scholarly journals THE ZADKO OBSERVATORY

2021 ◽  
Vol 53 ◽  
pp. 35-39
Author(s):  
J. A. Moore ◽  
B. Gendre ◽  
D. M. Coward ◽  
H. Crisp ◽  
A. Klotz
Keyword(s):  
Media Coverage ◽  
Gamma Ray ◽  
European Space Agency ◽  
Global Awareness ◽  
The Public ◽  
Technical Management ◽  
Space Agency ◽  
Nearby Stars ◽  
Near Earth Asteroids ◽  
Single Instrument

The 1.0 metre f/4 fast-slew Zadko Telescope was installed in June 2008 approximately seventy kilometres north of Perth at Yeal, in the Shire of Gingin, Western Australia. Since the Zadko Telescope has been in operation it has proven its worth by detecting numerous Gamma Ray Burst afterglows, two of these being the most distant 'optical transients' imaged by an Australian telescope. Other projects include a contract with the European Space Agency (ESA) to image potentially hazardous near Earth asteroids (2019), monitoring space weather on nearby stars (2019), and photometry of a transit of Saturn's moon Titan (2018). Another active Zadko Telescope project is tracking Geostationary satellites and attempting to use photometry to classify various space debris (defunct satellites). The Zadko Telescope's importance as a potential tool for education, training, and public outreach cannot be underestimated, as the global awareness of the importance of astronomy (and space science) as a context for teaching science continues to increase. An example of this was the national media coverage of its contribution to the discovery of colliding neutron stars in 2017, capturing the imagination of the public. In this proceeding, I will focus on the practical aspects of managing a robotic Observatory, focusing on the sustainability of the Observatory and the technical management involved in hosting different commercial projects. I will review the evolution of the Observatory, from its early, single instrument, state to its current multi-telescope and multi-instrument capabilities. I will finish by outlining the future of the Observatory and the site.

Europe's Path To Mars: The European Space Agency's Mars Express Mission

2011 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arturo Russo
Keyword(s):  
Selection Process ◽  
European Space Agency ◽  
Management Approach ◽  
Mars Exploration ◽  
Mars Express ◽  
The Public ◽  
Science Programme ◽  
Space Agency ◽  
History Of

Mars Express is the first planetary mission accomplished by the European Space Agency (ESA). Launched in early June 2003, the spacecraft entered Mars's orbit on Christmas day of that year, demonstrating the new European commitment to planetary exploration. Following a failed attempt in the mid-1980s, two valid proposals for a European mission to Mars were submitted to ESA's decision-making bodies in the early 1990s, in step with renewed international interest in Mars exploration. Both were rejected, however, in the competitive selection process for the agency's Science Programme. Eventually, the Mars Express proposal emerged during a severe budgetary crisis in the mid-1990s as an exemplar of a “flexible mission” that could reduce project costs and development time. Its successful maneuvering through financial difficulties and conflicting scientific interests was due to the new management approach as well as to the public appeal of Mars exploration. In addition to providing a case study in the functioning of the ESA's Science Programme, the story of Mars Express discussed in this paper provides a case study in the functioning of the European Space Agency's Science Programme and suggests some general considerations on the peculiar position of space research in the general field of the history of science and technology.

The Making of the Moon

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Chambers ◽  
Jacqueline Mitton
Keyword(s):  
European Space Agency ◽  
Lunar Exploration ◽  
The Sun ◽  
The Moon ◽  
The Public ◽  
China And India ◽  
Space Agency ◽  
Lunar Prospector ◽  
Large Satellite ◽  
The 1960S

This chapter considers how the very existence of the Moon, the only large satellite in the inner solar system, is a puzzle. The Moon is sufficiently large that one would think of it as a planet if it traveled around the Sun rather than Earth. Much of what the public now knows about the Moon comes from space missions, beginning in the 1960s and early 1970s. Six American Apollo missions each landed two astronauts on the surface. Three of the Soviet Union's unmanned Luna spacecraft touched down on the surface and then returned to Earth. After a long gap, lunar exploration resumed in the 1990s, when NASA's Clementine and Lunar Prospector spacecraft went into orbit. Recently, the pace of exploration has increased again, with the European Space Agency, Japan, China, and India, as well as NASA, all sending missions to the Moon.

scholarly journals The e-ASTROGAM space mission: a major step forward for supernova physics

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (S331) ◽  
pp. 351-356
Author(s):  
Vincent Tatischeff ◽  
Roland Diehl ◽  
Alessandro De Angelis
Keyword(s):  
Gamma Ray ◽  
European Space Agency ◽  
Space Mission ◽  
Medium Size ◽  
Major Step ◽  
Space Agency ◽  
Broad Energy Range ◽  
Order Of Magnitude ◽  
Energy Gamma ◽  
Broad Energy

Abstracte-ASTROGAM is a gamma-ray observatory operating in a broad energy range, 0.15 MeV – 3 GeV, recently proposed as the M5 Medium-size mission of the European Space Agency. It has the potential to revolutionize the astronomy of medium-energy gamma-rays by increasing the number of known sources in this domain by more than an order of magnitude and providing gamma-ray polarization information for many of these sources. In these proceedings, we discuss the expected capacity of the mission to study the physics of supernovae, both thermonuclear and core-collapse, as well as the origin of cosmic rays in SN shocks.

scholarly journals Detection capabilities of the Athena X-IFU for the warm-hot intergalactic medium using gamma-ray burst X-ray afterglows

2020 ◽  
Vol 642 ◽  
pp. A24
Author(s):  
Sarah Walsh ◽  
Sheila McBreen ◽  
Antonio Martin-Carrillo ◽  
Thomas Dauser ◽  
Nastasha Wijers ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Intergalactic Medium ◽  
Gamma Ray ◽  
Statistical Significance ◽  
European Space Agency ◽  
Gamma Ray Burst ◽  
X Ray ◽  
Baryonic Density ◽  
Space Agency ◽  
High Statistical Significance

At low redshifts, the observed baryonic density falls far short of the total number of baryons predicted. Cosmological simulations suggest that these baryons reside in filamentary gas structures, known as the warm-hot intergalactic medium (WHIM). As a result of the high temperatures of these filaments, the matter is highly ionised such that it absorbs and emits far-UV and soft X-ray photons. Athena, the proposed European Space Agency X-ray observatory, aims to detect the “missing” baryons in the WHIM up to redshifts of z = 1 through absorption in active galactic nuclei and gamma-ray burst (GRB) afterglow spectra, allowing for the study of the evolution of these large-scale structures of the Universe. This work simulates WHIM filaments in the spectra of GRB X-ray afterglows with Athena using the SImulation of X-ray TElescopes framework. We investigate the feasibility of their detection with the X-IFU instrument, through O VII (E = 573 eV) and O VIII (E = 674 eV) absorption features, for a range of equivalent widths imprinted onto GRB afterglow spectra of observed starting fluxes ranging between 10−12 and 10−10 erg cm−2 s−1, in the 0.3−10 keV energy band. The analyses of X-IFU spectra by blind line search show that Athena will be able to detect O VII−O VIII absorption pairs with EWO VII > 0.13 eV and EWO VIII > 0.09 eV for afterglows with F > 2 × 10−11 erg cm−2 s−1. This allows for the detection of ≈ 45−137 O VII−O VIII absorbers during the four-year mission lifetime. The work shows that to obtain an O VII−O VIII detection of high statistical significance, the local hydrogen column density should be limited at NH < 8 × 1020 cm−2.

Developing the Planck Mission Simulation as a Multi-Platform Immersive Application

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald A. Dekker ◽  
John Moreland ◽  
Jatila van der Veen
Keyword(s):  
European Space Agency ◽  
Data Gathering ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Microwave Background ◽  
The Public ◽  
Systems Implementation ◽  
Space Agency ◽  
Accuracy And Precision ◽  
Technical Details ◽  
Mission Simulation

Planck is an international mission led by the European Space Agency with significant contribution by NASA, designed to measure the anisotropy of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), the oldest radiation of the universe, with the greatest accuracy and precision of any such CMB experiment to date. The present work was completed as part of the Planck Education and Public Outreach (E/PO) effort to communicate the results of Planck science to the public. The Planck Mission Simulation is a multiplatform, interactive visualization of the mission, from launch to orbital insertion to data gathering operations. The simulation was developed for a number of hardware and software configurations. Originally designed for a multi-screen virtual reality system, the scope of project grew to include other systems, including 3D kiosk displays, stereoscopic televisions, and domed-roomed systems. Implementation factors, technical details, and lessons learned from deployment on various platforms are discussed.

scholarly journals Progress Toward a Space-Based Gravitational Wave Observatory

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (A29B) ◽  
pp. 357-362
Author(s):  
Jeffrey C. Livas ◽  
Robin T. Stebbins
Keyword(s):  
Gravitational Wave ◽  
Gravitational Waves ◽  
Gamma Ray ◽  
European Space Agency ◽  
Gravity Gradient ◽  
Electromagnetic Spectrum ◽  
Space Agency ◽  
Pulsar Timing ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Gamma Ray Telescopes

AbstractThe discovery of binary pulsar PSR 1913+16 by Hulse & Taylor in 1974 established the existence of gravitational waves, for which the 1983 Nobel Prize was awarded. However, the measurement of astrophysical parameters from gravitational waves will open an entirely new spectrum for discovery and understanding of the Universe, not simply a new window in the electromagnetic spectrum like gamma ray telescopes in the 1970s. Two types of ground-based detectors, Advanced LIGO/Virgo and Pulsar Timing Arrays, are expected to directly detect gravitational waves in their respective frequency bands before the end of the decade. However, many of the most exciting sources are in the band from 0.1–100 mHz, accessible only from space due to seismic and gravity gradient noise on Earth. The European Space Agency (ESA) has chosen the 'Gravitational Universe' as the science theme for its L3 Cosmic Visions opportunity, planned for launch in 2034. NASA is planning to participate as a junior partner. Here we summarize progress toward realizing a gravitational wave observatory in space.

scholarly journals Transient astronomy with the Gaia satellite

2013 ◽  
Vol 371 (1992) ◽  
pp. 20120239 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon T. Hodgkin ◽  
Łukasz Wyrzykowski ◽  
Nadejda Blagorodnova ◽  
Sergey Koposov
Keyword(s):  
Early Detection ◽  
Gamma Ray ◽  
European Space Agency ◽  
Space Mission ◽  
Gamma Ray Burst ◽  
Space Agency ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Optical Wavelengths

Gaia is a cornerstone European Space Agency astrometry space mission and a successor to the Hipparcos mission. Gaia will observe the whole sky for 5 years, providing a serendipitous opportunity for the discovery of large numbers of transient and anomalous events, e.g. supernovae, novae and microlensing events, gamma-ray burst afterglows, fallback supernovae, as well as theoretical or unexpected phenomena. In this paper, we discuss our preparations to use Gaia to search for transients at optical wavelengths, and briefly describe the early detection, classification and prompt publication of anomalous sources.

scholarly journals Retrieval of ionospheric profiles from the Mars Express MARSIS experiment data and comparison with radio occultation data

2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Sánchez-Cano ◽  
O. Witasse ◽  
M. Herraiz ◽  
S. M. Radicella ◽  
J. Bauer ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Radio Occultation ◽  
European Space Agency ◽  
Planetary Science ◽  
Mars Express ◽  
Radio Science ◽  
The Public ◽  
Space Agency ◽  
Martian Ionosphere ◽  
Occultation Data ◽  
Ionospheric Sounding

Abstract. Since 2005 the Mars Advanced Radar and Ionospheric Sounding experiment (MARSIS) aboard Mars Express has acquired a unique dataset on the ionosphere of Mars made up of ionospheric soundings taken by the instrument working in its active ionospheric sounding (AIS) mode. These soundings play a role similar to those of modern Terrestrial digisondes in the analysis of our planet ionosphere and have allowed us to dramatically improve our knowledge about the Martian ionosphere. This paper describes this kind of data, which are available from the public Planetary Science Archive, and introduces the MAISDAT tool developed by the European Space Agency to analyze and derive the vertical profile of electron density. Comparisons with radio occultation profiles obtained from Mars Express Radio Science instrument are performed to validate the procedure used in this study.

Radial Velocity Measurements with Objective Prisms for the Hipparcos Program

1984 ◽  
Vol 88 ◽  
pp. 196-198
Author(s):  
Ch. Fehrenbach
Keyword(s):  
Radial Velocity ◽  
European Space Agency ◽  
Stellar Dynamics ◽  
High Accuracy ◽  
Radial Velocities ◽  
High Dispersion ◽  
Proper Motions ◽  
Space Agency ◽  
Nearby Stars ◽  
Absolute Magnitudes

In 1986, the European Space Agency (ESA) will launch an astrometrie satellite, Hipparcos (see ESA SP-177) with the objective of measuring positions for 200,000 stars. Proper motions will be determined with an accuracy of 0.002 "/yr. It is also very important to have radial velocities for the program stars.We will show here that an accuracy of 4 to 5 km/s for the radial velocity is good enough for a number of studies. For stellar studies, we need highly accurate radial velocities, and correlation methods (Griffin, Mayor et al.) allow that but are restricted to cool stars. Radial velocities are also needed for studies of stellar dynamics. In the case of star clusters (open and globular) we need a high accuracy, however the study of motions of stars in our galaxy do not require such a high accuracy. Only by increasing the sample can we improve our knowledge. In Table I we give data for the velocity ellipsoid. Kinematical data are from Allen and we have added absolute magnitudes and distances for stars having mv = 7.5. From an examination of this table we see that an accuracy of 4-5 km/s is good enough to study B star motions. The last column gives the dispersion in proper motion, and some of the values are astonishing, but it is well known that the proper motions for the nearby stars show a very high dispersion.

scholarly journals A Novel Layered System to Prevent High-Energy, Ionizing Radioactive Photon Transmissions and Control Particle Behavior with the Utilization of Monte Carlo Transport Modeling via SPENVIS-based Modular Implementation

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 5352-5362
Author(s):  
Daniel Noon
Keyword(s):  
Gamma Ray ◽  
Human Life ◽  
European Space Agency ◽  
High Energy ◽  
Radiation Shielding ◽  
Layered System ◽  
Current Standard ◽  
Particle Detection ◽  
Photon Momentum ◽  
Space Agency

Today, mass nuclear weapons and reactor plants are becoming more prominent. However, current methods of radiation shielding are not viable due to heavy cost and ineffective means of weakening photon momentum. Therefore, it becomes necessary to design structures resistant to the behavior of radiation from exposing to human life. Specifically, 280 computational experiments were conducted in a SPENVIS environment utilizing Multi-Layered Shielding Simulation (MULASSIS) and Geant4 Radiation Analysis for Space (GRAS) on multiple shielding models. These thirteen models tested against nuclear, artificially-generated incident particles under single and multi-ray analyses with four angular photon distributions in comparison to SHEILDOSE, a current standard for cosmic radiation shielding developed by the European Space Agency. These designs using stainless steel, lead, slightly-radioactive bismuth, and lithium-hydride prevented over 99% of particle detection compared to SHIELDOSE, which conversely increased the neutron-energy dose by over 700%, and insufficiently reduced high-energy gamma ray penetration. Per kilogram, my model is 144 times cheaper and only a small fraction of the thickness of either SHIELDOSE or metal foams. Thus, the potential of enhanced nuclear plants, further space exploration, and an overall safer approach to utilizing or preventing exposure to atomic particles such as with multi-disaster protection buildings can become more readily available, thus saving millions of lives that are in impending danger.

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