Beowulf        Posted at 2023-02-16 14:27:26(95Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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|  This Picture of the Week shows a stunning view of the Milky Way as it stretches over the Atacama Desert, home to ESO’s Paranal Observatory. In the foreground, we also get a glimpse of the planet hunter NGTS, the Next Generation Transit Survey.  NGTS, built by a collaboration of UK, Swiss and German institutions, consists of 12 telescopes that continuously monitor the sky, looking for dips in the brightness of hundreds of thousands of stars. As an exoplanet transits between its host star and us, it dims the light reaching us, which can be picked up by NGTS. The survey specialises in looking for super-Earths, exoplanets more massive than our home planet but lighter than an ice giant like Neptune. NGTS also works in tandem with ESO telescopes, like the ones visible in the background: the Very Large Telescope (VLT, with its adaptive optics lasers) and the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) to the right. When NGTS detects new planet candidates, ESO instruments, such as the exoplanet specialists HARPS at ESO’s La Silla Observatory or ESPRESSO at the VLT, can do follow-up observations. From these observations we can learn about the masses of these exoplanets and compositions of their atmospheres. With the combined power of these facilities, the exoplanets of the Milky Way are being studied with the highest possible precision and detail there is. Credit: ESO/Beowulf  | |
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| jackieasasPosted at 2023-02-17 23:49:35(95Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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| 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 NOIRLab) Astronomers have released a gargantuan survey of the galactic plane 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 Dark Energy Camera, built by the US Department of Energy, at the NSF's Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, a Program of NOIRLab. The Milky Way Galaxy contains hundreds of billions of stars, glimmering star-forming regions, and towering dark clouds of dust and gas. Imaging and cataloging these objects for study is a herculean task, but a newly released astronomical dataset known as the second data release of the Dark Energy Camera Plane Survey (DECaPS2) reveals a staggering number of these objects in unprecedented detail. The DECaPS2 survey, which took two years to complete and produced more than 10 terabytes of data from 21,400 individual exposures, identified approximately 3.32 billion objects—arguably the largest such catalog compiled to date. Astronomers and the public can explore the dataset here. This unprecedented collection was captured by the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) instrument on the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), a Program of NSF's NOIRLab. CTIO is a constellation of international astronomical telescopes perched atop Cerro Tololo in Chile at an altitude of 2200 meters (7200 feet). CTIO's lofty vantage point gives astronomers an unrivaled view of the southern celestial hemisphere, which allowed DECam to capture the southern Galactic plane in such detail. | |
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| BeowulfPosted at 2023-02-18 10:02:44(95Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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|  This ESO Picture of the Week shows a crescent-shaped cocoon of gas and dust — a nebula known as NGC 3199, which lies 12 000 light-years away from Earth. It appears to plough through the star-studded sky like a ship through stormy seas. This imagery is very appropriate due to NGC 3199’s location in Carina — a southern constellation which is named after the keel of a ship! NGC 3199 was discovered by British astronomer John Herschel in 1834 as he compiled his famous catalogue of interesting night sky objects. The nebula has been the subject of numerous observations since, including those by ESO’s 8.2-metre Very Large Telescope (eso0310, eso1117), and 2.6-metre VLT Survey Telescope (VST). The latter made the observations that comprise this image. The nebula’s bright crescent feature is now known to be part of a much larger but fainter bubble of gas and dust. The nebula contains a notable star named HD 89358, which is an unusual type of extremely hot and massive star known as a Wolf-Rayet star. HD 89358 generates incredibly intense stellar winds and outflows that smash into and sweep up the surrounding material, contributing to NGC 3199’s twisted and lopsided morphology. The VST, which began operations in 2011, can image a large area of sky at once — an area twice the size of the full Moon — with its 256-megapixel camera, OmegaCAM. This allows it to characterise interesting objects which its larger neighbour, ESO’s Very Large Telescope, can then explore in even greater detail. Credit: ESO | |
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| SoupPosted at 2023-02-21 02:16:06(95Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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| Unknown class of water-rich asteroids identified by Marietta Fuhrmann-Koch, Heidelberg University  Implantation of planetesimals into the asteroid belt during the planets’ growth and dynamical evolution. Credit: Nature Astronomy (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41550-023-01898-x New astronomical measurements in the infrared range have led to the identification of a heretofore unknown class of asteroids. An international research team including geoscientists from Heidelberg University has succeeded in characterizing these small planets using infrared spectroscopy. They are located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and are—similar to the dwarf planet Ceres—rich in water. According to computer models, complex dynamic processes shifted these asteroids from the outer regions of our solar system into today's asteroid belt shortly after their creation. With an equatorial diameter of approximately 900 kilometers, the dwarf planet Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Many other small planets orbit in this region as well. "These are the remains of the building materials from which the planets of our solar system were created four and a half billion years ago. In these small bodies and their fragments, the meteorites, we find numerous relics that point directly to the process of planet formation," explains Prof. Dr. Mario Trieloff from the Institute of Earth Sciences of Heidelberg University. The current study shows that the small astronomical bodies originate from all regions of the early solar system. By means of small bodies from the outer solar system, water could have reached the still growing Earth in the form of asteroids, because the building blocks of the planets in the inner solar system tended to be arid, according to Prof. Trieloff, who heads up the Geo- and Cosmochemistry research group. The new infrared spectra were measured by Dr. Driss Takir at the NASA Infrared Telescope facility at the Mauna Kea Observatory in Hawaii (U.S.). "The astronomical measurements permit the identification of Ceres-like asteroids with a diameter as small as 100 kilometers, presently located in a confined region between Mars and Jupiter near Ceres' orbit," explains Dr. Takir, astrophysicist at the NASA Johnson Space Center and lead author of the study. At the same time, the infrared spectra support conclusions as to the bodies' chemical and mineralogical composition. Just like Ceres, there are minerals on the surface of the discovered asteroids that originated from an interaction with liquid water. The small astronomical bodies are quite porous. High porosity is yet another characteristic shared with the dwarf planet Ceres and an indication that the rock material is still quite original. "Shortly after the formation of the asteroids, temperatures were not high enough to convert them into a compact rock structure; they maintained the porous and primitive character typical of the outer ice planets located far from the sun," explains Dr. Wladimir Neumann, a member of Prof. Trieloff's team. He was responsible for the computer modeling of the thermal development of the small bodies. The properties of these Ceres-like objects and their presence in a relatively narrow zone of the outer asteroid belt suggest that these bodies were first formed in a cold region at the edge of our solar system. Gravitational disruptions in the orbits of large planets like Jupiter and Saturn—or "giant planet instability"—changed the trajectory of these asteroids such that the objects were "implanted" in today's asteroid belt. This was demonstrated through numerical calculations performed by the researchers on trajectory developments in the early solar system. The results were published in Nature Astronomy. | |
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| BeowulfPosted at 2023-02-21 18:03:21(95Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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|  This beautiful image portrays the galaxies NGC 799 (below) and NGC 800 (above) located in the constellation of Cetus (The Whale). This pair of galaxies was first observed by the American astronomer Lewis Swift back in 1885. Located at a distance of about 300 million light-years, our face-on view allows us to clearly appreciate their shapes. Like the Milky Way — our galaxy — these objects are both spiral galaxies, with characteristic long arms winding towards a bright bulge at the centre. In the prominent spiral arms, a large number of hot, young, blue stars are forming in clusters (tiny blue dots seen in the image) whereas in the central bulge a large group of cooler, redder, old stars are packed into a compact, almost spherical region. At first glance, these galaxies look rather similar, but the devil is in the detail. Apart from the obvious difference in size, only NGC 799 has a bar structure, extending from its central bulge, and the spiral arms wind out from the ends of the bar. Galactic bars are thought to act as a mechanism that channels gas from the spiral arms to the centre, intensifying star formation. A supernova was also observed in NGC 799 in 2004, and was given the name SN2004dt. Another interesting differentiating feature is the number of spiral arms. The small NGC 800 has three bright, knotty spiral arms, whilst NGC 799 only has two relatively dim, but broad spiral arms. These start at the end of the bar and wrap nearly completely around the galaxy forming a structure that looks almost like a ring. While it might seem that this image depicts two impressive close spiral galaxies coexisting in an everlasting peace, nothing can be further than the truth. We could be just witnessing the calm before the storm. We don’t know exactly what the future will bring, but typically, when two galaxies are close enough, they interact over hundreds of millions of years by means of gravitational disturbances. In some cases, only minor interactions occur, causing shape distortions, but sometimes galaxies collide, merging to form a single, new and larger galaxy. The image was obtained using the FORS1 instrument on the 8.2-metre ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT) atop Cerro Paranal, Chile. It combines exposures taken through three filters (B, V, R). Five asteroids can also be seen — can you find them all? The asteroids moved between the different exposures leaving colourful streaks in the image. Credit: ESO | |
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| SoupPosted at 2023-02-22 21:44:48(94Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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| Discovery of massive early galaxies defies prior understanding of the universe by Pennsylvania State University  1 / 1Images of six candidate massive galaxies, seen 500-800 million years after the Big Bang. One of the sources (bottom left) could contain as many stars as our present-day Milky Way, but is 30 times more compact. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, I. Labbe (Swinburne University of Technology). Image processing: G. Brammer (Niels Bohr Institute’s Cosmic Dawn Center at the University of Copenhagen) Six massive galaxies discovered in the early universe are upending what scientists previously understood about the origins of galaxies in the universe. "These objects are way more massive than anyone expected," said Joel Leja, assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State, who modeled light from these galaxies. "We expected only to find tiny, young, baby galaxies at this point in time, but we've discovered galaxies as mature as our own in what was previously understood to be the dawn of the universe." Using the first dataset released from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, the international team of scientists discovered objects as mature as the Milky Way when the universe was only 3% of its current age, about 500-700 million years after the Big Bang. The telescope is equipped with infrared-sensing instruments capable of detecting light that was emitted by the most ancient stars and galaxies. Essentially, the telescope allows scientists to see back in time roughly 13.5 billion years, near the beginning of the universe as we know it, Leja explained. "This is our first glimpse back this far, so it's important that we keep an open mind about what we are seeing," Leja said. "While the data indicates they are likely galaxies, I think there is a real possibility that a few of these objects turn out to be obscured supermassive black holes. Regardless, the amount of mass we discovered means that the known mass in stars at this period of our universe is up to 100 times greater than we had previously thought. Even if we cut the sample in half, this is still an astounding change." In a paper published today (Feb. 22) in Nature, the researchers show evidence that the six galaxies are far more massive than anyone expected and call into question what scientists previously understood about galaxy formation at the very beginning of the universe. "The revelation that massive galaxy formation began extremely early in the history of the universe upends what many of us had thought was settled science," said Leja. "We've been informally calling these objects 'universe breakers'—and they have been living up to their name so far." Leja explained that the galaxies the team discovered are so massive that they are in tension with 99% percent of models for cosmology. Accounting for such a high amount of mass would require either altering the models for cosmology or revising the scientific understanding of galaxy formation in the early universe—that galaxies started as small clouds of stars and dust that gradually grew larger over time. Either scenario requires a fundamental shift in our understanding of how the universe came to be, he added. "We looked into the very early universe for the first time and had no idea what we were going to find," Leja said. "It turns out we found something so unexpected it actually creates problems for science. It calls the whole picture of early galaxy formation into question." On July 12, NASA released the first full-color images and spectroscopic data from the James Webb Space Telescope. The largest infrared telescope in space, Webb was designed to see the genesis of the cosmos, its high resolution allowing it to view objects too old, distant or faint for the Hubble Space Telescope. "When we got the data, everyone just started diving in and these massive things popped out really fast," Leja said. "We started doing the modeling and tried to figure out what they were, because they were so big and bright. My first thought was we had made a mistake and we would just find it and move on with our lives. But we have yet to find that mistake, despite a lot of trying." Leja explained that one way to confirm the team's finding and alleviate any remaining concerns would be to take a spectrum image of the massive galaxies. That would provide the team data on the true distances, and also the gasses and other elements that made up the galaxies. The team could then use the data to model a clearer of picture of what the galaxies looked like, and how massive they truly were. "A spectrum will immediately tell us whether or not these things are real," Leja said. "It will show us how big they are, how far away they are. What's funny is we have all these things we hope to learn from James Webb and this was nowhere near the top of the list. We've found something we never thought to ask the universe—and it happened way faster than I thought, but here we are." The other co-authors on the paper are Elijah Mathews and Bingjie Wang of Penn State, Ivo Labbe of the Swinburne University of Technology, Pieter van Dokkum of Yale University, Erica Nelson of the University of Colorado, Rachel Bezanson of the University of Pittsburgh, Katherine A. Suess of the University of California and Stanford University, Gabriel Brammer of the University of Copenhagen, Katherine Whitaker of the University of Massachusetts and the University of Copenhagen, and Mauro Stefanon of the Universitat de Valencia. | |
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| SoupPosted at 2023-02-23 01:48:31(94Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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| A Blue Farewell  A blue halo glows around Pluto’s receding crescent in this parting image taken by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft on July 14, 2015. At the time of this shot, New Horizons was 120,000 miles (200,000 kilometers) away from Pluto. Shown in approximate true color, the picture was constructed from a mosaic of six black-and-white images from the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager, with color added from a lower resolution Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera color image. Scientists believe the haze is a smog resulting from the action of sunlight on methane and other molecules in Pluto's atmosphere. This reaction produces a complex mixture of hydrocarbons that accumulate into small haze particles which scatter blue light. As they settle down through the atmosphere, the haze particles form numerous intricate horizontal layers that extend to altitudes of over 120 miles (200 kilometers). Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute Last Updated: Feb 22, 2023 Editor: Monika Luabeya | |
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| SoupPosted at 2023-02-24 16:10:16(94Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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| Over one billion galaxies blaze bright in colossal map of the sky by NOIRLab  This is an image centered on a relatively nearby galaxy cluster dubbed Abell 3158; light from these galaxies had a redshift value of 0.059, meaning that it traveled approximately 825 million years on its journey to Earth. The image is a small part of the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys — a monumental six-year survey covering nearly half the sky. Credit: DESI Legacy Imaging Survey/KPNO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA; Image processing: M. Zamani & D. de Martin (NSF’s NOIRLab) The universe is teeming with galaxies, each brimming with billions of stars. Though all galaxies shine brightly, many are cloaked in dust, while others are so distant that to observers on Earth they appear as little more than faint smudges. By creating comprehensive maps of even the dimmest and most-distant galaxies, astronomers are better able to study the structure of the universe and unravel the mysterious properties of dark matter and dark energy. The largest such map to date has just grown even larger, with the tenth data release from the DOE's Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Legacy Imaging Survey. The DESI Legacy Imaging Survey expands on the data included in two earlier companion surveys: the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) Legacy Survey and the Beijing-Arizona Sky Survey. Jointly, these three surveys imaged 14,000 square degrees of the sky visible from the northern hemisphere, using telescopes at NSF's NOIRLab's Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) and Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in Chile. This ambitious six-year effort involved three telescopes, one petabyte of data, and 100 million CPU hours on one of the world's most powerful computers at the US Department of Energy's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center. This effort culminated in the largest two-dimensional map of the sky ever created. With collective observations by the Mosaic-3 camera on the Nicholas U. Mayall 4-meter Telescope and the 90Prime camera on the University of Arizona Bok 2.3-meter Telescope, both located at KPNO, as well as the DOE-built Dark Energy Camera (DECam) on the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at CTIO in Chile. One of the main purposes of this map is to identify roughly 40 million target galaxies for the five-year DESI Spectroscopic Survey, which is aimed at understanding dark energy by precisely mapping the expansion history of the universe over the last 12 billion years. The DESI project has selected its targets and the spectroscopic survey is currently underway. However, the team is looking to create the most comprehensive map of the sky that they can, so more images and improved processing have been added to the Legacy Surveys to include data that were previously missing. Most notably, the tenth data release focuses on integrating new imaging from DECam of the southern extragalactic sky, especially in areas away from the Milky Way's disk, which are ideal for looking far into the cosmos. With the addition of southern sky images in the new data release, the Legacy Surveys have been expanded to over 20,000 square degrees, nearly half the sky. In addition, the new release includes images of the sky taken in an additional color filter, able to sample infrared light just redder than what the human eye can see. The additions to the map's footprint and wavelength coverage will in turn make the data useful to a wider demographic of scientists. "The addition of near-infrared wavelength data to the Legacy Survey will allow us to better calculate the redshifts of distant galaxies, or the amount of time it took light from those galaxies to reach Earth," said Alfredo Zenteno, an astronomer with NSF's NOIRLab. "This is essential for surveys at radio and X-ray wavelengths that need the complete 'optical' view to identify the origin of the emission, like clusters of galaxies and active supermassive black holes," said Mara Salvato, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) and spokesperson for the DECam eROSITA Survey (DeROSITAS). The bulk of these additional DECam observations are from the DeROSITAS team, which includes scientists from NSF's NOIRLab, the University of La Serena, MPE and Ludwig Maximilians University Munich in Germany; the DECam Local Volume Exploration Survey; and the final (sixth) year of the Dark Energy Survey. The team also scoured the NSF NOIRLab data archive to use any public data of the sky that already existed or was being collected by other researchers. It's not only scientists who benefit from the growing archive of astronomical data coming out of the Legacy Surveys. The publicly available data make it possible for astronomy enthusiasts and curious individuals to digitally peruse the universe around us. "Anyone can use the survey data to explore the sky and make discoveries," said Arjun Dey, an astronomer with NSF's NOIRLab. "In my opinion it is this ease of access which has made this survey so impactful. We hope that in a few years the Legacy Surveys will have the most complete map of the entire sky, and provide a treasure trove for scientists well into the future." NOIRLab will host these data products in the Astro Data Archive, from the original images taken at the telescopes to the catalogs that report the positions and other properties of stars and galaxies. Astro Data Lab, which is part of the Community Science and Data Center (CSDC) at NSF's NOIRLab, also serves the catalogs as databases, which astronomers can easily analyze using the Astro Data Lab tools and services, and cross-match them with other datasets, giving more opportunities for discovery. In addition, Astro Data Lab provides astronomers with example scientific applications and tutorials to assist with their research. Provided by NOIRLab | |
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| BeowulfPosted at 2023-02-24 17:43:06(94Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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|  This image from ESO Photo Ambassador Farid Char, of the southern night sky over the Residencia “hotel” at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile, presents a beautifully star-filled and dynamic view of the heavens. To make the swirling star trails on this image, Farid used a 30-minute exposure to reveal the observed movement of the stars due to the rotation of the Earth. In the centre is the apparently still point of the south celestial pole. On the left, and at the top of the image, are the extended blurs of the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, neighbouring galaxies of the Milky Way. The dark glass dome below the circling stars is part of the roof of the Residencia building. This unique partially subterranean construction has been in use since 2002 by scientists and engineers working at the observatory. During the day, the 35-metre-wide dome allows natural daylight into the building. At the observatory, located on a mountain at an elevation of 2600 metres in the arid Atacama Desert, the excellent astronomical conditions come at a price. People there face intense sunlight during the day, very low humidity, and the high altitude can leave them short of breath. To help them relax and rehydrate after long shifts on the mountaintop, there is an artificial oasis at the Residencia, with a small garden, a swimming pool that humidifies the air, a lounge, a dining room, and other recreational facilities. The building can accommodate over 100 people. Credit: ESO& Beowulf | |
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| Deep61Posted at 2023-02-24 17:47:25(94Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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|  Believed to be the cosmic fire of creation by the Maya of Mesoamerica, M42 blazes brightly in the constellation Orion. Popularly called the Orion Nebula, this stellar nursery has been known to many different cultures throughout human history | |
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| Deep61Posted at 2023-02-24 17:48:10(94Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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| SuperbikemikePosted at 2023-02-24 17:52:46(94Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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| Very nice pics deep impressive  | |
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| GarthockPosted at 2023-02-24 18:16:33(94Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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| The ring system  In 1610 Galileo’s first observations of Saturn with a primitive telescope prompted him to report: Saturn is not a single star, but is a composite of three, which almost touch each other, never change or move relative to each other, and are arranged in a row along the zodiac, the middle one being three times larger than the lateral ones. Two years later he was perplexed to find that the image in his telescope had become a single object; Earth had crossed Saturn’s ring plane, and, viewed edge on, the rings had essentially disappeared. Later observations showed Galileo that the curious lateral appendages had returned. Apparently he never deduced that the appendages were in fact a disk encircling the planet. The Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens, who began studying Saturn with an improved telescope in 1655, eventually deduced the true shape of the rings and the fact that the ring plane was inclined substantially to Saturn’s orbit. He believed, however, that the rings were a single solid disk with a substantial thickness. In 1675 the Italian-born French astronomer Gian Domenico Cassini’s discovery of a large gap—now known as the Cassini division—within the disk cast doubt on the possibility of a solid ring, and the French mathematician and scientist Pierre-Simon Laplace published a theory in 1789 that the rings were made up of many smaller components. In 1857 the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell demonstrated mathematically that the rings could be stable only if they comprised a very large number of small particles, a deduction confirmed about 40 years later by the American astronomer James Keeler. Today it is known that, while Saturn’s rings are enormous, they are also extremely thin. The major rings have a diameter of 270,000 km (170,000 miles), yet their thickness does not exceed 100 metres (330 feet), and their total mass is only about 1.5 × 1019 kg, about 0.41 times the mass of Saturn’s moon Mimas. The entire ring system spans nearly 26,000,000 km (16,000,000 miles) when the faint outer rings are included. Like the rings of the other giant planets, Saturn’s major rings lie within the classical Roche limit. This distance, which for the idealized case is 2.44 Saturn radii (147,000 km [91,300 miles]), represents the closest distance to which a fairly large moon can approach the centre of its more-massive planetary parent before it is torn apart by tidal forces. Conversely, small bodies within the Roche limit are prevented by tidal forces from aggregating into larger objects. The limit applies only to objects held together by gravitational attraction; it does not restrict the stability of a relatively small body for which molecular cohesion is more important than the tidal forces tending to pull it apart. Thus, small moons (and artificial satellites) with sizes in the range of tens of kilometres or less can persist indefinitely within the Roche limit. Although the individual particles that make up Saturn’s rings cannot be seen directly, their size distribution can be deduced from their effect on the scattering of light and radio signals propagated through the rings from stars and spacecraft. This analysis reveals a broad and continuous spectrum of particle sizes, ranging from centimetres to several metres, with larger objects being significantly fewer in number than smaller ones. This distribution is consistent with the result expected from repeated collision and shattering of initially larger objects. In some parts of the rings, where collisions are apparently more frequent, even smaller (dust-sized) grains are present, but these have short lifetimes owing to a variety of loss mechanisms. Clouds of the smaller grains apparently acquire electric charges, interact with Saturn’s magnetic field, and manifest themselves in the form of moving, wedge-shaped spokes that extend radially over the plane of the rings. Although spokes were observed frequently during the Voyager encounters, they were not seen during the Cassini mission until September 2005, possibly an indication of the effect of a different Sun angle on the production of charged grains. The spokes may be seasonal, appearing only in the periods around equinox. Larger bodies dubbed ring moons, on the order of several kilometres in diameter, may exist embedded within the major rings, but only a few have been detected. There is evidence that transient “rubble pile” moons are continually created and destroyed by the competing effects of gravity, collisions, and varying orbital speed within the dense rings. The rings strongly reflect sunlight, and a spectroscopic analysis of the reflected light shows the presence of water ice, in addition to darker contaminants. Because the rings have such a low mass, it is likely that they are very young, between 10 and 100 million years old. It is thus conceivable that the major rings were produced by the breakup of a comet. Another possibility is that moons the size and composition of Tethys or Dione broke apart. The new ring system would have been much larger than the rings today and would have shrunk, possibly by forming the icy inner moons such as Tethys. Material from the rings can become charged through photoionization or by micrometeorite impact. Once charged, this material can migrate into the planet’s ionosphere by following magnetic field lines. Between 432 and 2,870 kg (952 and 6,327 pounds) of ring material fall into the ionosphere every second. At this rate, the rings will disappear in 292 million years. The main ring system shows structures on many scales, ranging from the three broad major rings—named C, B, and A (in order of increasing distance from Saturn)—that are visible from Earth down to myriad individual component ringlets having widths on the order of kilometres. The structures have provided scientists a fertile field for investigating gravitational resonances and the collective effects of many small particles orbiting in close proximity. Although many of the structures have been explained theoretically, a large number remain enigmatic, and a complete synthesis of the system is still lacking. Because Saturn’s ring system may be an analogue of the original disk-shaped system of particles out of which the planets formed, an understanding of its dynamics and evolution has implications for the origin of the solar system itself. The structure of the rings is broadly described by their optical depth as a function of distance from Saturn. Optical depth is a measure of the amount of electromagnetic radiation that is absorbed in passing through a medium—e.g., a cloud, the atmosphere of a planet, or a region of particles in space. It thus serves as an indicator of the average density of the medium. A completely transparent medium has an optical depth of 0; as the density of the medium increases, so does the numerical value. Optical depth depends on the wavelength of radiation as well as on the type of medium. In the case of Saturn’s rings, radio wavelengths of several centimetres and longer are largely unaffected by the smallest ring particles and thus encounter smaller optical depths than visible wavelengths and shorter. The B ring is the brightest, thickest, and broadest of the rings. It extends from 1.52 to 1.95 Saturn radii and has optical depths between 0.4 and 2.5, the precise values dependent on both distance from Saturn and wavelength of light. (Saturn’s equatorial radius is 60,268 km [37,449 miles].) It is separated visually from the outer major ring, the A ring, by the Cassini division, the most prominent gap in the major rings. Lying between 1.95 and 2.02 Saturn radii and not devoid of particles, the Cassini division exhibits complicated variations in optical depth, with an average value of 0.1. The A ring extends from 2.02 to 2.27 Saturn radii and has optical depths of 0.4 to 1.0. Interior to the B ring lies the third major ring, the C ring (sometimes known as the crepe ring), at 1.23 to 1.52 Saturn radii, with optical depths near 0.1. Interior to the C ring at 1.11 to 1.23 Saturn radii lies the extremely tenuous D ring, which has no measurable effect on starlight or radio waves passing through it and is visible only in reflected light. Exterior to the A ring lies the narrow F ring at 2.33 Saturn radii. The F ring is a complicated structure that, according to Cassini observations, may be a tightly wound spiral. Between the A and F rings, distributed along the orbit of the inner moon Atlas, is a tenuous band of material probably shed by the moon. Still farther out is the tenuous G ring, with an optical depth of only 0.000001; lying at about 2.8 Saturn radii, it was originally detected by its influence on charged particles in Saturn’s magnetosphere, and it is faintly discernible in Voyager images. Cassini images taken in 2008 revealed the presence in the G ring of a small moon, named Aegaeon, that is about 0.5 km (0.3 mile) across. This moon may be one of several parent bodies of the G ring. Those rings of Saturn that lie outside the A ring are analogous to Jupiter’s rings in that they are composed mostly of small particles continuously shed by moons. Beyond the G ring is the extremely broad and diffuse E ring, which extends from 3 to at least 8 Saturn radii. Cassini observations have verified that the E ring is composed of ice particles originating from geysers (a form of ice volcanism, or cryovolcanism) at a thermally active region—a hot spot—near the south pole of the moon Enceladus. Extending from 128 to 207 Saturn radii, far beyond the other rings, is the outermost, a vast, tenuous ring of dust shed from impacts on the moon Phoebe. It is the largest planetary ring in the solar system. The Spitzer Space Telescope discovered this ring; its observations showed an optical depth of 2 × 10−8. Unlike the other rings, this dust ring has the same inclination as Phoebe’s orbit. Other small satellites have tenuous rings or ring arcs associated with them, including the co-orbital moons Janus and Epimetheus, Methone, Anthe, and Pallene.  Saturn's three main rings Numerous gaps occur in the distribution of optical depth in the major ring regions. Some of the major gaps have been named after famous astronomers who were associated with studies of Saturn. In addition to the Cassini division, they include the Colombo, Maxwell, Bond, and Dawes gaps (1.29, 1.45, 1.47, and 1.50 Saturn radii, respectively), within the C ring; the Huygens gap (1.95 Saturn radii), at the outer edge of the B ring; the Encke gap (2.21 Saturn radii), a gap in the outer part of the A ring; and the Keeler gap (2.26 Saturn radii), almost at the outer edge of the A ring. Of these gaps, only Encke was known prior to spacecraft exploration of Saturn. Following the Voyager visits, scientists theorized that particles can be cleared from a region to form a gap by the gravitational effects of a moon about 10 km (6 miles) in size orbiting within the gap region. In 1990 one such moon, Pan, was discovered within the Encke gap in Voyager images and was recorded again in Cassini images. Daphnis, the anticipated corresponding moon within the Keeler gap, was found in Cassini images in 2005. Similar moons may exist within the Huygens and Maxwell gaps. More than 150 100-metre (300-foot) moonlets out of thousands believed to exist have been detected by the Cassini spacecraft in the A ring from propeller-like structures they leave in their wakes. Cassini also discovered a 400-metre (1,300-foot) moonlet in the B ring, although it does not appear to clear a gap. Other theories indicate that a gap can also be cleared in a ring region that is in orbital resonance with a moon whose orbit is substantially internal or external to the ring. The condition for resonance is that the orbital periods of the moon and the ring particles be a ratio of whole numbers. When this is the case, a given ring particle will always make close approaches to the moon at the same points in its orbit, and gravitational perturbations to the particle’s orbit will build up over time, eventually forcing the particle out of precise resonance. If the moon orbits outside the ring, it receives angular momentum from the resonant ring particles and, in turn, launches a tightly wound spiral density wave in the ring, which ultimately clears a gap if the resonance is strong enough. The boundary region at the outer edge of the B ring and the inner edge of the Cassini division is in a 2:1 resonance with Mimas, meaning that the orbital period of Mimas is twice that of the ring particles located at that radius. As predicted from such a resonance, the boundary is not perfectly circular but shows deviations in radius that result in a two-lobed shape. Although the location of this boundary clearly shows the influence of the resonance in sculpting the inner edge of the Cassini division, the remainder of the division’s structure is not fully understood. Similarly, the outer edge of the A ring is in a 7:6 resonance with the co-orbital moons Janus and Epimetheus and is scalloped with seven lobes. Effects of other resonances of this kind are seen throughout the ring system, but many similar features cannot be so explained. In general, the number of known moons and resonances falls far short of what is needed to account for the countless thousands of ringlets and other fine structure in Saturn’s ring system.  Last edited by Garthock on 2023-02-24 18:21:41 | |
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| BeowulfPosted at 2023-02-25 17:53:29(94Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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|  Sparkling at the edge of a giant cloud of gas and dust, the Flame Nebula, also referred to as NGC 2024, is in fact the hideout of a cluster of young, blue, massive stars, whose light sets the gas ablaze. Located 1,300 light-years away towards the constellation of Orion, the nebula owes its typical colour to the glow of hydrogen atoms, heated by the stars. The latter are obscured by a dark, forked dusty structure in the centre of the image and are only revealed by infrared observations. This image is based on data acquired with the 1.5-metre Danish telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile, combining three exposures in the filters B (40 seconds), V (80 seconds) and R (40 seconds). Credit: ESO/IDA R. Gendler, J.-E. Ovaldsen, C. Thöne and C. Féron and Beowulf Last edited by Beowulf on 2023-02-25 17:54:25 | |
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| BeowulfPosted at 2023-02-27 18:03:09(94Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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|  This week’s picture shows spectacular ribbons of gas and dust wrapping around the pearly centre of the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1398. This galaxy is located in the constellation of Fornax (The Furnace), approximately 65 million light-years away. Rather than beginning at the very middle of the galaxy and swirling outwards, NGC 1398’s graceful spiral arms stem from a straight bar, formed of stars, that cuts through the galaxy’s central region. Most spiral galaxies — around two thirds — are observed to have this feature, but it’s not yet clear whether or how these bars affect a galaxy’s behaviour and development. This image comprises data gathered by the FOcal Reducer/low dispersion Spectrograph 2 (FORS2) instrument, mounted on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) at Paranal Observatory, Chile. It shows NGC 1398 in striking detail, from the dark lanes of dust mottling its spiral arms, through to the pink-hued star-forming regions sprinkled throughout its outer regions. This image was created as part of the ESO Cosmic Gems programme, an outreach initiative to produce images of interesting, intriguing or visually attractive objects using ESO telescopes, for the purposes of education and public outreach. The programme makes use of telescope time that cannot be used for science observations. All data collected may also be suitable for scientific purposes, and are made available to astronomers through ESO’s science archive. Credit: ESO & Beowulf | |
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| Jase1Posted at 2023-02-27 19:12:33(94Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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| This footage shows the beautiful scene that night as the Aurora Borealis illuminated overhead. Usually, the Northern Lights can only be seen from Scotland and parts of northern England. However, on Sunday, parts of southern England as far down as Kent and Cornwall reported sightings. It is expected that stargazers will be able to catch them again on Monday night. | |
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| SoupPosted at 2023-02-28 22:14:03(94Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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| Galactic explosion offers astrophysicists new insight into the cosmos by Tatyana Woodall, The Ohio State University  SN 2021aefx in NGC 1566 at ≈2–21 μm. Left panel: MIRI F1130W PHANGS-JWST image of NGC 1566 showing the location of SN 2021aefx, marked with a green circle. Right panels: zoom-ins on SN 2021aefx in each PHANGS-JWST filter. The top four panels show 200 pc × 200 pc cutouts from NIRCam images at 2.0–3.6 μm. The bottom four panels show 1 kpc × 1 kpc MIRI images at 7.7–21 μm. The inner green circle marks the aperture used in the photometry measurement, and the two concentric dashed cyan circles mark the inner and outer apertures used for the background subtraction. Credit: The Astrophysical Journal Letters (2023). DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/acb6d8 Using data from the James Webb Space Telescope's first year of interstellar observation, an international team of researchers was able to serendipitously view an exploding supernova in a faraway spiral galaxy. The study, published recently in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, provides new infrared measurements of one of the brightest galaxies in our cosmic neighborhood, NGC 1566, also known as the Spanish Dancer. Located about 40 million light years away from Earth, the galaxy's extremely active center has led it to become especially popular with scientists aiming to learn more about how star-forming nebulae form and evolve. In this case, scientists were able to survey a Type 1a supernova—the explosion of a carbon-oxygen white dwarf star, which Michael Tucker, a fellow at the Center for Cosmology and AstroParticle Physics at The Ohio State University and a co-author of the study, said researchers caught by mere chance while studying NGC 1566. "White dwarf explosions are important to the field of cosmology, as astronomers often use them as indicators of distance," said Tucker. "They also produce a huge chunk of the iron group elements in the universe, such as iron, cobalt and nickel." The research was made possible thanks to the PHANGS-JWST Survey, which, due to its vast inventory of star cluster measurements, was used to create a reference dataset to study in nearby galaxies. By analyzing images taken of the supernova's core, Tucker and co-author Ness Mayker Chen, a graduate student in astronomy at Ohio State who led the study, aimed to investigate how certain chemical elements are emitted into the surrounding cosmos after an explosion. For instance, light elements like hydrogen and helium were formed during the big bang, but heavier elements can be created only through the thermonuclear reactions that happen inside supernovas. Understanding how these stellar reactions affect the distribution of iron elements around the cosmos could give researchers deeper insight into the chemical formation of the universe, said Tucker. "As a supernova explodes, it expands, and as it does so, we can essentially see different layers of the ejecta, which allows us to probe the nebula's core," he said. Powered by a process called radioactive decay—wherein an unstable atom releases energy to become more stable—supernovas emit radioactive high-energy photons like uranium-238. In this instance, the study specifically focused on how the isotope cobalt-56 decays into iron-56. Using data from JWST's near-infrared and mid-infrared camera instruments to investigate the evolution of these emissions, researchers found that more than 200 days after the initial event, supernova ejecta was still visible at infrared wavelengths that would have been impossible to image from the ground. "This is one of those studies where if our results weren't what we expected, it would have been really concerning," he said. "We've always made the assumption that energy doesn't escape the ejecta, but until JWST, it was only a theory." For many years, it was unclear whether fast-moving particles produced when cobalt-56 decays into iron-56 seeped into the surrounding environment, or were held back by the magnetic fields supernovas create. Yet by providing new insight into the cooling properties of supernova ejecta, the study confirms that in most circumstances, ejecta doesn't escape the confines of the explosion. This reaffirms many of the assumptions scientists have made in the past about how these complex entities work, Tucker said. "This study validates almost 20 years' worth of science," he said. "It doesn't answer every question, but it does a good job of at least showing that our assumptions haven't been catastrophically wrong." Future JWST observations will continue to help scientists develop their theories about star formation and evolution, but Tucker said that further access to other types of imaging filters could help test them as well, creating more opportunities to understand wonders far beyond the edges of our own galaxy. "The power of JWST is really unparalleled," said Tucker. "It's really promising that we're accomplishing this kind of science and with JWST, there's a good chance we'll not only be able to do the same for different kinds of supernovas, but do it even better." | |
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| sherbPosted at 2023-02-28 23:31:36(94Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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| Couple of pics of the aurora from 26th Feb, Kilmacolm , Scotland.   | |
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| sherbPosted at 2023-03-01 23:19:43(93Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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| If the Moon Were Only 1 Pixel - A tediously accurate map of the Solar System https://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html | |
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| SoupPosted at 2023-03-02 01:02:53(93Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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| Rare quasar triplet forms one of the most massive objects in the universe by University of Texas at Austin  Supercomputer simulations on Frontera reveal the origins of ultra-massive black holes, the most massive objects thought to exist in the entire universe. Shown here is the quasar triplet system centered around the most massive quasar (BH1) and its host galaxy environment on the Astrid simulation. The red and yellow lines mark the trajectories of the other two quasars (BH2 and BH3) in the reference frame of BH1, as they spiral into each other and merge. Credit: DOI 10.3847/2041-8213/aca160 Ultra-massive black holes are the most massive objects in the universe. Their mass can reach millions and billions of solar masses. Supercomputer simulations on Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC)'s Frontera supercomputer have helped astrophysicists reveal the origin of ultra-massive black holes formed about 11 billion years ago. "We found that one possible formation channel for ultra-massive black holes is from the extreme merger of massive galaxies that are most likely to happen in the epoch of the 'cosmic noon,'" said Yueying Ni, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Ni is the lead author of work published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters in December 2022 that found ultra-massive black hole formation from the merger of triple quasars, systems of three galactic cores illuminated by gas and dust falling into a nested supermassive black hole. Working hand-in-hand with telescope data, computational simulations help astrophysicists fill in the missing pieces on the origins of stars and exotic objects like black holes. One of the largest cosmological simulations to date is called Astrid, co-developed by Ni. It's the largest simulation in terms of the particle, or memory load in the field of galaxy formation simulations. "The science goal of Astrid is to study galaxy formation, the coalescence of supermassive black holes, and re-ionization over the cosmic history," she explained. Astrid models large volumes of the cosmos spanning hundreds of millions of light years, yet can zoom in to very high resolution. Ni developed Astrid using the Texas Advanced Computing Center's (TACC) Frontera supercomputer, the most powerful academic supercomputer in the U.S. "Frontera is the only system that we performed [in] Astrid from day one. It's a pure Frontera-based simulation," Ni continued. Frontera is ideal for Ni's Astrid simulations because of its capability to support large applications that need thousands of compute nodes, the individual physical systems of processors and memory that are harnessed together for some of science's toughest computation. "We used 2,048 nodes, the maximum allowable in the large queue, to launch this simulation on a routine basis. It's only possible on large supercomputers like Frontera," Ni said. Her findings from the Astrid simulations show something completely mind-boggling—the formation of black holes can reach a theoretical upper limit of 10 billion solar masses. "It's a very computational challenging task. But you can only catch these rare and extreme objects with a large volume simulation," Ni said. "What we found are three ultra-massive black holes that assembled their mass during the cosmic noon, the time 11 billion years ago when star formation, active galactic nuclei (AGN), and supermassive black holes in general reach their peak activity," she added. About half of all the stars in the universe were born during cosmic noon. Evidence for it comes from multi wavelength data of numerous galaxy surveys such as the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey, where the spectra from distant galaxies tell about the ages of its stars, its star formation history, and the chemical elements of the stars within. "In this epoch we spotted an extreme and relatively fast merger of three massive galaxies," Ni said. "Each of the galaxy masses is 10 times the mass of our own Milky Way, and a supermassive black hole sits in the center of each galaxy. Our findings show the possibility that these quasar triplet systems are the progenitor of those rare ultra-massive blackholes, after those triplets gravitationally interact and merge with each other." What's more, new observations of galaxies at cosmic noon will help unveil the coalescence of supermassive black holes and the formation the ultra-massive ones. Data is rolling in now from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), with high resolution details of galaxy morphologies. "We're pursuing a mock-up of observations for JWST data from the Astrid simulation," Ni said. "In addition, the future space-based NASA Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) gravitational wave observatory will give us a much better understanding the how these massive black holes merge and/or coalescence, along with the hierarchical structure, formation, and the galaxy mergers along the cosmic history," she added. "This is an exciting time for astrophysicists, and it's good that we can have simulation to allow theoretical predictions for those observations." Ni's research group is also planning a systematic study of on AGN hosting of galaxies in general. "They are a very important science target for JWST, determining the morphology of the AGN host galaxies and how they are different compared to the broad population of the galaxy during cosmic noon," she added. "It's great to have access to supercomputers, technology that allow us to model a patch of the universe in great detail and make predictions from the observations," Ni said. | |
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| SoupPosted at 2023-03-02 04:36:12(93Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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| Video Time Stars | |
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| Ange1Posted at 2023-03-02 07:08:14(93Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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| BeowulfPosted at 2023-03-03 17:37:13(93Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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|  Around 60 million light-years away, in the constellation Virgo, the two galaxies NGC4567 and NGC4568, nicknamed the Butterfly Galaxies due to their wing-like structure, are beginning to collide and merge into each other. This is depicted in this picture captured by the FOcal Reducer and low dispersion Spectrograph 2 (FORS2) instrument, which is mounted on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the Paranal Observatory in the Chilean Andes. Galaxy collisions are not unusual in the Universe. We may imagine them to be violent and catastrophic, but in reality they are surprisingly peaceful, like a waltz performed by stars, gas and dust, choreographed by gravity. This kind of collision and merger is also thought to be the eventual fate of the Milky Way, which scientists believe will undergo a similar interaction with our neighbouring galaxy Andromeda. FORS2 is often nicknamed Paranal’s “Swiss Army knife” for its incredible versatility, and it’s in fact one of our most demanded instruments. Besides capturing images like this one it can also take spectra of up to several tens of cosmic objects simultaneously, or study polarised light. This image was created as part of the ESO Cosmic Gems programme, an outreach initiative to produce images of interesting, intriguing or visually attractive objects using ESO telescopes, for the purposes of education and public outreach. The programme makes use of telescope time that cannot be used for science observations. All data collected may also be suitable for scientific purposes, and are made available to astronomers through ESO’s science archive. Credit: ESO & Beowulf | |
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| Jase1Posted at 2023-03-03 18:21:18(93Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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