Anonymous ID: 1472db Aug. 9, 2023, 5:12 p.m. No.19330893   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>0902 >>0936 >>0996 >>1234 >>1378 >>1453

Webb Reveals Colors of Earendel, Most Distant Star Ever Detected

Aug 8, 2023

 

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has followed up on observations by the Hubble Space Telescope of the farthest star ever detected in the very distant universe, within the first billion years after the big bang. Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument reveals the star to be a massive B-type star more than twice as hot as our Sun, and about a million times more luminous.

 

The star, which the research team has dubbed Earendel, is located in the Sunrise Arc galaxy and is detectable only due to the combined power of human technology and nature via an effect called gravitational lensing. Both Hubble and Webb were able to detect Earendel due to its lucky alignment behind a wrinkle in space-time created by the massive galaxy cluster WHL0137-08. The galaxy cluster, located between us and Earendel, is so massive that it warps the fabric of space itself, which produces a magnifying effect, allowing astronomers to look through the cluster like a magnifying glass.

 

While other features in the galaxy appear multiple times due to the gravitational lensing, Earendel only appears as a single point of light even in Webb’s high-resolution infrared imaging. Based on this, astronomers determine the object is magnified by a factor of at least 4,000, and thus is extremely small – the most distant star ever detected, observed 1 billion years after the big bang. The previous record-holder for the most distant star was detected by Hubble and observed around 4 billion years after the big bang. Another research team using Webb recently identified a gravitationally lensed star they nicknamed Quyllur, a red giant star observed 3 billion years after the big bang.

 

Stars as massive as Earendel often have companions. Astronomers did not expect Webb to reveal any companions of Earendel since they would be so close together and indistinguishable on the sky. However, based solely on the colors of Earendel, astronomers think they see hints of a cooler, redder companion star. This light has been stretched by the expansion of the universe to wavelengths longer than Hubble’s instruments can detect, and so was only detectable with Webb.

 

Webb’s NIRCam also shows other notable details in the Sunrise Arc, which is the most highly magnified galaxy yet detected in the universe’s first billion years. Features include both young star-forming regions and older established star clusters as small as 10 light-years across. On either side of the wrinkle of maximum magnification, which runs right through Earendel, these features are mirrored by the distortion of the gravitational lens. The region forming stars appears elongated, and is estimated to be less than 5 million years old. Smaller dots on either side of Earendel are two images of one older, more established star cluster, estimated to be at least 10 million years old. Astronomers determined this star cluster is gravitationally bound and likely to persist until the present day. This shows us how the globular clusters in our own Milky Way might have looked when they formed 13 billion years ago.

 

Astronomers are currently analyzing data from Webb’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) instrument observations of the Sunrise Arc galaxy and Earendel, which will provide precise composition and distance measurements for the galaxy.

 

Since Hubble’s discovery of Earendel, Webb has detected other very distant stars using this technique, though none quite as far as Earendel. The discoveries have opened a new realm of the universe to stellar physics, and new subject matter to scientists studying the early universe, where once galaxies were the smallest detectable cosmic objects. The research team has cautious hope that this could be a step toward the eventual detection of one of the very first generation of stars, composed only of the raw ingredients of the universe created in the big bang – hydrogen and helium.

 

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2023/webb-reveals-colors-of-earendel-most-distant-star-ever-detected

Anonymous ID: 1472db Aug. 9, 2023, 5:18 p.m. No.19330923   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>0944 >>0996 >>1234 >>1378 >>1453

NASA Software Catalog Offers Free Programs for Earth Science, More

Aug 9, 2023

 

Each year, NASA scientists, engineers, and developers create software packages to manage space missions, test spacecraft, and analyze the petabytes of data produced by agency research satellites. As the agency innovates for the benefit of humanity, many of these programs are now downloadable and free of charge through NASA’s Software Catalog.

 

The 2023-2024 Software Catalog contains more than 1,000 programs, including dozens of new packages added this year.

 

Among the 15 different categories of NASA software available through the catalog is environmental science. Whether it means helping farmers navigate crop-destroying droughts, tracking deadly storms such as hurricanes and tornadoes, or mapping floods, fires, and more, NASA’s fleet of Earth-observation satellites allows an “eye-in-the-sky” advantage to spot events, features, and long-term trends on our ever-changing planet.

 

"By making our innovations available to the public, we fulfill our goal of helping NASA's research and technology development find new uses beyond space exploration,” said Daniel Lockney, program executive for the agency’s Technology Transfer program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “We’re proud to make NASA software more accessible through our easy-to-use website, and we are dedicated to continuing this ‘customer-service’ approach to software release.”

 

Among the environmental science software included in the catalog are:

 

A popular modeling software that provides values for atmospheric parameters, such as temperature and winds, for any month and location in Earth’s atmosphere

A geospatial system for disaster response using low-cost hardware such as digital cameras or cellphones

A cloud-based toolkit that allows collaboration among researchers in Earth science

An algorithm to accurately forecast lighting strikes

A framework that combines maps with satellite-based rainfall estimates to identify potential landslide hazards

A platform built for interactive browsing of near-real-time satellite imagery to help with time-critical scenarios such as wildfires or flooding

NASA scientists and software experts, who use satellite data and more to better understand Earth, will be available to answer questions about free agency resources at 12 p.m. EDT, Wednesday, Aug. 16, during a Reddit “Ask me Anything.” Join or follow the discussion online using the /r/AskScience subreddit.

 

To complement the Software Catalog, NASA’s Technology Transfer program has also built a Remote Sensing Toolkit. The web-based set of tools helps users find, analyze, and use the most relevant satellite data for research, business projects, or conservation efforts.

 

Beyond environmental science, the catalog also includes software packages for system testing, aeronautics, business systems and project management, data and image processing, crew and life support, and more.

 

The Software Catalog is a product of NASA’s Technology Transfer program, managed for the agency by STMD. NASA routinely makes improvements to the Software Catalog website, ensuring the process is fast and easy. The program ensures technologies developed by and for NASA are broadly available to the public, maximizing the benefit to American taxpayers.

 

Access restrictions apply to some software that may be limited to use by U.S. citizens or for U.S. government purposes only.

 

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-software-catalog-offers-free-programs-for-earth-science-more

http://software.nasa.gov/

Anonymous ID: 1472db Aug. 9, 2023, 5:47 p.m. No.19331089   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>1121 >>1234 >>1378 >>1453

Cosmonauts Finish Spacewalk Installing Shields and Relocating Hardware

Aug 9, 2023

 

Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin concluded their spacewalk outside the International Space Station at 5:19 p.m. EDT after 6 hours and 35 minutes.

 

Prokopyev and Petelin attached three debris shields to the Rassvet module and tested the sturdiness of a work platform affixed to the end of the European robotic arm attached to the Nauka multipurpose laboratory module.

 

This was the eighth spacewalk in Prokopyev’s career, and the sixth for Petelin. It was the tenth spacewalk at the station in 2023 and the 267th spacewalk for space station assembly, maintenance, and upgrades.

 

https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacestation/2023/08/09/cosmonauts-finish-spacewalk-installing-shields-and-relocating-hardware/