Follow Your Passion: A Seamless Tumblr Journey
Exoplanet - Blog Posts
Kings of the High Desert
A herd of strange creatures has congregated on this rocky outcrop. Known as Emperor Shinebacks, they often climb these rugged foothills to obtain access to cooling breezes and additional food sources. Their top-heavy tripodal stature prevents further ascension into the mountains, but it serves them well on more level ground. Reflective carapaces mitigate much of the sun’s harmful rays, and cooling flaps along their flanks dissipate excess heat. A shineback’s normal gait is rather clumsy, but when haste is needed they clamp all three legs together into a single monopod and bounce effortlessly across the desert at remarkably high speeds. This combined with their massive size (adults are over eight feet tall) and protective social behavior makes them almost impervious to attack. Almost…
The Garden of Unearthly Delights
Biodiversity in Glow Forest Communities
Down on the floor of the Glow Forest, a startling array of lifeforms has evolved in the cool dark mist. The creatures that comprise the main structure of this biome are known as Vela, and they stretch skyward, consuming all the available sunlight and allowing none to escape below. This species won an evolutionary arms race long ago, and as a result its photosynthetic competitors were pushed to extinction. However being a successful monoculture has its disadvantages. Autotrophs form the base of the food chain in most environments, and now the Vela is the only one. This means it is now the main food source for many other species who would otherwise have more choices. Its main nemesis is the Stragulum. This amorphous creeping wrinkled blanket infects a new Vela pseudopod nearly as soon as it touches the ground. It rapidly takes hold and covers every inch of the surface, slowly digesting it. This in turn attracts a cadre of new organisms which consume the flesh of the Stragulum. Predators are then drawn to the area, and as the number of species grows, a self-perpetuating cycle of increasing biodiversity takes place. Eventually, the Stragulum becomes too much of a burden to the Vela and it severs its pseudopod in order to rapidly grow another nearby. But the biomass of the parasite still lingers for quite some time, feeding a plethora of bizarre and unique organisms scrambling for their share of the resources in this oasis of light amidst the darkness.
Esta incrível imagem da ascensão da Terra foi tirada durante a órbita lunar pela tripulação da missão Apollo 11 em julho de 1969. A primeira missão lunar tripulada, a Apollo 11, foi lançada a bordo de um veículo de lançamento Saturn V do Centro Espacial Kennedy, Flórida, em 16 de julho de 1969 e retornou com segurança à Terra em 24 de julho de 1969. A tripulação de 3 homens a bordo do voo consistia em Neil A. Armstrong, comandante; Michael Collins, piloto do Módulo de Comando; e Edwin E. Aldrin Jr., piloto do Módulo Lunar.
December 17th of 2019 is The Launch Date of The CHEOPS_Mission to measure The Radii of EXOPLANETS Which have already been discovered by now.
This is The Smallest Sized EXOPLANET Discovered by NASA's TRANSITING EXOPLANET SURVEY SATELLITE so far!
NASA's TESS mission finds its smallest planet yet
NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has discovered a world between the sizes of Mars and Earth orbiting a bright, cool, nearby star. The planet, called L 98-59b, marks the tiniest discovered by TESS to date.
Two other worlds orbit the same star. While all three planets’ sizes are known, further study with other telescopes will be needed to determine if they have atmospheres and, if so, which gases are present. The L 98-59 worlds nearly double the number of small exoplanets – that is, planets beyond our solar system – that have the best potential for this kind of follow-up.
“The discovery is a great engineering and scientific accomplishment for TESS,” said Veselin Kostov, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California. “For atmospheric studies of small planets, you need short orbits around bright stars, but such planets are difficult to detect. This system has the potential for fascinating future studies.”
A paper on the findings, led by Kostov, was published in the June 27 issue of The Astronomical Journal.
Keep reading
This could be The First Confirmed Astronomical Discovery of an Extrasolar_Moon more than 20_Years after The First Confirmed Astronomical Discovery of an Extrasolar_Planet was made!
Life in The TRAPPIST_1 System
The Potential for Life is higher than ever on The TRAPPIST_1 Exoplanets, a Researcher says. http://wr.al/1AePv
Nearby Exoplanet is 'excellent' target in The Search for Life.
NASA’s TESS Mission to Search for Lots More EXOPLANETS is now about to be Launched someday really soon!
The Hunt for New Worlds Continues with TESS
We’re getting ready to start our next mission to find new worlds! The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will find thousands of planets beyond our solar system for us to study in more detail. It’s preparing to launch from our Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral in Florida.
Once it launches, TESS will look for new planets that orbit bright stars relatively close to Earth. We’re expecting to find giant planets, like Jupiter, but we’re also predicting we’ll find Earth-sized planets. Most of those planets will be within 300 light-years of Earth, which will make follow-up studies easier for other observatories.
TESS will find these new exoplanets by looking for their transits. A transit is a temporary dip in a star’s brightness that happens with predictable timing when a planet crosses between us and the star. The information we get from transits can tell us about the size of the planet relative to the size of its star. We’ve found nearly 3,000 planets using the transit method, many with our Kepler space telescope. That’s over 75% of all the exoplanets we’ve found so far!
TESS will look at nearly the entire sky (about 85%) over two years. The mission divides the sky into 26 sectors. TESS will look at 13 of them in the southern sky during its first year before scanning the northern sky the year after.
What makes TESS different from the other planet-hunting missions that have come before it? The Kepler mission (yellow) looked continually at one small patch of sky, spotting dim stars and their planets that are between 300 and 3,000 light-years away. TESS (blue) will look at almost the whole sky in sections, finding bright stars and their planets that are between 30 and 300 light-years away.
TESS will also have a brand new kind of orbit (visualized below). Once it reaches its final trajectory, TESS will finish one pass around Earth every 13.7 days (blue), which is half the time it takes for the Moon (gray) to orbit. This position maximizes the amount of time TESS can stare at each sector, and the satellite will transmit its data back to us each time its orbit takes it closest to Earth (orange).
Kepler’s goal was to figure out how common Earth-size planets might be. TESS’s mission is to find exoplanets around bright, nearby stars so future missions, like our James Webb Space Telescope, and ground-based observatories can learn what they’re made of and potentially even study their atmospheres. TESS will provide a catalog of thousands of new subjects for us to learn about and explore.
The TESS mission is led by MIT and came together with the help of many different partners. Learn more about TESS and how it will further our knowledge of exoplanets, or check out some more awesome images and videos of the spacecraft. And stay tuned for more exciting TESS news as the spacecraft launches!
Watch the Launch + More!
Sunday, April 15 11 a.m. EDT - NASA Social Mission Overview
Join mission experts to learn more about TESS, how it will search for worlds beyond our solar system and what scientists hope to find! Have questions? Use #askNASA to have them answered live during the broadcast.
Watch HERE.
1 p.m. EDT - Prelaunch News Conference
Get an update on the spacecraft, the rocket and the liftoff operations ahead of the April 16 launch! Have questions? Use #askNASA to have them answered live during the broadcast.
Watch HERE.
3 p.m. EDT - Science News Conference
Hear from mission scientists and experts about the science behind the TESS mission. Have questions? Use #askNASA to have them answered live during the broadcast.
Watch HERE.
4 p.m. EDT - TESS Facebook Live
This live show will dive into the science behind the TESS spacecraft, explain how we search for planets outside our solar system and will allow you to ask your questions to members of the TESS team.
Watch HERE.
Monday, April 16 10 a.m. EDT - NASA EDGE: TESS Facebook Live
This half-hour live show will discuss the TESS spacecraft, the science of searching for planets outside our solar system, and the launch from Cape Canaveral.
Watch HERE.
1 p.m. EDT - Reddit AMA
Join us live on Reddit for a Science AMA to discuss the hunt for exoplanets and the upcoming launch of TESS!
Join in HERE.
6 p.m. EDT - Launch Coverage!
TESS is slated to launch at 6:32 p.m. EDT on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from our Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Watch HERE.
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com
ESA’s GAIA Mission might reveal a Treasure Trove of Nee Exoplanetary Discoveries!
ESPRESSO Sees it’s First Light.
ESPRESSO is a New Planet Hunting Telescope at The European Southern Observatory.
There is a Planet out beyond Our Solar_System which has a 27,000 Year Long Orbit around it’s Host_Star.
The Science of Photosynthetic Lifeforms on Habitable Zone Worlds in other solar_systems.
A Huge_Planet that’s "too big for its Host_Star" has been spotted orbiting a Faint Red_Dwarf Star by some Australian Researchers - with the help of a Backyard Astronomer.
Three planets with sizes and temperatures akin to those of the Earth and Venus are circling a dwarf star 40 light-years away. The star in question, named TRAPPIST-1 after the telescope used to observe it, is weaker and cooler than the Sun at the heart of our solar system. "With such short orbital
The search for another Earth is super cool even if it might never end lol
But like, Aliens.
WANT MORE? GET YOUR HEAD STUCK IN THE STARS AT MY BLOG!
Are We Alone? How NASA Is Trying to Answer This Question.
One of the greatest mysteries that life on Earth holds is, “Are we alone?”
At NASA, we are working hard to answer this question. We’re scouring the universe, hunting down planets that could potentially support life. Thanks to ground-based and space-based telescopes, including Kepler and TESS, we’ve found more than 4,000 planets outside our solar system, which are called exoplanets. Our search for new planets is ongoing — but we’re also trying to identify which of the 4,000 already discovered could be habitable.
Unfortunately, we can’t see any of these planets up close. The closest exoplanet to our solar system orbits the closest star to Earth, Proxima Centauri, which is just over 4 light years away. With today’s technology, it would take a spacecraft 75,000 years to reach this planet, known as Proxima Centauri b.
How do we investigate a planet that we can’t see in detail and can’t get to? How do we figure out if it could support life?
This is where computer models come into play. First we take the information that we DO know about a far-off planet: its size, mass and distance from its star. Scientists can infer these things by watching the light from a star dip as a planet crosses in front of it, or by measuring the gravitational tugging on a star as a planet circles it.
We put these scant physical details into equations that comprise up to a million lines of computer code. The code instructs our Discover supercomputer to use our rules of nature to simulate global climate systems. Discover is made of thousands of computers packed in racks the size of vending machines that hum in a deafening chorus of data crunching. Day and night, they spit out 7 quadrillion calculations per second — and from those calculations, we paint a picture of an alien world.
While modeling work can’t tell us if any exoplanet is habitable or not, it can tell us whether a planet is in the range of candidates to follow up with more intensive observations.
One major goal of simulating climates is to identify the most promising planets to turn to with future technology, like the James Webb Space Telescope, so that scientists can use limited and expensive telescope time most efficiently.
Additionally, these simulations are helping scientists create a catalog of potential chemical signatures that they might detect in the atmospheres of distant worlds. Having such a database to draw from will help them quickly determine the type of planet they’re looking at and decide whether to keep observing or turn their telescopes elsewhere.
Learn more about exoplanet exploration, here.
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.
Woah :o
That is soooooooo cool!
I don’t do excess research into exoplanets - like I do stars - but wow. Isn’t it just amazing how much information we can get from such a far object??? Science has really come so far, it brings a single tear to my eye ;)
I’ll definitely be on the lookout for more info!
WANT MORE? GET YOUR HEAD STUCK IN THE STARS AT MY BLOG!
YALE’S EXPRES LOOKS TO THE SKIES OF A SCORCHING, DISTANT PLANET
Yale technology is giving astronomers a closer look at the atmosphere of a distant planet where it’s so hot the air contains vaporized metals.
The planet, MASCARA-2 b, is 140 parsecs from Earth – or roughly 2.68 quadrillion miles. It’s a gas giant, like Jupiter. However, its orbit is 100 times closer to its star than Jupiter’s orbit is to our Sun.
The atmosphere of MASCARA-2 b reaches temperatures of more than 3,140 degrees Fahrenheit, putting it on the extreme end of a class of planets known as hot Jupiters. Astronomers are keenly interested in hot Jupiters because their existence had been unknown until 25 years ago and they may offer new information about the formation of planetary systems.
“Hot Jupiters provide the best laboratories for developing analysis techniques that will one day be used to search for biosignatures on potentially habitable worlds,” said Yale astronomer Debra Fischer, the Eugene Higgins Professor of Astronomy and co-author of a new study that has been accepted by the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
Fischer is the guiding force behind the instrument that made the discovery possible: the Extreme PREcision Spectrometer (EXPRES), which was built at Yale and installed on the 4.3-meter Lowell Discovery Telescope near Flagstaff, Ariz.
The primary mission of EXPRES is finding Earth-like planets based on the slight gravitational influence they have on their stars. This precision also comes in handy when looking for atmospheric details of far-away planets, the researchers said.
Here’s how it works.
As MASCARA-2 b crosses the direct line of sight between its host star and Earth, elements in the planet’s atmosphere absorb starlight at specific wavelengths – leaving a chemical fingerprint. EXPRES is able to pick up those fingerprints.
Using EXPRES, Yale astronomers and colleagues from the Geneva Observatory and Bern University in Switzerland, as well as the Technical University of Denmark, found gaseous iron, magnesium, and chromium in MASCARA-2 b’s atmosphere.
“Atmospheric signatures are very faint and difficult to detect,” said co-author Sam Cabot, a graduate student in astronomy at Yale and leader of the study’s data analysis. “Serendipitously, EXPRES offers this capability, since you need very high-fidelity instruments to find planets outside our own solar system.”
The study’s lead author, astronomer Jens Hoeijmakers of the Geneva Observatory, said EXPRES also found evidence of different chemistry between the “morning” and “evening” sides of MASCARA-2 b.
“These chemical detections may not only teach us about the elemental composition of the atmosphere, but also about the efficiency of atmospheric circulation patterns,” Hoeijmakers said.
Along with other advanced spectrometers such as ESPRESSO, built by Swiss astronomers in Chile, EXPRES is expected to collect a wealth of new data that may dramatically advance the search for exoplanets – planets orbiting stars other than our own Sun.
“The detection of vaporized metals in the atmosphere of MASCARA-2 b is one of the first exciting science results to emerge from EXPRES,” Fischer said. “More results are on the way.”
NASA’s beloved space telescopes: HUBBLE, TESS, WEBB, KEPLER & SPITZER l Exoplanet Travel Bureau
The Science Has Spoken: Pluto Will Never Be A Planet Again
“What’s perhaps most remarkable is that we can make a simple, mathematical relationship between a world’s mass and its orbital distance that can be scaled and applied to any star. If you’re above these lines, you’re a planet; if you’re below it, you’re not. Note that even the most massive dwarf planets would have to be closer to the Sun than Mercury is to reach planetary status. Note by how fantastically much each of our eight planets meets these criteria… and by how much all others miss it. And note that if you replaced the Earth with the Moon, it would barely make it as a planet.”
It was a harsh lesson in astronomy for all of us in 2006, when the International Astronomical Union released their official definition of a planet. While the innermost eight planets made the cut, Pluto did not. But given the discovery of large numbers of worlds in the Kuiper belt and beyond our Solar System, it became clear that we needed something even more than what the IAU gave us. We needed a way to look at any orbiting worlds around any star and determine whether they met a set of objective criteria for reaching planetary status. Recently, Alan Stern spoke up and introduced a geophysical definition of a planet, which would admit more than 100 members in our Solar System alone. But how does this stand up to what astronomers need to know?
As it turns out, not very well. But the IAU definition needs improving, too, and modern science is more than up to the challenge. See who does and doesn’t make the cut into true planetary status, and whether Planet Nine – if real – will make it, too!
SCIENCE PACKED WEEK: NASA Co-Op #3 Week 7
The amount of science that occurred this week was so overwhelming that I had to make the title all caps. Five major science related events occurred this week... I was a Judge at the FIRST Robotics Tech Challenge SE Texas Championship, assisted in astronaut user testing, watched a briefing about seven new Earth-like planets found, watched SpaceX Dragon cargo ship dock to the International Space Station, and trained on the job in Mission Control during the Dragon cargo ship unstow.
1. FIRST Robotics Tech Challenge Judging
FTC is like FRC (that I was in back in high school) except FTC robots are 18in x 18in x 18in, rather than 120lb robots we built, and play a different game. This year's game is Velocity Vortex which required students to build a robot in only six weeks that could lift large medicine balls and shoot Whiffle balls at a target. I had a great time at the FIRST Tech Challenge's SE Texas Regional Champs judging teams. It was a challenge to judge teams when there was so much talent to sift through! Unlike Minnesota FRC's one regional these TX FTC folks have to go through three levels of competition to get to the World Championship. Worlds will be held in Houston this year April 19-22.
Volunteer with at a FIRST Robotics event.
2. SpaceX Dragon Launch to Space Station
Launch of Falcon9 carrying dragon cargo to Space Station went wonderfully. Additionally, a stage of Flacon 9 successfully landed ON LAND back in Florida to be refurbished and reused. This private space industry/ US Government/ International effort demonstrates Scott Kelly's quote: "Spaceflight is the biggest team sport there is, and it's incredibly important that we all work together to make what is seemingly impossible possible." Kelly said this when he handed over command of the ISS to fellow NASA astronaut Tim Kopra during his Year In Space Mission in 2016. Despite public belief, spaceflight is a team collaboration (not competition) between government, private and international groups.
3. Astronaut User Testing
In parallel to hands free stowage app development I am "Project Manager-ing" for, I am helping with a similar app on an iPad. This iPad app is going through user testing to get approved and sent up to Space Station. I assisted with user testing including participants from ISO and participants from the astronaut crew office who have flown. The test participants were asked to gather items in the ISS mock-ups and pack them into the SpaceX Dragon cargo ship mock up. I was available for test participants to ask about space station locations. Additionally I made the “play” stowage items that participants gathered and packed.
4. New Earth-like Planets Found
First known system of seven Earth-sized planets has been found! This solar system is called TRAPPIST-1 and the planets are named letters "a" through "g" from closest to furthest from the Star. These planets are one hundred times closer to their star and closer to each other than the planets in our solar system. This means that on the surface of one planet you can see other planets clearly like our moon. Since this star is significantly cooler than ours which leaves three of these planets habitable despite close proximity to the star. At light speed it would take 39yrs to reach this solar system. In 2016 in Chile, researchers used the TRAPPIST telescope to find two of the planets in TRAPPIST-1. In part of a global effort NASA's Spitzer telescope found total of seven reported this week. In the future NASA's James Webb telescope, set to launch in 2018, will take a closer look at TRAPPIST-1.
Check out what the surface of planet TRAPPIST-1d looks like. Find the other six planets in the sky.
Take a 3D tour of TRAPPIST solar system.
NASA's press release about the new found exoplanets.
Full breif/ exoplanet discovery announcement video here, it's only 30mins long with press questions.
5. Dragon Cargo Ship Unstow
Conducted on the job training with DISO (Dragon Inventory Stowage Officer) in a Mission Control support room. DISOs are in charge of monitoring the astronaut’s cargo unstow of SpaceX’s dragon cargo ship docked to the International Space Station. Dragon delivered many scientific experiments, food and temperature sensitive items. During unstow astronauts Peggy Whitson and Thomas Pesquet were about an hour ahead of schedule. This crew is extremely efficient and is ahead of schedule for every task, even spacewalks. Pesquet unpacked cold bags where temperature sensitive science is stored and should be unpacked quickly. Whitson retrieved CTBs (Cargo Transfer Bags) from Dragon which included science that needed kept at a particular temperature and pressure. CTBs are White, rectangular, cushiony, sewn bags sealed with a zipper and are used on every flight to contain items.
Unloading items from dragon in an elegant organized fashion is critical because SpaceX must always know its center of gravity. If there is a Dragon emergency in which case dragon cannot stay on ISS and needs to return to Earth the center of gravity is available for accurate trajectory calculations. During my on the job training I followed the procedures sent to crew and recorded changes astronauts made to the procedure. I listened to the voice loops of each of the flight control consoles communicating to each other about the astronaut’s tasks. I was able to confirm “words”, what was spoken over the loop, to the official DISO flight controller as a second check. Sometimes DISO are asked to confirm that an unstow procedure is being completed correctly and sometimes DISO needs to call the Flight Director to point out a stowage item concern.
Whirlpool galaxy
Credit : Hubble and chandraxray
Planet uranus
Credit : NASA