WISE tagged posts

Bow shocks thought to mark the paths of massive, speeding stars are highlighted in these images from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Wyoming

Astronomers are finding dozens of the fastest stars in our galaxy with the help of images from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. When some speedy, massive stars plow through space, they can cause material to stack up in front of them in the same way that water piles up ahead of a ship. Called bow shocks, these dramatic, arc-shaped features in space are leading researchers to uncover massive, so-called runaway stars.

“Some stars get the boot when their companion star explodes in a supernova, and others can get kicked ou...

Images of 3 DOG’s. The left, middle, and right panels show optical image from HSC, near-infrared image from VIKING, and mid-infrared image from WISE, respectively. The image size is 20 square arcsecond (1 arcsecond is 1/3600 degree). It is clear that DOGs are faint in the optical, but are extremely bright in the infrared. Credit: Image courtesy of National Astronomical Observatory of Japan

As they harbor rapidly growing black holes in their centers, these results give us clues for understanding the evolution of galaxies and supermassive black holes. The research group discovered 48 DOGs, and measured how common they are using Subaru Strategic Program with Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC), a new wide-field camera with a field of view 9X the size of the moon.

How did galaxies form and evolve during t...