Hubble Captures Unique Ultraviolet View of a Spectacular Star Cluster - UNIVERSE

NGC 346 is nestled within the Small Magellanic Cloud, a small satellite galaxy to our Milky Way. NASA, ESA, and C. Murray (Space Telescope Science Institute); Image Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

Roughly 210,000 light-years away, the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is one of our Milky Way galaxy’s closest neighbors. In fact, this small galaxy is one of the Milky Way’s “satellite” galaxies, which orbit our home spiral galaxy.

Nested within the SMC is this spectacular star cluster, known as NGC 346. Its hot stars unleash a torrent of radiation and energetic outflows, which erode the denser portions of gas and dust in the surrounding nebula, N66. Dozens of hot, blue, and high-mass stars shine within NGC 346, and astronomers believe this cluster contains more than half of the known high-mass stars in the whole SMC. 

This inset image shows the location of NGC 346 within the Small Magellanic Cloud.

NASA, ESA, C. Murray (Space Telescope Science Institute), and ESO/VISTA VMC; Image Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has observed this cluster before, but its new view shows NGC 346 in ultraviolet light, along with some visible-light data. Ultraviolet light helps scientists understand more about star formation and evolution, and Hubble – with its combined sharp resolution and position above our UV-blocking atmosphere – is the only telescope with the ability to make sensitive, ultraviolet observations.

These two Hubble images of NGC 346 show the star cluster in visible and ultraviolet wavelengths of light.

NASA, ESA, A. James (STScI), and C. Murray (Space Telescope Science Institute); Image Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

These specific observations were gathered to learn more about how star formation shapes the interstellar medium, which is the gas distributed throughout seemingly empty space, in a low-metallicity galaxy like the SMC. Astronomers call elements heavier than hydrogen and helium “metals,” and the SMC contains fewer metals when compared to most parts of our Milky Way. This condition helps make it an excellent example of a galaxy similar to those that existed in our early universe, when very few heavy elements were around to incorporate. 

NASA Hubble Mission Team, Goddard Space Flight Center

Source: Hubble Captures Unique Ultraviolet View of a Spectacular Star Cluster - NASA Science   

NASA Awards 15 Grants to Support Open-Source Science

One of the 15 winning proposals for NASA High Priority Open-Source Science (HPOSS) funding will help simulate galaxies. Pictured here is barred spiral galaxy NGC 1300, as imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope.

NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Acknowledgment: P. Knezek (WIYN)

NASA awarded $1.4 million to 15 teams developing new technologies that advance and streamline the open sharing of scientific information.

High Priority Open-Source Science (HPOSS) awards fund projects that aim to increase the accessibility, inclusivity, or reproducibility of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate (SMD) research. Projects include open-source tools, software, frameworks, data formats, or libraries that will have a significant impact to the SMD science community. HPOSS awards are for one year and approximately $100,000.

The HPOSS solicitation is one of several cross-divisional funding opportunities funded by NASA’s Office of the Chief Science Data Officer (OCSDO) with a focus on advancing open science practices. These solicitations are unique among NASA’s annual omnibus solicitation for basic and applied research, Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Science (ROSES), providing cross-divisional support for new work with strong potential to advance the adoption of open science practices across SMD.

“We are excited to be able to fund these opportunities to enable modern research through NASA’s support of open science,” said Chelle Gentemann, program officer for HPOSS and open science program scientist for OCSDO at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. on an Intergovernmental Personnel Act assignment from the International Computer Science Institute. “Open science is crucial in improving the transparency, security, and reproducibility of scientific research.”

The HPOSS solicitation for ROSES-2024 is currently available as F.14 on NSPIRES. Under ROSES-2024, HPOSS has expanded to include the development of capacity-building materials, like curricula, tutorials, and other training materials, reflecting the program’s commitment to fostering open science practices.

The HPOSS solicitation has no fixed due date. Proposers are encouraged to submit their proposals via NSPIRES at any time. Proposals are evaluated by peer review panels and selections are made throughout the year.

“The proposals selected thus far illustrate the breadth of this solicitation, ranging from projects that will increase the accessibility of data relevant to specific research communities to open-source tools that will be relevant across multiple SMD divisions,” said Gentemann.

The selected awardees for the ROSES-22 and ROSES-23 calls are:

Roses-2022 Awardees

Erin Buchanan, Harrisburg University of Science & Technology, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
STAPLE: Science Tracking Across the Project Lifespan

James Colliander / Code For Science And Society, INC., Portland, Oregon
Ephemeral Interactive Computing for NASA Communities

Gretchen Daily, Stanford University, Stanford, California
Metadata Tools for More Transparent, Reproducible, and Accessible Geospatial Analysis

Douglas Moore, 39 Alpha Research, Tempe, Arizona
Dorothy: Making Scientific Data Transparent, Accessible, and Reproducible

Matthew Turk, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, Illinois
Synergistic Software Tooling for Geophysical and Astrophysical Analysis: Linking yt and Xarray

Richard Townsend, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin
Catalyzing an Open-Source Ecosystem for the GYRE Stellar Oscillation Code

Andrew Jiranek, Sciencecast Inc., Towson, Maryland
Advancing Equitable Scientific Publishing through Open-Science Digital Innovations

Jami Montgomery, Georgetown University, Washington, District of Columbia
Web-based Planetary Topography Toolkit

Roses-2023 Awardees

Russell Turner, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon
Creation of an Open Access 3-Dimensional Image and Data Library for Rat Bones from Space Shuttle Experiments

Hans-Peter Marshall / Boise State University, Boise, Idaho
The SnowEx DB Open-Source Project -- Standardized Data Access to Maximize Mission Data Use and Accelerate Research​

Leila DeFloriani / University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 
An Open-Source Library for Processing Forest Point Clouds Based on Topological Data Analysis

Michael Phillips / University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona
Spectral Cube Analysis Tool: A Python Graphical User Interface for Analyzing Spectral Image Data

Julie Barnum / University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado
A Heliophysics Software Search Interface Portal

Benjamin Keller / University of Memphis, Memphis, Tennessee
Portable and Reproducible Initial Conditions for Galaxy Simulations

Ryan Curtin / NumFocus, Austin, Texas
Enhance Usability and Discoverability of mlpack for Low-Resource Spaceflight Machine Learning

Summaries of previously selected proposals can be found under the “Selections” section on the HPOSS NSPIRES pages for ROSES-2022 and ROSES-2023. 

To learn more about the HPOSS program element, a recording of a recent informational webinar is available, along with the presentation slides. 

To learn more about NASA open science funding opportunities, visit: science.nasa.gov/open-science/nasa-open-science-funding-opportunities/ 

By: Lauren Leese

Source: NASA Awards 15 Grants to Support Open-Source Science - NASA Science 

Listen to the Universe - NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center - UNIVERSE

 

WRC 2024 - China's largest robot exhibition | Robots and technologies at the exhibition in China - PRO ROBOTS

 

iPhone 16 + iPhone 16 Pro Max NEW Colors - Unbox Therapy

 

Best Fails of The Week: Funniest Fails Compilation | Total Idiots At Work | Instant Regret | Karma

 

Short Clip - Natalie Portman - Lady in the Lake (TV Mini Series 2024) - Crime - Drama - Mystery

 

Source: Lady in the Lake (TV Mini Series 2024) - IMDb

Lady in the Lake — Another Take with Natalie Portman | Apple TV+

 

STAR WARS: REVENGE OF THE SITH Behind The Scenes #3 (2005) JoBlo Behind-the-Scenes + Bloopers

 

Funny and Weird Clips (3369)

 

Discovering Earth’s Third Global Energy Field - NASA Goddard - EARTH

 

New NASA Study Tallies Carbon Emissions From Massive Canadian Fires - EARTH

An astronaut aboard the International Space Station photographed wildfire smoke from Nova Scotia billowing over the Atlantic Ocean in May 2023. Warm weather and lack of rain fueled blazes across Canada last year, burning 5% of the country’s forests.

NASA

Extreme wildfires like these will continue to have a large impact on global climate.

Stoked by Canada’s warmest and driest conditions in decades, extreme forest fires in 2023 released about 640 million metric tons of carbon, NASA scientists have found. That’s comparable in magnitude to the annual fossil fuel emissions of a large industrialized nation. NASA funded the study as part of its ongoing mission to understand our changing planet.

The research team used satellite observations and advanced computing to quantify the carbon emissions of the fires, which burned an area roughly the size of North Dakota from May to September 2023. The new study, published on Aug. 28 in the journal Nature, was led by scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. 

Carbon monoxide from Canada wildfires curls thousands of miles across North America in this animation showing data from summer 2023. Lower concentrations are shown in purple; higher concentrations are in yellow. Red triangles indicate fire hotspots.

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

They found that the Canadian fires released more carbon in five months than Russia or Japan emitted from fossil fuels in all of 2022 (about 480 million and 291 million metric tons, respectively). While the carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted from both wildfires and fossil fuel combustion cause extra warming immediately, there’s an important distinction, the scientists noted. As the forest regrows, the amount of carbon emitted from fires will be reabsorbed by Earth’s ecosystems. The CO2 emitted from the burning of fossil fuels is not readily offset by any natural processes.

An ESA (European Space Agency) instrument designed to measure air pollution observed the fire plumes over Canada. The TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument, or TROPOMI, flies aboard the Sentinel 5P satellite, which has been orbiting Earth since 2017. TROPOMI has four spectrometers that measure and map trace gases and fine particles (aerosols) in the atmosphere.

The scientists started with the end result of the fires: the amount of carbon monoxide (CO) in the atmosphere during the fire season. Then they “back-calculated” how large the emissions must have been to produce that amount of CO. They were able to estimate how much CO2 was released based on ratios between the two gases in the fire plumes.  

“What we found was that the fire emissions were bigger than anything in the record for Canada,” said Brendan Byrne, a JPL scientist and lead author of the new study. “We wanted to understand why.”

Warmest Conditions Since at Least 1980

Wildfire is essential to the health of forests, clearing undergrowth and brush and making way for new plant life. In recent decades, however, the number, severity, and overall size of wildfires have increased, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Contributing factors include extended drought, past fire management strategies, invasive species, and the spread of residential communities into formerly less developed areas.

To explain why Canada’s fire season was so intense in 2023, the authors of the new study cited tinderbox conditions across its forests. Climate data revealed the warmest and driest fire season since at least 1980. Temperatures in the northwest part of the country — where 61% of fire emissions occurred — were more than 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit (2.6 degrees Celsius) above average from May through September. Precipitation was also more than 3 inches (8 centimeters) below average for much of the year.

Driven in large part by these conditions, many of the fires grew to enormous sizes. The fires were also unusually widespread, charring some 18 million hectares of forest from British Columbia in the west to Quebec and the Atlantic provinces in the east. The area of land that burned was more than eight times the 40-year average and accounted for 5% of Canadian forests.

“Some climate models project that the temperatures we experienced last year will become the norm by the 2050s,” Byrne said. “The warming, coupled with lack of moisture, is likely to trigger fire activity in the future.”

If events like the 2023 Canadian forest fires become more typical, they could impact global climate. That’s because Canada’s vast forests compose one of the planet’s important carbon sinks, meaning that they absorb more CO2 from the atmosphere than they release. The scientists said that it remains to be seen whether Canadian forests will continue to absorb carbon at a rapid rate or whether increasing fire activity could offset some of the uptake, diminishing the forests’ capacity to forestall climate warming. 

Source: New NASA Study Tallies Carbon Emissions From Massive Canadian Fires - NASA

Most Americans comfortable with AI in healthcare - Science X: Phys.org, Medical Xpress, Tech Xplore

 

Unboxing Samsung's HUGE New 8K Flagship TV - Unbox Therapy

 

HIT N RUN DRIVER GETS ULTIMATE KARMA - Dashcam Lessons

 

Angelina Jolie Was TERRIFIED to Sing for Role as Opera Diva Maria Callas - extratv

 

Short Clip - Angelina Jolie - Maria (2024) - Biography - Drama - Music

 

Source: Maria (2024) - IMDb

Angelina Jolie & 'Maria' Director Pablo Larraín On The Meaning Of A "Diva" At Venice Film Festival - The Hollywood Reporter

 

The Making of Star Wars - Attack of the Clones

 

Funny and Weird Clips (3368)