Table of contents for No. 95 in All About Space

LAUNCH PAD YOUR FIRST CONTACT WITH THE UNIVERSE Ready, Player One © ESO The European Southern Observatory (ESO) uses its global network of telescopes to capture the best pictures of the universe, but there’s no harm in having a bit of fun once in a while. Here is a scenario that bares a striking resemblance to the video game Mortal Kombat. The sight of two opponents facing off in front of picturesque background will make gamers of the 1990s reminisce. In this picture, there are two ESO staff members pretend-fighting – with the help of some special effects – in front of the Atacama Large Millimeter Array in Chile.…

Ding ding, the Dragon delivery is here © ESA/NASA The way ISS astronauts look at the incoming SpaceX Dragon cargo vehicle as it approaches the station must be similar to how we look out of the window, waiting for the delivery person to arrive. Instead of waiting for a large pepperoni pizza though, these astronauts receive more vital supplies such as fresh drinking water, more food and the latest scientific experiments. These not only provide unique results but must also supply a mental benefit to the astronauts.…

LAUNCH PAD YOUR FIRST CONTACT WITH THE UNIVERSE Jupiter’s strange core may have been forged by a colossal head-on crash © NASA, ESA About 4.5 billion years ago a young Jupiter collided head-on with a planetary embryo ten-times more massive than Earth. This giant impact formed Jupiter's dilute core, which contains hydrogen and helium, one new study suggests. Before NASA's Juno mission launched to orbit and study Jupiter, scientists thought that the planet's core was dense and compact. “Astronomers assumed that Jupiter has a small compact core with a mass ranging from five to 20 Earth masses,” lead study author Shangfei Liu of Sun Yat-sen University in Zhuhai, China, said in an email to Space.com. This was assumed because Jupiter started off as a rocky and icy planetary embryo. However,…

LAUNCH PAD YOUR FIRST CONTACT WITH THE UNIVERSE Something weird is happening to the Milky Way’s black hole Words by Meghan Bartels © ESO, ESA/Hubble Astronomers have been watching the black hole at the centre of our galaxy for 20 years, and in May they saw something they'd never seen before. Technically they aren't watching the black hole itself, which scientists call Sagittarius A*, or Sgr A*. Instead they're looking at the matter around that black hole. When the Milky Way's black hole is more active than usual, that event horizon becomes brighter as it heats up due to friction. Usually Sgr A* is pretty calm for a black hole, but in May that changed, according to new research. “The black hole is always variable, but this was the brightest…

Margaret Hamilton THE SOFTWARE GENIUS BEHIND THE MOON LANDINGS Margaret Hamilton reveals the inside story of the Apollo program and how sacrifice, hard work and constant questioning led to the completion of arguably humankind's greatest ever adventure Interviewed by Lee Cavendish © Getty What was a day in the life of a NASA computer scientist like during the 1960s? On the unmanned missions I began writing software mostly in the system software area. We had a lot to do with error detection recovery. My first piece of programming, which we now refer to as ‘software engineering computer science’, or some combination there of, had to do with error detection recovery, because they were worried about unmanned mission aborts – we needed the post-mortem software. So they [Draper management] thought, ‘We’re…

Who owns the International Space Station? The Space Station is truly an international project, with contributions from various space agencies around the world © Adrian Mann Zvezda The first fully Russian contribution to the ISS. The module provides station living quarters, life-support systems, electrical power distribution, data-processing systems, flight-control systems and propulsion systems. Cupola An observatory module whose seven windows are used to conduct experiments, watch dockings and make observations of Earth – it provides spectacular views of Earth and celestial objects. Columbus Europe’s largest contribution to the ISS, it allows research to be carried out in a weightless environment, as well as outside in the vacuum of space thanks to four exterior mounting platforms. Leonardo Permanent Multipurpose Module (PMM) The Italian-built PMM is a large, reusable, pressurised element that…

Black holes MILLIONS OF BLACK HOLES ARE HIDING IN OUR GALAXY Here’s how astronomers plan to find them © Marshmallow Laser Feast “There's a handful of objects that astronomers suspect might be isolated black holes” It's time to find all the missing black holes. That's the argument advanced by a pair of Japanese astrophysicists who wrote a paper proposing a new search for millions of ‘isolated black holes’ (IBHs) that likely populate our galaxy. These black holes, lost in the darkness, sip matter from the interstellar medium – the dust and other stuff floating between stars. But that process is inefficient, and a great deal of the matter gets expelled into space at high speeds. As that outflow interacts with the surrounding environment, the researchers wrote, it should produce radio…

The theories Just why is Neptune warmer than Uranus? It isn't. Uranus is colder This may sound contrary, but when you look at the data, Uranus is the anomaly. It should be warmer than Neptune but it's about the same temperature, even though it is closer to the Sun. And that's because Uranus does not have an internal heat source. Why? Well, that's another matter… Uranus was knocked sideways Was a catastrophic event to blame – Uranus being knocked on its side? It's a possibility, but as Dr Anthony D. Del Genio of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies says: “People still argue about the impact event that formed our Moon, so if we haven't settled that, imagine how much harder it is to figure out the history of…

Explained: Schrödinger's cat The famous thought experiment describes bizarre quantum behaviour Cat in a box Schrödinger’s cat is a thought experiment that involves the idea of putting a cat inside a closed box. Measurement time When the box is opened you can see whether the cat is either dead or alive, as you are measuring its state. Dead or alive? Because of the half-life of the radiation, at one point the cat has a 50-50 chance of being alive or dead. Radiation The cat is placed in a box alongside a source of radiation, which is likely to kill the cat eventually. Superposition? You have no way of knowing whether the cat is dead or alive, so the cat is both at once.…

Yutu-2’s lunar route 1 Lunar landing 3 January 2019 This day would go down in history as the first-ever soft landing on the far side of the Moon, specifically the Von Kármán crater in the South Pole-Aitken basin near the lunar south pole. 2 First lunar night 13 to 28 January 2019 The first lunar night was the scariest as the Chang’e-4 team didn’t know if the rover and lander would survive the cold, which was recorded as minus 190 degrees Celsius (minus 310 degrees Fahrenheit). 4 Third lunar night 14 to 28 March 2019 The third night arrived. The team put the craft into sleep mode knowing that the mission had reached its design lifetime. 6 Fifth lunar night 12 to 26 May 2019 The fifth lunar day proved…

Moon tour Lunar rays This month’s full Moon affords you the opportunity to spot a unique feature © NASA Astronomers are often asked when the best time to look at the Moon is. The obvious answer would seem to be when it’s full, because the full Moon is the biggest and brightest phase. But if you’re wanting to see details on the Moon then full Moon is absolutely the worst time. To see the Sun-drenched peaks of its towering mountains, the frigid depths of its deepest craters and the floors of the valleys which weave and wander across its surface, you need to be looking into your telescope’s eyepiece when the Moon is a crescent, or quarter phase – with the Sun’s rays hitting those geological landmarks at an angle…

STARGAZER In the shops The latest books, apps, software, tech and accessories for space and astronomy fans alike Book The Moon: A Celebration of Our Celestial Neighbour Cost: £20.00 (approx. $24.40 / €22.05) From: Collins Our fascination with the Moon is intimately bound up with the development of human culture and civilisation. By studying and exploring the Moon we have come to understand more about our aspirations, as well as our dreams and ourselves. Marking the 50th anniversary of Neil Armstrong’s ‘small step’ and published to coincide with Royal Museums Greenwich’s exhibition The Moon, this landmark work explores people’s fascination with our only natural satellite. Edited by the exhibition’s curators, Melanie Vandenbrouck, Megan Barford, Louise Devoy and Richard Dunn, this book illuminates how art and science meet in our profound…

Views of space, from space © NASA There's no better place to stare up at the shining stars and gaze upon the dusty band of the Milky Way stretching overhead than from the International Space Station (ISS). The astronauts work very hard on the Earth-orbiting outpost with countless experiments and science communication activities, so it is only fair that they can take a minute to observe and photograph the unique view of our planet's glowing limb that billions of people don’t have the privilege to see. In the same vein, views of the Moon appear even better on the ISS. As the station flew 430 kilometres (270 miles) over the South Pacific Ocean, they snapped a shot of our lunar companion.…

An army of ancient stars © ESA To the unaided eye, Omega Centauri could easily be confused with a faint star. But it isn’t until you get a closer inspection that you see it is in fact 10 million stars, all brought together by gravity in what is known as a globular cluster. Taken by Wouter van Reeven, one of the European Space Agency’s software engineers at the European Space Astronomy Centre in Madrid, Spain, this magnificent image reveals globular clusters in their true form: devoid of any gas and dust, as all material has been fused into the large number of stars shown in the tight stellar gathering.…

Elon Musk floats 'Nuke Mars' idea again Words by Michael Wall Nuking Mars is still on Elon Musk's wish list, it would seem. Four years ago the SpaceX founder and CEO went on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert and discussed a strategy for making the Red Planet more livable: detonating nuclear bombs over its poles. The explosions would vaporise a fair chunk of Mars' ice caps, liberating enough water vapour and carbon dioxide – both potent greenhouse gases – to warm up the planet substantially, the idea goes. This terraforming concept is apparently still bouncing around in Musk's head, because on 15 August he tweeted, seemingly unprompted: “Nuke Mars!” A few hours later he followed up with another tweet: “T-shirt soon.” If Musk is serious about nuking the Red…

Scientists create millions of virtual universes Words by Passant Rabie Observing the universe through telescopes can provide some clues as to how galaxies came to be, but looking at millions of virtual universes on a supercomputer gave scientists more insight into galaxy formation and the role that dark matter plays in it. A team of scientists from the University of Arizona generated millions of universe simulations, each following a different theory of galaxy formation. Every simulated universe contained 12 million galaxies that formed between 400 million years after the Big Bang and the present day. “We compiled 20 years of astronomical observations,” Peter Behroozi, assistant professor at the University of Arizona's Department of Astronomy, who led the study, said. “That gave us a lot of information about the universe –…

Neptune WHAT’S UP WITH NEPTUNE? Although the ice giant is further away than Uranus, their surface temperatures are remarkably similar. How could this be, and does it explain the planet's fierce winds? Reported by David Crookes Illustration © Tobias Roetsch When Voyager 2 reached Neptune in 1989, just 12 years after setting off on its historic journey through the Solar System, it discovered six new moons, took the first images of the planet's rings and noted a particularly violent storm. This was something of a surprise. In the southern hemisphere there was a swirling, counter-clockwise wind of up to 2,414 kilometres (1,500 miles) per hour – the strongest ever recorded in the Solar System. Astronomers called it the Great Dark Spot, and while it had gone by the time the…

Future tech Archinaut ARCHINAUT THE 3D SPACE PRINTER Manufacturing company Made In Space is preparing to revolutionise space-based construction with the introduction of a robotic architect © Adrian Mann Beyond the demonstration After Archinaut One has been demonstrated successfully, whether that’s in 2022 or beyond, the company will then move onto its commercial availability and the expansion of the technology. Scavenging for raw materials Material is still needed for the products. Made In Space hopes to utilise raw materials found in space, such as material from the surface of Mars or moons. Avoiding transport Without the need to jettison the object from Earth, it can be designed for the space environment instead of the launch environment. Moon to Mars NASA hopes that this manufacturing and assembling technology will play an…

Pinpointing the age of the universe There are two different ways scientists can date the age of the cosmos Traditional Expansion rate of the universe Looking at how quickly the universe is expanding, scientists can trace that back to the point it started, when the universe began. Distance to nearby galaxies The expansion rate is calculated by measuring the distances to nearby galaxies and comparing it with the speed at which those galaxies are receding from Earth. Distance to nearby stars Measuring the distances to nearby stars helps calculate how quickly the galaxies are travelling from Earth. White dwarf cooling Faintest white dwarf The faintest and coolest white dwarfs within globular clusters represent the oldest stars in the clusters. Globular cluster images Globular clusters are among the oldest clusters of…

USER MANUAL Chang'e-4 China’s second lunar lander is the first to explore the far side of the Moon, a face not seen by us on Earth © Xinhua/China National Space Administration Chang’e-4 is the fourth instalment in the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program and the second Chinese lander/rover mission to visit the Moon. Many space organisations name missions after gods and goddesses – NASA’s Juno mission, for example – and the China National Space Administration (CNSA) has done this in naming its Chang’e missions, aptly named after the Chinese goddess of the Moon. Chang’e-4 is similar to its predecessor Chang'e-3 in that it will place a lander on the lunar surface before releasing a rover, Yutu-2. The main difference between the two is that Chang’e-4 will explore where no man or…

Head-to-head Chang’e-4 vs Luna 9 The Soviet Union’s Luna 9 made the first soft landing on the Moon by an unmanned space probe in 1966. Where the Soviet’s space probe had a landing mass of close to 100 kilograms (220 pounds), Chang’e-4 – both with its lander and rover – was close to 1,350 kilograms (3,000 pounds). This weight makes the soft landing all the more impressive. Luna 9 landed in Oceanus Procellarum, taking pictures and sending back footage for about three days; Chang’e-4 has been operating for over three months, and has conducted multiple experiments as well as taking images. This is a testament to how far space probes have come in the last 50 years!…

STARGAZER This month’s planets Saturn rules the evening skies, offering astronomers the chance to track its largest moon Titan and its stunning ring system Mercury 18:50 BST on 25 September Constellation: Virgo Magnitude: -1.0 AM/PM: PM This is another really bad month if you enjoy tracking down the closest planet to the Sun. At the start of our observing period Mercury – named after the messenger of the gods – can be found close to brighter Venus in the west after sunset, but the pair will be so close to the Sun in the sky that they won’t be readily visible. Venus 19:00 BST on 26 September Constellation: Virgo Magnitude: -3.9 AM/PM: PM Looking at that magnitude of -3.9 you would be forgiven for thinking that Venus will be a…

Your astrophotography Astroshots of the month Send your astrophotography images to space@spaceanswers.com for a chance to see them featured in All About Space Tanja Schmitz Johannesburg, South Africa Telescope: Officina Stellare Hiper APO 150 and Orion eight-inch Astrograph “Being based in the Southern Hemisphere gives me access to some of the most exquisite targets and dark skies, although I often have to travel far to access them – my husband, who is also an astrophotographer, and I travel to locations untouched by light pollution. I’ve been photographing the night sky for three years, and although it’s a tough balancing act between daytime life and pursuing the hobby at night, it’s well worth the time I spend capturing the night sky. “I’ve realised that it’s not necessarily the quality of the…

LAUNCH PAD YOUR FIRST CONTACT WITH THE UNIVERSE A seagull made from stars ©ESO Deep within this cosmic seagull, enormous stellar babies are forming. Unmistakably looking like its namesake the Seagull Nebula – also known as Sharpless 2-296 – is a blend of pinkish gas, illuminated from newly born stars, carved into shape by the darkened trails of dust that absorb optical and ultraviolet light. By coincidence, this marvellous mixture of light and dark gives resemblance to a bird in flight, but instead of being filled with the chips of innocent seaside-goers, there's an abundance of dust, gas and traces of heavy elements.…

The universe's jellyfish © ESA/Hubble/NASA NGC 2022 is a deep-sky object 'floating' in the constellation of Orion, and is known as a planetary nebula. Pictured here by the Hubble Space Telescope is the colourful end of a star’s life – similar in mass to our Sun – where it begins to shed its outer layers. About half of its mass can be lost to space in this process and the central star will shrink and grow hotter, as its excited gaseous layers also disperse uniformly around the stellar centrepiece. A ‘planetary nebula’ actually has nothing to do with planets, and not all of these objects show off the same appearance.…

Not the largest mirror, but just as important © NASA The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will be the next telescopic heavyweight to peer into the far-off universe, and scientists and engineers are working extra hard to put it together as carefully as possible. The JWST, when finally assembled, will have unprecedented light-captured capabilities thanks to 18 hexagonal, gold-coated primary mirror segments pieced together like a honeycomb. However the secondary mirror is also vitally important, as this is what will pinpoint the light collected from the universe, into the instrumental suite for analysis.…

The Big Bang The evolution into today's universe Although we can't go all the way back, we can examine the after-effects 2 Rapid inflation The first decillionth of a second A tiny fraction of a second after the Big Bang, the expanding universe put on a huge spurt – known as inflation – which increased its size from a subatomic scale to several light years. ©Tobias Roetsch 3 Creation of matter After one second Following the inflationary epoch the universe continued to expand at a slower rate, eventually cooling to the point where the familiar particles of matter – such as protons and neutrons – were able to form. 1 The Big Bang Beginning of space and time The starting point – for our own universe, at least. Originally envisaged…

Evidence for and against the Big Bang Observations indicate the Big Bang theory is correct – but is it correct enough? © Getty Expansion of the universe We know the universe is expanding today – because galaxies are moving away from each other – and if we extrapolate the expansion backwards, it implies the Big Bang must have happened. © ESO© ESA Cosmic microwave background The visible relic of the early universe’s ‘recombination’ epoch – a prediction of the Big Bang theory that can’t be explained by rivals such as the steady-state model. Accelerating expansion We know the universe is expanding ever more rapidly – the red curve – but the original Big Bang only allowed the other curves. Something else – such as dark energy – must be interfering.…

Trouble on the ISS TROUBLE ON THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION Next year marks two decades of continuous human occupancy of space, but things haven't always run smoothly… Reported by James Romero © NASA This achievement of political ambition, engineering execution and international collaboration has changed the nature of space exploration. Following the initial period of politically motivated, headline-grabbing forays into space and then to the Moon came a more settled, but no less important period of habitation. “Because of the International Space Station, space exploration is no longer an up and down activity,” says space historian Robert Pearlman, co-author of Space Stations: The Art, Science and Reality of Working in Space. Cited as the largest peacetime international effort in human history, in 2014 British astronaut Tim Peake was the latest…

Clocking the cosmos The universe is expanding quickly, according to observations © Nichoals Forder; CMB waves Ripples in the CMB came from sound waves in the early universe, which can help calculate the Hubble Constant. Distance ladder Measuring distances to stars of known brightness can help calibrate the same types of stars in distant galaxies. Planck ESA’s Planck telescope has studied the CMB in the most detail yet, providing a clear picture of the radio waves left over from after the Big Bang. Cosmic microwave background The CMB has clues to the early stages of the universe, meaning we can use it to measure distances. Hubble Space Telescope Hubble measures the Hubble Constant by studying distances to Cepheid variables and supernovae in the most distant galaxies. Gravitational lenses Galaxy clusters…

First stars The oldest known stars About 13.8 billion years ago the universe was born, but how soon after did the stars follow? Meet some of the ancient members spotted so far Cayrel's Star Constellation Cetus Age 12.5 billion years old (+/- 3 billion years) Population Population II Distance 13,000 light years HE0107 Canis -5240 Major Constellation Phoenix Age 13 billion years old Population Population II Lepus Distance 36,000 light years SMSS J031300.36-670839.3 Constellation Hydrus Age 13.6 billion years old Population Population II Distance 6,000 light years Sneden's Star Constellation Aquarius Age 13 billion years old Population Population II Distance 15,300 light years 2MASS J18082002-5104378 Constellation Ara Age 13.5 billion years old Population Population II Distance 1,950 light years BD +17 3248 Constellation Hercules Age 13.8 billion years old (+/-…

Brexit BREXIT WHAT IT MEANS FOR ASTRONOMY AND SPACE EXPLORATION Space agencies reveal how the UK's efforts will be impacted by the decision to leave the European Union Professor Richard Massey is on a beach, enjoying a short break from his role of Royal Society Research Fellow at the Institute for Computational Cosmology at Durham University. All About Space interrupts him with a question about Brexit and he immediately drops everything. “I feel strongly about this issue,” he tells us, before launching into a passionate take on a subject that has split the United Kingdom down the middle. There is no getting away from Brexit – the UK's departure from the European Union (EU) which, at the time of writing, has been set for 31 October – but we know…

Planet of the month Saturn Unlike its Sun-hugging siblings Mercury, Venus and Mars, all through our observing period Saturn will be an easy naked-eye object. The best way to pin it down is probably to find Jupiter first, then use that planet as a guide to find Saturn: as the sky darkens after sunset brilliant Jupiter will quickly pop into view above the southern horizon, and if you look a short distance over to its left you’ll find a yellow-white ‘sta}r, much fainter than Jupiter, shining to the upper left of the handle of the famous ‘Teapot’ asterism of the lovely constellation of Sagittarius. Unfortunately this constellation never climbs very high in the sky as seen from mid-northern latitudes, so the famous ringed planet can’t do at the moment either,…

STARGAZER Meade Wilderness 20-60x80 An instrument built to last, this spotting scope is perfect for the casual astronomer and wildlife watcher If you can’t quite commit to a full-blown hobby in astronomy but enjoy watching nature at play, then a spotting scope in the Meade Wilderness range could be the instrument for you. From initial impressions the 20-60x80 is an excellent specimen, featuring a rugged rubber armour to protect the optics from moisture and finished to a high standard. The Meade Wilderness is supplied with a high-quality 20-60x zoom eyepiece, a soft case and camera adapter, but unfortunately doesn’t come with a tripod – something that this spotting scope requires for stable observations. For this reason we think that the Meade Wilderness is suitable for those interested in casual astronomy…