Meet the Perseverance Rover's Mars Samples: Swift Run & Skyland | NASA/JPL

Meet the Perseverance Rover's Mars Samples: Swift Run & Skyland | NASA/JPL

Meet two of the Martian samples that have been collected and are awaiting return to Earth as part of the Mars Sample Return campaign. As of late June 2023, NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover has collected and sealed 20 scientifically selected samples inside pristine tubes. The next stage is to get them back for study.

Considered one of the highest priorities by the scientists in the Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey 2023-2032, Mars Sample Return would be the first mission to return samples from another planet and provides the best opportunity to reveal the early evolution of Mars, including the potential for ancient life. NASA is teaming with the European Space Agency (ESA) on this important endeavor.

Learn more about Samples No. 10 and 11—“Swift Run” and “Skyland,” the first rock samples collected by the Perseverance rover from an ancient river delta environment on Mars. Scientists are particularly excited about studying such sedimentary rock samples up close because they form through interaction with liquid water and may have good potential for preserving signs of ancient life. 

Read about all the carefully selected samples: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars-rock-samples

Learn more about the Mars Sample Return campaign: https://mars.nasa.gov/msr 

A key objective for Perseverance's mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover characterizes the planet's geology and past climate, paves the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and is the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).

Rover Name: Perseverance

Main Job: Seek signs of ancient life and collect samples of rock and regolith (broken rock and soil) for possible return to Earth.

Mars Helicopter (Ingenuity)

Launch: July 30, 2020    

Landing: Feb. 18, 2021, Jezero Crater, Mars

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Duration: 1 minute, 14 seconds

Release Date: July 26, 2023

#NASA #Space #Astronomy #Science #Mars #RedPlanet #Planet #Astrobiology #Geology #Mars2020 #PerseveranceRover #JezeroCrater #SwiftRun #Skyland #MarsSampleReturn #MSR #Robotics #Technology #Engineering #JPL #Caltech #UnitedStates #MoonToMars #STEM #Education #HD #Video

Unexpectedly Calm & Remote Galaxy Cluster Discovered | NASA Chandra

Unexpectedly Calm & Remote Galaxy Cluster Discovered | NASA Chandra

Astronomers have discovered the most distant galaxy cluster with an important quality—paving the way to learning how and when some of these gigantic structures form and why the universe looks like it does in the present day.

To find this distant and unusually young galaxy cluster, teams of scientists used NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory along with NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, the South Pole Telescope, and the Dark Energy Survey project in Chile.

The cluster’s important quality is that it is “relaxed”, meaning that it is not being disrupted by violent collisions with other clusters of galaxies. This galaxy cluster, called SPT-CL J2215-3537 (or SPT2215 for short), is about 8.4 billion light-years from Earth. This means our telescopes see it when the universe is only 5.3 billion years old, compared to its current age of 13.8 billion years.

Astronomers think that galaxy clusters—enormous structures filled with individual galaxies, huge amounts of hot gas, and dark matter. In the case of SPT2215, researchers estimate that it has a mass some 700 trillion times that of the sun. Scientists think that galaxy clusters usually grow by merging with other clusters and smaller groups of galaxies over billions of years. This would have been especially true when the universe was younger. It was, therefore, surprising to find SPT2215 at its large distance from Earth. In other words, this discovery suggests that SPT2215 has become relaxed earlier than expected for a typical galaxy cluster.

Another interesting aspect of SPT2215 is the evidence for large amounts of star formation happening in its center. SPT2215 has a very large galaxy in its middle, which in turn has a supermassive black hole at its core. The prodigious amount of star formation shows scientists that much of the hot has cooled to the point where new stars can form, without outbursts driven by the black hole providing a heating source that prevents most of this cooling. This addresses an ongoing question of how much black holes stymie or support the birth of stars in their environments.

Relaxed clusters like SPT2215 are one of the signposts that have been used to measure the expansion of the universe. Adding distant objects like this to the sample of relaxed clusters allows astronomers to better constrain the acceleration of the cosmic expansion, and the properties of the dark energy that drives it.

Credit: NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory

Duration: 3 minutes, 18 seconds

Release Date: July 26, 2023

#NASA #Astronomy #Space #Science #Galaxies #GalaxyCluster #SPT2215 #PiscisAustrinus #Constellation #Universe #Xray #Chandra #Infrared #Spitzer #SpaceObservatories #SouthPoleTelescope #SPT #Antarctica #CfA #DarkEnergySurvey #DES #Chile #MSFC #UnitedStates #STEM #Education #HD #Video

Our Solar System: How were Planets Named? We Asked a NASA Expert

Our Solar System: How were Planets Named? We Asked a NASA Expert

How do planets get their names? With the exception of Earth, the planets in our solar system were named after Greek or Roman gods. Today, the job of naming things in space falls to the International Astronomical Union (IAU), the internationally recognized authority for naming celestial bodies and their surface features. NASA scientist Dr. Henry Throop explains more.

Video Credit: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Producers: Jessica Wilde, Scott Bednar

Editor: David Shelton

Duration: 1 minute, 45 seconds

Release Date: July 26, 2023

#NASA #Space #Astronomy #Science #SoalrSystem #Planets #Earth #History #Culture #Religion #Greeks #Romans #GreekGods #RomanGods #IAU #HenryThroop #Scientist #UnitedStates #STEM #Education #HD #Video

To Space (and Back) | High Above Down Under | NASA Goddard

To Space (and Back) | High Above Down Under | NASA Goddard

Episode 5: Follow two NASA rocket teams as they launch from Australia to study our nearest stellar neighbors—Alpha Centauri A & B—on a quest to understand how stars make the planets around them suitable for life. 

In this episode, the moment you have been waiting for. Time to launch some rockets! 

Learn more about NASA’s Sounding Rockets Program: https://www.nasa.gov/soundingrockets

Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center 

Additional footage: Office of the Chief Minister of the Northern Territory government, Equatorial Launch Australia

Additional graphics: Vecteezy 

Host: Miles Hatfield (NASA/GSFC) 

Writers/Videographers: 

Miles Hatfield (NASA/GSFC) 

Mara Johnson-Groh (NASA/GSFC) 

Producers: 

Beth Anthony (NASA/GSFC) 

Joy Ng (NASA/GSFC) 

Lacey Young (NASA/GSFC) 

Animators: 

Walt Feimer (NASA/GSFC) 

Jenny McElligott (NASA/GSFC) 

Scientific Advisor: 

Kevin France (CU Boulder/LASP/SISTINE)

Special thanks to:

Equatorial Launch Australia

Gumatj Corporation Ltd.

Office of the Chief Minister of the Northern Territory government

Release Date: July 26, 2023

#NASA #Space #Astronomy #Science #Stars #Exoplanets #Planets #AlphaCentauriA #AlphaCentauriB #UtravioletLight #Astrobiology #SoundingRockets #RocketLaunches #TeamSistine #TeamDeuce #ArnhemSpaceCentre #Australia #NorthernTerritory #Host #MilesHatfield #GSFC #NASAWallops #WFF #STEM #Education #Animation #HD #Video

NASA’s Juno Spacecraft Flies Past Planet Jupiter and Moon Io

NASA’s Juno Spacecraft Flies Past Planet Jupiter & Moon Io

On May 16, 2023, NASA’s Juno spacecraft flew past Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io, and then the gas giant soon after. Io is the most volcanically active body in the solar system. Slightly larger than Earth’s moon, Io is a world in constant torment. The biggest planet in the solar system is forever pulling at it gravitationally, along with its Galilean siblings—Europa and the biggest moon in the solar system, Ganymede. The result is that Io is continuously stretched and squeezed, actions linked to the creation of the lava seen erupting from its many volcanoes.

This rendering provides a “starship captain” point of view of the flyby, using images from JunoCam. For both targets, Io and Jupiter, raw JunoCam images were reprojected into views similar to the perspective of a consumer camera. The Io flyby and the Jupiter approach movie were rendered separately and composed into a synchronous split-screen video.

Launched on Aug. 5, 2011, Juno embarked on a 5-year journey to Jupiter. Its mission: to probe beneath the planet's dense clouds and answer questions about the origin and evolution of Jupiter, our solar system, and giant planets in general across the cosmos. Juno arrived at the gas giant on July 4, 2016, after a 1.7-billion-mile journey, and settled into a 53-day polar orbit stretching from just above Jupiter’s cloud tops to the outer reaches of the Jovian magnetosphere. Now in its extended mission, NASA’s most distant planetary orbiter continues doing flybys of Jupiter and its moons.

Visit http://www.nasa.gov/juno & http://missionjuno.swri.edu to learn more.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) manages the Juno mission for NASA. The mission's principal investigator is Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. The mission is part of NASA's New Frontiers Program, managed at the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver built the spacecraft.

Video Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS

Animation: Koji Kuramura & Gerald Eichstädt

Producer: Scott J. Bolton

Duration: 47 seconds

Release Date: July 26, 2023

#NASA #Space #Astronomy #Science #Jupiter #Planet #Atmosphere #Weather #Meteorology #Moon #Io #JunoMission #JunoSpacecraft #SpaceExploration #SolarSystem #Technology #Engineering #JPL #UnitedStates #MSFC #SwRI #CitizenScience #STEM #Education #HD #Video

Monitoring Earth Volcanoes from Space | European Space Agency

Monitoring Earth Volcanoes from Space | European Space Agency

Earth satellites play a vital role in monitoring volcanoes from space, providing real-time data on volcanic activity and can even help disaster response efforts post-eruption. Learn how the Copernicus Sentinel satellites can detect and track volcanic gas emissions, changes in ground deformation as well as volcanic ash plumes.

Learn more about Copernicus Sentinel satellites:

https://sentinels.copernicus.eu/web/sentinel/home

Credits: European Space Agency (ESA)

Duration: 3 minutes

Release Date: July 26, 2023

#NASA #ESA #Space #Satellites #CopernicusSentinelProgram #CopernicusSentinelSatellites #Science #Planet #Earth #Geology #Geoscience #Volcanoes #VolcanicGasEmissions #VolcanicAshPlumes #EarthObservation #RemoteSensing #Europe #STEM #Education #HD #Video

Two New Stars Being Formed: Herbig-Haro 46/47 | James Webb Space Telescope

Two New Stars Being Formed: Herbig-Haro 46/47 | James Webb Space Telescope

The NASA/European Space Agency/Canadian Space Agency James Webb Space Telescope has captured a high-resolution image of a tightly bound pair of actively forming stars, known as Herbig-Haro 46/47, in near-infrared light. Look for them at the center of the red diffraction spikes. The stars are buried deeply, appearing as an orange-white splotch. They are surrounded by a disc of gas and dust that continues to add to their mass.

Image Description: At the center is a thin horizontal orange cloud tilted from bottom left to top right. It takes up about two-thirds of the length of this angle, but is thin at the opposite angle. At its center is a set of very large red and pink diffraction spikes in Webb’s familiar eight-pointed pattern. It has a central yellow-white blob, which hides two tightly orbiting stars. The background is filled with stars and galaxies.

Herbig-Haro 46/47 is an important object to study because it is relatively young—only a few thousand years old. Stars take millions of years to form. Targets like this also give researchers insight into how stars gather mass over time, potentially allowing them to model how our own Sun, a low-mass star, formed.

The two-sided orange lobes were created by earlier ejections from these stars. The stars’ more recent ejections appear as blue, thread-like features, running along the angled diffraction spike that covers the orange lobes.

Actively forming stars ingest the gas and dust that immediately surrounds them in a disc (imagine an edge-on circle encasing them). When the stars ‘eat’ too much material in too short a time, they respond by sending out two-sided jets along the opposite axis, settling down the star’s spin, and removing mass from the area. Over millennia, these ejections regulate how much mass the stars retain.

Do not miss the delicate, semi-transparent blue cloud. This is a region of dense dust and gas, known as a nebula. Webb’s crisp near-infrared image lets us see through its gauzy layers, showing off a lot more of Herbig-Haro 46/47, while also revealing a wide range of stars and galaxies that lie far beyond it. The nebula’s edges transform into a soft orange outline, like a backward L along the right and bottom of the image.

The blue nebula influences the shapes of the orange jets shot out by the central stars. As ejected material rams into the nebula on the lower left, it takes on wider shapes, because there is more opportunity for the jets to interact with molecules within the nebula. Its material also causes the stars’ ejections to light up.

Over millions of years the stars in Herbig-Haro 46/47 will form fully—clearing the scene.

Take a moment to linger on the background. A profusion of extremely distant galaxies dot Webb’s view. Its composite NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) image is made up of several exposures, highlighting distant galaxies and stars. Blue objects with diffraction spikes are stars, and the closer they are, the larger they appear. White-and-pink spiral galaxies sometimes appear larger than these stars, but are significantly farther away. The tiniest red dots, Webb’s infrared specialty, are often the oldest, most distant galaxies.

Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, J. DePasquale (STScI)

Release Date: July 26, 2023

#NASA #ESA #Astronomy #Space #Science #HerbigHaro4647 #Vela #Constellation #JamesWebb #SpaceTelescope #JWST #InfraredLight #Cosmos #Universe #UnfoldTheUniverse #Europe #CSA #Canada #GSFC #STScI #UnitedStates #STEM #Education

What is an Annular Eclipse? | NASA Goddard

What is an Annular Eclipse? | NASA Goddard

On Oct. 14, 2023, an annular solar eclipse will cross North, Central, and South America. Visible in parts of the United States, Mexico, and many countries in South and Central America, millions of people in the Western Hemisphere can experience this eclipse. What is an annular eclipse? Why does it happen? And why does it create a “ring of fire” in the sky?

Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC)

Producer: Joy Ng (KBRwyle)

Writer: Vanessa J. Thomas (KBRwyle)

Editor: Beth Anthony (KBRwyle)

Animator: Beth Anthony (KBRwyle)

Scientist: Michael S. Kirk (GSFC)

Duration: 1 minute, 44 seconds

Release Date: July 25, 2023

#NASA #Space #Astronomy #Earth #Moon #Sun #SolarEclipses #AnnularSolarEclipse #AnnularEclipse #EclipseMap #SolarEclipse #Mexico #CentralAmerica #SouthAmerica #WesternHemisphere #GSFC #UnitedStates #STEM #Education #HD #Video

Meet Crew Members of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-7 Mission & Astronaut Loral O’Hara

Meet Crew Members of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-7 Mission & Astronaut Loral O’Hara

Official NASA Briefing: Crew members from NASA’s SpaceX Crew-7 mission, and astronaut Loral O’Hara, who will fly to space for the first time, discuss their upcoming missions to the International Space Station.

Crew-7 will carry NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli as well as Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Satoshi Furukawa, European Space Agency astronaut Andreas Mogensen of Denmark, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov of Russia aboard a Crew Dragon spacecraft on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to the International Space Station no earlier than Aug. 17, 2023. 

O’Hara is set to launch aboard a Soyuz rocket no earlier than Sept. 15, 2023, to join the other crew members to conduct science experiments and research aboard the orbiting laboratory. 

More on Crew-7: https://go.nasa.gov/471ovnh

An international partnership of space agencies provides and operates the elements of the International Space Station (ISS). The principals are the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada. The ISS has been the most politically complex space exploration program ever undertaken.

Credit: NASA

Duration: 50 minutes

Release Date: July 5, 2023

#NASA #Space #ISS #SpaceX #SpaceXCrew7 #CrewDragonSpacecraft #Cosmonaut #KonstantinBorisov #Роскосмос #Russia #Россия #Astronauts #SatoshiFurukawa #Japan #日本 #JAXA #JasminMoghbeli #SpaceXCrew7Commander #ESA #AndreasMogensen #SpaceXCrew7Pilot #Denmark #Danmark #Europe #LoralOHara #HumanSpaceflight #UnitedStates #STEM #Education #HD #Video

Spiral & Dwarf Galaxies Merging in Eridanus | Victor Blanco Telescope

Spiral & Dwarf Galaxies Merging in Eridanus | Victor Blanco Telescope

The spiral galaxy NGC 1532, also known as Haley’s Coronet, can be seen here interacting with its smaller neighbor, the dwarf galaxy NGC 1531. This image—taken by the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Dark Energy Camera mounted on the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, a Program of NSF’s NOIRLab—captures the mutual gravitational influences of a massive- and dwarf-galaxy merger.

The massive barred spiral galaxy NGC 1532 is located about 55 million light-years away in the direction of the southern constellation Eridanus (the river). Its sweeping spiral arms are seen edge-on from Earth, with the nearer arm dipping downward and the receding arm lurching upward as it tugs upon its smaller, dwarf companion galaxy NGC 1531. These gravitationally bound galaxies will eventually become one, as NGC 1532 completely consumes its smaller companion.

Despite its small stature, however, the dwarf galaxy has also been exerting a noticeable gravitational influence on its larger companion, distorting one of its spiral arms, which can be seen rising above the galactic plane. Additionally, plumes of gas and dust can be seen between the two galaxies, like a bridge of stellar matter held in place by the competing tidal forces. This interaction has also triggered bursts of star formation within both galaxies. 

Credit: CTIO/NOIRLab/DOE/NSF/AURA; R. Colombari, M. Zamani & D. de Martin (NSF’s NOIRLab)

Release Date: July 25, 2023

#NASA #Astronomy #Space #Science #Stars #Galaxies #Galaxy #NGC1532 #HaleysCoronet #Spiral #DwarfGalaxy #NGC1531 #Eridanus #Constellation #Cosmos #Universe  #VictorBlancoTelescope #DOE #CTIO #CerroTololoObservatory #Chile #SouthAmerica #NOIRLab #AURA #NSF #UnitedStates #STEM #Education

NASA Astronaut Loral O’Hara in Training | Johnson Space Center

NASA Astronaut Loral O’Hara in Training | Johnson Space Center

Astronaut Loral O’Hara is making her first spaceflight after selection as part of the 2017 NASA astronaut class. The Texas native earned a Bachelor of Science degree in aerospace engineering at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, and a Master of Science degree in aeronautics and astronautics from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. Prior to joining NASA, her work focused on the engineering and operations of deep-ocean research submersibles and robots. 

At the time of her selection in June 2017, O’Hara was a research engineer at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, where she spent eight years working on the engineering and operations of underwater vehicles such as the human-occupied research submersible Alvin and the remotely operated vehicle Jason. 

O’Hara will launch to the International Space Station no earlier than Sept. 15, 2023, for a mission with Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub. She will join Expedition 69/70 as a flight engineer aboard the space station.

Astronaut Loral O’Hara Official NASA Biography:

https://www.nasa.gov/content/loral-o-hara-nasa-astronaut

An international partnership of space agencies provides and operates the elements of the International Space Station (ISS). The principals are the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada. The ISS has been the most politically complex space exploration program ever undertaken.

Credit: NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC)

Duration: 11 minutes

Release Date: July 25, 2023

#NASA #Space #Earth #ISS #Science #AstronautTraining #Astronaut #LoralOHara #FlightEngineer #AerospaceEngineer #Robotics #Spacesuit #Women #Leaders #Pioneers #Expedition69 #Expedition70 #HumanSpaceflight #Houston #Texas #JSC #UnitedStates #STEM #Education #HD #Video

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-7 Training: Behind The Scenes | Johnson Space Center

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-7 Training: Behind The Scenes | Johnson Space Center

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-7 mission will carry NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli, European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Andreas Mogensen of Denmark, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Satoshi Furukawa, and Konstantin Borisov of Roscosmos (Russia) to the International Space Station. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft will launch from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on the company’s seventh crew rotation mission for NASA—no earlier than August 2023.

This is Moghbeli’s first trip into space since her selection as a NASA astronaut in 2017. The New York native earned a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering with information technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a Master of Science in aerospace engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. Moghbeli is a helicopter and Marine Corps test pilot with 2,000 hours of flight time in over 25 different aircraft. She also is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School in Patuxent River, Maryland. As mission commander, she will be responsible for all phases of flight, from launch to re-entry. She will serve as an Expedition 69/70 flight engineer aboard the station.

Mogensen was selected as an ESA astronaut in 2009 and became the first Danish citizen in space after launching aboard a Soyuz for a 10-day mission to the space station in 2015. As pilot on Crew-7, he will be responsible for spacecraft systems and performance. Aboard the station, he will serve as an Expedition 69/70 flight engineer. Mogensen is from Copenhagen, Denmark. He completed undergraduate studies and received a master’s degree in aeronautical engineering from Imperial College London in England before gaining his doctorate in aerospace engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. 

Furukawa will be making his second trip to space, having spent 165 days aboard the space station as part of Expeditions 28/29 in 2011. Furukawa is from Kanagawa, Japan, and was selected as a JAXA astronaut in 1999. He is a physician and received his medical degree from the University of Tokyo, and later a doctorate in medical science from the same university. Aboard the station, he will become a flight engineer for Expedition 69/70.

Cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov of Roscosmos will be making his first trip to space, and will also serve as a mission specialist, working to monitor the spacecraft during the dynamic launch and entry phases of flight. He entered the Roscosmos Cosmonaut Corps as a test cosmonaut candidate in 2018 and will serve as a flight engineer for Expedition 69/70.

Credit: NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC)

Duration: 17 minutes

Release Date: July 25, 2023

#NASA #Space #ISS #SpaceX #SpaceXCrew7 #CrewDragonSpacecraft #MissionSpecialists #FlightEngineers #Cosmonaut #KonstantinBorisov #Роскосмос #Russia #Россия #Astronauts #SatoshiFurukawa #Japan #日本 #JAXA #JasminMoghbeli #SpaceXCrew7Commander #ESA #AndreasMogensen #SpaceXCrew7Pilot #Denmark #Danmark #Europe #HumanSpaceflight #UnitedStates #STEM #Education #HD #Video

Star V960 Mon in Monoceros: Wide-field View | ESO

Star V960 Mon in Monoceros: Wide-field View | ESO

This image shows the sky around the location of the possible planet-forming star V960 Mon. The picture was created from images in the Digitized Sky Survey 2.

Distance: ~5,000 light-years

This image presents a dark area of the night sky, entirely speckled with glowing stars. White, blue and red tiny stars brighten the black background. Over this starry mantle, some bigger isolated red stars dominate the sky. The most spectacular ones are three aligned in a row together with a blue bright star almost at the center of the picture.

The Digitized Sky Survey (DSS) is a digitized version of several photographic astronomical surveys of the night sky, produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) between 1983 and 2006.

Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO)/Digitized Sky Survey 2

Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin

Release Date: July 25, 2023

#NASA #ESO #Astronomy #Space #Science #Star #V960Mon #Exoplanets #Planets #Monoceros #Constellation #VLT #SPHERE #ALMA #SolarSystem #AtacamaDesert #Chile #SouthAmerica #Europe #DSS2 #STScI #UnitedStates #STEM #Education

Zooming in on Possible Planet-forming V960 Mon Star | ESO

Zooming in on Possible Planet-forming V960 Mon Star | ESO

This video takes us on a journey to the V960 Mon star, some 5,000 light-years away from Earth. A spectacular new image released today by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) gives us clues about how planets as massive as Jupiter could form. Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), researchers have detected large dusty clumps, close to a young star, that could collapse to create giant planets.

“This discovery is truly captivating as it marks the very first detection of clumps around a young star that have the potential to give rise to giant planets,” says Alice Zurlo, a researcher at the Universidad Diego Portales, Chile, involved in the observations.

The work is based on a mesmerising picture obtained with the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) instrument on ESO’s VLT that features fascinating detail of the material around the star V960 Mon. This young star attracted astronomers’ attention when it suddenly increased its brightness more than twenty times in 2014. SPHERE observations taken shortly after the onset of this brightness ‘outburst’ revealed that the material orbiting V960 Mon is assembling together in a series of intricate spiral arms extending over distances bigger than the entire Solar System.

Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO), N. Risinger, DSS, ESO/ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/Weber et al.

Duration: 50 seconds

Release Date: July 25, 2023

#NASA #ESO #Astronomy #Space #Science #Star #V960Mon #Exoplanets #Planets #Monoceros #Constellation #VLT #SPHERE #ALMA #SolarSystem #AtacamaDesert #Chile #SouthAmerica #Europe #STEM #Education #HD #Video

Secrets of Planet Birth around Star V960 Mon | ESO

Secrets of Planet Birth around Star V960 Mon | ESO

The background of this image is dark, but in its center lurks a swirling ghostly figure, which extends towards the edge of the picture. At the very center there is a small bright region and erupting out of it there is a poorly defined, fuzzy edged cloud and blobs of material in yellow and blue, respectively. The yellow cloud extends far out in the image, making an elongated spiral shape that gets dimmer and less defined as it reaches the top and bottom of the frame. Meanwhile, the blue blobs only extend downwards from the center and to a fraction of the distance of the yellow spiral cloud. The blobs twist away from the central bright region, forming a tight U-shape lying on its right side.

A spectacular new image released today by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) gives us clues about how planets as massive as Jupiter could form. Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), researchers have detected large dusty clumps, close to a young star, that could collapse to create giant planets.

“This discovery is truly captivating as it marks the very first detection of clumps around a young star that have the potential to give rise to giant planets,” says Alice Zurlo, a researcher at the Universidad Diego Portales, Chile, involved in the observations.

The work is based on a mesmerising picture obtained with the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) instrument on ESO’s VLT that features fascinating detail of the material around the star V960 Mon. This young star is located over 5,000 light-years away in the constellation Monoceros and attracted astronomers’ attention when it suddenly increased its brightness more than twenty times in 2014. SPHERE observations taken shortly after the onset of this brightness ‘outburst’ revealed that the material orbiting V960 Mon is assembling together in a series of intricate spiral arms extending over distances bigger than the entire Solar System.

This finding then motivated astronomers to analyse archive observations of the same system made with ALMA, in which ESO is a partner. The VLT observations probe the surface of the dusty material around the star, while ALMA can peer deeper into its structure. “With ALMA, it became apparent that the spiral arms are undergoing fragmentation, resulting in the formation of clumps with masses akin to those of planets,” says Zurlo.

Astronomers believe that giant planets form either by ‘core accretion’, when dust grains come together, or by ‘gravitational instability’, when large fragments of the material around a star contract and collapse. While researchers have previously found evidence for the first of these scenarios, support for the latter has been scant.

“No one had ever seen a real observation of gravitational instability happening at planetary scales—until now,” says Philipp Weber, a researcher at the University of Santiago, Chile, who led the study published today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

“Our group has been searching for signs of how planets form for over ten years, and we couldn't be more thrilled about this incredible discovery,” says team-member Sebastián Pérez from the University of Santiago, Chile.

This research is presented in a paper to appear in The Astrophysical Journal Letters: https://www.eso.org/public/archives/releases/sciencepapers/eso2312/eso2312a.pdf

Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO)

Release Date: July 25, 2023

#NASA #ESO #Astronomy #Space #Science #Star #V960Mon #Exoplanets #Planets #Monoceros #Constellation #VLT #SPHERE #ALMA #SolarSystem #AtacamaDesert #Chile #SouthAmerica #Europe #STEM #Education

Recientemente: La puesta en órbita de un enjambre de pequeños satélites | NASA

Recientemente: La puesta en órbita de un enjambre de pequeños satélites | NASA

Recientemente en la NASA, la versión en español de las cápsulas This Week at NASA, te informa semanalmente de lo que está sucediendo en la NASA. 

Para obtener más información sobre la ciencia de la NASA, suscríbete al boletín semanal: https://www.nasa.gov/suscribete 

Ciencia de la NASA: https://ciencia.nasa.gov/

Credit: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Duration: 2 minutes, 26 seconds

Original Broadcast Date: July 21, 2023

Release Date: July 24, 2023

#NASA #Space #NASAenespañol #español #Satellites #CubeSats #StarlingMission #SwarmTechnologies #SpaceCommunications #SpaceNavigation #Earth #RocketLab #ElectronRocket #CommercialSpace #NASAAmes #ARC #Science #Technology #UnitedStates #STEM #Education #HD #Video