Backyard Astronomer: The Mars Show — coming to a night sky above you - The Tri-City News

Gary Boyle is an astronomy educator, guest speaker and monthly columnist for the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (RASC), as well as past president of the Ottawa Centre of the RASC.

Some three billion years ago, Mars was believed to have been a water world just like Earth.

It possessed great oceans and was most likely on its way to forming life. Water is made up of hydrogen, the most common element in the universe and oxygen, the third most common element. Water is extremely important to the development and sustaining of life as we know it.

Because Mars is half the size of the earth, the planet lost its heat faster as its internal core stopped rotating.

Similar to earth’s core which produces a magnetic field around our planet, Mars' core ceased producing its protective magnetic field thus allowing the solar winds to eat away at its atmosphere and the red planet lost its water.

Ever since the early telescopic observations made by the Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli in 1877 when Mars was in opposition, residing 56 million km away, he is said to have seen "canali" or channels on Mars. Seeing these features gave the impression of a possible civilization.

Since then, the red planet has been the focus of searching for ancient life and is also the base of science fiction writers and movie makers.

By the 2030s or 2040s, humans are expected to land on this fascinating world, looking for the possibility of life that might have once existed, even at the microbial level.

After all, life is life. But Mars is now in the news for other reasons, it is now a very visible object in the night sky.

Appearing as a bright-orange object rising in the northeast sky about 45 minutes after the sun sets in the west, Mars is nicely placed amongst the bright winter constellations of Orion the Hunter, Taurus the Bull, etc.

If you are still not sure where to look, any smartphone astronomy app will guide you.

So why is it so bright?

Earth orbits the Sun in 365 days whereas Mars does so in 687 days. Just like the inner lap on a race track, Earth catches up and overtakes slower Mars every 26 months. This upcoming opposition will occur on Dec. 8 at a separation of only 82 million km.

Over the weeks after opposition, our distance increases and Mars will slowly fade. Every seventh opposition is super close such as back in 2003 and 2020. The next opposition occurs on Jan. 15, 2025.

Be sure to look at Mars the night before (Dec. 7) as the Full Cold Moon will cover Mars for a little less than one hour.

All of Canada, as well as much of the U.S., except for Alaska and the southeastern states, will see this amazing sight.

Throughout its 29.5-day orbit around the earth, the moon moves its width every hour. Throughout the month, it covers stars as seen through a telescope and in rare events, bright planets.

This should be a fantastic photo opportunity as the disappearance and later reappearance should be quite evident.

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2022-12-04 19:38:32Z
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How to see Mars at its brightest at opposition this week - Digital Trends

Stargazers in the northern hemisphere are in for a treat this week as Mars has reached its closest point to Earth, giving the best view of the red planet until the 2030s. Mars made its closest approach to Earth on the night of November 30 to December 1, but the best views are yet to come as the planet reaches a point called opposition on the night of December 7 to December 8. Opposition is when Mars is directly opposite the sun as seen from Earth, which means this is when Mars will be at its brightest.

The reason that the closest approach and opposition are a few days apart is because of the elliptical nature of the planets’ orbits. Neither Earth nor Mars orbits in a perfect circle around the sun, so there are times when they are a little closer or a little further away. These small differences account for the few days’ delay between closest approach and opposition. The elliptical nature of Mars’s orbit is also why there will be such a great view of the planet this week. Mars won’t come back this close to Earth until 2033.

Finder chart for Mars on 8 December. Stuart Atkinson

This diagram from the U.K.’s Royal Astronomy Society shows how to locate Mars in the night sky on the evening of December 8. Mars should be one of the brightest objects in the skies, so if you’re lucky to have clear weather overhead at night then you should easily be able to spot the planet with binoculars or a telescope. At this time, Mars will be around 50 million miles away.

December 8 is also a great time to look for Mars as you may be able to spot the moon moving in front of the planet, called an occultation, depending on where in the northern hemisphere you are located. For exact times to look out for this event by U.S. region, head over to Sky and Telescope for more information.

According to Sky at Night magazine, you should be able to observe Mars using almost any telescope, but adding a Barlow lens to your setup will give you a better view and enhance the darker and lighter patches on the planet. You may be able to see features on Mars like its polar ice caps, its patches of light and dark which are called albedo features, and perhaps even certain large geological features like basins and plains.

Some of the most dramatic views of Mars will be on the night of December 8, but if that doesn’t work out for you then you should also look to the skies in the week before and after this date as you should still be able to get a good view then.

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2022-12-04 00:04:46Z
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NASA's Artemis I Orion spacecraft on journey from moon back to Earth - KTLA 5

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2022-12-03 18:18:10Z
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NASA Artemis I: Orion Spacecraft Fine-Tunes Trajectory and Downlinks Data - SciTechDaily

Orion’s solar arrays split the difference between Earth and the Moon on flight day 14 of the Artemis I mission in this image captured by a camera on the tip of one of the spacecraft’s four solar arrays. Credit: NASA

After departing distant retrograde orbit on the afternoon of Thursday, December 1, Orion completed a planned trajectory correction burn to fine-tune its course toward the Moon. The five-second burn (see video below) occurred at 9:54 p.m. CST on Thursday, and changed the spacecraft’s velocity by about 0.3 mph or less than half a foot per second.

On Artemis I, Flight Day 17 (Friday, December 2), teams collected additional images with Orion’s optical navigation camera and downlinked a wide variety of data files to the ground. This included downloading data from the Hybrid Electronic Radiation Assessor, or HERA. The radiation detector measures charged particles that pass through its sensors.

Measurements from HERA and several other radiation-related sensors and experiments aboard Artemis I will help NASA better understand the space radiation environment future crews will experience and develop effective protections. On crewed missions, HERA will be part of the spacecraft’s caution and warning system and will sound a warning in the case of a solar energetic particle event, notifying the crew to take shelter. NASA is also testing a similar HERA unit aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

Orion carries other experiments to gather data on radiation, including several radiation area monitors about the size of a matchbox that record the total radiation dose during the mission, dosimeters provided by ESA (European Space Agency) mounted inside the cabin to collect radiation data with time stamps to allow scientists to assess dose rates during various mission phases, and three “purposeful passengers” collecting additional information on what crews will experience during future missions. Four space biology investigations, collectively called Biology Experiement-1, are examining the impact of deep space radiation on seeds, fungi, yeast, and algae.

Orion will reenter the lunar sphere of influence on Saturday, December 3, making the Moon the main gravitational force acting on the spacecraft. It will exit the lunar sphere of influence for a final time on Tuesday, December 6, one day after its return powered flyby about 79 miles (127 km) above the lunar surface.

Orion’s optical navigation camera captured this image of the Moon on flight day 16 of the Artemis I mission. Orion uses the optical navigation camera to capture imagery of the Earth and the Moon at different phases and distances, providing an enhanced body of data to certify its effectiveness under different lighting conditions as a way to help orient the spacecraft on future missions with crew. Credit: NASA

A total of about 7,940 pounds of propellant has been used, which is about 150 pounds less that the amount expected before launch. Approximately 2,040 pounds of margin is available beyond what flight controllers plan to use for the remainder of the mission, which is nearly 130 pounds more than expected amounts before launch. About 97 gigabytes of data have been sent to the ground by the spacecraft.

Just after 1 p.m. CST on Dec. 2, Orion was traveling 229,812 miles (369,847 km) from Earth and 50,516 miles (81,298 km) from the Moon, cruising at 2,512 miles per hour (4,043 km/h).

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2022-12-03 08:43:45Z
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James Webb Space Telescope updates iconic Pillars of Creation image - RedShark News

The James Webb Space Telescope has just added a huge amount of detail to one of the most iconic space images of all time.

Webb Produces An Unparalleled View Of The Ghostly Light In Galaxy Clusters - Space Ref

Image of the intracluster light of the cluster SMACS-J0723.3-7327 obtained with the NIRCAM camera on board of JWST. The data have been processed by the IAC team to improve the detection of the faint light between the galaxies (black and white).Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI CREDIT NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

In clusters of galaxies there is a fraction of stars which wander off into intergalactic space because they are pulled out by huge tidal forces generated between the galaxies in the cluster.

The light emitted by these stars is called the intracluster light (ICL) and is extremely faint. Its brightness is less than 1% of the brightness of the darkest sky we can observe from Earth. This is one reason why images taken from space are very valueable for analyzing it.

Infrared wavelengths allow us to explore clusters of galaxies in a different way than with visible light. Thanks to its efficiency at infrared wavelengths and the sharpness of the images of the JWST, IAC researchers Mireia Montes and Ignacio Trujillo have been able to explore the intracluster light from SMACS-J0723.3-7327 with an unprecedented level of detail. In fact the images from the JWST of the centre of this cluster are twice as deep as the previous images obtained by the Hubble Space Telescope. “In this study we show the great potential of JWST for observing an object which is so faint” explains Mireia Montes, the first author of the article. “This will let us study galaxy clusters which are much further away, and in much greater detail” she adds.

In order to analyze this extremely faint “ghostly” light, as well as needing the observational capability of the new space telescoope, the researchers have developed new analysis techniques, which improve on existing methods. “In this work we needed to do some extra processing to the JWST images to be able to study the intracluster light, as it is a faint and extended structure. That was key to avoid biases in our measurements“ says Mireia.

Thanks to the data obtained the researchers have been able to demonstrate the potential of the intracluster light for studying and understanding the processes which go into the formation of structures as massive as clusters of galaxies. “Analyzing this diffuse light we find that the inner parts of the cluster are being formed by a merger of massive galaxies, while the outer parts are due to the accretion of galaxies similar to our Milky Way” she notes.

But these observations not only offer clues about the formation of galaxy clusters, but also about the properties of a mysterious component of our universe: dark matter. The stars which emit the intracluster light follow the gravitational field of the cluster, which makes this light an excellent tracer of the distribution of the dark matter in these structures.“The JWST will let us characterize the distribution of the dark matter in these enormous structures with unprecedented precision, and throw light on its basic nature” concludes Ignacio Trujillo, the second author of the article.

A New Era of Intracluster Light Studies with JWST, The Astrophysical Journal

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2022-12-02 16:09:52Z
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A black hole ripped apart a star in a galaxy far, far away - The Verge

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Astronomers spotted a ‘weird’ flash in February, equivalent to the light of more than 1,000 trillion suns.

An artist’s impression of a tidal disruption event.

Image: Carl Knox – OzGrav, ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery, Swinburne University of Technology

It was an event not seen in more than a decade: a sudden flash of energy launched out from the center of a distant galaxy, bright enough to be visible from 8.5 billion light-years away. With a burst of light equivalent to more than 1,000 trillion suns, the flash was first detected by the Zwicky Transient Facility, a survey of the entire night sky conducted from the Palomar Observatory in California. 

“On Valentine’s Day this year, we found a source that was puzzling. It was just weird!” Igor Andreoni of the University of Maryland, lead author of one of two papers about the event, told The Verge. “And weird is good in science. It means it’s something you can learn from.”

Within days, astronomers around the world turned their telescopes toward the flash, observing it in X-ray, radio, and other wavelengths. It was extraordinarily bright and was similar to a gamma-ray burst — a type of bright flash usually detected by gamma ray or X-ray telescopes. But this one had been spotted by an optical telescope.

The tremendous brightness of the flash led astronomers to conclude that it must have been caused by a star being torn apart. A star had wandered too close to the supermassive black hole at the heart of a galaxy and been shredded by the gravitational forces. “It can completely rip apart the star. It’s literally pulled and stretched until it can’t stand together anymore,” Andreoni explained. This is called a tidal disruption event, and astronomers have spotted dozens of these events over recent years. 

What is unusual about this particular event is that it created a tremendous jet of energy, with material being thrown out from the black hole’s poles at close to the speed of light. “We don’t know why, but sometimes a very powerful jet of material is launched when the star is disrupted,” Andreoni said. This jet is thought to have been especially bright because it is pointed directly at Earth, making it both appear brighter and be visible across a broader part of the electromagnetic spectrum.

To spot dramatic transient events like these, astronomers need telescopes that continually scan as much of the sky as possible and which flag any sudden changes in brightness — like the Zwicky Transient Facility. But there are thousands of changes in brightness observed every night, so this mountain of data needs to be refined to unearth the most interesting objects. Andreoni’s group works on sifting through this data to find very fast events in the optical wavelength.

Sudden changes in brightness could potentially be caused by a supernova or by two neutron stars merging. Further observations are needed to understand the specific event that triggered the flash. A supernova, for example, brightens over a period of weeks, which is extremely fast by astronomical standards. But this particular event brightened even faster than that, within a few hours or days. That made it of immediate and pressing interest. 

The group flagged this flash to the international community, encouraging researchers who worked using telescopes operating in other wavelengths like radio or X-ray to observe it, too. In total, 21 telescopes contributed data on the event. “When all the pieces of the puzzle were acquired and put together, this picture emerged which was just astonishing,” Andreoni said. “We were not expecting to find such a rare source, and definitely not in the optical.”

Of the stars that are ripped apart by black holes, only around 1 percent seem to produce these powerful jets, but researchers still aren’t sure exactly why. As the star is pulled apart and its material is pulled in toward the black hole, the energy of this matter is converted into light. It’s theorized that the magnetic fields and spin of the black hole could act together to send material shooting out from its poles — like a tube of paint squeezed in the middle until material flies out of either end.

“We’re talking about thousands of times the mass of the Earth that is pulled apart and spun up and launched at close to the speed of light. It’s a really unique opportunity to study something that is impossible to reproduce on Earth,” Andreoni said.

This was the first time that such a jet had been detected in the visible light part of the electromagnetic spectrum, also known as the optical wavelength. Previously, jets from around black holes had been detected by looking at X-rays, gamma rays, and radio waves.

This both tells astronomers something about the environment around the black hole — that it is not that dense because it allowed optical light to pass through — and shows that looking in the optical range could be a useful way to spot these extreme events in the future.

The need for telescopes to respond quickly to such events is also creating an impetus for greater flexibility in telescope design and planning. Telescopes like Hubble or James Webb are vastly oversubscribed, meaning many more researchers apply for time on the telescope than it is possible to accommodate. That’s why observing time is meticulously planned out years in advance and every last minute of observation time is filled as much as possible. But there’s also a need for telescopes that can respond to rare events within hours or even minutes.

It’s hard to safely and quickly change the direction of a space-based telescope, so Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope only occasionally contribute to this kind of research. But recently built ground-based telescopes, like the MASTER network or the GROWTH-India telescope, specialize in scanning the sky for gamma-ray events and immediately and autonomously moving to observe them.

And there’s always the option of a human-based intervention. “Sometimes you literally have to call people up and say, ‘Hey, can you please point the telescope at these or those coordinates?’” Andreoni said. In other cases, researchers submit requests through online systems to make observations during available moments. There’s increasing interest in considering how telescopes can respond to these brief and rare but scientifically important events.

Both the international cooperation between researchers working with different telescopes and the ability of those telescopes to respond rapidly were essential for making this breakthrough in black hole observations, Andreoni said. “This was extremely important for this kind of discovery. If we couldn’t do it with any telescope, we would have not realized that we were sitting on such a big discovery.”

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2022-12-01 17:46:15Z
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