Tumgik
#nustar
celestialmazer · 1 year
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
VISIONS OF THE FUTURE
Background: A creative team of visual strategists at JPL, known as "The Studio," created the poster series, which is titled "Visions of the Future." Nine artists, designers, and illustrators were involved in designing the 14 posters, which are the result of many brainstorming sessions with JPL scientists, engineers, and expert communicators. Each poster went through a number of concepts and revisions, and each was made better with feedback from the JPL experts.
David Delgado, creative strategy: The posters began as a series about exoplanets -- planets orbiting other stars -- to celebrate NASA's study of them. (The NASA program that focuses on finding and studying exoplanets is managed by JPL.) Later, the director of JPL was on vacation at the Grand Canyon with his wife, and they saw a similarly styled poster that reminded them of the exoplanet posters. They suggested it might be wonderful to give a similar treatment to the amazing destinations in our solar system that JPL is currently exploring as part of NASA. And they were right! The point was to share a sense of things on the edge of possibility that are closely tied to the work our people are doing today. The JPL director has called our people "architects of the future." As for the style, we gravitated to the style of the old posters the WPA created for the national parks. There's a nostalgia for that era that just feels good.
Joby Harris, illustrator: The old WPA posters did a really great job delivering a feeling about a far-off destination. They were created at a time when color photography was not very advanced, in order to capture the beauty of the national parks from a human perspective. These posters show places in our solar system (and beyond) that likewise haven't been photographed on a human scale yet -- or in the case of the exoplanets might never be, at least not for a long time. It seemed a perfect way to help people imagine these strange, new worlds.
Delgado: The WPA poster style is beloved, and other artists have embraced it before us. Our unique take was to take one specific thing about the place and focus on the science of it. We chose exoplanets that had really interesting, strange qualities, and everything about the poster was designed to amplify the concept. The same model guided us for the posters that focus on destinations in the solar system.
Lois Kim, typography: We worked hard to get the typography right, since that was a very distinctive element in creating the character of those old posters. We wanted to create a retro-future feel, so we didn't adhere exactly to the period styles, but they definitely informed the design. The Venus poster has a very curvy, flowy font, for example, to evoke a sense of the clouds.
Creative Strategy: Dan Goods, David Delgado
Illustrators: Liz Barrios De La Torre (Ceres, Europa); Stefan Bucher (Jupiter Design); Invisible Creature (Grand Tour, Mars, Enceladus) ;Joby Harris (Kepler 16b, Earth, Kepler 186f, PSO J318.5-22, Titan); Jessie Kawata (Venus); Lois Kim (Typography for Venus and Europa); Ron Miller (Jupiter Illustration)
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Free hi-res download poster designs of these and more from Nasa, credits and source text at the links:
VISIONS OF THE FUTURE: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galleries/visions-of-the-future
VOYAGER: https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/downloads
Bonus freebies - GALAXY OF HORRORS : https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/alien-worlds/galaxy-of-horrors/
:read more:
1. NASA's Voyager mission took advantage of a once-every-175-year alignment of the outer planets for a grand tour of the solar system. The twin spacecraft revealed details about Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune – using each planet's gravity to send them on to the next destination. Voyager set the stage for such ambitious orbiter missions as Galileo to Jupiter and Cassini to Saturn. Today both Voyager spacecraft continue to return valuable science from the far reaches of our solar system.
Delgado: The Grand Tour is the route the Voyager 2 spacecraft took to visit all four outer planets. We imagined this would be something people might want to repeat, since it's a flight plan that's possible every 175 years or so, when the outer planets are arranged just right. In the future, it might be considered "quaint" to experience a gravity assist. Harris: Style-wise, the design came from some references we looked at from transparency overlays from the 1960s. It initially had a black background, but we inverted it and the design just clicked.
2. NASA's Mars Exploration Program seeks to understand whether Mars was, is, or can be a habitable world. Missions like Mars Pathfinder, Mars Exploration Rovers, Mars Science Laboratory and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, among many others, have provided important information in understanding of the habitability of Mars. This poster imagines a future day when we have achieved our vision of human exploration of Mars and takes a nostalgic look back at the great imagined milestones of Mars exploration that will someday be celebrated as “historic sites.”
Delgado: This was the very last poster we produced for the series. We wanted to imagine a future time where humans are on Mars, and their history would revere the robotic pioneers that came first. There are a few fun things to point out here. You can see the silhouette of Olympus Mons in the background, there's a hint of underground water, and the rover's wheel is spelling out JPL on the ground in Morse code, just like the Curiosity rover does (for what the rover drivers call "visual odometry.")
3. There's no place like home. Warm, wet and with an atmosphere that's just right, Earth is the only place we know of with life – and lots of it. JPL's Earth science missions monitor our home planet and how it's changing so it can continue to provide a safe haven as we reach deeper into the cosmos.
4. The rare science opportunity of planetary transits has long inspired bold voyages to exotic vantage points – journeys such as James Cook's trek to the South Pacific to watch Venus and Mercury cross the face of the Sun in 1769. Spacecraft now allow us the luxury to study these cosmic crossings at times of our choosing from unique locales across our solar system.
Harris: We tried a few different designs for Venus, starting with the surface, but the intent was to show things people might find pleasant, and Venus' surface is anything but. Kim: The scene is of a city in the clouds during a transit of Mercury across the sun. The Morse code for the number 9 is written on the side (signifying the inhabitants are "on cloud 9").
5. The discovery of Enceladus' icy jets and their role in creating Saturn's E-ring is one of the top findings of the Cassini mission to Saturn. Further Cassini mission discoveries revealed strong evidence of a global ocean and the first signs of potential hydrothermal activity beyond Earth – making this tiny Saturnian moon one of the leading locations in the search for possible life beyond Earth.
Delgado: Saturn's moon Enceladus is all about the plumes erupting from its south pole. At our first brainstorming session, someone called the plumes "Cold Faithful," and that helped crystallize this idea quite quickly. There's no right way up in space, so for fun, we turned the surface upside down from the point of view of the visitors in the picture.
6. The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, complements NASA’s other astrophysics missions studying the universe in various spectra by observing the cosmos in high energy X-rays. The observatory’s unique design includes a lightweight mast, which deployed to its full length of 10 meters (33 feet) after the observatory reached Earth orbit following its launch on June 13, 2012. Typically, researchers point one of NuSTAR’s bulky ends – which contains the optics, or the hardware that collects X-rays – at the object they want to study. The light travels along the boom to the detectors, located at the other end of the spacecraft. The distance between the two is necessary to focus the light. As the first space telescope capable of taking focused high energy X-ray observations, NuSTAR has provided an unprecedented view of high energy objects, such as remnants of supernova explosions, like black holes and neutron stars, as well as the monster black holes that live in the centers of galaxies. After a decade of operation, NuSTAR continues to open new horizons, discover fascinating objects, and expand our knowledge of the Universe.​
7. The Jovian cloudscape boasts the most spectacular light show in the solar system, with northern and southern lights to dazzle even the most jaded space traveler. Jupiter's auroras are hundreds of times more powerful than Earth's, and they form a glowing ring around each pole that's bigger than our home planet. Revolving outside this auroral oval are the glowing, electric “footprints” of Jupiter's three largest moons. NASA's Juno mission will observe Jupiter's auroras from above the polar regions, studying them in a way never before possible.
Delgado: The basis for this poster was a Jupiter cloudscape by artist Ron Miller, who was very gracious in allowing us to modify his painting. In talking with a lead scientist on NASA's Juno mission (which is getting to Jupiter in July), we locked onto his description of the brilliant auroras Jupiter has. It would truly be a sight to see.
8. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is a true technological marvel. The largest and most complex space telescope ever built, Webb is able to gather light that has been traveling for 13.5 billion years, almost since the beginning of the universe. In effect, Webb is a time machine, allowing us to peer at the first galaxies to form after the Big Bang. Because it gathers infrared light, sees right through the giant clouds of dust that block the view of most other telescopes. Webb is 100 times more powerful than the Hubble Space Telescope. Most notably, with its 21-foot-wide (6.5-meter-wide) set of segmented mirrors, Webb is powerful enough to search for water vapor in the atmospheres of planets orbiting other stars. It will open a new window on these exoplanets, observing them in wavelengths of light at which they have never been seen before and helping us gain new insights about their nature. Webb will help us understand how galaxies evolve over billions of years into grand spirals, like our own Milky Way, search for signs of habitability on distant planets, and penetrate into the hearts of dust-shrouded stellar nurseries. The observatory launched from South America on Christmas Day 2021.
9. The Voyagers Rock On
Thanks to the twin Voyager spacecraft, music is truly universal: Each carries a Golden Record with sights, sounds and songs from Earth as it sails on through the yaget Milky Way. Recalling the classic rock era of the late 1970s when the Voyagers launched this poster is an homage to the mission's greatest hits. Some of the most extraordinary discoveries of the probes' first 40 years include the volcanoes on Jupiter's moon lo, the hazy nitrogen atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan and the cold geysers on Neptune's moon Triton. Voyager 1 is also the first spacecraft to deliver a portrait of our planets from beyond Neptune, depicting Earth as a 'pale blue dot,' and, as of Aug. 25, 2012, to enter interstellar space. Voyager 2 is expected to enter interstellar space in the coming years. Even after 40 years, the Voyagers' hits just keep on coming.
10. The Voyagers: Reaching for the Stars
The twin Voyager spacecraft, which launched in 1977, are our ambassadors to the rest of the Milky Way, destined to continue orbiting the center of our galaxy for billions of years after they stop communicating with Earth. On Aug. 25, 2012, Voyager 1 became the first human-made object to enter interstellar space, and Voyager 2 is expected to cross over in the next few years. At age 40, the Voyagers are the farthest and longest-operating spacecraft and still have plenty more to discover. This poster captures the spirit of exploration, the vastness of space and the wonder that has fueled this ambitious journey to the outer planets and beyond.
30 notes · View notes
icy-saturday · 2 months
Note
Can you make a persona of IXPE and a persona of NuSTAR? They’re both X-ray space telescopes
This is what IXPE looks like:
Tumblr media Tumblr media
And this is NuSTAR:
Tumblr media
Here you go! Hope you like them!
Tumblr media
3 notes · View notes
aestronautics · 2 years
Photo
Tumblr media
NuSTAR View of Galaxy NGC 1068
Galaxy NGC 1068 is shown in visible light and X-rays in this composite image. High-energy X-rays (magenta) captured by NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, are overlaid on visible-light images from both NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The X-ray light is coming from an active supermassive black hole, also known as a quasar, in the center of the galaxy. This supermassive black hole has been extensively studied due to its relatively close proximity to our galaxy. NGC 1068 is about 47 million light-years away in the constellation Cetus. The supermassive black hole is also one of the most obscured known, blanketed by thick clouds of gas and dust. NuSTAR's high-energy X-ray view is the first to penetrate the walls of this black hole's hidden lair. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Roma Tre Univ.
56 notes · View notes
spacecdt · 1 year
Text
Tumblr media
Flaring, active regions of the sun are highlighted in this image combining observations from several telescopes. High-energy X-rays from NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) are shown in blue; low-energy X-rays from Japan's Hinode spacecraft are green; and extreme ultraviolet light from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) is yellow and red.
(©)
17 notes · View notes
kreuzaderny · 1 year
Photo
Tumblr media
6 notes · View notes
skycrorg · 11 months
Text
Estudian extraña fuente de radio que proviene de la galaxia NGC 7582
Un AGN es una región compacta en el centro de una galaxia, más luminosa que la luz d... https://skycr.org/2023/04/08/estudian-extrana-fuente-de-radio-que-proviene-de-la-galaxia-ngc-7582/
Utilizando los telescopios espaciales XMM-Newton de la ESA y NuSTAR de la NASA, los astrónomos han observado una galaxia activa cercana conocida como NGC 7582. Los resultados de la campaña de observación, publicados el 30 de marzo en el servidor de preimpresión arXiv, arrojan más luz sobre la variabilidad espectral de rayos X. del núcleo galáctico activo (AGN) de NGC 7582. Un AGN es una región…
Tumblr media
View On WordPress
2 notes · View notes
eirianabryce · 1 year
Video
NASA’s NuSTAR Telescope Reveals Hidden Light Shows on the Sun
flickr
NASA’s NuSTAR Telescope Reveals Hidden Light Shows on the Sun by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center Via Flickr: Even on a sunny day, human eyes can’t see all the light our nearest star gives off. A new image displays some of this hidden light, including the high-energy X-rays emitted by the hottest material in the Sun’s atmosphere, as observed by NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR). While the observatory typically studies objects outside our solar system – like massive black holes and collapsed stars – it has also provided astronomers with insights about our Sun. In this composite image, NuSTAR data is represented as blue and is overlaid with observations by the X-ray Telescope (XRT) on the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Hinode mission, represented as green, and the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) on NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), represented as red. NuSTAR’s relatively small field of view means it can’t see the entire Sun from its position in Earth orbit, so the observatory’s view of the Sun is actually a mosaic of 25 images, taken in June 2022. The high-energy X-rays observed by NuSTAR appear at only a few locations in the Sun’s atmosphere. By contrast, Hinode’s XRT detects low-energy X-rays, and SDO’s AIA detects ultraviolet light – wavelengths that are emitted across the entire face of the Sun. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/JAXA #nasa #marshallspaceflightcenter #msfc #heliophysics #sun #space #solar #observation #star #astronomy #science #hinode #SDO #SolarDynamicsObservatory #NuSTAR Read More More about NuSTAR More about Solar Dynamics Observatory More about Hinode NASA Media Usage Guidelines
3 notes · View notes
andidowi · 1 year
Text
Leasure can come later. When you delay instant gratification, you will experience long-term satisfaction.
Tumblr media
2 notes · View notes
Photo
Tumblr media Tumblr media
NASA's NuSTAR reveals hidden light shows on the Sun Even on a sunny day, human eyes can't see all the light our nearest star gives off. A new image displays some of this hidden light, including the high-energy X-rays emitted by the hottest material in the Sun's atmosphere, as observed by NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR). While the observatory typically studies objects outside our solar system - like massive black holes and collapsed stars - it has also provided astronomers with insights about our Sun. In the composite image above (left), NuSTAR data is represented as blue and is overlaid with observations by the X-ray Telescope (XRT) on the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency's Hinode mission, represented as green, and the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) on NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), represented as red. NuSTAR's relatively small field of view means it can't see the entire Sun from its position in Earth orbit, so the observatory's view of the Sun is actually a mosaic of 25 images, taken in June 2022. The high-energy X-rays observed by NuSTAR appear at only a few locations in the Sun's atmosphere. By contrast, Hinode's XRT detects low-energy X-rays, and SDO's AIA detects ultraviolet light - wavelengths that are emitted across the entire face of the Sun. NuSTAR's view could help scientists solve one of the biggest mysteries about our nearest star: why the Sun's outer atmosphere, called the corona, reaches more than a million degrees - at least 100 times hotter than its surface. This has puzzled scientists because the Sun's heat originates in its core and travels outward. It's as if the air around a fire were 100 times hotter than the flames. The source of the corona's heat could be small eruptions in the Sun's atmosphere called nanoflares. Flares are large outbursts of heat, light, and particles visible to a wide range of solar observatories. Nanoflares are much smaller events, but both types produce material even hotter than the average temperature of the corona. Regular flares don't happen often enough to keep the corona at the high temperatures scientists observe, but nanoflares may occur much more frequently - perhaps often enough that they collectively heat the corona. Although individual nanoflares are too faint to observe amid the Sun's blazing light, NuSTAR can detect light from the high-temperature material thought to be produced when a large number of nanoflares occur close to one another. This ability enables physicists to investigate how frequently nanoflares occur and how they release energy. The observations used in these images coincided with the 12th close approach to the Sun, or perihelion, by NASA's Parker Solar Probe, which is flying closer to the our star than any other spacecraft in history. Taking observations with NuSTAR during one of Parker's perihelion passes enables scientists to link activity observed remotely in the Sun's atmosphere with the direct samples of the solar environment taken by the probe. TOP IMAGE....Wavelengths of light from three space observatories are overlapped to provide a unique view of the Sun in the image at left. The high-energy X-ray light detected by one of those observatories, NASA's NuSTAR, is seen isolated at right; a grid was added to indicate the Sun's surface. LOWER IMAGE....The Sun appears different depending on who’s looking. From left, NASA’s NuSTAR sees high-energy X-rays; the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Hinode mission sees lower energy X-rays; and NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory sees ultraviolet light. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/JAXA
4 notes · View notes
quasarlasar · 2 years
Photo
Tumblr media Tumblr media
*HEY LOOK---FREE FOOD!*
Sorry for being gone for so long...I had a lot of problems with my computer and a lot of grad school stuff going on. 
In this comic, Chandra (the pulsar character) remembers she used to be a black hole researcher, and decides to try getting back into this field. But of course since this is a setting where celestial objects are alive, black hole research is more like animal cognition research than physics. 
Chandra “reawakens” Schwarzschild by giving him a little bit of matter to accrete, seen as the faint red swirl that surrounds him. But this is not very much, and he quickly starts to run low and get hungry. Unfortunately for Chandra, the satellites she placed around him to gather data turn out to be a convenient snack. His accretion disk gets bright and blue when he rips apart the satellites. The T-Tauri stars Astro and Astra watch as Chandra uses her own relativistic jets to zoom over to Schwarzschild and try to get him to stop eating her expensive instrumentation.
To make things extra confusing, in panel 3 I decided to make two of Chandra’s satellites resemble the X-ray space telescopes NuSTAR and Chandra, which have been used a lot to study black holes. I thought it would be a funny cameo, especially given the 10th anniversary of NuSTAR was this summer. Of course now this means a character called Chandra is using a telescope called Chandra... 
Other notes:
You can see a red triangle in Chandra’s ensemble of satellites. This is meant to represent the Laser Interferometric Space Antenna (LISA)---a device planned in the 2030s to be launched to detect gravitational waves. I should note though it is planned to be made to detect supermassive black hole gravitational waves, not the higher frequency ones made by stellar black holes.
Chandra’s instrument panels are projections of a projector satellite rather than solid computer monitors. I mean, what’s a star supposed to do with a physical computer anyway?
Schwarzschild’s dialogue has ripples around it to represent gravitational waves. It’s not translated though, as it is seen from Astro and Astra’s perspective, and they do not speak the gravitational language of black holes. So it just comes across as random noises.
Yes I am doing the whole “black holes have gravitational waves as hunger pangs” thing again. Sue me.
5 notes · View notes
aldocerandaz · 2 months
Text
Los investigadores utilizaron el instrumento de polarimetría del observatorio espacial IXPE, llamado POLAR, para estudiar la polarización de la luz de rayos X emitida por los chorros del sistema binario SS 433
Los resultados del estudio, publicado en la revista Nature Astronomy, mostraron que la luz de rayos X de los chorros está polarizada en un grado de hasta el 40%. La polarización de la luz de rayos X es una medida de la dirección en la que se vibra la luz. En el caso de los rayos X, la polarización puede proporcionar información sobre la fuente de la luz y el camino que ha recorrido. En el caso…
Tumblr media
View On WordPress
0 notes
astroimages · 1 year
Link
No episódio de hoje, vamos trazer uma rodada de notícias para vocês sobre o que tem acontecido no nosso universo. Vamos começar falando sobre a luz oculta do Sol, isso mesmo, você sabia que existe um tipo de luz que só determinados instrumentos podem ver, e é sobre isso que vamos falar com vocês, vamos falar também de uma startup de Inteligência Artificial que usa imagens de satélites para rastrear veículos aéreos, inclusive usou para rastrear o famoso balão chinês que cruzou os céus dos EUA no dia 4 de fevereiro de 2023, vamos falar sobre um novo tipo de aurora que os astrônomos descobriram nas 4 maiores lua de Júpiter usando um dos maiores telescópios na Terra, o Keck e vamos terminar falando sobre uma pesquisa que encontrou pegadas de uma migração em massa de estrelas na galáxia de Andrômeda.
0 notes
skycrorg · 10 months
Text
Estudian extraña fuente de radio que proviene de la galaxia NGC 7582
Utilizando los telescopios espaciales XMM-Newton de la ESA y NuSTAR de la NASA, los astrónomos han observado una galaxia activa cercana conocida como NGC 7582. Los resultados de la campaña de observación, publicados el 30 de marzo en el servidor de preimpresión arXiv, arrojan más luz sobre la variabilidad espectral de rayos X. del núcleo galáctico activo (AGN) de NGC 7582. Un AGN es una región…
Tumblr media
View On WordPress
0 notes
transsolar · 1 year
Photo
Tumblr media
Transsolar World Academy Lectures on Daylight and Urban Responsive Design at NUST                                         
The last sessions of online teaching at NUST took place on the 18th of November. In the morning Daniel Lago gave his lecture about Daylight Delivery Strategies. He starts off asking the question, what is light? And how do we quantify it? The presentation then leads over to the definition of daylight, related comfort issues, measuring and important factors and finally rules of thumb for daylight design. Different applications are presented and showcased in project examples to show successful application of designing with daylight.
In the afternoon, there was a long session about Climate Responsive Urban Scale held by our colleagues Christine von Raven, Diego Romero and Lakshmishree Venugopal. Dive into the world of the urban design by understanding the impact rapid growth of cities and climate change can have. The team follows up presenting approaches towards sustainability and livability on an urban scale. In the next part the lecture addresses the topic mobility and Outdoor Comfort. How architecture can influence Urban Quality is discussed. The presentation ends with an optimistic outlook into the future, presenting Carbon Neutral Cities and fields of action.
Letcure 'Daylight delivery strategies' > Lecture 'Climate Responsive Urban Scale' >
0 notes
caloyolano · 1 year
Photo
Tumblr media
Sunday is a great day to eat out with your family. #kalamicebu at #xintiandi !! Xin Tian Di is probably our family's favorite restaurant at @nustarresort . I love their #dimsum dishes here. Have you dined here? Xin Tian Di NuStar Resort and Casino #restaurantsofcebu #chineserestaurant #dumplinga #siomai #friedrice #NuStar #XinTianDiCebu #happytummy #foodfeed #lunch (at Xin Tian Di) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cje0IrtJJOk/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
0 notes
Photo
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
NASA’s NuSTAR Mission Celebrates 10 Years Studying the X-Ray Universe After a decade of observing some of the hottest, densest, and most energetic regions in our universe, this small but powerful space telescope still has more to see. NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) is turning 10. Launched on June 13, 2012, this space telescope detects high-energy X-ray light and studies some of the most energetic objects and processes in the universe, from black holes devouring hot gas to the radioactive remains of exploded stars. Here are some of the ways NuSTAR has opened our eyes to the X-ray universe over the last decade. Seeing X-Rays Close to Home Different colors of visible light have different wavelengths and different energies; similarly, there is a range of X-ray light, or light waves with higher energies than those human eyes can detect. NuSTAR detects X-rays at the higher end of the range. There aren’t many objects in our solar system that emit the X-rays NuSTAR can detect, but the Sun does: Its high-energy X-rays come from microflares, or small bursts of particles and light on its surface. NuSTAR’s observations contribute to insights about the formation of bigger flares, which can cause harm to astronauts and satellites. These studies could also help scientists explain why the Sun’s outer region, the corona, is many times hotter than its surface. NuSTAR also recently observed high-energy X-rays coming from Jupiter, solving a decades-old mystery about why they’ve gone undetected in the past. Illuminating Black Holes Black holes don’t emit light, but some of the biggest ones we know of are surrounded by disks of hot gas that glow in many different wavelengths of light. NuSTAR can show scientists what’s happening to the material closest to the black hole, revealing how black holes produce bright flares and jets of hot gas that stretch for thousands of light-years into space. The mission has measured temperature variations in black hole winds that influence star formation in the rest of the galaxy. Recently, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) took the first-ever direct images of the shadows of black holes, and NuSTAR provided support. Along with other NASA telescopes, NuSTAR monitored the black holes for flares and changes in brightness that would influence EHT’s ability to image the shadow cast by them. One of NuSTAR’s biggest accomplishments in this arena was making the first unambiguous measurement of a black hole’s spin, which it did in collaboration with the ESA (European Space Agency) XMM-Newton mission. Spin is the degree to which a black hole’s intense gravity warps the space around it, and the measurement helped confirm aspects of Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Finding Hidden Black Holes NuSTAR has identified dozens of black holes hidden behind thick clouds of gas and dust. Visible light typically can’t penetrate those clouds, but the high-energy X-ray light observed by NuSTAR can. This gives scientists a better estimate of the total number of black holes in the universe. In recent years scientists have used NuSTAR data to find out how these giants become surrounded by such thick clouds, how that process influences their development, and how obscuration relates to a black hole’s impact on the surrounding galaxy. Revealing the Power of ‘Undead’ Stars NuSTAR is a kind of zombie hunter: It’s deft at finding the undead corpses of stars. Known as neutron stars, these are dense nuggets of material left over after a massive star runs out of fuel and collapses. Though neutron stars are typically only the size of a large city, they are so dense that a teaspoon of one would weigh about a billion tons on Earth. Their density, combined with their powerful magnetic fields, makes these objects extremely energetic: One neutron star located in the galaxy M82 beams with the energy of 10 million Suns. Without NuSTAR, scientists wouldn’t have discovered just how energetic neutron stars can be. When the object in M82 was discovered, researchers thought that only a black hole could generate so much power from such a small area. NuSTAR was able to confirm the object’s true identity by detecting pulsations from the star’s rotation – and has since shown that many of these ultraluminous X-ray sources, previously thought to be black holes, are in fact neutron stars. Knowing how much energy these can produce has helped scientists better understand their physical properties, which are unlike anything found in our solar system. Solving Supernova Mysteries During their lives, stars are mostly spherical, but NuSTAR observations have shown that when they explode as supernovae, they become an asymmetrical mess. The space telescope solved a major mystery in the study of supernovae by mapping the radioactive material left over by two stellar explosions, tracing the shape of the debris and in both cases revealing significant deviations from a spherical shape. Because of NuSTAR’s X-ray vision, astronomers now have clues about what happens in an environment that would be almost impossible to probe directly. The NuSTAR observations suggest that the inner regions of a star are extremely turbulent at the time of detonation. More About the Mission NuSTAR launched on June 13, 2012. The mission’s principal investigator is Fiona Harrison, chair of the Division of Physics, Mathematics, and Astronomy at Caltech in Pasadena, California. A Small Explorer mission managed by the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, NuSTAR was developed in partnership with the Danish Technical University (DTU) and the Italian Space Agency (ASI). The telescope optics were built by Columbia University, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and DTU. The spacecraft was built by Orbital Sciences Corp. in Dulles, Virginia. NuSTAR’s mission operations center is at the University of California, Berkeley, and the official data archive is at NASA’s High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center. ASI provides the mission’s ground station and a mirror data archive. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. TOP IMAGE....NuSTAR is the first space telescope able to focus high-energy X-rays. This colorful poster was made in celebration of the mission’s 10-year anniversary. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech CENTRE IMAGE....NASA’s NuSTAR space telescope, shown in this illustration, features two main components separated by a 30-foot (10-meter) mast, sometimes called a boom. Light is collected at one end of the mast and is focused along its length before hitting detectors at the other end. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech LOWER IMAGE....X-rays from the Sun – seen in the green and blue observations by NASA’s NuSTAR – come from gas heated to more than 5.4 million degrees Fahrenheit (3 million degrees Celsius). Data taken by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, seen in orange, shows material around 1.8 million F (1 million C). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/GSFC BOTTOM IMAGE....This illustration shows a black hole surrounded by an accretion disk made of hot gas, with a jet extending into space. NASA’s NuSTAR telescope has helped measure how far particles in these jets travel before they “turn on” and become bright sources of light, a distance also known as the “acceleration zone.” Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
5 notes · View notes