APOD: Clouds of the Large Magellanic Cloud (2019 May 03)

APOD: Clouds of the Large Magellanic Cloud (2019 May 03)
Image Credit & Copyright: Team Ciel Austral - J.C. Canonne,
N. Outters, P. Bernhard, D. Chaplain, L. Bourgon
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap190503.html

Explanation: The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is an alluring sight in southern skies. But this deep and detailed telescopic view, over 10 months in the making, goes beyond what is visible to most circumnavigators of planet Earth. Spanning over 5 degrees or 10 full moons, the 4x4 panel mosaic was constructed from 3900 frames with a total of 1,060 hours of exposure time in both broadband and narrowband filters. The narrowband filters are designed to transmit only light emitted by sulfur, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms. Ionized by energetic starlight, the atoms emit their characteristic light as electrons are recaptured and the atoms transition to a lower energy state. As a result, in this image the LMC seems covered with its own clouds of ionized gas surrounding its massive, young stars. Sculpted by the strong stellar winds and ultraviolet radiation, the glowing clouds, dominated by emission from hydrogen, are known as H II (ionized hydrogen) regions. Itself composed of many overlapping H II regions, the Tarantula Nebula is the large star forming region at the left. The largest satellite of our Milky Way Galaxy, the LMC is about 15,000 light-years across and lies a mere 160,000 light-years away toward the constellation Dorado.
http://www.cielaustral.com

Take a Spin With NASA Cutting-edge Mars Landing Technology

Reprint from http://www.nasa.gov
NASA's Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) project will be flying a rocket-powered, saucer-shaped test vehicle into near-space from the Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai, Hawaii, in June.

The public is invited to tune in to an hour-long live, interactive video broadcast from the gallery above a clean room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, where this near-space experimental test vehicle is being prepared for shipment to Hawaii. During the broadcast, the 15-foot-wide, 7,000-pound vehicle is expected to be undergoing a "spin-table" test. The event will be streamed live on www.ustream.tv/NASAJPL2 on March 31, from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. PDT. JPL's Gay Hill will host the program while LDSD team members will answer questions submitted to the Ustream chat box or via Twitter using the #AskNASA hashtag.

The LDSD crosscutting demonstration mission will test breakthrough technologies that will enable large payloads to be safely landed on the surface of Mars, or other planetary bodies with atmospheres, including Earth. The technologies will not only enable landing of larger payloads on Mars, but also allow access to much more of the planet's surface by enabling landings at higher-altitude sites.

More information about the LDSD space technology demonstration mission is online at:
/mission_pages/tdm/ldsd

The LDSD mission is part of NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate, which is innovating, developing, testing and flying hardware for use in future missions. NASA's technology investments provide cutting-edge solutions for our nation's future. For more information about the directorate, visit:

/spacetech

The Rosetta Mission

Reprint:
Ian O'Neill
Discovery News
Through some kind of interaction in the comet's environment, 67P's weak magnetic field seems to be oscillating at low frequencies (ESA/Rosetta/NavCam)

Through some kind of interaction in the comet's environment, 67P's weak magnetic field seems to be oscillating at low frequencies (ESA/Rosetta/NavCam)
Related Stories

Rough touchdown forecast for historic comet landing, Science Online, 12 Nov 2014
Rosetta has (almost) landed, Science Online, 07 Aug 2014
First hurdles cleared for historic comet landing (ABC News 12/11/2014)

The Rosetta mission has detected a mysterious signal coming from Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

The mission has five instruments in the Rosetta Plasma Consortium (RPC) that measure the plasma environment surrounding the comet.

Plasma is a charged gas and the RPC is tasked with understanding variations in the comet's activity, how 67P's jets of vapour and dust interacts with the solar wind and the dynamic structure of the comet's nucleus and coma.

But when recording signals in the 40-50 millihertz frequency range, the RPC scientists stumbled on a surprise — the comet was singing, they report.

Through some kind of interaction in the comet's environment, 67P's weak magnetic field seems to be oscillating at low frequencies. In an effort to better understand this unique 'song', mission scientists have increased the frequency 10,000 times to make it audible to the human ear.

First detected in August as Rosetta approached the comet from 100 kilometres, this magnetic oscillation has continued.

Rosetta scientists speculate that the oscillations may be driven by the ionisation of neutral particles from the comet's jets.

As they are released into space, they collide with high-energy particles from interplanetary space and become ionised. Because it is electrically charged, the plasma then interacts with the cometary magnetic field, causing oscillations. But to draw any conclusions about this, further work is needed.

Source:
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2014/11/12/4126840.htm

Six-tailed comet

MSNBC reported that" The Hubble Space Telescope has spotted one of the weirdest objects ever seen in the asteroid belt: a chunk of rock that's spinning around like an out-of-control lawn sprinkler, spraying out up to six comet-like tails of dust. If you would like to read more, click the link below:


http://www.nbcnews.com/science/six-tailed-comet-or-self-destructing-asteroid-its-comsteroid-8C11551565