NASA s Ames Research Center
Naseem Rangwala, project scientist at NASA Ames, standing near the door to enter SOFIA. Credits: NASA/SOFIA
One textbook chapter turned Naseem Rangwala into someone intent on studying the mysteries of the universe. Today she does just that, as project scientist for NASA’s flying telescope, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy.
Naseem Rangwala can’t think of a single unmarried woman from the small community where she grew up who moved abroad in pursuit of a career. But then, one day, she pulled up her roots from her hometown in India and made her way to NASA.
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SAN ANTONIO April 27, 2021 The Polarimeter to UNify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) mission has selected four early career scientists as associate investigators to pursue solar science under the mentorship of senior PUNCH science team members. Southwest Research Institute is leading PUNCH, a NASA Small Explorer (SMEX) mission that will integrate understanding of the Sun s corona, the outer atmosphere visible during total solar eclipses, with the solar wind filling the solar system.
The solar wind, a supersonic stream of charged particles emitted by the Sun, fills the heliosphere, the bubble-like region of space encompassing our solar system. Its boundary, where the interstellar medium and solar wind pressures balance, ends the sphere of the Sun s influence.
Margaret Meixner: Thank you, Tom.
Tom Temin: Now, Dr. Meixner, you’re with the Universities Space Research Association – that’s a kind of a third element in this whole setup. Tell us how the program is set up and what the association’s role in it is.
Margaret Meixner: Sure, NASA Ames manages the whole SOFIA project, but they partner with – in tandem with the Universities Space Research Association. And we manage basically that, we bridge the science to the community into the public. So we basically deliver the science.
Tom Temin: Got it. So this is one of many projects that the association is involved with?
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COLUMBIA, Md, April 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ After making numerous discoveries of how magnetic fields shape our universe, an instrument flying on board the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), is about to get even faster at gathering data.
SOFIA is upgrading the High-resolution Airborne Wideband Camera-Plus, or HAWC+ with four new detectors that will allow it to study magnetic fields in distant galaxies four times faster than its current rate. We want to speed up the pace of scientific discovery, and we can do that by making HAWC+ even better, said Dr. Margaret Meixner, Director of Science Mission Operations at Universities Space Research Association. This upgrade is part of a number of initiatives we re implementing to take SOFIA into the future.
Galactic Merger Warps Magnetic Fields
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What happens when two galaxies collide?
One of the brightest galaxies in the night sky, Centaurus A, is well known for its distinct S shape. This shape is believed to be the result of a clash between a spiral and an elliptical galaxy about 100 million years ago.
Now, for the first time, scientists have mapped out the invisible magnetic fields pulsing through Centaurus A using infrared light. The results show how the merging of the two original galaxies created a new, reshaped, and contorted galaxy that not only combined the two galaxies magnetic fields but amplified their forces.