NASA's Kepler Provides Insights on Enigmatic Planets

NASA - Kepler Mission patch.

January 7, 2014

More than three-quarters of the planet candidates discovered by NASA's Kepler spacecraft have sizes ranging from that of Earth to that of Neptune, which is nearly four times as big as Earth. Such planets dominate the galactic census but are not represented in our own solar system. Astronomers don't know how they form or if they are made of rock, water or gas.

The Kepler team today reports on four years of ground-based follow-up observations targeting Kepler's exoplanet systems at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington. These observations confirm the numerous Kepler discoveries are indeed planets and yield mass measurements of these enigmatic worlds that vary between Earth and Neptune in size.

Included in the findings are five new rocky planets ranging in size from 10 to 80 percent larger than Earth. Two of the new rocky worlds, dubbed Kepler-99b and Kepler-406b, are both 40 percent larger in size than Earth and have a density similar to lead. The planets orbit their host stars in less than five and three days respectively, making these worlds too hot for life as we know it.

Artist's concept of NASA's Kepler space telescope. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

A major component of these follow-up observations was Doppler measurements of the planets' host stars. The team measured the reflex wobble of the host star, caused by the gravitational tug on the star exerted by the orbiting planet. That measured wobble reveals the mass of the planet: the higher the mass of the planet, the greater the gravitational tug on the star and hence the greater the wobble.

"This marvelous avalanche of information about the mini-Neptune planets is telling us about their core-envelope structure, not unlike a peach with its pit and fruit," said Geoff Marcy, professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, who led the summary analysis of the high-precision Doppler study. "We now face daunting questions about how these enigmas formed and why our solar system is devoid of the most populous residents in the galaxy."

Using one of the world's largest ground-based telescopes at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, scientists confirmed 41 of the exoplanets discovered by Kepler and determined the masses of 16. With the mass and diameter in hand, scientists could immediately determine the density of the planets, characterizing them as rocky or gaseous, or mixtures of the two.

The density measurements dictate the possible chemical composition of these strange, but ubiquitous planets. The density measurements suggest that the planets smaller than Neptune -- or mini-Neptunes -- have a rocky core but the proportions of hydrogen, helium and hydrogen-rich molecules in the envelope surrounding that core vary dramatically, with some having no envelope at all.

The ground-based observation research validates 38 new planets, six of which are non-transiting planets only seen in the Doppler data. The paper detailing the research is published in the Astrophysical Journal today.

Chart of Kepler planet candidates as of January 2014. Image Credit: NASA Ames

A complementary technique used to determine mass, and in turn density of a planet, is by measuring the transit timing variations (TTV). Much like the gravitational force of a planet on its star, neighboring planets can tug on one another, causing one planet to accelerate and another planet to decelerate along its orbit.

Ji-Wei Xie of the University of Toronto used TTV to validate 15 pairs of Kepler planets ranging from Earth-sized to a little larger than Neptune. Xie measured masses of the 30 planets, thereby adding to the compendium of planetary characteristics for this new class of planets. The result also was published in the Astrophysical Journal in Dec. 2013.

"Kepler's primary objective is to determine the prevalence of planets of varying sizes and orbits. Of particular interest to the search for life is the prevalence of Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone," said Natalie Batalha, Kepler mission scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. "But the question in the back of our minds is: are all planets the size of Earth rocky? Might some be scaled-down versions of icy Neptunes or steamy water worlds? What fraction are recognizable as kin of our rocky, terrestrial globe?"

Artist's view of a Earth-size rocky exoplanet. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The dynamical mass measurements produced by Doppler and TTV analyses will help to answer these questions. The results hint that a large fraction of planets smaller than 1.5 times the radius of Earth may be comprised of the silicates, iron, nickel and magnesium that are found in the terrestrial planets here in the solar system.

Armed with this type of information, scientists will be able to turn the fraction of stars harboring Earth-sizes planets into the fraction of stars harboring bona-fide rocky planets. And that's a step closer to finding a habitable environment beyond the solar system.

Ames is responsible for the Kepler mission concept, ground system development, mission operations and science data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., managed Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo., developed the Kepler flight system and supports mission operations with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore archives, hosts and distributes Kepler science data. Kepler is NASA's 10th Discovery mission and was funded by the agency's Science Mission Directorate.

For more information about the Kepler space telescope, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/kepler .

The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA / J.D. Harrington / JPL / Michele Johnson / Ames Research Center / Michele Johnson.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

NASA's Fermi Makes First Gamma-ray Study of a Gravitational Lens

NASA - Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope logo.

Jan. 6, 2014

An international team of astronomers, using NASA's Fermi observatory, has made the first-ever gamma-ray measurements of a gravitational lens, a kind of natural telescope formed when a rare cosmic alignment allows the gravity of a massive object to bend and amplify light from a more distant source.

This accomplishment opens new avenues for research, including a novel way to probe emission regions near supermassive black holes. It may even be possible to find other gravitational lenses with data from the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope.

Gravitational Lens B0218+357

Video above: This movie illustrates the components of a gravitational lens system known as B0218+357. Different sight lines to a background blazar result in two images that show outbursts at slightly different times. NASA's Fermi made the first gamma-ray measurements of this delay in a lens system. Image Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

"We began thinking about the possibility of making this observation a couple of years after Fermi launched, and all of the pieces finally came together in late 2012," said Teddy Cheung, lead scientist for the finding and an astrophysicist at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington.

In September 2012, Fermi's Large Area Telescope (LAT) detected a series of bright gamma-ray flares from a source known as B0218+357, located 4.35 billion light-years from Earth in the direction of a constellation called Triangulum. These powerful flares, in a known gravitational lens system, provided the key to making the lens measurement.

Astronomers classify B0218+357 as a blazar -- a type of active galaxy noted for its intense emissions and unpredictable behavior. At the blazar's heart is a supersized black hole with a mass millions to billions of times that of the sun. As matter spirals toward the black hole, some of it blasts outward as jets of particles traveling near the speed of light in opposite directions.

The extreme brightness and variability of blazars result from a chance orientation that brings one jet almost directly in line with Earth. Astronomers effectively look down the barrel of the jet, which greatly enhances its apparent emission.

Image above: This Hubble image of gravitational lens B0218+357 reveals two bright sources separated by about a third of an arcsecond, each an image of the background blazar. Spiral arms belonging to the lensing galaxy also can be seen. B0218+357 boasts the smallest separation of lensed images currently known. Image Credit: NASA/ESA and the Hubble Legacy Archive.

Long before light from B0218+357 reaches us, it passes directly through a face-on spiral galaxy -- one very much like our own -- about 4 billion light-years away.

The galaxy's gravity bends the light into different paths, so astronomers see the background blazar as dual images. With just a third of an arcsecond (less than 0.0001 degree) between them, the B0218+357 images hold the record for the smallest separation of any lensed system known.

While radio and optical telescopes can resolve and monitor the individual blazar images, Fermi's LAT cannot. Instead, the Fermi team exploited a "delayed playback" effect.

"One light path is slightly longer than the other, so when we detect flares in one image we can try to catch them days later when they replay in the other image," said team member Jeff Scargle, an astrophysicist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.

Image above: In the heart of an active galaxy, matter falling toward a supermassive black hole creates jets of particles traveling near the speed of light. For active galaxies classified as blazars, one of these jets beams almost directly toward Earth. Image Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab.

In September 2012, when the blazar's flaring activity made it the brightest gamma-ray source outside of our own galaxy, Cheung realized it was a golden opportunity. He was granted a week of LAT target-of-opportunity observing time, from Sept. 24 to Oct. 1, to hunt for delayed flares.

At the American Astronomical Society meeting in National Harbor, Md., Cheung said the team had identified three episodes of flares showing playback delays of 11.46 days, with the strongest evidence found in a sequence of flares captured during the week-long LAT observations.

Intriguingly, the gamma-ray delay is about a day longer than radio observations report for this system. And while the flares and their playback show similar gamma-ray brightness, in radio wavelengths one blazar image is about four times brighter than the other.

Astronomers don't think the gamma rays arise from the same regions as the radio waves, so these emissions likely take slightly different paths, with correspondingly different delays and amplifications, as they travel through the lens.

"Over the course of a day, one of these flares can brighten the blazar by 10 times in gamma rays but only 10 percent in visible light and radio, which tells us that the region emitting gamma rays is very small compared to those emitting at lower energies," said team member Stefan Larsson, an astrophysicist at Stockholm University in Sweden.

As a result, the gravity of small concentrations of matter in the lensing galaxy may deflect and amplify gamma rays more significantly than lower-energy light. Disentangling these so-called microlensing effects poses a challenge to taking further advantage of high-energy lens observations.

Image above: This interactive illustrates how gravitational lensing can be observed by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Image Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.
View interactive: http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/fermi_gravitational_lensing/

The scientists say that comparing radio and gamma-ray observations of additional lens systems could help provide new insights into the workings of powerful black-hole jets and establish new constraints on important cosmological quantities like the Hubble constant, which describes the universe's rate of expansion.

The most exciting result, the team said, would be the LAT's detection of a playback delay in a flaring gamma-ray source not yet identified as a gravitational lens in other wavelengths.

A paper describing the research will appear in a future edition of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership. Fermi is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. It was developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy, with contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden and the United States.

Related Links:

Download multimedia in HD formats: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a011400/a011437/

NASA's Fermi website: http://www.nasa.gov/fermi

Paper: "Fermi-LAT Detection of Gravitational Lens Delayed  Gamma-ray Flares from  Blazar B0218+357" (preprint): http://arxiv.org/abs/1401.0548

Interactive: Gravitational Lensing: http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/fermi_gravitational_lensing/

Images (mentioned), Video, Text, Credits: NASA / J. D. Harrington / Goddard Space Flight Center / Lynn Chandler.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

ALMA Spots Supernova Dust Factory

ESO - European Southern Observatory logo.

6 January 2014

Composite image of Supernova 1987A

Striking new observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope capture, for the first time, the remains of a recent supernova brimming with freshly formed dust. If enough of this dust makes the perilous transition into interstellar space, it could explain how many galaxies acquired their dusty, dusky appearance.

Galaxies can be remarkably dusty places [1] and supernovae are thought to be a primary source of that dust, especially in the early Universe. But direct evidence of a supernova's dust‐making capabilities has been slim up to now, and could not account for the copious amount of dust detected in young, distant galaxies. But now observations with ALMA are changing that.

"We have found a remarkably large dust mass concentrated in the central part of the ejecta from a relatively young and nearby supernova," said Remy Indebetouw, an astronomer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) and the University of Virginia, both in Charlottesville, USA. "This is the first time we've been able to really image where the dust has formed, which is important in understanding the evolution of galaxies."

An international team of astronomers used ALMA to observe the glowing remains of Supernova 1987A [2], which is in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy orbiting the Milky Way about 160 000 light‐years from Earth. SN 1987A is the closest observed supernova explosion since Johannes Kepler's observation of a supernova inside the Milky Way in 1604.

Artist's illustration of Supernova 1987A

Astronomers predicted that as the gas cooled after the explosion, large amounts of dust would form as atoms of oxygen, carbon, and silicon bonded together in the cold central regions of the remnant. However, earlier observations of SN 1987A with infrared telescopes, made during the first 500 days after the explosion, detected only a small amount of hot dust.

With ALMA's unprecedented resolution and sensitivity, the research team was able to image the far more abundant cold dust, which glows brightly in millimetre and submillimetre light. The astronomers estimate that the remnant now contains about 25 percent the mass of the Sun in newly formed dust. They also found that significant amounts of carbon monoxide and silicon monoxide have formed.

"SN 1987A is a special place since it hasn't mixed with the surrounding environment, so what we see there was made there," said Indebetouw. "The new ALMA results, which are the first of their kind, reveal a supernova remnant chock full of material that simply did not exist a few decades ago."

Supernovae, however, can both create and destroy dust grains.

Portrait of a Dramatic Stellar Crib*

As the shockwave from the initial explosion radiated out into space, it produced bright glowing rings of material, as seen in earlier observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. After hitting this envelope of gas, which was sloughed off by the progenitor red giant star as it neared the end of its life, a portion of this powerful explosion rebounded back towards the centre of the remnant. "At some point, this rebound shockwave will slam into these billowing clumps of freshly minted dust," said Indebetouw. "It's likely that some fraction of the dust will be blasted apart at that point. It's hard to predict exactly how much — maybe only a little, possibly a half or two thirds." If a good fraction survives and makes it into interstellar space, it could account for the copious dust astronomers detect in the early Universe.

"Really early galaxies are incredibly dusty and this dust plays a major role in the evolution of galaxies," said Mikako Matsuura of University College London, UK. "Today we know dust can be created in several ways, but in the early Universe most of it must have come from supernovae. We finally have direct evidence to support that theory."

Notes:

[1] Cosmic dust consist of silicate and graphite grains — minerals also abundant on Earth. The soot from a candle is very similar to cosmic graphite dust, although the size of the grains in the soot are ten or more times bigger than typical grain sizes of cosmic graphite grains.

[2] Light from this supernova arrived at Earth in 1987, as is reflected in the name.

More information:

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an international astronomy facility, is a partnership of Europe, North America and East Asia in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. ALMA is funded in Europe by the European Southern Observatory (ESO), in North America by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) in cooperation with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and the National Science Council of Taiwan (NSC) and in East Asia by the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan in cooperation with the Academia Sinica (AS) in Taiwan. ALMA construction and operations are led on behalf of Europe by ESO, on behalf of North America by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), which is managed by Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI) and on behalf of East Asia by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ). The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) provides the unified leadership and management of the construction, commissioning and operation of ALMA.

This research was presented in a paper “Dust Production and Particle Acceleration in Supernova 1987A Revealed with ALMA”, by R. Indebetouw et al., to appear in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The team is composed of R. Indebetouw (National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO); University of Virginia, Charlottesville, USA), M. Matsuura (University College London, United Kingdom [UCL]), E. Dwek (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, USA), G. Zanardo (International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, University of Western Australia, Crawley, Australia [ICRAR]), M.J. Barlow (UCL), M. Baes (Sterrenkundig Obst Gent, Gent, Belgium), P. Bouchet (CEA-Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette, France), D.N. Burrows (The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, USA), R. Chevalier (University of Virginia, Charlottesville, USA), G.C. Clayton (Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge,USA), C. Fransson (Stockholm University, Sweden), B. Gaensler (Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics [CAASTRO]; Sydney Institute for Astronomy, The University of Sydney, Australia), R. Kirshner (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, USA), M.Lakicevic (Lennard-Jones Laboratories, Keele University, UK), K.S. Long (Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, USA [STScI]), P. Lundqvist (Stockholm University, Sweden), I. Martí-Vidal (Chalmers University of Technology, Onsala Space Observatory, Onsala, Sweden), J. Marcaide (Universidad de Valencia, Burjassot, Spain), R. McCray (University of Colorado at Boulder, USA), M. Meixner (STScI; The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA), C.-Y. Ng (The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong), S. Park (University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, USA), G. Sonneborn (STScI), L. Staveley-Smith (ICRAR; CAASTRO), C. Vlahakis (Joint ALMA Observatory/European Southern Observatory, Santiago, Chile) and J. van Loon (Lennard-Jones Laboratories, Keele University, UK).

ESO is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the world’s most productive ground-based astronomical observatory by far. It is supported by 15 countries: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in promoting and organising cooperation in astronomical research. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope, the world’s most advanced visible-light astronomical observatory and two survey telescopes. VISTA works in the infrared and is the world’s largest survey telescope and the VLT Survey Telescope is the largest telescope designed to exclusively survey the skies in visible light. ESO is the European partner of a revolutionary astronomical telescope ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. ESO is currently planning the 39-metre European Extremely Large optical/near-infrared Telescope, the E-ELT, which will become "the world’s biggest eye on the sky".

Links:

Research paper: http://www.eso.org/public/archives/releases/sciencepapers/eso1401/eso1401a.pdf

More about ALMA: http://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/alma/

Photos of ALMA: http://www.eso.org/public/images/archive/category/alma/

Images, Text, Credits: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/A. Angelich. Visible light image: the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. X-Ray image: The NASA Chandra X-Ray Observatory//Alexandra Angelich (NRAO/AUI/NSF)/R. Fosbury (ST-ECF).

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

An astronaut’s rhythm

ESA - European Astronauts patch / ISS - International Space Station patch.

6 January 2014

Anyone who has flown long distances will be familiar with the jetlag that comes with travelling across time zones. Our body clocks need time to adjust to different daylight times as high-fliers and frequent travellers know all too well. But what about astronauts, the highest fliers of all? Do they suffer from rocket-lag?

Astronauts can suffer sleeping problems in space just as on Earth. Stress, heavy workloads, anxiety, background noise, light and air quality can all upset their body clocks. Minimising sleep disturbances for astronauts is just one of the goals of the European Astronaut Centre’s medical team.

 ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli in sleeping bag on Station

“As on Earth, there are three basic ways to help settle into a regular sleeping pattern,” notes Volker Damann, head of the space medicine office.

Astronauts on the International Space Station have a very structured day, working ten hours maximum followed by a sleep period of eight hours. Breakfast, lunch and dinner are at set times as well as relaxation periods, debriefings, times to communicate with family and friends, times for privacy and times for sports activities.

 Space Station at night

The schedule is based on a 24-hour Earth day synchronised to Greenwich Mean Time. Even though astronauts experience 16 sunrises and sunsets every 24 hours, their week is not dissimilar to common working life on Earth.

After a Monday–Friday working week, Saturday is spent on more work, maintenance, cleaning and private time, while on Sunday they have no duties at all, although many astronauts continue to perform voluntary science and maintenance.

 Night work on Station

The schedule is planned, controlled and coordinated, but is often disrupted through mission requirements, unforeseen events, repairs, maintenance and additional science. Arriving spacecraft often require schedule changes and the crew can be asked to go to bed earlier to wake up refreshed for a late docking.

“Due to the structured routine chemical aids to help sleeping are usually not necessary,” says Volker. “If feelings of jetlag do occur we may recommend melatonin to an astronaut.”

 Blue light during Mars500

Melatonin is produced by our body to regulate our biorhythms. It helps to synchronise our internal clock to a change in wake-up or bedtime that occurs with transcontinental flights and flights into orbit.

The space medical community is also experimenting with light of different colours. Morning and evening sunlight on Earth has more red in it, while bright sunlight during  the day has more blue wavelengths, cueing our body for the time ahead.

Blue lighting on the Space Station could influence the body to be more alert, whereas red lighting might induce sleep.

 Setting Moon

Medication is an option if all else fails, but side effects include drowsiness and difficulties on waking up. Hangovers and even hallucinations are less than ideal when operating scientific equipment in outer space.

The Astronaut Centre tests medications for side-effects because they can differ between astronauts. Typical sleep medication induces sleep but is quickly filtered out by the body. “We do not want astronauts sleeping through fire alarms because they have taken too much,” says Volker.

 Sunset in orbit

Space pharmacology is still in its infancy. Nobody really knows how drugs work in weightlessness and whether a typical dose on Earth will be too little or too much in space. European researchers are investigating this area so astronauts can sleep soundly knowing that the people on ground are looking out for them.

Related links:

European Astronaut Centre: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Human_Spaceflight/Astronauts/The_European_Astronaut_Centre

International Space Station: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Human_Spaceflight/International_Space_Station

International Space Station tracker: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Human_Spaceflight/International_Space_Station/Where_is_the_International_Space_Station

Mars500: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Human_Spaceflight/Mars500

Images, Text, Credits: ESA / NASA.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Success launch of GSLV rocket and GSAT-14 satellite

ISRO - Indian Space Research Organisation logo.


Jan. 5, 2014

 Indian Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) rocket launch

The 8th launch of the Indian Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle successfully occurred at 10:48 UTC on January 5th 2014. The launch carried the GSAT-14 communications satellite into orbit.

Launch of 8th Indian GSLV Rocket with GSAT-14

The Satellite successfully separated at 11:06 UTC.

This flight was previously scheduled for 2013 however a fuel leak required a new second stage to be built.

GSLV-D5 launch 1982 Kg GSAT-14, a communication satellite, into Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO). GSAT-14 use its own propulsion system to reach its geostationary orbital home and will be stationed at 74º East longitude. GSAT-14 will help provide many satellite based communication services to the country including tele-education and telemedicine.

India's Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV), flying on the GSLV-D5 mission, will launch the GSAT 14 communications satellite. The rocket will fly in the GSLV Mk.2 configuration with an Indian-built cryogenic third stage.

GSAT 14 communications satellite

This GSLV rocket was the second GSLV rocket to use an Indian built upperstage, The previous 6 flights used a Russian upperstage.

GSLV has a poor track record with 5 out of 7 previous launches ending in failure, India hopes to master the GSLV ahead of eventual use to send humans into orbit.

For more information about Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), visit: http://www.isro.org/

Images, Video, Text, Credits: ISRO / Gunter's Space / Orbiter.ch Aerospace.

Cheers, Orbiter.ch

Highlights from CERN in 2013

CERN - European Organization for Nuclear Research logo.

Jan. 4, 2014

It's been a fruitful year for CERN. In his end-of-year message to everyone at CERN, Director-General Rolf Heuer writes:

"(2013) has shown how decades of diligent groundwork, a hallmark of CERN and particle physics, along with a deep-seated sense of the values of the organization, lay the foundations for success."

This success has come in 2013 in many forms.

The Large Hadron Colllider (LHC) came to the end of its highly successful first three-year run in February, giving way to a busy programme of maintenance and consolidation of CERN's entire accelerator chain that will enable the LHC to restart at higher energies in 2015. CERN’s experimental teams have continued to analyse data during this period, and many of them have embarked on upgrades of their own.

Image above: This year saw a busy programme of maintenance and consolidation across the accelerator chain. Here, an engineer works on the CMS detector (Image: Anna Pantelia/CERN ).

The LHC experiments ATLAS and CMS confirmed in March that the new boson found in 2012 is indeed a Higgs boson and continued to probe its properties. ALICE took data from lead-proton collisions and continued its steady programme of upgrade and consolidation work. LHCb observed a new matter-antimatter asymmety in the decays of the of the B⁰_s meson and measured one of the rarest processes in physics. After reaching the remarkable figure of 100 petabytes of stored data early in the year, CERN’s computing capacity was expanded significantly with an extension to the Data Centre at CERN as well as the establishment of a new data centre in Budapest, Hungary – ready to deal with the torrent of data to come when the LHC starts up again.

The year was busy for the rich research programme beyond the LHC. Teams at ISOLDE showed that atomic nuclei can be pear shaped and measured the ionization potential of the rarest element on Earth; antiproton experiments made world-beating measurements on the antiproton and looked at the effects of gravity on antimatter and the CLOUD collaboration shed new light on the effect of cosmic rays on the formation of clouds in the atmosphere.

The laboratory hosted its first ever TEDxCERN event, and opened the local tourist trail "Passport to the Big Bang". Some 70,000 people visited in September for the Open Days, which provided a rare opportunity for many to see the LHC underground. A collection of CERN photographs were put under a creative commons licence and CERN celebrated 20 years of putting World Wide Web software in the public domain by restoring the first website to its original URL (here: http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html) and recreating the world's first widely available web browser, the line-mode browser.

CERN - To discover the secret of the matter. Image Credit: CERN

CERN continued to strengthen ties around the world. Israel is to become CERN’s 21st Member State – the first new member since 1999 – and Ukraine is set to join as an Associate Member. For the future, the programme to upgrade the LHC to deliver more collisions was recognized as the top priority in the updated European Strategy for Particle Physics, approved by CERN Council in May.

Finally, the year 2013 saw a number of prestigious awards. In October, Peter Higgs and François Englert shared the Nobel prize in physics for "the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.” Other prizes for the laboratory included the Prince of Asturias award, the UNESCO Niels Bohr gold medal, and the Edinburgh medal awarded to CERN and to Peter Higgs.

Note:

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is one of the world’s largest and most respected centres for scientific research. Its business is fundamental physics, finding out what the Universe is made of and how it works. At CERN, the world’s largest and most complex scientific instruments are used to study the basic constituents of matter — the fundamental particles. By studying what happens when these particles collide, physicists learn about the laws of Nature.

The instruments used at CERN are particle accelerators and detectors. Accelerators boost beams of particles to high energies before they are made to collide with each other or with stationary targets. Detectors observe and record the results of these collisions.

Founded in 1954, the CERN Laboratory sits astride the Franco–Swiss border near Geneva. It was one of Europe’s first joint ventures and now has 20 Member States.

Related links:

Large Hadron Colllider (LHC): http://home.web.cern.ch/about/accelerators/large-hadron-collider

LHC experiments ATLAS: http://home.web.cern.ch/about/experiments/atlas

LHC experiments CMS: http://home.web.cern.ch/about/experiments/cms

ALICE: http://home.web.cern.ch/about/experiments/alice

For more information about European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), visit: http://home.web.cern.ch/

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: CERN / Cian O'Luanaigh.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

First 2014 Asteroid Discovered

Asteroid Watch.

Jan. 3, 2014

Image above: This animated GIF shows Asteroid 2014 AA, discovered by the NASA-sponsored Catalina Sky Survey on Jan. 1, 2014, as it moved across the sky. Image Credit: CSS/LPL/UA.

Early Wednesday morning (Jan. 1, 2014), while New Year's 2014 celebrations were still underway in the United States, the Catalina Sky Survey near Tucson, Ariz., collected a single track of observations with an immediate follow-up on what was possibly a very small asteroid -- 7 to 10 feet (2 to 3 meters) in size -- on a potential impact trajectory with Earth.

Designated 2014 AA, which would make it the first asteroid discovery of 2014, the track of observations on the object allowed only an uncertain orbit to be calculated. However, if this was a very small asteroid on an Earth-impacting trajectory, it most likely entered Earth's atmosphere sometime between 11 a.m. PST (2 p.m. EST) Wednesday and 6 a.m. PST (9 a.m. EST) Thursday.

Using the only available observations, three independent projections of the possible orbit by the independent orbit analyst Bill Gray, the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Mass., and Steve Chesley, of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., are in agreement that 2014 AA would hit Earth's atmosphere. According to Chesley, the potential impact locations are widely distributed because of the orbit uncertainty, falling along an arc extending from Central America to East Africa. The most likely impact location of the object was just off the coast of West Africa at about 6 p.m. PST (9 p.m. EST) Jan. 1.

It is unlikely asteroid 2014 AA would have survived atmospheric entry intact, as it was comparable in size to asteroid 2008 TC3, which was about 7 to 10 feet (2 to 3 meters) in size. 2008 TC3 completely broke up over northern Sudan in October 2008. Asteroid 2008 TC3 is the only other example of an object discovered just prior to hitting Earth. So far, there have been a few weak signals collected from infrasound stations in that region of the world that are being analyzed to see if they could be correlated to the atmospheric entry of 2014 AA.

NASA's Near-Earth Object Program at NASA Headquarters, Washington, manages and funds the search, study and monitoring of asteroids and comets whose orbits periodically bring them close to Earth. JPL manages the Near-Earth Object Program Office for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

More information about asteroids and near-Earth objects is available at: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/ , http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroidwatch and via Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/asteroidwatch

Image (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA / JPL / DC Agle.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch