NASA’s Mars weather camera helps find new crater on Red Planet

The new Mars crater spans half the length of a football field in this photo from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s sharpest-sighted camera, the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment

Researchers have discovered on the Red Planet the largest fresh meteor-impact crater ever firmly documented with before-and-after images. NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) captured the images.

The crater spans half the length of a football field and first appeared in March 2012. The impact that created it likely was preceded by an explosion in the martian sky caused by intense friction between an incoming asteroid and the planet’s atmosphere. This series of events can be likened to the meteor blast that shattered windows in Chelyabinsk, Russia, last year. The air burst and ground impact darkened an area of the martian surface about 5 miles (8 kilometers) across.

The darkened spot appears in images taken by the orbiter’s weather-monitoring camera, the Mars Color Imager (MARCI).

Since the orbiter began its systematic observation of Mars in 2006, scientist Bruce Cantor has examined MARCI’s daily global coverage, looking for evidence of dust storms and other observable weather events in the images. Cantor is this camera’s deputy principal investigator at Malin Space Science Systems, the San Diego company that built and operates MARCI and the orbiter’s telescopic Context Camera (CTX). Through his careful review of the images, he helps operators of NASA’s solar-powered Mars rover, Opportunity, plan for weather events that may diminish the rover’s energy. He also posts weekly Mars weather reports.

About two months ago, Cantor noticed an inconspicuous dark dot near the equator in one of the images.

“It wasn’t what I was looking for,” Cantor said. “I was doing my usual weather monitoring and something caught my eye. It looked usual, with rays emanating from a central spot.”

He began examining earlier images, skipping back a month or more at a time. The images revealed that the dark spot was present a year ago, but not five years ago. He homed in further, checking images from about 40 different dates and pinned down the date the impact event occurred. The spot was not there up through March 27, 2012, and then appeared before the daily imaging on March 28, 2012.

Once the dark spot was verified as new, it was targeted last month by CTX and the orbiter’s sharpest-sighted camera, the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE). Of the approximately 400 fresh crater-causing impacts on Mars that have been documented with before-and-after images, this is the only one discovered using a MARCI image, rather than an image from a higher-resolution camera.

CTX has imaged nearly the entire surface of Mars at least once during the orbiter’s seven-plus years of observations. It had photographed the site of this newly discovered crater in January 2012, prior to the impact. Two craters appear in the April 2014 CTX image that were not present in the earlier one, confirming the dark spot revealed by MARCI is related to a new impact crater.

HiRISE reveals more than a dozen smaller craters near the two larger ones seen in the CTX image, possibly created by chunks of the exploding asteroid or secondary impacts of material ejected from the main craters during impact. It also reveals many landslides that darkened slopes in the 5-mile surrounding area. A second HiRISE image in May 2014 added 3-D information.

“The biggest crater is unusual, quite shallow compared to other fresh craters we have observed,” said Alfred McEwen of the University of Arizona, Tucson.

The largest crater is slightly elongated and spans 159 by 143 feet (48.5 by 43.5 meters).

McEwen estimates the impact object measured about 10 to 18 feet (3 to 5 meters) long, which is less than a third of the estimated length of the asteroid that hit Earth’s atmosphere near Chelyabinsk. Because Mars has much less atmosphere than Earth, space rocks of comparable size are more likely to penetrate to the surface of Mars and cause larger craters.

“Studies of fresh impact craters on Mars yield valuable information about impact rates and about subsurface material exposed by the excavations,” said Leslie Tamppari, deputy project scientist for the MRO mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. “The combination of HiRISE and CTX has found and examined many of them, and now MARCI’s daily coverage has given great precision about when a significant impact occurred.”

NASA is developing concepts for its asteroid initiative to redirect a near-Earth asteroid — possibly about the size of the rock that hit Mars on March 27 or 28, 2012 — but much closer to Earth’s distance from the Sun. The project would involve a solar-powered spacecraft capturing a small asteroid or removing a piece of a larger asteroid and redirecting it into a stable orbit around Earth’s Moon.

Astronauts will travel to the asteroid aboard NASA’s Orion spacecraft, launched on the agency’s Space Launch System rocket, to rendezvous with the captured asteroid. Once there, they would collect samples to return to Earth for study. This experience in human spaceflight beyond low-Earth orbit will help NASA test new systems and capabilities needed to send astronauts to Mars in the 2030s.

NASA's WISE Findings Poke Hole in Black Hole "Doughnut" Theory

This enhanced image shows galaxies clumped together in the Fornax cluster, located 60 million light-years from Earth. The picture was taken by WISE, but has been artistically enhanced to illustrate the idea that clumped galaxies will, on average, be surrounded by larger halos of dark matter (represented in purple).

A survey of more than 170,000 supermassive black holes, using NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), has astronomers reexamining a decades-old theory about the varying appearances of these interstellar objects.

The unified theory of active supermassive black holes, first developed in the late 1970s, was created to explain why black holes, though similar in nature, can look completely different. Some appear to be shrouded in dust, while others are exposed and easy to see.

The unified model answers this question by proposing that every black hole is surrounded by a dusty, doughnut-shaped structure called a torus. Depending on how these “doughnuts” are oriented in space, the black holes will take on various appearances. For example, if the doughnut is positioned so that we see it edge-on, the black hole is hidden from view. If the doughnut is observed from above or below, face-on, the black hole is clearly visible.

However, the new WISE results do not corroborate this theory. The researchers found evidence that something other than a doughnut structure may, in some circumstances, determine whether a black hole is visible or hidden. The team has not yet determined what this may be, but the results suggest the unified, or doughnut, model does not have all the answers.

“Our finding revealed a new feature about active black holes we never knew before, yet the details remain a mystery,” said Lin Yan of NASA’s Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC), based at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “We hope our work will inspire future studies to better understand these fascinating objects.”

Every galaxy has a massive black hole at its heart. The new study focuses on the “feeding” ones, called activesupermassive black holes, or active galactic nuclei. These black holes gorge on surrounding gas material that fuels their growth.

With the aid of computers, scientists were able to pick out more than 170,000 active supermassive black holes from the WISE data. They then measured the clustering of the galaxies containing both hidden and exposed black holes — the degree to which the objects clump together across the sky.

If the unified model were true, and the hidden black holes are simply blocked from view by doughnuts in the edge-on configuration, then researchers would expect them to cluster in the same way as the exposed ones. According to theory, since the doughnut structures would take on random orientations, the black holes should also be distributed randomly. It is like tossing a bunch of glazed doughnuts in the air — roughly the same percentage of doughnuts always will be positioned in the edge-on and face-on positions, regardless of whether they are tightly clumped or spread far apart.

But WISE found something totally unexpected. The results showed the galaxies with hidden black holes are more clumped together than those of the exposed black holes. If these findings are confirmed, scientists will have to adjust the unified model and come up with new ways to explain why some black holes appear hidden.

“The main purpose of unification was to put a zoo of different kinds of active nuclei under a single umbrella,” said Donoso. Now, that has become increasingly complex to do as we dig deeper into the WISE data.”

Another way to understand the WISE results involves dark matter. Dark matter is an invisible substance that dominates matter in the universe, outweighing the regular matter that makes up people, planets, and stars. Every galaxy sits in the center of a dark matter halo. Bigger halos have more gravity and, therefore, pull other galaxies toward them.

Because WISE found that the obscured black holes are more clustered than the others, the researchers know those hidden black holes reside in galaxies with larger dark matter halos. Though the halos themselves would not be responsible for hiding the black holes, they could be a clue about what is occurring.

“The unified theory was proposed to explain the complexity of what astronomers were seeing,” said Stern. “It seems that simple model may have been too simple. As Einstein said, models should be made ‘as simple as possible, but not simpler.’”

Scientists still are actively combing public data from WISE, which was put into hibernation in 2011 after scanning Earth’s entire sky twice. WISE was reactivated in 2013, renamed NEOWISE, and given a new mission to identify potentially hazardous near-Earth objects.

Universe is Not Expanding After All, Scientists Say

New evidence, based on detailed measurements of the size and brightness of hundreds of galaxies, indicates that the Universe is not expanding after all, says a team of astrophysicists led by Eric Lerner from Lawrenceville Plasma Physics.

This image shows a star forming region in a nearby galaxy known as the Large Magellanic Cloud. Image credit: ESA / Hubble.

In their study, the scientists tested one of the striking predictions of the Big Bang theory – that ordinary geometry does not work at great distances.

In the space around us, on Earth, in the Solar System and our Milky Way Galaxy, as similar objects get farther away, they look fainter and smaller. Their surface brightness, that is the brightness per unit area, remains constant.

In contrast, the Big Bang theory tells us that in an expanding Universe objects actually should appear fainter but bigger. Thus in this theory, the surface brightness decreases with the distance. In addition, the light is stretched as the Universe expanded, further dimming the light.

So in an expanding Universe the most distant galaxies should have hundreds of times dimmer surface brightness than similar nearby galaxies, making them actually undetectable with present-day telescopes.

But that is not what observations show, as demonstrated by this new study published in the International Journal of Modern Physics D.

The scientists carefully compared the size and brightness of about a thousand nearby and extremely distant galaxies. They chose the most luminous spiral galaxies for comparisons, matching the average luminosity of the near and far samples.

Contrary to the prediction of the Big Bang theory, they found that the surface brightnesses of the near and far galaxies are identical.

These results are consistent with what would be expected from ordinary geometry if the Universe was not expanding, and are in contradiction with the drastic dimming of surface brightness predicted by the expanding Universe hypothesis.

“Of course, you can hypothesize that galaxies were much smaller, and thus had hundreds of times greater intrinsic surface brightness in the past, and that, just by coincidence, the Big Bang dimming exactly cancels that greater brightness at all distances to produce the illusion of a constant brightness, but that would be a very big coincidence,” Mr Lerner said.

That was not the only startling result of their research. In order to apply the surface brightness test, first proposed in 1930 by physicist Richard C. Tolman, the team had to determine the actual luminosity of the galaxies, so as to match near and far galaxies.

To do that, the astrophysicists had to link the distance to the galaxies with their redshift. They hypothesized that the distance is proportional to the redshift at all distances, as is well verified to be the case in the nearby Universe.

They checked this relation between redshift and distance with the data on supernova brightness that has been used to measure the hypothesized accelerated expansion of the Universe.

“It is amazing that the predictions of this simple formula are as good as the predictions of the expanding Universe theory, which include complex corrections for hypothetical dark matter and dark energy,” said study co-author Dr Renato Falomo of the Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova, Italy.

Dr Riccardo Scarpa from the Instituto de Astrofısica de Canarias, Spain, who is a co-author of the study, added: “again you could take this to be merely coincidental, but it would be a second big coincidence.”

Therefore if the Universe is not expanding, the redshift of light with increasing distance must be caused by some other phenomena – something that happens to the light itself as it travels through space.

“We are not speculating now as to what could cause the redshift of light,” Mr Lerner said.

”However, such a redshift, which is not associated with expansion, could be observed with suitable spacecraft within our own Solar System in the future.”

Wolf-Rayet Star Linked to Supernova SN 2013cu

A group of astronomers led by Dr Avishay Gal-Yam from Weizmann Institute of Science has identified a mysterious Wolf-Rayet star as the likely progenitor of SN 2013cu, a Type IIb supernova recently discovered in a distant galaxy known as UGC 9379.

This image from the 1.5-m robotic telescope at Palomar Observatory shows SN 2013cu in the galaxy UGC 9379. Image credit: Avishay Gal-Yam et al.

Wolf-Rayet stars are more than 20 times as massive as our Sun and at least 5 times as hot. Because they are relatively rare and often obscured, astronomers don’t know much about how they form, live and explode.

These stars are notable for having strong stellar winds and being deficient in hydrogen when compared with other stars. Taken together, these two factors give Wolf-Rayet stars easily recognizable stellar signatures.

Astronomers have long wondered whether Wolf-Rayet stars are the progenitors of certain types of stellar explosions – type IIb, Ib or Ic supernovae.

Yet, direct evidence linking such supernovae to their progenitor stars has been missing.

Now, Dr Gal-Yam’s team applied a new technique called flash spectroscopy to identify the likely Wolf-Rayet progenitor of the Type IIb supernova SN 2013cu just over few hours after it exploded.

“Newly developed observational capabilities now enable us to study exploding stars in ways we could only dream of before. We are moving towards real-time studies of supernovae,” said Dr Gal-Yam, who is the first author of a paper published in the journal Nature.

When SN 2013cu exploded in the galaxy UGC 9379 (located in the Bootes constellation, about 360 million light years away), its flash ionized its immediate surroundings, giving the astronomers a direct glimpse of the progenitor star’s chemistry.

This opportunity lasts only for a day before the supernova blast wave sweeps the ionization away. So it’s crucial to rapidly respond to a young supernova discovery to get the flash spectrum in the nick of time.

The astronomers triggered ground- and space-based telescopes to observe the event about 5.7 hours and 15 hours after it self-destructed.

The observations found evidence of composition and shape that aligns with that of a Nitrogen-rich Wolf-Rayet star. What’s more, the progenitor star likely experienced an increased loss of mass shortly before the explosion, which is consistent with model predictions for Wolf-Rayet explosions. These techniques shed fresh light on the poorly understood evolution of massive stars.

“This discovery was totally shocking, it opens up a whole new research area for us. With our largest telescopes you might have a chance of getting a spectrum of a Wolf-Rayet star in the nearest galaxies to our Milky Way, perhaps 4 million light years away. SN 2013cu is 360 million light years away – further by almost factor of 100,” said study co-author Prof Peter Nugent of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

“When a Wolf-Rayet star goes supernova, the explosion typically overtakes the stellar wind and all information about the progenitor star is gone. We got lucky with SN 2013cu – we caught the supernova before it overtook the wind. Shortly after the star exploded, it let out an ultraviolet flash from the shock wave that heated and lit up the wind. The conditions that we observed in this moment were very similar to what was there before the supernova.”

Saturn’s collapsing magnetic tail causes aurorae

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have captured new images of the dancing auroral lights at Saturn’s north pole. The ultraviolet images, taken by Hubble’s super-sensitive Advanced Camera for Surveys, capture moments when Saturn’s magnetic field is affected by bursts of particles streaming out from the Sun, providing evidence that the auroral displays are often caused by the dramatic collapse of the planet’s magnetic tail.

University of Leicester and other researchers have captured stunning images of Saturn’s aurorae as the planet’s magnetic field is battered by charged particles from the Sun. The team’s findings provide a “smoking gun” for the theory that Saturn’s auroral displays are often caused by the dramatic collapse of its “magnetic tail.”

Just like comets, planets such as Saturn and Earth have a “tail” — known as the magnetotail — that is made up of electrified gas from the Sun and flows out in the planet’s wake.

When a particularly strong burst of particles from the Sun hits Saturn, it can cause the magnetotail to collapse, with the ensuing disturbance of the planet’s magnetic field resulting in spectacular auroral displays. A very similar process happens on Earth.

Scientists observed this process happening on Saturn firsthand between April and May of 2013 as part of a three-year-long Hubble observing campaign.

The ultraviolet images, taken by Hubble’s super-sensitive Advanced Camera for Surveys, capture moments when Saturn’s magnetic field is affected by bursts of particles streaming out from the Sun.

Due to the composition of Saturn’s atmosphere, its aurorae shine brightly in the ultraviolet range of the electromagnetic spectrum. This observation campaign using Hubble meant that the astronomers were able to gather an unprecedented record of the planet’s auroral activity.

The team caught Saturn during a very dynamic light show. Some of the bursts of light seen shooting around Saturn’s polar regions traveled at more than three times faster than the speed of the gas giant’s rotation.

“These images are spectacular and dynamic because the auroras are jumping around so quickly,” said Jonathan Nichols from the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom. “The key difference about this work is that it is the first time the Hubble has been able to see the northern auroras so clearly.”

“The particular pattern of auroras that we saw relates to the collapsing of the magnetotail,” he added. “We have always suspected this was what also happens on Saturn. This evidence really strengthens the argument.”

“Our observations show a burst of auroras that are moving very, very quickly across the polar region of the planet. We can see that the magnetotail is undergoing huge turmoil and reconfiguration, caused by buffering from solar wind,” said Nichols. “It’s the smoking gun that shows us that the tail is collapsing.”

The new images also formed part of a joint observing campaign between Hubble and NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, which is currently in orbit around Saturn itself.

Between them, the two spacecraft managed to capture a 360° view of the planet’s aurora at both the north and south poles. Cassini also used optical imaging to delve into the rainbow of colors seen in Saturn’s light shows.

On Earth, observers of aurorae see green curtains of light with flaming scarlet tops. Cassini’s imaging cameras reveal similar auroral veils on Saturn, which are red at the bottom and violet at the top.

Magnetar formation mystery solved?

A team of astronomers believes they have found the partner star of a magnetar for the first time.

This artist’s impression shows the magnetar in the very rich and young star cluster Westerlund 1.

Magnetars are the bizarre superdense remnants of supernova explosions. They are the strongest magnets known in the universe — millions of times more powerful than the strongest magnets on Earth. A team of European astronomers using the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT) now believes they’ve found the partner star of a magnetar for the first time. This discovery helps explain how magnetars form — a conundrum dating back 35 years — and why this particular star didn’t collapse into a black hole as astronomers would expect.

When a massive star collapses under its own gravity during a supernova explosion, it forms either a neutron star or black hole. Magnetars are an unusual and exotic form of neutron star. Like all of these strange objects, they are tiny and extraordinarily dense — a teaspoon of neutron star material would have a mass of about a billion tons — but they also have extremely powerful magnetic fields. Magnetar surfaces release vast quantities of gamma rays when they undergo a sudden adjustment known as a starquake as a result of the huge stresses in their crusts.

The Westerlund 1 star cluster, located 16,000 light-years away in the southern constellation Ara the Altar, hosts one of the two dozen magnetars known in the Milky Way. It is called CXOU J164710.2-455216, and it has greatly puzzled astronomers.

“In our earlier work, we showed that the magnetar in the cluster Westerlund 1 must have been born in the explosive death of a star about 40 times as massive as the Sun,” said Simon Clark from The Open University in Milton Keynes, United Kingdom. “But this presents its own problem, since stars this massive are expected to collapse to form black holes after their deaths, not neutron stars. We did not understand how it could have become a magnetar.”

Astronomers proposed a solution to this mystery. They suggested that the magnetar formed through the interactions of two very massive stars orbiting one another in a binary system so compact that it would fit within the orbit of the Earth around the Sun. But, up to now, no companion star was detected at the location of the magnetar in Westerlund 1, so astronomers used the VLT to search for it in other parts of the cluster. They hunted for runaway stars — objects escaping the cluster at high velocities — that might have been kicked out of orbit by the supernova explosion that formed the magnetar. One star, known as Westerlund 1-5, was found to be doing just that.

“Not only does this star have the high velocity expected if it is recoiling from a supernova explosion, but the combination of its low mass, high luminosity, and carbon-rich composition appear impossible to replicate in a single star — a smoking gun that shows it must have originally formed with a binary companion,” said Ben Ritchie from The Open University.

This discovery allowed the astronomers to reconstruct the stellar life story that permitted the magnetar to form in place of the expected black hole. In the first stage of this process, the more massive star of the pair begins to run out of fuel, transferring its outer layers to its less massive companion, which is destined to become the magnetar, causing it to rotate more and more quickly. This rapid rotation appears to be the essential ingredient in the formation of the magnetar’s ultra-strong magnetic field.

In the second stage, as a result of this mass transfer, the companion becomes so massive that it in turn sheds a large amount of its recently gained mass. Much of this mass is lost, but some is passed back to the original star that we still see shining today as Westerlund 1-5.

“It is this process of swapping material that has imparted the unique chemical signature to Westerlund 1-5 and allowed the mass of its companion to shrink to low enough levels that a magnetar was born instead of a black hole — a game of stellar pass-the-parcel with cosmic consequences!” said team member Francisco Najarro of the Astrobiology Center in Spain.

It seems that being a component of a double star may therefore be an essential ingredient in the recipe for forming a magnetar. The rapid rotation created by mass transfer between the two stars appears necessary to generate the ultra-strong magnetic field, and then a second mass transfer phase allows the magnetar-to-be to slim down sufficiently so that it does not collapse into a black hole at the moment of its death.

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is Shrinking

The Great Red Spot on Jupiter is shrinking, says a team of astronomers led by Dr Amy Simon of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

This full-disc image of Jupiter was taken on 21 April 2014 with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3. Image credit: NASA / ESA / A. Simon, Goddard Space Flight Center.

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is a high-pressure anticyclone. This monster storm shows up in images as a conspicuous deep red eye embedded in swirling layers of pale yellow, orange and white. It rotates in an anti-clockwise direction in the planet’s southern hemisphere. Winds inside it rage at immense speeds, reaching several hundreds of km per hour.

The Great Red Spot itself may have been mentioned in writings before the late 1800s. There are references to Jupiter’s ‘permanent spot’ dating back as far as the late 1600s, although some astronomers disagree that the permanent spot mentioned is the Great Red Spot.

Historic observations gauged this turbulent spot to span about 41,000 km at its widest point – wide enough to fit three Earths comfortably side by side.

In 1979 and 1980, NASA’s Voyager fly-bys measured the Great Red Spot at a shrunken 23,335 km across.

In this comparison image the photo at the top was taken by Hubble in 1995 and shows the spot at a diameter of just under 21,000km; the second shows a 2009 photo of the spot at a diameter of just under 18,000 km; and the lowest shows the newest image from Hubble taken in 2014 with the spot at its smallest yet, with diameter of just 16,000 km. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Z. Levay, STScI.

Now, new images from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope capture the spot at a smaller size than ever before.

Dr Simon said: “recent Hubble observations confirm that the spot is now just under 16,500 km across, the smallest diameter we’ve ever measured,”

Amateur observations starting in 2012 revealed a noticeable increase in the spot’s shrinkage rate. The spot’s ‘waistline’ is getting smaller by just under 1,000 km per year. The cause of this shrinkage is not yet known.

“In our new observations it is apparent that very small eddies are feeding into the storm. We hypothesized that these may be responsible for the accelerated change by altering the internal dynamics of the Great Red Spot,” Dr Simon said.

Length of exoplanet's day measured for first time

Observations have, for the first time, determined the rotation rate of an exoplanet, which has been found to have a day that lasts only eight hours.
Observations from the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT) have, for the first time, determined the rotation rate of an exoplanet. Beta Pictoris b has been found to have a day that lasts only eight hours. This is much quicker than any planet in the solar system — its equator is moving at almost 62,000 mph (100,000 km/h). This new result extends the relation between mass and rotation seen in the solar system to exoplanets. Similar techniques will allow astronomers to map exoplanets in detail in the future with the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT).

Exoplanet Beta Pictoris b orbits the naked-eye star Beta Pictoris, which lies about 63 light-years from Earth in the southern constellation Pictor the Painter’s Easel. This planet was discovered nearly six years ago and was one of the first exoplanets to be directly imaged. It orbits its host star at a distance of only eight times the Earth-Sun distance — making it the closest exoplanet to its star ever to be directly imaged.

Using the CRIRES instrument on the VLT, a team of Dutch astronomers from Leiden University and the Netherlands Institute for Space Research (SRON) has now found that the equatorial rotation velocity of exoplanet Beta Pictoris b is almost 62,000 mph (100,000 km/h). By comparison, Jupiter’s equator has a velocity of about 29,000 mph (47,000 km/h), while Earth travels at only 1,100 mph (1,700 km/h). Beta Pictoris b is more than 16 times larger and 3,000 times more massive than Earth, yet a day on the planet only lasts eight hours.

“It is not known why some planets spin fast and others more slowly, but this first measurement of an exoplanet’s rotation shows that the trend seen in the solar system, where the more massive planets spin faster, also holds true for exoplanets,” said Remco de Kok from the Leiden Observatory. “This must be some universal consequence of the way planets form.”

Beta Pictoris b is a young planet, only about 20 million years old — compared to 4.5 billion years for Earth. Over time, the exoplanet is expected to cool and shrink, which will make it spin even faster. On the other hand, other processes might be at play that change the spin of the planet. For instance, the spin of Earth is slowing down over time due to the tidal interactions with our Moon.

The astronomers made use of a precise technique called high-dispersion spectroscopy to split light into its constituent colors — different wavelengths in the spectrum. The principle of the Doppler effect — Doppler shift — allowed them to use the change in wavelength to detect that different parts of the planet were moving at different speeds and in opposite directions relative to the observer. By carefully removing the effects of the much brighter parent star, they were able to extract the rotation signal from the planet.

“We have measured the wavelengths of radiation emitted by the planet to a precision of one part in a hundred thousand, which makes the measurements sensitive to the Doppler effects that can reveal the velocity of emitting objects,” said Ignas Snellen from Leiden Observatory. “Using this technique, we find that different parts of the planet’s surface are moving towards or away from us at different speeds, which can only mean that the planet is rotating around its axis.”

This technique is closely related to Doppler imaging, which has been used for several decades to map the surfaces of stars, and recently that of a brown dwarf — Luhman 16B. The fast spin of Beta Pictoris b means that in the future it will be possible to make a global map of the planet, showing possible cloud patterns and large storms.

“This technique can be used on a much larger sample of exoplanets with the superb resolution and sensitivity of the E-ELT and an imaging high-dispersion spectrograph. With the planned Mid-infrared E-ELT Imager and Spectrograph (METIS), we will be able to make global maps of exoplanets and characterize much smaller planets than Beta Pictoris b with this technique,” said Bernhard Brandl from Leiden Obversatory.

Artist’s impression of the planet Beta Pictoris b.

The Best Astronomy Photos of 2014 from the Astronomical League

Andromeda Galaxy (M31), imaged from Fayetteville, Ark., on Jan. 19, 2014

Eta Aquarid meteors above Bryce Canyon in Utah, in May 2014

The Elephant's Trunk Nebula, also known as IC 1396, on April 14, 2014

A star-forming nebula in Gemini, in January 2014

The Horsehead nebula, also known as Barnard 33 in emission nebula IC 434, taken at Seneca and Oswego in Illinois, Feb.-March 2014

An aircraft turns over the night sky with the Milky Way in the background above Santa Rosa Beach, Fla., on Jan. 5, 2014

The Pinwheel Galaxy, also known as Messier 101, M101 or NGC 5457, taken at the Winter Star Party in the Florida Keys on March 1, 2014

A panorama of the Milky Way taken from Fall Creek Falls State Park during the Eta Aquarid meteor shower on May 4, 2014

The Milky Way with Venus rising at Pensacola Beach in Pensacola, Fla., on March 2, 2014

The Orion Nebula, taken from Waukesha, Wisc., on Feb. 7, 2014

Pelican Nebula, taken from Waukesha, Wisc., on Jan. 9, 2014

The Milky Way, taken from Pensacola Beach in Pensacola, Fla., on March 2, 2014

The Pleiades, also known as M45 or the Seven Sisters, imaged from Fayetteville, Ark., on Jan. 25, 2014

Propeller Nebula in Cygnus, also known as DWB111, on May 1, 2014

The Rosette nebula, also known as NGC 2237 or Caldwell 49, taken from Waukesha, Wisc., on Jan. 6, 2014

The Rosette nebula, also known as NGC 2237 or Caldwell 49, taken from Seneca, Ill., in March 2014

A time lapse showing star trails above Big Lagoon State Park in Pensacola, Fla., on March 30, 2014

Waxing Moon over Winter Garden, Fla., on Feb. 10, 2014

NASA bets on private companies to exploit moon's resources

NASA—building on successful partnerships with private companies to resupply the International Space Station—is now looking to private entrepreneurs to help exploit resources on the moon.

In its latest initiative, unveiled in late January, the US space agency is proposing private companies take advantage of NASA's extensive know-how, its engineers and access to its installations to help design and build lunar robots.

But unlike NASA's contracts with SpaceX and Orbital Sciences to deliver cargo to the ISS, the moon proposal—dubbed CATALYST (Cargo Transportation and Landing by Soft Touchdown)—would get no US government economic help.

Recent missions in the moon's orbit have revealed evidence of water and other interesting substances on the moon, explained Jason Crusan, director of NASA's advanced exploration systems.

"But to understand the extent and accessibility of these resources, we need to reach the surface and explore up close."

"Commercial lunar landing capabilities could help prospect for and utilize these resources," permitting both commercial and research activities, he said.

"As NASA pursues an ambitious plan for humans to explore an asteroid and Mars, US industry will create opportunities for NASA to advance new technologies on the moon," Greg Williams, a top NASA official, added.

In 2013 NASA reached an agreement with Bigelow Aerospace to develop commercial sector involvement with the space agency, especially focused on plans to build a lunar base.

Founded by US billionaire Robert Bigelow, the company offers inflatable space modules.

Big money on the moon

These partnerships work "very well in lower orbit," said Bigelow's Michael Gold, referring to the re-supply contracts at the International Space Station.

"There is no reason it won't work just as well on the moon," he told AFP.

"Additionally, in this austere (budget) environment, it only makes sense to leverage private sector investments and capabilities," he said.

"It's not only the best option, but, because of the lack of federal money, the best option available to move forward drastically."

According to Gold, this approach is cheaper than a standard space mission fully paid by the federal government. For a few billion dollars it could even be possible to carry out manned missions to the Moon within a decade, Gold said.

"I think there is a great commercial potential on the moon," he added, citing significant reservers of helium 3, which is rare on Earth and which could be developed into a clean energy fuel ideal for nuclear fusion.

The lunar soil is also rich in coveted rare earth elements: 17 chemicals in the periodic table that are in an increased demand because they are heavily used in everyday electronics.

"There are a vast amount of opportunities for a wide variety of companies not only in America but across the globe," Gold insisted, emphasizing Europe and Japan, as well as the US Congress, are enthusiastic about a return to the moon.

John Logsdon, former director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, said these private partnerships could be "a way of NASA getting back involved with the moon without violating the president's policy that says we as a government we don't go back to the moon."

Logsdon was referring to Obama's 2010 decision to cancel the Constellation program—created by his predecessor, George W. Bush—which planed to return Americans to the moon by 2020 before embarking for Mars, but which was deemed too costly.

NASA chief Charles Bolden said last year his agency would not take the lead on a manned lunar mission, but wouldn't rule out the possibility of participating in one led by a private company or another country.