Pink Floyd has sold more than 40 million copies of the album “Dark Side of the Moon” — the title refers to lunacy, not the actual Moon.
Today’s APOD features something we’ve never seen before: the rotating moon…
No one, presently, sees the Moon rotate like this. That’s because the Earth’s moon is tidally locked to the Earth, showing us only one side. Given modern digital technology, however, combined with many detailed images returned by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), a high resolution virtual Moon rotation movie has now been composed. The above time-lapse video starts with the standard Earth view of the Moon. Quickly, though, Mare Orientale, a large crater with a dark center that is difficult to see from the Earth, rotates into view just below the equator. From an entire lunar month condensed into 24 seconds, the video clearly shows that the Earth side of the Moon contains an abundance of dark lunar maria, while the lunar far side is dominated by bright lunar highlands. Two new missions are scheduled to begin exploring the Moon within the year, the first of which is NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE). LADEE, which launched just over a week ago, is scheduled to begin orbiting the Moon in October and will explore the thin and unusual atmosphere of the Moon. In a few months, the ChineseChang’e 3 is scheduled to launch, a mission that includes a soft lander that will dispatch a robotic rover.
The central bulge of our galaxy contains around 10,000 million stars and spans thousands of light-years, but due to the obscuring dust and gas intermingled with this stellar hive, the overall shape of the bulge is poorly understood. Previous data from the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) project suggested the central galactic bulge was X-shaped — in a similar fashion to other galaxies observed in the Universe.
But using high resolution infrared data from VISTA, a better idea of the bulge’s shape has been mapped.
By focusing on 2 million red giant stars whose properties are well understood, very precise distances could be calculated. By doing this, a 3-dimensional model of the galactic bulge could be constructed.
“We find that the inner region of our Galaxy has the shape of a peanut in its shell from the side, and of a highly elongated bar from above”, said Ortwin Gerhard, co-investigator and leader of the Dynamics Group at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) in Garching, Germany. “It is the first time that we can see this clearly in our own Milky Way, and simulations in our group and by others show that this shape is characteristic of a barred galaxy that started out as a pure disc of stars.”
The second team of astronomers led by Sergio Vásquez, of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile, took a different approach to arrive at a similar conclusion. By comparing images of the central bulge 11 years apart using the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope, tiny shifts due to the motions of the bulge stars across the sky were measured. This betrayed the shape of the bulge.
“The stars we have observed seem to be streaming along the arms of the X-shaped bulge as their orbits take them up and down and out of the plane of the Milky Way. It all fits very well with predictions from state-of-the-art models!” said Vásquez.
Both groups of astronomers believe that the center of the galaxy started out as a flat disk of stars, but over the aeons became buckled and warped, eventually settling into the modern day “peanut.”
Taken over a 13-year span, this sequence of Hubble images reveals changes in a black-hole-powered jet of hot gas in the giant elliptical galaxy M87. These images are part of a new time-lapse movie that shows hot plasma spiraling along magnetic field lines generated by the supermassive black hole.
Credit: NASA/ESA/E. Meyer, W. Sparks, J. Biretta, J. Anderson, S.T. Sohn, and R. van der Marel (STScI)/C. Norman (JHU)/M. Nakamura (Academia Sinica)
This sequence of images, taken over a 13-year span by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, reveals changes in a black-hole-powered jet of hot gas in the giant elliptical galaxy M87. The observations show that the river of plasma, traveling at nearly the speed of light, may follow the spiral structure of the black hole’s magnetic field, which astronomers think is coiled like a helix. The magnetic field is believed to arise from a spinning accretion disk of material around a black hole. Although the magnetic field cannot be seen, its presence is inferred by the confinement of the jet along a narrow cone emanating from the black hole. The visible portion of the jet extends 5,000 light-years. // NASA/ESA/E. Meyer, W. Sparks, J. Biretta, J. Anderson, S.T. Sohn, & R. van der Marel (STScI)/C. Norman (Johns Hopkins University)/M. Nakamura (Academia Sinica)
Pretty amazing indeed: capturing a Perseid meteor exploding. It’s legit, too. Via Universe Today…
Personally, I’ve never seen anything like this, and photographer and digital artist Michael K. Chung said he couldn’t believe what he saw when he was processing images he took for a timelapse of the Perseid meteor shower. It appears he captured a meteor explosion and the resulting expansion of a shock wave or debris ring.
“It was taken early in the morning on August 12, 2013 from my backyard in Victorville, CA,” Michael told Universe Today via email. “The fade to white is NOT an edit- it is overexposure due to the sun coming up. From what I can tell, the timelapse sequence of the explosion and expanding debris span an actual time of approximately 20 minutes.”
Michael said because he shoots at much higher resolution than 720p, he’s able to provide two different sequences in this video: one is with the full frame of each capture scaled/reduced and then cropped down to 1280×720, and the other is with the full frame kept at resolution with just the region around the explosion cropped to 1280×720. “I included each sequence twice – once at 24 frames per second and the other at around 12 fps.”
First Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) movie, 21 hours after opening the telescope door. This video has been slowed forty percent and looped four times to show greater detail. Credit: NASA/IRIS
CSIRO’s Parkes radio telescope in eastern Australia has detected mysterious ‘flashes’ of radio energy from the distant Universe that may open up a whole new area of astrophysics. The surprising finding, made by a team of scientists from ten institutions in Australia, the USA, UK, Germany and Italy, is published in today’s issue of the journal Science.
“Staggeringly, we estimate there could be one of these flashes going off every ten seconds somewhere in the sky,” said research team member Dr Simon Johnston, Head of Astrophysics at CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science.
Four flashes were detected, each from a different direction and each lasting for only a millisecond (a thousandth of a second).
The characteristics of the radio signal — how it is ‘smeared out’ in frequency from travelling through space — indicate that the flashes came from up to 11 billion light-years away.
Searches for transient astrophysical sources often reveal unexpected classes of objects that are useful physical laboratories. In a recent survey for pulsars and fast transients, we have uncovered four millisecond-duration radio transients all more than 40° from the Galactic plane. The bursts’ properties indicate that they are of celestial rather than terrestrial origin. Host galaxy and intergalactic medium models suggest that they have cosmological redshifts of 0.5 to 1 and distances of up to 3 gigaparsecs. No temporally coincident x- or gamma-ray signature was identified in association with the bursts. Characterization of the source population and identification of host galaxies offers an opportunity to determine the baryonic content of the universe.
What would it look like to orbit a black hole? Since the strong gravity of the black hole can significantly alter light paths, conditions would indeed look strange. For one thing, the entire sky would be visible, since even stars behind the black hole would have their light bent to the observer’s eye. For another, the sky near the black hole would appear significantly distorted, with more and more images of the entire sky visible increasingly near the black hole. Most visually striking, perhaps, is the outermost sky image completely contained inside an easily discernible circle known as the Einstein ring. Orbiting a black hole, as shown in the above scientifically-accurate computer-created illustrative video, will show stars that pass nearly directly behind the black hole as zipping around rapidly near the Einstein ring. Although star images near the Einstein ring may appear to move faster than light, no star is actually moving that quickly. The above video is part of a sequence of videos visually exploring the space near a black hole’s event horizon.
Very interesting piece by Liz Fuller-Wright in the CSM last week on the discovery of variably-pulsating stars. Intially referred to as LGM-1 by the astronomers at the European Southern Observatory’s La Silla Observatory in Chile, including graduate student Jocelyn Bell. The “LGM” stood for “little green men.”
For seven years, the research team observed more than 3,000 young stars in the star cluster NGC 3766 for a few weeks each year. They found variable stars – 163 of them – including 36 that seem to break all the rules of pulsars. In fact, they held off on labeling the stars “pulsars,” choosing the less controversial label of “periodic variable stars,” though they said that they expect the scientific community to confirm that they are, in fact, pulsars.
As with many astronomic discoveries, it takes quite a while to confirm “discoveries.” This one in particular may rewrite the book on pulsar formation.
That’s pretty awesome. Maybe we’ll see pulsars in BigBangPrints soon.
Three NASA “phonesats” spend 6 days in orbit sending back complex data and photos of earth before burning up upon re-entry. [Orlando Sentinel – 06/08/2013]
Indian home ministry dismisses telecom department proposal to provide satellite-based communications to beef up surveillance in India’s Maoist hotbeds. [The Economic Times – 06/08/2013]
Despite criticism from former ESA and European industry launch-vehicle experts, ESA intends to stay on the course on Ariane 6. [Space News – 06/07/2013]
FCC to probe Intelsat practices following CapRock complaint that satellite operators inhibit competition by failing to upgrade their equipment or replace aging satellites on a timely basis. [Bloomberg – 06/07/2013]
Two years after launch, the first Space Based Infrared System Geo-1 missile warning satellite is quietly declared operational. [Space News – 06/07/2013]
Russian satellite launched last year to map the Arctic stops functioning. [SatNews – 06/07/2013]
Sierra Nevada Corporation successfully begins latest phase of hybrid rocket motor qualification testing for the Dream Chase flight vehicle. [SatNews – 06/07/2013]
Inmarsat makes compelling argument for sending M2M over a satellite network instead of a terrestrial variation at CTIA. [Wireless Week – 06/07/2013]
Telespazio Brazil CEO expects growth to come from three market segments – oil and gas, backhaul, and corporate networks, but most especially oil and gas. [Satellite Today – 06/06/2013]
Coastal states brace for another hurricane season with satellite networks. [CivSource – 06/06/2013]
KVH details four-part plan to bring variety of economical and convenient content services to mariners for the first time via its mini-VSAT product. [SatNews – 06/06/2013]
Northrop Grumman develops new GaN packaged power amplifier for military and commercial Ka-band applications. [Satellite Today – 06/06/2013]
GIT Satellite Communications X-Track(TM) asset management system meets requirements to become an Iridium LBS Premium Portal Provider in connection with the Iridium Extreme(R) satellite phone. [Yahoo Finance – 06/06/2013]
Stratolaunch, the company created by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen to develop a low-cost satellite launching system, gives Orbital Sciences contract to build world’s largest air-launched space rocket. [Space News – 06/05/2013]
CommunicAsia2013 Summit features eight dedicated tracks and two interactive workshops to cater to the growing demands of the satellite industry – to be held in Singapore, June 18 – 21. [SatNews – 06/05/2013]
Yahsat wins “Most Innovative Product and Service for Africa” for second consecutive year. [StarAfrica – 06/05/2013]
Eutelsat and OneAccess win “Business Service Innovation” award for provision of advanced enterprise services on KA-SAT satellite. [Yahoo Finance – 06/05/2013]
Skyware Global launches spin off company focused on electronics engineering and tactical ground systems. [Satellite Today – 06/05/2013]
Comtech Xicom gets four U.S. Navy contracts totaling $2.5 million for high-power dual-band traveling wave tube amplifiers.
[financial news – 06/05/2013]
Eutelsat Germany expands KabelKiosk service with TV product for local and regional IP and cable network operators in Germany. [Satellite Today – 06/05/2013]
SES-6 satellite is successfully launched on board an ILS Proton Breeze M booster from Baikonur, Kazakhstan; SES announces a significant long-term capacity anchor customer for SES-6 is Brazilian group Oi. [Yahoo Finance – 06/04/2013]
CASBAA satellite industry forum to be held in Singapore June 17, will examine An Industry in Transition. [Yahoo Finance – 06/04/2013]
Don’t forget the kbps in the energy markets – amidst the bandwidth revolution there remains an entire class of in-service low-bandwidth units serving the Oil and Gas and Utilities industries. [Northern Sky Research – 06/04/2013]
As Intelsat continues to struggle with only “modest near-term growth prospects” and “elevated government demand risk,” the company’s fiscal future remains bright. [Satellite Today – 06/04/2013]
Gilat’s SkyEdge II hub and VSATs to deliver education to around 2500 schools in Southeast Asia. [Financial Content – 06/04/2013]
My-HD and Arabsat celebrate success of partnership by launching full bouquet of 39 channels of which 31 are High Definition. [Satellite Evolution Group – 06/04/2013]
SkyVision launches new corporate voice, data and video services over satellite in Africa. [Satellite Today – 06/04/2013]
NASA develops interplanetary GPS, building test bed at Goddard and planning to send an instrument equipped with X-ray navigation technology to the International Space Station to test the system. [Satellite Today – 06/04/2013]
Arianespace’s CEO calls for fast-track modification of Ariane 5 rocket that will enable it to launch larger electric-propelled satellites into orbit. [Satellite Today – 06/04/2013]
India is forced to delay launch of its first navigation satellite due to malfunction in control actuator in second stage of the rocket. [Satellite Today – 06/03/2013]
Export-Import Bank of the United States adds to record-level support for the American satellite industry, authorizing $343.3 million loan financing AsiaSat’s purchase of communications satellites and launch services. [PR Newswire – 06/03/2013]
Global growth private equity firm TA Associates partners with its portfolio company SpeedCast Ltd to complete acquisition of Australian satellite communications service provider Pactel International. [Yahoo Finance – 06/03/2013]
Hughes Network Systems announces new emergency service package as the 2013 hurricane season gets underway. [Satellite Today – 06/03/2013]
Agilent Technologies announces system design tools for Satellite Communications and Navigation. [The Motley Fool – 06/03/2013]
Azerbaijan’s second telecommunications satellite to be launched in 2018. [TMC.net – 06/03/2013]
