TYB
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
August 26, 2024
Perseid Meteors Over Inner Mongolia
Did you see it? One of the more common questions during a meteor shower occurs because the time it takes for a meteor to flash is similar to the time it takes for a head to turn. Possibly, though, the glory of seeing bright meteors shoot across the sky while knowing that they were once small pebbles on another world might make it all worthwhile, even if your observing partner(s) can't always share in your experience. The featured video is composed of short clips taken in Inner Mongolia, China during the 2023 Perseid Meteor Shower. Several bright meteors were captured while live-reaction audio was being recorded – just as the meteors flashed. This year's 2024 Perseids also produced many beautiful meteors. Another good meteor shower to watch for is the Geminids which peak yearly in mid-December, this year with relatively little competing glow from a nearly new Moon.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Egyptian Space Agency Unveils Plan to Boost Space Capabilities
August 26, 2024
The Egyptian Space Agency (EgSA), led by CEO Dr. Sherif Sedky, according to reports that have surfaced has revealed an ambitious plan to bolster Egypt’s space capabilities.
As part of this initiative, EgSA is set to establish a joint-stock company focused on manufacturing satellite components, marking a significant step towards enhancing the nation’s space technology industry.
Additionally, the agency will launch a marketing company dedicated to promoting and commercializing its products.
In a move aimed at expanding access to satellite resources, EgSA will also reportedly introduce an electronic platform where users can conveniently browse and purchase satellite images.
This platform is expected to play a pivotal role in offering satellite data to a wider audience, furthering Egypt’s influence in the global space sector.
These efforts will potantially underscore EgSA’s commitment to driving innovation and economic growth through space technology.
https://www.techafricanews.com/2024/08/26/egyptian-space-agency-unveils-plan-to-boost-space-capabilities/
Japan's space agency ends Moon probe operation
August 26, 2024
Japan's space agency said on Monday it had ended its Moon lander operation after losing communication with the uncrewed spaceship last week.
The Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM), dubbed the "Moon Sniper" for its landing precision, touched down eight months ago—making Japan only the fifth nation to achieve a soft lunar landing.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) wrote on X there was no response from the SLIM after trying to communicate last week following three frigid lunar nights or six cold weeks.
"We judged that there was no prospect of restoring communication with SLIM, and at around 22:40 (1340 GMT) on August 23, we sent a command to stop the SLIM activity," JAXA said, nearly a year after launching the operation.
"SLIM continued to transmit information on its status and the surrounding environment for a much longer period than expected."
"At the time of launch, no one imagined that the operation would continue this long," it said.
The touchdown of the unmanned lander in January was a success, but it landed at a wonky angle that left its solar panels facing the wrong way.
As the sun's angle shifted, it came back to life for two days and carried out scientific observations of a crater with a high-spec camera.
The SLIM was not designed for the freezing, two-week-long lunar nights, when the temperature plunges to minus 133 degrees, but it worked up for a third time in April.
The spacecraft carried two probes, one with a transmitter and a mini-rover that moves like a turtle around the lunar surface beaming images back to Earth.
The SLIM's mission aims to examine a part of the Moon's mantle—the usually deep inner layer beneath its crust—believed to be accessible at the crater where it landed.
https://phys.org/news/2024-08-japan-space-agency-moon-probe.html
Rare Milky Way star cluster is packed with red supergiants 1 million times brighter than the sun
August 26, 2024
In the past, map makers often placed monsters on their maps to mark unexplored regions and potentially dangerous regions.
A famous example is the 'Theatrum Orbis Terrarum' map, created in 1570, which features sea serpents and other sea monsters.
Fast forward to today , and an unexplored Milky Way star cluster suggests that astronomers should adopt this tradition, too.
The cluster is known as Barbá 2 and is found just 24,000 light-years or so away from Earth.
An investigation using the star-surveying Gaia space telescope revealed that the Barbá 2 is packed with red supergiant stars, stars that can be hundreds of times wider than the sun and up to 1,000,000 times as luminous as the sun.
"There are many open clusters in the galaxy.
However, not all open clusters have the same level of interest to astronomers," Ignacio Negueruela, a researcher at the Universidad de Alicante who was part of the team behind the discovery of supergiants in Barbá 2, told Space.com.
"Clusters rich in red supergiants are very rare and tend to be very far away, but they play a crucial role in understanding key aspects in the evolution of massive stars."
The intimidating size and power of supergiants means these monster stars burn through their nuclear fuel much faster than stars like the sun.
Whereas our star will exist in its main sequence lifetime for around 10 billion years, supergiants are estimated to last just a few million years.
The short lifetime of supergiants means that while open clusters like Barbá 2 are common, with over 1,100 already discovered in the Milky Way alone, finding one packed with red supergiants is extremely rare.
Negueruela added that the study of open clusters like Barbá 2 that are rich in monster-sized stars could be important in discovering how they become red supergiants or fail to do so and how this influences their ultimate fate.
"In the Milky Way, there are only a handful of clusters rich in red supergiants," he said. "Finding a cluster like Barbá 2, which can be observed with a mid-sized telescope, is a significant and exciting discovery for astronomers.
Being so far away and affected by moderate extinction, the cluster does not look like much in optical images."
Barbá 2 was actually discovered around a decade ago by astronomer Rodolfo Barbá, but after he passed away in 2021, the discovery has not been published until now.
Hence, it is only fitting the cluster that now carries his name. "Rodolfo was well-known among his peers for being slow to publish.
He made many significant discoveries that he shared at meetings or discussed with colleagues but often didn’t get around to publishing," Negueruela said.
"After Rodolfo passed away, his close collaborator Jesús Maíz took on the task of ensuring that his work would be published."
Nothing lasts forever, and that's certainly true even for the most monstrous of stars, but just as is the case with distinguished scientists like Barbá, what is left behind is of vital importance.
Though stellar bodies of all sizes have lifetimes that make ours look truly insignificant in terms of duration, these stellar lives still grind to a halt when stars exhaust the fuel for nuclear fusion in their cores.
The life of any star is a delicate balancing act between the outward force of radiation pressure generated by nuclear fusion in its cores and the inward push of its own gravity.
Whether this battle rages for millions or billions of years, gravity inevitably wins, but the outcomes of this victory vary.
For instance, stars with sizes similar to the sun give up their war with gravity when they exhaust the supplies of hydrogen in their cores and can't continue to convert it to helium.
The gravitational collapse of these smaller-sized stars creates a stellar remnant called a white dwarf, which is prevented from further collapse by a quantum phenomenon called "electron degeneracy pressure," which essentially stops electrons from all occupying the same state.
If a star begins this process while at least eight times the mass of the sun and can hang on to at least 1.44 times of the sun's mass during its initial collapse (the so-called Chandrasekhar limit), when it collapses it can generate enough pressure in its core to fuse helium to heavier elements, giving the star a new bout of life.
cont.
https://www.space.com/milky-way-supermassive-stars-open-cluster
https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.20812
Aussie mushroom mission makes unlikely crossover with NASA astronauts stranded in space
August 26, 2024
A fungi-filled rocket sent to space by Australian scientists is sharing living quarters with two NASA astronauts stranded at the International Space Station.
Astronauts Sunita 'Suni' Williams and Barry 'Butch' Wilmore made headlines around the world when they became stranded in space in June after helium leaks impacted their Boeing Starliner space craft.
Late last week the decision was made to return the rocket to earth without the pair, who will live at the International Space Station until their return to Earth in February 2025.
Also currently calling the International Space Station home is a shipment from an Australian-first experiment developed by Melbourne's Swinburne University.
Swinburne Astrophysicist Dr Sara Webb is leading the study into growing the fungi in space.
"We want to be able to grow food in space eventually and mushrooms are a fantastic nutritional source," Webb said.
"What was really exciting is that when our payload was launched on the NG21 rocket it was packed inside that capsule with some of the clothes and supplies that are being sent up for Butch and Suni which are the Boeing Starliner astronauts," Webb said.
The team of scientists also hope to use the mushroom's roots to build structures in a far away galaxy.
"A huge problem with space is just how expensive it is and how limited you are with moving materials from one place to another," Webb said.
"You could use them as building materials in the future and if you ever go off world say to the moon and mars we need to be creative with how you build things."
Webb has had some help from senior students from Haileybury College who have designed the mushroom mission.
"Hopefully one day we get to have a little colony on mars and potentially all over the galaxy," Year 11 student Jessie said.
The mushrooms are expected to arrive back in Australia from the International Space Station in the coming weeks.
They'll then be fully grown in a lab before being compared with mushrooms that have never left the earth.
"I think in the next couple of decades we're going to see something called bio-manufacturing in space potentially for both food and even medicines and while it's still very early days I'm excited for the day I can have a 'space mushroom' on my plate," Webb said.
https://9now.nine.com.au/a-current-affair/aussie-mushroom-missions-chance-crossover-with-nasa-astronauts-stranded-in-space/2d070093-e57b-4e54-a352-2cdcacdd47e2
'Fireflies' help NASA map radiation around Jupiter and its moons
August 26, 2024
The first ever 3D radiation map of Jupiter and its moons has been created using low-light cameras aboard the Juno Spacecraft that have been tweaked to operate as radiation detectors.
The map reveals how Jupiter's powerful magnetosphere influences the radiation environment around one of the gas giant's moons, Europa, which is crucial for understanding the moon's surface chemistry, potential habitability, and the challenges of future space missions to this icy world.
"This is the first detailed radiation map of the region at these higher energies, which is a major step in understanding how Jupiter's radiation environment works," said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, in a NASA statement.
"This will help planning observations for the next generation of missions to the Jovian system.
The team optimized Juno's Advanced Stellar Compass (ASC) and Stellar Reference Unit (SRU) for this mission.
The ASC, which includes four cameras, was not initially designed to measure radiation, but instead was made to capture images of stars that help determine the spacecraft's orientation in space.
It also serves as an attitude reference for magnetic field investigations by monitoring how many high-energy particles from Jupiter's magnetosphere impact the spacecraft.
When these particles interact with the ASC instrument, they leave behind a signature streak of light that can be counted to determine the amount of radiation the spacecraft is flying through.
"Every quarter-second, the ASC takes an image of the stars," said Juno scientist John Leif Jørgensen of the Technical University of Denmark in NASA's statement.
"Very energetic electrons that penetrate its shielding leave a telltale signature in our images that looks like the trail of a firefly.
The instrument is programmed to count the number of these fireflies, giving us an accurate calculation of the amount of radiation."
Similarly, the SRU, a sensitive visible light camera, helps determine the spacecraft's orientation in space.
The data collected by both cameras complements each other, allowing scientists to characterize the radiation environment across different energy levels.
Using this new approach to their data, the scientists unexpectedly found a flow of high-energy particles near one of Jupiter's moons, Europa.
This distribution is affected by both the planet's rotation and the movement of the electrons from Jupiter's magnetosphere, which are swept around the planet at high speeds due to its rotation.
As Europa orbits the gas giant, these electrons move faster, overtaking the moon from behind and building up on its trailing side.
However, the team also observed that the highest-energy electrons among this swarm behave differently.
They drift "backward" relative to the rest of the magnetospheric flow, almost as if they were swimming against the current.
As a result, they collide with Europa's leading side facing in the direction of the moon's motion.
From the data, they team were able to observe that small "shepherd moons" orbiting near Jupiter's rings also interact with the planet's radiation environment, much like Europa.
Specifically, when Juno's spacecraft flies along magnetic field lines that connect to these moons or dense dust around the rings, the radiation levels detected by the ASC and SRU significantly decrease.
This suggests that these moons or dust structures influence or shield the surrounding radiation.
Additionally, the SRU is capturing rare low-light images of Jupiter's rings from Juno's unique perspective, providing valuable visual data of this region.
"There is still a lot of mystery about how Jupiter's rings were formed, and very few images have been collected by prior spacecraft," said Heidi Becker, lead co-investigator for the SRU and a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which manages the mission.
"Sometimes we're lucky and one of the small shepherd moons can be captured in the shot.
These images allow us to learn more precisely where the ring moons are currently located and see the distribution of dust relative to their distance from Jupiter."
Juno launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in 2011, and has since provided unprecedented insights into the Jovian system, including discovering salts and organic compounds on the surface of Ganymede, Jupiter's largest moon, and observing active volcanoes on the surface of another one of the gas giant's four largest satellites, Io.
https://www.space.com/fireflies-help-nasa-map-radation-around-jupiter-and-moons
‘Turn ‘em loose’: Congressman on UAP data
Aug 25, 2024 / 09:04 PM CDT
Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., calls UAP whistleblower Lue Elizondo “an American hero” for publicly sharing what he says he knows about unidentified anomalous phenomena, aka UFOs.
Elizondo, a former U.S. Army Counterintelligence Special Agent and former employee of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, says the U.S. military has been running an unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) retrieval and reverse engineering program for years — and has even recovered nonhuman specimens.
“My buddy Lue Elizondo is an American hero,” Burchett told NewsNation on Sunday.
He also shared his longtime frustration has what he calls a decades-long cover-up by the government.
“Every time we turn around, we have some smart-aleck kid with a man bun … telling us they don’t exist. And I say ‘well, what about this incident, or this report’ and they’ll say ‘well I don’t have anything on that.
I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ It goes on and on and on.”
Burchett says his personal conversations with pilots and others contradict the denials that he and other members of Congress have heard over the years.
“One of them (military pilot) told me, ‘Tim this thing was 14 feet from my canopy. I could not mis-identify it.’
If we have credible people telling us that they have recovered craft or recovered bodies … we ought to be able to see that information.”
Burchett says there will be more UAP hearings by House committees, and he expects the witnesses to be more forthcoming than others have been.
“We’re gonna call some people in and they’re gonna point some fingers and name some names. I think that the American public has a right to know,” he said.
But Burchett also warns the ultimate decision on releasing what the government knows about UAP may have to come from the White House.
“We’re gonna have to have a president with the guts to say ‘let’s release all of them. Let’s turn ‘em loose.’”
https://www.newsnationnow.com/space/ufo/ufo-uap-data-tim-burchett/
'I played with aliens after UFO crash-landed on Earth - I still have a piece of it'
09:31 ET, AUG 25 2024
A man from Los Angeles is adamant that he witnessed aliens escaping from a UFO after it crashed in a New Mexico desert, even claiming to have taken a piece of the mysterious craft as evidence of his encounter.
Jose Padilla, who grew up in San Antonio, was just nine years old when he alleges he and a childhood friend found the "avocado-shaped" alien craft.
He recounts that they were horse riding 13 miles from the Trinity nuclear test site, where the first nuclear bomb was detonated by the US in 1945, when the supposed encounter occurred.
Initially, Padilla thought the sound accompanying the "crash" was another bomb test.
"I told my friend, 'it must be another test from the bomb' and he said, 'no, it's not a bomb, look at the smoke coming out of the ground,'' Padilla shared with CBS News Los Angeles.
He asserts that upon investigating the source of the noise at his father's ranch, they saw smoke appearing to come from a crashed aircraft.
Padilla then describes seeing three extraterrestrials emerge from the wreckage and start "sashaying and running in circles."
However, Padilla says he wasn't frightened and felt the creatures "needed help".
He maintains that the military spent the next 10 days clearing up the debris and warned the boys to keep their distance, but they continued to observe from a nearby ridge, concealed behind cacti.
Mr Padilla recounts that he and his friends seized an opportunity when the soldiers took a break, entering the empty aircraft.
He decided to take a small "dial" from the wall of the craft and stashed it in his family's garage.
The peculiar object was analyzed by Frontier Analysis, an Ohio-based chemical testing lab, in 2015.
Their report stated that the artifact was composed of aluminum mixed with silicon and copper, a typical combination found in engine parts and that the isotopic ratios were terrestrial.
However, the company also stated that they could not exclude the possibility of the metals having an extraterrestrial origin, according to CBS News Los Angeles.
To this day, Mr Padilla maintains that: "No one knows what it is."
Over the years, he relocated to Rowland Heights, an unincorporated area of Los Angeles, California, where he raised a family but held on to the enigmatic keepsake, reports the Express.
Investigative journalist and UFO researcher Paola Harris interviewed him and another friend who also claims to have seen the alien craft back in 2012.
Her interview came as she was investigating a claim made by the son of World War II army pilot William Brophy, who said that one of his father's final missions involved flying over the area where the crash allegedly occurred.
Harris told the outlet that during one of these flights, Mr Brophy's father spotted two young boys on horseback, whom she believes were a young Mr Padilla and his friend.
https://www.irishstar.com/news/us-news/i-played-aliens-after-ufo-33535250
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR5kklDyWGI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoQ-uu5GOxo