>Immaculate Conception Church in Saint-Omer, France.
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
September 2, 2024
A Triangular Prominence Hovers Over the Sun
Why is there a triangle hovering over the Sun? Although the shape is unusual, the type of structure is not: it is part of an evolving solar prominence. Looping magnetic fields on the Sun channel the flow of energetic particles, sometimes holding glowing gaseous structures aloft for months. A prominence glows brightly because it contains particularly hot, dense, or opaque solar plasma. The surprising triangular structure occurred last week. Larger than our Earth, the iconic prominence was imaged by several solar photographers and documented by NASA's Solar Dynamic Observatory to form and violently dissipate in about a day. The featured image was captured in a color of red light emitted strongly by hydrogen. Below, solar fibrils carpet the Sun's chromosphere, while the background sky is so faint in comparison that no stars are visible. Our Sun's surface has been quite active this year.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore reports 'strange noise' coming from Boeing's Starliner spacecraft, 'I don't know what's making it'
September 2, 2024
On Saturday (Aug. 31) NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore noticed something weird inside the Starliner spacecraft.
Wilmore radioed down to Mission Control to ask about the bizarre noises heard emanating from Starliner's speakers while the spacecraft is currently docked to the International Space Station (ISS).
"There's a strange noise coming through the speaker," Wilmore tells Mission Control "I don't know what's making it."
Wilmore then holds a device to the speakers, allowing Mission Control to hear the pulsating sound occurring at regular intervals.
Mission Control at Johnson Space Center in Houston likens the sound to a "pulsing noise, almost like a sonar ping."
Sounding rather relaxed, and unfazed by the whole situation, Wilmore replied "All right, over to you, call us if you figure it out."
Mission Control then informs Wilmore that the recording will be passed along to the team and they'll let him know what they find.
Former Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield commented on the situation in a post on X. In the post, you can hear the strange sound reported by Wilmore.
"There are several noises I'd prefer not to hear inside my spaceship, including this one that Boeing Starliner is now making," Hadfield wrote.
The unusual sound was initially reported by Ars Technica, referencing a recording originally captured and shared by Michigan-based meteorologist Rob Dale on the NASA Spaceflight (NSF) forum.
Starliner launched on June 5 for its first-ever crewed mission, transporting NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore to the ISS.
The capsule successfully docked on June 6.
Although the mission was initially expected to last around 10 days, NASA and Boeing extended the capsule's stay in orbit multiple times as they investigated a thruster issue.
Ultimately, NASA determined that returning Williams and Wilmore on Starliner was too risky.
The agency announced that the two astronauts would instead return to Earth aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule in February 2025.
Meanwhile, the Boeing capsule will return to Earth uncrewed.
It is scheduled to undock the ISS no earlier than 6:04 p.m. EDT (2204 GMT) on Sept. 6 and land six hours later in the White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico.
https://www.space.com/strange-noise-boeing-starliner-spacecraft
Astronaut who spent 178 days in space shares 'big lie' he realized after seeing Earth
15:21 1 Sep 2024 GMT+1
Ex-NASA astronaut and author Ron Garan spent a whopping 178 days in space and it was a moment when he was looking down at Earth from the International Space Station which caused him to experience what's known as the 'Overview Effect'.
The 'Overview Effect' often takes place when astronauts go into space and look down and see Earth from that perspective for the first time.
The experience 'shift[s] […] the way astronauts view and think about our planet and life itself,' NASA explains.
Garan has accumulated 'more than 71 million miles in 2,842 orbits of our planet' coming to a total of 178 days, however, it was the moment he looked down at Earth which made 'certain things become undeniably clear'.
In an interview with Big Think, Garan explained: "We keep trying to deal with issues such as global warming, deforestation, biodiversity loss as stand alone issues when in reality they're just symptoms of the underlying root problem and the problem is, that we don't see ourselves as planetary'.
"When I looked out of the window of the International Space Station, I saw the paparazzi like flashes of lightening storms, I saw dancing curtains of auroras that seemed so close it was as if we could reach out and touch them and I saw the unbelievable thinness of our planet's atmosphere.
"In that moment I was hit by the sobering realization."
Garan was hit by the realization that our planet - and every living thing on it - is being kept alive by a 'paper thin layer'.
"I saw an iridescent biosphere teaming with life, I didn't see an economy, but since our human-made systems treat everything including the very life-support systems of our planet as the […] subsidiary of the global economy, it's obvious from the vanish point of space that we're living a lie," he continued.
The astronaut reflects on the moment as being a 'light bulb that pops up' when he realized 'how interconnected and interdependent we all are'.
Since returning from his mission, Garan 'continues to work towards a cleaner, safer and more peaceful planet,' urging others: "We need to move from thinking, economy, society, planet to planet, society, economy.
That's when we're going to continue our evolutionary process.
"[…] We're not going to have peace on Earth until we recognize the basic fact of the interrelated structure of all reality."
https://www.unilad.com/technology/space/nasa-astronaut-ron-garan-space-seeing-earth-realization-lie-175421-20240828
NASA finds this on Mars and is already looking for life: It’s the biggest discovery in history
09/02/2024
In the Appendix, three papers by NASA researchers report that liquid water has been found on Mars’s surface.
This finding could lead to a revolutionary method for studying Mars and looking for life on the planet.
This unprecedented finding was made on August 12, 2024, based on materials obtained from the Mars Insight Lander spacecraft, launched in 2018.
Seismic activity recorded by the InSight lander during its four years on the red planet included more than 1,300 ‘Marsquakes’, which aided the researchers in understanding the Martian interior structure and composition.
It is a significant scientific breakthrough in research on Mars that offers new data about its ability to sustain life and geological activities.
Liquid water in any state has fascinated researchers as they looked for evidence of liquid water on Mars.
From the seismic wave data, it was found that subsurface water is present. The procedures scientists used resembled a search for water sources on Earth.
These water sources are situated at depths between 10 and 20 kilometres deep.
This discovery offers concrete data supporting the historical hypothesis about the disappearance of water on Mars’s surface.
It means that the volume of water estimated here could cover the Mars surface to more than half a kilometre in depth if it were to spread out.
It essentially means that this discovery is significant progress in understanding Mars’s geology and the planet’s current state.
Dr Vashan Wright of the University of California, San Diego Scripps Institution of Oceanography research team involves more than 1,300 Marsquakes recorded by the Insight lander.
These discoveries indicate that such water reservoirs are not rare but could exist worldwide and occupy a substantial underground ocean that has evaded saturation mapping for Billions of years.
Well-water springs unlock the opportunity to dwell beneath the soil. The deep biosphere of Earth helps explain the possibility of microbial life on Mars.
There is a hypothesis that chemosynthetic microbes can exist deep in Martian rocks.
They note that the recent discovery of methane plumes on Mars may suggest the existence of life forms. Scholars are now discussing how to continue the study of these water reservoirs.
Despite the severe conditions on the surface of Mars, subsurface areas could be more conducive for life.
This discovery once again brings back the concept of planetary habitability and that of extraterrestrial life within the solar system.
To support the idea of extremophiles living in these deep aquifers, the authors paired the concept to similar biospheres on Earth that have microbial life located in deep waters and underground devoid of sunlight or organic carbon because they derive theirs from rocks and minerals.
Mars: ‘Getting to deep Martian water is not a piece of cake in terms of technology’. However, it is impossible to penetrate Mars and travel 10-20 kilometres beneath the red planet’s surface.
Maybe there is another way to get there – through mud volcanoes.
The Mars Sample Return mission might be helpful. Other methane plumes might give researchers the indirect evidence they need for further research.
Strategic objectives may include calls for strategic long-term goals like improved drilling methods.
The search for Martians might continue for several decades or centuries if more astrobiological missions were conducted or if newer, better technology was developed.
Researchers are still exploring other geophysical instruments, including ground-penetrating radar and other remote sensing technology, that may provide a better definition of these subsurface water resources.
They can use this information to pinpoint the areas with the highest potential for mission and exploration.
Thus, discovering liquid water deposits beneath the Martian surface significantly advances space exploration. This discovery not only changes the concept of Mars’s geology but also significantly contributes to the presence or absence of microbial life on our planet Mars.
Continuing the mission of searching for new Martian areas to inhabit, the comparisons are once again referring to the Earth’s deep hot biosphere inhabited by tough microorganisms.
Future tasks will remain challenging and novel, requiring new concepts and approaches to study these subterranean environments.
Still, this finding has initiated a new search for Mars, which refers to scientific curiosity and the public’s imagination. It is the type of question that is on the brink of being answered with the help of science, bringing people closer to the potential discovery of extraterrestrial life.
https://www.ecoticias.com/en/nasa-finds-liquid-water-on-mars/5918/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinholdenplatt/2024/08/31/space-scientists-invent-futuristic-vr-simulations-for-moon-astronauts/
Space Scientists Invent Futuristic VR Simulations For Moon Astronauts
Updated Sep 2, 2024, 08:40am EDT
The first American astronauts set to touch down on the Moon in the new millennium will not blast off for another 700 days, but now they can begin exploring potential landing sites by jacking into Matrix-style simulations of its cratered South Pole sector.
Simultaneous revolutions in space-based imagers and laser scanners, and in virtual reality modelling toolkits, are giving rise to VR doubles of real-life lunar scenes that appear to be identical twins.
“We are building very high resolution, photorealistic digital twins of potential Artemis III landing sites,” and then developing these into cutting-edge virtual replicas of the orb’s ancient plains and hypervelocity impact craters, says Kip Hodges, who as founding director of Arizona State University’s School of Earth and Space Exploration helped transform the university into one of the top American space studies centers and research nodes.
“The best available imagery from lunar orbit today is provided by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter,” which also sends out pulses of laser beams to chart the topography of the terrain, he told me in an interview.
“We are now using images and laser scans from the orbiter” to create geometrically precise VR models of the lunar surface.
“One application of virtual planetary environments that is attracting attention is in mission design and planning.
Mission planners can use them to design the safest and most efficient extravehicular activities,” Professor Hodges says.
“They are excellent training tools for astronauts preparing for landings and surface exploration.”
Astronauts selected for the elite Artemis missions can use these simulations to plan their sorties and memorize their surroundings, Hodges says, and in the process limit their time outside their SpaceX spacecraft, and their exposure to hazardous solar and cosmic radiation.
“There is a limit to how long they can stay outside of the hab - the Starship - a finite amount of time even with the new generation space suits,” says Professor Hodges, a one-time member of NASA’s Space Advisory Council who has helped NASA train American, Canadian, and Japanese astronauts on surface operations.
His team’s digital dioramas are part of a Big Bang-like burst of space-tech demos being launched in the run-up to aeronauts returning to the black and silver globe - featuring inventions by independent space outfits that could change the course of exploration, Professor Hodges says.
Intuitive Machines - the first commercial spaceflight group on the planet to orchestrate a soft landing on the Moon earlier this year, aims to loft a second remotely piloted spacecraft this December, carrying a robotic photographer developed by Lunar Outpost that will survey the periphery of the pole and transmit the images back to Earth.
Professor Hodges says his Digital Discovery Initiative group is joining forces with Lunar Outpost, which is despatching the rover-photographer on its 380,000-kilometer distant shooting assignment, to sculpt the new images into an immersive virtual guide to the sector.
His team’s digital doppelgängers, rich with close-up imagery captured by Lunar Outpost, could help astronauts and Mission Control at NASA survey the site in exquisite detail and sketch out follow-up expeditions of the future.
Recognition of the pivotal role virtual clones of the Moon can play in advance of the human landings is now exploding: Researchers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center have proposed integrating satellite imaging data with the agency’s “scientific models, point clouds and LIDAR data, and engineering, CAD-based models” across a series of virtual training simulations for astronauts and spaceflight planners outfitted with leading-edge VR headsets.
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Thomas Grubb, AR/VR Product Development Lead at Goddard, who teamed up with five colleagues to present blueprints to recreate the Moon inside the realm of virtual reality, said their super-real VR orb would feature “accurate lighting models for specified dates and times to simulate changes in the relative position of the sun and shadows during the timeframe of a robotic or crewed surface mission.”
“The goal is to create a VR environment of the Lunar South Pole for scientific evaluation of dynamic surface conditions (sunlight, geology, topography) to plan & visualize activities on future missions,” the Goddard scholars said in their study.
This advanced VR twin of the Moon would have the “capability for a group working remotely to explore the same VR space in real-time together.”
Trekking through virtual looking glass doubles of lunar worlds, Professor Hodges says, is likely to explode in the run-up to the spacefarer sojourns that will start in 2026.
Astronauts spread out across NASA and the European and Japanese space agencies, via their avatars, could all circumnavigate the Pole’s alien geography, and collectively schedule their sequel lunar liaisons, he says.
“I see this as an important step toward democratizing planetary science,” he says of the world-spanning reach of his Virtual Moon platform.
“Virtual reality is such a global phenomenon that scientists in Australia, Asia, Europe, and Africa could conduct virtual field geology together at the same time as part of the same team.”
Each time a colossal SpaceX Starship alights on the Moon, its pilots can quickly deploy a squad of rovers equipped with cameras and lasers to map their extraterrestrial environs.
Upon receiving these images and point clouds, Professor Hodges says, his group could speedily model a virtual mirror of the scene and beam it back to the astronauts at the speed of light.
The same platform could be used to connect up scientists involved in the Artemis program with the astronauts as they explore the surface of the Moon, with a slight delay as communications travel 1.3 light-seconds in each direction between the Earth and its age-old companion.
Professor Hodges adds that his Digital Discovery team and other ASU scholars have also begun creating virtual models for other celestial destinations slated for human exploration ahead.
“We are already hard at work building digital twins using Mastcam-Z imagery from Mars,” an incredible array of photographs produced by the Perseverance rover charting the ghosts of rivers and lakes that once animated a world that floats along the outer boundary of the solar system's habitable zone.
It turns out Perseverance is the greatest droid-photographer across the planet’s orange-red dunes, and his twin Mastcam-Z cameras have captured a fantastical stream of images.
An ever-expanding cosmos of simulations of the Moon and of Mars, Professor Hodges predicts, will be tapped to train the next waves of American and allied astronauts, along with future generations of space scientists and engineers spread out across the continents.
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Astronomers discover oldest known eclipse reference in 6,000-year-old Hindu text
September 2, 2024
When astronomers combed through an ancient Hindu text known as the Rig Veda, they discovered that it referenced a total solar eclipse that occurred roughly 6,000 years ago — making it the oldest known mention of an eclipse.
The Rig Veda, a collection of sayings and hymns from various religious and philosophical schools, was compiled around 1500 B.C. Like nearly all religious texts, it mentions historical events. Most are contemporary to when it was written, but some stretch back much further.
For example, various passages in the Rig Veda mention the location of the rising sun during the vernal equinox. One reference describes the vernal equinox as occurring in Orion, and another has it occurring in the Pleiades.
These descriptions allow astronomers to date those references, because as Earth spins on its axis, it wobbles like a spinning top, changing the relative position of important astronomical events.
Currently, the vernal equinox is in the constellation Pisces. It was in Orion around 4500 B.C. and in the Pleiades around 2230 B.C., meaning the Rig Veda recorded some memories of events far earlier than its compilation.
The Rig Veda's language is highly symbolic and allegorical, making it difficult to discern which stories are myths and which are historical.
But two astronomers — Mayank Vahia of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai and Mitsuru Soma of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan — think they've found references to an ancient eclipse.
They reported their findings in the Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage.
The passages are flowery but fitting for an eclipse, describing the sun as being "pierced" with darkness and gloom and proposing that evil beings had caused the sun's "magic arts to vanish."
The astronomers noted that these passages do not reference the story of Rahu and Ketu, which is a more recent Hindu mythology surrounding the eclipse, indicating that these passages were described before those stories were created.
Further passages helped the astronomers narrow down the time frame of the solar eclipse. It occurred when the vernal equinox was in Orion, and it also happened just three days prior to an autumnal equinox.
It was also a total solar eclipse, and it must have happened over the area where the eventual writers of the Rig Veda lived.
The astronomers found that only two possible dates fit these criteria: Oct. 22, 4202 B.C., and Oct. 19, 3811 B.C. Both of these dates are earlier than the current record holders for the oldest mention of an eclipse — a clay tablet, unearthed in Syria, that recorded an eclipse in either 1375 B.C. or 1223 B.C., and a rock carving in Ireland that might reference an eclipse in 3340 B.C.
The newfound reference in the Rig Veda highlights how total solar eclipses captivated people in antiquity and how ancient texts can contribute to our present-day knowledge of celestial events.
https://www.space.com/solar-eclipse-oldest-account-rig-veda
https://dds.sciengine.com/cfs/files/pdfs/view/1440-2807/FC8AA9DDB2264FA2AB2D97D63B7B8FDD.pdf
Astrophotographer captures Comet C/2023 E1 Atlas in rare encounter with Flying Bat and Squid Nebula
September 2, 2024
This striking deep-sky image details a cosmic cacophony of nebulas, stars and a periodic comet with an orbital period of 85 years.
The rare encounter was captured in exquisite detail by astrophotographer Miguel Claro.
A deep-sky portrait captured in different wavelengths between Ha, OIII and RGB light, features a large reddish cloud of glowing hydrogen gas from the Sh2-129, known as the Flying Bat nebula.
The nebula, with a physical diameter of 271 light-years, seems to have embedded a blueish giant Squid Nebula which spans across the center 50 light-years long.
Discovered in 2011 by French astrophotographer Nicolas Outters and located in the constellation Cepheus, the very faint bipolar shape of this planetary nebula (stars like our sun transform themselves into white dwarfs by casting off their outer gaseous) is distinguished here by the blue-green emission from doubly ionized oxygen atoms (atoms of oxygen that have lost two electrons).
Although an extra greenish diffuse ball is visible close to the edge of the Flying Bat's reddish wings, it’s not a new type of fancy nebula, but a rare encounter with a solar system visitant, the lonely, faint Comet C/2023 E1 Atlas, shinning with a dimmer 14.7 magnitude.
Comet C/2023 E1 Atlas orbits the sun every 85 years at an average distance of 19 AU (an astronomical unit (AU) is exactly 149,597,870,700 meters (92,955,807 miles or 149,597,871 kilometers), according to the International Astronomical Union (IAU). This is roughly the average distance between Earth and the sun.)
Among the 11 nights between July and August that I spent shooting the Flying Bat nebula to accumulate a total exposure time of 39.5 hours, I was very lucky to capture Comet C/2023 E1 Atlas on Aug. 5, 2023, around 7 p.m. ET (2300 GMT) using the Anit-Halo PRO Dual-Band 3nm from Player One.
Because I captured Ha and OIII at the same time, it allowed for the green coma of the comet to become visible in my filtered light for being emitting in the same wavelength where OIII emission lies in the G and B channels.
If it was only Ha, I would have missed it because it was totally invisible in this narrowband red channel.
to the left edge, are lying nebulas VdB 140 and LDN 446.
The image was captured from Dark Sky Reserve Alqueva Observatory, Cumeada, in Portugal, with a Poseidon-C Pro Camera.
https://www.space.com/astrophotographer-captures-image-comet-c-2023-e1-atlas-flying-bat-and-squid-nebula
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