Here’s this week’s Where In The Universe Challenge. You know what to do: take a look at this image and see if you can determine where in the universe this image is from; give yourself extra points if you can name the instrument responsible for the image. We’ll provide the image today, but won’t reveal the answer until tomorrow. This gives you a chance to mull over the image and provide your answer/guess in the comment section. Please, no links or extensive explanations of what you think this is — give everyone the chance to guess.
UPDATE: The answer has now been posted below.
This is Mars, from the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and this is a new image that was just released this week. It’s from the Gordii Dorsum region, which is an equatorial area just west of the Thasis bulge. The image shows a large area covered with polygonal ridges in an almost geometric pattern. If you remember, there were polygon features around the Phoenix landing site near the Mars Arctic region, and scientists thought they were created from freezing and thawing of suburface ice. But these polygons are huge, and Nicolas Thomas of the HiRISE teams writes,” The ridges may have originally been dunes which hardened (indurated) through the action of an unknown process. Groundwater might have been involved.”
“This was by far the coolest rocket flight I’ve ever seen!” said Ian Garcia, Guidance, Navigation, and Controls Engineer for Masten Space Systems.
I’ll second that! With their motto, “Just gas ’em up and go!” the Masten team today successfully demonstrated in-air engine re-light capability on their Xombie vehicle, and this was the first time that a vertical take-off, vertical landing vehicle has successfully performed a such a re-ignition during flight. Continue reading “Masten Successfully Re-Ignites Rocket Engine During Test Flight”
Image of the distant Universe as seen by Herschel’s SPIRE instrument Credit: ESA / SPIRE and HerMES consortia
[/caption]
Wow. Just wow. Each of the colored dots in this new image from the Herschel telescope is a galaxy containing billions of stars. These are distant luminous infrared galaxies, and appear as they did 10–12 billion years ago, packed together like grains of sand on a beach, forming large clusters of galaxies by the force of their mutual gravity.
“These amazing new results from Herschel are just a taste of things to come, as Herschel continues to unlock the secrets of the early stages of star birth and galaxy formation in our Universe,” said Dr. David Parker, Director of Space Science and Exploration at the UK Space Agency.
The galaxies are color coded in blue, green, and red to represent the three wavebands used for Herschel’s observation. Those appearing in white have equal intensity in all three bands and are the ones forming the most stars. The galaxies shown in red are likely to be the most distant, appearing as they did around 12 billion years ago.
For more than a decade, astronomers have puzzled over strangely bright galaxies in the distant Universe. These luminous infrared galaxies appear to be creating stars at such phenomenal rates that they defy conventional theories of galaxy formation.
Now ESA’s Herschel infrared space observatory, with its ability for very sensitive mapping over wide areas, has seen thousands of these galaxies and pinpointed their locations, showing for the first time just how closely they are sardined together.
The mottled effect in the image gives away this clustering. All the indications are that these galaxies are busy crashing into one another, and forming large quantities of stars as a result of these violent encounters.
This image is part of the Herschel Multi-tiered Extragalactic Survey (HerMES) Key Project, which studies the evolution of galaxies in the distant, ancient Universe. The project uses the SPIRE (Spectral and Photometric Imaging REceiver) instrument on Herschel and has been surveying large areas of the sky, currently totalling 15 square degrees, or around 60 times the apparent size of the Full Moon.
This particular image was taken in a region of space called the Lockman hole, which allows a clear line of sight out into the distant Universe. This ‘hole’ is located in the familiar northern constellation of Ursa Major, The Great Bear.
HerMES will continue to collect more images, over larger areas of the sky in order to build up a more complete picture of how galaxies have evolved and interacted over the past 12 billion years.
2010 KQ - a man-made object spotted orbiting the sun. Credit: Richard Miles, BAA via the Las Cumbres Observatory.
[/caption]
My dotAstronomy pal Edward Gomez from the Las Cumbres Observatory is reporting that a man-made object has been spotted orbiting the sun. First noticed in the Catalina Sky Survey on May 16, it was thought to be an asteroid, but then, because of its very circular and low-inclined orbit, Richard Miles, using the Faulkes Telescope North realized it could be man-made. Now dubbed 2010 KQ, it orbits the Sun every 1.04 years, and on May 21 it came within 1.28 lunar-distances of the Earth. Miles captured this image of the object, above, and spectral analysis of 2010 KQ is consistent with UV-aged titanium dioxide paint. What could it be?
Gomez says Miles believes it could be the 4th stage of a Russian Proton rocket which launched the Luna 23 lunar sample return attempt, which was launched on October 28, 1974 and reached lunar orbit in November of that year.
Read more about it, including info on how you could possibly track the object as well, on Edward’s blog. Hopefully we’ll hear more about Miles’ observations, too.
ISS astronaut Soichi Noguchi captured Atlantis and her crew streaking through the atmosphere on their return to Earth. Credit: Soichi Noguchi/JAXA/NASA
[/caption]
At a post-landing news conference, STS-132 commander Ken Ham described the incredible visual effects the crew of Atlantis witnessed as they returned to Earth today. As the shuttle was engulfed in plasma during the hottest part of their re-entry through Earth’s atmosphere, they were in orbital darkness, which highlighted the orange, fiery glow around the shuttle. “We were clearly riding inside of a fireball, and we flew right into the sunrise from inside this fireball, so we could see the blue color of the Earth’s horizon coming through the orange. It was amazing and just visually overwhelming.”
As evidence, ISS astronaut Soichi Noguchi captured Atlantis as that fireball, streaking though atmosphere, just as dawn approached. “Dawn, and Space Shuttle re-entered atmosphere over Pacific Ocean. 32 years of service, 32nd beautiful landing. Forever, Atlantis!” Noguchi wrote on Twitter, posting a link to the image.
Amazing.
Asked about his thoughts after landing, Ham said, “Walking around Atlantis after the flight I realized I probably just did the most fun and amazing thing I’ll do in my life.”
As for Atlantis, and whether she’ll fly one more time, the latest word is that the NASA authorization bill — as it stand now –will include language authorizing an additional shuttle mission.
As for Noguchi, take in all the images you can now from him on his Twitter feed, He, along with Expedition 23 Soyuz Commander Oleg Kotov, and astronaut T.J. Creamer are scheduled to leave the ISS on the Soyuz spacecraft on June 1 and land on the southern region steppe of Kazakhstan, completing almost six months on the station.
Here’s an image Noguchi took of Atlantis just after it undocked from the ISS last weekend.
Atlantis, as seen by Soichi Noguchi from the ISS, after undocking. Credit: Soichi Noguchi/ JAXA/ NASA
The Orion Nebula, one of the most brilliant star-forming regions in our galaxy. Other, newly-discovered regions like the Orion Nebula could help astronomers determing the chemical composition of our galaxy. Image Credit: APOD/Hubble Space Telescope
[/caption]
Our Milky Way churns out about seven new stars per year on average. More massive stars are formed in what’s called H II regions, so-named because the gas present in these stellar nurseries is ionized by the radiation of the young, massive stars forming there. Recently-discovered regions in the Milky Way that are nurseries for massive stars may hold important clues as to the chemical composition and structural makeup of our galaxy.
Thomas Bania, of Boston University, said in an NRAO press release, “We can clearly relate the locations of these star-forming sites to the overall structure of the Galaxy. Further studies will allow us to better understand the process of star formation and to compare the chemical composition of such sites at widely different distances from the Galaxy’s center.”
The announcement of these newly discovered regions was made in a presentation today at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Miami, Florida. The team of astronomers that collaborated on the search includes Thomas Bania of Boston University, Loren Anderson of the Astrophysical Laboratory of Marseille in France, Dana Balser of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), and Robert Rood of the University of Virginia.
H II regions that you may be familiar with include the Orion Nebula (M42), visible just South of Orion’s Belt with the naked eye, and the Horsehead Nebula, so famously imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope. For more information on other known regions (and lots of pictures), visit the 2Micron All-Sky Survey at IPAC.
By studying such regions in other galaxies, and our own, the chemical composition and distribution of a galaxy can be determined. H II regions form out of giant molecular clouds of hydrogen, and remain stable until a collision happens between two clouds, creating a shockwave, or the resulting shockwave from a nearby supernova collapses some of the gas to form stars. As these stars form and start to shine, their radiation strips the molecular hydrogen of its electrons.
The astronomers used both infrared and radio telescopes to see through the thick dust and gas that pervades the Milky Way. By combing surveys taken by the Spitzer Space Telescope’s infrared camera, and the Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope, they identified “hot spots” that would be good candidates for H II regions. To further verify their findings, they used the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT), a sensitive radio telescope that allowed them to detect radio frequencies emitted by electrons as they rejoined protons to form hydrogen. This process of recombination to form hydrogen is a telltale sign of regions that contain ionized hydrogen, or H II.
The location of the regions is concentrated near the ends of the central bar of the Milky Way, and in its spiral arms. Over 25 of the regions discovered were further from the center of the galaxy than our own Sun – a more detailed study of these outlying regions could give astronomers a better understanding of the evolution and composition of our Milky Way.
“There is evidence that the abundance of heavy elements changes with increasing distance from the Galactic center,” Bania said. “We now have many more objects to study and improve our understanding of this effect.”
The optical counterparts of many active galactic nuclei (circled) detected by the Swift BAT Hard X-ray Survey clearly show galaxies in the process of merging. Credit: NASA/Swift/NOAO/Michael Koss and Richard Mushotzky (Univ. of Maryland)
Only about 1% of supermassive black holes emit large amounts of energy, and astronomers have wondered for decades why so few exhibit this behavior. Data from Swift satellite, which normally studies gamma ray bursts, has allowed scientists to confirm that black holes “light up” when galaxies collide, and the data may offer insight into the future behavior of the black hole in our own Milky Way galaxy.
The intense emission from galaxy centers, or nuclei, arises near a supermassive black hole containing between a million and a billion times the sun’s mass. Giving off as much as 10 billion times the sun’s energy, some of these active galactic nuclei (AGN) are the most luminous objects in the universe. They include quasars and blazars.
“Theorists have shown that the violence in galaxy mergers can feed a galaxy’s central black hole,” said Michael Koss, the study’s lead author and a graduate student at the University of Maryland in College Park. “The study elegantly explains how the black holes switched on.”
Swift was launched in 2004, and while its Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) is waiting to detect the next gamma ray burst, it also has been mapping the sky using hard X-rays, said Neil Gehrels, Swift’s principal investigator. “In fact, it detected its 508th gamma ray burst about 30 minutes ago,” Gehrels said at the press conference the morning of May 26th at the 216th meeting of the American Astronomical Society. “But building up its exposure year after year, the Swift BAT Hard X-ray Survey is the largest, most sensitive and complete census of the sky at these energies.”
Until this hard X-ray survey, astronomers never could be sure they had counted the majority of the AGN. Thick clouds of dust and gas surround the black hole in an active galaxy, which can block ultraviolet, optical and low-energy, or soft X-ray, light. Infrared radiation from warm dust near the black hole can pass through the material, but it can be confused with emissions from the galaxy’s star-forming regions. Hard X-rays can help scientists directly detect the energetic black hole.
[/caption]
The survey, which is sensitive to AGN as far as 650 million light-years away, uncovered dozens of previously unrecognized systems.
“The Swift BAT survey is giving us a very different picture of AGN,” Koss said. The team finds that about a quarter of the BAT galaxies are in mergers or close pairs. “Perhaps 60 percent of these galaxies will completely merge in the next billion years. We think we have the ‘smoking gun’ for merger-triggered AGN that theorists have predicted.”
“A big problem in astronomy is understanding how black holes grow and are fed,” said Joel Bregman from the University of Michigan. “We know growth in the early stages of a black hole’s life is a combination of mergers plus accretion of gas and dust from nearby stars, and we think that the accretion is the more important process. But this shows us that the feeding of the gas and dust has been channeled into the center at a fairly early stage, and the disturbance from the mergers allows gas to be funneled into the center and flow into the black hole.”
“We’ve never seen the onset of AGN activity so clearly,” said Bregman, who was not involved in the study. “The Swift team must be identifying an early stage of the process with the Hard X-ray Survey.”
Other members of the study team include Richard Mushotzky and Sylvain Veilleux at the University of Maryland and Lisa Winter at the Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy at the University of Colorado in Boulder.
The study will appear in the June 20 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The spiral troughs and gian canyon Chasma Borale have puzzled scientists for 40 years.
[/caption]
The shape of the two-mile-tall Texas-sized ice cap at the north pole of Mars has puzzled scientists for forty years, but new results to be published in a pair of papers in the journal Nature on May 27 have put the controversy to rest.
The polar caps of Mars have been known since the first telescopic views of the planet, but early spacecraft images revealed that the north polar cap is scored by enigmatic troughs that spiral out from its center, as well as a chasm larger than the Grand Canyon. The origin of these features has been debated since they were first discovered in 1972.
One hypothesis to explain the giant canyon, called Chasma Boreale, is that volcanic heat melted the ice and caused a catastrophic flood that formed the chasm. Other scientists have suggested that wind sweeping downhill from the top of the cap carved Chasma Boreale from the ice.
Multiple explanations have been suggested for the spiral troughs too. One explains the troughs as fractures caused by the flow of ice from the pole. Another uses a model to suggest that the troughs are the natural result of solar heating and lateral heat conduction in the ice.
The two new papers, led by Jack Holt and Isaac Smith of The University of Texas at Austin’s Institute for Geophysics, used data from the Shallow Subsurface Radar (SHARAD) on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) to study the internal structure of the ice cap and discover the origin of the troughs and the chasm.
“SHARAD sends pulses of radio waves from orbit, 700 times per second,” Holt explained. “Some energy is reflected from the surface, and then from subsurface interfaces if the intervening material allows the radio waves to penetrate. Radar at this wavelength (about 20 meters) penetrates ice very well, and it has been used from airplanes on Earth to map large portions of Earth’s ice sheets.”
“By putting all of the reflections together one can make an image of what lies beneath the
surface,” Smith added.
Holt explained that the ability to map not only the surface features but also the internal structure of the ice cap “opens the door to better understand what we see on the surface by providing critical context in time.”
Top: An example SHARAD radar cross section of the martian north polar cap. Bottom: An annotated version of the same cross-section.
By mapping the three-dimensional structure of the north polar ice cap, Smith and Holt have determined that both the troughs and Chasma Boreale were formed by katabatic winds, which blow down from the top of the ice cap.
“We aren’t saying they were carved by wind, rather that wind had a strong role in their formation and evolution.” Holt said. “Chasma Boreale is an old feature that persisted because new ice did not accumulate there, likely due to persistent winds coming from the highest point on the ice cap.”
Holt also discovered evidence for another old canyon that has been completely filled in over time. “No evidence remains on the surface to indicate that it was there previously,” Holt said. “We can map it in the radar data, however.”
The spiral troughs likewise are controlled by the wind. “The radar layers we see show evidence for wind transport because they vary in thickness and elevation [across the troughs],” Smith, lead author of the trough paper, explained. “The wind moves across the trough instead of through it [and] moves ice from the upwind side (thereby thinning they layer) to the downwind side (adding more to the existing layer).”
This causes the spiral troughs to migrate upwind over time, a phenomenon first proposed by Alan Howard, a researcher at the University of Virginia, in 1982. “Many people proposed other hypotheses suggesting he was wrong,” Smith said. “But when you look at a hypothetical cross section from his paper, it looks almost exactly like what we see in the radar data. We were amazed at how accurate Alan Howard predicted what we would
see.”
The troughs are spiral shaped due to the planet’s rotation. As the katabatic winds blow from the center of the cap down to lower latitudes they are twisted by the same “coriolis force” that causes hurricanes to spiral on the Earth.
The layers that Holt and Smith mapped using radar data also suggest that ice flows are much rarer on Mars than they are on Earth. The lack of flows means that the polar ice on Mars preserves more complex layers than expected. “This complexity provides very specific constraints on the climatic processes responsible for [the layers],” Holt said. “We will eventually be able to reconstruct winds and accumulation patterns across the polar cap and through time.”
Holt plans to use the ancient polar landscapes inferred from the SHARAD data along with simulations of the martian climate to model the formation of the polar cap. “If we can recreate the major features such as Chasma Boreale [in the models], then we will have learned a great deal about climate on Mars during that period.”
Smith and Holt also plan to study the effect of Mars’ tilt on the formation of the ice cap. “Because Mars’ orbit and tilt change so much with respect to the sun, it would be nice to see how that has affected deposition of ice on the cap. This requires much more mapping, and we have already begun that process,” Smith said.
“There is still much research to do on Mars,” Smith said. “The planet has a lot of mysteries, some of which we haven’t even found yet.”
A bittersweet moment in space history as Atlantis and her six-member crew landed at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center on Wednesday morning. Very likely, this was Atlantis’ final landing, returning home after 25 years of service. The rich history of the Atlantis space shuttle includes 294 days in space, 4,648 orbits and 120,650,907 miles during 32 flights. There’s a chance this orbiter could fly again – she’ll be readied as a rescue ship for the last scheduled shuttle mission –and many shuttle supporters feel that since Atlantis will be fully geared up, she should fly one last time. But only time (and funding and Congress) will tell if Atlantis will fly again. Continue reading “Atlantis Returns Home — For the Last Time?”
The first mated Forward Assembly of an Orion Crew Module has been built by Lockheed Martin team at NASA Michoud Assembly Facility by welding together the Cone Assembly and the Crew Tunnel segments during May 2010. The final weld for the Ground Test Article (GTA) will join this Forward Assembly to the Aft Assembly. An aeroshell covered with thermal protection tiles will be attached later after the GTA skeleton is completed and mass simulators have been installed inside. Astronauts would enter the International Space Station through the tunnel after docking. Credit: Lockheed Martin
“The Orion capsule is the Congressionally approved program of record and we are moving forward with it”, says Larry Price, Lockheed’s Orion Deputy Program Manager in an interview with me. “Our work is continuing with the funding which is still approved until September 2010. Orion is a very functional vehicle. All subsystems will be state of the art.
“Orion is not Apollo on Steroids”, Price emphasized.
“We are building on what is known and it’s a very contemporary approach. The flight avionics are very similar to commercial airliners. We can take advantage of the latest advances in avionics and computing. Orion has been designed for long duration interplanetary functionality to operate beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO) for 6 months or more to visit the Moon, Asteroids, Lagrange points and other targets of interest for scientific investigation”, Price explained.
The Orion Cone assembly for the GTA is shown here with “Confidence panels” and equipment slings and clamps which were used to “practice“ and validate the crucial friction stir welding procedures for welding together the hardware segments which form the first Orion GTA pathfinder vehicle. Credit: Lockheed Martin
“The Orion project status is we have just one more weld remaining on the crew cabin”, says Tim Knowles. He is the Orion GTA Vehicle manager for Lockheed Martin and discussed Orion development in an interview with me. “When all follow on work to prepare the GTA is done, the final Orion GTA crew cabin will look very much like a real Orion capsule,” Knowles said.
“The final close out weld will join the Forward Cone Assembly and Crew Tunnel to the barrel shaped Aft Assembly. This combined piece then comprises the habitable volume and forms the first structural framework for the first Orion Crew Cabin”.
Interior view of Cone Assembly and crew hatch welded to the mid-ring (silver colored) at base. The 5 meter diameter Cone Assembly weighs about 650 lbs and will be welded to the Aft Assembly. The 18 cm thick mid-ring joins the barrel of the Aft Assembly to the Cone. The bent “T” shaped ring adds stiffness to the structure and also provides an attach point for the aeroshell support structure. Credit: Lockheed Martin“Inside the Aft Assembly is the backbone skeleton which provides structural stiffness to the cabin and also hardware mounting locations. The Aft Assembly is where the crew seats, storage lockers and other systems are installed onto compartments inside the backbone skeleton”.
“The welding process uses a technique called Friction Stir Welding (FSW)”, Knowles said. “It has produced acceptable results so far. It’s a learning process and not flawless, and improves each time we do it” added Knowles.
Orion Crew Module Cone for the Ground Test Article is hoisted and moved in preparation for welding at the NASA Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, La. Credit: Lockheed MartinThe welds for the final large segments ranged from about 300 to 450 inches in length. “These are the longest FSW welds ever attempted”, according to Larry Price.
“We use sound to evaluate the work and detect any flaws”, explained Knowles. “The testing method is called Phased Array Ultrasonic Testing (PAUT). It’s a Non-Destruction Evaluation (NDE) technique. Remember, the GTA is intended as a manufacturing pathfinder as well as a structural test article”.
“The actual welding times to combine the individual segments requires only about 45 minutes to an hour. Of course the real trick to getting a good weld is that it takes many many days of preparation work to get the parts and equipment and everything else set up properly,” explained Knowles.
Orion Aft Assembly, with Barrel and Bulkhead, will house the Backbone Assembly and be welded to the Forward Cone/Tunnel Assembly to form the complete Orion GTA structural assembly Credit: Lockheed Martin
“Most of the work on the parts needed to complete the GTA after completion of the welding is well along. They will be installed inside following a pressure test of the crew cabin that is scheduled for June. These include mass and volume simulators for items like the crew seats and consoles, lockers, waste management etc. On the outside we’ll add simulators for the parachutes, compressed gases, propellants and thrusters all around the shell we welded together”.
“Then we’ll add the simulated [cone shaped] thermal protection system (TPS) aeroshell around that, including a few real TPS tiles. We will also add a heat shield.”
“When we are done adding everything, the final Orion GTA will look very much like a real flight article of the Orion capsule”.
Mock up of the Orion Capsule at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Center. 4300 people are working on the Orion project across the US. Credit: Ken Kremer
“The GTA will then be placed in a chamber and bombarded with acoustic energy for environmental correlation tests. These tests simulate the flight environment to collect data for the purpose of comparing the results to our predictive models, updating the models, and then refining the design of the crew cabin”.
“We are planning to ship the GTA to our Lockheed facility in Denver around the end of October. It will be integrated with a simulated Launch Abort System to form a launch abort vehicle (LAV) that will subjected to further vibro-acoustic tests next spring. Then the GTA crew module will be shipped to NASA Langley for water drop landing testing to simulate the impact. Those tests will run into 2012”.
“About 86 people are currently working on various aspects of the Orion GTA project at Michoud”, according to Lockheed spokesman Kevin Barre.
The GTA is a key pathfinder vehicle and the first full-sized, flight-like test article for Orion. It will be subjected to numerous stringent tests which are crucial learning exercises that will help validate the cabin design and will be used to incorporate changes to the tools and manufacturing processes that will eventually lead to a human rated production vehicle.
This Orion GTA capsule is an indispensible forerunner to the next generation Orion vehicle which NASA had planned for human flights to shot to the Moon and the International Space Station (ISS). It is not an unmanned “rescue capsule”, or lifeboat, as recently proposed by President Obama at his April 15 space policy speech at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC).
President Obama’s new announcement to resuscitate Orion as a “rescue capsule” was a significant refinement to his original plan of February 2010 to wholly terminate Orion and Project Constellation as part of his initial 2011 NASA Budget proposal which would radically alter the future path of NASA.
