Radiation damage to Hubble has been 4.3 years out of phase with the Solar cycle

ppppone about 5 hours ago 26 commentsRead Article on arxiv.org

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jimrandomh•about 1 hour ago

Is the relevant radiation solar radiation, or is there damage from radiation coming from the direction the optics are pointed? If it's the latter, then maybe the sun's emissions interact with inbound particles from sources outside the solar system? (I don't have sufficient background or time to check whether the paper already rules this out.)

two_handfuls•about 2 hours ago

This sounds like the "hmm this is strange" first step of discovery.

metalman•about 1 hour ago

cue:ominous creapy alien sound track .play

gramie•25 minutes ago

And the nearest star to our solar system is 4.3 light years away. Coincidence?

:-)

ck2•about 4 hours ago

you should see what cosmic rays do to space telescopes

public almost never sees what raw images look like

RAW https://blog.galaxyzoo.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/spiral...

FINAL https://blog.galaxyzoo.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/spiral...

* https://blog.galaxyzoo.org/2010/04/12/how-to-handle-hubble-i...

they also slowly destroy the sensors since they are physical particles moving at almost the speed of light

netsharc•about 3 hours ago

Reminds me of the radiation after Chernobyl causing flashes on the physical film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOLBEx5DBaE

CamperBob2•14 minutes ago

Also the sobering footage taken by this YouTuber by sending a GoPro through a particle accelerator: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uf4Ux4SlyT4

adonovan•about 1 hour ago

Can anyone tell whether these exposures occurred through the camera lens (from fallout particles in the sky of the depicted scenes) or in post- (or pre-) exposure handling of the film from hot dust carried by the photographer?

saltcured•34 minutes ago

They are not part of the image of the scene. They wouldn't be focused by the optics.

The optics would just be a slight attenuation much like the rest of the camera housing, film reel, operator, etc. So really a summation of all the exposure types you can imagine.

matherial•about 1 hour ago

There's no reason they would preferentially travel through the lens and hit the current frame because most of the camera and film housing is about as transparent to gamma radiation as glass. Or maybe more transparent, because glass lenses in pro cameras tend to be rather bulky.

So this just happened somewhere between arrival to and departure from the zone.

jurebb•about 2 hours ago

thank you so much for this link! I have been trying to search for footage of this phenomenon (in the pre-llm era) 10+y ago

plmpsu•about 3 hours ago

Oh wow, I thought those were stars at first.

r_lee•about 3 hours ago

thanks for the links, that's really interesting to look at

do you happen to know how exactly those artifacts are cleaned up?

icegreentea2•about 2 hours ago

The blog link describes the cleanup process.

They take two pictures, each taking up half the total observation period. If you subtract the two images, the deltas should be the cosmic ray flashes. You can then subtract those out. They use two pictures as opposed to more to minimize the impact of readout noise.

To deal with "stuck pixel" type errors, they can slightly shift the camera between the two observations. They can counter act the shift before doing the initial subtraction.

srean•9 minutes ago

Signal processing / denoising of astronomical images is a field of study onto itself.

If you are like me you will find it super interesting. There is immense variety based upon what kind of telescope, what do you want to capture, whether it's for science or astrophotography (aesthetics).

If you are into math side of things you can begin with Richardson-Lucy as a starting point and stacking.

empiricus•32 minutes ago

funny how this also eliminates "close" fast moving objects. which I guess is a feature for a telescope

shrubble•about 3 hours ago

One way is to take a “blank” picture which will then show just the noise; then use that as a reference for what can be removed from the image.

rbanffy•about 3 hours ago

The blank should only show long term damage. Hits while the sensor is collecting light can be averaged out from multiple readings of the sensor.

javier2•about 2 hours ago

its actually quite doable. any cosmic rays will not be present in two pictures in a row. any permanent damage will be exactly the same in all pictures.

lofaszvanitt•about 3 hours ago

photoshop ;D, or using multiple pictures

superkuh•about 4 hours ago

It's well known that higher solar wind/CMEs density/speed/etc that comes with the peak of the 11 year intensity cycles scatters cosmic rays before they enter the inner heliosphere. Combine this with the 1~3 years it takes for the solar wind to travel out through the heliosphere and you get the phase difference. Really cool unintended sensor empirical data on it though.

Don't try to correlate with the sun spots, correlate with the solar wind/cmes from the spots getting out far enough to effectively scatter the incoming cosmic rays away.

3lambda•about 3 hours ago

I thought it only takes a few days for solar wind to travel from the sun to the Earth? Can you clarify?

terminalbraid•about 4 hours ago

The paper claims directly "the rate of degradation over time remains unsatisfactorily unpredictable" but you are claiming the authors do not understand or are unaware of the point you are making?

superkuh•about 4 hours ago

I think what I explained is known by anyone in solar physics. I cannot believe they would not have discussed it. It's absence in the paper is weird. But I think unpredictable refers more to LEO in the context of the paper where things are indeed more dynamic that just the 11 year periodicity of cosmic rays from solar activity causing scattering in the heliosphere.

DANmode•about 3 hours ago

Identifying a mechanism is not predicting its rate.

There may be another variable they’re trying to pin down.