One Of The Challenges In Studying Tornadoes Is Being In The Right Place At The Right Time. In That Regard,

M64, The Black Eye Galaxy

Earthrise, Apollo Moon Landing 

Saturn’s rings and our planet Earth and Moon in the same frame captured by nasa’s Cassini spacecraft 19 July. (source @nasa) *Out Pale Blue Dot*

Two Weeks in the Life of a Sunspot

On July 5, 2017, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory watched AR26665, an active region – an area of intense and complex magnetic fields – rotate into view on the sun. The satellite continued to track the region as it grew and eventually rotated across the sun and out of view on July 17.

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What is a protostar?

The formation of stars begins with the collapse and fragmentation of molecular clouds into very dense clumps.  These clumps initially contain ~0.01 solar masses of material, but increase in mass as surrounding material is accumulated through accretion.  The temperature of the material also increases while the area over which it is spread decreases as gravitational contraction continues, forming a more stellar-like object in the process.  During this time, and up until hydrogen burning begins and it joins the main sequence, the object is known as a protostar.

This stage of stellar evolution may last for between 100,000 and 10 million years depending on the size of the star being formed. If the final result is a protostar with more than 0.08 solar masses, it will go on to begin hydrogen burning and will join the main sequence as a normal star.  For protostars with masses less than this, temperatures are not sufficient for hydrogen burning to begin and they become brown dwarf stars.

Protostars are enshrouded in gas and dust and are not detectable at visible wavelengths.  To study this very early stage of stellar evolution, astronomers must use infrared or microwave wavelengths.

Protostars are also known as Young Stellar Objects (YSOs).

Comet C/2014 Q2 Lovejoy

by Joseph Brimacombe

Two Steps Forward in the Search for Life on Mars

We haven’t found aliens but we are a little further along in our search for life on Mars thanks to two recent discoveries from our Curiosity Rover.

We detected organic molecules at the harsh surface of Mars! And what’s important about this is we now have a lot more certainty that there’s organic molecules preserved at the surface of Mars. We didn’t know that before.

One of the discoveries is we found organic molecules just beneath the surface of Mars in 3 billion-year-old sedimentary rocks.

Second, we’ve found seasonal variations in methane levels in the atmosphere over 3 Mars years (nearly 6 Earth years). These two discoveries increase the chances that the record of habitability and potential life has been preserved on the Red Planet despite extremely harsh conditions on the surface.

Both discoveries were made by our chem lab that rides aboard the Curiosity rover on Mars.

Here’s an image from when we installed the SAM lab on the rover. SAM stands for “Sample Analysis at Mars” and SAM did two things on Mars for this discovery.

One - it tested Martian rocks. After the arm selects a sample of pulverized rock, it heats up that sample and sends that gas into the chamber, where the electron stream breaks up the chemicals so they can be analyzed.

What SAM found are fragments of large organic molecules preserved in ancient rocks which we think come from the bottom of an ancient Martian lake. These organic molecules are made up of carbon and hydrogen, and can include other elements like nitrogen and oxygen. That’s a possible indicator of ancient life…although non-biological processes can make organic molecules, too.

The other action SAM did was ‘sniff’ the air.

When it did that, it detected methane in the air. And for the first time, we saw a repeatable pattern of methane in the Martian atmosphere. The methane peaked in the warm, summer months, and then dropped in the cooler, winter months.

On Earth, 90 percent of methane is produced by biology, so we have to consider the possibility that Martian methane could be produced by life under the surface. But it also could be produced by non-biological sources. Right now, we don’t know, so we need to keep studying the Mars!

One of our upcoming Martian missions is the InSight lander. InSight, short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, is a Mars lander designed to give the Red Planet its first thorough checkup since it formed 4.5 billion years ago. It is the first outer space robotic explorer to study in-depth the “inner space” of Mars: its crust, mantle, and core.

Finding methane in the atmosphere and ancient carbon preserved on the surface gives scientists confidence that our Mars 2020 rover and ESA’s (European Space Agency’s) ExoMars rover will find even more organics, both on the surface and in the shallow subsurface.

Read the full release on today’s announcement HERE. 

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