Thursday, November 07, 2019

The Sunburst Arc Galaxy | Hubble

The Sunburst Arc Galaxy | Hubble
This video pans over the galaxy called the Sunburst Arc.
This image, taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows a massive galaxy about 4.6 billion light years away. Along its borders four bright arcs are visible; these are copies of the same distant galaxy, nicknamed the Sunburst Arc.

The Sunburst Arc galaxy is almost 11 billion light-years away and the light from it is being lensed into multiple images by gravitational lensing. The Sunburst Arc is among the brightest lensed galaxies known and its image is visible at least 12 times within the four arcs.


Credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA, Rivera-Thorsen et al.
Duration: 20 seconds
Release Date: November 7, 2019



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Sunburst Arc Doppelgangers | Hubble

Sunburst Arc Doppelgangers | Hubble
Warped Space Creates Kaleidoscope View of Faraway Galaxy
This new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows an astronomical object whose image is multiplied by the effect of strong gravitational lensing. The galaxy, nicknamed the Sunburst Arc, is almost 11 billion light-years away from Earth and has been lensed into multiple images by a massive cluster of galaxies 4.6 billion light-years away [1].

The mass of the galaxy cluster is large enough to bend and magnify the light from the more distant galaxy behind it. This process leads not only to a deformation of the light from the object, but also to a multiplication of the image of the lensed galaxy.

In the case of the Sunburst Arc the lensing effect led to at least 12 images of the galaxy, distributed over four major arcs. Three of these arcs are visible in the top right of the image, while one counterarc is visible in the lower left—partially obscured by a bright foreground star within the Milky Way.

Hubble uses these cosmic magnifying glasses to study objects otherwise too faint and too small for even its extraordinarily sensitive instruments. The Sunburst Arc is no exception, despite being one of the brightest gravitationally-lensed galaxies known.

The lens makes various images of the Sunburst Arc between 10 and 30 times brighter. This allows Hubble to view structures as small as 520 light-years across—a rare detailed observation for an object that distant. This compares reasonably well with star forming regions in galaxies in the local Universe, allowing astronomers to study the galaxy and its environment in great detail.

Hubble’s observations showed that the Sunburst Arc is an analogue of galaxies which existed at a much earlier time in the history of the Universe: a period known as the epoch of reionization—an era which began only 150 million years after the Big Bang [2].

The epoch of reionization was a key era in the early Universe, one which ended the “dark ages”, the epoch before the first stars were created when the Universe was dark and filled with neutral hydrogen [3]. Once the first stars formed, they started to radiate light, producing the high-energy photons required to ionize the neutral hydrogen [4].

This converted the intergalactic matter into the mostly ionized form in which it exists today. However, to ionize intergalactic hydrogen, high-energy radiation from these early stars would have had to escape their host galaxies without first being absorbed by interstellar matter. So far only a small number of galaxies have been found to “leak” high-energy photons into deep space. How this light escaped from the early galaxies remains a mystery.

The analysis of the Sunburst Arc helps astronomers to add another piece to the puzzle—it seems that at least some photons can leave the galaxy through narrow channels in a gas rich neutral medium. This is the first observation of a long-theorized process [5]. While this process is unlikely to be the main mechanism that led the Universe to become reionized, it may very well have provided a decisive push.

Notes
[1] The official designation of the Sunburst Arc galaxy is PSZ1 G311.65-18.48.

[2] The further we look into space, the further back we look in time. This allows astronomers to study different epochs of the Universe, by studying objects at different distances.

[3] Ionization is the process of gaining or losing electrons to leave electrically charged particles. The era is known as reionization because, after the Big Bang, matter formed first into protons and electrons. Then, during the era of recombination—about 380 000 years after the Big Bang—neutral hydrogen formed from these particles for the first time.

[4] While an ionized hydrogen atom consists of only the core of the atom (one proton) a neutral hydrogen atom contains a nucleus of one proton which is orbited by one electron.

[5] The paper outlining these observations will appear in the journal, Science, on November 8, 2019.

Image Credit: ESA, NASA, E. Rivera-Thorsen et al.
Release Date: November 7, 2019



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Monday, November 04, 2019

Islands and Clouds | International Space Station

Islands and Clouds | International Space Station
Iceberg-like blades cutting through the clouds in Earth's South Atlantic Ocean. This image shows the islands of: Zavodovski; Visokoi; (small un-named outcrops towards right); Candlemas and Vindication; Saunders; Montagu; and Bristol; and three at the top (left to right): Bellingshausen, Cook, and Thule. It was captured by European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano during his Beyond mission on the International Space Station.

Learn about Luca's Beyond mission:
http://lucaparmitano.esa.int

Credit: NASA/ESA
Image Date: October 29, 2019


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A Cosmic Bat in Flight | ESO

A Cosmic Bat in Flight | ESO
Hidden in one of the darkest corners of the Orion constellation, this Cosmic Bat is spreading its hazy wings through interstellar space two thousand light-years away. It is illuminated by the young stars nestled in its core—despite being shrouded by opaque clouds of dust, their bright rays still illuminate the nebula. Too dim to be discerned by the naked eye, NGC 1788 reveals its soft colors to ESO's Very Large Telescope in this image—the most detailed to date.


Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO)
Release Date: March 14, 2019


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Inside NASA's Kennedy Space Center! | Week of Nov. 1, 2019

Inside NASA's Kennedy Space Center! | Week of Nov. 1, 2019
The Space Launch System core stage pathfinder—a full-scale mock-up of the rocket's actual core stage—was loaded back onto NASA's Pegasus barge for its return trip to the agency's Michoud Assembly Facility in Louisiana. While at Kennedy, the pathfinder allowed teams to practice offloading, maneuvering and stacking techniques. Also, SpaceX fired up the Crew Dragon's SuperDraco engines in preparation of the company's In-Flight Abort Test.

Credit: NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC)
Duration: 1 minute, 42 seconds
Release Date: November 1, 2019



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Important Cargo Headed to International Space Station | This Week@NASA

Important Cargo Headed to International Space Station
This Week@NASA
This Week@NASA | Nov. 2, 2019: Important cargo headed to the space station, installing the thrust behind our return to the Moon, and a devastating wildfire seen from space . . . a few of the stories to tell you about—This Week at NASA!

Credit: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
Duration: 3 minutes, 45 seconds
Release Date: November 2, 2019


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Saturday, November 02, 2019

Skywatching: What's Up for November 2019 | NASA/JPL

Skywatching: What's Up for November 2019 | NASA/JPL
Highlights of the November sky include how to watch as Mercury transits the Sun on Nov. 11, plus how to observe the regular dimming and brightening of the "Demon star," Algol, with your own eyes.

Algol animation is licensed as CC-BY-SA 3.0.

Credit NASA-JPL/Caltech
Duration: 3 minutes, 5 seconds
Release Date: November 1, 2019



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Friday, November 01, 2019

NASA's Space to Ground: Continuous Station Presence for 19 Years

NASA's Space to Ground: 
Continuous Station Presence for 19 Years
Week of Nov. 1, 2019: NASA's Space to Ground is your weekly update on what's happening aboard the International Space Station.
A U.S. cargo craft is poised to resupply the International Space Station just days after a Japanese space freighter departed the orbiting lab Friday afternoon. Meanwhile, the Expedition 61 crew today continued an array of microgravity research and spacewalk preparations.

Flight Engineer Christina Koch with back-up support from NASA astronaut Jessica Meir used the Canadarm2 robotic arm to release Japan’s HTV-8 cargo spacecraft at 1:21 p.m. EDT today. The cargo craft spent five weeks attached to the orbiting lab following a Sept. 24 launch from the Tanegashima Space Center in Japan.

HTV-8 delivered some five tons of supplies and experiments to the orbital complex as well as new lithium-ion batteries. The batteries were installed in the electronics system of the far port truss of the complex replacing older nickel-hydrogen batteries and upgrading the station’s power supply.

Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus resupply ship sits atop an Antares rocket loaded with 8,200 pounds of science experiments and station hardware. Liftoff will take place on Saturday at 9:59 a.m. EDT from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

Meir and Koch will be in the cupola Monday morning awaiting the arrival of Cygnus. Meir will command the Canadarm2 to reach out and grapple Cygnus at 4:10 a.m. EST. Koch will back up Meir as astronaut Andrew Morgan of NASA monitors Cygnus’ approach and rendezvous.

Morgan and Commander Luca Parmitano of ESA (European Space Agency) are also getting up to speed with repair techniques for an external cosmic particle detector. The duo is reviewing procedures to replace the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer’s (AMS) thermal control system during a series of spacewalks tentatively planned for this month. The AMS measures the charge, velocity and mass of cosmic rays in its search for evidence of dark matter and anti-matter.

Morgan also watered plants and set up biology hardware that will house rodents shipped aboard Cygnus. Parmitano monitored the free-flying Astrobee robotic assistant testing its autonomous ability to perform tasks inside the space station’s Kibo laboratory module.

Cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Skripochka focused on Russian spacecraft work and science in their segment of the space station. The duo charged Soyuz crew ship batteries and packed a Progress cargo craft. Skvortsov then studied how pain adjusts to microgravity while Skripochka moved on to plumbing tasks.

Credit; NASA's Johnson Space Center
Duration: 2 minutes, 25 seconds
Release Date: November 1, 2019


#NASA #Space #ISS #Science #Cygnus #Cargo #NorthrupGrumman #Antares #Rocket #Astronauts #JessicaMeir #ChristinaKoch #AndrewMorgan #ESA #LucaParmitano #Italy #Italia #Expedition61 #SpaceStation20th #Human #Spaceflight #Women #Spacecraft #Houston #Texas #UnitedStates #International #STEM #Education #HD #Video