Indholdsfortegnelse for No. 145 i All About Space

SCAN HERE TO GET OUR DAILY NEWSLETTER Cast your mind back to 14 July 2015… that was the day NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft gave us our first close-up look of Pluto and its moons. Heading beyond the dwarf planet, further into the outer Solar System, the spacecraft – travelling at a speed of at least 83,000 kilometres per hour (51,0000 miles per hour) – entered the Kuiper Belt, giving us a view of the dual-lobed trans-Neptunian object 486958 Arrokoth, and later, in 2018, confirmed the existence of a hydrogen wall at the edge of our solar neighbourhood. But what lies beyond the confines of our Solar System? In our cover feature this issue, we speak to the experts, who have given us their best guesses on what we’re likely to…

A new image captures a winding jet of material that looks like a garden sprinkler expelled by a young stellar object. The target, formally known as 244-440, resides in the Orion Nebula, a stellar nursery that lies about 1,350 light years from Earth. Taken using the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument on the ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in northern Chile, the photo captures the striking ‘S’ shape of the jet of matter. The curved nature of the jet suggests that it may be coming from one star orbiting another star. “Very young stars are often surrounded by discs of material falling towards the star. Some of this material can be expelled into powerful jets perpendicular to the disc,” ESO officials said. “The S-shaped jet of 244-440 suggests that…

A space solar power prototype has demonstrated its ability to wirelessly beam power through space and direct a detectable amount of energy towards Earth for the first time. The experiment proves the viability of tapping into a near-limitless supply of power in the form of energy from the Sun from space. Because solar energy in space isn’t subject to factors like day and night, obscuration by clouds or weather on Earth, it’s always available. In fact, it’s estimated that space-based harvesters could potentially yield eight times more power than solar panels at any location on the surface of the globe. The wireless power transfer was achieved by the Microwave Array for Power-transfer Low-orbit Experiment (MAPLE), an array of flexible and lightweight microwave power transmitters, which is one of the three…

“Like an archaeological dig into the history of our Solar System.” That’s how New Horizons principal investigator Howard Stern described the spacecraft’s mission to Pluto and the outer Solar System. In recent decades, our ability to peer into the murky edges of the Solar System and map the populations of icy bodies that reside there has not only changed our understanding of the true scale and nature of the Solar System, but has also shone a light on the past, on how the current arrangement of rocky and icy worlds came to be and how interactions with the wider galaxy might shape its future. Residents of the outer Solar System can be divided into various populations by their current orbits, history of orbital interactions or their compositional makeup. Kuiper Belt…

Martin and Carlos are identical twins. Well, almost. While Martin is a medical doctor, Carlos is an astronaut about to travel to Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system to our own, at speeds nearing that of light. Just before takeoff, Martin and Carlos synchronise their watches, and Carlos reminds Martin that Einstein’s theory of special relativity predicts ‘time dilation’ – that is, that watches moving at a constant high speed appear to tick at a slower pace. This gets Martin thinking… with Carlos moving rapidly, his watch will run slower, which means that he will be younger upon his return. But from Carlos’ perspective Martin will be the one moving at high speed, so Martin’s watch will appear to run slower, and so it is Martin who should stay younger.…

“The James Webb Space Telescope is a pathfinder of scientific discovery” 1 WEBB IS HAILED AS THE GREATEST SPACE BREAKTHROUGH When Webb launched on 25 December 2021, it was the culmination of decades of work by NASA scientists and engineers. The launch went off without a hitch, as did the numerous steps of the telescope’s deployment in the following months. In mid-July Webb released its stunning first images. The infrared telescope will help us see almost every part of our universe in greater detail, including the most distant galaxies, allowing us a glimpse into the past. “Within days of [Webb] coming online in late June 2022, researchers began discovering thousands of new galaxies more distant and ancient than any previously documented – some perhaps more than 150 million years older…

One popular science-fiction TV series is For All Mankind, which chronicles a fascinating and thrilling alternative history of the US space program. In the alternate history, the Soviets beat the US to the Moon – Alexei Leonov takes that first small step instead of Neil Armstrong, quickly followed by a female cosmonaut, and it all follows on from there. By the mid-1970s there have been 25 Apollo missions, carrying both male and female crews, and both superpowers have small military outposts on the Moon, built on the rim of a crater down at the Moon’s south pole, Shackleton. Why there? Its shadowy depths, never illuminated by the Sun, contain priceless deposits of ice that can be processed to make fuel and water, allowing lunar settlers to ‘live off the land’…

Fully in the midst of summer, the short warmer nights offer a splendid selection of nebulae, star clusters and bright stars to observe. Red supergiant Arcturus proudly makes F its appearance known in the constellation of Boötes. The unmistakable Summer Triangle is easily observed this month, with the stars Altair, Deneb and Vega in the constellations of Aquila, Cygnus and Lyra respectively marking each of its corners. Summer is an ideal time to see the Milky Way, with Sagittarius and Scorpius marking its centre – here you’ll be able to see a selection of clusters, including the Ptolemy Cluster, also known as Messier 7. Using the sky chart This chart is for use at 22:00 mid-month and is set for 52 degrees latitude. 1 Holdthe chart above your head with…

A fresh atlas of five nearby stellar nurseries shows infant stars shining through the dense clouds of gas and dust from which they were formed. The atlas brings to light vast star birthplaces in infrared light. Astronomers created it by stitching together over a million cosmic baby pictures using the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) at the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Paranal Observatory in Chile. Astronomers know that stars form when cool and extremely dense patches in vast dust and gas clouds collapse under their own gravity. But details such as how many stars a dust cloud can birth – and how many of these stars will go on to host planets – are less clear. The observations from VISTA could help astronomers better understand these aspects…

A new experimental hypersonic cruise vehicle could be flying as soon as next summer under an initiative from the US Defense Innovation Unit (DIU). The DART AE high-speed test aircraft is being developed by Hypersonix Launch Systems following the award of a prototype contract. DART AE is a 300-kilogram scramjet-powered technology demonstrator that can reach speeds of up to Mach 7. The DIU, which operates under the US Department of Defense (DoD), describes itself as an organisation focused on accelerating the adoption of commercial and dual-use technology to solve operational challenges at speed and scale. The Pentagon is pursuing research and development of hypersonic defence programs. As part of this, the DIU has rolled out the high-cadence testing capabilities (HyCAT) project, which brings opportunities for commercial companies to develop reusable…

Scientists caught Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus spraying a huge plume of watery vapour far into space – and that plume likely contains many of the chemical ingredients for life. “It’s immense,” Sara Faggi, a planetary astronomer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said. This isn’t the first time scientists have seen Enceladus spout water, but the new telescope’s wider perspective and higher sensitivity showed that the jets of vapour shoot much farther into space than previously realised. Scientists first learned of Enceladus’ watery blasts in 2005, when NASA’s Cassini spacecraft caught icy particles shooting up through large lunar cracks called ‘tiger stripes’. Analysis revealed that the jets contained methane, carbon dioxide and ammonia – organic molecules containing the chemical building blocks necessary for the development of life. It’s even possible…

China plans to land astronauts on the Moon before 2030 and add a fourth module to its space station. The country’s plans for C landing on the Moon include a “short stay on the lunar surface and human-robotic joint exploration,” Lin Xiqiang, deputy director of the country’s human spaceflight agency, said during a news conference at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. Both NASA and China’s space agency are eyeing potential landing sites near the Moon’s south pole, where water ice and other resources that could prove to be valuable for lunar settlement and exploration can be found. Xiqiang also announced plans for adding a module to the Tiangong space station, which currently features three modules that were launched one at a time since May 2021 and put together in…

Earth is held in its orbit around the Sun, like other planets around their own stars. Stars themselves are held in galaxies by larger, E more massive objects like the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way. The glue that holds galaxies together is the force of gravity. Yet gravity isn’t the only force that matters when it comes to the structure of galaxies and the space between them. For years, interstellar magnetic fields were thought to be so weak they made no difference to how our galaxy evolved. However, research is increasingly showing that magnetic fields in galaxies are important to the way space is shaped. While the effects of our own planet and star’s magnetic fields can be felt on Earth, the magnetic fields of…

A stronomers long thought that a peculiar star system observed by the European Space Agency’s Gaia satellite was a simple case of a star orbiting a black hole. But two astronomers are challenging that claim, finding that the evidence suggests something far stranger: a never-beforeseen type of star made of invisible dark matter. The system consists of a Sun-like star, and something else. The star weighs 0.93 solar masses and has roughly the same chemical abundance as the Sun. Its mysterious companion is much more massive – around 11 solar masses. The objects orbit each other at a distance of 1.4 astronomical units, about the distance at which Mars orbits the Sun, making a complete orbit every 188 days. What could that dark companion be? One possibility is that it’s…

I magine a cosmic explosion some 100 times the size of our Solar System and 2 trillion times brighter than the Sun. This enormous fireball blasted bright for more than a year. But astronomers only spotted it by chance. Since its discovery, researchers have been doing their utmost to work out what could have caused the flare-up, which has now been observable for more than three years. It’s certainly intriguing, not to mention very rare, potentially paving the way for even more of these huge mystery explosions being discovered. The mystery began when the Zwicky Transient Facility in California detected an explosion in 2020 during routine nightly scans of the sky. The facility was looking for anything unusual by comparing the difference between new images and a set of reference…

In this issue... What’s in the sky? 80 The nights are still bright, but they’re a little longer each day that passes 82 Planetarium Where you can find the planets this month and the phases of the Moon Month’s planets 84 Uranus is a naked-eye target for skywatchers under favourable conditions Moon tour 86 Take an imaginary trip to the site of the first lunar base 87 Naked eye and binocular targets Distant galaxies and fascinating stars can be seen late on summer nights Deep sky challenge 88 The summer skies are stuffed full of amazing objects for your telescope if you’re prepared to stay up late 90 The Northern Hemisphere The central part of our home galaxy is teeming with star clusters to enjoy 92 Review We put the…

1 Pinwheel Galaxy (Messier 101) Close to the end of the Big Dipper’s handle, the magnitude +7.9 spiral galaxy Messier 101 can be seen through binoculars as a small round smudge. Some 27 million light years away, this galaxy is over 170,000 light years across, making it twice the Milky Way’s size. 2 Polaris (Alpha Ursae Minoris) The famous Polaris, the Pole Star, isn’t as bright as many have been led to believe. Far from being the brightest star in the sky, as new stargazers expect, at magnitude +2.0 it’s only the 48th-brightest star in the night sky. It’s approximately 430 light years from Earth. 3 Mizar and Alcor In the centre of the Big Dipper’s handle, Mizar and Alcor form one of the most famous double stars in the…

NASA has released four composite images using data from several of its most advanced telescopes to depict our universe in different wavelengths of light, including data collected by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, the James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope. The images, which show the Phantom Galaxy (Messier 74), NGC 1672, star cluster NGC 346 and the Eagle Nebula (Messier 16), are rendered in dazzling colours representing X-ray and infrared radiation, as well as optical light. Categorised as a barred-spiral galaxy for its straight ‘barred’ arms of stars near its centre, NGC 1672 is a galaxy about 60 million light years from Earth. The new composite image shows several areas, especially in its outer arms, emitting intense X-ray radiation, shown in purple. These areas represent super-dense objects, such…

Average global temperatures are rising at an ever-faster rate despite pledges by world leaders to tackle climate change. A new study, released last week during a preparatory meeting for the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference that will take place later this year in the United Arab Emirates, found that the pace of global warming has accelerated in recent years despite political commitments to curb the progress of the temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) compared to preindustrial times. Global temperatures increased on average by 1.07 degrees Celsius (1.93 degrees Fahrenheit) in the decade from 2010 to 2019, but the average rise in the decade from 2013 to 2022 was 1.14 degrees Celsius (2.05 degrees Fahrenheit). That means that the pace of human-induced climate change is accelerating…

Asteroids can tell us a great deal about the formation of our Solar System and could be stepping stones to the long-term colonisation A of the Moon and interplanetary trips to Mars and beyond. They might well contain water and air that could be used to support deep-space manned missions, and there’s the possibility of mining them for their precious metals. They certainly have the potential to enhance human existence, yet there are at least 1,000 dangerous asteroids that pose a risk to Earth. In April 2010, former president Barack Obama announced that NASA should send a manned mission to an asteroid by 2025. Though this target doesn’t look likely, one of NASA’s future plans is to use an unmanned spacecraft to capture a 500-tonne, seven-metre (23- foot) diameter…

Astrophysicist and lifelong space travel enthusiast Erika Nesvold was participating in what she describes as “a really fun” research A program, based at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California, when she experienced something of a “conceptual breakthrough”. “We got introduced to a lot of people working in the commercial space industry,” she explains. “At the time, space mining was the really big thing everyone was talking about. I met several of the entrepreneurs and had conversations where I would ask them about things like labour rights or environmental protection and got sort of dismissive responses, which I found concerning.” Nesvold decided to consult some experts in the field by launching a podcast called Making New Worlds – Exploring the Ethics of Human Settlement in Space. This project, she…

Astronomers stared deep into the heart of a hungry black hole, only to discover a jet of A X-rays beaming out of it that’s 60,000 times hotter than the surface of the Sun. Quasars are black holes with bright energetic jets of electromagnetic radiation beaming out of them from two sides as they feed on cosmic material. The quasar is known as SMSS J114447.77–430859.3 and is the most luminous example of such an object seen in the last 9 billion years of cosmic history. Located at the heart of a galaxy around 9.6 billion light years away from Earth and seen in the sky between the constellations of Centaurus and Hydra, this quasar is around 100,000 billion times brighter than the Sun. Quasars like J1144 are so bright that…

NASA’s prolific Kepler space telescope, which shut its powerful eye nearly five years ago, continued finding exoplanets N even while taking its final breaths. A team of astrophysicists and citizen astronomers combing through the last chunk of data that Kepler sent home say they found two new worlds and a candidate planet closely orbiting three faint stars about 400 light years from Earth. So far these are the only exoplanets that have been discovered in the telescope’s final dataset, making them the very last worlds that Kepler glimpsed just before it ran out of fuel and was shut down in late 2018. The Kepler space telescope launched in March 2009 to stare at 150,000 selected stars in the constellation of Cygnus – aprimary mission expected to last 3.5 years. The…

PLANET OF THE MONTH I t’s really surprising how few amateur astronomers and skywatchers – even the more experienced ones – have never seen Uranus. It’s because of its reputation for being ‘difficult’. Many people don’t even bother to look for this enigmatic ice giant planet, believing it’s very hard to see, but in fact it isn’t. Even a very modest pair of binoculars will allow you to track it down and see it as a green-hued star. The trick is knowing where and when to look for it. Fortunately, at the start of this month Uranus will be very well placed for those wanting to see it - close to strikingly bright Jupiter in the sky, around 11 degrees to its east. Unlike most of the worlds on view…

Summer in mid-northern latitudes gives us short nights which are never truly dark, which can wreak hhavoc on your viewing plans. However, they’re dark enough to see some real celestial wonders. The Milky Way arcs almost north to south at this time of year and brings with it all kinds of deep-sky gems, including open star clusters, globular star clusters and nebulae on which to feast your eyes. Down near the southern horizon you’ll find the constellations of Scorpius and Sagittarius, which are packed with many such objects. For example, there’s open star cluster Messier 7 – this object can be challenging for Northern Hemisphere observers as it’s so close to the horizon during this time of year. On the other hand, the exquisite Eagle Nebula, also known as Messier…

Celestron Cometron 7x50 Cost: £59.00 / $56.90 From: Celestron 1 1 What most don’t appreciate about children is that they can see a lot better in the dark than adults. That’s because their pupils can dilate wider, which makes their night vision better. Should you give a child a binocular that’s easier to carry and hold, but allows less light in? That’s one option. Another is to go for a binocular like the Celestron Cometron that manages to be both reasonably lightweight and lets as much light in as possible. That way you’re allowing them to see everything in the night sky they possibly could. With 7x magnification and a 50mm objective lens, the Celestron Cometron is ideally sized for stargazing. What’s more, it boasts multi-coated optics that comprise a…