In the Sky This Week – July 16, 2019

[tweet https://twitter.com/NASA/status/1151122320259452928 width=’300′ align=’right’]I was nine years old when Apollo 11 landed on the Moon in 1969; I was glued to my 13 inch black and white TV the entire mission, and I have been a complete space geek ever since. I have a lecture that I’ve given several times recently covering the space race, NASA Spin-offs, the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission, and my trip out to Tucson in January.  At the end of my lecture, I mention the #WeTheGeeks:Asteroids Google Hangout hosted by the White House in May of 2013; during this hangout, several influential individuals in various space and tech industries all agreed that two things had a major influence on their lives: the Apollo program, and Star Trek – I couldn’t agree more!

This is the week of the Apollo 11 50^th anniversary (#Apollo50th); 60 years ago, going to the Moon or planets was a dream of science fiction. Technology has advanced far beyond that of the era of the Moon landings, and robotic probes have explored all the major bodies in the solar system, taking us into the the next phase of solar system exploration, which will focus on landers and long-term reconnaissance orbiters. Apollo 11 was the first successful sample return mission; the OSIRIS-Rex asteroid sample return mission will be the largest U.S. sample return since the Apollo missions. Seven nations have now orbited the Moon, and four have landed (or crashed) on it;  NASA says it wants to send humans back to the Moon – including the first woman – by 2024. I’m hoping the next 50 years of space exploration will be as exciting for this generation, as the dawn of the space age was for me!

The star Arcturus appears in the western sky around midnight.

The star Arcturus in the western sky after midnight on July 16th. Credit: Stellarium / Bob Trembley.

Jupiter is high and the star Antares is low in the southwestern sky around midnight all week.

Jupiter and the star Antares in the southwestern sky after midnight on July 16th. Credit: Stellarium / Bob Trembley.

The Moon will appear near Saturn in the Southern sky after sunset on July 16^th & 17^th.

The Moon appears near Saturn after sunset on July 16 and 17th. Credit: Stellarium / Bob Trembley.

The constellation Ursa Major and the “Big Dipper” asterism appear low in the northern sky around 2:00 AM all week.

The constellation Ursa Major and the “Big Dipper” asterism in the northern sky around 2:00 AM on July 16th. Credit: Stellarium / Bob Trembley.

Venus appears very low towards the northeastern horizon just before sunrise.

Venus appears very low near the northeastern horizon before sunrise on July 16th. Credit: Stellarium / Bob Trembley.

Tarantula Nebula

Heart of the Tarantula Nebula. Credit: NASA, ESA, and D. Lennon (ESA/STScI)

Several million young stars reside in a nearby region of frenzied star birth known as 30 Doradus. Located 170,000 light-years away in the heart of the Tarantula Nebula, 30 Doradus is part of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small, satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. It is the brightest star-forming region visible in a neighboring galaxy, and it is home to the most massive stars ever seen. No known star-forming region inside the Milky Way Galaxy is as large or as prolific as 30 Doradus.

The intense star birth in 30 Doradus may be fueled partly by its close proximity to the Small Magellanic Cloud, a companion to its host galaxy. 30 Doradus churns out stars at a furious pace over millions of years. The Hubble image reveals the stages of star birth, from embryonic stars a few thousand years old and still wrapped in cocoons of dark gas, to behemoths that die young in supernova explosions.

Hubble observations show star clusters of various ages, from about 2 million to 25 million years old. Collectively, the stars comprise a bulk material millions of times the mass of the Sun. 30 Doradus contains one of the most rapidly rotating stars and the fastest moving stars ever observed.

The region’s sparkling centerpiece is a giant, young star cluster named NGC 2070, only 2 million to 3 million years old. Its stellar inhabitants number roughly 500,000. The cluster is a hotbed for young, massive stars. Its dense core, known as R136, is packed with several dozen of the most massive stars known, each about 100 times the mass of the Sun and about 10 times as hot. The cluster also harbors many thousands of smaller stars. For many years, it defied analysis from ground-based observations because of the facilities’ inadequate resolution. It was once even suggested to be a single “superstar,” about 3,000 times the mass of the Sun, until high-resolution images showed that it was actually many smaller stars.

The massive stars are carving deep cavities in the surrounding material by unleashing a torrent of ultraviolet light. This light is winnowing away the enveloping hydrogen gas cloud in which the stars were born. The Hubble image reveals a fantastic landscape of pillars, ridges, and valleys. Besides sculpting the gaseous terrain, the brilliant stars may be triggering a successive generation of offspring. When the ultraviolet radiation hits dense walls of gas, it creates shocks, which may generate a new wave of star birth.

30 Doradus is a “Rosetta Stone” for understanding regions of intense star formation. Many small galaxies exhibit more spectacular star birth, but 30 Doradus is near enough to Earth for its stellar contents and nebular structures to be studied in detail. Astronomers using Hubble can resolve individual stars, which provide important information about the stars’ birth and evolution.

Elena Sabbi of the Space Telescope Science Institute has studied how star formation propagates across the region. Daniel Lennon of the European Space Astronomy Centre in Spain is calculating the directions of motion of massive runaway stars, searching in particular for the origins of massive stars that have been ejected from R136.

Regions such as 30 Doradus are vital contributors to the evolution of galaxies and even life, because massive stars synthesize many of the heavier chemical elements in their nuclear furnaces and final supernova explosions. The explosions disperse the heavy elements to the surrounding interstellar medium, where new stars and planetary systems form from the enriched material. – NASA / Hubblesite.org

The full Moon occurs on July 16^th – rising at sunset, visible high in the sky around midnight, and up all night.

After July 16^th, the Moon will be a waning gibbous – rising after sunset, visible high in the sky after midnight, and visible to the southwest after sunrise. This is the phase of the Moon when people sometimes ask me “Why can I see the Moon during the day?”

The Moon from July 16-22, 2019. Visualizations by Ernie Wright / NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio.

Moon News

The Sun has been spot-free for 8 days; large coronal holes appear at both poles, although this week no large coronal holes appear near the equator.

SpaceWeather.com says: “Earth is exiting a stream of solar wind flowing from a hole in the Sun’s atmosphere. The day-long enhancement in solar wind velocity caused by this stream did little to spark geomagnetic activity. Better luck next time? Another stream of solar wind is due to arrive on July 19th”

Some exciting prominence activity on the Sun’s limb the last couple days!

The solar wind speed is 364.4 km/sec (↓), with a density of 2.6 protons/cm³ (↓).

Animated LASCO C2 Coronograph showing the solar corona above the Sun’s limb (the white circle). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Sun News

I just found this Interactive Solar Cycle Progression Graph at SpaceWeatherLive.com.

Solar Cycle Progression – July 16, 2019 from SpaceWeatherLive.com

Upcoming Earth-asteroid encounters:

Notes: LD means “Lunar Distance.” 1 LD = 384,401 km, the distance between Earth and the Moon. Table from SpaceWeather.com

On July 15, 2019, the NASA All Sky Fireball Network reported 39 fireballs.
(39 sporadics)

In this diagram of the inner solar system, all of the fireball orbits intersect at a single point–Earth. The orbits are color-coded by velocity, from slow (red) to fast (blue). From: Spaceweather.com

Fireball & Meteor News:

This is the position of the planets and a couple bodies in the solar system:

Solar System News – 4 Years Since Pluto Flyby!

OSIRIS-REx Asteroid Sample Return Mission

Voyager Spacecraft – New Management Plans

Landsat

Astronaut on the International Space Station Captures Michigan’s U.P.

This is where I went to college, and met my wife; it’s beautiful country, and will always hold a special place in my heart.
https://twitter.com/BalrogsLair/status/1149302442355507200

Climate

Data from the NASA Exoplanet Archive

Exoplanet Artwork by Bob Trembley

Simulation of possible Brown Dwarf AB Pictoris b. Credit: SpaceEngine / Bob Trembley

AB Pictoris b is an extrasolar planet or possible brown dwarf orbiting the K-type star AB Pictoris, located around 154 light years away from Earth. The estimated mass of this planet is 13.5 Jupiter masses, but because modeling such young objects is difficult, the true mass of the planet remains unknown. Certain models predict the planets mass to be around 11 Jupiter masses, but others predict it to be as high as 70 Jupiter masses. Using evolutionary models the planet should be around 13 Jupiter masses. As the actual mass is not known and isn’t known if the mass of the objects exceeds the deuterium burning limit, it is unclear whether or not the planet should be identified as a extrasolar planet or a brown dwarf. – Astronomy WiKi | FANDOM.com

Coronagraphic image of AB Pictoris showing its tiny companion (bottom left). The data was obtained on 16 March 2003 with NACO on the VLT, using a 1.4 arcsec occulting mask on top of AB Pictoris. Credit: ESO

New Measurement of How Fast the Universe is Expanding

Hubble Pic of the Week: Spiral Galaxy NGC 2985

Apps used for this post:

NASA Eyes on the Solar System: an immersive 3D solar system and space mission simulator – free for the PC /MAC. I maintain the unofficial