KREUZADER (Posts tagged space)

1.5M ratings
277k ratings

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna
Our Solar System’s First Known Interstellar Object Gets Unexpected Speed Boost “Using observations from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based observatories, an international team of scientists have confirmed ′Oumuamua (oh-MOO-ah-MOO-ah), the...

Our Solar System’s First Known Interstellar Object Gets Unexpected Speed Boost

Using observations from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based observatories, an international team of scientists have confirmed ′Oumuamua (oh-MOO-ah-MOO-ah), the first known interstellar object to travel through our solar system, got an unexpected boost in speed and shift in trajectory as it passed through the inner solar system last year.

“Our high-precision measurements of ′Oumuamua’s position revealed that there was something affecting its motion other than the gravitational forces of the Sun and planets,“ said Marco Micheli of ESA’s (European Space Agency) Space Situational Awareness Near-Earth Object Coordination Centre in Frascati, Italy, and lead author of a paper describing the team’s findings.

Analyzing the trajectory of the interstellar visitor, co-author Davide Farnocchia of the Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) found that the speed boost was consistent with the behavior of a comet.

“This additional subtle force on ′Oumuamua likely is caused by jets of gaseous material expelled from its surface,” said Farnocchia. “This same kind of outgassing affects the motion of many comets in our solar system.”

Comets normally eject large amounts of dust and gas when warmed by the Sun. But according to team scientist Olivier Hainaut of the European Southern Observatory, “there were no visible signs of outgassing from ′Oumuamua, so these forces were not expected.”

Source: nasa.gov
space astronomy 'oumuamua
Observations of the missing baryons in the warm–hot intergalactic medium “ It has been known for decades that the observed number of baryons in the local Universe falls about 30–40 per cent short of the total number of baryons predicted by Big Bang...

Observations of the missing baryons in the warm–hot intergalactic medium

It has been known for decades that the observed number of baryons in the local Universe falls about 30–40 per cent short of the total number of baryons predicted by Big Bang nucleosynthesis, as inferred from density fluctuations of the cosmic microwave background and seen during the first 2–3 billion years of the Universe in the so-called ‘Lyman α forest’ (a dense series of intervening H 1 Lyman α absorption lines in the optical spectra of background quasars). A theoretical solution to this paradox locates the missing baryons in the hot and tenuous filamentary gas between galaxies, known as the warm–hot intergalactic medium. However, it is difficult to detect them there because the largest by far constituent of this gas—hydrogen—is mostly ionized and therefore almost invisible in far-ultraviolet spectra with typical signal-to-noise ratios. Indeed, despite large observational efforts, only a few marginal claims of detection have been made so far. Here we report observations of two absorbers of highly ionized oxygen (O VII) in the high-signal-to-noise-ratio X-ray spectrum of a quasar at a redshift higher than 0.4. These absorbers show no variability over a two-year timescale and have no associated cold absorption, making the assumption that they originate from the quasar’s intrinsic outflow or the host galaxy’s interstellar medium implausible. The O VII systems lie in regions characterized by large (four times larger than average11) galaxy overdensities and their number (down to the sensitivity threshold of our data) agrees well with numerical simulation predictions for the long-sought warm–hot intergalactic medium. We conclude that the missing baryons have been found.

cosmology astrophysics space astronomy
How the Earliest Images of the Moon Were so Much Better than we Realised “Fifty years ago, 5 unmanned lunar orbiters circled the moon, taking extremely high resolution photos of the surface. They were trying to find the perfect landing site for the...

How the Earliest Images of the Moon Were so Much Better than we Realised

Fifty years ago, 5 unmanned lunar orbiters circled the moon, taking extremely high resolution photos of the surface. They were trying to find the perfect landing site for the Apollo missions. They would be good enough to blow up to 40 x 54ft images that the astronauts would walk across looking for the great spot. After their use, the images were locked away from the public, as at the time they would have revealed the superior technology of the USA’s spy satellite cameras, which the orbiters cameras were designed from. Instead the images from that time were grainy and low resolution, made to be so by NASA.

Source: worldofindie.co.uk
moon space nasa
More Mystery Objects Detected Near Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole “Astronomers have discovered several bizarre objects at the Galactic Center that are concealing their true identity behind a smoke screen of dust; they look like gas clouds, but...

More Mystery Objects Detected Near Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole

Astronomers have discovered several bizarre objects at the Galactic Center that are concealing their true identity behind a smoke screen of dust; they look like gas clouds, but behave like stars.

At today’s American Astronomical Society Meeting in Denver, a team of researchers led by UCLA Postdoctoral Scholar Anna Ciurlo announced their results, which they obtained using 12 years of data taken from W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea, Hawaii

“These compact dusty stellar objects move extremely fast and close to our Galaxy’s supermassive black hole. It is fascinating to watch them move from year to year,” said Ciurlo. “How did they get there? And what will they become? They must have an interesting story to tell.”

Source: keckobservatory.org
astronomy space
“ NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter is finding the Jovian giant to be more complicated than expected. Jupiter’s magnetic field has been discovered to be much different from our Earth’s simple dipole field, showing several poles embedded in a complicated...

NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter is finding the Jovian giant to be more complicated than expected. Jupiter’s magnetic field has been discovered to be much different from our Earth’s simple dipole field, showing several poles embedded in a complicated network more convoluted in the north than the south. Further, Juno’s radio measurements show that Jupiter’s atmosphere shows structure well below the upper cloud deck – even hundreds of kilometers deep. Jupiter’s newfound complexity is evident also in southern clouds, as shown in the featured image. There, planet-circling zones and belts that dominate near the equator decay into a complex miasma of continent-sized storm swirls. Juno continues in its looping elliptical orbit, swooping near the huge planet every 53 days and exploring a slightly different sector each time around.

Source: apod.nasa.gov
nasa jupiter space juno
NASA Wants to Create the Coolest Spot in the Universe “This summer, an ice chest-sized box will fly to the International Space Station, where it will create the coolest spot in the universe. Inside that box, lasers, a vacuum chamber and an...

NASA Wants to Create the Coolest Spot in the Universe

This summer, an ice chest-sized box will fly to the International Space Station, where it will create the coolest spot in the universe.

Inside that box, lasers, a vacuum chamber and an electromagnetic “knife” will be used to cancel out the energy of gas particles, slowing them until they’re almost motionless. This suite of instruments is called the Cold Atom Laboratory (CAL), and was developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. CAL is in the final stages of assembly at JPL, ahead of a ride to space this August on SpaceX CRS-12.

[…]

When atoms are cooled to extreme temperatures, as they will be inside of CAL, they can form a distinct state of matter known as a Bose-Einstein condensate. In this state, familiar rules of physics recede and quantum physics begins to take over. Matter can be observed behaving less like particles and more like waves. Rows of atoms move in concert with one another as if they were riding a moving fabric. These mysterious waveforms have never been seen at temperatures as low as what CAL will achieve.

Source: jpl.nasa.gov
nasa space international space station
From the moon’s far side, a radio receiver will listen for ancient clues to the universe’s origin “ China launched the relay communication satellite Queqiao, or “bridge of magpies,” on May 21 at 5:28am Beijing time from its Xichang Satellite Launch...

From the moon’s far side, a radio receiver will listen for ancient clues to the universe’s origin

China launched the relay communication satellite Queqiao, or “bridge of magpies,” on May 21 at 5:28am Beijing time from its Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwestern Sichuan province, according to the country’s space agency. Named for the birds in a Chinese folktale that help connect two parted lovers once a year, Queqiao will connect earth to the Chang’e-4 lander and rover that China plans to launch towards the end of this year. It’s an essential step for the lunar exploration mission because direct communication is impossible between the moon’s far side and the earth. If all goes as planned, China will become the world’s first nation to land on the far side of the moon by the end of the year.

[…]

A radio antenna, which is being transported with Queqiao, will be stationed some 60,000 km behind the moon. Scientists are hoping that the radio antenna will reveal clues about the early universe, the time after the Big Bang when stars began to form from an ocean of hydrogen.

Signals have different wavelengths, and those in lower frequencies are harder to catch from a place with a lot of interference like the earth, according to Heino Falcke, professor of astrophysics from Netherland’s Radboud University, which led the effort to design and build the antenna, known as the Netherlands-China Low-Frequency Explorer (NCLE).

Source: qz.com
cnsa space moon
Three Visions of Human Space Settlement: 1970s “You may have seen images of NASA’s 1970s space colony artwork. But you’ve never seen them like this, in full size, high resolution scans. In the 1970s, NASA Ames Research Center (ARC) conducted space...

Three Visions of Human Space Settlement: 1970s

You may have seen images of NASA’s 1970s space colony artwork. But you’ve never seen them like this, in full size, high resolution scans.

In the 1970s, NASA Ames Research Center (ARC) conducted space colony summer studies on Toroidal Colonies and Bernal Spheres which could hold population of up to 10,000 humans living in space, and on Cylindrical Colonies which could hold a population of 1,000,000.

Source: medium.com
nasa space
Extrasolar asteroid has been orbiting the Sun for 4.5 billion years “One object differs from all the rest, like an “odd man out”, as it were: asteroid (514107) 2015 BZ509. The difference is its retrograde orbit: this asteroid revolves around the Sun...

Extrasolar asteroid has been orbiting the Sun for 4.5 billion years

One object differs from all the rest, like an “odd man out”, as it were: asteroid (514107) 2015 BZ509.

The difference is its retrograde orbit: this asteroid revolves around the Sun in the opposite direction to the planets and other celestial bodies. This retrograde orbit and its stability since the Solar System began are considered strong evidence that it is of extrasolar origin and was captured by Jupiter’s gravitational field toward the end of the era in which the planets were formed. According to an article published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society-Letters, a study based on robust computer simulation has now corroborated this hypothesis.

Source: agencia.fapesp.br
astronomy space
“Gerdes and his colleagues spotted the new object in data from the Dark Energy Survey, a project that probes the acceleration in the expansion of the universe by surveying a region well above the plane of the solar system. This makes it an unlikely...

Gerdes and his colleagues spotted the new object in data from the Dark Energy Survey, a project that probes the acceleration in the expansion of the universe by surveying a region well above the plane of the solar system. This makes it an unlikely tool for finding objects inside the solar system, since they mostly orbit within the plane. But that is exactly what makes the new object unique: Its orbit is tilted 54 degrees with respect to the plane of the solar system. It’s something Gerdes did not expect to see. Batygin and Brown, however, predicted it.

Two years ago, Batygin and Brown made a case for Planet Nine’s existence based on the peculiar orbits of a handful of distant worlds known as Kuiper belt objects. That small population loops outward toward the same quadrant of the solar system, a phenomenon that would be extremely unlikely to happen by chance. Batygin and Brown argued that a ninth planet must be shepherding those worlds into their strange orbits.

Source: quantamagazine.org
astronomy space
High-Precision Orbit Fitting and Uncertainty Analysis of (486958) 2014 MU69 “ NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft will conduct a close flyby of the cold classical Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) designated (486958) 2014 MU69 on January 1, 2019. At a heliocentric...

High-Precision Orbit Fitting and Uncertainty Analysis of (486958) 2014  MU69

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft will conduct a close flyby of the cold classical Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) designated (486958) 2014 MU69 on January 1, 2019. At a heliocentric distance of 44 AU, “MU69” will be the most distant object ever visited by a spacecraft. To enable this flyby, we have developed an extremely high precision orbit fitting and uncertainty processing pipeline, making maximal use of the Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) and pre-release versions of the ESA Gaia Data Release 2 (DR2) catalog. This pipeline also enabled successful predictions of a stellar occultation by MU69 in July 2017. We describe how we process the WFC3 images to match the Gaia DR2 catalog, extract positional uncertainties for this extremely faint target (typically 140 photons per WFC3 exposure), and translate those uncertainties into probability distribution functions for MU69 at any given time. We also describe how we use these uncertainties to guide New Horizons, plan stellar occultions of MU69, and derive MU69’s orbital evolution and long-term stability.
Source: arxiv.org
astronomy space new horizons