Category Archives: Astronomy

Astronomy, Mars, Solar Science

Space sciences roundup – Dec.5.2019

A sampling of recent articles, videos, and images from space-related science news items (find previous roundups here):

Sun

** Initial results from Parker Solar Probe published: First NASA Parker Solar Probe Results Reveal Surprising Details of Sun – NASA

The information Parker has uncovered about how the Sun constantly ejects material and energy will help scientists rewrite the models they use to understand and predict the space weather around our planet, and understand the process by which stars are created and evolve. This information will be vital to protecting astronauts and technology in space – an important part of NASA’s Artemis program, which will send the first woman and the next man to the Moon by 2024 and, eventually, on to Mars.

The four papers, now available online from the journal Nature, describe Parker’s unprecedented near-Sun observations through two record-breaking close flybys. They reveal new insights into the processes that drive the solar wind – the constant outflow of hot, ionized gas that streams outward from the Sun and fills up the solar system – and how the solar wind couples with solar rotation. Through these flybys, the mission also has examined the dust of the coronal environment, and spotted particle acceleration events so small that they are undetectable from Earth, which is nearly 93 million miles from the Sun.  

During its initial flybys, Parker studied the Sun from a distance of about 15 million miles. That is already closer to the Sun than Mercury, but the spacecraft will get even closer in the future, as it travels at more than 213,000 mph, faster than any previous spacecraft.

Solar scientists discuss  the Parker findings:

Parker imagery shows outflow of particles from the Sun:

Video: The WISPR image on NASA’s Parker Solar Probe captured imagery of the constant outflow of material from the Sun during its close approach to the Sun in April 2019. Credits: NASA/NRL/APL

See also: First Parker Solar Probe Science Data Released to Public – Parker Solar Probe – Nov.12.2019.

Astronomy

** Gravitational lensing by massive galaxy cluster multiples views of a galaxy behind it: Hubble Captures a Dozen Sunburst Arc Doppelgangers | ESA/Hubble

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have observed a galaxy in the distant regions of the Universe which appears duplicated at least 12 times on the night sky. This unique sight, created by strong gravitational lensing, helps astronomers get a better understanding of the cosmic era known as the epoch of reionisation.

This new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows an astronomical object whose image is multiplied by the effect of strong gravitational lensing. The galaxy, nicknamed the Sunburst Arc, is almost 11 billion light-years away from Earth and has been lensed into multiple images by a massive cluster of galaxies 4.6 billion light-years away [1].

The mass of the galaxy cluster is large enough to bend and magnify the light from the more distant galaxy behind it. This process leads not only to a deformation of the light from the object, but also to a multiplication of the image of the lensed galaxy.

** Hubble telescope spots a face in a galactic collision: Hubble Captures Cosmic Face | ESA/Hubble

Although galaxy collisions are common — especially in the early universe — most are not head-on impacts like the collision that likely created this Arp-Madore system 704 million light-years from Earth. This violent encounter gives the system an arresting ring structure, but only for a short amount of time. The crash has pulled and stretched the galaxies’ discs of gas, dust, and stars outward, forming the ring of intense star formation that shapes the “nose” and “face” features of the system.

Ring galaxies are rare, and only a few hundred of them reside in our larger cosmic neighbourhood. The galaxies have to collide at just the right orientation so that they interact to create the ring, and before long they will have merged completely, hiding their messy past.

The side-by-side juxtaposition of the two central bulges of stars from the galaxies that we see here is also unusual. Since the bulges that form the “eyes” appear to be the same size, we can be sure that the two galaxies involved in the crash were of equal size. This is different from the more common collisions in which small galaxies are gobbled up by their larger neighbours.

This new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captures two galaxies of equal size in a collision that appears to resemble a ghostly face. This observation was made on 19 June 2019 in visible light by the telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys. Residing 704 million light-years from Earth, this system is catalogued as Arp-Madore 2026-424 (AM 2026-424) in the Arp-Madore “Catalogue of Southern Peculiar Galaxies and Associations”.

** An interview with astronomer and astrophotographer Dylan O’Donnell of Australia:

Check out O’Donnell’s astrophotography gallery. And here is a talk he recently gave about imaging the Southern Sky:

Moon

** Citizen scientist spots crash site of India’s Vikram lander in images from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

From NASA:

The Chandrayaan 2 Vikram lander was targeted for a highland smooth plain about 600 kilometers from the south pole; unfortunately the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) lost contact with their lander shortly before the scheduled touchdown (Sept. 7 in India, Sept. 6 in the United States). Despite the loss, getting that close to the surface was an amazing achievement. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera team released the first mosaic (acquired Sept. 17) of the site on Sept. 26 and many people have downloaded the mosaic to search for signs of Vikram. Shanmuga Subramanian contacted the LRO project with a positive identification of debris.

After receiving this tip, the LROC team confirmed the identification by comparing before and after images. When the images for the first mosaic were acquired the impact point was poorly illuminated and thus not easily identifiable. Two subsequent image sequences were acquired on Oct. 14 and 15, and Nov. 11. The LROC team scoured the surrounding area in these new mosaics and found the impact site (70.8810°S, 22.7840°E, 834 m elevation) and associated debris field. The November mosaic had the best pixel scale (0.7 meter) and lighting conditions (72° incidence angle).

The debris first located by Shanmuga is about 750 meters northwest of the main crash site and was a single bright pixel identification in that first mosaic (1.3 meter pixels, 84° incidence angle). The November mosaic shows best the impact crater, ray and extensive debris field. The three largest pieces of debris are each about 2×2 pixels and cast a one pixel shadow.

“This before and after image ratio highlights changes to the surface; the impact point is near center of the image and stands out due the dark rays and bright outer halo. Note the dark streak and debris about 100 meters to the SSE of the impact point. Diagonal straight lines are uncorrected background artifacts. Credits: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University”

** China’s Chang’e-4 lander module and Yutu-2 rover complete their 12th lunar day activities and are now shutting down for the 14 earth-day long lunar night.

China’s lunar rover Yutu-2 has driven 345.059 meters on the far side of the moon to conduct scientific exploration of the virgin territory.

…

Due to the complicated geological environment and the rugged and heavily cratered terrain on the far side of the moon, Chinese space engineers carefully planned the driving routes of the rover to ensure its safety.

Driving slowly but steadily, the Yutu-2 is expected to continue traveling on the moon and make more scientific discoveries, said CNSA.

** The FARSIDE project proposes to place a radio telescope array on the far side of the Moon:

FARSIDE (Farside Array for Radio Science Investigations of the Dark ages and Exoplanets) is a Probe-class concept to place a low radio frequency interferometric array on the farside of the Moon. A NASA-funded design study, focused on the instrument, a deployment rover, the lander and base station, delivered an architecture broadly consistent with the requirements for a Probe mission. This notional architecture consists of 128 dipole antennas deployed across a 10 km area by a rover, and tethered to a base station for central processing, power and data transmission to the Lunar Gateway, or an alternative relay satellite.

Asteroids & Comets

** Japan Hayabusa-2 probe returning with samples of the asteroid Ryugu. A capsule  with the samples will reach the Australian Outback in late 2020.

” Asteroid Ryugu captured with the Optical Navigation Camera – Telescopic (ONC-T) immediately after departure. Image time is November 13 10:15 JST (onboard time), 2019.
Image credit ※: JAXA, Chiba Institute of Technology, University of Tokyo, Kochi University, Rikkyo University, Nagoya University, Meiji University, University of Aizu, AIST.”

** A discussion of the metal rich asteroid Psyche, which will be visited by a NASA probe to launch in 2020:  The Prospects of Heavy Metal – Podcasts/NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Asteroids, ho! Pioneering space miners dream of Psyche, the largest metal asteroid in the solar system.

** TESS space observatory watched a comet erupt as it passed in view: NASA’s Exoplanet-Hunting Mission Catches a Natural Comet Outburst – NASA

Using data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), astronomers at the University of Maryland (UMD), in College Park, Maryland, have captured a clear start-to-finish image sequence of an explosive emission of dust, ice and gases during the close approach of comet 46P/Wirtanen in late 2018. This is the most complete and detailed observation to date of the formation and dissipation of a naturally-occurring comet outburst. The team members reported their results in the November 22 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

“TESS spends nearly a month at a time imaging one portion of the sky. With no day or night breaks and no atmospheric interference, we have a very uniform, long-duration set of observations,” said Tony Farnham, a research scientist in the UMD Department of Astronomy and the lead author of the research paper. “As comets orbit the Sun, they can pass through TESS’ field of view. Wirtanen was a high priority for us because of its close approach in late 2018, so we decided to use its appearance in the TESS images as a test case to see what we could get out of it. We did so and were very surprised!”

“This animation shows an explosive outburst of dust, ice and gases from comet 46P/Wirtanen that occurred on September 26, 2018 and dissipated over the next 20 days. The images, from NASA’s TESS spacecraft, were taken every three hours during the first three days of the outburst. Credits: Farnham et al./NASA. View enlarged image“

Mars

** A big set of Mars images of interest have been examined Bob Zimmerman at Behind the Black:

** Updates on Curiosity:

“Curiosity Left B Navigation Camera image taken on Sol 2602, December 1, 2019. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech” – LeonardDavid.com

** Seasonal boost in the oxygen level detected by Curiosity is not understood: With Mars Methane Mystery Unsolved, Curiosity Serves Scientists a New One: Oxygen – NASA’s Mars Exploration Program

For the first time in the history of space exploration, scientists have measured the seasonal changes in the gases that fill the air directly above the surface of Gale Crater on Mars. As a result, they noticed something baffling: oxygen, the gas many Earth creatures use to breathe, behaves in a way that so far scientists cannot explain through any known chemical processes.

…

Within this environment, scientists found that nitrogen and argon follow a predictable seasonal pattern, waxing and waning in concentration in Gale Crater throughout the year relative to how much CO2 is in the air. They expected oxygen to do the same. But it didn’t. Instead, the amount of the gas in the air rose throughout spring and summer by as much as 30%, and then dropped back to levels predicted by known chemistry in fall. This pattern repeated each spring, though the amount of oxygen added to the atmosphere varied, implying that something was producing it and then taking it away.

“Seasonal Variations in Oxygen at Gale Crater: Graph showing oxygen concentration through Mars seasons. Image credit: Melissa Trainer/Dan Gallagher/NASA Goddard “

** A review of the discoveries of the Spirit and Opportunity rovers: A New Understanding | The Planetary Society

The findings from the Mars Exploration Rovers allowed the Mars science community to develop our strategy for Mars exploration beyond “follow the water” to the more complicated question of whether these watery environments were ever habitable. Very loosely defined, a habitable environment is one that has the 2 other essential requirements in addition to liquid water that are needed to support life as we know it: a source of carbon and a source of energy. The Mars Science Laboratory mission’s Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars in 2012, carried a larger and more complicated payload than the Mars Exploration Rovers. Curiosity is capable of finding evidence of all 3 of these requirements. In fact, it has succeeded: within its landing site at Gale crater, Curiosity found ancient river and lake deposits that preserved carbon-containing compounds as well as evidence for water chemistry that could power microbial metabolism. Today, we not only know that Mars was once wet—it was also habitable.

** China’s Mars plans:

China has performed a hover and hazard avoidance test on a model the country’s first Mars rover, while engineers ready the real spacecraft for launch toward the red planet in mid-2020.

Comprising an orbiter, lander and rover, the mission aims to become the first Chinese spacecraft to reach Mars after lifting off aboard a Long March 5 rocket — the country’s most powerful launcher — during a several week window opening in July 2020.

The mission will launch from the Wenchang space center on Hainan Island, China’s newest spaceport.

Jupiter

** Juno continues its orbital studies of Jupiter and continues to provide amazing images. For example, Jovian Vortex View – Mission Juno:

Juno captured this stunningly detailed look at a cyclonic storm in Jupiter’s atmosphere during its 23rd close flyby of the planet (also referred to as “perijove 23”).

Juno observed this vortex in a region of Jupiter called the “north north north north temperate belt,” or NNNNTB, one of the gas giant planet’s many persistent cloud bands. These bands are formed by the prevailing winds at different latitudes. The vortex seen here is roughly 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers) wide.

Jupiter is composed mostly of hydrogen and helium, but some of the color in its clouds may come from plumes of sulfur and phosphorus-containing gases rising from the planet’s warmer interior.

Citizen scientist Kevin M. Gill created this image using data from the spacecraft’s JunoCam imager. It was taken on Nov. 3, 2019, at 2:08 p.m. PST (5:08 p.m. EST). At the time, the spacecraft was about 5,300 miles (8,500 kilometers) from Jupiter’s cloud tops above a latitude of about 49 degrees.

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One Giant Leap:
The Impossible Mission That Flew Us to the Moon

Astronomy, Exoplanets

ESO: First Giant Planet around White Dwarf Found

The latest news from the European Southern Observatory (ESO):

First Giant Planet around White Dwarf Found
ESO observations indicate the Neptune-like exoplanet is evaporating

This illustration shows the white dwarf WDJ0914+1914 and its Neptune-like exoplanet. Since the icy giant orbits the hot white dwarf at close range, the extreme ultraviolet radiation from the star strips away the planet’s atmosphere. While most of this stripped gas escapes, some of it swirls into a disc, itself accreting onto the white dwarf.

Researchers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope [VLT] have, for the first time, found evidence of a giant planet associated with a white dwarf star. The planet orbits the hot white dwarf, the remnant of a Sun-like star, at close range, causing its atmosphere to be stripped away and form a disc of gas around the star. This unique system hints at what our own Solar System might look like in the distant future.

“It was one of those chance discoveries,”

says researcher Boris Gänsicke, from the University of Warwick in the UK, who led the study, published today in Nature.

The team had inspected around 7000 white dwarfs observed by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and found one to be unlike any other. By analysing subtle variations in the light from the star, they found traces of chemical elements in amounts that scientists had never before observed at a white dwarf.

“We knew that there had to be something exceptional going on in this system, and speculated that it may be related to some type of planetary remnant.” 

To get a better idea of the properties of this unusual star, named WDJ0914+1914, the team analysed it with the X-shooter instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope in the Chilean Atacama Desert. These follow-up observations confirmed the presence of hydrogen, oxygen and sulphur associated with the white dwarf. By studying the fine details in the spectra taken by ESO’s X-shooter, the team discovered that these elements were in a disc of gas swirling into the white dwarf, and not coming from the star itself.

“It took a few weeks of very hard thinking to figure out that the only way to make such a disc is the evaporation of a giant planet,”

says Matthias Schreiber from the University of Valparaiso in Chile, who computed the past and future evolution of this system.

The detected amounts of hydrogen, oxygen and sulphur are similar to those found in the deep atmospheric layers of icy, giant planets like Neptune and Uranus. If such a planet were orbiting close to a hot white dwarf, the extreme ultraviolet radiation from the star would strip away its outer layers and some of this stripped gas would swirl into a disc, itself accreting onto the white dwarf. This is what scientists think they are seeing around WDJ0914+1914: the first evaporating planet orbiting a white dwarf.

Combining observational data with theoretical models, the team of astronomers from the UK, Chile and Germany were able to paint a clearer image of this unique system. The white dwarf is small and, at a blistering 28 000 degrees Celsius (five times the Sun’s temperature), extremely hot. By contrast, the planet is icy and large—at least twice as large as the star. Since it orbits the hot white dwarf at close range, making its way around it in just 10 days, the high-energy photons from the star are gradually blowing away the planet’s atmosphere. Most of the gas escapes, but some is pulled into a disc swirling into the star at a rate of 3000 tonnes per second. It is this disc that makes the otherwise hidden Neptune-like planet visible.

“This is the first time we can measure the amounts of gases like oxygen and sulphur in the disc, which provides clues to the composition of exoplanet atmospheres,”

says Odette Toloza from the University of Warwick, who developed a model for the disc of gas surrounding the white dwarf.

“The discovery also opens up a new window into the final fate of planetary systems,”

adds Gänsicke.

Stars like our Sun burn hydrogen in their cores for most of their lives. Once they run out of this fuel, they puff up into red giants, becoming hundreds of times larger and engulfing nearby planets. In the case of the Solar System, this will include Mercury, Venus, and even Earth, which will all be consumed by the red-giant Sun in about 5 billion years. Eventually, Sun-like stars lose their outer layers, leaving behind only a burnt-out core, a white dwarf. Such stellar remnants can still host planets, and many of these star systems are thought to exist in our galaxy. However, until now, scientists had never found evidence of a surviving giant planet around a white dwarf. The detection of an exoplanet in orbit around WDJ0914+1914, located about 1500 light years away in the constellation of Cancer, may be the first of many orbiting such stars.

According to the researchers, the exoplanet now found with the help of ESO’s X-shooter orbits the white dwarf at a distance of only 10 million kilometres, or 15 times the solar radius, which would have been deep inside the red giant. The unusual position of the planet implies that at some point after the host star became a white dwarf, the planet moved closer to it. The astronomers believe that this new orbit could be the result of gravitational interactions with other planets in the system, meaning that more than one planet may have survived its host star’s violent transition.

“Until recently, very few astronomers paused to ponder the fate of planets orbiting dying stars. This discovery of a planet orbiting closely around a burnt-out stellar core forcefully demonstrates that the Universe is time and again challenging our minds to step beyond our established ideas,”

concludes Gänsicke.

This chart shows the location of WDJ0914+1914 in the constellation of Cancer (The Crab). This map shows most of the stars visible to the unaided eye under good conditions, and WDJ0914+1914 itself is highlighted with a red circle on the image. This white dwarf is orbited by a Neptune-like exoplanet that is evaporating, the first ever giant planet found around a white dwarf.

Links

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Fire in the Sky:
Cosmic Collisions, Killer Asteroids, and
the Race to Defend Earth

Astronomy

Videos: Night sky highlights for December 2019

** What’s Up: December 2019 – Skywatching Tips from NASA JPL

What can you see in the December sky? Beautiful pairings of planets and the crescent Moon throughout the month, at sunrise and sunset. Here’s where and when to look to see Venus, Saturn and Mars. Additional information about topics covered in this episode of What’s Up, along with still images from the video, and the video transcript, are available at https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/whats-up… . Credit: NASA-JPL/Caltech

** Tonight’s Sky: December 2019 – Space Telescope Science Institute

Step outside on a cold December night when the stars shine bright to find the Big Dipper, Cassiopeia, and Cepheus. They will help you locate a binary star system, a fan-shaped open star cluster, and a variable star. Stay tuned for space-based views of a ragged spiral galaxy, an open star cluster, and an edge-on galaxy.

** What’s in the Night Sky December 2019 – Alyn Wallace

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Cosmic Collisions, Killer Asteroids, and
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Astronomy, Solar Science, Space Science

Space sciences roundup – Nov.6.2019

A sampling of recent articles, videos, and images from space-related science news items (find previous roundups here):

Exoplanets

** TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) has found 29 exoplanets so far in a survey of southern sky: NASA’s TESS Presents Panorama of Southern Sky | NASA

… Constructed from 208 TESS images taken during the mission’s first year of science operations, completed on July 18, the southern panorama reveals both the beauty of the cosmic landscape and the reach of TESS’s cameras.

“Analysis of TESS data focuses on individual stars and planets one at a time, but I wanted to step back and highlight everything at once, really emphasizing the spectacular view TESS gives us of the entire sky,” said Ethan Kruse, a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow who assembled the mosaic at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Within this scene, TESS has discovered 29 exoplanets, or worlds beyond our solar system, and more than 1,000 candidate planets astronomers are now investigating.

TESS divided the southern sky into 13 sectors and imaged each one of them for nearly a month using four cameras, which carry a total of 16 charge-coupled devices (CCDs). Remarkably, the TESS cameras capture a full sector of the sky every 30 minutes as part of its search for exoplanet transits. Transits occur when a planet passes in front of its host star from our perspective, briefly and regularly dimming its light. During the satellite’s first year of operations, each of its CCDs captured 15,347 30-minute science images. These images are just a part of more than 20 terabytes of southern sky data TESS has returned, comparable to streaming nearly 6,000 high-definition movies.

Solar system

** “Encounter with Ultima Thule: The Most Distant Object Humanity Has Ever Explored”

After encountering Pluto, the New Horizons spacecraft, for the first time flew by a member of the Kuiper Belt of icy objects beyond Neptune. This particular object, informally named “Ultimate Thule” (meaning the farthest place beyond the known world,) turned out to be a “contact binary” – two smaller icy worlds stuck together. Dr. Moore shares an insider’s view (with great images) of how the mission got there and what we learned at Ultima Thule.

Asteroids

** “ESO Telescope Reveals What Could be the Smallest Dwarf Planet Yet in the Solar System” | ESO

Astronomers using ESO’s SPHERE instrument at the Very Large Telescope (VLT) have revealed that the asteroid Hygiea could be classified as a dwarf planet. The object is the fourth largest in the asteroid belt after Ceres, Vesta and Pallas. For the first time, astronomers have observed Hygiea in sufficiently high resolution to study its surface and determine its shape and size. They found that Hygiea is spherical, potentially taking the crown from Ceres as the smallest dwarf planet in the Solar System.

As an object in the main asteroid belt, Hygiea satisfies right away three of the four requirements to be classified as a dwarf planet: it orbits around the Sun, it is not a moon and, unlike a planet, it has not cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit. The final requirement is that it has enough mass for its own gravity to pull it into a roughly spherical shape. This is what VLT observations have now revealed about Hygiea.

“A new SPHERE/VLT image of Hygiea, which could be the Solar System’s smallest dwarf planet yet. As an object in the main asteroid belt, Hygiea satisfies right away three of the four requirements to be classified as a dwarf planet: it orbits around the Sun, it is not a moon and, unlike a planet, it has not cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit. The final requirement is that it have enough mass that its own gravity pulls it into a roughly spherical shape. This is what VLT observations have now revealed about Hygiea.” – ESO

The making of a dwarf planet:

Computational simulation of the fragmentation and reassembly that led to the formation of Hygiea and its family of asteroids, following an impact with a large object. While changes in the shape of Hygiea occur after the impact, the dwarf-planet candidate eventually acquires a round shape.

** The story of Professor Amy Mainzer  and the NEOCam space asteroid observatory:  One scientist’s 15-year (and counting) quest to save Earth from asteroid impacts – The Space Review

NEOCam is a 50-centimeter telescope that will discover and characterize a large fraction of the asteroids and comets in the inner part of the solar system. It was supported based on its fundamental science, but the data that it will produce also serves planetary defense, which can be considered applied science. NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine has been called “passionate” about planetary defense and the American public agrees: in a recent AP-NORC poll of US priorities in space, monitoring asteroids was considered top priority by 68 percent of those polled, higher than any other category (59 percent prioritized scientific research and exploration; 23 percent and 27 percent prioritized human exploration of the Moon and Mars, respectively; and 19 percent prioritized a US military presence in space.) Imagine how much any presidential candidate would like to poll at 68 percent!

Sun

** The sun remains nearly spotless: Sunspot update October 2019: Sunspot activity continues to flatline | Behind The Black

Even though the previous 2008-2009 solar minimum was one of the deepest and longest ever recorded, the lack of sunspots in the past five months has significantly beaten it for inactivity, as shown on the first graph above. That previous minimum never had a period of even two months with so few sunspots. Furthermore, the Sun has now been blank 74% of the time in 2019, a record of blankness that beats the yearly record of either 2008 or 2009. If the Sun continues to be as blank as it has been for the next two months, 2019 will easily set the record for the year with the fewest sunspots ever recorded.

The big question remains: Are we heading for a grand minimum with no sunspots for decades? We still do not know. Even these unprecedented trends prove nothing, as we really do not yet have a clear understanding of why the Sun undergoes these various cycles of sunspot activity/inactivity. The Sun could still come back to life in the coming years. We can only wait and see.

Astronomy

** The captivating beauty of a galactic smashup: Hubble Captures Cosmic Face | ESA/Hubble

“This new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captures two galaxies of equal size in a collision that appears to resemble a ghostly face. This observation was made on 19 June 2019 in visible light by the telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys. Residing 704 million light-years from Earth, this system is catalogued as Arp-Madore 2026-424 (AM 2026-424) in the Arp-Madore “Catalogue of Southern Peculiar Galaxies and Associations”.” – ESA/Hubble

Although galaxy collisions are common — especially in the early universe — most are not head-on impacts like the collision that likely created this Arp-Madore system 704 million light-years from Earth. This violent encounter gives the system an arresting ring structure, but only for a short amount of time. The crash has pulled and stretched the galaxies’ discs of gas, dust, and stars outward, forming the ring of intense star formation that shapes the “nose” and “face” features of the system.

Ring galaxies are rare, and only a few hundred of them reside in our larger cosmic neighbourhood. The galaxies have to collide at just the right orientation so that they interact to create the ring, and before long they will have merged completely, hiding their messy past.

** Heavy element production seen at site of a neutron star collision that was spotted with gravitational wave detection: First identification of a heavy element born from neutron star collision | ESO

For the first time, a freshly made heavy element, strontium, has been detected in space, in the aftermath of a merger of two neutron stars. This finding was observed by ESO’s X-shooter spectrograph on the Very Large Telescope (VLT) and is published today in Nature. The detection confirms that the heavier elements in the Universe can form in neutron star mergers, providing a missing piece of the puzzle of chemical element formation.

In 2017, following the detection of gravitational waves passing the Earth, ESO pointed its telescopes in Chile, including the VLT, to the source: a neutron star merger named GW170817. Astronomers suspected that, if heavier elements did form in neutron star collisions, signatures of those elements could be detected in kilonovae, the explosive aftermaths of these mergers. This is what a team of European researchers has now done, using data from the X-shooter instrument on ESO’s VLT.

The Moon

** China’s lunar far-side exploration mission continues. Both the Yutu-2 rover and Chang’e-4 lander are demonstrating impressive resilience after multiple exposures to the deep cold of the 2 week long lunar nights. (Each uses a radioisotope heater unit to stay warm.) China’s lunar rover travels over 300 meters on moon’s far side – Xinhua

China’s lunar rover Yutu-2 has driven 318.62 meters on the far side of the moon to conduct scientific exploration of the virgin territory.

Both the lander and the rover of the Chang’e-4 probe have ended their work for the 11th lunar day, and switched to dormant mode for the lunar night on Monday (Beijing time), according to the Lunar Exploration and Space Program Center of the China National Space Administration.

The rover is now located 218.11 meters northwest of the lander.

…

The scientific tasks of the Chang’e-4 mission include conducting low-frequency radio astronomical observation, surveying the terrain and landforms, detecting the mineral composition and shallow lunar surface structure and measuring neutron radiation and neutral atoms.

** India’s Chandrayaan-2 orbiter starting to produce data from the 8 instruments aboard the spacecraft. The first findings include the detection of Argon-40 in the tenuous lunar atmosphere using a mass spectrometer and images with the Dual-Frequency Synthetic Aperture Radar (DF-SAR) that highlight the structures of image craters.

An initial image of the lunar surface from the Dual-Frequency Synthetic Aperture Radar (DF-SAR) on Chandrayaan-2. Credits: ISRO

More about the orbiter:

** The LROC imager on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captures dramatic views of the Bhabha crater,  which lies within the South Pole–Aitken (SPA) basin on the Moon’s farside: Dawn Over Bhabha Crater | Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera

“Central peak complex of Bhabha crater (70 kilometer diameter) rising from the shadows of dawn, image snapped on 28 August 2019 from an altitude of 73 kiolmeters. View is seen from east-to-the west, north is to the right, visible portion of central peak complex is about 14 kilometers wide, NAC M1321101374LR [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].”
Suborbital space sciences

** Research on reusable suborbital rocket vehicles will be the focus of the 2020 Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference (NSRC) in Broomfield, Colorado, March 2-4, 2020: Southwest Research Institute, Commercial Spaceflight Federation announce suborbital space researchers, educators conference – SwRI

The conference will provide an in-depth forum for attendees to learn more about funding and conducting research and public outreach aboard new commercial suborbital spaceflight systems — fortuitous byproducts of space tourism. Representatives from NASA, the Federal Aviation Administration, spaceports, and commercial suborbital and orbital vehicle operators will attend.

“A new era of routine access to suborbital space for researchers and educators is fast approaching,” said SwRI Associate Vice President Dr. Alan Stern, the NSRC program chair. “The 2020 conference will explore the many revolutionary ways this will affect space research and education.”

Organized by SwRI and the Commercial Spaceflight Federation (CSF), NSRC-2020 will feature dozens of keynote and invited presentations, panel discussions, workshops, aerospace tours, presentations, posters and networking opportunities.

“As a growing number of commercial space companies provide low-cost and frequent access to suborbital space for humans and research payloads, 2020 is the time to fully utilize this game-changing capability,” added Eric Stallmer, president of CSF. “NSRC-2020 will be the epicenter for researchers, educators, companies, students and entrepreneurs to connect and take part in this new era.”

NSRC is the premier conference for the suborbital space research and education community. The 2020 conference follows six previous, highly successful meetings since 2010. The program, sponsors, registration, logistics and other conference details are available at http://nsrc.swri.org.

Mars

** Insight‘s heat probe digger dug again and appeared to be doing well by getting traction from pressure put on its side by Insight’s robotic arm: Mole Digging on Mars: Breakthrough! – Leonard David – Oct.24.2019

“We have made important progress in our attempts to get the mole digging again…in fact, we got it digging again!”

That’s the word from Tilman Spohn of the German Aerospace Center’s (DLR) Institute of Planetary Research in Berlin. He’s the experiment leader on the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3), the self-hammering “mole” designed to dig down as much as 16 feet (5 meters) and take Mars’ temperature.

“This GIF shows NASA InSight’s heat probe, or “mole,” digging about a centimeter (half an inch) below the surface last week. Using a technique called “pinning,” InSight recently pressed against the mole using a scoop on its robotic arm to help the self-hammering heat probe dig so that it can “take the temperature” of Mars.” Credits: NASA JPL

but then it went into reverse:

NASA/JPL:

After making progress over the past several weeks digging into the surface of Mars, InSight’s mole has backed about halfway out of its hole this past weekend. Preliminary assessments point to unusual soil conditions on the Red Planet. The international mission team is developing the next steps to get it buried again.

A scoop on the end of the arm has been used in recent weeks to “pin” the mole against the wall of its hole, providing friction it needs to dig. The next step is determining how safe it is to move InSight’s robotic arm away from the mole to better assess the situation. The team continues to look at the data and will formulate a plan in the next few days.

“In this image from Oct. 26, 2019 — the 325th Martian day, or sol, of the mission — InSight’s heat probe, or “mole,” is seen after backing about halfway out of the hole it had burrowed.” Credits: NASA, JPL

** Latest on Curiosity’s travels:

“NASA’s Curiosity rover took this selfie on Oct. 11, 2019, the 2,553rd Martian day, or sol, of its mission. The rover drilled twice in this location, which is nicknamed “Glen Etive.” Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS“

** Glacier movements over the eons create striking structures at Euripus Mons: Ancient glacier flows on Mars | Behind The Black

You can see that this large apron is the result of repeated flows down from the mountain, with each new flow not quite traveling as far, creating a terraced slope extending many miles.

Euripus Mons glacier. HiRISE image cropped by Bob Zimmerman

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Astronomy, Education

Videos: Night sky highlights for November 2019

[ Update: “What’s Up” for November 2019 from NASA JPL:

Highlights of the November sky include how to watch as Mercury transits the Sun on Nov. 11, plus how to observe the regular dimming and brightening of the “Demon star,” Algol, with your own eyes. Additional information, along with still images from the video, and the video transcript, are available at https://go.nasa.gov/34hp376 . Algol animation is licensed as CC-BY-SA 3.0. Video credit NASA-JPL/Caltech.

]

** “Tonight’s Sky” for the coming month courtesy the Space Telescope Science Institute:

In November, hunt for the fainter constellations of fall, including Pisces, Aries, and Triangulum. They will guide you to find several galaxies and a pair of white stars. Stay tuned for space-based views of spiral galaxy M74 and the Triangulum Galaxy, which are shown in visible, infrared, and ultraviolet light.

** What’s in the Night Sky November 2019 – Alyn Wallace

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