Posted on by Bob King

Ceres and Vesta Converge in the Sky on July 5: How to See It

Ceres and Vesta are converging in Virgo not far from Mars and Spica. On July 5, the duo will be just 10' apart and visible in the high power telescope field of view. Positions are shown every 5 days for 10 p.m. EDT and stars to magnitude +8.5. Created with Chris Marriott's SkyMap software

I bet you’ve forgotten. I almost did. In April, we reported that Ceres and Vesta, the largest and brightest asteroids respectively, were speeding through Virgo in tandem. Since then both have faded, but the best is yet to come. Converging closer by the day, on July 5, the two will make rare close pass of each other when they’ll be separated by just 10 minutes of arc or the thickness of a fat crescent moon.

Vesta (left) and Ceres. Vesta was photographed up close by the Dawn spacecraft from July 2011-Sept. 2012, while the best views we have to date of Ceres come from the Hubble Space Telescope. The bright white spot is still a mystery. Credit: NASA
Vesta (left) and Ceres. Vesta was photographed up close by the Dawn spacecraft from July 2011-Sept. 2012, while the best views we have to date of Ceres come from the Hubble Space Telescope. The bright white spot is still a mystery. NASA will plunk Dawn into orbit around Ceres next February.  Credit: NASA

Both asteroids are still within range of ordinary 35mm and larger binoculars; Vesta is easy at magnitude +7 while Ceres still manages a respectable +8.3. From an outer suburban or rural site, you can watch them draw together in the coming two weeks as if on a collision course. They won’t crash anytime soon. We merely see the two bodies along the same line of sight. Vesta’s closer to Earth at 164 million miles (264 million km) and moves more quickly across the sky compared to Ceres, which orbits 51 million miles (82 million km) farther out.

Ceres and Vesta are happily near an easy naked eye star, Zeta Virginis, which forms an isosceles triangle right now with Mars and Spica. The map shows the sky around 10 p.m. local time facing southwest. Stellarium
Ceres and Vesta lie near an easy naked eye star, Zeta Virginis, which forms an isosceles triangle right now with Mars and Spica. The map shows the sky around 10 p.m. local time tonight facing southwest. Stellarium

Right now the two asteroids are little more than a moon diameter apart not far from the 3rd magnitude star Zeta Virginis. Happily, nearby Mars and Spica make excellent guides for finding Zeta. Once you’re there, use binoculars and the more detailed map to track down Ceres and Vesta.

Virgo will be busy Saturday night July 5, 2014 when the waxing moon is in close conjunction with Mars with Ceres and Vesta at their closest. Stellarium
Virgo will be busy Saturday night July 5, 2014 when the waxing moon passes about 1/2 degree from Mars as Ceres and Vesta squeeze closest.  Stellarium

In early July they’ll look like a wide double star in binoculars and easily fit in the same high power telescopic view. Vesta has always looked pale yellow to my eye. Will its color differ from Ceres? Sitting side by side it will be easier than ever to compare them. Vesta is a stony asteroid with a surface composed of solidified (and meteoroid-battered) lavas; Ceres is darker and covered with a mix of water ice and carbonaceous materials.

On the night of closest approach, it may be difficult to spot dimmer Ceres in binoculars. By coincidence, the 8-day-old moon will be very close to the planet Mars and brighten up the neighborhood. We’ll report more on that event in a future article.

With so much happening the evening of July 5, let’s hope for a good round of clear skies.

Posted on by Shannon Hall

Superluminous Supernova Puzzles Astronomers

Before (left) and after (center) images of the region where DES13S2cmm was discovered. On the right is a subtraction of these two images, showing a bright new object at the center -- a supernova. Credit: Dark Energy Survey

Supernovae are surprisingly dependable. These brilliant and powerful explosions that mark the end of massive stars’ lives tend to shine anywhere from one hundred million to a few billion times brighter than the Sun for weeks on end. And their intrinsic brightness is always well known.

But in recent years a rare class of cosmic explosions, which are tens to hundreds of times more luminous than ordinary supernovae, has been discovered. And now one of these odd superluminous supernovae is mystifying astronomers further, with characteristics that simply don’t add up.

The Dark Energy Survey (DES) came online in August 2013 in order to investigate millions of galaxies for the subtle effects of weak lensing, the phenomenon where intervening invisible matter causes distant galaxies to appear minutely sheared and stretched.

The survey started off with a bang; its first images revealed a rare superluminous supernova, dubbed DES13S2cmm, 7.8 billion light-years away.

“Fewer than forty such supernovae have ever been found and I never expected to find one in the first DES images,” said Andreas Papadopoulos from the University of Portsmouth in a press release. “As they are rare, each new discovery brings the potential for greater understanding — or more surprises.”

The problem is this: DES13S2cmm doesn’t easily match the typical characteristics of a superluminous supernova. The stellar explosion could be seen in the data six months later, much longer than most other superluminous supernovae observed to date.

“Its unusual, slow decline was not apparent at first,” said Mark Sullivan from Southampton University. “But as more data came in and the supernova stopped getting fainter, we would look at the light curve and ask ourselves, ‘what is this?’ ”

So Sullivan decided to investigate further. But understanding its origins are proving difficult.

For some supernovae, the optical light we see is actually created by radioactivity. In fact, supernovae tend to create large amounts of radioactive elements, which don’t occur naturally on Earth. Nickel-56, with a half-life of roughly six days, is a common example.

As the nickel decays into cobalt, it releases gamma rays, which are trapped by the other material ejected by the supernova. These trapped rays heat up the surrounding material until it radiates in the optical. In this case, the peak magnitude of the supernova is directly proportional to the amount of nickel-56 created in the explosion.

“We have tried to explain the supernova as a result of the decay of the radioactive isotope nickel-56,” said coauthor Dr Chris D’Andrea of the University of Portsmouth. “But to match the peak brightness, the explosion would need to produce more than three times the mass of our Sun of the element. And even then the behavior of the light curve doesn’t match up.”

So the team is now investigating other explanations. In one intriguing scenario the supernova was relatively normal but created a magnetar — an extremely dense and highly magnetic neutron star that’s millions of times more powerful than the strongest magnets on Earth — whose energy made the explosion exceptionally bright.

But this explanation doesn’t match the data either.

A few months ago a team of astronomers led by Robert Quimby explained a superluminous supernovae, PS1-10afx, by a chance cosmic alignment, where intervening matter worked like a lens to deflect and intensify the background light for a typical Type Ia supernova. D’Andrea, however, doesn’t believe this is the case here.

“DES13S2cmm looks nothing like a normal type of supernova, either in its photometric evolution or its spectroscopy,” D’Andrea told Universe Today. “So while we can never be sure that a very faint but very massive galaxy lies between us and another object and is serendipitously brightening the object, there is no need to adopt that assumption in the case of DES13S2cmm.”

chance cosmic alignment — where intervening matter worked like a lens to deflect and intensify the background light – See more at: http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/stellar-science/mysteriously-bright-supernova-explained/#sthash.m7Z8PJ3k.dpuf
chance cosmic alignment — where intervening matter worked like a lens to deflect and intensify the background light – See more at: http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/stellar-science/mysteriously-bright-supernova-explained/#sthash.m7Z8PJ3k.dpuf

So astronomers are heading back to the drawing board.

“With so few known, it’s hard to really understand their properties in detail,” said Bob Nichol from the University of Portsmouth. “DES should find enough of these objects to allow us to understand superluminous supernovae as a population. But if some of these discoveries prove as difficult to interpret as DES13S2cmm, we’re prepared for the unusual.”

The results will be presented today at the National Astronomy Meeting 2014 in Portsmouth.

Posted on by David Dickinson

The Making of the Pillars of Creation

Credit:

It’s one of the most iconic images of the modern Space Age. In 1995, the Hubble Space Telescope team released an image of towering columns of gas and dust that contained newborn stars in the midst of formation. Dubbed the “Pillars of Creation,” these light-years long tendrils captivated the public imagination and now grace everything from screensavers to coffee mugs. This is a cosmic portrait of our possible past, and the essence of the universe giving birth to new stars and worlds in action.

Now, a study out on Thursday from the 2014 National Astronomy Meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society has shed new light on just how these pillars may have formed. The announcement comes out of Cardiff University, where astronomer Scott Balfour has run computer simulations that closely model the evolution and the outcome of what’s been observed by the Hubble Space Telescope.

The ‘Pillars’ lie in the Eagle Nebula, also known as Messier 16 (M16), which is situated in the constellation Serpens about 7,000 light years distant.  The pillars themselves have formed as intense radiation from young massive stars just beginning to shine erode and sculpt the immense columns.

The location of Messier 16 and the Pillars of Creation in the night sky. Credit: Stellarium.
The location of Messier 16 and the Pillars of Creation in the night sky. Credit: Stellarium.

But as is often the case in early stellar evolution, having massive siblings nearby is bad news for fledgling stars. Such large stars are of the O-type variety, and are more than 16 times as massive as our own Sun. Alnitak in Orion’s belt and the stars of the Trapezium in the Orion Nebula are examples of large O-type stars that can be found in the night sky. But such stars have a “burn fast and die young” credo when it comes to their take on nuclear fusion, spending mere millions of years along the Main Sequence of the Hertzsprung Russell diagram before promptly going supernova. Contrast this with a main sequence life expectancy of 10 billion years for our Sun, and life spans measured in the trillions of years — longer than the current age of the universe — for tiny red dwarf stars. The larger a star you are, the shorter your life span.

Credit:
A capture from the simulation, showing a cross-section 25 by 25 light years square and 0.2 light years thick. The simulation shows how the O-type star “sculpts” its surroundings over the span of 1.6 million years, carving out, in some cases, the famous “pillars”. Credit: S. Balfour/ University of Cardiff.

Such O-Type stars also have surface temperatures at a scorching 30,000 degrees Celsius, contrasted with a relatively ‘chilly’ 5,500 degree Celsius surface temperature for our Sun.

This also results in a prodigious output in energetic ultraviolet radiation by O-type stars, along with a blustery solar wind. This carves out massive bubbles in a typical stellar nursery, and while it may be bad news for planets and stars attempting to form nearby any such tempestuous stars, this wind can also compress and energize colder regions of gas and dust farther out and serve to trigger another round of star formation. Ironically, such stars are thus “cradle robbers” when it comes to potential stellar and planetary formation AND promoters of new star birth.

In his study, Scott looked at the way gas and dust would form in a typical proto-solar nebula over the span of 1.6 million years. Running the simulation over the span of several weeks, the model started with a massive O-type star that formed out of an initial collapsing smooth cloud of gas.

That’s not bad, a simulation where 1 week equals a few hundred million years…

As expected, said massive star did indeed carve out a spherical bubble given the initial conditions. But Scott also found something special: the interactions of the stellar winds with the local gas was much more complex than anticipated, with three basic results: either the bubble continued to expand unimpeded, the front would expand, contract slightly and then become a stationary barrier, or finally, it would expand and then eventually collapse back in on itself back to the source.

The study was notable because it’s only in the second circumstance that the situation is favorable for a new round of star formation that is seen in the Pillars of Creation.

“If I’m right, it means that O-type and other massive stars play a much more complex role than we previously thought in nursing a new generation of stellar siblings to life,” Scott said in a recent press release. “The model neatly produces exactly the same kind of structures seen by astronomers in the classic 1995 image, vindicating the idea that giant O-type stars have a major effect in sculpting their surroundings.”

Such visions as the Pillars of Creation give us a snapshot of a specific stage in stellar evolution and give us a chance to study what we may have looked like, just over four billion years ago. And as simulations such as those announced in this week’s study become more refined, we’ll be able to use them as a predictor and offer a prognosis for a prospective stellar nebula and gain further insight into the secret early lives of stars.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Nearby Super-Earth is Best Habitable Candidate So Far, Astronomers Say

An artistic representation of Gliese 832 c against a stellar nebula background. A new paper says Gliese 832 might be home to another planet similar to this, but in the habitable zone. Credit: Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico, Arecibo, NASA/Hubble, Stellarium.
An artistic representation of Gliese 832 c against a stellar nebula background. A new paper says Gliese 832 might be home to another planet similar to this, but in the habitable zone. Credit: Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico, Arecibo, NASA/Hubble, Stellarium.

On a clear night, you might be able to spot the red dwarf star Gliese 832 through a backyard telescope, as it is just 16 light years away. Today, astronomers announced the discovery of super-Earth planet orbiting this nearby star and say it might be the best candidate yet for habitable world.

Gliese 832c was spotted by an international team of astronomers, led by Robert A. Wittenmyer from UNSW Australia. They used high-precision radial-velocity data from HARPS-TERRA, the Planet Finder Spectrograph and the UCLES echelle spectrograph. This star is already known to have one additional planet, a cold Jupiter-like planet, Gliese 832 b, discovered in 2009.

Orbital analysis of Gliese 832 c, a potentially habitable world around the nearby red-dwarf star Gliese 832. Gliese 832 c orbits near the inner edge of the conservative habitable zone. Its average equilibrium temperature (253 K) is similar to Earth (255 K) but with large shifts (up to 25K) due to its high eccentricity (assuming a similar 0.3 albedo). Credit: Planetary Habitability Laboratory.
Orbital analysis of Gliese 832 c, a potentially habitable world around the nearby red-dwarf star Gliese 832. Gliese 832 c orbits near the inner edge of the conservative habitable zone. Its average equilibrium temperature (253 K) is similar to Earth (255 K) but with large shifts (up to 25K) due to its high eccentricity (assuming a similar 0.3 albedo). Credit: Planetary Habitability Laboratory.

Since red dwarf stars shine dimly, the habitable zones around these stars would be very close in. Gliese 832c complies with an orbital period of 36 days (it’s orbital companion Gliese 832 b orbits the star in 9.4 years.)

The newly found super-Earth has a mass at least five times that of Earth’s and the astronomers estimate it receives about the same average energy as Earth does from the Sun. “The planet might have Earth-like temperatures, albeit with large seasonal shifts, given a similar terrestrial atmosphere,” says a press release from the Planetary Habitability Laboratory. “A denser atmosphere, something expected for Super-Earths, could easily make this planet too hot for life and a ‘Super-Venus’ instead.”

Using the Earth Similarity Index (ESI) — a measure of how physically similar a planetary mass object is to Earth, where 1 equals the same qualities as Earth — Gliese 832 c has an ESI of 0.81. This is comparable to Gliese 667C c (ESI = 0.84) and Kepler-62 e (ESI = 0.83).

“This makes Gliese 832c one of the top three most Earth-like planets according to the ESI (i.e. with respect to Earth’s stellar flux and mass) and the closest one to Earth of all three, a prime object for follow-up observations. However, other unknowns such as the bulk composition and atmosphere of the planet could make this world quite different to Earth and non-habitable.”

Artistic representation of the potentially habitable exoplanet Gliese 832 c as compared with Earth. Gliese 832 c is represented here as a temperate world covered in clouds. The relative size of the planet in the figure assumes a rocky composition but could be larger for a ice/gas composition. Credit: Planetary Habitability Laboratory.
Artistic representation of the potentially habitable exoplanet Gliese 832 c as compared with Earth. Gliese 832 c is represented here as a temperate world covered in clouds. The relative size of the planet in the figure assumes a rocky composition but could be larger for a ice/gas composition. Credit: Planetary Habitability Laboratory.

In their paper, Wittenmyer and his colleagues noted that while Solar Systems like our own appear — so far — to be rare, the Gliese 832 system is like a scaled-down version of our own Solar System, with an inner potentially Earth-like planet and an outer Jupiter-like giant planet. They added that the giant outer planet may have played a similar dynamical role in the Gliese 832 system to that played by Jupiter in our Solar System.

Certainly, astronomers will be attempting to observe this system further to see if any additional planets can be found.

If you’re interested in trying to see this star, here’s our guide on red dwarf stars that are visible in backyard telescopes.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Beautiful Astrophotos: Crescent Moon and Venus Rising

The waning crescent Moon below Venus, rising in the east on June 24, 2014 as seen from home over the flat prairie horizon of southern Alberta, Canada. Credit and copyright: Alan Dyer.

Did you see the crescent Moon near a bright star on Tuesday morning this week? Many of our Flickr group astrophotographers captured gorgeous shots of the two together in the sky, including this eye-candy image from Alan Dyer from Canada. Just take a look!

A beautiful conjunction between the Moon, the very bright planet Venus, and the easily recognizable open star cluster of the Pleiades from central Italy on the morning of June 24, 2014. Credit and copyright: Giuseppe Petricca.
A beautiful conjunction between the Moon, the very bright planet Venus, and the easily recognizable open star cluster of the Pleiades from central Italy on the morning of June 24, 2014. Credit and copyright: Giuseppe Petricca.
The waning crescent Moon and Venus as seen from the UK on June 24, 2014. Credit and copyright: Sculptor Lil on Flickr.
The waning crescent Moon and Venus as seen from the UK on June 24, 2014. Credit and copyright: Sculptor Lil on Flickr.
Moon and Venus Conjunction approximately 1 hour before sunrise on 24th June 2014. Looking east over central London with Canary Wharf on the horizon. Credit and copyright: Roger Hutchinson.
Moon and Venus Conjunction approximately 1 hour before sunrise on 24th June 2014. Looking east over central London with Canary Wharf on the horizon. Credit and copyright: Roger Hutchinson.
Venus and Waning Crescent Moon on June 24, 2014. Credit and copyright: Stephen Rahn.
Venus and Waning Crescent Moon on June 24, 2014. Credit and copyright: Stephen Rahn.

Want to get your astrophoto featured on Universe Today? Join our Flickr group or send us your images by email (this means you’re giving us permission to post them). Please explain what’s in the picture, when you took it, the equipment you used, etc.

Posted on by Shannon Hall

Three Supermassive Black Holes Tango in a Distant Galaxy, Marking a Huge Discovery

"Helical jets from one supermassive black hole caused by a very closely orbiting companion (see blue dots). The third black hole is part of the system, but farther away and therefore emits relatively straight jets." Credit: Roger Deane (large image); NASA Goddard (inset bottom left; modified from original)

In a galaxy four billion light-years away, three supermassive black holes are locked in a whirling embrace. It’s the tightest trio of black holes known to date and even suggests that these closely packed systems are more common than previously thought.

“What remains extraordinary to me is that these black holes, which are at the very extreme of Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, are orbiting one another at 300 times the speed of sound on Earth,” said lead author Roger Deane from the University of Cape Town in a press release.

“Not only that, but using the combined signals from radio telescopes on four continents we are able to observe this exotic system one third of the way across the Universe. It gives me great excitement as this is just scratching the surface of a long list of discoveries that will be made possible with the Square Kilometer Array.”

The system, dubbed SDSS J150243.091111557.3, was first identified as a quasar — a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy, which is rapidly accreting material and shining brightly — four years ago. But its spectrum was slightly wacky with its doubly ionized oxygen emission line [OIII] split into two peaks instead of one.

A favorable explanation suggested there were two active supermassive black holes hiding in the galaxy’s core.

An active galaxy typically shows single-peaked narrow emission lines, which stem from a surrounding region of ionized gas, Deane told Universe Today. The fact that this active galaxy shows double-peaked emission lines, suggests there are two surrounding regions of ionized gas and therefore two active supermassive black holes.

But one of the supermassive black holes was enshrouded in dust. So Deane and colleagues dug a little further. They used a technique called Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI), which is a means of linking telescopes together, combining signals separated by up to 10,000 km to see detail 50 times greater than the Hubble Space Telescope.

Observations from the European VLBI network — an array of European, Chinese, Russian, and South American antennas — revealed that the dust-covered supermassive black hole was once again two instead of one, making the system three supermassive black holes in total.

The VLBI network. Image Credit: Deane
The VLBI network. Image Credit: Roger Deane

“This is what was so surprising,” Deane told Universe Today. “Our aim was to confirm the two suspected black holes. We did not expect one of these was in fact two, which could only be revealed by the European VLBI Network due [to the] very fine detail it is able to discern.”

Deane and colleagues looked through six similar galaxies before finding their first trio. The fact that they found one so quickly suggests that they’re more common than previously thought.

The inner pair of black holes of the triple system as seen by the European VLBI Network (EVN). Contours show radio emission at 1.7 GHz, the colour scale show radio emission at 5 GHz frequency. Credit: R.P. Deane et al.
The inner pair of black holes of the triple system as seen by the European VLBI Network (EVN). Image Credit: R.P. Deane et al.

Before today, only four triple black hole systems were known, with the closest pair being 2.4 kiloparsecs apart — roughly 2,000 times the distance from Earth to the nearest star, Proxima Centauri. But the closest pair in this trio is separated by only 140 parsecs — roughly 10 times that same distance.

Although Deane and colleagues relied on the phenomenal resolution of the VLBI technique in order to spatially separate the two close-in black holes, they also showed that their presence could be inferred from larger-scale features. The orbital motion of the black hole, for instance, is imprinted on its large jets, twisting them into a helical-like shape. This may provide smaller telescopes with a tool to find them with much greater efficiency.

“If the result holds up, it’ll be very cool,” binary supermassive black hole expert Jessie Runnoe from Pennsylvania State University told Universe Today. This research has multiple implications for understanding further phenomena.

The first sheds light on galaxy evolution. Two or three supermassive black holes are the smoking gun that the galaxy has merged with another. So by looking at these galaxies in detail, astronomers can understand how galaxies have evolved into their present-day shapes and sizes.

The second sheds light on a phenomenon known as gravitational radiation. Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity predicts that when one of the two or three supermassive black holes spirals inward, gravitational waves — ripples in the fabric of space-time itself — propagate out into space.

Future radio telescopes should be able to measure gravitational waves from such systems as their orbits decay.

“Further in the future, the Square Kilometer Array will allow us to find and study these systems in exquisite detail, and really allow us [to] gain a much better understanding of how black holes shape galaxies over the history of the Universe,” said coauthor Matt Jarvis from the Universities of Oxford and Western Cape.

The research was published today in the journal Nature.

Posted on by Ken Kremer

Curiosity Marks Milestone Anniversary – 1 Martian Year On Mars!

NASA's Mars Curiosity Rover captures a selfie to mark a full Martian year -- 687 Earth days -- spent exploring the Red Planet. Curiosity Self-Portrait was taken at the 'Windjana' Drilling Site in April and May 2014 using the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera at the end of the roboic arm. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

NASA’s Curiosity rover celebrated a milestone anniversary today, June 24 – 1 Martian Year on Mars!

A Martian year is equivalent to 687 Earth days, or nearly two Earth years.

NASA marked the illustrious achievement with the release of a new ‘selfie’ captured recently while drilling deep into the Red Planet to unlock the secrets of Mars hidden past eons ago when the planet was far warmer and wetter and more conducive to the origin of life.

Curiosity’s new self-portrait was taken at the ‘Windjana’ Drilling Site in April and May 2014 using the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera at the end of the robotic arm.

As of today the 1 ton rover has been exploring the alien surface for a full Martian year since her nail biting touchdown inside Gale Crater on Aug. 5, 2012 – using the unprecedented sky crane maneuver which culminated in a rocket assisted touchdown astride a humongous mountain named Mount Sharp.

Mount Sharp dominates the center of Gale Crater and reaches 3.4 miles (5.5 km) into the Martian sky – taller than Mount Rainier.

During Mars Year 1 on Mars, Earth’s metallic emissary has already accomplished her primary objective of discovering a habitable zone on the Red Planet that contains the chemical ingredients necessary to support microbial life in the ancient past.

Curiosity rover panorama of Mount Sharp captured on June 6, 2014 (Sol 651) during traverse inside Gale Crater. Note rover wheel tracks at left. She will eventually ascend the mountain at the ‘Murray Buttes’ at right later this year. Assembled from Mastcam color camera raw images and stitched by Marco Di Lorenzo and Ken Kremer. Credit: NASA/JPL/MSSS/Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer-kenkremer.com
Curiosity rover panorama of Mount Sharp captured on June 6, 2014 (Sol 651) during traverse inside Gale Crater. Note rover wheel tracks at left. She will eventually ascend the mountain at the ‘Murray Buttes’ at right later this year. Assembled from Mastcam color camera raw images and stitched by Marco Di Lorenzo and Ken Kremer. Credit: NASA/JPL/MSSS/Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer-kenkremer.com

During 2013, Curiosity conducted the first two drill campaigns at the ‘John Klein’ and ‘Cumberland’ outcrop targets inside Yellowknife Bay. They were both mudstone rock outcrops and the interiors were markedly different in color and much lighter compared to the new drill site at ‘Windjana’ into a slab of red, sandstone rock.

The fresh bore hole was drilled into the “Windjana” rock outcrop on May 5, 2014, Sol 621, at the base of Mount Remarkable at a science stopping point called “The Kimberley Waypoint.”

It was 0.63 inch (1.6 centimeters) in diameter and about 2.6 inches (6.5 centimeters) deep and resulted in a mound of dark grey colored drill tailings piled around.

NASA’s Curiosity rover trundles towards Mount Sharp (right) across the alien terrain of Mars - our Solar Systems most Earth-like planet - and leaves behind dramatic wheel tracks in her wake, with Gale crater rim visible in the distance at left. Curiosity captured this photo mosaic of her wheel tracks, mountain and crater rim on Sol 644 after departing ‘Kimberley’ drill site in mid-May 2014. Navcam raw images were stitched and colorized and contrast enhanced to bring out detail. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer – kenkremer.com
NASA’s Curiosity rover trundles towards Mount Sharp (right) across the alien terrain of Mars – our Solar Systems most Earth-like planet – and leaves behind dramatic wheel tracks in her wake, with Gale crater rim visible in the distance at left. Curiosity captured this photo mosaic of her wheel tracks, mountain and crater rim on Sol 644 after departing ‘Kimberley’ drill site in mid-May 2014. Navcam raw images were stitched and colorized and contrast enhanced to bring out detail. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer – kenkremer.com

Windjana lies some 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) southwest of Yellowknife Bay.

Curiosity has successfully delivered pulverized and sieved samples from all three drill sites to the pair of onboard miniaturized chemistry labs; the Chemistry and Mineralogy instrument (CheMin) and the Sample Analysis at Mars instrument (SAM) – for chemical and compositional analysis.

Composite photo mosaic shows deployment of NASA Curiosity rovers robotic arm and two holes after drilling into ‘Windjana’ sandstone rock on May 5, 2014, Sol 621, at Mount Remarkable as missions third drill target for sample analysis by rover’s chemistry labs. The navcam raw images were stitched together from several Martian days up to Sol 621, May 5, 2014 and colorized. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer - kenkremer.com/Marco Di Lorenzo
Composite photo mosaic shows deployment of NASA Curiosity rovers robotic arm and two holes after drilling into ‘Windjana’ sandstone rock on May 5, 2014, Sol 621, at Mount Remarkable as missions third drill target for sample analysis by rover’s chemistry labs. The navcam raw images were stitched together from several Martian days up to Sol 621, May 5, 2014 and colorized. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer – kenkremer.com/Marco Di Lorenzo

It was through the results of the SAM and CheMin analysis and the discovery of clay minerals that the science team was able to determine that this area on the floor of Gale Crater is a habitable zone.

“Windjana has more magnetite than previous samples we’ve analyzed,” said David Blake, principal investigator for Curiosity’s Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument at NASA’s Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California, in a statement.

“A key question is whether this magnetite is a component of the original basalt or resulted from later processes, such as would happen in water-soaked basaltic sediments. The answer is important to our understanding of habitability and the nature of the early-Mars environment.”

Chemical analysis and further sample deliveries are in progress as NASA’s rover is ‘on the go’ to simultaneously maximize movement and research activities.

Curiosity’s Panoramic view of Mount Remarkable at ‘The Kimberley Waypoint’ where rover conducted 3rd drilling campaign inside Gale Crater on Mars. The navcam raw images were taken on Sol 603, April 17, 2014, stitched and colorized. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer – kenkremer.com/Marco Di Lorenzo. Featured on APOD - Astronomy Picture of the Day on May 7, 2014
Curiosity’s Panoramic view of Mount Remarkable at ‘The Kimberley Waypoint’ where rover conducted 3rd drilling campaign inside Gale Crater on Mars. The navcam raw images were taken on Sol 603, April 17, 2014, stitched and colorized. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer – kenkremer.com/Marco Di Lorenzo
Featured on APOD – Astronomy Picture of the Day on May 7, 2014

The lower reaches of Mount Sharp are the rovers ultimate goal because the sedimentary layers are believed to hold caches of water altered minerals based on high resolution measurements obtained by the CRISM spectrometer aboard NASA’s powerful Martian ‘Spysat’ – the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) – soaring overhead.

Curiosity still has about another 2.4 miles (3.9 kilometers) to go to reach the entry way at a gap in the dunes at the foothills of Mount Sharp sometime later this year.

Curiosity snaps selfie at Kimberley waypoint with towering Mount Sharp backdrop on April 27, 2014 (Sol 613). Inset shows MAHLI camera image of rovers mini-drill test operation on April 29, 2014 (Sol 615) into “Windjama” rock target at Mount Remarkable butte. MAHLI color photo mosaic assembled from raw images snapped on Sol 613, April 27, 2014. Credit: NASA/JPL/MSSS/Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer - kenkremer.com
Curiosity snaps selfie at Kimberley waypoint with towering Mount Sharp backdrop on April 27, 2014 (Sol 613). Inset shows MAHLI camera image of rovers mini-drill test operation on April 29, 2014 (Sol 615) into “Windjama” rock target at Mount Remarkable butte. MAHLI color photo mosaic assembled from raw images snapped on Sol 613, April 27, 2014. Credit: NASA/JPL/MSSS/Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer – kenkremer.com

To date, Curiosity’s odometer totals over 4.9 miles (7.9 kilometers) since landing inside Gale Crater on Mars in August 2012. She has taken over 159,000 images.

This map shows in red the route driven by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover from the "Bradbury Landing" location where it landed in August 2012 (blue star at upper right) to nearly the completion of its first Martian year. The white line shows the planned route ahead. Image Credit: NASA/JPL
This map shows in red the route driven by NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover from the “Bradbury Landing” location where it landed in August 2012 (blue star at upper right) to nearly the completion of its first Martian year. The white line shows the planned route ahead. Image Credit: NASA/JPL

Stay tuned here for Ken’s continuing Curiosity, Opportunity, Orion, SpaceX, Boeing, Orbital Sciences, commercial space, MAVEN, MOM, Mars and more planetary and human spaceflight news.

Ken Kremer
…………….

Learn more about NASA’s Mars missions, upcoming sounding rocket and Orbital Sciences Antares ISS launch from NASA Wallops, VA in July and more about SpaceX, Boeing and commercial space and more at Ken’s upcoming presentations.

June 25: “Antares/Cygnus ISS Launch (July 10) and Suborbital Rocket Launch (June 26) from Virginia” & “Space mission updates”; Rodeway Inn, Chincoteague, VA, evening

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

The Place Where Earth from Space Looks Like a Floating Piece of Cardboard

An image taken from the International Space Station taken on Jun 23, 2014 showing Western Sahara , near El Aaiun. Credit: Reid Wiseman/NASA.

As we’ve noted before, astronaut Reid Wiseman is sending out a bevy of tweets and pictures from his perch on board the International Space Station, but this recent image got our attention.

“Can’t explain it, just looked oddly unnatural to me and I liked it,” Wiseman said on Twitter, leaving no info on what Earthly feature might be.

Floating cardboard? That’s what many people thought. Comments from Twitter:

So what is this image and where on Earth is it?

I checked with Peter Caltner, who regularly tweets information on astronaut photos and he said the image shows Western Sahara, near El Aaiun (coordinates 26.824071,-13.222504) and the straight white line is a conveyor belt facility from a phosphate mine at Bou Craa that goes to a loading port at the coast. The conveyer belt is about 60 miles/100 km long, Peter noted.

You can see more images of this feature in this Google search, but none of them have quite the angle Wiseman had, which gave it the straight-edge box-like appearance from space.

See more comments about the image here.

Thanks again to Peter Caltner for his assistance!

Posted on by Shannon Hall

Titan’s Atmosphere May be Older than Saturn, a New Study Suggests

Titan's atmosphere makes Saturn's largest moon look like a fuzzy orange ball in this natural-color view from the Cassini spacecraft. Cassini captured this image in 2012. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
According to a study from UCLA, Titan experiences severe methane rainstorms, leading to a the alluvial fans found found in both hemispheres. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

It’s well accepted that moons form after planets. In fact, only a few months ago, astronomers spotted a new moon forming deep within Saturn’s rings, 4.5 billion years after the planet initially formed.

But new research suggests Saturn’s icy moon Titan — famous for its rivers and lakes of liquid methane — may have formed before its parent planet, contradicting the theory that Titan formed within the warm disk surrounding an infant Saturn.

A combined NASA and ESA-funded study has found firm evidence that the nitrogen in Titan’s atmosphere originated in conditions similar to the cold birthplace of the most ancient comets from the Oort cloud — a spherical shell of icy particles that enshrouds the Solar System.

The hint comes in the form of a ratio. All elements have a certain number of known isotopes — variants of that element with the same number of protons that differ in their number of neutrons. The ratio of one isotope to another isotope is a crucial diagnostic tool.

In planetary atmospheres and surface materials, the amount of one isotope relative to another isotope is closely tied to the conditions under which materials form. Any change in the ratio will allow scientists to deduce an age for that material.

Kathleen Mandt from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio and colleagues analyzed the ratio of nitrogen-14 (seven protons and seven neutrons) to nitrogen-15 (seven protons and eight neutrons) in Titan’s atmosphere.

“When we looked closely at how this ratio could evolve with time, we found that it was impossible for it to change significantly,” Mandt said in a press release. “Titan’s atmosphere contains so much nitrogen that no process can significantly modify this tracer even given more than four billion years of Solar System history.”

The team found that our Solar System is not old enough for this nitrogen isotope ratio to have changed as much as it has. By comparing the small change within this ratio, Mandt and colleagues found that it seemed more similar to Oort cloud comets than to Solar System bodies including planets and comets born in the Kuiper belt. The team is eager to see whether their findings are supported by data from ESA’s Rosetta mission, which will study comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko later this year.

Finally, the study also has implications for Earth. In the past, researchers assumed a connection between comets, Titan and Earth. But these results show that the nitrogen isotope ratio is different on Titan and Earth, suggesting the sources of Earth’s and Titan’s nitrogen must have been different.

It’s unclear whether Earth received nitrogen from early meteorites or if it was captured directly from the disk of gas that formed the Solar System.

“This exciting result is a key example of Cassini science informing our knowledge of the history of [the] Solar System and how Earth formed,” said Scott Edgington, Cassini deputy project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The research was published this week in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.