Herschel Links Water Around Jupiter to Comet Impact

Astronomers have finally found direct proof that almost all water present in Jupiter's stratosphere, an intermediate atmospheric layer, was delivered by comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, which famously struck the planet in 1994.

The findings, based on new data from the Herschel space observatory, reveal more water in Jupiter's southern hemisphere, where the impacts occurred, than in the north. Herschel is a European Space Agency mission with important NASA participation.

The origin of water in the upper atmospheres of the solar system's giant planets has been debated for almost two decades. Astronomers were quite surprised at the discovery of water in the stratospheres of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, which dates to observations performed with ESA's Infrared Space Observatory in 1997.

While the source of water in the lower layers of their atmospheres can be explained as internal, the presence of this molecule in their upper atmospheric layers is puzzling due to the scarcity of oxygen there. Its supply must have an external origin. Since then, astronomers have investigated several possible candidates that may have delivered water to these planets, from icy rings and satellites to interplanetary dust particles and cometary impacts.

Data from Herschel's Photodetecting Array Camera and Spectrometer (PACS), with the help of NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility, helped solve the mystery at Jupiter by showing an asymmetry in the distribution of water in its stratosphere, caused by the comet impact. Additional proof for a cometary source for the water came from Hershel's heterodyne instrument for the far infrared (HIFI), which probed the vertical profile of water in the stratosphere. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., helped build the HIFI instrument.

"The asymmetry between the two hemispheres suggests that water was delivered during a single event and rules out icy rings or moons as candidate sources," says Thibault Cavalié from the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Bordeaux, France, who led the study. "Local sources would provide a steady supply of water, which over time would lead to a hemispherically symmetric distribution in the stratosphere. Depending on whether the chemical species are transported in neutral or ionized form, local sources of water would result in higher concentrations either at the poles or along the equator, but not in a north-south asymmetry."

Hubble Sees a Unique Cluster: One of the Hidden 15

Palomar 2 is part of a set of 15 globulars known as the Palomar clusters. These clusters, as the name suggests, were discovered in survey plates from the first Palomar Observatory Sky Survey in the 1950s, a project that involved some of the most well-known astronomers of the day, including Edwin Hubble. They were discovered quite late because they are so faint -- each is either extremely remote, very heavily hidden behind blankets of dust, or has a very small number of remaining stars.

This particular cluster is unique in more than one way. For one, it is the only globular cluster that we see in this part of the sky, the northern constellation of Auriga (The Charioteer). Globular clusters orbit the center of a galaxy like the Milky Way in the same way that satellites circle around the Earth. This means that they normally lie closer in to the galactic center than we do, and so we almost always see them in the same region of the sky. Palomar 2 is an exception to this, as it is around five times further away from the center of the Milky Way than other clusters. It also lies in the opposite direction -- further out than Earth -- and so it is classed as an "outer halo" globular.

It is also unusual due to its apparent dimness. The cluster is veiled by a mask of dust, dampening the apparent brightness of the stars within it and making it appear as a very faint burst of stars. The stunning NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows Palomar 2 in a way that could not be captured from smaller or ground-based telescopes -- some amateur astronomers with large telescopes attempt to observe all of the obscure and well-hidden Palomar 15 as a challenge, to see how many they can pick out from the starry sky.

NASA's Hubble Sees a Horsehead of a Different Color

Astronomers have used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to photograph the iconic Horsehead Nebula in a new, infrared light to mark the 23rd anniversary of the famous observatory's launch aboard the space shuttle Discovery on April 24, 1990.

Looking like an apparition rising from whitecaps of interstellar foam, the iconic Horsehead Nebula has graced astronomy books ever since its discovery more than a century ago. The nebula is a favorite target for amateur and professional astronomers. It is shadowy in optical light. It appears transparent and ethereal when seen at infrared wavelengths. The rich tapestry of the Horsehead Nebula pops out against the backdrop of Milky Way stars and distant galaxies that easily are visible in infrared light.

Hubble has been producing ground-breaking science for two decades. During that time, it has benefited from a slew of upgrades from space shuttle missions, including the 2009 addition of a new imaging workhorse, the high-resolution Wide Field Camera 3 that took the new portrait of the Horsehead.

The nebula is part of the Orion Molecular Cloud, located about 1,500 light-years away in the constellation Orion. The cloud also contains other well-known objects such as the Great Orion Nebula (M42), the Flame Nebula, and Barnard's Loop. It is one of the nearest and most easily photographed regions in which massive stars are being formed.

In the Hubble image, the backlit wisps along the Horsehead's upper ridge are being illuminated by Sigma Orionis, a young five-star system just out of view. Along the nebula's top ridge, two fledgling stars peek out from their now-exposed nurseries.

Scientists know a harsh ultraviolet glare from one of these bright stars is slowly evaporating the nebula. Gas clouds surrounding the Horsehead already have dissipated, but the tip of the jutting pillar contains a slightly higher density of hydrogen and helium, laced with dust. This casts a shadow that protects material behind it from being stripped away by intense stellar radiation evaporating the hydrogen cloud, and a pillar structure forms.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Md., conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy Inc., in Washington.

NASA Engineers Review Placement of Webb Telescope's NIRSpec and Microshutters

The installation of equipment into the James Webb Space Telescope requires patience and precision. To prepare for the installation of the actual flight equipment and ensure perfection in the installations, scientists need to practice with an identical test unit. Scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. are currently rehearsing with the placement of the Webb's Microshutter Array into the NIRSpec.

ETUs or engineering test units are simulations of equipment that will fly on the Webb telescope. Back in 2010, NASA Goddard received the ETU of the Webb telescope's Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) instrument from its manufacturer in Germany. Currently, engineers and scientists are preparing and installing the Microshutter Array simulator into the engineering test unit of the Webb telescope's Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) instrument.

"The implementation of a new technology like this depends not only on the conception of it, but it depends on the skilled hands of the engineers and technicians," said Harvey Moseley, a senior astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "Using the hundred-fold increase in observing speed provided by the microshutters opens the epoch of the universe where the first galaxies are forming and the elements of our current universe."

NIRSpec will be the principal spectrographic instrument aboard the Webb telescope. A spectrograph is an instrument that separates light into a spectrum. The NIRSpec's components will be sensitive to infrared light from a variety of astronomical objects--from the most distant galaxies in the universe to relatively nearby exoplanets within our Milky Way galaxy. NIRSpec will be capable of obtaining spectra of more than 100 objects in the cosmos simultaneously. Studying an object's spectrum is important, because it helps scientists determine distinct physical properties of the object, such distance, age and even chemical composition. These measurements are important in unraveling the history of galaxy and planet formation.

NIRSpec's Microshutter Array consists of a grid of more than 60,000 microscopic rectangular flaps that act as ‘shutters’ to open or close tiny openings or ‘windows’ for light to pass through. Each individual shutter measures 0.1 by 0.2 millimeters, or approximately the width of a few human hairs. Shutters can be individually addressed and controlled, allowing different ones to be opened or closed in any number of patterns and configurations in order to allow light only from select objects of interest to pass through for dispersion and spectroscopic analysis while rejecting light from other unwanted sources. It is this reconfigurable selectivity of the Microshutter array that enables NIRSpec to look at any field of objects in any part of the sky and do spectroscopy on so many specific objects simultaneously.

Through practice, engineers and scientists will be able to perfect the installation of the Microshutter Array into the NIRSpec. 

The Long and Storied Path to Human Asteroid Exploration

Within NASA’s new FY2014 budget proposal lies a project known as the Asteroid Retrieval and Utilization Mission. This project would be the first to capture a small near-Earth asteroid and safely redirect it to a lunar orbit so that astronauts can visit and explore it. Such a mission would expand scientific knowledge of the origins of both humanity and the universe.

The goal of asteroid retrieval is not a new endeavor for NASA. In fact, the idea dates to the earliest days of the agency. In a 1964 document that looked at “long range future mission planning,” NASA expressed an early aspiration to visit asteroids through unmanned probes by the end of the 1970s. NASA did indeed send a probe through the asteroid belt early in that decade – Pioneer 10 safely traversed the Belt on its way to Jupiter in 1972. By 1969, according to a “Five Year Plan” laid out by the Office of Manned Space Flight, NASA was already looking at plans to send crewed missions to asteroids. However, at the time, the then-latest technology was insufficient to pursue this goal. NASA administrator Robert A. Frosch mentioned this in testimony to Congress on July 29, 1980, when he explained that “a number of evolutionary stages of technology development would be required” for such missions, including “asteroid retrieval to Earth.” Although the capabilities did not yet exist, it is noteworthy that the NASA administrator himself was publicly discussing the idea of asteroid retrieval in 1980. Asteroid retrieval was not just a pipe dream in the minds of a few NASA scientists!

Over the next two decades NASA continued studies and technology development work that would facilitate the capture and exploration of asteroids. In 1992, NASA sponsored a “Near-Earth-Object Interception Workshop” in Los Alamos, New Mexico. At this workshop, those present discussed a “space-based fabrication of very large, microlayer solar sails for asteroid retrieval.” Also discussed was the idea that “such capabilities clearly depend on much expanded human operations in space.” More recently, the International Space Station, has allowed NASA and its international partners to both complete a great deal of research on how to live and work in space, and also to explore long-duration human space flight and its effects on astronauts.

Since the dawn of the new millennium, NASA has also sent several missions to explore asteroids. Multiple probes have completed flybys of asteroids on their way to other planets, and two missions have launched specifically to study asteroids. NEAR (Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous)-Shoemaker became the first spacecraft to orbit and touch down on an asteroid when it reached the asteroid Eros in 2000 and descended to its surface in 2001, and in July 2011, the Dawn spacecraft became the first probe to enter orbit around an object in the main asteroid belt when it reached the asteroid Vesta. Having completed its investigation of Vesta, Dawn is now on its way to our solar system’s largest asteroid, Ceres.

Thus, NASA’s new Asteroid Retrieval and Utilization Mission is deeply rooted in the storied past of the agency. Thanks to many years of planning and recent technology developments, NASA now has the capability to accelerate current programs that are working on high-powered solar electric propulsion. This, alongside our work on the Space Launch System launch vehicle and the Orion spacecraft, will help us achieve a goal first imagined in the 1960s of retrieving an asteroid for human exploration. 

Blame it on the Rain

A new study tracks the "rain" of charged water particles into the atmosphere of Saturn and finds there is more of it and it falls across larger areas of the planet than previously thought. The study, whose observations were funded by NASA and whose analysis was led by the University of Leicester, England, reveals that the rain influences the composition and temperature structure of parts of Saturn's upper atmosphere. The paper appears in this week's issue of the journal Nature.

“Saturn is the first planet to show significant interaction between its atmosphere and ring system," said James O’Donoghue, the paper's lead author and a postgraduate researcher at Leicester. “The main effect of ring rain is that it acts to 'quench' the ionosphere of Saturn. In other words, this rain severely reduces the electron densities in regions in which it falls."

O’Donoghue explains that the ring's effect on electron densities is important because it explains why, for many decades, observations have shown those densities to be unusually low at certain latitudes on Saturn. The study also helps scientists better understand the origin and evolution of Saturn's ring system and changes in the planet's atmosphere.

"It turns out that a major driver of Saturn's ionospheric environment and climate across vast reaches of the planet are ring particles located some 36,000 miles [60,000 kilometers] overhead," said Kevin Baines, a co-author on the paper, based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "The ring particles affect both what species of particles are in this part of the atmosphere and where it is warm or cool."

In the early 1980s, images from NASA's Voyager spacecraft showed two to three dark bands on Saturn, and scientists theorized that water could have been showering down into those bands from the rings. Those bands were not seen again until this team observed the planet in near-infrared wavelengths with the W.M Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, in Hawaii, in April 2011. The effect was difficult to discern because it involves looking for a subtle emission from bright parts of Saturn. It required an instrument like that on Keck, which can split up a large range of light.

The ring rain's effect occurs in Saturn's ionosphere, where charged particles are produced when the otherwise neutral atmosphere is exposed to a flow of energetic particles or solar radiation. When the scientists tracked the pattern of emissions of a particular hydrogen ion with three protons (triatomic hydrogen), they expected to see a uniform planet-wide infrared glow. What they observed instead was a series of light and dark bands – with areas of reduced emission corresponding to water-dense portions of Saturn’s rings and areas of high emission corresponding to gaps in the rings.

They surmised that charged water particles from the planet’s rings were being drawn towards the planet along Saturn's magnetic field lines and were neutralizing the glowing triatomic hydrogen ions. This leaves large “shadows” in what would otherwise be a planet-wide infrared glow. These shadows cover some 30 to 43 percent of the planet's upper atmosphere surface from around 25 to 55 degrees latitude. This is a significantly larger area than suggested by images from NASA’s Voyager mission.

Both Earth and Jupiter have an equatorial region that glows very uniformly. Scientists expected this pattern at Saturn, too, but they instead saw dramatic differences at different latitudes.

"Where Jupiter is glowing evenly across its equatorial regions, Saturn has dark bands where the water is falling in, darkening the ionosphere," said Tom Stallard, a paper co-author at Leicester. "We're now also trying to investigate these features with an instrument on NASA's Cassini spacecraft. If we're successful, Cassini may allow us to view in more detail the way that water is removing ionized particles, such as any changes in the altitude or effects that come with the time of day."

Keck observing time was funded by NASA, with a letter of support from the Cassini mission to Saturn. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Italian Space Agency. The mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif.

Suzaku 'Post-mortem' Yields Insight into Kepler's Supernova

An exploding star observed in 1604 by the German astronomer Johannes Kepler held a greater fraction of heavy elements than the sun, according to an analysis of X-ray observations from the Japan-led Suzaku satellite. The findings will help astronomers better understand the diversity of type Ia supernovae, an important class of stellar explosion used in probing the distant universe.

"The composition of the star, its environment, and the mechanism of the explosion may vary considerably among type Ia supernovae," said Sangwook Park, an assistant professor of physics at the University of Texas at Arlington. "By better understanding them, we can fine-tune our knowledge of the universe beyond our galaxy and improve cosmological models that depend on those measurements."

The best way to explore the star's makeup is to perform a kind of post-mortem examination on the shell of hot, rapidly expanding gas produced by the explosion. By identifying specific chemical signatures in the supernova remnant, astronomers can obtain a clearer picture of the composition of the star before it blew up.

"Kepler's supernova is one of the most recent type Ia explosions known in our galaxy, so it represents an essential link to improving our knowledge of these events," said Carles Badenes, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Pittsburgh.

Using the Suzaku satellite's X-ray Imaging Spectrometer (XIS), the astronomers observed the remnant of Kepler's supernova in 2009 and 2011. With a total effective XIS exposure of more than two weeks, the X-ray spectrum reveals several faint emission features from highly ionized chromium, manganese and nickel in addition to a bright emission line from iron. The detection of all four elements was crucial for understanding the original star.

"Suzaku's XIS instrument is uniquely suited to this type of study thanks to its excellent energy resolution, high sensitivity and low background noise," said team member Koji Mori, an associate professor of applied physics at the University of Miyazaki, Japan.

Cosmologists regard type Ia supernovae as "standard candles" because they release similar amounts of energy. By comparing this standard to the observed peak brightness of a type Ia supernova, astronomers can pin down its distance. Their similarity stems from the fact that the exploding star is always a compact stellar remnant known as a white dwarf.

Although a white dwarf star is perfectly stable on its own, pair it with another white dwarf or a normal star and the situation eventually may turn volatile. The normal star may transfer gas onto the white dwarf, where it gradually accumulates. Or the orbits of binary white dwarfs may shrink until the two objects merge.

Either way, once a white dwarf begins tipping the scales at around 1.4 times the sun's mass, a supernova soon follows. Somewhere within the white dwarf, carbon nuclei begin merging together, forming heavier elements and releasing a vast amount of energy. This wave of nuclear fusion rapidly propagates throughout the star, ultimately shattering it in a brilliant explosion that can be detected billions of light-years away.

Astronomers can track some details of the white dwarf's composition by determining the abundance of certain trace elements, such as manganese, that formed during the explosion. Specifically, the ratio of manganese to chromium produced by the explosion turns out to be sensitive to the presence of a neutron-rich version of neon, called neon-22. Establishing the star's neon-22 content gives scientists a guide to the abundance of all other elements heavier than helium, which astronomers call "metals."

The findings provide strong evidence that the original white dwarf possessed roughly three times the amount of metals found in the sun. Progressive stellar generations seed interstellar gas with increasing proportions of metals. The remnant, which lies about 23,000 light-years away toward the constellation Ophiuchus, lies much closer to our galaxy's crowded central region than the sun does. There, star formation was probably more rapid and efficient. As a result, the star that blazed forth as Kepler's supernova likely formed out of material that already was enriched with a higher fraction of metals.

Park, Badenes, Mori and their colleagues discuss the findings in a paper scheduled for publication in the April 10 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters and now available online.

While the Suzaku results do not directly address which type of binary system triggered the supernova, they indicate that the white dwarf was probably no more than a billion years old when it exploded, or less than a quarter of the sun's current age.

"Theories indicate that the star's age and metal content affect the peak luminosity of type Ia supernovae," Park explained. "Younger stars likely produce brighter explosions than older ones, which is why understanding the spread of ages among type Ia supernovae is so important."

In 2011, astrophysicists from the United States and Australia won the Nobel Prize in physics for the discovery that the expansion of the universe is picking up speed, a conclusion based on measurements of type Ia supernovae. An enigmatic force called dark energy appears to be responsible for this acceleration, and understanding its nature is now a top science goal. Recent findings by the European Space Agency's Planck satellite reveal that dark energy makes up 68 percent of the universe.

Launched on July 10, 2005, Suzaku was developed at the Japanese Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS), which is part of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), in collaboration with NASA and other Japanese and U.S. institutions.

Hubble Sees Light and Dust in a Nearby Starburst Galaxy

Visible as a small, sparkling hook in the dark sky, this beautiful object is known as J082354.96+280621.6, or J082354.96 for short. It is a starburst galaxy, so named because of the incredibly (and unusually) high rate of star formation occurring within it.

One way in which astronomers probe the nature and structure of galaxies like this is by observing the behavior of their dust and gas components; in particular, the Lyman-alpha emission. This occurs when electrons within a hydrogen atom fall from a higher energy level to a lower one, emitting light as they do so. This emission is interesting because this light leaves its host galaxy only after extensive scattering in the nearby gas — meaning that this light can be used as a pretty direct probe of what a galaxy is made up of.

The study of this Lyman-alpha emission is common in very distant galaxies, but now a study named LARS (Lyman Alpha Reference Sample) is investigating the same effect in galaxies that are closer by. Astronomers chose fourteen galaxies, including this one, and used spectroscopy and imaging to see what was happening within them. They found that these Lyman-alpha photons can travel much further if a galaxy has less dust — meaning that we can use this emission to infer how dusty the source galaxy is.

Hubble Sees J 900 Masquerading as a Double Star

The object in this image is Jonckheere 900 or J 900, a planetary nebula — glowing shells of ionized gas pushed out by a dying star. Discovered in the early 1900s by astronomer Robert Jonckheere, the dusty nebula is small but fairly bright, with a relatively evenly spread central region surrounded by soft wispy edges.

Despite the clarity of this Hubble image, the two objects in the picture above can be confusing for observers. J 900’s nearby companion, a faint star in the constellation of Gemini, often causes problems for observers because it is so close to the nebula — when observation conditions are bad, this star seems to merge into J 900, giving it an elongated appearance. Hubble’s position above the Earth’s atmosphere means that this is not an issue for the space telescope.

Astronomers have also mistakenly reported observations of a double star in place of these two objects, as the planetary nebula is quite small and compact.

J 900’s central star is only just visible in this image, and is very faint — fainter than the nebula’s neighbor. The nebula appears to display a bipolar structure, where there are two distinct lobes of material emanating from its center, enclosed by a bright oval disk.

Hunting Massive Stars with Herschel

In this new view of a vast star-forming cloud called W3, the Herschel space observatory tells the story of how massive stars are born. Herschel is a European Space Agency mission with important NASA contributions. W3 is a giant gas cloud containing an enormous stellar nursery, some 6,200 light-years away in the Perseus Arm, one of our Milky Way galaxy's main spiral arms.

By studying regions of massive star formation in W3, scientists have made progress in solving one of the major conundrums in the birth of massive stars. That is, even during their formation, the radiation blasting away from these stars is so powerful that they should push away the very material from which they feed. If this is the case, how can massive stars form at all?

Observations of W3 point toward a possible solution: in these very dense regions, there appears to be a continuous process by which the raw material is moved around, compressed and confined, under the influence of clusters of young, massive stars called protostars.

Through their strong radiation and powerful winds, populations of young, high-mass stars may well be able to build and maintain localized clumps of material from which they can continue to feed during their earliest and most chaotic years, despite their incredible energy output.

The W3 star-formation complex is one of the largest in the outer Milky Way, hosting the formation of both low- and high-mass stars. The distinction between low- and high-mass stars is drawn at eight times the mass of our own sun: above this limit, stars end their lives as supernovas.

Dense, bright blue knots of hot dust marking massive star formation dominate the upper left of the image. Intense radiation streaming away from the stellar infants heats up the surrounding dust and gas, making it shine brightly in Herschel's infrared-sensitive eyes.

Older high-mass stars are also seen to be heating up dust in their environments, appearing as the blue regions, for example, lower down and to the left.
Extensive networks of much colder gas and dust weave through the scene in the form of red filaments and pillar-like structures. Several of these cold cores conceal low-mass star formation, hinted at by tiny yellow knots of emission.

Herschel is a European Space Agency mission, with science instruments provided by consortia of European institutes and with important participation by NASA. NASA's Herschel Project Office is based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. JPL contributed mission-enabling technology for two of Herschel's three science instruments. The NASA Herschel Science Center, part of the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, supports the United States astronomical community

Mimas Peeks Over Saturn

Saturn and its north polar hexagon dwarf Mimas as the moon peeks over the planet's limb. Saturn's A ring also makes an appearance on the far right. Mimas is 246 miles (396 kilometers) across.

This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 21 degrees above the ringplane. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Nov. 28, 2012 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 752 nanometers.

The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 495,000 miles (797,000 kilometers) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 4 degrees. Image scale is 27 miles (44 kilometers) per pixel.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. 

Supercomputer Helps Planck Mission Expose Ancient Light

Like archeologists carefully digging for fossils, scientists with the Planck mission are sifting through cosmic clutter to find the most ancient light in the universe.

The Planck space telescope has created the most precise sky map ever made of the oldest light known, harking back to the dawn of time. This light, called the cosmic microwave background, has traveled 13.8 billion years to reach us. It is so faint that Planck observes every point on the sky an average of 1,000 times to pick up its glow.

The task is even more complex than excavating fossils because just about everything in our universe lies between us and the ancient light. Complicating matters further is "noise" from the Planck detectors that must be taken into account.

That's where a supercomputer helps out. Supercomputers are the fastest computers in the world, performing massive amounts of calculations in a short amount of time.
"So far, Planck has made about a trillion observations of a billion points on the sky," said Julian Borrill of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, Calif. "Understanding this sheer volume of data requires a state-of-the-art supercomputer."

Planck is a European Space Agency mission, with significant contributions from NASA. Under a unique agreement between NASA and the Department of Energy, Planck scientists have been guaranteed access to the supercomputers at the Department of Energy's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The bulk of the computations for this data release were performed on the Cray XE6 system, called the Hopper. This computer makes more than a quintillion calculations per second, placing it among the fastest in the world.

One of the most complex aspects of analyzing the Planck data involves the noise from its detectors. To detect the incredibly faint cosmic microwave background, these detectors are made of extremely sensitive materials. When the detectors pick up light from one part of the sky, they don't reset afterwards to a neutral state, but instead, they sort of buzz for a bit like the ringing of a bell. This buzzing affects observations made at the next part of the sky.

This noise must be understood, and corrected for, at each of the billion points observed repeatedly by Planck as it continuously sweeps across the sky. The supercomputer accomplishes this by running simulations of how Planck would observe the entire sky under different conditions, allowing the team to identify and isolate the noise.

Another challenge is carefully teasing apart the signal of the relic radiation from the material lying in the foreground. It's a big mess, as some astronomers might say, but one that a supercomputer can handle.
"It's like more than just bugs on a windshield that we want to remove to see the light, but a storm of bugs all around us in every direction," said Charles Lawrence, the U.S. project scientist for the Planck mission. "Without the exemplary interagency cooperation between NASA and the Department of Energy, Planck would not be doing the science it's doing today."

The computations needed for Planck's current data release required more than 10 million processor-hours on the Hopper computer. Fortunately, the Planck analysis codes run on tens of thousands of processors in the supercomputer at once, so this only took a few weeks.

Planck is a European Space Agency mission, with significant participation from NASA. NASA's Planck Project Office is based at JPL. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, contributed mission-enabling technology for both of Planck's science instruments. European, Canadian and U.S. Planck scientists work together to analyze the Planck data.

Hubble Digs Up Galactic Glow Worm

This charming and bright galaxy, known as IRAS 23436+5257, was captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. It is located in the northern constellation of Cassiopeia, which is named after an arrogant, vain, and yet beautiful mythical queen.

The twisted, wormlike structure of this galaxy is most likely the result of a collision and subsequent merger of two galaxies. Such interactions are quite common in the universe, and they can range from minor interactions involving a satellite galaxy being caught by a spiral arm, to major galactic crashes. Friction between the gas and dust during a collision can have a major effect on the galaxies involved, morphing the shape of the original galaxies and creating interesting new structures.

When you look up at the calm and quiet night sky it is not always easy to picture it as a dynamic and vibrant environment with entire galaxies in motion, spinning like children’s toys and crashing into whatever crosses their path. The motions are, of course, extremely slow, and occur over millions or even billions of years.

The aftermath of these galactic collisions helps scientists to understand how these movements occur and what may be in store for our own Milky Way, which is on a collision course with a neighboring galaxy, Messier 31.

Hubble Gazes on One Ring to Rule Them All

Galaxies can take many forms — elliptical blobs, swirling spiral arms, bulges, and disks are all known components of the wide range of galaxies we have observed using telescopes like the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

Ring galaxies are mysterious objects. They are thought to form when one galaxy slices through the disk of another, larger, one — as galaxies are mostly empty space, this collision is not as aggressive or as destructive as one might imagine. The likelihood of two stars physically colliding is minimal, and it is instead the gravitational effects of the two galaxies that cause the disruption.

This disruption upsets the material in both galaxies, and redistributes it forming a dense central core, encircled by bright stars. All this commotion causes clouds of gas and dust to collapse and triggers new periods of intense star formation in the outer ring, which is full of hot, young, blue stars and regions that are actively giving rise to new stars.

The sparkling pink and purple loop of Zw II 28 is not a typical ring galaxy due to its lack of a visible central companion. For many years it was thought to be a lone circle on the sky, but observations using Hubble have shown that there may be a possible companion lurking just inside the ring, where the loop appears to double back on itself. The galaxy has a knot-like, swirling ring structure, with some areas appearing much brighter than others.

Landforms on Mars

This image was taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) flying onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission.

Gully landforms like those in this image are found in many craters in the mid-latitudes of Mars. Changes in gullies were first seen in images from the Mars Orbiter Camera in 2006, and studying such activity has been a high priority for HiRISE. Many examples of new deposits in gullies are now known.

This image shows a new deposit in Gasa Crater, in the Southern mid-latitudes. The deposit is distinctively blue in enhanced-color images. This image was acquired in southern spring, but the flow that formed the deposit occurred in the preceding winter.

Current gully activity appears to be concentrated in winter and early spring, and may be caused by the seasonal carbon dioxide frost that is visible in gully alcoves in the winter. 

Guinness World Record for Largest Astronomy Lesson at SXSW

Looking up through hundreds of colored filters and spectral glasses, 526 people shattered the record for the Largest Astronomy Lesson. Under the Texas night sky, students were instructed on the lawn of the Long Center for the Performing Arts at the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin on Sunday, March 10, 2013.

In the spirit of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Education Coalition outreach at SXSW, NASA, the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) and Northrop Grumman organized the record breaking event which was arbitrated by the Guinness World Records organization. In breaking this record, instructors aimed to shine light on the importance of astronomy with the full-scale model of the James Webb Space Telescope as their backdrop.

During the lesson, Frank Summers, an astrophysicist, and Dan McCallister, an education specialist, both from STScI, Baltimore, Md., demonstrated how astronomers use light and color to uncover the secrets of the cosmos. The lesson, prepared by STScI’s Office of Public Outreach, explained how astronomers use light and color to gain information about objects nearby like the moon and asteroids to young galaxies that are billions and billions of light-years away, and the importance of observing in wavelengths across the electromagnetic spectrum (the full range of light waves possible).

For more info, visit: http://www.nasa.gov

Tropical Cyclone Sandra

Sandra formed as a tropical storm over the southern Pacific Ocean on March 7, 2013, and strengthened into a cyclone two days later. On March 11, the U.S. Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) reported that Sandra was located roughly 350 nautical miles (650 kilometers) northwest of Nouméa, New Caledonia. The storm had maximum sustained winds of 90 knots (165 kilometers per hour) and gusts up to 110 knots (205 kilometers per hour).

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this natural-color image of Sandra on March 10. The eye of the cyclone was located northwest of New Caledonia and west of Vanuatu, and storm clouds spanned hundreds of kilometers.

Sandra had been moving toward the southeast, and the JTWC forecast that the storm would continue in that direction for the next few days, although it was expected to weaken considerably over the next day or so.

Hubble Finds Birth Certificate of Oldest Known Star

A team of astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has taken an important step closer to finding the birth certificate of a star that’s been around for a very long time.

"We have found that this is the oldest known star with a well-determined age," said Howard Bond of Pennsylvania State University in University Park, Pa., and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md.

The star could be as old as 14.5 billion years (plus or minus 0.8 billion years), which at first glance would make it older than the universe's calculated age of about 13.8 billion years, an obvious dilemma.

But earlier estimates from observations dating back to 2000 placed the star as old as 16 billion years. And this age range presented a potential dilemma for cosmologists. "Maybe the cosmology is wrong, stellar physics is wrong, or the star's distance is wrong," Bond said. "So we set out to refine the distance."

The new Hubble age estimates reduce the range of measurement uncertainty, so that the star's age overlaps with the universe's age — as independently determined by the rate of expansion of space, an analysis of the microwave background from the big bang, and measurements of radioactive decay.

This "Methuselah star," cataloged as HD 140283, has been known about for more than a century because of its fast motion across the sky. The high rate of motion is evidence that the star is simply a visitor to our stellar neighborhood. Its orbit carries it down through the plane of our galaxy from the ancient halo of stars that encircle the Milky Way, and will eventually slingshot back to the galactic halo.

This conclusion was bolstered by the 1950s astronomers who were able to measure a deficiency of heavier elements in the star as compared to other stars in our galactic neighborhood. The halo stars are among the first inhabitants of our galaxy and collectively represent an older population from the stars, like our sun, that formed later in the disk. This means that the star formed at a very early time before the universe was largely "polluted" with heavier elements forged inside stars through nucleosynthesis. (The Methuselah star has an anemic 1/250th as much of the heavy element content of our sun and other stars in our solar neighborhood.)

The star, which is at the very first stages of expanding into a red giant, can be seen with binoculars as a 7th-magnitude object in the constellation Libra.

Hubble's observational prowess was used to refine the distance to the star, which comes out to be 190.1 light-years. Bond and his team performed this measurement by using trigonometric parallax, where an apparent shift in the position of a star is caused by a change in the observer's position. The results are published in the February 13 issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The parallax of nearby stars can be measured by observing them from opposite points in Earth's orbit around the sun. The star's true distance from Earth can then be precisely calculated through straightforward triangulation.

Once the true distance is known, an exact value for the star's intrinsic brightness can be calculated. Knowing a star's intrinsic brightness is a fundamental prerequisite to estimating its age.

Before the Hubble observation, the European Space Agency's Hipparcos satellite made a precise measurement of the star's parallax, but with an age measurement uncertainty of 2 billion years. One of Hubble's three Fine Guidance Sensors measured the position of the Methuselah star. It turns out that the star's parallax came out to be virtually identical to the Hipparcos measurements. But Hubble's precision is five times better that than of Hipparcos. Bond's team managed to shrink the uncertainty so that the age estimate was five times more precise.

With a better handle on the star's brightness Bond's team refined the star's age by applying contemporary theories about the star's burn rate, chemical abundances, and internal structure. New ideas are that leftover helium diffuses deeper into the core and so the star has less hydrogen to burn via nuclear fusion. This means it uses fuel faster and that correspondingly lowers the age.

Also, the star has a higher than predicted oxygen-to-iron ratio, and this too lowers the age. Bond thinks that further oxygen measurement could reduce the star's age even more, because the star would have formed at a slightly later time when the universe was richer in oxygen abundance. Lowering the upper age limit would make the star unequivocally younger than the universe.

"Put all of those ingredients together and you get an age of 14.5 billion years, with a residual uncertainty that makes the star's age compatible with the age of the universe," said Bond. "This is the best star in the sky to do precision age calculations by virtue of its closeness and brightness."

This Methuselah star has seen many changes over its long life. It was likely born in a primeval dwarf galaxy. The dwarf galaxy eventually was gravitationally shredded and sucked in by the emerging Milky Way over 12 billion years ago.

The star retains its elongated orbit from that cannibalism event. Therefore, it's just passing through the solar neighborhood at a rocket-like speed of 800,000 miles per hour. It takes just 1,500 years to traverse a piece of sky with the angular width of the full Moon. The star's proper motion angular rate is so fast (0.13 milliarcseconds an hour) that Hubble could actually photograph its movement in literally a few hours.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Md., conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., in Washington.

NASA Is With You When You Fly

Traveling by air this holiday season, or any time of year? If so then you'll be in the company of millions who are directly benefiting from the ongoing research performed by NASA's aeronautical innovators now, and in the future.

During 2012, NASA's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate continued a wide range of research projects aimed at advancing the science of flight. Among the goals: enhancing safety, designing more fuel efficient jet engines, enabling quieter airplanes and improving air traffic management while also seeking to educate and inspire future generations of aviation experts.

NASA's "aeronauts" even had a hand in helping scientists learn about the Martian atmosphere during Curiosity's nail-biting descent toward the Red Planet in August.

Here are some highlights from 2012.

Developing Technology

NASA worked closely with Boeing in 2012 to fly the X-48C Blended Wing Body research aircraft, a sub-scale, remotely piloted vehicle intended to test new aircraft designs that forgo the conventional tube-and-wing airplane look in favor of one that blends the vehicle's wing and body into a smoothly contoured shape. Researchers believe this design could someday reduce fuel consumption by nearly 60 percent, noise by 70 percent, and emissions by 80 percent.

For more info, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/

NASA Transfers Operational Control of Environmental Satellite

The Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite, a partnership between NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), was transitioned to NOAA operational organization control Feb. 22, 2013. The transition marks the next step of the mission that supports NASA's Earth science research and NOAA's weather forecasting missions.

Suomi NPP continues the observations of Earth from space that were pioneered by NASA's Earth Observing System. The satellite's five instruments are providing scientists with data to extend more than 30 key long-term datasets. These records, which include observations of the ozone layer, land cover, atmospheric temperatures and ice cover, provide critical data for global change science.

"Suomi NPP is an important asset for NASA, NOAA, and the nation," said Michael Freilich, director of the Earth Science Division in NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "As a true collaboration in which all partners benefit, Suomi NPP measurements are supporting researchers and weather forecasters alike."

Suomi NPP also collects critical data for our understanding of long-term climate change while increasing our ability to improve weather forecasts in the short term. NOAA meteorologists are incorporating Suomi NPP information into their weather prediction models to produce forecasts and warnings that already are helping emergency responders anticipate, monitor, and react to many types of natural events.

"Satellites like Suomi NPP are critical to the National Weather Service's mission and improved decision support services," said Louis Uccellini, director of NOAA's National Weather Service. "These polar satellites provide an important dataset for the global Earth-observing system and will lead to improved forecasts out to three days in the future and beyond."

The Suomi NPP mission is a bridge between NASA's legacy Earth-observing missions and NOAA's next-generation Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS). Suomi NPP carries groundbreaking new Earth-observing instruments that JPSS will use operationally. The first satellite in the JPSS series, JPSS-1, is targeted for launch in early 2017.

NASA launched Suomi NPP Oct. 28, 2011, from California. Since then, the JPSS program based at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt., Md., has been helping maintain the Suomi NPP instruments in addition to providing the ground system, with NOAA institutional organizations providing operational mission support. The NOAA operations group now assumes responsibility for Suomi NPP.

Suomi NPP instruments observe key attributes of the Earth, including measurements of cloud and vegetation cover, ice cover, ocean color, and sea and land surface temperatures. The suite includes the Visible/Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS); the Cross-track Infrared Sounder (CrIS); the Clouds and Earth Radiant Energy System (CERES); the Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS); and the Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS).

"Observations from Suomi NPP are helping to advance science and to increase the accuracy of short-term meteorological predictions," said James Gleason, Suomi NPP project scientist at NASA Goddard. "ATMS data are being used by the National Weather Service in their forecast models. And OMPS data continued over 30 years of ozone hole measurements helping the community put this year's smaller ozone hole in perspective."

Suomi NPP observes Earth's surface twice a day, once in daylight and once at night, flying 512 miles (824 kilometers) high in a polar orbit. The satellite sends its data once an orbit to a ground station in Svalbard, Norway. The information is transferred via fiber optic cable for processing at NOAA's Satellite Operations Facility in Suitland, Md. Data products are archived at the NOAA National Climatic Data Center in Ashville, N.C.

Suomi NPP is named in honor of the late Verner E. Suomi, a meteorologist at the University of Wisconsin who is recognized widely as the father of satellite meteorology.