Red sprite lightning seen over Nebraska on August 12, 2013. Credit and copyright: Jason Ahrns.
When we first checked in with graduate student and astrophotographer Jason Ahrns earlier this month, he had the chance to be part of an observing campaign to try and photograph red sprite lightning from the air. Using a special airplane from the National Center for Atmospheric Research’s Aircraft Facility in Boulder, Colorado, Jason was part of a team that used high-speed video cameras and digital still cameras to learn more about this mysterious lightning. They flew over the central part of the US, such as over Colorado, Nebraska, and Oklahoma.
Named for the mythological sprites, which were known for being elusive, this lightning flashes quickly at high altitudes of 65-75 km (40-45 miles), but often as high as 90 km (55 miles) into the atmosphere. They are difficult to see from the ground, thus this airborne observing campaign.
Here are more images and video (some at 10,000 frames per second!) taken by Jason and his team:
Red sprite lighting, taken on August 12, 2013 over Red Willow County, Nebraska, US as part of a sprite observing campaign. Credit and copyright: Jason Ahrns.
Jason said on his blog, documenting the observing campaign, that “Most of what we saw were C-sprites, short for ‘Column sprites’ or ‘Columnar sprites’ – it just refers to their shape as tall, single columns.”
Sprites appear as luminous reddish-orange flashes, and sometimes look like jellyfish with “legs” that reach down into the clouds. Besides the columnar shapes, they also can be shaped like carrots and crowns, but why they take different shapes is unknown. They are thought to be triggered by the discharges of positive lightning between an underlying thundercloud and the ground. They were discovered by accident in 1989 when a researcher studying stars was calibrating a camera pointed at the distant atmosphere where sprites occur.
Sprite lighting, taken on August 12, 2013 over Red Willow County, Nebraska in the US. Credit and copyright: Jason Ahrns.
Above is an image, and below is the video of the same sprite slowed down by about 500 times:
UV image of Titan acquired by Cassini on April 13 (NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI)
As high summer slowly but steadily approaches on Saturn, Cassini is opening a window to the seasonal changes that occur not only on the ringed planet but also its moons. Here we can see a dark band developing around Titan’s north polar latitudes, a “fancy collar” made visible in ultraviolet wavelengths.
Polar collars have previously been seen by both Hubble and Voyager 2, and in fact a southern version was observed by HST 5 years after the planet’s 1995 equinox.
This summer collar is thought to be part of a seasonal process, related to the migration of upper-level haze material within Titan’s atmosphere.
Source: CICLOPS (Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for OPerationS)
A crater on Mercury at the edge of the larger Oskison crater located in the plains north of Caloris basin. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
Permanently shadowed craters on the moon or Mercury are one of the most exciting locations to search for water. Because the walls of these craters protect certain spots inside from the rays of the sun, it’s quite possible for ice to lurk inside of there.
We’ve found ice on so-called airless worlds because of this trick of geometry. So how about exploring them? What’s the best way to do so?
The NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts office suggests using TransFormers to get inside these places. No, not the awesome robots you see in the movies, but still something that has a certain degree of complication: “multifunctional platforms that can change their shape and function”, according to the agency.
NASA’s TransFormers mission concept as it could be deployed on Mercury. Credit: NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts
Like the iconic science fiction heroes, however, the TransFormers would be able to unfold and change their shape. These machines could relay information between a rover and an orbiting satellite, or reflect solar energy on to a target (say, a solar-powered rover).
The challenge with putting a rover in a permanently shadowed crater is figuring out how to power it. Nuclear power sources have special handling considerations during preparation and launch that must be taken into account for safety reasons. Solar power, however, would not be possible in these craters given there is no sunlight.
Putting a TransFormer at the crater’s edge, however, could make the environment a friendly one for a rover powered by the sun. It could reflect light inside and provide a power source for the rover to keep moving.
Solar-panelled rovers are already used on Mars. Here, the Spirit rover’s solar panels were covered with dust until a gust of wind blew it off in 2006. Credit: NASA.
And once that rover starts running around, it would have immense scientific benefits, NASA stated.
“For example, water found in the permanently shadowed areas of craters on the Moon or Mercury can reveal clues about planetary formation and history, and could be used as a resource for astronauts,” the agency wrote.
This could even be extended to the Red Planet, which offers the enticing possibility of stumbling across life.
“Cave exploration on Mars offers the possibility of finding extraterrestrial life; furthermore, caves are time capsules preserving geochemical traces and may safely shelter future human explorers.”
Neil Armstrong in the LM after his historic moonwalk (NASA)
Apollo 11 moonwalker Neil Armstrong died on Aug. 25, 2012 at age 82, and NASA has posted a video tribute with an original song “Tranquility Base” by songwriter Eric Brace. Fittingly, the video starts with a 1960’s era television set showing the first Moon landing… were you watching on a TV like that on July 20, 1969 when Neil took those first steps on the Moon?
The song begins:
“Tell me Neil, what you were thinking
With all of us watching you on the TV
Taking small steps and giant leaps and planting the flag
In a place no one had been.”
A beautiful display of the aurora borealis on June 6 this year. The line of light is the International Space Station; an airplane is off to the left. Credit: Bob King
As an amateur astronomer, two of the most frequently questions I’m asked are “When is the best time to see the aurora borealis and where is the best place?” In terms of place, two locations comes to mind: Churchill, Manitoba and Tromso, Norway. But until such time as the transporter is invented, most of us will be staying closer to home. The simple answer is north and the farther north the better.
As for the time, in the northern border states of the US, auroras occur fairly regularly around the time of solar maximum, when the sun peaks in storm activity. The current solar cycle tops out this summer and fall, so your chances at seeing northern lights are far better now than a year and a half ago when solar activity saw a steep decline during a protracted minimum.
A double rainbow spans above Planetario Alfa observatory in Mexico on August 24, 2013. Credit and copyright: César Cantú.
Astrophotographer César Cantú was in the right place at the right time this weekend! He took this beautiful photo of a double rainbow all the way across the sky — and directly over the Planetario Alfa observatory in Mexico, part of the Alfa Planetarium Science and Technology Museum, near San Pedro Garci’a, in the northeast part of Mexico.
Of course, this is reminiscent of the most famous double rainbow…at least on You Tube:
Update: It must be double rainbow season. Astrophotographer Göran Strand from Sweden took the image below on August 19,2013:
Double rainbow over a marina in Sweden on August 19, 2013. Credit and copyright: Göran Strand
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It’s time for the Weekly Space Hangout. This is our weekly rundown on all the big space news stories of the week, explained by a dedicated team of space journalists.
Host:Fraser Cain
Panel: Alan Boyle, Brian Koberlein, Jason Major, Nicole Gugliucci
We broadcast the Weekly Space Hangout every Friday afternoon as a live Google+ Hangout. You can join us live on Google+, YouTube or right here on Universe Today every Friday at 12:00 pm Pacific / 3:00 pm Eastern.
No answers today, only a question. But it’s one of the most interesting and meaningful questions we can possibly ask.
Where does life come from?
How did we get from no life on Earth, to the rich abundance we see today?
Charles Darwin first published our modern theories of evolution – that all life on Earth is related; adapting and changing over time. Look at any two creatures on Earth and you can trace them back to a common ancestor. Humans and chimpanzees share a common ancestor from at least 7 million years ago.
Trace back far enough, and you’re related to the first mammal who lived 220 million years ago. In fact, you and bacteria can trace a family member who lived billions of years ago. Keep going back, and you reach the oldest evidence of life on Earth, about 3.9 billion years ago.
But that’s as far as evolution can take us.
The Earth has been around for 4.5 billion years, and those early years were completely hostile to life. The early atmosphere was toxic, and a constant asteroid bombardment churned the landscape into a worldwide ocean of molten rock.
As soon as the environment settled down to be relatively habitable, life appeared. Just half a billion years beyond the formation of the Earth.
So how did life make the jump from raw chemicals to the evolutionary process we see today? The term for this mystery is abiogenesis and scientists are working on several theories to explain it.
One of the first clues is amino acids, the building blocks of life. In 1953, Stanley Miller and Harold Urey demonstrated that amino acids could form naturally in the environment of the early Earth. They replicated the atmosphere and chemicals present, and then used electric sparks to simulate lightning strikes.
Amazingly, they found a variety of amino acids in the resulting primordial soup.
Other scientists replicated the experiment, even changing the atmospheric conditions to match other models of the early Earth. Instead of water, methane, ammonia and hydrogen, they wondered what would happen if the atmosphere contained hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide from volcanic eruptions. Environments around volcanic vents at the bottom of the ocean might have been the perfect places to get life started, introducing heavier metals like iron and zinc. Perhaps ultraviolet rays from the younger, more volatile Sun, or abundant radiation from natural uranium deposits played a role in pushing life forward into an evolutionary process.
Artists concept of shredded asteroid around white dwarf (NASA/JPL-Caltech)What if life didn’t start on Earth at all? What if the building blocks came from space, drifting through the cosmos for millions of years. Astronomers have discovered amino acids in comets, and even alcohol floating in distant clouds of gas and dust
Maybe it wasn’t the organic chemicals that came first, but the process of self organization. There are examples of inorganic chemicals and metals that can organize themselves under the right conditions. The process of metabolism came first, and then organic chemicals adopted this process.
Thermophilic (heat-loving) bacteria may be among the last living creatures on Earth, the study suggests. Credit: Mark Amend / NOAA Photo LibraryIt’s even possible that life formed multiple times on Earth in different eras. Although all life as we know it is related, there could be a shadow ecosystem of microbial life forms in our soil or oceans which is completely alien to us.
So how did life get here? We just don’t know.
Maybe we’ll discover life on other worlds and that will give us a clue, or maybe scientists will create an experiment that finally replicates the jump from non-life to life.
The Solar System: it’s our home in space, the neighborhood that we all grew up in and where — unless we figure out a way to get somewhere else — all of our kids and grandkids and great-great-great-great-times-infinity-great-grandkids will grow up too. That is, of course, until the Sun swells up and roasts Earth and all the other inner planets to a dry crunchy crisp before going into a multi-billion year retirement as a white dwarf.
But until then it’s a pretty nice place to call home, if I may say so myself.
Edu-film designer Philipp Dettmer and his team have put together a wonderful little animation explaining the basic structure of the Solar System using bright, colorful graphics and simple shapes to illustrate the key points of our cosmic neighborhood. It won’t teach you everything you’ll ever need to know about the planets and it’s not advisable to use it as a navigation guide, but it is fun to watch and well-constructed, with nice animation by Stephan Rether and narration by Steve Taylor.
Check out the full video below:
“Through information design, concepts can be made easy and accessible when presented in a short, understandable edu-film or perhaps an infographic. Whether explaining the vastness of the universe or the tiniest building blocks of life – all information can be presented in a way that everyone understands. Regardless of prior knowledge.”
– Philipp Dettmer
(And come on, admit it… you learned something new from this!)
Voyager 1 acquired this image of Io on March 4, 1971. An enormous volcanic explosion can be seen silhouetted against dark space over Io's bright limb. Credit: NASA/JPL.
Recent observations of Jupiter’s moon Io has revealed a massive volcanic eruption taking place 628,300,000 km (390,400,000 miles) from Earth. Io, the innermost of the four largest moons around Jupiter, is the most volcanically active object in the Solar System with about 240 active regions. But this new one definitely caught the eye of Dr. Imke de Pater, Professor of Astronomy and of Earth and Planetary Science at the University of California in Berkeley. She was using the Keck II telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii on August 15, 2013 when it immediately became apparent something big was happening at Io.
“When you are right at the telescope and see the data, this is something you can see immediately, especially with a big eruption like that,” de Pater told Universe Today via phone.
de Pater said this eruption is one of the top 10 most powerful eruptions that have been seen on this moon. “It is a very energetic eruption that covers over a 30 square kilometer area,” she said. “For Earth, that is big, and for Io it is very big too. It really is one of the biggest eruptions we have seen.”
She added the new volcano appears to have a large energy output. “We saw a big eruption in 2001, which was in the Surt region, which is well known as the biggest one anyone has ever seen,” she said. “For this one, the total energy is less but per square meter, it is bigger than the one in 2001, so it is very powerful.”
While Io’s eruptions can’t be seen directly from Earth,infrared cameras on the Keck telescope (looking between 1 and 5 microns) have been able to ascertain there are likely fountains of lava gushing from fissures in the Rarog Patera region of Io, aptly named for a Czech fire deity.
While many regions of Io are volcanically active, de Pater said she’s not been able to find any other previous activity that has been reported in the Rarog Patera area, which the team finds very interesting.
Ashley Davies of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California and a member of the observing team told Universe Today that Rarog Patera was identified as a small, relatively innocuous hot spot previously in Galileo PPR data and possibly from Earth, but at a level way, way below what was seen on August 15, and reported in New Scientist.
de Pater and other astronomers will be taking more data soon with Keck and perhaps more telescopes to try and find out more about this massive eruption.
“We never know about eruptions – they can last hours, days months or years, so we have no idea how long it will stay active,” she said, “but we are very excited about it.”
No data or imagery has been released on the new eruption yet since the team is still making their observations and will be writing a paper on this topic.
Scientists think a gravitational tug-of-war with Jupiter is one cause of Io’s intense vulcanism.
