LOOK! Up in the sky... IT'S...

[samhexum]

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• Planet formation isn’t exactly the kind of thing that happens in the blink of an eye. New worlds form over extremely long stretches of time, at least on a human scale. They slowly build up mass from the dust and debris nearest to them, eventually forming the spherical shape we’re all familiar with.
  
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  Despite the fact that it can take ages for a planet to fully form, actually capturing the process of planet formation has proven to be incredibly difficult. Now, for the first time ever, astronomers have announced the witnessing of a planet in the midst of its own birth, and they’ve got a stunning image to back up the news.
   
  The discovery was made using the powerful planet-hunting tool called SPHERE, which is part of the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope. The instrument was able to spot a large mass of material — referred to as an accretion disk — surrounding a nearby star. Within that planet-forming cloud of debris, a planet is being constructed. In the image provided by ESO, the planet is seen as a bright mass to the right of its host star which has been blacked out by a mask that allows the surrounding detail to be seen.
   
  The planet, named PDS 70b, is careening through the dust cloud as it orbits its star, gathering material on its surface and slowly but surely maturing into what will one day be a fully-formed world. What makes this discovery so interesting is that it’s the first time that scientists have managed to spot such a young planet with utter certainty.
   
  “These discs around young stars are the birthplaces of planets, but so far only a handful of observations have detected hints of baby planets in them,” Miriam Keppler, the lead researcher on the project, explains. “The problem is that until now, most of these planet candidates could just have been features in the disc.”
   
  While a newborn planet might sound like an interesting place to visit, you most certainly wouldn’t want to set foot on PDS 70b any time soon. The young planet is absolutely scorching, with a surface temperature topping 1,000 degrees Celsius.
   
  
   
   
   
   
  

[+ Avalon]

Fascinating!!! Thank-you for sharing.

 

I took an astronomy class in college years ago. So much has changed since then.

[samhexum]

When you get caught in a storm here on Earth, you just find shelter for a little while and let it pass, but things are a whole lot different on Mars. It’s now been three weeks since the massive dust storm on Mars has swallowed up NASA’s aging Opportunity rover and scientists have absolutely no idea when the bot will wake back up or what condition it will be in when it finally does.

 

The rover has gotten the worst of this planet-wide storm and since it’s located in an area that was one of the first to be shrouded in the dense dust clouds, its solar panels have been unable to capture energy-giving light for a while now. Thus the rover sits in silence, unable to speak to its handlers back home and without enough power to do any actual work. So what’s next?

 

Dr. James Rice, co-investigator and geology team leader on the NASA project that includes Opportunity, recently gave a brief update on Opportunity’s status, as well as an interesting glimpse into what things were like for the rover just before it shut down:

 

We went from generating a healthy 645 watt-hours on June 1 to an unheard of, life-threatening, low just about one week later. Our last power reading on June 10 was only 22 watt hours the lowest we have ever seen. The primary concern is that we will not have enough power to keep us warm enough to prevent any damage to the vehicle’s electronics. However, our thermal experts think that we will stay above those low critical temperatures because we have a Warm Electronics Box (WEB) that is well insulated. So we are not expecting any thermal damage to the batteries or computer systems. Fortunately for us it is also the Martian Spring and the dust, while hindering our solar power in the day, helps keep us warmer at night.

 

Rice also brushes off concerns that the storm will ultimately claim Opportunity’s life, saying that it is “far from dead” and that the rover’s longevity should be all the proof anyone needs to believe that it will emerge from the dire situation intact.

 

He’s certainly right about that last point. Opportunity’s original mission was planned to last just 90 days from its landing date back in 2004, but it has somehow stretched that to over 14 years, continuing to add scientific objectives to its already impressive list of achievements. Let’s all just keep our fingers crossed that its incredible run doesn’t end here.

[samhexum]

Astronomers often have to look very, very carefully for something that they believe exists in a certain spot in space. Whether that be an exoplanet orbiting a distant star or perhaps a still-unseen planet lurking at the edge of the solar system, it’s a challenging endeavor. But every so often, the planets seem to align (no pun intended) and a new discovery just falls right into their laps.

 

That seems to be what happened to astronomers working at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, where a planned survey of trans-Neptunian objects was interrupted by Jupiter. The massive gas giant began muscling in on the telescope’s line of sight and in doing so, revealed a few secrets of its own.

 

Rather than delay their work, the researchers decided to pivot to studying moons of Jupiter that had flown into their gaze. In doing so, the scientists noticed not one, not two, but a full 12 totally new moons whose orbits hadn’t yet been documented, bringing the total number of the planet’s moons up to a whopping 79.

 

The scientists note that they were able to discover these new moons thanks to the lower detection threshold of the telescope. “We were able to go a little bit fainter than anyone has been able to go in the past,” Scott Sheppard of Carnegie Institution for Science told the Washington Post, “That’s why we were able to find these new moons.”

 

These new moons aren’t exactly record-breakers in terms of size. They’re quite small, measuring 2 miles in diameter at the most, and they orbit at a greater distance than many of the already-documented moons of Jupiter.

 

This isn’t likely to be the last new moons that we hear about coming from the gas giant, and astronomers believe there are still plenty of smaller satellites that remain undetected. It’s believed that many of the tiny moons around Jupiter were once much larger, having broken up over time due to the stress of gravity or perhaps even collisions with each other, resulting in the smaller objects we see today.

[+ Avalon]

The planet Jupiter has more moons than the Olympian Jove had lovers!

[samhexum]

NYPD pilots flew $4M plane in penis-shaped route to troll boss

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Five NYPD pilots were so angry at their supervisor that they used a $4 million, federally funded spy plane to fly a route shaped like a giant penis, The Post has learned.

 

Inspector James Coan, head of the Aviation Unit, learned of the phallic airborne artwork from his minions, who discovered the lewd pattern on the department’s flight-tracking software, sources said.

 

He alerted NYPD brass, and the pilots were disciplined following a departmental hearing — with two getting bounced from the unit.

 

The raunchy route came amid a feud between the pilots and Coan over whether the single-engine Cessna was safe to fly over open water — which is why the feds paid for it in the first place, according to the sources.

 

In July 2017, pilots were told to fly at low altitudes over open water 25 miles offshore so they could scan ships for radiological weapons.

 

“If that prop [propeller plane] goes, it’s over. You’re going to crash into the ocean,” a source said they warned their boss, Coan.

 

“They wouldn’t have enough glide time to get back to land at that altitude. It was like a suicide mission.”

 

The low-altitude flights also left them out of radar and radio range, sources added.

 

The pilots’ pushback intensified this past March, when Coan ordered them to make the runs more frequently, sources said.

 

Amid their protests, five flyboys took the plane up and flew the penis-shaped route. Supervisors on the ground saw the phallic flight path while tracking the plane and raised the issue with Coan.

 

In total, a dozen pilots have questioned the wisdom of flying a single-engine plane so far out over open water, sources said.

 

Eight of them — including the five penis-drawing pilots — were stripped of their flight gear and made to clean plane hangars and wash Coan’s department car, according to sources.

 

“Any of the people who complained about the mission — they got the s–t end of the stick,” a source said. “They had to do all these menial tasks outside their job description, including washing his car.”

 

NYPD pilots average more than $100,000 a year in pay, according to records posted on SeeThroughNY.net. “They’re wasting a fortune in training and expertise,” a source added.

 

By May, the NYPD had agreed to cease the offshore counterterror missions altogether until it met with the union representing pilots, but the meeting has yet to happen, sources said.

 

The plane’s last flight, according to tracking service Flight Aware, was on July 5, after itshuttled Mayor Bill de Blasio between his vacation in Canada and a Big Apple police memorial event.

 

Police Commissioner James O’Neill has defended using the plane for other than counterterrorism.

 

Last year, he rode the bird to the funeral for then-Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce’s mother, Dolores, and he admitted taking it to western New York for the July 8 funeral of a state trooper.

 

That flight does not appear on Flight Aware records, and the NYPD has refused to release the plane’s flight logs to The Post.

 

FEMA, which issued the grant used to buy the plane, has said it is looking into whether the NYPD misused the Cessna.

 

The NYPD did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

[samhexum]

Insanely hot exoplanet has titanium in its atmosphere

 

 

When it comes to heat in our solar system, Mercury takes the top crown, at least as far as planets are concerned. You wouldn’t last more than a few seconds on Mercury’s surface, with temperatures topping 800 degrees Fahrenheit on the sun-facing side of the planet, but believe it or not that’s downright chilly compared to the distant exoplanet KELT-9b.

 

KELT-9b is located around 650 light years from our solar system and it’s orbiting its start — named KELT-9 — at such a short distance that it managed to complete an orbit in less than two Earth days. Earth, in case you had forgotten, takes 365 days to orbit our star. That close relationship makes KELT-9b an incredibly hostile place and a new study reveals that the planet is so hot that materials we favor on Earth because of their strength are actually vaporized.

 

The planet is being hailed as the first example of an “ultra-hot Jupiter,” meaning that it’s a massive ball of gas and it’s, well, very hot. Temperatures on KELT-9b are thought to reach as high as 5,800 degrees Fahrenheit, thanks in large part to the fact that the star the planet is orbiting is a great deal hotter than even our own sun. In fact, the planet gets hotter than many stars observed by astronomers. This latest round of work was published in Nature.

 

 

By studying the light that shines through the planet’s atmosphere as it passes in front of its star, researchers have calculated what chemicals are likely present there. Amazingly, the team detected what appears to be iron vapor around the planet, which is something their theoretical models had predicted, but they also found something unexpected. The spectrum of light revealed the presence of gaseous titanium. Yes, the planet is so incredibly hot that even titanium doesn’t stand a chance.

 

It’s thought that planets which get as hot as KELT-9b sometimes completely evaporate due to the heat, but this particular gas giant is large enough that it’s been able to stand the test of time. We still wouldn’t want to visit it, though.

 

NASA admits Mars Opportunity rover could be lost forever

 

 

In a blog post, NASA said that it may never again have contact with the Opportunity rover after the craft got caught up in a Martian dust storm in the middle of June.

 

While expressing optimism that the worst of the Opportunity’s rover’s problems may be behind it, as the dust storm starts to “decay,” NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Andrew Good cautioned that the battery for the $400 million vehicle might have discharged so much power and been inactive for so long, it could be a loss.

 

“Even if engineers hear back from Opportunity, there’s a real possibility the rover won’t be the same,” Good wrote in an Aug. 16 blog post. “The rover’s batteries could have discharged so much power — and stayed inactive so long — that their capacity is reduced. If those batteries can’t hold as much charge, it could affect the rover’s continued operations.”

 

Good also cautioned that no one will know how the Opportunity rover is doing “until it speaks,” but added that the team behind it is optimistic after performing tests on its batteries before the storm hit its location.

 

“Because the batteries were in relatively good health before the storm, there’s not likely to be too much degradation,” Good wrote. “And because dust storms tend to warm the environment — and the 2018 storm happened as Opportunity’s location on Mars entered summer — the rover should have stayed warm enough to survive.”

 

Good added that the dust is less of a problem. Previous storms which “plastered dust on the camera lenses” saw most of the dust eventually shed off. “Any remaining dust can be calibrated out,” he wrote.

 

The dust storm started on June 10 and eventually covered the entire planet, according to Space.com.

 

Still, it has been a sore spot for NASA that it has not been able to contact the Opportunity rover since the dust storm.

 

Assuming NASA is able to get in contact with the rover (it is continuing to listen for signs and pinging it three times a week), Good says we may not know anything for a few weeks, likening its condition to a patient coming out of a coma.

 

“After the first time engineers hear from Opportunity, there could be a lag of several weeks before a second time,” Good wrote. “It’s like a patient coming out of a coma: It takes time to fully recover. It may take several communication sessions before engineers have enough information to take action.”

 

Opportunity has three so-called “fault modes” when it experiences a problem: a low-power fault that causes it to go into hibernation until there is more sunlight to let it recharge; clock fault, which might happen if the rover doesn’t know what time it is, causing disruptions in communication and uploss fault, which occurs when the rover hasn’t heard from Earth in a long time, causing it to check its equipment and try alternate ways to communicate with Earth.

 

Opportunity’s history

 

The Opportunity rover, which was initially meant to only be on the Red Planet for a 90-day mission, has made several groundbreaking discoveries throughout its now roughly 15-year trip, initially leaving Earth on July 7, 2003.

 

So far, it has detected signs of water, explored the insides of two craters and completed a marathon — the first vehicle to do so on another planet.

 

But Opportunity’s journey hasn’t always been a smooth one.

 

In 2005, the rover lost the use of one of its front wheels and got stuck in a thick pile of sand for about five weeks, according to Space.com. When it finally managed to move, it ran into a sand dune. In 2007, a dust storm hit and reportedly cut the spacecraft’s power to “dangerously low levels.” A month later, it turned back on and began exploring the Victoria Crater.

 

Despite its obstacles, the Opportunity has always managed to pull through. But this time, researchers aren’t sure what will happen.

 

In the meantime, scientists are trying to stay positive, creating a Mars-themed Spotify playlist — featuring “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” by Wham!, “Rocket Man” by Elton John, among others — and an office pool to help pass the time.

Edited August 20, 2018 by samhexum

[samhexum]

Holy Cow! Astronomers Agog at Mysterious New Supernova

An event known as "Cow" that has rocked astronomy since June likely offers a close look at the birth of a neutron star or black hole

 

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/holy-cow-astronomers-agog-at-mysterious-new-supernova/

[+ sync]

It is always refreshing for me to be reminded how trivial our earthly trials and tribulations compare to the "big picture."

[+ Avalon]

Holy Cow! Wow Indeed!

[samhexum]

It is always refreshing for me to be reminded how trivial our earthly trials and tribulations compare to the "big picture."

Holy Cow! Wow Indeed!

Dorothy:

Now look, all this nonsense has to stop, Rose. What we saw was not a UFO.

 

Rose:

Well, it wasn't a plane. Planes aren't that thin, or that bright.

 

Dorothy:

Neither is Oprah Winfrey, but that doesn't make her a flying saucer.

[samhexum]

Scientists know a lot about Mars, at least when it comes to what it looks like. Sound, on the other hand, is a lot more challenging and it’s not like we have high-powered microphones listening to the wind sweep across the Martian plains.

 

Now, researchers from Anglia Ruskin University and the University of Exeter in the UK have created an interesting piece of music that wasn’t just inspired by Mars but was actually composed by a computer algorithm using a Mars sunrise as data. The result is a surprisingly pleasing piece of music and you can listen to it yourself.

 

So how was it created? Anglia Ruskin University describes its creation as follows:

Researchers created the piece of music by scanning a picture from left to right, pixel by pixel and looking at brightness and color information and combining them with terrain elevation. They used algorithms to assign each element a specific pitch and melody.

 

As you might assume, the quieter notes and flowing background sounds come from the dark area surrounding the sun in the image. Higher-pitched notes are brighter pixels near the bright orb in the center.

 

“We are absolutely thrilled about presenting this work about such a fascinating planet,” Dr. Domenico Vicinanza, one of the scientists involved in the project, said in a statement. “Image sonification is a really flexible technique to explore science and it can be used in several domains, from studying certain characteristics of planet surfaces and atmospheres, to analyzing weather changes or detecting volcanic eruptions.”

 

The piece will actually be “performed,” so to speak, at the SC18 supercomputing conference in Dallas on Nov. 13. Audience members will hear the song through traditional speakers as well as “vibrational transducers” that will let them feel it. Pretty neat.

 

Edited January 15, 2019 by samhexum

[samhexum]

In an out-of-this-world first, green-thumbed Chinese scientists have managed to sprout a plant on the far side of the moon, officials said Tuesday.

 

“This is the first time humans have done biological growth experiments on the lunar surface,” said Xie Gengxin, who led the design of the experiment.

 

The sprout emerged from a lattice-like structure inside a canister since the country’s Chang’e-4 lander set down on Jan. 3, according to images released by the Advanced Technology Research Institute at Chongqing University.

 

Scientists who designed the “mini lunar biosphere” experiment sent a 7-inch container holding air, water and soil. Inside are cotton, potato and arabidopsis seeds — a plant of the mustard family — as well as fruit fly eggs and yeast.

 

A cotton sprout has grown well, but so far none of the other plants has taken, the scientists said.

 

“We have given consideration to future survival in space. Learning about these plants’ growth in a low-gravity environment would allow us to lay the foundation for our future establishment of space base,” said Professor Liu Hanlong, head of the experiment.

 

He said potatoes could be the main food source for space explorers, while cotton could be used for clothing and rapeseed could be a source of oil, according to the South China Morning Post.

 

Plants have been grown on the International Space Station before but never on the moon.

 

The ability to grow plants on Earth’s satellite will be integral for long-term space missions, like a trip to Mars, which would take about two-and-a-half years.

 

It would mean that astronauts could potentially harvest their own food in space.

 

A cotton sprout growing in a lattice-structured container during an experiment inside the Chang’e-4 lander on the far side of the moon.

 

[samhexum]

[samhexum]

'World's Largest' Plane Lifts Off From California Desert

 

A giant six-engine aircraft with the world's longest wingspan landed its first flight after some two hours in the air Saturday.

 

The behemoth, twin-fuselage Stratolaunch jet lifted off from Mojave Air and Space Port and climbed into the desert sky 70 miles north of Los Angeles.

 

Founded by the late billionaire Paul G. Allen, Stratolaunch is vying to be a contender in the market for air-launching small satellites.

 

The aircraft is designed to carry as many as three satellite-laden rockets at a time under the center of its enormous wing, which stretches 385 feet -- a longer wingspan than any other aircraft.

 

At an altitude of 35,000 feet, the rockets would be released, ignite their engines and soar into space.

 

The advantages of such air-launch systems include being able to use numerous airports and avoid the limitations of fixed launch sites which can be impacted by weather, air traffic and ship traffic on ocean ranges.

 

Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, founded Stratolaunch Systems Corp. in 2011 after emerging in aerospace by funding the development of the experimental air-launched SpaceShipOne, which in 2004 became the first privately built manned rocket to reach space.

 

After Allen's death in October 2018, Stratolaunch dropped plans to develop its own type of rocket engine and a family of launch vehicles, focusing instead on getting the giant plane airborne and launching Northrop Grumman's proven Pegasus XL.

 

The Stratolaunch aircraft emerged from its Mojave hangar for the first time in May 2017 and proceeded through ground tests, including taxiing and rolling down a runway at near-takeoff speeds.

 

Powered by the same type of engines used by Boeing 747s, the aircraft is designed to take off at a maximum weight of 1.3 million pounds. Its twin fuselages -- sort of the airplane equivalent of a catamaran -- are 238 feet long.

 

The previous wingspan leader was Howard Hughes' World War II-era eight-engine H-4 Hercules flying boat -- nicknamed the Spruce Goose. Surviving in an aviation museum, it has an approximately 320-foot wingspan but is just under 219 feet long.

 

While Stratolaunch calls its aircraft the world's largest, other airplanes exceed it in length from nose to tail. They include the six-engine Antonov AN 225 cargo plane, which is 275.5 feet long, and the Boeing 747-8, which is just over 250 feet long.