Science
Webb Telescope observes a globular cluster sparkling with separate stars – Phys.org
On June 20, 2022, the James Webb Space Telescope spent just over one hour staring at Messier 92 (M92), a globular cluster 27,000 light-years away in the Milky Way halo. The observation—among the very first science observations undertaken by Webb—is part of Early Release Science (ERS) program 1334, one of 13 ERS programs designed to help astronomers understand how to use Webb and make the most of its scientific capabilities.
NASA spoke with Matteo Correnti from the Italian Space Agency; Alessandro Savino from the University of California, Berkeley; Roger Cohen from Rutgers University; and Andy Dolphin from Raytheon Technologies to find out more about Webb’s observations of M92 and how the team is using the data to help other astronomers. (Last November, Kristen McQuinn talked with NASA about her work on the dwarf galaxy WLM, which is also part of this program.)
Tell us about this ERS program. What are you trying to accomplish?
Alessandro Savino: This particular program is focused on resolved stellar populations. These are large groups of stars like M92 that are very nearby—close enough that Webb can single out the individual stars in the system. Scientifically, observations like these are very exciting because it is from our cosmic neighborhood that we learn a lot of the physics of stars and galaxies that we can translate to objects that we see much farther away.
Matteo Correnti: We’re also trying to understand the telescope better. This project has been instrumental for improving the calibration (making sure all of the measurements are as accurate as possible), for improving the data for other astronomers and other similar projects.
Why did you decide to look at M92 in particular?
Savino: Globular clusters like M92 are very important for our understanding of stellar evolution. For decades they have been a primary benchmark for understanding how stars work, how stars evolve. M92 is a classic globular cluster. It’s close by; we understand it relatively well; it’s one of our references in studies of stellar evolution and stellar systems.
Correnti: Another reason M92 is important is because it is one of the oldest globular clusters in the Milky Way, if not the oldest one. We think M92 is between 12 and 13 billion years old. It contains some of the oldest stars that we can find, or at least that we can resolve and characterize well. We can use nearby clusters like this as tracers of the very ancient universe.
Roger Cohen: We also chose M92 because it is very dense: There are a lot of stars packed together very closely. (The center of the cluster is thousands of times denser than the region around the sun.) Looking at M92 allows us to test how Webb performs in this particular regime, where we need to make measurements of stars that are very close together.
What are the characteristics of a globular cluster that make it useful for studying how stars evolve?
Andy Dolphin: One of the main things is that the bulk of the stars in M92 would have formed at roughly the same time and with roughly the same mix of elements, but with a wide range of masses. So we can get a really good survey of this particular population of stars.
Savino: Also, since the stars all belong to the same object (the same globular cluster, M92), we know they are all about the same distance away from us. That helps us a lot because we know that differences in brightness between the different stars must be intrinsic, instead of just related to how far away they are. It makes the comparison with models much, much easier.
This star cluster has already been studied with the Hubble Space Telescope and other telescopes. What can we see with Webb that we have not seen already?
Cohen: One of the important differences between Webb and Hubble is that Webb operates at longer wavelengths, where very cool, low-mass stars give off most of their light. Webb is well-designed to observe very cool stars. We were actually able to reach down to the lowest mass stars—stars less than 0.1 times the mass of the sun. This is interesting because this is very close to the boundary where stars stop being stars. (Below this boundary are brown dwarfs, which are so low-mass that they’re not able to ignite hydrogen in their cores.)
Correnti: Webb is also a lot faster. To see the very faint low-mass stars with Hubble, you need hundreds of hours of telescope time. With Webb, it takes just a few hours.
Cohen: These observations weren’t actually designed to push very hard on the limits of the telescope. So it’s very encouraging to see that we were still able to detect such small, faint stars without trying really, really hard.
What’s so interesting about these low-mass stars?
Savino: First of all, they are the most numerous stars in the universe. Second, from a theoretical point of view, they are very interesting because they’ve always been very difficult to observe and characterize. Especially stars less than half the mass of the sun, where our current understanding of stellar models is a little more uncertain.
Correnti: Studying the light these low-mass stars emit can also help us better constrain the age of the globular cluster. That helps us better understand when different parts of the Milky Way (like the halo, where M92 is located) formed. And that has implications for our understanding of cosmic history.
It looks like there’s big gap in the middle of the image you captured. What is that and why is it there?
Dolphin: This image was made using Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). NIRCam has two modules, with a “chip gap” between the two. The center of the cluster is extremely crowded, extremely bright. So that would have limited the usefulness of the data from that region. The position of these images overlaps nicely with Hubble data available already.
One of your main goals was to provide tools for other scientists. What are you particularly excited about?
Dolphin: One of the key resources we developed and have made available to the astronomical community is something called the DOLPHOT NIRCam module. This works with an existing piece of software used to automatically detect and measure the brightness of stars and other unresolved objects (things with a star-like appearance). This was developed for cameras on Hubble. Adding this module for NIRCam (as well as one for NIRISS, another of Webb’s instruments) allows astronomers the same analysis procedure they know from Hubble, with the additional benefit of now being able to analyze Hubble and Webb data in a single pass to get combined-telescope star catalogs.
Savino: This is a really big community service component. It’s helpful for everyone. It’s making analysis much easier.
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If last week’s solar eclipse piqued your interest in astronomy, the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada’s Windsor Chapter plans to show off some of the more dramatic photos and videos members took of the event.
They were stationed along the path of totality along the northern shore of Lake Erie and in the U.S.
“People did take some nice photos with their cellphones, but we have members who took photos and videos with their telescopes,” said member Tom Sobocan. “You’ll see some pretty impressive shots.”
About 100 members are in the local chapter, which meets every third Tuesday of every month.
Thursday’s meeting is at the Ojibway Nature Centre on Matchette Road. It starts at 7:30, and it’s open to the public. Seating is limited, so Sobocan recommends arriving early.
Astronomers are looking ahead to new wonders in the heavens. Right now, the Pons-Brooks Comet, another once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, is approaching Jupiter in the constellation of Aries.
“If you’re in a dark-sky location, you can see it with the naked eye, and from inside the city, you can see it with binoculars,” said Sobocan. “It may get a little bit brighter going towards the fall, but our members have already photographed it with their telescopes.”
It’s a periodic comet which appears in the night sky once every 71 years.
Sobocan said once-in-a-lifetime events, like last week’s eclipse, inspired many of its existing members, but he hopes some new ones will join the group.
“I hope it inspires them to look up at the sky a little bit more often and realize that everything’s in motion in the sky,” he said. “It’s not stationary.”
Science
Giant, 82-foot lizard fish discovered on UK beach could be largest marine reptile ever found – Livescience.com
Scientists have unearthed the remains of a gigantic, 200 million-year-old sea monster that may be the largest marine reptile ever discovered.
The newfound creature is a member of a group called ichthyosaurs, which were among the dominant sea predators during the Mesozoic era (251.9 million to 66 million years ago). The newly described species lived during the end of the Triassic period (251.9 million to 201.4 million years ago).
Ichthyosaurs had already attained massive sizes by the early portion of the Mesozoic, but it was not until the late Triassic that the largest species emerged.
While the Mesozoic is known as the age of the dinosaurs, ichthyosaurs were not themselves dinosaurs. Instead, they evolved from another group of reptiles. Their evolutionary path closely mirrors that of whales, which evolved from terrestrial mammals that later returned to the sea. And like whales, they breathed air and gave birth to live young.
The newly discovered ichthyosaur species was unearthed in pieces between 2020 and 2022 at Blue Anchor, Somerset in the United Kingdom. The first chunk of the fossil was noticed atop a rock on the beach, indicating that a passerby had found it and set it there for others to examine, the researchers explained in the paper. The researchers published their findings April 17 in the journal PLOS One.
The reptile’s remains are made up of a series of 12 fragments from a surangular bone, which is found in the upper portion of the lower jaw. The researchers estimate the bone was 6.5 feet (2 meters) long and that the living animal was about 82 feet (25 m) long.
The researchers named the sea monster Ichthyotitan severnensis, meaning giant lizard fish of the Severn, after the Severn Estuary where it was found. The team believes it is not only a new species but an entirely new genus of ichthyosaur. More than 100 species are already known.
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A number of rib fragments and a coprolite, or fossilized feces, were found in the area as well, but they were not definitively attributed to the same animal.
The sediments in which these specimens were found contained rocks that indicated earthquakes and tsunamis occurred during that time, which suggests that this species lived during a time of intense volcanic activity that may have led to a massive extinction event at the end of the Triassic according to the researchers.
A similar specimen was discovered in Lilstock, Somerset in 2016 and described in 2018. Both were found in what is known at the Westbury Mudstone Formation, within 6 miles (10 kilometers) of each other. This ichthyosaur was estimated to have been as much as 85 feet (26 m) long, although the authors of the latest study believe it was slightly smaller.
The previous contender for the largest marine reptile was another ichthyosaur, Shonisaurus sikanniensis, which was up to 69 feet (21 m) long. S. sikanniensis appeared 13 million years earlier than I. severnensis and was found in British Columbia, making it unlikely that the new discovery represents another specimen of the previously known species.
A similarly massive ichthyosaur called Himalayasaurus tibetensis, which may have reached lengths of 49 feet (15 m), was discovered in Tibet and described in 1972. It dates to the same period, meaning that it probably is not the same species as the new discovery either.
I. severnensis was likely among the last of the giant ichthyosaurs, the researchers claim. Ichthyosaurs persisted into the Cenomanian Age (100.5 million to 93.9 million years ago) of the late Cretaceous period (100.5 million to 66 million years ago). They were eventually supplanted by plesiosaurs — long-necked marine reptiles that went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous, alongside all non-avian dinosaurs.
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The Canadian Space Agency also received a proposed $8.6 million for its lunar program
Nicole Mortillaro (new window) · CBC News
Canada’s space sector received a boost from the federal government in its budget, both in terms of money and vision.
The 2024 budget (new window) included a proposal for $8.6 million in 2024-25 to the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) for the Lunar Exploration Accelerator Program (new window) (LEAP), which invests in technologies for humanity’s return to the moon and beyond.
In addition to the funding, the federal government also announced the creation of a National Space Council, which will be a new whole-of-government approach to space exploration, technology development, and research.
For Space Canada (new window), an organization comprised of roughly 80 space sector companies including some of Canada’s largest, such as Magellan Aerospace (new window), Maritime Launch (new window) and MDA Space (new window), it was a welcome announcement.
We’ve been advocating for it since the inception of our organization, and we were really very happy, and we applaud the federal government’s commitment announced in the budget,
said Brian Gallant, CEO of Space Canada.
Gallant said that investment in space is an investment in Canada.
Two-thirds of space sector jobs are STEM jobs. These are good paying solid jobs for Canadians. And on top of that, we have approximately $2.8 billion that is injected into the Canadian economy because of the space sector,
he said.
The U.S. formed its National Space Council in 1989, but it was disbanded in 1992 and reestablished in 2017.
In the 2023 budget (new window), the government announced proposed spending of $1.2 billion over 13 years, that was to begin in 2024-25, to the CSA’s contribution of a lunar utility (new window) vehicle that would assist astronauts on the moon. The as–yet–developed vehicle could help astronauts move cargo from landing sites to habitats, perform science investigations or support them during spacewalks on the surface of the moon.
It also proposed to invest $150 million over five years for the LEAP program.
MDA Space, the company behind Canadarm, was also pleased with the announcement.
Canada has an enviable global competitive advantage in space and the creation of a National Space Council is critical to Canada maintaining that leadership position,
CEO Mike Greenley said in an email to CBC News.
Space is now a rapidly growing, highly strategic and competitive domain, and there is a real and urgent need to recognize its importance to the lives of Canadians and to our economy and national security.
The next project for MDA is Canadarm3, which will be part of Lunar Gateway, a international space station that will orbit the moon. It will serve as a sort of jumping-off point for astronauts heading to the moon and eventually beyond.
The Lunar Gateway is a great opportunity for Canada and for MDA Space to not only provide the next generation of Canadarm robotics but to clearly plant our flag as a core national and industry participant in the Artemis era,
Greenley said.
Lunar Gateway is set to begin construction no earlier than 2025 (new window), according to NASA.
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