Tag: science

Webb produces false color infrared image of the Crab Nebula

9:30 am

The Crab Nebula as in infrared by Webb
Click for original image.

The false-color infrared picture to the right, reduced and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Webb Space Telescope of the Crab Nebula, located 6,500 light years away and created when a star went supernova in 1054 AD, in order to better understand its make-up and origins. From the caption:

The supernova remnant is comprised of several different components, including doubly ionized sulfur (represented in green), warm dust (magenta), and synchrotron emission (blue). Yellow-white mottled filaments within the Crab’s interior represent areas where dust and doubly ionized sulfur coincide.

The spectroscopic data from this infrared observation has in fact increased the puzzle of the Crab’s origin. Previously the data suggested the supernova that caused it was one type of supernova. This data now suggests it could have been a different type, without precluding the possibility of the first.

“Now the Webb data widen the possible interpretations,” said Tea Temim, lead author of the study at Princeton University in New Jersey. “The composition of the gas no longer requires an electron-capture explosion, but could also be explained by a weak iron core-collapse supernova.”

You can read the published science paper here [pdf].

0 comments

Archaeologists discover 35 glass jars at Mount Vernon from 1700s, most containing edible preserved fruits

11:31 am

During an on-going renovation at George Washington’s Mount Vernon home, archaeologists have discovered 35 glass jars from the 1700s, with most containing preserved cherries and berries that appear completely edible.

Of the 35 bottles, 29 are intact and contain perfectly preserved cherries and berries, likely gooseberries or currants. The contents of each bottle have been carefully extracted, are under refrigeration at Mount Vernon, and will undergo scientific analysis. The bottles are slowly drying in the Mount Vernon archaeology lab and will be sent off-site for conservation.

Only a small quantity of the preserved fruits has been analyzed, with the following results:

  • 54 cherry pits and 23 stems have been identified thus far, suggesting that the bottles were likely full of cherries before bottling. Cherry pulp is also present.
  • Microscopy suggests that the cherries may have been harvested by snipping from trees with shears. The stems were neatly cut and purposefully left attached to the fruit before bottling.
  • The cherries likely are of a tart variety, which has a more acidic composition that may have aided in preservation.
  • The cherries are likely candidates for DNA extraction, which could be compared against a database of heirloom varieties to determine the precise species.
  • The pits are undergoing an examination to determine if any are viable for germination.

The last point is most fascinating. Imagine if a new cherry tree could be grown from a pit that was likely picked when George Washington was alive.

2 comments

Perseverance looks back at downstream Neretva Vallis

9:58 am

Perseverance looks backwards
Click for full resolution version. Highly recommended!

Cool image time! The panorama above was released today by the science team of the Mars rover Perseverance, created from 56 pictures taken by the rover’s high resolution camera. It looks east, downstream into Neretva Vallis, what is believed to be the ancient riverbed that produced the delta that now exists inside Jezero Crater.

The yellow lines in the overview map below indicate the approximate area shown by the panorama. The blue dot marks where Perseverance was located when it took these pictures on May 17, 2024.

Make sure you look at the full resolution image. Neretva Vallis, the depression in the center of the panorama, is about a quarter-mile wide. The green dot on the map marks Ingenuity’s final landing spot. Though the helicopter is somewhere inside that panorama, it does not appear to be visible as it lies on the far side of one of those dunes.

It is also possible that Ingenuity is visible, but is only a tiny dark dot that makes it hard to identify. In reviewing the high resolution image closely, there is one dot that could be Ingenuity.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

0 comments

Study: Dust removal at Jezero 9x greater than InSight landing area

11:41 am

Figure 2 from the paper
Figure 2 from the paper. Click for original.

Using data from the Mars rover Perseverance, scientists have concluded that dust removal rate in Jezero crater is almost ten times greater than where InSight landed in western Elysium Planitia.

The graph, figure 2 from their paper, illustrates that differents starkly. From their abstract:

Dust removal is almost 10 times larger than at InSight’s location: projections indicate that surfaces at Jezero will be periodically partially cleaned. The estimations of the effect of the accumulated dust as a function of time are encouraging for solar-powered missions to regions with similar amounts of dust lifting, which might be determined from orbital data on where dust storms originate, dust devils or their tracks are found, or seasonal albedo changes are noted.

In other words, it might be practical to send solar powered rovers to different places on Mars, if first research was done to see if the conditions there would regularly clear dust from those panels.

This research confirms what had been implied by the different experiences of landers/rovers in different places on Mars. InSight landed near the equator in a region south of the giant shield volcano Elysium Mons. It only survived four years, with steadily lower energy levels, because no wind or dust devil ever cleared the accumulating dust on its solar panels. Spirit meanwhile landed about 1,500 miles southwest of InSight, yet its power levels were still healthy after more than five years of operations, when those operations ended because the rover could no longer move. The rover Opportunity meanwhile on the other side of the planet lasted more than fourteen years. Both rovers relied on solar power, like InSight, but their solar panels kept getting cleared of dust by wind and dust devils.

It is unclear if this wind research has been done for Europe’s Franklin rover, presently scheduled to land in Oxia Planum in 2028. Franklin will rely on solar panels, and though its nominal mission on the surface is only supposed to last seven months, it is always assumed it will continue until the rover fails.

0 comments

Perseverance looks up at the rim of Jezero Crater

1:01 pm

Panorama on June 10, 2024 by Perseverance
Click for full resolution. For original images, go here, here, here, and here.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Cool image time. The panorama above was created from four pictures taken on June 10, 2024 by the left navigation camera on the Mars rover Perseverance (captions found here, here, here, and here). It looks north at the nearest hill that forms the north part of the rim of Jezero Crater.

The overview map to the right provides context. The blue dot marks Perseverance’s present location, when it took these pictures. The yellow lines indicate the approximate area covered by the panorama. The red dotted line marks the rover’s planned route, while the white dotted line the route it has actually taken.

Because the rover is now at the base of this hill, it can no longer see the top of the crater’s rim. What it sees instead is the barren foothills of that rim, covered with dust, dunes, and many broken rocks.

As I have noted numerous times, the utter lack of life marks this as a truly alien landscape, compared to Earth. Nowhere on our home planet would you see terrain this empty of life. While NASA likes to claim that Perseverance’s main mission is the search for life on Mars, that claim is always a lie. It is very unlikely any life is going to be found here by Perseverance, and if that was its true scientific purpose it would never have been built nor launched.

What the scientists are doing is studying the alien geology of Mars, to try to understand how this utterly alien planet got to be the way it is now. Such knowledge is critical for the future explorers of space, as it will make it easier for them to understand the alien landscapes they will find elsewhere, within the solar system and eventually in other solar systems far beyond.

0 comments

Curiosity sees evidence of solar storm hitting Mars

12:11 pm

Charged particles from solar storm
Click to see original three-frame movie.

Cool image time! The picture to the right is a screen capture from a three-frame movie created from photos taken by one of the navigation cameras on the Mars rover Curiosity. The white streak and other smaller streaks were created by charged particles hitting the camera’s CCD detector on May 20, 2024, from a solar storm caused by the strong solar flares presently being pumped out by the Sun.

The mission regularly captures videos to try and catch dust devils, or dust-bearing whirlwinds. While none were spotted in this particular sequence of images, engineers did see streaks and specks – visual artifacts created when charged particles from the Sun hit the camera’s image detector. The particles do not damage the detector.

The images in this sequence appear grainy because navigation-camera images are processed to highlight changes in the landscape from frame to frame. When there isn’t much change — in this case, the rover was parked — more noise appears in the image.

Curiosity’s Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) measured a sharp increase in radiation at this time – the biggest radiation surge the mission has seen since landing in 2012.

The view of this picture is to the south, looking towards the top of Mount Sharp, though that peak, more than 25 miles away, is not visible because the mountain’s lower flanks are in the way. A second movie showing similar charged particle streaks was taken looking south, with the rim of Gale Crater barely visible 20-30 miles away.

0 comments

The gullies on Mars are caused by a variety of factors, linked to both water and carbon dioxide

10:46 am

The global distribution of gullies on Mars
Click for original image.

In doing a detailed global analysis of all the known gullies on Mars, scientists now believe the gullies are formed by a variety of factors, linked to both water and carbon dioxide as well as the planet’s radically changing rotational tilt — varying from 11 to 60 degrees — over time.

Noblet’s paper articulates a “hierarchy of factors” that describes where gullies occur, with well-supported explanations as to why they form in one place and not another. None of the explanations in this paper are new. What’s new is how Noblet and coworkers reconcile apparent contradictions and inconsistencies among other researchers’ explanations of gully formation, explaining why an explanation that works for one spot on Mars doesn’t work in another.

The map above, from their paper, shows the global distribution of the gullies, which appear to favor the same mid-latitudes where the planet’s glaciers are mostly found. The data from many different studies suggests that when the planet’s rotational tilt was high, these mid-latitudes regions were warmer, and the near-surface ice there would sublimate away to get redeposited at the poles. When this happened the sublimation would cause the pole-facing gullies to form.

The paper also suggests that any gullies changing today are likely the result of the sublimation of carbon dioxide, not water.

There is a lot more at the article at the link, which is an excellent summation of this research.

0 comments

Research suggests a Mars mission will permanently damage a person’s kidneys

10:12 am

New research now suggests strongly that the exposure to cosmic rays during a three-year-long mission to Mars would cause permanent damage to a person’s kidneys.

The results indicated that both human and animal kidneys are ‘remodelled’ by the conditions in space, with specific kidney tubules responsible for fine tuning calcium and salt balance showing signs of shrinkage after less than a month in space. Researchers say the likely cause of this is microgravity rather than GCR [galactic cosmic rays], though further research is required to determine if the interaction of microgravity and GCR can accelerate or worsen these structural changes.

The primary reason that kidney stones develop during space missions had previously been assumed to be solely due to microgravity-induced bone loss that leads to a build-up of calcium in the urine. Rather, the UCL team’s findings indicated that the way the kidneys process salts is fundamentally altered by space flight and likely a primary contributor to kidney stone formation.

Perhaps the most alarming finding, at least for any astronaut considering a three-year round trip to Mars, is that the kidneys of mice exposed to radiation simulating GCR for 2.5 years experienced permanent damage and loss of function. [emphasis mine]

The study used samples “from over 40 Low Earth orbit space missions involving humans and mice, most of which were to the International Space Station, as well as 11 space simulations involving mice and rats.”

If these results are confirmed, it means that any interplanetary spaceship is going to require significant shielding. Having a safe haven they can go to during high energy solar events will not work, as cosmic rays arrive randomly at all times. This research thus tells us that we can’t simply add engines to the space station designs presently being built to send them to Mars. Instead, we need a heavy-lifte capability (such as Starship) to get the much heavier, well-shielded habitable modules into orbit.

7 comments

Ed Stone, who ran the Voyager missions for a half century, passes away at 88

9:54 am

Ed Stone, who was the project scientist for both Voyager missions to the outer solar system and beyond for a half century, passed away at 88 on June 9, 2024.

From 1972 until his retirement in 2022, Stone served as the project scientist from NASA’s longest-running mission, Voyager. The two Voyager probes took advantage of a celestial alignment that occurs just once every 176 years to visit Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. During their journeys, the spacecraft revealed the first active volcanoes beyond Earth on Jupiter’s moon Io, and an atmosphere rich with organic molecules on Saturn’s moon Titan. Voyager 2 remains the only spacecraft to fly by Uranus and Neptune, revealing Uranus’ unusual tipped magnetic poles, and the icy geysers erupting from Neptune’s moon Triton.

Stone was also head of JPL from 1991 to 2001, during the time it built and flew the Mars Pathfinder mission, which sent the first rover to Red Planet. That mission revitalized the entire American Mars exploration program for the next three decades.

Stone was one of the giants of American space exploration during its formative years. He leaves behind a legacy that will be difficult to match, highlighted most of all by both Voyager spacecraft, which outlived him.

2 comments

Evidence of giant asteroid collision in debris disk surrounding the star Beta Pictoris

9:48 am

Data difference between Spitzer and Webb
Click for original figure.

Scientists comparing infrared data collected twenty years apart — first by the Spitzer Space Telescope and then by the Webb Space Telescope — think they have detected evidence of a gigantic asteroid collision in the debris disk that surrounds the very young star Beta Pictoris, located 63 light years away.

The graph to the right shows the change found between the observations. From the caption:

Scientists theorize that the massive amount of dust seen in the 2004–05 image from the Spitzer Space Telescope indicates a collision of asteroids that had largely cleared by the time the James Webb Space Telescope captured its images in 2023.

…When Spitzer collected the earlier data, scientists assumed something like small bodies grinding down would stir and replenish the dust steadily over time. But Webb’s new observations show the dust disappeared and was not replaced. The amount of dust kicked up is about 100,000 times the size of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, Chen said.

It is believed by scientists that the debris disk that surrounds Beta Pictoris is comparable to the early solar system when the planets first started to form. This collision could be similar to the kind of collision that is thought to have formed the Moon, when a large Mars-sized object smashed into the early Earth.

6 comments

Scientists: Water frost detected in calderas of four Martian volcanos

9:33 am

Frost found on four Martian volcanoes

Scientists using data from two European Mars orbiters think they have detected patches of transient water frost in the calderas of four Martian volcanos, all located in the dry equatorial regions of Mars where previously no near-surface ice has been seen.

According to the study, the frost is present for only a few hours after sunrise before it evaporates in sunlight. The frost is also incredibly thin — likely only one-hundredth of a millimeter thick or about the width of a human hair. Still, it’s quite vast. The researchers calculate the frost constitutes at least 150,000 tons of water that swaps between the surface and atmosphere each day during the cold seasons. That’s the equivalent of roughly 60 Olympic-size swimming pools.

You can read the research paper here. The volcanoes with frost were Olympus Mons, Arsia Mons, Ascraeus Mons, and Ceraunius Tholus, as shown by the blue dots on the overview map to the right. All are in the dry tropics of Mars.

The researchers believe the frost comes from the atmosphere, like dew forming in the morning on Earth. For it to take place at these high elevations on Mars however is astonishing. At these high elevations the atmosphere is extremely thin. Furthermore, the dry tropics have so far been found to contain no near-surface water or ice to fuel these processes.

2 comments

A close-up of rocks on Mars

10:30 am

Curiosity's robot arm about to take a close look at the ground
Click for original image.

Close-up of rocks on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on June 6, 2024 by Curiosity’s Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), located at the end of the rover’s robot arm and designed to get close-up high resolution images of the ground that the arm is exploring.

The picture above, taken just after the one to the right and cropped, reduced, sharpened, and annotated to post here, shows the robot arm shortly after it has rotated upward after placing MAHLI right up against the ground. Note the tread marks. The science team apparently chose these target rocks because they were likely ground somewhat as the rover rolled over them, breaking the rocks to expose new faces.

According to the scientists, the camera was about two to three inches away from these rocks when it snapped the picture, with the scale about 16 to 25 microns per pixel. Since a micron is one millionth of a meter, this picture is showing us some very small details within a much larger rock.

I post this because I have rarely seen such colorful and crystal-like surface features from Curiosity.

1 comment
1 … 73 74 75 76 77 … 729