Carolyn Collins Petersen, Author at Universe Today

July 29, 2023July 29, 2023 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Astronomers are Watching a Planet Get its Atmosphere Blasted Away into Space

This artist's illustration shows a planet (dark silhouette) passing in front of the red dwarf star AU Microscopii. The planet is so close to the eruptive star a ferocious blast of stellar wind and blistering ultraviolet radiation is heating the planet's hydrogen atmosphere, causing it to escape into space. The illustration is based on measurements made by the Hubble Space Telescope. Credits: NASA, ESA, and Joseph Olmsted (STScI)

What do you get when a hot young world orbits a wildly unstable young red dwarf? For AU Microsopii b, the answer is: flares from the star tearing away the atmosphere. That catastrophic loss happens in fits and starts, “hiccuping” out its atmosphere at one point and then losing practically none the next.

July 28, 2023July 28, 2023 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

JWST Pierces Through a Thick Nebula to Reveal Newly Forming Binary Stars

The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has captured a high-resolution image of a tightly bound pair of actively forming binary stars, known as Herbig-Haro 46/47, in near-infrared light. NASA, ESA, CSA, J. DePasquale (STScI), CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

In 1985, the physicist Heinz Pagels wrote that star birth was a “veiled and secret event.” That’s because the stellar crêches hide the action. But, ever since the advent of infrared astronomy, astronomers have been able to lift that veil. In particular, the Hubble Space Telescope has studied these systems and now, the Webb Telescope (JWST) gives regular detailed views of stellar nurseries.

July 28, 2023July 28, 2023 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

How Did Supermassive Black Holes Grow So Quickly, So Early?

An international team of astronomers using archival data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and other space- and ground-based observatories have discovered a unique object in the distant, early Universe that is a crucial link between young star-forming galaxies and the earliest supermassive black holes. Current theories predict that supermassive black holes begin their lives in the dust-shrouded cores of vigorously star-forming “starburst” galaxies.

Supermassive black holes haunt the cores of many galaxies. Yet for all we know about black holes (not nearly enough!), the big ones remain a mystery, particularly when they began forming. Interestingly, astronomers see them in the early epochs of cosmic history. That raises the question: how did they get so big when the Universe was still just a baby?

July 27, 2023July 27, 2023 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Astronomers Find a Rare “Einstein Cross”

A great example of an Einstein Cross, as seen by Hubble Space Telescope. A "galaxy" with five nuclei is really one galaxy surrounded by a mirage of four images of a distant quasar. The galaxy lies 400 million light years away; the quasar about 8 billion. Credit: NASA/ESA/Hubble

Gravitational lensing is one of astronomy’s great wonders: a natural lens that magnifies the distant universe. Sometimes a lensing system takes the shape of a so-called “Einstein Cross”. Those are rare and amazingly useful ways to study objects far away in space and time.

July 24, 2023July 24, 2023 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

A New Technique Lets Us Learn What the Milky Way’s Arms Are Made Of

A chemical map of the Milky Way Galaxy superimposed over a NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory illustration of the Milky Way. Red and blue spots indicate objects with a high or low metallicity, respectively. High metallicity (red) corresponds to the presence of young stars, which are more abundant in spiral arms. Credit: K. Hawkins (UT Austin), NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (SSC/Caltech).

We’re all used to seeing maps of the Milky Way rich with stars and nebulae. But, there are regions we can’t see or map using conventional methods. There’s no way to get outside the Galaxy to take pictures of the whole shebang.

July 23, 2023July 23, 2023 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

An Enormous Cosmological Simulation Wraps Up, Recreating Even More of the Universe

In shaping the Universe, gravity builds a vast cobweb-like structure of filaments tying galaxies and clusters of galaxies together along invisible bridges hundreds of millions of light-years long. A galaxy can move into and out of the densest parts of this web throughout its lifetime. Credit: Volker Springel (Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics) et al.

There’s an old joke among astronomy students about a question on the final exam for a cosmology class. It goes like this: “Describe the Universe and give three examples.” Well, a team of researchers in Germany, the U.S., and the UK took a giant leap toward giving at least one accurate example of the Universe.

July 21, 2023July 21, 2023 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Record-Breaking Magnetar was There in the Data All Along

An artist’s impression of the ultra-long period magnetar—a rare type of star with extremely strong magnetic fields that can produce powerful bursts of energy. Credit: ICRAR

The cosmic zoo has strange beasts that astronomers stumble across in the most fascinating ways. Not long ago a team in Australia found a highly unusual magnetar, one of the weirder denizens of the starry zoo. It’s called GPM J1839-10 and it lies some 15,000 light-years away in the direction of the constellation Scutum.

July 20, 2023July 20, 2023 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Carbon-Based Molecules Seen Just a Billion Years After the Big Bang

A crop of the JADES Survey field that JWST observed, using its NIRCAM instrument to search for carbon-based molecules.

The more astronomers look at the early Universe, the more discoveries they make. Some of those finds change what they thought they knew about the infancy of the cosmos. For example, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) recently found evidence of carbon-based molecules and dust existing only a billion years after the Big Bang. It looks a bit different from the dust observed later in the Universe.

July 13, 2023July 13, 2023 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Soar Past Thousands of Galaxies in the Early Universe in Thrilling 3D

The Extended Groth Strip that JWST focused on to observe galaxies in the early Universe. The new visualization is a deep dive into this image. Credit: NASA, ESA, M. Davis (University of California, Berkeley), and A. Koekemoer (STScI) — The Extended Groth Strip that JWST focused on to observe galaxies in the early Universe. Credit: NASA, ESA, M. Davis (University of California, Berkeley), and A. Koekemoer (STScI)

Want to visit the most distant galaxy in the early Universe? Now you can via a fantastic visualization created from JWST observations of some of the most distant galaxies ever seen.

July 10, 2023July 10, 2023 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Want to Find Colliding Black Holes? Check the Disks Around Quasars

This illustration shows the merger of two black holes and the gravitational waves that ripple outward as the black holes spiral toward each other. Could black holes like these (which represent those detected by LIGO on Dec. 26, 2015) collide in the dusty disk around a quasar's supermassive black hole explain gravitational waves, too? Credit: LIGO/T. Pyle — This illustration shows the merger of two supermassive black holes and the gravitational waves that ripple outward as the black holes spiral toward each other. Credit: LIGO/T. Pyle

The universe is awash in gravitational waves. The collisions of massive objects such as black holes and neutron stars generate many of them. Now astronomers are wondering about the environments where these catastrophic events occur. It turns out they might need to look at quasars.