INFORMATION

In 2015, the naming of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) became the subject of controversy when it was revealed that the namesake (NASA’s administrator between 1961 and 1968) was involved in the infamous “Lavender Scare.” This refers to the period in the late 1940s and early 50s when the U.S. State Department purged thousands of individuals from their positions due to allegations of homosexuality. In 2021, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson requested a formal and public report and tasked NASA’s Chief Historian Brian C. Odom with investigating the matter. In their final report, titled “ NASA Historical Investigation into James E. Webb’s Relationship to the Lavender Scare ” (aka. the NASA James Webb Historical Report). In it, NASA claimed that their investigation found no direct evidence that Webb was a “leader of or a proponent” of the policy; therefore, they would not be renaming the JWST . In a surprise twist, it appears that NASA may reexamine its naming policy and recommend chan...

First light is an exciting time for astronomers and engineers who help bring new telescopes up to speed. One of the most recent and significant first light milestones recently occurred at the Subaru Telescope in Hawai’i. Though it has been in operation since 2005, the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan’s (NAOJ) main telescope recently received an upgrade that will allow it to simultaneously observe 2400 astronomical objects at once over a patch of sky the size of several moons. Those 2400 objects will be observed by the Prime Focus Spectrograph (PFS), which itself has multiple subcomponents and was developed by around a dozen universities and companies on four continents. Its major components consist of a “Prime Focus Instrument,” which contains 2400 individual fibers and lets it concentrate on various parts of the sky. Data from those fibers is then fed to a Spectrograph System (SpS), which analyzes it to produce the data used in scientific papers. The SpS consists of four ...

If we send some type of nuclear-powered tunnelbot to Europa to seek life under its icy shield, how will we know what it finds? How can a probe immersed in water under all that ice communicate with Earth? We only have hints about the nature of that ice, what layers it has and what pockets of water it might hold. All we know is that it’s tens of kilometres thick and as hard as granite. There’s tantalizing evidence for habitability on ocean moons like Jupiter’s Europa and Saturn’s Enceladus. The Hubble Space Telescope found persistent water vapour in Europa’s tenuous atmosphere, and the vapour had to come from somewhere. NASA’s Galileo mission studied the Jovian system from 1995 to 2003 and found that Europa likely has more water in its subsurface ocean than all of Earth’s oceans combined. And that water is salty. Though the outer layer is frozen solid, tidal flexing can heat the water closer to the core and keep it in a liquid state. And wherever we find liquid water in the Solar Sys...

NASA has announced the release of the James Webb History Report , a document detailing their investigation into the namesake of the next-generation space telescope that took to space on December 25th, 2021. Months before it launched, the observatory became the subject of controversy when it was revealed that Webb was involved in the so-called “ Lavender Scare .” After reviewing the relevant documents and collections located by their historians, NASA decided not to rename its flagship observatory. The Final Report, titled “ NASA Historical Investigation into James E. Webb’s Relationship to the Lavender Scare ,” was compiled by NASA Chief Historian Brian C. Odom (Ph.D., MLIS) and can be accessed through NASA’s servers. To break it down, the Lavender Scare coincided with McCarthyism and the Second Red Scare that took place during the late-1940s to mid-1950s. It was characterized by the mass dismissal of government personnel based on allegations of homosexuality. Between 1949 and 1952, ...

NASA’s JWST data just keeps on delivering amazing discoveries. Back in July, it observed the exoplanet WASP-39 b and found fingerprints of atoms and molecules and active chemical reactions in its clouds. Now, a team of scientists extends that discovery with a much deeper analysis of the data. According to Dr. Natalie Batalha, from the University of California-Santa Cruz, the JWST data are a game changer. “We observed the exoplanet with multiple instruments that, together, provide a broad swath of the infrared spectrum and a panoply of chemical fingerprints inaccessible until [this mission],” she said. The July observations were pretty exciting. JWST’s Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) instrument recorded the first unambiguous evidence of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) in an exoplanet atmosphere. It also made the first detection in an exoplanet atmosphere of sulfur dioxide (SO 2 , which is a component of smog here on Earth). SO 2 is produced by chemical reactions triggered by high-energ...

Is there anything good about volcanoes? They can be violent, dangerous, and unpredictable. For modern humans, volcanoes are mostly an inconvenience, sometimes an intriguing visual display, and occasionally deadly. But when there’s enough of them, and when they’re powerful and prolonged, they can kill the planet that hosts them. Modern-day Venus is a blistering hellscape. The temperature rises above 464 C (850 F, 737 K), which is, as Universe Today readers know, hot enough to melt lead (and spacecraft). It’s why, out of all the missions Russia sent to the planet’s surface, only four managed to transmit pictures before quickly succumbing to Venus’ extreme conditions. But modern-day Venus might be dramatically different from ancient Venus. Some research shows that ancient Venus had an atmosphere similar to ancient Earth’s. The planet may also have had substantial quantities of water on its surface. It’s possible that simple life existed on Venus at one time, but there’s not enough evi...

NASA’s Balloon Program Analysis Group recently presented a roadmap to NASA, to guide them on how to plan and fund future balloon astronomy programs. Balloons have been used for over a century to conduct physics experiments, astronomical observations and Earth observing work, but remain relatively unknown to the general public. Balloon astronomy share many advantages with space telescopes, but at a fraction of the cost. The first modern balloon-based scientific experiment was in 1912, when Austrian physicist Victor Hess lifted 3 electroscopes to an altitude of 5300 meters (although meteorologists had been using balloons to measure air temperature at different altitudes as far back as the late 19th century). Hess was trying to prove that background radiation emanates from radioactive minerals in the ground, but instead he found that ionizing radiation levels actually increased at high altitudes. This experiment, which discovered the high-speed particles that we now call cosmic rays, a...

NASA’s rolling geology robot shared a great image of sandstone that it found on Mars in Jezero Crater. It’s in a region called “Yori Pass”, which is part of an ancient river delta. Perseverance will take rock samples there for the upcoming Sample Return Mission. They should tell more about what happened with water in this region. And maybe they’ll show evidence of life. What’s So Important about Sandstone? Most of us have run across sandstone at one time or another here on Earth. It’s a rock formed when water carries sand from one place to another and deposits it. This could be in a lake or ocean environment, on an ancient beach, or along the edges of rivers. Some sandstones are also created when the wind blows sand into dunes. Over time, all these sand layers harden into solid rock. That rock tells a chemical and physical story about the conditions at the time it was laid down. A sandstone formation on Earth found in the Valley of Fire Nevada State Park. This area was once cover...

Climate change is the single greatest threat facing our planet today. Thanks to excess carbon emissions that have been growing steadily since the mid-20th century, average temperatures continue to rise worldwide. This leads to feedback mechanisms, such as rising sea levels, extreme weather, drought, wildfires, and glacial melting. This includes the Arctic Ice Pack, the East Antarctic glacier, and the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS), which are rapidly melting and increasing global sea levels. Worse than that, the disappearance of the world’s ice sheets means that Earth’s surface and oceans absorb more heat, driving global temperatures even further. According to a new NASA-supported study by an international team of Earth scientists and glaciologists, the Greenland Ice Sheet is melting at an accelerating rate, much faster than existing models predict. According to these findings, far more ice will be lost from Greenland during the 21st century, which means its contribution to sea-level rise...

Here’s a dramatic and spectacular new view of the Cone Nebula, as seen by the Very Large Telescope (VLT). This nebula is part of a distant star-forming region called NGC 2264, which about 2,500 light-years away. Its pillar-like appearance is a perfect example of the shapes that can develop in giant clouds of cold molecular gas and dust, known for creating new stars. The huge cone-shaped pillar of dust and gas is seven light-years-long. The nebula was discovered in the late 18th century by astronomer William Herschel. In the sky, this horn-like nebula in is located in the constellation Monoceros (The Unicorn), a surprisingly fitting name. The VLT is operated by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) on Cerro Paranal in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. This new image was released in celebration of ESO’s 60 th anniversary. A wide-field view of the region of the sky around the Cone Nebula. This image is from the Digitized Sky Survey (DSS), and includes the Christmas Tree star c...