Here’s an article about the Space Project album mentioned here earlier: The Sounds of Space, in Indie Music – Science Friday
And here are two of the songs on the album:
Webcasts: NASA LADEE, JP Aerospace, Virgin Galactic, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and more
Here’s sampling of recent space audio webcasts of interest:
* John Batchelor Hotel Mars, Wednesday, 4-16-14 | Thespaceshow’s Blog –
Dr. Haym Benaroya from Rutgers University […] discussed the NASA LADEE mission, lunar dust issues, the lunar surface, the importance our astronauts returning to the Moon and the Lunar Dust Experiment which so far has proven to be inconclusive regarding the questions it was to solve. Dr. Benaroya went over the toxic and corrosive nature of lunar dust to both humans and equipment, had similar things to say about Martian dust, and talked about how important it is for us to go back to the Moon.
* John Powell, Tuesday, 4-15-14 | Thespaceshow’s Blog
John Powell of JP Aerospace gave an update on their airship programs, PongSats, Airship to Orbit (ATO) project, and more.
* Planetary Radio Live at Yuri’s Night—Under Space Shuttle Endeavour | The Planetary Society
We’re back at the California Science Center, final home of Endeavour, the shuttle that made 25 flights into space. Join the party as we celebrate the 53rd anniversary of humanity’s transition to spacefaring species with Yuri’s Night Executive Director Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides, Virgin Galactic CEO and Yuri’s Night co-founder George Whitesides, and astronaut Ron Garan, who heads Fragile Oasis. You’ll also get a Curiosity update from Emily Lakdawalla, and we’ll find out what happened this week in space history with Bruce Betts.
* Cosmic Queries: A Stellar Sampling | StarTalk Radio Show by Neil deGrasse Tyson
This episode is bursting with conspiracy theories and strange hypotheses, but that doesn’t stop your own personal astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson from dropping some serious science. You’ll learn why the government isn’t secretly using HAARP to manipulate weather and why we shouldn’t dispose of pollution in our atmosphere. Find out where black holes go when they die, why there is no speed of dark, what would happen to the planets if we moved the Sun, the difference between black holes and white holes, and whether we could use quantum teleportation to explore inside a black hole. Neil also explains atmosphere, air pressure and vacuums, why hot air rises but air is colder at higher altitudes, and why time passes differently on Jupiter than on Earth. Plus, he tells comic co-host Eugene Mirman how to use physics to communicate with a 3-meter tall alien “gummy bear.”
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Find more space radio programs in the HobbySpace SpaceCasts section.
Hubble image captures galaxies near and far and in-between
A report from ESA/Hubble:
A cross-section of the Universe
An image of a galaxy cluster taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope gives a remarkable cross-section of the Universe, showing objects at different distances and stages in cosmic history. They range from cosmic near neighbours to objects seen in the early years of the Universe. The 14-hour exposure shows objects around a billion times fainter than can be seen with the naked eye.
This new Hubble image showcases a remarkable variety of objects at different distances from us, extending back over halfway to the edge of the observable Universe. The galaxies in this image mostly lie about five billion light-years from Earth but the field also contains other objects, both significantly closer and far more distant.
Studies of this region of the sky have shown that many of the objects that appear to lie close together may actually be billions of light-years apart. This is because several groups of galaxies lie along our line of sight, creating something of an optical illusion. Hubble’s cross-section of the Universe is completed by distorted images of galaxies in the very distant background.
These objects are sometimes distorted due to a process called gravitational lensing, an extremely valuable technique in astronomy for studying very distant objects [1]. This lensing is caused by the bending of the space-time continuum by massive galaxies lying close to our line of sight to distant objects.
One of the lens systems visible here is called CLASS B1608+656, which appears as a small loop in the centre of the image. It features two foreground galaxies distorting and amplifying the light of a distant quasar the known as QSO-160913+653228. The light from this bright disc of matter, which is currently falling into a black hole, has taken nine billion years to reach us — two thirds of the age of the Universe.
As well as CLASS B1608+656, astronomers have identified two other gravitational lenses within this image. Two galaxies, dubbed Fred and Ginger by the researchers who studied them, contain enough mass to visibly distort the light from objects behind them. Fred, also known more prosaically as [FMK2006] ACS J160919+6532, lies near the lens galaxies in CLASS B1608+656, while Ginger ([FMK2006] ACS J160910+6532) is markedly closer to us. Despite their different distances from us, both can be seen near to CLASS B1608+656 in the central region of this Hubble image.
To capture distant and dim objects like these, Hubble required a long exposure. The image is made up of visible and infrared observations with a total exposure time of 14 hours.
Zoom in on CLASS B1608+656
This video begins with a view of the night sky before zooming in towards galaxy
cluster CLASS B1608+656. It homes in first on a view of the area around the
cluster from the Digitized Sky Survey (produced with a ground-based
telescope), before focusingon Hubble observations of the cluster.
Hubble’s very long exposure (14 hours) combined with advanced
instrumentation and a unique location above the distorting atmosphere
means that its observations are both much sharper and much brighter than
those taken from the ground-based telescope. Hubble’s image is clearly
visible as a square of brighter galaxies near the end of the zoom video.
Credit: NASA, ESA, Digitised Sky Survey 2, N. Risinger (skysurvey.org)
Space policy roundup – April.16.14 [Update]
A critique of recent bombast in Congressional hearings : Editorial | A Feckless Blame Game on ISS Crew Access – SpaceNews.com
Those who bemoan NASA’s reliance on Russia, yet shortchange the very program designed to fix that problem, are at the same time adamant that the agency spend nearly $3 billion per year on SLS and Orion, vehicles that for all their advertised capability still have no place to go. Their size and cost make them poorly suited for space station missions, even as a backup to commercial crew taxis, and in any case the first SLS-Orion crewed test flight won’t happen before 2021.
NASA currently lacks an independent crew launching capability because of decisions made a decade ago, the consequences of which were fully understood and accepted at the time. The longer this situation lasts, however, the more culpable the current group of decision-makers will become.
In that vein, the current criticisms of NASA and the White House might be viewed as a pre-emptive strike by lawmakers who sense their own culpability. But in pressing arguments that fail to stand up to even modest scrutiny, they not only undermine their credibility, they give NASA cover to pursue a Commercial Crew Program approach that might not be sustainable.
If restoring independent U.S. access to station is as important as the administration’s congressional detractors say, they should fully fund the Commercial Crew Program, even if that means slowing development work on SLS and Orion, while ratcheting up the pressure on NASA to select a single provider. Only then can Congress truly say it has done its part to resolve the matter.
More space policy/politics related links:
- NASA budget:
- General policy:
- Defense space:
- Earth observation policy:
Update:
Webcasts:
* Tues 4/15/14 Hr 4 | John Batchelor Show – Bob Zimmermans twice-weekly report on space news and policy
ESO: A study in scarlet
This week’s European Southern Observatory (ESO) scientific highlight:
This new image from ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile reveals a cloud of hydrogen called Gum 41. In the middle of this little-known nebula, brilliant hot young stars are giving off energetic radiation that causes the surrounding hydrogen to glow with a characteristic red hue.
This area of the southern sky, in the constellation of Centaurus (The Centaur), is home to many bright nebulae, each associated with hot newborn stars that formed out of the clouds of hydrogen gas. The intense radiation from the stellar newborns excites the remaining hydrogen around them, making the gas glow in the distinctive shade of red typical of star-forming regions. Another famous example of this phenomenon is the Lagoon Nebula (eso0936), a vast cloud that glows in similar bright shades of scarlet.
The nebula in this picture is located some 7300 light-years from Earth. Australian astronomer Colin Gum discovered it on photographs taken at the Mount Stromlo Observatory near Canberra, and included it in his catalogue of 84 emission nebulae, published in 1955. Gum 41 is actually one small part of a bigger structure called the Lambda Centauri Nebula, also known by the more exotic name of the Running Chicken Nebula (another part of which was the topic of eso1135). Gum died at a tragically early age in a skiing accident in Switzerland in 1960.
In this picture of Gum 41, the clouds appear to be quite thick and bright, but this is actually misleading. If a hypothetical human space traveller could pass through this nebula, it is likely that they would not notice it as — even at close quarters — it would be too faint for the human eye to see. This helps to explain why this large object had to wait until the mid-twentieth century to be discovered — its light is spread very thinly and the red glow cannot be well seen visually.
This zoom sequence starts with a broad view of the Milky Way
and closes in on one of the more spectacular sections in the constellation
of Centaurus (The Centaur). In the final sequence we see the star formation
region known as Gum 41 in a new image from the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope
at the La Silla Observatory in Chile.
Credit:ESO/N. Risinger (skysurvey.org)/Hisayoshi Kato. Music: movetwo
This new portrait of Gum 41 — likely one of the best so far of this elusive object — has been created using data from the Wide Field Imager (WFI) on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile. It is a combination of images taken through blue, green, and red filters, along with an image using a special filter designed to pick out the red glow from hydrogen.
More information
ESO is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the world’s most productive ground-based astronomical observatory by far. It is supported by 15 countries: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in promoting and organising cooperation in astronomical research. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope, the world’s most advanced visible-light astronomical observatory and two survey telescopes. VISTA works in the infrared and is the world’s largest survey telescope and the VLT Survey Telescope is the largest telescope designed to exclusively survey the skies in visible light. ESO is the European partner of a revolutionary astronomical telescope ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. ESO is currently planning the 39-metre European Extremely Large optical/near-infrared Telescope, the E-ELT, which will become “the world’s biggest eye on the sky”.