Space Scientific Studies
What Uranus Cloud Tops Have in Common With Rotten Eggs
Even after decades of observations and a visit by NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft, Uranus held on to one critical secret — the composition of its clouds. Now, one of the key components of the planet’s clouds has finally been verified.
A global research team that includes Glenn Orton of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, has spectroscopically dissected the infrared light from Uranus captured by the 26.25-foot (8-meter) Gemini North telescope on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea. They found hydrogen sulfide, the odiferous gas that most people avoid, in Uranus’ cloud tops. The long-sought evidence was published in the April 23rd issue of the journal Nature Astronomy.
The detection of hydrogen sulfide high in Uranus’ cloud deck (and presumably Neptune’s) is a striking difference from the gas giant planets located closer to the Sun — Jupiter and Saturn — where ammonia is observed above the clouds, but no hydrogen sulfide. These differences in atmospheric composition shed light on questions about the planets’ formation and history.
NASA’s Webb Observatory Requires More Time for Testing and Evaluation; New Launch Window Under Review
NASA Release by Jen Rae Wang / Steve Cole
Headquarters, Washington’
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope currently is undergoing final integration and test phases that will require more time to ensure a successful mission. After an independent assessment of remaining tasks for the highly complex space observatory, Webb’s previously revised 2019 launch window now is targeted for approximately May 2020.
“Webb is the highest priority project for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate, and the largest international space science project in U.S. history. All the observatory’s flight hardware is now complete, however, the issues brought to light with the spacecraft element are prompting us to take the necessary steps to refocus our efforts on the completion of this ambitious and complex observatory,” said acting NASA Administrator Robert Lightfoot.
SPACE-TIME: The Missing Mass Mystery
By George McGinn
Cosmology and Space Research Institute
I don’t believe in Dark Matter or Dark Energy. Even the new Dark Flow.
Published on Oct 25, 2017 – For years, astronomers have been unable to find up to half of the baryonic matter in the universe. We may just have solved this problem. We’ve known for some time that around 95% of the energy content of the universe is in dark matter and dark energy. This dark sector doesn’t interact with light in any way and so is invisible to us. The remaining 5% – the light sector – represents all of the regular matter in the universe. Yet what if I told you that all of the stars and galaxies and galaxy clusters only comprise 10% of the light sector. The rest has proved as elusive as the dark sector. We think it must exist as extremely diffuse gas in between the galaxies, yet our intense searches miss up to half of it. At least until now.
POST TO SPACE-TIME: What about matter that due to the faster than light expansion of the universe? Do we not count them? Ignore them? At the current rate of expansion, which I believe (no verified) is about 2.4, this would mean less mass would be within the visible range every year, 100, 1000+ years. In the area where light will never reach us there is still matter and star creation which must me counted to get an accurate, exact answer to the total mass to dark matter to dark energy (if this really is another name for the faster than light expansion of the universe) ratio. Until them, this is no more than guess work.To make this less confusing, what I am referring to is the speed of causality, or speed of light. In several episodes, you represented this on a graph, say X=time, Y=speed, and the speed of “c” cut the graph at 45 degrees. Now everything to the left of “c” is the visible universe, but due to the faster than “c” expansion of the universe, galaxies cross over the line into the area where light is not fast enough to cross over. The same goes for matter. If Dark Energy is a myth, and only explains the rapid expansion of the universe set in motion by the Big Bang, the missing mass is in the part we can’t see. And since we can’t see into it, we have no idea how big it is, nor how old it is. Ninety-five percent of our missing mass may reside there.
Newly Discovered Exoplanet May be Best Candidate in Search for Signs of Life
Jason Dittmann
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Transiting rocky super-Earth found in habitable zone of quiet red dwarf star
An exoplanet orbiting a red dwarf star 40 light-years from Earth may be the new holder of the title “best place to look for signs of life beyond the Solar System”. Using ESO’s HARPS instrument at La Silla, and other telescopes around the world, an international team of astronomers discovered a “super-Earth” orbiting in the habitable zone around the faint star LHS 1140. This world is a little larger and much more massive than the Earth and has likely retained most of its atmosphere. This, along with the fact that it passes in front of its parent stars as it orbits, makes it one of the most exciting future targets for atmospheric studies. The results will appear in the 20 April 2017 issue of the journal Nature.
Asteroid to Fly Safely Past Earth on April 19
DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
A relatively large near-Earth asteroid discovered nearly three years ago will fly safely past Earth on April 19 at a distance of about 1.1 million miles (1.8 million kilometers), or about 4.6 times the distance from Earth to the moon. Although there is no possibility for the asteroid to collide with our planet, this will be a very close approach for an asteroid of this size.
The asteroid, known as 2014 JO25, was discovered in May 2014 by astronomers at the Catalina Sky Survey near Tucson, Arizona — a project of NASA’s NEO Observations Program in collaboration with the University of Arizona. (An NEO is a near-Earth object). Contemporary measurements by NASA’s NEOWISE mission indicate that the asteroid is roughly 2,000 feet (650 meters) in size, and that its surface is about twice as reflective as that of the moon. At this time very little else is known about the object’s physical properties, even though its trajectory is well known.
NASA News Briefing: Discoveries About Oceans Beyond Earth
NASA/JPL NEWS RELEASE | APRIL 10, 2017
NASA will discuss new results about ocean worlds in our solar system from the agency’s Cassini spacecraft and the Hubble Space Telescope during a news briefing 11 a.m. PDT (2 p.m. EDT) on Thursday, April 13. The event, to be held at NASA Headquarters in Washington, will include remote participation from experts across the country.
The briefing will be broadcast live on NASA Television and the agency’s website.
These new discoveries will help inform future ocean world exploration — including NASA’s upcoming Europa Clipper mission planned for launch in the 2020s — and the broader search for life beyond Earth.
Stars Born in Winds from Supermassive Black Holes
ESO’s VLT spots brand-new type of star formation
Observations using ESO’s Very Large Telescope have revealed stars forming within powerful outflows of material blasted out from supermassive black holes at the cores of galaxies. These are the first confirmed observations of stars forming in this kind of extreme environment. The discovery has many consequences for understanding galaxy properties and evolution. The results are published in the journal Nature.
A UK-led group of European astronomers used the MUSE and X-shooter instruments on the Very Large Telescope(VLT) at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile to study an ongoing collision between two galaxies, known collectively as IRAS F23128-5919, that lie around 600 million light-years from Earth. The group observed the colossal winds of material — or outflows — that originate near the supermassive black hole at the heart of the pair’s southern galaxy, and have found the first clear evidence that stars are being born within them [1].
Such galactic outflows are driven by the huge energy output from the active and turbulent centres of galaxies. Supermassive black holes lurk in the cores of most galaxies, and when they gobble up matter they also heat the surrounding gas and expel it from the host galaxy in powerful, dense winds [2].
NASA’s Juno Spacecraft Set for Fifth Jupiter Flyby
DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
Dwayne Brown / Laurie Cantillo
NASA Headquarters, Washington
NASA’s Juno spacecraft will make its fifth flyby over Jupiter’s mysterious cloud tops on Monday, March 27, at 1:52 a.m. PDT (4:52 a.m. EDT, 8:52 UTC).
At the time of closest approach (called perijove), Juno will be about 2,700 miles (4,400 kilometers) above the planet’s cloud tops, traveling at a speed of about 129,000 miles per hour (57.8 kilometers per second) relative to the gas-giant planet. All of Juno’s eight science instruments will be on and collecting data during the flyby.
The Many Faces of Rosetta’s Comet 67P
Markus Bauer
European Space Agency, Noordwijk, Netherlands
M. Ramy El-Maarry
University of Colorado
Matt Taylor
ESA Rosetta project scientist
NOTE: Make sure you check 0ut the accompanying Space Photo Exploration page for Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko
Images returned from the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission indicate that during its most recent trip through the inner solar system, the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko was a very active place – full of growing fractures, collapsing cliffs and massive rolling boulders. Moving material buried some features on the comet’s surface while exhuming others. A study on 67P’s changing surface was released Tuesday, March 21, in the journal Science.
“As comets approach the sun, they go into overdrive and exhibit spectacular changes on their surface,” said Ramy El-Maarry, study leader and a member of the U.S. Rosetta science team from the University of Colorado, Boulder. “This is something we were not able to really appreciate before the Rosetta mission, which gave us the chance to look at a comet in ultra-high resolution for more than two years.”
Dark Matter Less Influential in Galaxies in Early Universe
Reinhard Genzel
Director, Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik
Garching bei München, Germany
March 15, 2017
VLT observations of distant galaxies suggest they were dominated by normal matter
We see normal matter as brightly shining stars, glowing gas and clouds of dust. But the more elusive dark matter does not emit, absorb or reflect light and can only be observed via its gravitational effects. The presence of dark matter can explain why the outer parts of nearby spiral galaxies rotate more quickly than would be expected if only the normal matter that we can see directly were present [1].
Now, an international team of astronomers led by Reinhard Genzel at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany have used the KMOS and SINFONI instruments at ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile [2] to measure the rotation of six massive, star-forming galaxies in the distant Universe, at the peak of galaxy formation 10 billion years ago.
What they found was intriguing: unlike spiral galaxies in the modern Universe, the outer regions of these distant galaxies seem to be rotating more slowly than regions closer to the core — suggesting there is less dark matter present than expected [3].
