Pic of the Week: The Rings of Neptune

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Image (Credit): JWST image of Nepture showing its rings and moons. (NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI)

This week’s image is from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). It clearly shows the rings of Neptune as well as a number of its moons (the image below is a broader shot labeling those moons). It is an impressive shot by the JWST within our solar system, similar to the space telescope’s recent image of Jupiter.

Here is more about the image from NASA:

In this Webb image, Neptune resembles a pearl with rings that look like ethereal concentric ovals around it. There are 2 thinner, crisper rings and 2 broader, fainter rings. A few extremely bright patches on the lower half of Neptune represent methane ice clouds. Six tiny white dots, which are six of Neptune’s 14 moons, are scattered among the rings. The background of the image is black.

The Neptune image was uploaded to the NASA website on September 21, just a few days shy of the actual date in the calendar when Neptune was observed for the first time ever – September 23. The year was 1846 and the observer was German astronomer Johann Galle.

Image (Credit): JWST labeled image of Nepture showing its rings and moons. (NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI)

NASA News: An Eye on Hurricane Ian

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Image (Credit): Images from the ISS’s instruments monitoring Hurricane Ian as the storm neared Cuba. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

It may have been a bad week for NASA regarding the delayed launch of the Artemis I mission from Florida, but it has been a good week for NASA as it illustrates the benefits of monitoring Hurricane Ian as it crosses the Caribbean and heads towards Florida.

Two NASA instruments on the International Space Station (ISS) in particular are helping with this monitoring:

  • Compact Ocean Wind Vector Radiometer (COWVR) to measure the amount of rain in the atmosphere; and
  • Temporal Experiment for Storms and Tropical Systems (TEMPEST) to track the volume of ice particles pushed into the upper atmosphere by the storm.

Together these instruments give us a much better understanding of the storm hitting the eastern coast of the United States. In this type of situation, any additional details can assist civic leaders and potentially save lives.

We are all fascinated by NASA’s images showing dust storms sweeping across Mars or highlighting the Great Red Spot on Jupiter, which represents a violent storm that has marked the planet’s surface for hundreds of years. Enormous storms mark and transform the face of our Earth as well. Monitoring our own planetary storm systems is another worthwhile goal for our NASA scientists.

In Case You Missed It: Moons of Exomoons

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Example of an Earth-sized moon around a Neptune-sized moon around Jupiter. (Cool World Labs)

Hearing about the moonlet targeted by the DART spacecraft reminded me of a recent video discussing whether exomoons could have their own moons. It was a piece by Cool World Labs titled “Can Moons Have Moons?” It gets into the “Hill Sphere,” which is an astronomical body’s region in which it dominates the attraction of satellites. It can get pretty complex, as the drawing above demonstrates, but its an interesting concept that has yet to be proven in our own solar system or elsewhere. Given that Cool World Labs is already finding exomoons, it may be only a matter of time before we experience these submoons.

Space Stories: Enceladus, Maarten Schmidt, and SpaceX

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Image (Credit): Saturn’s moon Enceladus as seen by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. (NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)

Here are some recent stories of interest.

—Weather.com: “A Habitable Ocean? Scientists Believe An Essential Life Component May be Abundant on Saturn’s Icy Moon, Enceladus!“

Previously, NASA’s Saturn-studying Cassini spacecraft had discovered Enceladus’ subsurface liquid water as well as the plumes of ice grains and water vapour that erupted from cracks in the moon’s icy surface. Analysis of the plumes had revealed that they contain almost all the basic requirements of life as we know it. But while the bioessential element phosphorus is yet to be identified directly, scientists have now found evidence of its availability in the ocean beneath the moon’s icy crust.

—WashingtonPost.com: “Maarten Schmidt, Astronomer Who Explained Quasars, Dies at 92“

Maarten Schmidt, the Dutch-born American astronomer who explained the mysterious heavenly bodies known as quasars and in so doing helped create the modern picture of the universe, its structure and its history, died Sept. 17 at his home in Fresno, Calif. He was 92.

—Space.com: “FCC Denies SpaceX $900 Million in Starlink Funding“

The space launch services giant was recently rejected for nearly $900 million dollars in rural connectivity funding from the Wireline Competition Bureau (a branch of the Federal Communications Commission, or FCC). SpaceX characterized that decision(opens in new tab) as “grossly unfair” in its Sept. 9 appeal to the regulator, which is under review.

RIP: Cosmonaut Valery Vladimirovich Polyakov

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Image (Credit): Cosmonaut Valery Polyakov. (NASA)

Last week cosmonaut Valery Polyakov passed away at the age of 80 (1942 to 2022). He still holds the record for the longest single spaceflight in history when he was aboard the Mir space station for 437 days and 18 hours during one stay between 1994 and 1995. By the time he retired later in 1995, he had spent 678 days in space.

Russians have a history of long tours in space, including four cosmonauts from the last century who spent at least one year in a single tour:

  • Valery Polyakov – 437 days aboard Mir (1994-95)
  • Sergei Avdeyev – 379 days aboard Mir (1998-99)
  • Vladimir Titov – 365 days aboard Mir (1987-88)
  • Musa Manaro – 365 days aboard Mir (1987-88)

When U.S. astronaut Astronaut Scott Kelly returned to Earth with cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko from the International Space Station in 2016 after 340 days in space, the Russians were not so impressed according to a story in arsTECHNICA. The story notes cosmonaut Talgat Musabayev, serving as the head of the Kazakh space agency, stated, “Congratulations on your record. Of course it was already done 28 years ago.” 

Image (Credit): The Soviet Mir space station. (Encyclopaedia Britannica)