This X-ray nebula appears to look like a human hand. The ghostly shape comes courtesy of a pulsar star called PSR B1509-58 (B1509 for short) that is just 12 miles or 19 kilometers in diameter. The nebula itself is 150 light-years across. Image taken by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. Credit: NASA/CXC/CfA/P. Slane et al.
That spooky hand in the image above is producing questions for scientists. While the shape only coincidentally looks like a human hand, scientists are still trying to figure out how a small star produced such a large shape visible in X-rays.
Pulsar star PSR B1509-58 (or B1509 for short) is a 12-mile (19-kilometer) remnant of a much larger star that exploded and left behind a quickly spinning neutron star. Energy leaves mostly via neutrino (or neutral particle) emission, with a bit more coming out via beta decay, or a radioactive process where charged particles leave from atoms.
Using a new model, scientists found that so much energy comes out from neutrino emission that there shouldn’t be enough left for the beta decay to set off the X-rays you see here in this image, or in other situations. Yet it’s still happening. And that’s why they’re hoping to take a closer look at the situation.
Artist’s conception of a neutron star flare. Credit: University of California Santa Cruz
“Scientists are intrigued by what exactly powers these massive explosions, and understanding this would yield important insights about the fundamental forces in nature, especially on the astronomical/cosmological scale,” stated Peter Moller, who is with the theoretical division of Los Alamos National Laboratory and participated in the research.
Preliminary studies indicate that to better understand what’s happening on the surface of these objects, computer models must endeavor to “describe the shape of each individual nuclide” (or atom that has a certain number of protons and neutrons in its nucleus). That’s because not all of these nuclides are simple spheres.
Using facilities at Los Alamos, scientists created databases with different types of nuclides that had various beta-decay properties. They then plugged this into a Michigan State University model of neutron stars to see what energy was released as the stars accrete or come together.
Accretion can cause neutron stars to flare violently
The results stood against what was a “common assumption”, the scientists stated, that the radioactive action would be enough to power the X-rays. They urge more study on this front, especially using a proposed Facility for Rare Isotope Beams that would be built at Michigan State, using funding from the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. FRIB project participants are hoping that will be ready in the 2020s.
You can read more about the research in the Dec. 1 edition of Nature. It was led by Hendrik Schatz, a professor at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory at Michigan State.
We enjoy the light from the Sun during the day, and then the comforting glow of the Moon at night. But the light coming from the Moon is an illusion. As you know, you’re actually seeing the reflected light from the Sun, bouncing off the Moon which acts like a mirror. A really terrible mirror.
When astronauts walked on the surface, they reported that it was dark grey, the color of pavement. Because of its dark color and bumpy surface, it only reflects about 12% of the light that hits it. Additionally, the amount of light we get from the Moon depends on the point of its orbit.
During its first and last quarters, the Moon is half illuminated, but it’s only 8% as bright when it’s full. Just imagine the surface when its only partly illuminated. With the Sun at a steep angle, the mountains cast long shadows. This makes the lunar surface much darker than when it’s directly illuminated.
During the full Moon, it’s so bright that it obscures fainter objects in the night sky. Many astronomers put their telescopes away during this phase, and wait for it to go away. When the Moon is highly illuminated, it reflects so much light we can even see it during the day.
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The brightness of the daytime sky completely washes out the light from the stars, but the Moon is even brighter, and so we can can see it in the sky during the day. The Moon follows an elliptical orbit around the Earth, changing its distance and brightness quite a bit. When it is at its closest point, and it’s full, this is known as a supermoon. This Moon can be 20% brighter than normal.
You’ve probably experienced how the Moon can cast shadows. In fact, there are three objects in the sky that can cast shadows. The Sun, of course, the Moon… and Venus.
Venus is the next brightest object in the sky, after the Moon. It reflects 65% of the sunlight that hits it. Every few months, Venus reaches its brightest time – that’s when you can see your shadow. On a night with no Moon, head far away from city lights. Let your eyes adjust and watch as your hand casts a shadow on a white piece of paper, illuminated only by Venus.
One last thought on reflected light.We talked about how bad a mirror the Moon is, reflecting only 12% of the light that hits it. That’s nothing. Saturn’s moon Enceladus, on the other hand, reflects about 99% of the light that falls on it. If astronauts ever get the chance to walk on the surface of Enceladus, it’ll feel like freshly fallen snow.
Orion EFT-1 heat shield is off loaded from NASA’s Super Guppy aircraft after transport from Manchester, N.H., and arrival at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Dec. 5, 2013. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
Orion EFT-1 heat shield is off loaded from NASA’s Super Guppy aircraft after transport from Manchester, N.H., and arrival at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Dec. 5, 2013. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
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KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL – The heat shield crucial to the success of NASA’s 2014 Orion test flight has arrived at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) aboard the agency’s Super Guppy aircraft – just spacious enough to fit the precious cargo inside.
Orion is currently under development as NASA’s next generation human rated vehicle to replace the now retired space shuttle. The heat shields advent is a key achievement on the path to the spacecraft’s maiden flight.
“The heat shield which we received today marks a major milestone for Orion. It is key to the continued assembly of the spacecraft,” Scott Wilson, NASA’s Orion Manager of Production Operations at KSC, told Universe Today during an interview at the KSC shuttle landing facility while the offloading was in progress.
The inaugural flight of Orion on the unmanned Exploration Flight Test – 1 (EFT-1) mission is scheduled to blast off from the Florida Space Coast in mid September 2014 atop a Delta 4 Heavy booster, Wilson told me.
Orion EFT-1 heat shield moved off from NASA’s Super Guppy aircraft after arrival at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Dec. 5, 2013. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
The heat shield was flown in from Textron Defense Systems located near Boston, Massachusetts and offloaded from the Super Guppy on Dec. 5 as Universe Today observed the proceedings along with top managers from NASA and Orion’s prime contractor Lockheed Martin.
“The Orion heat shield is the largest of its kind ever built. Its wider than the Apollo and Mars Science Laboratory heat shields,” Todd Sullivan told Universe Today at KSC. Sullivan is the heat shield senior manager at Lockheed Martin.
The state-of-the-art Orion crew capsule will ultimately enable astronauts to fly to deep space destinations including the Moon, Asteroids, Mars and beyond – throughout our solar system.
The heat shield was one of the last major pieces of hardware needed to complete Orion’s exterior structure.
“Production of the heat shields primary structure that carries all the loads began at Lockheed Martin’s Waterton Facility near Denver,” said Sullivan. The titanium composite skeleton and carbon fiber skin were manufactured there to give the heat shield its shape and provide structural support during landing.
“It was then shipped to Textron in Boston in March,” for the next stage of assembly operations, Sullivan told me.
“They applied the Avcoat ablater material to the outside. That’s what protects the spacecraft from the heat of reentry.”
Textron technicians just completed the final work of installing a fiberglass-phenolic honeycomb structure onto the heat shield skin. Then they filled each of the honeycomb’s 320,000 cells with the ablative material Avcoat.
Orion EFT-1 heat shield hauled off NASA’s Super Guppy aircraft after arrival at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Dec. 5, 2013. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
Each cell was X-rayed and sanded to match Orion’s exacting design specifications.
“Now we have about two and a half months of work ahead to prepare the Orion crew module before the heat shield is bolted on and installed,” Sullivan explained.
The Avcoat-treated shell will shield Orion from the extreme heat of nearly 4000 degrees Fahrenheit it experiences during the blazing hot temperatures it experiences as it returns at high speed to Earth. The ablative material will wear away as it heats up during the capsules atmospheric re-entry thereby preventing heat from being transferred to the rest of the capsule and saving it and the human crew from utter destruction.
“Testing the heat shield is one of the prime objectives of the EFT-1 flight,” Wilson explained.
“The Orion EFT-1 capsule will return at over 20,000 MPH,” Wilson told me. “That’s about 80% of the reentry speed experienced by the Apollo capsule after returning from the Apollo moon landing missions.”
“The big reason to get to those high speeds during EFT-1 is to be able to test out the thermal protection system, and the heat shield is the biggest part of that.”
Hoisting Orion heat shield at KSC for transport to Orion crew module in the Operations and Checkout Building. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
The two-orbit, four- hour EFT-1 flight will lift the Orion spacecraft and its attached second stage to an orbital altitude of 3,600 miles, about 15 times higher than the International Space Station (ISS) – and farther than any human spacecraft has journeyed in 40 years.
“Numerous sensors and instrumentation have been specially installed on the EFT-1 heat shield and the back shell tiles to collect measurements of things like temperatures, pressures and stresses during the extreme conditions of atmospheric reentry,” Wilson explained.
Orion managers pose with heat shield at KSC; Scott Wilson, NASA Orion deputy manager of Production Operations; Todd Sullivan, heat shield senior manager at Lockheed Martin; Stu Mcclung, NASA Orion deputy manager of Production Operations. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
The data gathered during the unmanned EFT-1 flight will aid in confirming. or refuting, design decisions and computer models as the program moves forward to the first flight atop NASA’s mammoth SLS booster in 2017 on the EM-1 mission and human crewed missions thereafter.
“I’m very proud of the work we’ve done, excited to have the heat shield here [at KSC] and anxious to get it installed,” Sullivan concluded.
Stay tuned here for continuing Orion, Chang’e 3, LADEE, MAVEN and MOM news and Ken’s reports from on site at Cape Canaveral & the Kennedy Space Center press site.
Dec 11: “Curiosity, MAVEN and the Search for Life on Mars”, “LADEE & Antares ISS Launches from Virginia”, Rittenhouse Astronomical Society, Franklin Institute, Phila, PA, 8 PM
Takeoff of NASA’s Super Guppy from the shuttle landing runway at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Dec. 5, 2013 after removal of Orion heat shield. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com
Hubble image of the Horsehead Nebula, "tilt-shifted" by Imgur user ScienceLlama (Original image credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA))
Aww, how cute! What an adorable little… nebula?
Although here it may look like it could fit in your hand, the Horsehead Nebula is obviously quite a bit larger – about 1.5 light-years across from “nose” to “mane.” But given a tilt-shift effect by Imgur.com user ScienceLlama, the entire structure takes on the appearance of something tiny — based purely on our eyes’ natural depth-of-field when peering at a small object close up. Usually done with Photoshop filters these days, it’s a gimmick, yes… but it works!
The original image was captured in infrared light by the Hubble Space Telescope and released in April 2013, in celebration of its 23rd anniversary.
Check out more of ScienceLlama’s “tiny universe” images below:
A tiny Centaurus AA tiny Crab Nebula (see original NASA image here)A tiny Andromeda Galaxy in hydrogen alpha (see original here)
ADDITION 12/17: Several of these images (like this one) were originally processed by Robert Gendler from Hubble-acquired data, but the attribution was not noted by ScienceLlama. I apologize for the oversight — see more of Robert’s beautiful astrophotography on his website here. Another original source was Adam Block of the Mount Lemmon Sky Center.
Artists concept of the Chinese Chang'e 3 lander and rover on the lunar surface. Credit: Beijing Institute of Spacecraft System Engineering
China’s maiden moon landing probe successfully entered lunar orbit on Friday, Dec. 6, following Sunday’s (Dec. 1) spectacular blastoff – setting the stage for the historic touchdown attempt in mid December.
Engineer’s at the Beijing Aerospace Control Center (BACC) commanded the Chang’e 3 lunar probe to fire its braking thrusters for 361 seconds, according to China’s Xinhua news agency.
The do or die orbital insertion maneuver proceeded precisely as planned at the conclusion of a four and a half day voyage to Earth’s nearest neighbor.
China’s ‘Yutu’ lunar lander is riding piggyback atop the four legged landing probe during the history making journey from the Earth to the Moon.
Liftoff of China’s first ever lunar rover on Dec. 2 local China time (Dec. 1 EST) from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center, China. Credit: CCTV
The critical engine burn placed Chang’e 3 into its desired 100 kilometer (60 mi.) high circular orbit above the Moon’s surface at 5:53 p.m. Friday, Beijing Time (4:53 a.m. EST).
An engine failure would have doomed the mission.
Chang’e 3 is due to make a powered descent to the Moon’s surface on Dec. 14, firing the landing thrusters at an altitude of 15 km (9 mi) for a soft landing in a preselected area called the Bay of Rainbows or Sinus Iridum region.
The Bay of Rainbows is a lava filled crater located in the upper left portion of the moon as seen from Earth. It is 249 km in diameter.
The variable thrust engine can continuously vary its thrust power between 1,500 to 7,500 newtons, according to Xinhua.
The lander is equipped with terrain recognition equipment and software to avoid rock and boulder fields that could spell catastrophe in the final seconds before touchdown if vehicle were to land directly on top of them.
The voyage began with the flawless launch of Chang’e 3 atop China’s Long March 3-B booster at 1:30 a.m. Beijing local time, Dec. 2, 2013 (12:30 p.m. EST, Dec. 1) from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center, in southwest China.
If successful, the Chang’e 3 mission will mark the first soft landing on the Moon since the Soviet Union’s unmanned Luna 24 sample return vehicle landed nearly four decades ago back in 1976.
Chang’e 3 targeted lunar landing site in the Bay of Rainbows or Sinus Iridum
The name for the ‘Yutu’ rover – which means ‘Jade Rabbit’ – was chosen after a special naming contest involving a worldwide poll and voting to select the best name.
‘Yutu’ stems from a Chinese fairy tale, in which the goddess Chang’e flew off to the moon taking her little pet Jade rabbit with her.
The six-wheeled ‘Yutu’ rover will be lowered in stages to the moon’s surface in a complex operation and then drive off a pair of landing ramps to explore the moon’s terrain.
Yutu measures 150 centimeters high and weighs approximately 120 kilograms.
The rover and lander are equipped with multiple cameras, spectrometers, an optical telescope, radar and other sensors to investigate the lunar surface and composition.
Spectacular view of Chang’e 3 thruster firings after separation from upper stage with Earth in the background. Credit: CCTV
Chang’e 3 marks the beginning of the second phase of China’s lunar robotic exploration program.
The lander follows a pair of highly successful lunar orbiters named Chang’e 1 and 2 which launched in 2007 and 2010.
The next step will be an unmanned lunar sample return mission, perhaps by 2020.
China’s Chang’e 3 probe joins NASA’s newly arrived LADEE lunar probe which entered lunar orbit on Oct. 6 following a similarly spectacular night time blastoff from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.
Stay tuned here for continuing Chang’e 3, LADEE, MAVEN and MOM news and Ken’s SpaceX and MAVEN launch reports from on site at Cape Canaveral & the Kennedy Space Center press site.
Dec 11: “Curiosity, MAVEN and the Search for Life on Mars”, “LADEE & Antares ISS Launches from Virginia”, Rittenhouse Astronomical Society, Franklin Institute, Phila, PA, 8 PM
And if you’re interested in looking back, here’s an archive to all the past Carnivals of Space. If you’ve got a space-related blog, you should really join the carnival. Just email an entry to [email protected], and the next host will link to it. It will help get awareness out there about your writing, help you meet others in the space community – and community is what blogging is all about. And if you really want to help out, sign up to be a host. Send an email to the above address.
Comet C/2011 W3 (Lovejoy) imaged by the Subaru Telescope on Dec. 3. Image credit: NAOJ with data processing by Masafumi Yagi (NAOJ)
Comet ISON may be no more than just a cloud of icy debris these days but there’s another comet that’s showing off in the morning sky: C/2013 R1 (Lovejoy), which was discovered in September and is steadily nearing its Christmas Day perihelion. In the early hours of Dec. 3, astronomers using the 8.2-meter Subaru Telescope atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii captured this amazing image of Lovejoy, revealing the intricate flows of ion streamers in its tail. (Click the image above for extra awesomeness.)
At the time of this observation, at around 5:30 am on December 3, 2013 (Hawaii Standard Time), Comet Lovejoy was 50 million miles (80 million km) distant from Earth and 80 million miles (130 million km) away from the Sun.
The entire image of comet Lovejoy was made with the Subaru Telescope’s Suprime-Cam, which uses a mosaic of ten 2048 x 4096 CCDs covering a 34′ x 27′ field of view and a pixel scale of 0.2”.
Where to find comet Lovejoy in the morning sky, Dec. 7 (via spaceweather.com)
“Subaru Telescope offers a rare combination of large telescope aperture and a wide-field camera,” said a member of the observation team, which included astronomers from Stony Brook University in New York, Universidad Complutense in Madrid, Johns Hopkins University, and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. “This enabled us to capture a detailed look at the nucleus while also photogenically framing inner portions of Comet Lovejoy’s impressive ion tail.”
Comet Lovejoy is currently visible in the early morning sky as a naked-eye object in the northern hemisphere.
Read more about Lovejoy’s journey through the inner solar system in this article by Bob King here.
Image of comet Lovejoy on Dec. 5 by Flickr user Willo2173.
Do you have photos of comet Lovejoy or any other astronomical objects to share? Upload them to the Universe Today Flickr group!
This mosaic shows a rock, nicknamed "Ithaca" examined by the NASA Curiosity rover's Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) laser. The 100,000th laser shot of Curiosity's mission is marked in the image. The shot took place on Oct. 30, 2013 and was announced in early December. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/CNES/IRAP/UNM
The reports are in: it appears that Earth has the upper hand in firing laser shots on Mars. More seriously, however, the Curiosity rover has surpassed the uber-cool milestone of shooting 100,000 holes in the Red Planet’s surface to learn more about its chemical composition.
As you can see in the picture, the 100,000th shot took place on a rock nicknamed “Ithaca” on Oct. 30 from a distance of 13 feet, 3 inches (4.04 meters) away. (The news was just announced recently; as of early December, the laser had fired more than 102,000 times).
“The Chemistry and Camera instrument (ChemCam) uses the infrared laser to excite material in a pinhead-size spot on the target into a glowing, ionized gas, called plasma. ChemCam observes that spark with the telescope and analyzes the spectrum of light to identify elements in the target,” NASA stated.
Artist's conception of a planet like HD106906 b. Visible in the picture is a debris disk and its distant host star. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
What the heck is that giant exoplanet doing so far away from its star? Astronomers are still trying to figure out the curious case of HD 106906 b, a newly found gas giant that orbits at an astounding 650 astronomical units or Earth-sun distances from its host star. For comparison, that’s more than 20 times farther from its star than Neptune is from the sun.
“This system is especially fascinating because no model of either planet or star formation fully explains what we see,” stated Vanessa Bailey, a graduate astronomy student at the University of Arizona who led the research.
HD 106906 b is 11 times the size of Jupiter, throwing conventional planetary formation theory for a loop. Astronomers believe that planets gradually form from clumps of gas and dust that circle around young stars, but that process would take too long for this exoplanet to form — the system is just 13 million years old. (Our own planetary system is about 4.5 billion years old, by comparison.)
The discovery image of HD 106906 b, shown in thermal infrared light from instruments on the Magellan telescope at the European Southern Observatory in Chile. The image has been changed to take out light from its very bright host star. The planet orbits more than 20 times farther from its host star than Neptune does from the sun. (AU = astronomical units, or Earth-sun distances). Credit: Vanessa Bailey
Another theory is that if the disc collapses quickly, perhaps it could spawn a huge planet — but it’s improbable that there is enough mass in the system for that to happen. Perhaps, the team says, this system is like a “mini binary star system”, with HD 106906 b being more or less a failed star of some sort. Yet there is at least one problem with that theory as well; the mass ratio of the planet and star is something like 1 to 100, and usually these scenarios occur in ratios of 1 to 10 or less.
“A binary star system can be formed when two adjacent clumps of gas collapse more or less independently to form stars, and these stars are close enough to each other to exert a mutual gravitation attraction and bind them together in an orbit,” Bailey stated.
“It is possible that in the case of the HD 106906 system the star and planet collapsed independently from clumps of gas, but for some reason the planet’s progenitor clump was starved for material and never grew large enough to ignite and become a star.”
Young binary stars: Image credit: NASA
Besides puzzling out how HD 106906 b came to be, astronomers are also interested in the system because they can clearly see leftovers or a debris disk from the system’s formation. By studying this system further, astronomers hope to figure out more about how young planets evolve.
At 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit (1,500 degrees Celsius), the planet is most easily visible in infrared. The heat is from when the planet was first coalescing, astronomers said.
The astronomers spotted the planet using the Magellan telescope at the European Southern Observatory’s Atacama Desert in Chile. It was visible in both the Magellan Adaptive Optics (MagAO) system and Clio2 thermal infrared camera on the telescope. The planet was confirmed using Hubble Space Telescope images from eight years ago, as well as the FIRE spectrograph on Magellan that revealed more about the planet’s “nature and composition”, a press release stated.
