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    Category Astronomy/Space

    Scientists Sketch Aged Star System using over a century of observations

    March 13, 2021, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Two stars orbit each other within an enormous dusty disk in the U Monocerotis system, illustrated here. When the stars are farthest from each other, they funnel material from the disk’s inner edge. At this time, the primary star is slightly obscured by the disk from our perspective. The primary star, a yellow supergiant, expands and contracts. The smaller secondary star is thought to maintain its own disk of material, which likely powers an outflow of gas that emits X-rays.
    Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Smith (USRA/GESTAR)
    Download high-resolution video and images from NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio

    Astronomers have painted their best picture yet of an RV Tauri variable, a rare type of stellar binary where two stars — one approaching the end of its life ...

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    Astronomers have detected a Moving Supermassive Black Hole

    March 13, 2021, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Astronomers detect a black hole on the move
    Galaxy J0437+2456 is thought to be home to a supermassive, moving black hole. Credit: Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS).

    Scientists have long theorized that supermassive black holes can wander through space – but catching them in the act has proven difficult. Now, researchers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian have identified the clearest case to date of a supermassive black hole in motion. Their results are published today in the Astrophysical Journal.

    “We don’t expect the majority of supermassive black holes to be moving; they’re usually content to just sit around,” says Dominic Pesce, an astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics who led the study. “They’re just so heavy that it’s tough to get them going...

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    Engineers propose Solar-powered Lunar Ark as ‘Modern Global Insurance Policy’

    March 12, 2021, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Artists rendering of the lunar ark, with cry-preservation modules and a preservation analysis laboratory underground in a lava tube, and an elevator shaft connecting the tube to the surface, where there are solar panels, a Ka-band antenna and an airlock.
    Design concept for the lunar ark.

    University of Arizona researcher Jekan Thanga is taking scientific inspiration from an unlikely source: the biblical tale of Noah’s Ark. Rather than two of every animal, however, his solar-powered ark on the moon would store cryogenically frozen seed, spore, sperm and egg samples from 6.7 million Earth species.

    Thanga and a group of his undergraduate and graduate students outline the lunar ark concept, which they call a “modern global insurance policy,” in a paper presented over the weekend during the IEEE Aerospace Conference.

    “Earth is naturally a volatile environment,” said Thanga, a professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering in the UArizona College of Engineering...

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    Gigantic Jet spied from Black hole in Early Universe

    March 11, 2021, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    X-ray: NASA/CXO/JPL/T. Connor; Optical: Gemini/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA;
    Infrared: W.M. Keck Observatory; Illustration: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss
    Press Image, Caption, and Videos

    Astronomers have discovered evidence for an extraordinarily long jet of particles coming from a supermassive black hole in the early universe, using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.

    If confirmed, it would be the most distant supermassive black hole with a jet detected in X-rays. Coming from a galaxy about 12.7 billion light-years from Earth, the jet may help explain how the biggest black holes formed at a very early time in the universe’s history.

    The source of the jet is a quasar — a rapidly growing supermassive black hole — named PSO J352.4034-15.3373 (PJ352-15 for short), which sits at the center of a young galaxy...

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