Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 152 i All About Space

SCAN HERE TO GET OUR DAILY NEWSLET TER I’m delighted that my favourite planet, the ringed giant Saturn, graces the cover this issue. From its stunningly beautiful ring system to its family of moons, this month you’ll discover everything you need to know about the gaseous world. If you’re a keen observer of the night sky, you’ll also discover that Saturn is at its best in the southwest this month, dazzling at magnitude +1.0 in the evening sky. You won’t need a telescope in order to see it, as it’ll be so bright that you’ll be able to see it with the unaided eye. However, if you’re keen to see its many beautiful features, then you’ll need at least a small telescope to see it in its full glory. Throughout…

The stars of the Milky Way glisten in the night sky above Chile’s Valle de la Luna in a new photo from the European Southern Observatory (ESO). The photo captures the Milky Way illuminating the picturesque Valle de la Luna, meaning ‘Valley of the Moon’, which is located in the Chilean Atacama Desert. Known for its Moon-like landscapes and rock formations, Valle de la Luna offers a mystical scene in an otherwise desolate area. “The strange geological formations protruding out of the desert floor are twisted and gnarled like old wizards’ hats, while the sky above is filled with thousands of stars and a myriad of mesmerising colours,” ESO officials said. Valle de la Luna is located near the ESO’s Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) – a network of 66…

True Anomaly just scored a big chunk of change to continue developing its space security technology. The Colorado-based startup announced that it raised $100 million (£78.6 million) in a ‘Series B’ round of funding led by Riot Ventures. The money “will be used for continued investment in people, products and services to further advance True Anomaly’s national security space technology offerings at the intersection of hardware, software and AI,” True Anomaly representatives said. True Anomaly, which was founded in 2022, aims to help make space a safer and more sustainable environment for a wide range of stakeholders. The company also wants to help the United States retain its status as the world’s preeminent space power in the face of increasing competition with China. Though the company is young, it has…

A new investigation of data collected by NASA’s Cassini mission, which ended six years ago, has revealed that the spacecraft spotted a key ingredient needed for life on Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus. The Cassini observations have revealed a powerful energy source for potential life forms deep below the icy shell of this moon. Enceladus blasts out plumes of ice and water from fissures in its icy shell, and scientists have known for some time that organic molecules – some of which may have the right chemistry to be important for life as we know it – are contained in these jets. In 2017, scientists detected carbon dioxide, methane and hydrogen in Enceladus’ plumes, indicative of a metabolic process called methanogenesis. As its name suggests, methanogenesis produces methane, which is widespread…

A new theory suggests dark matter is made up of particles that strongly interact with each other via a so-called ‘dark force’. If A true, this may finally explain the extreme densities we see in dark matter halos surrounding galaxies. The existence of particles called selfinteracting dark matter (SIDM) acts as an alternative to cold dark matter theories which suggest the elusive stuff is made up of massive, slow-moving and thus cold weakly interacting particles that don’t collide. The problem with those cold dark matter models is that they struggle to explain two puzzles surrounding what are known as dark matter halos. “The first is a high-density dark matter halo in a massive elliptical galaxy. The halo was detected through observations of strong gravitational lensing, and its density is so…

New research has a duo of scientists unsure that humanity’s first-ever exomoon detections N are accurate. In fact, the same findings also showed that exomoons in general may only show themselves if they are extremely large. The new research demonstrates that while there is no reason to suggest moons aren’t orbiting worlds in other planetary systems, finding them is a tricky business. In the three decades since the first detection of an extrasolar planet, or ‘exoplanet’, the catalogue of worlds around other stars has burgeoned, with well over 5,000 examples confirmed to date. Yet any possible extrasolar moons, or ‘exomoons’, orbiting these worlds have evaded astronomers. That was until 2018, when astronomers believed they had finally spotted an exomoon around the planet Kepler-1625 b, a Jupiter-like world located around 8,000…

Just when scientists believed they had a handle on how stars and planets form, along come celestial bodies that might turn existing theories on their head. In this case, around 540 planetary-mass objects roughly the size of Jupiter that are freely floating in space. Discovered in the Orion Nebula using the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have found they’re not tied to a star. What’s more baffling is that some of them happen to be moving in pairs. In theory, they shouldn’t exist. “There’s a fair degree of scepticism about them because the find was totally unpredicted,” says Mark McCaughrean, senior advisor for science and exploration at the European Space Agency (ESA), who worked with Samuel Pearson, also at the ESA, on the study. But they, and many others, are…

Surprisingly, yes, a black hole could disappear. It would take a very, very long time though. Black holes are regions of space which have so much mass in such a small volume that the escape velocity – the speed you need to go to escape the gravitational pull of the body – becomes greater than the speed of light. These cosmic behemoths can grow in mass as material falls onto them. If a black hole finds itself in a quiet region of the universe, however, the strange world of quantum mechanics and the extreme gravity of the black hole cause a phenomenon named Hawking Radiation’ – one of the discoveries of the late Stephen Hawking. In quantum mechanics, space is full of entangled ‘virtual’ particle pairs that spring into existence…

Buried dozens of metres under the equator of Mars is a large honeycomb pattern similar to what’s found near Earth’s frigid B poles. Each crevasse spans 70 metres (230 feet) – about half a football field – and is bordered by 30-metre (98-feet) wide slurries of ice and mud. It’s likely that this material is somewhere between 2 billion and 3.5 billion years old. The patterns were spotted in the data sent home by China’s now-incommunicado Zhurong rover, which explored an expansive, bumpy region north of Mars’ equator named Utopia Planitia. Zhurong rolled just a little over one kilometre (0.6 miles) towards Mars’ southern region in one year of operations, but even during such a short trip, its radar had sensed a continuous pattern of 15 buried polygons – suggesting…

D uring February Saturn will be an evening object, but well past its best. At the end of January it will already be quite low in the southwest as the Sun sets, looking like a yellow-white ‘star’ in the setting constellation of Aquarius. Saturn will set just a few hours after the Sun, so you won’t have long to see it. And by the end of February it won’t be visible at all. But if you are a fan of this distant, magical ringed world, you should make every effort to see it as often as you can, because it will soon be a lot fainter and will look a lot less impressive in telescopes. This is because from our point of view here on Earth, Saturn is tilting up,…

Gemini, also known as the Twins, sits nicely about halfway up the sky at this time of year and contains many lovely objects for those armed with a telescope. These vary from open star clusters to faint nebulae and even a supernova remnant. The two bright stars that mark out the constellation are interesting, too. Alpha Geminorum, known as Castor, is a lovely star system composed of three binary pairs all linked together by gravity, and Beta Geminorum, known as Pollux, is an orange giant star and is known to have an extrasolar planet orbiting about it. Though it’s a simple constellation, there’s plenty to see. 1Messier 35 You only need a small telescope with low magnification or a suitable binocular to enjoy Messier 35, which is scattered over a…

NASA’s Perseverance rover just rolled past a big milestone on the Red Planet. The car-sized Perseverance has now been exploring its exotic environs for 1,000 Mars days, or sols. One sol is slightly longer than an Earth day at 24 hours and 37 minutes. “Sol in, sol out! I completed 1,000 Martian days … and my work is far from done,” said Perseverance team members writing from the rover’s perspective. The mission team celebrated 12 December as the official landmark day, though sol 1,000 extended into 13 December as well. The Perseverance rover and its tiny robotic partner, the Ingenuity helicopter, landed inside Mars’ Jezero crater on 18 February 2021. Ever since, the big rover has been hunting for signs of ancient Mars life on the floor of the 45-kilometre…

Using the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have observed the luminous cloud of material that surrounds a newborn star, cocooning it in a crib of gas and dust. These so-called Herbig-Haro objects are created when stellar winds and jets of gas billow from newborn stars, causing shock waves that slam into the gas and dust from which the star was born at high speeds. This particular Herbig-Haro object, which can be seen dominating the bottom half of this stunning new Webb image, captured with the telescope’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) instrument, is designated HH 797. The stellar ‘cocoon’ is located around 1,000 light years away, close to the young open star cluster IC 348, which itself is situated at the eastern edge of the Perseus dark cloud complex. Infrared instruments like…

Tasked with finding clues about the origins of life on Earth, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft scooped up pieces of a rugged rubble-pile asteroid named Bennu in late 2020 and delivered them to Earth about a few months ago. On 11 December, scientists got their first detailed description of some of that extraterrestrial collection. Dante Lauretta, the mission’s principal investigator and a professor of planetary science and cosmochemistry at the University of Arizona, said the bits of the ancient asteroid that have been retrieved so far are rich in carbon and organic molecules. All the particles are very dark in colour and consist of centimetre- and millimetre-sized “hummocky boulders” that have a rough “cauliflower-like texture,” said Lauretta. “They cling to everything we touch them with.” OSIRIS-REx dug out so much material that…

Astronomers have developed a new way of measuring cosmic distances by listening to the frequencies of ‘music’ played by vibrating stars that collectively act as a vast orchestra of different cosmic instruments. The results could help the European Space Agency (ESA) satellite Gaia better measure the positions of about 2 billion stars, as well as their distances from Earth and movements, while building a precise, three-dimensional map of the Milky Way. Scientists typically use a process called parallax, the apparent shift in an object’s position when seen from two different locations, to measure the distance to various stars. They measure the angles of the star itself using Gaia’s position in space and attempt to triangulate. The problem, however, is that the more distant a star is, the smaller the apparent…

The question of whether life exists on other planets is one that scientists frequently ponder, but have so far failed to answer. But hoping to change this is the New Worlds mission. While it’s still in the early phases of development following years of research, it’s likely to bear fruit in the near future. One of the problems with observing extrasolar planets is the amount of light emitted by the parent star they orbit. When scientists use a telescope to look deep into space, they find the brightness of these stars drowns out the light from the orbiting planets. They still see the more intense glow of larger planets, but the smaller ones are virtually impossible to spot. Since those tinier planets are, like Earth, more likely to contain signs…

We’ve seen the movies and read the books about what it would be like to have a habitat on W the Moon, but in order to turn our sci-fi fantasy into a reality, scientists must lay out some groundwork. That’s what the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a US organisation that aims to develop advancements in National Security technology, will be doing while working closely with 14 companies as part of its 10-Year Lunar Architecture (LunA-10) capability study. This study is meant to make significant progress in the development of future lunar habitats, the agency says. A recent statement released by DARPA announced that the companies selected are Blue Origin, CisLunar Industries, Crescent Space Services, Fibertek, Firefly Aerospace, GITAI, Helios, Honeybee Robotics, ICON, Nokia of America, Northrop Grumman, Redwire…

Betelgeuse was first observed centuries ago, but our knowledge of the orange-red star is still surprisingly vague. The red supergiant, B which is in the twilight years of its life, is the second-brightest star in Orion, marking the Hunter’s right shoulder. Red supergiants are the largest known type of star, and Betelgeuse is the closest one to Earth – roughly 600 light years away. Although the star’s intense brightness means that it’s been observed for centuries, its mysterious behaviour continues to leave scientists baffled. One of the latest bizarre findings was revealed in a study that suggested that the star is spinning much faster than previously thought, and may have even swallowed up a companion star some 100,000 years ago. This is odd because usually as a star grows to…

Orbital smash-ups cause tiny pieces of space junk to emit signals that could be detected from Earth, a new study has found. Space junk is a growing problem. As of November 2023, the world’s space surveillance networks were tracking about 35,610 pieces of space debris larger than ten centimetres (four inches). That stuff is old satellites, used rocket stages and fragments spawned in orbital collisions and explosions. These tracked objects are just the tip of the iceberg, however. About a million fragments between one and ten centimetres (0.4 inches and 4.0 inches) in size are believed to hurtle around Earth at enormous speeds. The estimated number of fragments in orbit that are smaller than this is 130 million. These bits are mostly invisible to current debris-tracking methods, such as ground-based…

T he United States, United Kingdom and Australia have all signed an agreement to develop a deep-space radar capable of keeping an eye on what’s happening in geosynchronous orbit. Found around 35,786 kilometres (22,236 miles) above Earth, this region is one of the most distant areas in which satellites operate. Interestingly, each spacecraft in geosynchronous orbit always hovers over the same area of Earth by matching the duration of its orbit to the rate at which our planet rotates once relative to stars in the background. The new system planned to watch over this part of space is known as the Deep Space Advanced Radar Capability, or DARC. DARC will provide 24-hour, all-weather radar coverage around the globe for the three nations that make up what’s known as the AUKUS…

In this issue... 80 What’s in the sky? Get fully prepared for a cold night under the stars with our observing guides 82Planetarium Where you can find the planets this month and the phases of the Moon 84 Month’s planets Saturn makes a breathtaking appearance for those observing in the evening 86Moon tour Small but perfectly formed, Lacus Spei and Lacus Temporis are worth a look at full Moon 87Naked eye and binocular targets February’s night sky is rich in pretty star clusters and bright, colourful stars 88Deep sky challenge Dig deep in the constellation of the Twins and you’ll find some of winter’s bestkept secrets 90The Northern Hemisphere Make the most of the February skies with these night-sky gems 92Review We put the National Park Foundation FirstScope to the…

The Moon is famous for its dark seas, or mare, and even nonastronomers know the name of one: the Sea of Tranquillity is where Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed in July 1969 on the Apollo 11 mission. Many of the seas have equally romantic names – the Sea of Crises, the Sea of Dreams, the Sea of Serenity – which is rather ironic considering they aren’t beautiful seas at all, but huge plains of ancient, dark, frozen lava. The largest lunar mare are clearly visible even to the naked eye, looking like dark blotches on the Moon’s bright face, and are especially prominent at full Moon. Much smaller and harder to see than the seas are the lunar lakes, or lacus. These are essentially ‘mini mare’, visually more like…

The James Webb Space Telescope has spotted a record-breaking free-floating brown dwarf and two other so-called ‘failed stars’ in a young star cluster just 1,000 light years from Earth. The recordbreaking brown dwarf is not associated with a parent star and has a mass around eight times that of Jupiter. Meanwhile, the smallest one has a mass around three times that of Jupiter, making it a challenge to current theories about how these celestial objects are born. The discovery could help astronomers better determine where the line between planets and stars is drawn. “One basic question you’ll find in every astronomy textbook is what are the smallest stars? That’s what we’re trying to answer,” research lead author and Pennsylvania State University scientist Kevin Luhman said. The team discovered these three…

KEEP IN TOUCH /AllAboutSpaceMagazine @spaceanswers space@spaceanswers.com The United States Congress just passed legislation that directs the US government to release records related to UFOs – some UFO records, anyway. According to new provisions in the Fiscal Year 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, the law that funds the US military and related activities, the US National Archives must collect for release all documents that “pertain to unidentified anomalous phenomena, technologies of unknown origin and non-human intelligence.” None of those terms are defined in the bill, however. Unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAP, is a relatively newly adopted and broadly defined term that encompasses UFOs in the sky in addition to unidentified objects underwater, in space or that appear to travel between these domains. The records are to be released once 25 years…

The gravitational pull from black holes is so strong that nothing can escape their grasp. But could we ever harness the gargantuan power of black holes as a source of energy? In a new study, scientists propose two ways to use black holes as energy sources in the future. They predicted processes for extracting energy from black holes by using their rotational and gravitational properties. “We know that we can extract energies from black holes, and we also know that we can inject energy into them, which almost sounds like a battery,” lead author Zhan Feng Mai, a postdoctoral researcher at the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Peking University, said. In the first hypothetical scenario, scientists would ‘charge’ the black hole by injecting it with massive electrically charged…

The human exploration of space is one of the crowning achievements of our species, with humankind not content merely to gaze at the stars, but determined to walk among them. Yet humanity’s exploration of space has not been all glory. The history of spaceflight is also littered with disaster and tragedy, with many pioneering space explorers sacrificing their lives while endeavouring to see humanity become a true spacefaring species. There are also incidents and events in the history of space exploration during which the quick thinking, ingenuity and bravery of astronauts, scientists, engineers and others have saved lives and averted disaster. CHALLENGER DISASTER 28 January 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger launched carrying seven crew members, including civilian school teacher Christa McAuliffe, commander Francis Scobee, pilot Michael J. Smith, mission specialists Ronald…

When people hear the term ‘astronomer’, most automatically W picture someone peering into a telescope. But you don’t need a telescope to see many of the amazing and beautiful things in the night sky. You can see many of the wonders of the universe using just your own eyes or binoculars. The telescope has allowed astronomers to see the planets of our Solar System in stunning detail and observe stars, nebulae and galaxies so far away that their dim light has taken millions or even billions of years to reach us. Telescopes make such faint objects look bigger and brighter, but they are totally useless for observing the big things beginners start out looking for, such as the shapes, or constellations, the brightest stars make in the night sky. LEARN…

1Hyades (Caldwell 41) The Hyades is a distinctive V-shaped star cluster representing the shoulder of Taurus, the Bull. It’s only 142 light years away, contains between 300 and 400 stars and is easy to see with the naked eye. However, dazzling bright-red Aldebaran is not a cluster member, as it lies between us and the cluster. 2 Messier 35 Messier 35 is an open star cluster 3,000 light years away and more than 24 light years wide. It contains perhaps 3,200 stars, and although it can be seen as a tiny smudge to the naked eye, it is a striking sight in binoculars and most small telescopes. 3 Procyon (Alpha Canis Minoris) Magnitude +0.3 Procyon is the eighthbrightest star in the sky. Its name means ‘before the dog’ in Greek,…

The Dog Star, Sirius, which shines at magnitude -1.46 in Canis Major, is an unmissable sight for those who are content with gazing at the sky without the need for binoculars or a telescope. Meanwhile, red supergiant Betelgeuse on the shoulder of Orion is also an easy target for the naked eye, glowing with a reddish hue. If you have a binocular of at least 10x50 magnification, then sweep across the stellar members that make up the Pleiades (Messier 45) and Hyades star clusters. If you have a telescope with at least a small aperture, then head to the tip of Taurus’ bottom horn and you should be able to spot a stunning supernova remnant, the Crab Nebula (Messier 1), under favourable conditions. Using the sky chart This chart is…

Space Shuttle Discovery Cost: £169.99 / $199.99 From:  LEGO 1 If you’re a space fan, then there’s no denying that this LEGO NASA Space Shuttle Discovery is one of the best LEGO space sets you can get your hands on right now. It’s an authentic recreation of NASA’s real Discovery shuttle, featuring realistic elements such as an opening payload bay, retractable landing gear and five seats for the crew. Unfortunately, you’ll have to use your imagination there since this set doesn’t come with Minifigures, but it’s a small price to pay for something that’s otherwise so detailed. As an added bonus, it also includes a model of the Hubble Space Telescope, which can be handily stowed away inside the payload bay. Rocket Launch Centre Cost: £124.99 / $159.99 From: LEGO 2This…