If you could only see gamma-rays, photons with up to a billion or more times the energy of visible light, the Moon would be brighter than the Sun! That startling notion underlies this novel image of the Moon, based on data collected by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope's Large Area Telescope (LAT) instrument during its first seven years of operation (2008-2015). Fermi's gamma-ray vision doesn't distinguish details on the lunar surface, but a gamma-ray glow consistent with the Moon's size and position is clearly found at the center of the false color map. The brightest pixels correspond to the most significant detections of lunar gamma-rays. Why is the gamma-ray Moon so bright? High-energy charged particles streaming through the Solar System known as cosmic rays constantly bombard the lunar surface, unprotected by a magnetic field, generating the gamma-ray glow. Because the cosmic rays come from all sides, the gamma-ray Moon is always full and does not go through phases. The first gamma-ray image of the Moon was captured by the EGRET instrument onboard the Compton Gamma-ray Observatory, launched 25 years ago.
The combined light of stars along the Milky Way are reflected by these cosmic dust clouds that soar some 300 light-years or so above the plane of our galaxy. Dubbed the Angel Nebula, the faint apparition is part of an expansive complex of dim and relatively unexplored, diffuse molecular clouds. Commonly found at high galactic latitudes, the dusty galactic cirrus can be traced over large regions toward the North and South Galactic poles. Along with the refection of starlight, studies indicate the dust clouds produce a faint reddish luminescence, as interstellar dust grains convert invisible ultraviolet radiation to visible red light. Also capturing nearby Milky Way stars and an array of distant background galaxies, the deep, wide-field 3x5 degree image spans about 10 Full Moons across planet Earth's sky toward the constellation Ursa Major.
ESA’s XMM-Newton has discovered gas streaming away at a quarter of the speed of light from very bright X-ray binaries in two nearby galaxies.
Makemake is one of several dwarf planets that reside in the frigid outer realm of our solar system called the Kuiper Belt, a "junkyard" of countless icy bodies left over from our solar system's formation.
Saturn’s largest moon is covered in seas and lakes of liquid hydrocarbons – and one sea has now been found to be filled with pure methane, with a seabed covered by a sludge of organic-rich material, and possibly surrounded by wetlands.
France’s Microscope satellite, carrying a set of ESA high-tech thrusters, lifted off last night from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, taking advantage of the same Soyuz launch that took the EU’s Sentinel-1B into orbit.
A CMS collision event as seen in the built-in event display on the CERN Open Data Portal (Image: CERN)
The CMS collaboration has made 300 TB of high-quality data from the LHC available to the public through the CERN Open Data Portal.
The collision data come in two types: The so-called “primary datasets” are in the same format used by the CMS Collaboration to perform research. The “derived datasets” on the other hand require a lot less computing power and can be readily analysed by university or even high-school students.
Notably, CMS is also providing the simulated data generated with the same software version that should be used to analyse the primary datasets. Simulations play a crucial role in particle-physics research and CMS is also making available the protocols for generating the simulations that are provided. The data release is accompanied by analysis tools and code examples tailored to the datasets.
These data are being made public in accordance with CMS’s commitment to long-term data preservation and as part of the collaboration’s open-data policy.
“Members of the CMS Collaboration put in lots of effort and thousands of person-hours each of service work in order to operate the CMS detector and collect these research data for our analysis,” explains Kati Lassila-Perini, a CMS physicist who leads these data-preservation efforts. “However, once we’ve exhausted our exploration of the data, we see no reason not to make them available publicly. The benefits are numerous, from inspiring high-school students to the training of the particle physicists of tomorrow. And personally, as CMS’s data-preservation co-ordinator, this is a crucial part of ensuring the long-term availability of our research data.”
The scope of open LHC data has already been demonstrated with the previous release of research data. A group of theorists at MIT wanted to study the substructure of jets — showers of hadron clusters recorded in the CMS detector. Since CMS had not performed this particular research, the theorists got in touch with the CMS scientists for advice on how to proceed. This blossomed into a fruitful collaboration between the theorists and CMS revolving around CMS open data.
Read more about CMS Open Data on the CERN Open Data Portal.
A longer version of this article was originally published on the CMS website
A waning crescent moon, early morning twilight, and Al Hamra's city lights on the horizon can't hide the central Milky Way in this skyscape from planet Earth. Captured in a single exposure, the dreamlike scene looks southward across the region's grand canyon from Jabal Shams (Sun Mountain), near the highest peak in Oman, on the Arabian Peninsula. Mist, moonlight, and shadows still play along the steep canyon walls. Dark rifts along the luminous band of the Milky Way are the galaxy's cosmic dust clouds. Typically hundreds of light-years distant, they obscure starlight along the galactic plane, viewed edge-on from the Solar System's perspective.
Blown by the wind from a massive star, this interstellar apparition has a surprisingly familiar shape. Cataloged as NGC 7635, it is also known simply as The Bubble Nebula. Although it looks delicate, the 7 light-year diameter bubble offers evidence of violent processes at work. Above and left of the Bubble's center is a hot, O-type star, several hundred thousand times more luminous and around 45 times more massive than the Sun. A fierce stellar wind and intense radiation from that star has blasted out the structure of glowing gas against denser material in a surrounding molecular cloud. The intriguing Bubble Nebula and associated cloud complex lie a mere 7,100 light-years away toward the boastful constellation Cassiopeia. This sharp, tantalizing view of the cosmic bubble is a composite of Hubble Space Telescope image data from 2016, released to celebrate the 26th anniversary of Hubble's launch.
This new video from ESA’s Herschel space observatory reveals in stunning detail the intricate pattern of gas, dust and star-forming hubs along the plane of our Galaxy, the Milky Way.
Twenty-six candles grace NASA's Hubble Space Telescope's birthday cake this year, and now one giant space "balloon" will add to the festivities. Just in time for the 26th anniversary of Hubble's launch on April 24, 1990, the telescope has photographed an enormous, balloon-like bubble being blown into space by a super-hot, massive star. Astronomers trained the iconic telescope on this colorful feature, called the Bubble Nebula, or NGC 7635. The bubble is 7 light-years across about one-and-a-half times the distance from our sun to its nearest stellar neighbor, Alpha Centauri. The Bubble Nebula lies 7,100 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cassiopeia.
ESA, in partnership with Ars Electronica, is announcing art&science@ESA, a new art residency to explore the fertile ground between art and space science.
Graphenea announces a new order for Aixtron's BM Pro chemical vapor deposition system. Aixtron is a worldwide leading provider of deposition equipment to the semiconductor industry.
AIXTRON’s BM Pro system, now in its 3rd generation, has been specially optimized for high quality graphene deposition with Graphenea’s tool having the highest throughput to date. Graphenea placed the order for an 8-inch configuration deposition system during the first quarter of 2016. The tool is scheduled for delivery later this year which will be followed by the installation and commissioning of the system by AIXTRON’s European support team.
Photo: Graphenea Headquarters in San Sebastian, Spain.
Graphenea’s Scientific Director, Dr. Amaia Zurutuza, comments: “Our existing AIXTRON BM Pro system has been a reliable workhorse in producing graphene for our needs. In taking the graphene to the next level, we chose an AIXTRON BM Pro tool again because of its scalable technology which allows meeting our graphene production needs of even higher throughput and larger areas. Also, the system meets our requirements of high temperature operation, combined with excellent uniformity. System flexibility, low maintenance, automatic recipe execution and process support were other compelling reasons for selecting AIXTRON again.”
Photo: Graphenea scientists working on the existing Aixtron BM Pro system.
Graphenea’s CEO, Jesus de la Fuente, comments: “This new system is part of our large investment program to introduce graphene technology in commercial devices. Our focus is to integrate graphene materials in CMOS (complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor) fabs starting with 8-inch wafers and 12-inch in the near future”.
See press release on Aixtron's website [link].
About Graphenea:
Graphenea, a leading company in graphene production and a venture backed by Repsol and CDTI, was established in 2010, and has since grown to be one of the world's largest providers of graphene. The company is headquartered at the nanotechnology cluster CIC nanoGune in San Sebastian, Spain and the MIT campus in Boston. Graphenea employs 15 people and exports graphene materials to more than 400 customers in 55 countries. The company has focused on constant improvement of graphene quality, becoming a supplier customers can rely on. Graphenea employs a team of skilled laboratory staff who have brought graphene film production techniques to a new level, offering the same high quality films on any substrate. Graphenea produces CVD graphene wafers up to 4 inches and graphene oxide in volumes up to 5 liters per package. Graphenea partners with large multinationals to develop custom graphene materials for their applications. Its research agility and ability to keep pace with the progress of graphene science and technology has allowed Graphenea to become the largest graphene supplier in the Graphene Flagship, a ten year project of the European Commission worth a billion euros. The company keeps a close relation with the world's leading scientists, regularly publishing scientific articles of the highest level.
