Ready for another Where In The Universe Challenge? Take a look and see if you can name where in the Universe this image is from. Give yourself extra points if you can name the spacecraft, telescope or instrument responsible for the image. We provide the image today, but won’t reveal the answer until later. This gives you a chance to mull over the image and provide your answer/guess in the comment section. And Please, no links or extensive explanations of what you think this is — give everyone the chance to guess.
UPDATE: The answer is now posted below:
Sharp eyes, everyone. This Hubble image from 2000 was taken when the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) was brand-spanking new. It shows the unique galaxy pair called NGC 3314. Through an extraordinary chance alignment, a face-on spiral galaxy lies precisely in front of another larger spiral. This line-up provides us with the rare chance to visualize dark material within the front galaxy, seen only because it is silhouetted against the object behind it.
[/caption]No Princess is sending holographic help messages. No Hans Solo is warming up a Millenium Falcon to jump into hyperdrive. We don’t even have a Death Star waiting around the corner. But, what we do have is evidence that astronomers have pushed the Hubble Space Telescope to its limits and have seen further back in time than ever before. “We are looking back through 96% of the life of the universe, and in so doing, we have found just one galaxy, but it is one, but it is a remarkable object. The universe was only 500 million years old at that time versus it now being thirteen thousand-seven hundred million years old. ” said Garth Illingworth, Ames Research Scientist. We know about the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, but we invite you to boldy go on…
While studying ultra-deep imaging data from the Hubble Space Telescope, an international group of astronomers have found what may be the most distant galaxy ever seen, about 13.2 billion light-years away. “Two years ago, a powerful new camera was put on Hubble, a camera which works in the infrared which we had never really good capability before, and we have now taken the deepest image of the universe ever using this camera in the infrared.” said Garth Illingworth, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “We’re getting back very close to the first galaxies, which we think formed around 200 to 300 million years after the Big Bang.” The study pushed the limits of Hubble’s capabilities, extending its reach back to about 480 million years after the Big Bang, when the universe was just 4 percent of its current age. The dim object, called UDFj-39546284, is a compact galaxy of blue stars that existed 480 million years after the Big Bang, only four percent of the universe’s current age. It is tiny. Over one hundred such mini-galaxies would be needed to make up our Milky Way.
The farthest and one of the very earliest galaxies ever seen in the universe appears as a faint red blob in this ultra-deep–field exposure taken with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. This is the deepest infrared image taken of the universe. Based on the object's color, astronomers believe it is 13.2 billion light-years away. (Credit: NASA, ESA, G. Illingworth (University of California, Santa Cruz), R. Bouwens (University of California, Santa Cruz, and Leiden University), and the HUDF09 Team)
Illingworth and UCSC astronomer Rychard Bouwens (now at Leiden University in the Netherlands) led the study, which will be published in the January 27 issue of Nature. Using infrared data gathered by Hubble’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 3 (WFC3), they were able to see dramatic changes in galaxies over a period from about 480 to 650 million years after the Big Bang. The rate of star birth in the universe increased by ten times during this 170-million-year period, Illingworth said. “This is an astonishing increase in such a short period, just 1 percent of the current age of the universe,” he said. There were also striking changes in the numbers of galaxies detected. “Our previous searches had found 47 galaxies at somewhat later times when the universe was about 650 million years old. However, we could only find one galaxy candidate just 170 million years earlier,” Illingworth said. “The universe was changing very quickly in a short amount of time.”
The Hubble Ultra Deep Field WFC3/IR Image. This Region of the Sky Contains the Deepest Optical and Near-Infrared Images Ever Taken of the Universe and is useful for finding star-forming galaxies at redshifts 8 and 10 (650 and 500 million years after the Big Bang, respectively). At UCSC and Leiden, we are using these data to better understand the properties of the first galaxies. Credit: Bouwen
According to Bouwens, these findings are consistent with the hierarchical picture of galaxy formation, in which galaxies grew and merged under the gravitational influence of dark matter. “We see a very rapid build-up of galaxies around this time,” he said. “For the first time now, we can make realistic statements about how the galaxy population changed during this period and provide meaningful constraints for models of galaxy formation.” Astronomers gauge the distance of an object from its redshift, a measure of how much the expansion of space has stretched the light from an object to longer (“redder”) wavelengths. The newly detected galaxy has a likely redshift value (“z”) of 10.3, which corresponds to an object that emitted the light we now see 13.2 billion years ago, just 480 million years after the birth of the universe. “This result is on the edge of our capabilities, but we spent months doing tests to confirm it, so we now feel pretty confident,” Illingworth said.
The galaxy, a faint smudge of starlight in the Hubble images, is tiny compared to the massive galaxies seen in the local universe. Our own Milky Way, for example, is more than 100 times larger. The researchers also described three other galaxies with redshifts greater than 8.3. The study involved a thorough search of data collected from deep imaging of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF), a small patch of sky about one-tenth the size of the Moon. During two four-day stretches in summer 2009 and summer 2010, Hubble focused on one tiny spot in the HUDF for a total exposure of 87 hours with the WFC3 infrared camera.
“NASA continues to reach for new heights, and this latest Hubble discovery will deepen our understanding of the universe and benefit generations to come,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, who was the pilot of the space shuttle mission that carried Hubble to orbit. “We could only dream when we launched Hubble more than 20 years ago that it would have the ability to make these types of groundbreaking discoveries and rewrite textbooks.”
To go beyond redshift 10, astronomers will have to wait for Hubble’s successor, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which NASA plans to launch later this decade. JWST will also be able to perform the spectroscopic measurements needed to confirm the reported galaxy at redshift 10. “It’s going to take JWST to do more work at higher redshifts. This study at least tells us that there are objects around at redshift 10 and that the first galaxies must have formed earlier than that,” Illingworth said.
“After 20 years of opening our eyes to the universe around us, Hubble continues to awe and surprise astronomers,” said Jon Morse, NASA’s Astrophysics Division director at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. “It now offers a tantalizing look at the very edge of the known universe — a frontier NASA strives to explore.” How far back will we go? If you sit around a campfire watching the embers climb skywards and discuss cosmology after an observing night with your astro friends, someone will ultimately bring up the topic of space/time curvature. If you put an X on a balloon and expand it – and trace round its expanse – you will eventually return to your mark. If we see our beginnings, will we also eventually see our end coming up over the horizon? Wow… Pass the marshmallows, please. We’ve got a lot to think about.
Reader Info: Illingworth’s team maintains the First Galaxies website, with information about the latest research on distant galaxies. In addition to Bouwens and Illingworth, the coauthors of the Nature paper include Ivo Labbe of Carnegie Observatories; Pascal Oesch of UCSC and the Institute for Astronomy in Zurich; Michele Trenti of the University of Colorado; Marcella Carollo of the Institute for Astronomy; Pieter van Dokkum of Yale University; Marijn Franx of Leiden University; Massimo Stiavelli and Larry Bradley of the Space Telescope Science Institute; and Valentino Gonzalez and Daniel Magee of UC Santa Cruz. This research was supported by NASA and the Swiss National Science Foundation. Hubble Ultra Deep Field Image and Video courtesy of NASA/STSci.
The Rosette Nebula, double time. Credit: Cesar Cantu from Monterrey, Mexico, and the Chilidog Observatory. Click for high resolution version.
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Think you are seeing double in this new image of the Rosette Nebula? This new astrophoto from César Cantú in Monterrey, Mexico shows two different views of this massive cloud of dust and gas, comparing two techniques of combining filters so that different features stand out. César used a Takahashi FSQ106 telescope and a FLI 8300 camera with 3 nanometer narrowband and RGB filters, using an exposure time of 8 hours and subexposures of 600 seconds each. He used PixInsight and Photoshop CS for processing.
The Rosette Nebula (NGC 2244) is part of a larger cluster, which lies at a distance of about 5,200 light years from Earth and in its entirety measures roughly 130 light years in diameter.
Thanks César for sharing your stunning image — flowers just in time for Valentine’s Day! See more at his website, Astronomía Y Astrofotografía.
3D images of HD 62623, obtained with the VLTI (left), compared to the model of a rotating disk (right). In the boxes, the gas kinematics is shown (3rd dimension): blue-coloured gas approaches the observer, while red-coloured gas recedes from the observer. The size of the inner gas disk of approx. 2 milli-arcseconds corresponds to 1.3 astronomical units (distance Earth-Sun), while the outer dust ring seen in the images has a radius corresponding to 4 astronomical units, assuming 2100 light years as distance to HD 62623. Images: F. Millour et al.
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For several years, astronomers have been trying to get a good look at a peculiar supergiant star that is surrounded by a disk of gas and dust. The star, HD 62623, is one of the very few known supergiant stars to have such a disk. These disks are generally only associated with smaller, young stars, as supergiants have strong stellar winds that would blow away any surrounding plasma and debris. Now, using long-baseline stellar interferometry with the “Amber” instrument at ESO’s Very Large Telescope interferometer, a team of astronomers were able to capture, for the first time, a 3-D view of this strange star and its surrounding environment, which revealed a hidden secret: a companion star is likely responsible for the surrounding disk.
“Thanks to our interferometric observations with Amber we could synthetize a 3-D image of HD 62623 as seen through a virtual 130 m-diameter telescope”, says Florentin Millour, leading author of the study, from Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur. “The resolution is an order of magnitude higher compared with the world’s largest optical telescopes of 8-10 m diameter.”
HD 62623 is an exotic, hot, supergiant star. Supergiants are the most massive stars out there, ranging between 10 to 70 solar masses, and can range in brightness from 30,000 to hundreds of thousands of times the output of our Sun. They have very short lifespans, living from 30 million down to just a few hundred thousand years. Supergiants seem to always detonate as Type II supernovae at the end of their lives.
“Our new 3D image locates the dust-forming region around HD 62623 very precisely, and it provides evidence for the rotation of the gas around the central star,” said co-author Anthony Meilland from Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy. “This rotation is found to be Keplerian, the same way the Solar system planets rotate around the Sun.”
The companion star, although not seen directly because its light couldn’t be resolved among the brightness of HD62623, was detected by a central cavity between the gas disk and HD 62623. The companion is thought to be approximately the mass of our Sun, and its presence would explain the exotic characteristics of HD 62623, which has many similar characteristics to a monster among the old stars within our Galaxy, Eta Carinae.
HD 62623 is located in the constellation Cygnus near another bright supergiant, Deneb of the summer triangle. Deneb however, like most other supergiants, has no surrounding disk.
Four domes of the 1.8 m Auxiliary Telescopes (AT), utilized for the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI). ESO, Cerro Paranal, Chile. Image: F. Millour, OCA, Nice, France.
The images obtained with the Amber instrument combines spatial and velocity information, showing not only the shape of the close environment of HD 62623, but also its kinematics or motion. Up to now, the necessary kinematics information was missing in such images.
The astronomers were able to “disentangle” the dust and gas emission in the HD 62623 circumstellar disc, and measure the dusty disc inner rim. They also constrained the inclination angle and the position angle of the major-axis of the disc.
The new 3D imaging technique used by the team is equivalent to integral-field spectroscopy, but gives access to a 15 times larger angular resolution or capacity to detect fine details in the images. “With these new capacities, the VLTI will be able to provide a better comprehension of many sky targets, too small to be resolved by the largest telescopes,” said Millour. “We could aim at young stellar disks or jets, or even the central regions of active galaxies.”
A close look at Enceladus, with Saturn's rings in the background. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
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The Cassini spacecraft has taken a some recent images of two of Saturn’s most notorious moons, where in both images the planet’s rings serve as a backdrop. Above, Enceladus stands out with its cratered surface, but Cassini’s camera also catches a glimpse of the planet’s rings in the background. Geologically young terrain in the middle latitudes of the moon shifts to older, cratered terrain in the northern latitudes.
The image was taken during the spacecraft’s flyby of Enceladus on Nov. 30, 2010, in visible with Cassini’s spacecraft narrow-angle camera, from a distance of approximately 46,000 kilometers (29,000 miles) from Enceladus. Image scale is 276 meters (906 feet) per pixel.
Below is a ‘raw’ view of Titan, and the rings.
A closeup of Titan rings, in front of Saturn's rings. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute.
This close-up view of Titan was taken on January 15, 2011, shows the cloudy atmosphere of the moon, with the rings in the background. Cassini was about 839,213 kilometers away from Titan.
‘First Light’ for VIRUS-W: This image (from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey) shows the galaxy NGC2903 and the field of view of the spectrograph. Credit: SDSS
The new observing instrument VIRUS-W, built by the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics and the University Observatory Munich, saw “first light” on 10th November at the Harlan J. Smith Telescope of the McDonald observatory in Texas. Its first images of a spiral galaxy about 30 million light-years away are an impressive confirmation of the capabilities of the instrument, which can determine the motion of stars in near-by galaxies to a precision of a few kilometers per second.
As an imaging field spectrograph, VIRUS-W can simultaneously produce 267 individual spectra – one for each of its glass fibers. By dispersing the light into its constituent colors, astronomers thus are able to study properties such as the velocity distribution of the stars in a galaxy. For this they use the so called Doppler shift, which means that the light from stars moving towards or away from us is shifted to blue or red wavelengths, respectively. This effect can also be observed on Earth, when a fast vehicle, such as a racing car, is driving past: the sound of the approaching car is higher, while for the departing car it is lower.
VIRUS-W´s unique feature is the combination of a large field of view (about 1×2 arcminutes) with a relatively high spectral resolution. With the large field of view astronomers can study near-by galaxies in just one or few pointings, while the high spectral resolution permits a very accurate determination of the velocity dispersion in these objects. In this way the astronomers obtain the large-scale kinematic structure of near-by spiral galaxies, which gives important insight into their formation history.
These are the first observational data taken by VIRUS-W at the beginning of November. The false colour image in the bottom row, left, shows an enlarged area of the galaxy NGC2903 shown above. Credit: M. Fabricius, MPE
Most galaxies are too distant and the separation between the billions upon billions of stars is too small to resolve it with even the best, cutting-edge instruments. The astronomers therefore cannot study individual stars but only the average motion along a specific line of sight.
The measured velocity distributions are characterized by two parameters: The mean velocity reveals the large-scale motion of the stars along the line of sight. The velocity dispersion measures how much the velocities of the individual stars differ from this mean velocity. If the stars have more or less the same velocity, the dispersion is small, if they have very different velocities, the dispersion is broad. For spiral galaxies, where the stars travel in fairly regular circular orbits, the velocity dispersion is mostly small. In elliptical galaxies, however, the stars have rather disordered orbits and so the dispersion is broad.
With the high spectral resolution of VIRUS-W, the astronomers can investigate relatively small velocity dispersions, down to about 20 km/s. This was impressively confirmed by the first images taken by VIRUS-W of the near-by spiral galaxy NGC2903.
“When we attached VIRUS-W around midnight on the 10th of November to the 2.7m telescope, we were very happy to see that the data delivered by VIRUS-W was of science quality virtually from the first moment on,” says Maximilian Fabricius from the Max-Planck-Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics. “As the first galaxy to observe we had selected the strongly barred galaxy NGC2903 at a distance of about 30 million lightyears – right in front of our doorstep. The data we collected reveal a centrally increasing velocity dispersion from about 80 km/s to 120 km/s within the field of view of the instrument. This was a very exciting moment and only possible because of the remarkable teamwork during the commissioning with a lot of support by the observatory staff!” The observing time at the telescope was made available by the VENGA project, to which VIRUS-W will be contributing from the beginning of 2011 onwards. It will then provide detailed kinematic data to this study.
The main instrument for VENGA is VIRUS-P, a spectrograph operating at the 2,7m Harlan J. Smith-Teleskope of the McDonald observatory since 2007. This instrument is a prototype of the VIRUS spectrographs being developed for the HETDEX project led by the University of Texas in Austin. For a study of the large scale distribution of galaxies, HETDEX will combine about 100 spectrographs at the 9.2m Hobby-Eberly Telescope of the McDonald observatory to form one large instrument. VIRUS-W (where the W stands for a later mission at the Wendelstein telescope of the Munich Observatory) is based on the same basic VIRUS design. Because of its broader spectral coverage and despite its much lower resolution, the prototype VIRUS-P already gives interesting insight into the age and chemical composition of stars and the interstellar medium as well as information about the star formation rate.
Dust flies from the tires of a moon buggy, driven by Apollo 17 astronaut Gene Cernan. These "rooster-tails" of dust caused problems. Credit: NASA
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How often have you heard (or thought) the sentiment that all NASA really needs is a President who will issue a bold challenge for the space agency, like Kennedy did in 1961, initiating the Apollo program to the Moon? Can we ever expect to witness such a call to action again?
“It is very unlikely,” said space historian and author Andrew Chaikin, who believes Apollo was an historical anomaly. “I think for many decades people saw Apollo as a model for how to do a space program; that you get a President to get up and make a challenge and the country follows along and does great things. But that was only true that one time in the context of the Cold War.”
We went to the Moon when we did not because we were a nation devoted to exploration, Chaikin believes, but because it seemed a politically important course of action in the context of our Cold War with the Soviet Union. “Once that was accomplished, then that political imperative evaporated,” he said.
On May 25, 1961, Kennedy announced his support for the Apollo program as part of a special address to a joint session of Congress:
Likely, we won’t hear any bold space-related challenge in tonight’s State of the Union Address by President Obama. Given the state of the economy, NASA might be facing a cut or freeze on their budget, a fact which might emphasize how unique an event the Apollo program ended up to be.
“What is required now is the development of technologies that will allow us to explore space in a sustainable way,” said Chaikin, author of “A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts,” who I interviewed for the NASA Lunar Science Institute podcast, “a way that won’t break the bank and will allow us to do more and more with reliable transportation systems that get us up into low Earth orbit. Then perhaps we can build the machines that can actually be stored in space to allow us to venture beyond low Earth orbit to the Moon and even further, to Mars and other destinations in the solar system.”
Chaikin said he’s actually very excited about the work being done in the private sector, such as by SpaceX, one of several commercial space companies trying to develop new transportation systems to provide sustainable hardware and sustainable architecture. “That can allow us to really get back in the game of exploring, not only with robots as we have been doing all along, but with humans again,” Chaikin said.
But Apollo’s uniqueness doesn’t mean it wasn’t important, or hasn’t left a lasting legacy for human spaceflight, and the human race in general.
Buzz Aldrin on the Moon for Apollo 11. Credit: NASA
“Simply put Apollo was the opening act in a story that has no end,” Chaikin said. “It’s a story of human beings leaving their home planet and venturing out into the universe, and as far as we go into space in some distant epoch, when we are living in other star systems and venturing throughout the galaxy, Apollo will have been the first step, so it is absolutely monumental when you look at it in that scale. I think Apollo is a lasting inspiration about what humans can accomplish when they work together.”
Apollo also showed people that anything was possible. “There was a phrase that went into our language after Apollo, and that was ‘If we can put a man on the Moon, why can’t we…’ fill in the blank,” said Chaikin. “The spirit that humans can overcome monumental challenges by working together, I think, is a valid legacy of Apollo culturally.”
Chaikin said Apollo was also important because of the technology development it spurred.
“A lot of the challenges that Apollo presented forced the industries to accelerate their development,” he said, “particularly in microelectronics. It is not that NASA invented all of the microelectronics that we use today but rather that the requirements of building a moon-ship and cramming it with all of the electronics that it needed to do its job required the electronics industry to miniaturize at a faster pace, it required the development of computers that could fit on a spacecraft, it required all kinds of analytical techniques and real-time tracking of the spacecraft as it went to and from the Moon. The legacy today is all the communications technologies and information processing technology that we are surrounded by. That really got an amazing jump start as part of the Apollo program.”
Earthrise from Apollo 8
And Apollo also affected our culture, in unique ways we observe even today. How often have you seen the “Earthrise” image taken by Apollo 8 or the picture of Buzz Aldrin standing on the Moon or other Apollo-related imagery in non-space-related venues?
“We got to a place where humans had never been before,” Chaikin said, “and the other lasting legacy is the view that we got from that ‘mountaintop,’ of our Earth as a very precious oasis of life in space, and a world that really is to be cherished and protected.”
We knew even as it was happening, Chaikin said, that seeing our world floating alone in space was perhaps the most profound impact of the voyage.
“In fact, if you look at the front page of the New York Times the very day after Frank Borman and his crew became the first humans to orbit the Moon,” Chaikin said, “you will see an essay by a poet named Archibald MacLeish talking about the impact of that view and the perspective of us as ‘brothers in the eternal cold riding on spaceship Earth.’ So this is one of the things sets Apollo apart from other earlier explorations is that we were experiencing it as it happened through live television and we were actually absorbing and processing the impact in real time.”
Launch of Apollo 8 lunar orbit mission
But then, humans being as attention-challenged as we are, it didn’t take very long for all of it to become old hat and to kind of recede into history. “And that is where we are today,” Chaikin said.
That being said, Chaikin does not see the Moon as a “been there, done that” world.
“As you know, we’ve been finding frozen water at the poles of the Moon and this is a completely different view of the Moon than we had 40 years ago,” Chaikin said. “And there are more and more intricacies that we are finding all the time. The Moon itself is a Rosetta Stone for deciphering the history of the solar system, and is profoundly valuable world for us on so many levels. And it is a spectacular place. The Apollo astronauts – I’ve spent hours talking to all of them about the Moon, about the experience of being on the Moon and they just say it is a spectacular place.”
“It is too bad that the political impetus for going to the Moon was so short-lived because it was part of the Cold war,” Chaikin continued, “and looking back we can see why that was the case. It is too bad we lost interest in the Moon and it has taken us so long to turn our attention back to the Moon and all it has to offer.”
Listen to the entire interview with Chaikin on the NLSI podcast, which can also be heard on the 365 Days of Astronomy podcast.
For more information about Andrew Chaikin, see his website, andrewchaikin.com
The Long Journey of Opportunity to Santa Maria Crater. This collage of three maps (left, top) and a new close up panoramic mosaic of Santa Maria crater on Sol 2464, Dec 29, 2010 (bottom right) shows the route traversed by the Opportunity Mars rover during her nearly 7 year long overland expedition across the Meridiani Planum region of Mars. Opportunity landed inside Eagle crater on Jan. 24, 2004 and has driven over 26 km (16 mi) since then. Opportunity arrived at the western rim of Santa Maria Crater on Dec. 16, 2010 on Sol 2451 and is driving around the edge in a counterclockwise direction on her way to the huge 22 km wide Endeavour crater which shows signatures of water bearing minerals. The rover is visible in top map taken from orbit by MRO spacecraft. The Panoramic Mosaic of Santa Maria Crater on Sol 2464 - at bottom right – was stitched together from raw images taken by Opportunity’s navigation camera. The rover was about 5 meters from the rim and nearing water bearing materials located roughly at the right of this photomosaic. Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell Marco Di Lorenzo, Kenneth Kremer
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Today, Jan. 24, 2011 marks the 7th anniversary of the safe landing of the Opportunity Mars Exploration Rover (MER). Opportunity will soon celebrate another remarkable milestone – 2500 Sols, or Martian days, roving the red planet. Together with her twin sister Spirit, the NASA rovers surely rank as one of the greatest feats in the annals of space exploration.
“No one expected Spirit or Opportunity to go on this long,” says Ray Arvidson in an interview from Washington University in St. Louis. Arvidson is the deputy principal investigator for the Spirit and Opportunity rovers.
7 Years ago today on Jan. 24, 2004, NASA’s Opportunity rover daringly smashed into the Martian atmosphere at about 12,000 MPH on a one shot, do or die mission with no certainty as to the outcome. Thus began “The Six Minutes of Terror” as the plummeting probes heat shield endured temperatures exceeding 1400°C (2600 F) during the fiery entry, descent and landing phase (EDL).
The spectacular plunge was slowed by atmospheric friction on the heat shield and a complex pre-programmed combination of parachutes and retro rockets, and in the last moments by inflatable airbags designed to allow the robot to bounce about two dozen times and gently and gradually roll to a complete stop.
A Geologist's Treasure Trove at Eagle Crater. Jan 28, 2004.
This high-resolution image captured by the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity's panoramic camera on Sol 3 highlights the puzzling rock outcropping that scientists were eagerly planning to investigate after safely landing. Opportunity was on its lander facing northeast; the outcropping lies to the northwest. These layered rocks measure only 10 centimeters (4 inches) tall and are thought to be either volcanic ash deposits or sediments carried by water or wind. Data from the panoramic camera's near-infrared, blue and green filters were combined to create this approximate, true-color image. Image credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell
Ultimately, Opportunity survived intact just like her twin sister Spirit who landed safely three weeks earlier on Jan. 3, 2004. EDL was the culmination of a seven month interplanetary cruise of over 250 million miles from Earth. Both rovers were launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida in the summer of 2003 on board Delta 2 rockets. The dynamic duo landed on opposite sides of the Red planet.
Opportunity is now 84 months into the 3 month mission – still alive and blazing a trail of Exploration and Discovery across the Meridiani Planum region of Mars.
The amazing Martian robot has driven more than 16.5 miles (26.7 km) and snapped over 148,000 pictures. She has suffered remarkable few mechanical failures and they have only minimally impaired her ability to traverse across the surface and conduct science operations.
Both rovers survived far beyond the mere 3 month “warranty” proclaimed by NASA as the mission began with high hopes following the nail biting “Six Minutes of Terror”. At the time, team members and NASA officials hoped they might function a few months longer.
“The rovers are our priceless assets” says Steve Squyres, of Cornell University who is the Principal Scientific Investigator for the mission. Squyres and the entire rover team treat every day with a “sense of urgency” and as “a gift to science”.
A Hole in One. Jan. 24, 2004. Sol 1.
The interior of a crater surrounding the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity at Meridiani Planum on Mars can be seen in this color image from the rover's panoramic camera. This is the darkest landing site ever visited by a spacecraft on Mars. The rim of the crater is approximately 10 meters (32 feet) from the rover. The crater is estimated to be 20 meters (65 feet) in diameter. Scientists are intrigued by the abundance of rock outcrops dispersed throughout the crater, as well as the crater's soil, which appears to be a mixture of coarse gray grains and fine reddish grains. Data taken from the camera's near-infrared, green and blue filters were combined to create this approximate true color picture, taken on the first day of Opportunity's journey. The view is to the west-southwest of the rover. Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell
Since 2004, the rover’s longevity has surpassed all expectations and nobody on the science and engineering teams that built and operate the twins can believe they lasted so long and produced so much science.
“We have a new Opportunity overview article publishing shortly in the Journal of Geophysical Research (JGR). The Spirit overview paper appeared recently. In addition, there will be about 24 new scientific papers coming out in the new few months as JGR special issues covering more of the MER results. ”
The incredible longevity is “way beyond the wildest expectations of even the people who built the twin sisters” according to fellow Cornell University Professor Jim Bell. “To say the rovers have surpassed expectations is an understatement. We’ve blown them out of the water”. Bell is the lead scientist responsible for the rovers’ high resolution color imaging system called Pancam.
“After 7 years it is still very exciting,“ Arvidson told me. “I am delighted to come to work every day. It’s great to work on the engineering plan for driving and operating the rovers and then see the results the next day.”
Spirit and Opportunity have accomplished a remarkable series of scientific breakthroughs, far surpassing the wildest dreams of all the researchers and NASA officials. Indeed both Mars rovers are currently stationed at scientific goldmines.
Santa Maria is just 6 km from the western rim of Endeavour which shows spectral signatures of phyllosilicates, or clay bearing minerals, which formed in water about 4 billion years ago and have never before been directly analyzed on the Martian surface.
Phyllosilicates form in neutral aqueous conditions that could have been more habitable and conducive to the formation of life than the later Martian episodes of more harshly acidic conditions in which the sulfates formed that Opportunity has already been exploring during her 7 year long overland expedition.
Since the moment she landed inside ‘Eagle’ crater, Opportunity has been on a Martian crater tour her entire lifetime.
Opportunity “scored a 300-million mile interplanetary hole in one,” Steve Squyres said at that time, by improbably rolling to a stop smack inside the small 66 foot wide ‘Eagle’ crater (see map) after bouncing across the virtually flat and featureless dusty plains of Meridiani. She has been a lucky princess from the moment of her birth, spying layered sedimentary rocks in a bedrock outcrop from first light in her cameras a mere 26 feet or so away. That’s unlike any previous lander.
Eagle-eye View of 'Eagle Crater'. March 2004. This image shows the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity's view on its 56th sol on Mars, before it left its landing-site crater. To the right, the rover tracks are visible at the original spot where the rover attempted unsuccessfully to exit the crater. After a one-sol delay, Opportunity took another route to the plains of Meridiani Planum. This image was taken by the rover's navigation camera. Image credit: NASA/JPL
Seven days later she drove off the landing pad, drilled into the outcrops and collected the “ground truth” science data to prove that hematite was present and liquid water had indeed flowed at Meridiani as a lake or shallow sea on ancient Mars.
After completing her science campaign, she climbed up and over the rim, departed ‘Eagle’ and arrived at ‘Endurance’ about 3 months after landing day.
After numerous tests, Opportunity was commanded to slowly crawl down into the crater. She gradually descending about 30 vertical feet, frequently drilling into the sedimentary rocks and layers to reveal Mars watery past in unprecedented scientific detail for about six months.
In Dec. 2004, Opportunity departed for “Victoria” crater, which many believed would be her final destination. The robot nearly perished in a sand trap at Purgatory along the way during a nearly two year drive across the treacherous martian sand dunes.
Opportunity arrived in Sept. 2006 to unveil Victoria’s Secrets in color. The rover actually wound up spending two years driving to different vantage points around the rim of and then inside the half mile wide crater before departing in Sept 2008 for the unimaginable goal of giant ‘Endeavour’ crater.
The rover team hopes to reach the slopes of Endeavour sometime later in 2011 if all goes well – before her 8th anniversary !
See below some of the best images taken by Opportunity during her 7 Year Martian Trek
Martian Moon Phobos eclipsing the sun on Sol 45Ready to Enter Endurance.
This view looking was taken by the navigation camera on June 6, 2004. That was two sols before Opportunity entered the crater, taking the route nearly straight ahead in this image. This view is a cylindrical projection with geometric seam correction. Credit: NASA/JPLWopmay in False Color .
NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity examined a boulder called Wopmay before heading further east inside Endurance Crater. The frames combined into this false-color view were taken by Opportunity's panoramic camera during the rover's 251st martian day (Oct. 7, 2004). The coloring accentuates iron-rich spherical concretions as bluish dots embedded in the rock and on the ground around it. The rock is about one meter (3 feet) across. Credit: NASA/JPL/CornellBurns Cliff.
Opportunity captured this view of Burns Cliff after driving right to the base of this southeastern portion of the inner wall of Endurance Crater. The view combines frames taken by Opportunity's panoramic camera between the rover's 287th and 294th martian days (Nov. 13 to 20, 2004). The mosaic spans more than 180 degrees side to side. Because of this wide-angle view, the cliff walls appear to bulge out toward the camera. In reality the walls form a gently curving, continuous surface. Image credit: NASA/JPL/CornellOpportunity's Heat Shield in Color, Sol 335.
This image from the panoramic camera on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity features the remains of the heat shield that protected the rover from temperatures of up to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit as it made its way through the martian atmosphere. This two-frame mosaic was taken on Sol 335 (Jan. 2, 2005). The view is of the main heat shield debris seen from approximately 10 meters (about 33 feet) away from it. Many rover-team engineers were taken aback when they realized the heat shield had inverted, or turned itself inside out. The height of the pictured debris is about 1.3 meters (about 4.3 feet). The original diameter was 2.65 meters (8.7 feet), though it has obviously been deformed. The Sun reflecting off of the aluminum structure accounts for the vertical blurs in the picture. Iron Meteorite on Mars.
Opportunity finds an iron meteorite on Mars, the first meteorite of any type ever identified on another planet. The pitted, basketball-size object is mostly made of iron and nickel. Opportunity used its panoramic camera to take the images used in this approximately true-color composite on the Sol 339 (Jan. 6, 2005). Credit: NASA/JPL/CornellOpportunity at Crater's Cape Verde in October 2006.
This image from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity near the rim of Victoria Crater. Victoria is an impact crater about 800 meters (half a mile) in diameter at Meridiani Planum near the equator of Mars. Five days before this image was taken, Opportunity arrived at the rim of Victoria, after a drive of more than 9 kilometers (over 5 miles). It then drove to the position where it is seen in this image. This view is a portion of an image taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft on Oct. 3, 2006. Credit: NASA/JPL/UA
Victoria’s Secret Revealed in Color.
This Opportunity panorama reveals 2,500 ft-wide, 230 ft-deep Victoria Crater from the lip at Duck Bay alcove. Geologic layers reveal the history of Martian water here. The panorama was taken about 8 feet from the crater rim on Sol 952 (28 Sept 2006) as the rover sat between two steep promontories, Cape Verde and Cabo Frio. This vista exposes a thick stack of geologic layers which revealed the hidden watery secrets of the Martian environment farther back in time than any other location visited previously by the rovers. One can see a ½ mile to the distant cliff walls of the crater, above a windswept dune field in the center. This mosaic was assembled from navcam images and featured in Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine and on the Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) on 2 Oct. 2006 in high resolution. Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell, Bernhard Braun, Marco Di Lorenzo, Kenneth Kremer. http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap061002.htmlAstronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) on 2 Oct. 2006 in high resolution
Check out this spherical projection panorama of Opportunity descending inside Victoria Crater on Sol 1332. Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell/Nasatech.net
Layers of Cape Verde in Victoria Crater.
This view of Victoria crater is looking north from Duck Bay towards the dramatic promontory called Cape Verde. The dramatic cliff of layered rocks is about 50 meters (about 165 feet) away from the rover and is about 6 meters (about 20 feet) tall. The taller promontory beyond that is about 100 meters (about 325 feet) away, and the vista beyond that extends away for more than 400 meters (about 1300 feet) into the distance. This is an approximately true color rendering of images taken by the panoramic camera (Pancam) on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity during Sol 952 (Sept. 28, 2006) using the camera's 750-nanometer, 530-nanometer and 430-nanometer filters. Credit: NASA/JPL/CornellOpportunity Traverse Map, Eagle to Victoria.
NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity reached the rim of Victoria Crater on Sept. 28, 2006, Sol 952. Opportunity drove 9.28 kilometers (5.77 miles) in the explorations that took it from Eagle Crater, where it landed in January 2004, eastward to Endurance Crater, which it investigated for about half of 2004, then southward to Victoria.Lyell Panorama inside Victoria Crater.
During four months prior to the fourth anniversary of its landing on Mars, Opportunity examined rocks inside an alcove called Duck Bay in the western portion of Victoria Crater. The main body of the crater appears in the upper right of this panorama, with the far side of the crater lying about 800 meters (half a mile) away. Bracketing that part of the view are two promontories on the crater's rim at either side of Duck Bay. They are Cape Verde, about 6 meters (20 feet) tall, on the left, and Cabo Frio, about 15 meters (50 feet) tall, on the right. This view combines many images taken by Opportunity's panoramic camera (Pancam) from the Sol 1,332 through 1,379. (Oct. 23 to Dec. 11, 2007).
These two pictures of Uranus -- one in true color (left) and the other in false color -- were compiled from images returned Jan. 17, 1986, by the narrow-angle camera of Voyager 2. Credit: NASA/JPL
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Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft that has flown close by one of the more enigmatic planets in our solar system (and the butt of many one-liners): Uranus. It was 25 years ago today (Jan. 24) that Voyager made the close pass, and scientists from JPL have been reminiscing about how they pored over the data being returned by the Grand-Touring Voyagers.
“Voyager 2’s visit to Uranus expanded our knowledge of the unexpected diversity of bodies that share the solar system with Earth,” said Project Scientist Ed Stone, who is now based at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “Even though similar in many ways, the worlds we encounter can still surprise us.”
Voyager 2 has discovered two "shepherd" satellites associated with the rings of Uranus. Image Credit: NASA/JPL
From the flyby, we saw for the first time Uranus’ small group of tenuous rings, and the tiny shepherding moons that sculpted them. Unlike Saturn’s icy rings, they found Uranus’ rings to be dark gray, reflecting only a few percent of the incident sunlight.
Miranda, innermost of Uranus' large satellites, is seen at close range in this Voyager 2 image, taken Jan. 24, 1986, as part of a high-resolution mosaicing sequence. Image credit: NASA/JPL
The images also showed the small, icy Uranus moon Miranda that had a grooved terrain with linear valleys and ridges cutting through the older terrain and sometimes coming together in chevron shapes. They also saw dramatic fault scarps, or cliffs. All of this indicated that periods of tectonic and thermal activity had rocked Miranda’s surface in the past.
The scientists were also shocked by data showing that Uranus’ magnetic north and south poles were not closely aligned with the north-south axis of the planet’s rotation. Instead, the planet’s magnetic field poles were closer to the Uranian equator. This suggested that the material flows in the planet’s interior that are generating the magnetic field are closer to the surface of Uranus than the flows inside Earth, Jupiter and Saturn are to their respective surfaces.
Voyager 2 was launched on Aug. 20, 1977, 16 days before its twin, Voyager 1. After completing its prime mission of flying by Jupiter and Saturn, Voyager 2 was sent on the right flight path to visit Uranus, which is about 3 billion kilometers (2 billion miles) away from the sun. Voyager 2 made its closest approach – within 81,500 kilometers (50,600 miles) of the Uranian cloud tops – on Jan. 24, 1986.
By the end of the Uranus encounter and science analysis, data from Voyager 2 enabled the discovery of 11 new moons and two new rings, and generated dozens of science papers about the quirky seventh planet.
Voyager 2 moved on to explore Neptune, the last planetary target, in August 1989. It is now hurtling toward interstellar space, which is the space between stars. It is about 14 billion kilometers (9 billion miles) away from the sun. Voyager 1, which explored only Jupiter and Saturn before heading on a faster track toward interstellar space, is about 17 billion kilometers (11 billion miles) away from the sun.
“The Uranus encounter was one of a kind,” said Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager, based at JPL. “Voyager 2 was healthy and durable enough to make it to Uranus and then to Neptune. Currently both Voyager spacecraft are on the cusp of leaving the sun’s sphere of influence and once again blazing a trail of scientific discovery.”
