“Operating between 2009 and 2013, ESA’s Planck mission scanned the sky at microwave wavelengths to observe the cosmic microwave background, or CMB, which is the most ancient light emitted in the history of our Universe. Data from Planck have revealed an “almost perfect Universe”: the standard model description of a cosmos containing ordinary matter, cold dark matter and dark energy, populated by structures that had been seeded during an early phase of inflationary expansion, is largely correct, but a few details to puzzle over remain.”
“Parker Solar Probe mission will revolutionize our understanding of the Sun, where changing conditions can propagate out into the solar system, affecting Earth and other worlds. Parker Solar Probe will travel through the Sun’s atmosphere, closer to the surface than any spacecraft before it, facing brutal heat and radiation conditions — and ultimately providing humanity with the closest-ever observations of a star.
In order to unlock the mysteries of the Sun’s atmosphere, Parker Solar Probe will use Venus’ gravity during seven flybys over nearly seven years to gradually bring its orbit closer to the Sun. The spacecraft will fly through the Sun’s atmosphere as close as 3.8 million miles to our star’s surface, well within the orbit of Mercury and more than seven times closer than any spacecraft has come before. (Earth’s average distance to the Sun is 93 million miles.)
Flying into the outermost part of the Sun’s atmosphere, known as the corona, for the first time, Parker Solar Probe will employ a combination of in situ measurements and imaging to revolutionize our understanding of the corona and expand our knowledge of the origin and evolution of the solar wind. It will also make critical contributions to our ability to forecast changes in Earth’s space environment that affect life and technology on Earth.
Parker Solar Probe will perform its scientific investigations in a hazardous region of intense heat and solar radiation. The spacecraft will fly close enough to the Sun to watch the solar wind speed up from subsonic to supersonic, and it will fly though the birthplace of the highest-energy solar particles.
To perform these unprecedented investigations, the spacecraft and instruments will be protected from the Sun’s heat by a 4.5-inch-thick (11.43 cm) carbon-composite shield, which will need to withstand temperatures outside the spacecraft that reach nearly 2,500 F (1,377 C).”
“This is an animated 3D view of the sky as observed by ESA’s Gaia satellite using information from the mission’s second data release. The bright band in the left half of the image is the Milky Way, where most of the stars in our Galaxy reside. The animation starts with the Orion constellation at the centre; we then move towards the neighbouring Taurus constellation and to the Hyades star cluster, which is part of this constellation. Hyades is the closest open cluster to the Solar System, some 150 light-years away.
The animation first shows the 3D structure of the cluster, based on accurate position and distance information from Gaia. Then an animated view of the future motions of stars is shown – both in Hyades and beyond. This is based on Gaia’s measurements of the velocity of stars across the sky, also known as proper motion.”
Credits Video: ESA/Gaia/DPAC, CC BY SA 3.0 IGO/Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC); Gaia Sky; S. Jordan / T. Sagristà , Astronomisches Rechen-Institut, Zentrum für Astronomie der Universität Heidelberg, Germany
“A new study using data from NASA’s NuSTAR space telescope suggests that the most luminous and massive stellar system within 10,000 light-years, Eta Carinae, is accelerating particles to high energies — some of which may reach Earth as cosmic rays. Cosmic rays with energies greater than 1 billion electron volts (eV) come to us from beyond our solar system. But because these particles — electrons, protons and atomic nuclei — all carry an electrical charge, they veer off course whenever they encounter magnetic fields. This scrambles their paths and masks their origins. Eta Carinae, located about 7,500 light-years away in the southern constellation of Carina, contains a pair of massive stars whose eccentric orbits bring them unusually close every 5.5 years. The stars contain 90 and 30 times the mass of our Sun.
Both stars drive powerful outflows called stellar winds, which emit low-energy X-rays where they collide. NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope observes gamma rays — light packing far more energy than X-rays — from a source in the direction of Eta Carinae. But Fermi’s vision isn’t as sharp as X-ray telescopes, so astronomers couldn’t confirm the connection. To bridge this gap, astronomers turned to NASA’s NuSTAR observatory. Launched in 2012, NuSTAR can focus X-rays of much greater energy than any previous telescope.
The team examined NuSTAR observations acquired between March 2014 and June 2016, along with lower-energy X-ray observations from the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton satellite over the same period. NuSTAR detects a source emitting X-rays above 30,000 eV, some three times higher than can be explained by shock waves in the colliding winds. For comparison, the energy of visible light ranges from about 2 to 3 eV.
The researchers say both the X-ray emission seen by NuSTAR and the gamma-ray emission seen by Fermi is best explained by electrons accelerated in shock waves where the winds collide. The X-rays detected by NuSTAR and the gamma rays detected by Fermi arise from starlight given a huge energy boost by interactions with these electrons. Some of the superfast electrons, as well as other accelerated particles, must escape the system and perhaps some eventually wander to Earth, where they may be detected as cosmic rays. Zoom into Eta Carinae, where the outflows of two massive stars collide and shoot accelerated particles cosmic rays into space.”
Credits Music: “Expectant Aspect” from Killer Tracks
“The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a space telescope developed in collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency that will be the scientific successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. The JWST will offer unprecedented resolution and sensitivity, and will enable a broad range of investigations across the fields of astronomy and cosmology. One of its major goals is observing some of the most distant events and objects in the universe, such as the formation of the first galaxies. These types of targets are beyond the reach of current ground and space-based instruments. Other goals include understanding the formation of stars and planets, and direct imaging of exoplanets and novas.
The JWST’s primary mirror is composed of 18 hexagonal mirror segments made of gold-coated beryllium that combine to create a mirror with a diameter of 6.5 meters (21 ft 4 in) – a large increase over the Hubble’s 2.4-meter (7.9 ft) mirror. The telescope will be deployed in space near the Earth–Sun L2 Lagrangian point, and a large sunshield made of five sheets of silicon- and aluminum-coated Kapton will keep JWST’s mirror and four science instruments below 50 K (−220 °C; −370 °F). Unlike the Hubble—which observes in the near ultraviolet, visible, and near infrared spectra—the JWST will observe in the long-wavelength (orange to red) visible light through the mid-infrared (0.6 to 27 μm) range. This will allow the JWST to observe high redshift objects that are too old and too distant for the Hubble and other earlier instruments to observe.
In development since 1996, the telescope is named after James E. Webb, the American government official who was the administrator of NASA from 1961 to 1968 and played an integral role in the Apollo program. The project has had numerous delays and cost overruns, and underwent a major redesign during 2005. In December 2016, NASA announced that construction of the JWST was complete and that its extensive testing phase would begin. In March 2018, NASA delayed the JWST’s launch an additional year after the telescope’s sunshield ripped during a practice deployment and the sunshield’s cables did not sufficiently tighten. It was further delayed on June 27, 2018 based on recommendations by an Independent Review Board. The JWST is scheduled to launch on March 30, 2021.”
“The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a space telescope developed in collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency that will be the scientific successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. The JWST will offer unprecedented resolution and sensitivity, and will enable a broad range of investigations across the fields of astronomy and cosmology. One of its major goals is observing some of the most distant events and objects in the universe, such as the formation of the first galaxies. These types of targets are beyond the reach of current ground and space-based instruments. Other goals include understanding the formation of stars and planets, and direct imaging of exoplanets and novas.
The JWST’s primary mirror is composed of 18 hexagonal mirror segments made of gold-coated beryllium that combine to create a mirror with a diameter of 6.5 meters (21 ft 4 in) – a large increase over the Hubble’s 2.4-meter (7.9 ft) mirror. The telescope will be deployed in space near the Earth–Sun L2 Lagrangian point, and a large sunshield made of five sheets of silicon- and aluminum-coated Kapton will keep JWST’s mirror and four science instruments below 50 K (−220 °C; −370 °F). Unlike the Hubble—which observes in the near ultraviolet, visible, and near infrared spectra—the JWST will observe in the long-wavelength (orange to red) visible light through the mid-infrared (0.6 to 27 μm) range. This will allow the JWST to observe high redshift objects that are too old and too distant for the Hubble and other earlier instruments to observe.
In development since 1996, the telescope is named after James E. Webb, the American government official who was the administrator of NASA from 1961 to 1968 and played an integral role in the Apollo program. The project has had numerous delays and cost overruns, and underwent a major redesign during 2005. In December 2016, NASA announced that construction of the JWST was complete and that its extensive testing phase would begin. In March 2018, NASA delayed the JWST’s launch an additional year after the telescope’s sunshield ripped during a practice deployment and the sunshield’s cables did not sufficiently tighten. It was further delayed on June 27, 2018 based on recommendations by an Independent Review Board. The JWST is scheduled to launch on March 30, 2021.”
Credits Music: Expanding Time and Space by Daniel jay Nielsen
Credits Video: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Sophia Roberts
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