OrbitalHub

NASA dicit:

Taking advantage of the total lunar eclipse of January 2019, astronomers, using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, have measured the amount of ozone in Earth’s atmosphere. The method used serves as a proxy for how they will observe Earth-like planets around other stars in search for worlds similar to our own.

Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Paul Morris (USRA): Lead Producer/Krystofer Kim (USRA): Lead Animator/Cassandra Morris: Voice over Talent

NASA dicit:

Sound waves from the nascent universe, called baryon acoustic oscillations (BAOs), left their imprint on the cosmos by influencing galaxy distribution. Researchers have explored this imprint back to when the universe was three billion years old, or roughly 20% of its current age of 13.8 billion years.

For most of its first half-million years, the universe looked extremely different than it does today. Instead of being speckled with stars and galaxies, the cosmos was filled with a sea of plasma – charged particles – that formed a dense, almost uniform fluid.

There were tiny fluctuations of about one part in 100,000. What few variations there were took the form of slightly denser kernels of matter, like a single ounce of cinnamon sprinkled into about 13,000 cups of cookie dough. Since the clumps had more mass, their gravity attracted additional material.

It was so hot that particles couldn’t stick together when they collided – they just bounced off each other. Alternating between the pull of gravity and this repelling effect created waves of pressure – sound – that propagated through the plasma.

Over time, the universe cooled and particles combined to form neutral atoms. Because the particles stopped repelling each other, the waves ceased. Their traces, however, still linger, etched on the cosmos.

Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Scott Wiessinger (USRA): Lead Producer/Scott Wiessinger (USRA): Lead Animator/Ashley Balzer (ADNET): Lead Science Writer/Jason D. Rhodes (JPL): Scientist/Katarina Markovic (JPL): Scientist/Scott Wiessinger (USRA): Narrator

NASA dicit:

Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are extraordinary events that generate as much energy in a thousandth of a second as the Sun does in an entire year.

Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have traced the locations of five brief, powerful FRBs, which are near or on their host galaxies’ spiral arms. The research helped rule out some of the possible stellar objects originally thought to cause these brilliant flares.

Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Paul Morris: Lead Producer/Andrea Gianopoulos: Science Writer/Cassandra Morris: Narrator/Sunrise over the Pacific: Artbeats/Animation of Magnetar: Scott Wiessinger/FRB Locations Animation: Scott Wiessinger and Chris Smith/Gamma Ray Burst Illustration: Michael Starobin/Neutron Star Merger: Michael Starobin/Magnetar Flyby Animation: Chris Smith/Magnetar Flare Sequence: Chris Smith

NASA dicit:

Scientists using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have found evidence that a planet orbiting a distant star that may have lost its atmosphere but gained a second one through volcanic activity.

The planet, GJ 1132 b, is hypothesized to have begun as a gaseous world with a thick hydrogen blanket of atmosphere. Starting out at several times the diameter of Earth, this so-called “sub-Neptune” is believed to have quickly lost its primordial hydrogen and helium atmosphere due to the intense radiation of the hot, young star it orbits. In a short period of time, such a planet would be stripped down to a bare core about the size of Earth.

Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Paul Morris

NASA dicit:

This is the deepest image ever taken in X-rays, representing over seven million seconds of Chandra observing time. For that reason, and because the observed field is in the southern hemisphere, astronomers call this region the “Chandra Deep Field South”.

At first glance, this image may appear to be a view of stars. Rather, almost all these different colored dots are black holes or galaxies. Most of the former are supermassive black holes that reside at the centers of galaxies.

In this data sonification, the colors dictate the tones as the bar moves from the bottom of the image to the top. More specifically, colors toward the red end of the rainbow are heard as low tones while colors towards purple are assigned to higher ones. Light that appears bright white in the image is heard as white noise. The wide range of musical frequencies represents the full range of X-ray frequencies collected by Chandra of this region.

In the visual color image, this large frequency range in X-rays had to be compressed to be shown as red, green, and blue for low, medium, and high-energy X-rays. Played as sound, however, the full range of data can be experienced. As the piece scans upward, the stereo position of the sounds can help distinguish the position of the sources from left to right.

Video credit: NASA/CXC/SAO/K.Arcand, SYSTEM Sounds (M. Russo, A. Santaguida)

NASA dicit:

When a star like the Sun begins to run out of helium to burn, it will blow off huge clouds of gas and dust. These outbursts can form spectacular structures such as the one seen in the Cat’s Eye nebula. This image of the Cat’s Eye contains both X-rays from Chandra around the center and visible light data from the Hubble Space Telescope, which show the series of bubbles expelled by the star over time. To listen to these data, there is a radar-like scan that moves clockwise emanating from the center point to produce pitch. Light that is further from the center is heard as higher pitches while brighter light is louder. The X-rays are represented by a harsher sound, while the visible light data sound smoother. The circular rings create a constant hum, interrupted by a few sounds from spokes in the data. The rising and falling pitches that can be heard are due to the radar scan passing across the shells and jets in the nebula.

Video credit: JNASA/CXC/SAO/K.Arcand, SYSTEM Sounds (M. Russo, A. Santaguida)