![]() "One of NASA's major goals is to identify planets that could support life," Youngblood said. Several other ground-based telescopes also made spectroscopic observations at other wavelengths during the eclipse, searching for more of Earth's atmospheric ingredients, such as oxygen and methane. ![]() Hubble recorded ozone absorbing some of the Sun's ultraviolet radiation that passed through the edge of Earth's atmosphere during a lunar eclipse that occurred on January 20 to 21, 2019. "Finding ozone is significant because it is a photochemical byproduct of molecular oxygen, which is itself a byproduct of life," explained Allison Youngblood of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics in Boulder, Colorado, lead researcher of Hubble's observations.Īlthough ozone in Earth's atmosphere had been detected in previous ground-based observations during lunar eclipses, Hubble's study represents the strongest detection of the molecule to date because ozone – as measured from space with no interference from other chemicals in the Earth's atmosphere – absorbs ultraviolet light so strongly. That's one reason why scientists think ozone or oxygen could be a sign of life on another planet, and refer to them as biosignatures. On Earth, photosynthesis over billions of years is responsible for our planet's high oxygen levels and thick ozone layer. Ozone is important to life because it is the source of the protective shield in Earth's atmosphere. Hubble detected the strong spectral fingerprint of ozone, which absorbs some of the sunlight. Though numerous ground-based observations of this kind have been done previously, this is the first time a total lunar eclipse was captured at ultraviolet wavelengths and from a space telescope. Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center The method used serves as a proxy for how they will observe earthlike planets around other stars in search for worlds similar to our own. Taking advantage of the total lunar eclipse of January 2019, astronomers, using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, have measured the amount of ozone in the Earth’s atmosphere.
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