NASA : Detectado un Gigantesco Cúmulo de Galaxias Gracias a Telescopios de la NASA

04.11.15.- Un equipo de astrónomos ha descubierto una gigantesca reunión de galaxias en una zona muy remota del Universo, gracias al Telescopio Espacial Spitzer y al observatorio WISE de la NASA.

Los cúmulos de galaxias están gravitacionalmente unidos por grupos de miles de galaxias, que a su vez contienen cada una cientos de miles de millones de estrellas. Los cúmulos crecen más y más con el tiempo a medida que adquieren nuevos miembros.

¿Cómo evolucionan con el tiempo? ¿Qué aspecto tenían hace miles de millones de años? Para responder a estas preguntas, los astrónomos se fijan en el Universo joven. Debido a que la luz necesita tiempo para llegar a nosotros, podemos ver cómo fueron objetos muy distantes en el pasado. Por ejemplo, estamos viendo el cúmulo de galaxias recién descubierto -llamado Massive Overdense Object (MOO) J1142 + 1,527 - tal y como existía hace 8.500 millones de años, mucho antes de que la Tierra se formase.

Mientras la luz de las galaxias distantes se abre paso hacia nosotros, se estira a largas longitudes de onda infrarrojas, por la expansión del espacio. Ahí es donde WISE y Spitzer ayudan.

En las imágenes infrarrojas producidas por Spitzer, estas galaxias distantes se destacan como puntos rojos, mientras que las galaxias más cercanas se ven blancas. Los astrónomos primero peinan a través del catálogo de WISE para encontrar candidatos a cúmulos de galaxias distantes. WISE ha catalogado cientos de millones de objetos en imágenes tomadas por todo el cielo desde 2010 hasta 2011.

El cúmulo de galaxias llamado MOO J1142+1527 puede verse aquí tal y como era cuando la luz partió hace 8.500 millones de años. Las galaxias rojas del centro de la imagen forman el corazón del cúmulo de galaxias. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Gemini/CARMA.

 

Luego usaron Spitzer para acotar los 200 objetos masivos más interesantes, en un proyecto llamado MaDCoWS. Spitzer no observa todo el cielo como WISE, pero puede ver con más detalle.

"Es la combinación de Spitzer y WISE la que nos permite ir de un cuarto de millón de objetos a los grupos más masivos de galaxias en el cielo", dijo Anthony González, de la Universidad de Florida en Gainesville, autor principal de un nuevo estudio publicado en Astrophysical Journal Letters.

A partir de estas observaciones, MOO J1142 + 1527 saltó como una de las más extremas.

Los observatorios W.M. Keck y Gemini en Mauna Kea, Hawai, se utilizaron para medir la distancia a la agrupación. Utilizando datos obtenidos con los telescopios Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-wave Astronomy (CARMA) cerca de Owens Valley en California, los científicos fueron capaces de determinar que la masa del cúmulo es mil billones de veces la de nuestro Sol, lo que lo convierte en el cúmulo más masivo conocido tan atrás en el espacio y el tiempo.

MOO J1142 + 1527 puede que sea sólo uno entre un puñado de grupos de este peso en el universo temprano, según las estimaciones de los científicos.

"En base a nuestra comprensión de cómo los cúmulos de galaxias crecen desde el principio de nuestro universo, este grupo debe ser uno de los cinco más masivos", dijo el co-autor Peter Eisenhardt, científico del proyecto de WISE del Laboratorio de Propulsión a Chorro de la NASA en Pasadena, California.

Durante el próximo año, el equipo planea seguir buscando entre más de 1.700 candidatos adicionales a ser cúmulos con Spitzer para identificar a los cúmulos mayores. 

"Una vez hayamos encontrado los cúmulos más masivos podemos empezar a investigar cómo evolucionan las galaxias en estos ambientes extremos", dijo González.

NASA
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
ayabaca@gmail.com
ayabaca@yahoo.com
ayabaca@hotmail.com

NASA : NASA's Spitzer and WISE Telescopes Find Close, Cold Neighbor of Sun

This artist's conception shows the object named WISE J085510.83-071442.5, the coldest known brown dwarf. This cool star-like body is as frosty as the North Pole (or between minus 54 and 9 degrees Fahrenheit). It is also the fourth closest system to our sun, at 7.2 light-years from Earth.

Image Credit: Penn State University/NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and Spitzer Space Telescope have discovered what appears to be the coldest "brown dwarf" known -- a dim, star-like body that, surprisingly, is as frosty as Earth's North Pole.

Images from the space telescopes also pinpointed the object's distance to 7.2 light-years away, earning it the title for fourth closest system to our sun. The closest system, a trio of stars, is Alpha Centauri, at about 4 light-years away.

"It's very exciting to discover a new neighbor of our solar system that is so close," said Kevin Luhman, an astronomer at Pennsylvania State University's Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds, University Park. "And given its extreme temperature, it should tell us a lot about the atmospheres of planets, which often have similarly cold temperatures."

Brown dwarfs start their lives like stars, as collapsing balls of gas, but they lack the mass to burn nuclear fuel and radiate starlight. The newfound coldest brown dwarf is named WISE J085510.83-071442.5. It has a chilly temperature between minus 54 and 9 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 48 to minus 13 degrees Celsius). Previous record holders for coldest brown dwarfs, also found by WISE and Spitzer, were about room temperature.

WISE was able to spot the rare object because it surveyed the entire sky twice in infrared light, observing some areas up to three times. Cool objects like brown dwarfs can be invisible when viewed by visible-light telescopes, but their thermal glow -- even if feeble -- stands out in infrared light. In addition, the closer a body, the more it appears to move in images taken months apart. Airplanes are a good example of this effect: a closer, low-flying plane will appear to fly overhead more rapidly than a high-flying one.

"This object appeared to move really fast in the WISE data," said Luhman. "That told us it was something special."

After noticing the fast motion of WISE J085510.83-071442.5 in March, 2013, Luhman spent time analyzing additional images taken with Spitzer and the Gemini South telescope on Cerro Pachon in Chile. Spitzer's infrared observations helped determine the frosty temperature of the brown dwarf. Combined detections from WISE and Spitzer, taken from different positions around the sun, enabled the measurement of its distance through the parallax effect. This is the same principle that explains why your finger, when held out right in front of you, appears to jump from side to side when you alternate left- and right-eye views.

"It is remarkable that even after many decades of studying the sky, we still do not have a complete inventory of the sun's nearest neighbors," said Michael Werner, the project scientist for Spitzer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. JPL manages and operates Spitzer. "This exciting new result demonstrates the power of exploring the universe using new tools, such as the infrared eyes of WISE and Spitzer."

WISE J085510.83-071442.5 is estimated to be 3 to 10 times the mass of Jupiter. With such a low mass, it could be a gas giant similar to Jupiter that was ejected from its star system. But scientists estimate it is probably a brown dwarf rather than a planet since brown dwarfs are known to be fairly common. If so, it is one of the least massive brown dwarfs known.

In March of 2013, Luhman's analysis of the images from WISE uncovered a pair of much warmer brown dwarfs at a distance of 6.5 light years, making that system the third closest to the sun. His search for rapidly moving bodies also demonstrated that the outer solar system probably does not contain a large, undiscovered planet, which has been referred to as "Planet X" or "Nemesis."

For more information on NASA's WISE mission, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/wise

NASA

Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui

ayabaca@gmail.com

ayabaca@hotmail.com

ayabaca@yahoo.com

NASA - NASA Chandra, Spitzer Study Suggests Black Holes Abundant Among The Earliest Stars

By comparing infrared and X-ray background signals across the same stretch of sky, an international team of astronomers has discovered evidence of a significant number of black holes that accompanied the first stars in the universe.

Using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, which observes in the infrared, researchers have concluded one of every five sources contributing to the infrared signal is a black hole.

The cosmic microwave background, shown at left in this illustration, is a flash of light that occurred when the young universe cooled enough for electrons and protons to form the first atoms. It contains slight temperature fluctuations that correspond to regions of slightly different densities, representing the seeds of all cosmic structure we see around us today. The universe then went dark for hundreds of millions of years until the first stars shone and the first black holes began accreting gas. A portion of the infrared and X-ray signals from these sources is preserved in the cosmic infrared background, or CIB, and its X-ray equivalent, the CXB. At least 20 percent of the structure in these backgrounds changes in concert, indicating that black hole activity was hundreds of times more intense in the early universe than it is today.
Credit: Karen Teramura, UHIfA
› Larger image
› Larger image (unlabeled)

"Our results indicate black holes are responsible for at least 20 percent of the cosmic infrared background, which indicates intense activity from black holes feeding on gas during the epoch of the first stars," said Alexander Kashlinsky, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

The cosmic infrared background (CIB) is the collective light from an epoch when structure first emerged in the universe. Astronomers think it arose from clusters of massive suns in the universe's first stellar generations, as well as black holes, which produce vast amounts of energy as they accumulate gas.

Even the most powerful telescopes cannot see the most distant stars and black holes as individual sources. But their combined glow, traveling across billions of light-years, allows astronomers to begin deciphering the relative contributions of the first generation of stars and black holes in the young cosmos. This was at a time when dwarf galaxies assembled, merged and grew into majestic objects like our own Milky Way galaxy.

"We wanted to understand the nature of the sources in this era in more detail, so I suggested examining Chandra data to explore the possibility of X-ray emission associated with the lumpy glow of the CIB," said Guenther Hasinger, director of the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu, and a member of the study team.

Hasinger discussed the findings Tuesday at the 222nd meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Indianapolis. A paper describing the study was published in the May 20 issue of The Astrophysical Journal.

The work began in 2005, when Kashlinsky and his colleagues studying Spitzer observations first saw hints of a remnant glow. The glow became more obvious in further Spitzer studies by the same team in 2007 and 2012. The 2012 investigation examined a region known as the Extended Groth Strip, a single well-studied slice of sky in the constellation Bootes. In all cases, when the scientists carefully subtracted all known stars and galaxies from the data, what remained was a faint, irregular glow. There is no direct evidence this glow is extremely distant, but telltale characteristics lead researchers to conclude it represents the CIB.

In 2007, Chandra took especially deep exposures of the Extended Groth Strip as part of a multiwavelength survey. Along a strip of sky slightly larger than the full moon, the deepest Chandra observations overlap with the deepest Spitzer observations. Using Chandra observations, lead researcher Nico Cappelluti, an astronomer with the National Institute of Astrophysics in Bologna, Italy, produced X-ray maps with all of the known sources removed in three wavelength bands. The result, paralleling the Spitzer studies, was a faint, diffuse X-ray glow that constitutes the cosmic X-ray background (CXB).

Comparing these maps allowed the team to determine whether the irregularities of both backgrounds fluctuated independently or in concert. Their detailed study indicates fluctuations at the lowest X-ray energies are consistent with those in the infrared maps.

"This measurement took us some five years to complete and the results came as a great surprise to us," said Cappelluti, who also is affiliated with the University of Maryland, Baltimore County in Baltimore.

The process is similar to standing in Los Angeles while looking for signs of fireworks in New York. The individual pyrotechnics would be too faint to see, but removing all intervening light sources would allow the detection of some unresolved light. Detecting smoke would strengthen the conclusion at least part of this signal came from fireworks.

In the case of the CIB and CXB maps, portions of both infrared and X-ray light seem to come from the same regions of the sky. The team reports black holes are the only plausible sources that can produce both energies at the intensities required. Regular star-forming galaxies, even those that vigorously form stars, cannot do this.

By teasing out additional information from this background light, the astronomers are providing the first census of sources at the dawn of structure in the universe.

"This is an exciting and surprising result that may provide a first look into the era of initial galaxy formation in the universe," said another contributor to the study, Harvey Moseley, a senior astrophysicist at Goddard. "It is essential that we continue this work and confirm it."

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra's science and flight operations from Cambridge, Mass. Data are archived at the Chandra X-ray Center in Cambridge.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena. Data are archived at the Infrared Science Archive housed at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at Caltech. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

Related Links

› Paper: Cross-Correlating Cosmic Infrared and X-ray Background Fluctuations: Evidence of Significant Black Hole Populations Among the CIB Sources
› "NASA's Spitzer Finds First Objects Burned Furiously" (06.07.12)
› "NASA Telescope Picks Up Glow of Universe's First Objects" (12.18.06)
› NASA’s Chandra website
› NASA’s Spitzer website

---

 

 

Francis Reddy
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

(Text issued as NASA Headquarters release No. 13-170)

NASA

Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui

ayabaca@gmail.com

ayabaca@hotmail.com

ayabaca@yahoo.com

Astronomy: A New View of the Tarantula Nebula



Hi My Friends: AL VUELO DE UN QUINDE EL BLOG., To celebrate its 22nd anniversary in orbit, the Hubble Space Telescope released a dramatic new image of the star-forming region 30 Doradus, also known as the Tarantula Nebula because its glowing filaments resemble spider legs. A new image from all three of NASA's Great Observatories--Chandra, Hubble, and Spitzer--has also been created to mark the event.

The Tarantula Nebula



To celebrate its 22nd anniversary in orbit, the Hubble Space Telescope released a dramatic new image of the star-forming region 30 Doradus, also known as the Tarantula Nebula because its glowing filaments resemble spider legs. A new image from all three of NASA's Great Observatories--Chandra, Hubble, and Spitzer--has also been created to mark the event.

The nebula is located in the neighboring galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud, and is one of the largest star-forming regions located close to the Milky Way. At the center of 30 Doradus, thousands of massive stars are blowing off material and producing intense radiation along with powerful winds. The Chandra X-ray Observatory detects gas that has been heated to millions of degrees by these stellar winds and also by supernova explosions. These X-rays, colored blue in this composite image, come from shock fronts--similar to sonic booms--formed by this high-energy stellar activity.

The Hubble data in the composite image, colored green, reveals the light from these massive stars along with different stages of star birth, including embryonic stars a few thousand years old still wrapped in cocoons of dark gas. Infrared emission data from Spitzer, seen in red, shows cooler gas and dust that have giant bubbles carved into them. These bubbles are sculpted by the same searing radiation and strong winds that comes from the massive stars at the center of 30 Doradus.

Image Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/PSU/L.Townsley et al.; Optical: NASA/STScI; Infrared: NASA/JPL/PSU/L.Townsley et al.

Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui

ayabaca@gmail.com

ayabaca@hotmail.com

ayabaca@yahoo.com

Astronomy: Tarantula Nebula

To celebrate its 22nd anniversary in orbit, the Hubble Space Telescope has released a dramatic new image of the star-forming region 30 Doradus, also known as the Tarantula Nebula because its glowing filaments resemble spider legs. A new image from all three of NASA's Great Observatories - Chandra, Hubble, and Spitzer - has also been created to mark the event.

30 Doradus is located in the neighboring galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud, and is one of the largest star-forming regions located close to the Milky Way . At the center of 30 Doradus, thousands of massive stars are blowing off material and producing intense radiation along with powerful winds. The Chandra X-ray Observatory detects gas that has been heated to millions of degrees by these stellar winds and also by supernova explosions. These X-rays, colored blue in this composite image, come from shock fronts -- similar to sonic booms -- formed by this high-energy stellar activity.

The Hubble data in the composite image, colored green, reveals the light from these massive stars along with different stages of star birth including embryonic stars a few thousand years old still wrapped in cocoons of dark gas. Infrared emission from Spitzer, seen in red, shows cooler gas and dust that have giant bubbles carved into them. These bubbles are sculpted by the same searing radiation and strong winds that comes from the massive stars at the center of 30 Doradus.

Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/PSU/L.Townsley et al.; Optical: NASA/STScI; Infrared: NASA/JPL/PSU/L.Townsley et al.
› Read more/access all images
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui

ayabaca@gmail.com
ayabaca@hotmail.com
ayabaca@yahoo.com

Astronomy: Spider Web of Stars

Hi My Friends: AL VUELO DE UN QUINDE EL BLOG., At a distance of about 10 million light-years, IC 342 is relatively close by galactic standards, however our vantage point places it directly behind the disk of our own Milky Way. The intervening dust makes it difficult to see in visible light, but infrared light penetrates this veil easily. IC 342 belongs to the same group as its even more obscured galactic neighbor, Maffei 2. Spider Web of Stars
Looking like a spider's web swirled into a spiral, Galaxy IC 342 presents its delicate pattern of dust in this image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Seen in infrared light, faint starlight gives way to the glowing bright patterns of dust found throughout the galaxy's disk.

At a distance of about 10 million light-years, IC 342 is relatively close by galactic standards, however our vantage point places it directly behind the disk of our own Milky Way. The intervening dust makes it difficult to see in visible light, but infrared light penetrates this veil easily. IC 342 belongs to the same group as its even more obscured galactic neighbor, Maffei 2.

IC 342 is nearly face-on to our view, giving a clear, top-down view of the structure of its disk. It has a low surface brightness compared to other spirals, indicating a lower density of stars (seen here as a blue haze). Its dust structures show up much more vividly (red). Blue dots are stars closer to us, in our own Milky Way.

New stars are forming in the disk at a healthy rate. The very center glows especially brightly in the infrared, highlighting an enormous burst of star formation occurring in this tiny region. To either side of the center, a small bar of dust and gas is helping to fuel this central star formation.

Data from Spitzer's infrared array camera are shown in blue (3.6 microns), green (4.5 microns) and red (5.8 and 8.0 microns).

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui

ayabaca@gmail.com

ayabaca@hotmail.com

ayabaca@yahoo.com

ASTRONOMÍA: Encuentran planeta con agua a 41 años luz de la tierra

Hola amigos: AL VUELO DE UN QUINDE EL BLOG.,Se llama 55 Cancri e y si nosotros somos la única civilización que existe en el Universo, que enorme desperdicio de espacio

Esa era una de las frases que decía la Doctora Ellie Arroway, protagonista de Contact, la novela de Carl Sagan. La exploración del espacio y la búsqueda de otros planetas que tengan características similares a las de la Tierra es una de las inquietudes del ser humano desde hace años y el trabajo de muchos astrónomos. Si hay vida ahí fuera o no, aún es algo que no sabemos, sin embargo, los científicos han descubierto un planeta en la constelación de Cáncer que parece ser un mundo acuático, es decir, posee agua al igual que la Tierra y, además, tiene un diámetro dos veces superior al de nuestro planeta.

55 Cancri A es una estrella de magnitud 6, es decir, es visible a simple vista, que está ubicada en la constelación de Cáncer y fue descubierta en el año 2004; una estrella muy similar a nuestro Sol que tiene 5 planetas que orbitan a su alrededor de los cuales, según los cambios detectados en su velocidad radial, hay un planeta que podría contener agua. Concretamente, este planeta, de nombre 55 Cancri e y que tarda unas 18 horas en girar alrededor de su Sol, tiene una masa 8 veces superior a la de la Tierra (o la mitad de la de Neptuno) y, según parece, podría estar repleto de agua.

¿Repleto de agua? Hasta ahora no se había podido medir la densidad de este planeta situado a 41 años luz de la Tierra, puesto que no se había podido calcular el radio de éste. Así que, desde su descubrimiento, siempre ha sido complicado afirmar si estamos ante un planeta parecido al nuestro, es decir, un “mundo acuático”, o bien ante un gélido mundo de hielo, como podría ser Neptuno.

Sin embargo, para arrojar algo de luz, Michael Gillon, de la Universidad belga de Lieja, ha comentado algunas de sus conclusiones tras observar, durante algún tiempo, a este exoplaneta. Este astrónomo ha estado observando 55 Cancri e de varias formas. Por un lado, usando el telescopio espacial Spitzer de la NASA y el telescopio espacial MOST de Canadá, por lo que ha podido obtener datos desde dos fuentes distintas que le han permitido llegar a la conclusión que este planeta tiene un radio dos veces mayor que el del planeta Tierra. ¿Y cómo ha realizado la medida? Gillon pensó en que cuando este planeta pasase delante de estos telescopios, la cantidad de luz que el planeta bloquease durante cada transición podría ser un dato proporcional al radio del planeta y, básicamente, así ha determinado este dato.

Además, Gillon ha determinado que el planeta 55 Cancri e es un planeta rocoso formado por una combinación de hierro y óxidos de magnesio y silicio, como el resto de planetas rocosos de nuestro sistema solar. Pero la densidad de estos materiales es extremadamente conocida y no casaba con la que se había medido:

Encontramos que 55 Cancri e es demasiado grande para estar formado únicamente por rocas. Por consiguiente, el planeta debía tener una especie de envoltura gaseosa

¿Una envoltura gaseosa? Dicho así, 55 Cancri e sólo podía presentar dos opciones posibles. Por un lado, este planeta podría tener una atmósfera formada por hidrógeno y helio, como la mayoría de planetas que son gigantes con hielo. Pero, al final, descartaron esta posibilidad puesto que una atmósfera así habría tendido a desaparecer; así que enfocaron el problema desde otro punto de vista. Una cobertura formada por agua que concentrase el 20% de la masa del planeta podría ser la explicación más lógica que explicase que esa atmósfera aún estuviese presente.

¿Entonces? Según estas hipótesis, 55 Cancri e es un planeta repleto de agua que, por su cercanía a su Sol, estaría a punto de ebullición. Información de Taringa.
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
ayabaca@gmail.com
ayabaca@hotmail.com

ayabaca@yahoo.com

Astronomy: NASA'S Spitzer Finds Solid Buckyballs in Space

Hi My Friends: AL VUELO DE UN QUINDE EL BLOG., Astronomers using data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have, for the first time, discovered buckyballs in a solid form in space. Prior to this discovery, the microscopic carbon spheres had been found only in gas form. Formally named buckminsterfullerene, buckyballs are named after their resemblance to the late architect Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes. They are made up of 60 carbon molecules arranged into a hollow sphere, like a soccer ball. Their unusual structure makes them ideal candidates for electrical and chemical applications on Earth, including superconducting materials, medicines, water purification and armor.

Space Balls
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has at last found buckyballs in space, as illustrated by this artist's conception showing the carbon balls coming out from the type of object where they were discovered -- a dying star and the material it sheds, known as a planetary nebula.

Buckyballs are made up of 60 carbon atoms organized into spherical structures that resemble soccer balls. They also look like Buckminister Fuller's architectural domes, hence their official name of buckministerfullerenes. The molecules were first concocted in a lab nearly 25 years ago, and were theorized at that time to be floating around carbon-rich stars in space.

But it wasn't until now that Spitzer, using its sensitive infrared vision, was able to find convincing signs of buckyballs. The telescope found the molecules -- as well as their elongated, rugby-ball-like relatives, called C70 -- in the material around a dying star, or planetary nebula, called Tc 1. The star at the center of Tc 1 was once similar to our sun but as it aged, it sloughed off its outer layers, leaving only a dense white-dwarf star. Astronomers believe buckyballs were created in shed layers of carbon that blew off the star. Tc 1 does not show up that well in images, so a picture of the NGC 2440 nebula, taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, was used in this artist's conception.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Hubble image credit: NASA, ESA, STScI

Jiggling Soccer-Ball Molecules in Space
These data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope show the signatures of buckyballs in space. Buckyballs, also called C60 or buckministerfullerenes, after architect Buckminister Fuller's geodesic domes, are made of 60 carbon atoms structured like a black-and-white soccer ball. They were first discovered in a lab in 1985, but could not be definitively identified in space until now. Spitzer was able to find their spectral signatures -- along with the signatures of their rugby-ball-like relatives, called C70 -- by analyzing the infrared light from Tc 1, a planetary nebula consisting of material shed by a dying star.

Buckyballs jiggle, or vibrate, in a variety of ways -- 174 ways to be exact. Four of these vibrational modes cause the molecules to either absorb or emit infrared light. All four modes were detected by Spitzer.

The space telescope first gathered light from the area around the dying star -- specifically a region rich in carbon -- then, with the help of its spectrograph instrument, spread the light into its various components, or wavelengths. Astronomers studied the data, a spectrum like the one shown here, to identify signatures, or fingerprints, of molecules. The four vibrational modes of buckyballs are indicated by the red arrows. Likewise, Spitzer identified four vibrational modes of C70, shown by the blue arrows.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Western Ontario

NASA'S Spitzer Finds Solid Buckyballs in Space

WASHINGTON -- Astronomers using data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have, for the first time, discovered buckyballs in a solid form in space. Prior to this discovery, the microscopic carbon spheres had been found only in gas form.

Formally named buckminsterfullerene, buckyballs are named after their resemblance to the late architect Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes. They are made up of 60 carbon molecules arranged into a hollow sphere, like a soccer ball.

Their unusual structure makes them ideal candidates for electrical and chemical applications on Earth, including superconducting materials, medicines, water purification and armor. In the latest discovery, scientists using Spitzer detected tiny specks of matter, or particles, consisting of stacked buckyballs.

They found them around a pair of stars called "XX Ophiuchi," 6,500 light-years from Earth. "These buckyballs are stacked together to form a solid, like oranges in a crate," said Nye Evans of Keele University in England, lead author of a paper appearing in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

"The particles we detected are miniscule, far smaller than the width of a hair, but each one would contain stacks of millions of buckyballs." Buckyballs were detected definitively in space for the first time by Spitzer in 2010. Spitzer later identified the molecules in a host of different cosmic environments. It even found them in staggering quantities, the equivalent in mass to 15 Earth moons, in a nearby galaxy called the Small Magellanic Cloud. In all of those cases, the molecules were in the form of gas.

The recent discovery of buckyballs particles means that large quantities of these molecules must be present in some stellar environments in order to link up and form solid particles. The research team was able to identify the solid form of buckyballs in the Spitzer data because they emit light in a unique way that differs from the gaseous form.

"This exciting result suggests that buckyballs are even more widespread in space than the earlier Spitzer results showed," said Mike Werner, project scientist for Spitzer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

"They may be an important form of carbon, an essential building block for life, throughout the cosmos." Buckyballs have been found on Earth in various forms. They form as a gas from burning candles and exist as solids in certain types of rock, such as the mineral shungite found in Russia, and fulgurite, a glassy rock from Colorado that forms when lightning strikes the ground. In a test tube, the solids take on the form of dark, brown "goo."

"The window Spitzer provides into the infrared universe has revealed beautiful structure on a cosmic scale," said Bill Danchi, Spitzer program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "In yet another surprise discovery from the mission, we're lucky enough to see elegant structure at one of the smallest scales, teaching us about the internal architecture of existence."

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. For information about previous Spitzer discoveries of buckyballs,

visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/news/spitzer20100722.html
and
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/news/spitzer20101027.html

Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui

ayabaca@gmail.com

ayabaca@hotmail.com

ayabaca@yahoo.com