Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Take 5 Minutes to See What the Moon Will Do During 2013

This new video shows exactly how the Moon will look to us on Earth during the entire year of 2013. While the Moon always keeps the same face to us, it’s not exactly the same face. Because of the tilt in its axis and shape of its orbit, we see the Moon from slightly different angles over the course of a month, and the year. Normally, we don’t see how the Moon “wobbles” in its orbit or as it moves closer and farther away from Earth. But seeing the entire year compressed down to 5 minutes, we can see the changes in libration, and axis tilt — as well as the most noticeable changes, the Moon’s phases.

In this new video from Goddard’s Scientific Visualization Studio, each frame represents one hour. In addition, as an improvement from their previous Moon visualization , this also shows other relevant information, including Moon orbit position, subearth and subsolar points, distance from the Earth.

At the SVS website, there is more information, including a Dial-A-Moon, where you can put in a certain date and find out how the Moon will look on a specific day.

“Thanks to Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, we now have excellent terrain maps of the Moon that can tell us the elevation at any point on the surface,” said Ernie Wright, who put this new video together. “I use those maps to make the Moon sphere bumpy in all the right places. That allows the rendering software to realistically simulate all the shadows and the ragged terminator (the dividing line between day and night).”

And if you’d like to have a handy bring-along app to find out anywhere what they Moon will be doing, check out Universe Today’s Phases of the Moon app, – available on iPhone or Android.

Source: NASA

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Spectacular 360-Degree 3-D Panorama from Apollo 16

Dealing with those who think the Apollo Moon landings never happened can be frustrating. Most of us just throw up our hands in exasperation, but Italian amateur astronomer Roberto Beltramini came up with a better idea: create a full 360-degree 3-D panorama of images from Apollo 16 to show “the true depth of the views taken by astronauts Apollo,” he said. “What better proof? This was the motivation that prompted me to start, but the spectacle and the interest in new ways of seeing the [Moon’s] wilderness, made me go farther.”

This panorama has now been put into a “Zoomify” making it fully interactive and lots of fun to explore. Grab your 3-D glasses, and you can find a rock and zoom in, follow the astronauts’ footprints and see one of the astronauts tinkering with the Lunar Rover. Click here and enjoy!

Beltramini’s initial plan was to create just a few 3-D anaglyghs, but once he got started, he just kept going. But of course, the Apollo 16 images taken by astronauts John Young and Charlie Duke as they walked, bounded and drove the lunar rover on the Moon’s surface were not originally taken with the intent to be made into 3-D view, making Beltramini’s job fairly difficult.

“The difficulty of making anaglyph, due to the shots not performed specifically for the purpose, may have dampened the attempts of other enthusiasts,” he writes on the website for amateur astronomy group in Viareggio, in the Tuscany region of Italy (Gruppo Astronomico Viareggio.) “To overcome this obstacle, I had to work adapting the pairs of pictures with graphics programs, cropping, resizing, by cleaning scratches and stains present because of the scans on the original story. Other marks are very annoying problem, that is, the black crosses placed at regular intervals in photographs taken during the Apollo missions that I had to delete one by one to avoid that interfere with 3D viewing.”

But over time he figured out how to make it work, “thanks to the phenomenon of rotation around a nodal point during the panning of the Apollo missions is possible, if there is plenty of overlap of the images, create a 3D 360 degree panorama,” he told Universe Today.

Apollo 16 was the fourth mission to land on the moon and launched on July 26, 1971, and the astronauts returned to Earth on August 7. Find out more about Apollo 16 here.

Posted on by Jason Major

Cassini Discovers Titan’s Glowing Atmosphere

A pair of images from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft show Titan glowing in the dark.

Titan never ceases to amaze. Saturn’s largest moon, it’s wrapped in a complex, multi-layered nitrogen-and-methane atmosphere ten times thicker than Earth’s. It has seasons and weather, as evidenced by the occasional formation of large bright clouds and, more recently, an area of open-cell convection forming over its south pole. Titan even boasts the distinction of being the only other world in the Solar System besides Earth with large amounts of liquid existing on its surface, although there in the form of exotic methane lakes and streams.

We have NASA’s Cassini spacecraft to thank for these discoveries, and now there’s one more for the ceaseless explorer to add to its list: Titan glows in the dark.

Seen above in two versions of the same calibrated raw image, acquired by Cassini on May 7, 2009, Titan hovers in front of a background field of stars which appear as blurred streaks due to the 560 seconds (about 9 1/2 minutes) exposure time and the relative motion of the spacecraft.

The image on the left shows Titan in visible light, receiving reflected sunlight off Saturn itself — “Saturnshine” — while the moon was on the ringed planet’s night side. The image on the right was processed to exclude this reflected light… and yet it still shines. (E pur si candeo?)

Read: Titan’s Surface “the Consistency of Soft, Damp Sand”

The hazy moon’s dim glow — measuring only around a millionth of a watt — comes from not only the top of its atmosphere (which was expected) but also from much deeper within, at altitudes of 300 km (190 miles).

The glow is created by chemical reactions within Titan’s atmosphere, sparked by interactions with charged particles from the Sun and Saturn’s magnetic field.

“It turns out that Titan glows in the dark – though very dimly,” said Robert West, the lead author of a recent study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters and a Cassini imaging team scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “It’s a little like a neon sign, where electrons generated by electrical power bang into neon atoms and cause them to glow. Here we’re looking at light emitted when charged particles bang into nitrogen molecules in Titan’s atmosphere.”

The light is analogous to the airglow seen in Earth’s atmosphere, often photographed by astronauts aboard the ISS.

Still, even taking known sources of external radiation into account, Titan is glowing from within with an as-yet-unexplained light. More energetic cosmic rays may be to blame, penetrating deeper into the moon’s atmosphere, or there could be unexpected chemical reactions or phenomena at work — a little Titanic lightning, perhaps?

“This is exciting because we’ve never seen this at Titan before,” West said. “It tells us that we don’t know all there is to know about Titan and makes it even more mysterious.”

Read more on the Cassini mission page here, and see more images from Cassini on the CICLOPS imaging center site.

Images: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute. Inset image: Titan’s atmosphere and upper-level hydrocarbon haze, seen in June 2012. Color composite by J. Major.

Posted on by Jason Major

From Eternity to Here: The Amazing Origin of our Species (in 90 Seconds)

From the initial expansion of the Big Bang to the birth of the Moon, from the timid scampering of the first mammals to the rise — and fall — of countless civilizations, this fascinating new video by melodysheep (aka John D. Boswell) takes us on a breathless 90-second tour through human history — starting from the literal beginnings of space and time itself. It’s as imaginative and powerful as the most gripping Hollywood trailer… and it’s even inspired by a true story: ours.

Enjoy!

(Video by melodysheep, creator of the Symphony of Science series.)

Posted on by Jason Major

Isotopic Evidence of the Moon’s Violent Origins

Artist’s impression of an impact of two planet-sized worlds (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Scientists have uncovered a history of violence hidden within lunar rocks, further evidence that our large, lovely Moon was born of a cataclysmic collision between worlds billions of years ago.

Using samples gathered during several Apollo missions as well as a lunar meteorite that had fallen to Earth (and using Martian meteorites as comparisons) researchers have observed a marked depletion in lunar rocks of lighter isotopes, including those of zinc — a telltale element that can be “a powerful tracer of the volatile histories of planets.”

The research utilized an advanced mass spectroscopy instrument to measure the ratios of specific isotopes present in the lunar samples. The spectrometer’s high level of precision allows for data not possible even five years ago.

Scientists have been looking for this kind of sorting by mass, called isotopic fractionation, since the Apollo missions first brought Moon rocks to Earth in the 1970s, and Frédéric Moynier, PhD, assistant professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis — together with PhD student, Randal Paniello, and colleague James Day of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography — are the first to find it.

The team’s findings support a now-widely-accepted hypothesis — called the Giant Impact Theory, first suggested by PSI scientists William K. Hartmann and Donald Davis in 1975 — that the Moon was created from a collision between early Earth and a Mars-sized protoplanet about 4.5 billion years ago. The effects of the impact eventually formed the Moon and changed the evolution of our planet forever — possibly even proving crucial to the development of life on Earth.

(What would a catastrophic event like that have looked like? Probably something like this:)

Read more: What’s the Moon Made Of? Earth, Most Likely.

“This is compelling evidence of extreme volatile depletion of the moon,” said Scripps researcher James Day, a member of the team. “How do you remove all of the volatiles from a planet, or in this case a planetary body? You require some kind of wholesale melting event of the moon to provide the heat necessary to evaporate the zinc.”

In the team’s paper, published in the October 18 issue of Nature, the researchers suggest that the only way for such lunar volatiles to be absent on such a large scale would be evaporation resulting from a massive impact event.

“When a rock is melted and then evaporated, the light isotopes enter the vapor phase faster than the heavy isotopes, so you end up with a vapor enriched in the light isotopes and a solid residue enriched in the heavier isotopes. If you lose the vapor, the residue will be enriched in the heavy isotopes compared to the starting material,” explains Moynier.

The fact that similar isotopic fractionation has been found in lunar samples gathered from many different locations indicates a widespread global event, and not something limited to any specific regional effect.

The next step is finding out why Earth’s crust doesn’t show an absence of similar volatiles, an investigation that may lead to clues to where Earth’s surface water came from.

“Where did all the water on Earth come from?” asked Day. “This is a very important question because if we are looking for life on other planets we have to recognize that similar conditions are probably required. So understanding how planets obtain such conditions is critical for understanding how life ultimately occurs on a planet.”

“The work also has implications for the origin of the Earth,”  adds Moynier, “because the origin of the Moon was a big part of the origin of the Earth.”

Read more on the Washington University news release and at the UC San Diego news center.

Inset image: Cross-polarized transmitted-light image of a lunar rock. Photo by James Day, Scripps/UCSD

Posted on by Jason Major

The Moon’s Water Comes From the Sun

An image of debris, ejected from Cabeus crater and into the sunlight, about 20 seconds after the LCROSS impact. The inset shows a close-up with the direction of the sun and the Earth. Image courtesy of Science/AAAS

An image of water-filled debris ejected from Cabeus crater about 20 seconds after the 2009 LCROSS impact. Courtesy of Science/AAAS.

Comets? Asteroids? The Earth? The origins of water now known to exist within the Moon’s soil — thanks to recent observations by various lunar satellites and the impact of the LCROSS mission’s Centaur rocket in 2009 — has been an ongoing puzzle for scientists. Now, new research supports that the source of at least some of the Moon’s water is the Sun, with the answer blowing in the solar wind.


Spectroscopy research conducted on Apollo samples by a team from the University of Tennessee, University of Michigan and Caltech has revealed “significant amounts” of hydroxyl within microscopic glass particles found inside lunar soil, the results of micrometeorite impacts.

According to the research team, the hydroxyl “water” within the lunar glass was likely created by interactions with protons and hydrogen ions from the solar wind.

“We found that the ‘water’ component, the hydroxyl, in the lunar regolith is mostly from solar wind implantation of protons, which locally combined with oxygen to form hydroxyls that moved into the interior of glasses by impact melting,” said Youxue Zhang, Professor of Geological Sciences at the University of Michigan.

Hydroxyl is the pairing of a single oxygen atom to a single hydrogen atom (OH). Each molecule of water contains two hydroxyl groups.

Although such glass particles are widespread on the surface of the Moon — the researchers studied samples returned from Apollo 11, Apollo 16 and Apollo 17 missions — the water in hydroxyl form is not something that could be easily used by future lunar explorers. Still, the findings suggest that solar wind-derived hydroxyl may also exist on the surface of other airless worlds, like Mercury, Vesta or Eros… especially within permanently-shadowed craters and depressions.

“These planetary bodies have very different environments, but all have the potential to produce water,” said Yang Liu, University of Tennessee scientist and lead author of the team’s paper.

The discovery of hydroxyl within lunar glasses presents an “unanticipated, abundant reservoir” of water on the Moon, and possibly throughout the entire Solar System.

The study was published online Sunday in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Source: University of Michigan news release.

Inset image: a grain of lunar agglutinate glass from samples returned by Apollo astronauts (Yang Liu)

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Curiosity’s “Bootprint” on Mars

Looking very similar to the iconic first footprint on the Moon from the Apollo 11 landing, this new raw image from the Curiosity rover on Mars shows one of the first “scuff” marks from the rover’s wheels on a small sandy ridge. This image was taken today by Curiosity’s right Navcam on Sol 57 (2012-10-03 19:08:27 UTC). Rover driver Matt Heverly described a scuff as spinning one wheel to move the soil below it out of the way.

Besides being on different worlds, the two prints likely have a very different future. NASA says the first footprints on the Moon will be there for a million years, since there is no wind to blow them away. Research on the tracks left by Spirit and Opportunity revealed the time scale for track erasure by wind is typically only one Martian year or two Earth years.

Here’s one of Buzz Aldrin’s bootprint, to compare:

The GRIN website (Great Images in NASA) says this is an image of Buzz Aldrin’s bootprint from the Apollo 11 mission. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon on July 20, 1969. Credit: NASA

Curiosity chief scientist John Grotzinger compared earlier images of some of the first tracks left on Mars by Curiosity to images of the footprints left by Aldrin and Armstrong on the Moon. “I think instead of a human, it’s a robot pretty much doing the same thing,” he said.

Lead Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Weekly Space Hangout – Sept. 27, 2012

This was an action-packed episode of the Weekly Space Hangout. Lots of stories, very little time.

Participants: Mike Wall, Alan Boyle, Ian O’Neill, Nancy Atkinson, Jason Major

Host: Fraser Cain

Want to watch us record the show live? Point your browser at next week’s event page to put the recording right into your calendar.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Will NASA Really Build a “Gateway” L-2 Moon Base?

In this artist’s concept, the Orion MPCV is docked to a habitat; an astronaut exits the spacecraft to conduct an EVA. Credit: NASA

Over the weekend, The Orlando Sentinel reported that NASA is considering building a hovering outpost beyond the Moon at L-2 (Lagrangian point 2) that will be a ‘gateway’ to serve as a point for launching human missions to Mars and asteroids. The buzz among the space-related social medias ranged from “this is the greatest idea ever” to “this is make-work for the Space Launch System, (NASA’s new rocket.)” The newspaper’s report cited a White House briefing given in September by NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden, but said “it’s unclear whether it has the administration’s support. Of critical importance is the price tag, which would certainly run into the billions of dollars.”

As always, money is the real issue with any grand ideas that anyone at NASA may have.

And NASA has now officially responded to the The Sentinel’s report and said… well, actually they didn’t really say much at all. Here’s the NASA statement:

“NASA is executing President Obama’s ambitious space exploration plan that includes missions around the moon, to asteroids, and ultimately putting humans on Mars. There are many options – and many routes – being discussed on our way to the Red Planet. In addition to the moon and an asteroid, other options may be considered as we look for ways to buy down risk – and make it easier – to get to Mars. We have regular meetings with OMB (Office of Management and Budget), OSTP(Office of Science and Technology) , Congress, and other stakeholders to keep them apprised of our progress on our deep space exploration destinations. This concept is a part of the Voyages document that we mentioned in an earlier Update posted on NASA.gov in June: http://go.nasa.gov/NASAvoyages.” Refer to page 26 of the chapter titled, “Habitation and Destination Capabilities.”

And so NASA does not deny they are looking into building such a base, and in the document mentioned above, they do provide some interesting details about why exploring cis-lunar space would be important: for scientific reasons, for technological and economic growth and to pave the way for future exploration.

Related content: Paul Spudis’ Plan for a Sustainable and Affordable Lunar Base

And so, what would a space station beyond the Moon be like? The Sentinel suggested it could be built in a budget-conscious way using parts left over from the International Space Station and be placed at what’s known as the Earth-Moon Lagrange Point 2, a spot about 38,000 miles beyond the far side of the Moon and 277,000 miles from Earth where the gravitational pull of Earth and the Moon are at equilibrium, so that a spacecraft could basically “hover” in a fixed spot.

In the document, NASA says the habitat they are designing combines technologies to accommodate a crew of at least four, potentially six for a mission to Mars. The in-space version of the habitat will require docking systems for crew transportation vehicles, and it could be used in cis-lunar space as a Lagrange point facility, or in transit to deep-space destinations, or near a NEA.

Artist’s concept of an inflatable cis-lunar facility, or Lagrange gateway. Credit: NASA

They call the L-2 Gateway base an “ISS Stepping Stone,” saying that the ISS is an invaluable resource for researching and testing exploration capabilities in space, and it may inspire future space station concepts.

“As NASA looks to explore beyond LEO, the agency is considering how a facility in cis-lunar space, potentially stationed at an Earth-Moon Lagrange point, could support research, testing, and astronomical observation, as well as provide a staging point for exploration missions. Such a facility, also known as a Lagrange gateway, would build upon ISS hardware and experience, and would serve as an initial in-space habitat, providing a basis for future long-duration habitation developments.”

Could this ‘Gateway’ idea really fly?

The Sentinel says that from NASA’s perspective, the outpost solves several problems.

“It gives purpose to the Orion space capsule and the Space Launch System rocket, which are being developed at a cost of about $3 billion annually. It involves NASA’s international partners, as blueprints for the outpost suggest using a Russian-built module and components from Italy. And the outpost would represent a baby step toward NASA’s ultimate goal: human footprints on Mars.” — Orlando Sentinel

The report doesn’t mention budget or costs, and if the federal government cuts budgets in the name of deficit reduction, it is very unlikely that NASA will get more money — and it likely could get less – than the current budget of $17.7 billion.

If the past is any indication of the future, this report may wind up like Werner von Braun’s 1950’s vision of getting humans to Mars: a report that future generations look back on and say, “wish we could have done that, and why can’t we do that now?”

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

A New, Automatic 3-D Moon

Korolev lobate scarp on the Moon, in 3-D. Lobate scarps, a type of cliff,are found mostly in the highlands on the Moon, and are relatively small and young. Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University.

Who doesn’t love 3-D images, especially of objects in space? But creating them can be a bit time-consuming for scientists, especially for images from orbiting spacecraft like the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter that takes images from just one angle at a time. Usually, it is “amateur” enthusiasts who take the time to find and combine images from different orbital passes to create rich, 3-D views.

But now, scientists at the University of Arizona and Arizona State University have developed a new automatic “brain” — a new automatic processing system that aligns and adjusts images from LRO, and combines them into images that can be viewed using standard red-cyan 3D glasses.

Alpes Sinuous Rille, an ancient channel formed as massive eruptions of very fluid lava poured across the surface of the Moon. Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University

Human vision sees in three dimensions because our eyes are set slightly apart and see the world from two different angles at once. Our brain then interprets the two images and combines them into a single three dimensional view.

It’s fairly easy to create 3-D views from the Mars rovers like Curiosity and Opportunity, because they have mast cameras and navigation cameras which operate in pairs to provide stereo views of the Martian surface.

Ancient radial scars of ejecta extend out from the Orientale basin for hundreds of kilometers and consist of aligned craters and massive dune-like forms. They formed as streamers of lunar rock thrown out from the Orientale impact and crashed back to the surface. Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University

But LRO orbits high above the Moon’s surface, and can see from only one angle at one time. However, images taken in different orbits, from different angles can be combined together to reconstruct a view in three dimensions.

And this new system can automatically combine the disparate shots together. The images here are a sample of what the team has created so far.

This ‘brain’ is provided by a new initiative, presented by team member Sarah Mattson (University of Arizona) to the European Planetary Science Congress on 25 September. The team have developed an This type of image is known as an anaglyph.

“Anaglyphs are used to better understand the 3D structure of the lunar surface,” said Sarah Mattson from the University of Arizona and LRO team member. “This visualization is extremely helpful to scientists in understanding the sequence and structures on the surface of the Moon in a qualitative way. LROC NAC anaglyEuropean Planetary Science Congress on 25 September. LROC NAC anaglyphs will also make detailed images of surface of the Moon accessible in 3D to the general public.”

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera – Narrow Angle Camera (LROC NAC) has acquired hundreds of stereo pairs of the lunar surface, and is acquiring more as the mission progresses. The LROC NAC anaglyphs make lunar features such as craters, volcanic flows, lava tubes and tectonic features jump out in 3D. The anaglyphs will be released through the LROC website as they become available.

Mattson presented the new system at the European Planetary Science Congress on September 25.