Space news topic and space related news

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MAROON-X Embarks on its Exoplanet Quest
https://www.gemini.edu/pr/maroon-x-embarks-its-exoplanet-quest

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NASA's Perseverance Drives on Mars' Terrain for First Time
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-perseverance-drives-on-mars-terrain-for-first-time

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COMET MAKES A PIT STOP NEAR JUPITER'S ASTEROIDS
https://hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2021/news-2021-05

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Scientists link star-shredding event to origins of universe's highest-energy particles
https://www.technology.org/2021/03/08/scientists-link-star-shredding-event-to-origins-of-universes-highest-energy-particles/

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Most distant quasar with powerful radio jets discovered
https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2103/

With the help of the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ESO's VLT), astronomers have discovered and studied in detail the most distant source of radio emission known to date. The source is a "radio-loud" quasar — a bright object with powerful jets emitting at radio wavelengths — that is so far away its light has taken 13 billion years to reach us. The discovery could provide important clues to help astronomers understand the early Universe.

Quasars are very bright objects that lie at the centre of some galaxies and are powered by supermassive black holes. As the black hole consumes the surrounding gas, energy is released, allowing astronomers to spot them even when they are very far away.

The newly discovered quasar, nicknamed P172+18, is so distant that light from it has travelled for about 13 billion years to reach us: we see it as it was when the Universe was just around 780 million years old. While more distant quasars have been discovered, this is the first time astronomers have been able to identify the telltale signatures of radio jets in a quasar this early on in the history of the Universe. Only about 10% of quasars — which astronomers classify as "radio-loud" — have jets, which shine brightly at radio frequencies [1].

P172+18 is powered by a black hole about 300 million times more massive than our Sun that is consuming gas at a stunning rate. "The black hole is eating up matter very rapidly, growing in mass at one of the highest rates ever observed," explains astronomer Chiara Mazzucchelli, Fellow at ESO in Chile, who led the discovery together with Eduardo Bañados of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany.

The astronomers think that there's a link between the rapid growth of supermassive black holes and the powerful radio jets spotted in quasars like P172+18. The jets are thought to be capable of disturbing the gas around the black hole, increasing the rate at which gas falls in. Therefore, studying radio-loud quasars can provide important insights into how black holes in the early Universe grew to their supermassive sizes so quickly after the Big Bang.

"I find it very exciting to discover 'new' black holes for the first time, and to provide one more building block to understand the primordial Universe, where we come from, and ultimately ourselves," says Mazzucchelli.

P172+18 was first recognised as a far-away quasar, after having been previously identified as a radio source, at the Magellan Telescope at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile by Bañados and Mazzucchelli. "As soon as we got the data, we inspected it by eye, and we knew immediately that we had discovered the most distant radio-loud quasar known so far," says Bañados.

However, owing to a short observation time, the team did not have enough data to study the object in detail. A flurry of observations with other telescopes followed, including with the X-shooter instrument on ESO's VLT, which allowed them to dig deeper into the characteristics of this quasar, including determining key properties such as the mass of the black hole and how fast it's eating up matter from its surroundings. Other telescopes that contributed to the study include the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's Very Large Array and the Keck Telescope in the US. 

While the team are excited about their discovery, to appear in The Astrophysical Journal, they believe this radio-loud quasar could be the first of many to be found, perhaps at even larger cosmological distances. "This discovery makes me optimistic and I believe — and hope — that the distance record will be broken soon," says Bañados.

Observations with facilities such as ALMA, in which ESO is a partner, and with ESO's upcoming Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) could help uncover and study more of these early-Universe objects in detail.

Notes
[1] Radio waves that are used in astronomy have frequencies between about 300 MHz and 300 GHz.

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Rare meteorite recovered in UK after spectacular fireball
https://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/rare-meteorite-recovered-in-uk-after-spectacular-fireball/

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Distant Planet May Be on Its Second Atmosphere, NASA's Hubble Finds
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/distant-planet-may-be-on-its-second-atmosphere-nasas-hubble-finds

Transformed from a gaseous planet like Neptune to a hot, rocky world with a poisonous atmosphere, GJ 1132 b shows that planets can undergo drastic physical changes.

Scientists using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have found evidence that a planet orbiting a distant star may have lost its atmosphere but gained a second one through volcanic activity.

The planet, GJ 1132 b, is hypothesized to have begun as a gaseous world with a thick hydrogen blanket of atmosphere. Starting out at several times the diameter of Earth, this so-called "sub-Neptune" is believed to have quickly lost its primordial hydrogen and helium atmosphere due to the intense radiation of the hot, young star it orbits. In a short period of time, such a planet would be stripped down to a bare core about the size of Earth. That's when things got interesting.

To the surprise of astronomers, Hubble observed an atmosphere which, according to their theory, is a "secondary atmosphere" that is present now. Based on a combination of direct observational evidence and inference through computer modeling, the team reports that the atmosphere consists of molecular hydrogen, hydrogen cyanide, methane and also contains an aerosol haze. Modeling suggests the aerosol haze is based on photochemically produced hydrocarbons, similar to smog on Earth.

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NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover Mission Honors Navajo Language
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasa-s-perseverance-mars-rover-mission-honors-navajo-language

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Asteroid 2001 FO32 Will Safely Pass by Earth March 21
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/asteroid-2001-fo32-will-safely-pass-by-earth-march-21

The interplanetary interloper won't come closer than 1.25 million miles to Earth, but it will present a valuable scientific opportunity for astronomers.

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What's the Connection Between Stellar-Mass Black Holes and Dark Matter?
https://www.universetoday.com/150494/whats-the-connection-between-stellar-mass-black-holes-and-dark-matter/

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Cosmic rays reveal tsunamis and waves
https://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/focus/en/articles/z0508_00121.html

Undersea sensors to detect tidal phenomena are the first of their kind

The first trial of an undersea sensor array to detect rapidly changing tidal conditions in Tokyo Bay has been a success. The Tokyo-bay Seafloor Hyper KiloMetric Submarine Deep Detector (TS-HKMSDD) uses particles generated by cosmic rays called muons to visualize variations in depth and density of the sea and seafloor above it. When this array is expanded, it should provide sufficient resolution to monitor the area for potentially dangerous natural disasters and aid the search for natural resources such as gas deposits.

The Tokyo Bay Aqua-Line is a roadway that connects Haneda Airport with Chiba Prefecture to the east. Its longest section is a 9.6-kilometer-long tunnel that extends 45 meters below sea level. This tunnel is primarily used for road traffic, but has now also become home to a unique scientific endeavor. It now houses around 10 special muon detectors within its service tunnels to the side of the road tunnels. This may seem like a strange place for such things as they cannot possibly see the sky. But this is because what they do see is no ordinary kind of light.

The detectors see muons. These particles are created in the atmosphere and pass through ordinary matter with ease. They are only slightly affected by the amount and density of matter they pass through, but the slight variations that result from this can be picked up by these highly specialized detectors. Similar in principle to the way an X-ray machine images bones inside a human body, the signals from multiple detectors can be combined to form a crude image of the distribution and density of matter, based on the number and positions of muons detected. These images can be put to different uses.

"Our successful first trial shows that we can image the sea above the tunnel with a spatial resolution of 10 meters and a time resolution of one minute," said Professor Hiroyuki Tanaka from Muographix at the University of Tokyo. "This clarity of data means we could use the detector to sense dangerous sea conditions such as strong storm waves or even tsunamis. And as muons come from all directions, it's possible to build images of the seafloor itself. This could be useful in detecting the natural gas reserves believed to exist there."

The TS-HKMSDD will commence full-time operation on May 5, 2021. The modular nature of the detector installation means that new sensors can be added continuously, improving the capabilities of the array as they go. Tanaka and his team aim to run a line of about 5,000 sensors along the nearly 10-kilometer tunnel. This configuration would make it the longest particle detector of its kind. The success of this trial could also help the project expand to other locations worldwide including the North Sea around the British Isles.

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New Study Challenges Long-Held Theory of Fate of Mars' Water
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/new-study-challenges-long-held-theory-of-fate-of-mars-water

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Another First: Perseverance Captures the Sounds of Driving on Mars
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/another-first-perseverance-captures-the-sounds-of-driving-on-mars

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Hubble Shows Torrential Outflows from Infant Stars May Not Stop Them from Growing
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2021/hubble-shows-torrential-outflows-from-infant-stars-may-not-stop-them-from-growing

Though our galaxy is an immense city of at least 200 billion stars, the details of how they formed remain largely cloaked in mystery.

Scientists know that stars form from the collapse of huge hydrogen clouds that are squeezed under gravity to the point where nuclear fusion ignites. But only about 30 percent of the cloud's initial mass winds up as a newborn star. Where does the rest of the hydrogen go during such a terribly inefficient process?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rO-mcWsqLaQ

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Hubble Captures Re-energized Planetary Nebula
https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2021/hubble-captures-re-energized-planetary-nebula

Located around 5,000 light-years away in the constellation of Cygnus (the Swan), Abell 78 is an unusual type of planetary nebula.

After exhausting the nuclear fuel in their cores, stars with a mass of around 0.8 to eight times the mass of our Sun collapse to form dense and hot white dwarf stars. As this process occurs, the dying star will throw off its outer layers of material, forming an elaborate cloud of gas and dust known as a planetary nebula. This phenomenon is not uncommon, and planetary nebulae are a popular focus for astrophotographers because of their often beautiful and complex shapes. However, a few like Abell 78 are the result of a so-called "born again" star.

Although the core of the star has stopped burning hydrogen and helium, a thermonuclear runaway at its surface ejects material at high speeds. This ejecta shocks and sweeps up the material of the old nebula, producing the filaments and irregular shell around the central star seen in this image, which features data from Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 and the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System.

Nice image

Spoiler

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Powerful stratospheric winds measured on Jupiter for the first time
https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2104/

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which the European Southern Observatory (ESO) is a partner, a team of astronomers have directly measured winds in Jupiter's middle atmosphere for the first time. By analysing the aftermath of a comet collision from the 1990s, the researchers have revealed incredibly powerful winds, with speeds of up to 1450 kilometres an hour, near Jupiter's poles. They could represent what the team have described as a "unique meteorological beast in our Solar System".

Jupiter is famous for its distinctive red and white bands: swirling clouds of moving gas that astronomers traditionally use to track winds in Jupiter's lower atmosphere. Astronomers have also seen, near Jupiter's poles, the vivid glows known as aurorae, which appear to be associated with strong winds in the planet's upper atmosphere. But until now, researchers had never been able to directly measure wind patterns in between these two atmospheric layers, in the stratosphere.

Measuring wind speeds in Jupiter's stratosphere using cloud-tracking techniques is impossible because of the absence of clouds in this part of the atmosphere. However, astronomers were provided with an alternative measuring aid in the form of comet Shoemaker–Levy 9, which collided with the gas giant in spectacular fashion in 1994. This impact produced new molecules in Jupiter's stratosphere, where they have been moving with the winds ever since.

A team of astronomers, led by Thibault Cavalié of the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Bordeaux in France, have now tracked one of these molecules — hydrogen cyanide — to directly measure stratospheric "jets" on Jupiter. Scientists use the word "jets" to refer to narrow bands of wind in the atmosphere, like Earth's jet streams.

"The most spectacular result is the presence of strong jets, with speeds of up to 400 metres per second, which are located under the aurorae near the poles," says Cavalié. These wind speeds, equivalent to about 1450 kilometres an hour, are more than twice the maximum storm speeds reached in Jupiter's Great Red Spot and over three times the wind speed measured on Earth's strongest tornadoes.

"Our detection indicates that these jets could behave like a giant vortex with a diameter of up to four times that of Earth, and some 900 kilometres in height," explains co-author Bilal Benmahi, also of the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Bordeaux. "A vortex of this size would be a unique meteorological beast in our Solar System," Cavalié adds.

Astronomers were aware of strong winds near Jupiter's poles, but much higher up in the atmosphere, hundreds of kilometres above the focus area of the new study, which is published today in Astronomy & Astrophysics. Previous studies predicted that these upper-atmosphere winds would decrease in velocity and disappear well before reaching as deep as the stratosphere. "The new ALMA data tell us the contrary," says Cavalié, adding that finding these strong stratospheric winds near Jupiter's poles was a "real surprise".

The team used 42 of ALMA's 66 high-precision antennas, located in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, to analyse the hydrogen cyanide molecules that have been moving around in Jupiter's stratosphere since the impact of Shoemaker–Levy 9. The ALMA data allowed them to measure the Doppler shift — tiny changes in the frequency of the radiation emitted by the molecules — caused by the winds in this region of the planet. "By measuring this shift, we were able to deduce the speed of the winds much like one could deduce the speed of a passing train by the change in the frequency of the train whistle," explains study co-author Vincent Hue, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in the US.

In addition to the surprising polar winds, the team also used ALMA to confirm the existence of strong stratospheric winds around the planet's equator, by directly measuring their speed, also for the first time. The jets spotted in this part of the planet have average speeds of about 600 kilometres an hour.

The ALMA observations required to track stratospheric winds in both the poles and equator of Jupiter took less than 30 minutes of telescope time. "The high levels of detail we achieved in this short time really demonstrate the power of the ALMA observations," says Thomas Greathouse, a scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in the US and co-author of the study. "It is astounding to me to see the first direct measurement of these winds."

"These ALMA results open a new window for the study of Jupiter's auroral regions, which was really unexpected just a few months back," says Cavalié. "They also set the stage for similar yet more extensive measurements to be made by the JUICE mission and its Submillimetre Wave Instrument," Greathouse adds, referring to the European Space Agency's JUpiter ICy moons Explorer, which is expected to launch into space next year.

ESO's ground-based Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), set to see first light later this decade, will also explore Jupiter. The telescope will be capable of making highly detailed observations of the planet's aurorae, giving us further insight into Jupiter's atmosphere.

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Experiments by a team of researchers from TU Berlin might accompany ESA to the Earth's moon in 2028
https://www.tu.berlin/en/about/profile/press-releases-news/2021/maerz/off-to-the-moon-in-seven-years/

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Astronomers image magnetic fields at the edge of M87's black hole
https://www.almaobservatory.org/en/press-releases/astronomers-image-magnetic-fields-at-the-edge-of-m87s-black-hole/

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Data Turned Into Sounds of Stars, Galaxies, Black Holes
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/news/data-turned-into-sounds-of-stars-galaxies-black-holes.html

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Laser-driven experiments provide insights into the formation of the universe
https://www.rochester.edu/newscenter/laser-driven-experiments-provide-insights-into-the-formation-of-the-universe-472452/

Researchers at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics are the first to experimentally measure the mechanism responsible for generating astrophysical magnetic fields.