Ash from Kilauea Eruption Viewed by NASA's MISR

NASA - EOS Terra Mission patch.

May 10, 2018

On May 3, 2018, a new eruption began at a fissure of the Kilauea volcano on the Island of Hawaii. Kilauea is the most active volcano in the world, having erupted almost continuously since 1983. Advancing lava and dangerous sulfur dioxide gas have forced thousands of residents in the neighborhood of Leilani Estates to evacuate. A number of homes have been destroyed, and no one can say how soon the eruption will abate and evacuees can return home.

On May 6, 2018, at approximately 11 a.m. local time, the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument on NASA's Terra satellite captured this view of the island as it passed overhead. Much of the island was shrouded by clouds, including the fissure on its eastern point. However, an eruption plume is visible streaming southwest over the ocean. The MISR instrument is unique in that it has nine cameras that view Earth at different angles: one pointing downward, four at various angles in the forward direction, and four in the backward direction. This image shows the view from one of MISR's forward-pointing cameras (60 degrees), which shows the plume more distinctly than the near-vertical views.

The information from the images acquired at different view angles is used to calculate the height of the plume, results of which are superimposed on the right-hand image. The top of the plume near the fissure is at approximately 6,500 feet (2,000 meters) altitude, and the height of the plume decreases as it travels south and west. These relatively low altitudes mean that the ash and sulfur dioxide remained near the ground, which can cause health issues for people on the island downwind of the eruption. The "Ocean View" air quality monitor operated by the Clean Air Branch of the State of Hawaii Department of Health recorded a concentration of 18 μg/m3 of airborne particles less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter at 11 a.m. local time. This amount corresponds to an air quality rating of "moderate" and supports the MISR results indicating that ash was most likely present at ground level on this side of the island.

EOS Terra satellite. Image Credit: NASA

These data were acquired during Terra orbit 97780. The smoke plume height calculation was performed using the MISR INteractive eXplorer (MINX) software tool, which is publicly available at https://github.com/nasa/MINX. The MISR Plume Height Project maintains a database of global smoke plume heights, accessible at https://www-misr.jpl.nasa.gov/getData/accessData/MisrMinxPlumes2/.

MISR was built and is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Terra spacecraft is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The MISR data were obtained from the NASA Langley Research Center Atmospheric Science Data Center in Hampton, Virginia. JPL is a division of Caltech in Pasadena.

Related article:

NASA Satellite detects Kilauea Fissures
http://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.ch/2018/05/nasa-satellite-detects-kilauea-fissures.html

For more information about Terra satellite, visit:

Terra Satellite: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/terra/index.html

Images, Text, Credits: NASA/Tony Greicius/MISR.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Astronauts and Robotics Setting Up For Next Week’s Spacewalk

ISS - Expedition 55 Mission patch.

May 9, 2018

Image above: A portion of the Canadarm2 robotic arm (left) and stormy clouds are seen in the north Pacific Ocean as the International Space Station orbited off the eastern coast of Russia. Image Credit: NASA.

Activities on the International Space Station are moving ahead towards next week’s spacewalk to swap out thermal control equipment. Flight Engineers Ricky Arnold and Drew Feustel will work outside the orbital lab for the maintenance job on May 16.

Robotics engineers are setting up the worksite on the Port 6 truss today ahead of next week’s spacewalk. Ground teams are remotely maneuvering the Canadarm2 with the Dextre robotic hand attached to relocate a leaky pump flow control subassembly (PFCS). The Canadarm2 will then be positioned afterward to support Arnold’s and Feustel’s work next week.

Image above: Flying over South Pacific Ocean, seen by EarthCam on ISS, speed: 27'567 Km/h, altitude: 420,30 Km, image captured by Roland Berga (on Earth in Switzerland) from International Space Station (ISS) using ISS-HD Live application with EarthCam's from ISS on May 9, 2018 at 22:02 UTC. Image Credits: Orbiter.ch Aerospace/Roland Berga.

The duo will work outside the station for about 6.5 hours to swap locations of 2 PFCS boxes. The PFCS controls the circulation of ammonia to keep station systems cool. Other spacewalk tasks planned in the timeline include swapping out a variety of communications gear.

The two spacewalkers gathered their tools and were joined on Tuesday by Flight Engineers Scott Tingle and Norishige Kanai for a spacewalk procedures review. The foursome also checked in with mission controllers to discuss the upcoming spacewalk. Tingle and Kanai will assist the spacewalkers in and out of their spacesuits next week and help choreograph the excursion.

Related links:

Expedition 55: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition55/index.html

Space Station Research and Technology: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/index.html

International Space Station (ISS): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Mark Garcia/Orbiter.ch Aerospace/Roland Berga.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Jupiter’s Dynamic Atmosphere

NASA - JUNO Mission logo.

May 9, 2018

This image captures the dynamic nature of Jupiter's northern temperate belt. The view reveals a white, oval-shaped anticyclonic storm called WS-4.

NASA’s Juno spacecraft took this color-enhanced image on April 1 at 2:38 a.m. PST (5:38 a.m. EST) during its 12th close flyby of the gas giant planet. At the time, the spacecraft was 4,087 miles (6,577 kilometers) from the tops of Jupiter’s clouds at 35.6 degrees north latitude.

This image was created by citizen scientist Emma Walimaki using data from the JunoCam imager on NASA’s Juno spacecraft.

JUNO orbiting Jupiter

JunoCam's raw images are available for the public to peruse and process into image products at:

http://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam    

More information about Juno is at: https://www.nasa.gov/juno and http://missionjuno.swri.edu

Image, Animation, Text, Credits: NASA/Tony Greicius/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Emma Walimaki.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Spinning Science: Multi-use Variable-g Platform Arrives at the Space Station

ISS - International Space Station logo.

May 9, 2018

International Space Station (ISS). Image Credit: NASA

Delivered to the International Space Station aboard SpaceX CRS-14, the Multi-use Variable-g Platform (MVP) is a new commercial testbed for centrifuge-based science aboard the orbiting laboratory. Because gravity determines so much of a live organism’s behavior and growth, centrifuge-based experiments have long been a part of biological investigations in space. While the pull of Earth’s gravity makes this type of investigation difficult at home, the space station’s microgravity environment makes it the perfect place for fractional gravity experimentation. MVP greatly expands that testing capability for the space station.

“This is a permanent, commercially owned research facility that gives researchers the opportunity to study the effects of gravity and partial gravity on living organisms, and, hopefully, by extrapolation to humans,” said Rich Boling of Techshot, the company responsible for MVP’s design and build.

Image above: An outer view of Techshot’s MVP facility, launched to the space station aboard SpaceX-14. Image Credit: Techshot.

What makes the facility so special is its size and capability. Containing two carousels that spin quickly to simulate up to two times the force of gravity, the platform is the largest centrifuge in the U.S. segment of the space station and allows investigators more room for, and control over, their research.

With room for six experiment modules on each carousel, Techshot can fly up to 12 separate modules on MVP at a time. Each module is equipped with temperature sensors, and the box that houses the carousels and modules can be set to the exact environmental specifications requested for any investigation.

This degree of control and precision makes for better science and clearer data.

Image above: Two carousels sit inside MVP and can create up to 2 g of force. Each carousel can be set to spin at a different speed. Image Credit: Techshot.

But before the real science can begin it must undergo hardware validation. Validation testing of the facility uses Drosophila (fruit flies) to verify environmental controls and check MVP’s overall performance. For MVP’s hardware validation run, one carousel will stay stationary to allow scientists to collect a baseline of behavior in microgravity. The other carousel will spin at the normal force of gravity on Earth (1 g) as control group. In addition to validating the controls and operability of MVP, this initial investigation – known as MVP-Fly-01 - will provide science data for researchers at NASA’s Ames Research Center. MVP is especially exciting for fruit fly research because it can host larger samples for multiple generations. This initial study will look at biological issues common between humans and fruit flies. The investigation concluded in late April, and the modules were removed from MVP and returned to Earth aboard the same Dragon that delivered them to space.

During the run, testing was monitored and controlled from Techshot’s own Payload Operations Control Center in Greenville, Indiana. Much like NASA’s own Mission Control Center at the agency’s Johnson Space Center, the Payload Operations Control Center allows the team at Techshot to talk to, adjust, and pull data from their hardware. A live video link also allows the team to monitor crew interactions with the equipment.

Image above: The first investigation aboard MVP will be a hardware validation run employing laboratory flies, but future investigations could involve a variety of small organisms. Image Credit: Techshot.

Asked what kinds of investigations the platform could host, Boling said, “It’s really whatever investigators could dream up that they want to put inside of these experiment modules. Each one empty is about 800ccs of volume. So whatever a research team wants for that volume, we can make it happen, get it up there, and get it back. For example, we have a tissue chip investigation coming up this year for a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.”

MVP greatly expands commercial and research opportunities in low-Earth orbit. Several investigations are already lined up for the platform, and customers include government, academic and commercially-based teams.

Says Boling of working with NASA, “The payload that eventually became MVP started out as a Small Business Innovative Research proposal.” After seven years and several phases of development, investment, and product improvement, Techshot was able to secure six research campaigns to get MVP started. These campaigns include research from industry, academia, and two additional investigations for Ames in 2019.

Spinning Science: Multi-use Variable-g Platform Arrives at the Space Station 

“We love working with the investigators,” said Boling. “This isn’t our science, but we are the tool that allows scientists to do research that hasn’t been done before or ask questions that haven’t been proposed. The future is bright for MVP, and research gleaned from its upcoming missions will hold benefits for both future missions beyond low-Earth orbit and science back here at home.

This investigation is sponsored for the station’s U.S. National Laboratory, which the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) manages.

Related article:

New Research Heading to Space Station Aboard 14th SpaceX Resupply Mission
http://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.ch/2018/04/new-research-heading-to-space-station.html

Related links:

Multi-use Variable-g Platform (MVP): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Facility.html?#id=1777

Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS): http://www.iss-casis.org/

U.S. National Laboratory: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/nlab/index.html

Commercial Space: http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/commercial/index.html

Spot the Station: https://spotthestation.nasa.gov/

Space Station Research and Technology: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/index.html

International Space Station (ISS): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html

Images (mentioned), Video, Text, Credits: NASA/Michael Johnson/JSC/Morgan McAllister.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

NASA Spacecraft Discovers New Magnetic Process in Turbulent Space

NASA - Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission (MMS) patch.

May 9, 2018

Animation above: In a turbulent magnetic environment, magnetic field lines become scrambled. As the field lines cross, intense electric currents (shown here as bright regions) form and eventually trigger magnetic reconnection (indicated by a flash), which is an explosive event that releases magnetic energy accumulated in the current layers and ejects high-speed bi-directional jets of electrons. Animation Credits: NASA Goddard’s Conceptual Image Lab/Lisa Poje; Simulations by: University of Chicago/Colby Haggerty; University of Delaware/Tulasi Parashar.

Though close to home, the space immediately around Earth is full of hidden secrets and invisible processes. In a new discovery reported in the journal Nature, scientists working with NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale spacecraft — MMS — have uncovered a new type of magnetic event in our near-Earth environment by using an innovative technique to squeeze extra information out of the data.

Magnetic reconnection is one of the most important processes in the space — filled with charged particles known as plasma — around Earth. This fundamental process dissipates magnetic energy and propels charged particles, both of which contribute to a dynamic space weather system that scientists want to better understand, and even someday predict, as we do terrestrial weather.  Reconnection occurs when crossed magnetic field lines snap, explosively flinging away nearby particles at high speeds. The new discovery found reconnection where it has never been seen before — in turbulent plasma.

NASA Spacecraft Discovers New Magnetic Process in Turbulent Space

Video above: In a new discovery reported in the journal Nature, scientists working with NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale spacecraft — MMS — uncovered a new type of magnetic event in our near-Earth environment. Video Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Joy Ng.

“In the plasma universe, there are two important phenomena: magnetic reconnection and turbulence,” said Tai Phan, a senior fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, and lead author on the paper. “This discovery bridges these two processes.”

Magnetic reconnection has been observed innumerable times in the magnetosphere — the magnetic environment around Earth — but usually under calm conditions. The new event occurred in a region called the magnetosheath, just outside the outer boundary of the magnetosphere, where the solar wind is extremely turbulent. Previously, scientists didn’t know if reconnection even could occur there, as the plasma is highly chaotic in that region. MMS found it does, but on scales much smaller than previous spacecraft could probe.

Explosive Magnetic Reconnection in Turbulent Plasma

Video above: In a turbulent magnetic environment, magnetic field lines become scrambled. As the field lines cross, intense electric currents (shown here as bright regions) form and eventually trigger magnetic reconnection (indicated by a flash), which is an explosive event that releases magnetic energy accumulated in the current layers and ejects high-speed bi-directional jets of electrons. NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale mission witnessed this process in action as it flew through the electron jets the turbulent boundary just at the edge of Earth’s magnetic environment. Video Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center's Conceptual Image Lab/Lisa Poje; Simulations by: Colby Haggerty (University of Chicago), Tulasi Parashar (University of Delaware).

MMS uses four identical spacecraft flying in a pyramid formation to study magnetic reconnection around Earth in three dimensions. Because the spacecraft fly incredibly close together — at an average separation of just four-and-a-half miles, they hold the record for closest separation of any multi-spacecraft formation — they are able to observe phenomena no one has seen before. Furthermore, MMS’s instruments are designed to capture data at speeds a hundred times faster than previous missions.

Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission (MMS). Image Credit: NASA

Even though the instruments aboard MMS are incredibly fast, they are still too slow to capture turbulent reconnection in action, which requires observing narrow layers of fast moving particles hurled by the recoiling field lines. Compared to standard reconnection, in which broad jets of ions stream out from the site of reconnection, turbulent reconnection ejects narrow jets of electrons only a couple miles wide.

“The smoking gun evidence is to measure oppositely directed electron jets at the same time, and the four MMS spacecraft were lucky to corner the reconnection site and detect both jets”, said Jonathan Eastwood, a lecturer at Imperial College, London, and a co-author of the paper.

Crucially, MMS scientists were able to leverage the design of one instrument, the Fast Plasma Investigation, to create a technique to interpolate the data — essentially allowing them to read between the lines and gather extra data points — in order to resolve the jets.

“The key event of the paper happens in only 45 milliseconds. This would be one data point with the basic data,” said Amy Rager, a graduate student at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and the scientist who developed the technique. “But instead we can get six to seven data points in that region with this method, allowing us to understand what is happening.”

Exploring Turbulent Space Around Earth

Video above: Earth is surrounded by a protective magnetic environment — the magnetosphere — shown here in blue, which deflects a supersonic stream of charged particles from the Sun, known as the solar wind. As the particles flow around Earth’s magnetosphere, it forms a highly turbulent boundary layer called the magnetosheath, shown in yellow. Scientists, like those involved with NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale mission, are studying this turbulent region to help us learn more about our dynamic space environment. Video Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Mary Pat Hrybyk-Keith; NASA Goddard’s Conceptual Image Lab/Josh Masters.

With the new method, the MMS scientists are hopeful they can comb back through existing datasets to find more of these events, and potentially other unexpected discoveries as well.

Magnetic reconnection occurs throughout the universe, so that when we learn about it around our planet — where it’s easiest for Earthlings to examine it — we can apply that information to other processes farther away.  The finding of reconnection in turbulence has implications, for example, for studies on the Sun. It may help scientists understand the role magnetic reconnection plays in heating the inexplicably hot solar corona — the Sun’s outer atmosphere — and accelerating the supersonic solar wind. NASA’s upcoming Parker Solar Probe mission launches directly to the Sun in the summer of 2018 to investigate exactly those questions — and that research is all the better armed the more we understand about magnetic reconnection near home.

Related Links:

Nature: http://nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/s41586-018-0091-5

Learn more about the Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mms/index.html

Learn more about NASA’s research on the Sun-Earth environment: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/index.html

Animation (mentioned), Image (mentioned), Videos (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Rob Garner/Goddard Space Flight Center, by Mara Johnson-Groh.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Black Hole Bounty Captured in the Milky Way Center

NASA - Chandra X-ray Observatory patch.

May 9, 2018

Astronomers have discovered evidence for thousands of black holes located near the center of our Milky Way galaxy using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.

This black hole bounty consists of stellar-mass black holes, which typically weigh between five to 30 times the mass of the Sun. These newly identified black holes were found within three light years – a relatively short distance on cosmic scales – of the supermassive black hole at our Galaxy’s center known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*).

Theoretical studies of the dynamics of stars in galaxies have indicated that a large population of stellar mass black holes – as many as 20,000 – could drift inward over the eons and collect around Sgr A*. This recent analysis using Chandra data is the first observational evidence for such a black hole bounty.

A black hole by itself is invisible. However, a black hole – or neutron star – locked in close orbit with a star will pull gas from its companion (astronomers call these systems “X-ray binaries”). This material falls into a disk and heats up to millions of degrees and produces X-rays before disappearing into the black hole. Some of these X-ray binaries appear as point-like sources in the Chandra image.

A team of researchers, led by Chuck Hailey of Columbia University in New York, used Chandra data to search for X-ray binaries containing black holes that are located near Sgr A*. They studied the X-ray spectra – that is the amount of X-rays seen at different energies – of sources within about 12 light years of Sgr A*.

The team then selected sources with X-ray spectra similar to those of known X-ray binaries, which have relatively large amounts of low energy X-rays. Using this method they detected fourteen X-ray binaries within about three light years of Sgr A*. Two X-ray sources likely to contain neutron stars based on the detection of characteristic outbursts in previous studies were then eliminated from the analysis.

The dozen remaining X-ray binaries are identified in the labeled version of the image using red colored circles. Other sources with relatively large amounts of high energy X-rays are labeled in yellow, and are mostly binaries containing white dwarf stars.

Hailey and his collaborators concluded that a majority of these dozen X-ray binaries are likely to contain black holes. The amount of variability they have shown over timescales of years is different from that expected for X-ray binaries containing neutron stars.

Chandra X-ray Observatory

Only the brightest X-ray binaries containing black holes are likely to be detectable at the distance of Sgr A*. Therefore, the detections in this study imply that a much larger population of fainter, undetected X-ray binaries – at least 300 and up to a thousand – containing stellar-mass black holes should be present around Sgr A*.

This population of black holes with companion stars near Sgr A* could provide insight into the formation of X-ray binaries from close encounters between stars and black holes. This discovery could also inform future gravitational wave research. Knowing the number of black holes in the center of a typical galaxy can help in better predicting how many gravitational wave events may be associated with them.

An even larger population of stellar-mass black holes without companion stars should be present near Sgr A*. According to theoretical follow-up work by Aleksey Generozov of Columbia and his colleagues, more than about 10,000 black holes and as many as 40,000 black holes should exist in the center of the Galaxy.

While the authors strongly favor the black hole explanation, they cannot rule out the possibility that up to about half of the observed dozen sources are from a population of millisecond pulsars, i.e., very rapidly rotating neutron stars with strong magnetic fields.

A paper describing these results appeared in the April 5th issue of the journal Nature. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, controls Chandra's science and flight operations.

Read More from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory: http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2018/sgra_swarm/

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

Images, Text, Credits: NASA/Lee Mohon/CXC/Columbia Univ./C. Hailey et al.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Exiled Asteroid Discovered in Outer Reaches of Solar System

ESO - European Southern Observatory logo.

9 May 2018

ESO telescopes find first confirmed carbon-rich asteroid in Kuiper Belt

Artist’s impression of exiled asteroid 2004 EW95

An international team of astronomers has used ESO telescopes to investigate a relic of the primordial Solar System. The team found that the unusual Kuiper Belt Object 2004 EW₉₅ is a carbon-rich asteroid, the first of its kind to be confirmed in the cold outer reaches of the Solar System. This curious object likely formed in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and has been flung billions of kilometres from its origin to its current home in the Kuiper Belt.

The early days of our Solar System were a tempestuous time. Theoretical models of this period predict that after the gas giants formed they rampaged through the Solar System, ejecting small rocky bodies from the inner Solar System to far-flung orbits at great distances from the Sun [1]. In particular, these models suggest that the Kuiper Belt — a cold region beyond the orbit of Neptune — should contain a small fraction of rocky bodies from the inner Solar System, such as carbon-rich asteroids, referred to as carbonaceous asteroids [2].

Orbital exile

Now, a recent paper has presented evidence for the first reliably-observed carbonaceous asteroid in the Kuiper Belt, providing strong support for these theoretical models of our Solar System’s troubled youth. After painstaking measurements from multiple instruments at ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), a small team of astronomers led by Tom Seccull of Queen’s University Belfast in the UK was able to measure the composition of the anomalous Kuiper Belt Object 2004 EW₉₅, and thus determine that it is a carbonaceous asteroid. This suggests that it originally formed in the inner Solar System and must have since migrated outwards [3].

The peculiar nature of 2004 EW95 first came to light during routine observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope by Wesley Fraser, an astronomer from Queen’s University Belfast who was also a member of the team behind this discovery. The asteroid’s reflectance spectrum — the specific pattern of wavelengths of light reflected from an object — was different to that of similar small Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs), which typically have uninteresting, featureless spectra that reveal little information about their composition.

Lost in space (artist's impression)

“The reflectance spectrum of 2004 EW₉₅ was clearly distinct from the other observed outer Solar System objects,” explains lead author Seccull. “It looked enough of a weirdo for us to take a closer look.”

The team observed 2004 EW₉₅ with the X-Shooter and FORS2 instruments on the VLT. The sensitivity of these spectrographs allowed the team to obtain more detailed measurements of the pattern of light reflected from the asteroid and thus infer its composition.

Asteroid fly-by

However, even with the impressive light-collecting power of the VLT, 2004 EW₉₅ was still difficult to observe. Though the object is 300 kilometres across, it is currently a colossal four billion kilometres from Earth, making gathering data from its dark, carbon-rich surface a demanding scientific challenge.

“It’s like observing a giant mountain of coal against the pitch-black canvas of the night sky,” says co-author Thomas Puzia from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

“Not only is 2004 EW₉₅ moving, it’s also very faint,” adds Seccull. “We had to use a pretty advanced data processing technique to get as much out of the data as possible.”

Orbit in exile

Two features of the object’s spectra were particularly eye-catching and corresponded to the presence of ferric oxides and phyllosilicates. The presence of these materials had never before been confirmed in a KBO, and they strongly suggest that 2004 EW₉₅ formed in the inner Solar System.

Seccull concludes: “Given 2004 EW95’s  present-day abode in the icy outer reaches of the Solar System, this implies that it has been flung out into its present orbit by a migratory planet in the early days of the Solar System.”

“While there have been previous reports of other ‘atypical’ Kuiper Belt Object spectra, none were confirmed to this level of quality,” comments Olivier Hainaut, an ESO astronomer who was not part of the team. “The discovery of a carbonaceous asteroid in the Kuiper Belt is a key verification of one of the fundamental predictions of dynamical models of the early Solar System.”

Notes:

[1] Current dynamical models of the evolution of the early Solar System, such as the grand tack hypothesis and the Nice model, predict that the giant planets migrated first inward and then outward, disrupting and scattering objects from the inner Solar System. As a consequence, a small percentage of rocky asteroids are expected to have been ejected into orbits in the Oort Cloud and Kuiper belt.

[2] Carbonaceous asteroids are those containing the element carbon or its various compounds. Carbonaceous — or C-type — asteroids can be identified by their dark surfaces, caused by the presence of carbon molecules.

[3] Other inner Solar System objects have previously been detected in the outer reaches of the Solar System, but this is the first carbonaceous asteroid to be found far from home in the Kuiper Belt.

More information:

This research was presented in a paper entitled “2004 EW95: A Phyllosilicate-bearing Carbonaceous Asteroid in the Kuiper Belt” by T. Seccull et al., which appeared in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The team was composed of Tom Seccull (Astrophysics Research Centre, Queen’s University Belfast, UK), Wesley C. Fraser (Astrophysics Research Centre, Queen’s University Belfast, UK) , Thomas H. Puzia (Institute of Astrophysics, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Chile), Michael E. Brown (Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, USA) and Frederik Schönebeck (Astronomisches Rechen-Institut, Zentrum für Astronomie der Universität Heidelberg, Germany).

ESO is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the world’s most productive ground-based astronomical observatory by far. It has 15 Member States: Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, along with the host state of Chile and with Australia as a strategic partner. 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 and its world-leading Very Large Telescope Interferometer as well as two survey telescopes, VISTA working in the infrared and the visible-light VLT Survey Telescope. ESO is also a major partner in two facilities on Chajnantor, APEX and ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. And on Cerro Armazones, close to Paranal, ESO is building the 39-metre Extremely Large Telescope, the ELT, which will become “the world’s biggest eye on the sky”.

Links:

ESOcast 160 Light: Lost in Space: http://www.eso.org/public/videos/eso1814a/

Research paper: http://www.eso.org/public/archives/releases/sciencepapers/eso1814/eso1814a.pdf

Photos of the VLT: http://www.eso.org/public/images/archive/category/paranal/

ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT): https://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/paranal-observatory/vlt/

X-Shooter: https://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/paranal-observatory/vlt/vlt-instr/x-shooter/

FORS2: https://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/paranal-observatory/vlt/vlt-instr/fors/

Images, Video, Text, Credits: ESO/M. Kornmesser/L. Calçada/Richard Hook/Calum Turner/Institute of Astrophysics, Pontificia Universidad Catolica Santiago/Thomas H. Puzia/Queen’s University, Belfast/Wesley C. Fraser/Tom Seccull.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch