Asteroid Will Safely Pass Closer Than Moon Wednesday

Asteroid & Comet Watch.

March 5, 2014

Image above: This image shows the relative locations of asteroid 2014 DX110 and Earth on March 4, 2014. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

As happens about 20 times a year with current detection capabilities, a known asteroid will safely pass Earth Wednesday closer than the distance from Earth to the moon.

This asteroid, 2014 DX110, is estimated to be about 100 feet (30 meters) across. Its closest approach to Earth will be at about 217,000 miles (about 350,000 kilometers) from Earth at about 1 p.m. PST (4 p.m. EST) on March 5.  The average distance between Earth and its moon is about 239,000 miles (385,000 kilometers).

Artist's view of asteroids passing Earth. Image Credit: NASA.

NASA detects, tracks and characterizes asteroids and comets using both ground- and space-based telescopes. The Near-Earth Object Observations Program, commonly called "Spaceguard," discovers these objects, characterizes a subset of them and identifies their close approaches to determine if any could be potentially hazardous to our planet.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., 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 at: http://www.nasa.gov/asteroid.

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA / Dwayne Brown / JPL / Guy Webster.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Chandra and XMM-Newton Provide Direct Measurement of Distant Black Hole's Spin

NASA - Chandra X-ray Observatory patch / ESA - XMM-Newton Patch.

March 5, 2014

Image above: Multiple images of a distant quasar known as RX J1131-1231 are visible in this combined view from Chandra (pink) and Hubble (red, green, and blue).

Astronomers have used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the European Space Agency's (ESA's) XMM-Newton to show a supermassive black hole six billion light years from Earth is spinning extremely rapidly. This first direct measurement of the spin of such a distant black hole is an important advance for understanding how black holes grow over time.

Black holes are defined by just two simple characteristics: mass and spin. While astronomers have long been able to measure black hole masses very effectively, determining their spins has been much more difficult.

In the past decade, astronomers have devised ways of estimating spins for black holes at distances greater than several billion light-years away, meaning we see the region around black holes as they were billions of years ago. However, determining the spins of these remote black holes involves several steps that rely on one another.

"We want to be able to cut out the middle man, so to speak, of determining the spins of black holes across the universe," said Rubens Reis of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, who led a paper describing this result that was published online Wednesday in the journal Nature.

Reis and his colleagues determined the spin of the supermassive black hole that is pulling in surrounding gas, producing an extremely luminous quasar known as RX J1131-1231 (RX J1131 for short). Because of fortuitous alignment, the distortion of space-time by the gravitational field of a giant elliptical galaxy along the line of sight to the quasar acts as a gravitational lens that magnifies the light from the quasar. Gravitational lensing, first predicted by Einstein, offers a rare opportunity to study the innermost region in distant quasars by acting as a natural telescope and magnifying the light from these sources.

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory spacecraft

"Because of this gravitational lens, we were able to get very detailed information on the X-ray spectrum – that is, the amount of X-rays seen at different energies – from RX J1131," said co-author Mark Reynolds also of Michigan. "This in turn allowed us to get a very accurate value for how fast the black hole is spinning."

The X-rays are produced when a swirling accretion disk of gas and dust that surrounds the black hole creates a multimillion-degree cloud, or corona near the black hole. X-rays from this corona reflect off the inner edge of the accretion disk. The strong gravitational forces near the black hole alter the reflected X-ray spectrum. The larger the change in the spectrum, the closer the inner edge of the disk must be to the black hole.

"We estimate that the X-rays are coming from a region in the disk located only about three times the radius of the event horizon, the point of no return for infalling matter," said Jon M. Miller of Michigan, another author on the paper. "The black hole must be spinning extremely rapidly to allow a disk to survive at such a small radius."

For example, a spinning black hole drags space around with it and allows matter to orbit closer to the black hole than is possible for a non-spinning black hole.

By measuring the spin of distant black holes researchers discover important clues about how these objects grow over time. If black holes grow mainly from collisions and mergers between galaxies, they should accumulate material in a stable disk, and the steady supply of new material from the disk should lead to rapidly spinning black holes. In contrast, if black holes grow through many small accretion episodes, they will accumulate material from random directions. Like a merry go round that is pushed both backwards and forwards, this would make the black hole spin more slowly.

ESA's XMM-Newton spacecraft

The discovery that the black hole in RX J1131 is spinning at over half the speed of light suggests  this black hole, observed at a distance of six billion light years, corresponding to an age about 7.7 billion years after the Big Bang, has grown via mergers, rather than pulling material in from different directions.

The ability to measure black hole spin over a large range of cosmic time should make it possible to directly study whether the black hole evolves at about the same rate as its host galaxy. The measurement of the spin of the RX J1131-1231 black hole is a major step along that path and demonstrates a technique for assembling a sample of distant supermassive black holes with current X-ray observatories.

Prior to the announcement of this work, the most distant black holes with direct spin estimates were located 2.5 billion and 4.7 billion light-years away.

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass., controls Chandra's science and flight operations.

For an additional interactive image, podcast, and video on the finding, visit: http://chandra.si.edu

For Chandra images, multimedia and related materials, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/chandra

For more information about ESA's XMM-Newton, visit: http://xmm.esac.esa.int/ and http://sci.esa.int/xmm-newton/

Images, Text, Credit:s NASA/ESA/CXC/Univ of Michigan/R.C.Reis et al; Optical: NASA/STSc.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

First Light for MUSE

ESO - European Southern Observatory logo.

5 March 2014

Powerful 3D spectrograph successfully installed on VLT

MUSE views the strange galaxy NGC 4650A

A new innovative instrument called MUSE (Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer) has been successfully installed on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the Paranal Observatory in northern Chile. MUSE has observed distant galaxies, bright stars and other test targets during the first period of very successful observations.

MUSE views of the Orion Nebula

Following testing and preliminary acceptance in Europe in September 2013, MUSE was shipped to ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. It was reassembled at the base camp before being carefully transported to its new home at the VLT, where it is now installed on Unit Telescope 4. MUSE is the latest of the second generation instruments for the VLT (the first two were X-shooter and KMOS and the next, SPHERE, will follow shortly).

MUSE colour-coded image of NGC 4650A

 

 MUSE views the unusual galaxy NGC 4650A

MUSE — Running through the 3D data of NGC 4650A

MUSE — Close up of the H-alpha line in the strange galaxy NGC 4650A

The leader of the team and principal investigator for the instrument, Roland Bacon (Centre de Recherche Astrophysique de Lyon, France), expressed his feelings: “It has taken a lot of work by many people over many years, but we have done it! It seems strange that this seven-tonne collection of optics, mechanics and electronics is now a fantastic time machine for probing the early Universe. We are very proud of the achievement — MUSE will remain a unique instrument for years to come.”

MUSE image of the Orion Nebula

MUSE views the Orion Nebula

MUSE’s science goals include delving into the early epochs of the Universe to probe the mechanisms of galaxy formation and studying both the motions of material in nearby galaxies and their chemical properties. It will have many other applications, ranging all the way from studies of the planets and satellites in the Solar System, through the properties of star-forming regions in the Milky Way and out to the distant Universe.

The MUSE instrument attached to the Very Large Telescope

As a unique and powerful tool for discovery MUSE uses 24 spectrographs to separate light into its component colours to create both images and spectra of selected regions of the sky. It creates 3D views of the Universe with a spectrum for each pixel as the third dimension [1]. During the subsequent analysis the astronomer can move through the data and study different views of the object at different wavelengths, just like tuning a television to different channels at different frequencies.

The MUSE instrument at night

MUSE couples the discovery potential of an imaging device with the measuring capabilities of a spectrograph, while taking advantage of the much better image sharpness provided by adaptive optics. The instrument is mounted on Unit Telescope 4 of the VLT, which is currently being converted into a fully adaptive telescope.

The MUSE instrument during installation at ESO’s Paranal Observatory

MUSE is the result of ten years of design and development by the MUSE consortium — headed by the Centre de Recherche Astrophysique de Lyon, France and the partner institutes Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik Potsdam (AIP, Germany),  Institut für Astrophysik Göttingen (IAG, Germany),  Institute for Astronomy ETH Zurich (Switzerland), L'Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie (IRAP, France), Nederlandse Onderzoekschool voor de Astronomie (NOVA, the Netherlands) and ESO.

The MUSE instrument during installation at ESO’s Paranal Observatory

Since the start of 2014, Bacon and the rest of the MUSE integration and commissioning team at Paranal have recorded the MUSE story in a series of blog posts which can be followed here. The team will present the first results from MUSE at the forthcoming 3D2014 workshop at ESO in Garching bei München, Germany.

Image above: The MUSE instrument makes the final ascent to the Very Large Telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory

“A muse is there to inspire. Indeed, MUSE has inspired us for many years and will continue to do so,” says Bacon in a blog post on the first light. “No doubt many astronomers from all over the world will also be charmed by our MUSE.“

MUSE image of the strange galaxy NGC 4650A

 

MUSE video of the transit of Europa across the disc of Jupiter

Notes:

[1] This technique, known as integral field spectroscopy, allows astronomers to simultaneously study the properties of different parts of an object such as a galaxy to see how it is rotating and to measure its mass. It also allows the chemical composition and other physical properties to be determined in different parts of the object. The technique has been used for many years but has now with MUSE reached a leap in sensitivity, efficiency and resolution. One way of describing this, is that MUSE simultaneously combines high-resolution imaging with spectroscopy.

More information:

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:

The MUSE blog: http://muse-vlt.eu/blog/MUSE-Comm/Blog/Blog.html

MUSE instrument page at ESO: http://www.eso.org/sci/facilities/develop/instruments/muse.html

Flyer about 3D spectroscopy at ESO (for scientists): http://www.eso.org/public/products/flyers/flyer_0018/

3D2014 workshop at ESO in Garching bei München, Germany, 10-14 March 2014: http://www.eso.org/sci/meetings/2014/3D2014.html

MUSE pages at the Observatoire de Lyon: http://muse.univ-lyon1.fr/

A video about MUSE (French, with English subtitles): http://youtu.be/e5TopF7DGMg

Press release from IAG Göttingen: http://www.uni-goettingen.de/de/3240.html?cid=4719

Press release from AIP Potsdam: http://www.aip.de/de/aktuelles/presse/muse

Images, Text, Credits: ESO/MUSE consortium/R. Bacon/L. Calçada/Ghaouti Hansali/Fernando Selman/G. Hüdepohl/Eric Le Roux/University Claude Bernard Lyon 1/CNRS/Videos: ESO/MUSE consortium/R. Bacon/L. Calçada.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Skylab 4 Pilot William Pogue Dies

NASA logo / NASA - Skylab 4 Mission patch.

March 4, 2014

Image above: Pogue relaxes on the running board of the transfer van during a visit to the Skylab 4/Saturn 1B space vehicle at Pad B, Launch Complex 39, Kennedy Space Center, Florida. Image Credit: NASA.

William Pogue, pilot on NASA's Skylab 4 mission in 1973-74, has died. He was 84 years old.

Skylab 4 was the third and final manned visit to the Skylab orbital workshop, launched Nov. 16, 1973, and concluded Feb. 8, 1974. At 84 days, 1 hour and 15 minutes, Skylab 4 was the longest manned space flight to that date.

Pogue was accompanied on the record setting 34.5-million-mile flight by Commander Gerald P. Carr and science-pilot Dr. Edward G. Gibson. They conducted dozens of experiments and science demonstrations during their 1,214 orbits of Earth, including extensive observations of the home planet as well as the sun's solar processes. Pogue logged 13 hours and 31 minutes in two spacewalks outside the orbital workshop.

Image above: Skylab 4 lifts off on a Saturn 1B rocket from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on Nov. 16, 1973. Image Credit: NASA.

Pogue described the excitement of launch in a 2000 interview as part of Johnson Space Center's Oral History project.

"I didn’t think we were going to launch. You know, we’d had so many problems. I was sitting there, and finally when we were at thirty seconds, I thought, well, maybe. It's a lot of noise."

Pogue said he thought he was "pretty cool" on liftoff, but a NASA doctor later told him his pulse jumped from 50 to 120. "It was pretty exciting," he said.

Pogue was born Jan. 23, 1930, in Okemah, Okla. After graduating from Oklahoma Baptist University in 1951, Pogue enlisted in the Air Force, where he went on to fly combat missions in Korea. From 1955 to 1957, he was a member of the USAF Thunderbirds, the Air Force's elite flying team.  Pogue eventually logged over 7,200 hours flying time in more than 50 types of aircraft, including more than 2,000 hours logged in space flight.

Image above: The Skylab 4 crew snapped this view of the space station on Feb. 8, 1974, during their final fly-around before returning home. Image Credit: NASA.

Pogue earned a Master of Science degree in Mathematics from Oklahoma State University in 1960 and served in the mathematics department as an assistant professor at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, from 1960 to 1963. In 1965, after a two-year tour as test pilot with the British Ministry of Aviation, Pogue became an instructor at Edwards Air Force Base, California.

Pogue was one of 19 Astronauts selected by NASA in April 1966. He served as a member of the astronaut support crews for the Apollo 7, 11, and 14 missions before being assigned to his Skylab flight.

Image above: The Skylab 4 crew confers via television from orbit wit Dr. Lubos Kohoutek, discoverer of the Comet Kohoutek. Left to Right, Gerald P. Carr, commander; Edward G. Gibson, science pilot; and William R. Pogue, pilot. Image Credit: NASA.

Pogue was awarded NASA's Distinguished Service Medal in 1974, and won many other awards in his career, including the Air Medal, Air Force Commendation Medal, Robert J. Collier Trophy (1974) and Robert H. Goddard Memorial Trophy (1975).

He retired from the Air Force in 1975, and he left NASA in 1977.  Pogue later worked as an independent technical contractor for several aerospace and energy firms. From 1984 to 1998 he provided contract technical support to the Boeing Company for the Space Station Freedom program which later  evolved into the International Space Station project.

In October 1997, he was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame at Titusville, FL.

Rest In Peace, William Pogue.

Related link:

Skylab orbital workshop: http://www.nasa.gov/content/40-years-ago-skylab-paved-way-for-international-space-station/

U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame: http://www.kennedyspacecenter.com/the-experience/us-astronaut-hall-of-fame.aspx

Images (mentioned), Text, Credit: NASA.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Space Station Sensor to Capture 'Striking' Lightning Data

ISS - International Space Station patch.

March 4, 2014

Keeping a spare on hand simply makes sense. Just as drivers keep spare tires on hand to replace a flat or blowout, NASA routinely maintains “spares,” too. These flight hardware backups allow NASA to seamlessly continue work in the unlikely event something goes down for a repair. When projects end, these handy spares can sometimes find second lives in new areas for use.

Researchers at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., developed a sophisticated piece of flight hardware called a Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS) to detect and locate lightning over the tropical region of the globe. Launched into space in 1997 as part of NASA’s Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), the sensor undertook a three-year baseline mission, delivering data used to improve weather forecasts. It continues to operate successfully aboard the TRMM satellite today.

The team that created this hardware in the mid-1990s built a spare -- and now that second unit is stepping up to contribute, as well. The sensor is scheduled to launch on a Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) rocket to the International Space Station in February 2016. Once mounted to the station, it will serve a two-year baseline mission as part of a U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Space Test Program (STP)-H5 science and technology development payload. STP-H5 is integrated and flown under the management and direction of the DoD's STP.

Image above: This International Space Station Crew Earth image of storm clouds over California shows lightning as a white glow to the right of center. The yellow lit areas beneath the clouds are the night lights from the highly populated areas of Los Angeles and San Diego. Image Credit: NASA.

NASA selected the LIS spare hardware to fly to the space station in order to take advantage of the orbiting laboratory’s high inclination. This vantage point gives the sensor the ability to "look" farther towards Earth's poles than the original LIS can aboard the TRMM satellite. Once installed, the sensor will monitor global lightning for Earth science studies, provide cross-sensor calibration and validation with other space-borne instruments, and ground-based lightning networks. LIS will also supply real-time lightning data over data-sparse regions, such as oceans, to support operational weather forecasting and warning.

"Only LIS globally detects all in-cloud and cloud-to-ground lightning -- what we call total lightning -- during both day and night," said Richard Blakeslee, LIS project scientist at Marshall. "As previously demonstrated by the TRMM mission, better understanding lightning and its connections to weather and related phenomena can provide unique and affordable gap-filling information to a variety of science disciplines including weather, climate, atmospheric chemistry and lightning physics.”

LIS measures the amount, rate and radiant energy of global lightning, providing storm-scale resolution, millisecond timing, and high, uniform-detection efficiency -- and it does this without land-ocean bias.

The sensor consists of an optical imager enhanced to locate and detect lightning from thunderstorms within its 400-by-400-mile field-of-view on the Earth's surface. The station travels more than 17,000 mph as it orbits our planet, allowing the LIS to observe a point on the Earth, or a cloud, for almost 90 seconds as it passes overhead. Despite this brief viewing duration, it is long enough to estimate the lightning-flashing rate of most storms.

Image above: Optics in the Lightning Imaging Sensor telescope. Image Credit: NASA.

Since more than 70 percent of lightning occurs during the day, daytime detection drove the technical design of the LIS. From space, lightning appears like a pool of light on the top of a thundercloud. During the day, sunlight reflected from the cloud tops completely masks the lightning signal, making it difficult to detect. However, LIS creates a solution by applying special techniques that take advantage of the differences in the behavior and physical characteristics of lightning and sunlight signals. These allow LIS to extract the strikes from bright background illumination.

As a final step in processing, a real-time event processor inside the LIS electronics unit removes the remaining background signal, enabling the system to detect the lightning signatures and achieve 90-percent detection efficiency.

Once the sensor is installed on the space station, the LIS team will operate it remotely. They will then assess the data it produces and disseminate it to forecasters and researchers from the Global Hydrology Resource Center, one of NASA’s Earth science data centers.

This instrument also can help our lives on Earth in many ways. The LIS science team has received strong endorsements from several national and international government agencies and university science organizations. These include the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), European Space Agency (ESA), Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite R- Series Program (GOES-R). Operational users, such as NOAA’s National Weather Service (NWS), Aviation Weather Center (AWC), Ocean Prediction Center (OPC) and Pacific Region will be interested in the data for their operational weather warning, forecasting and even validation applications. For other users, their science and application investigations will be improved and will benefit from the new lightning observations provided by LIS.

Image above: Discussing the Lightning Imaging Sensor engineering test unit are, from left, Bill Lopez and Jim McLeroy from the Department of Defense (DoD) Space Test Program (STP); John Davis from Marshall; Nathan Harnagel from DoD STP; and Mike Stewart from the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Image Credit: NASA.

From a research standpoint, LIS data could be very useful to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Randy Bass, a member of the FAA's Aviation Weather Research Team, said the information obtained could help them with validation activities of several oceanic convection ensemble model products they're developing, either in real-time or archive mode.

"It could also be used for validation of detection of convection from other ground- and space-based sensors we will be using at the time," said Bass. "Any data we can use for 'ground truth' over oceanic areas will be extremely helpful in development of better observing and forecasting products used for offshore aviation, especially as we expand our coverage throughout the Atlantic and Pacific oceans."

The end result would be better short-term forecasts of thunderstorms over offshore areas, giving pilots and air traffic controllers a better ability to reroute planes around hazards such as turbulence and lightning strikes. Bass said that while pilots have weather radar aboard, they can only see limited areas ahead of them. The FAA wants to improve their capability and give controllers the opportunity to see the weather activity too, which they don't have right now.

 International Space Station (ISS). Image credit: NASA

As lightning flashes above our heads, there's a lot to be learned about this electrical phenomena -- and the LIS team aims to find the answers to a lot of those questions.

"Measuring lightning is important for knowledge about the weather and also operationally important for aviation safety. By adding an instrument on space station, we can add observations from higher latitudes covering the 48 contiguous states,” said International Space Station Chief Scientist Julie Robinson, Ph.D. “This is a prime example of science on the International Space Station benefiting our nation.”

For more information about International Space Station (ISS), visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html

Related links:

Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS): http://lightning.nsstc.nasa.gov/lis/

NASA’s Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM): http://pmm.nasa.gov/node/158

U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Space Test Program (STP)-H5: https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=2ff65d8fe314b1ac5201ff52f556a5aa&tab=core&_cview=0

Global Hydrology Resource Center: http://ghrc.msfc.nasa.gov/

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center / Janet Anderson / Jessica Eagan.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Spiral galaxy spills blood and guts

ESA - Hubble Space Telescope logo.

4 March 2014

New Hubble image of spiral galaxy ESO 137-001

This new Hubble image shows spiral galaxy ESO 137-001, framed against a bright background as it moves through the heart of galaxy cluster Abell 3627. This cluster is violently ripping the spiral’s entrails out into space, leaving bright blue streaks as telltale clues to this cosmic crime.

This new Hubble image shows ESO 137-001, a galaxy located in the southern constellation of Triangulum Australe (The Southern Triangle) — a delicate and beautiful spiral galaxy, but with a secret.

Hubble and Chandra composite of ESO 137-001

This image not only captures the galaxy and its backdrop in stunning detail, but also something more dramatic — intense blue streaks streaming outwards from the galaxy, seen shining brightly in ultraviolet light.

These streaks are actually hot young stars, encased in wispy streams of gas that are being torn away from the galaxy by its surroundings as it moves through space. This violent galactic disrobing is due to a process known as ram pressure stripping — a drag force felt by an object moving through a fluid [1]. The fluid in question here is superheated gas, which lurks at the centres of galaxy clusters.

Zooming in on ESO 137-001

This image also shows other telltale signs of this process, such as the curved appearance of the disc of gas and dust — a result of the forces exerted by the heated gas. The cluster's drag may be strong enough to bend ESO 137-001, but in this cosmic tug-of-war the galaxy's gravitational pull is strong enough to hold on to the majority of its dust — although some brown streaks of dust displaced by the stripping are visible.

Studying ram pressure stripping helps astronomers to better understand the mechanisms that drive the evolution of galaxies. For example, it will leave this galaxy with very little of the cold gas that is essential for star formation, rendering the galaxy effectively incapable of forming new stars.

Panning across ESO 137-001

ESO 137-001 is part of the Norma Cluster, a cluster of galaxies near the centre of the Great Attractor, a region of space that earned its name by being so massive, and having a gravitational pull so strong, that it is pulling entire galaxy clusters towards it. This region is located around 200 million light-years from our galaxy, the Milky Way. Both our galaxy and its home group, the Local Group, are slowly being hauled towards this mysterious region. Hubble also imaged ESO 137-001's neighbour, ESO 137-002, which is also known to have a hot tail of gas extending outwards into space (potw1302).

3D visualisation of ESO 137-001 (artist’s impression)

Despite being relatively close by cosmic standards, catching even a glimpse of the Norma Cluster is no mean feat. Observed from Earth, the cluster lies close to the plane of the Milky Way and is obscured by a thick smog of cosmic dust. But Hubble is up to the challenge — using new data from Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3).

As with most images from Hubble, this is not just a pretty picture; it tells us a great deal about the harsh environment at the heart of a galaxy cluster, and the fate of galaxies like ESO 137-001 that find passage through it.

Fade between Hubble and Chandra images of ESO 137-001

A version of this image was submitted to the Hubble's Hidden Treasures image processing competition by contestant Serge Meunier.

Notes:

[1] A quick and simple analogy for this effect would be to imagine leaning out of a car window as it travelled quickly along a motorway, or walking within a swimming pool.

Notes for editors:

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA.

The data for this image comes from HST project 12377, with prinicipal investigator Ming Sun.

Links:

Hubblecast 72: Clues to a cosmic crime: http://www.spacetelescope.org/videos/heic1404a/

Images of Hubble: http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/archive/category/spacecraft/

NASA release: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2014/14/related/

Hubble's Hidden Treasures: http://www.spacetelescope.org/projects/hiddentreasures/

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory: http://chandra.harvard.edu/

Images, Text, Credits: NASA, ESA/ CXC / Acknowledgements: Ming Sun (UAH), and Serge Meunier / Videos: NASA, CXC / ESA, M. Kornmesser / Digitized Sky Survey 2 / Acknowledgements: Ming Sun (UAH) and Serge Meunier.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Satellite Sees Winter Storm March Over Mid-Atlantic

NASA / NOAA - GOES R patch.

On March 3, a major winter storm brought snow to the mid-Atlantic, freezing rain to the Carolinas and rain and some freezing rain to the Gulf Coast states. NOAA's GOES-East satellite captured an image of the clouds associated with the winter storm on March 3 at 12:45 p.m. EST (1745 UTC)/ as it continued on its march over the mid-Atlantic.

Bands of snow and sometimes heavy snow affected the Washington, D.C., region, Delaware and central Virginia, stretching west into West Virginia and eastern Kentucky. Snow also stretched back into the Ohio and Tennessee valleys while rain and freezing rain affected the Carolinas, and while the Gulf Coast states received rain. National Weather Service Winter Storm Warnings remained in effect until 6 p.m. EST on March 3 for Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, Md. In Richmond and Norfolk, Va., the Winter Storm warnings were in effect for six additional hours ending at midnight. 

Satellite Video Captures the Eastern U.S. Winter Storm Track 

On March 3, NOAA's National Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Md., noted the late-season winter storm will continue to shift eastward through the Tennessee Valley and the mid-Atlantic today, making for hazardous travel conditions. NOAA noted that unseasonably cold temperatures more typical of January will prevail east of the Rocky Mountains for the next few days keeping winter around for a while longer.

Artist's view of the GOES-East satellite

The clouds are associated with a cold front that stretched from eastern Maine through Maryland and west into the Tennessee Valley. At NASA/NOAA's GOES Project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., the cloud data from NOAA's GOES-East satellite were overlaid on a true-color image of land and ocean created by data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS, instrument that flies aboard NASA's Aqua and Terra satellites. Together, those data created the entire picture of the position of this major winter storm.

GOES satellites provide the kind of continuous monitoring necessary for intensive data analysis. Geostationary describes an orbit in which a satellite is always in the same position with respect to the rotating Earth. This allows GOES to hover continuously over one position on Earth's surface, appearing stationary. As a result, GOES provide a constant vigil for the atmospheric "triggers" for severe weather conditions such as tornadoes, flash floods, hail storms and hurricanes.

For updated information about the storm system, visit NOAA's NWS website: http://www.weather.gov

For more information about GOES satellites, visit: http://www.goes.noaa.gov/ or http://www.goes.gsfc.nasa.gov/

Images, Video, Text, Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Rob Gutro / NOAA / GOES Project.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch