Innehållsförteckning för No. 159 från All About Space

This issue, we head to Earth’s evil twin: Venus. Venus hasn’t always been a hostile world, however, with its sulphuric acid rain, searing heat and intense winds. Shortly after the planet formed, Venus was said to have been not too dissimilar to how our Earth looks today. So what caused it to stray? Turn to our cover feature to find out! Also this issue, you can find out if you have the right stuff to go to space – would you make a good astronaut? Let me know how you get on with our tests. Elsewhere, we present your cheat sheet to the universe, explore 20 world stargazing trips, answer your space questions thanks to our panel of experts and catch up with the European Space Agency’s director general Josef…

The high visibility of Venus in the night sky has made it a fixture in human mythology and art since before history began. In Roman mythology, Venus was the goddess of love, beauty, fertility, prosperity and victory. Considered an ancestor of the Roman people through her son Aeneas, who fled to Italy after the fall of Troy, Venus was the centre of many religious festivals. However, the name ‘Venus’ was only given to the second planet from the Sun in the 13th century; prior to this, it was known as morgensteorra, or the morning star, and æfensteorra, the evening star in Old English. The term ‘morning star’ may be more familiar in Latin as ‘Lucifer’ or the ‘light bringer’. In Hebrew the planet was known as ‘Helel’. It’s thought that…

For the second time in a row, Lockheed Martin will be at the forefront of the creation of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) next-generation weather satellites. NASA awarded the aerospace company a $2.27 billion (£1.76 billion) contract to develop and manufacture spacecraft for the next generation of NOAA satellites that will follow the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) series, Geostationary Extended Observations (GeoXO). The contract includes developing three initial spacecraft and will also allow the option for an additional four. Work on the satellites will be done both at Lockheed Martin’s facility in Littleton, Colorado, and also at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. “Our team is excited and ready to move forward to design and field this critical national capability,” Kyle Griffin, vice president and general manager…

NASA intends to reach Mars in the next decade, and sciencefiction movies and TV shows are making space exploration look more exciting than ever. But have you ever asked yourself if you’re really cut out for life as an astronaut? In 2021, NASA received over 12,000 applications from budding astronauts, and it’s no surprise that becoming an astronaut is appealing. Science-fiction movies make life in space look star-shatteringly exciting, from The Martian, which NASA experts consulted on, to the adventures of the crew of the Enterprise in Star Trek. And real life is fast catching up. NASA’s journey to Mars is well underway, with a plan that will see astronauts reaching Mars orbit some time in the 2030s. Increasingly, space agencies aren’t the only workplaces available to aspiring space travellers.…

The northern aurora borealis and southern aurora australis are celestial spectacles which seldom fail to amaze anyone lucky enough to see them. They appear as beautiful, glowing, dancing ribbons of light and they’re caused by charged particles in violent solar wind reaching Earth’s upper atmosphere at speeds of up to 72 million kilometres (45 million miles) per hour. But while scientists know what causes phenomena such as these, they don’t quite understand the entire solar wind process. More specifically, they’ve long sought to link the solar wind back to its source regions on the Sun so that its origins can be better studied. Such insights are important. Although aurorae are nothing short of delightful, the solar wind does have a more sinister side. Sometimes those flows of plasma embedded within…

Mysterious swirling patterns seen on the Moon’s surface may be linked to underground magma activity, a new study suggests. The ‘lunar swirls’ observed on the Moon exhibit a spiral pattern created by magnetised rocks that deflect or redirect solar wind particles that constantly bombard the Moon. Moon rocks that fall within the lunar swirls remain light in colour, while neighbouring rocks that don’t – and were therefore impacted by charged particles from the Sun – seem to undergo a chemical reaction that causes them to appear darker. However, given that the Moon doesn’t have a classic magnetic field of its own, researchers had to look for another source that could have magnetised the lunar swirls, which in some areas can extend for hundreds of miles, highlighted in images from NASA’s…

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

Choosing the best camera for astrophotography can be a daunting task. Today we are spoiled for choice, with a huge range of different manufacturers and models to choose from. The company ZWO has been producing astroimaging cameras for over a decade now, and as the years have progressed it has become one of the most popular manufacturers of affordable cameras for astrophotography. The ZWO ASI183MC Pro camera is aimed at those looking to purchase a dedicated multipurpose camera for astrophotography. A few years back, cameras such as this would have set you back a tidy four-figure sum, but with the advent of affordable technology from Chinese manufacturers such as ZWO, the playing field has completely changed. Cameras once costing a small fortune are within reach of a much wider range…

12 July 2024 Galactic penguin honours Webb’s second anniversary To celebrate two years since the James Webb Space Telescope started sending images back to Earth, NASA has released yet another stunning image taken by the revolutionary space telescope. The second-anniversary Webb image shows two interacting galaxies that make up a single object called Arp 142, which appears like a cosmic penguin with its egg. Fittingly for a celebration of Webb’s two years of science results, the new image is a double feature. Arp 142’s penguin-and-egg scene comprises two interacting galaxies located around 326 million light years from Earth in the constellation of Hydra. It has been observed before, but never in as much detail as this new view from Webb has allowed. “In just two years, Webb has transformed our…

Three astronomers have proposed expanding the official definition of a planet to encompass worlds orbiting stars other than our own, a nuance not currently included in the formal definition of the term established in 2006 by the International Astronomical Union, or IAU. If the trio’s new definition pans out, thousands of celestial bodies across the universe could be confirmed as formal planets. For a celestial body to qualify as a planet per the current IAU definition, it must orbit the Sun, have cleared the area around its orbit and must have enough mass that its gravity would have sculpted it into a nearly round shape.” The third requirement is particularly vague because it does not quantify just how round the celestial body should be, according to a team led by…

The European Space Agency (ESA) is fast-tracking a new mission called Ramses, which will fly to near-Earth asteroid 99942 Apophis and join the space rock in 2029 when it comes close to our planet – closer even than the region where geosynchronous satellites sit. Ramses is short for Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety, and as its name suggests is the next phase in humanity’s efforts to learn more about near-Earth objects (NEOs) and how we might deflect them should one ever be discovered on a collision course with Earth. In order to launch in time to rendezvous with Apophis in February 2029, scientists at the European Space Agency have been given permission to start planning Ramses even before the multinational space agency officially adopts the mission. The sanctioning and…

1 Atmosphere 96.5 per cent of Venus’ atmosphere is carbon dioxide, with 3.5 per cent being nitrogen. 2 Crust Venus’ crust is made of silicate rocks and is estimated to be 50 kilometres (31 miles) thick. 3 Molten mantle The heat from the core creates a molten mantle that is 3,000 kilometres (1,200 miles) thick. 4 Metallic core Venus’ iron core consists of a solid inner and liquid outer core roughly 3,200 kilometres (2,000 miles) in radius.…

Scientists have directly imaged eight dim objects accompanying very bright stars within the Gaia data catalogue, including so-called ‘failed stars’ that are known as brown dwarfs. The stars and their companions were originally identified from millions of stars in the Gaia catalogue. They were considered ideal for follow-up investigations with the ground-based GRAVITY instrument, an advanced near-infrared interferometer located at the Very Large Telescope (VLT) on the peak of Cerro Paranal in Chile. By combining infrared light from multiple telescopes in a process called interferometry, GRAVITY has already achieved the first direct observation of an extrasolar planet, or exoplanet. Following up on Gaia observations, GRAVITY directly spotted light signals from companions around the eight bright stars, seven of which were theorised objects, undiscovered until now. Three of the companion objects…

Like a light bulb switching between high and low-power modes, Saturn pumps into space varying amounts of heat based on its seasons, a fresh analysis of data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has revealed. A noticeable effect of this flux is turbulence in Saturn’s atmosphere, which whips up storms across its northern and southern hemispheres strong enough to wrap around the planet, scientists report in a paper published on 18 June in the journal Nature Communications. Such seasonal changes in radiated heat from Saturn and other gas giants are yet to be included in models describing their climates and evolutions, which assume the planets emit heat evenly in all directions and at a steady rate, Liming Li, a physics professor at the University of Houston, who a decade ago found Saturn…

A rapidly spinning neutron star that sweeps beams of radiation across the universe like a cosmic lighthouse has been discovered by US Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) Remote Sensing Division intern Amaris McCarver and a team of astronomers. The neutron star, or ‘pulsar’, is located within the dense star cluster Glimpse-CO1, which sits in the galactic plane of the Milky Way around 10,700 light years away. This millisecond pulsar, which spins hundreds of times per second, is the first of its kind found in the star cluster. The Very Large Array (VLA) spotted the pulsar, which is designated GLIMPSE-C01A, on 27 February 2021, but it remained buried in a vast amount of data until McCarver and her colleagues found it in the summer of 2023. Not only do the extreme conditions of…

Red-light friendly In order to preserve your night vision, you should read our observing guide under red light “The Moon and Messier 45 will make a close approach” Jargon buster Conjunction 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. Declination (Dec) How high an object will rise Dec measures north and south in degrees, arcminutes and arcseconds. There are 60 arcseconds in an arcminute in the sky. Like Earth’s latitude, and 60 arcminutes in a degree. Opposition When a celestial body is in line with Earth and the Sun. During opposition, an object is…

1 Helvetios (51 Pegasi) This magnitude +5.4 Sun-like star is almost 51 light years away and made the headlines in 1995 when astronomers detected a planet orbiting it. We now know this planet is larger than Jupiter and whizzes around its star every four days. 2 Triangulum Galaxy (Messier 33) Another member of our Local Group of galaxies, Messier 33 is smaller than our Milky Way. At magnitude +5.8 it is just visible to the naked eye on a Moon-free night unspoiled by light pollution. It is around 3 million light years away. 3 Andromeda Galaxy (Messier 31) The largest galaxy in our Local Group of galaxies, magnitude +3.4 Messier 31 is 2.5 million light years away and is much bigger than our own Milky Way. An obvious misty blur to…

Time may not be a fundamental element of the universe, but rather an illusion emerging from quantum entanglement. Time is a thorny problem for physicists; its inconsistent behaviour between our best theories of the universe contributes to a deadlock, preventing researchers from finding a ‘theory of everything’, or a framework to explain all of the physics in the universe. But in a new study, researchers suggest they may have found a clue to solving that problem by making time a consequence of quantum entanglement, the weird connection between two far-apart particles. The researchers published their findings on 10 May in the journal Physical Review A. In quantum mechanics, time is a fixed phenomenon – an inexorable, unidirectional flow from the past to the present. It remains external from the bizarre…

We might have been to the Moon, but our celestial neighbour still holds many secrets. However, one of them has just been unearthed by a team of international researchers. For the first time, they’ve proven the existence of a cave on the Moon. The cave is located in the Moon’s Sea of Tranquility, some 400 kilometres (250 miles) from the Apollo 11 landing site, and it’s 40 metres (130 feet) wide. “These caves have been theorised for over 50 years, but it is the first time ever that we have demonstrated their existence,” Lorenzo Bruzzone, a professor at Italy’s University of Trento, said. The researchers found their evidence in data from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) that was originally captured by the Miniature Radio-Frequency (Mini-RF) instrument in 2010. Using new…

The ‘greenhouse effect’ is probably a phrase that’s familiar to many of us because Earth is currently experiencing its own greenhouse effect, with global warming as a result. This is mainly driven by the release of greenhouse gases, predominantly carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere as a result of the burning of fossil fuels. However, Earth is unlikely to see a runaway greenhouse effect like that of Venus. But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn more about Earth’s fate if climate change isn’t abated by looking at our hellish neighbour. “The process on Earth is very different, and the energy from the Sun at Earth is only about 50 per cent of that at Venus, as Earth is farther away,” Svedhem says “But if in some way all the water on…

Currently, the only way we can propel vehicles through space is by shooting something out the back of them – whether that’s combustion products, ionised gas molecules accelerated by electromagnetic fields or inert gas heated by nuclear reactions. However, this profoundly limits our ability to explore our galaxy and beyond. We must carry everything with us that we will expel for thrust over an entire journey. To go further or faster needs more reactive mass, and even the mass we are carrying for later in the journey itself needs to be propelled as payload by more reactive mass, leading to impossibly large spaceships. What we need is a new way to propel craft that doesn’t rely on leaving stuff behind that can react against the universe itself, and that is…

It’s a bit of a myth that black holes pull everything in. Much of the matter that finds itself falling towards a black hole is actually spat back out thanks to powerful magnetic fields that are able to levitate charged particles out of a black hole’s accretion disc and accelerate them away. For a long time, the assumption was that this material flowed radially out from the vicinity of a black hole, either through a piercing jet that is collimated by magnetic fields or material lifted up by outflows of radiation emanating from the hot disc. However, there’s always been a bit of a paradox at the heart of this theory. If the environment immediately around black holes is adept at removing material from danger, how are supermassive black holes…

Alien life capable of communicating across interstellar space might not be able to evolve if its home planet doesn’t possess plate tectonics, not to mention just the right amount of water and dry land. Plate tectonics are absolutely essential if complex life is to evolve, argue Robert Stern of the University of Texas at Dallas and Taras Gerya of ETH Zurich in Switzerland. On Earth, complex multicellular life appeared during a period known as the Cambrian explosion, 539 million years ago. The modern-day form of plate tectonics, say Stern and Gerya, only began between a billion and half a billion years ago, in a geological era known as the Neoproterozoic. Prior to that, Earth had what’s known as stagnant lid tectonics: Earth’s crust, called the lithosphere, was one solid piece…

A highly anticipated astrobiology mission is troubleshooting a serious issue just months before its planned liftoff. The Europa Clipper spacecraft is scheduled to launch this October atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. The robotic explorer will embark upon a mission to assess the potential of Europa, an ice-covered ocean moon of Jupiter, to support life as we know it. But that launch date, and the probe’s ability to carry out its ambitious mission, may now be in peril. Mission team members have discovered a problem with its transistors, which control the flow of electricity on the probe. “The issue with the transistors came to light in May when the mission team was advised that similar parts were failing at lower radiation doses than expected,” NASA officials said. That’s of serious concern…

Maybe you’re planning a holiday but don’t realise there’s a jamboree of astronomy activities to experience across the world, from tourist attractions for all the family to adventurous hikes to remote observatories. The two big space agencies, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), have large visitor centres with towering rockets, authentic spacesuits, Moon rocks and vast multimedia displays. NASA has a variety of visitor centres across the US, including the home of spaceflight: Kennedy Space Center in Florida. In Europe there’s the ESA’s Space Expo in the Netherlands and space theme park Cité de l’espace near the city of Toulouse. France also has the impressive Pic du Midi Observatory, perched precariously on a mountain summit and reachable only by cable car. For British amateur astronomers who wish to get…

PLANET OF THE MONTH Our planet of the month this issue is mighty Jupiter, which is well placed in the morning sky. In fact, it will dominate the sky in the early hours, brighter than any other star or planet in the sky at that time. The month ahead will be the perfect opportunity to see this faraway world again if you’ve seen it before, or track it down for the first time if you haven’t. Jupiter is the largest planet in the Solar System by far. It could swallow Earth more than a thousand times over. Unlike Earth, which is a solid, rocky planet, Jupiter is a gas giant planet, a huge bloated ball of multiple layers of gas and liquid surrounding a solid, Earth-sized core. But all of…