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Rebekah Hounsell: Tracking Cosmic Light to Untangle the Universe’s Darkest Mysteries
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By NASA
5 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
It’s a new year on Mars, and while New Year’s means winter in Earth’s northern hemisphere, it’s the start of spring in the same region of the Red Planet. And that means ice is thawing, leading to all sorts of interesting things. JPL research scientist Serina Diniega explains. NASA/JPL-Caltech Instead of a winter wonderland, the Red Planet’s northern hemisphere goes through an active — even explosive — spring thaw.
While New Year’s Eve is around the corner here on Earth, Mars scientists are ahead of the game: The Red Planet completed a trip around the Sun on Nov. 12, 2024, prompting a few researchers to raise a toast.
But the Martian year, which is 687 Earth days, ends in a very different way in the planet’s northern hemisphere than it does in Earth’s northern hemisphere: While winter’s kicking in here, spring is starting there. That means temperatures are rising and ice is thinning, leading to frost avalanches crashing down cliffsides, carbon dioxide gas exploding from the ground, and powerful winds helping reshape the north pole.
“Springtime on Earth has lots of trickling as water ice gradually melts. But on Mars, everything happens with a bang,” said Serina Diniega, who studies planetary surfaces at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
Mars’ wispy atmosphere doesn’t allow liquids to pool on the surface, like on Earth. Instead of melting, ice sublimates, turning directly into a gas. The sudden transition in spring means a lot of violent changes as both water ice and carbon dioxide ice — dry ice, which is much more plentiful on Mars than frozen water — weaken and break.
“You get lots of cracks and explosions instead of melting,” Diniega said. “I imagine it gets really noisy.”
Using the cameras and other sensors aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), which launched in 2005, scientists study all this activity to improve their understanding of the forces shaping the dynamic Martian surface. Here’s some of what they track.
Frost Avalanches
In 2015, MRO’s High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera captured a 66-foot-wide (20-meter-wide) chunk of carbon dioxide frost in freefall. Chance observations like this are reminders of just how different Mars is from Earth, Diniega said, especially in springtime, when these surface changes are most noticeable.
Martian spring involves lots of cracking ice, which led to this 66-foot-wide (20-meter-wide) chunk of carbon dioxide frost captured in freefall by the HiRISE camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2015NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona “We’re lucky we’ve had a spacecraft like MRO observing Mars for as long as it has,” Diniega said. “Watching for almost 20 years has let us catch dramatic moments like these avalanches.”
Gas Geysers
Diniega has relied on HiRISE to study another quirk of Martian springtime: gas geysers that blast out of the surface, throwing out dark fans of sand and dust. These explosive jets form due to energetic sublimation of carbon dioxide ice. As sunlight shines through the ice, its bottom layers turn to gas, building pressure until it bursts into the air, creating those dark fans of material.
As light shines through carbon dioxide ice on Mars, it heats up its bottom layers, which, rather than melting into a liquid, turn into gas. The buildup gas eventually results in explosive geysers that toss dark fans of debris on to the surface.light shines through carbon dioxide ice on Mars But to see the best examples of the newest fans, researchers will have to wait until December 2025, when spring starts in the southern hemisphere. There, the fans are bigger and more clearly defined.
Spiders
Another difference between ice-related action in the two hemispheres: Once all the ice around some northern geysers has sublimated in summer, what’s left behind in the dirt are scour marks that, from space, look like giant spider legs. Researchers recently re-created this process in a JPL lab.
Sometimes, after carbon dioxide geysers have erupted from ice-covered areas on Mars, they leave scour marks on the surface. When the ice is all gone by summer, these long scour marks look like the legs of giant spiders.NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona Powerful Winds
For Isaac Smith of Toronto’s York University, one of the most fascinating subjects in springtime is the Texas-size ice cap at Mars’ north pole. Etched into the icy dome are swirling troughs, revealing traces of the red surface below. The effect is like a swirl of milk in a café latte.
“These things are enormous,” Smith said, noting that some are a long as California. “You can find similar troughs in Antarctica but nothing at this scale.”
As temperatures rise, powerful winds kick up that carve deep troughs into the ice cap of Mars’ north pole. Some of these troughs are as long as California, and give the Martian north pole its trademark swirls. This image was captured by NASA’s now-inactive Mars Global Surveyor.NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS Fast, warm wind has carved the spiral shapes over eons, and the troughs act as channels for springtime wind gusts that become more powerful as ice at the north pole starts to thaw. Just like the Santa Ana winds in Southern California or the Chinook winds in the Rocky Mountains, these gusts pick up speed and temperature as they ride down the troughs — what’s called an adiabatic process.
Wandering Dunes
The winds that carve the north pole’s troughs also reshape Mars’ sand dunes, causing sand to pile up on one side while removing sand from the other side. Over time, the process causes dunes to migrate, just as it does with dunes on Earth.
This past September, Smith coauthored a paper detailing how carbon dioxide frost settles on top of polar sand dunes during winter, freezing them in place. When the frost all thaws away in the spring, the dunes begin migrating again.
Surrounded by frost, these Martian dunes in Mars’ northern hemisphere were captured from above by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter using its HiRISE camera on Sept. 8, 2022. NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona Each northern spring is a little different, with variations leading to ice sublimating faster or slower, controlling the pace of all these phenomena on the surface. And these strange phenomena are just part of the seasonal changes on Mars: the southern hemisphere has its own unique activity.
More About MRO
The University of Arizona, in Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., in Boulder, Colorado. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington.
For more information, visit:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-reconnaissance-orbiter
News Media Contacts
Andrew Good
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-2433
andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov
Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov
2024-177
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Last Updated Dec 20, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
Hubble Space Telescope Hubble Home Overview About Hubble The History of Hubble Hubble Timeline Why Have a Telescope in Space? Hubble by the Numbers At the Museum FAQs Impact & Benefits Hubble’s Impact & Benefits Science Impacts Cultural Impact Technology Benefits Impact on Human Spaceflight Astro Community Impacts Science Hubble Science Science Themes Science Highlights Science Behind Discoveries Hubble’s Partners in Science Universe Uncovered Explore the Night Sky Observatory Hubble Observatory Hubble Design Mission Operations Missions to Hubble Hubble vs Webb Team Hubble Team Career Aspirations Hubble Astronauts News Hubble News Hubble News Archive Social Media Media Resources Multimedia Multimedia Images Videos Sonifications Podcasts E-books Online Activities Lithographs Fact Sheets Glossary Posters Hubble on the NASA App More 35th Anniversary 2 min read
Hubble Spies a Cosmic Eye
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the spiral galaxy NGC 2566. ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Thilker This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the spiral galaxy NGC 2566, which sits 76 million light-years away in the constellation Puppis. A prominent bar of stars stretches across the center of this galaxy, and spiral arms emerge from each end of the bar. Because NGC 2566 appears tilted from our perspective, its disk takes on an almond shape, giving the galaxy the appearance of a cosmic eye.
As NGC 2566 appears to gaze at us, astronomers gaze right back, using Hubble to survey the galaxy’s star clusters and star-forming regions. The Hubble data are especially valuable for studying stars that are just a few million years old; these stars are bright at the ultraviolet and visible wavelengths to which Hubble is sensitive. Using these data, researchers can measure the ages of NGC 2566’s stars, which helps piece together the timeline of the galaxy’s star formation and the exchange of gas between star-forming clouds and the stars themselves.
Hubble regularly teams up with other astronomical observatories to examine objects like NGC 2566, including the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. Webb data complements Hubble’s by going beyond the infrared wavelengths of light Hubble can see, better defining areas of warm, glowing dust. At even longer wavelengths, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) of 66 radio telescopes that work together can capture detailed images of the clouds of gas and dust in which stars form. Together, Hubble, Webb, and ALMA provide an overview of the formation, lives, and deaths of stars in galaxies across the universe.
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Claire Andreoli (claire.andreoli@nasa.gov)
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
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Last Updated Dec 19, 2024 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
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Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.
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By European Space Agency
Video: 00:01:22 An ethereal dance of misty clouds of interstellar dust with a myriad of distant stars and galaxies speckled like paint drops over a black canvas. This is a sonification of a breathtaking image king image taken by ESA's Euclid space telescope of the young star-forming region Messier 78.
The sonification offers a different representation of the data collected by Euclid, and lets us explore the stellar nurseries in M78 through sound. Close your eyes and listen to let the cosmic image be drawn by your mind’s eye, or watch as the traceback line in this video follows the sounds to colour the image from left to right.
The twinkling sounds of various pitches and volumes represent the galaxies and stars in the frame. The pitch of the sound points towards where we see the dot of light in the image. Higher pitches tell us that a star or galaxy appears further at the top in the image along the traceback line.
The brightness of these objects in and around M78 are represented by the volume of the twinkles. Whenever we hear a particularly loud clink, the star or galaxy that Euclid observed appears particularly bright in the image.
Underlying these jingling sounds, we can hear a steady undertone, made up of two chords which represent different regions in Messier 78. This sound intensifies as the traceback line approaches first the brightest, and later the densest regions in the nebula.
The first two deeper crescendos in this undertone indicate two patches in the image where the most intense colour is blue/purple. These appear as two ‘cavities’ in M78, where newly forming stars carve out and illuminate the dust and gas in which they were born.
The chords intensify a third time at a slightly higher pitch corresponding to the red-orange colours in the image, as the sound draws over the densest star-forming region of the frame. This stellar nursery is hidden by a layer of dust and gas that is so thick that it obscures almost all the light of the young stars within it.
As the sound traces over the entire Euclid image, these different tones together form a cosmic symphony that represents the image of Messier 78, and the stars and galaxies that lie behind and within it. You can read more about this image that was first revealed to the eyes of the world earlier this year here.
Many thanks to Klaus Nielsen (DTU Space / Maple Pools) for making the sonification in this video. If you would like to hear more sonifications and music by this artist, please visit: https://linktr.ee/maplepools
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By NASA
ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, P. Zeidler This new image of star cluster NGC 602, released on Dec. 17, 2024, combines data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory with a previously released image from the agency’s James Webb Space Telescope. Webb data provide the ring-like outline of the “wreath,” while X-rays from Chandra (red) show young, massive stars that are illuminating the wreath, sending high-energy light into interstellar space.
NGC 602 lies on the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud, which is one of the closest galaxies to the Milky Way, about 200,000 light-years from Earth.
See another new, festive image: the “Christmas tree cluster.”
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC; Infrared: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, P. Zeilder, E.Sabbi, A. Nota, M. Zamani; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare and K. Arcand
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By NASA
X-ray: NASA/CXC; Infrared: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, P. Zeilder, E.Sabbi, A. Nota, M. Zamani; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare and K. Arcand Since antiquity, wreaths have symbolized the cycle of life, death, and rebirth. It is fitting then that one of the best places for astronomers to learn more about the stellar lifecycle resembles a giant holiday wreath itself.
The star cluster NGC 602 lies on the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud, which is one of the closest galaxies to the Milky Way, about 200,000 light-years from Earth. The stars in NGC 602 have fewer heavier elements compared to the Sun and most of the rest of the galaxy. Instead, the conditions within NGC 602 mimic those for stars found billions of years ago when the universe was much younger.
This new image combines data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory with a previously released image from the agency’s James Webb Space Telescope. The dark ring-like outline of the wreath seen in Webb data (represented as orange, yellow, green, and blue) is made up of dense clouds of filled dust.
Meanwhile, X-rays from Chandra (red) show young, massive stars that are illuminating the wreath, sending high-energy light into interstellar space. These X-rays are powered by winds flowing from the young, massive stars that are sprinkled throughout the cluster. The extended cloud in the Chandra data likely comes from the overlapping X-ray glow of thousands of young, low-mass stars in the cluster.
X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: Clow, M.; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare and K. Arcand In addition to this cosmic wreath, a new version of the “Christmas tree cluster” is also now available. Like NGC 602, NGC 2264 is a cluster of young stars between one and five million years old. (For comparison, the Sun is a middle-aged star about 5 billion years old — about 1,000 times older.) In this image of NGC 2264, which is much closer than NGC 602 at a distance of about 2,500 light-years from Earth, Chandra data (red, purple, blue, and white) has been combined with optical data (green and violet) captured from by astrophotographer Michael Clow from his telescope in Arizona in November 2024.
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.
Read more from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Learn more about the Chandra X-ray Observatory and its mission here:
https://www.nasa.gov/chandra
https://chandra.si.edu
Visual Description
This release includes two composite images, each featuring a star cluster that strongly resembles holiday greenery.
The first image depicts star cluster NGC 602 in vibrant and festive colors. The cluster includes a giant dust cloud ring, shown in greens, yellows, blues, and oranges. The green hues and feathery edges of the ring cloud create the appearance of a wreath made of evergreen boughs. Hints of red representing X-rays provide shading, highlighting layers within the wreath-like ring cloud.
The image is aglow with specks and dots of colorful, festive light, in blues, golds, whites, oranges, and reds. These lights represent stars within the cluster. Some of the lights gleam with diffraction spikes, while others emit a warm, diffuse glow. Upon closer inspection, many of the glowing specks have spiraling arms, indicating that they are, in fact, distant galaxies.
The second image in today’s release is a new depiction of NGC 2264, known as the “Christmas Tree Cluster”. Here, wispy green clouds in a conical shape strongly resemble an evergreen tree. Tiny specks of white, blue, purple, and red light, stars within the cluster, dot the structure, turning the cloud into a festive, cosmic Christmas tree!
News Media Contact
Megan Watzke
Chandra X-ray Center
Cambridge, Mass.
617-496-7998
mwatzke@cfa.harvard.edu
Lane Figueroa
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama
256-544-0034
lane.e.figueroa@nasa.gov
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