The Danish 1.54-metre telescope located at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile has captured a striking image of NGC 6559, an object that showcases the anarchy that reigns when stars form inside an interstellar cloud. Credit: ESO
If you think that breaking all the rules is cool, then you’ll appreciate one of the latest observations submitted by the Danish 1.54 meter telescope housed at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. In this thought-provoking image, you’ll see what kind of mayhem occurs when stars are forged within an interstellar nebula.
Towards the center of the Milky Way in the direction of the constellation of Sagittarius, and approximately 5000 light-years from our solar system, an expansive cloud of gas and dust await. By comparison with other nebulae in the region, this small patch of cosmic fog known as NGC 6559 isn’t as splashy as its nearby companion nebula – the Lagoon (Messier 8). Maybe you’ve seen it with your own eyes and maybe you haven’t. Either way, it is now coming to light for all of us in this incredible image.
Comprised of mainly hydrogen, this ethereal mist is the perfect breeding ground for stellar creation. As areas contained within the cloud gather enough matter, they collapse upon themselves to form new stars. These neophyte stellar objects then energize the surrounding hydrogen gas which remains around them, releasing huge amounts of high energy ultraviolet light. However, it doesn’t stop there. The hydrogen atoms then merge into the mix, creating helium atoms whose energy causes the stars to shine. Brilliant? You bet. The gas then re-emits the energy and something amazing happens… an emission nebula is created.
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This zoom starts with a broad view of the Milky Way. We head in towards the centre, where stars and the pink regions marking star formation nurseries are concentrated. We see the huge gas cloud of the Lagoon Nebula (Messier 8) but finally settle on the smaller nebula NGC 6559. The colourful closing image comes from the Danish 1.54-metre telescope located at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. Credit: ESO/Nick Risinger (skysurvey.org)/S. Guisard. Music: movetwo
In the center of the image, you can see the vibrant red ribbon of the emission nebula, but that’s not the only thing contained within NGC 6559. Here swarms of solid dust particles also exist. Consisting of tiny bits of heavier elements, such as carbon, iron and silicon, these minute “mirrors” scatter the light in multiple directions. This action causes NGC 6559 to be something more than it first appears to be… now it is also a reflection nebula. It appears to be blue thanks to the magic of a principle known as Rayleigh scattering – where the light is projected more efficiently in shorter wavelengths.
Don’t stop there. NGC 6559 has a dark side, too. Contained within the cloud are sectors where dust totally obscures the light being projected behind them. In the image, these appear as bruises and dark veins seen to the bottom left-hand side and right-hand side. In order to observe what they cloak, astronomers require the use of longer wavelengths of light – ones which wouldn’t be absorbed. If you look closely, you’ll also see a myriad of saffron stars, their coloration and magnitude also effected by the maelstrom of dust.
It’s an incredible portrait of the bedlam which exists inside this very unusual interstellar cloud…
Curiosity accomplished historic 1st drilling into Martian rock at John Klein outcrop on Feb 8, 2013 (Sol 182), shown in this context mosaic view of the Yellowknife Bay basin taken on Jan. 26 (Sol 169) - back dropped with Mount Sharp - where the robot is currently working. Curiosity will bore a 2nd drill hole soon following the resumption of contact with the end of the solar conjunction period. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo
Curiosity accomplished historic 1st drilling into Martian rock at John Klein outcrop on Feb 8, 2013 (Sol 182), shown in this context mosaic view of the Yellowknife Bay basin taken on Jan. 26 (Sol 169) – back dropped with Mount Sharp – where the robot is currently working. Curiosity will bore a 2nd drill hole soon following the resumption of contact with the end of the solar conjunction period. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo
See drill hole and conjunction videos below[/caption]
After taking a well deserved and unavoidable break during April’s solar conjunction with Mars that blocked two way communication with Earth, NASA’s powerful Martian fleet of orbiters and rovers have reestablished contact and are alive and well and ready to Rock ‘n Roll ‘n Drill.
“Both orbiters and both rovers are in good health after conjunction,” said NASA JPL spokesman Guy Webster exclusively to Universe Today.
Curiosity’s Chief Scientist John Grotzinger confirmed to me today (May 1) that further drilling around the site of the initial John Klein outcrop bore hole is a top near term priority.
The goal is to search for the chemical ingredients of life.
“We’ll drill a second sample,” Grotzinger told Universe Today exclusively. Grotzinger, of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., leads NASA’s Curiosity Mars Science Laboratory mission.
“We’ll move a small bit, either with the arm or the wheels, and then drill another hole to confirm what we found in the John Klein hole.”
Earth, Mars and the Sun have been lined up in nearly a straight line for the past several weeks, which effectively blocked virtually all contact with NASA’s four pronged investigative Armada at the Red Planet.
NASA’s Red Planet fleet consists of the Curiosity (MSL) and Opportunity (MER) surface rovers as well as the long lived Mars Odyssey (MO) and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) robotic orbiters circling overhead. ESA’s Mars Express orbiter is also exploring the Red Planet.
“All have been in communications,” Webster told me today, May 1.
The NASA spacecraft are functioning normally and beginning to transmit the science data collected and stored in on board memory during the conjunction period when a commanding moratorium was in effect.
“Lots of data that had been stored on MRO during conjunction has been downlinked,” Webster confirmed to Universe Today.
Curiosity and Mount Sharp: Curiosity’s elevated robotic arm and drill stare back at you at the John Klein drill site – back dropped by mysterious Mount Sharp. The rover has resumed contact with NASA following the end of solar conjunction. This panoramic vista was snapped on March 23, 2013, Sol 223. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Marco Di Lorenzo/KenKremer (kenkremer.com)
And NASA is already transmitting and issuing new marching orders to the Martian Armada to resume their investigations into unveiling the mysteries of the Red Planet and determine whether life ever existed eons ago or today.
“New commanding, post-conjunction has been sent to both orbiters and Opportunity.”
“And the sequence is being developed today for sending to Curiosity tonight (May 1), as scheduled more than a month ago,” Webster explained.
“We’ll spend the next few sols transitioning over to new flight software that gives the rover additional capabilities,” said Grotzinger.
“After that we’ll spend some time testing out the science instruments on the B-side rover compute element – that we booted to before conjunction.”
Curiosity is at work inside the Yellowknife Bay basin just south of the Martian equator. Opportunity is exploring the rim of Endeavour crater at the Cape York rim segment.
Opportunity Celebrates 9 Years and 3200 Sols on Mars snapping this panoramic view from her current location on ‘Matijevic Hill’ at Endeavour Crater. The rover discovered phyllosilicate clay minerals and calcium sulfate veins at the bright outcrops of ‘Whitewater Lake’, at right, imaged by the Navcam camera on Sol 3197 (Jan. 20, 2013). “Copper Cliff” is the dark outcrop, at top center. Darker “Kirkwood” outcrop, at left, is site of mysterious “newberries” concretions. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer
Mars Solar Conjunction is a normal celestial event that occurs naturally about every 26 months. The science and engineering teams take painstaking preparatory efforts to insure no harm comes to the spacecraft during the conjunction period when they have no chance to assess or intervene in case problems arise.
So it’s great news and a huge relief to the large science and operations teams handling NASA’s Martian assets to learn that all is well.
Since the sun can disrupt and garble communications, mission controllers suspended transmissions and commands so as not to inadvertently create serious problems that could damage the fleet in a worst case scenario.
So what’s on tap for Curiosity and Opportunity in the near term ?
“For the first few days for Curiosity we will be installing a software upgrade.”
“For both rovers, the science teams will be making decisions about how much more to do at current locations before moving on,” Webster told me.
The Opportunity science team has said that the long lived robot has pretty much finished investigating the Cape York area at Endeavour crater where she made the fantastic discovery of phyllosilicates clay minerals that form in neutral water.
Signals from Opportunity received a few days ago on April 27 indicated that the robot had briefly entered a standby auto mode while collecting imagery of the sun.
NASA reported today that all operations with Opportunity was “back under ground control, executing a sequence of commands sent by the rover team”, had returned to normal and the robot exited the precautionary status.
Opportunity Celebrates 9 Years on Mars snapping this panoramic view of the vast expanse of 14 mile (22 km) wide Endeavour Crater from atop ‘Matijevic Hill’ on Sol 3182 (Jan. 5, 2013). The rover then drove 43 feet to arrive at ‘Whitewater Lake’ and investigate clay minerals. Photo mosaic was stitched from Navcam images and colorized. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo
“The Curiosity team has said they want to do at least one more drilling in Yellowknife Bay area,” according to Webster.
Curiosity has already accomplished her primary task and discovered a habitable zone that possesses the key ingredients needed for potential alien microbes to once have thrived in the distant past on the Red Planet when it was warmer and wetter.
The robot found widespread evidence for repeated episodes of flowing liquid water, hydrated mineral veins and phyllosilicates clay minerals on the floor of her Gale Crater landing site after analyzing the first powder ever drilled from a Martian rock.
Video Caption: Historic 1st bore hole drilled by NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover on Sol 182 of the mission (8 Feb 2013). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer (http://www.kenkremer.com/)
During conjunction Curiosity collected weather, radiation and water measurements but no imagery.
Curiosity Rover snapped this self portrait mosaic with the MAHLI camera while sitting on flat sedimentary rocks at the “John Klein” outcrop where the robot conducted historic first sample drilling inside the Yellowknife Bay basin, on Feb. 8 (Sol 182) at lower left in front of rover. The photo mosaic was stitched from raw images snapped on Sol 177, or Feb 3, 2013, by the robotic arm camera – accounting for foreground camera distortion. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Marco Di Lorenzo/KenKremer (kenkremer.com).
Watch this brief NASA JPL video for an explanation of Mars Solar Conjunction.
The Moon ushering in the dawn over the Southeastern United States. Credit: NASA/CSA via Chris Hadfield.
During his evening ritual of sharing images taken from the International Space Station, Commander Chris Hadfield posted this gem: a gorgeous night-time view of the southeastern United States, with the Moon hovering over Earth’s limb and the terminator separating night from day. Dawn is just beginning to break to the east, as the ISS flies overhead.
This image reflects the ‘wistful’ feelings Hadfield is having as his time in space in coming to a close. He and his two crewmates Tom Marshburn and Roman Romanenko will head back to Earth on May 13.
During a recent linkup with students, Hadfield said he is becoming “wistful” as he does tasks aboard the ISS, realizing he is doing some for the last time. He is trying to spending as much of his free time gazing out the window at Earth “because of the magnificent rarity of it and my desire to absorb as much of it as I possibly can.”
Hadfield said his emotions go between feelings of great responsibility and great honor to have been asked to command the space station, and he wants to “do it right,” making the most of his experience and communicating to as many people as possible on Earth.
“You do feel the responsibility of it to try and do it right, to try and have one perfect day on the station where I don’t make even one little mistake in any of the procedures, and I haven’t done it yet,” Hadfield admitted. “I’ve been here 130 days and I have yet to have day where I haven’t made at least one little small mistake.”
Some aspects of returning home are enticing: seeing family and friends, and eating things that aren’t dehydrated and come in a vacuum packed bag.
“I’m looking forward to fresh food and the crunch and the snap of food of all different varieties and the smell of rich coffee and the smell of fresh bread baking — that type of thing, a more full assault of the senses when I get home,” Hadfield said.
Here’s the latest update on what’s up in the night sky from Jane Houston Jones at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The Moon will be your guide on how to spot the spring constellations and other popular astronomical sights this month including nebulae, a galaxy trio and the site of a recent planetary discovery.
Artist's rendition of TESS in space. (Credit: MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics Research).
Last month, NASA announced plans to launch the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) in 2017. This is a satellite that will perform an all-sky survey to discover transiting exoplanets in orbit around the brightest stars in the Sun’s neighborhood. “TESS will carry out the first space-borne all-sky transit survey, covering 400 times as much sky as any previous mission,” said George Ricker, the mission’s principal investigator. “It will identify thousands of new planets in the solar neighborhood, with a special focus on planets comparable in size to the Earth.”
Today, Wednesday May 1, at 19:00 UTC (12:00 p.m. PDT, 3:00 pm EDT) you can take part in a live Google+ Hangout, and have your questions answered about TESS and the search for exoplanets with three leading members of NASA’s TESS mission:
George Ricker is principal investigator of the TESS mission and a senior research scientist at the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research (MKI) in Cambridge, Mass.
Sara Seager is a professor of planetary science and physics at MKI and a member of the TESS team. Seager’s research focuses on computer models of exoplanet atmospheres, interiors and biosignatures.
Joshua Winn is an associate professor of physics at MKI and deputy science director for the TESS mission. Winn is interested in the properties of planets around other stars, how planets form and evolve, and whether there are habitable planets beyond Earth.
What matter and antimatter might look like annihilating one another. Credit: NASA/CXC/M. Weiss
What goes up must always come down, right? Well, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) wants to test if that principle applies to antimatter.
Antimatter, most simply speaking, is a mirror image of matter. The concept behind it is that the particles that make up matter have an opposite counterpart, antiparticles. For example, if you consider that electrons are negatively charged, an antielectron would be positively charged.
This sounds like science fiction, but as NASA says, it is “real stuff.” In past experiments, CERN’s particle accelerator has created antiprotons, positrons and even antihydrogen. Properly harnessed, antimatter could be used for applications ranging from rocketry to medicine, NASA added. But we’ll need to figure out its nature first.
The Very Large Array, one of the world's premier astronomical radio observatories, consists of 27 radio antennas in a Y-shaped configuration 50 miles west of Socorro, New Mexico. Each antenna is 82 feet (25 m) in diameter. The data from the antennas is combined electronically to give the resolution of an antenna 22 miles (36 km) across. Image courtesy of NRAO/AUI and NRAO
Thanks to Channel 37, radio astronomers keep tabs on everything from the Sun to pulsars to the lonely spaces between the stars. This particular frequency, squarely in the middle of the UHF TVbroadcast band, has been reserved for radio astronomy since 1963, when astronomers successfully lobbied the FCC to keep it TV-free.
Back then UHF TV stations were few and far between. Now there are hundreds, and I’m sure a few would love to soak up that last sliver of spectrum. Sorry Charley, the moratorium is still in effect to this day. Not only that, but it’s observed in most countries across the world.
Channel 37, a slice of the radio spectrum from 608 and 614 Megahertz (MHz) reserved for radio astronomy, sits in the middle of the UHF TV band. Click to see the full spectrum. Credit: US Dept. of Commerce
So what’s so important about Channel 37? Well, it’s smack in the middle of two other important bands already allocated to radio astronomy – 410 Megahertz (MHz) and 1.4 Gigahertz (Gz). Without it, radio astronomers would lose a key window in an otherwise continuous radio view of the sky. Imagine a 3-panel bay window with the middle pane painted black. Who wants THAT?
The visible colors, infrared, radio, X-rays and gamma rays are all forms of light and comprise the electromagnetic spectrum. Here you can compare their wavelengths with familiar objects and see how their frequencies (bottom numbers) increase with decreasing wavelength. Credit: ESA
Channel 37 occupies a band spanning from 608-614 MHz. A word about Hertz. Radio waves are a form of light just like the colors we see in the rainbow or the X-rays doctors use to probe our bones. Only difference is, our eyes aren’t sensitive to them. But we can build instruments like X-ray machines and radio telescopes to “see” them for us.
Diagram showing what how Earth’s atmosphere allows visible light, a portion of infrared and radio light to reach the ground from outer space but filters shorter-wavelength, more dangerous forms of light like X-rays and gamma rays. To study the cosmos in these varieties of light, orbiting telescopes are required.
Every color of light has a characteristic wavelength and frequency. Wavelength is the distance between successive crests in a light wave which you can visualize as a wave moving across a pond. Waves of visible light range from one-millionth to one-billionth of a meter, comparable to the size of a virus or DNA molecule.
X-rays crests are jammed together even more tightly – one X-ray is only as big as an small atom. Radio waves fill out the opposite end of the spectrum with wavelengths ranging from baseball-sized to more than 600 miles (1000 km) long.
The frequency of a light wave is measured by how many crests pass a given point over a given time. If only one crest passes that point every second, the light beam has a frequency of 1 cycle per second or 1Hertz. Blue light has a wavelength of 462 billionths of a meter and frequency of 645 trillion Hertz (645 Terahertz).
If our eyes could see radio light, this is what the sky would look like. What appear to be stars are actually distant galaxies glowing brightly with energy radiated as matter gets sucked down black holes in the cores. The wispy arcs and shells are the remnants of exploding supernovae. Since air molecules don’t scatter radio waves like they do visible light to create a blue sky, the sky would be dark even on a sunny day. Credit: National Science Foundation
The higher the frequency, the greater the energy the light carries. X-rays have frequencies starting around 30 quadrillion Hertz (30 petahertz or 30 PHz), enough juice to damage body cells if you get too much exposure. Even ultraviolet light has power to burn skin as many of us who’ve spent time outdoors in summer without sunscreen are aware.
Radio waves are the gentle giants of the electromagnetic spectrum. Their enormous wavelengths mean low frequencies. Channel 37 radio waves have more modest frequencies of around 600 million Hertz (MHz), while the longest radio waves deliver crests almost twice the width of Lake Superior at a rate of 3 to 300 Hertz.
The sun as it would look in the radio portion of the spectrum at a frequency of 1.4 gigahertz (GHz). Image courtesy of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO/AUI)
If Channel 37 were ever lost to TV, the gap would mean a loss of information about the distribution of cosmic rays in the Milky Way galaxy and rapidly rotating stars called pulsars created in the wake of supernovae. Closer to home, observations in the 608-614 MHz band allow astronomers track bursts of radio energy produced by particles blasted out by solar flares traveling through the sun’s outer atmosphere. Some of these can have powerful effects on Earth. No wonder astronomers want to keep this slice of the electromagnetic spectrum quiet. For more details on how useful this sliver is to radio astronomy, click HERE.
Just as optical astronomers seek the darkest sites for their telescopes to probe the most remote corners of the universe, so too does radio astronomy need slices of silence to listen to the faintest whispers of the cosmos.
Imagery from SDO, SOHO and LASCO of the May 1, 2013 coronal mass ejection. Credit: NASA/ESA.
Just in time for May Day, the Sun blasted out a coronal mass ejection (CME) from just around the limb earlier today, May 1, 2013. In a gigantic rolling wave, this CME shot out about a billion tons of particles into space, traveling at over a million miles per hour. This CME is not headed toward Earth. The video, taken in extreme ultraviolet light by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), covers about two and a half hours of elapsed time.
Camilla, the rubber chicken mascot for the SDO, said via YouTube that getting this side view shows the power and force behind these solar flares and coronal mass ejections.
This image shows three views of the CME from three different instruments. Left is the SDO image, taken at 02:40 UT. Center is from the SOHO spacecraft, looking through their coronograph instrument. The “mushroom” cloud of plasma leaving the Sun is visible. On the right is the LASCO C2 (red) and C3 (blue) instruments on SOHO, which use a disk to block out the Sun. Visible are the solid occulter disk, used to create a false eclipse; the “pylon”, which is an arm that holds the occulter disk in place; a representation of the Sun in the form of a white disk drawn on the occulter during our image processing and then you can see background stars and the cloud of plasma leaving the Sun.
A coronal mass ejection from the Sun on May 1, 2013. Credit: NASA/SDO
Artist concept of the Fermi Space Telescope. Credit: NASA.
As a space telescope scientist or satellite operator, the last thing you want to hear is that your expensive and possibly one-of-a kind — maybe irreplaceable — spacecraft is in danger of colliding with a piece of space junk. On March 29, 2012, scientists from the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope were notified that their spacecraft was at risk from a collision. And the object heading towards the Fermi spacecraft at a relative speed of 44,000 km/h (27,000 mph) wasn’t just a fleck of paint or tiny bolt.
Fermi was facing a possible direct hit by a 1,400 kg (3,100-pound) defunct Russian spy satellite dating back to the Cold War, named Cosmos 1805. If the two satellites met in orbit, the collision would release as much energy as two and a half tons of high explosives, destroying both spacecraft and creating more pieces of space junk in the process.
But this story has a happy ending, with the Fermi telescope still operating and continuing its mission to map the highest-energy light in the universe, all thanks to a little orbital traffic control.
You can watch the video here for the complete story, or read more at the Fermi website about how the Fermi Space Telescope dodged a speeding bullet.
Credit: X-ray (NASA/CXC/SAO/E.Nardini et al); Optical (NASA/STScI)
Looking almost like a cosmic hyacinth, this image is anything but a cool, Spring flower… it’s a portrait of an enormous gas cloud radiating at more than seven million degrees Kelvin and enveloping two merging spiral galaxies. This combined image glows in purple from the Chandra X-ray information and is embellished with optical sets from the Hubble Space Telescope. It flows across 300,000 light years of space and contains the mass of ten billion Suns. Where did it come from? Researchers theorize it was caused by a rush of star formation which may have lasted as long as 200 million years.
What we’re looking at is known in astronomical terms as a “halo” – a glorious crown which is located in a galactic system cataloged as NGC 6240. This is the site of an interacting set of of spiral galaxies which have a close resemblance to our own Milky Way – each with a supermassive black hole for a heart. It is surmised the black holes are headed towards each other and may one day combine to create an even more incredible black hole.
However, that’s not all this image reveals. Not only is this pair of galaxies combining, but the very act of their mating has caused the collective gases to be “violently stirred up”. The action has caused an eruption of starbirth which may have stretched across a period of at least 200 million years. This wasn’t a quiet event… During that time, the most massive of the stars fled the stellar nursery, evolving at a rapid pace and blowing out as supernovae events. According to the news release, the astronomers who studied this system argue that the rapid pace of the supernovae may have expelled copious quantities of significant elements such as oxygen, neon, magnesium and silicon into the gaseous envelope created by the galactic interaction. Their findings show this enriched gas may have expanded into and combined with the already present cooler gas.
Now, enter a long time frame. While there was an extensive era of star formation, there may have been more dramatic, shorter bursts of stellar creation. “For example, the most recent burst of star formation lasted for about five million years and occurred about 20 million years ago in Earth’s time frame.” say the paper’s authors. However, they are also quick to point out that the quick thrusts of star formation may not have been the sole producer of the hot gases.
Perhaps one day these two interactive spiral galaxies will finish their performance… ending up as rich, young elliptical galaxy. It’s an act which will take millions of years to complete. Will the gas hang around – or will it be lost in space? No matter what the final answer is, the image gives us a first-hand opportunity to observe an event which dominated the early Universe. It was a time “when galaxies were much closer together and merged more often.”
