Category Astronomy/Space

3-mm GMVA image of the galaxy NGC 1052 showing a compact region at the centre and two jets (bottom), and sketch of the system with an accretion disk and two regions of entangled magnetic fields forming two powerful jets (top). The compact region in the image pinpoints the location of the supermassive black hole at the heart of NGC 1052, and the enormous magnetic fields surrounding the event horizon trigger the two powerful jets observed with our radio telescopes. Credit: Anne-Kathrin Baczko et al., Astronomy & Astrophysics

A team has measured the magnetic field in the vicinity of a supermassive black hole. A bright and compact feature of only 2 light days in size was directly observed by a world-wide ensemble of mm-wave radio telescopes in the heart of the active galaxy NGC 1052...

Credits: NASA/ESA/Hubble; acknowledgements: Judy Schmidt (Geckzilla)

Captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), this scene shows PGC 83677, a lenticular galaxy—a galaxy type that sits between the more familiar elliptical and spiral varieties.

It reveals both the relatively calm outskirts and intriguing core of PGC 83677. Here, studies have uncovered signs of a monstrous black hole that is spewing out high-energy X-rays and ultraviolet light.
http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/hubble-finds-a-lenticular-galaxy-standing-out-in-the-crowd/

Credit: Jean Lachat/University of Chicago Nicolas Dauphas, the Louis Block Professor in Geophysical Sciences, holds a chondrite meteorite that contains a puzzling mismatch in isotopic composition with Earth’s crust. The mismatch puzzles scientists because they long believed that Earth formed from planetary objects similar to meteorites. Dauphas and his colleagues present research this week in Nature that explains how this mismatch could have come about.

Chondrite meteorites contain a puzzling mismatch in isotopic composition with Earth’s crust. The mismatch puzzles scientists because they long believed that Earth formed from planetary objects similar to meteorites. For the past 10 years, scientists have been trying to understand why...

Valleys much younger than well-known ancient valley networks on Mars are evident near the informally named “Heart Lake” on Mars. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

Lakes and snowmelt-fed streams on Mars formed much later than previously thought possible, according to new findings using data primarily from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The recently discovered lakes and streams appeared roughly a billion years after a well-documented, earlier era of wet conditions on ancient Mars. These results provide insight into the climate history of the Red Planet and suggest the surface conditions at this later time may also have been suitable for microbial life.

“We discovered valleys that carried water into lake basins,” said Sharon Wilson of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, and the Uni...