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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.

A beastly sunspot that's 15 times the diameter of Earth remains highly active — and you might be able to spot it with your eclipse glasses!

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.

Some black hole pairs roll around each other in wobbly, egg-shaped orbits that could hold clues about their origins, gravitational wave measurements suggest.

NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Telescope will hunt for the universe's first stars — or rather, what's left of them after they've been ripped apart by black holes.

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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.

Ultra-fast pulses of laser light can be shaped into vortices similar to smoke rings – when chained together, they can carry enough information to transmit a simple image

Ultra-fast pulses of laser light can be shaped into vortices similar to smoke rings – when chained together, they can carry enough information to transmit a simple image

A severe geomagnetic storm has just hit Earth — which means we could see auroras tonight! Here's what you'll need to know.

The post Severe Geogmagnetic Storm Has Arrived! Auroral Blast Expected Friday Night appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

An American Flamingo takes a sip of water in the Indian River at Haulover Canal on Merritt Island on Thursday, Jan. 11, 2024. The American Flamingos are more common in Mexico and Cuba but the winds from Hurricane Idalia relocated them to Florida in September 2023. Kennedy Space Center in Florida shares a border with the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge where more than 310 species of birds inhabit the refuge.

A rare geomagnetic storm not seen for nearly 20 years could cause a stunning aurora borealis on 10 and 11 May

A rare geomagnetic storm not seen for nearly 20 years could cause a stunning aurora borealis on 10 and 11 May

Asteroid Apophis is heading to Earth, and scientists have revealed three tiny spacecraft concepts that could race to meet the space rock in April 2029.

Scientists have calculated the rotational speed of asteroid 2024 BX1, which exploded over Berlin earlier this year, by letting it trail in images of the sky. It turns out, 2024 BX1 was spinning faster than any other near-Earth object ever seen.

The FAA announced May 10 that it will prepare an environmental impact statement for SpaceX's planned work with Starship at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Exoplanets are a fascinating astronomy topic, especially the so-called “Hot Jupiters”. They’re overheated massive worlds often found orbiting very close to their stars—hence the name. Extreme gravitational interactions can tug them right into their stars over millions of years. However, some hot Jupiters appear to be spiraling in faster than gravity can explain.

WASP-12b is a good example of one of these rapidly spiraling hot Jupiters. In about three million years, thanks to orbital decay, it will become one with its yellow dwarf host star. Both are part of a triple-star system containing two red dwarf stars. The hot Jupiter orbits the dwarf in just over one Earth day at a distance of about 3.5 million kilometers. That’s well within the orbit of Mercury around the Sun. Thanks to that orbit and gravitational influence, one side of the planet always faces the star. That heats only one side and puts the surface temperature at about 2,200 C. Eventually heat flows to the opposite side, which stirs up strong winds in the upper atmosphere. The planet doesn’t reflect much light, and astronomers have described it as a pitch-black world.

As if all that isn’t odd enough, the gravitational pull of the nearby star distorts this hot Jupiter into an egglike shape. It’s also stripping the planet’s atmosphere away. So, it’s no wonder astronomers described WASP-12b as a doomed planet.

Artist’s impression of WASP-12b, a Hot Jupiter deformed by its close orbit to its star. Credit: NASA What’s Tugging on Hot Jupiters?

According to conventional theory, a hot Jupiter planet like WASP-12b should create strong gravitational tidal waves between themselves and their parent stars. Those waves transfer energy, which tugs at the planet. That pulls the planet right into the star. Such a fiery death is definitely in WASP-12b’s future. But, there’s just one problem: it’s getting sucked in faster than gravitational tidal waves can explain. What’s happening?

A team of scientists at Durham University in England studied WASP-12b and they’ve come up with an interesting idea. What if this hot Jupiter’s fate is determined by magnetic fields? That’s what Durham’s Craig Duguid proposed in a recently published paper. Duguid’s team thinks the strong magnetic fields inside some stars can dissipate the tidal waves generated by orbiting hot Jupiters.

Artist’s concept of the exoplanet WASP-12b, parent star devouring its hot Jupiter planet. Artwork Credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI)

How this works isn’t completely confirmed yet, but here’s the basic idea. Inwardly propagating internal gravity waves (IGWs) (such as those from the nearby hot Jupiter) move through a star. They eventually run into the star’s magnetic interior. If that magnetic field is strong enough, it transforms them into magnetic waves. They move back outward and eventually dissipate. In the process, however, that dissipation causes a huge energy drain. The result is still the same as with gravitational tidal waves: the hot Jupiter loses energy and plows into its parent star. And, it could explain why some hot Jupiters spiral into their stars more quickly than expected.

Exploring the Magnetic Mechanism Idea

In the paper, Duguid and his team used models of stars with convective cores—such as F-type stars with masses between 1.2 to 1.6 solar masses. Astronomers suspect these experience weak tidal dissipation. The team used the known properties of these stars’ interiors, along with estimates of their magnetic fields. For these stars, a convective core is the dynamo that generates the magnetic field. Although it’s classified as a type-G star, WASP-12 fits into the study, thanks to its near-solar mass and radius.

So, is it just gravitational tidal waves pulling the planet in, or could the proposed magnetic field action be at work? Duguid and colleagues concluded that the magnetic field idea is very possible. They write, “Our main result is that this previously unexplored source of efficient tidal dissipation can operate in stars within this mass range for significant fractions of their lifetimes. This tidal dissipation mechanism appears to be consistent with the observed inspiral of WASP-12b and more generally could play an important role in the orbital evolution of hot Jupiters—and to lower-mass ultra-short-period planets—orbiting F-type stars.”

Need More Data about Hot Jupiters

It’s an interesting result. There are a great many hot Jupiters in the exoplanet archives, simply because they are the easiest exoplanets to observe. Some of them are spiraling in faster than expected. This leads the authors to suggest that additional studies of similar-type stars and their hot Jupiters could confirm the magnetic mechanism. In addition, future observations could help astronomers also understand the tidal wave theory and help place some constraints on the types of stars where it would operate.

For More Information

Scientists Explain Why Some Exoplanets are Spiraling Towards Their Stars
An Efficient Tidal Dissipation Mechanism via Stellar Magnetic Fields

The post Why Hot Jupiters Spiral into Their Stars appeared first on Universe Today.

The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are well known satellite galaxies of the Milky Way but there are more. It is surrounded by at least 61 within 1.4 million light years (for context the Andromeda Galaxy is 2.5 million light years away) but there are likely to be more. A team of astronomers have been hunting for more companions using the Subaru telescope and so far, have searched just 3% of the sky. To everyone’s surprise they have found nine previously undiscovered satellite galaxies, far more than expected. 

Data from Gaia (the satellite collecting accurate position information of astronomical objects) suggests that most of the satellite galaxies orbiting our own are newcomers! Even the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are now known to be newcomers. Whether any of these will fall into orbit around the Milky Way is as yet unknown, largely because we do not have an accurate measure for the mass of our home Galaxy.

The recent search hopes to expand our understanding of this corner of the Universe with the first detailed search for companion dwarf galaxies. The paper from lead author Daisuke Homma and team from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan reports on the findings of their survey using the Subaru Telescope. 

Based on Mauna Kea in Hawaii The Subaru Telescope is an 8.2m diameter telescope located at the Mauna Kea Observatory in Hawaii. Until 2005 it was the largest single mirror telescope in the world with a gigantic 8.2 metre mirror. In all telescopes, larger mirrors collect more light bringing with it the ability to see fainter objects and finer levels of detail. A number of telescopes have now surpassed Subaru’s massive light collecting power but multi-mirror telescopes are becoming more popular. 

As the cornerstone of the study is a drive to understand dark matter distribution. The concept of the Universe being dominated by cold dark matter nicely describes the large scale model of the cosmos. It struggles however, to describe the structure in the local Universe predicting hundreds of satellite galaxies to the Milky Way. Until recently, we only knew of a handful of satellite galaxies contradicting the model in a quandary known as the missing satellites problem. The team from Japan hopes their work will help provide clues to understand this problem.

The paper reports that the previous data obtained before 2018 of an area of sky covering 676 degrees2 revealed three candidate satellite galaxies; Vir I, Cet III and Boo IV. Data released over the three years that followed covering 1,140 degrees2 revealed two additional candidates; Sext II and Vir III. Unexpectedly, the model suggests there should be  3.9 ± 0.9 satellite galaxies within 10 pc within the virial radius of the Milky Way (based on the density distribution of the Milky Way). Instead the team found more, nine to be precise! It seemed then that the missing satellite problem was no worse than expected, indeed there were too many galaxies!

The team acknowledged that their research was based on statistically small numbers and several assumptions had been made based on an isotropic distribution of satellites. To progress this further, there will need to be follow up studies of stars in the satellite galaxies and high resolution imaging.

Source : Final Results of Search for New Milky Way Satellites in the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program Survey: Discovery of Two More Candidates

The post Does the Milky Way Have Too Many Satellite Galaxies? appeared first on Universe Today.

The Starmus music and science festival heads to Bratislava, Slovakia for a multi-day event from May 12 to May 17. Here's what to expect.