a new study indicates it might be worse than we thought.

One of the most striking features we see on images of Phobos is the parallel sets of grooves on the moon’s surface. They were originally thought to be fractures caused by an impact long ago. But scientists now say the grooves are early signs of the structural failure that will ultimately destroy this moon.

“We think that Phobos has already started to fail, and the first sign of this failure is the production of these grooves,” said Terry Hurford, from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Why is Phobos falling apart?

Two words: tidal forces.

Phobos orbits closer to its planet than any moon in the Solar System. As it orbits just 6,000 km (3,700 miles) above Mars, and the planet’s gravity is pulling Phobos in closer and closer; it is also tearing Phobos apart. Scientists estimate the ultimate destruction of this tiny moon (22 kilometers/13.5-miles in diameter) might take place in about 30 to 50 million years.

It only take about 7.5 hours for Phobos to complete an orbit around the planet, while Mars takes almost 25 hours to complete one rotation on its axis. So Phobos travels three times around the planet for every Martian day. And as Fraser explains in this video, this is a problem.

Mars’ gravity is pulling in Phobos closer by about 2 meters (6.6 feet) every hundred years. The orbit will get lower and lower until it reaches a level known as the Roche Limit. This is the point where the tidal forces between the two sides of the moon are so different that it gets torn apart.

Hurford and his colleagues, who presented their latest findings at the annual Meeting of the Division of Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society this week, also delivered other bad news about the interior of Phobos – which could ultimately speed up the demise of the moon. Phobos’ insides are likely to be just a big pile of rubble — barely holding together — surrounded by a layer of powdery regolith about 100 meters (330 feet) thick.

“The funny thing about the result is that it shows Phobos has a kind of mildly cohesive outer fabric,” said Erik Asphaug of the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University in Tempe and a co-investigator on the study. “This makes sense when you think about powdery materials in microgravity, but it’s quite non-intuitive.”

Phobos' Stickney Crater — Phobos’ Stickney Crater. Credit: NASA.

Phobos’ grooves have long been an issue up for debate. As mentioned previously, one idea is that the grooves were associated with the impact that formed Stickney Crater, a big 10 km-wide crater that dominates one side of Phobos. However, scientists eventually determined that the grooves don’t radiate outward from the crater itself but from a focal point nearby. Another idea is they came from Phobos moving through streams of debris thrown up from impacts 6,000 km away on the surface of Mars, with each ‘family’ of grooves corresponding to a different impact event.

But new modeling by Hurford and his team supports the idea that the grooves are more like “stretch marks” that occur when Phobos gets deformed by tidal forces.

The team said that stress fractures predicted by their model coincide with the grooves seen in images of Phobos. This explanation also fits with the observation that some grooves are younger than others, which would be the case if the process that creates them is ongoing.

Huford also said the same fate may await Neptune’s moon Triton, which is also slowly falling inward and has a similarly fractured surface. The work also has implications for extrasolar planets, according to researchers.

“We can’t image those distant planets to see what’s going on, but this work can help us understand those systems, because any kind of planet falling into its host star could get torn apart in the same way,” said Hurford.

Here’s a video showing Mars Express images of Phobos over the last 10 years. The images show the grooves running across the small moon:

Source: NASA

November 3, 2015December 23, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

New Visualization Shows Incredible Variety of Extraterrestrial Worlds

This poster shows more than 500 exoplanets discovered before October 2015 arranged according to their temperature and density. Credit and copyright: Martin Vargic. Used by permission.

Here’s a great new poster showing over 500 extrasolar planets (about one quarter of the total) that have been discovered since 1988. This visualization, created by graphic artist and writer Martin Vargic from Slovakia, is based on the estimated radius and temperature of the planets, however other factors, such as density, age or stellar metallicity were also taken into consideration. All the various known classes of exoplanets are shown on the graphic, such as super-Earths, hot Jupiters, hot Neptunes, water worlds, gas dwarfs or superdense diamond planets.

Click on the image for a larger version, or a gigantic version here.

I love seeing the variety in sizes, as well as the diversity of projected colors of all the alien worlds.

According to NASA’s Exoplanet Archive website, 1,903 extra solar have been discovered since 1988 as of October 22, 2015.

You may have already seen Vargic’s very cool Map of the Internet, and of special interest to UT readers a map of how the the constellations have changed over time and visualization of the Moon replaced with other bodies, as well as a wide variety of other maps and infographics. You can check out his work on his website, Halcyon Maps. He puts out new graphics each week.

There are lots of ways to plot exoplanets. On the Exoplanet Archive website, you can see plots for exoplanet mass vs. period, temperature, number of exoplanets discovered by year (2014 was a banner year), as well as how the planets were discovered (radial velocity, microlensing, timing variations and orbital brightness modulation).

Previously, we’ve featured other exoplanet visualizations, such as one of Kepler’s transiting exoplanets and exoplanet candidates, plus this cool video visualization of the planetary systems discovered by Kepler that have more than one transiting object, created by Daniel Fabrycky from the Kepler spacecraft science team:

October 30, 2015December 23, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Charon’s Twin ‘Star Wars’ Craters Are Distinctly Different; New Horizons Continues Toward KBO

This composite image is based on observations from the New Horizons Ralph/LEISA instrument made at 10:25 UT (6:25 a.m. EDT) on July 14, 2015, when New Horizons was 50,000 miles (81,000 kilometers) from Charon. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute.

Just like Luke and Leia, two craters named for the Star Wars twins (Skywalker and Organa) have many similarities. They look about the same size and shape, and appear to have been created at the same time, and therefore are about the same age. But instruments on the New Horizons spacecraft detected one major difference: Organa and its surrounding area are laced with ammonia.

“Why are these two similar-looking and similar-sized craters, so near to each other, so compositionally distinct?” asked Will Grundy, who leads the New Horizons Composition team. “We have various ideas when it comes to the ammonia in Organa. The crater could be younger, or perhaps the impact that created it hit a pocket of ammonia-rich subsurface ice. Alternatively, maybe Organa’s impactor delivered its own ammonia.”

Both craters are roughly 5 kilometers (3 miles) in diameter, with similar appearances, such as bright rays of ejecta. One apparent difference is that Organa has a central region of darker ejecta, though from the map created with data from New Horizons’ Ralph/LEISA instrument, it appears that the ammonia-rich material extends beyond this dark area.

The nearby Skywalker crater, however, shows an infrared spectrum that is similar to the rest of Charon’s craters and surface, with features mostly dominated by ordinary water ice.

“This is a fantastic discovery,” said Bill McKinnon, deputy lead for the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging team. “Concentrated ammonia is a powerful antifreeze on icy worlds, and if the ammonia really is from Charon’s interior, it could help explain the formation of Charon’s surface by cryovolcanism, via the eruption of cold, ammonia-water magmas.”

The New Horizons team is informally naming features after various sci-fi characters. So maybe – like their Star Wars namesakes – the craters Skywalker and Organa actually are different ages, as students at the University of Leicester calculated in a paper published earlier this year. The students said that Leia would be about 2 years old than Luke because of relative velocity time dilation – which describes the bending of spacetime due to differences in speed. Their different journeys through space in various craft would change how fast they are aging.

But we digress…

A new map of Pluto's 'heart.' This image released on October 29, 2015, provides fascinating new details to help the science team map the informally named Krun Macula (the prominent dark spot at the bottom of the image) and the complex terrain east and northeast of Pluto's "heart" (Tombaugh Regio). Pluto's north pole is on the planet's disk at the 12 o'clock position of this image. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute — A new map of Pluto’s ‘heart.’ This image released on October 29, 2015, provides fascinating new details to help the science team map the informally named Krun Macula (the prominent dark spot at the bottom of the image) and the complex terrain east and northeast of Pluto’s “heart” (Tombaugh Regio). Pluto’s north pole is on the planet’s disk at the 12 o’clock position of this image. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

Meanwhile, as New Horizons continues to send back more imagery and data, the spacecraft’s hydrazine-fueled thrusters completed the third of four maneuvers to direct the spacecraft towards an ancient and distant Kuiper Belt Object named 2014 MU69.

As we explained in our previous article, the four maneuvers are designed change New Horizons’ path to send it toward a close encounter with the KBO on Jan. 1, 2019. Even though the New Horizons spacecraft hasn’t officially been approved to do this flyby as an extended mission, the team is taking advantage of being able to do the maneuvers early, thereby saving fuel.

The science team hopes to bring the spacecraft even closer to MU69 than it came to Pluto this summer, which was approximately 7,750 miles (12,500 kilometers)

The fourth and final KBO targeting maneuver is scheduled for next week, Nov. 4, 2015.

Another image released this week from the New Horizons team:

This image was made just 15 minutes after New Horizons' closest approach to Pluto on July 14, 2015, as the spacecraft looked back at Pluto toward the sun. The wide-angle perspective of this view shows the deep haze layers of Pluto's atmosphere extending all the way around Pluto, revealing the silhouetted profiles of rugged plateaus on the night (left) side. The image was taken with New Horizons' Multi-spectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) from a distance of 11,000 miles (18,000 kilometers) to Pluto. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute — This image was made just 15 minutes after New Horizons’ closest approach to Pluto on July 14, 2015, as the spacecraft looked back at Pluto toward the sun. The wide-angle perspective of this view shows the deep haze layers of Pluto’s atmosphere extending all the way around Pluto, revealing the silhouetted profiles of rugged plateaus on the night (left) side. The image was taken with New Horizons’ Multi-spectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) from a distance of 11,000 miles (18,000 kilometers) to Pluto. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

In September, the New Horizons team released a stunning but incomplete image of Pluto’s crescent. Thanks to new processing work by the science team, New Horizons is releasing the entire, breathtaking image of Pluto.

Alex Parker, one of the science team members who worked on the image said on Twitter, “The haze over Pluto’s dark limb were frustratingly run through with instrumental artifacts. This version is my latest destripe and denoise.” He also noted a few things: look closely, and you can see background stars behind Pluto. Additionally, look at Pluto’s shadowed limb:

Another wonderful thing about that new image: the bright haze gives us a look at how bumpy Pluto's shadowed limb is! pic.twitter.com/hUSGIZB8Bw

— Alex Parker (@Alex_Parker) October 29, 2015

Sources: NASA, Johns Hopkins U.

October 28, 2015December 23, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Stunning Planetary Trio Pictures from Around the World

The conjunction of Venus (brightest), Jupiter (above Venus) and Mars (dimmer below Venus & Jupiter) looking east in the morning twilight on October 25, 2015, as seen from the west shore of Lake Annette, in Jasper National Park, Alberta. The mountain is the Watchtower. Morning mist covers the lake waters. Haze in the sky adds the natural glows around the planets — no filters were used. Credit and copyright: Alan Dyer.

Have you seen the views in the morning skies this week, with three planets huddling together at dawn? Just one degree separated planets Jupiter and Venus, with Mars sneaking in nearby. Astrophotographers were out in full force to capture the scene!

Above, the very talented photographer Alan Dyer from Canada captured a stunning image of the planetary trio over Lake Annette, in Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada. He took several gorgeous shots, and so we’ve added one more of his below, plus dozens of other wonderful shots from our astrophotographer friends around the world. Each of these images are from Universe Today’s Flickr pool, so you can click on each picture to get a larger view on Flickr.

Enjoy these great views, as there won’t be a more compact arrangement of three planets again until January 10, 2021.

A panorama of roughly 120° showing a star- and planet-filled sky in the dawn twilight over Lake Annette in Jasper National Park, Alberta, on the morning of October 25, 2015. At left, to the east, are the two bright planets, Venus (brightest) and Jupiter in a close conjunction 1° apart (and here almost merging into one glow), plus reddish Mars below them, all in Leo, with the bright star Regulus above them. Right of centre, to the south, is Orion and Canis Major, with the bright star Sirius low in the south. At upper right are the stars of Taurus, including Aldebaran and the Hyades star cluster. Venus was near greatest elongation on this morning. Credit and copyright: Alan Dyer. — A panorama of roughly 120° showing a star- and planet-filled sky in the dawn twilight over Lake Annette in Jasper National Park, Alberta, on the morning of October 25, 2015.
At left, to the east, are the two bright planets, Venus (brightest) and Jupiter in a close conjunction 1° apart (and here almost merging into one glow), plus reddish Mars below them, all in Leo, with the bright star Regulus above them. Right of centre, to the south, is Orion and Canis Major, with the bright star Sirius low in the south. At upper right are the stars of Taurus, including Aldebaran and the Hyades star cluster. Venus was near greatest elongation on this morning. Credit and copyright: Alan Dyer.

Taken from Coral Towers Observatory in Queensland, Australia on October 28, 2014. Venus is to the right of and slightly below Jupiter and Mars is to the right of and below Venus. The pre-dawn landscape is illuminated by moonlight. Credit and copyright: Joseph Brimacombe.

Jupiter, Venus, and Mars rise behind the 14,155 foot peak of Mount Democrat in Colorado. Credit and copyright: Patrick Cullis.

Spooky Selfie, Three Planets and a Dead Satellite. The planetary conjunction of Jupiter, Venus and Mars on October 26, 2015, along with the ADEOS II satellite, which died in orbit in 2003 after the solar panels failed. Credit and copyright: Tom Wildoner.

Planetary conjunction of Jupiter, Venus and Mars as seen from Search Results Map of Le Puy Saint-Bonnet, 49300 Cholet, France Le Puy Saint-Bonnet, 49300 Cholet, France Le Puy-Saint-Bonnet in France on October 26, 2015. Credit and copyright: David de Cueves. — Planetary conjunction of Jupiter, Venus and Mars as seen from Search Results
Map of Le Puy Saint-Bonnet, 49300 Cholet, France
Le Puy Saint-Bonnet, 49300 Cholet, France
Le Puy-Saint-Bonnet in France on October 26, 2015. Credit and copyright: David de Cueves.

Venus, Jupiter and Mars grace the morning skies in France on October 26, 2015. Credit and copyright: Frank Tyrlik.

Here’s a timelapse from Damien Weatherley of his planet imaging session from the morning of October 25, 2015:

Venus, Jupiter & Mars create a close triangle in the eastern sky at dawn! John Chumack captured this image above his backyard Observatory in Dayton, Ohio on 10-26-2015. Credit and copyright: John Chumack.

A zoomed out view of the planetary trio from John Chumack's observatory in Dayton, Ohio on October 25, 2015. Credit and copyright: John Chumack. — A zoomed out view of the planetary trio from John Chumack’s observatory in Dayton, Ohio on October 25, 2015. Credit and copyright: John Chumack.

Conjunction of Venus, Jupiter & Mars on the morning of Monday Oct. 26, 2015. Credit and copyright: Holly Roberts.

Jupiter and Venus conjunction on October 25, 2015. They were approximately with a degree and a half of each other. Jupiter's moons are visible. Credit and copyright: Chris Lyons. — Jupiter and Venus conjunction on October 25, 2015. They were approximately with a degree and a half of each other. Jupiter’s moons are visible. Credit and copyright: Chris Lyons.

Venus and the almost invisible Jupiter struggled to shine through the haze on the morning of October 25, 2015, as seen in Malaysia. Credit and copyright: Shahrin Ahmad. — Venus and the almost invisible Jupiter struggled to shine through the haze on the morning of October 25, 2015, as seen in Malaysia. Credit and copyright:Shahrin Ahmad.

Venus, Jupiter and Mars in the hazy, cloudy morning skies over the UK on October 25, 2015. Credit and copyright: Sarah and Simon Fisher.

And here’s just a reminder that this planetary conjunction has been setting up for a while. Here’s a shot from October 10 of the planets as they started moving closer together:

A spooky planetary conjunction of Venus, Jupiter and Mars on October 10, 2015 on the Isle of Mull, Scotland. Credit and copyright: Shaun Reynold.

October 27, 2015December 23, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

New Horizons Maneuvers Toward Potential Kuiper Belt Target

Artist's impression of NASA's New Horizons spacecraft encountering a Pluto-like object in the distant Kuiper Belt. (Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Steve Gribben)

Even though the New Horizons spacecraft hasn’t officially been approved to do a flyby of a distant Kuiper Belt Object in about 3 years, the engineering team has now performed two maneuvers in a series of four to direct the spacecraft towards an ancient and distant KBO named 2014 MU69.

“Second of four engine burns to target our KBO was completed successfully!! Go New Horizons! Go NASA!” said Principal Investigator Alan Stern on Facebook.

Two more burns will occur within the next 8 days.

The 25-minute burn on October 25 was the largest propulsive maneuver ever conducted by New Horizons. The team said that the spacecraft is in excellent health as it continues to transmit data from the Pluto system flyby in July. It is currently zooming through deep space at more than 52,000 km/hr (32,000 miles per hour) and it is now about 122 million kilometers (76 million miles) past Pluto and 5.09 billion kilometers (3.16 billion miles) from Earth.

Projected path of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft toward 2014 MU69, which orbits in the Kuiper Belt about 1 billion miles beyond Pluto. Planets are shown in their positions on Jan. 1, 2019, when New Horizons is projected to reach the small Kuiper Belt object. NASA must approve an extended mission for New Horizons to study MU69. Credit: New Horizons team.

New Horizons must travel about a billion miles to get to 2014 MU69, which is also nicknamed “PT1” (for “Potential Target 1”) and if all continues to go well, the spacecraft is expected to reach the KBO on January 1, 2019.

“2014 MU69 is a great choice because it is just the kind of ancient KBO, formed where it orbits now, that the Decadal Survey desired us to fly by,” Stern said back in August 2015 when the target was announced. “Moreover, this KBO costs less fuel to reach [than other candidate targets], leaving more fuel for the flyby, for ancillary science, and greater fuel reserves to protect against the unforeseen.”

The 2003 National Academy of Sciences’ Planetary Decadal Survey recommended that the first mission to the Kuiper Belt include flybys of Pluto and small KBOs, in order to sample the diversity of objects in that previously unexplored region of the solar system. PT1 is a completely different class of KBO than Pluto.

New Horizons has hydrazine-fueled thrusters, and it carries enough fuel for the flyby, but the team really wants to have the other two maneuvers carried out as scheduled on Oct. 28 and Nov. 4, in order to make the fuel last as long as possible.

The New Horizons team will submit a formal proposal to NASA for the KBO flyby in early 2016. NASA officials have said the discussions on whether to approve this extended mission will take place in the larger context of the planetary science portfolio, i.e., to see if it fits in the budget.

Given the success of the Pluto system flyby, and the success so far of the maneuvers to send the spacecraft to PT1, it would be a grave mistake not to take advantage of this opportunity.