Posted on by Tammy Plotner

Delving Into The Mystery Of Black Hole Jets

Black hole with disc and jets visualization courtesy of ESA

The concept of a black hole jet isn’t a new one, but we still have a lot to learn about the mixture of particles found in the vicinity of them. Through the use of ESA’s XMM-Newton Observatory, astronomers have been taking a look at a black hole in our galaxy and found some surprising results.

As we know, stellar mass black holes take on materials from nearby stars. Matter from these companion stars is pulled away from the parent body toward the black hole and radiates a temperture so intense that it emits X-rays. However, a black hole doesn’t always ingest everything that comes its way. Sometimes they reject small portions of this incoming mass, pushing it away in the form of a set of powerful jets. These jets also feed the surroundings, releasing both mass and energy… robbing the black hole of fuel.

Through the study of jet composition, researchers are able to better determine what gets taken into a black hole and what doesn’t. Through observations taken at the radio wavelength of the electromagnetic spectrum, we have seen electrons crusing along at nearly the speed of light. However, it hasn’t been clearly determined whether the negative charge of the electrons is complemented by their anti-particles, positrons, or rather by heavier positively-charged particles in the jets, like protons or atomic nuclei.” With XMM-Newton’s power behind them, astronomers have had the opportunity to examine a black hole binary system called 4U1630–47 – a candidate known to have unexpected outbursts of X-rays for segments of time which last between months and years.

“In our observations, we found signs of highly ionised nuclei of two heavy elements, iron and nickel,” says María Díaz Trigo of the European Southern Observatory in Munich, Germany, lead author of the paper published in the journal Nature. “The discovery came as a surprise – and a good one, since it shows beyond doubt that the composition of black hole jets is much richer than just electrons.”

During September 2012, a team of astronomers headed up by Dr. Díaz Trigo and collaborators, observed 4U1630–47 with XMM-Newton. They also backed up their observations with near-simultaneous radio observations taken from the Australia Telescope Compact Array. Even though the studies were done close to each other – within just a couple of weeks – the results couldn’t have been more different.

According to Trigo’s team, the initial set of observations picked up X-ray signatures from the accretion disc, but there was no activity in the radio band. This is an indicator that the jets weren’t active at that time. However, in the second set of observations, there was activity in both X-ray and radio… the jets had turned back on! While examining the X-ray data from the second set, they also found iron nuclei in motion. These particles were moving both toward and away from XMM-Newton – proof the ions were part of twin jets aimed in opposite directions. However, that’s not all. There was also evidence of nickel nuclei pointing toward the observatory.

“From these ‘fingerprints’ of iron and nickel, we could show that the speed of the jet is very high, about two-thirds of the speed of light,” says co-author James Miller-Jones from the Curtin University node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research in Perth, Australia.

“Moreover, the presence of heavy atomic nuclei in black hole jets means that mass and energy are being carried away from the black hole in much larger amounts than we previously thought, which may have an impact on the mechanism and rate by which the black hole accretes matter,” adds co-author Simone Migliari from the University of Barcelona, Spain.

Astounding new findings? Well… yeah. For a typical stellar-mass black hole, this is the first time that heavy nuclei has been detected within the jets. As of the present, there is only “one other X-ray binary that shows similar signatures from atomic nuclei in its jets – a source known as SS 433. This black hole system, however, is characterised by an unusually high accretion rate, which makes it difficult to compare its properties to those of more ordinary black holes.” Through these new observations of 4U1630–47, astronomers will be able to fill in information gaps about what causes jets to occur in black hole accretion disks and what drives them.

“While we now know a great deal about black holes and what happens around them, the formation of jets is still a big puzzle, so this observation is a major step forward in understanding this fascinating phenomenon,” says Norbert Schartel, ESA’s XMM-Newton Project Scientist.

Original Story Source: ESA Press Release.

Posted on by Tammy Plotner

ALMA Warms Up the View of the Coldest Place In the Universe

Where is the coldest place in the Universe? Right now, astronomers consider the “Boomerang Nebula” to have the honors. Located about 5,000 light-years away in the constellation Centaurus, this pre-planetary nebula carries a temperature of about one Kelvin – or a brisk, minus 458 degrees Fahrenheit. That makes it even colder than the natural background temperature of space! What makes it more frigid than the elusive afterglow of the Big Bang? Astronomers are employing the powers of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope to tell us more about its chilly properties and unusual shape.

The “Boomerang” is different all the way around. It is not yet a planetary nebula. The fueling light source – the central star – just isn’t hot enough yet to emit the massive amounts of ultra-violet radiation which lights up the structure. Right now it is illuminated by starlight shining off its surrounding dust grains. When it was first observed in optical light by our terrestrial telescopes, the nebula appeared to be shifted to one side and that’s how it got its fanciful name. Subsequent observations with the Hubble Space Telescope revealed an hour-glass structure. Now, enter ALMA. With these new observations, we can see the Hubble images only show part of what’s happening and the dual lobes seen in the older data were probably only a “trick of the light” as presented by optical wavelengths.

“This ultra-cold object is extremely intriguing and we’re learning much more about its true nature with ALMA,” said Raghvendra Sahai, a researcher and principal scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and lead author of a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal. “What seemed like a double lobe, or ‘boomerang’ shape, from Earth-based optical telescopes, is actually a much broader structure that is expanding rapidly into space.”

So what is going on out there that makes the Boomerang such a cool customer? It’s the outflow, baby. The central star is expanding at a frenzied pace and it is lowering its own temperature in the process. A prime example of this is an air conditioner. It uses expanding gas to create a colder core and as the breeze blows over it – or in this case, the expanding shell – the environment around it is cooled. Astronomers were able to determine just how cool the gas in the nebula is by noting how it absorbed the constant of the cosmic microwave background radiation: a perfect 2.8 degrees Kelvin (minus 455 degrees Fahrenheit).

Credit: NASA/ESA
Credit: NASA/ESA
“When astronomers looked at this object in 2003 with Hubble, they saw a very classic ‘hourglass’ shape,” commented Sahai. “Many planetary nebulae have this same double-lobe appearance, which is the result of streams of high-speed gas being jettisoned from the star. The jets then excavate holes in a surrounding cloud of gas that was ejected by the star even earlier in its lifetime as a red giant.”

However, the single-dish millimeter wavelength telescopes didn’t see things the same as Hubble. Rather than a skinny waist, they found a fuller figure – a “nearly spherical outflow of material”. According to the news release, ALMA’s unprecedented resolution permitted researchers to determine why there was such a difference in overall appearance. The dual-lobe structure was evident when they focused on the distribution of carbon monoxide molecules as seen at millimeter wavelengths, but only toward the inside of the nebula. The outside was a different story, though. ALMA revealed a stretched, cold gas cloud that was relatively rounded. What’s more, the researchers also pinpointed a thick corridor of millimeter-sized dust grains enveloping the progenitor star – the reason the outer cloud took on the appearance of a bowtie in visible light! These dust grains shielded a portion of the star’s light, allowing just a glimpse in optical wavelengths coming from opposite ends of the cloud.

“This is important for the understanding of how stars die and become planetary nebulae,” said Sahai. “Using ALMA, we were quite literally and figuratively able to shed new light on the death throes of a Sun-like star.”

There’s even more to these new findings. Even though the perimeter of the nebula is beginning to warm up, it’s still just a bit colder than the cosmic microwave background. What could be responsible? Just ask Einstein. He called it the “photoelectric effect”.

Original Story Source: NRAO News Release.

Posted on by Tammy Plotner

ALMA Peers Into Giant Black Hole Jets

This detailed view shows the central parts of the nearby active galaxy NGC 1433. The dim blue background image, showing the central dust lanes of this galaxy, comes from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The coloured structures near the centre are from recent ALMA observations that have revealed a spiral shape, as well as an unexpected outflow, for the first time. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/NASA/ESA/F. Combes

Did you ever wonder what it would be like to observe what happens to a galaxy near a black hole? For all of us who remember that wonderful Disney movie, it would be a remarkable – if not hypnotic – experience. Now, thanks to the powerful observational tools of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), two international astronomy teams have had the opportunity to study the jets of black holes near their galactic cores and see just how they impact their neighborhood. The researchers have captured the best view so far of a molecular gas cloud surrounding a nearby, quiescent black hole and were gifted with a surprise look at the base of a massive jet near a distant one.

These aren’t lightweights. The black holes the astronomers are studying weigh in a several billion solar masses and make their homes at the center of nearly all the galaxies in the Universe – including the Milky Way. Once upon a time, these enigmatic galactic phenomena were busy creatures. They absorbed huge amounts of matter from their surroundings, shining like bright beacons. These early black holes thrust small amounts of the matter they took in through highly powerful jets, but their current counterparts aren’t quite as active. While things may have changed a bit with time, the correlation of black hole jets and their surroundings still play a crucial role in how galaxies evolve. In the very latest of studies, both published today in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, astronomers employed ALMA to investigate black hole jets at very different scales: a nearby and relatively quiet black hole in the galaxy NGC 1433 and a very distant and active object called PKS 1830-211.

“ALMA has revealed a surprising spiral structure in the molecular gas close to the center of NGC 1433,” says Françoise Combes (Observatoire de Paris, France), who is the lead author of the first paper. “This explains how the material is flowing in to fuel the black hole. With the sharp new observations from ALMA, we have discovered a jet of material flowing away from the black hole, extending for only 150 light-years. This is the smallest such molecular outflow ever observed in an external galaxy.”

Need feedback? Well, that’s exactly what this process is called. “Feedback” may enlighten us to the relationship between black hole mass and the mass of the surrounding galactic bulge. The black hole consumes gas and becomes active, but then it creates jets which purge gas from its proximity. This halts star formation and controls the growth of the central bulge. In PKS 1830-211, Ivan Marti-Vidal (Chalmers University of Technology, Onsala Space Observatory, Onsala, Sweden) and his team witnessed a supermassive black hole with a jet, “but a much brighter and more active one in the early universe. It is unusual because its brilliant light passes a massive intervening galaxy on its way to Earth, and is split into two images by gravitational lensing.”

Are supermassive black holes messy eaters? You bet. There have been occasions when a supermassive black hole will unexpectedly consume a staggering amount of mass which, in turn, turbo-charges the power of the jets and lights up the radiation output to the very pinnacle of energy output. This energy is emitted as gamma rays, the shortest wavelength and highest energy form of electromagnetic radiation. And now ALMA has, by chance, caught one of these events as it happened in PKS 1830-211.

“The ALMA observation of this case of black hole indigestion has been completely serendipitous. We were observing PKS 1830-211 for another purpose, and then we spotted subtle changes of color and intensity among the images of the gravitational lens. A very careful look at this unexpected behavior led us to the conclusion that we were observing, just by a very lucky chance, right at the time when fresh new matter entered into the jet base of the black hole,” says Sebastien Muller, a co-author of the second paper.

The main image, showing the nearby active galaxy NGC 1433, comes from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The coloured structures near the centre shown in the insert are from recent ALMA observations that have revealed a spiral shape, as well as an unexpected outflow, for the first time. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/NASA/ESA/F. Combes
The main image, showing the nearby active galaxy NGC 1433, comes from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The coloured structures near the centre shown in the insert are from recent ALMA observations that have revealed a spiral shape, as well as an unexpected outflow, for the first time. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/NASA/ESA/F. Combes
As with all astronomical observations, the key to discovery is confirmation. Did the ALMA findings show up on other telescopic observations? The answer is yes. Thanks to monitoring observations with NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, there was a definite gamma ray signature exactly where it should be. Whatever was responsible for the scaling up of radiation at ALMA’s long wavelengths was also responsible for making the light of the black hole jet flare impressively.

“This is the first time that such a clear connection between gamma rays and submillimeter radio waves has been established as coming from the real base of a black hole’s jet,” adds Sebastien Muller.

It isn’t the end of the story, however. It’s just the beginning. ALMA will continue to probe into the mysterious workings of supermassive black hole jets – both near and far. Combes and her investigative team are already observing close active galaxies with ALMA, and even a unique object cataloged as PKS 1830-211. The research will continue, and with it we may one day have answers to many questions.

“There is still a lot to be learned about how black holes can create these huge energetic jets of matter and radiation,” concludes Ivan Marti-Vidal. “But the new results, obtained even before ALMA was completed, show that it is a uniquely powerful tool for probing these jets — and the discoveries are just beginning!”

Original Story Source: ESO News Release.

Posted on by Tammy Plotner

Jupiter And Saturn May Be Rich In Diamonds

“Picture yourself in a boat on a river…” And make it a river of liquid hydrogen and helium deep within the atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn. You might not find a girl with kaleidoscope eyes, but you may very well find diamonds. According to new research, there may be an abundance of these precious gemstones swirling about in the skies of our solar system’s giant planets.

Recent data compiled by planetary scientists Mona L. Delitsky of California Specialty Engineering in Pasadena, California, and Kevin H. Baines of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has been combined with newly published pressure temperature diagrams of Jupiter and Saturn. These diagrams, known as adiabats, allow researchers to decipher at what interior level that diamond would become stable. They also allow for calculations at lower levels – regions where both temperature and pressure are so concentrated that diamond becomes a liquid. Imagine diamond rain… or rivulets of pure gemstone.

These adiabats of Saturn and Jupiter’s interior materials have been improved through new equations. Through the use of shockwave techniques, researchers at Sandia Laboratories and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have been provided with set boundaries for the various states of carbon. From these findings, you would be amazed at the chain of events at what might make diamonds occur. According to Delitsky and Baines, carbon could be generated as soot or graphite from a lightning strike. Since lightning is normal during Saturn’s many huge electrical storms, it stands to reason this elemental carbon would descend to a lower atmospheric level to be compressed into solid diamonds. It would then further descend towards the planet’s core to be eventually “pressure cooked” into a liquid state.

While the idea of diamonds at the heart of planets like Uranus and Neptune has been known for at least three decades, planetary scientists have been hesitant to include Jupiter and Saturn, concluding they were either too cool, too hot, or otherwise not suitable for the production of solid diamonds. Just as Jupiter and Saturn are much warmer at their cores, Uranus and Neptune are much too cold to sustain diamonds in a liquid state. However, thanks to the latest data, researchers are confident that deep inside Saturn there may be diamonds so large that they could be referred to as “diamondbergs”!

delitsky_alien_seas_diamondcruiseIs this the kind of stuff we dream of one day mining? You bet. In a book entitled “Alien Seas” (Springer 2013), Baines and Delitsky have devoted a chapter to the ringed planet entitled “The Seas of Saturn”. Here the duo elucidates on the new, accurate data and makes up a story about robotic mining missions delving deep into the interior of Saturn. Spooky robot hands reach out through the mist, gathering chunks of diamonds and ready them for return to Earth. Because of this new information, theorists Delitsky and Baines report that “diamonds are forever on Uranus and Neptune and not on Jupiter and Saturn.”

Ah, well… I’m still watching for Lucy in the sky.

This news release is based on DPS abstract #512.09 by M. L. Delitsky and K. H. Baines for their conference oral talk on Friday, 11 October 2013.

Posted on by Tammy Plotner

New Camera Aboard APEX Gets First Light

This image of the star formation region NGC 6334 is one of the first scientific images from the ArTeMiS instrument on APEX. The picture shows the glow detected at a wavelength of 0.35 millimetres coming from dense clouds of interstellar dust grains. The new observations from ArTeMiS show up in orange and have been superimposed on a view of the same region taken in near-infrared light by ESO’s VISTA telescope at Paranal. Credit: ArTeMiS team/Ph. André, M. Hennemann, V. Revéret et al./ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA Acknowledgment: Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit

And the “Cat’s Paw” was waiting to strike! In this exceptionally detailed image of star-forming region NGC 6334 we can get a sense of just how important new instrumentation can be. In this case it’s a new camera called ArTeMiS and it has just been installed on a 12-meter diameter telescope located high in the Atacama Desert. The Atacama Pathfinder Experiment – or APEX for short – operates at millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths, providing us with observations ranging between radio wavelengths and infrared light. These images give astronomers powerful new data to help them further understand the construction of the Universe.

Exactly what is ArTeMiS? The camera provides wide field views at submillimeter wavelengths. When added to APEX’s arsenal, it will substantially increase the amount of details a particular object has to offer. It has a detector array similar to a CCD camera – a new technology which will enable it to create wide-field maps of target areas with a greater amount of speed and a larger amount of pixels.

Like almost all new telescope projects, both personal and professional, the APEX team met up with “first light” problems. Although the ArTeMiS Camera was ready to go, the weather simply wouldn’t cooperate. According to the news release, very heavy snow on the Chajnantor Plateau had almost buried the building in which the scope operations are housed! However, the team was determined. Using a makeshift road and dodging snow drifts, the team and the staff at the ALMA Operations Support Facility and APEX somehow managed to get the camera to its location safely. Undaunted, they installed the ArTeMiS camera, worked the cryostat into position and locked the instrumentation down in its final position.

However, digging their way out of the snow wasn’t all the team had to contend with. To get ArTeMis on-line, they then had to wait for very dry weather since submillimeter wavelengths of light are highly absorbed by atmospheric moisture. Do good things come to those who wait? You bet. When the “magic moment” arrived, the APEX team was ready and the initial test observations were a resounding success. ArTeMiS quickly became the focus tool for a variety of scientific projects and commissioned observations. One of these projects was to image star-forming region NGC 6334 – the Cat’s Paw Nebula – in the southern constellation of Scorpius. Thanks to the new technology, the ArTeMiS image shows a superior amount of detail over earlier photographic observations taken with APEX.

What’s next for ArTeMiS? Now that the camera has been tested, it will be returned to Saclay in France to have even more detectors installed. According to the researchers: ” The whole team is already very excited by the results from these initial observations, which are a wonderful reward for many years of hard work and could not have been achieved without the help and support of the APEX staff.”

Original Story Source: ESO Public News Release.

Posted on by Tammy Plotner

Endings and Beginnings – Magnetic Jets Shape Stellar Transformation

A jet of energetic particles (shown in magenta) is shaping the environment around the star IRAS 15445-5449. Infrared light from dusty material which the jet has already shaped into a symmetric form is shown in green. The star itself is hidden by dust in its environment. Credit: E. Lagadec/ESO/A. Pérez Sánchez)

The incredible visual appearance of planetary nebulae are some of the most studied and observed of deep space objects. However, these enigmatic clouds of gas have defied explanation as to their shapes and astronomers are seeking answers. Thanks to a new discovery made by an international team of scientists from Sweden, Germany and Austria, we have now observed a jet of high-energy particles in the process of being ejected from an expiring star.

When a sun-like star reaches the end of its life, it begins to shed itself of its outer layers. These layers blossom into space at speeds of a few kilometers per second, forming a variety of shapes and sizes – yet we know little about what causes their ultimate appearance. Now astronomers are taking a close look at a rather normal star that has reached the end of its life and is beginning to form a planetary nebula. Cataloged as IRAS 15445-5449, this stellar study resides 230,000 light years away in the constellation of Triangulum Australe (the Southern Triangle). Through the use of the CSIRO Australia Telescope Compact Array, a compliment of six 22-meter radio telescopes in New South Wales, Australia, researchers have found what may be the answer to this mystery… high-speed magnetic jets.

“In our data we found the clear signature of a narrow and extremely energetic jet of a type which has never been seen before in an old, Sun-like star,” says Andrés Pérez Sánchez, graduate student in astronomy at Bonn University, who led the study.

How does a radio telescope aid researchers in an optical study? In this case the radio waves emitted by the dying star are compatible with the trademark high-energy particles they are expected to produce. These “spouts” of particles travel at nearly the speed of light and coincident jets are also known to emanate from other astronomical objects that range from newborn stars to supermassive black holes.

“What we’re seeing is a powerful jet of particles spiraling through a strong magnetic field,” says Wouter Vlemmings, astronomer at Onsala Space Observatory, Chalmers. “Its brightness indicates that it’s in the process of creating a symmetric nebula around the star.”

Will these high-energy particles contained within the jet eventually craft the planetary nebula into an ethereal beauty? According to the astronomers, the current state of IRAS 15445-5449 is probably a short-lived phenomenon and nothing more than an intense and dramatic phase in its life… One we’re lucky to have observed.

“The radio signal from the jet varies in a way that means that it may only last a few decades. Over the course of just a few hundred years the jet can determine how the nebula will look when it finally gets lit up by the star,” says team member Jessica Chapman, astronomer at CSIRO in Sydney, Australia.

Will our Sun also follow suit? Right now the answer is unclear. There may be more to this radio picture than meets the ear. However, rest assured that this new information is being heard and might well become the target of additional radio studies. Considering the life of a planetary nebula is generally expected to last few tens of thousands of years, this is a unique opportunity for astronomers to observe what might be a transient occurrence.

“The star may have an unseen companion – another star or large planet — that helps create the jet. With the help of other front-line radio telescopes, like ALMA, and future facilities like the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), we’ll be able to find out just which stars create jets like this one, and how they do it,” says Andrés Pérez Sánchez.

Original Story Source: Royal Astronomical Society News Release.

Posted on by Tammy Plotner

Hubble and NTT Capture Strange Alignment of Planetary Nebulae

While taking a look at more than a hundred planetary nebulae in our galaxy’s central bulge, astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and ESO’s New Technology Telescope have found something rather incredible. It would appear that butterfly-shaped planetary nebulae – despite their differences – are somehow mysteriously aligned!

We know that stars similar to our Sun end their lives shedding their outer layers into space. Like a reptile’s intact skin casing, this stellar material forms a huge variety of shapes known as planetary nebulae. One of the more common forms is bipolar – which creates a bowtie or butterfly shape around the progenitor star.

Like snowflakes, no two planetary nebulae are exactly alike. They are created in different places, under different circumstances and have very different characteristics. There is no way that any of these nebulae, nor the responsible stars that formed them, could have interacted with other planetary nebulae. However, according to a new study done by astronomers from the University of Manchester, UK, there seems to be a rather incredible coincidence… A surprising number of these stellar shells are lining up the same way from our galactic point of view.

“This really is a surprising find and, if it holds true, a very important one,” explains Bryan Rees of the University of Manchester, one of the paper’s two authors. “Many of these ghostly butterflies appear to have their long axes aligned along the plane of our galaxy. By using images from both Hubble and the NTT we could get a really good view of these objects, so we could study them in great detail.”

According to the news release, the astronomers observed 130 planetary nebulae in the Milky Way’s central bulge. They identified three different types, and closely examined their characteristics and appearance.

“While two of these populations were completely randomly aligned in the sky, as expected, we found that the third — the bipolar nebulae — showed a surprising preference for a particular alignment,” says the paper’s second author Albert Zijlstra, also of the University of Manchester. “While any alignment at all is a surprise, to have it in the crowded central region of the galaxy is even more unexpected.”

What causes a planetary nebula to take on a particular shape? For some time, astronomers figured their appearance may have been affected by the rotation of the star system in which they form. Many factors could contribute, such as whether or not the spawning star is a binary, or if it has a planetary system. Both of these factors could help mold the eventual outcome of the shed stellar material. However, bipolar planetary nebulae are the most extreme. Astronomers theorize their shapes are the product of jets blowing mass from the binary system perpendicular to the orbit.

“The alignment we’re seeing for these bipolar nebulae indicates something bizarre about star systems within the central bulge,” explains Rees. “For them to line up in the way we see, the star systems that formed these nebulae would have to be rotating perpendicular to the interstellar clouds from which they formed, which is very strange.”

We accept the fact that the properties of the parent stars are the biggest contributor to a planetary nebula’s shape, but this new information gives an enigmatic edge to the final outcome. Not only is each unique, but the Milky Way itself adds even more complexity. The entire central bulge rotates around the galactic center, and this bulge may have considerably more influence than we expected… the influence of its magnetic fields. The researchers suggest this “orderly behavior of the planetary nebulae” may have occurred because a strong magnetic field was present when the bulge formed. Since planetary nebulae nearer to us don’t line up in the same orderly fashion, it would be logical to assume these magnetic fields were much stronger when our galaxy first formed.

“We can learn a lot from studying these objects,” concludes Zijlstra. “If they really behave in this unexpected way, it has consequences for not just the past of individual stars, but for the past of our whole galaxy.”

Original Story Source: ESO News Release.

Posted on by Tammy Plotner

Trojan Asteroid Found Orbiting Uranus

One of three discovery images of 2011 QF99 taken from CFHT on 2011 October 24 (2011 QF99 is inside the green circle). This is the first of three images of the same patch of sky, taken one hour apart, that were then compared to find moving light-sources.

What’s new in the outer reaches of our solar system? Try the discovery of a Trojan asteroid orbiting Uranus. While a plethora of puns exist for this simple fact, the reality check is that this means there are far more of these objects out there than astronomers expected. The new Trojan even has a name – 2011 QF99!

A Trojan asteroid is a transient space rock which is temporarily captured by the gravity of a giant planet. It shares the planet’s orbital path, locked into a specific position known as a Lagrange point. What makes 2011 QF99 unusual is its presence in the outer solar system. Researchers found the scenario a bit unlikely. Why? The answer is simply because of planet size. According to theory, the strong gravitational pull of the larger neighboring planets should have destabilized any captured asteroid’s orbit and shot Uranian Trojans out of the neighborhood long ago.

So just how did this 60 kilometer-wide conglomeration of ice and rock end up circling Uranus? Astronomers turned towards computer modeling for the answer. The research team, including UBC astronomers Brett Gladman, Sarah Greenstreet and colleagues at the National Research Council of Canada and Observatoire de Besancon in France, did a simulation of the solar system and its co-orbital objects – including Trojan asteroids. A short-term animation showing the motion of 2011 QF99, as seen from above the north pole of the solar system can be found here.

“Surprisingly, our model predicts that at any given time three percent of scattered objects between Jupiter and Neptune should be co-orbitals of Uranus or Neptune,” says Mike Alexandersen, lead author of the study to be published tomorrow in the journal Science.

Until now, no one had made any estimates on the percentage of possible outer solar system Trojans. Unexpectedly, the amount ended up being far greater than earlier estimates. Just over the last 10 years, several temporary Trojans and co-orbitals have been cataloged and 2011 QF99 is one of them. It made its home around Uranus within the last few hundred thousand years and will eventually – in about a million years – escape Uranus’ gravity.

“This tells us something about the current evolution of the solar system,” says Alexandersen. “By studying the process by which Trojans become temporarily captured, one can better understand how objects migrate into the planetary region of the solar system.”

Original Story Source: UBC News Release.

Posted on by Tammy Plotner

Flicker… A Bright New Method of Measuring Stellar Surface Gravity

A simple, yet elegant method of measuring the surface gravity of a star has just been discovered. These computations are important because they reveal stellar physical properties and evolutionary state – and that’s not all. The technique works equally well for estimating the size of hundreds of exoplanets. Developed by a team of astronomers and headed by Vanderbilt Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Keivan Stassun, this new technique measures a star’s “flicker”. Continue reading “Flicker… A Bright New Method of Measuring Stellar Surface Gravity”

Posted on by Tammy Plotner

Hubble Looks Back In Time To See Shape Of Galaxies 11 Billion Years Ago

This image shows "slices" of the Universe at different times throughout its history (present day, and at 4 and 11 billion years ago). Each slice goes further back in time, showing how galaxies of each type appear. The shape is that of the Hubble tuning fork diagram, which describes and separates galaxies according to their morphology. Credit: NASA, ESA, M. Kornmesser

What we’re gonna’ do here is go back. Way back into time. Back to when the only thing that existed was… galaxies? When astronomers employed the power of Hubble’s CANDELS survey to observe different galaxy types from the distant past, they expected to see a variety of spiral, elliptical, lenticular and peculiar structures, but what they didn’t expect was that things were a whole lot more “peculiar” a long time ago!

Known as the Hubble Sequence, astronomers use this classified system for listing galaxy sizes, shapes and colors. It also arranges galaxies according to their morphology and star-forming activity. Up to the present, the Hubble Sequence covered about 80% of the Universe’s history, but the latest information shows that the sequence was valid as much as 11 billion years ago! Out of what we currently know, there are two dominant galaxy types – spiral and elliptical – with the lenticular structure as a median. Of course, this is constrained to the regions of space which we can readily observe, but how true did the sequence hold back when the Universe theoretically began?

“This is a key question: when and over what timescale did the Hubble Sequence form?” says BoMee Lee of the University of Massachusetts, USA, lead author of a new paper exploring the sequence. “To do this you need to peer at distant galaxies and compare them to their closer relatives, to see if they too can be described in the same way.”

Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers took on the sequence challenge to peer back 11 billion years in time to study galaxy structure. Up until now, researchers could confirm the sequence was valid as long ago as 8 billion years, but these new studies pushed CANDELS, the Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey, to the outer limits. It is simply the largest project ever, and soaked up 902 assigned orbits of observing time. Using the WFC3 and ACS cameras, the team examined structures that existed less than one billion years after the Big Bang. While earlier studies had aimed for lower-mass galaxies in this era, no study had really taken on serious observation of mature structures – ones similar to our own galaxy. Now the new CANDELS observations show us that all galaxies, regardless of size, fit into a totally different classification!

“This is the only comprehensive study to date of the visual appearance of the large, massive galaxies that existed so far back in time,” says co-author Arjen van der Wel of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany. “The galaxies look remarkably mature, which is not predicted by galaxy formation models to be the case that early on in the history of the Universe.”

Just what did this study see that’s so different? Just the power of two. Galaxies were either complex, with blue star forming regions and irregular structures, or they were like our nearby neighbors: massive red galaxies that exhibit no new star-formation. In the early Universe, galaxies like the Milky Way were uncommon. With so little to study, it was nearly impossible to get a large enough sample to sufficiently catalog their characteristics. Early research could only peer back in visible light, a format which emphasized star formation and revealed the red-shifted ultraviolet emission of the galaxies. This information was inconclusive because galaxy structure appeared disrupted and unlike the formations we see near to us. Through the use of infra-red, astronomers could observe the now red-shifted massive galaxies in their visible rest frame. Thanks to CANDELS lighting the way, astronomers were able to thoroughly sample a significantly larger amount of mature galaxies in detail.

“The huge CANDELS dataset was a great resource for us to use in order to consistently study ancient galaxies in the early Universe,” concludes Lee. “And the resolution and sensitivity of Hubble’s WFC3 is second to none in the infrared wavelengths needed to carry out this study. The Hubble Sequence underpins a lot of what we know about how galaxies form and evolve — finding it to be in place this far back is a significant discovery.”

Original Story Source: ” Hubble Explores the Origins of Modern Galaxies” – Hubble News Release.