Posts tagged astronomy
Cassini Shows Why Jet Streams Cross-Cut Saturn
Turbulent jet streams, regions where winds blow faster than in other places, churn east and west across Saturn. Scientists have been trying to understand for years the mechanism that drives these wavy structures in Saturn’s atmosphere and the source from which the jets derive their energy.
In a new study appearing in the June edition of the journal Icarus, scientists used images collected over several years by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft to discover that the heat from within the planet powers the jet streams. Condensation of water from Saturn’s internal heating led to temperature differences in the atmosphere. The temperature differences created eddies, or disturbances that move air back and forth at the same latitude, and those eddies, in turn, accelerated the jet streams like rotating gears driving a conveyor belt.
A competing theory had assumed that the energy for the temperature differences came from the sun. That is how it works in the Earth’s atmosphere.
“We know the atmospheres of planets such as Saturn and Jupiter can get their energy from only two places: the sun or the internal heating. The challenge has been coming up with ways to use the data so that we can tell the difference,” said Tony Del Genio of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, N.Y., the lead author of the paper and a member of the Cassini imaging team.
The new study was possible in part because Cassini has been in orbit around Saturn long enough to obtain the large number of observations required to see subtle patterns emerge from the day-to-day variations in weather. “Understanding what drives the meteorology on Saturn, and in general on gaseous planets, has been one of our cardinal goals since the inception of the Cassini mission,” said Carolyn Porco, imaging team lead, based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo. “It is very gratifying to see that we’re finally coming to understand those atmospheric processes that make Earth similar to, and also different from, other planets.”
Rather than having a thin atmosphere and solid-and-liquid surface like Earth, Saturn is a gas giant whose deep atmosphere is layered with multiple cloud decks at high altitudes. A series of jet streams slice across the face of Saturn visible to the human eye and also at altitudes detectable to the near-infrared filters of Cassini’s cameras. While most blow eastward, some blow westward. Jet streams occur on Saturn in places where the temperature varies significantly from one latitude to another.
Thanks to the filters on Cassini’s cameras, which can see near-infrared light reflected to space, scientists now have observed the Saturn jet stream process for the first time at two different, low altitudes. One filtered view shows the upper part of the troposphere, a high layer of the atmosphere where Cassini sees thick, high-altitude hazes and where heating by the sun is strong. Views through another filter capture images deeper down, at the tops of ammonia ice clouds, where solar heating is weak but closer to where weather originates. This is where water condenses and makes clouds and rain.
In the new study, which is a follow-up to results published in 2007, the authors used automated cloud tracking software to analyze the movements and speeds of clouds seen in hundreds of Cassini images from 2005 through 2012.
“With our improved tracking algorithm, we’ve been able to extract nearly 120,000 wind vectors from 560 images, giving us an unprecedented picture of Saturn’s wind flow at two independent altitudes on a global scale,” said co-author and imaging team associate John Barbara, also at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies. The team’s findings provide an observational test for existing models that scientists use to study the mechanisms that power the jet streams.
By seeing for the first time how these eddies accelerate the jet streams at two different altitudes, scientists found the eddies were weak at the higher altitudes where previous researchers had found that most of the sun’s heating occurs. The eddies were stronger deeper in the atmosphere. Thus, the authors could discount heating from the sun and infer instead that the internal heat of the planet is ultimately driving the acceleration of the jet streams, not the sun. The mechanism that best matched the observations would involve internal heat from the planet stirring up water vapor from Saturn’s interior. That water vapor condenses in some places as air rises and releases heat as it makes clouds and rain. This heat provides the energy to create the eddies that drive the jet streams.
The condensation of water was not actually observed; most of that process occurs at lower altitudes not visible to Cassini. But the condensation in mid-latitude storms does happen on both Saturn and Earth. Storms on Earth – the low- and high-pressure centers on weather maps – are driven mainly by the sun’s heating and do not mainly occur because of the condensation of water, Del Genio said. On Saturn, the condensation heating is the main driver of the storms, and the sun’s heating is not important.
Images of one of the strongest jet streams and a figure from the paper can be found at http://www.nasa.gov/cassini , http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and http://ciclops.org .
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI
M94
Distance: 5,000,000 Light Years
On visual inspection M94 appears to be a series of ring like structures. As one of the closest starburst-ringed galaxies it possesses one of the highest optical surface brightness nuclei known.
At its center is a 1400 light year stellar bar which has been an important influence on the overall morphology of the galaxy. Surrounding the central bar is an inner stellar disk with a radius of about 2300 light years. Further out at a radius of about 3500 light years is an almost perfectly circular starburst ring.
Ten things you may not know about stars
10) Every star you see in the night sky is bigger and brighter than our Sun
Of the 5,000 or so stars brighter than magnitude 6, only a handful of very faint stars are approximately the same size and brightness of our Sun and the rest are all bigger and brighter. Of the 500 or so that are brighter than 4th magnitude (which includes essentially every star visible to the unaided eye from a urban location), all are intrinsically bigger and brighter than our Sun, many by a large percentage. Of the brightest 50 stars visible to the human eye from Earth, the least intrinsically bright is Alpha Centauri, which is still more than 1.5 times more luminous than our Sun, and cannot be easily seen from most of the Northern Hemisphere.9) You can’t see millions of stars on a dark night
Despite what you may hear in TV commercials, poems and songs, you cannot see a million stars … anywhere. There simply are not enough close enough and bright enough. On a really exceptional night, with no Moon and far from any source of lights, a person with very good eyesight may be able to see 2000-2500 stars at any one time. (Counting even this small number still would be difficult.). So the next time you hear someone claim to have seen a million stars in the sky, just appreciate it as artistic license or exuberant exaggeration – because it isn’t true!8) Red hot and cool ice blue – NOT!
We are accustomed to referring to things that are red as hot and those that are blue as cool. This is not entirely unreasonable, since a red, glowing fireplace poker is hot and ice, especially in glaciers and polar regions, can have a bluish cast. But we say that only because our everyday experience is limited. In fact, heated objects change color as their temperature changes, and red represents the lowest temperature at which a heated object can glow in visible light. As it gets hotter, the color changes to white and ultimately to blue. So the red stars you see in the sky are the “coolest” (least hot), and the blue stars are the hottest!7) Stars are black bodies
A black body is an object that absorbs 100 percent of all electromagnetic radiation (that is, light, radio waves and so on) that falls on it. A common image here is that of a brick oven with the interior painted black and the only opening a small window. All light that shines through the window is absorbed by the interior of the oven and none is reflected outside the oven. It is a perfect absorber. As it turns out, this definition of being perfect absorbers suits stars very well! However, this just says that a blackbody absorbs all the radiant energy that hits it, but does not forbid it from re-emitting the energy. In the case of a star, it absorbs all radiation that falls on it, but it also radiates back into space much more than it absorbs. Thus a star is a black body that glows with great brilliance! (An even more perfect black body is a black hole, but of course, it appears truly black, and radiates no light.)6) There are no green stars
Although there are scattered claims for stars that appear green, including Beta Librae (Zuben Eschamali), most observers do not see green in any stars except as an optical effect from their telescopes, or else an idiosyncratic quirk of personal vision and contrast. Stars emit a spectrum (“rainbow”) of colors, including green, but the human eye-brain connection mixes the colors together in a manner that rarely if ever comes out green. One color can dominate the radiation, but within the range of wavelengths and intensities found in stars, greens get mixed with other colors, and the star appears white. For stars, the general colors are, from lower to higher temperatures, red, orange, yellow, white and blue. So as far as the human eye can tell, there are no green stars.5) The Sun is a green star
That being said, the Sun is a “green” star, or more specifically, a green-blue star, whose peak wavelength lies clearly in the transition area on the spectrum between blue and green. This is not just an idle fact, but is important because the temperature of a star is related to the color of its most predominate wavelength of emission. (Whew!) In the Sun’s case, the surface temperature is about 5,800 K, or 500 nanometers, a green-blue. However, as indicated above, when the human eye factors in the other colors around it, the Sun’s apparent color comes out a white or even a yellowish white.4) The Sun is a “dwarf” star
We are accustomed to think of the Sun as a “normal” star, and in many respects, it is. But did you know that it is a “dwarf” star? You may have heard of a “white dwarf,” but that is not a regular star at all, but the corpse of a dead star. Technically, as far as “normal” stars go (that is, astronomical objects that produce their own energy through sustained and stable hydrogen fusion), there are only “dwarfs,” “giants” and “supergiants.” The giants and supergiants represent the terminal (old age) stages of stars, but the vast majority of stars, those in the long, mature stage of evolution (Main Sequence) are all called “dwarfs.” There is quite a bit of range in size here, but they are all much smaller than the giants and supergiants. So technically, the Sun is a dwarf star, sometimes called “Yellow Dwarf” in contradiction to the entry above!3) Stars don’t twinkle
Stars appear to twinkle (“scintillate”), especially when they are near the horizon. One star, Sirius, twinkles, sparkles and flashes so much some times that people actually report it as a UFO. But in fact, the twinkling is not a property of the stars, but of Earth’s turbulent atmosphere. As the light from a star passes through the atmosphere, especially when the star appears near the horizon, it must pass through many layers of often rapidly differing density. This has the effect of deflecting the light slightly as it were a ball in a pinball machine. The light eventually gets to your eyes, but every deflection causes it to change slightly in color and intensity. The result is “twinkling.” Above the Earth’s atmosphere, stars do not twinkle.2) You can see 20 quadrillion miles, at least
On a good night, you can see about 19,000,000,000,000,000 miles, easily. That’s 19 quadrillion miles, the approximate distance to the bright star Deneb in Cygnus. which is prominent in the evening skies of Fall and Winter. Deneb is bright enough to be seen virtually anywhere in the Northern hemisphere, and in fact from almost anywhere in the inhabited world. There is another star, Eta Carina, that is a little more than twice as far away, or about 44 quadrillion miles. But Eta Carina is faint, and not well placed for observers in most of the Northern hemisphere. Those are stars, but both the Andromeda Galaxy and the Triangulum Galaxy are also visible under certain conditions, and are roughly 15 and 18 quintillion miles away! (One quintillion is 10^18!)1) Black holes don’t “suck”
Many writers frequently describe black holes as “sucking” in everything around them. And it is a common worry among the ill-informed that the so-far hypothetical “mini” black holes that may be produced by the Large Hadron Collider would suck in everything around them in an ever increasing vortex that would consume the Earth! “Say it ain’t so, Joe!” Well, I am not Shoeless Joe Jackson, but it ain’t so. In the case of the LHC, it isn’t true for a number of reasons, but black holes in general do not “suck.”This not just a semantic distinction, but one of process and consequence as well. The word “suck” via suction, as in the way vacuum cleaners work, is not how black holes attract matter. In a vacuum cleaner, the fan produces a partial vacuum (really, just a slightly lower pressure) at the floor end of the vacuum, and regular air pressure outside, being greater, pushes the air into it, carrying along loose dirt and dust.
In the case of black holes, there is no suction involved. Instead, matter is pulled into the black hole by a very strong gravitational attraction. In one way of visualizing it, it really is a bit like falling into a hole, but not like being hoovered into it. Gravity is a fundamental force of Nature, and all matter has it. When something is pulled into a black hole, the process is more like being pulled into like a fish being reeled in by an angler, rather than being pushed along like a rafter inexorably being dragged over a waterfall.
The difference may seem trivial, but from a physical standpoint it is fundamental.
So black holes don’t suck, but they are very cool. Actually, they are cold. Very, very cold. But that’s a story for another time.
Astronomers have spotted one of the rarest and most extreme galaxy clusters in the universe and, behind it, an object that shouldn’t exist.
Researchers Estimate Ice Content of Crater at Moon’s South Pole |
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft has returned data that indicate ice may make up as much as 22 percent of the surface material in a crater located on the moon’s south pole.
The team of NASA and university scientists using laser light from LRO’s laser altimeter examined the floor of Shackleton crater. They found the crater’s floor is brighter than those of other nearby craters, which is consistent with the presence of small amounts of ice. This information will help researchers understand crater formation and study other uncharted areas of the moon. The findings are published in Thursday’s edition of the journalNature.
“The brightness measurements have been puzzling us since two summers ago,” said Gregory Neumann of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., a co-author on the paper. “While the distribution of brightness was not exactly what we had expected, practically every measurement related to ice and other volatile compounds on the moon is surprising, given the cosmically cold temperatures inside its polar craters.”
The spacecraft mapped Shackleton crater with unprecedented detail, using a laser to illuminate the crater’s interior and measure its albedo or natural reflectance. The laser light measures to a depth comparable to its wavelength, or about a micron. That represents a millionth of a meter, or less than one ten-thousandth of an inch. The team also used the instrument to map the relief of the crater’s terrain based on the time it took for laser light to bounce back from the moon’s surface. The longer it took, the lower the terrain’s elevation.
In addition to the possible evidence of ice, the group’s map of Shackleton revealed a remarkably preserved crater that has remained relatively unscathed since its formation more than three billion years ago. The crater’s floor is itself pocked with several small craters, which may have formed as part of the collision that created Shackleton. continue reading
(via thescienceofreality)
40 Million Stars Mapped in New Night Sky Census
Astronomers are mapping more than 40 million stars in the sky, recording the brightness and location of many faint stars that will be catalogued accurately for the first time, researchers say.
The stars are being charted as part of the American Association of Variable Star Observers Photometric All-Sky Survey (APASS), which is scanning the sky at a level 100 times fainter than any previous star-mapping expedition.
“Prior surveys have done a good job measuring the brightness of bright stars,” Arne Henden, director of the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO), said in a statement. “Other organizations have announced plans to measure faint stars. But this goldilocks zone of stars that are neither too bright or too faint has been neglected, until now.”
