GRAIL mission returns first video of Moon’s far side

A camera aboard one of NASA’s twin Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) lunar spacecraft has returned its first unique view of the far side of the moon. MoonKAM, or Moon Knowledge Acquired by Middle school students, will be used by students nationwide to select lunar images for study.

GRAIL consists of two identical spacecraft, recently named Ebb and Flow, each of which is equipped with a MoonKAM. The images were taken as part of a test of Ebb’s MoonKAM on Jan. 19. The GRAIL project plans to test the MoonKAM aboard Flow at a later date.

Remnant of an Explosion With a Powerful Kick?

NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory has detected a compact object within the supernova remnant G350.1+0.3 that may be the dense core of the star that exploded. The position of this likely neutron star is well away from the center of the X-ray emission. If the supernova explosion occurred near the center of the X-ray emission then the neutron star must have received a powerful kick in the supernova explosion.

This supernova remnant is between 600 and 1,200 years old. If the estimated location of the explosion is correct, this means that the neutron star has been moving at a speed of at least 3 million miles per hour since the explosion. This is comparable to the exceptionally high speed derived for the neutron star in Puppis A and provides new evidence that extremely powerful “kicks” can be imparted to neutron stars from supernova explosions.

Another intriguing aspect of G350.1+0.3 is its unusual shape. While many supernova remnants are nearly circular, G350.1+0.3 is strikingly asymmetrical as seen in the Chandra data in this image (gold). Infrared data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope (light blue) also trace the morphology found by Chandra. Astronomers think that this bizarre shape is due to the stellar debris field expanding into a nearby cloud of cold molecular gas.

Eta Carinae Nebula

This image is a colour composite of Eta Carinae Nebula made from exposures from the Digitized Sky Survey 2 (DSS2). It is located about 7500 light-years away in the constellation of the same name and it spans 100 light-years. It is an intensive star-forming region with dark lanes of cool dust splitting up the glowing nebula gas that surrounds its many clusters of stars.

NGC 3324: A Pocket of Star Formation

This new view shows a stellar nursery called NGC 3324, located in the southern constellation of Carina roughly 7500 light-years from Earth. It is on the northern outskirts of the chaotic environment of the Carina Nebula, which has been sculpted by many other pockets of star formation.

A rich deposit of gas and dust in the NGC 3324 region fuelled a burst of starbirth there several millions of years ago and led to the creation of several hefty and very hot stars that are prominent in the new picture. Stellar winds and intense radiation from these young stars have blown open a cavity in the surrounding gas and dust. This is most in evidence as the wall of material seen to the centre right of the image.

The ultraviolet radiation from the hot young stars knocks electrons out of hydrogen atoms, which are then recaptured, leading to a characteristic crimson-coloured glow as the electrons cascade through the energy levels, showing the extent of the local diffuse gas. Other colours come from other elements, with the characteristic glow from doubly ionised oxygen making the central parts appear greenish-yellow.

A Massive Star and Its Cradle

This star-forming region, captured by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, is dominated by the bright, young star IRAS 13481-6124 (upper left), which is about twenty times the mass of our sun and five times its radius, and is surrounded by its pre-natal cocoon.

It is the first massive baby star for which astronomers could obtain a detailed look at the dusty disk closely encircling it. The research provides direct evidence that massive stars do form in the same way as their smaller brethren.

From this archival Spitzer image, as well as from observations done with the APEX 12-metre sub-millimetre telescope, astronomers discovered the presence of a jet, hinting at the presence of a disk. This was then confirmed by observations made with the European Southern Observatory Very Large Telescope Interferometer.

This picture was taken with Spitzer’s infrared array camera. It is a four-color composite, in which light with a wavelength of 3.6 microns is blue; 4.5-micron light is green; 5.8-micron light is orange; and 8-micron light is red. Dust appears red-orange and most stars are blue, though ones deeply embedded within dust (like IRAS 13481-6124) take on greenish-yellow tints.

Pulverized Planet Dust May Lie Around Double Stars

Tight double-star systems might not be the best places for life to spring up, according to a new study using data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. The infrared observatory spotted a surprisingly large amount of dust around three mature, close-orbiting star pairs. Where did the dust come from? Astronomers say it might be the aftermath of tremendous planetary collisions.

The particular class of double stars in the study, RS Canum Venaticorums (RS CVns for short), are separated by only about two million miles, or two percent of the distance between Earth and our sun. The stellar pairs orbit around each other every few days, with one face on each star perpetually locked and pointed toward the other.

The close-knit stars are similar to the sun in size and are probably about a billion to a few billion years old — roughly the age of our sun when life first evolved on Earth. But these stars spin much faster, and, as a result, have powerful magnetic fields, and giant, dark spots. The magnetic activity drives strong stellar winds that slow the stars down, pulling the twirling duos closer over time. And this is where the planetary chaos may begin.

As the stars cozy up to each other, their gravitational influences change, and this could cause disturbances to planetary bodies orbiting around both stars. Comets and any planets that may exist in the systems would start jostling about and banging into each other, sometimes in powerful collisions.

Above: (1) This artist’s concept illustrates an imminent planetary collision around a pair of double stars. (2) This artist’s concept illustrates a tight pair of stars and a surrounding disk of dust — most likely the shattered remains of planetary smashups.

Dusty Beginnings of a Star

This artist’s rendering gives us a glimpse into a cosmic nursery as a star is born from the dark, swirling dust and gas of this cloud.

Stars form when dark dust from the cloud begins to clump together under the influence of its own gravity. The infalling material forms a disk as it spirals inward, which feeds material onto the forming star at its center. Jets of material that shoot from the inner disk and protostar herald its birth.

Planets form out of the remnants of the disk of material that surrounds the infant star. This leads to a question that has long perplexed astronomers about the nature of brown dwarfs, objects that fall between planets and stars in terms of their temperature and mass.

Are brown dwarfs born like stars, as in this rendering, or do they form like planets orbiting another star? A study by researchers using data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has led to the preliminary conclusion that they are formed much like the star you see here.

Spitzer Discovers Largest Ring Around Saturn

NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has discovered an enormous ring around Saturn –€” by far the largest of the giant planet’s many rings.

The new belt lies at the far reaches of the Saturnian system, with an orbit tilted 27 degrees from the main ring plane. The bulk of its material starts about six million kilometers away from the planet and extends outward roughly another 12 million kilometers. One of Saturn’s farthest moons, Phoebe, circles within the newfound ring, and is likely the source of its material.

Saturn’s newest halo is thick, too –€” its vertical height is about 20 times the diameter of the planet. It would take about one billion Earths stacked together to fill the ring. The ring itself is tenuous, made up of a thin array of ice and dust particles. Spitzer’s infrared eyes were able to spot the glow of the band’s cool dust.

The ring would be difficult to see with visible-light telescopes. Its particles are diffuse and may even extend beyond the bulk of the ring material all the way in to Saturn and all the way out to interplanetary space. The relatively small numbers of particles in the ring wouldn’t reflect much visible light, especially out at Saturn where sunlight is weak.

Spitzer was able to sense the glow of the cool dust, which is only about 80 Kelvin (minus 316 degrees Fahrenheit). Cool objects shine with infrared, or thermal radiation; for example, even a cup of ice cream is blazing with infrared light. By focusing on the glow of the ring’s cool dust, Spitzer made it easy to find.

Chemical Soups Around Cool Stars

This artist’s conception shows a young, hypothetical planet around a cool star. A soupy mix of potentially life-forming chemicals can be seen pooling around the base of the jagged rocks. Observations from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope hint that planets around cool stars — the so-called M-dwarfs and brown dwarfs that are widespread throughout our galaxy — might possess a different mix of life-forming, or prebiotic, chemicals than our young Earth.

Life on our planet is thought to have arisen out of a pond-scum-like mix of chemicals. Some of these chemicals are thought to have come from a planet-forming disk of gas and dust that swirled around our young sun. Meteorites carrying the chemicals might have crash-landed on Earth.

Astronomers don’t know if these same life-generating processes are taking place around stars that are cooler than our sun, but the Spitzer observations show their disk chemistry is different. Spitzer detected a prebiotic molecule, called hydrogen cyanide, in the disks around yellow stars like our sun, but found none around cooler, less massive, reddish stars. Hydrogen cyanide is a carbon-containing, or organic compound. Five hydrogen cyanide molecules can join up to make adenine — a chemical element of the DNA molecule found in all living organisms on Earth.

Mars: The Floor of Toro Crater

Toro Crater may have experienced hydrothermal alteration, producing diverse minerals. The mineral diversity leads to diverse color in HiRISE, especially when enhanced as in this subimage. In general the blue and green colors indicate unaltered minerals like pyroxene and olivine, whereas the warmer colors indicate alteration into clays and other minerals. The linear north-south trending features are windblown dunes that are much younger than the bedrock.

Undulating Terrain in Vesta’s Southern Hemisphere

This shows some of the undulating terrain in the Urbinia quadrangle of Vesta’s southern hemisphere. This undulating terrain consists of linear, curving hills and depressions, which are most distinct in the right of the image. Many narrow, linear grooves run in various directions across this undulating terrain. There are some craters, less than 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) in diameter, in the bottom of the image with bright material surrounding them.

Cratered terrain in Vesta’s equatorial region

This image shows heavily cratered terrain in the Lucaria Tholus quadrangle of Vesta’s equatorial region. The craters have a wide range of sizes and have many different forms, which include fresh, degraded and some that are barely visible because they are so degraded. NASA’s Dawn spacecraft obtained this image with its framing camera on Oct. 23, 2011 from a distance of 700 kilometers.

Moonset from the space station

On January 9, 2012, astronauts on the International Space Station took this amazing footage of the moon setting behind the Earth’s limb. Air near the horizon is thicker, and acts like a lens. That bends the light from the bottom of the Moon up, squashing the Moon’s shape as you watch!

The Earth by night and the Orion constellation

Another astonishing shot from ESA astronaut, Andre Kuipers, onboard the International Space Station. The Orion constellation can be seen rising in the centre of this image, above the Earth at night.

Gulf of Mexico

With parts of two Russian spacecraft docked to the International Space Station in the foreground, this image from the orbital outpost shows the Gulf of Mexico and parts of Texas and Mexico. One of the Expedition 30 crew members took the photograph on Dec. 29, 2011. The two spacecraft are a Soyuz in the foreground, and a Progress, partially visible at top right.