COSMOS-1908 tagged posts

Astronomers make first accurate measurement of #Oxygen in Distant Galaxy

Galaxy COSMOS-1908 is in the center of this Hubble Space Telescope image, indicated by the arrow. Nearly everything in the image is a galaxy; many of these galaxies are much closer to Earth than COSMOS-1908. Credit: Ryan Sanders and the CANDELS team

Galaxy COSMOS-1908 is in the center of this Hubble Space Telescope image, indicated by the arrow. Nearly everything in the image is a galaxy; many of these galaxies are much closer to Earth than COSMOS-1908. Credit: Ryan Sanders and the CANDELS team

 
Quantifying the amount of oxygen is key to understanding how #matter #cycles in and out of galaxies. Oxygen, the third-most abundant chemical element in the universe, is created inside stars and released into interstellar gas when stars die. “This is by far the most distant galaxy for which the oxygen abundance has actually been measured,” said Alice Shapley, a UCLA professor of astronomy. “We’re looking back in time at this galaxy as it appeared 12 billion years ago.”
 
Knowing the abundance of oxygen in the galaxy called #COSMO...
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