Latest news with #EpochofReionization
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Oh Great, Starlink Might Be Blocking Signals That Are Basically From the Dawn of Time
Here's what you'll learn when you read this story: SpaceX's Starlink satellites were known to interfere with visible light astronomical observations, but many have now been found to be interfering with radio observations by leaking radio emissions. While this is unintentional, unchecked leakage of radio waves could block observations that go back to when the universe was only a billion years old. Starlink needs to intervene as soon as possible, before the emissions end up blocking faint light from the Epoch of Reionization—when neutral hydrogen was reionized by light from the first stars. Mega-constellations of satellites are connecting more and more of the world to the internet, beaming it down to Earth on an unprecedented scale. Unfortunately, in that process, they seem to be putting other scientific efforts at risk. With over 7,600 small satellites hovering in low-Earth orbit (LEO) and a total of 12,000 (with an extension to a possible 36,000) planned, SpaceX's Starlink is without a doubt the largest satellite mega-constellation bringing internet to the masses. But it comes at a cost—while Starlink is in compliance with regulations intended to keep it from interfering with scientific observations, unintentional leakage of radio waves from thousands of its satellites has reached a level that could severely interfere with observations of faint radio sources going back to the early days of the universe. SpaceX has managed to prevent some interference by switching off beams that transmit internet when their satellites pass over telescopes, but that hasn't cancelled out the entire problem. Astronomer Steven Tingay of Curtin University's International Center for Radio Astronomy Research in Australia is concerned. He and colleagues Dylan Grigg and Marcin Sokolowski investigated the types of emissions that were leaking from Starlink satellites, how much of these emissions were being released, and in what ways the mega-constellation could have a negative impact on Earth-based radio observations. He previously used the SKA-Low prototype station to analyze satellite constellation impacts on radio astronomy. 'A small fraction of the radio spectrum across the SKA-Low's bandwidth has protection for radio astronomy,' Tingay, Grigg, and Sokolowski said in a study recently posted to the preprint server arXiv. 'Although these protections exist, a succession of research has shown that an increasing number of satellites are being detected transmitting unintended electromagnetic radiation (UEMR) outside their designated downlink frequencies, and sometimes at these protected frequencies.' Some of SKA-Low's bandwidth—3.7 percent, to be exact—is protected by the International Telecommunications Union's Radiocommunication. But 3.7 percent is proving not to be enough. Starlink launches were already problematic when Tingay and his team conducted the study, with 477 satellites being sent to space during the four months they were collecting data. The two frequencies being released by many of the satellites in the constellation were 137.5 MHz and 159.4 MHz, which are two of the same radio frequencies at which astronomical observations are made. Tingay's team conducted the largest survey of Starlink satellites at SKA-Low frequencies. While there are there different models of satellite producing varying emissions, most of the ones that were leaking the problematic radio waves were type v2-mini-Ku (though, some v2-mini DTC and v1.5 models were also emitting waves at these frequencies). Starlink owns 75% of the v2-mini-Ku satellites in orbit, meaning that the company has the greatest responsibility when it comes to leakage from from these particular models. Leakage may go beyond interference in certain domains, even going so far as to potentially block observations that go all the way back to the Epoch of Reionizaiton—about a billion years after the Big Bang. This was when most of the electrically neutral hydrogen in the universe was charged by rising levels of radiation from the most ancient massive stars, known as Population III or Pop III stars (no Pop III stars have been detected yet). If left unchecked, radio emissions from Starlink satellites could get in the way of monumental discoveries. 'Future mitigation of the UEMR from Starlink satellites will be key for ultra-sensitive experiments with the SKA,' the researchers said. 'SpaceX has made significant progress liaising with astronomers in the optical domain, and we hope to keep this dialogue open in the radio domain.' You Might Also Like The Do's and Don'ts of Using Painter's Tape The Best Portable BBQ Grills for Cooking Anywhere Can a Smart Watch Prolong Your Life?
Yahoo
25-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
NASA launch crew rings NYSE closing bell
April 25 (UPI) -- Members of SPHEREx, NASA's Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer, recently visited the New York Stock Exchange to ring the closing bell. Several SPHEREx team members including flight system manager Michael Thelen rang the closing bell at the Wall Street exchange earlier in the week. Members of London-based aerospace firm BAE Systems Inc. also participated in the closing bell ritual. The company provided the telescope and spacecraft bus for the mission. The two-year SPHEREx mission aims to conduct an "all-sky spectral survey" using the near-infrared space observatory. NASA built the explorer at its Joint Propulsion Laboratory at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. SPHEREx successfully launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in March, marking the first dual launch in the private company's history. The observatory "will collect data on more than 450 million galaxies along with more than 100 million stars in the Milky Way in order to explore the origins of the universe," according to NASA's mission page. The $488 mission will produce a three-dimensional map, which will take up to two years. Scientists expect it will give them more information about how the universe expanded so rapidly.
Ammon
02-04-2025
- Science
- Ammon
NASA's SPHEREx telescope 'opens its eyes on the universe', taking stunning debut image of 100,000 galaxies and stars
Ammon News - A new NASA space telescope has turned on its detectors for the first time, capturing its first light in images that contain tens of thousands of galaxies and stars. The Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx) arrived in orbit atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on March 11. The six released images, collected by the space telescope on March 27, were each snapped by three different detectors. The top three images span the telescope's complete field of view, and are captured again in the bottom three which are colored differently to represent varying ranges of infrared wavelengths. Within each image's full field of view — an area roughly 20 times wider than the full moon — roughly 100,000 light sources from stars, galaxies, and nebulas can be glimpsed. "Our spacecraft has opened its eyes on the universe," Olivier Doré, a SPHEREx project scientist at Caltech and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a statement. "It's performing just as it was designed to." Costing a total of $488 million to build and launch, the new telescope has been in development for roughly a decade and is set to map the universe by observing both optical and infrared light. It will orbit Earth 14.5 times a day, completing 11,000 orbits during its lifetime to filter infrared light from distant gas and dust clouds using a technique called spectroscopy. Once it is fully online in April, SPHEREX will scan the entire night sky a total of four times using 102 separate infrared color sensors, enabling it to collect data from more than 450 million galaxies during its planned two-year operation. This amounts to roughly 600 exposures a day, according to NASA. This dataset will give scientists key insights into some of the biggest questions in cosmology, enabling astronomers to study galaxies at various stages in their evolution; trace the ice floating in empty space to see how life may have begun; and even understand the period of rapid inflation the universe underwent immediately after the Big Bang. SPHEREx's wide panorama view makes it the perfect complement for the James Webb Space Telescope, flagging regions of interest for the latter to study with greater depth and resolution. After lofting it to space, NASA scientists and engineers have performed a nail-biting series of checks on the new telescope. This includes ensuring that its sensitive infrared equipment is cooling down to its final temperature of around minus 350 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 210 degrees Celsius) and that the telescope is set to the right focus — something that cannot be adjusted in space. Based on these stunning preliminary images, it appears that everything has worked out. "This is the high point of spacecraft checkout; it's the thing we wait for," Beth Fabinsky, SPHEREx deputy project manager at JPL, said in the statement. "There's still work to do, but this is the big payoff. And wow! Just wow!"
Yahoo
28-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Galaxy Caught Turning on Lights at Cosmic Dawn, Stunning Astronomers
A galaxy spotted just 330 million years after the Big Bang has been implicated in bringing light to the choking dark of the early Universe. It's called JADES-GS-z13-1, and an analysis of the very faint light it has sent from more than 13.4 billion years ago reveals that it played a role in the Epoch of Reionization – the billion-year process that cleared the opaque fog that filled the early Universe, allowing light to stream freely. This epoch of the Universe's history is really hard to see, making the mechanisms behind it something of a mystery. JADES-GS-z13-1 literally sheds light into an age of cosmic darkness. The result is a signature emission called Lyman-alpha which is emitted by hydrogen as it changes energy states and can only be seen once reionization has taken place. "The early Universe was bathed in a thick fog of neutral hydrogen," says astrophysicist Roberto Maiolino of the University of Cambridge and University College London in the UK. "Most of this haze was lifted in a process called reionization, which was completed about one billion years after the Big Bang. GS-z13-1 is seen when the Universe was only 330 million years old, yet it shows a surprisingly clear, telltale signature of Lyman-alpha emission that can only be seen once the surrounding fog has fully lifted. This result was totally unexpected by theories of early galaxy formation and has caught astronomers by surprise." Here's how the story goes. At the beginning of the Universe as we know it, within minutes of the Big Bang, space was filled with a hot, dense fog of plasma consisting of small atomic nuclei and free electrons. What little light there was wouldn't have penetrated this fog; photons would simply have scattered off the electrons floating around, effectively making the Universe dark. After about 300,000 years, as the Universe cooled, protons and electrons began to come together to form neutral hydrogen (and a little bit of helium) gas. Most wavelengths of light could penetrate this neutral medium, but there was little in the way of light to produce it. But from this hydrogen and helium, the first stars and galaxies were born. Those first light sources delivered powerful radiation that knocked electrons off the neutral hydrogen, returning it to an ionized state once more. By this point, however, the Universe had expanded so much that the gas was exponentially more diffuse, allowing light to pass through more easily and begin its long journey across the stretches of time and space. By about 1 billion years after the Big Bang, following the period known as the Cosmic Dawn, the Universe was transparent, the way we see it today. Et voilà! The lights were on. The problem with JADES-GS-z13-1 is that, even if it's participating in reionization, we still shouldn't be able to see it. The space immediately around the galaxy would be ionized, creating a bubble of clarity about 650,000 light-years across at the time we see it; but fog should still be wrapped around this little cavity of brilliance the galaxy has carved in space-time. "We really shouldn't have found a galaxy like this, given our understanding of the way the Universe has evolved," says astronomer Kevin Hainline of the University of Arizona in the US. "We could think of the early Universe as shrouded with a thick fog that would make it exceedingly difficult to find even powerful lighthouses peeking through, yet here we see the beam of light from this galaxy piercing the veil. This fascinating emission line has huge ramifications for how and when the Universe reionized." We thought we had a pretty good handle on the timeline and process of reionization. JADES-GS-z13-1 throws that for a loop. One possible explanation is that a rapidly feeding black hole is responsible, causing material around it to heat up and blaze with light. Another explanation for the Lyman-alpha brightness could be a large number of really massive, hot stars, between 100 and 300 times the mass of the Sun. Both prospects are intriguing, since each offers a different window into the infancy of the Universe; but, at this point, neither can be confirmed. Future observations of the strange galaxy are planned to help astronomers learn more. One thing that is becoming clear, like the space around JADES-GS-z13-1: the more we learn about the early Universe, the more confusing it gets. "Following in the footsteps of the Hubble Space Telescope, it was clear Webb would be capable of finding ever more distant galaxies," explains astronomer Peter Jakobsen of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. "As demonstrated by the case of GS-z13-1, however, it was always going to be a surprise what it might reveal about the nature of the nascent stars and black holes that are formed at the brink of cosmic time." The research has been published in Nature. Did Life Ever Exist on Venus? Scientists Develop New Equation to Find Out. Giant 'Space Tornadoes' Discovered Raging in Milky Way's Turbulent Heart First-Ever Images of Neptune's Eerie Glow Finally Reveal Missing Aurora
Yahoo
13-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
NASA launches observatories to study cosmic origins, Sun
SANTA BARBARA COUNTY, Calif. – NASA's latest space missions are underway which will study everything from the origins of the universe to the atmosphere around the Sun. The observatories launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Tuesday, during what appeared to be a picture-perfect launch. NASA says onboard the rocket was the Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer observatory or what is known as the SPHEREx and four small satellites that form the Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere or what is known as the PUNCH for short. While the goals of each mission are different, the space agency says they are interconnected, as both missions aim to deepen our understanding of the universe. "Everything in NASA science is interconnected, and sending both SPHEREx and PUNCH up on a single rocket doubles the opportunities to do incredible science in space," Nicky Fox, an associate administrator at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., said in a statement. "Congratulations to both mission teams as they explore the cosmos from far-out galaxies to our neighborhood star. I am excited to see the data returned in the years to come." What Is Disney World's Severe Weather Policy? Despite challenges leading up to the launch, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California announced that it had successfully established communication with SPHEREx, which will soon begin its two-year mission to survey space for light invisible to the human eye. Astronomers will use the mission to gather data on millions of galaxies, as well as more than 100 million stars in our own Milky Way. Scientists hope the data will help determine how the universe has evolved and whether the ingredients for life are relatively common throughout the galaxy. "The fact our amazing SPHEREx team kept this mission on track even as the Southern California wildfires swept through our community is a testament to their remarkable commitment to deepening humanity's understanding of our universe," Laurie Leshin, director, NASA JPL, said in our statement. "We now eagerly await the scientific breakthroughs from SPHEREx's all-sky survey — including insights into how the universe began and where the ingredients of life reside." The PUNCH satellites also successfully separated from the rocket and are reportedly in good shape – they recently began their commissioning phase before getting to work. According to NASA, the instruments will work together to create 3D renderings of the Sun's corona and explore solar wind and other space weather events that impact Earth. See The Objects Humans Left Behind On The Moon "Questions like 'How did we get here?' and 'Are we alone?' have been asked by humans for all of history," James Fanson, a project manager at SPHEREx, stated. "I think it's incredible that we are alive at a time when we have the scientific tools to actually start to answer them." NASA was able to defray some of the costs by launching the missions on the same rocket and hopes that the observatories last well beyond their intended article source: NASA launches observatories to study cosmic origins, Sun
