Posted on by John Williams

Say Ahhh to Mars

Take a deep breath because this new panorama from Mars enthusiast Stu Atkinson will take it away.

“Anyway, a whole bunch of these came down, like I said, and to my delight they all linked up to form a big, biiiiiiiig panoramic mosaic,” said Stu on his blog “The Gale Gazette.” “And here it is. Obviously you’ll need to click on it to enlarge it… and I’ll warn you, it’s a big image, you can kiss the next few minutes goodbye because you’ll be panning around it for a while…”

Zoom in and you can see actual rocks. Click that little button at the right of the toolbar and Mars will take over your screen.

So far, Curiosity has rolled across a barely dusty plain in Gale Crater. Here’s a look of things to come. In black-and-white image from Curiosity, there appear to be big dunes to cross to get to the foothills of Aeolis Mons, or Mount Sharp.

A black-and-white but still breathtaking view of the dusty terrain between Curiosity’s current location and the foothills of Aeolis Mons, or Mount Sharp. Credit: NASA/JPL/Stu Atkinson

Curiosity has nearly finished robotic arm tests. Once complete, the rover will be able to touch and examine its first Mars rock.

“We’re about to drive some more and try to find the right rock to begin doing contact science with the arm,” said Jennifer Trosper, Curiosity mission manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif, in a press release.

This image from NASA’s Curiosity rover shows the open inlet where powered rock and soil samples will be funneled down for analysis. It was taken by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on Curiosity’s 36th Martian day, or sol, of operations on Mars (Sept. 11, 2012). MAHLI was about 8 inches (20 centimeters) away from the mouth of the Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument when it took the picture. The entrance of the funnel is about 1.4 inches (3.5 centimeters) in diameter. The mesh screen is about 2.3 inches (5.9 centimeters) deep. The mesh size is 0.04 inches (1 millimeter). Once the samples have gone down the funnel, CheMin will be shooting X-rays at the samples to identify and quantify the minerals.

Engineers and scientists use images like these to check out Curiosity’s instruments. This image is a composite of eight MAHLI pictures acquired at different focus positions and merged onboard the instrument before transmission to Earth; this is the first time the MAHLI performed this technique since arriving at Curiosity’s field site inside Gale Crater. The image also shows angular and rounded pebbles and sand that were deposited on the rover deck during landing on Aug. 5, 2012 PDT (Aug. 6, 2012 EDT).

Two science instruments, a camera called Mars Hand Lens Imager, or MAHLI, that can take close-up color images and a tool called Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) that can determine the elemental composition of a rock, also have passed tests. The instruments are mounted on a turret at the end of the robotic arm and can be placed in contact with target rocks. The adjustable focus MAHLI camera produced images this week of objects near and far; of the underbelly of Curiosity, across inlet ports and a penny that serves as a calibration target on the rover.

This close-up image shows tiny grains of Martian sand that settled on the penny that serves as a calibration target on NASA’s Curiosity rover. The larger grain under Abraham Lincoln’s ear is about 0.2 millimeters across. The grains are classified as fine to very fine sand.

The Mars Hand Lens Imagery (MAHLI) on the Curiosity rover taken by the Mast Camera on the 32nd Martian day, or sol, of operations on the surface. Engineers imaged MAHLI to inspect the dust cover and to ensure that the tool’s LED lights are functional. Scientists enhanced the image to show the scene as it would appear under Earth’s lighting conditions. This helps in analyzing the background terrain.

Check out more images from the Mars Science Laboratory teleconference.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Asteroid 2012 QG42 Zooms by Earth Tonight — Watch Live!

A newly found asteroid will zip past Earth tonight (Sept. 13/14). But don’t worry; at a distance of 2.85 million km (1.7 million miles) Asteroid 2012 QG42 will safely pass by Earth. But that’s close enough for this space rock to be considered a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (PHA) which means it may pose a threat in the future. This asteroid is between 190 to 430 meters (625 feet to 1,400 feet) wide and was first spotted by astronomers at the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona on August 26. NASA’s Near Earth Object Office said they will use this opportunity to observe the asteroid with radar – which is a great way to find out about the physical properties and orbits of asteroids.

Closest approach is on September 14 at 05:08 UT (1:08 am EDT)

Amateur and professional astronomers have already been keeping tabs on this asteroid. Above is a timelapse from Peter Lake. And a couple of different live feeds from telescopes will be available to watch the action.

The Virtual Telescope Project run by astronomer Gianluca Masi in Italy is already providing a live video stream at http://www.virtualtelescope.eu/webtv/

Additionally, the Slooh Space Camera night sky observing website will provide a live view of asteroid 2012 QG42’s closest approach in a webcast starting at 7 p.m. EDT (2300 GMT) on Sept. 13, offering views from at least one of its telescopes at its observatory in the Canary Islands, off the west coast of Africa. You can watch the Slooh webcast by visiting their website here: http://www.slooh.com

A view of Asteroid 2012 QG42 from the Siding Spring-Faulkes Telescope South on 2012, September 4, 2012, through a 2.0-m f/10.0 Ritchey-Chretien + CCD, a stack of 4×10-second exposures, taken with the asteroid at magnitude ~15.2 and moving at 4.35″/min. Credit: Ernesto Guido, Nick Howes & Giovanni Sostero.

Asteroid 2012 QG42’s flyby comes a few months after another recently discovered space rock, asteroid 2012 LZ1, made its closest approach to Earth just days it was discovered.

“Near-Earth objects have been whizzing past us lately, undetected until they have been practically on top of us,” said Bob Berman, Slooh commentator and Astronomy Magazine writer. “This illustrates the need for continued and improved monitoring for our own future safety. It is not a question of if, but when such an object will hit us, and how large and fast it may be going.”

Slooh will be using at least three of its online robotic telescopes to provide live image feeds as the celestial intruder makes its closest approach to Earth throughout the night.

At a magnitude of only 13-14, about the same faintness as the demoted ex-planet Pluto, the asteroid is a challenging target for backyard telescopes. To observe this kind of object requires large telescopes, equipped with ultra-sensitive CCD cameras, carefully set-up to point and track such a fast moving object — Slooh’s Half Meter Telescope at its Canary Islands Observatory is perfect for the task, the Slooh team said.

“To observe them — as we will do live on Thursday evening,” said Berman, “provides instruction and perhaps motivation to keep up our guard, as well as a sense of relief as it speeds safely past at a mere one fifteenth the distance to the nearest planets.”

With the radar images that NASA plans to take, the “echo”measurements can produce two-dimensional images that can provide spatial resolution as fine as a decameter if the echoes are strong enough. With enough data, astronomers can construct detailed three-dimensional models, define the rotation state precisely, and constrain the object’s internal density distribution.

So look for more information on this asteroid after it passes by Earth.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

The Moon from Earth As You’ve Never Seen it Before

The Morteus region on the Moon, taken from the suburbs of Paris, France. Credit: Thierry Legault. Used by permission.

Think this is an orbital view of the Moon? Guess again. Astrophotographer Thierry Legault took this image from his backyard in the suburbs of Paris, France! He’s taken a series of images of the Moon the past few nights that will blow your mind when you consider they were taken from Earth, within the confines of the metropolis of Paris (largest city in France, 5th largest in the EU, 20th largest in the world). Thierry used a Celestron C14 EdgeHD (356mm) and Skynyx2.2 camera. You definitely want to click on these images for the larger versions on Thierry’s website, and he suggests using a full-HD screen in subdued surroundings.

Additionally, Thierry also recently took images of Mercury and Uranus that include incredible detail.

Plato, Mons Pico and Montes Teneriffe as seen on Sept 8th, 2010, from the suburbs of Paris, France. Credit: Thierry Legault. Used by permission.

The clarity and detail are just tremendous. See all of Thierry’s recent lunar images at this link. He has a collection of twelve different images of various regions on the Moon and all are stunning.

Below are his images of Mercury and Uranus. In the image of Mercury, surface details are visible, and the cloud belts are even visible on the images of Uranus:

Incredibly detailed view of Mercury on August 23, 2012, as seen from Blancourt, France. Credit: Thierry Legault. Used by permission.

Uranus, as seen on September 9, 2012 from Blancourt, France. Credit: Thierry Legault. Used by permission.

Thanks, as always, to Thierry Legault for sharing his images and allowing us to post them. Check out his website: http://legault.perso.sfr.fr/ for more wonderful images and information about how he does his amazing astrophotography.

Posted on by John Williams

The Unusually Colossal Kepler Supernova

A composite image of Chandra X-ray data shows a rainbow of reds, yellows, green, blue and purple, from lower to higher energies. Optical data from the Digitized Sky Survey, shown in pale yellow and blue, offer a starry background for the image. Optical: DSS

An arc of hot gas that spewed from the Kepler Supernova offers tantalizing clues that the cataclysmic stellar explosion of 1604 was not only more powerful than previously thought but also farther away according to a recent study using Chandra X-ray Observatory data published in the September 1, 2012 edition of The Astrophysical Journal.

A new star appeared in the autumn skies of 1604. Although it was described by other astronomers, it was famous astronomer Johannes Kepler who thoroughly detailed the the second supernova sighting in a generation. The star shined more brilliant than Jupiter and remained visible – even during the day – over several weeks.

Look for Kepler’s Supernova at the foot of the constellation Ophiuchus, the Serpent Bearer, in visible light and you won’t see much. But the hot gas and dust glow brightly in the X-ray images from Chandra. Astronomers have long puzzled over Kepler’s Supernova. Astronomers now know the explosion that created the remnant was a Type Ia supernova. Supernovae of this class occur when a white dwarf, the white-hot dead core of a once Sun-like star, gains mass by either merging with another white dwarf or drawing gas onto its surface from a larger companion star until temperatures soar and thermonuclear processes spiral out of control resulting in a detonation that destroys the star.

Kepler’s Supernova is a bit different because the expanding debris cloud is shaped by gas and dust clouds throughout the area. Most Type Ia supernovae are symmetrical; nearly perfect expanding bubbles of material. A quick look at the Chandra image of the supernova and one notices the bright arc of material across the top edge of shockwave. In one model, a pre-supernova white dwarf and its companion were moving through a nebulous area creating a bow shock, like a boat plowing through water, in front. Another model suggests that the glowing arc is the edge of the supernova shockwave as it passes through an area of increasingly dense gas and dust. Both models push the distance of the supernova from the previously believed 13,000 light-years to more than 20,000 light-years from Earth, scientists say in the paper.

Scientists also found large amounts of iron by looking at the X-ray light from Chandra meaning that the explosion was far more powerful than an average Type Ia supernova. Astronomers have observed a similar Type Ia supernova using Chandra and an optical telescope in the Large Magellanic Cloud.

Kepler’s Supernova is the last Milky Way supernova visible to the naked eye. It was the second supernova to be observed in that generation after SN 1572 in Cassiopeia studied by the famous astronomer Tycho Brahe.

Source: http://chandra.harvard.edu

About the author: John Williams is owner of TerraZoom, a Colorado-based web development shop specializing in web mapping and online image zooms. He also writes the award-winning blog, StarryCritters, an interactive site devoted to looking at images from NASA’s Great Observatories and other sources in a different way. A former contributing editor for Final Frontier, his work has appeared in the Planetary Society Blog, Air & Space Smithsonian, Astronomy, Earth, MX Developer’s Journal, The Kansas City Star and many other newspapers and magazines. Follow John on Twitter @terrazoom.

Posted on by Paul Scott Anderson

Opportunity Rover Finds Intriguing New Spherules at Cape York

Mosaic image of the spherules in the rock outcrop on Cape York at Endeavour crater. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Stuart Atkinson

One of the most interesting discoveries made so far by the Opportunity rover on Mars has been the small round spherules or “blueberries” as they are commonly referred to, covering the ground at the rover’s landing site. Typically only a few millimetres across, some lie loose on the soil while others are imbedded in rock outcrops.

Analysis by Opportunity indicates that they are most likely a type of concretion, which are also found on Earth. These Martian concretions have been found to contain the mineral hematite, which explains its detection in this region from orbit, and one of the main reasons that the rover was sent to this location in Meridiani Planum in the first place. They are similar to the Moqui Marbles, iron-oxide concretions in the outcrops of Navajo Sanstone in Utah, which formed in groundwater.

Now, the rover (eight years later and still going!) has found what may be a different type of spherule. These ones generally resemble the previous ones, but are quite densely packed in an unusual rock outcrop that is on the eastern side of Cape York, the small island-like ledge on the rim of the huge Endeavour crater. With brittle-looking “fins” of material, the outcrop is an an area that from orbit has been identified as containing small clay deposits. There are also more substantial clay deposits farther south along Endeavour’s rim at the much larger Cape Tribulation, the next major destination of Opportunity.

Whether this outcrop actually has any clay in it isn’t known yet, but the examination of it by Opportunity continues at the time of this writing. Some spherules have apparently broken off the outcrop, exposing their inside structure. The new close-up images of the spherules were taken by the Microscopic Imager (MI) on the rover.

A portion of the rock outcrop. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Stuart Atkinson

What makes these spherules of interest is the possibility that they may be connected somehow to the clay deposits. Their dense concentration in the outcrop and the physical nature of the outcrop itself may indicate a different origin than the other spherules seen previously, as well as the fact that no hematite signature has been seen from orbit in this specific area (although there may be smaller amounts of hematite here as well). We will just have to wait for the results of the rover’s analysis to come back, but they should be interesting.

Opportunity is specifically looking for the clay deposits in this area, as they could have formed in non-acidic (or pH neutral) water as often happens on Earth. As we have seen in just the last few days though, the origin of Martian clays is itself still a subject of debate.

The whitish gypsum veins already seen at Cape York and examined by Opportunity also indicate the presence of liquid water at this location in the distant past. There are some interesting light-coloured veins in this same outcrop as well; whether they are also gypsum or something else isn’t known yet.

Thanks also to Stuart Atkinson for his excellent mosaic images made from the original Opportunity photos.

Posted on by Ken Kremer

Endeavour’s Cross-Country Final Piggyback Ride Arrives at Kennedy

SCA Arrival at KSC on Sept. 11 for Endeavour Ferry Flight to California on Sep. 17. Credit: Ken Kremer

The clock is rapidly ticking down on the final days of the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) as the proud home of NASA’s Space Shuttle Endeavour.

On Tuesday, Sept. 11, the modified 747 Jumbo Jet that will ferry shuttle Endeavour piggy-back style cross-country to her new eternal home in California arrived at KSC.

The Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, or SCA, touched down at the shuttle landing strip at KSC at about 5:05 p.m. EDT. See the gallery of approach and landing photos.

Image Caption: SCA Arrival at KSC on Sept. 11 for Endeavour Ferry Flight to California on Sep. 17. Credit: Ken Kremer

SCA Arrival at KSC on Sept. 11 for Endeavour Ferry Flight to California on Sep. 17. Credit: Ken Kremer

SCA Arrival Photo. Credit: Ken Kremer

The 747 landing marks the start of the process that culminates soon with the final airborne flight of the orbiter in the history of NASA’s Space Shuttle Program.

On Friday, Sept. 14 Endeavour will be hauled out of the iconic Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) for the final time and moved to the Shuttle Landing Facility where she will be hoisted and mated onto the back of the jumbo jet, designated NASA 905.

SCA Arrival Photo. Credit: Jeff Seibert/wiredforspace


SCA Arrival Photo. Credit: Jeff Seibert/wiredforspace

The mated pair are due to take off at first light on Monday, Sept.17 weather permitting on a multi day trip across America before landing in California.

The 747 crew will fly perform multiple, crowd pleasing and low flyovers of the space coast area, the KSC Visitor complex and the beaches – which will give every spectator a thrilling front row seat to this thrilling and bittersweet moment in space history as the shuttle takes flight for the very final time.

Watch for my upcoming tour report taking you inside the SCA Jumbo Jet.

And I will be on-site at KSC providing on-site Endeavour departure coverage for Universe Today readers through the dramatic takeoff on Sept 17.

Ken Kremer

………

SCA Arrival Photos Credit: Klaus Krueger

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Sputtering: How Mars May Have Lost Its Atmosphere

Artist depiction of the MAVEN spacecraft. Credit: NASA

Why is Mars cold and dry? While some recent studies hint that early Mars may have never been wet or warm, many scientists think that long ago, Mars once had a denser atmosphere that supported liquid water on the surface. If so, Mars might have had environmental conditions to support microbial life. However, for some reason, most of the Martian atmosphere was lost to space long ago and the thin wispy atmosphere no longer allows water to be stable at the surface. Scientists aren’t sure how or why this happened, but one way a planet can lose its atmosphere is through a process called ‘sputtering.’ In this process, atoms are knocked away from the atmosphere due to impacts from energetic particles.

Since Mars doesn’t have a strong intrinsic magnetic field, the atmosphere could have been eroded by interactions with the solar wind, and this video shows how that occurs. Also, the conditions in the early solar-system conditions enhanced the sputtering loss, and so the loss of Martian atmosphere could be caused by a complex set of mechanisms working simultaneously.

An upcoming mission could tell us what happened to Mars’ atmosphere. The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution spacecraft or MAVEN is equipped with eight different sensors designed to sort out what happened to the planet’s atmosphere.

MAVEN will be the first spacecraft ever to make direct measurements of the Martian atmosphere, and is the first mission to Mars specifically designed to help scientists understand the past – also the ongoing — escape of CO2 and other gases into space. MAVEN will orbit Mars for at least one Earth-year, about a half of a Martian year. MAVEN will provide information on how and how fast atmospheric gases are being lost to space today, and infer from those detailed studies what happened in the past.

Studying how the Martian atmosphere was lost to space can reveal clues about the impact that change had on the Martian climate, geologic, and geochemical conditions over time, all of which are important in understanding whether Mars had an environment able to support life.

The MAVEN will carry eight science instruments that will take measurements of the upper Martian atmosphere during one Earth year, equivalent to about half of a Martian year.

MAVEN is scheduled to launch in 2013, with a launch window from Nov. 18 to Dec 7, 2013. Mars Orbit Insertion will be in mid-September2014.

Posted on by Jason Major

50 Years Ago Today, We Chose to Go to the Moon

“We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people.”
– John F. Kennedy, September 12, 1962

On this day, 50 years ago, on a warm, sunny morning in Houston, Texas, President John F. Kennedy delivered a now-famous speech to 40,000 spectators at Rice University, a speech that supported the United States’s commitment to step beyond the boundaries of our world, to go beyond low-Earth orbit and eventually, successfully (and indeed before the decade was out!) land men on the Moon and return them safely to Earth.

It was an inspiring speech, both for the nation’s newly-developed space industry as well as for the entire country. (Would that we saw more overt dedication to space exploration from our leaders today!) This video from Rice University, itself celebrating its 100th anniversary in October, gives some insight into the events of that day in September of 1962, the small moments that led up to it and the large ones that followed.

From the Rice news release by Jade Boyd:

JFK’s 1962 moon speech still appeals 50 years later

Few moments in Rice’s history are as well known or oft remarked upon as the 1962 speech in which President John F. Kennedy boldly declared, “We choose to go to the moon!”

The speech marked a turning point for Rice, the city of Houston, the nation and the world. Globally, the space race played out against the backdrop of the Cold War, and in the U.S. the space program shared headlines with the Vietnam War and the struggle for civil rights. In Houston, NASA would pump more than $1 billion into the local economy in the 1960s and help the city blossom into the nation’s fourth-largest metropolis.

In a tribute to Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong this week, Rice alum Paul Burka ’63, executive editor of Texas Monthly magazine, published the verbatim text of Kennedy’s speech in his blog. Burka, who was at Rice Stadium that day, said the speech “speaks to the way Americans viewed the future in those days. It is a great speech, one that encapsulates all of recorded history and seeks to set it in the history of our own time. Unlike today’s politicians, Kennedy spoke to our best impulses as a nation, not our worst.”

Kennedy spoke at the stadium at 10 a.m. Sept. 12. It was a warm, sunny day, and fall classes were not yet under way. Rice’s incoming freshmen were on campus for orientation, but many of the estimated 40,000 spectators were Houston school children, said Rice Centennial Historian Melissa Kean.

Kennedy told the audience that the United States intended to take the lead in spaceflight, both to ensure that the Soviet Union did not base strategic weapons in space and because space exploration “is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in the race for space.”

The best-known line from the speech — “We choose to go to the moon!” — earned a thunderous ovation, in part because of Kennedy’s clever oratory. He played to the hometown crowd with the preceding line, “Why does Rice play Texas?” — a line that Kennedy jotted between the lines of the typed copy prepared by White House aide Ted Sorensen.

In its front-page coverage of the speech, the Rice Thresher made note of this line and others. The paper reported that the speech capped a two-day visit to Houston in which Kennedy toured facilities at the Manned Spacecraft Center (now Johnson Space Center), and the Thresher referred to the costly nature of the space program by citing the $5.4 billion annual NASA budget, a figure Kennedy also used in the speech.

The number impressed chemist Robert Curl ’54, one of many faculty members at the stadium.

“I came away in wonder that he was seriously proposing this,” said Curl, Rice’s Pitzer-Schlumberger Professor Emeritus of Natural Sciences and professor emeritus of chemistry. “It seemed like an enormous amount of money to spend on an exploration program. It was an impressive amount of money back then, and if you adjust for inflation, the Apollo program cost more than the LHC today.”

Curl said Kennedy’s vision paid off for NASA and Houston when Apollo 11 landed on the moon less than eight years later.

Another Rice faculty member in attendance was Ron Sass, fellow in global climate change at Rice’s Baker Institute for Public Policy and the Harry C. and Olga K. Wiess Professor Emeritus of Natural Sciences.

Sass and Curl each said Kennedy’s speech seemed no more remarkable at the time than the 1960 speech by President Eisenhower at Autry Court. Today, Eisenhower’s speech is largely forgotten, and Kennedy’s is still frequently cited in the news.

Sass said part of the enduring appeal of Kennedy’s speech is the magnitude of what he proposed, something Sass said he has come to appreciate more with age.

“It didn’t seem outlandish to me at the time,” Sass said. “I was young, and I thought you could do just about anything.”

“If this capsule history of our progress teaches us anything, it is that man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred. The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in the race for space.”
– President John F. Kennedy

For a full transcript of JFK’s speech, click here.

Video and inset image: Rice University. Apollo 11 liftoff: NASA

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

A Cosmic Flying Pencil — with Hair!

Pencil Nebula (NGC 2736) captured by ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. Credit: ESO

This odd-shaped cloud of gas and dust is nicknamed the Pencil Nebula, as the brightest part resembles a pencil. But this pencil looks like it has hair, flying off into the breeze! But that’s no simple breeze: these glowing filaments in NGC 2736 were created by a supernova explosion that took place about 11,000 years ago, and they are moving through the interstellar medium at about 650,000 kilometers (403,000 miles) per hour.

NGC 2736, also called Herschel’s Ray, as it was discovered by British astronomer John Herschel in 1835, is a small part of a supernova remnant in the southern constellation of Vela (The Sails). This detailed new image was taken by the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile. A wider view, below, shows the full view of the Pencil Nebula’s place in the region.

Wide-field view of the sky around the Pencil Nebula. Credit: ESO

The Vela supernova remnant is an expanding shell of gas that originated from the supernova explosion. Initially the shock wave was moving at millions of kilometers per hour, but as it expanded through space it plowed through the gas between the stars, which has slowed it considerably and created strangely shaped folds of nebulosity. The Pencil Nebula is the brightest part of this huge shell.

This new image shows large, wispy filamentary structures, smaller bright knots of gas and patches of diffuse gas. The nebula’s luminous appearance comes from dense gas regions that have been struck by the supernova shock wave. As the shock wave travels through space, it rams into the interstellar material. At first, the gas was heated to millions of degrees, but it then subsequently cooled down and is still giving off the faint glow that was captured in the new image.

By looking at the different colors of the nebula, astronomers have been able to map the temperature of the gas. Some regions are still so hot that the emission is dominated by ionized oxygen atoms, which glow blue in the picture. Other cooler regions are seen glowing red, due to emission from hydrogen.

The Pencil Nebula measures about 0.75 light-years across. ESO says that remarkably, even at its distance of approximately 800 light-years from Earth, at the speed it is traveling means that it will noticeably change its position relative to the background stars within a human lifetime.

The video below zooms in to the Pencil Nebula:

Source: ESO

Posted on by Jenny Winder

A Jodrell Odyssey – Part 2 – The Observatory

Caption: The original Jodrell Bank Control Desk with view of the Lovell telescope. Credit: Anthony Holloway.

Last week we took a look at the public face of the Jodrell Bank Observatory, the Discovery Centre. But this week we get a behind-the-scenes tour of the heart of this impressive and historic observatory.

Dr. Tim O’Brien is Associate Director of the Jodrell Bank Observatory and a Reader in Astrophysics in the School of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Manchester. As we begin our tour of the telescopes, control room and computers he explains the role of Jodrell in the historical development of radio astronomy. The Lovell telescope at the heart of the observatory, is today a Grade 1 listed building as well as being at the cutting edge of current, and indeed future, scientific research.

Jodrell Bank was originally the site of the university Botany Department’s testing ground. The Observatory was founded by Sir Bernard Lovell when interference from trams disrupted the research into cosmic rays that he was carrying out in the School of Physics at the University’s main campus in the city. Sir Bernard moved his radar equipment to the site in 1945 to try to find radio echoes from the ionized trails of cosmic rays but instead founded a whole new area of research into meteors.

The Lovell telescope (originally the Mark I) was the largest steerable radio telescope in the world (76.2m in diameter) and the only one able to track the launch rocket of Sputnik 1 in 1957; it is still the third largest in the world. Apart from tracking and receiving data from such probes as Pioneer 5 in 1960 and Luna 9 in 1966, a continual programme of upgrades enabled the scope to measure distances to the Moon and Venus and research pulsars, astrophysical masers, quasars and gravitational lenses. It has provided the most extensive studies of pulsars in binary star systems and discovered the first pulsar in a globular cluster. It detected the first gravitational lens and has also been used for SETI observations. Now on its third reflecting surface, a continual programme of upgrades has made it more powerful than ever.

In 1964 the Mark II elliptical radio telescope was completed. It stands in the middle of a field, dwarfing the small observing dome that house Tim’s optical teaching telescope and surrounded by post war huts named after the research that was done in them, so one is called Radiant (after meteors) and another Moon. With a major axis of 38.1m and minor axis of 25.4m the Mark II is mainly used alongside the Lovell as part of e-MERLIN (Multi Element Radio Linked Interferometer Network), the UK’s national radio astronomy facility run from Jodrell. This comprises up to 7 radio scopes: the Lovell, Mark II, Cambridge, Defford, Knockin, Darnhall and Pickmere. e-MERLIN has the longest baseline (separation of telescopes) of 217 Km and a resolution of better than 50 milliarcseconds, which compares with the Hubble Space Telescope but at radio rather than visible wavelengths. The Manchester branch of Jodrell also hosts the UK Regional Centre Node for ALMA (the Atacama Large Millimetre/sub-millimetre Array) in Chile.

The “42ft “ telescope stands by the entrance to the main building that houses the control room. The telescopes main task is to continually monitor the Pulsar at the heart of the Crab Nebula (all the time it is above the horizon). Tim at this point showed off his impressive party trick of mathematically demonstrating that the scope was indeed pointing at the Crab Pulsar by calculating from the pulsar’s Right Ascension ( 05h 34m 31.97s ) and Declination (+22d 00m 52.1s) where it would be in the sky at the time. It has collected over 30 years of data which represents 4% of the pulsar’s age, giving vital clues about how pulsars evolve.

Caption: Dr Tim O’Brien talking to Prof. Brian Cox and Dara O’Biain in the Control Room during Stargazing Live Credit: The University of Manchester

Tim was kind enough to allow me inside the Control Room, not often seen by general visitors to the site, though it plays host to BBC TV’s annual Stargazing Live series, hosted by Prof. Brian Cox and Dara O’Briain. It perfectly illustrates Jodrell historical and current role in radio astronomy. It is a wonderfully British mix of state of the art computer technology, original 1950’s equipment and all points between. There are massive flat screen monitors in one corner that display & can control each of the scopes, an atomic clock alongside wood and glass cabinets housing twitching needles that trace out air pressure, wind speed and temperature variations on rolls or discs of paper. In the centre of the room is the original horseshoe shaped control desk from the 1950s.

The vast window overlooks the Lovell scope which was ‘parked’ during my visit whilst the reflecting bowl was being given a new coat of paint, pointing straight up to the zenith with the brakes applied. If the winds increase during an observation the dish has to be raised and moved to a target higher in the sky. If the winds reach 45 miles per hour the dish has to be parked in this upright position. Luckily this doesn’t happen too often. A heavy accumulation of snow could distort the shape of the dish so it has to be tipped out. The control room is manned 24 hours a day 365 days of the year. The whole room has a very satisfying amount of blinking lights, dials, knobs and switches. As Tim rightly says “You need plenty of flashing lights.”

Jodrell houses a number of general-purpose and specialised computing clusters. Since the 1960s the Lovell and Mark II have been regularly involved with VLBI (Very Long Baseline Interferometry) which includes telescopes across Europe, China and Africa and can also be linked to the VLBA (Very Long Baseline Array) in America to create a telescope the size of the planet, able to produce the sharpest images in all astronomy. The VLBI room houses a huge array of receiver and recording equipment. This includes a GPS receiver, accurate to 0.5 millisec, affectionately known as the Totally Accurate Clock, though they have newer ones with 25 nanosecond accuracy and their maser atomic clock is accurate to 1 part in 10^15 or 1 second every 30 million years! Names are quite the thing at Jodrell, five signal generators, used to convert frequencies in the receiver are neatly labelled Sharon, Tracy, Nigel, Kevin and Darren.

Caption: The Mark II telescope at Jodrell Bank. Credit: The Author

Jodrell pioneered the connection of radio telescopes across hundreds of kilometres and constructed the dedicated optical fibre network that connects all seven e-MERLIN telescopes. Tim paused for effect in front of an impressively large and heavy-duty blue door that was adorned with numerous dramatic warning signs and hummed ominously, with his hand on a sturdy operating lever. This was the home of the e-MERLIN correlator, the focus of all seven telescopes and the heart of the network, it has to be carefully shielded so it doesn’t interfere with the radio scopes on site. Tim tapped in the entry code, pulled the lever and the gentle hum became a deafening roar as we entered a metal room, kept cold with air-conditioning. There are massive cylinders of gas in the corner ready to fill the room in case of fire. In the centre is a smoked glass cabinet, the size of a large wardrobe containing the computer hub with festoons of yellow optic fibre cables linked to the telescopes and bringing as much data into the room as travels on the rest of the UK internet combined.

Jodrell has about 40 staff on the site with over 100 more working from the University’s Alan Turing Building in Manchester. The group’s list of research programmes covers all aspects of astronomy, from studying the Big Bang to discovering exoplanets. They have used pulsars to test Einstein’s theory of gravity for which they were awarded the EC Descartes Research Prize. They developed low-noise amplifiers for ESA’s Planck spacecraft which will report its cosmology results next year. With a European network of radio telescopes they are using pulsars to attempt the first detection of gravitational waves predicted by Einstein.

Looking to the future, work is now underway alongside the main Control Building on the construction of a new building to house the International Project Office for SKA (the Square Kilometre Array) to be sited in Africa and Australia, that when completed in around 2024, will be the World’s largest radio telescope for the 21st century. As we are leaving I ask Tim what would be on his wish list for the future (all astronomers have a wish list don’t they?) He would like to see a system like SKA extended to cover the Northern hemisphere and a future telescope which could make real-time, whole-sky observations, instantly targeting transient objects such as the novae that are the main focus of his own research. I think Sir Bernard would approve.

Find out more about the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics