TYB
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
December 1, 2024
Cosmic Latte: The Average Color of the Universe
What color is the universe? More precisely, if the entire sky were smeared out, what color would the final mix be? This whimsical question came up when trying to determine what stars are commonplace in nearby galaxies. The answer, depicted here, is a conditionally perceived shade of beige. In computer parlance: #FFF8E7. To determine this, astronomers computationally averaged the light emitted by one of the larger samples of galaxies analyzed: the 200,000 galaxies of the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey. The resulting cosmic spectrum has some emission in all parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, but a single perceived composite color. This color has become much less blue over the past 10 billion years, indicating that redder stars are becoming more prevalent. In a contest to better name the color, notable entries included skyvory, univeige, and the winner: cosmic latte.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Declassified spy satellite images reveal 1,400-year-old battle site in Iraq that set off the Muslim conquest
December 1, 2024
Declassified spy images of Iraq have helped archaeologists find a historic Islamic battlefield.
Upon analyzing the images, which were taken in 1973 by a U.S. satellite system named KH-9 (Hexagon), the team found remnants of a 1,400-year-old settlement.
This helped them match the site to the lost location of the Battle of al-Qadisiyyah, the researchers reported in a study published Nov. 12 in the journal Antiquity.
The Battle of al-Qadisiyyah took place in A.D. 636 or 637 between the Arab Muslim army and the Sasanian Empire, which ruled the area that is now Iran between A.D. 224 and 651.
According to Encyclopedia Britannica, the battle was a consequential victory for the Muslim army and the beginning of the eventual Muslim conquest of Persia.
But William Deadman, an archaeologist at Durham University in the U.K. and the lead author of the study, and colleagues had not originally set out to find the lost battle site.
Using the 1973 satellite imagery, they were examining the Hajj pilgrimage route of Darb Zubaydah as part of its consideration as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
According to UNESCO, Darb Zubaydah connected the city of Kufa, Iraq, to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, and was the most important Hajj route between A.D. 750 and 850, during the Abbasid Caliphate, a golden age of Muslim civilization.
As the researchers looked over the newly declassified images, they realized they might have the chance to find the lost battlefield of al-Qadisiyyah, according to a Durham University statement.
Records of the battle had given clues to its location. For example, they mentioned there was a 6-mile-long (10 kilometers) wall that connected al-Qadisiyyah to a neighboring town and that the town was "south of a body of water, between [a] moat and a bridged stream," the paper noted.
Using these clues, Deadman located a modern-day agricultural field that matched the description.
An on-the-ground survey confirmed the find. Researchers identified the 6-mile-long wall and the moat north of the town mentioned in historical texts.
"This discovery provides a geographical location and context for a battle that is one of the founding stories of the expansion of Islam into modern day Iraq, Iran and beyond," Deadman said in the statement.
https://www.space.com/the-universe/earth/declassified-spy-satellite-images-reveal-1-400-year-old-battle-site-in-iraq-that-set-off-the-muslim-conquest
https://www.durham.ac.uk/news-events/latest-news/2024/11/declassified-spy-images-help-locate-ancient-battle-site/
SpaceX launches fifth mission for NRO’s proliferated architecture
November 30, 2024
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Nov. 30 launched the NROL-126 mission for the National Reconnaissance Office.
The rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 3:10 a.m. Eastern, the NRO said in a statement.
Although the launch was scheduled and announced, there was no live broadcast of the liftoff and a live feed only became available shortly before the main engine cutoff during the flight.
It’s unclear if this was due to operational decisions or specific requests from the NRO.
NROL-126 was the fifth launch of the NRO’s proliferated architecture of imaging satellites built by SpaceX and Northrop Grumman.
SpaceX launched the first four batches of NRO satellites to low Earth orbit in May, June, September and October.
Unlike previous launches of NRO satellites, the NROL-126 mission included an unspecified number of government satellites and 20 of SpaceX’s Starlink internet satellites.
Approximately eight minutes after liftoff, the Falcon 9’s first stage booster successfully landed on a drone ship in the Pacific Ocean.
This was the first flight for this particular booster.
The NRO designs and operates classified U.S. government surveillance and intelligence satellites.
The agency seeks to rapidly deploy a new network of satellites designed to track ground targets in near real time.
https://spacenews.com/spacex-launches-fifth-mission-for-nros-proliferated-architecture/
https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1862771327394009232?
Man creates his own satellite to take space selfies with Earth
Nov 30, 2024 08:30 EST
If you have ever dreamed of taking a space selfie from above, former NASA engineer turned YouTuber Mark Rober is working on a new project that should make that dream come true. Rober has built his own satellite, SAT GUS, which is fitted with the required hardware to take selfies from space.
Google is one of the partners, and the satellite literally has a Pixel phone glued to it inside a radiation-resistant case.
No, it won't be used to take selfies; instead, it will be used as a high-resolution screen to display the image in front of the camera.
You can take part in the project through the Space Selfie website and get your selfie clicked.
As part of the process, you need to upload an image that will be sent to the SAT GUS satellite.
The onboard camera hardware will photograph you with the Earth in the background and send it back.
The selfie satellite will be blasted into space using Space X Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California (USA).
It will be on board the Transport 12 mission in January 2025 and will start taking space selfies in a few months after being deployed in low-Earth orbit at about 600 km from the blue planet.
You can send any original image for the selfie, as long as it's kid and family-friendly and you own or have sharing rights.
It could be a solo photo, a group snap, or a photo of your furry friend.
Now, the Space Selfie is being marketed as "free," but everything comes at a price.
Some T-Mobile customers can get a free code via the T-Life app on December 3rd.
Select Google Pixel customers are also eligible for the code through invites, as per the website (you can track updates on the @teampixel Instagram account).
Codes are also available for those who want to sponsor a future engineer for $30 or have a subscription to CrunchLabs, which typically starts at $30/box for the quarterly plan.
CrunchLabs was founded by Mark and offers build kits for kids.
The unique code can be redeemed on the Space Selfie website, where you'll be asked to upload your selfie and provided an email to track its status.
Rober explained that the photo would be taken when the satellite is above your city.
You will be notified when the image will be snapped so you can go outside and technically get in the selfie twice.
SAT GUS can snap about 1,000 photos in a day, and the limited slots will be processed on a first-come, first-serve basis.
It has two fixed solar panels that dump their power into some 120 Wh batteries.
Rober noted that the satellite has another camera and Pixel phone set to ensure the selfie project doesn't derail if something goes wrong with the primary camera.
https://www.neowin.net/news/man-creates-his-own-satellite-to-take-space-selfies-with-earth/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KcV1C1Ui5s
Landmark space mission set to create artificial solar eclipses using satellites
Sat 30 Nov 2024 01.00 EST
Final preparations have begun for a landmark space mission that will use satellites flying in close formation to create artificial solar eclipses high above the Earth.
The Proba-3 mission is the European Space Agency’s first attempt at precise formation flying in orbit and calls for two spacecraft to loop around the planet in an arrangement that never deviates by more than a millimetre, about the thickness of a human fingernail.
All being well, the spacecraft will blast off from India’s Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, on the Bay of Bengal coast, at 4.08pm local time (10.38am UK time) on Wednesday.
After a four-month voyage, the probes will reach a highly elliptic orbit that swoops as close as 370 miles to Earth before swinging out for more than 37,000 miles.
“It’s an experiment in space to demonstrate a new concept, a new technology,” said Damien Galano, the Proba project manager at ESA.
“It’s very challenging because we need to control very well the flight path of the two spacecraft.”
If the satellites operate as intended, they will line up with the sun such that the lead spacecraft casts a carefully controlled shadow on its partner, allowing instruments on the latter to measure the sun’s corona, the outer layer of its atmosphere.
Traditionally, scientists have studied the sun’s ring-like corona during solar eclipses, when the moon blocks enough of the sun’s glare to make the corona visible from Earth.
The work requires scientists to chase eclipses around the world, often for only minutes of observation time, or none at all if the view is obscured by cloud.
The €200m (£166m) Proba-3 mission promises to transform scientists’ understanding of the corona by producing 50 artificial solar eclipses a year, each lasting six hours.
The lead spacecraft carries a 1.4-metre wide occulter disc to block the sun as seen from the second spacecraft, turning the pair into a 150-metre-long instrument called a coronagraph.
Data from the mission should shed light on the longstanding mystery of why the corona is so much hotter than the sun itself; the sun’s surface is about 5,500C, but the corona can exceed 1mC.
By better understanding the corona, scientists hope to improve their predictions of solar weather, coronal mass ejections – where pulses of plasma and magnetic field burst into space – and solar storms, which can damage spacecraft and cause power outages and communications blackouts on Earth.
The Proba-3 spacecraft will swing around the planet once every 19.7 hours for two years.
For six hours in every orbit the satellites will fly in formation, drawing on optical sensors and flashing LEDs to locate one another, and a precision laser system to automatically finesse their distance and orientation.
The first images from the mission are expected as soon as March 2025.
Beyond the mission’s main goals, ESA scientists have set aside time to test manoeuvres that may be helpful in the future to service faulty satellites or remove “uncooperative” hardware and debris from orbit.
Formation flying could usher in a new era of space-based observatories and instruments by having multiple spacecraft work together in precise configurations.
“If we would be able to have several satellites close to each other in an absolute, accurate, precise formation, we would be able to assemble larger instruments that are composed out of several satellites,” said Dietmar Pilz, the director of technology at ESA.
These multi-satellite instruments could be used to study the climate crisis, objects in the solar system, and more distant planets around faraway stars.
“We all know that the launchers have been increasing in their power and the masses that they can bring into space,” said Pilz, in reference to the heavy payloads carried by modern rockets.
“But no matter what you do, there’s always a limit.”
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/nov/30/landmark-space-mission-set-to-create-artificial-solar-eclipses-using-satellites
Mysterious, record-breaking energy burst connected to dead star and red dwarf
November 29, 2024
Astronomers have discovered a record-breaking burst of energy coming from deep space, tracing it to a binary system containing a tiny red dwarf star and a dead stellar remnant called a white dwarf.
The team from the Curtin University node of the International Center for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) discovered the pulse of bright energy in archival low-frequency data from the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA).
This radio wave pulse, designated GLEAM-X J0704-37, erupts every three hours, with these bursts lasting between 30 and 60 seconds.
That makes this signal the longest-period example of a rare and extreme phenomenon called "long-period radio transients."
First discovered in 2006, astronomers have been puzzled by long-period radio transients for almost 20 years, unable to figure out how exactly they generate radio waves.
This research may have solved that mystery by identifying a probable source of these energy bursts.
One reason the mystery has been so tricky is that previously discovered long-period radio transients sat within areas of the Milky Way packed with stars.
That has made it tough to hone in on what is actually generating these bursts of radio waves.
"The long-period transients are very exciting, and for astronomers to understand what they are, we need an optical image," Natasha Hurley-Walker, discovery team member and a researcher at Curtin University, said in a statement.
"However, when you look toward them, there are so many stars lying in the way that it's like 2001: A Space Odyssey. 'My god, it’s full of stars!'"
However, the team had a stroke of luck when discovering GLEAM-X J0704-37. This remarkable long-period radio transient originated from 5,000 light-years away at the edge of the Milky Way, which is more sparsely populated by stars.
"Our new discovery lies far off the galactic plane, so there are only a handful of stars nearby, and we're now certain one-star system, in particular, is generating the radio waves," Hurley-Walker added.
The team used the MeerKAT telescope in South Africa to pinpoint the origin of GLEAM-X J0704-37 to one specific star.
The next step for the researchers was to uncover the nature of the GLEAM-X J0704-37 emitting star system.
Red dwarf vs. white dwarf
Turning to the Southern Astrophysical Research Telescope (SOAR) in Chile, the scientists were able to determine that one of the stars at the source of GLEAM-X J0704-37 is a low-mass red dwarf star, also known as an "M-class," or "M-dwarf," star.
This presented a dilemma for the team. "The M dwarfs are low-mass stars that have a mere fraction of the sun's mass and luminosity.
They constitute 70% of the stars in the Milky Way, but not one of them is visible to the naked eye," Hurley-Walker explained. "An M dwarf alone couldn’t generate the amount of energy we’re seeing."
Returning to their data, the team found evidence suggesting that the red dwarf is in a binary system with another object.
They determined that this companion body is likely to be a white dwarf, the cooling stellar ember that is left over when a star with a mass around that of the sun dies.
"Together, they power radio emission," Hurley-Walker pointed out.
Hurley-Walker and colleagues propose that strong magnetic fields in the system cause the emission of periodic blasts of energy similar to those seen from rapidly spinning neutron stars, or "pulsars."
Because the system from which GLEAM-X J0704-37 emerges is located high above the disk of the Milky Way, the researchers were able to rule out a highly magnetic neutron star, or "magnetar," as the source of this long-period radio transient.
The team is now hard at work scouring data to confirm the nature of this binary system and explain exactly how it launched GLEAM-X J0704-37.
More generally, the fact that GLEAM-X J0704-37 has been active for the last 10 years, remaining undiscovered until now, suggests there are likely many more long-period radio transients lurking in archival data from a wide range of telescopes across the globe, including the MWA.
"These long-period radio transients are new scientific discoveries, and the MWA has fundamentally enabled the discoveries," MWA Director Steven Tingay, said in the statement.
"The MWA has a 55-petabyte archive of observations that provide a decade-long record of our universe. It is like having the data storage equivalent of 55,000 high-end home computers – one of the biggest single collections of science data in the world.
"It is an absolute gold mine for discovering more phenomena in our universe, and the data are a playground for astronomers."
https://www.space.com/record-breaking-mystery-energy-burst-gleam-xj0704-37
https://www.icrar.org/binarytransient/
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ad890e
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-14136617/plan-aliens-contact-earth-NASA-expert.html
What would happen day by day if aliens made contact with earth, according to ex-NASA expert
Updated 20:53 EST, 30 Nov 2024
It’s a moment that’s been depicted countless times in science fiction — but what would actually happen when extraterrestrials make contact via a signal picked up on Earth?
The moment could come as early as the end of this decade: if aliens receive signals sent by NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) to the Pioneer 10 satellite in the 70s, for example.
When the moment comes, the signal is most likely to be received by large ground-based telescopes such as FAST in China, the Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico and the Parkes Telescope in Australia, says former NASA expert Sylvester Kaczmarek.
Day One
There is no universally agreed rule on how scientists or governments would respond - or on questions such as whether aliens would have rights.
But extraterrestrial-focused organisations including the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) drew up a framework in 2010.
Rather than immediately announce the finding to the world, scientists would work to confirm it was real - first ruling out interference from earth such as satellites and radio transmissions.
A mysterious signal at the Parkes Radio Telescope in the 90s was discovered to be a microwave oven in the staff canteen.
Kaczmarek says: ‘For a signal to be considered potentially extraterrestrial, researchers would typically require multiple layers of confirmation and analysis, often over several weeks or months.
'The signal would need to demonstrate properties inconsistent with natural astrophysical sources and human-made interference.’
In SETI’s ‘Declaration of Principles Concerning the Conduct of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence’, published in 2010 with the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA), the guidelines suggest discoverers should collaborate with other institutions to be sure the signal is real.
Nothing would be announced until confirmed, although the scientists would respond to media queries if news ‘leaked’.
Week One (after confirmation)
Scientists at the observatory would notify organizations such as the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).
Kaczmarek says that while organizations such as SETI have their own strategies for first contact in the event of sudden contact, organizations with expertise in space communication like NASA, and the ESA would almost certainly get involved.
Kaczmarek says: ‘Governments would also become quickly involved, particularly those with advanced space programs or defense capabilities, like the US Space Force or equivalent agencies.
'However, in such a scenario, there would likely be confusion and competing interests before a unified global strategy emerged.’
Once scientists are certain, the discovery would be shared - probably through a public announcement including a press release and scientific publication, Kaczmarek says,
Kaczmarek says: ‘This transparency could be delayed depending on geopolitical or security concerns, especially if governments or defense agencies got involved.'
But once the secret is out, it's bound to leak so governments will likely try get ahead of the panic and confusion that would ensue.
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Week Two
One of the first things would happen would be to ‘protect’ the frequency the signal was received on to ensure more signals could be received.
Scientists would use emergency procedures within the World Administrative Radio Council of the International Telecommunication Union.
SETI’s guidelines suggest establishing a Post-Detection Study Group to analyze the signal and start discussions of how to respond.
At this point, it’s likely that the United Nations would become involved in deciphering the signal and working out how to respond.
Kaczmarek says, ‘In principle, the United Nations would play a central role in any coordinated global response.
'The UN Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) is the most likely body to lead, as it oversees the peaceful use of outer space and has existing treaties, like the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, that cover international cooperation in space.'
Scientists and governments would work together at this point to understand where the signal came from, what it means - and whether or not to respond.
Week Three
The response to alien contact would vary according to what form it took: a visit from a spacecraft would require a direct response, says Kaczmarek.
But a signal received from the depths of space would require ‘long-term planning’ to respond to.
It’s likely that responding to such a signal would be a global decision, according to the Declaration of Principles Concerning the Conduct of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.
Rather than the scientists or any one group formulating a response, the scientists would seek guidance from global groups such as the United Nations.
The document says, “In the case of the confirmed detection of a signal, signatories to this declaration will not respond without first seeking guidance and consent of a broadly representative international body, such as the United Nations.”
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