This is awesome. Astrophotographer Göran Strand took his 30 gigabytes of image data of the incredible aurora he shot on March 17 (which we shared here) and re-tooled everything to fit into an interactive virtual reality-type video where the viewer can move and pan around in any direction. You can watch below, or click here to see the full screen version and be transported to a small town in northern Sweden called Östersund.
Strand said he was almost obsessed with creating this virtual reality version to try and share the experience.
“Hopefully this means that I finally can close the case on the auroras from March 17,” he told Universe Today via email. “As you might understand, these amazing auroras had a big impact on me and I really want to show how wonderful it was.”
Here’s the virtual reality version. Use the arrow keys on your computer to move the view around in any direction:
Last December the Golden Spike Company announced its plans to enable private-sector lunar exploration missions which would be feasible, profitable, and possible — even without government funding. Comprised of veteran space program executives, managers, and engineers, Golden Spike intends to stand on the shoulders of current space technology to develop lunar transportation systems that can be used by agencies and private interests worldwide to get humans back to the Moon… but they still need your help getting the word out.
“We’re running an Indiegogo campaign as an experiment in public outreach and interest in human lunar expeditions,” Golden Spike CEO and planetary scientist Alan Stern explained to Universe Today in an email.
Recently Golden Spike started a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo with the goal of raising $240,000 for international outreach (that’s a dollar for every mile to the Moon!) but, with only 16 10 days left in the campaign, only $9,400 $12,134 has been contributed.* While dollar-for-mile that’s still farther than any humans have traveled into space since Apollo, it’s unfortunately quite short of their goal.
CEO and famed planetary scientist Alan Stern blames himself.
“Simply put, we didn’t put the right people and resources on this Indiegogo campaign,” Stern wrote in an announcement on the Indiegogo site on April 9.
But despite the small amount of time remaining, he’s not giving up.
“We’re going to take advantage of the press of time left — just 16 days — to reach out to the broader public about people they can be a part of a historic new era of human lunar exploration,” Stern writes.
“To do that, you’ll be seeing Golden Spike in the press quite a bit more the next two weeks.”
And he’s asking for your continued help to not just contribute, but also to get the word out.
“Speak to friends and colleagues. Message on sites like Twitter and Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn. Send emails. Heck, put up signs and hand out flyers! We’re in the final phases of this campaign, ask people to join in. Let them know why you joined. Tell them their participation will make a huge difference… If we do this right, we can succeed.”
While contributions to the Golden Spike campaign won’t be used to launch rockets or build Moon bases, they will be used to reach out to potential international partners and show them that people are indeed interested in getting people back to the Moon… proven by the fact that they’ll even put some of their own money into the venture.
Small donations, large donations… each contribution no matter the size shows that people will invest in a future of lunar exploration. Put some “skin in the game,” if you will.
Click here to contribute to the Golden Spike campaign.And even if you can’t contribute financially, help get the word out. Share this article, tell people about the campaign, let them know that our future on the Moon doesn’t have to rely on fickle government funding or be subject to catastrophic budget cuts.
We got there before, we can get there again. The Moon awaits.
“Make the point that 40-plus years of waiting for governments to do this for us showed that the people who want humans to explore the Moon have to take personal action if we want it.”
– Alan Stern, planetary scientist and Golden Spike Company CEO
PS: Be sure to email [email protected] when you donate to the campaign and let them know your name, city, and state, and who referred you to donate (in this case, Universe Today.) They’re giving prizes for the top US state, top country, and top referrals!
Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield demonstrates how tears don't fall in space. Credit: NASA/CSA.
No tears in heaven? Expedition 35 Commander Chris Hadfield shows that while you really can cry in space, tears don’t fall like they do here on Earth, and instead just end up as a big ball of water on your face. It’s physics, baby!
The Big Bang Theory: A history of the Universe starting from a singularity and expanding ever since. Credit: grandunificationtheory.com
One of the greatest mysteries is how the Universe began — and also how and why does it appear to be ever-expanding? CERN physicist Tom Whyntie shows how cosmologists and particle physicists are exploring these questions by replicating the heat, energy, and activity of the first few seconds of our Universe, from right after the Big Bang.
Online Messier Marathon with the Virtual Telescope Project.
Have you ever done a Messier Marathon? Want to try it online from the comfort of your own home? Astrophysicist Gianluca Masi will host a webcast today (April 9, 2013) at 18:00 UTC (2 pm EDT) (update: this webcast has been postponed due to clouds. We’ll post the new date and time when it becomes available). You can join in at this link, and explore the many treasures of the famous Messier Catalog. Masi said they will try to see as many of 110 objects in the Messier Catalog as possible in a single viewing session. This is what is called a Messier Marathon!
This is the fifth time the Virutal Telescope Project has attempted this, and they’ve had great success previously. Masi is doing the Marathon their robotic telescopes, and will provide real time images and live comments, along with answering your questions and “sharing your passion and excitement with friends from all around the world.”
A family portrait of the PH1 planetary system that was discovered in part due to crowdsourcing. Image Credit: Haven Giguere/Yale.
Maybe it’s because Jurassic Park is in theaters again, but we at Universe Today sometimes worry about how one person can mess up an otherwise technologically amazing system. It took just one nefarious employee to shut down the dinosaur park’s security fences in the movie and cause havoc. How do we ensure science can fight against that, especially when everyday citizens are getting more and more involved in the scientific process?
But perhaps, after talking to Chris Lintott, that view is too suspicious. Lintott is in charge of a collaborative astronomy and science project called the Zooniverse that uses public contributions to fuel some of the science he performs. Basically, anyone with an Internet connection and a desire to contribute can hunt for planets or examine astronomical objects, among many other projects.
Lintott, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford, says the science requires public contributions. Moreover, he hasn’t had a problem yet despite 800,000 individual contributors to the Zooniverse. He told Universe Today about how that’s possible in an e-mail interview.
1) Zooniverse has already produced tangible scientific results in space through collaborating with ordinary folks. Can you talk about some of the papers/findings that have been produced in your various projects?
There’s a long, long list. I’m particularly excited at the minute about our work on bulgeless galaxies; most spiral galaxies have a bulge full of old stars at their centre, but we’ve found plenty that don’t. That’s exciting because we think that means that they’re guaranteed not to have had a big merger in the last 10 billion years or so, and that means we can use them to figure out just what effect mergers have on galaxies. You’ll be hearing more about them in the next year or so as we have plenty of observing time lined up.
I’m also a big fan of Planet Hunters 1b, our first confirmed planet discovery – it’s a planet in a four-star system, and thus provides a nice challenge to our understanding of how planets form. We’ve found lots of planet candidates (systems where we’re more than 90% sure there’s a planet there) but it’s nice to get one confirmed and especially nice for it to be such an interesting world.
One of Zooniverse’s projects examines the nature of spiral galaxies, particularly those without central bulges at the center. Credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration and A. Evans (University of Virginia, Charlottesville/NRAO/Stony Brook University)
2) What benefits have you received from involving the public in space projects, in terms of results as well as raising awareness?
We couldn’t do our research any other way. Astronomers have got very good in the last few decades at collecting information about the universe, but we’re not always so good at learning how to use all of that information. The Zooniverse allows us to collaborate with hundreds of thousands of people so that we can scale our efforts to deal with that flood of data, and many of those volunteers go much further than just clicking on buttons we provide. So really our research is now driven in collaboration with thousands of people, spread all around the world – that’s an inspiring thought.
3) How many people do you manage in your space projects, approximately? How do you keep track of them all?
We have more than 800,000 registered volunteers – luckily, the computer keeps track of them (when they log in!).
4) How do you ensure their results meet the standards of scientific publication?
We carefully design projects so that we’re sure they will produce scientifically useful results before they’re launched; this usually means running a test with a small amount of data and comparing work done by volunteers with that of professionals. We usually find the volunteers are better than us! It helps that we have several people complete each task, so collectively we don’t make accidental mistakes.
5) How do you guard against somebody deliberately or accidentally altering the results?
The system insists that every classification is independent, and as we have several people look at each classification finding any deliberate attack would be easy – in any case, we’ve never seen any evidence of such a thing. Despite popular reports, most people are nice!
Nighttime photo of the Nile delta region taken from the ISS (NASA)
Enjoy some great views of our home planet from images taken from the orbiting Earth-observing satellites and taken by astronauts on the International Space Station. The satellites and scientists are cranking out data 24/7 to help us all better understand and sustain our home planet.
Above is a video created for Earth Month, and specifically Earth Day (April 22) from ISS imagery, and below is another video from satellite imagery. These are unique looks at the beauty and wonder of our home planet.
Want to learn more about our Universe or refresh your astronomical knowledge? Cosmoquest has two new online astronomy classes, and they are a great opportunity expand your horizons! The two classes are “The Sun and Stellar Evolution” (April 15 – May 8, 2013) and “Introduction to Cosmology” (April 23 – May 16, 2013) Cosmoquest offers the convenience of an online class along with live (and lively!) interaction with your instructor and a small group astronomy enthusiasts like yourself. The lectures are held in Google+ Hangouts, with course assignments and homework assigned via Moodle.
The instructors are likely well-known to UT readers. Research assistant and blogger Ray Sanders (Dear Astronomer and UT) will be teaching the stellar evolution class and astronomer and writer Dr. Matthew Francis will be leading the cosmology course.
The cost for the class is $240, and the class is limited to 8 participants, with the possibility for an additional 5 participants. Both instructors say no prior knowledge of cosmology or astronomy is needed. There will be a little math, but it will be on the high school algebra level. Concepts will be heavily emphasized.
The Sun is a fascinating topic of study, which allows solar astronomers to better understand the physical processes in other stars. During this 4-week / 8-session course, we’ll explore the Sun and Solar Evolution from an astronomer’s point of view. Our course
will begin with an overview of the Sun, and solar phenomenon. We’ll also explore how stars are formed, their lifecycles, and the
incredible events that occur when stars reach the end of their lives. The course will culminate with students doing a short presentation on a topic related to the Sun or Stellar Evolution.
Cosmology is the study of the structure, contents, and evolution of the Universe as a whole. But what do cosmologists really study? In this 8-session course, we’ll look at cosmology from an astronomy point of view: taking what seems like too big of a subject and showing how we can indeed study the Universe scientifically. The starting point is the smallest chunk of the Universe that is representative of everything we can see: the Cosmic Box.
Class level: No prior knowledge of cosmology or astronomy is needed. There will be a little math, but it will be on the high school algebra level: the manipulation of ratios and use of some important equations. The emphasis is on concepts!
Image and variations of Comet C/2011 L4 (PANSTARRS) taken on 2013, April 7, 2013 remotely from New Mexico. Credit: Ernesto Guido, Nick Howes, and Martino Nicolini.
Comet PANSTARRS has peaked, but astronomers are still keeping an eye on this comet to try and determine what its future might hold. The team from the Remanzacco Observatory has just produced some really interesting views of Comet PANSTARRS, with a little help from Martino Nicolini and his Astroart software.
Team member Nick Howes called this software “one of the best astronomical image processing and acquisition tools around,” and explained how these views can tell astronomers more about what is happening with the comet.
“The isophotes image (color coded) is a good way to see the morphology/structure of the coma,” he told Universe Today, adding that comparing the images here is “a very good way to determine any major events like a fragmentation. We’re hopeful that once PANSTARRS gets a bit higher, we’ll be able to look at it in even more detail with the 2 meter Faulkes scopes.”
And with the image processing in the image on the far right, it’s possible to see a bright shell in the coma of comet C/2011 L4 (PANSTARRS).
“The last elaboration in that image has been obtained using the M.C.M. (Median Coma Model), a filter that has the purpose of creating — from an image of a comet — a synthetic model of the ‘regular’ coma,” said Ernesto Guido, from the Remanzacco team. “That is obtained by mapping all the pixels that compose the image and averaging them together. In doing so we delete all the morphological “non-uniformity” contained in the coma itself. This regular coma will then be subtracted from the original image highlighting all the details that are normally immersed in the uniform brightness of the coma.”
Check out the Remanzacco website for more information and their continued updates.
Mosaic self-portrait of Curiosity at the John Klein outcrop on Feb. 3, 2013 (NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)
Although today Mars’ atmosphere is sparse and thin — barely 1% the density of Earth’s at sea level — scientists don’t believe that was always the case. The Red Planet likely had a much denser atmosphere similar to ours, long, long ago. So… what happened to it?
NASA’s Curiosity rover has now found strong evidence that Mars lost much of its atmosphere to space — just as many scientists have suspected. The findings were announced today at the EGU 2013 General Assembly in Vienna.
Curiosity’s SAM instrument (NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Curiosity’s microwave oven-sized Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument analyzed an atmosphere sample last week using a process that concentrates selected gases. The results provided the most precise measurements ever made of isotopes of argon in the Martian atmosphere.
Isotopes are variants of the same element with different atomic weights.
“We found arguably the clearest and most robust signature of atmospheric loss on Mars,” said Sushil Atreya, a SAM co-investigator at the University of Michigan.
SAM found that the Martian atmosphere has about four times as much of a lighter stable isotope (argon-36) compared to a heavier one (argon-38). This ratio is much lower than the Solar System’s original ratio, as estimated from measurements of the Sun and Jupiter.
The argon isotope fractionation provides clear evidence of the loss of atmosphere from Mars. (NASA/JPL)
This also removes previous uncertainty about the ratio in the Martian atmosphere in measurements from NASA’s Viking project in 1976, as well as from small volumes of argon extracted from Martian meteorites retrieved here on Earth.
These findings point to a process that favored loss of the lighter isotope over the heavier one, likely through gas escaping from the top of the atmosphere. This appears to be in line with a previously-suggested process called sputtering, by which atoms are knocked out of the upper atmosphere by energetic particles in the solar wind.
The solar wind may have helped strip Mars of its atmosphere over the course of many hundreds of millions of years (NASA)
Lacking a strong magnetic field, Mars’ atmosphere would have been extremely susceptible to atmospheric erosion by sputtering billions of years ago, when the solar wind was an estimated 300 times the density it is today.
These findings by Curiosity and SAM will undoubtedly support those made by NASA’s upcoming MAVEN mission, which will determine how much of the Martian atmosphere has been lost over time by measuring the current rate of escape to space. Scheduled to launch in November, MAVEN will be the first mission devoted to understanding Mars’ upper atmosphere.
Find out more about MAVEN and how Mars may have lost its atmosphere in the video below, and follow the most recent discoveries of the MSL mission here.
