São Francisco’s Colorful Palette

This Dec. 27, 2023 image of the São Francisco River in southeast Brazil showcases the range of vibrant colors in the area including blues, reds, greens, and yellows. Much of the unvegetated land, such as unplanted fields and unpaved roads, appears in bright shades of red and yellow. This coloration comes from the underlying clays and soils of Brazil’s state of Minas Gerais.

The photo focuses on the Três Marias Reservoir, a human-made waterbody fed by the São Francisco River. Access to freshwater for irrigation enables agriculture around the reservoir. Red- and green-toned areas can be distinguished as fields with center-pivot irrigation or straight-edged plots. An orange-tan contour line tracing the shoreline of the reservoir marks where water levels have been higher. The lighter shades of blue on the reservoir’s surface are due to sunglint, an optical effect that occurs when sunlight reflects off smooth water at the same angle a sensor views it.

Text credit: Andrea Wenzel

Image credit: NASA

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Monika Luabeya

NASA Selects 5 New Roman Technology Fellows in Astrophysics

NASA has awarded Nancy Grace Roman Technology Fellowships (RTF) to five early-career researchers in astrophysics for the class of 2023.  The program will support the advancement of their ideas for new technologies to further the exploration of the universe. 

This annual fellowship gives researchers the opportunity to develop the skills necessary to become principal investigators of future astrophysics missions, and fosters new talent by putting early-career instrument builders on track towards long-term positions. Specifically, the fellowship facilitates the development of skills necessary to lead astrophysics flight instrumentation development projects, as well as the development of innovative technologies that have the potential to enable major scientific breakthroughs.

“We saw higher numbers of strong applications for this class than in recent years, so we are especially honored to welcome this new group of five fellows,” says Mario Perez, RTF program scientist and chief technologist for NASA’s Astrophysics Division, based at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. “These new fellows advance important areas of technological interest to NASA astrophysics, and we expect them to become leaders in their fields and principal investigators of supporting technologies and space missions.”  

Since the RTF program was established in 2011, all 31 researchers who have previously been awarded the fellowship are still active in careers within the fields of astrophysics or planetary mission development. In 2024, five additional fellows were competitively selected, making the total 36 researchers who have been awarded this fellowship since the program began.

The program’s name honors Dr. Nancy Grace Roman, the first female executive at NASA who created the agency’s first astronomical program. She is known as the “Mother of Hubble” for her foundational role in planning NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. NASA’s forthcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is also named for her.

The five newly selected fellows are:

Nicholas Kruczek

Position: Instrument engineer, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado, Boulder

Hometown: Orchard Park, New York (“Go Bills!”)

Education: B.A. in Physics, Drexel University; Ph.D. in Astrophysical and Planetary Science, University of Colorado, Boulder

What is the focus of your research? Ultraviolet (UV) instrumentation and sounding rockets, with a focus on diffraction grating development.

What does this fellowship mean to you? At LASP, we’ve assembled a team that’s knowledgeable and passionate about sounding rockets and developing novel UV technologies. Having this environment provides a strong platform for mentoring undergraduate and graduate students. This fellowship provides much needed support to keep that team together and maintain our mission of the training the next generation of UV principal investigators and Roman fellows.

What inspired you to pursue your career in astrophysics? I’ve always been fascinated by the physics of light and its interaction with optics. Astrophysical instrumentation provided an outlet to channel that passion into a career. It gives me the opportunity to study optical phenomena in detail, but in the context of gaining a deeper understanding of the physical processes governing our universe.

Drew Miles

Name: Drew Miles

Position: Research assistant professor, California Institute of Technology

Hometown: Marshalltown, Iowa

Education: B.B.A in Accounting and B.S. in Physics and Astronomy, University of Iowa; M.S. and Ph.D. in Astronomy and Astrophysics, Penn State University

What is the focus of your research? My research is focused on developing and demonstrating technologies for space-based grating spectrographs. In this work we develop the full life cycle of the technology: conceiving new spectrograph designs and applications, using nanofabrication techniques to manufacture next-generation diffraction gratings, implementing the gratings into astronomy instruments, and verifying their performance in applications representative of their applicability to large NASA missions. 

What does this fellowship mean to you? This fellowship will help allow me to further develop my research program and implement the lab support and characterization capabilities needed to advance our technologies. Further, the Nancy Grace Roman Technology Fellowship program continues to be an excellent investment in the careers of early-career researchers, and I am appreciative at being awarded a fellowship and having the opportunity to advance impactful instrumentation for the future.

What inspired you to pursue your career in astrophysics? After not having exposure to physics and astronomy prior to college, I became interested in further exploring astronomy while taking a few elective physics and astronomy courses during my business degree. The idea of working to better understand the nature and evolution of our universe is extremely compelling. Later, I was fortunate to become involved in a research lab for experimental astrophysics and was hooked by the hands-on nature of the research and the need to maintain a long-term vision for the technology while ensuring the smallest details are well understood. Throughout my time as a student and postdoctoral researcher, the positive mentorship from my dissertation advisor (and former Roman Technology Fellow), Dr. Randall McEntaffer, and other members of the field have been critical in teaching me and allowing me to grow into the field.

Johanna Nagy

Position: Warren E. Rupp Assistant Professor of Physics at Case Western Reserve University

Hometown: Lompoc, California

Education: B.S. in Physics, Stanford University; Ph.D. in Physics, Case Western Reserve University

What is the focus of your research? My research group focuses on cosmology, studying the evolution and composition of the universe through increasingly precise measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background. We build instruments to measure its polarization and analyze the resulting data. Several of our current projects use NASA’s stratospheric balloons to access signals that are difficult to see from the ground.

What does this fellowship mean to you?

This fellowship will allow me to continue to grow my research group and expand our lab’s capabilities. I am most excited about being able to work with more undergraduate and graduate students and to help them pursue their own career paths.

What inspired you to pursue your career in astrophysics?

I became deeply interested in space when I was in middle school, but in college I learned how much I enjoy experimental work. It still amazes me that instruments we build by hand in the lab can help us answer fundamental questions about the universe. I have also been fortunate to have many fantastic mentors throughout my career and hope to pay it forward.

Dustin Swarm

Name: Dustin Swarm

Position: Postdoctoral Research Scholar in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at University of Iowa

Hometown: Greenville, Illinois

Education: B.S. in Spanish Education, B.A. in Physics and Mathematics, Greenville University; Ph.D. in Physics, University of Iowa

What is the focus of your research? My research involves the design and fabrication of focusing optics for high-energy astrophysics investigations. Constructing telescopes with focusing optics that operate in the hard X-ray to soft gamma-ray regime (100-600 keV) is unfeasible with current technologies. Developing high-performance focusing optics for this regime would enable deeper investigations of, for instance, accreting compact objects or sources of electron-positron annihilation.

What does this fellowship mean to you? The Roman Technology Fellowship is impactful for my early career in a number of ways. It is a major source of encouragement that my work is interesting and meaningful to people beyond myself. It is a validation that I have a place in the broader astrophysics community. It offers a chance of stability and a solid foundation on which to build my nascent career. I am also grateful for the opportunity it provides me to mentor and train future astrophysicists, following in the footsteps of the mentors who have poured into me along this journey. I am honored to be selected as a Roman Technology Fellow.

What inspired you to pursue your career in astrophysics? I grew up with a love of science. From my mother burying chicken bones in my sandbox to inspire my play as a paleontologist to my grandfather purchasing a telescope so we could look at the Moon in his backyard, my ambition was to become a scientist. I began college on an aerospace engineering path, but along the way I switched majors to Spanish education. I spent six years as a high school Spanish teacher, but during that time I followed the physics and astronomy world through documentaries, news articles, and books. I missed engaging with mathematics and science, and I eventually decided it was time to go back to school to become an astrophysicist. It was in this time that NASA’s Juno spacecraft was transmitting high quality photographs of Jupiter, and the ground-based LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory, was detecting black hole mergers. I was wrapping up my second undergraduate degree when news broke of the simultaneous detection of gravitational waves and electromagnetic radiation from the neutron star merger GW170817. I was fascinated by the papers published on this event, and it cemented my desire to become a high-energy astrophysicist.

Kyle Van Gorkom

Name: Kyle Van Gorkom

Position: Assistant research professor at Steward Observatory, University of Arizona

Hometown: Tucson, Arizona

Education: B.S. in Physics and Philosophy, Brandeis University; Ph.D. in Optical Sciences, University of Arizona

What is the focus of your research: My research focuses on the use of high-contrast imaging techniques and wavefront control to directly image exoplanets (planets around other stars) with space- and ground-based observatories.

What does this fellowship mean to you: This fellowship will enable me to start building an independent research program, to set up a laboratory for technology development in coronagraphy, and to begin mentoring the next generation of instrument builders.

What inspired you to pursue a career in astrophysics: I first became interested in astrophysics after taking a philosophy of science course during college, which led me to realize that if I wanted to be able to think carefully about the world, I needed a deeper understanding of physics. I joined a research group doing radio astronomy and then, following graduation, worked several years at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which introduced me to astronomical instrumentation and motivated me to pursue a PhD in optics. Over the years, I’ve had several supportive mentors whose guidance set me on my current career trajectory.

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NASA Citizen Scientists Spot Object Moving 1 Million Miles Per Hour

Most familiar stars peacefully orbit the center of the Milky Way. But citizen scientists working on NASA’s Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project have helped discover an object moving so fast that it will escape the Milky Way’s gravity and shoot into intergalactic space. This hypervelocity object is the first such object found with the mass similar to or less than that of a small star.  

Backyard Worlds uses images from NASA’s WISE, or Wide Field Infrared Explorer, mission, which mapped the sky in infrared light from 2009 to 2011. It was re-activated as NEOWISE (Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) in 2013 and retired on Aug. 8, 2024.

A few years ago, longtime Backyard Worlds citizen scientists Martin Kabatnik, Thomas P. Bickle, and Dan Caselden spotted a faint, fast-moving object called CWISE J124909.08+362116.0, marching across their screens in the WISE images. Follow-up observations with several ground-based telescopes helped scientists confirm the discovery and characterize the object. These citizen scientists are now co-authors on the team’s study about this discovery published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters (a pre-print version is available here).

“I can’t describe the level of excitement,” said Kabatnik, a citizen scientist from Nuremberg, Germany. “When I first saw how fast it was moving, I was convinced it must have been reported already.” 

CWISE J1249 is zooming out of the Milky Way at about 1 million miles per hour. But it also stands out for its low mass, which makes it difficult to classify as a celestial object. It could be a low-mass star, or if it doesn’t steadily fuse hydrogen in its core, it would be considered a brown dwarf, putting it somewhere between a gas giant planet and a star.

Ordinary brown dwarfs are not that rare. Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 volunteers have discovered more than 4,000 of them! But none of the others are known to be on their way out of the galaxy.

This new object has yet another unique property. Data obtained with the W. M. Keck Observatory in Maunakea, Hawaii, show that it has much less iron and other metals than other stars and brown dwarfs. This unusual composition suggests that CWISE J1249 is quite old, likely from one of the first generations of stars in our galaxy.

Why does this object move at such high speed? One hypothesis is that CWISE J1249 originally came from a binary system with a white dwarf, which exploded as a supernova when it pulled off too much material from its companion. Another possibility is that it came from a tightly bound cluster of stars called a globular cluster, and a chance meeting with a pair of black holes sent it soaring away.

“When a star encounters a black hole binary, the complex dynamics of this three-body interaction can toss that star right out of the globular cluster,” says Kyle Kremer, incoming assistant professor in UC San Diego’s Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Scientists will look more closely at the elemental composition of CWISE J1249 for clues about which of these scenarios is more likely.

This discovery has been a team effort on multiple levels—a collaboration involving volunteers, professionals, and students. Kabatnik credits other citizen scientists with helping him search, including Melina Thévenot, who “blew my mind with her personal blog about doing searches using Astronomical Data Query Language,” he said. Software written by citizen scientist Frank Kiwy was also instrumental in this finding, he said.

The study is led by Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 science team member Adam Burgasser, a professor at the University of California, San Diego, and includes co-authors Hunter Brooks and Austin Rothermich, astronomy students who both began their astronomy careers as citizen scientists.

Become a citizen scientist

Want to help discover the next extraordinary space object? Join the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 now — participation is open to anyone in any country worldwide.

Podcast

Check out this NASA’s Curious Universe podcast episode to hear personal stories from citizen scientists engaged NASA-related projects.

Media contact

Elizabeth Landau
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-0845
elandau@nasa.gov

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Mental Well-Being in Space

Science in Space: August 2024

Life on the International Space Station is quite different from life on the ground. Crew members experience multiple sunrises and sunsets each day, spend their time in a confined space, have packed schedules, and deal with microgravity.

These and other conditions during spaceflight can negatively affect the performance and well-being of crew members. Many studies on the space station work to characterize and understand those effects and others try out new technologies and practices to help counter them.

Light Up My Life

A current investigation from ESA (European Space Agency), Circadian Light tests a new lighting system to help astronauts maintain a more normal daily or circadian rhythm. An LED panel automatically and gradually changes the light spectrum and varies from day to day to better mimic natural conditions on Earth. The study seeks insight into this system’s effect on circadian rhythm regulation, sleep, stress, and overall well-being of crew members. The findings also could reveal ways to improve lighting for shift workers and those in extreme or remote environments.

Daily Rhythms

An earlier ESA investigation, Circadian Rhythms, examined how daily rhythms change during long-duration spaceflight and its non-24-hour cycles of light and dark. This understanding could support countermeasures to improve performance and health on future missions.

A well-established way to determine circadian rhythms is by continuously recording core body temperature, but methods to do so can be invasive and inconvenient. For this investigation, researchers developed non-invasive skin sensor technology for measuring body core temperature over extended periods of time.

Astronaut, Phone Home

Missions to the Moon or Mars will experience delays in communications with Earth – as much as 30 minutes each way from Mars. The Comm Delay Assessment investigation looked at how such delays might affect crew members handling medical and other emergencies to help psychologists develop ways to manage the stress of completing these critical tasks without immediate advice from Earth. Results showed that the space station could provide a platform to test communications delay countermeasures. The research also confirmed that communication delays increased individual stress and frustration and reduced task efficiency and teamwork, and suggested that enhanced training, teamwork, and technology could mitigate or prevent these problems.

This is Your Brain in Space

NeuroMapping studied changes to brain structure and function, motor control, and multi-tasking abilities during spaceflight and measured how long it took crew members to recover after a mission. Results published from this work include a study that found no effect on spatial working memory from spaceflight but that did identify significant changes in brain connectivity. Another paper reported substantial increases in brain volume that increased with mission duration and with longer intervals between missions. The researchers suggest that intervals of less than 3 years between missions may not be sufficient for full recovery.

Dear Diary

For the Journals investigation, crew members wrote daily entries that researchers analyzed to identify issues related to well-being. The study provided the first quantitative data for ranking the behavioral issues associated with spending lengthy time in space. Most journal entries dealt with ten categories: work, outside communications, adjustment, group interaction, recreation/leisure, equipment, events, organization/management, sleep, and food. The report provided insight into how these factors affect human performance and included recommendations to help crews prepare for spaceflight and to improve living and working in space.

Don’t Throw Away This Shot

Crew members on the space station take photographs of their home planet for Crew Earth Observations (CEO). These images record how humans and natural events change Earth over time and support a wealth of research on the ground, including studies of urban growth, natural systems such as coral reefs and icebergs, land use, and ocean events. Over time, researchers realized that taking these photographs also improves the mental well-being of crew members. Many of them spend much of their free time shooting from the station’s cupola.

Almost like Being There

ESA’s VR Mental Care tests the use of virtual reality (VR) technology to provide mental relaxation and better general mental health for astronauts during their missions. Participating crew members use a headset to view 360-degree, high-quality video and sound scenarios and fill out questionnaires about the experience. In addition to helping astronauts, this tool could be used to deal with psychological issues such as stress, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder on Earth.

Melissa Gaskill

International Space Station Research Communications Team

NASA’s Johnson Space Center

Search this database of scientific experiments to learn more about those mentioned in this article.

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Andrea Lloyd

The Summer Triangle’s Hidden Treasures

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The Summer Triangle’s Hidden Treasures

August skies bring the lovely Summer Triangle asterism into prime position after nightfall for observers in the Northern Hemisphere. Its position high in the sky may make it difficult for some to observe its member stars comfortably, since looking straight up while standing can be hard on one’s neck! While that isn’t much of a problem for those that just want to quickly spot its brightest stars and member constellations, this difficulty can prevent folks from seeing some of the lesser known and dimmer star patterns scattered around its informal borders. The solution? Lie down on the ground with a comfortable blanket or mat or grab a lawn or gravity chair and sit luxuriously while facing up. You’ll quickly spot the major constellations about the Summer Triangle’s three corner stars: Lyra with bright star Vega, Cygnus with brilliant star Deneb, and Aquila with its blazing star, Altair. As you get comfortable and your eyes adjust, you’ll soon find yourself able to spot a few constellations hidden in plain sight in the region around the Summer Triangle: Vulpecula the Fox, Sagitta the Arrow, and Delphinus the Dolphin! You could call these the Summer Triangle’s “hidden treasures” – and they are hidden in plain sight for those that know where to look!

Vulpecula the Fox is located near the middle of the Summer Triangle, and is relatively small, like its namesake. Despite its size, it features the largest planetary nebula in our skies: M27, aka the Dumbbell Nebula! It’s visible in binoculars as a fuzzy “star” and when seen through telescopes, its distinctive shape can be observed more readily – especially with larger telescopes. Planetary nebulae, named such because their round fuzzy appearances were initially thought to resemble the disc of a planet by early telescopic observers, form when stars similar to our Sun begin to die. The star will expand into a massive red giant, and its gases drift off into space, forming a nebula. Eventually the star collapses into a white dwarf – as seen with M27 – and eventually the colorful shell of gases will dissipate throughout the galaxy, leaving behind a solitary, tiny, dense, white dwarf star. You are getting a peek into our Sun’s far-distant future when you observe this object!

Sagitta the Arrow is even smaller than Vulpecula – it’s the third smallest constellation in the sky! Located between the stars of Vulpecula and Aquila the Eagle, Sagitta’s stars resemble its namesake arrow. It too contains an interesting deep-sky object: M71, an unusually small and young globular cluster whose lack of a strong central core has long confused and intrigued astronomers. Your own views very likely won’t be as sharp or close as this. However, this photo does show the cluster’s lack of a bright, concentrated core, which led astronomers until fairly recently to classify this unusual cluster as an “open cluster” rather than as a “globular cluster.” Studies in the 1970s proved it to be a globular cluster after all  – though an unusually young and small one! It’s visible in binoculars, and a larger telescope will enable you to separate its stars a bit more easily than most globulars; you’ll certainly see why it was thought to be an open cluster!

Delicate Delphinus the Dolphin appears to dive in and out of the Milky Way near Aquilla and Sagitta! Many stargazers identify Delphinus as a herald of the fainter water constellations, rising in the east after sunset as fall approaches. The starry dolphin appears to leap out of the great celestial ocean, announcing the arrival of more wonderful sights later in the evening. With a large telescope and dark skies, you can pick out globular clusters Caldwell 42 and Caldwell 47.

Want to hunt for more treasures? You’ll need a treasure map, and the Night Sky Network’s “Trip Around the Triangle” handout is the perfect guide for your quest!

Originally posted by Dave Prosper: August 2022

Last Updated by Kat Troche: April 2024

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