An enormous tree-shaped prominence spreads its “branches” tens of thousands of miles above the Sun’s photosphere in this image, a section of a photo acquired in hydrogen alpha (Ha) by Alan Friedman last week from his backyard in Buffalo, NY.
Writes Alan on his blog, “gotta love a sunny day in November!”
Check out the full image — along with an idea of just how big this “tree” is — after the jump:
Taken through a special solar telescope and a Grasshopper CCD camera, Alan’s gorgeous solar photos show the Sun in a wavelength absorbed by atomic hydrogen — most present in the photosphere and chromosphere — thus revealing the complex and dynamic activity of the Sun’s “surface”.
Here’s the full image:
The dark circle at upper left (added by me) shows approximately the scale size of Earth (12,756 km, or about 7,926 miles diameter.) As you can see, that particular prominence is easily six times that in altitude, and spreads out many more times wider… and this isn’t even a particularly large prominence! As far as solar activity goes, this is a non-event. (Not like what was seen by SDO on Nov. 16!)
Regardless, it makes for an impressive backyard photo.
Check out more of Alan’s photos on his blog and on his website, AvertedImagination.com. Many of his photos, some of which have been shown at galleries across the U.S., are available as limited-edition prints. (Alan also runs a greeting card print studio.) I’ve found that he usually shares at least a couple of fantastic solar shots every month, if not more.
Artist’s impression of the surface of Makemake, a dwarf planet beyond Pluto (ESO/L. Calçada/Nick Risinger)
It turns out there’s no air up there: the distant dwarf planet Makemake is surprisingly lacking in an atmosphere, according to findings made by astronomers using telescopes at ESO’s La Silla and Paranal observatories.
An international team of astronomers used the mountaintop telescopes to observe Makemake as it passed in front of a faint background star in April 2011, a brief stellar occultation that lasted only about a minute. By watching how the starlight was blotted out by Makemake, measurements could be made of the dwarf planet’s size, mass and atmosphere — or, in this case, its lack thereof… a finding which surprised some scientists.
“As Makemake passed in front of the star and blocked it out, the star disappeared and reappeared very abruptly, rather than fading and brightening gradually. This means that the little dwarf planet has no significant atmosphere,” said team leader José Luis Ortiz of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía in Spain. “It was thought that Makemake had a good chance of having developed an atmosphere — that it has no sign of one at all shows just how much we have yet to learn about these mysterious bodies.”
First discovered in 2005, Makemake is an icy dwarf planet about 2/3 the diameter of Pluto — and 19 AU further from the Sun (but not nearly as far as the larger Eris, which is over 96 AU away.) It was thought that Makemake might have a tenuous, seasonal atmosphere similar to what has been found on Pluto, but it now appears that it does not… at least not in any large-scale, global form.
Due to its small size, sheer distance and apparent lack of moons, making scientific observations of Makemake has been a challenge for astronomers. The April 2011 occultation allowed measurements to be made — even if only for a minute — that weren’t possible before, including first-ever calculations of the dwarf planet’s density and albedo.
As it turns out, Makemake’s albedo is about 0.77 — comparable to that of dirty snow… a reflectivity higher than Pluto’s but lower than that of Eris. Its density is estimated to be 1.7 ± 0.3 g/cm³, indicating a composition of mostly ice with some rock.
“Our new observations have greatly improved our knowledge of one of the biggest [icy bodies], Makemake — we will be able to use this information as we explore the intriguing objects in this region of space further,” said Ortiz.
The team’s research was presented in a paper “Albedo and atmospheric constraints of dwarf planet Makemake from a stellar occultation” to appear in the November 22, 2012 issue of the journal Nature.
Inset image: Makemake imaged by Hubble in 2006. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Image caption: Curiosity scoops repeatedly into this Martian soil at windblown ripple dubbed ‘Rocknest’, shown in this mosaic, and delivered samples to the SAM chemistry instrument, on the robots deck, to search for any signatures of organic molecules – the building blocks of life. This color mosaic was stitched together from hi-res color images taken by the robots 34 mm Mastcam camera on Sols 93 and 74. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS/Ken Kremer / Marco Di Lorenzo
Has Curiosity made a ‘Historic’ science discovery with the SAM (Sample Analysis at Mars) chemistry instrument that analyzes Martian soil (see mosaic above) and is designed to detect organic molecules – the building blocks of life? Has Curiosity unambiguously and directly detected the first signatures of organics on Mars ? Is an announcement imminent?
Speculation is rampant that NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has made an earth-shaking discovery ‘for the history books’ , following a radio interview by NPR’s Joe Palca with the mission’s Principal Investigator, John Grotzinger, while sitting in his office at Caltech last week. NPR reported the story on Tuesday, Nov. 20.
“We’ve got a briefing on Monday [Dec 3] where we’ll discuss our results,” John Grotzinger told me.
Grotzinger will describe the SAM data and their potentially pivotal implications at the annual meeting of the AGU (American Geophysical Union) being held from Dec 3-7 in San Francisco. Many papers and results from the first three months of the Curiosity Mars Science Lab (MSL) mission will be presented at the AGU meeting.
“The science team is analyzing data from SAM’s soil inspection, but not ready to discuss yet,” JPL Press spokesman Guy Webster informed me today.
It’s the Thanksgiving holiday period here in the US so the answers will wait a tad longer.
Image Caption: Curiosity Self Portrait with Mount Sharp at Rocknest ripple in Gale Crater. Curiosity used the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera on the robotic arm to image herself and her target destination Mount Sharp in the background.SAM chemistry suite located on robot’s deck near Mast. To the left is the northern rim wall of Gale Crater. This color panoramic mosaic was assembled from raw images snapped on Sol 85 (Nov. 1, 2012). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo
Curiosity had been collecting and analyzing Martian soil samples for more than a month at a windblown ripple called ‘Rocknest’. So far Curiosity has scooped into the Martian soil five times and delivered a single sample to SAM and two to the adjacent CheMin chemistry instrument.
“This data is gonna be one for the history books,” Grotzinger went on to say to NPR. “It’s looking really good.”
JPL Press spokesman Guy Webster advises caution and patience while damping down euphoria. He told me that the team is still trying to interpret and understand the analysis from SAM and seeking to clarify their meaning before making any premature conclusions.
“This is no change from the policy with past results from the mission, such as SAM’s atmosphere analysis or CheMin’s soil sample analysis: The scientists want to gain confidence in the findings before taking them outside of the science team,” Webster informed me.
“As for history books, the whole mission is for the history books. John was delighted about the quality and range of information coming in from SAM during the day a reporter happened to be sitting in John’s office last week. He has been similarly delighted by results at other points during the mission so far,” Webster said.
Organic molecules are the basis for life as we know it, and they have never before been discovered on the Red Planet’s surface. I am an organic chemist and to me the detection of organics on Mars would indeed be “Earth-shaking”. But just a finding of organics alone does NOT mean we discovered life. Organics are a prerequisite to life. Life requires finding much more complex molecules, like amino acids and far more beyond that.
Furthermore, finding signatures of organics so close to the surface might be a surprising result when one recalls that highly destructive ionizing radiation bombards the Martian topsoil 24/7.
So, it’s wise for the MSL team to be abundantly cautious and recheck their results multiple times. They wisely waited for further data before prematurely announcing the discovery of Martian methane. Initial SAM atmospheric measurements detecting methane turned out to be false – they actually originated from contamination by residual traces of Florida air trapped in the interior chambers of SAM and were carried all the way to Mars.
If organics are detected in the dusty dunes at Rocknest, the implications could be vast and potentially point to their widespread distribution across Gale crater and beyond.
As renowned astronomer Carl Sagan once said; ‘Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
Stay tuned.
Learn more about Curiosity’s groundbreaking discoveries, SAM and NASA missions at my upcoming free public presentations:
on Dec. 6 held at Brookdale Community College, Monmouth Museum, Lincroft, NJ at 8 PM – hosted by STAR astronomy
Dec 6: Free Public lecture titled “Atlantis, The Premature End of America’s Shuttle Program and What’s Beyond for NASA” including Curiosity, Orion, SpaceX and more by Ken Kremer at Brookdale Community College/Monmouth Museum and STAR Astronomy club in Lincroft, NJ at 8 PM
Dec 11: Free Public lecture titled “Curiosity and the Search for Life on Mars (in 3 D)” and more by Ken Kremer at Princeton University and the Amateur Astronomers Association of Princeton (AAAP) in Princeton, NJ at 8 PM.
Curiosity's SAM instrument intake tubes (NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)
Portrait of Curiosity assembled from raw images acquired with MAHLI on Sol 85 (Nov. 11. 2012 UTC) Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems. Composite by Jason Major.
Yesterday Mars Science Laboratory principal investigator John Grotzinger set the entire space science world abuzz with a tantalizing promise of “earthshaking” news on the horizon — literally “one for the history books,” as he put it in an interview with NPR. It seems one of Curiosity’s main science tools, the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument, has discovered… something… within recently-gathered samples, possibly in windblown-material scooped at a site called “Rocknest” earlier this month.
For now, though, the MSL team is keeping quiet on any more details until they’re reasonably sure they know what they have. Speculations abound — some serious, some not — but the bottom line is we’ll all have to wait for the official news to be released. In the meantime, here’s your chance to learn a little more about a fascinating high-tech Mars-tasting gadget called SAM.
About the size of a window air conditioning unit, the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument is contained within the front section of NASA’s Curiosity rover. Actually a suite of three instruments, SAM consists of a Gas Chromatograph (GC), a Quadrupole Mass Spectrometer (QMS), and a Tunable Laser Spectrometer (TLS), as well as systems that manipulate and process samples.
Annotated photo of SAM with side covers removed
Although mostly contained entirely within Curiosity, SAM does have two small inlet tubes that allow access for soil samples gathered with the rover’s arm, as well as inlets for atmospheric gases.
On Earth all of these different instruments would fill a lab. But to fit them all inside the Curiosity, which is about the size of a Mini Cooper (but only half the mass), they were painstakingly reduced in size to fit within a single rectangular structure about 40 kg (88 lbs).
Here’s how SAM’s components work:
The Gas Chromatograph (GC)
The GC has six complementary chromatographic columns. The GC assembly sorts, measures, and identifies gases it separates from mixtures of gases by pushing the mixed gases through long, coiled tubes with a stream of helium gas. It sorts the gas molecules by weight: they emerge from the tube in order from lightest (out first) to heaviest (out last). Once the gases are sorted, the GC can direct quantities of the separated gases into the QMS or TLS for further analysis.
The Quadrupole Mass Spectrometer (QMS)
The QMS identifies gases by the molecular weight and electrical charge of their ionized states. It fires high-speed electrons at the molecules, breaking them into fragments. It then sorts the fragments by weight with AC and DC electric fields. The spectra generated by the QMS detector uniquely identify the molecules in the gases.
The Tunable Laser Spectrometer (TLS)
The TLS uses absorption of light at specific wavelengths to measure concentrations and isotope ratios of specific chemicals important to life: methane, carbon dioxide, and water vapor. Isotopes are variants of the same element with different atomic weights, and their ratios can provide information about Mars’ geologic — and possibly biologic — history.
The QMS and the GC can operate together in a GCMS mode for separation and definitive identification of organic compounds. The TLS obtains precise isotope ratios for C and O in carbon dioxide and measures trace levels of methane and its carbon isotope.
In addition to these three analytical instruments SAM also has mechanical support devices: a sample manipulation system (SMS) and a Chemical Separation and Processing Laboratory (CSPL). The CSPL includes high conductance and micro valves, gas manifolds with heaters and temperature monitors, chemical and mechanical pumps, carrier gas reservoirs and regulators, pressure monitors, pyrolysis ovens, and chemical scrubbers and getters.
The SMS has a wheel of 74 small cups where soil samples gathered by Curiosity’s robotic arm are prepared for analysis. 59 are quartz cups that are small ovens which can be heated to very high temperatures to pull gases from the powdered samples. 9 sealed cups are filled with chemical solvents for lower-temperature experiments designed to search for organic compounds. The other 9 cups contain calibration materials.
With this suite of precision tools SAM is specifically designed to search for evidence of a habitable environment on Mars, whether past or present. As it takes up over half of the rover’s scientific payload area, you could say that Curiosity itself is specifically designed to carry SAM around Mars (although we won’t tell that to the other instruments!)
Knowing only that the “exciting” news from Grotzinger and his team is coming from data gathered by SAM, one could safely assume that it has something to do with a discovery of organic chemistry of some sort… but we’ll all have to wait a few more weeks to know for sure. Still, as that is the primary objective of MSL and Curiosity is barely over 100 Martian days into its mission, even the smallest hint of big news has everyone’s attention.
Like any big institution, NASA would love to trumpet a major finding, especially at a time when budget decisions are being made.
(And for an even more in-depth look at how SAM works, read Emily Lakdawalla’s article on The Planetary Society’s blog here.)
The result of an international effort between scientists and engineers, SAM was built and tested at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Paul Mahaffy is SAM’s Principal Investigator.
UPDATE: Apparently the NPR article that kickstarted all the rumors of big discoveries from Curiosity was a big misunderstanding… while data from the rover is “one for the history books,” according to P.I. John Grotzinger, that pertained to the mission as a whole — not any individual finding. Still, news from the MSL mission will be presented on Dec. 3 at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco.
“Rumors and speculation that there are major new findings from the mission at this early stage are incorrect… At this point in the mission, the instruments on the rover have not detected any definitive evidence of Martian organics.” – JPL news release, Nov. 29, 2012
For those of you who’d like to brush up on your Astronomy knowledge, or never took Astronomy 102, CosmoQuest has a new online course offering for you!
Following the success of the initial 101-level course (CQX 001: Solar System Science), the newest course offering is “CQX 003: Galaxies and Galaxy Clusters”. Just like the previous course offering, CQX003 is an 8-session, 4-week course, which will explore galaxies, galaxy clusters, and brief introduction to cosmology.
“Planets are cool and all, but I’m an extragalactic girl at heart. There is just NO comparison for studying the way that billions of stars interact in some of the largest gravitationally bound structures in the universe.” said Nicole Gugliucci (CosmoQuest) via the CosmoQuest Blog. “This class will cover all of that as well as what active galaxies are all about, another one of my favorite subjects. Then it will round up with a brief introduction to cosmology which is truly the study of EVERYTHING.”
Once again, the course will be a hybrid online course with lectures taking place via Google+ hangouts, with course assignments and homework assigned via Moodle. The instructor will once again be yours truly, Ray Sanders. For those not familiar with me, I’m a research assistant at Arizona State University, and have written for Universe Today in the past. I also blog when I have time over at “Dear Astronomer”.
In addition to my lectures, there may also be “guest” appearances from astronomers Dr. Pamela Gay, and Dr. Nicole Gugliucci.
“I love my solar system and its amazing planets and moons, but this class will give you a chance to expand your understanding beyond the solar system and explore the limits of what we know about the universe.” adds Georgia Bracey (CosmoQuest). “Beginning back when the idea of other galaxies was still a matter of debate, you’ll journey forward to examine our present-day understanding of how galaxies are formed and evolve, including a look at some of the hot topics in astronomy like dark matter, dark energy, active galactic nuclei, and the geometry of the universe.”
CosmoQuest has additional courses in the works for students interested in Cosmology, Data Reduction, Geology/Planetary Science, and more.
The cost for the class is $240, and the class is limited to 8 participants, with the possibility for an additional 5 participants. CQX003: Galaxies and Galaxy Clusters begins on November 26th 2012. More information, and a sign up link is at: http://cosmoquest.org/Classes
Don’t miss this opportunity to combine the convenience of an online class with the lively interaction of a small group of astronomers and astronomy enthusiasts!
After NASA was forced to back out of the joint ExoMars mission with the European Space Agency due to budget constraints, it looked like the exciting rover-orbiter mission might not happen. However, ESA went elsewhere looking for help, and has now announced a tentative cooperative arrangement with Russia’s space agency where Roscosmos will provide the two launch vehicles for multi-vehicle European-Russian ExoMars missions in 2016 and 2018.
Plans are for the mission to have an orbiter for launch in 2016, plus an ESA-built rover mission in 2018. Roscosmos will provide Proton rockets for the launches of the two missions, as well as providing an instrument for both the orbiter and the rover as well as overseeing the landing of the rover. The orbiter would study Mars’ atmosphere and surface and the six-wheeled vehicle would look for signs of past or present life.
The orbiter would also provide telecommunications for the rover.
Frederic Nordland, ESA’s director of international relations, said the agreement would be finalized before the end of the year and that its principal characteristics are already known and accepted by both sides. The announcement was made at a meeting in Naples, Italy this week of ESA’s space leaders from the 10 different nations that comprise the organization. The leaders are discussing future objectives and priorities for Europe in space, with the aim of shaping the development of Europe’s space capability.
During the meeting, Poland officially joined ESA, becoming the 20th member of the European space organization. It joins the other member states of Austria, Belgium, Britain, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.
ExoMars is now expected to cost ESA about 1.2 billion euros. So far, 850 million euros has been committed by the participating members, but officials remain confident the remaining funds can be raised.
ESA officials also said Russia’s Proton rocket might be used to launch Europe’s Juice mission to Jupiter in 2022, saving ESA’s science program some 170 million euros.
This new video shows exactly how the Moon will look to us on Earth during the entire year of 2013. While the Moon always keeps the same face to us, it’s not exactly the same face. Because of the tilt in its axis and shape of its orbit, we see the Moon from slightly different angles over the course of a month, and the year. Normally, we don’t see how the Moon “wobbles” in its orbit or as it moves closer and farther away from Earth. But seeing the entire year compressed down to 5 minutes, we can see the changes in libration, and axis tilt — as well as the most noticeable changes, the Moon’s phases.
In this new video from Goddard’s Scientific Visualization Studio, each frame represents one hour. In addition, as an improvement from their previous Moon visualization , this also shows other relevant information, including Moon orbit position, subearth and subsolar points, distance from the Earth.
At the SVS website, there is more information, including a Dial-A-Moon, where you can put in a certain date and find out how the Moon will look on a specific day.
“Thanks to Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, we now have excellent terrain maps of the Moon that can tell us the elevation at any point on the surface,” said Ernie Wright, who put this new video together. “I use those maps to make the Moon sphere bumpy in all the right places. That allows the rendering software to realistically simulate all the shadows and the ragged terminator (the dividing line between day and night).”
And if you’d like to have a handy bring-along app to find out anywhere what they Moon will be doing, check out Universe Today’s Phases of the Moon app, – available on iPhone or Android.
Universe Today writer John Williams is a busy guy. Not only does he write about space and astronomy, he also has his own graphic design and web company called TerraZoom, is the curator of the award winning Starry Critters website, and is a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador. A couple of years ago John created a card game called Hubble Star Cards, and the game won a Hubble Gold Star award in 2010 from NASA and the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) for its inspiring use of the amazing imagery from the Hubble Space Telescope. As the description says, “the vivid, stunning images motivate and engage children of all ages to learn about objects in space.”
Hubble Star Cards are now available in a high-quality, stunningly beautiful printed card set.
The cards are a just a bit larger than a normal card deck, at 3 inches by 5×5 inches, so the beautiful Hubble images are bigger and better.
They sell for $24.95, but Universe Today readers can get 15% off using UNIVERSE as a coupon code. Check them out at the Hubblestarcards.com website.
“Hubble has a unique ability to draw the public into exploring space,” says John. “Through beautiful images of planets, star clusters, pillars of dust, and galaxies, Hubble provides a crucial stepping stone in the process of scientific inquiry. Hubble Star Cards create a hand-held experience that opens the door to new questions and answers. You can actually hold the Universe, all of creation, in the palm of your hand and have fun learning about it at the same time.”
The game includes 60 cards categorized by planets, planetary nebulae, supernovae remnants, nebulae, star clusters and galaxies. The cards include an image, a basic description, a key to the type of object, location in the sky, constellation, and distance from Earth. Possible games include War, Go Fish, Sorting, Distances and Matching. Although targeted for students 8 and older, preschoolers have played many of the games just by using the amazing imagery as a guide.
Before she left the International Space Station this weekend, former ISS commander Suni Williams recorded an extensive guided tour of the orbital laboratory. The tour includes scenes of each of the station’s modules and research facilities with a running narrative by Williams of the work that has taken place and which is ongoing aboard the orbital outpost.
Suni Williams, Expedition 33 commander, works in the Quest airlock of the International Space Station. Credit: NASA
Scientists around the globe are fascinated by and continuously hunt for life outside of Earth, as well as in extreme conditions on Earth. Projects such as SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, scan the skies hunting for alien signals. The Kepler spacecraft increasingly adds to our tally of known extrasolar planets, buoying our prospects for habitable ones, and here on Earth, scientists like Dr. Robert Ballard have helped discover extremophile organisms living on hydrothermal vents deep within Earth’s oceans, once thought inhospitable to life. Life, it turns out, is possible under somewhat varying conditions. Does it exist elsewhere in our solar system or beyond? Astrobiologists believe the answer is “yes.”
Then, recently, the astronomy world was given a present in the form of a confirmed rogue exoplanet. Rogue planets are believed to exist, but only recently were researchers able to observe this particular drifting planet, homeless because it is not orbiting a star. With additional review, scientists might determine this world is moving through space with a group of young stars, the AB Doradus Moving Group. The planet is located approximately 100 light years from us.
Enter the world of science fiction. The plausible line between science and science fiction meet on a plane mixing reality and conjecture. In the new novel Cry from a Silent Planet, author John Rowland walks the tight rope of that line. An alien civilization lives underground because their dying star has scorched the surface of their home planet. Making matters worse, an incoming rogue black star appears to be on a gravitational collision course with them. This is the recipe for the riveting start of Cry from a Silent Planet.
Highly intelligent and advanced aliens are in a furtive quest to save their population from inevitable doom. On Earth, the year is 2024. Unlikely protagonist, Matt Slater, becomes more involved than he ever imagined or thought he was capable of. In the midst of struggling to save his life’s work and his marriage, he and his family find themselves stumbling upon a mysterious black door, in the middle of nowhere in Wyoming. Slater’s handiwork alters the door key and binds him to it, making him the only human being who can unlock it. The secrets behind that door begin the reader’s journey to take along with Slater.
At its heart, this science fiction novel touches upon significant science theories and future tech with sometimes alternate causations and results. You can tell the author has a physics and astronomy background by his playful manipulation of reality. The novel raises both ethical and moral imperatives. Some characters are spot on with their behavior. Others miss a beat with the author’s attempt at American Midwestern vernacular or military and political swagger; the language feels contrived on some pages. In an attempt to give some characters depth, the added drama feels awkward at times. However, once involved in this book, the reader is led on a journey with one welcomed surprise after another. Not your typical “humans meet aliens” story, Cry from a Silent Planet poses a giant “what if” scenario that will blow the lid off your notion of Earth’s past all the way back to the time when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.
This book provides an emotional look at how civilizations and their citizens behave in various situations. As human beings on Earth, we are known to have faults, many faults; how we treat each other and our planet is not always stellar. We believe the Earth is our domain and we are the most intelligent creatures inhabiting it. The culmination of this novel is that we are not alone in the Universe and how are we going to go on from here.
