Category Astronomy/Space

“Outflows” (red), regions where plumes of hot gas escape the intense nuclear burning at a star’s surface, form at the onset of convection in the helium shell of some white dwarf stars. This visualization depicts early convection on the surface of white dwarf stars of different masses. Credit: Adam Jacobs, Stony Brook University

3D simulations of double-detonation Type Ia supernovas reveal dynamic burning. Exploding stars may seem like an unlikely yardstick for measuring the vast distances of space, but astronomers have been mapping the universe for decades using stellar eruptions, supernovas, with surprising accuracy.

Type Ia supernovas – exploding white dwarf stars -are considered the most reliable distance markers for objects beyond our local group of galaxies...

The spectacular aftermath of a 360 million year old cosmic collision is revealed in great detail in this image from ESO’s Very Large Telescope at the Paranal Observatory. Among the debris surrounding the elliptical galaxy NGC 5291 at the centre is a rare and mysterious young dwarf galaxy, which appears as a bright clump towards the right of the image. This object is providing astronomers with an excellent opportunity to learn more about similar galaxies that are expected to be common in the early Universe, but are normally too faint and distant to be observed by current telescopes. Credit: ESO

The spectacular aftermath of a 360 million year old cosmic collision is revealed in great detail in new images from ESO’s Very Large Telescope at the Paranal Observatory...

Neutron star. Credit: NASA

A team of scientists from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem suggests a solution to the Galactic radioactive plutonium puzzle. All the Plutonium used on Earth is artificially produced in nuclear reactors. Still, it turns out that it is also produced in nature. “The origin of heavy elements produced in nature through rapid neutron capture (‘r-process’) by seed nuclei is one of the current nucleosynthesis mysteries,” Dr Hotokezaka, Prof Piran and Prof Paul from the Racah Institute of Physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem said in their letter. Plutonium is a radioactive element. Its longest-lived isotope is plutonium-244 with a lifetime of 120 million years.

Detection of plutonium-244 in nature would imply that the element was synthesized in astrophysical ph...

An optical image of the galaxy Messier 51 with the insert showing the location of supernova SN2011dh. Using precise radio imaging techniques, astronomers have determined the size of the shock around this supernovae, and estimated its outward velocity. Credit: Rafael Ferrando, Observatory Pla D’arguines Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-12-imaging-supernova-shell.html#jCp

Supernovae, the explosive deaths of massive stars, are among the most momentous events in the cosmos because they disburse into space all of the chemical elements that were produced inside their progenitor stars, including the elements essential for making planets and life. Their bright emission also enables them to be used as probes of the very distant universe...