Topic: Pasadena CA

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft sees Meteors crash into Saturn’s Rings

April 27, 2013 |

Written by Jia-Rui C. Cook
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has provided the first direct evidence of small meteoroids breaking into streams of rubble and crashing into Saturn’s rings.

These observations make Saturn’s rings the only location besides Earth, the moon and Jupiter where scientists and amateur astronomers have been able to observe impacts as they occur. Studying the impact rate of meteoroids from outside the Saturnian system helps scientists understand how different planet systems in our solar system formed.

Five images of Saturn’s rings, taken by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft between 2009 and 2012, show clouds of material ejected from impacts of small objects into the rings. (Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute/Cornell)

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NASA’s Herschel Space Telescope links Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9′s Impact to water around Jupiter

April 24, 2013 |

Written by Whitney Clavin
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – Astronomers have finally found direct proof that almost all water present in Jupiter’s stratosphere, an intermediate atmospheric layer, was delivered by comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, which famously struck the planet in 1994.

The findings, based on new data from the Herschel space observatory, reveal more water in Jupiter’s southern hemisphere, where the impacts occurred, than in the north. Herschel is a European Space Agency mission with important NASA participation.

This map shows the distribution of water in the stratosphere of Jupiter as measured with the Herschel space observatory. White and cyan indicate highest concentration of water, and blue indicates lesser amounts. The map has been superimposed over an image of Jupiter taken at visible wavelengths with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. (Image credit: Water map: ESA/Herschel/T. Cavalié et al.; Jupiter image: NASA/ESA/Reta Beebe (New Mexico State University))

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NASA’s Hyperspectral Infrared Imager (HyspIRI) Sees the Forest for the Trees and More

April 23, 2013 |

Written by Kathryn Hansen
NASA Earth Science News Team

Pasadena, CA – To Robert Green, light contains more than meets the eye: it contains fingerprints of materials that can be detected by sensors that capture the unique set of reflected wavelengths. Scientists have used the technique, called imaging spectroscopy, to learn about water on the moon, minerals on Mars and the composition of exoplanets.

Green’s favorite place to apply the technique, however, is right here on the chemically rich Earth, which is just what he and colleagues achieved this spring during NASA’s Hyperspectral Infrared Imager (HyspIRI) airborne campaign.

The HyspIRI airborne campaign overflew California’s San Andreas Fault on March 29th, 2013. The three-color (red, green, blue) composite image of the fault (left), composed from AVIRIS data, is similar to what a snapshot from a consumer camera would show. The entirety of data from AVIRIS, however, spans the visible to the short-wavelength infrared part of the spectrum. Temperature information (right) was collected simultaneously by the MASTER instrument. Red areas are composed of minerals with high silica, such as urban areas, while darker and cooler areas are composed of water and heavy vegetation. (Image credit: NASA/JPL)

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NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope finds Planet near the size of Earth orbiting in the Habitable Zone of another Star

April 19, 2013 |

Written by Whitney Clavin
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – NASA’s Kepler mission has discovered two new planetary systems that include three super-Earth-size planets in the “habitable zone,” the range of distance from a star where the surface temperature of an orbiting planet might be suitable for liquid water.

The Kepler-62 system has five planets: 62b, 62c, 62d, 62e and 62f. The Kepler-69 system has two planets: 69b and 69c. Kepler-62e, 62f and 69c are the super-Earth-sized planets.

The artist’s concept depicts Kepler-62f, a super-Earth-size planet in the habitable zone of a star smaller and cooler than the sun, located about 1,200 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra. (Credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech)

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NASA Astronomers using Herschel Space Observatory discover oldest star producing Galaxy to date

April 18, 2013 |

Written by Whitney Clavin
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – Astronomers, including Matt Bradford, Jamie Bock, Darren Dowell, Hien Nguyen and Jonas Zmuidzinas of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, have discovered a dust-filled, massive galaxy churning out stars when the cosmos was a mere 880 million years old. This is the earliest starburst galaxy ever observed.

The discovery, appearing in the April 18th issue of Nature, was made using the European Space Agency’s Herschel space observatory, for which JPL helped build two instruments.

This artist’s impression shows the “starburst” galaxy HFLS3. The galaxy appears as little more than a faint, red smudge in images from the Herschel space observatory. (Image credit: ESA-C. Carreau)

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NASA is looking for ways to Target an Asteroid

April 17, 2013 |

Written by DC Agle
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – Like many of his colleagues at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, Shyam Bhaskaran is working a lot with asteroids these days. And also like many of his colleagues, the deep space navigator devotes a great deal of time to crafting, and contemplating, computer-generated 3-D models of these intriguing nomads of the solar system.

But while many of his coworkers are calculating asteroids’ past, present and future locations in the cosmos, zapping them with the world’s most massive radar dishes, or considering how to rendezvous and perhaps even gently nudge an asteroid into lunar orbit, Bhaskaran thinks about how to collide with one.

This spectacular image of comet Tempel 1 was taken 67 seconds after it obliterated Deep Impact’s impactor spacecraft. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UMD)

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NASA funded study shows rain from Saturn’s Rings falls across the Planet

April 14, 2013 |

Written by Jia-Rui Cook
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – A new study tracks the “rain” of charged water particles into the atmosphere of Saturn and finds there is more of it and it falls across larger areas of the planet than previously thought.

The study, whose observations were funded by NASA and whose analysis was led by the University of Leicester, England, reveals that the rain influences the composition and temperature structure of parts of Saturn’s upper atmosphere. The paper appears in this week’s issue of the journal Nature.

This artist’s concept illustrates how charged water particles flow into the Saturnian atmosphere from the planet’s rings, causing a reduction in atmospheric brightness. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute/University of Leicester)

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NASA’s Galileo mission observations of Saturn’s moon Europa gives target areas for future study

April 13, 2013 |

Written by Guy Webster
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – The surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa exposes material churned up from inside the moon and also material resulting from matter and energy coming from above.

If you want to learn about the deep saltwater ocean beneath this unusual world’s icy shell — as many people do who are interested in possible extraterrestrial life — you might target your investigation of the surface somewhere that has more of the up-from-below stuff and less of the down-from-above stuff.

This graphic of Jupiter’s moon Europa maps a relationship between the amount of energy deposited onto the moon from charged-particle bombardment and the chemical contents of ice deposits on the surface in five areas of the moon (labeled A through E). (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Ariz./JHUAPL/Univ. of Colo.)

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NASA’s Cassini spacecraft sees Ice Clouds forming in atmosphere of Saturn’s moon Titan

April 12, 2013 |

Written by Jia-Rui C. Cook
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – An ice cloud taking shape over Titan’s south pole is the latest sign that the change of seasons is setting off a cascade of radical changes in the atmosphere of Saturn’s largest moon.

Made from an unknown ice, this type of cloud has long hung over Titan’s north pole, where it is now fading, according to observations made by the composite infrared spectrometer (CIRS) on NASA’s Cassini spacecraft.

The recently formed south polar vortex stands out in the color-swaddled atmosphere of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, in this natural color view from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute)

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NASA’s Kepler space telescope discovers White Dwarf bending light of nearby Star

April 7, 2013 |

Written by Whitney Clavin
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – NASA’s Kepler space telescope has witnessed the effects of a dead star bending the light of its companion star. The findings are among the first detections of this phenomenon — a result of Einstein’s general theory of relativity — in binary, or double, star systems.

The dead star, called a white dwarf, is the burnt-out core of what used to be a star like our sun. It is locked in an orbiting dance with its partner, a small “red dwarf” star. While the tiny white dwarf is physically smaller than the red dwarf, it is more massive.

This artist’s concept depicts a dense, dead star called a white dwarf crossing in front of a small, red star. The white dwarf’s gravity is so great it bends and magnifies light from the red star. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

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