Observing Comet Garradd - not

There is something ironic about snow and ice now on Earth preventing us from observing snow and ice from 4.5 billion years ago. But last night was a bust - snow and ice on the dome of the Gemini Telescope meant that we could not even go up the mountain, the telescope was closed.

Oh well, tonight's a new night. Oh well ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KE4HlmtOcg

Observing Comet Garradd (C-2009/P1)

The Gemini North telescope at the Mauna Kea Observatory, Hawaii

March 6, 2012

The summit of Maunakea is a cruel place. At 4,200 metres it is cruel because it is cold and sometimes very windy. But it is super-cruel because it can tease you - just above the telescope the sky can be clear with wonderfully bright stars; at the telescope itself it is too windy to open the dome and there is ridge cloud that makes the air too humid and the chance of ice forming on the telescope mirror to great to take a risk. After all, the telescope cost $90 million, and you can't take risks with that.

Oh, and I haven't introduced this properly yet.

So, I am at the Mauna Kea observatory in Hawaii with the purpose of observing Comet C-2009/P1 Garradd. This was the first comet discovered in 2009 and was thought to be on a "normal" periodic cometary orbit which would bring back close to the Sun from the icy depths of the Solar System at regular intervals. It might even have been round before it was discovered. Not so.

Garradd, which is recently past its closest approach to the Sun and just past its closest approach to Earth, is a one off. It has spent the last 4.5 billion years in what is known as the Oort Cloud, 50 thousand times further from the Sun than is our home planet Earth. Something in the environment of the outer Solar System gave it a kick and sent it crashing in towards the Sun. But it's not coming back - when the orbit was recalculated after the first discovery it was found that once past the Sun, Garradd would be hurled out of the Solar System altogether, never to be seen by humans again - or not until we get really good at space travel and surviving off-Earth for generations at a time.

Steve(left) and Bob (right) in front of the 8-metre diameter main mirror of Gemini

That makes the four nights that my colleague Bob Barber and I have been awarded on the Gemini North telescope very precious. We are here to work out how much water and ammonia the comet is giving off. Because Garradd is essentially a pristine relic of the early Solar System, finding out how much of what it has in it provides important clues into just what was in the cloud of gas, dust and ice that formed the Sun, the planets and everything else in our local space neighbourhood.

But the weather at the summit is just not cooperating, and we are closed up. And the prospects for tomorrow are not much better. Indeed, we may even get snow. The temperature outside is -7 degrees centigrade, and the wind speed is over 100 kilometres per hour, so if we do get snow there is a danger that the whole summit will be closed off. Doesn't someone up there know that if we miss this chance to view Garradd, it's not like waiting for the next bus. It's now or never (cue Elvis).

Maybe the weather forecasters are wrong and tomorrow will be better not worse. So here's a rainbow of hope over Hilo Bay, where Bob and started out from yesterday afternoon. More tomorrow, then, I hope.

One more day of hard work with good results. We got 1.25 meters in the fourth borehole. The first 40 cm were pure ice followed by permafrost of volcanic ash. Really interesting!!!. Laboratory work confirmed plenty of biomarkers including DNA, on the samples from the previous boreholes. Crossing fingers for same results in the last one. Also some bacteria started to grow.

We had to stop the fourth and last borehole due to other snow storm. We have a terrible storm but we have to recover material from the top of the hill because the Spanish ship Las Palmas will pick us up in two days for crossing Hoces Sea. Going back to Ushuaia. Be tuned…. Others results from Madrid lab will be post on the blog in a near future.
I would like to thank, from here, to the Spanish Army of XXV Spanish campaign to Antarctica with Mr. Casals as major and commander of the Gabriel de Castilla base for their help anymoment of our research. Our work had been impossible to develop without them.

Permafrost in Antarctica

The last two days were really productive. Good weather, not so strong wind and finally we got 1m 52 cm in the third borehole. We decided to drill this third borehole in a permafrost area.  After drilling at high and middle temperature we pretended to get cold temperature to look for psychrophiles. Cold loving bacteria leaving nearby to hot environment (hydrothermal volcanic source), tremendously interesting from an Astrobiology point of view. We had finally to stop drilling due to a very strong snow, but we have identified a very interesting place for a fourth borehole: Glacial ice on the top of a frosted (permafrost) volcanic ash.  Tremendously similar environment to the Martian permafrost basaltic areas. The cross sections will allow us to identify not only psycrophiles but also some mesophiles and thermopiles. These contact environments are possible new places to include in the Trans National Access 1 activity in a possible future Europlanet RI project extension. I will propose it for the future.

Will continue….

More about Antarctica

Still bad weather around. Finally we decided yesterday to go up to the hill just to continue with the second borehole. We got 60 cm depth at the second point the day before. The second point to be drilled was selected due to the proximity to the fault but not high temperature in the ground. At the very top of the column the temperature was 2 ºC. We started to drill and got 60 cm with 67 ºC. Finally, yesterday we got 1.10 m with 63 ºC at the bottom. 

Samples look like very interesting due to their composition, volcanic ashes with organic matter. Some bugs are growing after culturing them.

Some animals were very interested in us as represented in the picture. 

Antarctica

Today starts the trip to the cold of Antarctica. Members of Europlanet community are travelling to the Spanish Base in Deception Isle. 

Felipe Gomez, from Astrobiology Center in Madrid and coordinator of activities TNA 1 and JRA 2 of Europlanet RI project will be blogging directly from Antarctica. We are waiting right now for the ship that will transport us to the isle from Punta Arenas in Chile.

It will be a trip of four days. During two days we will be travelling along the Hoces Sea, one of the most stormy area in the world. We expect a "funny" travers to Antarcica. We will tell you in some days after all. After those four days we expect to have internet access to continue with our blogging activity in the Europlanet webWe will be posting the progress of the trip, pictures and the work we will be implementing along the following month in Antarctica.

Just we arrived to Gabriel de Castilla Spanish base. This base is managed by Spanish military personnel fro Defence Ministry. It is a pleasure for us to be here with these nice people supporting us for any necessity we could have in our work.

The team we are here is composed by Graciela de Diego, Mercedes Moreno, Olga Prieto and myself, Felipe Gomez.

We pretend to study the microbial diversity along the traverse between a thermal environment in the top of “Cerro Caliente” (hot mountain) and the permafrost in the down part of the valley.

Gabriel de Castilla Base is located at Deception Island in Antarctica, which is the tip of an active volcano with hydrothermal sources around. This is the part in we are interested on, in contact with the cold environment of the permafrost.

The first work day was yesterday with a very bad weather, snow and hard wind in the top of Cerro Caliente.

We arrived to the Spanish Base a couple of days ago after the traverse of Hoces Sea. We traversed this area in Las Palmas ship, a military vessel. Hoces or Drake Sea is one of the stormiest areas around the world, and normally, the traverse is very hard with strong movement of the vessel.

More news from Antarctica:

The methology to apply for sampling is drilling with an electrical engine for taking samples at 1 m. We will do three different drills at three different locations: at the top of the hill where a heat source is located, a nearby location where not so high temperature is located and, finally, just in the valley, where permafrost is located.

Today we started to drill in the top of Cerro Caliente. The place has a wonderful view to the entrance (Neptune docs) to the internal sea of the cone of the volcano. But, as usually, the weather was hard to deal with. But, finally, there is good news; after a hard drilling day we got samples at 80 cm deep. The temperature of the samples was 167 ºC. The temperature gradient just promises good scientific conclusions. To be continued…

Europlanet and the Future

We are gathered together at the beautiful Austrian Academy of Sciences to discuss the future of Europlanet.  We are nearing the end of the current project, which has been funded by the European Commission's Framework 7 programme for the 2009-2012 time period.  In this phase, Europlanet has covered a wide range of activities: it has brought together Europe's planetary scientists at the annual European Planetary Science Congress (EPSC) and science workshops, enabled personnel exchanges, developed of modelling tools and catalogues, and even organised field trips to places on Earth that resemble Mars and Europa.

But what does the European planetary community want for the future and how can they go about achieving their goals?  It's an interesting topic leading to lively discussion.

In the shorter term, the announcement went out yesterday for EPSC 2012, which will be held in Madrid. The meeting will cover the scope of planetary science with typically 50 sessions of different types.  For details, see http://www.epsc2012.eu/