Aimless In Space

ikenbot:

Black Hole ‘Bonanza’: Millions Found by NASA Space Telescope

A jackpot of previously unknown black holes across the universe has been discovered by the infrared eyes of a prolific NASA sky-mapping telescope.

The cosmic find comes from data collected by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey (WISE) telescope, which scanned the entire sky in infrared light from December 2009 to February 2011. The full catalog of observations by WISE during its mission was publicly released in March, and astronomers are still poring through this celestrial trove for discoveries.

“WISE has found a bonanza of black holes in the universe,” astronomer Daniel Stern of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., said during a news briefing today (Aug. 29). WISE turned up about three times as many black holes as have been found by comparable surveys in visible light, offering up a total of 2.5 million new sources across the sky.

ikenbot:

Huge Solar Eruption and M6-class flare on 2012/07/28

ikenbot:

Super-Sized Loops

Magnetic field lines between two active regions extended across about one-third of the Sun to make their connections (July 23-24, 2012).

The magnetically powerful active regions were just rotating into view, giving us a wonderful profile of their activity. The lower active region also spurts out several bursts of plasma as well. The looping arcs above each active region shows off the field lines nicely too.

ikenbot:

Cygnus in Ha Grayscale

“How would the sky look like if we could see hydrogen-alpha radiation with our own eyes? This image comes close. It was made from 9 images made from my backyard using a 100mm Canon lens with a SXV-H9 ccd camera. It’s the tail of the Swan (Cygnus).” — Andre vd Hoeven

ikenbot:

Oldest Spiral Galaxy in Universe Discovered

Illustration: An artist’s rendering of galaxy BX442, which is 10.7 billion light-years from Earth, and its companion dwarf galaxy. Credit: Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics/Joe Bergeron

Astronomers have discovered the universe’s most ancient spiral galaxy yet, a cosmic structure that dates back roughly 10.7 billion years, a new study reveals.

The galactic find, discovered by researchers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, comes as something of a surprise. Other galaxies from such early epochs are clumpy and irregular, not strikingly symmetrical like the newfound spiral, which broadly resembles our own Milky Way.

“The fact that this galaxy exists is astounding,” study lead author David Law, of the University of Toronto, said in a statement. “Current wisdom holds that such ‘grand-design’ spiral galaxies simply didn’t exist at such an early time in the history of the universe.”

ikenbot:

When Galaxies Collide: Beautiful Images of Cosmic Impacts

“As small galaxies merge, they make larger galaxies, and those will then merge to make still larger galaxies, and so on, up to and including the present-day galaxies,” said astronomer Kirk Borne of George Mason University.

Because of the vast distances between them, there’s a low probability that stars within galaxies will actually hit head-on. But gravitational forces can wrest stars from their previous orbits, scrambling the shape of the galaxies involved.

Friction between diffuse gas and dust inside each galaxy raises temperatures, and interstellar material often combines into huge molecular clouds. All this mass in one place triggers prodigious star formation, with stellar birth rates increasing by a hundredfold.

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On the following pages, Wired takes a look at some of the most amazing images ever taken of these cosmic pile-ups.

Continue to Gallery

ikenbot:

Major Solar Flare Erupts From Giant Sunspot

The sun unleashed a huge flare Thursday (July 12), the second major solar storm to erupt from our star in less than a week.

The solar flare peaked at 12:52 p.m. EDT (1652 GMT) as an X-class sun storm, the most powerful type of flare the sun can have.

“It erupted from Active Region 1520, which rotated into view on July 6,” NASA officials said in an alert. Active Region 1520, or AR1520, is a giant sunspot currently facing Earth.

Continue..

unknownskywalker:

Giant black hole kicked out of home galaxy

The galaxy at the center of this image contains an X-ray source, CID-42, which astronomers think that contains a massive black hole being ejected at several million miles per hour. The galaxy is located nearly 4 billion light years from Earth.

The main panel is a wide-field optical image of CID-42 and its surroundings. The top right image from the Chandra X-ray Observatory shows the X-ray emission is concentrated in a single source, corresponding to one of the two sources seen in deep observations by Hubble, which is shown in the middle inset box. The bottom inset shows how the X-rays align with the optical data.

Astronomers think that CID-42 is the byproduct of two galaxies that have collided, producing the distinctive tail seen in the upper part of the optical image inset. When this galaxy collision occurred, the supermassive black holes in the center of each galaxy also collided.

The two black holes then merged to form a single black hole, that recoiled from gravitational waves produced by the collision, giving the newly merged black hole a sufficiently large kick for it to eventually escape from the galaxy. In this scenario, the source with the X-rays is the black hole being ejected from the galaxy.

Watch the video: http://youtu.be/-Q3jnQkvU-o: Simulation of black hole ejection.

unknownskywalker:

Crash of the Titans: Andromeda Galaxy and the Milky Way Collision

NASA astronomers announced Thursday they can now predict with certainty the next major cosmic event to affect our galaxy, Sun, and solar system: the titanic collision of our Milky Way galaxy with the neighboring Andromeda galaxy.

The Milky Way is destined to get a major makeover during the encounter, which is predicted to happen four billion years from now. It is likely the Sun will be flung into a new region of our galaxy, but our Earth and solar system are in no danger of being destroyed.

The above illustrations depict the view of the night sky just before the predicted merger between our Milky Way galaxy and the neighboring Andromeda galaxy. About 3.75 billion years from now, Andromeda’s disk fills the field of view and its gravity begins to create tidal distortions in the Milky Way.

The view is inspired by dynamical computer modeling of the future collision between the two galaxies. The two galaxies collide about 4 billion years from now and merge to form a single galaxy about 6 billion years from now.

Watch the video: http://youtu.be/fqjSgZdo5XE

Above: 1. (2 billion years from now) The disk of the approaching Andromeda galaxy is noticeably larger. 2. (3.75 billion years fron now) Andromeda fills the field of view. The Milky Way begins to show distortion due to tidal pull from Andromeda. 3. (4 billion years fron now) After its first close pass, Andromeda is tidally stretched out. The Milky Way, too, becomes warped.

nzayn-astro:

The Local Group

The Local Group is a cluster of approximately 30 galaxies that spans nearly 2 million light years. The group is dominated by three main galaxies: Andromeda M31, the Milky Way, and Triangulum M33.

Each of these major galaxies possess numerous satellite galaxies, and together they form a vast “cloud” known as the Local Group.

The structure of the group is most likely unstable.  Calculations suggest these group is highly dynamic, and has probably changed significantly in the past.  It is generally believed that in the distant future, Andromeda and the Milky Way will collide, creating a massive elliptical galaxy containing tens of billions of stars.

The Local Group, however, is not isolated. It is instead in gravitational interaction and member exchange with countless nearby Groups. These include: Maffei-1 Group, Sculptor Group, M81 Group, and M83 Group. Combined with the Local Group, these numerous galaxies form immense chains of galaxies that wrap around a much larger structure known as the Virgo Cluster.

fyeahuniverse:

^{3C273 | First Known Quasar}

^{This brilliant rainbow of colour is an amalgamation of images from NASA’s Hubble, Chandra, and Spitzer space telescopes. This is the first known quasar, discovered in 1963, and the stream of particles flying out of it stretches over 100,000ly.}

^{(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Yale University)}

(via throughascientificlens)