The Northern Lights over Kilmany, Scotland reflect in a body of water. Credit: Corinne Mills
Wow, what a gorgeous view of the aurora in Scotland over the weekend, taken by astrophotographer Corine Mills! This image garnered dozens of rave reviews on Flickr, and rightly so. A solar wind stream struck Earth’s magnetic field over the weekend, igniting a G1-class geomagnetic storm that lasted more than 15 hours, according to SpaceWeather.com. Auroras with rare pulsations and vibrant colors were sighted in the northern latitudes. Below is an almost psychedelic “purple haze” aurora as seen over Saskatchewan, Canada.
Pilot Felix Baumgartner of Austria jumps out of the capsule during the final manned flight for Red Bull Stratos in Roswell, New Mexico, USA on October 14, 2012. Credit: Red Bull Stratos.
Daredevil Felix Baumgartner broke the sound barrier today during a skydive from the stratosphere, from approximately 38.5 km (128,000 ft, 24.24 miles) above the Earth’s surface. Baumgartner reached Mach 1.24 or 1,342 km/h (833.9 miles per hour), going faster than the speed of sound. Here is a gallery of official images and video from Red Bull Stratos. You can find out more in our full article which provides all the details.
The crane that holds the capsule as the balloon ascends. Credit: Red Bull Stratos.
The crane follows the balloon with the capsule at the flight line during the launch of Baumgartner’s flight. Credit: Red Bull Stratos.
Baumgartner seen on a screen at mission control center while he is still inside the capsule, while he talks to Joe Kittinger (back of his head is visible). Kittinger previously held the record for longest and fastest freefall before Baumgartner’s jump today. Credit: Red Bull Stratos.
Screens at the mission control shows Felix Baumgartner of Austria as he jumps from the capsule. Credit: Red Bull Stratos.
The view from a camera inside the capsule as Baumgartner jumps. Credit: Red Bull Stratos.
Baumgartner moves from his seat to the ledge outside the capsule. Credit: Red Bull Stratos.
Baumgartner floats down to Earth on a parachute. Credit: Red Bull Stratos.
Just before Baumgartner lands. Credit: Red Bull Stratos.
Baumgartner lands on his feet and celebrates. Credit: Red Bull Stratos.
Baumgartner falls to his knees after landing successfully. Credit Red Bull Stratos.
Felix Baumgartner celebrates after successfully completing his record-breaking jump. Credit: Red Bull Stratos.
Baumgartner after his successful jump. Credit: Red Bull Stratos.
Baumgartner and Technical Project Director Art Thompson celebrate together after the successful jump. Credit: Red Bull Stratos.
Baumgartner with members of his family following the successful jump. Credit: Red Bull Stratos.
Baumgartner, Kittinger and the Red Bull Stratos team at a press conference following the jump. Credit: Red Bull
Night vision under a full Moon at Wallaman Falls in Queensland, Australia. Credit and copyright: Thierry Legault. Used by permission.
Astrophotographer extraordinaire Thierry Legault traveled to Australia for the Transit of Venus this past June, but he didn’t stop with just taking incredible images of the Transit and then head home to France. He’s just published an wonderful collection of night sky images he took from his time in Australia, including this beautifully stunning image of a ‘Moonbow’ over Wallaman Falls, located in between Townsville and Cairns in north Queensland. If you’ve not seen a Moonbow before, you’re probably not alone. Many times, they are only visible in long exposure photographs, as the Moonlight effect is usually too faint for human eyes to discern. But the Moonlight on the water mist from the falls creates a Moonbow.
“The gibbous Moon makes a Moonbow over the falls while a bright meteor crosses the Milky Way,” Thierry wrote to Universe Today, sharing his new images. “Other visitors were sleeping in the camping area, but not me!”
Felix Baumgartner sinks to his knees and raises his arms after his successful dive from the stratosphere on Oct. 14, 2012. Credit: Red Bull Stratos.
Aerospace history was made as Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner set several records during an incredible heart-pounding jump from the stratosphere where he became the first person to travel faster than the speed of sound with just his body. Baumgartner was lifted aloft in a specially made capsule attached to one of the largest helium balloons ever used for human balloon flights. He jumped from approximately 39 km (39,045 meters, 128,100 feet, 24.26 miles) above the Earth, and now has the record for the highest jump, fastest jump and highest human balloon flight. He also broke the speed of sound, hitting an incredible Mach 1.24 or 1,342 km/h (833.9 miles per hour), in his dizzying descent. The previous record holder for three of those records was retired Air Force Col. Joe Kittinger, 84, — Baumgartner’s trainer, mentor and CAPCOM for the jump — who relayed words of encouragement throughout the ascent and helped Baumgartner go through his egress checklist. The only record of Kittinger’s that Baumgartner didn’t break was for the longest time in freefall. Baumgartner dropped for 4 minutes 20 seconds.
See a gallery of images below of the jump:
(This article was updated at 1:32 UTC on Oct. 15, 2012 to reflect verified data from Red Bull Stratos).
Baumgartner could be heard breathing heavily, but regularly, as he stepped onto the ledge of the capsule.
Just before he jumped, looking at the view of Earth below, Baumgartner said, “I wish the world could see what I can see. Sometimes you have to go really high to see how small you are.” He then dove feetfirst from the edge of the capsule.
Infrared cameras first picked up a small white dot falling through the sky, and soon the outline of Baumgartner was visible. Then, Baumgartner entered a spin, but he quickly was able to stabilize into a perfect freefall, bringing cheers from the Mission Control team from Red Bull Stratos.
Baumgartner could be heard talking during the entire freefall, but his words couldn’t always be made out. At one point he said his visor was fogging up, which had been a problem for much of the ascent inside the capsule. For some time during the ascent, there was discussion of aborting the jump because of the visor problem. But after much discussion and debate between Baumgartner and his team, the decision was made to go ahead with the jump.
As images appeared of Baumgartner falling under a fully deployed parachute, Kittinger radioed to his protege, “I couldn’t have done it better myself!”
While the goal of the jump was mainly to break records, the Red Bull Stratos team said today’s successful jump was a “big win for science,” as it collected valuable data to help improve safety for space travel and may even help with enabling high altitude bailouts from spacecraft that may be in danger.
Kittinger’s previous records were: Freefall from highest altitude: 31 km; fastest freefall: 988 km/h (614 mph); and longest freefall: 4 minutes 36 seconds, and so Kittinger still holds that record. The previous record for highest manned balloon flight was 34.66 km made by Victor Prather and Malcolm Ross in 1961.
All images are screenshots from the Red Bull Stratos webcast feed.
Screenshot of the webcast feed just minutes before Baumgartner jumped from the capsule.
Looking over Baumgartner’s shoulder inside the capsule as he goes through his checklist before the jump
Joe Kittinger and Felix Baumgartner go through the egress checklist to prepare for the jump.
Baumgartner’s view from the capsule just before he jumped.
Infrared view of Baumgartner during his freefall.
First non-infrared view of Baumgartner under his parachute.
Another view of Baumgartner under his unfurled parachute.
Baumgartner gets closer to the ground.
Baumgartner’s family cheers after they see the parachute has successfully deployed.
Part science experiment, part publicity stunt, part life-long ambition, the Red Bull Stratos mission features skydiver Felix Baumgartner attempting to break the speed of sound with his body in a record-setting freefall from the stratosphere. Watch live in the feed above. A high-tech capsule that will bring Baumgartner to 36,500 meters (120,000 feet) above Earth, via a stratospheric balloon.
Northern lights over the Jökulsárlón glacial lake in Iceland on September 19, 2012. Credit: Jean-Luc Dauvergne
Iceland is a land of stark beauty and extremes in both weather and landscape. But its also a place to see some of the most spectacular views of northern lights. Jean-Luc Dauvergne a journalist from Ciel Et Espace, a French astronomy magazine, recently traveled to Iceland and said in an email to Universe Today, “I think that this incredible place may be one of the most beautiful landscapes in the world to do photography with northern lights.” After seeing a view like this one at the Jökulsárlón Lagoon, on September 19, 2012 at the height of auroral activity, Dauvergne will likely return to Iceland again. “The weather was nearly perfect. And I saw northern lights every night What luck!”
He sent us another image of northern lights taken beside a US Navy DC3 “Dakota” that crashed in Icelandic South Coast in bad weather in 1973, which is located in the Solheimasondur area at the foot of the famous Eyjafjallajökull volcano that erupted in 2010, along with a video he created from his travels to Iceland.
Northern lights in Iceland on Sept. 20, 2012. Credit: Jean-Luc Dauvergne
The travel bureau from Iceland should consider using this video that Dauvergne created in order to advertise the great experiences one can have in this country. First in the video is Gulfoss, the “Golden Falls”, a 70 meter wide waterfall; then a geyser, named “Geysir” which the biggest geyser in the world after those in Yellowstone National Park in the US; then is the Vatnajökull area , the biggest glacier in Europe. “The most impressive place is the Jökulsárlón where the glacier arrive in a lake that communicates with the ocean,” said Dauvergne
XMM-Newton observation of the core of the very massive cluster Cyg OB2 located in the constellation of Cygnus, 4700 light-years from Earth. Credit: ESA/G. Rauw
Two massive stars racing in orbit around each other have had their colliding stellar winds X-rayed for the first time, thanks to the combined efforts of ESA’s XMM-Newton and NASA’s Swift space telescopes. Stellar winds, pushed away from a massive star’s surface by its intense light, can have a profound influence on their environment. In some locations, they may trigger the collapse of surrounding clouds of gas and dust to form new stars. In others, they may blast the clouds away before they have the chance to get started.
Now, XMM-Newton and Swift have found a ‘Rosetta stone’ for such winds in a binary system known as Cyg OB2 #9, located in the Cygnus star-forming region, where the winds from two massive stars orbiting around each other collide at high speeds.
Cyg OB2 #9 remained a puzzle for many years. Its peculiar radio emission could only be explained if the object was not a single star but two, a hypothesis that was confirmed in 2008. At the time of the discovery, however, there was no direct evidence for the winds from the two stars colliding, even though the X-ray signature of such a phenomenon was expected.
This signature could only be found by tracking the stars as they neared the closest point on their 2.4-year orbit around each other, an opportunity that presented itself between June and July 2011.
As the space telescopes looked on, the fierce stellar winds slammed together at speeds of several million kilometres per hour, generating hot plasma at a million degrees which then shone brightly in X-rays.
The telescopes recorded a four-fold increase in energy compared with the normal X-ray emission seen when the stars were further apart on their elliptical orbit.
“This is the first time that we have found clear evidence for colliding winds in this system,” says Yael Nazé of the Université de Liège, Belgium, and lead author of the paper describing the results reported in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
“We only have a few other examples of winds in binary systems crashing together, but this one example can really be considered an archetype for this phenomenon.”
Unlike the handful of other colliding wind systems, the style of the collision in Cyg OB2 #9 remains the same throughout the stars’ orbit, despite the increase in intensity as the two winds meet.
“In other examples the collision is turbulent; the winds of one star might crash onto the other when they are at their closest, causing a sudden drop in X-ray emission,” says Dr Nazé.
“But in the Cyg OB2 #9 system there is no such observation, so we can consider it the first ‘simple’ example that has been discovered – that really is the key to developing better models to help understand the characteristics of these powerful stellar winds. ”
“This particular binary system represents an important stepping stone in our understanding of stellar wind collisions and their associated emissions, and could only be achieved by tracking the two stars orbiting around each other with X-ray telescopes,” adds ESA’s XMM-Newton project scientist Norbert Schartel.
Space Shuttle Endeavour on the streets of Los Angeles. Credit: Scott Maxwell
Why did Space Shuttle Endeavour cross the road? To get to the California Science Center, of course! About midnight local time, Endeavour began a 19-km (12-mile), two-day trip down the streets of LA as it moves from the Los Angeles International Airport to the its permanent museum home at the California Science Center. Thousands of people took the opportunity to see the rare sight of a space shuttle traveling down a street and waited in the predawn darkness to get a glimpse of the slow-moving shuttle — which topped out at speeds of 3.2 km/h (2 mph) instead of its usual 28,000 km/h (17,500 mph) when the space shuttle was in Earth orbit. Lots of onlookers snapped photos, including Scott Maxwell from JPL, one of the Mars rover drivers, who generously shared a few of his pictures, as its not everyday we get to see such sights. “Astonishingly, I think Endeavour was even slower than the rovers,” Scott said via Twitter. “Not when in motion, but it took *lots* of breaks.”
See more images from Scott and NASA below:
“Maybe this panorama will give you a sense of the excited, bustling crowd around Endeavour,” said photographer Scott Maxwell.
See Scott’s Twitter feed for more images and comments about his early-morning shuttle-watching experience.
There were lots of Tweets about Endeavour’s journey, but this might be the best picture showing the shuttle in amongst the regular goings on in LA:
The space shuttle Endeavour is seen atop the Over Land Transporter (OLT) after exiting the Los Angeles International Airport on its way to its new home at the California Science Center in Los Angeles, Friday, Oct. 12, 2012. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls
The driver of the Over Land Transporter, who uses a joy stick to control the shuttle, is seen as he maneuvers the space shuttle Endeavour on the streets of Los Angeles. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls.
To make room for the five-story-tall shuttle and its 24-meter (78-foot) wingspan, about 400 trees were chopped down, overhead wires were raised, and steel plates were laid down to protect the streets and underground utilities.
Endeavour will mostly travel on wide boulevards. The cost of the move is estimated at $10 million.
Big Bird has been grabbing the headlines lately, and its time for another Muppet to get a little face time. So, here’s Cookie Monster’s face, plastered across the surface of Mercury. Well, it looks like it, anyway. This is an image from the MESSENGER spacecraft, orbiting Mercury, and the folks at Goddard Space Flight Center suggested this superposition of younger craters on older craters (in this case two smaller and shadowed craters that look like googly eyes placed on the rim of an older crater) appears to resemble everyone’s favorite blue, Sesame Street, cookie-loving monster.
While most of us can enjoy this image for the pareidolia effect of seeing a familiar face (and start salivating about cookies), what scientists are looking at here are craters. Specifically in this image, the Law of Superposition allows scientists to determine which surface features pre- and postdate others, leading to a better understanding of the geological history of different regions of Mercury’s surface.
Or, in Sesame Street lingo, which comes first?
Also, C is for crater.
The MESSENGER spacecraft acquired this image on August 29, 2012.
Image credit: Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington. Click image for access to higher resolution versions.
Artist depiction of Huygens landing on Titan. Credit: ESA
Artist concept of the Huygens probe landing on the surface of Titan. Credit: ESA
Even though the Huygens probe landed on Titan back in 2005 and transmitted data for only about 90 minutes after touchdown, scientists are still able to eke information out about Titan from the mission, squeezing all they can from the data. The latest information comes from reconstructing the way the probe landed, and an international group of scientists say the probe “bounced, slid and wobbled” after touching down on Saturn’s moon, which provides insight into the nature of the Titan’s surface.
“A spike in the acceleration data suggests that during the first wobble, the probe likely encountered a pebble protruding by around 2 cm from the surface of Titan, and may have even pushed it into the ground, suggesting that the surface had a consistency of soft, damp sand,” describes Dr. Stefan Schröder of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, lead author of a paper recently published in Planetary and Space Science.
An animation of the landing is below.
Schröder and his team were able to reconstruct the landing by analyzing data from different instruments that were active during the impact, and in particular they looked for changes in the acceleration experienced by the probe.
The instrument data were compared with results from computer simulations and a drop test using a model of Huygens designed to replicate the landing.
The scientists think that Huygens landed in something similar to a flood plain on Earth, but that it was dry at the time. The analysis reveals that, on first contact with Titan’s surface, Huygens dug a hole 12 cm deep, before bouncing out onto a flat surface.
The probe, tilted by about 10 degrees in the direction of motion, then slid 30–40 cm across the surface.
It slowed due to friction with the surface and, upon coming to its final resting place, wobbled back and forth five times. Motion subsided about 10 seconds after touchdown.
Earlier studies of data from Huygens determined the surface of Titan to be quite soft. The new study goes one step farther, the team said, to demonstrate that if something put little pressure on the surface, the surface was hard, but if an object put more pressure on the surface, it sank in significantly.
“It is like snow that has been frozen on top,” said Erich Karkoschka, a co-author at the University of Arizona, Tucson. “If you walk carefully, you can walk as on a solid surface, but if you step on the snow a little too hard, you break in very deeply.”
Had the probe impacted a wet, mud-like substance, its instruments would have recorded a “splat” with no further indication of bouncing or sliding. The surface must have therefore been soft enough to allow the probe to make a sizable depression, but hard enough to support Huygens rocking back and forth.
This raw image was returned by the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer camera onboard the European Space Agency’s Huygens probe after the probe descended through the atmosphere of Titan. It shows the surface of Titan with ice blocks strewn around. Credit: ESA/NASA/University of Arizona
“We also see in the Huygens landing data evidence of a ‘fluffy’ dust-like material – most likely organic aerosols that are known to drizzle out of the Titan atmosphere – being thrown up into the atmosphere and suspended there for around four seconds after the impact,” said Schröder.
Since the dust was easily lifted, it was most likely dry, suggesting that there had not been any rain of liquid ethane or methane for some time prior to the landing.
“You don’t get rain very often on Titan,” said Karkoschka, explaining that heavy downpours of liquid methane may occur decades or centuries apart. “When they do occur, they carve the channels we see in the pictures Huygens recorded as it approached the surface. The top layer at the landing site was completely dry, suggesting it hadn’t rained in a long time,” he added.
Karkoschka said that when Huygens landed, its downward-shining lamp warmed up the ground and caused methane to evaporate,” Karkoschka explained. “That tells us that just below the surface, the ground probably was wet.”
It has been suggested in earlier studies that the Huygens probe landed near the edge of one of Titan’s hydrocarbon lakes. Several hundred lakes and seas have been observed with the Cassini orbiter’s radar instruments, but with surface temperatures of minus 179 degrees Celsius (minus 290 degrees Fahrenheit), Titan does not have bodies of water. Instead, liquid hydrocarbons in the form of methane and ethane are present on the moon’s surface, with complex carbons making up dunes and other features on the surface.
