Io and Jupiter as seen by New Horizons during its 2008 flyby. (Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University APL/SWRI).
Sometimes the tried and true methods are still the best, even in observational astronomy. Researchers at the University of Prague demonstrated this recently in a study of the eclipsing binary system V994 Herculis (V994 Her).
Researchers P. Zasche and R. Uhla used a method known as the Light-travel-time Effect to verify that V994 Her is actually a double binary. If that method sounds familiar to any astronomy historians out there, that’s because it was first used by 17th century astronomers to gauge the speed of light.
V994 Her is a rarity in the skies. While many eclipsing binaries are known, V994 Her is one of only six quadruple eclipsing binary stars discovered. An eclipsing binary star is a system where the two stars pass one in front of the other from our line of sight. Although too close to be split visually, eclipsing binaries rise and fall in brightness periodically. One famous example is the star Algol (Beta Persei) in the constellation Perseus. Algol means the “Demon Star” in Arabic, which suggests that its curious nature was known to Arab astronomers in pre-telescopic times.
These may soon be the names of Pluto's family of moons (Hubble image: NASA, ESA and M. Showalter/SETI)
The votes have been tallied and the results are in from the SETI Institute’s Pluto Rocks Poll: “Vulcan” and “Cerberus” have come out on top for names for Pluto’s most recently-discovered moons, P4 and P5.
After 450,324 votes cast over the past two weeks, Vulcan is the clear winner with a landslide 174,062 votes… due in no small part to a little Twitter intervention by Mr. William Shatner, I’m sure.
During a Google+ Hangout today, SETI Institute senior scientist Mark Showalter — who discovered the moons and opened up the poll — talked with SETI astronomer Franck Marchis and MSNBC’s Alan Boyle about the voting results. Showalter admitted that he wasn’t quite sure how well the whole internet poll thing would work out, but he’s pleased with the results.
“I had no idea what to expect,” said Showalter. “As we all know the internet can be an unruly place… but by and large this process has gone very smoothly. I feel the results are fair.”
As far as having a name from the Star Trek universe be used for an actual astronomical object?
“Vulcan works,” Showalter said. “He’s got a family tie to the whole story. Pluto and Zeus were brothers, and Vulcan is a son of Pluto.”
The other winning name, Cerberus, is currently used for an asteroid. So because the IAU typically tries to avoid confusion with two objects sharing the same exact name, Showalter said he will use the Greek version of the spelling: Kerberos.
Cerberus (or Kerberos) is the name of the giant three-headed dog that guards the gates to the underworld in Greek mythology.
Now that the international public has spoken, the next step will be to submit these names to the International Astronomical Union for official approval, a process that could take 1–2 months.
(Although who knows… maybe Bill can help move that process along as well?)
Read more about the names on the Pluto Rocks ballot here, and watch the full recorded Google+ Hangout below:
On this day (Feb. 25) in 1969, Mariner 6 was hefted off of Earth on a path to Mars. What’s less known is the spacecraft nearly was destroyed only 10 days beforehand as the rocket began to collapse. This NASA account succinctly summarizes what must have been a terrifying moment:
A faulty switch opened the main valves on the Atlas stage. This released the pressure which supported the Atlas structure, and as the booster deflated it began to crumple. Two ground crewman started pressurizing pumps, saving the structure from further collapse. The Mariner 6 spacecraft was removed, put on another Atlas/Centaur, and launched on schedule. The two ground crewman, who had acted at risk of the 12-story rocket collapsing on them, were awarded Exceptional Bravery Medals from NASA.
Who were these exceptional people? Universe Today asked around at NASA for some answers, and got the gentlemen’s names: Billy McClure and Charles Beverlin, who were NASA contractors at General Dynamics. It appears that these two men were the first to receive an Exceptional Bravery Medal from the agency.
McClure, a Second World War veteran, died in 2009 at the age of 85. It appears that the medal was a highlight in McClure’s life, according to an account by his great-granddaughter Hanna Smith, who referred to him as “Grandad”:
“Grandad was flown to California to receive copies of the first pictures ever taken of Mars and to be personally thanked by the Vice President of the United States,” she wrote in a 2012 article. McClure retired from General Dynamics after 31 years of service. His son, also named Billy McClure, was a worker on the U.S. shuttle program.
The agency had no contact information for Beverlin given that he was not a NASA employee.
As for Mariner 6, the mission made it to Mars at a time when spacecraft failures were fast and frequent. The spacecraft’s closest approach to Mars was 2,131 miles (3,431 km) and it successfully beamed images and information back to Earth. It’s images finally squashed the notion of Martian “canals” — once proposed by astronomer Percival Lowell — and showed the surface of Mars to be very different from that of the Moon, in contrast to the results from Mariner 4. Mariner 6 also helped identify the makeup of the south polar cap (predominantly carbon dioxide, and its radio science refined estimates of the mass, radius and shape of Mars.
Just think, this cratered image of Mars below was only possible through an act of bravery from two men.
Mariner 6 image of Sinus Sabaeus and Deucalionis Regio on Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL
Jerry Linenger dons a mask during his mission on Mir in 1997. Credit: NASA
Sixteen years ago, a fire on the Russian space station Mir erupted after a cosmonaut routinely ignited a perchlorate canister that produced oxygen to supplement the space station’s air supply. Jerry Linenger, an American astronaut aboard Mir at that time, wrote about the incident that occurred on February 24, 1997 in his memoir Off the Planet:
As the fire spewed with angry intensity, sparks – resembling an entire box of sparklers ignited simultaneously – extended a foot or so beyond the flame’s furthest edge. Beyond the sparks, I saw what appeared to be melting wax splattering on the bulkhead opposite the blaze. But it was not melting max. It was molten metal. The fire was so hot that it was melting metal.
Linenger famously had some trouble donning gas masks, which kept malfunctioning, but he and the rest of the crew managed to put out the blaze before it spun out of control. The cause was traced to a fault in the canister.
Mir itself was deorbited in 2001, but the fire safety lessons are still vivid in everyone’s mind today.
Outside view of the Mir space station. Credit: NASA
NASA fire expert David Urban told Universe Today that a fire is among the most catastrophic situations that a crew can face.
You can’t go outside, you’re in a very small volume, and your escape options are limited. Your survival options are limited. That space can tolerate a much smaller fire than you can tolerate in our home. The pressure can’t escape easily, and the heat stays there, and the toxic products are there as well.
Urban, who is chief of the combustion and reacting systems branch of the research and technology directorate of the NASA Glenn Research Center, said NASA and Russia have learned several things from the incident that they have implemented on the International Space Station today:
– Changing fabrication procedures for the canisters. NASA officials and their Russian counterparts “took a good hard look” at the canisters and determined they were still the best solution given their modest weight and easy portability. They did, however, put stricter guidelines into the fabrication in the Russian facility. “The most likely cause was contamination during assembly of the cassette, the cartridge that contains the perchlorate. So, much stronger control there and more testing of the units as they make them. ”
– Better insulation. Urban noted the canisters are now in specially designed cases, a sort of high-temperature insulation package that can absorb the “blow torch effect” that happens if a unit fails. “It protects the rest of the vehicle … like a fire in a fireplace.”
– Clearing the way. Just before the Mir fire happened, the crew happened to clean up trash from the immediate area near the faulty canister. The procedure was just a coincidence, but it could have ended up saving the ship, Urban said. Today’s space station crews are very careful to keep a buffer between the canisters on board and any items. “In the shuttle era, it was different because it came back in 16 days or less. The space station or Mir, it’s like your house. You can’t let clutter accumulate. We’ve learned a lot in Mir about how to manage a long-duration vehicle.”
– Keeping up with the latest research. There are, in fact, two fire suppression systems on the International Space Station: a water foam system in the Russian sections, and a carbon dioxide system in the United States area. NASA is now working on a more modern “water mist” fire suppression method, based on an ongoing trend seen protecting terrestrial areas such as electronics and shipping rooms. This system emits fine particles, sort of like a sprinkler, that are just tens of microns across and act almost like a gas. Urban said the system is late in the design review part of development and should be ready for use on station within the next couple of years.
One 2011 NASA report on the incident also highlighted the importance of emergency preparation and safety drills to mitigate fires as they happen. “More effective warning systems could save several seconds of reaction time, which, in a crisis, could mean the difference between success and failure,” it stated. You can read the rest of that report here.
The Canadian asteroid-hunting NEOSSAT is among the fleet of satellites launched on Feb. 25, 2013.Credit: Canadian Space Agency
A Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) successfully launched from India today, sending seven different international satellites into orbit. Launch was at 7:31 a.m. EST (12:31 UTC) and on board were three Canadian-built spacecraft including a small asteroid-hunting satellite (weighing in at just 74 kg) called NEOSSat, other small satellites from the UK, Austria and Denmark and an India-France joint effort called SARAL, an Earth observation satellite, the primary payload for the launch.
Reports indicate all seven satellites were placed in their proper orbits and after their initial check-outs will being their missions.
NEOSSat (Near-Earth Object Surveillance Satellite)will track large asteroids that may come close to Earth and also track space debris in orbit. The suitcase-sized NEOSSat will orbit approximately 800 kilometers above the Earth, searching for objects that are difficult to spot using ground-based telescopes. Because of its location, NEOSSat will not be limited by the day-night cycle and will operate continuously.
“NEOSSat will discover many asteroids much faster than can be done from the ground alone,” said Alan Hildebrand of the University of Calgary. “Its most exciting result, however, will probably be discovering new targets for exploration by both manned and unmanned space missions.”
SARAL will be monitoring climate on Earth; CanX-3 BRITE (BRIght Target Explorer) is billed as the smallest astronomical telescope looking for faint objects; Sapphire is a military satellite that will keep track of objects orbiting between 3,800 and 25,000 miles (6,000 and 40,000 kilometers) from Earth; TUGSat-1 BRITE from Austria will monitor changes in brightness in stars; AAUSat 3 from Denmark will moniter ship traffic on Earth’s oceans, and STRaND-1 is a nanosatellite carrying a smartphone, has unique “screaming in space” experiment.
A polished slice of one of Russian meteorite samples. You can see round grains called chondrules and shock veins lined with melted rock. The meteorite is probably non-uniform. The preliminary analysis showed that the meteorite belongs to chemical type L or LL, petrologic type 5.
A little more than week ago a 7,000 ton, 50-foot (15-meter) wide meteoroid made an unexpected visit over Russia to become the biggest space rock to enter the atmosphere since the Tunguska impact in 1908. While scientists still debate whether it was asteroid or comet that sent a tree-flattening shockwave over the Tunguska River valley, we know exactly what fell last Friday.
Now is a fitting time to get more familiar with these extraterrestrial rocks that drop from out of nowhere.
The Russian meteoroid – the name given an asteroid fragment before it enters the atmosphere – became a brilliant meteor during its passage through the air. If a cosmic rock is big enough to withstand the searing heat and pressure of entry, fragments survive and fall to the ground as meteorites. Most of the meteors or “shooting stars” we see on a clear night are bits of rock the size of apple seeds. When they strike the upper atmosphere at tens of thousands of miles an hour, they vaporize in a flash of light. Case closed. But the one that boomed over the city of Chelyabinsk was big enough to to survive its last trip around the Sun and sprinkle the ground with meteorites.
The two main smoke trails left by the Russian meteor as it passed over the city of Chelyabinsk. Credit: AP Photo/Chelyabinsk.ru
Ah, but the Russian fireball didn’t get off the hook that easy. The overwhelming air pressure at those speeds combined with re-entry temperatures around 3,000 degrees F (1,650 C) shattered the original space rock into many pieces. You can see the dual trails created by two of the larger hunks in the photo above.
Scientists at Urals Federal University in Yekaterinburg examined 53 small meteorite fragments deposited around a hole in ice-covered Chebarkul Lake 48 miles (77 km) west of Chelyabinsk the following day. Chemical analysis revealed the stones contained 10% iron-nickel metal along with other minerals commonly found in stony meteorites. Since then, hundreds of fragments have been dug out of the snow by people in surrounding villages. As specimens continue to be recovered and analyzed, here’s an overview — and a look at what we know — of these space rocks that pay us a visit from time to time.
Bright fireball breaking up over Yellow Springs, Ohio. Credit: John Chumack
How many times has a meteor taken your breath away? A brilliant fireball streaking across the night sky ranks among the most memorable astronomical sights most of us will ever see. Like objects in your side view mirror, meteors appear closer than they really are. And it’s all the more true when they’re exceptionally bright. Studies show however that meteors burn up at least 50 miles (80 km) overhead. If big enough to remain intact and land on the ground, the fragments go completely dark 5-12 miles (8-19 km) high during the “dark flight” phase. A meteor passing overhead would be at the minimum distance of about 50 miles (80 km) from the observer.
Since most sightings are well off toward one direction or another, you have to add your horizontal distance to the meteor’s height to get a true distance. While some meteors are bright enough to trick us into thinking they landed just over the next hill, nearly all are many miles away. Even the Russian meteor, which put on a grand show and blasted the city of Chelyabinsk with a powerful shock wave, dropped fragments dozens of miles to the west. We lack the context to appreciate meteor distances, perhaps unconsciously comparing what we see to an aerial fireworks display.
Very cute Youtube video of Sasha Zarezina, 8, who lives in a small Siberian village, as she hunts for meteorite fragments in the snow after Friday’s meteor over Russia. Credit: Ben Solomon/New York Times
An estimated 1,000 tons (907 metric tons) to more than 10,000 tons (9,070 MT) of material from outer space lands on Earth every day delivered free of charge from the main Asteroid Belt. Crack-ups between asteroids in the distant past are nudged by Jupiter into orbits that cross that of Earth’s. Most of the stuff rains down as micrometeoroids, bits of grit so small they’re barely touched by heating as they gently waft their way to the ground. Many larger pieces – genuine meteorites – make it to Earth but are missed by human eyes because they fall in remote mountains, deserts and oceans. Since over 70% of Earth’s surface’s is water, think of all the space rocks that must sink out of sight forever.
A fragment of the Sikhote-Alin iron meteorite that fell over eastern Russia (then the Soviet Union) on Feb. 12, 1947. Credit: Bob King
About 6-8 times a year however, a meteorite-producing fireball streaks over a populated area of the world. Using eyewitness reports of time, direction of travel along with more modern tools like video surveillance cameras and Doppler weather radar, which can ping the tracks of falling meteorites, scientists and meteorite hunters have a great many clues on where to look for space rocks.
Since most meteorites break into pieces in mid-air, the fragments are dispersed over the ground in a large oval called the strewnfield. The little pieces fall first and land at the near end of the oval; the bigger chunks travel farthest and fall at the opposite end.
When a new potential meteorite falls, scientists are eager to get a hold of pieces as soon as possible. Back in the lab, they measure short-lived elements called radionuclides created when high-energy cosmic rays in space alter elements in the rock. Once the rock lands on Earth, creation of these altered elements stops. The proportions of radionuclides tell us how long the rock traveled through space after it was ejected by impact from its mother asteroid. If a meteorite could write a journal, this would be it.
Other tests that examine the decay of radioactive elements like uranium into lead tells us the age of the meteorite. Most are 4.57 billion years old. Hold a meteorite and you’ll be whisked back to a time before the planets even existed. Imagine no Earth, no Jupiter.
10x closeup of a very thin slice through a chondrule in the meteorite NWA 4560. Crystals of olivine (bright colors) and pyroxene (grays) are visible. Credit: Bob King
Many meteorites are jam-packed with tiny rocky spheres called chondrules. While their origin is still a topic of debate, chondrules (KON-drools) likely formed when blots of dust in the solar nebula were flash-heated by the young sun or perhaps by powerful bolts of static electricity. Sudden heating melted the motes into chondrules which quickly solidified. Later, chondrules agglomerated into larger bodies that ultimately grew into planets through mutual gravitational attraction. You can always count on gravity to get the job done. Oh, just so you know, meteorites are no more radioactive than many common Earth rocks. Both contain trace amounts of radioactive elements at trifling levels.
A stunning slice of the Glorieta pallasite meteorite cut thin enough to allow light to shine through its many olivine crystals. Click to see more of Mike’s photos. Credit: Mike Miller
Meteorites fall into three broad categories – irons (mostly metallic iron with smaller amounts of nickel), stones (composed of rocky silicates like olivine, pyroxene and plagioclase and iron-nickel metal in form of tiny flakes) and stony-irons (a mix of iron-nickel metal and silicates). The stony-irons are broadly subdivided into mesosiderites, chunky mixes of metal and rock, and pallasites.
Pallasites are the beauty queens of the meteorite world. They contain a mix of pure olivine crystals, better known as the semi-precious gemstone peridot, in a matrix of iron-nickel metal. Sliced and polished to a gleaming finish, a pallasite wouldn’t look out of place dangling from the neck of an Oscar winner. About 95% of all found or seen-to-fall meteorites are the stony variety, 4.4% are irons and 1% stony-irons.
A slice of the NWA 5205 meteorite from the Sahara Desert displays wall-to-wall chondrules. Credit: Bob King
Earth’s atmosphere is no friend to space rocks. Collecting them early prevents damage by the two things most responsible for keeping us alive: water and oxygen. Unless a meteorite lands in a dry desert environment like the Sahara or the “cold desert” of Antarctica, most are easy prey to the elements. I’ve seen meteorites collected and sliced open within a week after a fall that already show brown stains from rusting nickel-iron. Antarctica is off-limits to all but professional scientists, but thanks to amateur collectors’ efforts in the Sahara Desert, Oman and other regions, thousands of meteorites including some of the rarest types, have come to light in recent years.
Greg Hupe, renowned meteorite hunter, wears a big smile after finding a fresh 33.7g meteorite of the Mifflin, Wis. fall in 2010. Credit: Greg Hupe
Hunters share their finds with museums, universities and through outreach efforts in the schools. A portion of the material is sold to other collectors to finance future expeditions, pay for plane tickets and sit down to a good meal after the hunt. Finding a meteorite of your own is hard but rewarding work. If you’d like to have a go at it, here’s a basic checklist of qualities that separate space rocks from Earth rocks:
* Attracts a magnet. Most meteorites – even stony ones – contain iron.
* Most are covered with a matt-black, slightly bumpy fusion crust that colors dark brown with age. Look for hints of rounded chondrules or tiny bits of metal sticking up through the crust.
* Aerodynamic shape from its flight through the atmosphere, but be wary of stream-eroded rocks which appear superficially similar
* Some are dimpled with small thumbprint-like depressions called regmaglypts. These form when softer materials melt and stream away during atmospheric entry. Some meteorites also display hairline-thin, melted-rock flow lines rippling across their exteriors.
Beware of imitations! These are chunks of industrial slag that are often confused with real meteorites. Meteorites don’t have bubbly surfaces. Credit: Bob King
Should your rock passes the above tests, file off an edge and look inside. If the interior is pale with shining flecks of pure metal (not mineral crystals), your chances are looking better. But the only way to be certain of your find is to send off a piece to a meteorite expert or lab that does meteorite analysis. Industrial slag with its bubbly crust and dark, smooth volcanic rocks called basalts are the most commonly found meteor-wrongs. We imagine that meteorites must have bubbly crust like a cheese pizza; after all, they’ve been oven-baked by the atmosphere, right? Nope. Heating only happens in the outer millimeter or two and crusts are generally quite smooth.
Look Ma, no chondrules. NWA 3147 is an achondrite eucrite meteorite that probably originated from the asteroid Vesta. Credit: Bob King
Stony meteorites are further subdivided into two broad types – chondrites, like the Russian fall, and achondrites, so-called because they lack chondrules. Achondrites are igneous rocks formed from magma deep within an asteroid’s crust and lava flows on the surface. Some eucrites (YOU-crites), the most common type of achondrite, likely originated as fragments shot into space from impacts on Vesta. Measurements by NASA’s Dawn space mission, which orbited the asteroid from July 2011 to September 2012, have found great similarities between parts of Vesta’s crust and eucrites found on Earth.
We also have meteorites from Mars and the Moon. They got here the same way the rest of them did; long-ago impacts excavated crustal rocks and sent them flying into space. Since we’ve studied moon rocks brought back by the Apollo missions and sampled Mars atmosphere with a variety of landers, we can compare minerals and gases found inside potential moon and Mars meteorites to confirm their identity.
Some of the 53 chondrite meteorites found around Chebarkul Lake. Many are coated with a thin crust of melted and blackened rock heating by the atmosphere. The sign reads: Meteorite Chebarkul. Credit: AP / The Urals Federal University Press Service, Alexander Khlopotov
Scientists study space rocks for clues of the Solar System’s origin and evolution. For the many of us, they provide a refreshing “big picture” perspective on our place in the Universe. I love to watch eyes light up with I pass around meteorites in my community education astronomy classes. Meteorites are one of the few ways students can “touch” outer space and feel the awesome span of time that separates the origin of the Solar System and present day life.
US-European Asteroid Impact and Deflection mission – AIDA.
Planetary Defense is a concept very few people heard of or took seriously – that is until last week’s humongous and totally unexpected meteor explosion over Russia sent millions of frightened residents ducking for cover, followed just hours later by Earth’s uncomfortably close shave with the 45 meter (150 ft) wide asteroid named 2012 DA14.
This ‘Cosmic Coincidence’ of potentially catastrophic space rocks zooming around Earth is a wakeup call that underscores the need to learn much more about the ever present threat from the vast array of unknown celestial debris in close proximity to Earth and get serious about Planetary Defense from asteroid impacts.
The European Space Agency’s (ESA) proposed Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment mission, or AIDA, could significantly bolster both our basic knowledge about asteroids in our neighborhood and perhaps even begin testing Planetary Defense concepts and deflection strategies.
After two years of work, research teams from the US and Europe have selected the mission’s target – a so called ‘binary asteroid’ named Didymos – that AIDA will intercept and smash into at about the time of its closest approach to Earth in 2022 when it is just 11 million kilometers away.
“AIDA is not just an asteroid mission, it is also meant as a research platform open to all different mission users,” says Andres Galvez, ESA studies manager.
Asteroid Didymos could provide a great platform for a wide variety of research endeavors because it’s actually a complex two body system with a moon – and they orbit each other. The larger body is roughly 800 meters across, while the smaller one is about 150 meters wide.
Didymos with its Moon. Credit: ESA
So the smaller body is some 15 times bigger than the Russian meteor and 3 times the size of Asteroid 2012 DA14 which flew just 27,700 km (17,200 mi) above Earth’s surface on Feb. 15, 2013.
The low cost AIDA mission would be comprised of two spacecraft – a mother ship and a collider. Two ships for two targets.
The US collider is named the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART and would smash into the smaller body at about 6.25 km per second. The impact should change the pace at which the objects spin around each other.
ESA’s mothership is named Asteroid Impact Monitor, or AIM, and would carry out a detailed science survey of Didymos both before and after the violent collision.
“The project has value in many areas,” says Andy Cheng, AIDA lead at Johns Hopkins’ Applied Physics Laboratory, “from applied science and exploration to asteroid resource utilisation.” Cheng was a key member of NASA’s NEAR mission that first orbited and later landed on the near Earth Asteroid named Eros back in 2001.
Recall that back in 2005, NASA’s Deep Impact mission successfully lobbed a projectile into Comet Tempel 1 that unleashed a fiery explosion and spewing out vast quantities of material from the comet’s interior, including water and organics.
NASA’s Deep Impact images Comet Tempel 1 alive with light after colliding with the impactor spacecraft on July 4, 2005. ESA and NASA are now proposing the AIDA mission to smash into Asteroid Didymos. CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UMD
ESA has invited researchers to submit AIDA experiment proposals on a range of ideas including anything that deals with hypervelocity impacts, planetary science, planetary defense, human exploration or innovation in spacecraft operations. The deadline is 15 March.
“It is an exciting opportunity to do world-leading research of all kinds on a problem that is out of this world,” says Stephan Ulamec from the DLR German Aerospace Center. “And it helps us learn how to work together in international missions tackling the asteroid impact hazard.”
The Russian meteor exploded without warning in mid air with a force of nearly 500 kilotons of TNT, the equivalent of about 20–30 times the atomic bombs detonated at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Over 1200 people were injured in Russia’s Chelyabinsk region and some 4000 buildings were damaged at a cost exceeding tens of millions of dollars. A ground impact would have decimated cities like New York, Moscow or Beijing with millions likely killed.
ESA’s AIDA mission concept and NASA’s approved Osiris-REx asteroid sample return mission will begin the path to bolster our basic knowledge about asteroids and hopefully inform us on asteroid deflection and Planetary Defense strategies.
A billion years after the big bang, hydrogen atoms were mysteriously torn apart into a soup of ions. Credit: NASA/ESA/A. Felid (STScI)).
A metal-poor star located merely 190 light-years from the Sun is 14.46+-0.80 billion years old, which implies that the star is nearly as old as the Universe! Those results emerged from a new study led by Howard Bond. Such metal-poor stars are (super) important to astronomers because they set an independent lower limit for the age of the Universe, which can be used to corroborate age estimates inferred by other means.
In the past, analyses of globular clusters and the Hubble constant (expansion rate of the Universe) yielded vastly different ages for the Universe, and were offset by billions of years! Hence the importance of the star (designated HD 140283) studied by Bond and his coauthors.
“Within the errors, the age of HD 140283 does not conflict with the age of the Universe, 13.77 ± 0.06 billion years, based on the microwave background and Hubble constant, but it must have formed soon after the big bang.” the team noted.
Metal-poor stars can be used to constrain the age of the Universe because metal-content is typically a proxy for age. Heavier metals are generally formed in supernova explosions, which pollute the surrounding interstellar medium. Stars subsequently born from that medium are more enriched with metals than their predecessors, with each successive generation becoming increasingly enriched. Indeed, HD 140283 exhibits less than 1% the iron content of the Sun, which provides an indication of its sizable age.
HD 140283 had been used previously to constrain the age of the Universe, but uncertainties tied to its estimated distance (at that time) made the age determination somewhat imprecise. The team therefore decided to obtain a new and improved distance for HD 140283 using the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), namely via the trigonometric parallax approach. The distance uncertainty for HD 140283 was significantly reduced by comparison to existing estimates, thus resulting in a more precise age estimate for the star.
HD 140283 is estimated to be 14.46+-0.80 billion years old. On the y-axis is the star’s pseudo-luminosity, on the x-axis its temperature. Computed evolutionary tracks (solid lines ranging from 13.4 to 14.4 billion years) were applied to infer the age (image credit: adapted from Fig 1 in Bond et al. 2013 by D. Majaess, arXiv).
The team applied the latest evolutionary tracks (basically, computer models that trace a star’s luminosity and temperature evolution as a function of time) to HD 140283 and derived an age of 14.46+-0.80 billion years (see figure above). Yet the associated uncertainty could be further mitigated by increasing the sample size of (very) metal-poor stars with precise distances, in concert with the unending task of improving computer models employed to delineate a star’s evolutionary track. An average computed from that sample would provide a firm lower-limit for the age of the Universe. The reliability of the age determined is likewise contingent on accurately determining the sample’s metal content. However, we may not have to wait long, as Don VandenBerg (UVic) kindly relayed to Universe Today to expect, “an expanded article on HD 140283, and the other [similar] targets for which we have improved parallaxes [distances].”
As noted at the outset, analyses of globular clusters and the Hubble constant yielded vastly different ages for the Universe. Hence the motivation for the Bond et al. 2013 study, which aimed to determine an age for the metal-poor star HD 140283 that could be compared with existing age estimates for the Universe. The discrepant ages stemmed partly from uncertainties in the cosmic distance scale, as the determination of the Hubble constant relied on establishing (accurate) distances to galaxies. Historical estimates for the Hubble constant ranged from 50-100 km/s/Mpc, which defines an age spread for the Universe of ~10 billion years.
Age estimates for the Universe as inferred from globular clusters and the Hubble constant were previously in significant disagreement (image credit: NASA, R. Gilliland (STScI), D. Malin (AAO)).
The aforementioned spread in Hubble constant estimates was certainly unsatisfactory, and astronomers recognized that reliable results were needed. One of the key objectives envisioned for HST was to reduce uncertainties associated with the Hubble constant to <10%, thus providing an improved estimate for the age of the Universe. Present estimates for the Hubble constant, as tied to HST data, appear to span a smaller range (64-75 km/s/Mpc), with the mean implying an age near ~14 billion years.
Determining a reliable age for stars in globular clusters is likewise contingent on the availability of a reliable distance, and the team notes that “it is still unclear whether or not globular cluster ages are compatible with the age of the Universe [predicted from the Hubble constant and other means].” Globular clusters set a lower limit to the age of the Universe, and their age should be smaller than that inferred from the Hubble constant (& cosmological parameters).
In sum, the study reaffirms that there are old stars roaming the solar neighborhood which can be used to constrain the age of the Universe (~14 billion years). The Sun, by comparison, is ~4.5 billion years old.
The team’s findings will appear in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, and a preprint is available on arXiv. The coauthors on the study are E. Nelan, D. VandenBerg, G. Schaefer, and D. Harmer. The interested reader desiring complete information will find the following works pertinent: Pont et al. 1998, VandenBerg 2000, Freedman & Madore (2010), Tammann & Reindl 2012.
The Canadian asteroid-hunting NEOSSAT is among the fleet of satellites launched on Feb. 25, 2013.Credit: Canadian Space Agency
Early next week, an Indian rocket will launch into space carrying seven satellites on board. Among them will be a small but mighty asteroid-hunting telescope called NEOSSat. Built by the Canadian Space Agency, it will mainly focus on the Atira class of asteroids, which are made up of space rocks within Earth’s orbit, to figure out their size and distribution. The suitcase-sized NEOSSat will orbit approximately 800 kilometers above Earth, searching for near-Earth asteroids that are difficult to spot using ground-based telescopes.
Here’s a full rundown of what’s soaring to space on Monday (Feb. 25), if all goes to plan. Check out the launch from India at this link; it’s supposed to go into space around 7:25 a.m. Eastern (12:25 p.m. UTC).
– NEOSSat (Canada). Short for Near-Earth Object Surveillance Satellite, the satellite is actually split into two different missions. For half the time, it will be keeping a sharp eye out for asteroids that may swing by Earth at some point. The telescope will spend its other science mission watching satellites and space debris in orbit, to better track their movements.
“NEOSSat will discover many asteroids much faster than can be done from the ground alone,” said Alan Hildebrand of the University of Calgary. “Its most exciting result, however, will probably be discovering new targets for exploration by both manned and unmanned space missions.”
– SARAL (India/France). This is by far the largest satellite of the fleet; the rest of the mini sats listed below are hitching a ride to share launch costs. The satellite is supposed to take altimeter measurements of water and ice to watch the movement of waves and to add more data into climate change databases, among other objectives.
– CanX-3BRITE (Canada). The BRIght Target Explorer is billed as the smallest astronomical telescope, at just 8 inches (20 centimeters) across. Unlike bigger observatories that focus on very faint objects, BRITE will — as the name suggests — watch over brighter stars that we commonly use on Earth to connect the dots in constellations. Oddly enough, despite their prominence in our sky, these brighter stars are poorly studied, astronomers said.
– Sapphire (Canada). A military mission, this satellite will keep track of objects orbiting between 3,800 and 25,000 miles (6,000 and 40,000 kilometers) from Earth. The Canadians will share this information with their close military ally, the Americans.
– TUGSat-1 BRITE (Austria). This will be the first Austrian satellite. Like CanX-3, it will investigate bright stars by watching the changes in brightness using a technique called photometry (measuring visible light.) The satellite is equipped with a high-resolution CCD imager to take pictures.
– AAUSat 3 (Denmark). This satellite will test the capabilities of automatic identification of ships (AIS) technology, following the beacons that ships are required to send out with information about their cargo and destination. Most of the testing will focus on the water around Greenland.
– STRaND-1 (United Kingdom). This satellite is literally a screamer, as it will be broadcasting the sound of human screams into space to see if anyone nearby can hear them. (This is to test the oft-repeated phrase that in space, nobody can hear you scream.) Besides monitoring shrieks, the satellite makers will be testing how well the satellite is controlled by a smartphone. The acronym is short for Surrey Training, Research and Nanosatellite Demonstrator.
A young star is spotted firing jets of material out into space (ESA/Hubble & NASA. Acknowledgement: Gilles Chapdelaine)
Like very young humans, very young stars also tend to make a big mess out of the stuff around them — except in the case of stars it’s not crayon on the walls and Legos on the floor (ouch!) but rather huge blasts of superheated material that are launched from their poles far out into space.
The image above, acquired by the Hubble Space Telescope, shows one of these young stars caught in the act.
HL Tau is a relatively newborn star, formed “only” within the past several hundred thousand years. During that time it has scooped up vast amounts of gas and dust from the area around itself, forming a disc of hot, accelerated material that surrounds it. While most of this material eventually falls into the star, increasing its mass, some of it gets caught up in the star’s complex, rotating magnetic fields and is thrown out into space as high-speed jets.
As these jets plow thorough surrounding interstellar space they ram into nearby clouds of molecular gas, ionizing the material within them and causing them to glow brightly. These “shocks” are known as Herbig-Haro objects, after researchers George Herbig and Guillermo Haro who each discovered them independently in the early 1950s.
Detail of HH 151’s jet
In this Hubble image HH 151 is visible as a multiple-lobed cone of material fired away from HL Tau, with the leftover glows from previous outbursts dimly illuminating the rest of the scene.
The material within these jets can reach speeds of several hundred to a thousand kilometers a second. They can last anywhere from a few years to a few thousand years.
HH 151 is embedded within the larger star-forming region LDN 1551, located about 450 light-years away in the constellation Taurus. LDN 1551 is a stellar nursery full of dust, dark nebulae, newborn stars… and Herbig-Haro objects like HH 151.
(Hey, if baby stars are going to make a mess at least they can do it in the nursery.)
