Astro Blog

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/27/science/mars-meteorites-impacts-seismic.html By  Kenneth Chang , The New York Times.  Excerpt: The exquisitely sensitive seismometer on NASA’s InSight lander dutifully recorded the burst of seismic vibrations and then dispatched the data, a gift of science, to Earth the next day. The InSight scientists were busy celebrating the holidays. When they studied the tremor in detail in early January, it looked different from the more than 1,000 marsquakes that the stationary spacecraft had recorded during its mission to study the insides of the red planet. ...In scientific papers published Thursday, scientists using data from two NASA spacecraft reveal that the seismic event was not the cracking of rocks from the internal stresses of the red planet. Instead, it was shock waves emanating from a space rock hitting Mars. The discovery will help scientists better understand what is inside Mars and serves as a reminder that just like Earth, Mars gets wha...

https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/052/01GF423GBQSK6ANC89NTFJW8VM By Webb Space Telescope.  Excerpt: The Pillars of Creation ... is a region where young stars are forming – or have barely burst from their dusty cocoons as they continue to form. Newly formed stars are the scene-stealers in this  Near-Infrared Camera  (NIRCam) image. These are the bright red orbs that sometimes appear with eight diffraction spikes. When knots with sufficient mass form within the pillars, they begin to collapse under their own gravity, slowly heat up, and eventually begin shining brightly. Along the edges of the pillars are wavy lines that look like lava. These are ejections from stars that are still forming. Young stars periodically shoot out supersonic jets that can interact within clouds of material, like these thick pillars of gas and dust. This sometimes also results in bow shocks, which can form wavy patterns like a boat does as it moves through water. These young sta...

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-confirms-dart-mission-impact-changed-asteroid-s-motion-in-space By NASA  RELEASE 22-105 .  Excerpt:  Analysis of data obtained over the past two weeks  by NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) investigation team shows the spacecraft's kinetic impact with its target asteroid, Dimorphos, successfully altered the asteroid’s orbit. This marks humanity’s first time purposely changing the motion of a celestial object and the first full-scale demonstration of asteroid deflection technology. “All of us have a responsibility to protect our home planet. After all, it’s the only one we have,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “This mission shows that NASA is trying to be ready for whatever the universe throws at us. NASA has proven we are serious as a defender of the planet. This is a watershed moment for planetary defense and all of humanity, demonstrating commitment from NASA's exceptional team and partners from around ...

https://gizmodo.com/the-asteroid-that-killed-the-dinosaurs-spawned-a-monste-1849614930 By  Isaac Schultz , Gizmodo.  Excerpt: The impact created fast-moving waves nearly 3 miles high, a new study finds. A team modeling the aftermath of the asteroid impact that doomed the dinosaurs 66 million years ago say that the collision also created a global tsunami that devastated coastlines from North America to New Zealand. The researchers studied ancient sediments from over 100 sites around the world, to see how extreme waves resulting from the impact may have disrupted the geological record. Their work was  presented  at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in 2018 and is  published  this week in the journal AGU Advances.… 

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/30/science/europa-nasa-juno-photos.html By  Kenneth Chang , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Juno, a NASA spacecraft that has been orbiting Jupiter since 2016, zipped within 219 miles of Europa’s surface early on Thursday, speeding by at more than 30,000 miles per hour. Less than 12 hours later, the four images taken during the flyby, the closest observations of the moon since January 2000, were back on Earth. “They’re stunning, actually,” said Candice J. Hansen-Koharcheck, a scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Ariz., who is responsible for the operation of the spacecraft’s primary camera,  JunoCam . ...All four images were available  on Juno’s website .… 

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-dart-mission-hits-asteroid-in-first-ever-planetary-defense-test NASA RELEASE 22-100.  Excerpt: After 10 months flying in space, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) ...successfully impacted its asteroid target on Monday, the agency’s first attempt to move an asteroid in space. Mission control at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, announced the successful impact at 7:14 p.m. EDT. As a part of NASA’s overall  planetary defense  strategy, DART’s impact with the asteroid Dimorphos demonstrates a viable mitigation technique for protecting the planet from an Earth-bound asteroid or comet, if one were discovered. ...said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson “As NASA studies the cosmos and our home planet, we’re also working to protect that home, and this international collaboration turned science fiction into science fact, demonstrating one way to protect Earth.” DART targeted the astero...

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/new-webb-image-captures-clearest-view-of-neptune-s-rings-in-decades By NASA  Laura Betz   (Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD), Hannah Braun and Christine Pulliam (Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD).  Excerpt: ...Webb’s extremely stable and precise image quality permits these very faint rings to be detected so close to Neptune. ...Compared to the gas giants, Jupiter and Saturn, Neptune is much richer in elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. This is readily apparent in Neptune’s signature blue appearance in  Hubble Space Telescope images  at visible wavelengths, caused by small amounts of gaseous methane. Webb’s  Near-Infrared Camera  (NIRCam) images objects in the near-infrared range from 0.6 to 5 microns, so Neptune does not appear blue to Webb. In fact, the methane gas so strongly absorbs red and infrared light that the planet is quite dark at these near-infrared wavelengths, excep...