Transcript January
Space News looking back over December 2015 and January 2016 What is the Casimir Effect ?? This photograph shows the strange experiment used to test the Casimir effect. This tiny ~0.1mm ball provides evidence that the universe will expand forever, as it moves towards a smooth plate in response to energy fluctuations in the vacuum of empty space – confirming Dark Energy and Gravitational Repulsion!!! A Dying Red Star – but how? Here is Betelgeuse, a red giant that is ‘dying’ – that is casting off its outer layers – as seen in this picture. However, the most recent measure of its temperature using the SOFIA aircraft-based telescope indicates that it is nowhere hot enough – so should not have the energy to throw off the gas clouds we see here. Baffling ? ? ? ? “We are such Stuff that Stars are made of…” … or rather we are made of star-stuff. This version of the periodic table indicates the origin of the elements, beginning with the basic H and He of the Big Bang. How good to know that wedding ring gold was blasted out of a super-nova. Definitely worth the price then. Less expensive elements are of course pretty essential for the functioning of all known life. A New Kuiper Belt Object Detected This shows a new distant object in the Kuiper Belt. Detected by ‘New Horizons’ long range camera (LORRI) as it heads towards a fly-by of object 2014 MU69 in January 2017, this new object has been named ‘1994 JR1’. This 150km wide object is 5.3 billion km from the Sun, making it the closest ever picture taken of a Kuiper Belt object. Choice of Ices This close-up of Pluto shows 2 sorts of terrain, both very cold. On the left, water ice, H20 On the right, nitrogen Ice, N2 - maybe mixed with other solids eg. CO. This indicates that both molecules may have been ‘flowing’ over the surface, although the physics of this environment is very extreme and extremely hard to duplicate on Earth. The presence of ‘water volcanoes’ has been postulated on other parts of this strange body, which is expected to have sub-surface ‘heat’, causing convection. Lovely “Tails” from Comet Catalina These 2 ‘tails’ are rarely seen as well as this on a comet, but Catalina (2013 US10) is looking particularly good at the moment. Currently travelling through Ursa Major, so visible all night. Moving towards topcentre, the comet leaves its dust tail below it, while the ion tail ahead shows the direction of the solar wind. Who saw a Geminid in mid-December ? Some sites are rather better than the UK for meteor spotting . . . On the left – Chile On the right – China Both are of course time-delay composites from December 14th. Early Morning Alignment . . . The 5 nearest planets are now tidily in alignment and can be observed just before dawn – as shown in last Wednesday’s picture from Ibiza, Spain. [Tomorrow morning the Moon will be just to the right of Saturn. Pluto will also be present but invisible between Mercury and Venus.] JUNO proceeds towards Jupiter and breaks record The NASA mision to Jupiter ‘JUNO’ has become our most distant solar powered device, having reached 793million km from the Sun. Juno is due to arrive at Jupiter on July 4th (USA Independence Day). Even at that distance the massive solar arrays will be generating 500 watts. Ceres – or Epsom ??? This close-up of Occator Crater on Ceres, taken by the ever-descending DAWN spacecraft, clearly shows one of the bright spot that have fascinated us for many months. Latest thoughts are that it is a deposit of MgSO4.6H2O or “Epsom salts” brought up from below by impacts. Indigestion anybody??? Opportunity reaches 12 Years on Mars! Opportunity continues to explore ‘Marathon Valley’ on the rim of ‘Endeavour’ crater. It reached its 12-year ‘birthday on 25th January. Total distance covered in this time is 42.65km, more than a marathon. Daytime Moon and Morning Star On the 7th of December this set of 9 shots was taken from Phoenix, Arizona, USA at about 9.30 using a telephoto lens. Time here moves left to right. Moon moves right to left. Morning ‘Star’ Venus is now part of a lineup of 5 planets Earthrise Again – and again . . . Apollo (which one?) took the first and most famous photo of earthrise over the Moon. Now we have the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter doing this on a regular basis – when it is not looking straight down surveying the surface. Q: If you were on the Moon’s surface, could you see an ‘Earthrise’ – and if so how? LISA arrives at L1 and dumps its Engine After a 6-week trip, the LISA spacecraft reached the L1 point on 22nd Jan, from where it will test technologies to detect gravitational waves as predicted by General Relativity. Here it discards its propulsion module. Low Solstice Sun – plus Wave Diffraction A series of 5 shots at Lulworth Cove, Dorset shows the low Dec 22nd Sun, plus the wavelets of the diffraction pattern caused by the narrow sea opening. Remember your school or college optics experiments? Up and Down again - Safely Re-use is the buzz-word today. Reusable space hardware has to be the future of launches if only to save money. Several teams are hoping for success in this field:Blue Origin’s New Shepard space vehicle successfully flew to space, reaching its planned test altitude of 100.5 kilometres before executing a historic landing back at the launch site in West Texas in Nov. Spacex’s Falcon 9 launched 11 satellites and landed safely on Dec 21st. Virgin Galactic has yet to recover from its fatal crash of November 2014. First British Spacewalk Selfie . . . 15th January ‘16 Major Tim Peake was on schedule, so paused to take this selfie in space. Unfortunately his co-worker had a water leak which meant an early recall inside. Send anything interesting during February to: [email protected] “Waiting for news…!!”