#Goddard Institute for Space Studies

[nerdwelt]

NASA: Der Juli war der heißeste Monat seit Beginn der Aufzeichnungen, aber 2024 sieht noch heißer aus

Die NASA hat bestätigt, dass der Juli 2023 der heißeste Monat seit Beginn der Aufzeichnungen im Jahr 1880 war. Dies sollte für niemanden überraschend sein, da die Auswirkungen der Klimakrise auf der ganzen Welt immer offensichtlicher werden. Die Amerikaner spüren die Auswirkungen der Hitzewelle in allen Teilen des Landes. Die NASA-Administratorin Bill Nelson betont, dass wir handeln müssen, um…

[michaelgabrill]

NASA Selects Scientific Support for Goddard Institute of Space Studies

NASA has selected Autonomic Integra of Gaithersburg, Maryland, for specialized scientific support services to the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York. from NASA https://ift.tt/zBTHYka

[mysticstronomy]

DID LIFE EXIST ON VENUS??

Blog#429

Wednesday, August 21st 2024.

Welcome back,

The hellish planet Venus may have had a perfectly habitable environment for 2 to 3 billion years after the planet formed, suggesting life would have had ample time to emerge there, according to a new study.

In 1978, NASA's Pioneer Venus spacecraft found evidence that the planet may have once had shallow oceans on its surface. Since then, several missions have investigated the planet's surface and atmosphere, revealing new details on how it transitioned from an "Earth-like" planet to the hot, hellish place it is today.

It's believed that Venus may have been a temperate planet hosting liquid water for 2 to 3 billion years before a massive resurfacing event about 700 million years ago triggered a runaway greenhouse effect, which caused the planet's atmosphere to become incredibly dense and hot.

Researchers from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies shared a series of five simulations that show what Venus' environment would be like based on different levels of water coverage.

All five of the simulations suggest Venus may have been able to maintain stable temperatures, ranging from a low of 68 degrees Fahrenheit (20 degrees Celsius) to a high of 122 degrees Fahrenheit (50 degrees Celsius), for about 3 billion years, according to a statement from the Europlanet Society.

"Our hypothesis is that Venus may have had a stable climate for billions of years," Michael Way, one of the study researchers, said in the statement. "It is possible that the near-global resurfacing event is responsible for its transformation from an Earth-like climate to the hellish hot-house we see today."

Under stable climate conditions, Venus would have been able to support liquid water and, in turn, possibly allow life to emerge. In fact, if the planet hadn't experienced the resurfacing event, it might have remained habitable today, the researchers said.

However, the resurfacing event triggered a series of incidents that caused a release, or outgassing, of carbon dioxide stored in the rocks of the planet. As a result, Venus' atmosphere became too dense and hot for life to survive.

Creating the different simulations involved adapting a 3D general-circulation model, which accounted for atmospheric compositions as they were 4.2 billion years ago and 715 million years ago, and as they are today. The model also accounts for the gradual increase in solar radiation, as the sun gets warmer over the course of its lifetime.

In addition, three of the five scenarios assumed the topography of Venus was similar to what it is today. In these scenarios, the ocean ranged from a shallow depth of about 30 feet (10 meters) to about 1,000 feet (310 m), with a small amount of water locked in the soil.

Originally published on https://www.space.com

COMING UP!!

(Saturday, August 24th, 2024)

"HOW POWERFUL IS DARK ENERGY??"

[spacenutspod]

2 min read Hubble Glimpses a Bright Galaxy Group This new NASA Hubble Space Telescope image shows a tangled group of interacting galaxies called LEDA 60847. NASA/ESA/A. Barth (University of California – Irvine)/M. Koss (Eureka Scientific Inc.)/A. Robinson (Rochester Institute of Technology)/Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America) This new NASA Hubble Space Telescope image shows a group of interacting galaxies known as LEDA 60847. LEDA 60847 is classified as an active galactic nuclei, or AGN. An AGN has a supermassive black hole in the galaxy’s central region that is accreting material. The AGN emits radiation across the entire electromagnetic spectrum and shines extremely brightly. By studying powerful AGNs that are relatively nearby, astronomers can better understand how supermassive black holes grow and affect galaxies. Galaxy mergers are relatively common occurrences. Most larger galaxies are the result of smaller galaxies merging. The Milky Way itself contains traces of other galaxies, indicating it is the product of past mergers. Astronomers believe somewhere between 5% and 25% of all galaxies are currently merging.  This image of LEDA 60847 combines ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared data from Hubble. The ability to see across all those wavelengths is one of the things that makes Hubble unique. Different types of light across the electromagnetic spectrum tell astronomers different things about our universe. Ultraviolet light traces the glow of stellar nurseries and is used to identify the hottest stars. Visible light shows us moderate-temperature stars and material, and also how the view would appear to our own eyes. Last but not least, near-infrared light can penetrate cold dust, allowing us to study warm gas and dust, and relatively cool stars. LEARN MORE: Hubble’s Cosmic Collisions Hubble Science: Galaxy Details and Mergers Hubble Science: Tracing the Growth of Galaxies Download this image Media Contact: Claire AndreoliNASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MDclaire.andreoli@nasa.gov Share Details Last Updated Jan 23, 2024 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms Active Galaxies Astrophysics Division Galaxies Goddard Space Flight Center Hubble Space Telescope Missions The Universe Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From NASA Hubble Space Telescope Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe. Galaxies Stories Stars Stories James Webb Space Telescope Webb is the premier observatory of the next decade, serving thousands of astronomers worldwide. It studies every phase in the…

[theofficialastronomy101]

BREAKING NEWS ALERT

Scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) have found that Venus may have once had a shallow liquid-water ocean and a habitable surface temperature for up to two billion years.

LIFE ON VENUS

The findings, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, were obtained with a model similar to the type used to predict future climate change on Earth. Measurements by NASA’s Pioneer mission to Venus in the Eighties first suggested Venus originally may have had an ocean, but its proximity to the Sun means it receives far more sunlight than Earth. This led scientists to believe that the planet’s early ocean evaporated, water-vapour molecules were broken apart by ultraviolet radiation, and hydrogen escaped to space. With no water left on the surface, carbon dioxide built up in the atmosphere, causing a runaway greenhouse effect that created present conditions.

Dr. Michelle Thaller works as a scientist at Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center and has decades of experience. She told us: "I definitely think we’ll find life on another planet. I think that in our own Solar System, we’re quite close to it but once again we don’t have that 100 percent thing."On Mars, we see chemistry that on Earth if it were here we would say is due to life.

My personal opinion, whatever Michelle Thaller says goes! Period! She knows what she’s talking about, she’s a very smart and bright woman and I can put her right up there along with Stephen Hawking.

[mindblowingscience]

A team of geologists and planetary scientists from the California Institute of Technology, the University of California Santa Cruz, New York University, and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center reports evidence that Io's volcanic activity has been ongoing since the beginning of the solar system. In their study, published in the journal Science, the group studied sulfur isotopes in Io's atmosphere to determine how long the moon has been volcanically active. Prior research has shown that the solar system is approximately 4.5 billion years old and that Jupiter's moon, Io, is the most volcanically active body in the solar system. But until now, researchers did not know how long the moon has been active. To find out, the research team used data from ALMA to analyze the gases present in Io's atmosphere.

Continue Reading.

[thoughtlessarse]

The leap in temperatures over the past 13 months has exceeded the global heating forecasts – is this just a blip or a systemic shift? In a remarkably candid essay in the journal Nature this March, one of the world’s top climate scientists posited the alarming possibility that global heating may be moving beyond the ability of experts to predict what happens next. “The 2023 temperature anomaly has come out of the blue, revealing an unprecedented knowledge gap perhaps for the first time since about 40 years ago, when satellite data began offering modellers an unparalleled, real-time view of Earth’s climate system,” wrote Gavin Schmidt, a British scientist and the director of the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. If this anomaly does not stabilise by August, he said, it could imply “that a warming planet is already fundamentally altering how the climate system operates, much sooner than scientists had anticipated”. Many in the science and environment community read these words with alarm. Was the leap in temperatures over the past 13 months, which has exceeded the global heating forecasts of experts, a sign of a systemic shift, or just a temporary anomaly? If the world was warming even faster than scientists thought it would, seemingly jumping years ahead of predictions, would that mean even more crucial decades of action had been lost? With August now here, Schmidt is a fraction less disturbed. He said the situation remains unclear, but the broader global heating trends are starting to move back in the direction of forecasts. “What I am thinking now is we aren’t that far off from expectations. If we maintain this for the next couple of months then we can say what happened in late 2023 was more ‘blippish’ than systematic. But it is still too early to call it,” he said. “I am slightly less worried, but still humbled that we can’t explain it.”

continue reading

[kp777]

The leap in temperatures over the past 13 months has exceeded the global heating forecasts – is this just a blip or a systemic shift?

Excerpt:

In a remarkably candid essay in the journal Nature this March, one of the world’s top climate scientists posited the alarming possibility that global heating may be moving beyond the ability of experts to predict what happens next. “The 2023 temperature anomaly has come out of the blue, revealing an unprecedented knowledge gap perhaps for the first time since about 40 years ago, when satellite data began offering modellers an unparalleled, real-time view of Earth’s climate system,” wrote Gavin Schmidt, a British scientist and the director of the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. If this anomaly does not stabilise by August, he said, it could imply “that a warming planet is already fundamentally altering how the climate system operates, much sooner than scientists had anticipated”.

Read more.

[sf-images]

Earth Day 2024

April 21, 2024, update: . . . " the average global temperature on Earth has increased by at least 1.2° Celsius (1.9° Fahrenheit) since 1880 (it increased 0.4° Celsius since 2016). There is only 0.3° Celsius of increase left before we hit the first tier of cataclysmic thresholds, according to environmental scientists.

According to an ongoing temperature analysis led by scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), "the average global temperature on Earth has increased by at least 1.2° Celsius (1.9° Fahrenheit) since 1880 (it increased 0.4° Celsius since 2016). The majority of the warming has occurred since 1975, at a rate of roughly 0.15 to 0.20°C per decade. . . . . The data reflect how much warmer or cooler each region was compared to the base period of 1951-1980. (The global mean surface air temperature for that period was 14°C (57°F), with an uncertainty of several tenths of a degree.)"

Adding to this is the growing number of methane sinkholes, each releasing several gigatons of gas per day. This growing phenomenon is changing all the current climate projections. Indeed, we might already have reached the climate tipping point.

There was a time when we believed that we were the center of the universe and that we should have dominion over the Earth. But then Copernicus came along, who asserted that the Sun is indeed the center of our solar system, the Moon being the only body that revolved around the Earth. I'm sure you know that this resulted in a bit of an uproar. As for the dominion idea, our use of resources, overhunting, and factory farming of animals has contributed to climate change and the current sixth extinction. Watch Marvin Gaye's video, Mercy, Mercy Me (The Ecology), released in 1971.

The following two photos show a contrast between Greenland's Tunu Glacier in 1933 and 2013. This melt-back is characteristic of ice all around the world, though melt-back varies widely, depending on location.

Source:

The Greenland Ice Sheet - 80 years of climate change seen from the air.

/ Bjørk, Anders Anker; Kjær, Kurt H.; Larsen, Nicolaj Krog; Kjeldsen, Kristian Kjellerup; Khan, Shfaqat Abbas; Funder, Svend Visby; Korsgaard, Niels Jákup. 2014. Abstract from 44th International Arctic Workshop, Boulder, Colorado, United States.

It wasn't so long ago that Carl Sagan and climate scientists started sounding the alarm that we were going down a dangerous path. Subsequent climate data has revealed that those early projections vastly underestimated what was happening, since we now know that climate change is not a linear but an exponential process. That is, it happens faster and faster over time.

Via Voyager 1 (click to enlarge)

The now famous photograph of Earth as a pale blue dot was taken on February 14, 1990 by the deep space probe, Voyager 1, from a record distance of about 6 billion kilometers (3.7 billion miles). The more recent

Via Cassini

photograph was taken by the deep space probe, Cassini. Though more striking with Saturn in the foreground, it also shows how Earth is but a spec in the cosmos. As Sagan said in his book: Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. (Carl Sagan, The Pale Blue Dot, 1994)

People often say we have to save the Earth. Not so! The Earth will go on just fine without us. The issue is preserving the current biosphere that supports us and the other higher vertebrates. There will always be life on the planet so long as there's liquid water. As I present every year, here is my fictionalized account of our worst scenario. Let's do better!

[digitalworldbound]

liberty

characters: taichi and yamato summary: while yamato is attending a space program in America for the summer, taichi comes to a realization. a/n: this is an old draft i forgot to post; i haven't written anything new. stay hydrated and happy! also on AO3.

It had been twelve days and seven hours since he had last seen Yamato.

Not that Taichi was counting.

“It’s the opportunity of a lifetime,” Yamato had said, an unusual sparkle in his eyes. Taichi couldn’t bring himself to argue with him. 

As a result of hard work and excellent grades, Yamato had been awarded a summer internship at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. All expenses would be paid for, and Yamato couldn’t turn down a good deal.

Once the twelve of them had gathered in the crowded airport, Taichi had to fight the tears in his eyes. He wrapped his arms around Yamato for what felt like the last time

It was only for the summer, he reminded himself. 

Still, his heart strained uncomfortably in his chest as Yamato’s mop of blond hair slipped further and further away. 

It had been twelve days and seven hours since he had last seen Yamato, and Taichi was about to crack.

The air conditioner hummed pitifully in the corner of his apartment. Though the one bedroom, one bathroom apartment had always been small, the rooms felt stifling in the summer heat. Listlessly, Taichi flipped through an old issue of Sports Illustrated. Across the pages, men that were having a lot more fun than Taichi flashed brilliant smiles. The sunshine didn’t bombard them, but embraced them, a thin sheen of sweat highlighting their rugged cheekbones and emphasizing the blueness of their eyes.

Taichi shook his head. Their eyes weren’t that blue. Yamato’s were more crystalline, shimmering with depth and hue.  

Taichi shook his head again. The heat had gotten to him, turning his thoughts to mush and quickening his pulse. 

Peeling himself from the comforter, Taichi dressed quickly. Basketball shorts and a tank top were all he was willing to put on underneath the harsh Odaiba sun.

Outside, birds twittered mockingly. Their melodious conversations reminded him of late-night talks with Yamato, their voices muffled by phone speakers and sleep.

Their first year in college proved to be tougher than either of them had thought. Together, they would hole up in Taichi's cramped apartment, boxes of take out stretching between them. 

"You know," Taichi began one night, mouth loosened from alcohol or laughter. A half-finished midterm paper glared up at him from his laptop. "I hope all of this work is actually worth it in the end."

Yamato glanced up from his math worksheet. Numbers and letters combined in a way that made Taichi's head hurt, so he looked away, focusing on the way Yamato's eyebrows bunched together in thought.

"As long as you enjoy the journey, any outcome is worth it, you know?"

Yamato's eyes stared into Taichi's for a beat too long. An anxious fluttering erupted in Taichi's stomach, an oddly-placed cough doing little to ease his tension. 

Something pulled in Taichi's chest, a gravity urging him closer to blue eyes and the whisper of a smile. 

Instead, Taichi cleared his throat.

"Well, I'm glad math isn't a part of my journey." 

His voice sounded faint in the otherwise quiet room. Yamato merely snorted, turning back to his worksheet, the moment passing by as Taichi struggled with his courage.

In the present, Taichi wanted to kick himself for being so stupid. Passerbys glanced at him, nearly-grown and half wild with regret. Sweat beaded at his temples, the throngs of people overwhelming his senses. 

Taichi felt his sneakers guide him away from the sidewalk, leading him beneath the wide branches that caressed the edges of his busy district. 

With shade providing minimal comfort, Taichi ran his fingers carelessly through his hair. Despite the heat, his body had too much energy; his mind was too cluttered to think clearly.

Taichi turned himself around, his tacky skin pulling against the clothes of strangers as he hurried by. Once his apartment was in sight, his tanned legs broke into a run, lips curled downward in concentration.

A weak wave of lukewarm air greeted Taichi as the front door swung open, but the heat was now his least concern. 

Yamato, his Yamato, was a world away, probably spending his free time with a different, braver brunette who wouldn’t be afraid to kiss his best friend on the lips whenever he felt like it. 

With a groan, Taichi hastily kicked off his shoes. The linoleum floor was cold against his bare feet, but he paid little mind. 

A rickety desk stood cluttered in a corner. Yesterday’s clothes were draped over the chair, but there was no one else to mind. With a singular push, everything clattered onto the floor, Taichi rummaging through his drawers until he emerged victorious.

Though it was slightly stained with some mysterious liquid, the slightly-tattered postcard was exactly what he needed. 

Messily, he scrawled his message, short and sweet, and stuck on the first stamp he found. 

Braving the heat for a final time, the postcard was carefully pushed on its way, arriving safe, if not slightly damp, in a mailbox across the sea. 

It had been seventeen days and ten hours since Yamato had last seen Taichi, but a smile threatened to stretch his lips as he read the words out loud.

"Come home soon."

[myfusimotors]

NASA Analysis Confirms 2023 as Warmest Year on Record

Earth’s average surface temperature in 2023 was the warmest on record, according to an analysis by NASA. Global temperatures last year were around 2.1 degrees Fahrenheit (1.2 degrees Celsius) above the average for NASA’s baseline period (1951-1980), scientists from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York reported. “NASA and NOAA’s global temperature report confirms what…

[nerdwelt]

50-prozentige Chance, dass 2023 das wärmste Jahr seit Beginn der Aufzeichnungen wird: NOAA

Klimaexperten der US-Regierung haben am Montag darauf hingewiesen, dass es eine Wahrscheinlichkeit von fast 50 Prozent gibt, dass 2023 das wärmste Jahr aller Zeiten wird. Sie warnen zudem davor, dass es im nächsten Jahr noch heißer werden könnte. Sarah Kapnick, Chefwissenschaftlerin der National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), erklärte, dass 2023 bisher das drittwärmste Jahr seit…

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

NASA's EXCITE mission prepared for scientific balloon flight

Scientists and engineers are ready to fly an infrared mission called EXCITE (EXoplanet Climate Infrared TElescope) to the edge of space.

EXCITE is designed to study atmospheres around exoplanets, or worlds beyond our solar system, during circumpolar long-duration scientific balloon flights. But first, it must complete a test flight during NASA's fall 2024 scientific ballooning campaign from Fort Sumner, New Mexico.

"EXCITE can give us a three-dimensional picture of a planet's atmosphere and temperature by collecting data the whole time the world orbits its star," said Peter Nagler, the mission's principal investigator at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

"Only a handful of these types of measurements have been done before. They require a very stable telescope in a position to track a planet for several days at a time."

EXCITE will study hot Jupiters, giant gas exoplanets that complete an orbit once every one to two days and have temperatures in the thousands of degrees. The worlds are tidally locked, which means the same side always faces the star.

The telescope will observe how heat is distributed across the planet, from the scalding hemisphere facing the star to the relatively cooler nightside.

It will also determine how molecules in a world's atmosphere absorb and emit light over the entire orbit, a process called phase-resolved spectroscopy. Not only can this data reveal the presence of compounds—like water, methane, carbon dioxide, and others—but also how they circulate globally as the planet orbits its star.

NASA's Hubble, James Webb, and retired Spitzer space telescopes have collected a handful of these measurements between them.

In 2014, for example, Hubble and Spitzer observed an exoplanet called WASP-43 b. To collect data over the world's 22-hour day, scientists needed 60 hours of Hubble time and 46 hours from Spitzer. Resource-intensive studies like this on space-based observatories are difficult. Time is a limited resource, and studies must compete with hundreds of other requests for that time.

"During its first science flight, EXCITE aims to fly for over a dozen days from the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility's site in Antarctica," said Kyle Helson, an EXCITE team member and a research scientist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and NASA Goddard.

"And at the pole, the stars we'll study don't set, so our observations won't be interrupted. We hope that the mission will effectively double the number of phase-resolved spectra available to the science community."

EXCITE will fly to about 132,000 feet (40 kilometers) via a scientific balloon filled with helium. That takes it above 99.5% of Earth's atmosphere. At that altitude, the telescope will be able to observe multiple infrared wavelengths with little interference.

"The telescope collects the infrared light and beams it into the spectrometer, where it kind of goes through a little obstacle course," said Lee Bernard, an EXCITE team member and a graduate research assistant at Arizona State University in Tempe.

"It bounces off mirrors and through a prism before reaching the detector. Everything must be aligned very precisely—just a few millimeters off center and the light won't make it."

The spectrometer rests inside a vessel called a cryostat situated behind the telescope. The cryostat cools the spectrometer's detector—once a flight candidate from Webb'sNIRSpec (Near InfraRed Spectrograph)— to about 350 degrees below zero Fahrenheit (minus 210 degrees Celsius) so it can measure tiny intensity changes in the infrared light.

The entire telescope and cryostat assembly rests in a rowboat-shaped base where it can rotate along three axes to maintain stable pointing down to 50 milliarcseconds. That's like holding a steady gaze on a U.S. quarter coin from 65 miles away.

"Several different institutions contributed to EXCITE's subsystems," said Tim Rehm, an EXCITE team member and a graduate research assistant at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. "It's great to see them all assembled and working together. We're excited to do this test flight, and we're looking forward to all the future science flights we hope to have."

The EXCITE instrument was primarily built by NASA Goddard, Brown, Arizona State University, and StarSpec Technologies in Ontario, with additional support from collaborators in the U.S., Canada, Italy, and the United Kingdom.

NASA's scientific balloons offer frequent, low-cost access to near-space to conduct scientific investigations and technology maturation in fields such as astrophysics, heliophysics, and atmospheric research, as well as training for the next generation of leaders in engineering and science.

IMAGE: EXCITE (EXoplanet Climate Infrared TElescope) hangs from a ceiling at the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility's location in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. The mission team practiced taking observations ahead of flight by looking out the hanger doors at night. Credit: NASA/Jeanette Kazmierczak

[tearsinthemist]

How much hotter is the earth today compared to the start of the industrial age?

The roughly 2-degree Fahrenheit (1 degrees Celsius) increase in global average surface temperature that has occurred since the pre-industrial era (1850-1900 in NOAA's record) might seem small, but it means a significant increase in accumulated heat.Jan 18, 2024

How much hotter is the earth now than before Industrialisation?

According to an ongoing temperature analysis led by scientists at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), the average global temperature on Earth has increased by at least 1.1° Celsius (1.9° Fahrenheit) since 1880.

Is it hotter now than 30 years ago?

According to NOAA's 2023 Annual Climate Report the combined land and ocean temperature has increased at an average rate of 0.11° Fahrenheit (0.06° Celsius) per decade since 1850, or about 2° F in total. The rate of warming since 1982 is more than three times as fast: 0.36° F (0.20° C) per decade.Jan 18, 2024

Are summers actually getting hotter?

Change in average summer temperature from 1970 to 2022 Western U.S. had the most change, with the majority of California, Nevada, Oregon and New Mexico having a +4°F change. Costal portions of New Jersey and New York experienced similar changes.Jun 8, 2023

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Passant Rabie

Published: April 11, 2023

When Dr. Makenzie Lystrup was sworn in as the new director of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center last week, she didn’t take her oath of office on the Bible or the U.S. Constitution, but rather on a tome revered by space enthusiasts everywhere: Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot.

The book, published in 1994, is named after an iconic image of Earth, snapped by the Voyager I probe, that depicts the planet as a small speck smothered by the emptiness of space. That photo inspired astronomer Carl Sagan to write: “Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us.” For many, the book serves as a reminder of humanity’s place in the universe and the need to preserve our home planet, which makes it similar to holy scripture for a newly appointed NASA director.

On Thursday, when Lystrup chose to place her left hand on a copy of Sagan’s book while being sworn in by NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, a photographer captured the moment, and NASA Goddard’s social media shared the image.

The constitution does not require that government officials be sworn in using a particular text, just that they “shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution.” Most U.S. politicians and officials end up using the Bible.

But over the years, many officeholders have improvised while taking their oath. In 2018, Mariah Parker was sworn in as a member of the Athens-Clarke County commissioners with her hand placed on a copy of “The Autobiography of Malcom X.” When former U.S. ambassador to Switzerland Suzi LeVine took her oath in 2014, she put a hand on her Kindle. Keith Ellison, the first Muslim to be elected to Congress, took his oath in 2007 using the Quran.

Sagan is a revered figure in the space sciences community for his pioneering contributions to space exploration. “Like many astronomers and space scientists, my passion started with watching Carl Sagan’s ‘Cosmos’ on public television as a child,” Lystrup, who is a planetary scientist like Sagan, said in an emailed statement. “Sagan worked very hard to make science accessible and meaningful to everyone, and ‘Pale Blue Dot’ emphasizes the importance of exploring our universe and understanding our home planet.” 

“Given its personal significance to me and how its message resonates with the work we do at NASA Goddard on behalf of the world, it felt apropos to include it in the ceremony,” she added.

Lystrup will be the first female center director of the Goddard Space Flight Center, which includes a primary campus in Greenbelt, Maryland, as well as Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, the Katherine Johnson Independent Verification & Validation Facility in West Virginia, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the White Sands Complex in New Mexico, and the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Texas.

Goddard is home to the nation’s largest concentration of scientists, engineers and technologists dedicated to Earth and space science, according to NASA.

[itsfullofstars]

Webb explores a pair of merging galaxies by europeanspaceagency This image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope depicts IC 1623, an entwined pair of interacting galaxies which lies around 270 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Cetus. The two galaxies in IC 1623 are plunging headlong into one another in a process known as a galaxy merger. Their collision has ignited a frenzied spate of star formation known as a starburst, creating new stars at a rate more than twenty times that of the Milky Way galaxy. This interacting galaxy system is particularly bright at infrared wavelengths, making it a perfect proving ground for Webb’s ability to study luminous galaxies. A team of astronomers captured IC 1623 across the infrared portions of the electromagnetic spectrum using a trio of Webb’s cutting-edge scientific instruments: MIRI, NIRSpec, and NIRCam. In so doing, they provided an abundance of data that will allow the astronomical community at large to fully explore how Webb’s unprecedented capabilities will help to unravel the complex interactions in galactic ecosystems. These observations are also accompanied by data from other observatories, including the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, and will help set the stage for future observations of galactic systems with Webb. The merger of these two galaxies has long been of interest to astronomers, and has previously been imaged by Hubble and by other space telescopes. The ongoing, extreme starburst causes intense infrared emission, and the merging galaxies may well be in the process of forming a supermassive black hole. A thick band of dust has blocked these valuable insights from the view of telescopes like Hubble. However, Webb’s infrared sensitivity and its impressive resolution at those wavelengths allows it to see past the dust and has resulted in the spectacular image above, a combination of MIRI and NIRCam imagery. The luminous core of the galaxy merger turns out to be both very bright and highly compact, so much so that Webb’s diffraction spikes appear atop the galaxy in this image. The 8-pronged, snowflake-like diffraction spikes are created by the interaction of starlight with the physical structure of the telescope. The spiky quality of Webb’s observations is particularly noticeable in images containing bright stars, such as Webb’s first deep field image. MIRI was contributed by ESA and NASA, with the instrument designed and built by a consortium of nationally funded European Institutes (The MIRI European Consortium) in partnership with JPL and the University of Arizona. NIRSpec was built for the European Space Agency (ESA) by a consortium of European companies led by Airbus Defence and Space (ADS) with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center providing its detector and micro-shutter subsystems. Credits: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, L. Armus & A. Evans; CC BY 4.0 Acknowledgement: R. Colombari https://flic.kr/p/2nV4JdC