Nancy Atkinson, Author at Universe Today

May 13, 2024May 14, 2024 by Nancy Atkinson

What a Weekend! Spectacular Aurora Photos from Around the World

Spectacular aurora seen at the cliffs of Etretat in France. This is a a panorama composed of 25 images taken on May 11, 2024. Credit: Julien Looten. Used by permission.

“A dream come true.”
“I never expected this!”
“The most amazing light show I’ve ever seen in my life!”
“Once in a lifetime!”
“No doubt, this weekend will be remembered as ‘that weekend.’”

That’s how people described their views of the Aurora borealis this weekend, which put on a breathtaking celestial show around the world, and at lower latitudes than usual. This allowed hundreds of millions of people to see the northern lights for the first time in their lives. People as far south as Arizona and Florida in the US and France, Germany and Poland in Europe got the views of their life as a series of intense solar storms – the most powerful in more than 20 years – impacted Earth’s atmosphere starting Friday and through the weekend.

May 10, 2024May 10, 2024 by Nancy Atkinson

If You’ve Never Seen An Aurora Before, This Might Be Your Chance!

A coronal aurora twists overhead in this photo taken early on May 8, 2016 from near Duluth, Minnesota. Credit: Bob King

Tonight and the rest of the weekend could be your best chance ever to see the aurora.

The Sun has been extremely active lately as it heads towards solar maximum. A giant Earth-facing sunspot group named AR3664 has been visible, and according to Spaceweather.com, the first of an unbelievable SIX coronal mass ejections were hurled our way from that active region, and is now hitting our planet’s magnetic field.

Solar experts predict that people in the US as far south as Alabama and Northern California could be treated to seeing the northern lights during this weekend. For those of you in northern Europe, you could also be in for some aurora excitement. Check the Space Weather Prediction Center’s 30-minute Aurora Forecast for the latest information.

If the weather conditions are right in your area, you might hit the aurora jackpot. See a map with predictions, below.

May 7, 2024May 7, 2024 by Nancy Atkinson

Solar Max is Coming. The Sun Just Released Three X-Class Flares

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured these images of the solar flares — as seen in the bright flashes in the upper right — on May 5 and May 6, 2024. The image shows a subset of extreme ultraviolet light that highlights the extremely hot material in flares and which is colorized in teal. Credit: NASA/SDO

The Sun is increasing its intensity on schedule, continuing its approach to solar maximum. In just over a 24-hour period on May 5 and May 6, 2024, the Sun released three X-class solar flares measuring at X1.3, X1.2, and X4.5. Solar flares can impact radio communications and electric power grids here on Earth, and they also pose a risk to spacecraft and astronauts in space.

NASA released an animation that shows the solar flares blasting off the surface of the rotating Sun, below.

May 2, 2024May 6, 2024 by Nancy Atkinson

Solar Orbiter Takes a Mind-Boggling Video of the Sun

The 'fuzzy' Sun. Credit: ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/EUI Team

You’ve seen the Sun, but you’ve never seen the Sun like this. This single frame from a video captured by ESA’s Solar Orbiter mission shows the Sun looking very …. fluffy! You can see feathery, hair-like structures made of plasma following magnetic field lines in the Sun’s lower atmosphere as it transitions into the much hotter outer corona. The video was taken from about a third of the distance between the Earth and the Sun.

See the full video below, which shows unusual features on the Sun, including coronal moss, spicules, and coronal rain.

May 1, 2024May 1, 2024 by Nancy Atkinson

This is an Actual Picture of Space Debris

A piece of space debris in Earth orbit, as seen by the ADRAS-J satellite. Credit: Astroscale Japan, Inc.

Space debris is a growing problem, so companies are working on ways to mitigate it. A new satellite called ADRAS-J was built and launched to demonstrate how a spacecraft could rendezvous with a piece of space junk, paving the path for future removal. Astroscale Japan Inc, the Japanese company behind the satellite, released a new picture from the mission showing a close image of its target space debris, a discarded Japanese H2A rocket’s upper stage, captured from just a few hundred meters away.

April 29, 2024April 29, 2024 by Nancy Atkinson

How Knot Theory Can Help Spacecraft Can Change Orbits Without Using Fuel

These diagrams show a set of possible routes a spacecraft could take between different regions near to the Moon. Image via a new paper by Danny Owen and Nicola Baresi.

When a spacecraft arrives at its destination, it settles into an orbit for science operations. But after the primary mission is complete, there might be other interesting orbits where scientists would like to explore. Maneuvering to a different orbit requires fuel, limiting a spacecraft’s number of maneuvers.

Researchers have discovered that some orbital paths allow for no-fuel orbital changes. But the figuring out these paths also are computationally expensive. Knot theory has been shown to find these pathways more easily, allowing the most fuel-efficient routes to be plotted. This is similar to how our GPS mapping software plots the most efficient routes for us here on Earth.

April 28, 2024April 28, 2024 by Nancy Atkinson

Uh oh. Hubble's Having Gyro Problems Again

The Hubble Space Telescope has gone through its share of gyroscopes in its 34-year history in space. Astronauts replaced the gyros during the last servicing mission in 2009, bringing it back up to six (three with three spares), but they only last so long. Last week, HST went into safe mode because one of the gyros experienced fluctuations in power. NASA paused the telescope’s science operations today to investigate the fluctuations and perhaps come up with a fix.

With this one gyro experiencing problems, only two of the gyros remain fully operational. HST works best with three gyros, and so engineers are working to understand the issue and hopefully figure out a way to fix it remotely. However, several years ago, engineers figured out a way to still conduct science operations with only a single gyro.

April 23, 2024April 23, 2024 by Nancy Atkinson

Purple Bacteria — Not Green Plants — Might Be the Strongest Indication of Life

Artist's impression of Earth in the early Archean with a purplish hydrosphere and coastal regions. Even in this early period, life flourished and was gaining complexity. Credit: Oleg Kuznetsov — Artist's impression of Earth in the early Archean with a purplish hydrosphere and coastal regions. Even in this early period, life flourished and was gaining complexity, and distant exoplanets might begin similarly. Credit: Oleg Kuznetsov

Astrobiologists continue to work towards determining which biosignatures might be best to look for when searching for life on other worlds. The most common idea has been to search for evidence of plants that use the green pigment chlorophyll, like we have on Earth. However, a new paper suggests that bacteria with purple pigments could flourish under a broader range of environments than their green cousins. That means current and next-generation telescopes should be looking for the emissions of purple lifeforms.

“Purple bacteria can thrive under a wide range of conditions, making it one of the primary contenders for life that could dominate a variety of worlds,” said Lígia Fonseca Coelho, a postdoctoral associate at the Carl Sagan Institute (CSI) and first author of “Purple is the New Green: Biopigments and Spectra of Earth-like Purple Worlds,” published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters.

April 20, 2024April 20, 2024 by Nancy Atkinson

Juno Reveals a Giant Lava Lake on Io

An artists rendition of Loki Patera, a lava lake on Jupiter’s moon Io. Credit: NASA.

NASA’s Juno spacecraft came within 1,500 km (930 miles) of the surface of Jupiter’s moon Io in two recent flybys. That’s close enough to reveal new details on the surface of this moon, the most volcanic object in the Solar System. Not only did Juno capture volcanic activity, but scientists were also able to create a visual animation from the data that shows what Io’s 200-km-long lava lake Loki Patera would look like if you could get even closer. There are islands at the center of a magma lake rimmed with hot lava. The lake’s surface is smooth as glass, like obsidian.

March 28, 2024March 28, 2024 by Nancy Atkinson

Someone Just Found SOHO's 5,000th Comet

The 5,000th comet discovered with the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft is noted by a small white box in the upper left portion of this image. A zoomed-in inset shows the comet as a faint dot between the white vertical lines. The image was taken on March 25, 2024, by SOHO’s Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO), which uses a disk to block the bright Sun and reveal faint features around it. Credit: NASA/ESA/SOHO

The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) was designed to examine the Sun, but as a side benefit, it has been the most successful comet hunter ever built. Since early in the mission, citizen scientists have been scanning through the telescope’s data, searching for icy objects passing close to the Sun. An astronomy student in Czechia has identified 200 comets in SOHO data since he started in 2009 at the age of 13. He recently spotted the observatory’s 5,000th comet.