infrared wavelengths tagged posts

The long-sought after innermost dusty ring was detected with the highest spatial resolution in the infrared wavelengths ever used. An international team of scientists has achieved the milestone of directly observing the long-sought, innermost dusty ring around a supermassive black hole, at a right angle to its emerging jet. Such a structure was thought to exist in the nucleus of galaxies but had been difficult to observe directly because intervening material obscured our line of sight.

Now the inner disk is detected using the highest spatial resolution in the infrared wavelengths ever done for an extragalactic object. The new discovery was just published in The Astrophysical Journal.

“This is a very exciting step forward to view the inner region of a distant galaxy with such fin...

Astronomers using the VISTA telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory have discovered a previously unknown component of the Milky Way. By mapping out the locations of a class of stars that vary in brightness called Cepheids, a disc of young stars buried behind thick dust clouds in the central bulge has been found. This diagram shows the locations of the newly discovered Cepheids in an artist’s rendering of the Milky Way. The yellow star indicates the position of the Sun. Credit: ESO/Microsoft Worldwide Telescope

By mapping out the locations of a class of stars ie Cepheids, that vary in brightness , a disc of young stars buried behind thick dust clouds in the central bulge has been found. “The central bulge of the Milky Way is thought to consist of vast numbers of old stars...