A dividing cell is one of the most recognisable images in biology, but it’s still quite mysterious. Hundreds of different proteins work together inside, like mechanical parts in a clock, ensuring cell division, or mitosis, happens on time – too slow, and there’s a risk of problems in development; yet cancers may form when division is too quick. A new interactive web site, MitoCheck, lets us watch fluorescently-labelled proteins side-by-side inside dividing human cancer cells – the results of many experiments using a combination of confocal microscopy techniques. Pooling the information together produces an interactive atlas of 28 proteins that will grow to hundreds in the next few years. Here five proteins, including AURKB (red), help share the cell’s DNA between the two daughter cells. MitoCheck will eventually provide a resource for researchers to compare hundreds of different protein combinations – learning more about life and disease as the entire cellular ‘clockwork’ emerges.
Meteor, Comet, and Seagull (Nebula) Image Credit & Copyright:Takao Sambommatsu
Explanation: A meteor, a comet, and a photogenic nebula have all been captured in this single image. The closest and most fleeting is the streaking meteor on the upper right – it was visible for less than a second. The meteor, which disintegrated in Earth’s atmosphere, was likely a small bit of debris from the nucleus of Comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner, coincidentally the comet captured in the same image. Comet 21P, pictured across the inner Solar System from Earth, is distinctive for its long dust tail spread horizontally across the image center. This comet has been visible with binoculars for the past few months but is now fading as it heads back out to the orbit of Jupiter. Farthest out at 3,500 light years distant is the IC 2177, the Seagull Nebula, visible on the left. The comparatively vast Seagull Nebula, with a wingspan on order 250 light-years, will likely remain visible for hundreds of thousands of years. Long exposures, taken about two weeks ago from Iwaki-City in Japan, were combined to capture the image’s faintest elements. You, too, could see a meteor like this – and perhaps sooner than you might think: tonight is the peak of the Orionidsmeteor shower.
Violent outbursts of seething gas from young red dwarf stars may make conditions uninhabitable on fledgling planets. In this artist’s rendering, an active, young red dwarf (right) is stripping the atmosphere from an orbiting planet (left). Scientists found that flares from the youngest red dwarfs they surveyed — approximately 40 million years old — are 100 to 1,000 times more energetic than when the stars are older. They also detected one of the most intense stellar flares ever observed in ultraviolet light — more energetic than the most powerful flare ever recorded from our Sun. Credits: NASA, ESA and D. Player (STScI)
The word “HAZMAT” describes substances that pose a risk to the environment, or even to life itself. Imagine the term being applied to entire planets, where violent flares from the host star may make worlds uninhabitable by affecting their atmospheres.
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope is observing such stars through a large program called HAZMAT — Habitable Zones and M dwarf Activity across Time.
“M dwarf” is the astronomical term for a red dwarf star — the smallest, most abundant and longest-lived type of star in our galaxy. The HAZMAT program is an ultraviolet survey of red dwarfs at three different ages: young, intermediate, and old.
Stellar flares from red dwarfs are particularly bright in ultraviolet wavelengths, compared with Sun-like stars. Hubble’s ultraviolet sensitivity makes the telescope very valuable for observing these flares. The flares are believed to be powered by intense magnetic fields that get tangled by the roiling motions of the stellar atmosphere. When the tangling gets too intense, the fields break and reconnect, unleashing tremendous amounts of energy.
The team has found that the flares from the youngest red dwarfs they surveyed — just about 40 million years old — are 100 to 1,000 times more energetic than when the stars are older. This younger age is when terrestrial planets are forming around their stars.
Approximately three-quarters of the stars in our galaxy are red dwarfs. Most of the galaxy’s “habitable-zone” planets — planets orbiting their stars at a distance where temperatures are moderate enough for liquid water to exist on their surface — likely orbit red dwarfs. In fact, the nearest star to our Sun, a red dwarf named Proxima Centauri, has an Earth-size planet in its habitable zone.
However, young red dwarfs are active stars, producing ultraviolet flares that blast out so much energy that they could influence atmospheric chemistry and possibly strip off the atmospheres of these fledgling planets.
“The goal of the HAZMAT program is to help understand the habitability of planets around low-mass stars,” explained Arizona State University’s Evgenya Shkolnik, the program’s principal investigator. “These low-mass stars are critically important in understanding planetary atmospheres.”
The results of the first part of this Hubble program are being published in The Astrophysical Journal. This study examines the flare frequency of 12 young red dwarfs. “Getting these data on the young stars has been especially important, because the difference in their flare activity is quite large as compared to older stars,” said Arizona State University’s Parke Loyd, the first author on this paper.
The observing program detected one of the most intense stellar flares ever observed in ultraviolet light. Dubbed the “Hazflare,” this event was more energetic than the most powerful flare from our Sun ever recorded.
“With the Sun, we have a hundred years of good observations,” Loyd said. “And in that time, we’ve seen one, maybe two, flares that have an energy approaching that of the Hazflare. In a little less than a day’s worth of Hubble observations of these young stars, we caught the Hazflare, which means that we’re looking at superflares happening every day or even a few times a day.”
Could super-flares of such frequency and intensity bathe young planets in so much ultraviolet radiation that they forever doom chances of habitability? According to Loyd, “Flares like we observed have the capacity to strip away the atmosphere from a planet. But that doesn’t necessarily mean doom and gloom for life on the planet. It just might be different life than we imagine. Or there might be other processes that could replenish the atmosphere of the planet. It’s certainly a harsh environment, but I would hesitate to say that it is a sterile environment.”
The next part of the HAZMAT study will be to study intermediate-aged red dwarfs that are 650 million years old. Then the oldest red dwarfs will be analyzed and compared with the young and intermediate stars to understand the evolution of the ultraviolet radiation environment of low-mass planets around these low-mass stars. The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, in Washington, D.C.
Ann Jenkins / Ray Villard Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland 410-338-4488 / 410-338-4514 jenkins@stsci.edu/villard@stsci.edu
Evgenya Shkolnik Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona 808-292-9088 shkolnik@asu.edu
Parke Loyd Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona parke@asu.edu
On Saturday, October 20, NASA will host the ninth annual International Observe the Moon Night. One day each year, everyone on Earth is invited to observe and learn about the Moon together, and to celebrate the cultural and personal connections we all have with our nearest celestial neighbor.
There are a number of ways to celebrate. You can attend an event, host your own, or just look up! Here are 10 of our favorite ways to observe the Moon:
The simplest way to observe the Moon is simply to look up. The Moon is the brightest object in our night sky, the second brightest in our daytime sky and can be seen from all around the world — from the remote and dark Atacama Desert in Chile to the brightly lit streets of Tokyo. On October 20, the near side of the Moon, or the side facing Earth, will be about 80 percent illuminated, rising in the early evening.
The Moon and Venus are great targets for binoculars. Image Credit: NASA/Bill Dunford
With some magnification help, you will be able to focus in on specific features on the Moon, like the Sea of Tranquility or the bright Copernicus Crater. Download our Moon maps for some guided observing on Saturday.
Plan a lunar hike with Moontrek. Moontrek is an interactive Moon map made using NASA data from our lunar spacecraft. Fly anywhere you’d like on the Moon, calculate the distance or the elevation of a mountain to plan your lunar hike, or layer attributes of the lunar surface and temperature. If you have a virtual reality headset, you can experience Moontrek in 3D.
5. Touch the topography
Image credit: NASA GSFC/Jacob Richardson
Observe the Moon through touch! If you have access to a 3D printer, you can peruse our library of 3D models and lunar landscapes. This model of the Apollo 11 landing site created by NASA scientist Jacob Richardson, is derived from LRO’s topographic data. Near the center, you can actually feel a tiny dot where astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin left the Lunar Descent Module.
6. Make Moon art
Image credit: LPI/Andy Shaner
Enjoy artwork of the Moon and create your own! For messy fun, lunar crater paintings demonstrate how the lunar surface changes due to consistent meteorite impacts.
There are many movies that feature our nearest neighbor, from A Voyage to the Moon by George Melies, to Apollo 13, to the newly released First Man. You can also spend your evening with our lunar playlist on YouTube or this video gallery, learning about the Moon’s role in eclipses, looking at the Moon phases from the far side, and seeing the latest science portrayed in super high resolution. You’ll impress all of your friends with your knowledge of supermoons.
8. Listen to the Moon
Video credit: NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio/Ernie Wright
Make a playlist of Moon songs. For inspiration, check out this list of lunar tunes. We also recommend LRO’s official music video, The Moon and More, featuring Javier Colon, season 1 winner of NBC’s “The Voice.” Or you can just watch this video featuring “Clair de Lune,” by French composer Claude Debussy, over and over.
9. See the Moon through the eyes of a spacecraft
Image credit: NASA/GSFC/MIT
Visible light is just one tool that we use to explore our universe. Our spacecraft contain many different types of instruments to analyze the Moon’s composition and environment. Review the Moon’s gravity field with data from the GRAIL spacecraft or decipher the maze of this slope map from the laser altimeter onboard LRO. This collection from LRO features images of the Moon’s temperature and topography. You can learn more about our different missions to explore the Moon here.
10. Continue your observations throughout the year
An important part of observing the Moon is to see how it changes over time. International Observe the Moon Night is the perfect time to start a Moon journal. See how the shape of the Moon changes over the course of a month, and keep track of where and what time it rises and sets. Observe the Moon all year long with these tools and techniques!
However you choose to celebrate International Observe the Moon Night, we want to hear about it! Register your participation and share your experiences on social media with #ObserveTheMoon or on our Facebook page. Happy observing!
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.
Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah | #Geology #GeologyPage #Utah #USA
Located on the Colorado Plateau, the Bryce Canyon in southern Utah is a natural amphitheatre filled with spires and hoodoos. The Paiute Native Americans called it “red rocks standing like men in a bowl-shaped canyon”.
The hoodoos were formed when water repeatedly froze and melted in the vertical cracks of sedimentary rocks. Some hoodoos are taller than a 10-storey building.
Researchers have pioneered a technique to investigate how embryos develop, but which doesn’t use embryo tissue. This could side-step the ethical issues involved in embryo research. Aimed not to produce a living animal, but rather to find out more about the first steps in development. The technique uses stem cells, which can become many different types of cell. When the team stimulated mouse stem cells in a dish, the cells organised themselves into artificial embryo-like structures, called gastruloids (pictured). Next, the gastruloid developed along three axes that are known to be an important blue-print for the location of limbs. These axes run front to back, top to bottom and left to right. Here, cells that are spreading out to form the length of the body are labelled green, while cells which will ultimately become the tail bud are in pink. Further developing cells are labelled blue.
