Universe Today

May 20, 2013December 23, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Astronomers Detect Dust Feature in Comet ISON’s Inner Coma

Image from May 5, 2013 of a the inner region of Comet ISON using the 2-meter Liverpool telescope at La Palma. Credit: Nick Howes and Ernesto Guido, Remanzacco Observatory; Nalin Samarasinha, Planetary Science Institute.

In April, when the Hubble Space Telescope looked out towards Jupiter’s orbit and observed what has been billed as the “Comet of the Century” – Comet C/2012 S1 ISON – the space telescope photographed a unique feature in the comet’s coma. Now, a team of ground-based astronomers have performed follow-up observations, imaging Comet ISON as it heads towards the Sun and was just outside the orbit of Mars. They, too, have seen something in the coma and suspect it’s a similar feature to what Hubble imaged. The object is thought to be a jet blasting dust particles off the sunward-facing side of the comet’s nucleus.

These very useful follow-up observations are providing more insight on this highly anticipated comet, as well as helping to predict what might happen when it makes its closest approach to the Sun in November 2013.

“The hype surrounding this comet has been extreme” said Nick Howes from the Remanzacco Observatory, “with some wildly optimistic estimates for magnitude. We’re hoping this measured scientific approach will yield results just as exciting to the science community, even if the comet doesn’t end up meeting everyone’s expectations visually, for whatever reason.”

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope provides a close-up look of Comet ISON (C/2012 S1), as photographed on April 10, when the comet was slightly closer than Jupiter’s orbit at a distance of 386 million miles from the sun. Credit:NASA, ESA, J.-Y. Li (Planetary Science Institute), and the Hubble Comet ISON Imaging Science Team.

Some have predicted ISON may briefly become brighter than the full Moon. But right now the comet is far below naked-eye visibility, and larger telescopes are needed to makes observations.

Howes and Ernesto Guido from the Remanzacco Observatory in Italy used a suite of Hubble-sized ground-based telescopes in Australia, Hawaii and the Canary Islands to make their observations. They are collaborating with with Nalin Samarasinha, a Senior Scientist at the Planetary Science Institute (PSI) in an attempt to get high spatial resolution data on Comet ISON.

Howes and Guido have been imaging Comet C/2012 S1 ISON since the day it was discovered and actually played a small role in its discovery. They work on a variety of programs with professional and amateur astronomers around the world, but for this comet, their focus is on the so-called Afrho, a measure of a comet’s dust production. (Learn more about Arfho here.)

Samarasinha, a specialist in comets at the Planetary Science Institute, has been looking at the detailed structure of the near-nucleus coma of comet C/2012 S1 ISON using data, which the Remanzacco team is delivering in to the PSI.

Recently, Samarasinha had looked at image comparisons for the Remanzacco team’s dataset from May 2, 5, and 7 taken with the F10 2-meter Liverpool telescope on La Palma, using an extremely sensitive camera, perfectly suited for detailed comet work.

Image from May 2, 2013 of a the inner region of Comet ISON, using the 2 meter Liverpool Telescope at La Palma. Credit: Nick Howes and Ernesto Guido, Remanzacco Observatory; Nalin Samarasinha, Planetary Science Institute.

The images shown here are 28×28 pixel crops of the inner region of the comet.

“This comparison shows that the sunward feature Nick’s team suspected from images taken on 02/05/2013 is originating slightly north of west and then the position angle of the feature (measured from north through east) increases as one moves away from the optocenter,” said Nalin.

Nalin’s interpretation is that the curvature of this feature (which the team suspected was not caused by image enhancing initially, but can now categorically state is real) is not due to any rotational effects but is due to radiation pressure pushing dust grains towards the tail. Ultimately, this feature merges in with the tail.

Image from May 7, 2013 of a the inner region of Comet ISON, as seen with the 2-meter Liverpool Telescope at La Palma. Credit: Nick Howes and Ernesto Guido, Remanzacco Observatory; Nalin Samarasinha, Planetary Science Institute.

The team says these observations are in close agreement with features detected by the Hubble Space Telescope in April this year. As the comet comes closer to the Earth the spatial resolution will improve, and the team should get more detailed views on the coma structure.

Estimates suggest that the nucleus of ISON is no larger than 4-6 km (3-4 miles) across while the comet’s dusty coma, or head of the comet is approximately 5,000 km (3,100 miles) across, or 1.2 times the width of Australia. A dust tail extends more than 92,000 km (57,000 miles).

Ongoing observations seem to reveal this comet is ‘shedding’ quite a bit of mass, leaving astronomers to wonder if it will have enough body left to survive its perhihelion, the closest approach to the Sun on November 28, 2013.

Excitingly, Comet ISON observations are in the works for when the comet dashes past Mars, and the Curiosity rover is on tap to try imaging it from Mars’ surface with its high resolution Mastcam 100 camera, as well as on-orbit observations with the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

As the comet performs a hairpin turn around the Sun in November, its ices will vaporize in the intense solar heat. Assuming it defies death by evaporation, some predict it could become as bright as the full Moon. If so, that would occur for a brief time around at perihelion when the comet would only be visible in the daytime sky very close to the Sun. When safely viewed, ISON might look like a brilliant, fuzzy star in a blue sky.

As C/2012 S1 ISON is now heading in to the evening twilight glare, Howes and Guido will turn from large aperture instrumentation on this comet for a while, and work on observations with a wider field CCD, more sensitive in the R’ band, and also imaging with the Polarimeter instrument which will allow them to create detailed maps of the inner coma region.

Howes said that these ongoing collaborations with scientists with the amateur community are delivering valuable scientific data on a hugely interesting object.

May 20, 2013April 26, 2016 by Jason Major

Weird Gravity Waves Pulse From a Tropical Cyclone

Nighttime image of southern India and Tropical Cyclone Mahasen (NASA/NOAA)

Last Monday, May 13, the Suomi NPP satellite captured a fascinating image of Tropical Cyclone Mahasen as it moved northeast over the Bay of Bengal. The clouds of the storm itself weren’t optically visible in the darkness of a nearly new Moon, but lightning flashes within it were… as well as the eerie ripples of atmospheric gravity waves spreading outwards from its center.

According to the Space Physics Research Group at the University of California, Berkeley:

Gravity waves are the oscillations of air parcels by the lifting force of bouyancy and the restoring force of gravity. These waves propagate vertically as well as horizontally, and actively transport energy and momentum from the troposphere to the middle and upper atmosphere. Gravity waves are caused by a variety of sources, including the passage of wind across terrestrial landforms, interaction at the velocity shear of the polar jet stream and radiation incident from space. They are found to affect atmospheric tides in the middle atmosphere and terrestrial weather in the lower atmosphere. (Source)

Atmospheric gravity waves aren’t to be confused with gravitational waves in space, which are created by very dense, massive objects (like white dwarf stars or black holes) orbiting each other closely.

When the image was captured, Tropical Cyclone Mahasen was moving north through the Indian Ocean along a track that placed landfall along the Bangladesh coast. As it moved off the coast of India Suomi’s VIIRS Day-Night Band was able to resolve lightning flashes towards the center of the storm, along with mesopheric gravity waves emanating outwards like ripples in a pond.

Such gravity waves are of particular interest to air traffic controllers so assist in identifying areas of turbulence.

Since the moon was in a new phase, the lights and other surface features of India and Sri Lanka are clearly visible although the clouds of Mahasen are not — a tradeoff that occurs as the amount of moonlight cycles throughout the month.

TS Mahasen on May 17, 2013 (Chelys/EOSnap)

Over the course of the next few days Mahasen weakened into a deep depression, making landfall as a tropical storm on Bangladesh on May 16. In preparation for the storm large-scale evacuations were recommended for parts of Myanmar; however, this resulted in the overcrowding of boats and several vessels capsized. (Source: eosnap.com)

NASA launched the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System Preparatory Project (or NPP) on October 28, 2011 from Vandenberg Air Force Base. On Jan. 24, NPP was renamed Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership, or Suomi NPP, in honor of the late Verner E. Suomi. It’s the first satellite specifically designed to collect data to improve short-term weather forecasts and increase understanding of long-term climate change.

Suomi NPP orbits Earth about 14 times a day, observing nearly the entire surface of the planet.

Main image source: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

May 20, 2013December 23, 2015 by Elizabeth Howell

‘Major Tim’ Peake to Make first British Long-duration Spaceflight

British astronaut Timothy Peake training in a Soyuz simulator. (European Space Agency)

The name is Peake. Timothy Peake. And he’s set to follow in the (fictional) footsteps of fellow British citizen James Bond with a stay on a space station.

In 2015, Peake will be the first British citizen to live for six months on the International Space Station. He’ll be a part of the Expedition 46/47 crew. NASA hasn’t publicly named all of his seatmates yet, but expect a lot of excitement across the former Empire when Peake has his turn.

“This is another important mission for Europe and in particular a wonderful opportunity for European science, industry and education to benefit from microgravity research,” Peake said in a statement.

There have been a bevy of British astronauts before Peake, both as joint nationals within NASA and even for private spaceflights (remember Mark Shuttleworth‘s and Richard Garriott’s ‘vacations’ on station?) Also, it’s quite possible that even more British citizens will get into space before Peake does in 2015.

ESA astronaut Timothy Peake trains for the NEEMO 16 underwater mission. Credit: NASA

That’s not due to lack of qualifications on Peake’s part, though. He participated in the NEEMO 16 underwater mission and took part in a periodic underground cave expedition that ESA runs to simulate spaceflight, among other duties. Peake also used to be a helicopter pilot in the British Army; the media is already calling him “Major Tim” for that reason in homage to David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” song (most recently pwned by Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield.)

But 2015 also marks when the ground is expected to shift, so to speak, in commercial spaceflight. It’s expected that Britain’s Virgin Galactic will start regular suborbital runs around that year. (XCOR’s Lynx suborbital spacecraft also may start flights around the same time, perhaps with British citizens on board.)

British songstress Sarah Brightman previously announced she will make a much shorter visit to the space station in 2015. That hasn’t been fully confirmed yet — there aren’t many seats available on Soyuz spacecraft after the end of the shuttle program — but it’s possible she could make it up there.

Getting back to Peake, some important secondary news came out for the latest corps of European astronauts: all of them are expected to fly before the end of 2017, as ESA previously promised.

The European Space Agency's astronaut class of 2009 (left to right): Andreas Mogensen, Alexander Gerst, Samantha Cristoforetti, Thomas Pesquet, Luca Parmitano, Timothy Peake. Credit: European Space Agency/S. Corvaja — The European Space Agency’s astronaut class of 2009 (left to right): Andreas Mogensen, Alexander Gerst, Samantha Cristoforetti, Thomas Pesquet, Luca Parmitano, Timothy Peake. Credit: European Space Agency/S. Corvaja

The astronauts, who call themselves ‘The Shenanigans’, are already having an exciting month as Italian Luca Parmitano is scheduled to fly to the International Space Station May 28. (In a spaceflight first, he’s doing outreach with a 15-year-old while in orbit.)

Two other Shenanigans are assigned to spaceflights: Alexander Gerst and Samantha Cristoforetti, who will make the journey around 2014.

It’ll be a little while before the last two astronauts, Andreas Mogensen and Thomas Pesquet, get confirmation of flight assignments, but it should be by announced by mid-2015, stated ESA’s director-general, Jean-Jacques Dordain.

ESA has made numerous contributions to the station, racking up credits that the federation of countries can use towards astronaut spaceflights. Among them are the Columbus laboratory, the Automated Transfer Vehicle cargo ship and the cupola (a panoramic window with a history of awesome astronaut shots.)

The cameras mounted in the ISS's cupola could serve as the platform for the first-ever quantum optics experiment in space. — A view from the cupola in the International Space Station. Credit: NASA

“The value of Europe’s astronauts and the training given at the European astronaut center is reflected in the large number of mission assignments awarded to ESA astronauts,” stated Thomas Reiter, ESA’s director of human spaceflight and operations.

You can follow Peake’s training at his Twitter account, and he has promised to keep up his social media efforts in space.

“I certainly will be tweeting from space. A large part of what I want to achieve on this mission is to try to inspire a generation and encourage them to continue to support space flight and microgravity research,” Peake said in a press conference, as reported by The Guardian.

May 20, 2013April 26, 2016 by Bob King

Put The Aurora Borealis In Your Ear

A rural location is ideal for listening to the subtle sounds of the aurora with a VLF radio. Just turn it on and hold it up to the sky.This photo was taken early Saturday morning when green auroras were still visible through breaks in the clouds. Photo: Bob King

Do the aurorae makes sounds? That’s been a subject of discussion — and contention — among people who watch the sky. While most of us will never hear the aurora borealis directly, there’s help out there in the form of a little handheld radio. It’s called a VLF receiver and guarantees you an earful the next time the aurora erupts.

High-speed electrons and protons buzzing along Earth's magnetic fields lines emit very low frequency radio waves that human ears can here with a VLF receiver. Credit: Bob King — High-speed electrons and protons buzzing along Earth’s magnetic fields lines emit very low frequency radio waves that human ears can here with a VLF receiver. Credit: Bob King

Despite seeing hundreds of northern light displays ranging from mild to wild, I’ve yet to actually hear what some describe as crackles and hissing noises. There is some evidence that electrophonic transduction can convert otherwise very low frequency (VLF) radio waves given off by the aurora into sound waves through nearby conductors. Wire-framed eyeglasses, grass and even hair can act as transducers to convert radio energy into low-frequency electric currents that can vibrate an object into producing sound. Similar ‘fizzing’ sounds have been recorded by meteor watchers that may happen the same way.

Laboratory tests reveal that a surprising variety of substances, including frizzy hair and vegetable matter, can act as radio-to-audio VLF transducers. Credit: NASA

Imagination may be another reason some folks people hear auroras. Things that move often make sounds. A spectacular display of moving lights overhead can trick your brain into serving up an appropriate soundtrack. Given that the aurora is never closer to the ground than 50 miles, the air is far too thin at this altitude to transmit any weak sound waves that might be produced down to your ears.

If you’re like me and hard of auroral hearing, a small VLF (very low frequency) radio receiver will do the job nicely. This handheld device converts very low frequency radio waves produced from the interaction of the solar electrons and protons with the Earth’s magnetic field into sounds you can listen to with a pair of headphones.

The battery-operated WR-3 VLF (Very Low Frequency) receiver with headphones for tuning in on sounds bouncing around Earth's magnetic field. Credit: Bob King — The battery-operated WR-3 VLF (Very Low Frequency) receiver with headphones for tuning into sounds “natural” radio broadcast by planet Earth. Credit: Bob King

We’re used to waves of light which are very, very short, measuring in the millionths of an inch long. The pigments in our retinas convert these waves into visible images of the world around us. Radio waves given off by auroras and other forms of natural ‘Earth energy’ like lightning range from 19 to 1,800 miles long or longer. To bring them within range of human hearing we need a radio receiver. I fire up a little unit called a WR-3 I purchased back in the mid-1990s. The components are housed in a small metal box with a whip antenna and powered by a 9-volt battery. The on-off switch also controls the volume. Plug in a set of headphones and you’re ready to listen. That’s all there is to it.

olar wind heading into space and impacting Earth's protective magnetic shield, its magnetosphere. The particles are seen heading out in all directions, but with some of them hitting our magnetosphere. Earth's magnetic field lines are shown in concentric purple ovals, pushed on by pressure from the Sun and elongated on the side facing sway from the Sun. Credit: NASA — The magnetosphere of the Earth is enormous bubble of magnetism that surrounds our planet. It’s created through the interaction of the solar wind (yellow lines) and Earth’s magnetic field. The magnetosphere acts as a shield to protect us from dangerous radiation in space. Earth’s magnetic field lines are shown in concentric purple ovals, pushed on by pressure from the Sun and elongated on the side facing sway from the Sun. Credit: NASA

The receiver picks up lots of things besides aurora including a big ‘unnatural’ hum from alternating or AC current in power lines and home appliances. Turn one on in your house and you’ll immediately hear a loud, continuous buzz in the headphones. You’ll need to be at least a quarter mile from any of those sources in order to hear the more subtle music of the planet.

Lightning produces a great variety of radio sounds - sferics, tweeks and whistlers - you can hear with the right receiver. Credit: Bob King — Lightning produces a great variety of natural radio sounds – sferics, tweeks and whistlers – you can hear with a VLF radio receiver. Credit: Bob King

I drive out to a open ‘radio quiet’ rural area, turn on the switch and raise the antenna to the sky. Don’t stand under any trees either. They’re great absorbers of the low frequency radio energy you’re trying to detect. What will you hear? Read on and click the links to hear the sound files.

* Sferics. The first thing will be the pops, crackles and sizzles of distant lightning called sferics which are similar to the crackles on an AM car radio during a thunderstorm.

* Tweeks. Lightning gives off lots of energy in the long end of the radio spectrum. When that energy gets ducted through the upper layers of Earth’s atmosphere called the ionosphere over distances of several thousand miles, it emits another type of sound called ‘tweeks‘. These remind me of Star Wars lasers or dripping water. Flurries of tweeks have an almost musical quality like someone plucking the strings of a piano.

* Whistlers and Whistler Clusters. When those same lightning radio waves enter Earth’s magnetosphere and interact with the particles there, they can cycle back and forth between the north and south geomagnetic poles traveling tens of thousands of miles to create whistlers. Talk about an eerie, futuristic sound. After their long journey, the higher frequency waves arrive before those of lower frequency causing the sound to spread out in a series of long, descending tones. The sound may also take you back to those old World War II movies when bombs whistled through the air after dropping from the hatch of a B-17. Tweeks are very brief; whistlers last anywhere from 1/2 to 4 seconds or longer.

* Dawn Chorus. Sometimes you’ll hear dozens of whistlers, one after the other. When conditions are right, a VLF receiver can pick up disturbances in Earth’s magnetic bubble spawned by auroras called ‘chorus‘ or ‘dawn chorus’. Talk about strange. Who would have guessed that solar electrons spiraling along Earth’s magnetic field lines would intone the ardor of frogs or a chorus of birds at dawn? And yet, there you have it.

* More Dawn Chorus: On a good night, and especially when the northern lights are out, it’s a magnetospheric symphony. Thunderstorms thousands of miles away provide a bounty of crackles and tweeks with occasional whistlers. Listen closely and you might even hear the froggy voice of the aurora rising and falling with a rhythm reminiscent of breathing.

The crescent moon, Jupiter and Venus accompanied a spectacular aurora over Lake Superior in Duluth, Minn. last July. Credit: Bob King — The crescent moon, Jupiter and Venus accompanied a spectacular aurora over Lake Superior in Duluth, Minn. last July. With solar activity on the upswing and solar maximum predicted for the fall, auroras are more likely than ever in 2013. Credit: Bob King

If you’re interested in listening to VLF and in particular the aurora, basic receivers are available through the two online sites below. I’ve only used the WR-3 and can’t speak for the others, but they all run between $110-135. One word of warning if you purchase – don’t use one when there’s a lightning storm nearby. Holding a metal aerial under a thundercloud is not recommended!

* WR-3 VLF receiver from Stephen McGreevy
* North Country Radio ELF Earth Receiver

More on natural radio can be found HERE. Things to keep in mind when considering a purchase are whether you have access to an open area 1/2 mile from a power line and away from homes. You’ll also need patience. Many nights you’ll only hear lightning crackles from distant storms thousands of miles away peppered by the occasional ping of a tweet. Whistlers may not appear for weeks at a time and then one night, you’ll hear them by the hundreds. But if you regularly watch the sky, it’s so easy to take the radio along and ‘give a listen’ for some of the most curious sounds you’ll ever hear. How astonishing it is to sense our planet’s magnetosphere through sound. Consider it one more way to be in touch with the home planet.

For more on natural radio including additional sound files I invite you to check out Stephen P. McGreevy’s site.

May 19, 2013December 23, 2015 by Ken Kremer

Drill, Baby, Drill! – How Does Curiosity ‘Do It’

Panoramic view of Yellowknife Bay basin back dropped by Mount Sharp shows the location of the first two drill sites - John Klein & Cumberland - targeted by NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover. Curiosity accomplished historic 1st drilling into Martian rock at John Klein outcrop on Feb 8, 2013 (Sol 182) near where the robotic arm is touching the surface. This week the rover scooted about 9 feet to the right to Cumberland (right of center) for 2nd drill campaign in late-May 2013. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo

Video Caption: This JPL video shows the complicated choreography to get drill samples to Curiosity’s instruments as she prepares for 2nd drilling at “Cumberland.” See where “Cumberland” is located in our panoramic photo mosaic below.

It’s time at last for “Drill, Baby, Drill!” – Martian Style.

Ever wonder how Curiosity “Does It”

Well, check out this enlightening and cool new NASA video for an exquisitely detailed demonstration of just how Curiosity shakes, rattles and rolls on the Red Planet and swallows that mysterious Martian powder.

“Shake, shake, shake… shake that sample. See how I move drilled rock to analytical instruments,” tweeted Curiosity to millions of fans.

Get set to witness Martian gyrations like you’ve never seen before.

After a pair of short but swift moves this past week, NASA’s Curiosity rover is finally in position to bore into the Red Planet’s alien surface for the second time – at a target called “Cumberland.”

See where “Cumberland” is located in our panoramic photo mosaic below.

“Two short drives & 3.8 meters later, I’m zeroing in on my second Mars drilling target,” tweeted Curiosity.

Panoramic view of Yellowknife Bay basin back dropped by Mount Sharp shows the location of the first two drill sites – John Klein & Cumberland – targeted by NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover. Curiosity accomplished historic 1st drilling into Martian rock at John Klein outcrop on Feb 8, 2013 (Sol 182) near where the robotic arm is touching the surface. This week the rover scooted about 9 feet to the right to Cumberland (right of center) for 2nd drill campaign in late-May 2013.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo [/caption]

These were Curiosity’s first drives since arriving at the “John Klein” outcrop in mid- January 2013 where she carried out the historic first ever interplanetary drilling by a robot on another world.

For the past few days the robot has snapped a series of close up images of “Cumberland” with the high resolution MAHLI camera on the “hand” of the dextrous robotic arm.

And now that Curiosity has switched to the B-side computer, the rover has switched over to an back up set of never before used cameras on the mast head, which appear to be functioning perfectly.

“Curiosity is now using the new pair of navigation cameras associated with the B-side computer,” said Curiosity science team member Kimberly Lichtenberg to Universe Today.

The rover also evaluated the potential drill site with the ChemCAM and APXS instruments to confirm whether ‘Cumberland’ is indeed a worthy target for the time consuming process to collect the drill tailings for delivery to the duo of miniaturized chemistry labs named SAM and Chemin inside her belly

As outlined in the video, the robot engages in an incredibly complex procedure to collect the drill bit tailings and then move and pulverize them through the chambers of the CHIMRA sample system on the tool turret for processing, filtering and delivery for in situ analysis that could take weeks to complete.

This patch of bedrock, called "Cumberland," has been selected as the second target for drilling by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity. The rover has the capability to collect powdered material from inside the target rock and analyze that powder with laboratory instruments. The favored location for drilling into Cumberland is in the lower right portion of the image. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS — This patch of bedrock, called “Cumberland,” has been selected as the second target for drilling by NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity. The rover has the capability to collect powdered material from inside the target rock and analyze that powder with laboratory instruments. The favored location for drilling into Cumberland is in the lower right portion of the image. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

The state-of-the-art SAM and Chemin chemistry labs test aspirin sized quantities of the carefully sieved powder for the presence of organic molecules – the building blocks of life – and determine the inorganic chemical composition.

The science team wants to know how ‘Cumberland’ stacks up compared to ‘John Klein’, inside the shallow depression named ‘Yellowknife Bay’ where Curiosity has been exploring since late 2012.

“We’ll drill another hole to confirm what we found in the John Klein hole,” said John Grotzinger to Universe Today. Grotzinger, of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., leads NASA’s Curiosity Mars Science Laboratory mission.

‘Cumberland’ and ‘John Klein’ are patches of flat-lying bedrock shot through with pale colored hydrated mineral veins composed of calcium sulfate hydrated and a bumpy surface texture at her current location inside the ‘Yellowknife Bay’ basin that resembles a dried out lake bed.

“The bumpiness is due to erosion-resistant nodules within the rock, which have been identified as concretions resulting from the action of mineral-laden water,” according to NASA.

At Yellowknife Bay, Curiosity found evidence for an ancient habitable environment that could possibly have supported simple Martian microbial life forms eons ago when the Red Planet was warmer and wetter.

Analysis of the gray colored rocky Martian powder at ‘John Klein’ revealed that the fine-grained, sedimentary mudstone rock possesses significant amounts of phyllosilicate clay minerals; indicating the flow of nearly neutral liquid water and a habitat friendly to the possible origin of microbes.

Curiosity is expected to drill and swallow the ‘Cumberland’ powder at any moment if all goes well, a team member told Universe Today.

High resolution close-up of Cumberland outcrop on Sol 275 (May 15, 2013). Photo mosaic of Mastcam 100 raw images. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo — High resolution close-up of Cumberland outcrop on Sol 275 (May 15, 2013) – where Curiosity will bore her 2nd drill hole. Photo mosaic of Mastcam 100 raw images. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo

Meanwhile as Curiosity was moving to Cumberland, her older sister Opportunity was blazing a trail at Endeavour Crater on the opposite side of Mars and breaking the distance driving record for an American space rover. Read all about it in my new story – here.

And don’t forget to “Send Your Name to Mars” aboard NASA’s MAVEN orbiter- details here. Deadline: July 1, 2013

Ken Kremer

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Learn more about Mars, Curiosity, Opportunity, MAVEN, LADEE and NASA missions at Ken’s upcoming lecture presentations:

June 11: “Send your Name to Mars” and “LADEE Lunar & Antares Rocket Launches from Virginia”; NJ State Museum Planetarium and Amateur Astronomers Association of Princeton (AAAP), Trenton, NJ, 8 PM.

June 12: “Send your Name to Mars” and “LADEE Lunar & Antares Rocket Launches from Virginia”; Franklin Institute and Rittenhouse Astronomical Society, Philadelphia, PA, 8 PM.

May 18, 2013December 23, 2015 by Ken Kremer

Opportunity Mars Rover Blazes Past 40 Year Old Space Driving Record

Opportunity pops a ‘wheelie’ on May 15, 2013 (Sol 3308) and then made history by driving further to the mountain ahead on the next day, May 16 (Sol 3309), to establish a new American driving record for a vehicle on another world. This navcam mosaic shows the view forward to Opportunity’s future destinations of Solander Point and Cape Tribulation along the lengthy rim of huge Endeavour crater spanning 14 miles (22 km) in diameter. Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell/Kenneth Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo.

Now more than 9 years and counting into her planned mere 90 day mission to Mars, NASA’s legendary Opportunity rover has smashed past another space milestone and established a new distance driving record for an American vehicle on another world this week.

On Thursday, May 16, the long-lived Opportunity drove another 263 feet (80 meters) on Mars – bringing her total odometry since landing on 24 January 2004 to 22.220 miles (35.760 kilometers) – and broke through the 40 year old driving record set back in December 1972 by Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt.

See below our complete map of the 9 Year Journey of Opportunity on Mars.

Cernan and Schmitt visited Earth’s moon on America’s final lunar landing mission and drove their mission’s Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV-3) 22.210 miles (35.744 kilometers) over the course of three days on the moon’s surface at Taurus-Littrow.

Apollo 17 lunar rover at final resting place. Credit: NASA — Apollo 17 lunar rover at final resting place on the Moon. Lunar module in the background. Credit: NASA

Cernan was ecstatic at the prospect of the Apollo 17 record finally being surpassed.

“The record we established with a roving vehicle was made to be broken, and I’m excited and proud to be able to pass the torch to Opportunity, ” said Cernan to team member Jim Rice of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md, in a NASA statement.

And Opportunity still has plenty of juice left!

So, although there are no guarantees, one can reasonably expect the phenomenal Opportunity robot to easily eclipse the ‘Solar System World Record’ for driving distance on another world that is currently held by the Soviet Union’s remote-controlled Lunokhod 2 rover. See detailed graphic below.

In 1973, Lunokhod 2 traveled 23 miles (37 kilometers) on the surface of Earth’s nearest neighbor.

Why could Opportunity continue farther into record setting territory ?

Because Opportunity’s handlers back on Earth have dispatched the Martian robot on an epic trek to continue blazing a path forward around the eroded rim of the huge crater named ‘Endeavour’ – where she has been conducting ground breaking science since arriving at the “Cape York” rim segment in mid 2011.

Out-of-this-World Records. This chart illustrates comparisons among the distances driven by various wheeled vehicles on the surface of Earth's moon and Mars. Of the vehicles shown, the NASA Mars rovers Opportunity and Curiosity are still active and the totals for those two are distances driven as of May 15, 2013. Opportunity set the new NASA driving record on May 15, 2013 by traveling 22.220 miles (35.760 kilometers). The international record for driving distance on another world is still held by the Soviet Union's remote-controlled Lunokhod 2 rover, which traveled 23 miles (37 kilometers) on the surface of Earth's moon in 1973. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech — Out-of-this-World Records. This chart illustrates comparisons among the distances driven by various wheeled vehicles on the surface of Earth’s moon and Mars. Of the vehicles shown, the NASA Mars rovers Opportunity and Curiosity are still active and the totals for those two are distances driven as of May 15, 2013. Opportunity set the new NASA driving record on May 15, 2013 by traveling 22.220 miles (35.760 kilometers). The international record for driving distance on another world is still held by the Soviet Union’s remote-controlled Lunokhod 2 rover, which traveled 23 miles (37 kilometers) on the surface of Earth’s moon in 1973. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Opportunity has just now set sail for her next crater rim destination named “Solander Point”, an area about 1.4 miles (2.2 kilometers) away – due south from “Cape York.”

Endeavour Crater is 14 miles (22 km) wide, featuring terrain with older rocks than previously inspected and unlike anything studied before. It’s a place no one ever dared dream of reaching prior to Opportunity’s launch in the summer of 2003 and landing on the Meridiani Planum region in 2004.

Opportunity will blast through the world record milestone held by the Lunokhod 2 rover somewhere along the path to “Solander Point.”

Thereafter Opportunity will rack up ever more miles as the rover continues driving further south to a spot called “Cape Tribulation”, that is believed to hold caches of clay minerals that formed eons ego when liquid water flowed across this region of the Red Planet.

It’s a miracle that Opportunity has lasted so far beyond her design lifetime – 37 times longer than the 3 month “warranty.”

“Regarding achieving nine years, I never thought we’d achieve nine months!” Principal Investigator Prof. Steve Squyres of Cornell University told me recently on the occasion of the rovers 9th anniversary on Mars in January 2013.

“Our next destination will be Solander Point,” said Squyres.

Opportunity was joined on Mars by her younger sister Curiosity, currently exploring the crater floor inside Gale Crater since landing on Aug. 6, 2012.

Curiosity is likewise embarked on a epic trek – towards 3 mile high (5.5 km) Mount Sharp some 6 miles away.

Both rovers Opportunity & Curiosity have discovered phyllosilicates, hydrated calcium sulfate mineral veins and vast evidence for flowing liquid water on Mars. All this data enhances the prospects that Mars could have once supported microbial life forms.

The Quest for Life beyond Earth continues ably with NASA’s Martian sister rovers.

And don’t forget to “Send Your Name to Mars” aboard NASA’s MAVEN orbiter- details here. Deadline: July 1, 2013

Ken Kremer

…………….

Learn more about NASA missions, Opportunity, Curiosity and more at Ken’s upcoming lecture presentation:

June 12: “Send your Name to Mars” and “Antares Rocket Launch from Virginia”; Franklin Institute and Rittenhouse Astronomical Society, Philadelphia, PA, 8 PM.

Traverse Map for NASA’s Opportunity rover from 2004 to 2013 to Record Setting Drive on May 15. This map shows the entire path the rover has driven during more than 9 years and over 3309 Sols, or Martian days, since landing inside Eagle Crater on Jan 24, 2004 to current location heading south from Cape York ridge at the western rim of Endeavour Crater. On May 15, 2013 Opportunity drove 263 feet (80 meters) southward - achieving a total traverse distance on Mars of 22.22 miles (35.76 kilometers) - and broke the driving record by any NASA vehicle that was previously held by the astronaut-driven Apollo 17 Lunar Rover in 1972. Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell/ASU/Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer — Traverse Map for NASA’s Opportunity rover from 2004 to 2013 to Record Setting Drive on May 15. This map shows the entire path the rover has driven during more than 9 years and over 3309 Sols, or Martian days, since landing inside Eagle Crater on Jan 24, 2004 to current location heading south from Cape York ridge at the western rim of Endeavour Crater. On May 15, 2013 Opportunity drove 263 feet (80 meters) southward – achieving a total traverse distance on Mars of 22.22 miles (35.76 kilometers) – and broke the driving record by any NASA vehicle that was previously held by the astronaut-driven Apollo 17 Lunar Rover in 1972.
Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell/ASU/Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer

View Back at Record-Setting Drive by Opportunity. On the 3,309th Martian day, or sol, of its mission on Mars (May 15, 2013) NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity drove 263 feet (80 meters) southward along the western rim of Endeavour Crater. That drive put the total distance driven by Opportunity since the rover's January 2004 landing on Mars at 22.220 miles (35.760 kilometers. This exceeded the distance record by any NASA vehicle, previously held by the astronaut-driven Apollo 17 Lunar Rover in 1972. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech — View Back at Record-Setting Drive by Opportunity. On the 3,309th Martian day, or sol, of its mission on Mars (May 15, 2013) NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity drove 263 feet (80 meters) southward along the western rim of Endeavour Crater. That drive put the total distance driven by Opportunity since the rover’s January 2004 landing on Mars at 22.220 miles (35.760 kilometers. This exceeded the distance record by any NASA vehicle, previously held by the astronaut-driven Apollo 17 Lunar Rover in 1972. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Soviet Lunokhod-2 lunar rover. Credit: Ria Novosti

May 17, 2013December 23, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Comets PANSTARRS and Lemmon Still Linger for Early Morning Views

Comet PANSTARRS as seen in the early morning Arizona skies on May 17, 2013. Credit and copyright: Chris Schur.

The comet show is still not over! Early on May 16, 2013, astrophotographer Chris Schur from central Arizona was able to see two comets at once, Comet PANSTARRS AND Comet Lemmon. “We set up on our 14 foot tall balcony observing pad and was able to get the very low Comet Lemmon as it rose in the eastern sky,” Chris told Universe Today via email. “While PANSTARRS was up high by 2:30am, we had to wait until 3:30 before we could try Lemmon.”

While neither comet was visible to the naked eye, Chris reported that both were seen quite clearly in the 11×80 binoculars. “It was fun to go back and forth rapidly between the two objects to compare,” he said. “While PANSTARRS is now a very low surface brightness wedge shaped object, Lemmon was just a huge ball of light, about two magnitudes brighter.”

Comet Lemmon as seen over central Arizona on May 16, 2013. Credit and copyright: Chris Schur.

If you look carefully you can see the comets are stationary, and the stars are slightly trailed from the motion against the starry background.

“One point Id like to make is that PANSTARRS is currently exhibiting one of the most spectacular anti tails I have ever seen,” Chris said. “I have imaged hundreds of comets but never one with such a long sunward spike. This comet is VERY special.”

When viewed edge on from Earth, the anti tail appears as a spike projecting from the comet’s coma towards the Sun It is geometrically opposite to the other tails: the ion tail and the dust tail.

Thanks to Chris for sharing his great images of these comets!

Want to get your astrophoto featured on Universe Today? Join our Flickr group or send us your images by email (this means you’re giving us permission to post them). Please explain what’s in the picture, when you took it, the equipment you used, etc.

May 17, 2013December 30, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

This is the new ‘We Are the Explorers’ Video You’ll See at ‘Star Trek: Into Darkness”

Have you seen Star Trek: Into Darkness yet? If so, did you see the NASA-themed trailer, too? A crowd-funded 30-second video called “We Are the Explorers” is debuting at theaters this week, shown before the new Trek film begins. It highlights America’s future in space and is narrated by actor Peter Cullen, the voice of head Transformer Optimus Prime.
Continue reading “This is the new ‘We Are the Explorers’ Video You’ll See at ‘Star Trek: Into Darkness””

May 17, 2013December 23, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

Super-Bright Explosion Seen on the Moon

A bright flash on the Moon on March 17, 2013 when a boulder-sized asteroid hit the lunar surface.

If you were looking up at the Moon on March 17, 2013 at 03:50:55 UTC, you might have seen one of the brightest “lunar flashes” ever witnessed. And it would have been visible with just the naked eye.

“On March 17, 2013, an object about the size of a small boulder hit the lunar surface in Mare Imbrium,” says Bill Cooke of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office. “It exploded in a flash nearly 10 times as bright as anything we’ve ever seen before.”

The scientists estimate that the flash came from a 40 kg meteoroid measuring 0.3 to 0.4 meters wide hitting the Moon, likely traveling about 90,000 km/hr (56,000 mph.) The resulting explosion packed as much punch as 5 tons of TNT.

(FYI, lunar meteors hit the ground with so much kinetic energy that they don’t require an oxygen atmosphere to create a visible explosion. The flash of light comes not from combustion but rather from the thermal glow of molten rock and hot vapors at the impact site.)

The crater could be as wide as 20 meters. The scientists for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter are hoping to image the impact site the next time the spacecraft passes over the area. It should be relatively easy to spot, and lunar scientists are always on the lookout for recent impacts. Additionally, comparing the size of the crater to the brightness of the flash would give researchers a valuable “ground truth” measurement to validate lunar impact models.

Were you observing the Moon that night? Universe Today’s David Dickinson pointed out to me that it is quite possible an amateur could have caught it; however no amateur images have surfaced yet. The Moon would’ve been a waxing crescent and visible to the Pacific region and US West Coast at the time. If you have archived images or video, it might be worth a look. And we’d love to hear from you if you happened to catch anything! NASA said the impact site would have glowed like a 4th magnitude star for about one second.

These false-color frames extracted from the original black and white video show the explosion in progress. At its peak, the flash was as bright as a 4th magnitude star. Credit: NASA

During the past 8 years, Cooke and a team of NASA astronomers have been monitoring the Moon for signs of explosions caused by meteoroids hitting the lunar surface.

Ron Suggs, an analyst at the Marshall Space Flight Center, was the first to notice the March 17th impact in a digital video recorded by one of the monitoring program’s 14-inch telescopes. “It jumped right out at me, it was so bright,” he said.

During the 8 years of observations, the team has found that the flashes on the Moon are more common than anyone expected, with hundreds of detectable impacts occurring every year.

Since the monitoring program began in 2005, NASA’s lunar impact team has detected more than 300 strikes, most orders of magnitude fainter than the March 17th event. Statistically speaking, more than half of all lunar meteors come from known meteoroid streams such as the Perseids and Leonids. The rest are sporadic meteors–random bits of comet and asteroid debris of unknown parentage.
Cooke believes the lunar impact might have been part of a much larger event.

NASA's lunar monitoring program has detected hundreds of meteoroid impacts. The brightest, detected on March 17, 2013, in Mare Imbrium, is marked by the red square. Credit: NASA — NASA’s lunar monitoring program has detected hundreds of meteoroid impacts. The brightest, detected on March 17, 2013, in Mare Imbrium, is marked by the red square. Credit: NASA

“On the night of March 17, NASA and University of Western Ontario all-sky cameras picked up an unusual number of deep-penetrating meteors right here on Earth,” he said. “These fireballs were traveling along nearly identical orbits between Earth and the asteroid belt.”

This means Earth and the Moon were pelted by meteoroids at about the same time.

“My working hypothesis is that the two events are related, and that this constitutes a short duration cluster of material encountered by the Earth-Moon system,” said Cooke.

One of the goals of the lunar monitoring program is to identify new streams of space debris that pose a potential threat to the Earth-Moon system. The March 17th event seems to be a good candidate.

Source: Science@NASA

May 17, 2013December 23, 2015 by David Dickinson

Seeing the Red of ‘La Superba,’ a Magnificent Springtime Carbon Star

Finder chart for La Superba. (Photo by Author).

The Universe can be a very gray place. But this week, we’ll look at a fine example of a class of objects that defies this trend.

Many first time stargazers are surprised when the Trifid or the Orion Nebula fails to exhibit the bright splashy colors seen in Hubble photos. The fault lies not with the Universe, but in our very own eyes.

This is because the light sensitive fovea of our eye has two different types of photoreceptor cells; rods and cones. These act like slow and fast speed film (for those of us old enough to remember actual film!) Under low light conditions, objects have a very black-and-white appearance. It’s only with an increase in brightness that the color receptors in the cone cells of our eye begin to kick in.

One class of stars can induce this effect. They’re known as carbon stars.

A fine example of just such an object rides high in the late spring sky for northern hemisphere observers. This is the variable star Y Canum Venaticorum, also abbreviated as Y CVn or “La Superba” (The magnificent). This name was given to the star by Father Angelo Secchi in the mid-19^th century. It is one of the reddest stars in the sky.

Astronomers gauge the “redness” of a star by measuring its magnitude contrast through a blue and visible (green peaking) filters. This is what is known as its B-V index, and the higher the value, the redder the star.

La Superba has a B-V value of +2.5. For contrast, the familiar orange-red stars Antares and Betelgeuse have a B-V value of +1.83 & +1.85, respectively.

Some other classic carbon stars and their B-V values are;

TX Piscium: +2.5

Herschel’s Garnet Star: +2.35

V Hydrae: +4.5

R Leporis (Hind’s Crimson Star): +2.7

Many of these are also variable stars, and they can appear redder visually near their minimum brightness. In the case of La Superba, it ranges from magnitude +4.8 to +6.3 over a span of 160 days, with a longer super-imposed cycle of about 6 years. We’re just coming off of a peak cycle in late May 2013, and La Superba is easy to spot with binoculars about a third of the way between the brilliant double star Cor Caroli (visited by the Enterprise in the Star Trek: The Next Generation Episode “Allegiance”) and Delta Ursa Majoris.

I’ve shown off carbon stars such as La Superba and Hind’s Crimson Star at public star parties to great effect. They can be an excellent star party “secret weapon” when every other ‘scope down the line is aimed at the Orion nebula.

For a faint constellation, Canes Venatici has lots to offer. One of the best globular clusters in the sky M3 can be found within its borders, as can a handful of decent galaxies. La Superba lies in a rather empty region of the constellation high above the galactic plane. In fact, an area about 15° degrees north of location in the adjoining constellation Ursa Major was picked for the famous Hubble Deep Field image for this very reason.

Burnham’s Celestial Handbook describes La Superba as “one of the reddest of all the naked eye stars, (with) a truly odd and vivid tint in large telescopes.” Astronomer Agnes Clerke described its appearance in 1905 as an “extraordinary vivacity of prismatic rays, separated into dazzling zones of red, yellow, and green by broad spaces of profound obscurity.” (Note: the “spaces” referred to gaps in its spectra).

Through the telescope at low power, we see La Superba as an orange-red ember with shades of white. It’s an easy catch with binoculars, and one of the very few carbon stars that is visible to the naked eye under dark skies. We’d judge that only TX Piscium rivals it in brightness, and only V Hydrae and Hinds appear ruddier. I always like to ask first time observers of colored stars what they see… human eye-brain perception can vary greatly!

The coordinates of La Superba are:

Right Ascension: 12 Hours 45’ 08”

Declination: +45 26’ 25”

La Superba is about 600-800 light years distant. Physically, it is a massive star at three times the mass of our Sun. It’s also a monster in terms of diameter, at four astronomical units in size. If you placed it within our solar system, it would swallow up the orbits of the interior planets out to Mars!

La Superba is thus much less dense than our own Sun, and at a surface temperature of about 2,800K, relatively cool. It is also the brightest “J-type” carbon star in the sky, a rare sub-type characterized by the presence of the isotope carbon-13 in its atmosphere. A carbon star is a sun near the end of its life, accumulating carbon compounds in its outer atmosphere as it fuses heavier elements in one last “hurrah” before shedding its outer layers and forming a white dwarf embedded inside a planetary nebula. Carbon stars are much brighter in the infrared, and we see the very tail end of this absorption in the visible red end of the spectrum. In fact, La Superba is a full 9 magnitudes (nearly 4,000 times) brighter in the near-infrared than in the ultraviolet!

All amazing facts to ponder as we view a star near the end of its career, seeding the cosmos with the very element that makes life possible. Next time you’re out observing, be sure to go “into the red” and check out the fine carbon star!