The Rosetta orbiter, currently studying comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko as it orbits the Sun, has been watching how the comet has changed as it moves toward its perihelion (point of closest approach to the Sun) in August of 2015. As the comet heats up from the increasing intensity of the Sun’s rays, it releases surface gases and dust into what eventually becomes the atmosphere-like coma surrounding the comet. As the comet moves the material produces the visible tail that we usually associate with a comet. With 67P specifically, Rosetta has recently made a surprising discovery: That the water and carbon dioxide streaming...
As we are approaching the New Horizons bypass of Pluto just over a month from now, there is a lot of focus on the Plutonian system, from its strange Moons to its enigmatic surface. As we wait for the first ever high resolution images of the surface of Pluto, we can look to Hubble data to give us our fix. The best image of Pluto taken up to today, by Hubble, is blurry and at best can lead us to speculation about what we are seeing. But Hubble, as always, produces valuable science, and has given new insights into the...
For a long time, the scientific community has been hopeful for a mission to some of the most interesting moons of the solar system. Europa, Enceladus, and Ganymede all have subsurface oceans and will give substantial insights into the formation and evolution of life in the solar system and beyond. The only problem is that it costs an astronomical (literally) amount of money to get there. A bare bones mission to Europa would cost over 600 Million dollars, and if we are spending that much we had better be sure it will work. Money aside, the technology to get appropriate...
When the first stars and galaxies started to form, it was like a spark of a massive chain reaction where the vast amounts of gas and dust that had clumped together were quickly converted into dense, luminous star clusters. This was the beginning of the formation of the heavier elements that would eventually make up all that we see on the planet Earth. But when did this massive tirade of star formation end? When we look at galaxies in the present epoch, most don’t form stars very rapidly at all, and giant elliptical galaxies are all but devoid of gas,...
After yesterday’s post about some data that has caused us to rethink a theory, I wanted to follow it up today with an even bigger bit of data that could substantially change an even bigger theory. Dark energy was discovered as a large-scale repulsive force in the universe that is responsible for the acceleration of its expansion. It was discovered by looking at type 1a supernovae in distant galaxies. since the supernovae all explode with the same mass limit, they appear to all have the same intrinsic luminosity. If we know how bright they actually are, we can compare them...
We call it dark matter because it doesn’t give off light, right? Well there is a lot of matter than doesn’t radiate, but the difference is that whatever the stuff is that we call dark matter doesn’t interact with anything through the small-scale fundamental forces. The only way we have been able to detect it’s presence is through large-scale gravitational interaction. Dark matter is ‘dark’ because it doesn’t interact with anything in a way that lets us figure out what it’s made of. Well now that we’ve got that out of the way, we can look at the new...
Today is the day that the Dawn Mission completes a long 7.5 year long journey that has taken it past the orbit of Mars and into the asteroid belt, studying the second largest asteroid Vesta before heading toward the dwarf planet Ceres, where it has now injected itself into orbit, as of 7:39 am EST. This marks the first time in history a spacecraft has seen a dwarf planet up close, and with New Horizons passing Pluto in July, Dawn won the race in an astronomical photo finish. The Story So Far Launching on September 27th, 2007, Dawn orbited the Sun and...
With the MESSENGER probe set to crash into Mercury this month, it’s nice to look back on some of the finest data that it gathered during its tenure orbiting the smallest planet of the solar system. The image shows the Caloris Basin, the largest impact basin on Mercury and one of the largest in the solar system. The result of a massive asteroid impact during the early days of the solar system, the 1,500 Km wide crater was filled with lava aeons ago when Mercury was geologically active (seen in orange). Large impacts have punctured the surface of the basin since...
Comets are a lot like the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team. They get you really excited early on, and just when your hopes are highest, they become a continual disappointment. Then you go through the same thing the next time around. More often than not, comets with great expectations fizzle or burn up. Here are my top five comet fizzles from recorded history. But comets, unlike the Leafs, can sometimes succeed. They can live up to expectations and become a beautiful night sky jewel. Hale-Bopp comes to mind from 1997, when it exceeded the expectations and became the comet of a...
A newsworthy story yesterday was the delay of the launch of the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVER) satellite, atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, in a joint collaboration with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), NASA, and the Us Air Force. The launch was originally scheduled for Sunday just after 6pm EST, and had what we call an ‘instantaneous’ launch window, which means that if the craft didn’t launch on time, it would be scrubbed and launched another day. This is due to the fact that the craft is being sent to the L1 Lagrange point, a point in...
