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A neutron star is the crushed core of a massive star that ran out of fuel, collapsed under its own weight, and exploded as a supernova. It's the closest thing to a black hole that astronomers can observe directly, compressing half a million times Earth's mass into a ball roughly the size of Manhattan Island. Matter within a neutron star is so dense that a teaspoonful would weigh about a billion tons on Earth. <br /><br /> Neutron stars possess two other important traits. They spin rapidly, ranging from a few rpm to as many as 43,000, comparable to the blades of a kitchen blender, and they boast magnetic fields a trillion times stronger than Earth's. <br /><br /> Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Swift Catches an Anti-glitch from a Neutron Star
05.29.2013
The Ring Nebula's distinctive shape makes it a popular illustration for astronomy books. But new observations by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope of the glowing gas shroud around an old, dying, sun-like star reveal a new twist. <br /><br /> ”The nebula is not like a bagel, but rather, it's like a jelly doughnut, because it's filled with material in the middle,” said C. Robert O'Dell of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. He leads a research team that used Hubble and several ground-based telescopes to obtain the best view yet of the iconic nebula. The images show a more complex structure than astronomers once thought and have allowed them to construct the most precise 3-D model of the nebula. <br /><br /> O'Dell's team was surprised at the detailed Hubble views of the dark, irregular knots of dense gas embedded along the inner rim of the ring, which look like spokes in a bicycle wheel. These gaseous tentacles formed when expanding hot gas pushed into cool gas ejected previously by the doomed star. The knots are more resistant to erosion by the wave of ultraviolet light unleashed by the star. The Hubble images have allowed the team to match up the knots with the spikes of light around the bright, main ring, which are a shadow effect. Astronomers have found similar knots in other planetary nebulae. <br /><br /> All of this gas was expelled by the central star about 4,000 years ago. The original star was several times more massive than our sun. After billions of years converting hydrogen to helium in its core, the star began to run out of fuel. It then ballooned in size, becoming a red giant. During this phase, the star shed its outer gaseous layers into space and began to collapse as fusion reactions began to die out. A gusher of ultraviolet light from the dying star energized the gas, making it glow. <br /><br /> The outer rings were formed when faster-moving gas slammed into slower-moving material. The nebula is expanding at more than 43,000 miles an hour, but the center is moving faster than the expansion of the main ring. O'Dell's team measured the nebula's expansion by comparing the new Hubble observations with Hubble studies made in 1998. <br /><br /> Credit: NASA, ESA, C.R. Robert O’Dell (Vanderbilt University), G.J. Ferland (University of Kentucky), W.J. Henney and M. Peimbert (National Autonomous University of Mexico)<br /> Credit for Large Binocular Telescope data: David Thompson (University of Arizona)
The Ring Nebula’s true shape
05.23.2013
When did the first stars and galaxies form in the universe? How brightly did they burn their nuclear fuel? <br /><br /> Scientists will seek to gain answers to these questions with the launch of the Cosmic Infrared Background ExpeRIment (CIBER) on a Black Brant XII suborbital sounding rocket between 11 and 11:59 p.m. EDT, June 4 from the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. <br /><br /> Jamie Bock, CIBER principal investigator from the California Institute of Technology, said, “The first massive stars to form in the universe produced copious ultraviolet light that ionized gas from neutral hydrogen. CIBER observes in the near infrared, as the expansion of the universe stretched the original short ultraviolet wavelengths to long near-infrared wavelengths today. CIBER investigates two telltale signatures of first star formation -- the total brightness of the sky after subtracting all foregrounds, and a distinctive pattern of spatial variations.” <br /><br /> “The objectives of the experiment are of fundamental importance for astrophysics, to probe the process of first galaxy formation, but the measurement is also extremely difficult technically,” he noted. <br /><br /> This will be the fourth flight for CIBER on a NASA sounding rocket. The previous launches were in 2009, 2010, and 2012 from the White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico. After each flight the experiment or payload was recovered for post-calibrations and re-flight. <br /><br /> Photo: Courtesy of Jamie Bock/Caltech
NASA Launching Experiment to Examine the Beginnings of the Universe
05.20.2013
On 5:24 a.m. EDT on May 17, 2013, the sun erupted with an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection or CME, a solar phenomenon that can send billions of tons of solar particles into space that can reach Earth one to three days later and affect electronic systems in satellites and on the ground. Experimental NASA research models, based on observations from NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory, show that the CME left the sun at speeds of around 745 miles per second. The solar material in CMEs cannot pass through the atmosphere to affect humans on Earth. <br /><br /> Not to be confused with a solar flare, a CME can cause a space weather phenomenon called a geomagnetic storm, which occurs when they connect with the outside of the Earth's magnetic envelope, the magnetosphere, for an extended period of time. <br /><br /> Credit: NASA/SDO/Goddard, ESA&NASA SOHO
STEREO Detects a CME From the Sun
05.17.2013
This photograph taken by an astronaut on the International Space Station shows water of different colors within sub-basins of the Laguna (lake) Verde in the high Andes of northwest Argentina. The lake floor lies at 4,095 meters (13,438 feet) above sea level, whereas the peak of the local volcano (west of the lake, not shown) reaches over 3,000 meters higher (6,818 meters or 22,368 feet above sea level). <br><br> Laguna Verde (58 kilometers wide, 36 km long) often appears green, giving rise to its name. This image shows the turquoise tint in the central sub-basin (image center), with a yellow to black tinge to water in the southern sub-basin (left)—also known locally as Laguna Negro. The northernmost basin (right) appears black. The large gray zone comprising much of the rest of Laguna Verde is likely a combination of shallow water—only inches deep—and sunglint reflecting off the water surface. The reason for the color differences is that many different families of salt-loving organisms occupy hypersaline lakes such as Laguna Verde. These microscopic organisms appear as different colors, often bright, depending on the salinity and temperature of each water body or sub-basin. <br><br> The rest of the lake floor is dry and appears white from the build-up of thick salt deposits. Parallel lines around the southern subbasin (Laguna Negro) indicate prior shorelines of this shrinking water body. Evaporation removes water but leaves ephemeral shorelines marked with white salt. <br><br> Astronaut photograph ISS035-E-25019 was acquired on April 20, 2013, with a Nikon D3S digital camera using a 400 millimeter lens, and is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations experiment and Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, Johnson Space Center. The image was taken by the Expedition 35 crew. It has been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast, and lens artifacts have been removed. The International Space Station Program supports the laboratory as part of the ISS National Lab to help astronauts take pictures of Earth that will be of the greatest value to scientists and the public, and to make those images freely available on the Internet. Additional images taken by astronauts and cosmonauts can be viewed at the NASA/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. Caption by M. Justin Wilkinson, Jacobs/JETS at NASA-JSC.
Laguna Verde
05.17.2013
Springtime has brought a substantial and long-lasting bloom of phytoplankton in the Bay of Biscay, off the western coast of France. Swirls of green, turquoise, and cyan on the water surface show the location of these microscopic, plant-like organisms, while also tracing the currents and eddies that mix them. <br><br> Phytoplankton are always present in the water but the stronger sunlight of the season—as well as pulses of nutrient-rich sediments and fresh water flowing out from the land—promote prodigious blooms that can last for weeks to months. Blooms can be a blessing to other marine species, as these tiny floating plants often feed everything from zooplankton to fish to whales. But some algae and plankton blooms can turn dangerous, either through the production of chemical toxins or by severely depleting the oxygen supply in the ocean and creating “dead zones” that suffocate marine creatures. <br><br> NASA satellites captured these natural-color images of a phytoplankton-filled Bay of Biscay in the spring of 2013. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Terra satellite captured this image on May 4. <br><br> Such blooms tend to occur every March and April in the area, diminishing in May as ocean conditions change and surface nutrients run out. The colors of the blooms are mostly derived from the pigments in the phytoplankton, which use chlorophyll to turn sunlight into fuel (photosynthesis); some of the color is also attributable to the minerals in the fine shells of these organisms. Coccolithophores, for example, produce a calcite (limestone) shell that can give the water a milky appearance. <br><br> NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, LANCE/EOSDIS Rapid Response. Caption by Michael Carlowicz.
Swirls in the Waters off France
05.17.2013
This timeline highlights the average area of the ozone hole between September 7th and October 13th as observed by NASA spaced-based instruments (see colored bars and scale on right), and the emissions rates of human-produced ozone-depleting substances (ODSs) combined with natural emissions of halogen source gases (grey, see scale on left). The Montreal Protocol and it’s amendments, which allowed regulators to limit the amount of ODSs released, had a major impact on the emissions, as seen by their timing indicated by the black squares. In the meantime, the ODS burden (ODS remaining in the stratosphere) is decreasing slowly because of the long lifetimes of ODS in the atmosphere. Ozone recovery, in turn, will further lag the ODS decrease and likely occur in the 2050-2060 time frame.
The Ozone Hole
05.10.2013
NASA Project IceBridge completed the 2013 Arctic campaign on May 2 as the P3 returned to Wallops Island from Thule, Greenland. The NASA P3 aircraft flew over 200 hours on this deployment covering 96,000 km – this is almost 2.5 times around the Earth at the equator. Of the 200 hours 146 were for science data collection. The map shows the very good spatial coverage for the 26 land ice and sea ice research missions.
IceBridge 2013 Coverage
05.10.2013
                                                                                                                                                                                         
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  • Last Updated: 06/18/2013