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    Category Astronomy/Space

    Vast Ionized Hydrogen Cloud in the Whirlpool Galaxy revealed by Ultra-Sensitive telescope

    May 17, 2018, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Whirlpool Galaxy (stock image). Credit: © allexxandarx / Fotolia

    Whirlpool Galaxy (stock image). Credit: © allexxandarx / Fotolia

    Astronomers have been keenly peering into M51, or the Whirlpool Galaxy, since the 1800s, its signature spiral structure informing the earliest debates over the nature of galaxies and the Cosmos at large. But no one – not with the naked eye or with increasingly powerful modern telescopes – has ever seen what Case Western Reserve University astronomers first observed using a refurbished 75-year-old telescope in the mountains of southwest Arizona. “I literally looked at the image and said, ‘What in the world is that?'” said Case Western Reserve astronomy professor Chris Mihos.

    What it was turned out to be a massive cloud of ionized hydrogen gas spewed from a nearby galaxy and then essentially “cooked” by radiation from the gala...

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    Evidence for Stars Forming just 250 million years after Big Bang

    May 17, 2018, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    This image shows the galaxy cluster MACS J1149.5+2223 taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope; the inset image is the very distant galaxy MACS1149-JD1, seen as it was 13.3 billion years ago and observed with ALMA. Here, the oxygen distribution detected with ALMA is depicted in red. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, W. Zheng (JHU), M. Postman (STScI), the CLASH Team, Hashimoto et al.

    This image shows the galaxy cluster MACS J1149.5+2223 taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope; the inset image is the very distant galaxy MACS1149-JD1, seen as it was 13.3 billion years ago and observed with ALMA. Here, the oxygen distribution detected with ALMA is depicted in red. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, W. Zheng (JHU), M. Postman (STScI), the CLASH Team, Hashimoto et al.

    Most distant Oxygen ever detected in the universe. An international team of astronomers used ALMA to observe a distant galaxy called MACS1149-JD1. They detected a very faint glow emitted by ionised oxygen in the galaxy...

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    Astronomers find Fastest-Growing Black Hole known in Space

    May 17, 2018, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Computer-simulated image of a supermassive black hole. Credit: NASA, ESA, and D. Coe, J. Anderson, and R. van der Marel (STScI) [link]

    Computer-simulated image of a supermassive black hole. Credit: NASA, ESA, and D. Coe, J. Anderson, and R. van der Marel (STScI) [link]

    Astronomers at ANU have found the fastest-growing black hole known in the Universe, describing it as a monster that devours a mass equivalent to our sun every two days. The astronomers have looked back more than 12 billion years to the early dark ages of the Universe, when this supermassive black hole was estimated to be the size of about 20 billion suns with a 1% growth rate every one million years.

    “This black hole is growing so rapidly that it’s shining thousands of times more brightly than an entire galaxy, due to all of the gases it sucks in daily that cause lots of friction and heat,” said Dr Wolf from the ANU Research School of Astronomy and Astrophys...

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    Unusual Laser Emission from the Ant Nebula

    May 17, 2018, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    The Ant Nebula, as imaged by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, resembles the head and body of a garden ant. In reality, it's the result of a dying sun-like star and complex interactions of material at its heart. Credit: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

    The Ant Nebula, as imaged by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, resembles the head and body of a garden ant. In reality, it’s the result of a dying sun-like star and complex interactions of material at its heart. Credit: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

    An international team of astronomers have discovered an unusual laser emission that suggests the presence of a double star system hidden at the heart of the “spectacular” Ant Nebula. The extremely rare phenomenon is connected to the death of a star and was discovered in observations made by European Space Agency’s (ESA) Herschel space observatory.

    When low- to middleweight stars like our Sun approach the end of their lives they eventually become dense, white dwarf stars...

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