Cap'n Bob & the Damsel

Astronomy

Hubble Back in Operation

Since the James Webb Space Telescope is a ways off, I’m delighted to see the engineers get the Hubble Space Telescope back in operation.

From NASA:

NASA Issues Hubble Space Telescope Status Report

NASA engineers successfully activated the Advanced Camera for Surveys at 9:12 a.m. EDT Friday aboard the agency’s Hubble Space Telescope. Checkout was completed at 10:20 a.m. EDT with science observations scheduled to resume Sunday, July 2.

“This is the best possible news,” said Ed Ruitberg, deputy associate director for the Astrophysics Division at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. “We were confident we could work through the camera issue, and now we can get back to doing more incredible science with the camera.”

Engineers began uploading commands to the instrument Thursday, June 29, in an effort to restore operational status. A pre-programmed observing timeline for normal camera science operations will begin executing at approximately 8 p.m. EDT on July 2.

Engineers received indications on Monday, June 19, that power supply voltages were out of acceptable limits, causing the camera to stop functioning. The instrument was taken off line, so engineers could study the problem and determine the appropriate remedy. Hubble observations continued using other onboard science instruments.

The third-generation Hubble instrument consists of three electronic cameras, filters and dispersers that detect light from the ultraviolet to the near infrared. Astronauts installed the camera during a servicing mission in March 2002. It was developed jointly by Goddard, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore; Ball Aerospace, Boulder, Colo.; and the Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore.

For information about the Hubble Space Telescope, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/hubble

About the James Webb Space Telescope:

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a large, infrared-optimized space telescope, scheduled for launch in 2013. JWST will find the first galaxies that formed in the early Universe, connecting the Big Bang to our own Milky Way Galaxy. JWST will peer through dusty clouds to see stars forming planetary systems, connecting the Milky Way to our own Solar System. JWST’s instruments will be designed to work primarily in the infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum, with some capability in the visible range.

JWST will have a large mirror, 6.5 meters (21.3 feet) in diameter and a sunshield the size of a tennis court. Both the mirror and sunshade won’t fit onto the rocket fully open, so both will fold up and open only once JWST is in outer space. JWST will reside in an orbit about 1.5 million km (1 million miles) from the Earth.

JWST will orbit the L2 Lagrange Point, in the vicinity of the WMAP probe we blogged about yesterday.

01 Jul 2006 by Astronomy Rocket Science Technobabble

Back to the Bang

Scientists believe the Big Bang occurred because of an observed “cosmological background radiation” seen in all directions from the vantage point of Earth. Since June, 2001, a space-based instrumented observation platform called the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) has been collecting data that allows scientists to literally look back in time and space to virtually witness the birth of the universe.

In the video below, you will see a journey back through space/time starting from the WMAP probe in it’s orbit and continuing outward past Mars, the Asteroid Belt, Jupiter, Saturn, through the Oort cloud and into interstellar space. The journey continues through a “local” nebula in Orion and thence out of the Milky Way and past thousands of galaxies back into the time of primordial blue giant stars and ultimately past the “dark ages” and into the afterglow of the Big Bang. Then, brilliant light and, finally, darkness at “before the beginning of time.”

Please take this thrilling journey back to the beginning of time: (press to play)

Video courtesy NASA’s WMAP website
Audio — “Visions” from Distant Spirits — Scott August

Some history about WMAP:

WMAP was launched on June 30, 2001 from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Base aboard a Delta II rocket.

WMAP completed its prime 2 years of mission operations in its L2 orbit by September 2003. Meanwhile, the 2002 and 2004 Astronomy and Physics Senior Review granted WMAP mission extensions, endorsing the proposed 8-years of mission operations, to end September 2009.

In February 2003 the WMAP Team released a set of 13 papers (241 journal pages) along with flight data from the first year of observations of the CMB. In March 2006, the WMAP Team released 3-year data, including full polarization data, and papers describing the data processing, systematic error analyses, calibration, and other critical aspects of the experiment.

And, finally, a schematic diagram of the trip you just took back over more than thirteen and a half billion years in about a minute!

Schematic of the cosmic chronology

Images and video courtesy of NASA

30 Jun 2006 by Astronomy Rocket Science Technobabble

Space Rock Lunar Impact Video

Not having an atmosphere to ward off small meteoroids, the Moon’s surface is under constant bombardment by space rocks. NASA scientists are now collecting data about impactors on the Moon with an eye on problems they may cause future Lunar explorers.

NASA – A Meteoroid Hits the Moon

June 13, 2006: There’s a new crater on the Moon. It’s about 14 meters wide, 3 meters deep and precisely one month, eleven days old.

NASA astronomers watched it form: “On May 2, 2006, a meteoroid hit the Moon’s Sea of Clouds (Mare Nubium) with 17 billion joules of kinetic energy—that’s about the same as 4 tons of TNT,” says Bill Cooke, the head of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office in Huntsville, AL. “The impact created a bright fireball which we video-recorded using a 10-inch telescope.”

Right: A meteoroid hits the Moon.
[Click here or on the image to see the video]

Lunar impacts have been seen before–“stuff hits the Moon all the time,” notes Cooke–but this is the best-ever recording of an explosion in progress.

[Read more]

Image courtesy NASA.

Hat tip to Dr. Tony Phillips of SpaceWeather.com

14 Jun 2006 by Astronomy Environment Science Space Rocks

Screwy “Second Moon” Leaving Earth

Few of us know that planet Earth has been host to a “second moon” for the past seven years. And now, this fickle little rock is going to move along. An Earth-orbit-crossing Space Rock got a little too close to the gravitational influence of our planet and has been screwing around for the past few years — but not for long.

NASA – Corkscrew Asteroids

June 9, 2006: News flash: Earth has a “second moon.” Asteroid 2003 YN107 is looping around our planet once a year. Measuring only 20 meters across, the asteroid is too small to see with the unaided eye—but it is there.

This news, believe it or not, is seven years old.

“2003 YN107 arrived in 1999,” says Paul Chodas of NASA’s Near Earth Object Program at JPL, “and it’s been corkscrewing around Earth ever since.” Because the asteroid is so small and poses no threat, it has attracted little public attention. But Chodas and other experts have been monitoring it. “It’s a very curious object,” he says.

Right: The typical corkscrew path of an Earth Coorbital Asteroid.

[more]

10 Jun 2006 by Astronomy Science Space Rocks

Huge 4th of July Display — on Jupiter!

And, on an astronomical scale, it IS huge! We reported in a previous article, See Spot Run about the two red spots on Jupiter, Great Red and Red, Jr. Time to get the backyard telescope out and get it tuned up for this!

NASA – Huge Storms Converge

June 5, 2006: The two biggest storms in the solar system are about to go bump in the night, in plain view of backyard telescopes.

Storm #1 is the Great Red Spot, twice as wide as Earth itself, with winds blowing 350 mph. The behemoth has been spinning around Jupiter for hundreds of years.

Storm #2 is Oval BA, also known as “Red Jr.,” a youngster of a storm only six years old. Compared to the Great Red Spot, Red Jr. is half-sized, able to swallow Earth merely once, but it blows just as hard as its older cousin.

[more]

05 Jun 2006 by Astronomy Rocket Science

Binary Space Rocks Pass Earth Today


Like ships passing in the night, pair of space rocks zooms past Earth today at a distance of (only) 2.5 million miles. Dubbed Asteroid 2004 DC, the pair were not known to be a pair until radar reflections off the asteroid were detected by the Arecibo radar/radio telescope (remember the movie “Contact?”).

The green dot in the center near the bottom of the image below (from a NASA orbit simulation) is planet Earth. The scale of the image is such that the asteroid looks very close to our planet, but it is at quite a safe distance.

From SpaceWeather.com:

BINARY ASTEROID: Asteroid 2004 DC is flying by Earth today about 2.5 million miles away. Yesterday, astronomers using the giant Arecibo radar in Puerto Rico pinged the asteroid and discovered that it is actually two asteroids–a 60m rock orbiting a 300m rock. Researchers estimate that one in six near-Earth asteroids are binaries.

03 Jun 2006 by Astronomy Space Rocks

Toto, We’re not in Barstow Anymore

Finally! The Mars Rover “Opportunity” returned an image of the Martian Landscape that doesn’t look like it was taken in the Mojave Desert. The eerie textures and coloring lend an other-worldliness appearance to this image, unlike the images that comedian Dennis Miller asserts “Looks like Barstow!”

Photo Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech

Click here for a Larger Image.

As NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity continues to traverse from “Erebus Crater” toward “Victoria Crater,” the rover navigates along exposures of bedrock between large, wind-blown ripples. Along the way, scientists have been studying fields of cobbles that sometimes appear on trough floors between ripples.

They have also been studying the banding patterns seen in large ripples.This view, obtained by Opportunity’s panoramic camera on the rover’s 802nd Martian day (sol) of exploration (April 27, 2006), is a mosaic spanning about 30 degrees. It shows a field of cobbles nestled among wind-driven ripples that are about 20 centimeters (8 inches) high.

This is a false-color rendering that combines separate images taken through the panoramic camera’s 753-nanometer, 535-nanometer and 432-nanometer filters. The false color is used to enhance differences between types of materials in the rocks and soil.

OK — I admit that this is a “false color” image and isn’t representative of the natural sunlight on Mars, but if you were to pump sunlight up to the amount the Earth gets, you just might get a picture like this.

25 May 2006 by Aerospace Astronomy Rocket Science Technobabble

Categories

Archives