NGC 3372, Dusty Carina 

“To myself I am only a child playing on the beach, while vast oceans of truth lie undiscovered before me.”

— Isaac Newton

❤️

Female Physicist’s moodboard <3

Melotte 15, Inside the Heart

I love this! Our SPS club is building a memorial to Cassini, and it should be finished and installed by March!

Ultra-Close Orbits of Saturn = Ultra-Cool Science

On Sept. 15, 2017, our Cassini spacecraft ended its epic exploration of Saturn with a planned dive into the planet’s atmosphere–sending back new science to the very last second. The spacecraft is gone, but the science continues!

New research emerging from the final orbits represents a huge leap forward in our understanding of the Saturn system – especially the mysterious, never-before-explored region between the planet and its rings. Some preconceived ideas are turning out to be wrong while new questions are being raised. How did they form? What holds them in place? What are they made of?

Six teams of researchers are publishing their work Oct. 5 in the journal Science, based on findings from Cassini’s Grand Finale. That’s when, as the spacecraft was running out of fuel, the mission team steered Cassini spectacularly close to Saturn in 22 orbits before deliberately vaporizing it in a final plunge into the atmosphere in September 2017.

Knowing Cassini’s days were numbered, its mission team went for gold. The spacecraft flew where it was never designed to fly. For the first time, it probed Saturn’s magnetized environment, flew through icy, rocky ring particles and sniffed the atmosphere in the 1,200-mile-wide (2,000-kilometer-wide) gap between the rings and the cloud tops. Not only did the engineering push the spacecraft to its limits, the new findings illustrate how powerful and agile the instruments were.

Many more Grand Finale science results are to come, but today’s highlights include:

Complex organic compounds embedded in water nanograins rain down from Saturn’s rings into its upper atmosphere. Scientists saw water and silicates, but they were surprised to see also methane, ammonia, carbon monoxide, nitrogen and carbon dioxide. The composition of organics is different from that found on moon Enceladus – and also different from those on moon Titan, meaning there are at least three distinct reservoirs of organic molecules in the Saturn system.

For the first time, Cassini saw up close how rings interact with the planet and observed inner-ring particles and gases falling directly into the atmosphere. Some particles take on electric charges and spiral along magnetic-field lines, falling into Saturn at higher latitudes – a phenomenon known as “ring rain.” But scientists were surprised to see that others are dragged quickly into Saturn at the equator. And it’s all falling out of the rings faster than scientists thought – as much as 10,000 kg of material per second.

Scientists were surprised to see what the material looks like in the gap between the rings and Saturn’s atmosphere. They knew that the particles throughout the rings ranged from large to small. They thought material in the gap would look the same. But the sampling showed mostly tiny, nanograin- and micron-sized particles, like smoke, telling us that some yet-unknown process is grinding up particles. What could it be? Future research into the final bits of data sent by Cassini may hold the answer.

Saturn and its rings are even more interconnected than scientists thought. Cassini revealed a previously unknown electric current system that connects the rings to the top of Saturn’s atmosphere.

Scientists discovered a new radiation belt around Saturn, close to the planet and composed of energetic particles. They found that while the belt actually intersects with the innermost ring, the ring is so tenuous that it doesn’t block the belt from forming.

Unlike every other planet with a magnetic field in our Solar System, Saturn’s magnetic field is almost completely aligned with its spin axis. Think of the planet and the magnetic field as completely separate things that are both spinning. Both have the same center point, but they each have their own axis about which they spin. But for Saturn the two axes are essentially the same – no other planet does that, and we did not think it was even possible for this to happen. This new data shows a magnetic-field tilt of less than 0.0095 degrees. (Earth’s magnetic field is tilted 11 degrees from its spin axis.) According to everything scientists know about how planetary magnetic fields are generated, Saturn should not have one. It’s a mystery physicists will be working to solve.

Cassini flew above Saturn’s magnetic poles, directly sampling regions where radio emissions are generated. The findings more than doubled the number of reported crossings of radio sources from the planet, one of the few non-terrestrial locations where scientists have been able to study a mechanism believed to operate throughout the universe. How are these signals generated? That’s still a mystery researchers are looking to uncover.

For the Cassini mission, the science rolling out from Grand Finale orbits confirms that the calculated risk of diving into the gap – skimming the upper atmosphere and skirting the edge of the inner rings – was worthwhile.

Almost everything going on in that region turned out to be a surprise, which was the importance of going there, to explore a place we’d never been before. And the expedition really paid off!

Analysis of Cassini data from the spacecraft’s instruments will be ongoing for years to come, helping to paint a clearer picture of Saturn.

To read the papers published in Science, visit: URL to papers

To learn more about the ground-breaking Cassini mission and its 13 years at Saturn, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/main/index.html

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

Comet Lovejoy and The Pleiades

Comet McNaught next to the dome of the NTT on La Silla. The picture was taken in January 2007.

Credit: ESO/H.H.Heyer

NASA’s Fermi Traces Source of Cosmic Neutrino to Monster Black Hole

NASA - Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope logo. July 12, 2018 For the first time ever, scientists using NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have found the source of a high-energy neutrino from outside our galaxy. This neutrino traveled 3.7 billion years at almost the speed of light before being detected on Earth. This is farther than any other neutrino whose origin scientists can identify. High-energy neutrinos are hard-to-catch particles that scientists think are created by the most powerful events in the cosmos, such as galaxy mergers and material falling onto supermassive black holes. They travel at speeds just shy of the speed of light and rarely interact with other matter, allowing them to travel unimpeded across distances of billions of light-years.

Image above: NASA’s Fermi (top left) has achieved a new first—identifying a monster black hole in a far-off galaxy as the source of a high-energy neutrino seen by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory (sensor strings, bottom). Image Credits: NASA/Fermi and Aurore Simonnet, Sonoma State University. The neutrino was discovered by an international team of scientists using the National Science Foundation’s IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station. Fermi found the source of the neutrino by tracing its path back to a blast of gamma-ray light from a distant supermassive black hole in the constellation Orion. “Again, Fermi has helped make another giant leap in a growing field we call multimessenger astronomy,” said Paul Hertz, director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Neutrinos and gravitational waves deliver new kinds of information about the most extreme environments in the universe. But to best understand what they’re telling us, we need to connect them to the ‘messenger’ astronomers know best—light.” Scientists study neutrinos, as well as cosmic rays and gamma rays, to understand what is going on in turbulent cosmic environments such as supernovas, black holes and stars. Neutrinos show the complex processes that occur inside the environment, and cosmic rays show the force and speed of violent activity. But, scientists rely on gamma rays, the most energetic form of light, to brightly flag what cosmic source is producing these neutrinos and cosmic rays. “The most extreme cosmic explosions produce gravitational waves, and the most extreme cosmic accelerators produce high-energy neutrinos and cosmic rays,” says Regina Caputo of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, the analysis coordinator for the Fermi Large Area Telescope Collaboration. “Through Fermi, gamma rays are providing a bridge to each of these new cosmic signals.” The discovery is the subject of two papers published Thursday in the journal Science. The source identification paper also includes important follow-up observations by the Major Atmospheric Gamma Imaging Cherenkov Telescopes and additional data from NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and many other facilities.

Image above: The discovery of a high-energy neutrino on September 22, 2017, sent astronomers on a chase to locate its source—a supermassive black hole in a distant galaxy. Image Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. On Sept. 22, 2017, scientists using IceCube detected signs of a neutrino striking the Antarctic ice with energy of about 300 trillion electron volts—more than 45 times the energy achievable in the most powerful particle accelerator on Earth. This high energy strongly suggested that the neutrino had to be from beyond our solar system. Backtracking the path through IceCube indicated where in the sky the neutrino came from, and automated alerts notified astronomers around the globe to search this region for flares or outbursts that could be associated with the event. Data from Fermi’s Large Area Telescope revealed enhanced gamma-ray emission from a well-known active galaxy at the time the neutrino arrived. This is a type of active galaxy called a blazar, with a supermassive black hole with millions to billions of times the Sun’s mass that blasts jets of particles outward in opposite directions at nearly the speed of light. Blazars are especially bright and active because one of these jets happens to point almost directly toward Earth.

Image above: Fermi-detected gamma rays from TXS 0506+056 are shown as expanding circles. Their maximum size, color—from white (low) to magenta (high)—and associated tone indicate the energy of each ray. Image Credits: NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collab. Fermi scientist Yasuyuki Tanaka at Hiroshima University in Japan was the first to associate the neutrino event with the blazar designated TXS 0506+056 (TXS 0506 for short). “Fermi’s LAT monitors the entire sky in gamma rays and keeps tabs on the activity of some 2,000 blazars, yet TXS 0506 really stood out,” said Sara Buson, a NASA Postdoctoral Fellow at Goddard who performed the data analysis with Anna Franckowiak, a scientist at the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron research center in Zeuthen, Germany. “This blazar is located near the center of the sky position determined by IceCube and, at the time of the neutrino detection, was the most active Fermi had seen it in a decade.”

Visualizing Gamma Rays From Blazar TXS 0506+056

Video above: Fermi-detected gamma rays from TXS 0506+056 are shown as expanding circles. Their maximum size, color—from white (low) to magenta (high)—and associated tone indicate the energy of each ray. The first sequence shows typical emission; the second shows the 2017 flare leading to the neutrino detection. Video Credits: NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collab., Matt Russo and Andrew Santaguida/SYSTEM Sounds. NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership, developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy and with important contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden and the United States. The NASA Postdoctoral Fellow program is administered by Universities Space Research Association under contract with NASA. For more about NASA’s Fermi mission, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/fermi Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/main/index.html Related links: The source identification paper: http://science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi/10.1126/science.aat1378 Major Atmospheric Gamma Imaging Cherenkov Telescopes: https://magic.mpp.mpg.de/ NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/swift/main Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron: http://www.desy.de/index_eng.html Images (mentioned), Video (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Felicia Chou/Sean Potter/GSFC/Dewayne Washington. Greetings, Orbiter.ch Full article

And that’s when Earth made dolphins. LOL.

‘That was a quick flight’: How astronauts kept ice cool while their rocket malfunctioned at 4,970mph and plummeted back to Earth in harrowing 7G 'ballistic re-entry’ before hugging their loved-ones on the landing pad as Russia opens CRIMINAL probe.

Two astronauts kept ice cool as their rocket traveling at thousands of miles an hour malfunctioned on the edge of space while carrying them to the International Space Station, cockpit audio reveals.

Russian Aleksey Ovchinin and American Nick Hague made it back to Earth alive this morning after the booster on their Soyuz rocket broke at 164,000 feet and the rocket automatically turned back during a dramatic 7G 'ballistic re-entry’.

Ovchinin retained an enviable sang-froid as he realised what was happening, after they were rocked violently around in their seats by the force of the booster malfunction.

'An accident with the booster, 2 minutes, 45 seconds. That was a quick flight,’ he said in a calm voice in a streamed video of the incident.  

'We’re tightening our seatbelts,’ Ovchinin said on the video.

At that moment the two astronauts were experiencing weightlessness, when in an ordinary launch they should still have been pinned to the back of their seats by the force of the rocket surging upwards at 4,970mph.  

Russia says it has opened a criminal investigation and grounded all Soyuz flights. The accident comes weeks after a hole was discovered in the International Space Station amid talk from the Russian space authorities of deliberate sabotage.  

Video footage from the launch at the Baikonur Cosmodrome shows a large plume of smoke coming from the rocket at the moment it failed and footage from inside the capsule shows the two astronauts being violently shaken about.

The accident bears similarities to the 1986 Challenger disaster when one of its boosters failed at lift-off causing an explosion that killed seven.

Astronauts have been involved in Soyuz malfunctions twice before, one in 1983 when a crew was forced to eject from a Soyuz rocket as it exploded on the launchpad. In 1975 a Soyuz capsule crashed back to Earth from 90 miles up after a rocket failure, but the crew survived.

The rocket, which was designed in the 1960s, has also had one booster fail in similar fashion to today’s malfunction. In 2002 a booster rocket malfunctioned and the rocket which was carrying a satellite crashed in Kazakhstan killing one person on the ground.

In total Soyuz rockets have been launched 745 times of which 21 have failed. Thirteen of those failures have been since 2010, calling into question the continued reliability of the rocket.

Search and rescue teams were scrambled to the touchdown location as NASA revealed the descent meant the Russian-built Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft had to take 'a sharper angle of landing compared to normal’.

The Russians have suspended Soyuz flights to the space station while they investigate the cause of the booster failure.

The Soyuz is the only way to get people to the space station at the moment but officials insist the astronauts currently on the space station have enough supplies.  

NASA rookie Nick Hague and second-time flyer Aleksey Ovchinin of the Russian space agency were setting off for a six-month mission at the International Space Station Thursday, on a relatively rare two-man launch.

A spokesperson for NASA said that rescue teams have now reached Hague and Ovchinin and they’ve been taken out of the capsule and were in 'good condition’.

The craft’s landing engines and parachute system were said to have done their job as normal despite the enormous G-force acting on both the shuttle and crew during the landing.

Shortly after the incident rescue crews and paratroopers were rushed the emergency landing site in the barren Kazakh steppe to provide support for the crew.

NASA had issued a worrying tweet on Thursday morning saying: 'There’s been an issue with the booster from today’s launch. Teams have been in contact with the crew.’

'The capsule is returning via a ballistic descent, which is a sharper angle of landing compared to normal. Search and rescue teams are heading towards the expected touchdown location of the spacecraft and crew.’  

Cosmonaut Alexander Volkov commented: 'The guys are lucky that they remained alive. They had reached a good height so it was possible to descend in their capsule.’

More info, pictures, diagrams, videos at this link:  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6264339/Rocket-launch-booster-malfunction-forces-astronauts-return-Earth-ballistic-entry.html