Lasers like this one, at the VLT in Paranal, help counteract the blurring effect of the atmosphere. Powerful arrays of much larger lasers could hide our presence from aliens. (ESO/Y. Beletsky)
As the chill of winter settles into the northern hemisphere, fantasies of down-south travel pervade a lot of people’s dreams. Well, here’s a virtual journey to warm climes for astronomy buffs: a beautiful, music-filled timelapse of several European Southern Observatory telescopes gazing at the heavens in Chile.
Uploaded in 2011 (but promoted this morning on ESO’s Twitter feed), the timelapse was taken by astrophotographers Stéphane Guisard (also an ESO engineer) and José Francisco Salgado (who is also an astronomer at Chicago’s Adler Planetarium.) Telescopes include:
The early universe was sizzling with active galactic nuclei (AGN) — intensely luminous cores powered by supermassive black holes — most of which could outshine their entire host galaxies and be seen across the observable universe.
While our central supermassive black hole Sgr A* lies rather dormant at the moment, new evidence suggests that it too was once a powerful AGN.
The first hint occurred two years ago when astronomers discovered Fermi bubbles — massive lobes of high-energy radiation that expand 30,000 light years north and south of the galactic center.
Of course the source of these bubbles is “a hot topic today,” Dr. Joss Hawthorn from the Sydney Institute for Astronomy and lead author on the paper, told Universe Today. “Some think the bubbles were inflated by powerful star formation in the disk, others, like me, (think) that they were inflated by a powerful jet from Sgr A*.”
It’s becoming more and more plausible that the Fermi bubbles were created by a recently powerful jet protruding from the center of our galaxy — demonstrating they are remnants of a much more violent past.
But astronomers from the Sydney Institute for Astronomy in Australia, the University of Colorado, Boulder, and the University of Cambridge have found further evidence linking Sgr A* to a recent AGN.
The Magellanic Stream — a long ribbon of gas stretching nearly half way around the Milky Way and trailing our galaxy’s two small companion galaxies, the Magellanic Clouds — is likely to be another ancient remnant of our recent activity.
The problem is that the Magellanic Stream is extremely red. It is emitting a large number of photons that clock in at a particular wavelength: 656 nanometers. This wavelength not only falls in the visible spectrum, but corresponds to a red color.
The Magellanic Stream is emitting so much red light because it contains extremely energetic hydrogen atoms. When atoms have high-energy electrons, these electrons lose energy by emitting photons.
But astronomers cannot explain why the Magellanic Stream has so many energetic hydrogen atoms, why it is such a bright red color — unless they invoke recent AGN activity from the Milky Way galaxy.
If we assume Sgr A* was once very bright, it would have lit up the Magellanic Stream, causing hydrogen atoms to absorb energy from the incoming light — an effect still visible millions of years later.
A huge outburst of energy in our recent past is likely the cause of a Seyfert flare — an eruption of light and radiation when small clouds of gas fall onto the hot disk of matter that swirls around the black hole.
“If you hurl a bucket of water into a sink, you would be shocked if it all disappeared down the plug hole. Of course, the water spins around the plughole first. (The) same thing (occurs) with gas falling onto a black hole. the spinning disk heats up and generates powerful outbursts: Seyfert flares,” Dr. Hawthorn explained.
This provides further evidence that Sgr A* was once a very powerful AGN, causing Fermi bubbles and a brighter Magellanic Stream. It’s likely it was active as recent as one to three million years ago.
The paper has been published in the Astrophysical Journal and is available for download here.
Comet R1 Lovejoy imaged on November 10th by astrophtographer Justin Ng. (Credit: Justin Ng).
Comet 2012 S1 (ISON) is just 16 days away from its close encounter with the Sun and is now inside the orbit of Venus, at under 103,000,000 km (64,000,000 miles) away from the Sun. This new timelapse by award-winning photographer Justin Ng from Singapore shows the journey of both ISON and Comet 2013 R1 (Lovejoy), taken on November 11, 2013. The video covers 50 minutes of imaging time for ISON and 90 minutes of imaging time for Lovejoy.
As you watch the video of each, don’t worry – the comets and their tails are not fizzling out! This actually reflects the reduced visibility of the comets as the sky was gradually becoming brighter with daybreak. Additionally, Justin cautions that in the timelapse, both comets appear to be moving especially fast because of smaller field of view and long exposure.
On November 4, there were indications of a possible ion tail emerging from Comet ISON, and this comet’s growing dust tail now stretches to more than a full moon’s diameter. “Comet ISON is now plunging towards the Sun with 2 long tails at a magnitude of around +7 and it is visible in small scopes and strong binoculars,” writes Justin.
Comet ISON flies in front of constellation Virgo this week (from our vantage point on Earth) and it is expected to grow some 2.5 times brighter before it passes by the bright star Spica in Virgo on November 17 and 18.
“Comet Lovejoy just passed into the constellation Leo with a magnitude of around +6 and it’s an easy binocular object,” said Justin. “R1 Lovejoy will remain well placed at 50 to 60 degrees above the northeastern horizon before sunrise through this week for observers from near the Equator.”
Main service gantry of the Angara pad in Plesetsk under construction in April 2013. Credit: Russian Ministry of Defense, via Russian Space Web.
Reports coming out of Russia say that two people were killed at the Plesetsk space launch facility last week while doing routine work cleaning out a propellant tank. The Russian newspaper Ria Novosti said that on November 9, 2013, two workers were killed and three others were hospitalized after being exposed to poisonous nitrogen vapors while doing maintenance at the facility. Officials from the Russia Defense Ministry were quoted as saying the accident appeared to have been caused by failure to follow safety regulations.
The Plesetsk cosmodrome is located in the northwestern Arkhangelsk province. The facility has been undergoing refurbishing to take over a majority of the launches as Russia looks to reduce reliance on the Baikonur cosmodrome, which it leases from the former Soviet nation of Kazakhstan.
Currently, Russia uses Plesetsk to test intercontinental ballistic missile and to launch satellites, but they are hoping to use new facilities by next year to test the Angara heavy rocket.
Ria Novosti said it was unclear what accounted for the delay between the incident and its announcement, “but sensitive military issues are typically kept highly confidential in Russia.”
Unfortunately, over 50 people have been killed at this launch facility since 1973. In June of 1973, 9 people were killed by an explosion of Cosmos-3M rocket; in March of 1980, 48 people were killed by an explosion of a Vostok-2M rocket with a Tselina satellite, during a fueling operation; and in October of 2002, a Soyuz-U carrying the ESA Foton-M1 project failed to launch and exploded, killing one.
Right now, just one-fourth of Russia’s launches occur from within Russia itself, but Russia’s Federal Space Agency hope to have nine-tenths of its space launches from Plesetsk and the Vostochny cosmodrome by 2030.
The "pale blue dot" of Earth as seen from Cassini on July 19, 2013.
This summer, for the first time ever, the world was informed that its picture was going to be taken from nearly a billion miles away as the Cassini spacecraft captured images of Saturn in eclipse on July 19. On that day we were asked to take a moment and smile and wave at Saturn, from wherever we were, because the faint light from our planet would be captured by Cassini’s camera, shielded by Saturn from the harsh glare of the Sun.
A few preliminary images were released just a few days later showing the “pale blue dot” of Earth nestled within the glowing bands of Saturn’s rings. It was an amazing perspective of our planet, and we were promised that the full mosaic of Cassini images was being worked on and would be revealed in the fall.
Well, it’s fall, and here it is:
The full mosaic from the Cassini imaging team of Saturn on July 19, 2013… the “Day the Earth Smiled”
“After much work, the mosaic that marks that moment the inhabitants of Earth looked up and smiled at the sheer joy of being alive is finally here. In its combination of beauty and meaning, it is perhaps the most unusual image ever taken in the history of the space program.”
In this panorama of the Saturnian system, a view spanning 404,880 miles (651,591 km), we see the planet silhouetted against the light from the Sun. It’s a unique perspective that highlights the icy, reflective particles that make up its majestic rings and also allows our own planet to be seen, over 900 million miles distant. And it’s not just Earth that was captured, but the Moon, Venus, and Mars were caught in the shot too.
According to the description on the CICLOPS page, “Earth’s twin, Venus, appears as a bright white dot in the upper left quadrant of the mosaic… between the G and E rings. Mars also appears as a faint red dot embedded in the outer edge of the E ring, above and to the left of Venus.”
This was no simple point-and-click. Over 320 images were captured by Cassini on July 19 over a period of four hours, and this mosaic was assembled from 141 of those images. Because the spacecraft, Saturn, and its moons were all in constant motion during that time, affecting not only positions but also levels of illumination, imaging specialists had to adjust for that to create the single image you see above. So while all elements may not be precisely where they were at the same moment in time, the final result is no less stunning.
“This version was processed for balance and beauty,” it says in the description. (And I’ve no argument with that.)
See below for an annotated version showing the position of all visible objects, and read the full article on the CICLOPS page for an in-depth description of this gorgeous and historic image.
2013 Saturn mosaic, annotated version.
“I hope long into the future, when people look again at this image, they will recall the moment when, as crazy as it might have seemed, they were there, they were aware, and they smiled.”
All images credit NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
UPDATE 11/13: CICLOPS Director Carolyn Porco describes how this image was acquired and assembled in this interview video from the World Science Festival:
Stellar birth is visible in this image of HH 46/47 taken with the Spitzer Space Telescope and Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ALMA
Talk about birth in the fast lane. Fresh observations of HH 46/47 — an area well-known for hosting a baby star — demonstrate material from the star pushing against the surrounding gas at supersonic speeds.
“HH” stands for Herbig-Haro, a type of object created “when jets shot out by newborn stars collide with surrounding material, producing small, bright, nebulous regions,” NASA stated. It’s a little hard to see what’s inside these regions, however, as they’re clouded by debris (specifically, gas and dust).
The Spitzer space telescope (which looks in infrared) and the massive Chilean Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) are both designed to look through the stuff to see what’s within. Here’s what they’ve spotted:
– ALMA: The telescope is showing that the gas is moving apart faster than ever believed, which could have echoes on how the star cloud is forming generally. “In turn, the extra turbulence could have an impact on whether and how other stars might form in this gaseous, dusty, and thus fertile, ground for star-making,” NASA added.
Another view of HH 46/47 with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). Credit: ESO/ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/H. Arce. Acknowledgements to Bo Reipurth
– Spitzer: Two supersonic blobs are emerging from the star in the middle and pushing against the gas, creating the big bubbles you can see here. The right-aiming blob has a lot more material to push through than the left one, “offering a handy compare-and-contrast setup for how the outflows from a developing star interact with their surroundings,” NASA stated.
“Young stars like our sun need to remove some of the gas collapsing in on them to become stable, and HH 46/47 is an excellent laboratory for studying this outflow process,” stated Alberto Noriega-Crespo, a scientist at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology.
“Thanks to Spitzer, the HH 46/47 outflow is considered one of the best examples of a jet being present with an expanding bubble-like structure.”
Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield appeared on Conan last night, and if you missed it here’s a clip in which Conan O’Brien asks Chris to answer one of his most nagging questions about life in orbit: “Do you guys do laundry in space? How do you take care of that issue?”
Like Conan, you might be surprised at his response! (Seen any “shooting stars” recently?)
The cameras mounted in the ISS's cupola could serve as the platform for the first-ever quantum optics experiment in space.
Imagine you’re a space tourist wanting to blog about your experience. Too impatient to wait for the ride back to solid ground, you open up your laptop on the way home and post pictures and video of the experience just minutes after you were zooming through suborbital space.
That would only be possible if there was some sort of infrastructure available to send messages over the Internet or on text protocols, and according to Brian Barnett, there’s plenty of demand from the private sector, NASA and universities to do so. That’s why this morning, his company (Satwest) will put a temporary wi-fi hotspot in space aboard a rocket from Denver’s UP Aerospace Inc.
“It’s our first test of the technology in space,” Barnett told Universe Today. “We use the technology on the ground, and in airplanes already, and this will be the first test in space.”
Satwest Communications launches its Earth-to-space communications payload during a test balloon flight on Sept. 26, 2013. A November rocket flight aims to bring a similar payload into space. Credit: Satwest Communications
Here’s how it works: on board the rocket will be a satellite phone and e-mail device. Once it launches from Spaceport America in New Mexico around 10 a.m. Eastern (3 p.m. UTC) today (if all stays to schedule), high school students at Bosque School in Albuquerque will send out famous space movie lines.
The information will be transmitted to a ground station in Phoenix, which will transmit the message to the nearest Iridium satellite.
That satellite will then relay the message to the Iridium satellite that is closest to the rocket, which will zoom to a maximum altitude of 70 miles (112 kilometers). That’s just past the 62-mile (100 kilometer) Karman line that is a commonly accepted point for the edge of space.
Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo during a test flight. Credit: Virgin Galactic
SatWest currently has a contract for NASA suborbital rocket communications because there is a demand for experimenters wanting to have two-way, real-time chats with their payloads while they’re in the middle of their work. Other customers include Virgin Galactic, the Federal Aviation Administration, Masten Space Systems and Armadillo Aerospace.
Astronauts on the International Space Station can already transmit messages to the ground using NASA systems, but Barnett said his option could be cheaper if it is installed up there. (He added he is speaking theoretically as his current contract parameters are for suborbital rocket flights only.)
A still from a Mars Curiosity panorama stitched together from NASA images. Credit: Andrew Bodrov, from NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS images
Here’s a nice distraction to start off the day: pretend you’re playing in the sandbox of Mars alongside Curiosity. This new panorama shows the NASA Rover hanging out somewhat nearby Mount Sharp (Aeolis Mons), its ultimate destination for the two-year prime mission it’s currently on.
“The images for panorama [were] obtained by the rover’s 34-millimeter Mast Camera,” wrote Andrew Bodrov on a blog post describing his work. “The mosaic, which stretches about 30,000 pixels’ width, includes 101 images taken on Sol 437.”
Bodrov, who is from Estonia, frequently does space-related panoramas. We wrote about a couple of other Curiosity panoramas he did in March 2013, in February 2013 and August 2012.
Last year, he told Universe Today that he has used PTGui panoramic stitching software from New House Internet Services BV to accomplish the stunning views.
He also has a wealth of images from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, which is the launch site for Soyuz spacecraft missions.
“It’s very nice to see the achievements of humanity which allows you to see a picture of another world,” Bodrov said in 2012.
Comet ISON is making its way through the inner solar system. Visualize its unusual orbit and track its journey
around the sun with this paper model. The background image shows comet C/2001 Q4 (NEAT). Credit: NASA and T. A. Rector (Univ. of Alaska Anchorage), Z. Levay and L. Frattare (STScI) and WIYN/NOAO/AURA/NSF
Planet orbits are so easy to picture – eight nearly concentric hula hoops centered on the sun. Comets are weirder. Their orbits vary from tapered ellipses shaped like cigars to completely open-ended parabolas and even hyperbolas. Comet ISON’s highly-elongated (stretched out) orbit is best described as hyperbolic, although that’s subject to change if Jupiter gets into the act and gives the comet a gravitational nudge during its outbound journey. As the largest planet, it has a special knack for this kind of trick, having tamed many a wayward comet’s orbit into a neat ellipse.
Comets can travel in a variety of orbits from elliptical to open-ended parabolic and hyperbolic. Credit: Wikipedia
Comets in hyperbolic and parabolic orbits are typically making their first trip to the sun from the bitterly cold and distant Oort Cloud, a roughly spherical volume of space beginning about 3,000 times Earth’s distance from the sun and extending outward to 50,000 times that distance or nearly one-quarter of the way to Alpha Centauri. The Cloud is believed to hold trillions of icy comets. Think of it as the sun’s ultimate beer cave.
To help visualize Comet ISON’s travels across the solar system we can always go the Internet and search for images and video, but sometimes it’s fun to use your own hands. Building a model using a simple cardboard template can make the knowledge “stick”. Not to mention it’s an excellent classroom activity for teachers preparing students for the comet’s post-perihelion display. All you need is this color pdf file, a printer and a few minutes to assemble.
The familiar solar system with its 8 planets occupies a tiny space inside a large spherical shell containing trillions of comets – the Oort Cloud. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Planets’ orbits are only slightly tilted to each other, but Oort Cloud comets drop in from any angle they choose. Gravitational interactions with passing stars and clouds of interstellar gas nudge them into the inner solar system, where they’re cooked by the sun into glowing and long tails composed of vaporizing ice and dust. Long ago, some passing star gave ISON a push. It’s been falling toward the sun ever since.
Animation of Comet ISON’s orbit created by NASA
While it may be tough to picture Comet ISON’s orbit slicing the planetary racetrack at a 62-degree angle, the paper model will give you an intuitive understanding of ISON’s path and comet orbits in general.
P.S. In case you’re a klutz with a scissors just click on the Youtube video above.
