sherb       Posted at 2023-03-05 16:14:08(89Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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|  What would make a moon look like a walnut? A strange ridge that circles Saturn's moon Iapetus's equator, visible near the bottom of the featured image, makes it appear similar to a popular edible nut. The origin of the ridge remains unknown, though, with hypotheses including ice that welled up from below, a ring that crashed down from above, and structure left over from its formation perhaps 100 million years ago. Also strange is that about half of Iapetus is so dark that it can nearly disappear when viewed from Earth, while the rest is, reflectively, quite bright. Observations show that the degree of darkness of the terrain is strangely uniform, as if a dark coating was somehow recently applied to an ancient and highly cratered surface. Last, several large impact basins occur around Iapetus, with a 400-kilometer wide crater visible near the image center, surrounded by deep cliffs that drop sharply to the crater floor. The featured image was taken by the Saturn-orbiting Cassini spacecraft during a flyby of Iapetus at the end of 2004. | |
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| Jase1Posted at 2023-03-08 12:09:54(89Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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|  A new, near-infrared-light view from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, at right, helps us peer through more of the dust in this star-forming region. The thick, dusty brown pillars are no longer as opaque and many more red stars that are still forming come into view. While the pillars of gas and dust seem darker and less penetrable in Hubble’s view, they appear more diaphanous in Webb’s. The background of this Hubble image is like a sunrise, beginning in yellows at the bottom, before transitioning to light green and deeper blues at the top. These colours highlight the thickness of the dust all around the pillars, which obscures many more stars in the overall region. In contrast, the background light in Webb’s image appears in blue hues, which highlights the hydrogen atoms, and reveals an abundance of stars spread across the scene. By penetrating the dusty pillars, Webb also allows us to identify stars that have recently – or are about to – burst free. Near-infrared light can penetrate thick dust clouds, allowing us to learn so much more about this incredible scene. Both views show us what is happening locally. Although Hubble highlights many more thick layers of dust and Webb shows more of the stars, neither shows us the deeper universe. Dust blocks the view in Hubble’s image, but the interstellar medium plays a major role in Webb’s. It acts like thick smoke or fog, preventing us from peering into the deeper universe, where countless galaxies exist. The pillars are a small region within the Eagle Nebula, a vast star-forming region 6,500 light-years from Earth. Check out the above link its really cool  Last edited by Jase1 on 2023-03-08 12:38:15 | |
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| Jase1Posted at 2023-03-08 17:40:54(89Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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|  With giant storms, powerful winds, auroras, and extreme temperature and pressure conditions, Jupiter has a lot going on. Now, the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has captured new images of the planet. Webb’s Jupiter observations will give scientists even more clues to Jupiter’s inner life. This image comes from the observatory’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), which has three specialized infrared filters that showcase details of the planet. Since infrared light is invisible to the human eye, the light has been mapped onto the visible spectrum. Generally, the longest wavelengths appear redder and the shortest wavelengths are shown as more blue. Scientists collaborated with citizen scientist Judy Schmidt to translate the Webb data into images. This image was created from a composite of several images from Webb. Visible auroras extend to high altitudes above both the northern and southern poles of Jupiter. The auroras shine in a filter that is mapped to redder colors, which also highlights light reflected from lower clouds and upper hazes. A different filter, mapped to yellows and greens, shows hazes swirling around the northern and southern poles. A third filter, mapped to blues, showcases light that is reflected from a deeper main cloud. The Great Red Spot, a famous storm so big it could swallow Earth, appears white in these views, as do other clouds, because they are reflecting a lot of sunlight. | |
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| Jase1Posted at 2023-03-09 18:02:34(88Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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|  To the upper left of the cluster of young stars, and the top of the nebula’s cavity, an older star prominently displays NIRCam’s distinctive eight diffraction spikes, an artefact of the telescope’s structure. Following the top central spike of this star upward, it almost points to a distinctive bubble in the cloud. Young stars still surrounded by dusty material are blowing this bubble, beginning to carve out their own cavity. Astronomers used two of Webb’s spectrographs to take a closer look at this region and determine the chemical makeup of the star and its surrounding gas. This spectral information will tell astronomers about the age of the nebula and how many generations of star birth it has seen. Farther from the core region of hot young stars, cooler gas takes on a rust colour, telling astronomers that the nebula is rich with complex hydrocarbons. This dense gas is the material that will form future stars. As winds from the massive stars sweep away gas and dust, some of it will pile up and, with gravity’s help, form new stars. | |
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| BeowulfPosted at 2023-03-09 18:24:01(88Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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|  In this Picture of the Week, we take a deep plunge into the ocean of stars in the IC4701 nebula. This nebula is located in the Sagittarius constellation, and it is twice as wide as the full Moon in the sky. The energetic light from newly-born stars ionizes the hydrogen gas in the nebula, causing it to emit the intense reddish hue seen in this picture. The dark clouds in this image contain large amounts of interstellar dust, too dense for the light of the background stars to pierce through it.  The IC4701 nebula is part of a rich and vast complex of dust and gas within which new stars spring to life. When stars are born, most of them are cooler, redder, and less massive than our own Sun. Hotter, more massive stars are much rarer, and they quickly burn through all their fuel and die. This makes these brilliant blue and massive stars, and their surrounding glowing gas, beacons of recent star formation. Credit: ESO/VPHAS+ team. Acknowledgement: Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit  | |
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| mikeeybhoyPosted at 2023-03-09 19:02:36(88Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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| thank you that is best one yet even from Nasa!!! well done bro! mikeeybhoy. | |
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| GarthockPosted at 2023-03-09 19:16:34(88Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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| Black Holes, explained These infinitely dense points in space will spaghettify anything that ventures too close. Black holes are points in space that are so dense they create deep gravity sinks. Beyond a certain region, not even light can escape the powerful tug of a black hole's gravity. And anything that ventures too close—be it star, planet, or spacecraft—will be stretched and compressed like putty in a theoretical process aptly known as spaghettification. There are four types of black holes: stellar, intermediate, supermassive, and miniature. The most commonly known way a black hole forms is by stellar death. As stars reach the ends of their lives, most will inflate, lose mass, and then cool to form white dwarfs. But the largest of these fiery bodies, those at least 10 to 20 times as massive as our own sun, are destined to become either super-dense neutron stars or so-called stellar-mass black holes.  BLACK HOLES 101 At the center of our galaxy, a supermassive black hole churns. Learn about the types of black holes, how they form, and how scientists discovered these invisible, yet extraordinary objects in our universe. In their final stages, enormous stars go out with a bang in massive explosions known as supernovae. Such a burst flings star matter out into space but leaves behind the stellar core. While the star was alive, nuclear fusion created a constant outward push that balanced the inward pull of gravity from the star's own mass. In the stellar remnants of a supernova, however, there are no longer forces to oppose that gravity, so the star core begins to collapse in on itself. If its mass collapses into an infinitely small point, a black hole is born. Packing all of that bulk—many times the mass of our own sun—into such a tiny point gives black holes their powerful gravitational pull. Thousands of these stellar-mass black holes may lurk within our own Milky Way galaxy. One black hole is not like the others Supermassive black holes, predicted by Einstein's general theory of relativity, can have masses equal to billions of suns; these cosmic monsters likely hide at the centers of most galaxies. The Milky Way hosts its own supermassive black hole at its center known as Sagittarius A* (pronounced “ay star”) that is more than four million times as massive as our sun. The tiniest members of the black hole family are, so far, theoretical. These small vortices of darkness may have swirled to life soon after the universe formed with the big bang, some 13.7 billion years ago, and then quickly evaporated. Astronomers also suspect that a class of objects called intermediate-mass black holes exist in the universe, although evidence for them is so far debatable. No matter their starting size, black holes can grow throughout their lives, slurping gas and dust from any objects that creep too close. Anything that passes the event horizon, the point at which escape becomes impossible, is in theory destined for spaghettification thanks to a sharp increase in the strength of gravity as you fall into the black hole. As astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson once described the process: “While you're getting stretched, you're getting squeezed—extruded through the fabric of space like toothpaste through a tube.” But black holes aren't exactly “cosmic vacuum cleaners,” as often depicted in popular media. Objects must creep fairly close to one to lose this gravitational tug-of-war. For example, if our sun was suddenly replaced by a black hole of similar mass, our planetary family would continue to orbit unperturbed, if much less warm and illuminated. Peering through the darkness Because black holes swallow all light, astronomers can't spot them directly like they do the many glittery cosmic objects in the sky. But there are a few keys that reveal a black hole's presence. For one, a black hole's intense gravity tugs on any surrounding objects. Astronomers use these erratic movements to infer the presence of the invisible monster that lurks nearby. Or objects can orbit a black hole, and astronomers can look for stars that seem to orbit nothing to detect a likely candidate. That's how astronomers eventually identified Sagittarius A* as a black hole in the early 2000s. Black holes are also messy eaters, which often betrays their locations. As they sip on surrounding stars, their massive gravitational and magnetic forces superheat the infalling gas and dust, causing it to emit radiation. Some of this glowing matter envelops the black hole in a whirling region called an accretion disk. Even the matter that starts falling into a black hole isn't necessarily there to stay. Black holes can sometimes eject infalling stardust in mighty radiation-laden burps. | |
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| Jase1Posted at 2023-03-09 19:37:26(88Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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| Black holes are some of the strangest and most fascinating objects in space. They're extremely dense, with such strong gravitational attraction that not even light can escape their grasp. The Milky Way could contain over 100 million black holes, though detecting these gluttonous beasts is very difficult | |
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| mikeeybhoyPosted at 2023-03-09 19:45:03(88Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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| Thank you bhoys for all the great stuff you put up even teaching us abou QM!!--- Physicists on to book 1 now haha, but we never know what yougreat bhoys will surprise us with!!! all the best my great friends and thank you all again..!!! mikeeybhoy | |
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| Jase1Posted at 2023-03-09 19:58:28(88Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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| We all aim to please Glad you like the feature Thank you | |
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| Jase1Posted at 2023-03-10 09:15:04(88Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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|  Called the Cosmic Cliffs, the region is actually the edge of a gigantic, gaseous cavity within NGC 3324, roughly 7,600 light-years away. The cavernous area has been carved from the nebula by the intense ultraviolet radiation and stellar winds from extremely massive, hot, young stars located in the centre of the bubble, above the area shown in this image. The high-energy radiation from these stars is sculpting the nebula’s wall by slowly eroding it away. NIRCam – with its crisp resolution and unparalleled sensitivity – unveils hundreds of previously hidden stars, and even numerous background galaxies. Several prominent features in this image are described below. The “steam” that appears to rise from the celestial “mountains” is actually hot, ionised gas and hot dust streaming away from the nebula due to intense, ultraviolet radiation. Dramatic pillars rise above the glowing wall of gas, resisting the blistering ultraviolet radiation from the young stars. Bubbles and cavities are being blown by the intense radiation and stellar winds of newborn stars. Protostellar jets and outflows, which appear in gold, shoot from dust-enshrouded, nascent stars. A “blow-out” erupts at the top-centre of the ridge, spewing gas and dust into the interstellar medium. An unusual “arch” appears, looking like a bent-over cylinder. This period of very early star formation is difficult to capture because, for an individual star, it lasts only about 50,000 to 100,000 years – but Webb’s extreme sensitivity and exquisite spatial resolution have chronicled this rare event. Located roughly 7,600 light-years away, NGC 3324 was first catalogued by James Dunlop in 1826. Visible from the Southern Hemisphere, it is located at the northwest corner of the Carina Nebula (NGC 3372), which resides in the constellation Carina. The Carina Nebula is home to the Keyhole Nebula and the active, unstable supergiant star called Eta Carinae. NIRCam was built by a team at the University of Arizona and Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Technology Center. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI | |
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| GarthockPosted at 2023-03-10 15:51:08(88Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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| What are pulsars? These ultra-dense remnants of massive stars emit beams of radiation like a lighthouse.  This artist's concept shows a pulsar, which is like a lighthouse, as its light appears in regular pulses as it rotates. Pulsars are dense remnants of exploded stars, and are part of a class of objects called neutron stars. A pulsar is a special kind of neutron star, which is the ultra-dense leftover core of a massive star. Pulsars emit beams of radiation that sweep out in circles as the pulsar spins. When those beams flash over Earth, we see them as regular, repeating pulses of radio emission. “Pulsars are spectacular objects themselves — the mass of the Sun crammed into a tiny ball the size of a city, spinning on its axis, in some cases faster than a kitchen blender, and sweeping beams of radio waves across the sky,” Anne Archibald, a professor of astronomy at Newcastle University in the U.K., told Live Science in an email. WHO DISCOVERED PULSARS? In 1967 a graduate student named Jocelyn Bell was studying results from the Interplanetary Scintillation Array at the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory in Cambridge, U.K. She was working with her advisor, Antony Hewish, when they found a source of repeating radio signals coming from the same place in the sky every night, according to the CSIRO Australian Telescope National Facility. From far away, pulsars are no more dangerous than any other exotic kind of star in the universe. However, getting up close and personal with a pulsar would be a bad idea. In addition to the beams of radiation, pulsars typically have very strong magnetic fields, and the neutron stars themselves are often hot enough to emit X-ray radiation. Thankfully, the nearest known pulsar, PSR J0108-1431, is safely 424 light-years away. HOW ARE PULSARS FORMED?  This illustration shows magnetic field lines protruding from a highly magnetic neutron star, or a dense nugget left over after a star goes supernova and explodes. Known as magnetars, these objects generate bright bursts of light that might be powered by their strong magnetic fields. Prior to the discovery of pulsars, astronomers had already theorized that neutron stars might exist. They worked out that when a star that’s much more massive than the sun dies, it can sometimes leave behind an incredibly dense core. Astronomers called that core a neutron star. A neutron star has incredibly high density (about the same density as an atomic nucleus), putting several suns’ worth of material into a volume only a few miles across, according to the National Science Foundation’s National Radio Astronomy Observatory.(opens in new tab) While neutron stars are made almost entirely of neutrons, they do contain some positively charged protons. Because neutron stars are so small and dense, they rotate incredibly quickly. The charges moving in a circle power up incredibly strong magnetic fields, and that magnetism can launch beams of radiation that shoot out of the neutron star’s magnetic poles. HOW DO PULSARS PULSE? The magnetic poles of a neutron star rarely line up with its spin axis. This is just like Earth: Our planet's magnetic poles do not align with its geographic poles. On neutron stars, this causes the beam of radiation to sweep across space in circles above and below the star, according to NASA’s Imagine the Universe(opens in new tab). If the beams of radiation miss Earth, astronomers will see a normal neutron star. But if the beam sweeps over Earth, telescopes here will detect a burst of radiation every time the beam circles back around. From an Earthling's perspective, these look like regular flashes or pulses of radiation, hence the name "pulsars." The flashes from pulsars are extremely regular, with some maintaining regular cycles to within a billionth of a nanosecond. "It's like having a precision clock conveniently installed somewhere in the galaxy," Archibald said. ARE PULSARS DANGEROUS? This four-panel graphic shows the two pulsars observed by Chandra. Geminga is in the upper left and B0355+54 is in the upper right. In both of these images, Chandra’s X-rays, colored blue and purple, are combined with infrared data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope that shows stars in the field of view. Below each data image, an artist’s illustration depicts more details of what astronomers think the structure of each pulsar wind nebula looks like. From far away, pulsars are no more dangerous than any other exotic kind of star in the universe. However, getting up close and personal with a pulsar would be a bad idea. In addition to the beams of radiation, pulsars typically have very strong magnetic fields, and the neutron stars themselves are often hot enough to emit X-ray radiation. Thankfully, the nearest known pulsar, PSR J0108-1431, is safely 424 light-years away. HOW MANY PULSARS ARE THERE? Even though astronomers believe that there are about a billion neutron stars in the Milky Way galaxy, we know of only about 2,000 pulsars. Part of the reason for this discrepancy is that the radiation beam of a pulsar has to line up perfectly with Earth for telescopes here to see it. Second, not every neutron star is spinning fast enough or has a strong enough magnetic field to generate beams of radiation. Lastly, astronomers have only mapped a small fraction of the total volume of the galaxy, and they have not observed every pulsar, according to NASA. WHY DO PULSARS SLOW DOWN? Through careful observations, astronomers have found that pulsars tend to slow down with time. Emitting strong beams of radiation takes energy, and that energy comes from the rotational energy of the neutron star. As the pulsar continues to whirl, it slows down and loses energy. Eventually, after several million years, the pulsar "shuts off" and becomes a normal neutron star, according to Swinburne University’s Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing in Australia. However, sometimes a neutron star can pull material from a nearby stellar companion. This process adds angular momentum back to the neutron star, enabling it to rev up and become a pulsar again.  Using Chandra and other X-ray observatories, astronomers have found evidence for what is likely one of the most extreme pulsars, or rotating neutron stars, ever detected. The source exhibits properties of a highly magnetized neutron star, or magnetar, yet its deduced spin period is thousands of times longer than any pulsar ever observed. This composite image shows RCW 103 and its central source, known officially as 1E 161348-5055 (1E 1613, for short), in three bands of X-ray light detected by Chandra. WHAT CAN PULSARS BE USED FOR? Besides studying pulsars in their own right, astronomers can use them for other research purposes. One of the most tantalizing applications is in the area of gravitational wave astronomy, which studies the ripples in space-time formed when massive objects collide. "Gravitational waves are produced by some of the most spectacular events in the Universe," Archibald explained, "and they give us a way to study these events that is totally different from what we'd ordinarily get by detecting light or radio waves." When objects collide and release gravitational waves, these waves change the distances between points. So if astronomers have their telescopes trained on a pulsar, then the duration between pulses may shorten or lengthen if there is a gravitational wave passing by. By observing networks of pulsars, astronomers hope to catch signals of passing gravitational waves. The research is just getting started, but Archibald, who is part of one of these collaborations, is excited. "At first, we expect to see gravitational waves quite fuzzily, but even so it will tell us more about how galaxies formed," Archibald said, "As our sensitivity improves, though, we might detect individual pairs of black holes, kinks in cosmic strings, or something totally unexpected." | |
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| Jase1Posted at 2023-03-10 19:02:51(88Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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|  Titan is the only moon in the Solar System with a dense atmosphere, and it is also the only planetary body other than Earth that currently has rivers, lakes, and seas. Unlike Earth, however, the liquid on Titan’s surface is composed of hydrocarbons including methane and ethane, not water. Its atmosphere is filled with thick haze that obscures visible light reflecting off the surface. Scientists have waited for years to use Webb’s infrared vision to study Titan’s atmosphere, including its fascinating weather patterns and gaseous composition, and also see through the haze to study albedo features (bright and dark patches) on the surface. Further Titan data are expected from NIRCam and NIRSpec as well as the first data from Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) in May or June of 2023. The MIRI data will reveal an even greater part of Titan’s spectrum, including some wavelengths that have never before been seen. This will give scientists information about the complex gases in Titan’s atmosphere, as well as crucial clues to deciphering why Titan is the only moon in the Solar System with a dense atmosphere. [Image Description: Side-by-side images of Saturn’s moon Titan, captured by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera on 4 November 2022, with clouds and other features visible. Left image is various shades of red. Right image is shades of white, blue, and brown.] Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, A. Pagan (STScI), JWST Titan GTO Team | |
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| BeowulfPosted at 2023-03-11 13:48:45(88Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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|  Shreds of the luridly coloured supernova remnant DEM L 190 seem to billow across the screen in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The delicate sheets and intricate filaments are debris from the cataclysmic death of a massive star that once lived in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. DEM L 190 — also known as LMC N49 — is the brightest supernova remnant in the Large Magellanic Cloud and lies approximately 160 000 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Dorado. This striking image was created with data from two different astronomical investigations, using one of Hubble’s retired instruments, the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2). This instrument has since been replaced by the more powerful Wide Field Camera 3, but during its operational lifetime it contributed to cutting-edge science and produced a series of stunning public outreach images. The first of the two WFPC2 investigations used DEM L 190 as a natural laboratory in which to study the interaction of supernova remnants and the interstellar medium, the tenuous mixture of gas and dust that lies between stars. In the second project, astronomers turned to Hubble to pinpoint the origin of a Soft Gamma-ray Repeater, an enigmatic object lurking in DEM L 190 which repeatedly emits high-energy bursts of gamma rays. This is not the first image of DEM L 190 to be released to the public — a previous Hubble portrait of this supernova remnant was published in 2003. This new image incorporates additional data and improved image processing techniques, making this spectacular celestial fireworks display even more striking! Image description: A supernova remnant, in the shape of a flame, occupies the centre and top. It is made of many long strands and thin layers of gas, that brightly glow orange and blue. Faint gas clouds outline its edges. It is surrounded by several scattered blue and red stars, and the background is black and filled with small red stars. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, S. Kulkarni, Y. Chu & Beowulf | |
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| Jase1Posted at 2023-03-11 14:40:14(88Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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|  Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI The Cartwheel Galaxy, located about 500 million light-years away in the Sculptor constellation, is a rare sight. Its appearance, much like that of the wheel of a wagon, is the result of an intense event – a high-speed collision between a large spiral galaxy and a smaller galaxy not visible in this image. Collisions of galactic proportions cause a cascade of different, smaller events between the galaxies involved; the Cartwheel is no exception. The collision most notably affected the galaxy’s shape and structure. The Cartwheel Galaxy sports two rings — a bright inner ring and a surrounding, colorful ring. These two rings expand outwards from the center of the collision, like ripples in a pond after a stone is tossed into it. Because of these distinctive features, astronomers call this a “ring galaxy,” a structure less common than spiral galaxies like our Milky Way. The bright core contains a tremendous amount of hot dust with the brightest areas being the home to gigantic young star clusters. On the other hand, the outer ring, which has expanded for about 440 million years, is dominated by star formation and supernovas. As this ring expands, it plows into surrounding gas and triggers star formation. Other telescopes, including the Hubble Space Telescope, have previously examined the Cartwheel. But the dramatic galaxy has been shrouded in mystery – perhaps literally, given the amount of dust that obscures the view. Webb, with its ability to detect infrared light, now uncovers new insights into the nature of the Cartwheel. The Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), Webb’s primary imager, looks in the near-infrared range from 0.6 to 5 microns, seeing crucial wavelengths of light that can reveal even more stars than observed in visible light. This is because young stars, many of which are forming in the outer ring, are less obscured by the presence of dust when observed in infrared light. In this image, NIRCam data are colored blue, orange, and yellow. The galaxy displays many individual blue dots, which are individual stars or pockets of star formation. NIRCam also reveals the difference between the smooth distribution or shape of the older star populations and dense dust in the core compared to the clumpy shapes associated with the younger star populations outside of it. Learning finer details about the dust that inhabits the galaxy, however, requires Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). MIRI data are colored red in this composite image. It reveals regions within the Cartwheel Galaxy rich in hydrocarbons and other chemical compounds, as well as silicate dust, like much of the dust on Earth. These regions form a series of spiraling spokes that essentially form the galaxy’s skeleton. These spokes are evident in previous Hubble observations released in 2018, but they become much more prominent in this Webb image. Webb’s observations underscore that the Cartwheel is in a very transitory stage. The galaxy, which was presumably a normal spiral galaxy like the Milky Way before its collision, will continue to transform. While Webb gives us a snapshot of the current state of the Cartwheel, it also provides insight into what happened to this galaxy in the past and how it will evolve in the future. The James Webb Space Telescope is the world's premier space science observatory. Webb will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency. | |
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| BeowulfPosted at 2023-03-12 05:07:04(88Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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|  This gently glowing area of sky is actually a hot bubble of hydrogen gas — named Sh 2-305 — that has been bombarded by intense radiation from nearby stars. Such gas clouds are known as emission nebulae, or HII regions (pronounced “H-two”). The radiation in question is in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum and is thought to emanate from at least two O-type stars, and likely several others. This stellar class is the brightest and hottest that we know of — such stars can be up to 90 times as massive as the Sun, and an incredible one million times as bright. Together with five neighbouring bubbles, Sh 2-305 belongs to a giant complex of dense clouds of dust and gas and, on a larger scale, an enormous ring called the GS234-02 star-forming supershell (located in the Perseus arm of the Milky Way, in the constellation of Puppis). This image was obtained under 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 | |
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1stGD Posted at 2023-03-12 05:23:50(88Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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| Just waiting for: - We´ve found a planet with vegetation!! Why... we are pretty far out from our "hood" by now... ok it could be beoynd the next planet... but still... Something gotta be out there...   | |
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| Jase1Posted at 2023-03-12 09:10:33(88Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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|  If it does hit, the asteroid, roughly the size of an Olympic swimming pool, may arrive on Valentine's Day 2046 according to Nasa calculations. The closest the asteroid is expected to get to Earth is about 1.1 million miles (1.8m km), Nasa says. But researchers are still collecting data, which they say may change predictions. The asteroid, dubbed 2023 DW, has about a 1 in 560 chance of hitting Earth, according to Nasa. It's the only space rock on Nasa's risk list that ranks a 1 on the Torino Impact Hazard Scale. The scale, which goes from 0-10, measures the risk of space objects colliding with Earth. All other objects on the scale rank 0, indicating no risk for impact. A ranking of 1 means that an actual collision is extremely unlikely and no cause for public concern, Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) says. "This object is not particularly concerning," JPL navigation engineer Davide Farnocchia told CNN. If it does collide with us, 2023 DW would not have the same doomsday effect as the asteroid that decimated the Earth's dinosaurs 66 million years ago. That asteroid was far bigger at 7.5 miles (12km) wide, Scientific American says. But an impact from 2023 DW could still cause significant damage if it were to land atop a major city or densely populated area. A meteor less than half the size of 2023 DW exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, 10 years ago, causing a shock wave that blew out windows across 200 square miles and injured roughly 1,500 people. While contact with an asteroid seems unlikely, scientists have been preparing for such an encounter for years. Last October, Nasa confirmed the agency's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (Dart) mission had successfully changed the travel path of a small asteroid by slamming a spacecraft into it. "That's the very reason why we flew that mission," Mr Farnocchia said, "and that mission was a spectacular success." | |
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| MafketelPosted at 2023-03-12 09:22:45(88Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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| SuperbikemikePosted at 2023-03-12 18:08:25(88Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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| and i dont mind  | |
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| Jase1Posted at 2023-03-13 09:26:02(88Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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|    Relive the astronauts' experience. | |
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| Jase1Posted at 2023-03-13 15:01:00(88Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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| miokPosted at 2023-03-13 15:07:25(88Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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|  A potential supermassive black hole (bottom left arrow) leaves a trail of stars (middle arrow) as it's flung from a galaxy (top arrow). NASA/ESA/Pieter van Dokkum et al./Astrophysical Journal Letters 2023 The Hubble Space Telescope is still making first-of-a-kind discoveries after more than three decades in space. Its latest? Observations of the first ever supermassive black hole gone rogue from its own galaxy. That's what a team of astronomers is suggesting in a new study posted online. The study has been peer reviewed for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, according to Pieter van Dokkum, an astrophysicist at Yale University who led the new study. Even experts not involved in the study are excited for the team's results. "The observations are all fitting together with this scenario," Manuela Campanelli, an astrophysicist at the Rochester Institute of Technology not involved in the study but who has simulated runaway black holes in her research, told Insider. The first possible photo of a 'rogue' supermassive black hole  A trail of stars leaving a galaxy (the spot in the upper right of both images) and narrowing to a point on the lower left, indicating a runaway supermassive black hole. NASA/ESA/Pieter van Dokkum et al./Astrophysical Journal Letters 2023 What you're seeing above are two images of the same thing that tell the story of what happened. Look at the zoomed-in shot on the right: The big spot in the upper right is a galaxy. Then follow the faint line trailing away from it, which ends in a point on the lower left. That's where scientists think the runaway black hole is hiding. Black holes, by their very nature, are invisible. The reason astronomers are able to "see" any black hole is because it's surrounded by a swirling hot disk of gas, stars, and other cosmic stuff that is visible. But the most fascinating part of these photos is the streak you see trailing behind the black hole. That's what caught researchers' eyes as they examined nearby stars. They think that long tail coming out of the black hole is actually a trail of newborn stars, which formed after the black hole was hurled from its home galaxy, and ripped through space, generating a shockwave that caused clouds of intergalactic gas to collapse into stars. "I thought that I'd actually made an error that there was this weird streak in the image," van Dokkum told Insider. "It didn't look like any astrophysical objects at first. And then it turned out that it was real. It was also in other datasets. And that's when I got excited." Though black holes are notorious for devouring and destroying stars, this one seems to be creating them as well. Further observations, probably with the James Webb Space Telescope, are necessary to confirm that the object in the picture truly is a runaway supermassive black hole. Why a supermassive black hole would go rogue Supermassive black holes are mind-bogglingly dense objects with the mass of billions of suns, and scientists think there's one at the center of every galaxy. Needless to say, kicking one out of its home would take a lot of force. One such cataclysmic event that could possibly do the job is if two galaxies collide together, and their central black holes merge. A collision between black holes is one of the most violent, forceful events in the universe, and it could send a smaller remnant black hole careening into the void. Astrophysicists have long theorized that black holes could "go rogue" or "run away," if other black holes pushed them out of their galaxies. But nobody has ever confirmed a black hole wandering through intergalactic space, much less a supermassive black hole going rogue. And while two galaxies colliding is the simplest explanation for a rogue black hole, that's not what seems to have happened here. 2 other black holes may have expelled this one in a rare, violent event Van Dokkum thinks this black hole had an especially rare, dramatic, violent exit. Here's his theory: Two galaxies merged, and their supermassive black holes fell together, due to their sheer gravitational pull. That happens all the time. Hubble has photographed plenty of merging galaxies, like the ones in the image below. The next step is what made this merger so weird.  hubble merging galaxies NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration, and K. Noll (STScI) The team thinks that a third galaxy arrived, with a third black hole, and its gravity caused a complex dance of the three black holes, which ended with ejecting one of them into the distance.  A merging pair of galaxies, captured by JWST. ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, L. Armus, A. Evans Ever since then, over a period of 39 million years, the runaway black hole has been screaming away from its home galaxy at a speed of about 1,600 kilometers (nearly 1,000 miles) per second, according to van Dokkum's team's calculations. For reference, at that speed it would take you 25 seconds to circle the entire Earth. Basically, this supermassive black hole (if that's what it is) got third-wheeled and kicked out of its own home. Evidence for this third galaxy is yet to be confirmed, but the team is investigating a trail they see on the opposite side of the galaxy, where they think the other two black holes merged and then got kicked out by the recoil. "The picture really tells the story," van Dokkum said. That makes this event exceptionally rare, Campanelli said, because it involved three black holes instead of the conventional two that theorists typically pose in a scenario like this. Follow the trail of newborn stars — if it's not just a jet The other explanation for the mysterious trail in van Dokkum's Hubble photo is a fairly common one: jets of material that shoot out from the centers of galaxies with highly active black holes. But van Dokkum and Campanelli both say that's unlikely, based on the shape of the trail in the new picture. Jets shooting from galactic centers fan out away from the galaxy, as the material shoots from a point and spreads out in the distance, like what's shown in the Hubble image below:  Spectacular jets powered by the gravitational energy of a supermassive black hole in the core of the galaxy Hercules A. NASA Goddard Instead, the trail in van Dokkum's Hubble image fans out toward the galaxy. It seems to be a trail of new stars that formed as the traveling black hole generated shock waves in the intergalactic gas. Campanelli added that the compact and irregular shape of the galaxy is "typical" of galaxies formed from mergers. "If it turns out to be not real, I'll be surprised," van Dokkum said. "If it's not real, I think it is actually a combination of a few other gas clouds or something that seemed to line up in such a way that it looks like a streak." Even though they're invisible, there's no reason to worry about rogue supermassive black holes sneaking up on us from other galaxies. "We would have seen the effects of it if it was anywhere near us," van Dokkum said. Credits: Morgan McFall-Johnsen; edited by Jessica Orwig Mar 9, 2023 | |
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| Jase1Posted at 2023-03-13 15:43:42(88Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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|  Named in his honour, the Hubble Space Telescope launched in 1990 has similarly enhanced our knowledge and understanding of the universe, enabling astronomers and scientists to see glimpses into the cosmos that Hubble himself would have been in awe of. Here are 10 facts about Edwin Hubble, one of the most important figures in the field of modern astronomy. 1. He was a Rhodes Scholar Edwin Hubble was born on 20 November 1889 in Missouri, and was a keen sportsman as well as a fan of science fiction novels. This fascination of the world around him led to him studying for a degree in maths and astronomy at the University of Chicago in 1906. However, due to his father’s expectations, he went on to receive a scholarship to study at Queens College, Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, where he earned a degree in jurisprudence, including reading Roman and English Law. (The Rhodes scholarship is considered among the world’s most prestigious international scholarship programmes.) Nevertheless, he longed to pursue a career in the sciences and later returned to the United States to obtain a PhD in astronomy from the University of Chicago in 1914 at the Yerkes Observatory. 2. He was a veteran of World War One Hubble had hoped to finish his doctoral dissertation on a photographic investigation of faint nebulae and take up a position at the Mount Wilson Observatory in the summer of 1917, yet by then America had entered World War One. He rushed through his dissertation, took a final oral exam and reported to the army for duty just three days later. Hubble served in the US Army in France as a member of the 86th Division, reaching the rank of major, yet the 86th Division never saw combat. (During World War Two he served in an administrative capacity at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland.) 3. He was a key member of the Mount Wilson Observatory in California Completed in 1917, the Mount Wilson Observatory’s 100-inch (2.5 metre) Hooker telescope was the world’s largest at the time (until 1949). In 1919, Hubble was offered a staff position at the observatory by its founder and director, George Ellery Hale. Hubble went on to use the telescope to make many of his most important observations, and remained on staff at Mount Wilson until his death in 1953. 4. He is credited with the discovery of galaxies outside the Milky Way At that time, the prevailing view of the cosmos was that the universe consisted entirely of the Milky Way Galaxy. Although astronomers had speculated about the existence of other galaxies in the universe, there was no observable evidence of them. When Hubble pointed the Hooker Telescope at the constellation Andromeda Nebula, this perspective shifted. For centuries, the Andromeda Nebula had appeared as just an elongated cloud of light, dust and gas. But by using the telescope to observed these faint, fuzzy, cloud-like patches of light, Hubble’s observations now brought them into focus. In 1923, Hubble discovered that there were individual stars in this nebula. Hubble’s continued observations uncovered his first Cepheid variable star – a type of star used to measure distances in space by how its brightness changes. By charting the changes in these stars, Hubble discovered that the Cepheid variable stars in Andromeda were much further away than those in the Milky Way, leading him to believe the Andromeda Nebula was a galaxy in its own right. Hubble used this technique to study other spiral ‘nebulae’ in the universe, and concluded that millions of galaxies existed beyond our own. This discovery expanded the known size of the universe by several orders of magnitude, transforming the field of cosmology. 5. He devised the Hubble Classification Scheme Hubble compared galaxies by studying their physical properties. Focusing on their visual appearance, Hubble devised what is now the most influential system for classifying galaxies: the Hubble Classification Scheme. This arranges galaxies into two main categories based on their shapes – elliptical or spiral – and is subdivided based on specific characteristics of each galaxy. This sequence helped lay the groundwork for understanding how galaxies evolved, and ultimately the formation of the universe. 6. He developed the Hubble-Lemaître law, which describes the expansion of the universe By 1929, Hubble had discovered that not only was the universe home to millions of other galaxies, but the universe itself was expanding. He published a paper (‘A Relation Between Distance and Radial Velocity Among Extra-Galactic Nebulae’) that demonstrated that the further away a galaxy is from Earth, the faster it is moving away from Earth. Thus while other scientists – including Einstein – had assumed the universe to be static, Hubble went on to show that the universe is expanding. This notion of an ‘expanding’ universe formed the basis of the Big Bang theory, which states that the universe began with an intense burst of energy at a single moment in time and has been expanding ever since. Hubble had changed our view of the universe forever, finding that our own vast galaxy, home to our sun and 100 billion other stars, is but one of billions of other galaxies. 7. He was the first astronomer to use the term ‘redshift’ Furthermore, by studying the light emitted from various galaxies, Hubble discovered the shift in the spectrum of light from distant galaxies towards the red end of the spectrum. It became apparent that the universe was continuously expanding outward, and all the galaxies within it were moving away from one another. Hubble deemed this process ‘redshift’, as the further a galaxy is away from Earth, the redder its light will appear. This shift is caused by the Doppler effect and is another key piece of evidence for the expansion of the universe. 8. Einstein thanked Hubble for his work More than a decade prior to Hubble’s discoveries, Albert Einstein had set out his general relativity theory, and produced a model of space based on it, which claimed that space was curved by gravity and must therefore be capable of expansion and contraction. However, Einstein had caved to the observational wisdom of the day and changed his original equations. With the discovery of Hubble’s Law, Hubble had proved Einstein right. Einstein paid a special visit to Hubble at Mount Wilson in 1931 to thank him for his work, stating that second-guessing his original findings had been “the greatest blunder of my life”. 9. He received numerous awards and honours Hubble received a large number of awards in his lifetime, including the Newcomb Cleveland Prize in 1924; the Bruce Medal in 1938; the Franklin Medal in 1939; and the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1940. (He also received a 1946 Medal of Merit for outstanding contribution to ballistics research during World War Two.) Posthumously, Hubble also gained many honours. ‘Asteroid 2069 Hubble’ discovered in 1955, is named after him, as is the Hubble crater on the Moon. 10. The Hubble Space Telescope is named in his honour Hubble died in 1953 aged 63, leaving an immense legacy. His discovery of galaxies outside the Milky Way and the expanding universe revolutionised our understanding of the cosmos and continue to shape our understanding of the universe today. In recognition of his contributions, the Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990, was named in his honour. This telescope, removed from Earth’s atmosphere, now serves as our window to the universe. It is not the first space telescope, but it is one of the largest and most versatile, renowned both as a vital research tool and as a public relations boost for astronomy due to the stunning images it brings us.  | |
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| Jase1Posted at 2023-03-14 12:50:42(88Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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|  First theorised to exist by Einstein in his general theory of relativity, this object’s unusual shape can be explained by a process called gravitational lensing, which causes light shining from far away to be bent and pulled by the gravity of an object between its source and the observer. In this case, the light from the background galaxy has been distorted into the curve we see by the gravity of the galaxy cluster sitting in front of it. The near exact alignment of the background galaxy with the central elliptical galaxy of the cluster, seen in the middle of this image, has warped and magnified the image of the background galaxy around itself into an almost perfect ring. The gravity from other galaxies in the cluster is soon to cause additional distortions. Objects like these are the ideal laboratory in which to research galaxies too faint and distant to otherwise see. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, S. Jha Acknowledgement: L. Shatz | |
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