Author: H1401

A spinning neutron star periodically swings its radio (green) and gamma-ray (magenta) beams past Earth in this artist’s concept of a black widow pulsar. The neutron star/pulsar heats the facing side of its stellar partner (right) to temperatures twice as hot as the sun’s surface and slowly evaporates it. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center A dense, collapsed star spinning 707 times per second—making it one of the fastest spinning neutron stars in the Milky Way galaxy—has shredded and consumed nearly the entire mass of its stellar companion and, in the process, grown into the heaviest neutron star observed to…

This image captured by the Gemini North telescope on Maunakea in Hawaiʻi reveals the previously unrecognized galactic home of the gamma-ray burst identified as GRB 151229A. Astronomers calculate that this burst, which lies in the direction of the constellation Capricornus, occurred approximately 9 billion years ago. Credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA An international team of astronomers has found that certain short gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) did not originate as castaways in the vastness of intergalactic space as they initially appeared. A deeper multi-observatory study instead found that these seemingly isolated GRBs actually occurred in remarkably distant—and therefore faint—galaxies up to 10 billion…

Distribution of the OC population in Galactic coordinates. The black points represent the reported OCs found in this study, and the red squares represent the OCs newly identified in this work using Gaia DR3. The blue circles refer to the angular size of half number radius given by this work. Credit: Songmei et al., 2022. By analyzing the data from ESA’s Gaia satellite, astronomers from the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory (SHAO) in China have detected 101 new open clusters in the Milky Way galaxy. The discovery was presented in a paper published December 21 on the arXiv pre-print repository. Open clusters (OCs), formed…

Credit: ESA Although dark matter is a central part of the standard cosmological model, it’s not without its issues. There continue to be nagging mysteries about the stuff, not the least of which is the fact that scientists have found no direct particle evidence of it. Despite numerous searches, we have yet to detect dark matter particles. So some astronomers favor an alternative, such as modified Newtonian dynamics (MoND) or modified gravity model. And a new study of galactic rotation seems to support them. The idea of MoND was inspired by galactic rotation. Most of the visible matter in a galaxy is…

South Korea’s first-ever lunar orbiter Danuri has sent black-and-white images of Earth and the lunar surface, including this photo taken on December 31, 2022. South Korea’s first-ever lunar orbiter Danuri has sent black-and-white photos of the Moon’s surface and Earth, the national space center said Tuesday. Danuri—a portmanteau of the Korean words for “Moon” and “enjoy”—was launched on a SpaceX rocket from the United States in August 2022 and entered lunar orbit last month. Its images—taken between December 24 and January 1—show the lunar surface and Earth, and were shot from less than 120 kilometers (75 miles) over the Moon, the Korea Aerospace Research…

This image of the spectacular Sh2-54 nebula was taken in infrared light using ESO’s VISTA telescope at Paranal Observatory in Chile. The clouds of dust and gas that are normally obvious in visible light are less evident here, and in this light we can see the light of the stars behind the nebulae now piercing through. Credit: ESO/VVVX A myriad of stars is revealed behind the faint orange glow of the Sh2-54 nebula in this new infrared image. Located in the constellation Serpens, this stunning stellar nursery has been captured in all its intricate detail using the Visible and Infrared…

Credit: NASA / Goddard Space Flight Center / Jeremy Schnittman Black holes form natural time machines that allow travel to both the past and the future. But don’t expect to be heading back to visit the dinosaurs any time soon. At present, we don’t have spacecraft that could get us anywhere near a black hole. But, even leaving that small detail aside, attempting to travel into the past using a black hole might be the last thing you ever do. What are black holes? A black hole is an extremely massive object that is typically formed when a dying star…

ALMA image of the protoplanetary disc around HL Tauri. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO) Little ‘hurricanes’ that form in the disks of gas and dust around young stars can be used to study certain aspects of planet formation, even for smaller planets which orbit their star at large distances and are out of reach for most telescopes. Researchers from the University of Cambridge and the Institute for Advanced Study have developed a technique, which uses observations of these “hurricanes” by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimetre Array (ALMA) to place some limits on the mass and age of planets in a young star system. Pancake-like…

The power of JWST to map galaxies at high resolution and at longer infrared wavelengths than Hubble allows it look through dust and unveil the underlying structure and mass of distant galaxies. This can be seen in these two images of the galaxy EGS23205, seen as it was about 11 billion years ago. In the HST image (left, taken in the near-infrared filter), the galaxy is little more than a disk-shaped smudge obscured by dust and impacted by the glare of young stars, but in the corresponding JWST mid-infrared image (taken this past summer), it’s a beautiful spiral galaxy with…

GNIRS H-band acquisition image of SDSS J222551.65+001637.7AB showing the resolved white dwarf and brown dwarf components of the binary. Credit: French et al, 2022 Using the Gemini North telescope, astronomers have performed spectroscopic observations of a binary system known as SDSS J222551.65+001637.7AB. Results of the observational campaign indicate that the system consists of a white dwarf and a brown dwarf companion. The finding was reported December 21 on the arXiv pre-print server. SDSS J222551.65+001637.7AB is a binary system located some 711 light years away from the Earth. It was first identified in 2006 as binary composed of a hydrogen-rich white dwarf and a less massive stellar…

Illustration showing detection of the lensed 21 cm atomic hydrogen emission signal from a distant galaxy. Credit: Swadha Pardesi Astronomers from McGill University in Canada and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru have used data from the Giant Meterwave Radio Telescope (GMRT) in Pune to detect a radio signal originating from atomic hydrogen in an extremely distant galaxy. The astronomical distance over which such a signal has been picked up is the largest so far by a large margin. This is also the first confirmed detection of strong lensing of 21 cm emission from a galaxy. The findings…

An artist’s impression of what the dust around an active galactic nucleus might look like seen from a light year away. Credit: Peter Z. Harrington Powered by supermassive black holes swallowing matter in the centers of galaxies, active galactic nuclei are the most powerful compact steady sources of energy in the universe. The brightest active galactic nuclei have long been known to far outshine the combined light of the billions of stars in their host galaxies. A new study indicates that scientists have substantially underestimated the energy output of these objects by not recognizing the extent to which their light…

Color shows the polarized microwave emission measured by QUIJOTE. The pattern of lines superposed shows the direction of the magnetic field lines. Credit: The QUIJOTE Collaboration An international team of scientists have successfully mapped the magnetic field of our galaxy, the Milky Way, using telescopes that observe the sky in the microwave range. The new research is published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The team used the QUIJOTE (Q-U-I JOint TEnerife) Collaboration, sited at the Teide Observatory on Tenerife in the Canary Islands. This comprises two 2.5 m diameter telescopes, which observe the sky in the microwave part…

A color rendition of NGC 6302, the Butterfly Nebula, created from black-and-white exposures taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2019 and 2020. In the violet-colored regions, strong stellar winds are actively reshaping the nebular wings over the past 900 years. The other features range in age from 1200 to 2300 years. Credit: Bruce Balick/University of Washington/Joel Kastner/Paula Baez Moraga/Rochester Institute of Technology/Space Telescope Science Institute Planetary nebulae form when red giant stars expel their outermost layers as they run out of helium fuel—becoming hot, dense white dwarf stars that are roughly the size of Earth. The material that was…

The galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 as seen by NIRCam on JWST. It’s gravitational lensing properties (from its mass and from the mass of dark matter) are helping astronomers identify 88 distant galaxies in this field of view for further study. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI Clusters of galaxies do not appear in an instant. Instead they gradually form through the accumulation of many galaxies. But when galaxies fall in they don’t just stop moving. Instead, they keep moving around. These are called backsplash galaxies, and astronomers are using them to help understand the formation history of their home clusters. Clusters…

Credit: CC0 Public Domain A rare, recently discovered comet with a greenish tint is expected to whiz by Earth over the next few weeks, but sky gazers may need binoculars or a small telescope to see it. “It will be going past the constellation Corona Borealis just before sunrise here in Toronto with Feb. 1st being the best day to view it,” says York University Assistant Professor Elaina Hyde, director of the Allan I. Carswell Observatory in the Faculty of Science. “The Allan I. Carswell Observatory plans to target this interesting object with our one-meter telescope.” The last time this comet (discovered…

The HH 24 Complex. Credit: Reipurth et al. Astronomers have performed an impressive suite of observations at multiple wavelengths of the same system, dubbed the HH 24 complex. This complex hosts stars in the process of being born and the impacts of their violent interactions with each other, including the ejection of one of their siblings. All combined, the astronomers used six telescopes to make these observations, including the Hubble Space Telescope, the Very Large Array, and the ALMA telescope. With the combined power of all their observing wavelengths, the astronomers could put together a comprehensive picture of the HH 24 complex.…

This sequence of artist’s illustrations shows how a black hole can devour a bypassing star. 1. A normal star passes near a supermassive black hole in the center of a galaxy. 2. The star’s outer gasses are pulled into the black hole’s gravitational field. 3. The star is shredded as tidal forces pull it apart. 4. The stellar remnants are pulled into a donut-shaped ring around the black hole, and will eventually fall into the black hole, unleashing a tremendous amount of light and high-energy radiation. Credit: NASA, ESA, Leah Hustak (STScI) Black holes are gatherers, not hunters. They lie…

The unusual fireworks-like structure of nebula Pa 30 may result from the merger of two dying stars. Credit: Robert Fesen A Dartmouth professor’s images of the explosive aftermath from the collision of two dying stars could help scientists better understand this rare type of astronomical event—and may finally confirm the identity of a brilliant but short-lived star observed nearly 850 years ago. Robert Fesen, a professor of physics and astronomy, captured telescopic images that show a fireworks-like burst of thin filaments radiating from a highly unusual star at the center of an object called Pa 30, according to findings he announced…

Credit: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Mineral samples collected from the Ryugu asteroid by the Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft are helping UCLA space scientists and colleagues better understand the chemical composition of our solar system as it existed in its infancy, more than 4.5 billion years ago. In research recently published in Nature Astronomy, scientists using isotopic analysis discovered that carbonate minerals from the asteroid were crystallized through reactions with water, which originally accreted to the asteroid as ice in the still-forming solar system, then warmed into liquid. These carbonates, they say, formed very early on—within the first 1.8 million years of the solar system’s existence—and…

New research reveals that the mass of newly born stars (yellow, orange, and red circles stand for stars from higher to lower mass) varies with their metal abundances and their birth time (inner circle means born earlier). Credit: Wu Kun In the vast and diverse universe, the initial mass distribution at the birth of a new population of stars determines the fate of galaxies. This relationship is described by the initial mass function (IMF). For more than half a century, astronomers have assumed that the IMF is a universal relationship, i.e., it is uniform throughout the universe. However, in recent…

This image, which is brimming with stars and dark dust clouds, is a small extract—a mere pinprick—of the full Dark Energy Camera Plane Survey (DECaPS2) of the Milky Way. The new dataset contains a staggering 3.32 billion celestial objects—arguably the largest such catalog so far. The data for this unprecedented survey were taken with the US Department of Energy-fabricated Dark Energy Camera at the NSF’s Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, a Program of NOIRLab. Credit: DECaPS2 / DOE / FNAL / DECam / CTIO / NOIRLab / NSF / AURA. Image processing: M. Zamani & D. de Martin (NSF’s…

Two interacting galaxies viewed from the Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage Team Research led by the University of Southampton has revealed how supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are feeding off gas clouds which reach them by traveling hundreds of thousands of light years from one galaxy to another. An international team of scientists has shown there is a crucial link between the interaction of neighboring galaxies and the enormous amount of gas needed to ‘fuel’ these giant, super-dense, space phenomena. Their findings are due to be published in Nature Astronomy. A black hole can be created when a star collapses, squeezing matter into…

Many of Earth’s volatiles came from beyond Jupiter. Credit: Shutterstock/NASA Meteorites have told Imperial researchers the likely far-flung origin of Earth’s volatile chemicals, some of which form the building blocks of life. They found that around half the Earth’s inventory of the volatile element zinc came from asteroids originating in the outer solar system—the part beyond the asteroid belt that includes the planets Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus. This material is also expected to have supplied other important volatiles such as water. Volatiles are elements or compounds that change from solid or liquid state into vapor at relatively low temperatures. They include the six most common elements…