It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Thursday, September 07, 2023
SPACE
Hubble Space Telescope sees lonely galaxy looming in isolation (photo)
Samantha Mathewson Wed, September 6, 2023
a spiral galaxy
A distant galaxy looms in lonely isolation in a new photo from the Hubble Space Telescope.
The galaxy, called IC 1776, lies over 150 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Pisces. Hubble, a joint mission led by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), snapped this new view of the galaxy, capturing its irregularly-shaped structure and indistinct spiral arms.
"The edges are faint and the core has a pale yellow glow. It is dotted with small, wispy, blue regions where stars are forming," ESA officials said in a statement. "A few stars and small galaxies in warm colors are visible around it."
Observations of IC 1776 suggest the galaxy recently hosted a violent star explosion, also known as a supernova. Data from the Lick Observatory Supernova Search — a robotic telescope that scours the night sky in search of transient phenomena such as supernovas — revealed remnants of the stellar explosion, named SN 2015ap, with observations collected in 2015.
Hubble then followed up with observations of the supernova’s aftermath as part of two different projects, both of which were designed to investigate the debris left behind by such stellar explosions. The ESA shared Hubble’s latest view of IC 1776, in which the supernova SN 2015ap occurred, on Sept. 4.
"A variety of telescopes automatically follow up the detection of supernovae to obtain early measurements of these events’ brightnesses and spectra," ESA officials said in the statement. "Complementing these measurements with later observations which reveal the lingering energy of supernovae can shed light on the systems which gave rise to these cosmic cataclysms in the first place."
Astronomers discover new class of cosmic explosion brighter than 100 billion suns
Brandon Specktor Wed, September 6, 2023 Artists impression of a black hole destroying a nearby star. The researchers believe such a collision may be responsible for this new type of explosion.
Astronomers have discovered a mysterious new type of cosmic explosion that outshines nearly every supernova ever detected. Within 10 days, the peculiar blast grew brighter than 100 billion suns, then faded away to nearly nothing a few weeks later — a destructive event both briefer and more spectacular than a typical supernova.
The fast and furious event likely represents a new class of explosion never studied before, according to research published Sept. 1 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
"We have named this new class of sources 'Luminous Fast Coolers' or LFCs," lead study author Matt Nicholl, an astrophysicist at Queen's University Belfast said in a statement. "The exquisite data set that we have obtained rules out this being another supernova."
Supernovas are bright explosions that occur when large stars (typically measuring at least eight times the mass of the sun) burn up their nuclear fuel, collapse in on themselves and blast their outer layers of gas into space. Every year, astronomers observe hundreds of supernovas suddenly brighten, then gradually dim. Typically, a supernova reaches peak brightness after about 20 days, shining several billion times brighter than the sun. Over the following months, the explosion slowly fades away.
But LFCs are not supernovas. For one thing, the newly discovered explosion — which astronomers detected with the Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) telescope network in Hawaii, Chile and South Africa — occurred in a galaxy full of sun-like stars that are far too small to be supernova material.
Image from the European Southern Observatory New Technology Telescope showing the distant red galaxy (center) where the explosion occurred. The explosion site is marked by the yellow cross.
"Our data showed that this event happened in a massive, red galaxy two billion light-years away," study co-author Shubham Srivastav, a research fellow also at Queen's University, said in the statement. "These galaxies contain billions of stars like our Sun, but they shouldn't have any stars big enough to end up as a supernova."
In addition to its unusual location, the newfound explosion also grew far brighter and faded far quicker than a typical supernova, according to the researchers. Within the next 15 days, the object had faded by two orders of magnitude, and had faded to only 1% of its peak brightness just one month after detonating.
Simply put, the explosion did not fit the profile of any known supernova. So, had anything like it ever occurred before? To find out, the researchers combed through archival telescope surveys, looking for objects with a similar brightness and lifespan. They ultimately uncovered two other objects — one from a 2009 survey, and the second from 2020 — with similar properties to the newly detected blast.
The team concluded that these blasts represent a new — and very rare — class of cosmic explosion that likely has nothing to do with dying stars. What exactly are LFCs, then? For now, the team can only speculate.
"The most plausible explanation seems to be a black hole colliding with a star," Nicholl said.
However, even this explanation doesn't quite fit; when black holes rip material away from passing stars in gruesome interactions known as tidal disruption events, they release bright X-ray emissions — and none of the LFCs identified here showed any X-ray emissions.
It could be that scientific models of star-on-black-hole collisions need to be refined — or, astronomers just don't have enough information about LFCs to make any conclusions yet. The team will continue looking for more of these mysterious explosions in galaxies closer to Earth.
Astronomers discover the biggest shockwaves in the known universe
Scott Sutherland Wed, September 6, 2023 Astronomers discover the biggest shockwaves in the known universe
A team of astronomers has identified immense shockwaves radiating out from a massive collision in space as the biggest in the known universe.
Hiding behind the dust and gas of our Milky Way galaxy is a pair of galaxy clusters, called CIZA J1358.9-4750, that are in the early stages of merging together. Milky Way plus CIRA clusters - centred
A map of the galaxy clusters found by the Clusters in the Zone of Avoidance (CIZA) survey has been centred with the galactic core and matched up with a panoramic view of the Milky Way. The location of merging galaxy clusters CIZA J1358.9-4750 (CIZA 1359) is indicated by an arrow. The green arch denotes a region of the map that is best viewed from the southern hemisphere. Credits: Milky Way panorama - ESO/S. Brunier. CIZA map - D.D. Kocevski et al., 2003
CIZA 1359 is located around 1 billion light years away in what astronomers call the Zone of Avoidance — a region of space beyond our galaxy that most telescopes avoid due to the obscuring light, gas, and dust of the Milky Way.
However, x-ray telescopes can detect high-energy events even though the core of our galaxy. In fact, Japan's Suzaku x-ray astronomy satellite (deactivated since 2015) and the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton x-ray astronomy satellite (still operating after 23 years) have both collected observations of CIZA 1359 over the years.
By combining these observations, a team of researchers led by Kazuhiro Nakazawa and doctoral student Yuki Omiya, both from Nagoya University's Kobayashi-Maskawa Institute for the Origin of Particles and the Universe (KMI), closely examined these merging galaxy clusters.
Through their research, the researchers confirmed an intensely hot region of space located between the two that is roughly 20 million degrees hotter than the cores of both clusters. This zone is the result of two immense shockwaves, measured at around 3 million light years square, that are travelling through the material of the clusters at around 1,500 kilometres per second. 20230615 ciza1359 01 en
On the left, an X-ray image of CIZA J1359 points out the locations of the two galaxy clusters and the filament structure currently joining the two as they merge. On the right, a detailed model isolates the extremely hot region between the two clusters and the shockwaves generated by the collision. Credit: Yuki Omiya, et al., 2023/KMI
"By conducting a detailed reanalysis of past data in this study, we have successfully discovered the existence of two 'newborn giant shock waves' in merging clusters," said Omiya. "These shock waves have a width and depth 30 times larger than the diameter of our Milky Way galaxy, and this is the first time they have been observed."
In a blog post discussing the research on the KMI website, the team called this "the largest energy-release event in the universe."
Since the merger of these galaxy clusters is in such an early stage, this gave the researchers a good idea of the initial shape of the pair. That made it possible to compute the kinetic energy of one of these shock waves.
Taking the size and speed of the 'northwest' shockwave (the one pushing into the galaxy cluster on the right in the above images), they estimated its kinetic energy at "one billion times the energy consumed by the sun in a year, all released within just one second."
From here, the hope is that observations from new, more advanced radio telescopes, and new x-ray observatories such as Japan's XRISM mission, will help reveal more details of CIZA 1359 and deepen the researchers' understanding of the processes involved in the merging of galaxy clusters.
(Thumbnail image courtesy Yuki Omiya, et al., 2023)
SpaceX launch of NASA's Psyche mission to bizarre metal asteroid just 1 month away
Mike Wall Wed, September 6, 2023
A NASA probe will start winging its way toward a bizarre metal asteroid less than a month from now, if all goes according to plan.
The agency's Psyche spacecraft is scheduled to lift off atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Oct. 5 (though the launch window extends through Oct. 25, with each day offering one opportunity).
Psyche will arrive at its namesake — a 170-mile-wide (280 kilometers) metallic object in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter — in the summer of 2029, providing a feast for scientists and lots of eye candy for space fans.
"I am so looking forward to seeing those first images," Lori Glaze, director of NASA's Planetary Sciences Division, said during a news conference on Wednesday (Sept. 6). "They are going to be spectacular, when we finally get to see what this metal asteroid looks like up close."
Next month's launch will be a milestone moment for SpaceX as well: It will mark the first Falcon Heavy liftoff for NASA, as well as the rocket's first interplanetary mission. The Falcon Heavy, which is the second-most powerful rocket currently in operation (after NASA's Space Launch System), has lifted off just seven times to date, most recently on July 28.
Psyche was supposed to be aloft already. The original plan called for launch in the fall of 2022, but problems with the spacecraft's flight software led to a one-year delay.
Those kinks have all been worked out, say mission team members, who are eager for the upcoming liftoff.
"It’s getting increasingly real," Henry Stone, Psyche's project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, said in a statement on Wednesday. "We are counting the days. The team is more than ready to send this spacecraft off on its journey, and it's very exciting."
Liftoff will kick off a long cruise phase for Psyche, which will use highly efficient solar electric propulsion to make its way to the asteroid belt. A "gravity assist" flyby of Mars in May 2026 will boost Psyche's velocity, helping it reach its target space rock in late July 2029.
The probe will then study the asteroid up close for 26 months, circling lower and lower until it orbits a mere 40 miles (64 kilometers) above Psyche's surface. Scientists don't know what that surface looks like — they've never gotten a good look at Psyche or any other metal asteroid — but they have some intriguing ideas.
"One possibility is that the metal surface of Psyche is covered by tiny, spiky, cup-shaped micrometeorite impacts into metal, and little tiny grains of metal that flew off of them when they happened," the mission's principal investigator, Lindy Elkins-Tanton of Arizona State University, said during Wednesday's press conference.
"We expect part of the surface to be metal and part of it not to be metal," she added. "What's the non-metal part? Rock? Sulfur? We don't really know. I would say that the only thing we're pretty darn confident of is that there's metal there, and the metal is going to be similar to metal meteorites."
NASA’s Psyche spacecraft is shown in a clean room on June 26 at the Astrotech Space Operations facility near the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
And Psyche has a lot of metal — so much, in fact, that it would be worth about $10 quintillion here on Earth, Elkins-Tanton calculated a few years ago. But that figure is not to be taken seriously, she stressed on Wednesday.
"We have zero technology as a species to bring Psyche back to Earth. And if we did, it would likely be a catastrophic mistake," Elkins-Tanton said.
"Let's say we were able to actually bring Psyche back. Then it would flood the metals market, and it would literally be worth nothing," she added. "So, calculating the value of it is a fun intellectual exercise with no truth to it. We are not going there to mine an asteroid."
Rather, the $1.2 billion Psyche mission will take the asteroid's measure for science's sake. It will study the space rock using three dedicated instruments — a gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer, a multispectral imager and a magnetometer. The spacecraft will also use its onboard radio telecommunications system to conduct "gravity science," learning more about Psyche's internal structure and composition.
Such work will reveal a great deal about the asteroid, which scientists think may be the exposed core of a protoplanet — the raw materials from which rocky planets such as Earth and Mars are made.
"The first mission to explore an asteroid with a surface that contains substantial amounts of metal rather than rock or ice, Psyche seeks to better understand iron cores, an unexplored building block of planet formation," NASA officials wrote in a mission description.
"The mission will be the first to directly examine the interior of a previously layered planetary body, which they expect will shed additional light on how Earth and other rocky planets formed," they added.
The 6,056-pound (2,747 kilograms) Psyche probe also carries a ride-along NASA technology demonstration called DSOC (short for "Deep Space Optical Communications").
DSOC will use a laser system to send and receive data during the mission's long cruise phase out to the asteroid belt. To date, such high-capacity optical communications systems have been used on spacecraft only as far away as the moon. DSOC aims to extend that reach much farther, into very deep space.
"We're very excited about launch and looking forward to the important lessons learned, which will in the future enable human missions to Mars and the use of very high-resolution instruments," Abi Biswas, project technologist for DSOC at JPL, said during Wednesday's press conference.
Furthest ever detection of a galaxy’s magnetic field
ESO
IMAGE: THIS IMAGE SHOWS THE ORIENTATION OF THE MAGNETIC FIELD IN THE DISTANT 9IO9 GALAXY, SEEN HERE WHEN THE UNIVERSE WAS ONLY 20% OF ITS CURRENT AGE — THE FURTHEST EVER DETECTION OF A GALAXY’S MAGNETIC FIELD. THE OBSERVATIONS WERE DONE WITH THE ATACAMA LARGE MILLIMETER/SUBMILLIMETER ARRAY (ALMA), IN WHICH ESO IS A PARTNER. DUST GRAINS WITHIN 9IO9 ARE SOMEWHAT ALIGNED WITH THE GALAXY’S MAGNETIC FIELD, AND DUE TO THIS THEY EMIT POLARISED LIGHT, MEANING THAT LIGHT WAVES OSCILLATE ALONG A PREFERRED DIRECTION RATHER THAN RANDOMLY. ALMA DETECTED THIS POLARISATION SIGNAL, FROM WHICH ASTRONOMERS COULD WORK OUT THE ORIENTATION OF THE MAGNETIC FIELD, SHOWN HERE AS CURVED LINES OVERLAID ON THE ALMA IMAGE. THE POLARISED LIGHT SIGNAL EMITTED BY THE MAGNETICALLY ALIGNED DUST IN 9IO9 WAS EXTREMELY FAINT, REPRESENTING JUST ONE PERCENT OF THE TOTAL BRIGHTNESS OF THE GALAXY, SO ASTRONOMERS USED A CLEVER TRICK OF NATURE TO HELP THEM OBTAIN THIS RESULT. THE TEAM WAS HELPED BY THE FACT THAT 9IO9, ALTHOUGH VERY DISTANT FROM US, HAD BEEN MAGNIFIED VIA A PROCESS KNOWN AS GRAVITATIONAL LENSING. THIS OCCURS WHEN LIGHT FROM A DISTANT GALAXY, IN THIS CASE 9IO9, APPEARS BRIGHTER AND DISTORTED AS IT IS BENT BY THE GRAVITY OF A VERY LARGE OBJECT IN THE FOREGROUND.view more
CREDIT: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/J. GEACH ET AL.
Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers have detected the magnetic field of a galaxy so far away that its light has taken more than 11 billion years to reach us: we see it as it was when the Universe was just 2.5 billion years old. The result provides astronomers with vital clues about how the magnetic fields of galaxies like our own Milky Way came to be.
Lots of astronomical bodies in the Universe have magnetic fields, whether it be planets, stars or galaxies. “Many people might not be aware that our entire galaxy and other galaxies are laced with magnetic fields, spanning tens of thousands of light-years,” says James Geach, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Hertfordshire, UK, and lead author of the study published today in Nature.
“We actually know very little about how these fields form, despite their being quite fundamental to how galaxies evolve,” adds Enrique Lopez Rodriguez, a researcher at Stanford University, USA, who also participated in the study. It is not clear how early in the lifetime of the Universe, and how quickly, magnetic fields in galaxies form because so far astronomers have only mapped magnetic fields in galaxies close to us.
Now, using ALMA, in which the European Southern Observatory (ESO) is a partner, Geach and his team have discovered a fully formed magnetic field in a distant galaxy, similar in structure to what is observed in nearby galaxies. The field is about 1000 times weaker than the Earth’s magnetic field, but extends over more than 16 000 light-years.
“This discovery gives us new clues as to how galactic-scale magnetic fields are formed,” explains Geach. Observing a fully developed magnetic field this early in the history of the Universe indicates that magnetic fields spanning entire galaxies can form rapidly while young galaxies are still growing.
The team believes that intense star formation in the early Universe could have played a role in accelerating the development of the fields. Moreover, these fields can in turn influence how later generations of stars will form. Co-author and ESO astronomer Rob Ivison says that the discovery opens up “a new window onto the inner workings of galaxies, because the magnetic fields are linked to the material that is forming new stars.”
To make this detection, the team searched for light emitted by dust grains in a distant galaxy, 9io9 [1]. Galaxies are packed full of dust grains and when a magnetic field is present, the grains tend to align and the light they emit becomes polarised. This means that the light waves oscillate along a preferred direction rather than randomly. When ALMA detected and mapped a polarised signal coming from 9io9, the presence of a magnetic field in a very distant galaxy was confirmed for the first time.
“No other telescope could have achieved this,” says Geach. The hope is that with this and future observations of distant magnetic fields the mystery of how these fundamental galactic features form will begin to unravel.
Notes
[1] 9io9 was discovered in the course of a citizen science project. The discovery was helped by viewers of the British BBC television programme Stargazing Live, when over three nights in 2014 the audience was asked to examine millions of images in the hunt for distant galaxies.
More information
This research was presented in a paper to appear in Nature.
The team is composed of J. E. Geach (Centre for Astrophysics Research, School of Physics, Engineering and Computer Science, University of Hertfordshire, UK [Hertfordshire]), E. Lopez-Rodriguez (Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, Stanford University, USA), M. J. Doherty (Hertfordshire), Jianhang Chen (European Southern Observatory, Garching, Germany [ESO]), R. J. Ivison (ESO), G. J. Bendo (UK ALMA Regional Centre Node, Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, Department of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Manchester, UK), S. Dye (School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nottingham, UK) and K. E. K. Coppin (Hertfordshire).
The European Southern Observatory (ESO) enables scientists worldwide to discover the secrets of the Universe for the benefit of all. We design, build and operate world-class observatories on the ground — which astronomers use to tackle exciting questions and spread the fascination of astronomy — and promote international collaboration for astronomy. Established as an intergovernmental organisation in 1962, today ESO is supported by 16 Member States (Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom), along with the host state of Chile and with Australia as a Strategic Partner. ESO’s headquarters and its visitor centre and planetarium, the ESO Supernova, are located close to Munich in Germany, while the Chilean Atacama Desert, a marvellous place with unique conditions to observe the sky, hosts our telescopes. ESO operates three observing sites: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope and its Very Large Telescope Interferometer, as well as survey telescopes such as VISTA. Also at Paranal ESO will host and operate the Cherenkov Telescope Array South, the world’s largest and most sensitive gamma-ray observatory. Together with international partners, ESO operates ALMA on Chajnantor, a facility that observes the skies in the millimetre and submillimetre range. At Cerro Armazones, near Paranal, we are building “the world’s biggest eye on the sky” — ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope. From our offices in Santiago, Chile we support our operations in the country and engage with Chilean partners and society.
The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an international astronomy facility, is a partnership of ESO, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ALMA is funded by ESO on behalf of its Member States, by NSF in cooperation with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) in Taiwan and by NINS in cooperation with the Academia Sinica (AS) in Taiwan and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI). ALMA construction and operations are led by ESO on behalf of its Member States; by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), managed by Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI), on behalf of North America; and by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) on behalf of East Asia. The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) provides the unified leadership and management of the construction, commissioning and operation of ALMA.
About the University of Hertfordshire: Defined by the spirit of innovation and enterprise, the University of Hertfordshire has been an innovative, vocation-first educational force for more than 70 years. From our start as a leading educator within Britain’s aeronautical industry to our extensive offering today, we have always specialised in providing the environment and expertise needed to power every kind of potential. For our thriving community of more than 30,000 students from over 140 countries, that means high-quality teaching from experts engaged in groundbreaking research with real-world impact. Access to over 550 career-focused degree options and a chance to study at more than 170 universities worldwide, using outstanding, true to life facilities. And industry connections that offer professional networking opportunities which take talents even further. We are Herts. Herts. Beats Faster. Discover a place where ideas move at a different pace. Visit herts.ac.uk.
IMAGE: THE AERO CLUB OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA HAS AWARDED THE HOWARD HUGHES MEMORIAL AWARD TO NASA'S JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE.view more
CREDIT: NASA
The Aero Club of Southern California has awarded the Howard Hughes Memorial Award to NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. The award will be accepted at a ceremony Wednesday, Sept. 6, at the California Club in Los Angeles.
The Howard Hughes Memorial Award honors exceptional leaders who have advanced the fields of aviation or aerospace technology. Hughes’ first cousin, William R. Lummis, established the award in 1978, and the Aero Club of Southern California presents the award annually.
Accepting the award will be Mike Menzel, the NASA mission systems engineer for Webb at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
“On behalf of the entire Webb team I would like to thank Aero Club for this great honor,” Menzel said. “Our team was privileged to have had the opportunity to develop and execute such an important scientific mission – one that clearly demonstrates what can be achieved when a dedicated team of international partners commits to such an endeavor. We are all excited and inspired by Webb’s first year of images and scientific data, and we look forward to many more years of future exploration and discoveries.”
The award recognizes the contributions of the team that designed, developed, and now operate Webb, including individuals from Goddard; Northrop Grumman, Redondo Beach, California; the Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland; and Ball Aerospace, Boulder, Colorado. The mission was also made possible by many international contributions from partnerships with ESA (European Space Agency) and the CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
Launched in late 2021 after more than a decade of preparation, Webb successfully performed a complex series of deployments shortly after leaving Earth's orbit. About a month later, the telescope reached its working orbit at the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrange point, a stable orbit in space well beyond that of the Moon. Once there and fully commissioned, the 21-foot (6.5-meter) telescope began its record-breaking work. The first images were unveiled on July 12, 2022.
Webb operates at infrared frequencies. The combination of sensitive instrumentation with its massive primary mirror allows the telescope to see farther and more clearly than any previous observatory of its kind. Discoveries from existing and newly identified targets began to accumulate almost immediately.
The Aero Club of Southern California is a 501(c)(3) charitable aviation industry non-profit led by volunteer officers and Board members. Open to everyone with an interest in aviation and aerospace, Aero Club members get insights into the future of air and space exploration and access to the legends who explored the unknown.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s largest, most powerful, and most complex space science telescope ever built. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESAand the Canadian Space Agency.
2 new eclipse projects receive NASA funding
Ahead of the total solar eclipse crossing North America on April 8, 2024, NASA has funded two more proposals that will use the eclipse to advance science while engaging the public
IMAGE: THE BAILY'S BEADS EFFECT AS SEEN FROM MADRAS, OREGON, DURING THE AUG. 21, 2017, TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE.view more
CREDIT: CREDIT: NASA/AUBREY GEMIGNANI
Ahead of the total solar eclipse crossing North America on April 8, 2024, NASA has funded two more proposals that will use the eclipse to advance science while engaging the public. The new projects were awarded via NASA’s Heliophysics Innovation in Technology and Science (HITS) program.
“There are so many ways to participate in NASA science, especially as we enter the Heliophysics Big Year,” said NASA Heliophysics citizen science lead, Elizabeth MacDonald. “We’re so excited to watch these and our many other projects come to life.”
SunSketcher 2024: An Eclipse Movie Across America
Led by Gordon Emslie, a professor of physics and astronomy at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, SunSketcher 2024 will become NASA’s newest citizen science project. Citizen science, also known as participatory science, involves collaboration between professional scientists and members of the public who work together to conduct scientific studies.
SunSketcher 2024 will enable observers from along the eclipse’s path of totality – the region wherein the Moon completely blocks the Sun’s light during a total solar eclipse – to collaborate and create a single crowd-sourced “megamovie” of the event. Using the SunSketcher 2024 smartphone app, an upgraded version of an app originally developed for the 2017 total solar eclipse, participants will capture their views of the eclipse. The app uses the device’s GPS coordinates to determine the exact time when an eclipse phenomenon known as Baily’s Beads are visible. Baily’s Beads appear for a few moments right before and after totality, as tiny slivers of sunlight pass through the valleys on the lunar surface, giving the brief appearance of bright points, or “beads,” of sunlight. They disappear during totality, when the Moon completely blocks the solar surface, and then reappear as the Sun emerges from behind the Moon.
Using the SunSketcher 2024 app, participant observations will be combined to create a continuous one-hour movie of Baily’s Beads, recording exactly when they appear and disappear at different locations. Combined with precision maps of the lunar limb collected by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, this movie will allow the team to precisely measure the shape of the Sun – in particular, how much it deviates from a perfect sphere. This information will lead to an improved understanding of the flows in the solar interior, and is also key to testing gravitational theories.
GeoCollaborate: Sharing Eclipse Data for Broadcasters and Educators
Eclipses present a special scientific opportunity to collect a wide array of information, from direct solar measurements to the fleeting effects on Earth’s surface and atmosphere. But gathering and sharing that data is a challenge in and of itself. To address that challenge, StormCenter Communications, a company based out of Halethorpe, Maryland, and led by founder and CEO Dave Jones, has been funded to use their patented GeoCollaborate software application to widen access to eclipse science data.
GeoCollaborate was developed through NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contracts. The platform provides real-time data visualization, data sharing, and collaboration capabilities within a single interactive environment. For the upcoming 2024 total solar eclipse, StormCenter will use the GeoCollaborate Dashboard to share interactive visualizations, video content, and graphics with broadcast meteorologists and educators who can share it with broader audiences. By leveraging existing relationships in the broadcast community, GeoCollaborate will make it much easier for eclipse-related information to be accessed and broadcast to viewers across the nation. Social media posts and links to additional information will be presented in both English and Spanish to better engage speakers of both languages.
“These two projects join several other NASA-funded eclipse projects, and highlight how important solar eclipses are to understanding the Sun and its influence on Earth,” said program scientist and eclipse lead at NASA Headquarters, Kelly Korreck.
The same GeoCollaborate technology that supported response operations for Hurricane Idalia will be sharing Heliophysics content to broadcast meteorologists and educators in the classroom, delivering NASA data and information to help inspire the public and the next generation explorers.
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