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    Category Astronomy/Space

    Black Hole ‘Donuts’ are actually ‘Fountains’

    December 2, 2018, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    The three gaseous components form the long-theorized 'donut' structure: (1) a disk of infalling dense cold molecular gas, (2) outflowing hot atomic gas, and (3) gas returning to the disk. Credit: NAOJ

    The three gaseous components form the long-theorized ‘donut’ structure: (1) a disk of infalling dense cold molecular gas, (2) outflowing hot atomic gas, and (3) gas returning to the disk.
    Credit: NAOJ

    Based on computer simulations and new observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), researchers have found that the rings of gas surrounding active supermassive black holes are not simple donut shapes. Instead, gas expelled from the center interacts with infalling gas to create a dynamic circulation pattern, similar to a water fountain in a city park.

    Most galaxies host a supermassive black hole, millions or billions of times as heavy as the Sun, in their centers. Some of these black holes swallow material quite actively...

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    Newly discovered Supernova Complicates Origin Story Theories

    December 1, 2018, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Six images showing the host galaxy of the newly discovered supernova ASASSN-18bt. The top row shows three images from before the explosion taken by Pan-STARRS, ASAS-SN, and Kepler. The bottom row shows images from ASAS-SN and Kepler after the supernova was visible. The discovery image from the ASAS-SN team is in the bottom middle. To its left is a version with all the surrounding stars eliminated, showing only the new supernova's light output. On the bottom right is a Kepler image from after the supernova was detected. Kepler's precision was crucial to understanding the light from ASASSN_18bt in the early hours after the explosion. Credit: The All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN) project, the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS), and the NASA Kepler space telescope

    Six images showing the host galaxy of the newly discovered supernova ASASSN-18bt. The top row shows three images from before the explosion taken by Pan-STARRS, ASAS-SN, and Kepler. The bottom row shows images from ASAS-SN and Kepler after the supernova was visible. The discovery image from the ASAS-SN team is in the bottom middle. To its left is a version with all the surrounding stars eliminated, showing only the new supernova’s light output. On the bottom right is a Kepler image from after the supernova was detected. Kepler’s precision was crucial to understanding the light from ASASSN_18bt in the early hours after the explosion...

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    Hubble uncovers Thousands of Globular Star Clusters Scattered among galaxies

    November 30, 2018, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    This is a Hubble Space Telescope mosaic of a portion of the immense Coma cluster of over 1,000 galaxies, located 300 million light-years from Earth. Hubble's incredible sharpness was used to do a comprehensive census of the cluster's most diminutive members: a whopping 22,426 globular star clusters. Among the earliest homesteaders of the universe, globular star clusters are snow-globe-shaped islands of several hundred thousand ancient stars. The survey found the globular clusters scattered in the space between the galaxies. They have been orphaned from their home galaxies through galaxy tidal interactions within the bustling cluster. Astronomers will use the globular cluster field for mapping the distribution of matter and dark matter in the Coma galaxy cluster. Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Mack (STScI) and J. Madrid (Australian Telescope National Facility)

    This is a Hubble Space Telescope mosaic of a portion of the immense Coma cluster of over 1,000 galaxies, located 300 million light-years from Earth. Hubble’s incredible sharpness was used to do a comprehensive census of the cluster’s most diminutive members: a whopping 22,426 globular star clusters. Among the earliest homesteaders of the universe, globular star clusters are snow-globe-shaped islands of several hundred thousand ancient stars. The survey found the globular clusters scattered in the space between the galaxies. They have been orphaned from their home galaxies through galaxy tidal interactions within the bustling cluster. Astronomers will use the globular cluster field for mapping the distribution of matter and dark matter in the Coma galaxy cluster.
    Credit: NASA, ESA, J...

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    All of the Starlight ever produced by the Observable Universe Measured

    November 30, 2018, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    This map of the entire sky shows the location of 739 blazars used in the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope’s measurement of the extragalactic background light (EBL). The background shows the sky as it appears in gamma rays with energies above 10 billion electron volts, constructed from nine years of observations by Fermi’s Large Area Telescope. The plane of our Milky Way galaxy runs along the middle of the plot.
    Credit: NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration

    The team’s measurement, collected from Fermi data, has never been done before. From their laboratories on a rocky planet dwarfed by the vastness of space, Clemson University scientists have managed to measure all of the starlight ever produced throughout the history of the observable universe.

    Astrophysicists believe that our universe, whic...

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