As of Friday, and at present, we’re awaiting what might be a decent auroral display thanks to a massive solar eruption observed by, among others, NASA SOHO. The capture of the associated solar flare itself was captured by the NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory in ultraviolet on the 14th (below).
The NASA News Service provides up-to-date announcements of NASA policy, news events, and space science. A recent selection of space science articles are provided below, including direct links to the full announcements. Those interested in receiving these announcements from NASA can subscribe to their service by sending an email to: hqnews-request@newsletters.nasa.gov?subject=subscribe
NASA Telescopes Find Clues For How Giant Black Holes Formed So Quickly
Using data from NASA’s Great Observatories, astronomers have found the best evidence yet for cosmic seeds in the early universe that should grow into supermassive black holes.
Researchers combined data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, Hubble Space Telescope, and Spitzer Space Telescope to identify these possible black hole seeds. They discuss their findings in a paper that will appear in an upcoming issue of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
“Our discovery, if confirmed, explains how these monster black holes were born,” said Fabio Pacucci of Scuola Normale Superiore (SNS) in Pisa, Italy, who led the study. “We found evidence that supermassive black hole seeds can form directly from the collapse of a giant gas cloud, skipping any intermediate steps.”
Using a new satellite-based method, scientists at NASA, Environment and Climate Change Canada, and two universities have located 39 unreported and major human-made sources of toxic sulfur dioxide emissions.
A known health hazard and contributor to acid rain, sulfur dioxide (SO2) is one of six air pollutants regulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Current, sulfur dioxide monitoring activities include the use of emission inventories that are derived from ground-based measurements and factors, such as fuel usage. The inventories are used to evaluate regulatory policies for air quality improvements and to anticipate future emission scenarios that may occur with economic and population growth.
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For more information about, and access to, NASA’s air quality data, visit: so2.gsfc.nasa.gov
NASA uses the vantage point of space to increase our understanding of our home planet, improve lives, and safeguard our future. NASA develops new ways to observe and study Earth’s interconnected natural systems with long-term data records. The agency freely shares this unique knowledge and works with institutions around the world to gain new insights into how our planet is changing.
For more information about NASA Earth science research, visit: www.nasa.gov/earth
NASA’s Juno Spacecraft To Risk Jupiter’s Fireworks For Science
On July 4, NASA will fly a solar-powered spacecraft the size of a basketball court within 2,900 miles (4,667 kilometers) of the cloud tops of our solar system’s largest planet.
As of Thursday, Juno is 18 days and 8.6 million miles (13.8 million kilometers) from Jupiter. On the evening of July 4, Juno will fire its main engine for 35 minutes, placing it into a polar orbit around the gas giant. During the flybys, Juno will probe beneath the obscuring cloud cover of Jupiter and study its auroras to learn more about the planet’s origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere.
“At this time last year our New Horizons spacecraft was closing in for humanity’s first close views of Pluto,” said Diane Brown, Juno program executive at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Now, Juno is poised to go closer to Jupiter than any spacecraft ever before to unlock the mysteries of what lies within.”
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More information on the Juno mission is available at: www.nasa.gov/juno
A booster for the most powerful rocket in the world, NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS), successfully fired up Tuesday for its second qualification ground test at Orbital ATK’s test facilities in Promontory, Utah. This was the last full-scale test for the booster before SLS’s first uncrewed test flight with NASA’s Orion spacecraft in late 2018, a key milestone on the agency’s Journey to Mars.
“This final qualification test of the booster system shows real progress in the development of the Space Launch System,” said William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Seeing this test today, and experiencing the sound and feel of approximately 3.6 million pounds of thrust, helps us appreciate the progress we’re making to advance human exploration and open new frontiers for science and technology missions in deep space.”
Poster’s Note: One of the many under-appreciated aspects of NASA is the extent to which it publishes quality science content for children and Ph.D.’s alike. NASA Space Place has been providing general audience articles for quite some time that are freely available for download and republishing. Your tax dollars help promote science! The following article was provided for reprinting in August, 2015.
By Dr. Ethan Siegel
As Earth spins on its axis, our planet’s interior spins as well. Deep inside our world, Earth’s metal-rich core produces a magnetic field that spans the entire globe, with the magnetic poles offset only slightly from our rotational axis. If you fly up to great distances, well above Earth’s surface, you’ll find that this magnetic web, called the magnetosphere, is no longer spherical. It not only bends away from the direction of the sun at high altitudes, but it exhibits some very strange features, all thanks to the effects of our parent star.
The sun isn’t just the primary source of light and heat for our world; it also emits an intense stream of charged particles, the solar wind, and has its own intense magnetic field that extends much farther into space than our own planet’s does. The solar wind travels fast, making the 150 million km (93 million mile) journey to our world in around three days, and is greatly affected by Earth. Under normal circumstances, our world’s magnetic field acts like a shield for these particles, bending them out of the way of our planet and protecting plant and animal life from this harmful radiation.
But for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction: as our magnetosphere bends the solar wind’s ions, these particles also distort our magnetosphere, creating a long magnetotail that not only flattens and narrows, but whips back-and-forth in the onrushing solar wind. The particles are so diffuse that collisions between them practically never occur, but the electromagnetic interactions create waves in Earth’s magnetosphere, which grow in magnitude and then transfer energy to other particles. The charged particles travel within the magnetic field toward both poles, and when they hit the ionosphere region of Earth’s upper atmosphere, they collide with ions of oxygen and nitrogen causing aurora. Missions such as the European Space Agency and NASA Cluster mission have just led to the first accurate model and understanding of equatorial magnetosonic waves, one such example of the interactions that cause Earth’s magnetotail to whip around in the wind like so.
The shape of Earth’s magnetic field not only affects aurorae, but can also impact satellite electronics. Understanding its shape and how the magnetosphere interacts with the solar wind can also lead to more accurate predictions of energetic electrons in near-Earth space that can disrupt our technological infrastructure. As our knowledge increases, we may someday be able to reach one of the holy grails of connecting heliophysics to Earth: forecasting and accurately predicting space weather and its effects. Thanks to the Cluster Inner Magnetosphere Campaign, Van Allen Probes, Mars Odyssey Thermal Emission Imaging System, Magnetospheric Multiscale, and Heliophysics System Observatory missions, we’re closer to this than ever before.
Kids can learn about how solar wind defines the edges of our solar system at NASA Space Place – spaceplace.nasa.gov/interstellar
Caption: Composite of 25 images of the sun, showing solar outburst/activity over a 365 day period; NASA / Solar Dynamics Observatory / Atmospheric Imaging Assembly / S. Wiessinger; post-processing by E. Siegel.
The goal of the NASA Space Place is “to inform, inspire, and involve children in the excitement of science, technology, and space exploration.” More information is available at their website: http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/
With the New Horizons flyby of Pluto occurring on July 14th, two articles on the syracuse.com website have helped bring the news to a Central New York focus.
While Torregrossa’s article sticks close to some specifics about the surface features on Pluto now coming into increasingly finer detail, Glenn’s is full of some very handy comparisons to put the whole flyby into a bit more perspective as we sit and wait for better images (such as “The spacecraft will be as close to Pluto as New York is to South Africa.“ and “It’s only 1,500 miles in diameter — the distance from New York City to Dallas — but it has five moons.” – And some handy further reading links are included as well).
Kudos to Glenn, Mark, and syracuse.com for providing some local color to the *other* great NASA (dwarf) planet mission happening this year. CNYO already has a few lectures scheduled in the Fall where both the New Horizons/Pluto and Dawn @ Ceres missions will be presented. Stay tuned for further announcements!
The currentmodels indicate that auroral activity tonight will not be significant for Central New York and, if it does pick up, it won’t until at least 2 a.m.
Therefore, CNYO won’t be hosting any official session at Happy Valley (as was reported on the recent syracuse.com article) and will instead wait for fantastic pictures from (1) Canadian observers or (2) CNY observers who decided to brave it only to find the predictions were inaccurate and the aurora were fantastic. Either way, we won’t know until tomorrow morning.
We’ll post any updates over the next several days, else will hope to see people at a Jupiter/Venus Conjunction on or near June 30th (currently finalizing a Syracuse location). Stay tuned!
