Rare black moon Wednesday offers exceptional skygazing chance - CNET

A perigree full moon, or supermoon, is seen Sunday, August 10, 2014, in Washington. A supermoon occurs when the moon's orbit is closest (perigee) to Earth at the same time it's full.

NASA/Bill Ingalls

An unusual type of supermoon is set to take the stage this week. It's called a "black supermoon," and what makes it unlike other so-called supermoons is that it's basically invisible. 

The term "black moon" is an old nickname given to the second new moon in a given calendar month. If you remember your moon phases, you know a new moon occurs when the sun's light falls on the far side of the moon we don't see. It's essentially the opposite of a full moon.

The western hemisphere is getting a second new moon Wednesday, July 31 just before the calendar flips to August.

Making the celestial happening all the more intriguing is that this black moon comes when the moon is near its closest point to our planet along its orbit of Earth (the orbit is not a perfect circle). This is called perigee syzygy or more commonly, a supermoon. 

We normally talk about supermoons when they happen along with the full moon, which can make for a lunar spectacle that appears a little larger in the sky than normal. To actually see this black supermoon, however, would require special equipment and significant skywatching experience, but it does offer remarkably dark skies to see other things.

Now playing: Watch this: Our future on the moon: What will the moon look like...

8:35

That's particularly convenient, as two meteor showers are currently still near their peaks this week. 

So take advantage of those black skies and the black moon to see if you can catch a shooting star or 2 or 10, just watch out for fireballs raining meteorites. 

Originally published July 30. 

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2019-07-31 17:55:00Z
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NASA agrees to work with SpaceX on orbital refueling technology - Ars Technica

Enlarge / NASA concept for an in-space propellant depot.

NASA

On Tuesday afternoon, NASA announced 19 new partnerships with 10 U.S. companies to help bring more cutting edge technologies closer to production use in spaceflight. There were a lot of useful engineering ideas here, such as precision landing systems and robotic plant farms, but perhaps the most intriguing one involved the rocket company SpaceX and two of NASA's field centers—the Glenn Research Center in Ohio and the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.

"SpaceX will work with Glenn and Marshall to advance technology needed to transfer propellant in orbit, an important step in the development of the company’s Starship space vehicle," the NASA news release states. This is a significant announcement for reasons both technical and political.

For its part, SpaceX welcomed the opportunity to help advance NASA's Artemis Program, which NASA hopes will send humans to the Moon by 2024 (and, later on, to Mars). “We believe SpaceX’s fleet of advanced rockets and spacecraft, including Falcon Heavy and Starship, are integral to accelerating NASA’s lunar and Mars plans," a company spokesperson told Ars.

Technical

One of SpaceX's principal engineers behind the Starship project, Paul Wooster, has identified orbital refueling as one most difficult technology challenges the company will have to overcome in order to realize its Mars ambitions.

Under some scenarios by which the company aims to send humans to Mars, a Super Heavy rocket would launch a Mars-bound Starship to low-Earth orbit. At that point, the spacecraft would need to top its fuel tanks back up in order to get its payload all the way to the red planet. It's estimated that five Starship launches' worth of fuel (as payload) would be required to refuel a single Mars-bound Starship in low-Earth orbit, and this would involve the transfer of hundreds of tons of methane and liquid oxygen.

Such refueling technology would also be useful for others besides NASA. "I’ve got a stack of studies that go from the floor to the ceiling that list the critical technologies needed for humans to become long-term explorers in deep space, and in-space refueling is always on the list," said Bobby Braun, a former chief technologist at NASA who is now Dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. "It's the key for sustainability."

The new partnership recognizes SpaceX's maturity as a leading space transportation company, Braun said. And Glenn and Marshall are the right centers for SpaceX to partner with, even if there simultaneously exists a strong rivalry between SpaceX's low-cost rockets and Marshall's lead development of NASA's Space Launch System rocket.

• In-space refueling of Starship is a significant challenge for SpaceX.

  SpaceX

• How does one safely transfer cryo-propellants in space?

  SpaceX

• SpaceX has to develop the technology to produce propellant on the surface of Mars, and refuel rockets there.

  SpaceX

• And then launch them back to Earth, of course.

  SpaceX

NASA has previously done considerable work studying the handling, transfer of, and storage of rocket fuels such as liquid oxygen, hydrogen, and methane in space—they are difficult to work with, and susceptible to boil off in the space environment (hydrogen atoms can even migrate directly through metal fuel tanks). Under the new Space Act Agreement, NASA's Space Technology program will fund the time the agency's people spend working on these problems, and any agency test facilities used. In effect, teams from the company and agency will work together to solve the problem, each paying for its own part of the effort.

"The civil servants at Marshall and at Glenn are very talented in this area," Braun said. "The people at SpaceX clearly know their system, both the capabilities and the needs of the Starship architecture. The fact that they’re all going to get together in the same room, and work on the same problem, that’s tremendous."

Political

Braun served as chief technologist in 2010, back when the Obama administration created NASA's Space Technology program to foster just this kind of innovation in America's private space industry. It was a contentious time in space policy, as the White House was pushing for more funding for new space companies—and new space ideas such as fuel-storage depots—while Congress wanted to keep NASA in the rocket-building business.

Eventually, Congress got the upper hand, putting NASA on track to build the large SLS rocket at a development cost of more than $2 billion a year. The rocket program mostly benefited the Alabama space center, and was championed by Alabama state senator Richard Shelby. The potential of in-space fuel storage and transfer threatened the SLS rocket because it would allow NASA to do some exploration missions with smaller and cheaper rockets. As one source explained at the time, "Senator Shelby called NASA and said if he hears one more word about propellant depots he’s going to cancel the Space Technology program."

The line from other NASA officials was that as a technology, propellant depots were not ready for prime time. In 2011, former NASA administrator Mike Griffin and the current executive secretary of the National Space Council Scott Pace—both SLS advocates—wrote a withering criticism of the technology for Space News.

"Fuel depots as an element of a near-term space architecture are an example of magical thinking at its best, a wasteful distraction supported by the kinds of poorly vetted assumptions that can cause a concept to appear deceptively attractive," Griffin and Pace wrote. Ironically, their chosen heavy lift rocket for use in NASA's "near-term" architecture, the SLS rocket, remains badly behind schedule and over budget. It is unlikely to fly meaningful exploration missions for at least three or four more years and is holding up the Trump administration's Artemis plan.

Some engineers at NASA still wanted to solve the fuel storage and transfer issue in 2011, and put together a $400 million depot development plan. This would have included an in-space demonstration of the technology. They argued that both orbital refueling and large rockets were vital for a sustainable exploration plan. However, Congress never adequately funded the effort, and it fizzled into a series of lesser ground tests.

A consultant to NASA at the time, Charles Miller, was among those performing studies to show that the use of propellant depots could significantly lower exploration costs for NASA. On Tuesday, he praised the Trump administration and NASA chief Jim Bridenstine for putting the Space Technology program to good use.

"Administrator Bridenstine is clearly executing on President’s Trump’s guidance to increase commercial public-private-partnerships at NASA," Miller, now chief executive of UbiquitiLink, told Ars. "The game-changing technology that NASA has discovered is capitalism. This program proves NASA leadership has figured out the future is reusability mixed with commercial public-private-partnerships."

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2019-07-31 11:55:00Z
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This Bizarre Ancient Sea Monster Looked Like the Millennium Falcon - Live Science

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This Bizarre Ancient Sea Monster Looked Like the Millennium Falcon  Live Science

A long time ago, in a galaxy not at all far away, a carnivore with an uncanny resemblance to the Millennium Falcon from "Star Wars" scuttled through the seas.

https://www.livescience.com/66067-millennium-falcon-cambrian-predator.html

2019-07-31 11:21:00Z
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Roy Exum: Tonight! The Black Moon - The Chattanoogan

As a rule I am leery of any hocus-pocus that comes my way. When I was a teenager some of my crowd would go down to the Chickamauga National Battlefield to taunt a ghost known as “Green Eyes” and I would never go. I knew I’d be a lot better off not “stirring up any haints” and, while I’ll probably never know if that is true, I can say with certainty staying on my side of any ghosts has served me well. I won’t dare wake up a sleeping dog on purpose either. I knew a boy who got ‘good and bit’ one time when he was such a fool and I do have an aversion to dog bites.

By the time I got to be a senior in high school some long-legged girl told me “Green Eyes” was just a silly girl’s way of getting a boy off into the darkness to kiss. I didn’t bat an eye admitting I ain’t a good kisser when I’m scared and left it be. Yet I’ve always had a “weather eye” and I wouldn’t be right if I didn’t share that this is the night of The Black Moon.

* * *

FROM TIMEANDDATE.COM: “Some years have 13 Full Moons, which makes at least one of them a Blue Moon, as it doesn't quite fit in with the traditional Full Moon naming system. However, this is not the only definition of a Blue Moon … (PAY ATTENTION) … About every 19 years, there is no Full Moon in February. This is one of several definitions of the term Black Moon. The other definitions refer to a New Moon which does not fit in with the equinoxes or solstices, similar to a Blue Moon.”

* * *

You know you have heard from your elders, “Such-and-so will only happen once in a blue moon.” That’s because a Blue Moon comes around only once in every 29 months. But it is only once in every 19 years that the month of February will have no new moon.

AGAIN, FROM TIMEANDDATE.COM:

* -- There is no single accepted definition of a Black Moon. The term has been commonly used to refer to any of the following phenomena associated with the New Moon:

* -- Second New Moon in the same month: These Black Moons are the most common ones, and they occur about once every 29 months. Because of time zone differences, the month they happen in can vary, like the Black Moon in July 2019 (US) or August 2019 (UK).

* -- Third New Moon in a season of four New Moons: These Black Moons are a little rarer, and occur about once every 33 months. We divide a year into four seasons - spring, summer, fall (autumn), and winter. Usually, each season has three months and three New Moons. When a season has four New Moons, the third New Moon is called a Black Moon. This is the exact counterpart to the original definition of a Blue Moon, except that Blue Moons are Full Moons.

* -- No New Moon in February: About once every 19 years, there is no New Moon in February. This can only happen in February, as this is the only month which is shorter than a lunar month (lunation). When this occurs, both January and March have two New Moons, instead of just one, which is the norm. The next Black Moon by this definition will occur in 2033, while the last one was in 2014. Because of time zone differences, these Black Moons may not happen all over the world. For instance, there is a Black Moon in the most western parts of the US in February 2022, but not in Europe or Australia.

* -- No Full Moon in February: About once every 19 years, February does not have a Full Moon. Instead, there are two Full Moons in January and March, also known as a double Blue Moon. The next Black Moon by this definition will occur in 2037, while the last one was in 2018. Because of time zone differences, these Black Moons may not happen all over the world.

* * *

Now here’s where the goodie gets good. “Black Moons hold special significance to people who practice certain forms of Pagan religions and who believe certain actions become more potent when performed on the night of a Black Moon.”

Wanna’ make a baby? At exactly 11:11 p.m. tonight the sun, the moon, and planet Earth will be in perfect alignment. Again, the key word is “potent.”

* * *

"God said, 'Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate day from night; they shall serve as signs for the set times - the days and the years; and they shall serve as lights in the expanse of the sky to shine upon the earth.' And it was so. God made the two great lights, the greater light to dominate the day and the lesser light to dominate the night, and the stars." – Genesis 1:14-16

These two great lights are the sun, and the moon, respectively. The word for 'set times' here is moedim (appointed times) which is the very word that Yahweh chooses to use to describe His festivals. One more passage that speaks of these two lights is found in Psalms 104:19: "He made the moon to mark the seasons; the sun knows when to set."

* * *

WICCAN: THE SOLITARY BLACK MOON RITUAL

(From the website, sacredwicca.com, by Rowan Morgana, 2010)

On the night of the Dark Moon, as late as you can possibly stay awake, stand outside and breathe in the blackness of the night.  It is Hecate’s night, the Crone Goddess has covered you in her blanket and given you the time to consider all those things in your life that you no longer need.  You are safe within the womb of the Dark Goddess.

Consider that which you wish to banish from your life.  Take your time, allow Hecate to guide your thoughts.

 When you are ready, and you feel that you know exactly what must be banished turn widdershins to the East. Feel Hecate cleanse your mind of all unhealthy thoughts.

Turn widdershins to the North, feel Hecate cleanse your body of all unhealthy energies.

Turn widdershins to the West, feel Hecate cleanse your emotions of all that is causing you pain.

Turn widdershins to the South, feel Hecate cleanse your Spirit of all that is hindering your spiritual growth.

Breathe in the darkness of the night, breathe in the regenerative power of the Dark Goddess Hecate.  Know that you are cleansed and purified, ready to begin mental, physical, emotional and spiritual growth with the coming of the New Moon.

It is done. So mote it be.

* * *

LILITH, THE QUEEN OF THE BLACK MOON?

Ancient Demon, Dark Deity, or Sensual Goddess? (From the website, Ancient-origins.org)

In some sources she's described as a demon, in others she is an icon who became one of the darkest deities of the pagans. Lilith is one of the oldest known female spirits of the world. Her roots come from the famous Epic of Gilgamesh, but she was also described in the Bible and the Talmud.

In Jewish tradition, she is the most notorious demon, but in some other sources she appears as the first woman created on Earth. According to a legend, God formed Lilith as the first woman. He did it in the same way as he created Adam. The only difference was that in place of pure dust, he also used filth and residue. Traditionally Lilith means ''the night'', and she is related to attributes connected with the spiritual aspects of sensuality and freedom, but also terror.

Lilith’s name comes from the Sumerian word ''lilitu'', which meant a wind spirit or a female demon. Lilith was mentioned in the Tablet XII of the Epic of Gilgamesh, a famous poem of ancient Mesopotamia dated back to not later than c. 2100 BC. The tablet was added to the original text much later, c. 600 BC, in its later Assyrian and Akkadian translations. She appears in a magical story, where she represents the branches of a tree.

She is described with other demons, but researchers still argue if she was a demon or a dark goddess. At the same time, she appeared in early Jewish sources, so it is difficult to find out who mentioned her first. However, it is obvious that from the beginning of her existence in the texts she was related to Sumerian witchcraft.

In some sources she's described as a demon, in others she is an icon who became one of the darkest deities of the pagans. Lilith is one of the oldest known female spirits of the world. Her roots come from the famous Epic of Gilgamesh, but she was also described in the Bible and the Talmud.

In Jewish tradition, she is the most notorious demon, but in some other sources she appears as the first woman created on Earth. According to a legend, God formed Lilith as the first woman. He did it in the same way as he created Adam. The only difference was that in place of pure dust, he also used filth and residue. Traditionally Lilith means ''the night'', and she is related to attributes connected with the spiritual aspects of sensuality and freedom, but also terror.

In the Babylonian Talmud, Lilith was described as a dark spirit with an uncontrollable and dangerous sexuality. She is said to have fertilized herself with male sperm to create demons. She is believed to be the mother of hundreds of demons.

Lilith appears in the Bible, in the Book of Isaiah 34:14, which describes the desolation of Eden. From the beginning, she is considered as a devilish spirit, unclean, and dangerous. The Genesis Rabbah describes her as the first wife of Adam. According to the book, God created her and Adam at the same time. Lilith was very strong, independent, and wanted to be equal with Adam. She did not accept being less important than him and refused to lie beneath Adam for copulation. The marriage did not work and they never found happiness.

As Robert Graves and Raphael Patai wrote in the book ‘The Hebrew Myths’:

''Adam complained to God: 'I have been deserted by my help meet' God at once sent the angels Senoy, Sansenoy and Semangelof to fetch Lilith back. They found her beside the Red Sea, a region abounding in lascivious demons, to whom she bore lilim at the rate of more than one hundred a day. 'Return to Adam without delay,' the angels said, `or we will drown you!'

Lilith asked: `How can I return to Adam and live like an honest housewife, after my stay beside the Red Sea?? 'It will be death to refuse!' they answered. `How can I die,' Lilith asked again, `when God has ordered me to take charge of all newborn children: boys up to the eighth day of life, that of circumcision; girls up to the twentieth day. None the less, if ever I see your three names or likenesses displayed in an amulet above a newborn child, I promise to spare it.' To this they agreed; but God punished Lilith by making one hundred of her demon children perish daily; and if she could not destroy a human infant, because of the angelic amulet, she would spitefully turn against her own.''

Due to the misunderstandings and disappointments related to Lilith, God decided to create a second wife for Adam– Eve.

- - -

Nowadays, Lilith has become a symbol of freedom for many feminist groups. Due to the rising level of education, women started to understand that they could be independent, so they began looking for symbols of feminine power. She also started to be worshiped by some followers of the pagan Wicca religion, which was created in the 1950s.

This appeal was enhanced by artists, who took her on as a muse. She started to be a popular motif in art and literature around the Renaissance period, when Michelangelo portrayed her as a half woman, half serpent being. He presented her around the Tree of Knowledge, and increased the importance of her legend. With time, Lilith became more attractive for the imaginations of male artists like Dante Gabriel Rosetti, who created her image as the most beautiful female being of the world. The author of ''The Chronicles of Narnia'', C.S. Lewis, was inspired by the legend about Lilith in the creation of the White Witch. She was beautiful, but dangerous and cruel.

* * *

Whatever! Just know that tonight, at 11:11 p.m., you might want to buy a lottery ticket.

royexum@aol.com

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2019-07-31 03:39:19Z
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TESS hits the trifecta: Nearby bright star has 3 interesting planets - Ars Technica

Enlarge

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

Thanks to the massive trove of exoplanets discovered by the Kepler mission, we now have a good idea of what kinds of planets are out there, where they orbit, and how common the different types are. What we lack is a good sense of what that implies in terms of the conditions on the planets themselves. Kepler can tell us how big a planet is, but it doesn't know what the planet is made of. And planets in the "habitable zone" could be subjected to anything from a blazing hell to a frozen rock.

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (or TESS) was launched with the intention of helping us figure out what exoplanets are actually like. TESS is designed to identify planets orbiting bright stars relatively close to Earth, conditions that should allow follow-up observations to figure out their compositions and potentially those of their atmospheres.

Right now, there's a conference happening that's dedicated to describing some of the first discoveries made using TESS. Those discoveries include a three-planet system that seems perfectly positioned to test all of our exoplanet characterization techniques.

What are we looking at?

Both Kepler and TESS identify planets using what's called the transit method. This works for systems in which the planets orbit in a plane that takes them between their host star and Earth. As this occurs, the planet blocks a small fraction of the starlight that we see from Earth (or nearby orbits). If these dips in light occur with regularity, they're diagnostic of something orbiting the star.

This tells us something about the planet. The frequency of the dips in the star's light tells us how long an orbit takes, which tells us how far the planet is from its host star. That, combined with the brightness of the host star, tells us how much incoming light the planet receives, which will influence its temperature. (The range of distances at which temperatures are consistent with liquid water is called the habitable zone.) And we can use that, along with how much light is being blocked, to figure out how big the planet is.

Enlarge / Details of the TESS hardware.

NASA GSFC

But this leaves a lot of important questions unanswered.

Take a planet that appears to be larger than Earth. It could be rocky, like Earth, placing it in the super-Earth category. But it could also have a dense core surrounded by a thick, gaseous atmosphere, making it a mini-Neptune. Or it could be water-dominated, making for a water- or ice-giant, depending on where it orbits.

That last issue isn't as clear as it seems, either. The temperature of a planet depends in part on its distance from its host star (as well as that star's brightness). Some of that light will be reflected by the planet's surface and any clouds present in its atmosphere. And a fraction of the energy that's absorbed by the planet will be trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gasses (including, yes, carbon dioxide).

So the planet's composition and its atmosphere's contents play huge roles in influencing its temperature. At a given distance from a star, it's often possible for these factors to make the difference between a frozen body and one that's hot enough to boil off its oceans.

So, to really understand other planets and their potential to support life, we have to understand what they're made of and what their atmosphere looks like. And, while TESS itself doesn't answer those questions, it's designed to find planets where other instruments could.

Finding things to look at

Fortunately, there are ways of figuring these things out. For example, knowing the size of a planet and its mass tells us its density, which in turn lets us make inferences about its composition. From there, it's possible to figure out a planet's mass. One option is to figure out how much a planet tugs on its host star as it moves about in its orbit.

This tugging creates small Doppler shifts in the light coming from the star. This shift allows us to figure out the force the planet is exerting on the star, and thus its mass.

Alternately, if planets' orbits are packed tightly enough, they exert gravitational influences on each other: they speed up or slow down each other's orbits. These transit-timing variations can be registered over time and plugged into models that will provide plausible estimates for the planets' mass.

The transit method also has the potential to give us a sense of what's in the planet's atmosphere. As it passes in front of its host star, a small percentage of the starlight will be absorbed by the gasses in its atmosphere, creating a signature that can reveal the identity of those gasses. While this tiny signal is swamped by the noise in a single transit, observing multiple transits can eventually overcome this limitation.

All of this, however, requires a fair bit of light to start with, which means a bright, relatively nearby star. And we'd need to image multiple orbits, which means the planet in question needs to be orbiting relatively close to its host star.

These are precisely the things TESS is designed to pick up.

The new system

The new three-planet system is called TOI-270, and it's about 75 light years from Earth. The star at the center of the system is a red dwarf, a bit less than half the size of the Sun. Despite its small size, it's brighter than most of the nearby stars we know hosts planets. And—critically—it's stable. That means that variations in the star's light are minimal, and they're less likely to get in the way of trying to pick up subtle changes caused by its orbiting planets.

Enlarge / Details of the new system.

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Scott Wiessinger.

The three planets have orbital periods of 3.4 days, 5.7 days, and 11.4 days. The ratio among these periods can be expressed as ratios of integers, a feature that's called "orbital resonance."

These resonances tend to stabilize the orbits, keeping the planets' interactions from ejecting one of them from the system or send one diving into the star. Based on the size of the planets, the trio consists of a super Earth as the innermost planet, while the two outer planets are somewhat larger, falling into the class termed sub-Neptunes.

Right now, we only have enough observations of the TOI-270 system to confirm the existence of the three planets. Orbital simulations, however, suggest that a wide range of orbital eccentricities would be stable in the system, so it will take extended observations to figure out the precise details of the orbits.

But, since the longest orbit is under 12 days, that's not so onerous. Once the orbits are figured out, the planets are close enough together to cause transit-timing variations, providing us one avenue toward getting the masses of the planets. They're also large enough and close to the star to drag it around a bit while they orbit, creating Doppler shifts that would allow an independent measurement of the mass.

Significant atmospheres

The outer two planets, which are expected to have significant atmospheres, are prime candidates for studies of their composition. The authors estimate that the James Webb Space Telescope will eventually have a view of the system for over half the year, and it should be able to pick out the atmospheric signals for both planets.

What are we likely to find? All three planets are extremely hot, with only the outermost planet potentially being able to support some liquid water. However, it's also at the edge of boiling off any water into the atmosphere; the authors suggest temperate conditions are more likely on any moons it has. The interactions among the three planets also mean that each is likely to be tidally locked to the host star, which can result in a frigid far side of the planet and a baking star-facing side.

But even if habitability isn't an issue here, the system is definitely worth a careful look. When we have the sort of telescope hardware that will let us detect atmospheres, we'll want to test it out on something where it's likely to work and where we can troubleshoot the inevitable problems that will occur with the analysis. There will also be a learning process with the giant telescopes and James Webb that will be necessary for this work. That makes TOI-270 an important discovery, since it provides the perfect test conditions for exoplanet characterization.

Nature Astronomy, 2019. DOI: 10.1038/s41550-019-0845-5  (About DOIs).

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2019-07-30 10:45:00Z
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There's A Rocky Exoplanet Out There With Three Glowing Red Suns In Its Sky! - Mashable India

For years, astronomers have been on a lookout for Earth-like planets outside our solar system. NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has been dedicatedly employed to search exoplanets to explore the possibility of finding life in deep space and also, learning the secrets of the evolution of the Milky Way.

SEE ALSO: NASA Drops An Insane Map Of All The 4,000 Exoplanets Discovered To Date!

NASA’s exoplanet specialist telescope has now hunted down a certain rocky exoplanet locked in a triple-star system approximately 22.5 light-years away from our planet. Being referred to as LTT 1445Ab, the exoplanet is orbiting the primary star of the three red dwarfs that make the system. Hence, if you’re standing on its surface, you can spot three suns in the sky, as per Jennifer Winters, astronomer at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

The planet-hunting telescope, particularly focusing on exoplanets that pass between Earth and their home star came across the exoplanet, detecting how it was blocking a small percentage of light of its star. The dimming of the planet, as a result, grasped the attention of scientists who observed tiny movements of the star. Scientists could, thus, place constraints on the size and mass of the planet as it pulled the star only slightly owing to its gravity.

SEE ALSO: NASA’s TESS Mission Discovers Its Tiniest Planet To Date!

About 1.35 times the size of the physical Earth, LTT 1445Ab packs up to 8.4 times Earth’s mass, a lot denser than our home planet. Chances of habitability on this rocky exoplanet are slim even though it falls into the category of Mars, Venus and Earth-like terrain. However, it sure witnesses some really stunning skies. Besides, the new exoplanet could have an atmosphere which keeps scientists charged up for taking a closer look.

Scientists believe that LTT 1445Ab could be an excellent candidate for testing detection tools that are used to look for biogases such as methane and carbon dioxide. The reason being its frequent transitions which will offer ample number of opportunities for scientists for observation. As per cosmic scales, the exoplanet is not very far away from us and is just optimally lit by its stars for a conducive survey. The study has been submitted to the Astronomical Journal and is available on arXiv.

SEE ALSO: Astronomers Discover A Moon-Forming Disk Around A Baby Exoplanet

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https://in.mashable.com/science/5291/theres-a-rocky-exoplanet-out-there-with-three-glowing-red-suns-in-its-sky

2019-07-30 08:57:00Z
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Two meteor showers converge Monday night for a sparkling show - New York Daily News

Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to the EU market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism.

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2019-07-30 03:13:00Z
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Double meteor shower happening tonight - WKRN News 2

Posted: Jul 29, 2019 / 09:05 PM CDT / Updated: Jul 29, 2019 / 09:06 PM CDT

Look up! We are having a double meteor shower tonight. The Delta Aquarids and Alpha Capricornids will shine through the sky tonight. Saturn will also be visible. The shower peaks tonight with up to 20 meteors per hour possible.

However, this shower could be hard to see for some because of the rain showers and storms that are possible overnight.

The best way to see the meteors is to look southeast away from any lights which includes the moon. The good news is the moon is only 5.9% visible because it is a waning crescent which will increase your chances of seeing the meteors flying across the sky tonight.

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https://www.wkrn.com/weather/double-meteor-shower-happening-tonight/

2019-07-30 02:05:00Z
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Distant alien planet with three red suns discovered - Fox News

Imagine living in a world of triple sunsets.

Scientists have used NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite to find an exoplanet with three red suns.

The exoplanet LTT 1445Ab orbits one of the three suns, all of which are described as mid-to-late-life red dwarfs. “The planet transits the primary star in the system,” researchers explain, in a paper which is available on the scientific repository arXiv.

FIRST-EVER BLACK HOLE PICTURE PROVES THE POWER OF SCIENCE, SAYS FORMER NASA ASTRONAUT

The planet is described as having a radius that is 1.38 R_Earth, which means that it is a little over a third larger than our planet.

File image - artist's animation shows the view from a hypothetical moon in orbit around HD 188753 Ab, the first known planet to reside in a tight-knit triple-star system. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Space.com reports that the LTT 1445 Ab system is 22.5 light-years away. A light-year, which measures distance in space, equals 6 trillion miles.

A red dwarf, or “M dwarf” in astronomical terms, is “the smallest, most abundant and longest-lived type of star in our galaxy,” according to NASA.

NASA MISSION FINDS ITS FIRST EARTH-SIZED ALIEN PLANET

Scientists are intrigued by the discovery of the LTT 1445 Ab system. “It is the second nearest transiting exoplanet system found to date, and the closest one known for which the primary is an M dwarf,” they explain, in their study.

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The paper has been submitted to the Astronomical Journal.

Follow James Rogers on Twitter @jamesjrogers

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https://www.foxnews.com/science/distant-alien-planet-with-three-red-suns-discovered

2019-07-29 17:17:31Z
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Dueling meteor showers will light up the skies Monday night - KTVI Fox 2 St. Louis

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1. Dueling meteor showers will light up the skies Monday night  KTVI Fox 2 St. Louis
2. Spectacular meteor shower set to light up skies tonight: What you need to know  RT
3. The Delta Aquariids Kick Off The Summer Slate Of Meteor Showers | Mach | NBC News  NBC News
4. The Delta Aquariid Meteor Shower Is Peaking, Will Remain Visible Through August 23  KTLA Los Angeles
5. Look up! Dueling meteor showers to streak across the sky Monday night  WGHP FOX 8 Greensboro
6. View full coverage on Google News

https://fox2now.com/2019/07/29/dueling-meteor-showers-will-light-up-the-skies-monday-night/

2019-07-29 13:23:00Z
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Ro5 researchers suggest radioactive readings in 2017 were from a major nuclear release - Phys.org

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

A very large team of researchers from across Europe has found evidence that suggests radioactive ruthenium readings across the continent in 2017 were from an unknown nuclear source. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes their study of the unusual readings two years ago and what they found.

Back in the 1960s, scientists around the world began to see the need to detect radiation from human sources as a means of alerting the public to possible health hazards. After the Chernobyl accident in 1986, scientists in Europe realized that a network of radiation monitoring stations was the best way to detect and alert the public to fallout from nuclear accidents. Scientists in five countries, Finland, Sweden, the Federal Republic of Germany, Denmark and Norway, set up such a network, which they called the Ro5. Scientists from other European countries have joined the network over the years, but the name has remained. Two years ago, members of the network began reporting higher-than-normal levels of ruthenium 106 (106Ru). The levels were not high enough to be considered dangerous, but the area of detection was large enough to suggest something unusual had happened—some suspected a nuclear accident at a facility in Russia. But Russian officials insisted the levels were due to a release from a disintegrating satellite. In this new effort, 69 researchers from across Europe together found evidence that very strongly suggests the radioactivity they observed came from a Russian nuclear power plant in a southern part of the Urals—likely Majak.

Research by the team consisted of combining and compiling 1,100 atmospheric readings and 200 readings taken on the ground. The researchers were able to conclude that the radioactivity was not from a satellite. They further report that levels of radioactivity varied widely, from tenths of µBq·m⁻³ to over 150 mBq·m⁻³. They also found that the widespread nature of the readings suggested an unprecedented release of 106Ru. By looking at the data placed over a map, they were able to trace it back to its source—in the Southern Urals in Russia. The researchers suggest the evidence indicates that there was likely an unreported nuclear plant accident.

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Russia named as likely source of Europe radioactivity spike (Update)

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More information: O. Masson et al. Airborne concentrations and chemical considerations of radioactive ruthenium from an undeclared major nuclear release in 2017, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2019). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1907571116

© 2019 Science X Network

Citation: Ro5 researchers suggest radioactive readings in 2017 were from a major nuclear release (2019, July 29) retrieved 29 July 2019 from https://phys.org/news/2019-07-ro5-radioactive-major-nuclear.html

This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.

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2019-07-29 13:00:02Z
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Bringing Pieces of Mars to Earth in 2031: How NASA and Europe Plan to Do It - Space.com

Pristine samples of the Red Planet will come down to Earth a little over a decade from now, if everything goes according to plan.

NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are working together on a highly anticipated Mars sample-return mission, which advocates say is the logical next step in our study of the Red Planet and its life-hosting potential. 

"We need to bring [Martian] materials back and bring them into our laboratories," Brian Muirhead, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said during a presentation with NASA's Future In-Space Operations (FISO) working group last month.

Related: The Search for Life on Mars (A Photo Timeline)

Scientists in labs around the world will be able to analyze such samples much more precisely, and in many more ways, than a rover could do by itself on the Red Planet, helping us "to understand the history of Mars from a biological point of view," added Muirhead, who leads NASA's Mars sample-return campaign.

Researchers could even find signs of life in these Mars rocks, which are scheduled to return to Earth in 2031.

The NASA-ESA plan is not yet official, Muirhead stressed, and details are still being worked out. But here's a rundown of the concept, as it's currently conceived.

A sample-snagging rover

The campaign begins next July, with the launch of NASA's car-size Mars 2020 rover. The six-wheeled robot is scheduled to touch down in February 2021 inside the 30-mile-wide (50 kilometers) Jezero Crater, which hosted a river delta in the ancient past.

Mars 2020 (which will soon get a catchier moniker, via a student naming competition) will characterize Jezero's geology, hunt for signs of ancient life, demonstrate various technologies that could enable future human exploration of the Red Planet and perform a variety of other work, including the collection and caching of samples.

The rover carries 43 tubes for this purpose, five of which will be "references" that help researchers understand the environment the other tubes have been through, Muirhead said. So Mars 2020 could snag a maximum of 38 samples. Ideally, the rover will drop some of these in an accessible spot and keep others on its body, he added.

The next big step comes in 2026, with the launch of NASA's Sample Retrieval Lander (SRL) mission. SRL will include a stationary lander, the ESA-provided Sample Fetch Rover (SFR) and a rocket called the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV), which will be no more than 10 feet (3 meters) tall, Muirhead said.

The mission will touch down near the Mars 2020 landing site, and then SFR will hit the red dirt. This little robot will be smaller than NASA's golf-cart-size Spirit and Opportunity rovers, and it will leverage technology developed for ESA's life-hunting ExoMars rover, which is scheduled to launch toward the Red Planet next summer, just a week after Mars 2020 does.  

The SFR will carry no science instruments, Muirhead said. Its lone job, as its name indicates, will be to get the samples dropped by Mars 2020 back to the lander, where they will be placed into the basketball-size Orbiting Sample container, or OS. (The sample-return campaign is complex, so it's even heavier on the acronyms than most space missions are.) If Mars 2020 does indeed hold on to some of its collected samples, this bigger rover could roll over to the lander as well. 

"We've had to design the lander to accommodate both of these rovers coming and delivering tubes to us," Muirhead said.

Related: The Boldest Mars Missions in History

Launching off the Martian surface

An overview of the planned NASA-ESA Mars sample-return campaign.

(Image credit: K. Oldenburg/ESA)

All of this will take time. The SRL surface mission is expected to last about eight months, with five months devoted to fetching, Muirhead said. Meanwhile, the MAV will be sitting there, waiting for its moment.

"It's got to survive the surface environment — mostly [low] temperature, but dust also," Muirhead said. "And then it's got to launch and deliver into Mars orbit. So, it's a challenging environment for rocket propulsion."

Spacecraft have launched from the surface of Earth's moon before — the Apollo missions did this multiple times — but no vehicle has ever left the much more massive Mars after landing there. So the MAV will make exploration history.

The MAV's specs have yet to be firmed up, Muirhead said. The sample-return team is looking at two options: a two-stage solid-propellant version, and a single-stage rocket that employs hybrid propulsion technology. A decision on the design should come by the end of the year, Muirhead said.

After taking the OS on board, the MAV will launch off the solar-powered lander and deploy the OS container into Mars orbit, at least 190 miles (300 km) above the planet's surface. It will be plucked out of the void by the third big piece of this grand plan: ESA's Earth Return Orbiter (ERO).

Bringing it all back home 

Like the SRL mission, ERO is scheduled to launch in 2026. ESA recently invited European companies to submit proposals to build the spacecraft.

"The mission is becoming a reality, and we are proud to give European industry the chance to join the challenge," ESA's Orson Sutherland, study manager for ERO, said in a statement.

The ERO will use electric propulsion and feature multistage detachable modules, leveraging technologies developed for the recently launched BepiColombo mission to Mercury, ESA officials said. 

The European orbiter will install the newly captured OS inside a sterile containment system and then sterilize the joints of that system, likely using heat, Muirhead said. Such protocols will ensure that no Mars material leaks out during entry to Earth's atmosphere, potentially contaminating our planet. 

The containment system will be placed inside a special entry vehicle, which will deploy from the ERO when the spacecraft nears Earth. The entry vehicle will barrel through our planet's atmosphere and slam into a playa, or dry lake bed, in Utah. 

The team has designed the entry vehicle to operate without parachutes, relying instead on completely passive technologies. This strategy takes one big potential failure point out of play, Muirhead said.

The entry vehicle will experience impact forces of about 1,000 Gs if it hits the playa dirt, and perhaps 3,000 Gs if it's unlucky enough to slam into a rock, Muirhead said. (The acceleration at Earth's surface due to our planet's gravity is 1 G.) 

"We're designing to both of those [scenarios]," he added.

The targeted landing date is 2031. Mars and Earth align favorably for interplanetary launches just once every 26 months. So, if the SRL and ERO aren't ready in 2026, the next opportunity would come in 2028, with a 2033 sample return to Earth. 

"But beyond that, we really lose opportunities to do MSR [Mars sample return]," Muirhead said. "This is really a good opportunity, and we're working very hard to make this opportunity pay off." 

Waiting for approval

Again, the campaign outlined above is just a concept at the moment. Though the 2020 federal budget request allocates some money to NASA for MSR development, the project is not officially on NASA's books yet, or those of ESA. 

So we don't know how much all of this would cost. Muirhead said the team is treating the campaign as cost-constrained with a hard cap, though it's unclear what that cap will be.

MSR will be tough to pull off, requiring "multiple missions that will be more challenging and more advanced than any robotic missions before," ESA officials said in a different statement. 

But the team thinks it's up to the challenge.

"The campaign and the design studies that we've been conducting with ESA are proceeding extremely well," Muirhead said. "We are prepared to proceed with this partnership to implement the objectives, pending approval from our respective funding agencies." 

Mike Wall's book about the search for alien life, "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), is out now. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook. 

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https://www.space.com/mars-sample-return-plan-nasa-esa.html

2019-07-29 11:00:00Z
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Tonight is Lancaster County's best chance to see two 'dueling' meteor showers - LancasterOnline

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1. Tonight is Lancaster County's best chance to see two 'dueling' meteor showers  LancasterOnline
2. Spectacular meteor shower set to light up skies tonight: What you need to know  RT
3. The Delta Aquariids Kick Off The Summer Slate Of Meteor Showers | Mach | NBC News  NBC News
4. Dazzling Meteor Shower 'Delta Aquariids 2019' Is Officially Active Right Now!  Mashable India
5. The Delta Aquariid meteor shower begins its peak Sunday night  FOX 31 Denver
6. View full coverage on Google News

https://lancasteronline.com/news/local/tonight-is-lancaster-county-s-best-chance-to-see-two/article_7e2eb4a4-b095-11e9-8b18-cf76337a7d2c.html

2019-07-29 09:00:00Z
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Dazzling Meteor Shower 'Delta Aquariids 2019' Is Officially Active Right Now! - Mashable India

An annual meteor shower is making way to the night sky with a stunning show that could shoot up to 20 flamings per hour. The dazzling Delta Aquariids 2019 meteor shower will be at its nominal peak tonight, July 29, and can be best potted in the Southern Hemisphere, in all its glory.

SEE ALSO: Revealed: The Mysterious Reason Behind Weird Cone-Shaped Meteorites

What is essentially a display of space dust and bits of debris bursting from a comet (or comets) in our orbital path, the Delta Aquariids meteor shower will fly close to the Sun shedding particles that hit our atmosphere, around 60 miles above Earth. The meteor will zoom across the skies during which it will vapourize into shooting stars, leaving a trail of blazing light behind.

If at all you miss the celestial show tonight, you have until mid-August to catch the Delta Aquariid as the long, rambling meteor shower is officially active from July 12 to August 23 each year. The first week of August offers an excellent premise of dark skies with the upcoming new moon on July 31 - August 1. There will be just the perfect setting of a gorgeous waning crescent in the predawn hours of late July.

SEE ALSO: This company wants to illuminate our skies with beautiful artificial shooting stars!

Although, the Delta Aquariids shower will be best seen from the Southern Hemisphere, people living in the mid-northern latitudes can also catch a sight if the moon is out of the way. This shower is known to produce 10 to 20 meteors per hour at broad maximum. If you get lucky, you may also find a few Perseids in the scene as the shower overlaps with the famous Perseids meteor shower. Unfortunately, this year, the Perseids meteor shower is rising to its peak on bright moonlit sky on August 11, 12, and 13.

Just like most meteor showers, the best viewing hours to observe the Delta Aquariids are after midnight and before dawn for all times zones around the world.

Meteor showers happen when our planet crosses the orbital path of a comet. When a comet inches close to the Sun, it warms up and sheds and scatters bits and pieces into that comet’s orbital stream. This comet debris then slams into the Earth’s atmosphere at about 150,000 kilometers per hour, vapourize and blaze down as shooting stars.

SEE ALSO: How to see the Perseid meteor shower peak this weekend

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https://in.mashable.com/science/5257/dazzling-meteor-shower-delta-aquariids-2019-is-officially-active-right-now

2019-07-29 08:10:00Z
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Paleontologists find giant dinosaur bone in southwestern France - Raw Story

After staying up past midnight to continue to tweet attacks on Rep. Elijah Cummings (R-MD), Donald Trump was back at it again early Sunday morning frantically lashing out in every direction at the lawmaker, Democrats and more in a barrage of tweets.

After, once again, singling out the black lawmaker, Trump then accused the Democrats of "playing the race card."

"Someone please explain to Nancy Pelosi, who was recently called racist by those in her own party, that there is nothing wrong with bringing out the very obvious fact that Congressman Elijah Cummings has done a very poor job for his district and the City of Baltimore," he tweeted. "Just take look, the facts speak far louder than words! The Democrats always play the Race Card, when in fact they have done so little for our Nation’s great African American people. Now, lowest unemployment in U.S. history, and only getting better. Elijah Cummings has failed badly!"

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2019-07-28 11:25:49Z
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Water on the Moon: How UK-built technology will find water and put man on the Moon by 2050 - Express.co.uk

Water on the Moon will provide future settlers will all sorts of crucial resources, ranging from much need hydration to rocket fuel. By breaking down the bonds between water’s hydrogen dioxide structure (H2O), scientists can create oxygen for breathing and hydrogen for fuel. Before this can happen, however, scientists need to better understand where the water is located and how it is stored on the Moon. Towards this goal, researchers at the University of Surrey and the Surrey Space Centre are working on cheap, miniaturised satellites to analyse the surface of the Moon.

Related articles

Professor Craig Underwood, head of the Sensors and Platform Systems Group at the Surrey Space Centre, spoke to Express.co.uk about Surrey’s contribution to the race back to the Moon.

Thanks to the Apollo programme between 1969 and 1972, US space agency NASA has made many critical discoveries about the Moon’s composition and environment.

And with NASA planning to return to the Moon by the year 2024, scientists are once again excited about the prospect of walking on the Earth’s only satellite.

The biggest “game-changer” since the Apollo era, Professor Underwood said, is our current understanding the Moon’s shadowy poles are likely hiding deposits of water.

READ MORE: NASA satellite observes 'moving water' on Moon's surface

Water on the Moon: UK scientists are building satellites to scan the Moon for water (Image: GETTY)

Water on the Moon: CubeSats are a type of small, cheap and easy to deploy space probe (Image: GETTY)

If true, small box-sized satellites known as CubeSats built at Surrey can be deployed around the Moon to chart its polar surfaces with lasers.

I see living on the Moon towards the end of the 2020s and 2030s

Professor Craig Underwood, Surrey Space Centre

Professor Underwood said: “The big game-changer for the Moon happened post-Apollo. The results from Apollo showed us the rocks are incredibly dry.

“The indications of water on the Moon – not a direct discovery – that’s the mission we’re working on at Surrey.

“It’s a European mission to the Moon using a CubeSat to go and probe those regions with a laser from lunar orbit, and to map really accurately where those deposits are.”

READ MORE: How Soviet Luna 15 spacecraft beat Apollo 11 to the Moon by two days

Related articles

Finding and tapping into these lunar deposits will be a great leap forward for future lunar missions.

Water and rocket fuel are too heavy of a resource to ship back and forth between the Earth and the Moon.

On the International Space Station (ISS) for instance, every single drop of water is utilised as efficiently as possible through constant recycling.

On the Moon, having access to reservoirs of water that can be recycled and used by astronauts is a thrilling prospect.

READ MORE: NASA experts believe there could be even more water on the Moon

Because of this, Professor Underwood is positive the future of lunar exploration and beyond will bloom in the next two to three decades.

He said: “We’ve got water to drink, oxygen to breathe and hydrogen-oxygen to make rocket fuel, so it’s the ideal place to leap off from to the rest of the solar system.

“So, I see living on the Moon towards the end of the 2020s and 2030s timeframe. Let’s say by 2050.”

The CubeSat mission is still in the development stage but the University plays an important role in the design stage.

READ MORE: This is the only known photo of Neil Armstrong astronaut on Moon

Water on the Moon: The CubeSat is being designed by the University of Surrey (Image: CRAIG UNDERWOOD)

Water on the Moon: Not since the Apollo programme have humans walked on the Moon's surface (Image: GETTY)

Hopefully, Professor Underwood said the lunar CubeSats will also be built at Surrey.

Dubbed the Lunar Volatile and Mineralogy Mapping Orbiter or VMMO, the mission involves partners from the European Space Agency (ESA), the University of Winnipeg in the US, MPB Communications and others.

At the moment, there is a potential for a launch window between 2021 and 2022 as part of the Lunar Communications Pathfinder Orbiter mission with Surrey Satellite Technology.

Professor Underwood said: “There is still a whole world to explore. If you look down on that surface, then it’s a whole world out there.”

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https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1158263/Water-on-Moon-UK-technology-CubeSats-humans-Moon-2050-lunar-water-University-of-Surrey

2019-07-28 10:42:00Z
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Asteroid just misses Earth: "City killer" Asteroid 2019 OK came close to Earth, surprising scientists - CBS News

Dangerous asteroid zips by Earth

Scientists revealed an asteroid dubbed by some as a "city killer" came closer to the Earth than the moon this week. The Washington Post reported scientists say they had no idea it was coming.

Asteroid 2019 OK came hurtling toward Earth at a speed of nearly 15 miles a second, before flying past. According to NASA, it was about 45,000 miles from Earth on Thursday.

"It would have hit with over 30 times the energy of the atomic blast at Hiroshima," astronomer professor Alan Duffy told the Sydney Morning Herald. Duffy called the zooming space rock a "city killer".

This is the video of the close encounter of Asteroid 2019 OK we have been Twitting all day with the Earth: https://t.co/bjT7uhQJuO pic.twitter.com/3e4UyPcdPl

— ASAS-SN (@SuperASASSN) July 25, 2019

Astronomers say it posed no immediate threat but they admit they had no idea the giant rock was headed our way, because it came from the direction of the sun.

Trending News

The asteroid, about the size of a large boulder, only became visible a few days ago.

There are 20,000 near-Earth asteroids and they do occasionally make an appearance. In 2013, one slammed into Russia, injuring 1,600 people.     

At a conference in April, scientists from around the world were asked how to respond to a make-believe scenario in which an asteroid big enough to destroy a major city might be on track to strike the Earth in eight years.

The likely response would be using space ships to give the asteroid a nudge, one scientist said.

"All we have to do is change its speed a little faster or a little slower so that when it crosses Earth's orbit, it crosses either in front of us or behind us," said Dr. Lori Glaze, director of planetary science at NASA.

How NASA plans to keep an asteroid from hitting Earth

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https://www.cbsnews.com/news/asteroid-just-misses-earth-city-killer-asteroid-2019-ok-came-closer-to-the-earth-than-moon/

2019-07-27 15:19:00Z
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