Ten years ago, on July 23, 1999, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory was deployed into orbit by the space shuttle Columbia. Far exceeding its intened 5-year life span, Chandra has demonstrated an unrivaled ability to create high-resolution X- ray images, and enabled astronomers to investigate phenomena as diverse as comets, black holes, dark matter and dark energy.
“Chandra’s discoveries are truly astonishing and have made dramatic changes to our understanding of the universe and its constituents,” said Martin Weisskopf, Chandra project scientist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.
The science generated by Chandra — both on its own and in conjunction with other telescopes in space and on the ground — led to a widespread, transformative impact on 21st century astrophysics. Chandra has provided the strongest evidence yet that dark matter must exist. It has independently confirmed the existence of dark energy and made spectacular images of titanic explosions produced by matter swirling toward supermassive black holes.
To commemorate the 10th anniversary of Chandra, three new versions of classic Chandra images will be released during the next three months. These images, the first of which was released today, provide new data and a more complete view of objects that Chandra observed in earlier stages of its mission. The image being released today is of the spectacular supernova remnant E0102-72.
“The Great Observatories program — of which Chandra is a major part — shows how astronomers need as many tools as possible to tackle the big questions out there,” said Ed Weiler, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. NASA’s other “Great Observatories” are the Hubble Space Telescope, Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory and Spitzer Space Telescope.
The next image will be released in August to highlight the anniversary of when Chandra opened up for the first time and gathered light on its detectors. The third image will be released during “Chandra’s First Decade of Discovery” symposium in Boston, which begins Sept. 22.
“I am extremely proud of the tremendous team of people who worked so hard to make Chandra a success,” said Harvey Tananbaum, director of the Chandra X-ray Center at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass. “It has taken partners at NASA, industry and academia to make Chandra the crown jewel of high-energy astrophysics.”
Tananbaum and Nobel Prize winner Riccardo Giacconi originally proposed Chandra to NASA in 1976. Unlike the Hubble Space Telescope, Chandra is in a highly elliptical orbit that takes it almost one third of the way to the moon, and was not designed to be serviced after it was deployed.
The Chandra X-ray Observatory was named after the great Indian-born American astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, who served on the faculty at the University of Chicago for almost 60 years, winning the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on explaining the structure and evolution of stars.
The "eye" at the center of the galaxy is actually a monstrous black hole surrounded by a ring of stars. Credit: NASA/JPL
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Imagine peering through your telescope and having a wild creature with one Cyclops-like eye looking back at you! NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope saw just that when it located galaxy NGC 1097, about 50 million light-years away. It has long, spindly arms of stars, and its one “eye” at the center of the galaxy is actually a monstrous black hole surrounded by a ring of stars. Plus, this creature looks to be carrying a smaller blue galaxy in its arms!
The black hole is huge, about 100 million times the mass of our sun, and is feeding off gas and dust along with the occasional unlucky star. Our Milky Way’s central black hole is tame by comparison, with a mass of a few million suns.
“The fate of this black hole and others like it is an active area of research,” said George Helou, deputy director of NASA’s Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “Some theories hold that the black hole might quiet down and eventually enter a more dormant state like our Milky Way black hole.”
The fuzzy blue dot to the left, which appears to fit snuggly between the arms, is a companion galaxy.
“The companion galaxy that looks as if it’s playing peek-a-boo through the larger galaxy could have plunged through, poking a hole,” said Helou. “But we don’t know this for sure. It could also just happen to be aligned with a gap in the arms.”
Other dots in the picture are either nearby stars in our galaxy, or distant galaxies.
The white ring around the black hole is bursting with new star formation. An inflow of material toward the central bar of the galaxy is causing the ring to light up with new stars.
“The ring itself is a fascinating object worthy of study because it is forming stars at a very high rate,” said Kartik Sheth, an astronomer at NASA’s Spitzer Science Center. Sheth and Helou are part of a team that made the observations.
In the Spitzer image, infrared light with shorter wavelengths is blue, while longer-wavelength light is red. The galaxy’s red spiral arms and the swirling spokes seen between the arms show dust heated by newborn stars. Older populations of stars scattered through the galaxy are blue.
This image was taken during Spitzer’s “cold mission,” which lasted more than five-and-a-half years. The telescope ran out of coolant needed to chill its infrared instruments on May 15, 2009. Two of its infrared channels will still work perfectly during the new “warm mission,” which is expected to begin in a week or so, once the observatory has been recalibrated and warms to its new temperature of around 30 Kelvin (about minus 406 degrees Fahrenheit).
This mid-infrared composite image was obtained with the Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawai'i, on 22 July at ~13:30 UT with the MICHELLE mid-infrared spectrograph/imager. The impact site is the bright yellow spot at the center bottom of Jupiter's disk.
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After getting whacked unexpectedly by a small comet or asteroid, Jupiter is sporting a “bruise,” which has been big news this week. In visible wavelengths, the impact site appears as a black spot. But in a new image taken in near infrared by the Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawai’i, the spot shows up in spectacular glowing yellow.
“We utilized the powerful mid-infrared capabilities of the Gemini telescope to record the impact’s effect on Jupiter’s upper atmosphere,” said Imke de Pater from the University of California, Berkeley. “At these wavelengths we receive thermal radiation (heat) from the planet’s upper atmosphere. The impact site is clearly much warmer than its surroundings, as shown by our image taken at an infrared wavelength of 18 microns.”
As Universe Today reported earlier, this new spot on Jupiter was first seen by Australian amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley on July 19th. This set off a flurry of activity as the large ground based observatories have imaged Jupiter in attempt to learn more about the impact and the object that struck Jupiter. Astronomers now say the object was likely a small comet or asteroid, just a few hundreds of meters in diameter. Such small bodies are nearly impossible to detect near or beyond Jupiter unless they reveal cometary activity, or, as in this case, make their presence known by impacting a giant planet.
In infrared, the impact site shows up in remarkable detail. “The structure of the impact site is eerily reminiscent of the larger Shoemaker-Levy 9 sites 15 years ago,” remarked Heidi Hammel (Space Science Institute), who was part of the team that supported the effort at Gemini. In 1994, Hammel led the Hubble Space Telescope team that imaged Jupiter when it was pummeled by a shattered comet. “The morphology is suggestive of an arc-like structure in the feature’s debris field,” Hammel noted.
The Gemini images were obtained with the MICHELLE spectrograph/imager, yielding a series of images at 7 different mid-infrared wavelengths. Two of the images (8.7 and 9.7 microns) were combined into a color composite image by Travis Rector at the University of Alaska, Anchorage to create the final false-color image. By using the full set of Gemini images taken over a range of wavelengths from 8 to 18 microns, the team will be able to disentangle the effects of temperature, ammonia abundance, and upper atmospheric aerosol content. Comparing these Gemini observations with past and future images will permit the team to study the evolution of features as Jupiter’s strong winds disperse them.
“The Gemini support staff made a heroic effort to get these data,” said de Pater. “We were on the telescope observing within 24 hours of contacting the observatory.” Because of the transient nature of this event, the telescope was scheduled as a “Target of Opportunity” and required staff to react quickly to the request.”
Eclipse from Chongqing Municipality (Xinhua/Liu Chan)
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The total solar eclipse which just occurred on the 22nd of July 2009 was the longest maximum duration of the 21st century. Not since Saros 1991 have astronomers and eclipse chasers been treat to such an event! Totality lasted over six and a half minutes at maximum. duration. The event started in India along the western shore near Surat moved towards Butan and reached the southern tip of Nepal and the northern edge of Bangladesh.
For other lucky astronomers like Vietnamese student Dang Anh Tuan at Hanoi National University of Education, the eclipse path also took the event over cities like Chengdu, Suining, Chonging, Wuhan, Xiaogan, Hangzhou, and Shanghai – and event which yielded five minutes of totality. Leaving Shanghai the shadow path raced across the ocean, to fall across islands such as Toshima and Akusaki south of Japan and eventually the Marshall islands. Where was the longest point? The maximum eclipse duration of 6 minutes and 43 seconds occurs far off the coast in the Pacific Ocean! Are you ready to become an eclipse chaser? Then follow me…
I’ve always wanted to go on an eclipse chasing journey, but I’m afraid I’ll never quite be rich or well enough, unless it happens somewhere near me. But, my world is one that is both large and very small at the same time… And filled with wonderful friends from every corner. Bill Fish of Lubrizol Advanced Materials made my day by sending me some photos shared by their employees immediately after the eclipse had ended.
Seeing such incredible beauty, like this image of Bailey’s Beads taken in Chong Qing, and in just a few hours meeting great people like Jessica Bian, Kelly Zhou, Jun-Sheng Cao, Leo Chi, Mars Meng, Lucy Wang and Helen Tong felt so wonderful. Truly astronomy is a language we all speak! By roughly 9:00 in the morning, this is what they would have seen from their office windows or rooftops. Can you imagine what an exciting day it must have been?!
Well, needless to say, once I saw something like that, all my worries and cares for the day seemed so small. Even though I couldn’t leave my desk, the marvelous opportunity for me to become an eclipse chaser had just opened up like a fortune cookie right before my eyes. It was time for me to learn Chinese… and check out this awesome video done by Hubei Jingmen!
But he wasn’t alone… And neither was I. Millions of folks all over China were witnessing the eclipse and with each video I felt more and more like I was there, too.
“In the Zhejiang Haining, huge amounts of people were out to observe the wonderful total solar eclipse. The observation person is sea of people. But two big marvelous sight’s secret directions are the Sun, the Earth and the Moon…. “three meet”.”
Now, let’s travel to Beijing where the sky was enveloped in mist. Despite the weather, some 200 astronomy watchers queued in front of the Beijing Astronomical Observatory at 6:30 a.m. Staff at the observatory said the eclipse had sparked interest in astronomy. Yang Jing, a high-school student from Urumqi said. “I didn’t expect such a big crowd to watch the eclipse!”
Our next video comes from Chengdu… You can imagine the city stopping for just a moment to look skyward. “As soon as the totality happened, the clouds closed in so we couldn’t see the corona. That’s a pity,” said Zhen Jun, a man whose work unit had given the day off for the spectacle.
Now we move on to Hangzhou… When thousands of people thronged outdoors for the longest total solar eclipse of the 21st century, animals at the zoo in east China’s Hangzhou City also reacted, quickly and confusedly. The shadow of the moon disoriented birds whose body clock and direction depend on the sun. Red-crowned cranes and flamingos that had been wandering or drinking water suddenly fell asleep during the brief blackout of eclipse. But when the sun rays came out again several minutes later, the birds emerged from their cages and started the life of another “day.”
Even though I don’t understand a word of Chinese, I understand every word of “human”. Listen to them… Listen to the people talk and the children! How I wish I were there, too! Said Kang Hui:“The celestial phenomenon was a marvelous sight”. Are you ready to move again and follow the shadow? Then, let’s take a trip to Shanxi Linfen…
Now, I’ll race you to Hong Kong! Hundreds of people thronged into the Hong Kong Space Museum Wednesday morning for the Partial Solar Eclipse Observation activity. The public watched the eclipse using telescopes equipped with a safe filtering system and projection under guidance provided by the Space Museum.
Gosh, some of that footage feels like you could just reach right out and wrap your hand around that Moon, doesn’t it? Now let’s head to the middle of Anhui Yi County…
This one where you can see the corona dazzling is simply extraordinary. Can you imagine what it would feel like to be able to see this in real life? Come on… Let’s continue our eclipse chasing trip to Shanghai! It was raining in Shanghai when the total eclipse occurred at 9:35 a.m. The city put extra police on streets, and more than 30 police vessels patrolled the coast. Only street lamps were left on, as the city turned off all landscape lighting to allow people to watch the solar eclipse.
In Shanghai, more than 4,000 people ended up in suburban Yuehu Park of Sheshan Observatory and Yangshan Deep Water Port, two prime spots in the city, to observe the eclipse. Shanghai Science Hall also organized a public viewing session in downtown Fuxing Park and seventeen observation stations were set up in the solar eclipse path from Yunnan province to Zhejiang province.
Now we travel to the Henan Luoyang and say hello to these great kids and their equally excited parents and grandparents as we catch a partial eclipse.
“Luoyang’s light rain was intermittent, in the morning about 10:45, the Sun opened out the cloud layer to reveal the face of what was to come. The residents might see the partial solar eclipse! This kind of picture has not been seen here for a very long time. The Henan Luoyang partial solar eclipse looks just like the raging fire phoenix raising slowly.”
Shall we continue to Taiwan? Then grab us a cup of coffee and I will meet you at the Taibei Municipal Astronomy Scientific Culture Hall.
Shall we travel to Shenyang? This was also a partial solar eclipse location, but witnesses said the Moon “seemed like it was curved”.
Now, come with us to Ningbo. This one is so beautiful I wept when I saw it…
“This morning we just watched the total solar eclipse, which happens every 500 years. When the whole sun is blacken by the Moon. Everyone is highly excited. It’s pity I forgot to bring the camera by my side and the moment is passed away soon. But I am still lucky to see the sight. 500 years……how significant!”
When I was a child, I was charmed by a story about Ping the Duck, who lived on the Yangtze River. The last of the hundreds of videos I have watched today that I’d like to share with you is part of the Yangtze River collection.
Enjoy this beautiful composite image taken by Yang Lei at a park in southwest China’s Chongqing Municipality. It has been my most wonderful pleasure over the day to spend time in the East…
Chasing the Sun!
Solar eclipse occurring over Taipei of southeast China's Taiwan
My many thanks to Bill Fish for getting me started, Jessica Bian for investigating and translating and the wonderful people at Sina for sharing!
Ready for another Where In The Universe Challenge? Here’s #63! Take a look and see if you can name where in the Universe this image is from. Give yourself extra points if you can name the spacecraft responsible for the image. As usual, we’ll provide the image today, but won’t reveal the answer until tomorrow. This gives you a chance to mull over the image and provide your answer/guess in the comment section. Please, no links or extensive explanations of what you think this is — give everyone the chance to guess.
UPDATE: The answer has now been posted below
This is the Bullet Cluster, as seen by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. This image is very fitting for this week, as Chandra is celebrating it’s 10th anniversary. What you’re seeing here is two large clusters of galaxies that have crashed into one another at extremely high velocities. At a relatively close distance from Earth (3.8 billion light years away) and with a favorable side-on orientation as viewed from Earth, the Bullet Cluster provides an excellent test site to search for something very interesting: the signal for antimatter. Find out more about that and the image here.
If you enjoyed this week’s WITU Challenge, check back next for another test of your visual knowledge of the cosmos!
Asymmetrical aurorae, courtesy of Karl Magnus Laundal and Nature
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Seen the Northern Lights and you’ve seen them all, hm? Not so.
It is commonly assumed that the aurora borealis in the Northern Hemisphere and the aurora australis in the Southern Hemisphere are mirror images of each other — but new research has revealed differences between the events.
The aurorae, commonly known as the Northern and Southern Lights, are spectacular natural light displays in the Earth’s upper atmosphere. The phenomenon is caused by charged particles from the solar wind striking atoms and molecules in the atmosphere.
It’s intuitive to think the Northern and Southern Lights are identical, because the charged particles causing the aurora follow the symmetric magnetic field lines connecting the two hemispheres.
But study co-authors Nikolai Østgaard and Karl Magnus Laundal, both of the University of Bergen in Norway, report in the journal Nature this week that there are differences between the phenomena.
“Here we report observations that clearly contradict the common assumption about symmetric aurora: intense spots are seen at dawn in the Northern summer Hemisphere, and at dusk in the Southern winter Hemisphere,” they write. “The asymmetry is interpreted in terms of inter-hemispheric currents related to seasons, which have been predicted but hitherto had not been seen.”
Østgaard and Laundal based their report on observations from a new set of global imaging cameras at each pole. The authors suggest that the observed asymmetry confirms the existence of inter-hemispheric, field-aligned currents related to the seasons, which had been predicted but never before observed.
A liquid plume is spewing from Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus — but is it coming from heated ice on the surface, or a liquid ocean underneath?
Analysis of the plume’s chemistry, detailed in the Cassini (CICLOPS) image above and reported in Nature this week, may put the debate to rest.
Enceladus. Credit: CICLOPS
Lead author Jack Hunter (J.H.) Waite, of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas and his colleagues say ammonia detected in the jets from Enceladus’ south pole provides the strongest evidence yet for the existence of liquid water beneath the surface.
A previous paper led by Frank Postberg of the University of Heidelberg in Germany, published in Nature just last month, reported the discovery of salts in E-ring particles derived from the plume, also suggestive of a liquid reservoir.
But Susan Kieffer of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and her colleagues proposed in a 2006 Science paper that warm ice is heated near the surface, causing dissociation of clathrate hydrates. And Nicholas Schneider, of the University of Colorado at Boulder, and his colleagues published a paper in the same Nature issue as Postberg’s team (June 24) — reporting that there’s not enough sodium in the plume to support a liquid ocean.
The ammonia may tip the scales, say the authors of the new paper.
“The presence of ammonia provides strong evidence for the existence of at least some liquid water, given that temperatures in excess of 180K have been measured near the fractures from which the jets emanate,” the authors write. “We conclude, from the overall composition of the material, that the plume derives from both a liquid reservoir (or from ice that in recent geological time has been in contact with such a reservoir) as well as from degassing, volatile-charged ice.”
Besides ammonia, the authors detected various organic compounds and deuterium — ‘heavy’ hydrogen abundant in the oceans of Earth. Ammonia, together with methanol and salts, acts as an antifreeze, allowing liquid water to exist at below-freezing temperatures. The authors suggest that preserving even a residual oceanic layer during cooling episodes would maintain conditions necessary for tidal heating and geologic activity.
Enceladus is one of only three moons in the Solar System known to be volcanically active. The plume of gas and particles is thought to make up Saturn’s outermost ‘E’ ring.
UT ran a story last month, when Nature ran two papers with different ideas about whether Enceladus harbors a liquid ocean. See that story here.
Source for text: Nature. Source for images: Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations (CICLOPS), with thanks to study co-author William Lewis for the tip.
Planets and other objects in our Solar System. Credit: NASA.
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Many children, and even adults, dream of visiting other planets and wonder what it would be like to stand on another planet. For one thing, your weight would be different on another planet, depending on a number of factors including the mass of the planet and how far you are away from the center of the planet.
Before we start, it’s important to understand that the kilogram is actually a measurement of your mass. And your mass doesn’t change when you go anywhere in the Universe and experience different amounts of gravity. Your weight is best measured in newtons. But since your bathroom doesn’t measure your weight in newtons, we’ll use kilograms. This is what your bathroom scale would say if you stepped on another world.
Mercury is the smallest planet in our Solar System, but it is dense. Because Mercury is so small, it has very little gravity. If you weighed 68 kg on Earth, you would only weigh 25.7 kg on Mercury.
Venus is very close to Earth in size and mass. Venus’ mass is roughly 90% of the mass of the Earth. Thus, it is no surprise that someone would weigh a similar amount on Venus. Someone who weighed 68 kg on Earth would weigh 61.6 kg on Venus.
Mars is quite a bit smaller than Earth with only 11% of our planet’s mass. Mars is larger than Mercury, but it is not as dense as the smaller planet. If you weighed 68 kg on Earth then you would weigh 25.6 kg on Mars. Since Pluto was demoted to a dwarf planet, Mars became the planet where you would weigh the least.
Jupiter is the largest planet in our Solar System with the most mass. Because of Jupiter’s mass, you would weigh more on that planet than on any other one in our Solar System. If you weighed 68 kg on Earth then you would weigh 160.7 kg on Jupiter, over twice your normal weight. That is if you could actually stand on Jupiter’s surface, which is impossible because it is a gas giant, and gas giants do not have solid surfaces.
Saturn is a gas giant best known for its planetary rings system. It is also the second biggest planet in our Solar System. Despite its mass though, the planet has a very low density and a lower gravity than Earth. If you weighed 68 kg on Earth, you would weigh 72.3 kg on Saturn.
Uranus is a gas giant without a solid surface. Although Uranus is larger in size than Neptune, it has less mass and therefore less gravity. You would only weigh 60.4 kg on Uranus, if you weighed 68 kg on Earth.
Neptune, the last planet in our Solar System, is a gas giant. If you weighed 68 kg on Earth, then you would weigh 76.5 kg on Neptune if you could stand on the planet’s surface.
Although the Moon is not a planet, it is one of the few objects that astronauts have actually visited. Because the Moon is so small, it has a low density and low gravity. If you weighed 68 kg on Earth, then you would only weigh 11.2 kg on the Moon.
July 22, 2009 Solar Eclipse Image Submitted By Bill Fish
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The total solar eclipse which just occured on the 22nd of July 2009 was the longest in terms of maximum totality duration of the 21st century – lasting over six and a half minutes. Not since Saros 1991 have astronomers and eclipse chasers been treated to such a length of time! The eclipse footprint started in India along the western shore near Surat moved towards Butan and reached the southern tip of Nepal and the northern edge of Bangladesh. For other lucky astronomers, the eclipse path also took the event over the Chinese cities of Chengdu, Suining, Chonging, Wuhan, Xiaogan, Hangzhou, and Shanghai – yielding five minutes of totality. Leaving Shanghai the shadow raced across the ocean to fall across islands such as Toshima and Akusaki south of Japan and eventually the Marshall islands. Where did the longest time occur? The maximum eclipse duration of 6 minutes and 43 seconds was far off the coast in the Pacific Ocean! As I write this announcement, our readers are sending in their photos and stories to my home email (send them!!) and I just couldn’t wait to show you some of the beginning results. It will take a short time to do a little translation work… But it’s a small, wonderful world and this article will be updated very soon!
Garver and Bolden after they were sworn into office. Credit: NASA
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Steely-eyed missile men may still be a part of NASA, but the space agency’s newly sworn-in administrator says he is an unabashed hugger and admits to crying easily. “One more thing you’ll learn about me, I cry,” said Charlie Bolden at an all-hands video meeting with the NASA centers. “I think it’s important to be passionate.” Bolden’s Deputy Administrator Lori Garver said she’s a hugger, too and as Bolden and Garver hugged on stage, Garver exclaimed, “Feelings are not something that were popular in the last few years at NASA, but they’re back. Feelings are back!”
Garver was obviously referring to former administrator Mike Griffin, who once said, “I don’t do feelings, just think of me as Spock.”
Bolden, a retired Marine Corps general and four-time shuttle astronaut, spoke at length about himself and his hopes for NASA’s future. He asked NASA employees in attendance to raise their hands if they didn’t think NASA should go to Mars. When no one raised their hands, he said, “We all agree we want humans to go to Mars, we don’t agree on how to get there. The challenge is to figure out the most efficient, most cost-effective path to get there. We can’t get there the way we’re doing it right now, with a whole bunch of different people thinking we’ll do a little of that and a little of this. We need to come together with a coherent plan.”
A presidential panel is reviewing options for the NASA’s human space program and is expected to issue its report next month. Bolden told workers the review is “nothing to be afraid of.”
Also, a second review encompassing all areas of space — military, commercial, civil and scientific — is under way by the national security advisor, James Jones, a retired four-star Marine general.
“There needs to be a coherent policy and so President Obama has asked General Jones to put together a group to take a look at the national space policy,” Bolden said.
Bolden said he wants working at NASA to be fun. “I will make mistakes, but I’m going to have fun, and I want all of you (NASA work force) to have fun,” he said. However, he cautioned that working in space is a risky business, and not everything is fun. “NASA is in the news every day and there’s always the potential for it to be bad news when we have people in space.”
Showing that she is in touch with the public’s views of NASA Garver shared some encouraging poll results about public opinion of NASA. Of those polled, 72 per cent have a positive impression of NASA. That’s better than Apple, Garver said, which got only a 63 per cent rating.
“We are more popular than your iPod,” she said.
Both Bolden and Garver said they were incredibly proud to be working at NASA again. “I look forward to working with you all,” Bolden said, “and we have some important things we have to do.”
