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Earthsky
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Image Credit: Earthsky
Retrograde motion for Mars starts today
- Mars will begin its retrograde motion on December 7, 2024, a trick of perspective that creates an illusion of backward motion in front of the stars, lasting for some months.
- As Earth moves between the sun and Mars, the planets seem to reverse course in our sky.
- Retrograde motion for Mars will continue through mid-February 2025.
- The red planet will first reach a stationary point at 21 UTC on December 7, 2024, pausing briefly in front of the stars before moving westward.
- Early astronomers used to believe that planets, including Mars, orbited the Earth and spun around it in an epicycle, justifying their retrograde movement.
- Planets and moons can have true backward motion amongst themselves, with Venus and Triton, Neptune's largest moon, rotating in retrograde directions.
- The one word "retrograde" is used to signify either an illusion of backward motion or the actual backward rotation or orbit of a planet or moon.
- Modern astronomers believe that a true retrograde orbit for an orbiting moon might stem from a capture after colliding with a body or encountering another planet or star too closely.
- Astronomers discovered exoplanets that have retrograde orbits, puzzling scientists because planets usually form out of orbiting disks that share the star’s rotation.
- Close encounters can disrupt the orbits of planets and set them on a backward path.
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Livescience
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Image Credit: Livescience
Destroyed observatory helped SETI unlock the secrets of 'cosmic lighthouses' powered by dead stars
- Using data from the now-destroyed Arecibo radio telescope, scientists from the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute have unlocked the secrets of signals from "cosmic lighthouses" powered by dead stars.
- The team studied how the signals from pulsars are distorted as they travel through space and found patterns in the signals, showing how they are impacted by the interstellar medium.
- The research revealed that the bandwidths of pulsar signals were wider than current models of the universe suggest, indicating the need to revise models of the interstellar medium.
- Understanding pulsar signals is crucial for detecting gravitational waves, and the findings can enhance projects like NANOGrav's detection of the gravitational wave background.
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Knowridge
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Image Credit: Knowridge
Scientists use Hubble to get closest look yet at a quasar’s heart
- Astronomers have used NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to take the closest-ever look at the heart of a quasar—a dazzling galactic center powered by a supermassive black hole.
- The observations revealed strange structures around the quasar, including a mysterious L-shaped filament and several blob-like objects of varying sizes within 16,000 light-years of the black hole.
- Some of the blobs could be small satellite galaxies orbiting the black hole, fueling its brilliant glow.
- The study of quasars like this provides insights into the universe's history, galaxy formation, and the power of black holes.
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Digitaltrends
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Image Credit: Digitaltrends
Jupiter will be at its biggest and brightest this weekend. Here’s how to see it
- Jupiter will be at its biggest and brightest this weekend, providing a great opportunity for sky watchers.
- Jupiter will be in opposition on Saturday, December 7th, making it directly opposite from the sun as seen from Earth.
- Jupiter will be at its closest to Earth on Friday, December 6th, resulting in its relative closeness and increased size in the sky.
- It is possible to view Jupiter with the naked eye, but using binoculars or a telescope allows for a better view, and even a chance to see some of Jupiter's larger moons.
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Knowridge
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Image Credit: Knowridge
Advanced civilizations could be indistinguishable from nature
- The Fermi Paradox, the contradiction between what seems to be a high probability of extraterrestrial life and the total lack of evidence that it exists, has been examined from different angles.
- Researcher Lukáš Likavčan has re-examined the assumptions underpinning the paradox, arguing that the sustainability solution offers direct implications for how we can think about viable inhabitation of the earth.
- The sustainability solution states that we don’t see any evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence because rapid growth is not a sustainable development pattern
- Likavčan elaborates on the solution by re-thinking three underlying concepts: technospheres, planetary history, and sustainability.
- Haqq-Misra and Baum’s sustainability solution posits that exponential growth is not sustainable, which means that no civilisation will ever use all available energy from its planet, star, or galaxy.
- The “grass of the Universe” metaphor recognises the potential existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, which could potentially unfold throughout the cosmos in many permutations, conditioned by the setting of given star system and the inhabited exoplanet(s).
- A technosphere is only sustainable when it expands or strengthens a planet’s genesity.
- From that perspective, the only successful technosphere is one that folds back into the biosphere, making it very difficult, even impossible, to detect.
- It’s important to sometimes examine our underlying assumptions in order to further our understanding of the universe and our place within it.
- We need to rethink our assumptions about our planetary history and have more understanding into planetary histories to ascertain what parts of ours might be more generic and what parts do not reflect other planets with biospheres at all.
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Knowridge
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Image Credit: Knowridge
NASA pushes human moon landing back to 2027
- The Artemis moon landings are delayed again due to technical difficulties.
- NASA administrator Bill Nelson announced that the new landing dates are in April of 2026 for Artemis II and sometime in 2027 for the first human landing during the Artemis III mission.
- The difficulties the Artemis program faces stem from the complexity of the hardware and trajectories needed to take astronauts to the Moon according to Nelson.
- The decision to delay the Artemis II test flight came after an investigation into issues with the Orion spacecraft's heat shield.
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Astronomynow
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Brilliant Jupiter rides high in Taurus
- Jupiter will reach its long-awaited opposition on 7 December and lie in Taurus with a declination of just over 22 degrees.
- Jupiter offers an oblate disc some 48.1 arc seconds across, very impressive and larger than any other planet.
- Grab a pair of binoculars and Jupiter will show a small, perceptible disc, which spans a very impressive 48.1 arc seconds.
- Jupiter’s Great Red Spot (GRS) is its most famous feature, which is a long-lived storm found in the planet’s South Tropical Zone (STrZ) for possibly 350 years, but it’s shrinking.
- Turn a telescope on Jupiter and be able to enjoy some of the exciting and fascinating moon events that happen every day.
- The moon's orbit planes coincide with the plane of Jupiter’s equator, thus they can always be found within a narrow band east or west of Jupiter.
- Jupiter's speedy rotation period of under 10 hours means virtually the whole of Jupiter’s observable surface is available to observe on a single night this month.
- The Great Red Spot should be close to Io on 10 December in the late evening, 3 nights following opposition.
- Jupiter’s next opposition is on 10 January 2026 in Gemini, equally favourable.
- Observers will able to scrutinize Jupiter's dynamic cloud-tops; it will remain above 30 degrees in elevation between 5.30pm to 2.30am.
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Nasa
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Image Credit: Nasa
Sols 4384-4385: Leaving the Bishop Quad
- As the Curiosity rover climbs west toward the broad saddle separating Gediz Vallis from its neighboring canyon on the slopes of Mount Sharp, the rover is also approaching the edge of its current geological quadrangle or “quad” map on Mars.
- The current quad, designated “Bishop,” has meant that all of the targets studied by Curiosity since August 2023 have been named after places of geological interest near Bishop, California, on Earth.
- The team has taken great pleasure in visiting some of Curiosity’s target namesakes during the past year during their off hours, practicing geology while enjoying lovely mountains, lakes, and deserts.
- The translation is that all six of Curiosity’s wheels are firmly seated on solid ground, ensuring that the rover will not “pop a wheelie” when the heavy robotic arm reaches out to take close-ups of the nearby rock formations.
- The plan’s science emphasis is on fractures and light-colored veins in the rocks, indicating that cracks in the rocks experienced groundwater intrusion at some point in the distant past.
- Following that science block, Curiosity will drive 43 meters (about 141 feet) toward the west, ending with a MARDI image in addition to the usual post-drive image panoramas.
- On sol 4384, ChemCam and Navcam will be used together to obtain AEGIS observations of nearby bedrock.
- Atmospheric observations of dust opacity, clouds, and dust devils will complete the science for this plan.
- The next plan will see Curiosity drive uphill to the west and away from our beloved Bishop quad.
- Curiosity’s drive on Monday completed successfully.
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Universe Today
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Image Credit: Universe Today
Other Liquids Could Be Forming Minerals on Mars
- A team of researchers suggest that liquid carbon dioxide (CO2) could have formed minerals on Mars, in addition to water.
- Observations of minerals on the Martian surface suggest the presence of liquid water, but the researchers propose that liquid CO2 could have played a role.
- They explain that carbon sequestration processes, which liquefy CO2 on Earth and bury it underground, could have caused liquid CO2 to form and alter mineral composition on Mars.
- Further testing under more realistic Martian conditions is needed to confirm these findings.
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Universe Today
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Image Credit: Universe Today
Jared Isaacman is Trump’s Choice for NASA Administrator
- Jared Isaacman, a billionaire entrepreneur and experienced jet pilot, has been chosen as the new NASA Administrator by President-elect Donald Trump.
- Isaacman is known for commanding the first all civilian spaceflight, Inspiration 4, and initiating the Polaris Program for private space exploration.
- He replaces the outgoing Administrator Bill Nelson and is experienced in commanding a space mission, making him the first person with such expertise to lead NASA.
- Isaacman aims to drive public-private collaboration, global partnerships, and technological development as NASA advances the Artemis mission and prepares for Moon landings.
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Nasa
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Image Credit: Nasa
NASA Awards Operations, Services, Maintenance, and Infrastructure Contract
- NASA has awarded Nova Space Solutions, LLC with a contract to provide operations, services, maintenance, and infrastructure support for NASA's Stennis Space Center and Michoud Assembly Facility.
- The contract is valued at approximately $822.7 million and will be effective from July 1, 2025, for a period of eight years and three months.
- Nova Space Solutions will be responsible for contract management, logistics, safety, engineering and manufacturing support services, site services, facility operations and maintenance services, and environmental services and program management.
- NASA's Stennis Space Center is the largest propulsion test site in the nation, and the Michoud Assembly Facility is the premier site for manufacturing and assembly of large-scale space structures and systems.
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Universe Today
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Image Credit: Universe Today
NASA Pushes Human Moon Landing Back to 2027
- The Artemis program faces another delay due to technical difficulties, this time involving the Orion spacecraft heat shield.
- NASA administrator Bill Nelson announced new landing dates in April 2026 for Artemis II and sometime in 2027 for the first human landing during the Artemis III mission.
- The mission has made a lot of progress but there’s more work to be done on the Orion life support systems, according to Nelson.
- A test flight without landing is proposed for April 2026, to demonstrate the viability of all the systems.
- The Orion spacecraft is built to carry four astronauts from Earth to space and ultimately to the Moon. It has to be shielded from anything that space and Earth’s atmosphere throw at the capsule.
- When Orion first encountered the heat shield problem, gases generated inside the heat shield didn’t vent properly, causing cracks and triggering an investigation.
- Improvements can be made to the capsule, launch systems, environmental and life support systems during the delay until mid-2027 Artemis missions.
- Artemis III will be the first time anyone has set foot on the Moon since December 1972, and part of the Artemis program to provide long-term habitation and study of Earth’s nearest space neighbor.
- NASA aims to have an orbiting lunar station, habitats on the surface, and regular trips between in due course.
- Lunar explorers will spend time studying the surface, geology of the Moon and what resources are available for long-term exploration.
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Nasa
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Image Credit: Nasa
NASA JPL Unveils the Dr. Edward Stone Exploration Trail
- NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), located in Southern California, has unveiled a memorial for Ed Stone, project scientist of the agency's Voyager mission who was serving as director of JPL. The Dr. Edward Stone Exploration Trail is a series of plaques that tells the story of Stone's career as a space explorer and of the Voyager probes' journey. Voyager 1 and 2 have traveled over 15.4 billion and 12.9 billion miles, respectively, and the plaques trace their trajectories to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and beyond, as well as career highlights of Stone's. Simple line drawings and the Golden Record aboard the spacecraft are evoked in the design.
- 24 disc-shaped plaques along the Dr. Edward Stone Exploration Trail tell of Stone's work creating the WM Keck Observatory in 1985 and his appointment as JPL's director in 1991. Stone died in June 2024 aged 88 after leading the Voyager mission for half a century and leading JPL for 10 years. After retiring from the mission, Stone returned to teaching and research at Caltech, which manages JPL for NASA.
- Kaelyn Richards, who designed disc-shaped plaques in kind reference to the Golden Record aboard the Voyager spacecraft said, 'Everyone seemed to agree that Voyager was Ed Stone. Yes, he did so much more, but this was really his biggest legacy. So we’re honoring both the mission and the person alongside each other. And they both, in a poetic way have had very long, incredible lives.'
- Outside of the JPL headquarters, The Dr. Edward Stone Exploration Trail starts with a plaque that reads 'In honor of our friend Ed Stone: We continue to push the boundaries of exploration into the unknown, because of the mentorship and inspiration you shared with your colleagues and generations yet to come'; at the end, there is a plaque that bears the simple inscription: 'Ed Stone’s leadership and pursuit of scientific knowledge expanded humanity’s understanding of the universe. His legacy lives on through the Voyager mission, and the countless people he has inspired.'
- The 24 discs embedded in the pavement parallel to the JPL's new memorial are meant to trace the roughly approximate trajectory of each of the Voyager probes recording the spacecraft's movements to Jupiter, Saturn and beyond as well as on Earth
- Jupiter's magnetosphere, Saturn's rings, the heliosheath and the heliopause boundary to interstellar space and more that Voyager has explored are all included in these embedded plaques that are proportional distances to the center of the trail where the Dr. Edward Stone Exploration Trail is displayed.
- The Edward Stone Middle School was named after him in his hometown. 'Ed Stone's leadership and pursuit of scientific knowledge expanded humanity's understanding of the universe. His legacy lives on through the Voyager mission and the countless people he has inspired,' reads the plaque placed at the school.
- Stone was to JPL what Voyager was to Stone, the agency said: his biggest legacy.
- Stone joined the Caltech faculty as an assistant professor in 1967 and made enormous contributions to physics and astronomy, other than his work on the Voyager mission. He went on to serve as Caltech's Vice President for Astronomical Facilities and/or Chancellor from 1988 to 1990, and Vice Provost for Special Projects from 2004 to 2022.
- The Voyager probes, which Stone led for 50 years, are still out there exploring beyond our solar system to Timbuktu and beyond.
- Through Voyager, he allowed human-kind to leave our solar system and to move to the infinite void beyond our home-star, leaving behind the memory of humanities greatest achievements for someone, somewhere, to discover.
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Nasa
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Image Credit: Nasa
NASA’s IXPE Details Shapes of Structures at Newly Discovered Black Hole
- NASA’s IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) has helped astronomers better understand the shapes of structures essential to a black hole – specifically, the disk of material swirling around it, and the shifting plasma region called the corona.
- The stellar-mass black hole, part of the binary system Swift J1727.8-1613, was discovered in the summer of 2023 during an unusual brightening event that briefly caused it to outshine nearly all other X-ray sources.
- IXPE, which has helped NASA and researchers study all these phenomena, specializes in X-ray polarization, the characteristic of light that helps map the shape and structure of such ultra-powerful energy sources, illuminating their inner workings even when they’re too distant for us to see directly.
- The team further monitored how polarization values changed during Swift J1727’s peak outburst. Those conclusions matched findings simultaneously obtained during studies of other energy bands of electromagnetic radiation.
- The results represent a significant step forward in our understanding of the changing shapes and structures of accretion disk, corona, and related structures at black holes in general.
- IXPE is a joint NASA and Italian Space Agency mission with partners and science collaborators in 12 countries. IXPE is led by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
- The study demonstrates IXPE’s value as a tool for determining how different elements of the system are connected, as well as its potential to collaborate with other observatories to monitor sudden, dramatic changes in the cosmos.
- Swift J1727 briefly remained brighter than the Crab Nebula, the standard X-ray “candle” used to provide a baseline for units of X-ray brightness. Such outbursts are not unusual among binary star systems, but rarely do they occur so brightly and so close to home – just 8,800 light years from Earth.
- X-ray binary systems typically include two close-proximity stars at different stages of their lifecycle. When the elder star runs out of fuel, it explodes in a supernova, leaving behind a neutron star, white dwarf, or black hole.
- Michal Dovčiak, co-author of the series of papers and leader of the IXPE working group on stellar-mass black holes, said, “Further observations of matter near black holes in binary systems are needed, but the successful first observing campaign of Swift J1727.8–1613 in different states is the best start of a new chapter we could imagine.”
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