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Tag: Astronomy

  • Enormous Galaxy Cluster Spotted by NASA’s WISE

    Galaxy clusters, the rarest of galaxy groupings, can be difficult for astronomers to find. NASA‘s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) space telescope, however, has just found a gigantic galaxy cluster, and is expected to uncover thousands more. The new findings have been published in The Astrophysical Journal.

    “One of the key questions in cosmology is how did the first bumps and wiggles in the distribution of matter in our universe rapidly evolve into the massive structures of galaxies we see today,” said Anthony Gonzalez, leader of the research program at the University of Florida. “By uncovering the most massive of galaxy clusters billions of light-years away with WISE, we can test theories of the universe’s early inflation period.”

    WISE has completed two all-sky surveys at infrared wavelengths, looking for near-Earth asteroids for a project dubbed NEOWISE. Now, the WISE team is combining all of its data and making it publicly available late next year for a project called AIIWISE. Using the AIIWISE data, astronomers should be able to spot large galaxy clusters, as well as hidden cool stars nearby

    The first galaxy cluster found is called MOO J2342.0+1301 and located over 7 billion light-years from Earth. It is hundreds of times the mass of our Milky Way galaxy. Galaxy clusters are difficult to spot because their distance means not many we can observe have had sufficient time to form since the big bang.

    “I had pretty much written off using WISE to find distant galaxy clusters because we had to reduce the telescope diameter to only 16 inches [40 centimeters] to stay within our cost guidelines, so I am thrilled that we can find them after all,” said Peter Eisenhardt, co-author of the paper on the findings and a WISE project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “The longer exposures from AllWISE open the door wide to see the most massive structures forming in the distant universe.”

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/WIYN/Subaru)

  • New “Green Bean” Galaxies Discovered

    New “Green Bean” Galaxies Discovered

    A new type of galaxy nicknamed “green bean galaxies” has been identified and they are some of the rarest objects in the known universe.

    The nickname comes from the galaxies’ appearance: they glow with intense light generated by the ionized gas surrounding a super-massive black hole. They also resemble “green pea galaxies,” but are larger. Though most galaxies have a giant black hole at their center that causes the gas around it to glow, the entirety of green bean galaxies glow.

    The green bean galaxy seen in the photo above has been named J2240 and lies in the constellation Aquarius. It is around 3.7 billion light-years from Earth. The object was discovered by Mischa Schirmer, an astronomer at the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii. He then asked the European Southern Observatory (ESO) for time with the Very Large Telescope (VLT) to verify his finding.

    “ESO granted me special observing time at very short notice and just a few days after I submitted my proposal, this bizarre object was observed using the VLT,” said Schirmer. “Ten minutes after the data were taken in Chile, I had them on my computer in Germany. I soon refocused my research activities entirely as it became apparent that I had come across something really new.”

    After categorizing the green bean galaxy, Schirmer and his colleagues found 16 more with similar properties. The astronomers estimate that the objects are so rare that there is, on average, only one found in a cube 1.3 billion light-years across.

    The glowing regions of galaxies typically take up to 10% of the diameter of the galaxy, though exceptions, such as NGC 1277, are not unheard of. The glowing region of J2240, however, spans the entire galaxy with one of the biggest and brightest of such regions ever found.

    “These glowing regions are fantastic probes to try to understand the physics of galaxies – it’s like sticking a medical thermometer into a galaxy far, far away,” said Schirmer. “Usually, these regions are neither very large nor very bright, and can only be seen well in nearby galaxies. However, in these newly discovered galaxies they are so huge and bright that they can be observed in great detail, despite their large distances.”

    (Image courtesy CFHT/ESO/M. Schirmer)

  • Astronomers Reveal Unseen Starburst Galaxies

    Astronomers announced today that have characterized hundreds of previously unseen starburst galaxies. The starburst galaxies, which produce hundreds of stars each year, reveal that high star-formation rates have been the norm for much of our universe’s history.

    Using the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Herschel space observatory and W.M. Keck telescopes, astronomers measured the temperature, brightness, and star formation rate of thousands of galaxies that are shrouded by vast amounts of dust.

    “Starburst galaxies are the brightest galaxies in the Universe and contribute significantly to cosmic star formation, so it’s important to study them in detail and understand their properties,” said Caitlin Casey, lead author of a paper on the discovery published recently in The Astrophysical Journal and an astronomer at the University of Hawaii. “Some of the galaxies found in this new survey have star-formation rates equivalent to the birth of several thousand solar-mass stars per year, constituting some of the brightest infrared galaxies yet discovered.”

    Our Milky Way Galaxy, on average, produces only one sun-like star per year. Starburst galaxies, with their exceptional star formation, would outshine the Milky Way hundreds to thousands of times over if they weren’t covered in dust that absorbs much of the their visible light. Herschel was able to measure the infrared radiation emitted by the galaxies.

    Researchers then used the Keck telescopes to measure the redshifts of the starburst galaxies, determining how early in time the light from each galaxy comes. Most of the galaxies are 10 billion years old or less, but around 5% were older, with some having formed only 1 billion years after the beginning of the universe.

    “The Herschel data tell us how fiercely and prolifically these galaxies are producing stars,” said Seb Oliver, principal investigator for the HerMES Key Programme, into which the data have been collected. “Combining this information with the distances provided by the Keck data, we can uncover the contribution of the starburst galaxies to the total amount of stars produced across the history of the universe.”

    Astronomers will use the new data to help determine how large numbers of starburst galaxies formed during the first few billions of years of the universe. Their existence complicates current hypotheses on galaxy formation and evolution.

    “It’s a hotly debated topic that requires details on the shape and rotation of the galaxies before it can be resolved,” said Casey.

    (Image courtesy ESA–C. Carreau/C. Casey (University of Hawaii); COSMOS field: ESA/Herschel/SPIRE/HerMES Key Programme; Hubble images: NASA, ESA)

  • Hubble Photo Shows Blue Compact Dwarf Galaxy

    The above photo is an image of the irregular galaxy NGC 5253, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope‘s Advanced Camera for Surveys. It combines both visible and infrared exposures. A larger version of the image can be viewed here.

    The galaxy is the closest known Blue Compact Dwarf Galaxy (BCD), at a distance of around 12 million light-years from Earth. It sits in the constellation of Centaurus.

    BCD galaxies, according to NASA, have low dust content and lack an abundance of many elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. They do, however, have many star-forming regions due to molecular clouds that are similar to clouds in the early universe that formed the first stars. Astronomers consider galaxies such as NGC 5253 good places to study ancient star-forming processes.

    The center of the galaxy contains a star-forming region (“starburst”) where large, hot, young stars form and die rapidly. The stars glow blue in the image and traces of the starburst , produced by ionized oxygen gas, can also be seen. The central region is surrounded by an elliptical main body, which appears red in the image.

    According to NASA, the most current hypothesis on galaxy formation, the Lambda Cold Dark Matter model, predicts more satellite dwarf galaxies should be seen orbiting large galaxies such as our own that is currently observed. As such, this “Dwarf Galaxy Problem” makes BCD galaxies such as NGC 5253 an interesting anomaly.

    (Image courtesy ESA/Hubble & NASA)

  • Rocky Planets Could Be More Common Than Previously Thought

    Astronomers have now observed that the dust disc orbiting a brown dwarf contains millimeter-sized solid particles – the same “grains” found in the denser discs surrounding new stars.The new data suggests that rocky planets, such as Earth, may be more common throughout the univers than previously thought.

    Prevailing hypotheses held that brown dwarf accretion discs were too sparse, and the particles moving too fast to form larger objects. Also, any grains that manage to form were expected to move quickly towards their host brown dwarf. The new research, published this week in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, challenges theories of how rocky planets form.

    “We were completely surprised to find millimetre-sized grains in this thin little disc,” said Luca Ricci, an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology who led the research. “Solid grains of that size shouldn’t be able to form in the cold outer regions of a disc around a brown dwarf, but it appears that they do. We can’t be sure if a whole rocky planet could develop there, or already has, but we’re seeing the first steps, so we’re going to have to change our assumptions about conditions required for solids to grow.”

    The new observations were made using the Atacama Large millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile. The researchers say its increased resolution helped them find carbon monoxide around a brown dwarf called Rho-Oph 102, an object around 60 times the mass of Jupiter, but too small to become a true star. It was the first time cold molecular gas and small grains have been detected around a brown dwarf, suggesting that the disc is similar to those found around new stars.

    “ALMA is a powerful new tool for solving mysteries of planetary system formation,” said Leonardo Testi, an European Southern Observatory (ESO) astronomer and member of the research team. “Trying this with previous generation telescopes would have needed almost a month of observing – impossibly long in practice. But, using just a quarter of ALMA’s final complement of antennas, we were able to do it in less than one hour!”

    In the future, astronomers hope to use ALMA, which collects light with wavelengths around a millimeter, to map how the small particles and gas are distributed across a circumstellar disc and how they interact.

    [Image courtesyALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/M. Kornmesser (ESO)]

  • Astronomers Spot the Most Massive Black Hole Yet Seen

    Astronomers have measured the mass of what could be the most massive black hole yet discovered. The object, located at the center of the galaxy NGC 1277, is the equivalent of 17 billion Suns and makes up 14% of it’s galaxy’s mass. A paper on the black hole was published today in the journal Nature.

    NGC1277 is only 10% of the size of the Milky Way galaxy, and sits 200 million light-years away in the constellation Perseus. The image of the galaxy seen above was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. The supermassive black hole at its center has an event horizon (the distance at which not even light can escape the object’s gravity) that is 11 times as wide as Neptune’s orbit.

    “This is a really oddball galaxy,” said Karl Gebhardt co-author of the study and Astronomer at the University of Texas at Austin. “It’s almost all black hole. This could be the first object in a new class of galaxy-black hole systems.”

    The new findings were taken from observations by the Hobby-Eberly Telescope at the University of Texas at Austin’s McDonald Observatory. The telescope’s Massive Galaxy Survey (MGS) is seeking to better understand how black holes and galaxies form and evolve together.

    “At the moment there are three completely different mechanisms that all claim to explain the link between black hole mass and host galaxies’ properties,” said Remco van den Bosch, lead author of the study. “We do not understand yet which of these theories is best.”

    Astronomers currently know the mass of fewer than 100 black holes in galaxies, and the process of measuring them is time-consuming. The MGS hopes to cut down on the number of galaxies astronomers need to examine closely.

    “When trying to understand anything, you always look at the extremes: the most massive and the least massive,” said Gebhardt. “We chose a very large sample of the most massive galaxies in the nearby universe,”

    (Image courtesy NASA/ESA/Andrew C. Fabian)

  • Astronomers Spot the Most Massive Quasar Outflow Yet Seen

    Astronomers have discovered a quasar with the most massive outflow ever seen. Quasars are bright galactic centers powered by supermassive black holes, and many of them accelerate the material around them, throwing it out a high speed in a process that plays a key role in the evolution of galaxies. The newly discovered quasar is, according to researchers, five times more powerful than any quasar previously seen.

    A new study, to be published in The Astrophysical Journal, details the observations made of the quasar SDSS J1106+1939 using the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile. It reports that a mass equal to about 400 suns is streaming away from the quasar every year at a speed of 8000 kilometers per second (about 5000 miles per second).

    “We have discovered the most energetic quasar outflow known to date,” said Nahum Arav, team leader on the research. “The rate that energy is carried away by this huge mass of material ejected at high speed from SDSS J1106+1939 is at least equivalent to two million million times the power output of the Sun. This is about 100 times higher than the total power output of the Milky Way galaxy – it’s a real monster of an outflow. This is the first time that a quasar outflow has been measured to have the sort of very high energies that are predicted by theory.”

    According to the researchers, theoretical simulations of galaxies suggest quasar outflows could explain how the mass of a galaxy is linked to its central black hole mass, and why there are so few “large” galaxies in the universe.

    “I’ve been looking for something like this for a decade, so it’s thrilling to finally find one of the monster outflows that have been predicted!” said Arav.

    (Image courtesy ESO/L. Calçada)

  • Astronomers Spot Massive Comet Belts in Nearby Systems

    Astronomers using the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Herschel space observatory have discovered massive comet belts orbiting two nearby planetary systems. The systems, named GJ 581 and 61 Vir, are known to host planets that range in mass from Earth-sized to Neptune-sized.

    Neither of the systems shows evidence of planets that are close to Jupiter’s or Saturn’s mass. Scientists believe that Jupiter is responsible for disrupting our own Kuiper Belt in the past, sending comets raining toward the inner planets millions of years.

    “The new observations are giving us a clue: they’re saying that in the Solar System we have giant planets and a relatively sparse Kuiper Belt, but systems with only low-mass planets often have much denser Kuiper belts,” said Mark Wyatt, lead author of a paper describing observations of the debris disc around 61 Vir and an Astronomer at the University of Cambridge. “We think that may be because the absence of a Jupiter in the low-mass planet systems allows them to avoid a dramatic heavy bombardment event, and instead experience a gradual rain of comets over billions of years.”

    Astronomers measured signatures of cold dust at -200 degrees Celsius in the two systems, suggesting that they must have 10 times or more comets than are found in our own solar system’s Kuiper Belt.

    “For an older star like GJ 581, which is at least two billion years old, enough time has elapsed for such a gradual rain of comets to deliver a sizable amount of water to the innermost planets, which is of particular importance for the planet residing in the star’s habitable zone,” said Jean-Francois Lestrade, who led the work on GJ 581 at the Observatoire de Paris.

    Lestrade also pointed out, however, that the amount of dust detected around GJ 581 suggests collisions between comets, which could be caused by a Neptune-sized planet that is too far the star to be currently detected.

    A recent NASA study using data from the Spitzer space telescope suggest that Jupiter-sized planets just outside a system’s “snow line” might also be key to shaping a system where planets can sustain life as we know it.

    “Herschel is finding a correlation between the presence of massive debris discs and planetary systems with no Jupiter-class planets, which offers a clue to our understanding of how planetary systems form and evolve,” said Göran Pilbratt, ESA’s Herschel project scientist.

  • Astronomers Discover Dwarf Planet Makemake Has No Atmosphere

    Astronomers have discovered that a dwarf planet in our solar system named Makemake has no atmosphere. The object, which orbits in the outer solar system, was expected to have an atmosphere similar to another dwarf planet, Pluto, but new observations show that is not the case.

    The new discovery was made when European Southern Observatory (ESO) astronomers in observatories in Chile observed Makemake drifting in front of a distant star. Astronomers used three different telescopes, including the Very Large Telescope (VLT), at the ESO’s Lasilla and Paranal sites to observe the occultation. A study based on the findings will be published this week in the journal Nature.

    “As Makemake passed in front of the star and blocked it out, the star disappeared and reappeared very abruptly, rather than fading and brightening gradually,” said Jose Luis Ortiz, who led the ESO team. “This means that the little dwarf planet has no significant atmosphere,” says José Luis Ortiz. “It was thought that Makemake had a good chance of having developed an atmosphere — that it has no sign of one at all shows just how much we have yet to learn about these mysterious bodies. Finding out about Makemake’s properties for the first time is a big step forward in our study of the select club of icy dwarf planets.”

    The new observations allowed astronomers to more accurately determine Makemake’s size, mass, density, and albedo – the amount of the Sun’s light an object’s surface reflects. Not much is accurately known about Makemake before now because of its distance and lack of moons. It orbits in an area of the sky that has few stars, making stellar occultations like the one observed by Ortiz and his team rare and difficult to predict.

    Makemake was assumed to have an atmosphere because of its similarities to other dwarf planets. The object is two thirds the size of Pluto. It orbits the sun beyond the orbit of Pluto, but closer to the sun than the most massive dwarf planet, Eris, which is about 25% more massive than Pluto.

    “Pluto, Eris and Makemake are among the larger examples of the numerous icy bodies orbiting far away from our Sun,” said Ortiz. “Our new observations have greatly improved our knowledge of one of the biggest, Makemake – we will be able to use this information as we explore the intriguing objects in this region of space further.”

    (Illustration courtesy ESO)

  • Astronomers Spot ‘Bridge’ of Hot Gas Connecting Galaxy Clusters

    Astronomers using the Planck space telescope have confirmed the presence of a bridge of hot gas bridging the 10 million light-years of intergalactic space between two galaxy clusters.

    “Planck is helping to reveal hidden material between galaxy clusters that we couldn’t see clearly before,” said James Bartlett, a member of the U.S. Planck science team at NASA‘s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

    The European Space Agency (ESA) runs the Planck mission, with NASA also participating. The mission’s main goal is to capture light from the cosmic microwave background – the radiation left over from the earliest stages of the universe.

    The presence of the hot gas between the clusters Abell 399 and Abel 401 was first detected by the ESA’s XMM-Newton X-ray observatory. Astronomers using the Planck telescope and the Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect were able to confirm the phenomenon.

    The Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect is the result of the cosmic microwave background radiation interacting with the hot gas that envelops the galaxy clusters, which are huge collections of thousands of galaxies bound together by gravity. As the background radiation encounters the hot gas, its energy distribution is modified in a characteristic way predicted by the Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect.

    Early analysis by astronomers suggests the much of the gas is from gaseous matter that pervaded the early universe. The gas is compressed and heated up by the interacting galaxy clusters, making it easier to spot. By combining the Planck data with X-ray observations from the German satellite Rosat, astronomers have estimated the temperature of the gas to be close to 80 million degrees Celsius (144 million degrees Fahrenheit).

    (Image courtesy Sunyaev–Zel’dovich effect: ESA Planck Collaboration; optical image: STScI Digitized Sky Survey)

  • New “Super-Jupiter” Directly Imaged by Astronomers

    Astronomers have directly imaged a “super-Jupiter” planet orbiting around the star Kappa Andromedae.

    According to NASA, Kappa Andromedae now holds the record for the most massive star to host a directly imaged planet or lightweight brown dwarf companion. The planet, designated Kappa Andromedae b (Kappa And b), has a mass 12.8 times greater than Jupiter’s, making it almost a low-mass brown dwarf.

    “According to conventional models of planetary formation, Kappa And b falls just shy of being able to generate energy by fusion, at which point it would be considered a brown dwarf rather than a planet,” said Michael McElwain, a member of the discovery team at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “But this isn’t definitive, and other considerations could nudge the object across the line into brown dwarf territory.”

    The mass necessary for an object to be considered a brown dwarf is around 13 times the mass of Jupiter. At that point, the object is massive enough for deuterium (a heavy isotope of hydrogen) fusion to begin.

    Kappa And b imaged with the Subaru Telescope

    Kappa And b was imaged using infrared data from the Subaru Telescope in Mauna Kea, Hawaii. The research is part of the Strategic Explorations of Exoplanets and Disks with Subaru (SEEDS) project, which images extrasolar planets and protoplanetary disks around nearby stars. Researchers project images at near-infrared wavelengths using the Subaru Telescope’s adaptive optics system.

    Kappa Andromedae is a massive star that is only 30 million years old. The B9-type star is located 170 light-years from the solar system and is visible with the naked eye near the constellation Andromeda. Kappa And b has a temperature of around 1,400 degrees Celsius (2,600 degrees Fahrenheit) and orbits Kappa Andromedae at around 55 times the Earth’s distance from the Sun. A paper describing the SEEDS team’s observations of the objects is set to be published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

  • NASA May Have Found A New Most Distant Galaxy

    NASA today announced that astronomers have found a candidate for the new most distant galaxy ever seen. This comes just after a similar announcement in September, when a different red blob took the record.

    The object, dubbed MACS0647-JD, is observed to have existed only 420 million years after the big bang. The light from the small galaxy has traveled 13.3 billion years to reach Earth.

    MACS0647-JD is the latest find from the Cluster Lensing and Supernova Survey with Hubble (CLASH) group, which uses massive galaxy clusters as gravitational lenses to magnify the distant galaxies behind them. The technique magnifies the brightness of these galaxies in the Hubble telescope’s images. Specifically, astronomers used the galaxy cluster MACS J0647+7015 to magnify the image of the newly discovered galaxy.

    “This cluster does what no man-made telescope can do,” said Marc Postman, head of the Community Missions Office at the Space Telescope Science Institute. “Without the magnification, it would require a Herculean effort to observe this galaxy.”

    The new galaxy is only 600 light-years wide. As a comparison, the Milky Way galaxy is 150,000 light-years wide. Due to its size, astronomers have speculated that MACS0647-JD may be the early form of a larger galaxy.

    “This object may be one of many building blocks of a galaxy,” said Dan Coe, and a astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute. “Over the next 13 billion years, it may have dozens, hundreds or even thousands of merging events with other galaxies and galaxy fragments.”

    Coe is also the lead author of a new study on the galaxy which will appear in a December issue of The Astrophysical Journal. Coe and other CLASH researchers spent months ruling out other explanations for the object , including red stars, brown dwarfs, and red galaxies.

    NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope was used to gain images of the galaxy at longer wavelengths and help determine the object’s great distance. Spitzer will be used in the future to estimate the age and dust content of the galaxy.

  • NASA’s Kepler Telescope Ends Its Prime Mission, Begins Another

    NASA this week marked the end of the Kepler Space Telescope’s prime mission, which began in March 2009. Like other NASA equipment, the telescope is now beginning another, extended mission NASA says could last as long as four years.

    Kepler’s prime mission was to determine what fraction of stars might have Earth-like planets in their orbit. So far, the telescope has identified over 2,300 planet candidates and hundreds of Earth-size planet candidates. There are also candidates that orbit in the habitable zone of their system, where liquid water can exist. Kepler has confirmed more than 100 planets so far.

    “The initial discoveries of the Kepler mission indicate at least a third of the stars have planets and the number of planets in our galaxy must number in the billions,” said William Borucki, Kepler principal investigator at NASA’s Ames Research Center. “The planets of greatest interest are other Earths, and these could already be in the data awaiting analysis. Kepler’s most exciting results are yet to come.”

    Over the three and a half years of its prime mission, Kepler’s discoveries have revealed much about planetary systems. Just this year, Kepler Astronomers have confirmed a planet in a two-star system (like Tatooine) and even one in a four-star system.

    “Kepler’s bounty of new planet discoveries, many quite different from anything found previously, will continue to astound,” said Jack Lissauer, planetary scientist at Ames. “But to me, the most wonderful discovery of the mission has not been individual planets, but the systems of two, three, even six planets crowded close to their stars, and, like the planets orbiting about our sun, moving in nearly the same plane. Like people, planets interact with their neighbors and can be greatly affected by them. What are the neighborhoods of Earth-size exoplanets like? This is the question I most hope Kepler will answer in the years to come.”

    Back in April, NASA extended Kepler’s mission, which might run through 2016. Astronomers will use the extra time to continue to search for Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone of their system.

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

  • Close Rogue Planet Identified by ESO Astronomers

    Astronomers have identified what is “very probably” a relatively close-by planet hurtling through space – not orbiting a star. The European Southern Observatory used its Very Large Telescope and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope to study the object, which it calls the “most exciting free-floating planet candidate so far.”

    The ESO stated that at only 100 light-years away, the planet is the closest such object to the Solar System. Since it is not part of a star system, astronomers have been able to study its atmosphere in detail, giving them a preview of what planets orbiting other stars may be like.

    “Looking for planets around their stars is akin to studying a firefly sitting one centimetre away from a distant, powerful car headlight,” said Philippe Delorme lead author of a new study on the planet. “This nearby free-floating object offered the opportunity to study the firefly in detail without the dazzling lights of the car messing everything up.”

    Other rogue planets have been discovered before, but scientists have been unable to determine their age, leaving open the possibility that such objects are brown dwarfs. The new object, dubbed CFBDSIR2149, seems to be part of a group of relatively young stars known as the AB Doradus Moving Group. This allows astronomers to determine much more about it.

    “Further work should confirm CFBDSIR2149 as a free-floating planet,” said Delorme. “These objects are important, as they can either help us understand more about how planets may be ejected from planetary systems, or how very light objects can arise from the star formation process. If this little object is a planet that has been ejected from its native system, it conjures up the striking image of orphaned worlds, drifting in the emptiness of space.”

    Free-floating objects such as CFBDSIR2149 are hypothesized to form as either normal planets which are then ejected from their star systems, or as small lone objects. Either way, the ESO states the such objects could, perhaps, be as common as normal stars.

    (Image courtesy ESO)

  • ESA Releases New Supernova Remnant Photo

    ESA Releases New Supernova Remnant Photo

    The European Space Agency (ESA) has released a new image of the aftershock of a supernova remnant named W44. The image, seen above, combines infrared and X-ray light captured by the ESA’s Herschel and XMM-Newton space observatories.

    W44 is located around 10,000 light-years away from our solar system, residing in a nebula in the constellation Aquila. NASA stated that the phenomenon is one of the best examples found of a supernova remnant interacting with its parent cloud. W44 is all that remains of the star’s outer layer, which was thrown out in an explosion called a supernova at the end of the star’s life.

    What remains of the star itself is the spinning core of a neutron star, also known as a pulsar. Named PSR B1853+01, the pulsar is the bright blue-colored point in the top left of W44 in the photo. The object is believed to be around 20,000 old. As with all pulsars, the object spins rapidly, throwing out a wind of energetic particles and beams of light that range from radio to X-ray frequencies. The hot gas that fills the shell of the supernova remnant is also bright blue from X-rays.

    The Herschel mission is an ESA cornerstone mission. The U.S. Herschel Project Office is located at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which provides technology for two of Herschel’s three science instruments. The space observatory is examining heated gas and dust farther from W44, where new stars are forming.

    Larger versions of the image that are suitable as a wallpaper background are available through NASA’s website.

    (Image courtesy Quang Nguyen Luong & F. Motte, HOBYS Key Program consortium, Herschel SPIRE/PACS/ESA consortia, and ESA/XMM-Newton)

  • New “Super Earth” Planet Discovered in Six-Planet System

    U.K. and German Astronomers announced this week that they have discovered a new “super Earth” planet that could, conceivably, have an Earth-like climate.

    The planet exists in the habitable zone of a nearby star called HD 40307 and is part of a six-planet system. The system was previously believed to have only three planets, each too close to the star to support liquid water. By “avoiding fake signals caused by stellar activity,” the researchers found three new possible “super Earth” planets.

    “We pioneered new data analysis techniques including the use of the wavelength as a filter to reduce the influence of activity on the signal from this star,” said Mikko Tuomi, lead author of the study and astronomer at the University of Hertfordshire. “This significantly increased our sensitivity and enabled us to reveal three new super-Earth planets around the star known as HD 40307, making it into a six-planet system.”

    Of the three candidates, the one the researchers have the most intrest in is the outermost one. It’s mass is over seven times that of Earth’s, and it orbits HD 40307 at a distance similar to Earth’s distance from the Sun. The astronomers state that this is where liquid water and a stable atmosphere are possible, raising the possibility that it could support life. They also pointed out that the planet is likely to rotate on its own axis, creating a more Earth-like environment.

    “The star HD 40307 is a perfectly quiet old dwarf star, so there is no reason why such a planet could not sustain an Earth-like climate,” said Guillem Angla-Escude, co-author of the study and astronomer at the University of Goettingen.

    (Image courtesy the University of Hertfordshire)

  • Near-Earth Asteroid Imaged by NASA

    Near-Earth Asteroid Imaged by NASA

    NASA scientists announced today that they have created multiple radar images showing the near-Earth asteroid named 2007 PA8. The images were generated using data collected from the 70-meter Deep Space Network antenna in Goldstone, California on October 28 through October 30. During that time, the asteroid ranged from 10 million kilometers (6.5 million miles) to only 9 million kilometers (5.6 million miles) from Earth.

    NASA states that 2007 PA8 is an elongated, irregularly shaped object about 1.6 kilometers (one mile) wide. The asteroid also has ridges and, “perhaps,” craters. The data also suggests that the object rotates very slowly, taking three to four days for a full rotation.

    2007 PA8 was chosen, scientists said, because of its size and proximity to Earth at its closest approach. On the morning of November 5 the asteroid was only 6.5 million kilometers (4 million miles) from Earth, which is around 17 times the distance from the Earth to the moon.

    Much like this week’s announcement of the Hergenrother comet break-up, NASA assuaged fears by stating that the trajectory of 2007 PA8 is well understood, and that this month’s approach was the asteroid’s closest Earth flyby for at least the next 200 years. The object was tracked and characterized by the Near-Earth Object Observations Program, or “Spaceguard.” The program uses ground and space telescopes to detect, track, and characterize asteroids and comets passing close to Earth. It then plots their orbits to determine whether they could be “potentially hazardous” to Earth.

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/Gemini)

  • Superman Planet Found: Krypton Pinpointed by Neil deGrasse Tyson

    Just weeks after his alter-ego Clark Kent quit the Daily Planet, Superman is getting help from a real-life astrophysicist to pinpoint the location of his home planet.

    In an Action Comics #14 story titled “Star Light, Star Bright,” famous astrophysicist and director of the Hayden Planetarium Neil deGrasse Tyson will help Superman find Krypton “on its final day of existence.”

    “As a native of Metropolis, I was delighted to help Superman, who has done so much for my city over all these years,” said Tyson. “And it’s clear that if he weren’t a superhero he would have made quite an astrophysicist.”

    In real life, Tyson has announced the location of an actual Krypton-like star system. Located in the constellation Corvus and 27.1 light years from Earth lies a star designated LHS 2520 that has a “highly turbulent” red surface, but is cooler and smaller than our Sun. Tyson even provided coordinates for amateur astronomers to follow:

    J2000
    Right Ascension: 12 hours 10 minutes 5.77 seconds
    Declination: -15 degrees 4 minutes 17.9 seconds
    Proper Motion: 0.76 arcseconds per year, along 172.94 degrees from due north

    “This is a major milestone in the Superman mythos that gives our Super Hero a place in the universe,” said Dan DiDio, DC Entertainment co-publisher. “Having Neil deGrasse Tyson in the book was one thing, but by applying real world science to this story he has forever changed Superman’s place in history. Now fans will be able to look up at the night’s sky and say – ‘that’s where Superman was born’.”

    Tyson is also the host of the StarTalk radio program, which will soon become a part of the Nerdist YouTube channel. Among other things, Tyson is famous for complaining about the incorrect depiction of the night sky over the Atlantic ocean at the end of the movie Titanic. Director James Cameron corrected the sky for the Titanic 3-D re-release.

  • NASA Spots Comet Breaking Up in the Inner-Solar System

    Astronomers following the progress of the Hergenrother comet through the inner-solar system are now reporting that the comet is breaking up. Over the past few weeks the comet has been generating “outbursts” of dusty material, and now the object’s nucleus has split apart.

    “Comet Hergenrother is splitting apart,” said Rachel Stevenson, a post-doctoral fellow at NASA‘s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “Using the National Optical Astronomy Observatory’s (NOAO) Gemini North Telescope on top of Mauna Kea, Hawaii, we have resolved that the nucleus of the comet has separated into at least four distinct pieces resulting in a large increase in dust material in its coma.”

    The fragmentation of the comet’s nucleus was first detected on October 26 by a team of astronomers at the Remanzacco Observatory in Haleakala, Hawaii using the Faulkes Telescope North. It was also imaged by the WIYN telescope group at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona.

    The breakup means more material to reflect sunlight, making the comet’s coma significantly brighter. The object can be seen through a large telescope, and is currently between the constellations Andromeda and Lacerta.

    “The comet fragments are considerably fainter than the nucleus,” said James Bauer, the deputy principal investigator for NASA’s NEOWISE mission. “This is suggestive of chunks of material being ejected from the surface.”

    NASA emphasized in its statement that neither the comet, nor its fragments pose a threat to the Earth.

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/NOAO/Gemini)

  • Asteroid Belts Could Determine Earth-Like Potential, Study Suggests

    A new study shows that planets like Earth could be rare if they depend on asteroid belts of a specific mass range. Researchers suggested that the size and location of a solar system’s asteroid belt could determine whether complex life can evolve on an Earth-like planet.

    “Our study shows that only a tiny fraction of planetary systems observed to date seem to have giant planets in the right location to produce an asteroid belt of the appropriate size, offering the potential for life on a nearby rocky planet,” said Rebecca Martin, study co-author and a NASA Sagan fellow at the University of Colorado. “Our study suggests that our solar system may be rather special.”

    The study was based on an analysis of theoretical models and archival observations, including infrared data from NASA’s Spitzer telescope. It suggests that Jupiter’s gravity prevented the material in our asteroid belt from forming into a planet, and that material from the asteroid belt colliding with Earth provided extinction events crucial for speeding up the evolution of life.

    “To have such ideal conditions you need a giant planet like Jupiter that is just outside the asteroid belt [and] that migrated a little bit, but not through the belt,” said Mario Livio, study co-author and astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute. “If a large planet like Jupiter migrates through the belt, it would scatter the material. If, on the other hand, a large planet did not migrate at all, that, too, is not good because the asteroid belt would be too massive. There would be so much bombardment from asteroids that life may never evolve.”

    Martin and Livio tested models of accretion discs around young stars to calculate the “snow line” where material such as ice can remain intact. They cross-referenced their calculations with data from NASA’s Spitzer telescope, and then looked at observations of 520 giant planets found outside of our solar system. They found that only 19 of the giant planets are outside of the snow line, and that less than 4% of the observed systems may have a “compact” asteroid belt such as ours.

    “Based on our scenario, we should concentrate our efforts to look for complex life in systems that have a giant planet outside of the snow line,” said Livio.

  • NASA May Have Found the Source of the Sky’s Mysterious Infrared Glow

    NASA today announced that the mystery of the blotchy pattern of infrared light seen across the entire sky may finally be solved. According to a new study published in the journal Nature, the light comes from isolated stars that lie beyond the edges of galaxies. The starts are currently thought to have once been a part of galaxies, but were then flung out as the result of chaotic galaxy collisions or mergers.

    “The infrared background glow in our sky has been a huge mystery,” said Asantha Cooray, lead author of the study and professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California at Irvine. “We have new evidence this light is from the stars that linger between galaxies. Individually, the stars are too faint to be seen, but we think we are seeing their collective glow.”

    The study looked at data from NASA’s Spitzer telescope. Researchers looked at Bootes field, a large portion of the sky covering an arc equivalent to 50 full Earth moons. Data from the Spitzer was recently used to determine a more accurate measurement of the Hubble constant.

    “We looked at the Bootes field with Spitzer for 250 hours,” said co-author Daniel Stern of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “Studying the faint infrared background was one of the core goals of our survey, and we carefully designed the observations in order to directly address the important, challenging question of what causes the background glow.”

    A previous study, led by Alexander Kashlinsky and published in June of this year, came to a different conclusion on the Spitzer data. That study proposed that the infrared glow comes from the first stars to form in the universe. According to NASA, this new study used less sensitive observations than the Kashlinsky study, but analyzed a larger pattern of the infrared glow due to its larger scale.

    Though more research is needed, NASA stated that the new study refutes the early star hypothesis for the infrared glow. It shows that the light pattern of the glow is not consistent with current theories and computer simulations of the first stars and galaxies. NASA’s upcoming James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), scheduled to launch sometime around 2018, may be able to confirm the new orphaned star hypothesis.

    “The keen infrared vision of the James Webb Telescope will be able to see some of the earliest stars and galaxies directly, as well as the stray stars lurking between the outskirts of nearby galaxies,” said Eric Smith, JWST’s deputy program manager. “The mystery objects making up the background infrared light may finally be exposed.”

    (Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)