#NASA and #ESA have released the first images of the Solar Orbiter, including the closest pictures ever taken of the Sun. These images were captured when the spacecraft completed its first close pass of the Sun in mid-June this year
Launched on February 10, 2020, the Solar Orbiter mission has carried several cutting-edge instruments to monitor the environment of the Earth’s closest star.
Through this mission, scientists aim to gain an in-depth understanding of the solar wind, and how it releases the stream of charged particles that influence the entire Solar System.
The first images from the mission detail the presence of millions of miniature-size solar flares—also referred to as 'campfires'—near the surface of the Sun.
#NASA describes solar flares as sudden explosions of energy caused by the tangling, crossing, or reorganising of magnetic field lines near sunspots.
The images were captured by the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) on May 30, 2020, from a distance of 77 million km from the Sun.
During this time, the Solar Orbiter was at the perihelion—a point in its elliptical orbit measured to be closest to the Sun—which is roughly half the distance between the Earth and the Sun.
With the help of more Orbiter data, scientists are aiming to demystify the mysterious coronal heating phenomenon and figure out what causes the corona to be so hot—a problem considered to be among the most vexing in astrophysics.
“These unprecedented pictures of the Sun are the closest we have ever obtained,” said Holly Gilbert, NASA project scientist for the mission at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt.
(📸: : Solar Orbiter/EUI Team (ESA & NASA); CSL, IAS, MPS, PMOD/WRC, ROB, UCL/MSSL)
The EUI is programmed to take high-resolution images of the solar corona—which usually remains unexposed due to the bright light of the Sun’s surface and is, therefore, difficult to capture.
While searching for life in the Gulf of Mexico, researchers pulled out a new bizarre-looking species of isopod, whose head resembles the Darth Vader from Star Wars!
This new-found crustacean, named Bathonymus yucatanensis, has 14 legs and is around 26 cm long — approximately 25 times larger than its closest relative, the common woodlouse.
While these blonde creatures seem pretty scary, the "Vanilla Vaders" are, in fact, harmless to humans.
Their huge size is only due to deep-sea gigantism — a phenomenon wherein ocean dwellers grow bigger than their terrestrial relatives due to lack of sunlight.
This super-Earth is a rocky world, on which a year is equal to just 11 Earth days.
The short orbit is down to the red dwarfs being a lot smaller than the Sun that centres our solar system. But the smaller sizes also make their gravitational fields less expansive than the Sun's.
Therefore, Ross 508b revolves around its red dwarf at a distance of just 5 million km. Mercury, in comparison, is about 60 million km from the Sun.
The short distance between this super-Earth & its red dwarf begs the question: how could it possibly be habitable?
#Japan is making grand plans of creating interplanetary #trains and champagne flute-like glass habitats in its bid to send and host humans on the #Moon and #Mars!
An interplanetary transportation system dubbed the 'Hexatrack', which maintains a gravity of 1G during long-distance travel to mitigate the effects of prolonged exposure to low gravity, has been proposed by #Japanese researchers.
The #trains will also possess 'Hexacapsules', which are essentially hexagon-shaped capsules with a moving device in the middle.
In 2012, the almost-complete skeleton of a new kind of #dinosaur was found in the northern Patagonia region of #Argentina.
The dinosaur has been christened #Meraxes gigas. The generic epithet is an ode to a dragon in the #GameOfThrones series.
Standing at the height of 11 m (36 ft) and weighing roughly 4000 kgs, the #dinosaur sported several crests, bumps and horns on its skull, which lent it a menacing appearance.
But the highlight of the findings is that the dinosaur had teeny-tiny arms, just like the #Trex!
Dr Jose, along with an international research team from the US, UK and Australia, will be examining the Galactic Centre Cloud (GCC) — the central molecular zone of our Milky Way — in April 2023.
They have been allotted 27.3 hours over the access period of 12 months.