Tag: science

Deformed Martian craters

2:04 pm

Deformed Martian craters
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on September 3, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The focus of the image for the MRO science team were the wedding cake layers inside the largest crater. These layers suggest glacial ice, with the layers suggesting multiple cycles of glacial ebb and flow. Since the crater is at 43 degrees north latitude, and sits in the chaos region dubbed Protonilus Mensae, smack dab in the center of what I call Mars’ glacier country, this conclusion makes perfect sense.

To my eye, however, the most interesting feature of this photo are the many distorted craters. The overview map below shows the picture’s location, as well as several nearby very large impact craters which might have caused many secondary impacts, including the many craters at this location.
» Read more

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Hugging galaxies

2:25 pm

Hugging galaxies
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The Hubble Space Telescope science team today released the photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, of the interaction of three galaxies, the larger two of which look like they are hugging each other.

This galaxy triplet is estimated to be about just under 700 million light years away. It was taken as part of a program aimed at producing high quality images of strange looking galaxies.

Using Hubble’s powerful Advanced Camera for Surveys, astronomers took a closer look at some of the more unusual galaxies that volunteers identified. The original Galaxy Zoo project was the largest galaxy census ever carried out and relied on crowdsourcing time from more than 100,000 volunteers to classify 900,000 unexamined galaxies. The project achieved what would have been years of work for a professional astronomer in only 175 days and has led to a steady stream of similar astronomical citizen science projects. Later Galaxy Zoo projects have included the largest ever studies of galaxy mergers and tidal dwarf galaxies, as well as the discovery of entirely new types of compact star-forming galaxies.

If you want to do some real science, you should definitely check out the Galaxy Zoo webpage. Anyone can join in, using images produced by the Victor Blanco 156 inch (4 meter) telescope in Chile to find cool stuff that needs closer examination using better telescopes like Hubble.

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Gehrels-Swift returns to science operations

2:13 pm

The Gehrels-Swift orbiting space telescope has returned to full science operations, after engineers determined the shut down on January 18th was caused by the failure of one reaction wheel and uploaded software allowing the telescope to function using only its remaining five gyroscopes.

In the last two decades satellite engineers have developed a range of software to allow spacecraft to point with acceptable accuracy using as few as two gyroscopes, even one in some circumstances. Thus, Gehrels-Swift has significant margin with five working reaction wheels.

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Chandra in safe mode

9:11 am

The Chandra X-ray Observatory last week experienced a loss of power that caused engineers to put the science instruments on the space telescope into safe mode while they investigate the problem.

No further information is presently available.

Chandra has been in orbit since 1999, and is now on an extended mission through 2025. It would be a great tragedy if it failed now, just as the infrared Webb telescope is about to begin operations. The two space telescopes are complementary.

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Cracking ice on Mars?

12:43 pm

Cracking ice on Mars?
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on December 7, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the MRO science team dubs “erosion of scalloped terrain” in the northern lowland plains of Mars.

The cracks invoke the polygon cracks one sees in mud as it dries. The circular feature suggests a buried crater whose shape is merely suggested because the cracks are conforming to the underground topography.

Are we looking at dried mud? Maybe, but more likely we are seeing a sheet of ice now sublimating away and cracking as it does so. If you look at the full photo you will see the cracked material also appears to drape itself over several nearby low ridges, something that seems more likely from ice than mud.

The overview map below also suggests this is a buried layer of ice.
» Read more

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First image from IXPE

3:29 pm

Supernova remnant Cassiopeia A as seen by IXPE

NASA today released the first image produced from its new X-ray space telescope, the Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE).

The photo to the right is that image, showing the intensity of X-rays coming from the supernovae remnant Cassiopeia A. From the caption:

Colors ranging from cool purple and blue to red and hot white correspond with the increasing brightness of the X-rays. The image was created using X-ray data collected by IXPE between Jan. 11-18.

Though Chandra also detects objects in X-rays, IXPE will also detect their polarization, or the way the rays are oriented as they travel through space.

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Curiosity looks out across the mountains

12:20 pm

Curiosity panorama, Sol 3387, February 15, 2022
Click for high resolution. Original images found here and here.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! The mosaic above, created from two photos taken by Curiosity’s left navigation camera and downloaded from the rover today, looks to the southeast across the small rocky valley the rover has been traversing for the past two months towards Mount Sharp.

The rover had entered this valley through the nearest gap on the left, then traveled uphill from the left to the right until it had passed behind the nearest dark ridge on the right. It then retreated and turned left, starting uphill through Gordon Notch, as shown in the overview map to the right.

On the overview, the white line marks Curiosity’s past travels, with red dotted line indicating its planned future route. The yellow lines indicate the approximate view in the panorama above.

For scale, Navarro Mountain is about 450 feet tall. The actual peak of Mount Sharp is blocked by the white front range to the left. The rover is presently still 12,600 feet below that peak, which sits to the southeast about 35 miles away.

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Astronomers form lobbying group to block development on Moon’s far side

9:14 am

Lunar zone reserved solely for astronomers
Lunar zone reserved exclusively for radio astronomers

In order to allow them to someday in the future maybe consider the idea of possibly building space-based radio telescopes on the Moon, astronomers have now formed a new lobbying group to advocate the creation of a zone more than a thousand miles wide on the Moon’s far side where all future development will be forbidden.

The new committee is chaired by Claudio Maccone, an Italian SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) astronomer, space scientist and mathematician. Maccone supports creation of a Protected Antipode Circle or PAC, a large circular piece of lunar landscape about 1,130 miles (1,820 kilometers) wide that would become the most shielded area of the moon’s far side.

“PAC does not overlap with other areas of interest to human activity,” he said. “PAC is the only area of the far side that will never be reached by the radiation emitted by future space bases located at the L4 and L5 Lagrangian points of the Earth-moon system.”

In view of these unique features, Maccone believes the PAC should be officially recognized by the United Nations as an international protected area, where radio contamination by humans is curbed, now and into the future.

In other words, these astronomers want to be given, for free, full ownership of the region in the center circle on the graphic above for future radio telescopes, even though at present they have no plans or projects to build such things.

Though the idea of creating a region protected from radio signals so that good radio astronomy can be conducted has merit, no one should have the slightest sympathy for this request by astronomers. Why should anyone give them this vast amount of real estate when astronomers have shown so little interest in building any telescopes in space, anywhere?

Only after the astronomical community finally proposes an actual radio telescope for installation at this site should this request be given the slightest attention. Before that, it is merely a stupid power grab by elitists who deserve nothing from nobody.

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The lie that was COVID

12:25 pm

How governments determined policy against COVID
How our governments determined policy against COVID during
the past two years.

Almost two years after the first arrival of the Wuhan virus into the United States, we now can look back at what has transpired and come to some solid conclusions about this respiratory illness as well as the draconian panic-based responses by governments and many citizens.

The most significant take-away from this review is simple: Routinely, government officials, especially those in states controlled by Democrats, lied repeatedly in order to create fear and terror in the general population. Almost every claim they made, edict they declared, or mandate they ordered, was either an outright lie, or designed to obscure the truth. Let’s take them one-by-one.

The models

Almost immediately, politicians, health officials, and government scientists began touting a variety of computer models, with the model [pdf] put forth by scientists at Imperial College leading the way, that claimed millions would die if some short-term draconian measures were not taken immediately. Governments and corporations had to impose very temporary two-week lockdowns, social distancing, and mask mandates to slow the spread of COVID in order to reduce the immediate impact and thus avoid hospitals and health facilities from being overrun.

In other words, we were told that by simply under-going two weeks of martial law, the curve would flatten, hospitals would be able to handle the increased but controllable influx of patients, and we could then go back to normal.

This was an outright lie. » Read more

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A floating Martian rock

9:21 am

Mosiac of top of butte
For original images, click here and here.

A floating Martian rock
Click for original photo.

Cool image time! As Curiosity begins the slow and careful journey up through the rocky Gordon Notch onto the even rockier Greenheugh Pedimont layer above, the science team is using its cameras to take pictures of the buttes that form the northern and southern walls of that notch.

The mosiac above and the photo to the right, both cropped and reduced to post here, is one beautiful example. Taken by Curiosity’s high resolution camera on February 11th, both images show the consequences on geology of Mars’ low gravity, one third that of Earth’s. The top image shows the entire top of the butte, with the picture to the right focusing on one boulder that almost seems to be floating in the air. Look close and you can see daylight under the rock’s entire left half.

I think this butte is the north wall of Gordon Notch, but am not sure. Either way, the photos once again demonstrate that it is very dangerous to assign our Earth-based assumptions to Martian geology. There may be similarities, but the differences must not be ignored, or else our conclusions about what we see will be wrong.

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Rocket stage to hit Moon is from Chinese rocket, not Falcon 9 upper stage

6:22 pm

Astronomers have now concluded that the rocket stage that will impact the Moon on March 4th is not an abandoned the Falcon 9 upper stage that launched the DISCOVR satellite in 2015, but an upper stage from a Chinese rocket.

It was an engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Jon Giorgini, who realized this object was not in fact the upper stage of a Falcon 9 rocket. He wrote to Gray on Saturday morning explaining that the DSCOVR spacecraft’s trajectory did not go particularly close to the Moon, and that it would therefore be a little strange if the second stage strayed close enough to strike it. This prompted Gray to dig back into his data, and identify other potential candidates.

He soon found one—the Chinese Chang’e 5-T1 mission launched in October 2014 on a Long March 3C rocket. This lunar mission sent a small spacecraft to the Moon as a precursor test for an eventual lunar sample return mission. The launch time and lunar trajectory are almost an exact match for the orbit of the object that will hit the Moon in March.

Regardless, it will be very useful to pindown the exact impact time and place so that astronomers can observe it.

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Global image of Mars from UAE’s Al-Amal orbiter

10:23 am

Mars as seen by Al-Amal in January 2022
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The United Arab Emirates (UAE) today released several new images taken by its Al-Amal Mars orbiter, showing the changing atmospheric conditions on Mars between September ’21 and January ’22.

The photo to the right, cropped and annotated by me, is the January image, showing the dust storm conditions that presently exist in the equatorial regions of Mars. The lighter puffy cloud-like features in the center of the image are a 1,500 mile wide dust storm centered on the equator. The white dot indicates the approximate spot where Perseverance sits in Jezero Crater, within that storm.

The previous Al-Amal image from September (available at the link) shows the whole Martian hemisphere with generally clear skies.

Below is a recent photo taken by Perseverance illustrating these dusty conditions.
» Read more

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