Universe Today

June 6, 2013December 23, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Image Follow-up: Fire Up Your Spacecraft Thrusters!

An image from the ISS in 2012 showing re-boost thrusters firing. Credit: NASA.

Here’s a follow-up on an interesting image we posted last year, during Don Pettit’s stay on the International Space Station during Expedition 30/31. Pettit had posted this beautiful, sci-fi-looking image on his Google+ page, but didn’t say what it was, only describing it as “Orion in the headlights.” The constellation Orion is off in the distance, but there was some debate about what the light source was: was it light coming from a window on the ISS or a thruster burn?

It turns out this is likely one of the first ever-images of a thrust-burn taken (or released) from the ISS. An Debris Avoidance Maneuver took place at 10.12 GMT (5:12 a.m. EST) on February 29, 2012 and G+ commenter Peter Caltner pointed out, “the scenic lighting effect ends exactly in [the series of images that Pettit took] at the end of the 76 seconds of the burn duration.”

Engineers at Johnson Space Center confirmed to Universe Today this was in fact a thruster burn from the thrusters located on the aft end of the Zvezda Service Module.

The JSC team told us that during a burn, most of the windows are covered so they don’t get damaged so there’s not a lot of opportunity to take a picture like this. But the astronaut or cosmonaut that took this image was in the Pirs module looking toward the aft end of the Service Module, where the reboost engines are located. The “downward” -facing window (looks “up” in this image) is the large observation window in the Russian Zvezda Service Module.

But does this actually show a thruster plume?

Very likely, the light seen here is not actually the light from the rockets after igniting for lifting the station. Caltner, who regularly answers questions from the public on Twitter and G+ about images from space, said the light probably comes from the docking headlights, switched on deliberately for illuminating the exhaust gases of the booster rockets.

It’s an intriguing shot, and the debate on it (and finding out more about it) has been fascinating and interesting!

The NASA Crew Earth Observation site is a fun place to lose yourself looking through all the wonderful images taken from space. You can find images from the early Mercury flights to the most recent taken, and you can also find those extremely cool timelapse videos taken from the ISS. Those NEVER get old.

June 6, 2013December 30, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Welcome to the Space Station Science Garage

What do you get when you combine Mike Massimino, Don Pettit, Chris Hadfield, Tom Marshburn and some bean bag chairs? Space geek heaven, perhaps? Here’s the premier edition of a new series, and it features a great discussion about what it is like to fly in the cramped Soyuz after living in the expanse of the International Space Station for five months.

This looks like a great new series, as any day you can get Don Pettit talking science is a good day! Look for more in this series that will showcases human spaceflight and science aboard the International Space Station.

June 5, 2013December 23, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

ESA Launches ‘Albert Einstein’ Cargo Spacecraft to the Space Station

Ariane 5 VA213 carrying ATV Albert Einstein lifted off from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana at 21:52 GMT on June 5, 2013. Credit: ESA

ESA used a little E=mc^2 and launched the Automated Transfer Vehicle-4 (ATV-4) resupply ship, named “Albert Einstein” in honor of the iconic physicist, famous for his handy little equation. Liftoff of the Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana occurred at 5:52 p.m. EDT (2152 GMT) on June 5, 2013. This is second-to-last of ESA’s five planned ISS resupply spacecraft; the first one launched 2008, and all have been named after scientists.

ATV-4 will take a leisurely 10 days to reach the station, with docking scheduled for June 15.

You can watch the launch video below.

The three previous ATVs were named for Jules Verne, Johannes Kepler and Edoardo Amaldi.

The 13-ton ATV-4 will deliver more than 7 tons of supplies to the station when it docks to the aft port of the Russian Zvezda service module a week from Saturday.

The cargo includes 5,465 pounds of dry cargo, experiment hardware and supplies, 1,896 pounds of propellant for transfer to the Zvezda service module, 5,688 pounds of propellant for reboost and debris avoidance maneuver capability, 1,257 pounds of water and 220 pounds of oxygen and air.

Before the ATV-4 arrives at the station, the Russian ISS Progress 51 cargo spacecraft will undock from the Zvezda port at 13:53 UTC (9:53 a.m. EDT), Tuesday, June 11.

June 5, 2013December 23, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

SpaceX Tests Falcon 9-R Advanced Reusable Prototype Rocket

First firing of the Falcon 9-R advanced prototype rocket. Via Elon Musk on Twitter.

Over the past weekend, SpaceX fired up a new version of the Falcon 9, known as the Falcon 9-R, with “R” being for “reusable.” It was the first-ever firing their new advanced prototype rocket. SpaceX told Universe Today the hold-down firing occurred on Saturday, and it lasted for approximately 10 seconds. Elon Musk had tweeted the image above earlier this week, but the company doesn’t normally discuss testing or results, so have not said much about it.

But SpaceX’s communications director Christina Ra did tell us that the Merlin 1D engines used on the test is the same as what’s used on Grasshopper, which is the 10-story Vertical Takeoff Vertical Landing (VTVL) vehicle that SpaceX has designed to test the technologies needed to return a rocket back to Earth intact.

While the Grasshopper uses just one Merlin 1D engine, the Falcon 9-R uses nine, which Musk said via Twitter provides over 1 million pounds of thrust, “enough to lift skyscraper.”

While most rockets are designed to burn up in the atmosphere during reentry, SpaceX’s is hoping their new rocket can return to the launch pad for a vertical landing.

At the end of April Musk had shared another image of first test of the Falcon 9-R ignition system.

Word on the street is that the next test will be a full 3-minute test firing.

Here’s the Grasshopper test flight in April:

June 5, 2013December 23, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Amateur Images of the Ring Nebula Rival Views from Space Telescopes

M57 (the Ring Nebula) 'deep version' taken by by amateur astronomers Terry Hancock of Michigan and Fred Herrmann of Alabama who both used Astro-Tech 12 inch Ritchey-Chrétien astrographs. — M57 (the Ring Nebula) is accessible to amateur astronomers with good cameras. This 'deep version' taken by by amateur astronomers Terry Hancock of Michigan and Fred Herrmann of Alabama, who both used Astro-Tech 12 inch Ritchey-Chrétien astrographs.

The Ring Nebula is a planetary nebula about 2,000 light-years from Earth and measures roughly 1 light-year across. It is located in the constellation Lyra, and is a popular target for amateur astronomers.

But this new image, done as a collaboration between amateur astronomers Terry Hancock of Michigan and Fred Herrmann of Alabama, is amazing, with detail usually only seen from large ground-based observatories or space telescopes, particularly the detail of the gaseous outer shell of the nebula.

With over 25 hours of total exposure time, this is a remarkably deep exposure which explores the looping filaments of glowing gas. The collaborative effort combined data from two different telescopes, and both Hancock and Herrmann used Astro-Tech 12″ Ritchey-Chrétien astrographs.

Below is another view, a wide field version:

Image of M 57 (Ring Nebula), a collaboration by amateur astronomers Terry Hancock of Michigan and Fred Herrmann of Alabama who both used Astro-Tech 12 inch Ritchey-Chrétien astrographs.

Hancock’s data is from 2012 and 2013 using a QHY9 monochrome CCD and Herrmann’s data is from an SBIG STT-8300 monochrome CCD. Data was collected over 14 nights and six one hour narrow-band hydrogen alpha exposures were taken in order to show the dimmer outer shell.

Hancock explained on G+ that the lighter hydrogen forms the outer reddish envelope while the heavier blue-green oxygen remains about the core. “The gases in the expanding shell are illuminated by the radiation of the central white dwarf, and the glow is still 200 times brighter than our Sun,” he said.

Also visible in the images is the barred spiral galaxy IC 1296.

Recent views from the Hubble Space Telescope of the Ring Nebula showed how the ‘ring’ is really more similar to a football-shaped jelly donut, and Hancock and Herrmann’s view shows that shape as well.

Awesome work!

June 5, 2013December 23, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Watch Live Webcast: Space Warps

Hubble Space Telescope image shows Einstein ring of one of the SLACS gravitational lenses, with the lensed background galaxy enhanced in blue. A. Bolton (UH/IfA) for SLACS and NASA/ESA.

Want to join the hunt for new galaxies? During a special G+ Hangout today, June 5, a team of astronomers will share how you can help them find faint and distant galaxies by joining a search they’ve called “Space Warps.” This is a new project from the Zooniverse. The team of astronomers will discuss gravitational lensing, a strange phenomenon that actually makes it possible for us to see a galaxy far away and otherwise hidden by clusters of galaxies in front of them. They will also answer your questions about their ongoing search for distant galaxies, what this reveals about the cosmos, and how astronomers are beginning to fill out our picture of the universe.

You can watch in the window below, and the webcast starts at 21:00 UTC (2:00 p.m. PDT, 5:00 pm EDT). You can take part in thise live Google+ Hangout, and have your questions answered by submitting them before or during the webcast. Email questions to [email protected] or send a message on Twitter with the hashtag #KavliAstro.

If you miss it live, you can watch the replay below, as well.

The participants:
• ANUPREETA MORE is a co-Principal Investigator of Space Warps and a postdoctoral fellow at the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe at the University of Tokyo.
• PHILIP MARSHALL is a researcher at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology at Stanford University and SLAC.
• ARFON SMITH is Director of Citizen Science at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago and Technical Lead of Zooniverse (www.zooniverse.org).

You can also get more info at the Kavli Foundation, and visit the Space Warps website here.

June 5, 2013December 23, 2015 by Jason Major

Bottoms Up! It’s a Year of Lunar Libration From Down Under

Do you live in the southern hemisphere? Are you tired of all those views of the Moon that favor celestial north as up? Well here’s a video just for you from the good folks at the GSFC Scientific Visualization Center — it shows the full 2013 year of lunar phases and libration as seen from Earth’s southern half using data gathered by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. (Because what’s so great about north, anyway?)

Each frame represents one hour. Side graphs indicate the Moon’s orbit position, sub-Earth and subsolar points, and distance from the Earth at true scale. Awesome! Um, I mean… bonzer!

And what’s up with all that wobbling around? Find out more below:

The Moon always keeps the same face to us, but not exactly the same face. Because of the tilt and shape of its orbit, we see the Moon from slightly different angles over the course of a month. When a month is compressed into 24 seconds, as it is in this animation, our changing view of the Moon makes it look like it’s wobbling. This wobble is called libration.

The word comes from the Latin for “balance scale” and refers to the way such a scale tips up and down on alternating sides.

The Moon is subject to other motions as well. It appears to roll back and forth around the sub-Earth point (the location on the Moon’s surface where the Earth appears directly overhead, at the zenith.) The roll angle is given by the position angle of the axis, which is the angle of the Moon’s north pole relative to celestial north. The Moon also approaches and recedes from us, appearing to grow and shrink. The two extremes, called perigee (near) and apogee (far), differ by more than 10%.

Read more and see the current phase of the Moon (bottom up) on the GSFC Dial-a-Moon page here.

Source: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

June 5, 2013December 23, 2015 by Elizabeth Howell

New Hotspot Identified For Star Birth

A false-color image of NGC 6334 from multiple telescopes. The area is believed to be a hotspot of furious star birth. Credit: S. Willis (CfA+ISU); ESA/Herschel; NASA/JPL-Caltech/ Spitzer; CTIO/NOAO/AURA/NSF

A nebula named after a cat’s paw may be a stealthy spot for a lot of star birth. New observations of NGC 6334 revealed fainter stars than ever before seen, leading astronomers to believe there could be many star babies within the nebula.

You can see the results in the false-color picture above: red for new observations with the National Optical Astronomy Observatory’s Extremely Wide-Field Infrared Imager (NEWFIRM), green for the orbiting Spitzer Space Telescope and red for the Herschel Space Telescope that recently ended its mission.

“The observations acquired with NEWFIRM allowed us to identify and separate out the large number of contaminating sources, including background galaxies and cool stellar giants in the galactic plane to obtain a more complete census of the newly-formed stars,” stated Lori Allen, an NOAO team member.

Astronomers caught a glimpse of a future star just as it is being born out of the surrounding gas and dust, in a star-forming region similar to the one pictured above. (Spitzer Space Telescope image of DR21 in Infrared) Credit: A. Marston (ESTEC/ESA) et al., JPL, Caltech, NASA

A team led by Sarah Willis, a Ph.D. student at Iowa State University, recorded the stars they saw. Brightness ranged to about equivalent to our sun, to those that are a million times fainter. Then the scientists performed an extrapolation to determine how many lower-mass stars within the region.

“This is analogous to saying that if we observe the adult population in a town, we can estimate how many children live in the town, even if we can’t see them. In this way, the team can derive an estimate of the total number of stars in the region, and the efficiency with which stars are forming,” the NOAO stated.

Stars are often born in nebulas such as NGC 6334. Universe Today wrote a special feature on how stars are born a little while ago, and we also have covered starbirth regions such as this one and this one.

Source: National Optical Astronomy Observatory

June 5, 2013May 7, 2020 by Nancy Atkinson

Can You See the Great Wall of China from Space?

This picture, apparently the first verifiable photo of the Great Wall of China shot from low Earth orbit, was taken by International Space Station Commander Leroy Chiao on Nov. 24, 2004. Credit: NASA

One popular myth about space exploration is that the Great Wall of China is the only human-built structure that can be seen from space. But this is not true. The reality is that you can’t easily see the Great Wall with the unaided eye, even from low Earth orbit. And certainly, the Apollo astronauts couldn’t see it from the Moon, even though that urban legend has been widely circulated.

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, who spent five months aboard the International Space Station in 2012-2013, reiterated the facts about the Great Wall’s visibility from space.

“The Great Wall of China is not visible from orbit with the naked eye,” Hadfield said via Twitter. “It’s too narrow, and it follows the natural contours and colours [of the landscape].”

Additionally, when China’s first astronaut, Yang Liwei, went into space in 2003, he said that he couldn’t see the structure of the Great Wall from out his capsule window.

NASA has confirmed that US astronaut Leroy Chiao took what is thought to be the first verifiable image of the Great Wall of China from out his window on the International Space Station in 2004, using a zoom lens. He photographed a region of Inner Mongolia, about 200 miles north of Beijing, but said Chiao himself said he didn’t see the wall with his unaided eyes, and wasn’t sure if the picture showed it.

The image above was taken with a 180mm zoom lens. If you can’t make out the Great Wall in the image above, here’s a cropped version of the image with annotation to help make out the feature:

This photo of central Inner Mongolia, about 200 miles north of Beijing, was taken on Nov. 24, 2004, from the International Space Station. The yellow arrow points to an estimated location of 42.5N 117.4E where the wall is visible. The red arrows point to other visible sections of the wall. Credit: NASA.

What human-made structures are visible from space? Space Station astronauts have said the ancient pyramids at Giza are relatively easy to see out the window, but most visible are roads or long bridges across straits. Those features stand out as straight lines on the landscape, such as this image shared by Chris Hadfield:

'One straight human line drawn onto incredibly rough terrain,' said astronaut Chris Hadfield about this image. Credit: NASA/CSA/Chris Hadfield. — ‘One straight human line drawn onto incredibly rough terrain,’ said astronaut Chris Hadfield about this image. Credit: NASA/CSA/Chris Hadfield.

And, of course, at night cities are visible from space because the light they produce. You can see some stunning images here that NASA released in 2012 from the Suomi NPP satellite of city lights from space.

The Apollo astronauts confirmed that you can’t see the Great Wall of China from the Moon. In fact, all you can see from the Moon is the white and blue marble of our home planet.

With all of the human construction, many buildings and other structures can be seen from space. But you can’t see the Great Wall of China from space.

The Blue Marble from Apollo 17 — The Blue Marble image of Earth from Apollo 17. Credit: NASA

June 5, 2013December 23, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Swath of Destruction from Deadly Oklahoma Tornado Visible from Space

The track of the tornado that struck Moore, Oklahoma on May 20, 2013 is visible from space in this false color image taken on June 2, 2013 by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA’s Terra satellite.

The tornado that devastated the region around Moore and Newcastle, Oklahoma on May 20, 2013 has been determined to be an EF-5 tornado, the most severe on the enhanced Fujita scale, and has been called one of the most powerful and destructive tornadoes ever recorded. In this new image taken by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA’s Terra satellite, the scar of destruction on the Oklahoma landscape is clearly visible from space. In this false-color infrared image, red highlights vegetation, and the tornado track appears as a beige strip running west to east across this image; the color reveals the lack of vegetation in the wake of the storm.

According to the National Weather Service, the tornado was on the ground for 39 minutes, ripping across 17 miles (27 kilometers) from 4.4 miles west of Newcastle to 4.8 miles east of Moore. At its peak, the funnel cloud was 1.3 miles (2.1 kilometers) wide and wind speeds reached 210 miles (340 km) per hour. The storm killed at least 24 people, injured 377, and affected nearly 33,000 in some way.

In this image, infrared, red, and green wavelengths of light have been combined to better distinguish between water, vegetation, bare ground, and human developments. Water is blue. Buildings and paved surfaces are blue-gray.

You can also see an interactive satellite map from Google and Digital Globe, showing detail of every building that was damaged or destroyed. Satellite data like this are helping to assist in the recovery and rebuilding of the area. Satellite imagery can provide a systematic approach to aiding, monitoring and evaluating the process.

Source: NASA Earth Observatory