Category Archives: Astronomy

Conny Aerts and Jrgen Christensen-Dalsgaard both ERC grantees and Douglas Gough won the Prize for their techniques that unveiled the hidden intricacies within the sun and stars. Claire Voisin, also an ERC grantee, has been recognised for her work in algebraic geometry, which enables the description of shapes that defy visualisation.

The Crafoord Prize in Astronomy 2024 has been awarded to Douglas Gough from University of Cambridge in the UK, Jrgen Christensen-Dalsgaard from Aarhus University in Denmark, and Conny Aerts from KU Leuven in Belgium for developing the methods of asteroseismology and their application to the study of the interior of the Sun and of other stars. The awards were announced on 31 January 2024.

Conny Aerts had previously received two ERC Advanced Grants exploring asteroseismology (2009) and researching massive stars (2016). In 2023, together with three other researchers she won an ERC Synergy Grant and is now working on massive star modelling. In that project she took on one of the biggest challenges in astrophysics: accurately measuring the age of stars.

Jrgen Christensen-Dalsgaard received an ERC grant in 2011 and played a major role in the first-generation development of asteroseismology. He combined advanced observations of stellar oscillations with state-of-the-art modelling of stars and then added in research low-mass cool stars.

The Crafoord Prize in Mathematics 2024 has been awarded to Claire Voisin from Institut de Mathmatiques de Jussieu in France for outstanding contributions to complex and algebraic geometry, including Hodge theory, algebraic cycles, and hyperkhler geometry. Professor Voisin is the first woman to receive the Prize in Mathematics.

Claire Voisin, together with three other researchers, received an ERC Synergy Grant in 2020. She has provided important and highly acclaimed contributions in the field of algebraic geometry, through both counterexamples and strongly positive results for some of the most famous unsolved problems.

The Crafoord Prize is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Crafoord Foundation in Lund, Sweden. The disciplines, which change every year, are mathematics and astronomy, geosciences, biosciences, and polyarthritis. The Academy is responsible for selecting the Crafoord Laureates. The prize sum of 6 million Swedish Krona makes the Crafoord Prize one of the worlds largest scientific prizes. The Crafoord Prize in Mathematics and Astronomy was first awarded in 1982.. Apart from this years laureates, two other ERC grantees won Crafoord Prizes in 2011 and 2013.

About the ERC

The ERC, set up by the European Union in 2007, is the premier European funding organisation for excellent frontier research. It funds creative researchers of any nationality and age, to run projects based across Europe. The ERC offers four core grant schemes:Starting Grants,Consolidator Grants,Advanced GrantsandSynergy Grants. With its additionalProof of ConceptGrant scheme, the ERC helps grantees to bridge the gap between their pioneering research and early phases of its commercialisation. The ERC is led by an independent governing body, theScientific Council. Since November 2021, Maria Leptin is the President of the ERC. The overall ERC budget from 2021 to 2027 is more than 16 billion, as part of theHorizon Europeprogramme, under the responsibility of European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, Iliana Ivanova

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The Crafoord Prize 2024 goes to three ERC grantees for their pioneering contributions to astronomy and mathematics ... - European Research Council

SuperKnova is a project to provide learning opportunities in radio technology for students in a way that is inclusive and equitable. Originally conceived at the Radio Astronomy Imaging and Analysis Lab (RADIAL), SuperKnova is a collaboration between RADIAL, NRAO, and educators and students from across the country.

The SuperKnova website has a wealth of educational resources that are free to use. You can learn about the history of radio astronomy, the physics of radio technology, and even cube satellites and ham radios! There is also a citizen science project on Sensing the World Around You. Many of the learning materials are age-appropriate for middle school and high school students. They were developed as part of the National Radio Dynamic Zone (NRDZ) project, and are designed in such a way that teachers can integrate them into their course curricula.

Users of SuperKnova have found the materials quite useful. As one participant said, I feel like I now have a treasure trove of resources that have both enhanced my understanding of the EM spectrum and given me real life activities for my students to become engaged in. If you are a teacher who uses these materials in your classroom, you can give back to the project by filling out a short form on the SuperKnova resources page. It will help the team refine and expand available resources.

Radio technology is central to our modern world, and radio astronomy can reveal the Universe in amazing ways. SuperKnova does more than simply help students understand radio technology, it helps open doors to radio careers and works to ensure that radio astronomy is accessible to everyone.

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Learning Shines Brightly at SuperKnova National Radio Astronomy Observatory - National Radio Astronomy Observatory

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New research shows a large moonquake in the 1970s is associated with several south polar faults and areas at risk for landslides.

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera's image of a thurst fault near the lunar south pole. Credit: NASA/LRO/LROC/ASU/Smithsonian Institution

Seismic events throughout its history have sculpted the Moons crust with the cracks and cliffs we observe today. These features formed as the Moon shrank and sections of crust were pushed on top of one another.

Now, a new study of surface warping in the Moons south polar region has found evidence that some areas proposed for future landings are near or within fault zones and vulnerable to moonquakes. The paper was published inThe Planetary Science Journalon Jan. 25, 2024.

The Moon has shrunk over time as its core slowly cooled. Aprevious analysisof NASAs Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) images found that the Moons shrinkage is comparable to that of a grape, which shrivels up as it turns into a raisin. That same analysis found that the Moon is still shrinking today, which creates moonquakes along the faults that have developed.

The new study found that a group of cracks in the Moons south polar region are linked to a mighty moonquake captured in the 1970s by Apollo seismometers. The team used computer models to determine the surface stability in that area were, finding that some slopes are susceptible to landslides caused by moonquakes.

Our modeling suggests that shallow moonquakes capable of producing strong ground shaking in the south polar region are possible from slip events on existing faults or the formation of new thrust faults, saidThomas R. Watters, the studys lead author and a planetary tectonics expert at National Air and Space Museums Center for Earth and Planetary Studies, in a press release. The global distribution of young thrust faults, their potential to be active, and the potential to form new thrust faults from ongoing global contraction should be considered when planning the location and stability of permanent outposts on the Moon.

Seismic activity could threaten planned human exploration efforts for the first Artemis crewed landing, Artemis III. Shallow moonquakes, which occur at depths of about 100 miles (161 kilometers), can last hours. The large moonquake the Apollo Passive Seismic Network picked up was a magnitude 5 quake and lasted an entire afternoon.

NASA is interested inexploring the lunar south polebecause it has permanently shadowed regions where ice may linger.Artemis IIIis currently planned for 2026. When astronauts land, they will explore the darkened regions with navigation systems and headlamps.

Before this and other missions commence, the research team is hoping to find more areas that may be too risky to explore so they can be avoided.

As we get closer to the crewed Artemis missions launch date, its important to keep our astronauts, our equipment, and infrastructure as safe as possible, said Nicholas Schmerr, study co-author and geologist at the University of Maryland. This work is helping us prepare for what awaits us on the Moon whether thats engineering structures that can better withstand lunar seismic activity or protecting people from really dangerous zones.

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The Moon's south pole is likely not the safest place for manned missions - Astronomy Magazine

Space scientists are eager to protect the option of doing astronomy from the moon.

There are plans in the works to place astronomical hardware on the lunar landscape such as super-cooled infrared telescopes,a swath of gravitational wave detectors, large Arecibo-like radio telescopes, even peek-a-boo instruments tuned up to seek out evidence for "out there" aliens.

Yes, the future of lunar astronomy beckons. But some scientists say there's an urgent need to protect any moon-based astronomical equipment from interference caused by other planned activities on the moon, ensuring they can carry out their mission of probing the surrounding universe.

To that end, efforts are ongoing to scope out and create policy in conjunction with the United Nations in the hope of fostering international support for such protections.

Related: Gravitational wave detectors on the moon could be more sensitive than those on Earth

This action plan is spearheaded by the International Astronomical Union (IAU). The IAU brings together more than 12,000 active professional astronomers from over 100 countries worldwide.

Richard Green is chair of the IAU group specific to looking at the issues of staging astronomy from the moon. He is also an assistant director for government relations at Steward Observatory, run by the University of Arizona in Tucson.

The IAU working group is aiming to collaborate with a number of other non-governmental organizations to protect the option of doing astronomy from the moon, Green tells Space.com.

A number of participants in the IAU working group are spectrum managers from radio observatories, strongly linked to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and ITU's World Radiocommunication Conference, a treaty-level forum to review and revise, if necessary, radio regulations and global agreements regarding use of the radio-frequency spectrum and the geostationary-satellite and non-geostationary-satellite orbits.

The working group members want to maximize the range of protected frequencies, "including the very low frequencies needed to study the early universe and auroral emissions from planets," Green says.

The other approach, says Green is for protection of sites on the moon that might be suitable for cooled infrared telescopes or gravitational wave detector arrays.

"We have common cause with those who want to protect historical legacy sites and even those who want dedicated sites for extracting water or minerals," Green says. "We imagine that the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space is the venue in which some process can be developed to claim a site for protection and to resolve competing claims."

The IAU Astronomy from the moon working group has space law and policy experts who can provide a strong basis for that approach, Green says.

"Of course, the main goal is to conduct astronomical observations that can be uniquely done from the moon," Green explains. The working group is embracing the expertise of principal investigators of lunar missions or concepts for missions.

Doing so, Green says, can help engage the astronomical community in prioritizing sites of extreme scientific interest and take in issues of conducting science in an environment for which "equitable access" is anchored in the spirit of the United Nations 1967 Outer Space Treaty.

A thumbs-up approval of the IAU initiative is Ian Crawford, a professor of planetary science and astrobiology at Birkbeck College, London.

"My own view is that a subset of lunar locations, for example specific polar craters and key far side locations, need to be designated as 'Sites of Special Scientific Importance' and protected as such, Crawford told Space.com.

A possiblemodel, Crawford suggests, might be theAntarctic Specially Protected Areas (ASPAs) as defined in Annex V of the Environmental Protocol to the Antarctic Treaty.

"In any case, international coordination is clearly required so United Nations involvement appears entirely appropriate," Crawford says.

NASA is working with several U.S. firms to deliver science and technology to the moon's surface by way of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative.

Given the uptick in future CLPS-enabled robotic lunar exploration, we are about to the see the first NASA-funded science payloads landed there in over 51 years since the Apollo 17 human moon landing in December 1972, says Jack Burns, professor emeritus in the department of astrophysical and planetary sciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

One payload, for which Burns serves as co-investigator, is called the Radio Wave Observations on the Lunar Surface of the photoElectron Sheath (ROLSES). If successful, it would be the first radio telescope on the moon and situated at the lunar south pole. ROLSES is to be emplaced there in February via the Intuitive Machines Nova-C lunar lander's IM-1 mission under the CLPS partnership.

This will be followed in two years by the Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Experiment-Night, or LuSEE-Night, slated to fly in 2026 aboard the Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost Mission-2 lander. This endeavor is also part of the CLPS undertaking and Burns is a science team member of the LUNAR far side experiment.

LuSee-Night is a radio telescope that will look into the never-before seen dark ages of the early universe a time before the birth of the first stars.

With this potential and promising burgeoning of radio astronomy from the moon, Burns says "it is essential that we now develop international agreements to protect the far side of the moon for radio astronomy as it is the only truly radio-quiet site in the inner solar system."

Burns emphasizes that radio observations from the moon are no longer science fiction but science fact.

"We are entering a new era of science investigations from our nearest neighbor in space," Burns says.

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The moon could be perfect for cutting-edge telescopes but not if we don't protect it - Space.com

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2024 BJwill pass by Earth harmlessly at 12:29 p.m. EST on Saturday, Jan. 27.

A rendering of 2024 BJ from NASA's asteroid watch. Credit: NASA/JPL

A recently-discovered asteroid named2024 BJwill pass by Earth harmlessly at 12:29 p.m. EST on Saturday, Jan. 27.

2024 BJ will come within some 220,000 miles (354,000 kilometers) of Earth, closer than the average distance between the Moon and Earth.

Still, the asteroid will not be visible to the naked eye. Its too small. At an estimated 72 feet (22 meters), its about the size of two telephone poles stacked end to end. At a magnitude of 15.5 at its brightest, the asteroid will be about as bright as Pluto is in the sky. Only larger telescopes will catch 2024 BJs journey near Earth as it speeds by at around 58,000 miles (93,300 km) per hour.

Still, if you want to see the asteroid,The Virtual Telescope Projectwill livestream the close encounter starting at 17:00 UTC (noon EST).

The asteroid is considered an Apollo asteroid, which are asteroids who come closer to the Sun than 1.017 astronomical units. (One astronomical unit, or AU, is the average Earth-Sun distance.) These objects cross Earths orbit and, if large enough, can be considered potentially hazardous asteroids. However, 2024 BJ4 is not dangerous to Earth.

The next time 2024 BJ will swing near to our planet is over a decade away, onMarch 31, 2034. This encounter wont be nearly as close, though, at a distance of about 23 million miles (37.5 million km).

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You can stream an asteroid whizzing past Earth this weekend - Astronomy Magazine

Researchers hope the camera will reveal information about 20 million galaxies, 17 billion stars and six million space objects

Surrounded by the desert mountains and clear blue sky of northern Chile, astronomers from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory hope to revolutionize the study of the universe by affixing the worlds largest-ever digital camera to a telescope.

The size of a small car and weighing 2.8 metric tons, the sophisticated piece of equipment will reveal views of the cosmos as never before, officials from the US-funded project said. Beginning early next year, when the US$800 million camera will snap its first photos, the machine will sweep the sky every three days, allowing scientists to reach new heights in their galactic analyses.

Researchers will be able to go from studying one star and knowing everything in-depth about that one star, to studying thousands of stars at a time, said Bruno Dias, president of the Chilean Society of Astronomy (Sochias). According to Stuartt Corder, deputy director of NOIRLab, the US research center running the observatory located 2,500 meters up the Cerro Pachon mountain, 560 kilometers north of Santiago, the new facility will usher in a paradigm shift in astronomy.

The project solidifies Chiles dominant position in astronomical observation, as the South American country is home to a third of the globes most powerful telescopes, according to Sochias, and boasts among the clearest skies on the planet. The Rubin Observatory cameras first task will be to complete a 10-year review of the sky, called the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), which researchers hope will reveal information about 20 million galaxies, 17 billion stars and six million space objects. The survey will give scientists an up-to-date inventory of images of the solar system, allow them to map our own galaxy, the Milky Way and delve deeper into the study of energy and dark matter.

300TVs FOR ONE PICTURE

The new camera will be able to capture 3,200-megapixel photos resulting in images so large they would require more than 300 average-size high-definition televisions, lined up together, to view just one. The machine, built in California, will have triple the capacity of the worlds current most powerful camera, the 870-megapixel Hyper Suprime-Cam in Japan, and will have six times the capacity of NOIRLabs most powerful camera. The labs existing top camera, on Chiles Cerro Tololo mountain, is only 520 megapixels, according to Jacques Sebag, head of construction of the Rubin telescope. Chiles telescopes have come a long way since the 40-centimeter Cerro Tololo telescope, at the countrys first international observatory, installed in the 1960s.

That telescope arrived here on the back of a mule, because there was no road, said Stephen Heathcote, director of the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, only 20 kilometers from Cerro Pachon.

ASTRONOMY CAPITAL OF THE WORLD

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, named in honor of the US astronomer who discovered dark matter, will join several other space observation research centers in northern Chile.

The natural conditions of the regions desert landscape tucked between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes mountain range creates the clearest skies on the planet, thanks to a dry climate with little cloud cover. The area plays host to telescopes from more than 30 countries, including some of the most powerful astronomical instruments in the world, such as the radio telescope at the ALMA Observatory and the under-construction Extremely Large Telescope, which by 2027 is set to be able to view never-before-seen reaches of the universe.

Many of humanitys most important astronomical discoveries have been made at the Cerro Tololo observatory, such as the 2011 Nobel Prize-winning revelation that expansion of the universe is picking up speed, a phenomenon known as cosmic acceleration. Though other influential observatories have been opened around the globe, including in the United States, Australia, China and Spain, Chile is unbeatable in the world of astronomy, said Dias, the Sochias president.

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Astronomers in Chile to scour universe with car-sized mega camera -

Although the exact nature of dark matter continues to elude astronomers, we have gained some understanding of its general physical properties. We know how it clusters around galaxies, how it makes up much of the matter in the Universe, and even how it can interact with itself. Now a new study looks at just how fast dark matter can move.

The study focuses on an effect known as dynamical friction. The term is a bit of a misnomer since it isnt the kind of friction you see between two objects sliding against each other. A better term for the effect might be gravitational drag. It was first studied by Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar in 1943, and its caused by the gravitational interactions of a diffuse body.

Imagine a massive star moving through a cluster of red dwarf stars. Even though none of the stars are likely to collide, the gravitational interactions between them will affect stellar motions. The massive star will slow down as it leaves the cluster thanks to the gravitational tug of the red dwarf stars. On the other hand, the red dwarf stars will speed up a bit as they are dragged slightly toward the massive star. If you track the change in speed of the stars in the cluster, you can determine how fast the cluster was moving before the collision.

The same effect can occur between matter and dark matter. The presence of dark matter affects the motion of stars in the galaxy, and thanks to dynamical friction this distorts the shape of the galaxy. By mapping how the galaxy is distorted the team can calculate the motion of dark matter near the galaxy. So the team focused on finding distorted galaxies that arent part of a dense galactic cluster. Since the galaxies are fairly isolated, the distortion must occur because of dark matter.

The authors then compared the shape of these distorted galaxies to N-body simulations to map the motion of dark matter. One of the concerns they had was that the uncertainty in the data would be too large to make any meaningful constraints on dark matter. The team showed that for available samples, the data scatter is only about 10%. This means it is precise enough to apply to nearby galaxies. For example, detailed Gaia observations of the Large Magellanic Cloud should allow astronomers to get a handle on dark matter speeds there.

This approach gives astronomers one more tool for the study of dark matter. As future observations allow us to pin down the properties of dark matter, we may be able to determine what dark matter really is.

Reference: Kipper, Rain, et al. Back to the present: A general treatment for the tidal field from the wake of dynamical friction. Astronomy & Astrophysics 680 (2023): A91.

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Dark Matter Might Help Explain How Supermassive Black Holes Can Merge - Universe Today

On a drizzling day in May 1673, deep in the dense rainforest of French Guiana, a scientist died. Known to historians only by his first name, Meurisse, he may have been cut down by disease or perhaps a fatal accident, but a full description of his death was never properly recorded. The only person with him was his partner, an astronomer named Jean Richer, who was stricken ill and fighting for his own life.

The pair had been dispatched to Cayenne, on the northeastern coast of South America, the year before from Paris, 4,400 miles away. Sent by the French Academy of Sciences at the behest of astronomer Giovanni Cassini, part of their mission was to take a measurement that would reveal the distance between Earth and the suna value that was not yet known.

As long as humankind has gazed up at the sky, there have been attempts to determine the distance to the sun. Scientists in antiquity such as Eratosthenes and Ptolmey produced estimates that varied significantly, often greatly underestimating the true value.

By the 1670s, aided by newly developed astronomical instruments, Cassini was determined to find the answer once and for all. Inhabiting the second floor of the Paris Observatory, he worked on the problem unrelentingly. He had no hobbies, says Gabriella Bernardi, author of Giovanni Domenico Cassini: A Modern Astronomer in the 17th Century. From his diary emerges a man completely devoted to his profession.

"When people left European shores to go across the ocean, they assumed that you might die."

ByNicholas DewMcGill University

In many ways, the late 17th-century journey to French Guiana was routine, part of a series of scientific expeditions dispatched by Cassini. Richer and Meurisse had voyaged to northeastern North America two years earlier to measure latitudes and the heights of the tides, and French scientific expeditions would follow to destinations such as Senegal and Ecuador.

But it was the voyage to Cayenne that collected the key data that, united with Cassinis mathematical prowess, produced the first precise measurement of the vast distance between Earth and the sun.

On January 11, 1667, five years before the mission to French Guiana, astronomer Adrien Auzout stood in the meeting room of the sumptuous Bibliothque du Roi in Paris. Before a small assembly of men in long, thick wigs, he laid out a bold program of scientific research.

Right at the time the Academy is being conceived, they're already thinking about astronomical expeditions, says Nicholas Dew, a historian at McGill University. Auzout was the planner of this [He had] the vision of using colonial trade networks to send observers to points around the globe to conduct observations in astronomy.

Auzout's plan was wide-ranging and visionary. He recognized that certain astronomical questions, including the distances to the planets and the sun, would require taking observations simultaneously in two different locationssuch as in Paris and a far-flung locale. Auzout argued for a voyage all the way to Madagascar, where the East India Company was expected to establish operations, and the proximity to the equator would allow astronomers to take key observations.

As the men listened, the sounds and smells of a squalid, congested city may have wafted through the windows. In the late 17th century, Paris was known for raucous church processions, drunken merrymaking, and open gun violence. At the strike of seven each morning, city officials marched down the wide boulevards, ringing large bells to wake residents, directing them to clean the filth that had accumulated in front of their homes or risk a fine.

The bustling city was a hotbed of both intellectual activity and commerce, where a large, affluent population mixed freely with members of a forward-thinking scientific community. Many of the most skilled scientific instrument makers were in Paris at the time, and on the outskirts of the city, construction was beginning on a major new astronomical observatory.

Two years after Auzouts speech, in April 1669, Cassini arrived in Paris. He had been personally invited by King Louis XIV and would swiftly become one of the Academys modest illustrious figures.

Cassini was 44 years old when he set off for Parisa bachelor with a carriage full of astronomical instruments, says Bernardi.

As the Academy continued to prepare for an astronomical expedition to the equator, the scientists shifted their focus from Madagascar to Cayenne. This French settlement was a shorter distance away, and the Academy had to act quickly to catch a noteworthy event: In the fall of 1672, Mars and Earth would be at their closest points to each other in 15 years.

Cassini realized that precise observations of Mars during this time could be used to calculate the parallax of the planeta measurement of Marss apparent difference in position as seen from the two observing sites. This key measurement could then be used to work out the distance from Earth to the sun, making the close approach of Mars an opportunity that mustnt be missed.

Richer and Meurisse spent several days and nights working alongside Cassini to prepare for the joint observations they'd have to make while thousands of miles away. The pair of apprentices knew they were embarking on a perilous journey.

Anyone who's been sent on these ships in this period, they're all on a lower status level, Dew explains. The dangerous, scary, long-distance travel is done by the lower-grade, lower-paid people.

Traveling first to the French port of La Rochelle, Richer and Meurisse spent three months methodically testing and calibrating their instruments, including an octant, a quadrant, several telescopes of various sizes, and a few pendulum clocks.

They set sail for Cayenne on February 8, 1672, on a merchant vesselpossibly an empty slave ship on its way to Senegal. Gazing up from the ship's deck one evening during the passage, Richer made detailed observations of a comet with two bright tails streaking across the inky-black sky.

Cassini had given Richer several objectives: He was to measure the positions of the southern stars, the heights of the tides, and the duration of twilight. He was to make observations of Jupiters moons and take detailed notes on the movements of Venus, Mars, and Mercury. He and Meurisse were also expected to take barometric measurements and keep an eye out for unusual flora and fauna.

The pair arrived in Cayenne on April 22, 1672.

Fert aurum industris: Work brings wealth. Whoever coined Cayennes official motto must have had a grim sense of humor.

The tiny, desolate settlement could not have been an encouraging sight to Richer and Meurisse. Visited by only two or three ships a year, the island of Cayenne was separated from the rest of Guiana by the narrow 11-mile Mahury estuary on one side and the slender Cayenne River on the other.

As they stepped off the boat, the pair may have realized that they had chosen the most unpleasant time of year to arrive. In the Amazon, late April is near the height of monsoon season, oppressively humid and thick with mosquitoes. The sheets of rain fell on them mercilessly, flooding the river yet providing no relief from the sweltering heat.

At the center of the settlement stood Fort Cprou, a bleak, lonely structure, rebuilt in stone from wood after the most recent attack by the Indigenous population, signifying the French colonists determination to stay. A short walk from the fort was the Kings Store, a general store that served the settlement and often had little on the shelves.

There was also a modest Jesuit church and mission house. A 1685 account, noted in Catherine Losier's Supplying Cayenne Under the Old Regime: Archeology and History of Commercial Networks, describes it as a dwelling occupied by four fathers and a brother, along with 82 enslaved African people32 men, 23 women, and 27 childrento work the Jesuits crops and tend to their livestock. Enslaved Africans made up roughly 85 percent of the settlement.

And then there were the Kalina. The Indigenous people, also called the Galibi, had resided in the Cayenne region for over two thousand years before Europeans arrived. As one settler, Paul Boyer, would write after a visit around 1654: All the Galibi could think about was how to be rid of the French.

Past interactions between the two groups had been troubled. Less than 30 years before Richers arrival, in 1644, French officer Charles Poncet de Brtigny arrived in Cayenne with a few hundred men. He used an iron cattle brand bearing his name on the Kalina who displeased him, tried to force them to wear clothes, and kidnapped Indigenous women, confining them to his quarters. Within a year, a tribesman had sunk an ax into Bretignys skull, the opening of a blood-soaked ambush that left only a handful of Frenchmen alive in a settlement that had been burned to the ground.

The French didnt only have the Kalina to worry about. The Dutch managed to capture the colony a decade after Bretignys reign, only to be forced out by fresh French troops in a surprise attack. French settlers were then driven out by the British in 1667, wrenching back control of the colony a year laterjust four years before Richer arrived.

For Louis XIV, Guiana provided a strategic position for France to gain a foothold on the South American continent. But there was another reason the nations of Europe were enticed by the region, often divulged in a whisper: El Dorado. The Europeans fighting to control Cayenne believed that the fabled city of gold was hidden somewhere within Guiana, and whoever controlled Cayenne would have a direct route to the riches.

Richer and Meurisse, though, had embarked on a quest for scientific treasure.

Away from the settlement, across the thin, narrow river that gave Cayenne its name, lay the rest of Guianaa dense primeval rainforest, containing plants and animals not found anywhere else in the world. The environment would have been so alien to Richer and Meurisse, so different from the cobbled streets of Paris, that its hard to imagine which animals might have caught their eyes firstthe anteaters, iguanas, or spider monkeys? Were they astonished by glimpses of speckled jaguars or bright green parrots?

Academy records indicate that Richer and Meurisse took detailed notes on flora and fauna, but almost all of these have been lost to time. At one point, Richer came face to face with an electric eel, later writing that a simple touch with a finger or the tip of a stick, so numbs the arm and that part of the body closest to it that one remains about 15 minutes without being able to move.

Immediately upon arrival, Richer began scouting the jungle for the best place to build an observatory. Locating a spot after a couple of weeks, the two men recruited Indigenous workers and built a structure composed of branches, tree bark, and palm tree leaves, with a sizeable hole in the roof for their telescopes.

Sometime before mid-May the observatory was finished. Richers first observation was on May 14, when he calculated the height of the North Star. It was a promising start to what would be a very challenging mission.

The rain was merciless, and Richer wrote to Cassini of not being able to take observations for several days at a time because of the inclement weather. Almost not a day has passed without rain since our arrival.

At one point, so many ants crawled into the scientists pendulum clocks that the insects jammed the delicate machinery of cogs and wheels, causing at least one to stop completely.

Richer and Meurisse relied heavily on supplies from home, even though local food was available in the form of game, fish, and edible plants such as bananas, avocados, and mangos. The two Frenchmen preferred to eat familiar foods, including packets of cured meat, flour, Bordeaux wine, coffee, and cheesesupplies that were seldom replenished by the passing ships.

Sending food to the colonies was a constant issue, Dew says. The Europeans want to eat what they're used to eating . . . They're thinking: we have to have bread, we have to have wine.

The slowness of mail and the rareness of passing ships meant that Richer and Meurisse were effectively on their own.

Finally in October 1672, the rainy season stoppedjust in time to observe Mars. Richer measured the planet and nearby stars over the course of multiple weeks.

Across the Atlantic, 4,400 miles away, Cassini and Danish astronomer Ole Rmer also made measurements at the agreed upon times, peering out the window of the Paris Observatory.

Meanwhile, in London, astronomer John Flamsteed of the Royal Society was also measuring the parallax of Mars to determine the distance to the sun, cleverly observing Mars once early in the evening, waiting several hours for Earth to rotate, then measuring again. His final calculation would be close, but not quite as precise as Cassinis.

In the spring of 1673, Meurisse perished, possibly from yellow fever, malaria, pneumonia, or even severe malnutrition. When people left European shores to go across the ocean, they assumed that you might die, Dew says. When Meurisse dies, it would be nice if we knew more about it, but it isn't unusual for the documentation to be so sparse.

Richer, now alone, felt too sick to carry on. He sought out specimens to carry back to the Academy, capturing a live crocodile and chaining it up in the hold of the ship. Wracked with illness, he boarded the vessel with the draft of his mission report and departed Cayenne on May 25, 1673. On the long journey home, the crocodile died of starvation, but Richer recovered.

In 1679 Richers official mission report, Observations astronomiques et physiques faites en l'isle de Caienne, was released. Aided by Richers data, Cassini could finally make his calculations, announcing in a 1684 publication that our sun, which looked so close, was actually 87 million miles awayremarkably close to the true distance of about 93 million miles.

Word of the expedition and revelation of the sheer size of the solar system spread rapidly, thanks in large part to the popular writings of Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, who wrote about science in a unique, novelistic style. For the first time, astronomy was a subject for the dinner table.

Determining the distance to the sun was not the only legacy left by Richers expedition to Cayenne. While in South America, the astronomer also measured the length of a pendulum and compared the results to his precisely calibrated clocks. Something was off. The swinging pendulum seemed to produce a shorter second in Cayenne than it would in Paris.

Though Richer didn't realize it at the time, this was due to the fact that there is slightly less gravity near the equator, where Earth bulges as it spins, causing the pendulum to measure a shorter second. Isaac Newton would puzzle out the reason some 15 years later, using Richers measurements as evidence for his new theories of gravity.

Just think, Milord,Voltaire wrote in a letter to his friend Lord Hervey in 1740, without the voyage and experiments of those sent by Louis XIV to Cayenne in 1672 never would Newton have made his discoveries concerning attraction.

Bernardi believes that the success of the voyage was due to Cassini's modern approach. At the time, it was a complete innovation, she says. Cassini was the first to understand that a regular plan of observation, in collaboration with many other colleagues, made it possible to tackle more difficult problems and achieve important results, just like big science does today.

Just as the trading vessel that carried him home slipped away from the green shores of French Guiana, Richer would slip into relative obscurity, the accurate calculation of the Earth-sun distance becoming almost wholly Cassinis triumph. Once safely back in France, Richer broke from the academy and took a position as a military engineers assistant.

It was, once again, the height of monsoon season when Richer's ship sailed away. The heat would have been unwavering and the river close to overflowingthe relentless rain beating down upon the land he was leaving behind.

More:

How far away is the sun? They went on a perilous journey to find out. - National Geographic

The first fragment of 2024 BX1 recovered by the Natural History Museum/DLR/Freie Universtaet Berlin team. Credit: Natural History Museum in Berlin.

Update: Pieces of the asteroid have been found! Heres a post from the Natural History Museum in Berlin, which includes this photo of the happy searchers with a fragment of the asteroid.

The SETI Institute has more on the recovery here.

Heres our original article:

Germans out and about around 1:30 local time on the morning of Jan. 21, 2024, were in a perfect spot to see an unusual but not unexpected phenomenon.

A tiny asteroid about a yard (1 meter) in size, dubbed 2024 BX1, streaked across the dark sky in eastern Germany before disintegrating. Heres what it looked like from a camera in Leipzig:

The asteroid was first detected by Krisztin Srneczky, a researcher with the Konkoly Observatory in Budapest. NASA later confirmed the asteroids path over Berlin in aposton social media. While the object was no threat to the planet, it was an opportunity to test asteroid-spotting capabilities on Earth in case something more catastrophic is ever on the way.

Objects this small can reach the Earth once a year. Thats normal, and as telescopes and their capabilities get better, were bound to discover more and more, says NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratorys Davide Farnocchia, an engineer who works on calculating the orbits of asteroids and comets.

Srneczky spotted 2024 BX1 with the observatorys Schmidt telescope on Jan. 20 at 10:50 P.M. Hungarian time. It was identified as an asteroid because it was moving relative to the more distant, stationary stars. Srneczky reported the sighting to the International Astronomical Union Minor Planet Center (MPC) which sent a notification to NASAs impact hazard assessment system,Scout. When Scout determined that 2024 BX1 would hit Earth, it sent a message to Farnocchia and other scientists who track near-Earth objects (NEOs). A few hours later, the asteroid flashed through the sky, burning up.

I started getting text messages and I went back to my computer just to see, but essentially, the whole thing worked flawlessly in an automatic fashion and new impact predictions came in, and they got better and better as new data was reported, says Farnocchia.

With Scout, NASA can automatically detect an objects orbit and alert researchers if something is about to hit Earth. Scout also picks up artificial items like satellites or space junk. Farnoccahia says the system even alerted him about the interstellar object Oumuamua although of course in this case, Scout did not predict an impact. Instead, it alerted them because it could not find an orbit that fit Oumuamua.

Srneczky has detected asteroids like 2024 BX1 before. In 2022, he observed a small asteroid named 2022 EB5 two hours before it burned up over the Norwegian Sea. Srneczky has also discovered hundreds of minor planets in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, including numerous near-Earth objects (NEOs). NEOs are typically defined as any object whose orbit comes within 27.9 million miles (44.9 million kilometers) of Earths. In total, we know of about 34,000 NEOs.

Small asteroids like 2022 EB5 and 2024 BX1 enter Earths atmosphere about every 10 months, said Paul Chodas, director of JPLs Center for Near Earth Object Studies, in a 2022statement. Still, only eight have ever been observed prior to impact because they are hard to see until the last few hours before they hit. Survey telescopes must happen to be observing the right patch of sky at the right time to catch them in action.

Larger and potentially dangerous asteroids are detectable at much farther distances, and experts would know well in advance if one were heading for Earth. Still, scientists want to track any asteroid to test response times and prediction rates of models.

We had less than three hours in this case to figure out what was going to happen from first detection to when [2024 BX1] entered the atmosphere. And within three hours, we were able to collect enough data, pinpoint the impact locations within 100 meters [330 feet] or so, says Farnocchia.

Experts are looking for those larger, potentially dangerous asteroids those larger than 460 feet (140 m) that come close to Earth. These asteroids are of a size on what Farnocchia says is a threshold for causing regional-scale devastation. While an impactor of this size wont wipe out Earth, it can cause damage regionally. For an object to cause global-level damage, it must be at least 0.6 mile (1 km) in size.

Asteroids about the size of a tennis court (66 feet [20 m]) hit Earth every 50 to 100 years, perthe European Space Agency (ESA). They can inflict a lot of damage. Both NASA and ESA have projects underway that will work to detect both harmless and Earth-shattering asteroids. Like the stars in a daytime sky, many asteroids are hidden by the Suns glare. Some of these asteroids could make their way toward Earth without anyone knowing.

ESAs Near-Earth Object Mission in the Infrared (NEOMIR) mission, still in development, will serve as an early detection system that will orbit between the Sun and Earth at the L1 Lagrange point. NEOMIRs infrared detector is designed to pick up asteroids heading our planet from the direction of the Sun, where optical telescopes cant see them. Instead, NEOMIRwill detect heat from the asteroid itself, identifying potential hazards at least three weeks before impact.

NASAs successfulDouble Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) has showed we can move an asteroid with a spacecraft. DART smashed into Dimorphos, the tiny moon circling the larger asteroid Didymos, on Sept. 26, 2022. The impact changed Dimorphos period around its parent by 32 minutes.

Detecting smaller asteroids such as 2024 BX1 may also become more common as the Vera C. Rubin Observatory comes online next year. The observatory will scan the entire Southern Hemisphere sky every few days for changes like streaking asteroids or the flashes of supernovae. And planetary scientists are particularly excited about its ability to detect potentially hazardous asteroids, whose paths may come close to or even cross Earths orbit in the future.

Read the original post:

Scientists spotted an asteroid hours before it burned up over Germany - Astronomy Magazine

XRISMs Resolve instrument captured data from supernova remnant N132D in the Large Magellanic Cloud to create the most detailed X-ray spectrum of the object ever made. The spectrum reveals peaks associated with silicon, sulfur, argon, calcium, and iron. Inset at right is an image of N132D captured by XRISMs Xtend instrument. Credit: JAXA/NASA/XRISM Resolve and Xtend

XRISM, a collaborative mission between Japan, NASA, and ESA, is set to revolutionize X-ray astronomy with its advanced instruments, offering unprecedented insights into the universes hottest and most massive structures.

The Japan-led XRISM (X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission) observatory has released a first look at the unprecedented data it will collect when science operations begin later this year.

The satellites science team released a snapshot of a cluster of hundreds of galaxies and a spectrum of stellar wreckage in a neighboring galaxy, which gives scientists a detailed look at its chemical makeup.

XRISM will provide the international science community with a new glimpse of the hidden X-ray sky, said Richard Kelley, the U.S. principal investigator for XRISM at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Well not only see X-ray images of these sources, but also study their compositions, motions, and physical states.

XRISM (pronounced crism) is led by JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) in collaboration with NASA, along with contributions from ESA (European Space Agency). It launched on September 6, 2023.

Supernova remnant N132D lies in the central portion of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy about 160,000 light-years away. XRISMs Xtend captured the remnant in X-rays, displayed in the inset. At its widest, N132D is about 75 light-years across. Although bright in X-rays, the stellar wreckage is almost invisible in the ground-based background view taken in optical light. Credit: Inset, JAXA/NASA/XRISM Xtend; background, C. Smith, S. Points, the MCELS Team and NOIRLab/NSF/AURA

Its designed to detect X-rays with energies up to 12,000 electron volts and will study the universes hottest regions, largest structures, and objects with the strongest gravity. For comparison, the energy of visible light is 2 to 3 electron volts.

The mission has two instruments, Resolve and Xtend, each at the focus of an X-ray Mirror Assembly designed and built at Goddard.

Resolve is a microcalorimeter spectrometer developed by NASA and JAXA. It operates at just a fraction of a degree above absolute zero inside a refrigerator-sized container of liquid helium.

When an X-ray hits Resolves 6-by-6-pixel detector, it warms the device by an amount related to its energy. By measuring each individual X-rays energy, the instrument provides information previously unavailable about the source.

XRISMs Xtend imager collected this snapshot of supernova remnant N132D. The expanding wreckage is estimated to be about 3,000 years old and was created when a star roughly 15 times the Suns mass ran out of fuel, collapsed, and exploded. At its widest, N132D is about 75 light-years across. Credit: JAXA/NASA/XRISM Xtend

The mission team used Resolve to study N132D, a supernova remnant and one of the brightest X-ray sources in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy around 160,000 light-years away in the southern constellation Dorado. The expanding wreckage is estimated to be about 3,000 years old and was created when a star roughly 15 times the Suns mass ran out of fuel, collapsed, and exploded.

The Resolve spectrum shows peaks associated with silicon, sulfur, calcium, argon, and iron. This is the most detailed X-ray spectrum of the object ever obtained and demonstrates the incredible science the mission will do when regular operations begin later in 2024.

These elements were forged in the original star and then blasted away when it exploded as a supernova, said Brian Williams, NASAs XRISM project scientist at Goddard. Resolve will allow us to see the shapes of these lines in a way never possible before, letting us determine not only the abundances of the various elements present, but also their temperatures, densities, and directions of motion at unprecedented levels of precision. From there, we can piece together information about the original star and the explosion.

XRISMs Xtend instrument captured galaxy cluster Abell 2319 in X-rays, shown here in purple and outlined by a white border representing the extent of the detector. The background is a ground-based image showing the area in visible light. Credit: JAXA/NASA/XRISM Xtend; background, DSS

XRISMs second instrument, Xtend, is an X-ray imager developed by JAXA. It gives XRISM a large field of view, allowing it to observe an area about 60% larger than the average apparent size of the full moon.

Xtend captured an X-ray image of Abell 2319, a rich galaxy cluster about 770 million light-years away in the northern constellation Cygnus. Its the fifth brightest X-ray cluster in the sky and is currently undergoing a major merger event.

The cluster is 3 million light-years across and highlights Xtends wide field of view.

This composite image shows supernova remnant N132D. It uses data from NASAs Chandra X-ray Observatory (purple and green) and Hubble Space Telescope (red). N132D is among the brightest X-ray remnants in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a nearby dwarf galaxy. Credit: NASA/STScI/CXC/SAO, processing by Judy Schmidt, CC BY-NC-SA

Even before the end of the commissioning process, Resolve is already exceeding our expectations, said Lillian Reichenthal, NASAs XRISM project manager at Goddard. Our goal was to achieve a spectral resolution of 7 electron volts with the instrument, but now that its in orbit, were achieving 5. What that means is well get even more detailed chemical maps with each spectrum XRISM captures.

Resolve is performing exceptionally and already conducting exciting science despite an issue with the aperture door covering its detector. The door, designed to protect the detector before launch, has not opened as planned after several attempts. The door blocks lower-energy X-rays, effectively cutting the mission off at 1,700 electron volts compared to the planned 300. The XRISM team will continue to explore the anomaly and is investigating different approaches to opening the door. The Xtend instrument is unaffected.

NASAs XRISM General Observer Facility, hosted at Goddard, is accepting proposals for observations from members of U.S. and Canadian institutions through Thursday, April 4. Cycle 1 of XRISM General Observer investigations will begin in the summer of 2024.

XRISM is a collaborative mission between JAXA and NASA, with participation by ESA. NASAs contribution includes science participation from the Canadian Space Agency.

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XRISM Unveils the Invisible: A New Era in X-Ray Astronomy - SciTechDaily