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    Category Astronomy/Space

    Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope could detect Supermassive Dark Stars

    June 27, 2023, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    The first stars of the universe were very different than the stars we see today. They were made purely of hydrogen and helium, without heavier elements to help them generate energy in their core. As a result, they were likely hundreds of times more massive than the sun. But some of the first stars may have been even stranger. In the early universe, dark matter could have been more concentrated than it is now, and it may have powered strange stellar objects known as dark stars.

    Since dark matter and regular matter act similarly under gravity, clumps of dark matter in the early universe could have gathered clouds of hydrogen and helium around them. As this matter collapsed under its own weight, dark matter in its core might have generated energy...

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    Webb makes First Detection of Crucial Carbon Molecule

    June 27, 2023, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    These Webb images show a part of the Orion Nebula known as the Orion Bar. The largest image, on the left, is from Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument. At upper right, the telescope is focused on a smaller area using Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument). At the very center of the MIRI area is a young star system with a protoplanetary disk named d203-506. The pullout at the bottom right displays a combined NIRCam and MIRI image of this young system.
    Credits: ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb), and the PDRs4All ERS Team

    A team of international scientists has used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to detect a new carbon compound in space for the first time...

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    Our Galaxy’s Black Hole Not as Sleepy as thought

    June 26, 2023, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    The first ever image of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole that sit at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy
    The first ever image of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole that sit at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy.

    The supermassive black hole lurking at the center of our Milky Way galaxy is not as dormant as had been thought, a new study shows.

    The slumbering giant woke up around 200 years ago to gobble up some nearby cosmic objects before going back to sleep, according to the study published in the journal Nature on Wednesday.

    NASA’s IXPE space observatory spotted an Xray echo of this powerful resurgence of activity, the researchers said.

    The supermassive black hole Sagittarius A—abbreviated to Sgr A—is four million times more massive than the Sun. It sits 27,000 light years from Earth at the center of the Milky Way’s spiral.

    Last year astronomers revealed the first...

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    Astronomers explore the Properties of Ultra-Diffuse Galaxy UGC 9050-Dw1

    June 23, 2023, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Study explores the properties of ultra-diffuse galaxy UGC 9050-Dw1
    HST ACS/WFC F555W/F814W composite color image of UGC 9050-Dw1, which consists of very diffuse stellar light and an amorphous blue central clump of a relatively higher surface brightness. The inset at the lower left depicts a high contrast zoom-in of the central region of the UDG. Credit: Fielder et al, 2023

    Using the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), astronomers have investigated an ultra-diffuse galaxy known as UGC 9050-Dw1. Results of the study, published June 9 on the pre-print server arXiv, yield important insights into the properties of this galaxy.

    Ultra-diffuse galaxies (UDGs) are extremely-low-density galaxies. The largest UDGs have sizes similar to the Milky Way, but have only about 1% as many stars as our home galaxy...

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