Universe Today

September 18, 2013December 23, 2015 by Ken Kremer

Proof! – Frogs Jump at Chance to Board Rockets to Space from NASA Wallops during Antares booster Rollout

NASA Photographer discovers living proof that Frogs are leaping towards the on ramp for rocket ships bound for Earth orbit and beyond at NASA’s Wallops Island, VA, launch pads during rollout of the Antares rocket on Sept 13, 2013. Credit: Ken Kremer (kenkremer.com)

WALLOPS ISLAND, VA – Have you seen the NASA frog? The one that became famous worldwide last week following the historic Moon Shot of the LADEE mission from NASA Wallops Island in Virginia?

The one that the inexplicably appeared in a single photograph from a NASA Wallops remote camera when the pressure wave from the Minotaur rockets exhaust sent it hurtling skywards?

Perhaps you are an unbeliever? And think the frog photo was photoshopped?

Well after a thorough investigation, Universe Today has uncovered undeniable proof that NASA’s resident frogs are indeed jumping at the chance to make history again and leap aboard the next rocket headed to space from NASA Wallops on Sept 18.

How do I know this?

Well on Friday the 13th of September, I was on site at NASA Wallops for a photo shoot of the lengthy rollout of the Orbital Sciences Antares rocket to Launch Pad 0A – and the famous frog was a topic of endless conversation in between our gorgeous views of Antares moving along the road to the launch pad atop the Transporter Erector vehicle.

See my frog and rollout photo gallery herein.

Antares rocket arrives at on ramp to launch pad with cool new signs directing traffic to launch pads for trips to the Moon and the International Space Station. Credit: Ken Kremer (kenkremer.com)

Nary a frog was to be found anywhere all day and night along the 1 mile rollout route.

Finally, after much delay the Antares rocket was raised and erected firmly atop the launch mount.

And then at last the great frog discovery was made.

Close up of frog hiding near the Antares launch pad and apparently eager to jump aboard. Credit: Ken Kremer (kenkremer.com)

And of course it took a woman, a NASA photographer named Jamie, to do a man’s job – finding and corralling that frog and fearlessly holding the critter in front of all the guys, including me.

Antares rocket begins rollout atop transporter erector to Launch Pad 0A at NASA Wallops Island Facility, VA., on Sept. 13, 2013. Credit: Ken Kremer (kenkremer.com)

My photos are the proof that the mysterious origin of NASA’s apparently space loving resident frogs has been solved.

Jamie discovered the frog lurking inside a telescope dome used to protect NASA’s launch pad cameras during liftoff.

She found the frog hiding inside the dome to evade the ever present security patrols on the lookout for intruders. Where is the NSA when you need them?

And quite clearly these are intelligent frogs – eager to blast off to the High Frontier in pursuit of science.

Why?

Because for the past few weeks these space loving frogs have been reading the new pair of signs installed by the launch pad gates right in front of the on ramps directing traffic to the Minotaur and Antares rockets headed to the Moon and the International Space Station.

They were just waiting for the right moment to hop aboard.

Antares rocket rolls up on on ramp at NASA Wallops launch pad 0A bound for the ISS on Sept 18, 2013. Credit: Ken Kremer (kenkremer.com)

Everything remains on target for the Sept. 18 blastoff of Orbital Sciences Antares commercial rocket carrying the first fully functional Cygnus commercial resupply vehicle to orbit from NASA’s Wallops Island Facility on a demonstration mission bound for the International Space Station (ISS).

“The weather forecast remains at 75% chance of “GO” with favorable conditions,” said NASA Wallops test director Sarah Daugherty at a news media briefing at Wallops today.

“The launch could be widely visible along the East Coast from New York City to South Carolina.” – Weather permitting

Antares rocket raised at NASA Wallops launch pad 0A bound for the ISS on Sept 18, 2013. Credit: Ken Kremer (kenkremer.com)

Learn how and where to view the Antares launch by reading my “How to see the Antares Launch” story.

NASA Television coverage of the Antares launch will begin at 10:15 a.m. on Sept 18 – (www.nasa.gov/ntv).

Stay tuned to Universe Today for complete coverage of the Antares/Cygnus Orb-D1 mission to the ISS and my continuing Antares and LADEE mission reports from on site at NASA’s Wallops Launch Pads in sunny Virginia – reporting for Universe Today.

Ken Kremer

Antares rocket and Cygnus spacecraft after rollout to Launch Pad 0A at NASA Wallops Flight Facility Facility, VA.,on Sept. 13, 2013. Blastoff is slated for Sept. 18, 2013 at 10:50 a.m. EDT. LADEE launch pad 0B stands adjacent to right of Antares. Credit: Ken Kremer (kenkremer.com)

…………….

Learn more about Cygnus, Antares, LADEE, Curiosity, Mars rovers, MAVEN, Orion and more at Ken’s upcoming presentations

Sep 17/18: LADEE Lunar & Antares/Cygnus ISS Rocket Launches from Virginia”; Rodeway Inn, Chincoteague, VA

Oct 3: “Curiosity, MAVEN and the Search for Life on Mars – (3-D)”, STAR Astronomy Club, Brookdale Community College & Monmouth Museum, Lincroft, NJ, 8 PM

Oct 8: LADEE Lunar & Antares/Cygnus ISS Rocket Launches from Virginia”; Princeton University, Amateur Astronomers Assoc of Princeton (AAAP), Princeton, NJ, 8 PM

Seaside panoramic view of Antares rocket and Cygnus spacecraft after rollout to Launch Pad 0A at NASA Wallops at the Virginia Eastern Shore on Sept. 13, 2013. Blastoff for the ISS is slated for Sept. 18, 2013 at 10:50 a.m. EDT Credit: Ken Kremer (kenkremer.com)

September 17, 2013December 23, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Win a Copy of Homer Hickam’s “Crescent”

Homer Hickam’s latest series of books depicts life on the Moon in the next century. But it’s not a utopia. “Crescent,” the second book in the trilogy, includes battles against bioengineered beings and the hard life of mining helium-3. This series is written for young adults, but adults will enjoy the engaging characters, too.

You can read our full review and interview with Homer Hickam here.

Universe Today has four copies of “Crescent” to give away.

In order to be entered into the giveaway drawing, just put your email address into the box at the bottom of this post (where it says “Enter the Giveaway”) before Friday, September 20, 2013. We’ll send you a confirmation email, so you’ll need to click that to be entered into the drawing.

September 17, 2013December 23, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Book Review: ‘Crescent’ By Homer Hickam

You probably know Homer Hickam from his book “Rocket Boys” and the movie, “October Sky.” But Hickam’s repertoire of 15-plus books range from fiction to nonfiction, covering multiple topics beyond space flight and building rockets.

His most recent series – the Helium-3 trilogy of life on the Moon set 120 years into the future — is science fiction written for young adults. But adults with a penchant for science fiction seem just as taken with these books and their engaging characters.

Find out how to win a copy of “Crescent”

“I like to say I’m like Robert Heinlein, in that I write all my books for everybody!” Hickam told Universe Today by phone in a recent interview.

The idea of writing for a younger audience, he admits, wasn’t his own.

“I was asked to write a series for young adults,” he said, “and I had never had really written for that age group before. I figured it would be a challenge to write something that would be of interest to them, but I kind of took the easy way out by projecting the story 120 years into the future where I could make young adults think, feel and do pretty much what I wanted them to do! Hopefully I created characters that young adults will enjoy.”

Hickam has succeeded. The first book in the Helium-3 trilogy, “Crater” was published in 2012, and the newest, called “Crescent” was published this summer. Both books have been well received by young adult readers, and as mentioned, by adults, too.

The protagonists in the series are young adults themselves, which means there’s a lot of room for growth, discovery and coming of age.

Crater Trueblood is a 19-year-old miner of helium-3 on the Moon who has been forced to become a soldier in the ongoing war against the Crowhoppers. Crowhoppers are bio-engineered humans that are trained for battle and trained to kill. During a battle, Crater captures one of the Crowhoppers, a female named Crescent. Instead of killing her, as she expects and wants, Crater brings her to Moontown and finds he enjoys being with her.

Bring in Maria Medaris, the granddaughter of the richest man on the Moon, Colonel Medaris (a descendant of the character Jack Medaris from Hickam’s 1999 book, “Back to the Moon.” Maria and Crater have a history together, with a complicated relationship. But they end up defending Crescent when she’s falsely accused of murder; then Crater and Crescent escape into the lunar wilderness to avoid Crescent’s imprisonment and to survive must defend themselves from both the Moontowners and a band of Crowhoppers sent to capture or kill them. They must make hard decisions of what is worth fighting for.

Hickam says all his fiction books are character-driven, but he takes every chance he can to include scientifically accurate information.

“It’s very important to me to have scientifically accurate details,” Hickam said. “But where I put in technical details, it is primarily to advance the plot or for the character to grow – in other words, I’m not writing a textbook.”

But of course, there’s also speculation within the story, such as the gillie, a computer that is a synthetic, semi-sentient life-form.

“Nobody has created that yet,” Hickam said, “but it’s nothing I’ve invented out of whole cloth, as some scientists are looking to create a bio-computer.”

But that leads to contemplation of what do you do with a lifeform that is a computer.

Additionally, Hickam’s depiction of life on the Moon in the next century certainly isn’t of a utopia.

“I think that 100 years in the future we’ll probably be surprised about what is life is going to be like then,” Hickam said. “What I’ve done is take technology of today and imagine what it is going to be like 120 years in the future, with some bumps in the road. I don’t see any kind of nirvana or utopia coming –and we’d probably be all pretty bored if that happened! I think advances will come in biology and technology fields, and that is going to raise a host of moral questions for all of us.”

For example, Crescent is a genetically engineered human that is made to look ugly and fearsome as well as being a trained killer.

“So what do we do with humans that look scary, or that act even scarier?” Hickam pondered. “For those who haven’t read the book, think about what if you had someone who loved nothing more to help you, take care of you, cook for you, do everything for you. Everyone says, oh yes, that’s great. But you do know you are talking about wanting a slave. We are going to be able to create helpers, and when we do that, the moral questions for the human race is going to be huge.”

Of all the characters in this series, Hickam says he’s most intrigued by Maria.

“To me Maria is a fascinating character, and we’re still not sure about her and how she’s going to end up,” he said.

And how is the series going to play out? Hickam turned in his transcript for the third book in the trilogy in early September, but gave us no hints of what’s to come.

“The third one is supposed to wrap it all up,” he said with a laugh, “but really, there’s no way to wrap it all up!”

Tomorrow, we’ll talk more with Hickam about his journey from rocket scientist to writer and his views of the current state of space exploration.

September 17, 2013December 23, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Sleek GOCE Spacecraft Will Have Uncontrolled Re-entry into Earth’s Atmosphere

The sleek and sexy-looking GOCE spacecraft has been mapping Earth’s gravity for over four years, but soon its xenon fuel will run out and the satellite will end up re-entering our atmosphere. But no one can say for sure when or where the 1-ton satellite will fall.

The Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer has been orbiting Earth at super-low orbits, mapping out variations in Earth’s gravity with extreme detail. Launched in March 2009, the GOCE spacecraft was designed to fly low and has spent most of its mission roughly 500 km below most other Earth-observing missions, at an altitude of 255 km (158 miles), but has recently been at the lowest altitude of any research satellite at 224 km (139 miles).

With its sleek, aerodynamic design, some have called it the ‘Ferrari of space,’ but we’ve just called it sexy, like a satellite straight out of a James Bond movie.

And the satellite has delivered with unique results of Earth’s ‘geoid’ — precise measurements of ocean circulation, sea-level change and ice dynamics, greatly improving our knowledge and understanding of the Earth’s internal structure. The mission has also been studying air density and wind in space. Its data also produced the first global high-resolution map of the boundary between Earth’s crust and mantle, called the Mohorovicic, or “Moho” discontinuity.

Mission managers predict that in mid-October 2013 the spacecraft will run out of fuel and the satellite will begin its descent towards Earth. There will be no remaining fuel to guide its re-entry, and while most of GOCE is predicted to disintegrate in the atmosphere, several parts might reach Earth’s surface. Experts predict as much as 25% of the spacecraft will survive reentry, as many parts are made of advanced materials, such as carbon-carbon composites.

But when and where these parts might land cannot yet be predicted, ESA says.

As the re-entry time nears, better predictions will be made. Re-entry is expected to happen about three weeks after the fuel is depleted.

ESA says that taking into account that two thirds of Earth are covered by oceans and vast areas are thinly populated, the danger to life or property is very low.

Recently, other larger satellites have made uncontrolled re-entries, such as NASA’s 6-ton UARS spacecraft and Germany’s 2.4-ton ROSAT in 2011 and the 13-ton failed Russian Mars probe, Phobos-Grunt in 2012.

About 40 tons of human-made space debris reach the ground per year, but the spread and size mean the risk of an individual being struck is lower than being hit by a meteorite.

An international campaign will be monitoring the descent, involving the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee. The situation is being continuously watched by ESA’s Space Debris Office, which will issue re-entry predictions and risk assessments.

ESA says they will keep the relevant safety authorities permanently updated.

Additional info: ESA, BBC

September 17, 2013March 16, 2017 by Fraser Cain

Is There Really a Planet X?

Have you heard there’s a giant planet in the Solar System headed straight towards Earth?

At some point in the next few months or years, this thing is going to crash into Earth or flip our poles, or push us out of our orbit, or some other horrible civilization destroying disaster.

Are these rumours true?

Is there a Planet X on a collision course with Earth?

Unlike some of the answers science gives us, where we need to give a vague and nuanced answers, like yes AND no, or Maybe, well, it depends…

I’m glad to give a straight answer: No.

Any large object moving towards the inner Solar System would be one of the brightest objects in the night sky. It would mess up the orbits of the other planets and asteroids that astronomers carefully observe every night.

There are millions of amateur astronomers taking high quality images of the night sky. If something was out there, they’d see it.

These rumours have been popping up on the internet for more than a decade now, and I’m sure we’ll still be debunking them decades from now.

What people are calling Planet X, or Nibiru, or Wormwood, or whatever doesn’t exist. But is it possible that there are large, undiscovered objects out in the furthest reaches of Solar System?

Sure.

Astronomers have been searching for Planet X for more than a hundred years. In the 1840s, the French mathematician Urbain Le Verrier calculated that another large planet must be perturbing the orbit of Uranus. He predicted the location where this planet would be, and then German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle used those coordinates to discover Neptune right where Le Verrier predicted.

The famed astronomer Percival Lowell died searching for the next planet in the Solar System, but he made a few calculations about where it might be found.

A young Clyde Tombaugh with one of his famous homemade telescopes. (Credit : NASA/GSFC).

And in 1930, Clyde William Tombaugh successfully discovered Pluto in one of the locations predicted by Lowell.

Astronomers continued searching for additional large objects, but it wasn’t until 2005 that another object the size of Pluto was finally discovered by Mike Brown and his team from Caltech: Eris. Brown and his team also turned up several other large icy objects in the Kuiper Belt; many of which have been designated dwarf planets.

We haven’t discovered any other large objects yet, but there might be clues that they’re out there.

In 2012, the Brazilian astronomer Rodney Gomes calculated the orbits of objects in the Kuiper Belt and found irregularities in the orbits of 6 objects. This suggests that a larger object is further out, tugging at their orbits. It could be a Mars-sized object 8.5 billion km away, or a Neptune-sized object 225 billion km away.

A false-color, visible-light image of Comet ISON taken with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3. Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) — A false-color, visible-light image of Comet ISON taken with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3. Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

There’s another region at the edge of the Solar System called the Oort Cloud. This is the source of the long-period comets that occasionally visit the inner Solar System. It’s possible that large planets are perturbing the orbits of comets with their gravity, nudging these comets in our direction.

So, feel free to ignore every single scary video and website that says an encounter with Planet X is coming.

And use that time you saved from worrying, and use it to appreciate the amazing discoveries being made in space and astronomy every day.

September 17, 2013December 29, 2015 by Carnival of Space

Carnival of Space #319

Carnival of Space. Image by Jason Major.

Another week, another Carnival of Space! This week’s CoS is hosted by our pay Ray Sanders at his “Dear Astronomer” blog.

Click here to read Carnival of Space #319.

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.

September 17, 2013December 23, 2015 by Elizabeth Howell

Cometary Collisions Could Have Created Life On Earth

Water, ammonia, methanol and carbon dioxide could have come to Earth from cometary sources, according to a new study. Source: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

The energy of comets smashing into Earth billions of years ago could have generated life out of the building blocks of life that those extraterrestrial objects brought, according to new experiments published in a peer-reviewed study.

The finding comes after a team “shock compressed” an icy slush similar in composition to that found on comets, which are sometimes called “dirty snowballs” because they are a mixture of ice and rock. The compression, which researchers say is similar in intensity to comets hitting the Earth, generated amino acids – considered the basic bits of life.

“Our work shows that the basic building blocks of life can be assembled anywhere in the Solar System and perhaps beyond,” stated Zita Martins, a co-author of the paper who is with Imperial College London’s department of Earth science and engineering.

“However, the catch is that these building blocks need the right conditions in order for life to flourish. Excitingly, our study widens the scope for where these important ingredients may be formed in the Solar System and adds another piece to the puzzle of how life on our planet took root.”

An object entering a planet's atmosphere. Credit: Imperial College London — An object entering a planet’s atmosphere. Credit: Imperial College London

Whether life arose on Earth, or was imported from other locations in the Solar System or universe, has been a hot-button topic for decades. Learning the answer not only has implications for our own planet, but also for understanding how likely it is that life exists in other Solar System planets and moons — not to mention moons or planets in other star systems.

The new experiment — which the researchers say uncovers evidence of a “cosmic factory” process for starting life — saw the team at the University of Kent and the Imperial College using a gas gun to send a projectile into an ice combination similar to what one would find a comet. After the impact, the researchers saw amino acids forming.

The work builds on research initially done by Nir Goldman, a scientist with the Lawrence Liverpool National Laboratory, who predicted the results based on simulations in the laboratory’s supercomputer. Goldman found that comets could have imported life’s building blocks (ammonia, methanol, carbon dioxide and water). Then, as they smashed into Earth, the energy produced could be enough to jump-start life.

The building blocks of proteins are molecules called amino acids. Most types of amino acids can exist in two different forms, one that is 'left-handed' and the other as 'right-handed.' Credit: NASA — The building blocks of proteins are molecules called amino acids. Most types of amino acids can exist in two different forms, one that is ‘left-handed’ and the other as ‘right-handed.’ Credit: NASA

“This process demonstrates a very simple mechanism whereby we can go from a mix of simple molecules, such as water and carbon-dioxide ice, to a more complicated molecule, such as an amino acid,” stated Mark Price, a co-author and physicist from the University of Kent.

“This is the first step towards life. The next step is to work out how to go from an amino acid to even more complex molecules such as proteins.”

You can read the research paper, which was published Sept. 15, on Nature Geoscience.

Sources: Imperial College London and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

September 17, 2013December 23, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

A Capella String Theory: Bohemian Gravity (Video)

Image of 10 dimensional super strings. Credit: PBS.

There’s not much to say except you MUST watch this. Incredible.

Here is Tim Blais’ master’s thesis: A New Quantization Condition for Parity-Violating Three-Dimensional Gravity.

Words to the song below:

A Capella Science – Bohemian Gravity!

Is string theory right?
Is it just fantasy?
Caught in the landscape,
Out of touch with reality
Compactified
On S5 or T*S3

Space is a pure void
Why should it be stringy?
Because it’s quantum not classical
Nonrenormalizable
Any way you quantize
You’ll encounter infinity
You see

Quanta
Must interact
Via paths we understand
Using Feynman diagrams
Often, they will just rebound
But now and then they go another way
A quantum
Loooooop
Infinities will make you cry
Unless you can renormalize your model
Of baryons, fermions
And all other states of matter

Curved space:
The graviton
Can be thought of as a field
But these infinities are real
In a many-body
Loop diagram
Our results diverge no matter what we do…
A Quantum Soup (any way you quantize)
Kiss your fields goodbye
Guess Einstein’s theory wasn’t complete at all!

I see extended 1-D objects with no mass
What’s their use? What’s their use? Can they give us quark plasma?
What to minimize?
What functional describes this
String?
Nambu-Goto! (Nambu-Goto)
Nambu-Goto! (Nambu-Goto)
How to quantize I don’t know
Polyakov!
I’m just a worldsheet, please minimize me
He’s just a worldsheet from a string theory
Reperametrized by a Weyl symmetry!

Fermi, Bose, open, closed, orientable?
Vibrations
Modes! They become particles (particles!)
Vibrations
They become particles (particles!)
Vibrations
They become particles (particles!)
Become particles (particles!)
Become particles (many many many many particle…)
Modes modes modes modes modes modes modes!
Oh mamma mia mamma mia,
Such a sea of particles!
A tachyon, with a dilaton and gravity-vity-VITY

(rock out!)

Now we need ten dimensions and I’ll tell you why
(anomaly cancellation!)
So to get down to 4D we compactify!
Oh, Kahler!
(Kahler manifold)
Manifolds must be Kahler!
(Complex Reimannian symplectic form)
If we wanna preserve
Any of our super-symmetry

(Superstrings of type I, IIa and IIb)
(Heterotic O and Heterotic E)
(All are one through S and T duality)
(Thank you Ed Witten for that superstring revolution and your new M-theory!)

(Maldecena!)
(Super-Yang-Mills!)
(Type IIB String!)
Dual! Dual!
(In the AdS/CFT)
(Holography!)

Molecules and atoms
Light and energy
Time and space and matter
All from one united
Theory

Any way you quantize…

Lyrics and arrangement by Tim Blais and A Capella Science
Original music by Queen

September 17, 2013December 23, 2015 by Shannon Hall

Planet Evaporates Due to Stellar Flare

An artist's conception of a disintegrating planet - creating a trail of dust - around its rocky star.

Solar flares – huge eruptions of charged particles from the Sun – present little threat to Earth. On a few rare occasions these particles may disrupt our communications systems and cause radio blackouts. But they tend to be more aesthetically pleasing than harmful. It’s certainly a sight to be seen as these energetic particles collide with our atmosphere, resulting in a cascade of colorful lights – the aurora borealis.

Fortunately our planet provides the protection necessary from such harmful space radiation. But not all planets are quite so lucky. Take for instance Kepler’s latest object of interest: KIC 12557548b, a super Mercury-size planet candidate. Astronomers have recently found that due to this star’s activity – producing massive stellar flares – the planet itself is evaporating.

Only last year, four different sources published evidence that this rocky planet was disintegrating. Thanks to Kepler, it quickly became clear that the total amount of light from KIC 12557548 as a function of time – the light curve of the system – dropped every 15.7 hours as a planet orbited it. But the amount of light blocked due to the transiting planet varied from 0.2% to more than 1.2%.

The amount of light blocked is dependent on the size of the planet. A Jupiter-size planet will block more light than a Mercury-size planet. The variations here suggest a range for the size of the planet: from a super Mercury-sized planet to a Jupiter-sized planet.

But this wasn’t the planet’s only enigma. It also has an asymmetric light curve. The total light from the star drops steadily as the planet begins its transit, plateaus as the planet fully covers the disk of the star, and then increases as the planet ends its transit. But the rate at which the light drops is much faster than the rate at which it increases. It takes longer for the light curve to return to its original brightness, hinting at a tail of debris that trails the planet, continuing to block light.

Blah — The light curves of KIC 12557548b. The left-hand plot represents deep transits, whereas the right-hand plot represents more shallow transits. Both plots show a clear asymmetry. Source: Brogi et al. 2012

It appears that the planet is evaporating – emitting small particles of dust into orbit, which then trails behind it. The varying transit depth reflects the amount of dust currently evaporating.

Recently a team from the University of Tokyo analyzed the system in more detail, attempting to explain why this tiny planet is evaporating. “We found that the transit depth negatively correlates with the modulation of the stellar flux,” Dr. Kawahara, lead author on the study, told Universe Today. “The dust amount increases when the planet is located in front of the star spots.”

The transit depth does not vary randomly, but every 22.83 days. This coincides with the modulation of the stellar flux, or simply the stellar rotation period. Star spots may be indirectly detected by a star’s noticeable decrease in stellar flux. Because these star spots are large (much larger than sunspots) they last for long periods of time, and may be used to deduce the star’s rotation period.

Kawahara et al. found that the transit depth periodically varies with the stellar rotation rate – finding a correlation between stellar activity and the rate at which the planet is evaporating.

“Energy from the star spots increases the amount of dust and atmosphere from the planet,” explains Dr. Kawahara. The extreme heat and wind is enough to speed up the motions of the dust molecules; making them fast enough to escape the planet’s gravitational pull.

Future spectroscopic studies may search for molecules in the evaporating atmosphere of KIC 12557548b. But Dr. Kawahara remarks that due to the planet’s faintness it is unlikely. His best hope is that future studies may instead find a similar object closer to us, that may be more easy to study.

The finding is published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters and is available for download here.

September 17, 2013December 23, 2015 by Jason Major

A “Mini Jet” Juts from Saturn’s F Ring

A bright "mini-jet" spotted in Saturn's F ring

We all know that Saturn’s moon Enceladus has a whole arsenal of geysers jetting a constant spray of ice out into orbit (and if you didn’t know, learn about it here) but Enceladus isn’t the only place in the Saturnian system where jets can be found — there are some miniature versions hiding out in the thin F ring as well!

Watch the 50-mile-wide Prometheus dip into the F ring (CLICK TO PLAY) NASA/JPL/SSI. Animation by J. Major.

The image above, captured by the Cassini spacecraft on June 20, 2013, shows a segment of the thin, ropy F ring that encircles Saturn just beyond the A ring (visible at upper right). The bright barb near the center is what scientists call a mini jet, thought to be caused by small objects getting dragged through the ring material as a result of repeated passings by the shepherd moon Prometheus.

Coincidentally, it’s gravitational perturbations by Prometheus that help form the objects — half-mile-wide snowball-like clusters of icy ring particles — in the first place.

Unlike the dramatic jets on Enceladus, which are powered by tidal stresses that flex the moon’s crust, these mini jets are much more subtle and occur at the casual rate of 4 mph (2 meters/second)… about the speed of a brisk walk.

The reflective jets themselves can be anywhere from 25 to 112 miles (40 to 180 kilometers) long.

See more images of mini jets — also called “classic trails” — below:

Various images of mini jets captured by Cassini from 2005 to 2008.

Over 500 of these features have been imaged by Cassini since 2005. Read more about mini jets here.

(And don’t worry, Enceladus… these little jets are interesting but they have nothing on you!)

Source: Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for OPerationS (CICLOPS)

Image credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/QMUL.