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By USH
The world is full of mysterious places, and Vottovaara Mountain in Russia's Republic of Karelia is one of them. This site has been revered for thousands of years by ancient Saami tribes and shamans, who considered it a sacred place surrounded with powerful energy.
Image credit: Universe Inside You
Vottovaara is home to numerous strange megalithic structures and ruins that many believe couldn't have formed naturally. Among these are around 1,600 sacred stones, known as "seids," arranged in a puzzling pattern. These stones, often unusually shaped, are precariously balanced on small rocks in ways that defy simple explanations. While scientists suggest that this was the result of natural processes during the Ice Age, the sheer number and precision of these balanced stones challenge the idea that they occurred by chance.
Another intriguing feature of Vottovaara is a structure referred to as "the well," which locals believe to be an ancient, man-made water reservoir.
As you climb Vottovaara, you'll notice an eerie transformation in the trees. None of the trees on the summit are older than a few decades, and while young pines and firs start growing normally, they soon begin to twist and deform in bizarre ways. This phenomenon is thought to be caused by some unknown energy affecting the trees.
Known as Death Mountain, Vottovaara also is believed to be connected to ancient spirits that are said to inhabit the area, adding to its aura of mystery.
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By European Space Agency
ESA’s star-surveying Gaia mission has again proven to be a formidable asteroid explorer, spotting potential moons around more than 350 asteroids not known to have a companion.
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By NASA
Curiosity Navigation Curiosity Mission Overview Where is Curiosity? Mission Updates Science Overview Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Curiosity Raw Images Mars Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions All Planets Mercury Venus Earth Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto & Dwarf Planets 2 min read
Sols 4241–4242: We Can’t Go Around It…We’ve Got To Go Through It!
This image was taken by the Front Hazard Avoidance Camera (Front Hazcam) aboard NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity on Sol 4237 – Martian day 4,237 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission – on July 7, 2024 at 14:46:38 UTC. Earth planning date: Wednesday, July 10, 2024
Curiosity is currently trekking across Gediz Vallis channel because, as my nephew’s favorite book says, if we can’t go around it… we’ve got to go through it! Recently we’ve been parked for a while on the channel to drill “Mammoth Lakes,” (https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/sols-4222-4224-a-particularly-prickly-power-puzzle/) and are now on the move once again exploring the rubbly rocks. Today the science team planned two sols of activity for Curiosity as we venture on through and across Gediz Vallis channel.
On the first sol we undertake nearly two hours of planned science. This includes Navcam deck monitoring and a Mastcam tau, to measure dust in the atmosphere as part of our atmospheric and environmental activities, alongside some geology-focused observations. MAHLI is taking a close up image of “Donohue Pass” that we targeted with ChemCam LIBS and Mastcam imagery in the previous plan (https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/sols-4239-4240-vuggin-out/). ChemCam will take a LIBS on a rock named “Negit Island” that caught the team’s eye with a lighter base and a darker upper section. ChemCam will also take two RMIs of Gediz Vallis, one to document the wall of Gediz Vallis channel that we can see up ahead of us, and one looking at the rocks that sit within the channel. Mastcam is also taking a look at the wall of Gediz Vallis, as well as continuing a mega-mosaic started in the last plan that took 54 images of “Stubblefield Canyon.” Today we planned another 48 images to document the rest of this area named “Echo Ridge.”
ChemCam will take a passive observation of an interesting rubbly target in this region called “Wishbone Lake,” prior to a five-meter drive (about 16 feet) over to this feature. Once we have arrived, Curiosity will take some post-drive Navcam imaging and a MARDI image of our left-front wheel. After a well-deserved sleep, on the second sol of this plan Curiosity will automatically choose a LIBS target in our new workspace, before taking a dust-devil and suprahorizon movie to round off this plan.
Written by Emma Harris, Graduate Student at Natural History Museum, London
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Last Updated Jul 12, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
4 Min Read NASA’s Webb Captures Celestial Fireworks Around Forming Star
L1527, shown in this image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument). The colors within this mid-infrared image reveal details about the central protostar’s behavior.
The cosmos seems to come alive with a crackling explosion of pyrotechnics in this new image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Taken with Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument), this fiery hourglass marks the scene of a very young object in the process of becoming a star. A central protostar grows in the neck of the hourglass, accumulating material from a thin protoplanetary disk, seen edge-on as a dark line.
The protostar, a relatively young object of about 100,000 years, is still surrounded by its parent molecular cloud, or large region of gas and dust. Webb’s previous observation of L1527, with NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera), allowed us to peer into this region and revealed this molecular cloud and protostar in opaque, vibrant colors.
Image A: L1527 – Webb/MIRI
L1527, shown in this image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument), is a molecular cloud that harbors a protostar. It resides about 460 light-years from Earth in the constellation Taurus. The more diffuse blue light and the filamentary structures in the image come from organic compounds known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), while the red at the center of this image is an energized, thick layer of gases and dust that surrounds the protostar. The region in between, which shows up in white, is a mixture of PAHs, ionized gas, and other molecules. This image includes filters representing 7.7 microns light as blue, 12.8 microns light as green, and 18 microns light as red.
Both NIRCam and MIRI show the effects of outflows, which are emitted in opposite directions along the protostar’s rotation axis as the object consumes gas and dust from the surrounding cloud. These outflows take the form of bow shocks to the surrounding molecular cloud, which appear as filamentary structures throughout. They are also responsible for carving the bright hourglass structure within the molecular cloud as they energize, or excite, the surrounding matter and cause the regions above and below it to glow. This creates an effect reminiscent of fireworks brightening a cloudy night sky. Unlike NIRCam, however, which mostly shows the light that is reflected off dust, MIRI provides a look into how these outflows affect the region’s thickest dust and gases.
The areas colored here in blue, which encompass most of the hourglass, show mostly carbonaceous molecules known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. The protostar itself and the dense blanket of dust and a mixture of gases that surround it are represented in red. (The sparkler-like red extensions are an artifact of the telescopes’s optics). In between, MIRI reveals a white region directly above and below the protostar, which doesn’t show as strongly in the NIRCam view. This region is a mixture of hydrocarbons, ionized neon, and thick dust, which shows that the protostar propels this matter quite far away from it as it messily consumes material from its disk.
As the protostar continues to age and release energetic jets, it’ll consume, destroy, and push away much of this molecular cloud, and many of the structures we see here will begin to fade. Eventually, once it finishes gathering mass, this impressive display will end, and the star itself will become more apparent, even to our visible-light telescopes.
The combination of analyses from both the near-infrared and mid-infrared views reveal the overall behavior of this system, including how the central protostar is affecting the surrounding region. Other stars in Taurus, the star-forming region where L1527 resides, are forming just like this, which could lead to other molecular clouds being disrupted and either preventing new stars from forming or catalyzing their development.The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
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Media Contacts
Laura Betz – laura.e.betz@nasa.gov, Rob Gutro – rob.gutro@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Hanna Braun hbraun@stsci.edu Christine Pulliam – cpulliam@stsci.edu
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
Related Information
ARTICLE/IMAGE: Webb’s previous observation of L1527, with NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera)
VIDEO: Fly-through the star-forming Pillars of Creation
INTERACTIVE: Explore star formation via a multi-wavelength view of Herbig-Haro 46/47
POSTER: L1527 NIRCam poster
VIDEO: Science Snippets Video: Dust and the formation of Planetary Systems
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Last Updated Jul 02, 2024 Editor Stephen Sabia Contact Laura Betz laura.e.betz@nasa.gov Related Terms
Astrophysics James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Nebulae Protostars Science & Research Star-forming Nebulae Stars The Universe
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