New thermal images from powerful ground-based telescopes show swirls of warmer air and cooler regions never seen before within Jupiter's Great Red Spot. Image credit: NASA/JPL/ESO and NASA/ESA/GSFC
It’s difficult enough to track the weather on Earth, but with new thermal images of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, scientists now have the first detailed interior weather map of a giant storm system on another planet. “This is our first detailed look inside the biggest storm of the solar system,” said Glenn Orton, a senior research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “We once thought the Great Red Spot was a plain old oval without much structure, but these new results show that it is, in fact, extremely complicated.” Continue reading “New Images Unlock Secrets of Jupiter’s Red Spot”
Cassini art. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
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I often ponder whether the Cassini spacecraft is a better scientist or artist. I found three recent images from Cassini that definitely give the nod to artist, but surely there’s lots of great science here as well. In this image, Saturn casts its shadow on the rings, but it also shows how the rings reflect sunlight onto the dark side of the planet. Here Saturn appears dimly illuminated by this ringshine. This view looks toward the southern, unilluminated side of the rings from about 10 degrees below the ringplane, and was taken on Jan. 2, 2010 when Cassini was about 2.3 million kilometers (1.4 million miles) from Saturn. Below: beautiful moons.
Two moons, with Saturn's rings. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
While this image is stunningly gorgeous, perhaps the most amazing thing is that it was snapped by Cassini’s cameras just yesterday (March 15, 2010) and beamed back to Earth today! This is a raw, uncalibrated image and the only details posted about it is that the camera was pointing toward Tethys at approximately 2,410,546 kilometers away. Can anyone guess what the second moon is?
Double crescent moons. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute.
Another beauty, Dione and Titan make a smiling pair of crescent moons. This image was taken on March 12, 2010 and received on Earth March 13, 2010. The camera was pointing toward Dione at approximately 2,211,699 kilometers away.
This Hubble Space Telescope picture shows three rings of glowing gas encircling the site of Supernova 1987A, a star which exploded in February 1987. Credit: Dr. Christopher Burrows, ESA/STScI and NASA
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An ambitious new project using the Hubble Space Telescope will allow astronomers to peer deep into the universe in five directions to document the early history of star formation and galaxy evolution. Using an unprecedented amount of time of the famed space telescope, the Hubble Multi-Cycle Treasury Program will image more than 250,000 distant galaxies to provide the first comprehensive view of the structure and assembly of galaxies over the first third of cosmic time. “This is an effort to make the best use of Hubble while it is at the apex of its capabilities, providing major legacy data sets for the ages,” said Sandra Faber, project leader from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Other goals of the project are to look for crucial data on the earliest stages in the formation of supermassive black holes and find distant supernovae important for understanding dark energy and the accelerating expansion of the universe.
The effort relies on Hubble’s powerful new infrared camera, the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), as well as the telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). The proposal, which brings together a large international team of collaborators, was awarded a record 902 orbits of observing time as one of three large-scale projects chosen for the Hubble Multi-Cycle Treasury Program. The observing time, totaling about three and a half months, will be spread out over the next two to three years.
Hubble allows astronomers to see back in time as it gathers light that has traveled for billions of years across the universe. The new survey is designed to observe galaxies at distances that correspond to “look-back times” from nearly 13 billion years ago (about 600,000 years after the Big Bang) up to about 9 billion years ago. Astronomers express these distances in terms of redshift (“z”), a measure of how the expansion of the universe shifts the light from an object to longer wavelengths. The redshift increases with distance, and this study will look at objects at distances from about z=1.5 to z=8.
“We want to look very deep, very far back in time, and see what galaxies and black holes were doing back then,” Faber said. “It’s important to observe in different regions, because the universe is very clumpy, and to have a large enough sample to count things, so we can see how many of one kind of object versus another kind there were at different times.”
Faber and her fellow astronomers expect the first data from their observations to be available by the end of the year. Data from this project will be made available to the entire astronomy community with no proprietary period for Faber’s team to conduct their own analysis. The likely result will be a race among teams of scientists to publish the first results from this new treasure trove of data. But Faber said the project will yield such rich data it will keep astronomers busy for years to come.
“We’re very excited, not only about the 900 orbits, but also about what this new camera can do. It’s just amazing what it sees,” Faber said. “This project is the biggest event in my career, the culmination of three decades of work using big telescopes to study galaxy evolution.”
Additional information about the project is available on the Cosmology Survey Multi-Cycle Treasury Program web site at http://csmct.ucolick.org/.
Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield during one of his two EVAs during the STS-100 mission in 2001. Hadfield is backdropped against the blue and white Earth, and Scott Parazynski, who shared both space walks with Hadfield and who took this photo, appears as a small reflection in the Canadian astronaut's helmet visor. Credit: NASA
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What is it really like to go on a spacewalk? Some astronauts have said there are no words to describe the experience, but we talked with astronaut Chris Hadfield – the same guy who gave the best description ever of going to the bathroom in space – and asked him to convey his thoughts about his EVA experiences. Hadfield has done it again, and has now given the best description ever of a spacewalk.
UT: Chris, you were part of the STS-100 space shuttle crew that flew to the ISS 2001, and you had the opportunity to do a couple of spacewalks to help in the construction of the station. I once heard you describe one of your spacewalks where you said you were holding on to the side of the space station with one hand with your face into the wind as it were, and you were looking out at the rest of the entire Universe. For all of us that wish we could experience it, what is it really like to do a spacewalk? Chris Hadfield during an EVA in 2001. Also in the image is the Canadarm2 robotic arm on the ISS. Credit: NASA Chris Hadfield: Gosh, I’m not sure how to describe it. I was there for the birth of all three of my children. I did the first F-18 intercept of a Bear bomber off the coast of Canada. I represented Canada in a bunch of different levels, including as a fighter pilot. I was a test pilot doing all sorts of very fascinating, challenging, brand new work. I went to Mir, I went to the ISS. But nothing compares to going outside for a spacewalk. Nothing compares to being alone in the Universe; to that moment of opening the hatch and pulling yourself outside into the Universe.
Sometimes you’re driving on a mountain road, it’s slippery and you’re doing a bunch of curves and you don’t really see anything because you have a cliff falling away on one side and another cliff up on the other. But suddenly you come around a corner and you say, “Oh wow!” And there you’ve got the whole valley in front of you, or they make one of those nice pullovers where you can stop and look out, and you do, and you stop and you get out of your car and walk over to the edge and you see where you are, where all those little myopic turns have taken you.
A spacewalk is very much like that in that the opening of the hatch is probably step 750 of the day. And steps 1 through 749 were all boring and minuscule and each one was on a checklist and you had to do every one right, so you were very painstaking. But suddenly you do this one step, and suddenly you are in a place that you hadn’t conceived how beautiful this could be. How stupefying this could be. And by stupefying I mean, it stops your thought.
You’ve probably heard me say this before, but I knew I couldn’t keep notes up there and I would forget stuff so I sorta resolved to myself that I would verbalize and attempt to, as eloquently as I could, express what I was feeling and what I was seeing so that later I could listen to the recordings of it and remember, and not have missed such an amazing experience. And yet when I listen to the transcripts of what I said, most of it was just, “Wow!” It was so pathetic! But the experience was just overwhelming! Chris Hadfield during an EVA in 2001. Credit: NASA
It is like coming around a corner and seeing the most magnificent sunset of your life, from one horizon to the other where it looks like the whole sky is on fire and there are all those colors, and the sun’s rays look like some great painting up over your head. You just want to open your eyes wide and try to look around at the image, and just try and soak it up. It’s like that all the time. Or maybe the most beautiful music just filling your soul. Or seeing an absolutely gorgeous person where you can’t just help but stare. It’s like that all the time.
So, it’s an extremely distracting place to work. But it also really puts yourself into perspective because this human creation is right next to you and its inherently, massively beautiful, like the prow of the Titanic or something, where you feel this great human achievement of building this great structure that takes us to a place we’ve never been. But then you notice that even though it is huge and capable, it’s just a speck between everything which is on your left and all the colors and textures of our planet that are just pouring next to you on the right. And you are this little peephole of a microcosm in between those two things, both physically and historically. And you’re very much aware of that the whole time. I’m sort of gushing, but that’s what a spacewalk feels like. It is infinitely worth all the thousands of steps it takes to get there. It’s a great, great thing – I recommend it very highly.
Unfortunately, I was not in Florida over the weekend to see SpaceX’s successful static testfire of the Falcon 9’s rocket’s engines. But fortunately, SpaceX has now released a video of the event. Plus, Ken Kremer wrote a great article about it over the weekend. So check it out!
Phobos, as seen by Mars Express on March 7, 2010. Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)
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ESA released new images of Mars’ moon Phobos, taken during the Mars Express March 7, 2010 flyby, showing the rocky moon in exquisite detail and also in 3-D. Mars Express orbits the Red Planet in a highly elliptical, polar orbit that brings it close to Phobos every five months, and it is the only spacecraft currently in orbit around Mars whose orbit reaches far enough from the planet to provide a close-up view of Phobos. Like our Moon, Phobos always shows the same side to the planet, so only by flying outside the orbit is it possible to observe the moon’s far side. Mars Express did such flybys on March 7, 10 and 13. Get out your 3-D glasses for a great look at Phobos, below.
Phobos in 3-D. taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) onboard the ESA spacecraft Mars Express. Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)
Phobos is an irregular body measuring some 27 × 22 × 19 km. Its origin is debated. It appears to share many surface characteristics with the class of ‘carbonaceous C-type’ asteroids, which suggests it might have been captured by Mars. However, it is difficult to explain either the capture mechanism or the subsequent evolution of the orbit into the equatorial plane of Mars. An alternative hypothesis is that it formed around Mars, and is therefore a remnant from the planetary formation period.
The Phobos/Grunt landing site, as seen by Mars Express on March 7, 2010. Credits: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)
In 2011 Russia will send a mission called Phobos–Grunt (meaning Phobos Soil) to land on Phobos, and an experiment will collect a soil sample and return it to Earth for analysis.
Phobos-Grunt will also carry with it The Planetary Society’s LIFE experiment which will test the survivability of microorganisms in the conditions of deep space. The experiment is a study of the panspermia hypothesis, which posits that microorganisms have traveled between planets sheltered deep inside space rocks.
For operational and landing safety reasons, the proposed landing sites were selected on the far side of Phobos within the area 5°S-5°N, 230-235°E. But new HRSC images showing the vicinity of the landing with better illumination from the Sun that previous images, which will provide valuable views and information for mission planners.
Mars Express will continue to encounter Phobos until the end of March, when the moon will pass out of range. During the remaining flybys, the high-resolution camera and other instruments will continue to collect data.
And if you’re interested in looking back, here’s an archive to all the past Carnivals of Space. If you’ve got a space-related blog, you should really join the carnival. Just email an entry to [email protected], and the next host will link to it. It will help get awareness out there about your writing, help you meet others in the space community – and community is what blogging is all about. And if you really want to help out, let Fraser know if you can be a host, and he’ll schedule you into the calendar.
Finally, if you run a space-related blog, please post a link to the Carnival of Space. Help us get the word out.
As with last week’s Universe Puzzle, something that cannot be answered by five minutes spent googling, a puzzle that requires you to cudgel your brains a bit, and do some lateral thinking. This is a puzzle on a “Universal” topic – astronomy and astronomers; space, satellites, missions, and astronauts; planets, moons, telescopes, and so on.
Now that we’ve hunted down Orion and been bull ridin’ with Taurus, it’s time for us to discover a pair of celestial brothers – the Gemini twins. Gemini is one of the members of the zodiac which means the imaginary path the Sun, Moon and planets follow across the sky passes through the stars of this constellation. But what happens when you don’t have these solar systems objects to point the way to the pair? Then look over the top of Orion’s left shoulder and you’ll see two bright stars that live about a thumb’s length apart from each other – Castor and Pollux. For many of us, Gemini will be almost directly overhead at sky dark.
The slightly fainter star to the northwest is named Castor, and his almost identical brother star angled away to the southeast is Pollux. If you live where skies are dark, give your eyes plenty of time to adjust and you will begin to see the fainter stars that make up the stick figures of their bodies. Their “feet” will always point towards Orion. Once you understand the positions of the stars, it isn’t hard to see how ancient civilizations connected these two stars as twins! The ancient Romans saw the brothers Romulus and Remus, the two heroes that founded Rome. The Greek astronomers saw the twins Castor and Pollux, sons of the god Zeus. Oddly enough, both cultures believed the brothers were raised by the half-man, half-bull centaur called Chiron. Perhaps because of the nearby constellation of Taurus? It was Chiron who sent them to help Jason and the Argonauts in their quest to find the golden fleece. Legend has it that the twins rescued Jason’s ship from a killer storm and thus earned their place in the sky. Other stories say the twins were born of different fathers, making one mortal and one immortal. Pollux, who would live forever, was an excellent boxer. Castor, who would age normally, was an excellent horseman. When both were called upon to fight in the Trojan war, Castor was killed. Pollux love for his brother was so strong that he could not bear to be parted from him, so he begged Zeus to place them both in the sky as stars. The Arabs also saw this pair of stars as twins, while the Chinese referred to them as Yin and Yang!
But there’s a lot more “twins” here than can just be seen with your eyes alone. Two million year old Castor is also a very special type of “twin” star called a visual binary. This means it has another star that can be seen with a telescope very close to it. The two stars aren’t physically connected to each other, but its twin star is also a twin star! Pollux is also very special, too. Why? Because on on June 16, 2006 it was announced that there is planet just about twice the size of Jupiter orbiting it! The planet’s name is Polydeuces – another derivation of the word twin. In real life, this pair of stars couldn’t be more different than each other if they tried. Castor is a hot, blue/white A-type star – a multiple system located almost 50 light years away from Earth. Pollux is a cooler, singular star – a 35 light year distant orange giant that’s not only more massive than our Sun, but probably younger, too.
If you have binoculars or a telescope, be sure to take a look right around Castor’s big toe on a dark night. Here you will see colorful and bright galactic star cluster known as Messier Object 35. A large telescope will also reveal another nearby star cluster, NGC 2158, too. Another “twin”! There is also a planetary nebula called the “Eskimo” (NGC 2392) near the “arm” of the twin on the left. There are many other clusters and nebulae which are part of the constellation of Gemini, but most are too faint to seen without a large telescope.
Have fun with all your new knowledge of Gemini – the twins!
Gemini Map courtesy of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), Mythological Figures courtesy of Stellarium, Constellation photography courtesy of Till Credner, M35 and NGC 2158 courtesy of N.A.Sharp/NOAO/AURA/NSF. Thank you so much!
If you don’t know this face, then let me introduce you. His name is Ken Crawford and he’s the man “behind the curtain” of some of the most amazing works of astrophotography just this side of the Hubble Space Telescope. This northern California resident embarked on his celestial imaging journey almost a decade ago and his work graces everything from magazines to NASA’s “Astronomy Picture of the Day”. So what does the current President of the Advanced Imaging Conference, Inc. do when the skies are cloudy? Then step inside to find out…
This is a four minute journey through the Cosmos represents thousands of hours of image acquisition and processing. It is a compilation of Ken’s best astrophotography subjects since 2004 and gives tribute to all of us who love deep sky.
“What is amazing to me,” says Ken, “is that the ancient photons are so beautiful to our eyes, and when mixed with music, can be an inspiration to our soul.”
Kick back and enjoy the view. Not only does Ken share his wonderful visions through Imaging Deep Sky, but he also gives his time to the Cameron Park Rotary Community Observatory – as well as sharing his methods and work through presentations at schools, conferences and any gathering interested in what’s out yonder.
