ASTRONOMER’S CORNER

Written by Ted Forte

It’s time to get excited about a new space telescope! 

Set to launch on August 30, 2026 atop a Space X Falcon 9 rocket, by the time you read this, NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope should be well into its month-long transit and commissioning phase.  Roman will reside at the L2 Lagrange point, a million miles from Earth, just like the James Webb Space Telescope.  During a 5-year primary mission, it will be used to study dark energy, discover exoplanets, and do infrared astrophysics.   

Roman is the same size as the Hubble Space Telescope, and that’s no accident. In 2012, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) revealed to the world that it had two space telescopes, constructed similar to Hubble, but designed to be spy satellites with a wider field of view than the HST.  They had become surplus to requirements and NRO made them available to NASA. The space agency decided that one of them could be repurposed to meet the requirements of a hoped-for mission called WFIRST (Wide Field Infrared Telescope). The unexpected bequest afforded the WFIRST mission some much needed momentum toward approval by Congress.  

NASA directed that WFIRST proceed to implementation in March of 2020. In May of that year, the mission was renamed in honor of Nancy Grace Roman who was NASA’s first Chief of Astronomy and sometimes known as the “mother of Hubble” for her foundational role in planning the Hubble Space Telescope. The Roman telescope represents a unique accomplishment in the annals of NASA missions.  It has come to fruition eight months early and under budget!  Even its launch, originally scheduled for later this fall, was moved up.  

The same size as Hubble, Roman’s primary mirror is 2.4 meters (7.9 feet) in diameter.  With a focal ratio of f/7.9 (compared to Hubble’s f/24) its field of view (FOV) is much wider than Hubble’s. A hundred times wider as a matter of fact. It will enable Roman to survey the sky 1,000 times faster than Hubble.  

The telescope has two main scientific instruments. The Wide Field Instrument (WFI) is a 300-megapixel near-infrared camera for wide field imaging and spectroscopy that will measure about a billion galaxies during its primary mission. The Coronagraph Instrument will block starlight to reveal exoplanets and planet-forming disks in both visible and near-infrared wavelengths. Roman’s coronagraph is a technology demonstration that will be proof of concept for the upcoming Habitable Worlds Observatory that will seek out Earth-like planets around sun-like stars.  

The Coronagraph Instrument on Roman will enable high contrast imaging and spectroscopy of nearby exoplanets – Neptune-sized objects in orbits just a little larger than Earth’s orbit.  

A microlensing survey is expected to discover at least 1,000 exoplanets. Gravitational lensing is a technique that uses the gravity of a massive object, like a galaxy or black hole, to focus light. Microlensing refers to using the gravity of smaller objects like stars or planets. The Roman telescope will collect 1.4 terabytes of data every day.  

Normal matter, the stuff we can see, seems to make up just 5% of the universe. A mysterious substance deemed dark matter, which is detectable only by its gravitational effects on normal matter, is thought to make up 27% of the universe’s mass/energy budget. The remaining 68% of the energy of our universe is thought to be an even more mysterious force we call dark energy. Dark energy seems to be the driving force behind the accelerating expansion of the universe.  

Roman’s main objective is to study that accelerating expansion and the nature of that dark energy.  Roman will map matter distribution and trace how dark energy has evolved over cosmic time. 

The spacecraft has enough fuel for at least 10 years of operation, twice its planned primary mission. Currently, the technology to refuel the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope in orbit is not fully developed, but researchers are investigating the feasibility of such missions.  

 NASA proclaims: “Roman’s crisp, panoramic view of space and fast survey speeds provide the opportunity for astronomers to study the universe as never before.”   About 75% of its first five years will be devoted to three core surveys that will unveil more than a billion galaxies and illuminate the origins of supermassive black holes, study how celestial objects and phenomena change over time periods of days to years and look inward to provide one of the deepest views ever of the heart of our Milky Way galaxy.  

Written by Ted Forte

The news these days is full of the newly released government files on what used to be called UFOs and are now called UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena).  The released documents go all the way back to the 1947 Roswell N.M. incident that spawned a UFO craze and an entire community of believers, and continue to recent reports from military and commercial pilots with rather convincing videos of anomalous sightings of weird phenomena complete with radar data.    

Both the government and the scientific community are taking the reports seriously and investigating every credible account.  With a few sitting members of Congress and high-ranking military personnel convinced that we are seeing evidence of alien visitation, it’s no wonder the public seems fascinated.  Are we being visited by craft from another world?  The thought is both exciting and terrifying.   

Few scientists doubt that life on other planets is possible, some would say likely.  Theorists speculate that there could be hundreds if not thousands of planets with advanced life in our galaxy alone. And there are about two trillion galaxies in the observable universe.  There should be countless more beyond that detectable horizon. In such a vast universe, anything than can happen, should happen.  Is it possible that there are aliens in our skies or under our seas? Certainly.  

Here’s the “but”. It’s quite a deductive leap from “we see things in the sky that we can’t explain” to “we’re being visited by aliens from another world”.  In reality, almost all of these anomalous sightings eventually get explained: natural objects like planets, clouds and ball lightning, drones, balloons, military aircraft, etc.  Isn’t it a bit suspicious that these UAPs seem to fit our preconceived notion of what an alien UFO should look like? Many of the reports are simple errors, instrument malfunctions or explainable visual effects. Some could actually be intentional jamming or other deceptions.   

A large number of these events occur near military installations. Is that proof that clandestine aliens are spying on our bases, or is it that tests of state of the art experimental or secret aircraft, jammers, countermeasures or instruments are at the root of some sightings?  The US budget includes a black budget of tens of billions of dollars going into secret engineering projects identified only by code names. They likely produce things that are not communicated to other branches or units.   

Interstellar travel is extremely difficult. It’s completely beyond our capability at present and looks to remain so for the foreseeable future. Our current understanding of physics makes clear that the speed of light is immutable. If that premise is correct, then travel between stars is impractical for any biological entity similar to us because the distances are so insurmountable.  The evidence, so far, is that physics and chemistry are the same everywhere. If that is true, then, biology is also likely to be the same.  ETs probably have the same sort of limitations we do. I wonder if it’s even possible for complex life to travel between stars. In any case, it would be extraordinarily expensive in resources and require unreasonable amounts of energy.  And it requires shielding worthy of any sci-fi novel; when traveling at even 1% the speed of light, encountering so much as a proton would be catastrophic.  Of course, a much more advanced civilization might be able to solve all of the problems. I think we all hope that is the case (for our own spacefaring future), but I’m skeptical.   

As I said above, almost all of the UAP sightings have been explained. Almost. The few that have not been explained are keeping our military planners concerned and our scientific community captivated. Some of these sightings seem to be actual material objects that exhibit incredible capabilities.  If real, they represent a significant danger to our national security regardless of whether they are extraterrestrial or our earthly adversaries. It’s a valid government interest to investigate these sightings.  However, the events that remain unresolved, are by definition, the hardest ones to explain. It could be that they just have the weakest data or are the result of extraordinary coincidences.  

Mystery is the fuel to scientific curiosity and so it’s certain that these anomalous observations will continue to enthrall members of the scientific community.  In all likelihood, most of the remaining unresolved sightings will be explained. Without direct evidence of an alien origin, there is no reason to assume that aliens are behind any of these sightings.  In fact, aliens are the least likely explanation of all the many possibilities. Yet I think most of us would actually want it to be alien visitation – after all, swamp gas is such an unexciting explanation, isn’t it?   

Written by Ted Forte

NASA has announced sweeping changes in its approach to solar system exploration. Described as a “realignment”, and named Ignition, this new series of NASA initiatives represents a revised “mission-based” culture at the agency.  

Foremost in the new philosophy is an accelerated timeline for a lunar base and some ambitious plans to explore Mars. The proposed lunar-orbiting space station known as Gateway has been indefinitely postponed so that resources and international partnerships can be leveraged toward building a permanent base on the moon’s south pole. 

The time-line for the Artemis missions to the moon have been significantly realigned and moves our lunar exploration efforts from orbit to the surface. NASA announced earlier that the Artemis III mission, originally intended for a human landing on the moon, has been redesigned as a low-Earth orbit mission that will test the potential lunar landers being built by SpaceX and Blue Origin and perfect various rendezvous maneuvers. That mission is set to launch in 2027.  Artemis IV will land the first Americans to step foot on the moon since 1972 and it’s NASA’s intention to accomplish that landing before the end of President Trump’s term. 

Lunar exploration will depend heavily on NASA’s commercial partners. Commercially procured and reusable hardware will enable frequent and affordable crewed missions to the lunar surface. Initially, landings are planned about every six months, but that cadence should increase as our capabilities mature. Concurrent with NASA’s human landings, CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) will be sending rovers, instruments, and technology demonstrations that advance mobility and power generation.  We can expect up to 30 CLPS missions, in a rapid-fire cadence, starting in 2027. These will deliver rovers, hoppers and drones as well as numerous science instruments produced by industry, academia, and our international partners. Near-term payloads include the VIPER rover and the LuSEE‑Night mission. VIPER will prospect for lunar resources and map the distribution and concentration of water ice in the permanently shadowed areas of the lunar south pole. LuSEE-Night is a robotic radio telescope observatory that will be deployed on the far side of the moon.

Initiatives meant to continue America’s continued presence in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) include plans to extend the life of the International Space Station (ISS) into the 2030s and to add both a government core module and numerous commercial modules that can later be detached. This plan ensures our continuous presence in LEO once the ISS is de-orbited. 

NASA also announced the Space Reactor‑1 Freedom mission. SR-1 Freedom will be the first nuclear powered interplanetary spacecraft, and it will launch to Mars before the end of 2028. At Mars, it will deploy the Skyfall fleet of Ingenuity-Class helicopters to further explore the Red Planet. SR-1 Freedom will demonstrate the feasibility of nuclear propulsion, establish flight heritage nuclear hardware, and set regulatory and launch precedent for future fission power systems. 

NASA administrators also affirmed the agency’s commitment to several science missions. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, scheduled to launch this fall, will study dark energy among other science objectives. Roman is ahead of schedule and under budget and has defined a new standard for the management of large science missions. The Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s moon Titan, will deploy a nuclear-powered octocopter to explore Titan’s organic-rich environment. NASA will launch and deliver ESA’s (European Space Agency) Rosalind Franklin Rover to Mars in 2028. The rover contains an instrument contributed by NASA that will perform the most advanced detection and analysis of organic matter ever conducted on Mars. A new Earth science mission set to deploy soon will measure the dynamics of convective storms to improve the prediction of extreme weather events.  NEO Surveyor, scheduled to launch as early as September 2027, is the first space telescope specifically designed to hunt asteroids and comets that may be potential hazards to Earth. NASA's DAVINCI mission scheduled to launch in 2029, will enter the Venusian atmosphere and study the planet's atmosphere and surface composition to determine if Venus was once habitable.

All of these ambitious plans are intended to enable breakthrough scientific discoveries, revitalize the space workforce, and train future science and engineering leaders. Space exploration enthusiasts can be encouraged by the fact that Congress has repeatedly signaled its strong support for space science and is committed to pursuing this new golden age of exploration. The coming decades could see a vibrant off-world economy flourish that will spark innovation, invention and discovery, secure our future on the moon, and open the door to the cosmos beyond. 

Written by Ted Forte

The constellation of Auriga is prominent on winter evenings. It’s dominated by the bright star Capella, the sixth brightest star in the sky. The name Capella means “she goat” in Latin and the star represents Amalthea, the goat that suckled Zeus in Greek mythology. Auriga represents a charioteer and Capella marks either his left shoulder or the goat that he is carrying. Southwest of Capella is a noted triangle of stars, Epsilon, Zeta, and Eta Aurigae, that are collectively known as The Kids.  Epsilon Aurigae, the apex of that triangle, is perhaps the most enigmatic eclipsing binary star in the heavens – every 27 years or so, it dims for about 2 years. It last dimmed in 2009-2011. Astronomers still aren’t sure exactly what is eclipsing what in this weird system. 

The figure of the Charioteer is formed by a lopsided pentagon of bright stars, with Capella as its northwestern corner, that sits between Gemini and Perseus. Lying as it does along the band of the Milky Way, the constellation is rich in star clusters. Open or galactic clusters are gravitationally bound groups of tens to thousands of stars that were formed together in the same giant molecular cloud, are roughly the same age, and have a similar velocity through space. 

The best known of Auriga’s clusters are the three that made it to the Messier list. The French astronomer, Charles Messier, was an 18th century comet hunter who is famous for his catalog of comet look-alikes: objects that appear comet-like in small telescopes. The three, today known as M36, M37 and M38, were all discovered by the Italian astronomer Giovanni Battista Hodierna before 1654. He saw them each as a “nebulous patch”. The French astronomer, Guillaume Le Gentil, identified M36 and M38 as clusters of stars in 1749. Messier did the same for M37 in 1764. 

M38, aka NGC 1912, lies just a bit north of a line connecting Iota and Theta Aurigae and about midway between the two stars. It’s a lovely cluster of 160 stars. About 120 of those lie in an area half the size of the full moon. About a dozen of its brightest stars form a slanted cross through its center. M38 is over 4,000 light years distant. 

From M38, jump 2.3 degrees southeast to M36 (NGC 1960), a smaller cluster of about 60 stars. While it’s less massive, it’s the brightest of the three Messier clusters in Auriga and is visible to the unaided eye as a fuzzy star. It lies about the same distance away from us as M38. The cluster is estimated to be about 20 to 30 million years old, making it rather young.  The 19th century British astronomer, Thomas Webb, described the cluster as a “beautiful assemblage of stars … very regularly arranged”. The cluster has a loose central condensation of stars with several curving streams radiating out. It vaguely looks cross-like, similar to M38. 

The third Messier cluster is M37 (NGC 2099). It lies outside of Auriga’s pentagon asterism another 3.7 degrees southeast of M36. It’s a bit further away at 4,380 light years. Rich in stars, it probably has about 1800 members; 170 of those stars are brighter than 13th magnitude. At an age of 230 million years, it’s still considered young. This cluster looks more condensed than M36 or M38 and even resembles a loose globular cluster. I think it’s the more impressive of the three. See if you can detect the red tinge of its brightest star. 

A small round cluster, NGC 1907, is just 32’ south-southwest of M38 and will occupy the same field of view in a medium power telescope. It was discovered by William Herschel in 1787.  It’s nearly the same distance from us as M37. Well detached from the background and having a strong central condensation, it contains about 113 stars, generally of similar brightness. See if you can detect a bit of nebulosity associated with the cluster. This is starlight reflecting off of the residual dust and gas that still infuses the cluster. 

Another small cluster that will be obvious in a backyard telescope is NGC 1778. It was discovered by William Herschel on the same night he discovered NGC 1907. He noted it as "a coarsely scattered cluster of large stars”. Containing about 112 stars, it has no central condensation. Look for it 4.5 degrees northeast of Iota Aurigae, the western most star in the pentagon asterism. It’s about 4800 light years away.

There are more than 50 open clusters in Auriga and many of them are visible with binoculars or a small telescope. I hope this small sampling gets you started discovering them.