Category Astronomy/Space

An infrared and multi-wavelength image of the Central Molecular Zone in the Milky Way. Dense gas is shown in red, and warm and cold dust in green and blue respectively. Several key objects in the region are labeled, along with a set of embedded young stellar clusters seen at 24 microns. Credit: C. Battersby

The center of our Milky Way galaxy lies ~27,000 light-years away in the direction of the constellation of Sagittarius. At its core is a black hole ~4 million solar masses in size. Around the black hole is a donut-shaped structure about 8 light-years across that rings the inner volume of neutral gas and thousands of individual stars. Around that, stretching out to ~700 light-years, is a dense zone of activity called the Central Molecular Zone (CMZ)...

Circumstellar structures revealed by Subaru-HiCIAO. The gas and dust surrounding baby stars (their food) are significantly more extended than our solar system. Here we show the first observations of such complex structures around active young stars. Credit: Image courtesy of National Astronomical Observatory of Japan

Astronomers have used a new infrared imaging technique to reveal dramatic moments in star and planet formation. These seem to occur when surrounding material falls toward very active baby stars, which then feed voraciously on it even as they remain hidden inside their birth clouds. The team used the HiCIAO (High Contrast Instrument for the Subaru Next-Generation Adaptive Optics) camera on the Subaru 8-meter Telescope in Hawaii to observe a set of newborn stars...

(Artist concept) Far beyond the orbit of Neptune, the solar wind and the interstellar medium interact to create a region known as the inner heliosheath, bounded on the inside by the termination shock, and on the outside by the heliopause. Credit: NASA/IBEX/Adler Planetarium

A new study uses IBEX data and simulations of the interstellar boundary – which lies at the very edge of the giant magnetic bubble surrounding our solar system called the heliosphere – to better describe space in our galactic neighborhood. Immediately after its 2008 launch, NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer, or IBEX, spotted a curiosity in a thin slice of space: More particles streamed in through a long, skinny swath in the sky than anywhere else...

Two of the authors of this paper: Evencio Mediavilla (IAC) and Jorge Jímenez Vicente (UGR). Credit: Two of the authors of this paper: Evencio Mediavilla (IAC) and Jorge Jímenez Vicente (UGR).

Researchers have succeeded in measuring the inner edge of the disk of matter that orbits around a supermassive black hole in a quasar > 5B light yrs from earth(an object the size of our solar system that emits as much energy as a whole galaxy). It’s the most accurate measure achieved until now of such a small and distant object, and it has been achieved thanks to the so-called gravitational microlensing effect, caused by stars belonging to a galaxy between us and the quasar, and which may magnify tiny regions within the quasar.

In particular, they have managed to measure the inner edge of the disk o...