jccook@jpl.nasa.gov dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov NASA’s Juno Mission Gets Under Jupiter’s and Io’s Surface Mars. NASA Orbiter Spots Curiosity Rover Making Tracks to Next Science Stop Solar System. NASA’s EZIE Mission Captures ‘First Light’ Mars. NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover Studies Trove of Rocks on Crater Rim Solar System. NASA’s Juno Back to Normal Operations After Entering Safe Mode Mars. Perseverance Rover Witnesses One Martian Dust Devil Eating Another Mars. How NASA’s Perseverance Is Helping Prepare Astronauts for Mars Mars. NASA’s Curiosity Rover Detects Largest Organic Molecules Found on Mars Stars and Galaxies. NASA Launches Missions to Study Sun, Universe’s Beginning Solar System. NASA Turns Off 2 Voyager Science Instruments to Extend Mission Explore MoreQUIZZES. Image. Juno's JIRAM Captures Hots Spots on Io Image. Juno Sees Turbulence in Jupiter's Atmosphere Image. Curiosity on the Road to Boxwork Formations Image. Curiosity Looks Downslope From the Sulfate Unit Image. Image. 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Become a part of our Community!  >> Visit Now Comet ISON has disappointed many hobby astronomers in the past weeks — its brightness did not increase as strongly as previously assumed the comet will fly by the Sun at a distance of only 1.1 million miles (1.8 million kilometers) ISON’s light intensity increased abruptly; several observers announced a sudden rise in the comet’s activity Images of ISON taken by scientists from the MPS and the Wendelstein Observatory now offer possible evidence for the cause of this outburst the researchers aimed their telescope toward the approaching visitor The researchers’ images show two striking features within the comet’s atmosphere that protrude from the nucleus in a wing-like fashion While these so-called coma wings were still rather faint on November 14 they dominate the images taken two days later “Features like these typically occur after individual fragments break off the nucleus,” said Hermann Böhnhardt from MPS Where the emissions from the comet and its fragments meet a kind of boundary layer is formed that often takes a wing-like form as seen from Earth Whether or not this fragmentation process led to the recent outburst cannot be determined with certainty a connection between both phenomena has been well established the coma wings cannot be seen with the naked eye numerical methods were necessary to make them visible the researchers comb through the comet’s coma looking for spatial changes in the light intensity The uniformly bright background of the comet’s atmosphere is numerically eliminated so as not to outshine the fainter structures hidden beneath “Our calculations imply that ISON lost only one fragment or very few at the most,” said Böhnhardt updates and special offers via email from Astronomy.com Astronomy leads the astronomy hobby as the most popular magazine of its kind in the world Count me in Subscribers can access their digital magazine issues and registered users can participate in our Community forums and galleries rocky barren landscapes of frozen ice on Saturn's moon Titan white patches in the red sand of Mars – these are images of completely alien worlds but which they can capture in pictures with the help of space cameras on board unmanned space probes space cameras developed and built by researchers and engineers at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Katlenburg-Lindau/Lower Saxony have been providing scientists with a glimpse into these alien worlds And the latest news: since 16 July of this year two cameras on board NASA’s Dawn space probe have been orbiting the Vesta asteroid which orbits the Sun beyond the orbit of Mars in the so-called asteroid belt It is hoped that accurate images of the surface of this cosmic rock will help scientists to unravel the history of the development of our solar system succeeded in taking the first picture of a comet’s nucleus The success story of the camera makers from Katlenburg-Lindau starts with a comet – and a favourable constellation – because Halley’s Comet only passes Earth as close as it did in 1986 once every 76 years or so as it travels around the Sun Reason enough for the European Space Agency ESA to greet the cosmic traveller with a kind of welcoming committee: on 14 March 1986 the space probe Giotto flew past the comet at a distance of barely 600 kilometres Apart from other scientific instruments Giotto had on board the Halley Multicolour Camera belonging to the MPS During the fly-by the high-precision instrument succeeded in taking the first image of a comet’s nucleus – and thus the proof that a solid nucleus is hidden in the centre of the comet's coma of gas and dust the MPS has provided eight further scientific missions with their vision Five cameras from Katlenburg-Lindau are flying through space at the moment: two on board ESA’s Rosetta mission which will reach the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014; two aboard NASA’s Dawn probe and one aboard ESA’s Venus Express mission which has been investigating our neighbouring planet since 2006 the construction of such a camera is always a challenge,” says Professor Ulrich Christensen because although camera technology has developed significantly in recent years the demands placed on the instruments remain huge The first endurance test is the rocket lift-off itself In order to ensure that the high-precision instruments survive the powerful vibrations unscathed they are extensively tested beforehand at the vibration test unit of the MPS: the heavy vibration block on which the engineers mount the instruments runs through several “vibration programmes” in order to simulate all aspects of the rocket lift-off “The second big challenge for the cameras are the low temperatures and the vacuum in space,” explains Dr who heads the camera team for the Rosetta mission which provided spectacular images of the Lutetia asteroid in July 2010 The instruments must function properly when they arrive at their destination even after years of deep sleep during the voyage through space the MPS scientists simulate the conditions in space in so-called thermal vacuum chambers The space missions place very special demands on the cameras’ CDD chip “For the Giotto mission the CCD technology which is now incorporated into every digital camera who played a crucial role in the development of the Halley Multicolour Camera and numerous other cameras This was an essential condition for operating cameras in space because only the digital image data can be transmitted back to Earth by radio signal which has been orbiting the Vesta asteroid since 16 July 2011 Although the resolution of the cameras which are travelling through space aboard current missions is often not significantly higher than that of commercial ones “resolution is not everything,” says Sierks The space probes which travel to very remote regions of our solar system can only transmit limited quantities of data back to Earth anyhow the space cameras are far superior to their terrestrial brothers “Many of the objects which we observe have very low luminosity,” explains Sierks during which the cameras are often used for the visual navigation The cameras must be able to take pictures of the celestial body from a very great distance The MPS cameras aboard the Rosetta space probe succeeded in making the mission’s destination comet visible from a distance of more than 150 million kilometres at the beginning of June the missions sometimes require very short exposure times Giotto hurtled past Halley’s Comet at a speed of around 250,000 kilometres per hour “It is as if you wanted to take a photo of the pilot of a jet plane as it whizzes past,” remembers Kramm “The Dawn cameras also cope effortlessly with exposure times of a few milliseconds,” adds Andreas Nathues from the MPS the scientific leader of the Dawn camera team And this makes every space camera produced at the MPS a minor work of art Specially developed to do justice to the specific mission – and to provide fascinating glimpses into alien worlds was the reigning mare at the 2021 Herwart von der Decken Hanoverian elite mare show in Verden on 23 August 2021 Three daughters of the mare by this name won the Herwart von der Decken Prize for the "best mare band" in Hanover The yellow and white sash of the jumping winner went to Hann.Pr.A The 60 best three-year-olds from Hanover and Rhineland were judged by the two presidium members Hergen Forkert and Matthias Klatt as well as breeding director Ulrich Hahne Guest judge was the renowned breeder and trainer Johan Hamminga from the Netherlands She had already convinced at the free jumping competition in the Niedersachsenhalle in April now she led the 2018 vintage with an almost perfect presentation: Hann.Pr.A Saja (by Stolzenberg x Calido (breeder: Zucht- und Reiterhof Münch Reserve Champion was the Cornet Obolensky/Contendro daughter Hann.Pr.A Cornelie (breeder and exhibitor: Stefan Aust The quality of the mares with dressage horse pedigrees was high Va Pensiera (by Vitalis x Fürstenball (breeder and owner: Zuchthof Düvel the powerful full sister of last year's Bundeschampion Va'Pensiero triumphed and became dressage champion mare Flavienne (by Fürst Romancier x Decamerone (breeder: Dierk Hachmann owner stud farm Greim) was hardly inferior which presented the Champion Mare of the Herwart von der Decken-Show last year and discovered Flavienne at the foal auction in Verden Butt's Lemontree (by Asagao xx/Heraldik xx (breeder and owner: Prof who not only goes back to the foundation mare Liebeslust like Andreas Dibowski's Olympic horses Leonas Dancer and FRH Butts Leon but also like Charlotte Dujardin's Mount St John Freestyle Only every four years the best mare family is awarded the Herwart von der Decken-Show prize The judging commission included Landoberstallmeister Dr Burkhard Wahler and Dr Ludwig Christmann from the Hannoveraner Verband Reine FreudeThe "Dieta" statuette will start its journey to the Rhineland Reine Freude (by Ravallo x Frühlingstraum (St.Pr.St Vaiana by Veneno) impressed the spectators and judges alike Not only the expressive and strong moving bay horses themselves made them the winning family They are half-sisters of the dressage horse sire Fidertanz and go back to the foundation mare Jucking Breeder and exhibitor is Tobias Schult from Hünxe The reserve champion family is also high class: The three Stakkato daughters of the Hanoverian Mare of the Year 2017 Sarah (by Sherlock Holmes x Calypso II (breeder: Adolf Feldmann Spartanerin B have sport successes in the show jumping ring themselves and are full sisters of the internationally successful show jumper Saint Amour Stalls for Rent at Durondeau Dressage in Peer, Belgium Exceptionally Well Located Equestrian Facility in Wellington, Florida Well-built Equestrian Estate With Multiple Business Opportunities in Sweden Stable Units for Rent at Lotje Schoots' Equestrian Center in Houten (NED) For Rent: Several Apartments and Stable Wing at High-End Equestrian Facility Stable Wing Available at Reiterhof Wensing on Dutch/German border Real Estate: Well-Appointed Country House with Extensive Equestrian Facility in the U.K. Rémi Blot By Jenny Hogan The Sun is more active now than it has been for a millennium which comes from a reconstruction of sunspots stretching back 1150 years comes just as the Sun has thrown a tantrum giant plumes of have material burst out from our star’s surface and streamed into space The dark patches on the surface of the Sun that we call sunspots are a symptom of fierce magnetic activity inside a geophysicist who worked with colleagues from the University of Oulu in Finland and the Max Planck Institute for Aeronomy in Katlenburg-Lindau has found that there have been more sunspots since the 1940s than for the past 1150 years Sunspot observations stretch back to the early 17th century Usoskin’s team used a physical model to calculate past sunspot numbers from levels of a radioactive isotope preserved in ice cores taken from Greenland and Antarctica Ice cores provide a record of the concentration of beryllium-10 in the atmosphere This is produced when high-energy particles from space bombard the atmosphere but when the Sun is active its magnetic field protects the Earth from these particles and levels of beryllium-10 are lower There was already tantalising evidence that beryllium-10 is scarcer now than for a very long time from the UK’s Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford But he told New Scientist that when he saw the data converted to sunspot numbers he thought “why the hell didn’t I do this?” It makes the conclusion very stark “We are living with a very unusual sun at the moment.” The findings may stoke the controversy over the contribution of the Sun to global warming Usoskin and his team are reluctant to be dragged into the debate but their work will probably be seized upon by those who claim that temperature rises over the past century are the result of changes in the Sun’s output (New Scientist The link between the Sun’s magnetic activity and the Earth’s climate is Journal reference: Physical Review Letters (in press) fischer@psi.edu Large impacts of asteroids may have transferred carbonaceous material to the protoplanet and inner solar system The protoplanet Vesta has been witness to an eventful past: images taken by the framing camera onboard NASA's space probe Dawn show two enormous craters in the southern hemisphere The images were obtained during Dawn's year-long visit to Vesta that ended in September 2012 These huge impacts not only altered Vesta's shape Scientists under the lead of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Katlenburg-Lindau in Germany have shown that impacting small asteroids delivered dark similar events may have provided the inner planets such as Earth with carbon an essential building block for organic molecules carbonaceous material on Vesta can be found on the rims of smaller craters (left) or scattered in their surroundings (right) With a diameter of approximately 530 kilometres Vesta is the one of the few protoplanets in our solar system still intact today Vesta underwent complete melting approximately 4.5 billion years ago most of the volcanic activity on Vesta is thought to have ceased within a few million years making it a time capsule from the early solar system Dawn observations of Vesta have shown a surface with diverse brightness variations and surface composition There is bright material on Vesta that is as white as snow and dark material on Vesta as black as coal The enigmatic dark material holds the key to understanding the impact environment around Vesta early in its evolution Research led by scientists at the Max Planck Institute in Katlenburg-Lindau has shown that this dark material is not native to Vesta but was delivered by impacting asteroids “The evidence suggests that the dark material on Vesta is rich in carbonaceous material and was brought there by collisions with smaller asteroids,” explains Vishnu Reddy from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research and the University of North Dakota he and his colleagues now present the most comprehensive analysis of this material so far and modelling of dark material distribution on Vesta suggest  that it was delivered during the formation of giant impact basins on Vesta The dark material arrived with the first impact on the protoplanet In this three-dimensional image of one of Vesta’s smaller craters the dark material can be seen within the crater we created a map showing the distribution of dark material on Vesta using the framing camera data and found something remarkable,” explains   Lucille Le Corre from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research one of the lead authors of the study Dark material was preferentially spread around the edges of the giant impact basins in the southern hemisphere of Vesta suggesting a link to one of the two large impact basins A closer examination showed that the dark material was most probably delivered during the formation of the older Veneneia basin when a slow impacting asteroid collided with Vesta Dark material from this two to three billion year old basin was covered up by the impact that subsequently created the Rheasilvia basin “We believe that the Veneneia basin was created by the first of two impacts two to three billion years ago,” says Reddy impact modelling presented in the paper reproduces the distribution of dark material from such a low velocity impact.   Overview map of Vesta’s southern hemisphere and stars show where the dark material occurs The red line depicts the rim of the Veneneia basin the black line the rim of the younger Rheasilvia basin Evidence for dark material is also found in the HED meteorites that come from Vesta Some of the meteorites show dark inclusions that are carbon-rich Colour spectra of dark material on Vesta are identical to these carbon-rich inclusions in HED meteorites The link between dark material on Vesta and dark clasts in HED meteorites provides us with direct evidence that these meteorites are indeed from Vesta “Our analysis of the dark material on Vesta and comparisons with laboratory studies of HED meteorites for the first time proves directly that these meteorites are fragments from Vesta” “The aim of our efforts was not only to reconstruct Vesta's history but also to understand the conditions in the early solar system,” says Holger Sierks co-investigator of the Dawn mission at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research The Dawn mission was launched approximately five years ago and entered orbit around Vesta on July 16th Dawn will arrive at its second destination that like Vesta orbits the Sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter within the so-called asteroid belt The Dawn mission to Vesta and Ceres is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena for NASA's Science Mission Directorate is responsible for overall Dawn mission science The Dawn framing cameras have been developed and built under the leadership of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research with significant contributions by DLR German Aerospace Center and in coordination with the Institute of Computer and Communication Network Engineering The Framing Camera project is funded by the Max Planck Society A star field in the constellation Cepheus is a composite of two 600-second exposures by the Framing Camera acquired during tests on December 3 The Dawn mission to Vesta and Ceres is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate Other scientific partners include Planetary Science Institute Ariz.; Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research Germany; DLR Institute for Planetary Research Berlin; Italian National Institute for Astrophysics Photojournal Note:This image was previously released with the image shown in figure 3 It has now been replaced with an enhanced image and map shown in figure 2 Dawn Stereo Anaglyph of Hydrothermal Deposits at Occator Crater Dawn Stereo Anaglyph of Southeast Floor and Rim of Occator Crater Dawn Stereo Anaglyph of Hydrothermal Pits and Domes in Occator Crater Dawn Stereo Anaglyph of Impact Melt Deposits at Occator Crater Highlighting Bright Areas of Ceres' Occator Crater Related TopicsNews. 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