Astro Wonders

2021-05-08 10:30:01 Strange eruptions of matter from the sun had already been observed indirectly since the 1940s. From time to time, bursts of radio-wavelength energy would be observed from the sun. These were monitored at many wavelengths and classified by type and duration. The most curious of these were the traveling Type IV radio bursts detected in the 1950s. It was known through their radio properties that these events were caused by clouds that were a combination of magnetic fields and plasma emitting at radio frequencies, and traveling at over 1000 km/sec. By the 1960s, these solar eruptions were detected via the shock waves they produced, which could be detected by interplanetary spacecraft, and in their interaction with Earth’s magnetic field causing magnetic storms.

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2021-05-08 05:30:01 The James Webb Space Telescope (sometimes called JWST or Webb) will be a large infrared telescope with a 6.5-meter primary mirror. The telescope will be launched on an Ariane 5 rocket from French Guiana in 2021.

The Webb telescope will be the premier observatory of the next decade, serving thousands of astronomers worldwide. It will study every phase in the history of our Universe, ranging from the first luminous glows after the Big Bang, to the formation of solar systems capable of supporting life on planets like Earth, to the evolution of our own Solar System.

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2021-05-08 05:30:00 Guys this is done by our group member Open / Comment

2021-05-08 05:30:00 Since L2 is just an equilibrium point with no gravitational pull, a halo orbit is not an orbit in the usual sense: the spacecraft is actually in orbit around the Sun, and the halo orbit can be thought of as controlled drifting to remain in the vicinity of the L2 point. This requires some station-keeping: around 2–4 m/s per year from the total budget of 150 m/s. Two sets of thrusters constitute the observatory's propulsion system





Features

The JWST has an expected mass about half of Hubble Space Telescope's, but its primary mirror, a 6.5 meter diameter gold-coated beryllium reflector will have a collecting area over six times as large, 25.4 square metres (273 sq ft), using 18 hexagon mirrors with 0.9 square metres (9.7 sq ft) obscuration for the secondary support struts.

The JWST is oriented toward near-infrared astronomy, but can also see orange and red visible light, as well as the mid-infrared region, depending on the instrument. The design emphasizes the near to mid-infrared for three main reasons: high-redshift objects have their visible emissions shifted into the infrared, cold objects such as debris disks and planets emit most strongly in the infrared, and this band is difficult to study from the ground or by existing space telescopes such as Hubble. Ground-based telescopes must look through Earth's atmosphere, which is opaque in many infrared bands (see figure of atmospheric absorption). Even where the atmosphere is transparent, many of the target chemical compounds, such as water, carbon dioxide, and methane, also exist in the Earth's atmosphere, vastly complicating analysis. Existing space telescopes such as Hubble cannot study these bands since their mirrors are insufficiently cool (the Hubble mirror is maintained at about 15 °C (288 K)) thus the telescope itself radiates strongly in the infrared bands.



The JWST will operate near the Earth–Sun L2 (Lagrange point), approximately 1,500,000 kilometres (930,000 mi) beyond Earth's orbit. By way of comparison, Hubble orbits 550 kilometres (340 mi) above Earth's surface, and the Moon is roughly 400,000 kilometres (250,000 mi) from Earth. This distance made post-launch repair or upgrade of the JWST hardware virtually impossible with the spaceships available during the telescope design and fabrication stage. SpaceX says its new Starship has the ability to deliver satellites and space telescopes even larger than the James Webb and is designed to reach Mars orbit. Objects near this Lagrange point can orbit the Sun in synchrony with the Earth, allowing the telescope to remain at a roughly constant distance and use a single sunshield to block heat and light from the Sun and Earth. This arrangement will keep the temperature of the spacecraft below 50 K (−223.2 °C; −369.7 °F), necessary for infrared observations.

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2021-05-08 05:30:00 Guys this is made by our grp member Open / Comment

2021-05-07 21:00:22 On This Day in Space! May 7, 1992: Space shuttle Endeavour launches on maiden voyage

On May 7, 1992, the space shuttle Endeavour launched on its first flight. Endeavour was the fifth and last space shuttle that was ever built, and STS-49 was the first of 25 missions to fly on it.

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2021-05-07 20:30:16 STEVE over Copper Harbor
Image Credit & Copyright: MaryBeth Kiczenski

Explanation: What creates STEVEs? Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancements (STEVEs) have likely been seen since antiquity, but only in the past five years has it been realized that their colors and shapes make them different from auroras. Seen as single bright streaks of pink and purple, the origin of STEVEs remain an active topic of research. STEVEs may be related to subauroral ion drifts (SAIDs), a supersonic river of hot atmospheric ions. For reasons currently unknown, STEVEs are frequently accompanied by green "picket-fence" auroras. The featured STEVE image is a combination of foreground and background exposures taken consecutively in mid-March from Copper Harbor, Michigan, USA. This bright STEVE lasted several minutes, spanned from horizon to horizon, and appeared in between times of normal auroras. Open / Comment

2021-05-07 15:30:25 Astronaut Neil A. Armstrong, Apollo 11 mission commander, floats safely to the ground in this photo from May 6, 1968. The Lunar Landing Research Vehicle (LLRV) exploded only seconds before while Armstrong was rehearsing a lunar landing at Ellington Air Force Base near the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC). The photo is a blowup of 16mm documentary motion picture recorded during the mishap. trainer crash. . Armstrong had to eject himself from the simulator when it was just 30 feet above the ground, and he safely parachuted down while his aircraft crashed and burned. If he had waited even just one second longer to hit the eject button, he would have been killed by the fiery explosion.

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2021-05-07 10:31:58 A large piece of space debris, possibly weighing several tonnes, is currently on an uncontrolled reentry phase (that’s space speak for “out of control”), and parts of it are expected to crash down to Earth over the next few weeks.If that isn’t worrying enough, it is impossible to predict exactly where the pieces that don’t burn up in the atmosphere might land. Given the object’s orbit, the possible landing points are anywhere in a band of latitudes “a little farther north than New York, Madrid and Beijing and as far south as southern Chile and Wellington, New Zealand.”

The debris is part of the Long March 5B rocket that recently successfully launched China’s first module for its proposed space station. The incident comes roughly a year after another similar Chinese rocket fell to Earth, landing in the Atlantic Ocean but not before it reportedly left a trail of debris in the African nation of Cote D’Ivoire.At the time, experts noted this was one of the largest pieces of human-made debris ever to fallon earth Open / Comment

2021-05-07 05:58:12 Boeing and NASA are targeting July 30 for Starliner's second uncrewed orbital flight test The company was previously targeting April 2 before the Starliner program faced setbacks.

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