Science and Tech Pro

What Is MARS? || Science And Tech Pro.

#mars #knowledge #scienceandtechpro What Is MARS? || Science And Tech Pro. ------------------------------------------------------IN SIDE-------------------------------------------------------- what is MARS? Hello and welcome to our channel, where today we will be exploring the fourth planet from the sun, and one of the most intriguing planets in our solar system: Mars. Mars is the fourth planet from the sun and is often described as the most Earth-like planet in our solar system. It is a rocky planet with a thin atmosphere, and it has a similar day-night cycle to Earth. Mars is smaller than Earth, with a diameter of approximately half that of Earth's. It also has a lower gravity, which is only about 38% of that on Earth. One of the most distinctive features of Mars is its reddish color. This is due to the planet's iron-rich soil, which is called hematite. Hematite contains iron oxide, which gives the soil its red color. The planet's atmosphere is also responsible for its color, as it contains a lot of dust that reflects sunlight and gives the planet a red hue. The surface of Mars is marked by a number of unique features, including canyons, volcanoes, and impact craters. The largest canyon on Mars, Valles Marineris, is over 4,000 km long and up to 7 km deep. Olympus Mons, the largest volcano on Mars, is over 20 km tall and three times the height of Mount Everest. Mars has been the subject of numerous missions by space agencies around the world, with the most recent being the Mars Perseverance Rover mission. This mission successfully landed on Mars on February 18, 2021, and is designed to search for signs of ancient microbial life, collect samples of Martian soil and rock, and test new technologies that will help pave the way for future human missions to the Red Planet. Mars has two small moons, Phobos and Deimos, which are believed to be captured asteroids. These moons are irregular in shape and are covered in craters. Mars has a thin atmosphere, which is pri

What Is MARS? || Science And Tech Pro.

#mars #knowledge #scienceandtechpro What Is MARS? || Science And Tech Pro. ------------------------------------------------------IN SIDE-------------------------------------------------------- what is MARS? Hello and welcome to our channel, where today we will be exploring the fourth planet from the sun, and one of the most intriguing planets in our solar system: Mars. Mars is the fourth planet from the sun and is often described as the most Earth-like planet in our solar system. It is a rocky planet with a thin atmosphere, and it has a similar day-night cycle to Earth. Mars is smaller than Earth, with a diameter of approximately half that of Earth's. It also has a lower gravity, which is only about 38% of that on Earth. One of the most distinctive features of Mars is its reddish color. This is due to the planet's iron-rich soil, which is called hematite. Hematite contains iron oxide, which gives the soil its red color. The planet's atmosphere is also responsible for its color, as it contains a lot of dust that reflects sunlight and gives the planet a red hue. The surface of Mars is marked by a number of unique features, including canyons, volcanoes, and impact craters. The largest canyon on Mars, Valles Marineris, is over 4,000 km long and up to 7 km deep. Olympus Mons, the largest volcano on Mars, is over 20 km tall and three times the height of Mount Everest. Mars has been the subject of numerous missions by space agencies around the world, with the most recent being the Mars Perseverance Rover mission. This mission successfully landed on Mars on February 18, 2021, and is designed to search for signs of ancient microbial life, collect samples of Martian soil and rock, and test new technologies that will help pave the way for future human missions to the Red Planet. Mars has two small moons, Phobos and Deimos, which are believed to be captured asteroids. These moons are irregular in shape and are covered in craters. Mars has a thin atmosphere, which is pri

What Is MARS? || Science And Tech Pro.

#mars #knowledge #scienceandtechpro What Is MARS? || Science And Tech Pro. ------------------------------------------------------IN SIDE-------------------------------------------------------- what is MARS? Hello and welcome to our channel, where today we will be exploring the fourth planet from the sun, and one of the most intriguing planets in our solar system: Mars. Mars is the fourth planet from the sun and is often described as the most Earth-like planet in our solar system. It is a rocky planet with a thin atmosphere, and it has a similar day-night cycle to Earth. Mars is smaller than Earth, with a diameter of approximately half that of Earth's. It also has a lower gravity, which is only about 38% of that on Earth. One of the most distinctive features of Mars is its reddish color. This is due to the planet's iron-rich soil, which is called hematite. Hematite contains iron oxide, which gives the soil its red color. The planet's atmosphere is also responsible for its color, as it contains a lot of dust that reflects sunlight and gives the planet a red hue. The surface of Mars is marked by a number of unique features, including canyons, volcanoes, and impact craters. The largest canyon on Mars, Valles Marineris, is over 4,000 km long and up to 7 km deep. Olympus Mons, the largest volcano on Mars, is over 20 km tall and three times the height of Mount Everest. Mars has been the subject of numerous missions by space agencies around the world, with the most recent being the Mars Perseverance Rover mission. This mission successfully landed on Mars on February 18, 2021, and is designed to search for signs of ancient microbial life, collect samples of Martian soil and rock, and test new technologies that will help pave the way for future human missions to the Red Planet. Mars has two small moons, Phobos and Deimos, which are believed to be captured asteroids. These moons are irregular in shape and are covered in craters. Mars has a thin atmosphere, which is pri

What Is MARS? || Science And Tech Pro.

#mars #knowledge #scienceandtechpro What Is MARS? || Science And Tech Pro. ------------------------------------------------------IN SIDE-------------------------------------------------------- what is MARS? Hello and welcome to our channel, where today we will be exploring the fourth planet from the sun, and one of the most intriguing planets in our solar system: Mars. Mars is the fourth planet from the sun and is often described as the most Earth-like planet in our solar system. It is a rocky planet with a thin atmosphere, and it has a similar day-night cycle to Earth. Mars is smaller than Earth, with a diameter of approximately half that of Earth's. It also has a lower gravity, which is only about 38% of that on Earth. One of the most distinctive features of Mars is its reddish color. This is due to the planet's iron-rich soil, which is called hematite. Hematite contains iron oxide, which gives the soil its red color. The planet's atmosphere is also responsible for its color, as it contains a lot of dust that reflects sunlight and gives the planet a red hue. The surface of Mars is marked by a number of unique features, including canyons, volcanoes, and impact craters. The largest canyon on Mars, Valles Marineris, is over 4,000 km long and up to 7 km deep. Olympus Mons, the largest volcano on Mars, is over 20 km tall and three times the height of Mount Everest. Mars has been the subject of numerous missions by space agencies around the world, with the most recent being the Mars Perseverance Rover mission. This mission successfully landed on Mars on February 18, 2021, and is designed to search for signs of ancient microbial life, collect samples of Martian soil and rock, and test new technologies that will help pave the way for future human missions to the Red Planet. Mars has two small moons, Phobos and Deimos, which are believed to be captured asteroids. These moons are irregular in shape and are covered in craters. Mars has a thin atmosphere, which is pri

SPACE UPDATE: After Seventeen Years, A Spacecraft Makes Its First Visit Home: Inside a Solar Eruption: It’s not just what STEREO-A will see as it flies by Earth, but also what it will “feel,” that could lead to major discoveries. When a plume of solar material known as a coronal mass ejection, or CME, arrives at Earth, it can disrupt satellite and radio signals, or even cause surges in our power grids. Or, it may have hardly any effect at all. It all depends on the magnetic field embedded within it, which can change dramatically in the 93 million miles between the Sun and Earth. To understand how a CME’s magnetic field evolves on the way to Earth, scientists build computer models of these solar eruptions, updating them with each new spacecraft observation. But a single spacecraft's data can only tell us so much. “It's like the parable about the blind men and the elephant – the one who feels the legs says ‘it’s like a tree trunk,’ and the one who feels the tail says ‘it’s like a snake,’" said said Toni Galvin, a professor at the University of New Hampshire and principal investigator for one of STEREO-A’s instruments. “That's what we're stuck with right now with CMEs, because we typically only have one or two spacecraft right next to each other measuring it.” During the months before and after STEREO-A’s Earth flyby, any Earth-directed CMEs will pass over STEREO-A and other near-Earth spacecraft, giving scientists much-needed multipoint measurements from inside a CME.

SPACE UPDATE: After Seventeen Years, A Spacecraft Makes Its First Visit Home: A 3D View of the Sun: During the Earth flyby, STEREO-A will once again do something it used to do with its twin in the early years: combine views to achieve stereoscopic vision. Stereoscopic vision allows us to extract 3D information from two-dimensional, or flat, images. It’s how two eyeballs, looking out at the world from offset locations, create depth perception. Your brain compares the images from each eye, and the slight differences between those images reveal which objects are closer or farther away. STEREO-A will enable such 3D viewing by synthesizing its views with NASA's and the European Space Agency’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) and NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). Better yet, STEREO-A’s distance from Earth changes throughout the flyby, optimizing its stereo vision for different sized solar features at different times. It’s as if scientists were adjusting the focus on a several million-mile-wide telescope. STEREO scientists are using the opportunity to make much-needed measurements. They are identifying active regions, the magnetically complex regions underlying sunspots, hoping to uncover 3D information about their structure usually lost in 2D images. They’ll also test a new theory that coronal loops – giant arches often seen in close-up images of the Sun – aren’t what they appear to be. “There is a recent idea that coronal loops might just be optical illusions,” said Terry Kucera, STEREO project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Some scientists have suggested that our limited viewing angles make them appear to have shapes they may not truly have. “If you look at them from multiple points of view, that should become more apparent,” Kucera added.

SPACE UPDATE: After Seventeen Years, A Spacecraft Makes Its First Visit Home: On Aug. 12, 2023, NASA’s STEREO-A spacecraft will pass between the Sun and Earth, marking the first Earth flyby of the nearly 17-year-old mission. The visit home brings a special chance for the spacecraft to collaborate with NASA missions near Earth and reveal new insights into our closest star. The twin STEREO (Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory) spacecraft launched on Oct. 25, 2006, from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. STEREO-A (for “Ahead”) advanced its lead on Earth as STEREO-B (for “Behind”) lagged behind, both charting Earth-like orbits around the Sun. During the first years after launch, the dual-spacecraft mission achieved its landmark goal: providing the first stereoscopic, or multiple-perspective, view of our closest star. On Feb. 6, 2011, the mission achieved another landmark: STEREO-A and -B reached a 180-degree separation in their orbits. For the first time, humanity saw our Sun as a complete sphere. “Prior to that we were ‘tethered’ to the Sun-Earth line – we only saw one side of the Sun at a time,” said Lika Guhathakurta, STEREO program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. “STEREO broke that tether and gave us a view of the Sun as a three-dimensional object.” The mission accomplished many other scientific feats over the years, and researchers studied both spacecraft views until 2014, when mission control lost contact with STEREO-B after a planned reset. However, STEREO-A continues its journey, capturing solar views unavailable from Earth. On Aug. 12, 2023, STEREO-A’s lead on Earth has grown to one full revolution as the spacecraft “laps” us in our orbit around the Sun. In the few weeks before and after STEREO-A’s flyby, scientists are seizing the opportunity to ask questions normally beyond the mission’s reach.

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Spacecraft Adjusts Course to Get Closer to Earth:

TECHNOLOGY UPDATE: NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Spacecraft Adjusts Course to Get Closer to Earth: On July 26, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft fired its engines for about 63 seconds to slightly thrust itself onto a course closer to Earth. Preliminary tracking data indicates OSIRIS-REx changed its velocity, which includes speed and direction, by 1.3 miles, or 2 kilometers, per hour. It’s a tiny but critical shift; without course adjustments like this one the spacecraft would not get close enough to Earth on Sept. 24 to drop off its sample of asteroid Bennu. The spacecraft is currently 24 million miles, or 38.6 million kilometers, away, traveling at about 22,000 miles, or about 35,000 kilometers, per hour toward Earth. Over the next few days, engineers will use data collected before and after today’s engine burn, including Doppler radar data, to make sure the maneuver executed as planned and the spacecraft is on the right path.

400 Earth-Mass Rogue Planets:

SPACE UPDATE: New Study Reveals NASA’s Roman Could Find 400 Earth-Mass Rogue Planets: New research by scientists from NASA and Japan’s Osaka University suggests that rogue planets – worlds that drift through space untethered to a star – far outnumber planets that orbit stars. The results imply that NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, set to launch by May 2027, could find a staggering 400 Earth-mass rogue worlds. Indeed, this new study has already identified one such candidate. “We estimate that our galaxy is home to 20 times more rogue planets than stars – trillions of worlds wandering alone,” said David Bennett, a senior research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and a co-author of two papers describing the results. “This is the first measurement of the number of rogue planets in the galaxy that is sensitive to planets less massive than Earth.” The team’s findings stem from a nine-year survey called MOA (Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics), conducted at the Mount John University Observatory in New Zealand. Microlensing events occur when an object such as a star or planet comes into near-perfect alignment with an unrelated background star from our vantage point. Because anything with mass warps the fabric of space-time, light from the distant star bends around the nearer object as it passes close by. The nearer object acts as a natural lens, creating a brief spike in the brightness of the background star’s light that gives astronomers clues about the intervening object that they can’t get any other way. “Microlensing is the only way we can find objects like low-mass free-floating planets and even primordial black holes,” said Takahiro Sumi, a professor at Osaka University, and lead author of the paper with a new estimate of our galaxy’s rogue planets. “It’s very exciting to use gravity to discover objects we could never hope to see directly.” The roughly Earth-mass rogue

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Completes 16th Close Approach to the Sun:

SPACE UPDATE: NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Completes 16th Close Approach to the Sun: NASA’s Parker Solar Probe accomplished a milestone on June 27, 2023 – its 16th orbit of the Sun. This included a close approach to the Sun (known as perihelion) on June 22, 2023, where the spacecraft came within 5.3 million miles of the solar surface while moving at 364,610 miles per hour. The spacecraft emerged from the solar flyby healthy and operating normally. On Aug. 21, 2023, Parker Solar Probe will swing past Venus for its sixth flyby of the planet. To prepare for a smooth course, the mission team at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) applied a small trajectory correction maneuver on June 7, 2023, the first course correction since March 2022. This flyby will be the sixth of seven planned flybys of Venus during Parker’s primary mission. Parker uses Venus’ gravity to tighten its orbit around the Sun and set up a future perihelion at just 4.5 million miles from the Sun’s surface. As the Sun becomes increasingly active, this perihelion will be especially important to learning more about heliophysics.

Cosmic Harmonies

SPACE UPDATE: Cosmic Harmonies: Sonification From NASA Telescopes: M104: Messier 104 (M104 for short), located about 28 million light-years from Earth, is one of the largest galaxies in the nearby Virgo cluster. As seen from Earth, the galaxy is angled nearly edge-on allowing a view of its bright core and spiral arms wrapped around it. Spitzer's infrared view of M104 shows a ring of dust circling the galaxy that pierces through the obscuring dust in Hubble’s optical light image. Spitzer also sees an otherwise hidden disk of stars within the dust ring. The Chandra X-ray image shows hot gas in the galaxy and point sources that are a mixture of objects within M104 as well as quasars in the background. The Chandra observations show that diffuse X-ray emission extends over 60,000 light years from the center of the M104. (The galaxy itself spans 50,000 light years across.) In sonifying these data, we can listen to each type of light either separately or together. Either option begins at the top and scans toward the bottom of the image. The brightness controls the volume and the pitch, meaning the brightest sources in the image are the loudest and highest frequencies. The data from the three telescopes are mapped to different types of sounds. The X-rays from Chandra sound like a synthesizer, Spitzer’s infrared data are strings, and optical light from Hubble has bell-like tones. The core of the galaxy, its dust lanes and spiral arms, and point-like X-ray sources are all audible features in the sonification of these data.

Cosmic Harmonies

SPACE UPDATE: Cosmic Harmonies: Sonification From NASA Telescopes: Stephan's Quintet: In Stephan’s Quintet, four galaxies move around each other, held together by gravity, while a fifth galaxy sits in the frame but is actually at a much different distance. A visual image of Stephan’s Quintet contains infrared light from the James Webb Space Telescope (red, orange, yellow, green, and blue) with additional data from the Spitzer Space Telescope (red, green, and blue) and X-ray light from Chandra (light blue). A sonification of these data begins at the top and scans the image downward. As the cursor moves, the pitch changes in relationship to the brightness in different ways. The background galaxies and foreground stars in the visual images Webb detects are mapped to different notes on a synthetic glass marimba. Meanwhile, stars with diffraction spikes are played as crash cymbals. The galaxies of Stephan’s Quintet themselves are heard as smoothly changing frequencies as the scan passes over them. The X-rays from Chandra, which reveal a shock wave that has superheated gas to tens of millions of degrees, are represented by a synthetic string sound.

Milky Way’s Central Black Hole Woke Up 200 Years Ago

SPACE UPDATE: Milky Way’s Central Black Hole Woke Up 200 Years Ago, NASA’s IXPE Finds: Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, is far less luminous than other black holes at the centers of galaxies we can observe, which means our galaxy’s central black hole has not been actively gobbling up material around it. Yet new evidence from NASA’s IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) telescope suggests the ancient sleeping giant woke recently – about 200 years ago – to devour gas and other cosmic detritus within its reach. Sagittarius A* is more than 25,000 light years from Earth – our nearest supermassive black hole, with an estimated mass millions of times that of our Sun. Often abbreviated by researchers to Sgr A* (pronounced "Sagittarius A star"), it sits in the constellation of Sagittarius at the very heart of the Milky Way. Scientists called on IXPE for a closer look when previous X-ray studies detected relatively recent X-ray emissions of giant clouds of gas in its vicinity. Given that most cosmic clouds, called “molecular clouds,” are cold and dark, the X-ray signatures of these clouds should have been faint. Instead, they shone brightly. “One of the scenarios to explain why these giant molecular clouds are shining is that they are, in fact, echoing a long-gone flash of X-ray light, indicating that our supermassive black hole was not that quiescent some centuries ago,” said Frédéric Marin, astronomer at the Astronomical Observatory of Strasbourg in France and lead author of the new study, published in the journal Nature. IXPE, which measures polarization of X-ray light, or the average direction and intensity of the electric field of light waves, pointed at these molecular clouds for two periods of study in February and March 2022. When astronomers combined the resulting data with images from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and compared them to archival observations from the European Spac

Milky Way’s Central Black Hole Woke Up 200 Years Ago

SPACE UPDATE: Milky Way’s Central Black Hole Woke Up 200 Years Ago, NASA’s IXPE Finds: Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, is far less luminous than other black holes at the centers of galaxies we can observe, which means our galaxy’s central black hole has not been actively gobbling up material around it. Yet new evidence from NASA’s IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) telescope suggests the ancient sleeping giant woke recently – about 200 years ago – to devour gas and other cosmic detritus within its reach. Sagittarius A* is more than 25,000 light years from Earth – our nearest supermassive black hole, with an estimated mass millions of times that of our Sun. Often abbreviated by researchers to Sgr A* (pronounced "Sagittarius A star"), it sits in the constellation of Sagittarius at the very heart of the Milky Way. Scientists called on IXPE for a closer look when previous X-ray studies detected relatively recent X-ray emissions of giant clouds of gas in its vicinity. Given that most cosmic clouds, called “molecular clouds,” are cold and dark, the X-ray signatures of these clouds should have been faint. Instead, they shone brightly. “One of the scenarios to explain why these giant molecular clouds are shining is that they are, in fact, echoing a long-gone flash of X-ray light, indicating that our supermassive black hole was not that quiescent some centuries ago,” said Frédéric Marin, astronomer at the Astronomical Observatory of Strasbourg in France and lead author of the new study, published in the journal Nature. IXPE, which measures polarization of X-ray light, or the average direction and intensity of the electric field of light waves, pointed at these molecular clouds for two periods of study in February and March 2022. When astronomers combined the resulting data with images from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and compared them to archival observations from the European Spac

Milky Way’s Central Black Hole Woke Up 200 Years Ago

SPACE UPDATE: Milky Way’s Central Black Hole Woke Up 200 Years Ago, NASA’s IXPE Finds: Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, is far less luminous than other black holes at the centers of galaxies we can observe, which means our galaxy’s central black hole has not been actively gobbling up material around it. Yet new evidence from NASA’s IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) telescope suggests the ancient sleeping giant woke recently – about 200 years ago – to devour gas and other cosmic detritus within its reach. Sagittarius A* is more than 25,000 light years from Earth – our nearest supermassive black hole, with an estimated mass millions of times that of our Sun. Often abbreviated by researchers to Sgr A* (pronounced "Sagittarius A star"), it sits in the constellation of Sagittarius at the very heart of the Milky Way. Scientists called on IXPE for a closer look when previous X-ray studies detected relatively recent X-ray emissions of giant clouds of gas in its vicinity. Given that most cosmic clouds, called “molecular clouds,” are cold and dark, the X-ray signatures of these clouds should have been faint. Instead, they shone brightly. “One of the scenarios to explain why these giant molecular clouds are shining is that they are, in fact, echoing a long-gone flash of X-ray light, indicating that our supermassive black hole was not that quiescent some centuries ago,” said Frédéric Marin, astronomer at the Astronomical Observatory of Strasbourg in France and lead author of the new study, published in the journal Nature. IXPE, which measures polarization of X-ray light, or the average direction and intensity of the electric field of light waves, pointed at these molecular clouds for two periods of study in February and March 2022. When astronomers combined the resulting data with images from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and compared them to archival observations from the European Spac

Milky Way’s Central Black Hole Woke Up 200 Years Ago

SPACE UPDATE: Milky Way’s Central Black Hole Woke Up 200 Years Ago, NASA’s IXPE Finds: Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, is far less luminous than other black holes at the centers of galaxies we can observe, which means our galaxy’s central black hole has not been actively gobbling up material around it. Yet new evidence from NASA’s IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) telescope suggests the ancient sleeping giant woke recently – about 200 years ago – to devour gas and other cosmic detritus within its reach. Sagittarius A* is more than 25,000 light years from Earth – our nearest supermassive black hole, with an estimated mass millions of times that of our Sun. Often abbreviated by researchers to Sgr A* (pronounced "Sagittarius A star"), it sits in the constellation of Sagittarius at the very heart of the Milky Way. Scientists called on IXPE for a closer look when previous X-ray studies detected relatively recent X-ray emissions of giant clouds of gas in its vicinity. Given that most cosmic clouds, called “molecular clouds,” are cold and dark, the X-ray signatures of these clouds should have been faint. Instead, they shone brightly. “One of the scenarios to explain why these giant molecular clouds are shining is that they are, in fact, echoing a long-gone flash of X-ray light, indicating that our supermassive black hole was not that quiescent some centuries ago,” said Frédéric Marin, astronomer at the Astronomical Observatory of Strasbourg in France and lead author of the new study, published in the journal Nature. IXPE, which measures polarization of X-ray light, or the average direction and intensity of the electric field of light waves, pointed at these molecular clouds for two periods of study in February and March 2022. When astronomers combined the resulting data with images from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and compared them to archival observations from the European Spac

Cosmic Harmonies

SPACE UPDATE: Cosmic Harmonies: Sonifications From NASA Telescopes: Astronomers often look at objects in space through multiple telescopes. Because different telescopes can detect different types of light, each brings its own pieces of information to whatever is being observed. This is similar in some ways to how different notes of the musical scale can be played together to create harmonies that are impossible with single notes alone. In the past few years, NASA has been producing “sonifications” of astronomical data of objects in space. This project takes the digital data captured by its telescopes in space — most of which is invisible to our unaided eyes — and translates them into musical notes and sounds so they can be heard rather than seen. Each layer of sound in these sonifications represents particular wavelengths of light detected by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, James Webb Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope, and Spitzer Space Telescope in various combinations. R Aquarii : The system called R Aquarii contains two stars — a white dwarf and a red giant — in orbit around each other. In a composite visual image, Hubble data (red and blue) reveal spectacular structures that are evidence of outbursts generated by the pair of stars buried at the center of the image. X-rays from Chandra show a jet from the white dwarf banging into the material surrounding it and creating shock waves. In the sonification of R Aquarii, the piece evolves as a radar-like scan of the image, clockwise starting at the 12 o’clock position. The volume changes in proportion to the brightness of sources in Hubble’s visible light and Chandra’s X-ray image, while the distance from the center dictates the musical pitch (higher notes are farther out). The deep thuds toward the four corners are “diffraction spikes,” which are artifacts from the bright central star. Listeners can hear jets from the white dwarf as the cursor travels near the two o’clock and ei

TECHNOLOGY UPDATE: NASA’s New Detectors Could Improve Views of Gamma-Ray Events: Using technology similar to that found in smartphone cameras, NASA scientists are developing upgraded sensors to reveal more details about black hole outbursts and exploding stars — all while being less power hungry and easier to mass produce than detectors used today. “When you think about black holes actively shredding stars, or neutron stars exploding and creating really high-energy bursts of light, you are looking at the most extreme events in the universe,” said research astrophysicist Dr. Regina Caputo. “To observe these events, you need to look at the highest-energy form of light: gamma rays.” Caputo leads an instrument-development effort called AstroPix at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The silicon pixel sensors in AstroPix — still in development and testing — are reminiscent of the semiconductor sensors that allow smartphone cameras to be so small. “Gamma rays are notoriously tricky to measure because of the way that the incoming particle interacts with your detector,” said Dr. Amanda Steinhebel, a NASA Postdoctoral Program fellow working with Caputo. Gamma rays are wavelengths of light more energetic than ultraviolet and X rays, and their photons act more like particles than waves. “Instead of just being absorbed by a sensor like visible light,” Steinhebel said, “gamma rays bounce all around.” NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, which has studied the gamma-ray sky since 2008, solved the “bounce” problem in its main instrument by using towers of strip-shaped sensors. This table-sized cube, Fermi’s Large Area Telescope, was itself groundbreaking technology when the mission launched. Each strip maps a gamma-ray strike in a single-dimension, while layers of strips oriented perpendicular to each other record the second dimension. Gamma rays generate a cascade of energetic strikes through multiple layers,

SPACE UPDATE: NASA’s LRO Views Impact Site of HAKUTO-R Mission 1 Moon Lander: The ispace HAKUTO-R Mission 1 lunar lander was launched on Dec. 11, 2022, a privately funded spacecraft planned to land on the lunar surface. After a several-month journey to the Moon, the spacecraft started a controlled descent to the surface to land near Atlas crater. The ispace team announced the following day that an anomaly occurred, and the HAKUTO-R Mission 1 lunar lander had not safely touched down on the surface. On April 26, 2023, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft acquired 10 images around the landing site with its Narrow Angle Cameras. The images covered a region roughly 40 km by 45 km (about 25 miles by 28 miles). Using an image acquired before the landing attempt, the LRO Camera science team began searching for the lander. From the temporal image pair, the LRO Camera team identified an unusual surface change near the nominal landing site. The image shows at least four prominent pieces of debris and several small changes (47.581 degrees North latitude, 44.094 degrees East longitude). The central feature in the image above shows several bright pixels in the upper left and several dark pixels in the lower right. This is the opposite of nearby boulders, suggesting that this could be a small crater or different parts of the lander body. This site will be further analyzed over the coming months as LRO has the opportunity to make additional observations of the site under various lighting conditions and viewing angles.

SPACE UPDATE: A Stormy, Active Sun May Have Kickstarted Life on Earth: The first building blocks of life on Earth may have formed thanks to eruptions from our Sun, a new study finds. A series of chemical experiments show how solar particles, colliding with gases in Earth’s early atmosphere, can form amino acids and carboxylic acids, the basic building blocks of proteins and organic life. The findings were published in the journal Life. To understand the origins of life, many scientists try to explain how amino acids, the raw materials from which proteins and all cellular life, were formed. The best-known proposal originated in the late 1800s as scientists speculated that life might have begun in a “warm little pond”: A soup of chemicals, energized by lightning, heat, and other energy sources, that could mix together in concentrated amounts to form organic molecules. In 1953, Stanley Miller of the University of Chicago tried to recreate these primordial conditions in the lab. Miller filled a closed chamber with methane, ammonia, water, and molecular hydrogen – gases thought to be prevalent in Earth’s early atmosphere – and repeatedly ignited an electrical spark to simulate lightning. A week later, Miller and his graduate advisor Harold Urey analyzed the chamber’s contents and found that 20 different amino acids had formed. “That was a big revelation,” said Vladimir Airapetian, a stellar astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and coauthor of the new paper. “From the basic components of early Earth’s atmosphere, you can synthesize these complex organic molecules.” But the last 70 years have complicated this interpretation. Scientists now believe ammonia (NH3) and methane (CH4) were far less abundant; instead, Earth's air was filled with carbon dioxide (CO2) and molecular nitrogen (N2), which require more energy to break down. These gases can still yield amino acids, but in greatly reduced quantities