An allsky photo of the aurora in February, 2014 as seen from Östersund, Sweden. Credit and copyright: Göran Strand.
Two great music videos published this week feature incredible imagery from space. Above, Pink Floyd released an 20th anniversary video version of their instrumental “Marooned” which uses timelapse video photography taken by astronauts on the International Space Station (which we’ve featured many times, like here and here). For you Pink Floyd-aphiles, the anniversary edition of ‘The Division Bell‘ will be released on June 30th — including a double vinyl edition!
Below, a new video from Coldplay and their song “Sky Full of Stars” uses aurora imagery taken by Swedish astrophotopher Göran Strand, whose work we post frequently:
This version of a “A Sky Full of Stars” was used in the NBC special Coldplay: Ghost Stories. Göran recorded the aurora over Östersund on March 17, 2013. He photographed the aurora for 4 hours and then put all the images together to a movie showing the development of the aurora across the entire sky. See his original aurora video below.
This artist's conception shows two photons (in green) colliding. Image Credit: ATLAS / LHC
E = mc². It’s one of the most basic and fundamental equations throughout astrophysics. But it does more than suggest that mass and energy are interconnected, it implies that light can be physically transformed into matter.
But can it really — physically — be done? Scientists proposed the theory more than 80 years ago, but only today have they paved the way to make this transformation routinely on Earth.
The concept calls for a new kind of photon-photon collider. It sounds like science fiction, but it could be turned into reality with existing technology.
“Although the theory is conceptually simple, it has been very difficult to verify experimentally,” said lead researcher Oliver Pike from London’s Imperial College in a press release. “We were able to develop the idea for the collider very quickly, but the experimental design we propose can be carried out with relative ease.”
In 1934, two physicists Gregory Breit and John Wheeler proposed that it should be possible to turn light into matter by smashing together only two photons, the fundamental particles of light, to create an electron and a positron. It was the simplest method of turning light into matter ever predicted, but it has never been observed in the laboratory.
Past experiments have required the addition of massive high-energy particles. We’ve seen from the development of nuclear weapons and fission reactors that a tiny amount of matter can yield a tremendous amount of energy. So it seems Breit and Wheeler’s theory would require the opposite effect: tremendous amounts of energy from photons to yield a tiny amount of matter.
This experiment will be a first in that it doesn’t require the addition of massive high-energy particles. It will be performed purely from photons.
The concept calls for using a high-intensity laser to speed up electrons to just below the speed of light, and then smash them into a slab of gold to create a beam of photons a billion times more energetic than visible light. At the same time, another laser beam would be blasted onto a hohlraum — a small gold container meaning “empty can” in German — that would create a radiation field with photons buzzing inside.
The initial photon beam would be directed into the center of the hohlraum. When the photons from the two sources collide, some would be converted into pairs of electrons and positrons. A detector would then pick up the signatures form the matter and antimatter as they flew out of the container.
Theories describing light and matter interactions. Image Credit: Oliver Pike, Imperial College London
“Within a few hours of looking for applications of hohlraums outside their traditional role in fusion energy research, we were astonished to find they provided the perfect conditions for creating a photon collider,” Pike said. “The race to carry out and complete the experiment is on!”
The demonstration, if carried out successfully, would be a new type of high-energy physics experiment. It would complete physicists’ list of the fundamental ways in which light and matter interact, and both recreate a process that was important 100 seconds after the Big Bang and a process visible in gamma ray bursts, the most powerful explosions in the cosmos.
Star cluster NGC 3590 seen in a 2.2 -meter telescope located at the European Southern Observatory's La Silla Observatory in Chile. Credit: ESO/G. Beccari
Such stars, much science! Shining in front of darker dust, this star cluster (NGC 3590) is about 7,500 light-years from Earth. And because the cluster is located in a spiral arm of the Milky Way, looking at the new European Southern Observatory can help astronomers figure out more about our how galaxy came to be.
“These spiral arms are actually waves of piled up gas and stars sweeping through the galactic disc, triggering sparkling bursts of star formation and leaving clusters like NGC 3590 in their wake. By finding and observing young stars like those in NGC 3590, it is possible to determine the distances to the different parts of this spiral arm, telling us more about its structure,” ESO stated.
“Typical open clusters can contain anything from a few tens to a few thousands of stars, and provide astronomers with clues about stellar evolution. The stars in a cluster like NGC 3590 are born at around the same time from the same cloud of gas, making these clusters perfect test sites for theories on how stars form and evolve.”
As a spiral galaxy, the Milky Way has multiple “arms”. The one this cluster is located in is called the Carina spiral feature (part of the Carina-Sagittarius minor arm) after the constellation in which it is “most prominent.”
Can dragons really fly? And what’s with the weird seasons? A bunch of your scientific FAQs about the blockbuster Game of Thrones series are tackled in this video, with the occasional spoiler or Westeros-themed joke thrown in.
Gene Cernan on the Moon during the final EVA of the Apollo 17 mission, Dec. 13, 1972 (NASA/JSC scan)
On December 14, 1972, at about 5:40 a.m. GMT, Apollo 17 astronaut Eugene Andrew “Gene” Cernan returned to the lunar module Challenger after the end of the third mission EVA to join Harrison “Jack” Schmitt, completing nearly two and a half days of surface operations within the Taurus-Littrow site and officially becoming the last human to set foot upon the lunar surface. No one has returned since, and to this day the 80-year-old Cernan still holds the title of “last man on the Moon.”
If that’s not the perfect setup for a documentary film, I don’t know what is. Luckily for us there’s one in the works.
“The Last Man on the Moon,” from UK-based Mark Stewart Productions, tells the story of Gene Cernan and his accomplishments against the backdrop of the Apollo era, when superpowers competed for dominance in space and hotshot flyboys became international heroes. With firsthand accounts from Cernan himself and his family, along with several other astronauts and NASA celebrities, it’s an emotional and intimate account of America’s last lunar voyage.
Watch the trailer below:
According to IMDB the 99-minute documentary directed by Mark Craig is slated for release in the UK (and hopefully U.S.!) sometime this year, although an exact date isn’t listed. There have been advance screenings very recently, at some of which Cernan was present for Q&A sessions. Some viewers are calling it “the best space documentary they have seen” so needless to say I’m pretty excited about it!
47 Tucanae… the Coal Sack… Magellanic Clouds large and small… sure, it can be argued that the southern hemisphere sky has got all the “good stuff.” We’ve journeyed below the equator half a dozen times ourselves and we always make it a point to carry our trusty Canon 15x 45 image stabilized binocs – or track someone down with a serious ‘scope – even when astronomy isn’t the main focus of our particular away mission.
But did you know that you can glimpse one of the jewels of the southern hemisphere sky from mid-northern latitudes in May and June?
We’re talking about Omega Centauri in the constellation Centaurus. At a declination of -47 degrees south, it clears 5 degrees above the horizon as seen from around 37 degrees north, which corresponds to the latitudes of Richmond Virginia, Wichita Kansas and Sacramento, California in the United States and Seville Spain, Adana Turkey and Seoul South Korea worldwide.
Omega Centauri as imaged from near Oracle, Arizona at latitude 32 degrees 30′ north. Credit: Mike Weasner/Cassiopeia observatory.
In fact, it would be a fun project to see just how far north you could spot Omega Centauri from… located at right ascension 13 hours 26 minutes and declination -47 29’, Omega Centauri would theoretically juuusst clear the southern horizon at 52 degrees north, well into Canada… but has anyone caught sight of it that far north?
There’s evidence that Ptolemy knew of and recorded Omega Centauri in his Almagest as far back as 150 A.D. It was erroneously misidentified as a star over the centuries, hence the “Omega” designation. It was also too low in the southern sky to be included Charles Messier’s Paris-based catalog of deep sky objects, though it would’ve easily have made the cut had it been located farther north. Omega Centauri was first described by Edmond Halley in 1677 and made its catalog debut in 1746 when astronomer Jean-Philippe de Cheseaux listed it along with 21 other southern sky nebulae.
Shining at magnitude +4, Omega Centauri actually covers a section of sky slightly larger than the apparent size of a Full Moon and is an easy naked eye object from the southern hemisphere. From south of the equator we can easily pick out Omega Centauri from a dark sky site. On a recent trip to the Florida Keys, we could easily detect Omega Centauri riding high to the south over the Straits of Florida at local midnight. In fact, Arthur Upgreen muses in his fantastic book Many Skies just what Florida skies would look like if Omega Centauri were much closer to Earth, filling up the southern horizon scene.
The view from latitude 30 degrees north looking south at 10:30 PM local: click to enlarge. Created using Starry Night software.
Now for the wow factor of what you’re seeing. The largest of the 150-odd known globular clusters associated with our Milky Way Galaxy, Omega Centauri is almost 16,000 light years distant and weighs in at an estimated 4 million solar masses. Globular clusters are ancient structures and Omega Centauri contains millions of Population II stars dating from an age of about 12 billion years ago. The density at the core of the cluster is equal to a star per every 1/10th of a light year apart, and any planets orbiting said stars would host truly dazzling skies.
The bright star Spica (Alpha Virginis) in the constellation of Virgo the Virgin makes a good guide to find Omega Centauri from the northern hemisphere, as both have nearly the same right ascension to within 10 arc minutes of each other. Both currently transit the southern meridian at around 11:00 AM local in late May, and Omega Centauri lies just 35 degrees — about 3 ½ hand widths held at arm’s length — south of Spica.
Approximate cutoff latitudes for spotting Omega Centauri and Gacrux to the south in May and June. Credit: USGS.
And speaking of Centaurus, the constellation was also recently host to a naked eye nova last year as well. Nova Cen 2013 topped out at magnitude +3.3, though it was placed much farther south than Omega Centauri.
Another unique target in the constellation Centaurus is known as Przybylski’s Star. A seemingly nondescript +8th magnitude star, Przybylski’s Star has some peculiar spectral properties of rare trace elements. It also sits near the same declination as Omega Centauri at -46 43’ and has a right ascension of 11 hours 38’.
Finally, there’s another southern hemisphere treat peeking just above the southern horizon on late May and June evenings… look about 13 degrees to the lower right of Omega Centauri at around 10:30 PM local in late May, and you might just spy Gacrux (Gamma Crucis), the +1.6 magnitude star that makes up the “head” of the constellation Crux, the Southern Cross. This tough to spot target just tops out at 5 degrees above the southern horizon from here in Tampa Bay, Florida, beckoning northern hemisphere observers on these sultry May and June evenings to the jewels that lie just beyond the horizon to the south.
Comet 209P/LINEAR may still be faint but it's a beautiful object in this time exposure by Austrian astrophotographer Michael Jaeger. The stars appear as trails because the photographer followed the comet during the exposure.
As we anxiously await the arrival of a potentially rich new meteor shower this weekend, its parent comet, 209P/LINEAR, draws ever closer and brighter. Today it shines feebly at around magnitude +13.7 yet possesses a classic form with bright head and tail. It’s rapidly approaching Earth, picking up speed every night and hopefully will be bright enough to see in your telescope very soon.
As it approaches Earth in the coming nights, comet 209P/LINEAR will move quickly across the sky, traveling from Ursa Major to southern Hydra in just 10 days. When closest on May 28-29, the comet will cover 10 degrees per day or just shy of 1/2 degree per hour. All maps created with Chris Marriott’s SkyMap software
The comet was discovered in Feb. 2004 by the Lincoln Laboratory Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) automated sky survey. Given its stellar appearance at the time of discovery it was first thought to be an asteroid, but photos taken the following month photos by Rob McNaught (Siding Spring Observatory, Australia) revealed a narrow tail. Unlike long period comets Hale-Bopp and the late Comet ISON that swing around the sun once every few thousand years or few million years, this one’s a frequent visitor, dropping by every 5.09 years.
This detailed map shows the comet’s path from Leo Minor across the backside of the Sickle of Leo May 23-26. Hopefully it will be bright enough then to spot in an 8-inch or larger telescope. On May 25, it passes close to the colorful double star Gamma Leonis and a pair of NGC galaxies. Stars plotted to magnitude +9. Click to enlarge and then print out for use at the telescope.
209P/LINEAR belongs to the Jupiter family of comets, a group of comets with periods of less than 20 years whose orbits are controlled by Jupiter. When closest at perihelion, 209P/LINEAR coasts some 90 million miles from the sun; the far end of its orbit crosses that of Jupiter. Comets that ply the gravitational domain of the solar system’s largest planet occasionally get their orbits realigned. In 2012, during a relatively close pass of that planet, Jupiter perturbed 209P’s orbit, bringing the comet and its debris trails to within 280,000 miles (450,000 km) of Earth’s orbit, close enough to spark the meteor shower predicted for this Friday night/Saturday morning May 23-24.
Track of the comet from May 27-29 through Sextans to the Hydra-Crater border with positions shown every 3 hours. Times are CDT. Click to enlarge.
This time around the sun, the comet itself will fly just 5.15 million miles (21 times the distance to the moon) from Earth around 3 a.m. CDT (8 hours UT) May 29 a little more than 3 weeks after perihelion, making it the 9th closest comet encounter ever observed. Given , you’d think 209P would become a bright object, perhaps even visible with the naked eye, but predictions call for it to reach about magnitude +11 at best. That means you’ll need an 8-inch telescope and dark sky to see it well. Either the comet’s very small or producing dust at a declining rate or both. Research published by Quanzhi Ye and Paul A. Wiegert describes the comet’s current dust production as low, a sign that 209P could be transitioning to a dormant comet or asteroid.
Light curve for comet 209P/LINEAR forecasts a maximum magnitude of around 11. Dates are shown along the bottom and magnitude scale along the side. Click for additional information. Credit: Seiichi Yoshida
Fortunately, the moon’s out of the way this week and next when 209P/LINEAR is closest and brightest. Since we enjoy comets in part because of their unpredictability, maybe a few surprises will be in the offing including a brighter than expected appearance. The maps will help you track down 209P during the best part of its apparition. I deliberately chose ‘black stars on a white background’ for clarity in use at the telescope. It also saves on printer ink!
A brand new meteor shower shooting 100 and potentially as many as 400 meteors an hour may radiate from the dim constellation Camelopardalis below the North Star Saturday morning May 24. Each is crumb or pebble of debris lost by 209P/LINEAR during earlier cycles around the sun. This map shows the sky facing north around 2 a.m. from the Saturday May 24 from the central U.S. Stellarium
We’re grateful for the dust 209P/LINEAR carelessly lost during its many passes in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Earth is expected to pass through multiple filaments of debris overnight Friday May 23-24 with the peak of at least 100 meteors per hour – about as good as a typical Perseid or Geminid shower – occurring around 2 a.m. CDT (7 hours UT).
If it’s cloudy or you’re not in the sweet zone for viewing either the comet or the potential shower, astrophysicist Gianluca Masi will offer a live feed of the comet at the Virtual Telescope Project website scheduled to begin at 3 p.m. CDT (8 p.m. Greenwich Time) May 22. A second meteor shower live feed will start at 12:30 a.m. CDT (5:30 a.m. Greenwich Time) Friday night/Saturday morning May 23-24.
SLOOH will also cover 209P/LINEAR live on the Web with telescopes on the Canary Islands starting at 5 p.m. CDT (6 p.m. EDT, 4 p.m. MDT and 3 p.m. PDT) May 23. Live meteor shower coverage featuring astronomer Bob Berman of Astronomy Magazine begins at 10 p.m. CDT. Viewers can ask questions by using hashtag #slooh.
Artist's impression of the Earth scorched by our Sun as it enters its Red Giant Branch phase. Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Fsgregs
It’s amazing what astronomers can figure out from afar, and this now might include whether a star ate a few planets sometime during its history. Through looking at the predicted elements that make up a star, and any changes, this could be a key to figuring out if any planets were swallowed up by the star.
“Imagine that the star originally formed rocky planets like Earth. Further, imagine that it also formed gas giant planets like Jupiter,” stated Trey Mack, a graduate student in astronomy at Vanderbilt University who led the research.
“The rocky planets form in the region close to the star where it is hot and the gas giants form in the outer part of the planetary system where it is cold. However, once the gas giants are fully formed, they begin to migrate inward and, as they do, their gravity begins to pull and tug on the inner rocky planets. If enough rocky planets fall into the star, they will stamp it with a particular chemical signature that we can detect.”
Stars are mostly made up of hydrogen and helium (98%), meaning other elements only make up about 2% of the star. These elements (all of which are heavier than hydrogen and helium) are referred to as metals and when it comes to iron abundance, you will sometimes see the term “metallicity” referred to, concerning the ratio of iron to hydrogen.
To expand on previous studies concerning metallicity and how planets form, Mack examined sun-like stars to see the abundance of 15 elements, especially those such as aluminum, silicon, calcium and iron — considered to be the foundation of rocky planets such as the Earth.
The astronomers examined binary sun-like stars HD 20781 and HD 20782, which started with the same chemical compositions since they both came to be in the same gas and dust cloud. One star hosts two Neptune-sized planets, while the other has a Jupiter-sized planet.
“When they analyzed the spectrum of the two stars, the astronomers found that the relative abundance of the refractory elements was significantly higher than that of the Sun,” Vanderbilt University stated. “They also found that the higher the melting temperature of a particular element, the higher was its abundance, a trend that serves as a compelling signature of the ingestion of Earth-like rocky material.”
One of these stars (the one with the Jupiter-sized planet) probably ate up 10 Earth masses while the other star ate about 20 Earth masses. Between the star’s chemical composition and the fact that the gas giants are either in close or eccentric orbits, this implies there would be no rocky planets in the systems. More generally, if other stars are found to meet up with these explanations, this could be a clue to finding rocky planets.
“When we find stars with similar chemical signatures, we will be able to conclude that their planetary systems must be very different from our own, and that they most likely lack inner rocky planets,” added Mack. “And when we find stars that lack these signatures, then they are good candidates for hosting planetary systems similar to our own.”
Cosmic Journey by Sean McNaughton, Samuel Velasco, 5W Infographics, Matthew Twombly and Jane Vessels, NGM staff, Amanda Hobbs.
We humans are busy creatures when it comes to exploring the solar system. This new graphic (which updates one from four years ago) showcases all the planets we have visited in the past half-century. Both successful missions and failures are included on this updated list, although sadly you won’t find much about the various visits to comets and asteroids.
“The only downside to this spectacular map is the absence of orbits around minor bodies,” wrote Franck Marchis, a researcher at the Carl Sagan Center of the SETI Institute, in a blog post describing the graphic — which he often uses in public talks.
“Samuel Velasco, one of its creators, told me me that missions to asteroids and comets were not included because the graphic was getting too difficult to read. Tough choices had to be made.”
Other features of the graphic worth noting are the growing number of moon and Mars missions and the current locations of spacecraft in the outer solar system (or in Voyager 1’s case, beyond the solar system).
Explore the full resolution version by clicking on the lead image or here.
Sun in H-alpha, prominences May 17, 2014. Credit and copyright: Mary Spicer.
It’s like a total solar eclipse — without the Moon! Using a special hydrogen-alpha filter that completely blocks the Sun’s photosphere (visible surface) these images show just the Sun’s corona and the dancing solar prominences. The filter blocks all light from the Sun except for the red light emitted by excited hydrogen atoms, which are responsible for the distinctive color of prominences and the chromosphere, the wispy, hot layer of gas that overlies the photosphere.
Of course, never look directly at the Sun with the naked eye or through a telescope without a special solar filter.
The image above by Mary Spicer was taken with a Coronado PST, 2 x Barlow plus Canon 1100D. ISO-3200 1/400 second exposure, processed in Lightroom and Focus Magic.
See more below:
Solar prominences on April 21, 2014. Credit and copyright: Roger Hutchinson.
These images by Roger Hutchinson were taken with a Lunt LS60 Ha, Skyris 618C, and 2.5x Powermate.
Solar prominences on May 18, 2014 in H-alpha. Credit and copyright: Roger Hutchinson.
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