Saturday, April 29, 2023

On This Day in 2013: Remembering My HALO Jump!

"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."
-Leonardo da Vinci

Soaring about 30,000 feet above Whiteville, Tennessee...on April 29, 2013.

So today marks 10 years since I flew to Tennessee to do a HALO jump!

According to my jumpmaster on that flight (who's also the owner of Halojumper.com, the website that I booked this jump through), I was apparently the first Filipino ever to do a civilian HALO tandem skydive! Pretty cool...if true.

I found out last year (through one of my brothers, who also told me about the Tennessee-based HALO jump back in 2006) that I can travel up to Northern California to leap out of a plane from 30,000 feet in the air! (I live in Los Angeles County.)

This comes courtesy of SkyDance Skydiving...which is based in the NorCal city of Davis.

Unfortunately, the SkyDance Skydiving website doesn't mention the price of a HALO tandem jump—but I'm guessing it might be in the 4-figure dollar range like my skydive in Tennessee! If it is, then it's all good if I don't end up doing it; my goal was to jump from the altitude that passenger jets cruise in on their flights at least once.

I have other activities remaining on my bucket list to achieve! Anyways, here are photos from my high-altitude, low-opening skydive in 2013...

LINK: Click here for more images from my HALO tandem skydive

Getting seated as the Super King Air gets ready to take off for my HALO tandem skydive...on April 29, 2013.

Waiting for the Super King Air to reach 30,000 feet...on April 29, 2013.

The free fall as seen from a GoPro camera attached to my left glove...on April 29, 2013.

Staring at my left GoPro camera after the parachute opens...on April 29, 2013.

Coming in for a landing at the West Tennessee Skydiving drop zone...on April 29, 2013.

Touchdown at the West Tennessee Skydiving drop zone...on April 29, 2013!

My HALO Jump certificate.

"Sometimes you have to go up so high to realize just how small you really are."
-Felix Baumgartner (October 14, 2012)

Wednesday, April 26, 2023

One of Humanity's Two Interstellar Robotic Explorers Will Use Backup Power to Continue Its Mission into the Unknown...

An artist's concept of a Voyager spacecraft venturing through the cosmos.
NASA / JPL - Caltech

NASA’s Voyager Will Do More Science With New Power Strategy (News Release)

The plan will keep Voyager 2’s science instruments turned on a few years longer than previously anticipated, enabling yet more revelations from interstellar space.

Launched in 1977, the Voyager 2 spacecraft is more than 12 billion miles (20 billion kilometers) from Earth, using five science instruments to study interstellar space. To help keep those instruments operating despite a diminishing power supply, the aging spacecraft has begun using a small reservoir of backup power set aside as part of an onboard safety mechanism.

The move will enable the mission to postpone shutting down a science instrument until 2026, rather than this year.

Voyager 2 and its twin Voyager 1 are the only spacecraft ever to operate outside the heliosphere, the protective bubble of particles and magnetic fields generated by the Sun. The probes are helping scientists answer questions about the shape of the heliosphere and its role in protecting Earth from the energetic particles and other radiation found in the interstellar environment.

“The science data that the Voyagers are returning gets more valuable the farther away from the Sun they go, so we are definitely interested in keeping as many science instruments operating as long as possible,” said Linda Spilker, Voyager’s project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which manages the mission for NASA.

Power to the Probes

Both Voyager probes power themselves with radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs), which convert heat from decaying plutonium into electricity. The continual decay process means the generator produces slightly less power each year.

So far, the declining power supply hasn’t impacted the mission’s science output, but to compensate for the loss, engineers have turned off heaters and other systems that are not essential to keeping the spacecraft flying.

With those options now exhausted on Voyager 2, one of the spacecraft’s five science instruments was next on their list. (Voyager 1 is operating one less science instrument than its twin because an instrument failed early in the mission. As a result, the decision about whether to turn off an instrument on Voyager 1 won’t come until sometime next year.)

In search of a way to avoid shutting down a Voyager 2 science instrument, the team took a closer look at a safety mechanism designed to protect the instruments in case the spacecraft’s voltage – the flow of electricity – changes significantly. Because a fluctuation in voltage could damage the instruments, Voyager is equipped with a voltage regulator that triggers a backup circuit in such an event.

The circuit can access a small amount of power from the RTG that’s set aside for this purpose. Instead of reserving that power, the mission will now be using it to keep the science instruments operating.

Although the spacecraft’s voltage will not be tightly regulated as a result, even after more than 45 years in flight, the electrical systems on both probes remain relatively stable, minimizing the need for a safety net. The engineering team is also able to monitor the voltage and respond if it fluctuates too much.

If the new approach works well for Voyager 2, the team may implement it on Voyager 1 as well.

“Variable voltages pose a risk to the instruments, but we’ve determined that it’s a small risk, and the alternative offers a big reward of being able to keep the science instruments turned on longer,” said Suzanne Dodd, Voyager’s project manager at JPL. “We’ve been monitoring the spacecraft for a few weeks, and it seems like this new approach is working.”

The Voyager mission was originally scheduled to last only four years, sending both probes past Saturn and Jupiter. NASA extended the mission so that Voyager 2 could visit Neptune and Uranus; it is still the only spacecraft ever to have encountered the ice giants.

In 1990, NASA extended the mission again, this time with the goal of sending the probes outside the heliosphere. Voyager 1 reached the boundary in 2012, while Voyager 2 (traveling slower and in a different direction than its twin) reached it in 2018.

Source: Jet Propulsion Laboratory

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A 1976 photo of a full-scale test article of NASA's Voyager probe inside a space simulator chamber at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge, California.
NASA / JPL - Caltech

Tuesday, April 25, 2023

SpaceX Has Been Selected by Astrobotic to Send Its Third Mission to the Moon in 2026...

SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket lifts off on its maiden flight from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida...on February 6, 2018.
SpaceX

Astrobotic Purchases Falcon Heavy Launch Services (Press Release)

Laurel, Maryland – Astrobotic announced today during the spring Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium (LSIC) its purchase of launch services aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket for its third upcoming lander mission to the Moon. This mission will launch an Astrobotic lander to the Moon’s South Pole in 2026 to deliver payload customer instruments and cargo from around the world.

The lunar south pole is an area of increasing interest and planned activity, and Astrobotic is rising to meet the demand for missions to this key destination with the purchase of a Falcon Heavy to deliver medium-class payloads.

“The NASA Artemis program is a major effort to establish a U.S. presence at the lunar south pole, and at the same time, international customers are also lining up plans to pioneer new science, exploration and commercial activities within this region as well,” said Astrobotic CEO, John Thornton. “With all this rising interest, we felt now is the time to announce our next commercial mission to deliver hundreds of kilograms of payload to the lunar south pole.”

This next mission lands at an area of intense interest for science instruments, technology demonstrators, rovers, power systems and other infrastructure. Astrobotic plans to carry lunar surface payloads, as well as offer satellite deployments for those looking to deploy to other destinations in cislunar space.

“This third mission represents our next step toward making the Moon an accessible destination for those who have sophisticated, long term plans for the south pole,” said Thornton.

Astrobotic’s third lunar mission is targeted to launch in 2026 aboard a Falcon Heavy from SpaceX’s facilities in Kennedy Space Center, Florida.

Source: Astrobotic

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Assembly is completed on the Peregrine lunar lander inside the cleanroom at Astrobotic's headquarters in Pittsburgh, PA...in November of 2022.
Astrobotic

Wednesday, April 19, 2023

THE MANDALORIAN: Din Djarin and Din Grogu's Latest Adventure Has Come to an End...

Grogu uses the Force to protect Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and Bo-Katan Kryze (Katee Sackhoff) in the Season 3 finale of THE MANDALORIAN, titled Chapter 24: 'The Return.'

So earlier today, at midnight actually, I watched the Season 3 finale of The Mandalorian on Disney+!

Titled Chapter 24, "The Return," this episode saw Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and his young apprentice Grogu (with his new name becoming Din Grogu after Djarin officially adopted him as his son after the climax) helping Bo-Katan Kryze (Katee Sackhoff) and their fellow Mandalorians finally take back their home world of Mandalore from the Empire.

Chapter 24 was action-packed, with Djarin and Bo-Katan dueling with their arch-nemesis Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito) for the final time, the other Mandalorians engaged in a fierce battle with Imperial Stormtroopers equipped with jetpacks and Beskar armor, and Grogu using his Force abilities to take on a trio of Praetorian Guards who would be the precursor to Supreme Leader Snoke's elite bodyguards in Star Wars: The Last Jedi.

The Return ended on a happy note, with Bo-Katan reclaiming her rightful place as the leader of Mandalore, and Din Djarin and Din Grogu settling into their new shack on Nevarro...courtesy of High Magistrate Greef Karga (once again portrayed by Carl Weathers).

But the adventures of the Mandalorian and Baby Yoda aren't over yet, as we learn by the end of the finale that Din Djarin wants to return to his old ways as a bounty hunter. The difference from his previous jobs, this time around, is him focusing the hunt on rogue Imperial warlords around the galaxy!

Season 4 has already been written, according to showrunners Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni, and I can't wait to see what it has in store for Djarin and Grogu! Grand Admiral Thrawn (brought to life by Lars Mikkelsen) will make his live-action debut in this August's Ahsoka—but we can all be confident that the titular Jedi (played by Rosario Dawson) and her fellow band of Star Wars Rebels won't be the only ones to have a run-in with the blue-skinned heir to the Empire...

The Mandalorian is clearly putting Din Djarin and Grogu on a collision course with the most powerful threat to the galaxy before the First Order came to be...and I look forward to the day that we watch this epic moment on Disney+ and on the big screen! Happy Hump Day.

Din Djarin is ready to battle a squad of Imperial Stormtroopers (off-screen) in the Season 3 finale of THE MANDALORIAN, titled Chapter 24: 'The Return.'

The Armorer (Emily Swallow), Bo-Katan Kryze and their fellow Mandalorians fly into battle in the Season 3 finale of THE MANDALORIAN, titled Chapter 24: 'The Return.'

Using the Force, Grogu effortlessly evades a trio of Praetorian Guards in the Season 3 finale of THE MANDALORIAN, titled Chapter 24: 'The Return.'

Bo-Katan Kryze has a final duel with Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito) in the Season 3 finale of THE MANDALORIAN, titled Chapter 24: 'The Return.'

Din Djarin and Din Grogu settle into their new home on the planet Nevarro in the Season 3 finale of THE MANDALORIAN, titled Chapter 24: 'The Return.'

Tuesday, April 18, 2023

On This Day in 2018: A Prolific Spacecraft Launched on Its Mission to Discover New Exoplanets...

An artist's concept of NASA's TESS satellite searching for exoplanets in deep space.
NASA GSFC

NASA’s TESS Celebrates Fifth Year Scanning the Sky for New Worlds (News Release)

Now in its fifth year in space, NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) remains a rousing success. TESS’s cameras have mapped more than 93% of the entire sky, discovered 329 new worlds and thousands more candidates, and provided new insights into a wide array of cosmic phenomena, from stellar pulsations and exploding stars to supermassive black holes.

Using its four cameras, TESS monitors large swaths of the sky called sectors for about a month at a time. Each sector measures 24 by 96 degrees, about as wide as a person’s hand at arm’s length and stretching from the horizon to the zenith.

The cameras capture a total of 192 million pixels in each full-frame image. During its primary mission, TESS captured one of these images every 30 minutes, but this torrent of data has increased with time.

The cameras now record each sector every 200 seconds.

“The volume of high-quality TESS data now available is quite impressive,” said Knicole Colón, the mission’s project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “We have more than 251 terabytes just for one of the main data products, called full-frame images. That’s the equivalent of streaming 167,000 movies in full HD.”

“TESS extracts parts of each full-frame image to make cutouts around specific cosmic objects – more than 467,000 of them at the moment – and together they create a detailed record of changing brightness for each one,” said Christina Hedges, lead for the TESS General Investigator Office and a research scientist at both the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and Goddard. “We use these files to produce light curves, a product that graphically shows how a source’s brightness alters over time.”

To find exoplanets, or worlds beyond our solar system, TESS looks for the telltale dimming of a star caused when an orbiting planet passes in front of it. But stars also change brightness for other reasons: exploding as supernovae, erupting in sudden flares, dark star spots on their rotating surfaces and even slight changes due to oscillations driven by internal sound waves.

The rapid, regular observations from TESS enable more detailed study of these phenomena.

Some stars give TESS a trifecta of brightness-changing behavior. One example is AU Microscopii, thought to be about 25 million years-old – a rowdy youngster less than 1% the age of our Sun.

Spotted regions on AU Mic’s surface grow and shrink, and the star’s rotation carries them into and out of sight. The stormy star also erupts with frequent flares.

With all this going on, TESS, with the help of NASA’s now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope, discovered a planet about four times Earth’s size orbiting the star every 8.5 days. Then, in 2022, scientists announced that TESS data revealed the presence of another, smaller world, one almost three times Earth’s size and orbiting every 18.9 days.

These discoveries have made the system a touchstone for understanding how stars and planets form and evolve.

Here are a few more of the mission’s greatest hits:

- TESS has observed hundreds of supernovae and thousands of other candidate transient, or short-lived, events so far.

- TOI 700 d was the first planet TESS found that orbits within its star’s habitable zone. That’s the range of orbital distances where liquid water potentially could exist on the planet’s surface.

In January, astronomers announced this Earth-sized world was joined by another, TOI 700 e, that also orbits in the star’s habitable or “Goldilocks” zone.

- The active galaxy ESO 253-3 hosts a 78-million-solar-mass black hole that flares up every 114 days, the first supermassive black hole shown to flare regularly. To understand why, astronomers combined ground-based observations of the flares with data from TESS, NASA’s Swift and NuSTAR telescopes, and the XMM-Newton satellite operated by ESA (the European Space Agency).

The most likely answer, they say, is that a giant star skims close enough to the monster black hole once each orbit that the black hole’s gravity strips away some stellar gas. This material falls inward, creating a flare when it strikes the vast disk of gas surrounding the black hole.

- TESS discovered a trio of hot worlds larger than Earth orbiting a much younger version of our Sun called TOI 451, located about 400 light-years away. The system was found in a newly-discovered “river” of stars called the Pisces-Eridanus stream, which stretches across one-third of the sky.

TESS showed that many of the stars revealed had star spots and rotated rapidly – clear evidence the stream was only 120 million years-old, or one-eighth the age of previous estimates.

New discoveries are waiting to be made within the huge volume of data TESS has already captured. This is a library of observations astronomers will explore for years, but there’s much more to come.

“We’re celebrating TESS’s fifth anniversary at work – and wishing it many happy returns!” Colón said.

TESS is a NASA Astrophysics Explorer mission led and operated by MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Additional partners include Northrop Grumman, based in Falls Church, Virginia; NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley; the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts; MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory; and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.

More than a dozen universities, research institutes and observatories worldwide are participants in the mission.

Source: NASA.Gov

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An infographic showing achievements made by NASA's TESS satellite since its launch in 2018.
NASA

Monday, April 17, 2023

Hubble's Successor Takes a Photo of an Ultra-Luminous Infrared Galaxy...

An image of the ultra-luminous infrared galaxy Arp 220 that was taken by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

Webb Captures the Spectacular Galactic Merger Arp 220 (News Release)

Shining like a brilliant beacon amidst a sea of galaxies, Arp 220 lights up the night sky in this view from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Actually two spiral galaxies in the process of merging, Arp 220 glows brightest in infrared light, making it an ideal target for Webb.

Arp 220 is an ultra-luminous infrared galaxy (ULIRG) with a luminosity of more than a trillion suns. In comparison, our Milky Way galaxy has a much more modest luminosity of about ten billion suns.

Located 250 million light-years away in the constellation of Serpens, the Serpent, Arp 220 is the 220th object in Halton Arp’s Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies. It is the nearest ULIRG and the brightest of the three galactic mergers closest to Earth.

The collision of the two spiral galaxies began about 700 million years ago. It sparked an enormous burst of star formation.

About 200 huge star clusters reside in a packed, dusty region about 5,000 light-years across (about 5 percent of the Milky Way's diameter). The amount of gas in this tiny region is equal to all of the gas in the entire Milky Way galaxy.

Previous radio telescope observations revealed about 100 supernova remnants in an area of less than 500 light-years. NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope uncovered the cores of the parent galaxies 1,200 light-years apart.

Each of the cores has a rotating, star-forming ring blasting out the dazzling infrared light so apparent in this Webb view. This glaring light creates diffraction spikes — the starburst feature that dominates this image.

On the outskirts of this merger, Webb reveals faint tidal tails, or material drawn off the galaxies by gravity, represented in blue — evidence of the galactic dance that is occurring. Organic material represented in reddish-orange appears in streams and filaments across Arp 220.

Webb viewed Arp 220 with its Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI).

Source: NASA.Gov

Tuesday, April 11, 2023

QueSST Update: NASA's Next X-Plane Has Received Its Lower Empennage...

The tail assembly is installed on NASA's X-59 QueSST aircraft at Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California.
Lockheed Martin

NASA's X-59 Tail Installed (News Release)

NASA’s X-59 has undergone final installation of its lower empennage, better known as the tail assembly. This series of images was taken at Lockheed Martin Skunk Works in Palmdale, California.

This installation allows the team to continue final wiring and system checkouts on the aircraft as it prepares for integrated ground testing, which will include engine runs and taxi tests.

Once complete, the X-59 aircraft is designed to demonstrate the ability to fly supersonic while reducing the loud sonic boom to a quiet sonic thump. This aircraft is the centerpiece of NASA’s QueSST mission.

Source: NASA.Gov

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The tail assembly is installed on NASA's X-59 QueSST aircraft at Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California.
Lockheed Martin

The tail assembly is installed on NASA's X-59 QueSST aircraft at Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California.
Lockheed Martin

An artist's concept of NASA's X-59 QueSST aircraft flying over a rural community in the United States.
NASA

Friday, April 07, 2023

Hubble's Successor Captures an Amazing View of a Stellar Explosion...

An image of the Cassiopeia A supernova that was taken by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.
NASA, ESA, CSA, D. D. Milisavljevic (Purdue), T. Temim (Princeton), I. De Looze (Ghent University). Image Processing: J. DePasquale (STScI)

Webb Reveals Never-Before-Seen Details in Cassiopeia A (News Release)

The explosion of a star is a dramatic event, but the remains the star leaves behind can be even more dramatic. A new mid-infrared image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope provides one stunning example.

It shows the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A (Cas A), created by a stellar explosion 340 years ago from Earth’s perspective. Cas A is the youngest known remnant from an exploding, massive star in our galaxy, which makes it a unique opportunity to learn more about how such supernovae occur.

“Cas A represents our best opportunity to look at the debris field of an exploded star and run a kind of stellar autopsy to understand what type of star was there beforehand and how that star exploded,” said Danny Milisavljevic of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, principal investigator of the Webb program that captured these observations.

“Compared to previous infrared images, we see incredible detail that we haven't been able to access before,” added Tea Temim of Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey, a co-investigator on the program.

Cassiopeia A is a prototypical supernova remnant that has been widely studied by a number of ground-based and space-based observatories, including NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. The multi-wavelength observations can be combined to provide scientists with a more comprehensive understanding of the remnant.

Dissecting the Image

The striking colors of the new Cas A image, in which infrared light is translated into visible-light wavelengths, hold a wealth of scientific information the team is just beginning to tease out. On the bubble’s exterior, particularly at the top and left, lie curtains of material appearing orange and red due to emission from warm dust.

This marks where ejected material from the exploded star is ramming into surrounding circumstellar gas and dust.

Interior to this outer shell lie mottled filaments of bright pink studded with clumps and knots. This represents material from the star itself, which is shining due to a mix of various heavy elements, such as oxygen, argon and neon, as well as dust emission.

“We’re still trying to disentangle all these sources of emission,” said Ilse De Looze of Ghent University in Belgium, another co-investigator on the program.

The stellar material can also be seen as fainter wisps near the cavity’s interior.

Perhaps most prominently, a loop represented in green extends across the right side of the central cavity. “We’ve nicknamed it the Green Monster in honor of Fenway Park in Boston. If you look closely, you’ll notice that it’s pockmarked with what look like mini-bubbles,” said Milisavljevic. “The shape and complexity are unexpected and challenging to understand.”

Origins of Cosmic Dust – and Us

Among the science questions that Cas A may help answer is: Where does cosmic dust come from? Observations have found that even very young galaxies in the early universe are suffused with massive quantities of dust.

It’s difficult to explain the origins of this dust without invoking supernovae, which spew large quantities of heavy elements (the building blocks of dust) across space.

However, existing observations of supernovae have been unable to conclusively explain the amount of dust we see in those early galaxies. By studying Cas A with Webb, astronomers hope to gain a better understanding of its dust content, which can help inform our understanding of where the building blocks of planets and ourselves are created.

“In Cas A, we can spatially resolve regions that have different gas compositions and look at what types of dust were formed in those regions,” explained Temim.

Supernovae like the one that formed Cas A are crucial for life as we know it. They spread elements like the calcium we find in our bones and the iron in our blood across interstellar space, seeding new generations of stars and planets.

“By understanding the process of exploding stars, we’re reading our own origin story,” said Milisavljevic. “I’m going to spend the rest of my career trying to understand what’s in this data set.”

The Cas A remnant spans about 10 light-years and is located 11,000 light-years away in the constellation Cassiopeia.

Source: NASA.Gov

Thursday, April 06, 2023

Hubble's Successor Captures an Amazing View of Neptune's Fellow Ice Giant...

An image of Uranus that was taken by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI. Image processing: J. DePasquale (STScI)

NASA’s Webb Scores Another Ringed World With New Image of Uranus (News Release)

Following in the footsteps of the Neptune image released in 2022, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has taken a stunning image of the solar system’s other ice giant, the planet Uranus. The new image features dramatic rings as well as bright features in the planet’s atmosphere.

The Webb data demonstrates the observatory’s unprecedented sensitivity for the faintest dusty rings, which have only ever been imaged by two other facilities: the Voyager 2 spacecraft as it flew past the planet in 1986, and the Keck Observatory with advanced adaptive optics.

The seventh planet from the Sun, Uranus is unique: It rotates on its side, at roughly a 90-degree angle from the plane of its orbit. This causes extreme seasons since the planet’s poles experience many years of constant sunlight followed by an equal number of years of complete darkness.

(Uranus takes 84 years to orbit the Sun.)

Currently, it is late spring for the northern pole, which is visible here; Uranus’ northern summer will be in 2028. In contrast, when Voyager 2 visited Uranus it was summer at the south pole.

The south pole is now on the ‘dark side’ of the planet, out of view and facing the darkness of space.

This infrared image from Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) combines data from two filters at 1.4 and 3.0 microns, which are shown here in blue and orange, respectively. The planet displays a blue hue in the resulting representative-color image.

When Voyager 2 looked at Uranus, its camera showed an almost featureless blue-green ball in visible wavelengths. With the infrared wavelengths and extra sensitivity of Webb we see more detail, showing how dynamic the atmosphere of Uranus really is.

On the right side of the planet there’s an area of brightening at the pole facing the Sun, known as a polar cap. This polar cap is unique to Uranus – it seems to appear when the pole enters direct sunlight in the summer and vanishes in the fall; these Webb data will help scientists understand the currently mysterious mechanism.

Webb revealed a surprising aspect of the polar cap: a subtle enhanced brightening at the center of the cap. The sensitivity and longer wavelengths of Webb’s NIRCam may be why we can see this enhanced Uranus polar feature when it has not been seen as clearly with other powerful telescopes like the Hubble Space Telescope and Keck Observatory.

At the edge of the polar cap lies a bright cloud as well as a few fainter extended features just beyond the cap’s edge, and a second very bright cloud is seen at the planet’s left limb. Such clouds are typical for Uranus in infrared wavelengths, and likely are connected to storm activity.

This planet is characterized as an ice giant due to the chemical make-up of its interior. Most of its mass is thought to be a hot, dense fluid of "icy" materials – water, methane, and ammonia – above a small rocky core.

Uranus has 13 known rings and 11 of them are visible in this Webb image. Some of these rings are so bright with Webb that when they are close together, they appear to merge into a larger ring.

Nine are classed as the main rings of the planet, and two are the fainter dusty rings (such as the diffuse zeta ring closest to the planet) that weren’t discovered until the 1986 flyby by Voyager 2. Scientists expect that future Webb images of Uranus will reveal the two faint outer rings that were discovered with Hubble during the 2007 ring-plane crossing.

Webb also captured many of Uranus’ 27 known moons (most of which are too small and faint to be seen here); the six brightest are identified in the wide-view image. This was only a short, 12-minute exposure image of Uranus with just two filters.

It is just the tip of the iceberg of what Webb can do when observing this mysterious planet. In 2022, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine identified Uranus science as a priority in its 2023-2033 Planetary Science and Astrobiology decadal survey.

Additional studies of Uranus are happening now, and more are planned in Webb’s first year of science operations.

Source: NASA.Gov

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A wide shot of Uranus and six of its 27 known moons that was taken by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI. Image processing: J. DePasquale (STScI)

Saturday, April 01, 2023

Photos of the Day: Snapshots from THE MANDALORIAN's Panel at PaleyFest LA...

Pedro Pascal (who plays Din Djarin) and Katee Sackhoff (who portrays Bo-Katan Kryze) discuss THE MANDALORIAN during Day 1 of PaleyFest LA at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, CA...on March 31, 2023.

Happy April Fool's Day, everyone! Just thought I'd share these pictures that I took during Day 1 of PaleyFest LA...which was held at the Dolby Theatre (home to the Academy Awards) in Hollywood last night.

It was on Day 1 that a panel for The Mandalorian was held...right after the latest episode (Chapter 21—"The Pirate") was screened. In attendance at the panel were The Mandalorian creator Jon Favreau, Lucasfilm executive Dave Filoni, director Rick Famuyiwa and stars Pedro Pascal (who plays the Mandalorian himself, Din Djarin) and Katee Sackhoff (who portrays Bo-Katan Kryze).

There were no juicy tidbits revealed in terms of where Season 3 of The Mandalorian was headed, nor info about other Star Wars Disney+ shows currently being filmed or in post-production, but it was great to see the cast and crew behind one of the most popular Star Wars shows ever in person.

There are only three episodes left in Season 3— Can't wait to see what kind of cliffhanger it will end with! Even though Season 4 probably won't premiere till late 2024 or early 2025...

And yes, that is my director's cap for my short film The Broken Table which I'm wearing in the photos below! Carry on.

A STAR WARS fan dressed as the Mandalorian poses for photos inside the Dolby Theatre's lobby during Day 1 of PaleyFest LA...on March 31, 2023.

Waiting for THE MANDALORIAN screening to begin inside the Dolby Theatre's auditorium during Day 1 of PaleyFest LA...on March 31, 2023.

Waiting for THE MANDALORIAN screening to begin inside the Dolby Theatre's auditorium during Day 1 of PaleyFest LA...on March 31, 2023.

Jon Favreau, Dave Filoni, Rick Famuyiwa, Pedro Pascal and Katee Sackhoff discuss THE MANDALORIAN during a post-screening panel at PaleyFest LA in Hollywood, CA...on March 31, 2023.

Jon Favreau...the man who kickstarted the Marvel Cinematic Universe (with 2008's IRON MAN) and STAR WARS Disney+ universe.

Pedro Pascal, now wearing Dave Filoni's hat, and Katee Sackhoff continue discussing THE MANDALORIAN during Day 1 of PaleyFest LA in Hollywood, CA...on March 31, 2023.

Taking a selfie (as I wear my director's cap for my short film THE BROKEN TABLE) outside Dolby Theatre after THE MANDALORIAN panel at PaleyFest LA had come to an end...on March 31, 2023.