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Perseverance’s Backup Rock Sample Tubes Placed on Mars Surface | NASA/JPL
Celebrate the completion of the first sample depot – or scientifically curated collection of rock and soil samples—on another world with NASA's Perseverance rover team. The diverse set of scientifically curated samples could help scientists answer the question of whether ancient life ever arose on the Red Planet.
On Jan. 29, 2023, the Perseverance rover placed a 10th sample tube on the surface of Mars, providing the NASA-European Space Agency Mars Sample Return campaign a backup option to recover rock and soil samples for potential return to Earth in the future.
Note: In some clips, team members are wearing orange construction hats as a playful nod to the “sample depot construction” that was being undertaken on Mars.
Elliptical Galaxy M84: 'H' is for Hot & Huge | NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory
With a single letter seemingly etched in the X-ray glow around it, a giant black hole at the center of a massive elliptical galaxy is making a mark on its surroundings.
This “H”-shaped structure is found in a detailed new X-ray map of the multimillion-degree gas around the galaxy Messier 84, or M84 for short.
As gas is captured by the gravitational force of the black hole, some of it will fall into the abyss, never to be seen again. Some of the gas, however, avoids this fate and instead gets blasted away from the black hole in the form of jets of particles. These jets can push out holes, or cavities, in the hot gas surrounding the black hole. Given the orientation of the jets to Earth and the profile of the hot gas, the cavities form what appears to resemble the letter “H”.
Astronomers used NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory to make a map of the hot gas in and around M84. In fact, Chandra was able see down to only about 100 light-years away from the black hole in the center of the galaxy. This gas radiates at temperatures in the tens of millions of degrees. The huge letter “H” is about 40,000 light-years tall, or about half the width of the Milky Way. The radio image from the National Science Foundation’s Very Large Array, or VLA, in New Mexico reveals jets streaking away from the black hole.
Shadow Play around Planet-Forming Disk at Young Star TW Hydrae | Hubble
The young star TW Hydrae is playing "shadow puppets" with scientists observing it with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Distance: ~200 light years away
In 2017, astronomers reported discovering a shadow sweeping across the face of a vast pancake-shaped gas-and-dust disk surrounding the red dwarf star. The shadow is not from a planet, but from an inner disk slightly inclined relative to the much larger outer disk—causing it to cast a shadow. One explanation is that an unseen planet's gravity is pulling dust and gas into the planet's inclined orbit.
Now, a second shadow—playing a game of peek-a-boo—has emerged in just a few years between observations stored in Hubble's MAST archive. This could be from yet another disk nestled inside the system. The two disks are likely evidence of a pair of planets under construction.
TW Hydrae is less than 10 million years old and resides about 200 light-years away. In its infancy, our solar system may have resembled the TW Hydrae system, some 4.6 billion years ago. The TW Hydrae system is tilted nearly face-on to our view from Earth. Thus, it is an optimum target for getting a bull's-eye-view of a planetary construction yard.
The second shadow was discovered in observations obtained on June 6, 2021, as part of a multi-year program designed to track the shadows in circumstellar disks.
The disks may be proxies for planets that are lapping each other as they whirl around the star. It is sort of like spinning two vinyl phonograph records at slightly different speeds. Sometimes labels will match up but then one gets ahead of the other.
The suspected planets are located in a region roughly the distance of Jupiter from our Sun. And, the shadows complete one rotation around the star about every 15 years—the orbital period that would be expected at that distance from the star.
Any inner planets would be difficult to detect because their light would be lost in the glare of the star.
The TW Hydrae data are from Hubble's Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph. The James Webb Space Telescope's infrared vision may also be able to show the shadows in more detail.
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).
Image 1 Credits: NASA, ESA, STScI, John Debes (AURA/STScI for ESA)
Image 1 Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)
Image 2 Credits: NASA, AURA/STScI for ESA, Leah Hustak (STScI)
The Most Earth-like Exoplanets | The Planetary Society
These three planets beyond our Solar System have some important characteristics in common with Earth, like orbiting in the habitable zone of their star. By searching for Earth-like exoplanets, researchers hope to illuminate how ordinary and extraordinary our planet and its liquid water may be.
Aurora Borealis over Wyoming: Devils Tower & Red Rock
Midnight Reds and Meteor
Predawn Blue Aurora
Monumental Mirror
Red Rock Corona
Aurora Tower and Milky Way Galaxy
Mirrored Moon and Aurora
Colors of the Night
Green Belle Fourche
After a seven year effort, astrophotographer, Kevin Palmer, finally captured the pictures in Wyoming he had been dreaming of: "Two days earlier the sun hurled a massive explosion directly towards Earth at more than a million mph. When it arrived, it caused the strongest geomagnetic storm since 2005. My widest lens, which covers a field of view of 115°, was not nearly wide enough. The entire sky pulsed in green waves like lightning. The raw intensity was humbling. I could see the ground by the light of the aurora alone."
The Colors of the Aurora (U.S. National Park Service)
NASA: Espacio a Tierra | Jaque mate: 28 de abril de 2023
Espacio a Tierra, la versión en español de las cápsulas Space to Ground de la NASA, te informa semanalmente de lo que está sucediendo en la Estación Espacial Internacional.
European Astronaut Candidate Interviews | European Space Agency
Impressions from the new European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut candidates after their first month of training at the European Astronaut Training in Cologne, Germany.
The ESA astronaut candidates of the class of 2022 Sophie Adenot, Pablo Álvarez Fernández, Rosemary Coogan, Raphaël Liégeois and Marco Sieber started basic astronaut training on April 3, 2023, in preparation for future space missions. The five trainees were selected from 22,500 applicants from across ESA Member States.
The candidates are trained to the highest level of standards as specified by the International Space Station partners. Basic training includes learning about space exploration, technical and scientific disciplines, space systems and operations, as well as spacewalks and survival training. Once they receive the ESA astronaut certification, they will move on to the next phases of pre-assignment and mission-specific training.
00:00 - 00:12 – Intro
00:12 - 02:43 – Sophie Adenot
02:43 - 04:22 – Pablo Álvarez Fernández
04:22 - 06:58 – Rosemary Coogan
06:58 - 09:11 – Raphaël Liégeois
09:11 - 11:21 – Marco Sieber
11:21 - 11:38 – Outro
ESA astronaut candidate Sophie Adenot (France) Biography
Centaurus A Galaxy with Black Hole Shines | NASA Chandra & IXPE
The galaxy Centaurus A (Cen A) shines bright in this image combining data from multiple observatories. In the center of this galaxy is a supermassive black hole feeding off the gas and dust encircling it, and large jets of high-energy particles and other material spewing out. The jet shown at the upper left of this image extends for about 13,000 light-years away from the black hole. Also visible is a dust lane, wrapping around the middle of the galaxy, which may have resulted from a collision with a smaller galaxy millions of years ago. Cen A is found 12 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Centaurus and represents the fifth brightest galaxy in the sky.
Colors in this image have been chosen to reflect the sources of data. Blue shows x-ray light captured by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, orange represents x-rays detected by NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) satellite, and optical light seen by the European Southern Observatory in Chile is colored white and gray.
Cen A has been studied extensively since the launch of Chandra in 1999. With IXPE, which launched in 2021, scientists can understand the mysteries of this object in a new way. IXPE is specialized to look at a property of x-ray light called polarization, which relates to the organization of electromagnetic waves. This specialized measurement is helping scientists study how particles become accelerated to high energies and speeds—nearly the speed of light—at extreme cosmic objects like this one.
At Cen A, researchers using IXPE seek to understand what causes the x-ray emission in the jets. So far, scientists have not detected x-ray polarization at Cen A, indicating that particles much heavier than electrons, such as protons, are not producing the x-rays. More insights are to come as scientists analyze the data.
A South Polar Wonderland | NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
A wide variety of south polar terrains are on display in this spectacular color image taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spacecraft’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) instrument. The reddish material is the South Polar layered deposits. These deposits are a stack of layered, dusty water ice. Scientists believe that these layers record previous climatic conditions on Mars, much like terrestrial ice-sheets provide a record of climate change on the Earth.
Image cutout is less than 1 km (under a mile) top to bottom across and the spacecraft altitude was 248 km (154 mi).
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) is a spacecraft designed to study the geology and climate of Mars, to provide reconnaissance of future landing sites, and to relay data from surface missions back to Earth. It was launched on August 12, 2005, and reached Mars on March 10, 2006.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The HiRISE camera was built by Ball Aerospace and Technology Corporation and is operated by the University of Arizona.
Extraordinarily Bright Interacting Galaxies: AM 1214-255 | Hubble
This new image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope shows interacting galaxies known as AM 1214-255. These galaxies contain active galactic nuclei, or AGNs. An AGN is an extraordinarily luminous central region of a galaxy. Its extreme brightness is caused by matter whirling into a supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s heart.
Image Description: Two blue-white, comma-shaped galaxies: at upper-right and lower-left of center. Streams of diffuse gas stretch between them. Areas of reddish-brown dust dot galaxy at left, less so on galaxy at right. Black background dotted with stars, distant galaxies.
Hubble observed the galaxy closest to the center as part of an AGN survey, with the aim of compiling a dataset about nearby AGNs to be used as a resource for astronomers investigating AGN physics, black holes, host galaxy structure, and more.
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, A. Barth (University of California - Irvine), and J. Dalcanton (University of Washington); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)
Star Devouring Planet: Possible Preview of Earth's Fate | NOIRLab
Astronomers using the Gemini South telescope in Chile, operated by the National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab, have observed the first compelling evidence of a dying Sun-like star engulfing an exoplanet. The “smoking gun” of this event was seen in a long and low-energy outburst from the star—the telltale signature of a planet skimming along a star’s surface. This never-before-seen process may herald the ultimate fate of Earth when our own Sun nears the end of its life in about five billion years.
For most of its life, a Sun-like star fuses hydrogen into helium in its hot, dense core, which allows the star to push back against the crushing weight of its outer layers. When hydrogen in the core runs out, the star begins fusing helium into carbon, and hydrogen fusion migrates to the star’s outer layers, causing them to expand, and changing the Sun-like star into a red giant.
Such a transformation, however, is bad news for any inner-system planets. When the star's surface eventually expands to engulf one of its planets, their interaction would trigger a spectacular outburst of energy and material. This process would also put the brakes on the planet's orbital velocity, causing it to plunge into the star.
Credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/M. Garlick, ESA/Hubble (M. Kornmesser & L. L. Christensen), M.Paredes, Kwon O Chul, N. Bartmann
European & Australian Astronaut Candidates in Training | ESA
The five European candidates are Sophie Adenot, Pablo Álvarez Fernández, Rosemary Coogan, Raphaël Liégeois, and Marco Sieber. They are joined by Australian Space Agency astronaut candidate Katherine Bennell-Pegg (far-right).
European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut candidates of the class of 2022 are undergoing training at the European Astronaut Center in Cologne, Germany. The five candidates are Sophie Adenot, Pablo Álvarez Fernández, Rosemary Coogan, Raphaël Liégeois, and Marco Sieber. The astronaut candidates are joined by Australian Space Agency astronaut candidate Katherine Bennell-Pegg.
The group is part of the 17-member astronaut class of 2022, selected from 22,500 applicants from across ESA Member States.
These astronaut candidates will be trained to the highest level for future space missions. Basic training includes learning about space exploration, technical and scientific disciplines, space systems and operations, as well as spacewalks and survival training.
ESA astronaut candidate Rosemary Coogan (UK) Biography
Observing Ashes of the First Stars | European Southern Observatory
ESOcast 261 Light: Using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers have found the fingerprints left by the explosions of the first stars.
Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO)
Directed by: Angelos Tsaousis and Martin Wallner.
Editing: Angelos Tsaousis
Web and technical support: Gurvan Bazin and Raquel Yumi Shida
Written by: Claudia Sciarma and Jonas Enander
Footage and photos: ESO/L. Calçada, M. Kornmesser, ESA/Hubble, B. Tafreshi
Scientific consultant: Paola Amico, Mariya Lyubenova
This new NASA animation highlights the “super” in supermassive black holes. These monsters lurk in the centers of most big galaxies, including our own Milky Way, and contain between 100,000 and tens of billions of times more mass than our Sun.
Any light crossing the event horizon—the black hole’s point of no return—becomes trapped forever, and any light passing close to it is redirected by the black hole’s intense gravity. Together, these effects produce a “shadow” about twice the size of the black hole’s actual event horizon.
The animation shows 10 supersized black holes that occupy center stage in their host galaxies, including the Milky Way and M87, scaled by the sizes of their shadows. Starting near the Sun, the camera steadily pulls back to compare ever-larger black holes to different structures in our solar system.
First up is 1601+3113, a dwarf galaxy hosting a black hole packed with the mass of 100,000 Suns. The matter is so compressed that even the black hole’s shadow is smaller than our Sun.
The black hole at the heart of our own galaxy, called Sagittarius A* (pronounced ay-star), boasts the weight of 4.3 million Suns based on long-term tracking of stars in orbit around it. Its shadow diameter spans about half that of Mercury’s orbit in our solar system.
The animation shows two monster black holes in the galaxy known as NGC 7727. Located about 1,600 light-years apart, one weighs 6 million solar masses and the other more than 150 million Suns. Astronomers say the pair will merge within the next 250 million years.
At the animation’s larger scale lies M87’s black hole, now with a updated mass of 5.4 billion Suns. Its shadow is so big that even a beam of light—traveling at 670 million mph (1 billion kph)—would take about two and a half days to cross it.
The video ends with TON 618, one of a handful of extremely distant and massive black holes for which astronomers have direct measurements. This behemoth contains more than 60 billion solar masses, and it boasts a shadow so large that a beam of light would take weeks to traverse it.
Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab
Lead Producer: Scott Wiessinger (KBRwyle)
Lead Animator: Krystofer Kim (KBRwyle)
Lead Science writer: Francis Reddy (University of Maryland College Park)
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