NASA : Kepler's Six Years In Science (and Counting).- Seis años buscando vida extraterrestre.............

Hola amigos: A VUELO DE UN QUINDE EL BLOG., hemos recibido información de la Agencia Espacial NASA, sobre los seis años que cumplió el Observatorio Espacial Kepler, que fue lanzado el 6 de marzo  del 2009,  y empezó su trabajo el 12 de mayo del 2009; cuya  misión es cazar algún planeta que tenga las mismas características de La Tierra y tenga vida, en la Zona de Habitabilidad Galáctica.

El Telescopio, ha cumplido una nutrida etapa de captación de planetas o exoplaentas, que toda estrella similar a El Sol, tiene por lo menos un planeta.

NASA, nos dice: "Kepler lanzada el 6 de marzo de 2009. Su misión era estudiar una parte de nuestra galaxia para determinar qué fracción de estrellas podrían albergar, exoplanetas tamaño de la Tierra potencialmente habitables o planetas que orbitan otras estrellas. De particular interés son los exoplanetas orbitando en la zona habitable - el rango de distancia de una estrella en la que la temperatura de la superficie de un planeta en órbita podría mantener agua líquida. Para que la vida tal como la conocemos, el agua líquida es un ingrediente necesario............."

 

More information:
http://www.nasa.gov/ames/kepler/six-years-in-science

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Image credit: NASA Ames/W Stenzel

The graphic tells NASA's Kepler spacecraft's story by the numbers from the moment it began hunting for planets outside our solar system on May 12, 2009. From the trove of data collected, we have learned that planets are common, that most sun-like stars have at least one planet and that nature makes planets with unimaginable diversity.

Kepler launched on March 6, 2009. Its mission was to survey a portion of our galaxy to determine what fraction of stars might harbor potentially habitable, Earth-sized exoplanets or planets that orbit other stars. Of particular interest are exoplanets orbiting in the habitable zone -- the range of distance from a star in which the surface temperature of an orbiting planet might sustain liquid water. For life as we know it, liquid water is a necessary ingredient.

Of the more than 1,000 confirmed planets found by Kepler, eight are less than twice Earth-sized and in their stars' habitable zone. All eight orbit stars cooler and smaller than our sun. 

During its four-year prime mission, Kepler simultaneously and continuously measured the brightness of more than 150,000 stars, looking for the telltale dimming that would indicate the presence of an orbiting planet. From these dimmings, or transits, and information about the parent star, researchers can determine a planet's size (radius), the time it takes to orbit its star and the amount of energy received from the host star.

Kepler's exquisitely precise photometer, or light sensor, was designed to detect minute changes in brightness, to infer the presence of an Earth-sized planet. For a remote observer, Earth transiting the sun would dim its light by less than 1/100th of one percent, or the equivalent of the amount of light blocked by a gnat crawling across a car’s headlight viewed from several miles away.

In May 2014, the Kepler spacecraft began a new mission, K2, to observe parts of the sky along the ecliptic plane, the orbital path of the Earth about the sun, where the familiar constellations of the zodiac lie. This new mission provides scientists with an opportunity to search for even more exoplanets, as well as opportunities to observe notable star clusters, young and old stars, active galaxies and supernovae. The spacecraft continues to collect data in its new mission.

For more information on Kepler, please visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/kepler

---

Media contact:
Michele Johnson
Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
650-604-6982
michele.johnson@nasa.gov

Last Updated: May 17, 2015

Editor: Michele Johnson

Tags:  Ames Research Center, Distant Planets, Kepler and K2,

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NASA : James Webb Space Telescope's Near Infrared Spectrograph Installed

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James Webb Space Telescope's Near Infrared Spectrograph Installed

In March 2014, the James Webb Space Telescope's flight Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) was installed into the instrument module. NIRSpec joins the flight Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) Fine Guidance Sensor/ Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (FGS/NIRISS) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) which are already integrated into the ISIM, making the instrument module complete.

The James Webb Space Telescope is a large space telescope, optimized for infrared wavelengths. It is scheduled for launch later in this decade. Webb will find the first galaxies that formed in the early universe, connecting the Big Bang to our own Milky Way galaxy. Webb will peer through dusty clouds to see stars forming planetary systems, connecting the Milky Way to our own solar system. Webb's instruments will be designed to work primarily in the infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum, with some capability in the visible range.

> Read more

Image Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn

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NASA - NASA Observatory Measures Expansion of Universe

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 The cosmic distance ladder, symbolically shown here in this artist's concept, is a series of stars and other objects within galaxies that have known distances. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech › Full image and captio

Climbing the Cosmic Distance Ladder

Astronomers using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope have greatly improved the cosmic distance ladder used to measure the expansion rate of the universe, as well as its size and age. The cosmic distance ladder, symbolically shown here in this artist's concept, is a series of stars and other objects within galaxies that have known distances. By combining these distance measurements with the speeds at which objects are moving away from us, scientists can calculate the expansion rate of the universe, also known as Hubble's constant.

Spitzer was able to improve upon past measurements of Hubble's constant due to its infrared vision, which sees through dust to provide better views of variable stars called Cepheids. These pulsating stars are vital "rungs" in the distance ladder.

Spitzer observed ten Cepheids in our own Milky Way galaxy and 80 in a nearby neighboring galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud. Without the cosmic dust blocking their view, the Spitzer research team was able to obtain more precise measurements of the stars' apparent brightness, and thus their distances.

The researchers were then able to tighten up the rungs on the cosmic distance ladder, better determining distances to other galaxies, and enabling a new and improved estimate of our universe's expansion rate.

The galaxies used in this composite artwork are all infrared images from Spitzer covering wavelengths of 3.6 microns (blue), 4.5 microns (green), and 8.0 microns (red).

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

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Cepheids as Cosmology Tools

This graph illustrates the Cepheid period-luminosity relationship, which scientists use to calculate the size, age and expansion rate of the universe. The data shown are from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, which has made one of the most precise measurements yet of the universe's expansion rate by recalculating the distance to pulsating stars called Cepheids.

Cepheids are essential tools in cosmological-distance calculations thanks to what astronomers call their period-luminosity relationship. The timing, or period, of a Cepheid's pulses correlates with its inherit brightness, or luminosity, as shown on this graph. A longer pulse rate corresponds to a more luminous star. Once astronomers know how luminous a Cepheid is, they can compare that value to how bright it appears on the sky: the farther the object, the dimmer it will appear. By using a series of Cepheids and even farther objects of a different type, astronomers can determine the size of our universe.

Spitzer observed 10 Cepheids in the Milky Way (yellow dots) and 80 in one of our nearest satellite galaxies, the Large Magellanic Cloud (circled dots). At the infrared wavelengths used by the cameras operating on Spitzer, the dimming effects of dust on visible light are virtually non-existent. Moreover the scatter in the points about the period-luminosity relation is so small that single stars can be used to determine distances many times more precisely than from the ground and in the optical part of the spectrum. These two advantages alone have allowed researchers to use the Spitzer observations of Cepheids to securely recalibrate the size, age and expansion rate of the universe.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Carnegie

PASADENA, Calif. -- Astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have announced one of the most precise measurements yet of the Hubble constant, or the rate at which our universe is stretching apart.

The Hubble constant is named after the astronomer Edwin P. Hubble, who astonished the world in the 1920s by confirming our universe has been expanding since it exploded into being 13.7 billion years ago. In the late 1990s, astronomers discovered the expansion is accelerating, or speeding up, over time. Determining the expansion rate is critical for understanding the age and size of the universe.

Unlike NASA's Hubble Space Telescope that views the cosmos in visible and short-wavelength infrared light, Spitzer took advantage of long-wavelength infrared light for its latest Hubble constant measurement of 74.3 kilometers per second per megaparsec. A megaparsec is roughly three million light-years. This finding agrees with an independent supernovae study conducted last year by researchers primarily based at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., and improves by a factor of three on a seminal 2001 Hubble Space Telescope study using a similar technique as the current study.

"Spitzer is yet again doing science beyond what it was designed to do," said project scientist Michael Werner at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Werner has worked on the mission since its early concept phase more than 30 years ago. "First, Spitzer surprised us with its pioneering ability to study exoplanet atmospheres," said Werner, "and now, in the mission's later years, it has become a valuable cosmology tool."

In addition, the findings were combined with published data from NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe to obtain an independent measurement of dark energy, one of the greatest mysteries of our cosmos. Dark energy is thought to be winning a battle against gravity, pulling the fabric of the universe apart. Research based on this acceleration garnered researchers the 2011 Nobel Prize in physics.

"This is a huge puzzle," said the lead author of the new study, Wendy Freedman of the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Pasadena. "It's exciting that we were able to use Spitzer to tackle fundamental problems in cosmology: the precise rate at which the universe is expanding at the current time, as well as measuring the amount of dark energy in the universe from another angle." Freedman led the groundbreaking Hubble Space Telescope study that earlier had measured the Hubble constant.

Glenn Wahlgren, Spitzer program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said infrared vision, which sees through dust to provide better views of variable stars called cepheids, enabled Spitzer to improve on past measurements of the Hubble constant using Cepheids.

"These pulsating stars are vital rungs in what astronomers call the cosmic distance ladder: a set of objects with known distances that, when combined with the speeds at which the objects are moving away from us, reveal the expansion rate of the universe," said Wahlgren.

Cepheids are crucial to the calculations because their distances from Earth can be measured readily. In 1908, Henrietta Leavitt discovered these stars pulse at a rate directly related to their intrinsic brightness.

To visualize why this is important, imagine someone walking away from you while carrying a candle. The farther the candle traveled, the more it would dim. Its apparent brightness would reveal the distance. The same principle applies to cepheids, standard candles in our cosmos. By measuring how bright they appear on the sky, and comparing this to their known brightness as if they were close up, astronomers can calculate their distance from Earth.

Spitzer observed 10 cepheids in our own Milky Way galaxy and 80 in a nearby neighboring galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud. Without the cosmic dust blocking their view, the Spitzer research team was able to obtain more precise measurements of the stars' apparent brightness, and thus their distances. These data opened the way for a new and improved estimate of our universe's expansion rate.

"Just over a decade ago, using the words 'precision' and 'cosmology' in the same sentence was not possible, and the size and age of the universe was not known to better than a factor of two," said Freedman. "Now we are talking about accuracies of a few percent. It is quite extraordinary."

The study appears in the Astrophysical Journal. Freedman's co-authors are Barry Madore, Victoria Scowcroft, Chris Burns, Andy Monson, S. Eric Person and Mark Seibert of the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution and Jane Rigby of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

For more information on last year's supernovae study, visit:

 http://hubblesite.org/news/2011/08 .

For more information about WMAP, visit:

 http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/ .

JPL manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Data are archived at the Infrared Science Archive housed at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at Caltech. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. For more information about Spitzer, visit: http://spitzer.caltech.edu 

and http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer .

 

 

Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
whitney.b.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov

J.D. Harrington 202-358-0321
Headquarters, Washington
j.d.harrington@nasa.gov

NASA

Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui

ayabaca@gmail.com

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Astronomy: NASA's Chandra Shows Milky Way is Surrounded by Halo of Hot Gas

 This artist's illustration shows an enormous halo of hot gas (in blue) around the Milky Way galaxy. Also shown, to the lower left of the Milky Way, are the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds, two small neighboring galaxies. The halo of gas is shown with a radius of about 300,000 light years, although it may extend significantly further.

Data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory was used to estimate [link to press release] that the mass of the halo is comparable to the mass of all the stars in the Milky Way galaxy. If the size and mass of this gas halo is confirmed, it could be the solution to the "missing-baryon" problem for the Galaxy.

In a recent study, a team of five astronomers used data from Chandra, ESA's XMM-Newton, and Japan's Suzaku satellite to set limits on the temperature, extent and mass of the hot gas halo. Chandra observed eight bright X-ray sources located far beyond the Galaxy at distances of hundreds of millions of light years. The data revealed that X-rays from these distant sources are selectively absorbed by oxygen ions in the vicinity of the Galaxy. The nature of the absorption allowed the scientists to determine that the temperature of the absorbing halo is between 1 million and 2.5 million Kelvins.

Other studies have shown that the Milky Way and other galaxies are embedded in warm gas, with temperatures between 100,000 and one million degrees, and there have been indications that a hotter component with a temperature greater than a million degrees is also present. This new research provides evidence that the mass in the hot gas halo enveloping the Milky is much greater than that of the warm gas.

Credits: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss; NASA/CXC/Ohio State/A.Gupta et al.

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Astronomers have used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory to find evidence our Milky Way Galaxy is embedded in an enormous halo of hot gas that extends for hundreds of thousands of light years. The estimated mass of the halo is comparable to the mass of all the stars in the galaxy.

If the size and mass of this gas halo is confirmed, it also could be an explanation for what is known as the "missing baryon" problem for the galaxy.

Baryons are particles, such as protons and neutrons, that make up more than 99.9 percent of the mass of atoms found in the cosmos. Measurements of extremely distant gas halos and galaxies indicate the baryonic matter present when the universe was only a few billion years old represented about one-sixth the mass and density of the existing unobservable, or dark, matter. In the current epoch, about 10 billion years later, a census of the baryons present in stars and gas in our galaxy and nearby galaxies shows at least half the baryons are unaccounted for.

In a recent study, a team of five astronomers used data from Chandra, the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton space observatory and Japan's Suzaku satellite to set limits on the temperature, extent and mass of the hot gas halo. Chandra observed eight bright X-ray sources located far beyond the galaxy at distances of hundreds of millions of light-years. The data revealed X-rays from these distant sources are absorbed selectively by oxygen ions in the vicinity of the galaxy. The scientists determined the temperature of the absorbing halo is between 1 million and 2.5 million kelvins, or a few hundred times hotter than the surface of the sun.

Other studies have shown that the Milky Way and other galaxies are embedded in warm gas with temperatures between 100,000 and 1 million kelvins. Studies have indicated the presence of a hotter gas with a temperature greater than 1 million kelvins. This new research provides evidence the hot gas halo enveloping the Milky Way is much more massive than the warm gas halo.

"We know the gas is around the galaxy, and we know how hot it is," said Anjali Gupta, lead author of The Astrophysical Journal paper describing the research. "The big question is, how large is the halo, and how massive is it?"

To begin to answer this question, the authors supplemented Chandra data on the amount of absorption produced by the oxygen ions with XMM-Newton and Suzaku data on the X-rays emitted by the gas halo. They concluded that the mass of the gas is equivalent to the mass in more than 10 billion suns, perhaps as large as 60 billion suns.

"Our work shows that, for reasonable values of parameters and with reasonable assumptions, the Chandra observations imply a huge reservoir of hot gas around the Milky Way," said co-author Smita Mathur of Ohio State University in Columbus. "It may extend for a few hundred thousand light-years around the Milky Way or it may extend farther into the surrounding local group of galaxies. Either way, its mass appears to be very large."

The estimated mass depends on factors such as the amount of oxygen relative to hydrogen, which is the dominant element in the gas. Nevertheless, the estimation represents an important step in solving the case of the missing baryons, a mystery that has puzzled astronomers for more than a decade.

Baryons are particles, such as protons and neutrons, which make up more than 99.9 percent of the mass of atoms found in the cosmos. Measurements of extremely distant gas halos and galaxies indicate the baryonic matter present when the universe was only a few billion years old represented about one-sixth the mass and density of the existing unobservable, or dark, matter. In the current epoch, about 10 billion years later, a census of the baryons present in stars and gas in our galaxy and nearby galaxies shows at least half the baryons are unaccounted for.

Although there are uncertainties, the work by Gupta and colleagues provides the best evidence yet that the galaxy's missing baryons have been hiding in a halo of million-kelvin gas that envelopes the galaxy. The estimated density of this halo is so low that similar halos around other galaxies would have escaped detection.

The paper describing these results was published in the Sept. 1 issue of The Astrophysical Journal. Other co-authors were Yair Krongold of Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico in Mexico City; Fabrizio Nicastro of Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass.; and Massimiliano Galeazzi of University of Miami in Coral Gables, Fla.

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra's science and flight operations from Cambridge.

For Chandra images, multimedia and related materials, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/chandra

For an additional interactive image, podcast and video on the finding, visit:

http://chandra.si.edu

 

 

J.D. Harrington, 202-358-0321
Headquarters, Washington
j.d.harrington@nasa.gov

Janet Anderson, 256-544-0034
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
janet.l.anderson@nasa.gov

Peter Edmonds, 617-571-7279
Chandra X-ray Center, Cambridge, Mass.
pedmonds@cfa.harvard.edu

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Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui

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Astronomy: The Pinwheel Galaxy

Hi My Friends: A VUELO DE UN QUINDE EL BLOG.,his image of the Pinwheel Galaxy, also known as M101, combines data in the infrared, visible, ultraviolet and X-rays from four of NASA's space-based telescopes.

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 The Pinwheel Galaxy

This image of the Pinwheel Galaxy, also known as M101, combines data in the infrared, visible, ultraviolet and X-rays from four of NASA's space-based telescopes. This multi-spectral view shows that both young and old stars are evenly distributed along M101's tightly-wound spiral arms. Such composite images allow astronomers to see how features in one part of the spectrum match up with those seen in other parts. It is like seeing with a regular camera, an ultraviolet camera, night-vision goggles and X-ray vision, all at the same time.

The Pinwheel Galaxy is in the constellation of Ursa Major (also known as the Big Dipper). It is about 70 percent larger than our own Milky Way Galaxy, with a diameter of about 170,000 light years, and sits at a distance of 21 million light years from Earth. This means that the light we're seeing in this image left the Pinwheel Galaxy about 21 million years ago - many millions of years before humans ever walked the Earth.

Image Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; IR & UV: NASA/JPL-Caltech; Optical: NASA/STScI

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Astronomy: NASA Releases New WISE Mission Catalog Of Entire Infrared Sky

Hi My Friends: A VUELO DE UN QUINDE EL BLOG., WISE launched Dec. 14, 2009, and mapped the entire sky in 2010 with vastly better sensitivity than its predecessors. It collected more than 2.7 million images taken at four infrared wavelengths of light, capturing everything from nearby asteroids to distant galaxies. Since then, the team has been processing more than 15 trillion bytes of returned data. A preliminary release of WISE data, covering the first half of the sky surveyed, was made last April.

March 14, 2012 -

Mapping the Infrared Universe: The Entire WISE Sky
This is a mosaic of the images covering the entire sky as observed by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), part of its All-Sky Data Release.
The sky can be thought of as a sphere that surrounds us in three dimensions. To make a map of the sky, astronomers project it into two dimensions. Many different methods can be used to project a spherical surface into a 2-D map. The projection used in this image of the sky is called Aitoff, named after the geographer who invented it. It takes the 3-D sky sphere and slices open one hemisphere, and then flattens the whole thing out into an oval shape.
Any projection creates distortions, so people tend to use a particular projection type based on where in the resulting map the distortions are minimal. This map is centered on the Milky Way Galaxy. The plane of the Galaxy runs along the equator, and the center of the Galaxy is at the center of the map, where projection distortions are minimal. The distortions are most pronounced at the edges of the map. The right and left edges of this oval shape are the same location in the sky. A second projection of this image is also available, called equirectangular. This method projects the sky into a rectangular shape with Cartesian coordinates, and is useful for planetariums that may wish to display the image on their domes.
In this mosaic, the Milky Way Galaxy runs horizontally across this map. The Milky Way is shaped like a disk and the Solar System is located in that disk about two-thirds of the way out from the center. So we see the Milky Way as a band running through the sky. As we look toward the center of the Galaxy we are looking through more of the disk than when we are looking at large angles away from the center, and you can see a noticeable increase in stars (colored blue-green) toward the center of the image.
There are some artifacts worth noting in the image. For the image atlas, moving objects such as asteroids and comets were removed. However, some slower moving, bright objects did leave behind residuals. Residuals of the planets Saturn, Mars, and Jupiter are visible in this image as bright red spots off the plane of the Galaxy at the 1:00, 2:00 and 7:00 positions, respectively. In addition, at several locations in the image there are small rectangular shaped features that result from the difficulty in matching background levels of individual atlas frames.
With the exception of a few Solar System objects, all of the celestial bodies highlighted in previous featured images from WISE are visible in this map. The annotated version of this map shows the locations of about half of the featured images (the rest were omitted for clarity). Clicking on the name of the object in the annotated map above will open a new browser window showing the featured image for that object.
Three of the four wavelengths surveyed by WISE were used to create this image. The colors used in this image represent specific wavelengths of infrared light. Cyan (blue-green) represents light emitted predominantly from stars and galaxies at a wavelength of 3.4 microns. Green and red represent light mostly emitted by dust at 12 and 22 microns, respectively.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/WISE Team

NASA Releases New WISE Mission Catalog Of Entire Infrared Sky

WASHINGTON -- NASA unveiled a new atlas and catalog of the entire infrared sky today showing more than a half billion stars, galaxies and other objects captured by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission.

"Today, WISE delivers the fruit of 14 years of effort to the astronomical community," said Edward Wright, WISE principal investigator at UCLA, who first began working on the mission with other team members in 1998.

WISE launched Dec. 14, 2009, and mapped the entire sky in 2010 with vastly better sensitivity than its predecessors. It collected more than 2.7 million images taken at four infrared wavelengths of light, capturing everything from nearby asteroids to distant galaxies. Since then, the team has been processing more than 15 trillion bytes of returned data. A preliminary release of WISE data, covering the first half of the sky surveyed, was made last April.

The WISE catalog of the entire sky meets the mission's fundamental objective. The individual WISE exposures have been combined into an atlas of more than 18,000 images covering the sky and a catalog listing the infrared properties of more than 560 million individual objects found in the images. Most of the objects are stars and galaxies, with roughly equal numbers of each. Many of them have never been seen before.

WISE observations have led to numerous discoveries, including the elusive, coolest class of stars. Astronomers hunted for these failed stars, called "Y-dwarfs," for more than a decade. Because they have been cooling since their formation, they don't shine in visible light and could not be spotted until WISE mapped the sky with its infrared vision.

WISE also took a poll of near-Earth asteroids, finding there are significantly fewer mid-size objects than previously thought. It also determined NASA has found more than 90 percent of the largest near-Earth asteroids.

Other discoveries were unexpected. WISE found the first known "Trojan" asteroid to share the same orbital path around the sun as Earth. One of the images released today shows a surprising view of an "echo" of infrared light surrounding an exploded star. The echo was etched in the clouds of gas and dust when the flash of light from the supernova explosion heated surrounding clouds. At least 100 papers on the results from the WISE survey already have been published. More discoveries are expected now that astronomers have access to the whole sky as seen by the spacecraft.

"With the release of the all-sky catalog and atlas, WISE joins the pantheon of great sky surveys that have led to many remarkable discoveries about the universe," said Roc Cutri, who leads the WISE data processing and archiving effort at the Infrared and Processing Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "It will be exciting and rewarding to see the innovative ways the science and educational communities will use WISE in their studies now that they have the data at their fingertips."

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., manages and operates WISE for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The mission was competitively selected under NASA's Explorers Program, which is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The science instrument was built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory in Logan, Utah, and the spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp., in Boulder, Colo. Science operations, data processing and archiving take place at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

For a collection of WISE images released to date, visit:
http://wise.ssl.berkeley.edu/gallery_images.html

An introduction and quick guide to accessing the WISE all-sky archive for astronomers is online at:
http://wise2.ipac.caltech.edu/docs/release/allsky/
For more information about WISE,
visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/wise
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Astronomía: Hay más planetas que estrellas en nuestra galaxia

Hola amigos: A VUELO DE UN QUINDE EL BLOG., Nuestra galaxia, la Vía Láctea, contiene un mínimo de 100 mil millones de planetas, según un estudio estadístico detallado basado en la detección de tres planetas situados fuera de nuestro sistema solar, llamados exoplanetas. El descubrimiento, que se informó en el 12 de enero de la revista Nature, fue hecho por un equipo internacional de astrónomos, incluyendo a Stephen co-autor de Kane Instituto de Exoplanetas de la NASA en el Instituto de Tecnología de California en Pasadena, California. Artist's conception of the spiral structure of the Milky Way with two major stellar arms and a bar. Wkipedia. La Vía Láctea tiene al menos 100 mil millones de planetas:

La Vía Láctea contiene, al menos, 100.000 millones de planetas, según revela un censo planetario realizado por un equipo de astrónomos y difundido durante la reunión anual de la Sociedad Astronómica Estadounidense.
Los resultados se basan en observaciones realizadas durante seis años en colaboración con el programa PLANET (Probing Lensing Anomalies NETwork), una red de telescopios que toman medidas fotométricas de las estrellas.
Vía láctea. Los científicos han llegado a esta cifra gracias a la técnica de microlentes gravitacionales, que puede utilizarse para detectar la presencia de objetos masivos, como agujeros negros, o planetas extrasolares.
Se trata de un fenómeno que forma la luz cuando procede de objetos distantes y brillantes al curvarse alrededor de un objeto masivo, como una galaxia, y que permite detectar la diferencia de brillo en una estrella si pasa un planeta por delante.
A diferencia de otras técnicas de detección de planetas, que miden la sombras de los planetas que pasan por delante de sus estrellas o el bamboleo de una estrella debido al tirón gravitatorio de un planeta, la técnica de la microlente gravitacional permite captar planetas más pequeños o que están más lejos de su estrella.
El equipo ha estudiado 100 millones de estrellas entre 3.000 y 25.000 años luz de la Tierra y han combinado sus resultados con estudios anteriores, utilizando otras técnicas, para crear una muestra estadística de estrellas y planetas que las orbitan, que según los autores es la más completa de la galaxia.
El cruce de datos revela que cada estrella de nuestra galaxia contiene, en promedio, un planeta, lo que demuestra que a pesar de lo que se pensaba hasta hace unos años, no es algo tan raro que una estrella tenga su propio sistema planetario como el Sol.
Utilizando la técnica del microlente, los astrónomos pueden determinar la masa de un planeta, aunque este método no revela ninguna pista sobre su composición.
Los investigadores han concluido que hay muchos más planetas pequeños que grandes, del tamaño de Mercurio, Venus, la Tierra y Marte, lo que abre la posibilidad de encontrar nuevos candidatos a albergar vida.EFE

Hay más planetas que estrellas en nuestra galaxia
Hay más planetas que estrellas en nuestra galaxia, donde el sistema solar ha sido considerado durante largo tiempo como una excepción, reveló un estudio publicado el miércoles por un equipo internacional de astrónomos.

Según los cálculos estadísticos de su equipo, habría en promedio 1,6 planetas por estrella en nuestra galaxia.
Estrellas rodeadas de planetas: “esa es la regla, más que la excepción” en la Vía Láctea, destacó Arnaud Cassan, del Instituto de astrofísica de París, principal autor del artículo publicado en la revista científica británica Nature.

Según los cálculos estadísticos de su equipo, habría en promedio 1,6 planetas por estrella en nuestra galaxia. “Los planetas son más numerosos cuanto más pequeños son”, precisó Cassan.

Según sus cálculos, 17 por ciento de las estrellas tendrían un planeta de una masa comparable a la de Júpiter, un 52 por ciento de los planetas tendrían un planeta del tamaño de Neptuno y 62 por ciento del tamaño de las “supertierras”, esos planetas que son cinco a diez veces mayores que la Tierra.

“Parece que hay literalmente miles de millones de planetas con masas similares a la Tierra en órbita alrededor de las estrellas en la Vía Láctea”, destacó su colega Daniel Kubas, en un comunicado del Observatorio Europeo Austral ESO) instalado en La Silla, a unos 600 kilómetros al norte de Santiago de Chile.

Mientras que el equipo de Arnaud Cassan se interesó por las estrellas solitarias, otro estudio publicado este miércoles en Nature indica que 1 por ciento de las estrellas asociadas ("estrellas binarias") podrían tener un exoplaneta gigante en órbita alrededor de la pareja.

En nuestra galaxia habría varios millones de exoplanetas que tendrían varios soles, según William Welsh de la Universidad de San Diego (California), cuyo equipo identificó a dos nuevos planetas de ese tipo gracias al satélite Kepler que ya permitió detectar Kepler-16b, el primer planeta llamado “circumbinario”, que orbita entre dos estrellas.

Más de 700 exoplanetas han sido descubiertos en 16 años, de los cuales sólo una docena por “microlentes”, la técnica utilizada por el equipo de Arnaud Cassan que ha estudiado durante seis años millones de estrellas, buscando esos efectos de lupa.

Se trata de un fenómeno raro que se produce cuando dos estrellas están perfectamente alineadas en nuestra línea de mira: la masa más cercana amplifica la luz de la más lejana.Einstein demostró que la presencia de una masa modifica el trayecto de los rayos luminosos.

Si un planeta orbita alrededor de la estrella que desempeña el rol de lupa, ella contribuye así al efecto de amplificación de la luz, lo que ayuda a detectar un planeta aún con una masa muy pequeña, subrayó Cassan.

Tres exoplanetas de diferentes tamaños han sido detectados gracias a más de 3 mil 200 efectos de microlentes registrados de 2002 a 2007, lo que es un resultado “impresionante” para esta técnica, que permite presagiar una abundancia de exoplanetas en el seno de nuestra galaxia, subrayó ESO.

Una parte importante de los datos de este estudio fueron recogidos gracias a un telescopio danés del Observatorio de La Silla, una montaña chilena de 2 mil 400 metros de altura.

AFP Francia.
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
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ASTRONOMY: NASA's Fermi Space Telescope Explores New Energy Extremes

Hi my Friends: A VUELO DE UN QUINDE EL BLOG., After more than three years in space, NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is extending its view of the high-energy sky into a largely unexplored electromagnetic range.Gamma-rays detected by Fermi's LAT show that the remnant of Tycho's supernova shines in the highest-energy form of light. This portrait of the shattered star includes gamma rays (magenta), X-rays (yellow, green, and blue), infrared (red) and optical data. (Credit: Gamma ray, NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration; X-ray, NASA/CXC/SAO; Infrared, NASA/JPL-Caltech; Optical, MPIA, Calar Alto, O. Krause et al. and DSS)

In early November 1572, observers on Earth witnessed the appearance of a "new star" in the constellation Cassiopeia, an event now recognized as the brightest naked-eye supernova in more than 400 years. It's often called "Tycho's supernova" after the great Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, who gained renown for his extensive study of the object. Now, years of data collected by NASA's Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope reveal that the shattered star's remains shine in high-energy gamma rays.The detection gives astronomers another clue in understanding the origin of cosmic rays, subatomic particles -- mainly protons -- that move through space at nearly the speed of light. Exactly where and how these particles attain such incredible energies has been a long-standing mystery because charged particles speeding through the galaxy are easily deflected by interstellar magnetic fields. This makes it impossible to track cosmic rays back to their sources."Fortunately, high-energy gamma rays are produced when cosmic rays strike interstellar gas and starlight. These gamma rays come to Fermi straight from their sources," said Francesco Giordano at the University of Bari and the National Institute of Nuclear Physics in Italy. He is the lead author of a paper describing the findings in the Dec. 7 edition of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.Better understanding the origins of cosmic rays is one of Fermi's key goals. Its Large Area Telescope (LAT) scans the entire sky every three hours, gradually building up an ever-deeper view of the gamma-ray sky. Because gamma rays are the most energetic and penetrating form of light, they serve as signposts for the particle acceleration that gives rise to cosmic rays."This detection gives us another piece of evidence supporting the notion that supernova remnants can accelerate cosmic rays," said co-author Stefan Funk, an astrophysicist at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC), jointly located at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University, Calif.In 1949, physicist Enrico Fermi -- the satellite's namesake -- suggested that the highest-energy cosmic rays were accelerated in the magnetic fields of interstellar gas clouds. In the decades that followed, astronomers showed that supernova remnants may be the galaxy's best candidate sites for this process.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/news/tycho-star.html
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/main/index.html

NASA's Fermi Space Telescope Explores New Energy Extremes:
WASHINGTON -- After more than three years in space, NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is extending its view of the high-energy sky into a largely unexplored electromagnetic range. Today, the Fermi team announced its first census of energy sources in this new realm.
Fermi's Large Area Telescope (LAT) scans the entire sky every three hours, continually deepening its portrait of the sky in gamma rays, the most energetic form of light.
While the energy of visible light falls between about 2 and 3 electron volts, the LAT detects gamma rays with energies ranging from 20 million to more than 300 billion electron volts (GeV).
At higher energies, gamma rays are rare. Above 10 GeV, even Fermi's LAT detects only one gamma ray every four months. "Before Fermi, we knew of only four discrete sources above 10 GeV, all of them pulsars," said David Thompson, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "With the LAT, we've found hundreds, and we're showing for the first time just how diverse the sky is at these high energies."
Any object producing gamma rays at these energies is undergoing extraordinary astrophysical processes. More than half of the 496 sources in the new census are active galaxies, where matter falling into a supermassive black hole powers jets that spray out particles at nearly the speed of light. Only about 10 percent of the known sources lie within our own galaxy.
They include rapidly rotating neutron stars called pulsars, the expanding debris from supernova explosions, and in a few cases, binary systems containing massive stars.
More than a third of the sources are completely unknown, having no identified counterpart detected in other parts of the spectrum.
With the new catalog, astronomers will be able to compare the behavior of different sources across a wider span of gamma-ray energies for the first time.
Just as bright infrared sources may fade to invisibility in the ultraviolet, some of the gamma-ray sources above 1 GeV vanish completely when viewed at higher, or "harder," energies.
One example is the well-known radio galaxy NGC 1275, which is a bright, isolated source below 10 GeV. At higher energies it fades appreciably and another nearby source begins to appear. Above 100 GeV, NGC 1275 becomes undetectable by Fermi, while the new source, the radio galaxy IC 310, shines brightly.
The Fermi hard-source list is the product of an international team led by Pascal Fortin at the Ecole Polytechnique's Laboratoire Leprince-Ringuet in Palaiseau, France, and David Paneque at the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Munich.
The catalog serves as an important roadmap for ground-based facilities called Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes, which have amassed about 130 gamma-ray sources with energies above 100 GeV.
They include the Major Atmospheric Gamma Imaging Cherenkov telescope (MAGIC) on La Palma in the Canary Islands, the Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System (VERITAS) in Arizona, and the High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) in Namibia.
"Our catalog will have a significant impact on ground-based facilities' work by pointing them to the most likely places to find gamma-ray sources emitting above 100 GeV," Paneque said.
Compared to Fermi's LAT, these ground-based observatories have much smaller fields of view. They also make fewer observations because they cannot operate during daytime, bad weather or a full moon.
"As Fermi's exposure constantly improves our view of hard sources, ground-based telescopes are becoming more sensitive to lower-energy gamma rays, allowing us to bridge these two energy regimes," Fortin added. NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership. Fermi is managed by Goddard. It was developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy, with important contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden and the United States.
For images related to this story, please visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/fermi
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Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
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ASTRONOMY: NASA Mars-Bound Rover Begins Research in Space

Hi My Friends: A VUELO DE UN QUINDE EL BLOG., NASA's car-sized Curiosity rover has begun monitoring space radiation during its 8-month trip from Earth to Mars. The research will aid in planning for future human missions to the Red Planet.Mars Science Laboratory Spacecraft During Cruise, Artist's Concept
This is an artist's concept of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft during its cruise phase between launch and final approach to Mars. The spacecraft includes a disc-shaped cruise stage (on the left) attached to the aeroshell. The spacecraft's rover (Curiosity) and descent stage are tucked inside the aeroshell. Along the way to Mars, the cruise stage will perform several trajectory correction maneuvers to adjust the spacecraft's path toward its final, precise landing site on Mars. The Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft will use the stars to navigate. A star scanner on the cruise stage will help keep the spacecraft on track by constantly monitoring its position relative to stars in our Milky Way galaxy. The cruise stage will have its own miniature propulsion system, consisting of eight thrusters to be fired on command using hydrazine fuel in two titanium tanks. It will also have its own power system, consisting of a solar array for providing continuous power. The vehicle will maintain stability by spinning about its central axis at two revolutions per minute. The Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft is being prepared for launch during Nov. 25 to Dec. 18, 2011. Landing on Mars is in early August 2012. In a prime mission lasting one Martian year (nearly two Earth years) researchers will use the rover's tools to study whether the landing region has had environmental conditions favorable for supporting microbial life and for preserving clues about whether life existed. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

More information about Curiosity is at http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/ .

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

WASHINGTON -- NASA's car-sized Curiosity rover has begun monitoring space radiation during its 8-month trip from Earth to Mars. The research will aid in planning for future human missions to the Red Planet.

Curiosity launched on Nov. 26 from Cape Canaveral, Fla., aboard the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL). The rover carries an instrument called the Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) that monitors high-energy atomic and subatomic particles from the sun, distant supernovas and other sources.

These particles constitute radiation that could be harmful to any microbes or astronauts in space or on Mars. The rover also will monitor radiation on the surface of Mars after its August 2012 landing.

"RAD is serving as a proxy for an astronaut inside a spacecraft on the way to Mars,” said Don Hassler, RAD's principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo.”The instrument is deep inside the spacecraft, the way an astronaut would be. Understanding the effects of the spacecraft on the radiation field will be valuable in designing craft for astronauts to travel to Mars."

Previous monitoring of energetic-particle radiation in space has used instruments at or near the surface of various spacecraft. The RAD instrument is on the rover inside the spacecraft and shielded by other components of MSL, including the aeroshell that will protect the rover during descent through the upper atmosphere of Mars.

Spacecraft structures, while providing shielding, also can contribute to secondary particles generated when high-energy particles strike the spacecraft. In some circumstances, secondary particles could be more hazardous than primary ones.

These first measurements mark the start of the science return from a mission that will use 10 instruments on Curiosity to assess whether Mars' Gale Crater could be or has been favorable for microbial life.

"While Curiosity will not look for signs of life on Mars, what it might find could be a game- changer about the origin and evolution of life on Earth and elsewhere in the universe,” said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “One thing is certain: the rover's discoveries will provide critical data that will impact human and robotic planning and research for decades.”

As of noon EST on Dec. 14, the spacecraft will have traveled 31.9 million miles (51.3 million kilometers) of its 352-million-mile (567-million-kilometer) flight to Mars. The first trajectory correction maneuver during the trip is being planned for mid-January.

Southwest Research Institute, together with Christian Albrechts University in Kiel, Germany, built RAD with funding from the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters, Washington, and Germany's national aerospace research center, Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt.

The mission is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The mission's rover was designed, developed and assembled at JPL.

Information about the mission is available at:
http://www.nasa.gov/msl

You can follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at:
http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity
NASA.
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
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ASTRONOMY: Kepler Mission Description

Hi My Friends: A VUELO DE UN QUINDE EL BLOG., The Kepler instrument is a specially designed 0.95-meter diameter telescope called a photometer or light meter. It has a very large field of view for an astronomical telescope 105 square degrees, which is comparable to the area of your hand held at arm's length. The fields of view of most telescopes are less than one square degree. Kepler needs the large field of view in order to observe the large number of stars. It stares at the same star field for the entire mission and continuously and simultaneously monitors the brightnesses of more than 100,000 stars for at least 3.5 years, the initial length of the mission, which can be extended.

Kepler Spacecraft and Photometer(Launched on March 6, 2009)

Kepler Scientific Objectives

The scientific objective of the Kepler Mission is to explore the structure and diversity of planetary systems. This is achieved by surveying a large sample of stars to:
1.- Determine the percentage of terrestrial and larger planets that are in or near the habitable zone of a wide variety of stars
2.- Determine the distribution of sizes and shapes of the orbits of these planets
3.- Estimate how many planets there are in multiple-star systems
4.- Determine the variety of orbit sizes and planet reflectivities, sizes, masses and densities of short-period giant planets
5.- Identify additional members of each discovered planetary system using other techniques
6.- Determine the properties of those stars that harbor planetary systems.

Image above: Kepler's targeted star field. Credit: Carter Roberts of the Eastbay Astronomical Society

Kepler Mission Star Field
An image by Carter Roberts of the Eastbay Astronomical Society in Oakland, CA, showing the Milky Way region of the sky where the Kepler spacecraft/photometer will be pointing. Each rectangle indicates the specific region of the sky covered by each CCD element of the Kepler photometer. There are a total of 42 CCD elements in pairs, each pair comprising a square. Credit: Carter Roberts

Kepler Mission Description
Kepler, a NASA Strategic mission launched into an Earth-trailing heliocentric orbit on March 6, 2009, is designed to stare at a 105 square degree region of the sky in the constellations of Cygnus and Lyra. The mission's goal is to obtain long-term, unfiltered, and precise light curves of up to 100,000 cool stars and search for periodic transits of planets as small as the Earth. A secondary objective of the mission is to study rapid oscillations of the target stars in order to determine their ages, radii, and metallic chemical compositions of planet-hosting stars. The Kepler Science page and Science Goals pages lay out the scientific objectives in some detail.
The science operations phase of the mission began on May 12, 2009. Since then Kepler has monitored the same sky field almost continuously. The principal exception is for monthly data downlinks during which the spacecraft must turn away from the monitored field, reorient toward the Earth for the downlink, and return to the field. The spacecraft also "rolls" every three months to allow for continous illumination of Kepler's solar arrays. A table of scheduled quarterly rolls, each lasting about 1 day, is given on the MAST/Kepler FAQ page (see FAQ tab in left "gutter"). The fields of view of 42 CCDs covers a four-way symmetrical pattern on the sky such that the same stars remain on the detectors during the mission. Although the Kepler field covers a large sky area containing millions of stars, data from small regions around only 150,000 targets are recorded and stored onboard the spacecraft. The default integration time is about 30 minutes, although a small number of asteroseismology and other targets of interest are recorded with integration times of about 1 minute.
The mission has a nominal lifetime of three and one half years to pursue its core science objectives. These objectives will be carried out by Science Principal Investigator William Borucki of NASA's Ames Research Center, the Kepler Science Team, the Kepler Participating Scientists, and the Kepler Asteroseismology Science Consortium. In addition, a limited Guest Observer (GO) program, dedicated to general (non-exoplanetary) astrophysics has been established. Proposal solicitations will be made on an annual basis, resources permitting, by NASA Headquarters. The GO program is administered from NASA's Ames Research Center. Information of interest to potential GO proposers can be found at the GO program website and in NASA's omnibus annual announcement Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Sciences 2010 NASA ROSES.
A map of where Kepler's Field of View in the sky was obtained from the Project and is shown below. Clicking on this image will bring up a magnified view. Users can reconnoiter the Kepler field in detail by going to the FFI display page.
Investigators interested in whether targets included in the MAST/Kepler ("KIC") database lie on any of the 42 Kepler detector fields should first consult the Kepler Target Search form. Users are also emphatically advised not to use solely color-derived quantities like Teff, logg, etc. to select their targets for proposals.
As the mission proceeds, the Project will periodically drop stars as exoplanetary search candidates. As it does so, MAST will provide access to lists of targets and/or data released as notifications in the Dropped Target and Published Target tabs under the Search and Retrieval item on the left banner of this page and in the Public Light Curves link in the Quick Links section above. As data become nonproprietary, the restrictions against accessing them, which are denoted by the "yellow band" on the Retrieval page, will disappear. In addition to the Dropped and Target lists, Kepler light curves and associated ground-based follow up data have been also placed on MAST's Kepler High Level Science Products site.
Image above: Kepler's targeted star field graphic. Credit: NASA

Target Field of View :
Since transits only last a fraction of a day, all the stars must be monitored continuously, that is, their brightnesses must be measured at least once every few hours. The ability to continuously view the stars being monitored dictates that the field of view (FOV) must never be blocked at any time during the year. Therefore, to avoid the Sun the FOV must be out of the ecliptic plane. The secondary requirement is that the FOV have the largest possible number of stars. This leads to the selection of a region in the Cygnus and Lyra constellations of our Galaxy as shown.

Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
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ASTRONOMY:NASA PROBES SAGGEST MAGNETIC BUBBLES RESIDE AT SOLAR SYSTEM EDGE

Hi My Friends: A VUELO DE UN QUINDE EL BLOG., Observations from NASA's Voyager spacecraft, humanity's farthest deep space sentinels, suggest the edge of our solar system may not be smooth, but filled with a turbulent sea of magnetic bubbles.The Sun unleashed an M-2 (medium-sized) solar flare, an S1-class (minor) radiation storm and a spectacular coronal mass ejection (CME) on June 7, 2011 from sunspot complex 1226-1227. The large cloud of particles mushroomed up and fell back down looking as if it covered an area of almost half the solar surface. First complete image of the far side of the sun taken on June 1, 2011. Credit: NASA/STEREO

The far side unveiled! This is the first complete image of the solar far side, the half of the sun invisible from Earth. Captured on June 1, 2011, the composite image was assembled from NASA's two Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft. STEREO-Ahead's data is shown on the left half of image and STEREO-Behind's data on the right.

The STEREO spacecraft reached opposition (180° separation) on February 6 but part of the sun was inaccessible to their combined view until June 1. This image represents the first day when the entire far side could be seen.

The image is aligned so that solar north is directly up. The seam between the two images is inclined because the plane of Earth’s -- and STEREO's -- orbit, known as the "ecliptic", is inclined with respect to the sun's axis of rotation. The data was collected by STEREO's Extreme Ultraviolet Imagers in the SECCHI instrument suites.

STEREO was built and is operated for NASA by the Applied Physical Laboratory of the Johns Hopkins University; the spacecraft were launched on October 25, 2006 aboard a Delta II. The SECCHI instrument suite is a collaboration led by the Naval Research Laboratory, and the EUVI instruments were built by the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory.

For more about the STEREO mission visit www.nasa.gov/stereo

NASA Probes Suggest Magnetic Bubbles Reside At Solar System Edge :
WASHINGTON -- Observations from NASA's Voyager spacecraft, humanity's farthest deep space sentinels, suggest the edge of our solar system may not be smooth, but filled with a turbulent sea of magnetic bubbles.

While using a new computer model to analyze Voyager data, scientists found the sun's distant magnetic field is made up of bubbles approximately 100 million miles wide. The bubbles are created when magnetic field lines reorganize. The new model suggests the field lines are broken up into self-contained structures disconnected from the solar magnetic field. The findings are described in the June 9 edition of the Astrophysical Journal.

Like Earth, our sun has a magnetic field with a north pole and a south pole. The field lines are stretched outward by the solar wind or a stream of charged particles emanating from the star that interacts with material expelled from others in our corner of the Milky Way galaxy.

The Voyager spacecraft, more than nine billion miles away from Earth, are traveling in a boundary region. In that area, the solar wind and magnetic field are affected by material expelled from other stars in our corner of the Milky Way galaxy.

"The sun's magnetic field extends all the way to the edge of the solar system," said astronomer Merav Opher of Boston University. "Because the sun spins, its magnetic field becomes twisted and wrinkled, a bit like a ballerina's skirt. Far, far away from the sun, where the Voyagers are, the folds of the skirt bunch up.

" Understanding the structure of the sun's magnetic field will allow scientists to explain how galactic cosmic rays enter our solar system and help define how the star interacts with the rest of the galaxy.

So far, much of the evidence for the existence of the bubbles originates from an instrument aboard the spacecraft that measures energetic particles. Investigators are studying more information and hoping to find signatures of the bubbles in the Voyager magnetic field data.

"We are still trying to wrap our minds around the implications of the findings," said University of Maryland physicist Jim Drake, one of Opher's colleagues.

Launched in 1977, the Voyager twin spacecraft have been on a 33-year journey. They are en route to reach the edge of interstellar space. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., built the spacecraft and continues to operate them. The Voyager missions are a part of the Heliophysics System Observatory, sponsored by the Heliophysics Division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

To view supporting images about the research, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/sunearth

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text-only version of this release

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