Table of contents for No. 82 in All About Space

Infrared eye on Titan ©NASA/JPL-Caltech NASA’s Cassini spacecraft is still springing surprises about the Saturnian system, in particular the system’s largest moon, Titan. Cassini’s Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) instrument gathered 13 years’ worth of infrared data of the 'Earth-like' satellite from which these infrared maps were formed. Looking at Titan in the visible light wavelength doesn’t reveal much, as the surface of the moon is blocked by an orange, hazy atmosphere. The infrared observations provide a window to the surface, revealing its complex geology.…

A simultaneous stellar funeral and birth © NASA/JPL-Caltech NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope used its unique infrared capabilities to observe the supernova remnant HBH 3, exposing its thin, red veins of energetic gas along with the white-hot blotches of star-forming regions W3, W4 and W5. Observing the region in wavelengths of 3.6 microns and 4.5 microns reveals the blue and red features respectively, whereas the white regions are a combination of both regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. The eclectic mix of stellar birth and a supernova remnant is an appropriate visual metaphor of the continual life and death of stars throughout the cosmos.…

‘Ultra-hot Jupiter’ has heavy metals in its atmosphere Observations of an exoplanet that is hotter than many stars uncovers a glowing sky of iron and titanium © NASA/JPL Iron and titanium have been found in the atmosphere of a planet outside our Solar System for the first time. The heavy metals were detected around KELT-9b, a gas giant 620 light years from Earth, made possible because it also happens to be the hottest exoplanet discovered so far. Thanks to an equilibrium temperature of 3,700 degrees Celsius (6,692 degrees Fahrenheit), clouds do not condense in the atmosphere. This means the atoms around KELT-9b are not trapped within other molecules and are allowed to fly on their own in their atomic form, better enabling their detection. Researcher Kevin Heng, who wrote of…

NASA’s ‘Hidden Figures’ in line for a top award US senators seeking to recognise four African-American women for their key roles © NASA; Chuck Carter, Caltech Four brilliant African-American women who played a key role in the Space Race of the 1960s are on course for the USA's highest civilian award. The ‘Hidden Figures’ – so-called because of a 2016 biographical drama movie which highlighted their roles – could receive Congressional Gold Medals. It would suitably honour the efforts of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson and Christine Darden more than half-a-century later. The proposal has been put forward by Senators Chris Coons, Lisa Murkowski, Kamala Harris and 44 colleagues as the ‘The Hidden Figures Congressional Gold Medal Act’. “Each of these women played an important role at NASA during…

Ghost particle How they are detected The discovery of the source required a suite of telescopes – each able to view the universe in a different way – an approach called multi-messenger astronomy Major Atmospheric Gamma Imaging Cherenkov (MAGIC) Telescopes la palma, spain The twin MAGIC telescopes are located 2,200 metres (7,218 feet) above sea level. They detect the particle showers released when gamma rays interact with particles in Earth’s atmosphere. MAGIC confirmed Fermi’s findings by detecting even higher energy gamma rays from blazar TXS 0506+056. Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope Earth orbit NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope (FGST) is a space-based telescope designed to detect high-energy gamma rays emitted by pulsars and active galactic nuclei. Fermi was the first to identify that the source of the neutrinos was blazar TXS…

Sustainable space travel Sustainable space travel Creating fuel and breathable oxygen during humanity's voyage through the Solar System and beyond is essential © NASA “The molecules can be 'recombined' in order to create water in a fuel cell, which returns solar energy” Breathable oxygen Mars has relatively no atmosphere, making it impossible for humans to breathe without a well-crafted breathing apparatus. Creating breathable oxygen could lead to an easier life on Mars. Semiconductor A typical semiconductor would be titanium dioxide (TiO2). It is used to channel solar energy to split the water molecules. Artificial gravity 'Fake gravity' can be created by having a rotating frame of reference, using the centrifugal force as a gravity substitute. This is vital in removing the bubbles from water. Space fuel Having a fuel tank…

Hole in the Sun Our angry star The Sun interacts with the Solar System in many different ways 1. Know your place The Sun’s heat initially determined what types of planets formed and where. Rocky planets like Earth are close by, while gaseous ones like Jupiter (made of volatile molecules) are more distant. 2. Source of all life The Sun, as a stable source of heat and light, keeps Earth’s oceans liquid and makes the vast majority of life possible (the exception being life around deep sea vents). 3. Mangled magnetic mix The Sun’s magnetic field traps plasma, but can also contort until it ‘snaps’, sending charged material flying into space as a coronal mass ejection. This causes aurorae. 4. There’s a hole in my outermost layer Thin regions of…

USER MANUAL BepiColombo A collaborative effort between ESA and JAXA, the spacecraft will provide the best understanding of Mercury to date THE SPECS Launch: 19 October 2018 (UTC) Rocket: Ariane 5 Target: Mercury Operator: ESA and JAXA Estimated cost: £1.5 billion ($2 billion) Time in space: One Earth year (possible one Earth year extension) Distance from Earth: At least 77 million kilometres (48 million miles) Scheduled to launch on 19 October 2018, BepiColombo will be a first-of-its-kind mission for both the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). This mission will explore Mercury – the least explored terrestial planet in our Solar System. Only two spacecraft have ever paid the tiny planet a visit: NASA’s Mariner 10 and MESSENGER probes. The BepiColombo mission is named after…

How to… send a spacecraft to Mercury Starting with liftoff The first part of the journey is leaving home. BepiColombo will leave on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe's spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. Dispatching the stack When the rocket has reached an appropriate altitude of roughly 110 kilometres (68 miles) fairing separation occurs, followed by the upper-stage separation. This leaves just the BepiColombo stack. The long voyage It will take BepiColombo over seven years to reach Mercury. The spacecraft uses both its electrical propulsion mechanism and ‘gravitational slingshots’ around Earth, Venus and Mercury to complete the journey. Orbital insertion Approaching Mercury requires a gradual slow down due to the gravitational attraction of the Sun. By using ion thrusters and ditching the transfer module, orbital insertion can commence. Separating orbits…

Building a planet BUILDING A PLANET ON EARTH Scientists at a laboratory in New York are working diligently to produce a rare sample of another world © Shutterstock In Rochester, New York, United States, there is a laboratory that is home to the second most powerful laser in the world. This room can produce temperatures comparable to the core of the Earth, all in the name of research. This sanctuary of scientific research is the Laboratory of Laser Energetics (LLE), part of the University of Rochester’s southern campus. Within the LLE is the pièce de résistance, the OMEGA laser, which scientists are using to manufacture a new world. Within its target chamber, surrounded by 60 lasers, scientists are peering into the interior of gas giant planets such as Jupiter, Saturn…

STARGAZER This month’s planets The ringed gas giant Saturn rules the evening skies this month, joined by Mars and Jupiter Even though it is quite faint and never gets very high in the sky, Saturn is still the planet best placed for observation this month. At magnitude 0.4 it is an easy naked-eye object, brighter than most of the stars in the sky, but its low altitude means it will appear fainter than that figure suggests. The planet is also embedded in the frothy star clouds of the Milky Way’s almost-central region, so there is less contrast between it and the sky behind it, further reducing its immediate visual impact. Saturn is still lovely to look at this month and is visible from sunset through to the late evening hours.…

Deep sky challenge Tackle the sights of the Great Square Hidden treasures wait to be found in and around a feature of Pegasus © Anthony Ayiomamitis (TWAN); Ken Crawford; Göran Nilsson & The Liverpool Telescope The Andromeda Galaxy (M31) is one of the most famous and most frequently observed and photographed deep-sky objects in the whole of the night sky. And rightly so: easily visible to the naked eye as a smudge of light larger than the Moon, even a small telescope transforms it into a beautiful misty oval, while larger instruments reveal hints of its spiral structure, its bright central core and a pair of fainter satellite galaxies nearby. But a short star-hop away from this celestial celebrity lies a handful of other objects worthy of telescope owners’ attention.…

STARGAZER In the shops In the shops The latest books, apps, software, tech and accessories for space and astronomy fans alike “What we found to be an incredibly useful feature was the star patterns that are etched into the reticle” Software Universe Sandbox 2 Cost: £18.99 ($24.49) From: Steam Play A space simulator that can be downloaded to your computer, Universe Sandbox 2 is ideal for those who are keen to mix their love of gaming and the universe. Unlike many games on the market, however, Universe Sandbox doesn’t have a mission, but you can have fun creating universes, playing with existing ones and the objects within them. On the whole, the developers have impressively ensured that all the components (excluding the teapots) within this virtual cosmos – including planets,…

Space-eye view of the Columbia Glacier © NASA Using the observations of collective wavelengths from Landsat satellites has shown how the Columbia Glacier has changed since 1985. Water from the dense body of ice flows down the Chugach Mountains into a narrow inlet that leads into Prince William Sound in south-eastern Alaska. Snow and ice are shown here in bright cyan, vegetation in green, open water in dark blue and exposed rock in brown. Over the last three decades the end of the glacier, also known as a terminus, has seemingly retreated to the north by 20 kilometres (12 miles).…

Revealed: jaw-dropping microscopic image of speck of asteroid dust Brought to Earth eight years ago, scientists are getting up close to these grains of extraterrestrial rock © ESA Scientists still studying tiny grains of dust that were collected from an asteroid 13 years ago have released a stunning close-up photograph. The image shows a single grain of rock, as viewed under a microscope, retrieved from asteroid 25143 Itokawa by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA) Hayabusa mission in 2005 along with about 1,500 other samples. It ended up completing a 6 billion kilometre (3.7 billion mile) round trip over seven years. Tested by researcher Fabrice Cipriani from the European Space Agency, which has three such grains at its ESTEC technical centre in the Netherlands, the hope is that the grain…

Hole in the Sun IS TH HERE A HOLE IN THE SUN? Far from being well-known, our closest star is a stranger in our midst Reported by Kulvinder Singh Chadha © Tobias Roetsch It may be the brightest object in our sky, but the Sun is a dark horse. The more we study it, the more quirks it reveals and recently we have found quite a fundamental one. A new way of modelling the Sun's atmosphere has further widened a gap in our knowledge of its core. This could have implications for the whole of astrophysics, not just the Sun, and it may mean having to rethink a whole century of solar physics. The age, mass and luminosity of billions of stars would have to be recalculated. Scientists from the…

Orbits of Mercury: past and future MESSENGER’s orbit limited its observations. The two different orbits of the MMO and MPO will offer a more extensive view MPO As MPO orbits closer to the Mercurian surface than its partner and predecessor, it takes only 2.3 hours to complete one orbit. MESSENGER MESSENGER’s eccentric orbit meant that it could only get close-up observations of the north pole, leaving the south pole essentially undiscovered. MESSENGER took 12 hours to complete one orbit of the planet. MMO (Mio) As MMO focuses on magnetospheric observations its orbit is much more eccentric to gather a range of observations. It completes one orbit in 9.3 hours and passes closest to the equator.…

Focus on MEET NASA’S NEW COMMERCIAL CREW The first-ever selection of astronauts that will test the exploration capabilities of SpaceX and Boeing has now been announced Sunita Williams Starliner first mission astronaut Previous experience includes spending a total of 222 days aboard the ISS for Expeditions 14/15 and 32/33, commanding it in the process. Josh Cassada Starliner first mission astronaut This will be his first flight, having been selected for astronaut duty in 2013 after more than 3,500 flight hours as a test pilot and Navy commander. Eric Boe Starliner test flight astronaut Since being selected as an astronaut in 2000, piloted the Space Shuttle Endeavour for STS-126 and Discovery’s final flight as part of STS-133. Nicole Aunapu Mann Starliner test flight astronaut Mann was selected as an astronaut comparatively…

Building a planet Understanding the apparatus The OMEGA lasers and diamond anvil cells are vital when in creating this sample © NASA/JPL-Caltech; U.S. Department of Energy /University of Rochester; OMEGA lasers These lasers produce 30 kilojoules of energy in one-billionth of a second, heating the sample up to thousands of degrees. Opposing diamonds Diamond is the hardest material in the world, making it ideal for applying as much pressure as possible with little deformation and cracking. Rhenium gasket The gasket is a thin piece of material surrounding the sample in between the diamonds, acting as a seal in order to avoid leakage. Hydrogen sample The hydrogen sample is only in the order of micrograms, but it is enough for scientists to carefully observe and study as it shifts into a…

Star parties Star parties near you Fancy attending one yourself? These events from around the world are all worth the trip © NPS & Grand Canyon National Park “Make sure the object is in field of view, take your time refocusing the eyepiece and then take a good, long look” Jasper Dark Sky Festival Where: Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada When: 12 to 21 October 2018 Expect astronauts, astrophotography and nightly guided stargazing at this ten-day star party in the Canadian Rockies. Grand Canyon Star Party Where: Grand Canyon National Park's South Rim & North Rim When: 22 to 29 June 2019 Eight days of free nightly astronomy programmes and telescope viewing with amateur astronomers from around Arizona. Cherry Springs Star Party Where: Cherry Springs State Park, Pennsylvania, US When:…

STARGAZER Moon tour Albategnius Gaze down into an ancient walled plain that puts some of the Moon’s better-known features to shame © NASA There are many features on the Moon that have acquired ‘celebrity’ status because they are genuinely impressive. Other features aren’t given the same credit or attention because they are overshadowed by their more impressive neighbours. One such feature is a walled plain called Albategnius, which can be found almost in the centre of the Moon’s face as we see it from Earth. If you’re not familiar with this feature that’s no huge surprise. Albategnius is overshadowed by three huge and very famous features directly to its west: Ptolmaeus, Alphonsus and Arzachel. Linked together, and a striking sight in both a small pair of binoculars and a large telescope,…

How to… Catch the International Space Station This month there will be lots of opportunities to watch the Earth-orbiting outpost crossing the sky. If you’ve never seen it before, here’s how – and no special equipment is needed © Kim MyoungSung Many people are surprised to hear that it's possible to see the ISS in the sky. They think it’s too high or too far away. But it’s exactly because it’s so high that we can see it: long after it's dark down here on the ground the ISS is still bathed in sunlight, and we can see the light reflecting off its solar panels and modules, making it look like a bright ‘star’ that drifts silently across the sky, travelling from west to east. Sometimes it reaches high in…

Being prepared for a pass There is plenty of software available to help you get ready to look for the ISS Armed with your website- or app-generated information, head for somewhere with a big view of the sky. Aim to be there around ten minutes before the predicted start time of the pass. Face the west, and wait. Eventually you’ll see a ‘star’ climbing up slowly from the horizon – that will be the ISS. Enjoy the view as the ISS arcs across the sky from your right to your left. Don’t worry about taking photos or timing it, just watch it sailing peacefully through the constellations, possibly even passing the Moon. 1 Choose a suitable website Use a website or an app on your tablet or phone to find…

STARGAZER Astroshots of the month Warren Keller West Virginia, USA Telescope: 16-inch RCOS Ritchey-Chrétien owned by the University of North Carolina “I began exploring the night sky at 15 years old with an eight-inch Newtonian during the 1960s. It wasn’t until 1998 that I got my first taste of astroimaging with film, and in 2003 I switched to a CCD for capturing the treasures of the night sky. Artistic by nature, it’s less about cosmology and more about the thrill of the hunt for the myriad beautiful shapes and colours throughout the universe. My astrophotography tutorial business has given thousands a quick start to taking their own great photos.” Patrick Gilliland Worcestershire, UK & Calar Alto, Spain Telescope: Officina Stellare RH 200 Astrograph, Borg 125 SC refractor, Takahashi 106 &…

LAUNCH PAD YOUR FIRST CONTACT WITH THE UNIVERSE The first probe to touch the Sun © NASA/Bill Ingalls NASA’s mission to send the first space probe towards the largest, hottest and most volatile object in our Solar System was finally launched on 12 August 2018. On the tip of a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket, Parker Solar Probe is finally on its way to make history in space exploration. The Sun’s erratic and unusual behaviour has been the subject of many studies, however, this mission will supply the first set of concrete data about the object itself. This information will add valuable constraints to many theories to help scientists gain a better understanding of our nearest star.…

LAUNCH PAD YOUR FIRST CONTACT WITH THE UNIVERSE NASA seeks to rescue Opportunity rover Having lost contact with the rover in June, engineers are waiting for the Martian skies to clear © NASA/JPL “A bid to recover the rover is in full swing” NASA scientists have identified key signs which should enable them to touch base with the Mars Opportunity rover months after it became lost to radio silence. Space agency staff lost contact with Opportunity on 10 June this year when a dust storm encircled the Red Planet and blotted out the Martian skies. It was the first time the rover had become cut off after trundling across the surface of Mars for close to 14 years and, having landed on the Red Planet in 2004, scientists are hopeful…

LAUNCH PAD YOUR FIRST CONTACT WITH THE UNIVERSE Hydrogen wall may have formed at our Solar System’s border Data from New Horizons is almost matching that of Voyager, pointing to the potential existence of a visible boundary NASA scientists are almost certain that their New Horizons probe is able to view the outer boundary of our Solar System. Observations indicate that the probe is seeing extra-ultraviolet light at a point further from the Sun than would otherwise be expected. This is likely to be produced by a wall of hydrogen and would be the point at which our Sun's powerful jets of matter and energy flow have waned, reducing the ability to push back on the bits of dust and other matter which floats within our galaxy's walls. This is…

Ghost particle CHASING THE GHOST PARTICLE A flash of light detected deep beneath the South Pole has solved a century-old cosmic mystery Reported by Ben Gilliland © Tobias Roetsch For nearly 4 billion years a ghostly traveller hurtled towards our planet at nearly the speed of light – passing through galaxies and skirting alien worlds, but never once deviating from its course. When its journey began, the distant Earth had been a lifeless lump of rock orbiting a young star. The ghost’s journey was so vast that as it travelled, the first single-celled life evolved on Earth, single-celled life became multicellular, complex life blossomed in the seas and conquered the land, the dinosaurs rose and fell and humans took their first tentative steps out of Africa. Through the entirety of…

How to chase a neutrino It’s no easy task to catch a cosmic ghost-like particle and it is even harder still to pinpoint exactly where it came from. This is how it was done © Mark Krasberg, IceCube/NSF; Adrian Mann 1. Set the trap The IceCube neutrino detector is buried about 2.5 kilometres (1.6 miles) beneath the ice at the South Pole and is about a square kilometre in size. When a neutrino interacts with an atom in the ice it creates a particle called a muon that emits a trail of blue light. On 22 September 2017, IceCube’s detectors measured just such a signal. 2. Trace it back Within 43 seconds of the detection an alert was sent out to telescopes around the world – inviting other researchers to…

Why’s our Sun so odd? Sometimes it can seem as if it's a confused, hot mess © NASA; Tobias Roetsch; Miloslav Druckmüller; University of Chicago 1. The Sun's siblings are missing We don't know where the Sun's siblings are. The Australian National Observatory will look at the chemical composition of over 340,000 stars in the Milky Way to find the Sun's 'DNA match'. 2. A hot shower Just like on Earth, it rains on the Sun. When hot plasma meets cooler parts of the corona, it precipitates back to the surface. 3. Sprung from the solar surface Helical ultraviolet radiation could act like a spring and propel rare helium-3 and iron in a jet from the solar surface. 4. The corona has structure Denoising coronagraph images reveals that the outer…

Mission to Mercury MISSION TO MERCURY BepiColombo is off to the smallest and innermost planet to answer the questions MESSENGER couldn't Reported by Lee Cavendish © NASA; “BepiColombo will be perfect to follow up on MESSENGER”Dr Johannes Benkhoff Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun, is an unsolved mystery that has left many questions swirling around the minds of scientists. We have recently been blessed with many missions exploring the outer regions of our Solar System, such as NASA’s Juno mission at Jupiter and the New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt, and the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn. However, a mission to the inner-most planet poses its own set of challenges and rewards. Now, the highly anticipated BepiColombo mission, a collaborative mission between the ESA and the…

Ask All About Space ASTROPHYSICS Can light escape black holes? Yes and no. Black holes were first unambiguously identified in our galaxy more than 40 years ago, and since then they have been found in vast numbers both in the Milky Way and also at the cores of pretty much every large galaxy that has been studied in detail. The holy grail of observational research in this field is to obtain an ‘image’ of the immediate surroundings of a black hole and to observe the flows of matter around it. All of our theory tells us that nothing can escape from the event horizon of a black hole, not even light. In fact, this is how a black hole is characterised. However, theory also tells us that indirect exchange of…

Building a planet Gas giants dissected Hydrogen constitutes most of a gas giant planet, however, it exists in different forms 1 Solid core Although this is not yet proven, it is theorised that the cores of Jupiter and Saturn are solid, dense collections of the planets’ heavy elements collected during their formation. 2 Metallic hydrogen layer The pressure and temperatures are great enough surrounding the core that hydrogen has taken the metallic state, creating the planet’s dynamo and magnetosphere. 3 Molecular hydrogen The outer layers of Jupiter and Saturn present hydrogen in its more common form, molecular hydrogen. The different colours of the cloud tops are due to the different elements in their composition, including methane, water vapour and ammonia.…

Star parties STAR PARTIES THE SURVIVAL GUIDE Spending time with the night sky as well as like-minded people is what they're all about Written by Jamie Carter Eye-opening tours of the night sky conducted by an expert stargazer. The chance to look through huge telescopes and get close-ups of clusters, nebulae and galaxies. Staying up all night waiting for a particular object to be in the ideal position to observe. A star party is about all of this, and what’s more, it’s all in the company of like-minded people who share your passion for the night sky. But where do you start? What is a star party? Star parties come in various shapes and sizes. On the smallest scale they can be one-hour, often monthly get-togethers organised by a local…