The Van Allen Probes: Honoring the Origins of Magnetospheric Science

A broad suite of instruments on the Van Allen Probes will help scientists understand more about the myriad types of particles and waves in the radiation belts that encircle Earth, providing a flood of new data for scientists who study the magnetosphere. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center.

Earth's magnetism has captured human attention since the first innovator noticed that a freely moving piece of magnetized iron would always align itself with Earth's poles. Throughout most of history, the origins and physics of this magnetism remained mysterious, though by the 20th century certain things had been learned by measuring the magnetic field at Earth's surface. These measurements suggested that Earth's magnetic field was consistent with that of a giant bar magnet embedded deep inside Earth. However, the magnetic field observed at the surface of our planet is constantly fluctuating. During the 1930s scientists pioneered explanations that such fluctuations were due to streams of particles from the sun striking and becoming entrapped within Earth’s magnetic field.

Truly understanding Earth's magnetic environment, however, required traveling to space. In 1958, the first US rocket -- known as Explorer 1 and led by James Van Allen at the University of Iowa -- was launched. By providing observations of a giant swath of magnetized radiation trapped around Earth, now known as the Van Allen Belts, Explorer 1 confirmed that Earth's magnetic environment, the magnetosphere, was not a simple place. We now know that it has a complex shape – compressed on the side facing the sun, but stretched out into a long tail trailing off away from the sun -- affected as much by incoming material from the sun as Earth's own intrinsic magnetism. This magnetic field constantly fluctuates in response to both internal instabilities and events on the sun. It also provides a home for a host of electrified particles spiraling through this complex system.

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Smile! The Curiosity Rover’s Ultimate Self-Portrait

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The Curiosity rover self portrait. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems

Source: Universe Today
OK, we thought the low-resolution self-portrait from yesterday was great… but here’s the real goods: a monster, high-resolution awesome mosaic of 55 images taken by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), showing the rover at its spot in Gale Crater — called Rocknest — with the base of Gale Crater’s 5-kilometer- (3-mile-) high mountain, Aeolis Mons or Mount Sharp, rising in the background. The images were taken on Sol 84 (Oct. 31, 2012), and sent to Earth today. In the foreground, four scoop scars can be seen in the regolith in front of the rover. As we mentioned about the previous MAHLI mosaic, the arm was moved for each of the 55 images, so the arm and the camera doesn’t show up, just like any photographer behind the camera (or their arms) isn’t visible in a photograph.

You can get access to the full resolution version at this link. It’s amazing.
But that’s not all…

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Scientists Monitor Comet Breakup

Comet 168P-Hergenrother was imaged by the NOAO/Gemini telescope on Nov. 2, 2011 at about 6 a.m. UTC. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/NOAO/Gemini › Full view

The Hergenrother comet is currently traversing the inner-solar system. Amateur and professional astronomers alike have been following the icy-dirt ball over the past several weeks as it has been generating a series of impressive outbursts of cometary-dust material. Now comes word that the comet's nucleus has taken the next step in its relationship with Mother Nature.
"Comet Hergenrother is splitting apart," said Rachel Stevenson, a post-doctoral fellow working at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Using the National Optical Astronomy Observatory's Gemini North Telescope on top of Mauna Kea, Hawaii, we have resolved that the nucleus of the comet has separated into at least four distinct pieces resulting in a large increase in dust material in its coma."
With more material to reflect the sun's rays, the comet's coma has brightened considerably.
"The comet fragments are considerably fainter than the nucleus," said James Bauer, the deputy principal investigator for NASA's NEOWISE mission, from the California Institute of Technology. "This is suggestive of chunks of material being ejected from the surface."
The comet's fragmentation event was initially detected on Oct. 26 by a team of astronomers from the Remanzacco Observatory, using the Faulkes Telescope North in Haleakala, Hawaii. The initial fragment was also imaged by the WIYN telescope group at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona.
For those interested in viewing Hergenrother, with a larger-sized telescope and a dark sky, the comet can be seen in between the constellations of Andromeda and Lacerta.
The orbit of comet 168P/Hergenrother comet is well understood. The comet, nor any of its fragments, are a threat to Earth.

 

 Source:  Visit NASA

DC Agle 818-393-9011
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
agle@jpl.nasa.gov

Popular on the blog: How to find the South Celestial Pole (SCP) almost accurately.

 

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Sky Guide Africa South 2013

Prepared by the Astronomical Society of Southern Africa for use by novice, amateur and professional astronomers, Sky Guide Africa South 2013 is a practical resource, offering information for the whole year on the movement of the planets, upcoming eclipses, the dates of meteor showers, as well as star charts to aid in identifying stars and constellations in the southern African night skies.

The book also presents a wealth of information in a clear and accessible way about the Sun, Moon, planets, comets, meteors and bright stars, with many supporting diagrams, charts, illustrations and images.

An annual publication, Sky Guide Africa South is an invaluable resource for anyone with an interest in the night skies of southern Africa; ‘… an absolute must for first-time star-gazers and professional astronomers alike’.

• Source : Struik Publishers - More information...

ASSA Symposium 2012 - Videos on YouTube

Several talks given recently at the ASSA Symposium in Cape Town can now be watched on YouTube, and more are being added.

• The MeerKAT radio telescope - the path to the SKA mid-frequency array, presented by Justin Jonas
•  Radio astronomy: SKA-era interferometry and other challenges, presented by Jasper Horrell
•  Galaxy Clusters, presented by Maciej Soltynski
•  Astrophotography from a backyard observatory, presented by Dale Liebenberg
•  Some open clusters I didn’t discover, presented by Auke Slotegraaf
•  A pictorial history of SAAO Sutherland, presented by Willie Koorts
•  Doing astrophotography with a DSLR on a tripod, presented by Barbara Cunow
•  The shaping and testing of two 20-inch optical telescope mirrors, presented by Johann Swanepoel

More to come

• Watch the videos

SpaceX capsule completes successful first mission

The unmanned SpaceX capsule made a safe splashdown in the Pacific Sunday after successfully delivering its first commercial payload to the International Space Station.
The capsule parachuted into the water at 1922 GMT after an 18-day mission to resupply the station and was now being recovered by a team of divers, US-based SpaceX said in a brief statement on its website.

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Milky Way Galaxy is Embedded Immersed Swimming in a 1 to 2.5 Million Degree PLASMA Gas Cloud Coronal Bubble

 Click to enlarge Image.

Source: Holographic Fractal Filamentary Universe of Electricity, Magnetism, Superfluids and Dusty Galaxies

A humongous gaseous plasma coronal cloud bubble surrounding and engulfing the milky way galaxy, far better describes the new discovery, that is being purportedly called just a "superheated gas cloud or gas pool."  CORONAL GALAXY CLOUD : Wikiversity.org.

The galactic corona was first predicted and theorized by nobel prize winning astrophysicist Haanes Alfven. Conventionally accepted dogmatic big-bang gravity theorists are still purporting phony cosmology theories, and trying to explain all the missing gravity for galaxies as dark matter. They are just calling this a "hot intergalactic cloud of gas." 

Gaseous filaments at these extreme high temperatures are scientifically proven to be in the realm for plasma astrophysicists, not gravity cosmologists.  Small amounts of moving charges are intrinsic to plasmas, and far more responsible for shaping and ruling the universe by the fundamental force of electromagnetism. New findings by the trio of Chandra X-ray satellites shows that the enormous sized superheated gas cloud is between 1 to 2.5 million degrees kelvin, and entirely surrounding our milky way galaxy.

Charged oxygen atoms were detected absorbing X-ray light at this temperature range around the galaxy in the outer galaxy halo. All galaxies, especially those similar to our milky way, can be presumed to also be embedded and swimming inside gigantic hot plasma gas pools. The outer galaxy halo is several hundred times hotter than our sun's surface, and between 10 to 60 billion solar masses. Astronomer Smita Mathur of Ohio State University says "the outer, hotter gas halo may extend for a few thousand light years around our milky way galaxy, or it may extend farther out into the surrounding local group of galaxies."

The new findings show the newly discovered "outer, hotter gas halo" is much larger than the previously discovered warm hot intergalactic medium or WHIM filaments. The WHIM is between 100,000 - 1 million degrees kelvin, and far smaller in size. Stars have been shown to form inside the spiral arms of galaxies by condensation of the cooler gaseous intergalactic filaments.

The estimated density of this gas halo is so low that similar halos around other galaxies evade current detection methods. All the talk about finding and solving the mystery of the missing baryons of the universe by this new discovery, are foolish theory conjectures. 

Unmeasurable by detection methods, plasmas are known to have moving charges by electromagnetic forces far stronger in strength over vast distances than the gravitational mass of the gas. This produces cosmic-scale electric and magnetic fields requiring further complex plasma mathematics, but correctly mimics and replaces the phony devised relativity  interpretation having numerous problems.

This is what should really matter in any cosmology of the universe. The new findings strongly support plasma cosmology.

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Famed British soprano Sarah Brightman is planning a concert in space.

Source: The Huffington Post


Famed British soprano Sarah Brightman is planning a concert in space.

The "Phantom of the Opera" star announced her unusual booking in a press conference in Moscow this week, stating that she will be part of a three-person crew destined for the International Space Station (ISS) sometime in the next two to three years, reports Playbill.

Brightman plans to hitch a ride to the ISS aboard a Soyuz rocket powered by the Russian Federal Space Agency and orbit the earth for an estimated 10 days. The trip will be coordinated by Space Adventures, Ltd., a commercial space travel company created to satisfy the needs of daring (and moneyed) private citizens.

But orbiting isn't all the former disco queen intends to do. The 52-year-old singer also plans to become the first professional musician to sing from space...that is, if those ambitious Muse boys don't beat her to it.

According to a statement in an NBC News report, the UNESCO Artist for Peace Ambassador hopes to use her trip to "promote peace and sustainable development on Earth and from space."

"I am determined that this journey can reach out to be a force for good, a catalyst for some of the dreams and aims of others that resonate with me," she added.

The singer will have to wait until the release of her new album, "Dreamchase," until she can begin the training necessary to become a cosmonaut though. That gives us plenty of time to contemplate which single she will perform in space first. We vote she bring Andrea Boccelli beyond the exosphere and do "Time to Say Goodbye."

Astronomers discover 'diamond planet' twice the size of Earth

Source: Metro

A planet made largely of diamond and twice the size of Earth has been discovered by astronomers who have decided to call it '55 Cancri E'.

By Chris Wickham

LONDON (Reuters) - Forget the diamond as big as the Ritz. This one's bigger than planet Earth.

Orbiting a star that is visible to the naked eye, astronomers have discovered a planet twice the size of our own made largely out of diamond.

The rocky planet, called '55 Cancri e', orbits a sun-like star in the constellation of Cancer and is moving so fast that a year there lasts a mere 18 hours.

Discovered by a U.S.-Franco research team, its radius is twice that of Earth's with a mass eight times greater. That would give it the same density as Earth, although previously observed diamond planets are reckoned to be a lot more dense. It is also incredibly hot, with temperatures on its surface reaching 3,900 degrees Fahrenheit (1,648 Celsius).

"The surface of this planet is likely covered in graphite and diamond rather than water and granite," said Nikku Madhusudhan, the Yale researcher whose findings are due to be published in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The study - with Olivier Mousis at the Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planetologie in Toulouse, France - estimates that at least a third of the planet's mass, the equivalent of about three Earth masses, could be diamond.

Diamond planets have been spotted before but this is the first time one has been seen orbiting a sun-like star and studied in such detail.

"This is our first glimpse of a rocky world with a fundamentally different chemistry from Earth," Madhusudhan said, adding that the discovery of the carbon-rich planet meant distant rocky planets could no longer be assumed to have chemical constituents, interiors, atmospheres, or biologies similar to Earth.

David Spergel, an astronomer at Princeton University, said it was relatively simple to work out the basic structure and history of a star once you know its mass and age.

"Planets are much more complex. This 'diamond-rich super-Earth' is likely just one example of the rich sets of discoveries that await us as we begin to explore planets around nearby stars."

"Nearby" is a relative concept in astronomy. Any fortune-hunter not dissuaded by "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz", F.Scott Fitzgerald's jazz age morality tale of thwarted greed, will find Cancri e about 40 light years, or 230 trillion miles, from Park Avenue.