From ESA: “Europe’s space hub to open its doors on 6 October”

European Space Agency

17 June 2013

“From the latest space ferry to the very first Alphasat, Europe has never been more active in space, with a crowded manifest of ESA launches across the rest of the year. But where are all these varied missions born? See for yourself this October, as ESA’s ESTEC research and technology centre opens its doors to the public.

ESTEC’s Space Expo visitor centre is open year-round but on 6 October this year, for one day only from 10:00 to 17:00, the entire establishment is being opened to the public – provided you book early enough.

No sooner has Luca Parmitano joined the International Space Station than ESA’s latest space truck is resupplying the orbital outpost. Meanwhile, the May-launched Proba-V is returning its first maps of global vegetation, while the high-power Alphasat telecoms satellite is being prepared for launch. The Gaia satellite will soon begin charting a billion stars in 3D in our Galaxy, while the next batch of Galileo navigation satellites will also fly this year.

All very different space missions with diverse goals, but their origins can all be traced back behind the doors of a single location: the European Space Technology and Research Centre, ESTEC – ESA’s single largest establishment, nestling beside the sand dunes of Noordwijk, the Netherlands.

In place for more than half a century, ESTEC is the incubator of the European space effort, where most ESA projects are born and where they are guided through development. Involvement may start with initial mission planning, research projects or laboratory support, extending to the testing of entire spacecraft in the ESTEC Test Centre, the largest facility of its kind in Europe. And ESTEC’s Erasmus is the leading European repository of human spaceflight expertise.”

See the full article here.

The European Space Agency (ESA), established in 1975, is an intergovernmental organization dedicated to the exploration of space, currently with 19 member states. Headquartered in Paris, ESA has a staff of more than 2,000. ESA’s space flight program includes human spaceflight, mainly through the participation in the International Space Station program, the launch and operations of unmanned exploration missions to other planets and the Moon, Earth observation, science, telecommunication as well as maintaining a major spaceport, the Guiana Space Centre at Kourou, French Guiana, and designing launch vehicles. ESA science missions are based at ESTEC in Noordwijk, Netherlands, Earth Observation missions at ESRIN in Frascati, Italy, ESA Mission Control (ESOC) is in Darmstadt, Germany, the European Astronaut Centre (EAC) that trains astronauts for future missions is situated in Cologne, Germany, and the European Space Astronomy Centre is located in Villanueva de la Cañada, Spain.

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From NASA Webb: “NASA’s Webb Telescope’s Last Backbone Component Completed”

06.14.13

No Writer Credit

“Assembly of the backbone of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, the primary mirror backplane support structure, is a step closer to completion with the recent addition of the backplane support frame, a fixture that will be used to connect all the pieces of the telescope together.

Technicians complete the center section of the backplane and backplane support frame for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope at ATK’s facility in Magna, Utah. Photo Credit: ATK

The backplane support frame will bring together Webb’s center section and wings, secondary mirror support structure, aft optics system and integrated science instrument module. ATK of Magna, Utah, finished fabrication under the direction of the observatory’s builder, Northrop Grumman Corp.

The backplane support frame also will keep the light path aligned inside the telescope during science observations. Measuring 11.5 feet by 9.1 feet by 23.6 feet and weighing 1,102 pounds, it is the final segment needed to complete the primary mirror backplane support structure. This structure will support the observatory’s weight during its launch from Earth and hold its 18-piece, 21-foot-diameter primary mirror nearly motionless while Webb peers into deep space.”

See the full article here.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), previously known as Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST), is a planned space telescope optimized for observations in the infrared, and a scientific successor to the Hubble Space Telescope and the Spitzer Space Telescope. The main technical features are a large and very cold 6.5-meter (21 ft) diameter mirror, an observing position far from Earth, orbiting the Earth–Sun L2 point, and four specialized instruments. The combination of these features will give JWST unprecedented resolution and sensitivity from long-wavelength visible to the mid-infrared, enabling its two main scientific goals – studying the birth and evolution of galaxies, and the formation of stars and planets.

The telescope is planned for launch on an Ariane 5 rocket on a five-year mission (10-year goal) with a planned launch date in 2018.

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From NASA Chandra- “Abell 2597:Chandra Finds Ghosts Of Eruption In Galaxy Cluster”

NASA Chandra

“When viewed by Chandra, the galaxy cluster Abell 2597 showed a vast cloud of hot gas with two dark cavities – upper left and lower right – about 100,000 light years from the bright center of the cluster. These so-called ghost cavities are thought to be 100 million-year-old relics of an ancient eruption that originated around a massive black hole in the core of a centrally located galaxy.

Observation Dates July 28, 2000
Release Date January 08, 2002

Though dim, the ghost cavities are not completely empty. They contain a mixture of very hot gas, high-energy particles, and magnetic fields – otherwise the cavities would have collapsed under the pressure of the surrounding hot gas. As they rise through the hot gas like air bubbles in water, the ghost cavities may transport magnetic fields to the cluster gas from a disk surrounding a giant black hole.

If dozens of these cavities were created over the life of the cluster, they could explain the surprisingly strong magnetic field of the multimillion degree Celsius gas that pervades the cluster. Indeed, there is evidence that the explosion that produced the ghost cavities was not a one-time event. A small, bright radio source near the center of the cluster indicates that a new explosion has occurred recently possibly initiating the formation of new cavities.”

See the full article here.

Chandra X-ray Center, Operated for NASA by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory

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From ESO: “New Kind of Variable Star Discovered”

Minute variations in brightness reveal whole new class of stars

12 June 2013

Contacts

Nami Mowlavi
Geneva Observatory, University of Geneva/ISDC
Switzerland
Tel: +41 22 37 92 194
Email: Nami.Mowlavi@unige.ch

Sophie Saesen
Geneva Observatory, University of Geneva
Switzerland
Tel: +41 22 379 24 46
Email: Sophie.Saesen@unige.ch

Richard Hook
ESO Public Information Officer
Garching bei München, Germany
Tel: +49 89 3200 6655
Cell: +49 151 1537 3591
Email: rhook@eso.org

“Astronomers using the Swiss 1.2-metre Euler telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile have found a new type of variable star. The discovery was based on the detection of very tiny changes in brightness of stars in a cluster. The observations revealed previously unknown properties of these stars that defy current theories and raise questions about the origin of the variations.

The Swiss are justly famed for their craftsmanship when creating extremely precise pieces of technology. Now a Swiss team from the Geneva Observatory has achieved extraordinary precision using a comparatively small 1.2-metre telescope for an observing programme stretching over many years. They have discovered a new class of variable stars by measuring minute variations in stellar brightness.

The new results are based on regular measurements of the brightness of more than three thousand stars in the open star cluster NGC 3766 [1] over a period of seven years. They reveal how 36 of the cluster’s stars followed an unexpected pattern — they had tiny regular variations in their brightness at the level of 0.1% of the stars’ normal brightness. These variations had periods between about two and 20 hours. The stars are somewhat hotter and brighter than the Sun, but otherwise apparently unremarkable. The new class of variable stars is yet to be given a name.

This level of precision in the measurements is twice as good as that achieved by comparable studies from other telescopes — and sufficient to reveal these tiny variations for the first time.”

See the full article here.

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THE BASIC TOOLS OF E.S.O.

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From NASA JPL: “Black Hole Naps Amidst Stellar Chaos”

June 11, 2013

“Nearly a decade ago, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory caught signs of what appeared to be a black hole snacking on gas at the middle of the nearby Sculptor galaxy. Now, NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), which sees higher-energy X-ray light, has taken a peek and found the black hole asleep.

‘Our results imply that the black hole went dormant in the past 10 years,’ said Bret Lehmer of the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. ‘Periodic observations with both Chandra and NuSTAR should tell us unambiguously if the black hole wakes up again. If this happens in the next few years, we hope to be watching.’ Lehmer is lead author of a new study detailing the findings in the Astrophysical Journal.

The slumbering black hole is about 5 million times the mass of our sun. It lies at the center of the Sculptor galaxy, also known as NGC 253, a so-called starburst galaxy actively giving birth to new stars. At 13 million light-years away, this is one of the closest starbursts to our own galaxy, the Milky Way.

The Milky Way is all around more quiet than the Sculptor galaxy. It makes far fewer new stars, and its behemoth black hole, about 4 million times the mass of our sun, is also snoozing.

See the full article here.

Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a federally funded research and development center and NASA field center located in the San Gabriel Valley area of Los Angeles County, California, United States. Although the facility has a Pasadena postal address, it is actually headquartered in the city of La Cañada Flintridge [1], on the northwest border of Pasadena. JPL is managed by the nearby California Institute of Technology (Caltech) for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The Laboratory’s primary function is the construction and operation of robotic planetary spacecraft, though it also conducts Earth-orbit and astronomy missions. It is also responsible for operating NASA’s Deep Space Network.

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From ESA: “Pinwheeling across the sky”

XMM Newton

Herschel

Planck

10 June 2013
No Writer Credit

“The face-on Pinwheel spiral galaxy is seen at ultraviolet wavelengths in this image taken by ESA’s XMM-Newton space telescope.

Also known as M101, the galaxy lies 21 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. It measures 170 000 light-years across – nearly twice the diameter of our own Milky Way Galaxy – and contains at least a trillion stars. About a billion of these stars could be similar to our own Sun.

More often seen in visible light, here the Pinwheel Galaxy glows at ultraviolet wavelengths. Massive, hot young stars streaming with ultraviolet radiation mark out the galaxy’s spiral arms with bright pockets of forming stars.

Since the largest stars are the shortest lived, with a maximum lifespan of a few million years, studying the ultraviolet radiation being emitted by a distant galaxy is a good way to measure how much star formation is taking place within it – and it is clear that M101 is still very active.

The galaxy has also borne witness to the death of stars, with four supernova explosions recorded between 1909 and 2011.”

See the full article here.

The European Space Agency (ESA), established in 1975, is an intergovernmental organization dedicated to the exploration of space, currently with 19 member states. Headquartered in Paris, ESA has a staff of more than 2,000. ESA’s space flight program includes human spaceflight, mainly through the participation in the International Space Station program, the launch and operations of unmanned exploration missions to other planets and the Moon, Earth observation, science, telecommunication as well as maintaining a major spaceport, the Guiana Space Centre at Kourou, French Guiana, and designing launch vehicles. ESA science missions are based at ESTEC in Noordwijk, Netherlands, Earth Observation missions at ESRIN in Frascati, Italy, ESA Mission Control (ESOC) is in Darmstadt, Germany, the European Astronaut Centre (EAC) that trains astronauts for future missions is situated in Cologne, Germany, and the European Space Astronomy Centre is located in Villanueva de la Cañada, Spain.

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From Keck: “UCI Scientists Size Up Universe’s Most Lightweight Dwarf Galaxy with Keck Observatory”

Keck Observatory

“The least massive galaxy in the known universe has been measured by UC Irvine scientists, clocking in at just 1,000 or so stars with a bit of dark matter holding them together.

Credit: Garrison-Kimmel, Bullock (UCI)

The findings, made with the W. M. Keck Observatory and published today in The Astrophysical Journal, offer tantalizing clues about how iron, carbon and other elements key to human life originally formed. But the size and weight of Segue 2, as the star body is called, are its most extraordinary aspects.

‘Finding a galaxy as tiny as Segue 2 is like discovering an elephant smaller than a mouse,’ said UC Irvine cosmologist James Bullock, co-author of the paper. Astronomers have been searching for years for this type of dwarf galaxy, long predicted to be swarming around the Milky Way. Their inability to find any, he said, ‘has been a major puzzle, suggesting that perhaps our theoretical understanding of structure formation in the universe was flawed in a serious way.’

Segue 2’s presence as a satellite of our home galaxy could be ‘a tip-of-the-iceberg observation, with perhaps thousands more very low-mass systems orbiting just beyond our ability to detect them, he added.”

See the full article here.

Mission
To advance the frontiers of astronomy and share our discoveries with the world.

Today Keck Observatory is supported by both public funding sources and private philanthropy. As a 501(c)3, the organization is managed by the California Association for Research in Astronomy (CARA), whose Board of Directors includes representatives from the California Institute of Technology and the University of California, with liaisons to the board from NASA and the Keck Foundation.

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From ESO: “ERIS Project Starts”

New high-resolution camera and spectrograph for ESO’s Very Large Telescope

10 June 2013
Contacts

Harald Kuntschner
ERIS Project Scientist
ESO, Garching bei München, Germany
Tel: +49 89 3200 6465
Email: hkuntsch@eso.org

Lieselotte Jochum
ERIS Project Manager
ESO, Garching bei München, Germany
Tel: +49 89 3200 6213
Email: ljochum@eso.org

Richard Hook
ESO, Public Information Officer
Garching bei München, Germany
Tel: +49 89 3200 6655
Cell: +49 151 15 37 35 91
Email: rhook@eso.org

“ESO has taken a step towards the construction of a powerful new instrument — the Enhanced Resolution Imager and Spectrograph (ERIS) — to be installed on Unit Telescope 4 of ESO’s Very Large Telescope at Cerro Paranal in northern Chile.

Following the conclusion of the call for proposals, the project will be carried out by ESO in partnership with the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (Garching, Germany, with contributions from ETH Zürich, Switzerland) and the INAF Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory (Florence, Italy). ESO has given the go-ahead for the two collaborating institutes to start work and the project aims to achieve first light in late 2017.

ERIS — which will be active for at least ten years after it is installed — will benefit from the Adaptive Optics Facility that corrects for the blurring effects of the Earth’s atmosphere. It aims to take the sharpest direct images so far obtained using a single 8-metre class telescope [1]. ERIS will take over the role of the very successful NACO instrument, which is approaching the end of its life.

Applications of ERIS cover many areas of astronomy, from studies of bodies within the Solar System and the observation of exoplanets out to the imaging of galaxies in the distant Universe.

See the full article here.

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THE BASIC TOOLS OF E.S.O.

Paranal Platform The VLT

NTT – New Technology Telescope

La Silla

ALMA Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array

The European Extremely Large Telescope
VISTA (the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy)

Atacama Pathfinder Experiment telescope (APEX)

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From ESO; ESCcast 58 ALMA discovers a comet factory

New from ESO, this video on how comet structures get organized. Enjoy.

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La Silla

ALMA Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array

The European Extremely Large Telescope
VISTA (the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy)

Atacama Pathfinder Experiment telescope (APEX)

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From ESO: “ALMA Discovers Comet Factory”

6 June 2013
Contacts

Nienke van der Marel
Leiden Observatory
Leiden, The Netherlands
Tel: +31 71 527 8472
Cell: +31 62 268 4136
Email: nmarel@strw.leidenuniv.nl

Ewine van Dishoeck
Leiden Observatory
Leiden, The Netherlands
Tel: +31 71 527 5814
Email: ewine@strw.leidenuniv.nl

Richard Hook
ESO, Public Information Officer
Garching bei München, Germany
Tel: +49 89 3200 6655
Cell: +49 151 1537 3591
Email: rhook@eso.org

New observations of a “dust trap” around a young star solve long-standing planet formation mystery

“Astronomers using the new Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have imaged a region around a young star where dust particles can grow by clumping together. This is the first time that such a dust trap has been clearly observed and modelled. It solves a long-standing mystery about how dust particles in discs grow to larger sizes so that they can eventually form comets, planets and other rocky bodies. The results are published in the journal Science on 7 June 2013.

Astronomers now know that planets around other stars are plentiful. But they do not fully understand how they form and there are many aspects of the formation of comets, planets and other rocky bodies that remain a mystery. However, new observations exploiting the power of ALMA are now answering one of the biggest questions: how do tiny grains of dust in the disc around a young star grow bigger and bigger — to eventually become rubble, and even boulders well beyond a metre in size?

Computer models suggest that dust grains grow when they collide and stick together. However, when these bigger grains collide again at high speed they are often smashed to pieces and sent back to square one. Even when this does not happen, the models show that the larger grains would quickly move inwards because of friction between the dust and gas and fall onto their parent star, leaving no chance that they could grow even further.

Somehow the dust needs a safe haven where the particles can continue growing until they are big enough to survive on their own. Such “dust traps” have been proposed, but there was no observational proof of their existence up to now.

Nienke van der Marel, a PhD student at Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands, and lead author of the article, was using ALMA along with her co-workers, to study the disc in a system called Oph-IRS. They found that the star was circled by a ring of gas with a central hole that was probably created by an unseen planet or companion star. Earlier observations using ESO’s Very Large Telescope had already shown that the small dust particles also formed a similar ring structure. But the new ALMA view of where the larger millimetre-sized dust particles were found was very different!

‘At first the shape of the dust in the image came as a complete surprise to us,’ says van der Marel. ‘Instead of the ring we had expected to see, we found a very clear cashew-nut shape! We had to convince ourselves that this feature was real, but the strong signal and sharpness of the ALMA observations left no doubt about the structure. Then we realised what we had found.’

What had been discovered was a region where bigger dust grains were trapped and could grow much larger by colliding and sticking together. This was a dust trap — just what the theorists were looking for.”

See the full article with notes here.

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THE BASIC TOOLS OF E.S.O.

Paranal Platform The VLT

NTT – New Technology Telescope

La Silla

ALMA Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array

The European Extremely Large Telescope
VISTA (the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy)

Atacama Pathfinder Experiment telescope (APEX)

ESO, European Southern Observatory, builds and operates a suite of the world’s most advanced ground-based astronomical telescopes.

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