Tag Archives: distant galaxies

Managing the Deluge of ‘Big Data’ From Space

For NASA and its dozens of missions, data pour in every day like rushing rivers. Spacecraft monitor everything from our home planet to faraway galaxies, beaming back images and information to Earth. All those digital records need to be stored, indexed and processed so that spacecraft engineers, scientists and people across the globe can use the data to understand Earth and the universe beyond.

At NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., mission planners and software engineers are coming up with new strategies for managing the ever-increasing flow of such large and complex data streams, referred to in the information technology community as “big data.” (more…)

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A Half-Billion Stars And Galaxies From NASA’s WISE Mission Revealed — Many For First Time

A new atlas and catalog of the entire infrared sky with more than a half-billion stars, galaxies and other objects captured by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission was unveiled by NASA Wednesday.

“Today WISE delivers the fruit of 14 years of effort to the astronomical community,” said Edward L. (Ned) Wright, a UCLA professor of physics and astronomy and the mission’s principal investigator, who began working on the mission in 1998. (more…)

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NASA Space Telescope Finds Fewer Asteroids Near Earth

PASADENA, Calif. –– New observations by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, show there are significantly fewer near-Earth asteroids in the mid-size range than previously thought. The findings also indicate NASA has found more than 90 percent of the largest near-Earth asteroids, meeting a goal agreed to with Congress in 1998.

Astronomers now estimate there are roughly 19,500 — not 35,000 — mid-size near-Earth asteroids. Scientists say this improved understanding of the population may indicate the hazard to Earth could be somewhat less than previously thought. However, the majority of these mid-size asteroids remain to be discovered. More research also is needed to determine if fewer mid-size objects (between 330 and 3,300-feet wide) also mean fewer potentially hazardous asteroids, those that come closest to Earth. (more…)

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Herschel Measures Dark Matter for Star-Forming Galaxies

PASADENA, Calif. — The Herschel Space Observatory has revealed how much dark matter it takes to form a new galaxy bursting with stars. Herschel is a European Space Agency cornerstone mission supported with important NASA contributions.

The findings are a key step in understanding how dark matter, an invisible substance permeating our universe, contributed to the birth of massive galaxies in the early universe. (more…)

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NSF Signs $34.5-million Operating Agreement With University Of Wisconsin as Antarctic Neutrino Detector Nears Completion

The National Science Foundation has signed a five-year, $34.5-million agreement with the University of Wisconsin-Madison to operate a unique telescope–a cubic kilometer in volume–buried in the Antarctic ice sheet between 1,400 meters and 2,400 meters deep.

The collaborative agreement covers the cost of operating the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, located in the ice under the U.S. Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. The observatory records the rare collisions of neutrinos, elusive sub-atomic particles, with the atomic nuclei of the water frozen into ice. Neutrinos come from the sun, cosmic rays interacting with the Earth’s atmosphere, and dramatic astronomical sources such as exploding stars in the Milky Way and other distant galaxies. Trillions of neutrinos stream through the human body at any given moment, but they rarely interact with regular matter, and researchers want to know more about them and where they come from. (more…)

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