Innehållsförteckning för No. 129 från All About Space

It might be the most familiar place to us, but our strange solar neighbourhood still continues to surprise, as you’ll discover in this issue of All About Space. This month we have 25 weird and wonderful facts about our Solar System – and everything that fills it – to blow your mind. From its sheer size to the mysterious volcanoes of Jupiter’s moon Io, turn to page 14 to uncover something you didn’t know about our corner of the universe. Elsewhere in the magazine, we offer up some top tips and tricks to getting a variety of stunning images and great views of the night sky with as little fuss as possible. If you’ve ever wanted to get the very best sights of the Andromeda Galaxy, shoot the planets with…

© NASA The Moon, NASA’s target for its Artemis program, shines as a tantalising destination in this photo taken from the International Space Station. This shot was captured by a member of the station’s current Expedition 66 crew – which comprises of NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Thomas Marshburn, Kayla Barron and Mark Vande Hei; the European Space Agency’s Matthias Maurer; Roscosmos’ Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov – shows a waning gibbous Moon phase as the Moon shines above a brilliant Earth. The station was flying about 437 kilometres (272 miles) above the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of southern Argentina when this shot was captured.…

Our tally of strange new worlds just reached 5,000. The milestone comes amid a surge of recent discoveries and the promise of more insights to come as NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope readies for planet-gazing operations in deep space. “The 5,000-plus planets found so far include small, rocky worlds like Earth; gas giants many times larger than Jupiter and ‘hot Jupiters’ in scorchingly close orbits around their stars,” Jet Propulsion Laboratory officials said in a statement. “There are ‘super-Earths,’ which are possible rocky worlds bigger than our own, and ‘mini-Neptunes,’ smaller versions of our system’s Neptune,” the officials added. “Add to the mix planets orbiting two stars at once and planets stubbornly orbiting the collapsed remnants of dead stars.” The NASA Exoplanet Archive is housed at the California Institute for…

China is looking to spark interest in space tourism by opening its soon-to-be-completed space station to everyday citizens. Yang Liwei, who made history in 2003 by becoming China’s first astronaut in space, told Chinese media earlier this month that people without formal astronaut training could soon visit the Tiangong space station. “It is not a matter of technology but of demand,” Yang said when asked if the general public would be able to tour Tiangong. “And it can be realised within a decade as long as there is such demand.” But first China needs to complete the threemodule, T-shaped space station and make it fully operational. China plans to launch six missions this year to complete Tiangong. These will be launches of two new modules, a pair of cargo supply…

When we first started to build flying machines, we began by copying birds. In the initial stages of human flight, numerous people tried jumping from high places with poorly designed wings, leading them to fall to their deaths – the earliest account of this is of a man named Armen Firman trying it out during the 9th century. Despite this, attempts at flapping-wing flight continued into the machine age. It wasn’t until 2010 that a team from the University of Toronto, Canada, made the first successful flight of a piloted, engine-powered ornithopter –a craft that ‘flaps’ its wings. While fixed wings combined with a separate source of propulsion finally took us into the air, flapping-wing flight has a lot of potential benefits – it’s just really hard to do. But…

“This is the start of a great collaboration, and we’re so excited to see where it goes” © Adrian Mann Fresh on the heels of a third straight successful launch from California earlier this year, Virgin Orbit plans to extend its liftoffs to the United Kingdom. The company aims to launch for the first time this summer from Spaceport Cornwall in the western UK. The mission will loft a satellite for Space Forge, an in-space manufacturing startup based in Wales. The coming flight will be the first orbital mission ever to launch from the UK and the first to carry a satellite developed in Wales. “We’re thrilled to be making UK history with our first launch,” said Space Forge CEO Joshua Western. Space Forge wants to test a new mini…

For years the most powerful lenses staring out into the cosmos were the Wide Field and Planetary Camera and Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. As the years passed, one would replace the other, until 2009, when NASA installed one of the last instruments to be added to the observatory before it’s replaced by the James Webb Space Telescope. The WFC3 is still impressive, utilising two independent light paths: an optical channel that takes images from 200 to 1,000 nanometres and a near-infrared detector array that covers the wavelength range from 850 to 1,700 nanometres. © NASA…

Take three black holes and throw them into the disc surrounding a supermassive black hole and things get weird. That’s the conclusion of new research digging into a particularly strange gravitational-wave event that scientists observed in May 2019. Gravitational waves are the ripples in space-time caused by, among other dramatic events, the mergers of black holes. But this particular observation didn’t match other collisions scientists have caught: it resulted in a black hole in the mid-size range that scientists can barely see, much less explain, and some force was stretching the typically circular dance as the behemoths approached each other. “The gravitational-wave event GW190521 is the most surprising discovery to date. The black holes’ masses and spins were already surprising, but even more surprising was that they appeared not to…

Those risks are among the few that we can quantify. We know how probable impacts by rocks of different sizes are, and the biggest threat is from the rare big ones. I think if you do a normal calculation working out the probability and the consequences and what insurance premium you should spend to reduce that risk, you come up with a number like £100 or £200 million ($130 or $260 million) a year. That’s the kind of premium that would be worth spending to reduce the risk of an asteroid impact. It’s good that there is talk about doing this and spending money in two different ways. Did you know? Ceres is the largest asteroid in the Solar System – it’s about 940 kilometres (584 miles) in diameter. One…

A hundred years ago, Einstein truly became a household name when his theory of relativity was first tested and confirmed by experiments. Einstein predicted that light passing by a massive object should get deflected by gravity, and that this effect could even be detected by measuring the apparent location of stars near the Sun during a solar eclipse. For the Sun this deflection is less than a thousandth of a degree. For a black hole, with its much stronger gravitational field, the light ray can get bent by 360 degrees or more. Imagine shining a laser pointer at a black hole. If you point it right at the black hole, the light will get swallowed. If you point it to the side, it will get deflected by the black hole’s…

You’ll need: ✔ Smartphone ✔ Phone bracket ✔A tracking mount ✔ Telescope 1 Decide on a planet to image Find and centre the planet you wish to image through your telescope eyepiece. Venus and Mars are good targets for capturing detail. 2 Make the most of your telescope’s motor Ensure that your telescope mount’s drive system is on and operating. Motors are useful for tracking the planets through the course of the night. 3 Make sure you have a good view Check that you have a decent image of the planet on your phone’s screen. Try to get it in focus as much as you can using your telescope’s focuser. 4 Ensure your chosen planet is centred If your target is in the centre of the field…

Terry Hancock Location: Michigan Telescope: Takahashi FSQ-130 “My interest in astronomy began some 40 years ago in Australia. My first telescope was a 4.5-inch Newtonian, and I enjoyed many nights in the pollution-free, dark night skies of the hot Australian outback. It was often so dark that the Milky Way cast a shadow on the ground. The skies are mediocre in Western Michigan where I observe from these evenings. I pride myself in taking really long exposures of deepsky objects and always try to maintain a natural look.” Jeff Johnson Location: Las Cruces, New Mexico Astroshots Telescope: Takahashi FS-60C “I have a long love of astronomy and have observed the night sky for many years with binoculars and a telescope from the age of ten. I did my first ‘real’…

For gamers Space Commander: War and Trade Cost: Free From: Steam 1True space exploration on a grand scale canbe tough to pull off, so learning that a free-toplay game has done it is pretty impressive. Space Commander: War and Trade is a callback to other great titles in the genre. Your main goal is to explore the universe, make money and keep upgrading your ships until you become the best pilot in the galaxy. The game does feature ads, but they’re not as intrusive as many similar games. It’s also entirely possible to enjoy the entire single-player campaign without investing any money at all. For bookworms The Apollo Murders Cost: £20 / $28 From: Amazon 2Astronaut Chris Hadfield looked back in time andsaw the makings of a nail-biting Cold War…

© NASA Two floating robots have met for the first time aboard the International Space Station (ISS), though both have lived on the orbital outpost for more than two years. The Crew Interactive MObile companioN (CIMON), developed by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in cooperation with Airbus and IBM, is an artificially intelligent assistant designed to help astronauts go about their everyday tasks. The Astrobee, developed by a team at NASA’s Ames Research Center, was designed to autonomously perform various tasks, such as monitoring the environment aboard the station.…

© NASA The James Webb Space Telescope’s main mirror is fully aligned and is performing even better than it was designed to. The 6.5-metre (21.3-foot) mirror, composed of 18 hexagonal segments, had to travel to space folded up. Aligning it into one smooth reflecting surface was one of the main tasks that the Webb control team has had to tackle since the giant telescope’s launch on 25 December. The alignment process, w hich involved fine-tuning the positions and i nclinations of the 18 segments with nanometre-scale precision, has now been completed. And the James Webb Space Telescope mission – the most complex and most expensive observatory ever launched – is already producing images that take scientists’ breath away. “The telescope’s performance so far is everything that we dared to hope,”…

The brightest comet of 2021 has disintegrated. Icy wanderer Comet C/2021 A1 (Leonard) fell apart during its perihelion, or closest approach to the Sun. Perihelion was projected for 3 January roughly a year after the comet’s discovery. The comet’s discoverer, Gregory Leonard of the Catalina Sky Survey in Tucson, said the comet’s legacy was the tail structures made up of charged particles, © Getty known as ions. The tail was subject to “spectacular outburst-induced displays” after spotting the comet on 3 January 2021, he said. “Otherworldly and astonishing are the only descriptions that come to mind when I began viewing the images being posted online by a handful of dedicated expert astrophotographers, particularly after 19 December 2021, when the comet began undergoing strong periodic outburst activity,” said Leonard. Even if…

WORTH over £600 A compact mount platform that allows you to capture nightscapes and star images with elegance and ease, the Vixen Polarie Star Tracker allows you to capture the universe through the art of astrophotography. Ultralight and portable, this star tracker is ideal for widefield astroimaging. Operational on two AA batteries, the Polarie tracks the motion of the stars in order to eliminate star trails for exquisitely sharp images. Setting up is easy and fast – the Polarie can be attached to a standard camera tripod and accepts a digital camera weighing up to 3.2 kilograms. An included compass on the Polarie Star Tracker mount makes northern alignment easy, along with a polar scope for alignment. To be in with a chance of winning, answer this question: What is…

The specs Launch: 24 April 1990 Rocket: Space Shuttle Discovery (STS-31) Target: Low-Earth orbit Operators: NASA Estimated cost: $1.5 billion Time in space: 32 years Orbit height: 547 kilometres (340 miles) © NASA Spinning high above our world in the embrace of a low-Earth orbit lies Hubble, an observatory that’s served as the backbone of modern astronomy for over three decades. Its cameras have stared out into our Solar System and beyond, helping scientists, astronomers and academics to slowly peel back the mysteries that lie far beyond the blanket of our atmosphere. The Hubble Space Telescope may be an ageing amalgamation of engineering from across the decades, but its impact on astronomy is truly unmatched. When it launched on 24 April 1990, Hubble represented the biggest step forward for the…

Hell on Earth is a phrase used by many, but one planet actually matches this idea of a harsh and inhospitable environment – that accolade falls to Venus. The second planet from the Sun is similar in size and density to Earth, with it being only 638 kilometres (396 miles) smaller in diameter and 0.27 grams per cubic centimetre lower in density. These physical dimensions may paint a picture of a world similar to Earth, but that’s far from the case. Venus underwent a different evolution, and its dense atmosphere has fashioned the hottest surface temperature in the entire Solar System at 465 degrees Celsius (869 degrees Fahrenheit), with atmospheric pressures that are over 90 times that of Earth’s at sea level. Venus’ atmosphere is composed mainly of the greenhouse…

“Perseverance will end up collecting and caching several dozen Red Planet samples” © NASAx3 Images /JPL-Caltech N ASA’s Perseverance rover now has seven Mars rock samples in its collection. The car-sized robot drilled into another Martian rock and socked away the resulting core, mission team members announced on 8 March. It’s the seventh drilled sample that Perseverance has collected since touching down on the floor of the Red Planet’s Jezero crater in February 2021. Collecting samples for future return to Earth is one of Perseverance’s two main tasks, along with hunting for signs of ancient Mars life. The 45-kilometre (28-mile) Jezero crater harboured a lake and a river delta in the ancient past, so it’s a great place to do such work. Here on Earth, river deltas are good at…

Tatooine-like planets – planets orbiting around binary stars, also known as circumbinary planets – are no longer just science fiction. The Kepler spacecraft has observed transiting circumbinary planets. Here we focus on circumbinary-type planets that move around the centre of mass of the double-star system in a relatively wide orbit. The first requirement for survival on a circumbinary planet is that the planet remains dynamically stable. Gravitational perturbations from the binary can destabilise the circumbinary orbit. If this happens then the circumbinary planet is likely ejected from the system, or it could even collide with one of the stars. Both aren’t favourable scenarios for survivability. Secondly, if we agree to need liquid water for survival, and ideally a breathable atmosphere, the circumbinary planet should neither be too close nor too…

In the Northern Hemisphere, astronomers are fortunate to have a star, Polaris, very close to the north celestial pole. Polaris appears to stay fixed in position while the constellations rotate around it due to Earth’s spin about its axis. It’s a sensible assumption that there might be a similar guide at the south celestial pole, the point of sky around which the Southern Hemisphere stars appear to rotate. But Polaris is above the celestial pole purely by chance, and there’s no useful beacon marking the south celestial pole. The closest star, Sigma Octantis in Octans, is a very dim, fifth-magnitude star which is extremely hard to make out with the naked eye. While Sigma Octantis is the ‘south star’, it doesn’t have the same usefulness as Polaris for astronomers, so…

Above left: A black hole’s gravity alters light coming towards it to create a ‘photon sphere’ Above: Asteroid mining could be an extremely profitable business If I asked you how many metals you think you have in your pockets at the moment, you might say three or four. But you’ve probably got around 40 or 50 different metals on you right now if you’ve got a smartwatch on, a smartphone or even a tablet. The problem with all those exotic metals is that they are quite rare and hard to get on Earth. There’s a limited supply and they’re hard to recycle from the electronics we use. Therefore there’s a huge demand and potentially a lot of money to be made by going to the asteroids and mining those as…

et Andromeda in your sights Make sure you're equipped for the very best views of our nearest spiral, also known as Messier 31 You’ll need: ✔A dark observing site ✔ Our finder charts ✔A pair of binoculars (optional) ✔A small telescope (optional) 1 Get dark adapted It’s important to let your eyes adapt properly. Messier 31’s light is spread over a wide area and any light pollution or moonlight will hide it from view. 2 Find Cassiopeia First find Cassiopeia, a W-shaped constellation high in the Northern Hemisphere sky. Then locate the upside-down ‘Y’ of Perseus directly by it. 3 Use star hopping Starting at Mirfak, the central star in Perseus, slowly ‘star hop’ two stars along to the right to Mirach in Andromeda. 4 Seek a…

You’ll need: ✔ DSLR camera ✔A dark-sky site ✔ Wide-angle lens ✔ Tripod ✔A cable release ✔ Photoprocessing software 1 Position your camera Pointing it towards your chosen area of sky, turn your camera onto its side to give a portrait image. Focus sharply on either a bright star or a distant light on the horizon. 2 Alter the exposure time Press the cable release to take your first image. If your target isn’t clear, try increasing the ISO or exposure time until it looks more obvious. 3 Shoot a series When you have some images you are happy with, take a series of overlapping photos panning upwards to turn into a mosaic later when you are processing your images. 4 Alter the contrast Use processing software to increase the…

You’ll need: ✔ DSLR camera ✔ Telescope camera adaptor ✔ Small telescope ✔ Tracking mount 01 Aim your telescope Point the camera and the telescope towards Venus. Make sure you cap off the finderscope if the planet is very close to the Sun and be careful not to cause any damage to your eyes. 02 Turn on the drive Switch on the drive and wait for it to settle before you start taking your series of images. Make sure that your equipment is well set up, sturdy and, most importantly, still. 3 Set the exposure time Try to keep the exposure times for your shots as short as possible as Venus is very bright in the sky. You may need to increase the ISO value, but don’t…

Planet of the month Mars will be an important member of the parade of planets that will be stretched out across the predawn sky from the east to the southeast. If Mars was shining high in a dark sky at +0.9 it would be a striking sight, an obvious orange-red ‘star’ to the naked eye. However, during April and May Mars will be shining low in a sky bright with the slow but relentless approach of sunrise, so it will not be as easy to see. In fact, if your sky is misty or hazy you might even struggle to spot it without binoculars. At the start of our observing period the planets on either side – Venus to its left and Saturn to its right – will both be…

© ESA/Hubble & NASA This image of spiral galaxy NGC 4571, approximately 60 million light years from Earth, is part of a partnership between Hubble and other telescopes to provide more information about huge collections of stars. The galaxy is part of the Virgo Cluster of galaxies that contains more than 1,000 members. The cluster also encompasses the Local Group, which is the set of galaxies near to and including our own galaxy, the Milky Way. Astronomers are not only interested in looking at individual galaxies, but also examining them in context of their environments to learn more about how stars are formed and how galaxies evolve over billions of years.…

© ESA Europe’s beleaguered ExoMars rover is unlikely to launch before 2026 as the European Space Agency (ESA) ponders a path forward for the mission, including finding a new rocket, replacing Russianbuilt parts in cooperation with NASA or restarting its partnership with Russia in case the country’s war in Ukraine ends soon. ESA representatives outlined their plans for the mission in a press conference on 17 March after officially suspending cooperation with Russia’s space agency Roscosmos as a result of sanctions imposed on Russia by ESA member states. The ExoMars rover, conceived in 2005, was scheduled to launch to Mars from the Russiacontrolled Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on a Russian-built Proton rocket in September. “We have to do detailed studies of what this means and how the rover can arrive…

SpaceX’s Crew-4 mission will fly to the International Space Station (ISS) on 19 April, and the mission’s Dragon capsule just got a name: Freedom. “Crew-4 will fly to the ISS in a new Dragon capsule named Freedom. The name celebrates a fundamental human right and the industry and innovation that emanate from the unencumbered human spirit,” NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren, who will command the Crew-4 mission, said on Twitter on 23 March. Lindgren will fly alongside fellow NASA astronauts Robert Hines and Jessica Watkins, as well as European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti. “Through the Commercial Crew Program, NASA and SpaceX have restored a national capability, and we honour the ingenuity and hard work of those involved. Alan Shepard flew on Freedom 7 at the dawn of human spaceflight. We…

How did you become interested in space exploration? It all started when I was nine years old; I was in fourth grade reading an article in a magazine about the Gemini program. They were profiling the astronauts and the missions, and that was when I really, as far back as I remember, found myself very interested in the space program. While I attended summer camp as a child I would visit the glider field and we’d watch the gliders take off. So there was a little bit of aviation in my background, and I think that’s maybe the roots of my getting interested in aviation and space. Were you proud to be selected as the first female Space Shuttle pilot? Back in 1989 I interviewed for the job of Space…

1 The big launch Getting a large space telescope into space requires an incredibly powerful rocket to take it into low-Earth orbit. Since NASA was in the middle of its Space Shuttle Program in 1990, Hubble was launched inside Discovery. 2 Reaching low-Earth orbit To get Hubble into place, Discovery soared to a height of 600 kilometres (373 miles) above Earth, separating itself from the three boosters. At this height, Discovery’s crew of five was able to document the operation. 3 Unfurling the solar array As the Hubble Space Telescope was removed from Discovery’s cargo bay, the remotely operated Canadarm robotic arm was unfurled. However, one of Hubble’s solar arrays refused to fully unfurl, so an emergency spacewalk was prepped. 4 Launching Hubble into place Following five days of operation…

Look through a telescope and you’ll likely see the view wobble, similar to a heat haze over a hot road. This is caused by the 100 kilometres (62 miles) of air above us, and it significantly affects how well we can see into space. While old Victorian telescopes are often found near cities, the increase in light pollution and growing technological capabilities have led observatories to be built in more remote locations and at high altitudes to reduce atmospheric interference. For example, the British state astronomy program began with the Royal Observatory Greenwich in 1676 and is now carried out by mountaintop telescopes in Hawaii and the Canary Islands. National observing programs have clustered around a few key mountaintops, where telescopes can share resources. The Roque de los Muchachos on…

ASK Our experts answer your questions ©NASA A hundred years ago, Einstein truly became a household name when his theory of relativity was first tested and confirmed by experiments. Einstein predicted that light passing by a massive object should get deflected by gravity, and that this effect could even be detected by measuring the apparent location of stars near the Sun during a solar eclipse. For the Sun this deflection is less than a thousandth of a degree. For a black hole, with its much stronger gravitational field, the light ray can get bent by 360 degrees or more. Imagine shining a laser pointer at a black hole. If you point it right at the black hole, the light will get swallowed. If you point it to the side, it…

You’ll need: ✔ DSLR camera ✔ Zoom or telephoto lens ✔ Small telescope ✔ Tripod 1 Decide on your shot type Set up your equipment and choose either a wide-angle shot or a more close-up image using a zoom or telephoto lens or even a small telescope. 2 Locate the Moon under magnification It sounds simple, but finding the Moon can be tricky under magnification. Once you’ve found it, centre it in the viewscreen of your camera and snap away. 3 Focus on the Earthshine Once you’re happy with your shots of the crescent Moon, shift your focus to the Earthshine. Don’t wait too long to take the next shot though. 4 Process your images Using Photoshop or similar photo-editing software, combine the two images to…

You’ll need: ✔ No obstructions on the horizon ✔A pair of binoculars ✔ Tripod 1 Know what to look for Noctilucent clouds can be different colours. Look out for simple arcs or wisps of gold or more complex swirls and whirls of electric blue, often silhouetting clouds lower in the atmosphere. 2 Be prepared for brightening and fading If a display dies down, don’t give up – it might brighten again. Many of the largest displays fade away part way through before coming back. 3 Upgrade to binoculars Binoculars will show you beautiful detail inside noctilucent clouds – whirls and swirls, crosshatch patterns and long, sinuous lines of smoky cloud, shining in shades of violet and electric blue. 4 Try taking photos A DSLR on a tripod can snap great images…

Despite their name, the prominent lunar features known as ‘seas’ – ‘maria’ in Latin – aren’t stretches of liquid water. They’re vast pools of dark lava that flooded low-lying areas, but mainly impact basins, several billion years ago. These lava flows have long since solidified. It was only in ancient times – long before telescopes were first invented – that these dark patches, so clearly visible with the unaided eye, were speculated to be marine regions. But for more than 400 years we have known that the Moon’s seas are decidedly solid areas – no waves lap at their shores and no wind billows across their expanses. Mare Crisium (the Sea of Crises) is the most ‘selfcontained’ sea on the Moon’s nearside. Viewed from above, it’s markedly oval in shape;…

A stunning array of star clusters grace the night sky of the Northern Hemisphere during May. The constellation of Hercules (the Hero) brings with it the beautiful Great Globular Cluster in Hercules (Messier 13) and Messier 92 for astronomers with telescopes with a small aperture.Meanwhile, the brightest star in the northern celestial hemisphere, Arcturus in Boötes, can be found in the south. For those who can’t wait until the summer for a deluge of nebulae, the Cat’s Eye Nebula (NGC 6543) in Draco (the Dragon) is an easy target with medium-power telescopes. Galaxies such as the Black Eye Galaxy (Messier 64) in Coma Berenices (Berenice’s Hair) are also visible. Using the sky chart 1This chart is for use at 22:00 midmonth and is set for 52° latitude. 2Hold the chart…

Camera advice Cost: £1,339.99 / $1,399.99 From: Canon Type: DSLR Kit lens: N/A, sold with or without EF converter Sensor: 26.2 megapixels Lens mount: Canon EF ISO range: 100 to 40,000 Viewfinder size/resolution: Optical viewfinder, 45-point autofocus Video capability: 1080p Weight: 725 grams Size: 14.5 by 11.2 by 7.4 centimetres (5.7 by 4.4 by 2.9 inches) Memory card type: Single SD Best for… £ Large budgets ! Serious astrophotographers Landscape photography Solar System Deep sky The original Canon EOS 6D saw the birth of a new breed of cameras – one that introduced beginner, enthusiast and amateur photographers to the idea of an accessible full-frame system. For those of us who baulk at the idea of spending thousands of pounds on pro or semi-pro systems, the 6D offered an affordable…