Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Top 10 Really Cool Infrared Images from Spitzer

The 'Tornado Nebula.' Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / J. Bally (University of Colorado)

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The Spitzer Space Telescope’s Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) is a cool camera, no matter what temperature in which it operates! For 1,000 days now, the camera has been continuously taking images of the Universe – from its most distant regions to our local solar neighborhood. The IRAC is now operating in a “warm” version of its mission, as after more than five-and-a-half years of probing the cool cosmos, in 2009 it ran out of liquid helium coolant that kept its infrared instruments chilled.

“IRAC continues to be an amazing camera, still producing important discoveries and spectacular new images of the infrared universe,” said principal investigator Giovanni Fazio of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

To commemorate 1,000 days of infrared wonders, the program is releasing a gallery of the 10 best IRAC images, featuring images from both the cold and warm portions of its mission. Above is #1: The IRAC has uncovered some mysterious objects like this so-called “tornado” nebula. Because the camera is sensitive to light emitted from shocked molecular hydrogen (seen here in green), astronomers think that this strange beast is the result of an outflowing jet of material from a young star that has generated shock waves in surrounding gas and dust.

See more below:

The Orion Nebula, as seen by Spitzer's IRAC. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Univ. of Toledo

#2. A ‘warm’ look at the famous nebula in Orion, located about 1,340 light-years from Earth, is actively making new stars today. Although the optical nebula is dominated by the light from four massive, hot young stars, IRAC reveals many other young stars still embedded in their dusty womb. It also finds a long filament of star-forming activity containing thousands of young protostars. Some of these stars may host still-forming planets.

The Helix Nebula. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / J. Hora (CfA) & W. Latter (NASA/Herschel)

#3. After a long life of hydrogen-burning nuclear fusion, stars move into later life states whose details depend on their masses. This IRAC image of the Helix Nebula barely spots the star itself at the center, but clearly shows how the aging star has ejected material into space around it, creating a “planetary nebula.” The Helix Nebula is located 650 light-years away in the constellation Aquarius.

The Trifid Nebula. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech

#4. Located 5,400 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius, the Trifid Nebula appears as a big maze of gas and dust. Here, Spitzer’s IRAC was observing how the processes of stellar evolution affects the surrounding environment. The Trifid Nebula hosts stars at all stages of life, and with images like this, scientists can observe how stars mature.

The 'Mountains of Creation' in the W5 region near Perseus. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / CfA

#5. Within galaxies like the Milky Way, giant clouds of gas and dust coalesce under the influence of gravity until new stars are born. IRAC can both measure the warm dust and peer deeply into it to study the processes at work. In this giant cloud several stellar nurseries can be seen, some still within the tips of the dusty region that has been called the “Mountains of Creation, 7,000 light-years away from Earth.

DR22, in the constellation Cygnus the Swan. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech

#6. After blowing away its natal material, the young star cluster seen here emits winds and harsh ultraviolet light that sculpt the remnant cloud into fantastic shapes. Astronomers are not sure when that activity suppresses future star formation by disruption, and when it facilitates star formation through compression. The cluster, known as DR22, is in the constellation Cygnus the Swan.

Spitzer's composite of the entire Milky Way Galaxy. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / E. Churchwell (Univ. of Wisconsin)

#7. IRAC has systematically imaged the entire Milky Way disk, assembling a composite photograph containing billions of pixels with infrared emission from everything in this relatively narrow plane. The image here shows five end-to-end strips spanning the center of our galaxy. This image covers only one-third of the whole galactic plane. Astronomers unveiled a 55-meter version of the image at the AAS meeting in June of 2008, and you can see the entire image on the GLIMPSE (Galactic Legacy Infrared Mid-Plane Survey Extraordinaire) Image Viewer, which provides a great way to view and browse this image.

The Whirlpool Galaxy and its companion. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / R. Kennicutt (Univ. of Arizona)

#8. Collisions play an important role in galaxy evolution. These two galaxies – the Whirlpool and its companion – are relatively nearby at a distance of just 23 million light-years from Earth. IRAC sees the main galaxy as very red due to warm dust – a sign of active star formation that probably was triggered by the collision.

The Sombrero Galaxy. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / R. Kennicutt (Univ. of Arizona)

#9. Star formation helps shape a galaxy’s structure through shock waves, stellar winds, and ultraviolet radiation. In this image of the nearby Sombrero Galaxy, IRAC clearly sees a dramatic disk of warm dust (red) caused by star formation around the central bulge (blue). The Sombrero is located 28 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo.

A field of galaxies, seen by Spitzer's IRAC. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SWIRE Team

#10. And coming in at #10 is this lovely image showing many points of light. They aren’t stars but entire galaxies. A few, like the mini-tadpole at upper right, are only hundreds of millions of light-years away so their shapes can be discerned. The most distant galaxies are too far away and appear as dots. Their light is seen as it was over ten billion years ago, when the universe was young.

Will we see more from Spitzer? Certainly. NASA’s Senior Review Panel has recommended extending the Spitzer warm mission through 2015.

See larger versions of these images at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics website.

Posted on by Jason Major

Keck Observatory Fires Up MOSFIRE

The MOSFIRE instrument's "first light" image of The Antennae galaxies, acquired on April 4 2012.

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Last week, on April 4, 2012, the W.M. Keck Observatory’s brand-new MOSFIRE instrument opened its infrared-sensing eyes to the Universe for the first time, capturing the image above of a pair of interacting galaxies known as The Antennae. Once fully commissioned and scientific observations begin, MOSFIRE will greatly enhance the imaging abilities of “the world’s most productive ground-based observatory.”

Installed into the Keck I observatory, MOSFIRE — which stands for Multi-Object Spectrometer For Infra-Red Exploration — is able to gather light in infrared wavelengths. This realm of electromagnetic radiation lies just beyond red on the visible spectrum (the “rainbow” of light that our eyes are sensitive to) and is created by anything that emits heat. By “seeing” in infrared, MOSFIRE can peer through clouds of otherwise opaque dust and gas to observe what lies beyond — such as the enormous black hole that resides at the center of our galaxy.

MOSFIRE can also resolve some of the most distant objects in the Universe, in effect looking back in time toward the period “only” a half-billion years after the Big Bang. Because light from that far back has been so strongly shifted into the infrared due to the accelerated expansion of the Universe (a process called redshift) only instruments like MOSFIRE can detect it.

The instrument itself must be kept at a chilly -243ºF (-153ºC) in order to not contaminate observations with its own heat.

(Watch the installation of the MOSFIRE instrument here.)

Astronomers also plan to use MOSFIRE to search for brown dwarfs — relatively cool objects that never really gained enough mass to ignite fusion in their cores. Difficult to image even in infrared, it’s suspected that our own galaxy is teeming with them.

The impressive new instrument has the ability to survey up to 46 objects at once and then do a quick-change to new targets in just minutes, as opposed to the one to two days it can typically take other telescopes!

Unprocessed image of M82 taken with MOSFIRE on April 5, 2012. (W. M. Keck Observatory)

Images taken on the nights of April 4 and 5 are just the beginning of what promises to be a new heat-seeking era for the Mauna Kea-based observatory!

“The MOSFIRE project team members at Keck Observatory, Caltech, UCLA, and UC Santa Cruz are to be congratulated, as are the observatory operations staff who worked hard to get MOSFIRE integrated into the Keck I telescope and infrastructure,” says Bob Goodrich, Keck Observatory Observing Support Manager. “A lot of people have put in long hours getting ready for this momentous First Light.”

The two Keck 10-meter domes atop Mauna Kea. (Rick Peterson/WMKO)

Read more on the Keck press release here.

The W. M. Keck Observatory operates two 10-meter optical/infrared telescopes on the summit of Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii.  The spectrometer was made possible through funding provided by the National Science Foundation and astronomy benefactors Gordon and Betty Moore.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

New Image Shows Beautiful Violence in Centaurus A

Centaurus A in Far-infrared and X-rays. Credit: Far-infrared: ESA/Herschel/PACS/SPIRE/C.D. Wilson, MacMaster University, Canada; X-ray: ESA/XMM-Newton/EPIC

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The mysterious galaxy Centaurus A is a great place to study the extreme processes that occur near super-massive black holes, scientists say, and this beautiful new image from the combined forces of the Herschel Space Observatory and the XMM-Newton x-ray satellite reveals energetic processes going on deep in the galaxy’s core. This beautiful image tells a tale of past violence that occurred here.

The twisted disc of dust near the galaxy’s heart shows strong evidence that Centaurus A underwent a cosmic collision with another galaxy in the distant past. The colliding galaxy was ripped apart to form the warped disc, and the formation of young stars heats the dust to cause the infrared glow.

This multi-wavelength view of Centaurus A shows two massive jets of material streaming from a immense black hole in the center. When observed by radio telescopes, the jets stretch for up to a million light years, though the Herschel and XMM-Newton results focus on the inner regions.

At a distance of around 12 million light years from Earth, Centaurus A is the closest large elliptical galaxy to our own Milky Way.

“Centaurus A is the closest example of a galaxy to us with massive jets from its central black hole,” said Christine Wilson of McMaster University, Canada, who is leading the study of Centaurus A with Herschel. “Observations with Herschel, XMM-Newton and telescopes at many other wavelengths allow us to study their effects on the galaxy and its surroundings.”

Find more information on this image at ESA’s website.

Posted on by Jason Major

VISTA View Is Chock Full Of Galaxies

Mosaic of infrared survey images from ESO's VISTA reveal over 200,000 distant galaxies. (ESO/UltraVISTA team. Acknowledgement: TERAPIX/CNRS/INSU/CASU.)

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See all those tiny points of light in this image? Most of them aren’t stars; they’re entire galaxies, seen by the European Southern Observatory’s VISTA survey telescope located at the Paranal Observatory in Chile.

This is a combination of over 6000 images taken with a total exposure time of 55 hours, and is the widest deep view of the sky ever taken in infrared light.

The galaxies in this VISTA image are only visible in infrared light because they are very far away. The ever-increasing expansion rate of the Universe shifts the light coming from the most distant objects (like early galaxies) out of visible wavelengths and into the infrared spectrum.

(See a full-size version — large 253 mb file.)

ESO’s VISTA (Visual and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy) telescope is the world’s largest and most powerful infrared observatory, and has the ability to peer deep into the Universe to reveal these incredibly distant, incredibly ancient structures.

By studying such faraway objects astronomers can better understand how the structures of galaxies and galactic clusters evolved throughout time.

The region seen in this deep view is an otherwise “unremarkable” and apparently empty section of sky located in the constellation Sextans.

Read more on the ESO website here.

The VISTA telescope in its dome at sunset. Its primary mirror is 4.1 meters wide. G. Hüdepohl/ESO.

 

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Zoom Into the Entire Infrared Sky from WISE

This is a mosaic of the images covering the entire sky as observed by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), part of its All-Sky Data Release. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

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Love all the great things you can see in infrared? Then zoom on into the big view of the entire sky from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission. WISE has collected more than 15 trillion bytes of data with 2.7 million images of the sky at infrared light. It’s captured everything from nearby asteroids to distant galaxies, finding “Y-dwarfs,” a Trojan asteroid sharing Earth’s orbit, and stars and galaxies that had never been seen before, as well as showing astronomers that there are significantly fewer mid-size asteroids than previously thought.

Today NASA released a new atlas and catalog of the entire sky in infrared, and now even more discoveries are expected since anyone can have access to the whole sky as seen by the spacecraft.

“With the release of the all-sky catalog and atlas, WISE joins the pantheon of great sky surveys that have led to many remarkable discoveries about the universe,” said Roc Cutri, who leads the WISE data processing and archiving effort at the Infrared and Processing Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “It will be exciting and rewarding to see the innovative ways the science and educational communities will use WISE in their studies now that they have the data at their fingertips.”

Thanks to John Williams at Starry Critters, you can now zoom into WISE’s entire map of the infrared sky. John notes some interesting things in the image: “The bright swath across the center is the Milky Way Galaxy; our home galaxy. The view is toward the center of the galaxy with the spiral arms stretching to the edges. Some arti­facts were left in such as bright red spots off the plane of the galaxy. These are Saturn, Jupiter and Mars.”

An introduction and quick guide to accessing the WISE all-sky archive for astronomers is online at: http://wise2.ipac.caltech.edu/docs/release/allsky/

Click here for a collection of WISE images released to date.

More information about WISE.

Posted on by Tammy Plotner

The Care And Feeding Of Teenage Galaxies… And By The Way, They Need Gas

Images of the six galaxies with detected inflows taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys on the Hubble Space Telescope. Most of these galaxies have a disk-like, spiral structure, similar to that of the Milky Way. Star formation activity occurring in small knots is evident in several of the galaxies' spiral arms. Because the spirals appear tilted in the images, Rubin et al. concluded that we are viewing them from the side, rather than face-on. This orientation meshes well with a scenario of 'galactic recycling' in which gas is blown out of a galaxy perpendicular to its disk, and then falls back in at different locations along the edge of the disk. Credit: K. Rubin, MPIA

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Got a teenager? Then you know the story. Go to look for your favorite bag of chips and they’re gone. You eat one portion of meat and they need three. If you like those cookies, then you better have a darn good place to stash them. And, while you’re at it, their car needs gas. Apparently there’s a reason for the word “universal”, because teenage galaxies aren’t much different. Thanks to some new studies done by ESO’s Very Large Telescope, astronomers have been able to take a much closer look at adolescent galaxies and their “feeding habits” during their evolution. Some 3 to 5 billion years after the Big Bang they were happiest when just provided with gas, but later on they developed a voracious appetite… for smaller galaxies!

Scientists have long been aware that early galaxy structures were much smaller than the grand spirals and hefty ellipticals which fill the present Universe. However, figuring out exactly how galaxies put on weight – and where the bulk supply comes from – has remained an enigma. Now an international group of astronomers have taken on more than a hundred hours of observations taken with the VLT to help determine how gas-rich galaxies developed.

“Two different ways of growing galaxies are competing: violent merging events when larger galaxies eat smaller ones, or a smoother and continuous flow of gas onto galaxies.” explains team leader, Thierry Contini (IRAP, Toulouse, France). “Both can lead to lots of new stars being created.”

The undertaking is is MASSIV – the Mass Assembly Survey with the VIsible imaging Multi-Object Spectrograph, a powerful camera and spectrograph on the VLT. It’s incredible equipment used to measure distance and properties of the surveyed galaxies Not only did the survey observe in the near infrared, but also employed a integral field spectrograph and adaptive optics to refine the images. This enables astronomers to map inner galaxy movements and content, as well as leaving room for some very surprising results.

“For me, the biggest surprise was the discovery of many galaxies with no rotation of their gas. Such galaxies are not observed in the nearby Universe. None of the current theories predict these objects,” says Benoît Epinat, another member of the team.

“We also didn’t expect that so many of the young galaxies in the survey would have heavier elements concentrated in their outer parts — this is the exact opposite of what we see in galaxies today,” adds Thierry Contini.

These results point towards a major change during the galactic “teenage years”. At some time during the young Universe state, smooth gas flow was a considerable building block – but mergers would later play a more important role.

“To understand how galaxies grew and evolved we need to look at them in the greatest possible detail. The SINFONI instrument on ESO’s VLT is one of the most powerful tools in the world to dissect young and distant galaxies. It plays the same role that a microscope does for a biologist,” adds Thierry Contini.

The team plans on continuing to study these galaxies with future instruments on the VLT as well as using ALMA to study the cold gas in these galaxies. However, their work with gas isn’t the only “station” on the block. In a separate study led by Kate Rubin (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy), the Keck I telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, has been used to examine gas associated with a hundred galaxies at distances between 5 and 8 billion light-years – the older teens. They have found initial evidence of gas flowing back into distant galaxies that are actively forming new stars.

Images of the six galaxies with detected inflows taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys on the Hubble Space Telescope. Most of these galaxies have a disk-like, spiral structure, similar to that of the Milky Way. Star formation activity occurring in small knots is evident in several of the galaxies' spiral arms. Because the spirals appear tilted in the images, Rubin et al. concluded that we are viewing them from the side, rather than face-on. This orientation meshes well with a scenario of 'galactic recycling' in which gas is blown out of a galaxy perpendicular to its disk, and then falls back in at different locations along the edge of the disk. Credit: K. Rubin, MPIA

Apparently, like a teenager with the munchies, matter finds its way into those galactic tummies. One feeding theory is an inflow from huge low-density gas reservoirs filling the intergalactic voids… another is huge cosmic matter cycle. While there is very little evidence to support either hypothesis, gases have been observed to flow away from some galaxies and may be moshed around by several different sources – such as supernovae events or peer pressure from gigantic stars.

“As this gas drifts away, it is pulled back by the galaxy’s gravity, and could re-enter the same galaxy in time scales of one to several billion years. This process might solve the mystery: the gas we find inside galaxies may only be about half of the raw material that ends up as fuel for star formation.” says Dr. Rubin. “Large amounts of gas are caught in transit, but will re-enter the galaxy in due time. Add up the galaxy’s gas and the gas currently undergoing cosmic recycling, and there is a sufficient amount of raw matter to account for the observed rates of star formation.”

It might very well be a case of cosmic recycling… but I’d feel safer hiding my cookies.

Original Story Sources: ESO News Release and MPIA Science News Release. For Further Reading: Research Paper 1, Research Paper 2, Research Paper 3 and Research Paper 4.

Posted on by Tammy Plotner

FourStar Service: Red Galaxy Cluster Hides In Plain Sight

An infared image of the cluster. Three narrow slices of the infrared spectrum are represented in this color composite. The colors have been balanced to accentuate the red galaxies at a distance of 10.5 billion light years. Credit: FourStar Galaxy Evolution Survey ("Z-FOURGE")

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Located some 10.5 billion light years away in the general direction of the constellation of Leo, the most distant cluster of red galaxies so far discovered has been hiding in plain sight… until now. Thanks to the advanced observing techniques of FourStar, a new and powerful near-infrared camera on the 6.5m Magellan Baade Telescope, we’re now able to peer beyond faint and into the realm of the faintest. It’s 30 galaxies packed like sardines in a tin and their formation is the earliest known “galaxy city” in the Universe!

“These are the first steps of accurately measuring the rate at which these large urban cities formed in a dark-matter-dominated universe,” says Texas A&M astronomer, Dr. Casey Papovich. “The rate at which they come together tests our understanding of how structures in the universe formed. The broader the timeline, the better our chances of being accurate. Instrumentation is key, and as it evolves, we’ll keep pushing the boundaries.”

Up until now, this galaxy conglomeration had remained undisclosed – despite thousand upon thousands of hours of survey images taken in their area. It is truly amazing that they were overlooked by the huge ground-based telescopes and space-based research instruments, including the Hubble Space Telescope. There was just no accurate distance estimations until the FourStar project came along. Headed by Eric Persson of the Carnegie Observatories, the stellar team includes Carnegie’s David Murphy, Andy Monson, Dan Kelson, Pat McCarthy, and Ryan Quadri – a group whose findings will be published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Just what is FourStar? It’s a specialized camera set with a group of five very specific filters which are sensitively tuned to a very narrow portion of the near-infrared spectrum. “These new filters are a novel approach; it’s a bit like being able to do a CAT scan of the sky to rapidly make a 3-D picture of the early universe,” says Swinburne’s Karl Glazebrook, who is leading the Australian component of the international collaboration formed in 2009.What sets it apart is its ability to accurately measure distances between Earth and target galaxies one at a time. This allows the program to build an incredible three-dimensional look at the source point.

“Most other surveys were just looking at the tip of the iceberg,” Dr. Kim-Vy Tran explains. “The modern technology contained in this camera enabled us to detect the faintest light possible, allowing us to see much more of the iceberg than previously revealed. It’s like we’re using a comb to sift through the very distant universe. The combination of filters and depth provided by this camera give us the equivalent of more teeth, resulting in better measurements and more accurate results.”

The survey was built one deep over an 11×11 arcminute field each in COSMOS, CDFS and UDS. When it comes to galaxy properties, they are looking at 1-2% accurate redshifts and the current 3-D map is looking back to when the Universe was only 3 billion years old.

“This means the galaxy cluster is still young and should continue to grow into an extremely dense structure possibly containing thousands of galaxies,” explained lead author Lee Spitler of Australia’s Swinburne University of Technology.

The FourStar Galaxy Evolution Survey (“Z-FOURGE”) is just the beginning. Through studies of clusters like this one, astronomers can and will get a better understanding of how galaxy clusters evolve in relationship to their environments and – possibly – how they assemble into larger structures. The survey, led by Dr. Ivo Labbé, a former Carnegie postdoctoral fellow, now at Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands, will also strengthen our abilities to determine distances. In just a half a year, the team “has obtained accurate distances for faint galaxies over a region roughly one-fifth the apparent size of the Moon” locating about another thousand galaxies at even further extents.

“The excellent image quality and sensitivity of Magellan and FourStar really make the difference,” Labbé said. “We look forward to many more exciting and unexpected discoveries!”

Original Story Source: Carnegie Science News Release.

Posted on by Tammy Plotner

Supernova G350 Kicks Up Some X-Ray Dust

Vital clues about the devastating ends to the lives of massive stars can be found by studying the aftermath of their explosions. In its more than twelve years of science operations, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has studied many of these supernova remnants sprinkled across the Galaxy. Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/I.Lovchinsky et al, IR: NASA/JPL-Caltech

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Located some 14,700 light years from the Earth toward the center of our galaxy, a newly photographed supernova remnant cataloged as G350.1+0.3 is making astronomers scratch their heads. The star which created this unusual visage is suspected to have blown its top some 600 to 1,200 years ago. Although it would have been as bright as the event which created the “Crab”, chances are no one saw it due to the massive amounts of gas and dust at the Milky Way’s heart. Now NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the ESA’s XMM-Newton telescope has drawn back the curtain and we’re able to marvel at what happens when a supernova imparts a powerful X-ray “kick” to a neutron star!

Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/I.Lovchinsky et al, IR: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Photographic proof from Chandra and XMM-Newton are full of clues which give rise to the possibility that a compact object located in the influence of G350.1+0.3 may be the core region of a shattered star. Since it is off-centered from the X-ray emissions, it must have received a powerful blast of energy during the supernova event and has been moving along at a speed of 3 million miles per hour ever since. This information agrees with an “exceptionally high speed derived for the neutron star in Puppis A and provides new evidence that extremely powerful ‘kicks’ can be imparted to neutron stars from supernova explosions.”

As you look at the photo, you’ll notice one thing in particular… the irregular shape. The Chandra data in this image appears as gold while the infrared data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope is colored light blue. According to the research team, this unusual configuration may have been caused by the stellar debris field imparting itself into the surrounding cold molecular gas.

These results appeared in the April 10, 2011 issue of The Astrophysical Journal. The scientists on this paper were Igor Lovchinsky and Patrick Slane (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), Bryan Gaensler (University of Sydney, Australia), Jack Hughes (Rutgers University), Stephen Ng (McGill University), Jasmina Lazendic (Monash University Clayton, Australia), Joseph Gelfand (New York University, Abu Dhabi), and Crystal Brogan (National Radio Astronomy Observatory).

Original Story Source: NASA Chandra News Release.

Posted on by Tammy Plotner

Emerging Supermassive Black Holes Choke Star Formation

The LABOCA camera on the ESO-operated 12-metre Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope reveals distant galaxies undergoing the most intense type of star formation activity known, called a starburst. This image shows these distant galaxies, found in a region of sky known as the Extended Chandra Deep Field South, in the constellation of Fornax (The Furnace). The galaxies seen by LABOCA are shown in red, overlaid on an infrared view of the region as seen by the IRAC camera on the Spitzer Space Telescope. Credit: ESO, APEX (MPIfR/ESO/OSO), A. Weiss et al., NASA Spitzer Science Center

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Located on the Chajnantor plateau in the foothills of the Chilean Andes, ESO’s APEX telescope has been busy looking into deep, deep space. Recently a group of astronomers released their findings regarding massive galaxies in connection with extreme times of star formation in the early Universe. What they found was a sharp cut-off point in stellar creation, leaving “massive – but passive – galaxies” filled with mature stars. What could cause such a scenario? Try the materialization of a supermassive black hole…

By integrating data taken with the LABOCA camera on the ESO-operated 12-metre Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope with measurements made with ESO’s Very Large Telescope, NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and other facilities, astronomers were able to observe the relationship of bright, distant galaxies where they form into clusters. They found that the density of the population plays a major role – the tighter the grouping, the more massive the dark matter halo. These findings are the considered the most accurate made so far for this galaxy type.

Located about 10 billion light years away, these submillimetre galaxies were once home to starburst events – a time of intense formation. By obtaining estimations of dark matter halos and combining that information with computer modeling, scientists are able to hypothesize how the halos expanding with time. Eventually these once active galaxies settled down to form giant ellipticals – the most massive type known.

“This is the first time that we’ve been able to show this clear link between the most energetic starbursting galaxies in the early Universe, and the most massive galaxies in the present day,” says team leader Ryan Hickox of Dartmouth College, USA and Durham University, UK.

However, that’s not all the new observations have uncovered. Right now there’s speculation the starburst activity may have only lasted around 100 million years. While this is a very short period of cosmological time, this massive galactic function was once capable of producing double the amount of stars. Why it should end so suddenly is a puzzle that astronomers are eager to understand.

“We know that massive elliptical galaxies stopped producing stars rather suddenly a long time ago, and are now passive. And scientists are wondering what could possibly be powerful enough to shut down an entire galaxy’s starburst,” says team member Julie Wardlow of the University of California at Irvine, USA and Durham University, UK.

Right now the team’s findings are offering up a new solution. Perhaps at one point in cosmic history, starburst galaxies may have clustered together similar to quasars… locating themselves in the same dark matter halos. As one of the most kinetic forces in our Universe, quasars release intense radiation which is reasoned to be fostered by central black holes. This new evidence suggests intense starburst activity also empowers the quasar by supplying copious amounts of material to the black hole. In response, the quasar then releases a surge of energy which could eradicate the galaxy’s leftover gases. Without this elemental fuel, stars can no longer form and the galaxy growth comes to a halt.

“In short, the galaxies’ glory days of intense star formation also doom them by feeding the giant black hole at their centre, which then rapidly blows away or destroys the star-forming clouds,” explains team member David Alexander from Durham University, UK.

Original Story Source: European Southern Observatory News. For Further Reading: Research Paper Link.

Posted on by Jason Major

Beneath the Surface: Seeing Jupiter’s Hidden Storms

Juno will repeatedly dive between the planet and its intense belts of charged particle radiation, coming only 5,000 kilometers (about 3,000 miles) from the cloud tops at closest approach. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)


Launched on August 5, 2011, NASA’s Juno spacecraft will arrive at Jupiter in 2016 to study its magnetic field and atmosphere. Using its suite of science instruments Juno will peer inside the gas giant’s thick clouds, revealing hidden structures and powerful storms. To help people visualize what it means to see the invisible, JPL’s visual strategist Dan Goods created the exhibit above, titled Beneath the Surface. It’s an installation of lights, sound and fog effects that dramatically recreates what Juno will experience as it orbits Jupiter. By using their cell phone cameras, viewers can see lightning “storms” hidden beneath upper, opaque layers of “atmosphere”… in much the same way Juno will.

Goods explains: “Humans are only able to see a little, tiny sliver of what there is available in light. There’s gamma rays, microwaves, ultraviolet and infrared light also, and infrared is close enough to the visible part of the spectrum that cell phone cameras can pick it up. Cell phones normally produce more grainy photos at night because they don’t try to cut out the infrared light the way higher-end digital cameras do so in this case, the cell phone cameras are an advantage.” (Via the Pasadena Weekly.)

I had a chance to meet Dan Goods during a Tweetup event for the Juno launch at Kennedy Space Center. He’d brought a table that had magnetic elements set beneath a flat black surface, and by passing a handheld magnet over the table you could “detect” the different magnetic fields… in some cases rather strongly, even though they were all obviously invisible. It was an ingenious way that Juno’s abilities could be demonstrated in a “hands-on” manner.

Watch my video of the Juno launch from the KSC press site.

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Beneath the Surface takes that kind of demonstration to an entirely new level.

“I love to work with the world of things that are right in front of you but you just can’t see,” Goods said. “With Juno, there’s all this structure just under the surface of Jupiter, but humans can develop tools that help us understand things we’d never have seen before.”

The exhibit was installed at the Pasadena Museum of California Art until January 8. It will now travel to science museums around the country.

Video: watch how the exhibit was constructed.

Juno’s primary goal is to improve our understanding of Jupiter’s formation and evolution. The spacecraft will spend a year investigating the planet’s origins, interior structure, deep atmosphere and magnetosphere. Juno’s study of Jupiter will help us to understand the history of our own solar system and provide new insight into how planetary systems form and develop in our galaxy and beyond.

Explore the Juno mission more at http://missionjuno.swri.edu/.