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Ancient DNA extracted from layers of sediment in a Czech forest shows how a drop in biodiversity coincided with a shift to pig herding about 4000 years ago

The Hubble tension, a longstanding problem in cosmology, could potentially be relieved if early dark energy is taken into account.

NASA astronaut Tracy C. Dyson, along with Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub, return to Earth after completing their mission to the International Space Station.Credit: NASA

NASA astronaut Tracy C. Dyson completed a six-month research mission aboard the International Space Station on Monday, returning to Earth with Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub.

The trio departed the space station aboard the Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft at 4:36 a.m. EDT Monday, Sept. 23, making a safe, parachute-assisted landing at 7:59 a.m. (4:59 p.m. Kazakhstan time), southeast of the remote town of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan.

While aboard the orbiting laboratory, Dyson conducted multiple scientific and technology activities including the operation of a 3D bioprinter to print cardiac tissue samples, which could advance technology for creating replacement organs and tissues for transplants on Earth. Dyson also participated in the crystallization of model proteins to evaluate the performance of hardware that could be used for pharmaceutical production and ran a program that used student-designed software to control the station’s free-flying robots, inspiring the next generation of innovators.

Dyson launched on March 23 and arrived at the station March 25 alongside Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy and spaceflight participant Marina Vasilevskaya of Belarus. Novitskiy and Vasilevskaya were aboard the station for 12 days before returning home with NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara on April 6.

Spanning 184 days in space, Dyson’s third spaceflight covered 2,944 orbits of the Earth and a journey of 78 million miles as an Expedition 70/71 flight engineer. Dyson also conducted one spacewalk of 31 minutes, bringing her career total to 23 hours, 20 minutes on four spacewalks.

Kononenko and Chub, who launched with O’Hara to the station on the Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft last September, spent 374 days in space on a trip of 158.6 million miles, spanning 5,984 orbits. Kononenko completed his fifth flight into space, accruing a record of 1,111 days in orbit, and Chub completed his first spaceflight.

Following post-landing medical checks, the crew will return to the recovery staging city in Karaganda, Kazakhstan. Dyson will then board a NASA plane bound for the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Learn more about space station activities by following @space_station and @ISS_Research on X, as well as the ISS Facebook, ISS Instagram, and the space station blog.

-end-

Claire O’Shea / Julian Coltre
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
claire.a.o’shea@nasa.gov / julian.n.coltre@nasa.gov

Sandra Jones
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
sandra.p.jones@nasa.gov

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Details Last Updated Sep 23, 2024 LocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms

• International Space Station (ISS)
• Astronauts
• Humans in Space
• ISS Research
• Johnson Space Center
• Tracy Caldwell Dyson

An atlas doesn’t seem to be an essential item in cars these days but think about them and most people will think about distances. An atlas of the stars not only covers distances but must also take into account time too. The Andromeda galaxy for example is so far away that its light takes 2.5 million years to reach us. A team of researchers have now built a catalogue that contains information on millions of galaxies including their distance and looks back in time up to 10 billion years!

Like anything that has – hmmmm lots of stuff, there are always catalogues to capture information about them. Astronomy is no different and there are plenty of catalogues; Messier, New General, Second Cambridge Catalogue of Radio Sources and the Two Micron All Sky Survey, the list goes on. Now a new catalogue has been created to provide information on millions of distant galaxies. It’s been created by a collaboration of organisations led by the Institute of Space Sciences as a result of the Physics of the Accelerating Universe Survey (PAUS.)

This new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows Messier 96, a spiral galaxy just over 35 million light-years away in the constellation of Leo (The Lion). It is of about the same mass and size as the Milky Way. It was first discovered by astronomer Pierre Méchain in 1781, and added to Charles Messier’s famous catalogue of astronomical objects just four days later. The galaxy resembles a giant maelstrom of glowing gas, rippled with dark dust that swirls inwards towards the nucleus. Messier 96 is a very asymmetric galaxy; its dust and gas is unevenly spread throughout its weak spiral arms, and its core is not exactly at the galactic centre. Its arms are also asymmetrical, thought to have been influenced by the gravitational pull of other galaxies within the same group as Messier 96. This group, named the M96 Group, also includes the bright galaxies Messier 105 and Messier 95, as well as a number of smaller and fainter galaxies. It is the nearest group containing both bright spirals and a bright elliptical galaxy (Messier 105).

Over a period of 200 nights between 2015 and 2019, the teams embarked on their survey using the PAUCAM mounted upon the William Herschel Telescope (WHT) in La Palma. The camera is mounted at the prime focus of the WHT giving it a whopping 1 degree field of view. There are filter trays in front of the CCDs with 42 narrowband filters ranging from 4400 to 8600 angstroms. The team used the different filters to image the same field numerous times. The light from more distant objects will be shifted toward the red end of the spectrum and the multiple images of the same field will enable distance calculations to be made.

The William Herschel Telescope, part of the Isaac Newton group of telescopes, located on Canary Island. Credit: ing.iac.es

Overall, the survey covers 50 square degrees on the sky. To put that into context, the full moon measures half a degree across so the full survey maps out an area of sky equivalent to about 250 full moons. Having analysed the full set of images, the catalogue that has been developed includes data for 1.8 million objects which will be the foundations for astronomers to better understand the structure of the Universe. 

Understanding the structure of the universe is to understand the distribution of dark matter and dark energy. Dark energy is thought to make up 70 percent of the Universe but we still don’t know what it is. We can see its effect in the accelerated expansion of the Universe but its nature remains a mystery to us. The new survey will help to shine a light on dark energy with its comprehensive data set of galaxies that span more than 10 billion light years. 

This multiwavelength image of the Cloverleaf ORC (odd radio circle) combines visible light observations from the DESI (Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument) Legacy Survey in white and yellow, X-rays from XMM-Newton in blue, and radio from ASKAP (the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder) in red. X. Zhang and M. Kluge (MPE), B. Koribalski (CSIRO)

The results are a significant step forward in research into the cosmic distance scale and offers an extensive catalogue of photometric redshift measurements as they appeared billions of years ago. Over the months that follow, the team are planning on exploring galaxy clustering and galaxy shapes to help understand the evolution of the universe. 

Source : New cosmic distance catalogue to unlock the mysteries of Universe formation

The post A New Catalog Charts the Evolution of the Universe Over Time appeared first on Universe Today.

The largest Einstein Cross dwells among a rare arrangement of seven gravitationally lensed galaxies called the Carousel Lens located between 7 billion and 12 billion light-years from Earth.

Three crewmates have landed Earth after a record-long stay on the International Space Station (ISS) for two of them. For one, the 374 days has amounted to only a third of his total time in space.

Field trials indicate that pumping seawater onto the snow on top of Arctic sea ice can make the ice thicker, offering a possible way to preserve sea ice throughout the summer

Field trials indicate that pumping seawater onto the snow on top of Arctic sea ice can make the ice thicker, offering a possible way to preserve sea ice throughout the summer

Astronomers have cataloged over 500 gamma-ray bursts, which are some of the most violent explosions in the cosmos.

Uterus transplants are becoming more common, opening up the possibility of pregnancy and parenthood to people with certain health conditions

Video: 00:03:12

There’s a mystery out there in deep space – and solving it will make Earth safer. That’s why the European Space Agency’s Hera mission is taking shape – to go where one particular spacecraft has gone before.

On 26 September 2022, moving at 6.1 km/s, NASA’s DART spacecraft crashed into the Dimorphos asteroid. Part of our Solar System changed. The impact shrunk the orbit of the Great Pyramid-sized Dimorphos around its parent asteroid, the mountain-sized Didymos.

This grand experiment was performed to prove we could defend Earth against an incoming asteroid, by striking it with a spacecraft to deflect it. DART succeeded. But that still leaves many things scientists don’t know: What is the precise mass and makeup of Dimorphos? What did the impact do to the asteroid? How big is the crater left by DART’s collision? Or has Dimorphos completely cracked apart, to be held together only by its own weak gravity?

That’s why we’re going back – with ESA’s Hera mission. The spacecraft will revisit Dimorphos to gather vital close-up data about the deflected body, to turn DART’s grand-scale experiment into a well-understood and potentially repeatable planetary defence technique.

The mission will also perform the most detailed exploration yet of a binary asteroid system – although binaries make up 15% of all known asteroids, one has never been surveyed in detail.

Hera will also perform technology demonstration experiments, including the deployment ESA’s first deep space ‘CubeSats’ – shoebox-sized spacecraft to venture closer than the main mission then eventually land – and an ambitious test of 'self-driving' for the main spacecraft, based on vision-based navigation.

By the end of Hera’s observations, Dimorphos will become the best studied asteroid in history – which is vital, because if a body of this size ever struck Earth it could destroy a whole city. The dinosaurs had no defence against asteroids, because they never had a space agency. But – through Hera – we are teaching ourselves what we can do to reduce this hazard and make space safer.

The new interconnected breed of autocrats gains and retains power by deception, globally undermining democracies through their own institutions

Cave fish develop taste buds on their head and below their chin—and even in humans, taste cells grow in truly unexpected locations

New observations from the MeerKAT radio survey suggest our estimates of the cosmic dipole effect are actually in line with the large scale structure of the universe.

This week’s news roundup explores how the brain is affected by pregnancy, the way “scuba diving” lizards breathe underwater, and much more.

Find out what's going on at the International Space Station.

The Sentinel-1B satellite, the second satellite of the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission, completed its disposal process – which included lowering its orbit and passivating its systems to ensure re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere within 25 years.

This careful operation highlights the European Union’s and ESA’s commitment to space safety and sustainability and provides valuable experience for the disposal of current and future spacecraft.

CAPTCHA tests are supposed to distinguish humans from bots, but an AI system mastered the problem after training on thousands of images of road scenes

CAPTCHA tests are supposed to distinguish humans from bots, but an AI system mastered the problem after training on thousands of images of road scenes

A gravitational lens is the ultimate funhouse mirror of the Universe. It distorts the view of objects behind them but also supplies amazing information about distant galaxies and quasars. Astronomers using Hubble Space Telescope (HST) recently released a new image of one of these weird apparitions called “The Carousel Lens”. It’s a rare alignment of seven background galaxies that all appear distorted by an intervening galaxy cluster.

According to Berkeley Lab senior scientist David Schlegel, this gravitational lens is a great find for astronomers. “This is an amazingly lucky ‘galactic line-up’—a chance alignment of multiple galaxies across a line-of-sight spanning most of the observable universe,” he said. “Finding one such alignment is a needle in the haystack. Finding all of these is like eight needles precisely lined up inside that haystack.”

The Carousel Lens was uncovered in Dark Energy Survey data a few years ago. Now astronomers are zeroing in on it to measure its mass and the effects on the images of more distant galaxies. This gravitational lens alignment of seven galaxies and a foreground galaxy cluster could well provide new insights into the early Universe via the high-redshift galaxy sources, the properties of the lensing cluster, and unanswered questions in cosmology.

An example of the Carousel gravitational lens found in the DESI Legacy Surveys data. There are four sets of lensed images in DESI-090.9854-35.9683. They correspond to four distinct background galaxies — from the outermost giant red arc to the innermost bright blue arc. All of them appear gravitationally warped — or lensed — by the orange galaxy at the very center. Deconstructing the Carousel Gravitational Lens

Typical large-scale gravitational lenses in the Universe consist of a “lensing object” and more distant objects behind it. Generally, those distant objects are galaxies and quasars. (Small-scale gravitational lenses occur when a planet passes in front of its star, for example.) However, the Carousel Lens is more “cosmic” in nature, covering objects millions of light-years apart. In particular, the cluster doing the lensing is about 5 billion light-years from Earth. It’s also designated as DESI-090.9854-35.9683 and has at least four large galaxy members as well as several other possible cluster members.

The Carousel lenses at least seven distant galaxies. They lie anywhere from 7.62 to 12 billion light-years away from Earth. Their alignment with the lensing cluster resulted in multiple images of each of the more distant galaxies. Their shapes are the result of the “funhouse mirror” effect that stretches their apparitions. The galaxy labeled “4a, 4b, 4c, 4d” actually forms a nearly perfect “Einstein Cross”, which shows the symmetrical distribution of mass in the lens.

The Carousel is a great example of a “strong lens” in the Universe, according to Xiaoshang Huang, who is part of the team at Berkeley studying it. “Our team has been searching for strong lenses and modeling the most valuable systems,” said Huang. “The Carousel Lens is an incredible alignment of seven galaxies in five groupings that line up nearly perfectly behind the foreground cluster lens. As they appear through the lens, the multiple images of each of the background galaxies form approximately concentric circular patterns around the foreground lens, as in a carousel. It’s an unprecedented discovery, and the computational model generated shows a highly promising prospect for measuring the properties of the cosmos, including those of dark matter and dark energy.”

The Carousel Lens as seen by the HST marked up by the galaxies. The “L” indicators near the center (La, Lb, Lc, and Ld) show the most massive galaxies in the lensing cluster. Seven unique galaxies (numbered 1 through 7) – located an additional 2.6 to 7 billion light years beyond the lens – appear in multiple, distorted “fun-house mirror” iterations (indicated by each number’s letter index, e.g., a through d), as seen through the lens. (Credit: William Sheu (UCLA) using HST data.) What Makes this Lens So Special?

In their recently released paper, Schlegel, Huang, and others described modeling the Carousel Lens to understand its structure. They point out that it shows nearly every lensing configuration that astronomers see in such apparitions. There are various arcs, diamond shapes, the Einstein Ring, and double lensing.

The big spread of distances between the lens itself and the galaxies it’s distorting also presents some interesting cosmological areas of study. In particular, the science team hopes to do more spectral studies to understand the lensing cluster’s matter distribution. At least seven lensed sources will help constrain the amount of matter in the cluster and aid in understanding the amounts of dark and baryonic matter in such systems.

In addition to matter distribution, the team can also use this lensing system as a way to understand the characteristics of the distant lensed sources. This is important because the most distant ones give insight into conditions in their various epochs of cosmic history. For example, source 7 is an interesting “nearby” source that could be a very high-redshift “quiescent” galaxy. It appears to be very “red” in infrared measures and others of this sort have been observed by HST. Source 7 could be an efficient example of what’s called “early galaxy quenching”.

That occurs when star formation shuts down and the galaxy becomes quiescent. There are several ways that could happen, but the most common is some kind of feedback loop between the central supermassive black hole and outlying regions. This could occur as a result of galaxy mergers, for example, which were very common in the early Universe. The Carousel Lens (and others of its type) provides a special way to study that epoch of cosmic history and the events that shaped the galaxies we see today.

For More Information

Magnifying Deep Space Through the ‘Carousel Lens
The Carousel Lens: A Well-modeled Strong Lens with Multiple Sources Spectroscopically Confirmed by VLT/MUSE

Gravitational lens found in the DESI Legacy Surveys data

The post This Might Be the Best Gravitational Lens Ever Found appeared first on Universe Today.