Space In The News: April 2013

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Register by May 3 for Upcoming NASA/JPL Educator Workshop!

Educator Workshop April 30, 2013

This is a feature from the NASA/JPL Education Office.

How to Think Like a NASA Scientist: Analyzing Data, Drawing Conclusions

Date: Saturday, May 11, 2013, 8:30 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

Target audience: Middle and high school science and mathematics educators (but all are welcome)

Location: Theodore von Kármán Auditorium, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Overview: Learn to think like a NASA scientist - and get your students thinking like one, too! This one-day workshop will show you how to teach students to read scientific graphs and draw conclusions based on real NASA data. Experts will discuss current Earth science missions and show how the scientists, themselves, draw conclusions from these data. Participants will also receive science and math application problems to take back and use in the classroom tomorrow.

A registration fee of $25 covers continental breakfast, lunch and snacks. The deadline to register is May 3, 2013.

For more information and to register, visit: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/education/index.cfm?page=373

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Monday, April 29, 2013

Herschel Completes Its 'Cool' Journey in Space

News release: 2013-150 April 18, 2013

Herschel Completes Its 'Cool' Journey in Space

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-150&cid=release_2013-150

PASADENA, Calif. -- The Herschel observatory, a European space telescope for which NASA helped build instruments and process data, has stopped making observations after running out of liquid coolant as expected.

The European Space Agency mission, launched almost four years ago, revealed the universe's "coolest" secrets by observing the frigid side of planet, star and galaxy formation.

"Herschel gave us the opportunity to peer into the dark and cold regions of the universe that are invisible to other telescopes," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate at NASA headquarters in Washington. "This successful mission demonstrates how NASA and ESA can work together to tackle unsolved mysteries in astronomy."

Confirmation the helium is exhausted came today, at the beginning of the spacecraft's daily communication session with its ground station in Western Australia. A clear rise in temperatures was measured in all of Herschel's instruments.

Herschel launched aboard an Ariane 5 rocket from French Guiana in May 2009. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., built components for two of Herschel's three science instruments. NASA also supports the U.S. astronomical community through the agency's Herschel Science Center, located at the California Institute of Technology's Infrared Processing and Analysis Center in Pasadena.

Herschel's detectors were designed to pick up the glow from celestial objects with infrared wavelengths as long as 625 micrometers, which is 1,000 times longer than what we can see with our eyes. Because heat interferes with these devices, they were chilled to temperatures as low as 2 kelvins (minus 271 degrees Celsius, or 456 Fahrenheit) using liquid helium. The detectors also were kept cold by the spacecraft's orbit, which is around a stable point called the second Lagrange point about 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth. This location gave Herschel a better view of the universe.

"Herschel has improved our understanding of how new stars and planets form, but has also raised many new questions," said Paul Goldsmith, NASA Herschel project scientist at JPL. "Astronomers will be following up on Herschel's discoveries with ground-based and future space-based observatories for years to come."

The mission will not be making any more observations, but discoveries will continue. Astronomers still are looking over the data, much of which already is public and available through NASA's Herschel Science Center. The final batch of data will be public in about six months.

"Our goal is to help the U.S. community exploit the nuggets of gold that lie in that data archive," said Phil Appleton, project scientist at the science center.

Highlights of the mission include:

-- Discovering long, filamentary structures in space, dotted with dense star-making knots of material.
-- Detecting definitively, for the first time, oxygen molecules in space, in addition to other never-before-seen molecules. By mapping the molecules in different regions, researchers are learning more about the life cycles of stars and planets and the origins of life.
-- Discovering high-speed outflows around central black holes in active galaxies, which may be clearing out surrounding regions and suppressing future star formation.
-- Opening new views on extremely distant galaxies that could be seen only with Herschel, and providing new information about their high rates of star formation.
-- Following the trail of water molecules from distant galaxies to the clouds of gas between stars to planet-forming solar systems.
-- Examining a comet in our own solar system and finding evidence comets could have brought a substantial fraction of water to Earth.
-- Together with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, discovering a large asteroid belt around the bright star Vega.

Other findings from the mission include the discovery of some of the youngest stars ever seen in the nearby Orion "cradle," and a peculiar planet-forming disk of material surrounding the star TW Hydra, indicating planet formation may happen over longer periods of time than expected. Herschel also has shown stars interact with their environment in many surprising ways, including leaving trails as they move through clouds of gas and dust. More information is online at http://www.herschel.caltech.edu , http://www.nasa.gov/herschel and http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Herschel .

Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov

J.D. Harrington 202-358-5241
NASA Headquarters, Washington
j.d.harrington@nasa.gov

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NASA Probe Gets Close-Up Views of Large Hurricane on Saturn

News release: 2013-149 April 29, 2013

NASA Probe Gets Close-Up Views of Large Hurricane on Saturn

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-149&cid=release_2013-149

PASADENA, Calif. - NASA's Cassini spacecraft has provided scientists the first close-up, visible-light views of a behemoth hurricane swirling around Saturn's north pole.

In high-resolution pictures and video, scientists see the hurricane's eye is about 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) wide, 20 times larger than the average hurricane eye on Earth. Thin, bright clouds at the outer edge of the hurricane are traveling 330 mph(150 meters per second). The hurricane swirls inside a large, mysterious, six-sided weather pattern known as the hexagon.

"We did a double take when we saw this vortex because it looks so much like a hurricane on Earth," said Andrew Ingersoll, a Cassini imaging team member at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "But there it is at Saturn, on a much larger scale, and it is somehow getting by on the small amounts of water vapor in Saturn's hydrogen atmosphere."

Scientists will be studying the hurricane to gain insight into hurricanes on Earth, which feed off warm ocean water. Although there is no body of water close to these clouds high in Saturn's atmosphere, learning how these Saturnian storms use water vapor could tell scientists more about how terrestrial hurricanes are generated and sustained.

Both a terrestrial hurricane and Saturn's north polar vortex have a central eye with no clouds or very low clouds. Other similar features include high clouds forming an eye wall, other high clouds spiraling around the eye, and a counter-clockwise spin in the northern hemisphere.

A major difference between the hurricanes is that the one on Saturn is much bigger than its counterparts on Earth and spins surprisingly fast. At Saturn, the wind in the eye wall blows more than four times faster than hurricane-force winds on Earth. Unlike terrestrial hurricanes, which tend to move, the Saturnian hurricane is locked onto the planet's north pole. On Earth, hurricanes tend to drift northward because of the forces acting on the fast swirls of wind as the planet rotates. The one on Saturn does not drift and is already as far north as it can be.

"The polar hurricane has nowhere else to go, and that's likely why it's stuck at the pole," said Kunio Sayanagi, a Cassini imaging team associate at Hampton University in Hampton, Va.

Scientists believe the massive storm has been churning for years. When Cassini arrived in the Saturn system in 2004, Saturn's north pole was dark because the planet was in the middle of its north polar winter. During that time, the Cassini spacecraft's composite infrared spectrometer and visual and infrared mapping spectrometer detected a great vortex, but a visible-light view had to wait for the passing of the equinox in August 2009. Only then did sunlight begin flooding Saturn's northern hemisphere. The view required a change in the angle of Cassini's orbits around Saturn so the spacecraft could see the poles.

"Such a stunning and mesmerizing view of the hurricane-like storm at the north pole is only possible because Cassini is on a sportier course, with orbits tilted to loop the spacecraft above and below Saturn's equatorial plane," said Scott Edgington, Cassini deputy project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "You cannot see the polar regions very well from an equatorial orbit. Observing the planet from different vantage points reveals more about the cloud layers that cover the entirety of the planet."

Cassini changes its orbital inclination for such an observing campaign only once every few years. Because the spacecraft uses flybys of Saturn's moon Titan to change the angle of its orbit, the inclined trajectories require attentive oversight from navigators. The path requires careful planning years in advance and sticking very precisely to the planned itinerary to ensure enough propellant is available for the spacecraft to reach future planned orbits and encounters.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team consists of scientists from the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

Images and two versions of a movie of the hurricane can be viewed online at: http://go.usa.gov/TQSB .

For more information about Cassini and its mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov .

Jia-Rui C. Cook 818-354-0850
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
jccook@jpl.nasa.gov

Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726
NASA Headquarters, Washington
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

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Saturday, April 27, 2013

ScienceDaily: Astronomy News

Astronomer studies far-off worlds through 'characterization by proxy'

Posted: 26 Apr 2013 08:46 AM PDT

An astronomer is using Earth's interstellar neighbors to learn the nature of certain stars too far away to be directly measured or observed, and the planets they may host.

ScienceDaily: Extrasolar Planets News

Astronomer studies far-off worlds through 'characterization by proxy'

Posted: 26 Apr 2013 08:46 AM PDT

An astronomer is using Earth's interstellar neighbors to learn the nature of certain stars too far away to be directly measured or observed, and the planets they may host.

ScienceDaily: Stars News

Astronomer studies far-off worlds through 'characterization by proxy'

Posted: 26 Apr 2013 08:46 AM PDT

An astronomer is using Earth's interstellar neighbors to learn the nature of certain stars too far away to be directly measured or observed, and the planets they may host.

Friday, April 26, 2013

ScienceDaily: Extrasolar Planets News

TRAPPIST participated in the detection of ten percent of all transiting exoplanets known to date

Posted: 25 Apr 2013 07:32 AM PDT

Among the many planets detected orbiting other stars (exoplanets) over the last twenty years, a little less than three hundred periodically pass in front of their star. This is what astronomers call a planetary transit. Exoplanets that "transit" their stars are key objects for the study of other planetary systems, because they are the only planets beyond our solar system that can be studied in detail, both in terms of their physical parameters (mass, radius, orbital parameters) and their atmospheric properties (thermal structure, dynamics, composition).

ScienceDaily: Astronomy News

NASA probe observes meteors colliding with Saturn's rings
Einstein's gravity theory passes toughest test yet
Entire galaxies feel the heat from newborn stars: Bursts of star birth can curtail future galaxy growth
TRAPPIST participated in the detection of ten percent of all transiting exoplanets known to date

NASA probe observes meteors colliding with Saturn's rings

Posted: 25 Apr 2013 11:46 AM PDT

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has provided the first direct evidence of small meteoroids breaking into streams of rubble and crashing into Saturn's rings. These observations make Saturn's rings the only location besides Earth, the moon and Jupiter where scientists and amateur astronomers have been able to observe impacts as they occur. Studying the impact rate of meteoroids from outside the Saturnian system helps scientists understand how different planet systems in our solar system formed.

Einstein's gravity theory passes toughest test yet

Posted: 25 Apr 2013 11:22 AM PDT

A strange stellar pair nearly 7,000 light-years from Earth has provided physicists with a unique cosmic laboratory for studying the nature of gravity. The extremely strong gravity of a massive neutron star in orbit with a companion white dwarf star puts competing theories of gravity to a test more stringent than any available before.

Entire galaxies feel the heat from newborn stars: Bursts of star birth can curtail future galaxy growth

Posted: 25 Apr 2013 07:33 AM PDT

Astronomers have shown for the first time that bursts of star formation have a major impact far beyond the boundaries of their host galaxy. These energetic events can affect galactic gas at distances of up to twenty times greater than the visible size of the galaxy -- altering how the galaxy evolves, and how matter and energy is spread throughout the Universe.

TRAPPIST participated in the detection of ten percent of all transiting exoplanets known to date

Posted: 25 Apr 2013 07:32 AM PDT

ScienceDaily: Galaxies News

Entire galaxies feel the heat from newborn stars: Bursts of star birth can curtail future galaxy growth

Posted: 25 Apr 2013 07:33 AM PDT

ScienceDaily: Stars News

Einstein's gravity theory passes toughest test yet
Entire galaxies feel the heat from newborn stars: Bursts of star birth can curtail future galaxy growth
TRAPPIST participated in the detection of ten percent of all transiting exoplanets known to date

Einstein's gravity theory passes toughest test yet

Posted: 25 Apr 2013 11:22 AM PDT

Entire galaxies feel the heat from newborn stars: Bursts of star birth can curtail future galaxy growth

Posted: 25 Apr 2013 07:33 AM PDT

TRAPPIST participated in the detection of ten percent of all transiting exoplanets known to date

Posted: 25 Apr 2013 07:32 AM PDT

Thursday, April 25, 2013

NASA Probe Observes Meteors Colliding with Saturn's Rings

News release: 2013-147 April 25, 2013

NASA Probe Observes Meteors Colliding with Saturn's Rings

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-147&cid=release_2013-147

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Cassini spacecraft has provided the first direct evidence of small meteoroids breaking into streams of rubble and crashing into Saturn's rings.

These observations make Saturn's rings the only location besides Earth, the moon and Jupiter where scientists and amateur astronomers have been able to observe impacts as they occur. Studying the impact rate of meteoroids from outside the Saturnian system helps scientists understand how different planet systems in our solar system formed.

The solar system is full of small, speeding objects. These objects frequently pummel planetary bodies. The meteoroids at Saturn are estimated to range from about one-half inch to several yards (1 centimeter to several meters) in size. It took scientists years to distinguish tracks left by nine meteoroids in 2005, 2009 and 2012.

Details of the observations appear in a paper in the Thursday, April 25 edition of Science.

Results from Cassini have already shown Saturn's rings act as very effective detectors of many kinds of surrounding phenomena, including the interior structure of the planet and the orbits of its moons. For example, a subtle but extensive corrugation that ripples 12,000 miles (19,000 kilometers) across the innermost rings tells of a very large meteoroid impact in 1983.

"These new results imply the current-day impact rates for small particles at Saturn are about the same as those at Earth -- two very different neighborhoods in our solar system -- and this is exciting to see," said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "It took Saturn's rings acting like a giant meteoroid detector -- 100 times the surface area of the Earth -- and Cassini's long-term tour of the Saturn system to address this question."

The Saturnian equinox in summer 2009 was an especially good time to see the debris left by meteoroid impacts. The very shallow sun angle on the rings caused the clouds of debris to look bright against the darkened rings in pictures from Cassini's imaging science subsystem.

"We knew these little impacts were constantly occurring, but we didn't know how big or how frequent they might be, and we didn't necessarily expect them to take the form of spectacular shearing clouds," said Matt Tiscareno, lead author of the paper and a Cassini participating scientist at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. "The sunlight shining edge-on to the rings at the Saturnian equinox acted like an anti-cloaking device, so these usually invisible features became plain to see."

Tiscareno and his colleagues now think meteoroids of this size probably break up on a first encounter with the rings, creating smaller, slower pieces that then enter into orbit around Saturn. The impact into the rings of these secondary meteoroid bits kicks up the clouds. The tiny particles forming these clouds have a range of orbital speeds around Saturn. The clouds they form soon are pulled into diagonal, extended bright streaks.

"Saturn's rings are unusually bright and clean, leading some to suggest that the rings are actually much younger than Saturn," said Jeff Cuzzi, a co-author of the paper and a Cassini interdisciplinary scientist specializing in planetary rings and dust at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. "To assess this dramatic claim, we must know more about the rate at which outside material is bombarding the rings. This latest analysis helps fill in that story with detection of impactors of a size that we weren't previously able to detect directly."

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. JPL designed, developed and assembled the Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras. The imaging team consists of scientists from the United States, England, France and Germany. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

For images of the impacts and information about Cassini, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov .

Jia-Rui C. Cook 818-354-0850
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
jccook@jpl.nasa.gov

Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726
NASA Headquarters, Washington
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

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ScienceDaily: Astronomy News

Mysterious hot spots observed in cool red supergiant
Looking for life by the light of dying stars
Universality of circular polarization in star- and planet-forming regions: Implications for the origin of homochirality of life

Mysterious hot spots observed in cool red supergiant

Posted: 24 Apr 2013 07:24 PM PDT

Astronomers have released a new image of the outer atmosphere of Betelgeuse – one of the nearest red supergiants to Earth – revealing the detailed structure of the matter being thrown off the star.

Looking for life by the light of dying stars

Posted: 24 Apr 2013 08:23 AM PDT

Astronomers have now demonstrated that with the advanced technology available in the next decade we should be able to detect biomarkers like oxygen and methane in the planets that orbit dead stars called "white dwarfs" -- and to find new forms of life on those planets.

Universality of circular polarization in star- and planet-forming regions: Implications for the origin of homochirality of life

Posted: 23 Apr 2013 06:09 AM PDT

A research team in Japan has performed deep imaging linear and circular polarimetry of the 'Cat's Paw Nebula' (NGC 6334) located in the constellation Scorpius, successfully detecting high degrees of circular polarization (CP) of as much as 22% in NGC 6334. The detected CP degree is the highest ever observed.

ScienceDaily: Extrasolar Planets News

Looking for life by the light of dying stars

Posted: 24 Apr 2013 08:23 AM PDT

ScienceDaily: Stars News

Mysterious hot spots observed in cool red supergiant
Looking for life by the light of dying stars
Universality of circular polarization in star- and planet-forming regions: Implications for the origin of homochirality of life

Mysterious hot spots observed in cool red supergiant

Posted: 24 Apr 2013 07:24 PM PDT

Looking for life by the light of dying stars

Posted: 24 Apr 2013 08:23 AM PDT

Universality of circular polarization in star- and planet-forming regions: Implications for the origin of homochirality of life

Posted: 23 Apr 2013 06:09 AM PDT

ScienceDaily: Nebulae News

Universality of circular polarization in star- and planet-forming regions: Implications for the origin of homochirality of life

Posted: 23 Apr 2013 06:09 AM PDT

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

NASA Invites the Public to Fly Along with Voyager

News feature: 2013-146 April 24, 2013

NASA Invites the Public to Fly Along with Voyager

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-146&cid=release_2013-146

A gauge on the Voyager home page, http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov, tracks levels of two of the three key signs scientists believe will appear when the spacecraft leave our solar neighborhood and enter interstellar space.

When the three signs are verified, scientists will know that one of the Voyagers has hurtled beyond the magnetic bubble the sun blows around itself, which is known as the heliosphere.

The gauge indicates the level of fast-moving charged particles, mainly protons, originating from far outside the heliosphere, and the level of slower-moving charged particles, also mainly protons, from inside the heliosphere. If the level of outside particles jumps dramatically and the level of inside particles drops precipitously, and these two levels hold steady, that means one of the spacecraft is closing in on the edge of interstellar space. These data are updated every six hours.

Scientists then need only see a change in the direction of the magnetic field to confirm that the spacecraft has sailed beyond the breath of the solar wind and finally arrived into the vast cosmic ocean between stars. The direction of the magnetic field, however, requires periodic instrument calibrations and complicated analyses. These analyses typically take a few months to return after the charged particle data are received on Earth.

Voyager 1, the most distant human-made spacecraft, appears to have reached this last region before interstellar space, which scientists have called "the magnetic highway." Inside particles are zooming out and outside particles are zooming in. However, Voyager 1 has not yet seen a change in the direction of the magnetic field, so the consensus among the Voyager team is that it has not yet left the heliosphere.

Voyager 2, the longest-operating spacecraft, but not as distant as Voyager 1, does not yet appear to have reached the magnetic highway, though it has recently seen some modest drops of the inside particle level.

NASA's Eyes on the Solar System program, a Web-based, video-game-like tool to journey with NASA's spacecraft through the solar system, has added a Voyager module that takes viewers along for a ride with Voyager 1 as it explores the outer limits of the heliosphere. Time has been sped up to show one day per second. Rolls and other maneuvers are incorporated into the program, based on actual spacecraft navigation data. The charged particle data are also shown. Visit that module at: http://1.usa.gov/13uYqGP .

The Voyager spacecraft were built and continue to be operated by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. The Voyager missions are a part of NASA's Heliophysics System Observatory, sponsored by the Heliophysics Division of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

For more information about the Voyager spacecraft, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/voyager and http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov .

Jia-Rui C. Cook 818-354-0850
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
jccook@jpl.nasa.gov

2013-146

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ScienceDaily: Astronomy News

Galaxy goes green in burning stellar fuel
Hubble captures comet ISON
Jupiter's atmosphere still contains water supplied by the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet impact

Galaxy goes green in burning stellar fuel

Posted: 23 Apr 2013 12:37 PM PDT

Astronomers have spotted the "greenest" of galaxies, one that converts fuel into stars with almost 100-percent efficiency. The findings come from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the IRAM Plateau de Bure interferometer in the French Alps.

Hubble captures comet ISON

Posted: 23 Apr 2013 10:40 AM PDT

When the Hubble picture of ISON was taken on April 10, the comet was slightly closer than Jupiter's orbit at a distance of 386 million miles from the Sun. Hubble photographed a jet blasting dust particles off the sunward-facing side of the comet's nucleus. Preliminary measurements suggest that ISON's nucleus is no larger than three or four miles across.

Jupiter's atmosphere still contains water supplied by the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet impact

Posted: 23 Apr 2013 07:23 AM PDT

Researchers are reporting Herschel observations of water in Jupiter's stratosphere. It is a clear remnant of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet impact on Jupiter nearly 20 years ago.