New Images from esa Mars mission

Summary: Although the Schiaparelli lander was not as successful as hoped and plummeted into the surface of Mars rather than gently landing, the satellite it was released from is still working and returning new images of the surface of the planet. This Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) is orbiting the planet and using it's impressive cameras to send us back images with a resolution of 2.8 metres per pixel. The camera's principal investigator, Nicolas Thomas, compared it to "flying over Bern at 15,000km/h and simultaneously getting sharp pictures of cars in Zurich."

Other sensors on board will also be investigating the atmospheric gases and looking for water vapor, nitrogen dioxide, and sulphur dioxide among other chemical species. The goal is to detect possible signs of microbial life on the surface and detect the presence of hydrated minerals.

Source and images

Astronomical Updates

Highest Quality image of Ceres:
Ceres, the 950-km wide dwarf planet has a new image that is clearer than ever before. The resolution beats that of Hubble's image of Ceres. The cool thing is the image quality can only improve as Dawn approaches.

BBC News


New Horizons setting it's sights on Pluto:
The New Horizons probe will be zooming by Pluto on July 14th of this year but before it reaches the planet, it must start taking images to calibrate it's instruments and check its trajectory. The first images, with Pluto only as a tiny speck, should be released this week. Researchers are hoping that this mission will reveal many surprises about Pluto including new moons and possible rings.

BBC News


Large Asteroid and it's Moon:
The asteroid 2004 BL 86 was seen with a moon as it passed relatively close to Earth. The asteroid itself is 325m wide and it's moon is 70m wide.

BBC News

Conception art no longer

Summary: The Alma telescope has captured a first image of its kind. A picture of planetary formation. The star is HL Tau and here we can see the protoplanetary disk that has formed around the star. It is out of this that the planets are formed. The dark rings in the image are the paths carved out by new planets being formed. Astronomers were surprised by how quickly the process was taking place; HL Tau is only about a million years old. It was not expected to have planets forming yet. This adjustment in the timescale of planetary formation could have an impact on how we date our own solar system, and now that we know it forms faster than expected, we might train our telescopes on other stars around this age and hope for similar results.

BBC News

Backlog of Articles

I've been really busy with my studies but I have been still finding articles. These are no longer recent but for the sake of record keeping I would still like to post them on here for your reading pleasure.

Giant Black Hole at the Heart of a Dwarf Galaxy
Physics World

Leap Forward in Quantum Teleportation
Business Insider

First Images from India's spacecraft
BBC News

Complex Organic Molecules, Now Found in Space
BBC News

The Water-ice of Mercury
BBC News

Death Star Moon has confusing innards
BBC News

New Distance Record for Tractor Beams
BBC News

Water on a Neptune sized exoplanet
BBC News

India and US to collaborate on Mission
NASA

Hidden Valleys of the Moon
BBC News

Comets, Coming to a Printer Near You

Have you ever bemoaned your lack of a model of a comet? Feel your bedroom is incomplete without one? Worry no more; you can now 3D print your own. The ESA has released a model of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the duck shaped comet Rossetta will be Landing on.
BBC News

Nobel Prize to Blue LEDs
BBC News

First Gaia Telescope Image

Summary: The telescope Gaia has released its first test image of a star cluster in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). This is only a test image though, Gaia's real job is to track and characterize points of light moving across its big detector. These points of light could be anything from a star, an asteroid, or even flashes of light caused by explosions such as supernovae. The test image simply verified that all the electronics are working and communicating with each other properly.

Gaia will be making a 3D map of a small area of the sky over five years. Ideally, at the end of the mission, it will know the coordinates of the brightest stars to within an error of seven micro-arcseconds. This angle is the same angle as viewing a small coin like a euro on the surface of the moon from earth; incredibly small! Currently, the best precision is to within 1%, and as astronomers try to measure stars farther away, this error will become more noticeable. Gaia will double check our current methods of measurement and help limit the amount of error when measuring other stars. This means that our future measurements can be more accurate and we will be able to, hopefully, have a more accurate estimate of how fast our universe is expanding.


BBC News

New Stellar Dust

Summary: A telescope in Chile has captured images of an incredibly young supernova with tons of fresh dust surrounding it. This is the first time astronomers have been privileged enough to see the beginnings of this cosmic dust. These observations help confirm the theory that cosmic dust can form as the result of a supernovae.


BBC News

This Week in Solar Activity

Summary: Over the summer it seemed like the sun was having an unusual lack of activity for max in its solar cycle, but it has laughed in our faces this past week with bright solar flares and so-called canyons of fire.
Check out the article and the amazing video NASA Goddard has put together with footage.


Popular Science

The Visual Art of Music

Summary: One of my favourite things to see around the internet, are visual representations of invisible things. They tend to be creative and make great desktop backgrounds and this new article is no exception.
German photographer Martin Klimas has decided to photograph the music he loves. To do this, he poured multicoloured paint over his speakers (protected of course) and cranked the volume up. The paint leaps into the air due to the sound vibrations and spectacular pictures are revealed.


Smithsonian Mag

Petrified Animals

Summary: An Alkaline African Lake has been turning animals into stone. There's some very interesting science behind this, but I will just leave you with one of my favourite images. Click the picture to head to the article.

Frog Photobomb

Summary: A recent launch picture was photobombed by a flying frog, silhouetted against the explosion that lifts the rocket. A very beautiful and funny picture,, it was also recently commented on in the latest episode of "Mock the Week."



National Geographic

Smallest Shadow

Summary: Scientists have been able to photograph the shadow of an atom! There are some science-y implications that could follow this, but basically it is just super cool.




National Geographic

Cosmic Caterpillar

Summary: Hubble has yet another incredible space image for us. It is a cloud of gas that looks like a caterpillar. Unlike the small creatures we are used to on earth, this celestial caterpillar is 6 trillion miles long. It is actually a cloud of gas collapsing and may give birth to a star. But the important part is how beautiful it is.



Smithsonian Mag

Latin lessons for Astonomers

Summary: Because sometimes scientists enjoy making things more confusing, images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) are now going to be captioned in Latin. This is in addition to the already 10 different languages available to read the captions in. I find this particularly fitting as the planet is named for the Roman god of war and many of the sites on the planet already have Latin names.
Does this give anyone extra motivation to try to learn Latin in their spare time?


BBC News:

Spitzer’s Tenth Birthday Slideshow

In honor of Spitzer’s tenth year of searching for Dark Matter, BBC Future has compiled a short collection of some of it’s most brilliant images. If you enjoy astrophotography or are looking for a new desktop wallpaper, check out the pictures.

BBC Future

The end of Herschel's telescope

Summary: ESA's Herschel telescope, best known for its stunning images of nebulae like the Pillars of Creation, is set to take its last images later this month. this is a planned shut down. Due to the scientific instruments to take its images, the telescope needed to be constantly cooled to almost absolute zero temperatures. However, there is only so much coolant that can be flown with a satellite. The liquid is due to run out this month as expected.
Scientists are rushing to try and fit in as many observations as they can before the telescope ceases to function and they send it into orbit around the sun.
The images will be archived somewhere that they can be easily accessed.

BBC News: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21668712

Grail shattered on moon

Summary: The GRAIL mission has officially ended as its two satellites, Ebb and Flow, has been commanded to crash into the surface of the moon. It was decided to direct a crash landing when the fuel ran out rather than wait for an eventual, unpredictable fall so as not to destroy any of the historic landing sites like the Apollo site. (Imagine if a satellite fell and knocked over the American flag!)
Most of the data from these two satellites has not been fully analysed yet, but scientists do know that the data from these two provide the most detailed map of the surface of the moon that we have to date. As usual, for for details, check out the original article.




BBC News: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20761903

New galaxies examined

Summary: The Hubble telescope has been used to look again in the area of the Hubble Deep Field and has found 7 new galaxies, one of which may be the most distant galaxy observed. We can tell by the redshift. (The further away a galaxy is, the faster it is moving away from us. Because it is moving so fast, the light gets shifted a measurable amount. Further away=greater redshift.)


SpaceTelescope.org: http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1219/ (I know, a new source!)

Ice on Mercury!!!

Summary: At last, a planet close to home that we can travel to and ice skate on! But actually, the Messenger satellite has discovered that craters at the poles hold ice. The exciting thing is that because of this evidence, all strongly held theories about the formation of Mercury are incorrect. Now scientists will get to rewrite the history of the planet and maybe other inner planets like it.



BBC News: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20553879
Science: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2012/11/28/science.1229953
Science: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2012/11/28/science.1231106
Science: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2012/11/28/science.1229764
Science Podcast: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/338/6111/1233.2.full
SciShow: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-b6Q_hbhk0&feature=share&list=UUZYTClx2T1of7BRZ86-8fow

New Oldest Object

Summary: Scientists working with the Hubble and Spitzer telescopes have discovered a new oldest object in the universe. It still has a boring name, but has a very interesting history. It's old.


SciShow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3j4wz31gIM

Dwarf helps form spiral galaxy

Summary: Astronomers have found a well formed spiral galaxy just 3 billion years after the big bang. It is extremely rare for a well formed spiral to appear this early due to how chaotic the universe still was at this point. It was helped along by a small dwarf galaxy orbiting it; this added an extra gravitational pull to form the spiral.




BBC News: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18891760