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Here’s Why Black Holes Are Crullers, Not Donuts

“Just a few years ago, we didn’t even know whether it was a certainty that black holes had an event horizon, as we’d never observed one directly. In 2017, a series of observations were finally taken that could settle the issue. After a wait of two years, the first direct image of a black hole was released, and it showed us that the event horizon was, in fact, real as predicted, and that its properties agreed with Einstein’s predictions.

Now, another two years later, the polarization data has been added into the fold, and we can now reconstruct the magnetic properties of the plasma surrounding the black hole, along with how those features are imprinted onto the emitted photons. We still only have the one black hole that’s been directly imaged, but we can see how the light, the polarization, and the magnetic properties of the plasma surrounding the event horizon all change over time.”

You’ve seen the photo, but have you learned the science? Black holes are crullers, not donuts, and magnetized plasma is the reason why.

The year is 1965, and thanks to telecommunication engineers at our Jet Propulsions Laboratory, the first color version of one of our first Martian images had been created. Brought to life by hand coloring numbered strips, this image is a true blast to the past.

Fast forward to the 21st century and our Mars InSight mission now enables us to gawk at the Martian horizon as if we were there. InSight captured this panorama of its landing site on Dec. 9, 2018, the 14th Martian day, or sol, of its mission. The 290-degree perspective surveys the rim of the degraded crater InSight landed in and was made up of 30 photos stitched together.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

Created using still images taken by the Cassini spacecraft during it’s flyby of Jupiter and while at Saturn. Shown is Io and Europa over Jupiter’s Great Red Spot.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/CICLOPS/Kevin M. Gill

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Extreme Science: Launching Sounding Rockets from The Arctic

This winter, our scientists and engineers traveled to the world’s northernmost civilian town to launch rockets equipped with cutting-edge scientific instruments.

This is the beginning of a 14-month-long campaign to study a particular region of Earth’s magnetic field — which means launching near the poles. What’s it like to launch a science rocket in these extreme conditions?

Our planet is protected by a natural magnetic field that deflects most of the particles that flow out from the Sun — the solar wind — away from our atmosphere. But near the north and south poles, two oddities in Earth’s magnetic field funnel these solar particles directly into our atmosphere. These regions are the polar cusps, and it turns out they’re the ideal spot for studying how our atmosphere interacts with space.

The scientists of the Grand Challenge Initiative — Cusp are using sounding rockets to do their research. Sounding rockets are suborbital rockets that launch to a few hundred miles in altitude, spending a few minutes in space before falling back to Earth. That means sounding rockets can carry sensitive instruments above our atmosphere to study the Sun, other stars and even distant galaxies.

They also fly directly through some of the most interesting regions of Earth’s atmosphere, and that’s what scientists are taking advantage of for their Grand Challenge experiments.

One of the ideal rocket ranges for cusp science is in Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard, off the coast of Norway and within the Arctic circle. Because of its far northward position, each morning Svalbard passes directly under Earth’s magnetic cusp.

But launching in this extreme, remote environment puts another set of challenges on the mission teams. These launches need to happen during the winter, when Svalbard experiences 24/7 darkness because of Earth’s axial tilt. The launch teams can go months without seeing the Sun.

Like for all rocket launches, the science teams have to wait for the right weather conditions to launch. Because they’re studying upper atmospheric processes, some of these teams also have to wait for other science conditions, like active auroras. Auroras are created when charged particles collide with Earth’s atmosphere — often triggered by solar storms or changes in the solar wind — and they’re related to many of the upper-atmospheric processes that scientists want to study near the magnetic cusp.

But even before launch, the extreme conditions make launching rockets a tricky business — it’s so cold that the rockets must be encased in styrofoam before launch to protect them from the low temperatures and potential precipitation.

When all is finally ready, an alarm sounds throughout the town of Ny-Ålesund to alert residents to the impending launch. And then it’s up, up and away! This photo shows the launch of the twin VISIONS-2 sounding rockets on Dec. 7, 2018 from Ny-Ålesund.

These rockets are designed to break up during flight — so after launch comes clean-up. The launch teams track where debris lands so that they can retrieve the pieces later.

The next launch of the Grand Challenge Initiative is AZURE, launching from Andøya Space Center in Norway in April 2019.

 For even more about what it’s like to launch science rockets in extreme conditions, check out one scientist’s notes from the field: https://go.nasa.gov/2QzyjR4

For updates on the Grand Challenge Initiative and other sounding rocket flights, visit nasa.gov/soundingrockets or follow along with NASA Wallops and NASA heliophysics on Twitter and Facebook.

@NASA_Wallops | NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility | @NASASun | NASA Sun Science

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Curious about how to send research to the International Space Station or how to get involved with NASA missions as a college student? Ask our experts!

Through our Student Payload Opportunity with Citizen Science, or SPOCS, we’re funding five college teams to build experiments for the International Space Station. The students are currently building their experiments focusing on bacteria resistance or sustainability research. Soon, these experiments will head to space on a SpaceX cargo launch! University of Idaho SPOCS team lead Hannah Johnson and NASA STEM on Station activity manager Becky Kamas will be taking your questions in an Answer Time session on Thurs., June 3, from 12-1 p.m. EDT here on our Tumblr! Make sure to ask your question now by visiting http://nasa.tumblr.com/ask. Hannah Johnson recently graduated from the University of Idaho with a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering. She is the team lead for the university’s SPOCS team, Vandal Voyagers I, designing an experiment to test bacteria-resistant polymers in microgravity. Becky Kamas is the activity manager for STEM on Station at our Johnson Space Center in Houston. She helps connect students and educators to the International Space Station through a variety of opportunities, similar to the ones that sparked her interest in working for NASA when she was a high school student. Student Payload Opportunity with Citizen Science Fun Facts:

Our scientists and engineers work with SPOCS students as mentors, and mission managers from Nanoracks help them prepare their experiments for operation aboard the space station.

The Vandal Voyagers I team has nine student members, six of whom just graduated from the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering. Designing the experiment served as a senior capstone project.

The experiment tests polymer coatings on an aluminum 6061 substrate used for handles on the space station. These handles are used every day by astronauts to move throughout the space station and to hold themselves in place with their feet while they work.

The University of Idaho’s SPOCS project website includes regular project updates showing the process they followed while designing and testing the experiment.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

The Kepler space telescope has shown us our galaxy is teeming with planets — and other surprises

The Kepler space telescope has taught us there are so many planets out there, they outnumber even the stars. Here is a sample of these wondrous, weird and unexpected worlds (and other spectacular objects in space) that Kepler has spotted with its “eye” opened to the heavens.

Kepler has found that double sunsets really do exist.

Yes, Star Wars fans, the double sunset on Tatooine could really exist. Kepler discovered the first known planet around a double-star system, though Kepler-16b is probably a gas giant without a solid surface.

Kepler has gotten us closer to finding planets like Earth.

Nope. Kepler hasn’t found Earth 2.0, and that wasn’t the job it set out to do. But in its survey of hundreds of thousands of stars, Kepler found planets near in size to Earth orbiting at a distance where liquid water could pool on the surface. One of them, Kepler-62f, is about 40 percent bigger than Earth and is likely rocky. Is there life on any of them? We still have a lot more to learn.

This sizzling world is so hot iron would melt!

One of Kepler’s early discoveries was the small, scorched world of Kepler-10b. With a year that lasts less than an Earth day and density high enough to imply it’s probably made of iron and rock, this “lava world” gave us the first solid evidence of a rocky planet outside our solar system. 

If it’s not an alien megastructure, what is this oddly fluctuating star?

When Kepler detected the oddly fluctuating light from “Tabby’s Star,” the internet lit up with speculation of an alien megastructure. Astronomers have concluded it’s probably an orbiting dust cloud.  

Kepler caught this dead star cannibalizing its planet.

What happens when a solar system dies? Kepler discovered a white dwarf, the compact corpse of a star in the process of vaporizing a planet.

These Kepler planets are more than twice the age of our Sun!

The five small planets in Kepler-444 were born 11 billion years ago when our galaxy was in its youth. Imagine what these ancient planets look like after all that time?

Kepler found a supernova exploding at breakneck speed.

This premier planet hunter has also been watching stars explode. Kepler recorded a sped-up version of a supernova called a “fast-evolving luminescent transit” that reached its peak brightness at breakneck speed. It was caused by a star spewing out a dense shell of gas that lit up when hit with the shockwave from the blast. 

* All images are artist illustrations.

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Asperitas and Mammatus

Well-defined, wave-like structures in the underside of the cloud; more chaotic and with less horizontal organization than the variety undulatus. Asperitas is characterized by localized waves in the cloud base, either smooth or dappled with smaller features, sometimes descending into sharp points, as if viewing a roughened sea surface from below. Varying levels of illumination and thickness of the cloud can lead to dramatic visual effects.

Occurs mostly with Stratocumulus and Altocumulus

Mammatus is a cellular pattern of pouches hanging underneath the base of a cloud, typically cumulonimbus rainclouds, although they may be attached to other classes of parent clouds.

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You know what the Mexicans say about the Pacific? They say it has no memory. That’s where I want to live the rest of my life. A warm place with no memory. Open up a little hotel right on the beach. Buy some worthless old boat and fix it up new. Take my guests out charter fishing. Zihuatanejo. In a place like that, I could use a man that knows how to get things.

The Shawshank Redemption (1994) dir. Frank Darabont