Space
- JWST: NIRCam - ZS7 environment
https://esawebb.org/images/weic2413a/
[Image description: This image features the ZS7 galaxy system, showing a large field of hundreds of galaxies on the black background of space.]
- JWST: NIRCam - Uranuswww.nasa.gov NASA’s Webb Scores Another Ringed World With New Image of Uranus - NASA
Following in the footsteps of the Neptune image released in 2022, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has taken a stunning image of the solar system’s other ice giant, the planet Uranus. The new image features dramatic rings as well as bright features in the planet’s atmosphere.
- JWST: NIRCam - NGC 6440
https://esawebb.org/images/potm2404b/
[Image Description: A spherical collection of stars which fills the whole view. The cluster is dominated by a concentrated group of bright white stars at the centre, with several large yellow stars scattered throughout the image. Many of the stars have visible diffraction spikes. The background is black.]
- JWST: NIRCam - Horsehead Nebula
https://esawebb.org/images/weic2411a/
[Image description: At the bottom of the image a small portion of the Horsehead Nebula is seen close-in, as a curved wall of thick, smoky gas and dust. Above the nebula various distant stars and galaxies can be seen up to the top of the image. One star is very bright and large, with six long diffraction spikes that cross the image. The background fades from a dark red colour above the nebula to black.]
- Is there a download for new map of the moon from China?
Seems similar to the one released in 2022. I've searched for 15 minutes to try to find a new download or purchase link, without any luck! All the news stories just have low-res previews.
- Hubble's 34th Anniversary Image: The Little Dumbbell Nebula
YouTube Video
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- Dragonfly mission to Titan gets the green lightarstechnica.com NASA officially greenlights $3.35 billion mission to Saturn’s moon Titan
Dragonfly will push the boundaries of engineering and science as it explores Titan.
The mission includes a quadcopter to explore different locations on the surface.
- Dr. Becky - Has JWST [solved] the crisis in cosmology?vid.lilay.dev Has JWST SOLVED the crisis in cosmology?!
AD - Go to https://ground.news/drbecky to stay fully informed on Space and Science News. Subscribe through my link to get 40% off the Vantage plan for unlimited access this month only | Last weekend the lead researcher of a group using data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to calculate the...
Edited title for less cringe. Still a good video, regardless.
Original youtube link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKmPJmaeP8A
*WHAT THE HELL IS THAT HUGE BODY OF TEXT
- James Webb telescope confirms there is something seriously wrong with our understanding of the universewww.livescience.com James Webb telescope confirms there is something seriously wrong with our understanding of the universe
Depending on where we look, the universe is expanding at different rates. Now, scientists using the James Webb and Hubble space telescopes have confirmed that the observation is not down to a measurement error.
Astronomers have used the James Webb and Hubble space telescopes to confirm one of the most troubling conundrums in all of physics — that the universe appears to be expanding at bafflingly different speeds depending on where we look.
This problem, known as the Hubble Tension, has the potential to alter or even upend cosmology altogether. In 2019, measurements by the Hubble Space Telescope confirmed the puzzle was real; in 2023, even more precise measurements from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) cemented the discrepancy.
Now, a triple-check by both telescopes working together appears to have put the possibility of any measurement error to bed for good. The study, published February 6 in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, suggests that there may be something seriously wrong with our understanding of the universe.
- Ignition! – An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants [PDF]
Ignition! is part memoir and part history book from the 70's, written by John D. Clark who was an American rocket fuel chemist.
It doesn't go too deep into the chemistry side of things, so even if you're like me and don't understand that side at all you might enjoy reading it if you're into space history nerdery. Clark had a pretty hilarious writing style, so it's a surprisingly entertaining book considering the subject matter. As an example, here's what he had to say about chlorine trifluoride:
> All this sounds fairly academic and innocuous, but when it is translated into the problem of handling the stuff, the results are horrendous. It is, of course, extremely toxic, but that's the least of the problem. It is hypergolic with every known fuel, and so rapidly hypergolic that no ignition delay has ever been measured. It is also hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water — with which it reacts explosively. It can be kept in some of the ordinary structural metals — steel, copper, aluminum, etc. — because of the formation of a thin film of insoluble metal fluoride which protects the bulk of the metal, just as the invisible coat of oxide on aluminum keeps it from burning up in the atmosphere. If, however, this coat is melted or scrubbed off, and has no chance to reform, the operator is confronted with the problem of coping with a metal-fluorine fire. For dealing with this situation, I have always recommended a good pair of running shoes.
- The diagnosis is in—bad memory knocked NASA’s aging Voyager 1 offlinearstechnica.com NASA knows what knocked Voyager 1 offline, but it will take a while to fix
"Engineers are optimistic they can find a way for the FDS to operate normally."
"Engineers are optimistic they can find a way for the FDS to operate normally."
- In a Distant Solar System, the JWST Sees the End of Planet Formationwww.universetoday.com In a Distant Solar System, the JWST Sees the End of Planet Formation
Planet formation is ending around a distant young protostar. The planet-forming gas in the star's disk is being dispersed into space.
- JWST: NIRCam - Zwicky 18
https://esawebb.org/images/potm2403b/
[Image Description: Many small galaxies are scattered on a black background: mainly, white, oval-shaped and red, spiral galaxies. The image is dominated by a dwarf irregular galaxy, which hosts a bright region of white and blue stars at its core that appear as two distinct lobes. This region is surrounded by brown dusty filaments. At the bottom centre of the image, a companion galaxy is visible that appears as a collection of blue stars.]
- JWST: MIRI - Sombrero galaxy by Thomas Carpentier
https://www.flickr.com/photos/197464132@N05/53610345625/
- Geomagnetic storm from a solar flare could disrupt radio communications and create a striking auroraapnews.com Geomagnetic storm from a solar flare could disrupt radio communications and create a striking aurora
Space weather forecasters have issued a geomagnetic storm watch through Monday. They say a plasma burst from a solar flare could interfere with radio transmissions on Earth.
- RocketStar Announces Successful Demonstration of Fusion-Enhanced Pulsed Plasma Electric Propulsionwww.globenewswire.com RocketStar Announces Successful Demonstration of Fusion-Enhanced Pulsed Plasma Electric Propulsion
Innovator of in-space propulsion and digital signal processing creates the world’s first electric propulsion device enhanced with nuclear fusion...
cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/27670808
> RocketStar Announces Successful Demonstration of Fusion-Enhanced Pulsed Plasma Electric Propulsion
- Rocket launch marks big step in building China’s lunar infrastructurearstechnica.com Rocket launch marks big step in building China’s lunar infrastructure
Queqiao-2 will relay data between Earth and Chinese spacecraft on the far side of the Moon.
- JWST: NIRCam w/ Hubble - Cepheid host galaxy
https://esawebb.org/images/weic2408a/
[Image description: A face-on spiral galaxy with four spiral arms that curve outward in a counterclockwise direction. The spiral arms are filled with young, blue stars and peppered with purplish star-forming regions that appear as small blobs. The middle of the galaxy is much brighter and more yellowish, and has a distinct narrow linear bar angled from 11 o’clock to 5 o’clock. Dozens of red background galaxies are scattered across the image. The background of space is black
- JWST: NIRCam - NGC 604
https://esawebb.org/images/weic2407d/
[Image description: At the centre of the image is a nebula on the black background of space. The nebula is composed of clumpy, red, filamentary clouds. At the centre-right of the red clouds is a large cavernous bubble, and at the centre of the bubble there is an opaque blue glow with speckles of stars. At the edges of the bubble, the dust is white. There are several other smaller cavernous bubbles at the top of the nebula. There are also some smaller, red stars and a few disc-shaped galaxies scattered about the image.]
- SpaceX's Starship notches major flight test milestones, breaks up over Indian Ocean in final momentswww.cnbc.com SpaceX's Starship notches major flight test milestones, breaks up over Indian Ocean in final moments
SpaceX launched the third test flight of its Starship rocket on Thursday, as the company pushed development of the mammoth vehicle past new milestones.
- Space loves AI, AI doesn’t love Spacespacenews.com Space loves AI, AI doesn't love Space
Operators are developing creative solutions for putting AI on satellites, a challenge that comes with myriad technical and logistical obstacles.
- Pressure Fed Astronaut's newest discussion: Shuttle mission STS-39 | End of Mission Episode 11
YouTube Video
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This is a part of a Rocket Engineer's ongoing series of live reviews on various Space missions, mostly NASA
- Potentially habitable exoplanet's atmosphere may have been destroyedphys.org Possible atmospheric destruction of a potentially habitable exoplanet
Astrophysicists studying a popular exoplanet in its star's habitable zone have found that electric currents in the planet's upper atmosphere could create sufficient heating to expand the atmosphere enough that it leaves the planet, likely leaving the planet uninhabitable.
- The Star That Shouldn't Exist
YouTube Video
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Full disclosure: He does acknowledge that the most likely explanation is that it's not aliens.
"Misinterpretation is obviously the most boring on that list, which perhaps means it's the most likely to be the case. ... No one's ever actually put this stuff in a 10,000-Kelvin oven and measured how they absorb light. So the characteristic frequencies are theoretical, and it's quite possible that they are slightly wrong, and instead of seeing radioactive elements, we are instead seeing a far more mundane set of elements just behaving in an unexpected way."
- JWST: MIRI - Wolf-Rayet 140
https://esawebb.org/images/WR140a/
[Image Description: The background of this Webb image of star Wolf-Rayet 140 is black. A pair of bright stars dominates the center of the image, with at least 17 pink-orange concentric dust rings emanating from them. Throughout the scene are a range of distant galaxies, the majority of which are very tiny and red, appearing as splotches.]
>Each ring was created when the two stars came close together and their stellar winds (streams of gas they blow into space) met, compressing the gas and forming dust. The stars’ orbits bring them together about once every eight years; like the rings of a tree’s trunk, the dust loops mark the passage of time.
- JWST: NIRCam + MIRI - NGC 3256
https://esawebb.org/images/potm2306a/
[Image Description: A large, face-on spiral galaxy. The core is radiating very brightly. Streaks of dust glow intensely red, in the centre and across most of the galaxy. This gas is surrounded by a dark grey halo made of the galaxy’s stars. The halo stretches out into a tidal tail at the upper-left, and another at the bottom. Small stars and galaxies surround the spiral galaxy, on a black background.]
- JWST: NIRCam - [Herbig-Haro] 211
https://esawebb.org/images/weic2322a/
[Image description: At the centre is a thin horizontal multi-coloured cloud tilted from bottom left to top right. At its centre is a dark brown cloud from which both outflows are spewing from. These outflows transition from colours of yellow/orange, to a light blue region, with prominent light pink features in the outer regions.]
- JWST: NIRCam - Herbig-Haro 46/47
https://esawebb.org/images/weic2319a/
[Image description: At the centre is a thin horizontal orange cloud tilted from bottom left to top right. It takes up about two-thirds of the length of this angle, but is thin at the opposite angle. At its centre is a set of very large red and pink diffraction spikes in Webb’s familiar eight-pointed pattern. It has a central yellow-white blob, which hides two tightly orbiting stars. The background is filled with stars and galaxies.]
- JWST: NIRCam - Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex
https://esawebb.org/images/weic2316a/
[Image description: Red dual opposing jets coming from young stars fill the darker top half of the image, while a glowing pale-yellow, cave-like structure is bottom centre, tilted toward two o’clock, with a bright star at its centre. The dust of the cave structure becomes wispy toward eight o’clock. Above the arched top of the dust cave three groupings of stars with diffraction spikes are arranged. A dark cloud sits at the top of the arch of the glowing dust cave, with one streamer curling down the right-hand side. The dark shadow of the cloud appears pinched in the centre, with light emerging in a triangle shape above and below the pinch, revealing the presence of a star inside the dark cloud. The image’s largest jets of red material emanate from within this dark cloud, thick and displaying structure like the rough face of a cliff, glowing brighter at the edges. At the top centre of the image, a star displays another, larger pinched dark shadow, this time vertically. To the left of this star is a more wispy, indistinct region.]
- Before Ingenuity ever landed on Mars, scientists almost managed to kill itarstechnica.com Before Ingenuity ever landed on Mars, scientists almost managed to kill it
"The Mars 2020 science team wasn't interested in Ingenuity."
- JWST: NIRCam + MIRI - Wolf-Rayet 124
https://esawebb.org/images/weic2307a/
[Image Description: A large, bright star shines from the centre with smaller stars scattered throughout the image. A clumpy cloud of material surrounds the central star, with more material above and below than on the sides, in some places allowing background stars to peek through. The cloud material is yellow closer to the star.]