Two European satellites mimic total solar eclipse as scientists aim to study corona
The European Space Agency released the eclipse pictures at the Paris Air Show on Monday.
Launched late last year, the orbiting duo have churned out simulated solar eclipses since March while zooming tens of thousands of kilometers above Earth.
Flying 150 meters apart, one satellite blocks the sun like the moon does during a natural total solar eclipse as the other aims its telescope at the corona, the sun's outer atmosphere that forms a crown or halo of light.
It's an intricate, prolonged dance requiring extreme precision by the cube-shaped spacecraft, less than 1.5 meters in size.
Their flying accuracy needs to be within a mere millimetre, the thickness of a fingernail. This meticulous positioning is achieved autonomously through GPS navigation, star trackers, lasers and radio links.
Dubbed Proba-3, the $210 million (€181 million) mission has generated 10 successful solar eclipses so far during the ongoing checkout phase.
he longest eclipse lasted five hours, said the Royal Observatory of Belgium's Andrei Zhukov, the lead scientist for the orbiting corona-observing telescope. He and his team are aiming for a six-hour totality per eclipse once scientific observations begin in July.
Scientists are already thrilled by the preliminary results that show the corona without the need for any special image processing, said Zhukov.
"We almost couldn't believe our eyes," Zhukov said in an email. "This was the first try, and it worked. It was so incredible."
Zhukov anticipates an average of two solar eclipses per week being produced for a total of nearly 200 during the two-year mission, yielding more than 1,000 hours of totality.
That will be a scientific bonanza since full solar eclipses produce just a few minutes of totality when the moon lines up perfectly between Earth and the sun, on average just once every 18 months.
The sun continues to mystify scientists, especially its corona, which is hotter than the solar surface.
Coronal mass ejections result in billions of tons of plasma and magnetic fields being hurled out into space. Geomagnetic storms can result in disrupting power and communication while lighting up the night sky with auroras in unexpected locales.
While previous satellites have generated imitation solar eclipses, including the European Space Agency and NASA's Solar Orbiter and Soho observatory, the sun-blocking disk was always on the same spacecraft as the corona-observing telescope.
What makes this mission unique, Zhukov said, is that the sun-shrouding disk and telescope are on two different satellites and therefore far apart.
The distance between these two satellites will give scientists a better look at the part of the corona closest to the limb of the sun.
"We are extremely satisfied by the quality of these images, and again this is really thanks to formation flying" with unprecedented accuracy, ESA's mission manager Damien Galano said from the Paris Air Show. — Euronews
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Saudi Gazette
4 days ago
- Saudi Gazette
Astronomers spot an interstellar object zipping through our solar system
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The comet's speed and path through the solar system are two strong indicators that it originated beyond our solar system, said Gianluca Masi, astronomer and astrophysicist at the Bellatrix Astronomical Observatory in Italy and founder and scientific director of the Virtual Telescope Project. Masi has been making observations of the comet and will stream a live view of the object on the Virtual Telescope Project's website beginning at 6 p.m. ET Thursday. The comet is moving at nearly 37 miles per second (60 kilometers per second) — or 133,200 miles per hour (about 214,364 kilometers per hour) — too fast to be a 'local' object in our solar system, said Teddy Kareta, an assistant professor at Villanova University near Philadelphia. 'Objects bound to the sun — denizens of our solar system — take paths around it that return to the same point,' Kareta wrote in an email. 'The Earth's orbit is mostly circular, Pluto's orbit is a stretched oval, and many comets are very highly 'eccentric' — their orbits are very long and narrow ellipses. This object's path through the solar system is very nearly a straight line.' Tracking the object's orbit also reveals the path it has taken to reach our solar system, said Dr. Paul Chodas, director of NASA's Center of Near-Earth Object Studies at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. 'When we extrapolate its motion backwards in time we see that it clearly originated from outside our Solar System,' Chodas wrote in an email. 'It must have originated from another Solar System and probably has been travelling through interstellar space for millions of years until it happened to encounter our Solar System.' Since the initial sighting of the comet, located 420 million miles (675 million kilometers) from Earth, astronomers have rushed to observe the object with telescopes around the world. One of those astronomers is Kareta, who observed the comet, using the Lowell Observatory's Lowell Discovery Telescope in Flagstaff, Arizona, as soon as he heard about it on the night of its discovery. He said he believes it will only be a couple of weeks before just about every large telescope on Earth and in space has made time to spot and track the comet. 'People are excited. Almost every planetary astronomer I know immediately ran to a telescope or sent emails requesting telescope (observing) time in the next few days,' said Kareta, formerly a postdoctoral researcher at the Lowell Observatory. 'While we might have several months to study this fascinating object, the earlier we can figure out how it works — how it is evolving, what strange or unexpected properties it might have — the quicker we can plan for the rest of its passage through the solar system.' Comet 3I/ATLAS follows two other intriguing interstellar objects, called ISOs, that once passed through our solar system: 'Oumuamua in 2017 and 2I/Borisov in 2019. Both objects, also thought to be interstellar comets, stirred intense interest. The accelerated movements of cigar-shaped 'Oumuamua even ignited claims that it could be an alien probe. Little is known so far about comet 3I/ATLAS. Astronomers estimate its diameter to be 12 miles (20 kilometers), with significant uncertainty due to the object's brightness, Masi said. However, the comet seems to be the brightest and fastest of the three interstellar objects discovered so far, Kareta noted. 3I/ATLAS is approaching our solar system from the Milky Way's galactic center, a different direction than the previous objects, Chodas said. The object has shown signs of cometary activity, including that it appears to be losing mass like a comet. 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The comet is currently about 416 million miles (670 million kilometers) away from the sun and will make its closest approach to our star around October 30 at a distance of 130 million miles (210 million kilometers), according to NASA. The comet will also whip by Mars on October 2 at 18 million miles (30 million kilometers) from the red planet. This is a relatively close pass, astronomically speaking. For reference, Earth is about 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) from the sun. The nearest the comet will come to Earth is 167 million miles (270 million kilometers) on December 19, Masi said. Masi said the comet is currently visible in the Sagittarius constellation, which is best viewed from the southern sky in the middle of the night. While the full moon on July 10 will make 3I/ATLAS difficult to observe, observations even with small telescopes should improve in the coming months, he added. 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They're big questions, but the fact that we can make any progress on them by studying these fascinating objects should tell you why planetary astronomers are so excited to learn everything we can about them.' — CNN
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- Asharq Al-Awsat
Newly Spotted Comet Is Third Interstellar Object Seen in Our Solar System
Astronomers are tracking a newly spotted comet hailing from parts unknown, only the third time such an interstellar object has been observed visiting our solar system. According to US space agency NASA, the interloper - named 3I/ATLAS - was first spotted on Tuesday by an Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System, or ATLAS, telescope located in Rio Hurtado, Chile. Astronomers said its unusual trajectory indicated it had ventured from beyond our solar system. Journeying at a speed of around 37 miles (60 km) per second from the direction of the center of the Milky Way galaxy, 3I/ATLAS is presently located about 420 million miles (670 million kilometers) from Earth. "Beyond that we do not know very much, and there are many efforts underway to observe this object with larger telescopes to determine composition," University of Hawaii astronomer Larry Denneau, co-principal investigator for ATLAS, said on Thursday. The only other such interstellar visitors previously observed by astronomers were objects called 1I/'Oumuamua (pronounced oh-MOO-uh-MOO-uh), detected in 2017, and 2I/Borisov, discovered in 2019. "The comet has some similarities to 2I/Borisov in that it appears to be an icy comet, but it is much larger, possibly 10 km (6.2 miles) in diameter," Denneau said. "It currently has a faint coma," Denneau added, referring to the cloud of gas and dust surrounding a comet's nucleus, "but the coma and tail may increase dramatically as the object comes closer to the sun. Its closest approach to the sun will be later this year, when it will come inside the orbit of Mars. We don't know what will happen, so that's exciting." Astronomers said the comet poses no threat to Earth and will never come closer than 150 million miles (240 million km) away, equivalent to more than 1-1/2 times the distance between Earth and the sun. It is currently located about 416 million miles (670 million km) from the sun and will reach its closest approach to the sun around October 30, when it will be about 130 million miles (210 million km) away from our star. The ATLAS network is a NASA-funded telescope survey built and operated by the University of Hawaii, with five telescopes around the world that scan the night sky continuously to look for objects that could threaten Earth.
Al Arabiya
4 days ago
- Al Arabiya
NASA Identifies Newly Discovered Object as an Interstellar Comet That Will Keep a Safe Distance
NASA has discovered an interstellar comet that's wandered into our backyard. The space agency spotted the quick-moving object with the sky-surveying Atlas telescope in Chile earlier this week and confirmed it was a comet from another star system. It's officially the third known interstellar object to pass through our solar system and poses no threat to Earth. The newest visitor is 416 million miles (670 million kilometers) from the sun, out near Jupiter. NASA said the comet will make its closest approach to the sun in October, scooting between the orbits of Mars and Earth – but closer to the red planet than us at a safe 150 million miles (240 million kilometers) away. Astronomers around the world are monitoring the comet – an icy snowball officially designated 3I/Atlas – to determine its size and shape. It should be visible by telescopes through September before it gets too close to the sun and reappear in December on the other side of the sun. The first interstellar visitor observed from Earth was 'Oumuamua, Hawaiian for 'scout,' in honor of the observatory in Hawaii that discovered it in 2017. Classified at first as an asteroid, the elongated 'Oumuamua has since showed signs of being a comet. The second object confirmed to have strayed from another star system into our own – 2I/Borisov – was discovered in 2019 by a Crimean amateur astronomer with that name. It, too, is believed to be a comet.
