[Maggie's blog] Come Together

If you’re at all a fan of astronomy, you’ve probably marveled over the many beautiful photos of spiral galaxies that are out there. Like this one of NGC 3344 captured by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

But you may not know that galaxies have not always looked this way. The grand spirals we are so familiar with were formed over the course of billions of years by the collisions of smaller galaxies. Though, when spirals collide with a similar-sized galaxy, the disruption can cause them to merge and evolve into a giant elliptical galaxy. According to an article in Nature News, based on a survey of galaxy shape and structure (current to 2009), it is thought that “nearly all massive galaxies have undergone at least one major merger since the Universe was 6 billion years old.”

Giant elliptical galaxy, M87, located in the Virgo cluster

When we look at very distant galaxies, we see a completely different picture. Older galaxies tend to be small and clumpy, often with a lot of star formation occurring in the massive clumps. The question of how these clumpy galaxies evolve and develop structure over time is a big open question in astronomy, and we hope that the powerful up-and-coming James Webb Space Telescope will help astronomers to learn more.

Clumpy galaxy spied by the Hubble

Clumpy galaxies spied by the Hubble

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[Maggie's blog] Comet Watch

If you’re an astronomy buff, you might know that Comet Pan-STARRS has been gracing our early evening skies over the last few weeks. I was pretty excited about this because when I was in college, we had two spectacularly bright comets appear – Hayakutake and Hale-Bopp – a year apart.

Pan-STARRS definitely wasn’t the same experience for me as those two bright comets were. Though Pan-STARRS did apparently get bright enough to be naked-eye visible, you had to be at a dark location. It was also a tricky comet to view, because it was at its nearest approach to the Sun, which put it close to the Sun in the sky. This also meant that the comet was very low on the horizon, and it wasn’t visible for terribly long after sunset. It was a balancing act of waiting for the comet to be dark enough to view, without it being too low in the sky. Another disadvantage we had was that Washington, DC is directly to the west of our house, so the lights of the city tend to wash out that part of the sky. Without a known dark-sky site within a reasonable distance, my husband and I tried to be backyard astronomers instead.

We tried twice without binoculars with no luck. Then we ordered a pair, and the timing worked in our favor. We were clouded out for a few days, but by the time the binoculars arrived, it had cleared up. One more try from the backyard failed, and then we got the idea of going up onto the roof of our house. Almost immediately the comet was spotted… just before it set behind the trees.

We managed to catch it on a second night – and I am glad I saw it. But I’m still hoping that Comet C/2012 S1 (ISON), due in November, will be even brighter and as spectacular as the comets of my youth.

I did attempt to see if an iPhone could register Pan-STARRS through binoculars. The answer? Yes. But it looks like a single bright pixel:

Credit: Maggie Masetti

In contrast, here are *cough* scans of film pictures I took of Hayakutake (top) and Hale-Bopp (bottom) – Hayakutake was particularly stunning, and in a dark sky, its tail seemed to span the whole sky.

Credit: Maggie Masetti

Credit: Maggie Masetti

Though my pic of Pan-STARRS was unspectacular, there have been some really lovely photos of it. Some of my friends volunteered their own, and others I’ve seen online.

Here’s one taken by my friend Craig Markwardt from NASA Goddard:

Credit: Craig Markwardt

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[Sara's blog] Awww! Cosmic baby pictures!

Protostars in Messier 78, as seen by multiple observatories
Credit: NASA/ESA/ESO/JPL-Caltech/Max-Planck

The side-by-side images above depict protostars found in Messier 78, a reflection nebula found within the constellation Orion (but not the Orion Nebula, which is Messier 42). These are some of the youngest stars that astronomers have ever seen – some of them are still embedded deeply in a gaseous envelope, which would suggest that they’re under 25,000 years old. That may seem like a long time compared to our human lives… but for stars that can live for millions or billions of years, it’s still stellar infancy. These images accompanied this press release from the Herschel space observatory, and represent observations from Herschel as well as ground-based telescopes. Though they can be difficult to detect, researchers are hoping to document more young stars in various stages of life – from before birth through infancy – to learn more about the early development of stars.

NASA often looks at “young” astronomical objects, to learn more about the formation and evolution of the Universe. Here’s a selection of some beautiful and interesting cosmic baby pictures…
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[Koji's blog] A Victorian Scandal

A recent event reminded me of a scandal of a sort that happened around 1850. At the center of it was John Russell Hind, a British astronomer (I mentioned him in a previous blog about archives).

Hind was a superb observer who knew the sky very well. He discovered many interesting objects outside the solar system, but his main passion was the discovery of asteroids. He ended up discovering 10 of the first 30 asteroids known, which is quite a feat considering how hot this field was at the time. As the discoverer, he got to name these asteroids. At the time, asteroid names were picked from mythology – such as Ceres, Pallas, Juno, and Vesta, the names of the first 4 asteroids known.

Hind named the first two asteroids he discovered (nos. 7 and 8 overall) Iris and Flora. These sound more like old-fashioned women’s names to me, but they certainly are names from classical mythology, and so they passed without comments. Hind then picked the name “Victoria” for one of his later discoveries.

There was a reaction to this choice: “we are not amused” would be one way to put it. “You can’t name an asteroid after *your* queen,” would be another. Hind claimed, however, that he took the name from Roman mythology, in which Victoria is the goddess of victory. It was pure coincidence, according to him, that his sovereign, the Queen of the British Empire, was also called Victoria.

This composite image shows the comparative sizes of eight asteroids. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/JAXA/ESA

Fast forward 160 years or so. Recently, there was an internet poll to pick the names of a couple of small moons of Pluto. The clear winner: Vulcan. Some people said “you can’t name a moon of Pluto after a Star Trek planet.” (Sounds familiar?) Others countered
“but Vulcan is the god of fire in Roman mythology.” (Sounds familiar?) Some things never change, or so it seems, including the name of the asteroid no. 12 – still called Victoria, despite the initial objections.

So, the Star Trek connection probably will not disqualify the proposed name, Vulcan. Still, I’m not a big fan of this pick – wouldn’t you rather name a much hotter world after the god of fire, like one of the “hot Jupiters”?

Right now, exoplanets have relatively boring names – designated with lower case “b”, “c” etc. after the name of the parent star. Things could get very interesting, if astronomers ever decide to give them proper names.

Pluto and its moons, as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope, Credit: NASA, ESA, and L. Frattare (STScI)

[Maggie's blog] JWST @ SXSW, part 3

Sorry for the delay with part 3 of my coverage of the James Webb Space Telescope at South by Southwest – things were super busy on Sunday – it was a long day starting with a NASA Social and ending with a Guinness World Record – and then it was time to head home and collapse for a while!

But I’m starting to feel recovered from the long weekend, so here goes part 3.

Credit: Alex Evers

I’m actually going to back up a bit to Saturday night – a big storm was spotted on the radar and the whole NASA tent sprung into action. Everything was taken down and stowed to try to protect it from water and winds.

It turned out to be good that we had because there definitely had been water in the tent during the storm. The next morning was extra busy as a NASA Social was coming through at 9am, and everything had to be put back up before the tent opened for the day’s visitors.

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[Maggie's blog] JWST @ SXSW, part 2

Despite posting my blog pretty late last night, there are still a few things I want to share with you from Friday at South by Southwest. The NASA tent was busy til 10:30 PM last night – and would have been still going til midnight if the weather had cooperated for the star party. We had lots of speakers and the full-scale model was lit up in a pretty amazing light show.

Pamela Gay made a gorgeous time-lapse of sunset, the Austin skyline, and the light show from the full-scale model:

My personal favorite image from the event is this one our NASA photographer Chris Gunn got at night. If you’re at SXSW do go up the hill behind the NASA tent to see the full-scale model and the skyline from this vantage point!

Credit: Chris Gunn

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[Maggie's blog] JWST @ SXSW

The big event is here – South by Southwest. It’s a giant music, film, and tech festival that runs for 2 weeks in Austin, TX. And this year, NASA is at SXSW! Right next to the Interactive Festival, is a big NASA tent and… the full-scale model of the James Webb Space Telescope. Inside the tent are demonstrations and speakers talking about JWST, astrophysics, and engineering. There is a huge 30 foot visualization wall provided by Microsoft, there is live skyping from SXSW with the cleanroom at NASA Goddard, there are projects about JWST done by Middle School Students on display. And did I mention the full-scale model?

It’s four stories high and as big as a tennis court – it is truly impressive to behold. Northrop Grumman doesn’t display the model very often, so we are really lucky to have it here. And Austin makes a fine backdrop for it.

Though the weather hasn’t been cooperating, the rain appears to be lifting. Rain or shine, we will be here at the NASA Experience Tent, near the Long Center talking about astronomy & JWST from now until Sunday night, March 10. Everything here is free or open to the public, so if you’re in the Austin area, come by!

Here are some photos to give you a taste of SXSW so far.

NASA produced this really gorgeous time-lapse video of the full-scale model being constructed in front of the Austin skyline:

The full-scale model lit up at night:

Credit: Mike McClare

[Korey's blog] The Life of a Grad Student at NASA

I’m Korey Haynes, a graduate student doing research here at Goddard for my PhD thesis. What does a graduate student do at Goddard? Until recently, I spent about half my time taking classes and working on schoolwork, and the rest of the time conducting research here with my adviser. Now that I’ve completed all my classes – and passed the dreaded qualifying exams – I’m working on research full time.

While a lucky few people start grad school knowing exactly what they want to study, and many people come in totally undecided, I fell into a third category – I thought I knew exactly what I wanted, and then completely changed my mind. When I started grad school, I was going to study galaxies. Galaxies, of course, were the best area of astronomy. They have the prettiest pictures by far, they’re some of the biggest things you can study, and there are all sorts of still open questions. Plus I had already been to the Very Large Array in New Mexico as an undergrad to observe one galaxy, and I was getting to use Arecibo, the world’s largest single dish telescope, to help collect data on a large survey of galaxies during my first year in grad school, and I found all that observing to be very exciting.

Me, middle, visiting the Very Large Array as an undergrad with my classmates.
Credit: Korey Haynes

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[Maggie's blog] JWST is coming to South by Southwest!

That’s right! During the South by Southwest Gaming Expo from March 8 to 10, 2013, Austin will be home to the full-scale model of the James Webb Space Telescope. The model does not often make appearances, and as it is the length of a tennis court and four stories tall, it’s not something you want to miss if you can help it!

Full-scale model in Munich, Credit: EADS Astrium

Full-scale model in Baltimore, Credit: Mark Clampin

Along with the model, NASA and partner organizations will have variety of other displays and activities available from noon to midnight each day.

Inside the NASA Experience Tent located near the model, you can take a guided tour of the universe on a 20-foot-wide, 10-foot-tall “visualization wall” powered by Microsoft’s World Wide Telescope.

An astronaut, a Nobel Laureate (our own Dr. John Mather), and other experts involved with JWST will be giving presentations throughout the day and night, and then hanging around to chat with visitors and answer questions.

We are going to have several video chats with engineers in NASA Goddard’s enormous clean-room, as well as in Houston, where a giant thermal vacuum chamber will test components of JWST.

After dark, we’ll be looking at the stars over Austin. Local amateur astronomers will be setting up their telescopes each evening to give a closer view of the night skies, including a comet, Jupiter and its moons, the rings of Saturn, and the star-forming clouds of the Orion Nebula.

Also, in keeping with the “everything is bigger in Texas” theme, we’ll be attempting to break the Guinness World Record for the largest astronomy lesson ever taught. If you’re in the Austin area, please come be a part of it!

It’s all free and open to the public.

Here’s some schedule information for NASA @ SXSW.

If you can’t make it to Austin, you can still follow along with the activities by participating in live Google Hangouts, watching video updates recorded on location, browsing photos, seeing who has checked in at the model on 4 Square, or keeping track of what people are tweeting about the event — all at go.nasa.gov/JWSTsxsw. Check for the latest, starting next week as we build up to the big weekend – one thing that we’ll have by the end of next week will be a time-lapse of the full-scale model being constructed over three days!

Our plan is to do some special SXSW coverage for our Blueshift followers, so expect some image and video posts during the event here as well!

[Dan's blog] Try on a pair of NuSTARs!

Sara’s note: Please join us in welcoming our newest guest blogger, Dr. Dan Wik! You might have heard our interview with Dan in our podcast NASA’s Newest X-Ray Eyes, and we’re excited to get more behind-the-scenes coverage of NuSTAR and Dan’s research in his blog posts.

Imagine you are usually confined inside your home – like we are on the surface of the Earth – but when you do make it outside at night, you forget your glasses despite having terrible vision. Looking up at the sky, you can see a few blurry stars and a diffuse glow, but you can’t tell if the glow is really diffuse or just made up of many fainter stars. Next time you make it outside, you resolve to remember your glasses to find out. If the light is coming from the X-ray part of the spectrum, then on the next trip outside you’ll be wearing a pair of NuSTARs.

NuSTAR is the first observatory capable of focusing the bluest colors of X-ray light, in a bandwidth where the X-ray sky is the brightest. Since its launch last summer, it has been surveying the sky in order to detect the source of this glow, which is thought to be made up of many discrete objects. These are not stars, but massive black holes in the hearts of galaxies billions of light years away. In fact, we’ve already resolved the redder part of the X-ray sky with the Chandra X-ray Observatory, which is how we know what these objects are. However, the kind of black holes we see with Chandra cannot produce the light at the bluest end of the X-ray spectrum. We still think they’re massive black holes, but there’s something intrinsically different about them. Once we find them with NuSTAR, we’ll learn exactly why they’re different and what that means for the growth of black holes over cosmic time. These massive black holes at the centers of galaxies – millions of times more massive than the Sun – appear to grow as the galaxy around them grows and changes, a process that depends on their galactic neighborhoods and the larger cosmic web — seeded just after the Big Bang — in which all galaxies are ensnared.

A model of NuSTAR at Caltech. The part closest to the camera holds the mirrors (the two “eyes” – looks remarkably like a face), and the detectors and rest of the spacecraft are on the far end of the boom. Credit: Caltech/JPL/NASA

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