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    Category Astronomy/Space

    Next up: Ultracold Simulators of Super-Dense Stars

    January 5, 2019, Categories  Physics, Astronomy/Space

    Rice University graduate student Tom Langin makes an adjustment to an experiment that uses 10 lasers of varying wavelengths to laser-cool ions in a neutral plasma.
    Credit: Photo by Brandon Martin/Rice University

    Rice University physicists have created the world’s first laser-cooled neutral plasma, completing a 20-year quest that sets the stage for simulators that re-create exotic states of matter found inside Jupiter and white dwarf stars. The findings are detailed this week in the journal Science and involve new techniques for laser cooling clouds of rapidly expanding plasma to temperatures about 50 times colder than deep space.

    “We don’t know the practical payoff yet, but every time physicists have laser cooled a new kind of thing, it has opened a whole world of possibilities,” said ...

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    NASA’s New Horizons Mission reveals entirely new kind of world

    January 4, 2019, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    three views of the object showing how color data was overlaid on a higher resolution view to create the color view
    The first color image of Ultima Thule, taken at a distance of 85,000 miles (137,000 kilometers) at 4:08 Universal Time on January 1, 2019, highlights its reddish surface. At left is an enhanced color image taken by the Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC), produced by combining the near infrared, red and blue channels. The center image taken by the Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) has a higher spatial resolution than MVIC by approximately a factor of five. At right, the color has been overlaid onto the LORRI image to show the color uniformity of the Ultima and Thule lobes. Note the reduced red coloring at the neck of the object.
    Source: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute
    Published: January 2, 2019
    Historical Date: January 1,...
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    Juno mission captures images of Volcanic Plumes on Jupiter’s moon Io Light from the plumes and fires of Io on Earth’s darkest night

    January 2, 2019, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Juno’s Radiation Monitoring Investigation collected this image of Jupiter’s moon Io with Juno’s Stellar Reference Unit (SRU) star camera shortly after Io was eclipsed by Jupiter at 12:40:29 (UTC) Dec. 21, 2018. Io is softly illuminated by moonlight from another of Jupiter’s moons, Europa. The brightest feature on Io is suspected to be a penetrating radiation signature. The glow of activity from several of Io’s volcanoes is seen, including a plume circled in the image.
    Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI

    A team of space scientists has captured new images of a volcanic plume on Jupiter’s moon Io during the Juno mission’s 17th flyby of the gas giant. On Dec. 21, during winter solstice, four of Juno’s cameras captured images of the Jovian moon Io, the most volcanic body in our solar system...

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    New Horizons Successfully explores Ultima Thule

    January 1, 2019, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    At left is a composite of two images taken by New Horizons’ high-resolution Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), which provides the best indication of Ultima Thule’s size and shape so far. Preliminary measurements of this Kuiper Belt object suggest it is approximately 20 miles long by 10 miles wide (32 kilometers by 16 kilometers). An artist’s impression at right illustrates one possible appearance of Ultima Thule, based on the actual image at left. The direction of Ultima’s spin axis is indicated by the arrows.
    Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI; sketch courtesy of James Tuttle Keane

    NASA spacecraft reaches most distant target in history...

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