Posted on by Jason Major

JPL Wants To FINESSE Info From Exoplanets

FINESSE would observe exoplanets from a position in low-Earth orbit (NASA/JPL-Caltech)


Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s proposed FINESSE space telescope may not hunt for exoplanets, but it will find out what they’re made of.

Part of NASA’s Explorers program, FINESSE — which stands for (take a deep breath) Fast INfrared Exoplanet Spectroscopy Survey Explorer — would gather spectroscopic data from 200 known exoplanets over a two-year period, helping scientists to determine the composition of their atmospheres, surfaces, and even their weather.

While huge discoveries have been made by both ground- and space-based telescopes like Kepler and Corot over the past several years, identifying thousands of exoplanetary candidates, FINESSE will be the first mission dedicated to finding out what the atmospheres are like on worlds outside our solar system.

Using a sensitive spectrograph covering 0.7-5.0 microns, FINESSE will be able to identify molecular bands of water, methane, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and other molecules. Its sensitivity and stability will even allow it to detect the differences between an exoplanet’s day and night side, allowing wind flow and weather to be determined.

Known as an Offner spectrometer, the design of the FINESSE detector is derived from the Moon Mineralogy Mapper instrument, which was designed at JPL and flew to the Moon aboard India’s Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft.

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Touted as “the next step” in exoplanetary exploration, FINESSE is proposed for launch in October 2016.

Learn more at JPL’s FINESSE site here.

“FINESSE is the next step in humankind’s journey of understanding our place in the cosmos.”

– Mark Swain, principal investigator for FINESSE

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Watch How Life Recovers from Devastation

If a portion of Earth underwent a major cataclysm, how long would it take for life to recover? The 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens is giving scientists an unprecedented opportunity to witness a recovery from devastation, as the eruption leveled the surrounding forest, blasted away hundreds of meters of the mountain’s summit, and claimed 57 human lives. Landsat satellites have tracked the what has happened on the mountain, and how the forest was reclaimed — all on its own. This video shows a timelapse of the recovery, with annual images from 1979-2011 from the Landsat satellites, which acquired the images seen here between 1979 and 2011.
Continue reading “Watch How Life Recovers from Devastation”

Posted on by Jason Major

An Anti-Gravity User Interface

Mice? Where we're going, we don't NEED mice.

Researcher Jinha Lee at MIT has developed a remarkable way to interact with computers — via a programmable, intelligent and gravity-defying metal ball.

The concept, called “ZeroN”, is demonstrated in the video above. Fascinating!

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Using magnets and computer-controlled motors, ZeroN hovers in mid-air between two control units. Its movements can be pre-programmed or it can react to objects in its environment, and it can apparently “learn” new movements as it is interacted with.

Lee demonstrates how it could be used to control camera positions in 3D applications, and (my favorite) model the motions of planets and stars.

“ZeroN is about liberating materials from the constraints of space and time by blending the physical and digital world,” Lee states on his website.

ZeroN is still in its development stages and obviously needs refining (the 3D camera isn’t much use if the ball is wobbling) but the premise is interesting. I can see something like this being, at the very least, a mesmerizing interactive display for museums, classrooms and multimedia presentations.

Of course, with a little ingenuity a whole world of applications could open up for such a zero-g interface. (I’m sure Tony Stark already has a dozen on pre-order!)

Read more about this on Co.DESIGN (tip of the electromagnetic hat to PopSci.)

Posted on by Jason Major

How Do The Biggest Telescopes Work?

The VLT's laser beam creates a "false star" for adaptive optics calibration. (ESO/Y. Beletsky)

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Located high in the mountains of Chile’s Atacama Desert, the enormous telescopes of the European Southern Observatory have been providing astronomers with unprecedented views of the night sky for 50 years. ESO’s suite of telescopes take advantage of the cold, clear air over the Atacama, which is one of the driest places on Earth. But as clear as it is, there is still some turbulence and variations to contend with — especially when peering billions of light-years out into the Universe.

So how do they do it?

Thanks to adaptive optics and advanced laser calibration, ESO can negate the effects of atmospheric turbulence, bringing the distant Universe into focus. It’s an impressive orchestration of innovation and engineering and the ESO team has put together a video to show us how it’s done.

We all love the images (and the science) so here’s a look behind the scenes!

Video: ESO

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Stunning Timelapse of Planet Earth from Elektro-L

We’ve shared the images and a previous timelapse of Earth’s northern hemisphere, but now here’s a breath-taking timelapse of the entire blue (and green!) marble as seen from Russia’s Elektro-L weather-forecasting satellite, orbiting at a geostationary height of about 36,000 km (22,300 miles). This new video was created by James Drake using some of the largest whole disk images of our planet, as each image is 121 megapixels, and the resolution is 1 kilometer per pixel. The satellite’s wide-angle Multichannel Scanning Unit (MSU) takes images every 15-30 minutes, showing the same viewpoint of Earth across progressive times of the day and the images are in four different wavelengths of light — three visible, and one infrared.

It’s a beautiful view of home.
Continue reading “Stunning Timelapse of Planet Earth from Elektro-L”

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

New Crew Arrives at Space Station

The crew aboard the International Space Station is now back to a compliment of six. New Expedition 31 crew members Gennady Padalka, Joe Acaba and Sergei Revin docked and have now been welcomed on board the ISS after the hatches opened Thursday at 08:10 UTC (4:10 a.m. EDT). They docked to the Poisk module at 4:36 UTC (12:36 a.m. EDT) after a two day journey that began in Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan aboard a Soyuz TMA-04M spacecraft. While they’ll be in space for about six months, the new crew members will get right to work preparing for the arrival of the first commercial cargo craft to the ISS. SpaceX’s Dragon is scheduled to launch at 08:55 UTC (4:55 a.m. EDT) this Saturday, May 19, with the Canadarm2 grappling Dragon on May 22, berthing it to the Harmony node.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Meet MIRI, Infrared Camera for Webb Telescope

MIRI, ( Mid InfraRed Instrument ), during ambient temperature alignment testing in RAL Space's clean rooms. Image Credit: STFC/RAL Space

Our friend Will Gater from the BBC’s Sky At Night Magazine had the chance to get a behind-the-scenes tour of the facility that is building the Mid-Infrared Instrument on the long-awaited James Webb Space Telescope. You’ll meet MIRI inside clean room at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the UK, before it is packaged up and sent over to NASA Goddard in the US. You’ll also hear from some of the scientists involved in the project.

MIRI is expected to make important contributions to all four of the primary science themes for JWST: 1.) discovery of the “first light”; 2.) assembly of galaxies: history of star formation, growth of black holes, production of heavy elements; 3.) how stars and planetary systems form; and 4.) evolution of planetary systems and conditions for life.

Lead image caption: MIRI, ( Mid InfraRed Instrument ), during ambient temperature alignment testing in RAL Space’s clean rooms. Image Credit: STFC/RAL Space

Posted on by Jenny Winder

Venus Transit — There’s an App for That!

Transit of Venus by NASA's TRACE spacecraft Image credit: NASA/LMSAL
Transit of Venus in 2004 by NASA's TRACE spacecraft. Image credit: NASA/LMSAL

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There have been only six Venus transits since the invention of the telescope in the early 17th century. It was not until 1761 that the transit of Venus on June 6th was observed as part of the first ever international scientific observation project, instigated by Edmond Halley. Astronomers across the globe viewed the transit and the differences in their observations were used to triangulate the distance to Venus and, using Kepler’s laws, the distance to the Sun, the other planets and the size of the Solar System. Though the method used has not changed in the 251 years since, the equipment most certainly has.

For this transit, we have technology on our side.

In previous Venus Transits, expeditions were sent out far and wide and the 1761 transit was eventually recorded by 120 individual astronomers from 62 locations across Europe, America, Asia and Africa. They used only the simple telescopes of the day, fitted with dense filters, a pendulum clock to time the transit and quadrants to determine their exact latitude and local time. It is hardly surprising that their observations varied widely. Their calculations put the Sun’s distance between 130 and 158 million kilometres.

Transits happen in pairs. After 121 years a transit occurs followed 8 years later by another, then 105 years pass before the next pair and then the pattern repeats. Prior to the transit of 2004 the most recent transit was in 1882. There were none during the whole of the 20th century! We now approach the last chance to view a transit in our lifetime, the next will not occur until 2117.

Luckily, we’ve got some newly developed technology to help make this the most-observed transit ever!

Astronomers Without Borders are part of the Transit of Venus Project to get as many people around the world to observe the transit and to participate in a collective experiment to measure the Sun’s distance. To this end they have produced the Venus Transit phone app, available to download free for both iTunes and Android. Once downloaded you can start to practice timing the interior contacts of ingress and egress using a simulation of the transit. This is not as easy as it seems, as the black drop effect makes precise timing tricky so practice is definitely recommended. The app will tell you how far out you are so that you can perfect your timing and it will also predict times of contact based on your location together with times of sunrise and sunset.

On the day of the transit, the app will record the exact GPS time and your location, which is sent to the global database. Afterwards you can access your data on the website’s map to edit your entry, and upload descriptions, text, images, or movies and view other entries as well. This transit will be visible over most of the Earth except for parts of West Africa and most of South America, so download, get practicing and become part of a once in a lifetime, global citizen science experiment!

Find out more at Transit of Venus

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Asteroid 2012 KA to Buzz Earth on May 17

Orbit diagram of asteroid 2012 KU from JPL's Small Body Database website.

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On the heels of a bus-sized asteroid that passed harmlessly between Earth and the orbit of the Moon on May 13, another asteroid between 4.5 and 10 meters (14-33 feet) wide will buzz by at about the same distance on May 17, 2012. Asteroid 2012 KA was discovered just today (May 16), and is projected to make its closest approach about 0.0015 AU, or 224,397 kilometers (134,933 miles, .6 lunar distances) from Earth’s surface at 19:43 UTC on Thursday. The asteroid was discovered by the Mt. Lemmon Observatory, and at the time of this writing, is the only observatory that has made any observations. Therefore JPL lists the uncertainty of the orbit as fairly high (9 out of a 1 to 10 scale) but orbital projections from JPL’s Small Body Database website confirms there is no chance this asteroid would hit Earth. However, most stony meteoroids up to a diameter of about 10-meters are destroyed in thermal explosions by plummeting through Earth’s atmosphere.

We’ll provide any updates as they become available.

Posted on by Jason Major

The Big Dipper Like You’ve Never Seen It Before!

Junocam image of the stars that make up the "Big Dipper" asterism

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All right, it may look just like any other picture you’ve ever seen of the Big Dipper. Maybe even a little less impressive, in fact. But, unlike any other picture, this one was taken from 290 million km away by NASA’s Juno spacecraft en route to Jupiter, part of a test of its Junocam instrument!  Now that’s something new concerning a very old lineup of stars!

“I can recall as a kid making an imaginary line from the two stars that make up the right side of the Big Dipper’s bowl and extending it upward to find the North Star,” said Scott Bolton, principal investigator of NASA’s Juno mission. “Now, the Big Dipper is helping me make sure the camera aboard Juno is ready to do its job.”

Diagram of the Juno spacecraft (NASA/JPL)

The image is a section of a larger series of scans acquired by Junocam between 20:23 and 20:56 UTC (3:13 to 3:16 PM EST) on March 14, 2012. Still nowhere near Jupiter, the purpose of the imaging exercise was to make sure that Junocam doesn’t create any electromagnetic interference that could disrupt Juno’s other science instruments.

In addition, it allowed the Junocam team at Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, CA to test the instrument’s Time-Delay Integration (TDI) mode, which allows image stabilization while the spacecraft is in motion.

Because Juno is rotating at about 1 RPM, TDI is crucial to obtaining focused images. The images that make up the full-size series of scans were taken with an exposure time of 0.5 seconds, and yet the stars (brightened above by the imaging team) are still reasonably sharp… which is exactly what the Junocam team was hoping for.

“An amateur astrophotographer wouldn’t be very impressed by these images, but they show that Junocam is correctly aligned and working just as we expected”, said Mike Caplinger, Junocam systems engineer.

As well as the Big Dipper, Junocam also captured other stars and asterisms, such as Vega, Canopus, Regulus and the “False Cross”. (Portions of the imaging swaths were also washed out by sunlight but this was anticipated by the team.)

These images will be used to further calibrate Junocam for operation in the low-light environment around Jupiter, once Juno arrives in July 2016.

Read more about the Junocam test on the MSSS news page here.

As of May 10, Juno was approximately 251 million miles (404 million kilometers) from Earth. Juno has now traveled 380 million miles (612 million kilometers) since its launch on August 5, 2011 and is currently traveling at a velocity of 38,300 miles (61,600 kilometers) per hour relative to the Sun.

Watch a video of the Juno launch here, taken by yours truly from the press site at Kennedy Space Center!