From University of Arizona via phys.org : “Complex organic molecules detected in the starless core Lynds 1521E”

From University of Arizona

via

phys.org

L1521E: A map of the average line-of-sight dust temperature (color scale) and column density (contours) determined from SED fitting of Herschel Space Observatory. Credit: Scibelli et al., 2021.

European Space Agency [Agence spatiale européenne](EU) Herschel spacecraft active from 2009 to 2013.

Using the ARO 12-m telescope, astronomers have investigated a young starless core known as Lynds 1521E (or L1521E). The study resulted in the detection of complex organic molecules in this object. The finding is detailed in a paper April 15 in MNRAS.

ARO 12m Radio Telescope, NOAO Kitt Peak National Observatory(US), in the Arizona-Sonoran Desert on the Tohono O’odham Nation Arizona USA,Altitude 1,914 m (6,280 ft).,

Starless cores are dense, cold regions within interstellar molecular clouds. They represent the earliest observable stage of low-mass star formation. Observations show that even in such cold environments, complex organic molecules can be present. Finding these molecules in starless cores could help us better understand the processes of stellar formation and evolution.

L1521E is a dynamically and chemically young starless core in the Taurus Molecular Cloud, one of the two known in this cloud. It has a modest central density of around 200,000−300,000 cm−3 and it is assumed that it can only have existed at its present density for less than 100,000 years, which makes it one of the youngest starless cores so far detected and an excellent object to study how complex organic molecules form.

So a group of astronomers led by Samantha Scibelli of the University of Arizona searched for complex organic molecules in L1521E using the 12-meter telescope of the Arizona Radio Observatory (ARO), with promising results.

“Molecular line observations were made with the ARO 12m telescope during three separate seasons, two years apart, using two different backend receivers. The first observing shifts between January 12, 2017 and April 27, 2017 with 10 tunings between 84 and 102 GHz (3.6 − 2.9mm),” the researchers explained.

The observations detected dimethyl ether (CH3OCH3), methyl formate (HCOOCH3), and vinyl cyanide (CH2CHCN). Additionally, the study identified eight transitions of acetaldehyde (CH3CHO) and seven transitions of vinyl cyanide.

The study confirmed that the estimated chemical age of L1521E is indeed young, as complex organic molecules first peak at about 60,000 years. This is consistent with the carbon monoxide (CO) depletion age of this starless core.

The astronomers note that the detected abundances of complex organic molecules for L1521E are in general underestimated. This suggests that a desorption mechanism is missing, or the current description of the already considered mechanisms should be revised by further studies.

All in all, the results obtained by the team seem to suggest that complex organic molecules observed in cold gas formed not only in gas-phase reactions, but also on surfaces of interstellar grains. The new findings could also have implications for future studies of starless cores.

The detection of a rich COM [complex organic molecules] chemistry in young cold core L1521E presents an interesting challenge for future modeling efforts, requiring some type of unified approach combining cosmic-ray chemistry, reactive desorption and non-diffusive surface reactions,” the astronomers concluded.

See the full article here .

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As of 2019, the University of Arizona enrolled 45,918 students in 19 separate colleges/schools, including the UArizona College of Medicine in Tucson and Phoenix and the James E. Rogers College of Law, and is affiliated with two academic medical centers (Banner – University Medical Center Tucson and Banner – University Medical Center Phoenix). UArizona is one of three universities governed by the Arizona Board of Regents. The university is part of the Association of American Universities and is the only member from Arizona, and also part of the Universities Research Association(US). The university is classified among “R1: Doctoral Universities – Very High Research Activity”.

Known as the Arizona Wildcats (often shortened to “Cats”), the UArizona’s intercollegiate athletic teams are members of the Pac-12 Conference of the NCAA. UArizona athletes have won national titles in several sports, most notably men’s basketball, baseball, and softball. The official colors of the university and its athletic teams are cardinal red and navy blue.

After the passage of the Morrill Land-Grant Act of 1862, the push for a university in Arizona grew. The Arizona Territory’s “Thieving Thirteenth” Legislature approved the UArizona in 1885 and selected the city of Tucson to receive the appropriation to build the university. Tucson hoped to receive the appropriation for the territory’s mental hospital, which carried a $100,000 allocation instead of the $25,000 allotted to the territory’s only university (Arizona State University(US) was also chartered in 1885, but it was created as Arizona’s normal school, and not a university). Flooding on the Salt River delayed Tucson’s legislators, and by they time they reached Prescott, back-room deals allocating the most desirable territorial institutions had been made. Tucson was largely disappointed with receiving what was viewed as an inferior prize.

With no parties willing to provide land for the new institution, the citizens of Tucson prepared to return the money to the Territorial Legislature until two gamblers and a saloon keeper decided to donate the land to build the school. Construction of Old Main, the first building on campus, began on October 27, 1887, and classes met for the first time in 1891 with 32 students in Old Main, which is still in use today. Because there were no high schools in Arizona Territory, the university maintained separate preparatory classes for the first 23 years of operation.

Research

UArizona is classified among “R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity”. UArizona is the fourth most awarded public university by National Aeronautics and Space Administration(US) for research. UArizona was awarded over $325 million for its Lunar and Planetary Laboratory (LPL) to lead NASA’s 2007–08 mission to Mars to explore the Martian Arctic, and $800 million for its OSIRIS-REx mission, the first in U.S. history to sample an asteroid.

The LPL’s work in the Cassini spacecraft orbit around Saturn is larger than any other university globally. The UArizona laboratory designed and operated the atmospheric radiation investigations and imaging on the probe. UArizona operates the HiRISE camera, a part of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. While using the HiRISE camera in 2011, UArizona alumnus Lujendra Ojha and his team discovered proof of liquid water on the surface of Mars—a discovery confirmed by NASA in 2015. UArizona receives more NASA grants annually than the next nine top NASA/JPL-Caltech(US)-funded universities combined. As of March 2016, the UArizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory is actively involved in ten spacecraft missions: Cassini VIMS; Grail; the HiRISE camera orbiting Mars; the Juno mission orbiting Jupiter; Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO); Maven, which will explore Mars’ upper atmosphere and interactions with the sun; Solar Probe Plus, a historic mission into the Sun’s atmosphere for the first time; Rosetta’s VIRTIS; WISE; and OSIRIS-REx, the first U.S. sample-return mission to a near-earth asteroid, which launched on September 8, 2016.

UArizona students have been selected as Truman, Rhodes, Goldwater, and Fulbright Scholars. According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, UArizona is among the top 25 producers of Fulbright awards in the U.S.

UArizona is a member of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy(US), a consortium of institutions pursuing research in astronomy. The association operates observatories and telescopes, notably Kitt Peak National Observatory(US) just outside Tucson. Led by Roger Angel, researchers in the Steward Observatory Mirror Lab at UArizona are working in concert to build the world’s most advanced telescope. Known as the Giant Magellan Telescope(CL), it will produce images 10 times sharper than those from the Earth-orbiting Hubble Telescope.

Giant Magellan Telescope, 21 meters, to be at the NOIRLab(US) National Optical Astronomy Observatory(US) Carnegie Institution for Science’s(US) Las Campanas Observatory(CL), some 115 km (71 mi) north-northeast of La Serena, Chile, over 2,500 m (8,200 ft) high.

Giant Magellan Telescope(CL) 21 meters, to be at the Carnegie Institution for Science’s(US) NOIRLab(US) NOAO(US) Las Campanas Observatory(CL), some 115 km (71 mi) north-northeast of La Serena, Chile, over 2,500 m (8,200 ft) high.

The telescope is set to be completed in 2021. GMT will ultimately cost $1 billion. Researchers from at least nine institutions are working to secure the funding for the project. The telescope will include seven 18-ton mirrors capable of providing clear images of volcanoes and riverbeds on Mars and mountains on the moon at a rate 40 times faster than the world’s current large telescopes. The mirrors of the Giant Magellan Telescope will be built at UArizona and transported to a permanent mountaintop site in the Chilean Andes where the telescope will be constructed.

Reaching Mars in March 2006, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter contained the HiRISE camera, with Principal Investigator Alfred McEwen as the lead on the project. This National Aeronautics and Space Administration(US) mission to Mars carrying the UArizona-designed camera is capturing the highest-resolution images of the planet ever seen. The journey of the orbiter was 300 million miles. In August 2007, the UArizona, under the charge of Scientist Peter Smith, led the Phoenix Mars Mission, the first mission completely controlled by a university. Reaching the planet’s surface in May 2008, the mission’s purpose was to improve knowledge of the Martian Arctic. The Arizona Radio Observatory(US), a part of UArizona Department of Astronomy Steward Observatory(US), operates the Submillimeter Telescope on Mount Graham.

The National Science Foundation(US) funded the iPlant Collaborative in 2008 with a $50 million grant. In 2013, iPlant Collaborative received a $50 million renewal grant. Rebranded in late 2015 as “CyVerse”, the collaborative cloud-based data management platform is moving beyond life sciences to provide cloud-computing access across all scientific disciplines.
In June 2011, the university announced it would assume full ownership of the Biosphere 2 scientific research facility in Oracle, Arizona, north of Tucson, effective July 1. Biosphere 2 was constructed by private developers (funded mainly by Texas businessman and philanthropist Ed Bass) with its first closed system experiment commencing in 1991. The university had been the official management partner of the facility for research purposes since 2007.

U Arizona mirror lab-Where else in the world can you find an astronomical observatory mirror lab under a football stadium?

University of Arizona’s Biosphere 2, located in the Sonoran desert. An entire ecosystem under a glass dome? Visit our campus, just once, and you’ll quickly understand why the UA is a university unlike any other.

From University of Arizona via Science Alert (AU): “New Technique Used to Spot Possible Super-Earth in Alpha Centauri’s Habitable Zone”

From University of Arizona

via

Science Alert (AU)

13 FEBRUARY 2021
EVAN GOUGH

Oxygen/Moment. Credit: Getty Images.

Astronomers using a new technique may have not only found a super-Earth at a neighbouring star, but they may also have directly imaged it.

Example of direct imaging-This false-color composite image traces the motion of the planet Fomalhaut b, a world captured by direct imaging. Credit: NASA, ESA, and P. Kalas, University of California, Berkeley and SETI Institute.

And it could be nice and cozy in the habitable zone around Alpha Centauri.

Centauris Alpha Beta Proxima, 27 February 2012. Skatebiker.

It’s much easier to see giant planets than Earth-size planets. No matter which detection method is being used, larger planets are simply a larger needle in the cosmic haystack. But overall, astronomers are very interested in planets that are similar to Earth. And finding them is much more difficult.

We thought we’d have to wait for the ultra-powerful telescopes currently being built before we could directly image exoplanets.

Facilities like the Giant Magellan Telescope and the European Extremely Large Telescope will bring enormous observing power to bear on the task of exoplanet imaging.

Giant Magellan Telescope, 21 meters, to be at the NOIRLab NOAO Carnegie Institution for Science’s Las Campanas Observatory, some 115 km (71 mi) north-northeast of La Serena, Chile, over 2,500 m (8,200 ft) high.

ESO ELT 39 meter telescope to be on top of Cerro Armazones in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. located at the summit of the mountain at an altitude of 3,060 metres (10,040 ft).

But a team of researchers have developed a new technique that might do the job. They say they’ve imaged a possible sub-Neptune/super-Earth-sized planet orbiting one of our nearest neighbours, Alpha Centauri A.

The team presented their observations in an article in Nature Communications.

While astronomers have found low-mass exoplanets before, they’ve never sensed their light. They’ve watched as the planets revealed themselves by tugging on their stars. And they’ve watched as the light from the stars that host these planets dips when the planet passes in front of the star.

Planet transit. NASA/Ames.

But they’ve never directly imaged one. Until now, maybe.

This new detection method comes down to the infrared. One of the challenges in imaging Earth-sized exoplanets in infrared is to discern the light coming from an exoplanet when that light is washed out by all of the background infrared radiation from the star.

Astronomers can search for exoplanets in wavelengths where the background infrared is diminished, but in those same wavelengths, temperate Earth-like planets are faint.

One method is to look in the near-infrared (NIR) part of the spectrum. In NIR, the thermal glow of the planet is not so washed out by the star. But the starlight is still blinding, and millions of times brighter than the planet. So just looking in the NIR is not a total solution.

The solution may be the NEAR (New Earths in the AlphaCen Region) instrument used in this research.

ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) has recently received an upgraded addition to its suite of advanced instruments. On 21 May 2019 the newly modified instrument VISIR (VLT Imager and Spectrometer for mid-Infrared) made its first observations since being modified to aid in the search for potentially habitable planets in the Alpha Centauri system, the closest star system to Earth. This image shows NEAR mounted on UT4, with the telescope inclined at low altitude.

It works with the VISIR instrument, also on the VLT. The group behind NEAR is the Breakthrough Watch, part of Yuri Milner’s Breakthrough Initiatives.

ESO/VISIR on UT3 of the VLT

ESO VLT at Cerro Paranal in the Atacama Desert, •ANTU (UT1; The Sun ),
•KUEYEN (UT2; The Moon ),
•MELIPAL (UT3; The Southern Cross ), and
•YEPUN (UT4; Venus – as evening star).
elevation 2,635 m (8,645 ft) from above Credit J.L. Dauvergne & G. Hüdepohl atacama photo.

The NEAR instrument not only observes in the desirable part of the infrared spectrum, but it also employs a coronagraph.

The Breakthrough group thought that the NEAR instrument used on an 8-meter ground-based telescope would allow for better observations of the Alpha Centauri system and its planets.

So they built the instrument in collaboration with the ESO and installed it on the Very Large Telescope.

This new finding came as a result of 100 hours of cumulative observations with NEAR and the VLT.

“These results,” the authors write, “demonstrate the feasibility of imaging rocky habitable-zone exoplanets with current and upcoming telescopes.”

The 100-hour commissioning run was meant to demonstrate the power of the instrument.

The team says that based on about 80 percent of the best images from that run, the NEAR instrument is an order of magnitude better than other methods for observing “…warm sub-Neptune-sized planets throughout much of the habitable zone of α Centauri A.”

They also, possibly, found a planet. “We also discuss a possible exoplanet or exozodiacal disk detection around? Centauri A,” they write. “However, an instrumental artifact of unknown origin cannot be ruled out.”

This isn’t the first time astronomers have found exoplanets in the Alpha Centauri system.

There are a couple of confirmed planets in the system, and there are also other candidates.

But none of them have been directly imaged like this new potential planet, which has the placeholder name C1, and is the first potential detection around the M-dwarf in the system, Proxima Centauri.

Follow-up observations will have to confirm or cancel the discovery.

It’s exciting to think that a warm-Neptune class exoplanet could be orbiting a Sun-like star in our nearest neighbouring star system. One of the Breakthrough Initiatives goals is to send lightsail spacecraft to the Alpha Centauri system and give us a closer look.

Solar sail. Breakthrough Starshot image. Credit: Breakthrough Starshot

But that prospect is out of reach for now. And in some ways, this discovery isn’t so much about the planet, but about the technology developed to detect it.

The large majority of discovered exoplanets are gigantic planets similar in mass to Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune. They’re the easiest to find. But as humans from Earth, we’re predominantly interested in planets like our own.

Earth-like planets in a star’s habitable zone get us excited about prospects for life on another planet. But they can also tell us a lot about our own Solar System, and how solar systems in general form and evolve.

If C1 does turn out to be a planet, then the Breakthrough group has succeeded in a vital endeavour. They’re the first to detect an Earth-like planet by direct imaging.

Not only that, but they did it with an 8-meter, ground-based telescope and an instrument specifically designed and developed to detect these types of planets in the Alpha Centauri system.

The authors are confident that NEAR can perform well, even in comparison to much larger telescopes. The conclusion of the paper contains a description of the overall sensitivity of the instrument. Then they write that “This would in principle be sufficient to detect an Earth-analog planet around α Centauri A (~20 µJy) in just a few hours, which is consistent with expectations for the ELTs.”

The E-ELT will have a 39-meter primary mirror. One of its capabilities and design goals is to image exoplanets, especially smaller, Earth-size ones, directly.

Of course, the E-ELT will be an enormously powerful telescope that will undoubtedly fuel scientific discovery for a long time, not just in exoplanet imaging but in a variety of other ways.

And other gigantic ground-based telescopes will change the exoplanet imaging game, too.

What took hours for NEAR to see may take only minutes for the E-ELT [above], the Thirty Meter Telescope, or the Giant Magellan Telescope [above] to see.

TMT-Thirty Meter Telescope, proposed and now approved for Mauna Kea, Hawaii, USA , Altitude 4,050 m or 13,290 ft, the only giant 30 meter class telescope for the Northern hemisphere.

NEAR can’t compete with those telescopes and was never meant to.

But if these results are confirmed, then NEAR has succeeded where nobody else has, and for a fraction of the price of a new telescope.

Either way, what NEAR has accomplished likely represents the future of exoplanet research. Rather than broad-based surveys like Kepler and TESS, scientists will soon be able to focus on individual planets.

NASA/Kepler Telescope, and K2 March 7, 2009 until November 15, 2018.

NASA/MIT Tess

NASA/MIT Tess in the building.

NASA/MIT TESS replaced Kepler in search for exoplanets.

TESS is a NASA Astrophysics Explorer mission led and operated by MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Additional partners include Northrop Grumman, based in Falls Church, Virginia; NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley; the Center for Astrophysics – Harvard and Smithsonian in Cambridge; MIT Lincoln Laboratory; and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.

See the full article here .

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Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

The University of Arizona (UA) is a place without limits-where teaching, research, service and innovation merge to improve lives in Arizona and beyond. We aren’t afraid to ask big questions, and find even better answers.

In 1885, establishing Arizona’s first university in the middle of the Sonoran Desert was a bold move. But our founders were fearless, and we have never lost that spirit. To this day, we’re revolutionizing the fields of space sciences, optics, biosciences, medicine, arts and humanities, business, technology transfer and many others. Since it was founded, the UA has grown to cover more than 380 acres in central Tucson, a rich breeding ground for discovery.

U Arizona mirror lab-Where else in the world can you find an astronomical observatory mirror lab under a football stadium?

University of Arizona’s Biosphere 2, located in the Sonoran desert. An entire ecosystem under a glass dome? Visit our campus, just once, and you’ll quickly understand why the UA is a university unlike any other.

From University of Arizona: “A New Way to Look for Life-Sustaining Planets”

From University of Arizona

2.10.21

Daniel Stolte
Science Writer, University Communications
stolte@arizona.edu
520-626-4402

Researcher contact(s)
Kevin Wagner
Steward Observatory
kevinwagner@arizona.edu

Daniel Apai
Steward Observatory
apai@as.arizona.edu
520-621-6534

The Very Large Telescope, or VLT, at the Paranal Observatory in Chile’s Atacama Desert, elevation 2,635 m (8,645 ft). VLT’s instrumentation was adapted to conduct a search for planets in the Alpha Centauri system as part of the Breakthrough initiatives. This image of the VLT is painted with the colors of the sunset reflected in water on the platform. Credit: A. Ghizzi Panizza/ESO

It is now possible to capture images of planets that could potentially sustain life around nearby stars, thanks to advances reported today by an international team of astronomers in the journal Nature Communications.

Using a newly developed system for mid-infrared exoplanet imaging, in combination with a very long observation time, the study’s authors say they can now use ground-based telescopes to directly capture images of planets about three times the size of Earth within the habitable zones of nearby stars.

Efforts to directly image exoplanets – planets outside our solar system – have been hamstrung by technological limitations, resulting in a bias toward the detection of easier-to-see planets that are much larger than Jupiter and are located around very young stars and far outside the habitable zone – the “sweet spot” in which a planet can sustain liquid water. If astronomers want to find alien life, they need to look elsewhere.

“If we want to find planets with conditions suitable for life as we know it, we have to look for rocky planets roughly the size of Earth, inside the habitable zones around older, sun-like stars,” said the paper’s first author, Kevin Wagner, a Sagan Fellow in NASA’s Hubble Fellowship Program at the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory.

U Arizona Steward Observatory at Kitt Peak NOIRLab National Observatory of the Quinlan Mountains in the Arizona-Sonoran Desert on the Tohono O’odham Nation, 88 kilometers 55 mi west-southwest of Tucson, Arizona, Altitude 2,096 m (6,877 ft)

Kitt Peak NOIRLab National Observatory of the Quinlan Mountains in the Arizona-Sonoran Desert on the Tohono O’odham Nation, 88 kilometers 55 mi west-southwest of Tucson, Arizona, Altitude 2,096 m (6,877 ft), annotated.

The method described in the new paper provides more than a tenfold improvement over existing capabilities to directly observe exoplanets, Wagner said. Most studies on exoplanet imaging have looked in infrared wavelengths of less than 10 microns, stopping just short of the range of wavelengths where such planets shine the brightest, he said.

“There is a good reason for that because the Earth itself is shining at you at those wavelengths,” Wagner said. “Infrared emissions from the sky, the camera and the telescope itself are essentially drowning out your signal. But the good reason to focus on these wavelengths is that’s where an Earthlike planet in the habitable zone around a sun-like star is going to shine brightest.”

The team used the Very Large Telescope, or VLT, of the European Southern Observatory in Chile to observe our closest neighbor star system: Alpha Centauri, just 4.4 light-years away. Alpha Centauri is a triple star system; it consists of two stars – Alpha Centauri A and B – that are similar to the sun in size and age and orbit each other as a binary system.

Centauris Alpha Beta Proxima, 27 February 2012. Skatebiker.

The third star, Alpha Centauri C, better known as Proxima Centauri, is a much smaller red dwarf orbiting its two siblings at a great distance.

Alpha Centauri A (left) and Alpha Centauri B imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope. Located in the constellation of Centaurus (The Centaur), at a distance of 4.3 light-years, the star pair orbits a common center of gravity once every 80 years, with an average distance of about 11 times the distance between Earth and the sun. Credit: NASA/ESA Hubble.

A planet not quite twice the size of Earth and orbiting in the habitable zone around Proxima Centauri has already been indirectly detected through observations of the star’s radial velocity variation, or the tiny wobble a star exhibits under the tug of the unseen planet.

Radial Velocity Method-Las Cumbres Observatory, a network of astronomical observatories, located at both northern and southern hemisphere sites distributed in longitude around the Earth.

Radial velocity Image via SuperWasp http http://www.superwasp.org-exoplanets.htm

According to the study’s authors, Alpha Centauri A and B could host similar planets, but indirect detection methods are not yet sensitive enough to find rocky planets in their more widely separated habitable zones, Wagner explained.

“With direct imaging, we can now push beneath those detection limits for the first time,” he said.

Example of direct imaging-This false-color composite image traces the motion of the planet Fomalhaut b, a world captured by direct imaging. Credit: NASA, ESA, and P. Kalas, University of California, Berkeley and SETI Institute.

To boost the sensitivity of the imaging setup, the team used a so-called adaptive secondary telescope mirror that can correct for the distortion of the light by the Earth’s atmosphere. In addition, the researchers used a starlight-blocking mask called a coronagraph that they optimized for the mid-infrared light spectrum to block the light from one of the stars at a time. To enable observing both stars’ habitable zones simultaneously, they also pioneered a new technique to switch back and forth between observing Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B very rapidly.

“We’re moving one star on and one star off the coronagraph every tenth of a second,” Wagner said. “That allows us to observe each star for half of the time, and, importantly, it also allows us to subtract one frame from the subsequent frame, which removes everything that is essentially just noise from the camera and the telescope.”

Using this approach, the undesired starlight and “noise” – unwanted signal from within the telescope and camera – become essentially random background noise, possible to further reduce by stacking images and subtracting the noise using specialized software.

Similar to the effect to noise-canceling headphones, which allow soft music to be heard over a steady stream of unwanted noise, the technique allowed the team to remove as much of the unwanted noise as possible and detect the much fainter signals created by potential planet candidates inside the habitable zone.

The team observed the Alpha Centauri system for nearly 100 hours over the course of a month in 2019, collecting more than 5 million images. They collected about 7 terabytes of data, which they made publicly available.

“This is one of the first dedicated multinight exoplanet imaging campaigns, in which we stacked all of the data we accumulated over nearly a month and used that to achieve our final sensitivity,” Wagner said.

After removing so-called artifacts – false signals created by the instrumentation and residual light from the coronagraph – the final image revealed a light source designated as “C1” that could potentially hint at the presence of an exoplanet candidate inside the habitable zone.

“There is one point source that looks like what we would expect a planet to look like, that we can’t explain with any of the systematic error corrections,” Wagner said. “We are not at the level of confidence to say we discovered a planet around Alpha Centauri, but there is a signal there that could be that with some subsequent verification.”

Simulations of what planets within the data are likely to look like suggest that “C1” could be a Neptune- to Saturn-sized planet at a distance from Alpha Centauri A that is similar to the distance between the Earth and the sun, Wagner said. However, the authors clearly state that without subsequent verification, the possibility that C1 might be due to some unknown artifact caused by the instrument itself cannot be ruled out yet.

Finding a potentially habitable planet within Alpha Centauri has been the goal of the initiative Breakthrough Watch/NEAR, which stands for New Earths in the Alpha Centauri Region. Breakthrough Watch is a global astronomical program looking for Earthlike planets around nearby stars.

“We are very grateful to the Breakthrough Initiatives and ESO for their support in achieving another steppingstone towards the imaging of Earthlike planets around our neighbor stars,” said Markus Kasper, lead scientist of the NEAR project and a co-author on the paper.

The team intends to embark on another imaging campaign in a few years, in an attempt to catch this potential exoplanet in the Alpha Centauri system in a different location, and to see whether it would be consistent with what would be expected based on modeling its expected orbit. Further clues may come from follow-up observations using different methods.

The next generation of large telescopes, such as the Extremely Large Telescope of the European Southern Observatory and the Giant Magellan Telescope, for which UArizona produces the primary mirrors, are expected to be able to increase direct observations of nearby stars that might harbor planets in their habitable zones by a factor of 10, Wagner said.

ESO ELT 39 meter telescope to be on top of Cerro Armazones in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. located at the summit of the mountain at an altitude of 3,060 metres (10,040 ft).

Giant Magellan Telescope, 21 meters, to be at the NOIRLab NOAO Carnegie Institution for Science’s Las Campanas Observatory, some 115 km (71 mi) north-northeast of La Serena, Chile, over 2,500 m (8,200 ft) high.

Candidates to look at include Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, and Tau Ceti, which hosts an indirectly observed planetary system that Wagner and his colleagues will try to directly image.

“Making the capability demonstrated here a routine observing mode – to be able to pick up heat signatures of planets orbiting within the habitable zones of nearby stars – will be a game changer for the exploration of new worlds and for the search for life in the universe,” said study co-author Daniel Apai, a UArizona associate professor of astronomy and planetary science who leads the NASA-funded Earths in Other Solar Systems program that partly supported the study.

See the full article here .

five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings
Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

The University of Arizona (UA) is a place without limits-where teaching, research, service and innovation merge to improve lives in Arizona and beyond. We aren’t afraid to ask big questions, and find even better answers.

In 1885, establishing Arizona’s first university in the middle of the Sonoran Desert was a bold move. But our founders were fearless, and we have never lost that spirit. To this day, we’re revolutionizing the fields of space sciences, optics, biosciences, medicine, arts and humanities, business, technology transfer and many others. Since it was founded, the UA has grown to cover more than 380 acres in central Tucson, a rich breeding ground for discovery.

U Arizona mirror lab-Where else in the world can you find an astronomical observatory mirror lab under a football stadium?

University of Arizona’s Biosphere 2, located in the Sonoran desert. An entire ecosystem under a glass dome? Visit our campus, just once, and you’ll quickly understand why the UA is a university unlike any other.

From University of Arizona: “With $3M NASA Grant UArizona Scientists Will Test Mars Exploration Drones in Iceland”

From University of Arizona

Jan. 13, 2021
Daniel Stolte
Science Writer, University Communications
stolte@arizona.edu
520-626-4402

Researcher contact
Christopher Hamilton
Lunar and Planetary Laboratory
hamilton@lpl.arizona.edu

NASA has awarded $3.1 million to Christopher Hamilton in UArizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory to develop a drone that could act as a “field assistant” to a rover and explore previously inaccessible regions on Mars.

Created by an eruption five years ago, the Holuhraun lava flow field in Iceland is some of the newest “real estate” in the world where Christopher Hamilton and his team are testing new ways for drones and rovers to work together to explore Mars. Credit: Christopher Hamilton.

A team of scientists led by Christopher Hamilton of the University of Arizona is gearing up to send drones on exploration missions across a vast lava field in Iceland to test a next-generation Mars exploration concept.

Hamilton is the principal investigator on a project that has been awarded a $3.1 million NASA grant to develop a new concept combining rovers and unmanned aerial systems, commonly known as drones, to explore regions of the red planet that have been previously inaccessible. These new Rover–Aerial Vehicle Exploration Networks will be tested in Iceland to explore volcanic terrains similar to those observed on Mars.

NASA selected the RAVEN project as one of only four proposals out of 48 proposals competing for funding from NASA’s Planetary Science and Technology Through Analog Research program.

RAVEN adds an entirely new approach to NASA’s paradigm of planetary exploration, which traditionally has centered around four steps, each building on the scientific findings of the previous one: flyby, orbit, land and rove, according to Hamilton, an associate professor in the UArizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory who oversees a team of 20 scientists and engineers involved in the RAVEN project.

UArizona Raven drone for Mars exploration.

The first spacecraft sent to a previously unvisited body in the solar system commonly executes a flyby pass to collect as many data as possible to inform subsequent robotic missions, which consist of another space probe placed into orbit, then a lander, which studies the surface in one place, and, finally, a rover built to move around to visit and analyze various points of scientific interest.

“With RAVEN, we’re adding ‘fly’ to that list,” Hamilton said. “And not only that – the whole concept is really geared towards building new technology and procedures for two robots to work together on an extraterrestrial body. We are going to look at how a rover and a drone can work together to maximize the scientific output of such a mission.”

Raven| Mars exploration drone tested in Iceland.
When the RAVEN team members looked for suitable proving grounds that would provide a realistic backdrop for their work, they found it in a vast lava field in the highlands of Iceland. This pristine area is otherworldly enough that NASA used it in preparing the Apollo astronauts for walking on the moon. After extensive exploration, the team homed in on the Holuhraun lava flow field, created by an eruption only five years ago.

Pictures taken by Peter Hartree between 14.30 and 15.00 on September 4th 2014. Credit: peterhartree.

Pictures taken by Peter Hartree between 14.30 and 15.00 on September 4th 2014. Credit: peterhartree.

Lava fountains of the fissure eruption in Holuhraun, northeast of Bárðarbunga (Iceland) September 2014. The fountains on the photo are of the fissure’s main crater and were about 70-90 meters high at the time of the photo. Credit: Joschenbacher

“It’s some of the newest real estate in the world,” Hamilton said about the barren landscape, which is devoid of vegetation or topsoil. “What makes it especially interesting to us is that the lava was emplaced in a sandy area, which is very similar to what some Martian terrains look like.”

Analog landscapes, such as Holuhraun, are invaluable to planetary scientists because they provide the next best thing to an alien world right here on Earth. Often shaped by similar geologic processes as their extraterrestrial counterparts, they serve as realistic mock environments to prepare explorers – both human and robotic – to safely navigate the real thing. A major challenge in exploring young volcanic terrains on Mars is that the surfaces are too rough for a rover to traverse. RAVEN will open new opportunities for exploration by enabling a rover and drone to work together. The drone will provide reconnaissance to scout the best path forward, and even be able to collect and return remote samples that are inaccessible to the rover.

“Volcanic terrains offer exciting targets for exploration because of their potential to generate habitable hydrothermal systems, which could support or preserve microbial life,” Hamilton said. “RAVEN would make such locations accessible for the first time.”

RAVEN builds upon recent developments in drone technology – such as the Mars Helicopter, accompanying NASA’s Mars 2020 rover, which launched last July, and the DragonFly mission to Saturn’s moon Titan.

NASA Mars Ingenuity helicopter traveling with Perseverance rover.

RAVEN will provide a test platform for innovative technologies like remote sample acquisition and navigation based on computer-generated, 3D terrain models. Insights gathered during the three-year duration of the RAVEN project will directly inform next-generation follow-up missions to NASA’s upcoming Mars 2020 mission, which will include a lightweight, twin-rotor drone named Ingenuity that will be used as a technology demonstration to test powered flight on Mars for the first time.

“Once Mars Helicopter demonstrates the ability to fly on Mars, we would design the next-generation system capabilities,” Hamilton said. “Specifically, we’d be looking at what you would do with the next-generation architecture.”

A centerpiece of the project is the RAVEN Claw, a prototype grabbing device attached to a drone that can be configured in various ways, for example to pick up rocks or scoop up sand, and to return cached samples to the rover. Also tested will be alternative payload configurations, including lidar, hyperspectral imaging and drilling technology.

Lidar, which is a method for measuring distances using laser light, is what allowed the UArizona-led OSIRIS-REx sample return mission to maneuver a spacecraft into the closest orbit ever accomplished around a solar system body.

NASA OSIRIS-REx Spacecraft.

A hyperspectral imaging camera enables RAVEN to see light of many wavelengths, promising greater scientific return from local operations by improving the scouting that directs the rover to the target location.

Christopher Hamilton launches a drone during flight tests in the Holuhraun lava flow field. Credit: Christopher Hamilton.

“It is a testament to the University of Arizona’s long-standing track record in planetary exploration that NASA continues to trust our experts with finding solutions to some of our biggest challenges,” said University of Arizona President Robert C. Robbins. “RAVEN is no exception, as this project is part of the bold vision to land humans on Mars in the not-too-distant future. I am excited to see where this project will lead.”

The RAVEN project brings together institutions in three nations: the University of Arizona, the California Institute of Technology/Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Honeybee Robotics, the University of Tennessee and Howard University in the U.S.; the University of Western Ontario (CA), the Canadian Space Agency and MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. in Canada; and the University of Iceland and Vatnajökull National Park Service in Iceland.

See the full article here .

five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings
Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

The University of Arizona (UA) is a place without limits-where teaching, research, service and innovation merge to improve lives in Arizona and beyond. We aren’t afraid to ask big questions, and find even better answers.

In 1885, establishing Arizona’s first university in the middle of the Sonoran Desert was a bold move. But our founders were fearless, and we have never lost that spirit. To this day, we’re revolutionizing the fields of space sciences, optics, biosciences, medicine, arts and humanities, business, technology transfer and many others. Since it was founded, the UA has grown to cover more than 380 acres in central Tucson, a rich breeding ground for discovery.

U Arizona mirror lab-Where else in the world can you find an astronomical observatory mirror lab under a football stadium?

University of Arizona’s Biosphere 2, located in the Sonoran desert. An entire ecosystem under a glass dome? Visit our campus, just once, and you’ll quickly understand why the UA is a university unlike any other.

From University of Arizona: “Striped or Spotted? Winds and Jet Streams Found on the Closest Brown Dwarf”

From University of Arizona

Jan. 7, 2021
Mikayla Mace Kelley

Planetary scientists wondered if bands of winds or swirling storms dominated the atmospheres of brown dwarfs. UArizona-led research has solved the mystery.

Using high-precision brightness measurements from NASA’s TESS space telescope, astronomers found that the nearby brown dwarf Luhman 16B’s atmosphere is dominated by high-speed, global winds akin to Earth’s jet stream system. This global circulation determines how clouds are distributed in the brown dwarf’s atmosphere, giving it a striped appearance. Credit: Daniel Apai.

A University of Arizona-led research team has found bands and stripes on the brown dwarf closest to Earth, hinting at the processes churning the brown dwarf’s atmosphere from within.

Brown dwarfs are mysterious celestial objects that are not quite stars and not quite planets. They are about the size of Jupiter but typically dozens of times more massive. Still, they are less massive than the smallest stars, so their cores do not have enough pressure to fuse atoms the way stars do. They are hot when they form and gradually cool, glowing faintly and dimming slowly throughout their lives, making them hard to find. No telescope can clearly see the atmospheres of these objects.

“We wondered, do brown dwarfs look like Jupiter, with its regular belts and bands shaped by large, parallel, longitudinal jets, or will they be dominated by an ever-changing pattern of gigantic storms known as vortices like those found on Jupiter’s poles?” said UArizona researcher Daniel Apai, an associate professor in the Department of Astronomy and Steward Observatory and the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory.

Kitt Peak NOIRLab National Observatory of the Quinlan Mountains in the Arizona-Sonoran Desert on the Tohono O’odham Nation, 88 kilometers 55 mi west-southwest of Tucson, Arizona, Altitude 2,096 m (6,877 ft), annotated.

Apai is lead author of a new study published today in The Astrophysical Journal that seeks to answer that question using a novel technique.

Chasing Storms in Brown Dwarfs with NASA’s TESS Exoplanet Hunter Telescope

He and his team found that brown dwarfs look strikingly similar to Jupiter. The patterns in the atmospheres reveal high-speed winds running parallel to to the brown drawfs’ equators. These winds are mixing the atmospheres, redistributing heat that emerges from the brown dwarfs’ hot interiors. Also, like Jupiter, vortices dominate the polar regions.

Some atmospheric models predicted this atmospheric pattern, Apai said, including models by the late Adam Showman, a UArizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory professor and a leader in brown dwarf atmosphere models.

“Wind patterns and large-scale atmospheric circulation often have profound effects on planetary atmospheres, from Earth’s climate to Jupiter’s appearance, and now we know that such large-scale atmospheric jets also shape brown dwarf atmospheres,” said Apai, whose co-authors on the paper include the Astronomical Observatory of Padua’s Luigi Bedin and Domenico Nardiello, who is also affiliated with Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille in France.

“Knowing how the winds blow and redistribute heat in one of the best-studied and closest brown dwarfs helps us to understand the climates, temperature extremes and evolution of brown dwarfs in general,” Apai said.

Apai’s group at UArizona is a world leader in mapping the atmospheres of brown dwarfs and planets outside of our solar system using space telescopes and a new method.

The team used NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, space telescope to study the two brown dwarfs closest to Earth.

NASA/MIT TESS replaced Kepler in search for exoplanets.

At only 6 1/2 light-years away, the brown dwarfs are called Luhman 16 A and B. While both are about the same size as Jupiter, they are both more dense and therefore contain more mass. Luhman 16 A is about 34 times more massive than Jupiter, and Luhman 16 B – which was the main subject of Apai’s study – is about 28 times more massive than Jupiter and about 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit hotter.

“The TESS space telescope, although designed to hunt for extrasolar planets, also provided this incredibly rich and exciting dataset on the closest brown dwarf to us,” Apai said. “With advanced algorithms developed by members of our team, we were able to obtain very precise measurements of the brightness changes as the two brown dwarfs rotated. The brown dwarfs get brighter whenever brighter atmospheric regions turn into the visible hemisphere and darker when these rotate out of view.”

Since the space telescope provides extremely precise measurements and it is not interrupted by daylight, the team collected more rotations than ever before, providing the most detailed view of a brown dwarf’s atmospheric circulation.

“No telescope is large enough to provide detailed images of planets or brown dwarfs,” Apai said. “But by measuring how the brightness of these rotating objects changes over time, it is possible to create crude maps of their atmospheres – a technique that, in the future, could also be used to map Earthlike planets in other solar systems that might otherwise be hard to see.”

The researchers’ results show that there is a lot of similarity between the atmospheric circulation of solar system planets and brown dwarfs. As a result, brown dwarfs can serve as more massive analogs of giant planets existing outside of our solar system in future studies.

“Our study provides a template for future studies of similar objects on how to explore – and even map – the atmospheres of brown dwarfs and giant extrasolar planets without the need for telescopes powerful enough to resolve them visually,” Apai said.

Apai’s team hopes to further explore the clouds, storm systems and circulation zones present in brown dwarfs and extrasolar planets to deepen our understanding of atmospheres beyond the solar system.

See the full article here .

five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings
Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

The University of Arizona (UA) is a place without limits-where teaching, research, service and innovation merge to improve lives in Arizona and beyond. We aren’t afraid to ask big questions, and find even better answers.

In 1885, establishing Arizona’s first university in the middle of the Sonoran Desert was a bold move. But our founders were fearless, and we have never lost that spirit. To this day, we’re revolutionizing the fields of space sciences, optics, biosciences, medicine, arts and humanities, business, technology transfer and many others. Since it was founded, the UA has grown to cover more than 380 acres in central Tucson, a rich breeding ground for discovery.

U Arizona mirror lab-Where else in the world can you find an astronomical observatory mirror lab under a football stadium?

University of Arizona’s Biosphere 2, located in the Sonoran desert. An entire ecosystem under a glass dome? Visit our campus, just once, and you’ll quickly understand why the UA is a university unlike any other.

From University of Arizona: “New Space Telescope Will Reveal Unseen Dynamic Lives of Galaxies”

From University of Arizona

1.7.21

Daniel Stolte
Science Writer, University Communications
stolte@arizona.edu
520-626-4402

Carlos Vargas
Postdoctoral Researcher
University of Arizona
Department of Astronomy and Steward Observatory
cjvargas90@gmail.com

NASA has selected Carlos Vargas, a postdoctoral researcher in UArizona’s Steward Observatory, to lead a $20 million mission to build a space telescope that will map vast regions of star-forming gas that have eluded observation for decades.

Located 12 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Ursa Major, Messier 82, or the “Cigar Galaxy,” is known for its intense rate of star formation. Vast regions of gas provide the fuel from which new stars are born. The Aspera mission will send a small telescope into space to map the distribution of some of this gas and help answer fundamental questions about how galaxies evolve. Credit: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA); Acknowledgment: J. Gallagher (University of Wisconsin); M. Mountain (STScI); and P. Puxley (NSF)

NASA has selected the University of Arizona to lead one of its four inaugural Astrophysics Pioneers missions. With a $20 million cost cap, the Aspera mission will study galaxy evolution with a space telescope barely larger than a mini fridge. The telescope will allow researchers to observe galaxy processes that have remained hidden from view until now.

Led by principal investigator Carlos Vargas, a postdoctoral researcher in UArizona’s Steward Observatory, the Aspera mission seeks to solve a longstanding mystery about the way galaxies form, evolve and interact with each other. Intended for launch in late 2024, the space telescope is being specifically designed to see in ultraviolet light, which is invisible to the human eye.

NASA chose Aspera and three other missions for further concept development in the agency’s new Pioneers Program for small-scale astrophysics missions.

The Aspera mission’s goal is to provide the first-ever direct observations of a certain portion of the circumgalactic medium – vast “oceans” of low-density gas that permeate and surround individual galaxies and in some cases even connect them, bridging large distances across the universe.

The familiar pictures of galaxies as luminous archipelagos floating in space, filled with millions or billions of stars, tell only a small part of their story, Vargas said.

“As telescopes have become more sensitive and have allowed us to discover more exotic types of gases, we now realize there is tons of stuff in between galaxies that connects them,” he said. “Galaxies are undergoing this beautiful dance in which inflowing and outflowing gases balance each other.”

Led by UArizona’s Carlos Vargas and funded with $20 million from NASA, the Aspera mission will launch a space telescope about the size of a mini fridge to observe galaxy processes that have remained hidden from view until now.

Processes such as supernova explosions blow gas out of the galaxy, and sometimes it rains back down onto the galactic disc, Vargas said.

Previous observations of the circumgalactic medium, or CGM, revealed that it contains several different populations of gas in a wide range of densities and temperatures astronomers refer to as phases. But one of these gas phases has eluded previous attempts at studying it, and Vargas said it’s important because it is believed to host most of a galaxy’s mass.

“There is this intermediate form we refer to as warm-hot, and that is particularly interesting because it provides the fuel for star formation,” he said. “No one has been able to successfully map its distribution and really determine what it looks like.”

The Aspera mission is designed to home in on that missing chunk of the CGM that astronomers know must be there but haven’t been able to observe.

“Aspera is an exciting mission because it will lead us to discover the nature of mysterious warm-hot gas around galaxies,” said Haeun Chung, a postdoctoral research associate at Steward Observatory.

As the mission’s project scientist, Chung leads the instrument team charged with building the new space telescope.

“Though small, Aspera is designed to detect and map faint warm-hot gas, thanks to recent technological advancements and the increased opportunity that small-sized space missions provide,” Chung said.

Because the portion of the CGM that researchers refer to as warm-hot is thought to host the lion’s share of the mass that makes up a galaxy, it is a crucial piece of the puzzle for understanding how galaxies form and evolve, Vargas said.

“If you care about how life evolved, you care about how galaxies evolve, because you can’t have a planet without a star, and you can’t have a star without galaxy,” he said. “These all are very interconnected.”

The Aspera telescope will be the only instrument in space capable of observing in the ultraviolet spectrum, with the exception of the Hubble Space Telescope, which has surpassed its expected mission lifespan by many years.

Vargas said his team chose the mission’s name, Latin for “hardship,” to highlight the extraordinary difficulties that have needed to be overcome to observe and study the CGM.

“People have been going for this ‘missing’ gas phase for decades,” he said. “We aptly named our telescope to honor their efforts.”

UArizona President Robert C. Robbins said the mission marks a new milestone in the university’s long history of space exploration.

“Being selected for the first iteration of NASA’s Astrophysics Pioneers program is a testament to our excellent track record in space exploration – from providing the scientific approaches needed to tackle some of the most challenging questions in the universe, to developing innovative technology and providing successful management throughout the project,” he said.

Elizabeth “Betsy” Cantwell, UArizona senior vice president for research and innovation, applauded Vargas’s leadership of the mission.

“Dr. Vargas’s leadership on the Aspera mission reflects the excellent caliber of researchers attracted to the University of Arizona. We are particularly pleased because Dr. Vargas represents the exemplary nature of scientific inquiry at a Research 1 Hispanic-Serving Institution like the University of Arizona,” she said. “To receive this prestigious award so early in his career demonstrates Dr. Vargas’s incredible capability, and I am thrilled to see our researchers expanding our understanding of a subject as fundamental as galaxy formation and evolution.”

Cantwell added that the newly launched University of Arizona Space Institute provided the research team with support, and it will be building support for other large and impactful space initiatives as the institute grows.

“I’m tremendously proud to be part of a university that encourages and supports early career scientists like Carlos Vargas and Haeun Chung – both post-doctoral researchers – and the faculty members and engineers in their team, to successfully compete for ambitious missions like Aspera,” said Steward Observatory Director Buell Jannuzi.

Aspera brings together an interdisciplinary and diverse team including researchers from Columbia University, the University of Iowa, and Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany. The UArizona team includes deputy principal investigator Erika Hamden, assistant professor of astronomy and assistant astronomer at Steward Observatory; mission manager Tom McMahon, head of Steward Observatory’s engineering group; Peter Behroozi, assistant professor of astronomy; Ewan Douglas, assistant professor of astronomy; Dennis Zaritsky, professor of astronomy and deputy director of Steward Observatory; Aafaque Raza Khan, a graduate student at Steward Observatory; Dae Wook Kim, assistant professor in the College of Optical Sciences; and Simran Agarwal, graduate student in the College of Optical Sciences.

Corporate mission partners are Tucson-based companies Blue Canyon Technologies, a subsidiary of Raytheon Technologies, and Ascending Node Technologies.

See the full article here .

five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings
Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

The University of Arizona (UA) is a place without limits-where teaching, research, service and innovation merge to improve lives in Arizona and beyond. We aren’t afraid to ask big questions, and find even better answers.

In 1885, establishing Arizona’s first university in the middle of the Sonoran Desert was a bold move. But our founders were fearless, and we have never lost that spirit. To this day, we’re revolutionizing the fields of space sciences, optics, biosciences, medicine, arts and humanities, business, technology transfer and many others. Since it was founded, the UA has grown to cover more than 380 acres in central Tucson, a rich breeding ground for discovery.

U Arizona mirror lab-Where else in the world can you find an astronomical observatory mirror lab under a football stadium?

University of Arizona’s Biosphere 2, located in the Sonoran desert. An entire ecosystem under a glass dome? Visit our campus, just once, and you’ll quickly understand why the UA is a university unlike any other.

From University of Arizona: “Striped or Spotted? Winds and Jet Streams Found on the Closest Brown Dwarf”

From University of Arizona

1.7.21
Mikayla Mace Kelley

Planetary scientists wondered if bands of winds or swirling storms dominated the atmospheres of brown dwarfs. UArizona-led research has solved the mystery.

Using high-precision brightness measurements from NASA’s TESS space telescope, astronomers found that the nearby brown dwarf Luhman 16B’s atmosphere is dominated by high-speed, global winds akin to Earth’s jet stream system. This global circulation determines how clouds are distributed in the brown dwarf’s atmosphere, giving it a striped appearance. Credit: Daniel Apai.

NASA/MIT TESS replaced Kepler in search for exoplanets.

A University of Arizona-led research team has found bands and stripes on the brown dwarf closest to Earth, hinting at the processes churning the brown dwarf’s atmosphere from within.

Brown dwarfs are mysterious celestial objects that are not quite stars and not quite planets. They are about the size of Jupiter but typically dozens of times more massive. Still, they are less massive than the smallest stars, so their cores do not have enough pressure to fuse atoms the way stars do. They are hot when they form and gradually cool, glowing faintly and dimming slowly throughout their lives, making them hard to find. No telescope can clearly see the atmospheres of these objects.

“We wondered, do brown dwarfs look like Jupiter, with its regular belts and bands shaped by large, parallel, longitudinal jets, or will they be dominated by an ever-changing pattern of gigantic storms known as vortices like those found on Jupiter’s poles?” said UArizona researcher Daniel Apai, an associate professor in the Department of Astronomy and Steward Observatory and the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory.

Apai is lead author of a new study published today in The Astrophysical Journal that seeks to answer that question using a novel technique.

Chasing Storms in Brown Dwarfs with NASA’s TESS Exoplanet Hunter Telescope.

He and his team found that brown dwarfs look strikingly similar to Jupiter. The patterns in the atmospheres reveal high-speed winds running parallel to to the brown drawfs’ equators. These winds are mixing the atmospheres, redistributing heat that emerges from the brown dwarfs’ hot interiors. Also, like Jupiter, vortices dominate the polar regions.

Some atmospheric models predicted this atmospheric pattern, Apai said, including models by the late Adam Showman, a UArizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory professor and a leader in brown dwarf atmosphere models.

“Wind patterns and large-scale atmospheric circulation often have profound effects on planetary atmospheres, from Earth’s climate to Jupiter’s appearance, and now we know that such large-scale atmospheric jets also shape brown dwarf atmospheres,” said Apai, whose co-authors on the paper include the Astronomical Observatory of Padua’s Luigi Bedin and Domenico Nardiello, who is also affiliated with Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille in France.

“Knowing how the winds blow and redistribute heat in one of the best-studied and closest brown dwarfs helps us to understand the climates, temperature extremes and evolution of brown dwarfs in general,” Apai said.

Apai’s group at UArizona is a world leader in mapping the atmospheres of brown dwarfs and planets outside of our solar system using space telescopes and a new method.

The team used NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, space telescope to study the two brown dwarfs closest to Earth. At only 6 1/2 light-years away, the brown dwarfs are called Luhman 16 A and B. While both are about the same size as Jupiter, they are both more dense and therefore contain more mass. Luhman 16 A is about 34 times more massive than Jupiter, and Luhman 16 B – which was the main subject of Apai’s study – is about 28 times more massive than Jupiter and about 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit hotter.

“The TESS space telescope, although designed to hunt for extrasolar planets, also provided this incredibly rich and exciting dataset on the closest brown dwarf to us,” Apai said. “With advanced algorithms developed by members of our team, we were able to obtain very precise measurements of the brightness changes as the two brown dwarfs rotated. The brown dwarfs get brighter whenever brighter atmospheric regions turn into the visible hemisphere and darker when these rotate out of view.”

Since the space telescope provides extremely precise measurements and it is not interrupted by daylight, the team collected more rotations than ever before, providing the most detailed view of a brown dwarf’s atmospheric circulation.

“No telescope is large enough to provide detailed images of planets or brown dwarfs,” Apai said. “But by measuring how the brightness of these rotating objects changes over time, it is possible to create crude maps of their atmospheres – a technique that, in the future, could also be used to map Earthlike planets in other solar systems that might otherwise be hard to see.”

The researchers’ results show that there is a lot of similarity between the atmospheric circulation of solar system planets and brown dwarfs. As a result, brown dwarfs can serve as more massive analogs of giant planets existing outside of our solar system in future studies.

“Our study provides a template for future studies of similar objects on how to explore – and even map – the atmospheres of brown dwarfs and giant extrasolar planets without the need for telescopes powerful enough to resolve them visually,” Apai said.

Apai’s team hopes to further explore the clouds, storm systems and circulation zones present in brown dwarfs and extrasolar planets to deepen our understanding of atmospheres beyond the solar system.

See the full article here .

five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings
Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

The University of Arizona (UA) is a place without limits-where teaching, research, service and innovation merge to improve lives in Arizona and beyond. We aren’t afraid to ask big questions, and find even better answers.

In 1885, establishing Arizona’s first university in the middle of the Sonoran Desert was a bold move. But our founders were fearless, and we have never lost that spirit. To this day, we’re revolutionizing the fields of space sciences, optics, biosciences, medicine, arts and humanities, business, technology transfer and many others. Since it was founded, the UA has grown to cover more than 380 acres in central Tucson, a rich breeding ground for discovery.

U Arizona mirror lab-Where else in the world can you find an astronomical observatory mirror lab under a football stadium?

University of Arizona’s Biosphere 2, located in the Sonoran desert. An entire ecosystem under a glass dome? Visit our campus, just once, and you’ll quickly understand why the UA is a university unlike any other.

From University of Arizona: “Plumes on Icy Worlds Hold Clues About What Lies Beneath”

From University of Arizona

12.16.20
Media Contact
Daniel Stolte
Science Writer, University Communications
stolte@arizona.edu
520-626-4402

Researcher contacts
Christopher Hamilton
Lunar and Planetary Laboratory
hamilton@lpl.arizona.edu

Joana Voigt
Lunar and Planetary Laboratory
voigt@lpl.arizona.edu

A new model shows how brine on Jupiter’s moon Europa can migrate within the icy shell to form pockets of salty water that erupt to the surface when freezing. The findings are important for the upcoming Europa Clipper mission and may explain cryovolcanic eruptions across icy bodies in the solar system.

NASA/Europa Clipper annotated.

NASA Europa Clipper depiction.

This artist’s conception of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa shows a hypothesized cryovolcanic eruption, in which briny water from within the icy shell blasts into space. A new model of this process on Europa may also explain plumes on other icy bodies. Credit: Justice Blaine Wainwright.

On Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, powerful eruptions may spew into space, raising questions among hopeful astrobiologists on Earth: What would blast out from miles-high plumes? Could they contain signs of extraterrestrial life? And where in Europa would they originate? A new explanation points to a source closer to the frozen surface than might be expected.

Rather than originating from deep within Europa’s oceans, some eruptions may originate from water pockets embedded in the icy shell itself, according to new evidence from researchers at the University of Arizona, Stanford University, the University of Texas and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Using images collected by the NASA spacecraft Galileo, the researchers developed a model to explain how a combination of freezing and pressurization could lead to a cryovolcanic eruption, or a burst of water. The results, published in Geophysical Research Letters, have implications for the habitability of Europa’s underlying ocean – and may explain eruptions on other icy bodies in the solar system.

Plumes are great sources to get information from the interior and subsurface of a planetary body that is otherwise very hard to access far away from our home planet,” said Joana Voigt, co-lead author of the paper and a graduate research assistant in Christopher Hamilton’s research group at the UArizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. “However, we need to better understand the mechanisms driving eruptions and where the plumes were fed from. In the case of Europa there are two possible plumbing systems: transported liquids directly from the ocean below or feeding from a reservoir closer to the surface.”

Harbingers of Life?

Scientists have speculated that the vast ocean hidden beneath Europa’s icy crust could contain elements necessary to support life. But short of sending a submersible to the moon to explore, it’s difficult to know for sure. That’s one reason Europa’s plumes have garnered so much interest: If the eruptions are coming from the subsurface ocean, the elements could be more easily detected by a spacecraft like the one planned for NASA’s upcoming Europa Clipper mission.

But if the plumes originate in the moon’s icy shell, they may be less hospitable to life, because it is more difficult to sustain the chemical energy to power life there. In this case, the chances of detecting habitability from space are diminished.

“Understanding where these water plumes are coming from is very important for knowing whether future Europa explorers could have a chance to actually detect life from space without probing Europa’s ocean,” said the other co-lead author Gregor Steinbrügge, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford’s School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences.

The researchers focused their analyses on Manannán, an 18-mile-wide crater on Europa that was created by an impact with another celestial object some tens of millions of years ago. Reasoning that such a collision would have generated a tremendous amount of heat, they modeled how melting and subsequent freezing of a water pocket within the icy shell could have caused the water to erupt.

The model indicates that as Europa’s water transformed into ice during the later stages of the impact, pockets of water with increased salinity could be created in the moon’s crust. Furthermore, these salty water pockets can migrate sideways through Europa’s ice shell by melting adjacent regions of less brackish ice, and consequently become even saltier in the process.

“We developed a way that a water pocket can move laterally – and that’s very important,” Steinbrügge said. “It can move along thermal gradients, from cold to warm, and not only in the down direction as pulled by gravity.”

A Salty Driver

The model predicts that when migrating brine pockets reached the center of Manannán crater, they became stuck and began freezing, generating pressure that eventually resulted in a plume, estimated to have been over a mile high. The eruption of this plume left a distinguishing mark: a spider-shaped feature on Europa’s surface that was observed by Galileo imaging and incorporated in the researchers’ model.

Voigt said the spider feature looked immediately familiar, as it reminded her of similar features she had studied in images taken by the UArizona-led HiRISE camera on Mars, but she was skeptical because the geologic settings of Mars and Europa are drastically different.

“But geology doesn’t lie,” she said. “The features we observe on the surface are a result of the underlying processes, even if our current theories and ideas can’t provide an answer – that only means we might need to think outside the box.”

The relatively small size of the plume that would form at Manannán indicates that impact craters probably can’t explain the source of other, larger plumes on Europa that have been hypothesized based on Hubble and Galileo data, the researchers say. But the process modeled for the Manannán eruption could happen on other icy bodies, even without an impact event.

“We are not suggesting that recently observed plumes on Europa were caused by the same impact triggering mechanism as the older deposits, but brine migration may be a factor,” said UArizona’s Hamilton, an associate professor of planetary sciences who co-authored the report. He added that the mechanism described in the paper is also applicable to other icy worlds, such as Jupiter’s moon Ganymede, Saturn’s moons Enceladus and Titan, and the dwarf planet Ceres, which is the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

The study also provides estimates of how salty Europa’s frozen surface and ocean may be, which in turn could affect the transparency of its ice shell to radar waves. The calculations, based on imaging from Galileo from 1995 to 1997, show Europa’s ocean may be about one-fifth as salty as Earth’s ocean – a factor that will improve the capacity for the Europa Clipper mission’s radar sounder to collect data from its interior.

The new model offers insights that help untangle Europa’s complex surface features, which are subject to hydrological processes, the pull of Jupiter’s gravity and hidden tectonic forces within the icy moon.

“Even though plumes generated by brine pocket migration would not provide direct insight into Europa’s ocean, our findings are exciting because they suggest that Europa’s ice shell itself is very dynamic,” Voigt said.

The other co-authors on the paper are Don Blankenship, Krista Soderlund, Natalie Wolfenbarger and Duncan Young from the University of Texas at Austin; Dustin Schroeder at the Stanford’s School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences and Steven Vance from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The research was supported by the G. Unger Vetlesen Foundation. A portion of the work was carried out by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech, under a contract with NASA.

See the full UArizona article here .

See the Stanford University article discussed here.

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Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

The University of Arizona (UA) is a place without limits-where teaching, research, service and innovation merge to improve lives in Arizona and beyond. We aren’t afraid to ask big questions, and find even better answers.

In 1885, establishing Arizona’s first university in the middle of the Sonoran Desert was a bold move. But our founders were fearless, and we have never lost that spirit. To this day, we’re revolutionizing the fields of space sciences, optics, biosciences, medicine, arts and humanities, business, technology transfer and many others. Since it was founded, the UA has grown to cover more than 380 acres in central Tucson, a rich breeding ground for discovery.

U Arizona mirror lab-Where else in the world can you find an astronomical observatory mirror lab under a football stadium?

University of Arizona’s Biosphere 2, located in the Sonoran desert. An entire ecosystem under a glass dome? Visit our campus, just once, and you’ll quickly understand why the UA is a university unlike any other.

From University of Arizona and NASA via EarthSky: “Is Mars still volcanically active?”

From University of Arizona

and

NASA

via

EarthSky

November 23, 2020
Paul Scott Anderson

A new study of geologically young lava flows in Elysium Planitia suggests that Mars might still have residual volcanic activity below its surface. The finding could also correlate with seismic activity detected by the InSight lander in the same region and may have implications for possible Martian life.

Oblique view of Cerberus Fossae, a tectonic fracture in the Elysium Planitia region of Mars. A new study of young lava flows surrounding it suggests that this area might still be volcanically active today, underground. Image via ESA/ DLR/ FU Berlin.

Mars has some of the largest volcanoes in the solar system, but they’ve apparently been inactive for millions of years. No plumes of ash or flowing streams of lava are seen on Mars today. But just how long ago were the last great Martian eruptions? That has been a matter of some debate among planetary geologists, and now scientists at the University of Arizona (UA) have announced new evidence for recent – geologically speaking – explosive volcanism in the Elysium Planitia region of Mars.

InSight’s Landing Site: Elysium Planitia. Elysium Planitia, a flat-smooth plain just north of the equator makes for the perfect location from which to study the deep Martian interior.

Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, or InSight, is designed to study the deep interior of Mars. The mission seeks the fingerprints of the processes that formed the rocky planets of the solar system.

Its landing site, Elysium Planitia, was picked from 22 candidates, and is centered at about 4.5 degrees north latitude and 135.9 degrees east longitude; about 373 miles (600 kilometers) from Curiosity’s landing site, Gale Crater. The locations of other Mars landers and rovers are labeled.

InSight’s scientific success and safe landing depends on landing in a relatively flat area, with an elevation low enough to have sufficient atmosphere above the site for a safe landing. It also depends on landing in an area where rocks are few in number. Elysium Planitia has just the right surface for the instruments to be able to probe the deep interior, and its proximity to the equator ensures that the solar-powered lander is exposed to plenty of sunlight.

JPL, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the InSight Project for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Lockheed Martin Space, Denver, built the spacecraft. InSight is part of NASA’s Discovery Program, which is managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

For more information about the mission, go to: https://mars.nasa.gov/insight.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

According to the new findings, eruptions there may have occurred as recently as 53,000 years ago, which is a blink of an eye relative to Mars’ total age of about 4.6 billion years (same as Earth’s). According to these scientists, this finding could mean Mars is still volcanically active even today, at least underground.

Prior to this new work, the most recent eruptions known on Mars happened about 2.5 to 500 million years ago.

The intriguing findings were submitted to arXiv on November 11, 2020, for publication in the peer-reviewed journal Icarus.

Overhead view of Cerberus Fossae, with the mantling unit of younger lava flows surrounding it. Credit: Horvath et al./ Cornell University.

The evidence comes from the study of a volcanic lava deposit distributed symmetrically around a segment of the Cerberus Fossae fissure system in Elysium Planitia, called the “mantling unit.”

The researchers say it is probably the youngest such deposit yet found on Mars. It is similar to pyroclastic flows – fluidized masses of rock – on the moon and Mercury, but sits on top of older lava flows and has a thickness of tens of centimeters.

By counting the number of impact craters visible in the area, the researchers, led by David Horvath at UA, say these eruptions are estimated to have happened only 53,000 to 210,000 years ago. That’s like yesterday in geological terms.

Elysium Planitia is also where NASA’s InSight lander touched down on November 26, 2018. Since then, the probe has recorded hundreds of marsquakes in the planet’s subsurface with its Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument, proving that Mars is still seismically active. As of last February, it was reported that over 450 seismic signals had been detected, up to the equivalent of magnitude 4 on the earthly Richter Scale.

Some of those quakes were detected near or at Cerberus Fossae, the location of the young lava deposits. Could there be a connection? Mars doesn’t have tectonic plates like Earth does, so those quakes are more similar to those in the middle of continents on Earth rather than at plate boundaries. Whether there is any relation to current volcanic activity isn’t known, but based on the new findings of young lava flows, it certainly seems possible. From the paper:

“Given the young age of the deposit, it is possible that the deeper magma source that fed the deposit could still be active today and could generate seismicity observable by the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument on the Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport (InSight) lander (Lognonné et al., 2019). Seismicity related to magma transport and chamber pressurization has been linked to active volcanism on Earth (e.g., Battaglia et al., 2005; Grandin et al., 2012; Carrier et al., 2015). Magma-induced seismicity along rift zones can result in small to moderate earthquake magnitudes (Mw < 6). Dike-induced faulting and seismicity (Rubin & Gillard, 1998; Taylor et al., 2013) associated with this young magmatic activity is also possible."

There is also a possibility that current volcanic activity, if proven, could help explain the presence of methane in Mars’ atmosphere. Various telescopes, orbiters and the Curiosity rover have all detected the gas in small quantities, which on Earth is produced mostly by microbes as well as some from geologic activity. Scientists still don’t know the source of the Martian methane, but even if it is only from geological activity, that could still have implications for biology, since it would require liquid water-related chemical reactions (serpentinization) below ground.

The landing site of NASA’s InSight lander in Elysium Planitia and its proximity to the tectonic fissure system Cerberus Fossae. The probe has detected hundreds of marsquakes, including near Cerberus Fossae, which may be related to subsurface volcanic activity. Credit: J.T. Keane/ Nature Geoscience/ NASA.

Landslides within Cerberus Fossae, caused by marsquakes. Credit: NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ University of Arizona.

From the paper:

“Geologically recent near-surface magmatic activity in Elysium Planitia, combined with evidence for recent groundwater-sourced floods (Burr et al., 2002; Head et al., 2003), which may have been triggered by dike intrusions (Hanna & Phillips, 2006), raises important implications regarding the subsurface habitability on Mars. Dike-induced melting of ground ice and hydrothermal circulation could generate favorable conditions for recent or even extant habitable environments in the subsurface. These environments would be analogous to locations on Earth where volcanic activity occurs in glacial environments such as Iceland, where chemotrophic and psychrophilic (i.e., cryophilic) bacteria thrive (Cousins & Crawford, 2011). Subsurface microbial communities found in basaltic lavas on Earth (McKinley et al., 2000) are also aided by hydrothermal circulation of groundwater through porous basalt (Storrie-Lombardi et al., 2009; Cousins & Crawford, 2011). Recent or ongoing magmatic activity on Mars could also provide a source of transient methane releases to the atmosphere (Formisano et al., 2004; Fonti & Marzo, 2010) through direct volcanic outgassing or, more likely, serpentinization reactions (Atreya et al., 2007).”

The possibility that Mars is still volcanically active is exciting, since it would overturn long-held assumptions that the planet has been geologically dead for the most part for billions of years. It could also create habitable environments below the surface for Martian microorganisms, which would be even more exciting. Mars may not be as dead or dormant as we thought it was, perhaps in more ways than one.

See the full article here .

five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings
Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation’s civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958 with a distinctly civilian (rather than military) orientation encouraging peaceful applications in space science. The National Aeronautics and Space Act was passed on July 29, 1958, disestablishing NASA’s predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). The new agency became operational on October 1, 1958.

Since that time, most U.S. space exploration efforts have been led by NASA, including the Apollo moon-landing missions, the Skylab space station, and later the Space Shuttle. Currently, NASA is supporting the International Space Station and is overseeing the development of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle and Commercial Crew vehicles. The agency is also responsible for the Launch Services Program (LSP) which provides oversight of launch operations and countdown management for unmanned NASA launches. Most recently, NASA announced a new Space Launch System that it said would take the agency’s astronauts farther into space than ever before and lay the cornerstone for future human space exploration efforts by the U.S.

NASA science is focused on better understanding Earth through the Earth Observing System, advancing heliophysics through the efforts of the Science Mission Directorate’s Heliophysics Research Program, exploring bodies throughout the Solar System with advanced robotic missions such as New Horizons, and researching astrophysics topics, such as the Big Bang, through the Great Observatories [Hubble, Chandra,Spitzer, and associated programs. NASA shares data with various national and international organizations such as from the [JAXA]Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite.

The University of Arizona (UA) is a place without limits-where teaching, research, service and innovation merge to improve lives in Arizona and beyond. We aren’t afraid to ask big questions, and find even better answers.

In 1885, establishing Arizona’s first university in the middle of the Sonoran Desert was a bold move. But our founders were fearless, and we have never lost that spirit. To this day, we’re revolutionizing the fields of space sciences, optics, biosciences, medicine, arts and humanities, business, technology transfer and many others. Since it was founded, the UA has grown to cover more than 380 acres in central Tucson, a rich breeding ground for discovery.

U Arizona mirror lab-Where else in the world can you find an astronomical observatory mirror lab under a football stadium?

University of Arizona’s Biosphere 2, located in the Sonoran desert. An entire ecosystem under a glass dome? Visit our campus, just once, and you’ll quickly understand why the UA is a university unlike any other.

From University of Arizona: “Choose Your Own Adventure at Reopened Biosphere 2”

From University of Arizona

11.13.20
Mikayla Mace
Science Writer, University Communications
mikaylamace@arizona.edu
520-621-1878

John Adams
Biosphere 2
jadamsb2@arizona.edu
520-490-2575

Using the updated Biosphere 2 Experience app, visitors can now explore the world-class research facility safely and at their own pace.

The University of Arizona’s Biosphere 2 [below] has reopened to the public.

The facility closed to visitors due to COVID-19 in March, then reopened for driving tours in August. Now, visitors are welcome to walk the grounds again but should anticipate changes.

“We have developed a new app that will allow visitors to explore the facility at their own pace while keeping socially distant from other visitors,” said Katie Morgan, manager of ocean systems and education initiatives at Biosphere 2. “We are confident this new experience will provide visitors with a fun and safe way to interact with the facility.”

Biosphere 2 was created in the 1980s by a businessman and philanthropist who wanted to research and develop self-sustaining space-colonization technology. Two missions, between 1991 and 1994, sealed eight people inside the glass enclosure to measure survivability. After the facility changed hands multiple times, UArizona began leasing the property in 2007 and bought it in 2011 to serve as a tool to support scientists studying Earth systems and the consequences of climate change. The facility also was opened for public tours.

Planning a trip to Biosphere 2, located about 45 minutes north of Tucson, will require visitors to purchase tickets online and select a time to visit. This allows for crowd control and hourly cleanings, said Biosphere 2 Deputy Director John Adams. Face masks also are required.

Choose Your Own Adventure

Visitors can download the Biosphere 2 Experience app on their smartphones. As they exit the facility’s visitor center, they will begin walking a one-way path with 16 stops marked by numbered signs.

“We made sure we put a lot of history into this app,” Morgan said. “There are Biosphere 2 archival photos and videos available on the app that can’t be found online, making this a totally different experience than before.”

The app is also rich in information about the current research projects running in the facility’s Landscape Evolution Observatory, the rainforest, the ocean, the model city project and more.

“The nice thing is you can explore at your own pace,” Adams said. “This new experience allows you to tailor your visit. We’ve layered the information so visitors, if they so choose, can dive deeper into any subjects. Over time, we will continue to add and expand content as we roll out new research and experiences.”

A New Path

To accommodate social distancing, the Biosphere 2 team has modified the path through the grounds so that it is only one way.

“We were able to build on the existing trail system and add an extension into the rainforest,” Adams said.

This upper portion is ADA accessible, meaning it complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

After visiting the scenic overlooks, visitors can enter Biosphere 2 through the original airlock, round the domes and go into the rainforest through a new entrance. Then, they can work their way through the dense foliage of the rainforest to an overlook of the million-gallon experimental ocean through the upper savanna before exiting in the upper habitat dining area and kitchen.

“Of the 16 stops, more than half are on the exterior,” Adams said. “We’ve got scenic overlooks along the path that offer spectacular views of the property and surrounding landscape. There is also a stop to view Biosphere 2’s lungs – large air chambers designed to ensure the facility would never become over- or under-pressurized.”

The team at Biosphere 2 is planning to extend the app and the path under the glass later this year.

“We’re finishing up the desert trail extension,” Adams said, “which will allow access to all the biomes on a one-way trail.”

See the full article here .

five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings
Please help promote STEM in your local schools.

Stem Education Coalition

The University of Arizona (UA) is a place without limits-where teaching, research, service and innovation merge to improve lives in Arizona and beyond. We aren’t afraid to ask big questions, and find even better answers.

In 1885, establishing Arizona’s first university in the middle of the Sonoran Desert was a bold move. But our founders were fearless, and we have never lost that spirit. To this day, we’re revolutionizing the fields of space sciences, optics, biosciences, medicine, arts and humanities, business, technology transfer and many others. Since it was founded, the UA has grown to cover more than 380 acres in central Tucson, a rich breeding ground for discovery.

U Arizona mirror lab-Where else in the world can you find an astronomical observatory mirror lab under a football stadium?

University of Arizona’s Biosphere 2, located in the Sonoran desert. An entire ecosystem under a glass dome? Visit our campus, just once, and you’ll quickly understand why the UA is a university unlike any other.