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Planet caught in a gravitational 'tidal storm' is so hot that it glows
An eclipse for everyone – how visually impaired students can ‘get a feel for’ eclipses
Three Experiments Could Help Electrify Big Trucks
With a new EPA rule aiming to reduce carbon emissions from the biggest class of trucks in the U.S., companies are experimenting with overhead cables and wireless road charging
Scientists Use NASA Data to Predict Solar Corona Before Eclipse
4 min read
Scientists Use NASA Data to Predict Solar Corona Before EclipseOur Sun, like many stars, is adorned with a crown. It’s called a corona (Latin for “crown” or “wreath”) and consists of long, thread-like strands of plasma billowing out from the Sun’s surface. The powerful magnetic field of the Sun defines these strands, causing them to ripple and evolve their structures constantly. The strands are faint, however, so the only way to observe the corona with the naked eye is during a total solar eclipse.
In anticipation of the solar eclipse on April 8, 2024, scientists at Predictive Science are using data from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) to predict what our Sun’s crown may look like on that day. What’s more, their model uses the computational efforts of NASA’s Pleiades Supercomputer to update its predictions in near real-time. This means that the model continuously updates its predictions as it ingests data beamed down from SDO, providing information as close to real-time as possible.
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The solar corona is our star’s outer atmosphere. It “extends out into interplanetary space as the solar wind,” said Predictive Science president Jon Linker. Driven by heat and magnetic turbulence in the Sun, this wind blows out to the edges of the solar system. “It envelopes the planets,” Linker said, “including Earth.”
As Earth and other planets bathe in coronal outflow, their atmospheres react to the energetic particles and magnetic fields found within the solar wind. This reaction, called space weather, can range from mild to severe, just like terrestrial weather. Extreme space weather events, such as large solar eruptions called coronal mass ejections, can disrupt important communications technology, affect astronauts in orbit, or even harm the electric grids we all rely on.
Modern society depends on a variety of technologies that are susceptible to the extremes of space weather. This graphic shows some of the technology and infrastructure affected by space weather events. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight CenterSpace weather is one of the most tangible effects of the Sun’s dynamic exterior, and creating accurate forecasts is something scientists are striving toward. According to Linker, refining these solar models helps build the foundation for forecasting. “If you’re going to predict the path of a coronal mass ejection, just like for a hurricane, to have this more accurate background is really important,” he said.
SDO and other solar observatories provide detailed insights about the corona, but scientists are still missing some vital information about the forces that drive its activity, which is needed to predict the corona’s appearance with precision. “We don’t have a way of measuring the magnetic field accurately in the corona,” said Emily Mason, a research scientist at Predictive Science. “That’s one of the things that makes this so challenging.”
To build their model, researchers at Predictive Science use measurements of the Sun’s changing magnetic field at the solar surface to drive their model in near real-time. A key to this innovation was creating an automated process that converts raw data from SDO to show how magnetic flux and energy are injected into the corona over time. Adding this dynamic into the model allows the corona to evolve over time, leading to solar eruptions. “We developed a software pipeline that took in the magnetic field maps, picked out all of the areas that should be energized, and then fine-tuned the amount of energy to add to those areas,” Mason said. Building this automatic pipeline was a huge step forward for the team. In past predictions, the model used a static snapshot of the surface magnetic field – not ideal for keeping up with the ever-changing Sun, especially during our current heightened period of solar activity. Similarly, in iterations from 2017 and 2021, Mason explained that a teammate used to “literally hand-draw which areas on the Sun needed to be energized” by analyzing extreme ultraviolet activity in certain regions. Continuously updating the magnetic field is central to all of the changes with this year’s model, and the team has high hopes for the results.
Image Before/AfterThe recurrence of total solar eclipses provides opportunities to test the accuracy of their models against real-life conditions and update them accordingly. “We’ve used the eclipse predictions every time to do something new with the model,” said Cooper Downs, a research scientist at Predictive Science who orchestrated the automated modeling pipeline. “I’m really excited to see over the next two weeks how this prediction keeps improving. I think it will be a really drastic difference from what we used to be able to do.”
Mason shares his enthusiasm. “The eclipse is just such a fantastic chance to go, ‘Look at this! This is what we think it’s gonna look like! Don’t you want to learn more about this?” she said with a grin. “It’s a really exciting opportunity for us to share the things that excite us all year round with everybody else.”
By Rachel Lense
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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Want to Leave the Solar System? Here’s a Route to Take
The edge of the Solar System is defined by the heliosphere and its heliopause. The heliopause marks the region where the interstellar medium stops the outgoing solar wind. But only two spacecraft, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, have ever travelled to the heliopause. As a result, scientists are uncertain about the heliopause’s extent and its other properties.
Some scientists are keen to learn more about this region and are developing a mission concept to explore it.
The heliosphere plays a critical role in the Solar System. The Sun’s heliosphere is a shield against incoming galactic cosmic radiation, like that from powerful supernovae. The heliopause marks the extent of the heliosphere’s protective power. Beyond it, galactic cosmic radiation is unimpeded.
“We want to know how the heliosphere protects astronauts and life in general from harmful galactic radiation, but that is difficult to do when we still don’t even know the shape of our shield.”
Marc Kornbleuth, Boston UniversityThere’s no overall understanding of the shape and extent of the heliosphere and heliopause. A new study wants to address that by designing a probe that would travel beyond this region to find the necessary answers.
The study is “Complementary Interstellar Detections from the Heliotail,” published in Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences. The lead author is Sarah Spitzer, a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering at the University of Michigan.
“Without such a mission, we are like goldfish trying to understand the fishbowl from the inside,” said Spitzer.
The heliopause protects everything inside it from galactic cosmic radiation, including our astronauts who leave the Earth’s protective magnetosphere. “We want to know how the heliosphere protects astronauts and life in general from harmful galactic radiation, but that is difficult to do when we still don’t even know the shape of our shield,” said Marc Kornbleuth, a research scientist at Boston University and co-author of the study.
According to simulations, this image shows three models of what the heliosphere could look like. Left: a comet-like shape. Middle: The Croissant model. Right: A different, more streamlined comet-like shape. Image Credits are listed in the image.The heliosphere’s shape comes from the interaction between the Sun’s solar wind and the local interstellar medium (LISM.) The LISM is made of plasma, dust, and neutral particles. Two clouds in the LISM dominate our region of space: the Local Interstellar Cloud and the G-Cloud, home of the Alpha Centauri system. Two other clouds, the AQL Cloud and the Blue Cloud, are nearby. The clouds are regions where the LISM is denser.
The problem scientists face is that we can’t learn much more about the heliosphere’s shape and its relation to the LISM and its clouds without getting outside the heliosphere. While Voyager 1 and 2 have wildly exceeded the most feverish expectations by lasting this long and leaving the heliosphere, they’re near the end. Their instruments don’t function as they used to, and even then, those spacecraft were built in the 1970s. It goes without saying that technology has advanced since then.
What we need is a purpose-built spacecraft that can leave the heliosphere when and where we want it to. Of course, that’s an extremely long journey, and it would fulfill other scientific objectives along the way. But unlike the Voyager probes, which were sent to study the planets and only reached the LISM through sheer stubbornness, this probe would primarily be designed to explore the heliopause.
This illustration shows the position of NASA’s Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes outside of the heliosphere, a protective bubble created by the Sun that extends well past the orbit of Pluto. Voyager 1 exited the heliosphere in August 2012. Voyager 2 exited at a different location in November 2018. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech“A future interstellar probe mission will be our first opportunity to really see our heliosphere, our home, from the outside, and to better understand its place in the local interstellar medium,” said lead author Spitzer.
The idea has been around for a while. In 2021, scientists developed a mission concept for such a probe. They called it the Interstellar Probe and said it would embark on a 50-year-long journey into the LISM. They said it would “… provide the first real vantage point of our life-bearing system from the outside.” It could launch in 2036 and travel at a peak speed of 7 AU per year. That’s about one billion km per year.
The cover page from the 2021 proposal for a mission to leave the heliosphere. Image Credit: Interstellar Probe/JHUAPLThe exit point is a critical difference between the 2021 proposal and this one. The 2021 proposal stated that the probe should “Capture a side view of the heliopause to characterize shape, preferably near 45° off of the heliopause nose direction at (7°N, 252°E) in Earth ecliptic coordinates.”
The authors of this new paper say that the Interstellar Probe team got the exit point wrong. “However, this report assumes that a probe trajectory near 45 degrees off the nose of the heliotail, or the front of the Sun’s directional motion, is optimal,” they write. Spitzer and her colleagues examined the issue and came to a different conclusion. They investigated six different trajectories for a probe, from noseward to tailward. They concluded that a side view is best.
“If you want to find out how far back your house extends, walking out the front door and taking a picture from the front sidewalk is likely not your best option. The best way is to go out the side door so you can see how long it is from front to back,” said co-author Kornbleuth. This vantage point will give the best scientific results and view of the heliosphere’s shape.
“Understanding the shape of the heliosphere requires an understanding of the heliotail, as the shape is highly dependent upon the heliotail and its LISM interactions,” the authors write in their paper. “The Interstellar Probe mission is an ideal opportunity for measurement either along a trajectory passing through the heliotail, via the flank…”
There’s another compelling reason to follow this trajectory. Researchers think that plasma from the LISM might enter the heliosphere through its tail because of magnetic reconnection. If that’s true, the probe could sample the LISM twice: once inside the heliosphere and once outside of it.
The team also proposed that two probes be sent beyond the heliosphere. One would have a noseward trajectory, and the other would have a heliotailward trajectory. That would “… yield a more complete picture of the shape of the heliosphere and to help us better understand its interactions with the LISM,” they explain in their paper.
Recent research suggests that the Solar System is on a path that will take it out of the Local Interstellar Cloud (LIC.) It may already be in contact with four different clouds with different properties. Image Credit: Interstellar Probe/JHUAPL“This analysis took a lot of persistence. It started small and grew into a great resource for the community,” said study co-author Susan Lepri.
The team behind the proposal says the Interstellar Probe will be a 50-year mission travelling 400 astronomical units. It could potentially travel much further, up to 1,000 astronomical units. According to the researchers, this would give us an unprecedented view of the heliosphere and the LISM.
The post Want to Leave the Solar System? Here’s a Route to Take appeared first on Universe Today.
Bird Flu Detected in a Person in Texas: What We Know So Far
A person tested positive for avian influenza after being exposed to cows thought to be infected with the virus. It's the second time a human has been infected with H5N1 in the U.S.
NASA Sets Coverage for Astronaut Loral O’Hara, Crewmates Return
Three crew members are scheduled to begin their return to Earth on Friday, April 5, from the International Space Station. NASA will provide live coverage of their departure from the orbital complex and landing.
NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara, Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy, and spaceflight participant Marina Vasilevskaya of Belarus will depart from the station’s Rassvet module in the Roscosmos Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft at 11:55 p.m. EDT April 5, and will head for a parachute-assisted landing on the steppe of Kazakhstan, southeast of the town of Dzhezkazgan, at 3:18 a.m. Saturday, April 6 (12:18 p.m. Kazakhstan time).
Coverage will begin at 8 p.m. on April 5 with farewells and the Soyuz hatch closure on NASA+, NASA Television, the NASA app, YouTube, and the agency’s website. Learn how to stream NASA TV through a variety of platforms including social media.
O’Hara is completing a mission spanning 204 days in space that covered 3,264 orbits of the Earth and 86.5 million miles. Novitskiy and Vasilevskaya launched with NASA astronaut Tracy C. Dyson to the station aboard the Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft on March 23. Dyson will remain aboard the station for a six-month research mission.
After landing, the three crew members will fly on a helicopter from the landing site to the recovery staging city of Karaganda, Kazakhstan. O’Hara then will depart back to Houston.
Friday, April 5
8 p.m.: NASA coverage of farewells and hatch closure of the Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft begins
11:30 p.m.: NASA coverage for undocking continues
11:55 p.m.: Undocking
Saturday, April 6
2 a.m.: NASA coverage of deorbit burn and landing begins.
2:24 a.m.: Deorbit burn
3:18 a.m.: Landing
NASA’s coverage is as follows (all times Eastern and subject to change based on real-time operations):
-end-
Julian Coltre / Josh Finch
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
julian.n.coltre@nasa.gov / joshua.a.finch@nasa.gov
Sandra Jones
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
sandra.p.jones@nasa.gov
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NASA Awards Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowships for 2024
5 min read
NASA Awards Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowships for 2024 The class of 2024 NHFP Fellows are shown in this photo montage (top to bottom, left to right): The Hubble Fellows (seen in the red hexagons) are: Michael Calzadilla, Sanskriti Das, Yue Hu, Wynn Jacobson-Galan, Madeleine McKenzie, Jed McKinney, Andrew Saydjari, Peter Senchyna, Raphael Skalidis, and Adam Smercina. The Einstein Fellows (seen in the blue hexagons) are: Vishal Baibhav, Jordy Davelaar, Alexander Dittmann, Cristhian Garcia Quintero, Amelia (Lia) Hankla, and Keefe Mitman. The Sagan Fellows (seen in green hexagons) are: Jaren Ashcraft, Kiersten Boley, Cheng Han Hsieh, Rafael Luque, Sarah Moran, Shangjia Zhang, Lily Zhao, and Sebastian Zieba. NASA, Catherine Cranmer (CXC)The highly competitive NASA Hubble Fellowship Program (NHFP) recently named 24 new fellows to its 2024 roster. The program fosters excellence and inclusive leadership in astrophysics by supporting a diverse group of exceptionally promising and innovative early-career astrophysicists.
The NHFP enables outstanding postdoctoral scientists to pursue independent research in any area of NASA Astrophysics, using theory, observations, simulations, experimentation, or instrument development. Over 520 applicants vied for the 2024 fellowships. Each fellowship provides the awardee up to three years of support at a U.S. institution.
Once selected, fellows are named to one of three sub-categories corresponding to three broad scientific questions that NASA seeks to answer about the universe:
- How does the universe work? – Einstein Fellows
- How did we get here? – Hubble Fellows
- Are we alone? – Sagan Fellows
“The NASA Hubble Fellowship Program is a highly competitive program, and this year’s cadre of Fellows are to be congratulated on their selection,” said Mark Clampin, director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. “They will undoubtably be future leaders in the field of Astronomy and Astrophysics.”
The list below provides the names of the 2024 awardees, their fellowship host institutions, and their proposed research topics.
2024 NASA Hubble Fellowship Program:How does the universe work? – Einstein Fellows:
- Vishal Baibhav, Columbia University, Dancing with Black Holes: Harnessing gravitational waves to understand the formation of black holes
- Jordy Davelaar, Princeton University, Unraveling the physics of accreting black hole binaries
- Alexander Dittmann, Institute for Advanced Study, Bridging the Gap in Supermassive Black Hole Binary Accretion – From Simulation to Observation
- Cristhian Garcia Quintero, Harvard University, Phenomenological modified gravity in the non-linear regime and improving BAO measurements with Stage-IV surveys
- Amelia (Lia) Hankla, University of Maryland, College Park, Explaining Radio to X-ray Observations of Luminous Black Holes with a Multizone Outflowing Corona Model
- Keefe Mitman, Cornell University, Decoding General Relativity with Next-Generation Numerical Relativity Waveforms
How did we get here? – Hubble Fellows:
- Michael Calzadilla, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, A Multiwavelength View of the Evolving Baryon Cycle in Galaxy Clusters
- Sanskriti Das, Stanford University, Where the energetic universe meets the hot universe
- Yue Hu, Institute for Advanced Study, The Role of Magnetic Field in Galaxy Cluster’s Diffuse Structure Formation
- Wynn Jacobson-Galan, California Institute of Technology, Final Moments: Uncovering the Rate of Enhanced Red Supergiant Mass-loss in the Local Volume
- Madeleine McKenzie, Carnegie Observatories, Uncovering the unknown origins of globular clusters
- Jed McKinney, University of Texas, Austin, The Role of Dust in Shaping the Evolution of Galaxies
- Andrew Saydjari, Princeton University, Inferring Kinematic and Chemical Maps of Galactic Dust
- Peter Senchyna, Carnegie Observatories, Bridging the Gap: Bringing the First Galaxies into Focus with Local Laboratories
- Raphael Skalidis, California Institute of Technology, Magnetic fields in the multiphase interstellar medium
- Adam Smercina, Space Telescope Science Institute, A Portrait of the Triangulum: Advancing a New Frontier of Galaxy Evolution with Resolved Stars
Are we alone? – Sagan Fellows:
- Jaren Ashcraft, University of California, Santa Barbara, Optimizing the Vector Field for Next-generation Astrophysics
- Kiersten Boley, Carnegie Earth and Planets Laboratory, Identifying the Key Materials for Planet Formation and Evolution
- Cheng Han Hsieh, University of Texas, Austin, A Deep Dive into the Early Evolution of Protoplanetary Disk Substructures and the Onset of Planet and Star Formation
- Rafael Luque, University of Chicago, Understanding the origin and nature of sub-Neptunes
- Sarah Moran, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, From Stars to Storms: Planetary Cloud Seeding with Sulfur-based Hazes
- Shangjia Zhang, Columbia University, Probing Young Planet Populations with 3D Self-Consistent Disk Thermodynamics
- Lily Zhao, University of Chicago, Enabling Radial Velocity Detection of Earth-Twins Through Data-Driven Algorithms and Community Collaboration
- Sebastian Zieba, Smithsonian Astrophysics Observatory, Characterization of rocky exoplanet surfaces and atmospheres in the JWST era
An important part of the NHFP is the annual Symposium, which allows Fellows the opportunity to present results of their research, and to meet each other and the scientific and administrative staff who manage the program. The 2023 Symposium was held at the Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Science topics ranged through exoplanets, gravitational waves, fast radio bursts, cosmology and more. Non-science sessions included discussions about career paths, fellows’ plans for mentoring and to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion in the NHFP, as well as an open mic highlighting an array of talents outside of astrophysics.
The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland administers the NHFP on behalf of NASA, in collaboration with the Chandra X-ray Center at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute at Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena, California.
Short bios and photos of the 2024 NHFP Fellows can be found at:
https://www.stsci.edu/stsci-research/fellowships/nasa-hubble-fellowship-program/2024-nhfp-fellows
Media Contacts:
Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
Cheryl Gundy
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD
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