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Using All of Our Senses in Space
Today, we and the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced the detection of light and a high-energy cosmic particle that both came from near a black hole billions of trillions of miles from Earth. This discovery is a big step forward in the field of multimessenger astronomy.
But wait — what is multimessenger astronomy? And why is it a big deal?
People learn about different objects through their senses: sight, touch, taste, hearing and smell. Similarly, multimessenger astronomy allows us to study the same astronomical object or event through a variety of “messengers,” which include light of all wavelengths, cosmic ray particles, gravitational waves, and neutrinos — speedy tiny particles that weigh almost nothing and rarely interact with anything. By receiving and combining different pieces of information from these different messengers, we can learn much more about these objects and events than we would from just one.
Lights, Detector, Action!
Much of what we know about the universe comes just from different wavelengths of light. We study the rotations of galaxies through radio waves and visible light, investigate the eating habits of black holes through X-rays and gamma rays, and peer into dusty star-forming regions through infrared light.
The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, which recently turned 10, studies the universe by detecting gamma rays — the highest-energy form of light. This allows us to investigate some of the most extreme objects in the universe.
Last fall, Fermi was involved in another multimessenger finding — the very first detection of light and gravitational waves from the same source, two merging neutron stars. In that instance, light and gravitational waves were the messengers that gave us a better understanding of the neutron stars and their explosive merger into a black hole.
Fermi has also advanced our understanding of blazars, which are galaxies with supermassive black holes at their centers. Black holes are famous for drawing material into them. But with blazars, some material near the black hole shoots outward in a pair of fast-moving jets. With blazars, one of those jets points directly at us!
Multimessenger Astronomy is Cool
Today’s announcement combines another pair of messengers. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory lies a mile under the ice in Antarctica and uses the ice itself to detect neutrinos. When IceCube caught a super-high-energy neutrino and traced its origin to a specific area of the sky, they alerted the astronomical community.
Fermi completes a scan of the entire sky about every three hours, monitoring thousands of blazars among all the bright gamma-ray sources it sees. For months it had observed a blazar producing more gamma rays than usual. Flaring is a common characteristic in blazars, so this did not attract special attention. But when the alert from IceCube came through about a neutrino coming from that same patch of sky, and the Fermi data were analyzed, this flare became a big deal!
IceCube, Fermi, and followup observations all link this neutrino to a blazar called TXS 0506+056. This event connects a neutrino to a supermassive black hole for the very first time.
Why is this such a big deal? And why haven’t we done it before? Detecting a neutrino is hard since it doesn’t interact easily with matter and can travel unaffected great distances through the universe. Neutrinos are passing through you right now and you can’t even feel a thing!
The neat thing about this discovery — and multimessenger astronomy in general — is how much more we can learn by combining observations. This blazar/neutrino connection, for example, tells us that it was protons being accelerated by the blazar’s jet. Our study of blazars, neutrinos, and other objects and events in the universe will continue with many more exciting multimessenger discoveries to come in the future.
Want to know more? Read the story HERE.
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5 Out-of-This World Technologies Developed for Our Webb Space Telescope
Our James Webb Space Telescope is the most ambitious and complex space science observatory ever built. It will study every phase in the history of our universe, ranging from the first luminous glows after the Big Bang, to the formation of solar systems capable of supporting life on planets like Earth, to the evolution of our own Solar System.
In order to carry out such a daring mission, many innovative and powerful new technologies were developed specifically to enable Webb to achieve its primary mission.
Here are 5 technologies that were developed to help Webb push the boundaries of space exploration and discovery:
1. Microshutters
Microshutters are basically tiny windows with shutters that each measure 100 by 200 microns, or about the size of a bundle of only a few human hairs.
The microshutter device will record the spectra of light from distant objects (spectroscopy is simply the science of measuring the intensity of light at different wavelengths. The graphical representations of these measurements are called spectra.)
Other spectroscopic instruments have flown in space before but none have had the capability to enable high-resolution observation of up to 100 objects simultaneously, which means much more scientific investigating can get done in less time.
Read more about how the microshutters work HERE.
2. The Backplane
Webb's backplane is the large structure that holds and supports the big hexagonal mirrors of the telescope, you can think of it as the telescope’s “spine”. The backplane has an important job as it must carry not only the 6.5 m (over 21 foot) diameter primary mirror plus other telescope optics, but also the entire module of scientific instruments. It also needs to be essentially motionless while the mirrors move to see far into deep space. All told, the backplane carries more than 2400kg (2.5 tons) of hardware.
This structure is also designed to provide unprecedented thermal stability performance at temperatures colder than -400°F (-240°C). At these temperatures, the backplane was engineered to be steady down to 32 nanometers, which is 1/10,000 the diameter of a human hair!
Read more about the backplane HERE.
3. The Mirrors
One of the Webb Space Telescope's science goals is to look back through time to when galaxies were first forming. Webb will do this by observing galaxies that are very distant, at over 13 billion light years away from us. To see such far-off and faint objects, Webb needs a large mirror.
Webb's scientists and engineers determined that a primary mirror 6.5 meters across is what was needed to measure the light from these distant galaxies. Building a mirror this large is challenging, even for use on the ground. Plus, a mirror this large has never been launched into space before!
If the Hubble Space Telescope's 2.4-meter mirror were scaled to be large enough for Webb, it would be too heavy to launch into orbit. The Webb team had to find new ways to build the mirror so that it would be light enough - only 1/10 of the mass of Hubble's mirror per unit area - yet very strong.
Read more about how we designed and created Webb’s unique mirrors HERE.
4. Wavefront Sensing and Control
Wavefront sensing and control is a technical term used to describe the subsystem that was required to sense and correct any errors in the telescope’s optics. This is especially necessary because all 18 segments have to work together as a single giant mirror.
The work performed on the telescope optics resulted in a NASA tech spinoff for diagnosing eye conditions and accurate mapping of the eye. This spinoff supports research in cataracts, keratoconus (an eye condition that causes reduced vision), and eye movement – and improvements in the LASIK procedure.
Read more about the tech spinoff HERE.
5. Sunshield and Sunshield Coating
Webb’s primary science comes from infrared light, which is essentially heat energy. To detect the extremely faint heat signals of astronomical objects that are incredibly far away, the telescope itself has to be very cold and stable. This means we not only have to protect Webb from external sources of light and heat (like the Sun and the Earth), but we also have to make all the telescope elements very cold so they don't emit their own heat energy that could swamp the sensitive instruments. The temperature also must be kept constant so that materials aren't shrinking and expanding, which would throw off the precise alignment of the optics.
Each of the five layers of the sunshield is incredibly thin. Despite the thin layers, they will keep the cold side of the telescope at around -400°F (-240°C), while the Sun-facing side will be 185°F (85°C). This means you could actually freeze nitrogen on the cold side (not just liquify it), and almost boil water on the hot side. The sunshield gives the telescope the equivalent protection of a sunscreen with SPF 1 million!
Read more about Webb’s incredible sunshield HERE.
Learn more about the Webb Space Telescope and other complex technologies that have been created for the first time by visiting THIS page.
For the latest updates and news on the Webb Space Telescope, follow the mission on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
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Where in the World is Our Flying Telescope? New Zealand!
Our flying observatory SOFIA carries a telescope inside this Boeing 747SP aircraft. Scientists use SOFIA to study the universe — including stars, planets and black holes — while flying as high as 45,000 feet.
SOFIA is typically based at our Armstrong Flight Research Center in Palmdale, California, but recently arrived in Christchurch, New Zealand, to study celestial objects that are best observed from the Southern Hemisphere.
So what will we study from the land down under?
Eta Carinae
Eta Carinae, in the southern constellation Carina, is the most luminous stellar system within 10,000 light-years of Earth. It’s made of two massive stars that are shrouded in dust and gas from its previous eruptions and may one day explode as a supernova. We will analyze the dust and gas around it to learn how this violent system evolves.
Celestial Magnetic Fields
We can study magnetic fields in the center of our Milky Way galaxy from New Zealand because there the galaxy is high in the sky — where we can observe it for long periods of time. We know that this area has strong magnetic fields that affect the material spiraling into the black hole here and forming new stars. But we want to learn about their shape and strength to understand how magnetic fields affect the processes in our galactic center.
Saturn’s Moon Titan
Titan is Saturn’s largest moon and is the only moon in our solar system to have a thick atmosphere — it’s filled with a smog-like haze. It also has seasons, each lasting about seven Earth years. We want to learn if its atmosphere changes seasonally.
Titan will pass in front of a star in an eclipse-like event called an occultation. We’ll chase down the shadow it casts on Earth’s surface, and fly our airborne telescope directly in its center.
From there, we can determine the temperature, pressure and density of Titan’s atmosphere. Now that our Cassini Spacecraft has ended its mission, the only way we can continue to monitor its atmosphere is by studying these occultation events.
Nearby Galaxies
The Large Magellanic Cloud is a galaxy near our own, but it’s only visible from the Southern Hemisphere! Inside of it are areas filled with newly forming stars and the leftovers from a supernova explosion.
The Tarantula Nebula
The Tarantula Nebula, also called 30 Doradus, is located in the Large Magellanic Cloud and shown here in this image from Chandra, Hubble and Spitzer. It holds a cluster of thousands of stars forming simultaneously. Once the stars are born, their light and winds push out the material leftover from their parent clouds — potentially leaving nothing behind to create more new stars. We want to know if the material is still expanding and forming new stars, or if the star-formation process has stopped. So our team on SOFIA will make a map showing the speed and direction of the gas in the nebula to determine what’s happening inside it.
Supernova 1987A
Also in the Large Magellanic Cloud is Supernova 1987A, the closest supernova explosion witnessed in almost 400 years. We will continue studying this supernova to better understand the material expanding out from it, which may become the building blocks of future stars and planets. Many of our telescopes have studied Supernova 1987A, including the Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory, but our instruments on SOFIA are the only tools we can use to study the debris around it with infrared light, which let us better understand characteristics of the dust that cannot be measured using other wavelengths of light.
For live updates about our New Zealand observations follow SOFIA on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
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Ten Observations From Our Flying Telescope
SOFIA is a Boeing 747SP aircraft with a 100-inch telescope used to study the solar system and beyond by observing infrared light that can’t reach Earth’s surface.
What is infrared light? It’s light we cannot see with our eyes that is just beyond the red portion of visible light we see in a rainbow. It can be used to change your TV channels, which is how remote controls work, and it can tell us how hot things are.
Everything emits infrared radiation, even really cold objects like ice and newly forming stars! We use infrared light to study the life cycle of stars, the area around black holes, and to analyze the chemical fingerprints of complex molecules in space and in the atmospheres of other planets – including Pluto and Mars.
Above, is the highest-resolution image of the ring of dust and clouds around the back hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. The bright Y-shaped feature is believed to be material falling from the ring into the black hole – which is located where the arms of the Y intersect.
The magnetic field in the galaxy M82 (pictured above) aligns with the dramatic flow of material driven by a burst of star formation. This is helping us learn how star formation shapes magnetic fields of an entire galaxy.
A nearby planetary system around the star Epsilon Eridani, the location of the fictional Babylon 5 space station, is similar to our own: it’s the closest known planetary system around a star like our sun and it also has an asteroid belt adjacent to the orbit of its largest, Jupiter-sized planet.
Observations of a supernova that exploded 10,000 years ago, that revealed it contains enough dust to make 7,000 Earth-sized planets!
Measurements of Pluto’s upper atmosphere, made just two weeks before our New Horizons spacecraft’s Pluto flyby. Combining these observations with those from the spacecraft are helping us understand the dwarf planet’s atmosphere.
A gluttonous star that has eaten the equivalent of 18 Jupiters in the last 80 years, which may change the theory of how stars and planets form.
Molecules like those in your burnt breakfast toast may offer clues to the building blocks of life. Scientists hypothesize that the growth of complex organic molecules like these is one of the steps leading to the emergence of life.
This map of carbon molecules in Orion’s Horsehead nebula (overlaid on an image of the nebula from the Palomar Sky Survey) is helping us understand how the earliest generations of stars formed. Our instruments on SOFIA use 14 detectors simultaneously, letting us make this map faster than ever before!
Pinpointing the location of water vapor in a newly forming star with groundbreaking precision. This is expanding our understanding of the distribution of water in the universe and its eventual incorporation into planets. The water vapor data from SOFIA is shown above laid over an image from the Gemini Observatory.
We captured the chemical fingerprints that revealed celestial clouds collapsing to form young stars like our sun. It’s very rare to directly observe this collapse in motion because it happens so quickly. One of the places where the collapse was observed is shown in this image from The Two Micron All Sky Survey.
Learn more by following SOFIA on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
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What's Inside SOFIA? High Flying Instruments
Our flying observatory, called SOFIA, carries a 100-inch telescope inside a Boeing 747SP aircraft. Having an airborne observatory provides many benefits.
It flies at 38,000-45,000 feet – above 99% of the water vapor in Earth’s atmosphere that blocks infrared light from reaching the ground!
It is also mobile! We can fly to the best vantage point for viewing the cosmos. We go to Christchurch, New Zealand, nearly every year to study objects best observed from the Southern Hemisphere. And last year we went to Daytona Beach, FL, to study the atmosphere of Neptune’s moon Triton while flying over the Atlantic Ocean.
SOFIA’s telescope has a large primary mirror – about the same size as the Hubble Space Telescope’s mirror. Large telescopes let us gather a lot of light to make high-resolution images!
But unlike a space-based observatory, SOFIA returns to our base every morning.
Which means that we can change the instruments we use to analyze the light from the telescope to make many different types of scientific observations. We currently have seven instruments, and new ones are now being developed to incorporate new technologies.
So what is inside SOFIA? The existing instruments include:
Infrared cameras that can peer inside celestial clouds of dust and gas to see stars forming inside. They can also study molecules in a nebula that may offer clues to the building blocks of life…
…A polarimeter, a device that measures the alignment of incoming light waves, that we use to study magnetic fields. The left image reveals that hot dust in the starburst galaxy M82 is magnetically aligned with the gas flowing out of it, shown in blue on the right image from our Chandra X-ray Observatory. This can help us understand how magnetic fields affect how stars form.
…A tracking camera that we used to study New Horizon’s post-Pluto flyby target and found that it may have its own moon…
…A spectrograph that spreads light into its component colors. We’re using one to search for signs of water plumes on Jupiter’s icy moon Europa and to search for signs of water on Venus to learn about how it lost its oceans…
…An instrument that studies high energy terahertz radiation with 14 detectors. It’s so efficient that we made this map of Orion’s Horsehead Nebula in only four hours! The map is made of 100 separate views of the nebula, each mapping carbon atoms at different velocities.
…And we have an instrument under construction that will soon let us study how water vapor, ice and oxygen combine at different times during planet formation, to better understand how these elements combine with dust to form a mass that can become a planet.
Our airborne telescope has already revealed so much about the universe around us! Now we’re looking for the next idea to help us use SOFIA in even more new ways.
Discover more about our SOFIA flying observatory HERE.
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A Year on the Sun Through Our Satellite’s Eyes
Did you know we’re watching the Sun 24/7 from space?
We use a whole fleet of satellites to monitor the Sun and its influences on the solar system. One of those is the Solar Dynamics Observatory. It’s been in space for eight years, keeping an eye on the Sun almost every moment of every day. Launched on Feb. 11, 2010, this satellite (also known as SDO) was originally designed for a two-year mission, but it’s still collecting data to this day — and one of our best ways to keep an eye on our star.
To celebrate another year of SDO, we’re sharing some of our favorite solar views that the spacecraft sent back to Earth in 2017.
March: A long spotless stretch
For 15 days starting on March 7, SDO saw the yolk-like spotless Sun in visible light.
The Sun goes through a natural 11-year cycle of activity marked by two extremes: solar maximum and solar minimum. Sunspots are dark regions of complex magnetic activity on the Sun’s surface, and the number of sunspots at any given time is used as an index of solar activity.
Solar maximum = intense solar activity and more sunspots
Solar minimum = less solar activity and fewer sunspots
This March 2017 period was the longest stretch of spotlessness since the last solar minimum in April 2010 – a sure sign that the solar cycle is marching on toward the next minimum, which scientists expect in 2019-2020. For comparison, the images on the left are from Feb. 2014 – during the last solar maximum – and show a much spottier Sun.
June: Energized active regions
A pair of relatively small but frenetic active regions – areas of intense and complex magnetic fields – rotated into SDO’s view May 31 – June 2, while spouting off numerous small flares and sweeping loops of plasma. The dynamic regions were easily the most remarkable areas on the Sun during this 42-hour period.
July: Two weeks in the life of a sunspot
On July 5, SDO watched an active region rotate into view on the Sun. The satellite continued to track the region as it grew and eventually rotated across the Sun and out of view on July 17.
With their complex magnetic fields, sunspots are often the source of interesting solar activity: During its 13-day trip across the face of the Sun, the active region — dubbed AR12665 — put on a show for our Sun-watching satellites, producing several solar flares, a coronal mass ejection and a solar energetic particle event.
August: An eclipse in space
While millions of people in North America experienced a total solar eclipse on Aug. 21, SDO saw a partial eclipse from space. SDO actually sees several lunar transits a year from its perspective – but an eclipse on the ground doesn’t necessarily mean that SDO will see anything out of the ordinary. Even on Aug. 21, SDO saw only 14 percent of the Sun blocked by the Moon, while most US residents saw 60 percent blockage or more.
September: A spate of solar activity
In September 2017, SDO saw a spate of solar activity, with the Sun emitting 31 notable flares and releasing several powerful coronal mass ejections between Sept. 6-10. Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation, while coronal mass ejections are massive clouds of solar material and magnetic fields that erupt from the Sun at incredible speeds.
One of the flares imaged by SDO on Sept. 6 was classified as X9.3 – clocking in at the most powerful flare of the current solar cycle. The current cycle began in December 2008 and is now decreasing in intensity, heading toward solar minimum. During solar minimum, such eruptions on the Sun are increasingly rare, but history has shown that they can nonetheless be intense.
September: A trio of tempests
Three distinct solar active regions with towering arches rotated into SDO’s view over a three-day period from Sept. 24-26. Charged particles spinning along the ever-changing magnetic field lines above the active regions trace out the magnetic field in extreme ultraviolet light, a type of light that is typically invisible to our eyes, but is colorized here in gold. To give some sense of scale, the largest arches are many times the size of Earth.
December: A curling prominence
SDO saw a small prominence arch up and send streams of solar material curling back into the Sun over a 30-hour period on Dec. 13-14. Prominences are relatively cool strands of solar material tethered above the Sun’s surface by magnetic fields.
December: Solar question mark
An elongated coronal hole — the darker area near the center of the Sun’s disk — looked something like a question mark when seen in extreme ultraviolet light by SDO on Dec. 21-22. Coronal holes are magnetically open areas on the Sun that allow high-speed solar wind to gush out into space. They appear as dark areas when seen in certain wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light.
For all the latest on the Solar Dynamics Observatory, visit nasa.gov/sdo. Keep up with the latest on the Sun on Twitter @NASASun or at facebook.com/NASASunScience.
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When Dead Stars Collide!
Gravity has been making waves - literally. Earlier this month, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for the first direct detection of gravitational waves two years ago. But astronomers just announced another huge advance in the field of gravitational waves - for the first time, we’ve observed light and gravitational waves from the same source.
There was a pair of orbiting neutron stars in a galaxy (called NGC 4993). Neutron stars are the crushed leftover cores of massive stars (stars more than 8 times the mass of our sun) that long ago exploded as supernovas. There are many such pairs of binaries in this galaxy, and in all the galaxies we can see, but something special was about to happen to this particular pair.
Each time these neutron stars orbited, they would lose a teeny bit of gravitational energy to gravitational waves. Gravitational waves are disturbances in space-time - the very fabric of the universe - that travel at the speed of light. The waves are emitted by any mass that is changing speed or direction, like this pair of orbiting neutron stars. However, the gravitational waves are very faint unless the neutron stars are very close and orbiting around each other very fast.
As luck would have it, the teeny energy loss caused the two neutron stars to get a teeny bit closer to each other and orbit a teeny bit faster. After hundreds of millions of years, all those teeny bits added up, and the neutron stars were *very* close. So close that … BOOM! … they collided. And we witnessed it on Earth on August 17, 2017.
Credit: National Science Foundation/LIGO/Sonoma State University/A. Simonnet
A couple of very cool things happened in that collision - and we expect they happen in all such neutron star collisions. Just before the neutron stars collided, the gravitational waves were strong enough and at just the right frequency that the National Science Foundation (NSF)’s Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and European Gravitational Observatory’s Virgo could detect them. Just after the collision, those waves quickly faded out because there are no longer two things orbiting around each other!
LIGO is a ground-based detector waiting for gravitational waves to pass through its facilities on Earth. When it is active, it can detect them from almost anywhere in space.
The other thing that happened was what we call a gamma-ray burst. When they get very close, the neutron stars break apart and create a spectacular, but short, explosion. For a couple of seconds, our Fermi Gamma-ray Telescope saw gamma-rays from that explosion. Fermi’s Gamma-ray Burst Monitor is one of our eyes on the sky, looking out for such bursts of gamma-rays that scientists want to catch as soon as they’re happening.
And those gamma-rays came just 1.7 seconds after the gravitational wave signal. The galaxy this occurred in is 130 million light-years away, so the light and gravitational waves were traveling for 130 million years before we detected them.
After that initial burst of gamma-rays, the debris from the explosion continued to glow, fading as it expanded outward. Our Swift, Hubble, Chandra and Spitzer telescopes, along with a number of ground-based observers, were poised to look at this afterglow from the explosion in ultraviolet, optical, X-ray and infrared light. Such coordination between satellites is something that we’ve been doing with our international partners for decades, so we catch events like this one as quickly as possible and in as many wavelengths as possible.
Astronomers have thought that neutron star mergers were the cause of one type of gamma-ray burst - a short gamma-ray burst, like the one they observed on August 17. It wasn’t until we could combine the data from our satellites with the information from LIGO/Virgo that we could confirm this directly.
This event begins a new chapter in astronomy. For centuries, light was the only way we could learn about our universe. Now, we’ve opened up a whole new window into the study of neutron stars and black holes. This means we can see things we could not detect before.
The first LIGO detection was of a pair of merging black holes. Mergers like that may be happening as often as once a month across the universe, but they do not produce much light because there’s little to nothing left around the black hole to emit light. In that case, gravitational waves were the only way to detect the merger.
Image Credit: LIGO/Caltech/MIT/Sonoma State (Aurore Simonnet)
The neutron star merger, though, has plenty of material to emit light. By combining different kinds of light with gravitational waves, we are learning how matter behaves in the most extreme environments. We are learning more about how the gravitational wave information fits with what we already know from light - and in the process we’re solving some long-standing mysteries!
Want to know more? Get more information HERE.
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Pinpointing the Cause of Earth’s Recent Record CO2 Spike
A new NASA study provides space-based evidence that Earth’s tropical regions were the cause of the largest annual increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration seen in at least 2,000 years.
What was the cause of this?
Scientists suspect that the 2015-2016 El Niño – one of the largest on record – was responsible. El Niño is a cyclical warming pattern of ocean circulation in the Pacific Ocean that affects weather all over the world. Before OCO-2, we didn’t have enough data to understand exactly how El Nino played a part.
Analyzing the first 28 months of data from our Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO-2) satellite, researchers conclude that impacts of El Niño-related heat and drought occurring in the tropical regions of South America, Africa and Indonesia were responsible for the record spike in global carbon dioxide.
These three tropical regions released 2.5 gigatons more carbon into the atmosphere than they did in 2011. This extra carbon dioxide explains the difference in atmospheric carbon dioxide growth rates between 2011 and the peak years of 2015-16.
In 2015 and 2016, OCO-2 recorded atmospheric carbon dioxide increases that were 50% larger than the average increase seen in recent years preceding these observations.
In eastern and southern tropical South America, including the Amazon rainforest, severe drought spurred by El Niño made 2015 the driest year in the past 30 years. Temperatures were also higher than normal. These drier and hotter conditions stressed vegetation and reduced photosynthesis, meaning trees and plants absorbed less carbon from the atmosphere. The effect was to increase the net amount of carbon released into the atmosphere.
In contrast, rainfall in tropical Africa was at normal levels, but ecosystems endured hotter-than-normal temperatures. Dead trees and plants decomposed more, resulting in more carbon being released into the atmosphere.
Meanwhile, tropical Asia had the second-driest year in the past 30 years. Its increased carbon release, primarily from Indonesia, was mainly due to increased peat and forest fires - also measured by satellites.
We knew El Niños were one factor in these variations, but until now we didn’t understand, at the scale of these regions, what the most important processes were. OCO-2’s geographic coverage and data density are allowing us to study each region separately.
Why does the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere matter?
The concentration of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere is constantly changing. It changes from season to season as plants grow and die, with higher concentrations in the winter and lower amounts in the summer. Annually averaged atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations have generally increased year over year since the 1800s – the start of the widespread Industrial Revolution. Before then, Earth’s atmosphere naturally contained about 595 gigatons of carbon in the form of carbon dioxide. Currently, that number is 850 gigatons.
Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, which means that it can trap heat. Since greenhouse gas is the principal human-produced driver of climate change, better understanding how it moves through the Earth system at regional scales and how it changes over time are important aspects to monitor.
Get more information about these data HERE.
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Five Famous Pulsars from the Past 50 Years
Early astronomers faced an obstacle: their technology. These great minds only had access to telescopes that revealed celestial bodies shining in visible light. Later, with the development of new detectors, scientists opened their eyes to other types of light like radio waves and X-rays. They realized cosmic objects look very different when viewed in these additional wavelengths. Pulsars — rapidly spinning stellar corpses that appear to pulse at us — are a perfect example.
The first pulsar was observed 50 years ago on August 6, 1967, using radio waves, but since then we have studied them in nearly all wavelengths of light, including X-rays and gamma rays.
Typical Pulsar
Most pulsars form when a star — between 8 and 20 times the mass of our sun — runs out of fuel and its core collapses into a super dense and compact object: a neutron star.
These neutron stars are about the size of a city and can rotate slowly or quite quickly, spinning anywhere from once every few hours to hundreds of times per second. As they whirl, they emit beams of light that appear to blink at us from space.
First Pulsar
One day five decades ago, a graduate student at the University of Cambridge, England, named Jocelyn Bell was poring over the data from her radio telescope - 120 meters of paper recordings.
Image Credit: Sumit Sijher
She noticed some unusual markings, which she called “scruff,” indicating a mysterious object (simulated above) that flashed without fail every 1.33730 seconds. This was the very first pulsar discovered, known today as PSR B1919+21.
Best Known Pulsar
Before long, we realized pulsars were far more complicated than first meets the eye — they produce many kinds of light, not only radio waves. Take our galaxy’s Crab Nebula, just 6,500 light years away and somewhat of a local celebrity. It formed after a supernova explosion, which crushed the parent star's core into a neutron star.
The resulting pulsar, nestled inside the nebula that resulted from the supernova explosion, is among the most well-studied objects in our cosmos. It’s pictured above in X-ray light, but it shines across almost the entire electromagnetic spectrum, from radio waves to gamma rays.
Brightest Gamma-ray Pulsar
Speaking of gamma rays, in 2015 our Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope discovered the first pulsar beyond our own galaxy capable of producing such high-energy emissions.
Located in the Tarantula Nebula 163,000 light-years away, PSR J0540-6919 gleams nearly 20 times brighter in gamma-rays than the pulsar embedded in the Crab Nebula.
Dual Personality Pulsar
No two pulsars are exactly alike, and in 2013 an especially fast-spinning one had an identity crisis. A fleet of orbiting X-ray telescopes, including our Swift and Chandra observatories, caught IGR J18245-2452 as it alternated between generating X-rays and radio waves.
Scientists suspect these radical changes could be due to the rise and fall of gas streaming onto the pulsar from its companion star.
Transformer Pulsar
This just goes to show that pulsars are easily influenced by their surroundings. That same year, our Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope uncovered another pulsar, PSR J1023+0038, in the act of a major transformation — also under the influence of its nearby companion star.
The radio beacon disappeared and the pulsar brightened fivefold in gamma rays, as if someone had flipped a switch to increase the energy of the system.
NICER Mission
Our Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) mission, launched this past June, will study pulsars like those above using X-ray measurements.
With NICER’s help, scientists will be able to gaze even deeper into the cores of these dense and mysterious entities.
For more information about NICER, visit https://www.nasa.gov/nicer
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Our sun is dynamic and ever-changing. On Friday, July 14, a solar flare and a coronal mass ejection erupted from the same, large active region. The coils arcing over this active region are particles spiraling along magnetic field lines.
Solar flares are explosions on the sun that send energy, light and high-speed particles into space. Such flares are often associated with solar magnetic storms known as coronal mass ejections. While these are the most common solar events, the sun can also emit streams of very fast protons – known as solar energetic particle (SEP) events – and disturbances in the solar wind known as corotating interaction regions (CIRs).
Learn more HERE.
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Over a 22-hour period (May 2-3, 2017), strands of plasma at the sun’s edge shifted and twisted back and forth. In this close-up, the strands are being manipulated by strong magnetic forces associated with active regions on the sun.
To give a sense of scale, the strands hover above the sun more than several times the size of Earth! The images were taken in a wavelength of extreme ultraviolet light.
Learn more: http://go.nasa.gov/2qT2C4B
Credits: NASA/SDO
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The magnetic field lines between a pair of active regions formed a beautiful set of swaying arches, seen in this footage captured by our Solar Dynamics Observatory on April 24-26, 2017.
These arches, which form a connection between regions of opposite magnetic polarity, are visible in exquisite detail in this wavelength of extreme ultraviolet light. Extreme ultraviolet light is typically invisible to our eyes, but is colorized here in gold.
Take a closer look: https://go.nasa.gov/2pGgYZt
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Cascading loops on the surface of the sun highlight an active region that had just rotated into view of our solar-observing spacecraft. We have observed this phenomenon numerous times, but this one was one of the longest and clearest sequences we have seen in years.
The bright loops are actually charged particles spinning along the magnetic field lines! The action was captured in a combination of two wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light over a period of about 20 hours.
Take a closer look: https://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/potw/item/798
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This composite image shows a coronal mass ejection, a type of space weather linked to solar energetic particles, as seen from two space-based solar observatories and one ground-based instrument. The image in gold is from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, the image in blue is from the Manua Loa Solar Observatory’s K-Cor coronagraph, and the image in red is from ESA and NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory.
Our constantly-changing sun sometimes erupts with bursts of light, solar material, or ultra-fast energized particles — collectively, these events contribute to space weather. A new study shows that the warning signs of one type of space weather event can be detected tens of minutes earlier than with current forecasting techniques – critical extra time that could help protect astronauts in space.
Credits: NASA/ESA/SOHO/SDO/Joy Ng and MLSO/K-Cor
Our Flying Observatory Goes to New Zealand!
Our flying observatory, called SOFIA, carries a 100-inch telescope inside a Boeing 747SP aircraft. Scientists onboard study the life cycle of stars, planets (including Pluto’s atmosphere), the area around black holes and complex molecules in space.
Heading South
Once each year our flying observatory, SOFIA, its team and instruments travel to the Southern Hemisphere to Christchurch, New Zealand. From there the team studies stars and other objects that cannot be seen while flying in the Northern Hemisphere.
What We Study
We often study star formation in our Milky Way Galaxy. But from the Southern Hemisphere we can also study the lifecycle of stars in two other galaxies called the Magellanic Clouds. The Magallenic Clouds have different materials in them, which changes how stars form in these galaxies. Scientists are studying these differences to better understand how the first stars in our universe formed.
Home Away from Home
The observatory and its team use the National Science Foundation’s U.S. Antarctic Program facility at Christchurch International Airport. The Antarctic program’s off-season is June and July, so it’s an ideal time for us to use these facilities.
Another Blast of Winter
The Southern Hemisphere’s seasons are opposite from our own. When we are operating from Christchurch in June and July, it’s winter. This means that the nights are very long – ideal for our nighttime observing flights, which last approximately 10 hours.
Light Show
These observations often bring us so far south that the team onboard can see the Southern Lights, also called the Aurora Australis. This is the Southern Hemisphere equivalent of the Northern Lights, or Aurora Borealis, visible near the North Pole. Auroras are caused by particles from space hitting the atmosphere near Earth’s magnetic poles. Our scientists onboard SOFIA don’t study the aurora, but they do enjoy the view.
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The James Webb Space Telescope
Like your backyard telescope, just MUCH more powerful
We’re building the world’s biggest space telescope ever - the James Webb Space Telescope. Webb will look back in time, studying the very first galaxies ever formed. While Webb doesn’t have a tube like your typical backyard telescope, because it's also a reflector telescope it has many of the same parts! Webb has mirrors (including a primary and a secondary) just like a small reflector telescope, only its mirrors are massive (6.5 meters across) and coated in gold (which helps us reflect infrared light).
How does a reflector telescope work? Light is bounced from the primary to the smaller secondary mirror, and then directed to your eye:
Webb works pretty much the same way!
Taking the place of your eye to the eyepiece is a package of science instruments, including cameras and spectrographs, which will capture the light directed into them by the telescope’s mirrors.
In order to install these instruments, we had to move the telescope structure upside down… an impressive sight!
Once Webb was in place on the assembly stand in the cleanroom, the team at Goddard Space Flight Center installed the instrument module (which we call the ISIM, or Integrated Science Instrument Module), with surgical precision. ISIM has four instruments, three of which were contributed by our partners, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.
All four will detect infrared light from stars and galaxies as far away as 13.6 billion light years. In addition to seeing these first sources of light in the early Universe, Webb will look at stars and planetary systems being formed in clouds of dust and gas. It will also examine the atmospheres of planets around other stars – perhaps we will find an atmosphere similar to Earth’s!
Here is an image with the science instruments being lowered into their spot behind the primary mirror. You can see the golden mirror is face-down.
Here’s another perspective of the instruments being fit into the telescope.
What you've seen come together above is just the telescope part of the James Webb Space Telescope mission – next comes putting together the rest of the observatory. This includes our massive tennis court-sized sunshield (which acts like the tube-part of your backyard telescope, protecting the mirrors from stray light and heat), as well as the parts that do things like power the telescope and let us communicate with it.
It actually takes several weeks for Webb to completely unfold into its full deployment!
Follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram for updates on our progress. You can also visit our site for more information: http://jwst.nasa.gov
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Photo Credit #1: NASA/Chris Gunn. Photo Credit #2: NASA/Desiree Stover
Eight Things to Know About Our Flying Observatory
Our flying observatory, called SOFIA, is the world’s largest airborne observatory. It is a partnership with the German Aerospace Center (DLR). SOFIA studies the life cycle of stars, planets (including Pluto’s atmosphere), how interstellar dust can contribute to planet formation, analyzes the area around black holes, and identifies complex molecules in space.
1. A Telescope in an Airplane
SOFIA stands for the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy. It is a Boeing 747SP aircraft that carries a 100-inch telescope to observe the universe while flying between 38,000 and 45,000 feet – the layer of Earth’s atmosphere called the stratosphere.
2. The Short Aircraft Means Long Flights
SP stands for “special performance.” The plane is 47 feet shorter than a standard 747, so it’s lighter and can fly greater distances. Each observing flight lasts 10-12 hours.
3. It Flies with A Hole in the Side of the Plane…
The telescope is behind a door that opens when SOFIA reaches altitude so astronomers on board can study the universe. The kind of light SOFIA observes, infrared, is blocked by almost all materials, so engineers designed the side of the aircraft to direct air up-and-over the open cavity, ensuring a smooth flight.
4. …But the Cabin is Pressurized!
A wall, called a pressure bulkhead, was added between the telescope and the cabin so the team inside the aircraft stays comfortable and safe. Each flight has pilots, telescope operators, scientists, flight planners and mission crew aboard.
5. This Telescope Has to Fly
Water vapor in Earth’s atmosphere blocks infrared light from reaching the ground. Flying at more than 39,000 feet puts SOFIA above more than 99% of this vapor, allowing astronomers to study infrared light coming from space. The airborne observatory can carry heavier, more powerful instruments than space-based observatories because it is not limited by launch weight restrictions and solar power.
6. Studying the Invisible Universe
Humans cannot see what is beyond the rainbow of visible light. However, many interesting astronomical processes happen in the clouds of dust and gas that often surround the objects SOFIA studies, like newly forming stars. Infrared light can pass through these clouds, allowing astronomers to study what is happening inside these areas.
7. The German Telescope
The telescope was built our partner, the German Aerospace Center, DLR. It is made of a glass-ceramic material called Zerodur that does not change shape when exposed to extremely cold temperatures. The telescope has a honeycomb design, which reduces the weight by 80%, from 8,700 lb to 1,764 lb. (Note that the honeycomb design was only visible before the reflective aluminum coating was applied to the mirror’s surface).
8. ZigZag Flights with a Purpose
The telescope can move up and down, between 20-60 degrees above the horizon. But it can only move significantly left and right by turning the whole aircraft. Each new direction of the flight means astronomers are studying a new celestial object. SOFIA’s flight planners carefully map where the plane needs to fly to best observe each object planned for that night.
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20 Years of the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory
The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, SOHO for short, has captured the imagination of scientists and the public alike for two decades now. We teamed up with the European Space Agency (ESA) on SOHO, which observes the sun from space. It was launched 20 years ago this week, on Dec. 2, 1995, with the mission to study the internal structure of our neighborhood star, its atmosphere and the origin of the solar wind. SOHO sends spectacular data daily, and has led scientists to a wealth of understanding.
Here are the top 5 things you need to know about SOHO, the sun and other solar observation missions:
1. SOHO Set Out for Space with an Ambitious Mission
SOHO was designed to answer three fundamental scientific questions about the sun: What are the structure and dynamics of the solar interior? Why does the solar corona exist and how is it heated to such an extremely high temperature? Where is the solar wind produced and how is it accelerated? Clues about the solar interior come from studying seismic waves that appear as ripples on the sun's surface, a technique called helioseismology.
2. SOHO Enjoys a Great View
SOHO commands an uninterrupted view of the sun, while always staying within easy communication range of controllers at home. The space-based observatory moves around the sun in step with the Earth, by slowly orbiting around a unique point in space called the First Lagrangian Point (L1). There, the combined gravity of the Earth and sun keep SOHO in a position that's always between the sun and the Earth. The L1 point is about 1 million miles (about 1.5 million kilometers) away from Earth (about four times the distance to the Moon).
3. Bonus Discoveries: Lots of Comets
Besides watching the sun, SOHO has become the most prolific discoverer of comets in astronomical history. In September 2015, SOHO found its 3000th comet. Sometimes the spacecraft's instruments capture comets plunging to their death as they collide with the sun.
4. Extra Innings
SOHO was meant to operate until 1998, but it was so successful that ESA and NASA decided to prolong its life several times and endorsed several mission extensions. Because of this, the mission has been able to observe an entire 11-year solar cycle and much of the next.
5. Keep Your Eye (Safely) on the Sun
You can see what SOHO sees, almost in real time. The latest images from the spacecraft, updated several times daily, are available online. Take a look HERE.
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