Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 127 i All About Space

WELCOME In the summer of 1958, the most famous space agency was founded: the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA. From leading the landing of humans on the surface of the Moon and the construction of the Skylab space station to sending a fleet of orbiters, landers and rovers to other worlds in the Solar System and launching a team of missions to understand the laws that govern the existence of the universe, the agency has been at the forefront of our biggest strides into space. I can guarantee that you’ll learn something you didn’t know about NASA, which graces the cover as our major feature this issue. You can find the efforts of the space agency throughout your copy of All About Space, as you can with all…

EUROPEAN SUN PROBE FLEW THROUGH THE TAIL OF COMET LEONARD Words by Meghan Bartels ©ESA As Comet Leonard bid farewell to Earth and flew past Venus, a Sun-studying spacecraft flew through the comet’s long tail, giving humans a new perspective on the icy wanderer. Discovered last January and also known as Comet C/2021 A1, Comet Leonard was perhaps the most spectacular visitor for skywatchers in 2021. The object put on quite a show as it zoomed towards the Sun, particularly in the days leading up to its closest approach to Earth on 12 December. And, coincidentally, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Solar Orbiter mission flew through the comet’s tail as the spacecraft continued its own journey to study the Sun, offering scientists quite a bonus. “The big advantage is that…

WATER ON MARS MAY HAVE FLOWED FOR A BILLION YEARS LONGER THAN THOUGHT Words by Elizabeth Howell © NASA/JPL-Caltech Observations by a long-running Mars mission suggest that liquid water may have flowed on the Red Planet as little as 2 billion years ago. Scientists charted the presence of chloride salt deposits left behind by flowing water using years of data from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), which has been orbiting the Red Planet since 2006. By studying dozens of images of salt deposits taken by the craft’s Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM), the scientists interpreted a younger age for the salt deposits using the method of crater counting. The younger a region is, the fewer craters it should have, with adjustments for aspects such as a planet’s atmosphere,…

NASA NASA LOCATIONS NASA has sites all across the US, though they carry out many different types of research © FreeVectorMaps.com 1 AMES RESEARCH CENTER Located in the heart of California’s Silicon Valley, Ames provides leadership in areas including astrobiology and robotic lunar exploration. 2 ARMSTRONG FLIGHT RESEARCH CENTER Located inside Edwards Air Force Base in California, this is NASA’s main location for aeronautical research. 3 JET PROPULSION LABORATORY The JPL predates NASA and is famous for constructing robotic spacecraft, including all of NASA’s Mars rovers. 4 WHITE SANDS TEST FACILITY Set in the western foothills of the Organ Mountains of New Mexico, White Sands is where NASA tests its rocket engines and boosters. 5 JOHNSON SPACE CENTER The Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, is NASA’s centre for human…

NASA NASA’S TOP MISSIONS NASA has explored every known planet in our Solar System ©NASA; Getty CASSINI Launch date: 15 October 1997 End date: 15 September 2017 Description: The first probe to enter Saturn orbit, it dispatched a lander to Titan called Huygens. VOYAGER 2 Launch date: 20 August 1977 End date: Ongoing Description: The only probe to visit Uranus and Neptune. DAWN Launch date: 27 September 2007 End date: 30 October 2018 Description: The first probe to orbit two extraterrestrial objects, asteroids Ceres and Vesta. NEW HORIZONS Launch date: 19 January 2006 End date: Ongoing Description: The first probe to visit Pluto, it continues to explore the Kuiper Belt. GALILEO Launch date: 18 October 1989 End date: 21 September 2003 Description: The probe studied Jupiter and its moons and…

Focus on Milky Way A GIANT ATOMIC CLOUD CALLED ‘MAGGIE’ LIVES IN THE MILKY WAY Astronomers have discovered a giant filament stretching across our home galaxy Reported by Chelsea Gohd ©ESA Stretching thousands of light years across the Milky Way, a newly discovered filament of hydrogen named Maggie is one of the biggest structures ever discovered in our galaxy, and researchers think there could be others like it. A group of astronomers led by researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Astronomy in Germany has spotted something strange on the other side of the Milky Way: a massive filament of hydrogen gas. Hydrogen is both the simplest and the most abundant element in the universe. But hydrogen clouds like this filament can be tough to spot amid the interstellar medium,…

INSIDE SATURN 1 AMMONIA HAZE Cold conditions in the upper atmosphere allow ammonia to condense and form bright, hazy clouds at pressures between roughly 0.4 and 1.7 times Earth’s atmospheric pressure. 2 DEEPER CLOUDS As pressure increases further into Saturn’s atmosphere, other chemicals condense into droplets and form clouds - in particular ammonium hydrosulfide and a water ice/ammonia mix. 3 LIQUEFIED GAS At a depth of about 1,000 kilometres (621 miles), pressures reach 1,000 Earth atmospheres - enough for hydrogen to condense into its liquid molecular form. 4 METALLIC OCEAN Here pressures reach 2 million Earth atmospheres and temperatures rival the surface of the Sun. Hydrogen molecules split apart to form a sea of electrically charged metallic hydrogen. 5 FUZZY CORE Recent studies suggest Saturn has a fuzzy core that…

UFO office Focus on PENTAGON LAUNCHES NEW UFO OFFICE A new office in the Pentagon will investigate sightings of unidentified flying objects – but longtime extraterrestrial enthusiasts are sceptical Reported by Stephanie Pappas Putting the new Unidentified Aerial Phenomena program in the purview of the office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence & Security has some ufologists upset, as they don’t exactly trust the US military to reveal whatever truth is out there. “This is a subject with a provable history of secrecy, and anything that lacks a new openness about the information is subject to possibly inappropriate control,” Ron James, a spokesperson for the nonprofit Mutual UFO Network, which investigates such sightings, said. The creation of the new office was codified in the National Defense Authorisation Act,…

EDITING YOUR PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE ISS Well done - you’ve captured an ISS pass! Your work isn’t quite over yet, though. There’s still the task of combining these images into one using a method called stacking. Adobe Photoshop makes this easy. Other software is available to blend ISS and other star trail images, such as Starstax (Mac and Windows) and Startrails (Windows). Below is our step-by-step guide for the Photoshop method. STEP 1 Take all your images and put them as separate layers in Adobe Photoshop. STEP 2 Select all the layers you have and set the blend mode to lighten. STEP 3 Duplicate one of the layers and save it as a new layer. You may want to call this ‘Base Layer’ for ease of reference. STEP 4 Select…

Deep sky challenge STARGAZER DEEP SKY CHALLENGE THE LION’S GALAXIES The evenings of early spring are welcomed by the arrival of some lovely deep-sky objects Source: Wikipedia Commons © Jschulman555 Spring is known as the season of the galaxies to astronomers, as the nightside of Earth is facing away from the Milky Way and out into deep space, which is littered with other such ‘island universes’ as our own. The distances to these objects are truly vast, and so we often see them as small, hazy patches of light, but these objects are anything but small. Like the Milky Way, they contain billions of stars, clusters and nebulae. They also come in various shapes and sizes and can be a little smaller or even a lot larger than our home…

LAUNCH PAD YOUR FIRST CONTACT WITH THE UNIVERSE © ESO 24 JANUARY 2022 Galactic butterfly effect Approximately 60 million light years away, the galaxies NGC 4567 and NGC 4568 are colliding and merging. Aptly nicknamed the Butterfly Galaxies, this cosmic collision, located in the constellation Virgo, gives us an insight into the eventual fate of the Milky Way. Scientists believe that our home galaxy will undergo a similar encounter with our neighbouring galaxy Andromeda. This image was captured by the FOcal Reducer and low dispersion Spectrograph 2 (FORS 2) instrument mounted on the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the Paranal Observatory in the Chilean Andes. © ESA 28 JANUARY 2022 Martian tree stump A Mars probe has snapped a peculiar feature on the Red Planet’s surface that…

ASTRONOMERS DETECT A POWERFUL COSMIC OBJECT UNLIKE ANYTHING THEY’VE SEEN BEFORE Words by Brandon Specktor ©ICRAR Astronomers have discovered a mysterious, flickering object in our galaxy that belches enormous amounts of energy towards Earth three times an hour. This strangely powerful object – located about 4,000 light years from the Sun – is unlike any cosmic structure ever observed. The object in question, called GLEAM-X J162759.5-523504.3, appeared out of nowhere on a recent radio wave survey of the Milky Way. According to researchers, GLEAM-X brightened rapidly over the course of about 60 seconds, briefly becoming one of the brightest objects in the entire sky, then suddenly faded into darkness again. About 20 minutes later the object reappeared, before dimming back to nothing a minute later. Objects like these, which appear…

AN ANCIENT SOLAR STORM SMASHED EARTH AT THE WRONG PART OF THE SUN’S CYCLE, AND SCIENTISTS ARE CONCERNED Words by Brandon Specktor A very powerful solar storm pummelled our planet 9,200 years ago, leaving scars on the ice buried deep below Greenland and Antarctica. A new study of those ancient ice samples has found that this storm is one of the strongest outbursts of solar weather ever detected. Surprisingly, the storm appears to have hit during a solar minimum, the point during the Sun’s 11-year cycle when solar outbursts are typically much less common. Because of this unexpected discovery, the researchers are concerned that devastating solar storms could hit when we least expect them, and that Earth might not be prepared when the next big one arrives. “These enormous storms…

Future tech Kankoh-maru KANKOH-MARU This ambitious reusable spacecraft will be capable of taking 50 people to and from orbit ©Adrian Mann The Kankoh-maru, named after the steam-powered Japanese Kankō Maru vessel, is ambitious in its design to say the least. If it reaches fruition, this bizarre egg-shaped vehicle will take off and land by VTVL (vertical takeoff, vertical landing) as a single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) spacecraft. The whole thing is reusable, and with each launch the Kankoh-maru can take 50 people into orbit. The vehicle was first proposed by the Japanese Rocket Society in 1993. Since then a variety of tests on VTVL vehicles, albeit ones much smaller than the Kankoh-maru, have been carried out to test the feasibility of such a design. The good news? VTVL can successfully take a vehicle…

Exomoons FINDING AND DEFINING EXOMOONS As our catalogue of exoplanets grows, the hunt is on for moons around distant worlds Reported by Robert Lea © Tobias Roetsch Astronomers may have finally discovered a moon orbiting around a planet outside our Solar System. The development could have important implications for our understanding of how planetary systems evolve, as well as indicating how typical the planets of our Solar System are. Since the first discovery of planets around stars other than the Sun was made in the early 1990s, our catalogue of planets outside the Solar System has burgeoned, now containing over 4,000 confirmed worlds. One of the most important aspects of our investigation of these extrasolar planets – or exoplanets – is the assessment of how similar or diverse they are…

HOW TO FIND AN ALIEN MOON The different methods being used to hunt for exomoons TRANSIT TIMING METHOD The transit timing method works by measuring a change in the regular transit of a planet. As a planet swings around a star, if there are other objects in its vicinity then it can affect how often a transit is completed. This often indicates the presence of other planets in the system, but in theory the method could be used to hunt for large exomoons as well, revealing their tug on their parent planets. It’s hard to distinguish between an exoplanet and an exomoon via this method, though, so it might be difficult to make a discovery with it. ©NASA. RADIAL VELOCITY METHOD When an exoplanet orbits a star, its gravity can…

Artificial Moon Focus on CHINA BUILDS AN ‘ARTIFICIAL MOON’ FOR GRAVITY EXPERIMENTS The new experiment was inspired by a levitating frog Reported by Ben Turner ©Getty Chinese scientists have built an ‘artificial Moon’ research facility that will enable them to simulate low-gravity environments using magnetism. The facility, launching this year, will use powerful magnetic fields inside a 60-centimetre (23.6-inch) diameter vacuum chamber to make gravity ‘disappear’. The scientists were inspired by an earlier experiment that used magnets to levitate a frog. Ruilin Li, a geotechnical engineer at the China University of Mining and Technology, said that the chamber, which will be filled with rocks and dust to imitate the lunar surface, is the “first of its kind in the world” and that it could maintain such low-gravity conditions for “as…

Saturn EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT SATURN WITH ITS MOON SYSTEM, RINGS OF DUST AND ICE AND OCCASIONALLY TEMPESTUOUS ATMOSPHERE, THERE’S MORE TO THIS GAS GIANT THAN MEETS THE EYE Written by Giles Sparrow ©Alamy Saturn is our Solar System’s ringed wonder – a spectacular world encircled by planes of icy debris, giving it a unique appearance. But there’s a lot more to Saturn than just its rings; this enormous world is worth exploring both for its own complexity and the fascinating family of satellites that orbit it. As the most distant Solar System object easily seen with the naked eye, Saturn orbits at an average of 1.43 billion kilometres (887 million miles) from the Sun. Its slow orbit means that Saturn takes 29.5 years to make a full…

MAJOR MISSIONS TO SATURN PIONEER 11 Type: Jupiter and Saturn flyby Launched: 5 April 1973 Saturn flyby: 1 September 1979 Key discoveries: First close-up images of Saturn. Measurements of the magnetic field. Measured the temperature of Titan and photographed the unlit underside of the rings Status: Contact lost; now entering interstellar space VOYAGER 1 Type: Jupiter and Saturn flyby Launched: 5 September 1977 Saturn flyby: 12 November 1980 Key discoveries: Analysis of Saturn’s upper atmosphere. Discovery of complex structure in the rings of Saturn. Close-up images of Titan and other Saturnian moons Status: Entered interstellar space in 2012; still returning data about its conditions to Earth VOYAGER 2 Type: Multi-planet flyby Launched: 20 August 1977 Saturn flyby: 26 August 1981 Key discoveries: Measurement of temperature in the upper atmosphere. Images…

Z Canis Majoris MYSTERIES OF THE UNIVERSE WHAT DISTURBED A DISTANT STAR SYSTEM? Astronomers are a step closer to understanding how our Solar System formed, all thanks to a chance encounter Reported by David Crookes One of the greatest mysteries that astronomers hope to one day solve is how our Solar System formed. It’s long been known that star systems are shaped by collisions and other disruptive events, so whenever scientists are lucky enough to directly observe such an occurrence, it takes researchers one step closer to the answer. In 2021, scientists made a breakthrough. They used the Atacama Large Millimeter/ submillimeter Array (ALMA), along with the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), to peer at the Z Canis Majoris (Z CMa) star system. They wanted to study a…

Spot the ISS HOW TO SPOT THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION Written by Daisy Dobrijevic and Mathew Browne ©NASA THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION CAN BE SEEN FROM EARTH; YOU JUST NEED TO KNOW WHERE AND WHEN TO LOOK TIME ON THE ISS The ISS completes an orbit in 90 minutes, so how do astronauts keep track of time? The ISS uses Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). It was selected as the time zone for the ISS because it’s around the mid-point for all ISS partners. ©Getty The International Space Station (ISS) is a multinational laboratory orbiting 400 kilometres (248 miles) above our heads. It perhaps comes as no surprise that the ISS can easily be seen from Earth. The colossal structure reflects sunlight and appears as a bright, white pinpoint of light…

STARGAZER WHAT’S IN THE SKY? Comet 22P/Kopff will make its close approach to the Sun, predicted to reach +10.4” RED-LIGHT FRIENDLY In order to preserve your night vision, you should read our observing guide under red light Source: Wikipedia Commons © Chesnok ©Getty ©NASA JARGON BUSTER CONJUNCTION A conjunction is an alignment of objects at the same celestial longitude. The conjunction of the Moon and the planets is determined with reference to the Sun. A planet is in conjunction with the Sun when it and Earth are aligned on opposite sides of the Sun. RIGHT ASCENSION (RA) Right Ascension is to the sky what longitude is to the surface of the Earth, corresponding to east and west directions. It is measured in hours, minutes and seconds since, as the Earth…

LAUNCH PAD BIZARRE ALIEN PLANET HAS A LAYERED ATMOSPHERE OF VAPORISED METALS Words by Meghan Bartels YOUR FIRST CONTACT WITH THE UNIVERSE ©ESA Scientists have spotted the first evidence of an alien world with an atmosphere that’s layered like Earth’s – although perhaps a little too toasty for human tastes. The planet, dubbed WASP-189 b, isn’t a new discovery. Scientists already knew that the world, which lies about 322 light years from Earth, is a gas giant that orbits its star 20 times closer than Earth does the Sun, making it a sweltering world. “In the past, astronomers often assumed that the atmospheres of exoplanets exist as a uniform layer,” said Jens Hoeijmakers, an astrophysicist at Lund Observatory in Sweden. “But our results demonstrate that even the atmospheres of intensely…

Large Magellanic Cloud GALAXY PROFILE THE LARGE MAGELLANIC CLOUD This nearby dwarf galaxy is a satellite in orbit around our own The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is a satellite dwarf galaxy of the Milky Way that’s among the closest galaxies to Earth. At about 163,000 light years from Earth, the dwarf galaxy looks like a faint cloud in Southern Hemisphere skies. It lies on the border of the constellations Dorado and Mensa. Both the LMC and its companion, the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), are named after the explorer Ferdinand Magellan. While astronomers in the Southern Hemisphere had seen these clouds before Magellan’s round-the-world voyage in 1519, the explorer was first to bring that knowledge to the Western world. Magellan died in the Philippines during that voyage, but his crew provided…

TOP 5 DISCOVERIES 1 THE DRAGON STORM Usually hidden deep beneath the clouds, this long- lived storm occasionally sends plumes of white cloud to the surface and goes through periods of violent lightning activity. 2 POLAR HEXAGON Saturn’s north pole is home to a giant hexagonal cloud structure 30,000 kilometres (18,641 miles) across. At its very centre lies a swirling vortex-like feature that’s matched by one at the south pole. 3 RING RIPPLES Saturn’s rings are constantly reshaped by the gravitational influence of its moons - here the 86-kilometre (53-mile) Prometheus creates dark channels in the narrow F Ring as it disrupts the orbits of individual ring fragments. 4 PLUMES OF ENCELADUS Jets of water vapour erupt from seas just beneath the icy crust of Enceladus, spraying snow across the…

FINDING AN INTRUDER The object that broke into the star system made a bit of a mess 1 THE INTRUDER OBJECT The scientists discovered a source of light - called a point source - that showed an object is likely to have closely passed the protoplanetary disc and pulled a stream of gas from it. It’s about 4,700 AU from Z CMa. 2 FLEDGLING STARS The protoplanetary disc surrounds the Z Canis Majoris star system. It’s been discovered that the intruder was likely not part of this system and came from elsewhere. 3 PROTOPLANETARY DISC When stars form, lots of leftover material ends up orbiting in a disc around them. The reason why the intruder is intriguing is because it has disrupted the disc, and it’s from this material that…

Planets STARGAZER THIS MONTHS PLANETS Venus is a striking sight in the dawn sky, taking the morning watch with Mercury, Mars and Saturn PLANET OF THE MONTH Having been a very bright but very low object after sunset at the end of last year, Venus has now well and truly swapped its ‘evening star’ hat for its ‘morning star’ one, and is a stunning sight low in the east before sunrise. Brighter than any other planet or star around it, at the start of our observing period it will be rising two hours before the Sun, giving observers the chance to see it shining in a still-dark sky. If you get up early - or are still up after a long night - you’ll see Venus before you see anything…

STARGAZER IN THE SHOPS The latest books, apps, software, tech and accessories for space and astronomy fans alike FOR DECORATION GEMSTONE SOLAR SYSTEM Cost: £40.99 / $41.96 From: Amazon 1 Spruce up your workstation with this gemstone Solar System, including dwarf planet Pluto. Each celestial body is made from a different gemstone, with their unique colours representing the different bodies in our Solar System. The set includes Mercury (labradorite), Venus (woodgrain stone), Earth (sodalite), Mars (obsidian), Jupiter (tiger’s eye), Saturn (yellow onyx), Uranus and Neptune (aventurine) and dwarf planet Pluto (strawberry stone). The ideal gift for budding astronomers, gem collectors and space enthusiasts. FOR YOUR HOME STAR TEALIGHT SET Cost: £3.50 (approx. $4.75) From: Nordic House 2 Set the mood with this set of six adorable star tealights from Nordic…