Science
See Galaxies From the Last 10 Billion Years: Hubble Captures Largest Near-Infrared Image To Find Universe's Rarest Galaxies – SciTechDaily
There is a patch of the sky known as the COSMOS field, a region rich with galaxies, that was chosen for the Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS) project. For the first time, a complete near-infrared survey of the entire COSMOS field, imaged by the <span class="glossaryLink" aria-describedby="tt" data-cmtooltip="
” data-gt-translate-attributes=”["attribute":"data-cmtooltip", "format":"html"]”>Hubble Space Telescope, is being provided to researchers via 3D-DASH.
Although Hubble launched in 1990, a series of five servicing missions have kept it on the cutting edge of technology for the last 30 years. 3D-DASH will allow scientists to find rare objects that the brand new Webb Space Telescope can target for close-up study.
An international team of scientists recently released the largest near-infrared image ever taken by <span class="glossaryLink" aria-describedby="tt" data-cmtooltip="
” data-gt-translate-attributes=”["attribute":"data-cmtooltip", "format":"html"]”>NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, enabling astronomers to map the star-forming regions of the universe and learn how the earliest, most distant galaxies originated. Named 3D-DASH, this high-resolution survey will allow researchers to find rare objects and targets for follow-up observations with the recently launched James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) during its decades-long mission.
The study will be published in The Astrophysical Journal.
“Since its launch more than 30 years ago, the Hubble Space Telescope has led a renaissance in the study of how galaxies have changed in the last 10 billion years of the universe,” says Lamiya Mowla, Dunlap Fellow at the Faculty of Arts & Science’s Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics at the University of Toronto and lead author of the study.
“The 3D-DASH program extends Hubble’s legacy in wide-area imaging so we can begin to unravel the mysteries of the galaxies beyond our own.”
For the first time, 3D-DASH provides researchers with a complete near-infrared survey of the entire COSMOS field, one of the richest data fields for extragalactic studies beyond the <span class="glossaryLink" aria-describedby="tt" data-cmtooltip="
” data-gt-translate-attributes=”["attribute":"data-cmtooltip", "format":"html"]”>Milky Way. As the longest and reddest wavelength observed with Hubble – just beyond what is visible to the human eye – near-infrared means astronomers are better able to see the earliest galaxies that are the farthest away.
Astronomers also need to search a vast area of the sky to find rare objects in the universe. Until now, such a large image was only available from the ground and suffered from poor resolution, which limited what could be observed. 3D-DASH will help to identify unique phenomena like the universe’s most massive galaxies, highly active black holes, and galaxies on the brink of colliding and merging into one.
“I am curious about monster galaxies, which are the most massive ones in the universe formed by the mergers of other galaxies. How did their structures grow, and what drove the changes in their form?” says Mowla, who began working on the project in 2015 as a graduate student at <span class="glossaryLink" aria-describedby="tt" data-cmtooltip="
” data-gt-translate-attributes=”["attribute":"data-cmtooltip", "format":"html"]”>Yale University. “It was difficult to study these extremely rare events using existing images, which is what motivated the design of this large survey.”
To image such an expansive patch of sky, the researchers employed a new technique with Hubble known as Drift And SHift (DASH). DASH creates an image that is eight times larger than Hubble’s standard field of view by capturing multiple shots that are then stitched together into one master mosaic, similar to taking a panoramic picture on a smartphone.
DASH also takes images faster than the typical technique, snapping eight pictures per Hubble’s orbit instead of one picture, achieving in 250 hours what would previously have taken 2,000 hours.
“3D-DASH adds a new layer of unique observations in the COSMOS field and is also a stepping stone to the space surveys of the next decade,” says Ivelina Momcheva, head of data science at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy and principal investigator of the study. “It gives us a sneak peek of future scientific discoveries and allows us to develop new techniques to analyze these large datasets.”
3D-DASH covers a total area almost six times the size of the moon in the sky as seen from Earth. This record is likely to remain unbroken by Hubble’s successor, JWST, which is instead built for sensitive, close-up images to capture fine detail of a small area. It is the largest near-infrared image of the sky available to astronomers until the next generation of telescopes launch in the next decade, such as the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and Euclid.
Until then, professional astronomers and amateur stargazers alike can explore the skies using an interactive, online version of the 3D-DASH image created by Gabriel Brammer, a faculty member at the Cosmic Dawn Center in the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen.
Reference: “3D-DASH: The Widest Near-Infrared Hubble Space Telescope Survey” by Lamiya A. Mowla, Sam E. Cutler, Gabriel B. Brammer, Ivelina G. Momcheva, Katherine E. Whitaker, Pieter G. van Dokkum, Rachel S. Bezanson, Natascha M. Forster Schreiber, Marijn Franx, Kartheik G. Iyer, Danilo Marchesini, Adam Muzzin, Erica J. Nelson, Rosalind E. Skelton, Gregory F. Snyder, David A. Wake, Stijn Wuyts and Arjen van der Wel, Accepted, The Astrophysical Journal.
DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ac71af
arXiv:2206.01156
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and European Space Agency (ESA). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center manages the telescope in Greenbelt, Maryland. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Washington, D.C.
The full image is available at the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes.
Science
Marine plankton could act as alert in mass extinction event: UVic researcher – Saanich News
A University of Victoria micropaleontologist found that marine plankton may act as an early alert system before a mass extinction occurs.
With help from collaborators at the University of Bristol and Harvard, Andy Fraass’ newest paper in the Nature journal shows that after an analysis of fossil records showed that plankton community structures change before a mass extinction event.
“One of the major findings of the paper was how communities respond to climate events in the past depends on the previous climate,” Fraass said in a news release. “That means that we need to spend a lot more effort understanding recent communities, prior to industrialization. We need to work out what community structure looked like before human-caused climate change, and what has happened since, to do a better job at predicting what will happen in the future.”
According to the release, the fossil record is the most complete and extensive archive of biological changes available to science and by applying advanced computational analyses to the archive, researchers were able to detail the global community structure of the oceans dating back millions of years.
A key finding of the study was that during the “early eocene climatic optimum,” a geological era with sustained high global temperatures equivalent to today’s worst case global warming scenarios, marine plankton communities moved to higher latitudes and only the most specialized plankton remained near the equator, suggesting that the tropical temperatures prevented higher amounts of biodiversity.
“Considering that three billion people live in the tropics, the lack of biodiversity at higher temperatures is not great news,” paper co-leader Adam Woodhouse said in the release.
Next, the team plans to apply similar research methods to other marine plankton groups.
Read More: Global study, UVic researcher analyze how mammals responded during pandemic
Science
The largest marine reptile ever could match blue whales in size – Ars Technica
Blue whales have been considered the largest creatures to ever live on Earth. With a maximum length of nearly 30 meters and weighing nearly 200 tons, they are the all-time undisputed heavyweight champions of the animal kingdom.
Now, digging on a beach in Somerset, UK, a team of British paleontologists found the remains of an ichthyosaur, a marine reptile that could give the whales some competition. “It is quite remarkable to think that gigantic, blue-whale-sized ichthyosaurs were swimming in the oceans around what was the UK during the Triassic Period,” said Dean Lomax, a paleontologist at the University of Manchester who led the study.
Giant jawbones
Ichthyosaurs were found in the seas through much of the Mesozoic era, appearing as early as 250 million years ago. They had four limbs that looked like paddles, vertical tail fins that extended downward in most species, and generally looked like large, reptilian dolphins with elongated narrow jaws lined with teeth. And some of them were really huge. The largest ichthyosaur skeleton so far was found in British Columbia, Canada, measured 21 meters, and belonged to a particularly massive ichthyosaur called Shonisaurus sikanniensis. But it seems they could get even larger than that.
What Lomax’s team found in Somerset was a surangular, a long, curved bone that all reptiles have at the top of the lower jaw, behind the teeth. The bone measured 2.3 meters—compared to the surangular found in the Shonisaurus sikanniensis skeleton, it was 25 percent larger. Using simple scaling and assuming the same body proportions, Lomax’s team estimated the size of this newly found ichthyosaur at somewhere between 22 and 26 meters, which would make it the largest marine reptile ever. But there was one more thing.
Examining the surangular, the team did not find signs of the external fundamental system (EFS), which is a band of tissue present in the outermost cortex of the bone. Its formation marks a slowdown in bone growth, indicating skeletal maturity. In other words, the giant ichthyosaur was most likely young and still growing when it died.
Correcting the past
In 1846, five large bones were found at the Aust Cliff near Bristol in southwestern England. Dug out from the upper Triassic rock formation, they were dubbed “dinosaurian limb bone shafts” and were exhibited in the Bristol Museum, where one of them was destroyed by bombing during World War II.
But in 2005, Peter M. Galton, a British paleontologist then working at the University of Bridgeport, noticed something strange in one of the remaining Aust Cliff bones. He described it as an “unusual foramen” and suggested it was a nutrient passage. Later studies generally kept attributing those bones to dinosaurs but pointed out things like an unusual microstructure that was difficult to explain.
According to Lomax, all this confusion was because the Aust Cliff bones did not belong to dinosaurs and were not parts of limbs. He pointed out that the nutrient foramen morphology, shape, and microstructure matched with the ichthyosaur’s bone found in Somerset. The difference was that the EFS—the mark of mature bones—was present on the Aust Cliff bones. If Lomax is correct and they really were parts of ichthyosaurs’ surangular, they belonged to a grown individual.
And using the same scaling technique applied to the Somerset surangular, Lomax estimated this grown individual to be over 30 meters long—slightly larger than the biggest confirmed blue whale.
Looming extinction
“Late Triassic ichthyosaurs likely reached the known biological limits of vertebrates in terms of size. So much about these giants is still shrouded by mystery, but one fossil at a time, we will be able to unravel their secrets,” said Marcello Perillo, a member of the Lomax team responsible for examining the internal structure of the bones.
This mystery beast didn’t last long, though. The surangular bone found in Somerset was buried just beneath a layer full of seismite and tsunamite rocks that indicate the onset of the end-Triassic mass extinction event, one of the five mass extinctions in Earth’s history. The Ichthyotian severnensis, as Lomax and his team named the species, probably managed to reach an unbelievable size but was wiped out soon after.
The end-Triassic mass extinction was not the end of all ichthyosaurs, though. They survived but never reached similar sizes again. They faced competition from plesiosaurs and sharks that were more agile and swam much faster, and they likely competed for the same habitats and food sources. The last known ichthyosaurs went extinct roughly 90 million years ago.
PLOS ONE, 2024. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0300289
Science
Jeremy Hansen – The Canadian Encyclopedia
Early Life and Education
Jeremy Hansen grew up on a farm near the community of Ailsa Craig, Ontario, where he attended elementary school. His family moved to Ingersoll,
Ontario, where he attended Ingersoll District Collegiate Institute. At age 12 he joined the 614 Royal Canadian Air Cadet Squadron in London, Ontario. At 16 he earned his Air Cadet
glider pilot wings and at 17 he earned his private pilot licence and wings. After graduating from high school and Air Cadets, Hansen was accepted for officer training in the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF). He was trained at Chilliwack, British Columbia, and the Royal Military College at Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu,
Quebec. Hansen then enrolled in the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston,
Ontario. In 1999, he completed a Bachelor of Science in space science with First Class Honours and was a Top Air Force Graduate from the Royal Military College. In 2000, he completed his Master of Science in physics with a focus on wide field of view satellite tracking.
CAF Pilot
In 2003, Jeremy Hansen completed training as a CF-18 fighter pilot with the 410 Tactical Fighter Operational Training Squadron at Cold Lake, Alberta.
From 2004 to 2009, he served by flying CF-18s with the 441 Tactical Fighter Squadron and the 409 Tactical Fighter Squadron. He also flew as Combat Operations Officer at 4 Wing Cold Lake. Hansen’s responsibilities included NORAD operations effectiveness,
Arctic flying operations and deployed exercises. He was promoted to the rank of colonel in 2017. (See also Royal Canadian Air Force.)
Career as an Astronaut
In May 2009, Jeremy Hansen and David Saint-Jacques were chosen out of 5,351 applicants in the Canadian Space Agency’s
(CSA) third Canadian Astronaut Recruitment Campaign. He graduated from Astronaut Candidate Training in 2011 and began working at the Mission Control Center in Houston, Texas, as capsule communicator (capcom, the person in Mission Control who speaks directly
to the astronauts in space.
As a CSA astronaut, Hansen continues to develop his skills. In 2013, he underwent training in the High Arctic and learned how to conduct geological fieldwork (see Arctic Archipelago;
Geology). That same year, he participated in the European Space Agency’s CAVES program in Sardinia, Italy. In that human performance experiment Hansen lived underground for six days.
In 2014, Hansen was a member of the crew of NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) 19. He spent seven days off Key Largo, Florida, living in the Aquarius habitat on the ocean floor, which is used to simulate conditions of the International
Space Station and different gravity fields. In 2017, Hansen became the first Canadian to lead a NASA astronaut class, in which he trained astronaut candidates from Canada and the United States.
Did you know?
Hansen has been instrumental in encouraging young people to become part of the STEM (Science, Technology,
Engineering, Mathematics) workforce with the aim of encouraging future generations of space explorers.
His inspirational work in Canada includes flying a historical “Hawk One” F-86 Sabre jet.
Artemis II
In April 2023, Hansen was chosen along with Americans Christina Koch, Victor Glover and Reid Wiseman to crew NASA’s Artemis II mission to the moon. The mission, scheduled for no earlier
than September 2025 after a delay due to technical problems, marks NASA’s first manned moon voyage since Apollo 17 in 1972. The Artemis II astronauts will not land on the lunar
surface, but will orbit the moon in an Orion spacecraft. They will conduct tests in preparation for future manned moon landings, the establishment of an orbiting space station called Lunar Gateway, or Gateway, and a base on the moon’s surface where astronauts
can live and work for extended periods. The path taken by Orion will carry the astronauts farther from Earth than any humans have previously travelled. Hansen’s participation in Artemis II is a direct result of Canada’s contribution of Canadarm3
to Lunar Gateway. (See also Canadarm; Canadian Space Agency.)
“Being part of the Artemis II crew is both exciting and humbling. I’m excited to leverage my experience, training and knowledge to take on this challenging mission on behalf of Canada. I’m humbled by the incredible contributions and hard work of so many
Canadians that have made this opportunity a reality. I am proud and honoured to represent my country on this historic mission.” – Jeremy Hansen (Canadian Space Agency, 2023)
Did you know?
On his Artemis II trip, Hansen will wear an Indigenous-designed mission patch created for him by Anishinaabe artist Henry Guimond.
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