New Discoveries *4* - ...Solar System, Deep Space, cont'd

SpaceNut · 2005-03-29 06:54:00

Great view in the posted article of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) I had not ever seen that end of a telescope of that size before.
Doesn't the lack of metals also indicate relative age as well?

Palomar · 2005-03-30 09:16:13

Doesn't the lack of metals also indicate relative age as well?

*Hi SpaceNut: Perhaps. The article mentions age in reference to the lack of metals in the DSG...but it's also small, which could account for the lack. I really don't know enough about galaxy formation to say much other than what's (seemingly) inferred in the article.

-*-

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap0503 … ]Composite Crab

When I first saw this, I thought it was an artist's impression. Nope. Its pulsar spins 30 times per second, resulting from a supernova in 1054. There's a link to information about that event. Chinese astronomers documented the "guest star" in Taurus. Its brightness grew to -6, or 4 times the dazzle of Venus. Was visible for 23 days. Would have been terrific to have seen it.

Like a cosmic dynamo the pulsar powers the x-ray and optical emission from the nebula, accelerating charged particles and producing the eerie, glowing x-ray jets. Ring-like structures are x-ray emitting regions where the high energy particles slam into the nebular material.

Says the inner-most ring is approximately a light-year in diameter.

--Cindy

P.S.: Check out the movies in the link. I'll get to that later today, hopefully they'll work.

Palomar · 2005-03-31 06:45:00

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap050327.html]The Einstein Cross Gravitational Lens

*This is cool. Does this galaxy have 4 nuclei?

Stranger still, the images of the Einstein Cross vary in relative brightness, enhanced occasionally by the additional gravitational microlensing effect of specific stars in the foreground galaxy.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2005-03-31 12:42:50

http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish … 005]Beauty and violence in NGC 1316

*Lots of dust lanes and huge star clusters. Ripples, loops and plumes, believed to be the stellar remains of previous spiral galaxies which merged with NGC 1316 in the past.

NGC 1316 lies "in" the southern constellation of Fornax (I like that name), on the outskirts of a nearby cluster of galaxies 75 million l/y away.

NGC 1316 is also known as "Fornax A" because it is one of the strongest -and- largest of radio sources in the sky. Its "radio lobes" extend several degrees across the sky; in fact, beyond the edges of the photo, if you could see them.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2005-04-01 08:39:12

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/0 … e.html]Our Solar System seems -- to date -- very rare

*Compares the Solar System with other stars bearing 1 "Hot Jupiter"-type planet. Article points out that our Solar System abounds with eccentricities and the real question is likely just how rare is our little family of planets and moons? Based on the current incoming data from other stars with a satellite (or 2...if), looks like ol' Sol and our family of planets and moons are very special indeed.

--Cindy

dicktice · 2005-04-01 20:10:20

The best reason I can think of for space telescope arrays is to enable Earth-size planets to be "seen" circling Sol-type suns. All we've done so far is to prove that planets big enough to be detected by the grossest of methods circling stars aren't all that uncommon. Imagine being able to see planets our size ... how many more stars will be found circling them.

Palomar · 2005-04-05 04:29:18

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.htm … 1]Evidence for co-moving sub-stellar companion of GQ Lupus

*Includes image. It is 6 magnitudes dimmer than GQ Lupus. They're comparing this image to two others (obtained 2 years and 5 years ago). It shares GQ's proper motion, so is being classed a "co-moving companion." Okay, I'll take it that means they're not a binary system (rotating around one another)? Not sure...

Its spectral type is mid-L. Its mass is between 1 to 42 Jupiter masses.

Will be keeping tabs on this. So far they refer to it as "spectral" but can't help wondering if they're considering it might be a hot-Jupiter type of planet around this star.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2005-04-05 05:06:17

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap991127.html]Runaway Star

*This is a gorgeous image. Can clearly see the bow-shock resulting from the star's movement compressing the gases in its path. HD 77581 is 6000 l/y away "in" the constellation of Vela, traveling at 50 miles per second. It is also so bright that its light saturated the camera and "produces the spiky cross shape."

It has an optically invisible companion -- Vela X1 -- which is an "x-ray bright pulsar."

This pulsar is clearly the remnant of a supernova explosion ... which seems to have given this massive star and its companion a mighty kick!

--Cindy

dicktice · 2005-04-05 07:50:02

If I'm not mistaken, the "spikey cross shape" is due to the telescope's secondary mirror supports. It's a good way to differentiate local Milky Way stars from other galaxies.

Palomar · 2005-04-05 09:27:35

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap011204.html]Yet another runaway star

*AE Aurigae "The Flaming Star":

The material that appears as smoke is mostly interstellar hydrogen, but does contain smoke-like dark filaments of carbon-rich dust grains

Says the photo is of false but representative colors. Interesting about the purplish highlights admist the green; seems an unusual combination based on the astrophotos I've seen over the years.

They estimate AE Auriga was ejected from the region of the Orion Nebula 2.7 million years ago.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2005-04-06 06:47:20

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap050406.html]Majestic

*So many stars. Adjectives are sometimes so inadequate.

This is M7 in Scorpius (well...SOME of it is M7, LOL). I've not seen it with the unaided eye on a very dark night, but others have. Ptolemy noted this open cluster in 130 AD.

Approximately 100 stars comprise M7. It's 27 l/y across and aprox 1,000 l/y distant. The millions of background stars are, of course, unrelated to M7 and lie towards the Galactic Center.

The photo was taken at Kitt Peak.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2005-04-06 07:53:52

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap050403.html]The Galactic Center Radio Arc

*Says the RA is connected to the Galactic Center by curving filaments called Arches.

The bright radio structure at the bottom right likely surrounds a black hole at the Galactic center and is known as Sagittarius A*.

(That BH has been mentioned and discussed in the "Singularity" thread, in the Science & Technology folder).

One origin hypothesis holds that the Radio Arc and the Arches have their geometry because they contain hot plasma flowing along lines of constant magnetic field.

Data back from Chandra X-ray Observatory seems to indicate the plasma is colliding with a cloud of cold gas near-to. Hmmmm.

Interesting radio image; I've not seen it before. Looks like a big red spider. :-\

--Cindy

Palomar · 2005-04-06 12:09:57

*Thank god for Astronotes (space.com). They put in a brief article (column, updated format) what takes other similar web sites an entire page to relate:

April 5
Dust in the Wind of a Supernova
Astronomers have discovered a dusty wind that blew off a star right before it exploded into a supernova. This is the first time that a wind has been observed from this type of supernova precursor.
The dust-filled gale was detected around SN 2002ic, a Type Ia supernova about a billion light years from Earth. Type Ia supernovae occur when a small compact star, called a white dwarf, gobbles up mass from a companion star. At a certain point, the mass becomes too great and the white dwarf explodes.

Gluttons, sheesh. :;):

Because Type Ia supernovae are uniformly bright, astronomers have used them to determine how fast the universe is expanding. The data – somewhat surprisingly – say that the expansion is speeding up.
To confirm this acceleration, scientists want to learn more about how the Type Ia bombs tick. Rubina Kotak and Peter Meikle from Imperial College London were interested in SN 2002ic because it was the first Type Ia in which hydrogen had been observed.
When the scientists measured the speed of this hydrogen, they realized it was moving too slowly to be ejecta from the explosion. Instead, it must have come from a wind blowing off the white dwarf. Subsequent measurements in the infrared discovered hints of dust grains wafting in the wind.
These results were to be presented at the Royal Astronomical Society annual meeting April 5. -- Michael Schirber

Interesting all around. :up:

--Cindy

Palomar · 2005-04-07 10:26:55

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap000609.html]Cosmic Crossbow

*Quite a bit of info crammed into the caption. The crossbow portion measures 0.2 l/y across. The Vela pulsar is more massive than Sol, with the density of an atomic nucleus. Rotates 10 times per second and is 12 miles in diameter.

The cosmic crossbow shape is over 0.2 light-years across, composed of an arrow-like jet emanating from the polar region of the neutron star, and bow-like inner and outer arcs believed to be the edges of tilted rings of x-ray emitting high energy particles.
Impressively, the swept back compact nebula indicates the neutron star is moving up and to the right in this picture, exactly along the direction of the x-ray jet.

Lovely image, too.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2005-04-07 13:58:07

Reborn]http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/050407_old_star.html]"Reborn" star surprises astronomers

*Is V4334 Sgr ("in" Sagittarius), aka "Sakurai's Object." It was discovered on 20 February 1996 by Yukio Sakurai (a Japanese amateur astronomer) when the star suddenly brightened.

It is a white dwarf, formerly Sol-like, used up its fuel and collapsed. A teaspoon of its material would weigh 10 tons on Earth.

They speculate the sudden brightening was due to this star's "nuclear furnace" having re-ignited for one final blast. And it's going through this process 100 times quicker than anticipated.

Astronomers think a white dwarf's final eruption involves a burst of fusion in a shell of helium that surrounds a core of heavier nuclei such as carbon and oxygen.
Computer simulations indicated that heat-spurred convection would bring hydrogen from the star's outer envelope down into the helium shell, driving a brief flash of new nuclear fusion. This would cause a sudden increase in brightness. The original computer models suggested a sequence of observable events that would occur over a few hundred years.
"Sakurai's object went through the first phases of this sequence in just a few years -- 100 times faster than we expected," Zijlstra said. "So we had to revise our models."
The new scheme predicted the star should rapidly reheat and begin to ionize gases in its surrounding region. "This is what we now see in our latest VLA observations," Zijlstra said.

First time for everything, huh? I don't recall ever having heard/read of something like this before. :laugh:

--Cindy

Palomar · 2005-04-08 12:22:32

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.htm … 6587]Giant X-ray Loop

???

They're describing it as a "massive": 20 l/y across, adjoins the greatest star-forming region of our galaxy. Is 15 times larger than the Arches Cluster.

This is the first time that such a distinctive and huge loop structure has been observed...The most straightforward interpretation of the observations is that powerful particle-acceleration is occurring on-site, producing high energy particles with an energy of up to a thousand trillion electron volts

Does that mean you shouldn't stick a fork in it? Teehee.

Such particles have been detected previously in a few supernova remnants and many pulsar nebulae, where a very powerful central source has created them. However, evidence for high-energy particles has never been observed before in star-forming regions of our galaxy.

They're not certain if the loop is physically connected with the Arches Cluster or if it's a line-of-sight issue.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2005-04-09 05:57:19

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=16584]A completely new type of star cluster

*"Extended cluster." Study from the UK (with assistance by French, Australian and Canadian astronomers as well) of M31 (Andromeda Galaxy). 50 square degrees of sky has been surveyed.

The extended clusters have been found (so far) only in the Andromeda Galaxy, and not our own Milky Way Galaxy.

Extended clusters contain a similar number of stars in themselves as compared to globular clusters. However, extended clusters are many hundreds of light years across; much larger than GC's. This, of course, makes stars within EC's less densely distributed and therefore with greater distances between them.

"What is clear is that these clusters, like the globulars, are ancient. They are billions of years old - possibly amongst the first objects to form in the Universe."

"How these objects formed, and why there are no similar clusters in the Milky Way is still a mystery"

Speculation that the EC's may not have been originally created in M31, but "as part of other small, so-called dwarf galaxies, which have subsequently between pulled apart and merged with the giant M31 galaxy."

--Cindy

Palomar · 2005-04-11 14:03:52

http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish … 1142005]WR 140

*A binary pair of Wolf-Rayet stars. The study is from the National Science Foundation's VLBA. WR stars are dangerous and massive stars in their final days pre-supernova explosion.

This pair has an elliptically-shaped orbit roughly the size of our Solar System. One has 20 times the mass of Sol, the other 50 times the mass of Sol. It takes them only 7.9 years to complete an orbit around each other. Their orbit varies in length; sometimes they're as distant from each other as Sol to Neptune, sometimes "only" as far as Sol to Mars.

The stars' ferocious winds collide. Measuring the movements of these winds' collisions is key to new info about these stars.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2005-04-12 05:12:08

http://www.space.com/imageoftheday/imag … Lite-Brite Galaxy

*Clever. One of those oh-so-lovely spiral galaxies. This one is 7 million l/y away, "in" the constellation of Sculptor. The young hot stars are blue; the older are greenish-yellow. Bits of other info in the caption as well.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2005-04-13 13:40:37

*More about the Vega debris disk:

We present high spatial resolution mid- and far-infrared images of the Vega debris disk obtained with the Multiband Imaging Photometer for Spitzer (MIPS). The disk is well resolved and its angular size is much larger than found previously. The radius of the disk is at least 43" (330 AU), 70"(543 AU), and 105" (815 AU) in extent at 24, 70 and 160 um, respectively. The disk images are circular, smooth and without clumpiness at all three wavelengths. The radial surface brightness profiles imply an inner boundary at a radius of 11"+/-2" (86 AU). Assuming an amalgam of amorphous silicate and carbonaceous grains, the disk can be modeled as an axially symmetric and geometrically thin disk, viewed face-on, with the surface particle number density following an r^-1 power law. The disk radiometric properties are consistent with a range of models using grains of sizes ~1 to ~50 um. We find that a ring, containing grains larger than 180 um and at radii of 86-200 AU from the star, can reproduce the observed 850 um flux, while its emission does not violate the observed MIPS profiles. This ring could be associated with a population of larger asteroidal bodies analogous to our own Kuiper Belt. Cascades of collisions starting with encounters among these large bodies in the ring produce the small debris that is blown outward by radiation pressure to much larger distances where we detect its thermal emission. The dust production rate is >~10^15 g/s based on the MIPS results. This rate would require a very massive asteroidal reservoir for the dust to be produced in a steady state throughout Vega's life. Instead, we suggest that the disk we imaged is ephemeral and that we are witnessing the aftermath of a large and relatively recent collisional event, and subsequent collisional cascade.

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=16144]The article (including credits) as posted at spaceref.com

--Cindy

Palomar · 2005-04-14 06:01:29

http://www.space.com/imageoftheday/imag … .html]Star Buds in a Bubble

*Is a Spitzer image of RCW79, aprox 17,200 l/y distant, "in" the constellation of Centaurus. They estimate the bubble's diameter to be a mere 70 l/y.

Lots of star formation here: 2 new groups about the edge of the large bubble. Others visible in the small bubble (lower left). Yet another area of star formation near the "opening" at the top.

Image obtained March 10th, released April 13th.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2005-04-14 11:50:30

http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish … 442005]One of the earliest (post-Big Bang) stars identified

*This from Australian National University. The star has been dubbed HE 1327-2326. It contains the lowest level of iron yet found in any star, lacking twice as much iron as the previous record holder. It also has abnormally high levels of strontium, carbon and nitrogen. Another abnormality is apparent lack of lithium (none has been detected).

--Cindy

Palomar · 2005-04-19 05:17:26

http://www.space.com/imageoftheday/imag … 8.html]NGC 5907

*Aka the Splinter Galaxy. Appears edge-on from our viewpoint. Is "in" the constellation of Draco (the Dragon). Lots of thick interstellar dust; Spitzer's infrared instruments are allowing astronomers to see light from the galaxy previously obscurred by the dust for the first time.

By looking in infrared wavelengths from 3-10 microns, Spitzer found a significant and potentially massive thick stellar disk. This is the first time that a thick disk has been detected and characterized in infrared.

NGC 5907 is a rather near neighbor; only 39 - 40 million l/y away.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2005-04-19 11:41:21

http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish … 05]Ghostly supernova remnant

*Is G21.5-0.9, first discovered by radio astronomers 30 years ago. Chandra spent 150 hours studying it. Article notes that most supernovae leave behind bright shells; this one didn't.

The shell is created by the shockwave of particles ejected by the supernova explosion as they slam into material that was sloughed off earlier by the star. This shockwave heats the surrounding material to millions of degrees causing it to blaze in the X-ray spectrum visible to Chandra.

Lovely. They figure the star which went supernova was 10 times larger than Sol.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2005-04-20 06:08:11

Barnards]http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap050420.html]Barnard's Loop & Orion's Belt

*Stunning.

Not a "new discovery," but will post it here (like so many others). The origin of Barnard's Loop is still unknown. There's speculation it's the result of the winds from bright stars in the area or from long-past supernovae. Is invisible to the unaided eye and I've not had the luck of seeing it with my telescope. It was discovered in 1895 by E.E. Barnard; he was photographing that area of the sky, and it showed up on a long-duration exposure.

Can also see the Horsehead Nebula and the Great Nebula (M42).

On a related note, I just now found this fabulous image of M42:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020213.html]Click

I've seen lots of photos of M42, but that one nearly made my jaw drop. Wow.

--Cindy

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