Space In General
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Dotini
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April Fools Day Comet to pass relatively close to Earth.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/...omet-make-closest-pass-earth-record/99828158/
(Photo: NASA)
http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/...omet-make-closest-pass-earth-record/99828158/
(Photo: NASA)
Dotini
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Planet 9 news.
FOUR CANDIDATES FOR PLANET 9 LOCATED
Article Updated: 31 Mar , 2017 by Nancy Atkinson
A concentrated three-day search for a mysterious, unseen planet in the far reaches of our own solar system has yielded four possible candidates. The search for the so-called Planet 9 was part of a real-time search with aZooniverse citizen science project, in coordination with the BBC’s Stargazing Live broadcast from the Australian National University’s Siding Spring Observatory.
A view of data from SAMI, a new multi-object integral field spectrograph at Siding Spring Observatory, which was used to look for the hypothetical Planet 9. Credit: Dilyar Barat via Twitter.
Researcher Brad Tucker from ANU, who led the effort, said about 60,000 people from around the world classified over four million objects during the three days, using data from the SkyMapper telescope at Siding Spring. He and his team said that even if none of the four candidates turn out to be the hypothetical Planet 9, the effort was scientifically valuable, helping to verify their search methods as exceptionally viable.
“We’ve detected minor planets Chiron and Comacina, which demonstrates the approach we’re taking could find Planet 9 if it’s there,” Tucker said. “We’ve managed to rule out a planet about the size of Neptune being in about 90 per cent of the southern sky out to a depth of about 350 times the distance the Earth is from the Sun.
Researchers from Australian National University pose with BBC astronomers Chris Lintott, Brian Cox and Dara O’Brien. Credit: ANU.
Last year, Caltech astronomers Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin found indirect evidence for the existence of a large planet when they found that the orbits of several different Kuiper Belt Objects were likely being influenced by a massive body, located out beyond the orbit of Pluto, about 200 times further than the distance from the Sun to the Earth. This planet would be Neptune-sized, roughly 10 times more massive than Earth. But the search is difficult because the object is likely 1000 times fainter than Pluto.
http://www.universetoday.com/134824/four-candidates-planet-9-located/
FOUR CANDIDATES FOR PLANET 9 LOCATED
A concentrated three-day search for a mysterious, unseen planet in the far reaches of our own solar system has yielded four possible candidates. The search for the so-called Planet 9 was part of a real-time search with aZooniverse citizen science project, in coordination with the BBC’s Stargazing Live broadcast from the Australian National University’s Siding Spring Observatory.
A view of data from SAMI, a new multi-object integral field spectrograph at Siding Spring Observatory, which was used to look for the hypothetical Planet 9. Credit: Dilyar Barat via Twitter.
Researcher Brad Tucker from ANU, who led the effort, said about 60,000 people from around the world classified over four million objects during the three days, using data from the SkyMapper telescope at Siding Spring. He and his team said that even if none of the four candidates turn out to be the hypothetical Planet 9, the effort was scientifically valuable, helping to verify their search methods as exceptionally viable.
“We’ve detected minor planets Chiron and Comacina, which demonstrates the approach we’re taking could find Planet 9 if it’s there,” Tucker said. “We’ve managed to rule out a planet about the size of Neptune being in about 90 per cent of the southern sky out to a depth of about 350 times the distance the Earth is from the Sun.
Researchers from Australian National University pose with BBC astronomers Chris Lintott, Brian Cox and Dara O’Brien. Credit: ANU.
Last year, Caltech astronomers Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin found indirect evidence for the existence of a large planet when they found that the orbits of several different Kuiper Belt Objects were likely being influenced by a massive body, located out beyond the orbit of Pluto, about 200 times further than the distance from the Sun to the Earth. This planet would be Neptune-sized, roughly 10 times more massive than Earth. But the search is difficult because the object is likely 1000 times fainter than Pluto.
http://www.universetoday.com/134824/four-candidates-planet-9-located/
Dotini
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Here's an amusing report that tends to confirm what has been denied by some but strongly suspected by many.
Science
Asteroids By Mars Are Really A Destroyed Planet
Elana Glowatz,International Business Times 18 hours ago Those asteroids orbiting near Mars may not be asteroids at all — they are probably what’s left of a small planet that was destroyed in a collision while our solar system was still growing up.
Astronomers using the Very Large Telescope in Chile say the asteroids, known as Mars Trojans, appear to have similar compositions, suggesting a common origin, according to a study in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Read: Places on Earth That Are Kind of Like Mars
There are nine Trojans sharing an orbit around the Sun with Mars, all but one of them trailing the Red Planet in its movement. And of the Trojans trailing Mars, all but one are in what’s known as the Eureka family — which includes the first-discovered piece called Eureka and the others that are surrounding it.
An artist’s depiction shows the solar system’s eight planets, although much closer together than they actually are. Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun, and may be sharing its orbit with the remnants of a miniature planet from the early years of the solar system. Photo: NASA/JPL
https://www.yahoo.com/news/asteroids-mars-really-destroyed-planet-175203918.html
Science
Asteroids By Mars Are Really A Destroyed Planet
Astronomers using the Very Large Telescope in Chile say the asteroids, known as Mars Trojans, appear to have similar compositions, suggesting a common origin, according to a study in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Read: Places on Earth That Are Kind of Like Mars
There are nine Trojans sharing an orbit around the Sun with Mars, all but one of them trailing the Red Planet in its movement. And of the Trojans trailing Mars, all but one are in what’s known as the Eureka family — which includes the first-discovered piece called Eureka and the others that are surrounding it.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/asteroids-mars-really-destroyed-planet-175203918.html
CodeRedR51
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SES-10 Mission | Falcon 9 First Stage Landing
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Crowd-sourcing project discovers an unusual system - four planets, each at least twice the size of earth, in close proximity to a star:
http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2017-...lanets-discovered-in-new-solar-system/8423142
http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2017-...lanets-discovered-in-new-solar-system/8423142
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Dotini
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INCREDIBLE COMET TAIL: More than 180 million km from Earth, something is happening to Comet PanSTARRS (C/2015 ER61). On April 4th and 5th, the comet brightened more than 6-fold, from magnitude +8.5 to +6.5, suddenly reaching the verge of naked-eye visibility despite its great distance from our planet. Now amateur astronomers are photographing an incredible tail. Gerald Rhemann sends this picture from his private observatory in Farm Tivoli, Namibia:
"The comet's tail is about 2.5 degrees long," says Rhemann.
That means it spans more than 8 million km. For comparison, the entire sun is 1.4 million km wide; you could wrap the comet's tail around the sun's equator twice. Another way of putting it: The distance from Earth to the Moon is only 5% of the length of the gaseous lane behind Comet PanSTARRS.
"The comet's tail is about 2.5 degrees long," says Rhemann.
That means it spans more than 8 million km. For comparison, the entire sun is 1.4 million km wide; you could wrap the comet's tail around the sun's equator twice. Another way of putting it: The distance from Earth to the Moon is only 5% of the length of the gaseous lane behind Comet PanSTARRS.
CodeRedR51
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On this day in 1981, the first shuttle launch.
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CodeRedR51
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Orbital ATK Atlas V rocket launch today at 11:11am EDT will be available with 360* streaming video.
Edit: Here's a direct link to the 360* stream.
Edit: Here's a direct link to the 360* stream.
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Looping solar flare
Dotini
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Interesting view from orbit of aurora borealis. Note how the plasma seems to change direction, brightening and tightening in a knot or kink.
Aurora on Jupiter. Note the "tadpole" on the left. Footprint of a moon?
Aurorae on distant gas giant Uranus.
Aurora on Jupiter. Note the "tadpole" on the left. Footprint of a moon?
Aurorae on distant gas giant Uranus.
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Dotini
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Dumbbell shaped asteroid, commonly found as cometary bodies as well, whizzes by Earth. They call it a contact binary structure.
From spaceweather.com
CONTACT BINARY ASTEROID: When mountain-sized asteroid 2014 JO25 flew past Earth on April 19th, it looked like a fast-moving speck of light in backyard telescopes. NASA radars saw much more. The 70-meter antenna at Goldstone CA pinged the asteroid, illuminating it with radio energy as it passed by. The resulting images reveal a peanut-shaped asteroid that rotates about once every five hours:
"The asteroid has a contact binary structure - two lobes connected by a neck-like region," says Shantanu Naidu, a scientist from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who led the Goldstone observations. "The largest of the asteroid's two lobes is about 2,000 feet (620 meters) across."
These images have a resolution as fine as 25 feet (7.5 meters) per pixel. Additional radar observations are being conducted at both Goldstone and Arecibo on April 20 and 21, and could provide even greater detail. Stay tuned!
From spaceweather.com
CONTACT BINARY ASTEROID: When mountain-sized asteroid 2014 JO25 flew past Earth on April 19th, it looked like a fast-moving speck of light in backyard telescopes. NASA radars saw much more. The 70-meter antenna at Goldstone CA pinged the asteroid, illuminating it with radio energy as it passed by. The resulting images reveal a peanut-shaped asteroid that rotates about once every five hours:
"The asteroid has a contact binary structure - two lobes connected by a neck-like region," says Shantanu Naidu, a scientist from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who led the Goldstone observations. "The largest of the asteroid's two lobes is about 2,000 feet (620 meters) across."
These images have a resolution as fine as 25 feet (7.5 meters) per pixel. Additional radar observations are being conducted at both Goldstone and Arecibo on April 20 and 21, and could provide even greater detail. Stay tuned!
Danoff
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That was recorded in one day? If you look at the detail in the flare you can see movement throughout it. When they put Earth in for scale, you can see just how far anything moving through that flare is traveling. If that was recorded in a single day, the speeds are unbelievable.
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Dotini
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The magnetic field surrounding the solar system may be much stronger than thought. This bubble is like a membrane which separates the plasma of interstellar space from the plasma of the solar system. There is some penetration and particle exchange taking place which is under study.
New data from NASA's Cassini, Voyager and Interstellar Boundary Explorer missions show that the heliosphere -- the bubble of the sun's magnetic influence that surrounds the inner solar system -- may be much more compact and rounded than …more
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-04-cassini-voyager-missions-picture-sun.html#jCp
New data from NASA's Cassini, Voyager and Interstellar Boundary Explorer missions show that the heliosphere -- the bubble of the sun's magnetic influence that surrounds the inner solar system -- may be much more compact and rounded than …more
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-04-cassini-voyager-missions-picture-sun.html#jCp
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Dotini
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A group of aurora enthusiasts have found a new type of light in the night sky and named it Steve.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39686055
http://www.space.com/36583-new-aurora-feature-named-steve-investigated.html
Photographer Dave Markel caught this view of a strange aurora-like feature that appears in the skies of northern Canada. Based on data from European Space Agency's Swarm satellites, it appears to be a 16-mile-wide (25 km) ribbon of flowing gas in an area whose temperature is 5,500 degrees Fahrenheit (3,000 degrees Celsius) higher than the surroundings; the gas flows at 3.5 miles per second (6 km/s) compared to a speed of 33 feet/second (10 m/s) on either side of the ribbon. They're calling the feature "Steve."
Credit: Dave Markel Photography
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39686055
http://www.space.com/36583-new-aurora-feature-named-steve-investigated.html
Photographer Dave Markel caught this view of a strange aurora-like feature that appears in the skies of northern Canada. Based on data from European Space Agency's Swarm satellites, it appears to be a 16-mile-wide (25 km) ribbon of flowing gas in an area whose temperature is 5,500 degrees Fahrenheit (3,000 degrees Celsius) higher than the surroundings; the gas flows at 3.5 miles per second (6 km/s) compared to a speed of 33 feet/second (10 m/s) on either side of the ribbon. They're calling the feature "Steve."
Credit: Dave Markel Photography
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BobK
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The articles don't mention a source for the name, but I'd like to think it's named for @Steve Travis.
CodeRedR51
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Successful launch and landing this morning. (on land) Since this was a military satellite they fixed their attention on the separation and landing of the first stage which was incredible to see. T-10 countdown starts at 11:47.
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It doesn't fly down slow and hover, like movie rockets, or slow down to an approach speed and take its time coming down. That would take an insane amount of fuel! It burns at just the right rate to reach 0 velocity at the same time it reaches 0 altitude.
Watching the video, I saw the landing burn start at time 8:33, the velocity showing was 295 meters/second. Touchdown was at 9 minutes time, so killing 295 m/s in 27 seconds comes out to about 11 m/s/s, just a touch over a full g. in other words, it's slowing down hard for exactly the right amount of time to touch the ground. No more, no less.
This is the first time, I think, that they had complete coverage of the first stage's return, which was great to watch! That thing's quite busy while it's falling down!!!!
Edit: if meters per second is a vague something-or-other number, it's over 1000 km per hour!
Edit II: Did some more geeky stuff by writing down numbers as events happened:
At main engine cutoff, velocity was 1680 m/s (6050 km/hr) at about 70 km altitude, time from launch 2:23
Boostback burn began about 2:45, velocity was 1488 m/s (5350 km/hr) and 96.6 km. In 20 seconds it had coasted nearly 30 km upward. They didn't give figures for downrange distance...
Boostback burn ended at 3:20 (35 seconds) with velocity down to 843 m/s (3030 km/hr) and altitude 131 km. That works out to about 2 g if I did it right. It began a ballistic trajectory that peaked at 4:50, 166 km altitude, and velocity down to 293 m/s (1050 km/hr) and began falling from that point.
The entry burn at 7:14 ended the ballistic fall, speed was up to 1408 m/s (5070 km/hr) at 62.5 km altitude. It had fallen 100 km in 3 minutes!
Entry burn ended at 7:40, velocity down to 753 m/s (2700 km/hr) at 36.2 km altitude. That was almost 3 g. From there it was falling again, reaching a speed of 840 m/s (3025 km/hr) at 7:56 before aerodynamic drag started slowing it down.
I already mentioned the landing burn info, but at 8:33 it was falling at 295 m/s (1060 km/hr) and burned at a little over 1 g to reach 0 velocity at 0 altitude, 9 minutes after leaving the pad.
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