- 2859 - SOFIA - put a telescope in an airplane? NASA’s telescope on an airplane is the “Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy“. It has provided a new glimpse of the chemistry in the inner region surrounding massive young stars where future planets could begin to form.
--------------------------- 2859 - SOFIA - put a telescope in an airplane?
- SOFIA is a Boeing 747SP jetliner modified to carry a 106-inch diameter telescope. It is a joint project of NASA and the German Aerospace Center. The aircraft is maintained and operated from NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center Hangar 703 in Palmdale, California.
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- Ten years ago, SOFIA, first peered into the cosmos. Since the night of May 26, 2010, SOFIA’s observations of infrared light, invisible to the human eye, have made many scientific discoveries about the hidden universe.
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- SOFIA found massive quantities of water and organic molecules in the swirling, disk-shaped clouds, offering new insights into how some of the key ingredients of life get incorporated into planets during the earliest stages of formation.
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- A similar process likely happened during the formation of the Sun and the inner rocky planets of our solar system, including Earth.
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- Astronomers are seeing many more molecular signatures than were ever seen before at these wavelengths. It turns out that these stars are like chemical factories churning out molecules important for life as we know it and we just needed the right kind of observations to see them.
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- SOFIA’s infrared observations offer an unparalleled view of star chemistry. When visible light is spread into its component colors, a rainbow appears. When infrared light is broken into its components, it reveals a series of bright lines, called spectra. Each element creates a unique line, so the lines act as chemical fingerprints.
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- Scientists use the spectra to identify which substances are in and around stars. SOFIA’s instruments can detect small details in the chemical fingerprints from the cores of massive young stars, similar to how high-resolution images reveal tiny features.
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- This information about massive stars, more than 40 times the mass of our Sun, can be a reference for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, which will study the formation of Sun-sized stars, among other types of targets.
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- This study is demonstrates the power of infrared observatories to sense the presence of simple organic compounds that were important for the origin of life on Earth, and possibly other planets. One of the most important goals of both Webb and SOFIA is to understand the origins of stars and planets, and, ultimately ourselves. (Good luck with that)
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- Stars form when celestial clouds collapse, feeding a rotating disc of gas and dust into a central core. SOFIA looked at this process happening around two massive stars, AFGL 2591 and AFGL 2136, each about 3,000 light years away in the constellation Cygnus and the Juggler Nebula respectively.
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- The observatory found the inner regions of these discs are heated from the inside out, transforming the gas surrounding the core into an entirely different composition. Within the same areas of the disc where planets would form were a chemical soup of organic molecules, including water, ammonia, methane, and acetylene, which is a chemical building block of larger and more complex organic molecules.
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- The Webb’s extremely sensitive telescope will be able to detect some of the weakest signals from molecules present around Sun-like stars, SOFIA can unambiguously identify the chemical compositions of molecules glowing brightly around more massive stars. This will help scientists using Webb interpret the weaker signals.
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- The modified Boeing 747SP flies a nearly 9-foot diameter telescope up to 45,000 feet in altitude, above 99% of the Earth's water vapor to get a clear view of the infrared universe not observable by ground-based telescopes.
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- Its mobility also allows it to capture transitory events in astronomy over remote locations like the open ocean. Because SOFIA lands after each flight, it can be upgraded with the latest technology to respond to some of most pressing questions in science.
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- Using SOFIA, scientists detected the universe’s first type of molecule in space, unveiled new details about the birth and death of stars and planets, and explained what’s powering supermassive black holes, and how galaxies evolve and take shape, among other discoveries.
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- SOFIA found the first type of molecule to form in the universe, called helium hydride. It was first formed only 100,000 years after the Big Bang as the first step in cosmic evolution that eventually led to the complex universe we know today.
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- The same kind of molecule should be present in parts of the modern universe, but it had never been detected outside of a laboratory until SOFIA found it in a planetary nebula called NGC 7027. Finding it in the modern universe
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- The stellar wind from a newborn star in the Orion Nebula is preventing more new stars from forming nearby as it clears a bubble around it. Astronomers call these effects “feedback,” and they are key to understanding the stars we see today and those that may form in the future. Until this discovery, scientists thought that other processes, such as exploding stars called supernovas, were largely responsible for regulating the form
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- The powerful wind from the newly formed star at the heart of the Orion Nebula is creating the bubble (black) and preventing new stars from forming in its neighborhood.
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- SOFIA found that the wind flowing from the center of the Cigar Galaxy (M82) is aligned along a magnetic field and transports a huge amount of material. Magnetic fields are usually parallel to the plane of the galaxy, but the wind is dragging it so it’s perpendicular.
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- The powerful wind, driven by the galaxy's high rate of star birth, could be one of the mechanisms for material to escape the galaxy. Similar processes in the early universe would have affected the fundamental evolution of the first galaxies.
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- There is a nearby planetary system similar to our own. The planetary system around the star Epsilon Eridani is the closest planetary system around a star similar to the early Sun. SOFIA studied the infrared glow from the warm dust, confirming that the system has an architecture remarkably similar to
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- Magnetic fields in the Cygnus A galaxy are feeding material into the galaxy’s central black hole. SOFIA revealed that the invisible forces are trapping material close to the center of the galaxy where it is close enough the be devoured by the hungry black hole. However, magnetic fields in other galaxies may be preventing black holes from consuming material.
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- Magnetic fields may be what is keeping our Milky Way’s black hole quiet. SOFIA detected magnetic fields that may be channeling the gas into an orbit around the black hole, rather than directly into it. This may explain why our galaxy’s black hole is relatively quiet, while those in other galaxies are actively consuming material.
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- “Kitchen Smoke” Molecules in nebula offer clues to building blocks of life.
SOFIA found that the organic, complex molecules in the nebula NGC 7023 evolve into larger, more complex molecules when hit with radiation from nearby stars. Researchers were surprised to find that the radiation helped these molecules grow instead of destroying them. The growth of these molecules is one of the steps that could lead to the emergence of life under the right circumstances.
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- SOFIA discovered that a supernova explosion can produce a substantial amount of the material from which planets like Earth can form. Infrared observations of a cloud produced by a supernova 10,000 years ago contains enough dust to make 7,000 Earths. Scientists now know that material created by the first outward shock wave can survive the subsequent inward “rebound” wave generated when the first collides with surrounding interstellar gas and dust.
- SOFIA found the material produced from first outward wave can survive the second inward wave and can become seed material for new stars and planets.
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- SOFIA captured an extremely crisp infrared image of the center of our Milky Way galaxy. Spanning a distance of more than 600 light-years, this panorama reveals details within the dense swirls of gas and dust in high resolution, opening the door to future research into how massive stars are forming and what’s feeding the supermassive black hole at our galaxy’s core.
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- A composite infrared image of the center of our Milky way Galaxy spans 600+ lightyears across and is helping scientists learn how many massive stars are forming in our galaxy’s center. New data from SOFIA taken at 25 and 37 microns is combined with data from the Herschel Space Observatory, (70 microns), and the Spitzer Space Telescope, shown (8 microns). SOFIA’s view reveals features that have never been seen before.
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- What happens when exoplanets collide? Known as BD +20 307, this double-star system is more than 300 light years from Earth likely had an extreme collision between rocky exoplanets. A decade ago, observations of this system gave the first hints of a collision when they found debris that was warmer than expected to be around mature stars that are at least one billion years old.
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- SOFIA’s observations discovered the infrared brightness from the debris has increased by more than 10%, a sign that there is now even more warm dust and that a collision occurred relatively recently. A similar event in our own solar system may have formed our Moon.
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- A catastrophic collision between two rocky exoplanets in the planetary system BD +20 307, turning both into dusty debris. Ten years ago, scientists speculated that the warm dust in this system was a result of a planet-to-planet collision.
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- Now, SOFIA found even more warm dust, further supporting that two rocky exoplanets collided. This helps build a more complete picture of our own solar system’s history. Such a collision could be similar to the type of catastrophic event that ultimately created our Moon and our planet.
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- October 11, 2020 2859
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