11 minute read
Unlocking the Mysteries of Space
By Amanda Korsah
In the College of Sciences, many faculty are working on extraordinary research projects related to astronomy and planetary science. This includes discoveries on Sagittarius A*, the black hole located in the center of our galaxy, and working with the recently launched James Webb Space Telescope, the most powerful telescope ever created. Research in the College of Sciences has led to capturing the first-ever images of distant planets and determining previously unknown arcs of new galaxies, among other discoveries. An important contributor in the astronomy and planetary science community, UTSA is a member of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, with Provost Kimberly Espy on the board of directors and Chris Packham and Angela Speck from the Department of Physics and Astronomy serving as representatives.
Discoveries in Planetary Science
In January 2023, Xinting Yu will join the College of Sciences from the University of California Santa Cruz as an assistant professor and will continue her research into understanding planetary materials using aspects of material science. Originally from China, Yu earned her undergraduate degree in space physics at the University of Science and Technology of China where she conducted research on solar physics observing the Sun’s corona. She graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a Ph.D. in planetary science as part of its first planetary science program.
Yu’s primary postdoctoral research is on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, and the organics of its atmosphere. Titan is the only moon in the solar system with an atmosphere. Her study investigates how to simulate the organics on Titan in a laboratory on Earth and understand the roles these organics play in various chemical and physical processes on Titan. By introducing novel material science techniques like colloidal probe atomic force microscopy and nanoindentation into planetary science, she pioneers the material characterization of planetaryrelevant materials on Titan, and she has been extending her planetarymaterial research to other bodies in the solar system and beyond. Yu will continue her research in solar physics at UTSA. “Future work includes using these material properties to enhance the science behind the launch of Dragonfly, a NASA mission to send a drone to Titan in 2034 to investigate its surface,” she said.
Alan Whittington, a professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, is researching volcanology and planetary geology. One of his current projects involves volcanoes on Mars, including Olympus Mons, the biggest volcano in the solar system. Much can be learned from Mars’ volcanoes by examining similar volcanoes on our home planet, like those in Hawaii. High-temperature experiments by Whittington and his lab have assisted in the understanding of the Hawaii eruptions in 2018, particularly how fast lava can flow and how rapidly it cools and stops flowing. Whittington and his lab are also studying how the volcanoes on Mars erupted and what can be learned about the planet’s environment.
Another current project of Whittington’s involves a lunar regolith simulant. The research team is attempting to find a way to build shelter on the Moon. Much experimentation has gone into melting lunar soil into bricks to be used for landing and launching pads on the Moon. Whittington’s group works with Astroport Space Technologies Inc., a company that is developing patent-pending regolith solidification technologies for lunar infrastructure construction. Whittington’s research will provide measurements such as heat capacity and thermal conductivity to help determine how much energy will be needed to melt the rock. “We hope that our research contributes to the development of landing pads and habitats that will allow future scientists to go and do fieldwork on the Moon, Mars and beyond in order to further our understanding of how other terrestrial bodies formed and evolved through time,” Whittington said.
Thayne Currie, an associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, focuses on directly imaging planets around other stars, known as extrasolar planets. To carry out this research, he primarily works on the Subaru Coronagraphic Extreme Adaptive Optics (SCExAO) project on the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii. This instrument pushes the frontiers of what is possible for imaging extrasolar planets from ground-based telescopes by advancing new, key technologies. Right now, he mainly uses SCExAO to image fully formed gas giant extrasolar planets, similar to Jupiter. SCExAO can measure and quantify atmospheric properties of these planets, like clouds and gravity.
Currie is also using SCExAO to detect protoplanets, which are planets in the process of forming that are still embedded in disks of gas and dust around infant stars. Detecting many protoplanets could potentially construct a fossil record for understanding the earliest stages of the solar system’s formation. Imaging and characterizing protoplanets and fully formed planets around other stars helps us to better understand the formation and evolution of our solar system. In the future, technology honed with SCExAO will allow us to image rocky, Earth-size planets that may harbor life. “UTSA students interested in planets around other stars can be involved in this research,” said Currie.
Celestial Body Exploration
Eric Schlegel, a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, focuses a portion of his research on the astrophysics of interacting binary stars and X-ray emissions of spiral galaxies. Schlegel’s research primarily focuses on the unknown arcs called “burps” around Galaxy NGC 5195 and what caused the outward shock of the burps. He was part of the team that coined the term “burp” in relation to the black hole back in 2016. He suspects that the creation of the burps was caused either by material from a nearby galaxy called the NGC 5194 galaxy, or material that rushed towards the black hole; the black hole could not handle the material and pushed it back out, hence, the ‘burps.’
“Mass can build up around a black hole because of angular momentum: Think rock whirling over your head because of a connecting rope,” he said. “If that mass were then hit with a lot more mass, it would essentially be equivalent to a large road accident. When a lot of mass hits a lot of mass, you tend to create shocks that push mass into an empty space.” Schlegel and his colleagues are looking at the illuminated material and attempting to understand what they see as a shock. One test they conduct to see whether their interpretation is correct involves looking at different wavelengths. A shock that appears in the X-ray band is almost guaranteed to also be visible in radio waves. They are testing their interpretation using radio data with the Very Large Array radio telescope in New Mexico. “Astronomy is just as interesting now as it was when I was young,” said Schlegel.
Richard Anantua, an assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, has made quite an impact in black hole research using the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). Anantua is the head of the first EHT research group in Texas and has performed outreach to diversify the STEM field with programs such as the National Society of Black Physicists/Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory Event Horizon Telescope (NSBP/SAO EHT) Scholars program. His research tries to understand the images that can be seen from the Event Horizon Telescope, including the black hole-distorted regions of space and time around M87 and Sagittarius A*. What we understand as black holes are sectors of spacetime with a gravitational field so strong that light cannot escape.
Anantua’s research focuses on developing models of how energy in plasma is transmitted in particles. He uses data from a global array extending from the South Pole Telescope to the Greenland Telescope to compare with his models and understand how plasma looks around the black hole. His model simulations matched the data collected, indicating that turbulent processes where radiation is hottest can help scientists understand plasma thermodynamics. “Learning more about the black hole and its properties can increase our knowledge of the fundamental basis of our world and the general advancement of science,” said Anantua.
Chris Packham, a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, specializes in infrared instrumentation and astrophysical observations. He is using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)— the largest and most powerful telescope ever created—to understand the supermassive black holes at the center of certain distant galaxies. As the supermassive black hole devours gas and dust, it produces substantial amounts of heat and light. Packham and his colleagues are trying to understand the effect of these black holes on their galaxy and what effect the galaxy has on the black hole, and how the galaxy affects the creation of the supermassive black hole. This knowledge
could be used to help understand how the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way could affect our local region of the galaxy.
Packham, in collaboration with UTSA’s School of Music, hosted an event on Oct. 20 at the Main Campus called “Interstellar.” The event highlighted the stunning images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope with an astounding choral experience put together by the School of Music. “The JWST affords us an incredible opportunity to observe the universe in ways that we haven’t had before, and it’s wonderful to have UTSA faculty and students fully involved in this project,” Packham said.
As a professor and the chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy, Angela Speck makes it her mission to introduce her love of space to her students and everyone around her. Speck is an expert on solar eclipses and space dust. Most people do not ever witness an eclipse in their lifetime. “Even though there is a total solar eclipse somewhere on Earth approximately every 18 months, the time between total solar eclipses at one specific location on Earth averages 375 years,” said Speck. However, these eclipses are not evenly spaced: southern Illinois and southeast Missouri saw a total eclipse in 2017 and will again in 2024.
The locations where total eclipses occur need to be prepared to ensure safety for onlookers. Beyond helping communities prepare for total eclipses, Speck has also been involved with monitoring atmospheric response to total eclipses. She also investigates space dust, which are small particles from cosmic bodies that coast through space. Speck researches how the nature of space dust and her results could potentially mitigate climate change. One hypothesis is that space dust injected into the Earth’s stratosphere would reflect sunlight and protect the Earth from increasing temperatures. To test this, Speck is evaluating the reaction of dust to starlight and how that depends on dust composition, grain size and shape in order to model how such dust would impact the Earth’s atmosphere.
How a Galaxy Is Formed
David Silva, a distinguished professor of Physics and Astronomy and the dean of the College of Sciences, has long been interested in the formation and evolution of galaxies. Working with telescopes on the ground and in space, astronomers like Silva can infer the age of a star, when it was born and when it will die, where it is located, its threedimensional motion through space, and its chemical composition. This knowledge can illuminate how our home galaxy, the Milky Way, was formed and what lies in its future. Working with the same or similar telescopes, astronomers can study how more distant galaxies formed and evolved over cosmic time. Silva is a former director of the National Science Foundation’s National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO), the preeminent U.S. national center for ground-based, nighttime optical and infrared astronomy. Silva participated in the National Academies Decadal Survey of Astronomy and Astrophysics 2020. The final report, titled “Pathways to Discovery in Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 2020s,” provides a roadmap for astronomy and astrophysics in the United States for the next 10 years. Silva served on the subcommittee for optical and infrared astronomy from the ground. As part of this subcommittee, Silva worked with colleagues to examine what has happened in astronomy in the past in order to determine which projects to prioritize for the next decade. One notable recommended project was the U.S. Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) Program, which will ultimately help astronomers access the entire sky from Hawaii to Chile. The U.S. ELT Program is a multi-billion-dollar collaboration between U.S. federal, state (including Texas A&M and UT Austin) and private entities with several international partners. “The combination of the U.S. ELT Program observatories with other observatories, such as the James Webb Space Telescope, will open exciting new windows on the origins of the first galaxies in our universe,” said Silva.
Approximately every 18 months
Graduate Program in Physics with Specialization in Space Physics and Instrumentation
Robert Ebert is an adjoint faculty member in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at UTSA and a principal scientist at Southwest Research Institute (SwRI). He is a member of the UTSA–SwRI Space Physics Graduate Program, which offers master’s and doctoral programs and research opportunities in space physics, planetary science and astrophysics. Space physics is the study of charged particles, magnetic and electric fields, and currents associated with the Sun and the space environment around the Earth and other planets. SwRI scientists who associate with this program study these topics primarily through the analysis and interpretation of in-situ- and remote-sensing observations from instruments developed at SwRI that are located on satellites currently operating in space. They are also involved in developing new space missions. Students are directly involved in analyzing and modeling these spacebased observations and in supporting the development of instrumentation for space physics, planetary science and astrophysics applications.
