This graphic shows two of five new pairs of supermassive black holes recently identified by astronomers using a combination of data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), and the ground-based Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona.
Credits: X-ray (J122104): NASA/CXC/George Mason Univ./S.Satyapal et al.; X-ray (J140737): NASA/CXC/Univ. of Victoria/S.Ellison et al.; Optical: SDSS; Illustration: NASA/CXC/A.Hobart
Astronomers have identified a bumper crop of dual supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies. This discovery could help astronomers better understand how giant black holes grow and how they may produce the strongest gravitational wave signals in the Universe.
The new evidence reveals five pairs of supermassive black holes, each containing millions of times the mass of the Sun. These black hole couples formed when two galaxies collided and merged with each other, forcing their supermassive black holes close together.
The black hole pairs were uncovered by combining data from a suite of different observatories including NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), and the ground-based Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona.
“Astronomers find single supermassive black holes all over the universe,” said Shobita Satyapal, from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, who led one of two papers describing these results. “But even though we’ve predicted they grow rapidly when they are interacting, growing dual supermassive black holes have been difficult to find.”
Before this study fewer than ten confirmed pairs of growing black holes were known from X-ray studies, based mostly on chance detections. To carry out a systematic search, the team had to carefully sift through data from telescopes that detect different wavelengths of light.
Starting with the Galaxy Zoo project, researchers used optical data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) to identify galaxies where it appeared that a merger between two smaller galaxies was underway. From this set, they selected objects where the separation between the centers of the two galaxies in the SDSS data is less than 30,000 light years, and the infrared colors from WISE data match those predicted for a rapidly growing supermassive black hole.
Seven merging systems containing at least one supermassive black hole were found with this technique. Because strong X-ray emission is a hallmark of growing supermassive black holes, Satyapal and her colleagues then observed these systems with Chandra. Closely-separated pairs of X-ray sources were found in five systems, providing compelling evidence that they contain two growing (or feeding) supermassive black holes.
Both the X-ray data from Chandra and the infrared observations, suggest that the supermassive black holes are buried in large amounts of dust and gas.
“Our work shows that combining the infrared selection with X-ray follow-up is a very effective way to find these black hole pairs,” said Sara Ellison of the University of Victoria in Canada, who led the other paper describing these results. “X-rays and infrared radiation are able to penetrate the obscuring clouds of gas and dust surrounding these black hole pairs, and Chandra’s sharp vision is needed to separate them”.
The paper led by Ellison used additional optical data from the Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory (MaNGA) survey to pinpoint one of the new black hole pairs. One member of this black hole pair is particularly powerful, having the highest X-ray luminosity in a black hole pair observed by Chandra to date.
This work has implications for the burgeoning field of gravitational wave astrophysics. While scientists using the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) have detected the signals of merging black holes, these black holes have been of the smaller variety weighing between about eight and 36 times the mass of the Sun.
The merging black holes in the centers of galaxies are much larger. When these supermassive black holes draw even closer together, they should start producing gravitational waves. The eventual merger of the dual supermassive black holes in hundreds of millions of years would forge an even bigger black hole. This process would produce an astonishing amount of energy when some of the mass is converted into gravitational waves.
“It is important to understand how common supermassive black hole pairs are, to help in predicting the signals for gravitational wave observatories,” said Satyapal. “With experiments already in place and future ones coming online, this is an exciting time to be researching merging black holes. We are in the early stages of a new era in exploring the universe.”
LIGO is not able to detect gravitational waves from supermassive black hole pairs. Instead, pulsar timing arrays such as the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) are currently performing this search. In the future, the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) project could also search for these gravitational waves.
Four of the dual black hole candidates were reported in a paper by Satyapal et al. that was recently accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal, and appears online. The other dual black hole candidate was reported in a paper by Ellison et al., which was published in the September 2017 issue of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and appears online.
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, controls Chandra's science and flight operations.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, managed and operated WISE for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Space Dynamics Laboratory in Logan, Utah, built the science instrument. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. of Boulder, Colorado, built the spacecraft. Science operations and data processing take place at the Caltech/IPAC. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.
An artist’s illustration of a possible ninth planet in our solar system, hovering at the edge of our solar system. Neptune’s orbit is shown as a bright ring around the Sun.
Credits: ESO/Tom Ruen/nagualdesign
Caltech professor Mike Brown and assistant professor Konstanin Batygin have been working together to investigate Planet Nine.
Credits: Lance Hayashida/Caltech
It might be lingering bashfully on the icy outer edges of our solar system, hiding in the dark, but subtly pulling strings behind the scenes: stretching out the orbits of distant bodies, perhaps even tilting the entire solar system to one side.
If a planet is there, it’s extremely distant and will stay that way (with no chance -- in case you’re wondering -- of ever colliding with Earth, or bringing "days of darkness"). It is a possible "Planet Nine" -- a world perhaps 10 times the mass of Earth and 20 times farther from the sun than Neptune. The signs so far are indirect, mainly its gravitational footprints, but that adds up to a compelling case nonetheless.
One of its most dedicated trackers, in fact, says it is now harder to imagine our solar system without a Planet Nine than with one.
"There are now five different lines of observational evidence pointing to the existence of Planet Nine," said Konstantin Batygin, a planetary astrophysicist at Caltech in Pasadena, California, whose team may be closing in. "If you were to remove this explanation and imagine Planet Nine does not exist, then you generate more problems than you solve. All of a sudden, you have five different puzzles, and you must come up with five different theories to explain them."
Batygin and his co-author, Caltech astronomer Mike Brown, described the first three breadcrumbs on Planet Nine’s trail in a January 2016 paper, published in the Astronomical Journal. Six known objects in the distant Kuiper Belt, a region of icy bodies stretching from Neptune outward toward interstellar space, all have elliptical orbits pointing in the same direction. That would be unlikely -- and suspicious -- enough. But these orbits also are tilted the same way, about 30 degrees "downward" compared to the pancake-like plane within which the planets orbit the sun.
Breadcrumb number three: Computer simulations of the solar system with Planet Nine included show there should be more objects tilted with respect to the solar plane. In fact, the tilt would be on the order of 90 degrees, as if the plane of the solar system and these objects formed an "X" when viewed edge-on. Sure enough, Brown realized that five such objects already known to astronomers fill the bill.
Two more clues emerged after the original paper. A second article from the team, this time led by Batygin’s graduate student, Elizabeth Bailey, showed that Planet Nine could have tilted the planets of our solar system during the last 4.5 billion years. This could explain a longstanding mystery: Why is the plane in which the planets orbit tilted about 6 degrees compared to the sun's equator?
"Over long periods of time, Planet Nine will make the entire solar-system plane precess or wobble, just like a top on a table," Batygin said.
The last telltale sign of Planet Nine’s presence involves the solar system’s contrarians: objects from the Kuiper Belt that orbit in the opposite direction from everything else in the solar system. Planet Nine’s orbital influence would explain why these bodies from the distant Kuiper Belt end up "polluting" the inner Kuiper Belt.
"No other model can explain the weirdness of these high-inclination orbits," Batygin said. "It turns out that Planet Nine provides a natural avenue for their generation. These things have been twisted out of the solar system plane with help from Planet Nine and then scattered inward by Neptune."
The remaining step is to find Planet Nine itself. Batygin and Brown are using the Subaru Telescope at Mauna Kea Observatory in Hawaii to try to do just that. The instrument is the "best tool" for picking out dim, extremely distant objects lost in huge swaths of sky, Batygin said.
But where did Planet Nine come from? Batygin says he spends little time ruminating on its origin -- whether it is a fugitive from our own solar system or, just maybe, a wandering rogue planet captured by the sun’s gravity.
"I think Planet Nine’s detection will tell us something about its origin," he said.
Other scientists offer a different possible explanation for the Planet Nine evidence cited by Batygin. A recent analysis based on a sky mapping project called the Outer Solar System Origins Survey, which discovered more than 800 new "trans-Neptunian objects," suggests that the evidence also could be consistent with a random distribution of such objects. Still, the analysis, from a team led by Cory Shankman of the University of Victoria, could not rule out Planet Nine.
If Planet Nine is found, it will be a homecoming of sorts, or at least a family reunion. Over the past 20 years, surveys of planets around other stars in our galaxy have found the most common types to be "super Earths" and their somewhat larger cousins -- bigger than Earth but smaller than Neptune.
Yet these common, garden-variety planets are conspicuously absent from our solar system. Weighing in at roughly 10 times Earth’s mass, the proposed Planet Nine would make a good fit.
Planet Nine could turn out to be our missing super Earth.
One of the most mysterious stellar objects may be revealing some of its secrets at last.
Called KIC 8462852, also known as Boyajian’s Star, or Tabby's Star, the object has experienced unusual dips in brightness -- NASA's Kepler space telescope even observed dimming of up to 20 percent over a matter of days. In addition, the star has had much subtler but longer-term enigmatic dimming trends, with one continuing today. None of this behavior is expected for normal stars slightly more massive than the Sun. Speculations have included the idea that the star swallowed a planet that it is unstable, and a more imaginative theory involves a giant contraption or "megastructure" built by an advanced civilization, which could be harvesting energy from the star and causing its brightness to decrease.
A new study using NASA's Spitzer and Swift missions, as well as the Belgian AstroLAB IRIS observatory, suggests that the cause of the dimming over long periods is likely an uneven dust cloud moving around the star. This flies in the face of the "alien megastructure" idea and the other more exotic speculations.
The smoking gun: Researchers found less dimming in the infrared light from the star than in its ultraviolet light. Any object larger than dust particles would dim all wavelengths of light equally when passing in front of Tabby's Star.
"This pretty much rules out the alien megastructure theory, as that could not explain the wavelength-dependent dimming," said Huan Meng, at the University of Arizona, Tucson, who is lead author of the new study published in The Astrophysical Journal. "We suspect, instead, there is a cloud of dust orbiting the star with a roughly 700-day orbital period."
Why Dust is Likely
We experience the uniform dimming of light often in everyday life: If you go to the beach on a bright, sunny day and sit under an umbrella, the umbrella reduces the amount of sunlight hitting your eyes in all wavelengths. But if you wait for the sunset, the sun looks red because the blue and ultraviolet light is scattered away by tiny particles. The new study suggests the objects causing the long-period dimming of Tabby's Star can be no more than a few micrometers in diameter (about one ten-thousandth of an inch).
From January to December 2016, the researchers observed Tabby's Star in ultraviolet using Swift, and in infrared using Spitzer. Supplementing the space telescopes, researchers also observed the star in visible light during the same period using AstroLAB IRIS, a public observatory with a 27-inch-wide (68 centimeter) reflecting telescope located near the Belgian village of Zillebeke.
Based on the strong ultraviolet dip, the researchers determined the blocking particles must be bigger than interstellar dust, small grains that could be located anywhere between Earth and the star. Such small particles could not remain in orbit around the star because pressure from its starlight would drive them farther into space. Dust that orbits a star, called circumstellar dust, is not so small it would fly away, but also not big enough to uniformly block light in all wavelengths. This is currently considered the best explanation, although others are possible.
Collaboration with Amateur Astronomers
Citizen scientists have had an integral part in exploring Tabby's Star since its discovery. Light from this object was first identified as "bizarre" and "interesting" by participants in the Planet Hunters project, which allows anyone to search for planets in the Kepler data. That led to a 2016 study formally introducing the object, which is nicknamed for Tabetha Boyajian, now at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, who was the lead author of the original paper and is a co-author of the new study. The recent work on long-period dimming involves amateur astronomers who provide technical and software support to AstroLAB.
Several AstroLAB team members who volunteer at the observatory have no formal astronomy education. Franky Dubois, who operated the telescope during the Tabby's Star observations, was the foreman at a seat belt factory until his retirement. Ludwig Logie, who helps with technical issues on the telescope, is a security coordinator in the construction industry. Steve Rau, who processes observations of star brightness, is a trainer at a Belgian railway company.
Siegfried Vanaverbeke, an AstroLAB volunteer who holds a Ph.D. in physics, became interested in Tabby's Star after reading the 2016 study, and persuaded Dubois, Logie and Rau to use Astrolab to observe it.
"I said to my colleagues: 'This would be an interesting object to follow,'" Vanaverbeke recalled. "We decided to join in."
University of Arizona astronomer George Rieke, a co-author on the new study, contacted the AstroLAB group when he saw their data on Tabby's Star posted in a public astronomy archive. The U.S. and Belgium groups teamed up to combine and analyze their results.
Future Exploration
While study authors have a good idea why Tabby's Star dims on a long-term basis, they did not address the shorter-term dimming events that happened in three-day spurts in 2017. They also did not confront the mystery of the major 20-percent dips in brightness that Kepler observed while studying the Cygnus field of its primary mission. Previous research with Spitzer and NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer suggested a swarm of comets may be to blame for the short-period dimming. Comets are also one of the most common sources of dust that orbits stars, and so could also be related to the long-period dimming studied by Meng and colleagues.
Now that Kepler is exploring other patches of sky in its current mission, called K2, it can no longer follow up on Tabby's Star, but future telescopes may help unveil more secrets of this mysterious object.
"Tabby's Star could have something like a solar activity cycle. This is something that needs further investigation and will continue to interest scientists for many years to come," Vanaverbeke said.
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the Swift mission in collaboration with Pennsylvania State University in University Park, the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, and Orbital Sciences Corp. in Dulles, Virginia. Other partners include the University of Leicester and Mullard Space Science Laboratory in the United Kingdom, Brera Observatory and the Italian Space Agency in Italy, with additional collaborators in Germany and Japan.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at Caltech in Pasadena, California. Spacecraft operations are based at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, Littleton, Colorado. Data are archived at the Infrared Science Archive housed at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at Caltech. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. For more information about Spitzer, visit:
Scientists will use NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to study sections of the sky previously observed by NASA’s Great Observatories, including the Hubble Space Telescope and the Spitzer Space Telescope, to understand the creation of the universe’s first galaxies and stars.
The Hubble Ultra Deep Field is a snapshot of about 10,000 galaxies in a tiny patch of sky, taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.
Credits: NASA, ESA, S. Beckwith (STScI), the HUDF Team
After it launches and is fully commissioned, scientists plan to focus Webb telescope on sections of the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field (HUDF) and the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS). These sections of sky are among Webb’s list of targets chosen by guaranteed time observers, scientists who helped develop the telescope and thus get to be among the first to use it to observe the universe. The group of scientists will primarily use Webb’s mid-infrared instrument (MIRI) to examine a section of HUDF, and Webb’s near infrared camera (NIRCam) to image part of GOODS.
“By mixing [the data from] these instruments, we’ll get information about the current star formation rate, but we’ll also get information about the star formation history,” explained Hans Ulrik Nørgaard-Nielsen, an astronomer at the Danish Space Research Institute in Denmark and the principal investigator for the proposed observations.
Pablo Pérez-González, an astrophysics professor at the Complutense University of Madrid in Spain and one of several co-investigators on Nørgaard-Nielsen’s proposed observation, said they will use Webb to observe about 40 percent of the HUDF area with MIRI, in roughly the same location that ground-based telescopes like the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) and the Very Large Telescope array (VLT) obtained ultra-deep field data.
The iconic HUDF image shows about 10,000 galaxies in a tiny section of the sky, equivalent to the amount of sky you would see with your naked eye if you looked at it through a soda straw. Many of these galaxies are very faint, more than 1 billion times fainter than what the naked human eye can see, marking them as some of the oldest galaxies within the visible universe.
With its powerful spectrographic instruments, Webb will see much more detail than imaging alone can provide. Spectroscopy measures the spectrum of light, which scientists analyze to determine physical properties of what is being observed, including temperature, mass, and chemical composition. Pérez-González explained this will allow scientists to study how gases transformed into stars in the first galaxies, and to better understand the first phases in the formation of supermassive black holes, including how those black holes affect the formation of their home galaxy. Astronomers believe the center of nearly every galaxy contains a supermassive black hole, and that these black holes are related to galactic formation.
MIRI can observe in the infrared wavelength range of 5 to 28 microns. Pérez-González said they will use the instrument to observe a section of HUDF in 5.6 microns, which Spitzer is capable of, but that Webb will be able to see objects 250 times fainter and with eight times more spatial resolution. In this case, spatial resolution is the ability of an optical telescope, such as Webb, to see the smallest details of an object.
Pérez-González said in the area of HUDF they will observe, Hubble was able to see about 4,000 galaxies. He added that, with Webb, they “will detect around 2,000 to 2,500 galaxies, but in a completely different spectral band, so many galaxies will be quite different from the ones that [Hubble] detected.”
With NIRCam, the team will observe a piece of the GOODS region near their selected section of HUDF. The entire GOODS survey field includes observations from Hubble, Spitzer, and several other space observatories.
“These NIRCam images will be taken in three bands, and they will be the deepest obtained by any guaranteed time observation team,” explained Pérez-González.
NIRCam can observe in the infrared wavelength range of 0.6 to 5 microns. Pérez-González explained they will use it to observe a section of GOODS in the 1.15 micron band, which Hubble is capable of, but that Webb will be able to see objects 50 times fainter and with two times more spatial resolution. They will also use it to observe the 2.8 and 3.6 micron bands. Spitzer is able to do this as well, but Webb will be able to observe objects nearly 100 times fainter and with eight times greater spatial resolution.
Because the universe is expanding, light from distant objects in the universe is “redshifted,” meaning the light emitted by those objects is visible in the redder wavelengths by the time it reaches us. The objects farthest away from us, those with the highest redshifts, have their light shifted into the near- and mid-infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum. The Webb telescope is specifically designed to observe the objects in that area of the spectrum, which makes it ideal for looking at the early universe.
“When you build an observatory with unprecedented capabilities, most probably the most interesting results will not be those that you can expect or predict, but those that no one can imagine,” said Pérez-González.
The James Webb Space Telescope, the scientific complement to NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, will be the most powerful space telescope ever built. Webb is an international project led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
MIRI was built by ESA, in partnership with the European Consortium, a group of scientists and engineers from European countries; a team from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California; and scientists from several U.S. institutions. NIRCam was built by Lockheed Martin and the University of Arizona in Tucson.
This image combines two products from the first pointing at the Martian moon Phobos by the THEMIS camera on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter, on Sept. 29, 2017. Surface-temperature information from observation in thermal-infrared wavelengths is overlaid on a more detailed image from a visible-light observation.
NASA's longest-lived mission to Mars has gained its first look at the Martian moon Phobos, pursuing a deeper understanding by examining it in infrared wavelengths.
The Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) camera on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter observed Phobos on Sept. 29, 2017. Researchers have combined visible-wavelength and infrared data to produce an image color-coded for surface temperatures of this moon, which has been considered for a potential future human-mission outpost.
This series of images was taken in visible-wavelength light as the THEMIS camera on NASA's Mars Odyssey scanned across the Martian moon Phobos on Sept. 29, 2017. The apparent motion is due to progression of the camera's pointing during 18 seconds of observing, not from motion of Phobos.
"Part of the observed face of Phobos was in pre-dawn darkness, part in morning daylight," said THEMIS Deputy Principal Investigator Victoria Hamilton of the Southwest Research Institute, headquartered in San Antonio.
Looking across the image from left to right presents a sequence of times of day on the Martian moon, from before dawn, to sunrise, to increasing amounts of time after dawn. This provides information about how quickly the ground warms, which is related to the texture of the surface. As barefoot beach walks can confirm, sand warms or cools quicker than rocks or pavement.
This image of Phobos is one product of the first pointing at that Martian moon by the THEMIS camera on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter. The Sept. 29, 2017, observation also provided information about temperatures on different areas of Phobos. The oblong moon has an average diameter of about 14 miles.
"Including a predawn area in the observation is useful because all the heating from the previous day's sunshine has reached its minimum there," Hamilton said. "As you go from predawn area to morning area you get to watch the heating behavior. If it heats up very quickly, it's likely not very rocky but dusty instead."
Phobos has an oblong shape with an average diameter of about 14 miles (22 kilometers). Cameras on other Mars orbiters have previously taken higher-resolution images of Phobos, but none with the infrared information available from THEMIS. Observations in multiple bands of thermal-infrared wavelengths can yield information about the mineral composition of the surface, as well as the surface texture.
One major question about Phobos and Mars' even smaller moon, Deimos, is whether they are captured asteroids or bits of Mars knocked into the sky by impacts. Compositional information from THEMIS might help pin down their origin.
Colors in this image of the Martian moon Phobos indicate a range of surface temperatures detected by observing the moon on Sept. 29, 2017, with the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) camera on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter.
Since Odyssey began orbiting the Red Planet in 2001, THEMIS has provided compositional and thermal-properties information from all over Mars, but never before imaged either Martian moon. The Sept. 29 observation was completed to validate that the spacecraft could safely do so, as the start of a possible series of observations of Phobos and Deimos in coming months.
In normal operating mode, Odyssey keeps the THEMIS camera pointed straight down as the spacecraft orbits Mars. In 2014, the spacecraft team at Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver; and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California; and the THEMIS team at Arizona State University, Tempe, developed procedures to rotate the spacecraft for upward-looking imaging of a comet passing near Mars. The teams have adapted those procedures for imaging the Martian moons.
"We now have the capability of rotating the spacecraft for THEMIS observations," said Odyssey Project Scientist Jeffrey Plaut of JPL. "There is heightened interest in Phobos because of the possibility that future astronauts could perhaps use it as an outpost."
With the first observation now in hand, plans are advancing for additional opportunities at different illumination phases of Phobos and Deimos.
"We want to get observations under all types of lighting -- fully daylit, a small crescent, during eclipse," Hamilton said. "We hope this is the first of several observations that will help us understand Phobos and Deimos."
NASA's InSight lander will travel to Mars next year. When it does, it will be carrying two microchips bearing the names of members of the public.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
An example of a "boarding pass" that members of the public can download by participating in NASA's Frequent Fliers program. With each NASA mission that flies their names, individuals can accumulate "miles" on their boarding pass.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
When it lands on Mars in November of 2018, NASA's InSight lander will be carrying several science instruments -- along with hundreds of thousands of names from members of the public.
In 2015, nearly 827,000 people signed up to add their names to a silicon microchip onboard the robotic spacecraft. NASA is now adding a second microchip, giving the public another chance to send their names to Mars.
New submissions will be accepted through Nov. 1, 2017, at the following link:
"Mars continues to excite space enthusiasts of all ages," said Bruce Banerdt, the InSight mission's principal investigator at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "This opportunity lets them become a part of the spacecraft that will study the inside of the Red Planet."
This fly-your-name opportunity comes with "frequent flier" points reflecting an individual's personal participation in NASA's exploration of Mars. These points span multiple missions and multiple decades. Participants who sent their names on the previous InSight opportunity in 2015 can download a "boarding pass" and see their "frequent flier" miles.
As part of this frequent flier program, a chip carrying the names of 1.38 million people also flew aboard the first flight of NASA's Orion spacecraft in 2014. NASA is building Orion to carry astronauts to deep space destinations that will enable future missions to Mars.
After InSight, the next opportunity to earn frequent flier points will be NASA's Exploration Mission-1, the first flight bringing together the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft to travel thousands of miles beyond the Moon in preparation for human missions to Mars and beyond.
InSight will be the first mission to explore Mars' deep interior. The spacecraft will set down a seismometer to detect marsquakes and meteor strikes, using the seismic energy of these phenomena to study material far below the Martian surface. It also will deploy a self-hammering heat probe that will burrow deeper into the ground than any previous device on the Red Planet. These and other InSight investigations will improve our understanding about the formation and evolution of all rocky planets, including Earth.
InSight is scheduled to launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, in May of 2018.
el dispensador dice: al verme cercado por las intolerancias, observé que en el campo de batalla de la vida, había gentes como perdidas, mientras otras estaban extraviadas, algunas sólo miraban, y nadie conversaba, algo los tenía ocupados en pensamientos desvariados, cuando se pierde el futuro ya no se divisan las manos, así es que subí a la torre para divisar mejor las distancias y los horizontes, no se veían los enemigos, pero todo sonaba a desatino... cañones... espadas... balaceras... trincheras... misiles... desacuerdos por montones... ¿dónde se habrá perdido la paz que jamás reinó en esta Tierra?, me preguntaba mientras no entendía las razones... los negocios de la guerra justifican lo irracional de los argumentos vacíos y de las almas sin canciones... traté de hilvanar en mi cabeza los hechos de armas del siglo pasado, y eran muchos, algunos sobresalían pero otros no menores, quedaban aletargados en el recuerdo... dos guerras mundiales... víctimas y más víctimas, donde los que no eran anónimos eran desconocidos... ¿para qué sirve la medalla al valor?... cuando el destino se sacrifica para alimentar a miserables, el vacío queda del lado del que lucha por la nada propia para dar de comer a lo mucho que juntan los mezquinos... entendí que los motivos de la primera guerra mundial no habían sido otros que las miserias humanas de los poderosos pretendiendo colectar más poder, más bienestar, más comodidad, a cambio del olvido hacia los prójimos... digamos, razones económicas de espíritus pobres en cuerpos disfrutando de bienes robados y muchos más saqueados a indefensos y desprevenidos... no pasó mucho tiempo que caí en la cuenta que la segunda guerra mundial tenía los mismos fundamentos miserables de mezquindades a mansalva... y no pasó mucho tiempo para caer en Corea y en Vietnam para capturar evidencia absoluta acerca de la importancia que el poder le confiere a la muerte de los otros... no me olvidé de la Guerra Civil española, que sólo benefició a Bruselas y sus intereses de dominación mediante las ignorancias y los analfabetismos, entendiendo que hay titulados ignorantes en sus soberbias, entendiendo que hay profesionales con notables honores que no han logrado superar el analfabetismo de sus desidias... necios que se venden como sabios pero que no son más que falsos profetas de futuros consumidos antes de tomar sus respectivas entidades... no olvidé el martirio de los armenios a manos de los turcos... e inmediatamente caí en la cuenta que la paz no estaba en este planeta por la sencilla razón de que ella misma (paz) no moraba en el alma de cada ser humano... todo se resumía a ser palabra, no más que eso... sonaba como palabra... se oía como palabra... pero carecía de sentido, por tanto sonaba a hueco... comprobé que unos pocos no querían la paz, porque sus intereses y sus conveniencias pasaban por los conflictos entre los mortales indefensos, para lo cual debían fabricar escenarios de guerra... podría decirse, un terrorismo del poder... que necesita de terroristas de segunda mano que sirvan como mano de obra barata a sus fines (los del poder, claro está)... ideologías sin ideas... justificaciones sin causas... necedades y empecinamientos... cinismos... hipocresías... desprecios... intolerancias... atropellos... el poder moviliza a las masas que serán enviadas a un frente ficticio donde lucharán pobres contra pobres, desvalidos contra desvalidos, olvidados contra negados, omitidos contra despojados... y cuando todos mueren, el poder toma posesión de los remanentes, despliega grandes campos santos que nadie visitará y entierra a generaciones de voluntades sacrificadas por antojos de mentes desquiciadas, una y otra vez... sin solución de continuidad, sin fin... desde la torre creí escuchar los gritos desesperados de Guernica... no eran distintos a semejantes circunstancias en otros lugares, otros escenarios, con otras víctimas, para un mismo fin, alimentar los antojos del poder demente y aberrante... te diré que veo cada vez menos árboles, menos selvas, menos bosques, menos naturaleza en estado puro... te diré que veo cada vez más naturaleza sacrificada por locos por el dinero y los bienestares que jamás podrán disfrutar... te diré que veo que la gente anda frustrada porque está sintiendo en la intimidad de su alma que algo no anda bien, no sólo con el clima, sino con el cuento de políticos impresentables que se quieren quedar con todo, lo de todos... y no les alcanza porque la codicia ya no es tal, porque la avaricia supera a la anterior y ambas dan forma a una mezquindad miserable que además es insoportable... entonces las gentes se enferman al ver que se les escurre la dignidad a manos de desesperados por los dineros... pero los políticos siguen los mandatos de las corporaciones... y las corporaciones siguen el mandato del "dueño del mundo", émulo del pensamiento de un Julio Verne que tuvo la inspiración en la premonición de sus sueños... no fue el único, Nostradamus tuvo sueños parecidos y sus conclusiones, aún no siendo noveladas, se transformaron en versos que aún permanecen sin traducción al pensamiento facilista que impera en occidente... desde la torre se veía Barcelona... había grietas inducidas entre gentes semejantes... cada uno defendiendo causas huecas... me pregunté qué intereses movían a semejante quiebre... una vez más vi combates de inocentes anónimos versus anónimos inocentes... y casi de soslayo vi al poder reírse de las víctimas, y entonces ví que al poder sobre el poder le regocijaba el resultado consecuente con sus órdenes... y comprobé que el dueño del mundo disfrutaba la zozobra global... los llantos... los miedos... los temores... los ahogos... y una vez más... me pregunté cómo era posible que las gentes defendiesen causas injustas generadas por analfabetos de Dios... vi que había terceros agazapados aguardando la tragedia de los pobres, de los marginados, de los indigentes, de los hambreados, de los obligados a migrar, de los despojados y otros saqueados... llegué a la conclusión que el ser humano no tiene cura porque se le enseña a estar enfermo, porque esa enfermedad es la que nutre al poder enloquecido... ceder la dignidad para poder sobrevivir un día más es parte de dicha patología inducida... ser felpudo y obsecuente del mismo poder (u otro) también lo es... y la vida se escurre defendiendo mentiras que son productos de engaños globales, manipulaciones de la FE, manipulaciones de la esperanza, manipulaciones de los sueños, y en fin, manipulaciones donde muy pocos tienen todo el beneficio, donde los muchos (que son muchísimos) pierden todo en pos de una justicia que no es tal... no había solución... había que esperar por la revelación divina, implacable sobre la miseria humana... descendí de la torre, sabiendo que nada podía hacerse... paz y amor eran sólo excusas en mentes iluminadas que no tenían más que la voz propia, interior... que cobijaba una paz y un amor que se retroalimentaba de silencios y soledades... bajando de la torre miré por última vez el campo de batalla... vi occidentales venenosos y orientales tóxicos contaminando los escenarios de las gentes de bien... supe que sólo un artilugio del destino cósmico modificaría el rumbo de la catástrofe... ya en el llano, me mezclé entre la multitud, y me esfumé en un destello de humanismo sin tumba y sin cruz... la dignidad que no se siembra, no se vive, sólo se sacrifica... y ningún poder vale la pena la defensa de aquello que se compra y se vende... porque el negocio, sólo denigra la condición humana, asesinando los contenidos que necesitan de la calidad humana para que cada quien, pueda ser y estar por un segundo de eternidad compartida. OCTUBRE 04, 2017.- ningún poder vale tu sangre. Carmen Conde Sedemiuqse Esquimedes
Anders Monsen Askevold (Norwegian painter) 1834 - 1900 Dampbåt og Robåter i Fjordlandskap (Steamer and Rowing Boat in a Fjord Landscape, 1898 oil on canvas 55 x 81 cm. signed and dated lower t.v .: A. Askevold. Ddf. In 1898. private collection
Anders Askevold was a Norwegian landscape painter. Anders Askevold was known as an animal and landscape painter.
Anders Monsen Askevold was born in Askvoll, in Sunnfjord, Norway. He was the second oldest of ten siblings. His father was a teacher. His early training started at the age of thirteen in Bergen under Hans Leganger Reuch (1800-1854). He was educated as a painter in Düsseldorf, but continued his studies in Paris and Munich. Askevold came to Düsseldorf in 1855 and stayed for 3 years. He trained in Düsseldorf under Professor Hans Gude from 1855 until 1859. He was known as a member of the Düsseldorf school of painting with others like Adelsteen Normann. From 1861 to 1866 he was in Paris. In 1866 Askevold moved back to Norway and settled in Bergen. After this he moved back to Düsseldorf where he would spend his winters in Germany and his summers in Norway. Askevold did some commissions for churches in Norway. He died in 1900 in Düsseldorf.
His paintings were shown at numerous international exhibitions, including world exhibitions in London (1862), Paris (1867) and (1878), Vienna (1873) and Philadelphia (1876). In Vienna and Philadelphia, he was honored with medals. In 1884, in London he won the gold medal.
A monument was erected in his honor by the municipality of Askvoll during 1934. A painting by Askevold sold for over £5,000 in 2009
Isaac Ilyich Levitan (Russian painter) 1860 - 1900 Над вечным покоем (Above the Eternal Peace), 1894 oil on canvas 150 x 206 cm. Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia
The image of Russian nature, with its lack of spectacular colours and contrasts, is endowed in this landscape with heroic features. The artist surveys the world as if seeing it like a bird in mid-flight. His eye is presented with a majestically unfolding panorama of natural elements. The theme of the world's mysterious incomprehensibility is sounded in the landscape with a solemn and grim voice. The sideways and upwards open space is represented with general planes: water and the sky, painted using the same colour scheme, which boosts the picture's monumental impact. The lofty sky, open sideways and upwards, seems to develop some sort of struggle, collision. The celestial drama is not reflected in the steel scales of the water. The sky and land – parts of faceless cosmos – are made alien to each other. It is only the cliff, straining forward as it does, with a wooden church on top, that provides evidence of the human soul, fragile but full of faith, being present in the world. The confrontation between the human spirit and the infinity of the creation is represented in the picture on an epic, universal scale.
Frederic Edwin Church (American landscape painter) 1826 - 1900 Rainy Season in the Tropics, 1866 oil on canvas 56 1/4 x 84 1/4 in. (142.9 x 214 cm.) Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, United States of America
“Rainy Season in the Tropics” is one of the most celebrated works by the second-generation Hudson River School artist Frederic Edwin Church. Despite being a highly theatrical, fantastical, and symbolic landscape, the scene incorporates a number of scientifically accurate and observed elements. The double rainbow that spans the canvas, notable for the reversal of the color spectrum that occurs in the second of its two bands, is technically known as Alexander’s band, and Church’s meticulous depiction of it suggests that he may have consulted a scientific treatise when painting the scene. Furthermore, the tropical fauna emerging from the bottom right corner of the painting is based on botanical sketches Church made while living in Jamaica. Church and his wife retreated to the island in 1865 after the deaths of their two children from diphtheria, but when they returned to the United States the following year they were expecting a child. Many scholars interpret “Rainy Season in the Tropics” as a reflection of Church’s renewed optimism, both about his personal life and about a spirit of national unity following the end of the American Civil War.
El escritor Kazuo Ishiguro posa en el patio del "Royal Academy of Arts" en Picadilly, Londres, Reino Unido.CARMEN VALIÑO / VÍDEO: EPV
El británico Kazuo Ishiguro, de 62 años, ha sido galardonado este jueves con el Premio Nobel de Literatura 2017. Es el segundo autor en lengua inglesa consecutivo que consigue el Nobel, después de Bob Dylan el año pasado. Pero el reconocimiento al autor de Lo que queda del día (1989) será, sin duda, menos controvertido y, a la vez, más previsible, al tratarse de un autor de amplio reconocimiento que cuenta ya con prestigiosos galardones como el Booker.
El jurado ha destacado "sus novelas de gran fuerza emocional que han descubierto el abismo bajo nuestro nuestro ilusorio sentido de conexión con el mundo". Su obra más celebrada es Lo que queda del día (1989), su tercera novela, que ganó el premio Booker y en cuya adaptación cinematográfica Anthony Hopkins reprentó al mayordomo Stevens. También Nunca me abadones (2005) fue llevada a la gran pantalla. Su última obra, de fantasía, lleva por título El gigante enterrado y explora cómo la memoria se relaciona con el olvido, la historia con el presente y la fantasía con la realidad. Todas sus obras han sido publicadas en español por Anagrama.
“Es un escritor de una gran integridad. No mira hacia un lado, ha desarrollado un universo estético propio”, ha destacado Sara Danius, secretaria de la Academia Sueca. La literatura de Ishiguro aborda temas como la memoria, el tiempo o la autoilusión. Toma el relevo de Bob Dylan, galardonado en 2016 "por haber creado una nueva expresión poética dentro de la gran tradición americana de la canción". Tras el revuelo causado el año pasado por la concesión del premio a un músico, Danius ha confiado en que la elección de Ishiguro “hará al mundo feliz”.
Nacido el 8 de noviembre de 1954 en Nagasaki (Japón), Kazuo Ishiguro se trasladó a los cinco años con su familia a Surrey, Inglaterra, donde a su padre le ofrecieron un trabajo como oceanógrafo. Estudió literatura inglesa y filosofía en la universidad de Kent. Después cursó un posgrado de escritura creativa en la universidad de East Anglia, donde tuvo de profesores a Malcolm Bradbury y Angela Carter. Su tesis se convirtió en 1982 en su primera novela, Pálida luz en las colinas, recibida con elogios por la crítica. Es autor de siete novelas, que escribe en inglés, además de diversos libros de relatos y guiones para cine y televisión. Junto a Martin Amis, Ian McEwan Hanif Kureishi, Salman Rushdie o Julian Barnes, Ishiguro pertenece a la generación de novelistas que renovaron la narrativa británica en los años 80 de siglo pasado.
A pesar de su alabada trayectoria, la elección de Ishiguro ha sido recibida en el mundo editorial como una sorpresa, en la medida en que no era un habitual en las quinielas. En los últimos días, casas de apuestas como Ladbrokes habían desvelado los nombres de los favoritos para recibir el Nobel de 2017. Autores como el keniano Ngugi Wa Thiong'o o el japonés Haruki Murakami habían sido las principales apuestas para alzarse con el galardón más importante de las letras, pero no es la primera vez que sus nombres aparecen entre los candidatos. La canadiense Margaret Atwood, el poeta surcoreano Ko Un o el chino Yan lianke también habían entrado en esa lista.
Desde su creación en 1901 el Nobel de Literatura ha distinguido a 113 autores, 14 de ellos mujeres, y en cuatro ocasiones ha sido compartido, la última vez en 1974. La Academia ha afrontado este año un galardón que en 2016 contó con polémica al premiar al músico Bob Dylan. Se mantuvo la incertidumbre de si recogería el galardón y la compensación económica del Nobel. Finalmente, optó por enviar un discurso de agradecimiento a la Academia, lo que le permitió cobrar los alrededor de 820.000 euros. El también poeta no acudió a la ceremonia de entrega de los premios y en su lugar asistió la artista Patti Smith. Posteriormente, en abril, Dylan asistió a un acto privada en Estocolmo donde recibió, con casi cuatro meses de retraso, el premio más importante de literatura.
