New NASA consortium to study how life began

Image via Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

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How did life begin on Earth? That is one of the oldest and most profound questions that humans have ever tried to answer. Over the past several hundred years, the scientific answers have come a long way. Scientists want to understand what processes create life – both here and, possibly, on other planets – but there are many unsolved puzzles. To help solve the enigma, NASA this month launched a new research consortium – uniting researchers across multiple scientific disciplines – called Prebiotic Chemistry and Early Earth Environments or PCE3.

Scientists at University of California, Riverside (UCR) and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) announced PCE3 on February 14, 2019. Lori Glaze, acting director of NASA Planetary Science, said NASA has high hopes for this new consortium:

[It] has the potential to transform how we research the origins of life. The consortium will advance understanding of how life begins, by cross-fertilizing the community, enabling new collaborations, and fundamentally changing the dialogue across diverse intellectual expertise.

The ultimate goal of PCE3 is to identify what kinds of planetary conditions will allow life to begin. Its results will also be used to guide future NASA missions that search for habitable exoplanets.

Scientists still don’t know for sure how life first developed on the early Earth. Image via University of St. Andrews.

PCE3 will use a virtual interactive portal to make data available to the wider scientific community. This data pertains to early environments on Earth and how those conditions allowed the chemistry needed for life to get kick-started. As explained by Karyn Rogers of RPI, one of four PCE3 co-leaders:

With this approach, we will incorporate realistic planetary conditions into prebiotic chemistry experiments, leading to models for the emergence of life that are consistent with what we know of our planet’s early history.

Planet Earth and the chemistry of life share the same road. Because of that co-evolution, we can use our understanding of the fundamental planetary processes that set the Earth system in motion to sketch the physical, chemical, and environmental map to life.

Rogers explains more about this approach in the video below:

How did the early chemical reactions involving organic molecules lead to life itself? PCE3 will try to answer that question, said Ram Krishnamurthy of Scripps Research:

Among the group’s initial tasks will be to investigate how small molecules are synthesized on, or delivered to, the early Earth and how these might survive and subsequently form more complex compounds in early Earth environments that could have harbored life’s emergence.

An MIT and Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics study last year found that molecules called sulfidic anions were plentiful at the time that life is thought to have first appeared on Earth. Image via MIT.

Loren Williams of the Georgia Institute of Technology noted:

Deconstructing life’s origins requires a rich understanding of the environmental and chemical conditions during Earth’s early history and on how life developed and progressed in a world very different than today’s.

NASA’s Astrobiology Program has awarded a $9 million grant to RPI, via the Earth First Origins project, which will use its expertise to assist in the PCE3 consortium.

As noted by President Shirley Ann Jackson, RPI has a long history of research in the astrobiology field:

Rensselaer has an extensive history of significant contributions to the field of astrobiology, and the Earth First Origins project and the Rensselaer Astrobiology Research and Education Center (RARE) will be tremendous additions to our legacy of discovery. The interdisciplinary global collaboration involved in these initiatives epitomizes the visionary work we engage in as The New Polytechnic.

Various types of environments existed on early Earth and many of them could have been the starting place of life, or life could have emerged via processes that connected several environmental niches. We want to establish the range of possible conditions in different early Earth environments, replicate them in the lab, and understand the particular factors that contribute to the sequence of chemical syntheses that lead to life.

Stromatolites were some of the earliest multi-cellular life forms on Earth. Image via iStock.

The RPI research program brings together scientists in a wide range of fields, including planetary evolution, early Earth geochemistry, prebiotic/experimental astrobiology and analytical chemistry. The team also includes molecular biologists as well as geochemical modelers and data and visualization experts.

The early Earth Laboratory (eEL) – part of Earth First Origins – will use experimental equipment to simulate conditions on the early Earth, according to Bruce Watson, a co-investigator, geochemist and Institute Professor at Rensselaer:

Early Earth hosted a wide range of distinct environments. By accurately representing water-rock-atmosphere interactions, or the flow and mixing of fluids along thermal and chemical gradients, the eEL will provide a much better way of exploring the chemical pathways that emerged during Earth’s earliest times.

This is an exciting endeavor, not only in regards to life on Earth, but also life elsewhere. Thousands of exoplanets – planets orbiting other stars – have already been discovered by astronomers, and there are estimated to be billions in our galaxy alone. Knowing how life originated on Earth will help astronomers in their search for life on other worlds, including in our own solar system as well. Ocean worlds are common in our solar system – not only on Earth and but also on several icy moons with subsurface oceans – so oceans might be common elsewhere in space as well. If these ocean worlds can be found, they would be a prime target to search for evidence of alien biology.

The PCE3 consortium may not only help scientists understand how life developed on Earth, but how it could happen on other rocky exoplanets as well, such as those in the TRAPPIST-1 system. Image via ESO/M. Kornmesser.

Earth is a rocky planet, and many rocky planets are now being discovered outside our solar system. We don’t yet know the conditions on any of them, but some of these worlds might turn out to be somewhat similar to Earth. As the new NASA consortium progresses, its results will help scientists determine which of these worlds may be not only habitable but inhabited. As Timothy Lyons of UCR said:

I am particularly excited to frame the beginnings of life within the context of our planet’s early, dynamic habitability and to use those lessons to imagine how planets around distant stars similarly could have favored the origins and evolution of life.

How did life begin on Earth? A new NASA research consortium will try to answer that question. Image via Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Bottom line: The new PCE3 consortium by NASA will attempt to answer one of the biggest questions ever posed to humanity – how did life begin on Earth?

Via University of California, Riverside

Via Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

from EarthSky https://ift.tt/2SXUr9L

Image via Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Help EarthSky keep going! Please donate what you can to our annual crowd-funding campaign.

How did life begin on Earth? That is one of the oldest and most profound questions that humans have ever tried to answer. Over the past several hundred years, the scientific answers have come a long way. Scientists want to understand what processes create life – both here and, possibly, on other planets – but there are many unsolved puzzles. To help solve the enigma, NASA this month launched a new research consortium – uniting researchers across multiple scientific disciplines – called Prebiotic Chemistry and Early Earth Environments or PCE3.

Scientists at University of California, Riverside (UCR) and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) announced PCE3 on February 14, 2019. Lori Glaze, acting director of NASA Planetary Science, said NASA has high hopes for this new consortium:

[It] has the potential to transform how we research the origins of life. The consortium will advance understanding of how life begins, by cross-fertilizing the community, enabling new collaborations, and fundamentally changing the dialogue across diverse intellectual expertise.

The ultimate goal of PCE3 is to identify what kinds of planetary conditions will allow life to begin. Its results will also be used to guide future NASA missions that search for habitable exoplanets.

Scientists still don’t know for sure how life first developed on the early Earth. Image via University of St. Andrews.

PCE3 will use a virtual interactive portal to make data available to the wider scientific community. This data pertains to early environments on Earth and how those conditions allowed the chemistry needed for life to get kick-started. As explained by Karyn Rogers of RPI, one of four PCE3 co-leaders:

With this approach, we will incorporate realistic planetary conditions into prebiotic chemistry experiments, leading to models for the emergence of life that are consistent with what we know of our planet’s early history.

Planet Earth and the chemistry of life share the same road. Because of that co-evolution, we can use our understanding of the fundamental planetary processes that set the Earth system in motion to sketch the physical, chemical, and environmental map to life.

Rogers explains more about this approach in the video below:

How did the early chemical reactions involving organic molecules lead to life itself? PCE3 will try to answer that question, said Ram Krishnamurthy of Scripps Research:

Among the group’s initial tasks will be to investigate how small molecules are synthesized on, or delivered to, the early Earth and how these might survive and subsequently form more complex compounds in early Earth environments that could have harbored life’s emergence.

An MIT and Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics study last year found that molecules called sulfidic anions were plentiful at the time that life is thought to have first appeared on Earth. Image via MIT.

Loren Williams of the Georgia Institute of Technology noted:

Deconstructing life’s origins requires a rich understanding of the environmental and chemical conditions during Earth’s early history and on how life developed and progressed in a world very different than today’s.

NASA’s Astrobiology Program has awarded a $9 million grant to RPI, via the Earth First Origins project, which will use its expertise to assist in the PCE3 consortium.

As noted by President Shirley Ann Jackson, RPI has a long history of research in the astrobiology field:

Rensselaer has an extensive history of significant contributions to the field of astrobiology, and the Earth First Origins project and the Rensselaer Astrobiology Research and Education Center (RARE) will be tremendous additions to our legacy of discovery. The interdisciplinary global collaboration involved in these initiatives epitomizes the visionary work we engage in as The New Polytechnic.

Various types of environments existed on early Earth and many of them could have been the starting place of life, or life could have emerged via processes that connected several environmental niches. We want to establish the range of possible conditions in different early Earth environments, replicate them in the lab, and understand the particular factors that contribute to the sequence of chemical syntheses that lead to life.

Stromatolites were some of the earliest multi-cellular life forms on Earth. Image via iStock.

The RPI research program brings together scientists in a wide range of fields, including planetary evolution, early Earth geochemistry, prebiotic/experimental astrobiology and analytical chemistry. The team also includes molecular biologists as well as geochemical modelers and data and visualization experts.

The early Earth Laboratory (eEL) – part of Earth First Origins – will use experimental equipment to simulate conditions on the early Earth, according to Bruce Watson, a co-investigator, geochemist and Institute Professor at Rensselaer:

Early Earth hosted a wide range of distinct environments. By accurately representing water-rock-atmosphere interactions, or the flow and mixing of fluids along thermal and chemical gradients, the eEL will provide a much better way of exploring the chemical pathways that emerged during Earth’s earliest times.

This is an exciting endeavor, not only in regards to life on Earth, but also life elsewhere. Thousands of exoplanets – planets orbiting other stars – have already been discovered by astronomers, and there are estimated to be billions in our galaxy alone. Knowing how life originated on Earth will help astronomers in their search for life on other worlds, including in our own solar system as well. Ocean worlds are common in our solar system – not only on Earth and but also on several icy moons with subsurface oceans – so oceans might be common elsewhere in space as well. If these ocean worlds can be found, they would be a prime target to search for evidence of alien biology.

The PCE3 consortium may not only help scientists understand how life developed on Earth, but how it could happen on other rocky exoplanets as well, such as those in the TRAPPIST-1 system. Image via ESO/M. Kornmesser.

Earth is a rocky planet, and many rocky planets are now being discovered outside our solar system. We don’t yet know the conditions on any of them, but some of these worlds might turn out to be somewhat similar to Earth. As the new NASA consortium progresses, its results will help scientists determine which of these worlds may be not only habitable but inhabited. As Timothy Lyons of UCR said:

I am particularly excited to frame the beginnings of life within the context of our planet’s early, dynamic habitability and to use those lessons to imagine how planets around distant stars similarly could have favored the origins and evolution of life.

How did life begin on Earth? A new NASA research consortium will try to answer that question. Image via Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Bottom line: The new PCE3 consortium by NASA will attempt to answer one of the biggest questions ever posed to humanity – how did life begin on Earth?

Via University of California, Riverside

Via Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

from EarthSky https://ift.tt/2SXUr9L

Spectacular moon, 3 planets, before dawn

Are you a morning person? If so, and you’re blessed with clear skies, the next several mornings are for you. Just look east, the direction of sunrise. You’ll find the moon sliding by three bright morning planets.

Help EarthSky keep going! Please donate what you can to our annual crowd-funding campaign.

From top to bottom, this planetary lineup showcases Jupiter, Saturn and Venus. Wake up no later than one hour before sunrise to see the spectacle. Think photo opportunity!

On the morning of February 27, 2019, the waning crescent moon closely couples up with the brilliant planet Jupiter as viewed from North America. Elsewhere around the world, the moon is not as close. From the world’s Eastern Hemisphere – Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and New Zealand – the moon shines to the west of Jupiter on February 27. For all of us, Jupiter and our companion moon will appear very bright and close enough to make waking up early more than worthwhile.

View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Steve Pond in East Grinstead, Sussex, England, caught the waning moon and planets the last time the moon moved through this part of the sky, in late January and early February 2019.

The lighted side of a waning crescent moon points east, the direction of sunrise. The planets Saturn and Venus lie to the east of Jupiter, so the lit face of the moon will point toward the other two planets on the morning of February 27. Notice that the planets and moon make a line on our sky’s dome. This line shows you the whereabouts of the ecliptic, or Earth-sun plane. Since the other planets in our solar system – and the moon – all orbit more or less in this same plane, we always see them strung across our sky in this graceful line.

Each morning – in the hour before sunrise – you’ll see the moon farther east relative to this lineup of planets. Watch for the moon to pass Saturn and then Venus, as it makes its way toward the sunrise.

From various parts of Earth, the planets and moon will appear oriented differently in your sky. No matter where you live, though, fainter Saturn will lie between much-brighter Venus and Jupiter. Saturn, by the way, shines as brilliantly as a 1st-magnitude star. Jupiter outshines Saturn by about 11 times. And Venus outshines Jupiter by nearly eight times!

All are bright. If your sky is clear, you’ll be able to see all three planets with the greatest of ease.

After the moon drops out of the morning sky in early March, you can continue to find Saturn in between Venus and Jupiter for several months to come. Day by day, however, Jupiter and Saturn will drift farther west of Venus (opposite the sunrise direction) in the morning sky.

By the way, when we see the moon as a thin crescent in our sky, someone on the moon would see Earth as almost totally full. The sunlight reflected from the nearly full Earth onto the dark side of the moon is called earthshine. Look for its ghostly luminescence on the nighttime side of the moon in the mornings ahead.

Bottom line: A beautiful scene awaits you in the early morning sky. It’s a golden opportunity to see the moon sweep past 3 glorious planets: Jupiter, Saturn and Venus.

from EarthSky https://ift.tt/2ICKycS

Are you a morning person? If so, and you’re blessed with clear skies, the next several mornings are for you. Just look east, the direction of sunrise. You’ll find the moon sliding by three bright morning planets.

Help EarthSky keep going! Please donate what you can to our annual crowd-funding campaign.

From top to bottom, this planetary lineup showcases Jupiter, Saturn and Venus. Wake up no later than one hour before sunrise to see the spectacle. Think photo opportunity!

On the morning of February 27, 2019, the waning crescent moon closely couples up with the brilliant planet Jupiter as viewed from North America. Elsewhere around the world, the moon is not as close. From the world’s Eastern Hemisphere – Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and New Zealand – the moon shines to the west of Jupiter on February 27. For all of us, Jupiter and our companion moon will appear very bright and close enough to make waking up early more than worthwhile.

View at EarthSky Community Photos. | Steve Pond in East Grinstead, Sussex, England, caught the waning moon and planets the last time the moon moved through this part of the sky, in late January and early February 2019.

The lighted side of a waning crescent moon points east, the direction of sunrise. The planets Saturn and Venus lie to the east of Jupiter, so the lit face of the moon will point toward the other two planets on the morning of February 27. Notice that the planets and moon make a line on our sky’s dome. This line shows you the whereabouts of the ecliptic, or Earth-sun plane. Since the other planets in our solar system – and the moon – all orbit more or less in this same plane, we always see them strung across our sky in this graceful line.

Each morning – in the hour before sunrise – you’ll see the moon farther east relative to this lineup of planets. Watch for the moon to pass Saturn and then Venus, as it makes its way toward the sunrise.

From various parts of Earth, the planets and moon will appear oriented differently in your sky. No matter where you live, though, fainter Saturn will lie between much-brighter Venus and Jupiter. Saturn, by the way, shines as brilliantly as a 1st-magnitude star. Jupiter outshines Saturn by about 11 times. And Venus outshines Jupiter by nearly eight times!

All are bright. If your sky is clear, you’ll be able to see all three planets with the greatest of ease.

After the moon drops out of the morning sky in early March, you can continue to find Saturn in between Venus and Jupiter for several months to come. Day by day, however, Jupiter and Saturn will drift farther west of Venus (opposite the sunrise direction) in the morning sky.

By the way, when we see the moon as a thin crescent in our sky, someone on the moon would see Earth as almost totally full. The sunlight reflected from the nearly full Earth onto the dark side of the moon is called earthshine. Look for its ghostly luminescence on the nighttime side of the moon in the mornings ahead.

Bottom line: A beautiful scene awaits you in the early morning sky. It’s a golden opportunity to see the moon sweep past 3 glorious planets: Jupiter, Saturn and Venus.

from EarthSky https://ift.tt/2ICKycS

Andromeda galaxy via robotic telescope

More details at EarthSky Community Photos. | Image of M31 (Andromeda Galaxy) and M32 (a satellite galaxy) taken with the Harvard-Smithsonian 6-inch robotic internet telescope located near Amado, Arizona. 60-second exposure time. Image by James Figge.

Help EarthSky keep going! Please donate what you can to our annual crowd-funding campaign.

James Figge wrote:

This is the Andromeda galaxy from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics MicroObservatory. They have 6-inch robotic telescopes in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in Arizona. You control your image settings on this web page. Then you transmit your parameters, and the instructions go out to one of the robot telescopes. Within 24 hours or so a link to your image file is sent back to your email.

You then need to save the file on your computer and upload into the image processing software. The key is learning how to use the software. I practiced on it for 10 hours before I did my first image, which is the one above. I worked on processing this for about 2 hours. This part of it is really an art and you have to practice to understand how the software works. There are tutorials online that help you get started.

Anyone can use it over the internet; it is funded by a grant from NASA, so there is no charge to the user. Access is via:

http://mo-www.harvard.edu/OWN/

To control a telescope you go to the ‘control telescope’ tab. When you are ready to process your image you go to the ‘analyze images’ tab.

Thank you, James!

Bottom line: A photo of the Andromeda galaxy captured with the Harvard-Smithsonian 6-inch robotic telescope in Arizona.

from EarthSky https://ift.tt/2IBp5Ru

More details at EarthSky Community Photos. | Image of M31 (Andromeda Galaxy) and M32 (a satellite galaxy) taken with the Harvard-Smithsonian 6-inch robotic internet telescope located near Amado, Arizona. 60-second exposure time. Image by James Figge.

Help EarthSky keep going! Please donate what you can to our annual crowd-funding campaign.

James Figge wrote:

This is the Andromeda galaxy from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics MicroObservatory. They have 6-inch robotic telescopes in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in Arizona. You control your image settings on this web page. Then you transmit your parameters, and the instructions go out to one of the robot telescopes. Within 24 hours or so a link to your image file is sent back to your email.

You then need to save the file on your computer and upload into the image processing software. The key is learning how to use the software. I practiced on it for 10 hours before I did my first image, which is the one above. I worked on processing this for about 2 hours. This part of it is really an art and you have to practice to understand how the software works. There are tutorials online that help you get started.

Anyone can use it over the internet; it is funded by a grant from NASA, so there is no charge to the user. Access is via:

http://mo-www.harvard.edu/OWN/

To control a telescope you go to the ‘control telescope’ tab. When you are ready to process your image you go to the ‘analyze images’ tab.

Thank you, James!

Bottom line: A photo of the Andromeda galaxy captured with the Harvard-Smithsonian 6-inch robotic telescope in Arizona.

from EarthSky https://ift.tt/2IBp5Ru

dodecaphenyltetracene

The Pascal group has synthesized dodecaphenyltetracene 1.¹

While this paper has little computational work, it is of interest to readers of this blog since I have discussed many aspect of aromaticity. This new tetracene is notable for its large twisting along the tetracene axis: about 97° in the x-ray structure. I have optimized the structure of 1 at B3LYP-D3(BJ)/6-311G(d) and its structure is shown in Figure 1. It is twisted by about 94°. The computed and x-ray structures are quite similar, as seen in Figure 2. Here the x-ray structure is shown with red balls, the computed structure with gray balls, and hydrogens have been removed for clarity.

Figure 1. B3LYP-D3(BJ)/6-311G(d) optimized structure of 1.

Figure 2. Comparison of the x-ray (red) and computed (gray) structures of 1. (Hydrogens omitted for clarity.)

The authors note that this molecule is chiral, having near D₂ symmetry. (The optimized structure has D₂ symmetry.) They performed AM1 computations to estimate a very low barrier for racemization of only 17.3 kcal mol^-1, leading to a half-life of less than one second at RT.

A notable aspect of the molecule is that aromaticity can adapt to significant twisting yet retain aromatic character. For example, the molecule is stable even surviving boiling off of chloroform (61 °C) to form crystals and the majority of the C-C bonds in the tetracene portion have distances typical of aromatic systems (~1.4 Å).

References

1) Xiao, Y.; Mague, J. T.; Schmehl, R. H.; Haque, F. M.; Pascal Jr., R. A., “Dodecaphenyltetracene.” Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2019, 58, 2831-2833, DOI: 10.1002/anie.201812418.

InChIs

1: InChI=1S/C90H60/c1-13-37-61(38-14-1)73-74(62-39-15-2-16-40-62)78(66-47-23-6-24-48-66)86-82(70-55-31-10-32-56-70)90-84(72-59-35-12-36-60-72)88-80(68-51-27-8-28-52-68)76(64-43-19-4-20-44-64)75(63-41-17-3-18-42-63)79(67-49-25-7-26-50-67)87(88)83(71-57-33-11-34-58-71)89(90)81(69-53-29-9-30-54-69)85(86)77(73)65-45-21-5-22-46-65/h1-60H
InChIKey=NJQABVWYMCSFNE-UHFFFAOYSA-N

from Computational Organic Chemistry https://ift.tt/2Spp3vB

The Pascal group has synthesized dodecaphenyltetracene 1.¹

While this paper has little computational work, it is of interest to readers of this blog since I have discussed many aspect of aromaticity. This new tetracene is notable for its large twisting along the tetracene axis: about 97° in the x-ray structure. I have optimized the structure of 1 at B3LYP-D3(BJ)/6-311G(d) and its structure is shown in Figure 1. It is twisted by about 94°. The computed and x-ray structures are quite similar, as seen in Figure 2. Here the x-ray structure is shown with red balls, the computed structure with gray balls, and hydrogens have been removed for clarity.

Figure 1. B3LYP-D3(BJ)/6-311G(d) optimized structure of 1.

Figure 2. Comparison of the x-ray (red) and computed (gray) structures of 1. (Hydrogens omitted for clarity.)

The authors note that this molecule is chiral, having near D₂ symmetry. (The optimized structure has D₂ symmetry.) They performed AM1 computations to estimate a very low barrier for racemization of only 17.3 kcal mol^-1, leading to a half-life of less than one second at RT.

A notable aspect of the molecule is that aromaticity can adapt to significant twisting yet retain aromatic character. For example, the molecule is stable even surviving boiling off of chloroform (61 °C) to form crystals and the majority of the C-C bonds in the tetracene portion have distances typical of aromatic systems (~1.4 Å).

References

1) Xiao, Y.; Mague, J. T.; Schmehl, R. H.; Haque, F. M.; Pascal Jr., R. A., “Dodecaphenyltetracene.” Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2019, 58, 2831-2833, DOI: 10.1002/anie.201812418.

InChIs

1: InChI=1S/C90H60/c1-13-37-61(38-14-1)73-74(62-39-15-2-16-40-62)78(66-47-23-6-24-48-66)86-82(70-55-31-10-32-56-70)90-84(72-59-35-12-36-60-72)88-80(68-51-27-8-28-52-68)76(64-43-19-4-20-44-64)75(63-41-17-3-18-42-63)79(67-49-25-7-26-50-67)87(88)83(71-57-33-11-34-58-71)89(90)81(69-53-29-9-30-54-69)85(86)77(73)65-45-21-5-22-46-65/h1-60H
InChIKey=NJQABVWYMCSFNE-UHFFFAOYSA-N

from Computational Organic Chemistry https://ift.tt/2Spp3vB

Watch for the waning moon and Jupiter

Help EarthSky keep going! Please donate what you can to our annual crowd-funding campaign.

On the morning of February 26, 2019, the moon will be at or near its last quarter phase – visible in the dawn sky – with its half-illuminated side pointing at bright Jupiter. One day later – on February 27 – look for the wide waning crescent to more closely pair up with Jupiter on the sky’s dome. If you’re up before the sun, you might also see Antares, the brightest star in the constellation Scorpius the Scorpion, near the moon and Jupiter on these mornings.

Whether you see the moon and Jupiter in your southern or northern sky before sunup will depend on your location on the globe. We in the Northern Hemisphere see them in the south. As you face south, east is to your left and west to your right. From the Southern Hemisphere, they’re more toward the northern sky. But, for all of us, the moon and Jupiter are up before the sun. They’re very bright. You can’t miss them if you look!

The lit side of a waning moon always points eastward – the direction of the moon’s motion in orbit and monthly trip in front of the constellations of the zodiac. Because east is in the direction of sunrise, watch for the moon to swing past Jupiter in another few days, and then the planets Saturn and Venus in early March 2019.

In late February and early March, watch the moon go by Jupiter, Saturn and Venus. Read more.

The moon will reach its last quarter phase on February 26, at precisely 11:28 Universal Time. In North American and U.S. time zones, that translates to February 26 at 7:28 a.m. AST, 6:28 a.m. EST, 5:28 a.m. CST, 4:28 a.m. MST, 3:28 a.m. PST, 2:28 a.m. AKST (Alaska) and 1:28 a.m. HST (Hawaii).

For the fun of it – and to help you get a sense of how the sky changes from Earth’s Northern and Southern Hemispheres – check out the two charts below. The first one shows the view from about the middle of the continental U.S. on the mornings of February 26 and 27. The second chart shows the same view – on the same mornings – from Buenos Aires, Argentina, in South America.

Notice that – before daybreak on these mornings – you face southward to see the moon and Jupiter from a northerly latitude. From a southerly latitude, you see the same objects in the same positions relative to one another. The lighted face of the moon still points to Jupiter on February 26. The moon and Jupiter are still closest on February 27. But – from a southerly latitude on Earth’s globe – you would be looking northward (instead of southward).

The moon, the planet Jupiter and the star Antares as seen from middle latitudes in North America.

The moon, the planet Jupiter and the star Antares as seen from Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Bottom line: No matter where you live worldwide, let the waning moon be your guide to the dazzling planet Jupiter over the next several days.

from EarthSky https://ift.tt/2T4tamc

Help EarthSky keep going! Please donate what you can to our annual crowd-funding campaign.

On the morning of February 26, 2019, the moon will be at or near its last quarter phase – visible in the dawn sky – with its half-illuminated side pointing at bright Jupiter. One day later – on February 27 – look for the wide waning crescent to more closely pair up with Jupiter on the sky’s dome. If you’re up before the sun, you might also see Antares, the brightest star in the constellation Scorpius the Scorpion, near the moon and Jupiter on these mornings.

Whether you see the moon and Jupiter in your southern or northern sky before sunup will depend on your location on the globe. We in the Northern Hemisphere see them in the south. As you face south, east is to your left and west to your right. From the Southern Hemisphere, they’re more toward the northern sky. But, for all of us, the moon and Jupiter are up before the sun. They’re very bright. You can’t miss them if you look!

The lit side of a waning moon always points eastward – the direction of the moon’s motion in orbit and monthly trip in front of the constellations of the zodiac. Because east is in the direction of sunrise, watch for the moon to swing past Jupiter in another few days, and then the planets Saturn and Venus in early March 2019.

In late February and early March, watch the moon go by Jupiter, Saturn and Venus. Read more.

The moon will reach its last quarter phase on February 26, at precisely 11:28 Universal Time. In North American and U.S. time zones, that translates to February 26 at 7:28 a.m. AST, 6:28 a.m. EST, 5:28 a.m. CST, 4:28 a.m. MST, 3:28 a.m. PST, 2:28 a.m. AKST (Alaska) and 1:28 a.m. HST (Hawaii).

For the fun of it – and to help you get a sense of how the sky changes from Earth’s Northern and Southern Hemispheres – check out the two charts below. The first one shows the view from about the middle of the continental U.S. on the mornings of February 26 and 27. The second chart shows the same view – on the same mornings – from Buenos Aires, Argentina, in South America.

Notice that – before daybreak on these mornings – you face southward to see the moon and Jupiter from a northerly latitude. From a southerly latitude, you see the same objects in the same positions relative to one another. The lighted face of the moon still points to Jupiter on February 26. The moon and Jupiter are still closest on February 27. But – from a southerly latitude on Earth’s globe – you would be looking northward (instead of southward).

The moon, the planet Jupiter and the star Antares as seen from middle latitudes in North America.

The moon, the planet Jupiter and the star Antares as seen from Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Bottom line: No matter where you live worldwide, let the waning moon be your guide to the dazzling planet Jupiter over the next several days.

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Help name 5 new moons of Jupiter

Image via Carnegie Science.

In July 2018, Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science announced the discovery of 12 new moons orbiting Jupiter. Eleven are “normal” outer moons, and one is what he called an “oddball.” This brought Jupiter’s total number of known moons to a whopping 79 — the most of any planet in our solar system.

Now you can help Sheppard and his co-discoverers select the names for five of these newly announced moons!

Contest Launch Date:

February 21, 2019

Contest End Date:

April 15, 2019

How To Submit:

Tweet your suggested moon name to @JupiterLunacy and tell us why you picked it using 280 characters or fewer or a short video. Don’t forget to include the hashtag #NameJupitersMoons.

The General Rules:

– Jupiter Moons must be named after characters from Roman or Greek mythology who were either descendants or lovers of the god known as Jupiter (Roman) or Zeus (Greeks).
– Submissions must be 16 characters of fewer, preferably one word.
– Submissions must not be offensive in any language or to any culture.
– Submissions must not be too similar to the existing names of any moons or asteroids.
– Names of a purely or principally commercial nature are prohibited.
– Names of individuals, places, or events that are principally known for political, military, or religious activities are not suitable.
– Names commemorating living persons are not allowed.

The Rules for Each Individual Moon: 

– S/2003 J5 (Jupiter LVII) which is retrograde and thus name must be related to Jupiter or Zeus and end in an “e.”
– S/2003 J15 (Jupiter LVIII) which is retrograde and thus name must be related to Jupiter or Zeus and end in an “e.”
– S/2003 J3 (Jupiter LX) which is retrograde and thus name must be related to Jupiter or Zeus and end in an “e.”
– S/2017 J4 (Jupiter LXV) which is prograde and thus name must be related to Jupiter or Zeus and end in an “a.”
– S/2018 J1 (Jupiter LXXI) which is prograde and thus name must be related to Jupiter or Zeus and end in an “a.”

Learn More: 

Further details about how the International Astronomical Union names astronomical objects can be found here.
This video details some of the possible Jupiter moon names and can tell you more about how the Jupiter moon-naming process works.

Make Sure Your Proposed Name Is Not Already In Use: 

– Current Asteroid names can be checked at the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center here or here.
– Existing names for Jupiter’s other moons can be checked at Sheppard’s website here.

Help EarthSky keep going! Please donate what you can to our annual crowd-funding campaign.

A Song About Jupiter and Its Moons:

Song by Marsha and the Positrons. Video by Emily Bank.

Bottom line: Enter a contest to help name five newly discovered moons of Jupiter!

Via Carnegie Science

from EarthSky https://ift.tt/2tCmDjt

Image via Carnegie Science.

In July 2018, Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science announced the discovery of 12 new moons orbiting Jupiter. Eleven are “normal” outer moons, and one is what he called an “oddball.” This brought Jupiter’s total number of known moons to a whopping 79 — the most of any planet in our solar system.

Now you can help Sheppard and his co-discoverers select the names for five of these newly announced moons!

Contest Launch Date:

February 21, 2019

Contest End Date:

April 15, 2019

How To Submit:

Tweet your suggested moon name to @JupiterLunacy and tell us why you picked it using 280 characters or fewer or a short video. Don’t forget to include the hashtag #NameJupitersMoons.

The General Rules:

– Jupiter Moons must be named after characters from Roman or Greek mythology who were either descendants or lovers of the god known as Jupiter (Roman) or Zeus (Greeks).
– Submissions must be 16 characters of fewer, preferably one word.
– Submissions must not be offensive in any language or to any culture.
– Submissions must not be too similar to the existing names of any moons or asteroids.
– Names of a purely or principally commercial nature are prohibited.
– Names of individuals, places, or events that are principally known for political, military, or religious activities are not suitable.
– Names commemorating living persons are not allowed.

The Rules for Each Individual Moon: 

– S/2003 J5 (Jupiter LVII) which is retrograde and thus name must be related to Jupiter or Zeus and end in an “e.”
– S/2003 J15 (Jupiter LVIII) which is retrograde and thus name must be related to Jupiter or Zeus and end in an “e.”
– S/2003 J3 (Jupiter LX) which is retrograde and thus name must be related to Jupiter or Zeus and end in an “e.”
– S/2017 J4 (Jupiter LXV) which is prograde and thus name must be related to Jupiter or Zeus and end in an “a.”
– S/2018 J1 (Jupiter LXXI) which is prograde and thus name must be related to Jupiter or Zeus and end in an “a.”

Learn More: 

Further details about how the International Astronomical Union names astronomical objects can be found here.
This video details some of the possible Jupiter moon names and can tell you more about how the Jupiter moon-naming process works.

Make Sure Your Proposed Name Is Not Already In Use: 

– Current Asteroid names can be checked at the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center here or here.
– Existing names for Jupiter’s other moons can be checked at Sheppard’s website here.

Help EarthSky keep going! Please donate what you can to our annual crowd-funding campaign.

A Song About Jupiter and Its Moons:

Song by Marsha and the Positrons. Video by Emily Bank.

Bottom line: Enter a contest to help name five newly discovered moons of Jupiter!

Via Carnegie Science

from EarthSky https://ift.tt/2tCmDjt

Why zebras have stripes

Scientific testing has zeroed in on the advantages of a zebra’s striped coat. Image via Tim Caro

Help EarthSky keep going! Please donate what you can to our once-yearly crowd-funding campaign.

By Tim Caro, University of California, Davis and Martin How, University of Bristol

Zebras are famous for their contrasting black and white stripes – but until very recently no one really knew why they sport their unusual striped pattern. It’s a question that’s been discussed as far back as 150 years ago by great Victorian biologists like Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace.

Since then many ideas have been put on the table but only in the last few years have there been serious attempts to test them. These ideas fall into four main categories: Zebras are striped to evade capture by predators, zebras are striped for social reasons, zebras are striped to keep cool, or they have stripes to avoid attack by biting flies.

Only the last one stands up to scrutiny. And our latest research helps fill in more of the details on why.

Camouflage? ID? Natural air conditioning? No, no and no. Image via Tim Caro.

What’s the advantage of zebra stripes?

Could stripes help zebras avoid becoming a predator’s meal? There are many problems with this idea. Field experiments show that zebras stand out to the human eye when they’re among trees or in grassland even when illumination is poor – they appear far from camouflaged. And when fleeing from danger, zebras do not behave in ways to maximize any confusion possibly caused by striping, making hypothetical ideas about dazzling predators untenable.

Worse still for this idea, the eyesight of lions and spotted hyenas is much weaker than ours; these predators can only resolve stripes when zebras are very close up, at a distance when they can likely hear or smell the prey anyway. So stripes are unlikely to be of much use in anti-predator defense.

Most damaging, zebras are a preferred prey item for lions – in study after study across Africa, lions kill them more than might be expected from their numerical abundance. So stripes cannot be a very effective anti-predator defense against this important carnivore. So much for the evading-predators hypothesis.

What about the idea that stripes help zebras engage with members of their own species? Every zebra has a unique pattern of striping. Could it be useful in individual recognition? This possibility seems highly unlikely given that uniformly colored domestic horses can recognize other individuals by sight and sound. Striped members of the horse family do not groom each other – a form of social bonding – more than unstriped equid species either. And very unusual unstriped individual zebras are not shunned by group members, and they breed successfully.

What about some kind of defense against the hot African sun? Given that black stripes might be expected to absorb radiation and white stripes reflect it, one idea proposed that stripes set up convection currents along the animal’s back, thereby cooling it.

Field experiments tested how various coloring patterns affected the temperature of water-filled barrels. Image via Gábor Horváth in Scientific Reports.

Again, this seems improbable: Careful experiments in which large water barrels were draped in striped or uniform colored pelts, or were painted striped or unstriped, showed no differences in internal water temperatures. Moreover thermographic measurements of zebra, impala, buffalo and giraffe in the wild show that zebras are no cooler than these other species with whom they live.

The last idea for striping sounds preposterous at first blush – stripes stop biting insects from obtaining a blood meal – but it has a lot of support.

Early experiments in the 1980s reported that tsetse flies and horseflies avoid landing on striped surfaces and has been confirmed more recently .

Most convincingly, however, are data from across the geographic range of the seven living species of equids. Some of these species are striped (zebras), some are not (Asiatic asses) and some are partially striped (African wild ass). Across species and their subspecies, intensity of striping closely parallels biting fly annoyance in Africa and Asia. That is, wild equids indigenous to areas where annoyance from horseflies is prolonged over the year are those most likely to have marked striping patterns.

We think that the reason equids need to be striped in Africa is that African biting flies carry diseases such as trypanosomiasis, African horse sickness and equine influenza which can be fatal to equids. And zebras are particularly susceptible to probing by biting fly mouthparts because of their short cropped coats. Having a fur pattern that helped evade flies and the deadly diseases they carried would be a strong advantage, meaning stripes would be passed on to future generations.

Uniformly colored horses received many more approaches and touchdowns by bothersome flies than did zebras. Image via Martin How.

Testing the idea that stripes and flies don’t mix

But how do stripes actually exert their influence on biting flies? We set out to examine this at a livery in Somerset, U.K., where horseflies collect in the summer.

We were lucky enough to work with Terri Hill, the livery’s owner. We could get very close to her horses and tame plains zebras, allowing us to actually watch flies landing or flying past the equids. We also videoed fly behavior around the animals, and put different colored coats on horses.

It is important to remember that flies have much poorer vision than people. We found that zebras and horses received a similar number of approaches from horseflies, probably attracted by their smell – but zebras experienced far fewer landings. Around horses, flies hover, spiral and turn before touching down again and again. In contrast, around zebras flies either flew right past them or made a single quick landing and flew off again.

Frame-by-frame analyses of our videos showed that flies slowly decelerated as they approached brown or black horses before making a controlled landing. But they failed to decelerate as they approached zebras. Instead they would fly straight past or literally bump into the animal and bounce off.

Striped coats on plain-colored horses reduced the number of fly incursions on covered parts of the body. Image via Tim Caro.

When we placed black coats or white coats or striped coats on the same horse so as to control for any differences in animal behavior or smell, again flies did not land on the stripes. But there was no difference in landing rates on the horse’s naked head, showing that stripes exert their effect close up but do not impede fly approaches at a distance.

And it showed us that striped horse coats, currently sold by two companies, really do work.

So now that we know that stripes affect horseflies really close up, not at a distance, what is actually going on inches away from the host? One idea is that the stripes set up an optical illusion that disrupts the expected pattern of movement the fly experiences as it approaches the zebra, preventing it from landing properly. Another idea is that flies don’t see the zebra as a solid entity but a series of thin black objects. Only when very close do they realize that they’re going to hit a solid body and instead veer off. We are looking into these possibilities now.

So our basic research on fly behavior is not only telling us why zebras are so beautifully striped, but it has real implications for the horse-wear industry, with the potential to make riding and horse maintenance less painful for horse and rider alike.

Tim Caro, Professor of Wildlife, Fish & Conservation Ecology, University of California, Davis and Martin How, Research Fellow in Biological Sciences, University of Bristol

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

from EarthSky https://ift.tt/2H188NV

Scientific testing has zeroed in on the advantages of a zebra’s striped coat. Image via Tim Caro

Help EarthSky keep going! Please donate what you can to our once-yearly crowd-funding campaign.

By Tim Caro, University of California, Davis and Martin How, University of Bristol

Zebras are famous for their contrasting black and white stripes – but until very recently no one really knew why they sport their unusual striped pattern. It’s a question that’s been discussed as far back as 150 years ago by great Victorian biologists like Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace.

Since then many ideas have been put on the table but only in the last few years have there been serious attempts to test them. These ideas fall into four main categories: Zebras are striped to evade capture by predators, zebras are striped for social reasons, zebras are striped to keep cool, or they have stripes to avoid attack by biting flies.

Only the last one stands up to scrutiny. And our latest research helps fill in more of the details on why.

Camouflage? ID? Natural air conditioning? No, no and no. Image via Tim Caro.

What’s the advantage of zebra stripes?

Could stripes help zebras avoid becoming a predator’s meal? There are many problems with this idea. Field experiments show that zebras stand out to the human eye when they’re among trees or in grassland even when illumination is poor – they appear far from camouflaged. And when fleeing from danger, zebras do not behave in ways to maximize any confusion possibly caused by striping, making hypothetical ideas about dazzling predators untenable.

Worse still for this idea, the eyesight of lions and spotted hyenas is much weaker than ours; these predators can only resolve stripes when zebras are very close up, at a distance when they can likely hear or smell the prey anyway. So stripes are unlikely to be of much use in anti-predator defense.

Most damaging, zebras are a preferred prey item for lions – in study after study across Africa, lions kill them more than might be expected from their numerical abundance. So stripes cannot be a very effective anti-predator defense against this important carnivore. So much for the evading-predators hypothesis.

What about the idea that stripes help zebras engage with members of their own species? Every zebra has a unique pattern of striping. Could it be useful in individual recognition? This possibility seems highly unlikely given that uniformly colored domestic horses can recognize other individuals by sight and sound. Striped members of the horse family do not groom each other – a form of social bonding – more than unstriped equid species either. And very unusual unstriped individual zebras are not shunned by group members, and they breed successfully.

What about some kind of defense against the hot African sun? Given that black stripes might be expected to absorb radiation and white stripes reflect it, one idea proposed that stripes set up convection currents along the animal’s back, thereby cooling it.

Field experiments tested how various coloring patterns affected the temperature of water-filled barrels. Image via Gábor Horváth in Scientific Reports.

Again, this seems improbable: Careful experiments in which large water barrels were draped in striped or uniform colored pelts, or were painted striped or unstriped, showed no differences in internal water temperatures. Moreover thermographic measurements of zebra, impala, buffalo and giraffe in the wild show that zebras are no cooler than these other species with whom they live.

The last idea for striping sounds preposterous at first blush – stripes stop biting insects from obtaining a blood meal – but it has a lot of support.

Early experiments in the 1980s reported that tsetse flies and horseflies avoid landing on striped surfaces and has been confirmed more recently .

Most convincingly, however, are data from across the geographic range of the seven living species of equids. Some of these species are striped (zebras), some are not (Asiatic asses) and some are partially striped (African wild ass). Across species and their subspecies, intensity of striping closely parallels biting fly annoyance in Africa and Asia. That is, wild equids indigenous to areas where annoyance from horseflies is prolonged over the year are those most likely to have marked striping patterns.

We think that the reason equids need to be striped in Africa is that African biting flies carry diseases such as trypanosomiasis, African horse sickness and equine influenza which can be fatal to equids. And zebras are particularly susceptible to probing by biting fly mouthparts because of their short cropped coats. Having a fur pattern that helped evade flies and the deadly diseases they carried would be a strong advantage, meaning stripes would be passed on to future generations.

Uniformly colored horses received many more approaches and touchdowns by bothersome flies than did zebras. Image via Martin How.

Testing the idea that stripes and flies don’t mix

But how do stripes actually exert their influence on biting flies? We set out to examine this at a livery in Somerset, U.K., where horseflies collect in the summer.

We were lucky enough to work with Terri Hill, the livery’s owner. We could get very close to her horses and tame plains zebras, allowing us to actually watch flies landing or flying past the equids. We also videoed fly behavior around the animals, and put different colored coats on horses.

It is important to remember that flies have much poorer vision than people. We found that zebras and horses received a similar number of approaches from horseflies, probably attracted by their smell – but zebras experienced far fewer landings. Around horses, flies hover, spiral and turn before touching down again and again. In contrast, around zebras flies either flew right past them or made a single quick landing and flew off again.

Frame-by-frame analyses of our videos showed that flies slowly decelerated as they approached brown or black horses before making a controlled landing. But they failed to decelerate as they approached zebras. Instead they would fly straight past or literally bump into the animal and bounce off.

Striped coats on plain-colored horses reduced the number of fly incursions on covered parts of the body. Image via Tim Caro.

When we placed black coats or white coats or striped coats on the same horse so as to control for any differences in animal behavior or smell, again flies did not land on the stripes. But there was no difference in landing rates on the horse’s naked head, showing that stripes exert their effect close up but do not impede fly approaches at a distance.

And it showed us that striped horse coats, currently sold by two companies, really do work.

So now that we know that stripes affect horseflies really close up, not at a distance, what is actually going on inches away from the host? One idea is that the stripes set up an optical illusion that disrupts the expected pattern of movement the fly experiences as it approaches the zebra, preventing it from landing properly. Another idea is that flies don’t see the zebra as a solid entity but a series of thin black objects. Only when very close do they realize that they’re going to hit a solid body and instead veer off. We are looking into these possibilities now.

So our basic research on fly behavior is not only telling us why zebras are so beautifully striped, but it has real implications for the horse-wear industry, with the potential to make riding and horse maintenance less painful for horse and rider alike.

Tim Caro, Professor of Wildlife, Fish & Conservation Ecology, University of California, Davis and Martin How, Research Fellow in Biological Sciences, University of Bristol

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

from EarthSky https://ift.tt/2H188NV