Archive for the ‘Astronomy’ Category
Thanks to Herschel Space Observatory ESA and NASA’s Spitzer space telescopes, astronomers have discovered that the brightness of stars in the interior of the famous Orion Nebula formation is changing surprisingly quickly.
By overlaying the data collected by the instrument for the Herschel far-infrared with Spitzer’s two instruments, operating at shorter wavelengths, we obtained this image showing in detail the star formation in the heart of one of the most famous objects in the night sky.
The Orion Nebula is located at 1350 light years from Earth, and is clearly distinguishable in the winter sky visible from Europe. Also known as the ‘sword’ of Orion Nebula is located below the three stars forming the ‘belt’ of Orion ‘The Hunter’, one of the easiest constellations to recognize. Read the rest of this entry »
A new analysis of data on more than 118,000 stars in our galaxy gathered in the project tracking SDSS (Sloan Digital Sky Survey) shows that the stars orbiting outside the galactic plane are rare for another reason.
Many stars in our galaxy are circulating within the galactic disk. The stars of this disc orbit around the center of the galaxy. Most orbits are aligned in a plane, as are the planets around the sun in our solar system. However, some stars orbit following paths that lead to well above and below the plane of our galaxy, the Milky Way.
The team of the astronomers Judy Cheng and Connie Rockosi from the University of California at Santa Cruz was proposed to find out what kind of stars are these, where form, and how have arrived at their current locations. Read the rest of this entry »
An international team of scientists has discovered a rocky planet like Earth type that could support life, since it is in the habitable zone around its star, the orbital band where the distance to the star is the ideal to allow temperature range not too cold or hot, right for the existence of liquid water on the surface of any planet with the appropriate characteristics to be there.
The star around which spins this planet called GJ 667C, and is a class M red dwarf, located 22 light-years from Earth. The star is part of a triple star system, and has a chemical composition that differs from that of our Sun in the abundance of elements heavier than helium, such as iron, carbon and silicon. GJ 667C is poorer than the Sun in such heavy elements.
The other two stars of this triple system are orange dwarf or K dwarf, with a concentration of heavy elements is only 25 percent of our sun. These heavy elements are common materials in the composition of rocky planets such as Earth, Mars and Venus, so it was thought unlikely that the stars around poor in heavy elements possible the formation of lower mass planets than the typical gas giant, composed largely of hydrogen and helium. Read the rest of this entry »
The Kepler space telescope mission for NASA has discovered 11 new solar systems with planets. Specifically, the confirmed planets added 26 in total. These findings almost multiply by two the number of planets discovered have been verified by the Kepler space telescope, and tripling the number of stars than are known to possess more than one planet in its orbit passes in front of its star, from visual perspective of the Earth.
The new planets orbiting nearby stars and have its sizes ranging from just over fifty percent of Earth’s diameter to larger diameter than that of Jupiter. Fifteen of the planets are larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune. We will have to look further into these planets to determine what type rocky like Earth and what type gas (with a very thick atmosphere, like Neptune). The planets take between 6 and 143 days to complete one orbit around its star. All are closer to its star than Venus is from the Sun. Read the rest of this entry »
Although not many decades ago were considered impossible to detect planets in other solar systems, such discoveries worlds today happen at breakneck speed. No fewer than 18 have now been found by a team of astronomers led from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
Using mainly the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, the team at Caltech astronomer John Johnson surveyed about 300 stars. These researchers focused on the A-type stars, which are more massive than the Sun. The team found 18 planets with masses similar to Jupiter. Read the rest of this entry »
They have discovered new details about the birth of a famous black hole, a birth that took place over millions of years. The new and revealing information has been obtained by a team of scientists who analyzed data collected by the Chandra X-ray Observatory at NASA, as well as other optical telescopes, radio and X-ray
The Cygnus X-1 system contains a black hole, and new research on this has led to extremely accurate values of its mass, rotation and distance from Earth. With these key data, has managed to reconstruct the history of the black hole.
This new information can be deduced as born, its mass and how fast spinning shortly after its formation. It is an important achievement because, as emphasized by Mark Reid of the Center for Astrophysics (CfA) Read the rest of this entry »
One could say that pulsars are the lighthouses of the universe. These compact neutron stars that spin at breakneck speed emit flashes many times per second in the radio band or gamma rays. The pure gamma-ray pulsars are very difficult to find despite its high energy as they radiate very few photons per unit time.
Using an analysis algorithm, an international team of scientists has discovered in the Fermi satellite data, evidence of the existence of a series of gamma-ray pulsars in low light. These pulsars were not detected with conventional methods.
The number of gamma-ray pulsars known has grown accordingly over 100. These cosmic lighthouses still boasting many mysteries: not all radio pulsars can be identified as gamma-ray pulsars, and on the other hand, not all gamma-ray pulsars are “visible” in the band of radio waves. Read the rest of this entry »
An international team of scientists has observed an accumulation of gas that falls toward the black hole mass in the center of our galaxy. The moment of closest approach of the cloud will be mid-2013, but scientists have seen how the force of the black hole and is affecting you.
“It’s the first time we see a cloud falling into a black hole”, said Stefan Gillessen a researcher from Max Planck Institute and author of a study describing the early stages of this phenomenon. “This will allow us to learn much about these mysterious objects”.
The cloud has a mass three times that of Earth and moves into an area in the center of the Milky Way known as Sagittarius A. There is a very compact radio source and bright and also located, hypothetically, a supermassive black hole. Read the rest of this entry »
Three planets, each circling around its corresponding dying giant star have been discovered by an international research team with the Hobby-Eberly telescope giant.
The stars which revolve around those planets are HD 240237, BD +48 738 and HD 96127, and are located tens of light years from our solar system. The three newly discovered planetary systems are more evolved than our solar system. A dying massive stars and has a mysterious object orbiting further.
The study has been done by astronomer Alexander Wolszczan team of Pennsylvania State University, a pioneer in the discovery of planets in other solar systems, and Sara Gettel from the same university. Read the rest of this entry »
Some astronomers have obtained the best known photographs of a star sucking vampire who has achieved much of the material from its companion star. Combining the light collected by four telescopes in ESO’s Paranal Observatory in the Region of Antofagasta (Chile), managed to create a virtual telescope 130 meters in diameter, with a vision 50 times sharper than NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. Surprisingly, the new results show that the mass transfer from one star to another in this binary system is softer than expected.
“Now we can combine the light from four telescopes in the VLT and create super sharp images much faster than before”, says Nicolas Blind (IPAG, Grenoble, France), author of the paper presents the results. “The images are so sharp that we can not only watch the stars that orbit each other, but also measure the size of the larger star”. Read the rest of this entry »