Astronomy

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An aurora show like no other is playing out in the night sky this weekend, spawned by intense solar storms that are painting the sky spectacular hues of pinks, purples and greens.

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Tonight and the rest of the weekend could be your best chance ever to see the aurora.

The Sun has been extremely active lately as it heads towards solar maximum. A giant Earth-facing sunspot group named AR3664 has been visible, and according to Spaceweather.com, the first of an unbelievable SIX coronal mass ejections were hurled our way from that active region, and is now hitting our planet’s magnetic field.

Solar experts predict that people in the US as far south as Alabama and Northern California could be treated to seeing the northern lights during this weekend. For those of you in northern Europe, you could also be in for some aurora excitement. Check the Space Weather Prediction Center’s 30-minute Aurora Forecast for the latest information.

If the weather conditions are right in your area, you might hit the aurora jackpot.  See a map with predictions, below.

A map from the Space Weather Prediction Center shows the aurora forecast for the U.S. on May 11, 2024. Credit: Space Weather Prediction Center

“If you happen to be in an area where it’s dark and cloud free and relatively unpolluted by light, you may get to see a fairly impressive aurora display, and that’s really the gift from space weather, is the aurora,” said Rob Steenburgh, from NOAA’s (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), during a briefing on Friday.

A map from the Space Weather Prediction Center shows the aurora forecast for the northern hemisphere on May 10, 2024. Credit: Space Weather Prediction Center

According to SWPC, the impact from the geomagnetic storm reached Earth-based magnetometers on May 10th at 1645 UT. More CMEs are following close behind and their arrival could extend the storm into the weekend.

While these solar storms could provide stunning views of auroras, there is also the potential for disruption to communications systems, power grids and satellite operations.

The Sun is super active right now! ?? ? ?

The video below shows a series of flares that erupted over the past seven days… not counting another X-class flare that happened this morning! pic.twitter.com/O5jwUBmMDT

— NASA Sun & Space (@NASASun) May 10, 2024

As we reported earlier this week, the Sun released three X-class solar flares — the strongest class of flares — in short succession. Solar flares are explosions on the Sun that release powerful bursts of energy and radiation coming from the magnetic energy associated with the sunspots. The more sunspots, the greater potential for flares.

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured these images of the solar flares — as seen in the bright flashes in the upper right — on May 5 and May 6, 2024. The image shows a subset of extreme ultraviolet light that highlights the extremely hot material in flares and which is colorized in teal. Credit: NASA/SDO

The sunspot group AR3664 is so large, it is visible to the naked eye — but you MUST be wearing special eye-wear (got any of your eclipse glasses left from April 8?) or use special solar filters for telescopes or binoculars. AR3664 is enormous, about 10 times the size of Earth.

How to see the Northern Lights

The aurora is an incredible sight. Your best shot to see it is to be in a dark area.

“Get away from city lights into a dark, rural surrounding and look north,” said the National Weather Service in St. Louis, Missouri on X (Twitter). “Aside from some clouds associated with a passing front, much of the time looks mostly clear.”

Check the weather forecast in your region for cloud cover. But if you don’t have any luck tonight, check again Saturday or Sunday night. With multiple CMEs, the storm was expected to last through the weekend.

Good luck!

The post If You’ve Never Seen An Aurora Before, This Might Be Your Chance! appeared first on Universe Today.

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The Moon’s polar regions are home to permanently shadowed craters. In those craters is ancient ice, and establishing a presence on the Moon means those water ice deposits are a valuable resource. Astronauts will likely use solar energy to work in these craters and harvest water, but the Sun never shines there.

What’s the solution? According to one team of researchers, a solar collector perched on the crater’s rim.

There’s abundant solar energy on the Moon. But not all the time and not everywhere. At the bottom of the deepest craters closest to the poles, there’s no Sun.

Researchers from the Texas A&M Department of Aerospace Engineering are anticipating future missions to the Moon’s permanently shadowed craters to harvest water resources. They’re working with NASA’s Langley Research Centre on reflectors that can be mounted on a crater rim. When paired with a receiver somewhere inside the crater, solar power can be delivered where it’s needed.

Dr. Darren Hartl is an associate professor of aerospace engineering at Texas A&M University. He’s leading a team of researchers working on solar reflectors. “If you perch a reflector on the rim of a crater, and you have a collector at the center of the crater that receives light from the sun, you are able to harness the solar energy,” said Hartl. “So, in a way, you’re bending light from the sun down into the crater.”

Though they’re still in the early stages of their research, computer models show that a parabolic reflector transmits the optimal amount of light to crater bottoms. Parabola designs are common in different types of things like telescopes, microphones, and car headlights. There are also solar parabolic reflectors at work here on Earth.

This is the Eurodish, a parabolic solar collector. The collector is mounted to the dish itself, but on the Moon, the collector would be in the crater where power is needed. Image Credit: Schlaich Bergermann und Partner and released into the Public Domain at http://wire0.ises.org/wire/independents/imagelibrary.nsf

Parabolic dishes are common on Earth. Here, we can make them any size we want and build them wherever we need to. But the whole endeavour is different on the Moon. Every pound we launch into space is expensive. Their goal is a reflector small enough to be transported to the Moon and large enough to harness enough energy.

The researchers are working with self-morphing material that was developed by Hartl and other engineers at Texas A&M. Self-morphing materials are based on natural materials that turn matter into complex surfaces. They can change shape in response to their environments. These include muscles, tendons, and plant tissue.

“During space missions, astronauts may need to deploy a large parabolic reflector from a relatively small and light landing system. That’s where we come in,” said Hartl. “We are looking at using shape memory materials that will change the shape of the reflector in response to system temperature changes.”

Dr. Hartl specializes in advanced multifunction materials. At Texas A&M, his team focuses on projects ranging from “… self-folding origami-based structures to self-regulating morphing radiators for spacecraft to advanced actuators for avian-inspired aircraft,” according to his bio. He also has over a decade of experience working with self-morphing structures and Shape Memory Alloys (SMA.)

One of the difficulties of operating on the Moon is the wild temperature swings between night and day. At the equator, the temperature can reach 121 Celsius (250 F), far hotter than anywhere on Earth. But at night, the temperature drops precipitously to -133 C (-208 F.) The permanent shadows in the Moon’s deep polar craters foster temperatures as low as -250 C (-415 F.)

Hartl has experience developing materials for these pronounced swings in temperature. He leads the Multifunctional Materials and Aerospace Structures Optimization (M2AESTRO) Lab at Texas A&M. “Our proposed solutions incorporate shape-shifting metals that adjust their own heat rejection based on how hot or cold they are, so it solves the problem for us,” Hartl said in 2019.

This video explains some of what they’re working on at M2AESTRO, though it’s a few years old.

The Moon is the next frontier for human habitation. Astronauts will live and work there, and water is a vital resource. Not just for drinking, but it can also be split into oxygen for respiration and hydrogen for fuel. Scientists aren’t certain how much water ice there is, but there’s enough to be useful.

Extracting and managing that resource will be critical for the success of Artemis and other lunar exploration efforts. Doing it effectively will require advanced solutions designed specifically for the lunar environment. Self-morphing materials could play an important role.

The post Lighting Up the Moon’s Permanently Shadowed Craters appeared first on Universe Today.

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Humanity got its first look at the other side of the Moon in 1959 when the USSR’s Luna 3 probe captured our first images of the Lunar far side. The pictures were shocking, pointing out a pronounced difference between the Moon’s different sides. Now China is sending another lander to the far side.

This time, it’ll bring back a sample from this long-unseen domain that could explain the puzzling difference.

Chang’e-6 (CE-6) launched on May 3rd and is headed for the second largest impact crater in the Solar System: the South Pole Aitken (SPA) basin. It’ll land at Apollo Basin, a sub-basin inside the much larger SPA basin.

China has placed a lander on the far side of the Moon before (Chang’e 4.) They also placed a lander on the near side of the Moon and brought back samples (Chang’e 5.) But CE-6 will be the first sample ever returned from the Lunar far side. It’s the latest mission in the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program (CLEP.)

This graphic outlines China’s Lunar Exploration Program. Image Credit: CASC

A new paper published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters outlines the significance of the CE-6 landing site and the samples it’ll return to Earth. It’s titled “Long-lasting farside volcanism in the Apollo basin: Chang’e-6 landing site.” The lead author is Dr. Yuqi Qian from the Department of Earth Sciences at The University of Hong Kong.

When the USSR’s Luna 3 probe gave us our first look at the lunar far side, it didn’t take scientists long to realize how different it is from the near side. The near side of the Moon is marked by vast basaltic lava plains called lunar mares. Mares cover about 31% of the lunar near side.

But the far side is much different. Lunar mares cover only about 2% of the lunar far side. Instead, it’s dominated by densely-cratered highlands. This is known as the lunar dichotomy. The difference likely stems from a deposit of heat-producing elements under the near side that created the lunar mares. Scientists have also proposed that a long-gone companion moon slammed into the far side, creating the highlands.

This global map of the Moon, as seen from the Clementine mission, shows the differences between the lunar near side and far side. The familiar near side is marked by dark lunar mares. The far side has very few of them. This is known as the lunar dichotomy. Credit: NASA.

“A major lunar scientific question is the cause of the paucity of farside mare basalts,” Qian and his colleagues write in their paper. “The Chang’e-6 (CE-6) mission, the first sample-return mission to the lunar farside, is targeted to land in the southern Apollo basin, sampling farside mare basalts with critical insights into early lunar evolution.” 

CE-6 samples from the far side can start to answer the questions about the differences between the two sides. In preparation for receiving the samples, Qian and his colleagues studied the Apollo Basin’s volcanism. Their work revealed diverse and puzzling volcanism.

Their research shows that the Apollo basin experienced volcanic activities lasting from the Nectarian (~4.05 billion years ago) to the Eratosthenian Period (~1.79 billion years ago). However, since the far side’s crust is much thicker, it influenced the volcanic activity. In regions like the Oppenheimer Crater, where the crust has intermediate thickness, lava dikes stall beneath the crater floor. Lava spreads laterally and forms a sill and floor-fractured crater.

These two images give context to the CE-6 landing site. The left image shows where Apollo is inside the SPA. The right image shows some of the features in the Apollo crater, with the landing zone in a white rectangle. Image Credit: Qian et al. 2024.

Some regions, like the inner floor of the Apollo crater, have thin crusts. Here, lava dikes erupted directly and formed extensive lava flows. But where the crust is thickest, in the highland regions, there’s no evidence that dikes there ever reach the surface.

“This fundamental finding indicates that the crustal thickness discrepancy between near side and far side may be the primary cause of lunar asymmetrical volcanism,” said Dr. Qian. “This can be tested by the returned Chang’e-6 samples.”

They’ve chosen Apollo Crater’s Southern Mare partly because it contains at least two historic eruptions from two different times. Each one has a different Titanium content. The earlier one occurred ~3.34 billion years ago and has a low Titanium content (3.2% by weight.) The later one occurred ~3.07 billion years ago and has a higher Titanium content (6.2% by weight.)

This figure from the study shows the prime location for collecting samples according to the authors. This region would provide samples from the older, low-Ti basalts, the younger high-Ti basalts, and also overlying impact ejecta from the Chaffee S crater. Image Credit: Qian et al. 2024.

The titanium content in the rock is relevant because of petrogenesis, the origin and formation of rocks. Scientists think that high-Ti and low-Ti lunar basalts form when different geological layers of the Moon melted. “CE-6 samples returned from the unique geological setting will provide significant petrogenetic information to address further the paucity of farside mare basalts and the lunar nearside-farside dichotomy,” the authors write.

The authors suggest that CE-6 collect samples from the edge of the later eruption with the higher Titanium content. That sample will have higher scientific value because it’ll actually sample three things at once: Newer high-Ti basalt, underlying low-Ti basalt, and other materials unrelated to the mares that were transported by impact events. “Diverse sample sources would provide important insights into solving a series of lunar scientific questions hidden in the Apollo basin,” said Professor Joseph Michalski, a co-author of the paper also from the University of Hong Kong.

“The result of our research is a great contribution to the Chang’e-6 lunar mission. It sets a geological framework for completely understanding the soon-returned Chang’e-6 samples and will be a key reference for the upcoming sample analysis for Chinese scientists,” said Professor Guochun Zhao, Chair Professor of HKU Department of Earth Sciences and the co-author of the paper.

Chang’e 6 will deliver up to 2 kg (4.4 lbs) of lunar material. It should arrive on Earth around June 25th.

“These returned samples could help to answer questions about the evolution of high-Ti and low-Ti basalts, the influence of crustal thickness on lunar volcanism, and the most fundamental unsolved question of lunar science: What is the cause of the pronounced lunar nearside-farside asymmetry?” the authors conclude.

The post Here’s Where China’s Sample Return Mission is Headed appeared first on Universe Today.

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