Space Place Articles 2010

Astronomers Stumble onto Huge Space Molecules

by Trudy E. Bell and Dr. Tony Phillips

Deep in interstellar space, in a the swirling gaseous envelope of a planetary nebula, hosts of carbon atoms have joined together to form large three-dimensional molecules of a special type previously seen only on Earth. Astronomers discovered them almost accidentally using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

“They are the largest molecules known in space,” declared Jan Cami of the University of Western Ontario, lead author of a paper with three colleagues published in Science online on July 22, 2010, and in print on September 3.

Not only are the molecules big: they are of a special class of carbon molecules known as “fullerenes” because their structure resembles the geodesic domes popularized by architect Buckminster Fuller. Spitzer found evidence of two types of fullerenes. The smaller type, nicknamed the “buckyball,” is chemical formula C60, made of 60 carbon atoms joined in a series of hexagons and pentagons to form a spherical closed cage exactly like a black-and-white soccer ball. Spitzer also found a larger fullerene, chemical formula C70, consisting of 70 carbon atoms in an elongated closed cage more resembling an oval rugby ball.

Neither type of fullerene is rigid; instead, their carbon atoms vibrate in and out, rather like the surface of a large soap bubble changes shape as it floats through the air. “Those vibrations correspond to wavelengths of infrared light emitted or absorbed—and that infrared emission is what Spitzer recorded,” Cami explained.

Although fullerenes have been sought in space for the last 25 years, ever since they were first identified in the laboratory, the astronomers practically stumbled into the discovery. Co-author Jeronimo Bernard-Salas of Cornell University, an expert in gas and dust in planetary nebulae, was doing routine research with Spitzer's infrared observations of planetary nebulae with its spectroscopy instrument. When he studied the spectrum (infrared signature) of a dim planetary nebula called Tc 1 in the southern-hemisphere constellation of Ara, he noticed several clear peaks he had not seen before in the spectra of other planetary nebulae.

“When he came to me,” recounted Cami, an astrophysicist who specializes in molecular chemistry, “I immediately and intuitively knew it I was looking at buckyballs in space. I've never been that excited!” The authors confirmed his hunch by carefully comparing the Tc 1 spectrum to laboratory experiments described in the literature.

“This discovery shows that it is possible—even easy—for complex carbonaceous molecules to form spontaneously in space,” Cami said. “Now that we know fullerenes are out there, we can figure out their roles in the physics and chemistry of deep space. Who knows what other complex chemical compounds exist—maybe even some relevant to the formation of life in the universe!”

Stay tuned!

Learn more about this discovery at http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu.

For kids, there are lots of beautiful Spitzer images to match up in the Spitzer Concentration game at http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/en/kids/spitzer/concentration.

This article was provided by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Caption: Superimposed on a Spitzer infrared photo of the Small Magellanic Cloud is an artist's illustration depicting a magnified view of a planetary nebula and an even further magnified view of buckyballs, which consist of 60 carbon atoms arranged like soccer balls.

Blue Rings Around Red Galaxies

by Trudy E. Bell and Dr. Tony Phillips

Beautiful flat rings around the planet Saturn are one thing — but flat rings around entire galaxies?

That is the astonishing discovery that two astronomers, Samir Salim of Indiana University at Bloomington and R. Michael Rich of UCLA described in the May 10, 2010, issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

“For most of the twentieth century, astronomers observing at visible wavelengths saw that galaxies looked either ‘red and dead’ or ‘blue and new,’” explained Salim. Reddish galaxies were featureless, shaped mostly like balls or lentils; bluish ones were magnificent spirals or irregular galaxies.

Elliptical galaxies looked red, astronomers reasoned, because they had mostly old red giant stars near the end of their life cycles, and little gas from which new stars could form. Spiral and irregular galaxies looked blue, however, because they were rich in gas and dust that were active nurseries birthing hot, massive, bluish stars.

At least, that's how galaxies appear in visible light.

As early as the 1970s, though, the first space-borne telescopes sensitive to ultraviolet radiation (UV) revealed something mysterious: a few red elliptical galaxies emitted “a surprising ultraviolet excess,” said Rich. The observations suggested that some old red galaxies might not be as “dead” as previously supposed.

To investigate, Salim and Rich used NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer satellite to identify 30 red elliptical galaxies that also emitted the strongest UV. Then they captured a long, detailed picture of each galaxy using the Hubble Space Telescope.

“Hubble revealed the answer,” says Salim. The UV radiation was emitted by enormous, flat bluish rings that completely surrounded each reddish galaxy, reminiscent of the rings of Saturn. In some cases, the bluish rings even showed a faint spiral structure!

Because the bluish UV rings looked like star-forming spiral arms and lay mostly beyond the red stars at the centers of the elliptical galaxies “we concluded that the bluish rings must be made of hot young stars,” Salim continued. “But if new stars are still being formed, that means the red-and-dead galaxies must have acquired some new gas to make them.”

How does a galaxy “acquire some gas?” Salim speculates that it was an act of theft. Sometimes galaxies have close encounters. If a gas-rich irregular galaxy passed close to a gas-poor elliptical galaxy, the gravity of the elliptical galaxy could steal some gas.

Further studies by Galaxy Evolution Explorer, Hubble and other telescopes are expected to reveal more about the process. One thing is certain, says Rich: “The evolution of galaxies is even more surprising and beautiful than we imagined.”

The press release is available at http://www.galex.caltech.edu/newsroom/glx2010-03f.html.

The full published article is “Star Formation Signatures in Optically Quiescent Early-Type Galaxies” by Samir Salim and R. Michael Rich, The Astrophysical Journal Letters 714: L290–L294, 2010 May 10.

Point the kids to the Photon Pile-up Game at http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/en/kids/galex/photon, where they can have fun learning about the particle nature of light.

This article was provided by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Caption: The Galaxy Evolution Explorer UV space telescope helped to identify red elliptical galaxies that also emitted the strongest UV. These are detailed, long-exposure Hubble Space Telescope images of four of these galaxies that capture the UV-emitting rings and arcs indicative of new star formation.

Close Encounters with Jupiter

by Dr. Tony Phillips

Jupiter and Earth just had a close encounter - and it was a good one. In late September 2010, the two worlds were 31 million km (about 19 million miles) closer than at any time in the past 11 years. Soaring high in the midnight sky, Jupiter shone six times brighter than Sirius and looked absolutely dynamite through a backyard telescope.

Planetary scientist Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute isn’t satisfied. "I’d like to get even closer," he says. Bolton will get his wish in July 2016. That’s when a NASA spacecraft named "Juno" arrives at Jupiter for a truly close-up look at the giant planet. Swooping as low as 5,000 km (about 3,000 miles) above the cloud tops, Juno will spend a full year orbiting nearer to Jupiter than any previous spacecraft.

The goal of the mission is to learn what lies inside the planet.

Astronomers have been studying Jupiter since the invention of the telescope 400 years ago, but in all that time the planet’s vast interior has remained hidden from view. Even the Galileo probe, which dived into the clouds in 1995, penetrated no more than about 0.1% of Jupiter’s radius.

"Our knowledge of Jupiter is truly skin deep," says Bolton, Juno’s principal investigator. "There are many basic things we just don’t know - like how far down does the Great Red Spot go? And does Jupiter have a heavy core?"

Juno will improve the situation without actually diving into the clouds. Bolton explains how. "Juno will spend a full year in close polar orbit around Jupiter, flying over all latitudes and longitudes. We will thus be able to fully map Jupiter’s gravitational field and figure out how the interior is structured."

But that’s not all. Researchers have good reason to believe that much of Jupiter’s interior is filled with liquid metallic hydrogen, an exotic metal that could form only in the high-pressure, hydrogen-rich core of a giant planet. Jupiter’s powerful magnetic field almost certainly springs from dynamo action inside this vast realm of electrically conducting metal.

"Juno’s magnetometers will precisely map Jupiter’s magnetic field," says Bolton. "This map will tell us a great deal about planet’s inner magnetic dynamo - what it’s made of and how it works."

Finally, Juno will probe Jupiter’s atmosphere using a set of microwave radiometers. "Our sensors can measure the temperature 50 times deeper than ever before," says Bolton. Researchers will use that information to figure out how much water is underneath Jupiter’s clouds. "Microwave measurements of Jupiter’s water content are particularly exciting because they will help discriminate among competing theories of the planet’s origin."

Now that’s a close encounter. Stay tuned for Juno.

Find out more about the Juno mission at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/juno.

Play the new Solar System Explorer super game, which includes the Juno Recall mini-game at http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/en/kids/solar-system. It’s not just for kids!

This article was provided courtesy of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Caption: The Juno mission, arriving at Jupiter in July 2016, will help to solve the mystery of what’s inside the giant planet’s core.

The Hunt is On!

by Carolyn Brinkworth

The world of astronomy was given new direction on August 13, 2010, with the publication of the Astro2010 Decadal Survey. Astro2010 is the latest in a series of surveys produced every 10 years by the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academy of Sciences. This council is a team of senior astronomers who recommend priorities for the most important topics and missions for the next decade.

Up near the top of their list this decade is the search for Earth-like planets around other stars - called "extrasolar planets" or "exoplanets" - which has become one of the hottest topics in astronomy.

The first planet to be found orbiting a star like our Sun was discovered in 1995. The planet, called "51 Peg b," is a "Hot Jupiter." It is about 160 times the mass of Earth and orbits so close to its parent star that its gaseous "surface" is seared by its blazing sun. With no solid surface, and temperatures of about 1000 degrees Celsius (1700 Fahrenheit), there was no chance of finding life on this distant world. Since that discovery, astronomers have been on the hunt for smaller and more Earth-like planets, and today we know of around 470 extrasolar planets, ranging from about 4 times to 8000 times the mass of Earth.

This explosion in extrasolar planet discoveries is only set to get bigger, with a NASA mission called Kepler that was launched last year. After staring at a single small patch of sky for 43 days, Kepler has detected the definite signatures of seven new exoplanets, plus 706 "planetary candidates" that are unconfirmed and in need of further investigation. Kepler is likely to revolutionize our understanding of Earth's place in the Universe.

We don't yet have the technology to search for life on exoplanets. However, the infrared Spitzer Space Telescope has detected molecules that are the basic building blocks of life in two exoplanet atmospheres. Most extrasolar planets appear unsuitable for supporting life, but at least two lie within the "habitable zone" of their stars, where conditions are theoretically right for life to gain a foothold.

We are still a long way from detecting life on other worlds, but in the last 20 years, the number of known planets in our Universe has gone from the 8 in our own Solar System to almost 500. It's clear to everyone, including the Astro2010 decadal survey team, that the hunt for exoplanets is only just beginning, and the search for life is finally underway in earnest.

Explore Spitzer’s latest findings at http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu.

Kids can dream about finding other Earths as they read "Lucy’s Planet Hunt" at http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/en/kids/storybooks/#lucy.

This article was provided by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Caption: Artist’s rendering of hot gas planet HD209458b. Both the Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes have detected carbon dioxide, methane, and water vapor - in other words, the basic chemistry for life - in the atmosphere of this planet, although since it is a hot ball of gas, it would be unlikely to harbor life.

The Turbulent Tale of a Tiny Galaxy

by Trudy Bell and Dr. Tony Phillips

Next time you hike in the woods, pause at a babbling stream. Watch carefully how the water flows around rocks. After piling up in curved waves on the upstream side, like the bow wave in front of a motorboat, the water speeds around the rock, spilling into a riotous, turbulent wake downstream. Lightweight leaves or grass blades can get trapped in the wake, swirling round and round in little eddy currents that collect debris.

Astronomers have found something similar happening in the turbulent wake of a tiny galaxy that is plunging into a cluster of 1,500 galaxies in the constellation Virgo. In this case, however, instead of collecting grass and leaves, eddy currents in the little galaxy’s tail seem to be gathering gaseous material to make new stars.

"It’s a fascinating case of turbulence [rather than gravity] trapping the gas, allowing it to become dense enough to form stars," says Janice A. Hester of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

The tell-tale galaxy, designated IC 3418, is only a hundredth the size of the Milky Way and hardly stands out in visible light images of the busy Virgo Cluster. Astronomers realized it was interesting, however, when they looked at it using NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer satellite. "Ultraviolet images from the Galaxy Evolution Explorer revealed a long tail filled with clusters of massive, young stars," explains Hester.

Galaxies with spectacular tails have been seen before. Usually they are behemoths - large spiral galaxies colliding with one another in the crowded environment of a busy cluster. Tidal forces during the collision pull gas and stars of all ages out of these massive galaxies to form long tails. But in IC 3418, the tail has just young stars. No old stars.

"The lack of older stars was one tip-off that IC 3418’s tail isn’t tidal," says Hester. "Something else must be responsible for these stars."

Hester and eight coauthors published their findings in the June 10, 2010, issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The team described the following scenario: IC 3418 is speeding toward the center of the Virgo cluster at 1,000 kilometers per second. The space between cluster galaxies is not empty; it is filled with a gaseous atmosphere of diffuse, hot hydrogen. Thus, like a bicyclist coasting downhill feels wind even on a calm day, IC 3418 experiences "a stiff wind" that sweeps interstellar gas right out of the little galaxy, said Hester - gas that trails far behind its galaxy in a choppy, twisting wake akin to the wake downstream of the rock in the babbling brook. Eddy currents swirling in the turbulent wake trap the gas, allowing it to become dense enough to form stars.

"Astronomers have long debated the importance of gravity vs. turbulence in star formation," Hester noted. "In IC 3418’s tail, it’s ALL turbulence."

To many astronomers, that’s a surprising tale indeed.

See other surprising UV images from the Galaxy Evolution Explorer at http://www.galex.caltech.edu.

Kids (and grownups) can play the challenging new Photon Pileup game at http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/en/kids/galex/photon/.

This article was provided by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Caption: In the ultraviolet image on the left, from the Galaxy Evolution Explorer, galaxy IC 3418 leaves a turbulent star forming region in its wake. In the visible light image on the right (from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey), the wake with its new stars is not apparent.

The Sun Can Still Remind Us Who’s Boss

by Dr. Tony Phillips

Grab your cell phone and take a good long look. It's indispensible, right? It tells time, surfs the web, keeps track of your appointments and, by the way, also makes phone calls. Modern people can hardly live without one.

One good solar flare could knock it all out.

"In the 21st century, we’re increasingly dependent on technology," points out Tom Bogdan, director of NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado. "This makes solar activity an important part of our daily lives."

Indeed, bad space weather can knock out power systems, telecommunications, financial and emergency services - basically, anything that needs electronics to work. That’s why NOAA is building a new fleet of "space weather stations," the GOES-R satellites.

"GOES-R will bring our existing fleet of weather satellites into the 21st century," says Bogdan. "They're designed to monitor not only Earth weather, but space weather as well."

NOAA's existing fleet of Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) already includes some space weather capabilities: solar ultraviolet and X-ray telescopes, a magnetometer and energetic particle sensors. GOES-R will improve upon these instruments and add important new sensors to the mix.

One of Bogdan’s favorites is a particle detector named "MPS-Low," which specializes in sensing low-energy (30 ev - 30 keV) particles from the sun.

Who cares about low-energy particles? It turns out they can be as troublesome as their high-energy counterparts. Protons and other atomic nuclei accelerated to the highest energies by solar flares can penetrate a satellite’s exterior surface, causing all kinds of problems when they reach internal electronics. Low-energy particles, particularly electrons, can’t penetrate so deeply. Instead, they do their damage on the outside.

As Bogdan explains, "Low-energy particles can build up on the surfaces of spacecraft, creating a mist of charge. As voltages increase, sparks and arcs can zap electronics - or emit radio pulses that can be misinterpreted by onboard computers as a command."

The Galaxy 15 communications satellite stopped working during a solar wind storm in April 2010, and many researchers believe low-energy particles are to blame. GOES-R will be able to monitor this population of particles and alert operators when it’s time to shut down sensitive systems.

"This is something new GOES-R will do for us," says Bogdan.

The GOES-R magnetometer is also a step ahead. It will sample our planet’s magnetic field four times faster than its predecessors, sensing vibrations that previous GOES satellites might have missed. Among other things, this will help forecasters anticipate the buildup of geomagnetic storms.

And then there are the pictures. GOES-R will beam back striking images of the sun at X-ray and extreme UV wavelengths. These are parts of the electromagnetic spectrum where solar flares and other eruptions make themselves known with bright flashes of high-energy radiation.

GOES-R will pinpoint the flashes and identify their sources, allowing forecasters to quickly assess whether or not Earth is in the "line of fire."

They might also be able to answer the question, Is my cell phone about to stop working?

The first GOES-R satellite is scheduled for launch in 2015. Check www.goes-r.gov for updates. Space weather comes down to Earth in the clear and fun explanation for young people on SciJinks, http://scijinks.gov/space-weather-and-us.

This article was provided by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Caption: In spite of Earth’s protective magnetosphere, solar storms can wreak havoc with Earth satellites and other expensive electronics on the ground.

Black Holes No Joke

by Dr. Tony Phillips

Kip Thorne: Why was the black hole hungry?

Stephen Hawking: It had a light breakfast!

Black hole humor - you gotta love it. Unless you’re an astronomer, that is. Black holes are among the most mysterious and influential objects in the cosmos, yet astronomers cannot see into them, frustrating their attempts to make progress in fields ranging from extreme gravity to cosmic evolution.

How do you observe an object that eats light for breakfast?

"Black holes are creatures of gravity," says physicist Marco Cavaglia of the University of Mississippi. "So we have to use gravitational waves to explore them."

Enter LIGO - the NSF-funded Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory. According to Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, black holes and other massive objects can emit gravitational waves - ripples in the fabric of space-time that travel through the cosmos. LIGO was founded in the 1990s with stations in Washington state and Louisiana to detect these waves as they pass by Earth.

"The principle is simple," says Cavaglia, a member of the LIGO team. "Each LIGO detector is an L-shaped ultra-high vacuum system with arms four kilometers long. We use lasers to precisely measure changes in the length of the arms, which stretch or contract when a gravitational wave passes by."

Just one problem: Gravitational waves are so weak, they change the length of each detector by just 0.001 times the width of a proton! "It is a difficult measurement," allows Cavaglia.

Seismic activity, thunderstorms, ocean waves, even a truck driving by the observatory can overwhelm the effect of a genuine gravitational wave. Figuring out how to isolate LIGO from so much terrestrial noise has been a major undertaking, but after years of work the LIGO team has done it. Since 2006, LIGO has been ready to detect gravitational waves coming from spinning black holes, supernovas, and colliding neutron stars anywhere within about 30 million light years of Earth.

So far the results are...nil. Researchers working at dozens of collaborating institutions have yet to report a definite detection. Does this mean Einstein was wrong? Cavaglia doesn’t think so. "Einstein was probably right, as usual," he says. "We just need more sensitivity. Right now LIGO can only detect events in our little corner of the Universe. To succeed, LIGO needs to expand its range."

So, later this year LIGO will be shut down so researchers can begin work on Advanced LIGO - a next generation detector 10 times more sensitive than its predecessor. "We’ll be monitoring a volume of space a thousand times greater than before," says Cavaglia. "This will transform LIGO into a real observational tool."

When Advanced LIGO is completed in 2014 or so, the inner workings of black holes could finally be revealed. The punch line may yet make astronomers smile.

Find out more about LIGO at http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/

The Space Place has a LIGO explanation for kids (of all ages) at http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/en/kids/ligo, where you can "hear" a star and a black hole colliding!

This article was provided by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Caption: Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory in Livingston, Louisiana. Each of the two arms is 4 kilometers long. LIGO has another such observatory in Hanford, Washington.

Ancient Supernova Riddle, Solved

by Dr. Tony Phillips

Australopithecus squinted at the blue African sky. He had never seen a star in broad daylight before, but he could see one today. Was it dangerous? He stared for a long time, puzzled, but nothing happened, and after a while he strode across the savanna unconcerned. Millions of years later, we know better.

That star was a supernova, one of many that exploded in our corner of the Milky Way around the Pliocene era of pre-humans.

Australopithecus left no records; we know the explosions happened because their debris is still around. The solar system and everything else within about 300 light-years is surrounded by supernova exhaust - a haze of million-degree gas that permeates all of local space. Supernovas are dangerous things, and when one appears in the daytime sky, it is cause for alarm.

How did Earth survive? Modern astronomers believe the blasts were too far away (albeit not by much) to zap our planet with lethal amounts of radiation. Also, the Sun’s magnetic field has done a good job holding the hot gas at bay.

In other words, we lucked out.

The debris from those old explosions has the compelling power of a train wreck; astronomers have trouble tearing their eyes away. Over the years, they’ve thoroughly surveyed the wreckage and therein found a mystery - clouds of hydrogen and helium apparently too fragile to have survived the blasts.

One of them, whimsically called "the Local Fluff," is on the doorstep of the solar system. The observed temperature and density of the Fluff do not provide enough pressure to resist the crushing action of the hot supernova gas around it," says astronomer Merav Opher of George Mason University.

"It makes us wonder, how can such a cloud exist?" NASA’s Voyager spacecraft may have found the answer.

NASA's two Voyager probes have been racing out of the solar system for more than 30 years. They are now beyond the orbit of Pluto and on the verge of entering interstellar space. "The Voyagers are not actually inside the Local Fluff," explains Opher. "But they are getting close and can sense what the cloud is like as they approach it."

And the answer is...

"Magnetism," says Opher. "Voyager data show that the Fluff is strongly magnetized with a field strength between 4 and 5 microgauss. This magnetic field can provide the pressure required to resist destruction."

If fluffy clouds of hydrogen can survive a supernova blast, maybe it’s not so surprising that we did, too. "Indeed, this is helping us understand how supernovas interact with their environment - and how destructive the blasts actually are," says Opher. Maybe Australopithecus was on to something after all.

Opher’s original research describing Voyager’s discovery of the magnetic field in the Local Fluff may be found in Nature, 462, 1036-1038 (24 December 2009). The Space Place has a new Amazing Fact page about the Voyagers’ Golden Records, with sample images and sounds of Earth. Just in case one of the Voyager’s ever meets up with ET, we will want to introduce ourselves.

Visit http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/en/kids/voyager.

This article was provided by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Caption: Left-over cloud from the Tycho supernova, witnessed by Tycho Brahe and other astronomers over 400 years ago. This image combines infrared light captured by the Spitzer Space Telescope with x-rays captured by the Chandra X-ray Observatory, plus visible light from the Calar Also Observatory in Spain.

A Rock Hound is Born

It’s tough to be a geologist when you can’t tell one rock from another. Is that a meteorite or a chunk of lava? A river rock or an impact fragment? Houston, we have a problem!

It’s a problem Spirit and Opportunity have been dealing with for the past six years. The two rovers are on a mission to explore the geology of the Red Planet, yet for the longest time they couldn’t recognize interesting rocks without help from humans back on Earth.

Fortunately, it is possible to teach old rovers new tricks. All you have to do is change their programming - and that’s just what NASA has done.

"During the winter, we uploaded new software to Opportunity," says Tara Estlin, a rover driver, senior member of JPL’s Artificial Intelligence Group, and the lead developer of AEGIS, short for Autonomous Exploration for Gathering Increased Science. "AEGIS allows the rover to make some decisions on its own."

Estlin and her team have been working for several years to develop and upload increasingly sophisticated software to the rovers. As a result, the twins have learned to avoid obstacles, identify dust devils, and calculate the distance to reach their arms to a rock.

With the latest upgrade, a rock hound is born.

Now, Opportunity's computer can examine images that the rover takes using its wide-angle navigation camera (NavCam) and pick out rocks with interesting colors or shapes. It can then center its narrower-angle panoramic camera (PanCam) on targets of interest for close-up shots through various color filters. All this happens without human intervention.

The system was recently put to the test; Opportunity performed splendidly. At the end of a drive on March 4th, the rover settled in for a bit of rock hunting. Opportunity surveyed the landscape and decided that one particular rock, out of more than 50 in the NavCam photo, best met criteria that researchers had set for a target of interest: large and dark.

"It found exactly the target we would want it to find," Estlin says. "It appears to be one of the rocks tossed outward onto the surface when an impact dug a nearby crater."

The new software doesn’t make humans obsolete. On the contrary, humans are very much "in the loop," setting criteria for what’s interesting and evaluating Opportunity’s discoveries. The main effect of the new software is to strengthen the rover-human partnership and boost their combined exploring prowess.

Mindful that Opportunity was only supposed to last about six months after it landed in 2004, Estlin says, "It is amazing to see Opportunity performing a brand new autonomous activity six years later."

What will the rock hounds of Mars be up to six years from now? Stay tuned for future uploads!

Learn more about how the AEGIS software works at http://scienceandtechnology.jpl.nasa.gov/newsandevents/newsdetails/?NewsID=677

If you work with middle- or high-school kids, you’ll find a fun way to explore another kind of robot software - the kind that enables "fuzzy thinking" - at http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/en/educators/teachers_page2.shtml#fuzzy

This article was provided by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Caption: Opportunity spots a rock with its NavCam that its AEGIS software says meets all the criteria for further investigation.

Deadly Planets

by Patrick L. Barry and Dr. Tony Phillips

About 900 light years from here is a rocky planet not much bigger than Earth. It goes around its star once every hundred days, a trifle fast, but not too different from a standard Earth-year. At least two and possibly three other planets circle the same star, forming a complete solar system.

Interested? Don't be. Going there would be the last thing you ever do.

The star is a pulsar, PSR 1257+12, the seething-hot core of a supernova that exploded millions of years ago. Its planets are bathed not in gentle, life-giving sunshine but instead a blistering torrent of X-rays and high-energy particles.

"It would be like trying to live next to Chernobyl," says Charles Beichman, a scientist at JPL and director of the Michelson Science Center at Caltech.

Our own Sun emits small amounts of pulsar-like X-rays and high energy particles, but the amount of such radiation coming from a pulsar is "orders of magnitude more," he says. Even for a planet orbiting as far out as the Earth, this radiation could blow away the planet's atmosphere, and even vaporize sand right off the planet's surface.

Astronomer Alex Wolszczan discovered planets around PSR 1257+12 in the 1990s using Puerto Rico’s giant Arecibo radio telescope. At first, no one believed worlds could form around pulsars - it was too bizarre. Supernovas were supposed to destroy planets, not create them. Where did these worlds come from?

NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope may have found the solution. In 2005, a group of astronomers led by Deepto Chakrabarty of MIT pointed the infrared telescope toward pulsar 4U 0142+61. Data revealed a disk of gas and dust surrounding the central star, probably wreckage from the supernova. It was just the sort of disk that could coalesce to form planets!

As deadly as pulsar planets are, they might also be hauntingly beautiful. The vaporized matter rising from the planets' surfaces could be ionized by the incoming radiation, creating colorful auroras across the sky. And though the pulsar would only appear as a tiny dot in the sky (the pulsar itself is only 20-40 km across), it would be enshrouded in a hazy glow of light emitted by radiation particles as they curve in the pulsar's strong magnetic field.

Wasted beauty? Maybe. Beichman points out the positive: "It's an awful place to try and form planets, but if you can do it there, you can do it anywhere."

Find more news and images from Spitzer at http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/

In addition, The Space Place Web site features several games related to Spitzer and infrared astronomy, as well as a storybook about a girl who dreamed of finding another Earth. Go to http://tiny.cc/lucy208

This article was provided by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Caption: Artist’s concept of a pulsar and surrounding disk of rubble called a "fallback" disk, out of which new planets could form.

Flipping the Lights on Cosmic Darkness

Exploring the universe is a bit like groping around a dark room. Aside from the occasional pinprick of starlight, most objects lurk in pitch darkness. But with the recent launch of the largest-ever infrared space telescope, it's like someone walked into the room and flipped on the lights.

Suddenly, those dark spaces between stars don’t appear quite so empty. Reflected in the Herschel Space Observatory's 3.5-meter primary mirror, astronomers can now see colder, darker celestial objects than ever before - from the faint outer arms of distant galaxies to the stealthy "dark asteroids" of our own solar system.

Many celestial objects are too cold to emit visible light, but they do shine at much longer infrared wavelengths. And Herschel can observe much longer infrared wavelengths than any space telescope before (up to 672 microns). Herschel also has 16 times the collecting area, and hence 16 times better resolution, than previous infrared space telescopes. That lets it resolve details with unprecedented clarity. Together, these abilities open a new window onto the universe.

"The sky looks much more crowded when you look in infrared wavelengths," says George Helou, director of the NASA Herschel Science Center at Caltech. "We can't observe the infrared universe from the ground because our atmosphere blocks infrared light, and emits infrared itself. Once you get above the atmosphere, all of this goes away and suddenly you can look without obstruction."

Herschel launched in May from the Guiana Space Centre in French Guiana aboard a European Space Agency Ariane 5 rocket. Since then, it has expanded the number of distant galaxies observed at far infrared wavelengths from a few hundred to more than 28,000. And with the instrument testing and system check-out phases finally completed, the discoveries are only now beginning.

Beyond simply imaging these dark objects, Herschel can identify the presence of chemicals such as carbon monoxide and water based on their spectral fingerprints. "We will be able to decipher the chemistry of what's going on during the beginnings of star formation, in the discs of dust and gas that form planets, and in the lingering aftermath of stellar explosions," Helou says.

And those are just the expected things. Who knows what unexpected discoveries may come from "flipping on the lights?" Helou says, "We can't wait to find out."

Herschel is a European Space Agency mission, with science instruments provided by a consortium of European-led institutes and with important participation by NASA. See the ESA Herschel site at http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/area/index.cfm?fareaid=16

Also, see the NASA sites at http://herschel.jpl.nasa.gov/

and http://www.herschel.caltech.edu/

and http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/herschel/

Kids can learn about infrared light by browsing through the Infrared Photo Album at The Space Place, http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/en/kids/sirtf1/sirtf_action.shtml

This article was provided by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Caption: The Herschel Space Observatory has 3.5-meter primary mirror, allowing astronomers to see colder, darker celestial objects than ever before.

Building a Case Against Ozone

by Patrick Barry

When it comes to notorious greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide is like Al Capone - always in the headlines. Meanwhile, ozone is more like Carlo Gambino - not as famous or as powerful, but still a big player.

After tracking this lesser-known climate culprit for years, NASA’s Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) has found that ozone is indeed a shifty character. Data from TES show that the amount of ozone - and thus its contribution to the greenhouse effect - varies greatly from place to place and over time.

"Ozone tends to be localized near cities where ozone precursors, such as car exhaust and power plant exhaust, are emitted," says Kevin Bowman, a senior member of the TES technical staff at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. But the ozone doesn't necessarily stay in one place. Winds can stretch the ozone into long plumes. "Looking out over the ocean we can see ozone being transported long distances over open water."

Unlike CO2, ozone is highly reactive. It survives in the atmosphere for only a few hours or a few days before it degrades and effectively disappears. So ozone doesn't have time to spread out evenly in the atmosphere the way that CO2 does. The amount of ozone in one place depends on where ozone-creating chemicals, such as the nitrogen oxides in car exhaust. are being released and which way the wind blows.

This short lifespan also means that ozone could be easier than CO2 to knock off.

"If you reduce emissions of things that generate ozone, then you can have a quicker climate effect than you would with CO2," Bowman says. "From a policy standpoint, there’s been a lot of conversation lately about regulating short-lived species like ozone."

To be clear, Bowman isn’t talking about the famous "ozone layer." Ozone in this high-altitude layer shields us from harmful ultraviolet light, so protecting that layer is crucial. Bowman is talking about ozone closer to the ground, so-called tropospheric ozone. This "other" ozone at lower altitudes poses health risks for people and acts as a potent greenhouse gas.

TES is helping scientists track the creation and movement of low-altitude ozone over the whole planet each day. "We can see it clearly in our data," Bowman says. Countries will need this kind of data if they decide to go after the heat-trapping gas.

Ozone has been caught red-handed, and TES is giving authorities the hard evidence they need to prosecute the case.

Learn more about TES and its atmospheric science mission at tes.jpl.nasa.gov. The Space Place has a fun "Gummy Greenhouse Gases" activity for kids that will introduce them to the idea of atoms and molecules. Check it out at http://spaceplace.jpl.nasa.gov/en/kids/tes/gumdrops/

This article was provided by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Caption: These images are TES ozone plots viewed with Google Earth. Colors map to tropospheric ozone concentrations. The image on the left shows ozone concentrations at an altitude of approximately 32,000 feet, while the one on the right shows ozone at approximately 10,000 feet. The measurements are monthly averages over each grid segment for December 2004.