Category Astronomy/Space

UNC expert helps treat Astronaut’s Blood Clot during NASA mission

Stephan Moll, M.D., at NASA.
CREDIT
UNC School of Medicine

“My first reaction when NASA reached out to me was to ask if I could visit the International Space Station (ISS) to examine the patient myself,” said Stephan Moll, MD, UNC School of Medicine blood clot expert and long-time NASA enthusiast. “NASA told me they couldn’t get me up to space quickly enough, so I proceeded with the evaluation and treatment process from here in Chapel Hill.”

Moll was the only non-NASA physician NASA consulted when it was discovered that an astronaut aboard the ISS had a deep vein thrombosis (DVT) – or blood clot—in the jugular vein of their neck...

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GMRT discovers a Gigantic Ring of Hydrogen Gas around a distant galaxy

The optical image from the CFHT telescope with the distribution of neutral hydrogen in the form of a large ring shown in red as observed by the GMRT. The other two red blobs show the distribution of neutral hydrogen around two other galaxies which are in the vicinity of the ring. Credit: O. Bait (NCRA-TIFR/GMRT), Duc (ObAS/CFHT)

A team of astronomers at the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA) in Pune, India have discovered a mysterious ring of hydrogen gas around a distant galaxy, using the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT). The ring is much bigger than the galaxy it surrounds and has a diameter of about 380,000 light-years (about 4 times that of our Milky Way).

The galaxy (named AGC 203001), is located about 260 million light-years away from us...

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Blazar Variability

An artist’s conception of a blazar, a galay powered by an active nucleus. Blazars are the most common sources detected by NASA’s Fermi gamma-ray spacecraft. Astronomers have modeled the bright, variable emission from the blazar CTA102 between 2013-2017 using data taken from the gamma-ray to radio bands. They are able to explain the multiuwavelegnth variability observed using a geometrical model for the rapidly moving jets. Credit: M. Weiss/CfA

Active galactic nuclei (AGN) are supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies that are accreting material. These AGN emit jets of charged particles that move at speeds close to that of light, transporting huge amounts of energy away from the central black hole region and radiating across the electromagnetic spectrum...

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Giant Magnetic Ropes seen in Whale Galaxy’s Halo

Composite image of galaxy NGC 4631, the
Composite image of the galaxy NGC 4631, the “Whale Galaxy,” revealing large magnetic structures.
Credit: Composite image by Jayanne English of the University of Manitoba, with NRAO VLA radio data from Silvia Carolina Mora-Partiarroyo and Marita Krause of the Max-Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy

Using the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array radio telescope, a team of astronomers has captured for the first time an image of large-scale, coherent, magnetic fields in the halo of a faraway spiral galaxy, confirming theoretical modeling of how galaxies generate magnetic fields and potentially increasing knowledge of how galaxies form and evolve.

The international consortium, led by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, and...

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