Innehållsförteckning för No. 75 från All About Space

LAUNCH PAD SpaceX triumphantly launches its powerful new rocket The 70-metre Falcon Heavy cleared its pad and sent a Tesla sports car towards the asteroid belt © SpaceX; Elon Musk/Instagram “ This added a level of theatre to an already amazing occasion” SpaceX has realised a long-held dream by finally launching the world's most powerful rocket. Elon Musk's private aerospace manufacturer sent the huge reusable launch vehicle skywards from Florida's Kennedy Space Center at 3:45pm Eastern Time on 6 February. It was quickly hailed a success, despite a problem with one of the boosters, and now the company reckons it will go on to revolutionise future space travel. Falcon Heavy is an impressive three-core rocket that has 27 engines – the most used by any working rocket. The engines provide…

New stellar streams are discovered around the Milky Way Close to a dozen stars ripped away from smaller systems around our galaxy have been detected © NASA/JPL Caltech; Reidar Hahn/Dark Energy Survey Exactly 11 new streams of stars from other galaxies have been detected around our galaxy. They were discovered while astronomers were surveying the skies to uncover the nature of dark energy and dark matter. “It’s exciting that we found so many stellar streams,” said astrophysicist Alex Drlica-Wagner of the Fermilab Center for Particle Astrophysics. Before this discovery by the Dark Energy Survey (DES), only 24 or so stellar streams had ever been picked up. The stars are attracted by the Milky Way's powerful gravitational pull on smaller, nearby galaxies; the stars form streams as they are torn away.…

Comet 67P RETURN TO COMET 67P NASA is one step closer to revisiting Rosetta's comet and bringing a piece of it back home Written by Natalie Starkey © Adrian Mann NASA have some speculative yet fascinating plans to return to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (hereafter 67P), first visited by the ESA's Rosetta spacecraft in 2014. The potential new comet mission called CAESAR – Comet Astrobiology Exploration SAmple Return – would become the first spacecraft to collect samples from the surface of a comet and return them to Earth. “If CAESAR is ultimately selected to fly, this is absolutely tremendous news! There are still many unanswered questions about 67P,” says Professor Ian Wright from The Open University and principal investigator of Ptolemy on Rosetta’s Philae lander. In December 2017, CAESAR was selected as…

Focus on NO WINNER FOR GOOGLE LUNAR XPRIZE …YET! Officials behind the project have stated that the venture is far from over © NASA; Moon Express Inc. After over a decade of research, development and ambition, the $30 million (£21 million) Google Lunar XPrize will go unclaimed. When the competition was launched in 2007, the XPrize Foundation and Google collaborated to metaphorically throw $30 million on the table for any private company that could land a functioning robotic rover on the surface of the Moon. The initial deadline for the competition was set for 2014, but due to some setbacks the deadline has been pushed back to 31 March 2018. Peter Diamandis, founder and executive chairman of XPrize, and Marcus Shingles, chief executive officer of XPrize, have recently announced that…

INTERSTELLAR VISITOR When astronomer Robert Weryk first spotted an unusual object hurtling past Earth, he never imagined it had come from outside our Solar System Written by David Crookes © ESO/M. Kornmesser In the hours following 19 October 2017, Robert Weryk was sorting through the images captured by Pan-STARRS1, a 1.8-metre diameter telescope perched at the summit of the massive shield volcano, Haleakalā, on the Hawaiian island of Maui. Looking for evidence of near-Earth objects, he spotted a fast-moving body working its way across the night sky, halfway between the orbits of our planet and Mars. “It didn't have the motion that you'd typically expect from an asteroid or comet,” he says. And this sparked his curiosity. “I contacted a colleague who works at the European Space Agency and he…

Moon tour Menelaus crater How to find the impact at the end of one of the longest rays on the Moon © NASA Many well-known craters on the Moon are famous for being at the centre of complicated systems of rays. When they were formed, Copernicus, Tycho and Aristarchus all splashed bright rays of debris for huge distances across the lunar surface. Elsewhere on the Moon smaller, lesser-known craters have systems of rays too, and one of them, Menelaus, is the source of possibly one of the longest and brightest rays on the Moon. Menelaus is a small crater, just 27 kilometres (17 miles) across and barely 3 kilometres (1.9 miles) deep, but when the Moon’s phase is just right it is easily visible in binoculars and small telescopes. Slightly…

Capture conjunctions How to process your images There are several programs in which you can spruce up your conjunction shots... Photoshop and many other such packages have processes which can convert a dull image into something to be proud of. You can also combine two images together to remove an overexposed Moon or an underexposed planet, for example. By removing the offending object from one image and then combining the images together, you get the best of both in one clear image. 1 Transfer your images to your chosen software Import your images into some image processing software such as Photoshop or GIMP. 2 Layer your overexposed shots If you have taken two images of a conjunction, one overexposed, paste the more exposed one over the other. 3 Move onto…

STARGAZER Sky-Watcher Skymax-102 (AZ-EQ AVANT) The already popular Maksutov is back with a brand-new mount and maintains the features we have come to love with the Sky-Watcher brand March has arrived, signalling the end of the annual prime time observing period. The nights are getting shorter, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have as much fun. Especially when Sky-Watcher have now fitted a brand-new AZ-EQ AVANT mount on to a fan-favourite Skymax-102 beginners telescope. With a mount that can be controlled with both alt-azimuth and equatorial configurations, a host of new possibilities await with the combination of this already impressive Maksutov-Cassegrain telescope. To start with, it may be best to know what is included with this kit. The main elements of the bundle include a sturdy tripod, capable of expanding…

STARGAZER In the shops The latest books, apps, software, tech and accessories for space and astronomy fans alike 1 Book Curiosity Cost: £15.00 (approx. $21.00) From: Walker Books Ltd Curiosity: The Story of a Mars Rover condenses, illustrates and narrates the long journey of NASA’s Curiosity rover. This book, marketed for the ages of six and over, starts by asking the ever-present question ‘is anybody else out there?’ and continues by explaining how this continual curiosity led to the construction and execution of its namesake rover. Walker Books is renowned for publishing well-designed and informative children's books, and this publication is exactly what you would expect in quality. It’s large, with excellent illustrations and minimal text. It is common knowledge that children pay most attention to the pictures, and the…

Comet found passing by a distant star An amateur astronomer picking through Kepler's data discovered patterns that pointed to the presence of exocomets © NASA/ Danielle Futselaar Researchers have discovered evidence of comets in another star system by observing dips in the intensity of light from a star. It marks the first time such small objects have ever been detected in this way. Even more remarkable is that the discovery was first made by a citizen scientist called Thomas Jacobs. The exocomets were picked up using the sensitive Kepler Space Telescope – a spacecraft that's already well known to be capable of detecting Earth-like planets around Sun-like stars. It spotted tiny dark objects passing between the dwarf star KIC 3542116 and Earth, and the observations matched expectations of a comet's…

Earth 2.0 THIS MISSION WILL FIND EARTH 2.0 NASA’s new planet-hunting satellite will revolutionise our understanding of planets around other stars – and statistics suggest that it should find some worlds very similar to ours Written by Giles Sparrow © Tobias Roetsch © NASA; ESA; Nicholas Forder; M.Kornmesser; “The next step in exoplanet research is to start characterising individual planets, not just counting them” Stephen Rinehart The search for ‘exoplanets’ – worlds orbiting distant stars – has come a long way since the first such objects were confirmed in the mid-1990s. Today thousands of alien worlds are known or suspected, with each new satellite or technique offering fresh insights, which leads to the detection of many new planets. However, fundamental questions remain unanswered, and our experiments produce discoveries that are…

Who’s involved? TESS is a collaboration – but who does what? Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Manages science follow-up to TESS discoveries and acts as a second science centre. Space Telescope Science Institute Responsible for archiving the wealth of data from TESS. NASA Ames Research Center Developed TESS’s science pipeline. Orbital ATK Provides the main satellite ‘bus’, integrates and tests the TESS instruments, runs mission operations centre. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Manages the TESS mission, including engineering, safety, communication and public engagement. MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research Originators of TESS and the mission’s principal investigators. Responsible for managing mission science. MIT Lincoln Laboratory Responsible for designing and building TESS’s supersensitive cameras.…

Stephen Hawking’s thesis BLUFFER’S GUIDE TO STEPHEN HAWKING’S THESIS It was the paper that ‘broke the Internet’… here’s your cheat sheet into the mind of one of the world’s greatest physicists Written by Colin Stuart Scribbled in pencil on one of its early pages is ‘no copying without the author's consent’. In October 2017, Hawking's allowed his PhD thesis – Properties of Expanding Universes – to be made available online through the University of Cambridge's Apollo portal. The website crashed almost immediately under the sheer weight of traffic. It was downloaded almost 60,000 times in the first 24 hours alone. Hawking was 24 years old when he received his PhD in 1966 and, despite being diagnosed with motor neurone disease at just 21, could still handwrite that “this dissertation is…

Comet 67P What Rosetta told us about Comet 67P The world was found to be very different to what scientists were expecting A comet’s aroma It’s lucky the Rosetta team sent a robot to investigate the comet and not humans, as Rosetta found out exactly how comet 67P smells, and it’s not very nice. Scientists discovered that the comet emits a stench which smells like a mix of cat urine, bitter almonds and rotten eggs. A tough nut to crack When Rosetta’s Philae landed on the comet, it quickly showed scientists that this ‘dirty snowball’ was a lot tougher, and harder, than they were expecting. Comets are generally thought of as fluffy and delicate, but the Philae lander measured 67P’s surface to be impenetrably hard on the first touchdown. This…

THE FORGOTTEN FORCE A seemingly weak magnetic entity could have made all the difference in our universe’s evolution Written by Abigail Beall Earth is held in its orbit around the Sun, like other planets around their own stars. Stars themselves are held in galaxies by larger, more massive objects like the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way. Behind all of this, the glue that holds galaxies together, is the force of gravity. Yet, gravity is not the only force that matters when it comes to the structure of galaxies and the space between them. For years, the 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…

How magnets shaped the universe These guardians of the galaxy have allowed intelligent life to flourish © NASA; Tobias Roetsch; MPIfR Bonn. Inflation One theory says that seed magnetic fields could have been produced during the epoch of inflation, when the Universe expanded exponentially. Supernova explosions When very massive stars explode, they spew out high-energy electrons that emit gamma rays, which are deflected by magnetic fields. The formation of stars Magnetism is essential for stars, like our sun, to form, by preventing clouds of gas from collapsing too much. The early galaxies We know that 5-billion-years ago, galaxies already had magnetic fields as strong as that of our own galaxy. Intergalactic medium The pressure in the intergalactic medium is partly maintained thanks to the magnetic fields permeating through it. Formation…

An interstellar path 1 Arrival from the north It is understood that ‘Oumuamua arrived outside the orbit of Mars from the north at an angle of about 33 degrees, possibly from a direction close to that of Vega in Lyra. It was travelling in the opposite direction, or retrograde, to the general motion of the planets. 2 Travel within the inner Solar System ‘Oumuamua continued its hyperbolic trajectory through the Solar System (this diagram plots its position every seven days). It passed through the inner Solar System in September and October 2017. 3 Sweeping past the Sun Having sped to about 87.4 kilometres per second (196,000mph), ‘Oumuamua reached perihelion – that is, the point closest to the Sun – on the 9 September 2017, getting within 37.6 million kilometres (23.4…

STARGAZER What’s in the sky? What’s in the sky? Jargon buster Conjunction A conjunction is an alignment of objects at the same celestial longitude. The conjunction of the Moon and the planets is determined with reference to the Sun. A planet is in conjunction with the Sun when it and Earth are aligned on opposite sides of the Sun. Right Ascension (RA) Right Ascension is to the sky what longitude is to the surface of the Earth, corresponding to east and west directions. It is measured in hours, minutes and seconds since, as the Earth rotates on its axis, we see different parts of the sky throughout the night. Declination (Dec) This tells you how high an object will rise in the sky. Like Earth’s latitude, Dec measures north and…

Deep sky challenge Galaxies of Leo, Coma Berenices and Virgo The constellations of early spring are prominently on show. Here are some fascinating deep-sky objects for your telescope… © NASA/ESA; ESO/Oleg Maliy; Jschulman555 The night skies of early spring are best known for marvellous views of the star clusters and galaxies on offer. We can see galaxies especially well at this time of year due to the Earth facing away from the Milky Way galaxy and out towards the depths of space. The constellations of Leo, Coma Berenices and Virgo are rich hunting grounds for those who like to look out into the far reaches of the universe. There are several bright and well-known galaxies on view, along with many fainter and harder to see objects to push your scope…

Swirling gas detected in the earliest galaxies Astronomers discover that the youngest structures spin in the same way as the much more mature Milky Way © Astronomy Institute, Amanda Smith An international team of astronomers have looked back nearly 13 billion years and found two small ‘newborn’ galaxies that spin like a whirlpool in a similar manner to more mature galaxies such as the Milky Way. Rather than be “dynamically messy due to the havoc caused by exploding young stars,” Dr Renske Smit from the University of Cambridge says, “these mini-galaxies show the ability to retain order and appear well regulated.” This means that, despite their small size, the galaxies are already rapidly growing to become an adult galaxy of the type we are living in today, the researchers say.…

Eris Explorer’s Guide Eris Forgotten in the outskirts of the Kuiper Belt, the dwarf planet could prove to be an intriguing destination © NASA/JPL Eris, the dwarf planet named after the Greek goddess of discord and strife, has certainly caused plenty of arguments and quarrel, much like its namesake. Its discovery was confirmed in January 2005, igniting a huge debate as to what we define as a ‘planet’. This led to the demotion of Pluto to a dwarf planet in 2006, so Eris could never reach the ranks of the tenth planet in the Solar System. It can still rest its hat on the fact it’s the most massive, and second-largest, dwarf planet in the Solar System. Eris exceeds Pluto's mass by around 27 per cent, but is two per…

Space beer BREWING BEER IN SPACE With Budweiser’s intention to make itself the beer of Mars, All About Space digs a little deeper into its beneficial implications WRITTEN BY LEE CAVENDISH © NASA The formidable task of putting humans on the surface of Mars seems to be very newsworthy at the moment, especially with the surging efforts of SpaceX, Virgin Galactic and NASA. These organisations have a long-withstanding desire to, once again, go where no man has gone before. But with all these efforts being made in an attempt to travel to Mars, another organisation has already started to plan for the momentous occasion. Last year, the international lager distributor Budweiser announced its aim to make its 142-year-old product the ‘beer of Mars.’ “With this bold, new dream Budweiser is…

Fundamental forces of the universe There are four forces which, between them, are responsible for every interaction in the cosmos Weak nuclear force The ‘weak’ force is actually the third weakest of the four. It is responsible for the way subatomic particles interact and the cause of radioactive decay. Electromagnetic force Responsible for the interactions between charged particles, the electromagnetic force includes both electricity and magnetism. Gravitational force This is a force that attracts objects with a mass to each other - it's what keeps the planets in orbit around the Sun. It is the weakest of all four forces. Strong nuclear force Holds most matter together by binding quarks together into hadrons. It only works at tiny distances, but at these distances it is the strongest force.…

Future Tech Chasing satellites ELSA-d: chasing satellites With space debris a growing threat, Singapore-based Astroscale are preparing to test a satellite removal service © Adrian Mann “Astroscale intend to service companies launching new satellites to reduce the build-up of more debris” Initial orbital operations The paired satellite will be placed in low-Earth orbit for initial testing before moving on to the main mission. Launch Astroscale's initial attempt was launched on a Russian Soyuz rocket from the new launch site Vostochny in eastern Russia. Separation The main spacecraft is one metre by 60 centimetre squared and weighs 100 kilograms, it carries a 30-kilogram test target that it can release in orbit to demonstrate Astroscale's debris capture techniques. Optical tracking and ranging ELSA-d will use a combination of optical cameras and radar…

What we know about ‘Oumuamua While research time was limited, what did we manage to find out? © ESO / M. Kornmesser; ESO/Y. Beletsky It's likely wrapped in organic insulation Alan Fitzsimmons, Queen's University Belfast ‘Oumuamua is made up of organic ices such as frozen carbon dioxide, methane and methanol. Thanks to long-term exposure to cosmic radiation, a dark-red outer crust some half-a-metre thick appears to have formed over it. It is tumbling Karen Meech, astronomer at the Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii Light-curve observations showed ‘Oumuamua to have wild swings in brightness by a factor of 10, indicating an irregular, excited tumbling motion that is rarely seen in celestial bodies. It spins on its axis every 7.34 hours. It moves really quickly Scientific collaboration Scientists agree that ‘Oumuamua…

STARGAZER This month’s planets Venus is the ‘star of the evening’ this month, while Mars and Jupiter take the morning watch – a treat for early risers Venus 18:00 GMT on 03 March Constellation: Aquarius moving into Pisces Magnitude: -3.9 AM/PM: PM Even though Venus will spend the month quite low in the west after sunset, this is still a great month for looking at the “Evening Star” because it is going to have close encounters in the sky with several other worlds, all of which will make great photographic subjects. At the start of the month Venus will be low in the west after sunset, and as the sky darkens should come into view to the naked eye very easily. You’ll also notice another “star” close to it, on…

STARGAZER How to… Observe the mysterious Lunar 'X' A fleeting and therefore seldom-observed feature on the Moon's surface. Once you've seen it you'll understand why it has this name... You’ll need: ✓ Telescope ✓ Moon map ✓ Wristwatch ✓ Digital camera (optional) First discussed on the Internet in the early 2000s, although it may well have been noted by astronomers before then, the Lunar 'X' is a fleeting apparition on the Moon which occurs each month, but only for a few hours. Because of its transitory nature, it has not been seen by many people. However, it can be observed by anyone armed with even a small telescope or binoculars, if they are well supported, if you know where to look. It is caused by sunlight catching the tops of…

STARGAZER How to… Capture this month’s planetary conjunctions This March we can see several conjunctions – close approaches of objects to each other in the night sky… You’ll need: ✓ DSLR camera ✓ Telescope ✓ Image processing software March 2018 will see conjunctions of the Moon with planets, planets with other planets as well as planets with deep-sky objects. All of these will make a wonderful sight, and are great targets for astrophotography. Getting good pictures however, may require some image processing, along with knowing how to set up the shot in the first place. It can depend where you are on planet Earth for exactly what you see with regards to conjunctions of the Moon and planets. Some approaches can appear very close indeed. For example, the close approach…

STARGAZER Astroshots of the month Send your astrophotography images to space@spaceanswers.com for a chance to see them featured in All About Space Jeff Johnson Las Cruces, New Mexico “Some of my last data from my camera. Here’s a closer look at supergiant star, Sadr (also known as Gamma Cygni) in the constellation of Cygnus. A bright white-blue star at the centre of this image, the diffuse emission nebula IC 1318 lies in the background and appears red and quite dark, in colour.” Peter Louer Teide National Park, Tenerife “I retired to the beautiful island of Tenerife in 2013. One of the top sites in the world for astronomy, the Caldera in Teide National Park is at an altitude of over 2,000 metres, with a dry atmosphere and limited light pollution,…