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    Category Astronomy/Space

    Aging a Flock of Stars in the Wild Duck Cluster

    November 10, 2018, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    An image of the Wild Duck Cluster was captured by the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile. The blue stars at the center of the image are the stars of the cluster. Every star in the Wild Duck Cluster is roughly 250 million years old. Older, redder stars surround the cluster. Credit: European Southern Observatory

    An image of the Wild Duck Cluster was captured by the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile. The blue stars at the center of the image are the stars of the cluster. Every star in the Wild Duck Cluster is roughly 250 million years old. Older, redder stars surround the cluster.
    Credit: European Southern Observatory

    Do star clusters harbor many generations of stars or just one? Scientists have long searched for an answer and, thanks to the University of Arizona’s MMT telescope, found one in the Wild Duck Cluster, where stars spin at different speeds, disguising their common age.

    In a partnership between the UA and the Korean Astronomy and Space Science Institute, a team of Korean and Belgian astronomers used UA instruments to solve a puzzle about flocks of stars call...

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    Astronomers find pairs of Black Holes at the centers of Merging Galaxies

    November 10, 2018, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    These images reveal the final stage of unions between pairs of galactic nuclei in the messy cores of colliding galaxies. The image at top left, taken by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3, shows the merging galaxy NGC 6240. A close-up of the two brilliant cores of this galactic union is shown at top right. This view, taken in infrared light, pierces the dense cloud of dust and gas encasing the two colliding galaxies and uncovers the active cores. The hefty black holes in these cores are growing quickly as they feast on gas kicked up by the galaxy merger. The black holes' speedy growth occurs during the last 10 million to 20 million years of the merger. Images of four other colliding galaxies, along with close-up views of their coalescing nuclei in the bright cores, are shown beneath the snapshots of NGC 6240. The images of the bright cores were taken in near-infrared light by the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, using adaptive optics to sharpen the view. The reference images (left) of the merging galaxies were taken by the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS). The two nuclei in the Hubble and Keck Observatory photos are only about 3,000 light-years apart -- a near-embrace in cosmic terms. If there are pairs of black holes, they will likely merge within the next 10 million years to form a more massive black hole. These observations are part of the largest-ever survey of the cores of nearby galaxies using high-resolution images in near-infrared light taken by the Hubble and Keck observatories. The survey galaxies' average distance is 330 million light-years from Earth. CREDIT NASA, ESA, and M. Koss (Eureka Scientific, Inc.); W. M. Keck Observatory; Panoramic Survey

    These images reveal the final stage of unions between pairs of galactic nuclei in the messy cores of colliding galaxies. The image at top left, taken by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3, shows the merging galaxy NGC 6240. A close-up of the two brilliant cores of this galactic union is shown at top right. This view, taken in infrared light, pierces the dense cloud of dust and gas encasing the two colliding galaxies and uncovers the active cores. The hefty black holes in these cores are growing quickly as they feast on gas kicked up by the galaxy merger. The black holes’ speedy growth occurs during the last 10 million to 20 million years of the merger...

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    Ultra-Hot Gas around remnants of Sun-like Stars

    November 8, 2018, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Artist’s impression of the hot white dwarf GALEXJ014636.8+323615 (white) and its ultra-hot circumstellar magnetosphere (purple) trapped with the magnetic field (green). Credit: N. Reindl. Click for a larger image

    Artist’s impression of the hot white dwarf GALEXJ014636.8+323615 (white) and its ultra-hot circumstellar magnetosphere (purple) trapped with the magnetic field (green). Credit: N. Reindl. Click for a larger image

    Solving a decades-old mystery, an international team of astronomers have discovered an extremely hot magnetosphere around a white dwarf, a remnant of a star like our Sun. The work was led by Dr Nicole Reindl, Research Fellow of the Royal Commission 1851, based at the University of Leicester, and is published today (7 November) in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

    White dwarfs are the final stage in the lives of stars like our Sun...

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    Cosmic Fountain offers clues to how Galaxies Evolve

    November 8, 2018, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Artist impression of Abell 2597 showing the central supermassive black hole expelling cold, molecular gas — like the pump of a giant intergalactic fountain.
    Credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF; D. Berry

    Plumes of cold molecular gas spray out by black hole a billion light-years from Earth. Galaxy evolution can be chaotic and messy, but it seems that streams of cold gas spraying out from the region around supermassive black holes may act to calm the storm. This is according to an international team of scientists who have provided the first clear and compelling evidence of this process in action.

    Using the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA) of telescopes, the team, which includes researchers from Cardiff University, has observed a supermassive black hole acting like a ‘monumental fountain’...

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