Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

One Year Later, New POV Video of Baumgartner’s Freefall

Felix Baumgartner celebrates after successfully completing his record-breaking jump. Credit: Red Bull Stratos.

A year ago, BASE jumper Felix Baumgartner dove out of a balloon-borne capsule in the stratosphere (not space), 39 kilometers (24 miles) up. It was what I called “part science experiment, part publicity stunt, part life-long ambition,” with Baumgartner attempting to break the speed of sound with his body in a record-setting freefall. He accomplished just that, although many have questioned the usefulness of this “stunt” (read Amy Shira Teitel’s great piece from last year.)

But, in some sense, you gotta admire Baumgartner’s courage.

Red Bull has now released a new full 9.5-minute video of the entire dive, showing several views, including what Baumgartner saw during the dive, along with real-time readouts of his altitude, airspeed, G-force load, heart rate and other data. It’s interesting to watch how he got himself out of the incredible spin he was in, and fun to see how he opened up his visor before hitting the ground.

Here’s what Baumgartner said about the spin in the post-jump press conference last year:

“It started out really good because my exit was perfect, I did exactly what I was supposed to do… It looked like for a second I was going to tumble two more times and then get it under control, but for some reason that spin became so violent over all axis and it was hard to know how to get out of it, because, if you are trapped in a pressurized suit – normally as a skydiver you can feel the air and get direct feedback from the air — but here you are trapped in a suit that is pressurized at 3.5 PSI so you don’t know how to feel the air. It is like swimming without touching the water. And it’s hard because every when time it turns you around you have to figure out what to do. So I was sticking my arm out and it became worse and then I stuck arm out the other side and it became less, so I was fighting all the way down to regain control because I wanted to break the speed of sound. And I hit it. I don’t know how many seconds, but I could feel air was building up and then I hit it.”

Posted on by Elizabeth Howell

Wet Asteroid’s Remains Found In Old Star That Could Have Hosted Habitable Planets

Artist's impression of a rocky and water-rich asteroid being torn apart by the strong gravity of the white dwarf star GD 61. Credit: Mark A. Garlick, space-art.co.uk, University of Warwick and University of Cambridge

Remains of a water-filled asteroid are circling a dying white dwarf star, right now, about 150 light-years from us. The new find is the first demonstration of water and a rocky surface in a spot beyond the solar system, researchers say.

The discovery is exciting to the astronomical team because, according to them, it’s likely that water on Earth came from asteroids, comets and other small bodies in the solar system. Finding a watery rocky body demonstrates that this theory has legs, they said. (There are, however, multiple explanations for water on Earth.)

“The finding of water in a large asteroid means the building blocks of habitable planets existed – and maybe still exist – in the GD 61 system, and likely also around substantial number of similar parent stars,” stated lead author Jay Farihi, from Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy.

Earth’s oxygen and water as detected by Venus Express (ESA)
Earth’s oxygen and water as detected by Venus Express (ESA)

“These water-rich building blocks, and the terrestrial planets they build, may in fact be common – a system cannot create things as big as asteroids and avoid building planets, and GD 61 had the ingredients to deliver lots of water to their surfaces. Our results demonstrate that there was definitely potential for habitable planets in this exoplanetary system.”

More intriguing, however, is researchers found this evidence in a star system that is near the end of its life. So the team is framing this as a “look into our future”, when the Sun evolves into a white dwarf .

The water likely came from a “minor planet” that was at least 56 miles (90 kilometers) in diameter. Its debris was pulled into the atmosphere of the star, which was then examined by spectroscopy. This study revealed the ingredients of rocks inside the star, including magnesium, silicon and iron. Researchers then compared these elements to how abundant oxygen was, and found that there was in fact more oxygen than expected.

White Dwarf Star
White Dwarf Star

“This oxygen excess can be carried by either water or carbon, and in this star there is virtually no carbon – indicating there must have been substantial water,” stated co-author Boris Gänsicke, from the University of Warwick.

“This also rules out comets, which are rich in both water and carbon compounds, so we knew we were looking at a rocky asteroid with substantial water content – perhaps in the form of subsurface ice – like the asteroids we know in our solar system such as Ceres.”

The measurements were obtained in ultraviolet with the Hubble Space Telescope’s cosmic origins spectrograph. What’s more, the researchers suspect there are giant exoplanets in the area because it would take a huge push to move this object from the asteroid belt — a push that most likely came from big planet.

“This supports the idea that the star originally had a full complement of terrestrial planets, and probably gas giant planets, orbiting it – a complex system similar to our own,” Farihi added.

The discovery was recently published in Science.

Source: University of Cambridge

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Astronomy Cast Episode 317: Observatories

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to visit one of the big research observatories, like Keck, Gemini, or the European Southern Observatory? What’s it like to use gear that powerful? What’s the facility like? What precautions do you need to take when observing at such a high altitude?

Visit the Astronomy Cast Page to subscribe to the audio podcast!

We record Astronomy Cast as a live Google+ Hangout on Air every Monday at 12:00 pm Pacific / 3:00 pm Eastern. You can watch here on Universe Today or from the Astronomy Cast Google+ page.

Posted on by Elizabeth Howell

Possible Huge Meteorite Fragment Recovered From Russian Fireball

Frame grab from a video of the Feb. 15, 2013 Russian fireball by Aleksandr Ivanov

A half-ton meteorite — presumably from the Russian fireball that broke up over Chelyabinsk in February — was dragged up from Lake Chebarkul in the Urals, Russian media reports said. Scientists estimate the chunk is about 1,260 pounds (570 kilograms), but couldn’t get a precise measurement in the field because the bulky bolide broke the scale, according to media reports.

“The preliminary examination… shows that this is really a fraction of the Chelyabinsk meteorite,” said Sergey Zamozdra, associate professor of Chelyabinsk State University, in reports from Interfax and RT.

A polished slice of one of Russian meteorite samples. You can see round grains called chondrules and shock veins lined with melted rock. The meteorite is probably non-uniform. The preliminary analysis showed that the meteorite belongs to chemical type L or LL, petrologic type 5.
A polished slice of one of Russian meteorite samples (different samples than what was reportedly recovered on Oct. 16). You can see round grains called chondrules and shock veins lined with melted rock. The meteorite is probably non-uniform. The preliminary analysis showed that the meteorite belongs to chemical type L or LL, petrologic type 5.

“It’s got thick burn-off, the rust is clearly seen and it’s got a big number of indents. This chunk is most probably one of the top ten biggest meteorite fragments ever found.”

The big rock was first spotted in September, but it’s taken several attempts to bring it to the surface. If scientists can confirm this came from the fireball, this would be the biggest piece recovered yet. The chunk is reportedly in a natural history museum, where a portion will be X-rayed to determine its origins.

More than 1,000 people were injured and millions of dollars in damage occurred when the meteor broke up in the atmosphere Feb. 15, shattering glass and causing booms.

Since then, there have been numerous papers concerning the meteor’s origins (from the Apollo class of asteroids — you can read this article if you’re unclear on the difference between an asteroid and a meteorite) and tracking the spread of dust through the atmosphere, among other items.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

How the Moon Would Look if it Were at the Same Distance as the Space Station

The International Space Station transiting the Moon as captured by Mike Weasner from Cassiopeia Observatory in Arizona.

This is completely impossible, but fun just the same. How would the Moon look from Earth if it orbited at just 420 km above our planet, which is the same orbital distance as the International Space Station? Here, for the sake of fun, we’re disregarding the Roche Limit and how a body as large as the Moon being that close would completely disrupt so many things on our planet. Plus, as people discussing this on Google+ said, it would be horrible for astrophotography!

Check out more videos by this same person, which include a size comparison of the planets and how the Moon would look if it were replaced with some of the planets in our Solar System.

For an interesting comparison, here’s an image of the ISS crossing in front of the Moon:

Posted on by Elizabeth Howell

Masked Starbirth Mapped In New Milky Way Survey

Artist's conception of a star being born, within a protective shroud of gas and dust. New research shows that magnetic winds aid the growth of both protostars and SMBHs. Credit: NASA

Stars are born in private. Hidden in dust and gas clouds, these bright beacons in the universe slowly coalesce. All that debris makes it hard to spot the stars, but mapping out the pockets of starbirth is a good start to understanding what is going on inside.

A new survey tracked down 6,000 of these areas in our galaxy (the Milky Way), with the aim of understanding more about what happens when stars are just starting to come together. Most surveys, the team says, focus more on the “protostar” stage, when these objects are starting to look recognizably like stars.

“Starless clumps have only been detected in small numbers to date,” stated Yancy Shirley, an astronomer with the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory who led the research. “Now, for the first time, we have seen this earliest phase of star formation, before a cluster actually forms, in large numbers in an unbiased way.”

Artist's conception of the Milky Way galaxy. Credit: Nick Risinger
Artist’s conception of the Milky Way galaxy. Credit: Nick Risinger

These areas are difficult to peer through in visible light, but radio works just fine. The astronomers used the Sub-Millimeter Telescope at the Arizona Radio Observatory to conduct the survey, which looks at “all parts of the galactic plane visible from the northern hemisphere”, the team says.

It’s the first survey to show the environments where different stages of starbirth take place. While the team did not immediately disclose their plans for a follow-up in a press release, they state that one aim of mapping these areas is to “better understand how the properties of these regions change as star formation progresses.”

Read all about the survey in The Astrophysical Journal, or the preprint version on Arxiv.

Source: University of Arizona

Posted on by Shannon Hall

Novel Strategy May Help Target Extraterrestrial Intelligent Life

Photo: Mike Agliolo/Corbis

Discovering life beyond Earth might just be the holy grail of science. And even though we have yet to find evidence for little green men or blobs of bacteria, astronomers continue to search for elusive signs of life.

A novel strategy may help astronomers better target extraterrestrial intelligent life. Dr. Michael Gillon, of the University of Liege in Belgium, proposes an approach that would monitor the regions of nearby stars to search for interstellar communication devices.

The most common method in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (abbreviated as SETI) is the use of giant radio dishes to scan the stars, listening for possible faint signals coming from distant civilizations.

While the SETI institute has been hard at work since 1959 we haven’t chanced upon a signal yet. But that doesn’t mean we’re alone or that we should stop looking.

Even without a confirmed extraterrestrial signal, most astronomers would argue that recent discoveries have strongly reinforced the hypothesis that extraterrestrial life may just be abundant in the Universe. With the help of the Kepler Space Telescope we have learned that planets are plentiful throughout the Milky Way. With most stars harboring at least one planet, it’s conceivable that a few of those planets will have the right conditions for life.

So why haven’t we detected extraterrestrial intelligent life? Why do we have this glaring Fermi Paradox — the apparent contradiction between the high probability of extraterrestrial civilizations’ existence and the lack of contact with such civilizations?

One hypotheses to explain the famous Fermi Paradox is that self-replicating probes could have explored the whole Galaxy, including our Solar System, but we just haven’t detected them yet. A self-replicating probe is one sent to a nearby planetary system where it would mine raw materials to create a replica of itself that would then head towards other nearby systems, continuing to replicate itself along the way.

While our own technological civilization is less than two hundred years old, we have already sent robotic probes to a large number of bodies in our Solar System and beyond. Our furthest-reaching probe, Voyager 1, just made it to interstellar space. But it took it over 40 years.

“We are still far from being able to build an actual self-replicating interstellar spaceship, but only because our technology is not mature enough, and not because of an obvious physical limitation,” Dr. Gillon told Universe Today.

While we cannot currently send self-replicating probes to the nearest stars in a reasonable amount of time, nothing excludes this as a reachable future project, or a project already completed by extraterrestrial intelligent life.

This study further proposes that probes from neighboring stellar systems could use the stars they orbit as gravitational lenses to communicate efficiently with each other.

The coordination of probes to explore the Galaxy would be very inefficient unless they had the ability to directly communicate with one another. The vastness and structure of the Milky Way makes this seemingly impossible. By the time a signal reached a very distant star it would be highly diluted.

However, any star is massive enough to bend and amplify light. This process, gravitational lensing, is extremely powerful. “It means that the Sun (and any other star) is an antenna much more powerful than we could ever build,” says Dr. Gillon.

Based on this method, interstellar communication devices will exist along the line that connects one star to another. We now know exactly where to look, and even where to send messages.

Could this novel idea provide a new mission for SETI?

“A negative result wouldn’t tell us very much,” explains Dr. Gillon. “But a positive result would represent one of the most important discoveries of all time.”

The paper has been accepted for publication in Acta Astronautica and is available for download here.

Posted on by Elizabeth Howell

To The Moon! Crowdfunded Solar Sail Shoots For Lunar Launch

This Lunarsail concept from the Aerospace Research and Engineering Systems Institute successfully met its crowdfunding goal and is applying to get on a NASA rocket in the next few years. Source: Kickstarter (screenshot)

It’s a tiny satellite with ambitious goals: to zip all the way from the Earth to the Moon using a solar sail. A typical “cubesat” satellite sticks around Earth’s orbit to do a science, but the team behind Lunarsail convinced dozens of crowfunding donors that their concept can go even further.

The team asked for $11,000 on Kickstarter and actually received more than $15,000. The next step is to submit a formal proposal to NASA to hitch a ride on a rocket and get into space. (An announcement of opportunity was on NASA’s website in mid-August, but the link is currently unavailable as the agency’s site is shut down amid the government furlough. The posted deadline was Nov. 26).

“Common sense seems to suggest that cubesats don’t have the power or the huge rocket they would need to reach the Moon. Common sense can be deceptive, though,” the team wrote on their crowdfunding campaign page.

NCube-2 cubesat, a typical configuration for this kind of satellite (although the outer skin is missing.) Credit: ARES Institute
NCube-2 cubesat, a typical configuration for this kind of satellite (although the outer skin is missing.) Credit: ARES Institute

“It doesn’t take a more powerful spacecraft … the satellite doesn’t care what orbit it’s in — it just does its thing. It also doesn’t require a more powerful rocket. All we need is a rocket powerful enough to put the spacecraft into an appropriate orbit around the Earth, and then we can take over and get ourselves to the Moon.”

The Aerospace Research & Engineering Systems (ARES) Institute, which is the entity behind Lunarsail, further plans to involve students in the campaign. It’s asking around to see if there are any interested parties who could “bring mission-related science activities to thousands of students, particularly those in minority and at-risk communities.” If this goes forward, students could participate through experiments, observations and also with mobile apps.

While the team acknowledges it takes time to get a concept on a rocket and into space, they have a goal of having everything “flight-ready” by December 2016. Follow updates on the project at its web page.

Posted on by Elizabeth Howell

Future Supernova Is Surrounded By Hydrogen Clouds

A "super star cluster", Westerlund 1, which is about 16,000 light-years from Earth. It can be found in the southern constellation of Ara. The picture was taken from the European Southern Observatory's VLT Survey Telescope. Credit: ESO/VPHAS+ Survey/N. Wright

The faint green glow you see in that picture is not an early harbringer of Hallowe’en spooks. It’s hydrogen gas clouds found recently nearby W26, a future supernova in the star cluster Westerlund 1.

The European Southern Observatory’s VLT Survey Telescope in Chile spotted the hydrogen in the cluster, which has hundreds of huge stars that are only believed to be a few million years old. (Our solar system, by comparison, is about 4.5 billion years old.)

“Such glowing clouds around massive stars are very rare, and are even rarer around a red supergiant— this is the first ionised nebula discovered around such a star,” the European Southern Observatory stated.

“W26 itself would be too cool to make the gas glow; the astronomers speculate that the source of the ionizing radiation may be either hot blue stars elsewhere in the cluster, or possibly a fainter, but much hotter, companion star to W26.”

Funny enough, the nebula that surrounds the red supergiant is similar to the one surrounding SN1987A, a star that exploded as a fairly bright supernova in 1987. “Studying objects like this new nebula around W26 will help astronomers to understand the mass loss processes around these massive stars, which eventually lead to their explosive demise,” ESO added.

Source: European Southern Observatory

Posted on by Carnival of Space

Carnival of Space #323

Carnival of Space. Image by Jason Major.
Carnival of Space. Image by Jason Major.

This week’s Carnival of Space is hosted by Allen Versfeld at his Urban Astronomer blog.

Click here to read Carnival of Space #323.

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.