Universe Today

March 25, 2021March 25, 2021 by Scott Alan Johnston

A Very Powerful Solar Storm Hit the Earth Back in 1582

Earth's magnetosphere is the region defined by our planet's magnetic field. Image Credit: NASA

“A great fire appeared in the sky to the North, and lasted three nights,” wrote a Portuguese scribe in early March, 1582. Across the globe in feudal Japan, observers in Kyoto noted the same fiery red display in their skies too. Similar accounts of strange nighttime lights were recorded in Leipzig, Germany; Yecheon, South Korea; and a dozen other cities across Europe and East Asia.

It was a stunning event. While people living at high latitudes were well aware of auroras in 1582, most people living closer to the equator were not. The solar storm that year was unlike anything in living memory, and it was so strong it brought the aurora to latitudes as low as 28 degrees (in line with Florida, Egypt, and southern Japan). People this close to the equator had no frame of reference for such dazzling nighttime displays, and many took it as a religious portent.

March 24, 2021March 24, 2021 by Brian Koberlein

Gravitational Lenses Could Allow a Galaxy-Wide Internet

An early NASA concept of an interstellar space probe. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

As Carl Sagan once said, “The sky calls to us. If we do not destroy ourselves, we will one day venture to the stars.” And our first emissaries to the stars will be robotic probes. These interstellar probes will be largely autonomous, but we will want to communicate with them. At the very least we will want them to phone home and tell us what they’ve discovered. The stars are distant, so the probes will need to make a very long-distance call.

March 23, 2021March 23, 2021 by Andy Tomaswick

Perseverance Begins its Science on Mars With a Laser zap

Perseverance has already made its mark on scientific history by taking the first audio recording ever on Mars. But the instrument with the microphone, known as the SuperCam, wasn’t done there. It has plenty of other science to do, and recently it started running through some more preliminary tests. One of those tests happened to involve blasting a rock with a laser – while taking an audio recording of it.

March 22, 2021March 22, 2021 by Matt Williams

Rocks and Other Features at Perseverance’s Landing Site are Getting Navajo Names

On Feb. 18th, 2021, after spending six months in transit, the Perseverance rover landed in the Jezero Crater on Mars. By March 4th, it began driving short distances and calibrating its instruments in preparation for all the science operations it will conduct. Most recently, Perseverance began studying its first scientific target, a rock that has been named “Máaz” – the Navajo word for “Mars.”

March 22, 2021March 23, 2021 by David Dickinson

New Binocular Nova Cas 2021 Flares in Cassiopeia

A ‘new star’ erupted into visibility over the past weekend, and continues to brighten.

It began, as all modern astronomical alerts seem to, with one tweet, then two. Early on the morning of Friday, March 19^th, we started seeing word that a nova was spotted in the constellation of Cassiopeia the Queen, near its border with Cepheus. At the time, the nova was at magnitude +10 ‘with a bullet,’ and still brightening. A formal notice came that same night from the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) with Alert Notice 735 on the discovery of the first nova in Cassiopeia for 2021, Nova Cassiopeiae 2021, or N Cas 2021.

March 22, 2021March 22, 2021 by Nancy Atkinson

Mont Mercou on Mars

Mont Mercou - MSL MastCam - Sols 3057 - 3061. Credit: NASA/JPL/ image processing by Kevin M. Gill.

Here are a few stunning views of the Curiosity Rover’s current location, Mont Mercou in Gale Crater on Mars. This towering outcrop provides a great look at layered sedimentary rock structures. On Earth, it’s common to find layered rock like the ones within this cliff face, especially where there were once lakes. The pancake-like layers of sediment are compressed and cemented to form a rock record of the planet’s history.

This color image is from one of our favorite image editors, Kevin Gill. He assembled 202 raw images taken by MSL’s MastCam between sols 3057 and 3061. You can see Kevin’s full mosaic on Flickr.

March 21, 2021March 21, 2021 by Matthew Cimone

More Audio from Perseverance: the Crunch of its Wheels on the Martian Regolith

Some of Perseverance's first tire tracks as captured by one of Percy's "hazcams" or Hazard Avoidance Cameras. c. NASA/JPL

In absence of (yet) being able to step foot on Mars, we have robotic vicarious experiences through our rovers including Perseverance which landed this past February 18^th. In addition to photos we’ve collected from the surface over the decades, our ever-improving data connection to Mars made it possible to see video from Perseverance’s landing. That dramatic unfurl of the parachute and dust spray of the landing thrusters – astonishing! I’m not ashamed to admit I cried. Through Perseverance we’re also experiencing Mars exploration with another sense – SOUND! Sound from another planet!! Using Perseverance’s Entry, Descent, and Landing Microphone (EDL Mic) we recently recorded audio of Perseverance’s wheels rolling across the Martian regolith (broken rocks and dust or “soil”). The audio segment below is an edited portion of sound highlights from a longer 16 minute raw audio file.

NASA engineers combined three segments from the raw audio file recorded while the Perseverance Mars rover rolled across a section of Jezero Crater on sol 16 of the mission. Sections 0:20-0:45, 6:40-7:10, and 14:30-15:00 were combined into this 90-second highlight clip. There has been processing and editing to filter out some of the noise.
C. NASA/JPL-Caltech

March 21, 2021March 21, 2021 by Andy Tomaswick

Oh, the Irony. There are Likely Water Worlds Everywhere, but They’re Covered in ice and Impossible to Investigate

Liquid water was originally thought to be relatively rare in the solar system. But one of the most important discoveries of the last several decades of planetary science is that liquid water is extremely common, even outside of the orbit of a star that would allow for it on the surface of a planet or moon. It just happens to be covered by a sheet of ice. Scientists at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) have now theorized about what the abundance of liquid water means for life throughout the galaxy, and whether it might be more common than originally thought.

March 21, 2021March 21, 2021 by Andy Tomaswick

A Plan to Store Seeds, Spores, Eggs and Sperm on the Moon for Safekeeping

Always have a back up plan. Some people take that axiom to the highest levels develop backup plans for life itself. The Svalbard Seedbank is one such backup plan. Located in an ice cave in Norway it houses hundreds of thousands of seed samples in order to preserve biodiversity that is currently arranged on Earth. Ironically, if the worst models of sea level rise from climate change are realized, the Seedbank itself will be inundated by the sea and its precious cargo lost. So now a team led by a professor at the University of Arizona (UA) have proposed a much more radical idea: have the same sort of Ark, but to it much farther away from any potential catastrophic human failure – on the moon.

March 21, 2021March 21, 2021 by Andy Tomaswick

Every Spring a Single Cloud Forms at one of Mars’ Tallest Mountains and Only Lasts for a few Hours

Sometimes even forgotten pieces of technology can lead to completely new science. That was the case recently when scientists at the University of the Basque Country used an almost forgotten camera on the Mars Express to take a breathtaking video of a recurring cloud on the top of Arsia Mons.