European Space Agency's Euclid telescope launches from Florida, US

An artist's impression of Euclid. Image: ESA.
Yesterday, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, with the European Space Agency's (ESA) Euclid space telescope aboard, launched at 11:12 AM EDT (1512 UTC) from Cape Canaveral Space Launch Complex 40 in Florida, US. Euclid was to study dark matter, dark energy, and the expansion of the universe. Costing 1.4 billion, Euclid was to spend about a month traveling around 1,500,000 kilometers (932,057 mi) to the Lagrange point L2 between the Earth and the Sun, the area of the James Webb Space Telescope. There, it would observe about a third of the sky beyond the Milky Way for six years. NASA designed and built Euclid's Near Infrared Spectrometer and Photometer, and NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, with a tentative launch date of May 2027, was to provide more refined data scientists could use to correct Euclid's. IPAC senior research scientist Yun Wang stated Euclid and Roman would "add up to much more than the sum of their parts [...] Combining their observations will give astronomers a better sense of what's actually going on in the universe." Before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Euclid was scheduled for launch from French Guiana on a Russian Soyuz rocket in March 2023. Source: https://en.wikinews.org, available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License
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Hubble captures the start of a new 'spoke' season of Saturn: NASA

FEB 14, 2023 In a latest image of Saturn captured by National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA's) Hubble Space Telescope, the appearance of spokes on the planet's rings heralded the start of a new 'spoke' season, according to a statement by NASA. Scientists will be looking for clues to explain the cause and nature of the spokes, the statement said. The suspected culprit for the spokes is the planet's variable magnetic field, the statement said. Planetary magnetic fields interact with the solar wind, creating an electrically charged environment. On Earth, when those charged particles hit the atmosphere this is visible in the northern hemisphere as the aurora borealis, or northern lights, NASA said. Scientists think that the smallest, dust-sized icy ring particles can become charged as well, which temporarily levitates those particles above the rest of the larger icy particles and boulders in the rings, NASA said. Like Earth, Saturn is tilted on its axis and therefore has four seasons, though because of Saturn's much larger orbit, each season lasts approximately seven Earth years, the space agency said. Equinox occurs when the rings are tilted edge-on to the Sun. The spokes disappear when it is near summer or winter solstice on Saturn, which is when the Sun appears to reach either its highest or lowest latitude, respectively, in the northern or southern hemisphere of a planet, the space agency said. As the autumnal equinox of Saturn's northern hemisphere on May 6, 2025, draws near, the spokes are expected to become increasingly prominent and observable, the statement said. The latest image captured by Hubble is heralded the start of Saturn's "spoke season" with the appearance of two smudgy spokes in the B ring, one of the rings, of Saturn, the statement said. The ephemeral features don't last long, but as the planet's autumnal equinox approaches, more will appear, the statement said. The ring spokes were first observed by NASA's Voyager mission in the early 1980s. The transient, mysterious features can appear dark or light depending on the illumination and viewing angles, the statement said. NASA senior planetary scientist Amy Simon, head of the Hubble Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) program said, "Thanks to Hubble's OPAL program, which is building an archive of data on the outer solar system planets, we will have longer dedicated time to study Saturn's spokes this season than ever before." NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has observation time devoted to Saturn each year, thanks to the OPAL program, and the dynamic gas giant planet always showed something new, said the space agency. Saturn's last equinox occurred in 2009, while NASA's Cassini spacecraft was orbiting the gas giant planet for close-up reconnaissance, the agency said in the statement. With Cassini's mission completed in 2017, and the Voyager spacecrafts long gone, Hubble is continuing the work of long-term monitoring of changes on Saturn and the other outer planets, the space agency said. "Despite years of excellent observations by the Cassini mission, the precise beginning and duration of the spoke season is still unpredictable, rather like predicting the first storm during hurricane season," Simon said. While our solar system's other three gas giant planets also have ring systems, nothing compares to Saturn's prominent rings, making them a laboratory for studying spoke phenomena, the statement said. Whether spokes could or do occur at other ringed planets is currently unknown, NASA said. "It's a fascinating magic trick of nature we only see on Saturn for now at least," Simon said. Hubble's OPAL program will add both visual and spectroscopic data, in wavelengths of light from ultraviolet to near-infrared, to the archive of Cassini observations, NASA said. Scientists are anticipating putting these pieces together to get a more complete picture of the spoke phenomenon, and what it reveals about ring physics in general, the statement said.Copyright © Jammu Links News, Source: Jammu Links News
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Baffling radio signal coming from inside Milky Way Galaxy

Astronomers detect mysterious bursts of radio signals from distant galaxy; Photo: cbsnews

A mysterious intense blast of radio energy has been detected inside our own galaxy, astronomers have said in a new study published in the journal Nature.

The Independent reported that the detected signals are Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) that last only a small fraction of a second, however, it can possess more than the sun itself. Despite the intensity of FRBs, their causal origin remains largely unknown.

In the new study, however, astronomers observed a fast radio burst in our own Milky Way Galaxy for the first time – which is closer than any FRBs that was previously detected and might help astronomers understand their origin.

Scientists have long struggled to uncover the origin of these intense blasts because they are so short, unpredictable and originate far away. But the consensus is they are formed within some of the most extreme conditions possible in our universe — with potential explanations ranging from dying stars to alien technology. 

The bursts of radio energy appear to have come from a magnetar, or a star with a very powerful magnetic field, the scientists who discovered the new FRBs said. 

“This great mystery as to what would produce these great outbursts of energy, which until now we’ve seen coming from halfway across the universe,” said Kiyoshi Masui, assistant professor of physics at MIT, who led the team’s analysis of the FRB’s brightness, adding: “This is the first time we’ve been able to tie one of these exotic fast radio bursts to a single astrophysical object.”

The detection began on 27 April when researchers using two space telescopes – multiple X-ray and gamma-ray emissions – coming from a magnetar at the other end of our galaxy. The next day, researchers used two North American telescopes to observe that patch of sky and picked up the blast that came to be known as FRB 200428.

Pragya Chawla, one of the co-authors on the study and a senior Ph.D. student in the Physics Department at McGill, said they calculated such an intense burst coming from another galaxy which would be indistinguishable from some fast radio bursts. “This really gives weight to the theory suggesting that magnetars could be behind at least some FRBs,” he added.FRBs were first discovered in 2007, immediately gave speculation on what could be able to cause such intense blasts of energy. The new study is the first to provide evidence linking the FRBs with magnetars. At the very least, that could be a valuable clue to the origin of at least some of those FRBs. Source: https://www.daily-bangladesh.com/
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China operates world's biggest radio telescope to discover 'laws of universe'

World's largest radio telescope has become operational in southwestern China, with officials in Beijing saying that the project will help scientists search for alien life.
Since the early 1930s, when the first primitive radio telescopes began operating in an attempt to hunt for alien radio signals, astronomers have been busy sifting through the data collected from the immensity of the space to detect the faintest radio signals transmitted from a supposed alien civilization and to help the mankind feel, at last, that its loneliness in the incomprehensible universe is finally eased. The latest of such scientific endeavors is the world’s biggest radio telescope made by Chinese scientists and unveiled on Sunday.
The Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), measuring 500 meters in diameter, is erected in a scenic karst valley in Pingtang county, a mountainous area in the southeastern province of Guizhou in China.
The gigantic telescope, which took five years and devoured some $180 million to complete, clearly demonstrates China's growing ambitions in outer space explorations and its vigorous pursuit of global scientific prestige. 
The new Chinese telescope, whose massive dish is made of 4,450 panels, dwarfs the half-a-century old Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico as the world's largest single-dish radio telescope, since its sensitivity is twice as the old pal with a reflector as big as 30 football fields. The speed of FAST in surveying is also five to 10 times more than that of the Arecibo Observatory.
The 500-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) is seen at the final stage of construction, in the mountains in Pingtang county, Guizhou province, China. (Photo by Reuters)
“The ultimate goal of FAST is to discover the laws of the development of the universe,” said Qian Lei, an associate researcher with the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in remarks broadcast by state broadcaster CCTV on Sunday.
“In theory, if there is civilization in outer space, the radio signal it sends will be similar to the signal we can receive when a pulsar (spinning neutron star) is approaching us,” Qian added.
The huge Chinese cosmic ear requires a radio silence within a five-kilometer radius, therefore the 8,000 residents of the eight villages in the vicinity of the telescope site were forced to abandon their homes.
According to state media, the displaced villagers would be compensated, in the form of cash or new houses, from a budget of $269 million.
The CCTV report said that FAST managed to receive radio signals from a pulsar as far as 1,351 light years from the Earth during its recent test. Source: http://www.jokpeme.com
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First detection of super-Earth atmosphere

Credit: ESA/Hubble, M. Kornmesser
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has detected hydrogen and helium, but no water vapour, in the atmosphere of 55 Cancri e – the first time the atmosphere of a "super-Earth" has been analysed successfully. For the first time, astronomers were able to analyse the atmosphere of an exoplanet in the class known as super-Earths. Using data gathered with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and new analysis techniques, the exoplanet 55 Cancri e is revealed to have a dry atmosphere without any indications of water vapour. The results, to be published in the Astrophysical Journal, indicate that the atmosphere consists mainly of hydrogen and helium. The international team, led by scientists from University College London (UCL), took measurements of the nearby exoplanet 55 Cancri e, a super-Earth with a mass of eight Earths. It is located in the planetary system of 55 Cancri, a star about 40 light-years from Earth. Using observations made by the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) on board the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, the scientists were able to analyse the atmosphere in detail. The results were only made possible by exploiting a newly-developed processing technique. "This is a very exciting result,
because it's the first time that we have been able to find the spectral fingerprints that show the gases present in the atmosphere of a super-Earth," explains Angelos Tsiaras, a PhD student at UCL, who developed the analysing technique, along with his colleagues Ingo Waldmann and Marco Rocchetto. "The observations of 55 Cancri e's atmosphere suggest that the planet has managed to cling on to a significant amount of hydrogen and helium from the nebula from which it originally formed." Super-Earths like 55 Cancri e are thought to be the most common type of planet in our galaxy. They acquired the name 'super-Earth' because they have a mass larger than that of the Earth, but are still much smaller than the gas giants in the Solar System. The WFC3 instrument on Hubble has already been used to probe the atmospheres of two other super-Earths, but no spectral features were found in those previous studies. 55 Cancri e, however, is an unusual super-Earth, as it orbits very close to its parent star. A year on the exoplanet lasts for only 18 hours and temperatures on the surface are thought to reach around 2000 degrees Celsius. Because the planet orbits its bright parent star at such a small distance, the team was able to use their new technique to extract key information about the planet, during its transits in front of the host star. Observations were made by scanning the WFC3 very quickly across the star to create a number of spectra. By combining these observations and processing them through analytic software, the researchers were able to retrieve the spectrum of 55 Cancri e embedded in the light of its parent star. "This result gives a first insight into the atmosphere of a super-Earth. We now have clues as to what the planet is currently like and how it might have formed and evolved, and this has important implications for 55 Cancri e and other super-Earths," said Giovanna Tinetti, also from UCL. Intriguingly, the data also contain hints of the presence of hydrogen cyanide, a marker for carbon-rich atmospheres. "Such an amount of hydrogen cyanide would indicate an atmosphere with a very high ratio of carbon to oxygen," said Olivia Venot, KU Leuven, who developed an atmospheric chemical model of 55 Cancri e that supported the analysis of the observations. "If the presence of hydrogen cyanide and other molecules is confirmed in a few years time by the next generation of infrared telescopes, it would support the theory that this planet is indeed carbon rich and a very exotic place," concludes Jonathan Tennyson, UCL. "Although hydrogen cyanide, or prussic acid, is highly poisonous, so it is perhaps not a planet I would like to live on!"Source: http://www.futuretimeline.net/
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