Jonathan Powell, South Wales Argus astronomy writer
Fri, 3 November 2023
In this article:
Charles Messier
18th- and 19th-century French astronomer
Messier 31
Here's the latest Night Sky column from Argus astronomy correspondent Jonathan Powell:
A SPACE mission due to launch in the 2030s with the intention of studying how the universe was created, will have significant input from experts at Cardiff University.
Along with the actual technology involved, the university will feature prominently in the study and analysis of data to be collected from the LiteBIRD spacecraft, as it investigates the still present traces left over from the Big Bang which occurred some 13.7 billion years ago.
Saturday, October 28, saw a partial lunar eclipse as a shadow cast by the Earth clipped a portion of the Moon.
The next lunar eclipse will occur on Monday March 25, 2024.
The Andromeda Galaxy
If you are just starting out in astronomy, there are a number of objects for any potential bucket-list that one would like to observe.
South Wales Argus: Andromeda Galaxy Star Map - Credit EarthSky
Pinpointing certain stars and identifying the constellations will take time as they change with the seasons, along with the planets of our solar system.
However, one particular object adds a different dimension to the learning curve, that of locating and seeing for yourself, a galaxy.
Martin Griffiths, astronomer and science presenter at Dark Sky Wales, who is also director at the Brecon Beacons Observatory, spoke to use about Isaac Roberts, (1829 – 1904), engineer and businessman, who flew the flag for Wales as a pioneer in astronomy.
He said: "The autumn sky returns one of the most sought-after astronomical objects, the wonderful galaxy in Andromeda otherwise known as Messier 31.
"Noted by ancient astronomers such as Al Sufi in his Book of the Fixed Stars in 954 AD and described as seen through the telescope by Simon Marius in 1612, this object continues to draw observers and novice stargazers every season it appears.
"Included in Charles Messier’s catalogue of nebulous objects in 1764 as number 31, the true nature of this object eluded astronomers until the mid-20th century when it was discovered to be a galaxy, an “Island Universe” in its own right by Edwin Hubble.
"His work was the culmination of many observations regarding the true nature of the object and the tool of astrophotography was instrumental in revealing it.
"Before Hubble, Welsh astronomer Isaac Roberts took one of the greatest photographs of this wondrous galaxy.
"Roberts was born in Denbighshire in 1829, the son of a farmer. He grew up to become an engineer and amateur astronomer who built his own telescopes before commissioning Grubb Parsons to make him a 20-inch reflector, a very large telescope for an amateur.
"By 1883 he was experimenting with astrophotography and in 1885 he mounted the photographic plates directly at the prime focus of the 20-inch telescope to get larger images. In 1886 he exhibited his photographs at the Royal Astronomical Society of Liverpool, one of which detailed the nebulosity surrounding the stars of the Pleiades.
"On December 29, 1888, Roberts took what is now recognised as one of the greatest images in amateur studies.
"His subject was the Andromeda galaxy and his resulting plate revealed its spiral structure and the hint of resolution into stars. It was possibly the earliest photograph of the galaxy and although Roberts thought it revealed a solar system in the making, his image helped professional astronomers develop theories about these island universes which eventually led to our current understanding of galaxies and their place in the cosmos.
"Roberts eventually moved to Sussex and built a large observatory for the 20-inch where he continued to photograph the night sky. Roberts remained a member of the Liverpool Astronomical Society and became a Fellow of the Royal Geological Society.
"For his pioneering efforts in astrophotography, he was awarded the gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1895. After his death his wife donated money to French Astronomical Society which resulted in the biennial Dorothea Klumpe-Isaac Roberts prize, still awarded today.
"Roberts was proud of his Welsh heritage and spoke Welsh at home throughout his life. He left money in his will to Bangor, Cardiff and Liverpool Universities and now has a crater on the Moon named in his honour.
"The superb picture of Messier 31 remains the legacy of this far-sighted Welsh genius."
How to find the Andromeda Galaxy
This can be located with binoculars, appearing as a small, fuzzy, oval object.
The Andromeda galaxy is the nearest galaxy to our own Milky Way, at a distance of 2.5 million light-years.
Containing around one trillion stars, it measures a staggering 220,000 light-years across.
On clear nights, with good observing conditions, it can be seen with the naked-eye.
South Wales Argus: Partial Lunar Eclipse - Jason Mead
Meteor shower
The Leonids meteor shower starts on Monday, November 6, running until the last day of the month.
Peak activity is on the night of Friday November 17 into morning of Saturday November 18, with the expected hourly rate of meteors, ZHR, (Zenith Hourly Rate), around 15.
Situated in the constellation of Leo, the debris burning up in the atmosphere as "shooting stars" heralds from rocks and rubble left in the path of comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle, during its 33-year orbit of the Sun.
All observing can be done with the naked eye, so there is no need for a telescope or binoculars.
November’s Beaver Moon
November’s full Moon has, like other full Moons, several names, but one which is probably used more than others is Beaver Moon, so-called as the beaver population take shelter in their lodges, ahead of the winter months.
Beginner’s corner
As a help to beginners to find their way around the night sky, use the Moon during November to try and locate some bright stars on view.
On Friday, November 3, the Moon is positioned to the south of Pollux, the brightest star in the constellation of Gemini, the Twins.
On Monday, November 6, the Moon is positioned to the north of Regulus, the brightest star in Leo, the Lion.
On Saturday, November 11, the Moon is positioned to the north of Spica, the brightest star in Virgo, the Virgin.
On Monday, November 27, the moon is positioned to the north of Aldebaran, the brightest star in Taurus, the Bull.
Planets
Jupiter continues to dazzle in the southern half of the sky during November.
On Wednesday, November 1, Jupiter was at its closest to Earth, (perigee), with "opposition" – in line with the Earth and Sun, achieved on Friday, November 3.
As a result, Jupiter looks spectacular, with binoculars, (10 x 50 or larger), revealing Jupiter’s four inner moons, (showing as points of light near the planet).
A small telescope, (75 mm or larger), should reveal clouds in the form of bands on Jupiter’s disc.
On Saturday, November 25, the Moon will appear nearby.
While Jupiter is situated in the constellation of Aries, Saturn is also positioned to the south, in Aquarius. Try and locate the planet by using a nearby First Quarter Moon on Monday, November 20.
Venus dominates the morning sky in the east, rising about 4.5 hours before the Sun.
On Thursday, November 9, there’s a lovely pairing in the morning twilight as a crescent Moon pair up with Venus. Venus will appear to nestle just below the Moon.
South Wales Argus: Jonathan Powell, astronomy writer for the South Wales Argus
Moon phases
Third Quarter: November 5;
New Moon: November 13;
First Quarter: November 20;
Full Moon: November 27.
The James Webb Space Telescope spied new details within the Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant. - NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/Tea Temim
The James Webb Space Telescope peered inside the heart of the Crab Nebula to study the aftermath of a stellar explosion.
The space observatory spied previously unseen details within the glowing cloud of gas and dust that had been created by a supernova. The explosion was so bright when it appeared in the night sky in 1054 that astronomers believed it to be a new star.
Separately, other NASA missions captured a ghostly handlike feature in the cosmos and an eerie “face” within the swirling clouds in Jupiter’s atmosphere.
— The ancient planet that collided with Earth and formed the moon could also have created continent-size swaths of alien material inside our planet, according to new research.
— Space Perspective, a tourism startup, is offering passengers a “loo with a view” as they travel 100,000 feet to the edge of space in a pressurized capsule suspended from a high-tech balloon.
And on Sunday night, look up at the Southern Taurid meteor shower for a chance to see a bright fireball or two streaking across the sky.
The Lucy mission finally had its first close look at an asteroid — and it discovered a space rock surprise.
Launched in October 2021, the NASA spacecraft is the first designed to study the swarms of Trojan asteroids within Jupiter’s orbit.
To test Lucy’s systems and instruments before observing the Trojans, the probe first zoomed by Dinkinesh, located between Jupiter and Mars.
The images returned by the spacecraft revealed humanity’s first close look at Dinkinesh, which turned out to be a pair of space rocks rather than a single asteroid.
Sonam Sheth
Fri, 3 November 2023
NASA sent a spaceship rocketing by an asteroid — and discovered the space rock has a little baby one dancing around it
A rendering of NASA's Lucy Spacecraft and images of the binary asteroid system Dinkinesh — nicknamed "Dinky."NASA
NASA sent a spacecraft flying by the Dinkinesh asteroid.
The agency discovered that Dinkinesh is actually a binary asteroid system.
The Lucy spacecraft discovered that the larger asteroid has a baby asteroid dancing around it.
NASA sent a spacecraft flying by what it initially thought was one asteroid.
But the Lucy spacecraft returned images showing that the asteroid Dinkinesh is actually a binary asteroid system, meaning there are two asteroids orbiting a common center. In this case, the system features asteroids of different sizes — one much smaller than the other.
"Dinkinesh really did live up to its name; this is marvelous," Hal Levison, the principal investigator for Lucy who works at the Southwest Research Institute, said in a press release from NASA. "When Lucy was originally selected for flight, we planned to fly by seven asteroids. With the addition of Dinkinesh, two Trojan moons, and now this satellite, we've turned it up to 11."
Lucy flew by the asteroid system at a speed of 10,000 miles per hour, NASA said. The researchers working on the spacecraft had suspected that Dinkinesh might be a binary pair because of the way its brightness changed with time. The images the spacecraft returned confirmed their theory, according to the news release.
Lucy's flight was intended to be a test of the spacecraft — and it passed with flying colors.
"This is an awesome series of images," Tom Kennedy, a guidance and navigation engineer at Lockheed Martin in Colorado, said in the news release. "They indicate that the terminal tracking system worked as intended, even when the universe presented us with a more difficult target than we expected."
NASA’s Lucy spacecraft discovers 2nd asteroid during Dinkinesh flyby
IMAGE:
THIS IMAGE SHOWS THE “MOONRISE” OF THE SATELLITE AS IT EMERGES FROM BEHIND ASTEROID DINKINESH AS SEEN BY THE LUCY LONG-RANGE RECONNAISSANCE IMAGER (L’LORRI), ONE OF THE MOST DETAILED IMAGES RETURNED BY NASA’S LUCY SPACECRAFT DURING ITS FLYBY OF THE ASTEROID BINARY. THIS IMAGE WAS TAKEN AT 12:55 P.M. EDT (1655 UTC) NOV. 1, 2023, WITHIN A MINUTE OF CLOSEST APPROACH, FROM A RANGE OF APPROXIMATELY 270 MILES (430 KM). FROM THIS PERSPECTIVE, THE SATELLITE IS BEHIND THE PRIMARY ASTEROID. THE IMAGE HAS BEEN SHARPENED AND PROCESSED TO ENHANCE CONTRAST.
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CREDIT: NASA/GODDARD/SWRI/JOHNS HOPKINS APL/NOAO
On Nov. 1, NASA’s Lucy spacecraft flew by not just its first asteroid, but its first two. The first images returned by Lucy reveal that the small main belt asteroid Dinkinesh is actually a binary pair.
“Dinkinesh really did live up to its name; this is marvelous,” said Hal Levison, referring to the meaning of Dinkinesh in the Amharic language, “marvelous.” Levison is principal investigator for Lucy from the Boulder, Colorado, branch of the San-Antonio-based Southwest Research Institute. “When Lucy was originally selected for flight, we planned to fly by seven asteroids. With the addition of Dinkinesh, two Trojan moons, and now this satellite, we’ve turned it up to 11.”
In the weeks prior to the spacecraft’s encounter with Dinkinesh, the Lucy team had wondered if Dinkinesh might be a binary system, given how Lucy’s instruments were seeing the asteroid’s brightness changing with time. The first images from the encounter removed all doubt. Dinkinesh is a close binary. From a preliminary analysis of the first available images, the team estimates that the larger body is approximately 0.5 miles (790 m) at its widest, while the smaller is about 0.15 miles (220 m) in size.
This encounter primarily served as an in-flight test of the spacecraft, specifically focusing on testing the system that allows Lucy to autonomously track an asteroid as it flies past at 10,000 mph, referred to as the terminal tracking system.
“This is an awesome series of images. They indicate that the terminal tracking system worked as intended, even when the universe presented us with a more difficult target than we expected,” said Tom Kennedy, guidance and navigation engineer at Lockheed Martin in Littleton, Colorado. “It’s one thing to simulate, test, and practice. It’s another thing entirely to see it actually happen.”
While this encounter was carried out as an engineering test, the team’s scientists are excitedly poring over the data to glean insights into the nature of small asteroids.
“We knew this was going to be the smallest main belt asteroid ever seen up close,” said Keith Noll, Lucy project scientist from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “The fact that it is two makes it even more exciting. In some ways these asteroids look similar to the near-Earth asteroid binary Didymos and Dimorphos that DART saw, but there are some really interesting differences that we will be investigating.”
It will take up to a week for the team to downlink the remainder of the encounter data from the spacecraft. The team will use this data to evaluate the spacecraft’s behavior during the encounter and to prepare for the next close-up look at an asteroid, the main belt asteroid Donaldjohanson, in 2025. Lucy will then be well-prepared to encounter the mission’s main targets, the Jupiter Trojan asteroids, starting in 2027.
SwRI-led Lucy mission shows Dinkinesh asteroid is actually a binary
NASA’s Lucy spacecraft makes first asteroid flyby
Reports and ProceedingsIMAGE:
NEW IMAGES CAPTURED BY NASA’S LUCY SPACECRAFT CONFIRMED THAT THE SMALL MAIN BELT ASTEROID DINKINESH IS A BINARY. THIS IMAGE SHOWS THE “MOONRISE” OF DINKINESH’S SATELLITE. THE SWRI-LED MISSION WILL FLY BY 11 TOTAL ASTEROIDS OVER ITS 12-YEAR MISSION TO JUPITER’S TROJAN ASTEROIDS.
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CREDIT: NASA/GODDARD/SWRI/JOHNS HOPKINS APL
SAN ANTONIO — November 3, 2023 —New images captured by NASA’s Lucy spacecraft confirmed that the small main belt asteroid Dinkinesh is a binary, two asteroids that orbit a common center of mass. The SwRI-led mission will now fly by 11 asteroids in its 12-year mission to Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids. Dinkinesh was meant to be the first asteroid that Lucy flew by but ended up being the first two.
“Dinkinesh really did live up to its name; this is marvelous,” said Lucy Principal Investigator Dr. Hal Levison, of SwRI’s Solar System Science and Exploration Division in Boulder, Colorado, referring to the meaning of Dinkinesh (“you are marvelous”) in Amharic. “When Lucy was originally selected for flight, we planned to flyby seven asteroids. With the addition of Dinkinesh, two Trojan moons, and now this satellite, we’ve turned it up to 11.”
As Lucy approached Dinkinesh, the team noticed that the asteroid’s brightness was changing in interesting ways, and the team wondered if Dinkinesh was a binary system. As the spacecraft sent back its first images, this was confirmed: Dinkinesh is a close binary. From a preliminary analysis of the first available images, the team estimates that the larger body is approximately 0.5 miles (790 m) at its widest, while the smaller is about 0.15 miles (220 m) in size.
This flyby of Dinkinesh primarily served as an in-flight test of the spacecraft, specifically focusing on testing the systems that allow Lucy to autonomously track an asteroid as it flies past at 10,000 miles per hour, referred to as the terminal tracking system.
“We have seen many asteroids up close, and one may think little is left to discover and surprise us. Well, that is clearly wrong. Dinkinesh, and its enigmatic moonlet, differ in some interesting ways from the similarly sized near-Earth asteroids that have been seen by spacecraft like OSIRIS-REx and DART,” said Deputy Principal Investigator Dr. Simone Marchi of SwRI.
While this encounter was carried out as an engineering test, the team’s scientists are excitedly poring over the data to glean insights into the nature of small asteroids.
“Sharing the anticipation of viewing the first images with the team has been incredibly thrilling, as has been the lively discussion regarding the geology of these two remarkably small yet fascinatingly intriguing targets. I am eagerly looking forward to unraveling the color variations across this binary system,” said Dr. Silvia Protopa of SwRI.
The Lucy team will continue to downlink the remainder of the encounter data from the spacecraft over the next week. They will use the data to evaluate Lucy’s behavior during the encounter and prepare for the next close-up look at an asteroid, the main belt asteroid Donaldjohanson, in 2025. Lucy will then be well prepared to observe the mission's main targets, the Jupiter Trojan asteroids, starting in 2027.
For more information, visit https://www.swri.org/planetary-science.
Dinkinesh Animation [VIDEO] |
New images captured by NASA’s Lucy spacecraft confirmed that the small main belt asteroid Dinknesh is a binary. This series of images were taken 13 seconds apart by the terminal tracking camera (T2CAM) on the NASA Lucy Spacecraft during its closest approach on Nov. 1, 2023. The apparent motion of the two asteroids is due to the motion of the spacecraft as it flew past at 10,000 mph. The SwRI-led mission will fly by 11 total asteroids in its 12-year mission to Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids.
CREDIT
NASA/Goddard/SwRI/ASU
Jurassic worlds might be easier to spot than modern Earth
ITHACA, N.Y. –Things may not have ended well for dinosaurs on Earth, but Cornell University astronomers say the “light fingerprint” of the conditions that enabled them to emerge here provide a crucial missing piece in our search for signs of life on planets orbiting alien stars.
Their analysis of the most recent 540 million years of Earth’s evolution, known as the Phanerozoic Eon, finds that telescopes could better detect potential chemical signatures of life in the atmosphere of an Earth-like exoplanet more closely resembling the age the dinosaurs inhabited than the one we know today.
Two key biosignature pairs – oxygen and methane, and ozone and methane – appeared stronger in models of Earth roughly 100 million to 300 million years ago, when oxygen levels were significantly higher. The models simulated the transmission spectra, or light fingerprint, generated by an atmosphere that absorbs some colors of starlight and lets others filter through, information scientists use to determine the atmosphere’s composition.
“Modern Earth’s light fingerprint has been our template for identifying potentially habitable planets, but there was a time when this fingerprint was even more pronounced – better at showing signs of life,” said Lisa Kaltenegger, director of the Carl Sagan Institute (CSI) and associate professor of astronomy. “This gives us hope that it might be just a little bit easier to find signs of life – even large, complex life – elsewhere in the cosmos.”
Kaltenegger is co-author of “Oxygen Bounty for Earth-like Exoplanets: Spectra of Earth Through the Phanerozoic,” published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters. First author, Rebecca Payne, research associate at CSI, led the new models that details a critical epoch including the origins of land plants, animals and dinosaurs.
Using estimates from two established climate models (called GEOCARB and COPSE), the researchers simulated Earth’s atmospheric composition and resulting transmission spectra over five 100-million-year increments of the Phanerozoic. Each features significant changes as a complex ocean biosphere diversified, forests proliferated and terrestrial biospheres flourished, influencing the mix of oxygen and other gasses in the atmosphere.
“It’s only the most recent 12% or so of Earth’s history, but it encompasses pretty much all of the time in which life was more complex than sponges,” said Payne. “These light fingerprints are what you’d search for elsewhere, if you were looking for something more advanced than a single-celled organism.”
While similar evolutionary processes may or may not unfold on exoplanets, Payne and Kaltenegger said their models fill in a missing puzzle piece of what a Phanerozoic would look like to a telescope, creating new templates for habitable planets with varying atmospheric oxygen levels.
Kaltenegger pioneered modeling of what Earth would look like to faraway observers based on changes over time in its geology, climate and atmosphere – our “ground truth,” she said, for identifying potential evidence of life on other worlds.
To date, about 35 rocky exoplanets have been discovered in habitable zones where liquid water could exist, Kaltenegger said. Analyzing an exoplanet’s atmosphere – if it has one – is at the edge of technical capability for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope but is now a possibility. But, the researchers said, scientists need to know what to look for. Their models identify planets like Phanerozoic Earth as the most promising targets for finding life in the cosmos.
They also allow scientists to entertain the possibility – purely theoretical – that if a habitable exoplanet is discovered to have an atmosphere with 30% oxygen, life there might not be limited to microbes, but could include creatures as large and varied as the megalosauruses or microraptors that once roamed Earth.
“If they’re out there,” Payne said, “this sort of analysis lets us figure out where they could be living.”
Dinosaurs or not, the models confirm that from a great distance, such a planet’s light fingerprint would stand out more than a modern Earth’s.
For additional information, see this Cornell Chronicle story.
Cornell University has dedicated television and audio studios available for media interviews.
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JOURNAL
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters
DOI
Wearable devices may prevent astronauts getting 'lost’ in space
Disorientation puts astronauts in danger — now scientists have developed wearable vibrotactile devices to keep them on track
Peer-Reviewed PublicationThe sky is no longer the limit — but taking flight is dangerous. In leaving the Earth’s surface, we lose many of the cues we need to orient ourselves, and that spatial disorientation can be deadly. Astronauts normally need intensive training to protect against it. But scientists have now found that wearable devices which vibrate to give orientation cues may boost the efficacy of this training significantly, making spaceflight slightly safer.
“Long duration spaceflight will cause many physiological and psychological stressors which will make astronauts very susceptible to spatial disorientation,” said Dr Vivekanand P. Vimal of Brandeis University in the United States, lead author of the article in Frontiers in Physiology. “When disoriented, an astronaut will no longer be able to rely on their own internal sensors which they have depended on for their whole lives.”
Personal space
The researchers used sensory deprivation and a multi-axis rotation device to test their vibrotactors in simulated spaceflight, so the senses participants would normally rely on were useless. Could the vibrotactors correct the misleading cues the participants would receive from their vestibular systems, and could participants be trained to trust them?
30 participants were recruited, of which 10 received training to balance in the rotation device, 10 received the vibrotactors, and the remaining 10 received both. All participants were shown a video of the rotation device and told how it worked: moving like an inverted pendulum until it reached a crash boundary, unless it was stabilized by a person sitting in the device controlling it with a joystick.
Additional training, for the participants who received it, included tasks that taught participants to disengage from their vestibular sense and rely on the vibrotactors instead of their natural gravitational cues. These tasks involved searching for hidden non-upright balance points, which meant participants had to ignore their desire to align to upright and focus on the vibrotactors.
All participants were given a blindfold, earplugs, and white noise to listen to. Those with vibrotactors had four strapped to each arm, which would buzz when they moved away from the balance point. Each participant took part in 40 trials, aiming to keep the rotation device as close to the balance point as possible.
For half the trials, the rotation device operated on a vertical roll plane. This was considered an Earth analog because participants could use their natural gravitational cues for orientation. During the second half, which acted as a spaceflight analog, the rotation device operated on a horizontal roll plane where those gravitational cues could no longer help.
After each block of trials, participants were asked to rate how disoriented they felt and how much they trusted the vibrotactors. The scientists measured their success by looking at how often they crashed and how well they controlled their balance.
To infinity and beyond
All the groups were initially disoriented in the spaceflight analog. The scientists expected this, because participants could not rely on the natural gravitational cues that they usually use. Nearly all participants reported that they trusted the vibrotactors, but they also reported confusion from conflicts between their internal cues and the vibrotactors.
The participants wearing vibrotactors still performed better than those who only received training. The training-only group crashed more frequently, moved around the balance point more, and accidentally destabilized themselves more often. Receiving the training did help, though. As the trials continued, the group who received both training and vibrotactors performed best.
However, even with training, the participants didn’t perform as well as they did in the Earth analog. They may have needed more time to integrate cues from the vibrotactors, or the buzzing from the vibrotactors may not have given a strong enough danger signal.
“A pilot’s cognitive trust in this external device will most likely not be enough,” said Vimal. “Instead, the trust has to be at a deeper, almost sub-cognitive, level. To achieve this, specialized training will be required.”
If the sensors succeed in more extensive trials, the scientists said, the possible applications for spaceflight are many — from helping astronauts land safely on the surface of a planet, to supporting them as they move outside a vehicle in space.
JOURNAL
Frontiers in Physiology
METHOD OF RESEARCH
Experimental study
SUBJECT OF RESEARCH
People
ARTICLE TITLE
Vibrotactile Feedback as a Countermeasure for Spatial Disorientation
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
3-Nov-2023
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