Archive
A behind-the-scenes peek at the Apollo Command Module scale model at the NASA Goddard Visitor Center
Recent, gogblog went to visit the life-size model of the Apollo Command Module in the rocket garden behind the Goddard Visitor Center. Amidst the hardware of the historic Aerobee and Delta launch systems dating to the dawn of the space age, Visitor Center program manager Bill Buckingham gave us an exclusive tour of command module model — a pretty good replica of the object that carried three humans to the moon back in the 60s.
The funnest part was squirming into the thing and getting a feel, literally, for the environment in which three full-grown men spent a week traveling to and from the Moon: working, eating, sleeping, and defecating in a space the size of a large closet. It gives you a new appreciation for the meaning of the word “hero.” I call that “Three men doing their business in a closet for a week.”
The command module model, among the most popular attractions at the Visitor Center, is feeling its age. Water seepage has taken its toll, and Bill is hoping to attract contributions from volunteers to restore the model to better shape. Here’s what Bill has to say about it.
Why did a black hole blast star stuff into space at a quarter of light-speed on June 3, 2009? Here is what happened
On June 3, 2009, in an X-ray binary star system far, far away. . .
At the 2012 American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting in Austin, Texas, Gregory Sivakoff of the University of Alberta in Canada reported some astounding observations he and his colleagues accomplished using a globe-spanning array of radio telescopes and two NASA satellites.
The whole episode was a cosmic stroke of luck: The light from an event that happened some 28,000 years ago reached Earth just days before the global collaboration was scheduled to open for business. Goddard astrophysics writer Francis Reddy explains the details of the science today in a web feature story and animation.
Let’s start with the what: On or about June 3, 2009, enormous blobs of hot electrically charged matter were ejected from a black hole at about a quarter of the speed of light — roughly 75 million meters per second.
Next, the where: These black-hole “bullets,” as Reddy calls them in his web feature, were ejected from a binary star system. Called H1743–322, the system lies about 28,000 light-years from Earth. NASA’s HEAO-1 satellite discovered it in 1977
In H1743–322, a black hole and a star orbit each other at close quarters, every few days. They are close enough that the black hole’s massive gravity draws a steady stream of material off its companion’s wispy surface. The hot electrically charged gas swirls around the edge of the black hole, forming a whirlpool-like “accretion disc.” As the gas accelerates to high speed, it radiates X-rays that satellites at Earth can detect.
“Some of the infalling matter becomes re-directed out of the accretion disk as dual, oppositely directed jets,” Reddy writes. “Most of the time, the jets consist of a steady flow of particles. Occasionally, though, they morph into more powerful outflows that hurl massive gas blobs at significant fractions of the speed of light.”
Years ago, Sivakoff’s colleague James Miller-Jones, currently based at the International Center for Radio Astronomy Research at Curtin University in Perth, Australia, conceived of a plan to mount a “multiwavelength campaign” to study the periodic outbursts that astronomers observe from X-ray binaries like H1743–322. They got their chance on May 22, 2009.
On that date, renewed activity around the black hole triggered the Burst Alert Telescope on NASA’s Swift satellite. Miller-Jones, Sivakoff, and the other members of the international team of observers were able to marshal three radio telescopes: the Very Long Baseline Array, the Very Large Array, and the Australia Telescope Compact Array. The team also drew on data from NASA’s Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) satellite (which was just switched off this week, by the way, after 16 years of meritorious service).
Using information from the telescopes and satellites, the scientists were able to reconstruct the events leading up to and following the ejection of black-hole bullets from the binary system. Sivakoff reported those findings today at the AAS meeting.
Now, finally, what about the “how” of this outburst? That’s not very clear yet.
In similar black hole binaries, Miller-Jones says, astronomers have measured ejections traveling 92 percent of the speed of light! What process can shoot giant blobs of stuff out of the accretion zone of a black hole at such incredible speeds?
Sivakoff sketches out one possible explanation: Imagine knots of mass in the accretion disc, swirling around, getting closer and closer to the black hole. The disc is looped by powerful magnetic fields, which twist and tangle together as the disc rotates. When magnetic flux lines cross and connect, it could release enough energy to boost the black-hole bullets up and out of the disk.
“I think of a fairly stiff rope that is firmly to attached to the accretion disc,” Sivakoff explains. “As the disc spins, the rope is wound up, forming a sort of helix. Of course, there’s not one but many such ropes in an accretion disc. If two of those ropes touch — what astronomers call magnetic reconnection — lots of energy can be released. I like to envision ‘crossing the streams,’ a la Ghost Busters. This energy can accelerate particles, launching the bullet.”
There is another scenario, Miller-Jones says. Some scientists have proposed that what actually happens is that the inner edge of the accretion disc constricts, edging closer to the black hole’s “event horizon,” beyond which matter cannot escape. The magnetic and gravitational forces at this border region are extremely intense.
The forces could unleash a surge of material into the black hole’s paired jets, with a wavelike shock front ahead of it. “This causes particle acceleration,” Miller-Jones says, “and hence bright radio emission at this shock front.” So the bullets may actually be sudden surges in the jets, not discrete blobs.
But these explanations are just informed speculation at the moment. Additional multi-telescope observations could eventually provide enough clues to untangle the extreme physics that power black-hole bullets.
The team can only hope their recent stroke of luck holds out. Sivakoff says that the H1743–322 system conveniently started to flare up in late May 2009 — just as the team was preparing for the official opening of their observing window.
“Technically our observing was supposed to start in June 2009,” Sivakoff says. “But when this outburst went off a few days before our window was supposed to open up, we actually got permission to start observing earlier.”
So the discovery was the team’s inaugural run. “This was quite a trial by fire,” Sivakoff says.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
OH AND DID I MENTION? All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center. And while we’re at it, links to websites posted on this blog do not imply endorsement of those websites by NASA.
// < 
Steele Hill, NASA Goddard’s salesman of all things solar, just posted his latest weekly release of imagery, courtesy of NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. Steele creates the still images and video snippets for use in science museums and other public places. Here is his descriptive text for the image and video in this post.
NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory’s images of this Sun (Dec. 7, 2011) taken at almost the same time in several wavelengths at different temperatures and layers of the Sun. In addition, we superimposed an illustration of the Sun’s magnetic field lines to the view. We start off looking at the 6,000 degrees C. photosphere that shows the various sunspots on the “surface” of the Sun. Then, we transition into the region between the chromosphere and the corona, at about 1 million degrees C. where, in extreme UV light, the active regions appear lighter. We phase in a composite of three different wavelengths showing temperatures up to 2 million degrees C. To top it off, we overlay a science-based estimation of the complex magnetic field lines (partly made visible in the first UV image) extending from and connecting the active regions before going back to the sunspot image. Who says the Sun is boring?
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
OH AND DID I MENTION? All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center. And while we’re at it, links to websites posted on this blog do not imply endorsement of those websites by NASA.
w3counter(39986);
Behind the scenes pix of the next NASA satellite launch: cue the theme to The Right Stuff, here comes Piers Sellers, astronaut
Here on the East Coast, it’s 12:44 a.m., and most sensible people are asleep.
Not me: With Rex the Wonder Dog by my side, all 130-pounds of giant schnauserness of him snoring at my feet, I received these cool pix from California sent by my Goddard science writer colleague Christina Coleman.
I’m stuck here in Maryland while she and the rest of the NASA media team are out in California stoking the media blitz surrounding the launch of the NPP satellite. What’s that? Read up.
Below, TV produceress extraordinaire Malissa Reyes patches in TV people to “live shots,” which means local TV stations get to ask NASA scientists questions about the NPP satellite and what it will do for climate science and weather forecasting. (A lot, in case you are wondering.)
Below, see NASA’s Piers Sellers on a monitor in the production truck, whatever that is. In Christina’s photo he’s delivering yet another satellite interview at Vandenberg Air Force Base. Um, who are you?
Did I mention that Piers Sellers is 1) an actual astronaut, and 2) is one of the head science guys at NASA/Goddard? Piers Sellers. Astronaut. Cue theme music to The Right Stuff.
At the bottom of the blog, see a video of Justin Berk from ABC2 in Baltimore interviewing a sincerely-numbly-patient-Piers-Sellers discussing NPP’s capabilities and conducting a short tour of mission control. This was taped by Goddard veteran “shooters” Rob Andreoli and Silvia Stoyanova.
Rex is tired; gotta go.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
OH AND DID I MENTION? All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center. And while we’re at it, links to websites posted on this blog do not imply endorsement of those websites by NASA.
// < 
The NPP satellite will start its pole-to-pole world tour Friday morning after blast off.
It’s not even Friday morning and NPP has already gone on a world tour.
Well, not exactly. Early this morning — or late last night for Vandenberg Air Force Base folks — NPP hit the airwaves to strut its stuff. Four new state-of-the-art sensors, anyone? Five instruments capable of gathering data to continue more than 30 long-term sets of scientific data?
During live TV appearances by people associated with the mission (“live shots” in media lingo), early morning national news segments gave the newest Earth observing satellite some shine. Viewers got the scoop on how NPP will improve weather forecasts and the data that scientists use to predict climate.
Getting up in the dead of night to prepare for hours of back-to-back call-ins from perky anchors, who are used to working the graveyard shift, isn’t the easiest thing to do. But the camera crews from Kennedy Space Center and Goddard pulled through.
And for me, a first timer on the producer line, calling to confirm scheduling of the live shots for each station was full of television producer jargon like “stand-by,” “roll video,” “hold b-roll,” “45 seconds out,” and other really cool things everyone wishes to say at least once in their life while sitting in a production truck. I can’t take full credit. Most of the time I was repeating what our super-talented producer, Goddard’s own Malissa Reyes, was saying to the crew on the other end.
One after one, news stations called in via satellite connection to discuss NPP’s capabilities and societal benefits. Former astronaut and current deputy director of the Science and Exploration directorate at Goddard Space Flight Center, Piers Sellers, toughed it out at 3:00 a.m. live from Vandenberg Air Force Base to talk to more than 20 news stations about NPP’s impending launch on a Delta II rocket.
With hits from The Weather Channel, Fox, and even a shout out from Al Roker himself, NPP was no less than a superstar today. Even after we drank all of the coffee meant to keep us awake, Sellers kept the meteorologists well informed and excited about the new spacecraft and its capabilities.
The major topic this morning was weather. More than half of the meteorologists who tuned in via satellite wanted to know how NPP could improve weather forecasts. In three months, scientists will be able to obtain NPP data and incorporate it into the computer simulations (models) they use to predict the weather and issue weather warnings. These not only help the public decide between galoshes or sandals, but will also assist emergency responders with natural disasters such as hurricanes.
That’s good news for meteorologists. Just ask one.
“Anytime we see a new weather satellite in space it’s exciting,” said Justin Berk, a meteorologist with ABC2 Baltimore. “It will also greatly enhance our forecasts.”
Let’s not forget that NPP also has a role in climate research. During live shots, anchors also asked the question: What about climate change? NPP’s five instruments will monitor the health of Earth from space, sending down measurements of ozone near the ground (harmful) and high in the stratosphere (protective). NPP will also monitor sea and land surface temperatures, sea ice and glaciers, and changes in vegetation.
“NPP is the grandson of Terra,” Sellers said. “I’m really excited to see the imagery from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS).” VIIRS will collect radiometric imagery of the land, atmosphere, ice, ocean and observe active vegetation and fires and other surface temperatures.
After launch, NPP’s world tour truly begins, as it will orbit our planet pole-to-pole 14 times a day. But in the build up to the launch, NPP is getting a little taste of what it will be like for the next few years of its satellite life: anticipation regarding improved climate and weather data. Hope you’re just as excited as we are for this new earth science tool. Al Roker certainly was.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
OH AND DID I MENTION? All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center. And while we’re at it, links to websites posted on this blog do not imply endorsement of those websites by NASA.
// < 
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
OH AND DID I MENTION? All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center. And while we’re at it, links to websites posted on this blog do not imply endorsement of those websites by NASA.
//
&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt; &amp;amp;amp;lt;div&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;a href=”http://www.w3counter.com” mce_href=”http://www.w3counter.com”&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;img src=”https://www.w3counter.com/tracker.php?id=39986″ mce_src=”https://www.w3counter.com/tracker.php?id=39986″ style=”border: 0″ mce_style=”border: 0″ alt=”W3Counter” /&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/div&amp;amp;amp;gt; &amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;
//
SDO first-light anniversary webtastic mashup: Here (again!) are all the images and videos in one place
Here is a one-stop-shopping collection of our efforts this week to celebrate the one-year “first light” anniversary of NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.
Check out this “best of” compilation of video stunners from SDO’s first year at work and vote for your favorite. Voting is open until May 5. Pick the best SDO video of the year
They’re talking about us in Wales! At a meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society, researchers announced some new insights into what unleashed the powerful 2011 “Valentine’s Day” solar flare — with help from SDO.
Feast your eyes on this Flickr slideshow of SDO beauty shots.
And while you’re at it, see the past year of Solar Dynamics Observatory “pick of the week” beauty shots.
Did you miss the “Ask SDO” Twitter Q&A event on Tuesday? No problem: Experience the whole thing here on a Storify feature created by Goddard science writer Liz Zubritsky.
A year ago, NASA scientists gathered to announce the first crop of amazing SDO images to the world. But you can still watch the press conference.
Last but not least, browse the original SDO first-light image releases a year ago on the Goddard SDO website.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
OH AND DID I MENTION? All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center. And while we’re at it, links to websites posted on this blog do not imply endorsement of those websites by NASA.
//
&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;div&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href=”http://www.w3counter.com” mce_href=”http://www.w3counter.com”&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;img src=”http://www.w3counter.com/tracker.php?id=39986″ mce_src=”http://www.w3counter.com/tracker.php?id=39986″ style=”border: 0″ mce_style=”border: 0″ alt=”W3Counter” /&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/div&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;
NASA Goddard scores six spots in Discover Magazine's Top 100 Science Stories of 2010!
Discover Magazine revealed their Top 100 Science Stories of 2010, and Six NASA Goddard stories made the countdown. It reminds us that despite NASA being most closely identified or “branded” as the people who put people on the moon, we are as much a scientific institution as anything else. Here are the winners.
#100: Portrait of a Violent Star
#98: Roaming Rocks of Death Valley
#83: Mammoth Star Is the Biggest One Ever Seen
#76: What Lies Beyond the Edge of the Universe
#55: First Peek at the Solar System’s Outer Edge
#28: The Incredible Shrinking Moon
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
OH AND DID I MENTION? All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center. And while we’re at it, links to websites posted on this blog do not imply endorsement of those websites by NASA.
w3counter(39986);
How to rip a moon apart
We know that Saturn’s rings are ice particles orbiting the planet like a zillion tiny moons. But we’re not so sure how they got there. Surprised?
This week, a researcher at the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado, Robin Canup, published a new and intriguing hypothesis for what built Saturn’s rings as well as its inner moons. In a nutshell, Canup says multiple icy moons spiraled to their doom early in Saturn’s history, leaving behind the ice and rock that formed the rings and Saturn’s small inner moons.
Canup’s idea solves a few key problems for Saturn ring theorists. For more details, see the press release or a story by Discovery News writer Irene Klotz.
It’s hard to imagine a moon perhaps the size of Titan — around 5,150 kilometers (3,200 miles) across — getting torn apart. But it can happen, and the cause of it all is called tidal disruption.
Terry Hurford is a planetary scientist at Goddard who studies tidal disruption as it relates to Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus. Gravitational tides alternately stretch and compress those bodies, causing cracking at the surface and interior heating.
On Europa, the degree of distortion is about 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) in extent. It’s not as clear about Enceladus, but Hurtford roughly estimates it could be around 500 meters.
But if a moon strays too close to its planet, the tides can stretch it to the breaking point. The threshold is known as the Roche limit. Once a satellite gets within that distance to its planet, the planet’s gravity is in charge and the moon literally can’t hold itself together.
“The body gets more and more distorted tidally,” Hurford explains. “The gravity from Saturn makes it more like a football shape, where you have this kind of a point of the football pointed toward Saturn. As you get closer, this distortion can grow really large. If you get close enough, you can distort the body so much that it no longer can hold onto its mass.”
And that’s exactly what Canup shows in her new computer simulation. Multiple moons stray inside Saturn’s Roche limit. Tidal flexing — the same thing that today occurs on Europa and Enceladus — melts the moon’s watery ices and separates them from rocky material. Eventually the ice gets stripped off entirely to form the rings and inner moons, and the rocky stuff plummets into Saturn.
Pretty dramatic! And it’s intriguing to think that Saturn might have once had several large moon, not just one. I think they deserve to at least be named, these lost satellites of Saturn.
How about: “Going, “Going,” and “Gone”?
Tidal Disruption of a Moon
[These illustrations appear in the Wikipedia entry for “Roche limit” and were created by Theresa Knott of English Wikipedia. The illustration shows a top view of a planet and its moon.]
Far from the planet’s Roche limit (curved white line), the moon’s gravity molds it into a near-perfect sphere.
As the moon approaches the Roche limit, the planet’ s powerful gravity stretches and distorts the smaller satellite.
At the Roche limit, tidal forces overwhelm the moon’s own gravity, tearing the satellite into pieces.
Particles inside the Roche limit orbit faster than those outside the limit. This causes the particles to spread out and form rings.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
OH AND DID I MENTION? All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center. And while we’re at it, links to websites posted on this blog do not imply endorsement of those websites by NASA.
//
&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; &amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;div&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href=”http://www.w3counter.com” mce_href=”http://www.w3counter.com”&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;img src=”http://w3counter.com/tracker.php?id=39986″ mce_src=”http://w3counter.com/tracker.php?id=39986″ style=”border: 0″ mce_style=”border: 0″ alt=”W3Counter” /&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/div&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; &amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;
Gogblog Monday Video Rewind Picture Show: What Fueled 2005's Hurricane Season from Hell? Here it is A to Z.
CLICK ME to open a new window and watch the video
It’s hurricane season. And if you live on the Atlantic Coast, like gogblog, you sometimes get to wondering. . . What gives birth to these giant storms? How do tropical storms grow into hurricanes? Why do some fade early, while others reach category 5?
Watch this colorful and dynamic Goddard TV web short to get the answers: 27 Storms: Arlene to Zeta. It looks back on the destructive 2005 hurricane season — the one that gave us Katrina and the New Orleans catastrophe. The season birthed an astounding 27 named storms, beating 1933’s record of 21 nameable storms.
Got FiOS or some other fast Internet access? Go to the Scientific Visualization Studio website to download high-resolution versions of the video.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
OH AND DID I MENTION? All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center. And while we’re at it, links to websites posted on this blog do not imply endorsement of those websites by NASA.
//
&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt; &amp;lt;div&amp;gt;&amp;lt;a href=”http://www.w3counter.com” mce_href=”http://www.w3counter.com”&amp;gt;&amp;lt;img src=”http://w3counter.com/tracker.php?id=39986″ mce_src=”http://w3counter.com/tracker.php?id=39986″ style=”border: 0″ mce_style=”border: 0″ alt=”W3Counter” /&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt; &amp;lt;p&amp;gt;
NASA Space Ghost 