Texas Astronomer Discovers Most Distant Known Galaxy

Source - Space Daily

An artist's rendition of the newly discovered most distant galaxy z8_GND_5296. (The galaxy looks red in the actual Hubble Space Telescope image because the collective blue light from stars get shifted toward redder colors due to the expansion of the universe and its large distance from Earth.) Image credit: V. Tilvi, S.L. Finkelstein, C. Papovich, and the Hubble Heritage Team. For a larger version of this image please go here.

by Staff Writers Austin TX (SPX) Oct 28, 2013 University of Texas at Austin astronomer Steven Finkelstein has led a team that has discovered and measured the distance to the most distant galaxy ever found. The galaxy is seen as it was at a time just 700 million years after the Big Bang.
Although observations with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have identified many other candidates for galaxies in the early universe, including some that might perhaps be even more distant, this galaxy is the farthest and earliest whose distance can be definitively confirmed with follow-up observations from the Keck I telescope, one of a pair of the world's largest Earth-bound telescopes.
The result will be published in the journal Nature.
"We want to study very distant galaxies to learn how galaxies change with time, which helps us understand how the Milky Way came to be," Finkelstein said.
That's what makes this confirmed galaxy distance so exciting, because "we get a glimpse of conditions when the universe was only about 5 percent of its current age of 13.8 billion years," said Casey Papovich of Texas A and M University, second author of the study.

Astronomers can study how galaxies evolve because light travels at a certain speed, about 186,000 miles per second. Thus, when we look at distant objects, we see them as they appeared in the past. The more distant astronomers can push their observations, the farther into the past they can see.

The devil is in the details, however, when it comes to making conclusions about galaxy evolution, Finkelstein points out. "Before you can make strong conclusions about how galaxies evolved, you've got to be sure you're looking at the right galaxies."

This means that astronomers must employ the most rigorous methods to measure the distance to these galaxies, to understand at what epoch of the universe they are seen.

Finkelstein's team selected this galaxy, and dozens of others, for follow-up from the approximately 100,000 galaxies discovered in the Hubble Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS), of which Finkelstein is a team member. The largest project in the history of Hubble, CANDELS used more than one month of Hubble observing time.

The team looked for CANDELS galaxies that might be extremely distant, based on their colors from the Hubble images. This method is good but not foolproof, Finkelstein said. Using colors to sort galaxies is tricky because closer objects can masquerade as distant galaxies.

So to measure the distance to these potentially early-universe galaxies in a definitive way, astronomers use spectroscopy - specifically, looking at how much a galaxy's light wavelengths have shifted toward the red end of the spectrum during their travels from the galaxy to Earth because of the expansion of the universe. This phenomenon is called "redshift."

The team used Keck Observatory's Keck I telescope in Hawaii, one of the largest optical/infrared telescopes in the world, to measure the redshift of the CANDELS galaxy designated z8_GND_5296 at 7.51, the highest galaxy redshift ever confirmed. The redshift means this galaxy hails from a time only 700 million years after the Big Bang.

Keck I was fitted with the new MOSFIRE instrument, which made the measurement possible, Finkelstein said. "The instrument is great. Not only is it sensitive, it can look at multiple objects at a time." He explained that it was the latter feature that allowed his team to observe 43 CANDELS galaxies in only two nights at Keck and obtain higher quality observations than are possible anywhere else.

Researchers are able to accurately gauge the distances of galaxies by measuring a feature from the ubiquitous element hydrogen called the Lyman alpha transition, which emits brightly in distant galaxies. It is detected in nearly all galaxies that are seen from a time more than 1 billion years from the Big Bang, but getting closer than that, the hydrogen emission line, for some reason, becomes increasingly difficult to see.

Of the 43 galaxies observed with MOSFIRE, Finkelstein's team detected this Lyman alpha feature from only one. "We were thrilled to see this galaxy," Finkelstein said.

"And then our next thought was, 'Why did we not see anything else? We're using the best instrument on the best telescope with the best galaxy sample. We had the best weather - it was gorgeous. And still, we only saw this emission line from one out of our sample of 43 observed galaxies, when we expected to see around six. What's going on?' "

The researchers suspect they may have zeroed in on the era when the universe made its transition from an opaque state in which most of the hydrogen gas between galaxies is neutral to a translucent state in which most of the hydrogen is ionized (called the Era of Re-ionization).

So it's not necessarily that the distant galaxies aren't there. It could be that they're hidden from detection behind a wall of neutral hydrogen, which blocks the Lyman alpha signal the team was looking for.

Though the astronomers detected only one galaxy from their CANDELS sample, it turned out to be extraordinary. In addition to its great distance, the team's observations showed that the galaxy z8_GND_5296 is forming stars extremely rapidly - producing stars at a rate 150 times as fast as our own Milky Way galaxy.

This new distance record-holder lies in the same part of sky as the previous record-holder (redshift 7.2), which also happens to have a very high rate of star formation.

"So we're learning something about the distant universe," Finkelstein said. "There are way more regions of very high star formation than we previously thought. ... There must be a decent number of them if we happen to find two in the same area of the sky."

In addition to their studies with Keck, the team also observed z8_GND_5296 in the infrared with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Spitzer measured the amount of ionized oxygen the galaxy contains, which helps pin down the rate of star formation.

The Spitzer observations also helped rule out other types of objects that could masquerade as an extremely distant galaxy, such as a more nearby galaxy that is particularly dusty.

The team is hopeful about its future prospects in this area. The University of Texas at Austin is a founding partner of the 25-meter-diameter Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), soon to begin construction in the mountains of Chile.

This telescope will have nearly five times the light-gathering power of Keck and will be sensitive to much fainter emission lines, as well as even more distant galaxies. Although the current observations are beginning to pin down when re-ionization occurred, more work is needed.

"The process of re-ionization is unlikely to be very sudden," Finkelstein said. "With the GMT, we will detect many more galaxies, pushing our study of the distant universe even closer to the Big Bang."

Space cannon ready: Japan to shoot asteroid for samples in 2014 mission

Source - Space Daily

In 2013 the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency are sending the space probe, Hayabusa 2, on a long journey to an asteroid named 1999 JU3 (Image by Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency).

by Staff Writers Moscow (Voice of Russia) Oct 24, 2013 A unique space cannon developed for Japan's Hayabusa 2 spacecraft has successfully test-fired on Earth in preparation for a 2014 mission. During its upcoming journey into space, the cannon will blast an asteroid and mine samples of its soil.

The test took place in the Japanese prefecture of Gifu, paving the way for the Hayabusa 2 spacecraft to extract soil samples from the asteroid, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced on Monday.

During the mission of Hayabusa 2, scheduled to begin in December 2014, the space probe will extract soil from inside the asteroid. In order to do this, it will be equipped with a collision device designed to shoot at the surface of the asteroid from a distance of 100 meters with metal shell ammunition moving at a speed of two kilometers per second.

JAXA hopes to create a small (a few meters in diameter), artificial crater from which Japanese scientists can extract valuable samples capable of revealing the history of the formation of cosmic bodies of this type.

"A new function, [a] 'collision device,' is considered to be [on board] to create a crater artificially," JAXA explained on its website, adding that collecting samples from the surface that is exposed by a collision will ensure acquiring "fresh samples that are less weathered by the space environment or heat."

In order to calibrate the precision of the cannon, JAXA engineers had to overcome a number of challenges. However, the agency assures that all problems have already been solved.

"We were able to solve several problems associated with the development of the device. During the tests, the projectile hit right on target, and with the expected speed," JAXA engineer Takanao Saiki said.

Japanese scientists actively began exploring asteroids with the Hayabusa mission, which returned to earth in June 2010 after exploring a 500-meter-long rock-rich S-type Itokawa asteroid.

Hayabusa 2 is a successor of the first spacecraft and is scheduled to be launched in 2014 to conduct research of a C-type asteroid temporally called '1999 JU3.' It is believed to contain a higher concentration of organic matters and water.

"Minerals and seawater which form the Earth as well as materials for life are believed to be strongly connected in the primitive solar nebula in the early solar system, thus we expect to clarify the origin of life by analyzing samples acquired from a primordial celestial body such as a C-type asteroid to study organic matter and water in the solar system and how they coexist while affecting each other," JAXA posted on its website.

So far, research into '1999 JU3' revealed that it is a sphere approximately 920 meters in diameter with an albedo on the surface of about 0.06. The rotation period of the celestial object is approximately 7.6 hours.

Hayabusa 2 is expected to reach its target in the middle of 2018 before departing back to Earth in 2019.

Source: Voice of Russia

New light on supermassive black holes

Source - Space Daily
by Staff Writers Melbourne, Australia (SPX) Oct 22, 2013

File image.

Swinburne University of Technology scientists are part of an international team that has used observations of super-dense stars known as pulsars to probe the Universe in a completely new way.

Astronomers have known that at the heart of every galaxy, like our own Milky Way, there lurks a supermassive black hole.

But until now, the rate at which these black holes grow and collide has been poorly understood.

A paper in Science pits the front-running ideas about the growth of supermassive black holes against some of the most precise astrophysical measurements ever made.

The data for this experiment was derived from a long-standing collaboration established by the CSIRO and Swinburne using pulsar observations from the CSIRO Parkes 64 metre radio telescope.

The study was jointly led by Dr Ryan Shannon, a Postdoctoral Fellow with CSIRO, and Mr Vikram Ravi, a PhD student co-supervised by the University of Melbourne and CSIRO.

"For the first time, we've used information about gravitational waves as a tool in astrophysics," Dr Shannon said.

"It's a powerful new tool. These black holes are very hard to observe directly, so this is a new chapter in astronomy."

"One model for black-hole growth has failed our test and we're painting the others into a corner. They may not break, but they'll have to bend," Mr Ravi said.

Einstein predicted gravitational waves - ripples in spacetime, generated by bodies changing speed or direction. Bodies, for instance, such as pairs of black holes orbiting each other.

When galaxies merge, their resident black holes are doomed to meet. They first waltz together then enter a desperate embrace and merge.

"Towards the end of this dance they're growling out gravitational waves at a frequency we're set up to detect," Dr Shannon said.

Armed with the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array data, the researchers tested four models of black-hole growth. They effectively ruled out black holes gaining mass only through mergers, but the other three models "are still in the game," Dr Sarah Burke-Spolaor at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) said.

For Swinburne's Dr Willem van Straten, the result is particularly pleasing, as it exploits data processed on the Swinburne supercomputer from his PhD in the 1990s until today.

Curiosity confirms origins of Martian meteorites

Source - Mars Daily
by Staff Writers Washington DC (SPX) Oct 18, 2013

Scientists identified meteorites, such as this one nicknamed "Black Beauty," as Martian in origin. NASA.

Earth's most eminent emissary to Mars has just proven that those rare Martian visitors that sometimes drop in on Earth - a.k.a. Martian meteorites - really are from the Red Planet. A key new measurement of Mars' atmosphere by NASA's Curiosity rover provides the most definitive evidence yet of the origins of Mars meteorites while at the same time providing a way to rule out Martian origins of other meteorites.

The new measurement is a high-precision count of two forms of argon gas-Argon-36 and Argon-38-accomplished by the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument on Curiosity. These lighter and heavier forms, or isotopes, of argon exist naturally throughout the solar system.

But on Mars the ratio of light to heavy argon is skewed because a lot of that planet's original atmosphere was lost to space, with the lighter form of argon being taken away more readily because it rises to the top of the atmosphere more easily and requires less energy to escape. That's left the Martian atmosphere relatively enriched in the heavier Argon-38.

Years of past analyses by Earth-bound scientists of gas bubbles trapped inside Martian meteorites had already narrowed the Martian argon ratio to between 3.6 and 4.5 (that is 3.6 to 4.5 atoms of Argon-36 to every one Argon-38) with the supposed Martian "atmospheric" value near four. Measurements by NASA's Viking landers in the 1970's put the Martian atmospheric ratio in the range of four to seven. The new SAM direct measurement on Mars now pins down the correct argon ratio at 4.2.

"We really nailed it," said Sushil Atreya of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, the lead author of a paper reporting the finding today in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union. "This direct reading from Mars settles the case with all Martian meteorites," he said.

One of the reasons scientists have been so interested in the argon ratio in Martian meteorites is that it was - before Curiosity - the best measure of how much atmosphere Mars has lost since the planet's earlier, wetter, warmer days billions of years ago. Figuring out the planet's atmospheric loss would enable scientists to better understand how Mars transformed from a once water-rich planet more like our own to the today's drier, colder and less hospitable world.

Had Mars held onto its entire atmosphere and its original argon, Atreya explained, its ratio of the gas would be the same as that of the Sun and Jupiter. They have so much gravity that isotopes can't preferentially escape, so their argon ratio - which is 5.5 - represents that of the primordial solar system.

While argon comprises only a tiny fraction of the gases lost to space from Mars, it is special because it's a noble gas. That means the gas is inert, not reacting with other elements or compounds, and therefore a more straightforward tracer of the history of the Martian atmosphere.

"Other isotopes measured by SAM on Curiosity also support the loss of atmosphere, but none so directly as argon," said Atreya. "Argon is the clearest signature of atmospheric loss because it's chemically inert and does not interact or exchange with the Martian surface or the interior. This was a key measurement that we wanted to carry out on SAM."

410-meter asteroid 'may collide' with Earth in 2032

Source: Voice of Russia
by Staff Writers Moscow (Voice of Russia) Oct 18, 2013

The man behind 2013 TV135 asteroid discovery, Gennady Borisov from the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory.

A potentially catastrophic asteroid has been discovered by astronomers, who say there's a slim chance that the 410-meter-wide minor planet will crash into Earth in 2032, creating a blast 50 times greater than the biggest nuclear bomb.

The asteroid, described as 2013 TV135, was found in the Camelopardalis (Giraffe) constellation by the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory in southern Ukraine, the Minor Planet Center of the International Astronomers Union said.

"On the night of October 12, I was watching the Giraffe constellation, it was an in-depth monitoring as part of the comet search program," Gennady Borisov from the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory told Itar-Tass news agency. "This is when the asteroid... was discovered. The first observations show that it moves quickly and is relatively close."

The discovery has been confirmed by astronomers in Italy, Spain, the UK and Russia. In Russia, it was seen with telescopes at the Master Observatory in the Siberian republic of Buryatia, the IAU Minor Planet Center said.

The asteroid has been added to the List of the Potentially Hazardous Asteroids, which includes celestial bodies with orbits closer than 7.5 million kilometers from the Earth's orbit.

However, the threat posed by 2013 TV135 is minor, as it only has a one in 63,000 chance of colliding with our planet, according to available estimates.

Astronomers say the asteroid's orbit will be about 1.7 million kilometers away from the Earth's orbit on August 26, 2032.

If the asteroid hits Earth, it would create an explosion equivalent to 2,500 megatons of TNT, which is 50 times greater than the biggest nuclear bomb ever detonated.

impact site on Earth by 2028, Timur Kryachko from the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory told the RIA Novosti news agency.

The discovery was mentioned by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who is pushing for the development of anti-asteroid defense systems.

"Here's a super-task for our space industry," Rogozin said of the asteroid on his Twitter page.

The 2013 TV135 has been given a 1 out of 10 rating on the Torino Scale, used to estimate asteroid impact hazards, which means it "poses no unusual level of danger" and "the chance of collision is extremely unlikely."

According to NASA's Near Earth Object Program, there is currently just one asteroid that has the same rating. It's called 2007 VK184. At 130 meters wide, it has 1 in 1,820 chance of impacting Earth on June 3, 2048.

The chances that any other near-Earth asteroid will crash into earth in the next 100 years is estimated at "effectively zero" by NASA.

Asteroid 2013 TV135 - A Reality Check

Source - Space Daily
by Staff Writers Pasadena CA (JPL) Oct 18, 2013

This diagram shows the orbit of asteroid 2013 TV135 (in blue), which has just a one-in-63,000 chance of impacting Earth. Its risk to Earth will likely be further downgraded as scientists continue their investigations. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech. For a larger version of this image please go here.

Newly discovered asteroid 2013 TV135 made a close approach to Earth on Sept. 16 when it came within about 4.2 million miles (6.7 million kilometers). The asteroid is initially estimated to be about 1,300 feet (400 meters) in size and its orbit carries it as far out as about three quarters of the distance to Jupiter's orbit and as close to the sun as the Earth's orbit.

It was discovered on Oct. 8, 2013, by astronomers working at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory in the Ukraine. As of Oct. 14, asteroid 2013 TV135 is one of 10,332 Near-Earth objects that have been discovered

With only a week of observations for an orbital period that spans almost 4 years its future orbital path is still quite uncertain, but this asteroid could be back in the Earth's neighborhood in 2032. However, the Near-Earth Object Program Office states the probability this asteroid could then impact Earth is only 1-in 63,000.

The object should be easily observable in the coming months and once additional observations are provided to the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge Massachusetts, the initial orbit calculations will be improved and the most likely result will be a dramatic reduction, or complete elimination, of any risk of Earth impact.

"To put it another way, that puts the current probability of no impact in 2032 at about 99.998 percent," said Don Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

"This is a relatively new discovery. With more observations, I fully expect we will be able to significantly reduce, or rule out entirely, any impact probability for the foreseeable future."

NASA detects, tracks and characterizes asteroids and comets passing close to Earth using both ground- and space-based telescopes. The Near-Earth Object Observations Program, commonly called "Spaceguard," discovers these objects, characterizes a subset of them, and determines their orbits to determine if any could be potentially hazardous to our planet.

Comet ISON Details Emerge as it Races Toward the Sun

Source - Space Daily
by Staff Writers Tucson AX (SPX) Oct 16, 2013

This image shows the color change of Comet C/ISON's dust coma. The white dot at the center of the coma marks the location of the nucleus. ISON's dust coma appears to be less red near the nucleus than it is further away from the nucleus. Although the color change is actually very small, it could be an indication of relatively more water ice particles near the nucleus. Those icy particles evaporate, as they move outward, makes the coma appear redder. Credit: NASA, ESA, J.-Y. Li (Planetary Science Institute) and Hubble Comet ISON Imaging Science Team.

Scientists are unraveling more information on Comet C/2012 S1 (ISON) as it continues on its journey toward the Sun. Comet C/ISON will skim 730,000 miles above the Sun's surface on Nov. 28 and has the potential to be readily visible from Earth starting in early December.
"We measured the rotational pole of the nucleus. The pole indicates that only one side of the comet is being heated by the Sun on its way in until approximately one week before it reaches it closest point to the Sun," said Planetary Science Institute Research Scientist Jian-Yang Li, who led a team that imaged the comet.
"Since the surface on the dark side of the comet should still retain a large fraction of very volatile materials, the sudden exposure to the strong sunlight when it gets closer to the Sun than Mercury could trigger huge outbursts of material," Li said.
Li presented the findings at the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences 45th Annual Meeting in Denver.
Comet C/ISON was imaged with the Hubble Space Telescope using the Wide Field Camera 3 on April 10.
"We measured the color of the coma, and found that the outer part of the coma is slightly redder than the inner part," Li said. "This color change is unusual in comets, and seems to imply that the inner part contains some water ice grains, which sublimate as they move away from the nucleus."
Comet C/ISON was discovered in September 2012 when it was farther away from the Sun than Jupiter, and was already active at such a great distance. This is distinct from most other sungrazers - comets that pass extremely close to the sun - that are only discovered and remain visible for at most several days when nearest the Sun.
At such a close perihelion distance from the Sun, sungrazers are expected to be intensely heated by the Sun, and sublimate not only ice but also silicates and even metals, releasing a tremendous amount of dust. The expectation is high that Comet C/ISON will be much brighter and more spectacular than most other sungrazers when it puts on a show late this year.
"As a first-time visitor to the inner solar system, Comet C/ISON provides astronomers a rare opportunity to study a fresh comet preserved since the formation of the Solar System," Li said. "The expected high brightness of the comet as it nears the Sun allows for many important measurements that are impossible for most other fresh comets."

Visit here for ISON full detail

http://www.cometison2013.co.uk/perihelion-and-distance/

Kepler Finds First Signs of Other Earths

Source - Space Daily
by John Rehling Los Angeles CA (SPX) Oct 14, 2013

The algorithm is overly lenient in interpreting normal variations in starlight as being transits of small planets, and this was further complicated by abnormalities in the Kepler instrument itself. To explain this, it's necessary to say something of how Kepler operated. Figure 1 and Figure 2 larger size. (file image) An artistic view of the system seen from Kepler-62f. The host star is slightly redder than our sun. The smaller exoplanets Kepler-62b (1.3 times Earth's radius) and Kepler-62c (0.5 times Earth's radius) are close to the star. Kepler-62d (2 times Earth's radius) is significantly bigger and closer, Kepler-62e (1.6 times Earth's radius) and Kepler-62f (1.4 times Earth's radius) are relatively close to each other and both are sustaining water and rocky surface as suggested by the clouds' color, water, atmosphere and rocks Credit: Danielle Futselaar/SETI Institute. For a larger version of this image please go here.

A new analysis of observations from the Kepler spacecraft reveals what may be the first earth-sized planets with earthlike temperatures found orbiting sunlike stars.
Until now, Kepler's nearly continuous observations of over 150,000 stars have confirmed the existence of Earth-sized planets in the hot regions close to their star. Larger planets, some as small as one and a half times the Earth's diameter, have been found in the Habitable Zone, where the amount of heat they receive from their star may sustain earthlike temperatures.
In addition, earthlike planets have been found in the Habitable Zone of tiny, cool red dwarf stars, which may offer a more hazardous environment for life than with sunlike stars. But finding planets with the combination of earthlike size and earthlike temperature around sunlike stars, a major goal of the Kepler mission, has been elusive.
Part of the challenge is how difficult it is to spot a single transit by an Earth-sized planet, which blocks only 0.01% of its star's light, far less than larger planets block. This figure (figure 1 top image) shows the graph of three different stars' brightness as measured by Kepler during actual transits by extrasolar planets the size of Jupiter, Neptune, and Earth. Transits of larger planets stand out prominently, but transits by Earth-sized planets are so subtle, Kepler can only identify them when there is a series of many such dimming events occurring at the same regular interval.
Last December, the Kepler team released a list of 18,406 possible planets found by an algorithm that searched the first three years of Kepler data looking for series of transits.
If we define a size limit of no more than 1.25 times the Earth's diameter and a Habitable Zone where the amount of heating that a planet would receive is between that of Venus and Mars in our solar system, then this list contains 87 possible earthlike planets - a bonanza! There is, however, a catch: It is certain that the vast majority of these 87 are not real planets at all.
The algorithm is overly lenient in interpreting normal variations in starlight as being transits of small planets, and this was further complicated by abnormalities in the Kepler instrument itself. To explain this, it's necessary to say something of how Kepler operated.
During its operational lifetime, which ended earlier this year, Kepler would spend a quarter year (about three months) at a time staring very steadily at the same region of the sky. The light from Kepler's telescope falls onto an array of charge-coupled devices, or CCDs, like those in a digital camera.
At the end of each quarter, Kepler rotated its entire body 90 degrees, still staring at the same area of the sky, but with each star now observed by a different location on the surface of Kepler's grid of photosensitive CCDs for the new quarter. After that quarter, Kepler would rotate again, and so on for the four years, or 16 quarters, of Kepler's lifetime. This means that each particular star was observed by four different locations on Kepler's CCD grid, alternating in a cycle of four quarters, or one year.
The problem in this scheme is that certain locations of Kepler's CCD grid have proven to be slightly erratic. The data they collected are still useful, but with a little random noise, or jitter, added to the observations in ways that could make it seem like a small planet had transited in front of the star when in fact no transit at all had taken place. As a result, the same balky electronics could report bogus transits each quarter it observed the star, which therefore means at intervals of about a year.
If the bogus transits happened by chance to come at even intervals in time, this fooled the search algorithm into thinking it may have seen a small planet. What makes this particularly insidious is that these false reports of planets often seem to be earthlike in both size and temperature, including many of the 87 seemingly earthlike planets mentioned above.
That list of possible planets came from Kepler's first three years of observations, but fortunately, there is a saving grace - the fourth year. For three bogus transits to be spaced out evenly in time is not highly unlikely: The second bogus transit simply has to occur at the time halfway between the first and the third. But if the planet is real, then a fourth transit should occur about a year later, timed just as precisely as the first three. This is unlikely to occur if the first three were bogus. So by finding a fourth transit is a powerful reality check on that list of possible earthlike planets.
In my analysis of this data, I first studied the "noise" that Kepler recorded in observing each star to come up with an estimate of how likely it was that Kepler was registering some false transits associated with that star. Then, by focusing on a small list of stars which had a possible earthlike planet and seemed to escape the problem of Kepler's noisy electronics, I checked to see if their that planet showed an additional transit in the final year of observations. At least two, and perhaps five, showed signs of an additional and confirmatory transit.
Does this constitute the discovery of five truly earthlike planets around other stars? Not yet, because in any particular case there are other explanations for how real astrophysical events can mimic the transits of an earthlike planet. This figure (figure 2 lower image) shows three different cases that can look the same to Kepler. In case (a), we see an earthlike planet in the process of transiting its star, the case we are hoping to find.
In case (b), we see a large planet transiting a distant star, which just happens to be lined up right behind the closer (and therefore seemingly bigger) star that Kepler was looking at. In this figure, we can see what's happening, but Kepler doesn't obtain pictures with this level of detail; it only measures how the total amount of light varies over time.
When the large planet transits across the distant star, the loss of light is the same as if a small planet were transiting across the nearer star, so Kepler is effectively blind to the difference between these two cases. Case (c) shows another possibility, that a pair of binary stars perform a grazing eclipse of one another, hiding just enough of each other to block the same amount of light that an earth-sized planet would.
Very careful analysis of Kepler data may be able to tell when something like (b) or (c) is happening. In addition, even for those stars where (a) proves to be the case, the estimates of planet size and temperature are approximate, and some will prove to be larger, smaller, hotter, or cooler than the original estimate. It's left to future observations, using different telescopes and different methods, to examine these five or so cases to see which of these truly are what they seem they may be - planets with the same size and temperature as Earth.
Verification of these cases as earthlike planets, and further study of any of them that are, may prove to be a challenge as all of them are on the order of 2,000 light years away. But even without such verification, the number of possible earthlike planets resulting from this analysis provides an upper limit of how common such planets may be, and combined with estimates of how common cases (b) and (c) should be, can also provide a lower limit. This is not the final step in finding another place like home far off among the stars, but it's a critical step, and the one that Kepler was designed for.

US shutdown not to hit Indian Mars mission

Source - Mars Daily
by Staff Writers Bangalore (IANS) Oct 14, 2013

The 1,340kg Indian spacecraft has been shipped Thursday to ISRO's spaceport at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh, off the Bay of Bengal coast, about 80 km northeast of Chennai.

The partial shutdown of the US government would not affect the Indian Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) scheduled for launch Oct 28, the Indian space agency said Saturday.
"National Aeronautics Space Administration (NASA) and Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) authorities of the US have reaffirmed support to our Mars Orbiter Mission spacecraft, scheduled for launch Oct 28," the state-run Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said in a statement here.
The space agency's clarification came in the wake of reports in a section of the media that the US government shutdown could affect the ground support of NASA for India's maiden mission to the red planet, 400 million miles away.
"The launch window remains open till Nov 19. NASA and JPL will provide communications and navigation support from their deep space network facilities in the US," ISRO's scientific secretary V.S. Hegde said.
Incidentally, NASA is also scheduled to send its Maven (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) mission Nov 18.
The 1,340kg Indian spacecraft has been shipped Thursday to ISRO's spaceport at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh, off the Bay of Bengal coast, about 80 km northeast of Chennai.
The country's tryst with the red planet will cost Rs.450 crore, including Rs.150 crore for the spacecraft, Rs.110 crore for the 350-tonne heavy rocket and Rs.190 crore to augment the ground stations for the mission's operations.
The spacecraft will orbit around Marsfor six months at a distance of 375 km from its surface and 80,000km when away elliptically after a nine-month voyage to conduct various experiments with its five scientific instruments onboard.

Controllers prepare to awaken comet hunter from deep-space sleep

Source - Space Daily
by Staff Writers Paris (UPI) Oct 11, 2013

disclaimer: image is for illustration purposes only

European space mission controllers say they're preparing to wake a comet-hunting spacecraft from a two-year deep-space hibernation as it nears its cosmic goal.
The European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft is headed toward a comet knows as 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko to both orbit it and place a lander on it to study the role of comets in the evolution of the Solar System, an ESA release said Friday.
Rosetta, launched in March 2004, has had a long voyage including a complex series of flybys -- three times past Earth and once past Mars -- on its voyage toward its destination and an expected arrival in August 2014.
In July 2011 Rosetta was put into deep-space hibernation for the coldest, most distant leg of the journey as it traveled some 500 million miles from the Sun, close to the orbit of Jupiter.
Controllers set Rosetta's internal "alarm clock" to awaken the sleeping spacecraft in 100 days, on January 20, 2014.
Once it wakes up, Rosetta will warm up its navigation instruments and then halt its spin to point its main antenna at Earth, to let ground controllers know it is still alive.
"We are very excited to have this important milestone in sight, but we will be anxious to assess the health of the spacecraft after Rosetta has spent nearly 10 years in space," ESA Rosetta mission manager Fred Jansen said.
When it wakes up Rosetta will still be 6 million miles from the comet; its first images of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko are expected in May, the ESA said.

Russia’s ‘space troops’ not capable of defending against an alien attack

Source - Open Minds

Posted by: Jason McClellan 

Emblem of the Russian Aerospace Defence Forces. (Credit: Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation)

A Russian military space official admitted on Wednesday, October 2 that his country’s space troops are ill-equipped to defend against an extraterrestrial attack.
According to Russia Today, what was formerly known as the Russian Space Forces is now the Aerospace Defence Forces. This current incarnation of Russia’s space troops was created in 2011 “through the integration of several military branches responsible for anti-missile defense, strategic anti-aircraft warfare and control of outer space.” This new branch of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation is principally responsible for air and space defense. And one of its specific tasks is “Monitoring space objects and identification of potential threats to the Russian Federation in space and from space, prevention of attacks as needed.” But these space troops are apparently not ready if the prevention of an attack from extraterrestrial forces is needed.

Titov Main Test and Space Systems Control Center (Credit: Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation)

While speaking at a media conference at the Titov Main Test and Space Systems Control Center near Moscow, a journalist asked Sergei Berezhnoy, an aide to the head of Center, about defending against an extraterrestrial invasion. Berezhnoy responded, “So far we are not capable of that. We are unfortunately not ready to fight extraterrestrial civilizations.” He explained, “Our center was not tasked with it. There are too many problems on Earth and near it.”
Russia Today points out that, while the space troops may not have the capabilities to fight aliens just yet, they do have extremely effective and high tech resources to help them deal with terrestrial issues and threats.

Lonely, young planet drifting in space without a star

Source - CNN

By Laura Smith-Spark, CNN |

An artist's impression of free-floating planet PSO J318.5-22.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Astronomers find a young, low-mass planet wandering through space alone
• "We have never before seen an object free-floating in space that that looks like this," one says
• The planet will give an insight into the workings of young gas-giant planets like Jupiter
• It is easier to observe than other similar planets because it is not orbiting a young star

(CNN) -- It's just a newborn in planetary terms, and it's drifting all alone in space without a star to orbit.

The solitary life of this newly discovered planet, with the catchy name PSO J318.5-22, has astronomers excited.

Only 80 light-years from Earth, the 12 million-year-old planet has properties similar to those of gas-giant planets orbiting young stars.

But because it is floating alone through space, rather than around a host star, astronomers can study it much more easily.

"We have never before seen an object free-floating in space that looks like this," said Dr. Michael Liu of the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, who led the international team that discovered the planet.

"It has all the characteristics of young planets found around other stars, but it is drifting out there all alone. I had often wondered if such solitary objects exist, and now we know they do."

While about a thousand planets have been discovered outside our solar system in the past decade by indirect means -- such as observing the wobbling or dimming of their host stars as they orbit -- only a handful of new planets have been directly imaged, all of them around young stars, according to a release from the Institute for Astronomy.

Young stars are those less than 200 million years old.

PSO J318.5-22's solitary existence and its similarity to those directly observed planets makes it a rare find.

"Planets found by direct imaging are incredibly hard to study, since they are right next to their much brighter host stars. PSO J318.5-22 is not orbiting a star so it will be much easier for us to study," said Dr. Niall Deacon of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany and a co-author of the study.

"It is going to provide a wonderful view into the inner workings of gas-giant planets like Jupiter shortly after their birth."

The astronomers stumbled across it as they sifted through a mountain of data produced by the Pan-STARRS 1 (PS1) wide-field survey telescope on Haleakala, Maui.

The planet, which has only six times the mass of Jupiter, was identified by its faint and unique heat signature.

The astronomers were actually searching for failed stars known as brown dwarfs when they came across PSO J318.5-22, which stood out because of its red color.

Subsequent infrared observations using other telescopes in Hawaii showed it was no brown dwarf, but rather a young, low-mass planet.

By monitoring the planet's position for the next two years, using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, the team was able directly to measure its distance from Earth.

This means the astronomers have placed it within a collection of young stars called the Beta Pictoris moving group that formed about 12 million years ago.

The star that lends its name to the group, Beta Pictoris, has another young gas-giant planet in orbit around it, the astronomers say.

But PSO J318.5-22, which appears to be even lower in mass than that planet, continues to wend its solitary way through the universe, unattached to any star.

Diamond 'super-earth' may not be quite as precious

Source - Space Daily
by Staff Writers Tucson AZ (SPX) Oct 10, 2013

In the sky with diamonds? A so-called super-earth, planet 55 Cancri e was believed to be the first known planet to consist largely of diamond, due in part to the high carbon-to-oxygen ratio of its host star. Credit: Haven Giguere/Yale University/NASA.

A planet 40 light years from our solar system, believed to be the first-ever discovered planet to consist largely of diamond, may in fact be of less exquisite nature, according to new research led by University of Arizona astronomy graduate student Johanna Teske.
Revisiting public data from previous telescope observations, Teske's team analyzed the available data in more detail and concluded that carbon - the chemical element diamonds are made of - appears to be less abundant in relation to oxygen in the planet's host star - and by extension, perhaps the planet - than was suggested by a study of the host star published in 2010.
"The 2010 paper found that '55 Cancri,' a star that hosts five planets, has a carbon-to-oxygen ratio greater than one," Teske said. "This observation helped motivate a paper last year about the innermost planet of the system, the 'super-Earth' 55 Cancri e. Using observations of the planet's mass and radius to create models of its interior that assumed the same carbon-to-oxygen ratio of the star, the 2012 paper suggested the planet contains more carbon than oxygen."

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"However, our analysis makes this seem less likely because the host star doesn't appear as carbon-rich as previously thought," Teske said.
Observations obtained in 2010, together with simulations astronomers use to model a planet's interior based on data like radius, mass and orbital velocity, had yielded a carbon to oxygen ratio greater than one, in other words, an alien world based on carbon instead of oxygen as most planets are in our solar system, including Earth.
"The sun only has about half as much carbon as oxygen, so a star or a planet with a higher ratio between the two elements, particularly a planet with more carbon than oxygen, is interesting and different from what we have in our solar system," explained Teske, who is graduating this spring with a doctorate from the UA's Department of Astronomy and Steward Observatory.
Based on the previous results, it was suggested that the "diamond planet" is a rocky world with a surface of graphite surrounding a thick layer of diamond instead of water and granite like Earth.
The new research by Teske and collaborators, to be published in the Astrophysical Journal and available online, calls this conclusion in question, making it less likely a hypothetical space probe sent to sample the planet's innards would dig up anything sparkling.
Teske's group found that the planet's host star contains almost 25 percent more oxygen than carbon, about mid way between the Sun and what the previous study suggested.
"In theory, 55 Cancri e could still have a high carbon to oxygen ratio and be a diamond planet, but the host star does not have such a high ratio," Teske said. "So in terms of the two building blocks of information used for the initial 'diamond-planet' proposal - the measurements of the exoplanet and the measurements of the star - the measurements of the star no longer verify that."
A so-called super-Earth boasting about twice the Earth's diameter and eight times Earth's mass, the "diamond planet," whose official designation is 55 Cancri e, is the smallest member of a five-planet system located in the constellation Cancer. 55 Cancri e races around its host star at such close distance that one year lasts only 18 hours and its surface temperature is more than 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
"With rocky worlds like 55 Cancri e, researchers use measurements of a planet's radius, mass and density and basic physical equations governing the internal structure of solid planets to calculate possible compositions of the planet's interior," Teske said.
"This planet is probably rocky or has a large rocky component," she said. "We don't really know if it has an atmosphere."
Since astronomers can't probe the makeups of stars and planets directly, they rely on indirect observational methods such as absorption spectra; each chemical element absorbs light at different wavelengths, in a characteristic pattern that can be used as a fingerprint of that element. By analyzing the absorption spectra of starlight passing through a star's atmosphere, it is possible to deduce what elements are present in the star's atmosphere.
"Instead of using the same absorption lines in the spectrum of the host star as the previous study of 55 Cancri, we looked at more lines of carbon and more lines of oxygen," Teske said. "We find that because this particular host star is cooler than our sun and more metal-rich, the single oxygen line analyzed in the previous study to determine the star's oxygen abundance is more prone to error."
Teske instead relied on several different indicators of the oxygen abundance that were not considered previously. "Averaging all of these measurements together gives us a more complete picture of the oxygen abundance in the star."
Teske pointed out that the 'diamond planet' results hinge on the presumption that a star's composition bears some relation to the composition of its planets, a notion grounded in the idea that planets form from the same material as their host stars. However, as astronomers discover more and more extrasolar systems, a one-size-fits-all formula becomes less likely.
"We still don't know whether our solar system is common or uncommon in the universe," Teske said, "because many of the systems that we are finding have giant gas planets closer to the star, unlike our system where rocky planets dominate the inner orbits and gas giants occur further out."
Given there are so many processes - most of which are not fully understood - happening in a planet-forming disk that could influence the composition of planets, Teske said: "At this point, I would honestly be surprised if there was a one-to-one correlation."
"The compositions of planets and stars don't always match," she said, explaining that in a swirling disk of dust and gas giving birth to a star and planets, "you can have pockets where there is a lot of water, meaning an enhancement of oxygen. Or places where water has frozen out, leaving behind carbon species as the dominant gas molecules. So the planets that are accreting gas at those locations in the disk could be more carbon-rich instead of oxygen-rich."
Therefore, room for uncertainty remains, according to the researchers.
"Depending on where 55 Cancri e formed in the protoplanetary disk, its carbon-to-oxygen ratio could differ from that of the host star," Teske said. "It could be higher or lower. But based on what we know at this point, 55 Cancri e is more of a 'diamond in the rough.'"
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World's Largest Solar Sail, Sunjammer, Completes Test

Source - Space Daily

by Staff Writer Tustin CA (SPX) Oct 07, 2013

File image.

NASA officials, team partners, and local students were on hand to witness a key milestone for the Sunjammer Mission as it successfully deployed a quadrant of its solar sail - a critical design component that will eventually herald an era of propellantless spacecraft. Sunjammer will be the largest solar sail ever flown using photonic pressure (or sunlight) to maneuver in space.
Solar Sails have the potential to be a game changer for space exploration as the low-cost, propellantless and highly maneuverable sail craft will enable future satellites and spacecraft to journey throughout the solar system and beyond. The prime contractor, L'Garde Inc., hosted the test deployment at its facility in Tustin, CA, with mission partners NASA and Space Services Inc. present for the event.
The test is a critical milestone for the Sunjammer Mission as lead contractor L'Garde, Inc. demonstrated for the first time the successful coupling and deployment of the sail and deploying beam. The beam pulled a quarter of the sail out to its full open state as it will operate in space.
The demonstration was conducted under more stressful conditions since the Earth's gravity and atmosphere make it more difficult to test given the lightweight sail material. "If this test succeeded under these stressing conditions, we certainly anticipate it will work exceedingly well in space" said Nathan Barnes, President of L'Garde.
We are very pleased by these results, as they bring us one step closer to realizing NASA's vision of a propellantless spacecraft and introduce the exciting potential of solar sails to the world," said public outreach partner Space Services CEO, Charles Chafer.
Sunjammer is slated to launch in January 2015 and is NASA's first solar sail voyage to deep space. It will monitor key solar activity as well as carry a public "Cosmic Archive" of human perspectives including names, messages, photographs, and videos contributed by the public for future generations to discover.

Cassini finds ingredient of household plastic on Saturn moon

Cassini finds ingredient of household plastic on Saturn moon
by Staff Writers Pasadena, Calif. (UPI) Sep 30, 2013

disclaimer: image is for illustration purposes only

The Cassini spacecraft has detected propylene, an ingredient in household plastics, on Saturn's moon, Titan, the U.S. space said Monday.
The detection of the chemical used to make food-storage containers, car bumpers and other products is the first discovery of the plastic ingredient on any moon or planet other than Earth, NASA said in a release.
Cassini's Composite Infrared Spectrometer identified a small amount of propylene in Titan's lower atmosphere, NASA said. The instrument measures the infrared light emitted from Saturn and its moons much the same way human hands feel the warmth of a fire.
Propylene is the first molecule to be discovered on Titan using the spectrometer.
"This chemical is all around us in everyday life, strung together in long chains to form a plastic called polypropylene," said Conor Nixon, a planetary scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "That plastic container at the grocery store with the recycling code 5 on the bottom -- that's polypropylene."
Cassini's mass spectrometer had suggested earlier that propylene may be present in the upper atmosphere but a positive identification wasn't made until now, NASA said.
"This new piece of the puzzle will provide an additional test of how well we understand the chemical zoo that makes up Titan's atmosphere," said Scott Edgington, Cassini's deputy project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.