What Caused This Outburst Of This Star Named V838 Mon? For Reasons Unknown, This Star’s Outer Surface

What’s Up For September 2018?

Outstanding views Venus, Jupiter, Saturn and Mars with the naked eye!

You'll have to look quickly after sunset to catch Venus. And through binoculars or a telescope, you'll see Venus's phase change dramatically during September - from nearly half phase to a larger thinner crescent!

Jupiter, Saturn and Mars continue their brilliant appearances this month. Look southwest after sunset.

Use the summer constellations help you trace the Milky Way.

Sagittarius: where stars and some brighter clumps appear as steam from the teapot.

Aquila: where the Eagle's bright Star Altair, combined with Cygnus's Deneb, and Lyra's Vega mark the Summer Triangle. 

Cassiopeia, the familiar "w"- shaped constellation completes the constellation trail through the Summer Milky Way. Binoculars will reveal double stars, clusters and nebulae. 

Between September 12th and the 20th, watch the Moon pass from near Venus, above Jupiter, to the left of Saturn and finally above Mars! 

Both Neptune and brighter Uranus can be spotted with some help from a telescope this month.

Look at about 1:00 a.m. local time or later in the southeastern sky. You can find Mercury just above Earth's eastern horizon shortly before sunrise. Use the Moon as your guide on September 7 and 8th.

And although there are no major meteor showers in September, cometary dust appears in another late summer sight, the morning Zodiacal light. Try looking for it in the east on moonless mornings very close to sunrise. To learn more about the Zodiacal light, watch "What's Up" from March 2018.

Watch the full What’s Up for September Video: 

There are so many sights to see in the sky. To stay informed, subscribe to our What’s Up video series on Facebook.

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Has the COVID-19 pandemic really reduced pollution in areas participating in lockdowns? Is the environment “recovering”?

Measuring Cosmic Rays at the Edge of Space

It’s a bird!  It’s a plane!  It’s a… SuperTIGER?

No, that’s not the latest superhero spinoff movie - it’s an instrument launching soon from Antarctica! It’ll float on a giant balloon above 99.5% of the Earth’s atmosphere, measuring tiny particles called cosmic rays.

Right now, we have a team of several scientists and technicians from Washington University in St. Louis and NASA at McMurdo Station in Antarctica preparing for the launch of the Super Trans-Iron Galactic Element Recorder, which is called SuperTIGER for short. This is the second flight of this instrument, which last launched in Antarctica in 2012 and circled the continent for a record-breaking 55 days.  

SuperTIGER measures cosmic rays, which are itty-bitty pieces of atoms that are zinging through space at super-fast speeds up to nearly the speed of light. In particular, it studies galactic cosmic rays, which means they come from somewhere in our Milky Way galaxy, outside of our solar system.

Most cosmic rays are just an individual proton, the basic positively-charged building block of matter. But a rarer type of cosmic ray is a whole nucleus (or core) of an atom - a bundle of positively-charged protons and non-charged neutrons - that allows us to identify what element the cosmic ray is. Those rare cosmic-ray nuclei (that’s the plural of nucleus) can help us understand what happened many trillions of miles away to create this particle and send it speeding our way.

The cosmic rays we’re most interested in measuring with SuperTIGER are from elements heavier than iron, like copper and silver. These particles are created in some of the most dynamic and exciting events in the universe - such as exploding and colliding stars.

In fact, we’re especially interested in the cosmic rays created in the collision of two neutron stars, just like the event earlier this year that we saw through both light and gravitational waves. Adding the information from cosmic rays opens another window on these events, helping us understand more about how the material in the galaxy is created.

Why does SuperTIGER fly on a balloon?

While cosmic rays strike our planet harmlessly every day, most of them are blocked by the Earth’s atmosphere and magnetic field.  That means that scientists have to get far above Earth - on a balloon or spacecraft - to measure an accurate sample of galactic cosmic rays.  By flying on a balloon bigger than a football field, SuperTIGER can get to the edge of space to take these measurements.  

It’ll float for weeks at over 120,000 feet, which is nearly four times higher than you might fly in a commercial airplane. At the end of the flight, the instrument will return safely to the ice on a huge parachute. The team can recover the payload from its landing site, bring it back to the United States, repair or make changes to it, if needed, and fly it again another year!

There are also cosmic ray instruments on our International Space Station, such as ISS-CREAM and CALET, which each started their development on a series of balloons launched from Antarctica. The SuperTIGER team hopes to eventually take measurements from space, too.  

Why do we launch from Antarctica?

McMurdo Station is a hotspot for all sorts of science while it’s summer in the Southern Hemisphere (which is winter here in the United States), including scientific ballooning.  The circular wind patterns around the pole usually keep the balloon from going out over the ocean, making it easier to land and recover the instrument later. And the 24-hour daylight in the Antarctic summer keeps the balloon at a nearly constant height to get very long flights - it would go up and down if it had to experience the temperature changes of day and night. All of that sunlight shining on the instrument's array of solar cells also gives a continuous source of electricity to power everything.

Antarctica is an especially good place to fly a cosmic ray instrument like SuperTIGER. The Earth’s magnetic field blocks fewer cosmic rays at the poles, meaning that we can measure more particles as SuperTIGER circles around the South Pole than we would at NASA scientific ballooning sites closer to the Earth’s equator.  

The SuperTIGER team is hard at work preparing for launch right now - and their launch window opens soon! Follow @NASABlueshift for updates and opportunities to interact with our scientists on the ice.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

Solar System: Things to Know This Week

Like sailors of old, the Cassini mission team fondly thinks of the spacecraft as "she."  On April 22, she begins her Grand Finale, a spectacular end game—22 daring dives between the planet's atmosphere and innermost rings. Here are 10 things to know about her Grand Finale.

1. She's Broadcasting Live This Week

On Tuesday, April 4 at 3 p.m. EDT  (noon PDT), At Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Cassini team host a news briefing to discuss the mission's Grand Finale.

Tune in Tuesday: youtube.com/nasajpl/live

2. She's Powered in Part By ... Titan

Cassini left Earth with less than 1/30th of the propellant needed to power all her adventures at Saturn. The navigation team used the gravity of Saturn's giant moon Titan to change course and extend the spacecraft's exploration of Saturn. Titan also provides the gravity assist to push Cassini into its final orbits.

More on Cassini's navigation: saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/spacecraft/navigation/

3. She's a Robot

Cassini is an orbiter that was named for 18th century astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini. She was designed to be captured by Saturn's gravity and then explore it in detail with a suite of 12 powerful science instruments.

More on the Spacecraft: saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/spacecraft/cassini-orbiter/

4. She Brought a Friend to Saturn

Cassini carried the European Space Agency's Huygens Probe, which in 2005 descended through Titan's thick, perpetual clouds and made the most distant landing to date in our solar system.

More on Huygens: saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/spacecraft/huygens-probe/

5. She's a Great Photographer

Your mobile phone likely captures dozens of megapixels in images. Cassini, using 1990s technology closer to one megapixel cameras, has returned some of the most stunning images in the history of solar system exploration.

Cassini Hall of Fame Images: go.nasa.gov/2oec6H2 More on Cassini's Cameras: saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/imaging-science-subsystem/

6. She's an Inspiration

Those great images have inspired artist's and amateur image processors to create truly fantastic imagery inspired by the beauty of Saturn. Feeling inspired? There's still time to share your Cassini-inspired art with us.

Cassini Inspires Campaign: saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/cassiniinspires/

7. She's Got a Long History

Two decades is a long time to live in the harsh environment of outer space (respect to the fast-approaching 40-year-old twin Voyager spacecraft). Launched in 1997, Cassini logged a lot of milestones over the years.

Explore the Cassini Timeline: saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/the-journey/timeline/

8. She Keeps a Diary

And, you can read it. Week after week going back to 1997, Cassini's adventures, discoveries and status have been chronicled in the mission's weekly significant events report.

Read It: https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/?topic=121

9. She's Got a Fancy New App

Cassini was the prototype for NASA's Eyes on the Solar System 3-D visualization software, so it's fitting the latest Cassini module in the free, downloadable software is the most detailed, elaborate visualization of any mission to date.

Fly the Mission - Start to Finish: http://eyes.nasa.gov/cassini

10. She's Going Out in a Blaze of Glory

In addition to all the new information from 22 orbits in unexplored space, Cassini's engineers reprogrammed the spacecraft to send back details about Saturn's atmosphere to the very last second before the giant planet swallows her up on Sept. 15, 2017.

More on the Grand Finale: saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/grandfinale

Discover more lists of 10 things to know about our solar system HERE.

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We are swooningggg over this NEW Saturn image. 

Saturn is so beautiful that astronomers cannot resist using the Hubble Space Telescope to take yearly snapshots of the ringed world when it is at its closest distance to Earth. 😍

These images, however, are more than just beauty shots. They reveal exquisite details of the planet as a part of the Outer Planets Atmospheres Legacy project to help scientists understand the atmospheric dynamics of our solar system's gas giants.

This year's Hubble offering, for example, shows that a large storm visible in the 2018 Hubble image in the north polar region has vanished. Also, the mysterious six-sided pattern – called the "hexagon" – still exists on the north pole. Caused by a high-speed jet stream, the hexagon was first discovered in 1981 by our Voyager 1 spacecraft.

Saturn's signature rings are still as stunning as ever. The image reveals that the ring system is tilted toward Earth, giving viewers a magnificent look at the bright, icy structure. 

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, A. Simon (GSFC), M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley) and the OPAL Team

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Throwback Thursday: Apollo 11 FAQ Edition

With the help of the NASA History Office, we’ve identified some of the most frequently asked questions surrounding the first time humans walked on the surface of another world. Read on and click here to check out our previous Apollo FAQs. 

How many moon rocks did the Apollo crews bring back? What did we learn?

The six crews that landed on the Moon brought back 842 pounds (382 kilograms) of rocks, sand and dust from the lunar surface. Each time, they were transferred to Johnson Space Center’s Lunar Receiving Laboratory, a building that also housed the astronauts during their three weeks of quarantine. Today the building now houses other science divisions, but the lunar samples are preserved in the Lunar Sample Receiving Laboratory.

Built in 1979, the laboratory is the chief repository of the Apollo samples.

From these pieces of the Moon we learned that its chemical makeup is similar to that of Earth’s, with some differences. Studying the samples has yielded clues to the origins of the solar system. In March of 2019, we announced that three cases of pristine Moon samples will be unsealed for the first time in 50 years so that we can take advantage of the improved technology that exists today! 

Did you know you might not have to travel far to see a piece of the Moon up close? Visit our Find a Moon Rock page to find out where you can visit a piece of the Moon.

What did Apollo astronauts eat on their way to the Moon?

Astronaut food has come a long way since the days of Project Mercury, our first human spaceflight program that ran from 1958-1963. Back then, astronauts “enjoyed” food in cube form or squeezed out of tubes. Early astronaut food menus were designed less for flavor and more for nutritional value, but that eventually shifted as technology evolved. Astronauts today can enjoy whole foods like apples, pizza and even tacos. 

Apollo crews were the first to have hot water, making it easier to rehydrate their foods and improve its taste. They were also the first to use a “spoon bowl,” a plastic container that was somewhat like eating out of a Ziploc bag with a spoon. Here’s an example of a day’s menu for a voyage to the Moon:

Breakfast: bacon squares, strawberry cubes and an orange drink.

Lunch: beef and potatoes, applesauce and a brownie.

Dinner: salmon salad, chicken and rice, sugar cookie cubes and a pineapple grapefruit drink.

What did Michael Collins do while he orbited the Moon, alone in the Command Module?

As Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin worked on the lunar surface, Command Module pilot Michael Collins orbited the Moon, alone, for the next 21.5 hours. On board he ran systems checks, made surface observations and communicated with Mission Control when there wasn’t a communications blackout. Blackouts happened every time Collins went behind the Moon. In 2009, Collins wrote this in response to a flurry of media questions about the 40th anniversary of the mission:

Q. Circling the lonely Moon by yourself, the loneliest person in the universe, weren't you lonely? A. No. Far from feeling lonely or abandoned, I feel very much a part of what is taking place on the lunar surface. I know that I would be a liar or a fool if I said that I have the best of the three Apollo 11 seats, but I can say with truth and equanimity that I am perfectly satisfied with the one I have. This venture has been structured for three men, and I consider my third to be as necessary as either of the other two.”

What will Artemis astronauts bring back when they land on the Moon?

Artemis missions to the Moon will mark humanity’s first permanent presence on another world. The first woman and the next man to explore the lunar surface will land where nobody has ever attempted to land before -- on the Moon’s south pole where there are billions of tons of water ice that can be used for oxygen and fuel. We don’t know yet what astronauts will bring back from this unexplored territory, but we do know that they will return with hope and inspiration for the next generation of explorers: the Artemis generation. Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

For Earth Day, we’re inviting you to take a moment to celebrate our wonderful water world, Earth. As far as we know, our Blue Marble is the only place in the universe with life, and that life depends on water. Snap a photo of yourself outside and tag it #GlobalSelfie – bonus points if your selfie features your favorite body of water! http://go.nasa.gov/3xFt0H0

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

Take a dive between Saturn and its rings to see what our Cassini spacecraft saw during its first daring plunge on April 26! 

As Cassini made its first-ever dive through the gap between Saturn and its rings on April 26, 2017, one of its imaging cameras took a series of rapid-fire images that were used to make this movie sequence. The video begins with a view of the vortex at Saturn's north pole, then heads past the outer boundary of the planet's hexagon-shaped jet stream and continues further southward. 

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

If I am in the path of totality (Hopkinsville, KY) when can I take off my glasses to view the eclipse? Can I keep them off for the entire 2 minutes and 40 seconds?

If you are viewing the partial eclipse or lead up to totality, once you no longer can see any light through your eclipse glasses, then you can take them off. As long as the moon is fully covering the Sun you are safe. I would err on the side of caution and look away from the Sun a few moments before it’s over. This is also a great time to see what is happening around you! The animals should be responding differently than normal and this would be a great time to see that. 

Vice President Mike Pence visited our Kennedy Space Center in Florida today. While there, he delivered remarks to the workforce and toured our complex to see progress toward sending humans deeper into space, and eventually to Mars. He also had the opportunity to see our work with commercial companies to launch humans from U.S. soil to the International Space Station.