Innehållsförteckning för No. 80 från All About Space

Galactic embrace ©ESO Locked in a spellbinding, swirling dance are two interacting galaxies, NGC 5426 and NGC 5427, which together form an intriguing astronomical object named Arp 271. The image was captured by the Visible Multi-Object Spectrograph (VIMOS), which was affixed to the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope before it was decommissioned during March of this year. During its 16 active years VIMOS has helped astronomers to uncover the wild early lives of massive galaxies, observe awe-inspiring triple-galaxy interactions as well as explore some of the deeper cosmic questions, such as ‘how did the universe’s most massive galaxies grow so large?’ VIMOS also had the special talent of capturing detailed information about hundreds of galaxies at once. It was able to collect the spectra – the chemical footprints…

LAUNCH PAD Chaos on Jupiter © NASA/JPL-Caltech Yet another stunning capture from NASA’s Juno spacecraft, this colour-enhanced shot reveals the swirling cloud belts and tumultuous vortices within Jupiter’s northern hemisphere. At the time, Juno was roughly 15,500 kilometres (9,600 miles) from the gas giant’s cloud tops. Jupiter is famous for its chaotic and turbulent atmosphere, and this portion of the planet is of no exception. The darker cloud material signifies formations deep inside the world, while the brighter systems are most likely ammonia or ammonia and water mixed with a sprinkling of unknown chemical ingredients at a higher elevation. The bright oval at the bottom centre is a stand-out feature in the image. In ground-based telescope observations it appears uniformly white, but with the spacecraft’s JunoCam we’re able to see…

Einstein’s theory of general relativity passes first extragalactic test The much-heralded theory has been tested on a large scale for the first time © ESO/M. Kornmesser; ESA/Hubble, NASA Time and time again, Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity has been shown to be correct, and now – 103 years after it was proposed – it has been validated once more, this time in a distant galaxy. Researchers using data from the Hubble Space Telescope and the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) found that gravity in the galaxy ESO 325-G004 behaves in the same way as it does in our Solar System. In particular, it fits in with the predictions of the German-born scientist who said that objects with considerable mass can bend the light of distant objects, thereby…

NASA’s new plan to destroy potentially harmful asteroids The space agency has outlined its five-step plan to prevent asteroids from hitting Earth © ESA Hollywood fiction looks set to become fact as NASA and the US government set out their ten-year plan to protect Earth from asteroids. It is detailed in a 20-page report titled the National Near-Earth Object Preparedness Strategy and Action Plan which discusses what should be done if an asteroid or comet comes within 30 million miles of our planet. Near-Earth objects (NEOs) are observed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, but work is ongoing to identify the best kinds of spacecraft needed to nudge them out of harm's way or break them up. The plan also seeks to enhance NEO detection, tracking and characterisation,…

Dark energy and dark matter In recent decades evidence has grown for the presence of two mysterious entities in the universe © NASA; Tobias Roetsch; Bengt Nyman Made of matter As its name suggests, dark matter is commonly thought to consist of a series of invisible particles. Dark energy, on the other hand, is not thought to consist of particles. Outwards vs inwards The presence of dark matter adds extra gravity that helps glue galaxies and clusters of galaxies together. In contrast dark energy has an anti-gravitational effect, pushing galaxies apart. How much? Dark energy dominates the total energy/mass budget of the universe. It is thought to make up 68 per cent, with dark matter contributing 27 per cent. The remaining five per cent is normal matter. Getting experimental There…

Future Tech Generation ship Generation ship Barring a propulsion breakthrough, humanity’s best chance of reaching other star systems could be generation ships: flying colonies that would spend centuries in transit © Adrian Mann Pusher plate A huge insulated plate mounted on giant shock absorbing struts would smooth out the nuclear pulses. Proxima b Our nearest neighbour is a red dwarf star 4.25 light years away. Recent observations suggest it may have a habitable planet. Nuclear pulse propulsion Our best chance for interstellar engines we could build in the near future are nuclear pulse engines, where nuclear explosions, whether fission bombs or clean fusion reactions, push the ship along. Nuclear power station Such big ships will need a lot of power. The only way we can do that remote from the…

The solar model This model suggests that Pluto was formed in the depths of the Solar System where the temperatures were much colder Creation of young Pluto These clumps become large enough to become the planetesimal that eventually leads to the creation of Pluto. Culminating matter In this cold region, rocks and ice begin to clump together as they are swept up in the rotation of the protoplanetary disc. The fine line To satisfy this model, Pluto’s planetesimal must have been far away from the Sun to form at 20 Kelvin (-253°C or -424°F).…

Most dangerous missions “I wasn't even aware that the main chute had opened” British astronaut Tim Peake momentarily feared his main parachute had failed to open as he made his re-entry to Earth What happened? Travelling back from the ISS in the small Soyuz capsule with his crew mates, Tim Peake suddenly realised that he hadn't felt the main parachute opening, causing him to momentarily worry. What mission were they on? Peake was returning home from Expedition 46/47 on 18 June 2016. “Working and living on the ISS is the best place you could possibly wish, as a professional, to be. You are in an environment where you are so well supported; you are very aware you are doing absolute cutting-edge technology. The descent is a really exciting ride. In…

Deep sky challenge Stars, clusters and nebulae of the summer Glittering stellar groupings, a star’s corpse and a beautiful double star can be seen through any size of telescope Many think the summer sky is too bright to allow observation of ‘faint’ and ‘fuzzy’ deep-sky objects, but if you stay up late the sky is just dark enough to let you see some lovely sights. Around one and two in the morning – providing the sky isn’t lit up with a display of bright blue and silver noctilucent clouds – a telescope will give you very pleasing views of some of astronomy’s most famous objects. Although the broad, frothy band of the Milky Way dominates the sky, running right through the centre of Cygnus the Swan, or the Northern Cross,…

Hundreds of meteors on Sark! When will there be hundreds of meteors? Each year the Perseid Meteor shower occurs from around 17 July to 24 August. During that period there is usually a peak, and sometimes more than one, with an increased number of meteors. Often this is around the 12 August, and on rare occasions a peak could become an ‘outburst’ with many more meteors, as in 2016. This year the Perseid meteor peak is anticipated one day after a new Moon, so the sky will be especially dark. Will there really be hundreds? The number of meteors gradually increases as the anticipated peak occurs, averaging from 40 to 80 per hour, increasing to as many as 110 to even 140 an hour. While these are theoretical rates and…

Your astrophotography Astroshots of the month Send your astrophotography images to space@spaceanswers.com for a chance to see them featured in All About Space 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. It has proven to be the ideal location to combine my hobbies of photography and astronomy – here’s our stunning galaxy, the Milky Way.” Warren Keller Buckhannon, West Virginia Equipment: 16-inch RCOS Ritchey-Chrétien owned by the University of North Carolina PROMPT2 at Star Shadows Remote Observatory (SSRO) at CTIO “Here’s Messier 61 in Virgo, a seldom-seen galaxy and one…

ESO, inspired by Interstellar © P. Horálek/ESO La Silla observatory in Chile, which is owned by the European Southern Observatory (ESO), looks undeniably photogenic from every angle. That’s how ESO photo ambassador Petr Horálek was able to capture an unusual, yet creative perspective such as this one. “I was wondering if it was possible to capture the mystical colours of the universe without complicated equipment,” he explains, adding that he was initially inspired by one of the promotional posters for Christopher Nolan’s film Interstellar. “At La Silla, you can really feel – and capture – interstellar moments!” Horálek succeeded. The majestic band of the Milky Way galaxy can be seen blazing across the sky, creating a cosmic bridge between two of La Silla’s resident telescopes: the 3.6-metre telescope (left) and…

Exoplanet candidates found in record time Time taken to identify dozens of new planetary candidates has been slashed Almost 80 new exoplanets have been discovered by scientists analysing data from the follow-up mission to NASA's Kepler Space Telescope. The planetary candidates were discovered by K2 researchers in just two weeks, making it a record-breaking feat. The scientists looked at graphs of light intensity, known as lightcurves, from each of the 50,000 stars they analysed. They found that 30 of the candidates were of the highest quality, while 48 could potentially be false positives. There were also 164 eclipsing binaries and 231 other regularly periodic variable sources. One of the exoplanets appears to orbit the bright star HD 73344 every 15 days and, as well as being scorchingly hot with temperatures…

How could the universe end? There is a wide range of possibilities for the ultimate fate of the cosmos Big Crunch This is the idea that the universe will come crashing back together in a reversal of the Big Bang. For that to happen there would have to be enough stuff in the universe – a critical mass density – in order to overturn the current expansion. There isn't thought to be enough matter for that to happen. The fact that the expansion of the universe currently seems to be accelerating makes it even more unlikely. Big Bounce This is a close relation of the Big Crunch idea. Once a universe has contracted back into a vanishingly small point it might ‘bounce’ into another Big Bang. Such a scenario is…

The making of the Earth The nebular hypothesis is the most widely accepted theory of how our planet formed, at roughly the same time as rest of our Solar System’s worlds © Nicholas Forder A proto-planet is formed 4.6 billion years ago Gravity caused the Solar System, then a cloud of gas and dust, to collapse in on itself, forming the Sun. Some of the remaining material accumulated to form the Earth’s rocky core. The giant-impact hypothesis 4.5 billion years ago A Mars-sized rocky object known as Theia smashed into the proto-Earth, catapulting pieces of the young planet’s mantle into space. Some of these pieces merged to form our Moon. The Tertiary Period 65 million years ago The bumping of tectonic plates lead to rocks being pushed upwards to form…

“You plan a safe move or hunker down and duck” Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics explains the dangers posed to Space Station astronauts by orbiting junk © NASA; Kevin McGivern What happened? In June 2011 a piece of space junk flew past the International Space Station at 29,000 miles per hour. While it missed the ISS by 335 metres (1,099 feet) it was spotted too late to perform any manoeuvres, and so the six crew members had to seek safety in the two docked Soyuz capsules until the danger had passed. The probability of a hit was calculated at 1 in 360 – far below the 1 in 10,000 risk at which NASA usually calls for precautions. What mission were they on? The incident took place during…

Making the most of totality You will need to take two different exposures and fit them together through image processing Totality will officially end at 10:15, but the Moon will still look fully eclipsed for a while after that, so keep photographing the pair together as long as you can. After taking your photos, use image-processing software on your computer to make them sharper and enhance the colours of the Moon and Mars. However, don’t overdo it and turn the Moon into a garish orange blob or Mars into a bright red dot. 1 Hunt for a clear south-eastern horizon Scout out an observing site with a low south-eastern horizon, ensuring their are no tall hills or buildings to block your view. 2 Be prepared Ensure your camera is set…

Sark Wish Upon a Star in Sark 7 - 15 August 2018 Take a trip to Sark and enjoy some of the most highly envied dark skies in the world © SarkTourism; Jonathan Blake; Mark Whitehead; Sue Daly Productions / Sark Tourism; Mark Whitehead (Jersey) In January 2011 Sark of the Channel Islands gained the distinction of being awarded International Dark-Sky Association recognition for its exceptional quality of unpolluted darkness, and became the first functioning island community to gain this title. What does it mean? Sark, although very tiny, has a thriving population of around 600 people. We have everything this modern world can offer except motor cars and all they entail. This restriction means that our nights are truly dark, the planets of the Solar System easily distinguished, the…

Telescope advice Altair Astro 60 EDF Portable and devoid of colour-fringing when observing bright targets, this doublet refractor is any astronomer's dream Thinking of booking a late holiday this year to somewhere abroad with dark, clear skies? Then as the dedicated astronomer you are, you’ll want to take a ‘scope with you. It’ll need to be small and light so as not to exceed your baggage allowance, while at the same time have great optics so that you can make the most of those dark skies. Altair Astro have the perfect ’scope for you: the Altair 60 EDF, which they are calling their lightest, most compact telescope yet. The telescope tube weighs just 1.5 kilograms and is 23cm in length – your socks will take up more room in your…

In the shops In the shops The latest books, apps, software, tech and accessories for space and astronomy fans alike “If you are looking for one astronomy app that does everything, then we would highly recommend this one” Book Photographing the Deep Sky: Images in Space and Time Cost: £20.00 (approx. $26.50) From: Pen & Sword Books Ltd. Being aware of author Chris Baker’s astroimages, we were excited to get our hands on his book to feast our eyes on more of his exquisite work. We were not disappointed - there are a multitude of pictures showing nebulae, galaxies and other celestial wonders, revealing the many exuberant colours and fine details that can only be imaged with a great-quality telescope. The pages of Photographing the Deep Sky offers excellent advice…

LAUNCH PAD YOUR FIRST CONTACT WITH THE UNIVERSE At work under the Milky Way ©NASA Behind the Atacama Rover Astrobiology Drilling Studies (ARADS), robot, the Moon begins to rise. The buggy is busy on its 2017 season of field tests in Chile’s Atacama Desert. Meanwhile, the Milky Way is visible in the night sky. The aim of ARADS is to design tools and techniques that could be used to one day search for life on Mars or other places in the Solar System. This image shows a prototype rover which combines the ability to move across the surface, drill down to collect soil samples and feed them to several life-detection instruments on board. Chile’s Atacama Desert provides one of the most Mars-like environments on planet Earth.…

The Space Station’s new crew © NASA/Joel Kowsky Astronauts Sergey Prokopeyev of Russian Space Agency Roscosmos (bottom left), NASA’s Serena Auñón-Chancellor (bottom right) and the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Alexander Gerst (bottom centre) are the International Space Station’s newest crew members. In this image they can be seen on a video monitor as they talk to family and friends at the Moscow Mission Control Center in Korolev, Russia, a few hours after the Soyuz MS-09 docked to the Space Station on 8 June. They can be seen with Commander Drew Feustel of NASA (top centre), astronaut Ricky Arnold of NASA (top right) and Oleg Artemyev of Roscosmos (top left).…

LAUNCH PAD Universe’s ‘missing matter’ is finally found Scientists clear up a mystery by locating the elusive third of ordinary matter created when the cosmos was born “We found the missing baryons” Astrophysicists have finally pinned down the location of a huge amount of missing ordinary matter, going a long way to solving a mystery dating back some 20 years. Scientists at the University of Colorado Boulder say the missing matter is found in the space between galaxies. They made the discovery by observing a distant, ultra-bright black hole. The study was inspired by a stark discrepancy between the amount of ordinary matter calculated to have been created during the Big Bang and the amount that could be seen with telescopes today. Up until the recent findings, only two-thirds of…

LAUNCH PAD Exploding volcanoes explain weird Mars rock The eruptions went on to shape the strange landscape that is Medusae Fossae and led to a planet-wide ocean Huge volcanic eruptions may have changed the face of Mars over the course of 500 million years, and even caused an ocean to wash over the entire planet. That's the conclusion of a new study by Lujendra Ojha, a planetary scientist at John Hopkins University in Maryland, USA, who says it has the potential to alter scientific understanding of Mars' make-up. Ojha's research centred on the Medusae Fossae Formation, a large geological unit of probable volcanic origin on Mars. Its hilly, steep nature contrasts with the flatter surrounding environment but, by looking at radar and gravity data, Ojha and his fellow researcher, Kevin…

End of the universe WHEN THE UNIVERSE WILL END According to recent research, space and time's demise could come from a famous, particle-sized source Reported by Colin Stuart © Tobias Roetsch There are many ways the world could end: a deadly asteroid impact, a global pandemic of some super-contagious bug, a president with an itchy trigger finger. But what about the cosmos as a whole? Is there anything powerful enough to shatter the entire universe? The ultimate fate of the universe has been a hot topic among astronomers for decades. Initially they contemplated a Big Crunch – effectively a Big Bang in reverse. If the universe contains enough material then, eventually, its collective gravity would overturn the outwards expansion from its creation and it would start to shrink back down.…

Mini-moons DID MINI MOONS MAKE OUR EARTH? A new theory says ‘moonfalls’ may have formed our planet’s first continents Written by Libby Plummer © NASA; Tobias Roetsdch Mini-moons may have battered Earth with debris in its formative years, shaping the young planet and maybe even building the first continent. That’s the theory put forward by a new study which turns the ‘giant-impact hypothesis’ on its head. In the well-established giant-impact theory, a Mars-sized rocky object called Theia smashed into what would become Earth around 100 million years after the Solar System was formed. The giant collision spewed debris up into space forming a disc of debris, some of which gradually came together to form our Moon. This idea was initially put forward in 2012, and then four years later, researchers…

Martian storm STUCK IN A MARTIAN STORM NASA’s Opportunity rover has been stuck in one of the thickest dust storms ever observed on Mars © NASA/JPL-Caltech ; ESA The dust storms that arise on Mars aren’t as disastrous as portrayed in the 2015 scifi blockbuster film The Martian, however, observations from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) have recently shown a dust storm grow in size over the period of a week and a half. This storm even caused NASA to suspend science operations for its Opportunity rover, which was caught up in the middle of it. "This is the ideal storm for Mars science," says Jim Watzin, director of NASA's Mars Exploration Program at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, United States. "We have a historic number of spacecraft operating at…

PLU UTO IS IT MADE FROM COMETS? A new revelation about the dwarf planet has left astronomers once again questioning its identity Reported by Lee Cavendish The scientific community has always had a problem with Pluto’s status. The icy world's demotion to a dwarf planet in 2006 still burns strong for some, whilst others still refuse to even accept its new position. The identity crisis has now resurfaced with a new theory that claims that it could actually be roughly a billion comets all squished together. If this theory is proven true then this is just another nail in the coffin for Pluto and the argument to allow it to join the 'fully-fledged' planetary family once again. There were several factors that knocked Pluto from its planetary pedestal, but the…

USER MANUAL Gaia For over four years, the Milky Way mapper pinpointed over a billion stars to create an expansive dataset This almost sombrero-shaped spacecraft has been mapping the stars for more than four years. Its recent data release contains unrivalled information on nearly 1.7 billion stars, and is to date the greatest catalogue of stars ever produced. The European Space Agency (ESA) initially had the idea of using Gaia as an optical interferometer mission, meaning that Gaia originally would have been a series of smaller telescopes working together to create an image similar to that from a larger telescope. Thus ESA gave the mission its original name: the Global Astrometric Interferometer for Astrophysics, or GAIA. After the mission evolved and the interferometer idea was dropped, the name stuck. However,…

TOP TECH Gaia’s digital detectors: the billion-pixel camera Gaia contains the largest camera to ever leave Earth, consisting of 106 CCDs that makes up almost a billion pixels. Compared to the Apple iPhone 8’s 12 million-pixel camera, Gaia’s camera is over 80-times more impressive. These CCDs are split up into subsections that make up the three main instruments: the astrometric field, the photometric instrument and the radial velocity spectrometer, including some minor instruments that track the motion of stars and re-align the telescope. As a team, these CCDs are what make Gaia a success.…

Focus on SpaceX Block 5 SPACEX’S NEW ROCKET BREAKS RECORDS The latest Falcon 9 model, the Block 5, has recently undergone its first of many spaceflights © SpaceX The 11 May 2018 was not just the launch of the Bangabandhu-1 satellite, it also marked a memorable day for SpaceX, and could prove to be a milestone in their continuation to create sustainable spaceflight. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 Block 5 is the new-and-improved model, and the private space company has gone as far as to say that this rocket is capable of at least ten blast-offs into Earth orbit. By taking into account all its failures, Elon Musk and SpaceX have created a rocket that would be remarkable for rapid reusability while maintaining an exceedingly good standard of reliability with each and…

“Right at liftoff, we got several alerts” How close the crew of STS-93 came to disaster still remains unknown, but astronaut Steven A. Hawley explains the moment engine controllers were disabled by an electrical short What happened? About five seconds after liftoff an electrical short disabled the centre engine's primary digital control units, along with the right engine's secondary digital control units. Meanwhile, a shortage of fuel during the ascent of STS-93 was traced to a huge hydrogen leak. This could have caused the engine to dangerously overheat. What mission were they on? Hawley was on STS-93 on a primary mission to deploy the Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility (now known as the Chandra X-ray Observatory). “We had scrubbed two previous attempts at launching STS-93: the first was on 20 July…

STARGAZER This month’s planets The Red Planet reaches opposition this month and, providing you’re in the right place, you’ll be able to catch a wealth of its surface detail Finally, after taking what has felt like an eternity, this month Mars reaches opposition! A planet is said to be at opposition when it is directly opposite the Sun in the sky, and because this opposition of Mars coincides with a relatively close approach of Mars to the Earth, astronomers all around the world have been looking forward to this month all year, impatient to see Mars looking bigger and brighter in the sky than it has for many years. Unfortunately, because of its current position along the ecliptic in the constellation of Capricornus, Mars will not climb very high in…

How to… Photograph a totally eclipsed Moon rising with Mars On the evening of 27 July, a much-redder lunar companion will be rising with the Red Planet just beneath it, shining at its brightest for years. Here’s how to make sure you take photos of this rare event you’ll be proud of © Dylan O'Donnell, deography.co; Alfredo Garcia, Jr. Cross your fingers for a clear sky on the evening of 27 July. Not only will there be a total eclipse of the Moon, but Mars will look very striking in the sky too because it will be at opposition, closer to us and brighter in the sky than it has been for years. As if that wasn’t enough, for a brief time we’ll be able to see the totally eclipsed…

HEROES OF F SPACE Alan Bean He became the fourth man to walk on the Moon during the Apollo 12 mission © NASA-JSC Moon-walking astronaut turned talented artist, All About Space looks back at the fantastic life and career of Alan Bean after he recently passed away on 26 May 2018, at the age of 86. Born on 15 March 1932 in Wheeler, Texas, United States, Bean always wanted to be a pilot from a young age. After considering the career paths that could lead him to his dream job, Bean joined the Naval Air Reserves in high school. This led him to become a test and fighter pilot around the same time NASA’s space programme was coming into fashion. On his second attempt of applying to become an astronaut,…