Jimmy's blog
Wild 2: If You Were There On Jan. 2, 2004 NASA's Stardust spacecraft made a close flyby of comet Wild 2 (pronounced "Vilt-2"). Among the equipment the spacecraft carried on board was a navigation camera.that Comet Wild 2 is about 3.1 miles in diameter. This artist's concept depicts a view of Wild 2 that shows the faint jets emanating from the comet. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Jul 2010 23:00:00 -0500
Into the Looking Glass Recently, technicians at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., completed a series of cryogenic tests on six James Webb Space Telescope beryllium mirror segments at the center's X-ray & Cryogenic Facility. During testing, the mirrors were subjected to extreme temperatures dipping to -415 degrees Fahrenheit, permitting engineers to measure in extreme detail how the shape of the mirror changes as it cools. The Webb telescope has 18 mirrors, each of which will be tested twice in the Center's X-ray & Cryogenic Facility to ensure that the mirror will maintain its shape in a space environment -- once with bare polished beryllium and then again after a thin coating of gold is applied. The cryogenic test gauges how each mirror changes temperature and shape over a range of operational temperatures in space. This helps predict how well the telescope will image infrared sources. The mirrors are designed to stay cold to allow scientists to observe the infrared light they reflect using a telescope and instruments optimized to detect this light. Warm objects give off infrared light, or heat. If the Webb telescope mirror is too warm, the faint infrared light from distant galaxies may be lost in the infrared glow of the mirror itself. Thus, the Webb telescope's mirrors need to operate in a deep cold or cryogenic state, at around -379 degree Fahrenheit. Image Credit: NASA
Tue, 27 Jul 2010 23:00:00 -0500
NASA Finds Super Hot Planet With Unique Comet-Like Tail
Observations taken with Hubble's Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) suggest powerful stellar winds are sweeping the cast-off atmospheric material behind the scorched planet and shaping it into a comet-like tail.
"Since 2003 scientists have theorized the lost mass is being pushed back into a tail, and they have even calculated what it looks like," said astronomer Jeffrey Linsky of the University of Colorado in Boulder, leader of the COS study. "We think we have the best observational evidence to support that theory. We have measured gas coming off the planet at specific speeds, some coming toward Earth. The most likely interpretation is that we have measured the velocity of material in a tail."
The planet, located 153 light years from Earth, weighs slightly less than Jupiter but orbits 100 times closer to its star than the Jovian giant. The roasted planet zips around its star in a short 3.5 days. In contrast, our solar system's fastest planet, Mercury, orbits the sun in 88 days. The extrasolar planet is one of the most intensely scrutinized, because it is the first of the few known alien worlds that can be seen passing in front of, or transiting, its star. Linsky and his team used COS to analyze the planet's atmosphere during transiting events.
During a transit, astronomers study the structure and chemical makeup of a planet's atmosphere by sampling the starlight that passes through it. The dip in starlight because of the planet's passage, excluding the atmosphere, is very small, only about 1.5 percent. When the atmosphere is added, the dip jumps to 8 percent, indicating a bloated atmosphere.
COS detected the heavy elements carbon and silicon in the planet's super-hot 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit atmosphere. This detection revealed the parent star is heating the entire atmosphere, dredging up the heavier elements and allowing them to escape the planet.
The COS data also showed the material leaving the planet was not all traveling at the same speed. "We found gas escaping at high velocities, with a large amount of this gas flowing toward us at 22,000 miles per hour," Linsky said. "This large gas flow is likely gas swept up by the stellar wind to form the comet-like tail trailing the planet."
Hubble's newest spectrograph has the ability to probe a planet's chemistry at ultraviolet wavelengths not accessible to ground-based telescopes. COS is proving to be an important instrument for probing the atmospheres of "hot Jupiters" like HD 209458b.
Another Hubble instrument, the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS), observed the planet in 2003. The STIS data showed an active, evaporating atmosphere, and a comet-tail-like structure was suggested as a possibility. But STIS wasn't able to obtain the spectroscopic detail necessary to show a tail, or an Earthward-moving component of the gas, during transits. The tail was detected for the first time because of the unique combination of very high ultraviolet sensitivity and good spectral resolution provided by COS.
Although this extreme planet is being roasted by its star, it won't be destroyed anytime soon. "It will take about a trillion years for the planet to evaporate," Linsky said.
The results appeared in the July 10 issue of The Astrophysical Journal.
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute, operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. in Washington, conducts Hubble science operations.
For illustrations and more information about HD 209458b, visit:
NASA Television Debuts Full-Time High Definition Channel
The channel will deliver HD video that only NASA can provide, such as live launch coverage of space shuttles and other spacecraft. The "ISS Update," a daily program covering the activities of the on-orbit International Space Station crews, will air on the new HD channel. Video of the Earth shot by crews on the station and from NASA satellites also will be available.
NASA's video file news feed, media conferences, lectures, satellite interviews and special events also will be delivered in HD. The NASA TV HD channel will be offered in MPEG-2 format.
For complete NASA TV downlink and scheduling information, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/ntv
MESSENGER Spacecraft Reveals New Information About Mercury
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Launched in August 2004, the Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging spacecraft, known as MESSENGER, conducted a third and final flyby of Mercury in September 2009. The probe completed a critical maneuver using the planet's gravity to remain on course to enter into orbit around Mercury next year.
Data from the final flyby has revealed the first observations of ion emissions in Mercury's exosphere, or thin atmosphere; new information about the planet's magnetic substorms; and evidence of younger volcanic activity than previously recorded. The results are reported in three papers published online in the July 15 edition of Science Express.
The distribution of individual chemical elements that the spacecraft saw in Mercury’s exosphere varied around the planet. Detailed altitude profiles of those elements in the exosphere over the north and south poles of the planet were also measured for the first time.
"These profiles showed considerable variability among the sodium, calcium, and magnesium distributions, indicating that several processes are at work and that a given process may affect each element quite differently," said Ron Vervack, lead author of one of the papers and the spacecraft's participating scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), in Laurel, Md.
Emission from ionized calcium in Mercury's exosphere was observed for the first time during the flyby. The emission was concentrated over a relatively small portion of the exosphere, with most of the emission occurring close to the equatorial plane.
During its first two flybys of Mercury, the spacecraft captured images confirming that the planet's early history was marked by pervasive volcanism. The spacecraft's third flyby revealed a new chapter in that history within an impact basin 180 miles in diameter that is among the youngest basins yet seen. The basin, recently named Rachmaninoff, has an inner floor filled with smooth plains that differ in color from their surroundings. These sparsely cratered plains are younger than the basin they fill and apparently formed from material that once flowed across the surface.
"We interpret these plains to be the youngest volcanic deposits we have yet found on Mercury," said Louise Prockter, one of the spacecraft's deputy project scientists at APL and lead author of one of the three papers. "Other observations suggest the planet spanned a much greater duration volcanism than previously thought, perhaps extending well into the second half of solar system history."
For the first time, the spacecraft revealed substorm-like build-up, or loading, of magnetic energy in Mercury's magnetic tail. The increases in energy measured in Mercury's magnetic tail were very large. They occurred quickly, lasting only two to three minutes from beginning to end. These increases in tail magnetic energy at Mercury are about 10 times greater than at Earth, and the substorm-like events run their course about 50 times more rapidly.
Magnetic substorms are space-weather disturbances that occur intermittently on Earth, usually several times per day, and last from one to three hours. Earth substorms are accompanied by a range of phenomena, such as the majestic auroral displays seen in the Arctic and Antarctic skies. Substorms also are associated with hazardous energetic particle events that can wreak havoc with communications and Earth-observing satellites.
"The extreme tail loading and unloading observed at Mercury implies that the relative intensity of substorms must be much larger than at Earth," said James A. Slavin, a space physicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and a member of the spacecraft's science team and lead author of another paper.
The new measurements give fresh insight on the time duration of Mercury's substorms. Scientists await more extensive measurements when the spacecraft is in orbit.
"Every time we've encountered Mercury, we've discovered new phenomena," said Sean Solomon, the mission's principal investigator at the Carnegie Institution of Washington. "We're learning that Mercury is an extremely dynamic planet, and it has been so throughout its history. After MESSENGER has been safely inserted into orbit around Mercury next March, we'll be in for a terrific show."
In addition to flying by Mercury, the spacecraft flew past Earth in August 2005 and Venus in October 2006 and June 2007. Approximately 98 percent of Mercury's surface has been imaged by NASA spacecraft. After this spacecraft goes into orbit around Mercury for a yearlong study of the planet, it will observe the polar regions, which are the only unobserved areas of the planet.
The spacecraft was designed and built by APL. The mission is managed and operated by APL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
For more information about the mission, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/messenger
Attn: Education Desk June 3, 2010
No.
RIO VISTA AND ARROYO VALLEY STUDENTS REACH FOR THE STARS WITH HELP FROM NASA
San Bernardino students will communicate live with NASA astronauts in space
Select Rio Vista Elementary and Arroyo Valley High & Martin Luther King students will follow in President Barack Obama’s footsteps as part of a live NASA In-Flight Education Downlink on June 23.
During the NASA downlink, Rio Vista and Arroyo Valley students will interact with the crew of the International Space Station via a live audio and video feed. The members of Expedition 24 will answer questions from 12 Rio Vista students and 4 Arroyo Valley students during the 20-minute NASA downlink.
James Butts, Rio Vista microcomputer specialist and NASA ambassador, wrote the proposal that earned Rio Vista the right to participate in a NASA Downlink. Worldwide, only five schools earned NASA approval for a downlink this year.
Butts credited the support of Rio Vista Principal Charles A. Brown Jr. and District administrators with making the NASA Downlink and his after-school science and technology program possible.
“This is an amazing opportunity for Rio Vista and the entire District,” Butts said. “The International Space Station is about more than cutting-edge science and technology; it also represents the importance of diplomacy and teamwork, a sense of curiosity and adventure, and a willingness to dream big. Those are the skills and traits our students will need to succeed today, tomorrow, and well into the future.”
“And, that has always been my goal, to expose students to the building blocks of progress so they can expand their horizons. What better way to do that than a live interview with astronauts as they orbit the Earth in the International Space Station,” Butts added.
“We have always known our students are among the best and brightest,” San Bernardino City Unified School District Superintendent Dr. Arturo Delgado said. “Now the world will see we are preparing our students to become the leaders and explorers of tomorrow.”
To make the communication between the students and the NASA International Space Station possible, Time Warner Cable offered Rio Vista a satellite truck to receive and transmit the audio and visual feed for a successful downlink. Time Warner Cable will also promote the event during a five-minute segment on CNN Headline News as part of Time Warner Cable’s Local Edition.
“Time Warner Cable is pleased to partner with Rio Vista School on this exciting activity,” said Kelly Bennett of Time Warner Cable’s Public Affairs team. “It dovetails perfectly with our Connect a Million Minds philanthropic initiative, which connects local kids to exciting learning opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and math.”
Due to space limitations, attendance at the NASA downlink is by invitation only. Schools and community members can watch the International Space Station portion of the downlink via NASA TV at www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/. A complete video, including Arroyo Valley High footage, may be available to the public at a later date.
For more information about the San Bernardino City Unified School District, Rio Vista Elementary School, or Arroyo Valley High School, visit www.sbcusd.com.
For more information about Time Warner Cable and Connect a Million Minds, visit www.timewarnercable.com/socal/ and www.connectamillionminds.com.
This section is not for publication: Members of the media are invited to attend the NASA Downlink at Arroyo Valley High School, but you must call and reserve a spot, as space is limited. Please R.S.V.P. to Linda Bardere, director of Communications/Communications, or Nettie Rocha-Kaseno, secretary III, at (909) 381-1250. You may also R.S.V.P. via email to nettie.rochakaseno@sbcusd.com. Please indicate how many individuals from your organization will be attending and if you will be photographing or videotaping the event.
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Feature June 17, 2010 - end -
Astronomers Discover Star-Studded Galaxy Tail
The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-202&cid=release_2010-202
NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer has discovered a galaxy tail studded with bright knots of new stars. The tail, which was created as the galaxy IC 3418 plunged into the neighboring Virgo cluster of galaxies, offers new insight into how stars form.
"The gas in this galaxy is being blown back into a turbulent wake," said Janice Hester of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, lead author of a recent study published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. "The gas is like sand caught up by a stiff wind. However, the particular type of gas that is needed to make stars is heavier, like pebbles, and can't be blown out of the galaxy. The new Galaxy Evolution Explorer observations are teaching us that this heavier, star-forming gas can form in the wake, possibly in swirling eddies of gas."
Collisions between galaxies are a fairly common occurrence in the universe. Our Milky Way galaxy will crash into the Andromeda galaxy in a few billion years. Galaxies tangle together, kicking gas and dust all around. Often the battered galaxies are left with tails of material stripped off during the violence.
Hester and her team studied the tail of IC 3418, which formed in a very different way. IC 3418 is mingling not with one galaxy, but with the entire Virgo cluster of galaxies 54 million light-years away from Earth. This massive cluster, which contains about 1,500 galaxies and is permeated by hot gas, is pulling in IC 3418, causing it to plunge through the cluster's gas at a rate of 1,000 kilometers per second, or more than 2 million miles per hour. At this incredible speed, the little galaxy's gas is being shoved back into a choppy tail.
The astronomers were able to find this tail with the help of the Galaxy Evolution Explorer. Clusters of massive, young stars speckle the tail, and these stars glow with ultraviolet light that the space telescope can see. The young stars tell scientists that a crucial ingredient for star formation - dense clouds of gas called molecular hydrogen - formed in the wake of this galaxy's plunge. This is the first time astronomers have found solid evidence that clouds of molecular hydrogen can form under the violent conditions present in a turbulent wake.
"IC 3418's tail of star-formation demonstrates that strong turbulence promotes cloud formation," said Mark Seibert, a co-author of the paper and a member of the Galaxy Evolution Explorer science team at the Carnegie Institute for Science in Pasadena.
Hester added that galaxy tails provide the perfect environment for isolating the factors controlling star formation.
"These tails are unique, exotic locations where we can probe the precise mechanisms behind star formation," said Hester. "Understanding star formation is pivotal to understanding the lifecycles of galaxies and the dramatic transformations that some galaxies undergo. We can also study how the process affects the development of planets like our own."
Other authors of the paper are James D. Neill, Ted K. Wyder and Christopher Martin of Caltech; Armando Gil de Paz of the Universidad de Computense de Madrid, Spain; Barry F. Madore of the Carnegie Institute of Washington; David Schiminovich of Columbia University, N.Y., N.Y; and Michael Rich of UCLA.
Caltech leads the Galaxy Evolution Explorer mission and is responsible for science operations and data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena manages the mission and built the science instrument. The mission was developed under NASA's Explorers Program managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. Researchers sponsored by Yonsei University in South Korea and the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) in France collaborated on this mission.
Graphics and additional information about the Galaxy Evolution Explorer is online athttp://www.nasa.gov/galex/ and http://www.galex.caltech.edu .
2010-202
Runaway Star A heavy runaway star is rushing away from a nearby stellar nursery at more than 250,000 miles an hour, a speed at which one could travel to the our moon and back in two hours. This is the most extreme case of a very massive star that has been kicked out of its home by a group of even heftier siblings. The homeless star is on the outskirts of the 30 Doradus Nebula, a raucous stellar breeding ground in the nearby Large Magellanic Cloud. The stellar nusery is seen at the center of this image. The finding bolsters evidence that the most massive stars in the local universe reside in 30 Doradus, making it a unique laboratory for studying heavyweight stars. Also called the Tarantula Nebula, 30 Doradus is roughly 170,000 light-years from Earth. Tantalizing clues from three observatories, including the Hubble Space Telescope's newly installed Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS), and some old- fashioned detective work, suggest that the star may have traveled about 375 light-years from its suspected home, a giant star cluster called R136. Nestled in the core of 30 Doradus, R136 contains several stars topping 100 solar masses each. Visit Hubble Catches Heavyweight Runaway Star for more information. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, C. Evans (Royal Observatory Edinburgh), N. Walbom (STScI), and ESO
Wed, 12 May 2010 23:00:00 -0500
News release: 2010-155 May 11, 2010 - end -
Herschel Finds a Hole in Space
The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-155&cid=release_2010-155
The Herschel Space Observatory has made an unexpected discovery: a gaping hole in the clouds surrounding a batch of young stars. The hole has provided astronomers with a surprising glimpse into the end of the star-forming process.
Stars are born hidden in dense clouds of dust and gas, which can now be studied in remarkable detail with Herschel, a European Space Agency mission with important NASA participation. Although jets and winds of gas have been seen streaming from young stars in the past, it has always been a mystery exactly how a star uses the jets to blow away its surroundings and emerge from its birth cloud. For the first time, Herschel may be seeing an unexpected step in this process.
A cloud of bright reflective gas known to astronomers as NGC 1999 sits next to a black patch of sky. For most of the 20th century, such black patches were known to be dense clouds of dust and gas that block light from passing through.
When Herschel looked in its direction to study nearby young stars, astronomers were surprised to see the cloud continued to look black, which shouldn't have been the case. Herschel's infrared eyes are designed to see into such clouds. Either the cloud was immensely dense or something was wrong.
Investigating further using ground-based telescopes, astronomers found the same story no matter how they looked: this patch looks black not because it is a dense pocket of gas but because it is truly empty. Something has blown a hole right through the cloud.
"No one has ever seen a hole like this," says Tom Megeath of the University of Toledo, Ohio, the principal investigator of the research. "It's as surprising as knowing you have worms tunneling under your lawn, but finding one morning that they have created a huge, yawning pit."
The astronomers think that the hole must have been opened when the narrow jets of gas from some of the young stars in the region punctured the sheet of dust and gas that forms NGC 1999. The powerful radiation from a nearby adolescent star may also have helped to clear the hole. Whatever the precise chain of events, it could be an important glimpse into the way newborn stars rip apart their birth clouds.
Other members of the research team include Thomas Stanke of the European Southern Observatory, Germany; Amy Stutz of the Max-Planck Institute for Astronomy, Germany, and the Steward Observatory, Tucson; John Tobin of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Lori Allen of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, Tucson; Ali Babar of the NASA Herschel Science Center at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena; and Will Fischer and Erin Kryukova, University of Toledo, Ohio.
Herschel is a European Space Agency cornerstone mission, with science instruments provided by consortia of European institutes and with important participation by NASA. NASA's Herschel Project Office is based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. JPL contributed mission-enabling technology for two of Herschel's three science instruments. The NASA Herschel Science Center, part of the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, supports the United States astronomical community. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.
More information is online at http://www.herschel.caltech.edu ,http://www.nasa.gov/herschel and http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Herschel/index.html .
This is from the IYA2010 email
Dear friends,
Here are some IYA2009 updates from the last week.
Astronomy enthusiast creates beautifully illustrated and rhyming science
book: http://www.astronomy2009.org/news/updates/914/
European Planetary Science Congress (EPSC) 2010
Angelicum Centre – Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas
19 – 25 September 2010, Rome, Italy
Outreach Session: Lunar Outreach as a Tool for Public Engagement in
Planetary Science
This session will bring together amateur astronomers, educators,
researchers, and scientists active in the field of lunar science to
discuss the latest developments in outreach activities for promoting
public engagement in planetary science. The link to this is here:
http://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EPSC2010/sessionprogramme/OA
Convener contacts: M. Anand (m.anand@open.ac.uk)and D. Daou
(doris.daou-1@nasa.gov)
Media in Education Newsletter May 2010:
Highlights in Media Education include: an introduction to EuroCreator,
offering video resources to European teachers; an insight into an
innovative special interest group on educational podcasting; an article
about the MEDEA 2009 Finalist, Studiecoach, produced by the Dutch Open
University; an introduction to KlasCement, offering video resources to
Dutch-speaking teachers; several calls for related competitions such as
the EUROPRIX Multimedia Awards and the JAPAN PRIZE; and an interesting
collection of articles, publications and announcements about
developments and publications in the field of media and education
Full PDF here:
http://www.media-in-education.net/files/Media-in-Education_Newsletter_2010-05.pdf
A Google Lunar X PRIZE LEGO MINDSTORMS Challenge!
MoonBots is an exciting new contest that challenges teams of students
(ages 9 and up) and adults from around the globe to learn about
robotics, the Moon, and space exploration by designing and constructing
a LEGO MINDSTORMS robot that performs simulated lunar missions.
To learn more or register a team, visit www.MoonBots.org
Insight into a Galilean Nights event
Staunch IYA2009 supporter Upamanyu Moitra has released his Galilean
Nights event overview. He writes about aspects such as publicity and the
public's reaction, as well as details of the event itself. Says
Upamanyu, "I credit the success of the event to Mum, Dad, Sister and
Granny without whose help it would have been impossible for me to do
this." IYA2009 also credits success to Upamanyu himself. Read the report
and see photographs here:
http://upamanyuspeaks.blogspot.com/2010/05/galilean-nights-event-overview.html
Successful Mobile Exhibition Project test and star party in Iraq
The Amateur Astronomers Association of Kurdistan / Iraq (AAAK) has
launched its Mobile Exhibition Project (MEP). Its main target is to
allow students to look and learn about astronomy and the Universe
through selected astrophotos. Topics include the history of astronomy,
modern equipment, galaxies, nebulae, the Solar System and planets, AAAK
activity shots, and AAAK honorary members around the world.
More info: http://www.astronomy2009.org/news/updates/909/
Meeting: Astronomy and Power How Worlds are Structured
August 30 - September 4, 2010, Gilching (Germany)
More information: http://www.seac-2010.vhs-gilching.org/index.php
If you need any assistance, remember that the Secretariat is always
available for you.
Pedro, Mariana and Lee
IYA2009 Secretariat
--
_________________________________________________
Pedro Russo
International Year of Astronomy 2009 Coordinator
Editor-in-Chief CAPjournal
International Astronomical Union
e.prusso@eso.org
p. +49 (0) 89 320 06 195
f. +49 (0) 89 320 06 703
w.http://www.eso.org/~prusso/
w.www.astronomy2009.org /www.capjournal.org
a. IAU IYA2009 Secretariat
ESO education and Public Outreach Department
Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2
D-85748 Garching bei München
Germany
Posts: 71
Comments: 96
The Ambassador's Place is away to give those who would like current NASA/JPL info and events without getting in the way of the other great activities in this site. I hope you enjoy and find it's information useful and helpful. Great for EDU & STUDENTS...
