NASA Releases Sounds From Space On SoundCloud

NASA recently released over a half a century of sounds on SoundCloud, ranging from eerie noises from our solar system to historic moments in space exploration. The U.S. space agency recently created a SoundCloud page to reveal some of the most unusual sounds ever recorded, according to Mother Nature Network.

Although sounds in space are stifled by a vacuum, scientists have discovered ways of capturing noise using special instruments on the Voyager space probe that converts electromagnetic vibrations into sound, Gigwise reports.

The recordings include sounds of Saturn’s rings, Neptune, Jupiter, and Uranus, as well as what Earth would sound like millions of miles away. The files also contain sounds of shuttle launching and famous quotes from NASA astronauts.

Some of the sounds are quirky, chilling, and otherworldly. Here are seven of NASA’s most interesting uploads.

1. “Earthsong” It is also called “Chorus” and is NASA’s most popular feed. The sound is produced by our own planet. It is described as an electromagnetic phenomenon caused by plasma waves in Earth’s radiation belts that hover 8,000 miles above the surface. The sound is too high for humans to hear, however ham radio operators have detected it for a long time, especially in the morning. It has been compared to the sound of birdsongs, from which the moniker is derived. NASA recorded this in 2012 with its EMFISIS probe.


2. “Saturn Radio” Saturn is home to dramatic auroras that are a lot like the northern and southern lights that dance around the Earth’s poles when solar wind hits the upper atmosphere. These lights are closely related to the planet’s strong radio emissions, first detected by the Cassini spacecraft 2002.


3. “Interstellar Plasma” It has taken NASA’s Voyager 1 three decades since it left Earth to escape the sun’s magnetic field. This clip represents data that was recorded outside the heliosphere in 2012 and 2013. NASA calls it “The Sounds of Interstellar Space.”


4. “Sonified Starlight” Scientists now may “sonify” non-auditory data by translating its values to noises, a lot like a Geiger counter converts silent radiation to audible clicks. Locating patterns in in data is often easier by ear, even if the data doesn’t represent sounds. The technique also helps scientists understand faraway stars, as with this clip of sonified light waves from KIC 7671081B, a variable star listed in NASA’s Kepler Input Catalog (KIC).


5. “Eerie Enceladus” This is Saturn’s sixth-largest of its several dozen moons. Enceladus spews enormous plumes of water vapor from its ice-covered surface. In 2005, the Cassini spacecraft detected a “significant atmosphere around it,” recording data from ion cyclotron waves.


6. “A Giant Leap” Neil Armstrong’s most famous words when his foot touched the surface of the moon. This was the first SoundCloud clip that NASA posted online.


7. “Lift Off” These are the sounds of the first manned-mission to the moon, Apollo 11. The clip includes lift off, as well as the applause in the space center.

Some of NASA’s files might sound familiar to gamers.

NASA’s release of sounds from space on its SoundCloud page comprises of 63 files so far, including several of the most historic and mind-bending moments from the past 50 years of space exploration.
Source : inquisitr

Galaxies probably settled 2 billion years earlier than previously believed

Follow us on Google+



Scientists have dug deeper and discovered that galaxies actually settled in to their current forms some 2 billion years earlier than previously thought.

A group of researchers used the collective efforts of the hundreds of thousands of people that volunteered for the galaxy Zoo project to shed some light on the way that galaxies form and develop.

Dr. Brooke Simmons of the University of Oxford and her collaborators set Zoo volunteers the task of classifying the shapes of tens of thousands of galaxies observed by the Hubble Space Telescope. These objects are typically very distant, so they appeared more than 10 billion years ago, when the universe was about 3 billion years old, less than a quarter of its present age.

The newly classified galaxies were striking in that they look a lot like those in today's universe, with disks, bars and spiral arms. But theorists predict that they should have taken another 2 billion years to begin to form, so things seem to have been settling down a lot earlier than expected.

Brooke commented that they had predictions from galaxy simulations that they shouldn't find any of the barred features that we see in nearby, evolved galaxies, because very young galaxies might be too agitated for them to form. But with the public help they got in searching through many thousands of images of distant galaxies, they have discovered that some galaxies settle very early on in the universe.

The paper is published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Source : Zee News

Cassini sees sunny seas on Titan

This near-infrared, color view from Cassini shows the Sun glinting off of Titan's north polar seas.

As it soared past Saturn’s large moon Titan recently, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft caught a glimpse of bright sunlight reflecting off hydrocarbon seas.

In the past, Cassini had captured separate views of the polar seas and the Sun glinting off them, but this is the first time both have been seen together in the same view.

Also in the image:

– An arrow-shaped complex of bright methane clouds hovers near Titan’s north pole. The clouds could be actively refilling the lakes with rainfall.

– A “bathtub ring,” or bright margin, around Kraken Mare — the sea containing the reflected sunglint — indicates that the sea was larger at some point, but evaporation has decreased its size.

Titan’s seas are mostly liquid methane and ethane. Before Cassini’s arrival at Saturn, scientists suspected that Titan might have bodies of open liquid on its surface. Cassini found only great fields of sand dunes near the equator and lower latitudes but located lakes and seas near the poles, particularly in the north.

The new view shows Titan in infrared light. It was obtained by Cassini’s Visible and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) on August 21.

 

Folow us on Google + Dark Matter Space

Tragedy won't crush space tourism, supporters say

The second crash this week of a space craft is a setback for the fledgling field of space tourism, aerospace experts say. But it's unlikely to stop an industry that has attracted a trio of ambitious, daring billionaires like Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk from trying to open a pathway for ordinary citizens to travel into space.

VirginGalactic's SpaceShipTwo, which was designed to ultimately carry paying passengers into suborbital space, crashed Friday in the Mojave Desert during a test flight. The accident occurred three days after an Orbital Sciences rocket headed to the International Space Station exploded within seconds of liftoff in Virginia.

Pedro Llanos, who teaches about the commercialization of space at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University's Daytona Beach campus, said that space travel has suffered similar, sometimes deadly setbacks, in other stages of its evolution.

"It happened ... in the space era with the Apollo. It happened with the shuttle,'' he said. "The reason it happened in the past is because we were testing new technologies. It's happening now because we are pushing technology's boundaries, to move space exploration forward.''

Such exploration is critical, Llanos said, whether it's to create the possibility of mining asteroids for resources that are scarce on earth, or perfecting technology that will one day allow a person in California to travel to Australia within a couple of hours. "It will help us,'' he says. "It will help society.''

Now XCOR Aerospace, which has been developing its own suborbital vehicle, may get its paying passengers into space first, says John Spencer, founder and president of the West Los Angeles-based Space Tourism Society.

"It may be now that XCOR is first to go into a commercial setting because it will take a while for Virgin Galactic to catch up,'' he says.

"Virgin Galactic will eventually recover ... because of the extensive experience Branson and the Virgin brand has with one of the world's most successful airlines. Being first is cool but that doesn't really matter when you're creating a long-term vision for an expanding industry,'' Spencer said.

Among the hundreds who have paid tens of thousands of dollars for a ticket on one of Virgin Galactic's flights are actors Ashton Kutcher, Tom Hanks and Angelina Jolie. Spencer said those who want to go to space aren't easily dissuaded.

"One of the inherently unique aspects of space is it is dangerous but people are willing to risk their lives for that experience,'' Spencer said. "Just like climbing Mount Everest or sky diving.''

Source : USA TODAY

Jupiter's ‘one-eyed giant Cyclops’ captured by Hubble

A stunning event captured by NASA’s Hubble Telescope shows a big black eye staring back from Jupiter's Great Red Spot storm. In reality, it is shadow play on a planetary scale.

The image was captured by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope as it tracked changes in Jupiter’s immense Great Red Spot storm – a storm that has been raging for over 300 years. The black eye is caused by the shadow of the Jovian moon, Ganymede, sweeping across the center of the storm.

“For a moment, Jupiter stared back at Hubble like a one-eyed giant Cyclops,” a NASA spokesman told the Daily Express.

The Great Red Spot, the largest known vortex in the Solar System at 10,000 miles wide, is a persistent anti-cyclonic storm just south of Jupiter's equator. It has been raging for between 300 and 400 years, blowing winds at 345 miles an hour – speeds that are beyond comparison with even an Earthly Category 5 hurricane, which can only maximize up to 200 miles.

Astronomers are only beginning to fully understand the complexity of Jupiter, a gas giant which has a mass 317 times bigger than Earth. The planet has 62 moons – including four large ones called the Galilean moons, first discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610. Ganymede is the largest of these moons.

NASA catches the sun celebrating Halloween

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) captured quite a photo of the sun on October 8.

In the photo, hotspots of magnetic fields on the sun form what can appear to look like eyes, a nose and a grin reminiscent of a Jack-O-Lantern.

The image is a composite of two photos taken in ultraviolet light. The magnetic activity in the corona, or sun's atmosphere, is what creates the pattern.

The SDO, launch in 2010, monitors the sun's activity to provide accurate space weather forecasts, including to provide warning when solar flares may threaten the Earth.

EXPLOSION OF NASA'S UNMANNED ROCKET ANTARES

An unmanned Antares rocket exploded seconds after liftoff from a commercial launch pad in Virginia on Tuesday, marking the first accident since NASA turned to private operators to deliver cargo to the International Space Station, but officials said no one was hurt.

The 14-story rocket, built and launched by Orbital Sciences Corp, blasted off its seaside launch pad at the Wallops Flight Facility at 6:22 p.m. EDT carrying a Cygnus cargo ship for the space station. It exploded in a huge fireball moments later.

Orbital Sciences stock was down 12.74 percent after hours, or down $3.87 at $26.50.

The cause of the accident was not immediately known, said NASA mission commentator Dan Huot.

Huot said there were no reports of any personnel in the vicinity of the explosion. An Accomack County Sheriff's spokeswoman added, "As far as we know, all personnel are accounted for and everyone's OK."

Orbital Sciences said in a statement: "We've confirmed that all personnel have been accounted for. We have no injuries in the operation today."

NASA launch control said damage appeared to be limited to the launch facility and rocket. The Antares rocket has been launched successfully on four previous missions.

"This has been a lot of hard work to get to this point," Orbital Sciences Executive Vice President Frank Culbertson told the launch team just before liftoff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSJ2kcDirEo

Launch had been delayed one day after a boat sailed into a restricted safety zone beneath the rocket's intended flight path.

Virginia-based Orbital Sciences is one of two companies hired by NASA to fly cargo to the station after the space shuttles were retired. Tuesday's planned flight was to be the third of eight under the company's $1.9 billion contract with NASA.

The second U.S. supply line to the station is run by privately owned Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, which is preparing for its fourth flight under a separate $1.6 billion NASA contract.

Outfitted with a new, more powerful upper-stage engine, the Antares rocket launched on Tuesday carried a Cygnus spacecraft packed with 5,055 pounds (2,293 kg) of supplies, science experiments and equipment, a 15 percent increase over previous missions.

Cygnus was to loiter in orbit until Nov. 2, then fly itself to the station so astronauts can use a robotic crane to snare the capsule and attach it to a berthing port. The station, a $100 billion research laboratory owned and operated by 15 nations, flies about 260 miles (418 km) above Earth.

In addition to food, supplies and equipment, the Cygnus spacecraft was loaded with more than 1,600 pounds (725 kg) of science experiments, including an investigation to chemically analyze meteors as they burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.

The Cygnus also carried a prototype satellite owned by Redmond, Washington-based startup Planetary Resources Inc., which is developing technology to mine asteroids. The satellite, designated A3, was to be released into space by a commercially owned small spacecraft launcher aboard the station.

Source : Reuters

High-Altitude Methane Ice Cloud Discovered Floating Above Titan's Pole

NASA scientists have uncovered a starting new find on Saturn's moon, Titan. They've found an unexpected high-altitude methane ice cloud, similar to exotic clouds formed high above Earth's own poles. This cloud in the stratosphere over Titan’s north pole (left) is similar to Earth’s polar stratospheric clouds (right). NASA scientists found that Titan’s cloud contains methane ice, which was not previously thought to form in that part of the atmosphere. Cassini first spotted the cloud in 2006. (Photo : L. NASA/JPL/U. of Ariz./LPGNantes; R. NASA/GSFC/M. Schoeberl)

NASA scientists have uncovered a starting new find on Saturn's moon, Titan. They've found an unexpected high-altitude methane ice cloud, similar to exotic clouds formed high above Earth's own poles.

The researchers first spotted the cloud with the help of NASA's Cassini spacecraft. It was part of the winter cap of condensation over Titan's north pole. Now, scientists have teased apart the data and found that the cloud contained methane ice, which produces a much denser cloud than the previously identified ethane ice.

"The idea that methane clouds could form this high on Titan is completely new," said Carrie Anderson, lead author of the new study, in a news release. "Nobody considered that possible before."

The temperatures in Titan's lower stratosphere are not the same at all latitudes. In fact, the high-altitude temperature near the north pole is far colder than just south of the equator. This temperature difference-as much as 11 degrees Fahrenheit-is enough to yield methane ice.

So how do these clouds form? The mechanisms for forming these high-altitude clouds are different from what happens in the troposphere. Titan has a global circulation pattern; warm air in the summer hemisphere wells up from the surface and enters the stratosphere, slowly making its way to the winter pole. There, the air sinks back down and cools as it descends. This forms the methane clouds.

Currently, the scientists are gathering more information about Saturn's moon in order to better understand the natural processes that occur on the alien world. This could shed light on the processes that occur on exoplanets and allow scientists to apply their findings to processes that also occur on Earth.

"Titan continues to amaze with natural processes similar to those on Earth, yet involving materials different from our familiar water," said Scott Edgington, Cassini deputy project scientist. "As we approach southern winter solstice on Titan, we will further explore how these cloud formation processes might vary with season."

Spacecraft Spots Ice at Mercury's North Pole

NASA 's MESSENGER spacecraft has sent back its first visible-light images of water ice on Mercury, the tiny charbroiled planet that orbits closest to the sun.

The findings, described in the journal Geology, reveal that the ice deposits look surprisingly "fresh" -- and hint that water could have been very recently delivered to rocky little Mercury.

Even though Mercury sits less than 36 million miles from the sun -- which is less than two-fifths of the Earth's comfortable 93 million miles from sun -- some ice still manages to cling to the planet's surface. That's because the ice lies at the poles, in permanently shadowed regions inside craters that are eternally shielded from sunlight and remain very, very cold.

More than two decades ago, ground-based radar observations picked up signs of this polar ice, and the MESSENGER spacecraft later lent support to the idea with its own suite of instruments. But it's tough to actually see these permanently shadowed regions with the spacecraft's visible-light camera because, well, it's dark there. But recently, the team was able to refine the images of the ice-deposit surfaces with the help of what little light was reflecting off the crater walls.

The scientists examined Prokofiev, which at roughly 69.6 miles in diameter is the largest crater at Mercury's north pole thought to have water-ice deposits. There, the surface ice had a "cratered" texture -- showing that it was placed there more recently than the smaller underlying craters.

And in other spots, such as Berlioz crater, the researchers found that the water ice was "covered by a thin layer of dark, organic-rich volatile material." The boundaries of those icy regions were surprisingly sharp -- they hadn't been in place long enough to get smoothed out.

"The sharp boundaries indicate that the volatile deposits at Mercury's poles are geologically young, relative to the time scale for lateral mixing by impacts," the study authors wrote, "and either are restored at the surface through an ongoing process or were delivered to the planet recently."

To put that idea in perspective, estimates indicate that there could be roughly enough water-ice on Mercury to fill Lake Ontario. And if at least some of that water is indeed being delivered to the planet, it sheds new light on dynamics in the inner solar system, the scientists said.

"If Mercury's currently substantial polar volatile inventory is the product of the most recent portion of a longer process," the study authors wrote, "then a considerable mass of volatiles may have been delivered to the inner Solar System throughout its history."

X-Class Solar Flare, 4th Major Eruption On The Sun This Week Detected

It’s been a busy week for earth’s star, with a partial solar eclipse delighting space watchers Thursday, and three earlier solar flares captured on NASA’s cameras.

The NOAA’s space weather tracking detected the X3.1 class flare Friday, beginning just after two in the afternoon, Pacific time, and lasting till after 3 p.m.

Flares of this strength can disrupt radios and navigational equipment, but harmful radiation is absorbed by the earth’s atmosphere.



One legendary solar flare in 1989 actually shut down power grids in the U.S. and Canada. That was an “X15″ class flare, exponentially more powerful than this week’s flares.

An X1.6 class flare erupted on Tuesday. X is the strongest class, and an X2 is twice as strong as an X1.

An M-class or mid-level solar flare peaked at 6:59 p.m. Tuesday night, as measured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.

A third flare, an X1.1 on October 19th also sent radiation toward earth.

These solar eruptions can trigger larger than usual northern lights also known as the Aurora Borealis, sometimes making the glow visible as far south as Northern California.

NOAA Space Weather Scale descriptions can be found at
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/NOAAscales

Source : CBS Local

Hubble captures stunning image of a comet's brush past Mars

NASA has just released this image of comet Siding Spring's close brush past Mars, and it is thrilling.

The image you see above -- a fuzzy white comet hovering above a glowing rust-colored planet -- is actually a composite of several images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope on Saturday and Sunday.

NASA's Hi Res camera aboard a Mars orbiter captured the first images of the nucleus of a comet
There are a few reasons that Hubble could not take a picture like this in a single shot. For one, Mars is 10,000 times brighter than its cometary visitor, making it impossible to see details of Siding Spring and Mars in one exposure.

Also, the two objects were racing past each other during their near-rendezvous on Sunday. At least one of the objects would have been blurry if Hubble tried to take an image of them simultaneously.

The starfield that the two bodies are set against was provided by the Palomar Digital Sky Survey.

Despite being a bit of a cut and paste job, NASA officials say the image accurately illustrates the distance between Siding Spring and Mars at the time of the comet's closest approach.

It also accurately represents the relative sizes of the two bodies.

New Horizons to Explore Pluto

In January 2006, New Horizons was launched for its long journey to explore Pluto and its five known moons. This will be NASA’s first opportunity to explore the distant planet of which little is known since its 1930 discovery.

Pluto is the most famous resident of the Kuiper Belt, an area of space beyond Neptune that is filled with innumerable objects that are believed to be remnants of the formation of the solar system. A Dutch astronomer, Jan Oort, theorized that comets might originate from this distant region. Gerard Kuiper first envisioned the existence of icy objects beyond Neptune in 1951.

The Kuiper Belt is about 3 billion miles from Earth and is similar to the asteroids that orbit the sun between Mars and Jupiter.   The asteroid belt is filled with rocky objects whereas the Kuiper Belt’s objects are icy. Several dwarf planets, of which Pluto is one, exist in these far reaches of space. Dwarf planets are not only smaller than regular planets, but their lack of size does not give them the ability to clear space around them.

Currently in a hibernation state, New Horizons will awake and begin preparing for its encounter with Pluto on Dec. 6. The actual flyby will begin in January with the spacecraft’s closest encounter occurring on July 15, 2015. A scheduled trajectory adjustment burn was not deemed necessary and has left the craft with additional fuel.

The additional fuel has NASA officials searching for additional Kuiper Belt objects for New Horizons to explore. To identify potential targets, officials used the Hubble telescope to locate objects of interest. These targets had to be in line with Pluto so that additional use of fuel would not be required. The Hubble data identified three additional objects that will be tracked to ascertain their orbital path.

New Horizons crossed Neptune’s orbital path on Aug. 25. On Sept. 12 NASA, using the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager, began its initial preparatory testing of the approaching Pluto system. Hydra, a small moon of Pluto, was detected. It was not anticipated to view the moon until early in 2015. Locating Hydra this early in the process bodes well for the team’s ability to locate potential unknown moons or planetary rings.

New Horizons took 48 images, each lasting 10 seconds, of Pluto on two separate occurrences in July. While these images revealed Hydra, officials were unable to see Nix, another of Pluto’s moons. New Horizons was still 267 million miles from Pluto when these images were taken. Those images also revealed its largest moon, Charon. Some astronomers consider Pluto-Charon as a binary planet.

NASA has completed its detailed engineering review of the mission and has begun the process of planning for the approach science. By next month sequences for planetary approach will be developed. Each sequence serves as a two-week flight plan for the spacecraft and takes about eight weeks to develop, test and certify.

New Horizon’s exploration of Pluto and the Kuiper Belt is NASA’s first extensive look at this distant part of the solar system. Pluto was still classified as a planet when the mission initially launched. It has since been downgraded to a dwarf planet.

No sign of life detected on martian surface

The Curiosity rover used a laser to sample freshly drilled rock dust on Mars. It has not found methane.

NASA's Curiosity rover has failed to find significant signs of methane in the Martian atmosphere, mission scientists reported on Thursday. The new rover information suggests that earlier reports of Martian methane—once seen as a possible sign of microbial life on the planet—may have been off target.
If the Curiosity finding holds up, it would raise questions about one of the most intriguing discoveries made about Mars in recent years: that periodic and large-scale plumes of organic methane are released from beneath the planet's surface.
"We consider this to be a quite definitive conclusion, and we're very confident with it," Chris Webster, manager of the Planetary Science Instrument Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said of the new rover readings reported in the journal Science.
"It puts an upper limit on the background methane on Mars that is very constraining of any scenarios for its production on the planet."
The special interest in the gas comes from the fact that some 90 percent of the methane on Earth is the product of living microbes. Signs of methane plumes in the Martian atmosphere seen by Earth-based telescopes had earlier raised hopes of detecting similar microbial life hidden under the Martian surface.
Original Discovery Defended
The lead author of that 2009 methane plume discovery report, Michael Mumma of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said that he stood by his finding that substantial and localized plumes of methane were released on Mars in 2003.
He suggests that the Martian atmosphere destroys methane much more quickly than Earth's does, and that within three years of the original measurements new observations showed that half of the methane was gone.
"These findings are actually consistent with our results," Mumma said of the findings from Curiosity. "We reported that the methane releases are likely to be sporadic and that the methane is quickly eliminated in the atmosphere.
"The good news here is that the rover instrument designed to detect methane is working, and we look forward to ongoing monitoring in the future."
Other American and European researchers have also detected elevated levels of methane in the atmosphere of Mars—for example, the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiting spacecraft found methane in 2004—but none with the specificity reported by Mumma's team.
Curiosity Counters Methane Reports
Webster said that he took the previous reports of methane on Mars "at face value," since they too were published in peer-reviewed journals. But he said the Curiosity observations were clearly different.
While methane can be produced through geological processes, on Earth it is overwhelmingly a byproduct of microbes called methanogens. Best known as denizens of the guts of creatures ranging from humans to cattle to termites, these organisms produce the marsh gas found in wetlands and landfills. But they can also live deep underground.
Because of the harsh environment on Mars—high levels of surface radiation; low temperatures; and dry, acidic conditions—scientists have generally agreed that any microbes now alive on the planet would likely inhabit the deep underground.
Mumma's team did not point to biology as the source of the methane plumes they identified, but they did raise it as a possibility along with geological processes.
Surface Measurements Will Continue
The new paper makes the case that the methane levels Curiosity detected on the ground are so low that the likelihood of a biological source is vanishingly small.
"Methane is a very well understood gas that is quite stable," Webster said. "We know how long it lasts and how it is destroyed over decades."
While it is conceivable that something exists in the Martian atmosphere that destroys methane at a much faster pace than on Earth, "we have no evidence, no observations of what it might be," he said.
Webster said the rover's instruments have not detected any methane so far, but the possibility of error put the upper limit of methane at 1.7 parts per billion. That means that the Martian atmosphere could hold at most about 10,000 tons (nine million kilograms) of methane, notes the University of Michigan's Sushil Atreya, a co-author on the new study. On Earth, the atmosphere holds about six billion tons (5.44 trillion kilograms) of methane.
The methane-detecting device is on the rover's Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument panel and is called the tunable laser spectrometer. Webster said that efforts to detect methane will continue, but will likely be reduced if results continue to come back negative.
A European satellite is scheduled to arrive at Mars in 2016 with the specific goal of searching for gases such as methane. The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter was initially going to be a joint venture with NASA, but the agency pulled out for budgetary reasons.