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Tag: Astronomy

  • Astronomers Find “Twist” in Cosmic Microwave Background

    Astronomers this week announced that they have found a “twist” in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation that blankets the universe. To be more specific, researchers have detected B-mode polarization in the CMB caused by gravitational lensing.

    What this means is that astronomers have discovered just how the earliest light in the universe was deflected by galaxies and dark matter as it made its way to Earth, changing its polarization along the way. A map of sorts for the light has been re-created using a new technique. Researchers believe this discovery could help cosmologists piece together just what happened in the moments following the big bang.

    The new observations were made using a combination of data from the South Pole Telescope and the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Herschel space telescope. The results have been published in a paper this week in the journal Physical Review Letters.

    “It’s an important checkpoint that we’re able to detect this small lensing B-mode signal and it bodes well for our ability to ultimately measure an even more elusive type of B-mode created during the inflationary Big Bang,” said Duncan Hanson, lead author of the paper and an astronomer at McGill University.

    The other type of B-mode polarization Hanson refers to is caused by the rapid expansion of the universe that immediately (in fractions of a second) followed after the big bang. Current hypotheses predict that collisions between matter and energy during this inflationary period created gravitational waves that could be measured through this “promordial” B-Mode polarized light.

    (Image courtesy ESA)

  • Clouds Mapped on Jupiter-Like Exoplanet

    Clouds Mapped on Jupiter-Like Exoplanet

    Though much of the agency is preparing to shut down, NASA this week announced that astronomers have mapped the clouds of a planet outside our own solar system. Using the Kepler and Spitzer space telescopes, astronomers have created a cloud map of Kepler-7b, a Jupiter-like planet that orbits around the star Kepler-7.

    Though Kepler-7b has less than half the mass of Jupiter, the planet is nearly 50% larger than our local large gas giant. NASA researchers gazed at Kepler-7b for years to determine that the planet has high clouds on its western hemisphere and little cloud cover on its eastern side. A new paper on the findings is set to be published in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

    “By observing this planet with Spitzer and Kepler for more than three years, we were able to produce a very low-resolution ‘map’ of this giant, gaseous planet,” said Brice-Olivier Demory, lead author of the paper and an astronomer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “We wouldn’t expect to see oceans or continents on this type of world, but we detected a clear, reflective signature that we interpreted as clouds.”

    Astronomers using the Kepler telescope were able to determine that Kepler-7b had a bright spot on its western side. A follow-up with the Spitzer telescope revealed that the planet was too cool for the bright spot to be heat, meaning it came from light reflected from Kepler-7. NASA believes the technique might help researchers in the future examine the atmospheres of other exoplanets closer in make-up to Earth.

    “With Spitzer and Kepler together, we have a multi-wavelength tool for getting a good look at planets that are trillions of miles away,” said Paul Hertz, director of astrophysics at NASA. “We’re at a point now in exoplanet science where we are moving beyond just detecting exoplanets, and into the exciting science of understanding them.”

  • Oscillating X-ray/Radio Millsecond Pulsar Spotted

    Astronomers today announced that they have found a “missing link” for pulsar research. A pulsar has been found to oscillate between emitting radio waves and X-rays while spinning extremely fast.

    Pulsars, which are the remnants of dead stars (neutron stars) that were not massive enough to become black holes, are generally classified by the type of electromagnetic emissions they create. As the super-dense objects spin, the throw out radiation such as radio waves an X-rays. Astronomers believe that neutron stars in binary star systems may be “spun up” as they take in matter from a companion star, then begin emitting X-rays as they spin more quickly.

    The newly-discovered pulsar is referred to as a “millisecond pulsar” by astronomers, spitting out pulses of radiation in just milliseconds. It also represents a pulsar in the relatively short-lived in-between state of switching between emitting radio waves and X-rays as it accretes surrounding material. Observations of the pulsar are set to be published this week in the journal Nature.

    “The search is finally over: with our discovery of a millisecond pulsar that, within only a few weeks, switched from being accretion-powered and X-ray-bright to rotation-powered and bright in radio waves, we finally have the missing link in pulsar evolution,” said Alessandro Papitto, an astronomer at the Institute of Space Sciences and lead author on the paper.

    The pulsar, currently named IGR J18245-2452, was spotted emitting X-ray pulsed earlier this year using two European Space Agency (ESA) space telescopes. However, later observations revealed that the pulsar is actually the same one that was discovered by astronomers in 2006 – when it was observed emitting radio pulses. Further observations showed that the pulsar switched again to radio pulses just weeks after its “re-discovery.”

    “At that time, it appeared to be just another millisecond radio pulsar, but now here it was shining in X-rays – this is clearly no ordinary pulsar,” said Papitto.

    The new observations help confirm current theories about the formation of pulsars and millisecond pulsars in particular. They also shed light on how binary systems might evolve through time.

    (Image courtesy ESA)

  • NASA’s NuSTAR Finds Its First 10 Supermassive Black Holes

    NASA’s NuSTAR Finds Its First 10 Supermassive Black Holes

    Astronomers this week announced that NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) has spotted its first 10 supermassive black holes. NuSTAR, an X-ray space telescope, was launched in June 2012 on a mission to conduct surveys for supermassive black holes (those billions of times more massive than our sun) and supernova remnants. A new paper, published in the Astrophysical Journal, describes how these first black holes were found by accident, in images taken of other likely black hole candidates.

    “We found the black holes serendipitously,” said David Alexander lead author of the paper and an astronomer at Durham University. “We were looking at known targets and spotted the black holes in the background of the images.”

    These black holes are the first of what astronomers hope are hundreds to be found by NuSTAR in the coming years. The telescope is able to pick up the high-energy X-ray light that are given off by galaxies containing supermassive black holes. Finding these objects will help researchers determine several questions, such as how many supermassive black holes there are in the universe, and whether they may be the source of the observed cosmic X-ray background.

    “We are getting closer to solving a mystery that began in 1962,” said Alexander. “Back then, astronomers had noted a diffuse X-ray glow in the background of our sky but were unsure of its origin. Now, we know that distant supermassive black holes are sources of this light, but we need NuSTAR to help further detect and understand the black hole populations.”

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

  • Spitzer Telescope Now a Decade Old

    Spitzer Telescope Now a Decade Old

    Sunday marks the ten-year anniversary of the launch of NASA‘s Spitzer Space Telescope. NASA today commemorated the milestone by taking a look back at all the discoveries Spitzer has been integral in this past decade.

    “I always knew Spitzer would work, but I had no idea that it would be as productive, exciting and long-lived as it has been,” said Spitzer Michael Werner, project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “The spectacular images that it continues to return, and its cutting-edge science, go far beyond anything we could have imagined when we started on this journey more than 30 years ago.”

    Spitzer, as an infrared telescope, can observe the furthest objects yet detected. Throughout its career, Spitzer has found the most distant galaxies ever seen, helped accurately measure the Hubble constant, shined light on the universe’s infrared background glow, and discovered weather patterns on brown dwarf stars.

    The Spitzer telescope, much like the recently recommissioned WISE telescope, is now searching for near-Earth asteroids. While WISE will focus on finding potentially deadly asteroids, Spitzer will be helping NASA narrow down candidates for its plan to capture an asteroid in orbit around the moon for observation.

    “President Obama’s goal of visiting an asteroid by 2025 combines NASA’s diverse talents in a unified endeavor,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for science at NASA. “Using Spitzer to help us characterize asteroids and potential targets for an asteroid mission advances both science and exploration.”

    (Image courtesy NASA)

  • Kepler Space Telescope Broken, NASA Gives Up on Restoration

    Kepler Space Telescope Broken, NASA Gives Up on Restoration

    Sometimes the best physicists, engineers, and mathematicians in the world can’t save a failing satellite. NASA announced today that it has given up attempts to restore the malfunctioning Kepler Space Telescope.

    One of the Kepler’s four reaction wheels failed back in July 2012, and a second went out this past May. Since that time NASA researchers have been attempting to recover at lease one of the wheels, which are necessary for the telescope to be precisely aimed. With the restoration effort now abandoned, NASA has effectively cancelled the spacecraft’s four-year extended mission, which began after the completion of its primary mission in November 2012.

    NASA is now considering how the Kepler might be used for research using only its two remaining reaction wheels. Much of the data Kepler collected during its primary mission is still being evaluated, meaning that the satellite will continue to contribute to discoveries for some time to come.

    “Kepler has made extraordinary discoveries in finding exoplanets including several super-Earths in the habitable zone,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “Knowing that Kepler has successfully collected all the data from its prime mission, I am confident that more amazing discoveries are on the horizon.”

    Since its launch in 2009, Kepler has been searching for Earth-like exoplanets. The telescope has succeeded in its primary mission, confirming 135 different exoplanets in dozens of space systems. The discoveries include a planet in a system with four stars, exoplanets smaller than Earth, and a planet that could be similar to Star Wars‘ Tatooine. In addition, the spacecraft identified more than 3,500 candidate planets, meaning its greatest discoveries could still await.

    “At the beginning of our mission, no one knew if Earth-size planets were abundant in the galaxy,” said William Borucki, Kepler science principal investigator at NASA’s Ames Research Center. “If they were rare, we might be alone. Now at the completion of Kepler observations, the data holds the answer to the question that inspired the mission: ‘Are Earths in the habitable zone of stars like our sun common or rare?’”

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

  • Super-Strong Magnetic Field Found Around Magnetar

    Astronomers this week revealed that one of the strongest magnetic fields ever observed has been spotted around a neutron star. The object, dubbed SGR 0418, is also a magnetar – a subset of neutron stars that have strong magnetic fields.

    Neutron stars are what is left of stars that burn up their fuel and undergo supernova but do not become black holes. The super-dense objects pack more mass than some stars into spheres smaller than the size of the Earth.

    SGR 0418 is located only 6,000 light years from our solar system. Until now, the object was mistakenly measured to have an extremely weak surface magnetic field.

    “Until very recently, all indications were that this magnetar had one of the weakest surface magnetic fields known; at 6 trillion Gauss, it was roughly a 100 times lower than for typical magnetars,” said Andrea Tiengo, lead author of the paper on the magnetar published in the journal Nature. “Understanding these results was a challenge. However, we suspected that SGR 0418 was in fact hiding a much stronger magnetic field, out of reach of our usual analytical techniques.”

    Tiengo and his colleagues developed a new technique to measure X-ray variations in more detail. The astronomers used the European Space Agency‘s XMM-Newton telescope to observe SGR 0418 and found that it has an extremely powerful magnetic field – measured at around 1 quadrillion Gauss in short spans across its surface.

    “On average, the field can appear fairly weak, as earlier results have suggested,” said Tiengo. “But we are now able to probe sub-structure on the surface and see that the field is very strong locally.”

    (Image courtesy ESA/ATG Medialab)

  • Smallest Planet Yet Spotted Around Sun-Like Star

    Smallest Planet Yet Spotted Around Sun-Like Star

    Astronomers this week announced they have directly imaged the smallest planet yet found around a sun-like star. The planet, GJ 504b, is about four times the mass of Jupiter. It orbits its star at around 43 times the distance from Earth to the sun and has a dark pink color. The star GJ 504 is a main sequence (G0 stellar classification) star that is slightly hotter than the sun and located 57 light-years away from our solar system. It can be faintly seen near the constellation Virgo.

    “If we could travel to this giant planet, we would see a world still glowing from the heat of its formation with a color reminiscent of a dark cherry blossom, a dull magenta,” said Michael McElwain, a team member on the discovery and an astronomer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “Our near-infrared camera reveals that its color is much more blue than other imaged planets, which may indicate that its atmosphere has fewer clouds.”

    GJ 504b was spotted using the infrared Subaru Telescope, located in Hawaii. It was found as part of the Strategic Exploration of Exoplanets and Disks with Subaru (SEEDS) project, which began in 2009. A new paper describing the planet will soon be published in The Astrophysical Journal.

    Apart from its interesting size, the distance of GJ 504b from its star could call into question current hypotheses about the formation of gas giants like Jupiter. The current model has solid material coalescing into a core, which attracts gas from a star’s accretion disc. Such a process would be hard to explain at GJ 504b’s distant orbit.

    “This is among the hardest planets to explain in a traditional planet-formation framework,” said Markus Janson, another team member and a Hubble postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University. “Its discovery implies that we need to seriously consider alternative formation theories, or perhaps to reassess some of the basic assumptions in the core-accretion theory.”

    (Image courtesy Goddard Space Flight Center/S. Wiessinger)

  • Maria Mitchell Google Doodle Honors First Female Professional Astronomer

    Today, Google is honoring Maria Mitchell with a really cool Doodle that shows the first American professional female astronomer using a telescope to look to the sky – presumably in hunt for “Miss Mitchell’s Comet,” which she would discover in 1847.

    Mitchell was born in 1818 in Nantucket, Massachusetts and raised in the Quaker faith. She most likely benefitted from the Quaker’s belief in intellectual equality – getting the same type of education that her brothers received. Mitchell started pursuing astronomy at an early age. By age 12, Mitchell had already helped her father to calculate an annular eclipse. In 1836, Mitchell took a job as the first librarian of the Nantucket Atheneum, and she ended up working there for 18 years.

    And in 1847, she made a big discovery. Using a telescope, she spotted a coment that would later be named “Miss Mitchell’s Comet.” For this discovery, she was awarded a gold medal by the King of Denmark.

    The Maria Mitchell Association describes the rest of her life, which focused on being an educator:

    After achieving her fame, Maria was widely sought after and went on to achieve many great things. She resigned her post at the Atheneum in 1856 to travel throughout the US and Europe. In 1865, she became Professor of Astronomy at the newly-founded Vassar College.

    Maria was an inspiration to her students. It was Vassar College that Maria felt was truly her home. She believed in learning by doing, and in the capacity of women to achieve what their male counterparts could. “Miss Mitchell” was beloved by her students whom she taught until her retirement in 1888, due to failing health. She died in 1889, and was buried next to her parents in Nantucket’s Prospect Hill Cemetery.

    Today’s Google Doodle celebrates what would be her 195th birthday.

  • Most “Centaurs” Are Comets, Say Astronomers

    Most “Centaurs” Are Comets, Say Astronomers

    For years, the small objects orbiting the Sun between Jupiter and Neptune have remained a mystery to astronomers. Dubbed “centaurs,” researchers were unsure what exactly the objects were. Now, new observations using NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) have determined that many, if not most, of the objects are comets.

    The new observations were taken from an infrared survey made by WISE. According to NASA, the orbiting observatory was used to observe 52 centaurs and other “scattered disk objects,” 15 of which were newly discovered. The survey found the reflectivity of the centaurs, which astronomers compared to the color of the objects, which are generally blue-gray or red. Most of the objects that are blue-gray were found to be dark, which suggests that they are comets. The observations are detailed in a new paper, published this week in the Astrophysical Journal.

    “Comets have a dark, soot-like coating on their icy surfaces, making them darker than most asteroids,” said Tommy Grav, a co-author of the study and an astronomer at the Planetary Science Institute. “Comet surfaces tend to be more like charcoal, while asteroids are usually shinier like the moon.”

    The study found that around two-thirds of centaurs are likely comets, and the identity of the remainder cannot be confirmed. According to NASA, this means the centaurs came from far outside the solar system and became caught. The centaurs orbit in an “unstable” belt, and will eventually be thrown either closer to or away from the sun by Jupiter or Neptune.

    “Just like the mythical creatures, the centaur objects seem to have a double life,” said James Bauer, lead author of the study and an astronomer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). “Our data point to a cometary origin for most of the objects, suggesting they are coming from deeper out in the solar system.”

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

  • ‘Snow Line’ Spotted in Young Solar System

    Astronomers this week revealed that the first-ever “snow line” of a solar system has been spotted. Scientists believe that the snow line – similar to ones seen on the tops of mountains on Earth – could provide information about how planets with differing chemical compositions evolve around young stars.

    In the far reaches of accretion discs around young stars, molecules such as water, carbon dioxide, and methane freeze around dust grains that will eventually coalesce into planets. The line where such behavior begins was spotted around the star TW Hydrae, a star located 175 light-years away that astronomers believe is similar to what our solar system once was. An image of the snow line was taken using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, and the results of the research have been published in the journal Science Express.

    “ALMA has given us the first real picture of a snow line around a young star, which is extremely exciting because of what it tells us about the very early period in the history of our own Solar System,” said Chunhua Qi, a leader of the research team and an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. “We can now see previously hidden details about the frozen outer reaches of another solar system, one that has much in common with our own when it was less than 10 million years old.”

    This is the first direct image of a snow line ever captured. As insulating clouds of warm gas cloak snow lines, the regions are normally detected using spectral signatures. Qi and his colleagues were able to use ALMA to look for a specific molecule called diazenylium, which should only appear in regions where carbon monoxide (CO) is frozen. TW Hydrae’s snow line was found at around 30 astronomical units (AU, the distance from the Earth to the Sun) from the star.

    “Using this technique, we were able to create, in effect, a photonegative of the CO snow in the disk surrounding TW Hydrae,” said Karin Oberg, another leader in the research and an astrochemist at Harvard University. “With this we could see the CO snow line precisely where theory predicts it should be — the inner rim of the diazenylium ring.”

    (Image courtesy Bill Saxton/Alexandra Angelich, NRAO/AUI/NSF

  • New Neptune Moon Found by Hubble Space Telescope

    New Neptune Moon Found by Hubble Space Telescope

    NASA this week revealed that a new moon has been spotted orbiting the furthest planet from the sun, Neptune.

    The moon, the 14th known to be orbiting Neptune, has been labeled S/2004 N 1. The small rock is the smallest of Neptune’s known moons at approximately 12 miles across. It is located around 65,400 miles from Neptune, between the orbits of Neptune moons Larissa and Proteus, and orbits Neptune once every 23 hours.

    The moon is so small that it was missed by the Voyager 2 probe when it surveyed Neptune in 1989. It was spotted by the Hubble telescope in pictures taken from 2004 to 2009, but also went unnoticed until this month. Mark Showalter, an Astronomer at the SETI Institute in California, was studying the ring segments around Neptune when he “on a whim” extended his analysis beyond Neptune’s ring system. He spotted a small white dot, S/2004 N 1, which he was then able to find in 150 archival Hubble Space Telescope photos to plot its orbit.

    “The moons and arcs orbit very quickly, so we had to devise a way to follow their motion in order to bring out the details of the system,” said Showalter. “It’s the same reason a sports photographer tracks a running athlete – the athlete stays in focus, but the background blurs.”

  • Astronomers Spot Massive Star In-Utero

    Astronomers using the European Southern Observatory‘s Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) this week revealed that they have spotted a massive star in the process of being born. Researchers hope the new information can help uncover just how massive (stars with more than 10 times the mass of the sun) stars form.

    “The remarkable observations from ALMA allowed us to get the first really in-depth look at what was going on within this cloud,” said Nicolas Peretto, an astronomer at Cardiff University. “We wanted to see how monster stars form and grow, and we certainly achieved our aim. One of the sources we have found is an absolute giant – the largest protostellar core ever spotted in the Milky Way.”

    The most massive protostar was seen in a cloud called the Spitzer Dark Cloud 335.579-0.292, located 11,000 light-years from our solar system. It was spotted using the array’s microwave scan capabilities. The core of the protostar is over 500 times more massive than the sun, with material from surrounding clouds still increasing its size. Astronomers believe it will, in the future, collapse into a star that could be 100 times more massive than the sun.

    “Even though we already believed that the region was a good candidate for being a massive star-forming cloud, we were not expecting to find such a massive embryonic star at its centre,” said Peretto. “This object is expected to form a star that is up to 100 times more massive than the Sun. Only about one in ten thousand of all the stars in the Milky Way reach that kind of mass!”

    (Image courtesy ESO)

  • Hubble Telescope Spots a Blue Planet

    Hubble Telescope Spots a Blue Planet

    Astronomers have been finding and cataloging exoplanets for years now, but NASA this week announced that the Hubble Space Telescope has helped determined the color of a planet orbiting a star 63 light-years from our solar system.

    The planet, HD 189733b, has been found to be blue in color. Astronomers determined this using Hubble’s imaging spectrograph, which was able to measure color changes in the planet while it passed behind its star.

    “We saw the light becoming less bright in the blue but not in the green or red,” said Frederic Pont, a member of the research team and an astrophysicist at the University of Exeter. “Light was missing in the blue but not in the red when it was hidden. This means that the object that disappeared was blue.”

    If it were possible to see the planet in visible light, the planet might resemble a blue dot similar to Earth. Seem up close, however, the planet would be very different from our own. Astronomers describe HD 189733b as a “turbulent” world where temperatures reach 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit and glass rains from the sky. The blue color does not come from an ocean but from silicate particles hight in the planet’s atmosphere.

    HD 189733b was discovered in 2005 and is what Astronomers call a “hot Jupiter.” The planet orbits only 2.9 million miles from its star and is gravitationally locked. This means differing temperatures on each side of the planet cause massive storms and winds that can reach 4,500 miles per hour.

  • Astronomers Find Extra-Galactic Radio Bursts

    Astronomers this week announced that the first confirmed radio bursts from outside our Milky Way galaxy have been detected. A team of astronomers using the Parkes Observatory in Australia have detected four bursts, each originating from billions of light-years from our galaxy. The bursts are quick flashes of radio originating from a single point in the sky, lasting only milliseconds. The furthest burst recorded by the team was 11 billion light-years distant. The new research has been published in the journal Science.

    “Short radio bursts are really tricky to identify,” said Sarah Burke Spolaor, a member of the research team based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “Our team had to search 11 months of data covering a large sky area to find them.”

    Although gamma-ray bursts are routinely observed, radio bursts are more difficult to detect. Spolaor and her colleagues used software to sift through the satellite data to filter out local radio sources, such as cell phones.

    Researchers believe the extra-galactic radio bursts can help scientists learn about the nature of galaxies and the universe. Gamma-ray bursts are currently attributed to stars collapsing as they are drawn into black holes. The radio bursts are from a different source, but may also be from large galactic-scale events. Current hypotheses range from colliding neutron stars, to evaporating black holes and supernovae, though researchers have not confirmed any of these.

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL)

  • Distant Galaxy Caught ‘Feeding’ on Gas Clouds

    Astronomers using the European Southern Observatory‘s Very Large Telescope have found a distant galaxy that is “feeding” on nearby gas clouds. The flow of gas into the galaxy, astronomers say, is generating star formation and driving the rotation of the galaxy. The new observations lend credence to the hypothesis that galaxies grow and form stars by drawing in nearby material.

    “This kind of alignment is very rare and it has allowed us to make unique observations,” explains Nicolas Bouché of the Research Institute in Astrophysics and Planetology (IRAP) in Toulouse, France, lead author of the new paper. “We were able to use ESO’s Very Large Telescope to peer at both the galaxy itself and its surrounding gas. This meant we could attack an important problem in galaxy formation: how do galaxies grow and feed star formation?”

    The observations were possible due to the rare alignment of the galaxy and a distant quasar. As the light from the quasar passed through the galaxy, astronomers were able to research the gas surrounding it. Current theories predict that galaxies pull in the cool gas surrounding them , which then circles the galaxy and heats up to provide fuel for star formation.

    “The properties of this vast volume of surrounding gas were exactly what we would expect to find if the cold gas was being pulled in by the galaxy,” said Michael Murphy, a co-author of the research. “The gas is moving as expected, there is about the expected amount and it also has the right composition to fit the models perfectly. It’s like feeding time for lions at the zoo – this particular galaxy has a voracious appetite, and we’ve discovered how it feeds itself to grow so quickly.”

    (Image courtesy ESO/L. Calçada/ESA/AOES Medialab)

  • NASA Shuts Down Galaxy Explorer Telescope

    NASA Shuts Down Galaxy Explorer Telescope

    Just over ten years after its launch, NASA this afternoon decommissioned its Galaxy Evolution Explorer spacecraft. The satellite will no longer be used for science missions, but will remain in orbit for 65 years before burning up in Earth’s atmosphere.

    The GALEX telescope was launched in April 2003. Its primary, 29-month mission was to observe early-universe star formation in ultraviolet wavelengths. After its successful first mission, the spacecraft was re-commissioned three more times before the mission was cancelled.

    “GALEX is a remarkable accomplishment,” said Jeff Hayes, NASA’s GALEX program executive. “This small Explorer mission has mapped and studied galaxies in the ultraviolet, light we cannot see with our own eyes, across most of the sky.”

    In January, archival data from GALEX was used to discover the massive NGC 6872 galaxy. At a record 522,000 light-years across (around five time the size fo our Milky Way galaxy), NGC 6872 is the largest spiral galaxy known to exist.

    During its final year, GALEX was loaned to the California Institute of Technology, which used private funding to keep the project going. The telescope was used in its last year to survey the ultraviolet sky for black holes, supernovae, and rare galaxies. Data from these observations are scheduled to be made public later this year.

    “In the last few years, GALEX studied objects we never thought we’d be able to observe, from the Magellanic Clouds to bright nebulae and supernova remnants in the galactic plane,” said David Schiminovich, a GALEX team member and an astronomer at Columbia University. “Some of its most beautiful and scientifically compelling images are part of this last observation cycle.”

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

  • NASA Launches IRIS to Study Sun’s Atmosphere

    NASA Launches IRIS to Study Sun’s Atmosphere

    After being delayed for one day over a power outage at Vandenberg Air Force Base, NASA‘s Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) spacecraft was successfully launched on Thursday evening. The satellite will help researchers on Earth study the sun‘s lower atmosphere.

    “Congratulations to the entire team on the successful development and deployment of the IRIS mission,” said Gary Kushner, IRIS project manager at the Lockheed Martin Solar and Atmospheric Laboratory. “Now that IRIS is in orbit, we can begin our 30-day engineering checkout followed by a 30-day science checkout and calibration period.”

    Following its 60-day commissioning phase, IRIS will begin studying how the sun’s surface heats up and moves as it travels through its lower atmosphere. NASA stated that this region of the sun, located between the photosphere and corona, “powers” the solar atmosphere, producing solar wind and ultraviolet radiation. Researchers believe that researching this region can help to better predict solar weather, which can affect both Earth and its surrounding satellites.

    The IRIS was launched using a Pegasus XL rocket strapped to an Orbital L-1011 carrier aircraft. At 7:40 pm, at an altitude of 39,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean, the rocket was released from the plane and fired off into orbit. The launch can be seen in the video below, captured by NASA.

  • Three Planets Found in the Habitable Zone of Nearby Star

    The European Southern Observatory (ESO) this week announced it has found six planets in the Gliese 667C system, and that three of those planets are located within the system’s habitable zone. The habitable zone of a system is the area around a star where liquid water can exist. With the presence of water also comes the possibility for life as we know it.

    Gliese 667C is smaller than the Sun and is just 22 light-years away from earth. It is part of the greater triple star system known as Gliese 667. The three exoplanets are so-called “super-Earths” – planets more massive than Earth, but still rocky. This is the first time three planets have been found in the habitable zone of a star other than the Sun. Venus, Earth, and Mars are all within the habitable zone of our solar system.

    “We knew that the star had three planets from previous studies, so we wanted to see whether there were any more,” said Mikko Tuomi, an astronomer at the University of Hertfordshire. “By adding some new observations and revisiting existing data we were able to confirm these three and confidently reveal several more. Finding three low-mass planets in the star’s habitable zone is very exciting!”

    Previous studies of Gliese 667C had found only three planets, with one being in the star’s habitable zone. The new planets were found by combining data from HARPS, the ESO’s Very Large Telescope, the W.M. Keck Observatory, and the Magellan Telescope.

    “The number of potentially habitable planets in our galaxy is much greater if we can expect to find several of them around each low-mass star – instead of looking at ten stars to look for a single potentially habitable planet, we now know we can look at just one star and find several of them,” said Rory Barnes, co-author of the study and an astronomer at the University of Washington.

    (Image courtesy ESO/M. Kornmesser)

  • Herschel Telescope Given its Final Command

    Over one month ago, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced that the Herschel space observatory had run out of liquid helium coolant. The coolant was necessary to cool the telescope’s instruments to near absolute zero. As planned, the powerful infrared observatory quickly became useless as an astronomy tool.

    Today, the ESA announced that mission controllers have sent their the very last command to Herschel. The command was the final step in moving the satellite out of its L2 Sun-Earth Lagrange Point orbit. Over the past month the observatory has been given complex flight commands designed to deplete its fuel while maneuvering it into a safe heliocentric disposal orbit. On May 13 and 14, Herschel completed a record 7-hour and 45-minute thruster burn as part of these commands.

    While maneuvering the satellite into this safe orbit and depleting its fuel, researchers were also using the defunct observatory to conduct software and hardware tests.

    “Normally, our top goal is to maximise scientific return, and we never do anything that might interrupt observations or put the satellite at risk,” said Micha Schmidt, spacecraft operations manager for Herschel at the European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany. “But the end of science meant we had a sophisticated spacecraft at our disposal on which we could conduct technical testing and validate techniques, software and the functionality of systems that are going to be reused on future spacecraft. This was a major bonus for us.”

    Other ESA teams, such as the ExoMars rover team and the Euclid Dark Universe Mission, used Herschel to test components that will also be a part of their missions.

    “Herschel has not only been an immensely successful scientific mission, it has also served as a valuable flight operations test platform in its final weeks of flight,” said Paolo Ferri, the ESA’s head of Mission Operations. “This will help us increase the robustness and flexibility of future missions operations.”

    (Image courtesy ESA)

  • Herschel Telescope Runs Out of Coolant, Ends Mission

    The European Space Agency (ESA) today announced that the Herschel space observatory has run out of liquid helium coolant. The coolant is necessary to cool the telescope’s instruments to near absolute zero.

    Herschel’s ground station in Western Australia this afternoon found that the temperature in all of the telescope’s instruments is rising, confirming that the helium has run out. The depletion of the coolant was expected, as the 2300 litres of liquid helium inside the observatory had been evaporating since Herschel’s launch in 2009.

    “Herschel has offered us a new view of the hitherto hidden Universe, pointing us to a previously unseen process of star birth and galaxy formation, and allowing us to trace water through the Universe from molecular clouds to newborn stars and their planet-forming discs and belts of comets,” said Göran Pilbratt, a Herschel Project Scientist at the ESA.

    The telescope has been gazing into space for over three years. In just the past few months data from Herschel has been used to find starburst galaxies, examine a near-earth asteroid, discover massive comet belts, and link the 1994 Shoemaker-Levy 9 impact to water on Jupiter.

    “Herschel has exceeded all expectations, providing us with an incredible treasure trove of data that that will keep astronomers busy for many years to come,” said Alvaro Giménez Cañete, Director of Science and Robotic Exploration at the ESA.

    (Image courtesy ESA)