Mysterious Ultra-Red Galaxies May Be Cosmic 'Missing Link' (SPACE.com)

Scientists have spied a new type of ultra-red galaxy lurking at the far reaches of the universe, a new study reports.

Using NASA's Spitzer space telescope, the astronomers spotted four remarkably red galaxies nearly 13 billion light-years from Earth — meaning it's taken their light about 13 billion years to reach us. So researchers are seeing the galaxies as they were in the early days of the universe, which itself is about 13.7 billion years old.

NASA's Hubble space telescope has imaged even more ancient galaxies, but the four ruddy objects seen by Spitzer are a breed apart, researchers said.

"Hubble has shown us some of the first protogalaxies that formed, but nothing that looks like this," study co-author Giovanni Fazio, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said in a statement. "In a sense, these galaxies might be a 'missing link' in galactic evolution."

The four newfound galaxies shine much more brightly in infrared light than in visible wavelengths, which is how the infrared-sensitive Spitzer was able to detect them. The research team still isn't sure why they're so strikingly red.

There are three main reasons why a galaxy may appear red, researchers said. First, it may be extremely dusty. Second, it could contain many old, red stars. Or third, the galaxy may be extremely distant, in which case the expansion of the universe has stretched its light to very long (and very red) wavelengths.

All three of these factors may be in play in the newfound galaxies' case, researchers said. But they're not sure, since much about them remains mysterious.

"We've had to go to extremes to get the models to match our observations," said study lead author Jiasheng Huang, also of the CfA.

The four galaxies are grouped together and appear to be physically associated, rather than constituting a chance alignment of like objects, researchers said.

The team hopes to study the galaxies further, perhaps employing powerful ground-based instruments such as the Atacama Large Millimeter Array in Chile. And they'd like to find more examples of this new type of galactic "species."

"There's evidence for others in other regions of the sky," Fazio said. "We'll analyze more Spitzer and Hubble observations to track them down."

The astronomers reported their results online in the Astrophysical Journal.

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'Missing' Moon Dust Turns Up at St. Louis Auction (SPACE.com)

NASA has recovered a few grains of moon dust after learning that the lunar material was set to be auctioned off in St. Louis this month, federal prosecutors announced Thursday (June 23).

There's not much of the stuff — just some residue attached to a piece of transparent tape one-eighth of an inch (3 millimeters) wide. But its origin and history are what make the dust special: It came down to Earth in July 1969 with the Apollo 11 astronauts, who were the first humans to set foot on the lunar surface.

The United States Attorney's Office for Eastern Missouri learned in early June that the moon dust was going to be auctioned off in St. Louis. NASA investigators then contacted the auction house, Regency-Superior Auctions, which withdrew the material, prosecutors said.

Officials from the U.S. Attorney's Office took possession of the tape last Friday (June 17), then handed it over to NASA. The material was returned to the agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston on Monday (June 20). [Photos: Our Changing Moon]

The federal government regards the Apollo lunar samples as national treasures. It has never knowingly given moon rocks or loose moon dust to private individuals. But no arrests have been made in this case.

The woman who consigned the tape to Regency-Superior inherited it from her late husband, who apparently acquired it in good faith, officials said. The woman's name has not been released.

"In this particular situation, there was no wrong done," said space history expert Robert Pearlman, editor of the website collectSPACE.com, which is a SPACE.com partner. "Everyone cooperated."

Selling is not a crime

It's not illegal per se to sell lunar materials, Pearlman said. It all depends on how the seller came into possession of the samples. And people have gotten a hold of moon dust legally.

For example, NASA gave Apollo astronauts the patches from the outsides of their spacesuits, which had become impregnated with lunar dust. And the agency once released from its inventory a so-called "temporary stowage bag" used on one of the Apollo flights to hold small items during the mission.

In the course of the flight, the items placed in the bag stained the interior with moon dust. When the bag was later sold during an Oct. 2000 auction, its new owner found some smatterings of the remaining moon dust inside when he opened it up, Pearlman said.

A dusty film cartridge

The moon dust to be auctioned in St. Louis this month was originally lodged in the film cartridge of a camera used by Apollo 11 astronauts, who apparently dropped it on the surface of the moon.

Back then, a NASA employee named Terry Slezak was in charge of processing the film brought back from the Apollo missions. When he opened this particular cartridge, dust poured out, getting all over his hands. Slezak thus became the non-astronaut ever to touch lunar material with his bare hands.

According to Slezak, he used a towel and some transparent tape to clear the dust off the film, the New York Times reported.

The Apollo 11 astronauts later presented Slezak with a signed commemorative poster board, complete with pictures showing a smiling Slezak holding his dusty hand up for the camera. Slezak affixed the dusty piece of tape to the poster.

"I thought that would be kind of neat," Slezak told the Times.

Slezak sold the poster at auction in 2001 for just over $25,000, Pearlman said. While Slezak was never authorized to take the dust-flecked tape, he maintains that NASA has never questioned him about the matter.

Later, the dusty tape from the poster board was cut up into tiny pieces, some of which were also put up for sale. A piece three-eighths of an inch (9 mm) wide has sold for about $6,000, and slivers the size of the one Regency-Superior was going to auction off have been offered at nearly $1,000, Pearlman said.

Moon rocks for sale?

NASA astronauts brought 842 pounds (382 kilograms) of lunar material home to Earth between 1969 and 1972, souvenirs from their Apollo moonwalking jaunts. A court has valued this stuff at $1.44 million per ounce ($50,800 per gram), based on how much those NASA missions cost.

The space agency has given small amounts of moon material to national and state governments over the years. But NASA hangs on tightly to the rest of it.

"They track it very well," Pearlman said, adding that less than 1 ounce (28 g) of the lunar samples is thought to be unaccounted for.

But moon rocks, real or fake, are circulating on the market.

Just last month, NASA officials busted a woman who was trying to sell a purported moon rock for $1.7 million. The moon rock sting went down in a Denny's restaurant in Lake Elsinore, Calif.

While the auction of this tiny tape sliver seems to be small potatoes by comparison, Pearlman said he understands why NASA works so hard to recover lunar materials.

"You can't undo precedent," Pearlman said. "They want to be able to defend when there are large missing moon rocks, if that ever comes up. So they have to respond to every report that they receive."

Preliminary analysis of the dust on the tape indicates that it likely is of lunar origin, though it will take two to three weeks to confirm this definitively, prosecutors said.

You can follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter: @michaeldwall. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Moon Dust Missing for 40 Years Is Found at Auction House (Time.com)

It was one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind, and a lot of people wanted a piece of it. Now, some 40 years after moon dust brought back from the Apollo 11 mission went missing, it was recovered at a St. Louis auction house and returned to the Johnson Space Center in Houston this week.

"It's a speck - the size of a fingertip," said David Kols of Regency-Superior auction house, where the dust had been placed for sale. "But it's lunar material, and since we're not going back to the moon in my lifetime or yours, that makes it worth a lot to some people." (See TIME's special report on the 40th anniversary of the moon landing.)

The U.S. attorney's office in St. Louis, which announced the recovery of the moon dust on June 23, said that investigators with NASA believed the dust had come from the film cartridge of a camera used by astronauts on humanity's first trip to the moon in 1969. The dust was lifted from the cartridge using a 1-in. (2.5 cm) piece of clear tape. Somehow, it reached the black market and was sold in 2001, NASA investigators believe, to a German collector who cut up the tape into tiny slivers rather than return it to the U.S. government.

When investigators from both NASA and the U.S. attorney's office noticed moon dust listed for sale in St. Louis, they shut down the transaction with the cooperation of the auction house and the seller. The widow trying to sell the dust - her name was not released - said she didn't know where her late husband had purchased it. She "immediately and graciously agreed to relinquish it back to the American people," the U.S. attorney's office said.

The auction house had estimated its value at $1,000 to $1,500. (See photos of Mercury.)

Preliminary testing by the Johnson Space Center's lab has concluded that the material in "all likelihood" is lunar, but final results will take a few weeks.

More than 800 lb. (363 kg) of moon rocks, pebbles, sand and dust were ferried back to Earth during the Apollo lunar missions, which ended in late 1972. The overwhelming majority of the material was kept for analysis, but a handful of samples were given to museums, individual states and foreign dignitaries. Some are now unaccounted for, and there are many fakes for sale. A moon rock given to Missouri during the administration of Governor Christopher "Kit" Bond, who was first elected in 1972, was found last year in a box of memorabilia when Bond cleaned out his office after four terms in the U.S. Senate. Bond promptly returned the rock to the current governor, Jay Nixon.

The story of the film canister and the stolen dust had been considered a hoax by some, U.S. attorney Rich Callahan said. This discovery, even a little speck, suggests the story is true - though you have to peer really, really close. "The truth is, it's not much to look at," said Callahan. "You have to believe it's there."

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