An upcoming NASA mission could find that there are more rogue planets planets that float in space without orbiting a sun than there are stars in the Milky Way, a new study theorizes.

This gives us a window into these worlds that we would otherwise not have, said Samson Johnson, an astronomy graduate student at The Ohio State University and lead author of the study. Imagine our little rocky planet just floating freely in space thats what this mission will help us find.

The study was published today, Friday, Aug. 21, in The Astronomical Journal.

The study calculated that NASAs upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope could find hundreds of rogue planets in the Milky Way. Identifying those planets, Johnson said, will help scientists infer the total number of rogue planets in our galaxy. Rogue, or free-floating, planets are isolated objects that have masses similar to that of planets. The origin of such objects is unknown, but one possibility is they were previously bound to a host star.

The universe could be teeming with rogue planets and we wouldnt even know it, said Scott Gaudi, a professor of astronomy and distinguished university scholar at Ohio State and a co-author of the paper. We would never find out without undertaking a thorough, space-based microlensing survey like Roman is going to do.

The Roman telescope, named for NASAs first chief astronomer who was also known as the mother of the Hubble telescope, will attempt to build the first census of rogue planets, which could, Johnson said, help scientists understand how those planets form. Roman will also have other objectives, including searching for planets that do orbit stars in our galaxy.

That process is not well-understood, though astronomers know that it is messy. Rogue planets could form in the gaseous disks around young stars, similar to those planets still bound to their host stars. After formation, they could later be ejected through interactions with other planets in the system, or even fly-by events by other stars.

Or they could form when dust and gas swirl together, similar to the way stars form.

The Roman telescope, Johnson said, is designed not only to locate free-floating planets in the Milky Way, but to test the theories and models that predict how these planets formed.

Johnsons study found that this mission is likely to be 10 times more sensitive to these objects than existing efforts, which for now are based on telescopes tethered to the Earths surface. It will focus on planets in the Milky Way, between our sun and the center of our galaxy, covering some 24,000 light years.

There have been several rogue planets discovered, but to actually get a complete picture, our best bet is something like Roman, he said. This is a totally new frontier.

Rogue planets have historically been difficult to detect. Astronomers discovered planets outside Earths solar system in the 1990s. Those planets, called exoplanets, range from extremely hot balls of gas to rocky, dusty worlds. Many of them circle their own stars, the way Earth circles the sun.

But it is likely that a number of them do not. And though astronomers have theories about how rogue planets form, no mission has studied those worlds in the detail that Roman will.

The mission, which is scheduled to launch in the next five years, will search for rogue planets using a technique called gravitational microlensing. That technique relies on the gravity of stars and planets to bend and magnify the light coming from stars that pass behind them from the telescopes viewpoint.

This microlensing effect is connected to Albert Einsteins Theory of General Relativity and allows a telescope to find planets thousands of light-years away from Earthmuch farther than other planet-detecting techniques.

But because microlensing works only when the gravity of a planet or star bends and magnifies the light from another star, the effect from any given planet or star is only visible for a short time once every few million years. And because rogue planets are situated in space on their own, without a nearby star, the telescope must be highly sensitive in order to detect that magnification.

The study published today estimates that this mission will be able to identify rogue planets that are the mass of Mars or larger. Mars is the second-smallest planet in our solar system and is just a little bigger than half the size of Earth.

Johnson said these planets are not likely to support life. They would probably be extremely cold, because they have no star, he said. (Other research missions involving Ohio State astronomers will search for exoplanets that could host life.)

But studying them will help scientists understand more about how all planets form, he said.

If we find a lot of low-mass rogue planets, well know that as stars form planets, theyre probably ejecting a bunch of other stuff out into the galaxy, he said. This helps us get a handle on the formation pathway of planets in general.

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Rogue planets could outnumber the stars - The Ohio State University News

Posted on Aug 22, 2020 in Astronomy, Science

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere, said Carl Sagan. So, imagine a galaxy filled with tens of millions of black holes and dark, lifeless island worlds rogue, free-floating planets unmoored from the gravity and the life-giving light of an alien star. It is now is becoming increasingly apparent that the Milky Way may be just such a galaxy. An upcoming NASA mission could find that there are more rogue planetsplanets that float in space without orbiting a sunthan there are stars in the Milky Way, a new study theorizes.

This gives us a window into these worlds that we would otherwise not have, said Samson Johnson, at The Ohio State University and lead author of the study. Imagine our little rocky planet just floating freely in spacethats what this mission will help us find.

The Roman Telescope

The study calculated that NASAs upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope could find hundreds of rogue planets in the Milky Way. Identifying those planets, Johnson said, will help scientists infer the total number of rogue planets in our galaxy. Rogue, or free-floating, planets are isolated objects that have masses similar to that of planets. The origin of such objects is unknown, but one possibility is they were previously bound to a host star.

The Invisible Galaxy 100 Million Black Holes Lurking in the Milky Way

The universe could be teeming with rogue planets and we wouldnt even know it, said Scott Gaudi, a professor of astronomy and distinguished university scholar at Ohio State and a co-author of the paper. We would never find out without undertaking a thorough, space-based microlensing survey like Roman is going to do.

The Roman telescope, named for NASAs first chief astronomer who was also known as the mother of the Hubble telescope, will attempt to build the first census of rogue planets, which could, Johnson said, help scientists understand how those planets form. Roman will also have other objectives, including searching for planets that do orbit stars in our galaxy.

That process is not well-understood, though astronomers know that it is messy. Rogue planets could form in the gaseous disks around young stars, similar to those planets still bound to their host stars. After formation, they could later be ejected through interactions with other planets in the system, or even fly-by events by other stars. Or they could form when dust and gas swirl together, similar to the way stars form.

The Roman telescope, Johnson said, is designed not only to locate free-floating planets in the Milky Way, but to test the theories and models that predict how these planets formed.

Search Will Span 24,000 Light Years of the Milky Way

Johnsons study found that this mission is likely to be 10 times more sensitive to these objects than existing efforts, which for now are based on telescopes tethered to the Earths surface. It will focus on planets in the Milky Way, between our sun and the center of our galaxy, covering some 24,000 light years.

There have been several rogue planets discovered, but to actually get a complete picture, our best bet is something like Roman, he said. This is a totally new frontier.

The mission, which is scheduled to launch in the next five years, will search for rogue planets using a technique called gravitational microlensing. That technique relies on the gravity of stars and planets to bend and magnify the light coming from stars that pass behind them from the telescopes viewpoint.

This illustration shows a rogue planet drifting through the galaxy alone. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (Caltech-IPAC)

Gravitational Microlensing Einsteins General Relativity

This microlensing effect is connected to Albert Einsteins Theory of General Relativity and allows a telescope to find planets thousands of light-years away from Earthmuch farther than other planet-detecting techniques. Because microlensing works only when the gravity of a planet or star bends and magnifies the light from another star, the effect from any given planet or star is only visible for a short time once every few million years. And because rogue planets are situated in space on their own, without a nearby star, the telescope must be highly sensitive in order to detect that magnification.

The study estimates that this mission will be able to identify rogue planets that are the mass of Mars or larger. Mars is the second-smallest planet in our solar system and is just a little bigger than half the size of Earth.

Johnson said these planets are not likely to support life. They would probably be extremely cold, because they have no star, he said. (Other research missions involving Ohio State astronomers will search for exoplanets that could host life.) Studying them will help scientists understand more about how all planets form, he said.

If we find a lot of low-mass rogue planets, well know that as stars form planets, theyre probably ejecting a bunch of other stuff out into the galaxy, he said. This helps us get a handle on the formation pathway of planets in general. As many as six billion Earth-like planets in our galaxy, according to new estimates

Source: Samson A. Johnson et al. Predictions of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Galactic Exoplanet Survey. II. Free-floating Planet Detection Rates, The Astronomical Journal (2020). DOI: 10.3847/1538-3881/aba75b , iopscience.iop.org/article/10. 847/1538-3881/aba75b

The Daily Galaxy, Sam Cabot, via The Ohio State University

Image credits: NASA

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Island WorldsA Totally New Frontier of Exoplanets - The Daily Galaxy --Great Discoveries Channel

At the virtual Levy Lecture held on Aug. 4, the crowd was spellbound by a presentation, Through the Eyes of Hubble, by Michelle Nichols, Director of Public Observing at the Adler Planetarium. Ms. Nichols used an array of slides to show the majesty and mystery of the solar system, and demonstrated why Hubble has been so monumentally important to NASA and the general scientific community around the world.

Offering first a foundation of common terminology of such things as solar system, galaxy, universe, and nebula, Ms. Nichols then presented some historical context. She showed a photo of a professorial-looking man in a suit. This man, Lyman Spitzer, Jr. was the astrophysicist who in 1946 conceived of the idea of putting a telescope into space.

Fast forward a few decades The Hubble telescope and the Space Shuttle were being developed and built at the very same time. Ms. Nichols photographs of the Hubble telescopes mirror, which is not even 10 feet in diameter. It was designed to fit in the payload bay of the Shuttle, and on April 24, 1990 the Hubble telescope hitched a ride on Discovery as it blasted into space.

The very next day, April 25, the Discovery crew used the robotic arm in the payload bay to release the telescope into orbit: Mission accomplished sort of. The first pictures coming back from Hubble were pretty good, but they were not as sharp as the scientists expected. Reviewing all the preliminary work done before launch, NASA determined that when the mirrors were ground, one of the calibration instruments was not correct. The error was 1/50th the size of a human hair sSo small, and yet this error prevented the pictures from being precise. The images coming back from Hubble were still usable, but NASA needed to develop a plan to fix the mirror.

NASA got to work and developed two instruments that would fix the error. In 1993, as part of the mission for the Shuttle Endeavor, astronauts installed COSTAR (Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement), an instrument that would correct the mirrors flaw. The second instrument was an updated version of the Wide Field Planetary Camera. The instruments contained their own optics to correct the flaw without having to replace the existing mirror.

Both instruments worked perfectly; the error was corrected. In 2009, Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 was replaced by Wide Field Planetary Camera 3.Ms. Nichols shared photos comparing the differences of photographs taken by Hubble in various years: the 1990 Hubble, the 1993 Hubble, and the Hubble with a new camera. The advances in technology have delivered astounding images that defy imagination.

Ms. Nichols showed photos of stars being born, of stars dying and views of the universe with space dust filtered out. The images are stunning, unusual, and other-worldly.

Ms. Nichols enthusiasm and passion for astronomy comes through with every slide. She loves astronomy and loves to share it with anyone who cares to listen. The audience of 350+ was riveted and most stayed for the question and answer period that followed the last slide.

Anne Matsumoto, who described herself as a novice, said, Great presentation. Michelle is so knowledgeable and shares her info in a way that a novice viewer like myself finds valuable and fascinating. Thanks so much.

The presentation is available on YouTube. The Hubble website is another good source for looking at the majesty of outer space.

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Homage to Hubble is Out of This World - Evanston RoundTable

What does it resemble when galaxies impact? The Hubble Telescope caught a one of a kind sight as two systems are combining.

NASA says the world, called NGC 1614, is around 200 million light-years from Earth and is the aftereffect of a galactic merger which has made an exceptional appearance.

They call it eccentrically shaped and ablaze with activity in an announcement on NASAs site. It sits in the star grouping of Eridanus.

The result of the cosmic collision is a progression of interstellar gas from the littler cosmic system into the core of the bigger one, resulting in a burst of star formation that started in the core and has slowly spread outward through the galaxy, NASA says.

Astronomers state NGC 1614 is one of the most luminous items in the nearby universe.

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The two galaxies orbited together in a cosmic collision captured by Hubble - US Times Now

The Hubble photo shows rung-like features that could be easily mistaken for a ladder or a spider web.

But the Red Rectangle is neither of those and is instead a large nebula or cloud of gas ejected by a dying star.

NASA said: "Hubble's sharp picture shows that the Red Rectangle is not really rectangular, but has an overall X-shaped structure, which astronomers interpret as arising from outflows of gas and dust from the star in the centre.

"The outflows are ejected from the star in two opposing directions, producing a shape like two ice-cream cones touching at their tips.

"Also remarkable are straight features that appear like rungs on a ladder, making the Red Rectangle look similar to a spider web, a shape unlike that of any other known nebula in the sky"

READ MORE:Two schoolgirls warn NASA after 'discovering NEO'

The nebula is officially known as HD 44179 and its nickname was coined in 1973 by astronomers Martin Cohen and Mike Merrill.

The star at the centre of the nebula is believed to have once resembled our Sun.

But it is nearing the end of its life and is shedding layers of stellar material out into space.

The star most likely began to shed its material about 14,000 years ago.

And in a few thousand years, the star will shrink and will become hotter, releasing in the process vast amounts of ultraviolet radiation.

The radiation will flood the surrounding nebula and it give it a fluorescent property.

The result of this process is something astronomers refer to as a planetary nebula.

NASA said: "At the present time, however, the star is still so cool that atoms in the surrounding gas do not glow, and the surrounding dust particles can only be seen because they are reflecting the starlight from the central star.

"In addition, there are molecules mixed in with the dust, which emit light in the red portion of the spectrum.

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"Astronomers are not yet certain which types of molecules are producing the red colour that is so striking in the Red Rectangle, but suspect that they are hydrocarbons that form in the cool outflow from the central star."

Thanks to the power of the Hubble telescopes, astronomers have been able to detect a dark band crossing the central star.

The band is the shadow cast by a dense disk of dust that surrounds the dying star.

The star itself cannot be directly seen because of this dusty barrier.

Instead, astronomers can see the star's light streaming perpendicularly from the star.

The light can then be seen when it is scattered by the dust towards us.

NASA said: "Astronomers found that the star in the centre is actually a close pair of stars that orbit each other with a period of about 10-and-a-half months.

"Interactions between these stars have probably caused the ejection of the thick dust disk that obscures our view of the binary."

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NASA news: Hubble telescope snaps a breathtaking pic of the Red Rectangle - What is it? - Daily Express

We consider our universe to be limitless. Over the decades, people have explored that infinity to discover what is out there, even who is out there. But what about the space closest to us? The low Earth orbit is overcrowded by satellites, space junk, and the leftover remnants of space exploration. These leftover pieces affect how scientists and people experience space.

Episode aired Friday, Aug. 7th & Wednesday, Aug. 12th, 2020

Orbital debris, also known as space junk, are objects left in space that no longer function as intended. Objects in orbit will eventually return to the ground but are currently launching faster than they are re-entering. Many objects stay in orbit for decades. NASA estimates the amount of orbital debris in the low Earth orbit exceeds over 100 million pieces, ranging from one millimeter to over ten centimeters. This is enough for around one third of Americans to have their own piece of space junk.

The low Earth orbit also holds many objects currently in use, like satellites for weather and communications, the Hubble Telescope, and the International Space Station. However, even these essential devices contribute to overcrowding. When stargazing or photographing the night sky, it is hard not to see the bright streak of a satellite in view.

The oldest man-made object still in orbit is Vanguard 1. Launched in 1958, it was the fourth satellite launched into space. On Earth, after 50 years even trash becomes a part of an areas historical landscape. Do we leave these random remnants of past space projects in orbit to commemorate the history of human space exploration?

In order to preserve the beauty of our night sky, we must balance objects that provide value to humanity with decluttering our orbit.

This balance may not be hard to strike. We can sustain the overcrowding of the low Earth orbit by removing five of the highest risk objects each year, both small pieces that risk collision and large pieces that affect long-term accumulation. Scientists are currently working on the best way to remove items, however, there is no overarching regulatory body to create concrete removal plans.

We consider space to be limitless, but just like any other resource, it does have limits. We need to learn how to balance this resource. Not just for the humans of right now, but also those of the future. Will we look back in 30 years and wonder why no one tried to preserve it earlier?

Western Slope Skies is produced by members and friends of the Black Canyon Astronomical Society. This episode was written and recorded by Megan Spencer from Devils Tower National Monument.

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Western Slope Skies - The Limits of Space | KVNF Public Radio - KVNF Public Radio

The South Pole Telescope at the US Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, with a bright aurora in July 2020. Credit: Geoff Chen

Stars viewed from a place called Dome A in Antarctica can finally be seen without their twinkle which means in much greater detail.

Have you ever wondered why stars twinkle? Its because turbulence in the Earths atmosphere makes light emitted from the star wobble as it completes its lightyears-long journey to the lenses in our eyes and telescopes.

But now scientists from international research institutions including UNSW Sydney have found the best place on Earth where with the help of technology we can view distant stars as they really appear, without the distorting twinkle.

And it happens to be situated due south of Australias Davis Station in Antarctica, on a plateau 4000 meters above sea-level called Dome A.

A map of Antarctica showing Dome A, which is 900km away from the South Pole. Credit: Xiaoping Pang and Shiyun Wang, Chinese Antarctic Center of Surveying and Mapping

In research published today in the journal Nature, scientists showed that the conditions at the plateau lend themselves perfectly to viewing stars from Earth with greatly reduced interference from atmospheric turbulence.

According to UNSW Sciences Professor Michael Ashley, who was part of Chinese-led research team of scientists that designed, built, and set up a small telescope system at Dome A, the findings represent a fantastic opportunity to obtain better observations of the universe from ground-based telescopes.

After a decade of indirect evidence and theoretical reasoning, we finally have direct observational proof of the extraordinarily good conditions at Dome A, says Prof Ashley, an astronomer with UNSWs School of Physics.

Dome A is the highest point in the central plateau region of Antarctica, and the atmosphere is extremely stable here, much more so than anywhere else on Earth. The result is that the twinkling of the stars is greatly reduced, and the star images are much sharper and brighter.

The KunLun Differential Image Motion Monitors atop the 8-meter high tower. Credit: Zhaohui Shang

The telescope that was installed at Dome A the KunLun Differential Image Motion Monitor was 25cm in aperture and placed on an eight-meter platform. The height of the platform was crucial because it raised the telescope above the steep temperature gradients near the ice.

As Prof Ashley explains, turbulent eddies build-up when wind moves across a changing topography such as mountains, hills, and valleys.

This causes the atmospheric turbulence which bends the starlight around so by the time it hits the ground, its all over the place and you get these blurry images.

But, he says, Dome A in Antarctica is a plateau that is almost dead flat for many hundreds of kilometers in every direction, making its atmosphere very stable. Its also at an altitude of more than 4000 meters much higher than Mount Kosciuszko.

The telescopes were placed on an 8-meter tower which allowed undistorted views of stars when the atmosphere boundary layers dropped to lower than this height about a third of the time. Credit: Zhaohui Shang

There is this very slow wind that blows across the plateau which is so smooth that it doesnt generate much turbulence, Prof Ashley says.

What little turbulence there is we see restricted to a very low boundary layer the area between the ice and the rest of the atmosphere.

We measured the boundary layer thickness at Dome A using a radar technique about a decade ago and its about 14 meters, on average, but it fluctuates it goes down to almost nothing, and it goes up to maybe 30 meters.

The team found that by setting up their telescope on an 8-meter platform, it protruded past the boundary layer about a third of the time. Last year between April 11 and August 4 the telescope took photos every minute, and obtained 45,930 images taken when the boundary layer was lower than the 8-meter platform, it reported in Nature.

Prof Ashley says it was very challenging to finally obtain the readings and images that confirmed Dome A to be the premier location on earth to see into the depths of the cosmos.

It was very difficult because the observations have to be made in mid-winter with no humans present. UNSW played a crucial role in designing and building the infrastructure that was used the power supply system, computers, satellite communications which was managed by remote control.

But if the atmosphere plays such havoc with our instruments on Earth, wouldnt a satellite such as the Hubble Telescope, launched back in 1990 be ideal for such a job?

Prof Ashley says there are a couple of good reasons why a ground telescope set up at Dome A would be the better option. Beyond the obvious savings in dollars, there are also savings in time.

Satellites are a lot more expensive, Prof Ashley says, were talking maybe factors of 10 to 100 times the cost. But another advantage of making Earth-based observations is you can always add the latest technology to your telescope on the ground. Whereas in space, everything is delayed. And you cant easily use a lot of modern integrated circuits because theyre not radiation hardened. So you end up with space lagging the technology on the ground by 10 years or more.

The telescopes and towers were designed and built by Chinese researchers who led the study. Credit: Zhaohui Shang

Another advantage of using a telescope at Dome A rather than anywhere else on the planet is that smaller and fainter stars are suddenly much more observable thanks to the better resolution.

Basically this means that for a given size telescope, youre going to get a lot better images at Dome A. So rather than build a big telescope on a non-Antarctic site, you could build a smaller one and get the same performance, so its cheaper.

There is also a strategic advantage in the location of Dome A which is 900km from the South Pole over other areas on Earth at more hospitable latitudes. Being so far from the equator, polar nights of 24 hours or more of darkness in mid-winter open up a much wider window to view stars.

If you were to observe a star in say, Sydney, from when it rises to when it sets, you can only observe it for maybe eight hours a night, Prof Ashley says.

The South Pole Telescope at the US Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, with a bright aurora in July 2020. Credit: Geoff Chen

Whereas in wintertime at Dome A you can observe a star continuously. And for some projects like searching for planets around other stars, the fact that you can observe them continuously means you can find planets around them much more effectively.

Looking ahead, Prof Ashley says he would like to continue the research with UNSWs Chinese partners, and notes that China has an impressive and growing record in Antarctic scientific research. But he wonders whether Australia recognizes the great potential that Dome A represents in space research.

Dome A is a superb site for astronomical observations, and we should make every effort to participate in an international project to put a large telescope there to take advantage of the conditions.

With Antarctica being so close to Australia, it is a tremendous opportunity, he says.

Reference: Night-time measurements of astronomical seeing at Dome A in Antarctica by Bin Ma, Zhaohui Shang, Yi Hu, Keliang Hu, Yongjiang Wang, Xu Yang, Michael C. B. Ashley, Paul Hickson & Peng Jiang, 29 July 2020, Nature.DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2489-0

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Best Place on Earth to See Stars Where They Can Finally Be Seen Without Their Twinkle - SciTechDaily

Hubble captured the image on July 4, when the giant planet was 839 million miles from Earth, according to a statement from NASA released Thursday.

It shows what summertime is like in Saturn's northern hemisphere, which is pointed toward Earth, and a slight reddish haze can be seen over the area.

Scientists say this may be the result of heating due to increased sunlight, which could affect circulation or the ice content of the atmosphere.

Another possibility is that more sunlight leads to changes in how much photochemical haze is produced.

"It's amazing that even over a few years, we're seeing seasonal changes on Saturn," said lead investigator Amy Simon of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

Look closely at the photo and you'll notice a blue hue at the south pole, which is due to changes in the planet's winter atmosphere.

You can also see two of Saturn's moons in the image: Mimas to the right, and Enceladus at the bottom.

The image is part of a project named Outer Planets Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL), which aims to improve our understanding of atmospheric dynamics and evolution on gas giant planets such as Saturn and Jupiter.

OPAL scientists are looking into weather patterns and storms on Saturn, with various small atmospheric storms noted in this photo.

The picture is also sharp enough to show how the color of certain bands changes slightly each year. Saturn is largely yellow-brown in color due to the fact that the atmosphere is mostly hydrogen and helium with traces of ammonia, methane, water vapor and hydrocarbons.

You can also see Saturn's famous rings in incredible detail.

They consist mostly of pieces of ice, but no one really understands how and when they formed.

Many scientists believe they are more than 4 billion years old, the same age as Saturn itself, but others say they only came into being a few hundred million years ago, when dinosaurs walked the Earth.

In April, Hubble celebrated 30 years in space, during which time its images have contributed to a raft of exciting discoveries.

Hubble has enabled astronomers around the world to study black holes, mysterious dark energy, distant galaxies and galactic mergers.

It has observed planets outside of our solar system and where they form around stars, star formation and death, and it's even spotted previously unknown moons around Pluto.

Not bad for a telescope that was only designed to last 15 years.

CNN's Ashley Strickland contributed to this article.

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Hubble telescope captures stunningly clear image of summertime on Saturn - CNN

A new study on globular clusters, a group of stars orbiting a core, support theories that the Universe came to be over 13 billion years ago.

(Photo : Photo by NASA/Getty Images)392007 01: This image recorded by the Hubble telescope on July 10, 2001 shows two clusters of stars, called NGC 1850, located in a neighboring galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud.

The study, submitted to the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, inquired about the clusters in an attempt to determine the age of the Universe. Titled "Inferring the Age of the Universe with Globular Clusters," the research team was led by David Valcin from the Institute of Cosmos Sciences at the University of Barcelona (ICCUB) in Spain.

The multinational team included members from France's Sorbonne Universite and the US' Johns Hopkins University , in addition to the Spanish researchers from ICCUB and the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies. Representatives from the Flatiron Institute Center for Computational Astrophysics are also involved in the study.

In the study, researchers present their estimate for 68 galactic globular clusters. They utilized the distribution of the stars in each cluster through the full color-magnitude diagram. Among the criteria they used include distance, reddening, and metallicity.

They were able to examine the clusters through the Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Survey (ACS). Data from the stars in each cluster were modeled through using a modified version of isochrones.

RELATED:Research Team Discovers Origin Of Globular Clusters Around Giant Galaxies

Prior research on estimating the age of these globular clusters were also used, with their derived measurements agreeing with previously-published reports on the matter. The ICCUB-led research team, however, used the color-magnitude diagram to arrive at the age estimates. In comparison, previous estimates are taken through GAIA, which uses main-sequence dwarf stars instead. The team also used the Mesa Isochrones and Stellar Tracks (MIST) stellar model and the Dartmouth Stellar Evolution Database (DSED).

After evaluating the 68 globular clusters, they arrived at an age estimate of 13.35 billion years. The result they presented stands at a 68% confidence level, and an uncertainty range of 0.16 billion years for statistical uncertainty and 0.5 billion years for systematic. From the data gathered, the oldest globular clusters are those with lower metallicity.

The study used the age of the oldest stars to determine a baseline for determining the age of the Universe. The result supports previously-published reports from the Planck mission on Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) - background radiation all across the universe that is believed to have existed since The Big Bang.

RELATED: Humanity Has Finally Been Able to Observe the Cosmic Web

Furthermore, the Planck estimate on the age of the universe follows the Lambda - Cold Dark Matter (Lambda-CDM) cosmological model. The agreement between the globular cluster aging and the Planck estimate both narrow down the possible age of the Universe without building entirely on theoretical models.

However, the researchers recognize the need to identify discrepancies between different attempts to define the age of the Universe. David Valcin from the ICCUB said: "In the on-going uncertainty about the expansion of the Universe, it is important to collect more data which interpretation is as cosmology-independent as possible, to understand the origin of the discrepancy." He added that while globular clusters do not directly pinpoint the rate of expansion, it provides an idea about the age of the Universe.

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A Study on Globular Clusters Date the Universe at 13.35 Billion Years Old - Science Times

NASAs Hubble Space Telescope has beamed back an amazing photo showing summertime on Saturn.

Hubble captured the image on July 4, when the giant planet was 839 million miles from Earth, according to a statement from NASA released Thursday.

It shows what summertime is like in Saturns northern hemisphere, which is pointed toward Earth, and a slight reddish haze can be seen over the area.

Scientists say this may be the result of heating due to increased sunlight, which could affect circulation or the ice content of the atmosphere.

Another possibility is that more sunlight leads to changes in how much photochemical haze is produced.

Its amazing that even over a few years, were seeing seasonal changes on Saturn, said lead investigator Amy Simon of NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center.

Look closely at the photo and youll notice a blue hue at the south pole, which is due to changes in the planets winter atmosphere.

You can also see two of Saturns moons in the image: Mimas to the right, and Enceladus at the bottom.

The image is part of a project named Outer Planets Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL), which aims to improve our understanding of atmospheric dynamics and evolution on gas giant planets such as Saturn and Jupiter.

OPAL scientists are looking into weather patterns and storms on Saturn, with various small atmospheric storms noted in this photo.

The picture is also sharp enough to show how the color of certain bands changes slightly each year. Saturn is largely yellow-brown in color due to the fact that the atmosphere is mostly hydrogen and helium with traces of ammonia, methane, water vapor and hydrocarbons.

You can also see Saturns famous rings in incredible detail.

They consist mostly of pieces of ice, but no one really understands how and when they formed.

Many scientists believe they are more than 4 billion years old, the same age as Saturn itself, but others say they only came into being a few hundred million years ago, when dinosaurs walked the Earth.

In April, Hubble celebrated 30 years in space, during which time its images have contributed to a raft of exciting discoveries.

Hubble has enabled astronomers around the world to study black holes, mysterious dark energy, distant galaxies and galactic mergers.

It has observed planets outside of our solar system and where they form around stars, star formation and death, and its even spotted previously unknown moons around Pluto.

Not bad for a telescope that was only designed to last 15 years.

View original post here:

Clear image of summertime on Saturn captured by Hubble telescope - KTLA

by: MARCIA DUNN, AP Aerospace Writer

In this 2017 photo made available by NASA, technicians lift the mirror assembly of the James Webb Space Telescope using a crane inside a clean room at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. On Thursday, July 16, 2020, officials announced that the telescope is now scheduled to launch on Oct. 31, 2021. The previous target date was March 2021. (Desiree Stover/NASA via AP)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) The launch of NASAs successor to the Hubble Space Telescope faces seven more months of delay, this time because of the pandemic and technical issues.

Officials announced Thursday that the James Webb Space Telescope the space agencys top science priority is now scheduled to launch on Oct. 31, 2021. The previous target date was March 2021.

This next-generation observatory designed to peer farther into space and further back into time than any other spacecraft originally was supposed to fly more than a decade ago. The previous two-year-plus delay, announced in 2018, was due to worker error and hardware problems. Until COVID-19 struck, everything was finally going well, officials said.

Mission success is critical, but team safety is our highest priority, said NASA Associate Administrator Steve Jurczyk.

NASA stressed that the costs stemming from the latest postponement will not exceed the $8.8 billion spending cap for development set by Congress. Budget reserves set aside two years ago during the last major assessment will cover any additional expenses, said Thomas Zurbuchen, the space agencys science mission chief.

Nearly half the delay, about three months, is attributed to COVID-19. The outbreak has slowed work on the telescope by prime contractor Northrop Grumman in Southern California.

Another four months of padding was needed in the schedule to meet the new launch date, officials said, and lessons learned in spacecraft testing made clear just how much more time was needed. A critical acoustic and vibration test, for instance, is planned on the fully assembled telescope next month. Technicians also want to reopen and refold Webbs massive sun shield the size of a tennis court once more. The sun shield is needed to keep the infrared telescope cold once in space.

NASA plans to ship Webb next summer to its European launch site in French Guiana Europes contribution to the mission.

Of course, its hard to predict a year plus from now how things will be here and there, said program director Gregory Robinson.

Set to soar on an European Ariane rocket, Webb is destined for a point 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Earth, well beyond astronauts reach. The orbiting Hubble, by contrast, was repeatedly serviced by shuttle astronauts following its 1990 launch. Its expected to continue working into the 2030s, officials said Thursday.

NASA wants an overlap in operations between Hubble and Webb. The new telescope, once launched, will look at many of the same things Hubble has and will.

For me, it will be seeing old friends with completely new eyes, said program scientist Eric Smith.

Continued here:

NASAs Hubble telescope successor delayed again by virus, other issues - WSPA 7News

Tewksbury Public Library

Library Notes (Week of July 19)

Headline: Library To Host Virtual Talks On Outer Space, July 21-23

Event Registration

Please register online using our Calendar of Events at http://www.tewksburypl.org or by calling 978- 640-4490. We strongly recommend registration for programs that are marked *RR. Thank you to the Friends of the Library for generously sponsoring our programs.

Adult Events

TEWKSBURY JOB SEEKERS NETWORK Jump Start Your Job Search ON ZOOM (*RR)

Are you spending more time avoiding than advancing your job search? If so, you are not alone. In this presentation, you will learn ten simple but effective strategies to get you on track and on the path to your next job. Topics addressed include: the importance of planning ahead; dealing with distractions; conquering procrastination and avoidance; creating structures where there are none; and finding accountability. Job hunting is a full-time job. It requires a solid plan and effective strategies. Led by Linda King, a certified life coach and author of "Jump-Start That Job Search." King has created and facilitated workshops for job seekers at Massachusetts career centers and is a popular speaker at employment networking groups. Sponsored by the Friends of the Library.

The Truth About Roswell ON ZOOM (*RR)

Tuesday, July 21, 7pm

It's been over 70 years since the Roswell Daily Record first blared the viral headline "RAAF Captures Flying Saucer On Ranch in Roswell Region" on July 8th, 1947. Join five-time Boston/New England Emmy Award-winning folklorist John Horrigan as he presents a new chronology of the events that lead to speculation of an alleged UFO crash. John will reveal previously undisclosed details of the fantastic tale along with refuted testimonies, culled from his own exploration trips to the region in 1995, 1996 and 1997. John Horrigan is the host and co-creator of "The Folklorist" television series, which offers a captivating look at some of the lesser-known occurrences in history. John has won five Boston/New England Emmy Awards for his role on the show. He is also a prolific professional sports announcer, narrator, historical researcher and lecturer who has performed in over 2,500 venues across North America. Sponsored by the Friends of the Library and the Tewksbury Cultural Council, a local agency, which is supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency.

Explore The Solar System with NASA ON ZOOM (*RR)

Wednesday, July 22, 10:30am

Amanda Thompson, a NASA Ambassador, will discuss recent discoveries from two of NASA's biggest missions -- the Curiosity rover (Mars) and the New Horizons spacecraft (Pluto). Thompson will talk about the challenges of venturing into deep space and the successes we've been able to celebrate in this popular multimedia presentation. Amanda Thompson is a part of the Solar System Ambassador program through NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She is also a high school Earth Science teacher and a lover of all things space. Sponsored by the Friends of the Library and the Tewksbury Cultural Council, a local agency, which is supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency.

Hubble Scape Telescope & Astronomy ON ZOOM (*RR)

Thursday, July 23, 7pm

Robert A. Gonsalves, Emeritus Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Tufts University, will discuss the history of the telescope . Learn about Galileo's two-lens telescope; Newton's curved mirror design; earth-bound telescopes which remove the star-twinkling distortion of the earth's atmosphere; the Hubble Space Telescope; and the James Webb Space telescope. See some breathtaking photos of the universe as seen through the eyes of the Hubble telescope. Robert Gonsalves, Ph.D., is a nationally renowned expert in the field of image processing. In 1990, Gonsalves helped NASA fix the Hubble Telescope by calculating a prescription to correct an optics flaw. He more recently served as an optics advisor to NASA for the James Webb Space Telescope. Sponsored by the Friends of the Library and the Tewksbury Cultural Council, a local agency, which is supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency.

Teen Events

Escape Room ON ZOOM (*RR)

Wednesday, July 22, 6pm

Join Puzzle Break Newton for "The Grimm Escape", a virtual escape room. Work with your team to find clues and solve the puzzles before time runs out! This event is for grades 6-12. This is an online event via Zoom. An invite will be sent at least an hour prior to the start of the program to the email given at registration. Please do not use a school email address. Be sure to check your clutter/junk/spam boxes if the invite does not appear in your inbox. Please have Zoom downloaded prior to the start of the event. This event will start promptly at 6 pm.

Children's Events

Summer Sprouts Story Time ON FACEBOOK

Monday, July 20, 10:30am

Story time for infants and toddlers with Miss Heather! Join her for stories, songs, movement and more! This program will run live on the library's Facebook page (www.facebook.com/TewksburyLib).

Pajamarama Story Time on FACEBOOK

Monday, July 20, 7pm

Join us live on our Facebook page for Pajamarama Storytime! Have early literacy fun with stories, songs, movement and more at this early evening story time. Pajamas are optional but encouraged. This program will run live on the library's Facebook page (www.facebook.com/TewksburyLib).

Story Time ON FACEBOOK

Tuesday, July 21, 11am

Join Miss Kat for songs, movement, and a story or two! This program will run live on the library's Facebook page (www.facebook.com/TewksburyLib).

Summer Science: Pretty Pennies ON FACEBOOK & YOUTUBE

Wednesday, July 22, 2pm

Miss Kat will be posting four cool science projects this summer that you can do at home! This week, we will be learning how metal can react with oxygen and change color, and we will be learning how to clean up old pennies to make them shine! View the video on the library's Facebook page (www.Facebook.com/TewksburyLib) and YouTube page (www.youtube.com/TewksburyLibrary). Materials and instructions will be outside the library at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, July 22. This week, we will be supplying oxidized (green) pennies. You will need to supply: white vinegar, ketchup, lemon juice, dish soap, and water.

Jungle Jim! ON ZOOM (*RR)

Thursday, July 23, 2pm

Jungle Jim has moved his high-energy balloon program online! We will be watching it on Zoom, and we hope that you can join us. Please register one attendee for the one device that will be streaming this program. You can have as many people as you like watching with you! If you can't make it or the program is full, don't worry! A recording of this performance will be available for two weeks. This program is funded by the Friends of the Tewksbury Public Library.

Virtual Maker Craft: Hang-Around Bats ON FACEBOOK & YOUTUBE

Friday, July 24, noon

Watch a video to show you how to make some really cool crafts! Every week we will post a new fun tutorial. Visit the library's Facebook page (www.facebook.com/TewksburyLib) or YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/TewksburyLibrary) to view the video. This week, we will be learning how to make Hang-Around Bats! Suggested materials: Cardboard tube; Paint or markers; Construction paper; Pipe cleaners; Scissors; Hole punch; Glue; and Googly eyes. Bags of supplies (tube, construction paper, pipe cleaners, eyes) will be outside the library on Friday, 7/24 at 10AM, and are first come, first served. If you aren't able to get a bag, don't worry! We try to use materials that you already have or can easily get.

This press release was produced by the Town of Tewksbury. The views expressed here are the author's own.

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Tewksbury Library To Host Virtual Talks On Outer Space From July 21-23 - Patch.com

Ships, airplanes and people have been known to disappear without explanation in an area of the North Atlantic Ocean known as the Bermuda Triangle.

Could it be extraterrestrials, some force pulling objects under the sea or a link to the fabled lost city of Atlantis? Or could it simply be bad weather, human error or heavy traffic in the region? No one knows for certain, but more than 50 ships and 20 planes have vanished since the mid-19th century. That's actually no more than in any other well-traveled area of the ocean, but still, the conspiracy theories persist.

If we look skyward we can explore a similar phenomenon dubbed the "Bermuda Triangle of space." This vast region above Earth has been known to wreak havoc on spacecraft that happen to enter the area. The craft aren't suddenly vanishing into thin air, but the disruption that's caused is nevertheless serious, and it poses problems for both equipment and astronauts.

The Bermuda Triangle of space lies above the South Atlantic, stretching from Chile to Zimbabwe, and sits at the point where the inner Van Allen radiation belt comes closest to Earth's surface. Earth has two Van Allen belts, which are two doughnut-shaped rings of charged particles that surround our planet, held in place by Earth's magnetic field. The inner part consists mainly of high-energy protons and the outer part is mainly electrons. Because the belts trap the particles that are shooting from the surface of the sun, they end up protecting the surface of the planet from harmful radiation.

At the location of the Bermuda Triangle of space, or the South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA) as it is formally known, Earth's magnetic field is particularly weak. This means the particles of solar cosmic rays are not being held back to the same extent as they are elsewhere above the planet. As a result, solar rays come as close as 200 kilometers (124 miles) to the Earth's surface. The more intense solar radiation results in an increased flux of energetic particles in this area.

"I'm not fond of the nickname, but in that region, the lower geomagnetic field intensity eventually results in a greater vulnerability of satellites to energetic particles, to the point that spacecraft damage could occur as they traverse the area," said John Tarduno, professor of geophysics at the University of Rochester. "The lower magnetic field intensity allows Earth's radiation belt technically the inner belt to come closer to Earth's surface," Tarduno told All About Space. "Thus satellites passing through this region will experience higher amounts of radiation to the point that damage could occur. Think about an electrical discharge or arc. With more incoming radiation, a satellite can become charged, and attendant arcs can result in serious damage."

Ordinarily the Van Allen belts stretch at an altitude of between 1,000 and 60,000 km (620 and 37,000 miles) above Earth's surface. The low altitude of the radiation hotspot, however, puts it within the orbit of certain satellites, which become bombarded by protons that exceed energies of 10 million electron volts (eV) at a rate of 3,000 "hits" per square centimeter per second.

This affects the spacecraft's onboard electronic systems, which hampers the operation of these objects and forces space agencies and other satellite operators to power them down. The same goes for the Hubble telescope, which passes through the SAA 10 times a day, spending a good 15% of its time there. Hubble is unable to collect astronomical data during these moments, which is not ideal, but necessary.

All About Space

(Image credit: Future)

This article is brought to you by All About Space.

All About Space magazine takes you on an awe-inspiring journey through our solar system and beyond, from the amazing technology and spacecraft that enables humanity to venture into orbit, to the complexities of space science.

Failing to take precautions by shutting the spacecraft down would likely lead to system failure something astronauts have already witnessed with computers on board craft that fly in the vicinity of the SAA. The only solution is to take protective measures. "Putting equipment into a 'safe mode' means operations that are more vulnerable to radiation are curtailed," Tarduno said.

The more complex electronics have become, the more potential there is for problems to emerge. Any satellites that use the microwave tracking system DORIS which stands for Doppler Orbitography and Radiopositioning Integrated by Satellite for example, see a resulting shift of the onboard oscillator frequency.

Related: 'Vigorous' magnetic field oddity spotted over South Atlantic

Damage caused by the SAA can also prove very costly, as evidenced when the area sent the Japanese satellite Hitomi crashing down to Earth. Hitomi, or ASTRO-H, was commissioned by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to study extremely energetic processes in the universe. Just over a month after its February 2016 launch, its operators lost contact and the satellite broke into several pieces. Experts later discovered that the problem was due to the spacecraft's inertial reference unit (a type of motion sensor) reporting a rotation of 21.7 degrees per hour when the craft was actually stable. When the attitude control system sought to counteract the non-existent spin, a succession of events caused it to break.

Had the operators been able to spot the error in real time, they could have corrected it. But it happened while the satellite was travelling through the SAA, so communication was lost. There is also a possibility that the large dose of radiation affected the electronics. In any case, the unfortunate saga cost JAXA about $273 million and three years of prepared studies.

Astronauts can be affected by the SAA too. Some have reported seeing odd white lights flashing before their eyes, and steps have been taken to protect astronauts on board the International Space Station (ISS). Strong shielding is in place over the most frequently occupied parts of the ISS, such as the gallery and the sleeping quarters to reduce the amount of radiation the astronauts are exposed to. Astronauts also wear dosimeters, which are devices that measure their personal exposure to ionising radiation in real time, and send out a warning if they reach dangerous levels.

But why is the magnetic field less strong above the South Atlantic? It's because of the shape of Earth, which is not completely round. The Earth bulges slightly in the middle, and the planet's magnetic dipole field is offset from its center by about 500 km (300 miles). Where the dip lies, the charged particles and cosmic rays are closer to Earth's surface and provide less insulation from interplanetary space. Even so, this magnetic bubble still prevents solar wind from reaching the surface.

The magnetic field is sustained by a dynamo process that results from the flowing liquid metal in Earth's outer core that generates electric currents. When the planet rotates on its axis, the turbulent movement of molten, charged material is what forms the magnetic field, and gives the planet the north and south poles at the surface. Yet the poles aren't permanent, as Earth's magnetic field is constantly shifting; growing stronger and weaker as it moves around. At the moment, the magnetic field is weakening in the area of the SAA, which means the area growing.

Tarduno and his colleagues have been studying how long the SAA has been active. In 2018, they found a unique source of geological evidence in Africa that helped shed light on what Earth's magnetic field looked like thousands of years ago. Bantu farmers who lived in the Limpopo River Valley in Africa 1,000 years ago would perform a cleansing ritual which involved burning their villages during droughts to start afresh and encourage the rain. The burn resulted in the freeing of magnetic minerals in the clay that would align with Earth's magnetic field before cooling, which left Tarduno and his colleagues a stunning snapshot of what the magnetic field looked like at that time.

"We found something unusual about the core-mantle boundary under Africa," Tarduno said, which could be affecting the global magnetic field. The team found evidence that the SAA is the most current manifestation of a recurring phenomenon.

"Under Africa, at the core-mantle boundary just above the liquid-iron core, the field is reversed. This is something we call a reversed flux patch," Tarduno said. "It is this patch that seems to be causing most of the weak field and the SAA." Scientists have also looked into whether this will mean the magnetic field is about to flip, but studies based on observations of the past 50,000 years suggest the SAA is not a sign of this.

Further studies have also looked into how hazardous the radiation in the SAA could be at different levels. This is important because the growing area of the SAA will not only increase problems with computers and other electronic equipment on Earth, but it could also lead to a greater prevalence of cancer.

Riccardo Campana at the National Institute for Astrophysics in Bologna, Italy, analyzed radiation data from the Italian-Dutch satellite for X-ray astronomy BeppoSAX, which frequently journeyed through the lower edge of the SAA between 1996 and 2003. He found that radiation levels were lower in the lower part of the SAA than in the upper layers.

Still, as the European Space Agency points out, the magnetic field in this area has lost about 15%of its strength over the past 150 years. Before 1994, the magnetic north pole was moving at 10 km (6.2 miles) per year, but this has sped up to some 65 km (40 miles) per year since 2001. Could the magnetic field ever disappear completely, leaving Earth wide open to radiation?

Related: Space Radiation Threat to Astronauts Explained (Infographic)

"This is not a concern until many billions of years into the future," Tarduno said. "Even during times of magnetic reversals, there is a magnetic field, albeit much weaker and much more complex in form than the present one.

"The debate now is whether we are in the early stages of a magnetic reversal. The rapid decline in dipole magnetic field strength over the last 160 years and the pattern of decay lend some support for consideration of this as a possibility, but the short time span of the observed decay still puts this into the realm of speculation."

For now, the main concern is for space exploration, particularly given that the number of satellites and spacecraft carrying humans is set to increase. Knowing how the SAA behaves is crucial because as it grows at a rate of 19.3 km (12 miles) per year, it will soon end up covering a much greater geographical region than it does today.

Additional resources:

This article was adapted from a previous version published in All About Space magazine, a Future Ltd. publication.

Continued here:

South Atlantic Anomaly: Have astronomers finally explained space's Bermuda Triangle? - Space.com

FP TrendingJul 04, 2020 15:21:46 IST

Celestial fireworks in a star clustercalled G286.21+0.17 have now been observed by astronomers.

TheAtacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) radio telescope in Chile joined hands with the Hubble Space Telescope to create a mosaic of the star cluster,whichappearedlike 'cosmic fireworks' highlighting purple streamers and sizzling stars, as per a public release of the image.

Most stars in the universe, the Sun included, were born in huge star clusters, according to a Science Daily report. While the clusters are the building blocks of galaxies, their formation still remains shrouded in mystery.

Image of star cluster G286.21+0.17, caught in the act of formation. [Click image to see animated gif of stellar formation] Image credit: ALMA/Y Cheng etc al/Hubble/NRAO/AUI/NSF

The cluster itself is located in the Carina region of our galaxy, about 8000 light-years away.

A statement released by the National Radio Astronomy Observatoryexplained that ALMA was able to capture "dense clouds made of molecular gas" (the purple fireworks streamers), while stars in the image arevisible ininfrared light, as seen by the Hubble Telescope.

"This image shows stars in various stages of formation within this single cluster,"Yu Cheng, lead author of the study, from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, saidin the statement.

Cheng went on to add that the process may take at least a million years to complete.

Co-author Jonathan Tan of Chalmers University in Sweden and the University of Virginiasaid that the image highlights how dynamic and chaotic the process of the birth of a star really is.

"We see competing forces in action: gravity and turbulence from the cloud on one side, and stellar winds and radiation pressure from the young stars on the other,"Tansaid.

Find latest and upcoming tech gadgets online on Tech2 Gadgets. Get technology news, gadgets reviews & ratings. Popular gadgets including laptop, tablet and mobile specifications, features, prices, comparison.

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Space 'fireworks' highlight the violent birth of a star cluster in ALMA, Hubble image - Firstpost

There will be blood tests. Interrogations about junior high. An analysis of tax returns.

It is an experience Joseph R. Biden Jr. knows all too well from his time on the vice-presidential short list 12 years ago.

Much about Mr. Bidens own search for a running mate has been nontraditional. He has publicly mused about his criteria. He is not considering men. Above all, his choice could be the most important in years: At 77, Mr. Biden has said he views himself as a transition candidate. Left unsaid: His vice president could very well end up being the president next.

Yet as much as Mr. Bidens process is unique, its contours are familiar. Late last month, he told a local television station that his campaign had begun doing the background checks the latest sign that he is moving toward a short list of candidates.

If history is a guide, Mr. Bidens top contenders should expect to submit themselves to a process that veterans liken to a series of graphic medical procedures. Extraneous? Maybe. But, well, sometimes thats the vice presidency, too.

They basically are disassembling your entire life, said Kathleen Sebelius, a former Democratic governor of Kansas who, along with Mr. Biden, was vetted extensively by the Obama campaign in 2008. It was as intrusive and probing as anything Ive ever been through or would hope to ever go through again.

Evan Bayh, a former Democratic senator from Indiana and a repeat vice-presidential contestant, somewhat famously compared the vetting process to a colonoscopy except they use the Hubble telescope on you.

Indeed, when Barack Obama called Mr. Biden in June 2008 to request permission to vet him, Mr. Biden initially said no. Finally, he wrote in his 2017 memoir, I agreed to go through the vetting process, but not with a whole lot of enthusiasm.

Ms. Sebelius said Mr. Obama had called her when she was at a hotel for a meeting. Like Mr. Biden, she tried to persuade him not to vet her. I spent a little bit of time telling him why that was a terrible idea, she recalled. He was undeterred: A member of his vetting team was waiting to speak to her in a room downstairs.

One of the cardinal rules of the process is secrecy, and nearly everyone obeys. Most potential running mates do not speak about the search, if they acknowledge they are being vetted at all. Bob Kerrey, the former Nebraska senator who was vetted by Bill Clinton in 1992, said he flew on a friends private plane to the governors mansion in Little Rock, Ark., for a meeting so almost no one would know where he was.

Presidential candidates consider many factors when selecting their running mates. They are not always political. Mr. Kerrey, for instance, said he suspected early on he wasnt getting the job. For one, he wasnt married at the time and he worried that the optics in a photograph would be off.

You need to have Bill and Hillary and somebody and somebody, Mr. Kerrey said. You dont want Bill and Hillary and Bob.

Vetting procedures have become increasingly rigorous, in part because campaigns are wary of what can happen if details are overlooked. More recently, the availability of potentially incriminating details on the internet has made vetting seem more imperative than ever lest anyone dig up a surprise. (Of course, the election of President Trump showed that voters might also shrug off what might once have been disqualifying information.)

Tim Pawlenty, a former Minnesota governor, recalled scrambling with his wife, Mary, in 2008 to provide all the information John McCain requested as part of his vetting.

At one point during the process, our entire living room was covered with documents as Mary and I organized them, typed up answers to the lengthy questionnaire and organized it all into 3-ring binders, he said in an email. They stayed up late and subsisted on pizza as they raced to meet the campaigns deadlines.

Julin Castro, whom Mrs. Clinton vetted extensively in 2016, said her campaign had given him a survey seeking answers to more than 120 questions about his personal, political and financial history.

At one point during the interview to go over the responses, one of the questioners spotted Mr. Castros cellphone. What would the questioner find, he asked, if he were to take Mr. Castros phone and go through it right now? (No, Mr. Castro did not provide the answer to The New York Times.)

You recognize the gravity of this process, he said. But it still has this spy thriller, cloak-and-dagger aspect to it all.

With the global pandemic sidelining much of Mr. Bidens in-person presidential campaign, his veepstakes has become a welcome throwback to normal post-primary political activity.

Already, one of Mr. Bidens top contenders, Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, has formally withdrawn from contention. In an interview with MSNBC last month, she referred to the calls for racial justice that have swept the country since the death of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police, saying she believed that this is a moment to put a woman of color on that ticket.

Faux modesty is also part of the game: Everyone whose name is on a list almost always declares themselves honored just to be thought of at all. When Senator Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada said in May she was withdrawing from consideration, she said that it was an honor to be considered but that she wanted to keep her focus on her home state.

A brief survey of short-listed names over the years reveals some perennial participants. Mr. Pawlenty, for instance, was vetted by both Mr. McCain and Mitt Romney. Mr. Bayh was seriously considered by Al Gore and Mr. Obama.

Mr. Biden has also at times mentioned some familiar names, including Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, who was one of Mr. Gores finalists. (Ms. Shaheen, however, reportedly told Mr. Biden she was not interested in serving as his vice president.) But his pledge to choose a woman has eliminated most of the usual names from contention.

Mr. Obama called Mr. Biden to tell him he had gotten the job as Mr. Biden was waiting at a dentist's office while his wife, Jill, was having a root canal. Despite Mr. Bidens reluctance just weeks earlier, he was delighted. I accepted without hesitation, Mr. Biden said. It felt good to say yes.

But as it most often does, the process for most of Mr. Bidens prospects will likely end in disappointment and possibly some relief.

James Stavridis, a retired admiral who was vetted by Mrs. Clintons campaign, said it had been so intrusive and secretive that he jokingly told a friend, the former C.I.A. spokesman Bill Harlow, that he hoped he was really providing all the information to the Clinton campaign and not Russian intelligence.

When he was not chosen, he and Mr. Harlow decided to write a humorous novel about the Russians penetrating the U.S. V.P. selection process. In the proposal for the book, called The Veepstakes, they described the tone as stylistically, an entertainment la Chris Buckley or Elmore Leonard.

The proposal was widely rejected, Mr. Stavridis said. The premise was too implausible.

Mr. Castro professed to being disappointed when Mrs. Clinton ultimately selected Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia but said he was glad that all of that speculation was over.

The experience also came with an unexpected benefit. As part of his vetting, Mr. Castro had to get a blood test, forcing him to confront a phobia he had harbored since he was a young child.

The best thing was that I had to get over that fear, he said. It certainly wasnt that I got the job, because I didnt.

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Life on the Vice-Presidential Short List - The New York Times

There's an extensive system of haze layers in the bizarre hexagon on Saturn, a new study has found.

"Saturn's Hexagon" is a swirling maelstrom at the planet's north pole that, as its name implies, has an odd, hexagonal shape. The hexagon is an ever-present cloud pattern that "stands" as tall as an enormous, whirling tower on the planet. The phenomenon was first discovered in 1980 by NASA's Voyager spacecraft and was later on imaged in exquisite detail by the Cassini spacecraft, which orbited the planet from 2004 to 2017.

Now in a new study, scientists with the Planetary Science Group at the University of Basque Country used images from Cassini and the Hubble Space Telescope to show that Saturn's hexagon is more than just a geometric oddity. The feature has its own system of hazes layered on top of one another.

Related: Saturn's weird hexagon storms in stunning photos

In 2015, Cassini's main camera snapped high-resolution images of Saturn that revealed the hazes above the clouds in the hexagon. Fifteen days later, the Hubble telescope also took a look at the planet and its strange hexagon. Using these images, the team was able to understand more about the layers of hexagon hazes spotted by Cassini.

"The Cassini images have enabled us to discover that, just as if a sandwich had been formed, the hexagon has a multi-layered system of at least seven mists that extend from the summit of its clouds to an altitude of more than 300 km [186 miles] above them," Agustn Snchez-Lavega, a professor at the University of Basque Country who led the study, said in a statement. "Other cold worlds, such as Saturn's satellite Titan or the dwarf planet Pluto, also have layers of hazes, but not in such numbers nor as regularly spaced out."

The researchers found that each of these haze layers is approximately between 4.3 and 11 miles (7 and 18 kilometers). The team thinks that because of the drastic freezing temperatures in Saturns atmosphere (which range from minus 184 degrees Fahrenheit to minus 292 degrees F (minus 120 degrees Celsius to minus 180 degrees C)) there are likely frozen crystalline particles made up butane, acetylene or even propane in the cloud structure.

Now, this wasn't the first time these hazes have been spotted and studied but, with this work, these researchers have not only studied these layers closer, but they also suggest that the hazes are vertically distributed based on oscillations in density and temperature in Saturn's atmosphere caused by a gravitational pull. "Gravity waves" like this happen on other planets too, even on Earth with jet streams traveling in the atmosphere.

While Saturn's hexagon is still not completely understood, by understanding phenomena like Saturn's hexagon better, researchers hope to better understand not only this strange cloud pattern on Saturn but also atmospheric phenomena that happen here on our home planet, according to the same statement.

This work is detailed here in the May 8 edition of the journal Nature Communications.

Follow Chelsea Gohd on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Saturn's weird hexagon has 'sandwich-like' layers of hazy mists - Space.com

Could aliens that breathe helium and hydrogen live on exoplanets throughout the cosmos?

A new study of life on Earth suggests it's possible. And if so, that would mean the hunt for life in the universe may need to look beyond oxygen-bathed planets to ones with seemingly inhospitable atmospheres. There is no question that an oxygen atmosphere is conducive to life after all, it's what we breathe on Earth. But oxygen isn't common in the cosmos. It makes up about 0.1% of the mass of the universe. Far more common is hydrogen (92%) and helium (7%). The planet that dominates the solar system is Jupiter and its atmosphere is 90% hydrogen and 10% helium, with just traces of other elements. Rocky planets like Earth, with atmospheres bereft of hydrogen and helium, are only a small component of star systems.

With such a predominance of hydrogen and helium in the universe, it would be useful to understand whether atmospheres composed of these elements could support life. Researchers led by planetary scientist Sara Seager at MIT set out to find out if they could. They chose two forms of Earth life that could exist without oxygen: E. coli, a bacteria found in the guts of many animals, including humans; and ordinary yeast, a fungus used to bake bread and make beer, and which is hard to find in stores these days.

Related: 10 interesting places in the solar system we'd like to visit

The scientists took living cultures of both organisms and put them in several separate flasks and replaced the atmosphere inside with other gases. One set of flasks was filled with pure hydrogen, while another was replaced with pure helium. A third set of flasks served as the control and was filled with normal air.

Every few hours, the scientists removed some of the E. coli and yeast to find out if they survived. Both organisms were able to live in all atmospheres, the researchers reported May 4 in the journal Nature Astronomy. Given that both organisms evolved on Earth, it was not surprising that they did best in air, with the E. coli growing two times slower and yeast 2.5 orders of magnitude slower than they each did in normal air conditions.

However, the fact that both organisms survived in pure hydrogen and helium environments has potentially important consequences for astrobiologists, as the finding "opens the possibility for a much broader spectrum of habitats for life on diverse habitable worlds," Seager and her colleagues wrote in Nature Astronomy. E. coli also produced a series of waste products that are already on the list of possible biosignatures of extraterrestrial life, including ammonia, methanethiol and nitrous oxide.

The question then becomes how this recent study can advance our search for life on other planets.

Related: 9 strange excuses for why we haven't met aliens yet

For a long time, the field of astrobiology was considered to be a speculative one a field in which scientists would consider the possibilities but without any data to constrain their ideas. After all, life on other planets has never been observed until recently, astronomers were not certain that planets around other stars even existed.

That all changed only a quarter century ago. In 1995, astronomers at the University of Geneva announced the discovery of a planet orbiting an ordinary star outside of our solar system. This was the first observed exoplanet and it was orbiting a star called 51 Pegasi, located about 50 light-years from Earth.

In the early days of planetary discovery, astronomers found only gas giant planets like our own Jupiter, all located very close to their host star. For a while, these "hot Jupiters" seemed to be the most common types of exoplanets, but that was misleading. These planetary giants were discovered because the planet's gravity made their parent star wobble as they orbited, and astronomers could observe the wobble. Big planets in tight orbits cause bigger wobbles that are easier to detect.

That all changed in 2009, when the Kepler Space Telescope was launched. Kepler used a different method to search for exoplanets. Basically, it watched distant stars and looked for the shadow cast by planets as they passed in front of the parent star. Kepler ceased operations in late 2018, but during its near-decade of operations, it discovered more than 2,600 exoplanets. The characteristics of these planets are diverse, but even the Kepler program found many hot Jupiters.

Kepler, however, wasn't able to search for life on those worlds. First, many of the planets it discovered were so far away any attempt to image their atmospheres would be difficult, and second it didn't have instrumentation to see the planets' atmospheres.

The first problem is being solved by TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite), which was launched in early 2018 and uses the same technique as Kepler to survey nearby stars for planets.

Observing the atmosphere requires more powerful telescopes than Kepler or TESS. For instance, the first observed atmosphere of a planet outside our solar system was accomplished in 2001. Researchers used the Hubble Space Telescope to peer at a star called HD 20945. As the planet crossed in front of the star, Hubble instruments observed light emitted from sodium, which was interpreted as sodium suspended in a planetary atmosphere. Additional study in 2008 also revealed that the planet was surrounded by hydrogen.

And, of course, that is why the recent study at MIT is so interesting. Astronomers know that Jupiter's atmosphere is predominantly hydrogen and helium, and they've observed a hydrogen atmosphere around a planet orbiting a distant star. With this new finding that Earth-based life can exist in a pure hydrogen or helium environment, astrobiologists should be sure to study the spectrum of light emitted by planets enshrouded by hydrogen, with an eye toward rocky planets with such atmospheres, the researchers said.

For everyone interested in extraterrestrial life, the future is very promising. The TESS observatory is busily finding nearby exoplanets. In 2021, NASA plans to launch the long-awaited James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which is intended to replace and supersede the hugely successful Hubble telescope. Astronomers plan to use JWST to scan known exoplanets, looking for the signatures of life. Now, with MIT's recent study, astrobiologists are sure to add planets surrounded by hydrogen to the list.

Originally published on Live Science.

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This bacteria can survive on pure hydrogen. Could alien life do the same? - Livescience.com

The Hubble Space Telescope was launched into orbit on April 25, 1990, and has spent the last 30 years changing our understanding of the universe. To this day, the images that the Hubble Telescope capture allow scientists to constantly learn more and more about the cosmos. This week, the iconic Hubble Telescope turns 30and NASA is celebrating by releasing a new online tool that lets you see what the Hubble Telescope saw on your birthday.

All you'll need to do is type in the month and day of your birthday here to see the *stunning* image that the Hubble Telescope captured on your special day over the years. You won't be asked to input your birth year, as there isn't a photo assigned to every day of every year. The tool will instead show you the best photo ever captured on that date within the last three decades. While I was born in the '90s, the image that generated for my birthday on July 21 was captured in 2004. I was treated to an image of two merging spiral galaxies, known as Antennae galaxies, which I learned from the included description. And not to brag, but the two spiral galaxies that came together on my ninth birthday resulted in the formation of billions of stars, so I'm feeling pretty special. Claps for us, cancers!

While you can't nail down exactly what the Hubble saw on the day you were born, it's still a super fun tool to play around with. You can access the tool here. Want more? NASA also released a podcast for the Hubble Telescope's 30th birthday. You can also marvel at some other images the Hubble Telescope captured in the Caldwell catalog. I think this goes for all of us when I say: keep being out of this world, Hubble.

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In Honor of the Hubble Telescope's 30th Birthday, NASA Releases a Fun New Tool - HouseBeautiful.com

An unexpected, though delightful, benefit of the coronavirus lockdown is the significant reduction of air pollution. There are not very many cars on the road these days. Everybody is staying home. Therefore, there is less air pollution which means you can easily observe the night sky. It is even possible to see some of the planets without looking through binoculars or a telescope.

There is nothing like going outside and observing the night sky. On a clear night, away from city nights, the stars look like diamonds in the sky, as the childrens song goes. A cobalt blue sky filled with stars, and the occasional shooting star, is wonderful to behold.

Stargazing in the Great Smoky MountainsEvery summer on our family vacations we went camping in the Great Smoky Mountains. After dinner every night, we enjoyed the quiet beauty of the night sky. Daddy would point out a constellation and say, See those stars? That is the Big Dipper. Then hed say, A long, long time ago, people thought the stars looked like things and so they gave the stars a name. Ever the teacher, Daddy made everything a teachable moment, even stargazing on a family vacation in the Great Smoky Mountains.

In the American Southwest there is no light pollution. Visibility is so clear you can actually see satellites. Several years ago, on a trip to Zion and Bryce Canyon in Utah, one night the park ranger told the most delightful Navajo legends about the stars. One legend was about mountain goats. He said the young mountain goats liked climbing so much they climbed right up to the stars.

When the rangers talk was over, we had the opportunity to go outside, behind the visitors center, and look at Saturn. There were three telescopes, each of which was trained on Saturn and there was a team of five astronomers there to answer questions. When I looked in the telescope, I could clearly see Saturn and the rings! I looked away from the telescope and asked the astronomer to point out Saturns location in the sky. He pointed out Saturn and, although the rings were not visible, there in the Utah sky, I saw Saturn!

I thought how delighted Daddy would have been with the Navajo legends. I thought how thrilled he wouldve been looking at Saturn through the telescope. Daddy would have relished talking with the astronomers.

Skyview is a free phone app that allows me to locate stars and planets, the Hubble Telescope and the International Space Station. When I take my phone outside and click on Skyview, it shows the night sky, and I can look up and see the actual location of the stars and planets. Skyview has a compass and that helps me comprehend the location of the stars.

When you look at Skyview there is a small circle on the screen. Trained on a single star or planet, Skyview names the star or planet you are looking at. It identifies the Hubble Telescope and the ISS. Lately, Ive enjoyed looking at Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, Mercury, and Venus. I think it is amazing that Skyview shows the telescope and the ISS. One night last week, I was able to actually see the ISS as moved across the sky.

When I go outside at night to stargaze, it is quiet. The sky is magnificent. When there is a full moon, it brightens the sky. The occasional shooting star is a sight to behold.

With childlike awe and wonder I look at the stars and I think back on those family camping trips when Daddy taught my brother and me all about the constellations. Sometimes I think about the astronomers of biblical times who studied the stars and saw a star in the east a star they knew was very special, a star they wanted to follow to the to the birthplace of Jesus.

I will always appreciate the quiet, regal beauty of the night sky, which I can reverently behold from my front yard. Stargazing ... here, there and everywhere.

Roman Pam Walker is a paralegal, a writer, an avid cyclist, history enthusiast, and an ardent reader of Southern fiction. She is the author of People, Places, and Memories of Rome. Readers may email her at pamterrellwalker@gmail.com.

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Stargazing ... here, there and everywhere | Columns - The Catoosa County News

Scientists have revisited one of the most iconic images taken with the Hubble Space Telescope, revealing incredible details in infrared light.

The image, dubbed the "Pillars of Creation" in the Eagle Nebula, was taken by Hubble in 1995. The elephant trunk-shaped features in this iconic Hubble image are star-forming regions made up of incredible, monolithic structures of interstellar dust and gas.

This region is located about 6,500 to 7,000 light-years from Earth and is part of the larger region known as the Eagle Nebula, which is a stellar nursery in the constellation Serpens. While the "pillars" stretch about 4 to 5 light-years long, the Eagle Nebula spans a vast 55-70 light-years.

Related: The most amazing Hubble Space Telescope discoveriesMore: Another breathtaking Hubble view of the Pillars Of Creation

The famous image of the "Pillars of Creation," which NASA originally released in 1995, shows the region as seen in visible light, which is the range on the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation that the human eye can see. But, in this new view of the "pillars," researchers instead showed them through infrared light, which can pierce through thick clouds to reveal what is lurking behind dust and gas in the foreground.

This new image offers a striking new perspective of what the region looks like within those thick clouds of dust and gas. In this infrared view, you can see a smattering of bright and brilliant stars, even baby stars in this star-forming alcove in the cosmos.

As opposed to Hubble's 1995 image of the region, the "pillars" in this infrared image appear faint and ghostly and are not as prominent as they were in the visible light image. They almost look like shadows in the background, taking a backseat to the brilliant stars in the foreground.

The Eagle Nebula was discovered in 1745 by Swiss astronomer Jean-Philippe Loys de Chseaux. The nebula has an apparent magnitude of 6 (magnitude in astronomy is used as a measure of brightness) and can be observed from Earth with smaller, standard telescopes relatively easily, though larger telescopes would be required to spot the "pillars." The nebula is easiest to spot in the summertime in July.

Follow Chelsea Gohd on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Behold! See the Hubble telescope's iconic 'Pillars of Creation' view in infrared - Space.com