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Crushed rocks outpace giant fans in race to remove CO2 from air
Earth's 'second moon' is just visiting its cosmic parents for Thanksgiving
Using Chatbots and Ancient Writing to Simulate the Cultural Attitudes of Ancient Civilizations
Social psychologists could turn artificial-intelligence-powered tools like ChatGPT on to writings from past cultures. Will this help us study ancient civilizations?
Stunning Never Let Me Go stage version asks the big questions
Stunning Never Let Me Go stage version asks the big questions
Having a baby on Mars? You may be in for a difficult time
Having a baby on Mars? You may be in for a difficult time
Majority of people believe their devices spy on them to serve up ads
Majority of people believe their devices spy on them to serve up ads
Earth from Space: ‘Angry husband’ eruption
MapGuard: Advancing emergency evacuation capabilities in the Baltics
In emergency evacuations, access to reliable information can mean the difference between life and death. As our world faces growing challenges from natural disasters and conflicts, the need for rapid, accurate data during evacuations is vital.
What to know about creatine, the gym supplement with wide benefits
What to know about creatine, the gym supplement with wide benefits
NASA Langley Employees Earn Silver Snoopy Awards
Two employees from NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia recently earned the prestigious Silver Snoopy award, an honor given to NASA employees and contractors across the agency for outstanding achievements related to astronaut safety or mission success. Dr. Shih-Yung Lin and Dr. Peter Parker received the awards during a Space Flight Awareness (SFA) award ceremony at Langley on Nov. 21. Lin earned the award for exceptional engineering and technical leadership contributions to the Orion program. Parker earned the award for outstanding leadership and technical contributions in support of the International Space Station (ISS).
NASA astronaut Victor Glover visited Langley to present the awards. Glover is currently assigned as the pilot of NASA’s Artemis II mission to the Moon. He piloted the SpaceX Crew 1 mission to the International Space Station in 2018 and served as a flight engineer on expeditions 64 and 65.
“This, for me, feels like how I felt when I received my astronaut pin. This is us giving you our team pin,” said Glover. He later added, “This is something to wear with honor. You are a very special part of our safety and mission assurance culture.”
Astronaut Victor Glover presents the 2024 Silver Snoopy Awards to Dr. Shih-Yung Lin at NASA Langley Research Center.NASA/Angelique Herring
The Silver Snoopy is the astronauts’ personal award and is presented to less than one percent of the total NASA workforce annually. The significance of the award was not lost on the honorees, who both brought family members to share in the moment.
“I’m involved with lots of research projects, but they don’t all involve loss of human life,” said Parker. “It definitely is a more prestigious, more impactful, more consequential type of project that I’m being recognized for.”
Lin, who recently retired, echoed that sentiment.
“You set a very high standard in order to achieve the safest conditions for all the astronauts,” he said. “For me, if we get a good mission out of it, or multiple missions, I would consider that my personal lifetime goal for my career. That’s what it means to me.”
Lin and Parker each received a sterling Silver Snoopy lapel pin that has flown in space, plus a certificate of appreciation signed by Glover and an authentication letter. The pins awarded to Langley’s recipients flew aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour during an assembly mission to the International Space Station, STS-118, August 8-21, 2007. The award depicts Snoopy, a character from the “Peanuts” comic strip created by Charles Schulz.
An avid supporter of the U.S. space program, Schulz gave NASA astronauts permission to adopt Snoopy as their personal safety symbol during the Apollo era and has long served to promote excellence in every phase of space flight to help ensure the success of NASA missions. The Snoopy emblem reflects NASA and industry’s sense of responsibility and continuing concern for astronaut flight safety.
SpaceX likely to get FAA approval for 25 Starship launches in 2025
The First Close-Up Picture of Star Outside the Milky Way
Like a performer preparing for their big finale, a distant star is shedding its outer layers and preparing to explode as a supernova.
Astronomers have been observing the huge star, named WOH G64, since its discovery in the 1970s. It’s one of the largest known stars, and also one of the most luminous and massive red supergiants (RSGs). The star is surrounded by an envelope of expelled star-stuff, which could indicate it’s getting ready to explode.
WOH G64 isn’t in the Milky Way; it’s in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), the Milky Way’s largest satellite galaxy. Getting these detailed image is quite a feat for the ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer. It’s also quite an accomplishment for the team of scientists behind the image.
They’ve published their images and the results of their observations of the star in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. Their research is titled “Imaging the innermost circumstellar environment of the red supergiant WOH G64 in the Large Magellanic Cloud.” The lead author is Keiichi Ohnaka, an astrophysicist from Universidad Andrés Bello in Chile.
“This star is one of the most extreme of its kind, and any drastic change may bring it closer to an explosive end.”
Jacco van Loon, study co-author, Keele Observatory“Significant mass loss in the red supergiant (RSG) phase is of great importance for the evolution of massive stars before they end their life in a supernova (SN) explosion,” the researchers write in their paper. Understanding the progenitors to supernovae (SNe) is important because of the role they play in the Universe. These massive stars forge heavy elements through nucleosynthesis then spread them out into their surroundings when they explode. These heavy elements make rocky planets possible. SNe shockwaves can also compress gas in their vicinities, which can trigger the birth of new stars. Better images of stars approaching their explosive ends help astronomers understand them better.
“For the first time, we have succeeded in taking a zoomed-in image of a dying star in a galaxy outside our own Milky Way,” lead author Ohnaka said.
WOH G64 (WOH hereafter) is a whopping 160,000 light-years away. Even though the red supergiant is a behemoth that’s 2,000 times larger than the Sun, that’s an enormous distance. It’s all because of the VLTI and one of its newer instruments, called GRAVITY. It’s a powerful instrument that was installed on the VLTI in 2015.
When Ohnaka and his colleagues saw the images, they were buoyed with excitement. The images show a cocoon of dust surrounding the star, evidence that it’s convulsed and shed some of its outer layers.
“We discovered an egg-shaped cocoon closely surrounding the star,” said lead author Ohnaka. “We are excited because this may be related to the drastic ejection of material from the dying star before a supernova explosion.”
This artist’s reconstruction shows the star’s main features. The star is surrounded by an egg-shaped dust cocoon, with a wider ring or torus of dust. Astronomers are less certain about the shape and size of the outer ring, which requires more observations for clarity. Image Credit: ESO/L. CalçadaOhnaka and his colleagues have been observing WOH for a long time, but had to wait for better instruments to get a closer look.
Among other things, they noticed that the star has become dimmer over the last decade.
Gerd Weigelt is an astronomy professor at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy and a co-author of the research. “We have found that the star has been experiencing a significant change in the last 10 years, providing us with a rare opportunity to witness a star’s life in real time,” Weigelt said. In their final life stages, red supergiants like WOH G64 shed their outer layers of gas and dust in a process that can last thousands of years.
Jacco van Loon, the director of the Keele Observatory at Keele University in the UK has been observing WOH since the 1990s. “This star is one of the most extreme of its kind, and any drastic change may bring it closer to an explosive end,” Keele said.
With the more limited data available in the past, Ohnaka modelled what the dust environment might look like. Those models and observations predicted a different shape than the GRAVITY images reveal.
The images show an elongated, compact emission region in near-infrared (NIR) surrounding the star. This suggests that hot new dust has formed near the star, which helps obscure the star itself. The star’s NIR continuum has shifted in the last decade, which also supports the new dust hypothesis. Earlier images from before 2003 show more hydrogen absorption than recent images.
Other observations of RSG stars also show that their circumstellar environments aren’t spherical. For example, dust surrounding the remnant of SN1987A is also not spherical. Astrophysicists think that this dust was shed by SN1987A’s progenitor star before it evolved into a blue supergiant and exploded.
The elongated, cocoon shape of the emissions has two potential explanations. “The elongated emission may be due to a bipolar outflow along the axis of the dust torus,” the authors explain. “Alternatively, the elongation may be caused by the interaction with an unseen companion.”
This reconstructed GRAVITY image of WOH G64 is from the research and clearly shows the elongated, cocoon shape. Image Credit: Ohnaka et al. 2024.The non-spherical structures are common, and researchers want to understand this phenomenon better. “Given the high multiplicity rate among massive stars, the asymmetric, enhanced mass loss in the RSG phase, which can be driven by binary interaction, is essential not only for better understanding the evolution of massive stars but also for interpreting early-phase SN spectra,” the authors explain.
Unfortunately, observing WOH is becoming more difficult. The dust is obscuring the star. “The formation of new hot dust also means that the central star is now more obscured than the epochs before 2009,” the authors explain, and if the star keeps shedding material, the star will become dimmer.
But new instruments might help. GRAVITY’s successor, GRAVITY+ is being rolled out incrementally and will be completed in 2026.
“Similar follow-up observations with ESO instruments will be important for understanding what is going on in the star,” concluded Ohnaka.
WOH G64 is getting ready to explode, but that doesn’t mean it’s imminent in terms of human lifespans. Nobody alive today will witness the explosion. However, in stellar terms, the star’s death could be imminent.
Maybe our distant descendants, if we have any, will witness it.
The post The First Close-Up Picture of Star Outside the Milky Way appeared first on Universe Today.
NASA Awards Test Operations Contract
NASA has selected Sierra Lobo, Inc. of Fremont, Ohio, to provide for test operations, test support, and technical system maintenance activities at NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.
The NASA Stennis Test Operations Contract is fixed-price, level-of-effort contract that has a value of approximately $47 million. The performance period begins July 1, 2025, and extends three years, with a one-year base period and two one-year option periods.
The contract will provide test operations support for customers in the NASA Stennis test complex. It also will cover the operation and technical systems maintenance of the high-pressure industrial water, high-pressure gas, and cryogenic propellant storage support areas, as well as providing welding, fabrication, machining, and component processing capabilities.
NASA Stennis is the nation’s largest propulsion test site, with infrastructure to support projects ranging from component and subscale testing to large engine hot fires. Researchers from NASA, other government agencies, and private industry utilize NASA Stennis test facilities for technology and propulsion research and developmental projects.
For information about NASA and other agency programs, visit:
-end-
Tiernan Doyle
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
tiernan.doyle@nasa.gov
C. Lacy Thompson
Stennis Space Center, Bay St. Louis, Mississippi
228-363-5499
calvin.l.thompson@nasa.gov