Posted 01/13/11 Linda Morabito's Space PlaceVery interesting things going on in Astronomy on a very large scale! The Hubble deep field image in the composite posted today shows galaxies dating back to possibly 480 million years after universe began (circled in green). It is extremely important to know how many of them there were in the early universe. This will pertain to our understanding of galaxy evolution, and of course dark matter; to understand the way in which the initial first light of galaxies began. Solving the mystery of what reionized the universe will also depends on us looking back to the epoch of these early galaxies.
The problem is that the number of such galaxies cannot be accurately assessed due to gravitational lensing. Much larger galaxies loom in the foreground, formed more recently and are accordingly massive. As per Einstein’s general relativity, they bend the light from behind them, creating multiple images of the early galaxy finds, and also artificially brightened images.
These images produced through gravitational lensing, to put it succinctly confuse the count of those early galaxies. The recently released study by researchers says succinctly as well, expect and watch out for these problems in the count of early galaxies.
What will solve this issue? The much higher resolution and sensitivity of the James Webb telescope is needed. Furthermore, highly sophisticated algorithms must be developed to make sure the count has a chance to be accurate and not include the misleading characteristics of images in what researchers term a house of mirrors, which might lend to a distorted image of the early universe, overall.
What is most significant from this issue for us to take forward on the Space Place? Please keep in mind how early we are looking back into time. Another recent report is telling us that we are seeing now the first indications of protoclusters of galaxies, huge finds all that precede the structure of the universe as we see it now, going back to when this structure so much further along now, began, and to the very times of first light or re-ionization of the universe.
What else is important? Please keep in mind our need for the James Webb telescope as we continue to hope and expect that project to come to fruition. Please keep in mind the further we look out into space, the further back into time we look! And here’s something to think about, galaxy clusters on these large scales can contain 1 quadrillion times the mass of the Sun. Love it!
Image credit NASA, ESA, Z. Levay and A. Feild (STScI).
Will make a much better effort to have pictures, etc., of this presentation!
Posted 01/12/11 Linda Morabito's Space PlaceIt’s great to learn about a phenomenon you may not have heard about before! I will cut and paste a combination of descriptions from NASA and actually Wikipedia about Polar Mesospheric Clouds. I hope you will enjoy reading about these as much as I have! What prompted this is that the clouds were captured by NASA, Astronaut Wheelock in June of 2010 from Earth orbit as in our posted image.
Here is what I learned. I will also post a link to another picture which may show the phenomenon a little clearer than this photo, which is breathtaking though!
From NASA: “n the summertime in the far northern or southern latitudes, high in the Earth’s atmosphere at the edge of space, thin, silvery clouds sometimes become visible just after sunset. These high clouds, occurring at altitudes of about 80 kilometers (50 miles), are called polar mesospheric clouds (PMCs). They are also called noctilucent (“night-shining”) clouds.”
From NASA also: “Astronauts frequently observe polar mesospheric clouds over Canada, northern Europe, and Asia during June, July and August. While polar mesospheric clouds also occur over high latitudes in the Southern Hemisphere summer, astronaut observations of southern clouds are less frequent. Studies of polar mesospheric clouds are part of the research activities for the International Polar Year (IPY); to support IPY research, ISS astronauts will be looking for and documenting polar mesospheric clouds in both hemispheres. NASA’s AIM (short for “Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere”) mission is also studying polar mesospheric clouds.”
And, Wiki: “Noctilucent clouds are tenuous cloud-like phenomena that are the "ragged-edge" of a much brighter and pervasive polar cloud layer called polar mesospheric clouds in the upper atmosphere, visible in a deep twilight. They are made of crystals of water ice. The name means roughly night shining in Latin. They are most commonly observed in the summer months at latitudes between 50° and 70° north and south of the equator.
They are the highest clouds in the Earth's atmosphere, located in the mesosphere at altitudes of around 76 to 85 kilometers (47 to 53 mi). They are normally too faint to be seen, and are visible only when illuminated by sunlight from below the horizon while the lower layers of the atmosphere are in the Earth's shadow. Noctilucent clouds are not fully understood and are a recently discovered meteorological phenomenon; there is no evidence that they were observed before 1885.
Noctilucent clouds can form only under very restrictive conditions; their occurrence can be used as a sensitive guide to changes in the upper atmosphere.”
Posted 01/11/11 Linda Morabito's Space PlaceI would like to repost what I wrote on November 3, 2010, below about the green object that is shown in the clearest image of it we have ever seen, just released by Hubble! After the repost, the new news is in the last paragraph below!
“We search and search in the hopes of capturing that one snapshot so to speak, that one image of a star at a period of stellar evolution we haven’t seen before, although that period of stellar evolution is predicted by theory, or a galaxy in its evolution at a stage we surmise exists but haven’t yet seen.
”Well, it’s happened. We have caught a glimpse of a quasar at the center of a galaxy turning off or shutting down. Wow! How amazing is this? And how did this amazing moment in the galaxy’s evolution come to our attention? Through none other than Hanny’s Voorwerp! I believe that is Dutch for Hanny’s object.
”Please forgive me if I may not have thoroughly researched this find or how this find was found through Hanny’s find. But, loosely from what I can gather, in 2007 Hanny, a Dutch school teacher, was volunteering her time on-line to classify galaxies as a member of the public enthusiastically involved in the project by the Galaxy Zoo. She saw an object near the galaxy she intended to classify and spoke up about it! She wondered what it was.
”She was not the only one, once her find became known. What was the odd green object about the same distance from Earth as a galaxy IC 2497 beside it? The object had no stars, but was glowing. Why?
”A huge find has followed this find. It is now believed by researchers, according to wired that Hanny’s find was being ionized by the enormous energy of a quasar in that nearby galaxy, and the remnants of its effects in the Voorwerp reflection nebula brightness are possibly all that remains of the quasar!!! The quasar quit, but the light from the reflection nebula still glows on with the intense radiation emitted by that quasar. What Hanny’s Voorwerp really was, was a sign that said look here for one of the greatest treats you shall every see! It’s what we don’t see that matters here. A quasar gone dead in the center of that nearby galaxy and having done this within the last 45,000 to 75,000 years, the distance its light had to travel to the Voorwerp.
”While its light was on the way, what emitted the light, the infall of material from an accretion disk surrounding the galaxy’s supermassive black hole at its heart, the quasar died. Apparently it is true after all that accretion disks are small, an upper bound would be established for it to die to quickly in terms of cosmic times.
”This is just the beginning of what scientists will learn about a galaxy’s evolution based on what lies at its center, and how active that region is. They owe it all to Hanny and so do we!”
Now, the updated news released with the new clearer image from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys. Hubble states that the image has revealed star birth in a region of the green object that faces the spiral galaxy IC 2497. Radio observations have shown an outflow of gas arising from the galaxy’s core. The new Hubble images reveal that the galaxy’s gas is interacting with a small region of Hanny’s Voorwerp, which is collapsing and forming stars. The youngest stars are a couple of million years old. Not bad for an encore! Star birth from a region that has illuminated our chances of understanding quasars and the galaxies in which they are found!
Posted 01/10/11 Linda Morabito's Space PlaceOn the Space Place, we emphasize the importance of themes, astronomical knowledge which threads through the most recent news developments in Astronomy and Space Science. Thus we are equipped with some insight when the next major find or new model is suggested for the evolution of objects we see in space, on scales leading up to the evolution of the entire universe.
We have a better chance at settling on the significance of any major announcement, by adding to our astronomical knowledge; a better chance at understanding what we do and do not know about the universe and our place within it. When there is precious little understood about a particular area in Astronomy, though, one should take note of a significant find in that area, and appreciate it on that basis alone!
We don’t yet know how supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies form. We don’t know if the galaxies form first and the supermassive black hole follows, or if the supermassive black hole is there as some stand-alone phenomenon which leads to a galaxy’s formation.
As we have mentioned on the Space Place before, since there is a correlation to the mass of the supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies to the mass of the central spheroid component of the galaxy, one would tend to think that the supermassive black hole would form perhaps as a result of the central spheroid component, or at the very least could not form without one.
One if not both of these conjectures may be dispelled by an interesting new find made by a graduate student at the University of Virginia, as reported recently by Space.com.
This student, studying a very small, in fact dwarf galaxy, because of its starburst nature (furious rate of star formation() was using the National Science Foundation's Very Large Array radio telescope in New Mexico, along with the Hubble Space Telescope, to observe it.
We have indeed mentioned synchrotron radiation enough to understand that it results from charged particles accelerated in some cases nearly to the speed of light along twisted magnetic field lines arising from the rapid rotation of an accretion disk around a black hole. Synchrotron radiation is detected in the radio region of the spectrum, and that is what this student noticed in her data. This radio signature revealed the presence of a supermassive black hole in the center of what Space.com terms this pipsqueak galaxy with no central spheroid component; no bulge. Wow! One could extrapolate this all the way to the belief that supermassive black holes form first, and a galaxy then forms around them.
It is too soon to extrapolate that far. Logically, more dwarf galaxies need to be observed for the presence of a disproportionately humongous supermassive black hole at their centers, before this conclusion can be reached, and even then, another explanation might still be possible. But, what a wake-up development for those of us who have been wondering which came first, the chicken or the egg!
For confirmation of the existence of the superrmasssive black hole at the center of dwarf galaxy Henize 2-10, logically the student viewed a Chandra image of the galaxy, hoping to see X-ray emissions, also indicative of the existence of a black hole. This was indeed found in Chandra data, as per the posted image, with Hubble optical data in red, green and blue, the VLA radio data in yellow and the Chandra X-ray data in purple. Credit: X-ray(NASA/CXC/Virginia/A.Reines et al.) Radio (NRAO/AUI/NSF/Virginia/A.Reines et al.) Optical (NASA/STScI/Virginia/A.Reines et al.) Very interesting stuff to say the least!
Please be sure and let your friends know about the Space Place, so they can journey through the universe with us here!Please note that the supermassive black hole in the image at the center of Henize 2-10 has been marked with a small red X.
Posted 01/09/11 Linda Morabito's Space PlaceAmong the spectacular pictures of Earth attributed to Astronaut Douglas Wheelock from space. He says, "Another breathtaking sunset we get 16 of these each day in Earth orbit, each one a treasured moment. That beautiful thin blue line is what makes our home so special in the cosmos. Space is cool but, the Earth is a raging explosion of life in a vast sea of darkness (6-21-2010)." NASA, Astronaut Wheelock.
Extremely well said. Hope you have a wonderful day today, to all the members of the Space Place!
Posted 01/08/11 Linda Morabito's Space PlaceAs I ponder what is taking place right now in the news about astronomy and space science, I wonder how many of us keep it in perspective.
Here are a few of the topics that we have been seeing talked about elsewhere. First, we now understand apparently why the Sun’s upper atmosphere is a million degrees hotter than its surface. The Sun’s surface is not of course a solid surface and is marked by the photosphere. At the lower edge of the photosphere, the Sun becomes opaque. But, as one continues up through the layers of what are logically deemed the Sun’s atmosphere above that, temperatures rise.
Now it is learned that plasma propelled upward from the surface of the Sun, fountains of plasma jetted to the Sun’s corona by a new class of spicules, can indeed heat the corona to millions of degrees. This had never been observed before, and spicules, although known to exist, had never been caught in the act of accounting for this level of heat in the corona.
Using new observations from the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly on NASA’s recently launched Solar Dynamics Observatory and NASA’s Focal Plane Package for the Solar Optical Telescope (SOT) on the Japanese Hinode satellite, sufficient resolution provided a one to one correlation with the plasma at this temperature being inserted into the atmosphere by the spicules. Death to many other theorized mechanisms, some of which I used to teach students, and won’t anymore. Love it!
What else? The Crab Nebula pulsar changed and apparently spit out some massively accelerated particles along its magnetic field lines, smashing into the outer medium of the supernova remnant and changing the overall climate there for a while. Wow, what a show, of the highest energy ever traced to a specific source, but believe me, not the highest energy out there we have observed and will in the future trace to a specific source. So the Old Faithful pulsar had an energetic event, a dead star letting us know it’s not completely dead yet. Frances, this is synchrotron radiation of course, as well. Scientists are not sure what caused this flare or increase of acceleration in these electrons, 1000 times greater than the energy that will be achieved by our most powerful particle accelerators.
What more? The Moon has a core similar in structure to our Earth, albeit a small one, detected directly, finally, through old Apollo data from sensors placed on the Moon. It’s even molten in its outer layer, wonderful! Should the Moon have had a decent rotation rate, would a small magnetic field have emerged?
And speaking of terrestrial or Earth-like worlds in our own solar system, a category in which the Moon is often included, check out the news about Vesta! A chunk of it in a near Earth Asteroid has been discovered as originating from Vesta’s interior, specifically its mantle.
What is so important about that? Vesta is unique. It is a fully differentiated protoplanet that did not become a larger terrestrial planet and was not destroyed through early collisions with debris, and will therefore tell scientists a lot about the early conditions of the solar system. The thickness of Vesta’s mantle is important in determining the type and proportions of material that was available in the early solar system. An estimate of Vesta’s mantle size can be made using this new near Earth asteroid,correlated back to a large crater on Vesta, but scientists will likely wait until Dawn arrives to speak to Vesta’s story. Can hardly wait for Dawn to arrive there in August of this year!
Can Vesta, the second largest asteroid be considered a dwarf planet; well it is not spherical now probably due to the big impact we have just talked about! Michael, we still need to think about how objects should be designated in our solar system and perhaps others.
We have just talked about one star, ours, another dead star, a pulsar, one moon and a protoplanet. Can any of us extrapolate that to what we are seeing in a Hubble image in the Large Magellanic cloud. This one image shows a young globular cluster with a small, young open cluster (hence a double cluster) captured in the same image (lower right). The small cluster has blue stars and T-Tauri youth stars, and the picture is replete with nebulosity on the left seen in blue, thought to originate from the death of stars in supernova explosions.
How can we expand to this scale in our thinking and to the universe beyond? We can only try, but try we must to keep our perspective on our small place in this vast universe. Image credit: ESA, NASA and Martino Romaniello (European Southern Observatory, Germany)
Should add that how this new class of spicules rise to that temperature (millions of degrees) from the surface of the Sun is not understood yet, but there are dramatic rises in temperature that must take place going through the atmospheric layers. More to be learned, but now we know that the Corona's temperature is delivered by them.
Posted 01/07/11 Linda Morabito's Space PlaceAs I put together the presentation I will be making a week from today to the OrangeCounty Astronomers about my memoir “Parallel Universes” I began to select some of my favorite pictures we have posted on the Space Place to enjoy during that presentation. One is a picture of the Andromeda galaxy taken in the infrared by WISE.
So, I was very pleased to see the coincidence of more images of Andromeda in the infrared, emerging from ESA’s Herschel Spacecraft. Not only that, but apparently these images have been combined with images from ESA’s XMM-Newton, to show what ESA terms Andromeda’s once and future stars.
ESA makes several very straightforward assertions in their description of today’s image. First, the rings of dust (somewhat concentric about the center of the galaxy) are the highest resolution data ever taken of Andromeda in the far-infrared. The detail they reveal shows us the cool dust which traces out dense regions of gas where stars are forming. ESA says that such rings of dust may be the result of a collision with a smaller galaxy.
The x-ray emissions concentrated in the center of the galaxy where the density of stars is greatest and interspersed throughout the galactic disk, are regions where supernova explosions have taken place or where material is transferred from one star in a binary system to another via a forming an accretion disk. In both cases, the stars are dying.
We tip our hats to ESA’s spacecraft working on good stuff in the far-infrared to help us see where stars are born and in the x-ray region of the spectrum, to see where they are dying. Andromeda’s once and future stars. Credits: ESA/Herschel/PACS/SPIRE/J.Fritz, U.Gent/XMM-Newton/EPIC/W. Pietsch, MPE
Posted 01/06/11 Linda Morabito's Space PlaceHuge news! I hope you can appreciate what I am about to report on the Space Place! Here is one of those amazing “facts” that have been reported by a preponderance of logic as possible explanations of active galactic nuclei. To the point of actually stating for example to students, which I have done, that when our galaxy collides with Andromeda, likely our supermassive black hole in the center of our galaxy will once again become active. Galaxy collisions have been cited as a cause of such a rebirth of activity for a long time now. No more!!! For the last 8 billion years, galaxies involved in mergers have no correlation to active galactic nuclei. Only Hubble could provide such an insight and I am so impressed with this outcome that you may wish to read Hubble’s great find! http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1101/
Please be aware that the source of the power of quasars, as they are called, these off the scale active supermassive black holes at galaxy centers, are rendered so as the supermassive black hole eats. As we have said on the Space Place before, there is no more efficient mechanism in the universe for converting matter to energy than what takes place in the accretion disk surrounding a black hole as matter falls into it, in short, as it feeds.
The tidal forces at the feeding edge of the accretion disk, just outside the event horizon of the black hole, are so great across the disk, that the amount of friction the matter experiences as it becomes a meal, creates the amount of energy that we can view from nearly the beginning of galaxy formation time. It is suspected that early galaxies had enough dust and gas material to keep the black holes at their centers that energetic!
Not all quasars exist at the edge of time (much more did, however, back then), but we regularly observe that some active galactic nuclei are much, much more active than others. What would be the mechanism for the supermassive black hole in the center of a galaxy to approach that state again? Well certainly not collision that results in merger! What is left as possible reasons for the transformation to AGN status in galaxies whose centers are active enough to continue to shine so brightly, are the following, according to Hubble: “Possible ways of transporting matter towards a central black hole include instabilities of structures like a spiral galaxy's bar, the collisions of giant molecular clouds within the galaxy, or the fly-by of another galaxy that does not lead to a merger (known as galactic harassment).”
So there you have it, hot off the presses, a huge leap in our understanding, at least for galaxies dating back to 8 billion years. Study on galaxies earlier in the universe’s history will take place, according to the Hubble article.
This amazing picture I have used on this post is described by Chandra as follows: “This image of NGC 6240 contains new X-ray data from Chandra (shown in red, orange, and yellow) that has been combined with an optical image from the Hubble Space Telescope originally released in 2008. In 2002, the discovery of two supermassive black holes merging was announced based on Chandra data in this galaxy. The two black holes are a mere 3,000 light years apart and are seen as the bright point-like sources in the middle of the image.” The galaxy collision is believed to have started 30 million years ago!
Just by reporting and commenting on breaking astronomy news over the last year, I recall one study which indicated that merging supermassive black holes in a galaxy seemed to play a role in reducing the possibility of star formation after a merger. This seemed to me in direct conflict with a merged galaxy having more material to feed on if star formation is halted, perhaps even in the galaxy center. I have no idea if that study in any way pertains to the new Hubble find as described in this post. But, first in science often, we do get the clues that our “assumed” understanding might not be on the mark, and we sometimes learn definitively later, that is exactly the case.
Dave tells me he is very skeptical of this finding by Hubble. I will try to find my original post about the study of two merging black holes reducing or preventing star formation in a galaxy. Again, that may or may not be related to this amazing Hubble find, but at least we will continue to have a lot to talk about on the Space Place!
Posted 01/05/11 Linda Morabito's Space PlaceAs we reminisce about a spectacular Spitzer image taken in 2007, the image shows us a newly forming star cluster, in unique terms. Spitzer describes the 50 young stars of the Serpens South star cluster, which can be seen as the green, yellow, and orange tinted specs sitting atop the black dust lane running down the center of the image, in two categories.
Some are young stars and others are stellar infants or protostars, just beginning to form. Unique way to say the cluster of stars is made up of stars and what are almost stars!
I am very much getting that same feeling about the latest theory of the origins of the universe which abandons the Big Bang as the beginning of the universe. In fact this new theory depends upon there being no beginning and no end to the universe. If it weren’t just recently proposed by Wun-Yi Shu at the National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan , I would at first glance say it was the work of Stephen Hawking, as he originally described his no boundary principle; that the universe was once zero sized but not a singularity, and that the universe would expand and contract over time, but in essence have no beginning or no end.
This work is different, though, although the similarity in a couple of ways to Hawking’s work makes it a lot more interesting from my standpoint. And how does it remind me of the unique description of the Serpens South star cluster by Spitzer? I think I would rather say there were 15 stars in the cluster and the rest appear to be protostars, bringing the number eventually to 50. I would rather describe things in terms of current reality, not so much what will be one day. The fact of the matter is, that every theory of cosmology now, today, has missing elements or an inability to fully describe what we see in this universe. Our theories of cosmology are not stars yet!
The ingredients of the new theory are according to the blogger on Technology Review, are “that time and space are not independent entities but can be converted back and forth between each other.” The geometry of spacetime, therefore is “that the speed of light is simply the conversion factor between the two. Similarly, mass and length are interchangeable in a relationship in which the conversion factor depends on both the gravitational constant G and the speed of light, neither of which need be constant.
“So as the Universe expands, mass and time are converted to length and space and vice versa as it contracts.”
This solves some of the Big Bang’s problems and creates others. Redshift changes in bright objects would indicate an acceleration of those objects in line with observation that other theorists have to assign to some mysterious force called Dark Energy. There is no need to abandon conservation of energy in favor of some kind of poorly understood energy. But, other problems are created by this theory. What about the cosmic background radiation, which seems to be actual indication that the Big Bang actually took place? Woops! No explanation for that yet!
If you give up the Big Bang, you end up with a variety of new implications of a universe driven by conversion of space to time, time to space, mass to length and length to mass. In short, I’m afraid our star cluster to date, by anyone’s measure is filled with protostars!
We dream of a day when stars are formed and the light that is sustained in some cases for many billions of years will shine upon us! That day will come and we will see the ingredients of so many theories, past, present, and some future, meld into the answers which will spawn, even then, potentially greater mysteries.
Posted 01/04/11 Linda Morabito's Space PlaceThere are two concepts I would like to present to the Space Place today, and they are related and I think significant themes in our quest to understand our universe, or cosmology. You will have to read all the way through to understand the relevance of the Hubble image of the bird's head.
The first is a glimpse into what Wired presented as one of its top finds of the year 2010 in science and please remember that as I stated yesterday, there is no verification of this idea.
However, I would like us to have a brief glimpse into why some researches have proposed that a fingerprint on the cosmic background radiation is the imprint of the collision of bubble universes, supporting a model of the universe, its beginning and ultimate fate called eternal inflation and supporting the idea that our universe is one of an infinite number of universes.
According to researchers led by Stephen Feeney at the University College London, in a simulation based on a formulation of Einstein’s field equation, known as de Sitter, they ascertained that signals of previous collisions of universes with other bubble universes have azimuthal symmetry or are mirrored on both sides of the sky. Secondly, the signals should be circular in shape, as reported by Universe Today.
In standard inflation models, the universe experienced rapid inflation near the onset, resulting in the expanding universe we see, which is compatible with life, obviously, but a single universe. However, in a background space-time "foam" empty of matter and radiation, local quantum fluctuations in curvature, can form many bubbles that individually inflate into mini-universes with random characteristics. Each universe within the multiverse might possibly have a different set of constants and physical laws.
It is possible to imagine universes with different forms of life beyond what we can imagine or universes with no life. Thus during inflation, different regions might have the cessation of inflation occur at different times, resulting in different physical laws of these universes, a finite number. The process itself, however, goes on eternally, hence eternal inflation and literally the production of an infinite number of multiverses.
When these bubble universes collide, the British researchers have predicted the signatures in our cosmic background radiation, which tells us how the energy of the universe was distributed at the moment it had cooled enough for photons to escape the original soup of matter and energy after the big bang and much after inflation had taken place.
The researchers have found at least four such signatures in the cosmic background radiation. Now, has this proven that there is evidence of bubble collisions and thus a mutliverse that is now discovered and documented? No. Higher resolution data of the Cosmic Background Radiation is upcoming from the Planck spacecraft. The discovery of evidence to date might simply be artifacts in the data, and representative of purely nothing.
There are so many themes in this that pertain to my writing and analogies that are powerful metaphors. Certainly, in my discovery of active volcanism on Io, eliminating what else that data might indicate rather than a true discovery, artifacts in the data had to be considered. Additionally, the story of my life contains events that are metaphorically equivalent to universes colliding, and also time travel, a tool I will make full use of during upcoming presentations this year about “Parallel Universes, A Memoir from the Edges ofSpace and Time.” It is my hope that this will become a must read during 2011, regardless of whether or not you own a Kindle.
The section of this article which pertains to this post, is the apparent superluminal (faster than the speed of light) motion of our universe, should it be the only one, or one of many. Why are there parts of the universe that are so far away from us that their light cannot reach us because the time it takes light to travel to us exceeds the 14 billion years of our universe’s existence? How did the galaxies, etc., therefore move faster than the speed of light away from us during inflation? They didn’t. Space itself did, during inflation, carrying the material of the our universe with it at that speed, and since we cannot see this humungous portion of our universe, no information is exchanged. Therefore relativity or forbidding faster than light transmission of information is not violated.
Food for thought on the Space Place! Hubble shows us a bird’s head, which is a colliding spiral galaxy with its nucleus intact (the bird’s eye) and a small blue galaxy, forming the bird’s beak and top feathers as it is destroyed. Galaxies, collide, but do universes? We will have to stay tuned on the Space Place! Image Credit: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Posted 01/03/11 Linda Morabito's Space PlaceSometimes it’s not what you see, but what you don’t see that is also interesting. This lovely open star cluster in the Eagle Nebula recently imaged by Hubble shows us the cluster members, young blue stars, radiating in the ultraviolet, heating and changing their surroundings by ionizing the hydrogen around them.
They will change their birthplace, first in this way and then by dying, as they will do rapidly, since there are some very massive members among the siblings. Unlike our Sun, which we have depended upon for billions of years to foster the conditions under which we came to be, and rely on another so many billions to allow us to achieve our goals of leaving home into the greater universe, some of these stars will die on the scales of only millions of years. When they do, they will supernova, and create shock waves that change their environment even more.
Sometimes because of and sometimes in spite of, highly dense regions will cool in this neighborhood. And star birth will continue. What you don’t see are the missing regions. Ever drive along at night and have the fear there was something you weren’t seeing? A car endangering everyone, driving without its lights on, blocking anything behind it as it passes along your line of sight between you and something better illuminated beyond it. In that same way, highly dense regions of molecular hydrogen and dust will block all the regions behind them and we see nothing. When that happens (find them in this Hubble image), we know we are in the stellar nursery section of our universe and within those dark patches one of the wonders of the universe is taking place, with the birth of stars!
As we move along this year on the Space Place, I would like us to spend some time thinking about the next rover going to Mars! Promise we shall do that! We will continue as we have, going through the themes that make our quest to understand our universe comprehensible, so that when the breakthroughs come, our appreciation can match the step forward.
And, could Mars have plate tectonics? This is a significant topic of discussion. The only terrestrial planet believed to have plate tectonics is the Earth. And although tectonic forces have shaped the terrestrials, plates which basically float on the mantle and involve recycling of material through subduction and rifts, etc., lend to stability of climate and recycling of elements that are important to life. Here is a glimpse into that, although this researcher stands alone in this possibility for Mars: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mars-plate-tectonics-recent-past-110103.html
Mars is a world which will likely hold our first discovery of life beyond Earth. No such discovery has been made to date, but we stand on a threshold of discovery of proportions and scale that are at the edges of our imaginations and scientific understanding. We can only wonder if 2011 will be the year of those kinds of finds.
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA
Posted 01/02/11 Linda Morabito's Space PlaceMay 2011 bring the light of a new day to all of us, which it already has for today! Except that is, under the shadow of the Moon, during a solar eclipse! Only observers on the Earth at the very dark center of the shadow called the umbra, will see a total eclipse, which is why solar eclipses are seen by very few as they sweep a very tiny path across our globe. Very much unlike lunar eclipses, in which the moon passes in and out of the shadow of the Earth, and can be seen to some degree by more than a hemisphere of people on Earth!
This picture was apparently among the last taken from the Mir space station, on August 11, 1999. They certain finished off with a spectacular sight! As we go into 2011, we are reminded that we are what is out there in space, as I have always said on the Space Place! Our Moon, our world, our star, not any different in that regard than any of the trillions we will find in space (more, of course). What we learn about the universe, we learn about ourselves! Welcome new members of the Space Place! Find out here daily, what we do know and what we are striving to understand about the universe in which we live, and our place within it! Image credit Mir 27 crew, copyright, CNES.
Yes, those are planets beyond Earth in the picture, Jupiter and Saturn!
Posted 12/31/10 Linda Morabito's Space PlaceWhat will it be? Where will these tracks lead us? As Opportunity (as per the post below) looks back upon where it came from, now at Santa Maria, the rover will head toward Endeavor Crater. It is a huge crater and unexpected literally beyond belief that this rover would complete the trek to Endeavor when it was only built to last a short while on Mars!
We command Opportunity, but the rover has so much more to tell us in addition to the unprecedented data we have received from it and Spirit! Opportunity is saying pick your goals very, very high when it comes to Space exploration and they will be realized.
What will it be? Where will those tracks lead the people of Earth? It my prayer when it comes to exploration, to boldly go where no man has gone before! Happy New Year from Dave and me and our family to all the members of our Space Place! May the New Year be blessed with the happiness, health and the richness of life you and yours desire.
Posted 12/31/10 Linda Morabito's Space PlaceHaving a great time! Wish you were here! Hey, Mom, I made it! Finally here!
What do we do on this Earth? Some of us contemplate the latest research on the origins and fate of our universe. But, ultimately, we measure progress by where we go. We may not physically travel far, like in the case of my son and my brother who are disabled, but we measure our lives in the places we have been intellectually and events that yield the high and low points of our years.
Ryan may not have traveled far this year, but he sees the effort that he has put into the raising of his children in their major triumphs this year. For our grandson Robert that is in accomplishing his entire 6th grade to date mostly on a state-of-the-art laptop which he will continue to work twenty-five hours a semester at his school, to purchase for himself over the next three years, to Nathan who at age 3 told his first joke the other day (the first one he told that I heard.)
Ryan cautioned Nathan, after using the restroom to not leave the restroom without being dressed, as little children might do. His father reminded him, that Nathan had never seen him do anything like that. Nathan countered, Yes, you did. Ryan asked, When? Nathan responded, When you were a baby. Nathan laughed very hard along with the rest of us at this joke he had deliberately made to let his father know that he knew what was funny, and we were all in amazement when we heard Nathan say that.
Afterward, I noticed Nathan silently review the joke he had just made; when sitting in his highchair; he cracked himself up just thinking about how funny his statement was. Those, are milestones. Mental, intellectual activity is among our highest accomplishments especially when what we think of and do are for the benefit of others, a higher cause than just ourselves.
At this stage in our development, our activities should not remain on just one world, our birth planet. We should far and wide be reaching to extend our presence to worlds beyond our own. We have only one active presence on another world now, and that is the Opportunity rover on Mars. Opportunity might have made any of the statements that began this post, as it travels from place to place on an alien terrain. We, as humanity, have one small active rover on another planet and that is all that separates us from failure to maintain a quest that discovery tells us is the right thing to do.
Since the dawn of our existence, mankind has been exploring, whether physically or intellectually. When we explore, when discovery takes place, there is always benefit and gain. We never find that discovery is without gain, and we know that it is certainly not without pain. The universe reveals to us constantly the efforts of exploration are new understanding and that humanity as a whole benefits from greater technology, medical breakthrough, and scientific discovery.
Opportunity, this New Year’s Eve, is traveling along a trek that our very existence depends upon. The dangers in our universe, and the evolution of worlds like Mars, implicitly affect us. It is not a rover on the edge of crater, it is a presence that carries the flame of humanity forward. We need to keep exploring to preserve that precious light.
Pictured is where Opportunity is now at Santa Maria Crater. Where it is going is to Endeavor crater. Will post on this very special evening tonight about that! To view Opportunity's trek since arriving on Mars, toward its destinations on the edge of the large crater rim of Endeavor see http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/opportunity/20101216a/PIA13705_RA-1-traverse_br.jpg Credit images: NASA/JPL
Studies are focusing now on supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies. A new study by Chandra is contributing to this information, and one just released out of Tel Aviv.
The aim of the Chandra study is to contribute to the body of information which will one day relate the activity of supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies to the growth and evolution of galaxies themselves. There seems to a link to the size of a supermassive black hole at a galaxy’s center and the mass of the central regions of galaxies suggesting such a correlation. Please keep in mind that these supermassive black holes range in size from millions to billions of times the mass of our Sun depending on the galaxy. They also range in activity rate, from very little to enormous.
The study showed that only 1 percent of field galaxies, galaxies not associated in clusters, which can be compared to the Milky Way in terms of their mass and their ages, have high levels of activity in their supermassive black holes. Furthermore, this fraction of galaxies that do have such active galactic nuclei, depends implicitly upon the mass of the galaxy. Galaxies with much greater masses than the Milky Way see higher percentages of active supermassive black holes at their cores than galaxies only a fraction of the mass of the Milky Way.
The study also reaffirmed the belief that overall, there is a decrease in the number of any galaxies with active supermassive black holes at their centers over cosmic time. This implies that either the amount of available food for black holes, or the mechanism of making galactic nuclei active is changing over time.
And, finally, the study revealed that the percentage of galaxies that do have active supermassive black holes at their cores is no different in field galaxies than in galaxies in dense clusters. This is an extremely surprising result, but scientists are getting around this by pointing to other studies which imply differing declining rates of active galactic nuclei between galaxies in dense clusters and those not, could simply be meeting at this point in the universe’s history.
The study predicts that on average, our very quiet supermassive black hole in our galaxy should become or may have been much more active than now over a short duration of time compared to the lifetime of our Sun. Life on Earth would not be affected at our distance and location from galaxy center, however.
Pictured is a galaxy in the study in a dense cluster, Abell 644, showing Chandra’s glimpse at its suerpmassive black hole X-ray activity at its center. Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Northwestern Univ/D.Haggard et al, Optical: SDSS
The Tel Aviv study places the first period of rapid growth of supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies much earlier than previously thought, when the universe was only 1.2 billion years old as opposed to several billion years old as had been previously believed.
Supermassive black holes that were active when the universe was that young were about ten times smaller than most massive black holes that are seen later in the universe’s history, but those early black holes were growing at a much faster rate than their later counterparts and are therefore now much more massive than they.
It appears that it was a very good time for active black holes of the supermassive variety early in the universe and whatever mechanism for their growth that existed then grew them to larger proportions than was possible for any created afterward.
We are closing in on the data that will take us to a better understanding of how black holes at the centers of galaxies affect or are affected by galaxy formation and growth. Such studies will get extremely exciting and have already during this year on the Space Place when we see the mechanisms that supermassive black holes may bring to galaxies that either inhibit or spawn the birth of stars. Stay tuned!
I would also like to remind Space Place members to revisit our October 1 post on the Space Place, one of many times we addressed the search for the theory of everything here! We have strong proponents of string theory for example on our Space Place, but alternative ideas beyond the mathematically challenging concepts to relate gravity to the other three forces of the universe, have been presented here too, such as in that October 1 post. Was there just one force at the beginning of the universe as we emerged from a singularity that will unify general relativity and quantum physics? Come and journey with us on the Space Place in the coming year on a mission to understanding black holes and the origin and fate of our universe.
Just wanted to point out that the fabulous image above is misidentified by me as Abell 644 from the recent Chandra study, as a result of the adventure I go through for the Space Place nearly daily to get the best possible images.
Space.com had tantalizingly placed the above image on a quick look gallery without much identification and linked to the recent Chandra study, but it is actually the supermassive black hole at the center of NGC 5846 from a Chandra study about how rapidly supermassive black holes can spin.
Here is the description of the image I have shown above: Fast Facts for NGC 5846: Credit NASA/CXC/UFRGS/R.Nemmen et al. Scale Image is 2.6 arcmin across Coordinates (J2000) RA 15h 06m 29.40s | Dec +01ş 36' 25.00 Constellation Virgo Observation Date 2000-05-24 Observation Time 5 hours Obs. ID 788 Color Code Intensity Instrument ACIS Distance Estimate About 146 million light years Black Hole Mass 0.4 billion solar masses
The actual Chandra image in the study using Abell 644 is located at http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2010/2gal/a644_xray.jpg and because of decreased resolution you can see why I chose the original image when I believed it was also Abell. I have a lot of fun getting these images to you!
Posted 12/29/10 Linda Morabito's Space PlaceIt’s very nice to have interesting neighbors! Our galaxy has an interesting neighbor, M33, only behind Andromeda and ourselves in size of the member galaxies of our local group. We have looked at M33 and a region within it before on the Space Place, but M33 is particularly interesting as pictured in the infrared in this new image from WISE.
The infrared reveals the truth of this spiral, a little less than one half the size of the Milky Way. The galaxy center has little to no star forming going on, but the spiral arms are a different story. The infrared in that sense reveals what visible light would confuse; the bright galaxy center in visible light might suggest just the opposite.
Compared to our nearest star forming region within our own galaxy, the Orion nebula, this region known as NGC 604 out-sizes it (40 times as large!) and out-shines it. It is in fact the largest such region in the Local Group! If the two regions switched places in the two galaxies, NGC 604 would outshine the planet Venus, and be the brightest object in our night sky, with the exception of the Full Moon. Very interesting neighbor, indeed!
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/WISE Team
Posted 12/28/10 Linda Morabito's Space PlaceIt is a fitting end of year tribute to the organization which coordinated Hubble science in Europe for more than 26 years, to release a Hubble picture of the Cartwheel Galaxy reprocessed to bring out greater detail by free open source software, developed there. We spent some time this year on the Space Place looking at the galaxy in a composite image in part from Hubble, and understanding what we are seeing there. All of us can imagine the benefit we have received from this coordinating organization no matter where we are on Earth.
Fortunately for all of us Hubble operations and public outreach will not be affected by the closure. We tip our hats to Hubble once again, and to this ingredient of its success which supported Hubble science in Europe for decades!
By the way, with outstanding clarity, we view the outer shock wave (the blue ring) where intense star formation proceeds from the violent collision of a small galaxy passing right through a large disk galaxy and allowing us to feast on the spectacle of a ring galaxy known as the Cartwheel. Hubble brings this remarkable view of this remarkable find – first researched by Astronomer Bob Fosbury (who is stepping down as Head of the aforementioned organization ST-ECF) with the late Tim Hawarden – now and once before. Hubble gifted the world with images such as this.
To clarify, the discovery of the Cartwheel Galaxy was originally made from wide field images from the UK Schmidt telescope. Like countless other objects Hubble has brought this to us like never before!
Now, as of December 15, Mars Odyssey is the longest working Mars spacecraft in human history. We spent some time this year on the Space Place at a region named Noctis Labyrinthus, exploring with MRO data. Now, NASA has released a picture of that region taken by Mars Odyssey’s Thermal Emission Instrument. Here is what Universe Today says about the image. Enjoy!
“Noctis Vista: West of Valles Marineris lies a checkerboard named Noctis Labyrinthus, which formed when the Martian crust stretched and fractured. As faults opened, they released subsurface ice and water, causing the ground to collapse. This westward view combines images taken during the period from April 2003 to September 2005 by the Thermal Emission Imaging System instrument on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter. It is part of a special set of images marking the occasion of Odyssey becoming the longest-working Mars spacecraft in history. The pictured location on Mars is 13.3 degrees south latitude, 263.4 degrees east longitude. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU”
This is our second post for today, so be sure and take a look at the post below as well, as we move toward a New Year here on Earth.
Posted 12/27/10 Linda Morabito's Space PlaceWhere will you be on New Years Eve? Here is where Opportunity will be, at Santa Maria crater. Opportunity will stay at the crater in fact through mid-February, when it will once again hit the road for Endeavor Crater. Take a look at this fabulous picture taken by Opportunity looking down into Santa Maria’s steep wal...ls and sand-duned floor, 5 meters from its edge.
Opportunity will fulfill MRO’s expectation of finding a region that has been exposed to water bearing sulfate minerals at Santa Maria, never entering the crater, however. And further, the rover will use the RAT, Rock Abrasion Tool, on a selected target that it will study at length there. But, no commands will be sent to Opportunity during conjunction when Mars and Earth are on opposite sides of the Sun. It will instead remain at Santa Maria in expectation of the final leg of its journey to Endeavor.
Where will you be on New Years Eve? On the edge of a fairly fresh crater on some distant world? One day that will be the case for someone, perhaps someone who is still a student somewhere on Earth now, who will one day stand where Opportunity now rests, awaiting many kinds of journeys that will continue in 2011
I will do a second post today, above this one.
Posted 12/26/10 Linda Morabito's Space PlaceWe have indeed looked at the Carina Nebula before, but this is the time on the Space Place to look back a little into the issues which have captured our attention throughout the year. Certainly, star formation is one of them, and of course the beauty of the universe.
The Carina Nebula provides us both perspectives. Sculpted by the monster stars that have formed here, they erode the very nebula from which they were created by what Hubble terms as scorching ultraviolet and outflowing winds both of which shred. It seems as if this theme of evolution of the universe being radical, violent change, once again manifested at the expense of these stars’ birthplace, where the young come into being to make their mark on the cosmos around them. From this disruption on the universe’s scales can ultimately come further star birth, and even amazing possibilities, through the destruction of what once was.
On the beauty end, as we view this region, Hubble tells us “the immense nebula is an estimated 7,500 light-years away in the southern constellation Carina the Keel (of the old southern constellation Argo Navis, the ship of Jason and the Argonauts, from Greek mythology).
“This image is a mosaic of the Carina Nebula assembled from 48 frames taken with Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys. The Hubble images were taken in the light of ionized hydrogen. Colour information was added with data taken at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. Red corresponds to sulfur, green to hydrogen, and blue to oxygen emission.”
Image credit: NASA, ESA, N. Smith (University of California, Berkeley), and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
We are approaching the end of the year, and in this same way perhaps, new beginnings for us all.
Posted 12/25/10 Linda Morabito's Space PlaceMerry Christmas to all our Space Place members! Gratitude to old members, welcome to new!
The center of the Milky Way combines data from NASA's three Great Observatories.
In this image, X-rays from Chandra are blue and violet, near-infrared emission from Hubble is yellow, and Spitzer's infrared data are red.
Image Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/UMass/D. Wang et al.; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI/D.Wang et al.; IR: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSC/S.Stolovy
Posted 12/24/10 Linda Morabito's Space PlaceOn this beautiful day, I ask that you consider the size and the scope of the universe; I ask that you consider the magnitude of what we know we are aware of in this universe, and what we suspect is currently beyond our comprehension, but we are working ever so hard to grasp the facets of what may be multiple universes and the nature of existence.
I ask you to consider how far humanity has gotten from dark ages, and how close we yet remain in so many ways. I ask that we devote ourselves to the educations, inspiration, and betterment of the lives of young people, children. I ask that we give thanks to a universe in which we are given so much opportunity as well as recognizing so much risk in our existence.
The fact that we do exist at all, is a wondrous as the structures we see around us, evolving and making the display we are in awe of through a telescope and humbled by the near, close or true infinity of what we see. I ask that we continue to explore and never wane on that account. I ask and pray for your happiness, your health, and your precious families in the coming year. God bless us all!
As a tribute to how far we have come, in 1999, Hubble took this image from Earth orbit! We have been to this realm with Voyager and Galileo and we will continue to travel to such places, until the numbers and names of our missions will fill a volume too long to imagine. We will travel far and wide and many a Christmas when Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus and others around the world celebrate their existence, giving thanks in the ways that are most meaningful to them, will come along this journey through time; and so will go the millennia for man to reach a destiny which is now beyond our comprehension.
Posted 12/23/10 Linda Morabito's Space PlaceSpiral galaxies such as our Milky Way can be gigantic! Our galaxy is more than 100,000 light years across. However, it is by that scale, literally paper thin at about 1,000 light years thickness! However, it does have a thickness and that thickness is determined by the motion of stars in the disk. Stars travel in nearly circular orbits around the center of the disk, but also because of local gravity effects, bob up and down within the disk as their galactic year progresses.
They may move above and below the average galactic plane as determined by disk stars orbits, but the local effects of the disk always pull them cyclically back into the disk. However, something can happen, as researchers posit now, when the star rises above the galactic plane. The protective magnetic field of the galaxy is temporarily diminished in terms of the protection from cosmic rays that magnetic field provides when the Earth and our Sun are more within the shelter of the galactic plane. In fact researchers say that our movement toward the Virgo cluster produces literally a shockwave from that motion, that produces massive cosmic rays on the north side of the galaxy. This is what life on Earth is exposed to when above the galactic plane.
Researchers now say that 24 times the amount of cosmic rays hit the Earth at those times, in 62,000 year cycles (the bobbing up and down in the galactic plane of the Sun’s motion around the galaxy), and they have correlated this with a dramatic decrease of the number of species on Earth every 62,000 years. Although cosmic rays cannot penetrate Earth’s atmosphere, they create a cascade of particles such as muons. Those can potentially damage DNA, and thus give rise to the researchers’ correlation of the two cycles, our Sun’s appearance above the galactic plane periodically and the diminishing of species on Earth, with the same periodicity. A very new and interesting find!
On a different subject, I would like to point out that apparently a lay person studying old Viking data created a movie of the shadow of Phobos traveling across a dust storm on the surface of Mars as viewed by a Viking orbiter. Enjoy the movie of this at http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00002830/
The point Emily Lakdawalla is making by highlighting this find, is that the more data that is available to the public, the more often finds like this, otherwise not noted in the data, will happen. In 1977, I did an experiment as a guest investigator on the Viking extended mission with Tom Duxbury at JPL. This went the other direction. We predicted the transits of the shadow across the surface of Mars, which would indeed pass over the Viking landers and that permitted us to locate the landers on the surface to the highest accuracy that could be obtained then. To take a look at what we did please see an 1978 issue of Popular Science, page 18. Here is the link:http://books.google.com/books?id=qQAAAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA16&lpg=PA16&dq=phobos+shadow+experiment+Duxbury&source=bl&ots=2QNYG5iHtw&sig=oXy6-n_YI0d9PDbgnMuzgjNCE_w&hl=en&ei=b4cTTaeBMpSosAO2uezNAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&sqi=2&ved=0CDYQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=phobos%20shadow%20experiment%20Duxbury&f=false Pictured in my post today is the giant spiral M101, which we have seen on the Space Place before in a composite of Chandra, Spitzer and Hubble data. Here we see this majestic spiral, twice as wide as the Milky Way galaxy in just the Spitzer data that went into that composite. Image credit: NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Caltech and K. Gordon (STScI) We are very close to Christmas! Church services were cancelled here on Wednesday due to the rain. Skies are clear here today, and we look forward to Christmas Eve beneath a crystal clear window to our universe.
Posted 12/22/10 Linda Morabito's Space PlaceA very special image from Mars Express taken in July has been released. Please check out our post below today as well, as this is today's second post.
As per the Mars Express website, this is the oblique view of Phoenicis Lacus.
"Phoenicis Lacus has an area of 8100 sq km (59.5 x 136 km), which corresponds to the size ofCorsica. Only a small portion of it appears in this image, which was obtained on 31 July 2010 using the High-Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft.
"Phoenicis Lacus was formed by the uplift of the Tharsis plateau. The continual episodes of strong volcanic activity in Tharsis not only lifted the plateau, but also deformed Phoenicis Lacus, creating blocks and multiple fault lines at different orientations. Extension has taken place here, resulting in this characteristic ‘horst-and-graben’ (cliffs and valleys) landscape
"A prominent collapse feature in this region is also visible. It shows as a long pit and sinks to a depth of about 3 km below the surrounding plains. Its walls give a glimpse of extensive basalt layers and a small field of sand dunes covers the floor."
Wishing all our members a wonderful day from the Space Place!
Please check out a beautiful movie of a sunset on Mars from Opportunity http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/video/index.cfm?id=954Opportunity will celebrate the Holidays on Mars and see this nightly. It will not be alone, but our wishes and thirst for exploration will be with it! Thank you, Andrew for posting this on your page!
Posted 12/22/10 Linda Morabito's Space PlaceThere is a lot to report in astronomy now! First please take a look at this incredible image produced by e-Merlin composite image with Hubble in the visible region. e-Merlin is a radio telescope array, seven radio telescopes strong, whose distances apart span 137 miles, producing remarkable resolution or the ability to bring out amazing detail in images.
Shown in this picture are two images of the same quasar, a powerfully active supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy 9 billion light years away! The two images of the quasar are produced by gravitational lensing from a foreground galaxy, shown by its radio image as well just above the lower lensed image. It too must harbor a less powerful black hole at its center to produce the radio image that it does. A massive jet emanating from the Double Quasar image at the top is shown via its radio emissions as well. This image is stunning and speaks to the value of e-Merlin in understanding quasars, the evolution of the universe and dark matter! Image Credit: Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, University of Manchester. Please check comments below as I add new updates to exciting news today in discovery and space exploration!
Posted 12/21/10 Linda Morabito's Space PlaceHad to take a break before posting, because my three year old grandson wanted to play with an assortment of tiny stuffed animals we have to play with. Some are cats, dogs, and horses. They go to school, learn their ABC’s, we take a cell phone picture of them when they come home from school, Nathan cooks lunch for the...m, and then sometime a windstorm kicks up. Not sure how any of that evolved, but my imagination is not as great as a three year olds, that’s for sure.
It reminded me, however, of how busy we have all been. Nathan’s Mom and Dad have not had the opportunity to arrange for pictures for Nathan and Robert this year, not even for Nathan sitting on Santa Claus’ lap at a nearby mall, and Robert is way too old for that. But, I miss the pictures. Looking back on that picture in such an early stage of Nathan’s life will tell us things in the future. Now, that has happened for a black hole in a galaxy called M100 in the Virgo Cluster 50 million light years away!
What is significant about taking the picture of a baby black hole? This black hole is only about 30 years old, in that it was first observed by an amateur astronomer (news like this always causes me to want to tip my hat to amateur astronomers!). We know of course that the black hole was first born (ironic, since a star death is what it signifies) some 50 million and thirty years ago, but we are seeing it as it was then, when it was just a baby!
What have we learned from this? If the interpretations are correct, plenty! First, there was no gamma ray burst associated with the supernova appearance! From that we learn from spectral data, that the dying star (theorized to be 20 times as massive as our Sun) blew off only a portion of its hydrogen-rich envelope and not everything above its core. Chandra who took the babies picture has ascertained that by the history of x-ray emissions, this black hole is feeding from an accretion disk around it. Not a surprise for any baby.
But, the associated lack of a gamma ray burst reinforces this is a typical death of a star destined to be a black hole, and that those dying stars that do blow off their entire outer envelope typically are the ones who announce their spectacular death with a gamma ray burst. This is the first time, as predicted from theory, that a typical black hole formation has been observed. It’s hard to catch these types (common types) of black holes forming, because it takes decades of X-ray observations to firmly state that is what is being observed. From being able to observe a black hole from birth, scientists will learn a great deal about how stars like this explode and perhaps their numbers in the universe.
With a little more time I would like to explore the current theory on GRB and the new emerging ideas about black holes not forming instantly as the core collapses. Much more to come on the Space Place! Composite image of a supernova within the galaxy M100. Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/D.Patnaude et al, Optical: ESO/VLT, Infrared: NASA/JPL/Caltec
Posted 12/20/10 Linda Morabito's Space PlaceA dear friend once told me that she could not attend my wedding and was very pleased about that! I asked her why, and she indicated that it was always a good thing when multiple important occasions fell on the same day! She had a conflict for a very important event taking place at her workplace, and that meant to her that all things taking place that day otherwise must be important as well!
We are going to be gifted by a beautiful show from the greatest force known in the universe. To each of us that might mean something different. This time of year it means to many that God will show us a very special astronomical event this evening, west coast USA will see totality of a lunar eclipse before midnight, east coast much after midnight, and all parts of the world might be treated at some point to a partial lunar eclipse. I will post several links to aid in you determination of how this will be for you.
As we watch our Moon drift into the shadow of our Earth, please remember this eclipse is special because it is occurring during the Winter Solstice. I will also come up with the exact hour of the Winter Solstice, but the eclipse is significant because the eclipse is on the same day, and of course the eclipse will occur at different times for us locally when the exact moment of the solstice is the same for us in universal time. That is also true for the eclipse, but what we can experience of it will be different for all of us.
This coincidence of the eclipse and the Winter Solstice when the Sun is at its lowest declination in the sky as per the Earth’s tilt and our orbital position around the Sun hasn’t happened in 456 years and according to the Astronomy Picture of the Day, it has not been calculated when it will happen again. For those of us in mid-latitudes, northern hemisphere, the Solstice is the shortest day of the year. Above the Artic Circle the Sun will not rise at all. Below the Antarctic Circle, the Sun will never set. At noon tomorrow, the Sun will be directly above the Tropic of Capricorn. In this same day, our Moon will move into the shadow of the Earth, meaning that of course it is a Full Moon. In order for the Moon to pass into the Earth’s shadow it has to be directly opposite the Sun. I will post all links in comments below about the eclipse.
Please note our picture today was taken by Opportunity four days ago, as it approaches the rim of the Santa Maria crater, directed there by MRO which spotted water bearing sulfate mineral from orbit. Opportunity is also on its way to Endurance crater. Keep it in mind as we venture into an orbital solstice position and our moon into the shadow of our own world. Please remember as well that on this day, Carl Sagan, passed away in 1996.
Here is a breathtaking view of what will be in the sky during totality of the Moon. Please be aware that if you click on this, APOD changes toward end of day and be sure and go to archive if you don't see the Moon in total eclipse superimposed (by a a noted astro photographer) on the various objects that will be around the eclipsed moon. http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Here is another link. Please note the use of the term northern winter soltice, because of course this is not the winter solstice for our southern hemisphere friends, and please note the various dates and times going around that are posted that claim when an eclipse coincident with a solstice happened before or will happen again, prompting APOD to say that we haven't calculated [exactly] when this might happen again perhaps. http://www.spaceweather.com/
Who can resist this? Certainly not I. A Christmas ornament on a tree of the universe, only this one is 23 light years across. Imagine the supernova explosion that created this! Imagine that we are not certain of what causes those explosions but it could be from the jets that arise from twisted magnetic field lines of stars on the very threshold of death. The stars go inward toward collapse and spinning neutron stars of the end or beginning of some form we don’t fully grasp, a black hole. And so pulsars pulse and gamma ray bursts and mass to energy conversion from accretion disks may signal these events. But the outer layers of the star go outward. What is also meaningful is the signal of beauty the universe reminds us about. As harsh and as cruel as stellar death, there are arises from shocked gas by the expanding blast wave from a supernova (SNR 0509) a reminder that there is enough beauty by which to view the universe, that we can imagine a power so much greater than our own.
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Posted 12/18/10 Linda Morabito's Space PlaceI have a lot to post about today thanks to Dave! The Dragon Storm on Saturn is back, has re-emerged, now in the northern hemisphere. Previously, first noticed in the southern hemisphere, in 2004, it is indeed, a giant thunder storm with radio noise produced in high voltage lightening discharges. It moves around deep within Saturn’s atmosphere to re-emerge at times, pictured here in the near infrared from Cassini in 2005 (false color). Image Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NAS
Posted 12/17/10 Linda Morabito's Space PlaceHere are some new ideas. Don’t stop reading until the end where I have commented on the subject of new ideas. From using our own Sun as a gravitational lens to focus signals from distant space in order to find E.T, or perhaps to communicate with our own distant probes in the future to the discovery of much less carbon abundance in comets than we once envisioned, the world of science and discovery is abuzz with just that, discovery.
Now comes news that asteroids may form amino acids, the building blocks of proteins and hence life, under conditions other than exposure to water; perhaps under conditions of extreme temperature in which reactions in gasses might somehow spawn them. This, as New Horizons speeds faster than any spacecraft ever built by human hands, toward its 2015 encounter with Pluto.
Wait, there’s more! It is possible that Iapetus, Saturn’s moon with a mountain ridge along its equator might have formed after a giant impact sent material into orbit around the moon’s equator, a similar process as the Earth and Pluto’s large moons respectively might have formed. Once the orbit of Iapetus’ moon or moonlets decayed, the surface of Iapetus bears the proof as its mountain ridge. A similar process has recently been suggested for the formation of Saturn’s rings, a large icy moon whose orbit basically decayed into Saturn, creating the ring from its outer icy layers and destroying its rocky interior by falling into Saturn.
Okay, now to Mars, but don’t forget too that scientists have now seen very early galaxies with star formation rates that are mind boggling and dwarf current star formation rates in the universe. Back to Mars. For the very first time, Opportunity is being commanded to location chosen by MRO in orbit. Why?
As Space.com puts it “MRO detected the hydrated sulfates on Santa Maria's rim using its mineral-mapping spectrometer. Opportunity wasn't too far away, so the rover team decided to send the rover over for a closer look, researchers said.
“The Martian surface is bone-dry today, but hydrated sulfates and clays — which also form in the presence of water — reveal that the planet was once a much wetter place. But that was long ago; scientists think the clays are 4 to 4.5 billion years old and the hydrated sulfates are about 3.8 billion years old.”
Opportunity will tap several such places along its way to Endeavor crater. I really have to get to Toys R Us today for the grandchildren. Opportunity will spend the next two years trying to reach Endeavor. Could any of us plan a destination that will take two years for us to reach? I don’t want to spend that long reaching Toys R Us today. The view from Spirit is amazing, although no one has been able to communicate with it. Here is what it sees from perhaps its final resting place. But, come spring, March, there might be enough power to wake the rover up!
I want to point out the Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute is telling us about the power of sending a spacecraft to Pluto, perhaps dwarfed by Pluto’s lack of full planet status now. Stern is trying to tell us that New Horizons will be an amazing mission that opens up our understanding of the Kuiper belt mystery objects we so need to better understand. Are we listening? Who listened about my discovery of active volcanism? The first person I told dismissed it. Who is listening to the fact that my book might be a valuable read whether in Kindle or hard copy? It’s amazing the resistance to new ideas throughout time. Hopefully we will put those aside on the Space Place and learn the lessons of history!
Spirit is stuck at Troy! It made a huge discovery by getting stuck. It broke through a thin crust and found the material below. Here's what NASA said about it.
"Sulfates are minerals just beneath the surface that shout to us that they wer...e formed in steam vents, since steam has sulfur in it. Steam is associated with hydrothermal activity – evidence of water-charged explosive volcanism. Such areas could have once supported life."
"And most amazingly, the boundary between the sulfate-rich soil and the soil with just the generic concentration of sulfates runs right down the middle of the stranded rover. Spirit is lodged on the edge of a crater -- sitting astride the boundary!"
We applaud the little rover, in its very scenic resting place. If no word by spring, Spirit will wait there for us, having given its all to such a major find.
Posted 12/16/10 Linda Morabito's Space PlaceA massive star dies and what do you get? A Jellyfish in space radiating in various wavelengths in the infrared from the interaction of shock waves emanating from the explosion with the surrounding material.
Around the dead star, an extraordinary supernova remnant comes into being. Because of density variations in the surrounding medium struck by the shockwave, different energies of light are released as the material is swept up and heated by the blast.
On the lower right, the material is coming from a dense cloud which is seen as greenish dust cutting across IC 443, this Jellyfish-like star death form. The bluish colors of the smaller southern shell are emitted light from heated hydrogen gas and dust which occurred when a slow shock wave impacted the cloud.
A much faster shock wave hit the material upwards and to the left of the remnant, and caused the violet-colored shell. Within its sheet-like filaments, iron, neon, silicon and oxygen gas atoms and dust particles were triggered to release their mix of infrared wavelengths; longer wavelengths from cooler dust colored red in this amazing WISE image, to shorter infrared wavelengths from luminescent gas, colored blue in the WISE image.
The WISE website points out that the mixing of blue and cyan in the southern ridge is not often seen in WISE images. These colors represent the shorter wavelength, higher energy infrared.
All in all what a gorgeous aftermath to the death of a star, which brings us heavier elements in its wake than can be created any other way in the universe. With the nucleosyntheses which takes place in these blasts, the universe is seeded with elements heavier than iron, and the gold and silver we prize as elements of beauty and value, among many others, are born
