A Lunar Eclipse Animation

Physicists Have Figured Out Where The Sun's Plasma Jets Come From

Things are heating up.

After over a century of observations and several theories, scientists may have finally nailed the origin of the high-speed plasma blasting through the Sun’s atmosphere several times a day. Using a state-of-the-art computer simulation, researchers have developed a detailed model of these plasma jets, called spicules.

The new findings answer some of the bigger questions in solar physics, including how these plasma jets form and why the Sun’s outer atmosphere is far hotter than the surface.

“This is the first model that has been able to reproduce all the features observed in spicules,” Juan Martinez-Sykora, lead author and astrophysicist at the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute in California, told ScienceAlert.

Continue Reading.

This Black Eye Galaxy that got its name from the band of light absorbing dust appearing in front of the star systems bright center in the Hubble space telescope.

via reddit

Spacewalk complete and new astronaut record set! Shane Kimbrough and Peggy Whitson of NASA successfully reconnected cables and electrical connections on an adapter-3 that will provide the pressurized interface between the station and the second of two international docking adapters to be delivered to the complex to support the dockings of U.S. commercial crew spacecraft in the future. The duo were also tasked with installing four thermal protection shields on the Tranquility module of the International Space Station.

 Having completed her eighth spacewalk, Whitson now holds the record for the most spacewalks and accumulated time spacewalking by a female astronaut. Spacewalkers have now spent a total of 1,243 hours and 42 minutes outside the station during 199 spacewalks in support of assembly and maintenance of the orbiting laboratory.

 Astronaut Thomas Pesquet of ESA posted this image and wrote, ’ Shane and Peggy on their way to their first #spacewalk tasks.’

 Credit: ESA/NASA

This is an article from last year, but still very exciting news! I wonder how far it’s progressed since?

Voyager 1's thrusters fired up for first time since 1980

NASA scientists are able to fire up a set of thrusters on Voyager 1 for the first time since 1980, allowing the spacecraft to orient itself in interstellar space, 13 billion miles from Earth.

The venerable Voyager 1 spacecraft.  Still impressing after all these years. 

Eagle Nebula

via reddit

The Cassini probe took a picture of Saturn that includes Earth in it!

Cassini has actually taken a ton of cool photos of Saturn if you want to check those out in the wake of last week’s planets podcast. 

I mention New Horizons in today’s podcast but here’s some more up-to-date info!

Solar System: Things to Know This Week

Time for a little reconnaissance. 

Our New Horizons spacecraft won’t arrive at its next destination in the distant Kuiper Belt—an object known as 2014 MU69—until New Year’s Day 2019, but researchers are already starting to study its environment thanks to a few rare observational opportunities this summer, including one on July 17. This week, we’re sharing 10 things to know about this exciting mission to a vast region of ancient mini-worlds billions of miles away.

1. First, Some Background 

New Horizons launched on Jan. 19, 2006. It swung past Jupiter for a gravity boost and scientific studies in February 2007, and conducted a six-month reconnaissance flyby study of Pluto and its moons in summer 2015. The mission culminated with the closest approach to Pluto on July 14, 2015. Now, as part of an extended mission, the New Horizons spacecraft is heading farther into the Kuiper Belt.

2. A Kuiper Belt refresher

The Kuiper Belt is a region full of objects presumed to be remnants from the formation of our solar system some 4.6 billion years ago. It includes dwarf planets such as Pluto and is populated with hundreds of thousands of icy bodies larger than 62 miles (100 km) across and an estimated trillion or more comets. The first Kuiper Belt object was discovered in 1992.

3. That’s Pretty Far

When New Horizons flies by MU69 in 2019, it will be the most distant object ever explored by a spacecraft. This ancient Kuiper Belt object is not well understood because it is faint, small, and very far away, located approximately 4.1 billion miles (6.6 billion km) from Earth.

4. Shadow Play 

To study this distant object from Earth, the New Horizons team have used data from the Hubble Space Telescope and the European Space Agency’s Gaia satellite to calculate where MU69 would cast a shadow on Earth’s surface as it passes in front of a star, an event known as an occultation.

5. An International Effort 

One occultation occurred on June 3, 2017. More than 50 mission team members and collaborators set up telescopes across South Africa and Argentina, aiming to catch a two-second glimpse of the object’s shadow as it raced across the Earth. Joining in on the occultation observations were NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and Gaia, a space observatory of the European Space Agency (ESA).

6. Piecing Together the Puzzle 

Combined, the pre-positioned mobile telescopes captured more than 100,000 images of the occultation star that can be used to assess the Kuiper Belt object’s environment. While MU69 itself eluded direct detection, the June 3 data provided valuable and surprising insights. “These data show that MU69 might not be as dark or as large as some expected,” said occultation team leader Marc Buie, a New Horizons science team member from Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

7. One Major Missing Piece 

Clear detection of MU69 remains elusive. “These [June 3 occultation] results are telling us something really interesting,” said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute. “The fact that we accomplished the occultation observations from every planned observing site but didn’t detect the object itself likely means that either MU69 is highly reflective and smaller than some expected, or it may be a binary or even a swarm of smaller bodies left from the time when the planets in our solar system formed.”

8. Another Opportunity 

On July 10, the SOFIA team positioned its aircraft in the center of the shadow, pointing its powerful 100-inch (2.5-meter) telescope at MU69 when the object passed in front of the background star. The mission team will now analyze that data over the next few weeks, looking in particular for rings or debris around MU69 that might present problems for New Horizons when the spacecraft flies by in 2019. “This was the most challenging occultation observation because MU69 is so small and so distant,” said Kimberly Ennico Smith, SOFIA project scientist.

9. The Latest 

On July 17, the Hubble Space Telescope will check for debris around MU69 while team members set up another “fence line” of small mobile telescopes along the predicted ground track of the occultation shadow in southern Argentina.

10. Past to Present 

New Horizons has had quite the journey. Check out some of these mission videos for a quick tour of its major accomplishments and what’s next for this impressive spacecraft.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

I talked about Proxima Centauri last week but didn't realize it has a planet!

It’s starry scholastic month! Planet X will start it off with his first lesson: Proxima B!

http://www.space.com/33845-why-proxima-b-exoplanet-hard-to-find.html

Cost per kg for human spaceflight

via reddit

I found a bizarre open-access, peer-review journal of STEM research. It was hard for me to find anything that pertained to astronomy or any of the stellar studies, but I did find a couple categories I could investigate: 

Astrobiology

Astronomical Sciences

Spectroscopy (I didn’t see any astronomical spectroscopy stuff but who knows)

Just looking at the articles popping up suggests that it would take some serious digging to find anything (and I would certainly have to work on my keyword optimization techniques because typing ‘space’ into the search bar got me nothing relevant to my interests), but it’s a new potential resource! And for anyone who wants to find a way to publish in STEM fields, maybe it’s something worth checking out?