Gizmorama - July 13, 2015

Good Morning,

The Hubble Space Telescope will soon be a technological relic when the James Webb Space Telescope launches in 2018. It's the next generation of deep space telescopes and it might just catch a glimpse of alien civilizations.

Learn about this and more interesting stories from the scientific community in today's issue.

Until Next Time,
Erin

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*-- New composite X-ray image reveals active regions of Sun --*
LLANDUDNO, Wales (UPI) - A new image of the sun combines X-ray observations made by a number of instruments. The composite image shows the sun's flaring, active regions.

"We can see a few active regions on the Sun in this view," Ianin Hannah, an astronomer at the University of Glasgow, said of the image in a press release. "Our Sun is quietening down in its activity cycle, but still has a couple of years before it reaches a minimum."

On Wednesday, July 8, Hannah presented the image to attendees of the National Astronomy Meeting in Llandudno, Wales.

The composite rendering combines imaging results from NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) and the X-ray instrument on Japan's Hinode spacecraft. NuSTAR reveals the sun's high-energy X-rays (imaged in blue), while Hinode shows the sun's low-energy X-rays in green. Yellow and orange colors represent ultraviolet rays observed by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory.

NuSTAR -- which spends most of its time observing black holes -- is so sensitive that it has difficulty detailing the massive flares that send solar storms towards Earth. But researchers have been trying to use the telescope to detect hypothesized nanoflares, tiny flares that scientists believe explain why the sun's corona is so hot.

"What's great about NuSTAR is that the telescope is so versatile that we can hunt black holes millions of light-years away and we can also learn something fundamental about the star in our own backyard," said Brian Grefenstette, a NuSTAR scientist and astronomer at the California Institute of Technology.

Currently, the sun's still-significant electromagnetic activity -- as evidenced by the recent arrival of sizable storms -- is making it difficult to study the sun's more subtle flares.

"We still need the Sun to quieten down more over the next few years to have the ability to detect these events," said Hannah.


*-- Astronomers call on peers to dream up deep-space telescope of the future --*
SEATTLE (UPI) - The James Webb Space Telescope is set to launch in 2018, successor to the game-changing Hubble Space Telescope. The Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope will come online in roughly a decade.

But a group of astronomers say it's time to think even further ahead -- about the next generation of deep space telescopes, specifically one that can find distant alien life.

"If we think about what we want in the sky after the James Webb Space Telescope, we need to start thinking about it now," Washington astronomy professor Julianne Dalcanton said in released statement. "These are decades-long projects. No mission happens accidentally."

Dalcanton, an astronomer at the University of Washington, recently co-chaired an Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) committee on the future of space telescope technology. The group issued a "call to arms" to other astronomers, arguing the time is ripe to think big about the future of astronomical research. They also offered their idea for the next deep space telescope -- a project they call the High-Definition Space Telescope, or HDST.

The telescope's orbital path would lie one million miles from Earth, beyond the moon. It would peer deep into space, using a 40-foot-wide mirror to capture the faint light bouncing off faraway planets.

"The goal is not just to find watery planets with rocky cores," said Dalcanton. "We want to find atmospheres that have been shaped by the presence of life."

Dalcanton and the other authors of the new call-to-arms proposal imagine the HDST as the most powerful deep space telescope yet, using its massive mirror and other technological advancements to scan for, identify and document the presence of "planets that may be as much as 10 billion times fainter than their host star."

The new report was released in conjunction with a July 6 presentation and panel discussion hosted by the American Museum of Natural History.

"This is a chance to get people excited about something that could be their children's Hubble," Dalcanton concluded.

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