Innehållsförteckning för No. 77 från All About Space

Hubble captures farthest star ever seen The blue supergiant Icarus is spied more than 9 billion light years from Earth in an astonishing discovery “This is the first time we’re seeing a magnified, individual star" Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have detected the most distant star ever viewed. The enormous blue star, which has been nicknamed Icarus, is as much as a million-times more luminous and twice as hot as our Sun. It is located in a very distant spiral galaxy and it is so far away that its light would have taken a staggering 9 billion years to reach Earth. According to the team leading the discovery, the blue supergiant appears to us as it did when the universe was about 30 per cent of its current age,…

Black holes could erase our past Surviving certain black holes could lead to a future of infinite possibilities, says mathematician Although physicists insist that very little can escape a black hole, an American mathematician is not only claiming that humans could survive, but that it would potentially lead them to have an infinite number of future possibilities. In an intriguing paper, Peter Hintz, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, says venturing into relatively benign black holes would erase your past. And, since what has gone before shapes what's about to come, that would leave the years ahead completely wide open, with every outcome existing at once. It goes against the idea of determinism where the physical laws of the universe only allow for one possible path. This…

Are we alone? ARE WE ALONE THE IN SOLAR SYSTEM? Astronomers and planetary scientists are racing to discover whether alien life is widespread among the worlds in our cosmic neighbourhood Written by Giles Sparrow © NASA It’s not too long ago that scientists assumed our planet was the only place in the Solar System with the right conditions for life, but a series of stunning discoveries have recently shown that’s far from the case. Instead of having to search for telltale hints in the light of distant planets orbiting other stars, perhaps alien life (at least in the most simplest form) is waiting to be found on our cosmic doorstep. Ask a dozen biologists for a definition of life and you’re likely to get a dozen different answers – life…

New Moon mission Moon mission to go! The proliferation of new launch vehicles, habitats and landers under development means it'll soon be possible to build your own lunar spacecraft to order “It is becoming possible for a country, a company or even just a rich individual to build a Moon mission” When President Kennedy declared in 1961 that the US would reach the Moon before the end of the decade, it thrust NASA into uncharted territory. Only two humans had travelled into space, flying on adapted missiles, for some 108 and 15.5 minutes. No spacecraft had ever docked in space, no human had left Earth orbit and nothing at all had made a soft landing on another celestial body. Every part of the mission had to be designed, developed and,…

NASA at Mars The space agency has steadily developed an impressive entourage either orbiting or roaming the Martian surface © Nicholas Forder Mars Global Surveyor This satellite spent over nine years imaging and mapping the entire globe’s atmosphere and surface before NASA lost contact with it on 2 November 2006. Phoenix The lander of which InSight uses the same design, Phoenix landed on Mars on 25 May 2008 and lasted 157 sols. It included an array of instruments conducting different tasks on the surface of Mars. Spirit The fallen sibling of Opportunity, this rover spent 2,210 sols in operation, searching for evidence of water on Mars before getting stuck and falling silent. Mariner 9 Launched on 30 May 1971, Mariner 9 became the first spacecraft to orbit another planet. It…

Quark stars THE HUNT FOR QUARK STARS The search is on for a strange object somewhere in between a neutron star and a black hole Written by Abigail Beall When you drill down into the most fundamental building blocks of nature, strange things begin to happen, governed by the bizarre rules of quantum mechanics. These give rise to even stranger phenomena; some that have been observed and some that remain purely theoretical. “They might be possible in a very narrow set of circumstances, somewhere between a neutron star and a black hole” Dr Paul Sutter One example of these theoretical phenomena is a quark star. The idea is that the material that makes up neutron stars, thought to be some of the densest objects in the universe, when put under…

The Departure Lounge The craft that could one day take you to the edge of space and into orbit LAUNCH METHOD Vertical, on an Atlas V rocket (for its first two missions), like the Space Shuttle. The Dream Chaser is one of the few orbital spaceplanes in development. LAUNCH METHOD Skylon takes off horizontally like an airplane and reaches orbit using the same set of engines. PASSENGERS While the Dream Chaser is being developed as a cargo vessel, future plans include a version that could take seven people into orbit. LANDING Skylon could land on a standard runway, as its heavy payloads would be most likely left behind in space. LANDING Much like the Space Shuttle, the Dream Chaser will glide on its return from space, landing on any suitable…

Planet of the month This month’s planets It’s the ideal time to observe the Red Planet as it blazes in the morning sky, providing a stunning sight for those early risers Mars Constellation: Sagittarius moving into Capricorn Magnitude: -0.3, brightening to -1 at month’s end AM/PM: AM Mars is now really building up for its long-awaited, spectacular summer opposition when it will be a stunning sight in the sky, brighter than it has been for a long time. We’ll cover that in full detail then, but this month Mars will get brighter and more obvious to the naked eye with each passing morning. At the start of our observing period Mars will be rising at around 3am, and by the end of May it will be rising at around half…

STARGAZER How to… Find and observe globular clusters They’re among the most fascinating and beautiful objects you can study with a telescope – they’re also the most challenging. Here’s how to get the perfect view… © ESA/Hubble & NASA You’ll need: ✓ Star chart ✓ Telescope ✓ Selection of eyepieces Globular star clusters contain some of the oldest stars in the known universe. As the name suggests, they are massive balls of stars which can look like a sphere of diamonds through a telescope. Some of them are quite easy to find, although others can be trickier to locate. Nearly all of the globular clusters we can see with amateur telescopes orbit around our galaxy, the Milky Way, and the ones most easily visible are nearer to our Solar System.…

STARGAZER The Northern Hemisphere Summer is on its way with a selection of galaxies and star clusters to be enjoyed into the early hours © Wil Tirion; ESO; R. Jay GaBany; Ken Crawford With the summer sky bringing with it longer days and shorter nights, the constellations of May are reserved for those willing to stay up until the small hours to capture those stunning night-sky targets. Observers in the Northern Hemisphere can look forward to gazing at the gems of Canes Venatici (the Hunting Dogs), Centaurus (the Centaur), Coma Berenices (Berenice’s Hair) and Virgo (the Virgin), where a stunning selection of galaxies and star clusters are easy pickings with binoculars or telescopes. In particular, the Virgo Cluster is home to the Black Eye Galaxy (Messier 64), and spiral galaxy…

Distant black hole spotted shredding a star Black holes may emit energy in proportion to the amount of stellar material they consume A black hole situated more than a billion light years away has torn up and devoured a star, allowing astronomers to gain a deeper insight into the workings of such celestial objects. Scientists have been studying emissions from the supermassive black hole and they have found a proportional link between the X-rays that are produced by stellar material falling into the hole and the jet of energy that is emitted. It gives clues as to how black holes devour matter and regulate the growth of galaxies. The findings relate to radio signals picked up in November 2014 from 300 million light years away. Scientists found that the signals…

Ocean worlds How do the worlds of the outer Solar System measure up to Earth in terms of water content? © NASA, JPL-Caltech; NOAA; Tobias Roetsch Total amount of water/ice compared to Earth Ganymede  x39.5 The largest moon in the Solar System, Ganymede has a high water content. In the past, floating plates of ice rearranged themselves on a global water ocean, and a remnant of this ocean remains liquid today. Triton  x4.9 Neptune’s largest moon Triton is thought to be a captured dwarf planet from the outer edge of the Solar System with a similar proportion of ice to Pluto, and potential for its own hidden oceans. Callisto  x17.8 The outermost Galilean satellite of Jupiter, Callisto is huge and contains large quantities of ice. Scientists still aren’t entirely sure…

InSight JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE RED PLANET Meet the lander to peel off the face of Mars and tell us what is really going on underneath its surface Reported by Lee Cavendish © Adrian Mann swollen up to enormous sizes. The question that astronomers still can’t answer, though, is how did these terrestrial planets form and evolve? Thanks to modern technology and perseverance, astronomers have tried to answer this question in a period of extensive exploration of one of our closest neighbours, Mars. However, previous missions have only been able to scratch the surface. Where landers, rovers and orbiters before it have been in the hot pursuit of water on the dry, sandy surface, or designed to study the planet’s tiny atmosphere, InSight is delving deeper into the…

Measuring marsquakes and meteoric impacts When comparing a seismometer on Earth to InSight’s SEIS instrument, there isn’t much of a difference Meteorite impacts When pieces of space rock crash through a planet’s atmosphere, their impacts with the ground will cause a tremor picked up by a seismometer. Planetary quakes Although earthquakes are more prominent on Earth, due to our planet’s more active core, Mars can still experience such quakes. Elusive interior As waves change as they move through different material, SEIS will detect the wave change in order to identify the material under the surface. Earthquake measurements Scientists usually describe the degree of an earthquake to its ‘Richter scale’ rating – the amount of energy released during an earthquake.…

What is a quark star? © NASA; ESO; Tobias Roetsch; IHEP/CAS; Outer crust A quark star would have an outer crust, potentially made up of densely packed neutrons like those found in a neutron star. Slightly smaller than a neutron star A quark star would be slightly smaller than a neutron star, which tend to be between 10 and 20km (6.2 and 12.4 miles) in radius. No inner core Unlike a neutron star, a quark star would not have an inner core of protons, electrons and so on, it would only have quark matter inside. Free quarks Inside a quark star, the quarks would be free compared to inside a neutron star, where they are confined as neutrons.…

Climate change What's happening to Earth? We can already see some of the measurable effects of climate change on the planet 97% Scientific consensus The percentage of climate experts that agree climate trends observed over the last century are likely a result of human activity. 286 GIGATONNES PER YEAR Ice sheets The Antarctica and Greenland ice sheets have been losing mass since 2002, with 127 and 286 Gigatonnes lost respectively per year since then. 2016 Global warming 2016 was the hottest year on record. 2017 was the second warmest and 2015 the third hottest. 30% Biodiversity Since Europeans started to colonise the Americas over 500 years ago, 30 per cent of biodiversity has been lost. This is expected to rise to 40 per cent unless steps are taken. 3.2mm Sea…

Spaceports Boarding soon.. Your flight into Space The commercial space industry is gaining speed, and it could change all of our lives Written by Ian Evenden © Kevin McGivern Once, space launches were the preserve of national governments, as the USA and USSR tussled over who had the biggest rockets. Even Britain got in on the act, with the Black Arrow rocket, launched from Australia, and placing a single satellite into orbit. Black Arrow was canned for the same reason a lot of space ventures fail – costs. In 1966, NASA received some 4.41 per cent of the US federal budget, but in 2017 its share was only 0.47 per cent, and it hasn’t been over 1 per cent since 1993. This reluctance on the part of governments to fund…

Moon tour Schiller Take a look at a fascinating lunar mystery this month… © NASA Everyone loves a good mystery, and astronomy is full to bursting with them. Astronomers are kept awake wondering: What caused the Big Bang? When did Saturn’s rings form? Was there ever life on Mars? The Moon has many mysteries too – how exactly was it formed? Will people ever live there permanently? Could it be terraformed to become a second Earth? However, as puzzling as these questions are, the nature and history of the major features on the Moon’s surface are mostly well understood. Thanks to centuries of telescopic study and decades of exploration with space probes and crewed landings, we know how its dark seas and impact craters formed, and why there are far…

Deep sky challenge Galaxies and clusters of late spring This month, a wealth of deep-sky objects for those armed with almost any size telescope are on show At this time of year the orbit of the Earth around the Sun means that at night we face away from our own Milky Way and look out into the depths of space. This means we can see very distant galaxies, along with globular star clusters, which orbit around the galactic plane, but are often best seen against less crowded star fields. This month, there are also some exquisite double stars of differing colours to split with your telescope too. Here are some suggested targets to turn your instrument towards, although of course there are many, many more to be had if you…

LAUNCH PAD YOUR FIRST CONTACT WITH THE UNIVERSE © Nasa Space hangout Hanging off the International Space Station, NASA astronaut Drew Feustel is in the middle of installing wireless communications antennae on the station’s Tranquility module. During his spacewalk with fellow NASA astronaut Ricky Arnold, which took place during late March, Feustel took the opportunity to replace a camera system and remove suspect hoses from a cooling system while being safely tethered to the Earth-orbiting platform throughout the six-hour, ten-minute task. When all was done and dusted, the astronauts checked over their spacesuits and gave the Quest airlock – the pressurised module which serves as a stowage area for hardware and a staging area for crewmembers getting ready to go into space – a clean. The Milky Way’s arch over…

Dark-matter 'deficient' galaxy found The finding has prompted scientists to reconsider how galaxies form Astronomers are scratching their heads after a research team discovered a galaxy that seems to be devoid of any dark matter. Located millions of light years away, galaxy NGC-1052-DF2 appears to consist entirely of ordinary matter which, if proven, goes against the theory that dark matter should be present wherever ordinary matter exists. Most astronomers subscribe to the notion that roughly 27 per cent of the universe is made up of dark matter, while ordinary matter – the stuff we can see – accounts for five per cent. The discovery – or non-discovery, if you like – that there is 400-times less dark matter than expected given the size of the galaxy raises the possibility it…

Space-time ripples forged in the heart of our Milky Way Giant black holes may be having a previously unknown influence on other black holes and gravitational waves A new study suggests gravitational waves are created by black holes in the centre of most galaxies. According to Joseph Fernandez, a PhD student at Liverpool John Moores University, massive black holes can change the orbits of binary black holes – that is, those which orbit around each other in pairs. When this happens, the black hole binary systems become tight and eccentric, forcing them to merge much faster than they otherwise would. This, Fernandez theorises, leads to observable gravitational waves. It could also, a statement suggests, flip the binary system orbital plane, making the black holes orbit in the opposite direction to…

Are we alone? Hunt for life in the Solar System Much of the new evidence for habitable environments in our solar neighbourhood has come from visiting space probes © NASA, JPL-Caltech “Mars almost certainly had the right conditions for life to gain a foothold billions of years ago” Viking landers Target: Mars The Viking landers carried a ‘Labelled Release’ experiment that ‘fed’ samples of Martian soil with nutrients that were tagged with a radioactive carbon isotope. The rocks subsequently released radioactive CO2 gas, possibly indicating that microbes in the soil had processed the nutrients. However, attempts to repeat the test were met with negative results, so the case for life is not proven. Later probes discovered potentially toxic perchlorate chemicals on the Martian surface, so any Martian life might…

InSight’s instrumental trifecta These three instruments will tell us more about the interior of Mars than any other mission before it © NASA/JPL-Caltech ; Adrian Mann; Tobias Roetsch; Rotation and Interior Structure Experiment (RISE) By continuously relaying signals between InSight and the Deep Space Network on Earth, astronomers can deduce how much Mars wobbles. This information will provide important evidence on whether Mars has a liquid or solid core and if there are any other elements present. Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) If there is even the slightest vibration on the surface of Mars – a possible marsquake, meteorite impact, magma churning underneath, liquid water or even the weather – SEIS will detect this seismic activity passing through the body of Mars. Heat Flow and Physical Properties Probe (HP3)…

Track the Tesla HOW YOU CAN TRACK THE SPACEX TESLA TESLA From the streets to space, Elon Musk ’s Roadster is now making its way to Mars. Here’s what you need to locate it Reviewed by Lee Cavendish February 2018 marked a momentous occasion in space flight as Elon Musk’s SpaceX tested the launch of its Falcon Heavy rocket. This payload not only proved it is capable of sending humans back to the Moon, and even beyond, but it achieved this by also showing that its boosters can be saved and reused, potentially dropping the price of a space launch by a factor of ten. This launch had a payload that only an eccentric billionaire could pull off: in the tip of Falcon Heavy, and now travelling towards the orbit…

Focus on THE RETURN OF TIANGONG-1 Towards the latter days of March and the first days of April, the 'out-of-control' Chinese space station finally crash back to Earth © ESA; Fraunhofer Institute; Adrian Mann The Chinese space station Tiangong-1 has been without contact since March 2016, but made a resurgent appearance over the Easter weekend when it broke up over the Pacific Ocean. The 10.4-metre-long (34-foot) module was China’s first prototype space station of the Tiangong program, translated as ‘Heavenly Palace’ or ‘Celestial Palace’, when it was launched in September 2011. This marked the first step in China creating a third-generation space station, much like Mir and the International Space Station, but now it is the biggest man-made object to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere in over a decade. The aim…

Proposed spaceports If you’re going to fly, you need somewhere to take off from 1 Morotai spaceport, Indonesia The Indonesian Space Agency, LAPAN, is planning to complete the launch site by 2025. The island already has seven runways, and is sparsely populated. 2 Spaceport Sweden, Kiruna An agreement with Virgin Galactic was signed in 2007 for operational SpaceShipTwo flights, but none have yet taken place. 3 Canso, Nova Scotia Maritime Launch Services, a joint venture between three US companies, aims to launch eight Ukrainian-built Cyclone-4M rockets every year by 2022. 4 Clinton-Sherman Industrial Airpark, Oklahoma This former military airbase was the launch site for two private space launch companies, one of which went bankrupt in 2010. 5 Spaceport America, New Mexico The world’s first purpose-built operational spaceport. It’s seen launches…

STARGAZER 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 south. It’s measured in…

STARGAZER How to… Get the best views of comet C/2016 R2 (PANSTARRS) On 9 May 2018, the celestial body will make its closest approach to the Sun. Here are some pointers to help you see it… © Damian Peach, Jose J. Chambo You’ll need: ✓ Star chart ✓ Binoculars ✓ Telescope Comets are icy bodies which come from the depths of space and, under the action of gravity, hurtle towards our Sun. It is when they are near the Sun that we get to see them in all their glory, often as bright glowing objects with beautiful tails that can seem to stretch across the heavens. Comets are, however, notoriously unpredictable. We can know, often with some degree of accuracy, where they are going to be, but knowing how bright…

STARGAZER Altair GPCAM2 Mono Camera 290M Shoot in exquisite clarity with Altair Astro’s freshly upgraded CMOS Camera advice Cost: £259.00 (approx $364.50) From: Altair Astro Type: CMOS Sensor size: 1/20.8 inch We have reviewed a fair few GPCAM2 astrophotography cameras at All About Space, but this month have had the chance to try out Altair Astro's monochrome CMOS. What we've found to be a reoccuring feature during our tests of Altair’s GPCAM2 model has been its lightweight yet sturdy design, capable of fitting in 1.25-inch eyepiece slots with ease. We also garnered an appreciation of the high-quality nature of the Sony Exmor CMOS sensors, which - built inside this CMOS - is an IMX290 Mono sensor. “A mono camera can image an object in a much narrower wavelength band” Also…