Month: December 2020

• 

This evening, on 21 December 2020, you may be able to catch a phenomena not seen since 4 March 1226, which occurred roughly ~800 years ago. As viewed from the Earth, it will appear as these two planets, Jupiter and Saturn will ‘merge’ into one, which could be a fantastic sight for astrophotographers! The featured image was today’s Google Search Picture of the Day, and here at iPLEX, this is a reminder to go outside, observe, and be aware of the world around you, also to keep a focus for ongoing news and studies done in the science of the Solar System, and Exoplanets! Below, is a guide to help you find and observe Jupiter and Saturn in the night sky!

‘Great Conjunction’ 2020: NASA tips to see Jupiter and Saturn shine as a ‘Christmas Star’

Jupiter and Saturn will align in the night sky on Dec. 21 in an event astronomers call the “great conjunction” — also referred to as the “Christmas Star” — marking the planets’ closest encounter in nearly 400 years.

When Saturn and Jupiter converge on Dec. 21, the two planets may appear as a bright point of light that will be easily visible in the night sky. The two planets have slowly been moving closer to each other over the past few weeks.

A conjunction occurs when planets appear incredibly close to one another in the sky because they line up with Earth in their respective orbits. 

“You can imagine the solar system to be a racetrack, with each of the planets as a runner in their own lane and the Earth toward the center of the stadium,” Henry Throop, an astronomer in NASA’s Planetary Science Division, said in a NASA statement. “From our vantage point, we’ll be able to see Jupiter on the inside lane, approaching Saturn all month and finally overtaking it on December 21.”

Related: Get ready for the ‘Great Conjunction’ of Jupiter and Saturn

A rare alignment

While Saturn and Jupiter’s orbits bring the planets into alignment once every 20 years or so, this year marks the first time since 1623 that the two gas giants have passed this close to one another. 

This year’s great conjunction also marks the first time in nearly 800 years since the planets aligned at night and skywatchers were able to witness the event. (The 1623 conjunction wasn’t visible to skywatchers on much of the Earth because of its location in the night sky, so the last time the event was visible was in 1226.) 

The planets will be closest to each other in the sky on Dec. 21, appearing only a tenth of a degree apart. They will remain in close alignment for a few days and will be easily visible to the naked eye when looking toward the southwest just after sunset. While the two planets may be viewed as one point of light, they will remain hundreds of millions of miles apart in space, according to the statement from NASA.

Coincidently, this year’s great conjunction also falls on the first day of winter in the Northern Hemisphere. As a result, some have referred to the planetary alignment as forming a “Christmas star,” in reference to the Star of Bethlehem, given the event falls only a few days before Christmas. 

“Conjunctions like this could happen on any day of the year, depending on where the planets are in their orbits,” Throop said in the statement. “The date of the conjunction is determined by the positions of Jupiter, Saturn and the Earth in their paths around the sun, while the date of the solstice is determined by the tilt of Earth’s axis. 

The solstice is the longest night of the year, so this rare coincidence will give people a great chance to go outside and see the solar system.”

How to see it

To view the astronomical event, skywatchers should point their gaze toward an unobstructed part of the southwestern sky, about an hour after sunset since the planets will set below the horizon quickly. 

Leading up to the Dec. 21 conjunction, Saturn will appear slightly above and to the left of Jupiter. Then, the planets will reverse positions in the sky, NASA officials said in the statement. 

Jupiter and Saturn are bright, so they can be seen in areas with clear skies and no cloud cover — and even from most cities. This also means that the event can be seen with the naked eye. However, binoculars or a small telescope may allow viewers to see Jupiter’s four large moons, according to the statement. 

Follow Samantha Mathewson @Sam_Ashley13. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. 

Story credit: Samantha Mathewson

Reprinted from: https://www.space.com/great-conjunction-jupiter-saturn-christmas-star-2020-nasa-tips

In China’s latest endeavour to explore to the Moon, our closest neighbour in space, the next successor (and fifth in a series of many successful Chang’e missions), Chang’e-5 has just recently touched down on the Moon to collect what is believed to be the youngest Lunar samples. Landing on the surface of another planetary body in the Solar System is no easy feat! The lander completed a maneuver to be placed at Oceanus Procellarum with the samples expected to arrive back at the Earth in ~2 weeks time.

Story Reprinted below from SpaceNews by Andrew Jones — December 1, 2020

• 

HELSINKI — China’s Chang’e-5 has successfully landed on the moon in a major step towards obtaining the youngest lunar samples so far collected and delivering them to Earth.

The Chang’e-5 lander initiated a powered descent at 9:58 a.m. Eastern and successfully completed its soft landing near Mons Rümker in Oceanus Procellarum (“Ocean of Storms”) 10:11 a.m. Eastern.

The lander will within a few hours begin collecting samples by drilling up to two meters into the lunar regolith, with a scoop to later take material from the surface. Liftoff of a small spacecraft atop the lander will take place in around 48 hours.

A waiting lunar orbiter will collect the samples from the ascent vehicle and deliver them to Earth around December 16.

The mission is the first lunar sample return attempt since the end of the U.S. Apollo and Soviet Luna missions in the 1970s. It is hoped the radiometric dating of samples brought to Earth will confirm the age of rock units theorized geologically youthful. 

A relative lack of crater impacts observed in parts of this western edge of the moon suggest that it contains basaltic rocks created by late-stage volcanism which could be billions of years younger than those collected from Apollo and Soviet Luna landing sites.

Here's a gif of the Chang'e-5 descent and landing while we wait for the full video footage. There's a hover phase in there, but altitude is impossible to discern. pic.twitter.com/3QFitC0vcC

— Andrew Jones (@AJ_FI) December 1, 2020

“With the new age data, we can calibrate the crater counting method, being more precise for young events,” Dr. Lin Yangting, at the Institute of Geology and Geophysics in Beijing under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told SpaceNews. Additionally, scientists will conduct compositional, mineralogical and radioisotope analysis to ascertain “the nature of the young basalt and its mantle reservoir, in order to understand why the basalt erupted so [much] later.”

Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA associate administrator for science, tweeted his congratulations shortly after landing and expressed hopes that the samples could advance the international science community.

The four-module Chang’e-5 spacecraft launched on a Long March 5 rocket Nov. 23. It then embarked on a 112-hour to the moon and entered lunar orbit Nov. 28 before the spacecraft separated in preparation for the landing attempt. 

The lander is carrying science, imaging and sampling equipment along with the small ascent vehicle designed to lift samples back into lunar orbit. An orbiting service module remains in a lunar orbit ready to receive the samples, a process requiring an exacting and time-critical automated rendezvous and docking with the ascent vehicle.

Tuesday’s lunar landing is China’s third, following the Chang’e-3 and Chang’e-4 missions which touched down in 2013 and 2019 respectively. Chang’e-4 also made the first ever landing on the lunar far side with the aid of a relay satellite positioned beyond the moon.

• 

Chang’e-5: Next steps

Now on the surface, the Chang’e-5 lander has 48 hours to carry out its science and sampling activities and prepare the ascent vehicle for liftoff. 20 hours are set aside for collecting around two kilograms of lunar materials. These will consist of 0.5 kilogram samples from drilling and 1.5 kilograms scooped from the surface and placed in a container aboard the ascent vehicle.

Then follows perhaps the most challenging stages of the complex Chang’e-5 mission. The  roughly 500-kilogram ascent vehicle will launch from atop the lander into a 15 by 185-kilometer orbit to meet up with the waiting service module, which is meanwhile performing phasing burns in lunar orbit. Around two days after ascent vehicle liftoff the two spacecraft will have a 3.5-hour window during which they must perform rendezvous and docking. 

China has conducted rendezvous and docking operations, both automated and manually, in low Earth orbit using Shenzhou crewed spacecraft, Tiangong space labs and Tianzhou cargo vessels. This operation will however be taking place nearly 400,000 kilometers from Earth, bringing not insignificant light-time delay. It would also be the first ever robotic docking operation in lunar orbit. 

• 

After a successful docking the sample canister will be transferred from ascent vehicle to the reentry module attached to the service module. The ascent vehicle will then be jettisoned. The service module will spend 6-7 days in lunar orbit awaiting the optimal Earth return trajectory window for a reentry and landing at Siziwang Banner, Inner Mongolia 112 hours later.

The reentry vehicle will separate from the service module around 5,000 kilometers from Earth. A skip reentry, involving bouncing off the atmosphere—a maneuver tested by the Chang’e-5 T1 mission in 2014—to deal with the high-velocity return from the moon will follow. ESA tracking stations will support this critical phase as the spacecraft attempts reentry. 

Samples will then be transferred to specially constructed facilities in Beijing and Hunan for handling, analyzing and storing the lunar material. 

Fundamental questions

Bradley Jolliff, professor of Earth and planetary sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, says that remote sensing evidence for unusual concentrations of thorium, uranium, and potassium in the landing area pose interesting questions pertinent to Chang’e-5. “These are radiogenic heat-producing elements and may help us to understand why volcanism was so prolonged and extensive in the western Oceanus Procellarum region.”  

Additionally there is the possibility of the presence of “silicic volcanics” from the Mairan Domes in the collected material, which would provide added insight into potentially the complex lunar geology of the region.

Katherine Joy, a Reader in Earth Sciences at the University of Manchester, says the additional Chang’e-5 lander radar and imaging spectrometer instrument payloads will provide vital geological context for the returned samples. These will help “reveal the sub-surface nature of the landing site, for example, revealing the thickness of underlying soil and lava flows, and also the compositional diversity of the area.” 

These will “help [us] understand if the samples returned to Earth are representative of the area in which they were collected.” 

Joy and Jolliff state that development of robotic sample return technologies will assist in exploration of the moon, both as a step to crewed missions and providing ability to visit scientifically interesting areas which will not be targeted by human missions.

• 

Backup mission, future goals

Chang’e-6 is a sample return spacecraft engineered at the same time as Chang’e-5 to provide a backup in the event of failure. Success of Chang’e-5 would however see Chang’e-6 repurposed for a landing at the lunar south pole around 2023.

China has stated it will then proceed into an extended phase of lunar exploration involving Chang’e-7 and further lunar landing missions. The aim will be to establish an ‘international lunar research station’ in the mid-to-late 2020s as a precursor to crewed landings.

Sample return technology and experience developed through Chang’e-5 is also to be utilized for planned near Earth asteroid and Mars sample return missions later in the decade. The complexity of the Chang’e-5 mission profile is considered by observers to be related to future crewed lunar landing ambitions.

“The Chinese space agency has demonstrated its capabilities several times now, and they have stayed on schedule with their ambitious plans for the past decade. They will probably do likewise with their manned exploration. I think we should cooperate in terms of the science. It’s a great way to do diplomacy,” says Jolliff.

—

Edited at 1:58 p.m. Eastern with landing time and tweet from NASA official

Very sad news comes to us today from Puerto Rico, with the Arecibo Observatory (a radio telescope used for decades pioneering advances in planetary and stellar astronomy) meeting its end after the 900 ton instrument platform collapsed this morning. While the telescope itself survived many natural disasters such as Earthquakes and hurricanes, the loss of support cables led to its decommissioning in November as it was unsafe for workers to fix. As of 07:55 local time, the demise of the telescope became well known and widespread with reports of loud noises and fear for locals in the vicinity. The loss of this telescope greatly impacts planetary astronomy and our knowledge of asteroids and comets in the Solar System, and beyond.

NEWLY RELEASED VIDEO FOOTAGE OF THE MOMENT THE COLLAPSE HAPPENS, INCLUDING DRONE FOOTAGE SHOWING THE COLLAPSE FROM ANOTHER ANGLE:

This story has been re-printed from BBC News below:

• 

A huge radio telescope in Puerto Rico has collapsed after decades of astronomical discoveries.

The US National Science Foundation (NSF) said the telescope’s 900-ton instrument platform fell onto a reflector dish some 450ft (137m) below.

It came just weeks after officials announced that the telescope would be dismantled amid safety fears, following damage to its support system.

The Arecibo Observatory telescope was one of the largest in the world.

It was a key scientific resource for radio astronomers for 57 years, and was also made famous as the backdrop for a scene in the James Bond film GoldenEye and other Hollywood movies.

The NSF said there had been no reports of injuries following the collapse.

What happened to the telescope?

The NSF said the telescope collapsed at about 07:55 local time (11:55 GMT) on Tuesday, “resulting in damage to the dish and surrounding facilities”.

The telescope consisted of a 1,000ft-wide radio dish with an instrument platform hanging 450ft above. The platform was suspended by cables connected to three towers.

The NSF said an investigation into the platform’s fall was ongoing.

“Initial findings indicate that the top section of all three of the… telescope’s support towers broke off. As the 900-ton instrument platform fell, the telescope’s support cables also dropped,” it said in a statement.

“Preliminary assessments indicate the observatory’s learning centre sustained significant damage from falling cables,” it added.

Two cables had broken since August, damaging the structure and forcing officials to close the observatory.

A review last month found that the telescope was at risk of catastrophic collapse and said the huge structure could not be repaired without posing a potentially deadly risk to construction workers.

Officials said the structure would be dismantled.

Following the announcement, three members of Congress, including Puerto Rico’s representative Jenniffer González, requested funds “to enable the NSF to continue exploring options to safely stabilise the structure”.

• 

Jonathan Friedman, who worked for 26 years as a senior research associate at the observatory and still lives near it, told the Associated Press news agency of the moment the telescope collapsed on Tuesday.

“It sounded like a rumble. I knew exactly what it was,” he said. “I was screaming. Personally, I was out of control… I don’t have words to express it. It’s a very deep, terrible feeling.”

The NSF said it was “saddened” by the collapse and would be “looking for ways to assist the scientific community and maintain our strong relationship with the people of Puerto Rico”.

“Top priorities are maintaining safety at the site, conducting a complete damage assessment as quickly as possible, and taking action to contain and mitigate any environmental damage caused by the structure or its materials.

“While the telescope was a key part of the facility, the observatory has other scientific and educational infrastructure that NSF will work with stakeholders to bring back online,” the agency said.

What is the history of the telescope?

By Paul Rincon, Science editor, BBC News website

The telescope was built in the early 1960s, with the intention of studying the ionised upper part of Earth’s atmosphere, the ionosphere. But it was soon being used as an all-purpose radio observatory.

Radio astronomy is a field within the larger discipline that observes objects in the Universe by studying them at radio frequencies. A number of cosmic phenomena such as pulsars – magnetised, rotating stars – show emission at radio wavelengths.

The observatory provided the first solid evidence for a type of object known as a neutron star. It was also used to identify the first example of a binary pulsar (two magnetised neutron stars orbiting around a common centre of mass), which earned its discoverers the Nobel Prize in Physics.

The telescope helped to make the first definitive detection of exoplanets, planetary bodies orbiting other stars, in 1992.

It has also been used to listen for signals from intelligent life elsewhere in the cosmos and to track near-Earth asteroids.

Over the years, the main dish appeared as a location in movies, including GoldenEye, Pierce Brosnan’s first outing as James Bond in 1995, and the 1997 science fiction drama Contact, starring Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey.

Full Original Article: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55147973