Table of contents for No. 102 in All About Space

Welcome © Getty Do you remember where you were and what you were doing when the Hubble Space Telescope launched? After doing a quick survey around the office, not many can. However – quite unsurprisingly – what they do recall is the incredible set of discoveries, images and turning points that have not only made some corners of the universe much more visible, but brought us to the 30th anniversary of one of humankind's greatest achievements. It truly is a massive milestone – and we've made sure to celebrate it. This month, whether you're a subscriber to the magazine or hunt for us in your local newsagent or supermarket, you'll be able to get hold of 30 exclusive All About Space covers, each featuring one of Hubble's very best images.…

LAUNCH PAD Ripples in space-time could explain the mystery of why the universe exists Words by Yasemin Saplakoglu © Tobias Roetsch New research may help answer one of the universe’s biggest mysteries: why is there more matter than antimatter? That answer in turn could explain why everything from atoms to black holes exist. Billions of years ago, almost immediately after the Big Bang, cosmic inflation stretched the tiny seed of our universe and transformed energy into matter. Physicists think inflation initially created the same amount of matter and antimatter, which annihilate each other on contact. But then something happened that tipped the scales in favour of matter, allowing everything we can see and touch to come into existence – a new study suggests that the explanation is hidden in very…

Universe’s biggest known explosion has been spotted © NASA/ESA A gargantuan explosion tore through the heart of a distant galaxy cluster, releasing about five-times more energy than the previous record holder, a new study reports. “In some ways this blast is similar to how the eruption of Mount St Helens in 1980 ripped off the top of the mountain,” Simona Giacintucci of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC, said. “A key difference is that you could fit 15 Milky Way galaxies in a row into the crater this eruption punched into the cluster’s hot gas.” The explosion occurred in the Ophiuchus Supercluster, about 390 million light years from Earth. Giacintucci and her colleagues think the source was a supermassive black hole in one of the cluster’s constituent galaxies –…

Hubble turns 30 WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED FROM HUBBLE SO FAR? The space telescope has made fascinating new discoveries in every branch of astronomy. Here are some highlights 1 This is the Hubble ‘Extreme Deep Field’ image released in 2012. It’s a tiny area of the sky, photographed with an effective exposure time of 23 days. That means it can pick out hundreds of galaxies that are so faint – and so distant – that they’ve never been seen before. 2 In October 2019 Hubble provided the clearest image yet of an interstellar comet. This is 2I/Borisov, only the second interstellar visitor to be detected after ‘Oumuamua in 2017. This image was taken when 2I/Borisov was nearly 420 million kilometres (260 million miles) from Earth. 3 Hubble has given us…

HOW TO… Establish a space telescope 1 The big launch Getting a large space telescope into space requires an incredibly powerful rocket to take it into low-Earth orbit. Since NASA was in the middle of its Space Shuttle Program in 1990, Hubble was launched inside Discovery. 2 Reaching low-Earth orbit To get Hubble into place, Discovery soared to a height of 600 kilometres (373 miles) above the Earth, separating itself from the three boosters. At this height, Discovery’s crew of five is able to document the operation. 3 Unfurling the solar array As the Hubble Space Telescope was removed from Discovery’s cargo bay the remotely operated Canadarm robotic arm was unfurled. However, one Hubble’s solar arrays refused to fully unfurl. An emergency spacewalk was prepped. 4 Launching Hubble into place…

SHIFTING HABITABLE ZONES CURRENT 4.5 BILLION YEARS AGO A new star The newly formed Sun was much cooler than today, so the habitable zone would have been closer in. 3 BILLION YEARS AGO Mars habitable? The Sun warms over time, pushing the habitable zone out. A time when Mars may have been habitable. NOW Current climate Earth is the only planet completely in the habitable zone of the Sun, with temperatures right for liquid water. FUTURE 1.5 BILLION YEARS FROM NOW Death knell The Sun will be 15 per cent brighter than it is today, pushing the habitable zone beyond the Earth. 10 BILLION YEARS FROM NOW White dwarf Around a much cooler host, the habitable zone will be 100-times closer than it is today. 20 BILLION YEARS FROM NOW…

THE BABAR DETECTOR A much more modest detector than the Large Hadron Collider, its capability to investigate the universe’s most elementary particles should not be underestimated © Adrian Mann 1 Silicon Vertex Tracker (SVT) Physicists rely on the SVT to track the locations of charged particles while also measuring their momentum and angles. 2 Instrumented Flux Return (IFR) The IFR was designed to identify muons and to detect neutral hadrons, both to an extreme degree of precision. 3 Electromagnetic Calorimeter (EMC) The EMC can identify and measure electrons passing through and can consequently help understand the flavour of mesons present within the detector. 4 Cherenkov detector (DIRC) This detector is able to differentiate between charged particles of different masses. 5 Magnet coil The superconducting solenoid…

HOW DO FAST RADIO BURSTS WORK? Many subscribe to a theory put forward by Brian Metzger, a theorist at Columbia University 1 A big burp This model suggests a powerful magnetic neutron star releases an occasional flare of charged particles. 2 Hitting debris The flare travels at the speed of light and collides with clutter surrounding the magnetar left behind by previous flares. 3 Creating a shock wave As a consequence of this impact with the slower moving surrounding ion cloud, shock waves are created. 4 Pushing outwards This strengthens the magnetic field lines of the clouds, with the electrons gyrating as the shock wave pushes out. 5 Sending signals The effect of this motion is a burst of energetic radio waves that eventually slow to a lower frequency.…

STARGAZER Visionary Telesto 1000/114 A good choice for observing a variety of night-sky targets, but also a great telescope for beginners on a budget “Views are sure to provide a wow-factor for first-time observers” Telescope advice Cost: £180/$283 From: Optical Hardware Ltd Type: Reflector Aperture: 74.5” Focal length: 39” Best for ... Beginners Low budgets Planetary viewing Lunar viewing Double stars and bright deep-sky objects A part of Optical Hardware’s Visionary range, the Telesto was surprisingly easy to set up, even for a novice astronomer. When it comes to your very first telescope, we always recommend buying an instrument with an alt-azimuth mount rather than one that employs an equatorial mount. Equatorial mounts can be complicated to use and set up, and often give an extra bit of heft to…

Dramatic effect of coronavirus lockdowns seen from space Words by Rafi Letzter © NASA The new coronavirus’ impact on China is so stark that it can be seen from space as a dramatic drop in air pollution. Orbital instruments designed to monitor air quality picked up a substantial drop in concentration of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) pollution since January. NO2 is a harmful substance emitted by gas vehicles, power plants and other machines that burn fossil fuels. The decline is likely related to an economic slowdown and travel restrictions in China since the virus became widespread. “This is the first time I have seen such a dramatic drop-off over such a wide area for a specific event,” Fei Liu, an air-quality researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said. A NASA…

USER MANUAL Hubble Space Telescope Hubble Space Telescope With 30 years of service under its belt, the long-serving mission remains one of the greatest and most influential cosmic lenses © NASA/ESA/Hubble THE SPECS Launch: 24 April 1990 Rocket: Space Shuttle Discovery (STS-31) Target: Low-Earth orbit Operators: NASA Estimated cost: $1.5 billion Time in space: 30 years Orbit height: 547 kilometres (340 miles) Spinning high above our world in the embrace of a low-Earth orbit lies Hubble, a observatory that’s served as the backbone of modern astronomy for three decades now. Its cameras have stared into the cosmos of our Solar System and beyond and have helped scientists, astronomers and academics to slowly peel back the mysteries that lie far beyond the blanket of our atmosphere. The Hubble Space Telescope may be…

TOP TECH Wide Field Camera 3: Hubble’s advanced eye For years the most powerful lenses staring out into the cosmos were the Wide Field and Planetary Camera and Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. As the years passed, one would replace the other, until 2009 when NASA installed what looks to be one of the last instruments to be added to the observatory before it’s replaced by the James Webb Telescope. The WFC3 is still impressive, utilising two independent light paths: an optical channel that takes images from 200 to 1,000 nanometres and a near-infrared detector array that covers the wavelength range from 850 to 1,700 nanometres. © NASA…

White dwarfs WHITE DWARFS ARE THEY THE KEY TO LIFE? New research suggests that we’ve been looking for other civilisations in all the wrong places Reported by Colin Stuart © Tobias Roetsch Picture a planet that hosts life elsewhere in the universe. The kind where aliens wander around on its surface, going about their daily business much like you or I. What kind of planet comes to mind? Normally the answer is one very much like the Earth because our planet sits in a temperature sweet spot. We’re not too close to the Sun that we boil, nor too far that we freeze. Astronomers call it the Goldilocks zone because, like the porridge in the classic fairy tale, conditions are just right. Ideal for the all-important liquid water that…

Future tech Shapeshifting spacecraft SHAPESHIFTING SPACECRAFT Futuristic robotic explorers could seamlessly switch between swimming and spelunking © Adrian Mann A team of scientists and engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, are devising a concept mission which could see a swarm of mini-robots exploring worlds beyond our own – and top of the list is Saturn’s moon Titan. This swarm will be like no other mission before it, as it will consist of a team of up to 12 robots that can morph into different shapes that can help them roll, fly, float and swim. These robots have appropriately been named ‘Shapeshifters’. When NASA’s Cassini mission flew past Titan and dropped the European Space Agency’s Huygens probe onto the surface, it revealed a world of lakes, rivers…

STATS AND FACTS DARK MATTER Dark matter is one of the most misunderstood and fascinating subjects in astronomy. Here is some information that you may not know about this elusive substance SOLAR SYSTEM HALO The dark matter halo is at least 300,000 light years across 1933 When Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky first proposed the existence of dark matter DARK MATTER IS NOT ANTIMATTER 85% How much of the total mass in the universe is made of dark matter VERA RUBIN In 1968 she showed compelling evidence that there is ‘missing matter’ in galaxies. Her work was based on observing the velocities of stars in the Andromeda Galaxy THE EARLY UNIVERSE COULD HAVE HAD DARK MATTER STARS EUCLID An ESA mission, due to launch in 2022, dedicated to studying dark matter…

Parker Solar Probe PHOTO GALLERY POSTCARDS FROM THE SUN NASA’s Parker Solar Probe (PSP) has made it closer to our nearest star than any human-made object Reported by Lee Cavendish x2 images © NASA; Getty OVER A MILLION PASSENGERS NASA is always looking for public participation and interest in its missions as it seeks to inspire a new generation of astronomers and engineers. Prior to the launch of the PSP, NASA launched a different mission to get as many names on the spacecraft as possible. Through the NASA website, anyone was able to sign up with their name and email address to put their name on the first-ever mission to ‘touch’ the Sun. This led to the addition of a microchip on the spacecraft that holds an outstanding 1.1 million…

TUNING INTO THE SKIES Cutting-edge telescopes are being deployed in the hunt for more fast radio bursts © Nicholas Forder 1 Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) As the largest single-dish radio telescope in the world, FAST was able to detect even the faintest of bursts from the FRB known as 121102. Located in Guizhou in southwest China and costing $180 million (£140 million) to build over five years, it has been built into a natural crater in the ground, suspended by six cable-support towers and a network of 7,000 steel wires. It offers twice the sensitivity of the next-largest telescope while being ten-times faster than anything previously built, focusing radio waves from its fixed primary reflector on an antenna that is 140 metres (460 feet) above it. Able to work…

Moon tour Mare Crisium As Venus blazes beside the Moon this month, look for one of our natural satellite’s most famous seas © NASA Weather permitting, at the end of March we will be treated to a lovely sight in the evening sky: Venus, the beautiful ‘evening star’, will be shining lantern-bright in the west after sunset, close to a slender crescent Moon. The two worlds will be so close together in the evening twilight for three consecutive nights that they will draw the eye away from everything else and have amateur astronomers reaching for their binoculars and non-astronomers attempting to photograph them with their phone cameras. Not even light pollution will stop this pairing from being a memorable sight, but if your sky is very clear and dark you…

STARGAZER The Northern Hemisphere Spring lets us gaze out of the Milky Way’s plane © NASA Source: Wikipedia Commons © Martin Mark © ESO Bright yellow-white star Capella of Auriga (the Charioteer) sits low in the northwestern sky this month, a striking sight at magnitude +0.08 alongside easy-to-locate Castor and Pollux of Gemini (the Twins). Ursa Major’s ‘Big Dipper’ is the simplest asterism to find as soon as darkness falls, making it easy to use its pointer stars to find Polaris. Follow the pointers in the other direction and you will find bright-white star Regulus in Leo (the Lion); trace your finger along the bowl and you’ll find yourself led to brilliant yellow-orange star Arcturus in the constellation of Boötes (the Herdsman). Nearby, just northeast of Arcturus, you’ll be greeted…

STARGAZER In the shops The latest books, apps, software, tech and accessories for space and astronomy fans alike Book First on the Moon Cost: £25.00 / $29.95 From: Sterling The 50th anniversary of one of humankind’s greatest achievements might have passed, but we couldn’t put First on the Moon down. In honour of the groundbreaking Apollo 11 mission, this lavishly illustrated book – featuring stunning photographs and many rarely seen images and documents – tells the incredible story of the first men on the Moon. Acclaimed science author Rod Pyle returns with a beautiful and insightful book commemorating Apollo 11. First on the Moon offers an exciting behind-the-scenes look at America’s journey to the Moon – from the Space Race to the landing on the Sea of Tranquillity to…

LAUNCH PAD YOUR FIRST CONTACT WITH THE UNIVERSE Airglow lights up the Chilean desert © ESO Airglow is a fantastic phenomenon that only graces a select number of regions across the entire world. The Atacama Desert in Chile is one of these locations, as it is as far from light pollution as possible and exhibits very few cloudy nights. It is this lack of artificial light and interference that brings a glow to the air. Within Earth’s atmosphere, molecules are constantly colliding and emitting radiation over a range of wavelengths and colours. The mechanism is responsible for the majestic multicoloured sky over the dry Atacama Desert, visible in this image. The start of Expedition 62 © NASA At the International Space Station’s changing of the guard, a new expedition dawns.…

Oddball giant white dwarf may have formed in crash between smaller stars Words by Charles Q. Choi © University of Warwick; Mark Garlick A giant white dwarf star may be the offspring of a collision between two other white dwarfs, which may help shed light on how massive these stars must be in order to explode in a supernova. White dwarfs are the dim, fading cores of dead stars that are left behind after average-size stars have exhausted their fuel and shed their outer layers. Our Sun will one day become a white dwarf, as will more than 90 per cent of the stars in our galaxy. Scientists led by Mark Hollands, an astrophysicist at the University of Warwick, England, studied a white dwarf known as WDJ0551+4135, which is located…

THE MAKING OF A SPACE TELESCOPE 1970 Launch minus 20 years NASA’s aspirations to launch a ‘large space telescope’ go back a long way, and this 1970 conceptual drawing already looks distinctly Hubble-like. Commons © SDASM ArchivesSource: Wikiedia 1985 Launch minus 5 years By early 1985 Hubble was finished and scheduled for launch the following year – then it was delayed by the tragic Challenger accident in January 1986. © NASA APRIL 1990 The good news ... After a four year wait, Hubble was finally blasted into space on board Space Shuttle Discovery on 24 April 1990, blasting off from the Kennedy Space Center. © NASA ... and the bad news Within weeks of launch it became clear there was a serious problem with Hubble’s optics. Stars that should have…

Hubble turns 30 HUBBLE’S GREATEST IMAGES 1991 - 2020 SATURN You could easily mistake this photograph for a close-up image of Saturn taken by a passing space probe. The horizontal bands, caused by strong winds in the planet’s dense atmosphere, are clearly visible. LAGOON NEBULA A particularly colourful emission nebula featured in the 2018 Hubble anniversary image in the form of the Lagoon Nebula – Messier 8 or NGC 6523 – a giant interstellar cloud in the constellation Sagittarius. RED SPIDER NEBULA Here’s another planetary nebula, NGC 6537 in Sagittarius. It’s a double-lobed nebula, which despite its nickname – the Red Spider – looks more like a delicate butterfly than an arachnid in this beautiful image. ARP 148 The anniversary image for 2008 was actually a montage of 59…

Head-to-head Hubble vs Chandra When it comes to weight, Hubble remains one of the chunkiest at 12,247 kilograms – 1,361 kilograms more than its original launch weight – noticeably heavier than the Chandra X-Ray Observatory which clocks in at 4,790 kilograms. In terms of sheer size, Hubble isn’t quite as grand as the far newer Chandra, with its all-important measurements coming in at 13.3 metres by 4.2 metres compared to Chandra’s larger 13.8 metres by 19.5 metres. Hubble and Chandra almost occupy the same space as a double decker with a length of 15 metres and height of 4.3 metres.…

HOW STELLAR CORPSES ARE MADE © Tobias Roetsch 1 Main sequence A star burns hydrogen during this phase, which lasts most of its life. 2 Red giant Once hydrogen burning stops and helium burning starts, the star bloats. 3 Planetary nebula Helium burning is unstable, and eventually the star sheds its outer layers into space. 4 White dwarf A core of carbon and oxygen – the products of helium burning – is left behind. The crust This outer layer is thought to be about 50 kilometres (31 miles) thick. A super-thin atmosphere Some hydrogen and helium remains trapped in the white dwarf’s gravity. Compact crystals As the white dwarf cools, the carbon in the core settles into crystal structures.…

WHAT IS THE STANDARD MODEL? After the Big Bang, the cosmos cooled, and these elementary particles and forces began to take shape © Getty Up and down quarks These two quarks are best known for forming protons and neutrons, which can be found in the nucleus of every atom. The electron, muon and tau neutrino leptons These flavours of lepton are similar to their charged counterparts, the only difference is their charge is neutral. Top, bottom, strange and charm quarks These quarks are usually found in matter-antimatter particles known as mesons. Higgs boson Discovered in 2012 by the Large Hadron Collider, this boson is the force carrier for the Higgs field. Gluons This boson is the force carrier for the strong force that binds quarks together within a particle. Photons…

Planet formation Instant expert PLANET FORMATION: IS IT TURBULENT OR TRANQUIL? There are so many different types of planets – terrestrial planets like Earth, gas giants like Jupiter and dwarf planets like Pluto – but every cake must start with simpler ingredients, and planets are no exception. For planets these are the gases and minute dust particles that circled the infant Sun in the vast flattened disc we call the ‘protosolar nebula’. Laboratory studies of meteorites and astronomical studies of protostellar discs around nearly baby stars have also told us that however it happened, planets must form quickly, astronomically speaking, within a few million years. This revolutionised our thinking about how planets form. The small particles in the protosolar nebula can stick together and form pebble-sized particles, but the…

WHAT ARE THE AIMS OF THE SPACE FORCE? What does the department actually plan to do, and how does it plan to do it? Command and control of satellite operations  Assets like GPS will be looked after by the Space Force to make sure that the US doesn’t lose access to some of its important space capabilities. © Getty Space support to operations This includes making sure that military services on the ground that rely on space-based capabilities, like satellites, are not interrupted and continue operating. © Getty Space domain awareness The Space Force will track and monitor satellites in orbit and try to make sure they are not at risk of colliding with any others. © NASA Missile warning The Space Force will continue developing satellites to monitor any…

Fast radio bursts MYSTERIES UNIVERSE OF THE MYSTERIOUS BURSTS FROM SPACE Not only have strange signals been discovered from deep in the universe, one is repeating itself every 16.35 days Reported by David Crookes © Getty Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are bright flashes of radio emissions that only last a fraction of a second. But ever since they were discovered in 2007 by Duncan Lorimer and David Narkevic using data taken by the radio dish at the Parkes Observatory in Australia, astronomers have devoted many hours, days, months and years to figuring out what may be causing them. In truth, it hasn’t been an easy task. Over all that time, these transient radio pulses have only been detected a little over 100 times, and because they are typically observed…

STARGAZER What’s in the sky? ESSENTIAL GUIDES AND ADVICE FOR AMATEUR ASTRONOMERS © NASA, ESA Jargon buster Conjunction A conjunction is an alignment of objects at the same celestial longitude. The conjunction of the Moon and the planets is determined with reference to the Sun. A planet is in conjunction with the Sun when it and Earth are aligned on opposite sides of the Sun. Right Ascension (RA) Right Ascension is to the sky what longitude is to the surface of the Earth, corresponding to east and west directions. It is measured in hours, minutes and seconds since, as the Earth rotates on its axis, we see different parts of the sky throughout the night. Declination (Dec) This tells you how high an object will rise in the sky. Like…

Astroshots of the month Send your astrophotography images to space@spaceanswers.com for a chance to see them featured in All About Space Bill Schlosser Michigan, US Telescope: Meade LX850 14” Schmidt-Cassegrain, Astro-Tech AT65EDQ astrograph, Orion 7” Maksutov-Cassegrain “When I first saw Jupiter through an old Meade 8” reflector, it was a seriously life-changing moment for me. I joined the US Navy after graduating from high school and was stationed in San Diego, California. Being on board a darkened ship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean is something everyone should experience – I witnessed the Milky Way being so bright that it was casting shadows! “In 2009 I tried my hand at astrophotography. It was a steep learning curve and I went through a variety of different cameras.” Steve Coates Ocala,…