C/2011 L4 (PANSTARRS on March 15, 2013. Taken in Hachimantai City Japan. Credit and copyright: Jason Hill.
You want images and videos of Comet C/2011 L4 (PANSTARRS)? We’ve got ’em! We’ll start with this stunning view from Japan, taken by Jason Hill. But there’s lots more below:
A first capture of Comet PANSTARRS on March 14, 2013. Credit and copyright: Adam Wipp.Another first view of Comet PANSTARRS from Valencia, Spain on March 14, 2013. Credit and copyright: Alejandro Garcia.
This timelapse comes from Andrew Takano, a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin:
Comet PANSTARRS on March 14, 2013, as seen in the Arizona skies. Credit and copyright: Chris Schur.
Photographer Chris Schur said last night’s views were “the best and brightest comet yet in the western Arizona Sunset sky!” Schur said via email. “I was able to go much deeper tonight using an 80mm Zeiss refractor and Canon Xti. The head shows more fan like protrusions, and the tail is now really shaping up. … The comet here at our elevation of 5150 feet was very easy to see the entire time it was up, and I would rate it at first magnitude for sure.”
Comet PANSTARRS as seen from Aarhus, Denmark (56.2 N, 10.2 E). Credit and copyright: Jens Riggelsen.
Comet Panstarrs above Boulder, Colorado on the evening of March 13, 2013, courtesy of Patrick Cullis:
Comet PANSTARRS on March 13, 2013 as see from Newington, New Hampshire, USA. Credit and copyright: John Gianforte (theskyguy.org)Comet PANSTARRS seen from Oakland, California. The Port of Oakland and the Bay Bridge are in the foreground with the comet and crescent moon in the background. Taken on March 12, 2013. Credit and copyright: Jared Wilson.Comet C/2011 L4 (PANSTARRS) floats in the twilight sky over the lighthouses and pier at Grand Haven State Park in Grand Haven, Michigan on March 13, 2013. Credit and copyright: Kevin’s Stuff on Flickr.Comet PANSTARRS and a 5% illuminated Moon on March 13, 2013. Credit and copyright: Tavi Greiner.
You can see more at our Flickr page, and we’ll keep adding and posting! Thanks to everyone who has been so generous with sharing their great photos and videos.
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.
UPDATE: The webcast has been moved to March 16 at 17:00 UTC (1 pm EDT) due to bad weather in Italy.
Has it been cloudy where you live and you haven’t yet been able to see Comet PANSTARRS? The Virtual Telescope Project will have a live webcast of this comet, C/2011 L4 PANSTARRS, from Italy, March 15, on March 16 at 17:00 UTC, 1 p.m. EDT. “We have been waiting for it for over one year, and now the waiting is over,” said astrophysicist Gianluca Masi, who will host the webcast, which you can see at this link. Masi said they are keeping an eye on the skies, and will keep us updated on if they need to change the time of the webcast.
If you’re waiting for the weekend to see it with your own eyes, check out our detailed guides on how to see it here and here. Both are filled with graphics and great info on how to see this comet.
This comet has been a challenge to see, and was actually closest to the Sun on March 10, meaning that is when it was at its brightest. However, while Comet PANSTARRS will fade over the next few weeks, it will also rise higher into a darker sky and become – for a time – easier to see. So keep looking!
That red comet is pretty, but perhaps not so realistic. Credit: Game of Thrones Wiki/HBO (Screencap)
A blood-red comet appears in the sky. People quake in its wake.
This phenomenon, which happens in the second season of the medieval fantasy Game of Thrones, had us all wondering — can you ever actually see a red comet?
We talked to Matthew Knight, an astronomer at the Lowell Observatory in Arizona who observes comets. He gave us some answers just in time for the third season of Game of Thrones, which begins March 31.
At first blush, he said, the comet’s red color wouldn’t be possible because the strongest emissions from comets are in the blue and green regions, mostly from neutral gases such as hydroxide and cyanide.
There is a type of emission that is close to red, called “forbidden oxygen”, which occurs when atoms make a rare energy transition between states of “excitement”. But it’s very faint and short-lived, Knight wrote.
The visible light from a comet comes from a combination of reflected solar continuum (sunlight reflecting off of dust grains) and cometary emission (neutral and/or ionized molecules of gas that emit photons at a particular wavelength). The sunlight reflecting off of dust grains basically looks like sunlight and since the Sun appears yellow/white, this component cannot look red.
A small caveat is that due to the physical properties of dust grains, comet dust often actually does “redden” sunlight slightly when measured with sensitive equipment. However, this reddening is at a very low level and is not enough to cause the reflected sunlight to appear a deep red like in Game of Thrones. The strongest comet emissions in the region where human eyes can see are in the blue and green regions.
Comet Hale-Bopp. which displays the usual cometary colors. Credit: E. Kolmhofer, H. Raab; Johannes-Kepler-Observatory, Linz, Austria
So what ingredients does a comet need to look like the one in Game of Thrones? According to Knight, it would have to meet these criteria:
Be visible in daylight, which really only happens about once a century;
Be close to the sun (he supposes this one is, given how straight the tail is);
Have a “strange composition” that is different from anything we know in the solar system. The composition could be that forbidden oxygen he talked about, coming from a comet whose ices are carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. But that would be hard, because those types of ices would not survive long when exposed to sunlight.
If we really want to think in a science fiction vein, Knight suggests that maybe the comet could be made up unpredictably:
Alternatively it could be something else entirely unknown in cometary chemistry or dust, with really weird properties causing a much stronger reddening than is normally seen. In any event, the composition would be so anomalous that this comet would almost certainly have originated in another solar system. That would make comet scientists very interested in studying it!
But don’t despair yet. Comet ISON might be bright enough for daylight viewing when it swings by Earth late in 2013. Comets are unpredictable beasts, but we’re pretty sure of one thing: no matter how bright it is, it won’t look red.
One of the discovery images of the system obtained at the Keck II telescope using the adaptive optics system and NIRC2 Near-Infrared Imager. The rectangle indicates the field-of-view of the OSIRIS instrument for planet C. Credit: Image courtesy of NRC-HIA, C. Marois and Keck Observatory.
The most detailed look yet at the atmosphere of a distant exoplanet has revealed a mixture of water vapor and carbon monoxide blanketing a world ten times the size of Jupiter about 130 light years away from Earth. But even with water present on this world, it is incredibly hostile to life. Like Jupiter, it has no solid surface, and it has a temperature of more than a thousand degree. Additionally, no tell-tale methane signals were detected in the atmosphere. But this solar system is still of great interest, as three other giant worlds orbit the same star and scientists said studying this system will not only help solve mysteries of how it was formed, but also how our own solar system formed as well.
The observations were made at the Keck II telescope in Hawaii, using an infrared imaging spectrograph called OSIRIS, which was able to uncover the chemical fingerprints of specific molecules.
“This is the sharpest spectrum ever obtained of an extrasolar planet,” said Dr. Bruce Macintosh, from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. “This shows the power of directly imaging a planetary system. It is the exquisite resolution afforded by these new observations that has allowed us to really begin to probe planet formation.”
“With this level of detail,” said co-author Travis Barman from the Lowell Observatory, “we can compare the amount of carbon to the amount of oxygen present in the atmosphere, and this chemical mix provides clues as to how the planetary system formed.”
Artist’s rendering of HR 8799c at an early stage in the evolution of the planetary system, showing the planet, a disk of gas and dust, rocky inner planets, and HR 8799. Credit: Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics
The planets around the star, known as HR 8799, weigh in between five to 10 times the mass of Jupiter and are still glowing in infrared with the heat of their formation. The research team says their observations suggest the solar system was created in a similar way to our own, with gas giants forming far away from their parent star and smaller, rocky planets closer in. However, no Earth-like rocky planets have yet been detected in this system.
“The results suggest the HR 8799 system is like a scaled-up Solar System,” said Quinn Kanopacky, an astronomer from the University of Toronto in Canada. “Once the solid cores grew large enough, their gravity quickly attracted surrounding gas to become the massive planets we see today. Since that gas had lost some of its oxygen, the planet ends up with less oxygen and less water than if it had formed through a gravitational instability.”
There are two leading models of planetary formation: core accretion and gravitational instability. When stars form, a planet-forming disk surrounds them. With core accretion, planets form gradually as solid cores slowly grow big enough to start acquiring gas from the disk, while in the gravitational instability model, planets form almost instantly as the disk collapses on itself.
Properties such as the composition of a planet’s atmosphere are clues to how the planet formed, and in this case core accretion seems to win out. Although there was evidence of water vapor, that signature is weaker than would be expected if the planet shared the composition of its parent star. Instead, the planet has a high ratio of carbon to oxygen – a fingerprint of its formation in the gaseous disk tens of millions of years ago. As the gas cooled with time, grains of water ice formed, depleting the remaining gas of oxygen. Planetary formation then began when ice and solids collected into planetary cores.
“Once the solid cores grew large enough, their gravity quickly attracted surrounding gas to become the massive planets we see today,” said Konopacky. “Since that gas had lost some of its oxygen, the planet ends up with less oxygen and less water than if it had formed through a gravitational instability.”
“Spectral information of this quality not only provides clues about the formation of the HR8799 planets but also provides the guidance we need to improve our theoretical understanding of exoplanet atmospheres and their early evolution,” said Barman. “The timing of this work could not be better as it comes on the heels of new instruments that will image dozens more exoplanets, orbiting other stars, that we can study in similar detail.”
This system was also the study as part of remote reconnaissance imaging with Project 1640. The video below explains more:
The dark hot spot in this false-color image from NASA's Cassini spacecraft is a window deep into Jupiter's atmosphere. All around it are layers of higher clouds, with colors indicating which layer of the atmosphere the clouds are in. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/GSFC
In the swirling canopy of Jupiter’s atmosphere, cloudless patches are so exceptional that the big ones get the special name “hot spots.” Exactly how these clearings form and why they’re only found near the planet’s equator have long been mysteries. Now, using images from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, scientists have found new evidence that hot spots in Jupiter’s atmosphere are created by a Rossby wave, a pattern also seen in Earth’s atmosphere and oceans. The team found the wave responsible for the hot spots glides up and down through layers of the atmosphere like a carousel horse on a merry-go-round.
“This is the first time anybody has closely tracked the shape of multiple hot spots over a period of time, which is the best way to appreciate the dynamic nature of these features,” said the study’s lead author, David Choi, a NASA Postdoctoral Fellow working at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The paper is published online in the April issue of the journal Icarus.
Choi and his colleagues made time-lapse movies from hundreds of observations taken by Cassini during its flyby of Jupiter in late 2000, when the spacecraft made its closest approach to the planet. The movies zoom in on a line of hot spots between one of Jupiter’s dark belts and bright white zones, roughly 7 degrees north of the equator. Covering about two months (in Earth time), the study examines the daily and weekly changes in the sizes and shapes of the hot spots, each of which covers more area than North America, on average.
Much of what scientists know about hot spots came from NASA’s Galileo mission, which released an atmospheric probe that descended into a hot spot in 1995. This was the first, and so far only, in-situ investigation of Jupiter’s atmosphere.
“Galileo’s probe data and a handful of orbiter images hinted at the complex winds swirling around and through these hot spots, and raised questions about whether they fundamentally were waves, cyclones or something in between,” said Ashwin Vasavada, a paper co-author who is based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and who was a member of the Cassini imaging team during the Jupiter flyby. “Cassini’s fantastic movies now show the entire life cycle and evolution of hot spots in great detail.”
Because hot spots are breaks in the clouds, they provide windows into a normally unseen layer of Jupiter’s atmosphere, possibly all the way down to the level where water clouds can form. In pictures, hot spots appear shadowy, but because the deeper layers are warmer, hot spots are very bright at the infrared wavelengths where heat is sensed; in fact, this is how they got their name.
One hypothesis is that hot spots occur when big drafts of air sink in the atmosphere and get heated or dried out in the process. But the surprising regularity of hot spots has led some researchers to suspect there is an atmospheric wave involved. Typically, eight to 10 hot spots line up, roughly evenly spaced, with dense white plumes of cloud in between. This pattern could be explained by a wave that pushes cold air down, breaking up any clouds, and then carries warm air up, causing the heavy cloud cover seen in the plumes. Computer modeling has strengthened this line of reasoning.
In this series of images from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, a dark, rectangular hot spot (top) interacts with a line of vortices that approaches from on the upper-right side (second panel). Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/GSFC
From the Cassini movies, the researchers mapped the winds in and around each hot spot and plume, and examined interactions with vortices that pass by, in addition to wind gyres, or spiraling vortices, that merge with the hot spots. To separate these motions from the jet stream in which the hot spots reside, the scientists also tracked the movements of small “scooter” clouds, similar to cirrus clouds on Earth. This provided what may be the first direct measurement of the true wind speed of the jet stream, which was clocked at about 300 to 450 mph (500 to 720 kilometers per hour) — much faster than anyone previously thought. The hot spots amble at the more leisurely pace of about 225 mph (362 kilometers per hour).
By teasing out these individual movements, the researchers saw that the motions of the hot spots fit the pattern of a Rossby wave in the atmosphere. On Earth, Rossby waves play a major role in weather. For example, when a blast of frigid Arctic air suddenly dips down and freezes Florida’s crops, a Rossby wave is interacting with the polar jet stream and sending it off its typical course. The wave travels around our planet but periodically wanders north and south as it goes.
The wave responsible for the hot spots also circles the planet west to east, but instead of wandering north and south, it glides up and down in the atmosphere. The researchers estimate this wave may rise and fall 15 to 30 miles (24 to 50 kilometers) in altitude.
The new findings should help researchers understand how well the observations returned by the Galileo probe extend to the rest of Jupiter’s atmosphere. “And that is another step in answering more of the questions that still surround hot spots on Jupiter,” said Choi.
If you’re reading this then you probably love space exploration, and if you love space exploration then you know how awesome the MESSENGER mission is — the incredibly successful venture by NASA, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, and the Carnegie Institution of Washington to orbit and study the first rock from the Sun in unprecedented detail. Since entering orbit around Mercury on March 18, 2011, MESSENGER has mapped nearly 100% of the planet’s surface, found unique landforms called hollows residing in many of its craters, and even discovered evidence of water ice at its poles! That’s a lot to get accomplished in just two years!
The video above, assembled by Mark ‘Indy’ Kochte, is a tribute to the many impressive achievements of the MESSENGER mission, featuring orbital animations (love that MESSENGER shimmy!), surface photos, and the approach to the planet. Enjoy!
Images and animation stills courtesy NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington. Music: “Mercury Ridge” by Simon Wilkinson. Video creation and time-lapse animations by Mark ‘Indy’ Kochte.
Astronaut Chris Cassidy training for a spacewalk in NASA's Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory. Credit: Robert Markowitz
If a meteor hit the station, or a fire suddenly broke out, you’d want some pretty quick-thinking people on board to solve the problem. Thankfully, Chris Cassidy — a former Navy SEAL — is on his way to station in just a couple of weeks as a part of Expedition 35/36.
SEAL training is perhaps the most vigorous military program in the world. Even a quick look at the tests candidates must pass makes us feel exhausted. You need to master a suite of skills that range from demolition to navigation to, of course, fast swimming. There’s something called “combat diving”, which is supposed to test how well these Navy people “perform in stressful and often uncomfortable environments.”
And don’t forget “hell week.” Candidates only get to sleep four hours in 5.5 days. They rack up 200 miles of running through physically training for 20 hours a day. (No, those numbers are not typos. It’s real.)
Cassidy — who by the way, passed that gruelling SEAL training on the first try without getting hurt or going crazy — told Universe Today last week about what he would do should he be faced with an emergency in space.
I think just the training that I got in the field, training in the early part of my Navy career, and during my time being an astronaut will all combine together. What I know from combat in the Navy, there’s a sort of calmness that comes over people who are well-trained and know what to do. Muscle memory kicks in, and it’s not until after the thing is over that you realize what you went through.
I kind of think that’s how me as an individual, and we as a crew, will respond to any dicey dynamic event like that. Just work through the procedures that we’ve been trained, make the place safe if we can, and if we can’t, we are trained to evacuate. And the procedures all get us to that point.
Cassidy further joked that some of the humor SEALs use might not be appropriate in his most recent job title; former SEAL and International Space Station Expedition 1 commander William Shepherd once told Cassidy he might be “kicked out of a NASA meeting” if he used some of the language.
More seriously, though, Cassidy said he is particularly looking forward to doing experiments measuring bone mass on the International Space Station. Since that research has applications for people on Earth (particularly those facing osteoporosis he said it’s a demonstration of how spaceflight can help further health work on the ground.
His ultimate goal? “To be called back [to station] a second time.” Let’s hope he makes it.
Cassidy and his crewmates Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin are scheduled to launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on March 29. Here a look at some of the final training the crew received at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia:
The change of command ceremony on the ISS. Via NASA TV.
With the Canadian national anthem playing, astronaut Chris Hadfield accepted the “keys” to the International Space Station from outgoing Expedition 34 commander Kevin Ford, as Hadfield became the first Canadian commander of the space station.
“Thank you very much for giving me the keys to the family car… we’re going to put some miles on it,” Hadfield said during the change of command ceremonies held on the ISS today, marking the start of the Hadfield-led Expedition 35.
“It is a tremendous honour to assume command of the ISS,” Hadfield said in a statement issued by the Canadian Space Agency. “I will do my best to acquit myself well, accomplish the utmost as a crew for all the International Partners, and fully live and share the experience on behalf of so many around our world”.
“It’s a first for our country,” Hadfield continued, “but is really just the culmination of a lot of other firsts. I stand on the shoulders of so many that have made this possible, and now take my turn to try and add to that solid foundation for the Canadians that follow.”
Ford and Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin arrived at the station on October 25, 2012 and leave the ISS on Friday, March 15, 2013, making a landing on the steppe of Kazakhstan in their Soyuz TMA-06M spacecraft. Remaining on board with Hadfield are NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn and Russian Flight Engineer Roman Romanenko. They will be joined on March 29 by Expedition 35/36 crew members Pavel Vinogradov, NASA Flight Engineer Chris Cassidy and Flight Engineer Alexander Misurkin.
In this new video from Big Think, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson says he’s almost embarrassed for our species that it takes a warning shot across our bow before legislators take seriously the advice they’ve been receiving from astronomers about getting serious about asteroid detection and deflection; that it’s a matter of when not if Earth will get smacked by an asteroid. “But it took an actual meteor over Russia exploding with 25 times the power of the atom bomb in Hiroshima to convince people that maybe we should start doing something about it.”
This image shows an aerial view of the Chajnantor Plateau, located at an altitude of 5000 meters in the Chilean Andes, where the array of ALMA antennas is located. Credit: Clem & Adri Bacri-Normier (wingsforscience.com)/ESO.
Today, in a remote part of the Chilean Andes, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), was inaugurated at an official ceremony. This event marks the completion of all the major systems of the giant telescope and the formal transition from a construction project to a fully fledged observatory. ALMA is a partnership between Europe, North America and East Asia in cooperation with the Republic of Chile.
ALMA is able to observe the Universe by detecting light that is invisible to the human eye, and will show us never-before-seen details about the birth of stars, infant galaxies in the early Universe, and planets coalescing around distant suns. It also will discover and measure the distribution of molecules — many essential for life — that form in the space between the stars.
ALMA’s three international partners today welcomed more than 500 people to the ALMA Observatory in the Chilean Atacama Desert to celebrate the success of the project. The guest of honour was the President of Chile, Sebastián Piñera.
In honor of the official inauguration of ALMA, this movie, called ALMA — In Search of Our Cosmic Origins, has been released:
The President of Chile, Sebastián Piñera, said: “One of our many natural resources is Chile’s spectacular night sky. I believe that science has been a vital contributor to the development of Chile in recent years. I am very proud of our international collaborations in astronomy, of which ALMA is the latest, and biggest outcome.”
The Director of ALMA, Thijs de Graauw, expressed his expectations for ALMA. “Thanks to the efforts and countless hours of work by scientists and technicians in the ALMA community around the world, ALMA has already shown that it’s the most advanced millimetre/submillimetre telescope in existence, dwarfing anything else we had before. We are eager for astronomers to exploit the full power of this amazing tool.”
The observatory was conceived as three separate projects in Europe, USA and Japan in the 1980s, and merged to one in the 1990s. Construction started in 2003. The total construction cost of ALMA is approximately US$ 1.4 billion.
The antennas of the ALMA array, fifty-four 12-metre and twelve smaller 7-meter dish antennas, work together as a single telescope. Each antenna collects radiation coming from space and focuses it onto a receiver. The signals from the antennas are then brought together and processed by a specialized supercomputer: the ALMA correlator. The 66 ALMA antennas can be arranged in different configurations, where the maximum distance between antennas can vary from 150 meters to 16 kilometers.
