[Blog] Awesomeness Round-Up – 5/8/2012

We posted once about NuSTAR, a new X-ray telescope. It was due to be launched in March, but that launch date is now scheduled for June. Below is a great new image of NuSTAR in the nose cone of the Pegasus rocket it will be launched on.

Credit: NASA

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Using NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer, a space-based observatory, and the Pan-STARRS1 telescope on the summit of Haleakala in Hawaii, astronomers have gathered the most direct evidence yet of a supermassive black hole shredding a star that wandered too close.

Credit: NASA, S. Gezari (The Johns Hopkins University), and J. Guillochon (University of California, Santa Cruz)

“When the star is ripped apart by the gravitational forces of the black hole, some part of the star’s remains falls into the black hole while the rest is ejected at high speeds,” said project lead Suvi Gezari of the Johns Hopkins University. “We are seeing the glow from the stellar gas falling into the black hole over time. We’re also witnessing the spectral signature of the ejected gas, which we find to be mostly helium. It is like we are gathering evidence from a crime scene. Because there is very little hydrogen and mostly helium in the gas, we detect from the carnage that the slaughtered star had to have been the helium-rich core of a stripped star.”

The above image and this video are computer simulations:

The video shows a star being shredded by the gravity of a massive black hole. As the video caption says, “Some of the stellar debris falls into the black hole and some of it is ejected into space at high speeds. The areas in white are regions of highest density, with progressively redder colors corresponding to lower-density regions. The blue dot pinpoints the black hole’s location. The elapsed time corresponds to the amount of time it takes for a Sun-like star to be ripped apart by a black hole a million times more massive than the Sun.”

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[Christina's blog] Celebrating Science and Engineering in Washington, DC

Please welcome our new guest blogger, Dr. Christina Richey!

Over 3,000 booths, 100 stage shows, a book fair, a career fair, and an estimated 100,000 people each day gathered in one building. At times you’d smell something burning, or you’d hear an explosion followed by squeals of pure excitement. Throngs of people would cheer on races across cornstarch and the occasional astronaut would walk by. All the while folks waited in line to meet people like The Big Bang Theory’s Mayim Bialik. In the midst of organized chaos on Saturday and Sunday, I realized one thing: I love science! The USA Science & Engineering Festival was held at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center on April 28th & 29th and lived up to its claims as “the largest celebration of science and engineering in the USA”. It was, indeed, a large, boisterous celebration.

Credit: Christina Richey

I was a volunteer scientist at the booth for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in the NASA Pavilion area. For the entire weekend, we had a steady flow of kids and adults visiting to our booth to make star life cycle bookmarks, watch the JWST deployment video, or hold pieces of hardware. All the while they got to learn about the JWST from the scientists and engineers working on the project.

The entrance of the NASA Pavilion area greeted you with the music of Third Rock Radio, America’s Space Radio Station. Once you entered the pavilion area, it was everything NASA squeezed into a hallway of booths. Along with the JWST, the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), Kepler, Fermi, Dawn, and MESSENGER missions were all represented, as were the Challenger Center, Landsat, the International Space Station (ISS), and many more. Each booth was filled with scientists, engineers, and educators on hand, ready to excite children and adults alike about what we do on a daily basis.

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[Koji's blog] An “X-ray Astronomer” Among Radio Telescopes

To me, an observational astronomer, there is no such thing as X-ray astronomy. What I do is astronomical research on objects that happen to emit X-rays, as well as ultraviolet, visible, and infrared, etc. light. My research interest is not X-rays, but astronomical objects called cataclysmic variables and symbiotic stars – both involve dense “ash” of sun-like stars called white dwarfs in binary systems.

Having said that, to instrument builders, X-ray astronomy *is* a distinct discipline. Also, it takes time to become adept at using any complex tools and X-ray data analysis is no exception. In that sense, in terms of technical proficiency, I am an X-ray astronomer. I have also worked with infrared, visible light, and ultraviolet observations before – but not radio observations, not even by collaborating with the experts, until recently.

This is changing, partly because a phenomenon I’m very interested in called “nova outburst” can produce radio waves and X-ray photons. Basically, novae are nuclear explosions on the surface of the white dwarfs in cataclysmic variables and symbiotic stars. The material ejected (called ejecta) from these explosions emit radio waves when they are just expanding. However, collisions within the ejecta or collisions of the ejecta with some other materials can heat them up to many millions of degrees, making them bright in X-rays. So it makes a lot of sense to observe novae with X-rays and radio at the same time. Another reason for my evolving collaboration is that the premier instrument of radio astronomy has undergone a significant upgrade in the last several years, making them capable of doing observations that were never possible before.

Recently, I had the chance to visit the Science Operations Center of National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Socorro, New Mexico. About one hour west, on the high plains of San Augustin, is what used to be called the Very Large Array (VLA). The VLA uses a set of 27 antennas, each having a diameter of 25 meters (or 82 feet). By combining the signals from these antennas, the VLA acts like a much bigger telescope – the separations of the antennas, not the size of each individual antenna, determine how detailed an image we get (“the angular resolution”). The antennas of the VLA can be moved along special railroad tracks to several pre-constructed stations to suit the need of the observers. It’s a stunning sight to see the VLA, particularly when the entire array is moving from one target on the sky to the next. I even got to climb up on the 28th antenna undergoing routine maintenance (you don’t want to do that with ones in use – for one thing, if the antenna is tilted to observe an object low in the sky, it would be very dangerous).

Credit: Koji Mukai

Credit: Koji Mukai

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[Blog] Awesomeness Round-Up – 4/20/2012

Credit: NASA, ESA, D. Lennon and E. Sabbi (ESA/STScI), J. Anderson, S. E. de Mink, R. van der Marel, T. Sohn, and N. Walborn (STScI), N. Bastian (Excellence Cluster, Munich), L. Bedin (INAF, Padua), E. Bressert (ESO), P. Crowther (University of Sheffield), A. de Koter (University of Amsterdam), C. Evans (UKATC/STFC, Edinburgh), A. Herrero (IAC, Tenerife), N. Langer (AifA, Bonn), I. Platais (JHU), and H. Sana (University of Amsterdam)

Star-forming region 30 Doradus is colloquially known as the Tarantula Nebula (creepy!), but this new image released with data from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys makes it look more like a rich underwater scene. Located within our galaxy’s close neighbor, the Large Magellanic Cloud, it is one of the best stellar nurseries for astronomers to observe prolific star birth and learn more about how young stars form and grow. This image combines dozens of observations from Hubble, showing off star clusters at varying ages. The false color in this image represents the hot gas within the regions – red signifies hydrogen gas and blue represents oxygen. What a tangled web these stars weave!

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[Maggie's blog] The Last Flight of Discovery

Today we said a bittersweet farewell to the space shuttle orbiter Discovery, as it headed off to retirement at the National Air and Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center atop a special 747.

On its way to Dulles Airport (where it landed just outside DC) from Kennedy Space Center (where it took off from), it made approximately 4 loops around the Washington, DC metro area. There are many spectacular pictures of it, many of them taken by people lucky enough to look up and see it. Check out the #spottheshuttle hash tag on twitter to see some of them.

The official photos from NASA HQ, many taken from the T-38 chase plane, are spectacular. The photo below is from that set.

Credit: NASA/Robert Markowitz

The shuttle did fly over NASA Goddard and was a beautiful if bittersweet sight. There is a Flickr group that has lots of photos taken by NASA Goddard folks. If you are one of them, consider adding your photos.

We’ll leave with you a couple of photos taken by friends from Goddard.

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[Maggie's blog] Gorgeous new images of James Webb Space Telescope hardware being readied for testing.

These brand-new photos show a critical piece of James Webb Space Telescope hardware being hoisted with a crane into NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s giant thermal vacuum chamber (called the Space Environment Simulator, or SES) to be tested to withstand the cold temperatures of space.

The hardware in question is called the OSIM, or the OTE (Optical Telescope Element) Simulator. (I know, that’s an acronym within an acronym!)

What is the OSIM? It basically simulates the actual telescope for the purposes of testing the science instruments before they fly on the observatory. The OSIM itself will never fly into space, but it has an important job verifying that the science cameras and spectrographs will function as planned.

The actual telescope, known as the OTE, is the eye of the James Webb Space Telescope observatory and includes all the mirrors as well as the structure they will be mounted on, called the backplane. The OTE mirrors will gather the light coming from space and provide it to the Webb’s science instruments. Webb needs a large mirror to collect as much light as possible to see galaxies from the beginning of the Universe and to detect other faint astronomical sources.

Be sure to read the photo feature for more information on this test and what’s next!

[Maggie's blog] A talk with Scott London, property master for The Big Bang Theory

You might have read my recent blog post about our visit to a taping of The Big Bang Theory and our chat with Ann Shea, the set decorator. We also snagged a few minutes with Scott London, the show’s property master. Since we’re not Hollywood insiders, we had a lot of questions for Scott (and Ann) about their work – such as the differences between sets and props, how they find such cool stuff for the show, and their favorite pieces on the sets. Scott told us about everything from building a space toilet to cooking for the show.

Sara: Can you give us a little background on what you do, what your profession is?

Scott: Well, I’m the property master on the show and basically it’s anything an actor touches, from the rings, watches, food, guns, their computers, the chemicals, the experiments they do on the set. The wacky games they play. I built the 3D chess set – the actual one we bought was just too small. It was like on a Friday run-through and Chuck [Lorre, executive producer and co-creator] goes, “It’s really good. But can we have one, like, three times the size by Monday?” I literally built it. If you look at them, they kind of have this curve that holds the three levels. So I went and I got a globe stand that has the same curve and then I built it off that. So we just worked all weekend long and had it for them.

Photo courtesy of CBS/Warner Bros.

Sara: What’s the difference between props and sets?

Scott: If there’s just the floor and four empty walls, the production designer does all the colors and everything, and then the set decorator will come in and she’ll put the rugs in and the coffee tables and the couches and end tables and lamps and pictures and flowers. And in this case, on this show, Ann does all the weird little, you know, chemistry, or the DNA model, and all the old gadgets and things that are just around. Where I just deal with anything actually that’s in the script that the actors touch.

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[Maggie's blog] A chat with Ann Shea, Set Decorator for The Big Bang Theory

Sara and I were fortunate enough to be guests at a recent taping of The Big Bang Theory. Before the show, we had the chance to chat with Ann Shea, the set decorator, and Scott London, the property master. They were both very nice and very generous with their time, and we had a lot of fun talking with them! If you’ve been following our blog, you’ll know that we have sent an assortment of NASA items their way. We’ve been really interested in the detail in the sets for the show, how they pick the stuff to include, and where they find inspiration for all of the sets that pop up in each show! Ann revealed all:

Maggie: What is your official job title?

Ann: I’m the set decorator, and so usually once I get the plans and the walls are built is when I start my work of providing the furniture and the plants and the artwork and all the cool objects, the floor coverings and the practical lights.

Maggie: Where do you source everything? Do you have to send out a crew to go buy things in different places?

Ann: I go out to the prop houses or online or retail stores, and I pick it all out myself, every single thing on the show, and it’s a lot of stuff. Then my crew goes and picks it up for me and they bring it back here and place it where we think it should go.

Maggie: Once the initial plans are developed, and things are shopped for, what are your duties show to show? Do you supervise how stuff is put on the set?

Ann: Yes! And people think that, “Oh, once you have the main sets done, you pretty much don’t have much to do, right?” But little do they know, every week sets come in and go out. So, Koothrappali’s apartment doesn’t sit here on the stage all the time. It goes out and comes back in. So just collecting all that stuff again is a bit of a job. But usually my lead man takes care of most of that. But every once in a while when we try to get stuff back, and it’s a rental, they’ll be out, so I have to find whatever items are missing off of our order. But also, we have lots of swing sets every week, that are new sets, that people don’t even realize. We may only be in there for 10 seconds, but yet I have to do the whole set.

Maggie: We know that Leonard & Sheldon’s apartment is always there but it’s amazing when you watch the show that Raj’s apartment and all these things come down and up, because they look the same every time. And I can’t imagine how much work it is to put the comic book store up and down, and it’s impressive.

Sara: They’re very rich – I can’t even imagine every item that has to go into them.

Maggie: Yeah, because there’s a lot of stuff, it’s not just like one shelf with three things on it. There’s a lot of detail in each set.

Sara: These guys own a lot of stuff!

[Everyone laughs.]

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[Try It At Home] Build-It-Yourself: Satellite!

We’re offering you, our Blueshift readers, the exclusive chance to try out a new game, where you get to be the scientist!

The game allows you to build your own satellite. First choose what science your satellite will be used to study, and then decide what wavelengths, instruments and mirrors will help you learn the most about the science topic you’ve chosen. After you launch your satellite, you’ll see what it looks like, and learn what real mission has data similar to the one you created. You’ll discover a large range of astronomical missions, dating from the 1980s to today. The “today” part is where the James Webb Space Telescope comes in – it’s being built right now, with some pretty cutting edge technology (like its 18-segment mirror). You might be able to build a similar satellite if you choose the right options!

Since this game is brand-new, we’d love your feedback on it (via our blog, Facebook, or twitter) about what worked and what confused you. We hope you will enjoy trying it out! (Requires Flash 9 or higher.)

–> Try the game <--

Here’s a screenshot:

[Maggie's blog] Beautiful Science

On my recent vacation to Los Angeles, I visited Huntington Gardens. It’s a gorgeous place and in addition to gardens, it has several museums. I was very excited to see their permanent exhibit of old and rare science books. The exhibit is called “Beautiful Science: Ideas that Changed the World” – and they aren’t kidding by titling it that. The front room is all astronomy texts and in them are indeed contained some revolutionary ideas.

Here are some of the photos I took during my visit.

The exhibit starts with a copy of Aristotle from 1495 – the text in which he, in the 300s BC, suggested that everything revolves around the Earth.

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