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Tue Apr 23 17:48:26 CDT 2019

Hi all,

 I am on the plane to Sweden and Norway,…then Georgia (in the US), Brazil, California…which will include a visit to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, then to Missouri, and heading home on May 25th… every day is filled with either travel or presentations so it will be very interesting to go to all these different places, one after the other…I’ve never attempted to do so much, it will be interesting to see what happens…different languages, cultures, and time zones...everything is excellent with me, I always feel so fortunate and I am very thankful…this is my first visit to Sweden, I’ve been trying for about 5 years so I know will be very special…

I think I may have mentioned that I am now a Solar System Ambassador for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena…it is really amazing, can’t wait to see it…on of the cool thins they do is send info for teachers who want to attend lectures on many different space related subjects…I will include one, if you have a chance, try to check it out, let me know what you think…

I will be in Missouri from the 22nd-24th in the Waynesville and Springfield areas... if you would like me to visit your school, please let me know so we can try to get a schedule…if possible, spend a couple of days in Waynesville/Laquey, the the 24th in Springfield…we have to remember to always do our best, enjoy everything we do, believe in ourselves, and let those we care about most know…hugs & smiles…:-) :-) love ya, Gabe

The Astromaterials Research & Exploration Science Division at JSC will be hosting an upcoming webinar entitled: Exploring Mars: Journey to the Red Planet.
 Date:  April 25, 2019
Time:  10am PT (1pm ET)
Website:  https://ares.jsc.nasa.gov/interaction/webinars/webinar_detail.cfm?webinar_id=10 <https://ares.jsc.nasa.gov/interaction/webinars/webinar_detail.cfm?webinar_id=10>

Description
Join us for a FREE NASA Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science (ARES) interactive webinar designed to engage educators and their students (targeting grades 5-9 – though other grade levels are welcome to join in!) as they interact with Doug Ming, a NASA Scientist at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX.  Doug will share information about his career path to NASA as well as information about exploring Mars and considerations for humans and the journey to the Red Planet.  Register to participate in the LIVE event or to receive an ARCHIVE recording link.  The interactive presentation will last approximately 40-45 minutes followed by an optional ~15-30 bonus minutes for Q&A.

If registration is not received prior to four hours of the start of the live event, you will likely only be able to participate using the archived recording. 

NOTE:  Events are primarily geared towards students and teachers in grades 5-9 although other grade levels and interested formal or informal educators are welcome to participate.

You are welcome to share this opportunity announcement with any interested formal or informal educators.  As Solar System Ambassadors, please note the following details about registration:
If you plan to register to participate as an individual Solar System Ambassador (without other audience members such as students), please register using SSA and your state when asked to provide you school/organization name.  
If you are a Solar System Ambassador and also happen to be an educator at a school and plan to attend with your students, please register with your school name and indicate somewhere on the registration form that you are an SSA.

If you have questions about the webinar, please contact Paige Graff at:  paige.v.graff at nasa.gov <mailto:paige.v.graff at nasa.gov>

The Moon Shines with Jupiter and Saturn This Week! Here's How to See It
When the bright planet Jupiter rises in the southeastern sky at about 12:15 a.m. local time on Tuesday morning, April 23, it will be positioned 3 degrees to the lower left of the waning gibbous moon. The moon and planet will cross the sky together for the rest of the night, eventually moving to a point low in the southwestern pre-dawn sky. The duo will make a lovely photo opportunity when composed with an interesting foreground landscape.(Image: © Starry Night software <https://www.space.com/%E2%80%9Dhttp://www.starrynight.com/%E2%80%9D>)
If you're up late in the coming nights, you may want to pay attention to the waning gibbous moon — for it will be visiting the two largest gas giants of our solar system early on Tuesday and Thursday mornings (April 23 and 25). 

On Tuesday morning, the moon will sidle up to the largest planet in our solar system, giant Jupiter. Then, two mornings later, on Thursday, the moon will meet up with the ringed wonder of our planetary system, Saturn.

Of course, such alignments are all just a matter of perspective. Our moon will be about 243,000 miles (390,000 kilometers) away from Earth, while Jupiter is 430 million miles (692 million km) distant and Saturn is even farther out in space, at 907 million miles (1.46 billion km). 

Related: Best Night-Sky Events of April (Stargazing Maps) <https://www.space.com/33974-best-night-sky-events.html>

We Could Soon Watch a Black Hole in Action, Gobbling Up Matter in Real Time
This image by the Event Horizon Telescope project shows the event horizon of the supermassive black hole at the heart of the M87 galaxy.(Image: © EHT Collaboration)
DENVER — Last week, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) released the first-ever image of a black hole's shadow <https://www.livescience.com/65196-black-hole-event-horizon-image.html> cast against the hot gas of its accretion disk. That image, of the black hole at the center of galaxy Messier 87 (M87), was front page news all over the world. Soon, the EHT will produce the first movie of that hot gas whirling chaotically around the shadow, said project leaders who spoke Sunday (April 14) here at the April meeting of the American Physical Society.

The EHT isn't a single telescope. Rather, it's a network of radio telescopes all over the world making precisely timed recordings of radio waves all together, and these recordings can be combined such that the different telescope all act as one. As more individual radio telescopes join the EHT and the team updates the project's recording technology, the detail of the images should increase dramatically <https://www.livescience.com/65203-black-hole-why-so-long.html>, Shep Doeleman, the Harvard University astronomer who lead the EHT project said in his talk. And then, the team should be able to produce movies of black holes in action, he said.

"It turns out that even now, with what we have, we may be able, with certain prior assumptions, to look at rotational signatures [evidence of the accretion disk swirling around the event horizon]," Doeleman said. "And then, if we had many more stations, then we could really start to see in real time movies of the black hole accretion and rotation." [9 Ideas About Black Holes That Will Blow Your Mind <https://www.livescience.com/65170-9-weird-facts-black-holes.html>]

In the case of the black hole in M87, Doeleman told Live Science after his talk, making a movie will be pretty straightforward. The black hole is enormous <https://www.livescience.com/65200-black-hole-event-horizon-image-questions-remain.html>, even for a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy: It's 6.5 billion times the mass of Earth's sun, with its event horizon — the point beyond which not even light can return — enclosing a sphere as wide as our entire solar system. So, the hot matter of this black hole's accretion disk takes a long time to make a single trek around the object.

This Is the Last Photo Israel's Beresheet Moon Lander Ever Took

Beresheet's final photo: The Israeli moon lander captured this image on April 11, 2019, when it was just 9 miles (15 kilometers) above the lunar surface.(Image: © SpaceIL via Twitter)
Beresheet's farewell photo shows the battered patch of lunar ground that would become the little probe's final resting place.

The privately funded Israeli moon lander, whose name means "in the beginning" in Hebrew, crashed during its historic touchdown bid <https://www.space.com/israeli-beresheet-moon-landing-attempt-fails.html> on April 11 after suffering an engine glitch. The problem apparently began with a manually entered command <https://www.space.com/israel-beresheet-moon-crash-manual-command.html>, which led to a regrettable chain reaction, Beresheet's handlers have said.

And now we know what Beresheet <https://www.space.com/spaceil-beresheet.html> was looking at during its last moments, thanks to a photo released yesterday (April 17) by the nonprofit organization SpaceIL, which ran the moon mission along with the company Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI).

Related: Israel's 1st Moon Lander Beresheet in Pictures <https://www.space.com/43188-israel-first-moon-lander-spaceil-beresheet-photos.html>
What Happened Before the Big Bang?

Credit: Shutterstock
The Big Bang is commonly thought of as the start of it all: About 13.8 billion years ago, the observable universe went boom and expanded into being.

But what were things like before the Big Bang?

Short answer: We don't know. Long answer: It could have been a lot of things, each mind-bending in its own way. [How Massive Is the Milky Way? <https://www.livescience.com/63410-llm-how-much-milky-way-weighs.html>]

There's a Tiny, Bright Magnetar Photobombing Our Galaxy's Supermassive Black Hole

An image from Chandra shows how the magnetar suddenly lit up in front of the black hole in 2013.
Credit: Chandra X-Ray Observatory
There's a bright magnetar photobombing the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, frustrating astronomers' efforts to study the black hole — called Sagittarius A* — using X-ray telescopes.

SagA* is the nearest known supermassive black hole to Earth. And while it's far smaller, quieter and dimmer than the recently imaged black hole <https://www.livescience.com/65196-black-hole-event-horizon-image.html> at the center of the galaxy Messier 87, it still represents one of the best opportunities astronomers have for understanding how black holes <https://www.livescience.com/65238-wormholes-link-entangled-black-holes.html>behave and interact with their surrounding environments. But back in 2013, a magnetar <https://www.livescience.com/64999-sleeping-magnetar-wakes-up.html> — an ultradense star (also called a neutron star) wrapped in powerful magnetic fields — between SagA* and Earth lit up, and ever since has been messing with efforts to observe the black hole using X-ray telescopes.

"We think of this as maybe a shattering of the neutron star surface, or some really violent event on the neutron star that causes it to get very, very bright and then fade slowly over time," said Daryl Haggard, a physicist at McGill University in Montreal who studies SagA* and the galactic center. [3 Huge Questions the Black Hole Image Didn't Answer <https://www.livescience.com/65200-black-hole-event-horizon-image-questions-remain.html>]