Lunar Volcanism The Moon may not look like it at first glance, but instead of being home to giant and violent volcanoes like on Earth, it is in fact covered by plains of lava, known as “maria” (singular being “mare”) meaning “seas” in Latin (mistaken for seas by early astronomers [1]), along with a few smaller features like domes, cones, dark mantling deposits (deposits from more explosive eruptions [2]) and sinuous rilles (channels which lunar lava used to flow down, resembling rivers [3]). However, volcanoes on the Moon don’t work quite like they do back on Earth: the Moon’s gravity is only a sixth of what it is on Earth, meaning there’s less force to move the lava, and yet there are massive lava plains, suggesting a very thin and runny lava was used to make this happen. Also the lunar volcanoes are less explosive, since what makes Earth’s volcanoes explosive is water: something that there is little of on the Moon (although it’s not devoid of it). The forces driving it are also distinctly different, with no plate tectonics like Earth has, instead using the impacts of meteorites to create thinner crust where the lava can escape from. The overall thickness of the crust could in fact drive where lunar volcanic plains occur, with only 2% of the farside (the side not facing Earth) covered by maria, whilst a third of the nearside is covered by them, possibly because of the thinner crust on the nearside because of Earth’s gravitational pull [4]. And where the domes form reflects this, being several kilometres across, formed from slow cooling lava from lunar eruptions, but most importantly in clusters (where the crust is thinnest) [5] Volcano Complex Mons Rümker in Oceanus Procellarum. Credit: NASA So When’s the Next Eruption? Well, there may never be another one (although we can’t be sure). This is because the magma, from when the Moon first formed, is cooling down, like on Earth. However, when it cools down, it gets thicker (more viscous), and with this thickening comes the increased difficulty to have eruptions. Magma needs a pressure difference between it (the less dense material) and the rock above (the denser material), leading to the magma coming out of the lunar surface (as happens on Earth), like juice through a straw. In the Apollo 14 mission however, samples of lunar rock collected contained titanium-rich glass, formed from titanium-rich magma: something of a similar density to the Moon’s surface rock, leading to it being harder to have eruptions. That said, the the cooling down of the Moon would start to change its composition, making it a less dense substance and so letting the less dense magma make its way up to the surface (as hypothesised by a team of Dutch earth scientists) [6]. Orange Taurus-Littrow soil, orange because of microscopic glass beads from early lunar volcanism. Credit: NASA Volcanic Solar System It’s not just the Earth and Moon that are/were volcanically active; oh no! Most major rocky bodies, from planets to moons, have some form of volcanic past. In fact, there’s so many that I’m going to cut it down to three: Mars, Io and Pluto: three very different and interesting volcanic bodies. Mars, one of our closest neighbours, is home to the tallest planetary mountain in the solar system: Olympus Mons [7], 21km in height (nearly 2.5x Mount Everest) [8] and 600km in diameter [7]. But how does something get this big? Earth’s volcanoes are relatively short lived (generally), lasting a maximum of a few million years, but Martian volcanoes last for more than a billion years (but living a slower paced life). This long life means that layers of solidified lava can be built up over time, growing into what is seen on Mars today [9]. Olympus Mons. Credit: NASA/Viking 1 Io is the next stop in our volcanic tour. It’s the third largest Galilean moon (easily visible through binoculars) and has a distinctly ‘cheese-like’ look about it. This colour, however, is not because of cheese (sorry Wallace!), but frozen sulphurous molecules (apart from the dark regions) reflecting the Sun’s rays. And all these colours are because of one thing: volcanism. This small body is littered with hundreds of volcanoes (which form those dark regions), some standing out not because they visibly look like volcanoes (they do), but because of infrared radiation from the heat the magma is giving out. It might look like it had an active past, but it’s still active today, not just shown by the heat from volcanoes, but from the ever-changing amount of heat given off (detectable from Earth). This activity is not just because of the pressure difference between the magma and crust, but the gravitational pull of its host planet, Jupiter. Yes, the gravitational pull from Jupiter is literally dragging the magma out of Io, shown by the difference in infrared radiation between either side of the moon [10]. Io. Credit: NASA/Galileo Spacecraft/JPL/University of Arizona Pluto is our final, and most peculiar, stop in this quick tour. This is because the volcanoes don’t emit lava but, since they’re so far from the Sun, ice! Well, icy slush made of substances like water, nitrogen, ammonia or methane [11], but emitted from volcanoes which look rather like ones on Earth (apart from their size, at up to a massive 6km in height) [12], formed in a similar way to on Mars [11], creating mountains of frozen substances such as nitrogen (normally a gas back on Earth). Yet cold Pluto (at an average of -232ºC [13]) needs heat to drive geologic processes like volcanoes (even if they do emit something like nitrogen slush). Heat could come from an underground ocean bringing energy up to the surface (in the form of energy know as latent heat, given out during the freezing process, thereby turning the surface into a liquid). Yes, a hidden liquid ocean - something we have on Earth, the mantle, but working in a very different way [14][15]. Pluto. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute Lunar Caving But back to the Moon, because ESA are planning to send a mission to it to explore lunar caves created by its volcanic past. They’re more accurately described as ‘skylights’, since they’re collapsed parts of large systems of lava tubes running under the lunar surface, where lava once flowed [16]. The aim of this mission will be to both discover more about the Moon’s geology, but also to find out if these underground areas could be used as shelters for human visitors [17]. After getting ideas for this mission in 2019, ESA recently selected five of those ideas to become potential phases of a lunar mission. Firstly, the University of Würzburg, in Germany, came up with a spherical probe which could be lowered into these ‘skylights’ to create a 3D model of the lava tube, investigate its entrance, and find places with stable levels of radiation and temperature for humans to survive. Then there’s the University of Oviedo, in Spain, who came up the idea of using a group of robots which use WiFi (and wireless charging) to connect with a lander on the lunar surface, in order to investigate what’s happening within the lunar tunnels [16]. The University of Bremen and the Robotics Innovation Centre of the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) (catchy!) also put forward their proposal, in which a semi-autonomous rover is lowered into the tube system via a cable, before being released from it and using it as a recharging and communication station, whilst mapping the tube system between charges [18]. Then there’s the Canadian aerospace company Canadensys, who proposed a scouting mission using a radar and a gravimeter (a sensor to detect how much gravity there is, changing by slight amounts depending on what is underneath the surface) mounted on rovers, to look underground at the tube system and see if it’s interesting enough to explore [19]. And then there’s the University of Manchester (saving the best ‘till last!), which uses the unconventional jumping robot (or rather fleet of jumping robots), instead of the rover, to move in the tube system, since there’s so much rubble inside it from its collapse (which made the ‘skylight’ which is needed to enter the tube system). And that’s not all: these small hopping rovers could be ejected from the lander, where they fall onto the lunar surface surrounded by an air bag, before they then eject from that air bag to hop in the hole using another air bag to protect themselves from a second fall, then escaping that one to jump around inside the lunar caves [20]. Marius Hills Pit (a 'skylight' possible landing sight for the mission). Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University Human Settlement As described before, these tubes could be used for human settlement. They would serve as places free from the large temperature swings (up to 127ºC by day, and as low as -173ºC by night [21]) to the radiation from the Sun (with no atmosphere or magnetic field to protect humans from harmful radiation such as X-ray and ultraviolet light) to micrometeorites (not burnt up like they are in our atmosphere, instead raining down onto the surface) to the dust kicked up by the rocket engines of spacecraft leaving the lunar surface. Then there’s the possibility of water within them, in the form of ice, surviving in this state instead of evaporating away because of the caves acting as places of eternal darkness. This means they could be a source of water for people living within the tube system. Transport is also a possibility, since they run across maria, possibly becoming the gateways to exploration on an even larger scale than seen before, and by humans [22]. But there are lots of challenges, all to be addressed in ESA’s mission to investigate a lunar volcanic tube system, from the question of whether they’re stable, to that of whether they’re actually able to protect from temperature swings and dangerous radiation. With all this progress, hopefully one day we will have humans living permanently on the Moon, possibly using this tube system as a natural habitat. But even if it doesn’t turn out to be viable, there’s still a lot of interesting science to be conducted to see just what lunar volcanism was like, mapping these enormous and extensive tube systems. Artist Impression of Moon Colony from 1986. Credit: NASA/Dennis Davidson by George Abraham, ADAS member. #Moon #Volcano #Water #Artemis #ESA #Mars #Io #Jupiter #Pluto Click here for the previous news article Click here for the next news article Click here to watch the video on the Canadensys' proposal Click here to watch the video on the University of Manchester's proposal Click here to watch the video on the University of Oviedo's proposal Click here to watch the video on the University of Würzburg's proposal Click here to watch the video on the University of Bremen's and the DFKI's proposal Click here to have a look at a map of a possible area to be explored by ESA for this mission Click here to look at Olympus Mons on a map of Mars References "Lunar maria: a complete guide to the seas of the Moon". BBC Sky at Night Magazine. Archived from original on 27th February 2021. "Dark Mantling Deposits". Oregon State University. Archived from original on 27th February 2021. "Sinuous Rilles". Oregon State University. 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Why Now? Earth and Mars range in distances to each other dramatically, from ~401 million km to ~56 million km (over 7 fold difference), the shortest ride (taking ~7 months now) happening only once every 2 years. This short distance means less fuel and less money spent [1]. However, during this long 7 month travel, the planets are still moving, meaning that, in order to get to Mars in the shortest time, rockets must use the ‘Hohmann Transfer Orbit’ (a specific trajectory to get to Mars). This means there’s a specific time that rockets have to take off from Earth to get to Mars in that short time, but also at the right angle to approach either the orbit of Mars or the Martian surface [2]. Hohmann transfer orbit (1 = Earth, 2 = transfer orbit, 3 = Mars). Credit: Waterced Why Mars? It’s a captivating salmon pink object in the sky which has inspired human kind’s imagination to think aliens built canals on Mars, and also led H. G. Wells to write “The War of the Worlds” characterising the life forms on Mars as evil [21][22]. As well as this, a Martian day is very similar to an Earth day (40 minutes longer than on Earth), and it has a similar surface area to Earth’s continents, all making it easier for humans to acclimatise there. Then, there’s the possibility of past life, with the ‘canals’ and craters possibly having been hosts to a vast amount of liquid water, when Mars had a thick atmosphere to hold that water, contrasting to todays thin and carbon dioxide rich atmosphere. Then, there’s the alien tectonics (different to Earth’s more active system) which create ‘marsquakes’, the tallest volcano in the Solar System (Olympus Mons) and one of the largest canyons in the solar system (Valles Marineris) [23]. Valles Marineris Topographic View. Credit: PD-NASA Game Over Apart from the obvious challenge with leaving on time (yes, you really do need to hurry up or we’re going to be late!), there’s also the challenge of the “Seven Minutes of Terror”. This devilish sounding event is the time taken to reach the ground of Mars from entry into its atmosphere. Because of Mars’ distance from Earth, at 204 million km, it takes over 11 minutes (greater than the time for the descent) to transmit a signal across that distance in order to control the descent. Therefore, instead of direct commands, the whole descent is programmed, so if one thing is calculated incorrectly, the whole mission is over [3]. This was seen in the 1998 NASA mission to Mars called “Mars Climate Orbiter”, which failed due to a navigation error from an error translating imperial units to metric [4]. Then, because of the thin Martian atmosphere, there are a whole host of technologies, from sky cranes to parachutes to booster rockets, that are employed to slow the spacecraft down from 19,300kph (for the NASA’s Perseverance mission) to 0kph, in just 7 minutes, in very thin air [3]. This “Seven Minutes of Terror”, along with the ordeal with needing the correct trajectory in order to get into orbit or down to Mars, has cost the lives of a lot of missions in the past: 28 have failed compared to 19 that succeeded, meaning the chances are against them. However, with improved technology and maths skills (yes, I’m talking to you Mars Climate Orbiter!), chances of getting to the ground increase all the time. Curiosity Rover Sky Crane artist impression. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech UAE’s Hope The UAE have sent their first mission to Mars (a first for the Arab world too), named “Hope”. It aims to be Mars’ first weather satellite, giving a better picture of its climate dynamics and Mars’ weather patterns and variations, and how it effects the loss of hydrogen and oxygen the Martian atmosphere, still happening to this day, being why Mars has such a thin and perilous atmosphere [5][6]. It didn’t land on Mars, but after a mission that started at Tanegashima Space Port on 20th July 2020 [6], it went into the Martian orbit on 9th February 2021 [7], hitting just the right trajectory to be captured by Mars’ gravity and given a stable orbit around the planet: one that’s intended to last for 1 Martian Year (or to us mere earthlings, 687 Earth days: nearly 2 years [8]) [6]. There are three bits of kit onboard (all modestly beginning with “Emirates”): Emirates eXploration Imager (EXI): Images the atmosphere in 3 visible and 3 ultra-violet wavelengths to measure dust, water ice and ozone abundance. Emirates Mars InfraRed Spectrometer (EMIRS): Measures dust, water ice, water vapour and temperature in the atmosphere. Emirates Mars Ultra-violet Spectrometer (EMUS): Measures hydrogen, oxygen, carbon monoxide, as well as the atmosphere’s seasonality, impacts of the Sun on it, and the winds in the lower atmosphere [9]. All these will work together to get a better picture of the less understood Martian atmosphere. Martian water ice clouds from Mars Pathfinder. Credit: NASA/JPL China’s Tianwen-1 This is also China’s first time at the red planet, it’s attempt in November 2011 called “Yinghuo-1” (“firefly”) having fallen back to Earth after having been launched [10], but China’s Mars initiative has had a revamp, now called “Tianwen-1” (“Questions to Heaven”), and was launched on 23rd July 2020 from China [11], arriving into Mars’ orbit on 10th February 2021 [12]. It’s a two part mission, consisting of an orbiter and a rover. The satellite, now in orbit, will observe the characteristics of the Martian upper atmosphere, as well as the surface’s structures and compositions, with some onboard medium-resolution cameras to send back some fantastic pictures from above [13]. The rover, with no name announced as of yet, will attempt the “Seven Minutes of Terror” in May this year, landing in Utopia Planitia (a crater with a possible water deposit the size of Lake Superior in North America) [12], near where Viking 2 landed, but nearer to the Martian equator. It looks rather like NASA’s early Spirit and Opportunity rovers, equipped with cameras for pictures and navigation, and five more instruments for assessing the mineralogy of local rocks (including radars for looking at Mars’ geological layers) and seeking the presence of water-ice [13]. If successful, it will be the first mission to incorporate a satellite, rover and lander all in one hit. This mission could then be China’s precursor to a sample-return mission, like with their recent sample return mission to the far side of the Moon (Chang’e 4 [14]), meaning the Martian rock can be scrutinised even further [12]. Tianwen-1 Rover artist impression. Credit: CNSA, CC BY-SA 4.0 NASA’s Perseverance Rover NASA is the only one out of the three to have been here before, with extensive experience of the challenges of arriving and landing on Mars. It is also the most groundbreaking, with a lot of kit to look for a lot of things. The rover the size of a car with a $2.7bn price tag (£1.93bn) landed on Mars on 18th February 2021 (having set off 30th July 2020) to look for signs of ancient life, and will fill large test tubes full of Martian material and drop them at points on Mars’ surface to then pick up at a later date, and send to Earth to process [16][17]. There are 23 cameras for colour and 3D imagery (shooting high resolution 20-megapixel images) [15] plus a microphone for the full effect [17]; along with a drill to gather core samples for the test tube caches; technology to extract oxygen from Mars’ atmosphere (for testing so we learn more to aid future human missions); and sensors for monitoring the Martian weather and dust, helping to understand the Mars’ daily and seasonal weather variation (to name just a few experiments onboard) [16]. And it’s not just a rover: it’s got a mini-helicopter the size of a chihuahua, called Ingenuity! It’ll fly to places such as cliffs and craters, where the rover isn’t adapted for. With blades spinning at ~2,400 revolutions per minute (8 times faster than Earth helicopters), it has two cameras (black and white, as well as colour) [17] and can fly for up to 90 seconds at distances of 300 metres (aiming for 1+ flights in 30 days), but as the first Martian flight in history, this is still a wonder to behold [18]. The landing site is the Jezero Crater, full of hazards like sand, rocks, and cliffs: a place too dangerous for previous missions to go to, but with modern technologies to plot a trajectory into an area free of these hazards, the rover has a greater chance to land safely on Mars [19]. It’s interesting because it’s a crater that was once a lake (possibly up to 250m in deep) with river deltas (the perfect place to get biomarkers -signs of life), but is also very old [20]. All these missions, as well as other missions on and around Mars already, are all helping us get a better picture of this alien planet, so we can better understand our own planet, as well as other rocky planets; and have the chance to find alien life, so we can see how different Martian life is to Earth’s, to get a better view of how life began, and so how common it is in the Universe. Perseverance Rover's First Image. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech by George Abraham, ADAS member Click here for the previous news article Click here for the next news article Click here to subscribe to NASA’s Mars newsletter to get more information about current science happening on Mars (and here for other useful resources like this). Click here to find out where landing sites on Mars are compared to on Earth (and here for where the Perseverance Rover landed if it were on Earth, and here for Mars) Click here to look at a map of Mars using satellite imagery, and here for a map of the Jezero Crater. Click here to watch NASA’s broadcast of the rover landing. Click here to see some spectacular images of craters and canyons around Mars from the CaSSIS mission (on the ESA/Roscosmos Trace Gas Orbiter). Click here to follow NASA’s Perseverance on Twitter Click here to track the Hope Probe Click here to see images come in from Perseverance, and here for the sounds from Perseverance, as well as what other sounds would sound like on Mars Click here to get future invitations to watch future NASA launches and milestones, achieving a stamp in your passport for every virtual event you go to Click here to have the chance to send your name to Mars on a NASA mission (which happened with the most recent one) References "Mars missions: How long does it take to get to Mars?". BBC News. Archived from original on 19th February 2021. "Why have there been so many Mars missions recently?". ABC News. Archived from the original on 19th February 2021. 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What is the Square Kilometre Array? Unlike a normal telescope made of one detector, the Square Kilometre Array is a collection of radio telescopes and antennas which have a square kilometre of collecting area (or nearly 220 Lovell Telescopes! [1]), located in deserts two countries (Australia and South Africa), which, you’ll notice, don’t have a land border, but combine the data they produce from two different arrays [2], made from 197 mid-frequency (350 MHz to 15.3 GHz) dishes in South Africa and ~131,000 low-frequency (50 MHz to 350 MHz ) antennas in Australia [6]. It even outdoes the famous Hubble Space Telescope, with 50 times the image resolution [2]. Also, this global collaboration, with 16 countries taking part as well as 8 African partner countries [3], held its first meeting on the 4th February, approving and actioning the plans to construct this colossal project, costing a total of £1.8bn to build and operate [4]. Low Frequency = Down Right, ASKAP = Back right, Mid-frequency = Up Left, MeerKAT = Back Left. Credit: SKA Organisation, CC BY 3.0 The Plan of Action The Square Kilometre Array was conceived all the way back in September 1993 [5], leading, after many years of planning, to 4 precursor facilities (telescopes on the sites in South Africa and Australia to help the design of the Square Kilometre Array to be built there), and 17 pathfinder telescopes (trialing technology to be used on the Australian and South African sites in the future) including e-MERLIN [8] (An array of 7 UK based radio telescopes, including the 3 at Jodrell Bank [7]). Then, in 2020, the construction of the first phase started, to be ready to be in full operation by 2022. Stage 2, a stage to bring much higher sensitivity to the array [6], will then be constructed between 2023 to 2030 [9], spreading out across the African continent to fulfil this high sensitivity goal [3]. A MeerKAT Radio Telescope. Credit: Morganoshell, CC BY-SA 4.0 Challenges Such an ambitious project in such extreme environments holds with it a lot of challenges. First of all, the amount of data produced will be enormous: ~700 petabytes [10], or the same as over a million 500GB laptops [11], with just the Australian array transmitting enough data to fill 27 million laptops everyday, or 5 times 2015’s total internet traffic [13] (although I’m not sure about 2020s!). Then, to transmit this data, there will be as much optical fibre as to wrap two times around the entire Earth and the data itself will move 100,000 times faster than the 2022 projected broadband speed [12]! However, to transmit all this data, a lot of power is needed, but where is it all going to come from when you’re in the middle of a desert? In Australia, they found the answer in the abundance of solar energy, using a solar hybrid power station producing power to be stored in a 2.5MWh lithium-ion battery [15] (over 595,000 times that of an AA battery [14]). Also, being in a desert has other, more obvious, challenges, like deploying thousands of antennas and radio dishes over a remote plane with no roads and harsh arid conditions, demanding stable and accurate pointing, whilst the installation is quick and easy to carry out, with people and equipment kept to a minimum. Scale is also, aptly, a large issue, needing low costs per dish for mass manufacture, yet high sensitivity [16]. The scale, in terms of it being an international effort, can also be seen, with many engineers from across the globe working to help solve problems and build different parts of the telescope. The components need therefore to be portable enough to be moved from many different parts of the globe, and the engineers adaptable enough to work with people in very different time zones [10]. South Africa SKA central core (artwork). Credit: SPDO/TDP/DRAO/Swinburne Astronomy Productions, CC BY 3.0 Why do it? The array will help advance science at a much faster rate than previously because of its high sensitivity. There are 8 key topics which this is being built to play a key role in: The formation of the first structures at the beginning of the Universe and the change from neutral to ionised states of matter (no charge to charged). Finding pulsars (neutron stars with radio waves coming from their poles, observed on Earth as a regular “blip” when using radio telescopes) for precision time measurements for investigating the characteristics of space and time. Investigating the formation and evolution of galaxies. Probing the foundations of our understanding of the Universe, including of dark energy (an illusive energy which is accelerating the expansion of the Universe). Looking at the origin, structure and evolution of magnetic fields, key to much of what goes on in Space. Delving into how life originates and evolves into intelligent technologically minded beings, like us. Conducting high resolution surveys of galaxies and galaxy clusters to advance our understanding of them. Discovering transient (short lived, even less than a nanosecond long) phenomena because of its fast rate of surveying the sky, looking for everything from Gamma Ray Bursts (produced by everything from supernovae to neutron stars merging, with the afterglow being detectable, not in the higher energy gamma ray range) to supernovae (explosions of high mass stars as they change from a red supergiant to a black hole or neutron star) and Fast Radio Bursts (with the exact origin still unknown, made up of radio pulses less than a millisecond long) [17]. Magnetar (neutron star with magnetic field) in star cluster Westerlund 1 (artwork). Credit: SO/L. Calçada, CC BY 4.0 This truly revolutionary international project will pave the way for new theories and new understandings about our place in the Universe, but also create new questions which will hopefully also be uncovered by this adaptable and state-of-the-art array. by George Abraham, ADAS member. #SKA #Pulsar #Supernova #Life #Galaxy #BigBang #JodrellBank #CSIRO #MeerKAT #eMERLIN Click here for the previous news article Click here for the next news article Click here to listen to pulsars in action Click here to look at how you can get involved in the project References "The History of Jodrell Bank". Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics. Archived from the original on 6th February 2021. "SKA Project", Square Kilometre Array. Archived from the original on 6th February 2021. "Participating Countries". Square Kilometre Array. Archived from the original on 6th February 2021. "Square Kilometre Array: 'Lift-off' for world's biggest telescope". BBC News. 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Dark matter Dark matter: It’s illusive in every respect, outweighing the more well-understood visible matter by around six to one, making up 27% of our entire Universe. And unlike normal matter, Dark matter cannot be seen: it doesn’t absorb, reflect or emit light, instead interacting only by its gravitational effect [1], theorised because of its effect on the mass of galaxies and galaxy clusters, like 'Abell 1656' or the 'Coma Galaxy Cluster'. Galaxy clusters revolve, like a carousel, with the speed of this movement dependent on both the mass and position of the galaxies (mass calculated using light coming from the cluster). However, Fritz Zwicky, a Swiss Astronomer, noticed it wasn’t revolving at the right speed for its mass. Instead, it was going at a speed suggestive of a greater mass, from another, invisible, source: dark matter. This has since been measured in many galaxy clusters, as well as galaxies, raising the question of “What are we missing?”. The Fermi Gamma-Ray Telescope (FGST for short) is one of many projects hoping to solve this. One part of its mission is to find possible gamma ray emissions due to the collision of dark matter particles [2]. It looks at dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs) -galaxies with little dust, old stars and low light emission-, the galactic centre -the centre of our Milky Way, where there may be an excess of dark matter-, galaxy clusters -the largest gravitationally bound structures, filled with dark matter-, and background emissions -with dark matter particle collisions thought to have happened throughout the Universe’s history-[3]. False Colour Infrared/Visible Image of Coma Cluster. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/L. Jenkins (GSFC). Axions Axions are illusive particles, important because they could be one part of the answer to the question of a century: “What is dark matter?”. If they are real, they’re low mass elementary particles that could make up most, or all, of what we call “dark matter”. They’ve been found to possibly work like neutrinos [4]: discovered because of a lack of conservation of energy, momentum and angular momentum (or spin) [5], with detectors like Super-Kamiokande (or Super K) in Japan. It uses a large stainless-steel tank filled with 50,000 tons of pure water, put 1,000 metres underground, using 13,000 bubble-like photon-multipliers (converts photons, particles that make up light, into electrical signals) to detect these particles, which are in abundance [6]. So could we detect and study axions in this way? Quite possibly, since they’re likely produced in extreme environments, like star cores (like in our Sun)[7]. In fact, there is one such experiment, run at CERN (European Organisation for Nuclear Research), called the CERN Axion Solar Telescope, or CAST for short. It uses a strange type of telescope, using everything from a hollow beam pipe (like the tubes from normal telescope) to a dipole magnet (a prototype of that used in the Large Hadron Collider -LHC), along with an X-ray focusing mirror system and X-ray detectors at each end. But, why X-rays? Well, the magnetic field produced by the tube will convert axions into X-rays (read on to find out more about this process), making them easy to detect, since, as you will find out, X-rays from Space can’t be seen on Earth, even at the more high-tech observatories [15]. CAST Experiment at CERN. Credit: Roland Hagemann, CC BY-SA 3.0 The Magnificent Seven Yes, it’s a film, but it’s also a fun name for a group of seven neutron stars (also called the X-ray Dim Isolated Neutron Stars, or XDINS for short [8]): RX J0420.0-5022, RX J0720.4-3125, RX J0806.4-4123, RBS1223, RX J1605.3+3249, RX J1856.5-3754, and last but not least RBS 1774 (catchy!) [9]. They’re important because, for their age, they emit too many ultra-high-energy X-rays [4]. All stars have a lifecycle that can be plotted on a Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram: a diagram which relates luminosity (how bright) to temperature (what colour they are, using the letters OBAFGKM to denote this, O being the hottest and bluest, whilst M is the coolest and reddest). Stars, depending on their mass, follow various patterns across the graph [10]. However, as recently found by using archive data from ESA’s XMM-Newton (or X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission) Space Telescope and NASA’s Chandra X-ray Space Telescope, these stars aren’t following suit, pretending to look older than they really are, as though they’re further along the path stars take along the diagram (although neutrons stars aren’t usually found on it, since they’re extremely hot and extremely blue). This seems pretty odd, but there may be a good explanation for this, and it lies in the illusive axion. They’re special, not only because the may hold the key to discovering what dark matter is, but because they’re expected to be created in the core of stars, creating high-energy X-ray photons when inside a strong magnetic field: a feature of the Magnificent Seven (with magnetic fields billions of times stronger than that found on Earth). In order to cement this theory, the next step is seen to be observing white dwarfs (remnant of a low-mass star, like the Sun) with X-ray telescopes, since they have very strong magnetic fields, but aren’t expected to produce x-rays [11]. Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram. Credit: ESO, CC BY 4.0 For Your Eyes Only It isn’t easy though, since observing in the high-energy X-ray part of the electromagnetic spectrum (a spectrum from red low energy to blue high energy light) is impossible from Earth based telescopes, with our atmosphere being opaque to high energy X-ray emissions (which is good for our health, but less so for science -you can’t have everything!). Instead, the only method is by taking up valuable time on the few X-ray telescope orbiting Earth, like XMM-Newton [12]. The telescope, launched on 10th December 1999, uses 58 mirrors to detect millions of stars in one observation, even if they’re very dim and far away, using “five X-ray imaging cameras and spectrographs” [13]. And then there’s Chandra, launched a few months before, on 23rd July 1999, with just 4 mirrors, nested inside each other, focusing light onto detectors 9.2m from the front of the telescope [14]. Transparency of Atmosphere (X-ray = left, radio = right). Credit: ESA/Hubble (F. Granato). What ever research into why these stars are so bring brings up, it will still revolutionise our understanding of the Universe, even if the extra emissions aren’t made by quite the process we anticipated. by George Abraham, ADAS member. #DarkMatter #Axion #HRDiagram #Star #NeutronStar #Neutrino #XRay #XMMNewton #Chandra #CERN #SuperK #FGST #XDINS #CAST Click here for the previous news article Click here for the next news article Click here to see the CAST experiment in action Click here to see a video of stars, imaged by ESA's Gaia mission, get collated into the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram Click on the names to have a look at what the Magnificent Seven look like with XMM-Newton data on ESA Sky: RX J0420.0-5022, RX J0720.4-3125, RX J0806.4-4123, RBS1223, RX J1605.3+3249, RX J1856.5-3754, RBS 1774 References "Dark matter". CERN. Archived from original on 23rd January 2021. "What is Dark Matter". NASA. Archived from the original on 23rd January 2021. "Fermi Searches for Dark Matter". Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, NASA. Archived from the original on 23rd January 2021. "Mystery particle may explain extreme X-rays shooting from the 'Magnificent 7' stars". Space.com. Archived from the original on 23rd January 2021. "How Massive Neutrinos Broke the Standard Model". Forbes. Archived from the original on 23rd January 2021. "Overview". Super-Kamiokande. Archived from the original on 23rd January 2021. "Search for axions from nearby star Betelgeuse comes up empty". Phys.org. Archived from the original on 23rd January 2021. "X-ray dim isolated neutron stars: What do we know?". Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics. Archived from the original on 23rd January 2021. "The Magnificent Seven: Magnetic fields and surface temperature distributions". arXiv. Archived from the original on 23rd January 2021. "The Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram". CSIRO. Archived from the original on 23rd January 2021. "Physicists May Have Found Dark Matter: X-rays Surrounding "Magnificent 7" May Be Traces of Theorised Particle". SciTech Daily. Archived from the original on 23rd January 2021. "Transparency of the atmosphere". ESO. Archived from the original on 23rd January 2021. "XMM-Newton Summary". ESA. Archived from the original on 23rd January 2021. "About Chandra". Chandra X-ray Observatory, Harvard. Archived from the original on 23rd January 2021. "CAST". CERN. Archived from the original on 23rd January 2021.

What is a Quasar? A quasar is not an object as such, but the evidence of one: a supermassive black hole, in the centre of a galaxy. They are a subset of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) and are the most luminous (brighter than 100 billion Suns) and most massive (heavier than 100 million Suns) of them all. They are also quite uncommon, since they take a while to “warm up” and have a short life, finishing once the sufficient fuel, dust and gas for a quasar to occur has been used up on creating such bright events. Any AGN smaller than 100 million Suns (1 million to 100 million) is then dimmer than 100 billion Suns (1 billion to 100 billion), and is known as a Seyfert galaxy: much more common than their quasar counterparts, comparable to how stars get less common and last for less time the brighter they are (known as “cosmic downsizing”). This brighter trait of quasars means that they can be seen from a larger distance away, and being less common, appear to exist in the older (further away) universe, with the number of AGNs increasing from 13 billion years ago, before decreasing in density at around 10.5 billion years ago [1]. Then, after quasars come blazars: AGNs that are pointed directly at Earth. These are much brighter than quasars, since sometimes the light, emitted in jets from AGNs, remains concentrated for hundreds of thousands of light years, whilst usually moving at 99% the speed of light [2]. Quasar PKS 1127-145 Jets ≥ 1 million light years long. Credit: NASA/CXC/A.Siemiginowska/J.Bechtold How to Find a Quasar Even in amateur telescopes, the brightest quasars are visible, looking like a star, whilst the host galaxy of the AGN is invisible (click here for a guide on how to observe them). However, some are out of the optical range, since they are too near or far from Earth. The distance changes the colour (or wavelength) of the light due to how wavelength increases with distance, creating a redshift (i.e. the light is redder and so less energetic than bluer light) [3]. When trying to locate them with large telescopes, professional astronomers use a survey technique, looking across the sky, specifically at the universe when it was less than 3 billion years old, at the place when most quasars are: redshift z=3, being the amount of redshift something has (the greater the number, the greater the redshift), corresponding to how far away from Earth it is (greater redshift means its further away), known as “Hubble’s Law”. Examples of surveys to do this include the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), with its survey to find quasars among other things, called the Extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS). It mapped the sky zone where quasars exist (outlined earlier), finding 500,000 of them when it observed 6,000 square degrees of sky (just over 14.5% of the sky [4]), showing how common they are at that age of the universe [5]. Universe redshift (Earth in middle and edge of observable universe at edge). Credit: Piquito veloz, CC BY-SA 4.0 The Oldest Quasar Ever Discovered Discovered at a distance where the light observed was made around 670 million years (5% of its current age [7]) after the Big Bang [6], the catchy named quasar "J0313-1806" was discovered, at a brightness 1,000 times that of our own galaxy and a mass 1.6 billion times that of our Sun, using the equivalent of 25 Suns per year (compared the the Milky Way’s rate of the equivalent of 1 Sun per year [7]) , making the gas flowing out at 20% the speed of light. In fact, this quasar is so old that the black hole it originates from didn’t form from the collapse of a large star, as the common stellar mass black hole do (found nearer to Earth), but by cold hydrogen gas from the early universe collapsing in on itself to form a black hole [6]. This discovery was only 20 million light years further than the last record for the oldest quasar, but the supermassive black hole it originate from is double the mass [8]. Infographic of the quasar. Credit: NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/J. da Silva What Quasars Tell Us They help us understand the early universe, being some of the only objects that can be detected by telescopes on Earth that far back in the past. They show us how black holes were made in the early universe. As well as this, it can tell us about what is between us and the quasar being observed, showing what the temperatures and compositions of gasses in the early universe were, by studying the spectrograms of light coming from quasars, having passed through all this material [9]. This means that, as we find more and more quasars going further and further back in time (since they're further and further away in space, and light takes time to travel), we can build a picture of the early universe, and what and how things formed in that unique era in our universe’s history. Quasar HE 0940-1050's spectrum after passing through the space between us and it. Credit: ESO, CC BY 4.0 by George Abraham, ADAS member #Quasar #Blazar #SeyfertGalaxy #BlackHole #ALMA #Record #ESO #EarlyUniverse Click here for the previous news article Click here for the next news article Click here to see an animation by ESO (European Southern Observatory) of one of the most distant quasars in our universe: ULAS J1120+0641 Click here to see the paper on the discovery of J0313-1806 Click here to look at a quasar, 3C 273, in a giant elliptical galaxy in the constellation Virgo (the first quasar to be discovered, discovered in 1960 by Allan Sandage) on ESA's ESASky References “Why are all quasars far away?” Astronomy. Archived from the original on 17th January 2021. “Blazars and Active Galaxies”. NASA Fermi. Archived from the original on 17th January 2021. “Visually Observing Quasars”. Royal Astronomical Society Canada. Archived from the original on 17th January 2021. “How Big is the Sky?” Bad Astronomy. Archived from the original on 17th January 2021. “eBOSS”. SDSS. Archived from the original on 17th January 2021. “A Luminous Quasar at Redshift 7.642”. arXiv. Archived from the original on 17th January 2021. “Quasar Discovery Sets New Distance Record”. ALMA. Archived from the original on 17th January 2021. “Most distant quasar discovered sheds light on how black holes grow”. Phys.org. Archived from the original on 17th January 2021. “Ultrabright Quasar Lit Up the Early Universe”. Live Science. Archived from the original on 17th January 2021.

A lot to take into Consideration Satellites and the rockets that encapsulate them are made of many combinations of materials to keep us safe and keep it and its contents safe, whilst getting the best science possible from a mission. However, for the most part, space agencies like to focus on the safety of the machine and what’s in it, being complex, with satellites exposed to the noise, vibration and gravitational forces of takeoff. Then, there’s the dramatic changes in temperature from going into and out of the Sun’s reach, creating fast and large temperature changes, leading to “thermal stress, vibration and cracking” [1] (with the ISS orbiting once every 92 minutes, creating 15 to 16 sunrises daily [2], and Mercury, a planet with little atmosphere, having temperatures as hot as 472ºC in the Sun, and as cold as -180ºC when facing away [14]). And then, there’s the constant bombardment of UV (Ultra-Violet) radiation (along with other ionising forms of radiation), leading to plastics and coatings cracking, and materials outgassing (which also leads to the new car smell), contaminating the surface of instruments [1]. This has then led to the creating of new combinations of materials that combat these problems, then making them space-ready. These include kevlar: the material featured in bullet proof vests back on Earth, but used on satellites in Space, for its resistance to temperature change and the constant threat of space debris impacting the satellite. Then, there’s aluminium: a light weight material that, when combined with others in an alloy, is strong, so much so that it’s used on the ISS’s shutters to protect windows from space debris impacts (which, incidentally, are made of twice the number of panes, all at greater thickness, than those used on Earth) [3]. Space Shuttle Endeavour's impact with space debris on radiator. Credit: NASA Progress in Temperature Control Satellites use a range of coatings and technologies to regulate their temperature, keeping both the equipment, and possibly people within, safe. One such technology is an Optical Solar Reflector (OSR), glued to the outside of the satellite’s radiator panels (panels threaded with pipes containing ammonia, which changes from gas to liquid to release waste heat from the craft, before cycling around again [4]), rejecting solar radiation whilst dissipating excess heat from the satellite. However, the OSRs, made of quartz, are heavy, fragile, and therefore expensive, whilst not having the ability to be applied to curved surfaces, with polymer foils having taking its place in such circumstances, while suffering from issues of longevity, lasting only 3-5 years. Another technology came out in 2018 that greatly improved this technology, known as meta-OSR, designed around metal oxides, with the added benefits of being lighter in weight, durable, and taking the place of not just the OSR, but louvers (which are rather like Venetian window blinds, regulating how much heat is lost [5]) as well, through different combinations of these metal oxides [6]. The ISS's panels & radiators (white panels). Credit: NASA Advances in Harvesting Solar Energy Energy is another very important resource in Space, with most satellites getting it from the Sun (except the few that use technologies like nuclear power, such as Voyager 1 and 2 [7]), shown by spacecraft such as ESA’s Philae lander, which lost power to transmit data back to Earth, because it was in a place with only 1.5 hours of sunlight in 67P’s (the comet) 12 hour day [8]. However, what if you could use more efficient solar panels, getting more energy from the Sun so more data can be transferred, possibly helping the next big discovery to happen? One such technology is called perovskite: a crystal discovered 200 years ago, which is more efficient because of its wider use of the electromagnetic spectrum (made of light at different frequencies), with 27.3% efficiency instead of the 22% of typical silicon solar technology around now [9]. It is also flexible [10], allowing for easier and cheaper designs of solar arrays on satellites in the future. Thin film perovskite solar cell. Credit: Jordi Sastre-Pellicer/EMPA, CC BY-NC 2.0 Environmental Impact However, the technology for satellites is designed with the survival of the satellite and what’s inside it in mind; not who and what is left on Earth. The rockets that send those satellites up do have an affect on important parts of our atmosphere, like the Ozone Layer, located in the Stratosphere. Particles emitted by the rocket’s engines act as a nucleus, or starting point, for ice to form, leading to ozone being depleted. Moreover, some rockets emit chlorine gas, which acts like the CFCs (Chlorofluorocarbons) banned worldwide for their affect of creating a hole in the Ozone Layer [11]. And then, there’s the space debris problem, where, upon reentry of a satellite, small particles of alumina (synthetic aluminium oxide), which, as Takao Doi (professor at Kyoto University and a Japanese astronaut) put it, “will float in the upper atmosphere for many years” [12], also contributing to the problem of loss of ozone when released in the Stratosphere. The Ozone Hole from 1984 to 1997. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory Wood: the Newish Super-Material The answer could lie in the new proposal (published on 24th December 2020) by Sumitomo Forestry (a Japanese forestry company) and Kyoto University (based north east of Osaka in Japan, south west of Tokyo), in which wood is the material of choice for a satellite, to be finished in 2023 [13]. Wood, unlike traditional aluminium alloys, would burn up in the atmosphere upon reentry, releasing no harmful substances and releasing no debris to interact with the Ozone Layer or become space debris [12]. Moreover, wood doesn’t stop electromagnetic radiation (light) or magnetic fields, meaning that devices like antennas (for transmission of information) and attitude control mechanisms (controlling the orientation of the satellite), leading to simpler, more cost effective satellite designs. However, the materials used will also be resistance to temperature change and harmful solar radiation described earlier [13]. These new discoveries and inventions are just scratching the surface of what developments await in the future, making space technology more sustainable and good for our planet, whilst revealing more secrets of our universe. Artist impression of the world's first wooden satellites. Credit: Sumitomo Forestry By George Abraham, ADAS member #Satellite #Ozone #ISS #SpaceDebris #Perovskite #MetaOSR #Wood Click here for the previous news article Click here for the next news article Click here to learn how to make your own satellite with JPL’s guide Click here to see the current state of the Ozone Layer Click here to see NASA’s “Beginner’s Guide to Rockets”, including information on everything on how they get rockets off the ground and into space to then survive References "Materials and Processes". ESA. Archived from the original on 4th January 2021. "International Space Station: 15 Facts for 15 Years in Orbit". Space.com. Archived from the original on 4th January 2021. "The Materials Used in Artificial Satellites and Space Structures". AZO Materials. Archived from the original on 4th January 2021. "Shaker test of radiator panel". ESA. Archived from the original on 4th January 2021. "Rosetta thermal louvres". ESA. Archived from the original on 4th January 2021. "New thermal coatings for spacecraft and satellites developed sing metamaterials". University of Southampton. Archived from the original on 4th January 2021. "Voyager's Heartbeat is Nuclear 'Battery'". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 4th January 2021. "Philae comet lander sends more data before losing power". BBC News. Archived from the original on 4th January 2021. "UK firm's solar power breakthrough could make world's most efficient panels by 2021". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 4th January 2021. "Perovskites: The future of solar?". BBC Sounds. Archived from the original on 4th January 2021. "Satellites and the Ozone Layer". BBC Sounds. 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The mWhat is a Conjunction? A conjunction is where two celestial objects come close together in the sky. When specifically looking at planetary conjunctions, they’re due to the elliptical orbits, slightly inclined planes of each orbit, and each object’s varying time taken to complete this orbit [1]. However, if the objects come too close to each other, as seen from Earth, one can partially or fully cover the other, leading to an occultation: something usually observed between the Moon and another object behind, because of the Moon’s size, also making a fun target for astronomers to image, with the next lunar occultation happening on 17th April 2021 by Mars (but only visible in SE Asia) [2]. Then, there are eclipses, where the Sun, Earth and Moon align in various ways. Firstly, a lunar eclipse involves the Earth sandwiched between the Sun and Moon, meaning the Earth blocks the Sun’s light from reaching the Moon, instead going through the Earth's atmosphere, creating a red tinge on the Moon’s surface [3], with the next total lunar eclipse (where the alignment is perfect) visible from Timperley Village Club happening on 20th December 2029 [4]. Conversely, solar eclipse involve the Moon sandwiched between the Earth and Sun, blocking the Sun’s light out from reaching Earth [3], with the most recent one seen in Argentina and Chile on 14th December 2020, and the next partial solar eclipse (where the Sun is partly obscured), visible from Timperley Village Club, happening on 10th June 2021, whilst the next total solar eclipse (where the Sun is partly obscured) will be seen on 14th June 2151 (although total solar eclipses can be seen in the near future if you’re not immortal and can travel) [4]. Then, there are transits. When specifically looking at solar transits, an inferior planet (a planet orbiting the Sun closer than we are) crosses in front of the Sun, seen as a dot travelling across the Sun [3] (if using the correct safety equipment of course), with the next visible from Timperley Village Club being a transit of Mercury on 13th November 2032 (although the next Venus transit visible from here will be on 8th December 2125, being much rarer) [4]. However, there are also planetary transits, whereby a planet would partially obscure another (with Jupiter transiting Saturn next on 17th June 7541… sit tight!) [7]. ESO Very Large Telescope, Moon, Venus and Jupiter in 2009. Credit: ESO/Y. Beletsky, CC BY 4.0 The Great Conjunction That said, our main focus right now is what’s called a “Great Conjunction” being a conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter: the two largest planets in our Solar System. It’s especially special due to the separation of the two planets, being just 0.1º (with the next Great Conjunction happening in 2040 incurring a larger 1.1º separation. Moreover, Great Conjunctions only happen every 19.6 years, and a separation of this amount famously hasn’t been seen since 1623, as documented by Kepler in his book “De Stella Nova” [5] This dramatic and close proximity to one another in the night sky means that, instead of seeing the two planets as two points of light with the naked eye, they will be seen as one object, until a low power telescope or pair or binoculars are used [6]. And, it’ll be worth it, since the next time Jupiter and Saturn will appear less that 0.2º apart will be 2080, and then 2417 (with these events happening in pairs, as seen with the pair of events in 1623 and 1683) [7]. Illustration from Kepler's De Stella Nova (1606) of great conjunctions 1583-1723 Observing the Wonder You may have seen the classic trick played on astronomers, where the weather turns cloudy as soon as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to observe something arrises. However, if you want to be in with a chance of seeing this, make sure you’re available each day from now until 28th December [7], between 5pm and 6pm [8][9]. Then, if it clears, look toward the southwestern horizon, and, if there aren’t any tall trees or houses in the way, you should see a bright point in the sky: Jupiter and Saturn [9]. Then, just as Galileo Galilei did in 1610, just before the Great Conjunction of 1623, you can use a pair of binoculars (large 20x80s would be best, with a wide field of view and high magnification [5]) or a small telescope to see the four Galilean moons: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto [10]. Sadly, they will only be visible during the twilight hours, since, during the Great Conjunction, happening on the 21st December at 6:37pm (but visible only from 4:30pm till 6pm) [6], will only be visible in full darkness on 21st at 5:52pm with just 2º of elevation [5]. That said, the twilight could make images look that bit more dramatic if imaged with a wide field-of-view and a good background. Saturn from Cassini Orbiter. Credit: NASA/ESA/ASI Jupiter from Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3. Credit: NASA/ESA Predicting these Events The models of the Solar System have shaped how accurately we can predict such events. From Ptolemy’s geocentric view, where everything revolved around Earth in perfect circles (whilst ‘epicycles’ or smaller orbits made by objects were made, explaining retrograde motion -the backwards and forwards motion of objects in the sky); to Copernicus’ heliocentric view, with everything revolving around the Sun, again in perfect circles; to the modern day Kepler view, with objects orbiting around the Sun in an elliptical path (explaining retrograde motion) [11]. Using Tyco Brahe’s observations, Kepler made laws which governed the motion of objects around the Sun. His first described how all planets’ orbits are elliptical (ellipses having two points or foci, whereby the sum of the distances from the foci and edge of the ellipse is constant), with the Sun at one focus. His second was that, in equal time periods, the area of the ellipse covered by an imaginary line between the planet and Sun was constant (showing that planets speed up their orbit the closer to the Sun they are). The last law was that the square of the orbital periods (the time it takes for a planet to orbit the Sun) is directly proportional (increasing together at constant ratio) to the cube of the orbit’s semi-major axis (the furthest distance from the edge of the ellipse to its centre) [12]. All these laws put together, plus some extra maths from more recent scientists like Einstein, have brought about the accurate predictions of where everything will be at different points in time in the sky, so we can know when and where to look for phenomena like the Great Conjunction, to enjoy what the universe brings us. Events like the nearby Great Conjunction are truly once in a lifetime (or twice if you’re as young as I am), so they’re truly unmissable events if you have the chance to observe them. That said, if the sky doesn’t clear or the horizon is too high, watch the live streams by Prof. Matthew Bate of the University of Exeter’s Astrophysics Group both on Saturday (today) and Sunday on YouTube (happening at 4:15-6:15pm). Elliptical Orbit of Planets around the Sun (Kepler's 1st Law). Credit: Arpad Horvath, CC BY-SA 3.0 by George Abraham, ADAS member. #Conjunction #Transit #Occultation #Eclipse #SolarEclipse #LunarEclipse #Jupiter #Saturn #GreatConjunction #Kepler Click here for the previous news article Click here for the next news article Click here to see where Jupiter is currently using Stellarium (or find it yourself using their app) Click here to see Jupiter and Saturn’s location using The Sky Live’s planetarium Click here to see the live sky view (from Timperley Village Club) on Heavens Above, to see Jupiter and Saturn, as well as any satellites, so your pictures are clean of satellite streaks. Click here to see predictions for future lunar occultations Click here to see the weather forecast, to plan for your observation (and here for this and other widgets for help with planing your astronomy activities) Click here to see predictions of future eclipses and solar transits Click here to see Kepler's laws along with Einstein's and Newton's laws in action in this simulation (and here to see other useful resources like this one) References "What is a planetary conjunction". Royal Museums Greenwich. Archived from the original on 19th December 2020. "Bright Planet & Asteroid Occultations by the Moon for 2021". International Occultation Timing Association. Archived from the original on 19th December 2020. "What are Eclipses and Transits?" TimeandDate.com. Archived from the original on 19th December 2020. "Eclipses and Transits Visible". TimeandDate.com. Archived from the original on 19th December 2020. "The Great Conjunction: History in the Making". December 2020 The Sky at Night Magazine, ISBN 9-771745-986058-12> "Jupiter and Saturn meet in close 'great conjunction' since 1623". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 19th December. "The December 2020 Great Conjunction". TimeandDate.com. Archived from the original on 19th December 2020. "Sunrise, Sunset, and Daylength, December 2020". TimeandDate.com. Archived from the original on 19th December 2020. "Jupiter". Stellarium Web. Archived from the original on 19th December 2020. "The 'Great' Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn". NASA. Archived from the original on 19th December 2020. "Geocentric and Heliocentric Models". Space.fm. Archived from the original on 19th December 2020. "Orbits and Kepler's Laws". NASA. Archived from the original on 19th December 2020.

Asteroids: An Untapped Resource Asteroids are ancient remnants of the Solar System’s formation, around 4.6 billion years ago; waste material in a cosmic building project, numbering 1,038,379 in a count in early 2019, located mainly in the Asteroid Belt, between Mars and Jupiter. They are anything from tens of metres to hundreds of kilometres in diameter, like Vesta, at 530km, yet making up a mass of less than the Moon [1] (at 0.07345e+24kg [2]). But, with such a comparatively small size to even the Moon, how come we’re interested in them? Well, it’s to do with what they’re made of: many precious metals and minerals ranging from gold to phosphorus, being what 2011 UW158 (or 436724 for short) is made of, being then valued at around $5.4 trillion in 2015, and 796 Sarita, at over $100 trillion [3] [4]. This amazing mining potential is something not unnoticed by any means, with the rise of companies like 'SpaceX' and 'Blue Origin' already spending lots on space, and others more targeted at mining, like 'Planetary Resources' and 'Deep Space Industries', all in the knowledge of the increasingly profitable prospects of space, once seemingly a sci-fi dream, but soon, possibly, reality [5]. Animation of radar images of 2011 UW158. Credit: Arecibo Telescope/NASA Governing Space However, as seen on Earth, exploitation of a pristine place isn’t great for the environment and the heritage shared by us all, being why places like Outer Space, Antarctica, the High Seas and the Atmosphere have been put into the Global Commons (outlined by the UN), to be protected for all of us to enjoy [6]. The Outer Space Treaty of 1967, signed by many nations, is one of the foundation laws for the Global Commons, outlining, among other things, lack of sovereignty and exploitation of Outer Space [7]. This doesn’t take into account, however, the commercial approach to Outer Space, not being led by a nation but by private entities, leading to the Artemis Accords: the most recent piece of Outer Space legislation, designed to govern commercial use of Outer Space, so as to make it sustainable to use, but still protected as our common heritage [8]. Exploration So, after that bit of legal training (but as a disclaimer, I’m not a source of Outer Space legal advice), you can now go and search for what’s out there and where is best to mine. There are four major missions that have happened in recent years that have paved the way for exploring asteroids, and comets, potential, while also having routes in everything from protecting our planet from asteroids falling to Earth, to finding the origins of the Solar System and even the origins of life. Hayabusa Hayabusa (aka MUSES-C) is first to be launched on our list, back in 2003. From the Japanese “はやぶさ” meaning “Peregrine Falcon”, Hayabusa set a course for the asteroid Itokawa, taking measurements of everything from its gravity to what the surface is like, gathering samples to take back to Earth in 2010, landing in Australia [9]. These samples were the most important part of the mission, being something that we can’t get unless we actually go there, so are scientifically valuable, revealing insights into the formation of planets in the early Solar System that rocks on Earth couldn’t, because of the active conditions experienced here [10]. Re-entry of Hayabusa over Woomera Test Range. Credit: NASA/Ed Schilling Rosetta Launched in 2004, it was destined not for an asteroid, but for a comet. Although comets are not as commercially exciting as asteroids, scientifically, they are very exciting, possibly holding the answer to how water is on Earth and how life formed, making this mission very important to science. Destined for Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the mission went so far away that it took 23 minutes for commands to get there, flying along side something that had never had images so detailed taken of it before [11]. Then, a probe landed on its surface, making a triple touchdown before coming to a stop in a dark zone, relying on just 60 hours of charge to take measurements, before dying. However, in this time it detected organic molecules (meaning molecules needed for life), and molecular oxygen in its coma (an envelope of gas around the rocky nucleus) along with many other key findings, still being revealed today [12] [13]. Image of 67P by Rosetta's NAVCAM. Credit: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM, CC BY-SA IGO 3.0 OSIRIS-REx Launched in 2016, OSIRIS-REx was focused again on the physical properties of asteroids, looking at their chemistry, mineralogy, geochemistry, landing on asteroid Bennu, a carbon-rich asteroid, to do this. It could, along with improving the science around asteroids that could impact Earth (as discussed previously), again help us learn how the planets and life formed. The mission has recently taken a step forward, picking up its sample from the surface to be sent back to Earth for further analysis in 2023, so as to learn more about this exciting object [15]. Artist's impression of OSIEIS-REx touching down on Bennu. Credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona Hayabusa-2 The final mission is the follow-on from Hayabusa, launched in 2014 and this time targeting another asteroid called Ryugu, using similar but upgraded technologies to Hayabusa, with upgrades including a new device that can create an artificial crater in the surface to gather rock that is less weathered by things like solar wind than the surface, gathering better samples. Another major difference in the two missions is that Ryugu is older than Itokawa, possibly having a higher likelihood of revealing the secrets to the origins of life [16]. On 21st February 2019, it landed, firing a 5g pellet at >1,050km/h to create a crater and gather a sample, before touching down again on 11th June 2019, collecting more samples from the dust made by the previous touchdown, as well as collecting further samples, to make up a very heavy 100mg. It might not sound like much, but this can help pave the way for many more discoveries once back on Earth [17]. The two samples collected on Ryugu’s surface then fell to Earth at 11km/s on 6th December 2020, after having touched down on Ryugu’s surface just 1 year earlier, making landfall in the Australian outback, like with the previous mission, with people from JAXA (Japan's space agency) quickly rushing to the scene to collect the 16kg capsule that protected it from the elements, making sure the sample was safe [18]. Cameras in Australian Outback capture capsule fireball in sky. Credit: EPA All the data from these projects will then make it possible to pave the way for a better understanding of life and the Solar System, whilst also, possibly, paving the wave for a future in going to asteroids not to collect samples to test, but to collect rocks to use to improve our lives, whilst doing this ethically, within constraints that the Outer Space Treaty and Artemis Accords. by George Abraham, ADAS member. #Satellite #Artemis #Asteroid #Comet #Rosetta #Hayabusa #OSIRISRex Click here for the previous news article Click here for the next news article Click here to see what asteroids are in the Solar System at the moment and what they're worth Click here to search for other asteroids and find out more about them (and here to find other useful resources like this one) References "Asteroids". NASA. Archived from the original on 12th December 2020. "Moon Fact Sheet". NASA. 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Our Home Our Solar System is found in the Milky Way galaxy; a galaxy 100,000 light-years in diameter, with over 200 billion stars, of which the closest one to us, the sun, is 30,000 light-years from the galactic centre and tipped 63º off of the galactic plane (being like the Solar System’s ecliptic, which is the plane in which most objects orbit the Sun) [1]. It’s an amazing part of the universe, with a lovely spiral shape and a calm galactic centre (the central part of the galaxy, home to the supermassive black hole: Sagittarius A*). But wait a second. How do we know all this, since we’re inside it. It’s rather like pretending to take a picture of Earth from the edge of the Solar System, and getting all the small details correct, whilst sat at home on Earth, but harder. Milky Way over Black Rock Desert, Nevada, USA. Credit: Steve Jurvetson, CC BY 2.0 Before Satellites Before the age of satellites, if we wanted to know what the place we live in looks like, it involved taking detailed measurements of distance and position, then creating a map of the galaxy. The Herschels (William and Caroline) took on this task in the late 18th century, using a method called “star gauging”, reasoning that, if they saw many stars in one direction, it was the edge of the galaxy, and conversely, fewer stars in another is a closer patch of galaxy. This did create a rather irregular shaped map, being because they thought that they could see to the edge of the galaxy, when they couldn’t. This is due to the interstellar dust clouds that hid some stars from their view [2] (being what also, incidentally, prevented us from finding Sagittarius A* for years). Also, they thought that stars were uniformly distributed and every star is as luminous as our Sun (both of which we now know aren’t correct), further making the observations invalid [3]. However flawed this method was, it did pave the way for others to take their place in the future, to then make more accurate models of the Milky Way. Shape of Milky Way deduced from observations. Credit: Caroline Herschel/William Herschel WISE NASA’s WISE (Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer), having had its 10th birthday in December 2019 [4], overcame problems experienced by the Herschels by using infrared light instead of visible, being able to discover some 400 or more stellar nurseries (where stars are formed from dust) once covered in a cloak of dust, but now revealed [5]. It can then map not just the Milky Way (seen in a characteristic belt across the sky) but the entire sky, seeing other galaxies in a new light (literally), showing the sky in much greater detail than ever before [4], creating data to then get used in the making of a map of our own galaxy. Most importantly, it has led to finding that arms other than the 4 main ones are more important that previously thought, as well as finding better information as to what they look like, with the ability to find where gas and stars are very densely packed, which would otherwise be hidden by the dust surrounding them [5] (being what stopped the Herschels from mapping the Milky Way so well). WISE data used to trace shape of spiral arms. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech GAIA ESA’s Gaia spacecraft, 4 years younger than WISE, is different to WISE, in that it’s not only showing the structure of our galaxy, but how it formed and its future, using models from the public data to make many discoveries. For instance, they found that the majority of stars in the Milky Way are orbiting clockwise, whilst there’s a large group of stars going anticlockwise, suggesting they weren’t born in this galaxy. They’ve also found that stars from the same stellar nursery moving in clusters [6]. As well as these amazing discoveries, Gaia data has helped in the finding, published on 25th May 2020, that the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy that began colliding with the Milky Way 5.7 billion years ago, has collided 3 times over the last 6 billion years, triggering star formation episodes, of which the Sun’s formation 4.7 billion years ago coincides, so the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy may be the reason we’re here today [7]. As well as this though, it was also found to be a reason for the Milky Way’s structure being not flat but warped (one part is curved upward and the other side is curved downward) [8]. And then, 2 days ago on 3rd December 2020, another paper used Gaia data to make a further groundbreaking observation, which used the mapped paths of stars in our Milky Way (specifically looking at how the anticentre, or edge of the galaxy, is growing and changing) to then get a prediction from a computer model of the next 400 thousand years of motion of stars in our galaxy, taking into account things like the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy, still being cannibalised by the Milky Way. This, along with all the other numerous papers from Gaia data, show just how much of a “treasure trove for astronomers” (DE BRUIJNE Jos, 2020) this is [9], and will be for years to come, where we will hopefully have the ability to take even better stellar selfies. How 40,000 stars in 100 parsecs will move in next 400 thousand years. Credit: ESA/Gaia/DPAC, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO By George Abraham, ADAS member. #MilkyWay #WISE #Gaia #Satellite #Herschel Click here for the previous news article Click here for the next news article Click here for a list of virtual reality resources that take advantage of ESA’s Gaia data Click here to look at ESA Sky using NASA’s WISE data Click here to access optical colour ESA Sky, which has Gaia’s new data available. Simply click on the 3rd icon along (after having selected “Science Mode”), which looks like an ellipse, and click on the “Gaia eDR3 (Optical)” square, before clicking on any green square on the map, when zoomed in to maximum, and clicking “Load Data”, showing all the observations Gaia has made, then showing you how much data Gaia collects, and so its potential for years to come. N.B. As long as the name includes “Gaia”, it’s the correct data to look at (since the name may change over time, as more data is released). References "Milky Way Galaxy: Facts About Our Galactic Home". Space.com. Archived from the original on 5th December 2020. "Herschel and the Milky Way". Online Star Register. Archived from the original on 5th December 2020. "Mapping the Milky Way: William Herschel's Star Gages". Berry College. Archived from the original on 5th December 2020. "Celebrating 10 Years of the WISE Spacecraft". NASA. Archived from the original on 5th December 2020. "Charting the Milky Way from the Inside Out". NASA. Archived from the original on 5th December 2020. "Gaia Astronomical Revolution". ESA. Archived from the original on 5th December 2020. "Galactic Crash may have Triggered Solar System Formation". ESA. Archived from the original on 5th December 2020. "Milky Way's Warp caused by Galactic Collision, Gaia Suggests". ESA. Archived from the original on 5th December 2020. "Gaia's New Data takes us to the Milky Way's Anticentre and Beyond". ESA. Archived from the original on 5th December 2020.

Space Debris: What is it? It is simply everything from decommissioned satellites to screws to jettisoned parts of rockets. Ever since 4th October 1957, when Sputink 1, our first ever artificial satellite, went into orbit around Earth, the skies have been filling with ever more increasing amounts of litter, some of which travel at speeds over 22,300 mph. Then, as all this debris has been building up, it has been crashing into other satellites and making more and more debris. These events have therefore increasing over the last few decades, with this being made worse by anti-satellite missile launches from China (2007 and 2009 tests) and India, making another 400 fragments of satellite, ready to hit anything, from a GPS satellites to the ISS [1]. Indeed, the ISS has been feeling the brunt of this new phenomenon, with the threat so prominent that a sophisticated detection system to label space debris has been made, labelling them as either yellow (1 in 100,000 chance of impact) or red (1 in 10,000 chance impact), but these warnings aren’t like at a football match; they help keep the crew alive. Indeed, if they did think a piece of space debris to be a significant threat, then they would move the whole ISS in a Debris Avoidance Manoeuvre, or DAM, to get it out of the way [2]. However, this is not ideal, so is not always carried out, leading to the odd chip in the window (as seen in the image below) and even the odd air leak! Presently, there is more than 8,800 tonnes of man-made objects in orbit around Earth, with 128 million objects from 1mm to 1cm in size (still being deadly if travelling at 22,300 mph) [3]. And then, there’s the problem of not only having space debris crashing into other satellites that were otherwise functioning perfectly, but some of it (very rarely it has to be said) falling down to Earth, uncontrolled. It was 20 tonnes of Chinese rocket that reentered the Earth’s atmosphere at 4pm on 11th May 2020, as part of China’s “Long March 5B”; China’s largest and most recent rocket, which created the 4th largest piece of debris to reenter Earth [4] Many satellites do get de-orbited, falling into a place nicknamed the “Spacecraft Cemetery”, also called Point Nemo, being the furthest place from people anywhere on Earth, located in the south of the Pacific Ocean. However, this is not the fate for all satellites, with a “Graveyard Orbit” being made 22,400 miles above Earth, around 200 miles from the outer active satellites [5], but, is it right to be making a graveyard in space, when we want to be making manned missions to Mars and the Moon in the near future? Impact chip on ISS window. Credit: ESA, NASA, Tim Peake Orbital Surveillance The immediate problem now is that, once you’ve sent your shining new satellite worth in the millions or billions of pounds, it then is destroyed by some debris someone else forgot to clean up. So, the first frontier in the fight against collisions is to track these millions of pieces of debris in orbit, preventing such collisions from ever happening. Groups like the American and Russian military are keeping an eye on orbital space debris, warning people of impending collisions, using optical telescopes like the USA’s Space Surveillance Telescope (which will be operational again in 2022) [6], with objects as small as 10cm visible to these telescopes [7] (you can see all the data of space debris orbiting the Earth on this website, which shows a visualisation of whereаbouts all the known pieces of debris out there at the moment). Adapting Design Another option is to reduce the amount of debris out there, which is what various space agencies have done, with Russia, China, Japan, France and ESA outlining how to reduce the emission of debris [7], with everything from end of life disposal into the “Graveyard Orbit”; to testing of satellites so that, if something were to fall into Earth, it wouldn’t cause harm to people; to preventative technologies to stop shedding of fuel, discharging of batteries and explosions in space, reducing the amount of debris created once more (all found in the very detailed code of conduct here) [8]. One extreme example of this is seen in Elon Musk’s reusable landing rocket (which landed on a floating space port), first launched from Cape Canaveral in 2016, heading for the ISS, before landing on a floating barge in the Atlantic Ocean (seen on this clip by the BBC). It produces little space debris and can reduce costs by being reused [9] (like in NASA’s Space Shuttle Program, although hopefully with less safety issues). Falcon 9 1st Stage Landing. Credit: SpaceX Active Removal Now, technology is being implemented in the form of Active Debris Removal (ADR), which could dramatically decrease the amount of debris in the atmosphere (shown in the image below), by taking out all the high mass, high collision probability and high altitude space debris, reducing impact of space debris on missions that are active. They have even identified areas where debris will accumulate, being: “100km and 80º inclination, 800km and 98º inclination, and 850km and 71º inclination”, being places where the ADR projects are likely to target first, having the greatest impact on the amount of debris in orbit around Earth [10]. There are many ways this has been theorised to work, including ESA’s e.DeOrbit idea, which has many different methods proposed for the capture of debris, including everything from harpoons to nets and even robotic arms. Solar sails to push debris down, swinging satellites capturing debris by its shear momentum, and spacecraft on the back of planes are also all proposals to remove debris from Earth orbit [11], but which one will be viable and will bring us out of the mess we’ve put ourselves in? Predictions with and without ADR by 2209. Credit: ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO 'World’s First Debris Removal Mission' [12] The very first ADR mission contract was signed 2 days ago (26/11/20), with ESA signing up to an €86 million contract with ClearSpace SA: a Swiss start-up, with a mission in 2025 called ClearSpace-1, to be launched. It is planned to capture the Vespa (Vega Secondary Payload Adapter), having been put in a gradual disposal orbit, and close to the size of a small satellite, at 112kg in mass [12]. However, apart from being different in being the first ADR mission, it’s also different in that ESA haven’t decided how the mission is going to work, hoping to create a more commercial environment, to then bring about lower cost ADR missions, so as to have a lot more like this one in the future [13]. The proposed method of capture is to rendezvous with the payload, before using 4 robotic arms to capture it, and drag it down to its fate, in Earth’s atmosphere, which will burn up the debris [14], as seen in phenomena like meteor showers and fireballs. Whatever method of removal is used in the future, one thing is for sure: it is necessary, since, if we don’t, it will just build up and build up, until it becomes impossible to have satellites in Earth orbit, instead having a wall, rather like in WALL-E. Main propellant tank of 2nd stage of Delta 2 Landed Texas 1997. Credit: NASA ODPO By George Abraham, ADAS member #ClearSpace #ClearSky #SpaceDebris #SpaceX #ESA #ADR #ISS #SpaceShuttle Click here for the previous news article Click here for the next news article Click here to see the current state of our space debris problem References "Space junk is a huge problem–and it's only getting bigger". National Geographic. Archived from the original on 28th November 2020. "How Much of a Threat is Space Debris to the ISS?". Forbes. Archived from the original on 28th November 2020. "Space Debris by the Numbers". ESA. Archived from the original on 28th November 2020. "A Huge Hunk of Space Debris Fell to Earth". Smithsonian Magazine. Archived from the original on 28th November 2020. "Where do Old Satellites Go When they Die?". NASA Space Place. Archived from the original on 28th November 2020. "U.S. Space Force is deploying surveillance telescope in Australia". Space News. 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A Bit Close for Comfort Throughout the Earth’s history, rocks from above have been a constant threat to what is on the Earth. 3.8 billion years ago, just 700 million years into Earth’s history, the Late Heavy Bombardment took place, where debris from planets being made, smashed into Earth, keeping it in a molten state. Then came the fall of animals such as most of the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago, where a 10km wide asteroid fell into the Yucatán Peninsula, in the south east of Mexico, south of the Gulf of Mexico, created the 300km diameter Chicxulub crater, bringing about a global winter and global fires, among other things [1]. This turbulent past has shaped our planet, bringing humans to be Earth’s dominant species. But the threat of a future impact is always there, though 10km wide asteroids are, luckily, very uncommon. That said, even relatively small asteroids can sometimes cause a threat if they enter the atmosphere. Chicxulub Crater Gravitational Anomalies due to Asteroid Impact. Credit: US Geological Survey (white line is coast) Natural Defence However, our Earth has ingenious ways at tackling some of these beasts of space: it’s called Earth’s atmosphere. It’s a relatively thick layer of gasses (compared to other rocky planets in our solar system, except Venus), mainly made of nitrogen (~78%) and oxygen (~21%) (shown by how the sky is blue, since blue light is scattered more than other colours due to this composition [2]) [3]. Because of the air resistance this layer of gas causes, objects like meteors burn up easily, before hitting the ground, leading to phenomena such as meteor showers, caused by trails of debris left by comets’ dust tails and asteroids [4], as well as fireballs (but only some of them get burnt up), leading to temperatures as high as 1,650ºC (hence why rockets need heat shields) [3]. To see the whole story, however, we must travel to the far side of the Moon; an old surface, untouched for millennia, without the thick atmosphere we have. The Moon’s volcanism has covered many of the craters on the near side in lava flows and left large 'sea-like' maria, whilst the far side has a thicker crust, so lava can’t so easily escape and cover up its blemishes, showing just how frequently hit the Moon is, and how, due to lack of weathering, erosion and plate tectonics, these marks still remain, unlike on Earth, where craters are still being discovered to this day, or have fallen into the mantle because of subduction (one plate going underneath another plate) [5] [6]. This means that the Earth could be impacted more than we think by these monsters in the sky (over geological time, that is), so the question then arises: what would happen if an asteroid big enough to get though the Earth’s thick atmosphere reached the ground? Far Side of Moon by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University Fire in the Sky In fact, this question is answered every year, in regular events called Fireballs. This name may sound quite cinematic, and indeed they are, from time to time, quite cinematic objects (when seen from a distance!). In Chelyabinsk at 3:20:26 GMT on 15th February 2014, the biggest fireball since 1908 (in Tunguska) -with both events happening in Russia (2,420km from each other -1,500 miles)- fell from the sky, with an impact equivalent to 440 kilotons of TNT [7], and a diameter of ~15 meters, weighing ~7,000 tons and travelling 64,800 kph (40,260 mph). It wounded ~1,000 and damaged many buildings by shattering glass, for instance [8]. This event was something that may make it seem unlucky to live in Russia, since these event are really very rare, but they still caused only local impacts, unlike the global impacts of the meteorite that wiped out most of the dinosaurs. In fact, fireballs are usually much less dramatic, and occur over the sea (since there is more sea than land on Earth), but in totally random locations (as seen by the map of fireballs since 15th April 1988 by NASA's JPL Centre for Near Earth Object Studies). One such event happened just 3 days ago, at 10:21:24 GMT on 18th November 2020, over the South Tasmanian Sea, on nearly the opposite side of the world. As is with most fireballs, this one fell over the sea; specifically over the Southern Ocean, just south of Tasmania (an island south east of Australia). The live stream camera on a research vessel 'Investigator' (operated by the CSIRO or ‘Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation’) picked up the fireball, black and white in the image but bright green to observers. Events like these usually go unnoticed, with “over 100 tonnes of natural space debris” entering the atmosphere daily (NAGLE Glen, 2020), with a few of them becoming fireballs like this one. You’ve just got to be at the right place at the right time to observe them (or sometimes the wrong place at the wrong time, as was the case for many in Chelyabinsk!) [9] [10] [11]. Footage from the ship 'Investigator' of fireball. Credit: CSIRO Incoming! Luckily for us, the world is ready for the next big fireball, with many telescopes scanning the skies for potentially hazardous objects, such as the Arecibo radio telescope, talked about in the last article for the site's use in sending the the Arecibo Message into space. It has recently been decommissioned due to damage done to the cables that support the platform suspended over the dish below, bringing an end to this iconic telescope [19]. However, the current projects of Pan-STARRS 1 and 2, (which stands for the “Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System”) are carrying on its work. They're located on top of Haleakala on the island of Maui in Hawaii and are funded by NASA’s Near Earth Observation Program, designed to take 4 exposures of 1,000 square degrees of the sky every hour during the night. Then, data on objects with unusual motions is sent to the Minor Planet Centre, where information like the orbit and size of the object is determined, to see if it is a threat [12]. Then, around 3 weeks prior to an impact, information can then be sent to people in the ‘at risk’ area, preventing injury, so events like that seen in Chelyabinsk, with injury from shattered glass, won’t be seen [13]. Then, in the extremely unlikely event that a very large asteroid is bound for Earth, there are various different options available to either deflect it or break it up. One such method, submitted to US Congress in 2007 and called the most effective method by NASA, would be to: launch a nuclear bomb into space, detonate it, and so deflect the asteroid away from the Earth. However nice that sounds, global nuclear fallout would be a slight issue, so a “kinetic impactor” has also been proposed, being a projectile (like a rocket) which would nudge the asteroid in the right direction (although key facts like the momentum, trajectory and composition of the asteroid must be known) [14]. One mission that will help our understanding of asteroids to better our chances of surviving an impact, and to get some cool science, is the recent OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer) mission, which, on 28th October this year, collected a sample of the asteroid Bennu (named after the Ancient Egyptian god of the Sun. Discovered in 1999, this asteroid is now classed as potentially hazardous (with an orbit getting close to the Earth -within 7.5 million km or 0.03x the distance from the Earth to the Sun- and a size of ~1500 sq. metres, or, as NASA put it, the size of a car park with 100 spaces), but also is rich in Platinum and Gold, along with possibly holding some secrets to the origins of life on Earth, since it has gone billions of years undisturbed. The samples (which were nearly lost to space [15]) are going to get back on 24th September 2023, shedding new light on these dangerous, yet useful and exciting objects [16] [17]. Sample Return Capsule before & after collection. Credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona University/Lockheed Martin Glittering Comet Dust While we’re waiting for the results of that mission, there are some meteors that you can observe yourself over the coming months. The peak of the Leonids has just passed us by, happening on 16-17th November (although you might still be able to see some), but the Geminids are on there way in mid December (13-14th December), caused by the dust left by the asteroid 3200 Phaethon, currently in the middle of Venus’ and Mercury’s orbits, and visible in the early hours heading through Virgo at an apparent magnitude of 16.11 (needs a good telescope). This is a pretty good shower too, with, at its peak, 120 meteors per hour [18]. 2012 Geminid Meteor Shower Composite Image. Credit: NASA/Marshall Space Flight Centre, CC BY-NC 2.0 By George Abraham, ADAS member #NEO #FireBall #MeteorShower #Asteroid #Meteor Click here for the previous news article Click here for the next news article Click here to find the current location of asteroid Bennu, and here for 3200 Phaethon (click here for a list of websites like JPL Small-Body Database Browser, to help with amateur astronomy) Click here for information on what the current sky is like, to see if you’ll have a chance to observe some NEOs (Near Earth Objects). Click here to see members’ pictures of NEOs (please send in your own pictures using the link at the bottom of the gallery page) if you want to appear in our member gallery, or send in your observers reports, which will appear on our news page). References "Timeline: Comet and asteroid impacts". New Scientist. Archived from the original on 21st November 2020. "Why is the sky blue?" MetOffice. Archived from the original on 21st November 2020. 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This Saturday on 21 Nov 2020 the virtual North West Astro Fest starts at 5pm. You can join in via Zoom using the link: https://zoom.us/j/92626916986?fbclid=IwAR0J9DFnfhpugtYU5VB0jevvMttKKUP-ZLzLRuKWapRc3LgZAFrpngquE1I#success or view via YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfj5H8zpWX1N8e6x-I3ss6A Hope to see you there! by Chris Suddick #NWAF

Is Anyone There? It’s always a thought in the back of everyone’s mind: Are We Alone? One of the ways that humanity has attempted to answer this question is by trying to tell them that we’re here. One inventive way we have done this is by sending a pictographic message, using not language, but the art of imagery (something which has been successful on our own planet, in the form of the spread of the Ancient Egyptian language around Europe, to morph into what we now know as Latin and Arabic alphabets [1]). It was in the form of a radio broadcast (the Arecibo Message) from the Arecibo Radio Telescope’s 305 metre antenna, in the north west of the US island, Puerto Rico, in the far east of the Caribbean Sea. This was the most powerful (‘equivalent to a 20 trillion watt omnidirectional broadcast’[2]) radio broadcast ever to be beamed deliberately into the voids of space. It was made up of 1679 bits (numbers -1s & 0s- of code) put into 73 lines (23 bits per line), making a graphic starting with the Arecibo telescope , before having a representation of the solar system, a figure of a human, some DNA and biochemicals of primitive life on Earth. At 10 bits/second, it took just under 3 minutes to transmit, but its message in our culture has stayed for 46 years (having been transmitted in 1974). [2] The Arecibo Message. Credit: Arne Nordmann, CC BY-SA 3.0 The Whole of Humanity in a Disc The Golden Record is, by far, the most impressive method yet to contact alien life. Two copies were made, with one put on Voyager 1 and the other on Voyager 2. It was a 12 inch (~30cm) phonographic record, made of copper, but gold plated, with an aluminium cover electroplated with uranium-238 [3]. This may all sound a bit crazy and over-the-top, but every part of the design had a purpose. The cover was engraved with lots of information on everything from how to play the disc, to where humanity are in the universe compared to everything else, using universal units like the time associated with a fundamental transition of an atom of hydrogen, and binary code. The radioactive cover may seem dangerous, but with a half life of 4.51 billion yeas, and a 2cm diameter on the cover, aliens could measure its diameter or radioactivity, and find how long it has been since the uranium was put on the cover [4]. Then, there’s the record itself, with 55 greetings in different languages, lots of music (from the Brandenburg Concerto to a Peruvian wedding song [6]), some earthly sounds (from a train to a volcano [7]), and 115 images in analog form (from X-ray scans of hands to the double helix of DNA [8]). This postcard from Earth is something that is certainly an amazing feat of design, but, apart from being a cultural icon, will it ever fall into the hand of aliens, and if so, will we, as a species, be gone by then [5]? The Golden Record (The Sound of Earth). Credit: NASA A Journey to the Edge The records themselves were on board two spacecraft, bound for the outer edges of the solar system, to also send back images never before taken. They set off in 1977, taking now iconic images like “The Pale Blue Dot”, images of much less pale blue Neptune, and the giant that is Saturn. Then, in 2004 (Voyager 1) and 2007 (Voyager 2), they crossed the shock; an area around the Sun where the solar wind abruptly slows down, welcoming the interstellar wind, heating up the spacecraft. Following this, 2013 (Voyager 1) and 2018 (Voyager 2) marked the entry into Interstellar Space; the place which marks the edge of the heliosphere (the reach of the Sun’s magnetic fields) [9]. Fast-forward to today, and Voyager 1 in 151.7AU (151.7x the average distance from the Earth to the Sun) from the Earth, and Voyager 2 is 125.9AU from Earth [10]. Then, from all that distance away, on 29th October, NASA contacted Voyager 2 for the first time since March (the longest it has been offline in over 30 years), from an antenna in Canberra, Australia (part of a network of antennas to contact satellites past the Moon, including ones in Madrid and California), after upgrades to the deep space network dish at the Canberra site [11]. Due to the distance, it took nearly 17.5 hours to contact the spacecraft, and another 17.5 hours to get a response (imagine trying to talk to a friend and it taking over day to hear a response to something you said!) [12]. It is amazing that such a far-flung object is still in contact with humanity, but such is human engineering that we can indeed do so, and will be able to for many years more. Model of Voyager Spacecraft. Credit: NASA Are You Receiving? As the aliens pick up on of the bright signals sent by Earth, there is still a barrier to interpreting what the alien reply will mean? How will they communicate? What will their linguistic code mean? Will we be able to communicate if there were an intelligence barrier between our two species? All questions which sadly cannot be easily answered, with our knowledge of life being focused on a grand total of 1 planet with life: Earth [13]. And then, there’s the question of whether they will even understand or see our signals in the first place. Indeed, Claudio Grimaldi, a French astronomer, published a paper on how it’s likely for an alien civilisation to be long gone. This is partly due to the fact that light has a speed (~300000 km/s), meaning that anything we look at, whether it be a star or an alien civilisation’s message, will be history (it takes 2 years for the light of our nearest star other than the Sun to get to us). It depends on how fast the civilisation can evolve and how long it lasts for as to whether we can see there signals, or if they can see our signals so they know where to direct their’s [14]. Then, if the unlikely event arises that an alien civilisation detects these signals, it could still take 100s or even 1,000s of years to have a conversation (with humans having only been around for ~3.2 million years [15]). However unlikely contact with another intelligent civilisation is in this truly massive universe, our human wonder for if anyone else is out there will still live on regardless, and maybe, one day, we will find intelligent life, but until then, I guess we’ll just have to watch E.T. and Doctor Who. The Arecibo Observatory. Credit: JidoBG, CC BY-SA 4.0 By George Abraham, ADAS member #Life #Voyager #AreciboMessage #GoldenRecord #SETI Click here for the previous news article Click here for the next news article Click here to see where Voyager 1 and 2 are at the moment. Click here to see a video putting the vastness of the universe into perspective. Click here for more on humanity's search for alien life. References "The Secret History of Writing: From Pictures to Words". BBC. Archived from the original on 14th November 2020. "Arecibo Message". SETI Institute. Archived from the original on 14th November 2020. "The Golden Record". JPL, NASA. Archived from the original on 14th November 2020. "The Golden Record Cover". JPL, NASA. Archived from the original on 14th November 2020. "What are the contents of the Golden Record?". JPL, NASA. Archived from the original on 14th November 2020. "Music from Earth". JPL, NASA. Archived from the original on 14th November 2020. "Sounds of Earth". JPL, NASA. Archived from the original on 14th November 2020. "Images on the Golden Record". JPL, NASA. Archived from the original on 14th November 2020. "NASA's Voyager Timeline". JPL, NASA. Archived from the original on 14th November 2020. "Mission Status". JPL, NASA. 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What is the Solar Cycle? This is where the sun changes from having virtually no sunspots to many, and back down again, taking a total of around 11 years to complete. However, this can range in both time (from 8 to 14 years) and peak activity. It consists of 2 solar minimums, with low numbers of sunspots and their location at ~30º latitude north and south, and 1 solar maximum, with higher numbers of sunspots and their location around the equator (0º) [1]. The 23rd Solar Cycle. Credit: NASA What are Sunspots? They can be seen as dark spots (made of a very dark “umbra” and a lighter “penumbra” around this) on the photosphere (the surface of the sun visible when using the correct filters, being a thin 100km thick compared with the Sun’s 700,000km radius [2]), at a cool 5,800 Kelvin (5526.85ºC), just cooler than the Earth’s outer core [3], having diameter of up to 50,000km (a Greece and a Fiji [4]). It indicates interactions from the Sun’s complex and little understood magnetic field, as well as solar flares (an explosion of radiation released from the surface of a sunspot, stored in ‘twisted’ magnetic fields [5]). [6] [7] Sunspots taken with taken by the Hinode's Solar Optical Telescope in 2006. Credit: NASA/JAXA Welcome to a New Age Various agencies have now confirmed that, in December 2019, the Sun reached solar minimum, bringing about a new solar cycle (the 25th to be reliably observed, counted since 1755 [12]), and is predicted to reach a maximum between November 2024 and March 2026 (looking likely to hit 115 sunspots at its peak by July 2025, with the highest activity seeing over 200 [8]) indicating the midpoint of the solar cycle [9]. So, from hereon-in, the Sun will emit more and more radiation and will become more and more exciting to observe, if you have the right equipment to do so. What does this solar cycle hold? Well, we can only speculate: it is widely thought that it will be similar to the previous, but it may be lower in activity than the last (with a general downward trend seen in the last 3 solar cycles), or higher, signalling the beginning of a new upwards trend in the peak number of sunspots (the measure of the Sun’s activity) [10] Butterfly Diagram of sunspots. Credit: David Hathaway, NASA, Marshall Space Flight Centre How does it Happen? The Sun has poles, like the Earth’s or a bar magnet’s, but with a key difference: these poles are generated inside a star, made of plasma. This makes a whole lot of difference when looking at its stability. The Earth’s poles have flipped 100 times in the past 20 million years (taking around 1,000 years to flip each time) [11]; relatively stable compared to the Sun, flipping every 11 years at solar maximum; the midpoint of the solar cycle, slowing activity down to a minimum (where we’re at now) before bringing in a new solar cycle [10]. These regular flips in the Sun’s magnetic field need to be understood by looking at how they’re generated. It’s thought that, deep inside the Sun, the electrically conducting plasma flows in such a way so as to create a ‘dynamo’ type effect, creating these magnetic fields. Indeed, when this flow weakens, the Sun’s overall magnetic field, and so its activity, weakens, creating a ‘Grand Minimum’, giving evidence for this theory of how the Sun’s magnetic fields are produced [13]. Then, during a flip, the Sun’s massive heliosphere (the spread of the Sun’s magnetic field, being billions of kilometres past Pluto; a dwarf planet 5.9 billion km from the Sun [14], and 10,000km thick) creates waves in the field (doing things such as deflecting cosmic rays) before then stabilising as it completes the process [15]. Heliosphere During a Flip. Credit: Werner Heil/NASA Why does this Matter? The most obvious way is with the aurorae, since they’re caused by charged particles emitted from the Sun interacting with the Earth’s magnetosphere (its version of the Sun’s heliosphere), some of which are captured at the poles and accelerated towards the atmosphere, interacting with it and producing the aurorae [16] (although there is new science all the time about this event, being one of the many topics in astronomy which we don’t yet have the whole story to). In general, they will now become more numerous and stronger, seen once or twice per month at this cycle’s maximum, but for now at least, once or twice a year (but this relatively boring time will soon be over!). Along with this, nature will feel hard hit, in ways you might not expect. Migrating birds are a common example of animals that use an ‘internal compass’ to navigate. However, increased solar activity (as seen at solar maximum) can interfere with the signal from the Earth’s magnetic field, leading to confusion, causing significant errors in direction [17]. There are, though, far more deadly outcomes of the solar cycle, which are to be seen in the coming years. As the Sun becomes more active, it gets more likely that large solar events such as solar flares or coronal mass ejections, also known as CMEs, (events which eject light, energy and matter into the surrounding environment) occur (although they can occur at any time) [18]. They can either interfere with satellite communications by blinding the signal produced by a satellite, with a much brighter signal from solar wind [19] or even power outages as power grids are disrupted by the interference [20]. That said, it’s unlikely for that to be powerful enough to affect us on Earth, but instead the damage is mainly probable to occur in space, where instruments aren’t protected by the Earth’s magnetic field, so need much less energised solar wind (the stuff that’s ejected from the Sun) to damage the equipment [21]. Coronal Mass Ejection. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory. Overall though, I feel this is a little bit of good news for this year, as we seek better chances of those hidden gems of aurorae further south and of capturing the Sun in its active glory (using the correct precautions of course) in the near future (something to look forward to!). by George Abraham, ADAS member #Sun #CME #Satellite #SolarMin #SolarCycle #Heliosphere #Plasma #MagneticField Click here for the previous news article Click here for the next news article Click here to see the current solar activity, to discover if you can catch a glimpse of the aurorae or sunspots on the sun (using the correct viewing equipment), along with other widgets to tell you everything from the cloud forecast to ISS flyovers. Click here for the ADAS guide to the cosmos, including information on the Sun References "Solar Cycle Primer". NASA. Archived from the original on 7th November 2020. "The Photosphere". NASA Marshall Space Flight Centre. Archived from original on the 7th November 2020. "Earth's Core 100 degrees hotter than expected". Live Science. Archived from the original on 7th November 2020. "Land Area (sq. km)". The World Bank. Archived from the original on 7th November 2020. "What are Solar Flares". ESA. Archived from the original on 7th November 2020. "What are Sunspots". Space.com. Archived from the original on 7th November 2020. "What are Sunspots". SpaceWeatherLive.com. Archived from the original on 7th November 2020. "The sun has begun a new solar weather cycle. It should be pretty quiet, scientists say.". Space.com. Archived from the original on 7th November 2020. "Solar Cycle 25 has begun, say Solar Astronomers". The Sky at Night Magazine. Archived from the original on 7th November 2020. "Solar Cycle 25: The Sun Wakes Up". ESA. Archived from the original on 7th November 2020. "Earth's Magnetic Poles could start to Flip. What Happens then?". Phys.org. Archived from the original on 7th November 2020. "Solar Cycle". ESA. 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Symbolic The Moon is something that has always been very symbolic to humans, being Earth’s only natural satellite and usually the brightest object in the night sky across the Earth. It has been engrained into human culture since the beginning, seen in Ancient Egypt generally on top of the god Khonsu (“traveller” or “pathfinder” in English) being a defender against demons, and by Bronze Age Celts as something to help souls navigate after the person has died. It has also been seen in numerous paintings, like Vincent Van Gogh’s “Stary Night” (1889) and Caspar David Fridrich’s “Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon” (1818), all showing the moon as something key to life, whether it be to meditate over or as “King of the Skies”. [1] Map of Moon overlaid with Knowth markings. Source: BBC News. Accessed 31/10/20 Ancient Evolution There are many theories for the formation of the Moon, but there are three that are the most accepted The first is the “capture” theory, whereby the Earth pulled in a passing body of rock, backed up by how Mars’ moons, Phobos and Deimos, were asteroids that were taken into Mars’ orbit; along with how the lunar rock collected by the Apollo missions, has shown that its composition is different to Earth’s. However, the Moon, unlike Phobos and Deimos, is spherical and orbits in the ecliptic (a plane in the solar system where most astronomical bodies in it can be found). This seems a bit strange to then assume that this is whole truth, so another theory exists that explains why the Moon is not like Phobos and Deimos, but more “planet” shaped and oriented. It is the “Co-formation” theory. This is where the Earth and Moon were formed at the same time, with the particles that make up the Moon and that of the Earth got gravitationally bound together at the same time. This can happen, and could be the case since the Moon has a similar composition to Earth, and it’s orbit is explained by this theory. However, it seems that this may also not be the whole story, since, if this were true, then the Moon would have a similar density to Earth, since its core would have the same heavy elements within it, but it doesn’t; it has a lower density than Earth. There is, however, one more widely accepted theory (bar the lunar cheese theory of course!) which could be the closest to the real answer. It is that of the “Giant Impact Hypothesis”. This has by-far the most exciting name, but an even more exciting explanation. It all starts with a Mars-sized body called “Theia”, which impacted Earth when it was only young, leading to Earth ejecting some of itself. Then, through gravitational attraction, the ejected parts of Earth and Theia came together into what we now call the Moon. This event was believed by NASA to be 100 million times larger than the asteroid impact that brought an end to the dinosaurs. However, the Apollo missions’ rock samples suggest that, again, this theory isn’t correct. This is because models show that 60% of the Moon’s rock should be made of Theia’s material, but this doesn’t seem to be the case. [2] What ever the answer, each of these theories are likely to play some part, but we may never know what actually happened, since we can only use what is in front of us right now. Artist concept of two objects colliding in HD172555 system, like Large Impact Hypothesis. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Explosive Past As well as in the possible events that happened in the Giant Impact Hypothesis, the Moon has had a few more violent episodes in its past, not least of which is its surprising volcanism. It may not have large volcanoes like Earth has, such as in Hawaii, but what it does have is basaltic (the type of runny lava found in shield volcanoes such as those in Iceland) lava fields, being visible from Earth, each with the name of a “Mare” or “Sea” from the Latin (since it was thought that they were great oceans of water). They are vast planes, 19 in all, and with the addition of formations such as rilles (looking like rivers or valleys, like Hadley Rille[3], on the centre of the visible side of the Moon, for example), shows that the Moon is indeed volcanic. However, they are slightly different to ones found on Earth. Lunar volcanoes are old compared to Earth’s; 3-4 billion years old in fact (being the typical age of a sample from a mare), compared to most of Earth’s positively spritely age of a few 100,000 years old. Also, it’s not got any recent volcanic evidence, unlike Earth, with volcanic activity happening all the time, and it has no plate tectonics (large fragments of crust that move across the molten rock mantle below) like Earth. Instead, it has near circular basins or mares, appearing where the crust is thinnest, being on the Moon’s near side (only less than 2% appear on the opposite thicker far side). Also, the lunar gravity of a 6th of Earth’s leads to runnier lava which spreads over a wider area (not in the cone shape which is seen on Earth, leading to the "mare" shape) [4]. Evidence of small basaltic eruption on Moon (irregular mare patch). Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University Mission to the Moon As commented previously, the various missions to the Moon brought not just the astronauts who went there back with them, but rocks too. Some of which have only recently been opened for scientific analysis, these rocks were sent back to Earth and analysed with X-rays for a cross-section of the rock, and mass spectrometry, allowing for molecules of rock to be identified, so as to find out, for instance, how similar the composition of lunar rocks are to those on our Earth [5]. The first lunar sample to be delivered back to Earth was in Apollo 11, with 22kg of rock from the Sea of Tranquility (Mare Tranquillitatis), leading to the discovery of lunar basalt of 3.6 billion years in age, revealing the Moon’s volcanic past. The lighter anorthosite rock (rich in calcium) was also found, being originally from the lunar highlands, backing up the Giant Impact Hypothesis since the early stage of the Moon explains this anomaly (as the various rocks coalesced into one body). Moreover, this particular sample included rocks known as “breccias”, which are fragments of rock which melted together because of the intense heat caused by meteorite impacts, showing that the lunar surface was heavily bombarded at some point in its history. Indeed, some say Apollo 11’s samples alone accounted for ~80% of our understanding of the Moon today [6]. In total, 382kg of samples have been brought to Earth by the Apollo missions [7], and many more was brought back by other missions such as the Soviet “Luna” missions. 5.5kg of lunar rock from Apollo 11 in Houston. Credit: NASA One small step for man… into an alien puddle? Well, not quite! On Monday, NASA announced the most recent bit of science found out about the Moon: it has water. Not as much as on Earth though. In fact, the Sahara desert contains 100x that which was discovered on the Moon. Using NASA’s/DLR’s (German Aerospace Centre) SOFIA (or Stratospheric Observatory of Infrared Astronomy), being “the world’s largest flying observatory” [8] evidence for water has been found on the Moon, in the Clavius Crater on the southern hemisphere’s Earth facing side. It had long been though that the Moon had no water because it would all evaporate off into space because of the Moon’s lack of a sufficient atmosphere in order to keep this water. The data from both SOFIA and the Apollo landings’ lunar samples has been used to reveal the possibility that micrometeorites delivered small amounts of this water to the surface, or that the solar winds from the Sun delivered hydrogen to minerals containing oxygen on the lunar surface, creating hydroxyl, before micrometeorites delivered radiation to transform this into water. This water could then either be trapped in beadlike structures within the lunar soil from the temperature of the micrometeorite impact, or in the grains of lunar soil, to shelter from the Sun (of which the Clavius Crater has in plentiful supply), which would evaporate it, then explaining why it's still here. This is exciting because of how NASA plans to head its Artemis program in the near future, bringing people to live on the Moon, needing to find resources to sustain life there, with one of the most important ones being water, needed not only for drinking, but for farming, for example, meaning human presence on the Moon can not only happen but can be sustainable. This is the first time SOFIA has ever observed the Moon [9], and the first time all these pieces of the “jigsaw” have been pieced together to make such a dramatic discovery. Hopefully, we will find even more deposits as years go by, and maybe even find enough to sustain astronauts on the lunar surface without needing water from Earth. Clavius Crater (south up). Credit: NASA By George Abraham, ADAS member #Moon #Artemis #Evolution #Water #Life #Clavius Click here for the previous news article Click here for the next news article Click here for the ADAS guide to the cosmos, including information on the Moon References "The Moon: One of the earliest human symbols". BBC Culture. Archived from the original on 31st October 2020. "How was the Moon Formed?" Space.com. Archived from the original on 31st October 2020. "Volcanism on the Moon: Sinuous Rilles". Oregon State University. Archived from the original on 31st October 2020. "Volcanism on the Moon". Oregon State University. Archived from the original on 31st October 2020. "Long-Sealed Moon Rocks Collected on the Apollo Mission Just Opened for the First Time". Live Science. 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A Permanent Presence As part of the Space Race, in 1971 the USSR started what has now progressed into a feat of scientific cooperation not seen on Earth. This was Salyut 1 (Салют-1 in Russian, meaning “Salute” or “Fireworks” [1]), made of 4 compartments (2 pressurised and 1 unpressurised), designed to for the first residents of outer space to reside, using the now famous Soyuz (Союз in Russian, meaning Union [2]) to go to and from the craft [3]. It was a snug home for the cosmonauts who ventured inside, but with all the amenities needed to survive, from a dining area to an exercise area, it was like an inescapable campervan for 3, but in space. However, there were also problems, like the risk of death from the sometimes toxic air or sudden depressurisation in the Soyuz, and the hatch to the Salyut not opening. In fact, even the orbit of the space craft could not be maintained long enough, with it being de-orbited just 2 years after being put in to space [4]! However, this was just the start of a long journey of exploration, human ingenuity and science when it comes to creating a population of humans not residing on this rock we have been on for millennia. A model of Soyuz docking Salyut 1. Credit: NASA/David S. F. Portree A Building in Space Mir (Мир in Russian meaning “world”, “peace” and “village”) [5] was the successor to the Salyut series of space stations, with the first module launched in 1986, staying up there for 15 years. It was modular in its makeup, not unlike the current ISS, apart from: its size, being 13.1 metres in length (a home not for the claustrophobic!) [6], its smell, being “a bit like an oily garage” (FOAL Michael, 2016), the disorganisation of it all, like “going into the oesophagus of someone’s throat” (FOAL Michael, 2016), and the sound, being of Russian disco music! So, maybe it was more like a home than you might expect! There was only one problem (apart from the smell, sight, and sound): the money. The Russian space agency, Roscosmos, was in disrepair after the fall of the USSR, and even with help from NASA, it was still a piece of old metal in space getting older by the day, and with technology improving so fast during that time, it was becoming far out-dated, leading, even to problems with the docking of its cargo ships, since they didn’t have enough money for automatic docking [7]. Mir as seen from Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1998. Credit: NASA Truly International The ISS (International Space Station) is a joint operation of 15 countries, started in 1998 and continuously occupied since late 2000. Like all space stations before it, it conducted, and is still conducting, countless scientific experiments to better our understanding of how things work in microgravity, from human bodies to espresso machines! However, it is much bigger, hosting not 13.1 metres of length like in Mir, but the size of a Boeing 747 (with the ISS being 109 metres long [10], ~8x longer than Mir) [8]. This venture will then aid us to make another step beyond our Earth’s orbit, to one around the Moon, to maybe even one around another planet, meaning we can then become a truly interplanetary species. ISS after the undocking of the STS-132. Credit: NASA/Crew of STS-132 Not of this Earth The most recent proposal of a home out of this world (literally) is Lunar Gateway. It will be the first station to orbit another body other than the Earth, and will be supported not only by other nations, but private companies as well. Part of NASA’s Artemis program, its aim is as the name suggests: a gateway for astronauts en route to the Moon, and even a place to train NASA astronauts for missions to Mars. However, all the design of this station could not have been carried out without the help of past space stations, and what problems they encountered. Along with NASA, the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), Japanese space agency (JAXA), and ESA, have been inputting into its development, with Roscosmos having expressed interest in the venture [9] All these space stations have been true stepping stones to a life not bolted to Earth but only bound by our technology and how long we can survive away from others. Maybe one day, we will even have one orbiting another planet. I suppose we shall just have to wait and see! Lunar Gateway Concept Art. Credit: NASA By George Abraham, ADAS member #Salyut #Soyuz #Mir #ISS #LunarGateway #NASA #ESA #JAXA #CSA #Roscosmos #Moon #Mars Click here for the previous news article Click here for the next news article Click here for NASA's 'Spot the Station' tool (along with many more useful tools, like observing weather and solar activity), so you can be in with the chance of seeing the most recent space station of them all: the ISS. References "Салют". OpenRussian.org. Archived from the original on 18th October 2020. "Союз". OpenRussian.org. Archived from the original on 18th October 2020. "Salyut 1: The First Space Station". Space.com. Archived from the original on 18th October 2020. "Salyut 1". AerospaceGuide.net. Archived from the original on 18th October 2020. "Mir Space Station". NASA. Archived from the original on 18th October 2020. "Mir Space Station: Testing Long-Term Stays in Space". Space.com. Archived from the original on 18th October 2020. "A Space Crash". BBC Witness History. Archived from the original on 18th October 2020. "International Space Station: Facts, History & Tracking". Space.com. Archived from the original on 18th October 2020. "Gateway". NASA. Archived from the original on 18th October 2020. "International Space Station". NASA. Archived from the original on 18th October 2020.

Humble Beginnings From the first satellite, Sputnik 1 [1] (from Спутник, once meaning ‘fellow traveller’, now meaning ‘satellite’), launched in 1957 by the Soviet Union [2], we as a species have continued to develop and innovate our technology to better suit our needs in every day life. Since then, many more have been launched, leading to 2,666 to be in orbit around Earth (as of 1st April 2020) [3], with many more having crashed into Earth or made into debris. Sputnik 1 Replica. Credit: NSSDC, NASA Littering… in Outer Space This debris has built up over the 63 years satellites have been launched into space. As of July 2009, there are ~19,000 of these measuring greater than 10cm [4]. This may not sound big, but when travelling at hypervelocity (4-5km/s [5]), they can really do some damage, leading to geostationary satellites (satellites over one location on Earth) using 5-10% of their total cost on design (to mitigate against damage from impact), tracking debris and replacing satellites if they get severely damaged. As this amount builds up and up, this could bring about the ‘Kessler syndrome’: a cascade of collisions, brining about more and more self-generating collisions, stopping some orbits from being used because of this [6]. This then makes it harder and harder for satellites to be launched and stay safe in orbit, for use in the longer term. Hypervelocity Impact. Credit ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO Calling from Afar However bad this has been for our planet, one thing is for sure: our lives wouldn’t be the same without them. From the TV and mobile phones, to GPS and weather monitoring, and even monitoring how the climate is changing over a long period of time [7], satellites have been invaluable to us, and many can’t imagine what life would be like without them. They make sure our lives are interconnected, even across great distances, whilst helping us stay safe, even keeping track of the most remote events, like that of the Nepal earthquake of 2015, letting aid arrive quickly, meaning less people die, even in countries that seem so isolated, like Nepal [8]. ‘Flarewell’ Iridium Communications (2018) [9] They may be fantastic things, but, as every protagonist in a good story does, they have one fatal flaw, specifically for us here on the ground: they reflect light. Indeed, they reflect light so much that, in recent years, people have come out in their droves to see the spectacle of satellite flares, like that of the iridium satellites (having recently been decommissioned to be replaced by less reflective satellites), which created bright flares in the sky from reflecting sunlight at the Earth [9]. However fun flares from satellites seem, one thing is for sure: they are the best photo-bombers when it comes to astrophotography and general astronomical observations. So, with the realisation of this flaw and its impacts on modern science, you would think people would realise it would be a bad idea to put too many more up, since the sky is bad as it is with all those satellites up there already. Comet Holmes and Iridium Flare. Credit: Brocken Inaglory, CC BY-SA 3.0 A Net Across the Sky The answer is, of course, no. This is due to the new Starlink satellites. Like the Iridium satellites, they are communications satellites in orbit around Earth, for fast communications around the world. However, they are slightly different, in the way that they are more compact, provide internet access across Earth, and there are a lot more of them. In fact, there are over 626 more satellites orbiting (the most recent ones deployed on 6th October 2020 [14]) at present [10] [11]. I think anyone hearing that will think that it has got to have some impact on the sky, and it does. It creates a “train” of satellites in the sky, visible with the naked eye [12]. Starlink are going to change this though, with less reflective coatings on the satellites, making them half as bright, but this isn’t going to stop the disruption to the professional observer or scientist looking for a good shot [12], now even striking fear into radio astronomers, with “satellite transmissions leading to a 70% loss in sensitivity in the downlink band” [13] They are, however, going to provide an important service, providing Internet to those with none, or with a bad connection, helping increase development and quality of life, but at what cost to our view of the night sky? [13] Starlink Satellites across Blanco 4-metre Telescope. Credit: NSF/CTIO/AURA/DELVE, CC BY 4.0 Outer Space: A Global Commons The UN classifies outer space as a global commons [14], but for how long will we all be able to use it freely, before it is blocked off for those who wish to see it? This exponential growth in satellites may free the world up to us on Earth, but at what cost to that basic human right of the night sky? By George Abraham, ADAS member #Sputnik #Satellite #Starlink #Iridium #Flarewell Click here for the previous news article Click here for the next news article Click here for a great video by Richard Bullock showing a timelapse of the Starlink constellation. References "What is a Satellite?" NASA. Archived from the original on 11th October 2020. "Sputnik 1". NASA. Archived from the original on 11th October 2020. "How many Satellites Orbit Earth". Geospatial World. Archived from the original on 11th October 2020. "Space Debris". Earth Observatory. Archived from the original on 11th October 2020. "What are Hypervelocity Impacts?" ESA. Archived from the original on 11th October 2020. "What are Satellites Used For?" UCS. Archived from the original on 11th October 2020. "The Cost of Space Debris". ESA. Archived from the original on 11th October 2020. "Nepal Earthquake: Hundreds Die, Many Feared Trapped". BBC News. Archived from original on 11th October 2020. "Join Us to Say #flarewell to Iridium Flares". Iridium. Archived from the original on 11th October 2020. "Starlink". Starlink. Archived from the original on 11th October 2020. "How a New Satellite Constellation Could Allow Us to Track Planes All Over the Globe". The Verge. Archived from the original on 11th October 2020. "Starlink Already Threatens Optical Astronomy. Now, Radio Astronomers are Worried". Science Magazine. Archived from the original on 11th October 2020. "How to See a 'Starlink Train' from you Home this Week as SpaceX Satellites Swarm the Night Sky". Forbes. Archived from the original on 11th October 2020. "SpaceX's Darker Starlink Satellites are still Ruining Astronomers' Research". Futurism. Archived from the original on 11th October 2020. "How Africa can Tap into SpaceX's Starlink Satellites". IT Web. Archived from the Original on 11th October 2020.

We once thought that we were the centre of everything, as shown by Aristotle and Ptolemy, with their geocentric view of the universe. This then eventually developed into Alan Guth's view of an expanding universe, with the knowledge that neither we, nor even the Sun, are in the centre of the universe. Instead, we are getting further away from everything, seen by Hubble's observations of the redshift of the universe [1]. This notion that we aren't the centre of everything has led to a question of "Are we alone?". It has been widely explored in culture, from the martians in 'War of the Worlds', to E.T in 'E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial'. Our views of these illusive creatures have been both hostile and kind, yet we still have the urge to find out if they exist and where they live. Indeed, in a YouGov survey in 2015, when asked if they believe if there is extra-terrestrial intelligent life, 52% of the 1751 people surveyed said yes [2], showing just how embedded into our culture this hope for other life is. Martians vs. Thunder Child by Henrique Alvim Corrêa Little Green Men With missions like the Mars Viking Lander, and projects like SETI (the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence), we have been scouring the universe to try and find life, or habitable conditions, on other planets and around other stars. 120 years ago, some believed that there was that intelligent life did exist on other worlds, and not only that but on our neighbour, Mars. Observations of the intricate canal system that laced the entirety of Mars to supposedly irrigate the crops on the drying world with water from the frozen ice caps [3]. Some years later, it was deemed from observations from the 1976 Viking Lander Mission that this view was far from the truth, with life looking unlikely in today's world. However saddening this was, we still had some hope, with searches continuing, like famous discoveries such as LGM-1 (Little Green Man). Jocelyn Bell and her team of scientist at Cambridge University discovered a strange radio signal which was a regular pattern of pulses of radio waves directed at them. They thought that it was possibly aliens, before realising the staggering reality that it was the first detection of a pulsar: a dense ball of spinning gas, with jets of gamma rays (high frequency light) streaming from its poles, being what was picked up by the radio telescope (they were radio waves because of the red shift of the waves from high frequency gamma to low frequency radio) [4]. First radio signal of Pulsar, examined by Jocelyn Bell. Credit: Billthom, CC BY-SA 4.0 'Like a Candy Store for Microbes' WAIT Hunter (2008) [13] The solar system, and indeed the universe, appeared to be empty of life apart from us, until we searched on not just planets, but moons: moons like Europa, orbiting Jupiter. This unlikely place was one identified by the Galileo spacecraft as having a salty liquid water ocean locked under the surface, which could harbour life. [5] Water, being a key component in the search for life, has lead to many more places being identified as possible alien habitats, like Enceladus, orbiting Saturn. This moon was seen by the Cassini spacecraft, which flew through the plumes of vapour spewing from the alien surface. All key components for life were found, from hydrogen to carbon compounds [6]. The only thing is, it's a very long way away! False colour Cassini image of jets in the southern hemisphere of Enceladus. Credit: NASA 'Is There Intelligent Life on Earth?' SAGAN C. (1994) Pale Blue Dot. New York: Random House Looking further still, the SETI Institute is an organisation aimed at finding out: what life is, how does life begin, and if we are alone. They use many tools to fulfil their aims, one of which is the Drake Equation [7]. Formulated by Frank Drake, the equation outlines the parameters that need to be known to find out how many civilisations there are in the Milky Way, who's electromagnetic (light) emissions are detectable. (the equation itself can be found on SETI's website) [8]. The Drake Equation has led to many research projects, from searching for radio signals from other worlds, to searching on Mars to see if life existed or exists still today [8]. Allen Telescope Array, North East of San Francisco in California, USA. Credit: Colby Gutierrez-Kraybill, CC BY 3.0 'Aerial Life' [14] On 14th September, the world found out about our most recent, most surprising and most definite detection yet of alien life. Unlike finding other worlds that look habitable, but are very far away or desolate today, we have found our neighbour, Venus, to possibly support life in the modern day. Observations, using the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii and ALMA (Atacama Large Millimiter/submillimeter Array) in Chile, have been directed at a little researched gas called phosphine. It is a gas that smells like rotting fish, being given off by sewage and swamps, to name a few sources. It is poisonous to us oxygen breathers, but to the anaerobic (who breathe without oxygen), it is nothing of the sort. What is interesting is that it can easily be destroyed by sunlight and sulphuric acid (both in abundance on Venus), so it must have been recently produced. The only thing is, there is a reason why scientists have not ventured to look for life there in recent years. This is because of the truly inhospitable conditions, from 90x the atmospheric pressure of Earth, to the sulphuric acid in abundance, with 75-95% of Venus' clouds being this, and 95% of the atmosphere comprised of carbon dioxide, along with a surface temperature at an uncomfortable 400ºC. However, the theory behind such a discovery as this is that, many years ago, life did exist on the surface of Venus, when the climate was more similar to ours. This life then died out, leaving behind microbial life 50km up in the atmosphere, which live in a ~20ºC climate with surface pressures like Earth, but still with the sulphuric acid and carbon dioxide abundant atmosphere. It may sound like a far cry from what life on Earth needs, but it still sounds pretty promising. Scientists have tested to see if volcanoes, lightning or chemical reactions in the atmosphere could do the same thing, and they've not found anything yet, leading us to the conclusion that maybe there is life there. The question is, how is it adapted to not get burnt up and dissolved in the atmosphere? [9] [10] [11] [12] Venus imaged by NASA's Mariner 10 Spacecraft. Credit: NASA We may never know whether or not there is life somewhere else, but I think that throughout history we have seen examples of our human-centric views being incorrect, with the Earth being at the centre of everything being a key example of that. I feel that this view of Venus not being hospitable may be yet another thing that we see ourselves as the "centre" of, but I'm sure other life in the universe, in the past, present and future, were, are and will think the same. by George Abraham, ADAS member #SETI #Venus #Alien #Life #Mars #Drake Click here for the previous news article Click here for the next news article References "Cosmological Theories through History". Physics of the Universe. Archived from original 19th September 2020. "YouGov Survey Results". YouGov. Archived from original 19th September 2020. "Tracing the Canals of Mars". Space.com. Archived from original 19th September 2020. "Little Green Men?". Space.com. Archived from original 19th September 2020. "Extraterrestrial Life" ESA. Archived from original 19th September 2020. "Small Saturn moon has most of conditions needed to sustain life" Guardian. Archived from original 19th September 2020. "Mission" SETI Institute. Archived from the original 19th September 2020. "Drake Equation" SETI Institute. Archived from the original 19th September 2020. "Is there life floating in the clouds of Venus?" BBC News. Archived from the original 17th September 2020. "'Phosphine gas found in Venus’ atmosphere may be ‘a possible sign of life'". Science News. Archived from the original 20th September 2020. "Life on Venus". BBC The Sky at Night. Archived from the original 20th September 2020 (the programme is only available to watch in the UK on the BBC website) "Possible sign of life on Venus stirs up heated debate". National Geographic. Archived from the original 20th September 2020. "Saturn's moon Enceladus has all the ingredients needed for alien life". Wired. Archived from the original 25th September 2020. "Extra-Terrestrial “Aerial” Life on Venus?". SciTech Daily. Archived from the original 17th September 2020

From the latest missions from ESA and NASA to the modern technology of nuclear fusion, plasma has been and will be an important feature in the news. Plasma is a phase of matter like solid, liquid or gas [1]. It is where a gas is positively ionised (where there are more protons, or positively charged particles, than electrons, or negatively charged particles) with free electrons (not bound to atoms) around the positive ions, resulting in a charge of around ±0 (neutral). This is found at low pressures (in the upper atmosphere) and at high temperatures (in stars) [2]. 'Unlimited Energy' [3] Nuclear fusion is a new technology, created in many ways, namely in thermonuclear fusion. One of the ways to harness power from nuclear fusion is through using a TOKAMAK (from the Russian acronym 'ТОКАМАК' standing for Тороидальная Камера с Магнитными Катушками' or 'Toroidal Chamber with Magnetic Coils') [3]. There are ~50 of these in operation [4], which work by putting hydrogen gas under extreme heat and pressure, before an electric current is put through the gas and it turns into plasma. The plasma is then heated to 150 to 300 million ºC, where the electromagnetic force (which helps keep the various sub-atomic particles stay in their place) is overcome and the sub-atomic particles collide and fuse (hence 'nuclear fusion'), releasing a lot of energy in the process [3]. DIII-D Tokamak Fusion Chamber. Credit: Rswilcox, CC BY-SA 4.0 'More Plasma = More Acceleration' [5] Plasma is also used in CERN, (the European Organisation for Nuclear Research). In 2016, CERN began the project called AWAKE (Advanced WAKEfield Experiment), which aims to accelerate electrons to bring them quickly to high speeds over short distances (10 metres) with little energy being used. It does this by firing a laser pulse at rubidium gas, causing it to ionise, turning it into plasma. This creates a wakefield (an area of strong potential gradient) making it possible to accelerate the electrons at high speeds. It is hoped that the distance that this is possible to do will be increased to be longer than the 10 metres it is currently effective at [5]. CERN's AWAKE Project. Credit: Maximilien Brice, CC BY 4.0 'First-ever Mission to "touch" the Sun' [6] The Parker Solar Probe, launched by NASA in 2018, will get to 4 million miles (~6.4 million kilometres) from the surface of the Sun. This mission will observe the solar wind (a form of plasma), to find out what accelerates it from subsonic to supersonic. It will also help in forecasting space weather (changed by solar wind, among other things), which can alter orbits of satellites and even shorten a satellite's lifespan. This means that, in the future, we can take steps to protect against satellites being damaged [6]. Artist Impression of the Parker Solar Probe. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben 'Most complex scientific laboratory ever to have been sent to the Sun' [7] ESA's Solar Orbiter is going to as close as 42 million kilometres (~26 million miles) from the Sun's surface. The probe will answer many so far unanswered questions about the Sun, including "What drives generation of the Solar Wind?". The Sun's behaviour has puzzled scientists for many years, but soon, with help from Solar Orbiter, we will be able to make more accurate predictions of solar wind to again help protect satellites from damage, whilst expanding our knowledge of the Sun, and creating new questions to answer [7]. Part of Solar Orbiter being built in Stevenage, UK. Credit: O. Usher (UCL MAPS), CC BY 2.0 'Compact, Electrodeless and Low Voltage Design' [8] Recently, ESA has announced that they, along with SEND and the Universidad Carlos III's Plasma & Space Propulsion Team (EP2-UC3M) in Spain, have developed a new design for a propulsion engine, using electric propulsion to bring extra energy into the thrust reaction, making it more energy efficient to use thrusters on small satellites with this type of thruster. This means satellites need to use less weight and space for fuel, and so can use more for new scientific instruments, whilst having fuel that will last much longer, so satellites can be operational for longer. It has resulted in the new Helicon Plasma Thruster for use in the EU funded HIPATIA project (find out more here). [8] [9] Thruster During Test Firing (NASA's version). Credit: NASA Plasma has been used over many years to light up neon shop signs, but it is now being used in cutting edge science to further our understanding of the world and to meet our growing demands as we look for alternative energy to traditional, but harmful, fossil fuels. by George Abraham, ADAS member #Plasma #Sun #HIPATIA #SolarWind #Satellite #CERN #TOKAMAK #ESA #NASA #SEND #Energy Click here for the next news article References Goldston, R.J.; Rutherford, P.H. (1995). Introduction to Plasma Physics. Taylor & Francis. p. 1−2.ISBN978-0-7503-0183-1. "How Lightning Works". HowStuffWorks. April 2000. Archived from the original on 7th April 2014. "Tokamak". Iter. Archived from the original on 13th August 2020. "All-the-World's Tokamaks". All-the-World's Tokamkas. Archived from the original on 4th June 2020. "AWAKE: More plasma = more acceleration". CERN. Archived from the original on 13th September 2020. "Parker Solar Probe". NASA. Archived from the original on 13th September 2020. "Solar Orbiter". ESA. Archived from the original on 4th September 2020. "Plasma Propulsion for Small Satellites". ESA. Archived from the original on 13th September 2020. "HIPATIA". HIPATIA. Archived from the original on 13th September 2020.

ADAS are proud to organise the showing of the recently released Apollo 11 documentary with scenes restored form the original clips taken during the 1969 event. This film is still not on general release in the UK yet. The film is being shown as part of the Sale Arts festival at Sale Waterside. Tickets are now on sale but there is a limit of 80 seats available so get your tickets soon. Tickets can be purchased from the Festival website here: https://watersidearts.org/whats-on/2615-sale-festival-apollo-11-2019-film-astronomy-event [this link doesn't exist today]. by Rodger King #Apollo #WatersideArts #Film