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AstroViz: Iconic Pillars of Creation Star in NASA’s New 3D Visualization
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By NASA
Mars: Perseverance (Mars 2020) Perseverance Home Mission Overview Rover Components Mars Rock Samples Where is Perseverance? Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Mission Updates Science Overview Objectives Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Perseverance Raw Images Images Videos Audio More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions The Solar System The Sun Mercury Venus Earth The Moon Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto & Dwarf Planets Asteroids, Comets & Meteors The Kuiper Belt The Oort Cloud 2 min read
Reaching New Heights to Unravel Deep Martian History!
This is an image of the rim that the Perseverance rover took on sol 383 (March 19th, 2022) when it was traversing the crater floor. Dox Castle is located at the top of the image in the far ground. NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU The Perseverance rover is reaching new heights as it ascends the rim of Jezero crater (over 300 meters in elevation higher than the original landing site)! The rover is now enroute to its first campaign science stop Dox Castle (image in the far ground) a region of interest for its potential to host ancient Mars’ bedrock in the exposed rocks on the rim.
Impact craters like Jezero may be the key to piecing together the early geologic history of Mars, as they provide a window into the history of the ancient crust by excavating and depositing deep crustal materials above the surface. Crater rims act as keepers of ancient Martian history, uplifting and exposing the stratigraphy of these impacted materials. Additionally, extreme heat from the impact can encourage the circulation of fluids through fractures similar to hydrothermal vents, which have implications for early habitability and may be preserved in the exposed rim bedrock. With the Perseverance rover we have the potential to explore some of the oldest exposed rocks on the planet.
Exploring such diverse terrains takes a lot of initial planning! The team has been preparing for the Crater Rim Campaign these last few months by working together to map out the types of materials Perseverance may encounter during its traverse up and through the rim. Using orbital images from the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) instrument, the science team divided the rim area into 36 map quadrants, carefully mapping different rock units based on the morphologies, tones, and textures they observed in the orbital images. Mapping specialists then connected units across the quads to turn 36 miniature maps into one big geologic map of the crater rim. This resource is being used by the team to plan strategic routes to scientific areas of interest on the rim.
On Earth, geologic maps are made using a combination of orbital images and mapping in the field. Planetary scientists don’t typically get to check their map in the field, but we have the unique opportunity to validate our map using our very own robot geologist! Dox Castle will be our first chance to do rim science – and we’re excited to search for evidence of the transition between the margin and rim materials to start piecing together the stratigraphic history of the rocks that make up the rim of Jezero crater.
Written by Margaret Deahn, Ph.D. student at Purdue University
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By Space Force
Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III announced seven initiatives to improve the quality of life for service members and their families.
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Hubble Space Telescope Home Hubble Examines a Spiral Star… Missions 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 Lithographs Fact Sheets Glossary Posters Hubble on the NASA App More Online Activities 2 min read
Hubble Examines a Spiral Star Factory
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the spiral galaxy NGC 5668. ESA/Hubble & NASA, C. Kilpatrick This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features a spiral galaxy in the constellation Virgo named NGC 5668. It is relatively near to us at 90 million light-years from Earth and quite accessible for astronomers to study with both space- and ground-based telescopes. At first glance, it doesn’t seem like a remarkable galaxy. It is around 90,000 light-years across, similar in size and mass to our own Milky Way galaxy, and its nearly face-on orientation shows open spiral arms made of cloudy, irregular patches.
One noticeable difference between the Milky Way galaxy and NGC 5668 is that this galaxy is forming new stars 60% more quickly. Astronomers have identified two main drivers of star formation in NGC 5668. Firstly, this high-quality Hubble view reveals a bar at the galaxy’s center, though it might look more like a slight oval shape than a real bar. The bar appears to have affected the galaxy’s star formation rate, as central bars do in many spiral galaxies. Secondly, astronomers tracked high-velocity clouds of hydrogen gas moving vertically between the disk of the galaxy and the spherical, faint halo which surrounds it. These movements may be the result of strong stellar winds from hot, massive stars, that would contribute gas to new star-forming regions.
The enhanced star formation rate in NGC 5668 comes with a corresponding abundance of supernova explosions. Astronomers have spotted three in the galaxy, in 1952, 1954, and 2004. In this image, Hubble examined the surroundings of the Type II SN 2004G, seeking to study the kinds of stars that end their lives as this kind of supernova.
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Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Sep 12, 2024 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
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By NASA
22 Min Read The Marshall Star for September 11, 2024
Starship Super Heavy Breezes Through Wind Tunnel Testing
NASA and its industry partners continue to make progress toward Artemis III and beyond, the first crewed lunar landing missions under the agency’s Artemis campaign. SpaceX, the commercial Human Landing System (HLS) provider for Artemis III and Artemis IV, recently tested a 1.2% scale model of the Super Heavy rocket, or booster, in the transonic Unitary Plan Wind Tunnel at NASA’s Ames Research Center. The Super Heavy rocket will launch the Starship human landing system to the Moon as part of Artemis.
A 1.2% scale model of the Super Heavy rocket that will launch the Starship human landing system to the Moon for future crewed Artemis missions was recently tested at NASA’s Ames Research Center’s transonic wind tunnel, providing valuable information on vehicle stability when re-entering Earth’s atmosphere.NASA During the tests, the wind tunnel forced an air stream at the Super Heavy scale model at high speeds, mimicking the air resistance and flow the booster experiences during flight. The wind tunnel subjected the Super Heavy model, affixed with pressure-measuring sensors, to wind speeds ranging from Mach .7, or about 537 miles per hour, to Mach 1.4, or about 1,074 miles per hour. Mach 1 is the speed that sound waves travel, or 761 miles per hour, at sea level.
Engineers then measured how Super Heavy model responded to the simulated flight conditions, observing its stability, aerodynamic performance, and more. Engineers used the data to update flight software for flight 3 of Super Heavy and Starship and to refine the exterior design of future versions of the booster. The testing lasted about two weeks and took place earlier in 2024.
Four grid fins on the Super Heavy rocket help stabilize and control the rocket as it re-enters Earth’s atmosphere after launching Starship to a lunar trajectory. Engineers tested the effects of various aerodynamic conditions on several grid fin configurations during wind tunnel testing.NASA After Super Heavy completes its ascent and separation from Starship HLS on its journey to the Moon, SpaceX plans to have the booster return to the launch site for catch and reuse. The Starship HLS will continue on a trajectory to the Moon.
To get to the Moon for the Artemis missions, astronauts will launch in NASA’s Orion spacecraft aboard the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket from the agency’s Kennedy Space Center. Once in lunar orbit, Orion will dock with the Starship HLS or with Gateway. Once the spacecraft are docked, the astronauts will move from Orion or Gateway to the Starship HLS, which will bring them to the surface of the Moon. After surface activities are complete, Starship will return the astronauts to Orion or Gateway waiting in lunar orbit. The astronauts will transfer to Orion for the return trip to Earth.
Wind tunnel testing at Ames helped engineers better understand the aerodynamic forces the SpaceX Super Heavy rocket, with its 33 Raptor engines, experiences during various stages of flight. As a result of the testing, engineers updated flight control algorithms and modified the exterior design of the rocket.NASA With Artemis, NASA will explore more of the Moon than ever before, learn how to live and work away from home, and prepare for future human exploration of the Red Planet. NASA’s SLS, exploration ground systems, and Orion spacecraft, along with the human landing system, next-generation spacesuits, Gateway lunar space station, and future rovers are NASA’s foundation for deep space exploration.
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center manages the HLS and SLS programs.
For more information about Artemis, visit here.
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NASA, Boeing Welcome Starliner Spacecraft to Earth, Close Mission
NASA and Boeing safely returned the uncrewed Starliner spacecraft following its landing at 9:01 p.m. CDT Sept. 6 at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico, concluding a three-month flight test to the International Space Station.
“I am extremely proud of the work our collective team put into this entire flight test, and we are pleased to see Starliner’s safe return,” said Ken Bowersox, associate administrator, Space Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. “Even though it was necessary to return the spacecraft uncrewed, NASA and Boeing learned an incredible amount about Starliner in the most extreme environment possible. NASA looks forward to our continued work with the Boeing team to proceed toward certification of Starliner for crew rotation missions to the space station.”
NASA and Boeing welcomed Starliner back to Earth following the uncrewed spacecraft’s successful landing at 9:01 p.m. CDT Sept. 6 at the White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico. NASA The flight on June 5 was the first time astronauts launched aboard the Starliner. It was the third orbital flight of the spacecraft, and its second return from the orbiting laboratory. Starliner now will ship to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center for inspection and processing.
NASA’s Commercial Crew Program requires a spacecraft to fly a crewed test flight to prove the system is ready for regular flights to and from the orbiting laboratory. Following Starliner’s return, the agency will review all mission-related data.
“We are excited to have Starliner home safely. This was an important test flight for NASA in setting us up for future missions on the Starliner system,” said Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. “There was a lot of valuable learning that will enable our long-term success. I want to commend the entire team for their hard work and dedication over the past three months.”
NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams launched June 5 aboard Starliner for the agency’s Boeing Crewed Flight Test from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. On June 6, as Starliner approached the space station, NASA and Boeing identified helium leaks and experienced issues with the spacecraft’s reaction control thrusters. Following weeks of in-space and ground testing, technical interchange meetings, and agency reviews, NASA made the decision to prioritize safety and return Starliner without its crew. Wilmore and Williams will continue their work aboard station as part of the Expedition 71/72 crew, returning in February 2025 with the agency’s SpaceX Crew-9 mission.
The crew flight test is part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. The goal of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program is safe, reliable, and cost-effective transportation to and from the International Space Station and low Earth orbit. This already is providing additional research time and has increased the opportunity for discovery aboard humanity’s microgravity testbed, including helping NASA prepare for human exploration of the Moon and Mars.
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Artemis IV: Gateway Gadget Fuels Deep Space Dining
NASA engineers are working hard to ensure no astronaut goes hungry on the Artemis IV mission.
A prototype of the Mini Potable Water Dispenser, currently in development at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, is displayed alongside various food pouches during a demonstration at NASA’s Johnson Space Center.NASA/David DeHoyos When international teams of astronauts live on Gateway, humanity’s first space station to orbit the Moon, they’ll need innovative gadgets like the Mini Potable Water Dispenser. Vaguely resembling a toy water soaker, it manually dispenses water for hygiene bags, to rehydrate food, or simply to drink. It is designed to be compact, lightweight, portable and manual, making it ideal for Gateway’s relatively small size and remote location compared to the International Space Station closer to Earth.
Matt Rowell, left, an engineer at Marshall, demonstrates the Mini Portable Water Dispenser to NASA food scientists during a testing session.NASA/David DeHoyos The team at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center leading the development of the dispenser understands that when it comes to deep space cuisine, the food astronauts eat is so much more than just fuel to keep them alive.
“Food doesn’t just provide body nourishment but also soul nourishment,” said Shaun Glasgow, project manager at Marshall. “So ultimately this device will help provide that little piece of soul nourishment. After a long day, the crew can float back and enjoy some pasta or scrambled eggs, a small sense of normalcy in a place far from home.”
Shaun Glasgow, right, project manager at Marshall, demonstrates the Mini Potable Water Dispenser.NASA/David DeHoyos As NASA continues to innovate and push the boundaries of deep space exploration, devices like the compact, lightweight dispenser demonstrate a blend of practicality and ingenuity that will help humanity chart its path to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
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NASA to host International Observe the Moon Night 2024
The public is invited to join fellow sky-watchers Sept. 14 for International Observe the Moon Night – a worldwide public event encouraging observation, appreciation, and understanding of the Moon and its connection to NASA exploration and discovery. This celebration of the Moon has been held annually since 2010, and this year NASA’s Planetary Missions Program Office will host an event at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville. The Planetary Missions Program Office is located at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.
International Observe the Moon Night is Sept. 14.NASA The free event will be from 5:30 to 8 p.m. CDT at the Davidson Center at the rocket center. Attractions will include hands-on STEM activities, telescope viewing from the Von Braun Astronomical Society, music, face painting, a photo booth, a science trivia show, and much more.
Headline entertainment will be provided by the Science Wizard, David Hagerman. The Science Wizard has appeared on national television and will perform two different science-based stage shows at the event.
NASA’s Planetary Missions Program Office will host an event as part of International Observe the Moon Night at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville on Sept. 14. NASA It’s the perfect time to universally celebrate the Moon as excitement grows about NASA returning to our nearest celestial neighbor with the Artemis missions. Artemis will land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon, using innovative technologies to explore areas of the lunar surface that have never been discovered before.
Learn more and find other events here. Happy International Observe the Moon Night!
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New Hardware for Future Artemis Moon Missions Arrives at Kennedy
From across the Atlantic Ocean and through the Gulf of Mexico, two ships converged, delivering key spacecraft and rocket components of NASA’s Artemis campaign to the agency’s Kennedy Space Center.
On Sept. 3, ESA (European Space Agency) marked a milestone in the Artemis III mission as its European-built service module for NASA’s Orion spacecraft completed a transatlantic journey from Bremen, Germany, to Port Canaveral, Florida, where technicians moved it to nearby Kennedy. Transported aboard the Canopée cargo ship, the European Service Module – assembled by Airbus with components from 10 European countries and the U.S. – provides propulsion, thermal control, electrical power, and water and oxygen for its crews.
On the left, the Canopée transport carrier containing the European Service Module for NASA’s Artemis III mission arrives at Port Canaveral in Florida on Sept. 3 before completing the last leg of its journey to the agency’s Kennedy Space Center’s Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout via truck. On the right, NASA’s Pegasus barge, carrying several pieces of hardware for Artemis II, III, and IV arrives at Kennedy’s Launch Complex 39 turn basin wharf Sept. 5.NASA “Seeing multi-mission hardware arrive at the same time demonstrates the progress we are making on our Artemis missions,” said Amit Kshatriya, deputy associate administrator, Moon to Mars Program, at NASA Headquarters. “We are going to the Moon together with our industry and international partners and we are manufacturing, assembling, building, and integrating elements for Artemis flights.”
NASA’s Pegasus barge, the agency’s waterway workhorse for transporting large hardware by sea, ferried multi-mission hardware for the agency’s SLS (Space Launch System) rocket, the Artemis II launch vehicle stage adapter, the “boat-tail” of the core stage for Artemis III, the core stage engine section for Artemis IV, along with ground support equipment needed to move and assemble the large components. The barge pulled into NASA Kennedy’s Launch Complex 39B Turn Basin on Sept. 5.
The spacecraft factory inside Kennedy’s Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building is set to buzz with additional activity in the coming months. With the Artemis II Orion crew and service modules stacked together and undergoing testing, and engineers outfitting the Artemis III and IV crew modules, engineers soon will connect the newly arrived European Service Module to the crew module adapter, which houses electronic equipment for communications, power, and control, and includes an umbilical connector that bridges the electrical, data, and fluid systems between the crew and service modules.
The SLS rocket’s cone-shaped launch vehicle stage adapter connects the core stage to the upper stage and protects the rocket’s flight computers, avionics, and electrical devices in the upper stage system during launch and ascent. The adapter will be taken to Kennedy’s Vehicle Assembly Building in preparation for Artemis II rocket stacking operations.
The boat-tail, which will be used during the assembly of the SLS core stage for Artemis III, is a fairing-like structure that protects the bottom end of the core stage and RS-25 engines. This hardware, picked up at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility, will join the Artemis III core stage engine section housed in the spaceport’s Space Systems Processing Facility.
The Artemis IV SLS core stage engine section arrived from Michoud and also will transfer to the center’s processing facility ahead of final assembly.
Pegasus also transported the launch vehicle stage adapter for Artemis II, which was moved onto the barge at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center on Aug. 21.
Under the Artemis campaign, NASA will land the first woman, first person of color, and its first international partner astronaut on the lunar surface, establishing long-term exploration for scientific discovery and preparing for human missions to Mars. The agency’s SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft, and supporting ground systems, along with the human landing system, next-generation spacesuits and rovers, and Gateway, serve as NASA’s foundation for deep space exploration.
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Hubble, Chandra Find Supermassive Black Hole Duo
Like two Sumo wrestlers squaring off, the closest confirmed pair of supermassive black holes have been observed in tight proximity. These are located approximately 300 light-years apart and were detected using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory. These black holes, buried deep within a pair of colliding galaxies, are fueled by infalling gas and dust, causing them to shine brightly as active galactic nuclei (AGN).
This is an artist’s depiction of a pair of active black holes at the heart of two merging galaxies. They are both surrounded by an accretion disk of hot gas. Some of the material is ejected along the spin axis of each black hole. Confined by powerful magnetic fields, the jets blaze across space at nearly the speed of light as devastating beams of energy.NASA This AGN pair is the closest one detected in the local universe using multiwavelength (visible and X-ray light) observations. While several dozen “dual” black holes have been found before, their separations are typically much greater than what was discovered in the gas-rich galaxy MCG-03-34-64. Astronomers using radio telescopes have observed one pair of binary black holes in even closer proximity than in MCG-03-34-64, but without confirmation in other wavelengths.
AGN binaries like this were likely more common in the early universe when galaxy mergers were more frequent. This discovery provides a unique close-up look at a nearby example, located about 800 million light-years away.
The discovery was serendipitous. Hubble’s high-resolution imaging revealed three optical diffraction spikes nested inside the host galaxy, indicating a large concentration of glowing oxygen gas within a very small area. “We were not expecting to see something like this,” said Anna Trindade Falcão of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian in Cambridge, Massachusetts, lead author of the paper published Sept. 9 in The Astrophysical Journal. “This view is not a common occurrence in the nearby universe, and told us there’s something else going on inside the galaxy.”
Diffraction spikes are imaging artifacts caused when light from a very small region in space bends around the mirror inside telescopes.
A Hubble Space Telescope visible-light image of the galaxy MCG-03-34-064. Hubble’s sharp view reveals three distinct bright spots embedded in a white ellipse at the galaxy’s center (expanded in an inset image at upper right). Two of these bright spots are the source of strong X-ray emission, a telltale sign that they are supermassive black holes. The black holes shine brightly because they are converting infalling matter into energy, and blaze across space as active galactic nuclei. Their separation is about 300 light-years. The third spot is a blob of bright gas. The blue streak pointing to the 5 o’clock position may be a jet fired from one of the black holes. The black hole pair is a result of a merger between two galaxies that will eventually collide. NASA, ESA, Anna Trindade Falcão (CfA); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI) Falcão’s team then examined the same galaxy in X-rays light using the Chandra observatory to drill into what’s going on. “When we looked at MCG-03-34-64 in the X-ray band, we saw two separated, powerful sources of high-energy emission coincident with the bright optical points of light seen with Hubble. We put these pieces together and concluded that we were likely looking at two closely spaced supermassive black holes,” Falcão said.
To support their interpretation, the researchers used archival radio data from the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array near Socorro, New Mexico. The energetic black hole duo also emits powerful radio waves. “When you see bright light in optical, X-rays, and radio wavelengths, a lot of things can be ruled out, leaving the conclusion these can only be explained as close black holes. When you put all the pieces together it gives you the picture of the AGN duo,” said Falcão.
The third source of bright light seen by Hubble is of unknown origin, and more data is needed to understand it. That might be gas that is shocked by energy from a jet of ultra high-speed plasma fired from one of the black holes, like a stream of water from a garden hose blasting into a pile of sand.
“We wouldn’t be able to see all of these intricacies without Hubble’s amazing resolution,” Falcão said.
Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have discovered that the jet from a supermassive black hole at the core of M87, a huge galaxy 54 million light years away, seems to cause stars to erupt along its trajectory. The stars, called novae, are not caught inside the jet, but in a dangerous area near it. (NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center; lead producer: Paul Morris) The two supermassive black holes were once at the core of their respective host galaxies. A merger between the galaxies brought the black holes into close proximity. They will continue to spiral closer together until they eventually merge – in perhaps 100 million years – rattling the fabric of space and time as gravitational waves.
The National Science Foundation’s Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) has detected gravitational waves from dozens of mergers between stellar-mass black holes. But the longer wavelengths resulting from a supermassive black hole merger are beyond LIGO’s capabilities. The next-generation gravitational wave detector, called the LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna) mission, will consist of three detectors in space, separated by millions of miles, to capture these longer wavelength gravitational waves from deep space. ESA (European Space Agency) is leading this mission, partnering with NASA and other participating institutions, with a planned launch in the mid-2030s.
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Chandra X-ray Center controls science from Cambridge, Massachusetts and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts. Northrop Grumman Space Technologies in Redondo Beach, California was the prime contractor for the spacecraft.
The Hubble Space Telescope has been operating for over three decades and continues to make ground-breaking discoveries that shape our fundamental understanding of the universe. Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center manages the telescope and mission operations. Lockheed Martin Space, based in Denver, Colorado, also supports mission operations at Goddard. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, conducts Hubble science operations for NASA.
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Betelgeuse! Betelgeuse! Betelgeuse! Stargazers Won’t See Ghosts but Supergiant Star for Spooky Season
Stargazers seeking familiar points of interest in the night sky are likely to point out Betelgeuse, the red supergiant star sometimes identified as “the shoulder of Orion.” Even some 400-600 light-years distant, it’s typically one of the brightest stars visible in the night sky, and the brightest of all in the infrared spectrum.
Fewer space enthusiasts may know that Betelgeuse’s nickname may have been mistranslated from the Arabic phrase Ibṭ al-Jauzā’ in the 13th century. Depending on the nuances of pronunciation, Betelgeuse actually might be “the armpit of Orion.”
Betelgeuse is part of the Orion constellation. NASA What may come as a surprise is that the star that inspired the naming of a ghostly movie menace is doing some hurtling of its own. Betelgeuse is actually a runaway star in the process of bidding a big galactic adios to its birthplace – the hot star association that includes Orion’s Belt – and speeding away at approximately 18.6 miles per second.
That’s an awesome prospect, said Dr. Debra Wallace, deputy branch chief of Astrophysics at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. Betelgeuse is a pulsating star with an uncertain distance of roughly 548 light-years and changing luminosity. We estimate its radius is approximately 724 times larger than our Sun. If it sat at the center of our solar system, it would swallow the orbits of Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. Its bow shock – the “wave” generated by its passage through the interstellar medium – is roughly four light-years across.
What cosmic force caused Betelgeuse to go on the interstellar lam from its point of origin?
“Typically, stars don’t become runaways without receiving a big kick,” Wallace said. “What’s most likely is that the competing gravity of other nearby stars ejected it outward or something else blew up in its proximity. There was a change in the dynamic interactions of the star grouping, and Betelgeuse was sent packing.”
Betelgeuse is only 10 million years old, but already in the twilight of its life. Given that our own small star is nearly 5 billion years, roughly halfway through its own estimated lifespan, why is Betelgeuse expected to be here today and gone tomorrow – give or take 100,000 years?
“Think about setting a fire in your back yard,” Wallace said. “The more fuel you throw on it, the faster and hotter it burns. It’s visually impressive – but gone in a flash.”
That’s because stars ignite a powerful chain of nuclear fusion reactions to counter their own intense gravity, which is always striving to collapse the star in on itself. For supergiants such as Betelgeuse, that delicate balance requires it to burn extremely hot and bright – but that also means it consumes its fuel supply far faster than our own modest young star.
Wallace said Betelgeuse likely started its life at least 20 times the mass of Earth’s Sun. It’s been visible to us for millennia. Ancient Chinese astronomers would have identified it as a yellow star which has since evolved to the right, per the Hertzsprung-Russell stellar evolution diagram and a 2022 study of the star’s color evolution. When the Egyptian astronomer Ptolemy saw Betelgeuse some 300 years after the earliest Chinese observations, it had gone orange. Today, the star has taken on a fierce red color that makes it easy to find in the night sky.
This four-panel illustration reveals how the southern region of the red supergiant Betelgeuse suddenly may have become fainter for several months in late 2019 and early 2020. In the first two panels, as seen in ultraviolet light by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, a bright, hot blob of plasma is ejected from a convection cell on the star’s surface. In panel three, the expelled gas rapidly expands outward, cooling to form an enormous cloud of obscuring dust grains. The final panel reveals the huge dust cloud blocking the light from a quarter of Betelgeuse’s surface, as seen from Earth. “Betelgeuse likely will burn for another 100,000 years or so, depending on its mass loss rate, then could end up a blue supergiant – like Rigel, the star that serves as Orion’s right knee – before it explodes,” Wallace said. That supernova event, she noted, will release as much energy in a split-second as our Sun generates in its entire lifetime, though Betelgeuse is far too distant to have any effect on our solar system.
Which isn’t to say the red supergiant doesn’t have any surprises left. In October 2019, Betelgeuse abruptly darkened, as much as half of its luminosity draining away in an event astronomers dubbed “the Great Dimming.”
Researchers began speculating about an early supernova, but by early 2020, Betelgeuse had brightened once more. Studies using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope suggested a slightly less explosive cause. An upwelling of a large convection cell on Betelgeuse – perhaps in honor of its flatulent namesake – had expelled a titanic outburst of superhot plasma, yielding a dust cloud that dramatically blocked the star’s light for months.
“We’re still figuring out the mechanisms which cause massive star evolution, and the advent of new telescopes has been tremendously helpful,” Wallace said. “We’ve only realized in the last 20 or 30 years that most massive stars are products of binary evolution.”
Was Betelgeuse part of a binary star system, and did its demise – or a cataclysmic split – turn it into a runaway? Is it possible it’s still there, having merged with or still locked in a fatal dance with its fugitive partner? New studies suggest those may be possibilities, though Wallace notes that further intensive study is needed.
Will Betelgeuse ultimately go out with a bang or a whimper? Time will tell. But don’t write off the red giant just yet.
Stargazers in the Northern Hemisphere seeking to spot Betelgeuse should scan the southwestern sky. Those south of the equator should look in the northwestern sky. Find a line of three bright stars clustered together, representing Orion’s belt. Two brighter stars just to the north mark Orion’s shoulders; the very bright left one is Betelgeuse.
Learn more about Betelgeuse here.
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NASA’s Mini BurstCube Mission Detects Mega Blast
The shoebox-sized BurstCube satellite has observed its first gamma-ray burst, the most powerful kind of explosion in the universe, according to a recent analysis of observations collected over the last several months.
“We’re excited to collect science data,” said Sean Semper, BurstCube’s lead engineer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “It’s an important milestone for the team and for the many early career engineers and scientists that have been part of the mission.”
BurstCube, trailed by another CubeSat named SNOOPI (Signals of Opportunity P-band Investigation), emerges from the International Space Station on April 18. NASA/Matthew Dominick The event, called GRB 240629A, occurred June 29 in the southern constellation Microscopium. The team announced the discovery in a GCN (General Coordinates Network) circular on Aug. 29.
BurstCube deployed into orbit April 18 from the International Space Station, following a March 21 launch. The mission was designed to detect, locate, and study short gamma-ray bursts, brief flashes of high-energy light created when superdense objects like neutron stars collide. These collisions also produce heavy elements like gold and iodine, an essential ingredient for life as we know it.
BurstCube is the first CubeSat to use NASA’s TDRS (Tracking and Data Relay Satellite) system, a constellation of specialized communications spacecraft. Data relayed by TDRS (pronounced “tee-driss”) help coordinate rapid follow-up measurements by other observatories in space and on the ground through NASA’s GCN. BurstCube also regularly beams data back to Earth using the Direct to Earth system – both it and TDRS are part of NASA’s Near Space Network.
After BurstCube deployed from the space station, the team discovered that one of the two solar panels failed to fully extend. It obscures the view of the mission’s star tracker, which hinders orienting the spacecraft in a way that minimizes drag. The team originally hoped to operate BurstCube for 12-18 months, but now estimates the increased drag will cause the satellite to re-enter the atmosphere in September.
“I’m proud of how the team responded to the situation and is making the best use of the time we have in orbit,” said Jeremy Perkins, BurstCube’s principal investigator at Goddard. “Small missions like BurstCube not only provide an opportunity to do great science and test new technologies, like our mission’s gamma-ray detector, but also important learning opportunities for the up-and-coming members of the astrophysics community.”
BurstCube is led by Goddard. It’s funded by the Science Mission Directorate’s Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters. The BurstCube collaboration includes: the University of Alabama in Huntsville; the University of Maryland, College Park; the Universities Space Research Association in Washington; the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington; and NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.
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