New Discoveries #5 - Deep space, galactic, solar system, etc.

Palomar · 2005-06-02 06:17:16

*Thanks, Cobra Commander, for locking the previous thread.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap971023.html]Echoes of supernova 1987A

Bull's-eye.

-then-

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap971024.html]Moving echoes around SN 1987A

Check out the 1-year difference.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2005-06-02 11:17:11

http://www.pparc.ac.uk/Nw/millennium_sim.asp]Oh. My. God.

*Through this, I'll be able to see what I've always wanted to see.

Omniscience isn't too far away.

From a different article (universetoday.com):

...the growth and expansion of the Universe after the Big Bang, including the formation of galaxies, clusters and quasars...

--Cindy

Palomar · 2005-06-03 06:35:16

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap010829.html]AFGL 2591: Putting on a show

*And what a photo. This young star (only 1 million years old) is "expelling outer layers of dust-laced gas as gravity pulls inner material toward the surface."

It has already created a nebula 500 times the diameter of our Solar System within 10,000 years' time. Wow.

This star is located towards the constellation Cygnus (The Swan), aprox 3000 l/y distant.

-*-

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap011004.html]M74: Grand Design

Another Sc class galaxy. Is 30 million l/y distant, towards the constellation Pisces. Estimated to contain over 100 billion stars. They point out the "bright blue star clusters"; some portion of that appears a bit greenish to me as well (towards lower left-hand corner). Is similar to our Milky Way Galaxy, apparently.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2005-06-07 06:25:22

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap990503.html]Loop I

*Aka North Polar Spur (so named because of its immenze size). Best seen on radio and x-ray maps. It is huge, spanning 100 degrees of sky.

It's described as a thin bubble of gas. Diameter of aprox 700 l/y. Its center is only 400 l/y from us.

They're still debating as to its cause. Speculation includes that it's expanding gas from a million year-old supernova. It's currently impacting the nearby Aquila Rift molecular cloud.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2005-06-07 11:35:54

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.htm … ]Supernova Remnant Menagerie

*Stunning.

Is dubbed N 63A and resides in a star-forming region of the Large Magellanic Cloud. Many of the stars in its immediate vicinity are described as extremely massive. They speculate the star which produced this remnant possessed 50 times the mass of Sol. New stars are being born within 10 to 15 l/y of N 63A.

Article states infrared, x-ray and radio observations reveal the bubble completely encompasses the optical emission.

Photo is color representative.

Certainly is unusual in appearance, IMO.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2005-06-09 04:55:46

http://www.spaceweather.com/swpod2005/0 … jpg]Within 24 hours of the New Moon...

*...not a new discovery per se, but I enjoy posting hard-to-get astrophotos in appropriate threads. This thread will do for this photo.

It and the following caption are courtesy spaceweather.com:

On June 6th, the Moon was New, absolutely dark and invisible. Less than 24 hours later, John Stetson of Raymond, Maine, took this picture of its emerging crescent...
"Young moons" like this one are vanishingly slender and glow only faintly against the blue twilight sky. They're not easy to photograph.

I can't recall ever having seen a Moon that "young." Within 48 hours, yes. Probably have years ago (while living the Midwest), but where I reside now has mountain ranges to the west-northwest, and we live in the center of town.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2005-06-09 05:18:01

*Sodium Tetrafluoride on Io abstract:

Silicon tetrafluoride (SiF4) is observed in terrestrial volcanic gases and is predicted to be the major F - bearing species in low temperature volcanic gases on Io (Schaefer and Fegley, 2005b). SiF4 gas is also a potential indicator of silica-rich crust on Io. We used F/S ratios in terrestrial and extraterrestrial basalts, and gas/lava enrichment factors for F and S measured at terrestrial volcanoes to calculate equilibrium SiF4/SO2 ratios in volcanic gases on Io. We conclude that SiF4 can be produced at levels comparable to the observed NaCl/SO2 gas ratio. We also considered potential loss processes for SiF4 in volcanic plumes and in Io's atmosphere including ion-molecule reactions, electron chemistry, photochemistry, reactions with the major atmospheric constituents, and condensation. Photochemical destruction (tchem ~ 266 days) and/or condensation as Na2SiF6 (s) appear to be the major sinks for SiF4. We recommend searching for SiF4 with infrared spectroscopy using its 9.7 micron band as done on Earth.

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=16907]Web page

--Cindy

Palomar · 2005-06-11 05:40:13

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap000921.html]XZ Tauri system ejects gas bubble

*Is a binary system 500 l/y distant, "in" Taurus. The stars are separated by a distance equal to Sol - Pluto distance.

Astronomers have been observing a bubble of gas which has been expanding for 30 years. The bubble's size is currently 15 times greater than the distance between those two stars.

Unsure as to why this bubble is occurring.

-*-

Related to the above:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap010604.html]T-Tauri star-forming system

--Cindy

Palomar · 2005-06-13 07:38:16

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/0 … .html]Void galaxies

*Voids within space are usually (average) 100 million light years across. The galaxies within them make up less than 5% of all known galaxies; however, voids account for 40% of the Universal volume.

Void galaxies tend to be bluish in appearance becasue they're still creating young and hot blue stars, and more than the average as compared to other galaxies. They also create more stars than previously thought.

Article says void galaxies tend to form near the edges of voids, rather than towards the center.

– like hermits that want to remain within earshot of civilization.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2005-06-14 05:44:37

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap0505 … agittarius Dwarf Tidal Stream

*Seems our galaxy remains in the active process of eating one of our satellite galaxies, the Sagittarius Dwarf. They're speculating the SD may have once been pulled through the Milky Way's disc, and close to where Sol currently is.

Interesting artist's depiction.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2005-06-14 11:08:28

*Wanna know why it's best to look for aurorae at midnight?

What's special about midnight? At that time of night, the sky above you is physically close to Earth's magnetic tail. The so-called "magnetotail" is a region of our planet's magnetic field stretched out by the solar wind and filled with energetic particles that feed aurora storms. If you like auroras, getting close to the magnetotail is a good thing.

From spaceweather.com. Of course we don't have auroral activity this far south...and if we do, it's so faint and rare and I'm sleeping when it happens...

An interesting tidbit of info, IMO. Maybe I've known it previously and forgot (the ol' brain pan is getting filled up...)

--Cindy

Palomar · 2005-06-15 06:38:27

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap961122.html]Blue Snowball Nebula & "FLIERS"

*Fished this out of Astropix the other day. FLIERS is an acronym for Fast Low-Ionization Emission Regions. They're fast-moving and dense knots of gas; speculation is that they're expelled -before- the star blows the actual nebula.

They're unsure of the actual formation process or longevity of FLIERS.

The Blue Snowball Nebula is catalogued as NGC 7662.

And it's pretty, too.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2005-06-15 08:24:08

*Chemical abundances in 43 metal-poor stars:

We have derived abundances of O, Na, Mg, Al, Si, Ca, Sc, Ti, V, Cr, Fe, Ni and Ba for 43 metal-poor field stars in the solar neighbourhood with iron abundances [Fe/H] ranging from -0.4 to -3.0. Total abundance errors are estimated to about 0.1-0.2 dex for most elements, while relative abundances are most probably more accurate. We have made an extensive comparison with other similar studies and traced the reasons for the, in most cases, relatively small differences.
Among the results we note the following: We find [O/Fe] from the O I IR- triplet lines to possibly increase beyond [Fe/H]=-1.0, though considerably less than obtained by others from abundances based on OH lines. We find correlations among the deviations for individual stars from the trends of individual alpha elements relative to Fe. This may support the idea that the formation of the Halo stars occurred in smaller systems with different star formation rates.
We verify the finding by Gratton et al. (2003b) that stars that do not participate in the rotation of the galactic disk show a lower mean and larger spread in [alpha/Fe] than stars participating in the general rotation. The latter stars also seem to show some correlation between [alpha/Fe] and rotation speed.
We finally advocate that a spectroscopic study of a larger sample of halo stars with well-defined selection criteria is very important, in addition to the very considerable efforts that various groups have already made. (Abridged)

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.htm … 5]Abstract

--Cindy

Palomar · 2005-06-15 20:47:10

http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish … 05]Staring into a cosmic jet

*Study concerns Herbig-Haro 211. It contains a protostar which is only roughly 1,000 years old; its distance is approximately 1,000 l/y "in" the constellation of Perseus.

The Submillimeter Array in Hawaii was used. They can see perhaps within 100 astronomical units of the protostar. It's expected the protostar will develop into a low-mass star, similar to Sol. Is of especial interest because it will help explain stellar life stages.

Says astronomers are finding jets everywhere around the universe; from galactic cores to black holes and neutron stars, and stellar newborns.

Yet despite their commonness, the processes that drive them remain shrouded in mystery. Even relatively nearby stellar jets hide their origins behind almost impenetrable clouds of dust. All stars, including our sun, pass through a jet phase during their "childhood," so astronomers are eager to understand how jets form and how they may influence star and planet formation.

-also-

"Jets form very close to a protostar, within about 5 million miles of its surface according to the model we applied" said researcher Naomi Hirano (ASIAA). "The SMA can help test the jet model on the youngest protostars using molecular tracers from within that innermost region."

Cool.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2005-06-16 06:03:21

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap981103.html]Sextans A: Seemingly Square Galaxy

*Nice mixture of green, blue and gold. Appears squarish from our perspective. The large orange star in the pic is actually within our Milky Way Galaxy and is superimposed. Sextans A is aprox 5000 l/y across; a dwarf irregular galaxy. 5 million l/y distant, "in" the constellation Sextans.

100 million years ago "something mysterious" triggered massive new star formation at its center.

Massive short-lived stars exploded in supernovae that caused more star formation and yet more supernovae, ultimately resulting in an expanding shell.

In the lower left-hand "corner" is a particularly bright and expansive cluster of bluish stars. Lovely.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2005-06-16 08:37:31

*Are meteor showers misunderstood?

From spacedaily.com: It's possible...that a comet will break into fragments, creating a cloud of meteoroids. That, say astronomers, may not be unnatural.
Jenniskens has discovered a fragment of lost comet D/1819 W1 (Blanpain), last seen in 1819. It has survived for 36 orbits, and was detected on November 22, 2003 by the Catalina Sky Survey as a minor planet called 2003 WY25. It passed Earth at a distance of only 0.025 AU (3.7 million kilometers) on December 11, 2003. After its orbit was better determined, Jenniskens traced the object back to that of Blanpain in 1819. 2003 WY25 is a tiny object, only 400 meters in diameter, assuming that, like similar objects, it reflects about 4% of the sunlight that hits it.
Jenniskens and co-author Esko Lyytinen, an amateur astronomer from Finland, calculated how the debris of a breakup in 1819 would have spread under the influence of planetary perturbations. They discovered that a breakup during (or just before) the return of 1819 can explain a spectacular shower of meteors that radiated from the constellation of Phoenix in 1956. In that year, the planet Jupiter had steered the trail of debris into Earth's path.
"The 19th century idea that meteor showers originate from the breakup of comets went into remission after astronomer Fred Whipple, in 1951, developed a quantitative description of meteoroid acceleration by the drag of water vapor," says Jenniskens. "Ever since, meteor showers were thought to be caused by the gradual ejection of meteoroids when the comet's ices evaporated on approach to the Sun."
Instead, it now appears that many meteoroid streams are caused by wholesale disintegration of comets, which are loose assemblages of cometesimals and are known to frequently break apart. There are several possible causes of such fragmentations, one of which is collisions with large meteoroids...
Last year, Jenniskens identified minor planet 2003 EH1 in the orbit of the strong Quadrantid shower of January, and argued that the object was the residue of a broken comet giving rise to the Quadrantid shower. A comet seen in A. D. 1490 - 1491 (C/1490 Y1) was perhaps the manifestation of that breakup.
The detection of 2003 WY25 provides a second example of the formation of a meteoroid stream by the disintegration of a comet. Other well known meteor showers that likely originated from the breakup of a comet, according to Jenniskens, include the December Geminids (with remnant 3200 Phaethon), as well as the June Daytime Arietids and July delta-Aquariids that are associated with the Marsden-group of sun-skirting comet fragments. It is now also likely that the spectacular meteor storms of Andromedids in 1872 and 1885 were due to the progressive fragmentation of comet 3D/Biela in 1846 and 1852.
Dr. Jenniskens is chair of the Pro-Amat working group of Commission 22 (meteoroids and interplanetary matter) of the International Astronomical Union.

Sure, why not?

--Cindy

Palomar · 2005-06-17 05:26:11

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap970602.html]Bright Star Knots in NGC 4038

*Impact with another galaxy (NGC 4039). I posted a wide-angle photo of both of them in the ND *4* thread within the month. Of course this is a closeup of bright blue knots of stars in the culprit galaxy (the one which smashed into the other). The next billion years will be very tumultuous for this region. Lots of gas clouds violently colliding and producing new hot blue stars.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2005-06-17 07:58:48

*Well...new -photo- anyway. Rather majestic:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap050617.html]Small Magellanic Cloud

Is one of the best photos I've yet seen of the SMC. Two globular clusters in view also: NGC 362 and 47 Tucanae.

-*-

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap980124.html]Large Magellanic Cloud

Really would like to see them for myself, but that'd require a bit of travel.

Both the LMC and the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) are joined to the Milky Way by a stream of cold hydrogen gas.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2005-06-20 13:43:51

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap000802.html]At the edge of the Crescent Nebula

*Aka NGC 6888. This photo is merely a portion (a 3 light-year wide segment) of the nebula, which is 4,700 l/y distant "in" the constellation of Cygnus (The Swan).

It's forming as the result of a Wolf-Rayet star (WR 136) beginning to shed its outer envelope 250,000 years ago; it expels the equivalent of one Solar mass every 10,000 years. The wind impacts interstellar gas, lighting it up.

WR 136 hasn't yet gone supernova. They're predicting it will, though, within a million years.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2005-06-21 07:02:13

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap990409.html]WR 104: Pinwheel Star

*They think this Wolf-Rayet star has a binary companion. The fact that this dust trail exists proves that somehow stellar dust flakes -aren't- being obliterated by the extremely intense WR (primary star's) starlight.

A possible solution to this dusty dilemma is that a companion star exists hidden in the bright central region, generating wind interactions which shield a relatively narrow dust forming region from the light of WR 104.

I like the comparison to "a cosmic lawn sprinkler." :laugh:

Is a false-color infrared image.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2005-06-22 06:14:10

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap0208 … ]Centaurus A: Composite turmoil

*Fascinating image.

Blue: X-rays

Red: Low-energy radio waves

White: Optical light

Green: Energetic radio waves

They're speculating this galaxy gobbled up a smaller one approximately 100 million years ago. An explosion aprox 10 million years ago is responsible for the "arcs of hot gas shooting out from the center."

-*-

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap050621.html]Lovely: Cygnus wall of star formation

Is a portion of NGC 7000, the North American nebula. Is about 1500 l/y distant, "in" Cygnus. Photo spans aprox 15 l/y.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2005-06-22 11:31:25

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap970430.html]Milky Way Molecule Map

*Cool. Deals with gas clouds within our Milky Way; their locations and the directions they are traveling (via their molecular makeup).

The band of our Milky Way Galaxy spans the middle. The data have not only helped our understanding of the Galaxy, but highlight a few mysteries too. For example: what causes the rapid speed of the gas near the Galactic Center?

Our SMBH? See the "Singularity" thread for details. :;):

--Cindy

Palomar · 2005-06-23 07:30:05

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020119.html]Stars Without Galaxies

Galaxies are made up of stars, but are all stars found within galaxies?

No. Mentions discovery of 600 red giants "adrift" independently in the vicinity of the Virgo Cluster of galaxies. Odd that they'd be found there, of all places. Hmmmmm.

Anywho, includes a really cool artist's illustration of what the night sky might look like from a hypothetical planet orbiting one of these particular red giant stars; speculation, etc.

Possibly ejected from their home galaxies during galaxy-galaxy collisions, these isolated suns may well represent part of a large, previously unseen stellar population, filling the space between Virgo Cluster galaxies.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2005-06-23 10:07:50

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap961122.html]Blue Snowball Nebula & "FLIERS"
*Fished this out of Astropix the other day. FLIERS is an acronym for Fast Low-Ionization Emission Regions. They're fast-moving and dense knots of gas; speculation is that they're expelled -before- the star blows the actual nebula.
They're unsure of the actual formation process or longevity of FLIERS.
The Blue Snowball Nebula is catalogued as NGC 7662.
And it's pretty, too.
--Cindy

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap971219.html]NGC 6826: The Blinking Eye Nebula

*FLIERS again; in this nebula, they're red. And there's a mystery involved:

Are they also expanding outward from the central star? If so, their "bow shocks" point in the wrong direction!

Very interesting.

Nebular longevity compared to stellar longevity mentioned.

They should rename it the Nemo Nebula; it reminds me of the little fish in "Finding Nemo." LOL!

--Cindy

Palomar · 2005-06-24 05:11:06

http://www.space.com/imageoftheday/imag … tml]Smooth hues and wisps of dust

*Exquisite photo of the Antares region in Scorpius. Is a mosaic and was taken by amateur astronomers via the Kitt Peak Observatory program.

Can see globular cluster M4 to the right of Antares (my favorite star). Blue, purplish and dark golden dust clouds.

Wish my telescope afforded a similar view. ::sigh::

--Cindy

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#1 2005-06-02 06:17:16

Re: New Discoveries #5 - Deep space, galactic, solar system, etc.

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