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Final Venus Flyby for NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Queues Closest Sun Pass
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By European Space Agency
Proba-3 is such an ambitious mission that it needs more than one single spacecraft to succeed. In order for Proba-3’s Coronagraph spacecraft observe the Sun’s faint surrounding atmosphere, the disk-bearing Occulter spacecraft must block out the fiery solar disk. This means Proba-3’s Occulter ends up facing the Sun continuously, making it a valuable platform for science in its own right.
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By NASA
Hubble Space Telescope Home NASA’s Hubble, Webb… 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 Lithographs Fact Sheets Glossary Posters Hubble on the NASA App More Online Activities 6 Min Read NASA’s Hubble, Webb Probe Surprisingly Smooth Disk Around Vega
Teams of astronomers used the combined power of NASA’s Hubble and James Webb space telescopes to revisit the legendary Vega disk. Credits:
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, S. Wolff (University of Arizona), K. Su (University of Arizona), A. Gáspár (University of Arizona) In the 1997 movie “Contact,” adapted from Carl Sagan’s 1985 novel, the lead character scientist Ellie Arroway (played by actor Jodi Foster) takes a space-alien-built wormhole ride to the star Vega. She emerges inside a snowstorm of debris encircling the star — but no obvious planets are visible.
It looks like the filmmakers got it right.
A team of astronomers at the University of Arizona, Tucson used NASA’s Hubble and James Webb space telescopes for an unprecedented in-depth look at the nearly 100-billion-mile-diameter debris disk encircling Vega. “Between the Hubble and Webb telescopes, you get this very clear view of Vega. It’s a mysterious system because it’s unlike other circumstellar disks we’ve looked at,” said Andras Gáspár of the University of Arizona, a member of the research team. “The Vega disk is smooth, ridiculously smooth.”
The big surprise to the research team is that there is no obvious evidence for one or more large planets plowing through the face-on disk like snow tractors. “It’s making us rethink the range and variety among exoplanet systems,” said Kate Su of the University of Arizona, lead author of the paper presenting the Webb findings.
[left] A Hubble Space Telescope false-color view of a 100-billion-mile-wide disk of dust around the summer star Vega. Hubble detects reflected light from dust that is the size of smoke particles largely in a halo on the periphery of the disk. The disk is very smooth, with no evidence of embedded large planets. The black spot at the center blocks out the bright glow of the hot young star.
[right] The James Webb Space Telescope resolves the glow of warm dust in a disk halo, at 23 billion miles out. The outer disk (analogous to the solar system’s Kuiper Belt) extends from 7 billion miles to 15 billion miles. The inner disk extends from the inner edge of the outer disk down to close proximity to the star. There is a notable dip in surface brightness of the inner disk from approximately 3.7 to 7.2 billion miles. The black spot at the center is due to lack of data from saturation. NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, S. Wolff (University of Arizona), K. Su (University of Arizona), A. Gáspár (University of Arizona)
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Webb sees the infrared glow from a disk of particles the size of sand swirling around the sizzling blue-white star that is 40 times brighter than our Sun. Hubble captures an outer halo of this disk, with particles no bigger than the consistency of smoke that are reflecting starlight.
The distribution of dust in the Vega debris disk is layered because the pressure of starlight pushes out the smaller grains faster than larger grains. “Different types of physics will locate different-sized particles at different locations,” said Schuyler Wolff of the University of Arizona team, lead author of the paper presenting the Hubble findings. “The fact that we’re seeing dust particle sizes sorted out can help us understand the underlying dynamics in circumstellar disks.”
The Vega disk does have a subtle gap, around 60 AU (astronomical units) from the star (twice the distance of Neptune from the Sun), but otherwise is very smooth all the way in until it is lost in the glare of the star. This shows that there are no planets down at least to Neptune-mass circulating in large orbits, as in our solar system, say the researchers.
Hubble acquired this image of the circumstellar disk around the star Vega using the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS). NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, S. Wolff (University of Arizona), K. Su (University of Arizona), A. Gáspár (University of Arizona)
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“We’re seeing in detail how much variety there is among circumstellar disks, and how that variety is tied into the underlying planetary systems. We’re finding a lot out about the planetary systems — even when we can’t see what might be hidden planets,” added Su. “There’s still a lot of unknowns in the planet-formation process, and I think these new observations of Vega are going to help constrain models of planet formation.”
Disk Diversity
Newly forming stars accrete material from a disk of dust and gas that is the flattened remnant of the cloud from which they are forming. In the mid-1990s Hubble found disks around many newly forming stars. The disks are likely sites of planet formation, migration, and sometimes destruction. Fully matured stars like Vega have dusty disks enriched by ongoing “bumper car” collisions among orbiting asteroids and debris from evaporating comets. These are primordial bodies that can survive up to the present 450-million-year age of Vega (our Sun is approximately ten times older than Vega). Dust within our solar system (seen as the Zodiacal light) is also replenished by minor bodies ejecting dust at a rate of about 10 tons per second. This dust is shoved around by planets. This provides a strategy for detecting planets around other stars without seeing them directly – just by witnessing the effects they have on the dust.
“Vega continues to be unusual,” said Wolff. “The architecture of the Vega system is markedly different from our own solar system where giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn are keeping the dust from spreading the way it does with Vega.”
Webb acquired this image of the circumstellar disk around the star Vega using the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, S. Wolff (University of Arizona), K. Su (University of Arizona), A. Gáspár (University of Arizona)
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For comparison, there is a nearby star, Fomalhaut, which is about the same distance, age and temperature as Vega. But Fomalhaut’s circumstellar architecture is greatly different from Vega’s. Fomalhaut has three nested debris belts.
Planets are suggested as shepherding bodies around Fomalhaut that gravitationally constrict the dust into rings, though no planets have been positively identified yet. “Given the physical similarity between the stars of Vega and Fomalhaut, why does Fomalhaut seem to have been able to form planets and Vega didn’t?” said team member George Rieke of the University of Arizona, a member of the research team. “What’s the difference? Did the circumstellar environment, or the star itself, create that difference? What’s puzzling is that the same physics is at work in both,” added Wolff.
First Clue to Possible Planetary Construction Yards
Located in the summer constellation Lyra, Vega is one of the brightest stars in the northern sky. Vega is legendary because it offered the first evidence for material orbiting a star — presumably the stuff for making planets — as potential abodes of life. This was first hypothesized by Immanuel Kant in 1775. But it took over 200 years before the first observational evidence was collected in 1984. A puzzling excess of infrared light from warm dust was detected by NASA’s IRAS (Infrared Astronomy Satellite). It was interpreted as a shell or disk of dust extending twice the orbital radius of Pluto from the star.
In 2005, NASA’s infrared Spitzer Space Telescope mapped out a ring of dust around Vega. This was further confirmed by observations using submillimeter telescopes including Caltech’s Submillimeter Observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, and also the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, and ESA’s (European Space Agency’s) Herschel Space Telescope, but none of these telescopes could see much detail. “The Hubble and Webb observations together provide so much more detail that they are telling us something completely new about the Vega system that nobody knew before,” said Rieke.
Two papers (Wolff et al. and Su et. al.) from the Arizona team will be published in The Astrophysical Journal.
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 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 in Greenbelt, Maryland, 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.
Explore More:
Finding Planetary Construction Zones
The science paper by Schuyler Wolff et al., PDF (3.24 MB)
The science paper by Kate Su et al., PDF (2.10 MB)
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Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
NASA’s Perseverance rover captured the silhouette of the Martian moon Phobos as it passed in front of the Sun on Sept. 30, 2024. The video shows the transit speeded up by four times, followed by the eclipse in real time. NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS/SSI The tiny, potato-shaped moon Phobos, one of two Martian moons, cast a silhouette as it passed in front of the Sun, creating an eye in Mars’ sky.
From its perch on the western wall of Mars’ Jezero Crater, NASA’s Perseverance rover recently spied a “googly eye” peering down from space. The pupil in this celestial gaze is the Martian moon Phobos, and the iris is our Sun.
Captured by the rover’s Mastcam-Z on Sept. 30, the 1,285th Martian day of Perseverance’s mission, the event took place when the potato-shaped moon passed directly between the Sun and a point on the surface of Mars, obscuring a large part of the Sun’s disc. At the same time that Phobos appeared as a large black disc rapidly moving across the face of the Sun, its shadow, or antumbra, moved across the planet’s surface.
Astronomer Asaph Hall named the potato-shaped moon in 1877, after the god of fear and panic in Greek mythology; the word “phobia” comes from Phobos. (And the word for fear of potatoes, and perhaps potato-shaped moons, is potnonomicaphobia.) He named Mars’ other moon Deimos, after Phobos’ mythological twin brother.
Roughly 157 times smaller in diameter than Earth’s Moon, Phobos is only about 17 miles (27 kilometers) at its widest point. Deimos is even smaller.
Rapid Transit
Because Phobos’ orbit is almost perfectly in line with the Martian equator and relatively close to the planet’s surface, transits of the moon occur on most days of the Martian year. Due to its quick orbit (about 7.6 hours to do a full loop around Mars), a transit of Phobos usually lasts only 30 seconds or so.
This is not the first time that a NASA rover has witnessed Phobos blocking the Sun’s rays. Perseverance has captured several Phobos transits since landing at Mars’ Jezero Crater in February 2021. Curiosity captured a video in 2019. And Opportunity captured an image in 2004.
By comparing the various images, scientists can refine their understanding of the moon’s orbit to learn how it’s changing. Phobos is getting closer to Mars and is predicted to collide with it in about 50 million years.
More About Perseverance
Arizona State University leads the operations of the Mastcam-Z instrument, working in collaboration with Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, on the design, fabrication, testing, and operation of the cameras, and in collaboration with the Niels Bohr Institute of the University of Copenhagen on the design, fabrication, and testing of the calibration targets.
A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).
Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed for the agency by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.
Space Science Institute produced this video.
For more about Perseverance:
https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020
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NASA to Launch Innovative Solar Coronagraph to Space Station
NASA’s Coronal Diagnostic Experiment (CODEX) is ready to launch to the International Space Station to reveal new details about the solar wind including its origin and its evolution.
Launching in November 2024 aboard SpaceX’s 31st commercial resupply services mission, CODEX will be robotically installed on the exterior of the space station. As a solar coronagraph, CODEX will block out the bright light from the Sun’s surface to better see details in the Sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona.
In this animation, the CODEX instrument can be seen mounted on the exterior of the International Space Station. For more CODEX imagery, visit https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14647. CODEX Team/NASA “The CODEX instrument is a new generation solar coronagraph,” said Jeffrey Newmark, principal investigator for the instrument and scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “It has a dual use — it’s both a technology demonstration and will conduct science.”
This coronagraph is different from prior coronagraphs that NASA has used because it has special filters that can provide details of the temperature and speed of the solar wind. Typically, a solar coronagraph captures images of the density of the plasma flowing away from the Sun. By combining the temperature and speed of the solar wind with the traditional density measurement, CODEX can give scientists a fuller picture of the wind itself.
“This isn’t just a snapshot,” said Nicholeen Viall, co-investigator of CODEX and heliophysicist at NASA Goddard. “You’re going to get to see the evolution of structures in the solar wind, from when they form from the Sun’s corona until they flow outwards and become the solar wind.”
The CODEX instrument will give scientists more information to understand what heats the solar wind to around 1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit — around 175 times hotter than the Sun’s surface — and sends it streaming out from the Sun at almost a million miles per hour.
Team members for CODEX pose with the instrument in a clean facility during initial integration of the coronagraph with the pointing system. CODEX Team/NASA This launch is just the latest step in a long history for the instrument. In the early 2000s and in August 2017, NASA scientists ran ground-based experiments similar to CODEX during total solar eclipses. A coronagraph mimics what happens during a total solar eclipse, so this naturally occurring phenomena provided a good opportunity to test instruments that measure the temperature and speed of the solar wind.
In 2019, NASA scientists launched the Balloon-borne Investigation of Temperature and Speed of Electrons in the corona (BITSE) experiment. A balloon the size of a football field carried the CODEX prototype 22 miles above Earth’s surface, where the atmosphere is much thinner and the sky is dimmer than it is from the ground, enabling better observations. However, this region of Earth’s atmosphere is still brighter than outer space itself.
“We saw enough from BITSE to see that the technique worked, but not enough to achieve the long-term science objectives,” said Newmark.
Now, by installing CODEX on the space station, scientists will be able to view the Sun’s corona without fighting the brightness of Earth’s atmosphere. This is also a beneficial time for the instrument to launch because the Sun has reached its solar maximum phase, a period of high activity during its 11-year cycle.
“The types of solar wind that we get during solar maximum are different than some of the types of wind we get during solar minimum,” said Viall. “There are different coronal structures during this time that lead to different types of solar wind.”
The CODEX coronagraph is shown during optical alignment and assembly. CODEX Team//NASA This coronagraph will be looking at two types of solar wind. In one, the solar wind travels directly outward from our star, pulling the magnetic field from the Sun into the heliosphere, the bubble that surrounds our solar system. The other type of solar wind forms from magnetic field lines that are initially closed, like a loop, but then open up.
These closed field lines contain hot, dense plasma. When the loops open, this hot plasma gets propelled into the solar wind. While these “blobs” of plasma are present throughout all of the solar cycle, scientists expect their location to change because of the magnetic complexity of the corona during solar maximum. The CODEX instrument is designed to see how hot these blobs are for the first time.
The coronagraph will also build upon research from ongoing space missions, such as the joint ESA (European Space Agency) and NASA mission Solar Orbiter, which also carries a coronagraph, and NASA’s Parker Solar Probe. For example, CODEX will look at the solar wind much closer to the solar surface, while Parker Solar Probe samples it a little farther out. Launching in 2025, NASA’s Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) mission will make 3D observations of the Sun’s corona to learn how the mass and energy there become solar wind.
By comparing these findings, scientists can better understand how the solar wind is formed and how the solar wind changes as it travels farther from the Sun. This research advances our understanding of space weather, the conditions in space that may interact with Earth and spacecraft.
“Just like understanding hurricanes, you want to understand the atmosphere the storm is flowing through,” said Newmark. “CODEX’s observations will contribute to our understanding of the region that space weather travels through, helping improve predictions.”
The CODEX instrument is a collaboration between NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute with additional contribution from Italy’s National Institute for Astrophysics.
By Abbey Interrante
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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