Copenhagen Suborbitals Test Launch: Capsule Survives – Mostly

On August 12, Copenhagen Suborbitals conducted a scheduled test of their Tycho Deep Space Capsule launch escape system.

The launch went according to plan, but not so the landing.

The spacecraft went into a tumble before dropping the capsule into the Baltic Sea at shield-crunching speeds.

“We had perfect launch, but quickly the entire configuration began to tumble,” said Kristian von Bengtson, co-founder of Copenhagen Suborbitals.

“The main chutes clearly did not have complete deployment and the capsule hit water in high speed, buckling the bottom shield.”

NASA Fermi Tycho Supernova: Cosmic Mystery

Gamma rays detected by NASA's Fermi space telescope show that the remnant of Tycho's supernova shines in the highest-energy form of light. 

This portrait of the shattered star includes gamma rays (magenta), X-rays (yellow, green, and blue), infrared (red) and optical data.

CREDIT: Gamma ray, NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration; X-ray, NASA/CXC/SAO; Infrared, NASA/JPL-Caltech; Optical, MPIA, Calar Alto, O. Krause et al. and DSS

A well-known exploded star that is pumping out powerful gamma rays may be the celestial smoking gun astronomers have in the search for the origins of some of the fastest-moving particles in the universe, a new study reports.

NASA's Fermi space telescope has detected gamma rays — the highest-energy form of light — emanating from the shattered husk of Tycho's supernova, a star that exploded in 1572.

The find could help astronomers pinpoint the origin of cosmic rays, super-speedy subatomic particles that crash constantly into Earth's atmosphere, researchers said.

Gamma-rays detected by Fermi's LAT show that the remnant of Tycho's supernova shines in the highest-energy form of light. 

This portrait of the shattered star includes gamma rays (magenta), X-rays (yellow, green, and blue), infrared (red) and optical data. (Credit: Gamma ray, NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration; X-ray, NASA/CXC/SAO; Infrared, NASA/JPL-Caltech; Optical, MPIA, Calar Alto, O. Krause et al. and DSS).

In early November 1572, observers on Earth witnessed the appearance of a "new star" in the constellation Cassiopeia, an event now recognised as the brightest naked-eye supernova in more than 400 years.

It's often called "Tycho's supernova" after the great Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, who gained renown for his extensive study of the object.

Now, years of data collected by NASA's Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope reveal that the shattered star's remains shine in high-energy gamma rays.

The detection gives astronomers another clue in understanding the origin of cosmic rays, subatomic particles - mainly protons - that move through space at nearly the speed of light.

Exactly where and how these particles attain such incredible energies has been a long-standing mystery because charged particles speeding through the galaxy are easily deflected by interstellar magnetic fields. This makes it impossible to track cosmic rays back to their sources.

"Fortunately, high-energy gamma rays are produced when cosmic rays strike interstellar gas and starlight. These gamma rays come to Fermi straight from their sources," said Francesco Giordano at the University of Bari and the National Institute of Nuclear Physics in Italy. He is the lead author of a paper describing the findings in the Dec. 7 edition of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Better understanding the origins of cosmic rays is one of Fermi's key goals. Its Large Area Telescope (LAT) scans the entire sky every three hours, gradually building up an ever-deeper view of the gamma-ray sky. Because gamma rays are the most energetic and penetrating form of light, they serve as signposts for the particle acceleration that gives rise to cosmic rays.

"This detection gives us another piece of evidence supporting the notion that supernova remnants can accelerate cosmic rays," said co-author Stefan Funk, an astrophysicist at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC), jointly located at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University, Calif.

In 1949, physicist Enrico Fermi - the satellite's namesake - suggested that the highest-energy cosmic rays were accelerated in the magnetic fields of interstellar gas clouds. In the decades that followed, astronomers showed that supernova remnants may be the galaxy's best candidate sites for this process.

NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter: Sunrise on the Moon

On June 10, 2011, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter angled its orbit 65° to the west, allowing the spacecraft's cameras to capture a dramatic sunrise view of the moon's Tycho crater.

A very popular target with amateur astronomers, Tycho is located at 43.37°S, 348.68°E, and is about 51 miles (82 km) in diameter.

The summit of the central peak is 1.24 miles (2 km) above the crater floor. The distance from Tycho's floor to its rim is about 2.92 miles (4.7 km).

Tycho crater's central peak complex, shown here, is about 9.3 miles (15 km) wide, left to right (southeast to northwest in this view).

Image Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Arizona State University

Chandra X-Ray Observatory Image: Tycho supernova remnant

Looking like a bunch of flowers, this image comes from a very deep Chandra observation of the Tycho supernova remnant in the Milky Way.

It is produced by the supernova explosion of a white dwarf star in our home galaxy.

Low-energy X-rays (red) show expanding debris from the supernova explosion and high energy X-rays (blue) show the blast wave, a shell of extremely energetic electrons.

These high-energy X-rays show a pattern of X-ray "stripes" never seen in a supernova remnant.

Some of the brightest stripes can be seen on the right side of the remnant pointing from the outer rim to the interior.

These stripes may provide the first evidence that supernova remnants can accelerate particles to energies a hundred times higher than achieved by the most powerful particle accelerator on Earth, the Large Hadron Collider.

The results could explain how some of the extremely energetic particles bombarding the Earth, called cosmic rays, are produced. Tycho is named after a Danish astronomer who first observed it in 1572.

Picture: NASA/CXC/Rutgers/K.Eriksen / Rex Features

Tycho's supernova remnant shows its stripes

(Image: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Rutgers/K.Eriksen et al.; Optical: DSS)

X-ray stripes have been spotted lurking in the high-energy blast wave of a stellar explosion spotted by Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe in 1572.

Expanding debris from the explosion shines in low-energy (red) X-rays, while the blast wave, a shell of energetic electrons, shines in high-energy (blue) X-rays.
 
The band pattern, which has never been seen before in any remnant, appears in the high-energy X-ray observations.

The stripes are thought to be regions where magnetic fields in the blast wave are more tangled than in surrounding areas. Electrons spiral around these magnetic field lines, and the radius of this corkscrew motion is thought to dictate the size of the gaps between the stripes.

That size corresponds to particles at energies about 100 times as high as those produced at the Large Hadron Collider, according to Kristoffer Eriksen of Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey, and colleagues.

The study suggests that supernova remnants can account for some of the high-energy particles called cosmic rays that bombard Earth from space.

NASA WISE: Tycho’s Supernova Remnant

This image from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) takes in several interesting objects in the constellation Cassiopeia, none of which are easily seen in visible light.

The red circle visible in the upper left part of the image is SN 1572, often called “Tycho’s Supernova”.

This remnant of a star explosion is named after the astronomer Tycho Brahe, although he was not the only person to observe and record the supernova.

When the supernova first appeared in November 1572, it was as bright as Venus and could be seen in the daytime.

Over the next two years, the supernova dimmed until it could no longer be seen with the naked eye. It wasn’t until the 1950s that the remnants of the supernova could be seen again with the help of telescopes.

When the star exploded, it sent out a blast wave into the surrounding material, scooping up interstellar dust and gas as it went, like a snow plow.

An expanding shock wave traveled into the surroundings and a reverse shock was driven back into toward the remnants of the star. Previous observations by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope indicate that the nature of the light that WISE sees from the supernova remnant is emission from dust heated by the shock wave.

In the center of the image is a star forming nebula of dust and gas, called S175 (in the Sharpless catalog of ionized nebula). This cloud of material is about 3,500 light years away and 35 light-years across. It is being heated by radiation from young hot stars within it, and the dust within the cloud radiates infrared light.

On the left edge of the image, between the Tycho supernova remnant and the very bright star, is an open cluster of stars, King 1, first catalogued by Ivan King, an astronomer at UC Berkeley. This cluster is about 6,000 light-years away, 4 light-years across and is about 2 billion years old.

Also of interest in the lower right of the image is a cluster of very red sources. Almost all of these sources have no counterparts in visible light images, and only some have been catalogued by previous infrared surveys.

There are indications that they may be young stellar objects associated with a dense nebula in the area. Young stellar objects (YSOs) are stars in their earliest stages of life. YSOs are surrounded by an envelope of dust, which would explain the very red color of the sources in this image.

All four infrared detectors aboard WISE were used to make this mosaic. The image spans an area of 1.6 x 1.6 degrees on the sky or about 3 times as wide and high as the full Moon.

Colour is representational: blue and cyan represent infrared light at wavelengths of 3.4 and 4.6 microns, which is dominated by light from stars. Green and red represent light at 12 and 22 microns, which is mostly light from warm dust.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/WISE Team

NASA: Fantastic Close-up of Moon Crater - Tycho

LRO image of Tycho crater. The proposed Constellation site is to the North of the crater's central peak. Credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University

New photographs taken by a satellite in orbit around the moon have revealed one of its most prominent craters in a whole new light.

The moon's Tycho Crater, though average in size, is special because it appears to have formed relatively recently. The vast crater still looks pristine in the new images, while older craters are slowly covered by newer impacts as their features are obscured over the years.

Like all the moon's craters, Tycho is thought to have formed when a space rock slammed into the surface. Since the moon lacks Earth's protective atmosphere, which vaporizes small asteroids on collision courses, even tiny rocks can make a dent on the lunar surface.

The new images were captured by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and released Jan. 14. The robotic spacecraft is on a scouting mission to map the moon's surface in great detail to help plan for the proposed manned trips on the horizon.

Rays of material ejected during the impact are still visible around Tycho, as is the central heap of debris that resulted when melted material flowed back down the crater's slopes and solidified in the middle. Because it is so well preserved, Tycho offers a unique chance to study the mechanics of how craters form, researchers said in a statement.

Tycho is about 53 miles (85 km) in diameter. Without directly sampling rocks from inside the crater, scientists can't be sure how old it is.

One of their best guesses comes from rocks collected by astronauts at the Apollo 17 landing site that may have originated at Tycho and been displaced by the impact. Radiometric age dating of these rocks indicates they formed about 108 million years ago, meaning the Tycho crater may have formed then as well.

"This may still seem old, but compared to the 3.9 billion-year age for many large lunar craters, Tycho is the new kid on the block," LRO researchers said in a statement.

To find the truth about Tycho's age, scientists will need rocks collected inside the crater. These may finally be available soon, since the site has been chosen as a possible landing spot for future manned missions to the moon in the 2020s under NASA's Constellation program.

"Directly sampling material from within the crater would help us learn more about not just when Tycho formed, but the ages of terrains on other planets throughout the solar system," the scientists said.