NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day

July 11, 2024

Globular Cluster Omega Centauri

Globular star cluster Omega Centauri packs about 10 million stars much older than the Sun into a volume some 150 light-years in diameter. Also known as NGC 5139, at a distance of 15,000 light-years it's the largest and brightest of 200 or so known globular clusters that roam the halo of our Milky Way galaxy. Though most star clusters consist of stars with the same age and composition, the enigmatic Omega Cen exhibits the presence of different stellar populations with a spread of ages and chemical abundances. In fact, Omega Cen may be the remnant core of a small galaxy merging with the Milky Way. With a yellowish hue, Omega Centauri's red giant stars are easy to pick out in this sharp telescopic view. A two-decade-long exploration of the dense star cluster with the Hubble Space Telescope has revealed evidence for a massive black hole near the center of Omega Centauri.

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html?

A Midsummer Red Sprite Seen from Space

JUL 10, 2024

NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick photographed red sprites in Earth’s upper atmosphere from the International Space Station on June 3, 2024.

The bright red flashes (more easily seen by clicking on the photo to see a larger version) are a less understood phenomena associated with powerful lightning events and appear high above the clouds in the mesosphere.

Transient Luminous Events (TLEs), including red sprites, are colorful bursts of energy that appear above storms as a result of lightning activity occurring in and below storms on Earth.

Crew members typically capture TLEs with wide focal lengths during Earth timelapses. Instruments mounted outside station, like Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM), can capture a range of data for researchers on Earth using cameras, photometers, X-ray and gamma-ray detectors. Learn more about seeing storms from space.

While space station crew hunt for TLEs from space, you can help right here on Earth: send your photographs of sprites and other TLEs to NASA’s citizen science project, Spritacular, to contribute to a crowdsourced database that professional scientists can use for research.

https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/a-midsummer-red-sprite-seen-from-space/

NASA Deputy Administrator Strengthens Ties in Japan, Republic of Korea

JUL 10, 2024

NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy will visit Japan and the Republic of Korea beginning Thursday, July 11, to underscore the critical role of international cooperation in advancing space exploration and technology development.

During her week-long visit to the region, Melroy will engage with ministers and other senior government officials in both countries, including leaders from JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and KASA (Korea AeroSpace Administration) to strengthen partnerships and highlight civil space cooperation.

In Tokyo, Melroy will participate in the Secure World Foundation’s 6th Summit for Space Sustainability, highlighting NASA’s leadership in responsible and sustainable operations amid rapid technological advancements, many of them championed by the agency.

NASA and JAXA are working to advance sustainable human exploration of the Moon. NASA announced in April that Japan will design, develop, and operate a pressurized rover for exploration of the lunar surface.

The activity is part of a shared goal for a Japanese national to be the first non-American to land on the Moon as part of a future Artemis mission, assuming important benchmarks are achieved.

In addition, NASA and JAXA are advancing goals in climate research and space science missions to benefit humanity.

Melroy also will speak alongside other space agency leaders at the 45th Scientific Assembly of the Committee on Space Research in Busan, Korea, emphasizing opportunities for international and commercial collaboration in space research.

The visit to Korea coincides with the recent establishment of KASA and builds upon decades of collaboration with NASA in exploration, Earth and space science, and aeronautics.

https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-deputy-administrator-strengthens-ties-in-japan-republic-of-korea/

NASA Administrator, Leaders to Discuss Space-Based Cancer Research

JUL 10, 2024

As part of the Biden Cancer Moonshot, NASA will virtually host an event at 2 p.m. EDT Thursday, July 11, to highlight how the agency is working to end cancer for the benefit of humanity by conducting research aboard the International Space Station.

The event will stream on NASA Television and the agency’s website. Learn how to stream NASA TV through a variety of platforms, including social media.

Additional participants include:

Dr. Michael Roberts, chief scientific officer, International Space Station National Laboratory

Dr. Catriona Jamieson, director, Sanford Stem Cell Institute at the University of California San Diego

As a member of the Cancer Cabinet, NASA is working with agencies and researchers across the federal government to reduce the nation’s cancer death rate by at least 50% in the next 25 years, one of the ambitious but achievable goals of the Cancer Moonshot.

https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-administrator-leaders-to-discuss-space-based-cancer-research/

https://www.whitehouse.gov/cancermoonshot/

NASA’s Hubble Finds Strong Evidence for Intermediate-Mass Black Hole in Omega Centauri

July 11, 2024

Most known black holes are either extremely massive, like the supermassive black holes that lie at the cores of large galaxies, or relatively lightweight, with a mass of under 100 times that of the Sun.

Intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) are scarce, however, and are considered rare "missing links" in black hole evolution.

Now, an international team of astronomers has used more than 500 images from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope — spanning two decades of observations — to search for evidence of an intermediate-mass black hole by following the motion of seven fast-moving stars in the innermost region of the globular star cluster Omega Centauri.

These stars provide new compelling evidence for the presence of the gravitational pull from an intermediate-mass black hole tugging on them. Only a few other IMBH candidates have been found to date.

Omega Centauri consists of roughly 10 million stars that are gravitationally bound. The cluster is about 10 times as massive as other big globular clusters — almost as massive as a small galaxy.

Among the many questions scientists want to answer: Are there any IMBHs, and if so, how common are they? Does a supermassive black hole grow from an IMBH? How do IMBHs themselves form? Are dense star clusters their favored home?

The astronomers have now created an enormous catalog for the motions of these stars, measuring the velocities for 1.4 million stars gleaned from the Hubble images of the cluster.

Most of these observations were intended to calibrate Hubble's instruments rather than for scientific use, but they turned out to be an ideal database for the team's research efforts.

"We discovered seven stars that should not be there," explained Maximilian Häberle of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany, who led this investigation. "They are moving so fast that they would escape the cluster and never come back.

The most likely explanation is that a very massive object is gravitationally pulling on these stars and keeping them close to the center. The only object that can be so massive is a black hole, with a mass at least 8,200 times that of our Sun."

Several studies have suggested the presence of an IMBH in Omega Centauri.

However, other studies proposed the mass could be contributed by a central cluster of stellar-mass black holes, and had suggested the lack of fast-moving stars above the necessary escape velocity made an IMBH less likely in comparison.

"This discovery is the most direct evidence so far of an IMBH in Omega Centauri," added team lead Nadine Neumayer of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany, who initiated the study, together with Anil Seth from the University of Utah, Salt Lake City.

"This is exciting because there are only very few other black holes known with a similar mass. The black hole in Omega Centauri may be the best example of an IMBH in our cosmic neighborhood."

If confirmed, at a distance of 17,700 light-years the candidate black hole resides closer to Earth than the 4.3-million-solar-mass black hole in the center of the Milky Way, located 26,000 light-years away.

Omega Centauri is visible from Earth with the naked eye and is one of the favorite celestial objects for stargazers living in the southern hemisphere.

Located just above the plane of the Milky Way, the cluster appears almost as large as the full Moon when seen from a dark rural area. It was first listed in Ptolemy’s catalog nearly 2,000 years ago as a single star.

Edmond Halley reported it as a nebula in 1677. In the 1830s the English astronomer John Herschel was the first to recognize it as a globular cluster.

The discovery paper led by Häberle et al. is published online today in the journal Nature.

https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/nasas-hubble-finds-strong-evidence-for-intermediate-mass-black-hole-in-omega-centauri/

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07511-z

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKbGe7FxF7s

Surfing NASA’s Internet of Animals: Satellites Study Ocean Wildlife

JUL 10, 2024

Anchoring the boat in a sandbar, research scientist Morgan Gilmour steps into the shallows and is immediately surrounded by sharks.

The warm waters around the tropical island act as a reef shark nursery, and these baby biters are curious about the newcomer.

They zoom close and veer away at the last minute, as Gilmour slowly makes her way toward the kaleidoscope of green sprouting from the island ahead.

Gilmour, a scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, conducts marine ecology and conservation studies using data collected by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) from animals equipped with wildlife tags. Palmyra Atoll, a United States marine protected area, provides the perfect venue for this work.

A collection of roughly 50 small islands in the tropical heart of the Pacific Ocean, the atoll is bursting with life of all kinds, from the reef sharks and manta rays circling the shoreline to the coconut crabs climbing palm branches and the thousands of seabirds swooping overhead.

By analyzing the movements of dolphins, tuna, and other creatures, Gilmour and her collaborators can help assess whether the boundaries of the marine protected area surrounding the atoll actually protect the species they intend to, or if its limits need to shift.

Launched in 2020 by The Nature Conservancy and its partners – USGS, NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), and several universities – the project team deployed wildlife tags at Palmyra in 2022, when Gilmour was a scientist with USGS.

Now with NASA, she is leveraging the data for a study under the agency’s Internet of Animals project.

By combining information transmitted from wildlife tags with information about the planet collected by satellites – such as NASA’s Aqua, NOAA’s GOES (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite) satellites, and the U.S.-European Jason-3 – scientists can work with partners to draw conclusions that inform ecological management.

“Internet of Animals is more than just an individual collection of movements or individual studies; it’s a way to understand the Earth at large,” said Ryan Pavlick, then Internet of Animals project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, during the project’s kickoff event.

The Internet of Animals at Palmyra

“Our work at Palmyra was remarkably comprehensive,” said Gilmour. “We tracked the movements of eight species at once, plus their environmental conditions, and we integrated climate projections to understand how their habitat may change.

Where studies may typically track two or three types of birds, we added fish and marine mammals, plus air and water column data, for a 3D picture of the marine protected area.”

Now, the NASA team has put that data into a species distribution model, which combines the wildlife tracking information with environmental data from satellites, including sea surface temperature, chlorophyll concentration, and ocean current speed.

The model can help researchers understand how animal populations use their habitats and how that might shift as the climate changes.

Preliminary results from Internet of Animals team show that the animals tracked are moving beyond the confines of the Palmyra marine protected area.

The model identified suitable habitats both in and around the protected zone – now and under predicted climate change scenarios – other researchers and decisionmakers can utilize that knowledge to inform marine policy and conservation.

Following a 2023 presidential memorandum, NOAA began studying and gathering input on whether to expand the protected areas around Palmyra and other parts of the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument. Analysis from NASA’s Internet of Animals could inform that and similar decisions, such as whether to create protected “corridors” in the ocean to allow for seasonal migrations of wildlife.

The findings and models from the team’s habitat analysis at Palmyra also could help inform conservation at similar latitudes across the planet.

Beyond the Sea: Other Internet of Animals Studies

Research at Palmyra Atoll is just one example of work by Internet of Animals scientists.

Claire Teitelbaum, a researcher with the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute based at NASA Ames, studies avian flu in wild waterfowl, investigating how their movement may contribute to transmission of the virus to poultry and other domestic livestock.

Teams at Ames and JPL are also working with USGS to create next-generation wildlife tags and sensors. Low-power radar tags in development at JPL would be lightweight enough to track small birds.

https://www.nasa.gov/general/surfing-nasas-internet-of-animals-satellites-study-ocean-wildlife/

https://www.nasa.gov/nasa-earth-exchange-nex/new-missions-support/internet-of-animals/

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