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Space News Update — November 10, 2015 —

Contents

In the News

Story 1:

Mars’ Moon Phobos is Slowly Falling Apart

Story 2: ‘Weird’ mountains on Pluto may be ice volcanoes

Story 3:

Dark Matter and Particle Acceleration in Near Space

Departments

The Night Sky

ISS Sighting Opportunities

NASA-TV Highlights

Space Calendar

Food for Thought

Space Image of the Week

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1. Mars’ Moon Phobos is Slowly Falling Apart

New modeling indicates that the grooves on Mars’ moon Phobos could be produced by tidal forces – the mutual gravitational pull of the planet and the moon. Initially, scientists had thought the grooves were created by the massive

impact that made Stickney crater (lower right). Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

The long, shallow grooves lining the surface of Phobos are likely early signs of the structural failure that will ultimately destroy this moon of Mars.

Orbiting a mere 3,700 miles (6,000 kilometers) above the surface of Mars, Phobos is closer to its planet than any other moon in the solar system. Mars’ gravity is drawing in Phobos, the larger of its two moons, by about 6.6 feet (2 meters) every hundred years. Scientists expect the moon to be pulled apart in 30 to 50 million years. “We think that Phobos has already started to fail, and the first sign of this failure is the production of these grooves,” said Terry Hurford of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

The findings by Hurford and his colleagues are being presented Nov. 10, 2015, at the annual Meeting of the Division of Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society at National Harbor, Maryland.

Phobos’ grooves were long thought to be fractures caused by the impact that formed Stickney crater. That collision was so powerful, it came close to shattering Phobos. However, scientists eventually determined that the grooves don’t radiate outward from the crater itself but from a focal point nearby.

More recently, researchers have proposed that the grooves may instead be produced by many smaller impacts of material ejected from Mars. But new modeling by Hurford and colleagues supports the view that the grooves are more like “stretch marks” that occur when Phobos gets deformed by tidal forces.

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The gravitational pull between Mars and Phobos produces these tidal forces. Earth and our moon pull on each other in the same way, producing tides in the oceans and making both planet and moon slightly egg-shaped rather than perfectly round.

The same explanation was proposed for the grooves decades ago, after the Viking spacecraft sent images of Phobos to Earth. At the time, however, Phobos was thought to be more-or-less solid all the way through. When the tidal forces were calculated, the stresses were too weak to fracture a solid moon of that size.

The recent thinking, however, is that the interior of Phobos could be a rubble pile, barely holding together, surrounded by a layer of powdery regolith about 330 feet (100 meters) thick.

“The funny thing about the result is that it shows Phobos has a kind of mildly cohesive outer fabric,” said Erik Asphaug of the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University in Tempe and a co-investigator on the study. “This makes sense when you think about powdery materials in microgravity, but it's quite non-intuitive.”

An interior like this can distort easily because it has very little strength and forces the outer layer to readjust. The researchers think the outer layer of Phobos behaves elastically and builds stress, but it’s weak enough that these stresses can cause it to fail.

All of this means the tidal forces acting on Phobos can produce more than enough stress to fracture the surface. Stress fractures predicted by this model line up very well with the grooves seen in images of Phobos. This explanation also fits with the observation that some grooves are younger than others, which would be the case if the process that creates them is ongoing.

The same fate may await Neptune’s moon Triton, which is also slowly falling inward and has a similarly fractured surface. The work also has implications for extrasolar planets, according to researchers.

“We can’t image those distant planets to see what’s going on, but this work can help us understand those systems, because any kind of planet falling into its host star could get torn apart in the same way,” said Hurford.

Source: NASA Return to Contents

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2. ‘Weird’ Mountains on Pluto may be Ice Volcanoes

The informally named feature Wright Mons, located south of Sputnik Planum on Pluto, is an unusual feature that’s about 100 miles (160 kilometers) wide and 13,000 feet (4 kilometers) high. It displays a summit depression (visible in the

center of the image) that’s approximately 35 miles (56 kilometers) across, with a distinctive hummocky texture on its sides. The rim of the summit depression also shows concentric fracturing. New Horizons scientists believe that this

mountain and another, Piccard Mons, could have been formed by the ‘cryovolcanic’ eruption of ices from beneath Pluto’s surface. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

Maps of Pluto charted using data from NASA’s New Horizons mission appear to show two huge mountains scientists said Monday could be ice volcanoes, a discovery that would set the distant dwarf planet apart from its neighbors in the outer solar system.

Two sprawling mountain peaks, each about 100 miles across and several miles high, have deep depressions carved from their centers, a telltale marker of a volcano, at least on more familiar geologically active worlds closer to the sun.

“Whatever they are, they’re definitely weird, and volcanoes is maybe the least weird hypothesis at the moment,” said Oliver White, a scientist on the New Horizons team from NASA’s Ames Research Center.

But Pluto itself is an enigma.

Geologists did not expect to see apparent glacial ice flows, and scientists are making unexpected findings about Pluto’s tenuous atmosphere. With the discovery that Pluto is geologically alive, more signs are pointing toward the presence of volcanic activity.

“I’m having difficulty unseeing volcanoes,” White said Monday. “As somebody who did his Ph.D. in volcanic morphology, when you see a big mountain with a hole on the top, it generally points to one thing.”

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“It’s just astounding that in all of the exploration that we’ve done, that the nearest neighbor analogy to these constructs occurs on Mars,” said Alan Stern, New Horizons’ principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute. “You have to look to the other red planet to find something similar. Across all the worlds of the middle solar system, we’ve seen nothing like this. It’s truly amazing. It’s like something on a terrestrial planet.”

If the two mountains highlighted by White, informally dubbed Wright Mons and Piccard Mons, are actually volcanoes — whether active or extinct — their output is not molten rock but a slurry of water ice, nitrogen, ammonia, or methane, scientists said.

Using three-dimensional maps created with stereo imagery captured by New Horizons on its July 14 flyby of Pluto, geologists estimate Wright Mons is 13,000 feet high — about 4 kilometers — while nearby Piccard Mons looms even taller.

The geometry of New Horizons’ encounter with Pluto put both mountains in twilight, with the insides of their central pits in darkness.

The announcement Monday bolsters evidence that Pluto harbors a liquid ocean deep underneath its outer shell of ice. Measurements show Pluto’s icy crust is mainly made of frozen nitrogen, methane and carbon monoxide, volatile species with super-cold melting points.

Scientists believe the ices are energized from a meager heat source buried inside Pluto’s core emitting warmth from the natural radioactive decay of elements cocooned inside the dwarf planet at its formation during the dawn of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago.

The immense tug of gravity from Jupiter and Saturn pulls on their moons, a force known as tidal heating that deforms the interiors of moons like Io and Enceladus, triggering their famous eruptions of lava and icy plumes.

Pluto has no such nearby giant to mush its insides and give rise to volcanoes.

“An internal radioactive heat source is, at the moment, the only heat source that we can really think of given that tidal heating has probably not had much effect on Pluto,” White said. “Pluto is very small. It would have a silicate core, and the heat source may have died off quite a bit over the 4.5 billion years over Pluto’s existence.”

While there’s maybe less heat to go around (than on planets in the inner solar system), perhaps you get more bang for your buck with the heat that is available given the nature of these ices that are on the surface,” White said.

White said that ice volcanoes “would be one of the most phenomenal discoveries of New Horizons, and would make Pluto an even more fascinating and unique place than it’s already proven itself to be.”

“After all, nothing like this has been seen in the deep outer solar system,” said Jeff Moore, leader of New Horizons’ geology, geophysics and imaging team from NASA Ames.

Scientists shared their latest interpretations of Pluto at the 47th annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences near Washington, D.C.

Tectonics, resurfacing and slow glacial movement can erase the record of craters seen elsewhere on Pluto, according to Kelsi Singer, a scientist based at the Southwest Research Institute.

“We’ve mapped more than a thousand craters, which vary greatly in size and appearance,” Singer said in a statement. “Among other things, I expect cratering studies like these to give us important new insights into how this part of the solar system formed.”

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Alex Parker, a planetary astronomer at SWRI, studied the crater record on Pluto and Charon to glean insights into the wider population in the Kuiper Belt, a ring of icy bodies outside the orbit of Neptune, of which Pluto is the largest.

Nearly all of the craters on Pluto and Charon came from impacts with Kuiper Belt Objects, Parker said, but there are surprisingly few small impact markings. The finding could mean many such worlds in the Kuiper Belt may have formed not as an accumulation of many smaller bodies, but in one piece, challenging a longstanding model on the history of outer frontier of the solar system.

If true, the theory means medium-sized residents of the Kuiper Belt, such as the next target of the New Horizons mission, are likely primordial relics left over from the beginning of the solar system, the very building blocks that came together to form larger worlds.

Data crunching has also revealed Pluto’s rarefied nitrogen atmosphere hangs closer to the surface than expected.

“We thought the exobase — the top of the atmosphere — was seven to eight times larger than Pluto,” said Leslie Young, deputy project scientist on the New Horizons mission at SWRI. “Now we know it’s only about two-and-a-half times larger than Pluto. It’s still an extended atmosphere, but much more compact.”

Molecules are escaping from Pluto’s atmosphere at a much lower rate than previously thought, scientists said, and the atmosphere is being stripped by the same mechanism that blasts gases away from Earth and Mars.

New Horizons also glimpsed Pluto’s four tiniest moons during its brief flyby, turning the dim points of light only discovered within the last decade into worlds worthy of study.

Images show two of the satellites, Kerberos and Hydra, likely coalesced when two smaller objects merged some time long ago. Pluto’s other two small moons, Styx and Nix, may have formed the same way, according to Mark Showalter, a New Horizons co-investigator from the SETI Institute.

The formation theory suggests Pluto once had more moons in the wake of an ancient cataclysmic collision that siphoned off part of Pluto to form Charon, Showalter said.

The quartet of diminutive moons also behave chaotically, with wildly rotating motions that might be influenced by the pull of Charon, which could keep the satellites from “de-spinning” into slower rotation rates, as scientists predicted.

Hydra, the outermost of Pluto’s moons, spins around 89 times in a single orbit. “The way I would describe this system is not just chaos but pandemonium,” Showalter said.

The data pipeline streaming down from New Horizons will continue through 2016, with the communications rate limited by the specifications of the probe’s antenna and its vast distance from Earth.

About 20 percent of the Pluto flyby data has reached the ground so far, Stern said Monday.

Source: Spaceflightnow.com Return to Contents

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3. Dark Matter and Particle Acceleration in Near Space

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Kounotori H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV-5) is seen berthed to the International Space Station. The external CALET experiment, which will search for signatures of dark matter, is seen

being extracted from the unpressurized section by the station's robotic arm, Canadarm2. An aurora over the Earth limb is visible in the background. Credit NASA

A new space telescope will soon peer into the darkness of 'near space' (within a few thousand light years of Earth) to seek answers related to the field of high-energy astrophysics. Peering into darkness can strike fear into the hearts of some, but a new space telescope will soon peer into the darkness of "near space" (within a few thousand light years of Earth). Scientists are using the telescope to seek answers related to the field of high-energy astrophysics.

The CALorimetric Electron Telescope (CALET) investigation will rely on the instrument to track the trajectory of cosmic ray particles and measure their charge and energy. The instrument is optimized for measuring electrons and gamma rays, which may contain the signature of dark matter or nearby sources of high-energy particle acceleration.

"The investigation is part of an international effort (involving Japan, Italy and USA) to understand the mechanisms of particle acceleration and propagation of cosmic rays in the galaxy, to identify their sources of acceleration, their elemental composition as a function of energy, and possibly to unveil the nature of dark matter," said CALET principal investigator Dr. Shoji Torii.

"We know that dark matter makes up about a quarter of the mass-energy of the universe, but we can't see it optically and don't know what it is," said Dr. John Wefel, and CALET co-principal investigator for the US team. "If CALET can see an unambiguous signature of dark matter, it could potentially produce a new understanding of the nature of dark matter."

Right now, scientists are much more certain what dark matter is not, rather than what it is. This research may help scientists identify dark matter and fit it, more accurately, into standard models of the universe.

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CALET launched aboard the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) H-II Transfer Vehicle "Kounotori" (HTV-5) in August 2015 and was placed on the International Space Station's Japanese Experiment Module - Exposed Facility just days after its arrival.

The instrument is a charged particle telescope designed to measure electrons, protons, nuclei and gamma rays. Unlike the telescopes that are used to pinpoint stars and planets in the night sky, CALET operates in a scanning mode. As it looks upward, it records each cosmic ray event that enters its field of view and triggers its detectors to take measurements of the cosmic ray. These measurements are recorded on the space station and sent to a ground station where they are fed into computers running analysis codes that allow scientists to reconstruct each event.

From the resulting measurements, scientists must then separate electrons from the protons, gamma rays and the higher Z elements (chemical elements with >1 proton in the nucleus). They then sort the particles by energy to extend the existing data to higher energies and search for signatures of new astrophysics processes and phenomena like dark matter and nearby particle acceleration to study cosmic ray propagation in the galaxy.

"The major theoretical model attributes dark matter to weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), whose nature is predicted by various high energy physics models," said Torii. "In these models, a WIMP would be its own antiparticle and, when two of them get together, they annihilate, producing known particles like electron/positron pairs, proton/anti-proton pairs, and gamma rays."

Searching for excess annihilation products (i.e. electrons and gamma rays) is one way to try to identify a dark matter candidate and this is where CALET helps scientists. CALET joins another ISS investigation searching for excess annihilation products, the Alpha Magenetic Spectrometer or AMS, which is looking at positrons and antiprotons to identify dark matter.

"Dark matter is still a puzzle," said Torii. "By measuring with good energy resolution the spectrum of high energy cosmic electrons and photons, CALET may make a discovery or exclude existing models."

"Seeing an appropriate signature in the electron spectrum and/or gamma rays would be extremely important since this would set the mass scale (weight) for the dark matter particles, which would in turn allow theorists to better determine new physics associated with the WIMP," said Torii, adding that it is possible that a signature may be found that is not indicative of dark matter, but rather indicates a nearby source of charged particle acceleration.

"The latter would be [a] huge achievement since no individual sources have ever been positively identified," said Torii. "Such objects seem to be able to accelerate particles to energies far higher than we can achieve on Earth using the largest machines and we want to learn how nature does this, with possible applications here on Earth."

Understanding the location of these sources as well as particle propagation (the time particles spend, and distance traveled, wandering around the galaxy) means scientists can infer the shape of the cosmic ray spectrum at the source. Gaining a better understanding of how cosmic rays originate and the mechanisms of particle acceleration and propagation is important to space travel and for understanding the radiation environment in space and on Earth.

"Basically, CALET is after new information about how our little corner of the universe works," said Torii, who added that the investigation underscores the importance of the space station as a platform for performing investigations and for successful international collaboration.

Source: Eurekalert.com Return to Contents

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The Night Sky

Source: Sky and Telescope and (illustration) Space.com Return to Contents

Tuesday, November 10

• Take a look at Cassiopeia again. The third segment of its W pattern, counting from the top, points roughly straight down. Extend it twice as far down and you're at the Double Cluster in Perseus. At magnitudes 4.3 and 4.4, this pair of star-swarms is apparent to the unaided eye if you have a dark sky. They're visible in binoculars or a small, wide-field telescope from almost anywhere.

Wednesday, November 11

• The brightest star on the northeastern side of the November evening sky is Capella, magnitude zero. It's below Perseus. Look well to its right (about three fists at arm's length) to locate the Pleiades, the size of your fingertip at arm's length. Below the Pleiades blinks orange Aldebaran.

Thursday, November 12

• By about 8:30 Orion is clearing your eastern horizon (depending on how far east or west you live in your time zone). Aldebaran is high above Orion. Above Aldebaran are the Pleiades. Aldebaran and the Pleiades always serve as Orion's announcers.

Friday, November 13

• By about 8 or 9 p.m. this week, the Great Square of Pegasus stands in its level position very high toward the south. It's straight overhead if you're at the latitude of Miami. Its right (western) side points very far down toward Fomalhaut. Its eastern side points down less directly toward Beta Ceti (Diphda), not as low.

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ISS Sighting Opportunities (from Denver)

Date Visible Max Height Appears Disappears

Wed Nov 11, 5:31 AM 3 min 17° 16° above NW 11° above NNE

Thu Nov 12, 4:41 AM < 1 min 13° 13° above NNE 11° above NNE

Thu Nov 12, 6:15 AM 1 min 10° 10° above NNW 10° above N

Fri Nov 13, 5:22 AM 1 min 12° 12° above NNW 10° above NNE

Sat Nov 14, 6:06 AM < 1 min 10° 10° above N 10° above N

Sighting information for other cities can be found at NASA’s Satellite Sighting Information NASA-TV Highlights (all times Eastern Time Zone) No Live Events Scheduled Until November 17th

Watch NASA TV online by going to the NASA website. Return to Contents

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Space Calendar

• Nov 10 - Badr 7 (Arabsat 6B)/ GSAT 15 Ariane 5 Launch

• Nov 10 - Comet 44P/Reinmuth Closest Approach To Earth (1.750 AU)

• Nov 10 - Comet C/2013 P4 (PANSTARRS) At Opposition (5.458 AU)

• Nov 10 - Comet C/2014 W10 (PANSTARRS) Closest Approach To Earth (6.750 AU)

• Nov 10 - Apollo Asteroid 2015 VM64 Near-Earth Flyby (0.014 AU)

• Nov 10 - Asteroid 17744 Jodiefoster Closest Approach To Earth (1.028 AU)

• Nov 10 - 45th Anniversary (1970), Luna 17 Launch (USSR Moon Rover Mission)

• Nov 10 - Ronald Evans' 85th Birthday (1930)

• Nov 10 - Jack Northrop's 120th Birthday (1895)

• Nov 10 - John Bevis' 320th Birthday (1695)

• Nov 11 - Cassini, Distant Flyby of Calypso, Pan, Pandora & Tethys

• Nov 11 - Comet 319P/Catalina-McNaught At Opposition (1.032 AU)

• Nov 11 - Aten Asteroid 2015 VH65 Near-Earth Flyby (0.015 AU)

• Nov 11 - Apollo Asteroid 2015 VD1 Near-Earth Flyby (0.051 AU)

• Nov 11 - Asteroid 11195 Woomera Closest Approach To Earth (1.307 AU)

• Nov 11 - Asteroid 9252 Goddard Closest Approach To Earth (1.814 AU)

• Nov 11 - Ben Gascoigne's 100th Birthday (1915)

• Nov 11 - Carl Wirtanen's 105th Birthday (1910)

• Nov 11 - Vesto Slipher's 140th Birthday (1875)

• Nov 12 - Comet 41P/Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresak At Opposition (3.290 AU)

• Nov 12 - Apollo Asteroid 2015 VR64 Near-Earth Flyby (0.008 AU)

• Nov 12 - 20th Anniversary (1995), STS-74 Launch (Space Shuttle Atlantis, Mir Space Station)

• Nov 12 - 35th Anniversary (1980), Voyager 1, Saturn Flyby

• Nov 13 - Cassini, Titan Flyby

• Nov 13 - Space Junk (WT1190F) Reenters Earth's Atmosphere

• Nov 13 - Comet 214P/LINEAR Perihelion (1.852 AU)

• Nov 13 - Comet 6P/d'Arrest Closest Approach To Earth (1.994 AU)

• Nov 13 - Comet P/2014 L3 (Hill) At Opposition (3.960 AU)

• Nov 13 - Apollo Asteroid 2011 MD Closest Approach To Earth (1.819 AU)

• Nov 13 - Asteroid 42776 Casablanca Closest Approach To Earth (2.294 AU)

• Nov 13 - Neptune Trojan 2007 VL305 At Opposition (27.206 AU)

• Nov 13 - David Rabinowitz's 55th Birthday (1960)

Source: JPL Space Calendar Return to Contents

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Food for Thought '1st Hardware Store in Space': Commercial 3D Printer Launching in 2016

Made In Space and home-improvement company Lowe's are partnering on the Additive Manufacturing Facility, a 3D printer headed to the International Space Station in early 2016. Credit: Made In Space/Lowe's

The home-improvement industry will soon get its first foothold in space.

California-based startup Made In Space is partnering with home-improvement giant Lowe's to launch a commercial 3D printer to the International Space Station (ISS) early next year, representatives of both companies announced today (Oct. 29).

Made In Space built the 3D printer, which is called the Additive Manufacturing Facility (AMF), and will retain ownership of the machine. But the AMF sports a Lowe's logo, and the company will use it to make branded tools.

"It is the first hardware store in space," Kyle Nel, executive director of Lowe's Innovation Labs, the company's innovation hub, told Space.com. "Lowe's sells tools on Earth, and this way we're going to be able to provide tools in space as well."

One Lowe's store in the San Francisco Bay Area will also feature a replica of the AMF, as well as the section of the ISS that houses it, after the 3D printer gets to orbit, Nel added.

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Made In Space hardware is already aboard the ISS; the company built a technology-demonstrating 3D printer for NASA that was installed aboard the space station in November 2014. That machine has worked well in microgravity conditions, paving the way for the AMF, which will be a fully operational, commercially oriented machine available to a variety of customers.

The AMF's launch date and launch provider have not yet been determined, but the 3D printer should get off the ground in the first half of next year, Made In Space president Andrew Rush said.

Space-based 3D printing has the potential to help humanity extend its footprint out into the solar system, by making us far less dependent on supplies from Earth, advocates say. NASA has high hopes for the technology, which creates products layer by layer out of metal, plastic or other "feedstock" material. (Eventually, such feedstock could be sourced on the moon or Mars, aiding efforts to colonize those bodies, proponents of the technology say.)

Indeed, the space agency worked with Made In Space to get the first 3D printer aboard the orbiting lab. NASA has also been testing 3D-printed rocket parts, and it also recently awarded a $125,000 grant to a scientist who aims to build a prototype 3D printer that makes food.

Made In Space's long-term goals center on helping to open the heavens to crewed exploration, and the collaboration with Lowe's represents a step along that journey, Rush said.

"We see this relationship as a great validation of that path from space-technology development to terrestrial spinoff, which I think is crucial to the growth of the industry, and also crucial to people's awareness of the industry," Rush told Space.com.

"More is coming," he added, "so stay tuned."

Source: Space.com Return to Contents

International Space Station commander Barry "Butch" Wilmore holds up the first 3D printed part made in space. The part, an extruder plate (a piece of the printer itself), was made on Nov. 24, 2014. Credit: NASA

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Space Image of the Week

AE Aurigae and the Flaming Star Nebula Image Credit & Copyright: Jesús Vargas (Sky-Astrophotography) & Maritxu Poyal (Maritxu)

Explanation: Is star AE Aurigae on fire? No. Even though AE Aurigae is named the flaming star, the surrounding nebula IC 405 is named the Flaming Star Nebula, and the region appears to have the color of fire, there is no fire. Fire, typically defined as the rapid molecular acquisition of oxygen, happens only when sufficient oxygen is present and is not important in such high-energy, low-oxygen environments such as stars. The material that appears as smoke is mostly interstellar hydrogen, but does contain smoke-like dark filaments of carbon-rich dust grains. The bright star AE Aurigae, visible toward the right near the nebula's center, is so hot it is blue, emitting light so energetic it knocks electrons away from surrounding gas. When a proton recaptures an electron, light is emitted, as seen in the surrounding emission nebula. Pictured above, the Flaming Star nebula lies about 1,500 light years distant, spans about 5 light years, and is visible with a small telescope toward the constellation of the Charioteer (Auriga).

Source: NASA APOD Return to Contents