Soviet food for the Mir space station.
looks like the perfect picnic hamper. Gonna eBay it!
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Space and stuff
- Thread starter rascal
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looks like the perfect picnic hamper. Gonna eBay it!
summerisle
The rain, it raineth every day
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-39521344
Atmosphere found around Earth-like planet GJ 1132b
Scientists say they have detected an atmosphere around an Earth-like planet for the first time.
They have studied a world known as GJ 1132b, which is 1.4-times the size of our planet and lies 39 light years away.
Their observations suggest that the "super-Earth" is cloaked in a thick layer of gasses that are either water or methane or a mixture of both.
The study is published in the Astronomical Journal.
Discovering an atmosphere, and characterising it, is an important step forward in the hunt for life beyond our Solar System.
But it is highly unlikely that this world is habitable: it has a surface temperature of 370C.
Dr John Southworth, the lead researcher from Keele University, said: "To my knowledge the hottest temperature that life has been able to survive on Earth is 120C and that's far cooler than this planet."
Chemical signatures
The discovery of planet GJ 1132b was first announced in 2015. It lies in the Vela constellation in the southern hemisphere.
While it is a similar size to Earth, the star it orbits is much smaller, cooler and dimmer than our Sun.
Using a telescope at the European Southern Observatory in Chile, the researchers were able to study the planet by watching how it blocked some of the light of its host star as it passed in front of it.
"It makes the star look a little bit fainter - and it's actually a very good way of finding transiting planets - it's how this one was found," said Dr Southworth.
But different molecules in a planet's atmosphere - if it has one - absorb light in different ways, allowing scientists to look for their chemical signatures when the world transits its star.
The observations of planet GJ 1132b suggest that it has a thick atmosphere containing either steam and/or methane.
"One possibility is that it is a 'water world' with an atmosphere of hot steam," said Dr Southworth.
The researchers say while it is unlikely that any life-forms could survive on this world, the discovery of an atmosphere is encouraging in the hunt for extraterrestrial life.
Dr Southworth said: "What we have shown is that planets around low mass stars can have atmospheres and because there are so many of those in the Universe, it makes it that much more likely that one might have life."
Commenting on the research Marek Kukula, the public astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, said: "This is a nice proof of concept.
"If the technology can detect an atmosphere today, then it bodes well for being able to detect and study the atmospheres of even more Earth-like planets in the not-too-distant future."
Atmosphere found around Earth-like planet GJ 1132b
Scientists say they have detected an atmosphere around an Earth-like planet for the first time.
They have studied a world known as GJ 1132b, which is 1.4-times the size of our planet and lies 39 light years away.
Their observations suggest that the "super-Earth" is cloaked in a thick layer of gasses that are either water or methane or a mixture of both.
The study is published in the Astronomical Journal.
Discovering an atmosphere, and characterising it, is an important step forward in the hunt for life beyond our Solar System.
But it is highly unlikely that this world is habitable: it has a surface temperature of 370C.
Dr John Southworth, the lead researcher from Keele University, said: "To my knowledge the hottest temperature that life has been able to survive on Earth is 120C and that's far cooler than this planet."
Chemical signatures
The discovery of planet GJ 1132b was first announced in 2015. It lies in the Vela constellation in the southern hemisphere.
While it is a similar size to Earth, the star it orbits is much smaller, cooler and dimmer than our Sun.
Using a telescope at the European Southern Observatory in Chile, the researchers were able to study the planet by watching how it blocked some of the light of its host star as it passed in front of it.
"It makes the star look a little bit fainter - and it's actually a very good way of finding transiting planets - it's how this one was found," said Dr Southworth.
But different molecules in a planet's atmosphere - if it has one - absorb light in different ways, allowing scientists to look for their chemical signatures when the world transits its star.
The observations of planet GJ 1132b suggest that it has a thick atmosphere containing either steam and/or methane.
"One possibility is that it is a 'water world' with an atmosphere of hot steam," said Dr Southworth.
The researchers say while it is unlikely that any life-forms could survive on this world, the discovery of an atmosphere is encouraging in the hunt for extraterrestrial life.
Dr Southworth said: "What we have shown is that planets around low mass stars can have atmospheres and because there are so many of those in the Universe, it makes it that much more likely that one might have life."
Commenting on the research Marek Kukula, the public astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, said: "This is a nice proof of concept.
"If the technology can detect an atmosphere today, then it bodes well for being able to detect and study the atmospheres of even more Earth-like planets in the not-too-distant future."
Adopt a piece of the planet!!!
https://climate.nasa.gov/adopt-the-planet/#/
I got my bit!!! Just off the coast of South Korea!
(I know this isn't "space" per se, but it is NASA, so sticking it here......)
https://climate.nasa.gov/adopt-the-planet/#/
I got my bit!!! Just off the coast of South Korea!
(I know this isn't "space" per se, but it is NASA, so sticking it here......)
summerisle
The rain, it raineth every day
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-39592059
Saturn moon 'able to support life'
Saturn's ice-crusted moon Enceladus may now be the single best place to go to look for life beyond Earth.
The assessment comes on the heels of new observations at the 500km-wide world made by the Cassini probe.
It has flown through and sampled the waters from a subsurface ocean that is being jetted into space.
Cassini’s chemistry analysis strongly suggests the Enceladean seafloor has hot fluid vents - places that on Earth are known to teem with life.
To be clear: the existence of such hydrothermal systems is not a guarantee that organisms are present on the little moon; its environment may still be sterile. But the new results make a compelling case to return to this world with more sophisticated instrumentation - technologies that can re-sample the ejected water for clear evidence that biology is also at play.
"We're pretty darn sure that the internal ocean of Enceladus is habitable and we need to go back and investigate it further," said Cassini scientist Dr Hunter Waite from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas.
"If there is no life there, why not? And if there is, all the better. But you certainly want to ask the question because it's almost as equally as interesting if there is no life there, given the conditions," he told BBC News.
The sub-surface ocean on Enceladus is thought to be many kilometres deep, kept liquid by the heat generated from the constant gravitational squeezing the moon receives from the mighty Saturn.
Cassini has already established that this voluminous liquid is in contact with the rock bed from the types of salts and silica that have also been detected in the jets.
But what scientists really wanted to know is if a particular interactive process seen at Earth was taking place in the distant abyss - something called serpentinisation.
At the mid-ocean ridges on our planet, seawater is drawn through, and reacts with, hot upwelling rocks that are rich in iron and magnesium. As the minerals in these rocks incorporate H2O molecules into their crystal structure, they release hydrogen - a byproduct that can be used by some microbes as an energy source to drive their metabolism.
It is the definitive signal for molecular hydrogen in the plumes of Enceladus that Cassini has now confirmed.
"If you were a micro-organism, hydrogen would be like candy - it's your favourite food," explained Dr Chris McKay, an astrobiologist with the US space agency (Nasa).
"It's very good energetically; it can support micro-organisms in grand style. Finding hydrogen is certainly a big plus; icing on the cake for the habitability argument, and a very tasty one at that."
The type of microbes described by Dr McKay are called methanogens because they make methane as they react the hydrogen with carbon dioxide.
Nasa, which leads the Cassini mission, was due to make the hydrogen announcement a couple of months after the probe's last fly-through of the moon's jets in October 2015. But the agency held off.
One of the concerns was that the Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer on the satellite can actually make molecular hydrogen inside itself if water enters the instrument in a particular way.
Dr Waite's group has spent a year analysing the data to make sure the hydrogen signal is intrinsic to the jets and not merely some artefact of the INMS's operation. And although serpentinisation is arguably the best explanation for the signal, it is possible to produce the gas also from the heating of very primitive (meteoritic) rock.
The Cassini mission is coming to a close. Having spent 12 years circling Saturn, it is now running low on fuel and will be dumped in the atmosphere of the ringed planet in September - to ensure it cannot collide with Enceladus at some future date and contaminate it.
Europa holds a vast, salty ocean beneath it's fractured ice shell.
As brilliant as the probe's instruments are, they were never designed to make a direct life detection at the bright white moon. This would need a whole new class of spectrometers. A proposal is being put together to fly them in 2026.
Nasa has already green-lit a mission to Europa, an ocean moon of Jupiter. It very likely has serpentinisation going on as well. But its ice shell is very much thicker and it could be that very little of the water escapes to space.
The appeal of Enceladus is the ease with which its subsurface can be studied because of the material carried into space by its network of geysers. A probe only needs fly through the emission to make the investigation.
"The Cassini mission has really brought Enceladus to the fore in terms of the search for life elsewhere in the Solar System," commented British Cassini scientist Dr Andrew Coates.
“The top three now I would say are about equal. There's Mars, which may have had life 3.8 billion years ago when conditions were very different to what they are now. There's Europa, which has a subsurface ocean; and now Enceladus. Those three may have, or had, the right conditions for life."
Dr Waite added: “For life, you need liquid water, organics, and the CHNOPS elements (carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, sulphur). OK, we haven't yet measured phosphorus and sulphur at Enceladus. But you also need some kind of metabolic energy source, and the new Cassini results are an important contribution in that regard."
A paper describing the work of Dr Waite's group is published in the journal Science.
Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos
Saturn moon 'able to support life'
Saturn's ice-crusted moon Enceladus may now be the single best place to go to look for life beyond Earth.
The assessment comes on the heels of new observations at the 500km-wide world made by the Cassini probe.
It has flown through and sampled the waters from a subsurface ocean that is being jetted into space.
Cassini’s chemistry analysis strongly suggests the Enceladean seafloor has hot fluid vents - places that on Earth are known to teem with life.
To be clear: the existence of such hydrothermal systems is not a guarantee that organisms are present on the little moon; its environment may still be sterile. But the new results make a compelling case to return to this world with more sophisticated instrumentation - technologies that can re-sample the ejected water for clear evidence that biology is also at play.
"We're pretty darn sure that the internal ocean of Enceladus is habitable and we need to go back and investigate it further," said Cassini scientist Dr Hunter Waite from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas.
"If there is no life there, why not? And if there is, all the better. But you certainly want to ask the question because it's almost as equally as interesting if there is no life there, given the conditions," he told BBC News.
The sub-surface ocean on Enceladus is thought to be many kilometres deep, kept liquid by the heat generated from the constant gravitational squeezing the moon receives from the mighty Saturn.
Cassini has already established that this voluminous liquid is in contact with the rock bed from the types of salts and silica that have also been detected in the jets.
But what scientists really wanted to know is if a particular interactive process seen at Earth was taking place in the distant abyss - something called serpentinisation.
At the mid-ocean ridges on our planet, seawater is drawn through, and reacts with, hot upwelling rocks that are rich in iron and magnesium. As the minerals in these rocks incorporate H2O molecules into their crystal structure, they release hydrogen - a byproduct that can be used by some microbes as an energy source to drive their metabolism.
It is the definitive signal for molecular hydrogen in the plumes of Enceladus that Cassini has now confirmed.
"If you were a micro-organism, hydrogen would be like candy - it's your favourite food," explained Dr Chris McKay, an astrobiologist with the US space agency (Nasa).
"It's very good energetically; it can support micro-organisms in grand style. Finding hydrogen is certainly a big plus; icing on the cake for the habitability argument, and a very tasty one at that."
The type of microbes described by Dr McKay are called methanogens because they make methane as they react the hydrogen with carbon dioxide.
Nasa, which leads the Cassini mission, was due to make the hydrogen announcement a couple of months after the probe's last fly-through of the moon's jets in October 2015. But the agency held off.
One of the concerns was that the Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer on the satellite can actually make molecular hydrogen inside itself if water enters the instrument in a particular way.
Dr Waite's group has spent a year analysing the data to make sure the hydrogen signal is intrinsic to the jets and not merely some artefact of the INMS's operation. And although serpentinisation is arguably the best explanation for the signal, it is possible to produce the gas also from the heating of very primitive (meteoritic) rock.
The Cassini mission is coming to a close. Having spent 12 years circling Saturn, it is now running low on fuel and will be dumped in the atmosphere of the ringed planet in September - to ensure it cannot collide with Enceladus at some future date and contaminate it.
Europa holds a vast, salty ocean beneath it's fractured ice shell.
As brilliant as the probe's instruments are, they were never designed to make a direct life detection at the bright white moon. This would need a whole new class of spectrometers. A proposal is being put together to fly them in 2026.
Nasa has already green-lit a mission to Europa, an ocean moon of Jupiter. It very likely has serpentinisation going on as well. But its ice shell is very much thicker and it could be that very little of the water escapes to space.
The appeal of Enceladus is the ease with which its subsurface can be studied because of the material carried into space by its network of geysers. A probe only needs fly through the emission to make the investigation.
"The Cassini mission has really brought Enceladus to the fore in terms of the search for life elsewhere in the Solar System," commented British Cassini scientist Dr Andrew Coates.
“The top three now I would say are about equal. There's Mars, which may have had life 3.8 billion years ago when conditions were very different to what they are now. There's Europa, which has a subsurface ocean; and now Enceladus. Those three may have, or had, the right conditions for life."
Dr Waite added: “For life, you need liquid water, organics, and the CHNOPS elements (carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, sulphur). OK, we haven't yet measured phosphorus and sulphur at Enceladus. But you also need some kind of metabolic energy source, and the new Cassini results are an important contribution in that regard."
A paper describing the work of Dr Waite's group is published in the journal Science.
Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos
summerisle
The rain, it raineth every day
Soviet space poster with the tagline : There is no God.
summerisle
The rain, it raineth every day
https://creators.vice.com/en_us/art...chive-searchable-site?utm_source=tcptwitterus
PHOTOGRAPHY
NASA's Massive Photo Archive Is Now on One Convenient, Searchable Site
The world's desktop backgrounds and screen savers are about to get the NASA bump, now that the organization has updated its site for 2017.
For a government organization trying to bring us into the space age, NASA's web design hasn't always been up with the times. A new update streamlines the databases logging documentation distributed across all 10 of NASA's field centers dating back to its creation in 1958. Now you can search for the exact photo you're looking for, from the moon landing to the latest pics of Titan, without having to be know in advance whether you have to look in the Kennedy Space Center's archives or the Jet Propulsion Lab's.
We found a number of gorgeous space photos and artist renditions of celestial phenomena while exploring this new digital frontier, but some of the most interesting images are of the humans and machines that make up NASA itself. Trolling the search function led us to Russian Cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, who, while handsome in Earth gravity, looks like he could oust Giorgio A. Tsoukalos as the new "Aliens" meme. His picture is the only thing that comes up when you search the site for "UFO." There are race car drivers, crystals forming in microgravity, a moon that looks like the Death Star (that is a moon!), this robotic astronaut, HoloLens experiments, and one incident in 1973 where a Skylab team left a fake corpse for the following astronauts to find when they arrived.
Dummy left behind by Skylab 3 crew for the Skylab 4 crew
The updated site offers plenty of stunning photos of nebulas, supernovas, star systems, galaxies, etc. for desktop backgrounds and screen savers, but if you have a few moments go gonzo on the search bar and let us know what interesting moments you find on Twitter.
Check out a few of our favorites below:
NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute, Circling Satellites, 2007
GSFC, Into the Depths of the Lagoon Nebula, 2011
JPL, Flying by the Death, 2010. In this view captured by NASA Cassini spacecraft on its closest-ever flyby of Saturn moon Mimas, large Herschel Crater dominates Mimas, making the moon look like the Death Star in the movie Star Wars.
GSFC, The Twin Jet Nebula, 2015
JPL/NASA/UCLA/William K. Hartmann, Hartmann Background, 2007
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Roma Tre Univ., NuSTAR View of Galaxy NGC 1068, 2015
NASA/JPL-Caltech, North America Nebula in Different Lights, 2011
GSFC, Behemoth Black Hole Found in an Unlikely Place, 2016
NASA/ESA, Quasar Drenched in Water Vapor Artist Concept, 2012
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ.of Ariz., Comets Kick up Dust in Helix Nebula, 2007
NASA/JPL-Caltech, Black Holes: Monsters in Space Artist Concept Download, 2013
Embark on 2017: A Search Odyssey in NASA's huge image database here.
PHOTOGRAPHY
NASA's Massive Photo Archive Is Now on One Convenient, Searchable Site
The world's desktop backgrounds and screen savers are about to get the NASA bump, now that the organization has updated its site for 2017.
For a government organization trying to bring us into the space age, NASA's web design hasn't always been up with the times. A new update streamlines the databases logging documentation distributed across all 10 of NASA's field centers dating back to its creation in 1958. Now you can search for the exact photo you're looking for, from the moon landing to the latest pics of Titan, without having to be know in advance whether you have to look in the Kennedy Space Center's archives or the Jet Propulsion Lab's.
We found a number of gorgeous space photos and artist renditions of celestial phenomena while exploring this new digital frontier, but some of the most interesting images are of the humans and machines that make up NASA itself. Trolling the search function led us to Russian Cosmonaut Gennady Padalka, who, while handsome in Earth gravity, looks like he could oust Giorgio A. Tsoukalos as the new "Aliens" meme. His picture is the only thing that comes up when you search the site for "UFO." There are race car drivers, crystals forming in microgravity, a moon that looks like the Death Star (that is a moon!), this robotic astronaut, HoloLens experiments, and one incident in 1973 where a Skylab team left a fake corpse for the following astronauts to find when they arrived.
Dummy left behind by Skylab 3 crew for the Skylab 4 crew
The updated site offers plenty of stunning photos of nebulas, supernovas, star systems, galaxies, etc. for desktop backgrounds and screen savers, but if you have a few moments go gonzo on the search bar and let us know what interesting moments you find on Twitter.
Check out a few of our favorites below:
NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute, Circling Satellites, 2007
GSFC, Into the Depths of the Lagoon Nebula, 2011
JPL, Flying by the Death, 2010. In this view captured by NASA Cassini spacecraft on its closest-ever flyby of Saturn moon Mimas, large Herschel Crater dominates Mimas, making the moon look like the Death Star in the movie Star Wars.
GSFC, The Twin Jet Nebula, 2015
JPL/NASA/UCLA/William K. Hartmann, Hartmann Background, 2007
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Roma Tre Univ., NuSTAR View of Galaxy NGC 1068, 2015
NASA/JPL-Caltech, North America Nebula in Different Lights, 2011
GSFC, Behemoth Black Hole Found in an Unlikely Place, 2016
NASA/ESA, Quasar Drenched in Water Vapor Artist Concept, 2012
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ.of Ariz., Comets Kick up Dust in Helix Nebula, 2007
NASA/JPL-Caltech, Black Holes: Monsters in Space Artist Concept Download, 2013
Embark on 2017: A Search Odyssey in NASA's huge image database here.
summerisle
The rain, it raineth every day
A memorial on the moon to every astronaut who has died in the pursuit of space exploration.
More here :
http://www.check-six.com/lib/Fallen_Astros.htm
More here :
http://www.check-six.com/lib/Fallen_Astros.htm
SpaceX's launch the other day of NROL-76.
Good shots from the tracking camera of the 1st stage separation, flip and boost back.
Then on landing some excellent shots up close and high res of the landing burn. Spectacular stuff!!
Video should play just prior to MECO and stage separation.
19:09 is the entry burn, which looks fantastic!
20:00 for just prior to the landing burn
20:34 for a couple of seconds prior to the awesome shot of that burn in progress!!
Good shots from the tracking camera of the 1st stage separation, flip and boost back.
Then on landing some excellent shots up close and high res of the landing burn. Spectacular stuff!!
Video should play just prior to MECO and stage separation.
19:09 is the entry burn, which looks fantastic!
20:00 for just prior to the landing burn
20:34 for a couple of seconds prior to the awesome shot of that burn in progress!!
Last edited:
summerisle
The rain, it raineth every day
Some great photographs of Saturn taken by Juno this month. Contrast and colour enhanced.
Jupiter's south pole.
Stormy weather.
Jupiter's cloudtops seen from 7,800 miles away.
Jupiter's 'little red spot', the size of Earth.
Jupiter's ice and dust rings, with Orion in the background.
Jupiter's south pole.
Stormy weather.
Jupiter's cloudtops seen from 7,800 miles away.
Jupiter's 'little red spot', the size of Earth.
Jupiter's ice and dust rings, with Orion in the background.
Jupiter just to the right of the moon tonight. Also in a few minutes the ISS will be crossing the sky. Probably about 1033 in Liverpool.
NASA's new concept vehicle for bimblin' about on Mars...
Phwoar!!!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/40232443
Phwoar!!!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/40232443
- Status