Deep Sky

Hubble Space Telescope View Of Turbulent Star-Making Region In The Tarantula Nebula

May 14, 2012

Several million stars are vying for attention in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of a raucous stellar breeding ground in 30 Doradus, located in the heart of the Tarantula nebula.

30 Doradus is the brightest star-forming region in our galactic neighbourhood and home to the most massive stars ever seen. The nebula resides 170 000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small, satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. No known star-forming region in our galaxy is as large or as prolific as 30 Doradus. The image comprises one of the largest mosaics ever assembled from Hubble photos and consists of observations taken by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys, combined with observations from the European Southern Observatory’s MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope that trace the...

SETI Searchs Kepler Telescopes Top Earth-Like Planet Discoveries

September 29, 2011

By Michael Muracco

The Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, the largest steerable radio telescope in the world, is observing 86 planetary systems that may contain Earth-like planets in hopes of detecting signals from intelligent civilizations.

Astronomers at the University of California, Berkeley, are aiming a radio telescope at the most Earth-like worlds discovered by NASA’s Kepler space telescope. Kepler has recently identified 1,235 possible planets around stars in our galaxy. The search began on Saturday, May 8, when the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope – the largest steerable radio telescope in the world – dedicated an hour to eight stars with possible planets. Once UC Berkeley astronomers acquire 24 hours of data on a total of 86 Earth-like planets, they’ll initiate a coarse analysis and then, in about two months, ask an estimated...

University Of Massachusetts Astronomers Prove: We’re Not From Here!

September 13, 2011

By Michael Muracco

We are from another galaxy in the process of joining with the Milky Way. The Milky Way is actually not our parent galaxy. The mystery of why the Milky Way has always been sideways in the night sky has never been answered -- until now.

Imagine the shock of growing up in a loving family with people you call “Mum” and “Dad” and then, suddenly, learning that you are actually adopted! This same sense of shock came as scientists announced that the Sun, the Moon, our planet and its siblings, were not born into the familiar band of stars known as the Milky Way galaxy, but we actually belong to a strange formation with the unfamiliar name of the Sagittarius Dwarf galaxy! How can this be? Using volumes of data from the Two-Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS), a major project to survey the sky...

Merging Black Holes Twist And Stretch Space Time

April 15, 2011

By Michael Muracco

Two doughnut-shaped vortexes ejected by a pulsating black hole. Also shown at the center are two red and two blue vortex lines attached to the hole, which will be ejected as a third doughnut-shaped vortex in the next pulsation. Credit: The Caltech/Cornell SXS Collaboration

When black holes slam into each other, the surrounding space and time surge and undulate like a heaving sea during a storm. This warping of space and time is so complicated that physicists haven’t been able to understand the details of what goes on—until now. “We’ve found ways to visualize warped space-time like never before,” says Kip Thorne, Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics, Emeritus, at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). By combining theory with computer simulations, Thorne and his colleagues at Caltech, Cornell University, and the National Institute for Theoretical Physics in South Africa have developed conceptual tools...

Hubble Pinpoints Source Of High-Energy Gamma Rays And X-Rays

April 7, 2011

By Michael Muracco

Hubble Space Telescope pinpoints source of high-energy gamma rays and X-rays.

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has joined forces with other telescopes to study the source of one of the most puzzling bursts of high-energy gamma rays and X-rays ever observed. More than a week after the burst was first spotted, high-energy radiation continues to brighten and fade. “We know of objects in our own galaxy that can produce repeated bursts, but they are thousands to millions of times less powerful than the bursts we are seeing now. This is truly extraordinary,” said Andrew Fruchter at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, USA. Astronomers say they have never seen...

What has Hubble told us about black holes?

February 28, 2011

By Michael Muracco

For centuries, scientists imagined objects so heavy and dense that their gravity might be strong enough to pull anything in – including light. They would be, quite literally, a black hole in space. But it’s only in the past few decades that astronomers have conclusively proved their existence. Today, Hubble lets scientists measure the effects of black holes, make images of their surroundings and glean fascinating insights into the evolution of our cosmos. One of Hubble’s mission objectives at launch was to study black holes, and to test the theory that supermassive black holes lurk in the centres of...

Arp 147: Giant Ring of Black Holes

February 10, 2011

By Michael Muracco

Arp 147 contains the remnant of a spiral galaxy (right) that collided with the elliptical galaxy on the left, producing an expanding wave of star formation that shows up as a blue ring containing in abundance of massive young stars. These stars race through their evolution in a few million years or less and explode as supernovas, leaving behind neutron stars and black holes. A fraction of the neutron stars and black holes will have companion stars, and become bright X-ray sources as they pull in matter from their companions. The nine brilliant X-ray sources scattered around the ring...

Sagittarius A*: The Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole -158 Trillion Miles Away

February 1, 2011

By Michael Muracco

Sagittarius A*: The Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole -158 Trillion Miles Away

“The black hole came into existence billions of years ago, perhaps as very massive stars collapsed at the end of their life cycles and coalesced into a single, supermassive object.” -Andrea Ghez, professor of physics and astronomy, UCLA For years, astronomers speculated that a giant, mysterious force lay at the center of the Milky Way 26,000 light years or 158 trillion miles away, but it wasn’t until recently that definitively showed what it was. Ghez’s research focuses on the origin and early life of stars and planets, and the distribution and nature of the matter at the center of...

“Beyond the Event Horizon of a Black Hole is the Beginning of Another Universe”

January 31, 2011

By admin

“Beyond the Event Horizon of a Black Hole is the Beginning of Another Universe”

Do black holes hold the key that could unlock the secrets of our patch of the universe? Some of the world’s leading physicists believe that in the event that quantum effects allow time to extend indefinitely into the past that it could be possible that beyond the event horizon of a black hole is the beginning of another universe. Embedded in the heart of each of the universe’s one trillion galaxies is a supermassive black hole that is roughly one million to one billion times the mass of the sun. About 10 percent of these giant black holes feature...

Interstellar Clouds Rotating 10 Billion Times Per Second

January 31, 2011

By admin

Interstellar Clouds Rotating 10 Billion Times Per Second

The red region in this image of interstellar clouds highlight microwaves from fast-spinning dust specks found in the Milky Way galaxy—spinning more than ten billion times a second, astronomers announced. The odd radiation has long been associated with dense, dusty clouds between stars, but its exact source was a mystery. Finding the source of the microwave fog will ultimately help the Planck team refine its studies of the cosmic microwave background, or CMB, radiation that was emitted during the big bang, more than 13 billion years ago. Scientists found the tiny grains—each just 10 to 50 atoms wide—using the...