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Welcome to HOW IT WORKS BOOK OF SPACE

Space has fascinated mankind from the earliest days of civilization, and as we keep scratching the surface of the vast universe in which we live, our sense of awe and wonder continues to grow unabated. Now, with the technological advancements being made by the world’s space agencies, we understand more than ever about the things that are happening beyond our own planet. This new edition of the How It Works Book of Space has been updated with more of latest astronomical advancements, stunning space photography from the most advanced telescopes on the planet, and glimpses at what the future of space exploration holds, such as the planned mission to Mars. Taking you from the heart of our Solar System and out into deep space. Get ready for lift off and…

Welcome to HOW IT WORKS BOOK OF SPACE

Journey through the Solar System

The Solar System formed about 4.6 billion years ago, when part of a giant molecular cloud had a gravitational collapse. The centre became the Sun, which comprises more than 99 per cent of the Solar System’s total mass. The rest became a dense, flat rotating disk of gas from which planets formed, called a protoplanetary disk. In our Solar System, most of that disk became the eight planets, each of which orbits the Sun. There are two different categories of planets: gas giants and terrestrials. The gas giants are the four outer planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. They are much bigger than the terrestrial planets and are mostly made of helium and hydrogen, although Uranus and Neptune also contain ice. All of the outer planets have ring systems made of…

Journey through the Solar System

Map of the Solar System

The Statistics Neptune Type: Gas giant Rotation (Equatorial): 60,179 days Rotation (Polar): 16.11 hours Volume: (Earth = 1) 57.74 Average distance from Sun: 2.8 billion miles Number of moons: 13 Speed: 5.43km/s Surface temp: -220°C The Statistics Pluto Type: Dwarf Rotation (Equatorial): 90,613 days Rotation (Polar): N/A Volume: (Earth = 1) 0.0059 Average distance from Sun: 3.7 billion miles Number of moons: 3 Speed: 4.666km/s Surface temp: -230°C The Statistics Uranus Type: Gas giant Rotation (Equatorial): 30,799 days Rotation (Polar): 17.24 hours Volume: (Earth = 1) 63.1 Average distance from Sun: 1.78 billion miles Number of moons: 27 Speed: 6.81km/s Surface temp: -214°C The Statistics Saturn Type: Gas giant Rotation (Equatorial): 10,759 days Rotation (Polar): 10.66 hours Volume: (Earth = 1) 763.59 Average distance from Sun: 888 million miles Number of moons: 34 Speed: 9.69km/s Surface temp: -140°C The Statistics The Sun Type: Star Rotation (Equatorial): 25 days Rotation (Polar): 34 days Mass: (Earth= 1) 333,000 Surface temperature: 5,500°C Core temperature: 15 million °C Diameter (Equatorial): 864,900 miles The Statistics Jupiter Type: Gas giant Rotation (Equatorial): 4,331 days Rotation (Polar): 9.93 hours Volume: (Earth…

Map of the Solar System

ESA’s Envisat

DID YOU KNOW?ISS astronauts spend ten mins a day taking photos of Earth with digital and 35mm and 70mm film cameras The crew of Apollo 8 were the first people to see and photograph our planet as a globe in its entirety. During the fourth orbit around the Moon, Lunar module commander William Anders took a series of photographs of the Earth that became known as ‘Earthrise’. They revealed the true splenWdour of our planet suspended in stark contrast with the barren lunar surface, and became an icon for showing that our home is a fertile and fragile dot of life in an immense and deadly universe. From the Sixties onwards an enormous number of Earth observation satellites have been launched to look at the hard facts about the state of our…

A celestial wonder, the Sun is a huge star formed from a massive gravitational collapse when space dust and gas from a nebula collided, It became an orb 100 times bigger and weighing over 300,000 times that of Earth. Made up of 70 per cent hydrogen and about 28 per cent helium (plus other gases), the Sun is the centre of our solar system and the largest celestial body anywhere near us. “The surface of the Sun is a dense layer of plasma at a temperature of 5,800 degrees kelvin that is continually moving due to the action of convective motions driven by heating from below,” says David Alexander, a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University. “These convective motions show up as a distribution of what are called granulation…

During a solar eclipse, the Moon casts shadows on the Earth known as umbra or penumbra. The umbra is the darkest part of the shadow, while the penumbra is the area where part of the Moon is blocking the Sun. Partial eclipses happen when the Sun and Moon are not in perfect alignment – only the penumbra of the Moon’s shadow passes over the surface of the Earth. In a total eclipse, the umbra touches the Earth’s surface. There are also annular eclipses, in which both the Sun and the Moon are in alignment but the Moon appears to be slightly smaller than the Sun. The Sun appears as a bright ring, or annulus, around the Moon’s profile. The umbra is still in line with a region on the Earth’s surface,…

Solar tornadoes

A gigantic sphere of hydrogen plasma (ionised gas), our Sun is by far the most dominant body in the Solar System and one of its most visually intense events is the solar tornado. These twisting magnetic fields are between 100 to 1,000 times larger than their equivalents on Earth and have been observed at a gigantic 70,000 kilometres (43,496 miles) tall. Over 11,000 of these phenomena are on the Sun’s surface at any time and they are believed to potentially be the source of heating for the outer reaches of the Sun and could contribute to auroras on our planet. Solar tornadoes differ from Earth-based twisters because they are comprised of a magnetic field of plasma. They are more frequently spotted around the Sun’s equator and poles, as this is where…

Solar tornadoes

Solar storm chaser

How similar are solar tornadoes to tornadoes on Earth? Aside from the visible appearance, tornadoes on Earth and on the Sun are very different phenomena. In both cases, the tornado funnel is narrow at the bottom and widens with height in the atmosphere. Particles inside tornadoes are forced to move in spirals. Tornadoes on Earth occur as a result of temperature and gas pressure differences and strong shear winds. Solar tornadoes are generated by rotating magnetic field structures, which force the plasma, ie the ionised gas, to move in spirals. How do solar tornadoes contribute to auroras on Earth? It has been speculated that giant tornadoes may serve as a possible trigger of solar eruptions, where they build up a magnetic field structure until it destabilises and erupts. As a consequence, ionised gas…

Exploring the Moon

The Moon has been shrouded in mystery since the dawn of time. For a start, where did it come from? The popular current hypothesis is the giant impact theory. We’ve learned from dating lunar rocks that the Moon formed about 4.5 billion years ago, a good 30-50 million years after the Solar System. But while the Earth was just finishing its formation, it was struck by a giant celestial body about the size of Mars, which has been christened Theia. This collision blasted material out into space near the Earth, which coalesced into the body that today we call the Moon. Whether the material came from Earth or the planetoid that caused the impact (or both) is still a matter of debate. The Moon is the second-brightest object in our sky after…

Exploring the Moon

THE FIRST MOON LANDING

In the Sixties the ‘Space Race’ between the USA and USSR was heating up. Russia had struck the initial blow by launching the first man-made satellite – Sputnik 1 – in 1957, and four years later they sent the first human – Yuri Gagarin – into space. The Americans followed suit a few weeks later but it was readily apparent they were playing catch-up to the Russians. To reassure the American people, President Kennedy issued an impassioned speech to Congress in 1961 announcing the ambitious goal of placing a human on the Moon before the end of the decade. As a result Project Apollo was born, and with it NASA was tasked with fulfilling Kennedy’s lofty aim. An unprecedented technological marvel, the Apollo missions would come to define not only…

THE FIRST MOON LANDING

15 FACTS YOU NEVER KNEW ABOUT ECLIPSES

Have you ever seen the sky turn pitch black during the day? We don’t mean the grey dark of a rainy day, but dark like the night. The only time you will ever see this is during a total solar eclipse, which is one of nature’s most breathtaking eclipses. It happens when the Moon moves in front of the Sun for a few minutes, blocking its light and underneath the Moon’s shadow darkness falls. Total solar eclipses are rare and in a way it is an incredible stroke of luck that we have them. The Sun’s distance from Earth just happens to be about 400 times the Moon’s distance from our planet. The Sun also happens to be about 400 times larger than the Moon, so thanks to this magic ratio…

15 FACTS YOU NEVER KNEW ABOUT ECLIPSES

Although we’ve been observing Mercury from Earth for thousands of years, its close proximity to the Sun – about 58 million kilometres, on average – has made it difficult for astronomers to learn much about the planet. The Hubble Space Telescope cannot observe it, because turning that close towards the Sun would damage the telescope’s instruments. Most of what we know came from the 1975 Mariner 10 space probe’s fly-by. With the naked eye, Mercury can only be seen at dawn or dusk, depending on the time of year (unless there is a solar eclipse). This is due to the Sun’s glare. Mercury can also be seen as a small black spot moving across the Sun at intervals of seven, 13 and 33 years. This is known as a transit of…

Venus has often been called Earth’s sister planet because of their similarities. Both planets are terrestrial (meaning that they are made up of silicate rocks) and close in size, mass and gravity. Venus probably has a similar structure to Earth, with a crust, mantle and core. It has a diameter of around 12,000 kilometres, 650 kilometres smaller than Earth. Its mass is about 80 per cent of Earth’s mass, and its gravity 90 per cent of Earth’s gravity. However, there are also many differences between Venus and Earth. Venus is about 108 million kilometres from the Sun and has an almost perfectly circular orbit, while all of the other planets have elliptical orbits. Venus completes one orbit every 225 days and has one of the slowest rotations of any planet, with…

To date there have been almost 50 missions to Mars, with around half of those failing. Other than the Earth it is the most studied planet in the Solar System, and for centuries it has been at the heart of wild speculation and groundbreaking scientific discoveries. Observations of Mars have not only revealed otherwise unknown secrets but also posed new and exciting questions, and it is for these reasons that it has become the most intriguing planetary body of our time. Named after the Roman god of war, Mars has fascinated astronomers since Nicolaus Copernicus first realised Mars was another planet orbiting the Sun in 1543. Its notable features such as huge impact craters, gullies and dormant volcanoes suggest it was once more geologically active than it is now, leading scientists…

The spiders from Mars

At Mars’s south pole, in the middle of winter, the temperature can plummet as low as -125 degrees Celsius (-193 degrees Fahrenheit), which is chilly enough for carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere to freeze out as a layer of dry ice (what we call frozen carbon dioxide). When spring comes around, this frost evaporates explosively! The darker ground below the dry ice absorbs the warmth of sunlight at a faster rate than the ice does. The warmer ground warms the dry ice from the bottom up, causing it to turn back into carbon dioxide gas – a process called sublimation. As the gas heats up it expands and forces its way through the ice above, burrowing its way to the surface by carving out channels that converge at a…

The spiders from Mars

Is Titan Earth’s toxic twin?

Venus is often referred to as ‘Earth’s evil twin’ because, despite having similar characteristics and evolutionary starting line, it went on to become the inhospitable world that it is today. However, a team of scientists from University College London (UCL) have dubbed the giant moon Titan ‘Earth’s toxic twin’ for a few slightly different reasons. Saturn’s biggest natural satellite is the only other place in the Solar System where it rains, has rivers and surface oceans – of liquid hydrocarbons (like ethane and methane), rather than water. These were recorded during descent of the Huygens probe, the only spacecraft to have successfully landed on any celestial body in the outer Solar System, in 2005. The team at UCL has found that in Titan’s dense, hazy atmosphere there is also a polar wind…

Is Titan Earth’s toxic twin?

Weather on Jupiter

If you’ve ever moaned about the weather, you can count yourself lucky that you don’t live on Jupiter. The majority of the planet is formed of hydrogen and helium gases. The clouds, however, are made up of ammonia ice crystals. The temperature range on Jupiter is pretty incredible. The clouds that hover above the surface of the planet are a freezing -145 degrees Celsius (-229 degrees Fahrenheit), but as you move closer to the core it reaches a scorching 35,000 degrees Celsius (63,000 degrees Fahrenheit). And if that doesn’t sound quite bad enough, then the weather conditions on the surface of the planet are almost guaranteed to put you off. We spoke to expert Pedram Hassanzadeh, an Environmental Fellow at Harvard University: “The atmosphere of Jupiter has two prominent visible features”, he…

Weather on Jupiter

When Galileo Galilei discovered Jupiter in 1610, it is doubtful that he was aware of the impact this giant planet had on the surrounding Solar System. From altering the evolution of Mars to preventing the formation of a ninth planet, the size and mass of Jupiter has seen it exert an influence on its neighbours second only to the Sun. Jupiter’s mass and composition almost more closely resemble a star than a planet, and in fact if it was 80 times more massive it would be classified as the former. It can virtually be regarded as being the centre of its own miniature Solar System; 50 moons to date are known to orbit the gas giant, with the four largest (Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, the Galilean satellites) each surpassing Pluto…

We’ve been viewing Saturn with the naked eye since prehistoric times, but the planet’s most unique feature – its ring system – wasn’t discovered until 1610. Each ring contains billions of chunks of dust and water-ice. Saturn has about 14 major ring divisions, but there are also satellites and other structures within some of the rings and gaps. Saturn’s rings are believed to have come from the remains of moons, comets or other bodies that broke up in the planet’s atmosphere. The rings aren’t the only fascinating thing about Saturn, however. This gas giant is less dense than any other planet in our solar system and has a mostly fluid structure. It radiates a massive amount of energy, thought to be the result of slow gravitational compression. Saturn takes about 29.5…

What are Saturn’s rings?

While both Neptune and Uranus can boast of being encircled by a stellar crown of sorts, it’s Saturn that is the true ‘lord of the rings’. Neptune’s five relatively thin rings are so small that they weren’t definitively discovered until 1968, while Uranus’s narrow bands were discovered even later, in 1977. By contrast, Galileo was the first person to view Saturn’s rings over 400 years ago using a simple telescope. Six of its seven rings span from 74,500 kilometres (46,300 miles) to 140,220 kilometres (87,130 miles) above the surface of Saturn, while its diffuse E ring is truly gigantic at around 300,000 kilometres (186,000 miles) wide – nearly the distance between the Earth and the moon. Most of the rings are primarily composed of water ice that ranges in size from tiny…

What are Saturn’s rings?

Capable of containing 63 Earths inside it (it is only 14.5 times as dense, as it is a gas giant), Uranus is the third largest in our Solar System. Appearing calm and pale blue when imaged, Uranus has a complex ring system and a total of 27 moons orbiting its gaseous, cloudy main body. Due to its distance from the Sun the temperature at the cloud-top layer of the planet drops to -214°C and because of its massive distance from Earth it appears incredibly dim when viewed, a factor that led to it not being recognised as a planet until 1781 by astronomer William Herschel. Inside Uranus A cross-section of the blue planet Miranda The smallest and innermost of Uranus’s five major moons, Miranda is like no other moon in our Solar System When the…

Over 4.5 billion kilometres from Earth and with an average temperature of -220°C, Neptune is the furthest planet from the Sun and the coldest in our Solar System, excluding the dwarf planet Pluto. It is a massive (49,532km in diameter) sphere of hydrogen, helium and methane gas, formed around a small but mass-heavy core of rock and ice that, despite its similar size and structure to its inner neighbour Uranus, differs in appearance dramatically, presenting its turbulent, violently windy atmosphere on its surface. Find out what makes Neptune so unique and volatile right here. Inside Neptune A cross-section of the smallest gas giant Triton Learning more about Neptune’s massive moon While Neptune has 13 moons in total (four in its ring system and nine out), it has only one major moon – Triton. Triton was…

Neptune’s boomerang moon

Nereid is Neptune’s third-largest moon coming in behind Triton (with a diameter of 2,707 kilometres (1,681 miles)) and Proteus (with a diameter of 440 kilometres (273 miles)) . It has a diameter of approximately 340 kilometres (210 miles) and its most interesting characteristic is that it has the most fluctuating orbit of any moon in the Solar System. The second of the planet’s moons to be discovered, its orbit is so changeable it can vary from 9.65 million kilometres (6 million miles) away from the planet to just 1.37 million kilometres (854,000 miles) at its closest position. Astronomers are divided when it comes to the reason for its trajectory but one school of thought is that the satellite was captured from the Kuiper asteroid belt, which explains its unusual orbit. Further, Nereid, which…

Neptune’s boomerang moon

Mercury’s orbit

Of all the Solar System’s planets, Mercury has the most eccentric orbit. Moving in an ellipse its distance from the Sun varies rather vastly from 46 million kilometres (28.6 million miles) to 70 million kilometres (43.5 million miles) across its entire orbital cycle. Not only does Mercury travel in an ellipse, but the planet’s closest approach to the Sun is not always in the same place. Mercury’s orbit drifts, with each ellipse around the Sun seeing it move along slightly, tracing a shape similar to the petals of a daisy (see picture). This drifting is partially caused by the gravitational pull of local bodies; the Sun, of course, has the most influence, but other planets and asteroid belts can also have an effect, dictating its path. However only part of Mercury’s drift is…

Mercury’s orbit

The secrets of transits

Twice every century the planet Venus does something extraordinary and appears to move, or ‘transit’, across the face of the Sun. It is a rare alignment of Earth’s orbit with Venus’ and the Sun, but in the 18th century scientists used transits of Earth’s hellish cousin to measure the size of the Solar System. The most recent transits of Venus in 2004 and 2012 had relatively little scientific importance, but transits of other planets are extremely significant. These are not transits of other planets in our Solar System, but in other star systems. Astronomers detect transits of exoplanets across stars and have found over 1,000 alien worlds this way. As the stars are so far away, planet hunters like the Kepler space telescope can’t take a picture of the exoplanet’s silhouette…

The secrets of transits

The astronomer Percival Lowell predicted the existence of a ninth planet in our solar system, beyond the orbit of Neptune. Lowell failed to find Planet X, but Clyde Tombaugh – using the Lowell Observatory in Arizona – confirmed his calculations. Shortly after Planet X’s discovery back in January 1930 it was named Pluto. In 1978, it was determined that Lowell’s theory based on the mass of Pluto and its effects on Uranus and Neptune were incorrect. Tombaugh’s discovery was just a coincidence. The dwarf planet Pluto takes a leisurely 248 years to orbit the Sun. Its highly elliptical orbit takes it to a maximum of 7.4 billion kilometres from the sun to as close as 4.5 billion kilometres. Twice in this orbit it is actually closer to the Sun than Neptune,…

One of Jupiter’s four largest moons – the others being Io, Ganymede and Callisto – Europa is notable for its icy surface with a theorised ocean underneath. The moons all keep the same face towards Jupiter as they orbit. The layer of ice that encapsulates Europa’s entire surface is as little as 5-100 miles thick. It has one of the smoothest surfaces in the solar system, with its features such as valleys and hills no larger or deeper than a few hundred metres. This suggests it is young and still actively forming like Earth. Most of Europa is made of rock, although its core has a large iron content. Gravitational forces from Jupiter and its other three largest moons have given Europa a hot interior in a process known as tidal…

When is a planet not a planet? Well, it’s not as simple as you might think. Defining a planet into a particular category isn’t easy, with the debate continuing to rage as to how exactly planets should be classified. According to the International Astronomical Union (IAU), dwarf planets are spherical objects in orbit around the Sun that are not moons, but they share their orbits with other debris which they have not been able to clear. It was the latter point that let Pluto down back in 2006, as it has other bodies within its orbit that it has not gathered. In addition, many bodies were discovered that were larger than Pluto, such as Eris, ultimately leading to its reclassification. In simple terms, a dwarf planet can be regarded as a…

Auroras on other planets

For many years, the auroras seen on our planet were thought to be the souls of the dead moving to the afterlife. An aurora on Earth is actually caused by the Sun and can be thought of as a form of space weather. Solar winds hit Earth with highly charged particles, but our planet’s magnetic field deflects most of them before they reach the atmosphere. Every so often these winds are boosted by solar flares or coronal mass ejections, which release huge amounts of plasma. When these intense solar winds reach Earth, some of the ionised particles get trapped in the magnetic field. These particles are then accelerated along the field lines toward the poles where they can enter the upper atmosphere, colliding with gas particles that cause them to emit…

Auroras on other planets

Asteroids are the most numerous bodies in our Solar System, with hundreds of thousands of them orbiting around the Sun in both belts and as individuals. They far outnumber our well-documented planets (and dwarf planets, to that matter) and are being studied by space agencies world wide, each of which are trying to shed some light on what historically were written off as simple floating rocks. However, asteroids are unique in the fact that they tell us much about the conditions of the universe post-big bang, how astrophysics effect space phenomena and how planets are formed, granting the scientific community great insight into our Solar System’s origins and workings. Structures There are three types of asteroid: carbonaceous (C-type), siliceous (S-type) and metallic (M-type) variants, each corresponding to the composition of an asteroid,…

Asteroids in our Solar System

Direction of orbits Key K Degrees Kelvin Gm Gigametre AU Astronomical unit Km Kilometres Mi Miles Km/s Kilometres per second ~ Mean Eros Dimension: 16.84km Aphelion: 266.762Gm (1.783 AU) Perihelion: 169.548Gm (1.133 AU) Orbital period: 643.219 days Escape velocity: 0.0103km/s Temperature: ~227K Spectral type: S With a one-in-ten chance of hitting either Earth or Mars in the next million years, Eros is one of the largest and wellstudied near-Earth asteroids. In fact, Eros is one of a few asteroids to actually be landed upon by an Earth probe, and as such we have a cavalcade of information on it. Ceres Dimension: 590 miles Aphelion: 446,669,320km (2.9858 AU) Perihelion: 380,995,855km (2.5468 AU) Orbital period: 1,680.5 days Escape velocity: 0.51km/s Temperature: ~167K Spectral type: C Technically classed as a dwarf planet, Ceres – named after the Roman goddess of growing plants and the harvest – is…

Asteroids in our Solar System

Astronaut training

It’s been nearly half a century since Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space, but with the rare exception of a few billionaire civilians, space travel is still a well-guarded privilege. As NASA initiates a new long-term mission to return to the Moon and push on to Mars, the space agency is looking for a few good men and women who contain the rare mix of hyperintelligence, marathon stamina and good old-fashioned guts to board the brand-new Ares I-X rocket and blast off to the uncharted depths. What does it take to become one of the lucky few to venture into space? NASA basic training NASA astronaut training is much like cramming for final exams at MIT while simultaneously enduring basic training for the Green Berets. Candidates begin their training…

Astronaut training

Inside a spacesuit

It’s probably best to think of a spacesuit not as an item of clothing – like a jumper you’d put on when it’s cold or a pair of wellies to keep your feet dry – but as a habitat or a small personal spaceship that astronauts wear when they’re out in space. Two of the main threats to human life in space are the lack of oxygen and the extreme range of temperatures, which can fluctuate from below -100 degrees Celsius (-150 degrees Fahrenheit) to in excess of 120 degrees Celsius (242 degrees Fahrenheit). But they can face other dangers, too: the extremely low pressure, micrometeorites travelling several times the speed of a bullet and exposure to high levels of radiation, unfiltered by any planetary atmosphere like Earth’s, travelling from the…

Inside a spacesuit

Underwater astronaut training

When an astronaut prepares for a mission to the International Space Station, they must practise the tasks that they’ll be carrying out in space. However, in order to make the training as realistic as possible, the microgravity they’ll encounter outside our planet’s atmosphere needs to be mimicked here on Earth. It may sound far-fetched, but NASA has an ingenious way of replicating space’s unique environment on our home planet – it has placed a large-scale mock-up of the International Space Station in an enormous swimming pool. The American space agency calls this 12-metre (40-foot) deep pool the Neutral Buoyancy Lab (NBL) and astronauts have been training here since 1996. Astronauts undertake six-to-eight-hour underwater sessions on a daily basis – the equivalent time for an Extravehicular Activity session in space. When it’s time…

Underwater astronaut training

Living in space is the ultimate mental and physical test of the human body. On Earth, the experience of being in space is almost impossible to replicate; the closest astronauts can get is to train underwater but, even then, the experience is a world away from that first journey into orbit or beyond. There’s no ‘up’ or ‘down’ in space, so many of their sensory receptors are rendered useless, while materials such as water behave completely differently to how they do on Earth. So, how do astronauts cope, and what’s it like to actually live in space? We’re about to find out. Since Yuri Gagarin became the first man to leave the Earth in 1961, life in space has altered and improved dramatically. Gagarin spent the entirety of his 108-minute flight…

08:00 Daily conference/work In the morning astronauts perform the first of their daily tasks assigned by ground control. They often have a daily conference where they discuss their jobs for the day. Their work consists of supervising experiments that would not be possible on Earth or performing routine maintenance on equipment to ensure the survival of the crew. On some days they take video calls from Earth. These are often simply to friends and family but, on rare occasions, they may talk to schoolchildren, the US president or even the Pope. 06:40 Breakfast/getting ready Astronauts eat their first meal of the day, which is nothing like the freeze-dried food of the Apollo missions. Fresh fruit and produce are stored on the ISS, while tea and coffee are available in packets. Astronauts can wear…

On board the International Space Station

What’s it like to live in space? Man has had a continuous presence in space since 2000 on the International Space Station. In 1998, the Zarya module was launched into orbit by the Russian Federal Space Agency. This was the first piece of the ISS. Now that it is complete, the ISS is the largest satellite to ever orbit the Earth. After being finished in 2012, the ISS is also arguably the most expensive single object to ever be constructed at more than $150 billion. The ISS wasn’t the first space station, however; in 1971 the Soviet Union launched the Salyut, which was the first in a series of space stations. Two years later, NASA launched Skylab. However, both of these programmes were single modules with limited life spans. In 1986, the…

On board the International Space Station

CURIOSITY’S GREATEST DISCOVERIES

Today Mars is dry, cold and barren. No water flows on its surface and the air is thin and poisonous. But once upon a time, Mars was wet, possibly warm and could even have been home to microbial life. In 2004, NASA landed two robotic rovers called Spirit and Opportunity on Mars, and found conclusive evidence that water once ran on Mars’ surface, perhaps as recently as a few million years ago. What scientists wanted to know next was whether this water contributed to an environment that could support life, so they sent another rover, the largest ever sent into space, to answer that question. Curiosity is about the size of a family car. It is controlled by engineers back on Earth, whose commands can take up to 20 minutes to travel…

CURIOSITY’S GREATEST DISCOVERIES

Mapping the galaxy

Into orbit Charting Gaia’s journey to the stars 1AU = 150mn km (93mn mi) The European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft is the ultimate cartographer. Its five-year goal is to make a three-dimensional map of a billion stars in our galaxy that is more accurate than anything before. Gaia, which blasted off in December 2013, is able to measure the distances and positions of stars down to an accuracy of six billionths of a degree on the sky. Such supreme sensitivity will also give astronomers information about how the stars are moving around the galaxy and, by knowing their true distances, it will be possible to determine how bright each of these billion stars truly is. It is hoped that this data will enable scientists to build more accurate models of the evolution of stars.…

Mapping the galaxy

Galileo Space Probe

NASA launched the Galileo spacecraft, which comprises the Galileo Orbiter and Space Probe, atop a space shuttle in 1989, using a 38-month orbit of Venus and the Earth’s gravitational pull to gain the necessary speed to reach Jupiter. While the Galileo Orbiter was designed to orbit and study Jupiter and its moons, the Galileo Probe was released near Jupiter and was sent into the gas giant itself. It entered the atmosphere of Jupiter at 30 miles per second (47kmps), the highest impact speed ever achieved by a man-made object. Amazingly, Jupiter’s gravitational forces slowed the craft to 0.07 miles per second (0.12 kmps) in just four minutes. The Probe’s heat shield, made of carbon phenolic, was able to withstand the 15,500°C ball of plasma caused by this sudden deceleration, producing light brighter…

Galileo Space Probe

Understanding ROCKET SCIENCE

Rocket science has been around since the 280s BCE, when ancient Chinese alchemists invented gunpowder. Initially used in fireworks, gunpowder was soon put to use in weaponry as fire-arrows, bombs and more. Through the centuries, rockets continued to be used as weapons until the early-20th Century. In 1912, Robert Goddard built the first liquid-fuel rocket (previous rockets were solid-fuel) and began the age of modern rocketry. To date, there have been about 500 rocket launches from NASA’s Cape Canaveral, and more than five thousand satellites launched by rockets from spaceports around the world. While the term ‘rocket’ can be used to describe everything from cars to jet packs, most of us think ‘space travel’ when we see ‘rocket’. Most rockets follow the same basic design. Typically they are tube-like, with stacks…

Understanding ROCKET SCIENCE

The hardest part of exploring the final frontier is actually getting there in the first place. While mankind has been undertaking space-faring missions for over 50 years now, our methods of propulsion to escape Earth’s influence have barely changed at all, and the fundamental problem of overcoming our planet’s gravity is still readily apparent. When, years ago, people dreamed of regular space planes flying every week or space elevators lifting cargo into orbit, limitations and complexities have seen our forays beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO) rely solely on vertically launching rockets. Unfortunately, these themselves bring with them a number of limitations – notably the amount of thrust that is needed to transport cargo into orbit and the cost considering that most rockets are almost entirely non-reusable. And so, as is…

The Orion spacecraft

The primary goals of the Orion spacecraft, which has been contracted to technology company Lockheed Martin by NASA, are to deliver crew and cargo to the International Space Shuttle and return astronauts to the Moon after almost a 50-year wait. Orion made its first test flight in 2014 and is on course to complete a lunar mission by the early 2020s. The Orion crew module is similar in design and appearance to the Apollo Command Module that first took astronauts to the Moon. It is three times the volume of the Apollo module with the same 70° sloped top, deemed to be the safest and most reliable shape for re-entering Earth’s atmosphere at high velocity. The Orion module has a diameter of five metres and a total mass of about 9,000kg…

The Orion spacecraft

Spacecraft re-entry

While not all spacecraft are designed to return home after completion of a mission, those that do must overcome intense heat and forces as the spacecraft passes through our atmosphere. Almost all spacecraft undergo a ballistic entry, travelling directly through the atmosphere until parachutes slow their descent. Only a few – NASA’s space shuttle and the US Air Force’s secretive unmanned space plane X-37B – are capable of performing a glide landing and touch down on a runway like an aeroplane. The dense gas in our atmosphere is useful for slowing down a spacecraft on re-entry, allowing it to land safely without the need for extra fuel to reduce its velocity when approaching our planet. This is a problem scientists must overcome when a satellite lands on a celestial body with…

Spacecraft re-entry

Following the popularity and success of NASA’s manned Apollo missions in the late 1960s, it seemed that space tourism would soon become a reality. Pan American Airways were quick to jump on the idea, opening a waiting list for a planned service to the Moon. Up until the company eventually disbanded in 1991, more than 93,000 wannabe astronauts had signed up for the scheme. A new kind of space race was envisaged; private companies would compete to become the first to provide normal people with the chance to experience the wonders of space travel. It’s incredible to think that in the years that followed Neil Armstrong’s giant leap for mankind, only seven space tourists have made the trip to low-Earth orbit, none of which have even come close to retracing his…

ELS launch site

The sight of a rocket igniting and blasting off is one of the most aweinspiring things anyone can ever watch. For the lucky people in Kourou, French Guiana, this is a regular occurrence, thanks to the European Space Agency’s (ESA) multirocket launch pad. With the birth of the ESA, the French-built launch pad was selected as the place from where all European-funded missions take off. The Ensemble de Lancement Soyouz (ELS) is made up of three specific sections. There is the preparation area, where rockets are put together, the launch control centre, a safe bunker, which houses the scientists and engineers involved in the launch, and finally the launch platform, the 53-metre (174-foot) high tower that holds the rocket steady and vertical until the moment it takes off. The site is…

ELS launch site

Since Russia’s Sputnik 1 satellite entered space on 4 October 1957, thousands of manned and unmanned spacecraft, including Earth satellites and deep-space probes, have launched into the cosmos. In those five decades, space travel has truly come on leaps and bounds, with the development of liquid and solid fuels, as well as the use of solar panels and radioactive power sources among many of the impressive innovations, allowing space agencies across the planet to undertake evermore ambitious missions that would once have never been thought possible. Here, we’ve compiled ten of the most successful missions that have advanced the field of space travel to a whole new level. 1969 Apollo 11 Probably the most well-known space mission of all time, Apollo 11 was launched atop the most powerful rocket to date, the…

Voyager spacecraft

On 20 August 1977 Voyager 2 launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida aboard a Titan-Centaur rocket, heralding the start of one of the most ambitious deep space exploration missions of all time. Two weeks later Voyager 1 was sent up in an identical launch, although its greater speed meant that it eventually overtook Voyager 2. The list of accomplishments by the two probes is astounding. Between them they have studied all of the major planets of the solar system past Mars, in addition to some moons of Jupiter and Saturn, making countless new discoveries in the process. Now, as the furthest man-made objects from Earth, they are on their way out of the solar system. The launch of the mission coincided with a favourable alignment of the planets in the Seventies…

Voyager spacecraft

The Herschel crater

Of Saturn’s major moons, Mimas is the closest to the planet at 185,520 kilometres away. The moon is believed to have created the Cassini Division, a 4,800-kilometre gap between Saturn’s A and B rings. Mimas has an average diameter of 396 kilometres, with an ovoid shape. This is due to its low surface gravity – about one 25th that of Earth’s moon – as well as the strong gravitational pull from Saturn. The same side of Mimas always faces Saturn, and it has an asynchronous rotation (meaning that it takes the same amount of time to both orbit and rotate on its axis) of 22.5 hours. Mimas has a very low density, about 1.17 times that of water, so astronomers believe that it probably comprises a small rocky core with an…

The Herschel crater

Several hundred ants are currently in orbit on the International Space Station, in an experiment to see how they adapt to microgravity environments. The way ant colonies work is fascinating. They don’t have a central control; no single ant can force another to do something. Instead, they use information gathered locally to assess situations, which means the behaviour of the colony depends on the local cues each ant produces. Colonies send out worker ants to search and assess new areas. This can help them find food, map foreign terrain and identify potential threats. By studying the ways ants assess an alien environment, scientists believe they will be able to develop better search algorithms for robots. They want to create autonomous search robots that do not need a central control, much like…

How robots keep astronauts company

Feelings of loneliness are often hard to avoid when you’re in space. Astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) for long periods often struggle with this. Sometimes, their psychological issues can be harder to deal with than living in microgravity or sleeping upright. To combat this, Japanese scientists designed a robot with the aim of providing psychological support. It was named Kirobo, which is derived from the Japanese word for hope (“kibo”) and robot. Kirobo stands 34 centimetres (13.4 inches) tall and weighs one kilogram (2.2 pounds). It has a clever voice-recognition system and can produce its own sentences with the help of an advanced languageprocessing system, and its own built-in voice synthesis software. These innovative systems were actually designed by Toyota, which plans to use the technology to develop other robots’…

How robots keep astronauts company

10 secrets of space

Answering questions and solving puzzles has been the driving force behind astronomy for thousands of years, even if it often seems that for every mystery solved, a new one springs up. Today, astronomers like to think they have a fairly good understanding of the way our universe works, and processes from the life cycle of stars to the evolution of galaxies, and it’s certainly true that we know a lot more than we did a century ago. But there are still plenty of loose ends and new ones are still constantly emerging. Some of these mysteries are recent discoveries that may seem at first to break the established rules. Of course, we can’t be sure until these particular enigmas are resolved, but often the solution to puzzles like this is just…

10 secrets of space

The Big Bang theory begins with a simple assumption: if the universe is expanding and cooling – something Edwin Hubble and company proved at the beginning of the 20th Century – then it must have once been very small and very hot. From then on, the simple becomes infinitely complex. Big Bang theory is nothing less than the summation of everything we’ve learned about the very big (astrophysics) and the very small (quantum physics) in the history of human thought. Cosmologists – people who study the origin and evolution of the universe – theorise that 13.7 billion years ago, a bubble formed out of the void. The bubble, many times smaller than a single proton, contained all matter and radiation in our current universe. Propelled by a mysterious outward force, the…

There may be as many as 10 billion trillion stars in the 100 billion galaxies throughout the universe, but “only” about 100 billion in our galaxy, the Milky Way. Most stars comprise plasma, helium and hydrogen. They form when giant molecular clouds (GMCs), also known as star nurseries, experience a gravitational collapse. This increase in pressure and temperature forces fragments into a body known as a protostar. Over the course of its life, a typical star goes through continuous nuclear fusion in its core. The energy released by this fusion makes the star glow. Stars are classified according to the Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram, which lists their colour, temperature, mass, radius, luminosity and spectra (which elements they absorb). There are three main types of star: those above, below and on the main sequence.…

1 Flare stars If you’re looking for a star that’s unpredictable, then the fl are star is it. With their dramatic bursts of brightness, fl are stars often come in the form of dim red dwarfs, which are small and relatively cool stars compared to our Sun. They’re not too dissimilar to our very own star, though – the material that erupts from their surfaces is similar to how solar fl ares storm from the Sun’s surface – and these phenomena are all down to magnetic reconnection in the stars’ atmospheres. Magnetic reconnection is when magnetic fi elds are rearranged, causing high temperatures and particles to race away at high speeds. From Earth, fl are stars usually appear quite faint to us despite turning up the brightness. In fact, in order to…

Mysterious magnetic stars

Anatomy of the magnetar The astronomical make-up the universe’s strongest magnets DID YOU KNOW?Magnetars often have ‘starquakes’ on their surfaces, detected from Earth in the form of gamma rays! There are plenty of exotic objects in the universe and many might agree that the magnetar fi ts neatly into this category. Magnetars are exactly what their name infers – they are stars with a monstrous magnetic fi eld, quadrillions of times stronger than any magnet humans can build. It’s said the magnetar is so powerful that if you placed one at a distance halfway to the Moon, it would have no trouble stripping information from all the credit cards in the world. But what makes them so powerful? Magnetars are rapidly spinning neutron stars, made from the collapse of a massive star during a…

Mysterious magnetic stars

THE MYSTERY OF DARK MATTER

Dark history The Hubble Space Telescope has successfully mapped a cross-section of dark matter in the universe to a distance of 6.5 billion light years. Astronomers measured the shape of galaxies in images of this cross-section – the huge amount of dark matter acts as a gravitational lens, warping the light from the galaxies. The degree of lensing shows how much dark matter is present. The results showed that dark matter has become clumpier with time, as gravity pulls it and ordinary matter into a giant web across the universe. DID YOU KNOW?New research from 2014 suggests that dark matter might be hiding in microscopic black holes Out there in the universe, something is going on that we’re not able to fully explain. Over three billion light years away from Earth, two great…

THE MYSTERY OF DARK MATTER

Space volcanoes

It’s not just Earth that has volcanoes, they can be found on several other celestial bodies too. The volcanoes on other terrestrial planets like Venus and Mars, and moons such as Jupiter’s Io, are very similar to those on Earth, spewing out hot molten rock from below. However, those found on icy moons such as Enceladus and Titan, which orbit Saturn, eject something much colder. They are called cryovolcanoes, or ice volcanoes, and work in a very different way to their hotter cousins.…

Space volcanoes

What is a meteor shower?

A meteor shower occurs when lots of meteoroids enter the Earth’s atmosphere one after the other. Meteoroids are bits of dust and rock from comets that are released when their orbit brings them close to the Sun. The Sun’s heat boils off some of the comet’s icy surface and the resulting debris then trails it in orbit. Meteoroids that enter the Earth’s atmosphere are known as meteors, and can regularly be seen travelling across the sky alone. However, several times each year, the Earth’s orbit crosses with the orbit of a comet causing it to collide with a bunch of meteoroids all at once. Meteors travel through the Earth’s atmosphere at very high speeds - up to 72 kilometres (45 miles) per second. Friction of the atmosphere causes the meteor to heat…

What is a meteor shower?

DID YOU KNOW?The measurement of ‘light year’ was first introduced by Friedrich Bessel in 1838 5 TOP FACTS LIGHT YEARS 1 Voyager probes In August 2010, the Voyager probes were at a distance from our Sun of 17.1 and 13.9 billion km respectively. It’ll take them 18,000 years to travel one light year. 2 Milky Way Our galaxy is approx. 100,000 to 150,000 light years across. 3 Close neighbours There are only 12 stellar objects up to a distance of ten light years from the Sun. 4 Naked eye The furthest stellar object you can see with the naked eye is the Sombrero Galaxy, which is 28 million light years away. 5 Short blast For a few hours, you could see a supernova stellar explosion with the naked eye on 19 March 2008. It was at a distance of 7.5 billion…

Searching for hidden planets

It’s been over 80 years since Einstein fi rst published his general theory of relativity and he’s still making headlines. Astronomers are now using a central tenet of Einstein’s revolutionary theory – that massive objects like stars and galaxies can bend the fabric of space-time – to create celestial magnifying glasses called gravitational lenses. Here’s how it works. Using Einstein’s theory, scientists proved that light travelling toward Earth from a distant star bends slightly as it passes by the Sun. The bending effect is almost imperceptible because the Sun doesn’t contain tremendous amounts of mass. But imagine if an entire galaxy sat between the Earth and a far-off star. The mass of the galaxy cluster would act like a thick lens, bending and warping the light as it passed. To someone on…

Searching for hidden planets

The search for a new Earth

Where are we looking? The search for exoplanets is presently restricted to our own Milky Way spiral galaxy, which has a diameter of about 100,000 light years. This is mainly due to the various limitations on the technology and techniques used to seek them out. Using astrometric and Doppler shift methods, the area of search is a range of from 100 to 300 light years. This can be extended by the transit method to 6,000 light years and using chronometry, as proposed for the TPF-C spacecraft, to 12,000 light years. Gravitational lensing can fi nd extrasolar planets 25,000 light years away. As these techniques are refi ned, the search range is constantly being extended. One theory is that the galaxy itself has a Goldilocks Zone, so that star systems in the spiral arms…

The search for a new Earth

Future planet-finding missions

DID YOU KNOW?COROT-7 b orbits its star at a speed of 466,030mph NASA’s Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) Project TPF Coronagraph Solar coronagraphs were originally used with telescopes to block out the disc of the Sun to study its corona – this is hot plasma emitted by stellar bodies that travels millions of miles beyond its surface. Applied to the search for extrasolar planets the problem of blocking out the direct light of a star poses a much bigger problem. By isolating and studying the stellar corona, any planet within this area should be detected by the TPF-C spacecraft’s telescope combined with coronagraph detection equipment. TPF Interferometer This TPF-I mission would employ a formation of five spacecraft. Four would each be equipped with a four-metre infrared telescope, and one spacecraft would receive the data from them…

Future planet-finding missions

We caught up with Wesley Traub, the chief scientist for NASA’s Exoplanet Exploration Program, and the project scientist for the Terrestrial Planet Finder Coronagraph (TPF-C) Q: What type of outer space missions are needed in order to fi nd exoplanets? Wesley Traub: An astrometric mission is needed to discover planets around our nearest neighbour stars. This mission could determine the orbital parameters of each planet and accurately measure its mass. This is important because we need a list of planets that are close enough to Earth that we can measure their properties; nearest-neighbour planets are bright enough for us to measure, but more distant ones are not. Q: Will you be able to fi nd evidence of Earth-type and even life on these planets? WT: A visible spectroscopy mission is needed to look for biomarkers…

Different types of galaxies explained

There are several different galaxy classifi cation systems, but the most widely used is the Hubble Sequence, devised by the great Edwin Hubble in 1926 and later expanded upon by Allan Sandage among others. It’s more commonly known as the Hubble tuning fork due to the shape the system represents in diagrammatic form. Hubble’s system was designed to demonstrate the various classifi cations of three main classes of galaxy broken down into elliptical, spiral and lenticular shapes. The latter is essentially an intermediate of the other two types. The tuning fork was erroneously thought that each galaxy type represented snapshots of the entire life span of galaxies, but it has since been demonstrated that this is not the case. The most recent version of Hubble’s tuning fork comes courtesy of the Spitzer…

Different types of galaxies explained

When we delve into certain realms of astronomy, the scale of events and objects are often impossibly large to imagine. If we think of planets like Earth and Mars we can at least get some sort of grasp as to their size, as we can consider them relative to other bodies. As we get to bigger objects, like Jupiter and the Sun, our understanding gets somewhat muddled, but we can still comprehend how enormous they are by using Earth as a starting point (for example, the Sun is over 100 times the size of Earth). It’s when we get to the larger celestial occurrences, like supergiant stars and black holes, however, that things really start to become unfathomable. In this article we’ll be taking a look at one of these…

WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE

1 The big splash Scientists believe that our Moon was formed when a small protoplanet about the size of Mars – which astronomers have called Theia – slammed into the young Earth. This collision took place less than 100 million years after the birth of the Solar System. The impact destroyed Theia and sent some of Earth’s mantle fl ying into space which formed a ring of debris around our planet that coalesced into the Moon. 2 Merger When Theia struck Earth at high speed and an angle of around 45 degrees, the protoplanet was pulverised, its iron core sinking into the now molten Earth which had been heated by the shock of the impact to create a global ocean of lava. 3 Goodbye mantle While most of Theia was absorbed by the Earth –…

WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE

Meteorological satellites

Weather forecasting isn’t just handy for letting you know if you need an umbrella, it can also help save lives by providing early warning of devastating storms and fl oods. To be able to accurately predict these events, forecasters need to constantly monitor the Earth’s surface and atmosphere, and they can do this thanks to a vast network of meteorological satellites fl ying through space. There are two main types: geostationary and polar-orbiting satellites, which work together to monitor the planet from every angle. Currently watching North and South America and the Eastern Pacifi c are the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites, GOES-EAST and GOESWEST. In 2016, the current GOES-EAST satellite, GOES-13, will retire after ten years of service. Its replacement, GOES-R (to be renamed GOES-16 after launch), will be able…

Meteorological satellites

The search for alien life

Virtually every part of our planet is teeming with life, and it would be extraordinary that life – even on the lowest microbial level – does not exist on planets beyond our solar system. On a statistical level, our Milky Way spiral galaxy has a diameter of 100,000 light years and contains between 200 and 400 billion stars, a quarter of which have planets orbiting them. Of them, there could be 500 million planets that move in the habitable zone that can sustain life like our own. If an alien civilisation were to reach our level of technological ability, it seems only logical that they would beam out messages in search of other life forms. The main restriction is that energy, matter, or information cannot travel faster than the speed of…

The search for alien life

Q: Have you personally taken part in any search for alien life projects? Philip Plait: No, but some years ago, when I was working on Hubble, I tried to get pictures of extrasolar planets – which, unfortunately, didn’t work out. However, I’ve written numerous times on astrobiology topics, and it was the subject of an episode of a TV show I fi lmed. Q: What are our chances of fi nding aliens? PP: I know Seth Shostak of SETI has said that if aliens are out there and broadcasting using radio, we’ll detect them in the next 25 years or so. There are a lot of assumptions in there, but it’s an interesting calculation. I can’t say for sure when it will happen, of course, but I’d sure like to be around if…

Telescopes are all designed to do the same thing: collect and magnify light so that we can examine it. Practically speaking, we most often use them to observe the cosmos. There are three main types of scope: refractive, refl ective and compound. Hans Lippershey is credited with inventing the fi rst working telescope in 1608, which was a refracting type using lenses. Lippershey’s invention was known as a Dutch perspective glass and probably consisted of a convex lens at the end and a concave lens as an eyepiece. Numerous other astronomers worked to improve upon this initial design, including Galileo Galilei and Johannes Kepler; Galileo’s version of the refracting telescope was the fi rst to be called a ‘telescope’, with Greek poet Giovanni Demisiani coining the name. All refracting telescopes had…

How do telescopes see stars?

From their origins as simple hand-held instruments formed from a crude coupling of convex objective lens and concave eyepiece used to observe distant objects, to their utilisation in collecting and monitoring electromagnetic radiation emanating from distant space phenomena, telescopes are one of the human race’s most groundbreaking inventions. Indeed, now there are telescopes which can monitor, record and image almost all wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum, including those with no visible light and their usage is widening our understanding of the world around us and the far-fl ung reaches of space. Here, we take a look at some of the forms of telescope in use today, exploring how they work and what they are discovering. The optical telescope Since its creation in 1608, the optical telescope has made the close viewing of…

How do telescopes see stars?

Radio telescopes

The radio telescope works by receiving and then amplifying radio signals produced from the naturally occurring emissions of distant stars, galaxies and quasars. The two basic components of a radio telescope are a large radio antenna and a sensitive radiometer, which between them refl ect, direct and amplify incoming radio signals typically between wavelengths of ten metres and one millimetre to produce comprehensible information at an optical wavelength. Due to the weak power of these cosmic radio signals, as well as the range in wavelength that they operate in, radio telescopes need to be large in construction, as the effi ciency of the antenna is crucial and can easily be distorted by terrestrial radio interference. The most common radio telescope seen is the radio reflector; this consists of a parabolic antenna…

Radio telescopes

James Webb Space Telescope

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), originally known as the Next Generation Space Telescope, employs engineering techniques never used on a space telescope before and will produce unparalleled views of the universe. The JWST is scheduled for launch in 2018 in a joint venture between the ESA, NASA and Arianespace, the world’s fi rst company to offer commercial rocket launches. Primarily, the JWST will observe infrared light from distant objects. To gather light on the telescope the primary mirror on the JWST is made of 18 hexagonal beryllium segments, which are much lighter than traditional glass and also very strong. To roughly point the telescope in the direction of its observations a star tracker is used, and a Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS) is employed to fi ne-tune the viewings. The secondary mirror…

James Webb Space Telescope

European Extremely Large Telescope

Since its invention over 400 years ago the humble telescope has come on leaps and bounds. In the early-20th century astronomers relied on old single or twin-mirror methods to produce images of distant galaxies and stars, but as the size of telescopes increased the quality of imagery reduced. It wasn’t until the arrival of the Keck Observatories in Hawaii in the Eighties and Nineties, using 36 smaller mirror segments stitched together like a honeycomb, that telescopes were really able to view distant corners of the universe in stunning detail. This segmented design provides the basis for how the next generation of super-powerful telescopes will work, such as the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT), which is being built by the European Southern Observatory. What makes the E-ELT stand out from the crowd…

European Extremely Large Telescope

How far can we see into space?

Using the naked eye, it’s possible to spot the Andromeda galaxy. It has been visible to mankind long before we even knew it was another galaxy, but scientists are now determined to explore beyond the realms of nearby galaxies into the vast expanse of the universe. During its 25 years of service, the Hubble Space Telescope has provided an incredible amount of data, helping astronomers see further than ever before. Among its most famous contributions are the Hubble Deep Field images, which have provided us with the most detailed glimpses into the farthest reaches of the visible universe. Calculating just how far away Hubble’s most distant discoveries are from Earth is challenging, but astronomers have found a way to do this accurately. They measure the brightness of Type Ia supernovas – where…

How far can we see into space?

Spectrography, or spectroscopy, is the study of light from distant objects (such as a black hole or galaxy) to analyse their composition, movements and structure. It works by measuring the intensity of light present across a range of energies on the electromagnetic spectrum. Every element in the universe has a particular pattern of black lines, known as emission lines, unique to that element on the spectrum. By matching the known emission lines of an element to those observed on a spectrum from an object, the composition can be determined. A spectrometer is an instrument that is used to analyse these electromagnetic spectrums. In practice, it does this by observing the light (be it visible, infrared or otherwise) emitted from a source, and deducing the various energies associated with that light. Depending on…

The Leonids While not the most consistent of meteor showers, the Leonids can be one of the most dynamic spectacles in an astronomer’s calendar. They’re a product of the comet Tempel-Tuttle, which has a radius of around 1.8 kilometres (1.1 miles) and has a 33-year cycle. The comet itself is fairly unremarkable compared to the likes of Halley’s or Hale-Bopp, however it leaves behind a dense stream of debris that results in a meteor shower rate that can reach as many as 300 meteors an hour. Meteors enter the Earth’s atmosphere all the time. Spend a little time looking up at the sky at night in the country or a place with similarly low light pollution and there’s a good chance you’ll see a ‘shooting star’, the result of air friction burning…

Wildest weather in space

DID YOU KNOW?In 1989, geomagnetic storms caused an electrical blackout in Québec, Canada, that lasted 12 hours Weather on Earth can be extreme, but whatever’s happening outside right now where you are, it’s a safe bet that it’s better than the weather in the rest of the Solar System. Earth has the nicest weather thanks to a number of features: its size, its distance from the Sun, its axial tilt, orbital and rotational period, and its chemical composition. Although Earth’s meteorology can be devastating, in comparison to some of our planetary neighbours, it’s actually rather mild. Plus, a lot of our weather can be summed up in one word: water (albeit in various forms). Meanwhile, on planets lacking water, an atmosphere or a magnetic fi eld to shield them from the worst…

Wildest weather in space

What frequency is a quasar?

Some objects in space are viewable with the naked eye. Other anomalies such as quasars (the most powerful energy source in the universe – a type of star galaxy) and pulsars (spherical neutron stars) require a radio telescope. These telescopes receive and amplify frequencies from deep space using antennas, and measures their intensity. “By studying the intensity of radio frequencies, astronomers can monitor the conditions of space,” says Dr Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the SETI Institute. “Radio waves are not hindered by gas and dust between stars, so you can ‘look’ straight through a galaxy to the other side. Quasars were found because of radio telescopes.” According to Dr Shostak, a radio telescope uses a very low-noise amplifi er that collects radio waves, themselves collected using massive antennas. The signal…

What frequency is a quasar?

Listening in to the universe

Sound waves are pressure waves, which cannot travel through a vacuum, so sounds can’t actually be heard in the cosmos, however what the universe is brimming with is electromagnetic radiation. We are all familiar with technology that converts radio waves into audible sounds, and similar equipment is being used to listen to what is going on in space. The human ear is so good at detecting audio patterns that, by listening to an audible version of the electromagnetic radiation received by telescopes, astronomers are able to identify information that might have otherwise been missed using visual data alone. Using radio telescopes, hissing can be heard as solar fl ares burst from the Sun, while the rhythmic spinning of a pulsar produces clicks like a metronome. Planets also produce their own radio…

Listening in to the universe

Spitzer Space Telescope

DID YOU KNOW?The Spitzer was formerly known as the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SITF) Objects in space radiate heat in the form of infrared energy, but ground-based telescopes cannot detect it due to the Earth’s atmosphere. Because the Spitzer Space Telescope orbits around the Sun, it can record this energy in the form of images. The telescope uses three highly sensitive instruments – a camera, a spectrograph and a photometer – that operate on different wavelengths and detect pixels to form pictures. Infrared telescopes have to be kept very cold (-268ºC) in order to function properly. The Spitzer was launched with a liquid helium supply to keep its instruments cold for a minimum of 2.5 years. It is far enough away from the Earth so that it does not pick up infrared…

Spitzer Space Telescope

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All About Space (Digital) Subscription October 1st, 2024 Issue

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No. 161: $3.99

Astronomy Magazine (Digital) Subscription May 1st, 2025 Issue

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12 Issues: $44.99 ~~$83.88~~

La Cucina Italiana Magazine (Digital) Subscription April 1st, 2025 Issue

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