NASA-JPL

JPL News – Day in Review

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This image from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft shows Kupalo Crater, one of the youngest craters on Ceres. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA 


Features on dwarf planet Ceres that piqued the interest of scientists throughout 2015 stand out in exquisite detail in the latest images from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, which recently reached its lowest-ever altitude at Ceres.

Dawn took these images near its current altitude of 240 miles (385 kilometers) from Ceres, between Dec. 19 and 23, 2015.

Kupalo Crater, one of the youngest craters on Ceres, shows off many fascinating attributes at the high image resolution of 120 feet (35 meters) per pixel. The crater has bright material exposed on its rim, which could be salts, and its flat floor likely formed from impact melt and debris. Researchers will be looking closely at whether this material is related to the “bright spots” of Occator Crater. Kupalo, which measures 16 miles (26 kilometers) across and is located at southern mid-latitudes, is named for the Slavic god of vegetation and harvest.

“This crater and its recently-formed deposits will be a prime target of study for the team as Dawn continues to explore Ceres in its final mapping phase,” said Paul Schenk, a Dawn science team member at the Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston.

The fractured floor of Dantu Crater on Ceres is seen in this image from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

Dawn’s low vantage point also captured the dense network of fractures on the floor of 78-mile-wide (126-kilometer-wide) Dantu Crater. One of the youngest large craters on Earth’s moon, called Tycho, has similar fractures. This cracking may have resulted from the cooling of impact melt, or when the crater floor was uplifted after the crater formed.

A 20-mile (32-kilometer) crater west of Dantu is covered in steep slopes, called scarps, and ridges. These features likely formed when the crater partly collapsed during the formation process. The curvilinear nature of the scarps resembles those on the floor of Rheasilvia, the giant impact crater on protoplanet Vesta, which Dawn orbited from 2011 to 2012.

Dawn’s other instruments also began studying Ceres intensively in mid-December. The

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft viewed this Cerean crater, which is covered in ridges and steep slopes, called scarps on Dec. 23, 2015. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

visible and infrared mapping spectrometer is examining how various wavelengths of light are reflected by Ceres, which will help identify minerals present on its surface.

Dawn’s gamma ray and neutron detector (GRaND) is also keeping scientists busy. Data from GRaND help researchers understand the abundances of elements in Ceres’ surface, along with details of the dwarf planet’s composition that hold important clues about how it evolved.

The spacecraft will remain at its current altitude for the rest of its mission, and indefinitely afterward. The end of the prime mission will be June 30, 2016.

“When we set sail for Ceres upon completing our Vesta exploration, we expected to be surprised by what we found on our next stop. Ceres did not disappoint,” said Chris Russell, principal investigator for the Dawn mission, based at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Everywhere we look in these new low- altitude observations, we see amazing landforms that speak to the unique character of this most amazing world.”

Dawn is the first mission to visit a dwarf planet, and the first mission outside the Earth-moon system to orbit two distinct solar system targets. After orbiting Vesta for 14 months in 2011 and 2012, it arrived at Ceres on March 6, 2015.

Dawn’s mission is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorate’s Discovery Program, managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital ATK Inc., in Dulles, Virginia, designed and built the spacecraft. The German Aerospace Center, Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Italian Space Agency and Italian National Astrophysical Institute are international partners on the mission team. For a complete list of mission participants, visit: http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission

More information about Dawn is available at the following sites: http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov and http://www.nasa.gov/dawn

 

 

 

 

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NASA Space Telescopes See Magnified Image of Faintest Galaxy from Early Universe

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This is a Hubble Space Telescope view of a very massive cluster of galaxies, MACS J0416.1-2403, located roughly 4 billion light-years away and weighing as much as a million billion suns. Image credit: NASA, ESA, and Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile

 

 

Astronomers harnessing the combined power of NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes have found the faintest object ever seen in the early universe. It existed about 400 million years after the big bang, 13.8 billion years ago.

The team has nicknamed the object Tayna, which means “first-born” in Aymara, a language spoken in the Andes and Altiplano regions of South America.

Though Hubble and Spitzer have detected other galaxies that are record-breakers for distance, this object represents a smaller, fainter class of newly forming galaxies that until now had largely evaded detection. These very dim objects may be more representative of the early universe, and offer new insight on the formation and evolution of the first galaxies.

“Thanks to this detection, the team has been able to study for the first time the properties of extremely faint objects formed not long after the big bang,” said lead author Leopoldo Infante, an astronomer at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. The remote object is part of a discovery of 22 young galaxies at ancient times located nearly at the observable horizon of the universe. This research means there is a substantial increase in the number of known very distant galaxies.

The results are published in the December 3 issue of The Astrophysical Journal.

The new object is comparable in size to the Large Magellanic Cloud, a diminutive satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. It is rapidly making stars at a rate 10 times faster than the Large Magellanic Cloud. The object might be the growing core of what will likely evolve into a full-sized galaxy.

The small and faint galaxy was only seen thanks to a natural “magnifying glass” in space. As part of its Frontier Fields program, Hubble observed a massive cluster of galaxies, MACS0416.1-2403, located roughly 4 billion light-years away and weighing as much as a million billion suns. This giant cluster acts as a powerful natural lens by bending and magnifying the light of far more distant objects behind it. Like a zoom lens on a camera, the cluster¹s gravity boosts the light of the distant proto-galaxy to make it look 20 times brighter than normal. The phenomenon is called gravitational lensing and was proposed by Albert Einstein as part of his General Theory of Relativity.

The galaxy’s distance was estimated by building a color profile from combined Hubble and Spitzer observations. The expansion of the universe causes the light from distant galaxies to be stretched or reddened with increasing distance. Though many of the galaxy’s new stars are intrinsically blue-white, their light has been shifted into infrared wavelengths that are measurable by Hubble and Spitzer. Absorption by intervening cool intergalactic hydrogen also makes the galaxies look redder.

This finding suggests that the very early universe will be rich in galaxy targets for the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope to uncover. Astronomers expect that Webb will allow us to see the embryonic stages of galaxy birth shortly after the big bang.

For more information, visit http://www.nasa.gov/hubble or http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer.

 

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Hubble’s View of Ganymede — Briefing Materials

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Image%20of%20Jupiter%27s%20moon%2C%20GanymedeThis image of Ganymede, one of Jupiter’s moons and the largest moon in our solar system was taken by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft. Credits: NASAM ultimedia Files

NASA is hosting a teleconference at 11 a.m. EDT on Thursday, March 12, to discuss Hubble Space Telescope’s observations of Ganymede, Jupiter’s largest moon. These results will help scientists in the search for habitable worlds beyond Earth.

Speakers/Presenters

  • Jim Green, director of Planetary Science, NASA Headquarters, Washington
  • Joachim Saur, professor for geophysics, University of Cologne, Germany
  • Jennifer Wiseman, Hubble senior project scientist, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland
  • Heidi Hammel, executive vice president, Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Washington
     


Figure: 1 — GANYMEDE VIDEO

Caption: This is a video clip of what Ganymede looks like, based on images from NASA’s Galileo orbiter. The US Geological Survey has classified the surface of Ganymede into the types of terrain. The brown regions are those that are heavily cratered and much older than the light shaded regions that are smoother with few craters. These lighter shaded regions are believed to be formed by flooding of the surface with water coming from faults or even cryo-volcanos that have taken place over billions of years. Perhaps even tectonic processes are at work with some crustal ice sheets being forced downward by the emergence of newer icy material. The Galileo spacecraft made six close flybys of the Ganymede and detected a magnetic field coming from the moon itself. In addition, the best models of Ganymede from the Galileo data showed a deep ocean under a thick ice crust. Credit: NASA, USGS


 

Figure: 2 — CUTAWAY OF THE MOON GANYMEDE

CUTAWAY OF THE MOON GANYMEDE

Caption: This is an illustration of the interior of Jupiter’s largest moon Ganymede. It is based on theoretical models, in-situ observations by NASA’s Galileo orbiter, and Hubble Space Telescope observations of the moon’s magnetosphere, which allows for a probe of the moon’s interior. The cake-layering of the moon shows that ices and a saline ocean dominate the outer layers. A denser rock mantle lies deeper in the moon, and finally an iron core beneath that. Credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Feild (STScI)


 

Figure: 3 — GANYMEDE’S MAGNETIC FIELD

This is a sketch of the magnetic field lines around Ganymede, which are generated in the moon’s iron core.

Caption: This is a sketch of the magnetic field lines around Ganymede, which are generated in the moon’s iron core. Hubble Space Telescope measurements of Ganymede’s aurorae, which follow magnetic field lines, suggest that a subsurface saline ocean also influences the behavior of the moon’s aurorae. Credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Feild (STScI)


 

Figure: 4 — GANYMEDE’S AURORAL BELTS- OVERLAY IMAGE

Hubble images of Ganymede's auroral belts (colored blue in this illustration).

Caption: NASA Hubble Space Telescope images of Ganymede’s auroral belts (colored blue in this illustration) are overlaid on a Galileo orbiter image of the moon. The amount of rocking of the moon’s magnetic field provided evidence that the moon has a subsurface saltwater ocean.  Credit: NASA/ESA


 

Figure: 5 — ARTIST CONCEPTION OF GANYMEDE – MAGNETIC FIELDS

In this artist’s concept, the moon Ganymede orbits the giant planet Jupiter.

Caption: In this artist’s concept, the moon Ganymede orbits the giant planet Jupiter. NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope observed aurorae on the moon controlled by Ganymede’s magnetic fields. This field is embedded in Jupiter’s own immense magnetosphere (yellow field lines). A saline ocean under the moon’s icy crust reduces shifting in the auroral belts as measured by Hubble. Credit: NASA/ESA


 

 

Figure: 6 — ARTIST CONCEPTION OF GANYMEDE

Artist concept of Ganymede orbiting Jupiter.

Caption: In this artist’s concept, the moon Ganymede orbits the giant planet Jupiter. NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope observed aurorae on the moon controlled by Ganymede’s magnetic fields. A saline ocean under the moon’s icy crust reduces shifting in the auroral belts as measured by Hubble. Credit: NASA/ESA


 

Figure: 7 — PLOT OF THE ROCKING OF GANYMEDE’S MAGNETIC FIELD

This chart plots the excursion of a pair of auroral belts on Jupiter’s moon Ganymede.

Caption: This chart plots the excursion of a pair of auroral belts on Jupiter’s moon Ganymede. Their motion provides insight into the moon’s interior. Ganymede has a magnetic field produced by an iron core. Because Ganymede is close to Jupiter, it is also embedded in Jupiter’s own magnetic field. When Jupiter’s magnetic field changes, the aurorae on Ganymede also change, “rocking” back and forth. This amount of rocking is inhibited if the moon has a subsurface ocean. By watching the rocking motion of the two aurorae, scientists were able to determine that a large amount of saltwater exists beneath Ganymede’s crust, affecting its magnetic field. Credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Feild (STScI)



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