Pic of the Week: A Halloween Preview – N44

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Nebula LHA 120-N44, or N44, as captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. (NASA, ESA/Hubble, D. Gouliermis)

Talk about eerie. This week’s image is from the NASA/European Space Agency’s (ESA) Hubble Space telescope. The ghostly image shows nebula LHA 120-N44, or N44, which is about 160,000 light-years away. It is within the Large Magellanic Cloud that orbits our galaxy.

Here is more from NASA describing what you are seeing:

N44 is dominated by two features: a vast central void and a shell of dense, dusty gas. The central void is a ‘superbubble’ spanning roughly 210 by 140 light-years across. The glittering stars at the center of the void are responsible for its creation; through their powerful stellar winds and explosive supernovae, these stars expelled much of the gas from which they were born.

When the stars of N44’s central star cluster swept away this gas, the expelled gas compressed and formed a shell around the superbubble. New stars are forming in this compressed gas shell, making N44 an interesting target for astronomers who are using the nebula to study how stars form in this environment. Their goal is to understand how long it takes from the collapse of cold gas clouds into dense knots to the moment nuclear fusion ignites in the heart of a newborn star.

Survey Results: Americans and UFOs

Posted on by onespaceman2000

Americans are skeptical about their government for many reasons beyond the Epstein Files. In the case of UFOs, they continue to believe that Uncle Sam is withholding the truth. As shown in the figure above, this skepticism has grown over the years.

The results from a recent Gallup poll, outlined in Americans Still Skeptical That UFOs Are Aliens, have even more to say about how American feel, including:

  • 37% believe at least some UFOs have been alien spacecraft;
  • Individuals between age 30 to 49 are more likely to believe UFOs have been alien spacecraft; and
  • 17% of Americans say they have personally seen something they thought was a UFO.

Steven Spielberg, creator of this summer’s blockbuster movie Disclosure Day, is probably not all that surprised by these results. He has been telling this same story about encounters with aliens since 1977 with his movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

I think it is also reasonable to be skeptical about the existence of UFOs at this point. As Carl Sagan stated in his book Other Worlds:

UFOs: The reliable cases are uninteresting and in the interesting cases are unreliable.

Hence, it might be reasonable to be skeptical on both fronts – we cannot trust our government to properly share what it knows about UFOs, yet what it knows about UFOs is of no real value.

Space Quote: Better Late Than Never

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Nancy Grace Roman with a scale model of the Hubble Space Telescope. (NASA)

“I just want to thank everybody, and congratulate you. Boy, it looked beautiful on television…Jared is doing a fantastic job, you are doing a fantastic job, and I’m supplying you all that money.”

–Statement by President Trump to NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman after the successful launch of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Of course, this is the same president that submitted multiple budgets over the years that would have eliminated this same telescope as well as many other NASA programs. In fact, only the bipartisan efforts of Congress made the launch possible by “supplying…all that money.” Given the status of other White House efforts in Iran and elsewhere, it makes sense the president is looking for a win. Let’s hope NASA has plenty more wins coming up to keep the budget ax far away.

Space Stories: Dragon Delays, Odd Black Holes, and Surprising Martian Warmth

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): SpaceX Dragon capsule. (SpaceX)

Here are some recent space-related stories of interest.

—Space.com: “SpaceX, NASA Delay Next Astronaut Launch to ISS Due To Leak on Dragon Spacecraft”

SpaceX’s next astronaut mission to the International Space Station won’t launch on Sept. 12 after all. That flight, known as Crew-13, has been delayed due to an oxidizer leak in the propulsion system of SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, NASA announced on Saturday (Aug. 29). Joint NASA and SpaceX teams are performing additional tests and data review and will complete any necessary rework prior to launch,” NASA officials wrote in an update on Saturday. “A new target date will be announced once available.”

—Earth.com: “Giant Black Holes Appeared Too soon After the Big Bang, and Astronomers May Know Why“

Nearly every large galaxy keeps a giant black hole at its center. Some of those giants already weighed a billion Suns when the universe was less than 700 million years old. Astronomers have struggled for decades to explain how anything grew that heavy that fast. A new study built on James Webb Space Telescope observations suggests one possible answer. The researchers describe a young black hole wrapped in gas so dense that the whole object shines like a single enormous star. Astronomers call objects like it black hole stars. The light from this one has been traveling for 13 billion years, since a moment just 660 million years after the Big Bang, and no earlier example has been found.

—Caltech: “Thermal Anomaly Discovered Below Mars’s South Pole“

Based on gravitational measurements that give clues to the Red Planet’s interior structure, Mars’s interior southern hemisphere is around 200 to 400 degrees Celsius warmer than the northern half of the planet and partially molten. The surprising finding adds additional context to Martian history and the periods of time in which it may have hosted conditions favorable for life. The research was led by Caltech alumnus Alexander Berne (PhD ’26), who is now a postdoctoral associate at the University of Arizona. The findings are reported in a paper appearing in the journal Nature on August 27.

Note: Here is the podcast version of this post.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Has Launched

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Telescope aboard a SpaceX rocket transiting the sun during launch from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida earlier today. (NASA/John Kraus)

Earlier today, NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope was successfully launched from Florida’ Kennedy Space Center. It is now on a journey toward the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point, or L2, about 1 million miles from Earth where it will start its mission.

The Roman Space Telescope will have a field of view at least 100 times larger than Hubble’s, which it can use to view billions of galaxies as well as answer questions about exoplanets, dark energy, dark matter, and more.

Nicky Fox, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, stated:

Roman will be a discovery machine that will bring us closer than ever before to answering humanity’s most profound questions about our cosmic history…With its large field of view and fast survey speeds, Roman will usher us into a new era of discovery and make the invisible visible, setting the foundation for humanity’s search for life beyond our solar system.

Not a bad mission for a repurposed spy satellite donated to NASA back in 2012. I wonder if the National Reconnaissance Office has any other old satellites or spacecraft lying around that it might want to put to use discovering more about the universe.

It’s a promising way to turn swords into plowshares.