Two newspapers in Bangladesh have issued a retraction after publishing an article taken from the popular but satirical website “The Onion” which claimed Neil Armstrong had been convinced by conspiracy theorists that the Moon landings were faked. The Daily Manab Zamin said Armstrong had shocked a news conference by saying he now knew it had been an “elaborate hoax.” The New Nation then picked up the story, and only later did they realize the Onion was not a genuine news site.
Both have now apologized to their readers for not checking the story. “We thought it was true so we printed it without checking,” associate editor Hasanuzzuman Khan told the AFP news agency.
“We didn’t know the Onion was not a real news site.”
The article said Armstrong had told a news conference he had been “forced to reconsider every single detail of the monumental journey after watching a few persuasive YouTube videos and reading several blog posts” by a conspiracy theorist.
Of course, like everything else on The Onion, the story was completely made up.
The two newspaper articles drew a lot of attention in Bangladesh, and was one of the top articles getting hits on the papers’ websites.
11 new HiRISE images are available to help search for the Mars Polar Lander. Credit: NASA/JPL
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We had an enthusiastic response to an article we ran in July about searching through images from the HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to help find the ill-fated Mars Polar Lander. Now, Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society Blog has sent out an alert that a dozen more images are available from the big release of images from HiRISE for additional searches for MPL, including the image above. See this page from the HiRISE site for a links to all the images. On this page, you’ll find an overview of the Mars Polar Lander, its disappearance, the search to find it, and why they want to find it. Emily also has a lengthy post with tips and instructions on how to search for particular objects in the HiRISE images. If you think you have found something of interest, post a comment on this page of the HiRISE Blog, or use this form to contact the HiRISE team. The UnmannedSpaceflight website has a thread discussing the search (serious searchers only).
Ok, phew, I think that’s all the links you’ll need! Let me know if I missed something….
The Raffaello module attached to the ISS during the STS-114 mission in 2005. Credit: NASA
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Apparently the International Space Station is going to get bigger. According to an article on Flight Global, NASA and the Italian Space Agency (ASI) are preparing to sign an agreement to add another laboratory to the ISS by using a modified multipurpose logistics module (Raffaello) during the final Space Shuttle mission. It will be attached in September 2010 during Endeavour’s STS-133 mission. The idea had originally been rejected, but earlier this year ISS program manager Michael Suffredini said using an MPLM for an additional module was being reconsidered.
The Italian-designed and built – but NASA owned – logistics module will be able to bring up extra spare parts and science and equipment racks. The module has 16 equipment racks for its 9,400kg (20,600lb) of cargo that could be used for experiments.
The Italian Space Agency (ASI) will pay €22 million ($31.3 million) to upgrade the module, such as micrometeroid protection. In return the agency is guaranteed a seat on NASA’s next crew transport system and six ISS mission opportunities for its Italian astronauts. These are three short-duration missions and three six-month expeditions.
Flight Global reported that “ASI says it can ‘confirm that we are going to sign an agreement. One module will became a permanent element of the ISS. It will be an ASI activity with national funds co-ordinated with ESA as the main European partner of the ISS programme.'”
The crew for the final mission may have to be cut from seven to five in order to accommodate the added weight of the module.
Artists concept of a pair of O'Neill cylinders. Credit: NASA.
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The International Space Station is big. About the size of American football field, it has an acre of solar panels, includes 358 cubic meters (12,626 cubic ft) of habitable volume, and there is enough reflective outer surface that in the right conditions, it can be seen from Earth during the day. But with the ISS, we’re just getting warmed up with building structures in space. There are some ideas out there for even larger structures — so called megastructures in space. Here are a few proposals for future space stations and structures that one day could be built in Earth orbit.
The top image is called an O’Neill cylinder, and is a space habitat proposed by physicist Gerard K. O’Neill. What started out as a design challenge for his students became structures O’Neill used in his book that promoted the idea of humans living in space, The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space. An O’Neill cylinder consists of two very large, counter-rotating cylinders, each 5 miles (8 km) in diameter and 20 miles (32 km) long, that are connected at each end by a rod via a bearing system. The rotation provides artificial gravity on the inner surfaces while the central axis of the habitat would be a zero gravity region, where recreational facilities could be located.
To save the huge cost of rocketing the materials from Earth, this habitat could be built with materials launched from the moon with a mass driver. Exterior view of a Stanford torus. Bottom center is the non-rotating primary solar mirror, which reflects sunlight onto the angled ring of secondary mirrors around the hub. Painting by Donald E. Davis
After O’Neill proposed his structure, a later NASA/Ames study at Stanford University developed an alternate version, the Stanford torus. This is torus, or donut-shaped ring, 1.8 km in diameter. This structure would be capable of housing 10,000 to 140,000 permanent residents, similar to a suburb here on Earth.
The structure would rotate once per minute to provide between 0.9g and 1.0g of artificial gravity on the inside of the outer ring from centripetal acceleration. The interior of the torus would be used as living space, and is large enough that a “natural” environment can be simulated, including trees and other plants. Sunlight would be provided inside the structure with a system of mirrors. Outside view of a Bernal Sphere.
A Bernal sphere is a another type of orbital space habitat intended as a long-term home for permanent residents. It was first proposed in 1929 by John Desmond Bernal, and is said to be one of the inspirations for Gerard O’Neill and his students. Bernal’s original proposal included a hollow spherical shell 1.6 km (1 mile) in diameter, filled with air for a target population of 20,000 to 30,000 people. The inside of the Bernal sphere.
Bernal predicted that as the human race grew, their material and energy needs would outpace what planet Earth could provide. Orbiting colonies could harness the Sun’s energy and provide extra living space for a burgeoning population.
Rotating the sphere twice a minute would generate an artificial gravity aproximate to Earth’s. An advantage of the sphere is that it has the smallest surface area for a given internal volume, so minimizing the amount of radiation shielding required.
Our next Future Friday will take a look at megastructures at the planetary scale.
Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! Ah, yes… Full Moon. Are you ready to howl? If you didn’t get a chance to watch the galiean moons do their dance last weekend, then be sure to catch the awesome video you’ll find inside! In the meantime, keep your ears alert for the rise of tonight’s “Full Corn Moon” and check out the Omicron gems. As the skies get darker, the Herschel challenges warm up – so dust off your optics and I’ll see you in the backyard…
Friday, September 4, 2009 – It’s a Full Moon tonight. Many cultures refer to this one in particular as the ‘‘Corn Moon,’’ because at this time of year most corn crops are ready for harvest. Tonight let’s harvest some bright lunar features as we trace the ray system of Tycho in the lunar south. Look for the bright points of Kepler and Aristarchus in the northwest quadrant. In the east, dazzling crater Proclus will light up the western shore of Mare Crisium. Just north of central, look for the two bright rings of Manlius and Menelaus.
Although the Moon will dominate tonight’s sky, we can still take a very unusual and beautiful journey to a bright and very colorful pair of stars known as Omicron 1 Cygni. Easily located about halfway between Alpha (Deneb) and Delta on the western side (RA 20 13 28 Dec +46 46 40), this is a pure delight in binoculars or any size telescope.
The striking gold color of 3.7-magnitude Omi 1 A is easily highlighted against the blue of its same-field companion, 5th magnitude Omi 1 B. Although this wide pairing is only an optical one, the K-type giant (A) is indeed a double star—an eclipsing variable about 150 times larger than or own Sun—and is surrounded by a gaseous corona more than double the size of the star itself. If you are using a scope, you can easily spot its blue tinted, 7th magnitude companion star about one-third the distance between the two giants. Although our true pair is some 2 billion kilometers apart, they are oriented nearly edge-on from our point of view, allowing the smaller star to be totally eclipsed during each revolution. This total eclipse lasts for 63 days and happens about every 10.4 years, but don’t stay up too late. . . We still have years to wait!
Saturday, September 5, 2009 – Tonight before the Moon commands the sky, let’s start with the brightest star in Vulpecula—Alpha. Although it is not a true binary star, it is quite attractive in the telescope, and an easy split for binoculars. Alpha itself is a 4.4-magnitude red giant, which makes a nice color contrast with the unrelated yellow field star that is 2 magnitudes dimmer.
Now head around a half degree northwest of Alpha (RA 20 19 29 Dec –70 51 36) for open cluster NGC 6800. Also known as Herschel VIII.21, this cluster is suitable for even smaller scopes but requires aperture to resolve completely. Discovered by Sir William in this month (10th) in 1784, you’ll like this ring-like arrangement of stars!
Now drop 2.7 degrees southwest of Alpha (RA 19 23 12 Dec +22 08 00) for yet another open cluster, NGC 6793. Discovered by Herschel in 1789 and logged as catalog object VIII.81, you’ll find a few more bright stars here. The challenge in this cluster is not so much being able to see it in a smaller telescope—but being able to discern a cluster from a star field! Try using the photo to help you distinguish it from the rest…
Sunday, September 6, 2009 – Today we celebrate many births. In 1891, it’s Yrjo Vaisala who produced telescope optics and discovered asteroids. In 1830, John Henry Dallmeyer, who was a master at making telescopes and eyepieces, was born. Last, in 1811, was James Melville Gilliss who founded the United States Naval Observatory.
Tonight we’ll return again to Vulpecula, but with a different goal in mind. What we’re after requires dark skies yet can be seen in either binoculars or a small telescope. Once you’ve found Alpha, begin about two finger-widths southeast, and right on the galactic equator you’ll find NGC 6823 (RA 19 43 10 Dec +23 17 54.). The first thing you will note is a fairly large, somewhat concentrated magnitude 7 open cluster.
Resolved in larger telescopes, the viewer may note these stars are the hot, blue-white variety. For good reason. NGC 6823 only formed about 2 billion years ago. Although it is some 6,000 light-years away and occupies around 50 light-years of space, it’s sharing the field with something more—a very large emission/reflection nebula, NGC 6820 (RA 19 42 27 Dec +23 05 14).
In the outer reaches of star cluster NGC 6823, new stars are being formed in masses of gas and dust as hot radiation is shed from the brightest of the stellar members of this pair. Fueled by emission, NGC 6820 isn’t always an easy visual object; it is faint and covers almost four times as much area as NGC 6823. But trace the edges very carefully, since the borders are much more illuminated than the central cluster region. Take the time to really observe this one! The processes going on here are very much like those in the ‘‘Trapezium’’ area of the Orion nebula. Be sure to mark your siting in your observing notes. NGC 6823 is Herschel VII.18 and NGC 6820 is also known as Marth 401!
Did you catch last week’s awesome Jupiter events? If not – then enjoy this great footage taken by the one and only Joe Brimacombe. (Not only is Dr. Joe cool… but he’s also one of the best observers I know!)
Perhaps you need another little nudge to get you out and observing, huh? Then here’s a list of Jupiter activities over the weekend:
Friday
00:58 UT, Io begins transit of Jupiter.
01:28 UT, Io’s shadow begins to cross Jupiter.
03:16 UT, Io ends transit of Jupiter.
03:48 UT, Io’s shadow leaves Jupiter’s disk.
22:10 UT, Io enters occultation behind Jupiter.
Saturday
01:00 UT, Io exits eclipse by Jupiter’s shadow.
02:36 UT, Europa exits eclipse by Jupiter’s shadow.
19:24 UT, Io begins transit of Jupiter.
19:58 UT, Io’s shadow begins to cross Jupiter.
21:42 UT, Io ends transit of Jupiter.
Sunday
16:36 UT, Io enters occultation behind Jupiter.
17:06 UT, Europa begins transit of Jupiter.
18:14 UT, Europa’s shadow begins to cross Jupiter.
This week’s awesome images are (in order of appearance): Full Moon (credit—NASA), Omicron 1 Cygni, NGC 6800, NGC 6793, NGCs 6823 (central) and 6820 (credit—Palomar Observatory, courtesy of Caltech) and Jupiter footage courtesy of Joe Brimacombe. We thank you so much!
The Surveyor 3 spacecraft, Lunar Module descent stage, and Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Package (ALSEP) along with astronaut tracks are all visible in this image of the Apollo 12 landing site. Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University
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Back in July when the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter team released stunning images from several Apollo landing sites, it was not possible at that time to image the Apollo 12 site, the westernmost landing site, due to operational constraints. But now LRO has taken a good look at Oceanus Procellarum and the wait was well worth it. Easily and clearly visible are the Lunar Module descent stage and Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Package (ALSEP), along with astronaut tracks, and the Surveyor 3 spacecraft.
“There are only so many locations that can be imaged at one time,” said Mark Robinson, principal investigator of LRO’s Camera, LROC. “Not every target can be imaged every time around. I’m glad we had to wait another month, it was very exciting to see this image a month after the excitement of the first round of Apollo landing sites.”
LRO is slated to orbit the moon for at least another 12 months, which means Robinson and his team have many more imaging opportunities ahead of them. In mid-September the spacecraft’s orbit will be lowered, allowing LROC to acquire even higher resolution images of the Apollo and Surveyor landing sites.
For higher resolution images and more info about about the Apollo 12 site, check out the LRO website.
The Hubble Space Telescope after its release from Servicing Mission 4. Credit: NASA
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It’s a countdown of cosmic proportions! In just six days, NASA will release the first images from the newly refurbished Hubble Space Telescope. These Early Release Observations (EROs) will be showcased at news briefings from NASA Headquarters at 15:00 GMT and 16:00 GMT (11 a.m. and noon EDT) Wednesday, Sept. 9 on NASA TV. The past few weeks, the Hubble team has concentrated on making high-priority science observations and finishing up instrument calibrations. Any clues as to what the first new images will include? Hubble scientists say the new images will be the first true display of the power of Hubble’s new technology, dazzling amateur and professional astronomers with a wealth of new information and areas for research. Here’s what the Hubble team has been working the past few weeks:
•The Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) has been completing its checkout, but it is now taking science images on a regular basis.
•The Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) is finished with its calibration activities and completing its work in support of Hubble’s EROs.
•The Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) is in the final phases of its calibrations for both its near-ultraviolet and far-ultraviolet channels. The channels, which study different wavelengths of ultraviolet light, must be calibrated separately. For example, engineers and scientists are continuing to test the focus for the far-ultraviolet channel, while the near-ultraviolet channel’s focus appears to be good.
•The cooling system for the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) has cooled the instrument down to operational levels, which is great news. NICMOS was not serviced during the STS-125 mission, but it was shut down in September 2008 following an anomaly during a spacecraft computer update. Engineers tried turning it on in July 2009, but the cooling system failed. But on on August 1, the cooling system restarted without the previous problems. “NICMOS began cooling efficiently,” said Frank Summers in the Hubble Blog, “and actually faster than expected. Note that when we say “cool,” we really mean “cold.” Really cold. Beyond Arctic, mind-numbing, freezingly cold. NICMOS is cooled to -321 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s the temperature needed for infrared observations.”
It takes NICMOS more than a week to achieve that temperature. Then the instrument must show stability at those temperatures for science to be possible. Engineers have now turned on the detectors to begin the several-week calibration process for NICMOS. So far so good, and surely we’ll hear more about NICMOS during the news briefing next week.
ESA’s XMM-Newton orbiting X-ray telescope has uncovered the first close-up of a white dwarf star that could explode into a type Ia supernova within a few million years. That’s relatively soon in cosmic time frames, and although this white dwarf that is orbiting its companion star HD 49798, is far enough away to pose no danger to Earth, it is close enough to become an extraordinarily spectacular celestial sight. Calculations suggest that it will blaze initially with the intensity of the full Moon and be so bright that it will be seen in the daytime sky with the naked eye. But don’t worry, it will be awhile!
Astronomers have been on the trail of this mysterious object since 1997, when they discovered that something was giving off X-rays near the bright star HD 49798. Now, thanks to XMM-Newton’s superior sensitivity, the mysterious object has been tracked along its orbit. The observation has shown it to be a white dwarf, the dead heart of a star, shining X-rays into space.
Sandro Mereghetti, INAF–IASF Milano, Italy, and collaborators also discovered that this is no ordinary white dwarf. They measured its mass and found it to be more than twice what they were expecting. Most white dwarfs pack 0.6 solar masses into an object the size of Earth.
This particular white dwarf contains at least double that mass but has a diameter just half that of Earth. It also rotates once every 13 seconds, the fastest of any known white dwarf.
The mass determination is reliable because the XMM-Newton tracking data allowed the astronomers to use the most robust method for ‘weighing’ a star, one that uses the gravitational physics devised by Isaac Newton in the 17th century. Most likely, the white dwarf has grown to its unusual mass by stealing gas from its companion star, a process known as accretion. At 1.3 solar masses, the white dwarf is now close to a dangerous limit.
When it grows larger than 1.4 solar masses, a white dwarf is thought either to explode or collapse to form an even more compact object called a neutron star. The explosion of a white dwarf is the leading explanation for ‘type Ia supernovae’, bright events that are used as standard beacons by astronomers to measure the expansion of the Universe. Until now, astronomers have not been able to find an accreting white dwarf in a binary system where the mass could be determined so accurately.
“This is the Rosetta stone of white dwarfs in binary systems. Our precise determination of the masses of the two stars is crucial. We can now study it further and try to reconstruct its past, so that we can calculate its future,” says Mereghetti.
So start telling your descendants to watch out for the spectacular show! (And hopefully no new hoax emails will be spawned about a supernova coming soon that will look as big as the full Moon to the naked eye a la the “Mars as big as the full Moon” hoax!)
Lead image caption: Illustration of the white dwarf and its companion HD49798. If it was possible to look at the system up-close, it would look something like this. Credits: Francesco Mereghetti, background image: NASA, ESA and T.M. Brown (STScI)
An artist's rendering shows the spiral galaxy of Andromeda, center right, over a period of about three billion years as repeated, but modified views of the dwarf galaxy Triangulum, move away from it, clockwise towards Earth, then back towards it, where Triangulum will be ultimately devoured by the Andromeda galaxy says astronomer John Dubinski. (AP Photo/Illustration by John Dubinski and Larry Widrow)
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From Earth, the Andromeda Galaxy looks like a calm, bright galaxy, and is visible with the naked eye in our night sky. But astronomers have discovered things aren’t as tranquil as it seems over at M31. Andromeda is eating the neighbors.
The Andromeda Galaxy contains a trillion stars and lies only about 2.5 million light-years away, so it is a great object to observe and study. But recently astronomers observed wispy streams of stars on the outer fringes of Andromeda, and realized they were leftovers from a cannibalistic feeding frenzy of smaller galaxies it has absorbed.
“This is a startling visual demonstration of the truly vast scale of galaxies,” said Dr. Mike Irwin from the University of Cambridge. “The survey has produced an unrivalled panorama of galaxy structure which reveals that galaxies are the result of an ongoing process of accretion and interaction with their neighbours.”
The cannibalism continues and another victim lies in wait: M33 in the constellation of Triangulum, is destined for a future meal.
“Ultimately, these two galaxies may end up merging completely,” Dr. Scott also from the University of Cambridge. “Ironically, galaxy formation and galaxy destruction seem to go hand in hand.”
Astronomers from Cambridge were part of an international team that made a million light-year-wide survey of the Andromeda Galaxy and its surroundings using a powerful digital camera on the giant Canada-France-Hawaii telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii.
They discovered that many of these stars could not have formed within Andromeda itself because the density of gas so far from the galaxy’s core would have been too low to allow formation to take place. Therefore, the team reason that they are almost certainly the remnants of other, smaller galaxies which have been absorbed by Andromeda – and that Andromeda itself is still in a state of expansion.
The team’s paper argues that the larger-scale substructures identified on the galaxy’s fringes are probably the “undigested” remains of previously accreted dwarf galaxies. In all likelihood, they originally belonged to dwarf galaxies or other, proto-galactic fragments.
We frequently ooh and aah over the images returned by the HiRISE camera from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and now there’s gonna be a whole lot of oohing and aahing going on. The HiRISE folks have just released more than 1,500 new observations of Mars for the Planetary Data System archive, showing a wide range of gullies, dunes, craters, geological layering and other features on the Red Planet. Take a gander at some of the highlights:
Colliding Sand Dunes in Aonia Terra. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
This is one of my favorites, “Colliding Sand Dunes in Aonia Terra. See a “movie” of it here.
These images were taken during months of April through early August of this year. The camera team at the University of Arizona releases several featured images each week and periodically releases much larger sets of new images, such as the batch just posted.
See all the new images, available here.
Each full image from HiRISE covers a strip of Martian ground 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) wide, about two to four times that long, showing details as small as 1 meter, or yard, across.
Here’s another favorite; patterns in CO2 ice on Mars: Patterns in carbon dioxide ice on Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
Meanwhile, engineers are still trying to determine what caused MRO to go into safe mode about a week ago. This has happened several times, and mission managers are intent on getting to the bottom of the problem.
To help in identifying a root cause in case of a recurrence, engineers have programmed the spacecraft to send back a higher rate of data, and to frequently record engineering data onto non-volatile memory. That large amount of data now being received could give an improved record of spacecraft events leading up to the latest reboot.
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter currently has normal power, temperatures and battery charge. It remains in proper sun-pointed attitude and in high-rate communication with Earth. Safe mode is a precautionary status that spacecraft are programmed to enter when they sense conditions for which they do not know a more specific response. While in this mode, a spacecraft suspends non-essential activities pending further instructions from ground controllers.
“The spacecraft is stable and our priority now is to carefully work our way to understanding this anomaly, with the intent of preventing recurrences,” Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project Manager Jim Erickson, at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., said Friday.
For more information about the mission, visit the MRO website.
