The Night Sky Guy

New Asteroid Photos Revealed

Check out the new set of images just released by the folks at the European Space Agency who were at the helm of the Rosetta probe that just zipped by the 130 km wide asteroid Lutetia. Now the spacecraft will be put into hibernation until its next stop in 2014 when it arrives at a comet and launches a small lander to its surface.

Go to the official mission website to view the entire image gallery.

Close up of Lutetia asteroid from Rosetta probe cameras. Click image to view gallery. Credit: ESA

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WATCH LIVE: Asteroid Flyby Today

UPDATE July 10, 2 pm ET : Space Probe has zipped by space rock and has already beamed back images to Earth. First closeups of asteroid Lutetia will be released shortly after 5 pm Eastern Time. Watch here for LIVE web conference where  scientists will show off those first photos.

Rosetta comet-chasing probe is expected to pass the asteroid Lutetia at a relative speed of 54 000 km/hr, when both are located some 454 million km from Earth int he asteroid belt.  As 100 km wide Lutetia is a major scientific target of Rosetta’s mission, most of the orbiter and lander instruments will be on for flyby, studying the asteroid’s surface, dust environment, exosphere, magnetic field, mass and density.

Rosetta is perfectly lined up to skim by at 3162 km at (12:10 pm Eastern Time (18:10 CEST). Watch live web streaming video as it happens, along with mission control press conferences with the latest images begin beamed back from the spacecraft. Read my National Geographic story about the mission.

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Star Gobbles Planet

The hottest known planet in the Milky Way galaxy may also be its shortest-lived world. The doomed planet is being eaten by its parent star, according to observations made by a new instrument on NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS). The planet may only have another 10 million years left before it is completely devoured.

WASP-12 is a yellow dwarf star located approximately 600 light-years away in the winter constellation Auriga. The hot planet is so close to the star it completes an orbit in 1.1 days.

The planet, called WASP-12b, is so close to its Sun-like star that it is superheated to nearly 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit and stretched into a football shape by enormous tidal forces. The atmosphere has ballooned to nearly three times Jupiter’s radius and is spilling material onto the star. The planet is 40 percent more massive than Jupiter.

This effect of matter exchange between two stellar objects is commonly seen in close binary star systems, but this is the first time it has been seen so clearly for a planet.  “We see a huge cloud of material around the planet which is escaping and will be captured by the star. We have identified chemical elements never before seen on planets outside our own solar system,” says team leader Carole Haswell of The Open University in Great Britain.

Check out this short video interview with astronomer discussing discovery of a star which is devouring one of its orbiting planets.

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Happy 20th Hubble!

As the Hubble Space Telescope achieves the major milestone of two decades on orbit, NASA is celebrating Hubble’s journey of exploration with a stunning new picture.

Huuble image of small portion of one of the largest seen star-birth regions in the galaxy, the Carina Nebula. Click image to enlarge

NASA is releasing a new Hubble photo (see above) of a small portion of one of the largest known star-birth regions in the galaxy, the Carina Nebula. Three light-year-tall towers of cool hydrogen laced with dust rise from the wall of the nebula. The scene is reminiscent of Hubble’s classic “Pillars of Creation” photo from 1995, but even more striking.

NASA’s best-recognized, longest-lived and most prolific space observatory was launched April 24, 1990, aboard the space shuttle Discovery during the STS-31 mission. Hubble discoveries revolutionized nearly all areas of current astronomical research from planetary science to cosmology. Over the years, Hubble has suffered broken equipment, a bleary-eyed primary mirror, and the cancellation of a planned shuttle servicing mission. But the ingenuity and dedication of Hubble scientists, engineers and NASA astronauts allowed the observatory to rebound and thrive. The telescope’s crisp vision continues to challenge scientists and the public with new discoveries and evocative images.

“Hubble is undoubtedly one of the most recognized and successful scientific projects in history,” said Ed Weiler, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Last year’s space shuttle servicing mission left the observatory operating at peak capacity, giving it a new beginning for scientific achievements that impact our society.”

Hubble fans worldwide are being invited to take an interactive journey with Hubble by visiting http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/Hubble20/ .  They can also visit http://www.hubblesite.org to share the ways the telescope has affected them.  Follow the “Messages to Hubble” link to send an e-mail, post a Facebook message, or send a cell phone text message.  Fan messages will be stored in the Hubble data archive along with the telescope’s science data. For those who use Twitter, you can follow @HubbleTelescope or post tweets using the Twitter hashtag #hst20.

Here is a video zoom in on the photo’s location in the night sky. Very cool, check it out !

- adapted from NASA News announcement

Check out more detailed close-ups of this milestone image and more in-depth info on how it was taken on NASA’s webpage.

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Volcanic Venus Surprise

3-D radar image of the Maat Mons volcano on Venus

The most recent infrared data from European Space Agency’s (ESA) Venus Express orbiter seem to confirm that our neighbouring sister world is volcanically active today. “We are pretty sure that Venus still has volcanic activity,” say Joern Helbert and Nils Mueller from the DLR Institute of Planetary Research.

The orbiter has been circling the planet, which is constantly obscured by thick cloud cover, since 11 April 2006. The spacecraft travels around the planet in an elliptical orbit at an altitude that varies from 300 to 66,000 kilometers. It carries VIRTIS, the only instrument that can look through the atmospheric windows onto the surface of Venus and record its infrared radiation patterns at a variety of heights. “At certain infrared ranges we can clearly see that the surface is glowing,” says planetary physicist Helbert.

According to the VIRTIS data, there are nine hotspots, areas over underground magma chambers, which are very likely volcanically active. “The solidified lava flows, which radiate heat from the surface, seem hardly weathered. So we can conclude that they are younger than 2.5 million years old — and the majority are probably younger than 250,000 years,” added Helbert. “In geological terms, this means that they are practically from the present day.” It is also possible that there are smaller volcanic vents and lava flows that cover very restricted areas. Nils Mueller and Joern Helbert are co-authors of a paper on volcanic hotspots that appears in the latest edition of Science.

The volcanic peak Idunn Mons, situated in the Imdr Regio area of Venus. It has a diameter of about 200 kilometres (120 miles) and its summit rises about 2.5 kilometers (1.6 miles) above the plains, and the bright flows originate there.

If further analysis confirms that Venus is volcanically active, making it the first geologically active planet after Earth itself, it would certainly affect our understanding of our own planet. While Earth and Venus are very similar in size and structure, they have had very different histories. So when and why did their development take such distinct paths, such that waterless Venus, at 500 degrees Celsius, is completely hostile to life, and Earth is so suited to it? “Perhaps Venus can tell us why Earth is so special,” added Joern Helbert.

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Stunning New Orion Photo

Astronomers have their eyes on a hot group of young stars, watching their every move like the paparazzi. A new infrared image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope shows the bustling star-making colony of the Orion nebula, situated in the hunter’s sword of the famous constellation. Like Hollywood starlets, the cosmic orbs don’t always shine their brightest, but vary over time. Spitzer is watching the stellar show, helping scientists learn more about why the stars change, and to what degree planet formation might play a role.

Orion's Stellar Nursery; Click image to enlarge; Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

“This is an exploratory project. Nobody has done this before at a wavelength sensitive to the heat from dust circling around so many stars,” said John Stauffer, the principal investigator of the research at NASA’s Spitzer Science Center, located at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “We are seeing a lot of variation, which may be a result of clumps or warped structures in the planet-forming disks.”

The new image was taken after Spitzer ran out of its coolant in May 2009, beginning its extended “warm” mission. The coolant was needed to chill the instruments, but the two shortest-wavelength infrared channels still work normally at the new, warmer temperature of 30 Kelvin (minus 406 Fahrenheit). In this new phase of the mission, Spitzer is able to spend more time on projects that cover a lot of sky and require longer observation times.

One such project is the “Young Stellar Object ariability” program, in which Spitzer looks repeatedly at the same patch of the Orion nebula, monitoring the same set of about 1,500 variable stars over time. It has already taken about 80 pictures of the region over 40 days. A second set of observations will be made in fall 2010. The region’s twinkling stars are about one million years old – this might invoke thoughts of wrinkle cream to a movie star, but in the cosmos, it is quite young. Our middle-aged sun is 4.6 billion years old.

Young stars are fickle, with brightness levels that change more than those of adult, sun-like stars. They also spin around faster. One reason for the ups and downs in brightness is the existence of cold spots on their surfaces. Cold spots are the opposite of “age spots” – the younger the star, the more it has. The cold spots come and go as a star whips around, changing the amount of light that reaches our telescopes.

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Andromeda’s Inner Beauty

One of the most celebrated targets for backyard astronomers is seen in a whole new way, thanks to a recently launched NASA space telescope. The immense Andromeda galaxy, also known as Messier 31 or simply M31, is captured in full in this new image from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. The mosaic covers an area equivalent to more than 100 full moons, or five degrees across the sky.

Andromeda neighbour; Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

WISE used all four of its infrared detectors to capture this picture (3.4- and 4.6-micron light is colored blue; 12-micron light is green; and 22-micron light is red). Blue highlights mature stars, while yellow and red show dust heated by newborn, massive stars.

Andromeda is the closest large galaxy to our Milky Way galaxy, and is located 2.5 million light-years from our sun. It is close enough for telescopes to spy the details of its ringed arms of new stars and hazy blue backbone of older stars. Also seen in the mosaic are two satellite galaxies, known as M32, located just a bit above Andromeda to the left of center, and the fuzzy blue M110, located below the center of the great spiral arms. These satellites are the largest of several that are gravitationally bound to Andromeda.

The Andromeda galaxy is larger than our Milky Way and contains more stars, but the Milky Way is thought to perhaps have more mass due to its larger proportion of a mysterious substance called dark matter. Both galaxies belong to our so-called Local Group, a collection of more than 50 galaxies, most of which are tiny dwarf systems. In its quest to map the whole sky, WISE will capture the entire Local Group.

-adapted from a NASA news announcement

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Last Nighttime Shuttle Launch

For those of you who missed the 4:14 am EST  launch of shuttle Endeavour this morning here is the video of the  thunderous event. Mission STS-130 is taking up a habitat module ‘Tranquility’ to the space station and a giant bay window called a cupola where a robotic console will be installed aboard the ISS.

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Inside the Brewing NASA Storm

Veteran space reporter Miles O’Brien talks with various stakeholders in the human spaceflight debate just now heating up thanks to the new NASA budget proposal.

This Week in Space with Miles O’Brien. Special Report from Washington DC on NASA’s Change of Direction

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Hubble Unveils Pluto

NASA has released the most detailed and dramatic images ever taken of the distant dwarf planet Pluto. The images from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope show an icy, mottled, dark molasses-colored world undergoing seasonal surface color and brightness changes. Pluto has become significantly redder, while its illuminated northern hemisphere is getting brighter.

These changes are most likely consequences of surface ice melting on the sunlit pole and then refreezing on the other pole, as the dwarf planet heads into the next phase of its 248-year-long seasonal cycle. Analysis shows the dramatic change in color took place from 2000 to 2002. The Hubble pictures confirm Pluto is a dynamic world that undergoes dramatic atmospheric changes, not simply a ball of ice and rock. These dynamic seasonal changes are as much propelled by the planet’s 248-year elliptical orbit as by its axial tilt. Pluto is unlike Earth, where the planet’s tilt alone drives seasons. Pluto’s seasons area symmetric because of its elliptical orbit. Spring transitions to polar summer quickly in the northern hemisphere, because Pluto ismoving faster along its orbit when it is closer to the Sun. Ground-based observations, taken in 1988 and 2002 show the mass of the atmosphere doubled during that time. This may be because of warming and melting nitrogen ice.

Hubble Maps Pluto's Changing Surface (courtesy of NASA)

The new Hubble images are giving astronomers essential clues about the seasons on Pluto and the fate of its atmosphere. When the Hubble pictures taken in 1994 are compared to those of 2002 and 2003, astronomers see evidence that the northern polar region has gotten brighter, while the southern hemisphere darkened. These changes hint at very complex processes affecting the visible surface. The images will help planetary astronomers interpret more than three decades of Pluto observations from other telescopes.

“The Hubble observations are the key to tying together these otherdiverse constraints on Pluto and showing how it all makes sense by providing a context based on weather and seasonal changes, which opens other new lines of investigation,” says principal investigator MarcBuie of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo.

New horizons at Pluto

These Hubble images, taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys, will remain the sharpest view of Pluto until NASA’s New Horizons probe is within six months of its flyby during 2015. The Hubble images are invaluable for picking the planet’s most interesting hemisphere for imaging by the New Horizons probe. New Horizons will pass by Pluto so quickly that only one hemisphere will be photographed in detail. Particularly noticeable in the Hubble images is a bright spot that has been independently noted to be unusually rich in carbon monoxide frost. It is a prime target for NewHorizons. “Everybody is puzzled by this feature,” Buie said. New Horizons will get an excellent look at the boundary between this bright feature and a nearby region covered in pitch-black surface material. “The Hubble images also will help New Horizons scientists better calculate the exposure time for each Pluto snapshot which is important for taking the most detailed pictures possible,” Buie said. With no chance for re-exposures, accurate models for the surface of Pluto are essential for properly exposed images. The Hubble images surface variations a few hundred miles across that are too coarse for understanding surface geology. But in terms of surface color and brightness, Hubble reveals a complex-looking world with white, dark-orange, and charcoal-black terrain. The overall color is believed to be a result of ultraviolet radiation from the distant Sun breaking up methane present on Pluto’s surface, leaving behind a dark and red carbon-rich residue.

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