Astronomy Teacher Finds Hubble Telescope's Hidden Treasure

Astronomy Teacher Finds Hubble Telescope's Hidden Treasure - A Connecticut astronomy teacher has uncovered a dazzling view of a satellite galaxy to the Milky Way while exploring the "hidden treasures" of the Hubble Space Telescope.

The new Hubble photo, released Thursday (Jan. 17), shows an intriguing star nursery dotted with dark dust lanes in the Large Magellanic Cloud about 200,000 light-years from Earth. The Hubble observation used to create the image was discovered in the telescope's archives by Josh Lake, a high school astronomy teacher at Pomfret School in Pomfret, Conn., as part of the "Hubble Hidden Treasures" contest that challenged space fans to find unseen images from the observatory.

 

Nearly 200 000 light-years from Earth, the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, floats in space, in a long and slow dance around our galaxy. As the Milky Way’s gravity gently tugs on its neighbour’s gas clouds, they coll

Hubble officials also released an eye-popping video tour of the Large Magellanic Cloud, which zooms in on the region highlighted in Lake's photo.

Lake won first prize in the Hubble photo contest with an image of the LHA 120-N11 (N11) region of the Large Magellanic Cloud. Hubble officials combined Lake's image with more observations of the N11 region in blue, green and near-infrared light wavelengths to create the new view.

"In the center of this image, a dark finger of dust blots out much of the light," Hubble officials said in an image description. "While nebulae are mostly made of hydrogen, the simplest and most plentiful element in the universe, dust clouds are home to heavier and more complex elements, which go on to form rocky planets like the Earth."

The interstellar dust in N11 is extremely fine, much more so than household dust on Earth. It is more similar to smoke, researchers explained.

The Large Magellanic Cloud, or LMC, is one of two small satellite galaxies of the Milky Way (the other is the smaller, aptly named Small Magellanic Cloud). Because of its relatively close proximity, the Large Magellanic Cloud has long been used as a sort of cosmic laboratory to study how stars form in other galaxies.

"It lies in a fortuitous location in the sky, far enough from the plane of the Milky Way that it is neither outshone by too many nearby stars, nor obscured by the dust in the Milky Way’s center," Hubble officials said in a statement. "It is also close enough to study in detail … and lies almost face-on, giving us a bird’s eye view."

In addition to the N11 region, the Large Magellanic Cloud is also home to the spectacular Tarantula nebula, the brightest nearby star nursery, Hubble officials said.

The Hubble Space Telescope has been snapping spectacular photos of the universe since 1994 and is a joint project by NASA and the European Space Agency. This month, NASA officials said the long-lived space observatory could potentially last through 2018. ( space.com )

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Is NASA Lost in Space or Aimed at Asteroid?

Is NASA Lost in Space or Aimed at Asteroid? - A report this month from the National Research Council (NRC) has called NASA’s overall trajectory into question. It pointed out the national disagreement over the U.S. space agency’s goals and objectives, a disparity detrimental to the organization’s planning and budgeting efforts.

The 12-person blue-ribbon study group observed that the White House should take the lead in forging "a new consensus" on NASA's future in order to more closely align the agency’s budget and objectives and remove restrictions impeding NASA's efficient operations.

Twin Space Exploration Vehicles approach an asteroid with the Multi-Person Crew Vehicle docked to a habitat in the background.

For one, the NRC study team took aim at a lofty directive to NASA by President Barack Obama when he spoke at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in April 2010:

"Early in the next decade, a set of crewed flights will test and prove the systems required for exploration beyond low-Earth orbit. And by 2025, we expect new spacecraft designed for long journeys to allow us to begin the first-ever crewed missions beyond the moon into deep space. So we’ll start…we’ll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history. By the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth. And a landing on Mars will follow. And I expect to be around to see it."

Dubious destination

While the NRC study team did not undertake a technical assessment of the feasibility of an asteroid mission, it was informed by several briefers and sources that the current planned asteroid mission has significant shortcomings.

"A current stated interim goal of NASA's human spaceflight program is to visit an asteroid by 2025," said Albert Carnesale, chancellor emeritus and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who chaired the NRC committee that wrote the report.

"However, we've seen limited evidence that this has been widely accepted as a compelling destination by NASA's own work force, by the nation as a whole, or by the international community. The lack of national consensus on NASA’s most publicly visible human spaceflight goal along with budget uncertainty has undermined the agency's ability to guide program planning and allocate funding."

The NRC report added that there appears to be continued enthusiasm for a mission to the moon but not for an asteroid mission, although there is both U.S. and international interest in robotic missions to asteroids.

But the view that a manned flight to a near-Earth object (NEO) is a dubious destination doesn’t settle well in some quarters.

Bring the asteroid to the astronauts

"I agree with the findings in the NRC report that NASA has a long way to go to fulfill the Obama goal of an asteroid mission by 2025," said former astronaut Tom Jones, author of the upcoming book, "Mission: Asteroid."

Jones told SPACE.com that NASA has not taken any major steps, starting with a search for near-Earth asteroid (NEA) targets, necessary to achieve that goal. The agency has so little money that it can’t afford its own asteroid search program, relying instead on a private asteroid-hunting telescope commissioned by the B612 Foundation. NASA's Orion deep-space vehicle and large booster programs won't fly with a crew until after 2020, given current budgets and schedules, he said.

"The best way for NASA to reach both its asteroid goal and to launch humans into translunarspace — beyond the moon — is to use a robot spacecraft to retrieve and return to a safe lunar orbit a small, 500-ton asteroid," Jones said. "Near the Earth-moon L2 point, astronauts and robot probes can explore and dissect this asteroid for science and commercial-scale resources … water being the most valuable."

Bringing the asteroid to the astronauts, Jones said — as described by the Keck Institute for Space Studies team in 2012 — "could jump-start an entire industry between the Earth and the moon, using the energy and raw materials of space to enable everything from robotic probes to the planets, to eventual moon and Mars surface exploration," he said.

Foundation of self-sustainability

"U.S. strategic goals for human space activity need to be long-term. We should have continuous operational reach in near-Earth space, regular access to the surface of the moon, and regular access to Mars," said Mark Sykes, director of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Ariz. He is also the chair of NASA’s Small Bodies Assessment Group.

"All of this requires building space-based infrastructure on a foundation of self-sustainability. Accessing and utilizing resources available on near-Earth objects, particularly water for fuel, life-support and shielding, is the cornerstone and is critical to achieving any of these goals," Sykes told SPACE.com.

Sykes said it would make sense to send a piloted mission to oversee the automated emplacement and startup of a resource recovery facility on a near-Earth object.

"This could help guarantee the successful deployment of many untended facilities to other targets in the future by bringing what humans do best: dealing with the unexpected and improvisation," Sykes said. "In the meantime, great science could also be achieved, but this is strictly bonus…not a rationale."

This could be done on the timescale envisioned by President Obama, Sykes said, with some initiative and little additional cost, and far less total cost than any other option.

Live off the (space) land

Existing Discovery mission proposals are on the table to fly a Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer-class spacecraft that would identify many NEO resource targets in orbits that would afford low-energy, short-duration missions, Sykes said.

Additionally, resource recovery experiments could be undertaken on the International Space Station using meteorite samples and other analog materials, Sykes said.

"Apollo taught us that doing something once or even a few times is no guarantee that it will ever be done again. If we want a permanent American presence in space, we need to learn to live off the land," Sykes said.

"Near-Earth objects are our best opportunity to accomplish this cost-effectively," he concluded.

Asteroids within reach

There's no lack of asteroids to focus upon, said Lindley Johnson, NEO Observations Program Executive at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Johnson noted that he doesn’t speak for NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate (HEOMD) and not in a position to be able to say anything about the priorities for piloted/human spaceflight missions.

"I just know HEOMD has a great challenge to be able to build the basic capabilities needed for future human spaceflight with the budget prospects they’ve been given," Johnson told SPACE.com.

"But we also know there are a lot of near-Earth asteroids out there between here and Mars and we still see them on the horizon for the future of exploration. Maybe somewhat beyond this next hill we must climb, but they are still out there for us to reach for," Johnson said. ( space.com )

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Hot or Not? US Heat Wave Mapped from Space

Hot or Not? US Heat Wave Mapped from Space - Suffering in the summer heat? You're not alone. In a new map made using data compiled by a NASA satellite, a heat wave can be seen spreading across the country, hitting the Great Plains particularly hard.

In the past week, 1,011 records have been broken around the country, including 251 new daily high temperature records on Tuesday (June 26), according to the Associated Press. The week before that, 77 record-high temperatures were tied or beaten. What's more, 26 states and Washington, D.C., are under some kind of heat advisory today (June 29).

   

This map shows the heat wave currently sweeping across the United States with temperatures taken by a NASA satellite on June 26, 2012.

The extreme heat, combined with a dry winter and spring, has helped spawn a number of wildfires raging across the West. Many states with the highest temperatures have had more blazes. Colorado experienced the brunt of the heat wave earlier this week and had eight large wildfires burning as of today. Wyoming and Utah — other states that have seen unusually hot weather — together had nine wildfires burning.

The map was made using surface temperatures nationwide from June 17-24, which were measured by NASA's Aqua satellite. These temperatures were then compared with the average over the same eight days from 2000-2011. Areas with warmer-than-average temperatures are shown in red, near-normal temperatures are white, and cooler conditions are blue.

So what's with the extreme heat? This heat wave, like all major weather events, has its direct cause in a complex set of atmospheric conditions that produce short-term weather. However, weather occurs within the broader context of the climate, and many scientists agree that global warming has made it more likely that heat waves of this magnitude will occur.

This year has been extreme in terms of heat and dryness, as was 2002 (a record-breaking year for fires in Colorado). So far, 2012's weather looks very similar to the weather of 1910. That year, spring was warm and dry, which fed into a hellish fire season. Among the blazes was the Great Fire of 1910, also known as "the Big Burn," which destroyed 3 million acres of forest in Washington, Idaho and Montana. ( LiveScience.com )

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Super-Giant Black Hole Baffles Scientists

Super-Giant Black Hole Baffles Scientists - You would probably not enjoy the galaxy NGC 1277. Never mind that it's far - 220 million light-years away in the constellation Perseus. The problem is that at its center is a giant, giant black hole, 17 billion times as massive as our sun, so big that scientists calculate it makes up 59 percent of the mass of the galaxy's disc.

Astrophysicists have long believed that there's a black hole at the center of our Milky Way, but it probably accounts for something like 0.1 percent of the galaxy's center. The one in NGC 1277, scientists report in today's edition of the journal Nature, is the second largest they've ever observed, and it upends what they thought about how galaxies form.

 

ABC News - Super-Giant Black Hole Baffles Scientists (ABC News)

Black holes, as you'll recall, are objects in space so massive that their gravity consumes everything around them - stars, planets, matter, energy, even light. Earthly scientists can only observe their effect on the space around them, not see them directly. Be grateful we're not close to one. They're actually useful to astrophysicists in explaining the nice spiral shape of many galaxies - you need something massive in the middle for the stars to circle - but NGC 1277 is an extreme.

"This is a really oddball galaxy," said Karl Gebhardt of the University of Texas at Austin, a member of the team that made the find. "It's almost all black hole. This could be the first object in a new class of galaxy-black hole systems." Gebhardt and colleagues at the McDonald Observatory have been calculating the mass of different black holes - no small task considering their powerful gravity.

The researchers put together an animation of how stars in that distant galaxy would behave, whipping around the center to avoid falling in.

What would you see if you lived on a habitable planet in that far-away galaxy and could look toward the center? Probably nothing that makes sense to human eyes. Black holes have such powerful gravity that they distort the space around them. ( ABC News )

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Monster Black Hole Is Biggest Ever Found

Monster Black Hole Is Biggest Ever Found - Astronomers have discovered what may be the most massive black hole ever known in a small galaxy about 250 million light-years from Earth, scientists say.

The supermassive black hole has a mass equivalent to 17 billion suns and is located inside the galaxy NGC 1277 in the constellation Perseus. It makes up about 14 percent of its host galaxy's mass, compared with the 0.1 percent a normal black hole would represent, scientists said.

"This is a really oddball galaxy," said study team member Karl Gebhardt of the University of Texas at Austin in a statement. "It's almost all black hole. This could be the first object in a new class of galaxy-black hole systems."

The giant black hole is about 11 times as wide as the orbit of Neptune around our sun, researchers said. The mass is so far above normal that the scientists took a year to double-check and submit their research paper for publication, according to the study's lead author, Remco van den Bosch.

"The first time I calculated it, I thought I must have done something wrong. We tried it again with the same instrument, then a different instrument," van den Bosch, an astronomer at Germany's Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, told SPACE.com. "Then I thought, 'Maybe something else is happening.'"

Galactic evolution questioned

The finding may have implications for our understanding of how giant black holesevolve in the center of galaxies.

Astronomers typically believe that the size of the central part of a galaxy, and the black hole inside of it, are linked. But the vastly different proportions seen in NGC 1277 are calling that into question.

NGC 1277's black hole is many times more massive than its largest known competitor. It makes up about 59 percent of its host galaxy's central mass. The object's closest competitor is in the galaxy NGC 4486B, whose black hole takes up 11 percent of the central galaxy's mass.

However, van den Bosch's team says it has also spotted five other galaxies near NGC 1277 that look about the same, and may also harbor gigantic black holes inside of them.

"You always expect to find one sort [of a phenomenon], but now we have six of them," van den Bosch said. "We didn't expect them, because we do expect the black holes and the galaxies to influence each other."

The research is detailed in tomorrow's (Nov. 29) edition of the journal Nature.

Black hole census

Van den Bosch said his team discovered the mega black holes during a survey to seek "the biggest black holes we could find."

The astronomers analyzed the light coming from 700 galaxies, using an immense light-gathering telescope: the Hobby-Eberly Telescope at the University of Texas at Austin's Mcdonald Observatory.

From that large survey, they found six galaxies with stars and other objects whipping about inside of them at unusually high average speeds — more than 218 miles a second (350 kilometers). The galaxies also were small, at less than 9,784 light-years across.

Suspecting the speed and size measurements meant massive black holes lay inside these galaxies, the team used Hubble Space Telescope archival data of NGC 1277 and discovered the large black hole.

The team also noted that NGC 1277 has only old stars inside it. The youngest stars in the galaxy are 8 billion years old, almost twice the age of our sun.

Van den Bosch said he is curious to know if these large black holes only formed in the early years of the universe.

"It could just be this thing has been sitting around since the Big Bangand not done much since then," he said. "It might be a relic of what star formation and galactic formation looked like at that time." ( space.com )

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2012 Mayan Apocalypse Rumors Have Dark Side, NASA Warns

2012 Mayan Apocalypse Rumors Have Dark Side, NASA Warns - NASA scientists took time on Wednesday (Nov. 28) to soothe 2012 doomsday fears, warning against the dark side of Mayan apocalypse rumors — frightened children and suicidal teens who truly fear the world may come to an end Dec. 21.

These fears are based on misinterpretations of the Mayan calendar. On the 21st, the date of the winter solstice, a calendar cycle called the 13th b'ak'tun comes to an end. Although Maya scholars agree that the ancient Maya would not have seen this day as apocalyptic, rumors have spread that a cosmic event may end life on Earth on that day.

Thus NASA's involvement. The space agency maintains a 2012 information page debunking popular Mayan apocalypse rumors, such as the idea that a rogue planet will hit Earth on Dec. 21, killing everyone. (In fact, astronomers are quite good at detecting near-Earth objects, and any wandering planet scheduled to collide with Earth in three weeks would be the brightest object in the sky behind the sun and moon by now.)

"There is no true issue here," David Morrison, an astrobiologist at NASA Ames Research Center, said during a NASA Google+ Hangout event today (Nov. 28). "This is just a manufactured fantasy."

Real-world consequences

Unfortunately, Morrison said, the fantasy has real-life consequences. As one of NASA's prominent speakers on 2012 doomsday myths, Morrison said, he receives many emails and letters from worried citizens, particularly young people. Some say they can't eat, or are too worried to sleep, Morrison said. Others say they're suicidal.

"While this is a joke to some people and a mystery to others, there is a core of people who are truly concerned," he said.

Not every 2012 apocalypse believer thinks the world will end on Dec. 21. Some, inspired by New Age philosophies, expect a day of universal peace and spiritual transformation. But it's impressionable kids who have NASA officials worried.

"I think it's evil for people to propagate rumors on the Internet to frighten children," Morrison said.

Myths and misconceptions

NASA scientists took questions via social media in the hour-long video chat, debunking doomsday myths from the rogue planet Nibiru to the danger of killer solar flares.

In fact, said NASA heliophysicist Lika Guhathakurta, it's true that the sun is currently in an active phase of its cycle, meaning electromagnetic energy has picked up. Large solar flares can impact electronics and navigation systems on Earth, but satellites monitoring the sun give plenty of warning and allow officials to compensate for the extra electromagnetic activity when it hits our atmosphere. What's more, Guhathakurta said, this particular solar maximum is the "wimpiest" in some time — scientists have no reason to expect solar storms beyond what our planet has weathered in the past.

Nor are any near-Earth objects, planetary or otherwise, threatening to slam into our planet on Dec. 21, said Don Yeomans, a planetary scientist who tracks near-Earth objects at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The only close asteroid approach on the horizon is forecast to occur on Feb. 13, 2013, when an asteroid will pass within 4.5 Earth radii to our planet (for perspective, Earth's radius is 3,963 miles, or 6,378 kilometers). The asteroid is not going to hit Earth, Yeomans said.

Other rumors — that the Earth's magnetic field will suddenly reverse or that the planet will travel almost 30,000 light-years and fall into the black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy — were also dismissed. (A light-year is the distance light travels in one year, or about 6 trillion miles, or 10 trillion km.)

One popular rumor that the planet will undergo a complete blackout from Dec. 23 to 25 earned a "What?" and blank looks from the panel of scientists.

Ultimately, concerns about Earth's fate would be better focused on slow-acting problems such as climate change rather than some sort of cosmic catastrophe, said Andrew Fraknoi, an astronomer at Foothill College in California.

Mitzi Adams, a heliophysicist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, agreed.

"The greatest threat to Earth in 2012, at the end of this year and in the future, is just from the human race itself," Adams said. ( space.com )

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How 'The Big Bang Theory' Sent Howard Wolowitz to Space

How 'The Big Bang Theory' Sent Howard Wolowitz to Space - Howard Wolowitz is still in space. The fictional aerospace engineer and Expedition 31 crew member was seen floating aboard the International Space Station (ISS) during last week's season premiere of the CBS hit television series "The Big Bang Theory." On this week's episode, airing tonight (Oct. 4), Wolowitz is still off the planet, 250 miles (400 km) up.

Of course, he is not really on the space station. The real ISS Expedition 31 ended in July. Wolowitz, or rather actor Simon Helberg, was on a sound stage at the Warner Bros. studio lot in Burbank, Calif.

 

His spacecraft surroundings never orbited the Earth, but they did play previous host to the Energizer Bunny for a Super Bowl commercial and were seen in the 2004 feature film, "The Day After Tomorrow."

But Helberg's, or rather Wolowitz's crew did include a real life NASA astronaut, Mike Massimino, and, further blurring the lines between art and life, the fictional Expedition 31 crew patch that they wore on the show placed Wolowitz's and Massimino's names side-by-side.

Behind the scenes, the job of delivering Wolowitz to the orbiting outpost didn't fall to a Russian rocket but rather to The Big Bang Theory's production designer John Shaffner, set decorator Ann Shea and their teams.

Scavenging for space parts

As it turns out, you can rent a space station.

Last May, when the show's fifth season finale called for Wolowitz to launch onboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, Shaffner went looking for one.

"The first thing that we always do in this business is ask, 'Well, can we rent it? Did somebody make one first?' And unfortunately, we discovered that there weren't any Soyuz replicas to be found," Shaffner told collectSPACE.com in an interview.

For the Soyuz, Shaffner and Shea received photos from NASA, turned to a Kansas museum to find dimensions, and scavenged parts from an aerospace junkyard in Los Angeles to piece together a realistic capsule. But in the course of his seeking out the spacecraft, Shaffner found a space station.

"So when the call came this summer from the producers that we need the space station, I was able to immediately say 'Well guess what? No fear. Let me make sure we can put it on hold,' which I did immediately," Shaffner recalled.

From the outside, WonderWorks' space station set for rent looks more like an elongated shipping crate, but inside are the replica science and equipment racks, panels and hand holds that form the general layout and appearance of the real space station's laboratory module. Shea's challenge was making it look lived in, like the orbiting complex.

"I collected things that looked like what was in the actual space station," Shea told collectSPACE.com. "I watched the video of the station probably 20 times, trying to pick out all these different things and there were so many surprises in the stuff you saw attached to the walls with velcro so they wouldn't float around."

"There were camera lenses for some reason, there were toothbrushes, pens, family photographs and lots and lots of different cases of things," she said. "They even had this sort of Halliburton case, or it looked like a Halliburton case, that was a food warmer, somehow — I can't imagine how that worked. So, I got one of those and we labeled it 'food warmer.'"

Wireless weightlessness

With only 20 feet or so (6 meters) of space station set to work with, Shaffner got together with the directors, visual effects supervisors and cinematographers to use unique camera angles and creative framing to create more 'space' than there really was.

They also added a section to the rented module to allow other actors — the other station crew members — to enter and exit, giving viewers a sense that a sprawling outpost continued beyond the lab.

"We really examined ways we could reimagine the spaces we added," Shaffner said.

Part of that was made possible by the way they achieved the appearance of weightlessness. Rather than raise the roof and suspend the actors by wires, the solution came from below.

"It was done by supporting the people from underneath," Shaffner revealed. "There was a very long, sort of skinny platform that a person could lie on and it would almost look like they were swimming through in weightlessness."

The actors also deserve some credit, said Shaffner, for mastering the motions of microgravity.

"They studied and really did a remarkable job with acting the weightlessness," he said.

Attention to accuracy

Having a real astronaut on the set offered a chance for some immediate feedback. Massimino reprises his role on the show for this and next week's episodes.

"His response was immediate and really positive," Shaffner said of Massimino's impression of the spacecraft. "He was so blown away by [the set]. He said, 'Wow, you guys really did an amazing job! This really feels like it. This is really how big it is, it is not very big.'"

"He was very, very appreciative and I think in the end that made everyone involved feel extra good about it," said Shaffner. "We had all pulled together to make this real for him and he got a really big kick out of it."

Beyond wanting to please Massimino, the attention to accuracy was rooted in the show's long commitment to serving the storyline by being honest and truthful with its visuals.

"We are all very committed to making sure that we don't want ever the set or the visual environment to not make you believe the story, to take your interest and your mind out of what the characters are living through and start questioning authenticity," Shaffner said.

"So we work very hard on creating our authenticity, and it is a theatrical authenticity to some extent. But by really looking and researching and trying to make it honest and authentic, we believe it helps the storytelling," he said. ( space.com )

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Spidery black objects on Mars surface raise speculation

Spidery black objects on Mars surface raise speculation - Someone alert Ziggy Stardust, there appear to be spiders on Mars.

Strange black objects seen from 200 miles above the surface of Mars are generating interest and speculation that the unidentified objects could be anything from geysers to sunbathing colonies of microorganisms.

 

Scientists are trying to identify the strange black spidery objects in these images. (Michael Benson/NASA/JPL/University )

NPR presents several photos of the objects, including one taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on Jan. 27, 2010, that appears to show "little black flecks dotting the ridges, mostly on the sunny side, like sunbathing spiders sitting in rows."

The objects were first spotted in 1998. Interestingly, they appear when the surface of Mars begins to warm, showing up in the same location most of the time. And then when the Martian winter approaches, they disappear with the same precise regularity. The images have been brought into greater detail by Michael Benson in his book "Planetfall: New Solar System Visions."

Most scientists, including teams from the U.S. Geological Survey, Hungary and the European Space Agency, have their own theories, but the leading explanation is that the objects are geysers of CO2 exploding from underneath the planet's surface.

"If you were there, you'd be standing on a slab of carbon dioxide ice," Phil Christensen of Arizona State University told NPR. "All around you, roaring jets of carbon dioxide gas are throwing sand and dust a couple hundred feet into the air. The ground below would be rumbling. You'd feel it in your space boots."

And while the geyser theory is the most popular explanation, it has yet to be verified.

In the meantime, there are some interesting alternative theories, including one from a group of Hungarian scientists, who have speculated that the objects are actually colonies of photosynthetic Martian microorganisms that emerge each year to sunbathe in the warm weather. ( The Sideshow )

 

What the objects may look like up close. (Artist rendering by Ron Miller/JPL/Arizona State University)

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The Scariest Things in Space

The Scariest Things in Space - Halloween brings out the zombies and vampires here on Earth, but these and other monsters are a constant presence in the heavens above our heads.

Space is full of freaky and freakish phenomena, from stars that suck the life out of their stellar companions to gigantic black holes billions of times more massive than our sun. In honor of the Halloween season, here's a brief rundown of the spookiest things in space.

The undead planet

Many astronomers had heaped dirt on the huge alien planet Fomalhaut b, but it apparently lives again.

Back in 2008, astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope announced the discovery of an enormous planet circling the bright star Fomalhaut, which lies just 25 light-years from Earth. Other researchers subsequently cast doubt on Fomalhaut b, saying the discovery team had actually just imaged a giant dust cloud.

But a new analysis of Hubble observations from 2004 and 2006, to be published soon in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, detects the planet all over again. Other researchers are scrutinizing the Fomalhaut system, too, so this zombie may be buried once again before all is said and done.

Zombie stars

Some stars do Fomalhaut b one better, literally coming back to life in violent and dramatic fashion.

Astronomers know these zombie stars as Type Ia supernovas — huge and powerful explosions that send star innards streaking out into the universe.

Type Ia supernovas explode from binary systems that contain at least one white dwarf — a tiny, super-dense star that has ceased undergoing nuclear fusion reactions. White dwarfs are "dead," but they don't have to stay that way in a binary system.

They can roar back to life, albeit briefly, in a gigantic supernova explosion by sucking material from their companion stars, or by merging with them.

Vampire stars

Just like vampires of fiction, some stars manage to stay young by sucking the life force from hapless victims.

These vampire stars are known as "blue stragglers," and they act much younger than the ancient neighbors with which they formed. They burn much hotter, for example, and appear much bluer. Scientists think they manage this feat by sucking hydrogen fuel away from companion stars.

Giant black holes

Black holes seem like the stuff of science fiction — objects of extreme density whose gravity is so strong that not even light can escape if it draws near enough.

But they're very real, and quite common throughout the universe. In fact, astronomers think that supermassive black holes lie at the heart of most, if not all, galaxies, including our own Milky Way.

"Supermassive" is an apt descriptor, for these objects are mind-bogglingly gigantic. Scientists recently discovered two black holes that each contain about as much mass as 10 billion suns.

The unfathomable blackness of space

If you're scared of the dark, deep space is not the place for you. It is a place of extreme blackness, far from the comforting lights of home.

Space is black because it's incredibly empty, scientists say. Though trillions of stars are scattered throughout the cosmos, there just aren't many molecules in the huge intervening distances for their light to bounce and scatter off.

Witches' brooms and spiders

The heavens are populated by cackling witches, glowing skulls and all-seeing eyes — in fact, pretty much any ghoul or monster you can imagine.

We see these shapes in diffuse collections of glowing gas and dust called nebulas, which are scattered throughout the universe. Spotting space tarantulas and witches' brooms is an example of pareidolia, a phenomenon in which the human brain recognizes shapes in random images.

Killer asteroids

The above phenomena may be spooky in an abstract or silly way, but they pose no threat to humanity. That cannot be said for big asteroids that zoom close to Earth.

A space rock at least 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) wide has the potential to wipe out civilization if it strikes our planet, experts say. And even asteroids that measure just 130 feet (40 meters) across can inflict serious damage on a local scale if they strike near a populated area.

Asteroid impacts are a fact of life here on Earth; a 6-mile-wide (10 km) space rock is probably what wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Luckily for us, however, scientists are scanning the heavens for dangerous space rocks, and there are ways to deflect asteroids that may have Earth's name on them — if we have enough lead time.

An active sun

The sun gives us life, but our star is not exactly benign. It unleashes huge storms from time to time, with potentially devastating impacts on radio communications, satellite navigation and power grids here on Earth.

Such solar outbursts have been on the rise lately, as the sun has settled into a particularly active phase of its 11-year cycle. Researchers expect solar activity to peak in 2013. ( space.com )

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Proof of Moon's Birth in Giant Impact Found in Zinc

Proof of Moon's Birth in Giant Impact Found in Zinc - Water on the moon boiled away in massive quantities in a cataclysmic evaporation event during the moon's birth, bolstering the theory that a Mars-sized body collided with the Earth to form its only natural satellite, scientists say.

Researchers examined rocks collected by astronauts during NASA's Apollo lunar landing missions, as well as a meteorite that originated on the moon to make the find. They looked for traces of zinc, and found the ratios of heavy to light isotopes are greater than on Earth, which suggests the moon went through an intense evaporation event early in its formation.

 

This artist's conception of a planetary smashup whose debris was spotted by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope three years ago gives an impression of the carnage that would have been wrecked when a similar impact created Earth's Moon. A team at Was

The study is more evidence for the theory that the moon formed from a colossal impact, researchers said.

Early in the moon's formation, the surface was hot enough to vaporize zinc – and a giant impact is one of the few things that would generate that much heat. Another prediction of the theory is that heavier isotopes would be more common, because they would condense at a higher temperature.

"What we found is that the depletion [of lighter isotopes] of Zinc is probably due to evaporation," said study co-author Frédéric Moynier, assistant professor of Earth and planetary sciences at the Washington University in St. Louis.

Zinc on the moon

Moynier, study lead author Randal Paniello and James Day of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, found that the ratio of zinc-66 to zinc-64 in moon rocks is about three to four times greater than either Earth or Mars. On the Earth and Mars respectively, it is 0.25 to 0.27 parts per thousand. On the moon, it was a difference of 1.3 to 1.4 parts per thousand.

Almost all the samples collected from the moon had similar ratios of heavier to light isotopes, even though they came from very different places all over the moon. (One sample came from a meteorite that originated there).

The team also measured the effect in tektites, which are pebble-sized rocks formed by meteor impacts. They found the same thing: The tektites were also depleted in zinc-64 relative to ordinary Earth rocks.

The high temperatures imply the water vaporized. That would also point to a depletion of other volatiles – elements such as hydrogen, chlorine, sulfur, which vaporize at relatively low temperatures.

Searching for moon water

However, several studies show water present in some lunar rocks.

Recent missions like NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite revealed evidence of moon water in 2009. India's Chandrayaan-1 found hydroxyl, an oxygen-hydrogen compound that makes water when bonded to another hydrogen atom.

How much water and other volatiles the moon has is a key question for plans of future lunar exploration by astronauts. Advocates of a "wet moon" say that the lunar mantle may have big stores of those chemicals. But other scientists think the volatiles are mostly in the top layers of lunar soil, brought in by impacts and generally dating from after the moon's formation.

"[The results] show that all this water they found on the face of the moon is secondary water," Moynier said.

Water and volatiles are probably from impacts and the solar wind, Moynier said. The studies showing volatiles in the volcanic glass might be showing local areas that are enriched, relative to the rest of the moon, he added.

Denton Ebel, curator of meteorites at the American Museum of Natural History, noted that there is evidence of seismic activity on the moon and evidence of hydrogen-bearing rocks at the moon's interior. Ebel was not involved it he study.

There is also a heat source at the center of the moon. That would point to some volatiles and water being there. But the new research seems to show a moon-spanning mine of water and other volatiles is less likely.

"The dry moon is dead, but the wet moon is not alive," he said.

Ebel noted that the isotope study confirms a prediction of the impact theory of the moon's formation. There are still a lot of questions, though. For example, the moon's composition is broadly similar to the Earth's mantle – as the impact theory predicts. But the Earth's mantle is depleted in potassium, and the moon's should look the same. It doesn't.

The study also shows how important it is to get samples, Ebel said.

Without the Apollo moon rocks and lunar meteorites, gathered mostly from Antarctica, it would be harder to test the impact theory at all, since the evidence comes from direct chemical analysis. ( SPACE.com )

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Giant Eye In Space Seen by NASA Telescopes

Giant Eye In Space Seen by NASA Telescopes - A pair of NASA space telescopes have captured a spectacular new photo of the Helix Nebula, a glowing celestial vision that resembles a giant cosmic eye.

The Helix Nebula (also known as NGC 7293) represents a dying star known as a planetary nebula. The new picture, released Wednesday (Oct. 3), combines data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, which observes in long-wavelength infrared light, and the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX), which picked out the short-wavelength ultraviolet light coming from the object.

 

This object, called the Helix nebula, lies 650 light-years away, in the constellation of Aquarius.

The Helix Nebula is located about 650 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Aquarius. It provides a sneak peak at the future of our own sun, which is expected to turn into a planetary nebula in about 5 billion years.

Planetary nebulas are stars around the size of the sun that have neared the ends of their lives and run out of hydrogen and helium fuel for fusion in their cores. At this point, they puff out their outer gaseous layers into glowing shells around them, and condense into small white dwarf stars.

"The white dwarf is about the size of Earth, but has a mass very close to that of the original star; in fact, a teaspoon of a white dwarf would weigh as much as a few elephants!" NASA scientists wrote in a statement.

The white dwarf star is visible in the picture as the tiny white dot in the center of the nebula.

This star emits intense ultraviolet radiation, which in turns lights up the outer gas layers in infrared wavelengths. Both ranges of the spectrum are shown here in the combined light of the two telescopes. In the photo, the GALEX data is shown in blue, while the Spitze Space Telescope observations are represented in yellow. Some of the background space is from data collected by NASA's all-sky Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE).

Planetary nebulas aren't planets at all, but they were erroneously named in the 18th century because they resembled gas giant planets, and the name has stuck. ( SPACE.com )

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